Have you ever noticed the people that deny climate change and the people that work at voter suppression are the same people. Are these two issues connected? You would think at first glance no. Environmental problems and voter suppression seem to be two very separate issues but are they really? If you really think about it as the public has become more and more aware of climate change and what it is already doing to our country and our world voter suppression has grown. Is it just a coincidence or is there more to it.

Climate change has been talked about pretty much all my life. It has been called saving the Environment, Acid rain, Global Warming, to Climate Change. They all talked about the same issue and that issue is what man is doing to our planet. Have we changed enough of our habits to make a real difference? Probably not.  Petroleum products still dominate our lives. We think of oil, we think of gas or fuel  for our cars. The real problem is that petroleum products are all around us and we don’t even realize it. From pipes in your home to the shampoo that you wash your hair you may be using petroleum products. I saw an article that states that over half of a barrel of oil is used for the manufacture of products other than gasoline. Can a lot of these products be made from more environmentally  friendly material, in many cases, yes. One product that was outlawed in this country was Hemp. Industrial hemp could be used to replace much of the petroleum products we use today. One problem is that the growing of Industrial hemp is not legal in the whole United States and for over 60 years it was illegal everywhere. Were I live in Florida, it is only legal for research. Why? I think all of us pretty much know the answer to that. In our capitalistic country,  where competition is important  for the consumer,  the natural resource companies really didn’t want the competition. Here is a product that could have been helping us for the last 70 years and it was made illegal. Powerful people did not want to hemp to compete against their products so they campaigned very hard and had it made illegal. The 1% making money at the expense of the nation is not a new thing.

Today we are at a crossroads when it comes to climate change and our economy. Well, maybe that is not an accurate statement. Maybe we are at a crossroads with climate change and the 1%. We still have very powerful people that are very rich from the products that are destroying our planet. They want to maintain and even grow that wealth and the expense of the planet and our future.  The majority of Americans do believe that climate change is real. Could that be why voter suppression is such a big deal to the Republican Party. If the majority want change how do you stop that change? You silence the voice of the majority. They Republicans say that if we have voter reform and people are actually able to vote they will never win another election. That is an overreaction  but they would be a minority party because in reality they have many minority opinions. Instead of coming up with a better message that the American people can get behind they would rather suppress people so the 1% maintains their power.

Fear of socialism taking away our freedom are just talking points that they try and sell the people to scare them. The freest countries are much more socialistic than we are. The lying and misinformation is meant to cloud the real issues. Everything that the Republican Party does is so the 1% maintains their power. All the issues they bring up about free stuff and entitlement is just scare tactics to justify the end results and that is minority rule. I don’t know what else you call it. You fear that if everyone votes you won’t win so you would rather let democracy fail than to change the direction of the party. That definitely is not the vision of our forefathers. That is the vision of tyrants. That is the very thing that we fought a revolution to escape from.

I always say that our democracy is under attack but in reality the vision of our forefathers is under attack. What they created, our system of government of the people, by the people, for the people. That is what is under attack and that is what we have to fight to preserve. The vision of minority rule in the United States not only weakens us but weakens freedom around the globe.

 

Products made from petroleum | Ranken Energy Corporation (ranken-energy.com)

Hemp Can Completely Replace Petroleum, Here’s How - GoGreenWithHempSF

A List Of Legal Hemp States in the USA | Hemp Foundation

Why Hemp Was Banned In 1937 - A Look At Hemp Prohibition History - Great Hemp USA

Amer Change Communicationicans Underestimate How Many Others in the U.S. Think Global Warming is Happening - Yale Program on Climate