The British screenwriter Angus MacPhail is credited with coining the term “MacGuffin,” though it is usually attributed to Alfred Hitchcock. In drama, the MacGuffin is anything the pursuit of which serves to drive the plot forward. The MacGuffin may not itself be of any intrinsic interest; what is important is that the protagonists of the story are desperately seeking to acquire it.
In House Resolution 109 – Recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal, the environment — the “Green” bit — is the MacGuffin. Though the proposed legislation is ostensibly aimed at saving the planet from the looming carbon apocalypse, that really isn’t the point of this bill. Rather, climate change is simply the excuse used to justify broad and deep changes to our economy, and drastic restrictions of our choices, prosperity, and freedom. It is a truly fascistic resolution masquerading as a noble pursuit of clean water and blue skies.
It’s also a very dishonest bit of work. It begins with a recitation of falsehoods about increased severe weather events, and a claim of anthropogenic global warming that is not supported by evidence. It then trots out the ludicrously tenuous projections of economic impact four score years from now, and cites them as a justification for a truly draconian forced transformation of the economy.
The environment is really not what the resolution is about. All the talk of “renewable” and “Green” and “clean” this and that is simply the MacGuffin intended to move this ugly bit of central planning forward. What the resolution is really about is social justice, government control, and socialism.
That’s why it spends so much time talking about “indigenous peoples” and “communities of color,” and why it invokes the common — but not environment-related — leftist tropes of income inequality and racial/gender divides.
That’s why it promises to (all bold text taken verbatim from the resolution):
promote justice and equity by stopping current, preventing future, and repairing historic oppression of indigenous peoples, communities of color, migrant communities ….
Maybe those are noble goals (though I actually think they’re mostly victim-baiting and grievance-mongering), but they aren’t environmental goals. They’re simply more of the left’s redistributive, identity-group social engineering.
What else does it offer? Free education:
providing resources, training, and high-quality education, including higher education, to all people of the United States ….
Union jobs:
high-quality union jobs that pay prevailing wages
Guaranteed wages, benefits, vacations, and retirement for everyone:
a job with a family-sustaining wage, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations, and retirement security to all people of the United States
More stuff for unions (because we love our unions):
strengthening and protecting the right of all workers to organize, unionize, and collectively bargain
More business regulation and micro-management:
strengthening and enforcing labor, workplace health and safety, antidiscrimination, and wage and hour standards across all employers, industries, and sectors
A big nod to the American Indian community:
obtaining the free, prior, and informed consent of indigenous peoples for all decisions that affect indigenous peoples and their traditional territories, honoring all treaties and agreements with indigenous peoples, and protecting and enforcing the sovereignty and land rights of indigenous peoples
And providing — that’s the word it uses — every American with:
high-quality health care
housing
economic security
food
and access to nature.
Got it? This supposed “environmental” legislation would: guarantee you a house, a job, food, a college education, and health care; strengthen unions; and provide reparations and special advantages to all sorts of “aggrieved” groups including Native Americans, the young, the handicapped, women, and minorities.
Why don’t they simply call it the Turn America into Venezuela Proposal? Because that wouldn’t sell (and, let’s be honest, because they’re too foolish to appreciate that that’s where this would go). So instead they wrap it in a dishonest claim of imminent global catastrophe, and use that as the justification for calling for de facto state control of industry and commerce, education and health care, our jobs and our homes and our lives.
The new fascists are cute and perky and full of themselves, but they’re still fascists.
