At the urging of my wife, I just watched a video of Rick Santorum speaking in Pennsylvania after his loss in the republican primary in Illinois. Among the many nauseating things he said was that he has never believed in climate change, and never supported any legislation that would even attempt to address it.
Obviously, I am outraged at his words. But this one imbecilic man is no cause for sadness or alarm. Sure, someone should burn his house down, but he alone is not the problem.
During Santorum's speech, he told a story about his own background in coal, oil, and gas. "My grandfather was a coal miner," he said. "We're very proud of our oil and gas heritage."
If you're reading this blog, I probably don't need to remind you that Santorum is not a climate scientist. His connection to climate change is that his grandfather was a miner and he lives in Pennsylvania. Never mind that neither of those facts qualifies him in any way to make an evaluative judgment about the veracity of climate change. The fact is that a story about family history, a personal relationship to the history of American energy production seems to lend this man credibility.
He is proud to be related to a coal miner, and the audience applauds this line as though mining coal were intrinsically noble like being in law enforcement or the military. His audience confuses his nostalgic tone and affected twang for authority. This man, they think, knows what he's talking about.
This is the problem, the reason I'm scared to death for my future, for the future of my family, my son. Americans can't seem to tell the difference between what's real and what is a lie.
Unlike many, I don't think this is an ability we've lost as a nation, but one we never had. American history is rife with examples of large numbers of people being duped into whatever convenient lie the latest politician came up with. Most of the time, we figure it out in due course and correct our mistakes. Think the Iraq war, Vietnam, McCarthyism. But climate change is different. This phenomenon has the potential to destroy us, not just as a culture, but as a species. If we don't act in time, and that time may already have passed, humanity will end up on the other side of this disaster as something completely unrecognizable.
We cannot afford to be conned into believing this is not happening. We cannot afford to confuse a confident manner and kitschy nostalgia for the truth. Santorum's biggest applause line in the speech was that man-made global warming was not climate science but political science. It's neither. It is a phenomenon that threatens all of us.
I want you to understand this. Climate change is going to kill you. It's going to kill me. It's going to kill Rick Santorum. It's going to kill all of us. This is not to scare you. It's simply the facts. You wanna go down with your eyes closed, fingers in your ears, singing la la la at the top of your voice, get in line behind Senator Santorum. You wanna go down swinging, now's the time.
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Sandra Fluke Is My Hero
During his now imfamous rant, Rush Limbaugh seemed to imply that the amount of birth control a woman takes can be used to determine how much sex she's having. There are a number of reasons why this is both funny and disturbing.
Once, after some particularly excellent love making, my wife said, "That was so good I might have to take two pills." Then we laughed. Birth control pills need only be taken once a day regardless of how often a woman has sex. Other methods of birth control like the patch, the ring, depo, and IUD's need to be administered even less frequently. They're not like Viagra which users need to take every time they have sex. I find it interesting that the Catholic church is just fine with covering Viagra. Presumably that drug promotes procreation, but if it's an issue of life and death, I ask how many people have ever died of erectile disfunction? Women die every day of unintended pregnancy, but I digress.
I grew up knowing about sex, about how the human body worked, about how people get pregnant, and about how birth control works, so Limbaugh's comments took me aback because I thought everybody knew how birth control works. After all 98% of American women use birth control, which means 98% of American men do too. How could anyone be ignorant about something this pervasive?
It turns out Rush isn't the only one who fundamentally misunderstands the inner workings of the human reproductive cycle. Many people didn't even raise an eyebrow at the implication that providing no-cost birth control is tantamount to subsidising prostitution. Why?
In Utah, this legislative session, congress passed a bill that outlaws any sex education at all. Other states have passed and are passing similar laws, attempting to keep the general public ignorant of how their bodies work. By the time the average American graduates from high school, she will know more about the American Modernist movement than her own body.
And that's why Sandra Fluke is important. Her efforts to bring the discussion about women's rights to the fore of American politics succeeded more thoroughly than she could have imagined when she first got involved with the issue. Being called a slut and having the guts to stand up and make a very public fight out of it have made a huge difference.
This debacle is more than an idiotic talk radio host overstepping his rhetorical authority. It is an opportunity for us to realize how important this fight is, and to educate ourselves, because we clearly have a fight on our hands, and we can't afford to lose. The stakes are too high. The winners of this fight will control women's bodies. Let's make sure it's women who win.
Once, after some particularly excellent love making, my wife said, "That was so good I might have to take two pills." Then we laughed. Birth control pills need only be taken once a day regardless of how often a woman has sex. Other methods of birth control like the patch, the ring, depo, and IUD's need to be administered even less frequently. They're not like Viagra which users need to take every time they have sex. I find it interesting that the Catholic church is just fine with covering Viagra. Presumably that drug promotes procreation, but if it's an issue of life and death, I ask how many people have ever died of erectile disfunction? Women die every day of unintended pregnancy, but I digress.
I grew up knowing about sex, about how the human body worked, about how people get pregnant, and about how birth control works, so Limbaugh's comments took me aback because I thought everybody knew how birth control works. After all 98% of American women use birth control, which means 98% of American men do too. How could anyone be ignorant about something this pervasive?
It turns out Rush isn't the only one who fundamentally misunderstands the inner workings of the human reproductive cycle. Many people didn't even raise an eyebrow at the implication that providing no-cost birth control is tantamount to subsidising prostitution. Why?
In Utah, this legislative session, congress passed a bill that outlaws any sex education at all. Other states have passed and are passing similar laws, attempting to keep the general public ignorant of how their bodies work. By the time the average American graduates from high school, she will know more about the American Modernist movement than her own body.
And that's why Sandra Fluke is important. Her efforts to bring the discussion about women's rights to the fore of American politics succeeded more thoroughly than she could have imagined when she first got involved with the issue. Being called a slut and having the guts to stand up and make a very public fight out of it have made a huge difference.
This debacle is more than an idiotic talk radio host overstepping his rhetorical authority. It is an opportunity for us to realize how important this fight is, and to educate ourselves, because we clearly have a fight on our hands, and we can't afford to lose. The stakes are too high. The winners of this fight will control women's bodies. Let's make sure it's women who win.
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