That seems to be the case with this almost-unbelievable-except-for-everything-we-know-about-Republicans editorial on Cap and Trade by Sarah Palin in today’s Washington Post. Really. I mean a lot of people are concerned that newspapers are dying, but the dynamic changes when you realize that they may be killing themselves.
About climate change, like economic recessions and health care, the Republican party has no ideas beyond tax cuts and “drill, baby, drill”. And it’s a throughway to understanding how we got to the present predicament in which all three are intertwined and strangling us, if not a purgative toward transcending it.
I won’t detail how one party bent on resentment and victimization is unhealthy for our politics. But for the planet, time’s a wastin’ and the stakes are high. The thing is, as I have tried to outline here from time to time, a sustainable economy and a healthy ecology are very closely related. Having no ideas for how to make them work together with some degree of harmony is simply not an option. That’s what we’re here to figure out. We do politics as a means to solving problems based on mutual consent and the public good. A nefarious strain of anti-public has infested the party with the (R). They lionize the private sector without even acknowledging its significant other – and after a while, there are few routes back to a healthy respect for the public sector. Unwilling to defend it in certain instances, they forget how to do it all. And here they are, with no idea.
Again, as with newspapers, are they dying or killing themselves?