It’s been obvious now for a number of years that the right wing dominated Republican Party exists through maintenance of a class system. Only by pushing policies that keep the rich rich and the poor poor can they succeed. This is bad. This is very bad. But even worse is the simple fact they have crossed a line and now become willful and unrepentant imbeciles. The result is going to be destruction of the planet. Think I’m overreacting? Read on. Oh, I know this seems extreme, but bear with me for a moment and you may come, if reluctantly, to agree with me.

• Opposition to nearly all environment legislation: Newest on the Republican hit list is the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed setting of new limits on mercury and arsenic contamination by big industry (which also opposes new regulations). Mercury is a known neurotoxin that can delay or damage children’s neurological development and result in disabilities including blindness. It’s not good for adults, either. Both substances are emitted by coal-fired plants, and Republicans, in particular, don’t give a shit that we’re poisoning ourselves with the stuff.
• Opposition to regulation of other air pollutants: As we all know, Republicans are constitutionally incapable of supporting substantial expenditures for alternative sources of energy. Thus, in addition to what is pouring out of coal-fired plants, we’re also spewing pollutants from our cars’ and trucks’ tailpipes. In the March 26, 2015 issue of the L.A. Times, reporter Geoffrey Moran cites a study in the recent issue of the Journal of the American Association Psychiatry that supports this pollution as a cause of lower cognitive processing and ADHD in children.
• Opposition to vaccination: The imbecility of this is almost beyond belief. As idiots like Rand Paul say that the choice of vaccination should be left to individuals (and damn the risk to the general public), we now see rising incidences of measles and whooping cough, diseases that can maim or be lethal and that were nearly absent until scientific ignoramuses like Jennie McCarthy came on the scene and Republican politicians decided to take us headlong into the good ol’ days of disability and death.
• Refusal to believe in the human contribution to climate change: If not the above, then this is what’s going to kill us all. 2014 was the warmest year on record for our planet. The fact that morons like James Inhofe can stand in front of Congress with a snowball and deny climate change is proof that Republicans are going to kill us all. The oceans are rising as polar ice melts. Severe storms are becoming more common and destructive. Whole islands and parts of the U.S. coast are going to be flooded into non-existence. The Western U.S. is struggling with record drought. Climate change is going to lead to mass migrations, and these will lead to conflict and killing.

And why do Republicans behave the way they do? Here are two observations I’ve made:

• The U.S. has become a corporatized nation. We’re no longer a representative democracy. Corporations own our politicians, and corporations only feel accountable to their shareholders, not to the public – or the world – at large. Big oil rules, and plans to do so until we all die of suffocation. After all, it’s short term gain that interests them. Not the future for the executives’ descendants.
• The Republican right’s drift into more and more literal, fundamentalist religion with a belief in the “Rapture” means that they can do anything to the planet now because it won’t matter then the Rapture lifts them up to that great paradise in the sky. Yes, these superstitious yahoos actually don’t care about the planet because, to many of them, it’s irrelevant. God will save the deserving while the rest of us go to hell.

C’mon folks. This is 2015. We should have long grown out of primitive superstition. God doesn’t save children from burning buildings. Firemen do. God doesn’t save people with busted guts from dying. Surgeons do. And God isn’t going to save us from the havoc being wrought on the planet through our own environmental disrespect. Only we can do that, and if we don’t wake up and take action, it will soon be too late. Uncontrolled pollution, uncontrolled population growth, lack of potable water, severe weather…Republicans and Democrats, but mostly Republicans (including those dolts on the Supreme Court), better get with it soon, or there’ll be hell to pay for all of us, and not just us infidels.

Readers of this blog have often noted my despair over the deficiencies in our educational system and, specifically, the degree of people’s scientific ignorance. Think: James Inhof. In light of this, I offer the following science lesson, which I hope in some small way will help raise the level of scientific literacy in our rapidly sinking nation.

 Electricity Simplified

A Science Lecture by Yerffej N. Flow, Ph.D.

    Our topic is electricity. Electricity makes our modern world run. Everyone should understand it but only few do. When you finish reading this, you will know all there is to know about electricity and will be able to count yourself among a privileged few, the electrically connected cognoscenti.

Prehistoric folks did not have electricity. Well, they did but they didn’t know what to do with it. It is well documented in cave paintings how a caveman of great repute named Hrrrrrmph Toog, upon being struck by lightning, became the world’s first 4 million watt fluorescent lighting fixture. Unfortunately, he was unable to comment upon his distinctive achievement afterward.

There are lots of modern theories about electricity. One says that electricity is 98.7% cream of mushroom soup, but we’ll choose the easiest one because it’s…easy. It says that electricity is made up of something called charge. Charge is carried on little particles called electrons and protons, which are stored in cat fur and received by you from MasterCard in the form of a monthly bill with 18.5% interest. Electrons carry negative charge and protons carry positive charge. It could be the other way around, but I forget.

