One wonders…
…whether environmental activists are really as upset about the consequences of the oil spill as they say they are. They’re certainly not acting like it.
The New Neo
A blog about political change, among other things
…whether environmental activists are really as upset about the consequences of the oil spill as they say they are. They’re certainly not acting like it.
I’m more concerned as to what will come out of the bayou once all this oil gets in there. It’s a fertile, seething mass of natural decay. Already, insects the size of small Code Pinkers venture out of the recesses when the wind blows right. Add in rich, thick and gooey deep earth oil and who know what will emerge. The South isn’t like Alaska, which is relatively benign in the realm of environmental decay, they’ll be damage but ultimately the oil will be absorbed into the ecology.
You will also note that the Democrats are in no hurry to waive the Jones Act to allow foreign ships to help with the clean up. They were available to help the first week. The issue is maritime unions. The guys working on the rigs Obama is trying to shut down are mostly non union so screw them.
This is their “toldja so” moment. (Nevermind that it was govt. regs that required offshore drilling to be so far offshore, where this kind of event would be more likely to occur).
They want to milk this.
Imagine if BP was able to put a cap on the leak within the first few days, or with some foreign help, was able to contain the spill. This would no longer be a big headline news item. No, it was better for team Obama, etc. to move sloooowwwly, to let the effects of the spill sink in on the public’s psyche.
The more damage to the environment, the more control the current regime and environmentalists believe the populace will be willing to give up to prevent this from happening again.
Its why progressivism only lasts for a generation then takes two off… it takes two to grow up a new generation that will flip off their elders and make the same mistakes and help complete the ends, as the prior installments are never fully reversed.
Well most environmentalists aren’t really concerned about the environment, only their own moral superiority. They are angry at their parents and use society as a canvas to wipe their sh*t on.
Environmentalism isn’t about the environment.
Feminism isn’t about women.
Peace groups aren’t about peace.
Free speech groups aren’t about free speech.
Civil rights groups aren’t about civil rights.
Homosexual marriage isn’t about homosexuals.
Human rights groups aren’t about human rights.
Organized labor isn’t about the working man.
These are all merely wedge issues to mobilize the useful idiots to “build a mass movement.” The issues themselves are of no consequence to the organizers. Angela Davis once chided me in my pre-Damascene conversion era for not realizing this.
Consider the competing hypotheses:
1. The organizers and decision makers of each group above actually care first and foremost about issue.
In this case we should be able to predict their response based on what has happened.
2. The organizers and decision makers of each group above actually care first and foremost about building a socialist movement — and merely employ the issue as a vehicle to do that.
In this case we should be able to predict their response based not on what has happened, but rather on its effect on advancing socialism.
Hypothesis #1 would predict that environmentalists would be howling about the oil spill and Chinese pollution, and would have howled about the Aral Sea and Chernobyl, that feminists would have howled about the treatment offered Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, Condoleeza Rice, and Monica Lewinsky (not to mention women in Islamic countries), that civil rights groups would have howled about the treatment offered Clarence Thomas and Condoleeza Rice, that peace activists would have howled about Soviet SS-20s back when, and would be howling now about Obama’s continuing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, that human rights groups would be howling about, well, most of the world outside the US and Europe.
Hypothesis #2 would predict that the response of each of the groups above would depend on the political affiliation of the dramatis personae, rather than just the facts of the case. Environmental catastrophe? Is America in any way involved, or be made to look responsible? If yes, is there any way to lay this at door of patriotic Americans, Republicans, or corporations? If yes, break out the papier mache heads. If no, forget it. Aral Sea, Chernobyl, Chinese pollution…yawn.
In each case, hypothesis #2 stomps hypothesis #1 and leaves it for dead. Hypothesis #1 simply does not comport well with the data, and therefore must be rejected in favor of hypothesis #2, which uniformly predicts the experimentally observed outcome.
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Occam’s Beard, as always… dead on.
Environmentalists are now known as watermelons. Green on the outside; red on the in. As Occam’s Beard said, it’s not about the environment. With the Dope I guess they feel they have finally realized the power they strive for. The silence is deafening!
Environmentalists?
I picture them sitting all full of Smug â„¢ in their parents houses, (lord forbid they actually work and take care of themselves) whining about things like how they need, nay, deserve, free health care. All while they type away on their state of the art Mac computers, chatting on their super expensive iPhones and anxiously worrying about their largest problem: whether to put their iPod on normal play or shuffle.
A tenet of Marxism is that Capitalism contains the fatal seeds of its own destruction, which will inevitably cause its complete collapse.
