Poof! Environmental Protections Gone!
From this mornings 1440.com:
| Pollution Limits Lifted |
| The US Environmental Protection Agency yesterday said it is repealing limits on planet-warming pollution from coal- and natural gas-fired power plants, a sector that generates about 25% of all US climate pollution. The rollback follows previous moves by the Trump administration to eliminate or weaken policies aimed at restricting planet-warming chemicals and gases. The EPA says revoking the power plant regulations will save the industry over $300B and lower Americans’ energy bills. Environmental groups contend that rolling back the pollution limits could threaten tens of thousands of lives and exacerbate the impacts of climate-related natural disasters. The proposal is expected to face legal challenges, but if upheld in court, the rule could prevent future administrations from regulating power plants’ greenhouse gas emissions. If the US power sector were a country, its pollution production would rank fifth globally—behind only China, the entire US, India, and Russia (see greenhouse gas emissions on this globe). |
Greed wins. Science loses.
All the years of careful bi-partisan crafting of legislation to protect our air, protect our water, protect our medical advances, protect our food supply destroyed by this wrecking ball of an administration.
“The Cruelty is the Point”
I was singing to the choir, complaining to my old high school friend about the tactics and strategies employed by the Trump administration, against immigrants, against the press, and against any citizen disagreeing with this administration’s viewpoint. “It all seems so intentional, so cruel,” I said.
“The cruelty is the point,” he responded. It was short, pithy, but that was weeks ago and I continue to ponder the phrase. I wondered why it sounds familiar – my friend used quote marks – so this morning, I googled it and got this very thorough AI response:
“The cruelty is the point” is a political phrase coined by The Atlantic staff writer Adam Serwer in a prominent 2018 essay. [1, 2]
Origin and Meaning
- Coinage: Adam Serwer used the phrase in his October 2018 essay, “The Cruelty Is the Point”. [1, 2, 3]
- Core Argument: Serwer argued that the policies and public behavior of the Trump administration and its supporters were not accidentally harsh or crude, but intentionally designed to cause pain to marginalized groups. [1, 2]
- The Bond: He wrote that inflicting this pain creates a powerful sense of unity, pride, and shared identity among political supporters, binding them together through common opposition to outsiders, immigrants, and minority groups. [1]
Book Adaptation
- Publication: Serwer expanded his essays into a book titled The Cruelty Is the Point: The Past, Present, and Future of Trump’s America, published in June 2021. [1, 2]
- Themes: The book examines how modern political conflicts connect to deeper historical currents in the United States, including white supremacy, migration debates, police unions, and the legacy of the Lost Cause. [1, 2]
Usage and Legacy
- Political Lexicon: The phrase became a widely adopted descriptor in political commentary to characterize populist movements, harsh immigration rules (such as family separations), and rhetoric directed at political opponents. [1, 2, 3]
- Broader Application: Analysts and commentators frequently invoke the phrase outside the Trump administration to describe political strategies that rely on outraging rivals and signaling hostility toward specific demographic or social groups. [1, 2]
The original article in The Atlantic states:
“It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump.”
I urge you to read the October 2018 essay, and the book. From the beginning of the second Trump term, from the the very first day with the horrifying Presidential Edicts, the cruelty has been increasingly woven into public policy. The policies are Anti-American, anti-immigrant, anti-women and anti-everything I was taught to believe as I grew up – That we are created and born with equal rights, male and female, black, white, yellow, red and all the glorious colors in between. “Red and yellow, black and white, we are precious in His sight.”
Our priest told us from the pulpit this week that we are “to carry the light.” Each one of us, individually and together, carries the light. We can choose to be kind. We can reflect “the light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
Finally, A Quiet Moment
We’ve had a rough couple of weeks, starting with an emergency visit to a local vet clinic on a Sunday, then two weeks of constantly surveilling our sick cat. In the greater scheme of things, it’s not such a big deal, we say “it’s a first world problem,” but it creates a whirlwind of extra activity and extra work. We have three cats, and now, three separate places for them. We have our normal activities, and daily requirements. It all adds up.
Two of the cats, including the sick cat, are used to hanging out together, so they don’t understand why they have to be separated. Most of the time, things have been OK. Except at night. No sooner are we all settled, maybe even drifting into sleep, when one or another will start yowling, and scratching at a door, and you’d think it can only go on so long, but no, it keeps going on until we re-arrange things, and it’s good for thirty five minutes or mabe even an hour and then it all starts again.
So we’ve not been getting much sleep, and all this is exacerbated by the worries we have that our sick cat is not getting better. Today is a good day, but we are still worried not everything has resolved, and we have not gotten to the root of the problem.
