Millennials are going crazy for the Green New Deal. Some say it’s more popular than Instagram and more influential than the Top 40, but one thing’s for sure; it has everybody talking. It’s just that those conversations might not be what the Democratic Party was expecting.
Maybe telling people their truck has got to go, air travel should become a thing of the past, nearly all the buildings in the United States need to be remodeled, and cow flatulence is now punishable by the force of law got people’s attention? President Donald Trump’s line “it sounds like a high school term paper” was an accurate description of how many of us view the green tropes of the new progressives.
Championed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Sen. Ed Markley of Massachusetts, the idea of an earth free from climate change touched the hearts of those on the left and led the majority of Democratic presidential candidates to endorse the idea without reading the fine print…or the second sentence. Never mind the fact that the earth has always been and forever will be susceptible to changes in the climate and our attempts to eliminate this design from Washington, D.C. reflect a supreme arrogance.
The rewards for the supporters of the New Green Deal? Money for those unwilling to work, justice on behalf of the marginalized, no more gasoline and no more pesticides – all for the low cost of a couple trillion dollars. Lucky for those presidential hopefuls and political leaders alike who aspire for the deal, they’ll have a chance to vote on the measure thanks to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. No doubt a vote for the New Green Deal will demonstrate to the true believers how committed they are to a green planet and all the social justice attached thereto.
If you listen to much of the mainstream media you’ll often hear that the future of our country rests with the millennials cheering on the Green New Deal, people like Reps. Ocasio-Cortez or Ilhan Omar of Minnesota. “The presidency of Trump and the GOP’s electoral success in recent years is nothing more than a fluke,” Omar insists. According to the young progressives now pushing the New Green Deal, the future belongs to the millennial who is well versed in the merits of socialism, the philosophy of social justice, and environmental activism.
These notions wouldn’t be out of place on NPR or MSNBC. The radical left has been making similar arguments for decades. Now, such progressive policy positions are creeping into the mainstream of a party, which seeks to control the White House.
The Green New Deal is preposterous on its face. However, despite being doomed to fail, it does provide a window into how the highly educated, coastal, liberal elite in America think. Solutions which amount to the complete deconstruction of the American economy in an effort to cure the environment and combat social justice sounds radical to the average American, yet at elite universities, the coffee shops of urban cities, and the newsrooms of media’s upper echelon, the Green Deal is Avant Garde. It is woke. It is hip. In short, it is the new black.
Despite the mainstream media’s fascination and coronation of AOC and her tribe, polling shows millennials as a whole don’t want a Green New Deal, a 70% marginal tax rate, the recognition of infinite genders, or the abolition of national borders. Despite the Democratic Party moving towards progressivism and the Republican Party moving towards statist cronyism, the people of America still want a representative republic where ideas like individual liberty, free markets, limited government, and personal responsibility reign.
If coastal elitists want to understand how those of us in “fly over country” feel about a world without trucks, grilled meat, or homecoming queens, I suggest they attend a tailgate at an Ole Miss or Mississippi State game day this fall and ask around. It’s a pretty safe bet there will be more than a couple of enthusiastic answers.
The Environmental Protection Agency isn’t just coming to your local power plant, they’re coming to you live on Mississippi Public Broadcasting.
Well, not exactly the EPA. Rural Voices Radio will be using a $25,954 grant given by the agency to the Mississippi Writing/Thinking Institute to produce programming related to the Gulf of Mexico.
What is Rural Voices Radio you ask?
A short format program undertaken by the Mississippi Writing/Thinking Institute at Mississippi State University, Rural Voices Radio works with both children and adults so that they can experience what it’s like to work in radio with participants generally sharing essays or poems about their life in Mississippi. In a statement the EPA said that the grant will provide “hands-on opportunities to help change behaviors of Gulf residents as ‘keepers of the Coast’ with vested interest in its protection.”
After the agency spent 12 years trying to understand what to do about the billions of gallons of raw sewage spilling into the Pearl River, the public need only to rejoice as taxpayer money is funding programs like Rural Voices Radio.
The grant serves as an excellent example of how the agency has conducted its business in recent years.
The pretext to the existence of the EPA has largely centered on the notion that the EPA serves as the sole defender of our nation’s environmental wellbeing. Therefore, all actions undertaken by the agency, regulatory or otherwise, serve to benefit the public good. While the agency may sometimes place restrictions on heavy polluters, the average American most likely won’t have much contact with the EPA, except when they’re drinking their clean water and breathing in high-quality air.
Repeated by both proponents of the agencies goals and bureaucrats inhabiting it, the “sole defender” notion has not proved itself indicative of reality. Companies of all sizes have demonstrated not only the ability to self-regulate but a desire to protect our environment. In short, market forces and the profit motive appear to be great motivators. Meanwhile, the EPA has deviated from its original mandate becoming increasingly fond of regulating the behavior of individuals rather than organizations. Simultaneously, the agency has demonstrated ineffectiveness when it is made to address a true crisis.
While the grant provided to the Mississippi Writing/Thinking Institute demonstrates wasteful spending by the government, it also represents an investment in which the only desired outcome is the alteration of individual behavior.
These actions, the earliest iterations of which are generally undertaken with noble intentions, seek to gratify the neo-puritanical desires of those who regulate, seeking to expand upon what they are permitted to regulate. Such activity creates a self-gratifying cycle, which further expands the scope of their bureaucracy.
