Tag: politics

Ken Burn’s The American Revolution

I’ve finished watching Ken Burns’ six part series, The American Revolution, and I think it brilliant, reproducing through letters, paintings, actual locale, staged reenactment, and historian insight a reasonable, balanced portraiture of the genesis of a new nation.

In watching it, I’ve found myself unlearning the version of American history I absorbed in school—one that portrayed the country as born purely of promise, while minimizing its foundations in slavery and the seizure of Indigenous lands.

I hadn’t realized, for instance, that the Revolution was in effect America’s first civil war: nearly 20 percent of the population sided with Britain as Loyalists. Atrocities occurred on both sides—burned homesteads, pillage, and widespread rape.

George Washington emerges as essential to the colonies’ improbable victory over seasoned British troops, often intuitive, and when necessary, boldly improvisational—especially in his surprise attack on the Hessian garrison at Trenton.

He also also fought with chronically scarce resources, including men and weapons. Smallpox devastated his ranks until ever practical Washington ordered mandatory inoculation for the entire Continental Army. For this, and much more, he merits the accolade, “the father of our country.”

The second sentence of the Declaration of Independence remains, for me, among the greatest ever written: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

It’s also, as historian Jill Lepore points out in These Truths, proved an instrument of exclusion, its author Thomas Jefferson—like Washington—owning hundreds of enslaved people and enjoying immense wealth.

The Declaration is a document of soaring ideals and deep compromises, and we live with those contradictions still—half of America’s wealth held by one percent of the population, and inequities woven through our social and economic life.

The American Revolution, then, is best understood as a work in progress. It inspires hope that we can do better—and in some respects, we have—though much remains unfinished.

While the Revolution’s principal architects—Jefferson, Adams, Franklin—were men of the Enlightenment who trusted reason to guide human flourishing, the war itself was largely fought by working-class coalitions, many lured by the promise of 100 acres of land taken from Indigenous nations.

Burns isn’t receptive to the argument advanced by the 1619 Project—that American history truly begins with the arrival of enslaved Africans in 1619, and that the Revolution was in part propelled by Southern fears that Britain would eventually abolish slavery.

We do see, however, that the Dunmore Proclamation (1775)—offering freedom to enslaved people who joined the British cause—galvanized Southern resistance. Yet Britain itself, as Burns points out, was hardly on the brink of abolition, its Caribbean wealth built on massive slave labor. Simply a political ploy, Dunmore owned many slaves, and slavery would endure in the Empire for another sixty years.

France entered the conflict in 1777, driven not by idealism but by a desire to avenge its humiliation at Britain’s hands and to reclaim lost influence. Without French military and financial support, the colonies almost certainly would have remained British dominions. By this point, the Revolution had become a global conflict, fought on many fronts.

Part V turns to Valley Forge, outside Philadelphia—the de facto capital of the newly united colonies. There the Revolution reached its nadir: troops half-starved, poorly clothed, ill-housed, and undersupplied as a brutal winter descended, the Congress unable for months to pay the troops. Many died. Many deserted.

With Spring, the French presence is felt, dividing British resources. By 1781, the British suffer massive defeat at Yorktown through a combined force of American troops and the French fleet, blocking British escape. A peace treaty, however, would not ensue until 1783.

The war left the new nation weak and divided, its economy wracked with inflation, huge national debt, and resentful farmers who bore much of the burden, leading to the insurrection in western Massachusetts of 1000 farmers before it was put down by militia. The nation’s weakness would lead, however, to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 defining American governance with its checks and balances under The Constitution.

Women and slaves were, nonetheless, still omitted from the democratic franchise; indigenousness lands seized with violent alacrity.

Washington emerges the series hero, not only innovative on the battlefield with few resources, but committing to democratic rule in resigning his military commission at war’s end.

The series’ central insight is that while the Revolution promised a nation unlike any other, that promise survives only through continual reengagement.

It merits wide viewing: a masterpiece deserving of the highest praise.

