Led by A Pack of Stupid Hyenas

The United States, in the past year and a half, has demonstrated an incredibly careless attitude towards National Security, the economy, the environment and climate, science, and resource management. When the dumbest people in the country scrape the bottom of every barrel they can find until they find the dumbest candidate available, this kind of stuff happens. I suspect it happened to the Romans, the Greeks, the British, Portuguese, and Spanish Empires, certainly to Nazi Germany, and to every other Empire that rose to great heights and fell into oblivion. Of course, it didn't have to be that way for the United States and it probably didn't have to be for the other great failures in human history. Although it does seem like empires attract idiots and we’re certainly proof of that. 

In many of those examples (probably all), the central flaws in those failed societies were racism and nationalism. According to Webster's, nationalism is "an ideology that elevates one nation or nationality above all others and that places primary emphasis on promotion of its culture and interests as opposed to those of other nations, nationalities, or supranational groups." There is almost no upside to nationalism, but there are plenty of downsides. At least in a low technology ancient society, falling behind the rest of the world isn't much of an issue. When human knowledge doubles ever century or two, it’s not hard to catch up.  In a 21^st Century society, falling behind is an extinction event for the country’s technology, industry, trade,  competiveness, and education system.  And a lack of awareness and acknowledgment of worldwide problems, such as climate change, rapid technological change that threatens established economies (ie AI, for example), economic inequality that threatens World stability, and the always looming possibility of a World War are only problems in a modern society. We, of course, are living in that modern world with all of those threats, but half of the country wants to wish or pray away the hard stuff. Our leading political party, known as the Republican Party in the United States and as the American Fascist Party to the rest of the world, has deluded itself into imagining that ignoring worldwide problems is a practical tactic.

This isn't by accident. The fact is none of these worldwide problems are amenable to a national solution. There is, obviously I hope, absolutely no practical solution that the United States by itself could apply to climate change. None. Not one. This is a problem that was created by industrialized nations carelessly using fossil fuels and ignoring the science and the growing signs that we are pushing the world’s climate towards becoming inhospitable to human life. (Obviously, a whole bunch of other animals are going to die off too.)  Pretending that global warming/climate change is “a hoax” is beyond stupid and is risking the whole world’s safety for the profit of a few. 

During the first Trump Administration, I got into a social media discussion about climate change.  (I know, “stupid, stupid, stupid!”)  The conversation started when a polar vortex had dipped down well into the Rocky Mountain states and a lot of people were claiming that those frigid winter days were proof that climate change, global warming, was “a hoax.”  In a conversation with one of those people, I described the vortex phenomenon as "global warming with local weirdness" as an explanation for why the surface of the whole planet might be warming while local areas could experience temporary lower than normal temperatures. And the response was, "Idaho is local?" (Seriously.)  Ignoring, for the moment, the fact that Idaho makes up less than 0.042% of the surface area of the planet and the fact that this person probably didn't even take into account the weather in the entire state, the comment Illustrated the obliviousness of this group of people.  Yes, Karen, Idaho is a local area, barely significant even in North America. 

I recently read a book about the gigantic geological fault that runs from Alaska into Central California, Cascadia's Fault: The Coming Earthquake and Tsunami that Could Devastate North America, by Jerry Thompson. The state of geological science isn't anywhere near good enough to make accurate predictions of when earthquakes may occur, or how severe they will be (but this one could be as large as a 9.0), but the science is certainly good enough to point out where they are likely to occur and how often, in the past, they have happened before. And while I read this book, I'm trying to imagine what the Trump Administration's response would be to an earthquake that caused trillions of dollars of damage, destroyed a half dozen major American cities along with hundreds of smaller towns and villages, killed tens of thousands of Americans, and displaced many more. If you are a certifiable member of the MAGA cult, you probably see Trump doing some stupid, impossible superhuman crap. The rest of us will have a hard time imagining Trump and his “administration” of fools making one intelligent decision in a crisis, let alone the thousands of intelligent decisions that would be required in this kind of crisis. 

Most likely, if this kind of disaster or any other major crisis occurred, the whole Republican Party would point fingers at Democrats and scientists for not preventing them from having to be useful.  Nothing enrages conservatives more than having to do stuff.