Young cannibals

Young cannibals
By David Benjamin

“Q: What’s the difference between cannibals and liberals?
“A: Cannibals don’t eat their own.”
— Lyndon Johnson

MADISON, Wis. — According to the New York Times’ TV show, “The Weekly,” the new rallying cry of the post-pubescent left in America is “Green New Deal.” Although only a slogan, it signifies ideas far more elaborate and profound. But its charm, for its choristers, is its hypnotic, galvanizing rhythm. There’s nothing like a three-word slogan to cloud the mind and boil the blood.

“Blood and Soil!” “”We Shall Overcome!” “Off the Pig!” “Hope and Change!” “Lock Her Up!” “Black Lives Matter,” “Send Her Back!” “Build the Wall!” “What? Me Worry?” Et Cet Era!

Two Times reporters followed youthful squads dispatched by an outfit called the Sunrise Movement (not to be confused with David Duke’s Sunshine Coalition). The kids were chasing Democratic presidential candidates down hallways, cajoling them into signing a big white board on which was printed a “pledge” to support the Green New Deal. All but a few candidates succumbed. They had little choice. They were surrounded by zealots, put on the spot and asked if they stood by three words— “green” and “New Deal” — that have been intrinsic to the Democratic Party since FDR and JFK. Besides, they were being filmed.

The Times reporters, true to their enthusiasm for the theatrics and “immediacy” of videographic journalism, neglected to ask the beleaguered candidates if they had read through the entire text of the recently drafted and adorably slapdash pre-nup to which they were hastily pledging their troth.

Me? Yeah, I read it. As a lifelong liberal and faithful Democratic voter, there isn’t anything in the Green New Deal to which I can object. It’s common sense.

On the other hand, as a rank-and file reporter and news editor for 45-odd years, I’m dubious of the Deal’s real-world prospects. Literarily, it’s an editor’s migraine. It jumbles together every liberal pipe dream of the past half-century. Its text wanders tipsily, indulges in superfluous surplusage and repeatedly distracts the reader from its main point: the real, imminent danger of climate change.

I’m not surprised that the candidates captured by the chanting mob of unwrinkled youngsters caved in and signed. These folks are politicians, after all, and politicians get ahead by telling crowds what they want to hear.

I’ve seen this crowd before. I was young during the Days of Rage. I watched, from a safe distance, the earnest, ineffectual activism of dozens of defunct insurgencies, from the Student Mobilization Committee to the PLP, Black Panthers and Yippies. Although not naturally a joiner, I belonged to the Boston Draft Resistance Group. In that capacity, as a living symbol of the efficacy of organized youth politics, I got drafted anyway and got handed a No. 2 pencil by the infamous Sgt. Brown at the Boston Army Base induction center.

Since I noticed people on the CBS Evening News shouting “Ban the Bomb” in 1961, I’ve sympathized with every fresh liberal movement, including the Sunrise gang. I’ve observed that they almost never win. I’ve also figured out why.

They’re having too much fun. Three-word slogans are a sort of high. Hanging out in hallways and ambushing Buttegieges is a trip to the moon on gossamer wings. Buttonholing Hillary on a staircase and shouting into her face, or snatching a microphone away from Bernie and issuing a primal scream — whoo! — it’s virtually orgasmic.

Sit-ins, marches, hashtags, trolling and confrontation, chants, rants, blogs and manifestos — totally bitchin’ rad! Also annoying to most grownups. But I can’t blame the kids for using time-honored tactics to get noticed and rally their peers. This is what true believers do. As Max Yasgur once said, “God bless ’em!”

I object somewhat, however, to the two shmucks from the Times, who had a chance — by posing a few questions — to inject a measure of realism into their video puff piece (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/02/the-weekly/democrats-climate-change-green-new-deal.html?searchResultPosition=3).

The Times’ team could have, but did not, ask: Are you guys members of the Democratic Party? Do your followers vote for Democrats? Do they vote at all? Will your followers support the eventual Democratic candidate and work — actively and aggressively — for a Democratic majority in Congress?

Answers to these unasked queries might well decide the next national election. They’re important because only one political party in the United States has acknowledged the reality of climate change and taken action — since the days of Silent Spring — to mitigate human-caused environmental devastation. The answers matter because the only political allies the Sunrisers have are Democrats. They’re important because, as far as I can tell, the only politicians the Sunrise leaders are attacking, cornering, browbeating and condemning are Democrats.

The Green New Dealers’ clear, sworn enemies are Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell and the Republican Party. But they’re leaving those guys alone.

Eventually, every insurgency in U.S. politics from the AFL-CIO to Greenpeace, must come to terms with an inescapable reality — that all American political power is concentrated in the two major parties — and they must make a choice. They can stand by one of those parties or sink into irrelevancy.

It’s customary for Republicans — a minority party that regards politics as an all-or-nothing war of good vs. evil — to absorb their insurgencies (the Tea Party, white supremacy, Grover Norquist) and vote monolithically. When they fail to unite, as they did when Ross Perot’s maverick candidacy boosted Bill Clinton over George Bush, they lose power. But this sort of screw-up is more common to Democrats, whose factions tend to pout when they don’t get everything they want.

In 1980, insurgent Democrats voted for John Anderson or refused to vote. Their reward was a red-baiting right-wing president who coddled racists, spawned corruption and mocked environmentalism. In 2000, 97,000 Floridians supported the quixotic candidacy of Ralph Nader, spurning Al Gore and getting, as their reward, eight years of a sociopath, Dick Cheney, as shadow president of the USA.

In 2016, the Greens nominated for president Jill Stein, who was filmed consorting with dictator Vladimir Putin at a banquet for Russian propaganda television. In Wisconsin and Michigan, to demonstrate their hatred for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, 82,469 liberal iconoclasts voted for Ms. Stein. Trump won the two states’ 26 electoral votes by a combined total of 32,881 votes.

Democrats and Times reporters, captivated by the passion of “progressive” upstarts like the wide-eyed Sunrisers, have a bigger problem than the sheer fickleness of one-issue insurgencies. The main dilemma posed by these merry pranksters of the left is their very youthfulness. Under-30s do not vote in the sort of numbers that change elections. Most just don’t give a shit. Many don’t know how to vote and couldn’t find a polling place if you stapled maps to their bibs. The rest are mad as hell because their momentary hero — Howard Dean or Jerry Brown, Ralph Nader, Jesse Jackson, Bill Bradley, John Edwards, Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders — got beat in the primaries (and screwed by the Satanic superdelegates).

Since 1974, three-quarters of eligible voters from ages 18-24 have not bothered to exercise their simplest, easiest, most effective civic duty. Whatever their reasons — apathy, outrage, moral purity — they do not vote. Nor do they encourage their youthful peers to vote. They are dead money.

Right now, the Green New Deal kids are — in Eldridge Cleaver’s words — part of the solution. By November 2020, don’t be surprised to see that they’re part of the problem.