A conservative admires a mountain for its view, said Eric Hoffer. A liberal tries to build a house on top of it.
In former times when words had meaning, Humpty Dumpty was banished to Wonderland.
`My name is Alice, but -- '
`It's a stupid name enough!' Humpty Dumpty interrupted impatiently. `What does it mean?'
`must a name mean something?' Alice asked doubtfully.
`Of course it must,' Humpty Dumpty said with a sort laugh: `my name means the shape I am -- and a good handsome shape it is, too. With a name like your, you might be any shape, almost.'
`Why do you sit out here all alone?' said Alice, not wishing to begin an argument.
`Why, because there's nobody with me!' cried Humpty Dumpty. `Did you think I didn't know the answer to that? Ask another.'
Poor Humpty Dumpty was born before his time. Today Humpty Dumpty would be right in the mainstream, making words mean whatever he wants them to mean while denying whatever it is that he wishes not to know.
When the new, new conservatives deny global warming, they have come a long way from the time the royal preserves were protected from the commoners. Whatever these modern Republicans are, they are not conservatives.
Reactionary is the kindest nomenclature for them.
While denialism of the vague and amorphous Democratic "progressives" running in terror from the liberal label, rightly or wrongly, is not omnipresent as it is among the Republican reactionaries, it is all too common.
I have (most negligently) failed to read Michael Specter's surprising (to me) book, Denialism, that skewers the hypocrisy of politics from right to left, the attacks on the book by purported environmentalists favoring policies leading to increased pollution and global warming are evidence enough of the truth of what Specter is claiming.
Michael Specter’s new book ‘Denialism’ misses its targets
...there’s another, even more glaring oversight at work here. In a book devoted to "denialism," and "how irrational thinking hinders scientific progress, harms the planet, and threatens our lives," there is almost no discussion of the most powerful and successful of all the denier cliques: those who insist human-induced climate change is a hoax.
Did you catch that?
The Grist blogger doesn't bother denying lefties propose policies that would increase pollution and global warming but says the other guys are worser because they are more powerful, richer and successful.
...Specter mainly trains his sights on unsuccessful or marginally empowered "deniers," such as those challenging the pharma behemoth or vaccines for children.
Those "marginally empowered 'deniers'" include publication in The Lancet, the most prestigious of all scientific medical journals, support for the kook theory that MMR vaccinations cause autism. Only very recently has The Lancet retracted its endorsement of the hoax after unenumerated multitudes of children suffered death and disability from denial of inoculations that continues to this day in some regions of the world.
The book’s index has no entry for "climate change." The entry for "Global warming" cites just one page—a reference to genetically modified foods as a "solution" to global warming.
Does this mean that Specter thinks Monsanto’s critics—of whom I am one—pose more of threat to humanity than the likes of Sen. James Inhofe...
Again the author doesn't deny that he is of a kind with the like of James Inhofe but whines that he is less successful in harming the environment.
...no need to agree with every science-based report that praises organic ag. But to pretend such papers don’t exist is poor journalism.
Sure is, if true. It would be as dreadful as ignoring The Lancet's endorsement of the kook theory that autism is caused by childhood vaccinations.
It may very well be true that Specter ignored the vast accumulation of scientific research outside the ambit of captive researchers of both Monsanto with its poisonous "mean green" and the organic cult professing fanciful notions that a little more generation of greenhouse gases and real organic pollution is not so bad.
I have posted scientific abstracts and even graphic evidence of what better breeding can do for any who will look:
The enhanced arabidopsis plants on the left continue to grow despite artificial drought conditions while their standard twins on the right are dead.
Dead plants are not terribly productive.
Tom Philpott, blogging in Grist, may think that provides no evidence that GMO's might be more productive but others demur from his extraordinary claims.
We will do science for a greener, more productive world in spite of corporate evildoers and their kooky twins on the left or suffer the consequences.
I don't care if Eric Hoffer thinks liberals want to build mansions on mountains while conservatives want to maintain the view. This green liberal likes mountains and clean water and air. Damn the polluters on the right and left determined to deny science.
Best, Terry