Democrats are the "choice" party.
They should be consistent. Choice on climate.
Democrats are for choice on issues of sex, gender, and reproduction. Let people do their own thing. It's nobody's business but one's own.
There was a lesson there for Democrats. The values and norms of educated, urban and suburban, diversity-accepting people -- the new heart of the Democratic Party -- can enjoy acceptance so long as they don't rub too hard against people who make other personal choices.
Democrats did not analogize from abortion choice to Covid-vaccination choice. There were good arguments that the issues were fundamentally different. After all, at first at least, vaccinations appeared to reduce transmission to others, not just the severity of the disease to oneself. Democratic governors were feeling their way amid emerging information. But when that presumption appeared not to be true, and vaccinated people do sometimes transmit the disease, and vaccinations were about personal safety, Democrats were slow to adjust. Democrats looked to have switched roles with the abortion-banning right and became the choice-denying busybody. That hurt them politically.
Democratic climate activists may well be exactly right on the science on natural gas, on fossil fuels, and electric vehicles. I suspect they are. But they will succeed in electing Trump and a Congress sworn to unwind everything Biden did and that climate activists want if their policies are about prohibitions and limitations of choice. Their policies and messaging need to be about creating real-life affordable alternatives. Americans will embrace greener energy when it is approximately as reliable, inexpensive, and convenient as are fossil fuels. And then it won't take government mandates. The solution to a greener America is largely technological. Democrats are the progressive party. They need to express their confidence in progress.
If Democrats try to take away choices, or force people to make ones that are inconvenient and more expensive, they will have the same result as GOP legislatures who try to end abortion choice. They will elect their opposition.
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20 comments:
Our worsening man-made climate crisis is already costing us trillions of dollars and countless lives, and only man can reverse it. Trying to do it without offending anybody is hopeless, but it needs to be done regardless if we care about our grandchildren.
Our generation is leaving our offspring a planet steeped in pollution, superstorms, fires, floods, rising sea levels and killer heat. We have the technological ability to reverse this, but not the political will.
The people who buy into the trans/radical rainbow mafia agenda are putting the rights of certain biological men over the safety, privacy and rights of females. It is dangerous and shameful.
Biological men don't belong in female bathrooms, dressing rooms, locker rooms, homeless shelters, prisons, sports, etc., for the obvious reasons human beings have known since forever.
Sex is a biological fact, not a feeling. Plastic surgery, synthetic hormones, clothes, make up and a new first name don't turn a male female. That is reductionist and insulting.
Our sex is hard wired into our DNA. Women have ovaries with eggs, fallopian tubes, uteruses and vaginas. Women and girls can get pregnant and have babies. Females are mothers and males (the sperm donors) are fathers.
It's not nice to (try to) fool Mother Nature. So-called trans people need to accept the sex they were born. Be a "girly man" or a "Tom boy" and leave it at that.
COVID was different simply because it was a novel, contagious and deadly virus. The government was trying to keep our so-called health care system from collapsing under the weight of very sick COVID patients.
Pregnancy is not a contagious disease. It is a temporary state (with lasting and life-changing consequences) that only directly affects females of child-bearing age.
Anon, surely you aren’t including a person who’s born with two sets of gonads. I hope
The overarching topic here is climate change and CO2 emissions. While technology is developed the short term strategy will be conservation. You can gain much of the same advantage of an electric vehicle by driving smarter, combining trips, public transportation and so on. Many households have two or more cars for convenience, but it's possible to function with less.
Climate change disruption is already costing billions and that cost is borne by every individual, and is a drag on the overall economy.
As far as pronouns are concerned, the request for usage is a test of your humanity. There's no grade...it's pass/fail.
Your reasoning throughout today's blog is terribly flawed, Peter.
Let's start with the one about trans people. "Male-to-female trans athletes and trans people in traditional gendered spaces are another instance of forced interaction. It isn't your own thing. It is now our thing. This compulsory interaction creates political pushback and Republicans are exploiting it." I'll ignore the matter of athletic competition, which is a vexed question, and focus on other interactions. I remember a student from Tennessee saying in one of my college classes (1959, it was), "It's my choice not to sit by Negro students." I find the parallel apt. What are trans people supposed to do when cis people don't want to be next to them in, say, an airport bathroom? We're talking about public spaces here, Peter, and who gets to say who can be in them. Public policy, not private choice, must govern this matter.
As far as pronouns, you simply lost your thread of thought. No one is forced to call a non-binary person "they" any more than white Southerners were forced to call Black people Mr. and Ms. It is considerate, but no one made it compulsory. Gradually, change for the better occurred.
