Dissecting the "Green New Deal".

"Green New Deal." The words can be inspiring, but what do they mean? As a term, it's just a slogan into which we can dump almost any content.

Green, of course, means it has an environmental component. And New Deal suggests an economic redistribution component. What do those two things have to to with each other? Possibly nothing, and it's just a marriage of convenience to push multiple liberal goals at once - not inherently a bad strategy - in which case there's a path forward that still keeps markets at the core of the economy.

Or they may have everything to do with each other, if you take an eco-feminist perspective where all oppression, of women, minorities, the poor, and the earth, are all interconnected, in which case markets must go, absolutely and wholly, because they are inherently exploitative.

"New Deal" is also a trope to remind us favourably of FDR, a great Democratic hero still. But the New Deal did not end the Depression, and likely extended it. It did not simply do some redistribution to provide relief for the poor, but forcibly took people's property from them in multiple ways and was highly discriminatory towards non-whites. The FDR administration was abusive, arrogant, and unconcerned with the date of individuals who got in its way.