Green - Part Deux

This is in response to the opinion that 75% of the Green New Deal was "good stuff." Real historical perspective obliged me to write this. 

       When you preface something with "Green" one is led (intentionally in this case) to believe it's primarily about environmental issues most progressives support. First off 75% of the GND has nothing to do with "Green" except money and the redistribution of it. Second and to me even more telling is the parroting of anti-nuclear rhetoric which is even more flawed than anti-vaxx propaganda.

         The environmental "spin" involved here is, like the first four bars of "Satisfaction," the hook. A Green New Deal should be about what it suggests itself to be - climate change/carbon reduction, environmental cleanup and EPA strengthening, such as reinstituting all Obama ecology related executive orders and enacting them into law(missing from the GND). Period. That's "green".

        Certainly, supporting wind options is important, and where applicable and practicable (West TX, northern Plains, etc.) will reduce carbon admissions. Of course, you must be willing to ignore the piles of dead birds below the turbine pylons. Solar is also attractive in those areas, especially in western regions and, generally, the lower flatter coastal regions of the South, where there are lots of days with longer light. 
      Unfortunately, the farther north we go, the shorter the daylight hours and in winter, when we need power the most for "green" heating, they are shortest. Battery technology is far from adequate in the foreseeable future to support metropolitan areas with solar, if ever (can you say Seattle?)

         Meanwhile Nuclear is sustainable, safe, and yet the US is lagging in the development and application of even safer and almost infinitely refuelable liquid salt cooled (LSC) reactor plants, whereas India and China are pioneering such work. We (the US Atomic Energy Commission) actually built an operating high power, small profile LSC reactor at Oak Ridge in the '60s but the military wanted more Plutonium, so it was scrapped in favor of fast breeders - less safety, scarcer fuel.

        My issue is with citing what is actually nanny state economic social engineering on a scale outstripping even Sweden or Norway as "Green. " It isn't. No, it isn't. No. Not that some of the concepts aren't great concepts, like Universal single payer Health Care and Social Security. 

      

       Reduced educational costs are a great idea as well. Sadly, the concept of "free college for all" overlooks the simple fact that not everyone wants to, or should, go to college. Add to that, the proliferation of graduates with a shiny new BA in an area which has few, if any, real world job applications at the undergrad level (BA Psychology, for example) On the other hand, Vocational training (unmentioned in the GND) would lift many out of unemployability and do it quicker. Get a BFA and look for work where you can find it, if you can find it. There are lots of cabbies carrying their musical instrument in the cab just in case. 

       On the other hand, get certified in A/C repair, plumbing or Nursing (even with an AA degree) and have a job for life! There are also those of ALL ethnicities, (before you take offense at what ensues) who are likely to either be unable or unwilling to work. If that route becomes economically attractive/feasible, those numbers are likely to increase.

         As for "reparations" it really sounds good - to the group in question. Of course, it's a scam, since no one seriously proposes or would ever be willing to say "OK, let's all go back to Europe and restore the continent to the original inhabitants." Now them's reparations!  Similarly, no real-world plan to take land currently “owned” by others and give it to Native Americans has a snowball’s chance in Hell of realization.

         In the case of slavery it is even less doable, for varied reasons very few seem to have really considered. A microscopic few, if any, African Americans born in America really want to return “home” to a continent which isn’t, and hasn’t been “home” for multiple generations, and no amount of money, no matter what might be eventually done with it, can atone for the great American sin of race based slavery. I say race based, because the descendants (and there are almost certainly a relative few, but some exist) of indentured servants are just as surely descended from “circumstantial" slaves in many cases. It is estimated that as many as two-thirds of the people who came to the colonies between the 1630s and the American Revolution did so in this manner – whether voluntarily or involuntarily. This means that many of us with colonial American roots can trace our ancestry to at least one indentured servant. For the seven years indenture contract, these people were treated essentially as slaves, and letters from white indentured English at Jamestown are quite explicit as to the degree of misery, starvation and abuse these persons suffered. Was this as bad as race based slavery? Not in most ways, bu it does show that willingness to abuse one's fellow man as a class issue isn't isolated to race, as many Americans would like to believe.  

