#(yeah yeah take steps to help reverse climate change. you know what I mean)

[geekyzelda]

It’s really funny watching New England deal with wildfire smoke when the west coast is just like that every summer now

[fatandnerdy30]

The Itsy Bitsy Spider 17

Hope and Scott enlarged themselves as soon as they came in the special door Hank had provided for them. Both of them were heavy hearted for the news they had to tell Hank.

"Hope?" he father called from the living room. "I thought I heard you. Did you bring...oh you did." Hank came walking out into the foyer and made a face at Scott, who smiled and waved. "Hey Hank. It's nice to see you again. OH! Ummm...thanks for the new suit. It fits perfectly." "Of course it does. We've been working together for almost two years. I think I should know your measurements by now. Now, where is Sean? His family is waiting to see him." Hope shook her head, looking sadly at the floor. "We...we lost him. He was killed by one of the doctors that was holding his family captive. I'm sorry..." Doctor Pym was speechless. "How?" he finally asked after a long silence. "There was another man in the room. He took us by surprise when we thought he was unconscious, but he still had enough life in him to manage to pull a knife on Sean and....stabbed him in the back." Hope took a deep breath. She usually wasn't this upset when they lost someone. But, this man had known her father, was her father's friend. She would have liked to get to know him. "In the end, Sean destroyed his files, all his research." took the small tablet out of her back pocket, using a blue disc on it. "We were able to save the tablet Doctor McCleary was holding, but that's all." She handed the bloody tablet to her father, seeing the face he made when he took it. "Thank you," he managed to say around the sudden lump in his throat. His one time partner was gone. He shouldn't be feeling this way, he hadn't spoken to the man in nearly thirty years. But, it still hurt. "Any luck getting in touch with Doctor Banner?" Hope asked. Hank shook his head. "I started to..but I've been thinking, and I don't think I want anything to do with the Avengers if Stark is anywhere near them." "What?!" Scott exclaimed. "So, you'll just leave a kid who used to be normal, the size of a mouse for the rest of his life, without helping? Not even sending Doctor Banner any information on the serum that could have been used?" Hank gave Lang an angry glare. "You have no clue what Stark is like! He's a user. He uses everyone and everything for his own gain!" Scott shook his head. "No. I don't agree with you. I met him, fought with him...he uses his technology to help people, not take them down! You're thinking of his father!" The white haired man glared at Scott, but didn't say anything. Nothing would change his mind on the Stark family. "I want you to bring the boy here, then. If we have him, we can at least tell if the serum is reversible." Hope and Scott looked at him with shocked faces. "Do you know how impossible that would be? Tony has an AI that monitors the entire building, and I'm pretty sure he has things in place for anything ant sized." "Well, I am not stepping foot in a Stark building, even if that means leaving a child the way he is now!" Hank was stubborn, but the thing was, so was Hope. "Well, I'll go into the building then, and have you on Video where you can see the kid, talk with him, ask him questions. Sound good?" "Not really. I don't want you anywhere near the Avengers." "This isn't going to solve anything. Just suck up your pride, Hank and go to see this kid! Or, at least contact Doctor Banner!" Scott had had enough of this. The two glared at one another until Pym sighed. "Fine. I'll go into Stark's tower. But, he's not getting any files or information from me." With that, the man turned. "Where are you going?" Scott yelled. He wasn't finished. "To tell Sean's family the news," was all Hank needed to say. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The news was playing on the screen in front of the nurses station. May wasn't really paying much attention to what was being broadcast as she did her filing, until something caught her eye. Turning to the television, she saw it was the Avengers taking fire from some super villain that could fly, the footage from almost a week ago. But, that wasn't what she was looking at. One of the camera men turned his attention to the Hulk, who had Tony Stark's daughter in his arms, but there was something on his shoulder. The camera zoomed in a little more and May thought her heart was going to stop. There, sitting the green giants shoulder, was Peter! The woman let out a small scream as she watched the monster grab him in his hand and close the fist. "May?" One of the woman's coworkers came over, worry on her brow. "What's wrong?" "Peter," she whispered. "Peter's alive!" She pointed to the battle on the screen. The woman was unable to wrap her head around it all. Her nephew was alive and was the size of a doll with Tony Stark. The Hulk was shown again, but this time his legs were caught in a metallic rope and he was sent flying to the ground, letting go of the Stark girl, but the camera couldn't pick up Peter. Until the little girl was about to fall to her doom. Her sleeve was being pulled by something, and the cameraman focused in on Peter as he grabbed her sleeve and managed to actually pull the girl to safety. May smiled, tears in her eyes. Just like her nephew to think of others! Suddenly, he was gone, a piece of asphalt landing where he was. She let out a scream and collapsed. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "First things first." Steve was setting up to start training Peter. It was a little odd not to be using the equipment, but hey, work with what you've got. "We run some tests. First test: strength. Sam told us what you did on that bridge with Morgan, and let me tell you, that was no small feat. So, I want to see how much you can lift." He set up the smallest weights they had, which weren't light, but not too heavy either. "Start with the smallest, lightest one. Then move up until you can't lift anymore. Sound good?" Peter nodded with a smile as he jumped off Mr. Stark's palm, taking off the wrist straps and running up to the weights that were so much larger than him. But, he couldn't be put down by that, because this was his moment to show the Avengers what he could do! Rubbing his hands together, Peter grabbed the weight. Everyone watched with bated breath as the boy lifted the weight with ease above his head. That was ten pounds, no light weight. "Now what?" he asked, not about to just let the weight drop. "Just put it down and go to the next," Steve said patiently. Peter nodded and gently set the dumbbell down, moving on to the next one, which was fifteen pounds. Again, he easily lifted the weight above his head for about thirty seconds before setting it down again. Again and again he lifted the weights, but started struggling when he hit the fifty pound mark. At sixty pounds, he was literally shaking in his effort to lift it. At seventy pounds, he grunted as he tried to lift it, but could barely get it over his head before he dropped the weight, breathing hard, his face red. There were six more weights, so he moved to the next one, which was seventy-five. He struggled a lot with this one, this time barely getting it off the ground before he collapsed to his knees, panting. Peter felt the ground rumbling so bad he actually fell