Category: Political

Dear Colin Kaepernick,

You don’t have to stand at attention during the national anthem if you don’t want to. You live in a free country. Tens of thousands of Americans have died throughout our history in order to protect your right to protest in any way that you wish. Many people in this country such as yourself have a legitimate issue with recurrent prejudicial practices within our law enforcement system. A variety of means to address these concerns are readily available in a free society. You need to understand however that the symbolism of your recent gesture is grossly misguided.

I can assure you without hesitation that the United States of America is not your problem. In fact, this great nation is the fearless gatekeeper that keeps the real nasty guys in this evil world at bay while we all work out our petty differences. I would recommend that you go over to Syria for a few months and then see for yourself where you rank “unfair police practices” on your overall list of sociopolitical concerns.

You are a lucky man for many reasons tonight. You are lucky because you were born with raw athletic talent. You are lucky that you were born in the United States of America where you are allowed to profit wildly from that talent. But most importantly, you are lucky because our flag doesn’t give a damn about your antics this weekend. You can ignore that flag… you can turn your back on it… you can spit on it… and you can even burn that flag if you want to. The American flag and all of the amazing people that it represents will continue to protect you and your God-given right to express yourself in any way you see fit.

But please understand how you appear to the rest of us when you express this open resentment towards our flag. You look like a fish that resents water or a plant that resents sunlight. You appear too foolish to understand the very environment around you which has been keeping you safe and allowing you to flourish. The United States of America has been acting as your own personal diving cage in a world full of sharks. Some people might mistakenly think that it took courage to do what you did this weekend. The real courage was exhibited by brave Americans over the past 238 years who paved the way for you to be able to protest this weekend without fear of serious retribution. You were trashing our country while still hiding behind Lady Liberty’s skirt.

We need to have a serious discussion about race relations, gun violence, and prejudicial police practices in this country. However, you are no longer qualified to lead this discussion. You trashed the American flag. You trashed the very same flag which protects all of our personal freedoms… and we all have the God-given constitutionally-protected right going forward to ignore your stupid sorry ass.

Sincerely,

An American Citizen

Allow me to explain something about Libertarians. Just because we believe something should be legalized does not mean that we condone it in any way.

I believe that prostitution should be legalized. I also believe that this is a pretty terrible way to make a living.

I believe that drugs should be legalized. I absolutely hate drugs and wish that they did not exist.

Oh, no!  Here we go again.  Here comes another crazy article from one of those “climate change deniers.”  Although, I suppose that if I had been born during the ancient pre-Socratic era that many of you would have been referring to me back then as one of those “round-Earthers”.  You might now be wondering to yourself why I picked the time before Socrates as my example for the prevalence of the flat-Earth theory when it is common knowledge that Christopher Columbus proved to everyone that the world was round back in 1492.  You might be surprised to learn that what your teachers taught you in school was completely wrong and that the round-Earth model was widely accepted before Columbus left on his historic voyage. That is the thing about common knowledge.  It commonly ends up making us all look like misinformed fools.

So what makes me qualified to make statements regarding man-made global warming?  Well, I certainly have a background which is firmly rooted in science.  I graduated with a chemistry degree from Hendrix College and presented my research regarding the synthesis of conformationally mobile bicyclic tetrahydro-1,2-oxazines by isomerization of isoxazolidinylmethyl tosylates to the American Chemical Society in 1991.  Wait!  Don’t scamper away like a frightened bunny!  I am only using these big scary scientific words as evidence that I know what the heck I am actually talking about.  I plan to only use smaller and non-threatening words going forward.  I should also point out that I am a medical doctor who worked for years as an associate professor for a local university.   I certainly have more of a scientific background than Al Gore or Bill Nye.   Most importantly, I need you to understand that I am not some redneck sitting on his back porch wearing a tin-foil hat in order to prevent the government from reading my thoughts.

So… am I writing this article in order to explain to everyone that the world has not recently been in a warming trend?  Absolutely not!   Would you stop asking me all of these damn questions and just let me explain?  Our planet has clearly been in a warming trend from 1975 to 1998.  There is no dispute over this fact from anyone.  However, we do have a giant logistical hurdle that must be cleared before I can even attempt to begin to change your mind regarding the issue of man-made global warming.  It is the 500-pound gorilla in the room that must be addressed.  You have had it drilled into your head over the past few years that 97 percent of all scientists now agree that global warming is due to carbon emissions produced by humans.   The debate is over.  The science is clear.  Alternate climate theory is to be mocked and ridiculed.   Stick a fork in this debate… it’s done.  So let me ask you something… other than the facts that Christopher Columbus taught us all that the Earth was round and that 97 percent of all scientists agree that man-made global warming is real, what other actual science do you really know for yourself regarding the Earth and its climate?  Most of your “so-called knowledge” is probably based on what politicians have told you in the past.  To really understand the history of the global warming debate you really need to break the explanation down into two separate but important parts:  the science and the politics.   Let’s start with the science.

