Category: Social Issues

GRETA THUNBERG: Climate Change Crusader

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GRETA THUNBERG:

Climate Change Crusader

By Trevor K. McNeil

The “Aggressive” Approach of Greta Thunberg: Greta was born 1/3/03. She said in a recent interview, “I was diagnosed with Asberger’s Syndrome, COD, and selective mutism. That basically means I only speak when I think its necessary. Now is one of those times.”

Climate Activism

Climate change news generally brings a mixed response.  Climate activists are either saints or lunatics, largely depending on one’s alignment on the political compass. Those on the political Left trend towards the first descriptor, those on the political Right the other. Such is the case with Greta Thunberg. Conservatives dismissing her as a stupid, emotional, misguided child and Liberals, for the most part, embracing her as the best hope for the future.

In A Teenager’s Brain

The Conservatives, as usual, are wrong. For a teenager to be emotional means nothing. All teenagers are more emotional, at least more so than adults. It is in their brain chemistry, the process of maturation causing the brain to physically change. The brains of teenagers are literally different from those of adults. One of the results of this difference is that teenagers can have a drive unseen in adults.

Symptoms Of Her Diagnosis

In addition to her teenage brain, Greta exhibits a commonality with people diagnosed with Asberger’s Syndrome. Most particularly the development of an all-consuming interest in a specific subject.  These factors are positives when it comes to being an international climate activist. Beginning when she was 8 Greta became obsessed with climate change and climate change news. She began at home, literally forcing her parents to change their activities to cut the family’s carbon foot print.

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Last Chance To Save Amazon Rain Forest

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EDITORIAL:

By Trevor McNeil

Fashionable Worries

The American journalist and satirist P.J. O’Rourke long ago identified what he termed, ‘fashionable worries.’ Ones which he laid out in detail in his 1994  book, All The Trouble In the World. It is doubtful that O’Rourke really meant to dismiss the listed issues as not being issues. I liken it to how people will take on new styles in clothing because they think they should. He seems a rather reasonable sort; and among his list of ‘fashionable worries’ is over population, and other such crises, that not even a Republican – which O’Rourke really isn’t – would argue are not really issues.

On Balance

What is far more likely, on balance of evidence, is that O’Rourke was being honest when he explained himself and why he wrote the book.  He emphasized he was not making fun of the issues, but rather those who adopt them with no real idea of what those issues are really about, or any of the other major issues going on, for that matter. One of those identified was the depletion of the Amazon rain forest. An eco-system few understand; in a part of the world few Americans have ever visited.

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SUICIDE PREVENTION MONTH

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D. S. Mitchell

Please Call #988 for help. 

Dangerous To Your Health

September is National Suicide Prevention Month. If you are between 15-35, suicide is the second leading cause of death for your age group.  For all age groups, suicide is responsible for more deaths than murder and natural disasters, combined.  Men take their own lives four times as often as women. Many men sadly would rather be dead than seem ‘weak.’

Not Rare, Or Isolated

As you can see, suicide is not a rare, or an isolated event. Twenty-two vets a day kill themselves. An alarming increase in suicide among law enforcement officers should be of national concern. Approximately 170 officers killed themselves last year. Suicide is permanent. No one comes back. It is very real and definitely a permanent end.

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Senseless Killing: Trophy Hunting

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SENSELESS KILLING                               

By Anna Hessel

The Senseless Death of One Lion

In the summer of 2015, Minnesota dentist Dr. Walter Palmer, having reportedly paid $50,000 in US dollars to hunter-guide Theo Bronkhorst as the price for an innocent lion’s head, shot and killed a majestic creature named Cecil.  Palmer first shot Cecil with bow and arrow, then tracked the wounded king of the jungle for about a 40-hour period, finally killing him with a rifle on July 1st near Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe.

A Song Too Late

Public outrage at this prompted many celebrities and politicians, among others, to publicly condemn the murder of this animal.  Musicians composed songs of tribute in Cecil’s honor, while artists worldwide such as Aaron Blaise, a former animator for Disney, created works to celebrate his life and mourn his death.

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KOCH BROS: Corruption & Hypocrisy

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By Trevor McNeil & D.S. Mitchell

Kernel of Truth

The old adage that “only the good die young” was confirmed with the death of David Koch at the age of 79.  David Koch, and brother Charles, formed the two-headed demon that led one of the most unethical and unprincipled companies in modern memory.  Which is saying something with the likes of Enron as competition. Though, to be fair, like them or hate them, no one at Enron, as far as is known, used their vast fortune to fund and push for extreme hard right libertarian political ideology of small government and anti-regulation to transform U.S. government policy.

The Company We Keep

A group of hard Right, hyper-“patriotic”, pseudo-Christians emerged with the Obama election. These folks identified themselves as the “Tea Party”.  They were a cranky group of hustlers and howlers who seem to think the parable goes “turn the other cheek; and then pull a Glock”. A bit of a turn on the standard evangelical prayer group.

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Trumpism Is Unsustainable

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Calamity face

I am on a mission to make sure that Donald Trump is a one term president. Voter Blue.

Trumpism Is Unsustainable

By D. S. Mitchell

My Personal Mission

Trumpism is unsustainable. Donald Trump has been in office for two and a half years. Since November 9th, 2016 I have made it my personal mission to call out our faux president every chance I get for his scandalous and corrupt behavior. I challenge anyone, Republican or Democrat to name any president in our 200 year plus history that was worse than this guy. Trump is in fact a risk to the country, in every way imaginable.  He is a reckless and hate filled demagogue.

Temperamentally Unfit

Trump’s chaotic thinking and his emotional volatility are, in fact, a danger to the country he administers. In my most wild nightmares, I never imagined the potential of such a soulless narcissist ever being elected to any office in the country, much less the presidency. His behavior over the last week has raised both tempers and eyebrows. The local volunteer Fire Department has had to stop by my house several times to put my ‘hair fire’ out.

