Month: January 2026

Climate Change is Jewish Physics

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It goes with the territory. Fascist leaders are convinced they are always right and therefore empowered to make correct judgments about anything that comes their way. For Hitler that meant denial of most of 20th century physics, especially relativity and quantum mechanics, as Jewish physics. There was a direct line from that to the Germans’ inability to mount any significant challenge to allied development of nuclear weapons. In the end the Germans were defeated without such weapons, but it was only a matter of luck that it happened in time. Hitler defeated the entire German war machine, because he was always right.

The parallels to climate change are exact. Climate change is real, and the technological underpinning for the rest of the world is being built about combatting it. We’re either part of that future or we’re not. It affects not only how energy is generated and distributed but also how major applications use it. We sit around talking about how to “win” our competition with China when we have ceded all of that to them.

In our own power network the situation is beyond ridiculous. The many new mega-datacenters demand vast increases in electrical power to run them. We could use that opportunity to upgrade our (outdated and insecure) electrical infrastructure nationwide in a way that would serve the datacenters, the public, and the evolution to new energy sources. That would buy benefits for the datacenters themselves, and would certainly improve public attitudes about their construction–and that’s in addition to the benefits as we address climate change and new energy sources come online. (See what China is doing here.) In fact we have refused to do any such thing, leaving the implementation as a bunch of point solutions based primarily on fossil fuels and an outright prohibition on wind and solar. When you’re never wrong, there’s no limit to the damage.

We the human race may or may not succeed in avoiding real climate disaster, but any successes we achieve will be despite Trump’s sabotage. Whatever international order comes out of it all will reflect the interests of those who build it. And the status of the US will recognize that Trump’s sabotage was in literal terms a crime against humanity.

An Example Says It All

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During the Covid crisis the Trump people carried on a campaign of blatant immorality that never got the attention it deserved. They got themselves vaccinated, but encouraged their supporters not to. Not getting vaccinated was an act of resistence to Biden, a gesture for freedom in the face of government overreach, and would be just fine. They killed supporters for their benefit.

That was handy for the campaign. It was a smokescreen for their botched handling of the early stages of the epidemic. So many people died from the anti-vax campaign that they could repeat their bottom line over and over again: “More people died from Covid under Biden than under Trump.”

Now cut to the present. As with Covid, it’s not an accident that Trump’s supporters are the ones hurt most by today’s Trump economy: the tariffs, the instability, the cuts to public services including medicare and social security. It’s certainly not the billionaires (or Trump himself) who are getting hurt. They’ve got their tax cuts, which is to say all those supposed savings from DOGE and other budget cuts went to them. The MAGA people–like the unvaccinated–are sacrificed to the program.

It’s the same internationally–who is getting hurt? Not Russia or China. He’s buddy-buddy with them. They’re all on board with the idea of spheres of influence, the idea that big powerful countries should be able to take what they can get. It’s US allies who trusted us. They’re easy targets, because they were on our side. They represented the first line of our defense against the USSR and now Russia. They didn’t have defenses against us (although they’re now learning).

It’s time to recognize that’s what Trump is. It’s easier to fleece people who considered themselves your friends than to fight enemies. He’s the ultimate confidence man. He’s enormously skilled in insinuating himself with people who are ambitious or have problems, and absolutely ruthless in taking advantage of those who have the misfortune to trust him. Whether he sees himself that way or not, that’s what he is.

There’s no arguing that the MAGA people, among others, have seen the prosperity of the country pass them by. There are real problems with the top-heavy distribution of wealth in this country. But Trump has sold them a story worthy of his talents: that poor immigrants and our foreign allies are the ones making them poor, while the billionaires who command real money and used their political power to create the wealth distribution are their friends! This amazing switch of responsibility is sold as free market economics, but it comes down to something as old as time–that the rich deserve all they can get and certainly should not be saddled with the needs of their inferiors. Unsurprisingly those billionaires are now cashing-in left and right while the others are standing hat-in-hand waiting for the ever-distant golden future.

The ultimate confidence man has delivered the ultimate win.

We’re Betting Everything Against Climate Change

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The takeover of Venezuela has made us a colonial power. Trump is now the dictator of Venezuela for the indefinite future. It has also led to new rhetorical heights about spheres of influence and how we should be able to use our superpower status to take whatever we want from anyone. So seizing Greenland from a NATO member is our perogative by right.

We’re telling all nations of the Americas that their independence is only for as long as we like it. Outside the Americas we’re threatening NATO’s existence by seizing territory. More generally we’re legitimizing the use of military force by anyone with the power to do it. History shows where that goes.

And what we’re getting for all that is oil. Oil that for the most part is not going to become available without billions of dollars of investment and years of development. Even without climate change that’s a shaky prospect; with the reality of climate change it’s nuts.

Climate change denial is not just a matter of sabotaging the Paris agreement and killing research funding.; it’s fundamental to everything they do. The rest of the world is continuing without us. It has to, since there is no other choice. China may be a dictatorship, but it values competence. Europe has kept its act together despite US pressure. Others are already seeing climate impacts. We’re off in our very own never-never land farther and farther from reality.

We’re going nowhere. The only question is whose sphere of influence gets us.