Monday, November 21, 2016

Profiles in Appeasement - Alden Meyer



Driving to a job the other morning I heard an interview on “Love of Earth” a NPR program with Alden Meyer a proud old environmental warrior, Directory of Strategy and Policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists.  His advice: “People should just hold their horses a little bit and wait and see what develops. Let Mr. Trump get his transition team in place, get his key nominees in place, and then see how it plays out.”

That response was like getting slapped in the face on top of everything else that’s occurring (... and that’s not occurring.).  Appeasement at it very worst in a time when Meyer and the UCS should be broadcasting and explaining how serious of a national crisis our country has been tossed into.  Nothing less than the active engagement of millions of previous sideliners into our national political dialogue will temper their future achievements.  

Don’t forget Trump and his Alt-Right and neo-Republican people have promised to dismantle huge programs and protections that our nation and its people’s wellbeing have come to rely on, given half a change.  We've f'n given them a full house.  Wake up the oligarchs are in charge now.

Democrats and traditional Republicans have proven themselves to be impotent, younger generations you better step up, lordie knows none of us older ones has your back.
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Love of Earth, interview with Alden Meyer 
Air Date: November 18, 2016  
http://www.loe.org/shows/shows.html?programID=16-P13-00047 
The Paris Climate Agreement came into force just before COP22 in Marrakech, this year’s high level UN Climate talks that ended November 18th. Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists tells host Steve Curwood member countries at the meeting in Morocco are determined to push ahead with implementing the Paris deal and work on climate protection even though the incoming US president vowed during his campaign he would ‘rip up’ the Paris accord. (09:45)
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Alden Meyer is director of strategy and policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists and the director of its Washington, DC, office. 
CURWOOD: So, tell me what was the reaction among the folks gathered there at Marrakech to Donald Trump's unexpected election as the 45th US President, specially of course, given his campaign assertion that he would cancel the Paris climate agreement. 
ALDEN MEYER: Well, I mean I think there was a initial shock because all the polls and the pundits back home were predicting not a comfortable Hillary Clinton win, but certainly a win in the electoral college, but of course Donald Trump does not represent all of America. 
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That’s it?  
Have you no conception of what we have just done?

Don’t misdirect us with stories of who voted for Trump, focus us on who is taking over the reigns of our government and who will be loath to give any of it back.  It’s that news you need to pay attention to!

Do you really need to be clobbered over the head before you get it?  We have handed our US government over to the puppets of oligarchs who have openly avowed they want nothing more than to vandalize our government and its protections as fast and as much as possible.  It doesn’t matter who voted them in, they are in there and you sure as hell better start paying attention and confronting them, not wait till after damage gets inflicted.

After the miserable failures of the Democrats, as well as Republican old school, it’s obvious the old warriors are clueless as to what’s happening today.

I say that not to denigrate, but to help younger people appreciate how impotent the old school has been  We are lost in yesteryear.  We made this mess, but it really is up to younger more aware and passionate people to take the reigns of power.  Doing that right will demand the active participation of millions of Americans.  Do we have it in us?

The only check and balance on the amount of damage they inflict, will be We The People taking direct action.

I don’t mean hostile confrontation, though don't kid yourself, that's what some of them are after.  I understand that violence only begets more violence and it sucks.  I mean, what this country really needs is a million conversations occurring over our own Left and Right fences, you know our family and friends and co-workers and associates.  Most all of us know and cooperate with each other in everyday life.  Now we gotta figure our how to make it work on a national level.

We The People need to figure this out by national consensus - and stop being led like sheople by the likes of the Kochs, Murdochs and those masters of the universe as they are pursuing their own self-serving agenda that has nothing to do with our rights or wellbeing.  Take off the blinders.

Trump and his crowd have promised their constituency they’ll dismantle landmark protections and agencies that citizens spent decades fighting tooth and nail to enact.  They weren't joking!!!

Meyer help wake up people to the fact that we have created a true and present constitutional crisis in that the Alt-Right promises to pack our courts with litmus test judges who are avowed right-wing dogmatists.  

