GOP's 2016 Platform wishful thinking over substance.

I wrote the following for the September issue of the Four Corners Free Press, it's a sequel to last month's "Calling out Trump's Rev. Burns and GOP absolutism." Since I retain the copyrights, I can share it here, and I invite anyone, if you want to, copy and use any of it.  

Another privilege I retain is that I can keep on editing and since most of serious writing is rewriting and editing, this isn't exactly the same essay that appears in the FCFP.  (You know what they say: The project is never finished, you just meet deadlines!)

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July 19th Ben Adler at grist.org reported on the GOP Platform’s environmental goals, he compiled a list of eleven highlights. Republican’s call for:

Cancelation of the Clean Power Plan - Abolish the EPA as we know it. - (barring that) - “Forbid the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide” - Stop environmental regulatory agencies from settling lawsuits out of court - Revoke the ability of the president to designate national monuments - “Oppose any carbon tax” - Kill what minimal federal fracking regulations exist - Expedite export terminals for liquefied natural gas - Turn federal lands over to states. - Halt funding for the U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change (IPCC) - Build the Keystone XL pipeline and more like it.

To begin with, what’s up with the GOP’s seething hostility towards our government? If not our current government, what else? Regional power struggles? The problem with our government is the outside power-brokers who are only concerned with their own immediate self-interest. State governments are easier to own by ruthless interests, so where would that leave We The People’s interests when it comes to divvying up the last of our unmolested landscapes?

Calling out Trump's Rev. Burns and GOP absolutism

       Occasionally I write a column for the Four Corners Free Press out of Cortez, Colorado.  For their August issue I decided to write about the Republican platform, but while doing research I wound up getting side-tracked by their absolutism.  The new GOP demonstrates a contrived sense of superiority, which seems based on a fanciful notion that they alone understand "God" - even worse a conviction that they are somehow God's Chosen People.  Cementing that impression was reverend Burns' off-the-wall GOP convention invocation.

Here I repost my August FCFP column though I've added a couple lines specifically calling out Rev. Burns and pointing out that the God he's praying to is merely a reflection of his own petty partisan bigotry.  It is something that has nothing to do with any ultimate God of Creation and Time, Life and Love! 

It's ludicrous to think the creator of this universe would be picking sides like some trumpeting politician, oh but how the self-certain certainly do. 

( I include a copy of Burns' prayer at the end, along with a collection of quotes and links to interesting articles that look at reverend Burns.)

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Considering the GOP platform and Trump's Rev. Burns

The GOP Convention gave me a reason to read the 2016 Republican Platform which is the distillation of their rank and file’s world outlook along with their wish list, so it’s worth paying attention to. I had intended to report on it’s sketchy content.  Instead, I found myself overwhelmed by their attitude, which needs to be considered before the content can make sense.

For someone like me, a liberty loving rationalist who’s into the scientific enlightenment, the one that rescued humanity from religious superstition, someone who believes in evidence-based constructive learning about each other and this Earth from which we were born and which we shall all die back into, it’s a horrific document.

What made it especially frightening is its absolute self-certainty, along with a disregard, if not hatred, for all who are outside of their religious/philosophical tribe. It reads like there’s no more room for reason with this new Republican crowd, it’s their way or else, consequences be damned.

Here’s how they start: “We believe in American exceptionalism. We believe the United States of America is unlike any other nation on earth.”