The Hot Sauce of Deception

The Green New Deal sucks.

Hold on. Don’t chuck your yoga mat at me. I like the idea of the legislation. My issue is with the salesmanship.

During these last few weeks, the climate change shitstorm ravaging America has upgraded to a full blown turd-icane. Curbing fossil fuel exploitation to save the planet should be an easy sell in this climate. For Pete’s sake, according to research done by the Institute of Mybrain, that’s the plot of 50% of all movies made since 1980. One starred a giant, blue space cat and it became the highest grossing movie of all time.

But Avatar didn’t make billions of dollars by appealing only to liberals. I grew up in West Virginia, where coal is both an economic bedrock, as well as the state bird, and a lot of my conservative friends love that movie. This is an incredible feat considering that the villains in the film are space coal miners.

Saving the great outdoors can be an appealing narrative to right-leaning folks, and support from some of them is necessary for the Green New Deal’s passage. As I see it, there are two major, yet fixable, marketing hurdles, that keep conservatives hissing like a possum on a trash can at its mention.

First, a “Green New Deal” sounds like a special at a marijuana dispensary. Liberals hear that and picture everyone a little more relaxed while testing how many different things in their pantry can be dipped in peanut butter. But conservatives grab their guns, and picture job loss and jazz grass spreading from coast to coast.

The second problem? G.N.D. advocates fail to clearly explain what happens to people that currently work in the fossil fuel industry. Go ahead. Ask them. You’ll get some version of “job retraining,” and more hemming and hawing than a husband trying to explain his secret Farmers Only account to his wife.

Negative side effects of massive legislation are inevitable. The Green New Deal will be very unpleasant for some people. You’re asking vegans to try the brisket. Some will hold their nose and do it, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be indigestion. Still, I don’t think it’s impossible to gain conservative-leaning support for this cause. Just look at the tactics of the folks across the aisle.

Republicans are absolute masters at marketing. They can turn “Social Security” into “entitlements,” “wealth confiscation” into “tax cuts,” and “Tim Allen” into a “sitcom star.”

They sell their ideas like a commercial for medication. Everyone is smiling, sharp dressed, and white, traipsing through an idyllic park. Then they hit you with a gentle voice-over:

“You work hard. You’ve earned the freedom of a full night’s sleep. So if you have restless leg syndrome, try Restium.”

Then in the last second of the commercial, a rapid, tiny voice says:

“May-cause-extreme-anal-seepage.”

If Democrats marketed the same medicine, the entire commercial would be:

“TAKE OUR MEDICINE! IT’S CALLED ‘PANTSHITTER!’”

Republicans expertly downplay negative side effects. They understand the emotion of holding on to “your freedoms” will always overpower your fear of seeing corporations horde wealth or shitting your pants in your sleep.

So what should Green New Deal advocates do?

I’m not saying they should lie, but if you’ve ever been poor and hungry, you know that a good hot sauce can cover up the bad ingredients in a Cup O’ Noodles. You can’t eat a better meal tomorrow if you starve to death today, and a little hot sauce helps you overlook that skull and bones next to the sodium dosage on the Nutritional Facts label.

The Green New Deal needs a deceptive sauce. Its main ingredient needs to be something conservative people love so much that it overpowers their fear of change. Something so comforting and American, an apple pie looks like a sickle and hammer in its shadow.

It needs GUNS.

That’s right. Say goodbye to the “Green New Deal.” Now we’re toting “GUNS”: the Green United New Structures Act.

Congrats, Democrats. You can now appear on the news and spout about how much you love GUNS. When Republicans attack you? “What’s the problem? You don’t support GUNS?” Joe Biden can run through a diner in western Pennsylvania bumping elbows while shouting “Guns! Guns! Guns, baby!”

Picture the commercial.

We see a coal mine entrance. A sweaty, dirt-caked guy in a construction hat strides out. This man has never ordered a latte in his life, and if he did, he would have to confess to his priest.

He carries a solar panel. He climbs on the roof of a nearby house and hammers away while a Bruce Springsteen track plays:

“He’s powering the nation,

“and he’s sexy as Hell,

“with his hammer ringing out,

like the Liberty Bell.”

Okay, so I don’t know any Springsteen songs, but you get the point.

Our worker finishes. He wipes sweat from his brow. He looks off in the distance. What does he see?

A nasty, empty, coal-fired power plant.

And he blows it away with a machine gun.

Slam to title: “GUNS rule! Tell your local congressman to support GUNS! ”

In the last second of the commercial, a rapid, tiny voice says:

“May-require-some-people-to-change-careers-and-learn-new-skills-but-hey-your-kids-won’t-have-to-kill-a-man-some-day-for-the-last-bottle-of-LaCroix-at-an-abandoned-Go-Mart.”

Don’t worry. This commercial does not end on a down note. Guess what we see over this voice-over?

Our hammer man gets a high five from a giant, blue space cat.