Of course it gets idealistic in parts, sounding more like FDR's New Deal and his Four Freedoms than anything more recent, but FDR was once lionized for those ideals, including "a family-sustaining wage," "retirement security," "affordable, safe and adequate housing," (which we're hearing about every day from our Republican establishment in Flagler), and so on.
Not a word about cows. Not a word about taking planes away or shoving trains down your commuting habits. If the document goes far afield here and there, it's a working set of principles, not an edict, not an executive order. And it's a starting point to a direction the country cannot afford not to take -- not to cripple its freedoms, but to safeguard and foster them. Its opponents want to incinerate its authors, particularly Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who makes reactionaries as delirious as Trump does liberals. But what has been the reactionary alternative? As with health care, as with immigration, as with inequality, perhaps a prayer, a wall and a tax break. In other words, nothing but a paralytic invitation to self-destruction: this way to the greenhouse gas chambers, ladies and gentlemen.
The Green New Deal doesn't pretend to be perfection. It's not dogma. It's not final. It's barely a beginning, an attempt to push back against a republic of insects and grass, but least it is one. It invites debate, and it proposes action. Deal me in.
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