The Worst of the Worst that is coming is Global Warming!

It was barely a campaign issue, but Global Warming is THE worst thing conservatives are now poised to worsen!

In the election campaign just past, the conservatives did their usual dystopian spin on the state of the nation, ginning up angst and fear over “invasion” at the border, the outrageous price of eggs (completely Biden’s fault), the “transgender menace,” and how the “communist” Democrats are killing babies at birth, defunding the police and plotting to take away your guns. There were plenty of voters ready and willing to swallow down these whoppers, added to the congenitally racist and/or sexist who were absolutely not under any circumstances going to vote for a Black woman to be president. The strategy worked like a charm — again.

Meanwhile, there is a tempest raging across the land (and sea and air) that has already killed thousands of Americans. It has destroyed individual lives, homes and even whole towns… right here in the United States. A mass murderer is on the loose, and sporadically rampaging. It appears out of nowhere. No place is safe. And we have solid evidence its malevolence is just beginning and is going to accelerate as it spreads… to the point of threatening the very viability of higher life on Earth.

Hmm…. the end of not just America but civilization itself? Kinda scary. To say the least.

If this threat stemmed from dark-skinned immigrants or transgender teenagers or bespeckled atheist professors conservatives would be apoplectic about it. Those “real patriots” would be up in arms, emphatically demanding that their politicians stop it NOW! Build a Wall! Mass Deportation! Martial Law! Call out the National Guard! Summon the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, Space Force! Send in the “well-regulated militias!” The Supreme Court! The Death Penalty!

But this existential danger does not spring from any human source, other than… us all!

Well, not all of “us” equally around the world. But the BIGGEST finger of blame points directly at the good old USA.

Yet even here, in the historically most responsible nation on Earth for this crime spree, we don’t share equally in causing this calamity, though we will all share the suffering.

Turns out those who DO own the most culpability are the least interested in even acknowledging that this mass murdering phenomenon even exists!

Of course, the problem, the murderer, is the killer atmosphere, the monster “we” have managed to create in our laboratories of consumerism.

“What problem?,” the oil, gas, coal and cattle shills have argued for decades. “Humans can’t change the climate,” they scoff. “Look, here’s a snowball; does this look like Global Warming?” “It’s all natural!” “It’s a Chinese hoax!” “Cow farts are causing this? You are crazy!”

Or, if it does exist, they equivocate, we can’t do anything about it. And should not even try. It will nip into corporate profits, big bonuses for execs, and inconvenience people. Trust the “market” to solve all problems.

Conservatives have been peddling this horrifically anti-social, anti-science nonsense for at least FORTY YEARS! And they have gotten away with it. They have remained totally unpunished for their selfish, evil, fatal wrongness!

Yes, conservatives are forever wrong… about everything. But this is, by far, the worst thing they have ever been wrong about.

So you would think that the Democrats would eventually make this a key campaign issue. You would be wrong.

It doesn’t “poll” well, they argue. It’s not an issue people are interested in. Sure enough, in 2024 only 12 percent of Democrats named “Climate Change” as their top issue of concern. A whopping 2 percent of Republicans said the same. Perhaps these were Republicans who have already felt the stab of killer heatwaves, historic wildfires, tornado swarms, super hurricanes, decades-long droughts, rain bombs, epic floods, freaky deadly winter events, mudslides, invasive species (including tropical diseases), destabilization of ecosystems, sea level rise or other climate change related disasters.

Yes, the climate is changing. It’s getting HOTTER! And this extra heat is stirring the very atmosphere into a cauldron of chaos, which can even temporarily make things so cold in Texas that hundreds of people die.

So MAKE IT AN ISSUE, Democrats!

Republicans make up issues all the time. This one doesn’t need to be pulled from some think tank spin room. It’s happening. It’s destroying! It’s killing! Rebrand it back to “Global Warming,” not the softer, nebulous “climate change,” and hammer the conservatives for their utter greed and cynicism, combined with ineptitude, in regards to this matter that WILL harm, or kill, us all, sooner rather than later.

Nope. They won’t do it. And it’s not hard to see why. Many Democrats are actually conservative on this issue!

To properly address this threat, we have to change our ways.

Change? Our “way of life?” That’s a non-starter with conservatives, and, alas, many “centrist” and “moderate” — and even some “liberal” — Democrats are in that very same camp.

When pushed on the subject, Democrat officials look at you like you’re the crazy one. “We’re going to tell the American people that they need to back off the gas-guzzlers and animal flesh? Yeah, right, that’s gonna fly!” they retort.

Well, it better fly. Or we are all toast… literally!

Climate scientists warned us in the late NINETEEN SEVENTIES that this was all coming. We are pumping far too much greenhouse gasses (notably carbon-dioxide and methane) into the atmosphere. Indeed, the clarion call was first issued back in the early 1900s, when a scientist calculated that CO2 levels were rising and that eventually this would cause a greenhouse effect on Planet Earth. So this information is not new, nor is the warning, nor is the plea to throttle back our reliance on the primary sources of these gasses. The main culprits are coal, oil, gas and cattle.

(Yes, cattle are among the top four causes of this calamity, not just because billions of them are belching and farting methane — up to EIGHTY TIMES more powerful than CO2 in immediate warming potential — but also the vast tracts of land, particularly forests, that are destroyed annually — often burned, releasing ALL their CO2 at once — to graze cattle, thus robbing the planet of the immense cooling effects of trees. The single most effective thing YOU can do to combat Global Warming is to swear off anything that comes from cattle! A hard ask, sure… but do you want a planet, or not?)

