"Climate Change is a hoax", Trump's Flare for Gaslighting.

 

A certain New Yorker's idea of a Funday on Fifth Avenue.

The reason, well, one of them, I started writing this blog was because, thanks to an accident in my childhood, I see the world from a uni-ocular, as in Cyclopean, perspective, so thought, Well, I quite literally see the world differently than almost anyone else, so I think I'll record it ... the same reason applies to why I started to draw.

My understanding of the term Gas-lighting seems to be a case in point. The term is used, as per the definitions I've found online:

"To manipulate (someone) by psychological means into questioning their own sanity."

It comes from the movie Gaslight wherein Ingrid Bergman's husband tries to do the above. My exception to the way the term is used, and has come to be cemented into place as to its meaning, is that in that movie the gaslight wasn't used by the husband to try to drive his wife coo-coo. Au contraire, it was the gaslighting that gave him away and provided the clue that exposed his nefarious plans to the person he was supposedly "gaslighting".

Leaving his wife alone in the house, the scheming husband would sneak into an adjoining house and work on his plans, leaving her alone. When he turned on the gas in one place, it would dim the lights in his own, leaving his wife to wonder what was causing it to happen. This, however, given the various tricks and subterfuges her husband was using to cause her to question her own sanity, was the least of her worries. But the kicker is, he was completely unaware that the secrecy of his activities was being  jeopardized by this tell-tale sign. But what the term implies is that he was using the dimming of the gaslight to drive his wife bonkers, despite the fact that the complete opposite was true: when one of her friends, well, her only friend really, informed her that he saw hubbie entering the second house, it was the dimming of the gas lighting that helped clue her in to the dirty trick her husband was pulling on her, as he had informed her he was going elsewhere (his ability to access said house not being known to her until then).

So now she knew! Every time he left and the dimming threw the light onto activities he wished to keep secret from her, it exposed his lies and gave her the confidence to see through his other cruel tricks as well: It was the gas lighting that SAVED her sanity, not what made her question it.

Ergo sum of its parts: Gaslighting someone should be considered a GOOD thing!

So it's just a bit of irony that lighting gas throughout the midwest is gaslighting the public, in the manner of its defined, but erroneous, meaning:

Four Corners Methane Hot Spot: a highly concentrated plume of greenhouse gas hovers over the region where there’s a 155,000-ton gap between the emissions these facilities collectively report to the Environmental Protection Agency’s greenhouse gas inventory, and the amount of emissions the scientists estimate is needed to produce a plume as concentrated as the hot spot. The industry, of course, blames the gap on geologic seeps.  

Water vapor is the most abundant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, both by weight and by volume, account for 66 to 85 percent of the greenhouse effect, compared to a range of 9 to 26 percent for CO2.

The amount of gas flared,  burnt off in the flare system to produce water vapor and carbon dioxide, in the Permian rose about 85 percent last year reaching 553 million cubic feet a day in the fourth quarter, according to data from Oslo-based consultant Rystad Energy.

and, it's being known that,

If there is a high amount of waste heat and water vapor is released in copious amounts it affects the weather and rainfall in its area.

But,

It would have to be an immense plant with an enormous release of heat and consequent water vapor.

However,

The Permian, the North Dakota, the Marcellus shale fracking operations, as well as the Four Corners, 
are all equivalent to exactly that: immense flaring operations generating enormous releases of heat and its consequent CO2 and water vapor directly into the atmosphere. Yet which fails to take into account the un-flared methane that is released in now unregulated amounts, as the Obama-era regulations have been so mangled and their intended lack of enforcement so broadcast as to leave them, for all intents and purposes, non-existent. And all these Greenhouse gases are being released in such enormous unprecedented quantities to produce a product for which there is no demand (No. Dakota's oil, for example is so constrained by its remoteness that there is a sizable discount, currently at more than 20% of the already low price of oil, the low price being a function of its plenitude on the world market). It is being produced solely to make America grate again by producing oil its refineries are useless for processing, thus making it necessary for the US to import growing levels of Russian oil.

So, in case you were wondering what Putin and  Trump discussed during  their closed door conference, it was surely this: pull the same trick on Venezuela that the Trump administration did in
Iran: use oil politics to ensure private gain for his cronies. By placing sanctions on Venezuela,
Russian oil, despite sanctions being on Russia right now, is being imported in copious quantities to
Texas to keep their refineries in operation, since the oil produced in the US is useless as far as these refineries' capabilities are concerned and is at the crux of the reason the ban on exporting oil was
lifted during the Obama presidency.

These sanctions have no more justification than that Venezuela is a Socialist Country, even as the President ladles cash to his constituencies in the farm belt for the losses they are incurring because of climate change and his tariff regime: that's Socialism.

Even as his administration uses "Defense" of National Security to keep the Auto industry from choking on its fumes: Socialism,

Even as the Boeing Executives get ladled cash for their warplanes while manufacturing killer Jets for their customers: Socialism.

There would be no fracking industry if not for the government research in fracking as well as the QE the Fed larded the industry with to the tune of trillions of $$$$$$$: How is that not Socialism?

The Military Industrial Complex, including such obvious industries as Chemical plants, the Nuclear industry, Oil companies, electric utilities, none of which would exist without Socialism, because none of them would make the necessary investments to even make them insurable, never mind going concerns: unless they get the government to assume their risk they threaten to close shop, as they can't then make a profit. This even includes Banking (the Fed: a private Corporation whose employees are paid for by the taxpayers), housing (Fanny Mae, etc: buying up mortgages the banks issuing them would never extend if they couldn't offload the risk to the taxpayer); industry after industry would be non-existent, as would their much-vaunted profits, without Socialism, for the simple reason, that, as in any Socialist country, those deriving the benefits aren't the same as those  who assume the risk. Dividends (hell the richest Corporations don't even pay taxes) from all these Corporations don't go to the taxpayer, but to shareholders who, thanks to the PPT, all but have even their share prices guaranteed by the Central Government. And that is Socialism. Calling it the Military Industrial Complex is a fancy-pants way of hoodwinking the public into accepting policies that in any other country would be accepted for what they are: Socialism.

Without Socialism, the US, nor any other economy, would be competitive, as Industry, from the Fossil Fuel industry (Suing Exxon without suing the Federal Government that built the Interstate Highway System that made the acquisition, fueling, maintenance and insuring of a personal automobile pretty much mandatory, demonstrates the lawsuit for what it actually is: pure political posturing; Showboating) to the housing industry, would be right now, flat on their backs.

Venezuelan sanctions have nothing to do its being a Socialist country anymore than Iranian sanctions have anything to do with ... well, whatever the trumped up reason is, as with all of DJ's decisions, they are made to position his offspring and the companies they keep to profit from his tenure in the White House to the detriment of not only the sanctioned countries, but most of all, his own constituencies, because, in a political demonstration of the adage You only hurt the ones you love, the ones you should hurt least of all, he knows that hurting the ones that love him will cost him nothing, even as the repercussions of his policies are flooding their homes, destroying their livelihood, making their purchases more expensive by the day,  they all dutifully support him because he will defend the unborn, even as the water-borne, as in diseases and molds, houses and family cars, are killing his ardent faithful, who are being gaslighted to death by this insane level of savoir flare.