Liberal climate change denial - like a virus

Guy is, sadly, absolutely right about this.  I have added my own reflections below.

Remember When James Hansen was a Legitimate Scientist?

I have some friends that I have known for at least 25 years. During that time we have largely made common ground about neo-liberalism and various (usually) Tory governments and the harm they have wreaked.

We would get together, perhaps twice a year over coffee and brunch. In recent years I would try to share what I knew about the oncoming abrupt climate change train wreck. I can’t quite express it but the group would heave a collective sigh of relief and change the subject of conversation onto some “safe” subject (far from the robust conversations of previous years).

Then along came the 2016 US (and concurrent NZ) election and the Donald J. Trump presidency and the subsequent Russiagate insanity (along with everything that came, and comes along with it).

I have always had a rather singular (and semi-Tolstoyan) view of Trump. It has almost seemed that he was 'heaven-sent' (NOT “Kremlin-sent) to bring about the collapse of the American empire and America, so insane is everything in the American polity.

“If Trump didn’t exist someone would have had to invent him”

The person who comes closest to expressing this insanity (more so than even the angry words of Paul Craig Roberts) is James Howard Kunstler whose columns I enjoy reading.

But this is too complicated for those that get their “information” from the NZ media, BBC with the occasional “daring” dive into al-Jazeera.

My view means I am SUPPORTING the yellow-haired one.

In the liberal mindset if you point out FACTS that are demonstrably correct (such as, Trump originally wanted detente with Russia (which is a sensible thing unless you are certifiably insane) or there is an ongoing coup against Trump who, unless you buy into the Russiagate insanity, was (whether you like it or not) fairly elected in a country that has probably not had a free and fair election without fraud since at least the year 2000.

Somehow in the liberal viewpoint a piece of what Chomsky calls “institutional analysis”, something that is eminently provable and even objective is misread as support for the thing they fear most.

Getting back to our friends, I should have read the signs. Every bit of news would be met by one with a furrowing of the eyes, “that is terrible” or (increasingly rarely) “that is good”.

I am highly irritated by this extreme binary thinking in the political and geopolitical arena.

I endeavour to stay with the WHAT IS rather than WHAT SHOULD BE - that much I have got from Jiddu Krishnamurti.

Those erstwhile “reasonable” and broad-minded people are being rendered insane by their attachment to binary thinking “WHAT SHOULD BE”

Their “WHAT SHOULD BE” is being shattered with every day, with every headline.

The only way to avoiding this is to take refuge in the daily tosh that is thrown up by RNZ and the likes.

There are two possible responses - either retreat into anger against those who upset comfortable beliefs.or retreat into complete delusion.

Personally, I think people have the right to be as deluded as they like and hold whatever views they like so long as they don’t try and fob that onto me, especially if they have no evidence apart from what is going on in their head and most especially if they are aggressively trying to persuade me of their delusions.

I have something concrete in mind.  If it did not bother me so much I would not mention it. But I have to speak my mind and this is my forum for doing so.

I went to a meeting last weekend with our friends full of trepidation of what might occur, even to the extent of bringing my own car keys in the case of needing to make a quick getaway.

This arose from the other friend, (Jim I will call him) without provocation accused me of “colluding” with the Right Ring and almost walked out of the meeting in a cafe.

This was,I have to point out BEFORE the events of the March 15 shooting in Christchurch and the whole new government agenda.

So, having resolved to restrict my conversation to “safe” topics I ended up with Bob (not his real name) one-on-one in an adjoining dining room and the conversation seemed quite OK so I felt quite safe.

A small alarm bell went off in the middle of all of this when I heard “Putin is a fascist” (I certainly was not going to ask for clarification!).

Quite suddenly (or so it seems to me) the conversation took a slightly strange turn. I was now being told that a lot of things were happening in the world ( back-handed confirmation of what I had being talking about, about abrupt climate change, economic collapse etc.)

I was suddenly being told that NONE of this mattered (sic) and it did not matter what happened to humanity. I was being told that the ONLY thing that mattered was EMOTION and that the problem was “emotional dysfunctron”

And then, suddenly this all switched to the “emotional dysfunction” of Trump and how Putin was a “fascist”. At the base of this, it seems, was Putin’s objective assessment that liberalism in the West had failed.

I did not try to argue other than asking if he had read the interview or listened to Putin in his own words. No, came the response because he KNEW. 

The accusation was the “proof”

I just said I thought it was a good idea to listen to the original source. 

I also said that I really did not want to have this conversation and sat for several minutes while this turned into a threatening (for me) HARANGUE.

The more I retreated into silence wondering where I could hide the more aggressive it became.

Finally,I made the excuse of needing a glass of water and fled to the kitchen where the others were.

And I would not return until there were others in the room.

***

To me his indicates a kind of “virus” that is affecting previously decent people who were tolerant and reasonable who might have in the past have said “I disagree with you but I will defend your right to say it.. That is behind us.

This is what happens to people who have bought into some sort of ideal image of what they would like to see that has more in common with what is happening in their own heads than anything else.

When the ideal world they have created in their own heads has collapsed  the “liberal” veneer of tolerance evaporates and they are overtaken by a kind of insanity.

There is a relatively small.number of people (and for some reason Stephen Cohen comes to mind) who are neither Right nor Left but simply objective observes but have been preposterously identified by the liberal “Left” as Kremlin agents and the like.

They are identified by the very people who are full of anger and hatred as “purveyors of hate speech”.

This has reached its most preposterous and illogical conclusion with Facebook's new “community standards” where they have modified their standards on “threats on people’s lives” to say it is intolerable so long as they’re directed against “dangerous” individuals or organisations, or someone accused (but not convicted) of a crime.

As if to underline all this I have become privy to a story about how one person betrayed the openness of one person's feeling about climate change just to defend their own inner world they have created for themselves.

Unfortunately, we are going to see more and more of this and it is going to get very ugly for those of us that uphold the truth as we see it.