Quiz Question #1 (multiple choice):

Electrons are:

1. Oblong
2. Protons
3. Really, really tiny

Electric charge doesn’t generally do us much good unless it’s moving. When it isn’t, it’s called static electricity. When it is, it’s called electric current. Current flows through “conductors”. It’s blocked by “insulators”. Wire is a conductor. Wood is an insulator. Rubber is a contraceptive.

Quiz Question #2 (true or false): A large number of electrons flowing through a conductor will electrocute him.

Remember the last time you were at a football game? Remember stuffing your way through some dark, bowelly tunnel to get into the stadium? Remember how you got all sweaty? Aha! You’ve just learned the principle of the toaster oven. Or a light bulb. Those cute, cuddly little electrons (people), all sqwoooshed together in the heating element or lighting filament (bowelly tunnel), create heat that makes the wire glow. Your toaster oven toasts, your light bulb lights, all so you can munch golden brown nuts ‘n berry bread toast and read USA Today bathed in the warm glow of a merry hundred watter instead of eating cold gruel in the dark. The wonders of science, revealed!

As you can see, electricity is actually quite simple. And important. It is a little-known fact that all modern electrical devices, from radios to the space shuttle, are just combinations of toaster ovens and light bulbs. The trick is in knowing the proportions.

Next time, we’ll discuss microwave ovens, fertility and alien abduction. Class dismissed.

Note: Yerffej N. Flow received his Ph.D. with negative honors from the Oxford (shoe) University in 2011. He prefers to be called “Doctor”, but not by sick people.

© J. Allan Wolf, 2015

By now, you’ve all gotten used to my periodic diatribes against Republican arrogance, ignorance, and economic elitism, so it won’t surprise you that here’s another one.

One of the most fundamental flaws in our legislative process is the ability to put any sort of rider on a bill, relevance to the primary bill being a non-issue. And so it has been that the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party, to which any more moderate leaning Republicans kowtow, has blocked funding for the Department of Homeland Security by insisting on a provision invalidating President Obama’s recent actions on immigration. Never mind that that action was taken because Congress has consistently failed to address immigration. The Republicans have no plan (and even appear overtly hostile toward immigrants), and the Democrats are wimps who seem to stand for nothing and certainly aren’t actively, vocally supporting the President. The Republicans have thus shown themselves to care more about immigration than the overall security of the United States against all forms of threat, including terrorism.

With that position, Republicans are batting a thousand on general irrationality and the willingness to put the nation at risk. Here are some other areas where the Republicans are actively seeking to destroy the country:

• Health insurance: No plan of their own but hostile to the Affordable Care Act. If they succeed in getting it overturned, millions will end up uninsured again.
• Minimum wage: They’re opposed, fully invested in keeping the economic underclass down
• Abortion: Almost universally opposed and would be happy to see women dying in back alley abortions as they strive to legislate against responsible pregnancy termination and choice.
• Gay marriage: Oh, yeah, they think it’s a religious abomination and want to impose their views on you, too.
• The environment: Absolute opposition to environmental protection, instead favoring ecologic devastation by big business. Maybe they think the Rapture will save them, and damn everyone else.
• Hostility toward, and general disbelief in, science: The earth is 6000 years old? Evolution is just a “theory”? The scientifically ignorant don’t understand the actual meaning of the word “theory” as applied to scientific fact. Worse, some of their ignorance seems downright willful.
• Separation of church and state: Republicans have become an American Taliban, eager to impose their own notion of the U.S. as a Christian nation and ignoring the Founding Fathers’ firm stance against precisely what these historical dopes are promoting.
• Global climate change: Idiots like Senator James Inhof, totally ignorant of science and the considered opinion of every reputable climate scientist on Earth, fail completely to understand and/or accept the reality that is observable to anyone who isn’t a moron. Overall, the planet is warming, oceans are rising, and disaster is becoming a looming certainty.

I could go on, but the essence of current day Republican philosophy is its absolute reliance upon a stratified class system, with a permanently disadvantaged underclass, a contracted middle class, and a small but dominant upper class that can’t see beyond the end of its own economic nose. The Koch brothers et al. have essentially bought Congress, and we are now living in a corporate nation with rapidly eroding social mobility and freedom. Environmental destruction is already occurring and, under incompetent and self-interested leadership, appears headed for much worse in the relatively near future. Voter suppression, continuation of policies that prevent social advancement, and the use of religion and unbridled chauvinism to justify all manner of bigotry and in-your-bedroom legislation are destroying the ideals we, as a country, have in the past and (at least many of us) continue to espouse.

If we don’t wake up to the reality of the situation soon and militate for change, it’s going to be too late. When totalitarian repression becomes too great, people revolt, and I fear the day this could happen in what is supposed to be the land of the free and home of the brave.