Climate hysteria and President Trump's irritation with General Motors — indicative of the "bin"

28 November 2018

A question

Has the United States become a loosely organized cage for epidemic cultural insanity?

To wit

Sometimes, I amuse my (skeptically inclined) self by ruminating on tidbits of culturally revealing news.

Like four noticeable pieces from just this week:

the US government-generated 2018 climate assessment

President Trump's dismissive treatment of it —

as well as

GM's reduction of its car-making and workforce

and

the President's reaction to that.

This essay's structure

I will begin with summaries of the news pieces.

And end with the observation that all this constitutes:

cultural "nuts-ness"

and

Donald Trump's not unlikely reelection.

First, comes the US government's 2018 Fourth National Climate Assessment

Here direly summarized by Eric Levitz:

By 2100, routine droughts will ravage the Midwest, bringing the bread basket’s agricultural yields down to 1980s levels (when America had far fewer mouths to feed).

[S]easonal wildfires will arrive in the Southeast, where communities and infrastructure are entirely unprepared for such conflagrations.

As ozone levels rise and air quality diminishes, asthma and airborne diseases will grow more prevalent.

As temperature changes shift the geographic range and distribution of various disease-carrying insects, more Americans will suffer from mosquito and tick-borne illnesses; by 2050, the number of West Nile virus cases is expected to more than double.

As sweltering heat waves become more frequent, the prevalence of heart attacks and other cardiovascular problems will rise; by 2100, climate change will condemn so many Americans to premature, heart-related deaths, such fatalities will cost the U.S. economy upward of $140 billion.

As rising tides inundate coastal cities, millions of Americans — and billions of dollars worth of infrastructure — will need to be relocated. As warming renders large swathes of the global south unlivable, American exporters will lose entire consumer markets on which they currently rely, while demands for U.S. humanitarian assistance and disaster aid will grow.

In total, the report estimates that climate change will render the American economy more than 10 percent smaller than it would have otherwise been by 2100.

After the report was released — President Trump flamboyantly took the stage

Here humorously treated by Adam Raymond:

The Trump administration’s effort to delegitimize its own climate change report continued Tuesday night, with President Trump declaring himself not a “believer” of the 1,600-page National Climate Assessment, which paints a dire picture of the coming effects of global warming.

Trump cited his own “high levels of intelligence” when asked why he was skeptical of the report, which was prepared with the input of 13 different federal agencies and 300 scientists.

“One of the problems that a lot of people like myself — we have very high levels of intelligence, but we’re not necessarily such believers,” Trump said.

DAWSEY: You said yesterday when you were leaving that you were skeptical of a climate change report that the government had done. Can you just explain why you’re skeptical of that report?

TRUMP: One of the problems that a lot of people like myself — we have very high levels of intelligence, but we’re not necessarily such believers.

You look at our air and our water, and it’s right now at a record clean. But when you look at China and you look at parts of Asia and when you look at South America, and when you look at many other places in this world, including Russia, including — just many other places — the air is incredibly dirty.

And when you’re talking about an atmosphere, oceans are very small. And it blows over and it sails over. I mean, we take thousands of tons of garbage off our beaches all the time that comes over from Asia.

It just flows right down the Pacific, it flows, and we say where does this come from. And it takes many people to start off with.

Yes, that's the American president chatting.

I doubt that any of world history's elected leaders could match his on-point articulateness.

Following climate news — came General Motors' decisions . . .

. . . to quit making some entrenched (even iconic) car models and to cut its workforce in compensation.

I partially addressed this topic yesterday.

YouTube's "The Fast Lane Trucks" intelligently tackled some of the numerical reasons for GM's decision.

And Alex Dykes provided an equally smart, but differently focused, summary on his channel.

President Trump leapt into action again

And (again) with an apparently dubious grasp regarding the market mechanics of what was going on.

He tweeted that he was:

Very disappointed with General Motors and their CEO, Mary Barra, for closing plants in Ohio, Michigan and Maryland. Nothing being closed in Mexico & China. The U.S. saved General Motors, and this is the THANKS we get! We are now looking at cutting all @GM subsidies, including....

