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Meet the Greenies
J.R. Nyquist 07.17.01 They like old clothes and they drive a clunker. They eat organic food, refer to themselves as "Buddhists," attend the local Episcopalian Church and they voted for Ralph Nader. Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like you to meet Mr. and Mrs. Greenie. Well, technically they're not Mr. and Mrs. Judging by their fervid declamations against matrimony, they never will tie the knot (because it's against their principles). And yes, they are expecting a child. Although the father is not the father, if you know what I mean. It's all rather loosey goosey with the Greenie weenies. Conventional bourgeois morality does not apply to them. They have risen high above old fashioned ideas, and fashionably drift in the upper stratosphere -- near the infamous ozone hole. Truth be told, these folk are beyond terrestrial family dynamics. It could even be said they are anti-nuclear in more than one sense of the word. The Greenies are actually quite charming, in a leafy vegetable sort of way. I always learn something when they drop by. For example, I am now fully informed on the frightful rate at which the rain forests are disappearing, the number of species lost per hour, and the awful truth about global warming. So many overheated facts, one after another, has a nice softening effect on the brain. A most pleasant effect while eating. And one is also entertained by the occasional New Age references and interjections. But the Greenies' liven their conversation with one theme above all others: Mankind is bad, animals and trees are good. Here are people who have advanced far beyond communism. Its concepts are already too human-centric for them. When you get right down to it, Karl Marx only cared about the proletariat. Mr. and Mrs. Greenie care about millions of oppressed rodents, worms and bugs. Non-human species of the world, unite! I really did wonder, though. How did they enjoy my sausage pizza, sitting at my oak dining table, in a house made of wood planks? And there was the electricity from the lights, the gas oven that cooked the food, the automobile that brought them from 10 miles away. But the Greenies did not complain. In fact, they seemed to enjoy the pizza and the electricity and the paved roads. But their guilt must have weighed heavily, because the topic always turned to that awful global infestation -- the human race. The world's population should be 500 million," Mrs. Greenie said, suggesting a fashionable solution to all the world's problems. How do we achieve that?" I asked with genuine curiosity. By restricting the food supply," Mr. Greenie smiled between bites. So the plan is to starve 5.5 billion people to death?" I asked. No, no, they protested. When there is less food people will have fewer children. It is a very simple formula which anyone can understand. And by this method we will save the whales, the rain forest and the trees (not to mention spotted owls). Oh yes, I thought to myself, we will restrict the food supply. People always take the food supply into account when they have babies. Like in the case of Bangladesh or Biafra or Ethiopia. My mind remembered an old feature article from the National Lampoon: "Anorexia Nervosa, the plague of the Third World: Why are they doing it to themselves?" Was I alone in thinking that Mr. and Mrs. Greenie were a bit confused? Various schemes for driving home a pro-human point passed through my brain. After dismissing half a dozen arguments that wouldn't have registered at all, I was finally tempted to pull out my copy of Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal -- for preventing the children of poor people from being a burden to their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the public." Swift wrote the proposal in 1729. Some say it was a misanthropic work, a black satire on the callousness of society's upper classes. "I think it is agreed by all parties," wrote Swift about the Irish poor, "that this prodigious number of children, in the arms, or on the backs, or at the heels of their mothers ... is in the present deplorable state of the kingdom a very great additional grievance." Swift offered, in black comic fashion, a grim culinary suggestion. "I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London," he wrote, "that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled...." But Swift's cutting brutality wouldn't have registered on Mr. and Mrs. Greenie. In all sincerity they are struggling against human badness. They struggle against morality, against gasoline and DDT. They even want the food supply to shrink. As I listened to the Greenies chattering on about limiting the population of the planet, I could not help wondering how Mrs. Greenie understood her own pregnancy. Could it be that the rules, once more, do not apply to this high-flying, ozone-bumping couple? I couldn't help comparing Mr. and Mrs. Greenie's population reduction idea to Hitler's Final Solution. I despaired to think, however, that Hitler came off better in the comparison because he only hated part of the human race. These people hated everyone equally I don't know what to think, really, because Mr. and Mrs. Greenie seem like such nice people. Were they really serious about reducing the population of the planet by 5.5 billion people? Do they really think that human beings should be sacrificed to the well being of trees and animals? Well, if we look around at what's happening in Oregon and Northern California, we can see that a great blight has been advancing against the human community. And looking at the wreckage of our timber industry, and the mess being made in the fishing industry, I think Mr. and Mrs. Greenie are serious. And I think they are winning.
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