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Mandragora swallows the moon and the oceans turn to fire

Is it a prion disease? Have aliens orbited Make’EmStupid Satellites to keep us in our place? Why is this happening everywhere at once all over the world?

Fundamentalists in India gobble up Modi’s us-against-them bullshit and start torching mosques. They’re Hindu fundies, not Christian, but it doesn’t seem to help one bit. Duterte, Putin, Trump, LePen (although the French managed to avoid electing her), Taliban, Bolsonaro, Xi Jinping, the list goes on and on, everywhere. Reality disappears behind made-up stories people kill for. Or would like to kill for.

The top-of-mind recent example is antivaxxers. They invent metastasizing conspiracies in favor of a devastating disease to avoid the safest medical intervention there is. Covid vaccines are gobsmackingly safe [1]. Safer than aspirin. Safer than burgers. Safer than lettuce, for all I know. I don’t think we collect statistics on lettuce. But if we did, I wouldn’t be surprised if vaccines turned out to be safer. Antivaxxers condemn people to die rather than admit that all — all! — of the evidence is against them.

There’s the anti-choice crowd. They’ve twisted “my body, my choice” into its opposite. Reproductive choice [2] means women don’t die from botched abortions. Nor does it kill their neighbors. Antivaxxers are saying they can do whatever they want, no matter whether it kills you. It is the opposite. But words mean nothing now and nobody cares that “Don’t kill me” morphed into “Shut up while I kill you.”

Then there’s the whole melee about transwomen. (Transmen barely appear, which gives the game away. Misogyny 101.) Instead of escaping society’s invented gender boxes, that movement has decided sex doesn’t exist. Biological sex. The method for making babies, which leaves babies everywhere, which would kind of prove it exists. They’ve decided it doesn’t. It’d be news to Silurian fish that sex is vague. It’d be news to pine trees, if pine trees read the news. Evolution could barely happen without it. It’s a denial of reality on the order of flat earthers. (To be clear, you can believe what you like in your own world, where it doesn’t damage nonbelievers. Nobody else has to buy into your sense that it’s turtles all the way down [3].) But a bunch of trans rights activists (#NotAllTranswomen) have decided to believe in the transubstantiation of the flesh of men into the essence of women, and ruin and death to the heretics [4].

The biggest and most lethal group, though, is the deniers of the climate crisis. The chemistry that means carbon dioxide in the air traps heat has been known since the 1800s [5]:

In a series of experiments conducted in 1856, Eunice Newton Foote — a scientist and women’s rights campaigner from Seneca Falls, New York — became the first person to discover that altering the proportion of carbon dioxide (then called “carbonic acid gas”) in the atmosphere would change its temperature. This relationship between carbon dioxide and the earth’s climate has since become one of the key principles of modern meteorology, the greenhouse effect, and climate science. … [N]o one acknowledged Foote was the first to make this discovery for more than a century

Meanwhile, right up until now (yes, I mean Manchin), people whose salary depends on not understanding that fact tell themselves stories about natural variation or a hotter sun or tech solutions or that we’ll just turn up the A/C. Anything to force somebody else to take care of it, even when it kills people.

(Just for the record: No, the variation is off the charts. No, the other planets aren’t warming. No, people make and use technology. If technology was the solution, rather than people being the problem, the tech would have already been applied. No, there’s no way to turn up the A/C for all of nature, except by not idiotically warming the planet to begin with.)

The climate crisis deniers are the worst of the lot because they’ll kill billions of people. Billions with a “b.”

So here we are, trapped in alternative “facts.” If the loonies don’t get us for ignoring them, reality will when it crashes down.

7 Comments (Open | Close)

7 Comments To "Mandragora swallows the moon and the oceans turn to fire"

#1 Comment By quixote On 23 Oct, 2021 @ 18:04

Then again, I just saw [6] from Jane Goodall advising optimism. She’s one of the few people who might know.

All is lost, but the new civilization that rises from these ashes will be interesting.

#2 Comment By Branjor On 02 Nov, 2021 @ 13:37

Liberal media outlets are citing “white backlash” and “rejection of criticl race theory” as the reason for a possible Repub win in the VA governor’s race, ignoring the Loudoun sexual assaults and gender identity ideology. Nice that they believe all parents who aren’t white are OK with their children being raped. If the Dems lose this or just win it by a hairsbreadth, they need to learn the lesson that trans ideology is a losing issue and a vote drainer.

#3 Comment By quixote On 02 Nov, 2021 @ 21:50

I haven’t even heard about whatever atrocity that is. Nor, honestly, do I want to. Not the details. I’m maxed out on awfulness. But the outlines I can guess.

Meanwhile, all the talk is about how white women prefer racism and that that’s what put Youngkin so far ahead.

/*endless screaming*/

#4 Comment By Branjor On 03 Nov, 2021 @ 08:29

“A boy in a dress” raped a girl in a girls’ bathroom in a Loudoun County high school. He was assumed “trans” by the school and allowed in that bathroom. His mother later said he “identified as a boy.” The school ignored the assault and just transferred him to another high school, where he then proceeded to rape another girl, this time in a classroom. The father of the first victim, Scott Smith, who leaned politically right, went to a school board meeting to get answers and a woman said his daughter was lying. He started cursing at her and was arrested and dragged away. Obama made a general statement to the effect that parents concerned about these scandals in the schools were peddling “fake outrage.” The boy in question was found guilty of sodomizing the girl and forcing fellatio on her. I hope it’s OK if I give this Daily Mail link.

[7]

#5 Comment By quixote On 03 Nov, 2021 @ 12:09

Jeeezus. Not a word on the left, since touching trans issues involves touching their own religious beliefs, not just other people’s.

(Daily Mail UK is fine if they’re writing truth, like above. Not, if not. Sadly, this stuff appears only in right wing mass media because it serves their purposes of going back to the 1950s. And of course among feminist writers who aren’t anywhere near mass. Did I say endless screaming earlier?)

This is not going to work out, is it? Just have to hope that the new civilization that rises from the ashes is an improvement.

#6 Comment By NW Luna On 22 Nov, 2021 @ 13:34

You probably already know, but Kara Dansky, @KDansky, is a good one to follow for news and actions on this issue. She’s been interviewed on Fox News (ZOMG!) a few times because other media seem to think biological sex is transphobic.

WoLF, @WomensLibFront, also does good work. They were involved in a FOIA request to the WA State Dept of Corrections for info on how many trans-identified men were held in women’s prisons. The ACLU sued to stop the FOIA. Yes, the ACLU. They’ve been coopted by the trans ideologues and what is women’s safety compared to the feelings of men? Obvious which one is going to lose.

I love what UK women are doing. Women Won’t Wheesht! (Scots for “Women won’t shut up.” (grin)

#7 Comment By quixote On 25 Nov, 2021 @ 11:03

Yes, to all your points, Luna.

To me, it’s heartbreaking that the only mass media willing to give women a voice on this are outfits like Fox and Daily Mail. (To be fair, as time goes by and the truth comes out, the BBC and The Times (UK) are waking up.) Their agenda is to keep women in the good old gender boxes. Which is the opposite of getting rid of them entirely. Which is what people pulling for women’s rights would like to reach. And yet, here we are. The only outlets are the ones trying to get back to June Cleaver. Just makes me want to scream. Endlessly.

Wheesht is such a great word!