Beltane New (Healing) Moon
“People “should not be forced to live on property with brown lawns, golf on brown courses or apologize for wanting their gardens to be beautiful,” Yuhas fumed recently on social media.”
“Drought or no drought, Steve Yuhas resents the idea that it is somehow shameful to be a water hog. If you can pay for it, he argues, you should get your water.” Washington Post, 6/13/2015
New hashtags #watershaming, #droughtshaming underscore an intensely personal political divide now being made clear in California. As water recedes, civility is among the drought’s unintended consequences. Steve Yuhas, quoted above, has given voice to what many undoubtedly feel. I have the money to do what I want.
That at least some of the wealthy feel this way should come as no surprise. This is a key difference between those on the right and those on the left. The left believes we are all in this together; the right believes personal accomplishment trumps communal responsibility. To be fair, Yuhas includes in his complaint the fact that he pays high property taxes on his Rancho Santa Fe home. And, he probably does.
Yuhas only states what American culture itself implies. If you can afford it, you can buy it. That can has become should be able to under any circumstances is a logical extension of this idea. No one likes restrictions. I get that. But how many parents have used these words, often in frustration, “You have to learn to share.”
There will always be the 1%’ers who feel as Yuhas does. They are both a historical and current reality. In the ancien regime in France they said the villeins should eat cake. In England they instituted a poll tax under Margaret Thatcher. In Tolstoy’s Russia they worked their serfs like slaves. I don’t personally begrudge them their attitudes; I do begrudge them their sense that they should be able to act on them without consequence.
Perhaps this drought-induced rant will lay clear the difference between right and left. The right want to do what they want to do. Let’s call that toddler politics. The left wants to share the results of our common labors. Let’s call that “You have to learn to share.” politics. Which one makes more sense for a nation?