It is fundamentally wrong to have taxpayer dollars be used to influence the content of any broadcast, let alone one which seeks to change the behavior of those who it is meant to reach. For too long the EPA has operated disconnected from the interests of those for which it was established to serve, wasting taxpayer money on projects unrelated to its mandate while failing to fulfill its most basic obligations.
It would be in the interest of all taxpayers to see grants such as the one provided to the Mississippi Writing/Thinking Institute end immediately and a system introduced in which the mandate of the EPA is transferred to state agencies to enforce and interpret as they see fit.
Many people are still wondering what the future holds in Oxford.
It’s been three months since Jeff Vitter announced he would leave his role as Chancellor of the University of Mississippi, leaving behind a legacy which could best be described as tattered.
A tenure marred by declining enrollment, the prohibition of the playing Dixie at football games, the removal of the state flag from university property, and NCAA sanctions could leave little to the imagination as to why people seemed to always be asking, “What’s going on at Ole Miss?”
In Vitter’s departure, both conservative and progressive students who were displeased with his leadership rejoiced in the notion that the university could restore its stature. Yet to date nothing has changed.
Larry Sparks, who took over as Chancellor following Vitter’s resignation, has indicated that the extent of his interest in the role extends only to keeping the seat warm for whomever the Institutions for Higher Learning selects. But it still remains unclear as to who that may be.
The question Ole Miss grapples in the selection of its leadership is one which has consistently been asked throughout all actions undertaken by the university: What exactly is Ole Miss and what does it want to become?
If you were to ask students and alumni, the vast majority would say they treasure Ole Miss as a bastion of southern heritage and tradition, seeking its preservation for future generations to enjoy. However, if you were to ask university faculty that sentiment would rarely be echoed, if at all. It is this disconnect which has led Ole Miss to where it finds itself today.
A faculty comprised of out-of-state academics which insist it undertake self-flagellation in repentance for existing in a place which high minded costal liberals deem reprehensible cannot coexist with the interests of those the university is meant to serve. It is with this knowledge that Vitter built the legacy which would eventually destroy him, acting to intentionally subvert democracy under the pretext that any change presented with indignation is inherently good.
The nature of all organizations is that those who are held responsible for its decisions are held responsible for its culture. When the organization is one which has a mission to serve, the culture should exist in service of the values and interests of its constituents.
For Ole Miss to find a chancellor who can properly serve the community is one who can understand a clear definition of Ole Miss and remain committed to its values. The next leader doesn’t necessarily have to be from Mississippi, but he or she definitely can’t be against Mississippi and expect to lead successfully.
Ole Miss finds itself at a moment of definition where it may move beyond its fatigue and capitalize on its potential as a university to attract and retain world class talent to Mississippi.
The last two Chancellors at Ole Miss have left much to be desired before an early departure from their roles. All eyes will be on the next leader, because a large contingent of the Ole Miss faithful know the school is on very thin ice today.
The question, “What are you doing?” propelled Twitter from a small Silicon Valley startup to one of the most influential social media companies in the world – at least for the one in twelve Americans on Twitter.
Lauded over by the news media as a convenient prop to introduce what on its face would seem like an impartial cross section of America, all metrics indicate that Twitter has been struggling to maintain its foothold in an increasingly volatile digital climate.
So why do we care so much about Twitter? The blue checkmarks giving us our news do. While only roughly eight percent of Americans use Twitter, it wouldn’t be hyperbolic to suggest that 100 percent of those in the news media do.
If you were to look at recent data, Twitter’s market share has dwindled to a mere 24 percent of adults. Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat, meanwhile, are continuing to expand their presence beyond that of the microblogging service. Twitter explains their decline in market share as the byproduct of a changing landscape, however it is worth noting that Twitter has changed a considerable amount itself.
The platform was once hailed as a revolutionary device that would topple authoritarians and usher in an era of global free speech. Now, it has turned into a carefully curated echo chamber where the most minor of utterances can translate into the complete destruction of someone’s personal life, if not become national news.
In the fall of 2013, data showed Twitter was the most popular social media platform for teenagers in the United States. For those who used and later disregarded the service five years ago, not much thought could be attributed to their past tweets.
However, if they were to pursue a sport professionally or a life in outward facing public service then there is a very real possibility that something they posted erroneously could become national news.
Those entering into the social media market for the first time know this well and are less likely to expose themselves to outward risk as platforms less prone to gaffe, such as Snapchat and Instagram, gain foothold. In short Twitter is no longer the platform of the Arab Spring, it is the Twitter of Kyler Murray and lest we forget, Covington Catholic.
When an entire industry in part relies on a service which represents a waning eight percent of the population as a demonstration of widespread American sentiment and in turn treating every action as a premeditated statement, the message becomes disconnected from common thought and is perhaps why the media has such difficulty connecting with the values of middle America.
Twitter from all indications is not dead, in fact it is far from it. Yet we have so commonly accepted Twitter being presented as a cross section of our nation’s public understanding that we have become, in a word, hypnotized by statements which come to us in 280 characters or less. The prerogative of concise communication is that it may deliver maximum impact. On Twitter this manifests itself in wit overpowering fact and outrage before process.
The advice I would give to those spending too much time on Twitter is to take a moment and experience the world, it’s far kinder than it seems.