View From Here
By David Mark Greaves
A changing climate, a deadly virus, and a fascist Republican party are the challenges the nation is faced with going into the Fall of 2021. Hurricane Ida devastated Louisiana, leaving four million without power and forced the mighty Mississippi River to reverse its flow. An historic drought in the west that has not only caused wildfires that have burned over a million acres of forests, homes and towns, it has made reading the California Data Exchange Center chart on the State’s reservoir levels, a chilling experience. All reservoirs are way below historic levels and far, far below capacity, while the environmental conditions are inexorably worsening. Joining them is Nevada’s Lake Mead, built by blocking the Colorado River with the Hoover Dam, now at an historic low, prompting a first-ever Tier 1 emergency, triggering water curtailments to Arizona and other western states. All caused by a drought that’s been 20-years long with no end in sight.

The Covid 19 virus will be with us for some time, in one mutation or another. For now, it’s the Delta Variant mutation, more transmissible than the original, that is causing the latest surge in cases. Because it can be transmitted by the vaccinated as well as the unvaccinated, we should be prepared for the possibility of everyone contracting Delta, or some variation, sooner or later. The vaccinated may not notice they’re infected or have mild symptoms, the unvaccinated will get sick, may get hospitalized, and perhaps die. It’s a hell of a gamble, putting a life at risk for even a strongly held belief, when it is opposed by scientific evidence of fact, and the findings of health agencies in competing nations around the world. With over five billion doses given worldwide, the jury has come in on vaccine safety.
“Fascism: a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition,” Merriam-Webster dictionary. This is what the Republican party has become.

We see evidence of their authoritarian desires in the voter suppression and nullification efforts, as well as the gerrymandering to ensure their elections. The Republican mob-like base, horrified at the thought of white Christians not being in total control, and goaded into a frenzy by media personalities lusting for profits and would-be dictators and their enablers lusting for power, is charting the course into dangerous, rocky waters.
President Joe Biden was correct in not only ending the war in Afghanistan, but declaring,
“It’s about ending an era of major military operations to remake other countries.”
We’ve got plenty of nation-saving and nation-building to do here at home.