A reader comments:Did anyone do a Google Image Search for Bill McKibben? Do yourself a favor and search him. Then imagine that guy trying to talk about environmental stewardship to a big group of la raza swilling Tecate while they load Mt. Baldy snow into the back of their V8 Rams.
Cross between David Brooks and that "It's the economy, stupid" guy.
ReplyDeleteThe two groups most responsible for bringing blacks and mestizos into the US are also the two most right-wing groups: southern slaveholders and large western land owners. Honorable mention goes to conservative hero Reagan's 86 amnesty.
ReplyDeleteThe end of the slave trade was a liberal Puritan effort, and the big immigration pause happened toward the end of the Progressive Era.
It is easy to bash unknown liberals in Vermont, but it would be more productive to ID primaries in both parties where there is a big difference in immigration position.
Pro amnesty Jeff Flake just won what could have been a close republican primary in AZ, for example.
Looks like a prototypical anglo environmentalist. Tons of them here in the NW. Their experience with Mexican culture is limited to eating cheap chalupas while in grad school.
ReplyDeletehttp://images5.fanpop.com/image/photos/25400000/NBC-nightmare-before-christmas-25437044-1280-1024.jpg
ReplyDeleteThe two groups most responsible for bringing blacks and mestizos into the US are also the two most right-wing groups: southern slaveholders and large western land owners.
ReplyDeleteI hate to argue semantics, but I don't think you can place a group from prior centuries onto the current 'left-right' spectrum.
And large Western landowners? You mean the ones receiving tons of government subsidies to employ illegals? Look, I won't argue that Big Farm isn't guilty, but if it weren't for guys like McKibben, who paint anyone who pushes back against immigration (or against Big Farm for fostering immigration) as a racist, then it would be much easier to actually combat what big landowners are doing. But how can we get to them when the McKibbens won't let us?
He looks frail , like the kind of guy who doesn't just need a Mexican to roof his house, but to carry his groceries to the car.
ReplyDeleteI don't think deep down guys like McKibben actually think that Mexicans care about the environment. Ultimately in McKibben's view, it doesn't matter what the masses, whether they're white or Mexican, think about the environment. The issue to them is upon which masses would it be easier to impose potentially dictatorial "green" measures. Even if the white masses are more environmentally concerned and willing to go along with green measures, there would be a limit to any sort of green tyranny they would tolerate, a limit that the white masses would avoid going beyond by resisting in a physical, potentially military capacity. And the white masses would be more difficult to suppress and defeat military than the Mexican masses. The Mexican masses might care less about the environment, but they would be easier to impose potentially dictatorial green measures, and easier to suppress and defeat in the event of violent uprising against green tyranny.
ReplyDeleteThis is the kind of the instinctual, primate troop political intuition subtext under this.
Skeletor?
ReplyDeleteFunny enough, he looks a little like Kevin MacDonald's SWPL younger brother.
ReplyDeleteHe's got the horse mouth/teeth thing going on.
ReplyDeleteTwo quick thoughts;
ReplyDeleteTo the second (anonymous) poster at 4:20 Pm. Just to bring you up to speed in case you hadn't heard, but the trans-Atlantic slave trade was ended in 1808, 205 years ago.
My other thought is looking at this guy and where he lives, i wonder just how much experience he has ever really had being around Mexicans? Probably just about nil.
You beautifully take on McKibben and win on substance. Then you undermine it by resorting to ad hominem mockery of his looks. This post allows McKibben to occupy the high ground. I would delete it.
ReplyDeleteThe two groups most responsible for bringing blacks and mestizos into the US are also the two most right-wing groups: southern slaveholders and large western land owners. Honorable mention goes to conservative hero Reagan's 86 amnesty.
ReplyDeleteWhy aren't the Mestizos themselves responsible for coming here? And why aren't the traveling salesmen (the "pushers") more responsible than their customers for the presence of African slaves in this country? One day the first Africans just showed up on the coast of Virginia in the possession of salesmen making a cold call.
Anon 5:13 is an idiot. California (and Victor Davis Hanson with his numerous essays to this effect) shows how readily Mexicans respond to intrusive 'green' diktats. Whites totes put up with it. They don't break, it is quite something to behold how far these ecotards are pushing them and they're still letting them steal good land and resources.
ReplyDeleteIs he related to that Hehman character?
ReplyDeleteAnon 4:20, you must be one of the Pacific Rim readers around here always cribbing selective talking points from Wikipedia. The Immigration Act of 1924 passed because of the united front of both organized labor and west coast ethno-nationalists (mostly in N. California) together with more than enough WASP Republicans from the main line, like its co-sponsor. None of its scarce opponents--ethnic operators from urban machines, basically--are even remotely "right-wing" in the modern sense, though the traditionally anti-immigration unions who had backed it then certainly can't be found on the Left today. Your attempt to associate "Big Business" with the slave trade is particularly idiotic since the only going concerns dependent on involuntary labor were certain agricultural mom-and-pop outfits--the Bens & Jerrys of their day--who had no problem shifting their costs onto the rest of industrialized America.
ReplyDeleteI think McKibben's piece actually sank like a stone... Not many comments at the main site (compared to any story involving guns or gays) despite being linked from the RealClearPolitics home page. The stereotypical L.A. Times reader in Westwood or Hancock Park is probably smart enough to recognize this novel outlandish argument isn't seaworthy, at least not in present form.
