"For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind..."
Hosea 8:7
Houses on the Jersey shore torn to shreds like
matchbooks. Homes burned to the
ground in the Rockaways. Lower
Manhattan flooded, subway tunnels awash, the largest public transport facility on
Earth shut down because of weather, millions of people in the nation's most
populated corridor still without electricity in late autumn cold, schools with
no power, electricity wires strung on poles snagged by falling trees, the list
can go on ad nauseum.
Politically expedient deniers of the almost universal
scientific opinion about global warming have their work cut out for them. They are faced with what Andrew Cuomo
says, "a once in a generation storm every two years."
Weather patterns are changing.
Building codes that allowed frame construction almost everywhere
on the Atlantic seaboard are suddenly and unequivocally now subject to hasty
revision. No justification possibly exists for such malfeasance. Hurricane Sandy was not, by any
stretch of the wildest naysayer's imagination, unforeseeable. Floodgates have protected the low-lying
areas of Europe for many years.
If people insist on living near the frequently violent sea,
they should be prepared for its fury.
Global warming is showing the consequences of warmer seas--more violent
storms and freakier weather patterns--all to the detriment of our feckless
infrastructure, sown by generations of myopic politicians who, in all fairness,
clearly did not see what was in store for stricken communities from DC to
Massachusetts.
Now the wake up call has come. In Florida, there are building codes that have arisen since
Hurricane Andrew have strengthened, however, FPL still thinks that burying power
lines is economically not feasible; a few years ago, they replaced some of the
traditional wooden poles in my neighborhood with higher concrete ones. The trees still overhang the lines
anyway.
The early Republican debates were a cacophony of voices
denying climate change; Mitt Romney still has nothing to say about it, his perfidious
calculative demeanor evident. And frankly, the President has not done enough to
awaken the public, which mostly cares now about the economy.
The tea partiers and fundamentalists are now calculating
what a woman should do with her body and if the candidates are sufficiently
religious to hasten the erosion of the constitutional wall of separation
between church and state, instead
of preparing for national disasters like Hurricane Sandy.
Deniers of man-made climate change include almost the entire
Republican Party, and those who think that government serves no useful purpose
except starting wars, nurturing the military industrial complex and
transforming primitive Islamists into Jeffersonian democrats.
Florida continues to
set a new low bar for election shenanigans.
The State Legislature, in concocting an indecipherable
ballot has struck another new level of loathsomeness. It has composed ballot initiatives, among which is one that
is labeled "Religious Freedom." It is fraudulently conceived and evilly promulgated. What it really represents is an attempt
to interject religion in the educational system by providing state funding to
religious schools, voucherized money that could be used instead to improve
public education rather than defunding it. These are the same people who are apostles of the same ilk
of creationists in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas who would teach
creationism to our children. We
are living a 21st century nightmarish re-run of Inherit the Wind.
The Presidential Campaign grinds to a lowly end.
There was seemingly no end to the negative commercials, the
meaningless dialog, the emails during which both parties attempt convincing voters
that the other side is going to ruin the country, the economy, the world
itself.
The campaigns have been financed by copious amounts of super
PAC cash coming from special interest groups airing offensive announcements
denouncing each other's candidates, adding to a witch's brew of obfuscation,
misinformation and distortion.
The debates, a glibness and disappointing appearance
contest, droned on and on, giving the electorate only a superficial sample of
what qualities a leader really requires.
Nothing in the end was revealed but a continual and seemingly unending
parade of talking points. The debates did not tell us who would be a good
President or a bad President. Who would shine in a moment of crisis? Who is a deep thinker? A problem
solver? A person who could break
the legislative gridlock? A person with a definite agenda? None of this was revealed in the debates, even if it were fact.
A two-year, $2.5 billion election cycle slows down the
efficiency of government and places politics above the national interest. Our Federal system is severely
broken. The negativity of the past
two years demeans those who do win
and expands the polarized divide.
It diminishes the governing ability of the winner, who inevitably
suffers diminution by the misinformation saturating the airwaves. The election campaigns should last 6
months beginning to end; the Electoral College should be abolished. There should be public financing of the
campaigns and a constitutional amendment shutting down of all the extra money
that has distorted the process beyond all recognition.
