J'accuse!

Even prior to this post, I have blogged 37 posts that I have tagged with a label that matters to me a lot: Empathy.  In her speech last night, Meryl Streep reminded us about that noble human quality.  By pointing out how empathy-deficient the pussy-grabbing president-elect is:

It was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter—someone he outranked in privilege, power, and the capacity to fight back. It kind of broke my heart when I saw it, and I still can’t get it out of my head because it wasn’t in a movie; it was real life. And this instinct to humiliate, when it’s modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, filters down into everybody’s life, because it kind of gives permission for other people to do the same thing.

I still cannot believe he won despite such talk and action.  A horrible human being as the President!

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It is even more depressing to think that he won because of such talk and action.

To quote the philosopher Adam Smith--yes, that same Smith who is canonized as the saint of capitalism--"by changing places in fancy with the sufferer, that we come either to conceive or to be affected by what he feels."  We imagine how it would be to be disabled. Or to be terminally ill. Or to live in Aleppo.  Normal human beings, therefore, do not mock the disabled, or the dying, or those being bombed in Aleppo.  Yet, if 63 million voted for that horrible human being to be the president, then I worry more about my fellow citizens than about the pussy-grabber himself!

Which is why right from election night I have been operating with a clear bottom-line: There is no such thing as a good trump voter:

Trump campaigned on state repression of disfavored minorities. He gives every sign that he plans to deliver that repression. This will mean disadvantage, immiseration, and violence for real people, people whose “inner pain and fear” were not reckoned worthy of many-thousand-word magazine feature stories. If you voted for Trump, you voted for this, regardless of what you believe about the groups in question. That you have black friends or Latino colleagues, that you think yourself to be tolerant and decent, doesn’t change the fact that you voted for racist policy that may affect, change, or harm their lives. And on that score, your frustration at being labeled a racist doesn’t justify or mitigate the moral weight of your political choice.

To empathize requires a fundamental starting point of recognizing and respecting the other--who does not look like me. Not with this demagogue and his voters!

Empathy is also what serious art conveys to us.  As Streep said, "An actor’s only job is to enter the lives of people who are different from us, and let you feel what that feels like."  Like even when a eleven-year old boy silently sheds tears because an animated character dies.

Unlike that eleven-year old boy, the demagogue has an utter lack of an ability to "fancy with the sufferer"--a complete and total lack of empathy.  There will be situations during his presidency when he will have to be the comforter-in-chief.  There will be situations when he will have to weigh whether or not to bomb a place or a country.  There will be situations when his policies might have drastic effects on people.  But, when he lacks empathy ... progress will stall.  We might even regress.  The trump voters will stand accused!

Who cares if poor countries are fucked, eh!

(As you can imagine, an edited version of this is what I have sent the editor!)

A year ago, after visiting India in December 2015, I wrote about the record-setting rains and floods in the city of Chennai, where my parents and sister live. Almost 14 inches of rain fell within a matter of 24 hours, and that was merely one of the rain spells. With all the reservoirs full, authorities had to open up the gates, which then flooded the city.

A year later, the same city but another extreme event. A “super cyclone” changed course and aimed straight towards the city. It is an irony that the cyclone was named Vardah, which means red rose. A beauty of a red rose it was not. In a couple of hours, the winds had toppled about a quarter of the trees in the city. Transformers blew up, utility poles cracked and fell, and power and communication systems were knocked out. Some of the more than eight million people in the area were without power and water for more than a week.

Because of the cyclone, the airport was closed. I was already en route, and was held back in Dubai for a day. The night that I landed in Chennai, the city was pitch dark at most places—no electricity. Fallen tree branches—and entire trees too—made the drive home from the airport eerie. Like practically everybody else in the city, my parents were also sitting by the candle light and waving a plastic fan about themselves in order to keep themselves cool and to shoo away the mosquitoes that couldn’t care about the cyclone.

The following morning, I walked about the city. This was as close as I have been to a landscape that can be described as a war zone. Entire trees uprooted. Buildings with facades blown off. Walls destroyed. And a strange silence in contrast to the high noise levels that otherwise typically assault my senses.