Then what do we do?  Make no mistake these are absolutely ruthless and driven people.  A land were fact means nothing in the face of self-certain faith powered by ruthlessness.  That's one ugly America.

That is their promise, don’t you dare dismiss their seriousness in this time of national emergency, if our current form of government means anything to you.

A healthy democracy demands an informed, attentive and engaged electorate.  Democracy use it or loss, and right now we are on the cusp of losing some valued protections and principles and ways of government.

Also it would be good to remind people it’s mega-war-bucks oligarch who are actually behind all this, as docile We The People are playing into their hand. 
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ALDEN MEYER:  are states and cities and businesses that are going to keep moving ahead no matter what he does. We don't know whether he would fulfill what he was talking about in the campaign and pull out of the Paris agreement,  
So people should just hold their horses a little bit and wait and see what develops. Let Mr. Trump get his transition team place, get his key nominees in place, and then see how it plays out.
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What are you saying?  Shame on you!  

That’s appeasement of the worst sort.  

Lets all sit on our hands and give them the time to consolidate their power.  Are you crazy!  No, no, no, the time for complacency is over.  Act now or get yourself run over.  It really is that serious.  Electoral College is Dec 19th and we must make some clear statement: "This is what a democracy by the people looks likes, Trump, you will not have his obscene way with us."   Stop minimizing it. strive to engage people's survival instincts, because it is that serious.

You should be screaming bloody murder and making people aware that the FBI should stop hiding Trump’s many entanglements with foreign enemy nationals, some of whom are involved within those enemy governments.  Demand that FBI Director Comey release his Trump files and answer to his wanton election manipulation.  Now, before Dec 19th Electoral College meets!

I mean, get real.  We got a Russian Obligate, a man with no interest in government, a salesman, a showman, and you council us to sit by and see what happened.

I mean this is national security stuff.  Why so little attention.  Why so little alarm.  Why so little up roar?

This past year the Democrats were supposed to seat a new Supreme Court Justice but they rolled over for the neo-Republican bullies - instead of rallying their constituency every f’n day to complain and write and write again and protest and argue with rational argument and evidence.  

When will we learn that every moment is critically important, it wouldn’t repeat itself and shouldn’t be squandered.  Now I see us doing it all over again with this detached acceptance, dreaming it won’t be so bad.  Sad silly detached self absorbed people.

Time for some serious bitch slaps all the way around.  We can allow the Passion of Jesus to guide us.  Once we actually face up to our own failings and sins and omissions, resulting in personally burning on the crosses of our own individual making, then we are reborn surprisingly grown up and enabled to deal with new days. 

{Therein lies the true secret of Jesus’ Passion ;-) - It has nothing to do with the god of time and creation, life and love, imaginary heaven or hell - Jesus is a potent personal guide, nothing more.  Then again a powerful personal guide is a great and rare thing and I don’t mean to minimize him, he’s helped me get through some tough times and come out the better for it.  I have the deepest respect, though I will keep Jesus in perspective.  

Real down to Earth physical facts is what directs our lives, I am born of this planet Earth and will return to this Earth and no tribal holy text is more true or powerful than the reality of our moment in time on this evolving planet that I love and mourn for. 

Just saying.    :-)  }
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ALDEN MEYER:  What it has done, however, over the last week is generate an unprecedented sense of solidarity among all the countries here.  ...
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Solidarity only goes so far.

We need a massive awaking and crash course in how serious all this really is.  After the fact will do no one any good.  Too much time already wasted.

A healthy democracy demands an informed and engaged citizenry  ~  Unless you are part of the solution, you are part of the problem  ~  We need all the help we can get  ~  We need each other to keep ourselves honest  ~  Allow Facts to outweigh our own self-certain Faith
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3:15 … many of the most creative and dynamic members are the Alt-Right Twitter army always ready with clever memes and smackdowns against liberal journalists 

The problem is they believe it's okay to fabricate facts based on wishful thinking and self-interest to the exclusion of others.   Honesty is victim to cleverness, and they don't have the scruples to care.  That’s not a smart way to deal with a challenging future. 

They forget we live in the vasty over crowded over exploited world of 2016, not some mystical yesteryear where the world is still a wide open cornucopia waiting to be plucked. 

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