By Ron Reagan
“May you live in interesting times,” cursed the ancient Chinese. And why not? Interesting times sound like the way to go. I mean, who wants to live in boring times, right? Like a lifetime of nothing good on TV. But think about it! Ask the dinosaurs how interesting things got 65 million years ago. The fall of the Roman Empire — that was interesting. How about Europe during the Black Death? Pretty interesting.
Sure, the Renaissance and Enlightenment were interesting, too. But in a drawing room sort of way. At the time, most people didn’t even know they were happening. Floods, fire, famine, death, disease, destruction. Those things tend to get everyone’s attention. They’re really, really interesting.
Well, lucky us. Today we live in absolutely fascinating times. An unprecedented set of calamities is unfolding around us like some lotus blossom of the apocalypse. Most of these are of our own making. Yet, adding to the drama, there’s this quirky little feature of human nature that seems to make us do far too little too late to address most of these issues. That’s if we do anything at all.
Just a few highlights: Global warming, of course.
Global warming
Scientists have warned about this, by the way, since the late 19th century. For years, climate researchers have been warning us that breaching the 1.5-degree Fahrenheit boundary would open the door to an increasingly dire catalog of environmental disasters.
Well, according to the most precise satellite measurements, for most of the last year we have been at or beyond that threshold. 2023 had been the hottest year on record. Until this year. And how’s that been working out for us?
Phoenix just recorded 110 days in a row above 100 degrees. That’s nearly a third of the year. Temps have since dropped into the 90s, which is sweater weather for Phoenix. At least their heads are above water — possibly because there is no water. Their aquifers have been turned into putting greens.
If we’re not burning, it seems we’re flooding. Places you’ve never associated with floods pop up in the news: Connecticut?! Cars afloat, people canoeing down Main Street, dogs on rooftops, torrential rain, overflowing rivers, rising sea levels. A number of climate scientists now believe that most of Florida will be underwater by the end of the century. (Some of you may be thinking: So there’s an upside!) The highest point in the state is only 345 feet above sea level. Seventy-five years. That’s one human lifetime. And we lose an entire state. And Disney World.
Think of the economic repercussions! Real estate gone. Jobs disappeared. Forced migration of millions of people. Habitat and species loss.
If they’re under water, are they still a state? What happens to the Electoral College? Will we have to modify the flag? Can we just swap Florida for Puerto Rico?
These are pressing questions and the state’s governor, Ron DeSantis, has an answer: Stop using the term “climate change.” If we don’t say its name, it can’t get in.
Sure, we all know about global warming. We’re all concerned — unless, of course, we’re still denying its existence, like a certain presidential candidate. We try to reduce our personal carbon footprint, but, collectively, we pumped more CO² into the atmosphere last year than any year in history. We think our next car might be electric, but American automakers have scaled back their plans for EVs ’cause, y’know, sales weren’t as brisk this year as expected. And the U.S. is pumping more oil than ever before. Well, maybe you’ll just buy one of those cheaper Chinese EVs, but did you notice that the Chinese have been commissioning more coal-fired plants to build and power those EVs?
Things are getting worse faster than expected. And we’re not doing much about that. Kinda depressing.
Microplastics
I guess if it gets too hot, we could decamp to a rapidly melting Antarctica . . . where it’s snowing microplastics. Yes, every breath we take, every drop of rain everywhere on Earth, even the very blood coursing through our veins, is now full of plastic. Plastic, you see, has a special property besides making packaging that’s impossible to open without sustaining injury. When it degrades — slowly, ever so slowly — it simply breaks down into ever smaller versions of itself. It remains plastic all the way down to the molecular level where it can sneak into our bodies and cause who-knows-what damage. Here’s a bonus: As it pollutes our oceans, it contaminates the tiny, filter-feeding creatures at the bottom of the marine food chain. You know, the ones that prop up an entire ecosystem upon which billions of people depend for food.
Now, you’d think the prospect of their own kids stuffed with plastic, if not the utter degradation of our environment, just might spur the good folks in the plastics industry to some concerted action aimed at lessoning their industry’s impact on the planet, or at least on their children’s biome. Well, they do have a plan: Produce even more plastic — they hope much more — in the coming decades. You think we’re swimming in plastic now? Wait till individual grapes come in their own shrink wrap!
Presumably the industry will continue blaming us, the consumers, for plastic pollution. Globally, less than 10 percent of plastic is actually recycled. According to the plastic people, that’s all our fault.
I know, depressing. It gets worse.
If only plastic was the sole toxin being pumped into our bloodstreams! Perhaps you’ve heard of phthalates or PFAS, PFCs? Ubiquitous chemicals used in packaging, canned food, fire retardants, non-stick coatings — many domestic and industrial uses. It’s everywhere. And quite toxic — linked to cancers, developmental delays, etc. The EPA has declared that there is no safe dose of PFAS for humans. It’s also referred to as a “forever” chemical — once in the environment, it will persist for thousands of years. Kinda like plastic.