over, only to be met with several adults, all of them looking down at him from their towering, skyscraper heights. It was scary, but the boy couldn't move at the moment. Tony knelt down first. "You okay, Spiderling?" When the boy nodded, he smirked. "Well that was one helluva show, Thumbelina. Feel like you could do a little more?" Peter nodded. "Yeah...let me just catch my breath?" He let out a gasp as he was grabbed around his middle by two large fingers and lifted from the ground. A water bottle cap was thrust into his hands filled with sweet, blissful water by a smirking billionaire. The teen couldn't thank Mr. Stark before he started chugging the liquid down, not stopping until it was empty. "That's much better, thanks." He sighed. "So what's next?" "We want to see how well you're able to stick to things," Bruce came forward, excitement in his voice. "We've seen you in action on certain objects, but we want to test in what climate you would stick. Like, can you stick to wet surfaces, frozen surfaces, things like that. Can you handle it?" Peter nodded, but then paused. "I think the chemical should be done by now, too," he said thoughtfully. "But, I have nothing to put it in and I really wanted to test it out. I mean, I have something to put it in, but no container since I didn't have time to measure it yesterday while I was building the shooter." Tony smirked and held out his hand to Banner, dropping the teen into the doctor's palm. "Yeah, I already thought of that. While you two were playing mad scientist, I made something for the kid. Be right back." Peter gave Doctor Banner a confused look, to which the man just shrugged. "I can never tell what Tony's thinking," he replied. While they waited for Tony to come back, Bruce let Peter off his palm to stick to the nearest wall. The entire group watched in fascination as they small boy climbed all the way to the top of the ceiling. Wanda followed when he got too high as a safety precaution, ready to catch the boy if he fell. But, Peter had all his concentration on his hands and feet, making sure they stuck to the surface of the smooth wall. When he turned to look down, he was met with the smiling face of Wanda, who waved to him. "How long do they want me to stay up here?" he asked, and the girl repeated down to the others. "You can come down any time you want, son. You didn't even have to climb that high," Steve laughed, imagining Peter's blush. "Well that's something you should have told me," Peter grumbled. He wanted to test his own abilities too, and someone was there to catch him just in case. So, he turned around and slowly let his hands off the wall and straightened out so he could just walk down the wall like it was nothing. A few times he had to catch himself because of the weird angle, but he was sure it was a pretty cool sight. And it helped him understand that he could stick to more than just metal this way. "Reminds me of when we first rescued him," Natasha laughed. "Freaked Tony out so bad to see him just walk down his suit." Peter grinned at the memory as he stepped onto the floor. "I wasn't sure I could do it, because I had never used my new abilities before Mr. Stark came into the lab. I had been hiding under the table they put my cage on, sticking to one of the table legs after they..." Peter stopped himself, unable to think about what the soldiers did back then. It seemed like so long ago, but it had only been two weeks since then. "It's okay," Bucky said, kneeling down. "I understand more than anyone how messed up Hydra can be. But, if you ever want to talk about it, just let me know and I'll be there to listen." Peter smiled up gratefully at the man and nodded. "Thank you," was all he said, and that was all that needed saying. "What did I miss?" Mr. Stark asked as he walked back into the room holding a brown bottle and something in his fisted hand. "Well, Peter just climbed up to the ceiling and literally walked back down," Sam said. "Freakiest thing I've ever seen, and I fought Ant-Man." "Friday, turn the sprinklers on the wall please," Steve asked and suddenly Peter was almost swept away by the river streaming down the wall and onto the floor. "Woah!" he cried, falling on his butt and just going with the current, that is until Rhodey reached down and plucked him from the water like a drowning bird. "Easy there, Spider-Head," the man laughed, though it felt weird to have a something so small actually literally sticking to him. "A little warning next time, Cap?" he asked the wincing blonde. "Th-thanks Mr. Rhodes." "Hey, you don't have to call me that, kid. Just call me Rhodey, okay? That's what everyone calls me anyway, except when I'm at work, then they call me Mr. Rhodes, or General." Peter's face was priceless when he told him that, his eyes wide and his mouth shaped like the perfect 'O'. "You're a general? That's amazing!" He hadn't ever met a general before, and he had a million and one questions, but they were interrupted by Mr. Stark literally grabbing Peter from the man's hand. "Okay, time to see if you stick." Tony said with a smirk, the teenager squirming in between his pointer and thumb. He pressed the boy to the wall and waited a minute before slowly bringing his hand away, but keeping one palm up under him just in case. And Peter was glad for the hand, because the minute Mr. Stark let go, he slipped at least a foot-to him-down the wall before he was able to feel his fingertips grip. "Phew, that was close," he laughed, looking back to see the giant adults watching him with worried faces. "I'm okay, just took a minute. I'm gonna start climbing now." And Peter did just what he said he was going to do. But, he didn't get very far before he lost his concentration, thinking about how well this was going, and he fell. Tony was glad he'd had his hand out, because the kid fell right into the center of his palm, face pale and eyes squeezed shut. "You okay, Pete?" Peter opened one eye, then let out an explosive breath and nodded. "Yeah, yeah....I'm good...just lost my concentration for a second." "What do you mean?" Bruce asked, coming over to inspect Peter for any injuries. "Concentration?" Peter nodded. "Yeah. It's like, when I focus on sticking to things, I do it, even if it's in the back of my mind, as long as I'm thinking about it, I can do it. I don't really know how it works, but it does. I think anyway. I wasn't really able to use my abilities back in the lab, spending almost all my time in that cage, at least until Sean came in. He let me out and set up a little obstacle course for me to use for exercise." The team all had the same look of pity on their faces, to which Peter freaked out at. "It-it's no big deal!" he cried, eyes wide. "I'm not in there anymore, so that part of my life is over!" He was telling the truth about that. His life had gotten better than it ever had, even with May. Sure she was great, but ever since they lost Ben, he'd lost a father figure of sorts. But, now when he looked around the room, he had so many male role models. But when he looked at Mr. Stark, he almost felt like the man was his father in a way. He couldn't explain it, but whenever the man held him in his hands, he felt....safe. Protected. And in a way, loved. He liked feeling that way. "Boss," Friday's voice came from the ceiling. "Happy says there's a woman screaming at the gate of the Compound. She says her name is May Parker." Peter's face went white as he looked up at Mr. Stark with horror. Aunt May was here!?

