By Naomi Serviss / New York City
“It stinks!”
So opined Jon Lovitz, voicing an animated New York film critic in the appropriately named 1994 TV cartoon sitcom, The Critic.
It’s been my go-to declaration ever since SCOTUS
declared war on America a month ago.
Something stinks to high heaven, as my mother was wont to say. The air sours with a right-wing guile, off-putting.
We’re fighting for personal health rights, again?
It’s depressing.
Déjà vu once more.
Not content to mess with women’s reproductive rights, the Supremes shredded any semblance
of a church/state separation.
I can picture the six justices rolling up their judicious black sleeves and having at the nitty-gritty of privacy, First Amendment rights, oh, the list grows.
What could be dismantled, castrated or gerrymandered next, you might ask.
How about Mother Earth,
skies once blue
pure waters below?
Humanity is kneecapping its own habitat.
Credit the Industrial Revolution and its spawn.
How about the greedy corporation-running
bastards who grow fat on stolen profits,
pushing fossil fuels like there’s no tomorrow?
Irony is not dead.
Thanks to this 2022 right-leaning, partisan high court, the Environmental Protection Agency
(created by Richard Nixon!) has been strip-mined.
On June 30th, the conservative Supreme Court majority put the brakes on the EPA’s ability to protect our own environment.
Which means that reducing emissions isn’t all
that important in the long run.
Unless you like inhaling oxygen.
It’s the gas and oil industry who will profit. And they, in turn, scratch Republican’s backs with, oh, maybe a contribution perhaps.
Those same industries gave 84 percent of their generous contributions to Republicans.
How could anyone in their right (and logical) mind accept climate deniers’ screeds and rants?
It’s an embarrassment that our United (ha)
States is ruled by those six misogynists
(why can’t a woman be a misogynist as well?).
Our beloved country of origin is controlled by authoritarian-loving right-wingers.
They can now stymie actions that might forestall
a catastrophic climate emergency!
Even to this layperson, it is obvious we’ve hit Def Con Infinity, the worst of all possible
outcomes.
Just made that up.
A green light given to those entities that poison us with carbon dioxide tailpipe emissions.
Not to mention gas and oil blight.
Because the Supreme Court’s majority decision wrests away even a smidgen of EPA clout, “to respond to the most pressing environmental
challenge of our time.”
So wrote the court’s dissenting liberal minority.
I am a sorrowful Boomer, who is ashamed that my contemporaries (and I) couldn’t get it together enough to leave our kids a healthy planet.
I’m not the only one.
We were such idealistic hippies!
Always grooving on peace and love.
Earth Day was every day. Our vibe was a collective goodness that would heal the world.
Yadda, yadda, yadda.
Regardless of who's to blame,
it still stinks!
Naomi Serviss is a New York-based award-winning journalist whose work has been published in The New York Times, Newsday, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Highroads (AAA magazine), in-flight publications, spa and travel magazines and websites, including BroadwayWorld.com
Maybe our grandchildren’s generation can make a difference. That is if there is anything left. For now get that clothespi to put on your nose.