By Gillian Foulger, Professor of Geophysics, Durham University, Jon Gluyas, Durham University, and Miles Wilson, Ph.D. Student in the Department of Earth Sciences, Durham University. Devastation in Sichuan province after the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, thought to be induced by industrial activity at a nearby reservoir. dominiqueb/flickr People knew we could induce earthquakes before we knew what…
As the smoke continues to waft down from Canada and linger, I am reminded of loneliness. The US surgeon general declared last month that loneliness is now an American epidemic. Vivek Murthy said that it “takes as deadly a toll as smoking upon the population of the United States.” “Millions of people in America are struggling in the shadows,” he said, “and that’s not right.”
While I’m sympathetic to feelings of loneliness, I’m pretty sure no one is truly alone. I’m pretty sure because, this week anyway, the evidence is right there for everyone to see. Every one of us is part “the interdependent web of all existence.” Smoke wafting down from Canada is affirmation of that truth.
“The devastating impacts of climate change”
READ MORE: 'No end in sight' to wildfires choking Eastern US with smoke: report
The smoke is “a thick, hazardous haze that’s disrupting daily life for millions of people across the US and Canada, blotting out skylines and turning skies orange,” the Associated Press reported. It’s “billowing from wildfires in Quebec and Nova Scotia and sending plumes of fine particulate matter as far away as North Carolina and northern Europe,” It could persist through the weekend.
The smoke, according to the Associated Press, “chased baseball players from ballfields, actors from Broadway stages, delayed thousands of flights and sparked a resurgence in mask wearing and remote work — all while raising concerns about the health effects of prolonged exposure to such bad air.”
The smoke is so bad the Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called the president Wednesday. His office said both leaders “acknowledged the need to work together to address the devastating impacts of climate change.”
We are part of something bigger
READ MORE: 'People didn’t listen': Arctic summer sea ice disappearance now 'inevitable' as soon as the 2030s
“The interdependent web of all existence” is one of the seven principles of Unitarian Universalism, of which I am a card-carrying member. It specifically addresses climate change. It’s not only about that and the fate of our planet, though. It is about the relationship between individuals and communities.
“We make a profound mistake when we limit [the seventh principle] to merely an environmental idea,” Rev. Forrest Gilmore has said. “It is so much more. It is our response to the great dangers of both individualism and oppression. It is our solution to the seeming conflict between the individual and the group.”
The smoke wafting down from Canada and lingering is, to be sure, a reminder of climate change and the dangers we face. But it’s also a reminder that none of us is truly alone – that we are part of something bigger and more profound.
As Rev. Gilmore said: “Our seventh principle may be our Unitarian Universalist way of coming to fully embrace something greater than ourselves. The interdependent web — expressed as the spirit of life, the ground of all being, the oneness of all existence, the community-forming power, the process of life, the creative force, even God — can help us develop that social understanding of ourselves that we and our culture so desperately need.”
The smoke is the proof
We deny that. We instead insist on being a country of individualists. After the US surgeon general declared loneliness an American epidemic, the Associated Press’s Ted Anthony dove deep into the social history of individualism to explain “how the American Dream convinces people loneliness is normal.”
In May, Anthony wrote that, “as far back as the early 19th century, when the word ‘loneliness’ began to be used in its current context in American life, some were already asking the question: Do the contours of American society — that emphasis on individualism, that spreading out with impunity over a vast, sometimes outsized landscape — encourage isolation and alienation? Or is that, like other chunks of the American story, a premise built on myths?”
It’s a myth. No one is truly alone. The smoke is proof.
Will the smoke trigger a systemic response to climate change?
Maybe. But if a once-a-century plague did not smash the myth of the rugged individualist – if the covid did not prove that no one is truly alone and that we’re all in this together – neither will a few days of hazy skies over Gotham.
In any case, it’s important to remember that a systemic response to climate change does not depend on most people most of the time coming around to believing that no one is truly alone and that we’re all in this together. Some people will come around. Most won’t. Denial is the American superpower.
A systemic response to climate change depends on the iron will of small and highly organized groups of people, like the Unitarian Universalists, who have set out to bravely declare, against the political grain, that every person, whether lonely or not, is part of “the interdependent web of all existence.”
It depends on some people telling all people that they are not alone.
READ MORE: Why 'we cannot return to ignorance' when it comes to 'our air': professor
Donald Trump acted like "the most bumbling mafia don in the history of mafia dons" when he coordinated the obstruction alleged in the confidential documents case, national security attorney Brad Moss said Friday night.
Moss, who said on Thursday that Trump is facing the legal challenge of his life with a legal team that isn't up for the job, was part of a panel discussing the case on MSNBC's The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell. Moss accused Trump of "showing off documents" and being carless in other ways.
"He's talking about it to a staffer from the political action committee. He's talking about it to the ghost writers of Mark Meadows," Moss said. "He's getting these subpoenas and acting like the most mafia don in the history of mafia dons. He was joking and talking to his lawyer like, can we say that we don't have anything?"
No, Moss said, you either "comply with the subpoena or move to quash it."
"You don't say, how do I lie? That is what is so dangerously concerning with this indictment," he added.
Moss further noted that Trump is presumed innocent, but added that, "if we do get the trial, I don't see much of a reason to believe that they won't be able to make their case."
"I don't see a lot of substantive defense that Donald Trump will make at trial," according to Moss.
The fact that the government was able to pierce the barrier of attorney-client privilege and obtain Donald Trump's lawyer's notes tells you "all you need to know" about the strength of the prosecution's case, a former DOJ official said Friday evening.
In a wide-ranging interview on MSNBC's The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, former Acting Solicitor General of the United States Neal Katyal suggested that the prosecution's ability to work within the courts to get access to traditionally barred materials says a lot about how the trial will unfold.
Katyal echoed the sentiments of Andrew Weissman, a veteran federal prosecutor who worked on the special counsel investigation into Trump's ties to Russia, who said earlier on the same panel that the "gold" in the indictment "was revealed by having pierced the attorney-client privilege" and that it "relates to the obstruction charges."
"The basic rule is, attorney-client privilege is sacrosanct until and unless you as the client are trying to solicit a crime that your lawyer is participating in," Weissman said. "So that is not something that is privileged and you obviously need to go to a judge, and the judge has to agree that you established that."
Following Weissman's comments, Katyal elaborated even further, saying the key point was the overriding of attorney-client privilege.
"I think Andrew makes the very important point," Katyal said, adding that "what ultimately was litigated and brought to this very respected judge in Washington, D.C., and then ultimately to our nation's second highest court, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia circuit, should attorney-client privilege in the current notes be given over to prosecutors?"
He further said the courts "took the radical step, really unique, of saying that this is so serious, this crime, and Trump was using his attorney to try to commit it," that it warranted the departure.
"They basically pierced attorney-client privilege," he added. "That to me, Lawrence, says that all you need to know about this case."
Katyal further noted that, because "this is such a serious matter, and Trump's actions were so lawless," that attorney-client privilege ultimately had to be pierced.
"We have to pierce attorney-client privilege, the most sacred privilege in Anglo Americana law going back centuries upon centuries. That to me is why I listened to Jack Smith's press conference today, and the most important words he said were to all Americans: read the indictment."
Watch the video below or click the following link.
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