@sparrowrider @letsbeinspiredby @6inchicon @ixlovexirondad @carttorchdeatth

[blessedarethebinarybreakers]

The past couple days I've been stressed about a lot of things but tonight I've been really anxious about global warming and like I'm scared everything is hopeless because of it and the articles about how it isn't reversible at this point don't help and yeah

And an anon: i’m having a hard time finding peace of mind in wake of recent climate events and climate problems in general, to the point where reading about it sends me into anxiety. i’m not sure what to do? i think i ask for a prayer but even just some reassurance would help

Hey to both of you. I am in the same place as you are. All the news from the past few weeks combined with reading about how things are irreversible is definitely affecting my mental health for the worse – so I’m going to emphasize for you what I need to keep reminding myself: it’s okay to unplug from the news. It’s okay to put it aside and not read all the details, to pray in a more generalized way for the people suffering and helping. 

It also helps me to seek out the good news: that there are ways that can be implemented to help slow the change. That there are so many people reaching out and helping those in need. To pray in thanksgiving for those people.

Finally, I bring my worry and anxiety and grief to God. It’s so terrifying not to have the answers – to not know if things are going downhill for good, to not know which regions are going to get hit next, to not know how and when God is going to fix this all….So I take that to God. And I try to rest, to accept I can’t have the answers and that the best I can do with my grief and worry after accepting I have them is to pray that they be transformed into action and love. 

The sermon my pastor gave yesterday meant so much to me in regards to dealing with this anxiety. Her sermon was on Genesis 1, and you can listen to an audio recording of it here, or read it as a PDF here. I’ll paste some of it here:

‘… [Genesis 1] was written at a time of great upheaval though, which brings up the next part of the line, “the earth was a formless void.”

The Hebrew phrase for “formless void” isn’t actually as neat and clean as all that. I think of it more as an attempt to express a feeling than as a real set of words. The earth was all “Tohu Va-Vohu”, it says. Those words don’t really mean anything. It’s like trying to write down that things were all “gggllllaaaahhhhh,” but you don’t know how to write that, so you say there were“willy nilly” or “topsy turvy.” They were “Tohu Va-Vohu;” they were chaotic.

Most scholars think this story was written during the Babylonian exile when people’s lives were pretty Tohu Va-Vohu. All they knew was thrown into a state of chaos and they weren’t sure what to believe anymore. 

To give you a sense of their topsy turvy feeling, this story was probably written around the same time as Psalm 137, which says:

By the rivers of Babylon—there we sat down and there we weptwhen we remembered Zion. On the willows therewe hung up our harps. For there our captorsasked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth,saying, [taunting] ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’

I don’t think most of us have any idea what it is like to be ruled by an oppressive foreign government, ripped from our home, unable to return (though some of us do), but all of us can look around right now at-Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Jose, and Katia;-the worst earthquake in Mexico in 100 years;-wildfires in California, Oregon, Washington State, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Nevada, New  Mexico, and Colorado;-the worst monsoon season in generations in India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Pakistan;-an Antarctic ice shelf the size of Delaware breaking free;

not to mention-threats of nuclear war from North Korea and the United States;-Rohingya Muslims fleeing from Myanmar;-hundreds of thousands of young people here who are now living in uncertainty after one stroke of our president’s pen [talking about the scheduled end to DACA, an immigration act]

And, with all that, I think we can get the feeling of “Tohu Va-Vohu” - of the chaos of the world - as this story was written. 

To the exiles, the text of Genesis 1 declared that God’s dreams cannot be defeated by the Babylonian gods or oppressive rulers of any sort. As they sat down to cry by the river they could look at that water and think about their God ordering the water and the land, the sky and the sun - not as a matter of science, but as a matter of faith. This whole story is a faith statement that God does not run from chaos. God continues to care for the creatures and the creation that God spoke into being, the one God loves and calls good every step along the way. This was written as a pastoral statement - a declaration of belief - about a connection with God that persists, even in the face of a real historical problem that seemed to deny such a bond could still be true.

