MAN! IT IS GETTING HOT!
And I don’t mean just the thermometer temperature.
Woodland Hills topped 120 over the weekend. 120, in LA, in the Valley. I used to live in the Valley. Thank you Lord, for the TORCA project that gifted me Ocean Park’s cool ocean breezes. Until a wall of four-story construction covers Main Street. And if climate change raises the ocean levels, even a lot, well, I’m at the top of a hill and would wind up with ocean front property. (Sorry, Joel, Mario, Marty and a few other washed up friends.)
Climate change? Doesn’t seem to be talked about much these days, does it? Even with twin hurricanes playing tag across the Caribbean and a record 13 tropical storms before September, now at 17. And 2,000,000 acres of CA wilderness up in flames, so far. (That’s a larger area than two Rhode Islands.)
THE SILENCE ON CLIMATE CHANGE
Is startling and disquieting, even as we have the threat of High Temp Trump moving us backward for another four years (or 12). Can we survive that? Will it be too late to reverse all the damage?
I guess we’ll have to save the planet come January but right now, save the election. Our revered Post Office has been dismantled, to great damage and distress to all Americans (I just had to pick up meds at Walgreen’s because my mailed order, shipped Aug. 10, hasn’t arrived yet) — just for one man’s election lust. And all manner of voter suppression is being pushed through by Republicans, from DC to county registrars. Murders by police of unarmed Black Americans continue unabated while the moment that millions of demonstrators in the streets are demanding, to reverse 400 years of racism, is being ignored, refuted, delayed, debated and studied into post-election irrelevance. Such as the study of what happened here 5/31.
And, oh yeah — coronavirus. 400,000 agonizing deaths by the end of the year. Just Monday, at a “press conference,” Trump twice made fun of the notion of wearing masks. You still see many in SM not wearing them, following the example of their wise and genius leader. But why should they? Our City government has made only laughable token efforts to make that happen, and keep us safe. Had enough winning yet?
I KNOW YOU ALL KNOW THIS
Those of you who consider facts. But this is so important, to us all, that it bears repeating. You know that the one thing you can do to affect our multiple crises is to vote, no matter what your reservations may be. Educate yourself (especially on local issues, and the responsibility of the incumbents), and your friends, and make sure they all vote. To remove Donald Trump, and every Republican who has enabled him. (That would be, all of them.)
You might be getting by OK but more than 40M Americans lost their jobs due to the bungled response to the pandemic. Twice as many low paying jobs as high paying, and many of those will never come back. The unemployment and lost GDP are worse than they were for the Great Depression. This is a nightmare that’s only beginning.
Stock market’s fine though, fancy that. That’s why Trump keeps bragging on his “great economy.” And while you may be the delighted beneficiary of a fattened portfolio, please think of 8M children in households that are behind on the rent, about to be evicted. Up to 17,000,000 American children are not getting enough to eat. Good Lord, this is America? And of course, all the dire economic, health and hunger statistics run about twice as high for Blacks as whites.
Vote, at least, for the children.
I DON’T NEED TO GO ON
You’re either listening, or have your fingers pushed deep into your ear canals. By the fourth paragraph, I had written enough for the Trump worshipers to write me off.
But just ignoring is not enough for them these days, it seems. No, that’s the heat I referred to at the beginning, that has been hiked up higher than a hooker’s hemline. (Oh, don’t jump on me for that. I like alliteration, OK?)
For more than a year I’ve been posting these columns on social media sites related to Santa Monica. Sure, it often includes a discussion of national politics (local too) but aren’t we all in SM talking and thinking about that? Aren’t we all going to vote in November? I get about 80-90 percent positive reaction. But if I mention or even allude to Trump, the haters crawl out from under the rocks, and they are getting nastier, let me tell you.
I get my share of hate mail (my email address is at the bottom of every column). But lately Trumpettes are going public with going ballistic, spewing their personal invective. Then I have to decide: do I let that nonsense stand for all to read, many who won’t know about the factual errors, or do I go down the hole and refute and correct? Almost always these days, I choose the former. But I worry that by giving my opinions (this behavior has a chilling effect, intentionally I believe), I spark more disinformation. So we should all just shut up and listen to The Donald, eh?
TERRY O’DAY
This week has been interesting, on the local scene, to see Council member Terry O’Day twist himself in knots trying to get the SMRR endorsement for the election, when he didn’t follow the rules. I understand his efforts, because as I have witnessed at past SMRR nominating conventions, the board and even the presiding chairs can ignore the votes taken and find a reason to do whatever they please.
O’Day is firmly entrenched in SM Forward, the real money power broker here for the last five years — he was a founder, along with Judy Abdo, and ran several six-figure election PACs. He of course has their endorsement and was the top vote getter in the last election, but this quiet member of the Council is now getting a little noisy in his unseemly quest to hold on to power. Kudos to Michael Soloff and Patricia Hoffman, co-chairing the SMRR convention, to stick to the rules and not be bullied.
Charles Andrews has lived in Santa Monica for 34 years and wouldn’t live anywhere else in the world. Really. Send love and/or rebuke to him at therealmrmusic@gmail.com