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Editorial: “A Matter Of Time”

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A Look At Gun Control and 2nd Amendment Reform           

By Trevor K. McNeil

Still Echoing

The cycle has come back around again, and gun-control has returned to the sociopolitical forefront. Something that has occurred with increasing regularity since the beginning of the 21st century, starting with the Columbine shooting in 1999. A twenty year old tragedy that still has echos today.

Posting Memes

Both Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza and Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz posted memes related to Columbine massacre, before committing their own atrocities. The down time between mass shootings has been reduced from months, to weeks, to hours.  The two most recent shootings in Ohio and Texas occurring on the same day. Something that has never happened before on American soil. It has gotten to the point that in the United States no one is safe anywhere. Not in church, not in school, not at the mall, not at a concert, not at a restaurant.

Efficient Means Of Killing

The main reason this is happening, and will continue to happen, is a lack of political will by law makers to devise meaningful reforms. Finding that ‘will’ seems is apparently hard.  But we must find the will. We must make it more difficult for such crimes to occur by limiting access to guns. Death by gun is one of the most modern and efficient means of killing, on an personal level, ever devised. One such reform would be an extreme overhaul of unlicensed gun shows. Such unregulated gun shows are exactly how the Columbine shooters got the guns they used that fateful day, in April 1999.

Under Age

Despite that both shooters were too young to buy, or own a gun in Colorado, they were able to use a ‘straw buyer’ to get the guns at an unlicensed gun show. In December, 1998 several guns were purchased at an unlicensed gun show by the straw buyer. The buyer later sold the weapons to Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, in spite of the seller knowing the boys were under the legal age. It is clear that if they had tried to buy such weapons in a licensed gun store they would have been turned away.  If they hadn’t gotten the guns a lot of people would be alive today, including the shooters.

Gun Love

The gun love is so strong in some quarters, not even Democrats dare stand against them, even in terms of reasonable measures. Conor Lamb, as such, is a self-described “Pro-Gun Democrat.” It was that distinction that was key in his victory over his Republican opponent in 2018. It is a fact that gun law reform will be necessary if America is to slow the number of gun related deaths. Currently, the United States loses 40,000 people annually to gun violence.  Many of these deaths are not mass shooting events, but rather domestic violence or suicidal actions.

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News That Bites: Try A Little Kindness

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Try A Little Kindness

By David L. Shadrick

Hello and welcome to Calamity Politics and “News That Bites” with David Shadrick and Calamity Clown.  Calamity has stood us up. She sent me a note scribbled on the back of a Nancy Pelosi fund raising letter telling me she intended to spend the afternoon curled up in Bernie Sanders’ lap, while he reads his “Medicare4All” plan aloud. 

It Ain’t Easy

This is probably the hardest article I have ever tried to write.  It shouldn’t be that hard to simply remind everyone that we all need to be a little bit nicer to each other.  As the world around us experiences the chaos that is existence, we need to remember to take a few extra minutes to embrace kindness, as a life choice.

Reserve Your Condemnation

When I do fundraising I often times have to remind volunteers not to become agitated or angry when someone doesn’t make a donation, or worse, is disrespectful.  I remind them that there are so many charities begging for money; and people have limited resources. I know what it’s like to be on a fund raisers platinum mailing list.

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“Killers, Victims or Bystanders”

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Killers, Victims, or Bystanders

By D. S. Mitchell

Indifference Is Seductive

Elie Wiesel, teacher, writer, philosopher and Auschwitz death camp survivor, said in a speech before the US Congress in 1999, “indifference can be tempting-more than that, seductive.  It is much easier to look away from victims.  It is after all, awkward and troublesome to be involved in another person’s pain and despair.”

Three Categories

Furthermore, “to be indifferent to that suffering makes the human being, inhuman.  Indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor-never the victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten.  The political prisoner, the starving children, the homeless refugees-not to respond to their plight, not to relieve their solitude by offering them a spark of hope is to exile them from human memory.  And in denying their humanity, we betray our own.  Indifference, then, is not only a sin, it is a punishment.  Where I came from, society was composed of three simple categories: the killers, the victims, and the bystanders.”

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What Happened At Columbine

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NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This is a piece I wrote about the Columbine tragedy. It turned out a bit different than I thought it was going to, but I think it works. It basically centers on the difficulty of really knowing the past with so many factors and interests involved, and ends with a counter-factual. A counter-factual is a sort of intellectual game we historians do to better understand what actually happened. We go through the facts and find a factor, usually a small one, that plausibly could have changed everything; presuming everything else stayed the same.

My factor was the fact that both of the attackers were under the legal age to buy the kind of guns they used and had to get them through an illegal “straw purchase.” In this case, meaning through a third-party, someone who got them at a gun show from unlicensed sellers. Had this not happened they would have been left with their primary bomb plot which if successful would have been the second largest domestic bomb attack after Oklahoma City. We, however, know that the large bombs completely failed and the homemade pipe-bombs were ineffective, all of the deaths coming from gunshots. No guns, no dead and what is seen as the first-mass shooting becomes an embarrassing fuck-up-T.K. McNeil

What Really Happened At Columbine

By Trevor K. McNeil

When Are Facts, Really Facts?

Recording history accurately is a tricky business at best. Particularly when there is a degree of shock and trauma involved in the events. Passion, stress and the now known unreliability of eye-witness reports make accuracy difficult if not impossible to piece together.  Furthermore, human memory can lead to things being a matter of record that turn out not to be true. The only reason we have a good idea of what happened on 9/11 is that there is video. But to this day, there are theorists who believe there were explosives inside the towers that were the real cause of the towers collapse.

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