Nihilism

I grow increasingly depressed every day.

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So the President's son has published a book called “Triggered: How the Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us”.  This is the President's son, accusing half the country of thriving on hate and wanting to silence the other half.  Besides being blatantly untrue, this is the kind of rhetoric designed to divide the country and set us at each other's throats.  And the President is promoting it on twitter.

My son, @DonaldJTrumpJr is coming out with a new book, “Triggered: How the Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us” – available tomorrow, November 5th! A great new book that I highly recommend for ALL to read. Go order it today!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 4, 2019

In some alternate universe somewhere, people are shocked that the President of the United States could engage in such divisive rhetoric instead of promoting a shared sense of civic virtue.  But of course it's not shocking. It's the new normal.

In other news, day after day more and more solid evidence is coming out that President Trump has engaged in blatant corruption and abuse of power.  All this mountain of evidence has done nothing to break the faith of Donald Trump's core supporters.  Donald Trump still enjoys the support of the Republican party, and conventional wisdom is that the Republican controlled Senate will never vote to impeach him.  So it looks like he's just going to get away with it.

From the New York Times:

Ninety-nine percent of white evangelicals and 98 percent of Republicans who rely on Fox News as their primary news source do not believe Mr. Trump should be impeached and removed, the survey found, compared with 94 percent of Republicans over all.

And I know we now live in a world in which different political groups now live in different realities, so very little facts are agreed upon.  Which makes discourse impossible.  But you can't tell me that Donald Trump's supporters believe that he is good for the country as a whole.  What they know is that politics is us against them, and that they view Donald Trump as one of "us" and he is hurting the "them", and that's more important than what is good for the country.

In other news, the U.S. is pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement.  It's difficult to overstate how devastating this is.  This, quite literary, could mean that the human race will not survive to the end of the century.
On CNN today: 11,000 scientists warn of 'untold suffering' caused by climate change

Even if everyone agreed on the need to take urgent action, it would still be difficult to beat the clock on the climate change apocalypse.  But we can't even agree that this is a crisis.

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In Brazil, the rainforest crisis continues.  Indigenous people who try to protect their rainforest are ambushed and gunned down by loggers.

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In New Delhi, the air has (once again) become so bad that the charts can not even measure it.  It is literally killing people to breathe the air.

The causes are a combination of traffic, farmers burning their crops, and fireworks set off for the Diwali festival.  

An Indian friend tells me that the government in the past had tried to ban fireworks for the Diwali festival, but the outcry from Hindus was so great that the government had to relent.  The fireworks must be set off, even if it means choking the people of New Delhi.

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In Saigon (where I live now) the air pollution is regularly at unsafe levels.  Yesterday on the expats Facebook page, someone posted the air quality number.  The comments were filled with surly people (both expats and Vietnamese) telling him to stop posting this, what was the point?  We all had to live in this pollution anyway, so why complain about it? One of the Vietnamese commenters wrote in a proverb: "You can't run from the sun"

In my apartment, I always worry about the baby.  We have the windows shut and the air-filter on constantly.  Our attempt to purify the air, however, is undercut by our Korean neighbor, who smokes in the hallway right outside our door.

I can some days hear him coughing--hacking--very loudly.  He sounds in pain.  But he keeps smoking.

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A college friend of mine--someone highly educated (a lawyer)--posted this to his Facebook page:

Dan SheaApril 6, 2016 · McGregor, FL, United States
From a Florida ER doctor:
Today I had a 25-year old with 8 kids - that's right 8, all Illegal Anchor Babies and she had the nicest nails, cell phone, hand bag, clothing, etc. She makes about $1,500 monthly for each; you do the math. I used to say, "We are the dumbest nation on earth," Now I must say and sadly admit: WE are the dumbest people on earth (that includes ME) For we Elected the Idiot Ideologues who have passed the Bills that allow this.
Sorry, but we need a Revolution, If the Illegal Immigrant is over 65, they can apply for SSI and Medicaid and get more than a woman on Social Security, who worked from 1944 until 2004. She is only getting $791 per month because she was born in 1924 and there's a 'catch 22' (notch) for her. It is interesting that the Federal Government provides a single refugee with a monthly allowance of $1,890. Each can also obtain an additional $580 in Social Assistance, for a total of $2,470 a month. This compares to a single pensioner, who after contributing to the growth and development of America for 40 to 50 years, can only receive a monthly maximum of $1,012 in Old Age Pension and Guaranteed Income Supplement.
Maybe our Pensioners should apply as Refugees! Consider sending this to all your American friends, so we can all be ticked off and maybe get the Refugees cut back to $1,012 and the Pensioners up to $2,470. Then we can enjoy some of the money we were forced to submit to the Government over the last 40 or 50 or 60 years.
PLEASE SHOW THIS TO EVERY AMERICAN TAXPAYER YOU KNOW

Right off the bat, anyone with any common sense should be able to tell this is ridiculous.  $1,500 for each kid?
But even if common sense weren't enough to make you suspicious, a simple Google search will find numerous sites debunking this.
Factcheck: A Mythical Florida Mom (And Other False Claims About Immigrants) 
and Snopes.com

But the post must have confirmed what my friend wanted to believe about immigrants--that they are all lazy, awful people sucking away our tax dollars, and so we are justified in hating them--and so he posted it without bothering to check it.

I posted the link to the factchecking sites in the comments of my friend's post.  He left the post up on his Facebook page anyway.

Snopes traces this urban legend through various iterations.  It started out as a Canadian story, then got changed through the years as various people added more and more exaggerations to it.

In September 2017, an April 2016 Facebook iteration of the rumor shared by Dan Shea began circulating once again. As of 13 September 2017, it had been shared well more than a quarter of a million times:

Actually it's up to 1.4 million shares now.

All by people who didn't bother to check if this was true, or didn't care.

Dan Shea, who created this rumor, obviously knew he was fabricating it since he added in some of his own flourishes from the original.  And if he didn't know before, he knows now, because his Facebook page is filled with people commenting and either factchecking him, or yelling abuse at him.  He seems to glorify in the notoriety rather than show any contrition.

And that's not even counting all the other websites this story is showing up at.  A simple Google search of "Today I had a 25-year old with 8 kids" will show this story popping up again and again and again.  It's obviously been making a lot of rounds.

From a Florida ER doctor:
Today I had a 25-year old with 8 kids - that's right 8, all Illegal Anchor Babies and she had the nicest nails, cell phone, hand bag, clothing, etc. She makes about $1,500 monthly for each; you do the math.u

— Julie Converses🇺🇸 ⭐⭐⭐ (@jat1020) April 11, 2019

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What has happened to people's civic virtue?  To the idea of community?  To the idea of all working together for the greater good?  To the idea of sacrificing your own self-interest for the benefit of society?

That sentiment existed at one time, right? 

Can we go back to that?

We are in danger of succumbing to nihilism.  In order to turn around from this, we need to think positively.  Value life.  Take care of your body.  Eat healthy.  Stop drinking. Stop smoking.  Take care of the environment.  Think about what is good for the country as a whole, not what is just good for your faction.  Think about what is good for the world as a whole.  Try to help other people, not to harm them.  Bring good into the world, not hate.

We can do this.  We can change things.  But first we need to stop the way we're currently living.  We can't survive like this.