This MSN.com article begins:

Late Sunday night, Lauren Boebert shared this post on social media, where she openly disparaged climate activists.

“You’ve got to appreciate the irony of climate protesters trudging through a foot of snow and -30 degree wind chills to yell about how the planet is warming,” she wrote.

“They just don’t see it, do they?”

Her post ignited a firestorm, with many users pointing out her apparent ignorance on the subject.

“It’s not just about the Earth getting hotter; it’s about extreme weather patterns as the Earth tries to adapt,” one user explained.

“This includes intensified cold spells, erratic rainfall, heavy snow, and more, all symptoms of climate change.”

Others shared graphs showing the drastic changes in climate across the world in recent years, noting that the science has been well-documented.

We need to face the fact that we in the U.S. are nowhere close to a point the realities of climate change are uniformly accepted, as there are plenty of people who reject science generally. This country will feature uneducated folks living in its rural districts for as long as we have a society here.  I advise not wasting our mental and emotional resources getting into a snit about American ignorance; it’s just a part of who we are as a nation.

That these people have leaders who themselves are boobs changes absolutely nothing.

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If you’re a grocery retailer, especially a convenience store, refusing to sell bottled water will lead to an immediate and severe reduction to your income stream.  Accordingly, I’d like to extend my kudos to whomever wrote this note on his refrigerator.  That’s bravery; that’s integrity.

But sadly, he finds himself submersed in one of hundreds of different business sectors in which honestly and decency is actually a considerable handicap.

Last year, PepsiCo earned $8.9 billion on $86 billion in revenue, and every single one of their customers is now (at least) a little bit unhealthier than he was the year before.  In addition to Aquafina, did the retailer featured in the meme get rid of all his sodas and salty, sugary poison, the manufacturing (not to mention consumption) of which is slowly but steadily destroying the planet and its inhabitants?

I don’t wish to sound mean, but maybe finding a truly honest career is not such a bad idea.

 

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Every element of American society seems so contentious, but for what real reason?

On social media, we learn that vegans, regardless of the rationale that lies at the core of their eating habits, are under attack from meat-eaters.  Why?  What’s the matter with letting people choose their lifestyles, especially when they’re not forcing themselves on you?

We see posts providing ideas from the clergy instructing the devout on how to counter atheists. Why? What’s the imperative to argue with other people who just happen to see the world differently?

The meme here speaks to the us-versus-them “logic” that the fossil fuels proponents uses against the environmentalists, and, more to the point, against the entire auto industry as it phases out gas and diesel.

Why are we so appealing about argument for its own sake?

 

 

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Below is the front page of a Florida newspaper from a couple of weeks ago.

You will try in vain to find anything remotely like this stupidity, greed, and cruelty anywhere else on this planet.

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Here’s an exciting development (not) in solar PV, which claims (falsely) that it delivers 18 times more power from sunlight than traditional technologies.

Let’s do some quick math, to see just how important (fraudulent) this breakthrough (scam) is.  Say today’s standard solar panel are 25% efficient.  18 times that is an efficiency of no less than 450%.  4.5 times as much energy is released than was incident on it in the first place!

I really don’t think there’s anyone in junior high school so ignorant as to accept this.

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Where will the energy come from that will make this building spin?

Strangely, they don’t say.

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(AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

Per this article, Fox News has discontinued the ad campaign of Mike Lindell (the MyPillow Guy) on the basis that he, as he admits, has become financially insolvent.

One wonders how he faltered, given that he had amassed such a fortune selling high-margin bedwear to Fox News viewers and other Trump supporters over a period of many years.

My theory: Fox is anxious to find an excuse to cut ties with Lindell, due to his position on the Big Lie.  Fox doesn’t need another close-to-billion-dollar settlement stemming for civil litigation, and Lindell still claims adamantly that he has ironclad evidence that the U.S. 2020 presidential election was stolen.

Of course, he can’t reveal what that evidence might be, but that’s not a problem for people who don’t concern themselves with facts and truth in the first place.

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Here’s an article I won’t be reading, because the answer to the question is so obvious: her voting base loves her racism.

It’s the chicken-and-the-egg principle at work in politics.  MTG can hardly be called the cause of the ignorance and hatred in rural Georgia, but she certainly makes it socially acceptable for these folks to speak and act like they’re living in the 1920s, and they can’t get enough of it.

Demand creates its own supply.

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Assuming that Trump is ultimately unsuccessful in overthrowing the U.S. federal government, there will be an ongoing conversation about the content of the meme here.

We will never stop wondering how it was possible that a man who was roundly regarded as a deranged moron by so many intelligent and highly accomplished public servants who worked directly with him over a period of many years, came to rise, through a free and fair election, to become the most powerful person on Earth?

Of course, the reason this is on so many people’s minds is that it appears that there is a good chance that he’ll be re-elected.

Things that would be inconceivable anywhere else in the developed nations of Earth make perfect sense here in America.

 

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Here, Socrates reminds us of the problems associated with being what is essentially a tribal species.  We tend to look for differences between us, rather than similarities.  Then we use these perceived differences as motivation for hatred and, often, violence.

In my email signature I quote explorer and writer Freya Stark: “Few are the giants of the soul who actually feel that the human race is their family circle.”  Socrates was certainly among them.

One wonders if some global event, e.g., environmental collapse, could change all this.  It’s definitely a possibility.

 

 

 

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