All In This Together

In a review of Notes from an Apocalypse by Mark O'Connell, Robert Jensen finds honest, solid reporting on the state of the world. But Jensen faults O'Connell for not considering "the question of how we are going to struggle collectively with the problem of excessive wants".

Jensen says we must turn to an expanded notion of politics if there is to be any hope of maintaining a "remnant" of humanity.

O’Connell observes, accurately I think, that "everything is falling apart, coming to an end, precisely because we are unable to believe in the possibility of change." The comforts that come with dense energy (such as fossil fuels) and high technology (from the industrial and digital revolutions) are hard for most of us who have them to give up. For many of those who labor without those comforts, the goal is to acquire them.

That fear of change is evident even in most of the environmental movement, which in its campaigns often suggests that renewable energy and increased efficiency can support First World living standards indefinitely, rather than push for dramatic reductions in consumption that are necessary.

[A]nyone living in the First World should be aware of the suffering required for our lifestyles, and that’s bound to produce some anxiety in a morally conscious person—which should be the beginning of the story, not the end.

What’s missing from O’Connell’s book is any discussion of collective action, beyond one’s home and family, any thoughts about political activity. It’s no surprise that someone who includes no mention of that possibility sees only dead-ends and counsels that the only thing we can do is accept that.

If we reject the revanchist desires of preppers and resist the reactionary tendencies of those with the libertarian escape fantasies, is there not much that can be done in trying to imagine a saving remnant? What will be required of people in an uncertain future—life on the down-slope of our high-energy/high-technology world? Coming together to wrestle with those questions is politics.

It does no good to harbor illusions over our modern predicament. But a certain kind of hope seems essential--there are positive actions to be taken, if only for the sake of making our lives worth living now.

Update (April 3):  Emma Gray reflects on how the pandemic exacerbates existing inequalities.

[I]t becomes increasingly clear that things aren’t great for anyone, but those most vulnerable among us certainly are not OK. The coronavirus has laid bare the economic inequalities and systemic inadequacies that have always existed.

There is hope that some good will come out of this tragedy. Perhaps people will finally understand why fighting climate change right now is so imperative. Perhaps more employers will extend paid sick leave to their contract employees. Perhaps there will be greater support for policies that decouple health insurance from employment altogether. Perhaps many of us will take a beat and learn to be a little kinder, a little more grateful, a little more thoughtful about the way we move about the world and interact with the people in it.

Update (April 5):  Katie Halper and Matt Taibbi interview Johann Hari author of Lost Connections. Hari explains that depression and anxiety are not malfunctions of individuals, they are signals of unmet social needs. Studies have shown that doing things simply for yourself does not increase happiness, while doing things for others (more typical outside the United States) does increase happiness. Hari mentions that Russians tend to think the "pursuit of happiness" is nonsense--happiness comes and goes; we don't have much control over it. Rather, it is the collective pursuit of meaning that will carry us through pain.

Update (April 6):  As Richard Wolff shows how the pandemic highlights the failures of capitalism, Graham Peeples argues that the crisis calls a movement toward unity.

Fragmentation constitutes the normal, if totally unnatural, way of things; it characterizes virtually every aspect of life and describes the state of mind of most, if not all of us.

Generations have been systematically conditioned into believing that this is the way to live, that we are separate and must compete with one another to survive; that greed, selfishness, social division and tribalism are part of who and what we are as human beings, and that there is no alternative.

If we are to move out of the crumbling chaos of the old and create a new and just civilization in which humanity can live peacefully together for the first time in our long and painful history, we must, first of all, recognize that we are one; that all of life is interconnected ... . The new forms and ways of living that must emerge need to be based on and encourage expressions of brotherhood and compassion.

The creation of a fertile ground in which harmony can come into being is a great deal easier than might be imagined. As humanity collectively demonstrates (excluding the minority) in times of need, underneath the outward shows of cruelty and selfishness, mankind is good; remove the obstacles (fear, desire, competition etc.) to compassion and that unifying force – love, which is our very nature, will naturally and spontaneously express itself.

