Note: Google is making it extremely difficult for me to log into this blog. It appears that Google allows a person to have only one account, which means that I would have to reveal my identity. I have resisted doing so. If you find nothing new posted here in 2014, you might need to use a search engine to find out where Republican Climate has gone.
My
postings on this blog have been sporadic, but I want to let you know it is not
dead. I have, during the past year, lost some of my initial enthusiasm. I am no
less alarmed by what the Republicans are doing. But I have little faith that
what the Democrats are doing will help us out of the crisis. The choice, it
seems to me, is between evil Republicans and inept Democrats. This will be as true
in 2014 as it was in 2013.
Usually,
when we humans attempt to predict what will happen in the coming year, we try
to understand the past year. But if we have learned anything from the past
year, it is that our future will follow a largely arbitrary trajectory. Was
there any progress on rebuilding our economy or on preventing global warming or
on enhancing science literacy? It doesn’t matter, because for any reason or for
no reason the Republican-led House of Representatives, and the Senate over
which Republicans wield the constant threat of filibuster, can simply decide to
cause our economy to collapse. The Republicans actually started the process in
October, taking us a few hours into government default, just to prove to us
that they could. They want us to remember that they have the knife to our
throats. Therefore, to use just this example, default is not something that
might occur as a result of deficit spending or of depleted resources or of not
taking care of long-term environmental problems, but something that Republican
extremists in Congress can impose arbitrarily. How can one possibly plan ahead
for that?
Therefore,
many people look ahead into 2014 with a numb astigmatism. We know that some
emergency will come along, but we cannot guess what it will be. We must remain
tensely vigilant, ready for anything, and as far as we know, we have to remain
under these stressful conditions forever. We will not be able to see the
emergency until it arrives. It was bad enough to have nearly insurmountable long-term
problems, and to be prepared for the actions of crazy dictators and extremists,
but now we also have to consider our own unpredictable government.
All
you have to do to see this vision of a future filled with unpredictable
emergencies is to go to the movies. My family and I went to see The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. The
main thing that happened in this movie was that the good people (humans, elves,
and dwarves) slashed and impaled orcs. The orcs looked like half-decomposed
monsters. The special effects were good, but after about the six hundredth orc
was killed, I was pretty much satiated, even though the movie was only half
over.
I
believe that The Hobbit, as well as
several 2014 movies whose previews we saw, reflect the kind of conflict that
many people anticipate for the immediate future. After all, studios do not make
expensive movies unless market research shows that millions of people will be
attracted to them. And not necessarily to enjoy them. People sometimes go to
movies to deal with the demons inside their minds. Specifically, in these
movies:
·
The
conflicts consist of totally
unpredictable attacks. Gandalf could sense that something evil was emerging
from under the earth, but no further prediction was possible. You cannot
anticipate these conflicts.
·
The
foes are incomprehensibly evil. They
seem motivated primarily by their love for evil, which makes them even more
unpredictable. And they are all alike. The orcs all look nearly alike and have
the same voice and the same feelings. You cannot negotiate with them
collectively nor can you find even one of them who is not totally evil and with
whom you might be able to reason.
·
The
governments are totally
dysfunctional. The elves cared only about their walled kingdom, and the humans
dwelling beside the lake had an inept and hedonistic king. The only possibility
of salvation was from little militia groups (in this case, a little band of
dwarves) taking matters into their own hands.
·
The
response can be only to slash the
evil foes early, often, and perhaps forever. There is no time to negotiate or
understand; if you hesitate for even a moment before slashing, you will be
dead.
It
occurred to me that this is the kind of future that the moviegoers anticipated
for 2014. Our government will not deal with or perhaps even admit any
predictable long-term issues such as global warming or gun violence or
immigration, and are likely to create new and unpredictable conflicts; we
cannot trust our government to deal with any emergencies that come along, even
those that they themselves create; and the only possible response is to remain
stressed-out, ready to instantly respond to emergencies by extreme and perhaps
violent measures, on our own. We know we have to get and keep our own personal
finances in shape, because we cannot individually succeed if we do not; but we
cannot know whether personal financial wisdom will keep us alive in a chaotic
economy. Over the long term, many people actually expect a dystopia, a grim future in which there is no altruistic
society but in which each individual, or each little band of people, has to look
out for himself or itself. If our popular entertainment is any guide, a lot of
people actually expect to descend into a future of chaos.
Few
people will openly admit this. Financial and policy prognosticators make it
sound like we know where we are going and how to get there. That’s their job.
And both parties in Congress wants us to think that they have suddenly become
good people. They want us to think that the budget deal worked out by
Republican Paul Ryan and Democrat Patty Murray is the beginning of a
Congressional lovefest during which Republicans and Democrats will become
comrades. But, as indicated by the kinds of movies we will be seeing in 2014,
deep down we anticipate that the future is an incoherent mass of emergencies
for which we cannot prepare.
