The Impossible Takes a Little Longer

"I always have hope," President Obama said with a grin on Friday.  Actually, the grin was on his face.  And whataya know, the Murdoch empire is crumbling, the NFL is settling, the American women soccer team is in the World Cup finals, the wounded Giants are leading their division--and in the National League Central, the Pittsburgh Pirates are in first place.  In July!  After the All-Star Break!

What's next?  A black President?

Solve the Manufactured Problem, We've Got Real Ones

All that happened in public on Friday regarding the debt ceiling debate was President Obama's press conference.  He continues to hope for the grand deal that will solve the debt and deficit shortfall for the next decade or more, but he seems prepared to accept a deal of about a trillion in cuts along with the debt ceiling rise, still hoping at least for those middle class payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance extensions.  He made a simple but persuasive case that the Eric Cant/John Banal insistence on two and a half trillion in cuts with no new revenue is functionally impossible, and not a serious proposal.  He noted that polls show overwhelming support among "the American People"--using the words that Banal and Cant misuse to justify their loony positions--for a mixed approach of cuts and new revenue.

Here's the USA Today report on the press conference; here's one from Time.  I furnish these as a public service, noting that the twitterized blogs and cable stations offer only opinions, with the slimmest of sound bites, if any.  You still have to go to print publications and their staffs for actual reporting, and you have to pretty much go to C-SPAN or the White House site to see the press conference or read the transcript. 

That's disturbing on a lot of levels.  One of the cable shows led with the headline that President Obama was again portraying himself as the only adult in the room.  I think a half hour spent with the press conference is convincing evidence that he is the only adult in just about any room in Washington:

"Look, we’ve been obsessing over the last couple of weeks about raising the debt ceiling and reducing the debt and deficit. I’ll tell you what the American people are obsessing about right now is that unemployment is still way too high and too many folks’ homes are still underwater, and prices of things that they need, not just that they want, are going up a lot faster than their paychecks are if they’ve got a job.

And so even after we solve this problem we still got a lot of work to do... My point is that those are a whole other set of issues that we need to be talking about and working on. I’ve got an infrastructure bank bill that would start putting construction workers back to work rebuilding our roads and bridges. We should be cooperating on that...

So there will be huge differences between now and November 2012 between the parties, and whoever the Republican nominee is, we’re going to have a big, serious debate about what we believe is the right way to guide America forward and to win the future. And I’m confident that I will win that debate, because I think that we’ve got the better approach. But in the meantime, surely we can, every once in a while, sit down and actually do something that helps the American people right here and right now."

"I am going to keep on working and I’m going to keep on trying. And what I’m going to do is to hope that, in part, this debate has focused the American people’s attention a little bit more and will subject Congress to scrutiny. And I think increasingly the American people are going to say to themselves, you know what, if a party or a politician is constantly taking the position "my way or the high way," constantly being locked into ideologically rigid positions, that we’re going to remember at the polls.

It’s kind of cumulative. The American people aren’t paying attention to the details of every aspect of this negotiation, but I think what the American people are paying attention to is who seems to be trying to get something done, and who seems to be just posturing and trying to score political points. And I think it’s going to be in the interests of everybody who wants to continue to serve in this town to make sure that they are on the right side of that impression.

And that’s, by the way, what I said in the meeting two days ago. I was very blunt. I said the American people do not want to see a bunch of posturing; they don’t want to hear a bunch of sound bites. What they want is for us to solve problems, and we all have to remember that. That’s why we were sent here."

Here's how President Obama ended the press conference:

"But we're running out of time. That's the main concern that I have at this point. We have enough time to do a big deal. I've got reams of paper and printouts and spreadsheets on my desk, and so we know how we can create a package that solves the deficits and debt for a significant period of time. But in order to do that, we got to get started now. And that's why I'm expecting some answers from all the congressional leaders sometime in the next couple of days.

And I have to say this is tough on the Democratic side, too... if you are a progressive, you should be concerned about debt and deficit just as much as if you're a conservative. And the reason is because if the only thing we're talking about over the next year, two years, five years, is debt and deficits, then it's very hard to start talking about how do we make investments in community colleges so that our kids are trained, how do we actually rebuild $2 trillion worth of crumbling infrastructure.

If you care about making investments in our kids and making investments in our infrastructure and making investments in basic research, then you should want our fiscal house in order, so that every time we propose a new initiative somebody doesn’t just throw up their hands and say, "Ah, more big spending, more government."