Conservative elites and politicians, many of them with direct or indirect ties to coal, oil, gas and Big Animal-Ag have done their best to deny, debunk, distort, delay, derail any and all efforts both here in America and around the world, to prevent doing much of anything to effectively curb this ominous, ultra-deadly force. Billions of conservative-minded citizens, with their own personal affections for these very same dirty industries, have eagerly embraced the conservative argument… against all science and, increasingly, their own lived experience.

So, essentially, these conservatives, certainly the leaders ladling out the toxic counter-narrative and firmly standing in the way of addressing the problem, are enablers and accessories to the greatest crime in human history… that of killing the biosphere! It is MASS murder in the first degree! Premeditated, calculated, with a flashing billboard of a motive… their own advantage, privilege and power.

As usual.

Once again, I reiterate, the ONLY thing conservatives ever “conserve” is their own advantage, privilege and power within their society. That’s why conservatism is the Ideology of Selfishness!

Sure, Donald Trump is right when he says that, “I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any votes.” What he is acknowledging there is that his voters have no conscience or higher moral compass, just their own selfishness. But this is not someone on Fifth Avenue. This is all of us, and all other life forms. Are the Democrats just going to put their heads in the sand when the Ideology of Selfishness threatens all of us, randomly kills, wipes out entire towns? Really?

And these conservatives praise themselves as “Pro Life?” Seriously, there could not be a more tragically absurd description. These people are TRAITORS to life itself!

Call them out! Hammer their wrongness! Bring a tempest of shame upon their heads! And we better get at it quickly before it’s too late. We don’t have a lot of time to get this right.

How much time do we have? Well, according to climate scientists, just a degree and a half…

… Whoa! Hold on!

Now the climate scientists admit they were wrong. Turns out the planet is not getting hotter in the manner they expected. It’s actually getting hotter faster than anyone thought.

Worse news: as the planet gets hotter it triggers even more heating in a terrifying feedback spiral. The wrath of this diabolical airy monster is accelerating and gaining new super powers with each ton of greenhouse gas emitted. We are nearing a point of no-return, where a cataclysmic cascade of heat-releasing systems will be triggered… and that will be the end of the biosphere as we know it.

And now we return you to the other looming nightmare: Oligarchic fascism rising! Including in America.

What is a newly empowered conservative majority, owning the White House, the Senate, the House of Representatives, the Supreme Court, lower courts across the land, many state houses… plus a zombie horde of utterly selfish and/or low-information voters… going to do about this existential crisis?

Everything it can.

To make it WORSE!

To make a volatile atmosphere even more volatile. To accelerate the acceleration. To close off any last ditch efforts to mitigate the worst of the worst of Global Warming.

Trump and his corporate pirates are going to revoke proactive policies that attempt to slow down this tragedy. They are going to deregulate the dirty industries, they are going to drill, baby, drill, they are going to “bring back coal,” they are going to binge on steaks and burgers and cheese and ice cream, waving the flag and the Bible as they encourage everyone else in the world to do the same. Neo-fascist regimes around the globe will be more than happy to go along with these absolutely wrong-headed (on every level: rational, emotional and spiritual) impulses.

Oh yes, and don’t forget how conservatives are going to shrink the federal government to where it can be “drowned in a bathtub.” So once the climate-related disaster comes to your community, heh, you’re on your own, bub! No aid for you. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps! And you won’t be able to turn to your insurance policy, either. Those will be unaffordable in the next few years. The risks are simply becoming too great for these companies to dare cover anyone’s “stuff,” of life, with a capricious monster on the loose.

At the very point in human history when the world MUST come together to solve a truly existential problem, conservatives around the world are promoting becoming more isolationist and “nationalist.” “America First!” No, “China First!” No, “Russia first!” No, “North Korea First!” No, “Iran first!” No, “Hungary First!” No, “Israel First!” No, “Argentina first!” Etc.

It’s a recipe for our own epitaph as a species: “They were so cleverly selfish, they destroyed their own nest!” Something most other life forms are smarter than to do.

This era of national and world leadership by conservatives conserving their own advantage, privilege and power, with utter disdain for the natural world (except what they can profit from), and with zeal for “owning the libs,” will certainly be a new “Golden Age” for all those who love disasters, and are ready to embrace those killer heatwaves, historic wildfires, tornado swarms, super hurricanes, decades-long droughts, rain bombs, epic floods, freaky-deadly winter events, mudslides, invasive species (including tropical diseases), destabilization of ecosystems, sea level rise or other climate change related disasters.

If you haven’t experienced one of these as of yet, don ‘t worry.

It’s coming.

It’s coming for you, and your children, and your grandchildren, and your great-grandchildren and for every generation forthcoming. If there are many more.

And to think that 70+ million Americans voted to risk a livable planet, the birthright of every single living thing, for faith in the lying, bragging, whining, blaming, insulting conman that is Donald Trump! It still boggles my mind, and probably always will.

The atmosphere doesn’t differentiate amongst those who still doubt, those who haven’t a clue, those who don’t care, those who are hoping to strike it rich soon, those of us who are heart-broken over this situation. It’s going to pound us all.

Enjoy the Make America Great regime, folks! If you think that can be achieved by destroying the world, you are even more stupid than selfish. And that’s saying a lot.

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Check out singer-songwriter Rusty Reid at www.RustyReid.com or your favorite streaming service.

No Hate.
No Violence.
All Life is Sacred.
The Universe is Magnificent & Beautiful.
Love is the Way.

Copyright 2024, Rusty Reid