Gardening Toad: The constitution of a warrior and the compassion of a saint. Individual effort counts! NBF
If we’re killing ourselves in increments, we can save ourselves in increments.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/1/9/2294235/-What-now-The-power-of-us
Gardening Toad 1/9/25 — with a compendium of her environmental links
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I’ve mentioned in the past that despite enormous differences, the majority human kind seem confoundingly good at two things: driving and rationalizing — as if these two activities exist outside of the ‘time and space’ framework that gauges human aptitudes.
That’s not to say that all drivers are good. It’s just that if most drove like they run their lives, the highway would be strewn with wreckage.
As for the reshaping of ‘inconvenient truths’, this seems to come naturally to us. Nevertheless, the seemingly prodigious skill displayed by of even our most challenged brethren becomes a tad less wondrous through the realization that the trick lies in fooling yourself first — less so everyone else. For this con is relative to I.Q., common sense and gullibility, depending on which ‘necessity’ hires for the hit.
Make no mistake, if not ‘murder’, kneecapping oft results.
A multipurpose tool, rationalization has all the applications we need to create an instant escape hatch from reality, like the cartoon in which a rectangle, hastily sketched on a solid wall, becomes a ‘real’ doorway.
By ‘slight of mind’ a ‘pass’ is copped, provided nobody questions it’s ‘sketchiness’.
An example of this is the reflex response to suggestions that personal climate action is essential and potentially dynamic — which is to box it up and send it back marked ‘defective’. The reason given that the enormity of the problem demands enormity of response and people are ‘small’.
Being so myself, it took me a while to make the connection between the logic of this and how it has been used for upwards of 250 years to avoid the responsibility of voting (once the novelty wore off).
I kept forgetting that one of the pillars of DK is ‘one person / one vote’
— it took even longer to link it to its dissonant correlation with man’s self-defeating love of playing odds.<
For decades, those advocating environmental action here, have had to battle the ‘hydra’ of climate denial rationalization, as it vainly seeks to shield ‘normal’ and avoid commitment. Any one promoting individual and/or grassroots efforts to counter environmental degradation, was sanctimoniously informed that meaningful change could only come through legislation, despite the many decades of evasively compromised legislative neglect.
Furthermore, it serves this purpose greatly to ignore the historical record regarding change, which more often than not, has been ‘roots up’.
After all, ‘trickle down’ has always proven to be more politically ‘popular’ than populist, at least as far as the ‘roots’ are concerned.
It doesn’t take a degree in political science to see that this approach isn’t working — but so as to not be wasteful, the talking points get repurposed for suffocating pro-action with ‘hothouse’ excuses that perennial a bloom to fit the occasion
This same brush-broadening is used for quick-gilding the classic copouts to voting — which are, as we all know, “my vote doesn’t count” — with “they’re all the same” running close second.
After all, when you spit in the ocean do the waves get bigger?
Actually they do, but only only if you’re paying attention.
The accumulative effect takes time and that, in our culture of instant gratification, is an anathema most have no patience for — it having long since been bred out by consumer conditioning.
After all, nothing sells as well as ‘impatience’.
While laboring this cynicism to avoid unwelcome responsibility, it is nonetheless given time off from staying the same hands doling out dollars for lottery tickets, despite the odds being proof of futility.
The difference lies in the abstraction of hazy long-term benefits versus the nagging ache of narcissistic desire. focused
Most will eat the chick before it becomes hen — for fear of the fox.
~~~
One of my great heroes on DK was ‘Gardening Toad.’
Although she had already been on my radar, we didn’t begin to bond until, along with coolspring and myself, she would unflaggingly jump in to comment on the marvelous environmental articles that ‘birches’ regularly posted when he first joined the site. She did this as part of an agenda she’d set herself to support whatever climate diaries she found, as did the rest of us.
This shared purpose, quickly and organically grew into a mutual support team, ala Dumas — with birches as our D’Artagnan.
Being on the front lines so to speak, I would witness the aggressive character of blowback GT would receive from commenters seeking to avoid their environmental duty by trying to cut down her message promoting the power of individual action.
This was constant and wearily took the form of the same poorly thought out, ‘jump-seat’ stupid response, paraded out in ‘off-the-rack’ redundancy, while presented as cutting edge.
It became “death by 1000 cuts”.
As an example, I quote from her diary I’ve linked above:
“I was recently challenged by a fellow kossack when I posted that we the people have the most power in our society, even after losing the election, “Please, point to what power we have.”
I responded, “We have the power to completely rebuild our culture to one of equity and abundance for humans and the biosphere, if we feel like it. From the individual, neighborhood, city, state, and even regional level. Nobody is stopping us.”
When this infantile reactionary kicking got to be to much, she would reach out to me and the comraderry that we developed attempting to cope with it helped us both.
It’s one thing to write about politics here and quite another entirely to try spreading climate awareness. Although there is a small, dedicated and first-rate group on board, generally speaking, readers’ reactions range from indifference to outright hostility. Avoidance factors greatly into acceptance, and information that runs in the face of it often triggers aggression.
Only rarely does anyone drop their defenses and come on board.
Since relatively few can get past climate snuffing/shrugging for want of self-reflection, they remain poorly informed and will lash out with ill-conceived and malnourished arguments that can test the patience of the environmentally keen, especially when they aim for the ‘messenger’.
~~~
The constitution of a warrior and the compassion of a saint.
GT provides refuge for a very rare combination of strength defined by conviction and commitment — which valiantly stands guard over a frayed sensitivity that has been battered repeatedly by human callousness, while suffering the madhouse it historically sustains.
Her generosity born of concern, leaves the doors of this sanctuary cracked and vulnerable to be breached.
Although she did her best to cope with the limitations of some readers and focus on the appreciation others showed, the former cut too deep and the wounds healed too slowly.
Over time it would cost her — and eventually it drove her away.
She has been gone now for well over a year and her loss still pains me — especially as it came during a period in which we also lost Pakalolo, cawfeemug, and Rock.
Her message was simple and she herself provided a shining example.
Getting to know her was an uncommon privilege dear to me.
Although the effects of environmental collapse are all around us, they remain for the most part, too immaterial and mercurial to form a solid, consciously palpable threat, especially as our normal response is to refuse delivery.
But for many the threat posed to complacency by commitment to pro action is real and by rationalized sleight of hand, the imperative of survival flips when faced with the demands of ‘comfort’ — and so they fear the cure but not the cancer.
Because this faulty logic isn’t getting paraded around in comments as much, doesn’t mean that those predisposed to use it have learned their error. What they have learned is that it does not hold up anymore and they lack a replacement.
Thanks to their callousness, so do we.
I Love U G. T .
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/3/13/2373081/-FIVE-VOTES-That-s-What-the-New-Mayor-of-Boca-Raton-Florida-Won-By?utm_campaign=trending
3/14/26 bibloteach
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Don’t forget No-Buy-Friday tomorrow!
…and No Kings Day on the 28th coming up 🙂
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