Update (April 16):  As protests emerge over stay-at-home orders, Amanda Marcotte notices how some people manage to "fall apart completely at the first sign of even the slightest hardship".

Right-wing Americans have little sympathy for millions of their fellow citizens who face real hardship, but an endless amount of self-pity because they have to skip a fishing trip. No wonder they love [Dear Leader], a man who can't be bothered to care about Americans dying, but is in full-blown panic mode because he might not get re-elected.

In reality, this pandemic has exposed how we're all in this together and none of us are "rugged individuals." We need those health care workers and grocery store employees and teachers. We are all dependent on each other, not just for the basic necessities of life, but the luxuries like boating and gardening. Right wingers have spent decades denying this fact, clinging to their Ayn Rand fantasies that they're not dependent on the rest of us and are under no obligation to pay their taxes or by treating others with decency and compassion.

But it turns out that conservatives are more dependent on the system than all the people they deplore as weak, so much so that a minor interruption in their daily life causes a full-blown temper tantrum like the one we witnessed in Michigan this week. More are coming, we can be sure of that.

Update (May 7):  Paul Rosenberg sees opportunity in the crisis.

When push comes to shove — as it has with the pandemic — the majority of Americans reject the neoliberal worldview that has led us to this state, where our nation is vastly under-resourced to deal with catastrophes. They reject its contradictory definition of freedom, which tells us we can only do what the market allows — especially when the market says you can't invest in basic life protection. Most Americans believe that we're all in this together, because that's what they see every day with their own eyes. Strengthening our democracy to meet the challenges we face is the most sensible pathway before us.

Update (May 18):  Jonathan Cohn examines the dismal U.S. response to the Covid-19 crisis.

[T]here’s only so much that even the most determined policymakers can do right now. What the U.S. really needs to do is reimagine what the government does and how it operates ― to build a new state edifice, starting with its foundation, in a way that it has done only a few times in its history. And it’s not clear the political system is capable of that.

Update (June 8):  Matthew Rozsa argues that the pandemic and climate change illustrate two points: we ignore science at our peril; capitalism is "inherently unsustainable". Rozsa quotes Michael Mann:

[W]hat COVID-19 has laid bare is the fragility of this massive infrastructure which we've created to artificially maintain consumption far beyond the natural carrying capacity of the planet. And continued exploitation of fossil fuels, obviously, is inconsistent with a sustainable human society.

Update (June 24):  Amanda Marcotte details how the Republican-led quick reopening experiments have failed as the U.S. heads back toward an even greater peak in new Covid-19 cases.

The economic theory behind reopening was that because the lockdown had shuttered so many businesses and caused a huge recession, then surely ending the lockdown would mean those businesses and all the economic activity they generate would come roaring back to life.

The problem is that restaurants and stores don't magically make money by opening their doors. They need actual customers to come in and spend money. Getting back to work is an empty promise if people show up and find there's little or no work to be done.  

But then they had their reasons for rushing things.

[T]his catastrophe cannot be laid solely at the feet of [Dear Leader] and his delusions. A huge part of the problem was that Republicans, for all their chatter about "the economy," have always been far more invested in gutting the social safety net and slashing taxes than in the genuine economic well-being of Americans. Reopening fast was largely a dodge used to justify the Republican refusal to pass more bills to protect workers and businesses from economic catastrophe, since those bills would require increased government spending and, most likely, raising taxes on the wealthy to pay for it.

There can be no economic recovery until we contain and control the pandemic. Reopening was a feint, an excuse to kick people off unemployment but never an actual plan to get the economy functioning again. Republicans sacrificed people's health — in fact, they literally killed people — for an economic recovery that was never going to happen.

Update (July 21):  In the face of disaster, has Fuckface actually come around to reality?

It will get worse before it gets better.

Or, as Amanda Marcotte explains, will he revert to his go-to strategy of gaslighting that he learned from his father?

