Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - Al Gore bought another house - 6 fireplaces and 9 bathrooms. Hypocrisy at its finest

roachboy · 05-06-2010, 03:18 AM

how is this the same?

the guy bought a house. a house is not a belief that is at cross purposes with stated positions.
for all you know it's the greenest of green houses with swedish toilets that use no water and passive solar heating.

what you're reacting to is the number of bedrooms. and the price. what allows you to connect that to climage change is some notion that dealing with climate change will involve renunciation as if the current petroleum-crazed was of doing things is absolutely necessary and no alternatives are imaginable so if that way of doing things is creating problems the response is necessarily to subtract elements so make do with less not develop alternatives (think o i dunno the idea that youd have to do without cars as opposed to the idea that a system-level response to climate change might be to underwrite the development of solar-powered cars or something)
so the idea is that you cannot imagine an alternative set of consumer lifestyle possibilities to what exists now. and you imagine that sustainable practices involve sleeping on planks and wearing a hair frock while you eke out some miserable existence.
i have no idea at all where that stereotype---if it's even that--comes from.
but it's clear that it's a conservative mythology that functions to delegitimate concern for the environment by setting it up as a way of being that wants to take something away from righteous amuricans.

from there the link is in your head to al gore buying a house. but unless you accept the implicit characterization, the connection is arbitrary.

so this is nothing like the attitudes of a homophobic conservative congressman or the special problems created by jimmy swaggart employing hookers.
unless you assume that conservative packaging of "environmentalists" as persecuting Others represents some kind of fact about the world.
which i think ludicrous.
and so's this "controversy"

05-06-2010, 03:18 AM	#36 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	how is this the same? the guy bought a house. a house is not a belief that is at cross purposes with stated positions. for all you know it's the greenest of green houses with swedish toilets that use no water and passive solar heating. what you're reacting to is the number of bedrooms. and the price. what allows you to connect that to climage change is some notion that dealing with climate change will involve renunciation as if the current petroleum-crazed was of doing things is absolutely necessary and no alternatives are imaginable so if that way of doing things is creating problems the response is necessarily to subtract elements so make do with less not develop alternatives (think o i dunno the idea that youd have to do without cars as opposed to the idea that a system-level response to climate change might be to underwrite the development of solar-powered cars or something) so the idea is that you cannot imagine an alternative set of consumer lifestyle possibilities to what exists now. and you imagine that sustainable practices involve sleeping on planks and wearing a hair frock while you eke out some miserable existence. i have no idea at all where that stereotype---if it's even that--comes from. but it's clear that it's a conservative mythology that functions to delegitimate concern for the environment by setting it up as a way of being that wants to take something away from righteous amuricans. from there the link is in your head to al gore buying a house. but unless you accept the implicit characterization, the connection is arbitrary. so this is nothing like the attitudes of a homophobic conservative congressman or the special problems created by jimmy swaggart employing hookers. unless you assume that conservative packaging of "environmentalists" as persecuting Others represents some kind of fact about the world. which i think ludicrous. and so's this "controversy" __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite Last edited by roachboy; 05-06-2010 at 03:25 AM..