Not Cool: The Hipster Elite and Their War on You (17 page)

Yes, pure poetry. A few minutes later, he wrote back:

I hate to break it to Gonja, but “most of the kids” did not die from flu shots, but from flus and other illness that targeted a public increasingly spooked by vaccinations. This sentiment is driven by celebrity-caused hysteria and a need for shallow nitwits to appear cool. If you remember, Jim Carrey was one of the most hysterical advocates of ditching vaccines, if only to impress his then-girlfriend, fellow anti-vaccine nutbag Jenny McCarthy. I don’t believe it’s a coincidence that as his film career waned, his political advocacy blossomed. He replaced one sort of trash with another. But at least his films never killed anyone. If you don’t include “death by boredom.”

The truth? The cool kills children. This item appeared on the website of WFTV in Orlando, Florida, in April 2013:

Maybe raising awareness isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Is there a vaccine against stupid celebrities?

I’ve covered the vaccine mess elsewhere, and repeatedly—so enough. Instead, I want to focus on the one phrase that stuck with me from Gonjasufi: “I believe in the power of raw food and sunlight.”

All that matters in the world is to believe. Never mind evidence or facts; as long as you believe, then you’re admired for your passion. And in a modern world where every greenie, leftist, or prog embraces their iPads and iPods, as well as the organic food trucked in by, um, trucks—to Whole Foods—they still “believe” that man-made stuff is bad. They condemn anything with a human fingerprint on it—but only if it’s a product they don’t use. It’s why you can hate Alcoa but not Apple.

And it’s also really easy to be a hypocrite, if your actual lifestyle isn’t monitored 24/7. You can prattle on all you want about carbon emissions at a restaurant because no one will see you desperately hailing a cab on the way home. No walking for you, Captain Caring. It’s just too cold, and you need to get home to shove a candle in your ear.

Remember, for the cool, even stuff like “natural” disasters is far from natural. Hurricanes, after all, are the product of global warming, caused by man and his insatiable lust for SUVs (but not private jets). If we all lived a simpler life, the earth would reward us with flood-free lives. Never mind that these disasters have been part of the world since the world began—what’s uncool is how we’ve exacerbated them. Crap, a CNN talking head even wondered if the allegedly sudden appearance of asteroids in 2013 was the fault of global warming. I really don’t blame her. She’s so used to hearing from her guests that man is the cause of everything bad in the world, she probably blames her ratings on global warming. But really, consider
that
logic. Blaming auto emissions for asteroids is the modern equivalent of a rain dance. I fear
human sacrifice may be next. It better be organized by Nielsen ratings.

This nonsense is so backward and illogical that it’s positively childlike. Celebrities can argue against man-made stuff with their mouths, yet how often are their mouths the beneficiary of man’s heightened abilities to affect nature? Plastic bags: evil. Plastic surgery: good. Have you seen Daryl Hannah’s face lately? Neither has she, apparently. To me it’s about as natural as the international space station. I don’t think vegan Pam Anderson’s implants were grown in an organic vegetable garden. If man-made things are so harmful, Meg Ryan’s lips alone must be responsible for at least ten dead polar bears.

Things from earth: cool. Things from man: uncool. And if you happen to work for a business that violates that mantra, you’re part of the problem. You are evil. If you want to be cool in any modern setting, it is heartily encouraged to denigrate these things: cars, oil, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, clinical trials, food production, fracking, irradiation, pasteurization, profits, e-cigs, freeways, factories. That’s off the top of my head (another target of denigration). Meanwhile, you can bet the person gaining cool cred from bemoaning any of the above is shopping at Whole Foods, the feel-good mecca for organauts. But without most of the stuff I just listed above, Whole Foods would not exist. That organic food didn’t arrive on the store shelves via an incredibly disciplined group of storks. I’ve seen the semis out in front and they don’t harness the power of yoga and haikus.

The polar opposite of organic foods, in the mind of the cool, is genetically modified foods. I blame the media for encouraging the hysterics. Not an article is published about these foods without reference to the overused phrase “Frankenfoods.” But that word says more about the laziness of reporters who lack experience
in the realm of science than it does about any flaws in the science. GM foods represent the most uncool of things to people pushing the “natural” lifestyle: man infecting natural foods with something evil, something impure and unnatural. It’s like giving a cantaloupe an STD (which is entirely possible, I’ve come to find). Better heads than mine have elaborated on it, but without GM foods, many people would die. I know that’s uncool to say, but it’s true: Genetic modification helps feed people who would otherwise starve. Drought-resistant wheat wasn’t made by angry ponytails in a teachers’ lounge. It was created by thoughtful scientists to feed earth’s expanding numbers. GM crops might in fact save Africa, if the anti-progress assholes would just get out of the way.

I always laugh at how something deemed cool in one culture is deadly in another. Take Gonjasufi’s love for raw food. Think about what raw food is. It’s what cavemen ate. Look how that turned out. They died. It’s what countries, right now, on the present-day earth, must suffer through because they lack the technology and farming know-how to eat safely. Raw food is what you eat as a last resort. And what’s more natural than salmonella and E. coli infections? Oh yeah, death.

It reminds me of those folks who condemn coal. Do they have any idea what’s being burned—out of desperation—in other countries? Do they realize how many people die from the crap they burn to keep warm and how coal would save their lives? As Bjørn Lomborg (no, he never won Wimbledon) pointed out in the
Wall Street Journal
:

And that’s just in Detroit.

But who needs to hear that really, when you can rail against climate change and coal in a heated hot tub in Breckenridge? Lomborg also points out:

So, two million people die from lack of safe fuels to provide the most important need (warmth). But instead, our politicians, activists, and celebrities would rather focus on something that may or may not contribute to a five-figure death count. How come?