It would be very helpful for us to be able to say to the American people, our fiscal house is in order. And so now the question is what should we be doing to win the future and make ourselves more competitive and create more jobs, and what aspects of what government is doing are a waste and we should eliminate. And that's the kind of debate that I'd like to have."

The only other development on Friday was the House leadership announcing that there will be a series of symbolic votes next week before any real vote on whatever deal that gets agreed to, an obvious sop to the Rabid Right members.  That deal is being worked out now supposedly, since everyone at the table in those White House meetings has agreed that the country going into default is not an option.

Endgame?

Thursday saw the S&P also threaten to downgrade the national credit rating, a poll showed that Republicans will be blamed for the consequences of not raising the debt ceiling, another poll affirmed again that a majority of Americans want a mixture of cuts and revenue increases, and an overwhelming majority want the rich to pay more; and several Senate GOPers essentially turned on the Eric Cant-led House GOPer freshmen who have inspired and forced this unforced crisis.

Also, in the words of the Boston Globe: "That deadline loomed ever larger yesterday, as China, the US government’s largest foreign creditor, called on US policy makers to take action to protect the interests of investors. Federal Reserve Board chairman Ben Bernanke warned that failure to raise the debt ceiling would amount to “a self-inflicted wound’’ that would cause “a very severe financial shock’’ to the global economy. And Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told lawmakers that they are running out of time".

After another White House session that didn't end in a deal, President Obama said 24 to 36 hours was his time limit.  That seems realistic in view of the imminent threat of a lower credit rating which would instantly result in higher interest rates.

By the dead of night in the capitol of the living dead, news of a "Plan B" rapidly becoming the Plan A deal in the making was being leaked to several journalists.  Here's one such report.   It's a modified version of the McConnell proposal plus some of the Biden group cuts, resulting in some sort of vote to raise the debt ceiling--possibly by the McConnell route of empowering the President to raise it all by himself--accompanied by some cuts ($1.5 trillion over ten years is the number leaked) and a deficit commission.  One version reported has no revenue increases, while another has a few, along with some short-term stimulus: unemployment insurance extensions and continuing a middle class tax cut.

President Obama scheduled a press conference for 11 a.m. eastern on Friday.

The key will be a proposal that gets enough Democrats and Republicans in the House to offset the 80 or so Rabid Right GOPer freshies who have vowed to vote against the debt limit increase no matter what deal is reached.

Maybe we can look forward to Washington pivoting (in Rachel Maddow's words) from this stupid fight to the real economic fight, for jobs.

Manufactured Chaos

Wednesday saw the ratcheting up of pressure on the GOPers to understand the catastrophe they are flirting with in preventing the U.S. from paying its bills.  Wall Street Journal editorials, David Brooks' column, a statement by a Citcorps economist to the effect that asking what happens the day after America defaults is like asking what you're going to do the day after your suicide, all trumped by the Moody's statement that it is considering  downgrading this nation's credit rating.  If that happens, interest rates go up immediately, and experts say only one point will be enough to send the country back into recession, with even higher unemployment.  And there's nothing temporary about it--it's a genie that's very hard to get back in the bottle.

Hyperbole is always a temptation in political battles.  But in this one, it is unnecessary.  This is the Armageddon of ignorance.

Wednesday's other news was of the most openly contentious meeting among the members of Congress and the White House trying to negotiate an agreement that will pass both houses of Congress.  Rep Eric Cant broke protocol and gave his version in a press conference.  We'll see today if anyone believes him.  The most complete journalistic account I've seen so far is from Ben Stein.

The fear expressed by Democrats such as Sen. Sherrod Brown and journalists including Joe Klein is that GOPers, especially in the House, are so fragmented now that they are incapable of getting anything done at all.  Mitch McConnell's proposal, initially embraced by John Banal, has found some favor with Harry Reid, but there are features of it that won't get Democratic support, and that may doom it.  But again, it may be a genie that can't get back in the bottle.  (There's a contrary view, expressed by Jay Newton Small,  that the proposal was only tactical, aimed at getting Eric Cant focused on doing a deal.)

President Obama has ruled out a short-term raising of the debt limit, and most business minds would agree--it just continues the uncertainty that stalls the economy.  He has stood firm on including some revenue as well as cuts.  He has also given this group meeting in the White House until Friday to craft their proposal.

