I hadn’t expected to follow up so directly on yesterday’s post, but sometimes the loonies get me going. Yesterday we had proponents of guns rushing to the defense of texting while driving; today a front-page article in the NYT talks about opponents of teaching evolution linking their cause with global warming denial.
Now that climate change has come under a cloud, I guess it’s only natural to hitch your wagon to a falling star. Only problem is, we now have state legislatures declaring “Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, but rather a highly beneficial ingredient for all plant life.” That old black/white thinking again: if it ain’t bad, it must be good. Too bad the Brazilian rainforests won’t be around to enjoy all that healthy CO2 we’re spewing.
I won’t call this “linking” tactic stupid; in fact, I think it’s pretty shrewd. What surprises me is that it’s been so long in coming, seeing as how the Right has been so good for so long at gathering together all these diverse hot-button issues so that they can get people to vote against their own economic interests. To be sure, the Party of No knows when to take an affirmative stand: pro-business, pro-gun, pro-life...and pro-fantasy as far as their literal reading of Genesis is concerned. It’s a big tent, all right. Send in the clowns. (But send out the clones, because cloning is being linked as well.)
But I can’t help but look at these commonalities from another perspective. The shootin’/textin’ crowd is wary of restrictions. The evolution & global warming deniers are wary of theories. And we already know that another bunch in the big tent is wary of people of color. Ain’t it clear? It’s the Party of Fear. They’re just doing what they do best: stirring up anxieties among people too uninformed to question their rhetoric.
Why can’t the Left take a lesson from this tremendous organizational ability and get something done? Instead we’ve got heel-dragging on a Consumer Protection Agency and Bart Stupak poised to unravel the whole health-care package because it doesn’t jibe with his views on abortion. I know, I know: unlike lock-step Republicans, Democrats aren’t afraid to stand up for their principles. Now all we need is for some pro-gun Democrat to insist that the health bill guarantee the right to be packing heat while visiting your doctor. We need to tie things together, folks, not nit-pick them apart.
No, we lefties don’t have a big tent. We’re just a carnival sideshow, geeks and all, masquerading as a congressional majority. And what P.T. Barnum once said applies to all of us who voted for them: “There’s a sucker born every minute.”
Now that climate change has come under a cloud, I guess it’s only natural to hitch your wagon to a falling star. Only problem is, we now have state legislatures declaring “Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, but rather a highly beneficial ingredient for all plant life.” That old black/white thinking again: if it ain’t bad, it must be good. Too bad the Brazilian rainforests won’t be around to enjoy all that healthy CO2 we’re spewing.
I won’t call this “linking” tactic stupid; in fact, I think it’s pretty shrewd. What surprises me is that it’s been so long in coming, seeing as how the Right has been so good for so long at gathering together all these diverse hot-button issues so that they can get people to vote against their own economic interests. To be sure, the Party of No knows when to take an affirmative stand: pro-business, pro-gun, pro-life...and pro-fantasy as far as their literal reading of Genesis is concerned. It’s a big tent, all right. Send in the clowns. (But send out the clones, because cloning is being linked as well.)
But I can’t help but look at these commonalities from another perspective. The shootin’/textin’ crowd is wary of restrictions. The evolution & global warming deniers are wary of theories. And we already know that another bunch in the big tent is wary of people of color. Ain’t it clear? It’s the Party of Fear. They’re just doing what they do best: stirring up anxieties among people too uninformed to question their rhetoric.
Why can’t the Left take a lesson from this tremendous organizational ability and get something done? Instead we’ve got heel-dragging on a Consumer Protection Agency and Bart Stupak poised to unravel the whole health-care package because it doesn’t jibe with his views on abortion. I know, I know: unlike lock-step Republicans, Democrats aren’t afraid to stand up for their principles. Now all we need is for some pro-gun Democrat to insist that the health bill guarantee the right to be packing heat while visiting your doctor. We need to tie things together, folks, not nit-pick them apart.
No, we lefties don’t have a big tent. We’re just a carnival sideshow, geeks and all, masquerading as a congressional majority. And what P.T. Barnum once said applies to all of us who voted for them: “There’s a sucker born every minute.”
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