But, good Marxists don’t have to stand around. They can give it a push to its collapse, and bring about the World of Equality that much faster.
From this perspective, oil drilling is evil, destined to inevitably collapse. The failure of the Deepwater Horizon well is part of this prediction. But, good Marxists don’t have to stand around. They can give this collapse a push by accepting harm rather than working hard to minimize that harm.
Just saw something on MSNBC that disgust me (no suprise there) They were interviewing a girl , about 11 years old, about the oil coming ashore in Florida. She was crying and saying “I just took it for granted it (beach) would always be there.” So the adults around her have apparently let her believe the beach can never be recovered. Maybe they straightened her out after the interview, but i get tired of the over the top rhetoric about permanently destroyed “fragile” ecosystems. I hate to see this oil leak, but get a grip people!
Congtratulations!
you made it to the top of Hot Air
@ Occam’s Beard 5:59 pm: I have never read a better blog comment anywhere, ever.
Not upset one bit. This is another
opportunitycrisis not to waste.http://nolanimrod.com/2010/06/23/proof-obama-to/
Thanks, Artfl. I hadn’t seen that yet.
Wow! Thanks for the kind comments!
Go, OB, go!
Occam, you have been reading again. naughty you.
OB, let’s hope your comment goes viral. I don’t see how it could be improved. It even has Angela Davis!
Oblio, I’ve thought many times about that conversation with her, and another regarding free speech (“Of course we’re for free speech. Everyone is free to speak the truth, but just not free to speak lies.” “Oh.”). With those two troubling remarks she planted the seed of my leftist apostasy, although I didn’t appreciate it at the time. The long and short of it is, she’s a piece of work.
The comment could definitely be improved. I’d dashed it off quickly, and now wish I’d taken the time to proofread it.
So, Occam’s Beard, you met Angela Davis? What’s she like? Does she still have that big fro?
Ah, Angela. Promethea, no idea if she still has the ‘fro— that was 40 years ago – but back in the day she had an enormous one, probably two feet across, literally. She looked for all the world like a dandelion, although I kept that observation to myself.
I used to see her swimming at the natatorium. When she emerged, the ‘fro of course was not in evidence, and she looked like a drowned rat. It was hard to keep a straight face when seeing someone who looked perpetually pissed off looking so ridiculous. Probably sensing this, she always seemed temporarily — and uncharacteristically – a bit self-conscious, much like a dog getting a bath.
A funny thing about her is that, ‘fro notwithstanding, she could pass for white. If I clocked some beach time, and she didn’t, I’d be darker skinned than she is. Where’s Freud when you really need him?
Back then Marcuse had two prize grad students/ disciples/ acolytes, Angela and a guy, whom I won’t name as he apparently cleaned up his act, but she and he were Mary Magdalene and Peter to Marcuse’s Jesus. One day the campus was abuzz with electricity — Peter had gone over to the dark side to become a stockbroker or realtor (IIRC), for God’s sake! He hadn’t just had doubts, or had a doctrinal dispute with the Party — he’d gone full-on capitalist, to the fulminating outrage of the Reds. No greater betrayal was imaginable. Even at that point in my philosophical progression I was amused.
What’s Angela like? She is (or at least, was — she may have changed, although I doubt it) a ruthless bitch of the first water, totally dedicated to communism, utterly devoid of humor or humanity, and capable of anything. And I do mean anything. She is/was a snake. Think Irma Grese with an Afro, and you won’t be far wrong.
Occam: Angela and the ‘fro, fairly recently:
neo, interesting.
She’s dialed back the ‘fro, but her sartorial style is really neither here nor there.
The interesting thing to me is that the malevolence is not in evidence (not to go Johnny Cochrane on you). She seems old and tired and irrelvant, just going through the motions, rather like an ageing rock group performing its greatest hits.
So let me moderate my comments above. She was a snake, but now seems …rather pathetic, and I can’t help feeling a bit sorry for her. I get a sense that she realizes she’s wasted her life on rubbish, but is too old and too proud to do the full Eldridge Cleaver, so she phones it in instead. Sad, really. Good for America, but sad from a human point of view.
You know, I feel stronger empathy with her now than I ever did back then, even when I subscribed to her politics.
If I had to bet, I’d bet that she wishes she had grandchildren. I can’t conceive of a more profoundly depressing thought.
Comment on Occam’s comment:as usual it’s back to Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer. It is all about being part of a cause, something external to oneself, that allows one to hide from the dismal, unexceptional being one really is.
Also less expensive than being an alcoholic and provides a good chance to meet other losers and develop bonds.
