Considering the source

Who someone is is at least as important as what they say.

Sometimes a quote requires a bit more from me than a meme.

I recently ran across this, from British environmentalist and activist George Monbiot:

“The problem with gross domestic product is the gross bit. There are no deductions involved: all economic activity is accounted as if it were of positive value. Social harm is added to, not subtracted from, social good. A train crash which generates £1bn worth of track repairs, medical bills and funeral costs is deemed by this measure as beneficial as an uninterrupted service which generates £1bn in ticket sales.”

I like (and agree) with this quote. Frankly, that quote says something important and worth repeating (in my not-very-humble opinion). But the reason it’s not appearing in a meme on my Facebook timeline is that in researching the source (of whom I admit that I had not previously heard), I turned up a couple of things I also thought worthy of note. Basically (and I do realize that I am over-using parenthesis), I found out that he’s a bit of a slime-ball.

In the interest of fairness, it must be noted that George Monbiot was involved in an effort to defame Alistair McAlpine, Lord McAlpine of West Green, a prominent conservative and former advisor to Margaret Thatcher, with false allegations of child abuse. These false allegations resulted in court decisions against both the BBC and ITV with the cash awarded being donated to charity by Lord McAlpine, who also dropped his suit against Monbiot in exchange for Monbiot donating his time to three charities. Monbiot described this action by Lord McAlpine as “unprecedented.”

It should also be noted that Monbiot put his hypocrisy on tour when he bought a used diesel Renault and toured the US and Canada in it, campaigning on climate change.

While I agree with a lot of what Monbiot has said, and I support many of the same causes as he does, his blatant sleaziness and unrepentant douchebaggery makes him a less-than-desirable spokesman. And while I oppose much of what Baron McAlpine supports, it must be said that in most other regards he comes off much better than Monbiot.

I feel that it’s important for me to say that, to vocally repudiate much of what Monbiot is aside from the causes he represents, just as I feel it to be important that the Republicans and Conservatives speak against the more off-the-wall elements of their own movement. Frankly, I don’t hear enough of this sort of thing from either side.

Edited for spelling on 3/22/14, because I could no longer stand the errant "T" that changed hear to heart.

The Blues Viking

The thoughts expressed here are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

Wikipedia on George Monbiot 

Wikipedia on Lord McAlpine 

How to destroy a society: Try to save it.

The problem with a pluralistic democracy is that no one wants the “pluralistic” part. And most of us are none too keen on the “democracy” part, either.

(Sometimes, I do amazingly stupid shit. This is one of those times. Apparently, I wrote this article back in January...and forgot to post it. I ran across it again while I was cleaning out some garbage on Google's Blogger. It was a bit too good to just delete, so here it is. Belatedly.)

Quoth Webster:

plu·ral·ism

1. a situation in which people of different social classes, religions, races, etc., are together in a society but continue to have their different traditions and interest
2. the belief that people of different social classes, religions, races, etc., should live together in a society
   
   Merriam-Webster (m-w.com)

In my continual scavenging for quotes, I ran across this gem from conservative pundit Mark Levin:

“We now have the liberal playbook and we know what they are doing, and we are using it against them. Unlike the Democrats though, we aren't out to destroy our society, we are out to save it.”

What utter hogwash. Does Levin actually believe that Democrats are deliberately seeking to destroy society, or worse to destroy America itself? Are we (Liberals, not merely card-carrying Democrats) actually so evil? (I mean, I try to be, but…)

What Levin does not appear to realize (or perhaps is deliberately ignoring) is that we are all trying to save society. We all want to leave the world a better place then we found it. We all want to make this a better, stronger, more durable society than we ourselves inherited.

Inevitably, people are going to disagree about the best way to accomplish this. That’s what a pluralistic democracy is for. That’s what compromise is for. We are never going to all agree on the best way to move forward; we have to trust that a solution reached through open debate and compromise, while unlikely to entirely satisfy everyone, is a better way to achieve our common goals. Not perfect, far from it, but better.

Here’s what makes Levin and his ilk dangerous. He (and they) refuse to acknowledge that their opposite numbers (the evil Liberals) are themselves trying to achieve those same goals. Refusing to acknowledge this lets the far right believe that only they can save society, and thus any extreme in the pursuit of that goal is permissible.

And let us not forget that there are Liberal extremists out there as well, those who simply can not (or will not) accept that there are Conservatives who are doing nothing more than trying to make a better society.

As a single society composed of differing ideas, we have but two options; either we move forward or we stand still (going backwards is hardly an option; almost never possible and often disastrous to attempt). Moving forward requires that we all work at it together. Singling out one group or the other and trying to lay the responsibility for society’s evils at their feet is counterproductive. Extremism is extremely counterproductive.

It comes down to this: Working together may not guarantee success, but failing to do so guarantees failure. The sooner we all recognize this, the sooner we can all move our society forward.

The Blues Viking

The thoughts expressed here are mine, and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

Imaginary conversation with a cat, early one frigid morning…

Meow?

Hey, meow?

