What's The Matter With Kansas (Greensburg Edition) . . .

. . . watched the Greensburg 'Special Presentation' on Discovery (as part of a cross promotion with sister channel Planet Green).

This program is pure propaganda, as is Planet Green. It's a rebranding of Discovery Home as an all green all the time channel, and I guess future episodes will be carried over there instead of on the main Discovery Channel.

The hour focused mainly on the F5 tornado, outlining the complete devastation of this small town (pop around 1500). After detailing those events, they move on to show that some folks will leave, but many will stay, and it shows that the town's political leadership seem to have all latched onto the idea of making Greensburg green.

They show a bit of what appears to be a town hall meeting or planning commission meeting (not sure which), and the business people seem to be stymied in being allowed to rebuild because plans haven't been finalized (I'm guessing it's set up for a later sequence of those same people marvelling at the wonderfulness of the outcome after the collective decision to go green had been made, but that transformation will be left for a later chapter).

Seems like letting the people rebuild in an ad hoc basis, without regards to whether or not they choose to do so in the 'greenest' manner possible would make more sense, but for the people making this documentary, and for the town's political leadership, collective action where they get to make the decisions for everyone else is so much sexier.

Towards the end, this douchebag, makes some ridiculous speech about America having lost its way, and how 'greening' Greensburg will be a sentry and signal to the rest of Kansas, the rest of the United States, and the rest of the World that we are living in a new Green Age where all will bow to the twin gods of Small Carbon Footprint and Sustainability (OK, maybe he didn't say all that verbatim, but Mr. Picard pretty much said all that without exactly saying that). All you really need to know about this douchebag, other than that he's obviously a douchebag the minute you hear him speak more than two sentences, is that he's (according to his own webpage) "one of the preeminent environmental consultants in North America" , and he's "a founding member of the U.S. Green Building Council" , and he "is represented by the Creative Arts Agency (seriously, this douchebag 'environmental consultant' is represented by agents, and not just any agents, but THE agency better known as THE DEATH STAR) in Los Angeles and serves as their in-house Sustainability Expert."

My tolerance for this stuff was exceeded by this single episode. Unfortunately I won't be watching the rest of this to see how it turns out. But I think I can guess where this is headed in the remaining 12 episodes. A few bad people resist the wonderful transformation, but the wonderful transformation continues apace, and Greensburg is rebuilt better, and greener than ever, and thanks to douchebags like John Picard, they'll implement all sorts of wonderful projects of dubious merit but great symbolic value and will trade in all their awful pick-up trucks and SUVs for shiny new Priuses cause we only have one planet, and we're all in this together, and only we can be the change we desire, and only insipid slogans have meaning, and if Leonard DiCaprio is on board it must be the right thing to do, and America can be great again, but only if Americans agree to use less resources and behave more like Europeans.