The final week of August has perennially meant palpable melancholy, concerning the ending of Summer, the season of sunshine, warmth, watersports and outdoor activities. The traditionally effective antidote, to this annually occurring emotion, were positive thoughts of the coming Fall Season, with its comfortable coolness, color, and universal renewal of energy. This year, the concluding days of Summer Season, seem not to have occasioned any of the usual, seasonal regret. The excessive and unusual number of fires, the flooding rains, the unusual and intensive storms, the extreme climatic conditions, including unusual heat, the frightening pace of glacial melting, effecting unwanted changes to the ocean and the terrestrial flora and fauna, the declining purity of the air and drinking water, are not productive of any such nostalgic feelings. Compounding these ominous symptoms of existential climate change, are the multiple fires, currently burning in the Brazilian Rainforest, with potentially alarming results, for North America, South America and the very Planet, itself.
A contemporaneous, and not entirely, unrelated transition, to the passage of this unusual Summer, is the decease of billionaire, David Koch. One can only shake his head, with bewilderment, in recollection of his life, and in contemplation of his dubious legacy. The deceased was a partner in an entity, whose annual profits have been in the billions of dollars, specifically derived, from its far reaching, immoral exploitation, and sale of fossil fuel; despite its recognized, dynamic role, in despoiling our green planet, its air, water, and topography, as well as eons of evolutionary developed, fauna and flora. What can any truthful discussion of his legacy be?
David Koch (and his shamefully, guilty brother), may well be the most prominent, richest, and most successful, of that cohort of entrepreneurs, whom, we have often described as, functionally, valuing excessive profits over the existence of planetary life. In order to be permitted to make and accumulate, their vast treasury of many billions of dollars, the Koch brothers saw fit to buy-off a significant number of U.S. Senators and Representatives, the Presidency, and virtually, the entire Republican Party. The Koch Brothers were only too glad to advantage themselves, of the situational existence, of the huge expense, implicit in running for, and keeping, national political office, and the convenient number of less than idealistic, ambitious politicians.
Koch millions are undeniably responsible, for the operation of the dirty, polluting, coal industry, for fracking, excessive oil drilling, water pollution, deforestation, air pollution by carbon and greenhouse gas, general climate change and lasting insult to the planet. The Koch brothers have in large part, severely desecrated the American Republican Democracy, in order to personally profit, from their intentional despoliation, and the consequent, existential endangerment, of our planet; inclusive of the pollution of the environment. Most selfishly immoral, is their demonstrated cynical and intentional, downplaying of the importance, of the life and health of humanity. With such a toxic and pathological legacy, what can, even a fabricated, eulogy memorialize? We are not principally disposed to celebrate the occurrence of death, although many liberal extremists appear exultant, at the decease of one of the villainous, Koch clan. However, we will, at minimum, candidly declare, that we will not, especially, miss him.
As a direct result of his, (together with other selfish entrepreneurs’), unlimited predilection for profitmaking, and veritable, pathological disregard for human life, as well as the health of our threatened planet, we may never again, be enabled to experience the enjoyment of past, memorable and nostalgically recalled, Summers.
-p.
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