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.