Its Really Hot

 

IT'S REALLY HOT

One has to view the current news with amusement. It's necessary.  On the 6th of July, the Des Moines Register, along with a slough of other news outlets, talked about our Governor calling for a special session of the legislature to pass abortion restrictions and then in the same paper, covered the fact that we just experienced the hottest two days on earth in history and possibly for the last 125,000 years.  Now that's quite a record and one that I'm paying attention to.  

Once again our governing officials address issues of no consequence.  This is how you govern in Iowa, by not governing.  We do not want to admit that there might be trouble on the horizon - - that is discomfiting and probably not vote getting since the electorate has no more concern with the future than our governor.  And it is not God's will that will create havoc, it is human stupidity; unless of course, human stupidity is God's will, and then we are cooked regardless.  The idea that we can only act individually and not collectively and that whatever happens is inevitable is the mind-set of our governor and elected representatives - - they are helpless.  

We have seen enough from the past several legislative sessions that our state government has no clue.  They do not understand that the world has passed them by and enacting  stupid laws will not change that fact.  They need to go the way of the dinosaurs - - disappear.  If one will actually take the time to look around and notice what is happening, one will quickly come to the discovery, and I use the word discovery purposefully, that we as a people, as a society, as a conglomeration of individuals, are also clueless.  Bob Dylan said it in the sixties, and it is more true today than then, "the times they are a changin'".  

We, and I mean us,  have come to the conclusion that we, as individuals, can do nothing about climate change, or injustice, or societal stupidity; and therefore no one does anything (except possibly make it worse).  We in Iowa are leading the nation in our inability to look around us and see what is actually happening on the planet.  I took a look again the other night at William Anders' earth photo from the moon (google it).  Folks, we live on a ball in the middle of nothing; we are all in this together whether we are American or Aztec.  It's time we began acting like it.  It's not time to be patriotic, it's time to be planetary.

And, it is not a matter of making sure a woman has no right to control her own body, women never have - - we've made sure of that; it is what is not addressed that will kill us all on this very blue, watery, isolated planet in the middle of nothing - - we are alive in an infinite space isolated from everything else and there are actions that we can take as humans that will benefit us and our descendants and possibly make continued life on this planet possible for them.  Just a thought mind you.

Richard E H Phelps II

Mingo