       From the 17th century into the 19th century, transportation to the colonies as a criminal or an indentured servant served as punishment for crimes, real or imagined, or for simply being poor and viewed as an 'undesirable', in England and Ireland. This exile into slavery was facilitated by the Transportation Act of 1718. Tens of thousands of children and vulnerable adults were kidnapped from Britain and transported by sail ship to the emerging lands of America (and Australia), as a source of expendable labor for the numerous plantations of the colonies.

        Yes, I know, “But they were freed and had opportunities to better themselves.” While that is true, it is appropriate to remember that the issue with the descendants of former African slaves is similar. There are two significant differences, however. First, former indentured servants and their kin were not distinguishable by race from other European-Americans. Secondarily, and linked with the first, is the fact that since 1789, while there was still a plethora of economic and social stigma based on economic status and in some cases, ethnicity, both the Irish and Italians at one time having been referred to as “non-white,” There was a Constitution, which differentiated, by language, between not “White and Black, but “Slave or Free.”

        That changed, beginning in January 1863 with the Emancipation Proclamation which had the odd consequence of freeing slaves in the rebel South, a military measure more than anything else, while until April,1864, non-free Blacks remained enslaved in the slave holding Union states. By 1804, all the Northern states had already passed legislation to abolish slavery, either immediately or gradually. One example:  Connecticut in 1784 declared that children of enslaved African-Americans born in the future would be freed—but only after turning 25. Vermont, on the other hand, had abolished slavery (1777) while still not yet in the Union.

        Why all the history? Simply to point out that not all Blacks have the same history in the United States. Many may well have no actual familial history of either plantation slavery or, if Northern, lack of self-determination. Determining what, if any, “reparation” (never mind trying to figure out what the nature of such a thing might be) is a fool’s errand and a genealogical impossibility. If I damage your car, we can probably agree what “reparation" looks like.  Lacking a time-machine, there is, in truth, no such definability when speaking of “reparations for slavery”. It’s just money. Who, indeed, wants to be the first to develop the precise methodology of distributing it or determining how it should be spent to remediate a problem dating to… yeah, we all know 1619/Jamestown as the “first Black slaves in the North American colonies” right? (I know most don’t but I’m stroking you) In fact, in 1526, enslaved Africans were part of a Spanish expedition to establish an outpost on the North American coast in present-day South Carolina. It is likely that their escaped descendants’ DNA are now part of both the Lumbee and Cherokee tribes at a minimum. 

       Additionally, Melungeons (what?) are at least partially descended from slaves. Melungeon is a term, first appearing in print in the 19th century, used in Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina to describe people of mixed ancestry. Melungeons were considered by outsiders to have a mixture of European, Native American, and African ancestry. So, what of those whose African ancestry is mixed?  In the 1840’s, several Melungeons were tried for illegal voting on the grounds that they were not white, and therefore ineligible to cast a ballot. In Virginia, Melungeons were classified as “colored” by the Racial Integrity Act, which was in effect from 1924 to 1971. Ava Gardner was Melungeon, and Abraham Lincoln, Johnny Depp, Fiona Apple, Tom Hanks and others have, or had, Melungeon roots.  So, what do we pay Tom Hanks?

        What’s my point? Enforce the United States Constitution, as it exists now, in areas of human and civil rights to the letter of the law and require states to do the same. This is not and shouldn’t be some pie in the sky monetary band aid, but a requisite social sea change which can only happen if tolerance, empathy, and opening of the heart occur on all sides of the issue. That can’t be done with money, free cell phones or food stamps. It also can’t be done if state boards of education dumb down curricula to remove references to the “unpleasant" realities of our history. It means bitch slapping someone who says, “Well that’s just the way things were,” as an excuse for past bad behavior.

        There is no need for divisive rhetoric. The laws are in place. So why not just have the GND propose enforcing them? (we know why, don’t we?) We hear all the good “liberal words,” devoid of any plan whatsoever to implement any of them. The GND sounds good, like ice cream, and its proponents are charismatic, so let’s hop on board. I’m sorry as a life-long social liberal, but also historian, when I see bright persons enchanted by a charismatic presenter with a terribly flawed plan. It's why advertisers hired Suzanne Somers in tight yoga pants to peddle the Thigh Master!         

       The GND isn’t “75%” good, but a fair part of it is. It could, however, have the effect when the total impossibilities of the more outré propositions become obvious, that the real “babies” of fighting climate change and non-carbon dependence as well as universal single payer healthcare get tossed out with the bathwater. And that would be a crime.