If you listen to some environmentalists talk, you would think that our planet had been going along just fine for thousands of years and then suddenly experienced a rise in global temperatures with the onset of the Industrial Revolution.  It really is too bad that things did not happen like this in our actual history because it truly would make a compelling argument for man-made global warming.  Unfortunately, facts can be stubborn things.   The recorded temperature of our planet has been fluctuating wildly for many thousands of years before the Industrial Revolution. One of these periods that should be examined closely is commonly referred to as the “medieval warm period.”  This was a period from 950 to 1250 in which our planet sustained much higher temperatures than the ones that we all experience today, yet our Earth did not experience any awe-inspiring surges in its ocean levels.   This period of time was actually pretty boring in the grand scheme of things except of course for when Genghis Khan soundly defeated the Khwarezmian Empire… that dude was completely nuts!

When it comes to the theoretical melting of the polar ice caps, I would like for all of you to do a little experiment.  Go and get a drinking glass from your kitchen.  I want you to fill this glass with as much ice as physically possible.  You need to see mountains of ice coming up over the top of this container.  Next, I would like for you to fill this glass up with water until it reaches the very top.  Then allow your experiment to sit somewhere at room temperature. You know what happens next because you have seen this disaster with ice cream before, right?  Wrong!  If you allow this experiment to melt before your very eyes, you will discover not only that you did not make a mess but that the water level is now lower than you first started.  Is this magic?   Am I some sort of witch or wizard?  Before you and Al Gore burn me at the stake, allow me to explain to you what happens with water when it freezes… it expands.  And guess what happens to ice when it melts… it goes the other way… the opposite of expands… it shrinks?  Let’s just say that ice takes up much more space than water.  For all of the ice you see above the water both in your container and at the polar ice caps, there is much more ice below the surface. Some areas around the northern ice cap have repeatedly melted and refrozen throughout the history of our planet but this does not result in rising sea levels… because our oceans and seas are not a bunch of idiots and these bodies of water understand basic chemistry and physics.

Moving on, the medieval warm period was then followed by the “Little Ice Age” in which temperatures dropped significantly for the next four hundred years. One has to ask themselves what happened to cause this sudden global cooling process. Did the Mongols suddenly make an effort to reduce their own carbon footprint? Perhaps many of the people killed during the Spanish Inquisition were using too much hairspray?  All we know for sure is that temperatures quickly went down and stayed down for many centuries.

Now let’s fast forward a little bit to the Industrial Revolution.  The entire planet began to run on coal in the early 1800’s.  Steamships and steam-powered railroads became the primary means of transportation.   In 1880, we began to burn coal in order to generate electricity.  A few decades later we developed gas-guzzling cars which exploded into use all over the planet.  By 1940, we were burning coal and gasoline like crazy.   We were emitting more carbon during this period than in any other time throughout human history!  You suspect that average climate temperatures had to be skyrocketing during this period? Wrong!  Please don’t try to get ahead of me on this and start guessing what I am about to say… I am trying to explain everything.  Average global temperatures actually fell from 1940 to 1975 despite the fact that our planet’s carbon emissions were at an all-time high for the previous decades.  So how is this drop in temperatures possible if carbon emissions are so closely tied global temperatures?  Now, that is one of the smartest questions that you have asked me so far.

Let’s first look at the makeup of the Earth’s atmosphere.  Our atmosphere is made up of approximately 78 percent nitrogen, 21 percent oxygen, 0.93 percent argon, 0.04 percent carbon dioxide, and trace quantities of other gases.   Currently, the percentage of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is closer to 0.039 percent but I rounded up.  If you cranked up every coal plant on the planet then you still would not get this much above 0.049 percent which is still just barely beyond the rounding error.   But what about the “Greenhouse Effect”, you ask?  Couldn’t just a slight change in CO2 result in more heat becoming trapped in the Earth’s atmosphere?    Wow, you are like a dog with a freaking bone in regards to these questions.