But today IS a good day. One cat is at my feet, the sick cat, snuggled up and relaxed, which is a really good sign. The other cat, the one that joined our family at the same time as the sick cat is just feet away, on a stand looking out across the Bayou. Or, more likely, he is watching a lizard. He is crazy for lizards.
Most of the time, AdventureMan and I are pretty chipper. This cat illness, and the amount of time it is taking to resolve, and the amount of work involved in keeping cats all separated, and three litter boxes, and cleaning and all the laundry, and lugging the sick cat to the vet for x-rays and treatments, begins to wear on us. We aren’t so patient, with ourselves, with each other. We are tired. We take turns grabbing naps during the day, during cat quiet times, like right after feeding.
I barely know what is going on in the world, except that the Strait of Hormuz is not open, and our allies continue to grow in mistrust of our leadership and our lack of serious purpose. I’m too tired to get roused up as I believe the same insanity is likely to be reigning tomorrow.
I’m just thankful for these minutes of peace, that the sick cat is relaxed and sometimes you have to take what IS and say that this very minute is good enough.
Sunday at the Veterinary Emergency Clinic
My normal Sunday morning is quiet and contemplative. I get up early, whisper a quick “I’m going to church now” to Adventure Man and head out to what we jokingly call The Express Service. It’s for the quiet people who want to worship without a lot of embellishments and move on. Our priests are very good at respecting people’s time and creating a serene atmosphere for worship.
On my bathroom mirror is an ominous yellow sticky that says “wake me when you get up to talk about Uhtred.”
Uhtred is seeping blood and pus on his left flank. We know there are no options, we dress quickly to get to the Vet Emergency Care before the rest of the world awakes – we’ve been there before. It’s the only game in town, and weekends are busy.
We sign in. As they take Uhtred to the back to give him a superficial exam, a man comes in carrying a huge dog – maybe 80 pounds – who does not look like he is breathing.
We are updated on Uhtred’s condition and moved to a small room. A tech came by with water and an update – due to an all-hands-on-deck emergency, less urgent cases are on hold, Uhtred being a less urgent case.
We wait six hours. During these six hours, I take a break to go outside and walk; walking helps me calm my anxiety and keeps me sane. As I walk, I see another prostate dog come in on a stretcher, and desperate people with cages arriving. We’re under a high heat warning. It’s affecting our animals, too. We’re all desperate. We love our animals, and this is the only emergency treatment center open on Sunday in town. The wait seems endless.
A very competent doctor comes in and gives us two options: a stabilization one where we get him to our own vet the next day, and a complete treatment one, where they get to him when they can, but there are higher priority cases, and they just keep arriving, and they won’t get to him until late in the day. We opt for stabilization; we’d actually prefer Uhtred be treated by our own somewhat eccentric vet who has known us for years, and has treated all our cats.
We leave the clinic in relief after six hours with a cleaned-up, medicated cat in an “E” collar (for Elizabethan) to keep him from licking his wound.
As we leave, something extraordinary happens, something we have never seen before. The clinic closes its doors to incoming patients. There is one doctor, and 40+ situations awaiting her attention. Until they can bring in more emergency staff, they cannot deal with more. My heart goes out to them all, those who are trying to triage and treat these desperate cases, and those who are turned away when there are no other options.
We have a family dinner later in the day, this one an adult-only dinner where we discuss family situations and discuss options. We love these dinners, meeting with our son and his wife quietly, relaxed and open. We make a great team.
My daughter-in-law tells me there IS another option, further north, where we can take our animals under emergency conditions, a place they really like. Another resource! I am so thankful; I’ve never heard of this place, and it relieves my future anxieties about our animal emergencies.
CrisisGroup.Org
Because I follow – or try to follow – piracy in Somalia, I go down rabbit holes. Some rabbit holes lead you to the most amazing places, including a comprehensive update on an upsurge in Somalian piracy and root causes.
The rabbit holes led me to this fascinating group, Crisisgroup.org. I’m always curious who is behind these organizations – this organization, out of Brussels, seems to keep watch on some far-flung and, to U.S. readers, sometimes obscure potential events, which, when they explode, we wonder why we never heard of these fomenting conflicts.
Biases: Believing Our Delusions
This is from a daily reading by Richard Rohr, a theologian I love reading for his broad outlook on belief and spirituality.
None of us is free from biases that skew our thinking. He lists several of the thinking errors below.
