While the rest of the industrialized world provides workers with nationalized health care and vacation packages designed to produce a healthy workforce, the United States is leading the charge in a return to the days of robber barons and sweatshops. Never have the world’s workers needed unity more.
There are pundits bemoaning the apparent beginning of the United States loss of world economic dominance in every newspaper, on every talk radio program, and on Fox News every second of airtime. It’s quite likely that the decline of the U.S and the demise of the Pax Americana are upon us. What these pundits fail to realize is that the politicians and political parties they prop up and in many cases direct from behind are responsible for the social, economic, and political conditions we now face. When playing to the poorly educated one gets poor candidates for office and a voter base driven by our own brand of tribalism and Taliban.
The current field of potential GOP presidential candidates makes Nixon look good by comparison. That is frightening! The voter base that supports the GOP is no longer comprised of men and women who had the intellect of Buckley. Eisenhower and Teddy Roosevelt could not win a GOP nomination today. Instead, the GOP is playing to teavangelists, a base driven by theocracy, racism, and anti-intellectualism. That base is so poorly grounded in reality that they believe the trickle down myth and the lie that tax cuts for the super-rich will bring jobs back to American workers. With a voter base like that, this nation is set to self-destruct by becoming a theocratic oligarchy. We should take a hard look at the Latin America of the Colonial era. That is likely to be the future of the U.S.
Today’s petty annoyances are becoming today’s aggravations. The cable TV and internet service have been dropping off-line this morning. In each case, it has required a phone call to Comcast to generate an automated refresh signal to bring them back up on line. Yesterday, such an interruption would have been of no consequence. Today, after a night with all our accustomed services restored, a hot shower, and a home-cooked breakfast, those interruptions trigger inappropriate annoyance.
We slip back into our accustomed routines so easily, while others have real worries to deal with.
There is a line of storms off to our west, moving slowly toward us. It is bringing rain to regions that do not need any more. The Mississippi valley is already experiencing serious flooding and anticipates more. The NWS is predicting the possibility of severe storms in the lower Mississippi valley Monday. While they don’t predict another extreme outbreak, there is the possibility of more tornadoes in an area already blown apart last week.
I know that I’ll be monitoring the storm forecasts and the actual tornado genesis and tracking much more closely for a long time to come. That perceived need to monitor something I can do very little about beyond prepare as much as possible is one thing driving my annoyance. When I booted up the radar scans this morning the presence of the storms to our west gave me a moment’s pause.
It is amusing that the N.E. corner of Tennessee’s low frequency of tornadic storms was one of the major reasons we chose this area when we left Florida. The NWS records listed 7 documented tornadoes in the years 1954-2004. We’ve had five or six, including those of the 27th & 28th, since moving here in 2006. The changing climactic conditions along with a La Nina Pacific ocean circulation have resulted in a persistent southward shift in the jet stream that brings the storm tracks more closely over us. It is going to keep my attention on the weather, and the climate, for some time to come. And yes, it is attributable, at least in part, to global warming.
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