Again, the argument against coal is an argument against man-made machines (even though coal is made by earth) and, of course, America. Coal is America. You are cooler and braver to blame America. Imagine if you actually pointed out that in a world where only the warm survive, coal beats everything, hands down. Shit, people are actually burning shit to survive. If dung actually were an effective fuel, MSNBC could heat the entire solar system.

Remember unpasteurized Odwalla? You can’t miss their cute little bottles of organic juices at your local deli or grocery. Crap, sometimes my wife will even buy one (which I instantly hide
behind the rum). In 1996, the hippie-dippie company was held criminally responsible for poisoning—yes poisoning—a couple of dozen people, and killing a kid, with its apple juice. See, the juice wasn’t pasteurized and therefore carried the pathogen E. coli O157:H7. That’s a fancy name for a poison that destroys the cells in your intestine. It can cause diarrhea, but it can also kill you. In my mind, that’s kind of uncool. The juice wasn’t pasteurized so it would be seen as “pure.” And pure is cool. Deadly cool. Thankfully, Odwalla learned its lesson and embraced the evil technology that is pasteurization. That’s good. My wife loves the stuff, and I’d like to have her around (for a while).

Still, despite its dangers, the raw movement exists, for no other reason than it helps define the individual practicing it. Now, I’m not talking about apples and oranges, which I think most people think of when you talk about raw foods. I’m talking about idiots who think drinking unpasteurized milk makes you a better person, even if the FDA implores you not to. Maybe we should simply look at it as thinning the herd. The more people who drink raw milk, the fewer people there will be who drink raw milk. And that’s got to be good for conservative candidates in an election year.

Cool folks are consumed by the idea of purity. “Are there any additives in that free-range cupcake?” “There are no pesticides involved in the making of my hemp doughnut.” “Sorry, can’t eat these strawberries—whoever transported them was probably listening to Rush Limbaugh in his truck.” Purity is a big thing with the coolerati. But, like cool, it exists separate from the notions of good and evil. Pure sugar is delicious. What about pure cocaine? How about pure horseshit? Yep, it’s 100 percent pure, but it’s still horseshit.

And as with horseshit, if you use it to define your course of existence, you will die. Or you will kill others. Pure lead will kill
you (it’s called a bullet). Speaking of which, the EPA wants to ban lead bullets, deeming them an environmental toxin. Perhaps we can make ammunition out of tofu? The Taliban would love that!

Incidentally, if you really think organic means pure, then you’re in for a helluva heartbreak. Organic farms do use pesticides and, as reported by Brian Palmer in Slate, organic wine needs eighty times more fertilizer than conventional vino. Worse, as the Consumers Union reported back in April 1998, one-quarter of organic food eaten in America was tainted with pesticides. That’s a long time ago but my guess is, whatever was contaminated was probably better for you than anything else. I’m thinking, in this case, it’s probably a good thing when the rules of organic food prep are violated. Some people would not be reading this sentence now if fifteen years ago pesticides weren’t being used on the sly. They’d be compost.

Because organic farmers don’t use conventional methods, the only way they can produce and keep up with nonorganic is to increase their acreage. More space, I thought, was a bad thing! Aren’t we running out of room, people? And let’s not forget, increasing acreage for organic farming only leads to the death of more little disease-carrying critters like mice, voles, and life coaches. But as long as everything’s pure, then everything is cool. And when everything is cool, everything is permissible!

It’s not just about food. It’s also about where the food goes. Because what’s the point of eating pure food if you, yourself, are impure?

And that really is the danger of accepting an ideology that transcends the basic belief in right and wrong. Sure, you can be pure—and still be rotten to the core. In that sense, there are no additives. You’re perfect. A 100 percent organic jackass! But a cool one!

If there had to be a mascot for the cool environmentalist, it’s got to be the mosquito, the purveyor of a poison called malaria. That’s because, in an effort to be cool, they willfully ignore science, and data that could save millions of lives all over the world, including many poor people sweating profusely in Sub-Saharan Africa who are swatting at drones far deadlier than the ones flying over Pakistan.

There’s nothing cooler than putting the planet before people. The problem with this kind of coolness is that it’s wrong and often deadly. How many have died because it became cool to demonize DDT? Millions of lives were saved by that evil chemical, which killed malaria-carrying mosquitoes before the cool demonized it.

No one can escape the cool’s pressure to bend you to their will. They invade your hotel room, with thoughtful little placards placed on your bedside table, guilting you into participating in their thoughtful green program by using a soggy towel. They pretend it’s for the sake of the Earth. But it’s really about
saving on Tide. It’s why I now sleep only in youth hostels under the pseudonym “Lou Dobbs.”

But there’s nothing cooler than an environmental trend—and proof of its coolness is its ability to transcend death. Meaning, even if the trend ends in loss of human life, it’s A-OK, because it’s for the deadly “greater good.” A small but significant example is the ban of plastic shopping bags, to be replaced by the reusable type, which took place in San Francisco in 2012. These bags were banned for a couple of reasons: One, they make life hard for seagulls (scientifically described as “filthy, gruesome flying rats that shit on your head”—an appellation occasionally hurled at me). And they’re a petroleum-based product (as you know, there’s nothing more uncool than oil, even under the guise of another helpful product). But what the Bay Area found out, soon enough, is that what’s helpful to the birds is none too kind to nonbirds. Specifically, the human beings who get crapped on by said birds. According to researchers at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, the sacks often end up containing potentially deadly bacteria that have killed people. According to their research: “the San Francisco County ban is associated with a 46 percent increase in deaths from food-borne illnesses. This implies an increase of 5.5 annual deaths for the county.” And as I think you’ll agree, even an implied death can really suck.