And I invite you to hear it that way today as well. Our Bible opens with good news, with the best news, that God loves us and can be trusted, even in the face of storms and fires, of deportation orders and unjust systems. That means that in the midst of the tohu va-vohu of the world or of your own life you can open to the very first page of this book and have a world painted for you in which chaos doesn’t win. You can hear the symphony of these words - the meter and repetition that brings harmony to the “tohu va-vohu” of every new beginning. It’s goal is not to ignore what is going on as the storm rages or the fire burns, but to remind you that the chaos is not the end nor the fullness of the story. So weep by the river as you must, and then get up, because God has called you “mine,” and God has called you “good.” …’

God has called this entire world Good, and God’s not going to abandon us now or ever. We will keep on fighting for this planet and its Creation with all our energy, and we will keep on hoping that God will do what we are unable to do. God promises restoration for all things – for us and our relationships, for this world and all its living things and its soil. So we won’t give up. 

Things are so scary, things have been scary for a long time. There have always been natural disasters. There has always been suffering and pain. And while I know I for one often struggle to make sense of that, to find God in that suffering, I know that I can trust God is there. God is here, and God will restore this Good world. 

Followers, what helps comfort you in this time? 

[enst1000bk]

Ugh I’m Soooo Out of Energy!

Hey everyone! This weeks topic is a little bit different than those in the past because it’s a resource in a different way than we have been focusing on. Today we’re going to be talking about energy: Renewable vs Nonrenewable and the advantages and disadvantages of both. Let’s dive in! First, what is energy? Energy by definition is the ability to do work. In order to move any part of my body, or even just to think, my brain has to perform work in order to do the desired function. Energy can come in many different forms like kinetic (moving my arm), electrical, chemical, potential, mechanical, and more. Energy is all around us and fuels every exchange we make in the world while we’re living here. Fossil fuels like coal, natural gas, and oil are examples of nonrenewable energy sources. When the energy stored in a fossil fuel gets used up, there’s no getting it back. They take millions of years to form within the crust of the Earth under very specific conditions, so they technically are renewed at some point, but they’re not renewable in a human’s life time. Other sources of energy like wind, sun, and flowing water can be used to create energy over and over again, which makes them a renewable energy source. Recently, the world has been trying to switch over from a predominantly non-renewable energy market to one that is more sustainable and utilizes more renewable energy sources. 

 The reason many people still use fossil fuels (especially developing countries) as energy sources is because they are cheaper to use than renewable sources. However, fossil fuels are detrimental to the overall health of the planet. Fossil fuels are the leading cause of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere, which is also the leading cause of global warming and climate change (EPA).

However, as science and technology progress we as a society are coming closer to unlocking the secret to renewable energy. In current years, the cost of renewable energy has been decreasing and thus the use of renewable energy like solar power has been increasing in popularity. In the US about 18% of all energy used came from renewable sources in 2017 (Wales, 2018). Countries like the US and Canada have also made pledges to produce almost entirely renewable energy by the year 2050, with cities like Los Angeles pledging to be 100% renewable by 2050 (Walton, 2019). Clearly, people want to use renewable energy because they know it is better for the planet and the well being of everyone living on it. The problem is that companies still prefer to use fossil fuels so that they can make a bigger profit, because most people in this world thrive off of a capitalist economy in the United States, whether they know it or not. That goes into another rant thought, so why don’t we get back on track and talk more about energy, shall we?

As mentioned in my blog before, energy comes with different qualities depending on how it is used and sourced. For instance, high quality energy comes from high-quality sources, and it takes high-quality energy to mine more high-quality energy. We also know that when high-quality energy is used, some of it is lost as low-quality energy that can’t be used nearly as effectively. Net energy is the amount of usable high-quality energy that is given off from a certain quantity of an energy source. When oil was first being used as a source of energy, it had a higher net energy because most resources were found in large concentrated deposits that weren’t too deep underground, so it didn’t take that much energy to drill down for it, transport it up to the surface, or transport it to useful energy to consumers. Now however, as the hunt for oil slows down due to supplies dwindling at alarming rates, the oil is less concentrated and loses more to low-quality energy, the net energy decreases. Not only does it require more energy to find oil nowadays, but it is also much more expensive. This loss of high-quality energy to low-quality energy is known as energy waste. Almost 84% of energy used in America is wasted, that means only 16% of what Americans pay for for electricity and energy is actually used. That’s a huge waste of energy! One of the biggest wastes of energy comes from our cars. American society revolves heavily around transportation and unfortunately most people don’t utilize public transportation. Instead, most Americans travel places by using their own car that is typically not very gas efficient. Instead of people sitting together in one vehicle like a bus, most citizens that can afford it choose to drive their own vehicle for the sake of comfort and luxury. Obviously, we all want to be comfortable and having your own car makes that super easy, but it also has a direct attack on our planet. In 2017, only 1.15% of cars sold in the U.S. were electric cars, meaning that the emissions coming from cars were most carbon dioxide, and further lead to global warming and climate change (Bellan, 2018). 

The trend for electric cars has continued to rise every year since they’ve been on the market, but the majority of Americans (and people around the world) are using gas-guzzling cars and polluting the planet at a speed unprecedented to anything like it before. Scientists believe that “humanity has about 12 years to avoid the most dire consequences of climate change. To avert catastrophic sea level rise, food shortages, and widespread drought and wildfire, emissions must be reduced by 45 percent from 2010 levels, and by 100 percent by 2050” (Bellan, 2018). That’s a little bit more than a decade! People should be freaking out but most citizens are complicit in watching the earth crumble around them, and I think it’s mostly because of ignorance and a sense of not being important enough to make change. At this point, I don’t think people can say that they aren’t aware of the environmental crises our planet is facing every day. We are constantly bombarded about how awful our planet is doing and how fast we need to act in order to fix it, but most people aren’t doing anything to help. Yeah, people use reusable straws now I guess but that just is not enough. Change has to happen soon, but it needs to be big enough to make a difference as well. I think ignorance comes in to the conversation not in the fact that people do not know what the problem is, but rather that they do not know how to help. I understand why people feel like one person is not enough to make a change, but the reality of this situation is that any help matters. Creating your own compost bin is one more person composting in the world, which means there’s one more person creating healthy soil. And who knows, you might inspire your friend to start composting, and then maybe even your whole neighborhood. Change starts at the small scale and while it may not seem like enough, it leads to bigger reactions. I agree change on a small scale is not enough given the planets current circumstances, but any change at all is a start, and we need some small changes in order to spark a massive movement. In terms of energy, this means that more people need to start buying electric cars or taking public transportation, and supporting companies that provide clean, renewable energy. Without baby steps at the beginning, the solution to the energy crisis can’t start running, and we as a planet need the solution to start sprinting forward if we are ever going to have a chance to reverse the damage already done, and then continue to live sustainably.