There is undoubtedly more drama to come. But the remaining possibilities: a face-saving (for GOPers) deal that has cuts but includes revenues (but with a middle class tax cut that makes it all revenue neutral); an almost clean bill raising the debt ceiling with some meaningless face-saving (for GOPers) language; or complete stalemate, and at that point, I wouldn't be surprised if the President plays the 14th amendment card.  I think essentially that's what he meant when he said "I'll take it to the American people."  But it's a big gamble. If there's a big noise against it, Moodys and their ilk may still downgrade the credit rating.  It's really uncharted territory, as is this whole manufactured unnecessary mess.

Very Late Night News

The Obama campaign has sent a sneak preview to supporters of its first report on campaign contributions.

More than 550,000 contributors, more than any campaign at this point in history.

98% of contributions were $250 or less, with the average under $70.

The totals: $47 million to Obama for America, the Obama campaign; $38 million to the Democratic National Committee, for a total of $86 million.  

Local Nature Notes

We walked the Trinidad head on the last day of June.  I've never seen the trail so overgrown. Near the top it was almost invisible.  Budget cuts?  Bad timing?

In PA, I was used to goldfinches (as well as cardinals and bluejays) but I haven't seen birds that yellow hereabouts for a long time, if ever.  This spring however we started seeing flashes of yellow darting around in front and back yards.  Now there are a couple of little birds that seem to be checking out the back porch for nesting possibilities.  One bird that seemed almost entirely yellow perched on the clothesline.  It looked almost like a parakeet, but I'm terrible at identifying birds.  Later I spotted either that bird or another with a lot of yellow but a big black band on the back.  Any idea of what these birds (pretty sure there are two) could be?

Late Night Report

There were elections today.  In primaries for the senatorial recall elections in Wisconsin, the Democrats (the real ones--not the patently fake Dems the GOPers put on the ballot as one of several ploys to confuse the electorate) seem all to have won.  The final election will be next month.  It looks as though the Wisconsin Senate will be switching to a Democratic majority by the fall, despite every desperate and totalitarian tactic the GOPers have thrown in the way.

There was a congressional election in California, for the seat of retiring Jane Harman.  At the moment Democrat  Janice Hahn is exceeding expectations, and may well be on her way to a blowout victory. Update: Hahn has won by slightly over 9 points.

So far Mitch McConnell's proposal to essentially raise the debt ceiling without agreed upon budget cuts is being widely viewed as a GOPer surrender and a victory for President Obama.  But it's not really over.  There may be twists and turns still to come. 

Politics of the Moment

Things are happening (and not happening) fast in the debt ceiling drama.  The first major shift came in a CBS new interview, when in answer to a question (a repeated, specific question) President Obama said he could not guarantee that Social Security checks would go out as scheduled on August 3, if the debt ceiling isn't lifted by August 2. 

Though the interview itself will not air until Tuesday evening, this question and answer were released and played often during the day Monday.  It seems to have had an immediate effect on congressional GOPers.

The first effect was to press their "that's what you are, what am I" button, when John Banal blamed President Obama for what GOPers are refusing to do--raise the debt ceiling, as has always been done in the past, including 7 times during the Bush administration.

The second was the other shoe dropping in this GOPer strategy on the fly, when GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell threw up his hands and said no deal was possible because Obama wouldn't agree to GOPer demands, so he made a new proposal, already hotly debated and not always consistently interpreted.  Here's the NY Times interpret.

 It seems to me to be a combination of my resolution #1 (declare victory and go home) and the outcome President Obama predicted months ago: a series of targets for cuts with triggers if the cuts aren't made.  The outcome seems to be to give the President the responsibility while GOPers get to take symbolic votes to show their disapproval.  But it does solve the debt ceiling problem.  However, anger from the Rabid Right was immediate, so even though Grover Norquist supports it (and so quickly that it looks like Mitch checked with him first), it's so far only a new focus for even louder noise.

Now that the public is increasingly understanding what the debt ceiling actually is, and what not raising it might mean, the political floor under the GOPers, pretty illusory to begin with, is starting to cave and at least some of the congressional leadership knows it.  They want to resolve this before even more people hear about the checks not going out (as President Obama also said, it's not just Social Security.)  

This is likely to change hour by hour.  But..the baseball All-Star game starts soon, I haven't actually watched it in years but with several Pirates as well as Giants playing, I'm going to make the late political shows a secondary priority. 