This strategy works not by actually convincing people to believe [Dear Leader's] lies, which now average about 12 a day. Rather, it works the same way [his father's] gaslighting about the heating worked — by inducing a sense of helplessness in the victim, and by making clear there's nothing the victim can say or do to persuade the gaslighter to recognize reality. [Manbaby] yelled "no collusion" like a parrot for months until the public essentially gave in to the lie, in a "Have it your way, just stop screaming at me" reaction.

[Agent Orange] clearly hopes he can pull the same trick off one more time with the coronavirus, insisting that everything is fine — in the face of all evidence to the contrary — at such length and with such stubbornness that his opponents eventually just give up.

Update (December 17):  Megha Bahree reports on countries looking beyond Gross Domestic Product when they plan for the economic well-being of their citizens.

[This example] shows what can be achieved when an economy is set up around the idea of improving people’s lives rather than the pursuit of endless growth. It pokes huge holes in the conventional wisdom that GDP ― a broad, crude measure of economic success ― is the only metric that counts.

It’s a lesson some economists are hoping the world heeds as countries embark upon the monumental challenge of rebounding from our current pandemic-related economic meltdown. It’s a chance to rethink who economies are for and how to rebuild them; to give people meaningful lives and take us off the path of climate destruction.

Sign of Things to Come?

COVID-19 is a new disease caused by the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2). The mutation may not be directly related to climate change, but epidemics are becoming more frequent under new environmental conditions. Crises will emerge for which governments are not prepared. Misinformation will spread in an era of "fake news" that can only make things worse.

Update (March 13):  It's getting very hard to keep up with the news. My anxiety is skyrocketing. Heather Digby Parton expands on the dangers of this political failure.

This crisis makes it obvious that America can try to retreat from the world all it wants, but it won't work. We share this planet and it gets smaller every day. If we are to deal with massive disruptions like global pandemics and the existential threat of climate change, we cannot afford to have leaders who fail to understand that.

And Amanda Marcotte points to Republican "aversion to the very concept of a common good".

For decades, GOP strategy has been consistent: Whenever they get power, they slash regulations and gut spending, with the goal of making government less effective. This is a deliberate strategy to make the public broadly distrustful of government, and therefore increasingly open to shifting more and more power to the wealthy individuals who control the private sector.

This ideological commitment to an every-man-for-himself ideology, which is terrible in any circumstances, is exposed as particularly dreadful in the face of a pandemic. Disease is a reminder that humans are a herd species, wholly dependent on each other for survival, and that government must be a way to formally organize that joint survival pattern. It's not some villain in a racism-inflected right-wing morality fable about the importance of "personal responsibility".

Update (March 15):  Bob Hennelly argues this crisis could "help us muster the will to make the lifestyle and economic changes required to face up to the challenge of global warming" but the recent history of capitalism doesn't bode well.

[V]ital spheres, from the environment to the public health, [have been] secondary to the private pursuit of profit.

In an interview with Paul Rosenberg, Dr. Timothy Brewer emphasizes that we're all in this together.

The most important question is, "How do we all get through this?" And we get through this by focusing on what we know, and what we need to learn, and taking care of each other — so not by discriminating, not by panicking, and not by trying to isolate ourselves with our 500 rolls of toilet paper.

Update (March 17):  A British report finds that up to two million Americans could die from COVID-19 if strong action isn't taken. Jacek Debiec notes that fear contagion can be mitigated when we cope with threats together.

Update (March 18):  John Vidal explains how loss of habitat and biodiversity makes diseases like COVID-19 more likely.

In 2008, [Kate Jones, chair of ecology and biodiversity at University College London,] and a team of researchers identified 335 diseases that emerged between 1960 and 2004, at least 60% of which came from non-human animals.

Increasingly, says Jones, these zoonotic diseases are linked to environmental change and human behavior. The disruption of pristine forests driven by logging, mining, road building through remote places, rapid urbanization and population growth is bringing people into closer contact with animal species they may never have been near before, she says.

