Feature of the Week
We’ve been examining the Dittohead attitude towards the environment, so let’s dramatize the topic, having some fun at the same time! Win-Win
12.18.04 @ 05:53 PM EDT [link]

Dittoheads and Birdbrains
I work only a couple of blocks from where global environmental issues are being fought in a microcosm. I’m of course talking about what’s happening over by Central Park, the former and hopefully future home of the red tail hawks Pale Male and Lola. I get the impression from talking with folks outside of NYC that it’s a highly visible and compelling issue even outside the NYC SMSA. I can tell you that those who live within sight of the Empire State Building are absolutely obsessed. Nature has a special meaning to New Yorkers. It represents an important reminder of forces that are and that should be beyond the reach of humanity. Living and working in a place where the hand of man dominates everything you see, one might imagine that nature would be forgotten. Quite the opposite is true. Maybe it comes down to that old maxim “familiarity breeds contempt,” that those with ready access to wildness have no special regard for it. In any case, these very visible hawks are perhaps the most beloved in all of human history, simply because they have come to be a symbol of so much to so many. Not that there is anything wrong with that. People need a focus for their passions, and the unfolding tale of Pale Male and Lola is as good as any other. Which brings us to the other players in this drama. If the hawks represent all of Nature, indeed the very Earth itself, what does the birdbrain coop board of 927 Fifth Ave. represent? They’re of course the quintessence of the Dittohead attitude towards the environment. Their enthusiasm for a particular manifestation of Nature is directly dependent on the answers to the following questions: 1) Is there any money to be made? 2) Is there any down side of any kind for tolerating Nature as it exists? Both answers trigger action, either to exploit value (by sucking it out as fast as possible) or by putting “nature on a leash” (a delicious phrase from John Sayles’ Sunshine State). The only reason to ever just leave Nature alone is…well, just laziness, I guess. From their perspective it’s a perfectly logical way of looking at the world. The rest of us see the Earth as an extremely complicated mechanism that we don’t understand very well and on which we and posterity are totally dependent. At the same time, we know that we have unleashed the power to impact the Earth to a degree unimaginable only a generation ago, and this power has created so much wealth that tempering it may well be beyond human capability. In other words, there is a possibility that environmental catastrophe is already in the cards. Let’s all hope that’s not the case. In the event we can muster the will to mitigate this undeniable risk enough so that future generations have a shot at our level of wealth, we have a moral obligation to try. I’m reminded of Trevanian: “Who will do the hard things? Those that can.”
12.17.04 @ 10:32 PM EDT [link]

Rush on an Environmental Tear
For anyone that�s been following Rush lately, my sympathies. No, actually I meant that you must know he�s been on an anti-environment tear. (And you don�t really need to endure the pain of following Rush. Why not instead let SherWright.com do the heavy lifting for you?). Just look at some of the entries that have popped up on our �Rush Insight to Ponder� feature. I mean, the man has issues! If you don�t believe me, here are some recent quotes from the show: �More wacko environmental news today. It's just coming out of the woodwork� � �the thing that they don't factor in this story is the literally millions of birds that will get chopped up in windmills that liberals are going to build for power because they don't like electricity.� � �This is incredible! It is unbelievable! Do you notice how rooted this whole global warming razzmatazz is?� � �If there's global warming going on, how in the world here in south Florida -- it's not even Christmas yet which is when these first cold waves usually hit -- can they have opened shelters?� We already heard the one about what would happen if birds had shotguns, which presents a very unique perspective concerning the relationship between man and nature. And here are the clinchers: �you may wonder why do I spend so much time on this global warming stuff. Folks, you got to understand something. I don't go seek this stuff out. This is no different than if it were a story on Ted Kennedy or John Kerry or anything else during the campaign. I get up every day and I do show prep and I find things that are ultimately an attack on institutions and traditions I believe in, like America and like our Constitution, and I feel the need to defend it, and make no mistake what global warming is. Make no mistake what radical militant environmentalism is. It's the new home of communism�� and �It's my belief in God, and my profound awe, and I think this is really where you can separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to environmentalist wackos -- and Communists too.� Boiling all of this down, he seems to be saying 1) exploitation of natural resources at the fastest possible rate is a moral imperative 2) there�s absolutely no chance that the global industrial complex is having any impact whatsoever on the biosphere since God wouldn�t permit that 3) anyone who believes otherwise is an atheist communist. I believe I just offered a dispassionate restatement of Rush�s statements. Next time let�s analyze them for validity and possible psychological sources.
12.17.04 @ 10:26 PM EDT [link]