—rj

Not Without Consequences: Trump Rolls Back Biden’s Gasoline Mandate

One of Trump’s ugliest moments as President, and there have been far too many, occurred yesterday when, surrounded by applauding auto executives, he rolled back Biden’s 50 mpg gasoline mandate to 35 mpg by 2031, assuring along with suspension of tax credits, the death of electric vehicles in the U.S.

This can only mean more trucks, more SUVs. And—yes—more carbon discharge, escalating ocean temperatures already soaring, the disruption of marine life, and rising seas as the Alaskan Arctic and Antarctica glaciers continue to melt.

In the meantime, what a boon all of this is to China’s burgeoning EV sales in world markets that includes Europe as well as Africa, Asia and Oceania, some models selling in the $10,000 dollar range. China now is a majority stock holder in Volvo.

But Trump thinks climate change is just a hoax, despite overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary, declaring on signing the bill into law that climate change is “the greatest scam in American history, the Green New Scam a quest to end the gasoline powered car. This is what they wanted to do even though we have more gasoline than any other country by far.”

What Trump has just done will have its consequences, the best estimates of media and environmental groups informing us that under the earlier standards, gasoline consumption would have been reduced by 14 billion gallons by 2050: Long term, more drought, more forest fires and, ominously, the dissolution of ocean currents fundamental to mammal well-being, which includes ourselves.

Trump’s lackeys argue the president’s bill is a boon to consumers, reducing car prices by a projected $1000, as if that’s going to dent a stagnant auto market, the average vehicle price now $50,000 and faulting on auto loans at a record high.

Mind you, this is just empty rhetoric when it comes to curbing inflation, The truth is the president’s tariffs potentially increase builder costs from $7,500 to $10,000 per home, with every $1,000 increase in the median price of a new home pricing out roughly 106,000 potential buyers, according to the National Home Builders Association.

Along with rising home prices, this president’s hysteria when it comes to renewables is costing you monthly electric bills averaging 12% over those of 2024, all of which means less disposable income, and fated to impact low wage households the most.

But back to CO₂, pollutants from tailpipe emissions like nitrogen oxides (NO), volatile organic compounds (VOC), and particulate matter hasten poor air quality and generate respiratory health issues as well.

Trump gets none of this. He runs government as a business, reaping profits for himself and family members. A derelict president, he’s more absent than present in the Oval Office, this fiscal year thus far, spending $371 million dollars on flights at tax payer expense to play golf at his Florida haven, Mar-a-Lago.

Off message as usual, he used the occasion to assault Minnesota’s Somali community whom, the day before, he called “garbage.” Today, it was “they had “destroyed Minnesota” and “destroyed our country.” The “Somalians should be out of here.”

If I asked you what was the fastest warming area of the U.S. outside of Alaska, would it surprise you that it’s New England, where I was born and raised in my early years? The winters I knew as a child are filled with memories of frequent snow fall, frozen lakes, hockey, sledding, skiing, and maple syrup.

Weather experts report New England “has heated up by 2.5C (4.5F) on average from 1900 to 2024, far in excess of the global average, with the world warming by around 1.3C due to the release of heat-trapping gases from burning fossil fuels” (The Guardian, 4 December 2025).

That’s a shocking increase and may prove a portent of what lies ahead. The UN and climate experts have set a maximum goal of 1.5°C (2.7°F) of warming above pre-industrial levels as the threshold, above which we reach the tipping point of near impossible reversal.

Meanwhile, Trump ignores the coming apocalyptic fallout of unrestrained fossil fuel policy, eco systems destroyed, famine common, forest fires ubiquitous, unbearable heat, polluted air, whales and elephants reduced to children’s picture books.

In sum, the Trump administration’s assault on the environment in the context of exponential climate change exhibits all too well the earmarks of corporate denial in the pursuit of monetary gain, whose consequences none of us will escape.

A nation can survive incompetence; what it cannot survive is deliberate blindness to the world burning at its door.

–RJ

Fran Lebowitz: Just Plain Irresistible

On my morning romp through The Guardian, I bumped into Fran Lebowitz—a new acquaintance for me—and immediately took to her sardonic take on so many of the things, often political, that keep one awake at night.