The resulting transmission of disease from wildlife to humans, she says, is now "a hidden cost of human economic development. There are just so many more of us, in every environment. We are going into largely undisturbed places and being exposed more and more. We are creating habitats where viruses are transmitted more easily, and then we are surprised that we have new ones."

Jones studies how land use change contributes to the risk. "We are researching how species in degraded habitats are likely to carry more viruses which can infect humans," she says. "Simpler systems get an amplification effect. Destroy landscapes, and the species you are left with are the ones humans get the diseases from."

Update (March 20):  Gideon Lichfield thinks some aspects of life will never go back to "normal".

The world has changed many times, and it is changing again. All of us will have to adapt to a new way of living, working and forging relationships. But as with all change, there will be some who lose more than most, and they will be the ones who have lost far too much already. The best we can hope for is that the depth of this crisis will finally force countries — the U.S., in particular — to fix the yawning social inequities that make large swaths of their populations so intensely vulnerable.

Update (March 21):  Zach Carter points out that political failure cuts both ways.

An endless parade of centrists vied for the 2020 Democratic nomination not by talking about ideas, but by talking about competence, leadership and other intangibles while warning that candidates that did talk about ideas were too dangerous and scary.

A party that doesn’t really believe in anything will have a hard time putting up serious proposals in a crisis.

Update (March 22):  Efforts to contain the virus are having a massive economic impact. Bob Hennelly suggests American capitalism is poorly suited to handle this kind of crisis.

This is what happens when you organize every aspect of your society to promote wealth accumulation and nothing else.

[O]ur vaunted American health care system — which is designed to maximize shareholder profits and discourage patients from using it — turns out to be antithetical to promoting the public health. This for-profit model is based on scarcity, which rations access to care, ventilators and personal protection equipment for medical staff, all to feed the insatiable bottom line.

Works great until that doomsday scenario when everybody needs it.

Our whole socioeconomic framework was predicated on the notion that our society could function and feed off vast inequality, and that the day-in and day-out misery of tens of millions of American families was their problem.

Update (March 25):  Ken Orphan hopes a lesson can be learned.

[T]here are signs that Covid-19 is changing the way humanity looks at the way society is arranged. ... [T]here are questions emerging about how our species has treated the delicate balance between us and the natural world. Indeed, many are realizing that there is no "us and the natural world" at all. Covid-19 might be the biosphere’s last and desperate warning to our species that the status quo is a one-way ticket to extinction. The only question that remains is how we will respond to its urgent message.

Amy Westervelt contrasts responses to COVID-19 and climate change.

At its root, climate change is the result of too much political and economic power being placed in the hands of too few people. Absent those power dynamics, a rational society would act when a majority of global scientists warned of certain catastrophe.

Update (April 1):  Heather Digby Parton slams the bullshit emanating from Dear Leader's mouth.

He's good at being the center of attention. ... The celebrity PR strategy is obvious. After downplaying the virus as no worse than the flu and insisting that life should go back to normal immediately, he's now calling himself a hero for saying no to the people who said it was the flu and wanted life to go back to normal. Anything less than 200,000 dead will be proof of his genius. You have to give him points for chutzpah, if for absolutely nothing else.

Republicans have said for years that we need to run the government like a business because people in the private sector know how to get things done. Unfortunately, the businessman they picked to take this on was the owner of a vanity business dedicated to selling his phony "brand" as a self-made billionaire. When faced with a serious managerial crisis and a demand for real leadership, he didn't have the faintest idea how to do it.

Update (April 6):  Here's a thought: maybe everyone who voted for this fucking asshole has blood on their hands.

Americans braced for what the nation’s top doctor warned Sunday would be "the hardest and saddest week" of their lives while Britain assumed the unwelcome mantle of deadliest coronavirus hot spot in Europe after a record 24-hour jump in deaths that surpassed even hard-hit Italy’s.

