The idiom “tilting at windmills” (or turbines) derives from the novel Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. It means to attack imaginary enemies, or fight unwinnable or futile battles. Big Oil and Coal (and others) are in a futile battle against clean energy. Clean energy will inevitably emerge victorious. Unfortunately, when oil billionaire brothers, Charles and David Koch of Koch Industries (apologies for putting their names on the horse and ass’s asses) fight unwinnable battles you can be certain the pointless battles will last a lot longer than they should. Putting approximately 100 million dollars of their money into right-wing coffers to keep fellow polluters happy and federal regulations lax, Koch Industries is more than eager to fight a battle that compromises our future and greatly compromises the future of our children. The same children to which they are now eagerly marketing.
The brothers have also been enthusiastically supporting the Tea Party. They are doing a fine job of fooling the new political movement into believing that a victory for the Tea Party and their backers is a victory for good old “Joe America”.
What the Joes really need to do is look further in to who is telling them what, and why. A little digging will certainly uncover that most major polluting industries are in the pockets of many of their Republican and Tea Party heroes (Democrats too, but less so. Hence their slogan “the lesser of two evils”).
If billionaire polluters help elected officials get into office then who do you think they are beholden to? Who are they working for? You, the people, their constituents, the Joes they are polluting, or the billionaires who got them there? And why are these billionaires cow-towing to the Joes? Could it be that they want you to have their backs when “crazy, radical, hippie, liberals” (read, folks who like clean soil, air and water) call them out on the poison they release into our environment in extremely dangerous amounts? It could.
Name calling and turning Joe against Joe is a game politicians, corporations and billionaires have long played to keep us distracted so they are free to do whatever their extremely tiny, crusty, brownish-grey hearts desire. Which (to keep it simple) is ONLY to make more money.
Money is the root of all evil. And unfortunately evil is a beautiful flower of deception that keeps us from focusing on the root.
Let’s all try to pay closer attention to who is yelling at whom and why. Use your critical mind to find out why, and please avoid any misdirected hostility. Otherwise, you are the fertilizer that helps Evil grow.
Evil needs you. You do not need evil–no matter how pretty it may seem.
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