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The rain and floods of December 2015, and the super-cyclone of December 2016, will now be followed by drought. Yes, water shortage. The state of Tamil Nadu, for which Chennai is the capital, is reeling from a monsoon that failed—the second worst in over 150 years. “The latest spell of rain due to Cyclone Vardah has only brought down the State’s deficit from 66 per cent to 61 per cent, says S. Balachandran, Director in the Meteorological Department.” If not for the moisture that the cyclone brought with it, the city and the state would be in an even worse situation.

Such extremes are consistent with climate weirding. I way prefer the phrase “global weirding” because it helps avoid unnecessary debates with deniers who want to contest global warming. The same deniers also typically point to changes in weather in order to raise pointless questions about global climate changes. Finally, global weirding helps me understand the kinds of extreme weather stories that have become all too common.

Extreme events are beyond the predictability that humans have lived by. The monsoons, for example, have wild swings these days. When it rains, it seems to pour all at once. Or, it rains when it should not. And, like this past season, the rains are deficient. This is especially a disaster for developing countries like India where a significant percentage of the population relies on intensive agriculture. The drought in Tamil Nadu has already resulted in a few farmers worried about their misfortunes committing suicide.

Climate scientists warn that we have to prepare for more and more extreme events that result from climate weirding. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) noted that “a changing climate leads to changes in the frequency, intensity, spatial extent, duration and timing of extreme weather and climate events, and can result in unprecedented extreme weather and climate events.”

Of course, it is not merely about the rains. Heat waves, for instance, are increasing in both frequency and intensity. Unlike wind and rains, heat waves are not action made for cameras. Thus, unlike with a cyclone, for instance, there are no images and videos that go viral when it comes to heat waves. But, heat waves kill more people than rains and cold spells do. It is then not difficult to understand that heat waves during water-deficit situations can become disasters in tropical areas like India.

We in the United States need to stop denying the human cause in the global climatic changes in this industrial era. As a country with an affluence that is the envy of the rest of the world, we need to assume leadership in addressing global weirding. These will be enormous challenges during the demagogue's presidency and with the Grand Old Minions controlling Congress. But, we have overcome challenges in the past; here, too, I hope that we will eventually do the right thing.

Cactus and boiled ash make an awesome meal!

The demagogue and the millions who voted for him continue to spin whatever stories that suit them.  But, the laws of physics are the laws of physics, and--unlike the brainless Republicans--are not affected by moronic and misleading tweets from the demagogue.

One of the many, many lessons from this election is that despite all the benefits that we people enjoy from the progress in scientific understanding, a great many are clueless about the scientific method.  The laws work " regardless of political or social prejudices, and they are indisputably true."

But the most basic scientific concept that is clearly and disturbingly missing from today's social and political discourse is the concept that some questions have correct and clear answers. 

The scientific method is not how one feels and does not work by name-calling. It is not faith-based either.  It is the scientific method that leads scientists to conclude:

2016 will go down as the warmest year globally since record-keeping began, with preliminary reports indicating that 2016 was 1.3 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times.

And one of the consequences?

As temperatures rise, we’re also learning more about how these rising temperatures affect our weather – and extreme weather events, in particular.
With the help of new and evolving climate research, we’re detecting a stronger link between warming and changing weather patterns.

Yep, extreme weather events.  When it rains it floods creating records. Droughts are record-setting. People old enough to have experienced a sense of predictability are now our living witnesses on how how unpredictable meteorological events have become.

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While the demagogue and most of the people who voted for him continue to dismiss climate change and its human cause, the effects of climate change are already being felt all over the world.  Especially in poor countries that do not have the resources to adapt to the rapid changes.  Like in Madagascar:

Southern Africa’s drought and food crisis have gone largely unnoticed around the world. The situation has been particularly severe in Madagascar, a lovely island nation known for deserted sandy beaches and playful long-tailed primates called lemurs.
But the southern part of the island doesn’t look anything like the animated movie “Madagascar”: Families are slowly starving because rains and crops have failed for the last few years. They are reduced to eating cactus and even rocks or ashes. The United Nations estimates that nearly one million people in Madagascar alone need emergency food assistance.

 And the understanding through the scientific method is this:

New research, just published in the bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, concludes that human-caused climate change exacerbated El Niño’s intensity and significantly reduced rainfall in parts of Ethiopia and southern Africa.
The researchers calculated that human contributions to global warming reduced water runoff in southern Africa by 48 percent and concluded that these human contributions “have contributed to substantial food crises.”

Of course, all these are nothing but hoax manufactured by the Chinese!