The United States Of America

[HARDCORE]

1-24-2023

For the record - there is no nation upon the face of this Earth that is anywhere near as glorious, and as powerful, as these United States of America – and that is a fact, and these are not just hollow words of braggadocio either! And as such, I can not understand how “This Nation of Ours”, that stood toe to toe, against “The Onslaughts and Brutality of The Colossal Old World”, could (all of a sudden) have cowered at the feet of several puny little despotic entities that are not fit to lick “Our Gallant Red, White and Blue Boots?”

Once again – “We Are the Indomitable United States of America” and our can-do prowess is one that has never kowtowed to the demands, threats of violence from powerful “Old World Despots”, or even those sneak-attacks that were met by the strong right arm of “Our Uncle Sam” and the vice-like fangs of “Our Lady Liberty!”

And once again, nothing has really changed over the years, save for a lack of determination from the complacent in our midst, or the desire to accomplish with words, threats and guile alone, those blessings of liberty that “Our Founding Fathers and Mothers” knew full well could only be secured with a strong and determined right arm, technological superiority, and “The Guts and Craw of Our Founders” - and so it must forever remain – if we are to survive as that bastion of freedom and liberty that “The Almighty Created, and Ordained, Us To Be!!”

“AND SO IT IS - AND AMEN TO THAT - GOD BLESS AMERICA!”

Hardcore

[Boats]

A not so good posting about: Changing America May Not Be the Climate Solution - We Think It Is
By: Anthony Sinorelli 01-19-23 / The Good Men Project
Re: https://goodmenproject.com/featured-...e-think-it-is/

Note: Maybe instead, we need her strengths. 01-19-23

The climate change debate is fraught with antipathy toward Americans. We are greedy, oblivious, and hateful. We are gluttonous, fat, overfed, and wasteful. We are self-centered and don’t give a damn about anyone else. Generally, the attack takes the form of what this person said in a comment on another post:

“I really hope I’m wrong, but does anyone really believe that Americans (generally perceived as the most self-centered and oblivious people on the planet) would be willing to drive less, fly less, eat less steak, outlaw advertising, and otherwise voluntarily spin down their lifestyles to save the planet from a vague future threat that many of them are being told is fake news anyway? Remember, these are the same people who were willing to let a million of their fellow citizens die to avoid the inconvenience of wearing a face mask. And who among the current pantheon of American political figures would have the courage to propose such a path?”

I’m an American, and to be honest, I don’t take exception to many of these characterizations of us as a society. I understand, I think, how it looks to others who are concerned about climate. My country led the way for 250 years of burning fossil fuels. America created incredible wealth by not counting a bunch of costs we are now seeing as climate change. We insisted on globalization and expansion to continue the growth path capitalism requires. I get it. I really get it.

But as well as being an American by the simple luck of birth location, I am also a citizen of the world, and I am deeply concerned about climate change. I know we need to do the right thing, and I want to do the right thing. Most people I know want to do the right thing.

People implore us to strike out individually to make the necessary changes. Degrow. Change your lifestyle. Go local. One commenter, for example, put all the blame on cars — a not-so-subtle dig on how most Americans live in and for their cars. I asked,

“Out of curiosity, if all cars are eliminated, how do people get around?”

The response…

“Walk. In large cities, busses and trams. Between settlements, trains or busses. If that doesn’t seem feasible, then it’s because you’re envisioning a society set up to cater to cars, not people.”

This gets me to the point I want to make. It is not at all that I am “envisioning a society set up to cater to cars,” but rather that American society is already set up that way. It was set up when I was born into it, and it has been set up that way for decades. Of course, there are alternatives. Of course, societies can be built and structured in other ways. But ours is not. We have inherited and added to an infrastructure of tangible reality and cultural reality built on cars, to be sure, but even moreso, on fossil fuels. We have skills, habits, and assumptions about how our world works, and most Americans have mastered that to one extent or another. We are structured to live that way, and not any other way.

When the climate change debate implores Americans to “voluntarily spin down their lifestyles to save the planet from a vague future threat” we are moving into the area of impossibility. Individual choices to work against an enormous system are laudable, but it is not practical as a way of getting to the change we need fast enough. Individual change in this environment is a huge lift with an extremely small impact. Go ahead. Sell your car. Walk everywhere. Buy your backpack for bringing home your groceries. Avoid the events, classes, and meetings that make life interesting that are on the other side of town because there just isn’t enough time to get there by bus. Take your kids out of sports, music, art, and church activities because you can’t get them there. Do the big lift and make the big sacrifice. How much impact will your effort result in? You shrink the carbon footprint of one family out of the 8 billion people on Earth. It is a pimple on an elephant’s ass, at best.

