American "Exceptionalism" in the 21st Century
"For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind..."
- Hosea 8:7
Houses on the Jersey shore torn to shreds like matchbooks. Homes burned to the ground in the Rockaways. Lower Manhattan flooded, subway tunnels awash, the largest public transport facility on Earth shut down because of weather, millions of people in the nation's most populated corridor still without electricity in late autumn cold, schools with no power, electricity wires strung on poles snagged by falling trees, the list can go on ad nauseum.
Politically expedient deniers of the almost universal scientific opinion about global warming have their work cut out for them. They are faced with what Andrew Cuomo says, "a once in a generation storm every two years."
Weather patterns are changing.
Building codes that allowed frame construction almost everywhere on the Atlantic seaboard are suddenly and unequivocally now subject to hasty revision. No justification possibly exists for such malfeasance. Hurricane Sandy was not, by any stretch of the wildest naysayer's imagination, unforeseeable. Floodgates have protected the low-lying areas of Europe for many years. If people insist on living near the frequently violent sea, they should be prepared for its fury. Global warming is showing the consequences of warmer seas--more violent storms and freakier weather patterns--all to the detriment of our feckless infrastructure, sown by generations of myopic politicians who, in all fairness, clearly did not see what was in store for stricken communities from DC to Massachusetts.
Now the wake up call has come. In Florida, there are building codes that have arisen since Hurricane Andrew have strengthened, however, FPL still thinks that burying power lines is economically not feasible; a few years ago, they replaced some of the traditional wooden poles in my neighborhood with higher concrete ones. The trees still overhang the lines anyway.
The early Republican debates were a cacophony of voices denying climate change; Mitt Romney still has nothing to say about it, his perfidious calculative demeanor evident. And frankly, the President has not done enough to awaken the public, which mostly cares now about the economy.
The tea partiers and fundamentalists are now calculating what a woman should do with her body and if the candidates are sufficiently religious to hasten the erosion of the constitutional wall of separation between church and state, instead of preparing for national disasters like Hurricane Sandy.
Deniers of man-made climate change include almost the entire Republican Party, and those who think that government serves no useful purpose except starting wars, nurturing the military industrial complex and transforming primitive Islamists into Jeffersonian democrats.
Florida continues to set a new low bar for election shenanigans.
The State Legislature, in concocting an indecipherable ballot has struck another new level of loathsomeness. It has composed ballot initiatives, among which is one that is labeled "Religious Freedom." It is fraudulently conceived and evilly promulgated. What it really represents is an attempt to interject religion in the educational system by providing state funding to religious schools, voucherized money that could be used instead to improve public education rather than defunding it. These are the same people who are apostles of the same ilk of creationists in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas who would teach creationism to our children. We are living a 21st century nightmarish re-run of Inherit the Wind.
The Presidential Campaign grinds to a lowly end.
There was seemingly no end to the negative commercials, the meaningless dialog, the emails during which both parties attempt convincing voters that the other side is going to ruin the country, the economy, the world itself.
The campaigns have been financed by copious amounts of super PAC cash coming from special interest groups airing offensive announcements denouncing each other's candidates, adding to a witch's brew of obfuscation, misinformation and distortion.
The debates, a glibness and disappointing appearance contest, droned on and on, giving the electorate only a superficial sample of what qualities a leader really requires. Nothing in the end was revealed but a continual and seemingly unending parade of talking points. The debates did not tell us who would be a good President or a bad President. Who would shine in a moment of crisis? Who is a deep thinker? A problem solver? A person who could break the legislative gridlock? A person with a definite agenda? None of this was revealed in the debates, even if it were fact.
A two-year, $2.5 billion election cycle slows down the efficiency of government and places politics above the national interest. Our Federal system is severely broken. The negativity of the past two years demeans those who do win and expands the polarized divide. It diminishes the governing ability of the winner, who inevitably suffers diminution by the misinformation saturating the airwaves. The election campaigns should last 6 months beginning to end; the Electoral College should be abolished. There should be public financing of the campaigns and a constitutional amendment shutting down of all the extra money that has distorted the process beyond all recognition.