Brickbat: Turning Over a New Leaf

The New York legislature is looking at a bill that would ban the sale of gasoline-powered lawn mowers and leaf blowers in the state. If passed, the bill would require rules to enforce the ban by Jan. 1, 2025.

Comments

[Fist of Etiquette]

I say destroy all the trees to save the environment.

[Its_Not_Inevitable]

And burn all the grass.

[DaveH]

What could possibly go wrong!

[Jerry B.]

If it's like the one in D.C., city works crews are exempted.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Exempted from work?

[Mother's Lament (original flavor)]

I remember way back a year ago when they swore that they weren't coming for your gas stove.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

How about a leaf-burning stove?

[Stuck in California]

Just yesterday in a random news story I saw a Soros bot had written the words "Nobody is coming for your gas stove!"

I swear, the trolls don't update their talking points. We're definitely to the "But it's good thing" era of the propaganda/denial cycle on that one.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

OK, I don't like leaf blowers, mostly because the noise can be annoying, especially when some neighbor and/or immigrant gets anal and spends a hour (like the guy across the street from my former house did every week). But that's my problem.

The more philosophical reason I don't like leaf blowers is the basic strategy. Just because you don't want some shit on your property does not give you the right to blow it onto some other property.

[Think It Through]

Done correctly, leaf blowers blow shit from your own concrete (driveways and sidewalks) into your own yard. Where they can be mulched, mowed, or gathered, as appropriate.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Maybe. But I almost always see, people blow stuff onto the neighbor's yard, into the street (and then down the street to end in front of the neighbor's place), or into the storm drain. Most fun is then watching the neighbor blow it back.

[Stuck in California]

Done correctly,

THIS is the main thing.

I'm with you EBHS. For example, just Tueday I was driving down the street and some asshole with the leaf blower was cleaning the sidewalk by blasting the grass and dirt and pebbles into the street. More specifically, directly at my truck. Thanks, dude, saved yourself 15 seconds with a broom but now you're fucking up my paint and covering my freshly washed truck with all that shit you blasted into the air.

[Think It Through]

What's that timeline that progresses from "that's a conspiracy theory, it's not happening" to "it's happening in a limited way" to "it's happening and it's a good thing" to "submit, comrade"?

Seems appropriate here.

[Medulla Oblongata]

https://americanmind.org/salvo/thats-not-happening-and-its-good-that-it-is/

Which brings us to the Law of Salutary Contradiction, whose formulation is: “That’s not happening and it’s good that it is.” While the Law of Merited Impossibility applies to the future, this one is about the present. It’s what the ruling class immediately switches to after what they insisted would “never” happen is happening before everyone’s eyes.

Is the NSA spying on Tucker Carlson? That’s an insane conspiracy theory … which is also warranted by Tucker’s treasonous contacts with Russian officials as he seeks an interview with Putin.

Is the Biden Administration inviting in illegal immigrants, then putting them on military planes and shipping them to the heartland? Absolutely not … and these future Nobel Prize winners deserve their shot at the American Dream.

Once you learn to recognize this pattern, you see it everywhere. It is the cornerstone of ruling class rhetoric in the current year.

The Law of Merited Impossibility

The coinage is Rod Dreher’s and goes back to the early debates on homosexual marriage. As Dreher formulates it, the Law of Merited Impossibility holds: “That will never happen, and when it does, boy will you [homophobes, transphobes, racists, sexists, whatever] deserve it.”

This Law is used, first, to disarm resistance to the latest leftist enthusiasm. Whatever the innovation is, it will have no adverse consequences. None! Puberty blockers and disfiguring surgeries have no downsides whatsoever. How dare you suggest they might!

Its second purpose is to dismiss out of hand “slippery slope” arguments—despite, or because of, the fact that every single such argument over the last twenty years at least has proved true. Worried that allowing people to “self-identify” as whatever sex they want will lead to pervy 50-year-old men exposing themselves to’ tween girls? Insist, loudly and indignantly, that that will NEVER happen and anyone who suggests it might is an alarmist bigot with a heart full of hate.

The third purpose is to enforce the new caste system. Those who get to impose fresh irrational indignities on the rest of us are the upper caste. Those who object, or even have reservations, are lower. The latter are not allowed to harbor, much less express, any doubts. Whatever humiliation the upper caste has planned for us, we deserve and must meekly accept. Hence when said pervy 50-year-old actually does start waving around “her” equipment in the girls’ locker room, if any parent dares object, let ’em have it with both barrels. That thing that ten seconds ago you said would “never” happen? Now it’s righteous punishment for the retrograde.

[Its_Not_Inevitable]

Madness.

[Longtobefree]

I remember one day when a friend asked my father why he didn't rake all his leaves to the curb and burn them. (yes, I am that old)
My dad said "Those aren't my leaves. Those are God's leaves. He puts them on the trees in the spring to give us shade in the summer, and when we don't need the shade as much, but rather the warmth of the sun, he takes them off the trees and puts them on the ground to keep the earth warm. Who am I do overrule God? When God doesn't want the leaves on my yard anymore, He will send a breeze to move them."

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Was you dad sitting in a comfy chair and drinking beer when he said that?

[Longtobefree]

Nope.
We were standing in the yard after playing catch.
He never drank any alcohol.
(but he did have a comfy chair where he read newspapers and American history while drinking iced tea)

[Gaziger]

Since the proposed law doesn't outlaw the USE of gasoline powered equipment the companies will simply purchase new equipment outside the state. Who wins and who loses in that scenario?