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CANDIDATE FROM HELL: WHY VOTING FOR DONALD TRUMP IS A SUICIDAL ACT  
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Tom Engelhardt
August 15, 2024
TomDispatch [[link removed]]

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_ Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, and crew are determined to fully reject
that Green New Scam (as Republicans now love to call it), which means
the two of them are intent on making you, me, and everyone else on
this planet sweat, sweat, sweat. _

Donald Trump sitting next to J.D. Vance on Day One of the Republican
National Convention., Photo: EPA // BBC

 

Donald Trump is all too literally the candidate from hell and, yes,
he’s threatening to take the United States and the world to — no
place else! — hell and back. He’s the greatest danger to this
planet imaginable. And I’m not even thinking about what else he’d
do, were he to win election 2024 and return to the Oval Office,
having reassured
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religious voters that, should they opt for him this November,
they’ll never have to do so again. (“Get out and vote, just this
time… You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know
what? It’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine, you won’t have to vote
anymore, my beautiful Christians.”)

Forget all of that, including the racism
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the madness, the urge
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transform this country into the all-American equivalent of an
autocracy. Forget every last bit of it — even if, yes, that’s one
hell of a lot to forget! Instead, focus on just one thing: Donald
Trump and his crew, including that gem J.D. Vance, who attacked what
he called “the Green New Scam
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at the Republican convention, are determined to fossil-fuelize our
future in a fashion never before seen, not at least under these
circumstances.

And unfortunately, Donald Trump is anything but alone. (Do you hear
me, Vladimir Putin
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In fact, according to a recent _Guardian_ report
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almost one-quarter of this country’s congressional representatives
(100 members of the House and 23 senators) deny the very existence of
climate change — and be shocked, very shocked, but every last one of
them is a Republican! In what now passes for the mainstream, The
Donald and his vice-presidential buddy, the very opposite of “cat
ladies
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are extreme but all too common examples of the urge to heat this
planet to the boiling point or beyond. Admittedly, the competition is
fierce. After all, whatever steps President Joe Biden took in relation
to climate change — and he did take them
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they will make a difference — American oil production
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gas
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all set staggering new global records during his term in office.

Still, there’s no question about one thing: Donald Trump, J.D.
Vance, and crew are determined to fully reject that Green New Scam (as
Republicans now love to call it), which means the two of them are
intent on making you, me, and everyone else on this planet sweat,
sweat, sweat. I say that given the fact that, only recently, humanity
experienced the hottest day ever recorded and the very next day
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an even more feverish daily global record. And that, mind you, was
after 13 straight months each of which (including two Junes) set new
heat records for human history (and probably far beyond it), and all
of that, in turn (if you don’t mind the longest, hottest sentence
imaginable), came after 2023 set a global record as the hottest year
ever — and count on this: I’m undoubtedly leaving all sorts of
things out.

Yikes, I’m already sweating!

A GREEN NEW SCAM PRESIDENT?

Given the recent withdrawal of 81-year-old Joe Biden from the
presidential race, 78-year-old Donald Trump is now the oldest American
presidential candidate ever (yes, ever!), so why should he give a damn
about how hot our future could become? Admittedly, there are his kids
and grandkids to consider, but it’s not clear that, even when it
comes to them (and despite his recent family-ization
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the Republican convention), he gives a damn about anyone other than…
yes, Donald Trump. Based on the last few years of him, I doubt it. In
the most literal sense possible, as far as he’s concerned, he’s
always the man of the moment. Any moment. And if the moment isn’t
his, then to hell with it and everything else!

And believe me, under the circumstances, I’m not just using
“hell” figuratively.

After all, this planet and this country are both growing hotter all
too quickly. This was already one hell of a summer in the United
States. State after state, city after city simply broiled
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while records were regularly set across the globe. (Hey, Las Vegas hit
a new city high
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120 degrees Fahrenheit in July and, in breaking local heat records, it
was anything but atypical.) After all, June, as I mentioned, was
the 13th straight hottest month
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its kind ever. And while later in the summer, we might get a slight
break from such record-setting temperatures, the future looks all too
grim. While you’re at it, consider yourself lucky that you don’t
live in someplace like Dubai, where on one recent
anything-but-atypical July day the temperature hit 113 and the heat
index 144. In fact, the _Washington Post_ now suggests
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the Persian Gulf region may be the “most likely to regularly exceed
life-threatening heat thresholds during the next 30 to 50 years.”
 

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Buy the Book - Click here
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Of course, only this summer, Donald Trump held a rally in Phoenix,
Arizona, where the temperature hit… go ahead, just for hell of it,
take a guess!

Yes, 113 degrees
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Eleven of his listeners were treated right there for heat exhaustion
on “stretchers hooked to IV bags,” while The Donald continued to
“rail against wind turbines and electric vehicles.” And mind you,
unlike the acts of the assassin whose bullet hit Trump’s ear at that
rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, the former president’s statements in
Arizona blasting any efforts to deal with this overheating globe of
ours weren’t considered acts of violence.

And I’m not even including Project 2025
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a Heritage Foundation greenhouse-gas nightmare of a document prepared
for the possible second term of the president who called climate
change “a great hoax
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and once said sarcastically
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“The oceans are going to rise 1/100th of an inch in the next 300
years and it’s going to kill everybody,” while insisting
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windmills cause cancer and that electric cars are ‘bad’ for the
environment.” After all, despite the fact that so many of Project
2025’s creators at that “notorious rightwing climate-denying think
tank
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were former Trumpian officials and J.D. Vance is closely tied
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it, the former president has claimed
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has absolutely nothing to do with him. Still, here’s the Trumpian
essence of it all: he’s always been a fossil-fuelizer of the first
order; the oil and gas industry has backed
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presidential runs big-time; and he seems desperately eager to do it
all (and more) again. As he so classically put the matter during this
election campaign: on day one back in the Oval Office, he’s going
to act like
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“dictator“ and, above all, institute a “drill, baby, drill”
regime for the next four years (and undoubtedly beyond). He and his
key officials the second time around are going to do their damnedest,
in other words, to encourage the long-term, full-scale overheating of
this planet.

