Part 1 – that is, if I can keep myself on target for the rest. The above quote is the title of a post by Lloyd Alter in stating that there is really only one way to solve the Climate Change crisis – and that is to vote and he goes on to say there are lots of things that can be done, proposes 5 main themes, and then admits that because folks like him and those at TreeHugger have failed to persuade Normal folks like us to voluntarily take up the hairshirt and ditch our cars, get rid of our stuff, live in tiny apartments and have to shop every day for groceries because of small fridges (it’s good for you to be out and talk to your neighbors!) and have to walk everywhere……we’ll use our votes to force Government to force you to live the way we want you to (emphasis mine):
The only thing that will save us is political change, and that’s up to the young people who have enough time left in their lives to be seriously invested in this issue. I noted in an earlier post, titled Climate change is a disaster for millennials, an inconvenience for the boomers:
The younger generations that are going to get screwed by climate change the most are the ones that should be organizing now. This is not the defining issue of my generation. But it is of theirs.
Young men and women who don’t have suburban houses and good jobs and SUVs, who get mad, show up and vote them out of office. That’s the number one thing we have to do. Everything else is commentary.
Ah yes, the danger of direct democracy – the mobocracy. Have warned these folks, time and time again: you won’t like it when the other side regains control. But that was just too enticing, and turned out to have a series of comments:
Sidenote: and these kinds of things also sideline me writing at the ‘Grok – I get caught up in the back and forth with those that are of a more socialist / forced communitarian outlook; I just feel that I should be that countervaling opinion and forget to bring them back to the ‘Grok.
First, I actually did get a complement from the head honcho there, Lloyd:
I really do appreciate that you stick around and keep commenting here, which is why I am responding. But have we not always told people how to live their lives, from the Ten Commandments down? How do you feel about smoking restrictions? Lead in paint or arsenic in ink?
I’ll leave the questions for later – but it was nice to see that my contrarian viewpoint was needed. The first exchange, however, was an interesting, even if short, discussion of the role of language:
fcfcfc: Hi: “Billionaires never miss mid terms and have YOUR congressman on speed dial.”
Humm… does not seem to be any lack of clarity there….…..Bill
YOUR? Yes Oust Unqualified Republicansgranitegrok: The other response, Bill, is that we on the other side decided to oust Unqualified Democrats. The pendulum can always swing the other way and things are always a matter of perception(s)
fcfcfc: Perception is REALITY??? Gee, now you sound like a NYC marketing person… I guess the universe was not here before man because there was no man to perceive it…
There is no TRUTH, only perception…. how convenient for no accountability..granitegrok: You provide an exact example – I didn’t say that there is “no Truth” – but that was your perception of what I wrote, is it not? Because I didn’t use the words you were looking for, you instituted them into the conversation on your own. The one thing I have learned in doing political blogging intensively for over a decade that there are almost always multiple perceptions of how to interpret a set of facts: half full, half empty, or even is a glass present?
I am all for accountability – but what are the standards of measure and what is the definition of what used to be our common language? Many refuse to the former and keep redefining the latter so accountability is a hard thing to come by dispassionately speaking.
And yes, in Politics, perception is a great part of Reality, like it or not. So no, not an NYC marketing guy but one that continues tries to deal with political spin from both sides of the aisle (for they all do it).
And this ties back into my Capitalism / Socialism / Communism posts earlier this morning
Sidenote: “Earlier this morning” – VERY early for me!We Groksters had a “time” together at Grokster Mike’s place – something that we don’t do enough of and nice to just fire off a repartee and back and forths. No, we didn’t record it but it was fun! But that meant almost a 4 hour round trip drive and when we got home I sat down on the couch and, well, drifted mostly off to nap time. Woke up, decided to go to bed at around 8:30pm. Now up at 3:30am. At least the house is quiet this early in the morning – NO interruptions!
fcfcfc: …Just a short note, it is interesting to note in all our linguistic befuddlement and confusion, the Billionaire class and all its desires has managed to stay together and grow even more, more, more, more BIGGER!! Wow, how did all that happen with all the lack of concrete language meaning… how did their desired money not get lost along such a confused passageway… must be coincidence..
Yeah that above sentence caught my attention – the typical economic class warfare I see a lot over there. Remember, many environmentalists are green on the outside, and may well be green all the way through. But many are red on the inside – as in the red in the hammer & sickle flags we see waving more and more often. I really do think that the answer is really simple yet they keep intimating that it is far more than what it seems:
granitegrok: …Let my try this for a first draft answer: more people are voluntarily buying THEIR products and services over those presented by their competition?
In a free society, it IS just that – that the value proposition (the value of the goods offered offset by the price requested for them) is one that people accept. People get rich by constantly fulfilling other peoples needs and wants by presenting stuff that people want at the price they are willing to pay (i.e., Jess’s observation of “In Socialism, everyone is either a resource and/or just another mouth to feed…a burden. I’d rather be treated as a customer with others trying to figure out how to best satisfy my needs.“)
Part 2 either later on today or tomorrow, IF I remember to post it.
