Post by GoreSupporterNJ on Jan 28, 2004 16:52:50 GMT -5
Damn Hippie Liberal Trees
BushCo wants you to know: Caring about the environment is for pinko terrorist idiots
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist Wednesday, January 28, 2004
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As if 600-year-old redwoods give a damn for your politics.
As if struggling salmon care a whit for the Catholic Church's sneering homophobic stance on gay marriage. Like Alaskan elk think your viewpoints on war are far too lopsided to hold sway in the national dialogue.
There are typical GOP evils and there are warmongering BushCo flying monkeys and there is Dick Cheney's pallid sneer as he slaughters a small mountain of birds for blood sport, and then there is perhaps the most vile and destructive notion the GOP has succeeded in foisting upon the numbed nation to date: that caring about Mother Nature makes you, yet again, a "god__ hippie liberal."
This is what has happened: The GOP has succeeded, woefully, viciously, in demonizing nature. Right now, to love our unlogged forests or to wish air quality to be protected or to hope our leaders don't allow monster crony oil companies to jam their snarling proboscises into our country's nature preserves for a handful of crude is now to be thought of as a dreadlocked Greenpeace-Earth First!-tofu lover.
It's true. You cannot think solar power is cool without being labeled a hippie. You cannot want the U.S. Navy to knock it off with the god--- high-powered sonar that damages whales without being cast as some sort of New Age freak. You cannot drive a Prius without being deemed some sort of nutball geek who probably feeds your kids only hemp seeds and homemade sproutburgers with a side of fresh mulch.
This is the other thing: Bush is the worst environmental president in the nation's history. Period. The proofs are irrefutable, and the list of his administration's sinister assaults on the pale blue dot we all call home is painful and tragic and punishable in the afterlife by seven billion years of listening to Lynne Cheney being scraped across a chalkboard.
No natural resource has been left unmolested: From forest management to air quality to water pollution to emissions standards to land management to industrial farming to reduced controls on heavy polluters to global warming to nuclear waste to our energy policy, BushCo has made atrociously efficient progress in decimating, in just three short years, 30 years of staunch environmental protections.
Dubya, by way of his industry cronies, have initiating more than 200 major rollbacks of America's most significant environmental laws. Hey, it's nothing new: As governor of Texas, Bush made his state No. 1 in thick smudgy black air and water pollution that makes babies gag and eyes water and cancer cells flourish. He had the ugliest enviro record of any governor in the state's history.
He has openly sodomized the Clean Air Act. He has given the green light to clear cutting the nation's largest old-growth forest, Alaska's stunning Tongass National Forest. He is allowing huge industrial polluters extensive new freedoms to pump toxins into rivers and lakes. He has scoffed at the Kyoto Treaty, even as the world's top scientists wave proof after proof of the reality of global warming in his face.
Here's a telling fact: During Dubya's State of the Union speech, the environment received not a single mention. According to Environment2004, not since Bush Sr.'s 1992 State of the Union address has a president failed to acknowledge that a healthy environment is essential to the survival of our species. Dubya did, however, scowl at steroid use by athletes. Now, there's a pressing issue.
The list of BushCo enviro assaults is enormous, appalling, increasing and far too extensive and outright depressing to detail in this column, but much gruesome proof can be had by perusing Robert F. Kennedy's superlative, damning essay in Rolling Stone, "Crimes Against Nature," or by simply browsing through the National Resource Defense Council's many pages on BushCo's enviro-hating policies. For a start.
Here's how successful the GOP's antienvironment brainwashing has been: With the exception of Dennis Kucinich, not one of the major Demo presidential candidates has truly focused on environmental issues in the debates or in their campaign speeches, for fear of being labeled "too liberal." Thanks to the GOP, to talk too much about the health of the planet now is to be thought of as anticapitalist and antiprogress and an outright traitor to the American causes of money-uber-alles and the-world-is-our-sandbox.
So duped is the nation that to even hint that you care deeply about safe drinking water for kids or the direct connection between toxic big agribiz and the increased rates of heart disease and cancer in this nation is tantamount to spitting on the flag.
BushCo even shames its own party members. Abundant, I imagine, are the staunch Republicans who still care deeply about the health of the planet and want to see pollution decreased and their children able to drink the water or go fishing at the local lake without worrying about mercury poisoning from the local coal factory -- the one Bush just excused from complying with the Clean Air Act.
But they don't dare speak up. They don't dare mention that they care, lest the "liberal" label get slapped on their asses and they are instantly considered treasonous terrorist sympathizers who would happily give refuge and a nice organic chai tea to Osama bin Laden.
This is the GOP credo: You're either with us 100 percent, or you're a commie hippie homo who should move to France. And there are few things a conservative fears more than being ostracized by the party.
The truth is, no matter which party you align yourself with, nowadays it takes more guts, more outright nerve, to care about this planet, to work to strip your life of the plastic and the poisonous and minimize your waste and your impact, eat more consciously and support local farming and cherish the flora and fauna, than it ever could be to load up the Escalade with Malaysian-made crap you bought at Wal-Mart that's now 89 cents cheaper because it's made in a sweatshop and not at the local factory that was forced to shut down.
This, then, is the ultimate BushCo credo: No sanctity. No reverence for that which is larger and more ancient and more divine. No concern for that which provides beauty and nourishment and sustenance. Mother Nature is not a source of life and inspiration and vital health -- she's just a lowly wench who needs to be put in her place.
And this, then, is the only possible response: If there was any better time in American history to proudly announce yourself as an environmentalist, this is it. It really doesn't matter where you stand on other issues. Because when that beautiful bitch Mother Nature really begins to strike back, nothing else will matter.
~~~~~~
I'm here to say then, that I AM a damn tree hugging liberal, and PROUD OF IT. Take that you RW, beedy eyed, smirking, oil spouting fakes.
