Category: CURRENT TRENDS

Former vice president, current presidential candidate, now presumptive democratic nominee Biden was right single payer healthcare is had in Italy, throughout Europe and it didn’t help; indicating Medicare for all would do very little to combat the enormity of a pandemic in the U.S. Similarly yes other countries are providing UBI (universal basic income), guaranteeing a majority of people’s employment wages, merely furloughing workers not firing them; yet, the question isn’t can they do it, but how long they can do it without looking like failures such as Greece amidst its financial crisis.

The problem isn’t big tobacco finding a new way to get the next generation hooked on a different variant of their deadly product after so many years of seeing smoking rates decline; neither is it youth’s unique penchant for finding the hottest it, stupid, reckless trend that could kill them. No the problem was and is a repeating one, poor regulation of a consumer product by agencies meant to do just that, utter obliviousness by creators about their own product, let alone how people would use it once placed in their hands. Leading to an ignorant public who doesn’t understand the importance of licensed vape devices and the fluid cartridges that go in them, thus the illness linked to death, double lung transplants and odd lung diseases, but just ban vaping.

Extreme weather, climate change takes the brunt of the blame; earths warming temperatures due to greenhouse gases changing weather patterns leading to the devastation before us while American and other world leaders deny the clear science behind it earing the scorn of our youngest generation. However virtually with every natural disaster Americans wake up to the increasing disappointment the America they thought they had doesn’t exist, the government, the safeguards they believed would protect them have left them bereft, preventions for local/regional weather phenomenon, climate change induced or not, not taken costing lives and livelihoods.

11, 12 year old rape victims, incest survivors shouldn’t have to carry their attacker/abuser’s baby and they certainly shouldn’t have to, to appease the extreme religious ideology of the minority lawmakers in sparsely populated, rural states.

From #metoo to the straight arms club, recent revelations leave serious questions about how to navigate care and affection in both the consent and the Trump era, as well as the consequences of telling the platonically physically affectionate (the huggers) among us not to be.

And when we say safety we don’t mean from skinned knees, scarped elbows, natural mild consequences of acting up at school, forgetting to do the laundry or let the puppy out, failing grades or non-life threatening common life experiences. We mean safety as much from the perverts, freaks, psychos, mass shooters, deranged killers, those specifically bent on hurting children as the once labeled ‘freak accidents’ that were, in retrospect to our own upbringings, the product of mild neglect and lax safety protocols now insisted upon because of repeated serious injury, death to children.

Talk about a raging case of toxic masculinity, thinking the only way, the best way to discipline or manage children is to be violent with them; never truly examined, so called grown-up problem solving involves some level of violence against people younger, weaker and less able to defend themselves regardless of age. Relatedly, surprise, surprise the people who need lessons on adulting are older adults.

Sadly it only took 3 months for that reality to come to pass to the detriment of the victims.