Before beginning, and in fairness to the good people of Menomonie, Wisconsin, whose voting record we examined earlier Tuesday afternoon, let us remember that Texas is the home office for climate denialists among our elected representatives.
It begins at the top with Tailgunner Ted Cruz, who’s been spouting the stupid on this subject heavily for the last few weeks. It runs down through Governor Greg Abbott and indicted attorney general Ken Paxton. And it runs deeply through the Texas congressional delegation, which includes some leading intellectual giants like Lamar Smith and Louie Gohmert, although, to be fair to those other worthies, Gohmert doesn’t know much about anything, so it’s almost unfair to include him here.
I mention this only because Houston is about to turn into a really bad Kevin Costner film and the climate crisis is one of the main reasons why.
And so fucking what? Look, this Vox piece was a load of false-equivalence crap, so stop acting it out by yelling I Told You So before people are even dried off. The people who already believe you don’t need the reminder and the people who don’t aren’t reading you anyway.
These are pretty typical comments when it comes to federal aid for Houston and its environs:
Can we please ask the Federal Government – in the form of one specific person, teh Communist Muslim Overlord – to say yes to Texas …. as long as they ask on the White House lawn in front of the full array of tv cameras and it must run as the head story on a certain ‘news’ program?
Just for once can we rub their noses in it?
Wait, can’t you just shoot the flood with your concealed handgun?
Karma. It’s a bitch.
Ideally, authorizations for these monies should be at the periodic discretion of the President, as chief executive, as to whether it is needed.
The next election will be held Tuesday 8 Nov 2016. Said authorisations should be arranged so they ALL go up to the President Nov 9 or 10. And those places plumping for Republicans (the Party of Small Government) should get all aid cut until 20 Jan 2017, when the new President can do as he or she wants.
I get it.
America is hard to love right now.
Three out of every ten of us who vote are going to vote for Donald Trump. Four of every ten of us haven’t quite cottoned to the idea of women or gay people being citizens under the law, and people are spending lots of time figuring out how to assure themselves that they are in charge of where men and women go to the bathroom. Like, lots of time. The space race took up fewer mental meters than this bathroom crap does.
Thanks to the Internet, we now see that our racist uncle is everybody’s racist uncle, and thanks to news organizations thinking they are just Internets and have to tell us what our racist uncle thinks, too, we hear so much hate all day long. That Vox trash fire wasn’t wrong about the ease of seeing loathing. We see every dumbass meme about Obama killing jobs by forcing people to buy different light bulbs and we see the comments applauding those dumbass memes. What of the news we’re forced to watch in doctors’ offices or wherever is pretty stupid. It’s like the point in your family Christmas party where everybody’s drunk is always going on.
Hard to love that. So, so hard.
GRIT YOUR DAMN TEETH, AND DO IT ANYWAY.
Because: What is the alternative?
I guess we could stop voting. I guess we could stop calling and writing and working and campaigning. I guess we could pretend we know who everybody in Houston voted for, or maybe check their records, before we tow their cars out of the floodwaters. I guess we could repeal Obamacare for the red states, because to hell with those people anyway, right? I guess we could withdraw all federal services from states whose governors seem to hate the federal government, and teach those people a lesson.
I guess at a certain point we could give up even thinking about this crap, and watch TV. It’s been a rough, punishing 6 months and all I do is work. I would like to watch TV.
It’s Sunday morning. Love your enemies. Do good to those who persecute you.
Moreover: Do good to those who persecute themselves, for no damn good reason other than screw some imagined minority somewhere, or they can’t be bothered to find out that the ACA and Obamacare are the same thing, or they don’t see a point to voting because THE SYSTEM MAN, or they are just stone-ass dumb and mad. Do good to those who persecute you unless they tell you to go away was not part of the deal.
You want to tell me that a sick baby born in Alabama tomorrow to a couple of poor 15-year-olds bears any responsibility for the state’s shitbag governor? I want that baby to live and be fed and be happy and that baby dying sick and poor does absolutely nothing to change who holds the House of Representatives.
You know what would? Some actual goddamn Democratic money being put into every single legislative district race where Republicans run unopposed year after year after year. Yeah, probably futile and why bother. Because the sick baby, that’s why.
Does America deserve America’s help right now? Probably not. We are a shithead country at the moment. We are full of jerks. But that doesn’t get better if two thirds of us shake our heads and go home because we’re tired. I have news for us all: Not working doesn’t make us any less tired. It just makes us tired, and powerless.
What’s in front of us? A presidential election in which our choices are almost certainly a fairly conservative mainstream politician and ONE OF TWO COMPLETE LUNATICS. In the meantime there will be fires and floods and disasters natural and unnatural, and sick babies and poor kids who need food, and we are not asking how anybody voted before we address any of that. America is hard to love right now.
What’s the alternative?
A.
For what it’s worth, you’re absolutely right. I don’t think that even the gospel writers thought that we’d see the day when one political faction would be so bereft of morality and common human decency as to take credit for other people’s charity and mercy. That political faction is heavily backed by the popular media, which never remembers just how we got into such terrible fixes, except to opine that it maybe had something to do with fair housing legislation enacted back in the late 1970s.
Sadly, the opponents of that political faction can never seem to bring themselves to remind the public that things turned so shitty about the time that faction persuaded enough people in the right places that taxes are the worstest thing ever, Hitler to the hundredth power. Hand in hand with that is the idea that what’s mine is mine and screw you if you don’t have. Meanwhile, the architects of this lousy society keep filching a little more every year and the majority of us slide a little farther toward the sewer grate.
Thank you for this. If I could find a way to leave it under the pillow of every tired liberal tonight I would, simply as a timely reminder. You are right on, and I appreciate your writing. Thanks again.
Ona Marae
Thank you so much for writing this. And you’re right, of course.
That Vox “smug liberal” shit pile has had me stewing since my sister posted it as “something to think about” over the weekend. The point of that thing seemed to be, “Instead of ignoring, avoiding, or criticising your racist, climate-denying, mysoginist neighbor, you need to hug him and hold his hand until he’s all better.” Yeah, tell that to the melting glaciers.