Jan
BushCo wants you to know: Caring about the environment is for pinko terrorist idiots
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist Wednesday, January 28, 2004
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As if 600-year-old redwoods give a damn for your politics.
As if struggling salmon care a whit for the Catholic Church's sneering homophobic stance on gay marriage. Like Alaskan elk think your viewpoints on war are far too lopsided to hold sway in the national dialogue.
There are typical GOP evils and there are warmongering BushCo flying monkeys and there is Dick Cheney's pallid sneer as he slaughters a small mountain of birds for blood sport, and then there is perhaps the most vile and destructive notion the GOP has succeeded in foisting upon the numbed nation to date: that caring about Mother Nature makes you, yet again, a "god__ hippie liberal."
This is what has happened: The GOP has succeeded, woefully, viciously, in demonizing nature. Right now, to love our unlogged forests or to wish air quality to be protected or to hope our leaders don't allow monster crony oil companies to jam their snarling proboscises into our country's nature preserves for a handful of crude is now to be thought of as a dreadlocked Greenpeace-Earth First!-tofu lover.
It's true. You cannot think solar power is cool without being labeled a hippie. You cannot want the U.S. Navy to knock it off with the god--- high-powered sonar that damages whales without being cast as some sort of New Age freak. You cannot drive a Prius without being deemed some sort of nutball geek who probably feeds your kids only hemp seeds and homemade sproutburgers with a side of fresh mulch.
This is the other thing: Bush is the worst environmental president in the nation's history. Period. The proofs are irrefutable, and the list of his administration's sinister assaults on the pale blue dot we all call home is painful and tragic and punishable in the afterlife by seven billion years of listening to Lynne Cheney being scraped across a chalkboard.
No natural resource has been left unmolested: From forest management to air quality to water pollution to emissions standards to land management to industrial farming to reduced controls on heavy polluters to global warming to nuclear waste to our energy policy, BushCo has made atrociously efficient progress in decimating, in just three short years, 30 years of staunch environmental protections.
Dubya, by way of his industry cronies, have initiating more than 200 major rollbacks of America's most significant environmental laws. Hey, it's nothing new: As governor of Texas, Bush made his state No. 1 in thick smudgy black air and water pollution that makes babies gag and eyes water and cancer cells flourish. He had the ugliest enviro record of any governor in the state's history.
He has openly sodomized the Clean Air Act. He has given the green light to clear cutting the nation's largest old-growth forest, Alaska's stunning Tongass National Forest. He is allowing huge industrial polluters extensive new freedoms to pump toxins into rivers and lakes. He has scoffed at the Kyoto Treaty, even as the world's top scientists wave proof after proof of the reality of global warming in his face.
Here's a telling fact: During Dubya's State of the Union speech, the environment received not a single mention. According to Environment2004, not since Bush Sr.'s 1992 State of the Union address has a president failed to acknowledge that a healthy environment is essential to the survival of our species. Dubya did, however, scowl at steroid use by athletes. Now, there's a pressing issue.
The list of BushCo enviro assaults is enormous, appalling, increasing and far too extensive and outright depressing to detail in this column, but much gruesome proof can be had by perusing Robert F. Kennedy's superlative, damning essay in Rolling Stone, "Crimes Against Nature," or by simply browsing through the National Resource Defense Council's many pages on BushCo's enviro-hating policies. For a start.
Here's how successful the GOP's antienvironment brainwashing has been: With the exception of Dennis Kucinich, not one of the major Demo presidential candidates has truly focused on environmental issues in the debates or in their campaign speeches, for fear of being labeled "too liberal." Thanks to the GOP, to talk too much about the health of the planet now is to be thought of as anticapitalist and antiprogress and an outright traitor to the American causes of money-uber-alles and the-world-is-our-sandbox.
So duped is the nation that to even hint that you care deeply about safe drinking water for kids or the direct connection between toxic big agribiz and the increased rates of heart disease and cancer in this nation is tantamount to spitting on the flag.
BushCo even shames its own party members. Abundant, I imagine, are the staunch Republicans who still care deeply about the health of the planet and want to see pollution decreased and their children able to drink the water or go fishing at the local lake without worrying about mercury poisoning from the local coal factory -- the one Bush just excused from complying with the Clean Air Act.
But they don't dare speak up. They don't dare mention that they care, lest the "liberal" label get slapped on their asses and they are instantly considered treasonous terrorist sympathizers who would happily give refuge and a nice organic chai tea to Osama bin Laden.
This is the GOP credo: You're either with us 100 percent, or you're a commie hippie homo who should move to France. And there are few things a conservative fears more than being ostracized by the party.
The truth is, no matter which party you align yourself with, nowadays it takes more guts, more outright nerve, to care about this planet, to work to strip your life of the plastic and the poisonous and minimize your waste and your impact, eat more consciously and support local farming and cherish the flora and fauna, than it ever could be to load up the Escalade with Malaysian-made crap you bought at Wal-Mart that's now 89 cents cheaper because it's made in a sweatshop and not at the local factory that was forced to shut down.
This, then, is the ultimate BushCo credo: No sanctity. No reverence for that which is larger and more ancient and more divine. No concern for that which provides beauty and nourishment and sustenance. Mother Nature is not a source of life and inspiration and vital health -- she's just a lowly wench who needs to be put in her place.
And this, then, is the only possible response: If there was any better time in American history to proudly announce yourself as an environmentalist, this is it. It really doesn't matter where you stand on other issues. Because when that beautiful bitch Mother Nature really begins to strike back, nothing else will matter.
~~~~~~
I'm here to say then, that I AM a damn tree hugging liberal, and PROUD OF IT. Take that you RW, beedy eyed, smirking, oil spouting fakes.
Jan