Recognizing Our Biases
CAC (Center for Advanced Contemplation – ed.) faculty member Brian McLaren has done thoughtful and helpful research about what makes us see things so differently from one another. He identified thirteen biases that we outline today. Being a former pastor and an excellent communicator, Brian found a way to make these complex ways of seeing simple and memorable. He writes:
People can’t see what they can’t see. Their biases get in the way, surrounding them like a high wall, trapping them in ignorance, deception, and illusion. No amount of reasoning and argument will get through to them, unless we first learn how to break down the walls of bias. . . .
Confirmation Bias: We judge new ideas based on the ease with which they fit in with and confirm the only standard we have: old ideas, old information, and trusted authorities. As a result, our framing story, belief system, or paradigm excludes whatever doesn’t fit.
Complexity Bias: Our brains prefer a simple falsehood to a complex truth.
Community Bias: It’s almost impossible to see what our community doesn’t, can’t, or won’t see.
Complementarity Bias: If you are hostile to my ideas, I’ll be hostile to yours. If you are curious and respectful toward my ideas, I’ll respond in kind.
Competency Bias: We don’t know how much (or little) we know because we don’t know how much (or little) others know. In other words, incompetent people assume that most other people are about as incompetent as they are. As a result, they underestimate their [own] incompetence, and consider themselves at least of average competence.
Consciousness Bias: Some things simply can’t be seen from where I am right now. But if I keep growing, maturing, and developing, someday I will be able to see what is now inaccessible to me.
Comfort or Complacency Bias: I prefer not to have my comfort disturbed.
Conservative/Liberal Bias: I lean toward nurturing fairness and kindness, or towards strictly enforcing purity, loyalty, liberty, and authority, as an expression of my political identity.
Confidence Bias: I am attracted to confidence, even if it is false. I often prefer the bold lie to the hesitant truth.
Catastrophe or Normalcy Bias: I remember dramatic catastrophes but don’t notice gradual decline (or improvement).
Contact Bias: When I don’t have intense and sustained personal contact with “the other,” my prejudices and false assumptions go unchallenged.
Cash Bias: It’s hard for me to see something when my way of making a living requires me not to see it.
Conspiracy Bias: Under stress or shame, our brains are attracted to stories that relieve us, exonerate us, or portray us as innocent victims of malicious conspirators.
League of Women Voters: State of Union Bingo Cards
Gotta love those ladies in pearls, although lately the League has been attracting a much younger group of activists. An amazingly non-political group, the League looks at issues and candidates, and encourages INFORMED voters. All people are welcome; in spite of the name, the league also includes men. This is a group that makes a difference.
With their wicked sense of humor, the National League encourages all Americans to watch the dreaded State of the Union speech tonight, and has published a set of Bingo Cards to keep you engaged. You can download them for yourself and your family members at League of Women Voters: State of the Union Bingo or you can print these, which I downloaded from their website.
Yes, I am a member of this group. They keep up with the important issues, and they invite speakers to meetings to explain the substance to the public. They educate people about voting rights without bias.
They help with elections, and, where allowed, they help register new voters – people turning 18, new citizens, people who haven’t voted before. The current stereotype of this group as elderly educated women in pearls is quickly changing as super-charged young people seek to exert their rights in an orderly, lawful fashion.
By uniting women from all parties and all walks of life, they have a big voice and have effectively challenged unjust and unconstitutional laws at the local, state, and national levels. They take their commitment voting rights, issues, and impartiality very seriously.
And, they have a wonderful sense of humor 😄.
From Axios: America’s Healthiest and Least Healthy States
(The United Health Foundation was established by UnitedHealth Group in 1999 as a nonprofit, private foundation dedicated to improving health and health care. To date, the United Health Foundation has committed more than $845 million to programs and communities around the world, including a $100 million commitment to help advance and grow the health care workforce.” (from the United Health Foundation website)
This is one of the non-governmental agencies using facts and statistics to measure outcomes of health practices in the USA. Official statistics are disappearing. Entire years of government studies have been deleted from websites. Fortunately, there are people who saw it coming and who recorded the data from the websites, hoping for a future that respects science, research and statistics, and uses that research to create a greater good for us all, and shares that knowledge and best practices with the world.
So Much For Health and Transparency
It started during COVID. Politicians and their Administrations stopped publicizing statistics when the stats revealed their government was doing little or nothing to prevent spread of disease. Now, under the cover of cost reductions and eliminating fraud they are gutting the agencies that maintain the statistics and restricting publications of what few statistics are being gathered. Fortunately, private institutions and individuals are watching, keeping track, and doing their best to keep a vulnerable population informed.
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Early Voting in Florida
Here There and Everywhere 