{"id":303345,"date":"2019-07-12T06:06:59","date_gmt":"2019-07-11T20:06:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=303345"},"modified":"2019-07-12T06:06:59","modified_gmt":"2019-07-11T20:06:59","slug":"the-definition-of-controversial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/the-definition-of-controversial\/","title":{"rendered":"The definition of controversial"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s only controversial<br \/>\nif someone might be deposed<br \/>\nThe one who might lose power<br \/>\nis the one who is opposed<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s only controversial<br \/>\nwhen the cash cow&#8217;s growing lean<br \/>\nFor money&#8217;s all that matters<br \/>\nall else said is just smoke screen<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s only controversial<br \/>\nwhen the golden goose is sold<br \/>\nFor status quos entrenched for years<br \/>\nwon&#8217;t give up their stronghold<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s only controversial<br \/>\nwhen the truth might be revealed<br \/>\nControl depends on lies<br \/>\nand all the liars&#8217; lips are sealed<\/p>\n<p>So, is it controversial?<br \/>\nSeek the facts behind the memes<br \/>\nThere&#8217;s a battle for supremacy<br \/>\nthat&#8217;s what it really means!<\/p>\n<p>I had a chat yesterday with a documentary producer working on a story about Super Typhoon Yutu for the BBC Earth series (see community query below). He mentioned that, these days, many people in the U.S. are reluctant to say, as I did, that &#8220;the typhoons and storms seem to be getting more frequent and more severe due to global warming&#8221; given the controversy over that topic.<\/p>\n<p>I told him there is no debate. There is no controversy. The so-called debate is all contrived. I once read a quote to the effect that the word &#8220;controversy&#8221; is really a euphemism. It really means someone&#8217;s position of power or source of money is being threatened. Whenever you hear about a &#8220;controversial&#8221; new this or a &#8220;controversial&#8221; new that on the evening news, all you need to do to understand what&#8217;s really going on is ask yourself, &#8220;Whose power is being threatened?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>For example, &#8220;controversial alternative therapies&#8221; threaten the medical establishment&#8217;s and pharmaceutical companies&#8217; financial power. &#8220;Controversial&#8221; meat substitutes threaten the beef council. &#8220;Controversial&#8221; labeling of soybean beverages as soy &#8220;milk&#8221; threaten the dairy industry.<\/p>\n<p>How do we know this is true? Well, people have been using home remedies for centuries. Meat analogs (think &#8220;tofu burger&#8221;) have been around for decades. It only became &#8220;controversial&#8221; when market share of products like BeyondBeef increased and sales of the new product started to threaten the profits of the established order. Then, suddenly, all sorts of &#8220;controversy&#8221; appeared!<\/p>\n<p>Despite what those opposed would have you believe, their opposition has nothing to do with concern over public confusion by labeling. It has nothing to do with the FDA&#8217;s concern for health and safety. (If that were the case, then MSG would have been banned from supermarket shelves decades ago!)<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s purely a battle for market dominance and supremacy.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, and for the record, one of the main reasons that climate change is being contrived to be &#8220;controversial&#8221; is that once you admit that it&#8217;s real, then you are obligated to seek a solution, and the solution\u2014controlling emissions\u2014means cutting back the expansion and profits of industries that contribute to that warming by burning fossil fuels, cutting down rain forests and livestock farming. That&#8217;s the simple reason that certain segments of the population\u2014those who benefit from these industries\u2014oppose the concept. It&#8217;s about a loss of power. (The other subset of society opposed to admitting the truth of climate change are the very religious who believe that they take &#8220;power&#8221; away from God&#8217;s omnipotence to admit that humans are causing climate change.)<\/p>\n<p>So, from now on, listen carefully how that word is used in news broadcasts, and ask the right questions to figure out the truth!<\/p>\n<p>COMMUNITY QUERY: By the way, do you have video of Super Typhoon Yutu? That producer I mentioned needs actual video taken while the storm was in force (Oct. 25, 2018, before 7am), not the aftermath. If you do, please contact me at walt@saipanliving.com\u00a0and I&#8217;ll put you in touch with him. It could help bring a little more global attention to Saipan and our recovery efforts.<\/p>\n<p><em>Walt Goodridge is author of over 24 books and conducts workshops to help others turn their passion into profit. Learn more at\u00a0www.waltgoodridge.com. Walt&#8217;s Friday LIFE RHYme #489. Full archive:\u00a0www.liferhymes.com.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s only controversial if someone might be deposed The one who might lose power is&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3712],"class_list":["post-303345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion","tag-walt-goodridge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303345\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}