In its “Notable and Quotable” sidebar yesterday, the Wall Street Journal excerpted an essay from The New Republic that took note of “Trump party boats”, which the writer wokely described as “jubilant white Americans . . . partying on boats festooned with banners supporting the former president”. She then conceded “something painfully true: Democrats just aren’t about having fun.”
Sadly, I get what she means. I was out on Long Island this summer, and it was clear that the people on the party boats with the Trump 2024 banners were having a blast. A lot of Democrats lack this spirit, and that’s a problem. The left needs more party boats and relatedly, a sense that, as Ronald Reagan famously exhorted, “it’s morning in America.” We need to make more space for joy in our understanding of the world, as Marjorie Taylor Greene is doing in her twisted and misleading way.
This call for “joy in our understanding of the world” clashes remarkably with the thesis of the essay: that it’s a very bad thing that climate optimists – people who think that a changing climate may improve life on Earth and certainly isn’t a catastrophic threat – may derail the transition to the austere future advocated by the Davos Dystopians. A measure of how much the writer fears optimism is that she links it to the most toxic exponent she can find.
She does try to put an optimistic spin on the “Green New Deal”:
By addressing the climate crisis, we are making the world better. With every policy step we take away from fossil fuels, we are cleaning up the air and water, creating new clean industries in which humans can thrive, making our cities greener, more beautiful, cooler, and full of life. People will live longer lives, evading heat waves and devastating storms. Indeed, our children could well have a future that is more pregnant with exciting possibility than the world we live in now.
In other words, after the inevitable blackouts, surging energy prices and multi-trillion dollar transition costs, we will emerge into a Brave New World. That message demands that we endure hardship now, not indulge in joy. The fun will arrive after the eggs have been broken – provided that we actually get an omelet.
The fact that many Democrats’ view of the current state of the world is ineluctably depressing and pessimistic doesn’t prove that it is wrong. Winston Churchill wasn’t wrong when he promised only “blood, toil, tears and sweat”. “Churchill party boats” would have been jarringly out of place during the Blitz. Those who believe in a “climate crisis” on a par with, or worse than, World War II have a duty to denounce frivolity and proclaim “sunset in America”.
Meanwhile, the rest of us will go out and have fun.
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