The plans that he and J.D. Vance have when it comes to fossil fuels
should make anyone’s hair stand on end (even someone as bald as me).
After all, he’s already promised that, above all else, when he next
enters the Oval Office, his main goal will be to “drill, baby, drill
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You can’t be more blunt than that when it comes to encouraging the
fossil-fuel companies from whom you recently demanded
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fortune in election funding.

And that’s obviously just the beginning. He and his crew
have promised to
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out anything the Biden administration did aimed at dealing with
climate change and fossil fuels while nixing any steps taken to
support the creation of clean energy. Instead, he would “develop the
liquid gold that is right under our feet” and “unleash domestic
energy production like never before.” From obliterating wind power
projects (“I hate wind
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to promoting oil and natural gas drilling from the Gulf of Mexico to
the Alaskan Arctic, there’s no end to what he and his cronies have
in mind. He and his “team” may even be ready to systematically
dismantle, if not obliterate
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Environmental Protection Agency (which, in case you’ve forgotten,
was created in 1970 by a Republican president, Richard Nixon, who did
little else right). Donald Trump’s next presidency, in other words,
will clearly force the U.S. government to literally worship at the
foot (or the oil rig) of the fossil-fuel companies.

THE SLOW-MOTION EQUIVALENT OF A NUCLEAR WAR

To put all of this in some grim perspective, the British outfit Carbon
Brief estimated that, by 2030, a Trump presidency would
add approximately four billion more tons
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greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere than another Biden
administration (or, assumedly, one run by Kamala Harris
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And all of that means that a country and a world already overheating
at a record pace would do so in an even more dramatically grim
fashion.

The startling thing is that, on this distinctly overheating planet of
ours, a person whose platform is essentially an oil or natural
gas-drilling rig should have the faintest chance of being elected
president. It’s not all that complicated really. Leaving aside any
other issue, voting for Donald Trump in our already rapidly warming
world would be — all too literally — a suicidal act.

And keep in mind that, even before Donald Trump returns to the Oval
Office a second time (should he win in November), the news daily has
gotten ever worse. As a start, we’re talking about a country that,
in the Biden years and despite the money that he and his crew
began investing
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climate-change-mitigating activities, set its sixth
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yearly record in 2023 for producing oil (more than any other country
on the planet) and another for exporting oil
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gas [[link removed]], while the
giant U.S. oil companies continued to garner record profits
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Of course, climate change is hardly the only danger on planet Earth
right now. There’s the potentially explosive set of horrors underway
in Gaza and elsewhere in the Middle East that could erupt into
something far worse at any moment. (Ominously enough, the U.S.
only recently dispatched
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more warships and planes to the region.) And there are other dangers,
including the possibility of a future war with China, a
potential nuclear face-off
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Russia, or even (should Donald Trump lose the election this year), a
rise in violence in this country, if not some possible version of
a civil war
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at home.

But put in proper perspective, climate change should be seen as the
slow-motion equivalent of a nuclear war on this planet, one that —
not in a day, a week, a month, or a year — but over the decades to
come, could make our world ever less livable, ever less ours. While a
full-scale nuclear exchange could almost instantly create a “nuclear
winter” that might result
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up to five billion of us dying of hunger, climate change could
devastate this planet in a similarly horrific fashion, just over the
(very) long term.

So, consider a vote for Donald Trump a vote for nothing less than
destroying the Earth as a livable environment for… well, all of
those to come. And given the apocalyptic nature of that, don’t you
find it strange that Trump’s climate-change views and his ultimate
support for the fossil fuel industry above all else (except himself)
haven’t gotten more attention in this election season?

Anyone who lived through the last blistering year should realize that
global heat of an unprecedented sort isn’t anywhere near a high
point but, given the fossil fuels still pouring into the atmosphere
(including staggering amounts
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methane, a gas that heats the planet faster than any other), at
something closer to a low point. And under the circumstances, Donald
(“drill, baby, drill”) Trump should be considered, not
figuratively but all too literally, the presidential candidate from…
yes, hell. Voting for him would be voting for, in historical (and
Christian) terms, the devil and that’s not just an image but
potentially an all-too-literal reality.

As president, Donald Trump would undoubtedly prove to be a first-class
global heat machine and voting for him would be the slow-motion
equivalent of putting an atomic weapon in the Oval Office. Quite a
prospect, don’t you think?

_[TOM ENGELHARDT created and runs the website TomDispatch.com
[[link removed]]. He is also a co-founder of
the American Empire Project
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praised history of American triumphalism in the Cold War, The End of
Victory Culture
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A fellow of the Type Media Center [[link removed]], his
sixth book is A Nation Unmade by War
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_Copyright 2024 Tom Engelhardt. Cross-posted with permission. May not
be reprinted without permission from TomDispatch
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_Follow TomDispatch on Twitter
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Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel, Songlands
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Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War
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as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century:
The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power
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Ann Jones’s They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return from
America’s Wars: The Untold Story
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* Climate Catastrophe
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* Climate Crisis
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* Climate Change
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* Climate disaster
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* Donald Trump
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* J.D. Vance
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* GOP
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* MAGA
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* 2024 Elections
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* environment
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* Planet Earth
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* Natural Gas
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* carbon fuels
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