'Fire and Rain'

The mostly White suburban and exurban voters who cheer Donald Trump at his increasingly vicious and unhinged MAGA rallies (which is saying something as the bar was already excruciatingly low) still view themselves as the ‘good guys’.

As they did this past weekend in Erie, Pennsylvania when Trump called for extrajudicial violence directed at minorities and migrants who he has falsely accused of committing the majority of crimes in this country.

Which is simply not true.

These voters are as caught up in the excitement and validation he gives their worst instincts as they are blind to the fact that they themselves are imperiled by his caustic rhetoric.

It is akin to admiring how strong and well-built a gallows is and not noticing that it was, in fact, built for you.

There’s a noose with their names on it but they’re too busy hooting and hollering with their fellow MAGA revelers to notice the stairs they are walking up only lead one way.

It’s a coronation for the condemned where the executioner asks those present to empty their pockets and hand him the contents before meeting their maker.

There were surely a large number of Trump voters who lost their homes and vehicles, possessions and worse, their lives, during Hurricane Helene and its catastrophic aftermath.

As floodwaters ravaged the bucolic mountains of Western North Carolina, upending and erasing entire towns that took generations to build, Donald Trump was tossing out boxes of chicken tenders to drunk college kids in Alabama while watching a football game as the guest of a petroleum executive.

Who happened to also be a major donor to his campaign, just like the oil and gas executives in Palm Beach earlier this year that Trump asked for a billion dollar contribution to his campaign for which he would roll back all of President Biden’s environmental regulations and EV and wind power initiatives on on day one.

A quid pro quo with no thought of the consequences or how those actions would affect the lives of millions of people and make our climate disasters even more deadly.

It is also quite simply bad economics and a middle finger to the future.

But that makes no difference to the most venal and ignorant man to ever hold public office in the United States.

The ‘Drill Baby Drill’ guy thinks climate change is a joke - or worse he doesn’t care and is counting on his supporters to feel the same way.

It is quite clear that many of them do not care, as the toxically masculine iconography of the MAGA movement has the overconsumption of fossil fuels as a central tenet of their political philosophy.

How else does one explain the giant pickup trucks spewing exhaust from their custom mufflers, retrofitted to emit MORE carbon dioxide (along with a multitude of other deadly and planet-warming gasses such as carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, methane, benzene and toxic particulate matter) while making obnoxiously loud sounds as they bully their way down the road.

Those black clouds of soot left in their weaponized vehicles’ wake are a point of pride for the so called MAGA warriors.

A way to ‘stick it to the libs’ and to proclaim one’s own ignorance and lack of empathy towards the natural world as a badge of honor.

This is the movement that gave us ‘coal rolling’ as a pastime.

They have been taught to ignore science by the same right-wing ideologues that taught them vaccines were bad and to not wear masks during a global pandemic that claimed over a million American lives.

A COVID-era dry run of sorts for the real battle ahead over fossil fuels.

The same crackpot influencers that disseminate such ignorance are funded via conservative think tanks that receive a majority of their funding from petrochemical titans like Koch Industries.

They benefit from an easily malleable voting base taught to distrust governmental authority and scientific data.

It is working.

They have been trained to view conservation and environmental science as an impediment to their personal freedoms.

As egregious and self-defeating a lie as has ever been forced upon a people.

It has been mainlined into their minds and their self-reinforcing culture for decades from Fox News, Republican politicians beholden to the oil and gas industry, and an entire ecosphere of right-wing podcasters and pundits.

MAGA voters have also been trained to believe the price of gasoline is the single most important issue facing them while at the same time being systemically weaned from the knowledge of the true cost of a gallon of gas.

They don’t equate the horrors we witnessed from Hurricane Helene with a warming planet because they have been trained not to see the truth.

It is similar to their attitudes towards gun safety legislation in a country where gun violence is the leading cause of death of children and teenagers.

As bitter an indictment of our culture and the inability to do anything about it as one could make.

A people who routinely look the other way when classrooms full of children are slaughtered on a regular basis have no problem ignoring the cause of the natural disasters that are befalling our nation with a staggering frequency.

There’s another storm forming in the Gulf as I write this; ‘thoughts and prayers’ will not make it go away.

Sober acceptance of science and sacrifice, ingenuity and facing the challenges ahead through a lens of truth and politicians un-beholden to the oil & gas industry can mitigate the harm and increase our chances of survival on an increasingly volatile planet.

It is never too late to begin to do the right thing.

We have to find a way to wean the toxically-masculine MAGA supporters away from their addiction to lies and a lifestyle that will lead to their own demise.

Trump offers them the ability to feel like tough guys in a complex world that in their minds seems to be spinning out of control.

He tosses them simple solutions based on lies to complicated issues that require self-sacrifice and introspection.

Real leaders do not seek the easy way out but have the courage to ask of their constituents something harder.

They illuminate ways to take individual actions that effect the greater good.

The climate emergencies we ALL face are a great example of this: we need progress and awareness.

Not more intentional darkness so the industries that are causing it can continue to make record profits while our planet burns.    

We need to find a way to help the so-called tough guys in MAGA move past the goofy beards, the guns and gas guzzlers, the badge worship, the silly flags with Trump’s face on it.

The violent rhetoric aimed at innocent people that are out-working them on a daily basis.

Deep down they must know its all a lie; with every new Trump watch, pair of gold sneakers or coffee table book fetishizing his ‘fight, fight, fight’ histrionics, they have to be moving closer to the realization that they are, in fact, being played.

That they are pawns on a chessboard they themselves will never own.

We may have seemingly passed the point of no return for many them; at the same time mother nature seems to be exacting revenge for our collective excesses - or delivering a wake up call that must be heeded.

We can and must come together as a nation and address climate change while participating, each of us, in saving our planet and mitigating future destruction.

We are not powerless: our collective power in this moment resides at the ballot box.

A Trump victory in November would be ‘game over’ for the environment and for the people too ignorant to see that.

We must do better.

Vote Blue.