What You Get from Talking to a Dittohead about the Environment
Here’s the short answer: personal satisfaction at best. That’s why we counseled in the earlier blog to go immediately for the kill. By taking your best shots upfront, you can then agree to disagree with your Dittohead opponent and move on to another topic. The sad fact is that it is hopeless to talk to a Dittohead about the Environment and Global Warming. Just look at tax policy. They’re cutting taxes and ending up with huge deficits, yet they still deny the connection. (A case in point is Rush on deficits: “the only way to get rid of a deficit is to cut taxes and grow out of it. Every time we've tried that it's happened.”) Every American should have figured out from day-to-day experience that when you spend more than you take in you go into debt. How then are Dittoheads going to admit to environmental degradation and global warming when they don’t even admit that their tax cuts have caused trillions in debt? They’re just not going to get it. Another case in point – Rush on the environment: “if a bird could grab a shotgun and fire back at us, it would, folks. Never forget that.” That, folks, is the very picture of denial. The reason they’re not going to get what you have to say is that their positions are fundamentally based on greed, and greed is about as powerful a motivator as you get. They’re on very good terms with greed, and heartily agree with Gordon Gekko that “greed is good, greed works.” There are always jobs to be gained from raping the land and they are unwilling to constrain any source of wealth. Put another way, an environmental point of view requires that immediate, easy economic gain be tempered by the moral issue of respect for future generations, and we all know how Dittoheads feel about moral issues! The only use they have for “morality” is as an excuse for giving right wing constituencies the power to criminalize non-adherence to their sect’s religious beliefs. That has as much to do with morality as the invasion of Iraq had to do with the War on Terrorism. So view your discussion with Dittohead about the environment as an opportunity to get something off your chest, slightly more effective than talking to a mirror, but don’t spend too much time on it or people will start looking at you funny!
12.16.04 @ 08:11 PM EDT [link]

Bush Has Been Reading Ann’s Latest!
I’d planned to publish on “what you get when you talk to a Dittohead about the environment” but I knew that would have to wait when I looked at CNN last night and saw Bush awarding Medals of Freedom to George Tenet, Tommy Franks, and Paul Bremer (left to right in that order) There’s a photo here Like a bolt from the blue it hit me that Bush has gone out of his way to show to all that would see that he has embraced the Tao of Ann as formulated in her latest opus, “How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must).” Here’s her creed, as has been spotlighted so many times here that I’ve just been doing a copy and paste for each new use: “Don't be defensive, always outrage the enemy, and never apologize to, compliment, or show graciousness.” Awarding those medals was the perfect demonstration of conformance to Ann’s creed! It very clearly communicates the Administration’s attitude towards the major topics for which it has been criticized. Bush’s gesture in awarding these medals exactly matches the famous gesture made by Nelson Rockefeller to his hecklers. link. Bush chose award of the Nation’s highest civilian medal rather than Rockefeller’s colorful gesture because it better matches Ann’s tao by being particularly outrageous and most certainly not defensive or apologetic. Here’s my parsing of the message Bush is sending. Order is important, for two reasons. The first reason is that the left to right sequence exactly corresponds to the sequence and context of events for which Bush has been criticized. First was Tenet, the poster boy for poor intelligence in the runup to 9/11 and the Iraq invasion - particularly the missing WMD. Franks is a stand-in for the decision to invade, and Bremer represents the occupation – Abu Ghraib and the insurgency that was nurtured by Bremer’s dissolution of the Iraqi Army. (If you didn’t believe me when I was saying it, note that even the interim Iraqi Prime Minister has been saying it!). The second significance of the order is that Franks is much taller than the other two, so putting him in the middle is the perfect in-the-large recreation of Rockefeller’s gesture!
12.15.04 @ 08:49 PM EDT [link]

Bush Has Been Reading Ann’s Latest!
I’d planned to publish on “what you get when you talk to a Dittohead about the environment” but I knew that would have to wait when I looked at CNN last night and saw Bush awarding Medals of Freedom to George Tenet, Tommy Franks, and Paul Bremer (left to right in that order) There’s a photo here Like a bolt from the blue it hit me that Bush has gone out of his way to show to all that would see that he has embraced the Tao of Ann as formulated in her latest opus, “How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must).” Here’s her creed, as has been spotlighted so many times here that I’ve just been doing a copy and paste for each new use: “Don't be defensive, always outrage the enemy, and never apologize to, compliment, or show graciousness.” Awarding those medals was the perfect demonstration of conformance to Ann’s creed! It very clearly communicates the Administration’s attitude towards the major topics for which it has been criticized. Bush’s gesture in awarding these medals exactly matches the famous gesture made by Nelson Rockefeller to his hecklers. link. Bush chose award of the Nation’s highest civilian medal rather than Rockefeller’s colorful gesture because it better matches Ann’s tao by being particularly outrageous and most certainly not defensive or apologetic. Here’s my parsing of the message Bush is sending. Order is important, for two reasons. The first reason is that the left to right sequence exactly corresponds to the sequence and context of events for which Bush has been criticized. First was Tenet, the poster boy for poor intelligence in the runup to 9/11 and the Iraq invasion - particularly the missing WMD. Franks is a stand-in for the decision to invade, and Bremer represents the occupation – Abu Ghraib and the insurgency that was nurtured by Bremer’s dissolution of the Iraqi Army. (If you didn’t believe me when I was saying it, note that even the interim Iraqi Prime Minister has been saying it!). The second significance of the order is that Franks is much taller than the other two, so putting him in the middle is the perfect in-the-large recreation of Rockefeller’s gesture!
12.15.04 @ 08:47 PM EDT [link]

