Blue Green and Between 6/9/25: Why The Bad Guys Are Attacking Culture, Landscape Art Shapes How We See Nature, and More!
Every week I share feature articles, news, tools, and actions to help everyone protect and enjoy our wonderful planet, from the sea to the sky and everything in between.
In this week's issue:
Something Important: Why The Bad Guys Are Destroying American Culture and Civilization
Something Important: The Deadly Consequences of Silencing Science
Something to Enjoy: How Landscape Art Shapes How We See Nature
Something Quick
Something Important: Why The Bad Guys Are Destroying American Culture and Civilization
If I wasn't living through it, the last six months in the US would be beyond belief, something conjured up in a Kafka-esque novel or surrealist film. But I know it is a tragic, unforgivable, undemocratic reality, an unmitigated attack on American civilization and culture. One of the underlying questions many have been asking for this entire, endless half-year has been, why? Why undermine and eliminate the science that has built American prosperity and leadership? Why undercut health and conservation measures that help keep Americans healthy? Why attack popular institutions like the Kennedy Center and the Smithsonian?
I've read many opinions and analyses in the last several months from many different sectoral experts. They offer opinions such as the Bad Guy plays to the MAGA base that has put and can keep him in power, that the tech bro cabal surrounding the Bad Guy keeps giving him money as he destroys the checks and balances that impede them, and that the alignment of MAGA interests and those behind Project 2025 fuel the destruction of anything that stands in the way of establishing a Christian Nationalist patriarchy.
I believe all those reasons might be true. But this article from The Guardian coalesces the answer down to one simple (and yet really not so simple) reason: making Americans more ignorant and isolated so they will more readily accept the alternative truths, control, and edicts of a tinpot authoritarian regime that the Bad Guy and his minions are trying to create.
Take away art and drama and music that inspires and energizes, and, yes, outrages us, and we lose the ability to dream, to question, to wake up.
Take away community-supportive media like the Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio, and we have to struggle to find alternative voices other than those a dictator prescribes.
Take away parks, protected areas, and green spaces and we forget what it feels like to be free; we forget concerns about the state of nature and what it means to care about each other, our communities, and our planet.
Take away science and we lose truth and innovation and knowledge, leaving us reliant on whatever voices of authority a dictator has decided. We get their truth, not THE truth.
Incredible damage has been done; more is coming. But we don't have to take it lying down. Call your congressional representatives; the congressional switchboard is (202) 224-3121. Or call the White House switchboard (202-456-1111) or email the White House (comments@whitehouse.gov or president@whitehouse.gov). Join the next No Kings or Kick Out the Clowns rallies on June 14. Keep speaking out and standing up!
Something Important: The Deadly Consequences of Silencing Science
On June 9, the appallingly unqualified HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. dismissed the entire CDC Vaccine Advisory Committee. This of course comes after months of attacks on federal science, health, and conservation agencies and the experts who work--and worked--for them, attacks that threaten our democracy, prosperity, economy, and ecology. But there is also the cost of preventable human deaths. A few examples:
• 30,000,000 people starved to death in the USSR and China in the 1950s because they bought into pseudo-science championed by Trofim Lysenko that happened to align with their repressive politics.
• Nearly 320,000 unvaccinated people died of Covid after vaccines were available to everyone in 2022 because of antivaxxing activity.
• Rampant misinformation on social media about different types of cancer and treatments potentially endangers patients who buy into the misinformation.
Don't take anything you read on social media as true or factual. Do your research: consider the source and how biased it may be; check other sources; and check reliable fact checking sites like Snopes and FactCheck.org. Check out more ways to find junk science here.
Something to Enjoy: How Landscape Art Shapes How We See Nature
Google Arts and Culture has a lovely story, focused on New York's Hudson Valley, about how landscape art and how it has changed over the years helps shape our views of nature. See it here.
Something Quick:
Tesserae (My Newsletter with In-depth Essays on Nature and Conservation, Recreation and Play, Art and Culture, History, Creativity, and Spirituality)
Fun Finds (Quirky Things I Stumble on in My Research)
Notes for Nature (Ideas and Resources for Science, Nature, and Conservation Writers)
Blue Green and Between (Articles, News, Tools, and Actions to Protect and Enjoy our Wonderful Planet)
My Design Shop, Oddly Enchanted (Whimsical, Vintage Illustration-Inspired Wares for You and Your Home)
My Website
That's it for this week - see you next week!