JackH’s Recent Comments

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  The Unified Vanguard Strikes Again!

  "Labor rights, women's rights, and racial equality are on the decline; there's pushback against GLBT and the disabled."  Yep - exactly like how Down's Syndrome babies are disappearing in affluent parts of the U.S..  Marketplace eugenics.  And don't think for a minute that the day after the first test for a "gay gene", there won't be the first abortion of a potentially gay child.  Which'll lead to more "disappearances".  

  "Today there are new bipartisan attempts to destroy social security and a lack of serious efforts to establish universal health care."  What on earth does universal health care have to do with global warming?  I support it, but come on!  Please, please, PLEASE get over the "unified revolutionary vanguard" fetish.  Again, you're going right into that old leftist trap, of ever-increasing purity and every-increasing jihads against other factions, until you're like the Trotskyites.   On A review of Joe Romm's new book posted 2 years, 9 months ago 34 Responses

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  It all sounds really nice

  But am I the only one who notices a depressing similarity in 98% of these sorts of books?  Detailed, rigorous explanations of just what is going wrong followed by a tacked-on solutions chapter that utterly fails to measure up to everything that went before?  

  It feels a lot like a forced optimism, the kind of thing the makers of the British zombie movie "28 Days Later" felt they had to cater to when writing a happy ending specifically for the American market.  Of course, others can be susceptible to this, too - George Monbiot's "Heat", again, was interesting, but his proposals showed the political and social acumen of a 5-year-old (a World Parliament?  Yeah, we'll get right on that).  The mere act of noticing this forced optimism will get you screamed at by devotees of the "Great Turning" (because, of course, once "Empire" collapses, the world will inevitably and immediately rush towards "Earth Community" for the first time in human history).  You'll be denounced as a Kunstlerian doomsayer.  

  But maybe there's some room between wishing for the End and "everything's gonna be okay - wait, it'll all be better, even!".  Maybe we need to look at things with clearer eyes.  

  Just some thoughts...On A review of Joe Romm's new book posted 2 years, 9 months ago 34 Responses

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  The perfect storm of self-satisfaction

  I think y'all are the ones who need to lighten up a little.  You're acting like I said something obscene about Rosa Parks or Gandhi.  It wasn't a March on Washington - it was a party.  Calm down.  Don't be so defensive.  

  The original post went on at length about how wonderful it was that this party "defied stereotypes".  I merely pointed out that, in reality, it seemed to actually confirm some far more widely held stereotypes (i.e., lily-white, San Francisco, gentrified urban, hipster-leaning, affluent, etc).  It's real nice and all to want environmentalism to be "fabulous", but fashions change.  What's fabulous today is laughable tomorrow.  Do you really want to go the route of turning environmentalism into another class marker, a status symbol?  I'd say that is precisely the stereotype most widely held about environmentalists today, not some 60s-era picture of sandals and patchouli flogged to death by aging conservative radio talk show hosts.

  That's all I'm gonna say about this - it's great you had a nice party.  But when people go on about how it defied stereotypes, as if somehow it's a great moral and political event, don't act shocked if some people don't quite buy it.  On It kicked ass posted 2 years, 12 months ago 15 Responses

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  I'm not quite sure this is such a great thing...

  There's another stereotype of environmentalists out there - that of young, urban, white yuppies/hipsters.  And that stereotype seems to be on full display here.  

  Let's be honest - outside of America's most famous drug addict, Rush Limbaugh, not many people take seriously the image of environmentalists as tree-hugging, patchouli-drenched hippies (although that's an accurate stereotype of your average jam-band follower).  There's another stereotype of environmentalists out there - that of urban white yuppies/hipsters who are in love with their own righteousness (except they love Stephen Colbert and David Cross, so that means they can't be accused of humorlessness).  And that stereotype seems to be on full display here.  Give the hot people about 10 years, substantial male-pattern baldness, and a few pot bellies from all that vegan food, and you're looking at South Park's "Smug Alert" episode and the Seattle Weekly's "Ask An Uptight Seattleite".

  Environmentalism has to be a big tent, and what I worry about is that "lifestyle environmentalism" just transforms it into another status marker or, even worse, a faddish rebelliousness that will get tossed overboard for the next hip thing, a la Thomas Frank's "The Conquest of Cool" and the recent book "A Nation of Rebels".  The future of environmentalism isn't with the beautiful people ghettoizing themselves inside small urban enclaves.  Let me rephrase that - a successful environmentalism isn't going to be based on the beautiful people ghettoizing themselves in a few urban enclaves.  On It kicked ass posted 2 years, 12 months ago 15 Responses

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  Hubris

  "I do not need to respect everyone's views- this is the fallacy of post-modernism writ large."

  That's BS.  There's a massive, massive difference between respect and agreement.  Respecting arguments you disagree with prevents you from falling into intellectual hubris, willful ignorance, and self-satisfaction - qualities which, and there's no way to put it delicately, you've shown in spades in your arguments against religion.  You dismiss the opinions of quite a large number of historians, including atheist and agnostic ones, about the origins of the Enlightenment because... what?  You just don't like the sound of it?  Your arguments have an extremely retro feel to them, like reading some late 19th century dusty old tract.  A few provocative insults at God, some red herrings, profound misunderstandings of religion, a little bit of looking down your nose, and there you go.  You can't think people haven't heard this before, can you?   Honestly, it's been done many, many, many, many times before, and with far more style and wit.  I think a bit of study of what you oppose would do you good - it would give your arguments a lot more heft.  

  I absolutely respect your skills as an economist.  And, believe it or not, I respect your arguments, because without respecting them, I'll fall victim to the fallacy you've fallen into.  

  You don't have to respect me or my opinions.  But it would do you good to learn how to respect differing opinions, so as not to underestimate your opponents - to study those arguments in order to refute them.  Else you'll keep talking a lot about things you know very little about.  On Energy is better spent elsewhere posted 3 years ago 93 Responses