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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   30037 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 26, 2024

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A missing mood in development news: Environmentalists pin hopes on tiny fish to stop Highway 413.

From a plain reading of the article, the logic goes:

  • Activists don't like the proposed Highway 413
  • They searched for a way to stop it.
  • They found these fish, and the strategy may be effective.

In a sane world filled with people arguing in good faith, you might see a similar situation:

  • There are endangered animals in an area
  • Environmentalists discovered development posed a risk to them
  • Therefore they oppose that development

If you trust the CBC's reporting, then the activists would be better described as anti-development rather than environmentalist. The discussion is centered on the highway, the political situation around it, the promises that Doug Ford (bad!) made, and the actions the Federal Liberals (good!) took which slowed it down.

I grew up in the San Diego area, and recall environmentalists opposing transmission lines from new desert solar plants into the city because it threatened some desert tortoise's habitat. Environmentalists have been this way for decades, at least right wing environmentalists like Uncle Ted and the anarchoprimitivists are honest about their intentions:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunrise_Powerlink

https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/public_lands/energy/sunrise_powerlink/index.html

Also for anyone wondering after reading the environmentalist article, given that I grew up less than a mile away from the edge of the Cleveland National "Forest," it ain't no forest.

See this is exactly why I don’t like environmentalists as a group. I can understand the need to protect a species, and I’m generally in favor of protecting the environment where possible. But there’s a point where you have to be pragmatic about these things. We need roads, power plants and wires. Planning around a major habitat I get. But if you oppose everything people want to do even when it’s 95% of what you want, then I see no reason to take them seriously when they suggest we need to retool our infrastructure to protect the environment.

In their defense they are like the various right wing commenters here who refuse any compromise on guns, abortion, environmental law, etc. on the grounds that the left will just run rampant over them if they compromise and the only winning move is complete defiance and opposition to anything the enemy does. Even if each action is indefensible individually. I don't have a high opinion of either group.

It's good politics if you care about your goals. Centrist opinion doesn't matter in the long run. Only control of institutions does.

Centrists vote for the status quo. So all you have to do is be the status quo.

If you want something different out of politics, you have to be Lenin, not Talleyrand.

In the long run, I think Talleyrand spent more of his life getting what he wanted than Lenin did. And he saw a lot of change in his life, too. He just didn't think he could control it.

It feels like one of those intentionally bad metaphors. It's so bad I can't make heads or tails of it, but, also, to quote Bertrand Russell on Marx,

"His theoretical errors, however, would not have mattered so much but for the fact that, like Tertullian and Carlyle, his chief desire was to see his enemies punished, and he cared little what happened to his friends in the process."

I feel the same about all these people who look down on centrists and Talleyrand.

I don't look down on him. He was an incredibly competent and useful man, and without his involvement France may not even still exist.

But he is also not who you want to be if you have political goals. He went with the flow, only altering fate in small ways.

If you want to make a mark on history and change things you need to hire guys like him, but you can't be like him.

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