As reported on the front page of the New York Times, a lot of PFAS ends up in municipal waste, waste that is being used, year after year, as fertilizer on millions of acres of American farms. Now, cows are dying, children are getting sick, farmers are scared — for their family’s health and that they’ll lose their farms. In Maine, the majority of over 100 farms tested had dangerous levels of PFAS. One farm was so toxic it was taken offline for agriculture forever. That’s in, FOREVER.
PFAS has turned up on farmland in Michigan, as well. Naturally, you’d expect the state of Michigan to quickly begin testing its farms to assess the extent of the crisis. They have not. They’re concerned, as well they might be, that what they’ll find will devastate their agricultural industry. An industry increasingly dependent on a toxic fertilizer that is poisoning the life out of their farms, their livestock, their families.
Imagine this playing out globally! We don’t have to imagine that. It is.
Pretty depressing. Better to just look away.
Scary problems
Are you beginning to sense a theme here? Big scary problem is identified, a serious response is required, but said response would gore many oxen and upset apple carts large and small. Besides, big, scary problems are so . . . big and scary. Better we ignore the problem altogether, pretend it doesn’t exist, minimize it, maybe acknowledge it . . . but only as a concern for future generations. Or, as a last resort, you can accuse the people raising concerns about the problem as fringy lunatics with malign, probably communist intent.
It’s human nature. When threats of monumental proportions arise, especially ones for which we bear responsibility, we stick our anxious heads in a bucket of sand. Thing is, that strategy doesn’t make problems go away. They just fester.
The list is long: homelessness in our cities, income inequality, social media algorithms that divide us while preying on our kids, food that isn’t food making us sick, infertility rates spiking, birth rates tanking, leading to the coming population crash (which, admittedly, would be a benefit for every other living thing on the planet), and that old favorite, back by popular demand courtesy of guys like Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin, nuclear holocaust. Duck and cover!
But don’t worry! Elon Musk is gonna move us all to Mars where there’s nothing but volcanic dust to eat and the temperature’s a balmy minus 80 degrees.
Truly depressing. But very, very interesting.
Here’s where we pull the plane out of its nosedive.
There is another threat just as insidious and perhaps more immediate that speaks directly to the work of the FFRF — the battle between democracy and authoritarianism. Around the world and, crucially, right here in America, authoritarianism — with its usual bedfellows — is gaining ground.
Maintaining democracy
The good news is, here in America, we have something to say about that. We still live in a democratic republic. But that could change faster than you might think.
As he left the Constitutional Convention, having helped draft our constitution, Benjamin Franklin — as you probably know — was asked, “Do we have a monarchy or a republic?” “A republic,” he replied, “if you can keep it.”
Democracy is both new and terribly difficult to maintain. It is fragile and needs constant tending. We think of ourselves as the world’s oldest democracy. But for roughly half our history, women weren’t allowed to vote. Never mind the slaves. You can, in fact, make a strong argument that we were not truly a democracy until the civil rights legislation of the mid-1960s, particularly the Voting Rights Act. Pretty new-fangled, this democracy thing. Work in progress. We’re still figuring it out. And some folks still don’t cotton to the idea of every citizen having the right to vote.
The next months will tell us whether our experiment in representative government that began nearly 240 years ago will continue. Whether ideas like liberty and justice for all will spread around the globe or wither and vanish like Lindsey Graham’s spine or Lauren Boebert’s cerebral cortex.
Democracy is a conversation — sometimes an unruly argument. It’s messy. It requires compromise. You have to accept losing. Much of this does not come naturally to barely evolved apes, including certain unevolved presidential candidates.
Authoritarianism, on the other hand, is easy. It may be the human default setting. We shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking that an urge for self-determination is universal, that a yearning for freedom and liberty is baked into everyone’s genes. There are many people in the world who long for the dubious comforts of tyranny, who are waiting for the “strongman” to take the reins.
He might ride in on a tall horse. He may have a funny mustache. Or slather his face with pumpkin-hued pancake while sporting a baroque comb-over. Doesn’t matter. There will always be gullible victims who clamor for his grift.
Bane of religion
This is where religion — perhaps the original grift — joins the picture.
How many of the current autocrats have linked themselves to a church? Have exploited religious fervor for their own ends?
Vladimir Putin doesn’t strike me as a particularly pious fellow — more a poison-my-political-foes-invade-neighboring-countries-threaten-nuclear-war kinda guy. Yet, he’s very chummy with the Russian Orthodox Church, promoting himself as a defender of the faith. And they, in turn, not wanting to be poisoned or nuked, and always drawn to power, have bear-hugged him back.
You know who else hearts Putin? Right-wing evangelicals in the U.S. They see him as a warrior for Christendom. Many say they’d rather he was our president than any stinky, squishy, godless Democrat.
Nahendra Modi of India has been fanning the flames of Hindu/Muslim animosity — a pool of gasoline that barely needs a match. Like many authoritarians past and present, he has discovered that demonizing a vulnerable minority — in this case, Muslim citizens — boosts your chances of reelection. He’s also an example of autocrats forming mutual fan clubs. When Putin invaded the Ukraine and the West responded with sanctions, Modi was eager to lend a hand — to Putin.