Update: Congratulations NL!  

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"The person who loves the world as his own body may be entrusted with the empire."

Tao Te Ching

Wildflowers Weekend

In the end just about all we've got is music.  So in this nervous weekend, a treat I stumbled upon: from a 2002 Wildflower Festival concert, a version of Eric Andersen's "Thirsty Boots"--his 60s song about civil rights marchers--with a rare U.S. appearance by Andersen together with Judy Collins (she's the host, and in fine voice), with assistance from Arlo Guthrie and Tom Rush.  Enjoy this one, and have a nourishing weekend.

American Exceptionalism?

Among the many wrong directions this country is going is the continuing sense in some quarters that the United States is its own planet, unrelated to the rest of the unenlightened world.  In Texas, the power mad governor with the connivance of the Supreme Court of Shame executed a foreign citizen (a Mexican, so maybe that doesn't count) without the opportunity to seek help from his own government since his arrest, in violation of international agreements that in turn protects Americans charged with crimes on foreign soil.  It opens the wounds of torture under Bush that also violated international law.

America is exceptional in many ways, but not all of those ways are good.  For example, in the civilized world the United States has the biggest gap between the rich few and the non-rich many and the highest percentage of men in prison.  It is virtually alone in not providing guaranteed health care, and in all states but one, permitting concealed guns in public.  These are not unrelated.

It is among the world's top polluters and propagators of greenhouse gases, and virtually alone in not seriously acknowledging the climate crisis.   How backward we are is made painfully obvious by the action of Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard in announcing a greenhouse gas pollution tax.  Most European nations have one.

Yet in these trying days in America, reactionary voices are louder than ever, taken more seriously, and seem more powerful than ever.  They want to make America even more exceptional--a conservative Christian xenophobic and racist nation, the world capital of denial, run by stupid slogans that would end up comitting national economic and social suicide, while bringing down environmental wrath on the world far beyond our exceptional shores. 

It is a pivotal moment, and the hope is that this is the last hurrah of a dying self-righteous barbarism.  Josh Marshall opines:

  " I think we will look back at this moment as the chaotic time that the old order turned to the new. In my opinion, we are seeing the remants of the soon-to-be old power structure see their grip on power slip with the predictable response of ever greater efforts to hold power through cohesion, projections of power, and inflexibility. I would change the term pollsters use here from enthusiasm to desperation or fear. The end is coming. The demographics are clear. Majority minority is marching closer every day. Their team is the long-term loser, the horse and buggy to the Model T. We are now in the Battle of the Bulge phase of this transition. I don't think the transition will be smooth nor do I think that Democrats can't lose elections, but the behavior seems to fit to me. Democrats will compromise because the future is theirs while Republicans have to hold on to every vestige of their order remaining as though their lives depend on it...because it does. Tomorrow is not bright for them."

Emerson for the Day

"It is vain to dream of a wildness distant from ourselves."

Thoreau

Focus

Following up on yesterday's posts, a couple of quotes from President Obama's press conference last week.
First, on defining what raising the debt limit actually mean--not making room for future spending, but allowing the U.S. Treasury to pay its bills for past spending:

"These are bills that Congress ran up. The money has been spent. The obligations have been made. So this isn’t a situation -- I think the American people have to understand this -- this is not a situation where Congress is going to say, okay, we won’t -- we won’t buy this car or we won’t take this vacation. They took the vacation. They bought the car. And now they’re saying maybe we don’t have to pay, or we don’t have to pay as fast as we said we were going to, or -- that’s not how responsible families act. And we’re the greatest nation on Earth, and we can’t act that way."

He finished the press conference with these words:

You know, every day I get letters from folks all around the country who show incredible resilience, incredible determination, but they are having a very, very tough time. They’re losing their homes. Some have lost their businesses. Some have lost work and have not been able to find jobs for months, maybe a year, maybe a year and a half. And they feel some desperation. And some folks who are working just are having a tough time paying the bills because they haven’t seen their wages or incomes go up in 10 years, and the costs of everything else have gone up.

And every day that weighs on me. Every minute of every day that weighs on me. Because I ran for President precisely to make sure that we righted this ship and we start once again creating a situation where middle-class families and people who aspire to be in the middle class, if they’re working hard, then they’re living a better life.

