(imagine in a southern sh*t-kicker voice)
“waell, we’s all so proud of y’all & yer bravery & stuff… & too bad yer gonna burn up on re-entry …
“we could shore use yer courage over thar in I-rack shootin’ all dem Al-Kaydians
“hey mebbe you could aim that shuttle thing of yers into one of dem ‘hot-spot’ thingies… we gotta mess a’ traiters in dat dere congress cain’t seem to russle-up some more firepower for Our Boys over thar…”
Vonnegut predicted an executive branch run by “bread & circuses” president who kisses babies & snips ribbons… while the vp does all the real work. and reagan lived-up [down] to that expectation.
Heinlein predicted a presidency run by an astrology-loving first lady (reagan again).
but neither, i’ll bet, ever dreamed of this.
in the end, all americans have a naive expectation that their elected leaders are intelligent, loyal, & moral… and will dedicatedly support their own efforts to lead the American Dream (job, family, house, car, retirement).
what happens when the average ‘red-stater’ realizes that the latter isn’t even remotely true? unless you’re a Corporation, and/or earning $10M/year, there are no tax breaks, tax shelters, or tax incentives which can remotely make-up for the city/state services you’ve lost in the last 5 years… let-alone the environmental impact.
and just-in: after 26 years, the first new Nuke Plants have just been approved, & fast-tracked. do the words “Three Mile Island” mean anything to anyone? how about “Chernobyl”? the US eastern seaboard still has three (3) unshielded chernobyl-type plants in operation, at last count…
just follow the $$: the major oil companies own the nuclear plants, as well as the ‘hydrogen’ plants (coal-burning boondoggles). Bio-diesel, solar, wind, geothermal? Nah, don’t make them laugh.
i just wonder– do these rich guys really think that their $$ will buy them security & separation from sucking-down bad air & eating food grown in a poisoned water-table?
Tags: politics
they probably think by then their money has bought them a ticket to another planet that is just like paradise. but, hey, money ain’t be able to buy that coz men in power tend to be already old, won’t live to see the day, though men is working on getting older eternity is still an entity not entirely known, or fill me in?
funny to me is how they are all religious. surely it must be more convenient to be without any faith. no hell to burn in, no being re-born as who you might have worked on being in the last run (or just the way you like to look at it). so, mathematically, being religious and doing what they do must surely mean to believe you do the right thing, to end up in paradise or be re-born as a unicorn or president again or something? or maybe space travel is far more advanced than we think.
so, it’s a combination of money (buys privileges like first class air seats or space tickets in the future, or maybe just some first rate medical treatment), religion (convenient explanation how i will still end up in paradise, only need to believe i was doing the right thing, i. e. killing a few thousand of them damn non-believers), believing they are doing the right thing and turning a somewhat blind eye towards the ecological future of this planet. and possibly a few thousand more aspects flying at 2073k miles an hour that i really wouldn’t want to dream about, but, hey, lucky me, i got my own issues.
oh, wait, some of them issues they create might be mine. *checking*. no. i am turning a blind eye, too. maybe even as far as paying with my money for this mayhem. i have no car. maybe my rent will increase due to the oil prices… no, don’t think so. airtravel might be more expensive, that would suck. a war would major suck. terrorism sucks. being afraid of terrorists sucks. the news suck. having no money sucks. so, since i live in a country not at war and have not been blown up or anything by terrorists yet, the main impact i experience is paying money for those things (food is getting more expensive, too).
but i am well protected by the circumstances i live in. i don’t even pay taxes. and hey! i am glad i don’t. so don’t listen to me.
n*
The negatives of religion (eg, smug self-satisfaction) are incredibly amplified when you add political power into the mix. There is nothing more stubborn than a religious zealot… & nothing more scary than one with political power.
one can feel some level of freedom when one knows “God is dead”, but how much more empowered are they when they’re utterly, unshakeably convinced, “God thinks I’m the Best”? This is the very thought going-thru suicide-bombers when they take their last ride– WWII vets report seeing Kamikaze pilots chanting to themselves as they crashed their planes into ships in Pearl Harbor; Marines report seeing the suicide-bombers praying as they drove their truck into the embassy in Beirut. Now they’re even technologically-enabled– the modern suicide-bomber often has a walkman, & a taped screed from their Iman reassuring them of their place in the afterlife. How’s that for an iPod commercial?
We have swapped Ayatollah Khomeini for a bland, platitude-spouting “just-folks” fella who directs obscene amounts of $$ to his buddies (his “Base”), & can’t be bothered to give a shit (or even pretend to) about anyone else.
at this point in humanity’s development, space travel would only be a wasteful boondoggle, imho. I’m sure we could spend ridiculous amounts of $$ to put somebody on a different planet… but they’d just have to bring their living environment with them. For the (really long) forseeable future, this Earth is the only one we have, & any implication that we could leave it, just distracts from the real problem of the increasing rate of environmental destruction.
One of the factors in Hurricane Katrina’s ‘success’ in smashing New Orleans, is that much of the Mississippi Delta is submerged now. Usually it acts like a natural buffer to deplete much of a sea-born storm’s force… but this time it had neglible effect, b/c it’s underwater. Why? It’s called “global warming”, & at the current rate of icecap melting/etc, lower Manhattan is on-target to be flooded (sans any hurricane-like storm), by 2030.
But don’t worry– Bush doesn’t listen to scientists, & instead pays for his own “News Programs” saying ‘everything is fine’.
swamps go back to being swamps then and we all go under