DENIAL

So, it's below freezing tonight in my part of the world, a night of deep winter, only it's Spring. And the past few weeks have seen many days and nights of Midsummer, only it was Winter. In fact in the past few weeks over 7,000, that's right, seven thousand records were broken around our country for the highest temperatures on that date ever. And now all the Spring blossoms, and even crops that came out too early, will freeze tonight.

Yet, there are still those who deny climate change. Or say this is the "normal" way weather varies. They deny global warming is real, even though the hottest years on record for the USA all occurred in the last decade.

And then there are those who accept the facts, that yes, islands are disappearing from rising water, the tundra is thawing, polar bears can no longer get to their prey over ice because it's melted away, Spring comes earlier and lasts shorter as Summers begin sometimes, like the past few weeks, while it's still Winter, and last well into shortened Falls.

Scientists predict all kinds of problems as a result of global warming. Only ten years ago they were warning that weather would become more extreme, and sure enough it has, including last year that saw more extreme weather events than ever before in our history.

This is an unprecedented crisis for the entire world. And yet when I went to the place where I work out the other day, above a bank(!), on the doorway from the parking lot someone had taped a leaflet with the large boldfaced headline: "WAKE UP AMERICA BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE!"

But it wasn't about global warming and climate change, the first sentence made it clear why we needed to wake up: "President Obama and his team of radical socialists, Vice President Biden, House Speaker Pelosi and others are attacking our way of life."

That lie was followed by many more, including that the unemployment rate is going up, that the stimulus bill was a failure, and that "Obama is trying very hard to wreck our free market system at a very rapid pace in order to destroy our economy so as to initiate a policy of socialism" which they then define as "spreading the wealth of the upper and middle classes to the poor, thus taking away your liberty and freedom."

There's more lies and then at the bottom a handwritten addendum saying "Obama is collapsing and destroying America right before your eyes (Do your own research)." But what they mean by research is obviously rightwing web sites and propaganda since real research would have resulted in this flyer never having been written. [I ripped it down and threw it out but on my way out another had been taped up, which I also tore down and bought home so I could quote from it.]

This is what those who know better, and those who should know better, among rightwing Republicans and media figures and other rightwing propagandists, are reaping. And as it always has in the past, it will not only harm those they target, which is anyone whose interests don't align with the rightwing corporate and super wealthy masters, but will eventually come back to bite them in the ass as well. I hope that happens before it's too late.