This week, the world finally got its first look at the grandiose “Green New Deal” plan to transform America by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her “Democratic” Socialist cohorts. Not since the Titanic set sail from England to the US on its ill-fated maiden voyage in 1912 has such a massive project arrived with so much fawning media coverage, only to sink so quickly and ignominiously due to its creators’ hubris, arrogance and incompetence. 

The titanic egos of all involved crashed into the iceberg of reality the second the world got a gander at what they actually want to do.  The widespread reaction — a combination of shock, disbelief and uncontrolled laughter — so spooked the GND’s backers that within hours, it disappeared from AOC’s website. (But don’t worry: the Internet is forever, so there will always be copies around for future historians and anyone who needs a good belly laugh.)

The “Green New Deal” is ridiculously utopian, utterly devoid of even the slightest consideration of feasibility or affordability. It seems to be such a product of an undergraduate all-night bull session that you’d suspect its creators already started trying to conserve water by drinking their bong water. 

The Hilariious Highlights

Here are just a few of the hilarious highlights:

Rebuild or replace every building in America to make them all energy-efficient. (There are about 75 million single family homes in the US and 5.6 million commercial buildings, so if you thought it was hard to get a contractor now…)   

Replace airplanes with high-speed trains (good luck, Hawaiians!)  

Eliminate all fossil fuels and nuclear power. (Eliminating clean nuclear plants would actually increase CO2 emissions, but I guess they watched The Simpsons while stoned and got scared). 

Replace 99% of gas-powered cars with electric cars, which I suppose would be powered by plugging them into outlets connected to windmills.

How to pay for all this?  No problem-o: AOC explains that the Federal Reserve would extend credit (i.e., print money) to a chain of new public banks that would loan people money to rebuild all their structures — effectively making the government everyone’s mortgage holder and therefore, the owner of all homes and businesses in the USA.  A socialist utopia at last!   

I didn’t even mention the little socialist extras tossed in, like high-quality health care for all, universal access to healthy food, guaranteed government jobs and a guaranteed income to everyone who can’t work or “isn’t willing to work.”  Or the planners’ admission that they aren’t certain yet how to eliminate cow farts in 10 years.  Perhaps they could just replace all the cows with herds of unicorns that poop cotton candy. 

Laughing at the Gift to Republicans

Kimberley Strassel of the Wall Street Journal summed it up well, saying that by the end, she was laughing so hard, she nearly cried; and that if Republicans wanted to forge a fake Democratic bill to show how bonkers the party had become, they couldn’t have done a better job.

… Although blogger Jim Treacher took a pretty hilarious stab at it: https://pjmedia.com/trending/its-time-for-a-new-green-new-deal/

Still, there’s no better fodder for comedy than the real thing:  https://pjmedia.com/trending/the-6-most-bizarre-proposals-from-alexandria-ocasio-cortezs-green-new-deal/

While mainstream Democrats went into radio silence, Republicans rejoiced at this unforced error. Axios reporter Jonathan Swan said the “Green New Deal” was “like Christmas and Hanukkah and every other holiday” arriving at once for the Trump reelection campaign. He said they’d talk about it with glee until the cows come home (if we still have cows by 2020.) 

To Give You Some Idea of the Absurdity

The bill’s backers tried to dismiss objections by saying that skeptics also said it would be too hard to build the Interstate Highway system.  Two problems: this makes the Interstate Highway system look like a Hot Wheels track. Plus, we were able to build that because back then, ironically, we didn’t have a bunch of green warriors and EPA bureaucrats protesting and demanding 20 years’ worth of environmental impact studies. Even Obama admitted that he discovered there were no “shovel-ready jobs” – because it now takes millions of dollars’ worth of time-wasting red tape before you can even buy a shovel.

To give you an idea of just how absurd and impossible the GND plan is, they want to replace all air travel routes between all US cities with high-speed rail. In 2008, the pioneering leftist utopians (they should be called “Dreamers” instead of the DACA recipients) in California voted to build a high-speed rail line connecting the north, south and the Central Valley, at a cost of $39 billion. 

Eleven years later, it’s given a whole new meaning to the phrase, “going nowhere fast.” After endless problems and delays, it’s been scaled back to a line between just two cities, L.A. and San Francisco, and is still nowhere near complete. The budget has ballooned to $100 billion and is likely to go even higher, considering the earliest it’s now projected to be finished is 2033. 

America put a man on the moon in less than 10 years.  Liberals can’t even build a train between two cities in the same state in less than 25 years. And they think they’re going to connect every city in America by high speed rail within 10 years?  Are they high on speed?!

Besides, if they end all air travel, how will environmentalists get to their climate change conferences at five-star resorts in Switzerland?

For those who want more details (or laughter), David Harsanyi at The Federalist provides even more on this socialist (crack) pipe dream.

Why We Have to Take This Silliness Seriously

But while it’s fun to guffaw at the childish idiocy of this plan, we need to try to keep a straight face and take some aspects of it seriously. 

Remember, this massive plan that would destroy our way of life, kill our economy, crush our freedom and end America as we know and love it is what many miseducated young people really want. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez might be far more qualified to be a “Not Ready for Prime Time Player” on Saturday Night Live than a Congress member, but enough people actually voted for her to put her into power, and a number of her colleagues backed this boondoggle. (Although after actually seeing it, some of them are running away from it like scalded cats.) 

As enjoyable as it is to ridicule it, we also must make it clear to its young and naïve supporters why this is a perfect example of something they only think they want until they get it, then they’ll instantly regret it.  It’s the face tattoo of government policies.  

We should also feel grateful and relieved that this week might go down in history as the week that the air went out of the balloon of the great dream of turning American socialist. President Trump poked the first pin in it during his State of the Union Address, when he looked his opponents in the eye, forcefully declared that America was founded on liberty and would never be socialist, and forced many of them to stand up and applaud that statement.  Those who didn’t looked like wayward teenagers being scolded by their dad.

Then, only two days later, after snarking that Trump was just “scared” of their brilliant socialist plans, the kids showed us their “great leap forward.”  Americans dissolved into laughter, and the plan’s humiliated creators quickly yanked it from the Internet.  Let’s pray that the damage is permanent and irreparable. 

Okay, kids, you’ve finally seen what socialism looks like in action. Do you really want to go through with getting that plan tattooed on your face now? 

 

Originally published at MikeHuckabee.com and is reprinted with permission