Time to make DINOs really extinct

The executive branch of Minnesota's government has approved an amended permit allowing massive water withdrawals to support the construction of Enbridge's Line 3 pipeline. Minnesota's governor has written  (Tweeted) something to the effect that "any pipeline through treaty lands is a non-starter with me." The campaign to help Minnesota's governor get reelected in 2022 keeps sending me emails requesting donations. My response: Any administration that allows Minnesota's environment and treaty lands to be impaired in support of an unneeded tar sands pipeline is a non-starter for my money.

local Democratic caucus, 2018

Photo by J. Harrington

The Democratic National Committee has done much to keep real progressives like AOC and other members of "The Squad" from getting elected and/or re-elected. My snail mail and email inbox keep filling up with requests from the DNC, or prominent Democrats on its behalf, to contribute to increasing the Democratic majority. I'm more interested in increasing the progressive majority since I believe that DINOs like Manchin and Sinema are placeholders at best. The Democratic administration in our nation's capital seems to support Enbridge's Line 3, despite campaign promises to tackle climate change. Although I may well vote a democratic ticket in November 2022, I'm likely to send contributions only to progressive candidates who honor their promises and/or help fund primary challenges to the regressive members of the party.

As I see it, we are all faced with enough critical issues that helping support a too little, too late political party is not in our interest or that of our descendants. Republicans are, and have been for quite some time, an unmitigated disaster for all except themselves and the 1%. Going back at least as far as Clinton and NAFTA, the best I can hope for from democrats is a mitigated disaster. I'm tired of being limited to chosing the lessor of two evils.

The Age of Dinosaurs

By James Scruton

There are, of course, theories 

about the wide-eyed, drop-jawed 

fascination children have for them, 

about how, before he's learned 

his own phone number or address, 

a five-year-old can carry 

like a few small stones 

the Latin tonnage of those names, 

the prefixes and preferences 

for leaf or meat. 

My son recites the syllables 

I stumble over now, 

sets up figures as I did 

years ago in his prehistory. 

Here is the green ski slope 

of a brontosaur's back, 

there a triceratops in full 

gladiator gear. From the arm 

of a chair a pterodactyl 

surveys the dark primeval carpet. 

Each has disappeared from time 

to time, excavated finally 

from beneath a cabinet 

or the sofa cushions, only 

to be buried again among its kind 

in the deep toy chest, 

the closed lid snug as earth. 

The next time they're brought out 

to roam the living room 

another bone's been found 

somewhere, a tooth or fragment 

of an eggshell dusted off, 

brushing away some long-held notion 

about their life-span 

or intelligence, warm blood 

or cold. On the floor 

they face off as if debating 

the latest find, what part 

of which one of them 

has been discovered this time. 

Or else they stand abreast 

in one long row, side 

by scaly side, waiting to fall 

like dominoes, my son's 

tossed tennis ball a neon yellow 

asteroid, his shadow a dark cloud 

when he stands, his fervor for them 

cooling so slowly he can't feel it— 

the speed of glaciers, maybe, 

how one age slides into the next.

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