"We are all Keynesians now." That's what Nixon said in 1971. Republicans weren't always so, especially when FDR was president. (Remember him?) He could say that sort of thing, i.e., claim the mantle of traditions and positions that he had formerly excoriated. We all want peace in Vietnam, we all want an opening with China, we are all for price controls, etc. etc. Whadda guy!
Funny how that quotation echoes all over the place now. It expresses the resigned acceptance that an intellectual cause is lost, and the realization that what one was fighting might be right after all. We are all reductionists, we are all liberals, we are all neo-cons...everyone is rippin' off Mr. Richard N! And now, Kristof, in a recent column, states that "we are all environmentalists now." Well, maybe.
I don't think that those mining and lumber companies out west and in Indonesia are environmentalists at all. They are still in the 19th century explore-extract-destroy-move on mode. To the extent that they are more responsible, it's because they are forced to be. Kristof has a point, though, about that alarmist nature of much eco-publicity. Since I don't follow the press releases, I can't really evaluate whether it dominates or not, but it's always a lurking tendency, true. And I haven't read the article to which he refers, in which two environmentalists pray for the current movement to die so that something vital and productive may be born from it. To me, it sounds like factional in-fighting, but maybe I'm wrong.
This stuff makes me think of a blog I came across[neo-neocon] by some woman who claims that she was a liberal until she got "mugged by reality" on 9/11. Sounds to me like somebody who traded one set of pieties for another.
Funny how that quotation echoes all over the place now. It expresses the resigned acceptance that an intellectual cause is lost, and the realization that what one was fighting might be right after all. We are all reductionists, we are all liberals, we are all neo-cons...everyone is rippin' off Mr. Richard N! And now, Kristof, in a recent column, states that "we are all environmentalists now." Well, maybe.
I don't think that those mining and lumber companies out west and in Indonesia are environmentalists at all. They are still in the 19th century explore-extract-destroy-move on mode. To the extent that they are more responsible, it's because they are forced to be. Kristof has a point, though, about that alarmist nature of much eco-publicity. Since I don't follow the press releases, I can't really evaluate whether it dominates or not, but it's always a lurking tendency, true. And I haven't read the article to which he refers, in which two environmentalists pray for the current movement to die so that something vital and productive may be born from it. To me, it sounds like factional in-fighting, but maybe I'm wrong.
This stuff makes me think of a blog I came across[neo-neocon] by some woman who claims that she was a liberal until she got "mugged by reality" on 9/11. Sounds to me like somebody who traded one set of pieties for another.
1 comment:
I to found neo neo-con, another idolizer of The Norm (normblog)a liberal hawk quite in favor now.She seems to take a position by default, unable to explain her ideas she latches onto other, more easily explainable ones.Hardly unusual in this climate of virulent anti-intellectualism.These "End of Environmentalism" guys are slick self promoters,trying to associate a new narrative with themselves, probably so they can take it to the bank.And Surprise, its working.The ecological collapse might not be as immanent as some claim, but does that really make it any less serious? Capitalists are betting on it.(betting our childrens future that is)
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