via Making Light, Teresa Nielsen Hayden's take on how the current government is making global warming worse by denial and cover ups and general corrupt practices.

The comments are just as interesting as the links in the piece.

I've been thinking about this for a while now, but haven't had the urge to write it in a journal entry yet because of childcare overload with Naoto gone.

I think about famous scandals in Japan, and about scandals in the United States. Then I was thinking about how a novel manuscript I was reading had a part in it about Americans not caring anymore about politics.

And you know what, I agree. We don't care. Neither do the Japanese. I don't think Watergate could happen anymore in our curent situation, because as long as somebody says sorry and steps down (as is the classic way in Japan, think seppuku) we just keep going.

And so I wonder if we need a new way to think about things then "exposing lies." We exposed Clinton's sexual misconduct, and so what? We exposed Enron, and so what? Things go on very like they did before.

I think the "expose the misconduct and get it out to the newspapers" doesn't work anymore in our country. As long as the wrongdoer says "I'm sorry" and lays low for a while, they can go back to doing whatever they wanted to do in the first place, and their cronies will keep screwing things over in the meantime.

What would stop people if exposure doesn't? I don't know.