How to Talk to a Dittohead about Global Warming and the Environment
Environmental policy conversational strategy demands massive preemptive action. This is a topic area for which you must borrow from the right wing playbook. Recall that great masterpiece to the competitive spirit, The Karate Kid, and particularly the creed of the Cobra Kai, “strike first strike hard no mercy sir!” Besides being the creed of the evil opposing dojo in the movie, it was also the motto of Bush Cheney 2004, and turnaround is always fair play. So how do you “sweep the leg,” to recall the scene where the Cobra Kai sensei orders an attack against Daniel’s injured knee? Here are some thoughts: “You think gas prices are bad now. What about when they are $1 million a barrel, after most of it has been sucked up. Or do you deny that someday it will all be gone? Don’t we have a moral obligation to use the wealth that oil provides to develop viable alternatives for that day?” Or try facts: “According to the September 2004 issue of National Geographic, glaciers are visibly melting, sea ice is thinning, permafrost is thawing, lakes are shrinking, ice shelves are collapsing, droughts are lingering, mountain springs are running dry, plants are flowering sooner, migration times are changing, coral reefs are bleaching, coastlines are eroding.” Or how about the morality angle: “Global warming is like doing medical experiments on children. Our massive changing of the environment is like a big experiment with unknown results. Shouldn’t the burden of proof that no harm is being done be on the ones producing the change?” Tomorrow let’s talk about what the likely Dittohead reply will be, and what to do about it.
12.14.04 @ 03:19 PM EDT [link]

How to Talk to a Dittohead about Tax Cuts
The trick to talking to a Dittohead about taxes is dodge dodging. Tax policy is where Dittoheads have perfected an impressive number of dodges to get around the basic problem with Dittohead tax policy, that it’s really dumb. I mean, even four year old kids know that if they won’t be getting that big lollipop if it costs a quarter but their allowance is only a dime. Dittoheads, on the other hand, believe they have a divine right to anything they want - interstates, military, disaster relief, homeland security, and a host of other goodies – even as taxes are being ratcheted down. To deal with this self-serving credo, Dittoheads have turned justifying tax cuts into a martial art. Why do you think they talk about “rounds” of cuts? They have perfected a series of aggressive moves – called dodges - designed to disable their opponent with a single blow. If you are to oppose them, you must master the counter to each dodge, and practice it until it is totally instinctive! Let’s do some simple sparring. You and your opponent are facing each other across the dojo, your sister-in-law’s kitchen. You both bow, and then he leads his attack with the WFA dodge: “Cleaning up government waste, fraud, and abuse will save more than enough to pay for the last round of tax cuts!” Without thinking you reply with “How convenient, the only government spending with no constituency! So why after 200 years is it still there? Maybe getting rid of it would cost more than it’s costing in the first place!” He comes back with the Every Dime Dodge (EDD). “Tax cuts worked! If liberals would cut out their sacred cow programs, there’d be no deficits.” Counter with “So you think that taxes only need to cover spending you personally agree with? What if everyone felt that way?” If he should at any point break through your defenses with an unexpected move, use the last-resort counter: “Sher Wright said you’d use that dodge!"
12.13.04 @ 08:00 PM EDT [link]

The Con-munist Manifesto
Let’s talk about the “nuts and bolts” of Con-munism, the social-political-economic system now embraced by the GOP. First, the nuts are Dittoheads. (Sorry, sorry, couldn’t resist). Anyway, Con-munism is best understood as reactionary opposition to the basic tenets of liberal democracy. No doubts about that, right? Rush and Co. certainly wouldn’t disagree that they hate liberalism. What are the tenets of liberal democracy that they hate so much? Well, as practiced throughout the Western World, liberal democracy holds that the default approach to social and economic issues is freedom. When applied to social issues, freedom means absence of censorship and an open marketplace for ideas. Religious beliefs are protected, with the caveat that no one religion’s beliefs can impede freedom by being enforced in law. Applying freedom to the economic sphere produces capitalism, the system where individuals create wealth for society and for themselves by fulfilling an economic need. The only constraint that liberal democracy imposes on freedom is sustainability. People and companies must exercise their freedoms in a responsible way, a way that does not harm other people, including people from future generations. Closely aligned with the concepts of freedom and sustainability is the concept of a social safety net that enables vulnerable individuals like children to achieve their full potential despite disadvantages of birth and random chance. Liberalism’s simple formula of responsibly exercised freedom has produced unprecedented human progress, wealth, and happiness. Enter Con-munism, which is to the success of liberal democracy as a parasite is to a body. Con-munism is founded on the principle that there is short-term wealth to be gained by eliminating sustainability as a constraint to wealth creation, and short term power to be gained by pandering to constituencies that desire to limit freedom. (“Constituencies,” special interests seeking to overrule the freedom of others to enforce their personal beliefs, are the third “con” of Con-munism, along with “Conservative” and “Confidence Scheme.”) Small wonder that Con-munists rail so much against liberalism, considering that their entire movement is defined as a negation of its fundamental principles. What’s really happening, unfortunately, is that the axe is sweeping down on the neck of the goose that has laid golden eggs for Western society for the last 200 years!
12.12.04 @ 06:49 PM EDT [link]