March for Science, Sacramento, CA, April 22, 2017
It’s clear that a war for the soul of the nation is underway. The March for Science on Saturday reminded us that the stakes are even higher than that. I snapped this photo because I liked the right-hand sign, “Science – Because you can’t just make shit up.” Only later did I notice the sign to the left – “All Life on the Planet is Counting on US.”
That evening, I noticed a Denver Post article: junior Trump is off to Montana to help a GOP special election candidate by joining him in a prairie dog hunt. Greg Gianforte, the congressional candidate said, “What can be more fun than to spend an afternoon shooting the little rodents?” Apparently, real men think it’s fun to kill the animals during the season when the females nurse their young.
Prairie dogs are considered “agricultural pests,” and ranchers kill them because they damage crops. They are, however, listed as “a species of concern” by the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks because their numbers are in decline.
The Humane Society of the United States has condemned the hunt, noting that prairies dogs are a key species in the ecology of the great plains, and “more than 100 other animals depend on the prairie dog as food or move into the burrows they dig.”
In response to HSUS concerns, congressional-hopeful, Gianforte says, “Clearly they’ve never shot a prairie dog. They don’t know how much fun it is.”
Think about that. Think about Gandhi’s words, “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”
Gianforte’s opponent in the May 25 special election is Rob Quist, a popular musician. Who would you rather have in congress – who is more likely to move our country to greatness – a creative artist or someone who thinks killing small creatures is fun?
There are likely to be opportunities for online contributions to Quist’s campaign as the election approaches. I plan to give as much as I can.
The current president and all of his minions and congressional lapdogs represent the greatest threat to the physical, spiritual, and ecological health of this nation of my lifetime. Nothing is more important than resisting their agenda as vigorously as possible and removing them from office as soon as we can.
The First Gates 
Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that some other opposing candidate had declared, “Clearly they’ve never shot a Gianforte. They don’t know how much fun it is.” How great an outraged outcry that would have raised!
But good on you, and your like-minded friends, for taking this stand. Sadly the fight for the soul of the nation is not confined to the US — look at France, the UK, Turkey, Syria, South Africa … the list goes on and on. 😦
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Exactly – this fear-based contraction is rippling through the west, and I fear, will continue to do so as the pace of change continues to accelerate. That was far too big a topic for a single post. That, in fact, is a reason I haven’t been posting recently. No sooner to I start to wrap my mind around the day’s outrage, when three more hit the news.
The bad news is that western-based economies are not sustainable, as they are based on the fantasy of unlimited growth, and as Michael Meade has pointed out, unlimited growth = cancer. In an era of cooperation, signaled by such moves as the Paris Accords, there is some hope, but things have turned so much darker, in such a short time, that I fear we’re looking at the “hard” fall of empires, which history tells us often involve some combination of war, pestilence, famine, economic collapse.
There are various threads of good news but one of them is the awakening of a grass-roots pushback against the corporate/political complex that the worldwide science marches represent. There really are no limits to what individuals of good will and vision can accomplish.
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