Now, these structural changes in our economy that have been going on for a decade -- in some cases, longer -- they’re not going to be solved overnight. But we know what to do. We know that if we are educating our kids well, then they’re going to be more competitive. We know that if we are investing in things like infrastructure, it pays off.... We know that we’ve got to get control of our deficit. There are some things that aren’t going to solve all our problems but can make progress right now. And the question is whether or not Democrats and Republicans are willing to put aside the expedience of short-term politics in order to get it done.

And these folks are counting on us. They desperately want to believe that their leadership is thinking about them and not playing games. And I think that if all the leadership here in Washington has the faces and the stories of those families in mind, then we will solve this debt limit issue; we will put in place steps like a payroll tax cut and infrastructure development; we’ll continue to fund education; we’ll hold true to our commitment to our seniors.

These are solvable problems, but it does require us just getting out of the short-term and, frankly, selfish approach that sometimes politics breeds. We’ve got to think a bit long term."

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"Without virtue, happiness cannot be."

Thomas Jefferson
Founding Father (really) and author of the
Declaration of Independence

Fair Warning

Politics and politicians have been so extreme in recent years and especially in recent weeks that it's seemed this is all moving fast to some extreme moment.  That moment could be soon, as Washington has only about two weeks to resolve the debt limit crisis before it takes on a horrible life of its own.

As action that may be swift and strange begins after the holiday in perhaps the decisive act in this drama, it's worth stepping back to get in focus who we are.

It's been the conventional wisdom that as a species we are programmed to be selfish to the extreme, always aggressive and destructive, and ready to react to fear with unbridled and irrational violence.  But for all the considerable evidence that history holds, human societies and human beings--as well as animals and animal societies--have another side.

This was noted in one way in yesterday's New York Times--and intentionally timed to our current situation and debate.  Thirst for Fairness May Have Helped Us Survive  is the headline for the Natalie Angier piece, which offers examples from several cultures to make the point that "Darwinian-minded analysts argue that Homo sapiens have an innate distaste for hierarchical extremes, the legacy of our long nomadic prehistory as tightly knit bands living by veldt-ready team-building rules: the belief in fairness and reciprocity, a capacity for empathy and impulse control, and a willingness to work cooperatively..."

In particular humans have a tendency, reflected in various societies, of a balance in which some may have more than others, but nobody has way more than others.  This is a general rule that contemporary America breaks, with its multimillionaire CEOs at a time of decline for most and hardship for many. It is this sort of American exceptionalism  that GOPers are pushing with such fervor.  And it is the failure to push back on Wall Street excesses, Frank Rich maintains, that has weakened President Obama politically.

Other research supports the notion that innate tendencies towards helpfulness, kindness, fairness and sharing have survival value, for individuals and societies--or even species.  This crisis requires both a sense of reality (of causes that have effects, regardless of which party says so) and a sense of empathy for those who will be most hurt by yet another economic blow.  We don't have to invent these capacities, or virtues.  We need to value them, and bring them to bear.  Right now.

How Sweet It Is

Since it opened in 2001, the main attraction of PNC Park in Pittsburgh has been---PNC Park, voted by ESPN the best major league baseball park in America.  But this year, the home team is playing exciting, winning baseball--and the park is overflowing.  There was another sellout crowd on Monday to watch the Pirates come from behind to beat the Astros.

Pittsburgh is drenched in baseball history and tradition--right down to the most famous homerun-heralding line on the radio broadcast from the 50s, Bob Prince singing "And you can kiss it goodbye!"  I don't know who the latest announcer is, but I caught him using this phrase.  I watched the Pirates teams--at Forbes Field and Three Rivers Stadium--that won three world championships and were perennial division leaders in the 90s, but could never get past the league championship.  When that team, with its Outfield of Dreams (Bonds, Bonilla and Van Slyke) was broken up, the Pirates went on an 18 year hiatus of losing seasons (and "losing season" doesn't mean failing to win a championship--it means losing more games than you win), and set an all-sports record for consecutive futility.

Now near the season's midpoint, this year's team is 3 games above even and a game and a half out of first in their division.  And by all accounts they're playing exciting ball---solid starting pitching, lights-out relievers, good fielding and scratch-hitting and running, with the occasional you can kiss it goodbye.  Plus it's a very young team and so they're excited, too.

