by Blue Stockings |
:: Clears throat::
Freedom shall not ring tonight
Nor the Constitution stand
They're on the phone with the FBI
The press have all been banned
The watchdog's teeth have fallen out
And the courts have come to heel
The Decider's in the House tonight
While Congress sleeps at the wheel
What do we care for the Bill of Rights?
Just 'a goddam piece of paper'
Liberty doesn't need the law
If she's got the flag to drape her
[commentary after the jump]
So Rush Limbaugh is hard at work to convince the people who believe the things he tells them that the poor stranded polar bears shown in The Daily Mail aren't stranded; they're "just playing."
Man oh man, it seems like a bad idea to carry the can for that side of the debate. If the other guys, Al Gore's team, are wrong, we Americans would have to cut back on what everyone knows is overconsumption of fossil fluids sooner rather than later (the "later" being the point at which they're depleted); use our ingenuity and engineering and scientific know-how to develop alternative energy sources, and live in a way that will protect the air, water, and other species. At the sacrifice of a few things we shouldn't have taken for granted anyway, we'd all end up winners.
But if Rush's team is wrong----as most credible scientists agree----then what? The consequences are unthinkable. We're talking about global cataclysm and the end of life as we know it on this planet.
Doesn't it occur to him that people might remember----and in the near future if the science is correct---that he and other individuals did all they could do to push the whole "climate change as nature at play" viewpoint? And that they thereby were instrumental in the failure of the U.S. government to take the steps that are necessary RIGHT NOW to put the brakes on the process? The very people he is talking out of any sense of urgency or imminent danger are the very people who are most likely to be furious when it turns out he's misled them.
I guess I don't understand what he gets out of it. Maybe he believes it. People at the far end of the political spectrum---on either side---feel they have to be SO DAMN CONSISTENT. It's like, once an issue gets identified as "Democrat" or "Republican", people on either end switch their brains off and just jump right on. There's not even any analysis. "This is the view of the (Republican) White House and I'm a Republican who voted them in so I HAVE TO SUPPORT IT."
Not that progressives are any better, mind you. Well, in that respect. However. Both sides are guilty of kneejerkiness in the first degree. Why don't people understand? JUST BECAUSE YOU VOTED FOR THEM DOESN'T MEAN YOU HAVE TO DRINK THE KOOL-AID.
They're accountable to you; you're not accountable to them. If they let you down after you've supported them, you get to be let down; you get to hold them accountable. When did we lose sight of this? And again, people on both ends of the political spectrum are equally guilty.
With respect to global warming, I can't imagine a motive----other than the utter sheer bloody-mindedness of rejecting a view held by scientists around the world because you don't like Al Gore---for going on trying to prove that polar bears aren't drowning, but waving.
So for Rush Limbaugh, this parody of one of the best-known works of the great Twentieth Century English poet, Stevie Smith, on behalf of all the polar bears AND melting glaciers who would like you to know they are not playing around:
Nobody heard the drowned polar bears,
But their ghosts kept on moaning:
It was much further out than we thought
And not solid but melting.Poor bears, they always loved swimming
And now they're dead
It must have been too far for them their hearts gave way
we said.Oh yes yes yes, it's too far these days
(Still the drowned bears are moaning)
They've grown much too far apart
And we were not playing, but drowning.[sorry, Stevie; sorry, Stevie; sorry sorry sorry]
