Naomi Klein directs her “Shock Doctrine” lens at the cascading disaster in Texas to understand why Texas Republican politicians there fear the Green New Deal.
Once the self-described party of small government, low taxes, and family values, Republicans also considered themselves the party of ideas back in the Reagan-Gingrich period. Over time the GOP became the party of vote suppression, conspiracy theories, and owning the libs, if not of outright sedition. The “failed policies of the past” is a standard catchphrase among conservatives for never-specified liberal approaches to governing they abhor, governing being something they have long abandoned.
The free-market fundamantalism that led to the collapse of the go-it-alone, deregulated energy grid in Texas is further proof, Klein believes, that the party’s hoary playbook is not up to the challenges of the 21st century. The late economist Milton Friedman said that in an ordinary disaster, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.
All Texas Republicans offer is retrenchment. Gov. Greg Abbott’s first reflex was not swift effective action to address his state’s humanitarian crisis. It was to run to Fox News to name a liberal scapegoat.
Klein writes:
In short, Republican ideas are no longer lying around — they are lying in ruin. Small government is simply no match for this era of big, interlocking problems. Moreover, for the first time since Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s former prime minister, declared that “there is no alternative” to leaving our fates to the market, progressives are ready with a host of problem-solving plans. The big question is whether the Democrats who hold power in Washington will have the courage to implement them.
The horrors currently unfolding in Texas expose both the reality of the climate crisis and the extreme vulnerability of fossil fuel infrastructure in the face of that crisis. So of course the Green New Deal finds itself under fierce attack. Because for the first time in a long time, Republicans face the very thing that they claim to revere but never actually wanted: competition — in the battle of ideas.
The ideas “lying around” these days are on the progressive side. With the Green New Deal and the Sunrise Movement, with Fight for $15, with The Poor People’s Campaign, and others. As Texas recovers, that should be clearer than ever.