Pittsburghers are seizing the moment and filling that park with the cheers it has never known until now.  On the summers I've been back and the Pirates have been in town I've seen a game, but I probably won't get back this summer.  But I can kind of guess what it's like--after all, the SF Giants play in a ball park very much like PNC, and I've been there when that place was rocking.  Baseball doesn't get any better.  (But a fashion note.  On Monday they played with red caps.  Red caps?  That's Phillies stuff. Ditch em, guys.)

Pause Before Chaos

A little pause for backyard barbecues and fireworks before the oncoming chaos.  The Rabid Right has closed down the Minnesota government, forced a budget balanced on the backs of the poor, mentally ill, students and the middle class in California and in other states, while threatening to bring down the American economy for an even Greater Recession and pursuing a reactionary and anti-democratic social and political agenda, all to please a rabid minority and the greed of their corporate masters.

And that's before the real chaos begins--no NFL football.  Not even NBA basketball.

It is also amidst signs of the future that are happening now: the biggest wildfire in New Mexico history, the flood waters lapping at the edge of a Nebraska nuclear power plant, and the realities the media misses or passes over--the ongoing trauma of shattered lives in Joplin and Tuscaloosa, and all the other flooded and burned out communities.  Or the lonely rooms where the elderly may quietly die in a heat wave this weekend.  The places all over the world that are in turmoil because of drought and higher food prices, depleted fishing waters and barren lands: the Climate Crisis future.

So it's worth also pausing in the patriotic holiday to ask where America is.  Because something extreme is happening all around us.  The news from places like Kansas and Wisconsin is just astonishing.  And Washington--where climate crisis denialists hold a convention to celebrate their suicidal notions.  And a nation is held hostage to extremists, despite what polls say about how very unpopular they and their ideas now are.  We should be preparing for the future by recognizing the significance of what is happening now, but we're mired in this reactionary mud.  Somehow it seems the Founding Fathers would see this clearly.

It's a national mind clouded by fear--that denies the future it really suspects is coming but which it refuses to face-- but we can be more specific than that.  This unrecognized fear is being repressed, which makes what explodes out of the unconscious all the more powerful.  In  addition to the personal unconscious and the personal shadow discussed in the recent Climate Inside posts, Jung posited a collective unconscious, which contains a collective shadow.  There sleeps the tendencies that can drive our lives, which Jung called archetypes.  Often we recognize these forces in the form of mythic figures.

I don't know enough psychology or mythology to suggest which archetypes may be possessing these people now, but one figure does come to mind from the Beatles' Yellow Submarine movie.  It's the Vacuum Monster, who simple vacuums up everything it comes upon, until towards the end of the sequence (a six minute section you can see on YouTube here), it consumes the entire world and finally (seeing its own tail move) it consumes itself. 

How It Ends

As GOPer terrorists in Congress continue to hold the world economy hostage with their non-negotiable and utterly absurd demands, there is great uncertainty about the outcome even among the chatterers who are usually way too certain about their opinions.  Despite the consequences, described by former Obama economic advisor Larry Summers when asked why people shouldn't want to see the debt ceiling maintained. "Because they don't want a version of the Lehman Brothers catastrophe for 2008 on steroids. Because they don't want to see the buck broken on money market funds and the ensuing financial panic. Because they don't want to live with the consequences for their purchasing power of a crash in the dollar. Because they don't want to live in a nation that is no longer a nation of law, that meets its obligations. For those reasons and many more, we all have an enormous stake in doing the elementary and the obvious thing and meeting our debt obligations."

So what are the alternatives?  The most obvious ones now seem among the least likely: there's a deal that nobody completely likes but that everybody can live with that attacks long-term deficits without stopping present recovery and the stimulus and tax policy attempts to get the economy moving faster, with special attention to Main Street and middle class jobs.  But nobody sees that coming.

Will it end with the GOPers or Obama completing giving in to the other side's requirements for a deal?  There's some thought--and some fear--that it's more likely that Obama and the Dems will cave, if for no other reason than Obama is the responsible figure in all of this, and the Rabid GOPers are counting on that.  He won't let them blow up the economy.  But on the other hand, the polls are on his side.  There is very strong support in virtually every poll for doing what the Dems require--raising some revenue by ending corporate jet and oil company tax loopholes, etc, and not touching Medicare coverage or Social Security benefits.  Perhaps even more telling, the latest NY Times poll shows that only 8% blame President Obama for the current economy.  Most blame effects of  Bush spending, and Wall Street.  This suggests that the President has a strong hand...if the GOPers are rational, even as politicians, let alone as Americans.

