Posted on 5/26/2007, 3:00:30 AM by Reform Canada
ON LINE opinion - Australia's e-journal of social and political debate The debate is far from over
By Ben-Peter Terpstra Posted Thursday, 24 May 2007
“German psychologists have diagnosed ‘environmental angst’ and ‘ecochondria’ to describe the resulting migraines and depression, which are especially prevalent among the young” - Newsweek, December 2006.
Campaigning TV producers might not know much about kids, but they all know one thing: kids scare easily.
“When it comes to environmental manipulation,” reasons James Hirsen in Tales From The Left Coast, “Hollywood wouldn’t be so shortsighted as to leave out the kiddies. In September 1990 a show called Captain Planet and the Planeteers muscled its way into the minds of our little ones under the guise of a cartoon show.” Do we ever learn?
Explains Hirsen: “In the now-defunct show, Captain Planet … uses his powers to stop other beings from messing with the environment”. And the wickedest kid of all in this “multicultural” show, of course, is the “over-consuming ugly American who always seems to want food to satisfy his voracious appetite”.
Even, “the names of villains are crafted to help vent some animosity towards the stereotypical environmental abuser”. Yes, kids scare easily.
Captain Planet, however, didn’t foresee the scientific scandals now being exposed in the new millennium, or today’s backlash.
Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring, first published in 1960s, for instance, was the launching pad for the cultural left’s anti-DDT crusade. The result? Millions died because the chattering classes’ fondness for “organic” apples blinded their eyes to Africa’s poverty. Today, however, DDT is back. Africans are, once again, winning the war against malaria. This is good news.
Think, too, about why Captain Planet’s hysterical theme song (“Captain Planet, he’s our hero, gonna take pollution down to zero”), was so attractive to TV producers. They didn’t have to showcase African cartoons dying of malaria. Dead people can’t argue back.
Another voice of sanity, Andrew Bolt, a Herald-Sun columnist, finds more comically absurd examples of environmental manipulation (from Free Willy to Finding Nemo) in his book The Best of Andrew Bolt.
States Bolt: “In Brother Bear, for instance, the hunter Kenai kills a bear, only to become a bear himself. He then finds that the bears are love and their human hunters are hate - so much so that when he is able to live again as a human, he refuses.” Bor-ing.
To argue that flooding a child’s school, television programs, reading materials, and soul, with apocalyptic visions isn’t psychologically harmful, is to live in denial. Right now, on some level, a young subject is consciously (or subconsciously) processing this moral garbage. Meanwhile, cashed-up fear merchants are fuelling pupils’ insecurities with yet more false prophecies.
How many messages of doom will the suicidal teenager, for example, receive before deciding that his or her life is nothing more than an inconvenient carbon footprint? “Environmental angst” and “ecochondria,” after all, are symptoms of a much larger problem. Groupthink.
For sure, children must be given a fair and balanced view of current issues in small doses. But the media tells children otherwise. The real debate (we never had), they falsely claim, is over. Then, they pile on, and on, and on.
Apparently, “the gun debate” is also over, “the abortion debate” is over, and even the “capital punishment debate” is over (in spite of the fact that over 50 per cent of Australians support the death penalty). In other words, whenever the cultural left is lost for words, the debate is always over. Then, they pile on, and on, and on.
Funnily enough, in Stalin’s Red Russia, the “debate over Christianity” was always over too. And, how long will sceptics have to wait to hear that the “debate” over “global warming” is over for the 100th time? Translation: shut up, and stop thinking.
“I got the impression that instead of going out to shoot the birds, I should go out and shoot the kids who shoot the birds,” said Paul Watson, the overwrought co-founder of Greenpeace in Access to Energy, December 1982.
The debate is over? Today, Channel 7’s campaigning journalists treat Greenpeace’s talking points as indisputable facts. Revealingly, “fair debate” in this country is reduced to listening to Captain Planet’s recycled monologues.
And consider this: “We in the Green movement,” said Carl Amery of the Green Party in Mensch & Energie, April, 1983, “aspire to a cultural model in which the killing of a forest will be considered more contemptible and more criminal than the sale of six-year-old children to Asian brothels.” The debate is over?
Perhaps our watchdog media needs to reexamine the root causes of this “green” movement. In 2007, the writing and presenting classes seem more emotionally invested in proclaiming the rights of “drowning polar bears” over defenceless children in brothels.
Ignore the fact that many scientists are breaking ranks. The very “debate is over” argument, to be sure, was always cultic in nature. Science shouldn’t ever be based on a show of hands, or Channel Seven’s Sunrise show sermons. Verifying facts, questioning hypotheses, and so on, is not a sign of weakness, but one of strength. The rest is garbage.
Ben-Peter Terpstra is a freelance writer. His blog pizzatraysandbeerbottles is here.
© The National Forum and contributors 1999-2007. All rights reserved.
ping
When a lib says, “The debate is over”, it means they’ve either lost the argument and know it, or they don’t want to hear opposing viewpoints.
The kids should have grown up under MAD, Mutually Assured Destruction. :)
Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring, first published in 1960s, for instance, was the launching pad for the cultural left’s anti-DDT crusade. The result? Millions died because the chattering classes’ fondness for “organic” apples blinded their eyes to Africa’s poverty. Today, however, DDT is back. Africans are, once again, winning the war against malaria. This is good news.
It wasn't just Africa. Many third world people in Latin America and Asia similarly died for lack of the cheap and proven weapon against malaria.
But the ignorant felt good about caring. We're talking adults. And they all vote.
I still continue to believe that stupidity should be a jail-time crime, specially for elected office holders and "public servants".
Scaring the children is a deliberate tactic and it works.
Friend's ten year old came home from school, told her mother the world would eventually blow up.
Where did you hear that? mother asked.
We had a lecture from a scientist today. He told us all about the greenhouse effect and global warming and how, if we don't stop polluting the planet it will get so hot we will all die...and then the whole world will blow up.
(I can see it now. There will be an Office For the Establishment of a Sustainable Population to which the little darlings can report their wastefull parents...and have them rounded up ... Turn the children into enemies of the parents and control the planet!)
it's soooo Stalin.
One more manifestation of the inarguable fact that liberals are hostile nasty people who under the thin cover of sanctimony will even hurt their young.
|
|||||
|
|
That is just beautiful devolve! I see a new star in there too!
As the world turns, lol.
I just looked at the P page link of the above graphic and heard the “Somewhere” music. Lovely!
The other slideshow link is very slow moving devolve, many many seconds long for each and then the ST music on the final page.
That other link is 3 webpages
It does take longer
The 3nd has lots of frames
- 2001 .midi
- Captain Kirk - Star Trek TV Intro .wav
- A Star Trek .midi (now) I believe
3rd page auto-redirects back to my profile page after about 4 minutes
[3rd page auto-redirects back to my profile page after about 4 minutes]
Lol, a long time. Wonder how long it takes to get on my profile page with 56K dial up? I think I saw in the analyzer that it was close to 4 minutes!!
Yikes!! That poor lady!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