There are fights in the White House over unproven treatments and Heather Digby Parton points out how the Administration would rather promote a rightwing agenda than confront the health crisis.

His administration is now entirely staffed by embedded ideologues, fringe players and loyalists who will just keep swinging the wrecking ball, no matter what else is going on. Not even a deadly global pandemic will stop them from fulfilling their pledge to fulfill the president's whims and desires. If they can sneak in some longstanding right-wing extremist goals while nobody's looking, that's just frosting on the cake.

Update (April 12):  I'd like to ask a supporter sometime how they feel to have a president who doesn't give a shit whether you live or die.

In his haste to jumpstart the economy, [Fuckface] posed a frightening scenario to Dr. Anthony Fauci during a task force meeting in the Situation Room. No COVID-19 countermeasures would be taken so that people would quickly become infected, with some recovering to create a protective herd immunity.

"Why don’t we let this wash over the country?" [he] asked, a question others told the [Washington Post] the president has raised repeatedly in the Oval Office.

Fauci realized with surprise that [Dear Leader] was serious. "Mr. President, many people would die."

Update (April 14):  Amanda Marcotte blasts our pitiful excuse for national leadership.

This is what [Dear Leader] clearly wants people to believe: That he has total authority, but absolutely zero responsibility.

The reality is straightforward: [Manbaby], by refusing to take this seriously until it was too late — and also by continuing to undermine efforts to test and treat people — caused this disaster. Many of the people he's now trying to blame, such as governors, journalists and public health officials, are doing the work to clean up the mess he made, though they can only do so much.

And the thanks these people get for trying to save the nation, which could well have the unwelcome but unavoidable consequence of rescuing [this asshole's] chances at re-election, is to hear [Dear Leader] bellow at them about how he's the king of everything and they need to do more bowing and scraping. ... But all those folks will keep on doing their job, even though that might aid the orange monstrosity who is making their lives miserable, because ultimately helping the public is their job. Taking responsibility and getting the job done is what real leaders do, and that's something [Fuckface von Clownstick] will go to his grave without understanding.

Update (April 25):  Marcotte is fed up with the daily propaganda shows.

[W]hat happened on Thursday was exactly what it looked like: A man who thinks he knows everything but actually knows nothing, who only halfway absorbed a presentation about how disinfectant and sunlight can kill the virus. He used this tidbit of information to bullshit wildly, saying stuff that was painfully dumb and dangerous because he is too lazy and stupid to have learned that household cleaners are poisonous.

And Heather Digby Parton notes that Senator Mitch McConnell is all too happy to punish "blue" states in a crisis.

It's unclear exactly how McConnell hopes to thread the needle of only helping red states while leaving the blue states twisting in the wind. But he'll have to find a way, because plenty of red states are going to need the same kind of help. Perhaps he thinks he can hold any further aid hostage until blue-state governors agree to eliminate public employee pensions, but that's a tricky business when his own voters will be hostages as well. But McConnell doesn't gleefully call himself "the Grim Reaper" for nothing. If anyone's willing to risk his own constituents' lives to score political points, it's him.

This upcoming campaign should be one for the books. The incumbent president and his party have decided that their best bet to win over the country during an unprecedented crisis will be to give as much money as possible to big business, force states into bankruptcy and destroy the pensions of cops, firefighters and teachers as the pile of dead bodies gets higher and higher

Update (April 26):  In an interview with Chauncey DeVega, John Gartner argues Dear Leader "is not just incompetent. He is actively engaging in sabotage".

People such as [Fuckface] are malignant-narcissist sadists because they, at some deep level, are driven to cause harm to other people. [His] life is proof of this. He enjoys ripping people off and humiliating people. He does this manically and gleefully. He has lied more than 16,000 times. He threatens people online and elsewhere. I believe that [von Clownstick] is also a sexual sadist, who on some basic level enjoys and is aroused by watching people be afraid of him. In his mind, [he] is creating chaos and instability so that he can feel powerful.

Update (April 28):  Amanda Marcotte explains how Fuckface defends himself by employing the "gaslighting" technique.