 So far the GOPers are resisting a deal in which they get almost everything they want, which suggests they don't want a deal.  So to me that means:

Resolution #1: Declare Victory and Go Home.  Both sides announce that a long-term deal is impossible now, because the Other Side is wrong and irrational, and Our Side won't compromise our principles.  So we're passing a clean debt ceiling bill, because after all we are responsible Americans and we don't want the economy to tank, and on all the other issues we're going to the voters in 2012.

  This is so far being proposed by exactly nobody but me.  The other possible solution being floated include:

Resolution #2: By a Thousand Cuts.  A set of cuts agreed to results in a temporary raise in the debt ceiling for a few months, when it all starts all over again.  Some folks think this is the best we can expect.

Resolution #3: The Fourteenth Amendment.  This is getting increasing buzz.  The 14th Amendment to the Constitution states: "The validity of the public debt of the United States...shall not be questioned."  Some say it was created for just this kind of situation.  So the solution is that President Obama simply invokes the 14th Amendment, disregards the congressional debt ceiling, and declares that the U.S. will pay its bills as usual.  Constitutional scholars say it could work, and they aren't sure that anyone even has the standing to take the matter to court.

So far the White House is discouraging the idea, and the Dem's designated firebrand of the moment, Senator Chuck Schumer, says it's a good idea but there isn't time to implement it this time around.  But that's the official word.  There's some feeling that the administration (Treasury in particular) would like to have this out there as part of the discussion--to let the GOPers know that the hostages might just escape.

Happy birthday to Martha, Bruce, Grace Ann and all my other natal twins. (And I'm not committing to this being my favorite movie line of all time--that's the original poster's opinion.  But I guess it's close.)

California Greeding

The piggishness of the GOPer rich that's holding the world economy hostage in Washington, and quietly turning the states into corporate empires as well as the nation (thanks to the Supreme Corporate Court) has just had another victory in California.

A Democratic governor and Democratic majority legislature apparently could not overcome GOPer resistance to even holding a referendum in which the state's voters could decide on new taxes to balance the state budget.  No--they couldn't face the danger that they couldn't buy results to their liking, and the wealthy might have to pay a fairer share for the government that provides them infrastructure and support.

Instead, the Democrats passed a budget that places all the burden on the poor and the middle class, through cuts in programs for the poor, severe cuts to the state's once proud university systems, cuts in law enforcement that will make the inner cities more dangerous, the closing of 70 more state parks, and on and on.  The only new revenue will come from regressive fee increases (car registration) and applying state taxes to online purchases.

In other words, it's people like me who will pay.  It will not be the wealthy of this state who have seen their wealth nearly double in the past decade while the incomes of everyone else have gone down.  But now the wealthy are safe from paying anything more, while all of the cuts and all of the revenue increases will affect everybody else.

People of the Lie

"Although I was aware they were illegal, we had become somewhat inured to using some activities that would help us in accomplishing what we thought was a legitimate cause."--Jeb Magruder, testifying about the Nixon White House during Watergate.

 "I didn't like Nixon until Watergate."-- New Right pioneer M. Stanton Evans.

"We ought to see clearly that the end does justify the means."--Evangelist C. Peter Wagner.

"If the method I am using accomplishes the goal I am aiming at, it is for that reason a good method."-- Jerry Falwell, describing his goal to destroy the public schools.


These are statements by some of the founding fathers of today's Rabid Right, quoted by Rick Perlstein in his Mother Jones piece, "Inside the GOP's Fact-Free Nation," with its subtitle: How political lying became normal.

Perlstein begins with examples of past political lies, particularly ones that got the U.S. into wars.  He chronicles the 1970s revulsion against the manifest lying of the Vietnam era, and how GOPers brought lying back but with this new quasi-religious rationale.

Now GOPer politicians lie as a matter of course, up to and including the various Big Lies that affect history big time.  In companion pieces, David Corn analyzes why the Obama White House couldn't correct GOPer lies about  health care reform ("government takeover of health care," "death panels") and another piece examines why the media (and others) are hoodwinked by liars, even when they are repeat offenders.

It's not a pretty picture.  Lies are effective when they are simple, shocking, sensationalistic stories, and new media carries them around the planet with the speed and jolt of electricity, far faster than factual corrections can be made.  I'm not sure these articles really explain why people believe them, and what some of the examples say about people who believe known liars over people they know and work with is pretty disheartening.