Now 75, Lebowitz’s essays are well worth reading, even if they sometimes make you wince—saber-toothed witticisms worthy of jotting down. She does not suffer fools gladly, and she’d make a terrific talk-show guest; in fact, she often has.

Her best book, The Lebowitz Reader (1994), remains thoroughly timely, a compendium of sharp observations on our cultural absurdities.

It may surprise you that she never attended college. A self-declared misfit, she spent high school hiding books under her desk, frequently getting caught and suspended.

She has no illusions about the times we live in, the reluctance to resist conformity, and the challenge of being an authentic self. We’d be great friends.

A consummate non-conformist, she owns no computer, no cellphone, not even a typewriter. But she does own 10,000 books and reads deeply—especially Baldwin and Fitzgerald. On Fitzgerald, she says:

“Most of my adult life I’ve been very irritated by the legend of F. Scott Fitzgerald. So every five years, I reread The Great Gatsby, hoping it’s not that good—but unfortunately it is.”

Her political commentary is cutting. She laments the resurgence of book banning—driven largely by one political party that still enjoys the support of nearly half the nation’s voters.

A liberal Democrat, she rejects centrist Democrats who fail to stand up to corporate power. Clinton, she thought, seemed like a Republican. Reagan, to her, proved the prototype of the “dumb president,” and Trump the worst incarnation of incompetence—a “cheap hustler, lazy, but mostly dumb.”

On the indulgence of the wealthy in politics, she is characteristically blunt:

“I object to people who are rich in politics. I don’t think they should be allowed to be in politics. It is bad for everybody but rich people, and rich people don’t need any more help… No one earns a billion dollars. People earn $10 an hour; people steal a billion dollars.”

Her acerbic wit can be genuinely funny. Regarding mountain climbing—an enthusiasm she cannot fathom—she says there’s simply no substitute for a warm shower and a well-cooked meal. “Oh, but the camera views are spectacular!” Plenty of photos already exist for that. She walks extensively in New York, but always to a destination.

Space confines me, as usual, but I think my drift is clear: Lebowitz is a voice worth knowing, irritating, insightful, and just plain irresistible.

—rj

Something Larger Than Itself: Baseball as Metaphor

It was the 7th inning of last night’s Dodger-Blue Jays World Series game, the Dodgers leading 5-4. I needed sleep, so gave up watching, but nonetheless fervently hoped the Jays would pull it out against baseball’s best team money can buy and perennial champion.

I’m glad I left the screen early. The game went 18 innings! The Blue Jays lost.

For me, baseball is metaphor for something larger than itself—each batter in existential challenge, one against a field of nine. In short, the odds of getting that hit aren’t likely, and yet batters do come through, sometimes winning a game.

As I waited for sleep to descend, I thought of how tonight’s game reflected my America, facing the hegemony of an encroached political dynasty. Would things ever change?

I fell asleep, expectant.

And so with our nation.

I refuse to give up hope. There’s yet another day, another game to be played. Sometimes the unexpected happens—the underdog breaks through. That happens in life, too. We get that hit. We score that run.

As poet Joy Sullivan tells us,
“i know nothing about baseball, but something in me breaks with joy when the runner rushes in, body flung & reaching, & the umpire lifts his arms out like a prophet or a mother & makes him safe.”

—rj

We Will Not Have a King! America Says No to Donald Trump

I know I’m preaching to the choir for the most part, but silence is not an option given a White House ogre who would be king, trampling the bounds of our Constitution and violating every norm of moral decency

Not a single day passes without his intrusion. He is everywhere — America’s unprecedented micromanager — overriding the citizenry’s right to dissent and Congress’ constitutional sovereignty over the nation’s purse.

He persecutes critics with vitriol, weaponizes the Department of Justice for revenge and governs, not by law, but by impulse and ego.

It was not enough for him to pave over Jackie Kennedy’s iconic Rose Garden. Now a $200 million, 90,000-square-foot ballroom extravaganza is under construction — an East Wing expansion with bulletproof glass and ostentatious design that mocks the White House’s classical restraint.