Under [Dear Leader's] administration the term has ventured into politics. It's become a way to talk about how [this asshole] and his defenders won't merely tell lies, but will stand by even the dumbest and most obvious lies, holding their ground until the defenders of reality simply give up fighting.

With garden-variety lying, the liar tends to assume the target doesn't know the truth and so can be made to accept the lie as if it were truth. Gaslighting differs dramatically in that the target actually knows what's true. They experienced it, heard it or witnessed what really happened themselves. So what the gaslighter must do is convince the target to reject the evidence of their own eyes and ears.

[W]e should call out these kinds of diversionary tactics, which are meant to force us into a debate about whether our minds are broken and whether we can literally perceive anything at all. That's not the issue. The issue is that our president is a lazy, arrogant moron who went on TV and spewed fatuous bullshit about how maybe doctors should look into shooting up patients with poisonous chemicals because, y'know, it's worth a shot.

Update (May 5):  Bob Cesca reminds us there's only one thing Dear Leader cares about.

[T]he most awful aspect of this latest display of convulsive ineptitude is that he's not just making things worse for himself, he's making things worse for everyone else, especially the additional thousands of souls that'll be lost because [Fuckface] is terrified of losing the election.

During this harrowing episode in our national history, we're faced with two unprecedented calamities: an economic crisis and a health care crisis. Each one is being aggravated by a garishly costumed villain in the White House who lacks any interest in a rational, sustainable resolution.

Update (May 6):  Heather Digby Parton says the Administration has decided it's best to "live and let die".

[O]fficials [have] flailed around, unable to perform even the most basic tasks one would expect of the federal government in a disaster, while frantically running in circles trying to look as if they were doing something. Now, since they cannot do the job, they have apparently decided to let the virus "wash over the country" as [Dear Leader] wanted to do from the beginning. If some governors can manage to mitigate the worst of it in their states, good for them. The president has gone back to his full-time job of running for re-election.

"Kill your co-workers, friends and family to save the American way of life!" doesn't sound like a winning campaign slogan to me. But what do I know?

Update (July 28):  Public health experts were discussing COVID-19's potential impact back in January.

Ten Years

In an interview with Laura Paddison, Christiana Figueres, lead negotiator for the Paris climate agreement, says the next ten years will be critical for civilization.

It is in this decade that we will either reach a concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that is so dangerous that we will not be able to manage the negative consequences for years to come and the increasingly destructive forces of nature will wreak havoc upon, not just infrastructure and biodiversity, but also on the ability of humans to live on this planet.

Or, the other choice is that we wake up to the fact that during these 10 years we can decisively change the course of those greenhouse gases, we can bring them down to one half of what they are now, and along that journey, we can actually do a lot of good.

We can increase public health, we can increase the quality of urban life, we can increase the comfort and smartness of transportation. And actually, I also think that we can rise as a human species; we can rise to a higher level of consciousness and a higher level of understanding of who we are on this planet.

Save Lives and Save Money

Why does Senator Bernie Sanders have a great chance to be elected President? A study published in The Lancet finds that Medicare for All would be a hugely successful policy.

[W]e calculate that a single-payer, universal health-care system is likely to lead to a 13% savings in national health-care expenditure, equivalent to more than US$450 billion annually (based on the value of the US$ in 2017). The entire system could be funded with less financial outlay than is incurred by employers and households paying for health-care premiums combined with existing government allocations. This shift to single-payer health care would provide the greatest relief to lower-income households. Furthermore, we estimate that ensuring health-care access for all Americans would save more than 68,000 lives.

Update (January 9, 2021):  A paper published in Health Affairs finds that single-payer health insurance is even more feasible than we thought.

What the researchers find is that most estimates of the effect of universal coverage expansion on healthcare utilization are overblown, adding to a growing consensus that Medicare for All is less costly than previously thought due to lower administrative costs and usage rates that increase only slightly or not at all.