Word Count: 1,310 Blog Question: How else can people make the switch to clean energy without switching to electric cars or solar energy? How can we hold corporations more responsible for the type of energy they are using and selling?

                                                  Works Cited

Bellan, R. (2018, October 16). The State of Electric Vehicle Adoption in the U.S. Retrieved from https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/10/where-americas-charge-towards-electric-vehicles-stands-today/572857/

Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions Data. (2017, April 13). Retrieved from https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data

Wales, M. (2018, November 01). The Cost of Renewable Energy Versus Fossil Fuels. Retrieved from https://www.naturespath.com/en-ca/blog/cost-renewable-energy-versus-fossil-fuels/

Walton, R. (2019, May 08). LA now biggest U.S. city to announce 100 percent renewable energy goals. Retrieved from https://www.power-eng.com/articles/2019/05/la-now-biggest-u-s-city-to-announce-100-percent-renewable-energy-goals.html

[bpellerin]

True blue nightmare

How could good people with good ideas and principles end up like this? How can so many, right here in Canada, still support Donald Trump and what he represents? How can so many support (morally and financially) Ezra Levant’s Rebel Media after the Charlottesville events and the accompanying alt-right fracas?

I don’t understand it. It’s not what I thought conservatism (with which I’ve been associated for years) was all about.

It was one thing to get a chuckle out of the 2016 presidential circus. You could take a certain kind of pleasure in seeing everyone getting so upset. It’s not like the political establishment doesn’t need a good shakeup every now and then. But that wasn’t serious, was it? Sooner or later people would have to come to their senses, step away from the TV, drink some strong coffee and get back to sober, mature reality.

Alas.

Every time Mr. Trump said something outrageous (which wasn’t rare), his popularity increased. It was like being stuck in a political version of Opposite Day. What should have gone up went down, and what should have disappeared in a cloud of infamy, was loudly cheered and repeated by disturbingly large crowds.

I was never a fan of this kind of politics, and of this particular politician. I find him boorish, vulgar, and dangerously self-centred. But when so many millions of people vote for someone, you have to keep a certain tiny door open because hey, democracy is how we do things.

Yeah, well. I can no longer keep that door open. For me the last Twitter straw came in late June when, in a pair of tweets, the president managed to display crazy behaviour along with extreme meanness and vulgarity. Put together, they read: “I heard poorly rated @Morning_Joe speaks badly of me (don't watch anymore). Then how come low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came.. to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year's Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!”

It’s not OK to stand behind a man who, as POTUS, tweets like that. Especially after all the other offensive things he’s said and done against just about everyone. A man who makes a mockery of his office and the constitution he swore to uphold by making policy on the fly and who shows contempt for the two other branches of government.

Especially after the events of Charlottesville, when he started by blaming both sides for the violence before condemning white supremacists specifically only to revert to blaming both sides the next day, well, now there’s no excuse.[1] In my book, if you still support him, and defend him, you are like him.

And you are part of the problem.

____

In Canada, Trump supporters also tend to be ardent fans of The Rebel. I’ve known Ezra Levant for a long time. I’ve worked with him at Sun News Network (not particularly closely, but he had me on his show several times). My husband, John Robson, contributed historical video vignettes for The Rebel from day one. Nobody will make me believe that Ezra is a racist or a bigot. I know he’s not. But some of the stuff he runs appeals to a lot of them. I believe it’s a mistake for Ezra to stir that pot of festering anger for clicks, YouTube views, and financial contributions.

That’s not something I’ve just recently discovered. I had been discussing these things with my husband for many long months before he finally announced he was stepping back from contributing to the site, and I do think he waited too long. He has explained himself elsewhere and I don’t need to add to that.

Charlottesville was the last straw for a lot of people, including my old friend Brian Lilley and National Post columnist Barbara Kay. If Charlottesville had been a one-off thing, many people might have opted to forgive Ezra and his crew, but it wasn’t. The tone of The Rebel had long been one of anger, sometimes paranoia, with a remarkable blind spot when it came to the company it kept. Trying to distance yourself from the alt-right was a step in the right direction, but it was too little, too late. Better than nothing, but not by much.

I know many people who still support The Rebel, post-Charlottesville, many of them financially. It makes me sad. Because I know these people are not stupid, or evil, or racist, or any more bigoted than the average person (oh, come on; we all have some of that in us). But what they are is angry, frustrated, and genuinely scared for the future of their country.

These are people who think Canada – as the West generally – may have lost its way. They worry that the values that made Canada what it is today are not, well, valued anymore. They think the people in charge are worried about the wrong stuff (in no particular order: climate change, multiculturalism, transgender rights, inclusiveness, safe spaces, organic meat) at the expense of the right stuff (traditional family values, cultural assimilation of immigrants, national security, military preparedness, law and order, property rights and free speech).

