From COVID to 'Critical Environmental Justice'?

(AP Photo/John Amis, File)

In the minds of those who know the left better than it knows itself — I count myself among that group — the Democrat Party and its liberal media lapdogs’ embrace of the coronavirus and its never-ending lockdowns and restrictions has been suspect from the beginning.

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Put simply, the left hasn’t had a cause célèbre this good, as they see it, in decades.

The Vietnam War pops into mind as their last big politically-expedient “crisis.” As I’ve written multiple times in the past, in the immortal exploitative words of Rahm Emanuel, “You never let a serious crisis go to waste.” No one better understands Emanuel’s admonishment better than the Democrat Party —and the pandemic has provided them a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity on a silver platter.

So what’s next? What will come of the “COVID experience”? How can the Democrat Party continue to exploit the crap out of COVID after its no longer a perceived threat? (Except to Anthony Fauci, John Kerry, and Biden’s handlers, of course)

What will be the Democrat Party encore?

After having become famous for several brilliant breakthroughs in physics, Albert Einstein spent the last thirty years of his life on a fruitless quest for a way to combine gravity and electromagnetism into a single “unified field theory.”

Now, more than 65 years after Einstein’s death, the left is in pursuit of its own “unified theory.” Let’s call it the “unified justice theory,” in which “racial justice,” “social justice,” “economic justice,” and “environmental justice” are all rolled into one tidy little package.

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As the COVID lockdowns, mask mandates, social distancing, and random other edicts issued by Democrat governors, seemingly at whim, stretched into a year, I became more and more convinced that somehow the left would find a way to continue lockdowns-on-demand, mask requirements, school closings, and whatever else their little “progressive” hearts led them to do. For months, I just wasn’t sure what their next angle would be — but I was pretty sure it would have something to do with “climate change.”

In the collective minds of the left, what could be better? While they continue to lose half of the country or more to the ridiculous notion that “climate change” is the “existential threat of our time,” what better way to force the “settled science” [nonsense] on America at will — exactly as they have done with the pandemic. But how?

Enter “critical environmental justice.”

Just remove “critical race theory” and insert “environmental justice” — everything sounds far more ominous and moral if “critical and “justice” are tossed in, and there you have it. The left’s ticket to continued draconian rule by overzealous and power-drunk Democrat lawmakers, governors, mayors; the whole lot of them.

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“Critical environmental justice” is founded on four basic pillars, but first an overview:

Have you ever wondered how the Black Lives Matter movement relates to environmental issues? Or, what prisons and jails have to do with environmental justice? Are you interested in learning more about environmental justice scholarship and activism?

In his 2018 book, What is Critical Environmental Justice? David Naguib Pellow reveals how ecological violence is first and foremost a form of social violence, and how the harm to ecosystems mirrors the experiences of marginalized groups across the planet. Join us as facilitators David Spataro (Political Science) and Sonya Doucette (Environmental Chemistry) guide our journey.

And the four pillars of CEJ:

1. Emphasizes the overlapping dimensions of racism, classism, patriarchy, heteronormality, ableism, and speciesism

2) Includes multiscalar frameworks

3) incorporates the role of state power

4) Focuses on focus on racial and social justice

To understand the mind of David Naguib Pellow, all one needs to do is read his views on Black Lives Matter in his own words — written in July 2016.

“Black Lives Matter (BLM) is a social movement centered on the problem of state-sanctioned racist violence. The movement began as a response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman, a man who killed Trayvon Martin, a seventeen-year old African American boy in Sanford, Florida, in 2012.

From that moment on, social media, mainstream media, and the Black Lives Matter movement would routinely intensify the national focus on racialized state-sanctioned violence when yet another video or testimony surfaced featuring an African American being shot, beaten, choked, and/or killed by police or White vigilantes.

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Environmental Justice Studies

Pellow argues that social justice is inseparable from environmental protection.

“The Environmental Justice (EJ) movement is composed of people from communities of color, indigenous communities, and working-class communities who are focused on combating environmental injustice—the disproportionate burden of environmental harm facing these populations.

“For the EJ movement, social justice is inseparable from environmental protection.”

[…]

“Thus, hundreds of studies have documented that people of color, people of lower socioeconomic status, indigenous and immigrant populations, and other marginalized communities are disproportionately affected by ecologically harmful infrastructures, such as landfills, mines, incinerators, polluting factories, and destructive transportation systems, as well as by the negative consequences of ecologically harmful practices, such as climate change/disruption and pesticide exposure.”

And how does Pellow suggest the “critical” issue of “environmental justice” be tackled?

George Orwell would be proud.

“CEJ Studies is interdisciplinary, multi-methodological, and is activist-scholar inspired in that it seeks to bridge and blur the boundaries and borders between the academy and community, [and the federal government], theory and practice, [and] analysis and action.”

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Centralized control. “Blur the boundaries and borders between theory and practice.” That’s got “progressive” written all over it, doesn’t it? How perfect. “We don’t know if it’s true or not, but we are hellbent on remaking America as we see it in our little ‘buy the world a Coke and teach it to sing in perfect harmony’ utopian minds.”

And finally, Critical Environmental Justice and Black Lives Matter

“In order to examine Black Lives Matter as a CEJ case study, I gathered data from the BLM website, archives, and social media, as well as major essays published in national and international media outlets by BLM advocates and supporters.

“This selection of data is not intended to be strictly representative, but rather, as a purposive sample it speaks to the core BLM frames and the four pillars of CEJ Studies.”

It couldn’t be more clear. Under the banner of “social justice,” “racial justice,” and the never-ending battle against “white supremacy” and “systemic racism,” the left will turn to “critical environmental justice” in its never-ending menacing drive to tell you what you can do, when and where you can do it, and what will happen to you if you fail to comply.

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To borrow from Orwell’s “Animal Farm,” “All Americans are equal. But some Americans are more equal than others.” The pigs “others” live in the farmhouse, gang — and they will continue to do their damnedest to push us into the barn and keep us there.

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