Right now, Laurel is out watering trees that we planted on our five-acre Hines Plantation one or two years ago. She shouldn’t have to be doing this. It’s only the first part of July, not the end of August. Normally, we would have gotten about twice as much rain as actually fell in May and June. But this wasn’t a normal spring. On three days in June, I believe, high temperature marks for the date were broken in Salem. Much less rain. Much higher heat. Doesn’t this strongly suggest that something is different with the weather? And not just here, but everywhere. Record numbers of tornadoes. Record deluges of rain. Record heat waves. But George W. Bush says that the evidence isn’t in, and we need to study global warming for a lot longer before we start to do anything about it.
What an idiot. Fortunately, experts who aren’t idiots are a counterweight to the Fool-in-Chief. The World Meteorological Association recently issued a report saying, in the words of a U.K. news service, that “the world’s weather is going haywire.” Well, they should know, since the Association is linked to 185 weather services around the world. And George Bush is only linked to his conservative political contributors, plus his fantasy that he is doing God’s work on Earth. It’s long been understood that the symptom of global warming isn’t just heat, but climatic extremes—cold as well as heat, deluges of rain as well as droughts. And this is just what is being observed around the world.
Hopefully science will come to our rescue before Bush and his cronies lead us into an ecological disaster. Every time I read about the difference between what a respected international scientific body says about a subject such as global warming, and what half- or full-lies come out of the mouths of politicians and industrialists with obvious vested interests in the status quo, I’m reminded of the danger of True Believers, whether these be religious, political, or whatever.
Sure, we all selectively filter reality through our own belief system, focusing on what supports what we already believe to be true and ignoring contradictory evidence. But True Believers see life through exceedingly crude lenses of perception. Deep down, Bush really isn’t an idiot, but his blinders turn him into one. Truth is out there somewhere. If we don’t believe that, then we’re stuck in a subjective, relativistic maze where nothing means anything but what we decide it should be. I can’t subscribe to that.
If there truly is objective truth, leaving aside the question of whether it is possible to ever be known completely, then the goal must be to seek this truth as sincerely and honestly as possible. So far, our present Administration is failing to do this. But I won’t give up hope. Maybe a firecracker will explode near Bush’s brain today and shake up some neurons, causing him to view the world more truthfully. [Note to Secret Service: the preceding is purely a fantasy, and protected by the First Amendment].
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