Who did more long-term damage to the United States and World? (user search)
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  Who did more long-term damage to the United States and World? (search mode)
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Poll
Question: ?
#1
Trump
 
#2
Reagan
 
#3
Bush Jr.
 
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Total Voters: 79

Author Topic: Who did more long-term damage to the United States and World?  (Read 1024 times)
Person Man
Angry_Weasel
Atlas Superstar
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Posts: 36,681
United States


« on: April 08, 2021, 02:31:31 PM »

Trump is an unserious answer because and only because he hasn't even been out of office for long enough to need a new toothbrush. I fully expect that in the longue durée his energy policies alone will be viewed more harshly than any policy of either of the other options with the possible exception of Reagan's inaction on AIDS. However, since that hasn't happened yet, Reagan is my answer.

I've been dogpiled on in some circles for making unambiguous my stances on Reagan's AIDS policy, and there are still plenty of people who see it as a political inevitability vis-à-vis the stigma of the disease, even though his leadership is exactly what would've been needed to break through such prejudices. Similarly, I imagine that many circles in the oil emirates of the nation will still be fondly looking back on Trump's energy policy and cursing Biden's one offhand remark about divesting from oil even once ecological consequences become insurmountable, although public opinion will probably gradually keep moving in the right direction on both issues.

This is going to sound much more pessimistic than my usual posting style but I'm of the opinion that ecological consequences, at least in my drought-stricken little corner of New England, are already insurmountable and have been for a few years now. The Doomsday Clock should be set at zero; the conversation should turn from preventing catastrophe to living in the aftermath of catastrophe, which is still possible and even likely (in other words, I'm not freaking out about total human extinction or whatever). Serious body blows to our post-industrial way of life are unavoidable now.

I fully agree, but my point in that particular phrasing was that what we've already seen still has not been quite enough for a critical mass of people to concur, or to be consistently violent enough in heavily populated and would-be informed areas to become more impossible to ignore. I think particularly of how Alaskans still care too much about their Oil Bucks™ (and Mike Dunleavy making cuts to every service under the sun for even more Oil Bucks™) to see clearly that polar regions are already the most drastically affected, and that the resulting positive feedback is only an exponential driver of further woes. This sort of discourse is what reawakened the anprim sympathies that I once dismissed as outlandish follies of an awkward youth, and my inability to at present make any personal strides towards that ideal is a bit of a persistent crisis of faith for me.

My advice is to move to a less-dense area than wherever you are now and start keeping chickens or ducks or something. Even just switching to getting eggs from my neighbors rather than from the grocery store has done wonders for my own faith in my ability to handle what we're living through.

Come on, guys. I don't think it will be that bad any time soon. I definitely think that by the time I hit retirement age, there's a 50/50 chance that where we were at around the end of April last year could be the New Normal. Life would kind of go on as usual, right?
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