The title has been around for awhile and although there seems to be a veneer of respectability and even some scientific research in this wonderschrift its namesake was a huge joke – or was it?
The Green New Deal was unveiled last week and to much fanfare that rather quickly faded away. It was endorsed by nine presidential hopefuls and Nancy Pelosi called it one of the “enthusiasms” that her party is being energized by but said that she hadn’t really read it. I am beginning to wonder if the speaker reads anything that is not on big note cards like she was reading at the State of the Union; remember the health care bill that had to be passed before it could be read? Unlike that health care bill the New Deal was there for all to see for a while and all of a sudden I cannot find it because I wanted to read it again for it’s entertainment value. Number one – the document I read at first I thought was an “Onion” piece and we have talked about the “Onion” before. It is satire and it is devastating to note that sometime an “Onion” piece, as insane as it might be can, in this day and age be considered a real story. Number two the document read like a 6th grade essay. My writing is often criticized for punctuation and some grammar but this was not just juvenile it was puerile. The high points were that every building in the United States would have to be updated or rebuilt to reach some standard of environmental legislation, air travel would be banned in ten years, there would be a guaranteed income for those who could not or would not work (folks need to follow their bliss you know), all fossil fuels would be banned and the plan I saw ruled out nuclear energy as well. Cattle would be banned because they release methane, we would all travel on high speed rail, free health care for all etc. Free education for all through graduate school I believe was on the list too, and that makes sense because judging from the knowledge of history, economics and sociology, the education of the people that wrote it should have been free because it was worth nothing in the real world. Healthy food for all was also promised and of course the folks that wrote the plan would decide what is healthy. I am imagining a world of Kale and Starbucks and maybe a pizza on occasion.
The silliness of it all was manifest but it was a serious proposition; or was it? Notice it is no where to be found this morning. The places where it was posted have removed it. The speaker called it an “enthusiasm”. The original Greek word Enthusiasmos means to be possessed by a god. Notice the way these ideas are presented in almost religious terms. Plans are moral and merciful and do justice etc. There may be a movement here that has finally reached the omega point where their dreams and fevered imaginations have gotten to a point where they really believe what they say or we have reached a point where folks are “flooding the zone” with stuff that is so outrageous that it will soon become a part of the fabric of life and conversation and not seem strange at all after a while. Remember that ten years ago the desire to undergo a sex change operation was considered a form of insanity. Today, some consider you to be insane if you don’t want one.
We curmudgeons and Cassandras back in the day of the abortion conversation tried to explain that the sales pitch that abortion would safe and under a doctors care and only to protect a mother; safe legal and rare as we were told, would go down the slippery slope and the next step would be infanticide. Last week those predictions came to fruition in New York. A child can be killed after birth and guess what – a Doctor doesn’t have to do it. Infanticide was openly espoused by the Virginia Governor last week but he is in trouble not for promoting infanticide, but for maybe wearing black face in a picture. So an open and chilling espousal of the blatant murder of a baby, this is no longer a fetus, this is an individual human being, is chased out of the public discussion and attention by the wearing of black face 30 years ago. Zones are being flooded all over the place so that eventually the weird and creepy and sick becomes the norm. White Republicans are called a “blood cult” while the New York State Legislature is called progressive and concerned for women. The Alinsky adage of accusing your opponents of what you yourself are doing is applied over and over again. I don’t think the old white republicans in the senate can be a blood cult, but I think a legislature that locks into law the murder of born alive babies might be.
Anyway I can see the day coming, remember I am a Cassandra, when the “government’ requires farmers to at least put diapers on their cattle. It might be something that prosaic that finally leads us to wake up from our slumber and put an end to this nonsense. We may be marching to be Venezuela but we don’t have to double time.
