by William Skink
I’m not sure the science of it, but after forest fires do their thing, delicious fungi emerge, but only when the ground gets warm enough.
This was the bounty from mother nature I sought today with my family, not the useless MARCH FOR SCIENCE I saw people plastering Facebook with.
I get the political context of marching for science. Trump and Republicans (and Christians) are lumped into the anti-science category, so of course the resistance to that now manifests as a march in the streets for that. For science.
I wonder how many people out marching for science today gave any thought to how the application of science in the pursuit of war has created weapons capable of destroying life on earth? Not all life, but definitely ours, which is all we really care about, right?
I’m not pointing this out thinking I’m any better. I’m really not. I have the same kind of phone my friends on Facebook have to post their pictures with, the same phone that requires certain mineral elements with fancy, scientific names, like lithium. Minerals that just so happened to have been “discovered” 9 year into America’s longest war, in Afghanistan:
WASHINGTON — The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.
The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.
An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and BlackBerrys.
After getting dirty today hunting for mushrooms, I took a shower. But my hands are not clean. I type this post on a product that comes to me through the exploitation and suffering of others.
The way I deal with my complicity is by making art and helping others. Another thing I find helpful is refusing to allow myself to get sucked in to the dangerous political red/blue binary that blinds people to the anti-war consensus of the public, and the pro-war consensus (Republicans AND Democrats) of the political establishment.
Last weekend it was Trump’s taxes, this weekend it’s science. With war on our doorstep, what’s next on the march menu to nowhere?
When Trump launched missiles into Syria–missiles we wouldn’t be able to create without science–why did so many miss their mark? If it was a Russian missile defense system shooting them down, or a Russian hacking of the guidance technology directing the missiles, that means direct military action between two nuclear-armed nations has already occurred.
Why isn’t resistance to war the reason people are marching in the streets? We are on the verge of the lid blowing off, yet becoming cheerleaders for science on Earth Day is all the resistance can think to do?
What other conclusion is there other than we are fucked?