Get Energy Smart! NOW!

“The Donald” is going to headline at the Republican National Convention (RNC).   The widespread RUMINT is that Trump will gleefully, to laughing and cheering RNC delegates, do a fantasy skit where he fires a President Barack Obama imitator.

Missing among much of this fanfare is the core symbolism of putting Donald Trump on the stage of a major political event.  The Republican Party leadership has, sadly for the nation, been captured by an ideological vision enraptured by conspiracy theories and hateful of expertise (and knowledge and institutions and thinking …) at odds with their policy priorities.

A clear example of the Republican National Committee’s embrace of conspiracy theorist was the winter passage of a resolution supporting the ‘black helicopter’ crowd’s focus on “Agenda 21” as the evil UN’s efforts to create a global socialist government through such despicable measures as promotion of energy efficient building codes. That resolution:

The United Nations Agenda 21 is being covertly pushed into local communities throughout the United States of America through the International Council of Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) through local “sustainable development” policies such as Smart Growth, Wildlands Project, Resilient Cities, Regional Visioning Projects, and other “Green” or “Alternative” projects

The Republican National Committee recognizes the destructive and insidious nature of United Nations Agenda 21 and hereby exposes to the public and public policy makers the dangerous intent of the plan.

Putting aside the simple reality that ICLEI is an excellent organization worth supporting rather than some form of devilish covert underminer of U.S. security, the RNC embrace of junk conspiracy theory and anti-science concepts is far from limited to just this one resolution.

The anti-science syndrome nature of the current RNC is all too clear with the GOP’s passion for global warming denial.  The GOP’s determined denial of basic science and desire for Americans to disregard drought, heat-wave, wild-fire, and other tangible examples of mounting climate chaos is one of the clearest examples in American history of ideology trumping basic common sense and wisdom.

Donald Trump’s Las Vegas-like headline act at the RNC next week is thus fitting for all too many reasons:

• Trump, in many ways reminiscent of nominee Mitt Romney’s Bain experience profiting off bankrupting companies, has a long record of huge loses and bankruptcies. Trump has flamboyantly made a speciality trumping others via bankruptcy. Many have lost their shirts off their backs investing with or loaning to him.  Trump thus stands as a symbol of how the RNC’s precepts would profit a few even while bankrupting the nation.
• Trump, just as with the RNC Agenda 21 Resolution, has promoted conspiracy theories.  For example, Trump is a prominent “Birther” (questioning whether — despite the truth being quite different — whether Barack Obama was born in the United States).
• Trump, just as with the powers that be in the GOP, is a global warming denier.  Suggesting that winter disproves temperature records around the world, Trump argued that large snowfalls should make the Nobel Prize committee retract its award to VP Gore and 1000s of the world’s scientists:
  

  “With the coldest winter ever recorded, with snow setting record levels up and down the coast, the Nobel committee should take the Nobel Prize back from Al Gore,” the tycoon told members of his Trump National Golf Club.

Bankruptcy specialist.

• Trump.
• RNC.
• Check.

Conspiracy theory promoter.

• Trump.
• RNC.
• Check.

Anti-science syndrome suffering Global Warming denier:

• Trump.
• GOP.
• Check.

Donald Trump and the RNC are a perfect fit.

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore for Trump photo at start of post. Caricature by DonkeyHok=tey.