Welcome to the Moment of Truth, the thirst that is the drink.
Things are going to change. We can try to influence those changes to raise our chances for a decent future, or we can wait for the changes to happen to us.
One change that is definitely going to happen is, we're going to stop using fossil fuels. And we're going to stop polluting the environment. Either we'll make these changes by choice, or by default. Either we will transform the way we produce and consume energy and other resources, or our present course will render us too dead to continue.
Fossil fuels, it's in the name. They are fossils. Old and petrified. Their time was up long ago. The oil-gas-and-coaligarchy has held onto its dominance over land, sea and air by overthrowing governments, displacing and massacring entire populations, buying the governments too white to destroy and replace, and everywhere distorting elections and laws with bribery and coercion. They're not nice. They've overstayed their welcome.
I think dinosaurs would be offended by our use of the term "dinosaur" to mean an entity whom time has passed by, who no longer understands current events and is itself, in word, deed and physical incarnation, an anachronism in the culture. Cartoon dinosaurs, Gary Larson "Far Side" dinosaurs, would be offended, not literal dinosaurs, they don't exist anymore. The Larson ones would consider it a derogatory term, not just as an insulting metaphor, but as an actual identifier for themselves. "I'm a stegosaur, I'm a triceratops, I'm a sauropod, don't call me the 'D- word.'"
Actual dinosaurs are fossils. Not in the pejorative sense. They're really fossils. Their flesh has been replaced by sedimentary minerals over tens of millions of years. Although some evolved into birds.
But Larson sauropods and their ilk, they'd be mad. So out of sensitivity to cartoon prehistoric bird ancestors, I'm going to say "D-word."
Ha! No I'm not.
In an effort to get ahead of the coming changes – to change our behavior before the consequences of our behavior change us into corpses – the new Democratic Congresspersons, voted in on a wave of hatred of Donald Dump, the cartoon duck with no pants, have introduced an introduction to legislation they propose to propose. Of course, because it's intended to solve actual problems rather than placate those who cause the problems, it's being pooped on by dinosaurs and their advocates. Dinosaurs like James Carville, Nancy Pelosi, the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, Forbes magazine – are throwing everything from shade to their own feces on the idea of a Green New Deal, one goal of which would be to make America run 100% on clean renewable energy by 2030.
"It'll never fly!" "Who are these people? What are they saying?" "That's not how it works!" "It's un-American!" "We've got to give the energy companies time to transition to these new-fangled energies!"
One at a time, D-words. And by D-word, I mean dick.
There are additional goals of the Green New Deal. Less economic inequality. A single-payer universal health care system similar to the ones civilized nations have. The dicks are concerned, of course, about how this will upset the health insurance industry that causes all the health care inequality and outrageous expense in this stupid country. And if you make things more equal, what about the billionaires who enjoy hoarding obscene wealth? Has anyone considered their feelings? What if one of those billionaires was an at-risk gay disabled child woman of color? Then you'd be a classist racist homophobic able-ist misogynist, wouldn't you? Why do you hate the person I just imagined? And those shoes are pretty nice, you so-called socialist. Why aren't they dirty and ruined? Isn't that what socialists like? A ruined, frozen old mansion full of undeserving peasants, like in Dr. Zhivago?
Do these young pups really think the US economy is going to change into a humane, ecologically non-destructive system in only ten years? When has something like that ever happened?
At the end of 1941 the US economy began to retool itself to challenge and defeat what at the time were the two biggest, most powerful armies in history. And it succeeded in less than five years. It succeeded in transforming its peacetime economy into a wartime one to thwart millions of soldiers loyal to the dictatorial ideologies of two war machines developed over decades. It did it while funding the arts and public works, fashioning the Social Security system, bringing women into the work force, integrating the military, enacting anti-trust laws, legalizing alcohol, integrating the military, and lifting the entire nation out of economic depression.
So how about you dicks shut up about what's possible? We recognize you as dicks, you know. We see you. You're the ones who still thought blackface was hilarious in the 80s. I mean, why fight it, you say? It exists. This social justice is just a passing fad, it'll blow over. You don't fight problems that exist. That's no way to solve anything.
Now, now, old dicks, don't get all fossilized over it. Here's what I suggest we don't do. Let's NOT have the current fossil fuel companies retool to become tomorrow's renewable energy companies. Let's not have Dick Cheney's Halliburton in charge of anything. They all need to go down. They've shown they'll do anything to hang onto the power they've built, including starting wars that kill millions. So let's not invite them to the reworked economy, okay? They are mad, inhumane engines of destruction, they are dinosaurs, dinosaurs selling refined dinosaur remains, they're cannibal dinosaurs. As organizations of humans, they excel at destroying humanity. As citizens of the planet, they think it's theirs to rape. They are malignant tumors in civilization. They are consistently bad actors with one objective: to make money at the cost of it matters not what.
While we're at it, can we not turn over the legal marijuana industry to the tobacco companies? Oh, and when sex work is legalized, let's not put pimps and sex traffickers in charge of it, okay?
You dicks? Get back in your Larson cartoon. This has been the Moment of Truth. Good day!