[T]he Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has estimated that implementing a single-payer health insurance program in the U.S. would reduce overall healthcare spending nationwide by about $650 billion per year.

Between the CBO's finding that Medicare for All's administrative cost savings have been underestimated and Gaffney et al.'s finding that the effects of universal coverage reforms on healthcare utilization and costs have been overestimated, it is becoming increasingly clear that in addition to saving lives, Medicare for All would be less expensive than previously acknowledged.

Update (June 19, 2022):  A study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA finds that single-payer health insurance would have saved lives and money over the first two years of the pandemic.

[F]rom the pandemic’s beginning until mid-March 2022, universal health care could have saved more than 338,000 lives from COVID-19 alone. The U.S. also could have saved $105.6 billion in health care costs associated with hospitalizations from the disease—on top of the estimated $438 billion that could be saved in a nonpandemic year.

Dark Times

Now that Dear Leader has been newly freed of any constraints and with a vicious campaign cranking up, Lucian Truscott gets straight to the point.

There will come a time when we look back on this week as the moment in our history when we finally understood that we have a man as president who is acting like a fascist dictator.

Openly taking vengeance on his enemies means Fuckface is sliding further into dangerous territory.

To call for the imprisonment of political opponents without trial is not playing with rhetoric for effect. It's not political gimmickry. It's not cute. It's not funny. It's not clever. Let's say out loud what it is: It's pure fascism, plain and simple.

Update (February 17):  David Cay Johnston suggests that Speaker Pelosi anticipated von Clownstick's worsening behavior and that Democrats have the opportunity to make Republicans pay a price.

They are tied to [Dear Leader] and cannot easily get a political divorce, thanks to Pelosi’s strategy, without openly saying they made a terrible mistake in failing to convict and remove [him] from office.

Update (February 23):  Heather Digby Parton says Bill Barr "and the president are on a crusade to punish the president's enemies and go easy on his friends". Even giving a briefing about ongoing Russian interference is enough to get you fired and replaced with a loyalist.

Meanwhile, Bob Cesca notes a Daily Beast report in which Dear Leader "offered WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange a pardon in exchange for aiding in [von Clownstick's] cover-up of the Russian military's hacking and theft of emails from the Democratic National Committee in 2016".

Update (September 24):  We certainly know by now (February in hindsight is part of the "beforetimes") how dark things can get--there's no guarantee anything gets better. In an interview with Chauncey DeVega, Tim Wise offers some advice.

Even with all the horrible things that have happened in such a short time this year, I will tell you that the outcome of this moment is not preordained. If the people in this country who have been ignoring the crises finally wake up and get out of bed and do the moral and good thing, then America's multiracial democracy has a chance of surviving. The problem is that too many of us have been waiting around and not being engaged in the struggle, because they believed that the long march of progress was something guaranteed in America.

Do what James Baldwin said to do: Earn your death. Earn your death by confronting with fortitude and honesty the conundrums of life. Earn your death by the way you live. And that means people need to get off their behinds and do what is necessary to save the United States and the world and the planet from [Fuckface von Clownstick], the Republican Party and the broader right-wing movement.

Record Temperature in the Antarctic

This beats the previous record from nearly five years ago by over one degree Fahrenheit.

[R]esearchers stationed at the Esperanza research station at the northern tip of the Antarctic peninsula found that temperatures reached 64.9º Fahrenheit (18.3º Celsius)—the highest temperature logged since scientists began recording the continent’s temperature in 1961.

Update (February 14):  Another (non-continental) temperature record for Antarctica.

The 20.75C [69F] logged by Brazilian scientists at Seymour Island on 9 February was almost a full degree higher than the previous record of 19.8C, taken on Signy Island in January 1982.

Update (February 23):  A satellite image from NASA shows how much melting occurred in just a few days on an Antarctic island.

Permafrost Collapse

A study published in Nature Geoscience finds that "models considering only gradual permafrost thaw are substantially underestimating carbon emissions from thawing permafrost".