Though many think the world revolves around humanity, it really doesn’t. Despite what it says in the Bible, our dominion over this planet and all other living things is still very much a work in progress progressing not all that well. If our supposed dominion dominates much longer there won’t be anything surviving to have dominion over. If we were indeed put in charge, then the Almighty certainly made a very poor judgment call.

Environmentally, things overall couldn’t seem much worse or more desperately rationalized as somehow surmountable. At least we don’t still hold belief that the sun revolves around the earth.

I’m an avid gardener and can be rightly accused of being an unashamed tree-hugger. My small yard accommodates 18 carefully considered trees. Most are deemed ice storm friendly, planted on that recommendation by a municipal workshop after the meteorological nightmare of 1998. Yet, many a winter storm I go out and assist their fight against the mercurial nature of increasing climate change. Despite desperate late-night attempts to save them from the peril of ice and snow accumulation, sometimes even before they’ve dropped their leaves, they give no thanks to all my good intentions and horticultural care. Despite such stewardship, they have every right to declare: “You did this, not nature.” “You,” meaning humankind.

I provide water for the birds, and trees and perennials offering fruit and seed. My yard is a virtual aviary. Birdbaths cleaned and filled, do they come and drink immediately to show their appreciation? They come whenever they choose, treating human benevolence with complete disregard. They drink, wash, and then soil the water until none following will partake. Never have they mistaken me for St. Francis. My humanness remains a permanent cause of their species’s distrust. My species causes most other living things to harbor a profound instinctual fear. Humankind earns such distrust mostly due to its synonym’s time immemorial gender indictment. Mankind is unkind, and routinely far, far worse.

For all my adult life I’ve acknowledged the social, political and historical culpability of being a man. Worst still, a white man. One of those collectively guilty of being exceptionally wrong-headed in the arenas of racial, gender and environmental justice. Morally wrong, dead wrong, repeatedly wrong regarding so much and showing few signs of significant improvement.

Attempting to be an exception to that gender rule provides some personal solace, but being a white man remains a less than proud calling card.

Donald Trump, whether as a stand-alone individual or as the new darling of a resurgent KKK, continues to spoil any chances of improving that branding. “Make America Great Again!” is Trumpspeak for continued white male dominance. That there’s a woman, or person of color, that pretends otherwise is perhaps the saddest testament to the entrenched blind partisanship within our two-party system. More so if they abhor Trump’s extreme divisiveness and support voting for him anyway. Even sadder still are those men who will vote for him as a shining example of their gender.

History has always been mostly a his-story of the fight for dominion over his own kind, generation after generation, peoples against peoples. Man’s greatest enemy has always been other competitive men. Now, men have to justify how they, as the most controlling of their species, in essentially one generation’s lifetime, beyond all their gender’s many failures to truly be a protector, have become the oppressor of all planetary life. Manifest Destiny has morphed into full planetary assault. This planet has become terminally endangered by a humankind dominated by men contemptuous of nature itself, as if they believe they themselves give life to all things.

Strikingly, the opposition to environmentalism is all too similar to that undermining gun rights legislation, with similar results. Over and over again, the terrifying violence portrayed on the Weather Channel rivals any sensational carnage the evening news can muster on Second Amendment enabled horrific acts.

We are repeatedly told by the NRA and global warming deniers that the identified causes of so much ongoing destructiveness, societal and environmental, are calculated lies by those bent on destroying a falsely accused status quo. Those on the extreme right continue to put their fingers in their ears while mouthing rote justification for rationalized irresponsibility. Unfortunately, that minority somehow holds political sway over true expression of what most conservative Americans actually believe.

The vast majority of gun owners want sensible gun control. 195 wide-ranging world governments jointly acknowledge the need for immediate and major carbon reduction.

Three questions: Why would otherwise trusted mainstream scientists and all law enforcement agencies lie? Why might climate change deniers and the NRA lie? Who gains the most in perpetuating the status quo?

Manufacturers of weaponry have a powerful vested interest in financing the NRA’s opposition to any reasonable interpretation of the Second Amendment’s intent. Members of Congress beholden to fossil fuel industry interests well know on which side their bread is best buttered.

How long will it be before “mankind” acts like “a real man” and tells corporate bullies, anywhere and everywhere, that the dominion of the almighty buck stops here?

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Gary Anderson lives in Bath.