Do me a favour and hold the scorn for a minute. Forget that you disagree with these people, and try this thought experiment. Imagine that the roles are reversed. Imagine yourself – a fine, reasonable, upstanding citizen who works hard to do the best he can every day of his life – having serious concerns about the path your country has taken and being not only ignored but ridiculed for having those fears.

Keep holding that scorn. You can do it.

Imagine that your concerns are ignored and ridiculed, for years on end. That no matter how hard you try you can’t seem to get your message across. Year after year you see things deteriorate some more, and no politician speaks to your concerns. Until one day this bizarre orange person shows up and says, without fear or embarrassment, some of the things you’ve been saying for so long. Oh sure, he’s also saying things you don’t agree with – even things you find offensive. But there he is again talking about one of your biggest worries and pledging to do something to make it better!

You’re doing awesome on the scorn-holding front. You’re almost there. Keep it up!

You are so desperate and angry after being ignored and ridiculed for so many years that you are willing to ignore a lot of unpleasant facts about this weird orange person and cheer for him anyway. Because he’s the only one among all those politicians who’s not ignoring or ridiculing you. Better yet, the weird orange person gets ridiculed just like you and yet he keeps saying those things you’re so desperate to hear, and offers no apologies for his behaviour.

OK. Breathe, the thought experiment is over. Back to being you.

I know what you’re thinking. There’s a reason no serious politician speaks the way our long-frustrated angry voter does. That’s because that kind of talk is guaranteed to get anyone laughed out of the serious crowd. That’s not because everyone in the media is a liberal idiot. You’d be amazed how many conservatives and middle-of-the-road types lurk in newsrooms. I’m not prepared to say there’s no such thing as biased journalists, but as I’ve been saying to conservatives for years, if you believe in a media conspiracy to silence conservatives I’ve got a big shiny new bridge to sell you.

Also? I have news. Journalists can’t even organize pub night without 16 rounds of reply-all emails – and even then half the people typically fail to show up. Journalists couldn’t conspire to silence conservatives if they tried. They can’t even organize their own desk drawers.

Ryan Holiday, in his wonderful Ego is the Enemy, quotes Seneca that “He who indulges in empty fears earns himself real fears,” and adds that what paranoia usually does is create “the persecution it seeks to avoid, making the owner a prisoner of its own delusions and chaos.”

The reason our angry, frustrated and long-despised conservatives get ignored is because a lot of their opinions are often 1) very unpopular with normal people who are not themselves journalists; and 2) expressed in spectacularly sub-optimal ways.

I can count of the fingers of one hand the number of conservatives in this country who can express a conservative opinion without tangling themselves up in their own rhetorical ineptitude. I’m married to one of them (I disagree with him on a lot of things, but he’s one hell of a debater). It doesn’t help your cause when you look angry and clumsy while trying to make an unpopular point. It just reinforces people’s opinion of you as someone who doesn’t need to be taken all that seriously. Which angers our already frustrated conservative some more until one day he shows up at a rally wearing that red baseball cap and starts filling up his feed with #MAGA retweets.

___

Nobody wins when all sides are shouting at each other when forced to interact and muttering darkly to themselves otherwise. We need to start talking to each other, not screaming at each other. And we need to start listening to one another.

We need a dialogue.

In practice, that means conservatives need to quit sounding so paranoid. That’s a big one. They also really ought to avoid whining about being ignored and/or persecuted. That just makes them sound petulant and entitled. I would also counsel evangelicals to really make an effort to refrain from using Biblical language when talking to non-Christians. It really grates on the ear, and that’s not helpful.

Fears about society going to hell in a handbasket may or may not be entirely justified. Personally I think it’s not quite as bad as all that. Human beings have been through worse, and somehow we’re still all here.

Regardless of what I think, if you’re trying to convince other people that current policies or ideas or ideologies are destructive, it helps a lot not to start the conversation with “YOU’RE TRYING TO DESTROY OUR COUNTRY!!!” I’m pretty sure there are no reasonable Canadians who are deliberately trying to do that, not even Gerald Butts. Being accused like that does not make anyone receptive to your points.

Explain your concerns gently. Acknowledge that you don’t see eye to eye with your interlocutors. Further acknowledge that there is some good in your opponents’ positions (really; do try to find something, even if it’s just good intentions). But then calmly and patiently walk them through your concerns. Help them understand something they might not even have thought about. Try to make your opponents into allies, if only for a tiny bit. That’s your beachhead. You need a beachhead. Because right now you’re out at sea.

Oh, and please – try to stay away from making people who don’t believe traditional heteronormative values are the entire point of civilized society not feel like unrepentant sinners. It’s a big, varied world with all kinds of funky people in it, and most of us are doing our best every day to be as good as we can. Gay parents aren’t worse than straight parents. In fact, I’ve met plenty of gay parents who were much better than the traditional, straight parents I had growing up. Granted, anecdotes don’t make for good policy. But do try to keep an open mind and an open heart. I strongly suggest keeping your focus on making sure children are well taken care of – because everyone agrees with that goal. And work very gently from there.

Lefties and other non-conservatives: Please stop calling people names because they hold views you consider retrograde. I get that a lot of Christians are annoying when they talk about people indulging in a gay “lifestyle”, as though being queer was a passing fad, like some kind of metaphysical fidget spinner. They make me cringe, too. But that doesn’t necessarily make them obnoxious bigots. Even in the cases where it does, there’s not much to be gained by shutting down a conversation with someone just because they take the Bible literally. Do try to engage them. Smile as you point them to statistics showing children raised in non-traditional homes do as well (if not, in certain cases, better) than their peers. Remind them – gently – that divorce does a lot more damage to children than having two mommies, and that divorce is, at the moment at least, an overwhelmingly heterosexual issue. That maybe we could all try to work to strengthen all families, for the benefit of the children who never asked to be there.

