8/3/23
Newsletter #416
The Crack of Dawn
In 1961 Kurt Vonnegut had a short story published in Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine entitled “Harrison Bergeron” (which was later anthologized in Vonnegut’s short story collection, Welcome to the Monkey House). Harrison Bergeron takes place in a future where the most important concept is Equality. Society and the government force everybody to be equal. To achieve this, if you are too attractive, you are disfigured or have to wear a mask; if you are too athletic or graceful, you must wear sandbags attached to your waist; and if you are too intelligent, you must wear hearing aids that intermittently send out loud shrieks to scramble your thoughts and kill your ideas.
The U.S. seems to be on that same course – equality is the most important thing there is and must be achieved in any way possible. Of course, equality is impossible, and we all know it, we just don’t like to talk about it. The universe does not distribute talent and ability equally. As much as you may love basketball, with your heart set on being a player in the NBA, if you’re not exceptionally coordinated, as well as unusually tall, you haven’t got a chance. They could lower the basket, and maybe they will. Soon thereafter comes the sandbags on the belts. I believe that Mr. Vonnegut is saying that too much equality is a bad thing. Too much of anything is bad, except love.
Excellence is a worthy goal; equality is not. It should be a level playing field, but we also know that will never happen, either. As the comedian Bill Burr put it (and I paraphrase), “The reason men get more money per hour is that when the Titanic sinks, it’s women and children first. Guess who gets to stay behind?”
At my advanced age – my Medicare kicked in two days ago – I feel like my POV is on a drone that’s rising slowly upward. As the alien so eloquently puts it in Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959), “Stupid humans! Stupid, stupid humans!”
So, there’s this thing called AMOC. I quote from the unassailable source called Google.
AMOC stands for Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. The AMOC circulates water from north to south and back in a long [sometimes 1,000 years] cycle within the Atlantic Ocean [which connects with the Pacific Ocean].
In other words, meaning my own, AMOC causes the temperature of the oceans by mixing and circulating salt water with the fresh water that is coming from the melting glaciers. One might reason that if cold fresh water is added to warm salt water, it should cool down. Alas, it is not so. Salt water is more buoyant than fresh, because of the salt. The more the glaciers and ice packs melt, the higher the warm water goes. The ocean water is 100 degrees off the coast of Miami right now.
Google asks, What will happen if AMOC collapses?
Google replies, The collapse of the current could trigger rapid weather and climate changes for the U.S., Europe and elsewhere. It could bring an ice age to Europe and sea-level rise in cities like Boston and New York, according to a USA TODAY report, as well as stronger storms and hurricanes along the East Coast.
I love how Google and USA TODAY see the world as, “. . . the U.S., Europe and elsewhere.” They use as their prime examples, Boston and New York, but it’s really all over elsewhere that big problems are already occurring. Right now. Not in the future.
I guess that’s my point. I don’t always have one when I start. Hopefully, one develops.
Other than climatologists and me, everybody seems to see this issue in the future tense, or even as questionable. I don’t hear anybody using the present tense. The shit storm is not coming; we’re in it right now. The ocean won’t be 100 degrees in Miami in the future; it’s 100 degrees right now! Hello. It’s not going to get unbearably hot in Arizona soon; it’s unbearably hot at this moment and has been for a record amount of time.
And over there in Elsewhere, it’s insanely hot, wet and flooding, and flooding some more.
But I’ll leave you with a fact. It’s not a speculation or prediction.
What is the capital of Indonesia?
Jakarta, right? Right, except that Jakarta is sinking fast.
The new capital is to be called Nusantara, which is located on another island that’s on higher ground. Jakarta, and the island where it’s located, Java, is rapidly sinking. Java is the most populous island in the world, with 145 million people. Indonesia is comprised of over 17,000 islands, with 273 million people. And that’s just Indonesia. Bangladesh is all islands, populated by hundreds of millions of people, and 75% of it has sunk. 300,000 to 400,000 people flee Bangladesh a year right now.
My point is, and it completely doesn’t matter if anyone agrees with me – although I’m over there with the beleaguered and doubted climatologists who, like Chicken Little, yell and yell, but no one listens – we’re fucked. Right now. Not in some post-apocalyptic future. It’s occurring at this exact moment right now before our very eyes. Right here in America, and Elsewhere, too.
Yet we see not. Which doesn’t matter either.
Noam Chomsky, who seems to have let himself go and transmogrified into Father Time, believes that we still have time to blow ourselves up with nuclear bombs. Given that many of these nuclear weapons are in the hands of stable characters like Vladimir Putin, who seems to have found his way into another Afghanistan in Ukraine, Noam “Miss Sunshine” Chomsky may yet be correct, and may even live to see it.
I usually keep this shit to myself because it’s a real buzzkill. But sometimes I can’t.
Have a really nice day.
Those rising temperatures and sea levels will drive us all to equality pretty soon....