Three days ago, during a dinner for corporate behemoths — Amazon, Apple, Meta, Google, Microsoft, T-Mobile, and Comcast among them — he unveiled plans for an American Arc de Triomphe to rise across the Potomac, opposite the Lincoln Memorial. Contributors, he promised, will have their names engraved.

Within the White House he’s installed a “Presidential Walk of Fame” lined with photos of his predecessors, except for former President Joe Biden, represented by an autopen image.

On his orders, massive flagpoles have been installed on the White House south grounds. It appears he wants to emulate France’s Louis XIV and facsimile Versailles.

Meanwhile, our nation suffers as his tariffs induce seismic consequence for world markets, a boomerang policy ensuring economic stress here at home. Consumers already feel the pinch.

Yesterday, the would be King informed visiting Ukrainian president Zelensky he’ll not be getting those coveted tomahawk missiles after all. Russia and Ukraine must stop their war, even if it means Ukraine must surrender much of its land. In coming weeks, he will meet a second time with despot Putin in Budapest to hammer out Ukraine’s fate. He deems himself a peacemaker even as he plots Venezuelan intervention and guns down boats at sea.

Today, media reports Ukraine’s defenses are rapidly buckling; more so, its morale. Trump’s misfire, propelled by egotism, promises to outweigh Russia’s nightly onslaught of missiles and drones, delivering a coup de grâce assuring Ukraine’s doom.

Yesterday, Trump pardoned the notorious George Santos, sentenced to seven years for multifarious deceit. Will Epstein’s collaborator Ghislaine Maxwell be next?

In this time of climate challenge posing a future earth transformed into a version of Mars, Trump has systematically, unhesitatingly, chosen to war on the environment, auctioning off public lands for fossil fuel development, sanctioned logging the nation’s remaining pristine wilderness, suspended curbs on air and water pollution, subsidies for renewable energy technology—electric vehicles, solar and wind—visionary endeavors prodigious with promise.

Ominously, yesterday he sent 80% of our nuclear arsenal guardians home, surely sheer madness in a time of mounting Russian, Chinese, and North Korean intimidation.

Implementing his autocratic reach for fascism are his incompetent lackeys and sycophantic Republican enablers, who conflate loyalty with virtue.

Let him build his Versailles of glass and steel. We choose otherwise, our priority a republic defined by courage and conscience.

March boldly, my fellow warriors for freedom. Let your voices fill every street and square: “We will not have a king!”

–RJ

The Lethal Consequences for Women of Trump’s Suspending Foreign Aid

Waist up portrait of young African American doctor consulting female patient using digital tablet in clinic setting

Yesterday, in a 6-3 vote, liberal members of the court dissenting, the US Supreme Court granted an emergency stay of a lower court decision mandating that the Trump administration disburse the $4 billion dollars in foreign aid approved by Congress.

While the Court’s decision isn’t a final one, the funds must be spent before the end of the fiscal year, endangering their being ever dispensed.

The Court’s decision violates the right of Congress to legislate the nation’s purse, as granted by the Constitution.

The consequences from the holdup are lethal, especially for women in developing nations.

In Uganda, 88 teachers have been dismissed and thousands of students have dropped out, the majority of them girls. In Uganda, only a quarter of remaining students are females.

Early sell off of daughters as young as thirteen is increasingly common, as families seek to buttress income through dowries, consequent with the government’s reduction in food subsidies.

As is, numerous African women have been raped by warring militants, especially in South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Rape victims face social stigma and diminished prospects of marriage. The
administration’s policies only add to their plight.

Let me tell you what’s happened in Lesotho, whose primary industry is textiles, its workforce 80% female. Due to Trump’s tariffs and a decrease in aid, orders have dried-up, resulting in mass layoffs.

Across Africa, reduced employment impacts health, imperiling the progress made against AIDS/STD. Most health care workers are women. It used to be that women could access an HIV test, averaging 12 cents a test. With suspension of aid, that option has virtually disappeared.