ReplyDeleteAnon 5:13 is an idiot. California (and Victor Davis Hanson with his numerous essays to this effect) shows how readily Mexicans respond to intrusive 'green' diktats. Whites totes put up with it. They don't break, it is quite something to behold how far these ecotards are pushing them and they're still letting them steal good land and resources.
ReplyDeleteNo, you're the idiot. There have been no "intrusive green diktats" at this point. The "green diktats" ordinary people have been subjected to are things like encouragements to buy CFL bulbs. And Victor Davis Hanson's numerous essays don't tell us anything except that Hispanics litter.
The elites in South America regularly push people off the land - not for conservation purposes, but to grab land and make more money. They'll send in death squads to do so. It'd be a lot harder for them to do so if it were armed white men on the land and not mestizos and indios.
A bit mean-spirited isn't it? Yes, we get it: ugly people tend to advocate for the more marginalized people because they know what it's like to be marginalized. What's wrong with that?
ReplyDeleteHe's got donkey teeth/mouth. The Mexicans would put him in a donkey show.
ReplyDeleteI read McKibbens "The End of Nature" about 20 years ago, and was duly mortified by all that was to come(I was young). I don't still have a copy of the book, but I think it would be revealing, now that it is approaching the 25th anniversary of publication, to go back and look at some of McKibbens predictions for the then near future, in other words, our now recent past.
ReplyDeleteAs I remember it, the book was full of apocalyptic hedging language, such as, "in the next few decades, sea levels could rise more than a foot, flooding coastal cities and leading to huge number of refugees fleeing the inundation."
Well yeah, that "could" happen, but that's not really a prediction. A prediction is "over the next three decades sea lavels will rise by at least one foot." Again, it's been a long time since I read the book, but I recollect a lot more of the former, and not much of the latter.
You will (I'm making a prediction) find McKibbens blog post from the Copenhagen Climate Summit amusing:
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2009/12/reason-and-faith-copenhagen
He talks a lot about how much weeping he's been doing.
I read McKibbens "The End of Nature" about 20 years ago, and was duly mortified by all that was to come (I was young). I don't still have a copy of the book, but I think it would be revealing, now that it is approaching the 25th anniversary of publication, to go back and look at some of McKibbens predictions for the then near future, in other words, our now recent past.
ReplyDeleteAs I remember it, the book was full of apocalyptic hedging language, such as, "in the next few decades, sea levels could rise more than a foot, flooding coastal cities and leading to huge number of refugees fleeing the inundation."
Well yeah, that "could" happen, but that's not really a prediction. A prediction is "over the next three decades sea levels will rise by at least one foot." Again, it's been a long time since I read the book, but I recollect a lot more of the former, and not much of the latter.
You will (I'm making a prediction) find McKibbens blog post from the Copenhagen Climate Summit amusing:
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2009/12/reason-and-faith-copenhagen
He talks a lot about how much weeping he's been doing lately.
ps: Steve, comment moderator makes it difficult to know when you've successfully posted your comment. Sorry if I've double posted.
This guy is what you call a 'gork'. A geek and a dork.
ReplyDeleteA bit mean-spirited isn't it? Yes, we get it: ugly people tend to advocate for the more marginalized people because they know what it's like to be marginalized. What's wrong with that?
ReplyDeleteYou miss the point, and it's not that McKibbon is ugly, but that he has the face of a SWPL (like that doe-eyed creature a few posts down) that you will never find in the company of these people he so conspicuously celebrates and pretends to know. And yes, it has something to do with masculinity and "pc-whipping", as Sailer calls it.
I'm always amused seeing guys like Barack Obama and Eric Holder posturing as representatives of urban blacks, with their big, ungainly caucasoid heads and features. Holder wouldn't last a minute among "[his] people"--and he didn't have to, thanks to his own privileged background.
As for Obama, he did his missionary bit, had his look (it's funny how in Dreams the characterizations of his troops during his community organizing days are bursting at the sub-textual seams with condescension for their laziness and childishness) and hasn't been back since.
Anon 11:30, whites don't have to be driven off the land. They turn it over when asked to in letter form.
ReplyDeleteIt's a lot easier and cheaper than armed guards.
Well, the immirgation issue moved me to the left. The reason I used to be against regulation and taxes of business but a lot of business people avoid both by hiring illegal immirgants. Also, lots of guestworkers leads to downward wages. Unfortunely a lot of folks on the left are multiculture and thing if you are against Hispanic or Asian immirgation you are racists.
ReplyDeleteWell, the immirgation issue moved me to the left. The reason I used to be against regulation and taxes of business but a lot of business people avoid both by hiring illegal immirgants. Also, lots of guestworkers leads to downward wages. Unfortunely a lot of folks on the left are multiculture and thing if you are against Hispanic or Asian immirgation you are racists.
ReplyDeleteI'm not entirely sure what you're saying here. Environmental stewardship is more correctly a 'conservative' impulse. That's why the Left is abandoning things like land management, population control, etc., in favor of ethereal concepts like 'climate change.' When it comes down to funding the welfare state, the Left will strip-mine, clear-cut and over-build with the best of them. California's land regulation is actually elite whites cordoning off their low-density enclaves. For the schmucks who can't afford acreage, too bad.