The Most Equal Comrade outdoes himself

Much has been written, here and elsewhere, about how Trump's political style and the resulting adulation he's receiving, coming as it does on the heels of a similar phenomenon over the past seven or eight years with the Most Equal Comrade as the focal point, raises the nasty possibility that post-America has entered an age of Caesarism.

Lately, given the scale on which Trump has been consuming oxygen, it's been understandable that the MEC's doubling down on his uniquely warped brand of tyranny has not had the exposure it should be getting.

Let us here contribute to that exposure by passing along the news that the MEC - the Lightworker-in-Chief, he who would quell the rise of the oceans - has unilaterally renamed Mount McKinley.  That's right. Henceforth, its official name is to be Denali, which means "the high one" in the  Athabascan language.

Obama's move to strip the mountain of its name honoring former President William McKinley, a son of Ohio, drew loud condemnations from Ohio lawmakers, including House Speaker John Boehner, who said he was "deeply disappointed" in the decision.

"This political stunt is insulting to all Ohioans, and I will be working with the House Committee on Natural Resources to determine what can be done to prevent this action," added Rep. Bob Gibbs, R-Ohio.

The announcement comes as he embarks on a trip to Alaska, where he will grandstand about melting permafrost and receding glaciers and preen about the supposedly moral decision to keep Alaskans from extracting oil from ANWR. (By the way, the lie that the global climate is in any kind of trouble grows more flimsy by the day.)

Tell the Inupiat people, particularly Benjamin Nageak, about how moral and wonderful that decision is.

The Inupiat people, who live in ANWR on the northern coastal plain, also oppose Mr. Obama’s proposal because they support energy development on their own lands. Arctic Slope Regional Corp., an Alaska Native regional corporation, owns subsurface rights to land within ANWR, and Kaktovik Inupiat Corp. owns the surface rights.

Alaska state Rep. Benjamin Nageak, a Barrow Democrat who was born in ANWR and is a member of the Inupiat tribe, objected to the president’s proposal when it was announced earlier this year.

“We have thousands and thousands of acres of land that our people in the state of Alaska, especially in ANWR, have title to, and [they] cannot even use that resource to enrich themselves,” Mr. Nageak said. “That is wrong. When you give the people the ability to enrich themselves, you don’t lock up their lands so they don’t do anything else but just sit on it, and nothing comes out of it except the renewable resources that we depend on.”

Leaders in the actual-energy-rather-than-play-like energy industry, as well as in Alaskan government see plainly that the Most Equal Comrade is in no-longer-have-to-give-a-s--- mode:

“There has been a very clear shift in the administration’s position,” said Louis Finkel, vice president of government relations at the American Petroleum Institute. “In the first four years, you heard a lot of rhetoric about an ‘all of the above’ energy policy. The administration’s lost sight of that. The administration clearly is looking at everything they do through a Paris lens.”
Alaska Gov. Bill Walker said he wants to talk to the president about the state’s “economic climate change,” a reference to the drop in global oil prices and the resulting hit to the state’s budget. The governor has been pushing the Obama administration to allow more oil and gas production in Alaska, and has accused Mr. Obama of “declaring war on Alaska’s future” by seeking to block oil and gas exploration in huge swaths of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).

“We have an excellent pipeline in Alaska, except it is three-quarters empty,” Mr. Walker, a Republican-turned-independent, told reporters last week. “So I’ll talk to him about what we need to do to put more oil in the pipeline.” 

Anybody with a modicum of perceptivity could see this coming years ago.

Take heed, post-America. Learn how to smell a love of personal power and run like hell in the other direction when you smell it.