America is on fire, the Gulf is endangered & the Trump Cult Threatens our Children

The Pacific Northwest, Oregon, and California are under siege from wildfires yet again. Acres and acres of land have burned, and the weather continues to threaten chances of relief any time soon. The particles breathed in from the spreading clouds of fire that stretch across the nation and have for months contain metal toxins increasing the risk for stroke, heart attack and more. Skies as far away as New York City have darkened from the smoke from the wildfires and footage from the west resemble scenes from the darkest nightmares of apocalyptic films.
Meanwhile, the stabilization of the the Atlantic Merdional Overturning Circulation system, or what is better known as the Gulf Stream is under threat and the destabilization has increased more quickly than was originally predicted. Destabilization is almost euphemistic because the loss of the Gulf Stream's stability would be a tipping point. If that tipping point is reached, there will be no going back.
The Gulf Stream affects the entire population of earth. The Gulf Stream is what moves ocean currents in a stable predictable pattern. If it were to collapse, the damage would be catastrophic and easy to predict results include rising sea levels that rip off part of the eastern coast of the U.S., end monsoons in Africa, heating of the climate in Europe. But the collateral damage could be greater.
In the midst of such crises is the worldwide pandemic of Covid. I can't help but wonder how the world came to be a place where people base their actions and decisions on political tropes, inflammatory tweets and Facebook. We are living in a strange time.
Imagine what it would have been like if Covid had threatened the world when any other president had been in office. From Kennedy to Obama, the presidents who have been scrutinized by television cameras would have been shown in meetings with the CDC and epidemiologists. He would have increased public service announcements to distribute information as widely as possible. When the vaccination became available, he would have sat before television cameras that captured the moment all over the world when he got his first jab.
How our lives would be different now! The public wouldn't have had to get information about the virus from Facebook extremist fringe groups or an unapologetic buffoon who didn't care about the Americans he was sworn to protect.
Scientists knew for decades that it was only a matter of time before we faced a pandemic. They are cyclical. We had history to study that enabled us to predict things about the future. The Public Health Service was created over 200 years ago. It reacted to medical crises and aided civilian defense against disease. The CDC was founded in 1946 as part of the Public Health Service. Originally, it was involved in the battle against malaria. Epidemiology was a relatively new field in medicine but it became the cornerstone of the CDC's service within the Public Health Service.
In 2018, the CDC produced the following video outlining how they were prepared to fight the next pandemic by showing the timeline of the 1918 flu pandemic followed by how they were prepared to combat it. It might be worth mentioning here that influenza is a virus.
It seems that the CDC was prepared to defend against Covid-19, so what happened? On March 25, 2020, President Trump declared during a coronavirus task force briefing that the White House was prepared to face the outbreak with a team of public health officials. As NPR reported, "a bit of reassurance that probably would not have been necessary if that briefing had included anyone from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."
The public was seeking information that was reliable while the 45th president ignored the recommendations made by the CDC and encouraged a lift on restrictions for public Easter gatherings. Instead of using the best resources available for the health and safety of the public, the CDC, Trump undermined the health of the entire nation, and perhaps the world by using his Coronavirus Task Force to answer questions about the stock market and other financial interests.
As a result, Americans turned to social media for information. While social media is many things, it is not an authoritative source for factual information. Facebook is well known for the spread of misinformation. It allows fringe conspiracy networks like anti-vaccination proponents to thrive. The fringe networks that Facebook supports grew from a few members or a few hundred members to an incredible hundreds of millions of members. When there is an information blackout, people will turn to any information they find and because that is what happened, people who fell into the rabbit holes of conspiracy theories refuse to get vaccinated and gain immunity to Covid because they believe the vaccination program is a coverup, a dark plan to inject tracking devices into them and know their every move. It's ironic when you consider the fact that being a member of Facebook gives just about everyone in the entire world access to more information about them than can be gotten anywhere else.
We have to consider the Cult of Trump. The 45th president has had an inordinate amount of influence over a spectacularly large section of the US public. When he suggested that if people were concerned about Corona they drink a chlorine based substance used to clean fish tanks, some did. Some died. Did that influence the Cult to doubt their overgrown adolescent bully of a commander in chief to question his response to the pandemic? Apparently not.
When he told his cult to attack the capitol building, they did. Insurrection is in direct opposition to law. People lost their lives and the Executive branch of the government lost any shred of remaining dignity it had. Did that deter the Cult of Trump? No. They didn't mind that he had encouraged violence on the very institution he represented.
When he lost his bid for re-election, Trump created and expanded PACs like the 'Make America Great Again' pac. The Cult of Trump has enthusiastically given millions of dollars to get their messiah like leader re-elected. That same Messiah is using those funds to pay off his debts. As usual, the Cult of Trump, when faced with the factual evidence, embraces denial for the sake of their Messiah.
Perhaps worst of all, the Cult of Trump has been in the lead for spreading conspiracy theories and calling Corona a hoax since the pandemic began. The Cult of Trump refuses to be vaccinated. Their argument varies from, 'it's a hoax', to 'the government wants to inject us with tracking devices' to 'it's my right to choose.'
You can't argue against a fable like 'hoax.' You can try to explain common sense to those who believe that Corona is a hoax and its vaccine is the vector of the hoax by invading their bodies with tracking devices, but you can't win the argument because facts don't matter to the Cult of Trump. These Cult of Trump defenders of the suspension and denial of fact will then turn to the tired American argument that it is within their rights as an American citizen to refuse a vaccination. They will tinge their argument by using code words like 'choice,' to appeal to liberal tropes like women's rights, and women's rights to choose which is ironically about women's rights to choose to have an abortion. I've just got this feeling that the Cult of Trump doesn't care about women's rights and if anything would impede women from choosing abortion.
But the logic of the Cult of Trump doesn't exist. There is no logic in their refusal to be vaccinated. They have become so enured to acceptance of outrageous lies over facts that it's easy for them to dismiss the facts and often, emulating their Messiah, they are unapologetic in their refusal. When some Cult of Trump grandma gives her grandson the Delta variant of Corona virus and he dies, will she finally understand what it has meant to be a worshipper of the Cult of Trump Messiah? No. I don't believe she will. For the Cult of Trump, like all cults has been built on brainwashing of individuals who are susceptible to charismatic bullies.
The world is in chaos and our future is under threat. There are steps that could be taken to alleviate the threat. Simple steps that aren't painful to our way of life. Don't buy water in plastic bottles. Invest in alternate energies for transportation. Recycle. It's not about politics. It's not about your personal rights. It's about common sense and ensuring the future of our planet. Get vaccinated. Save the world. When did people start making choices about life and death based on political views and personal rights? My best guess at an answer to that is: when the 'great information superhighway' was put into the hands of the public and every person with a voice behind an anonymous screen became as authoritative as any other voice together with the buyout of honest journalism by the few corporations that own everything replacing journalism with propaganda that ensures that a few wealthy individuals best interests are met. And their goal is the accumulation of wealth with public support.

Tipping Points: Large, Irreversible Changes that threaten the viability of our planet.
Tipping Points are used by scientists to describe the point at which there is no return from the collapse of a system of the earth's forces that guarantee it remains a viable living environment. Some of these tipping points have already been met. Each tipping point speeds up the chances of the next irreversable permanent change.