....for electric cars. General Motors made a big China bet years ago when they built plants there (and in Mexico) - don’t think that bet is going to pay off. I am here to protect America’s Workers!

(Why, one wonders, did the President not go after Chrysler and Ford for essentially the same offense?)

Let's reflect on these events

Are they forms of American insanity?

I'd say so.

First, assessing the 2018 climate assessment

Human extinction is not (apparently) in the report's forecast. And the document reportedly anticipates a "mere" 10 percent contraction in what might have been the US economy in 2100.

Even if accurate, such a dip would disappear among History's much larger and always fluctuating accountings of the same thing.

Consequently, from a selfish "conservative" perspective, the conniptions that fearful liberals are suffering (with the report's release) are unwarranted.

And in truth, the more familiar one is with climate projections and the science underlying them — the more one recognizes how quantitatively uncertain everything is.

Just because millions of people will (almost literally) drown in ice melt — or alternatively go without fresh water and food — does not mean that every other place on the planet will suffer similarly.

In consequence, President Trump's incoherently dismissive reaction to the climate assessment is (arguably) politically astute. Unpleasantness here is going to fall primarily on the masses who have no say in American governance or policy.

In fairness to Trump's ignorant callousness, can you think of any other politically influential American leader, who ever took global humanity into full moral account?

I cannot think of any.

Not even Jimmy Carter — who once dismissively implied that the North Vietnamese were just as responsible for our arguably genocidal reaction to their civil war, as we had been. See Edwin A. Martini, Invisible Enemies: The American War on Vietnam, 1975-2000 (University of Massachusetts Press, 2007) (at page 45).

There is something about entering (or playing at) politics that renders people incapable of gathering facts and applying sound ethical reasoning to them.

Climatic warming is one of these issues. Whichever "side" one takes, rational perception flies out the window and into the storm.

Moving on — GM's reaction to market events

I am not persuaded, as others are, that Ford, Chrysler and GM's quit decisions are wise in the long term.

They've merely ceded claims to expertise and manufacturing ability to foreign companies. Consider well-paid German and Japanese labor forces' success in the United States. Those companies are meeting American CAFE and safety standards. And, contrary to the American auto makers' position, Americans are still buying foreign-brand sedans.

I also don't buy the claim that the entire auto market has moved toward crossovers, SUVs and trucks.

Even in truck-crazy Texas, sedans (often small ones) are everywhere. The same is true, wherever I go in the United States. Not everyone has thirty to sixty thousand dollars to fork over for one of the auto industry's grossly overpriced raised vehicles.

What American auto manufacturing has definitively conceded to "foreigners" are adaptable manufacturing smarts, clever implementation, and a tolerance for smaller profit margins. All of which competitors, even the rich ones, seem to have little trouble with.

Last, President Trump's reaction to GM's decision

Again, politically astute.

It's "kinda" nice to see a Prez jump on corporations, who are firing American workers. Even if his fix (removing subsidies for electric cars) would worsen the job loss problem.

Many of us are pleased that the nation's Chief Executive cares enough to go public with his irritation. We are, I suspect, willing to overlook the narcissism and self-inflicted ignorance that went with it.

In that regard, did you ever see Oily Dickin' Bill — or Hypocrisy's Obamanator — or for that matter, Bush the War Christian — do anything succinctly similar to what Trump has tried to do, while all three were underhandedly doing their efficient best to ship American jobs to foreign shores?

Nope.

Trump may be a despicable idiot and a gross incompetent. But he knows what appeals to the working people. You know, the people whom the American Establishment has made it their full-time business to splay and shaft.

The moral? — Yes, we are living in a Bin of Loons

Where one richly egocentric guy — in transparently crazy and essentially ineffective ways — is doing more for American working morale, than the equally plutocratically leaning leaders, who eagerly paved the way to where we are now.

When everyone at society's top is rapacious and immoral, the illusion that someone there cares (a bit) about the rest of us is — also insanely — uplifting.

At this rate, Donald Trump may be president again. Which in itself, indicates how failed American culture has become.

Welcome to the Bin. And I hope you like warm and turbulent weather.

PeteFree.com

Climate hysteria and President Trump's irritation with General Motors — indicative of the "bin"