What the Far-Right Fascination With Pinochet Should Tell Us (theintercept.com)
The Father of all lies, the first lie that leads to all other lies, is that taxes are theft. The one percent have spent untold millions creating the myth that all taxation is stealing and that wealth must trickle down for prosperity to happen. This “Voodoo” leads immediately into red-baiting, that any redistribution of wealth is communism- and this then leads into religious arguments that communism is satanic and the real goal is atheism. The second great lie of the 21st century is that climate change is somehow a vast hoax perpetrated by a left-wing globalist cabal. This anti-science cancer of the mind was paid for in large part by the Koch brothers. And the third great lie, the most terrible and destructive lie of all, is that the media is all fake news and the enemy of the people, which has been called “Post-truth politics.” Voodoo, anti-science, and lies.
The most meaningful passage for me in the bible, the one that informs my faith like no other, is when Pilate asks Jesus, “What is truth?” When the very concept of truth, not as a spiritual matter but as practical reality, is destroyed, then insane totalitarian genocidal regimes are soon to follow. America, and by extension, the world, is in great danger. Right now.
A Green New Deal, and hopefully a Green New Space Deal, is becoming less and less likely. The vision of Gerard K. O’Neill, that space solar power would end poverty on Earth and be the economic engine of space colonization- and insurance for the human species against extinction, is the narrow path to salvation.
And…my most recent comment concerning NASA’s HRP https://www.nasa.gov/hrp : The ONLY thing that is going enable humans to live and work in space is a Near Sea Level Radiation 1 Gravity environment (NSLR1G). Humans will not live and work in large numbers in an environment that causes permanent damage…period. The solution to dosing and debilitation is a massive cosmic ray water shield in the 400 ton range for a small capsule and well over a kiloton for any practical working space- and a tether generated artificial gravity system. The water shield and tether system is going to be a feature of Space Stations, Lunar Cyclers, and Spaceships or there just won’t be any Human Space Flight Beyond Earth Orbit (HSF-BEO).
Ice on the Moon 