C’mon, man, meow already!

Go ‘way, Kitty. I’m asleep.

Can I go outside?

Kitty, it’s freezing out there.

Can I just have a look?

You’re just going to stand there for five minutes while I 

shiver in the cold wind holding the door open, then decide 

you don’t want to go out after all. So no.

Please? I promise I’ll check very carefully before I go out, 

and if it’s too cold I’ll come right back in. Meow?

It’s ten below outside! You’d freeze. No, Kitty. I’m sorry.

You’re mean.

I know, Kitty. Please let me sleep now.

Well, will you feed me?

Not right now, OK? Please let me sleep.

Don’t hide under the blankets. You know that never works. 

I really want some food now.

Not now, Kitty.

Even if I sit on your shoulder?

I’m sorry. I need to sleep.

How ‘bout if I do that thing where I gently paw at you?

Please don’t do that.

With my claws out?

Stop that.

How about if I just walk around on your head?

STOP that!

Here come the claws…

Alright, alright! I’m up. I’m going to the kitchen. 

I’m getting your food.

Will you carry me?

Of course I will.

And give me some water, too?

Of course I will.

And while you’re carrying me you can babytalk to me. I 

like that.

“Good Kitty. You’re a good Kitty. Yes you are!”

And when I’m done eating can I come snuggle with you? 

I promise I’ll purr real loud; I know you like that…

Of course you can, Kitty.

Then can I go outside?

<sigh> We'll see, Kitty.

The Blues Viking

The thoughts expressed here are mine and if you don't like them you can get your own damn blog.

How Green Was My Prius

Electric cars have gone from being a drawing-board pipe dream to being in every major automobile manufacturer's inventory. They are popular, at least in part, because they are perceived as being better for the environment. They aren't; not yet, anyway. But if we weren't making and selling them now, perhaps they would never realize that potential.

Back in November of '08, part of an article I wrote dealt (briefly) with the Chevrolet EV-1, a fledgling electric car that worked well, was manufacturable, was practical, and was inexplicably killed by General Motors. (What color is you're lifejacket?, November 20, 2008.) It seemed then that the electric car was far off in the future. Not so far, as it happened; electric cars are now offered by every major car manufacturer. And people are buying them. It's time (well past time) to take another look at this subject.

Deceptive color, green.

Consider the battery. There are few endeavors as destructive to the environment as the production of electric batteries. Environmentalists will (justifiably) eschew the production of batteries for toys and CD players and flashlights and the like, while loudly championing electric cars as the saviors of the planet even though the batteries in them are far more environmentally destructive to produce than those in your flashlight. At the current time, an electric car is as environmentally destructive as the gas-guzzler it would replace.

This leads to the kind of math that I am terrified by: Just how many human deaths is it worth to save the planet? I am not sure that we can assign such values to things without resigning our humanity.

If you think that I am saying that we shouldn't be driving electric cars, I am definitely not saying that. The problems of the electric car, and the batteries that it relies upon, are indeed large but I do not think that they're insurmountable. But who's going to climb that mountain if improvements in these technologies aren't needed, now? It may, in fact, come to pass that things like electric cars will indeed be the saviors of us all, but only if we can find a way of producing their components and developing their technologies without killing ourselves. I am sure that such problems cannot be overcome without research, that getting such research done will require a market, and that market won't exist unless we are pushing products like electric cars that require such research to fulfill their potential.

This is the reality of capitalism...nothing ever gets done without there's a profit in it. We may decry the fact that our way of life is driven by the relentless pursuit of profit, we may even be striving mightily to change that (or maybe just blogging about it), but no matter how earnestly we may want it to be otherwise it is what it is. For now, anyway, and even if we can change that can we really hope to change it in time?

This should be a point that the conservatives are making, and loudly. It isn't.

We live in a time when the electric car is perceived as a "left wing" thing by the right, and this perception is fueled by Barack Obama's strong support of the concept. This is unfortunate, since whatever Obama supports is automatically denigrated in conservative dogma. This is in defiance of the marketplace, the deity at whose alter all conservatives sacrifice, because the electric car is succeeding in that marketplace. In their rush to demonize anything that Obama supports, they are willing to likewise demonize a technology that is, despite their efforts, succeeding. 

A quick Google search turned up some glowing rhetoric from manufactures (naturally) and the left (naturally) extolling the virtues of the electric car along with some vitriolic rhetoric from the right (naturally) warning that the evil electric car is economically and environmentally unsound. But while the noise from the manufactures (and the noise from the left) is ignoring the dire warnings from the right, the noise from the right is ignoring the very real economic and environmental necessity of doing this now if we're ever going to do it better in the future.

So go ahead and buy that Prius (or Volt or Leaf or whatever) and drive it without embarrassment (if you can) but don't fool yourself that you're doing anything for the environment. You aren't...not today, anyway. But maybe, just maybe, you're making it possible for something truly great to happen tomorrow.

The Blues Viking

The thoughts here expressed are mine and if you don't like them you can get your own damn blog.