The Dangers of Windmill Thinking

The crazy keeps piling up. This week it was windmills. Our Dear MisLeader is convinced they cause cancer, although as Colbert points out, the real danger is that listening to Trump trumpeting his nonsense causes brain damage:



And part of the problem here is that wind energy is not all sweetness and light—it does have problems, and noise and bird deaths are issues. Still, the death, environmental damage and pollution caused by fossil fuels seems to make wind a pretty good deal, in comparison—and all those windmills rich jerks like Trump like to hate are being put up by pretty hard-headed utility companies.



But I worry that Don Trump Quixote may again be distracting us. While the media are tilting at his ridiculous farcical notions--meanwhile, horrible other policies are taking shape. Take this excellent column by Lynda Waddington from this morning’s Gazette.

I have no words, no wind, no ability to summon anything but anger. In the Civil War, the question was whether freed slaves would become citizens of the United States. A wise man of the time said some wise words about African-American soldiers:

"Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letter, U.S., let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pocket, there is no power on earth that can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship."

Frederick Douglass

Frederick had it right. Deport U.S. veterans because of misdemeanors or old paperwork errors? The sound you hear is not wind, it's my blood boiling at the very thought. I'm not a veteran, and you don't have to be one to love America, but if anything clarifies your loyalty to the U.S., wearing our uniform ought to, and citizenship for those whose breasts bore, in a symbolic sense, the brass letters "U.S." isn't even open to question, to my mind.

I hear a wind coming, and I hope it is a political storm that sweeps the Trumpers out in 2020.

Never forget—this is what this awful, evil administration has brought us to. While we are distracted by the idiocy of the war on windmills, our government is doing dark deeds that should bring us all shame.

Which means that it doesn’t really matter who is nominated to oppose Donald Trump in 2020. No, I know it matters in many ways--but it does not matter for whom a rational person a will vote that fall. As long as they aren’t Donald Trump, chances are they will at least have enough of a grasp of reality to know that the noise of wind can sway hearts and minds, but it cannot cause cancer.

As for the orange one, he is a cancer on our body politic. Let us remove him and his minions ASAP.