Musings: Grand Delusions

It's always fascinating — and often downright funny — to observe delusional thinking.

Like this excerpt from the draft mission statement for KKCR, the supposed “community” radio station on Kauai:

We provide a forum for overlooked, suppressed, or under-represented voices.

We broadcast news, opinion and civic affairs that foster our community’s capacity to think independently, skillfully, and critically.

Mmm, since when does an echo chamber filled with all the same old voices and group speak foster independent, skillful or critical thinking? Yet these guys honestly think they are presenting a balanced view of the world and giving voice to the “voiceless.”

This is followed in the minutes by Mickey Sussman, president of the station's Community Advisory Board:

Mickey says that we have a different world than from when the last [mission] statement was made. Our island is under attack (poisons and policies) and we need to talk about it.

Yup. There's that echo I was talking about. Though Mickey might find some people have a very different idea about who and what is poisoning the island — if he actually stepped outside the chamber, that is.

Then there was the woman whose family bought a house in Wainiha six years ago because she thought the double bridges — now slated for replacement — would keep big trucks, and thus “McMansions” out of her neighborhood. “We moved here for the solitude,” Christina Presley tells The Garden Island.

Presley obviously has no clue what has already gone down on "her" side of the bridge, where so many of the small houses that formerly served as affordable long-term rentals have been slicked up and greatly expanded — often in violation of federal flood laws — to serve the high-end vacation rental market.  Nope, not even the bridges could stop that lucrative action — they just made more trips with smaller trucks — or the growing hordes of tourists. But watch, they'll be the first ones to scream about lack of services if there's a disaster.

Then there was the Center for Food Safety's Ashley Lukens — yes, her again — bitching about the inadequacies of the “Good Neighbor” program, in which the big ag companies agree to voluntarily disclose restricted pesticide use and impose 100-foot buffers. It started on Kauai and is about to go statewide. But Ashley tells Civil Beat:

Time and time again we’ve seen that voluntary measures don’t capture bad actors so a voluntary program isn’t going to be adequate by itself, but information is absolutely a starting point.

Yet on Sept. 30, she was lauding the advent of “a historic Good Neighbor Program on O'ahu!” and taking credit for something that has been in the works between the Dept. of Ag and the seed companies since March:

Kauai Councilman Gary Hooser also weighed in on the call to make disclosure mandatory:

It’s volunteer [sic] so we have no way of knowing how accurate the numbers are unless there’s some government oversight. Without some oversight it’s based on pure trust of the industry. My experience with the industry is that’s not enough.

Yet we are supposed to trust him, even when he repeatedly lies....Like I said, this stuff is humorous.

Which brings me to Baby Hoos — Dylan — who penned this letter to the editor:

To be clear: I do not condone witch hunts of politicians or their supporters on social media or via rabid bloggers, but I do support truth.

Being a victim of such witch hunts as a child of a politician and as a candidate, they leave me with an uncomfortable feeling in my stomach. Especially when being used as tools to manipulate facts.

Meanwhile, his own father is a fount of mistruths and manipulation. And Dylan has been at the forefront of the Kauai anti-GMO movement, which is characterized in large part by its witch hunts on social media. He himself held the infamous “shame” banner at the Lege, trying to cast aspersions on politicians who disagree with his view on biotech.

Dylan concludes with this little gem:

It’s not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game.

Yeah, Dylan, you and your “ends justify the means” comrades tell us all about it.

I'll close with this, posted on Facebook by Kaiulani Kimbrell, whose father, Andrew, runs the Center for Food Safety and helped bring Vandana Shiva to Hawaii so she could spread her poisonous message of fear:

It was posted with this message:

One of my DVD/CD projects [yes, Kaiulani is on the CFS payroll, too] we recently finished just arrived in the mail! Feels good! It's a manifesto for a new food future! Thanks team!

Proving once again that one person's propaganda is another's "manifesto."