America's dish detergent wars

[ensho]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/oct/13/phosphate-ban-dishwash-detergent


The fuss over phosphate bans provides an object lesson in the paranoid politics of the Tea Party's anti-liberal backlash



Political observers trying to understand the conservative backlash movement in America known as the Tea Party certainly have their work cut out for them. It's a movement primarily composed of Medicare recipients who object to "government-run healthcare". Its leaders claim they're more libertarian in orientation, and yet they routinely back some of the most anti-choice politicians ever to run for such major office. One of their key leaders likes to compare himself to Martin Luther King Jr, but the issues that most reliably get Tea Partiers to hit the streets are reliably racialised to exploit their prejudiced paranoia. They are full of contradictions, often making – and then running from – position statements, and seem to be more about just being angry than listing specific grievances.

But as a long-time conservative-watcher, I think the best way to understand where reactionaries are coming from is to look at some of the smaller issues that get them all riled up. Take, for instance, the long-standing fight over phosphates in dish detergent. The parameters of this debate provide an excellent insight into the Tea Partiers, what motivates them, and why they're so paranoid.

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But for many, any price paid to keep the environment clean is too high. As soon as Spokane County in Washington banned phosphate dish detergent in response to oxygen depletion in its rivers and lakes, many residents rebelled by actually driving to Idaho to purchase the same kinds of dish detergent they'd been using before.

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Rightwing bloggers gleefully seized on this story of dish detergent smuggling, gloating that Washington residents were sticking it to the environmentalists by using more gas to buy detergent and using more water to wash dishes. Of course, the ugly reality is that wastefulness has a larger impact than upsetting environmentalists – it means fewer resources for the future and a dirtier environment, of course – but the sheer glee of potentially inflicting stress on demonised environmentalists was enough to distract from these facts. Erick Erickson of Red State, alarmed by the possibility that a wine glass might have a spot on it that some red-blooded American would have to wipe off with a towel, said, "At what point do they get off the couch, march down to their state legislator's house, pull him outside, and beat him to a bloody pulp for being an idiot?"

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sigh

[eleny]

1. It's like a two year old's mentality with foot stamping and shouting, "No!"

[starroute]

2. It's more like a zero-sum "if you lose, I must have won" thing

What these idiots don't realize is that it doesn't work that way. Not only are there such things as win-win outcomes, there are also lose-lose outcomes. And by spiting the "liberals," they're also screwing themselves.

[Odin2005]

3. They are social dominators, they can only think in "win-lose" terms.

[marybourg]

4. The dishes look terrible and half have to be re-washed by hand

but "LemiShine" seems to be the answer.

[4lbs]

5. Gee, I wash all my dishes by hand, using Kirkland brand (CostCo) dishwashing liquid.

It's $6.99 for a large 135 oz container that says "Environmentally Friendly liquid dish soap".

Safe for septic systems, with biodegradable agents. Contains no phosphates.

Even the plastic container is recyclable.

[MineralMan]

6. I use the same for hand dishwashing. It works just great, is

inexpensive, and environmentally sound. It's not bad at getting grease off my hands, either. For our rollaway dishwasher, though, I use a different product. Can't remember the name, offhand. I buy it at Costco, too. A big bin for about the price of two of the small bags of the same stuff.