Let’s keep in mind another feature of Americans — we are pretty damned ingenious. For all of our faults, Americans are creative. Americans are good at creating solutions and manifesting them in the world. How about instead of attacking Americans to reduce our lives in ways we do not know how to do with minimal impact, let’s encourage Americans to get creative, put our minds to solutions, and change the world the way we know best how to do — through business, technological advancement, and creative entrepreneurship.

Look, I know many people in the climate debate seek system change. Capitalism is evil, we consume too much (especially Americans), the world produces way too much junk, and growth must be sacrificed. In all honesty, a more pedestrian society would be quite attractive to many people. But all that system change is an enormous undertaking that would require decades of planning and building, trillions of dollars in public investment, and probably a ton of litigation. Transformations like this involve winners and losers, and you can bet that the losers will resist. Just imagine, for a moment, what would happen if the car hater quoted above got his way and all cars were taken off the roads. Can the bus system in your city accommodate hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of new riders? How about the trains? How many new buses would need to be built? Where would they come from? How fast could they be built?

And then there are the social-economic considerations: Unemployment in the auto industry, wasted time on longer rides and waiting for buses, and the sudden uselessness of displaced suburban homes. Can you imagine this might have political repercussions?

Here is the worst part: We could go through all this turmoil and disruption, totally change our lives, restructure society, and dislodge capitalism as a system… and it would not stop climate change. Why? Because that kind of system change can’t happen fast enough. It is physically impossible to change a society’s infrastructure that fast. Many would say that cultural change is even slower. We just cannot get there this way.

This brings me back to Americans. The antipathy toward Americans, whether earned or not, doesn’t help us get to a solution. Rather than imploring Americans to shrink their lives, let’s motivate them to commit everything to solve this challenge. Let’s urge all Americans to give up their jobs producing shit people don’t need, and commit their lives to jobs that will solve climate change. Let’s put this discussion on the lips of everyone in every place in the American and global economy. Let’s utilize the structure we have to make the solutions we need as quickly as possible, so as to provide the opportunity for the longer-term system change to be decided and manifested. Let’s make solving climate change honorable, worthy, and sexy. Let’s unleash the creativity of Americans and the American system to fix this thing. We can build out a 100% renewable energy system. We can figure out how to capture and sequester carbon, or better yet, use it. We can build a system that will use less of everything, thereby enabling everyone to use less whether they believe in the effort or not. This is how we can get to a solution.

Stopping and reversing climate change is a moonshot. Let’s motivate the creative force America represents, join it with the other creative forces in the world, and get this done.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Personal note: It will be a cold day in hell before this type of philosophy comes into
play. The toy's we have today are like pets. We feed them - we fix them and we are
paying a fortune for gas and insurance. Climate change is an issue and has been
for decades - it seems no one cares. More efficent but still a pollutant.
-
Garbage is tossed out weekly and where it goes nobody knows. Is it recycled
doutful. We save glass and can's for recycle the rest is buried or burned another
contributor to climate change.
-
Tough subject most of what we have today are throw away items. Yea we have
a problem the world is full of throw aways. It's a habit we all have now adays.
-
I'm abit of a horder I keep memories and things that are important to me that
other's may toss aside as usless items. Yet I still do it to this very day.
-
Sad epitaph - we hear talk abut it - but nothing happens. Pollution is a problem
no two ways about it. Most of us have throwaway items - maybe soem recycled by
others - but who cares - we don't have it anymore. Until next weeks pickup of our
trash.
-
What's the fix - God only knows? - But it must be addressed and the sooner
the better.
-
What bothers me is our infrastructure (electrical) power outtages are more
frequent then ever and not everybody has solar panels or generators so
you freeze your ass off for a few day and moreso after tornado's - or
flooding or long lasting water repairs. Maintenance is lacking as are the
upgrades of our tutilities. You here we don't have the money or we are
working on it - in they start in the rich neighborhoods. A few weeks of
no heat or bad water is common of late. Where does all that money
go we pay inito? Pay raises for the corp folks?
-
Sad isn't it!