It’s hard to feel good about much lately. The wildfires out west are a horrifying come-due. In many cases, bark beetle infestations, made possible by a warming climate, have killed off forests, leaving them dead tinderboxes. Throw extreme heat and record-setting droughts on top of it, and you get the apocalyptic calamity we’re witnessing. The arctic is on fire, too, and the Greenland ice sheet has passed the point of no return. In the wake of Hurricane Laura, mushrooming swarms of mosquitoes are killing cows and horses. Oh, and the pandemic.
So I wanted to focus on something uplifting this week, and Rhode Island voters delivered. On Tuesday, they went to the polls, and it took until last night to finish counting the ballots. But once they had, something stunning emerged: An historic romp by the progressive wing of the party, which tossed out more than a dozen members of the (allegedly) mobbed-up, right wing Democratic establishment.
I filled in again this week for Mehdi Hasan as guest host of the podcast Deconstructed, and that was our topic for today’s episode, which you can find here or on any of the podcasting platforms you use.
Please consider starting your own podcast.