Is The World Collapsing?

Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News!

I just watched numerous clips from and about today’s hearing for a US Supreme Court Justice. There was one specific thing I never saw specifically stated about Brett Kavanaugh and it is one of the unspoken, obvious points that irks me the most:

Vast evidence indicates that Kavanaugh drank so heavily when younger that he might have sexually assaulted women when drunk and then not remembered it.

It may be true that he does not remember sexually assaulting women, which he could say but is obviously not what he has been saying. Instead, he’s claiming he never got drunk enough that he might not remember something (despite a ton of claims to the contrary), and thus he definitely never did any of the things he is claimed to have done when drunk.

Friends and accusers, his best friend and even he himself, have noted repeatedly that he was a super heavy drinker. His best friend back at the time of some of the sexual assault allegations (not necessarily the ones from his time at Yale or later in life), Mark Judge, wrote in his own book about his regretful history getting blackout drunk in high school … with Brett Kavanaugh (er, wait, no, a very obviously codenamed Bart O’Kavanaugh). He also apparently told his ex-girlfriend about gang banging drunken girls, something accusers have also reported happened to them by or around Brett Kavanaugh. Mark Judge even seemed to almost acknowledge that what he did was rape. Again, rather than admit to being at the very least a witness to some of the things his good friend Mark Judge wrote about in his book, Kavanaugh says there’s no chance any of that happened. That just cries “lying to get a position on the Supreme Court.”

Rather than say that he doesn’t remember sexually assaulting people but he did get so drunk when younger that he perhaps didn’t remember everything he did or witnessed (that wouldn’t be a helpful thing to admit, eh?), Kavanaugh claims that he never got blackout drunk and definitely never did the things multiple women claimed.

He’s obviously lying, as far as I can see. And it is not entirely surprising since it’s almost 100% certain he lied about other matters earlier in the Senate hearings since admitting to them probably would have cost him the promotion he is so bloody supposed to have!

Update: Apparently, Senator Amy Klobuchar, who has an alcoholic father, essentially made the point I had not seen made elsewhere. It is included in the following segment.

Update #2: A Republican voter and former classmate of Brett Kavanaugh’s at Yale also now made the point I made above, that it’s essentially certain that Kavanaugh got so drunk at times that he wouldn’t have remembered things he had done (again, something he seemed to admit in high school and his close friend wrote about as an adult). She also vividly recalled an episode (or more) of sexual harassment. You can watch the clip here:

The other thing that came out loud and clear from his testimony, some of the Republican Senator monologues, and a few Republican responses to the testimony was blatant, loud, aggressive entitlement and elitism.

“I’m entitled to a seat on the Supreme Court! I have been ever since I was a privileged jock at Georgetown Prep getting wasted on weekends and at beach parties and on the FFFFFFFourth of July!” — not a direct quote from Bart O’Kavanaugh.

“He is a good guy! There is no reason he or we should sit through claims of multiple accusers that he sexually assaulted them! Which is why we only let one accuser sit in front of the Senate, not others and not their friends or other witnesses. Look, I’ve been accused of sexual assault many, many times and I’m president of the United States! Look, I’ve even bragged about sexually assaulting women, bragged about ogling naked teenagers behind the scenes at beauty pageants, bragged about trying to cheat with my friends’ wives, and paid off a porn star and and Playboy bunny for having affairs with them while my newborn son was at home in another city. And I’m president of the United States!” — not a direct quote from Don the Con Drumpf.

With our US Supreme Court, US Congress, and entire country degraded to such a horrid, sexist, filthy level, it almost makes you feel like the country is collapsing, if not the world.

Turn the channel and you get to the Elon Musk news of the day — the freakin’ SEC is suing the most transparent, honest, honorable, and societally helpful CEO I can think of … for not being transparent & honest enough?

Seriously. Instead of going behind common shareholders’ backs and planning a go-private plan that cuts them out of the equation, Elon Musk roped all shareholders in at the beginning of serious deliberations. But he is now being sued for that. As a shareholder, I didn’t feel misled by Musk at all from those tweets. I thought he and his explanations were clear. Yet, the SEC is suing Musk on my behalf? It is disturbing.

Again, it brings on a kind of feeling that the world is collapsing.

Chip in a few dollars a month to help support independent cleantech coverage that helps to accelerate the cleantech revolution!

However, all of that said, we live in a fairly stable world right now and Tesla should be fine. Elon should be fine. The above are two examples of majorly broken systems at the highest societal level, but there’s a solid chance neither of them leads to catastrophe.

That may not be the story in 30 years — it almost certainly won’t be. Our climate is getting increasingly unstable from year to year. Even fairly “small” climate disruptions lead to massive societal challenges and mass migration. Imagine the climate disruptions we’ve seen multiplied by 10, or 100 — the droughts, the fires, the diseases, the superstorms. That’s what we’re speeding towards.

We are experiencing “nothing” today compared to what we are likely to face in decades to come. Collapse of key systems will increase massively as the world heats up. We are showing ourselves already that we are probably not ideally equipped to deal with such dramatic climatic change. It would be better to strengthen and increase our efforts now rather than have to deal with the consequences later.

Or we can just sit back and presume others will do the work, and then see where that leads.

Related: 2 Critical Climate Change Problems Most People Don’t Know About


Have a tip for CleanTechnica? Want to advertise? Want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.

Latest CleanTechnica TV Video


Advertisement
 
CleanTechnica uses affiliate links. See our policy here.

Zachary Shahan

Zach is tryin' to help society help itself one word at a time. He spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as its director, chief editor, and CEO. Zach is recognized globally as an electric vehicle, solar energy, and energy storage expert. He has presented about cleantech at conferences in India, the UAE, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, the USA, Canada, and Curaçao. Zach has long-term investments in Tesla [TSLA], NIO [NIO], Xpeng [XPEV], Ford [F], ChargePoint [CHPT], Amazon [AMZN], Piedmont Lithium [PLL], Lithium Americas [LAC], Albemarle Corporation [ALB], Nouveau Monde Graphite [NMGRF], Talon Metals [TLOFF], Arclight Clean Transition Corp [ACTC], and Starbucks [SBUX]. But he does not offer (explicitly or implicitly) investment advice of any sort.

Zachary Shahan has 7324 posts and counting. See all posts by Zachary Shahan