PRIORITIES

 I remember reading somewhere that, in late 1944 into early 1945, as Nazi Germany was collapsing:

The Allied bombing campaign had crippled Germany’s rail network.

German troops at the front were desperate for transport of fuel, weapons, and reinforcements.

Despite this, Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS and a central architect of the Holocaust, continued to prioritize deportations—especially in 1944 during the destruction of Hungarian Jewry. Trains continued to deport Jews to concentration and extermination camps as a top priority.

I dunno. Just thought about this the other day on a trip into lower Arkansas, i.e. LA.

Passing by bald areas where farm communities once stood and concrete-pad strewn strips where downtowns once thrived, I thought about us.

Conditions now suggest that those areas may be facing a drought of Biblical proportions, threatening the only industry left to those communities.

Then I saw where our president said we couldn’t afford to address the health of our people anymore because we need the money to make bombs and kill people. Actually, it wasn’t money but debt-capacity, which he equates with money.

Leave saving humanity to the states, he said.

In our state, they want to direct resources to the destruction of public schools and construction of a monumental prison facility.

Is this what y’all voted for? Is this what y’all want?

Really?

Off to earn today but here is a fascinating article from Science Daily. Maybe there's hope yet
Click Here.

Saturday Sermon

One of the worst memories of my youth is that of being forced, in grade school, to watch films of children my age locked into what they called “iron lungs.” Those were machines that allowed children with polio to breath. Yes, to perform the simple act that allows us to breath. Invariably, after seeing such a film, my Sainted Mother would decide, after school, to subject us kids to a homemade test for polio. You had to lie on your back on the kitchen table and hang your head over the edge. You lowered it, waited, and then had to lift it. If you couldn’t, you might be headed for one of those machines that allowed you to breath.

Know what allows us to breathe without an iron lung? Green plants do the trick. Trees do the trick. Science-based physical transformation does the trick. I know of no peer-reviewed double-blind study that supports a thesis that “thoughts and prayers” will do the trick.

In the news, I read recently that a sizable section of our population is composed of Americans who “don’t believe in the scientific facts of global climate change.” Believe? Science is not something in which someone believes or doesn’t believe. Goodness gracious. Jump from a tall building and see if the Law of Gravity cares whether you believe in it or not.

When the last tree on earth is cut, as the last tree on Easter Island was, nature won’t care if we don’t believe in the scientific fact of photosynthesis, not even if we declare loudly that we believe in individual property rights more than we believed in survival.

When we start bringing back the iron lungs for children with polio, the disease won’t care that we claimed a right not to believe in the healing power of scientific facts.

Reading the news today, I can’t help believing that the major policy determinant emerging from the current American presidency is the desire to eradicate the memory of President Barack Obama in the manner of Egyptian kings defacing the statues of their predecessors. No matter how sound, or popular the existing policy may be, the goal will be, not to amend it, not to replace it with a sounder tool, not to ignore it, not to admit, however grudgingly, the efficacy of a rival’s work, but simply to end it. “I’ll show him,” sounds better as comic book dialogue than as political policy.

Back in olden days, national policy often changed as a result of thought, dialogue, compromise, and a public administration concept called “satisficing,” or finding a solution, perhaps not the best, but one that got the job done. Yes, sadly, national policy was once settled by means of a bloody civil war. We should all behave in such a rational manner that it is never again solved that way. The signs are not encouraging.

Nowadays, national policy is changed or established by an executive order by one man. Another man has ended dialogue between the two legislative bodies of government. One man in a foreign country controls a broad swath of our foreign policy. Another man in a foreign country controls parts of our free-election processes. One man leading a secret organization led, for many years before his death, our national government’s direction regarding our First Amendment right to exercise religious belief or non-belief as we choose. His successors still do.

I’m sure that there is a name for all of this, but I can’t put my thumb on it right now.

As another hurricane prepares to slam into our east coast, public systems based on science will determine the amount and extent of damage to our native soil. Whether one believes in science or not, transportation and communication systems based on science will be the sole determinant of life and death for many Americans.

Don’t bother asking Hurricane Dorian if it believes in science.

When Trump Tower is under water up to its second floor, the Atlantic Ocean won’t care that an American president didn’t believe in climate change. The National Geographic Society, owned by a Rupert Murdoch-controlled company that owns the 20th Century Fox movie studio, the Fox television network and Fox News Channel, made a prediction. The following photograph suggests, based on our current path, how America will look after the ravages of global warming take control.

A bit of irony that will comfort me until my last hours appears here. As you will notice, the little homesite near Pine Bluff, Arkansas, once purchased by my sharecropping parents will be more valuable than Mar-A-Lago.

“Fear and Loathing …” is a catchy phrase for a book title, but no way to run a country. As author Hunter S. Thompson said, though, “Buy the ticket, take the ride.” We bought the ticket, and now we are riding into oblivion in a country ruled by fear and loathing. What a shame.

           

“Buy the ticket, take the ride.” Tomorrow's children won't travel far in an iron lung.

Science eliminated these.
Disbelief in Science
will bring them back.

