#oregon fires

So lemme get this straight You put a poison in the rain And then you set the woods aflame So that you could make your numbers Bigger than everyone else's numbers At what point did you decide That power alone wasn't worth your time? It's Atlas's suicide or it's nothing for you But I can't get off of your ride I can't fucking breathe Without a biohazard mask across my mouth Cause the toxic flood about to inundate my hometown, yeah I can't see the sun without a hazmat bodysuit To shield myself from the world outside As I watch ‘em burning it to the ground, yeah

For the first 10 years I lived here I could just leave the window open from late spring to early fall. Just literally never close it. Feel the breeze and smell the plants. The house was designed for that.

Now the summers get too hot and then too smoky every single year. I hate this time of year now, it's just endlessly miserably and literally poisoning us. And it makes me angry all the time because I keenly remember it not being this way until a decade ago. This is so recent! But now it feels like it'll just be like this forever. Every year watching our beautiful forests we worked so hard to protect burn down from the combination of climate change and a refusal to use widespread controlled burns.

"Little fires can prevent big fires" is apparently too threatening and difficult for the kind of black-and-white thinking that dominates politics in this country. We could just for once listen to the indigenous people who figured out how to live here without burning it down and poisoning the sky.

☔️🍀🌧☔️🌬💦💧🌧🌦🌨🌊

If you can, please donate to fire relief organizations I will link below. Everything counts- even if it is just a few dollars. Put as much intention into this post as you possibly can. Pray, do a rain spell, send vibes, do anything. You have more power than you think, and collecting energy is what this post needs to make it work.

☔️California wildfire relief 👩🏿‍🚒

🌧Oregon wildfire relief🧑🏽‍🚒

We all know that Trump tells lies.

But what is curious is that Trump tells certain lies that his followers are more likely to believe--consequently setting them up for serious health hazards that can sometimes result in death.

Trump is also behind disbanding certain parts of the social safety net that are likely to negatively impact the health and well being of many of his working class and/ or retired supporters. 

For instance:

We now know that Trump deliberately underplayed how lethal COVID-19 is--putting many of his followers (especially the ones who refuse to wear masks and to practice social distancing) at risk of getting the virus and possibly dying.

Trump’s administration has petitioned the Supreme Court to “overturn the Affordable Care Act,” which would leave as many as 23 million Americans without health insurance in the middle of a pandemic--with no plan in place to replace the ACA. Many blue-collar white people (the very people who make up much of Trump’s base) benefit from the ACA. In addition, many of the people the ACA covers live in Red states.

Despite the fact that “white supremacist extremists....pose the most persistent and lethal threat” to the US, Trump has turned Antifa (the loosely organized group of anti-fascist activists) into such a bogeyman that Trump supporters in Oregon are risking serious injury or death by avoiding evacuating areas ravaged by wildfires because they believe untrue rumors that the fires are being set by Antifa in order to loot towns.

Trump has pledged to terminate the payroll tax if he is re-elected. That would effectively bankrupt Social Security and Medicare. If that happens, many seniors, including many Trump supporters (43% of seniors still support him), will undoubtedly die prematurely.

The Trump administration’s proposed changes to SNAP would have left nearly a million Americans hungry during the pandemic. Food insecurity certainly affects health and well being. The Trump administration is still fighting the court order that halted the changes to the program. Many white Americans without college degrees (a big part of Trump’s base) benefit from SNAP and other safety net programs. 

So you have to ask, why is Trump deliberately saying and doing things that could literally lead to the premature deaths of many of his followers? 

What is he thinking when he looks out at a crowd of maskless supporters packed together at his rallies, knowing full well that some of them will die because of his lies?

And why are so many of these same people willing to put their health and lives on the line (as well as the health and lives of their loved ones) to vote for someone who is doing this to them? 

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