Fighting Evil with Evil - or Stupidity with Insanity?

Don’t laugh. Fighting evil with evil makes lots of sense – if you want a permanent state of evil to persist.

Congress and the administration have found a new and improved way of convincing the US public that trying to make sense out of politicians is like trying to persuade a pathological liar to switch to speaking only the truth. It’s a non-starter.

While fighting fire with fire makes sense to some extent (you burn away the fuel in a controlled fashion so that wildfires can’t spread as easily), fighting debt with more debt as in the recent string of bailout fiascos, for example, does not. As sufficiently observed by astute media pundits, it’s like fighting a fire with gasoline, or like pumping water into a sinking ship as observed in the post below.

Not to be deterred, however, Congress is about to embark on an even crazier path: fighting pollution (which allegedly causes global warming) by polluting the upper atmosphere with chemicals designed to act as a “sun-shade.”

Right.

That means if you have a company that emits pollutants in the course of its manufacturing process, you must pay a penalty in the form of purchasing “emission credits” – while the government gets to make its on atmospheric pollution program “legal” just by voting for it.

According to the law of unintended consequences, the very best case outcome of this insanity is that the sunshade actually ends up working – and therefore will bring about the next ice age (once the solar cycle that is the actual cause of any current global warming abates n the natural, non-man made, course of galactic events.) What will politicians come up with, then? Start a government program that requires you to burn more fossil fuel so our children and grandchildren can stop shivering? Mandate the purchase of government-issue super-SUVs while imposing tax penalties for riding a bike to work?

The worst-case scenario is that whatever they shoot, pump, or spray up there will make the atmosphere permanently toxic. How do we know what they are actually unloading into our breathing space? Does a big polluter with great white house connections have a lot of particulate matter to unload that would otherwise be illegal to dispose of? If he gets the white house to make him the number one sunshade dealer of the world, his polluting will become legal. Simple as that.

Why is all of this happening? It’s happening because congressional (that includes senatorial) incumbents know they have a statistical probability of getting reelected that is better than 90 percent.

Just imagine you had a job that guaranteed you a similar chance of continued employment (and an iron-clad retirement program to boot after only two years of service!) in spite of boasting nothing but failures and breaches of your employment contract. Would you still listen to your boss? Would you even try to make sense? No way. You would act just like these jokers – and eventually get a chance to vote yourself pay raises.

Whose fault is this sad and slightly ironic state of affairs?

Ours, yours and mine - because we haven’t enforced the law* on them. So, if you have any complaints about Congress, ask yourself if you have voted for your local congressional incumbent at any time during the past three elections (or “refused” to vote out of “protest”). If you did, you know who is to blame for this mess.

You are.

So, please do something about it – while you still can.

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* The US Constitution: It's the Law!