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Wednesday, November 17, 2021

Paper or Plastic?

By Anna Von Reitz

Here in Alaska, it's a balmy minus 7, and I am forced to remember a day just like this about three years ago, when I came into town --- Anchorage --- to shop for groceries at a specialty shop.

I was told that the Anchorage Municipal Assembly --- part of the rocker popper Papist Municipal Government that legally and lawfully isn't supposed to exist outside of the Municipality of Washington, DC, had voted to ban plastic grocery bags and unless I wanted to carry out all my separate items by hand, I would have to pay an additional hefty sum to buy two reusable cloth totes....

When I asked the dull-eyed cashier if the Assembly was smoking whacky tabbacky when they passed this latest dictum, the young thing shrugged helplessly and said, "I dunno...."

Nobody seems to know how these morons got all these god-like powers, but we all get inconvenienced and pay for it just the same.

Then I read the highlights of the public commentary leading to this brilliant new "law", and learned that we were trying to be "more sustainable". Plastic bags fill up landfills. Plastic bags use non-renewable resources (oil).

I shook my head. Guilty as accused. Shoot the plastic bags. Hang 'em high! It's time for the Anchorage Assembly to DO something.....

And I reflected that this is the same group that will scream about all the trees being cut to produce paper bags and all the nasty, stinky pulp mills.

This is also the group that will whine loudest when their organic ketchup bottle slides through the strings of their ergonomically designed politically correct reusable grocery bag and the ketchup goes splat all over their Birkenstock sandals and cashmere socks.

So, admittedly, I had a dim view of this new ordinance right from the beginning and was inclined to boycott Anchorage as much as possible.

For the next several months, whenever necessity demanded it, I had to remember to bring my cloth bags and totes to the store, just like the Anchoragites, a rare Northern Branch of the California Coastal Luddites.

We had barely survived and become inured to this latest inroad against personal choice when the pandemic hit, and to my astonishment, the very next time I went to Anchorage for supplies, I was met at the door and told, that no, I couldn't bring my (presumed to be) germ-ridden reusable grocery bag into the store.

The Anchorage Assembly had voted to ban reusable grocery bags as a public health menace, and now, we were required to wear them (or their germy equivalent) on our faces, instead.

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I stood staring at the beleaguered store manager who looked like a small vole looking for his next meal.

"Let's see here, I can't bring my reusable, sustainable grocery tote into the store, because it's made of cloth and collects germs, but I am required to wear a mask made of the same thing--- cloth--- on my face?"

The look he gave me made me laugh until my sides ached. He hadn't thought of that. I turned on my heel and tossed my "sustainable" grocery tote into the trash can on my way out, and I haven't been back since.

It's part of the same myopia that surrounds the subject of electric cars. People think they are more sustainable and better for the environment --- apparently, for no logical reason at all.

Let's see, you can burn gasoline directly to produce the energy to move your car, or you can burn other fossil fuels (including coal) to produce electricity, that then is partially lost during transit through the grid, and then store this energy your electric car's battery bank, which represents a massive amount of lithium and Rare Earth Minerals (REM's) that have to be mined and milled and transported and....all you've done is....make more problems for yourself.

To be specific, you've wasted more energy, added to the pollution problem at the level of the power plant, and added all the expense and environmental damage implied by your demand for lithium and REM mining.

You've also greatly increased the likelihood that you and other truly innocent people are going to die in a fiery blaze of glory, because the voltage produced by these electric cars when they are the least bit damaged can fry a bull moose at 500 yards.

As Emily Latella used to say, "Never mind...."

And the CEO's at Ford and GM and Toyota go along with this nonsense, not because they are stupid, not because they can't think, not because they don't know better ---- but because it is "politically correct", which apparently means that we've all been worn down to the intellectual and emotional equivalent of the most backward five year-old in town.

Back to the question --- how did these morons get all these god-like powers to dictate to everyone else?

Because "everyone else" wanted to avoid the job of self-governance, they handed that responsibility over to people who can't think.

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See this article and over 3300 others on Anna's website here: www.annavonreitz.com

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