Pap smears are now largely unavailable; the fallout, cervical cancer rivals maternal mortality.

African children, many of them already undernourished, stunted in growth and suffering mental retardation, face the bleakest of futures.

Some women may resort to transactional sex as means to economic survival, increasing health risk.

With the pervasive suspension of birth control assistance, women lose the ability to limit family size. The average family size in Africa is 4.5. Still more in the Sahel. By the century’s turn, Nigeria alone will have a projected 750 million population.

Poverty is an enemy of the social fabric, contributing to domestic violence.

Poverty contributes to crime, much of it food theft.

Poverty increases migration pressures and with dislocation, still more violence, as is occurring in South Africa, migrants resented as competitors.

Menaced by climate warming, which Trump calls a hoax, Africans are confronted with daily survival made worse by prolonged droughts and tropical diseases.

Trump, however, dismisses developing nations as “shithole countries,” his racism creating a vast milieu of unprecedented suffering.

I’ve largely centered on Africa, but its experience is reenacted in other developing countries as well.

Women, tragically, are Trump’s primary victims.

rj

On the Other Hand: Reminiscence of Charlie Kirk

We’ve been hearing a great deal about Charlie Kirk in the aftermath of his assassination, much of it pejorative in public media—and in some cases, disturbingly celebratory—even from a few of my own friends on Facebook.

Whatever one’s politics, Kirk consistently embraced conversation across divides, something rare in today’s climate of weaponized rhetoric on both right and left—rhetoric that too often spills over into violence.

I’m reminded of my own university experience decades ago at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, when state police were brought in after radicals seized several buildings. Over lunch one day, a friend who later became a professor at UC Davis told me bluntly, “blood was needed to prevail.”

Kirk, however controversial his views, waded into the near-universal tide of leftist polemic across university campuses. He did so not with violence but with debate—introducing new lanes of conversation and allowing dissident voices to be heard.

Journalist and bestselling author Michael Easter (The Comfort Crisis), himself a staunch liberal, shared this reflection on his encounter with Kirk:

A years ago, I got a message from Charlie Kirk. He wanted me to come on his podcast.

All I knew about him then was that he was a right-wing political commentator.

I don’t publicly discuss politics because my books cover health and the human experience, which is universal. So I asked my publicist—who is extremely progressive—if I should go on.

“Do it,” she said. “If politics comes up, steer it back to health.”

Charlie didn’t ask me a single political question. He was exceptionally kind and genuinely curious about my work. He had a better reading of my book than nearly any other interviewer, and he drew out faith-based parallels I’d never considered. That actually deepened my own understanding of my work. He mentioned my book far more than he had to.

I’ve been on big podcasts with meditation and self-help gurus who weren’t a fraction as present, kind, and curious as Charlie Kirk.

Our conversation changed how I see public figures. The 20-second clips and 280-character hot takes we see in our media ecosystem don’t capture the full breadth, depth, and humanity of a person. I now have no hesitations talking to anyone.

I respect Charlie as a curious thinker and fellow human. I respect his devotion to his faith and family. His willingness to talk with anyone was inspiring, unique, and beneficial. I’m sad he’s gone (Substack, September 13, 2025).

Easter’s words remind me of John Stuart Mill’s enduring warning against censorship:

The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race; if the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth; and if wrong, they lose what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error (On Liberty).

rj

 

 

A Heinous Crime That Could Have Been Prevented

It had been the end of a long day when 23 year old Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zartuska boarded Charlotte’s Lynx Blue Line train at 9:46 on August 22, 2025.

Also boarding the train, but evading paying for his ticket, was Decarlos Brown, Jr., a homeless man with fourteen run-ins with the police, awaiting trial for a new offense.

In four minutes, Iryna, who had fled the violence of the Ukraine conflict for a better life in America, would be dead, stabbed three times in the neck while looking at her cellphone by Brown, who sat behind her.

She died almost instantly.

Still wielding a bloody pocket knife, Brown was heard repeatedly shouting, “I got that white girl.”

Video captured the killing.

Brown, 34, has been charged with first degree murder.

