The first, second, third, and fourth largest wildfires in California history are burning across the state at the same time.That has prompted officials in several states to beg the public to disregard the lies. Even the FBI tweeted the claims are untrue.
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And against this nightmare background, QAnon cultists have been flooding the phone lines at 911 dispatchers, and interfering with firefighting operations, with claims that fires are being started by “antifa terrorists.”
While there have undoubtedly been some human-caused fires and even some arrests for arson, the QAnon calls are not only baseless, they are consuming vitally needed resources and misdirecting investigators in the midst of an emergency.
Bernie Sanders tweeted:
A half million people in Oregon evacuate as wildfires rage. Over 3 million acres in California burned. The western sky is red. An 800-mile derecho destroyed towns in Iowa. The Arctic topped 100 degrees.In response Craig Hall tweeted an appropriate cartoon here.
The Green New Deal has been called "expensive."
Compared to what?
As for the Arctic reaching 100 degrees, Leah McElrath retweeted a tweet from The Ice Age with a link to an article in the Siberian Times:
HUGELY EXCITING! A cave bear carcass has been recovered from the permafrost on an Arctic island - “the first and only find of its kind.” The preservation is remarkable; all internal organs are present. And that nose! Wonderful!McElrath added:
Global warming is causing permafrost to melt, so we are coming face-to-face with creatures humans last interacted with 25,000 years ago.Dr A. Pearson added:
Worst. Dystopian. Novel. Ever.
What we are living through is both more horrifying and more stupid than anything even the most creative fiction author could write.
What a time to be alive.
One reason I focus on trying to educate and mobilize people to save democracies is because I believe representative government is critical to saving humanity.
But we aren’t doing well at saving either one at the moment.
This isn’t the world I want to leave my daughter.
And all of the bacteria and viruses that they died with. The permafrost melt is one of those things that has the potential to knock us out.Reminder: Freezing does not kill viruses, freezing preserves viruses.
Sarah Kendzior tweeted an excerpt of her book Hiding in Plain Sight:
Once an autorcrat gets into office, it is very hard to get them out. They will disregard term limits, they will purge the agencies that enforce accountability, they will rewrite the law so that they are no longer breaking it. They will take your money, they will steal your freedom, and if they are clever, they will eliminate any structural protections you had before the majority realizes the extent of the damage.thinman added:
"Once an autocrat gets in.. it is very hard to get them out."
Like way harder than a legit vote count hard. Like way harder than a court case or a strongly worded press release, or a scathing post on social media.
Like people are dying for it hard.
Hunter of Kos reported what Roger Stone said recently. Stone is a felon and the only reason he is not in prison is “because Donald Trump commuted his sentence—for crimes committed on Trump's behalf.” So Stone is free to continue work to get the nasty guy reinstalled in the Oval Office. Towards that goal Stone said the nasty guy should declare martial law, arrest high profile opponents of the nasty guy (Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook is an opponent? He seems to be doing a lot of helping), and “seize” ballots. He justifies this by saying notes in (at least) Nevada should not be counted because they would have been flooded with illegals. Yeah, those claims are false. Stone knows them to be false, but that doesn’t matter. The claim is enough for far right terror cells to decide to act.
Dartagnan of the Kos community recounted the Brooks Brothers riot in 2000 that intimidated ballot recounting in southern Florida. The election eventually went to Bush II. The riot got its name because so many protesters wore suits – and were organized by the GOP. Alas, the media framed the tactics as “grassroots.”
The GOP tactics in 2020 will only be worse than that. They nasty guy has already shown is prepared to incite violence from his supporters, declare mail-in voting as fraudulent, harass voters in minority precincts, and harass vote counters on the way to legal challenges.
On to the good news. Ron Brownstein of The Atlantic reported that several progressive organizations are working together to make sure another Brooks Brothers riot is met with resistance. The coalition is called Protect the Results. Their aim is to ensure a fair election, though the spectacle of hundreds of thousands of voters peacefully marching would tell counters we have their backs and also tell media how strong we are.
Brownstein quoted research published by Larry Bartels of Vanderbilt University. I’ve mentioned this study before. It’s the one my friend and debate partner objected to. Some of the findings of a poll of people who vote Republican included in the study:
Over half strongly or somewhat agreed with “the traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it.”
Just under half agreed with “strong leaders sometimes have to bend the rules in order to get things done.”
About 40% agreed with “a time will come when patriotic Americans have to take the law into their own hands.”
Nearly 75% agreed with “It is hard to trust the results of elections when so many people will vote for anyone who offers a handout.”
Only about 25% disagreed with any of those statements.
These people don’t want democracy.
The Joe Biden campaign has said it is ready to handle the bogus legal challenges the GOP will throw up. But, wrote Dartagnan:
The Biden campaign cannot overshadow the threatening aspect of armed neo-Nazis and “militia” terrorists banging the doors at local election boards and auditoriums where these recounts will take place. That can only be achieved by sheer numbers of people demanding that the ballots be counted.
In sum, it isn’t going to be pretty, and for the most part we Democrats will be on our own, faced with a party now quite literally in thrall to fascism. These groups and the many sure to join them in the next few weeks will have our back, but ultimately it may come down to every one of us taking a stand, in the streets.
When I left off discussing Les Troyens of Berlioz yesterday I noted Aeneas and his crew escaped Troy as it fell. The reason for their escape is the gods had decreed he was to be the founder of Italy.
I watched the rest of it this afternoon. The plot for this part: Carthage is prosperous, guided by Queen Dido. Her subjects love her. She is a young widow and has sworn off love. Her sister suggests not closing off love.
Aeneas and the Trojans arrive just in time to offer to help repel invaders. After the battle Aeneas and Dido fall in love and (eventually) sing a beautiful duet.
But the gods have decreed Aeneas must fulfill his destiny of founding Italy. So in anguish of being separated from Dido, he leaves with his crew. In her anguish she commands a pyre be built and all the gifts that the Trojans gave her are to be thrown on it. She prays a descendant – Hannibal – will avenge her and the crowd chants an everlasting hatred of Rome. Then she climbs on to the pyre and stabs herself. The curtain comes down as the smoke begins to rise.
Other versions of the story (listen to Purcell’s Dido’s Lament) say that Dido wanted the flames of her pyre to be high enough so they could be seen by the Trojan ships before they sailed over the horizon.
I don’t know my Homer that well to know how well this opera portrays the story. However, this seems to be two separate operas in which a handful of characters overlap.
This opera lasted over four hours on video. Add intermissions to a live show and it would take five. One reason for the great length is the tradition that French operas of the time must have a ballet. Many Italian operas, when staged in Paris, had to pause the action and bring on the dancers. Composers had to write special dance music for their Paris productions. This opera had several dance sequences, though they were danced in a modern style, not like ballet. While each one was lovely I would have preferred a more streamlined story.
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