Your description of Angela now befits so many of those who gave their all to the cause only for the cause to push them aside when their all was not as much as it was when they were young and more gullible.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Mr Davis in his end days lectured Obama on how to turn the tables and use them to get someplace just to get back at them for doing what they did to him and Langston huges, and Richard Right, and many others who for one reason or another no longer served their purpose, or no longer were blind.
the more stuff you read as to that past history, the more VERY clear things become as to why we are where we are.
one of the clearest things was how ignoring the relevancy of associations… (the most classic being FDRs comment as to communists in his immediate circle).
I would also say that that list points to the cancers we cant do without. go ahead, try to excise feminism as a Marxist thing, the women wont let you. having been twisted up by the progressives, and their lying dialogue, and their cover lies for when you try to examine things. [i know of almost no women who can wrap their minds around to what degree they have been hoodwinked, and their vanity keeps them from driving off the cliff like Thelma and Louise]
and Bob from Virginia..
that’s why Christianity is not liked, as it makes even the lowliest of humans, exceptional beings. it takes a very odd mind and turn to make one think that one is not exceptional in the scheme of things. one actually has to be told in weird ways and weird examples to prove it absent other things, in order for one to take that mindset.
for instance… life started over 3.5 billion years ago. From the first life form that was developed enough to seed all other forms hence, there was a unbroken line of living leading all the way up to you. you being one of the very few living things existing at a pinnacle of development (like most other things too).
So what if your deaf like me (in one ear), or that you are a super systemizer, while someone else really loves to travel and enter chili competitions…
what makes ones life special is not to find some outside cause that one can sign up and join to find relevancy.
what makes life special is the relevancy inherent in it even if you don’t do that. that is, the signing up doesn’t give it relevancy, the choosing and exercising of freedom does, and signing up is one external example of exercising such choice.
on one level one can think of a soul as freedom. freedom is not corporal, but you can lose it. when one deals with the devil one gives ones freedom away to travel through a different set of circumstances than one belives one can travel on their own, or one cant reach and accept that one can reach it.
The fools bargain is in dealing away the one thing for a dream that would provide that dream.
If I had to bet, I’d bet that she wishes she had grandchildren.–Occam’s Beard
She has grandchildren. One of them is Obama.
Occam and Neo . . .
Thanks for the update on Angela. One of the fun things about getting older is watching people age. Angela goes from beautiful dandelion to straggly poodle. One of my friends went from willowy blond babe (Aphrodite) to snaggle-toothed crone (Hecate). I won’t tell you what I looked/look like cuz I’m protecting my secret identity.
Tonight and for a few days my guests will be the World’s Oldest Hippies. One is a community organizer, the other a poet. It’s always interesting. I can imagine what they think of me, the dreaded rightwinger wingnut. 😉
Occam and Neo . . .
Thanks for the update on Angela. One of the fun things about getting older is watching people age. Angela goes from beautiful dandelion to straggly poodle. One of my friends went from willowy blond babe (Aphrodite) to snaggle-toothed crone (Hecate). I won’t tell you what I looked/look like cuz I’m protecting my secret identity.
Tonight and for a few days my guests will be the World’s Oldest Hippies. One is a community organizer, the other a poet. It’s always interesting. I can imagine what they think of me, the dreaded rightwinger wingnut. 😉
GENOCIDAL ECO-MANIACS: Everyone’s favourite comment on the eco-fascists may be that of President Vaclav Klaus of the Czech Republic: “What is at risk is not the climate but freedom…I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity now in ambitious environmentalism, not in communism. This ideology wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning..”
Louisiana’s become a reliably red state with a governor who’s a non-white up-and-comer in the Republican party. Obama would cheerfully carpet-bomb the place.
Trimegistus wrote “Louisiana’s become a reliably red state with a governor who’s a non-white up-and-comer in the Republican party. Obama would cheerfully carpet-bomb the place.”
Ain’t going to happen, it would mean that Obama would have to make a clear concise decision and see it carried out. More likely he would make a speech suggesting someone else bomb Louisiana and blame the necessity of bombing Louisiana on Bush.
Artfldgr, your the reference to evolution is somewhat dated. Today we know Darwin’s idea was right but his direction was wrong. Mankind is evolving TO blue-green algae.
And all this time i thought that we were just an invention water had so that it could move up hill easier. 🙂
Artfldgr: And then there’s this, from the story “The Dreamers,” by Isak Dinesen:
Great story, by the way, if anyone wants to read it. It’s in Seven Gothic Tales.
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