What A Dream I Had!

Final Up to date on: twenty second June 2025, 12:31 am

No, this isn’t a narrative a couple of Simon and Garfunkel tune. It’s a story of a dream I had this morning within the precognition interstices between deep sleep and wakefulness. That may be a place in our sleep cycle characterised by researchers as REM sleep, named for its fast eye actions. Some individuals assume that is when the mind reorganizes the compartments in our minds, casting out the previous and integrating the brand new in an effort to make sense of the occasions of the previous days, weeks, or months.

When most of us say we had a dream, it’s this era of REM sleep they’re referring to. It may be an unusually artistic interval. Many well-known authors and musicians maintain a notepad and pen on the nightstand to allow them to write down the flashes of perception that happen when our brains are lively however our our bodies are asleep. Typically, these desires fade pretty shortly as soon as we get up however this one has lingered for hours. Does it have one thing to do with cleantech? It’d. See what you assume.

The Dream

Within the dream, I’m within the checkout line at a grocery retailer with my spouse. I hand the clerk a bank card, however after he inserts it within the card reader, he takes my card and says, “I’ll be proper again.” When he returns, he’s with three males with their faces coated who arrest me and cart me off to jail. I keep in mind pondering, “I ought to have paid money.” It appears my bank card was by some means linked to every little thing I had ever written on the web, together with all of the tales I’ve finished for CleanTechnica over time.

My spouse comes to go to me in detention with a thick folder containing printouts of each considered one of my on-line posts with probably the most egregious and offensive elements highlighted. I’m, in a phrase, doomed — finished in by my very own phrases. Like these in Dante’s Inferno, I’m led by my captors deeper and deeper into the nether areas of a big jail constructed of heavy granite blocks and lit by torches. As I move by, different inmates who’re struggling all types of indignities themselves avert their eyes, understanding my punishments will likely be a lot worse than theirs.

In Dante’s Inferno, the most well liked locations in Hell are reserved for many who, in a interval of ethical disaster, preserve their neutrality. I contemplate my nation — which ought to correctly be referred to as the Disunited States of America — to be in an ethical disaster. That makes it my responsibility to talk out. Elie Wiesel, who chronicled the horrors of the Third Reich, at all times maintained that “There could also be instances after we are powerless to forestall injustice, however we must not ever fail to protest.” That’s considered one of my core beliefs.

I mentioned all this with my spouse over breakfast, and, after all, being the eminently sensible individual she is, she recommended the dream was a warning to tone down my assaults on the idiots and incompetents dedicated to returning America to its Golden Age, when rich white males dominated with impunity and everybody else — ladies, individuals of shade, and anybody who dared depart from the straight and slim — had been ostracized or incarcerated.

That’s definitely one attainable possibility. I may simply do “rip and skim” experiences devoid of my ordinary banter and badinage. I do know there are some readers who would applaud such self restraint. Properly, funk that! I’m very involved about how America is tuning right into a nation of slavish know nothings.

The Woman With Seven Names

I learn a ebook not too long ago entitled The Woman With Seven Names a couple of younger girl born and raised in North Korea. Her descriptions of her native nation are horrific. Every residence has a speaker that may’t be turned off that broadcasts authorities propaganda all day day by day. Individuals are inspired to denounce their neighbors for having impure political ideas and the army roams the streets just like the Taliban seeking anybody who’s a possible enemy of the regime.

It sounds very structured and strict (and lots like 1984), however two issues about her narrative struck me. The primary was how she remembers having a contented childhood regardless of the restrictions. The second was how related the US is right this moment because the occasion at present in energy makes an attempt to shove its dogma down everybody’s throat.

Palantir

Am I being paranoid? I don’t assume so. I used to be studying Robert Reich’s Substack submit this morning during which he describes what is occurring between the federal government and an organization referred to as Palantir, named after a personality in Lord Of Rings. “Draw a circle round all of the property in America now dedicated to Synthetic Intelligence,” Reich says. “Draw a second circle round all of the property dedicated to the U.S. army. A 3rd round all property being dedicated to serving to the Trump regime acquire and compile private data on thousands and thousands of Individuals. And a fourth circle across the elements of Silicon Valley devoted to turning the US away from a democracy right into a libertarian dictatorship led by tech bros.

“The place do the 4 circles intersect? At a company referred to as Palantir Applied sciences and a person named Peter Thiel.” Reich says that in March, an government order required all companies and departments of the federal authorities to share information on Individuals. Palantir was “chosen” to get the job finished, helped in massive measure by a suggestion by Thiel’s former enterprise associate, Elon Musk.

“Palantir is now busily combining private information on each American gleaned from the Division of Homeland Safety, Protection Division, Division of Well being and Human Companies, Social Safety Administration, and Inner Income Service, together with their checking account numbers and medical claims,” Reich provides. “Will the Trump regime use this rising tremendous database to advance Trump’s political agenda, discover and detain immigrants, and punish critics?” And also you thought I used to be simply being paranoid!

Faceless, Anonymous State Actors

Heather Cox Richardson right this moment writes, “People in plain garments with their faces coated and with out badges or title tags are snatching individuals off the streets and taking them away. Todd Lyons, the appearing director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), claimed that such measures for anonymity are crucial as a result of ‘ICE officers have seen a staggering 413 % improve in assaults towards them.’”

“On Tuesday, masked, plainclothes ICE brokers assaulted and arrested New York Metropolis comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander, town’s chief monetary officer. Lander was accompanying an immigrant to a scheduled court docket listening to…. Lander requested the brokers to supply an arrest warrant for the person they had been arresting, and was himself arrested. Homeland Safety stated it might cost him with impeding a federal officer and ‘assaulting legislation enforcement.’”

However Philip Bump of the Washington Publish reviewed the video of the incident and wrote that Lander “assaulted the officers within the sense {that a} bully would possibly accuse you of getting gotten in the best way of his fist.” Oddly sufficient, these masked individuals who got here to arrest me in my dream had been precisely like these real-life ICE brokers. I envisioned them earlier than I learn Richardson’s column right this moment.

What sticks in my craw is how the present occasion in energy refers to Democrats as a type of vermin, polluters of society who need to be exterminated. How related are these phrases to these of the Nazis who stated the identical issues about Jews, Gypsies, and anybody else they deemed inferior? Simply final week, Utah Senator Mike Lee used the assassination of two Democrats as an excuse guilty them for the tragedy. He was joined by a number of different Republicans who couldn’t wait to place their rampant hatred and cruelty on show.

This isn’t the America I grew up in. The America I do know and love is best than this — significantly better. Virtually 2000 years in the past, an individual walked amongst our forebears spreading a message of affection and tolerance. The occasion in energy right this moment is aware of nothing of these teachings, regardless of its members beating their breasts and proclaiming how pious they’re. God gave his solely son to point out people the best way to salvation. Trying again on how issues turned out, He should marvel if his reward was squandered on the individuals of Earth. Certainly there are different planets the place His message would flourish, aren’t there?