Engage conservatives on immigration and Western values. It’s to the benefit of everyone to make sure we don’t unwittingly allow tolerance to ding our cherished values of equality and inclusiveness. Agree that it would be OK to discriminate against a group that wanted to throw homosexuals off a cliff, or that anyone who demands the right to perform clitorectomies should be told to get in line or get out. Agree to some lines in the sand. Give conservatives something they can work with you to improve.

Show some sympathy for the crowds of people who – for one reason or another – find themselves bypassed by technological evolution. People whose skills are no longer in demand and who are too old to retrain. People who feel helpless and out-of-date with the world. You don’t have to remind them that their best-before date is fast approaching. They’re painfully conscious of it. The fact that some of them blame cheap labour and “job-stealing immigrants” for their troubles is unhelpful, I get it. But try to have some room in your heart for the thought that very often it’s anger and fear you hear talking, not real sentiment.

And if all of that fails, and you’re up against a wall of obtuseness in human form, keep in mind this splendid advice from The Power of No’s authors James and Claudia Altucher: 1) Don't argue; it's pointless. You will never change their mind. 2) Let them state their opinion. Try to learn something from it. Try to respect one angle of their point of view. 3) Everyone just wants to be heard. 4) Listen.

If we could all make an effort to listen to each other more, and yell insults less, we’d bring back much-needed sanity to our public square.

____

[1] Lots of good people make a convincing case that there was indeed violence on all sides in Charlottesville. That some counter-protesters showed up to disrupt a rally that had been allowed by the authorities, armed with all kinds of weapons, clearly anticipating violence. Other counter-protesters were peaceful. As were some of the folks who showed up to protest the plan to remove the statue of Robert E. Lee. Fine. Nothing is 100% black-and-white, as it were. But when one person from one side (the side that associates with the KKK and neo-Nazis, as far as we know) rams his car into a crowd of people, the president has a solemn moral duty to come down hard on that side. Not to deny that there were bad people elsewhere. But to emphasize that deliberately killing people in the name of a racist ideology is unmistakably un-American.

[newstfionline]

How Scared Should People on the Border Be?

By Domingo Martinez, NY Times, March 31, 2017

BROWNSVILLE, TEX.--The news here on the border with Mexico travels fast.

Most of it is, in fact, “fake news”--conjecture and unverifiable gossip exchanged over “el Feisbuk,” which is what people here in the Rio Grande Valley call the social network. Instead of snapshots and emojis, it now disseminates warnings. People are frightened, and frightened people repeat things that frighten them more:

Stay at home tomorrow. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is conducting raids in the kitchens.

Don’t send your kids to school on Wednesday. The border patrol is looking for kids with no papers.

Don’t drive down 802 on Fridays anymore.

There’s a checkpoint at the grocery store. They arrested 100 people last night at 10.

Who knows? Some of it might be true.

You can’t drive much farther south in Texas than Brownsville, a city separated from its Mexican neighbor by an iron fence, like an exclusive country club or drug dealer’s hacienda. It’s a border town, and one that has been suspiciously quiet while its future is bandied about in Washington by a president who equates “making America great again” to “getting the Mexicans out.”

Much of the Rio Grande Valley abuts the fence, which stretches some 650 miles and was built in 2006 for $7 billion. The fence has done little to deter smuggling. Drug cartels, being crafty criminals, get around it in any number of ways: tunnels, light aircraft, homemade submarines, even T-shirt cannons fired over the fence.

Smugglers of humans have adapted as well, using similar techniques (minus the T-shirt cannons). The main effect of making it harder to get across the border has been to create a greater need for coyotes--people, many of whom have ties to the cartels, who will help you cross for pay. This means even more trauma for migrants, including robbery, rape, ransoming and murder.

Many of those who make it across end up staying here, on the border, because there’s another checkpoint an hour and a half north, at Sarita.

There are two border towns in every border town. There’s the one I’ve recently discovered, which is deeply involved in local schools, has air conditioning and Wi-Fi, and drives comfortably appointed tanks that pass as cars. It has Snapchat for the kids who do their homework, all the cable in the world and so, so much food.

In this town, every Sunday is reason enough for barbecue, guacamole and limes picked fresh from the tree, squeezed right into your beer.

Then there is the other border town, where I was raised back in the 1970s. It lives directly behind the first. It avoids eye contact. It cooks in the kitchens and manicures your St. Augustine grass and is paid--not much--by the hour. Those people--not your criminals or rapists or “bad hombres”--are waiting and waiting to take a swipe at that golden lie of the “American dream” they endured thousands of treacherous miles worthy of a Tolkien novel to reach.

And while they wait, they work. Any work. They struggle through tertiary economies--reselling clothes, furniture or appliances at roadside stands, making tamales or tortillas in garages, setting up hair salons in living rooms (men’s cuts $7), cleaning houses and offices and schools, mowing, cutting, picking. They always work. The work is compulsory.

These two towns have lived side by side peacefully for generations. It’s like a tide meeting a shore, a pattern repeated naturally, with a telescoping logic: There’s the border in the border town, then the border town in Texas, then Texas in the United States, then the United States in the world. Now invert it: There’s the world, there’s America, there’s Texas, there’s the border town and finally, within the town, there’s still another world, waiting to get in.

Before I moved back to Brownsville in January, I’d spent 23 years in Seattle. Throughout last year’s election, I watched the news with the eyes of a West Coast liberal. As the veneer of social decorum paled and then vanished, we sat around being entertained by progressive news shows. Even after the confounding results of the election, we felt reassured and validated in our perception of the world, our ability to call out hypocrisy in institutions and governments, lawyers and hedge fund managers.

