Ice melting at the poles turns into water. Earth’s spin causes centrifugal force, sending that water towards the equator. Adding mass to that region slows the rotation of the Earth. That’s pretty straightforward. It’s basic physics. Ice Capades skaters have been demonstrating that effect for years: arms in, faster spin.
Scientists recently figured out how to compare current trends with far earlier times. A newly-published paper says Earth is now slowing at an “unprecedented” rate—greater than at any time in 3.6 million years. Good luck, though, convincing your MAGA uncle that days are getting longer because of climate change.
Man-made greenhouse gas emissions have the power to put the brakes on an object whose mass is so great that it takes 27 zeroes to write it down, but gerrymandered ignorance renders that knowledge irrelevant. Why, it’s almost disheartening to think about.
Fortunately there are flickering bright spots on the horizon. Just over the river, in fact.
These are, indeed, some terrible times, but not so dire that Democrats have abandoned hope of flipping the Senate. Granted, thanks to the chamber’s peculiarities—the filibuster, and massive over-representation of rural voters, to name just two—a Senate run by Democrats would be unable on its own to, for example, give the President the austere sort of public housing unit he actually deserves. Committees run by Democrats, though, could certainly overturn some interesting rocks.
In order to achieve that glittering ambition, though, Democrats will have to oust Susan “Deeply Concerned” Collins, of Maine, an incumbent whose spirit animal may well be the barnacle. Among its many peculiarities, Maine conducts its elections using ranked choice voting. Under some circumstances, that can draw out the vote counting process. So, we couldn’t be sure the result of Tuesday’s election would be known in time for this newspaper. As it turns out, we need not have worried. The results were in right away, because Platner slammed it with 72 percent of the vote.
That’s a big margin for a newcomer. Yet some Democrats “from away” find this quite alarming. Why might that be? Surprise, surprise: we blame the media.
For reasons which never seem to get a full airing in news broadcasts, corporate-owned news media have never been very good at reporting on issues involving the doings of corporations—especially when those corporations are interacting with the government. That stuff is dry, complicated, and requires a lot of research. It’s also likely to get you fired from your well-paying job if reporting it makes the bosses or their cronies look bad. It’s safer, easier, and more remunerative to draw in readers and viewers with salacious tales of personal misbehavior.
This trend is not exactly new. When Bill Clinton was gassing on about the supposed benefits of globalized trade, the media spent so much of its time drooling over land scandals and interns that it never really got around to properly covering the gutting of manufacturing and the crushing of unions. It underwent a tremendous expansion—a Big Bang, if you will—exactly eleven years ago next Tuesday, due to a sudden overabundance of raw material. We have now reached the point where it’s deemed sufficient for the national media to repeat every negative personal factoid, and ignore a candidate’s message entirely.
One of the latest products of this system is the Graham Platner of the general public’s imagination: a big, hairy, scary, walking and talking tattoo which has somehow acquired the power to send nasty text messages and run for the Senate.
Vote for him? Out of the question. A statistically-average consumer of today’s news product would cross the street to avoid such a monster. This has a certain strain of Democrats doing what they do best: wringing their hands or clutching their pearls, depending on their household income.
Meanwhile, back in Maine, there’s an actual human being going around talking about what it’s like trying to stay fed, keep a roof over your head, and keep the health care system from killing you in this economy. His name is Graham Platner, too.
Some other human beings in Maine, the kind who have no editor’s expectation to fulfill, have been going out of their way to hear him talk about who he is, how he came to be who he is, and what he will do if he gets elected.
What he says is that it’s not about him. It’s an organizing project. According to Tuesday’s results, it’s working.
While Democrats elsewhere are fussing and fretting, those in Maine are working to elect their nominee. They’re not just comfortable with him, but enthusiastic about him.
People used to say, when this paper was young: “As Maine goes, so goes the nation.”
Depending on what happens in November, maybe we’ll dust that off.
- This article originally appeared in the New Hampshire Gazette.