Motives

I planned to do a nice post about the Patriot Act tonight, considering that this Saturday's guest on Political Pistachio Radio is going to be Paul Ibbetson, author of the book, "Living Under The Patriot Act: Educating a Society," as well as an expert on terrorism and national security. However, news items and liberal musings about me, and observations of today's world got me thinking. And you know, it made me really think about people's motives.

I've posted about "motives" before, so I suppose this is nothing new. Some liberal motives are grounded in good intentions, but fall short when applied to reality. Human Nature, unfortunately, is not capable of behaving in the "Fair" and "Utopian" society that the far left seems to be wishing for (the proper name for such an unreachable society is "socialism"). Other liberal motives are sometimes simply to attack and be a mean as they can be to get their point across. A liberal writes often about me in such a way - my buddy SkyDiveRick usually alerts me when it gets really bad over there (No link to the liberal's site - he doesn't deserve the traffic, nor the attention), lashing out with name calling and attacks and facts more often than not retrieved from left-leaning sources. Sometimes a person's motives are good, but fall short. Sometimes their motives are poor, and somehow things work out fine. Regardless, I was once asked about "sin", and me being a Christian, of course, I had an answer. I believe that sometimes something is not necessarily wrong for what it is, but for the reason behind it. Example: It isn't a sin to eat, but if the reason for eating is to use the food to replace a void in one's life, in a vain attempt to make the person feel better, resulting in a gluttonous frenzy of overeating, it is a sin.

But sin is not what this post is about. It is about motives, and motives when it comes to the liberal left often perplex me. Environmentalists too. The reason is that it fascinates me how folks will say their motive is one thing, when often it is actually something different. Or claim to have certain motives and their actions don't necessarily follow suit (Gore is a shining example of that one - considering the CO2 he spews into the atmosphere with his private jets, etc.). The article that said this the loudest, for me however, was one I read in yesterday's newspaper.

The headline in my local paper read: Prius is pick for flashing green. The story, by the way, was on the front page, too. Now, I could not find the link to the story at the site of my paper on the web, but the same story also was in the New York Times, so the above link sends you there. Anyhow, the article states that the Prius hybrid car is selling well, while other hybrids are not. Why is this? The answer is startling.

I figure environmentally conscious folks who buy the hybrids do it as a way of doing their part in the phantom Global Warming Crisis, or perhaps they do it for the better mileage. Makes sense, right?

The main reason that the Prius sells better is not for the noble cause of being green, per se, but because it is more obviously a hybrid. In other words, the buyers want everyone to know that they are driving a hybrid because the Prius is sold only as a hybrid, and unlike the other hybrids (Honda Civic, Ford Escape, Saturn Vue) it can't be confused as being a non-hybrid vehicle. It's more about show than substance.

I got a kick out of the fact that the marketing research company that figured this out is based in Bandon, Oregon (you know, the town where I had a confrontation with the liberal hippie). Anyway, I just thought that was pretty shallow of the hybrid owners who talk about putting Earth first, but in reality it's all about putting their personal image first.

It's like folks who give to charities. It is good to give to charities, but if folks have to go around telling everybody they do so, and then list the charities they give to, one wonders about the real reasons these folks give to charities in the first place. Same thing with the Prius. These people didn't really buy the car, deep down, because of some virtuous attempt to save the world, but so that they could go around showing off to people that they are so-called "environmentally conscious."

It's bad enough that the liberal left has brainwashed the world into believing that we are causing Global Warming (when considering our minuscule output of greenhouse gases alone that is comically not likely - not counting the "real" scientific facts that the globe is warming because of sunspot activity, not CO2, and that in reality, the CO2 is not causing the warming, the warming is causing the increase in CO2!), and besides, I think the Earth has been too cold for too long and that in reality it is actually returning to its proper "warmer" temperature, which will allow, if one thinks about this, for us to grow more crops for our ever increasing population since the warming will create more fertile land further to the north. And we seem to forget that once, before the discovery of America by Columbus, and when Eric the Red located the Canadian Coastline, Greenland was green. But when these environmentalists claim they are so eco-friendly, and their real motivation is for them to look good and look green in the eyes of their peers over doing it for their cause, it sums up to me what these hypocrites are truly all about.

Oh, and as an added note, my first blog is getting a little attention again. Defender of the Blahs is supposed to be a journal of my journey to publication, but more often than not, nowadays, the news is little and far between, so I've decided to begin posting old stories and poetry I've written over the years on that site. Tonight I posted a poem I wrote way back in 1981 when I was fifteen years old. It's not a poem by a polished writer, considering my age and experience, at the time, but it's entertaining nonetheless. Anyway, if you dare, give it a read.