In 2014, he was sentenced to prison for armed robbery and released in September, 2020.

In February, 2021, he was arrested for assaulting his sister, leaving her with minor injuries.

A few weeks later, he was arrested for injury to private property and trespassing.

In July 2022, he was arrested for a domestic disturbance.

Shortly after, he was arrested for injury to personal property and trespassing.

Brown’s criminal history is lengthy, reaching back to when he was a minor.

He has a documented history of mental illness. After the armed robbery, his aggressiveness intensified, resulting in his mother having him committed under court order for psychiatric observation—the diagnosis: schizophrenia.

Following his release, his aggressiveness increased still further and his mother ordered him to leave the household.

A few weeks before murdering Zarutzka, police detained Brown for misusing 911.

Despite all of this, he remained free to walk Charlotte’s streets.

Subsequently, Magistrate Teresa Stokes allowed him freedom from incarceration in exchange for his written promise to show up for a later hearing.

In a July 22 continuance hearing on Brown’s 911 misuse, judge Roy Wiggins ordered a forensic evaluation.

Unfortunately, he did not detain Brown in the meantime, a mistake with lethal consequence four weeks later.

As for the evaluation, it never happened.

In the aftermath, some on the Left argued that Brown was as much a victim of a system that failed as was Iryna. In turn, they initiated a GoFundMe account that raised $75,000 dollars to defray his legal expenses as part of the “fight against the racism and bias against our people.”

GoFundMe pulled the account.

Iryna’s murder became politicized, Trump labeling Brown a “lunatic.” Democrats, in turn, accused Trump of exploiting the tragedy for political gain.

Otherwise, Democrats have been largely silent about the murder.

In fairness, North Carolina governor Josh Stein (D) did speak out, denouncing the crime as senseless and calling for a greater police presence.

For many Democrats, however, the story didn’t fit their narrative.

Charlotte mayor Vi Lyles commented that the Charlotte transportation was safe, “by and large,” despite a recent survey reporting just 37% of Charlotte residents consider the Charlotte Area Transit System safe.

It can be argued that Progressives share responsibility for people like Brown being on the streets, abetted by black leadership and liberal media frequently engaging in racial framing that rationalizes black criminality as the offspring of white racism.

Many on the right fault Progressive advocacy of cashless bail, reduced incarceration, expunging felony records; and last, but not least, defunding the police, constitute a litany of liberal efforts more focused on criminals than the law-abiding.

Apart from the Washington Post, liberal news media, by and large, did not report the murder, consequently censoring the public’s right to know through omission, a noticeable detour from its intense coverage of the subway death of Jordan Neely by Daniel Perry, a white man.

Among media not reporting the story,

The New York Times
CNN
NPR
USA Today
Reuters
Axios
ABC News
PBS
MSNBC

(CNN did finally reference the crime, but only after the video’s release on September 5, devoting a two minute blurb to the story in its morning show).

Even Wikipedia has been caught up in the frey, one of its editors calling for the deletion of the posting titled “Killing of Iryna Zarutska.” A box message, later deleted, appeared above the post: “An editor has nominated this article for deletion.”

Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sander believes Wikipedia is now “too left” and “unreliable” (Manhattan Institute).

Brown, obviously mentally ill, should have been removed from the streets long ago in the interest of public safety.


The Brown case is not unprecedented when it comes to the American justice system’s failing the mentally ill, many of them homeless.

As Charlotte council member Edwin Peacock put it,
“If you’re constantly arresting people and they keep coming back out on the streets, what type of message is that sending?”

In 2020, former Democrat governor Roy Cooper, now running for the senate, established the “Task Force for Racial Equity in Criminal Justice,” co-chaired by then Attorney General and current Governor Josh Stein. It recommended “reimagining public safety” to “promote diversion and other alternatives to arrest,” “deemphasize” some felony crimes, prioritize “restorative justice,” and “eliminate cash bail” for many crimes (The Department of Justice (September 9, 2025).

In 2020, Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Chief Johnny Jennings declared  “law enforcement, in general, is based on racism” and their department can “probably slow down” on “discretionary arrests.”

