Tuesday, January 31, 2017
Shock and Awe
Like most of you, I
am absolutely stunned by Donald Trump's shock and awe campaign. He
wields the executive pen like a kid in a candy shop. Not only is he
delivering on his abominable campaign promises, he's added nasty
surprises like proposing to sell off public lands. Congress has
already changed the rules to make it easier for him to do so. These
lands are the foundation of the modest beginning for EO Wilson's audacious, noble proposal to set aside half the earth for
wildlife to recover from the ravages of human-driven extinction.
One quickly realizes that it's not only the efforts to combat
climate change that his actions put at risk, but the protection of
habitat against the assault on wildlife. And he includes the National
Parks, our national treasures, in his inventory of real estate on the
block. Park Rangers (my son Jesse is one at Yosemite) have
courageously resisted his gag order, and the NPS chief has issued a magnificent rejoinder to our demagogue president.
It is hard to
imagine a worse set of cabinet picks, and the Senate is not showing
the backbone on either side of the aisle to stand up to him. He
bullied and lied his way – and worse – to election, and now he's using the same tactics as President,
relentlessly tweeting his “alternative facts.” More subtle
tactics are being employed by the true masters of propaganda, the
Russians, to convince the majority of it's citizens to acquiesce to a
totally false narrative about the historical and current realities in
their country, but Trump's moves in the same direction are chilling.
We must resist, and never tire of it.
Trump's narcissistic
lying means that nobody, friend or foe,can trust his word. This has
potentially catastrophic consequences. By continuing to belittle
NATO, he threatens the future of peace in Europe, with NATO members
Latvia and Lithuania looking like easy pickings for an emboldened
Vladimir Putin. If NATO does not resist their takeover, it is not
only obsolete, but dead. Meanwhile, Trump and Rex Tillerson are
rattling sabers over China's claims in the South China Sea, risking
war between major nuclear powers. John F Kennedy, a seasoned
politician with diplomatic skills, similarly risked nuclear war with
the Soviet Union over their Cuban missiles. But Kennedy was
reasserting the longstanding policy of control of our neighboring
waters declared in the Monroe Doctrine. Can our leaders not see that
China, as an established world power, has similar interests in their
own backyard pond? It is important that the World Court in the Hague
has ruled against their claim, but the Philippines, whose territorial
waters have been violated, has absolved China. We cannot afford to
police the world indefinitely. Are the South China atolls and
fortified reefs in our “core interests,” as China claims for
itself?
But can we count on
President Trump even knowing what the Monroe Doctrine is? Perhaps,
since he has delegated national security briefings to his
vice-president, he can have Pence do the research for him on our own
geopolitical history. After all, we shouldn't expect knowledge of
political science or policy matters from a real estate mogul and
reality tv host with the emotional intelligence of a six year-old (by
his own admission ).
From my perspective
as a climate journalist and activist, the ascension of an outright
climate denialist, with cabinet choices of a half-dozen more,
completes the campaign of disinformation mounted by the fossil fuel
industry, aided and abetted by virtually the entire Republican Party.
The rest of the world stands in absolute disbelief that the world's
leading power, with a strong postwar history of helping the recovery
of defeated nations and development of the Third World, has turned
its back on the future of civilized order on this planet. The tragic
irony is that this is occurring after a reluctant US finally was
party to a successful climate accord in Paris in December 2015, the
culmination of decades of agonizing diplomacy, attempting to
reconcile the competing interests of 197 signatory countries.
Trump appears to be
preparing the way for pulling out of the Paris Accord. Legal experts
point out that doing so formally would require almost an entire
presidential term. But prominent in the executive orders from his
Gatling-pen are a wholesale attack on government scientists, with gag
orders issued for all agencies. His leaked memo about dismantling
the EPA may simply be rumination, but he has fulfilled virtually
every promise, a feat even the best of politicians could not match.
The US has the best tools for data collection and analysis in the
world (NOAA, NASA, DOE, EPA), and these tools are being mothballed by
executive order. As one government scientist put it with respect to
climate data, “We are flying blind.”
So what can we do?
The purpose of shock and awe is to make such a gargantuan show of
force that the opposition is overwhelmed and collapses. That has not
happened, and I don't think it will. The women's march was
one of the largest marches ever, with simultaneous marches all over
the country, in Canada and abroad. From the women I have talked to,
they were so crammed that marching was not possible, everyone was
smushed together, inching along, or marching in place. This means the
usual guidelines for crowd estimates did not apply. The estimate of
500,000 seems low, lower than the 750,000 estimated in LA. Nevertheless, the
overall estimate of 3 to 4 million marchers across the country
definitely sends a message. But the Trump Resistance involves much
more than a one-off day of marching, as I will explore in my next
post. Courage!
Labels: Boy King, climate denialism, Donald Trump, EO Wilson, Monroe Doctrine, NATO, NPS chief, Paris Accord, shock and awe, South China Sea, Trump Resistance, women's march
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