Where is our center?

Did you ever wake up in the morning with nothing to say? I haven’t. What I have to say may not always make sense but I never run out. This morning, for example, I can’t help thinking about the center of things. For example, consider the center of the Universe. We, somehow think we are it. Sad thing is, we’re not. I’m not sure we even know where the center of the Universe is. It’s where the Big Bang started, but have we located it yet? If we have, let me know, and don’t tell me it is in Arkansas.

Then consider things moral and political. Those used to be linked, you know, at least occasionally. Anyway, it’s tough times, the way I look at things, for those who would have us cling to a centrist view of our amazing Universe and try to see things from a balanced perspective.

No such luck. We are drawn with increasing force to either end of polar extremes. On the one end is a philosophy of greed, meanness, and selfishness. On the other end is silliness, self-destruction, and a shortsighted obsession with perfection as perceived by the perceiver.

Pity the poor centrist. Like the old hobo with one hand grasping an east-bound tanker, and the other on a fast-tracking freighter headed for the Golden Gate, we risk being pulled apart by indecision.

When I parted amicably with the United States Navy, I had what I considered a fairly small repertoire of wants.

I wanted a nice job in a respected profession. (Done)

I wanted to marry an exceptionally fine woman. (Done)

I wanted us to have a home of our own, (Done)

I wanted to read the entire works of William Faulkner. (Still working on it)

I wanted to develop a cadre of exceptional friends. (Done and continuing)

I wanted to learn to play the banjo. (Questionable progress, and in conflict with the preceding.

I wanted to be left alone and to bother no one. (More and more difficult)

I wanted to be a positive force in helping my former shipmates of various minority persuasions overcome the national resistance to their success in achieving what was possible for me.

For the last item, I thought we were making progress. Educational opportunities expanded. Jobs opened. Positive role models appeared in TV and film. (Sometimes)

Housing opportunities … well … not much progress there but signs were positive.

Our national corpus wasn’t healed, but was improving.

Then along came Barack Obama.

Oh my lord!

How could one man create such a subterranean monster of hatred? It rose, and is still stomping on our dreams and opportunities. The Center folded and the extremes dropped anchor in separate but equally dangerous shoals.

There, today, we ride the rough waves that will carry us into the future. Outside this morning, I continue to hear a destructive rain that seems never to stop. Up north, it’s snowing in May. These are results of our refusing to respect the fragility of our planet. Can the Center pull us back to within a safe harbor of reason and rational thinking? I don’t know.

I hope so, though

Reconciliation: 26

When I was ten, they told me that the world might end from nuclear explosions. When I was 21, they told me that I might die at the hands of an unknown freedom fighter. When I was 30, they told me that I might die from the effects of obesity. All my life, people have been telling me I might die.

Each time I faced predictions of annihilation, cool heads, luck, or careful living saw me through. The concept of “mutually assured destruction” (MAD) helped stave off a Dr. Strangelove ending to the planet. Keeping my head down and eschewing volunteering of any sort helped bring me luck, and guided me safely out of a war zone. Thirty years of daily exercise kept the old ticker pounding on schedule.

Now, they say we will all die unless we quit strangling our planet. This one has me worried. The planet has endured five extinctions in its long history and a sixth is looming, according to reputable scientists. The signs are clear.

The polar icecaps are melting.

Coastal cities in the United States are increasingly water-soaked because of rising sea levels.

The South Pacific’s Great Barrier Reef will be dead because of increasing seawater temperatures, within decades, according to oceanographers.

National Geographic has published a map showing what might happen if the ice on land melted and drained into the sea, raising it 216 feet and creating new shorelines for our continents and inland seas. My home town of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, now hundreds of miles inland, would be a seaport.

From the Union of Concerned Scientists: “Every one of the past 40 years has been warmer than the 20th century average. 2016 was the hottest year on record. The 12 warmest years on record have all occurred since 1998.”

Of course, a few scientifically-trained people claim this is a hoax and simply not true. If we are lucky, they will be right.

What we much ask ourselves is, “Do we feel lucky?”

Well, do we?

I don’t. Those who dispute the findings of the established science community largely serve corporations and industries that stand to increase profits be following a path of not addressing the issue.

We seem to be stuck, moreover, in a paradigm in which our leaders can hold, and act upon, two directly opposing thoughts at once. To wit:

The President of the United States, the leader of the ruling political party, is set to withdraw from a world-wide coalition that exists to address global destruction on the grounds that all this talk about climate change is a hoax. I know I have friends who agree and, trust me, I try to understand.

But. the United States military establishment, in the meantime, is spending millions upon millions of dollars preparing to meet new challenges that will result from climate change. Our president has pledged to provide the military with greater and greater funds, some of which will undoubtedly go to preparing for the changes created by new climate conditions.

As my Hispanic friends would say, “Que?”

I have a term to describe this ability to act upon and support opposing opinions simultaneously. I hope it offends no dear friends. It’s not “covfefe.” I call it: “bipolar-illogic.”

I have some future ocean-front property for sale.