More Peggy Noonan bullshit

Megan is trying to rebrand herself, as I've mentioned recently. The Althousian trajectory into self-parody has slightly shifted, into an Andrea Mitchell/Peggy Noonan elite decrying elitism style hypocrisy. I must admit, it's a canny career move. I doubt Althouse makes very much from blogging, and even Megan can recognize AA mostly exists to be pointed to and laughed at. Andrea Mitchell, however, is for some reason respected, plus she's married to Alan fucking Greenspan. That's as elite as it gets, yet Mitchell feels she has the standing to criticize Obama for going to Hawaii for vacation as somehow out of touch with the common man, despite Hawaii being where he grew up and where his too old to travel grandmother who raised him lives. Palin has made it ok for conservatives to lie and be blatant hypocrites in public again, and damned if Megan isn't gonna cash in on that money train. Strawbabies of the world, unite, and help Megan rise into a higher tax bracket.

Future perfect:

I read stuff like this and I think, no wonder we're getting nowhere selling lower carbon initiatives. Too much writing and blogging on the topic of global warming seems to consist of urban dwellers saying to everyone else "You're just going to have to accept the fact that your life is going to suck" in their best third-grade dragon-teacher voice, and then getting surprised and angry when the people they're talking to call them selfish, elitist loons.

Megan's link is a blog meta discussion of a discussion of a discussion Ezra and Matty Y had about capping the speed a car can go at 75 mph. This is an extraordinarily stupid idea from extraordinarily stupid people who live in a fantasy world of their own creation, and has nothing to do with telling rural folk they can't drive anymore. And it's her fucking lunch table crowd she's about to mock, her friends, her peers. She is one of them. Even she has to accept this, though only to get it out of the way so she can keep lecturing her friends and strawbabies.

Of course, a large portion of my blogging on the topic also consists of saying, "Well, I'm afraid your life is going to suck", and I should strive harder to avoid sounding like I'm happy as a clam that the rest of America has to lean into the strike zone and take one for the team. I'm not. I think that if the planet is warming up, you're going to have to give up driving so much, and I'm going to have to give up flying, and this is not fun. I like driving as much as you do. I . . . well, I hate flying, and would happily never do it again. But I like being places that aren't Washington DC.

Megan, however, can still drive her new car she flew to Florida to pick up, because she's doing it in a city. That whole city/highway mileage thing has it backwards. Driving in a city is actually good for the environment.

I understand that people's desires for large houses in leafy suburbs are every bit as valid as my ardent desire to live near the peaceful hum of traffic. Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a policy that effects everyone equally, and the painful job of being an adult is doing things we don't like because they're the morally right thing to do. Assuming arguendo that global warming is happening, and is anthropogenic, the right thing for our society to do is try to make our economy more efficient. Unless we can figure out a better way. But it isn't enough to say, "we ought to figure out a better way" and go back to making the icecaps melt, as so many libertarian think tanks do; until we actually do so, we should be striving for greater efficiency.

Non-elites should sacrifice for the elites, as it has always been. Megan isn't actually going to to fly any less, nor is she even going to feel guilty about it, she's just going to fault everyone around her for not doing so.

But having said all that, if I lived somewhere where long drives were mandatory, I'd be pretty hopping mad if a lot of city dwellers not only came along and told me I was going to have to use less gas, but did so without a trace of sympathy--indeed, spoke to me as if I really deserved to suffer for some unnamed environmental sins. It sucks. I feel your pain, as much as an urban dweller can, anyway. If I seem to be saying otherwise, it's not because I am gleefully wishing for your destruction, but rather because I'm trying to show you that the changes won't be quite as dreadful as you perhaps imagine--it is possible to live a happy and fulfilling life at higher densities. But I'm sorry you can't have your druthers.

Yes, Megan understands why rural folk get mad when people like Megan say the types of things Megan says; it's because of liberal media elites trying to control their lives. Sure, Megan's not a liberal and can only point to her political centrist comically stupid blogger friends indirectly for a non-example example of what she's actually doing herself, but that doesn't mean there aren't bus tours where us librul elites go from NYC to rural Montana to force ranchers to give up their 4x4s for dirtbikes. The left is to blame for Megan's flaws, duh.