Some time ago I mentioned in a post how the Democrats and many on the left overused ‘Fascist’ draining the word of its terror and so when a Presidential candidate and eventually President came along who at the very least had proto-fascists in his circle of advisers the warning sounded too much like the familiar electoral noise and failed to gain much traction.

A similar but not exactly analogous sequence dogs the heels of the Republicans and many on the right. For decades the many in the GOP and their supporters have labeled any proposal to their left as ‘socialism.’ It didn’t really matter what the proposal actually did, nearly any government program addressing nearly any inequity was creeping socialism and would inevitably lead the United States to a Soviet future with gulags dotting our Western Deserts. Baby Boomers, of which I am one, seemed congenitally unable to recognize they world had changed, stuck to the script even after the collapse of the USSR and only switched the totem of terror to the latest failed state that worked for their propaganda.

In my morning political reads on the right I see over and over pieces where the authors and editors are quaking in terror at the rise of Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and the pronounced leftward push from the Democratic. Socialism as a pejorative insult and warning has lost all meaning joining the background of noise that is for the most part ignored.

Now be sure the liberal/progressive/left policies pushed by AOC, are in no way the equivalent to Soviet totalitarianism and the drive leftward has yet to reach anything comparable to the GOP’s abandonment morality, decency, and loyalty in their election and protection of President Trump.

I do not know if they had kept the term in more of a reserve if it would have helped them at this point in time. Between the party’s protective interference for Trump with his bold blatant corruption and their indifference to the economic turmoil to struggling Americans while playing blood brothers to voter suppression instead of adapting to the nation’s changing needs and demographics they may have painted themselves in an electoral trap that mere words would have proved inadequate as a means of escape. A party governing over peace and prosperity, albeit both serious issues and far from assured, should not have had the House washed away from them and I believe the flood has yet to crest.

The other day I was reading a conservative column and ventured for a few posts into the comments. In replay to a commenter pointing out the disparate impact of voting restriction policies the author of the column replied with the brief response that he didn’t think disparate impact proved racism. Since in the case of voting restrictions I do think there is a strong racist bias in there, I wondered what are the simple criteria one might use to distinguish between a disparate impact that is an unintended side-effect of the a policy and one that is the goal of the policy?

I think that there is a two-part test that pretty well answers that question.

First, was any attempt made to moderate the disparate impact once it was evident? If a political actor, individual or party, implements a plan and when that plan has a disparate impact on populations and they then take no action to reduce that disparate impact it is fairly safe to assume that at best the disparate impact is of no concern to the political actor. The policy can be judge to be apathetic at best and intention at worst.

Secondly if the policy is propagated to other regions is it modified or altered to avoid the disparate impact evidenced in the original implementation? When a policy becomes popular with a political community it is often copied by its admirers but it is also often adjusted for the perceived flaws of the original version. After all that is how improvements happen, the idea is expanded, deepened, and implementation improved, if throughout this process the disparate impact remains then it is very safe to conclude that the disparate impact is the objective of the policy.

With the voting rights restrictions passed in state after state by the GOP minorities consistently found it harder to vote. No GOP move was made to mitigate this effect and when the policy was copied in new jurisdictions the impact of minority communities remained.

It is understandable, from one point of view, why this occurs. On average the GOP captures only about 15% of the black vote, leaving a substation advantage to the Democratic Party. But instead of asking themselves why their message appeals to only a slim number of minorities, the GOP has instead implemented policies to reduce the numbers reaching the polls. Recently the new Democratic majority in the House has announced plans to make it easier for more voters to participate in our election, this idea, more people voting, has been labeled by the GOP Senate Majority leader as ‘a power grab.’

Unlike Mitch I believe in Democracy, the Franchise, the power of ideas, and that the best ideas can persuade.

As a devotee to the concept that truth is fractal and complex I try to read from a number of political perspectives. No one has a corner on truth and no one is above getting it wrong but sometimes I read something that makes it seems as if someone is just trying to go out of their way to be thick, David French’s article ‘The Green New Deal is Everything That is Wrong With Progressive Environmentalism‘ is just such a thing.

The core argument of the essay is that progressives even when they are motivated singular subject cannot resist the allure of their various causes and these drag unrelated topics in an every expansive net to transform, alter, and control American culture. As evidence of this he cites Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s legislative proposal ‘The Green New Deal,’ and the numerous issues it addresses beyond climate change and environmentalism. He is right that the issues addressed range far and wide but he’s wrong to suggest that this is some sort of nefarious mission creep or a legislative Trojan Horse, the title alone is enough to explain the scope of her proposal.

The title ‘The Green New Deal’ is comprised of three elements, we can safely ignore the article as simply something required by English grammar leaving us with two elements, “Green” and “New Deal.”

Green clearly refers to the environment and currently the point of concern is Global Climate chiefly driven by human induced atmospheric pollution. Here French seems to have stopped reading the title of the legislation and his piece works off the assumption that everything in it is about and should be restricted to environmental policies but there is that second element to consider.

The New Deal was a set of sweeping program, financial reforms, public work projects, and yes social engineering enacted during the Administration of FDR in the decade before America’s entry into World War II. Now, set aside if The New Deal was a good idea or a bad one, a successful government project or not, those questions are immaterial to the French’s disingenuous or dense observation about AOC’s proposal. As French states in his piece ‘Because when you read the document you quickly realize that progressivism is the priority, not the environment.’

The entire critique is built upon the assumption that The Green New Deal is only about the Green and not at all about The New Deal. The title was chosen, clearly, to harken to back to what the Democratic Party, and many others, feel was the shinning success that came about following the Great Depression and ignoring that aspect is misleading and unworthy of a columnist’s precious word count. AOC clearly plans social engineering on the scale or FDR’s and she is not hiding that intent behind bland euphemisms like ‘Enhanced Interrogation,’  ‘Job Creators,’ or ‘Persons of Wealth.’

So I put it to you, who is being dishonest and trying to hoodwink the public?