I’ve been doing a lot of thinking … most of it in the wee hours just before the sun rises around 7:00 a.m. … and my thoughts have taken many pathways, some of which I’ve written about in recent posts.  Another is the environment and how people are in denial about their own role … about the role of humans in general … in the destruction of our planet’s atmosphere.  What to do about it?

Well, last night I had a thought … advertising!  Advertising and marketing are powerful tools used mainly to sell products and increase corporate profits.  People are gullible … we believe that if we don’t use that one brand of toothpaste, our smiles won’t be beautiful, and if we don’t use that new good-scented deodorant, our friends and even our significant others will shun us.  Why do we believe it?  Because it is shoved in our faces time after time after time, day in and day out.  Eventually, subliminal persuasion works and when we see that new variety of soda on the grocery shelves, we automatically reach for it without thinking.

So … if advertising works so well to sell products, doesn’t it make sense that the Environmental Protection Agency, working along with all the environmental groups, should invest in a bit of air and print time to tell people over and over and over how they should turn off the lights, turn down the thermostat, and drive less?  How they should stop feeding the oil companies so many of their hard-earned dollars and stop buying water in throwaway plastic bottles?  Now, I’m no genius, so if I’ve thought of this, surely others have too?  If people hear something enough times, a seed begins to grow in their minds … let’s get busy and plant the seed of conservation!

I’ve been trying to avoid writing about the utter stupidity coming out of the mouths of some members of the Republican Party these days.  But a couple lately, both by freshmen members of the U.S. House of Representatives, just beg for dissemination …

Lisa McClain is a representative from the state of Michigan who gave a speech at the former guy’s ‘rally’ outside of Detroit last weekend.  As she was rattling off the “accomplishments” of the former guy, she claimed that he “caught Osama bin Laden” … Say WHAT???  Usama bin Laden was killed in a raid during the administration of President Barack Obama shortly after 1:00 a.m. on May 2^nd in the year 2011 … nearly six years before the former guy first set foot into the Oval Office!!!

Ms. McClain claims it was “an honest mistake”, but I’m sorry … she’s a liar.

And then there’s ol’ Lauren Boebert, a representative from the state of Colorado, who has decided that LGBTQ people should not be allowed to ‘come out’, or tell others of their gender identity, until they reach the age of 21.  Shit, Lauren, it’s not like buying alcohol or tobacco!!!  It’s who a person is!!!  A child should be encouraged to talk about their feelings, to express themselves, and a young person must not be made to feel that there is ‘something wrong’ or that they are an aberration!  Send Ms. Boebert and her gun collection back to Colorado and let her resume her duties as owner of “Shooters”, that sleazy bar & grill she owns where the servers all carry guns!  Take her OUT of our government!!!

Last weekend saw yet another mass shooting, this time in Sacramento, California.  Six dead, at least 12 injured.  Police have arrested one man but suspect there was a second shooter involved.  Over 100 casings were found in the area.

Well, I guess there’s more than one way to reduce the population in the U.S., eh?  Funny, though, that people are appalled at the idea of abortion, want to ban birth control, and yet … the idea of nearly unrestricted guns and 10,963 deaths by guns so far this year in the U.S. doesn’t seem to bother them a bit.

I can hear the gunkies now (my latest wordvention … if drug addicts can be called “junkies”, then shouldn’t gun addicts be called “gunkies”?) saying, “There she goes again, crying about how we’ve misinterpreted the 2^nd Amendment, how gun deaths are so awful … she’s like a broken record.”

Well, gunkies, rest easy for today I’m only going to let loose a big SIGH rather than a torrent of words that the people who need to listen to cannot hear.  Until one day … one fateful day when you get that phone call telling you that your own child has been killed by a man with a gun.  And then, maybe … just maybe, you’ll understand.

Oh, and one last thing … Sarah Palin, the failed governor of Alaska, has announced that she plans to run for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.  Best wishes to Ms. Palin for a monumental, perhaps even record-shattering LOSS in November!  As governor, her approval ratings dropped from 93% to 54% in under two years.  She resigned more than a year before the end of her term, citing “opposition research,” 150 FOIA requests and 15 “frivolous” legal ethics complaints filed by “political operatives” against her, as well as stating that she did not wish to be a lame duck governor.  No doubt she did the good people of Alaska a huge favour with her resignation, and hopefully she will do us all a favour by losing in November!  She’s like a bad penny … she keeps showing up where she isn’t wanted.