The Traps of Reason and Codependence Preventing the Left From Acting

A clean energy example

It was my family job to make sure my father’s cigarettes were extinguished after he passed out from drinking. The arms of his recliner were scarred with burn marks. I was 10. He’d assigned me this duty, and I worried he’d burn our house down, my brother and I in it.

No, this isn’t a story about a shitty childhood. It’s a story about America today and the narcissistic pyromaniac in the Whitehouse. I know something about narcissists. Yet this also isn’t about how to deal with a narcissist.

I wanted this post to be about our energy policy because I’m trying to get my head around Trump’s Big Bullsh*t Bill just passed by congress. While I focus on climate and energy communications, there’s so much wrong with the bill that will hurt Americans, that no rationale can justify it. It’s simply self-destructive. We think we are trying to extinguish the burning metaphoric cigarette fires. Instead, we are hitting ourselves in the head with a hammer, and continuing until we black out and the house burns down around us.

Let’s start with the first trap; facts and reasons. Here’s a brief outline of Trump’s Bullsh*t Bill and the impacts. Spoiler alert: While we can understand this outline, it is not required to convince people that clean energy is the right policy. 72% of Americans support clean renewable energy. We mistake the fact that people approve of clean energy with the idea that it is somehow policy. Nor is past success an indication of what will happen in the future. Clean energy in America under the Trump administration is not inevitable, it is dead or dying despite the facts. The following is meant to show the absurdity of facts, reasons, and arguing.

Trump has said that his goal is to bring back manufacturing jobs and that China is our enemy, or at least responsible for the loss of our economic prosperity. For arguments sake, let’s take him at his word. The bill decimates the U.S. transition to clean renewable energy. Briefly, here are a few logical problems for Trump’s policy and those who supported the bill.

1. Cost of Energy:
Clean renewables, like wind and solar, are now the cheapest forms of energy available on the planet! Check out the independent Lazard Levelized Cost of Energy report here.

2. Who’s Investing Clean Renewables?
Smart countries all over the world are investing in renewables in order to lower their energy costs and increase their energy security. Even oil producer Saudia Arabia is doubling down on renewables. China leads the world in both installed clean energy and investment in clean energy. Today, 16% of their energy comes from wind, 26% from solar and 13% from hydroelectric for a total of 56%. While the U.S. hovers around 23%. Last year, China invested almost 1 Trillion dollars in clean energy. The U.S. invested one fourth of that at $272 Billion. Yes, a Trillion is more than a Billion.

3. Which states in the U.S. lead in clean energy?
Even Texas can read the handwriting on the wall having built 40% of their energy coming from solar and wind according to Joshua D. Rhodes and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. (ERCOT) Texans aren’t stupid. Neither are Californians or Iowans or the 24 other states with 100% clean energy goals. Unfortunately, the Big Bullsh*t Bill will harm red states more than blue states.

4. Competitive Advantage:
Why is China putting solar panels on their solar panel manufacturing plants? They aren’t stupid either. They know that lower energy costs are a competitive advantage.

U.S. manufacturers outsourced our manufacturing to countries with lower labor costs in the late 70’s, and accelerated this in the 90’s by outsourcing to China in order to increase profits. The results were disastrous for U.S. workers.

Now we want to “outsource” our energy requirements to expensive fossil fuels and bring back coal. As a result, our cost of manufacturing goes up and weakens our competitive edge in the global market. You can read a more detailed analysis I wrote during Trump’s first term: Trump to Allow China to Destroy U.S. Manufacturing Again Under His Energy Policy. An excerpt.

“If I were a Chinese strategist and wanted to harm the US manufacturing or military sectors, what strategy and tactics would I employ? Look to Sun Tzu and the Art of War. The strategy would be simple. Engage in an indirect war. One does not directly confront a stronger enemy, but rather engages him in tactics that divide his forces and drain the energy of his army and his people.

Knowing that Trump will “react” to anything that remotely bruises his ego, I would let it be known that the Chinese had indeed created the hoax of Global Warming, then sit back and let him do the rest. Here’s how it works…”

In the time since this was written, China has only increased their development of strategic clean renewable energy.

5. Jobs:
Clean energy jobs are one of the fastest growing job categories in the U.S. Yet as a result of Trump’s Big Bullsh*t Bill, estimates by Energy Innovation are that 760,000 jobs will be lost by 2030.

