Gov. Jan Brewer is pulling Arizona out of the coalition of Western states and Canadian provinces trying to make some regional progress in limiting greenhouse gases. J.D. Hayworth is taking on John McCain in the Republican Senate primary (make your own gasbag jokes). For awhile, I worried Arizona might be denied what I call "The Full Kook," where the Kookocracy implements its most cherished and dangerous proposals, rather than being the crazy aunt in the attic down at the Capitol whose ravings are muted by the adult in the governor's chair. Now I'm more hopeful. Why? Because the Full Kook is the only way I can see that Arizona might save itself. For decades, the creeping growth of the Kookocracy has slowly been damaging every part of the state's social and economic health. But still, the Kooks kept control of the Legislature because most eligible voters stay home. Only the Full Kook might shake most Arizonans out of their torpor — and we'll see if there's what Saint Janet called the "sensible center" majority — or if the Big Sort has turned Arizona into the nation's largest insane asylum.
Brewer is falling into line with the successful reactionary effort to halt any measures to address climate change — or even to accept its scientific legitimacy. Even the New York Times has strangely bought into this. The deniers of established science are "skeptics." What next in the flagship of the liberal media: "Evolution skeptics"? Thus the big snowstorm in the East is a sign that "global warming is a hoax," when in fact it is confirmation of the destabilizing weather patterns we were told to expect from climate change. In Seattle, we just had our warmest January on record. (Stephen Colbert has a great retort for the deniers, in media most Americans can understand). No matter. The strategy is to keep arguing and prevent action. In D.C., any meaningful action to limit emissions is dead, another casualty of the Hoover/Carter/Obama malaise. What is barely reported is how much money Exxon/Mobil and other corporate giants are pouring into not only lobbying against action, but to prop up the elaborate propaganda machine of the "skeptics." Nor is there ongoing, serious discussion of the costs of inaction, whether because of what's coming from climate change or because we're abrogating opportunities to create new industries to help slow or reverse its effects.
So Arizona needn't worry. America will remain paralyzed. Reality will not, and the costs, destabilization and even national security perils from climate change will continue to creep forward. Brewer doesn't even hear the contradiction in her statement, when she withdraws from the Western Climate Initiative — hardly perfect but a start among serious leaders — and wants to avoid California emission standards, but also wants green-tech jobs. Sorry, the two work together. This is why Germany is solar-power central. And notice that China is working furiously to corner the technology and manufacture of renewable energy. In the U.S., the best shot at ameliorating the effects of climate change are happening in the smart states, not the cheap states. Even if ASU makes some research breakthroughs, Arizona lacks the economic capacity to exploit most of them.
Brewer is playing to her ignorant base, and playing her role in the national drama orchestrated by the corporate puppet-masters. The intelligent Republicans know climate change is real. They just think "we'll adapt." And they will, behind their walls and gilded privilege…maybe. In the meantime, the short-term gain from inaction is too alluring. Goldman Sachs and Exxon have no more impulse control than the corner boys. Not for nothing was the parallelism between the drug dealers and the businessmen so powerful on HBO's The Wire. Thus will America squander this precious window to prepare for a future very different from the recent past. Our grandchildren will curse us, if they can read or think, if they are not dragooned into the proto-fascist ranks of the Tea Party.
In Arizona's limited media market, I suspect no one will raise the catastrophic dangers to the state from climate change. Among them: much less renewable water supplies; larger and more costly forest fires; the loss of entire eco-systems as well as the damage to the forests from parasites, and, of course, the rising heat island and extended summers in Phoenix. No, let us go back to business as usual and pray the Growth Machine revives. In the meantime, a victory against SOCIALISM!!
The Hayworth-McCain match should be fun, although I fear J.D. doesn't have a chance. The corporate bosses are more comfortable with McCain, and he is too feared by the state elites to break ranks. McCain deserves to lose for a host of reasons, especially his unwillingness to help Arizona become competitive with federal money. In Hank Paulson's new book, McCain comes off very badly. For the extreme right that is the center of the Arizona Republican party, McCain is unreliable: he was for immigration reform and against torture. Until he changed his mind. McCain is an opportunist.
Hayworth couldn't be worse. Lord, I would love to see the McCain media love fest — they still see him as a "maverick" — pass away. J.D.'s not mean; I'll give him that, ideology aside. That would be an improvement. And there's a chance Hayworth really would become part of the hard-core ideological "conservatives" that seem to be our national future. True, their policies just brought the world to the brink of recession and America to near ruin, but many voters have short memories. And we may have to fall much further before liberals learn to fight.
Senator Hayworth, the gentleman from Arizona. I like the ring of it.
McCain toyed with the idea of becoming an independent during W’s first term and even running with John Kerry in 2004. But he kept his eyes on the prize of the presidency and resolved his difficulties with the devil. His career is now a postscript to that flirtation with the idea of National Greatness. I dislike him intensely but I do wonder what the national political scene might be like today if he had the courage of his better narcissistic traits.
Politics otherwise is a nightmare. This country has been mainstreaming right-wing extremism for several decades and the result is that the MSM fall over themselves protesting the pure and good intentions of white racists and assorted scumbags. Any demurral about an overt racist (Tom Tancredo) keynoting their convention? Of course not. How about the birther wacko Joseph Farah sprinkling his rancid fairy dust to the cheering throng? None. The star attraction was a women too innocent of even the slightest complexity to mention a considered policy position.
AGW is a casualty of a political culture that rewards inane oversimplifications and bullet talking points. Newt Gingrich, who fancies himself an intellectual, has new reversed field and mocks the theory. George Will, the pseudo-Burkean walking harrumph, ridicules it regularly. Where are the adults on the right? Maybe it’s Toga Night every night at the Heritage Foundation.
I’d like to think we’re better than this but recent history suggests otherwise. We’re a badly informed, badly led, and overfed nation. There’s a paradox for the left in having won significant victories on behalf of the “people” we are now forced to watch them demand tax cuts for their wealthy superiors and spending cuts that will make life intolerable for themselves. A genuine conservative might note the contradiction and help explain to them their situation. But genuine conservatism has been marginalized. Instead, there’s the incoherent rage of populist birdbrains and the handwringing of people like ourselves. It’s anyone’s guess where this ends up. I’m hoping for the least terrible of possible outcomes.
Many of us are planning our escape from Arizona. There is no hope for this place, let’s leave it to the crazy idiots.
I don’t know anyone with young children who wants to raise them in this state. There has been too much damage done to hope to fix it within our lifetimes.
What the Kooks haven’t realized is that their actions will drive people out of the state. Without the balancing effect of moderates in leadership positions, our environmental train wreck will rumble onward down the hill.
PS: My wife and I now have an Oregon address. After 40 years in the Valley, I have mostly given up! The Flat Earth Society can have it.
Me, I’ll stay here, simply because I’m a proud native son eager to enter the fray on behalf of common sense. This is all my family and I have, and I think there are plenty of positive aspects to the state that we can better promote and amplify. And who knows, maybe the current economic crisis (replete with unique AZ elements) will force more of my fellow residents to scramble for real solutions — as might happen if we were all stranded together on a desert island with rapidly diminishing resources….
Are there any figures on how much fed money Arizona would have received if McCain was a “normal” politician?