In Afghanistan, the ruling Taliban have married governance with the worst impulses of religious zealotry. Afghan women are already deprived of the right to an education, jobs or the simple liberty to leave home without a male chaperone, even while wearing those beekeeper suits. Now, because things in Afghanistan weren’t tragic enough already, women are officially barred from speaking in public. Not public speaking, mind you. Just speaking. The Afghan men, as usual, have nothing interesting to say.
What is it with so many religionists that makes them so terrified of women? That makes them want to deprive women of basic rights? That makes them want to do terrible things to women? When the Gazans stormed across the Israeli border on Oct. 7 — opening the latest act in their long-running territorial/religious conflict — they had been told to do as they pleased to the people in the kibbutzim. Apparently, what pleased many of them was to hunt down young girls, gleefully raping, torturing, mutilating and murdering those they didn’t drag back to the howling mobs in Gaza as hostages or trophies. Was that a political statement? Religious fervor? Or a particularly perverse, shamelessly sadistic fusion of the two?
Let’s not let Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu off the hook. He only clings to power through the good graces of the right-wing religious fanatics in his governing coalition. They embrace violence every bit as much as Hamas. They, too, view the battle through their own religious lens, see a zero-sum conflict with no point in compromise.
Authoritarian rule, whether secular or religious, shares certain features. It’s almost invariably bigoted — racist, misogynistic, antisemitic, Islamophobic, homophobic. It rules by fear and seeks out vulnerable groups to victimize — gay people, trans kids, folks of other religions, people with no religion, immigrants, the poor.
It moves quickly to demonize, stifle and finally shutter a free press. It subverts independent courts. Elections become shams with leaders ultimately being “elected” for life. Think Victor Orban in Hungary.
Dictators aren’t up for a discussion, which pretty much precludes any real stab at democracy. If they’re not claiming to speak to God and for God, they’re claiming to be God. Like the Kim family in North Korea — kiss their asses or go straight to a fiery hell.
We’re not quite ready for the burqa here in America, not quite living in a “Handmaid’s Tale.” But don’t kid yourself! There are plans afoot — and not just Project 2025 — aiming to create an avowedly Christian nation under the thumb of ideologically vetted white males. Let’s call them MAGA-Christians! The folks plotting to take over would purge the government of nonbelievers — in God, in Trump. They’d stack the judiciary and Justice Department with cronies, reward sycophants and use the power of the state to punish their opponents.
And don’t forget, girls, they’ll want to monitor your menstrual cycles and gynecological visits, the better to punish you for even considering an abortion. If you get pregnant, they’ll force you to stay pregnant. It’s their call, not yours. Not that they really care about fetuses, they just want to punish you for having sex. One look at Samuel Alito’s pinched, angry face tells you it’s all about the sex.
The usual caveat: There are plenty of believers who cherish freedom, even for nonbelievers like us, who value the separation of governance and theology just as we do, who carry their faith into the public square quietly and with dignity, who don’t try to impose their beliefs on those who don’t share them.
But here in the U.S. and elsewhere, their sane voices are increasingly being drowned out by a braying mob of religious extremists bent on bullying their way to power. And, too few people in public life and the media seem willing to stand up to them. Worse, here at home, the candidate for president from one of our two major parties has linked up with Christian nationalists. A once proud party, at least marginally sane, is now in thrall to a grifting sociopath perfectly willing to cater to religious zealots despite his own utter lack of faith.
I mean, is there anything funnier than watching Donald Trump dodge the question, “What’s your favorite bible passage?” Sure, he can hawk bibles online, he just hasn’t read one. But he’s certainly relentless.
As that prophetic poet of the apocalypse, William Butler Yeats, put it: “The best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
A lot on the line
Well, the best of us had better absorb some of that intensity. There’s a lot on the line.
We don’t usually wake up in the morning thinking we have to save democracy. Or our nation. Or the world, for that matter. But here we are. History has tracked us down.
Like it or not, this is our moment. And since it’s quite likely the only one we’ll get, we’ll want to make the most of it.
The past is gone. The future is a toss-up. Here we sit, right now, flipping the coin. The present moment. The only moment we will ever know. Our moment to make a difference. Our moment to matter.
We can cut our emissions of CO² and lessen the consequences of climate change. But the carbon we’ve already pumped into the atmosphere will be heating the planet for centuries.
Microplastics? Maybe we can come up with something that eats the stuff. Most likely, archaeologists a million years from now will identify our era by its layer of plastic.
PFAS are here to stay whether we want to think about it or not.
But authoritarianism, particularly the homegrown variety? That’s another matter. We can do something about that. It doesn’t take a degree in physics or chemistry or engineering. We just have to look the issue squarely in the eye. Don’t fall for the false equivalencies! Don’t buy the both-sides-ism and what-about-ism!
So, it’s pretty simple: Get out and vote! Tell your friends and co-workers to vote! Have them tell their friends and co-workers to vote! Tell your crazy uncle with the “Let’s Go Brandon” T-shirt the election already happened and he missed it! Sorry, Uncle Bob!
Vote like the nation depends on your vote, because it does! Vote like your life depends on it, because it does! Vote for your children! Vote for your grandchildren! Not to reclaim a mythic past, but for right here, right now. And all the present moments yet to come.
