By Guest Columnist Noel Holston
A long-ago college classmate of mine guy posted the illustration above on Facebook to express his elation in having helped reelect former President Donald J. Trump who, in case anybody’s forgotten, is a convicted criminal, a self-described sex offender, and the proud ringmaster of a horrendous 2021 riot in Washington, D.C., that was a violation of his Constitutional oath and an act of treason.
And his acolytes insist they’re not a cult. Perish the thought.
The nicest thing I can say about this image is that it’s not as offensive as memes I’ve seen that compare Trump of Mar-a-Lago to Jesus of Nazareth.
For non-MAGAts like me, the image suggests not a new day or another “Morning in America” but a sci-fi/horror movie like Godzilla in which an ugly, angry monster slowly rises from beneath the sea and prepares to wreak havoc and destruction across the land.
And then there’s the irony of the image: the second coming (lower case intended) of a demagogue who insists human-induced climate change is a “hoax” and has sworn he’ll use his power to kill regulations and programs that would mitigate its destructive effects, Florida be damned.
Maybe he’ll propose building a seawall.
All snark aside, the coming Administration’s rejection of science, especially when it comes to climate change, is the greatest threat it poses. We have plenty of other contentious issues – guns, gangs, reproductive freedom, illegal immigration, drugs – but none of them is as urgent as addressing the pollution that’s accelerating climate shifts and catastrophic weather it engenders.
To everyone who got bent out of shape about the price of bread after the pandemic, I say, “Wait’ll the floods, wildfires and tornados start wiping out whole crops.”
Trump and billionaire pals like Elon Musk are more interested in exploring the profit-potential of outer space than in restoring and preserving the planet that we actually live on.
I hate to break it to them, geniuses that they consider themselves, but by the time we get even two or three “pioneers” settled in on our moon or Mars, Earth will be a world of hurt. That just how the two timelines match up.
I don’t know what exactly we can do about this existential threat – and when I say existential, I mean our existence, not Earth’s. Earth will go on with or without us.
Maybe if the next monster hurricane wiped Mara-a-Lago off the map.
Maybe.
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About the author: Guest columnist Noel Holston is a freelance writer who lives in Athens, Georgia. He serves as Georgia Correspondent for Wry Wing Politics. He’s also a contributing essayist to Medium.com, TVWorthWatching.com, and other websites. He previously wrote about television and radio at Newsday (2000-2005) and, as a crosstown counterpart to the Pioneer Press’s Brian Lambert, at the Star Tribune (1986-2000). He’s the author of “Life After Deaf: My Misadventures in Hearing Loss and Recovery,” by Skyhorse.