07/10/2024
Hurricane Milton is category 5. It is expected to be double the force of hurricane Helene which devastated the east coast and basically razed Asheville, North Carolina - a city in the Appalachian Mountains nowhere near ground zero that is 250 miles from the ocean and 2,134 feet above sea level - only a few weeks ago. It is expected to hit Florida on Wednesday.
The Republican plan is to end federal funding for disaster recovery, end all subsidies for clean and renewable energy, and divert all those resources to increasing the production of and reliance on fossil fuels.
I find it mind boggling that anyone could be either on or on the wrong side of this fence. I get that people are stupid, but this is beyond stupid. This is apocalyptic stupid.
If I had my way no harm would come to anybody in Florida, but I will not get my way. All signs point to most of Florida being destroyed, many people dying, many more getting very badly hurt, and many more than that losing everything they have.
This isn't going to get better. This isn't going to stop. Records for heat and disasters are going to keep getting broken year after year.
People don't realize it, but most of Louisiana is already underwater. The maps that we look at show the state as if it is land, but it isn't. If you look at it on Google Earth you can see that about 40 percent of what the maps show is actually water, and most of that land near that water is actually marshland largely unsuitable for human infrastructure. It is not unreasonable to assume that should this keep happening - and it will - Florida will soon be the same - a state that looks like land on a map, but is really mostly underwater.
Climate change is here. This is it. The front of the train has already entered the tunnel. Soon the whole train will be inside. We can't stop it, but we could have. All that is left is to mitigate it, and change our systems and infrastructure to work around it. But the fact that we had a half century long warning, and we chose to ignore it just to prop up a small handful of sociopathic monsters who would rather be the last man standing atop a pile of bloody skulls than a very wealthy man in a flourishing society gives me almost no confidence that we will even do that.
The Republican Party is no longer a political party. As of January 6th, 2021 they officially became a domestic terrorist organization. They behave like one and they must be treated like one. Noam Chomsky identified them as the most dangerous organization in human history over a decade ago and he was absolutely correct. If they seize power and control of the Federal government in the coming months, they will not only usher in tyrannical authoritarian theocratic fascism essentially transmogrifying the United States into all the worst aspects of Russia, North Korea, and Iran, they may very well usher in the extinction of the human race.
I know that to many that sounds alarmist and hyperbolic, but open your eyes, clear the religious wax out of your ears, and look the f**k around. The alarms have been there our whole lives and have steadily gotten louder and louder, but in the last ten years they have been drowned out by idiots and fanatics screaming about critical race theory, gender critical theory, and woke.
I take no joy in the fact that Florida is about to be ravaged. And while there will be many people that will be killed because they couldn't leave, there will also be many that will be killed because they wouldn't leave. Either because they don't believe the news, or because they have faith that god will protect them. The small amount of solace I take is that maybe enough of those people will be wiped out to tip the electoral scales, turn Florida blue, and keep the Republicans from implementing their literal doomsday agenda.
Kamala Harris is not perfect. Not by a long shot. But she is not actively trying to destroy what we have left. This election is the easiest choice you will ever get to make for the rest of your life. You cannot sit this one out. Your life, and the life of everyone you have ever known and loved depends on it.
