Not to split hairs, but the 2024 election is not an opportunity to end Trumpism for good, if by the term you mean the hate and ignorance of the many tens of millions of MAGA Americans who carry this terrible infliction around with them.

I have every confidence that major right-wing political issues and the politicians who support them will lose at the polls, but all this stupidity will not simply vanish into thin air; it will go into dormancy, only to arise at some later time.

Dormancy is actually a best-case scenario, because here’s a related question: What level of violence can we expect if Trump is convicted and incarcerated on one or more of 91 felonies with which he’s charged?

 

 

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It would be a better world if what Heraclitus said were true, but it certainly appears that good people can suffer terrible fates and vice versa.

This brings to mind the ultimate destiny of Donald Trump, certainly among the worst human beings in our history.  People all around the globe are hoping to see him go down hard.

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December is a good time of year to remind ourselves that our consumerism as a society is a choice; it’s not a requirement.

On a related note, when we support the thrift-store economy, we’re reducing the amount of resources that are extracted from the Earth and providing those with lesser means the opportunity to have clothes and other items that they otherwise couldn’t afford.

 

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Re: the meme here, a reader notes: This climate meeting was all about fossil fuel strategies and alliances to wipe out renewable energy.

There is no doubt that this was the focus on the part of Big Oil.  Looked at from that perspective, the “justification” is clear: show the world that fossil energy is here to stay, and as they say in science fiction, “resistance is futile.”

Their problem, of course, is that the costs of solar and wind continue to come down, and the power of pure market forces will eventually make energy from oil, gas and coal, prohibitively expensive.

Precisely what this planet will be like at that point is impossible to determine, as is the prognosis for keeping temperature rises to a workable level.

 

 

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This cartoon by “Stines” reminds us that, when they grow up, naughty kids turn into bad adults who have no compunction about destroying the planet’s capacity to support life, if that’s what’s required to make them rich.

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Though we Americans tend to learn very little about the political issues that motivate voters in other countries, things elsewhere around the globe seem to make better sense than they do here.

I would be shocked to know that the French, the Germans, or the Japanese have viable political parties that are built around anti-wokeism, especially taken to extremes, e.g., what Ron DeSantis is doing in Florida.

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Good job by Jimmy Kimmel here (or, more properly, one of his writers).

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Thucydides’ statement here implies that war has been a permanent, 365-day-a-year feature of Western society for at least the last 2500 years.

Occasionally we run into small groups of people who are trying to change that, like the organizers of the World Peace Tax Fund (that would allow taxpayers to direct their payments away from the military), and the Year Without War folks, who are working to find a calendar year in which all fighting around the globe would temporarily cease.

Sadly, neither seems to be gaining strength.

 

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I’m willing to bet that he’ll find incarceration even more embarrassing.

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When we come across political advertising like this, we realize to our horror that many Americans are incapable of any more refined level of thinking than this, and that their votes counts just as much as yours and mine.

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