As for vaccinations, you at least acknowledged that this is not a mere personal choice. Actually, no state government made COVID vaccinations mandatory. The armed services did so, but that was neither Democratic nor Republican. But states do make vaccinations mandatory for public school children, with every state allowing exemptions for medical and religious reasons and some states (like Oregon) allowing exemptions for philosophic reasons, which in my view is a mistake. Vaccinations are a matter of public health and thus, to some extent, must be a matter of public policy, not private choice. Surely you can understand that, Peter.
When you write about climate change, a subject on which your good sense fails you time and again, you are wrong in several ways. First, I see no policies being enacted or proposed that compel people to change their ways. There is a marked distinction between declaring that by such-and-such a year all cars sold in California must be electric (a proper policy choice) and telling people with gas-fueled cars that they must get rid of them and buy an electric car (who is doing that, Peter?). The same difference holds for mandating that all homes built in Ashland starting in such-and-such a year must have heat pumps and telling current homeowners that they must install heat pumps. We've repeatedly enacted such policies. For example, we required car manufacturers to install catalytic converters in all cars beginning in a certain year, but we didn't require owners of cars without them to retrofit their cars.
As for "shaming" people about their personal choices on matters such as food choices, I'm not sure whom you're faulting here. I don't know of any Democratic politicians filing bills to ban meat. I think you're just expressing your usual irritability toward "progressive Democrats." But leaving aside the loaded term "shaming," why shouldn't people advocate for what they think are good choices? That's how change happens. It happened regarding wearing furs. No law banned that choice, but it has become increasingly socially unacceptable. Good!.
Returning to your remarks on climate policy, I reiterate criticisms I've expressed before on this topic. First, you are wrong that promoting green policies is politically unpopular. Two, even if it were, the threat of global warming is so dire that if Democrats abandoned their position on addressing the threat through public policy, it really wouldn't matter much if they lost the White House.
Anyone who thinks the government isn’t mandating choices that no one wants should go try to buy an incandescent lightbulb. What we have now instead are inferior lighting choices that either flicker or have atrociously ugly light or burn out after a year or two, despite having promised much longer life to justify their insanely expensive prices.
The only thing keeping the Democrats from making combustion powered cars illegal right now is the political doom that they know would await them if they dared to do it.
I suspect there will be a new black market in incandescent lightbulbs.
They say that “democracy dies in the darkness”. Who knew that it was going to be the Democrats who took away the light.
There you go again, Malcolm, inserting facts into demented minds.
Not surprisingly, burning natural gas to boil water, to spin turbines to produce electricity uses more natural gas per therm than burning natural gas in your stove. Also, arguably, same argument against your heat pump, depending on your climate.
Michael T, you must have stocked up on I candescent bulbs, man. I love my “inferior lighting choices”, which are now about the same price as yours, don’t flicker, have lasted over 20 years now, and have many choices of light available.
Thanks so much, Ed :)
Oops! My lights are all LEDs , or will be when we run out of wholesale purchases of incandescents from eons ago.
“Democracy dies in the darkness.” Good quote, but it refers to the darkness of ignorance, such as that exhibited by those who refuse to accept election results, not to a lack of incandescent lightbulbs. It isn’t Democrats bringing that darkness about.
I bought a box if those "inferior" lighting products some 14 or 15 years ago at a home improvement show. I installed the last two about a year ago,but I blame the wiring in my RV home for the slightly less than advertised life of the bulbs. I also appreciate the lower heat output.
My privilege L ege, Malcolm. I've been through several smaller quakes, and have no desire to see or be in a big mother.
“It’s nobody’s business but one’s own”.
Where facets of identity are truly self-determined or elective, that makes sense. Race and sex, on the other hand, used to be protected as a civil rights matter precisely because they were deemed to be objective, “immutable” characteristics, and hence irrational—and toxic—as a basis for varied treatment. Science today, however, often seems to enshrine social and political cachet.
I live in an older 5th Wheel, and I still have a couple if incandescent ceiling lights to replace. I have the new LED fixtures, just have been avoiding getting up on the ladder to change them out.
Ed, IMHO, you shouldn’t get rid of your incandescent lights-at least not yet. May as well wait til next summer. Fact is, all their waste heat will merely help heat your house in winter months (and right now, this year. Brr.)
It's not "they" who say "democracy dies in the darkness."
That's on the masthead of the Washington Post, which you neglected to mention.
I hope you subscribe, too. It's a great source.
I think it refers to transparency and accountability of our leaders.
So glad you speak for the Democratic party.
Your posts are always devoid of facts.
Name one similar piece of legislation that has taken effect upon signing. Just one .
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