I was thinking last week that I needed to sit down and write another pandemic post since things had changed yet again. We added fire to the rest of it. Went from you need to stay home to avoid germs to you need to stay home with your doors and windows shut tight and wet towels around anything that might not be sealed well and don't run any outside air exchangers and you are still going to feel like you've been running behind a diesel truck for a week...
The West Coast burned. California started, as is their way lately, and then we had a huge wind storm Labor Day weekend and transformers blew, and campfires weren't put out correctly, and it looks like a few arsonists as well. And the winds kept blowing. And the incredibly dry forests just went up. Closer to the city here than most people were comfortable with. And little towns that were set up in the mountains, in our temperate rain forest, burned to the ground. People have lived in those areas for decades but this time the winds came early, our normal high winds in the winter cause enough issues, but man add in the dry hot weather and...disaster seems like too soft of a word. Devastation. Destruction. California, Oregon, Washington, all on fire. All sitting under a thick bank of smoke that made our air quality "Extremely Hazardous."
And then there were the politics. I mean sure, there are always politics around these massive fires. One side yelling about FOREST MANAGEMENT and the other about CLIMATE CHANGE and it's really BOTH. We had bad forest management policies for years, we did too much to control small burns which led to way too much over growth that provided fuel. We also started building further and further into the woodlands and the whole reason to have a house in the forest is the forest so there aren't fire breaks and open spaces around the houses to provide at least a fighting chance.
There are those that want to point to logging and how that will save the forest, but it won't. The logging areas in Oregon burned as well. And the sort of great illustrations they give you about spaced trees don't spread fires are really good, except that's a really expensive way to log. Clear cutting and replanting (replanting only because it's the law here) is the actual way to make money logging. But if there were money in that sort of tagging and felling dead trees, and clearing out some of the undergrowth, then yeah, that could be good. But there isn't so it's really just hot air from the people who don't want any sort of regulation. And what we don't need right now is more hot air.
And then we had the extra political momentum of the Conservosphere spreading rumors that Antifa was meeting in the forest to burn them all down. And they won't let go of that. Anytime an arsonist is arrested they scream I TOLD YOU! like that meth addicted, mental unstable, long criminal record for similar acts, guy is Antifa. And then there was some looting, as there always is because some people are assholes, but the rumors hit that marauding bands of Antifites were coming from the city to steal their good burned stuff. So then you had people setting up road blocks to "protect" their things.
And here is where I get it.
A little.
These communities are losing everything. Entire neighborhoods are gone, entire towns are gone. What is left in the ash is all that they have, and when people steal that from you? When it's all you have to remember a whole life by? Sure, you are going to be upset. But the people out there (Lars Larson, I'm looking at your skeezy face) try and make it also a political war? That's just as despicable. Using someone's loss to inspire their hate is vile. So anyway, we ended up with armed citizens pulling people over and threatening journalists by gun point and it was and might still get deadly. We have way too many armed angry people in America and you can just feel that it's about to go really really badly. Very much like the clashes between the protestors and the counter protestors downtown. When people are angry and armed you get violence. It's a fairly simple equation.
But I didn't sit down to write about it because I felt lousy. And my eyes were burning. And I just thought I'll wait until the air gets better, because it has to get better soon. And then the rain came yesterday and the air got a good scrub and it got better and Ruth Bader Ginsburg died.
For Fuck's Sake.
I saw a great comparison made, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the Thurgood Marshall for women's equality. She means so much to so many of us. She was an incredible role model. A force to be reckoned with. Small in stature and large in intellect. She made me feel better about the world even when she mostly had to write dissents. Because she knew that by putting forward strong dissenting arguments she was helping future generations to fight those battles. She should have been able to retire a few years ago when the cancer came back, but she didn't because she was trying, you know she was trying, to hold on until Trump was out of office. Because she knew, just like you and I know, that McConnell would never hold himself to his own standards he made up in 2016.
There have been a few times in my life where I could physically feel grief. Yesterday was one of them. When I read the headline that she had passed I felt the blood drain from my face, the bottom dropped out of my stomach and my hearing went whoosh. Despair and grief blending into an almost overwhelming feeling of loss.
Her death would always be hard. She was huge. She was so important. But...now?
Now her death signals another ultra conservative on the court. Three picks for Trump. Trump. Who should not be president. Trump who got his first pick when McConnell kept it from Obama when McConnell KNEW the Russians were interfering on Trump's behalf, don't ever forget that part. Trump who will get his last pick when McConnell rushes through a pick to make sure he gets his way because he can see that national temperature lately has been running very cold toward Trump being reelected.
Another young super conservative justice who will do their best to undo everything that has been done. Who has no reason to change or soften with society because they got their job by being a throwback. The courts are lost for decades. And it's so frustrating. I tried so fucking hard last election cycle to make progressives understand it wasn't about Clinton, it was about the Court. Clinton was for four or eight years, but the court was for decades. But you know her emails and they just didn't like her and...Fuck you. Again. Fuck you.
I feel despair. Like honest true despair. It feels like the upcoming election no longer matters. Trump might be gone but the damage he and Mitch have done to the courts will last for the rest of my life. For most of Christopher's life. For a good chunk of the formative parts of Liam and Kelsey's lives. It's just so disheartening. The social progress that we've made is going to be undone. Voting rights have already been slashed. Reproductive rights. LGBTQ+ rights. Human rights. We're in for another fight, but this time there won't be a doubt as to how it's going to go. Roll backs are coming.
So yeah. Pandemic update. The world is on fire and McConnell is holding a lighter.
Fuck.
No comments:
Post a Comment