Let’s say that you placed a cold spoon in a hot bowl of soup.  Then you come back and touch the spoon a few minutes later.  Ouch!  Why did you touch that spoon, you idiot?  It’s hot.  How did your spoon get so hot?  It was warmed by the hot soup, of course. If you checked the temperature of the spoon then you would quickly discover that the end of the spoon that was in the soup was much hotter than the handle part sticking out of the soup.   The hottest part of the spoon was closest to the original source of the heat.  Now let’s look at the Greenhouse Effect models for our planet. The troposphere is the area of the Earth’s atmosphere which traps these greenhouse gases and captures the heat from the sun.   If the troposphere is the source for our global warming then this section should obviously be the warmest part of our spoon.  However, studies of the Earth’s atmosphere have repeatedly shown that the “warmest part of the spoon” is the atmosphere closest to the ground!  So, the Earth’s ground is causing our global warming?  Oh, we are getting so close to the truth that you that can almost smell it!

Pro tip:  When you are trying to figure out the cause of the fluctuations in the Earth’s temperature, you might want to take into account that giant yellow hydrogen ball of plasma in the sky.   You know that thing that makes our temperatures go up to ninety degrees during the day and then drop down into the seventies when we turn our planetary back to it again at night?  Of course, I am talking about the sun!  The sun!  Who would have thunk it?   You may want to be sitting down for this next part. Yes… I am absolutely telling you that the 9,941 degree Fahrenheit sun is a much more significant factor for our climate’s temperature than the 0.04 percent of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere.

Increased solar activity can quite easily be recorded by observing an increased number of “sun spots” on the surface of the sun.  If one goes back and looks at the recorded history of sun spots over the past two-thousand years, one will quickly see a sharp correlation between solar activity and the Earth’s temperature.  Remember the Little Ice Age that I told you about?  This closely correlates with 400 years of some of the lowest solar activity in history.   The sun simply wasn’t as hot during this period when compared to the previous centuries before this.

Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have never correlated precisely with climate change, but scientists have discovered something else that correlates extremely closely with temperature fluctuations throughout history:  cosmic rays!   That’s right… these are the very same cosmic rays that gave Reed Richards and the rest of the Fantastic Four their amazing powers back in 1961.   These cosmic rays continuously come down from space and hit water droplets in the atmosphere which results in cloud formation.  When the sun is highly active then this results in fewer cosmic rays making it into our atmosphere resulting in fewer clouds.  Fewer clouds in the sky results in higher surface temperatures on Earth… wait a minute… higher surface temperatures!  That is the hot end of the spoon!   Our explanation now finally matches closely with our results!

Okay, so if everything that I said makes sense then how the heck can 97 percent of all scientists agree that man-made global warming is caused by carbon emissions?  This is where we get into the political aspect of this debate.   The origin for this current scientific and political quagmire rests squarely at the feet of the Iron Lady.  You heard me correctly…   Margaret Freaking Thatcher!   During the 1970’s, the prime minister of the United Kingdom was trying to convince a skeptical nation about the benefits of nuclear power.  This was just around the same time that global temperatures had started to rise.  Mrs. Thatcher decided to point towards a few words from a single disrespected Swedish scientist about his theories regarding carbon dioxide emissions and global temperature increases.   Politicians used this unproven theory to push for “cleaner” forms of energy production.  Governments then started paying for scientists to “prove” that these theories had merit.  The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established to prove the link between carbon emissions and global warming.  Scientists soon discovered an endless supply of money if they applied for government research grants with the words “global warming” and “carbon emission” in the application.   Scientists who did not agree with the premise did not need to apply.  Global warming became the “golden goose” of scientific research.   Saying that 97 percent of IPCC scientists agree that man-made global warming is real is like saying that 97 percent of people who work for Donald Trump agree that Donald Trump is awesome.  You get the results that you pay for.

There are plenty of scientists on this planet who know beyond a shadow of doubt that carbon dioxide emissions have absolutely nothing to do with global warming.  These people are now mocked and ostracized. They often struggle to find work.  Many find it impossible to get funding for research.  They have become social pariahs within the scientific community.  Just a few years ago, an official inquiry was launched to investigate a coordinated manipulation by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the global surface temperature data.  As throughout the course of history, our recent warming trend has now tapered off while many of our “top scientists” are under tremendous pressure to “prove” that this warming trend still exists.  For the record, I don’t have a problem with a society that does not have an answer for every question.  But I do have a huge problem with a society which believes that some answers should never be questioned.