6. Costs of Energy:
When we use more expensive energy sources, then end user costs rise as well. Again, according to Energy Innovation, wholesale electricity costs will rise by 25% by 2030, and so will consumer costs.

7. Pollution:
By relying on fossil fuels Trump will pump another 4 Billion tons of carbon into our air, heating our climate and increasing catastrophic weather events. Why does Exxon Mobile get to determine the fate of our children?

Even a more reasonable energy policy that includes “all of the above, would be better than Trump’s bill.

NONE OF THIS MATTERS.

Facts help us understand why something is important. But facts, logic, and reasons don’t get people to change their minds any more than asking someone to stop smoking because it’s bad for the health will convince them to quit. If any reason or logic of it mattered, MAGA wouldn’t be killing clean energy. When we use, even sensible arguments, they have no effect, otherwise we wouldn’t have republicans supporting Trump’s Big Bullsh*t Bill. Hint: It’s money and power that drive them.

Which brings me to the next point. If we peel the onion and get rid of the layer of facts and reasons, then what do we find next? We find the co-dependence of the a great many American people. Some of us believe that our drunken smoking father in Washington DC will wake up. That the scales will fall from his eyes and he will see the error of his ways and finally take care of us and America. Maybe it will only be a small fire. We can survive a small fire, right?

This is indeed the definition of co-dependency: “excessive emotional or psychological reliance on a partner, typically one who requires support on account of an illness or addiction.” We want Trump to change or go away. We believe he must change and therefore will change. But he knows how to pull our strings. We can even admit we have compassion for him. But he will not change. He is pathologically sick. Believing he will change is delusion. Our delusion.

It is also the delusion of those republicans who support him. While they may fear him, they may believe they can control him, or mitigate the disastrous actions that he takes. Or perhaps they believe that things won’t get so bad. But to republicans and even independents and those on the left that are sitting on the sidelines, I say this. You cannot reason with a malignant narcissist. He will burn your house and my house down.

Reasons and logic won’t work on our fellow citizens, consider that nothing has mattered so far, not his dementia, his ignorance, his rage, or his stupidity, or incompetence. Nothing. We have somehow let a con-man, a felon, and convicted rapist and sexual predator who has bankrupted 6 businesses into our house. His policies make no sense, however well-challenged as I attempted with a simple look at clean energy. Nor his conspiratorial health policies that will kill of harm hundreds of thousands of us. Nor destroying our NATO alliance, and laying off CIA and state department employees. Or killing Medicare and health care for tens of millions. Or building concentration camps. Did I mention tariffs and tanking the economy?

The purpose of these actions is not policy, it is retribution. Which is boundless when one is paranoid. Chaos is the result, then the next step is to consolidate power. Trump’s method is to create chaos and fear then promise that he alone can solve the problem. It is a sick pursuit of power and it is going to kill many of us, maybe even our kids, and the country in which we once believed. It will take our jobs, our health, and our future. No one is coming to save us. But you.

So we are wasting our breath arguing about how bad Trump is believing we can use this to convince others.

The audience we need to have conversations with are not Trump or MAGA, but those on the left, or independents, and a few republicans on the right, who have yet to understand why their silence is terrifying. It is those caught in denial and codependence, and we must treat them and help them. It’s complex, but we could start by asking questions, listening, by being honest but not judging them, by helping them understand their dependency, and by giving them agency and a place to take actions.

When I say ask them a question, I mean make it personal. Are you losing your health insurance? What are you going to do? How can I help? Here’s an idea. Or, what will your parent live on when they take away social security? Can they support themselves or will you have to? Or, what will happen to your kid’s school if they kill the Department of Education and withhold $7B in funding? You get the idea. Let them reach their own conclusions, and then ask them for their help. And so on. And when we’ve earned it, by really listening, we can share our own stories. Stories from the heart.

We can lead. We now understand that Trumpism is about self and ego growing like a house fire sucking up more and more power. We can elevate our values of fairness, compassion, empathy, strength, and independence. As Americans we know the value of taking care of all of us, our vets, our poor, our seniors, our kids. We can elevate our innovation, our education, our sense of justice. More than this, we need to understand that our vision of a better America is possible and not give up. No one is burning down our house. And we are not taking care of anyone who tries.

Thanks for all you do! See you in the streets.

- Hobie
We are all connected. Savor the Earth! ™

L. Hobart Stocking
hobart@skywaterearth.com