Once you were strong: Click for the holy spastic.
Scientist and author
David Robert Grimes↱, via
Scientific American:
Climate change confounds a central tenet of libertarian free-market views. Accepting the reality of human-mediated climate change means mitigating action should logically follow. But as free-market beliefs typically entail strong distrust of government or market regulation, climate change poses an ideological challenge. This leaves people with two distinct options: One might carefully reevaluate the boundaries of one's convictions to incorporate new information and refine their philosophy; this intellectually admirable approach is difficult and cognitively expensive work. Or there is a darker, easier alternative—simply reject the problem, and retreat into naked negation by ignoring evidence and seeking to stymy those pointing out the urgency of the issue.
Such attempts to undermine scientific consensus to preserve belief are what psychologist Leon Festinger called motivated reasoning. As information becomes distorted through a prism of belief, it is reinterpreted to reaffirm existing values, and jettisoned if it contradicts dogma. Under the schema of motivated reasoning, even the weakest information propping up a belief becomes amplified, while strong disconfirming evidence is dismissed. To quote Paul Simon, "All lies and jest / Still the man hears what he wants to hear / And disregards the rest." On platforms like X (formerly Twitter), hashtags like #ClimateScam pour vicious invective on climate scientists, accusing them of global conspiracy. Such paranoia skirts the fact that such a hypothetical conspiracy would be virtually impossible to maintain, and speaks to desperate attempts to cling to ideology in the face of intrusive reality.
There are other factors at play, beyond loathing of regulation, with men disproportionately in the ranks of denialists. More than this, society has become increasingly politically polarized. While Donald Trump (himself a climate denier) was not present at the debate, his shadow loomed large. As U.S. political polarization widens, Trump's legacy has thoroughly cast acceptance of climate science into a left-wing position, a form of "wokeism" to be scorned. Denial has been co-opted too by contrarian figureheads, extolled by hucksters whose entire schtick is to define themselves entirely in opposition to the mainstream. Little wonder that exemplars of this genre like Joe Rogan, Russell Brand and Jordan Peterson amplify denialism to huge audiences. Inevitably, climate change denial has been grasped at by the same conspiracy theorists who denied COVID, priding themselves as rejecting "official" narratives. Such unholy alliances of disinformation purveyors reduce our ability to take corrective action.
To combat ideology's stranglehold on people's thinking, we must condemn performances like the Republican debate's climate cattle call for what they are: reckless and self-serving displays of ideology rejecting reality.
This is a reality of American politics, and at some point it becomes important to recognize the contiguity within the range. Someone
recently↗ wondered, "Why worry about Trump when we have James Webb out there?" and Grimes pretty much describes the answer. For instance, if other parts of American political discussion considers racism, misogyny, Christian nationalism, and othe iterations of supremacism, it is easy to think of them as other sorts of issues. But there is contiguity; the antiscientific spectrum so easily overlaps with other antihistorical narratives in large part because it is so easy, in a range of religion, superstition, and neurotically convenient projection, for diverse fantasies to find common cause by their shared identity
against something; the larger attribute is an underlying
antisociality.
It's one thing, for instance, if we coniser Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in relation to the magagaga, but we should also remember U.S. Sen. Rick Scott, formerly governor of Florida. It's basic politics, of couse, to point out that Floridians elected the guy who got away with massive Medicare fraud, but his administration was also notorious for suppressing state scientists in re environmental issues. The ongoing DeSantis culture war against science and education is inextricably bound to the culture war against history, women, nonwhites, homosexuals, transgender, and parts of speech.
The melodramatic description is that reality does not agree with their fancy, so they now reject the underlying social contract, "define themselves entirely in opposition to the mainstream". More subtle ways of putting it simply use more words to reduce the average impact per word, but the nearly dualistic pretense is entirely the produce of such identifications against what does not suit their fancy.
Vis à vis the GOP 2024 presidential nomination, the Republican prospect actually looks dangerous to American society and the human endeavor.
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Notes:
Grimes, David Robert. "Republican Presidential Candidates Vow to Fiddle as Earth Burns". Scientific American. 1 September 2023. ScientificAmerican.com. 6 September 2023. https://bit.ly/45CuX2Q
but whoa, Michael Cohen, goes smackdown.