So what is the point of all this?  Who cares if we are right or wrong about global warming?   The polar bears will be fine either way.  No harm.  No foul.  How does this affect you?  Well, if you live among the people in the developed world then it probably won’t affect you very much.  The government may try to regulate your carbon footprint and tell you what kind of car you can drive.  They may try to regulate industry and force expensive and unnecessary intervention which will ultimately be passed on to the consumer.   Your cost of living may go up a little bit for no reason.  But if you live in the undeveloped world then some of these regulations could suppress you for the remainder of your lifetime.  Laws are being enforced right now that prevents the developing world from utilizing the older and cheaper forms of energy production.  Often times this means not having energy at all for entire swaths of our global society.  It means keeping millions of Africans in the dark while we keep our lights on and while Al Gore flies around in his jumbo jet.

I am all for keeping this world clean.  The Earth is a beautiful place and we should make sure we leave it in as good of a condition as we found it.  I am a big fan of clean water and clean air.  We should all do everything within our power to make sure that our planet does not become polluted and uninhabitable.  We should not have to lie to our fellow citizens or stand with our collective foot on their necks in order to achieve these goals.

I have grown frustrated over the past few years regarding the lack of attention paid to inner city gun violence. The greatest mortality risk for a young black male growing up in the inner cities today is not at the hands of our police departments. This demographic is most likely to die at the hands of other young black men. In retrospect, most of these murderers lack any significant male role model in their lives. Hundreds of young black children have been gunned down in the city of Chicago alone over the past year, yet the death of Cecil the Lion and Michael Brown received more attention than all of these victims combined. For years, I assumed that the public’s apathy regarding this epidemic problem was simply due to the subtle soft racism of lowered expectations. However, I just recently realized that this persistent neglect by the mainstream media may be due to the lack of a catchy slogan for the cause. I think it is long past the time that we actually had one. I recommend that we use the slogan “Black Dads Matter.”

When I was in tenth grade way back in 1985, I had a large Confederate flag hanging in my bedroom.  One day, I had a good friend named Corey Oates over to my house to play video games.  Corey is black and highly intelligent.  As he sat down in my room, he looked up at this flag and told me in a semi-joking manner, “You know, that flag is a symbol of racial oppression and is highly offensive to people of my color.”  I rolled my eyes at him and said, “What are you talking about, you homo?  This flag just means that I am a rebel.  I am not offending anyone.  Don’t be such a retard.”

Personal growth comes gradually with most people.  It comes over long periods of time and is accelerated through education.  It evolves with exposure to other opinions and cultures.   I can’t pinpoint the precise moment when these changes occurred in me but I do know that I am not a big fan of the Confederate flag or the words “homo” or “retard” thirty years later.   My friend Corey knew that I had no hatred for other people in my heart, but my obliviousness to the pain that I may have been inflicting on those around me should not serve as an excuse for my behavior.   We worry so much about “political correctness” these days and how it may infringe on our freedom of speech… but having the right to say something does not mean that you should actually say it.   Human decency dictates that we restrict our own speech as soon as we realize that it unnecessarily damages the psyche of those around us.

The Confederate flag has been flown throughout the south for far too long.   As a general rule, one does not get to fly one’s flag any longer after one loses the war.   Only the winner gets to fly the flag.  That is the way that it has always been.  Can you imagine how people would feel if the Nazi flag was raised throughout Israel today?   Can you imagine the anger and hostility this would elicit from the general public for no reason whatsoever?   The Confederate flag belongs in our museums… not flying over our government buildings or in the bedrooms of our clueless teenagers.

Just recently, an angry racist white-supremacist entered a historically black church and killed nine of its church members in a cold-blooded attack.  He stated that he wanted to start a race war.   He acted as if he spoke for White Americans throughout this country.   What would be a better way to honor those victims than to start the process of removing the Confederate flag from flagpoles everywhere?   Would there be a better way of collectively thumbing our noses at this cold-hearted killer?

We should not remove symbols of the Confederacy because we are forced to.  We should not succumb to peer pressure or political correctness.    We should remove all symbols of the Confederacy because they lost the war over one-hundred-and-fifty years ago.   We should remove these symbols because they unnecessarily hurt people for no reason.   We should remove them because we have undergone our own personal growth as a nation.  We should willingly take down these Confederate flags… not because we are forced to… but because we are a good and decent nation.