Then I came home. Now I see, up close, the impact that election could have on people I know who are very much in danger of losing everything.

They were burning the sugar cane when I came back. Slow-moving trucks with loud speakers drove around the fields calling out in Spanish that if anyone was hiding in there, it was best to get out: The fields were about to burn. It wasn’t a trick. No one was going to arrest you. Just get out.

The border was making a humanist accommodation. I wasn’t certain why, but this put a knot in my throat. I felt something akin to pride.

Lately there have been images on the evening news of gendarmes in ICE jackets knocking on doors, terrified children crying, portly Latin men in handcuffs, Border Patrol agents hydrating migrants in dirty ball caps before escorting them away for processing--the stuff of nightmares for the vulnerable.

Conversely, there are stories about the parasites on the side of “the peoples.” The immigration “lawyers” who convince non-English speakers to pay thousands of dollars earned $5 an hour for a sheet of paper with official-looking letterhead on it, convincing them that it will be enough “papeles” to ward off the most insistent of warrant knocks. A new kind of frontier snake oil.

When I first came back, I wanted to accompany my father on a trip across the border into Matamoros for a pharmacy run--his Medicare covered only so much of his prescriptions, and he could get triple the amount for the same price there.

Dad took a step back and looked at me: “¡Hombre, estas pendejo! ¡Te secuestraran en cuanto te vean!” You’re a goddamned idiot, he said. They’ll kidnap you the minute they see you.

He thinks I look like a “bolillo.” A white guy. Which is funny, because when my friends on the West Coast looked at me, I could tell they were envisioning a big floppy hat and crisscrossed bandoleers and fantastic revolvers.

What frustrates me most about this border town is how passively it awaits its sentence from the bolillos from afar. Marches and demonstrations, “Days Without an Immigrant,” they happen only in faraway cities. Not here. It bewildered me at first, and then I understood: Oh, yeah. Probably not the smartest thing for people here to do, drawing attention to themselves right at the border.

“Terrified of deportation? Let’s march and make ourselves known!”

Civil disobedience is the stuff of privilege, as alt-right keyboard cowboys love to point out on bulletin boards, because the people who really have something to lose don’t want to be publicly marked. Reports of people apprehended for immigration violations pollinate the news daily: a father arrested right after dropping his daughter off at school; a battered woman arrested in the courthouse where she had gone to seek protection from her violent boyfriend; an immigrant kept in a detention center despite having a brain tumor.

But is all this really a result of the new political climate? Or are we just hearing about it more, thanks to the hysteria propagated on el Feisbuk?

The Trump administration has said that the government will stop exempting “classes or categories of removable aliens from potential enforcement.” But no new laws have been passed. If you ask the Border Patrol and ICE, they say there have been no changes in policy down here at the border, or none that they’re willing to admit.

Some of the stock images we see on the news are from long before the last election, or instances in which warrants are being served after months of investigation. ICE does not actually have crack detectives who drink coffee outside a suspect’s mother’s house, waiting until he comes home for Christmas to nab him.

It might be months before the aftershocks of the new administration’s ministrations finally reach the frontier and we see the actual effect of its new policies.

But will the president’s dream of a new and bigger wall change anything down here? Very likely not. Tunnels will be dug deeper. Cannons aimed higher. Ladders built taller. Coyotes will charge more. And most of the people building the wall will be Hispanic. In fact, dozens of the companies bidding for the contract are owned by Hispanics. Racism and self-loathing aside, ethics are the stuff of the comfortable: Down here, work is work. The Guardian quoted a Puerto Rican businessman who voiced a fairly universal attitude toward the $25 billion project:

“I think the wall is a waste of time and money,” said Patrick Balcazar, the owner of San Diego Project Management. “For environmental reasons, it’s dumb. From an economic point of view, it’s dumb.” But he said: “If you want to put up a wall, I’m going to put up the best wall I can and I’m going to pay my people. My goal is to build a wall so I can make enough money so we can turn this thing around and tear down the wall again.”

Or quicker to the point: “We don’t see it as politics,” said Jorge Diaz, who manages De la Fuente Construction. “We just see it as work.”

For once, I’d like to hear something good come out of this part of the world, just to shake things up. The only news to come out of South Texas is framed in the superlative, and not positively: extraordinary poverty, profound rates of illiteracy, generations-deep nepotism, off-the-charts diabetes, casual civil-rights abuses, untreated wastewater in the Rio Grande, the mythical crossover border violence and the mosquitoes.

Lots to be proud of, really, when you reverse it, and consider them obstacles to overcome that make people, or a place, who they are. Perhaps that’s why the Rio Grande Valley has so many proud sons and daughters.

I’m a citizen, born in Brownsville; I have no personal reason to worry. But I do, now, carry my passport and another form of ID with me when I leave the house, as if this were Eastern Europe in the buildup to World War II. Why tempt fate? Down here, it used to be that your command of English could see you waltz through a traffic stop. There were times in the ‘80s when I was a teenager and my friends and I could hardly speak from drinking, and we’d still be allowed back across the border after a night in Matamoros. But those days are gone.

Now, whenever I see any uniformed personnel, I quietly activate my civil, American posture and prepare to level my voice out and stand guard over my father and his status as a naturalized citizen, if the need arises.

Which, again, is mealy-mouthed, knee-jerk liberal posturing, because in reality, his 71 years of experience here, his own adaptation to his environment, will see him through what’s next, as will this border, which has lived through wars and political mood swings and buffoons and bloviates before, without the help of el Feisbuk, or people like me.

Domingo Martinez is the author of the memoirs “The Boy Kings of Texas” and “My Heart Is a Drunken Compass.”