Jan 31 2010

Stuffing it

Category: Uncategorizedharmonicminer @ 9:34 am

Here is a piece of leftist propaganda.  It’s a bit long, about 20 minutes… so watch the beginning, the middle, and the end, and you’ll get the idea…  insofar as there is one.

Hmmm…according to the end credits,  GAIA had something to do with producing this golden turkey, hmmm?

No surprise there…. it is, after all, the eco-pagan earth worshipers who are obsessed with the notion that earth is some kind of giant organism, a living thing in its own right.

The film is filled with economic and scientific ignorance. For one thing, there are NO “circular, non-linear, closed-loop” systems on earth, and never have been. If there were, climates would never have changed, new species would never have arisen, nor died out, and all would be in some kind of stasis forever. It is simply false that earth had some great stability of climate and species until humans came along, as even the most ignorant surely know.

One of my favorite lines is the one about people leaving the natural areas that had “sustained them” for generations, and moving to the cities. Well, duh. I suppose that might be a problem, if the definition of “being sustained for generations” didn’t basically mean most people being hungry most of the time, and most people dying young. If you’d like to be sustained that way, go for it.   Personally, I’d rather start out the day with a nice diet coke…  which requires an industrial culture and modern distribution system.  But I promise to recycle the can…  mostly, anyway.

What gives western leftists the chutzpa to think they know how “indigenous peoples” should live their lives?  Maybe “indigenous peoples” would like some diet coke, too.

The bit about having to replace computers every couple of years because “the chip is a different shape than the old one” is just so breathtakingly ignorant about the nature of computers, motherboards, support chip sets, operating system requirements, RAM, and the like, that I don’t know whether to laugh or horse-laugh.  Most of the rest of the economic assertions in this drivel are of similar quality, and betray a huge lack of understanding about the laws of economics, not to mention physics, that are at work in our culture…  and everyone else’s, too.

I’m especially entertained that the narrator thinks we should keep using the older, bigger, power hungry computer monitors, instead of the newer, flatter, power-efficient, low-magnetic-emission monitors.  These environmentalists should really get together and decide on some priorities.  Does she think I should have kept my 10 mpg 1967 Chevy monster-car so I wouldn’t have to buy a new one?  Sheesh.  Do we want sustainability or energy efficiency?  She should get in a time machine and visit New York City in 1850, and learn all about “sustainability” when horses ruled the roads, including the sustained smell of horse puckey.

I’ve read that my Prius puts more total gunk in the environment, from manufacture to disposal, than a Hummer.  But I still feel VERY virtuous driving it around, with everyone knowing how environmentally conscious I am.

The narrator is correct about the dangers of toxins.  But if I took her seriously, I’d worry about putting my head on a pillow at night, for fear it will give me cancer, judging from all the chemicals she claims are in my pillow stuffing.  I wonder what her opinion is of the West’s refusal to allow the use of DDT on malarial mosquitoes in the third world, leading to 50 million unnecessary deaths from malaria in the decades since.  Of course, since she thinks there are WAY too many of us, I suppose she isn’t that bothered by it.

The narrator says that “nursing is a sacred act” or words to that effect, as she frets about “toxins in mother’s milk.”  One wonders if she thinks carrying an unborn child is ALSO a sacred act.  One wonders if she votes for “pro-choice” (really, pro-abortion) politicians, since they’re more likely to be leftists like her.   Typically, those with her persuasion vote left.  Maybe she thinks abortion is a “sacred act,” too.

This film was recently shown in a university course on “diversity.”

No surprise there, though it has nothing whatsoever to do with the putative content of the course, which is supposed to be about racism and cultural bigotry and the like, according to its catalog description.  But, as I’ve observed before, in the minds of diversity activists, “diversity” is inseparable from the entire leftist agenda, and any discussion of “diversity” is an open door for discussion about global warming, environmentalism, the evils of American foreign policy, the sins of organized Christian religion (especially evangelicals and catholics), and the depredations of capitalism. And, of course, sustainability is the latest craze, as the left is gradually forced to acknowledge that anthropogenic global warming is a fraud, and so the left (which is really about centralizing power in government) needs a new environmental agenda to promote.  So a college course in “diversity” is indeed a likely place for a piece of leftist propaganda on “sustainability.”

It would be different, of course, if the film was shown in class, and then “de-constructed” for its racist content, of which there is a considerable amount, some in subtle references that imply that third worlders shouldn’t be allowed to do what they see as being in their own economic self-interest.   It would be different if the film was criticized as promoting greater poverty in the third world (which the policies it promotes would guarantee), and was shown as an example of how leftist bias harms the poor in the end, by undermining their ability to improve their economic situations due to implementing the misplaced ideologies of western leftists.

But that isn’t how it’s used.  This film was presented in a “Diversity” class, and apparently swallowed whole by many students, though it’s viewpoint isn’t “diverse” in the slightest…  it’s merely Left.

What does it have to do with “diversity”?  Nothing at all.

Except that the agenda of the left is, like the Republic, indivisible.

3 Responses to “Stuffing it”

  1. innermore says:

    A little birdy told me that lIfe does not consist in the abundance or lack of, sustainability of, responsible consumption of, paranoid guilt about, stupid movies about, racist distribution or re-distribution of possessions.

    I’ve also heard that we are all content in our own poverty until someone says we’re poor.

    The conclusion I arrive at after viewing this is that it seems some of our neighbors are obsessively afraid of death.

    Curious. All the solution scenarios suggested by these folks seem eerily Judaistic. We strayed (moved to cities). God punished (And the earth warmed). Messiah comes (windmill farms). We’re saved (one-world government). C’mon! tell us we’re not a Christian nation! This evangelistic method certainly never worked on them. What makes them think it’ll work on us?

  2. economist says:

    It seems that in this post you made many personal attacks and assumptions about the creators of this film, but had no response to the statistics that they presented.

  3. harmonicminer says:

    It’s possible to tell so many lies in a one sentence that it takes ten sentences to refute them. In fact, many straight-ahead lies take ten sentences or so to refute the one lie. That’s why, according to Mark Twain, “A lie goes half-way around the world before truth gets its boots on.”

    I certainly don’t have time to research every “fact” listed in a 20 minute video. But there are some things I do know about, and I listed a few of them in my post… and they indeed show the creator of the video to be either a nitwit, or someone willing to beguile the ignorant. The bit about “computer chips being different shapes” presented as some kind of nefarious plot on the part of computer makers to sell more computers (and causing the trashing of old ones) is just risible.

    It’s simple: when someone lies to me, I don’t bother checking the rest of their “facts.” In any case, the radical leftism of the creators of the video just sticks out in bumps… which is enough combined with the obvious lies and misrepresentations to blunt any interest I have in a detailed fact check.

    I’d be interested to know what you would consider an “assumption” about the creators of the film… since I simply responded to the points and perspectives they showed.

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