In 2020, Democrat State Senator Mujtaba Mohammed, who represents Charlotte,  declared “independence from rogue police” (DOJ, September 9, 2025).

As I write, the Department of Justice has announced Brown will face federal charges, making him eligible for the death penalty. In a statement, Attorney General Pam Bondi depicted Iryna Zarutska “as a young woman living the American dream. Her horrific murder is a direct result of failed soft-on-crime policies that put criminals before innocent people.”

Ironically, the media is now weighing in. Where have they been? Is it the White House intervention and possibility of the death penalty that motivates this sudden rush to reporting in?

News comes that Paramount has now appointed an ombudsman to review bias at CBS news.

As for our courts, my thoughts drift to the late, gifted satirist Tom Wolfe of “Radical Chic” fame. His acclaimed Bonfire of the Vanities (1987) got it right—America’s highly politicized, often incompetent judicial system, is a sham.

rj

Sheer Lunacy: Trump’s Assault on the Environment

The Trump administration’s assault on the environment in the context of exponential climate change exhibits all too well the earmarks of corporate denial in the pursuit of monetary gain that will reap catastrophic consequences.

When Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring appeared in 1962, it moved two presidents to take action, Kennedy ordering an investigation of pesticide use and Nixon founding the Environmental Protection Agency.

Unfortunately, Trump’s EPA version bears little resemblance and to chart his myriad changes would try your patience.

I confess to being an environmental zealot. I read eco literature vividly, keep up with the latest happenings, donate regularly to environmental groups.

I support protecting endangered species like the whooping crane, manatee, blue and finback whales. I accept evolution’s tapestry of a variegated offspring, reaping the legacy of successful adaptation over vast aeons of time, our human presence but a wink by comparison.

I do not subscribe to the administration’s either/or assumption of jobs vs. environment. On the contrary, abundant studies show commitment to the Green New Deal would inaugurate new technologies and promote GNP growth. According to a University of Massachusetts study, commitment to a climate jobs program would generate 1.5-2 million net jobs annually for a decade (Pollin et al.).

Trump and his lackeys ignore such research. They are of a stubborn mindset, devotees of fossil industry interests,

Recently, this administration waived thirty environmental and public health studies in pursuit of building a wall through the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge, placing endangered species habitats and ecosystem corridors in jeopardy.

Meanwhile, they’ve slashed the EPA budget by 65%, cancelled or unenforced dozens of environmental rules, opened the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and US coastal waters to oil drilling, slated public lands with their indigenous monuments for auctioning, and severely reduced national park staffing.

As for the Endangered Species Act, this administration has compromised it to allow for economic considerations. Good-bye, my beloved manatees, the Everglades, Yosemite as we once knew it in its pristine beauty,

As Rachel Carson reminds us, “Beauty — and all the values that derive from beauty — are not measured and evaluated in terms of the dollar.” (Lost Woods).

Addendum:

Yesterday, my heart quickened as Dee Dee and I drove into Lexington, honked our horn at several groups of Trump protestors gathered along the way, who exuberantly reciprocated our waves.

We learned we’re not alone.

Collectively, it is our duty to resist.

RJ

Nature Isn’t All Butterflies

I want to step back from writing about politics, at least for now. We all have our views, and too often—much like professing religious beliefs—we run headlong into barbed-wire intolerance.

Some find distraction, even intoxication, in endless hours of media; others in sports; still others in hobbies that bring both pleasure and mastery—or in the familiar solace of alcohol.

I prefer reading, not just any kind, but what helps me grow and be more aware I’m not alone. Lately, it’s been nature memoirs, especially like H is for Hawk. I want to get back to my beloved Thoreau and not least, Wendell Berry. I miss Tolstoy.

Of course, we shouldn’t extract from nature what really derives from our imposed views such as we find in Wordsworth’s poetry. Nature, as writer James Rebank reminds us, “isn’t all butterflies, sunshine and healing.”

Still, whenever I step outside the human world, there descends this quieting solace, and I think myself made whole again.

rj