On the current GOPer tactic of being against anything and everything that President Obama is for, even if they were on principle for it before, Rachel Maddow said Monday,  "the kind way to explain this is as disgusting hypocrisy."  What's worse, she says, is the possible strategy--to create widespread suffering among ordinary Americans through economic deterioration, just for partisan political gain.  Right now those lies are the basis for action--refusing to honor the country's debts--that may well have nearly instantaneous consequences for every one of us, creating widespread and probably long-lasting suffering.  Update: If this seems an extreme charge, note this statement from a top economist at Moody and former McCain advisor who says that even a brief default is likely to cause a new recession.)

Creating suffering is worse.  But lying as a principle, lying justified as a necessary means to an end, particularly in a democratic society which makes decisions based on shared information, and even justifying it as God's work--that comes close to Scott Peck's definition of evil in his landmark book, People of the Lie.

Though the effects of evil can be sensed and named, naming something or someone as evil risks projection.  But a lie is much more defined.  As I've suggested in the Climate Inside posts, some of what public figures as well as ordinary people say is unconscious projection.  But there's plenty of evidence that many of these lies--and especially the Big Lies--are deliberate, excused in their minds for their political effect.

The effects of these lies are destroying us.  But so are the lies themselves.

Here's Your Tea Party--How Do You Like It Now?



from Squids with Lasers


The Tea Party Republican victories in the states have led to this, as accounted by the Rachel Maddow Show, foremost among those paying attention to this ongoing portion of the systematic destruction of the middle class, the dismantling of the Founder's commonwealth and the final solution of corporate greed creating state-sponsored cruelty:

 In Florida, Republican Governor Rick Scott proposing a $1.5 billion giveaway to businesses to be paid for with $3.3 billion cuts in education.

In Arizona, Republican Governor Jan Brewer signing $538 million in giveaways to businesses over the next decade while proposing almost the same amount of savings from throwing poor people off the state‘s Medicaid rolls.

In Michigan, Republican Governor Rick Snyder proposing nearly $2 billion in giveaways to business to be paid for by raising taxes on poor people and old people.

In Wisconsin, Republican Governor Scott Walker signing $140 million worth of giveaways to businesses just before signing a state budget to raise taxes on poor people to the tune of $49 million."

Meanwhile in Washington, GOPers are so corrupt in the pockets of their corporate masters that House GOPers chose a particular regulation to oppose--one aimed at preventing tobacco companies from marketing cigarettes to children and making cigarettes more addictive--after accepting nearly $300,000 in tobacco company cash.

Meanwhile, the Rabid Right's favorite talk radio hosts not only take the talking points devised by Rabid Right think tanks and publications--they're on the take for major wads of their cash.

But that's nothing compared to what DC GOPers are currently insisting they will do: they will bring down the world economy because Democrats want to close tax loopholes favoring corporate jets. 

They refuse to consider raising revenue by ending subsidies to their fossil fuel masters. They won't consider requiring the cringingly wealthy to pay taxes a little closer to the proportion non-wealthy actually pay.

And above all, they will not let it be known that the major cause of the budget deficit now is the Bushwars, and the major cause of the budget deficit for the next decade is the Bush tax cut for the numbingly wealthy.  If Congress cuts not a dime of spending, but the Bush tax cuts expire, the budget will be balanced by 2016.   

All of this enriches the already monstrously rich--and not the tricorner hat-wearing saps with their tragic misunderstanding of American political history.  Is it possible that they will wake up to see whose tea party this really is?

This is the "philosophy" that holds the world hostage, threatening to at the very least deeply wound the American economy, and the federal government's ability to respond to the critical needs of the American people, by refusing to raise the debt ceiling so the government can make good on all Bush's debts-- all for partisan political gain.  The conventional wisdom has it that the Wall Street masters will assert their control in time to prevent catastrophe but I'm not so sure--their greed is so great, and they may be willing to take some losses (with their money, not a problem) for the long-term risk of complete power.

Acclimatizing

For those who demand a neuroscience explanation, there's this piece on the brain waves responsible for climate crisis denial.  Personally I find the Jungian-based explanation more persuasive, but I recognize he's not as stylish these days as the folks with electrodes.

In that same issue of Mother Jones, there's Kate Sheppard's chronicle of  "how climate science became the target of "the best-funded, best-organized smear campaign by the wealthiest industry that the Earth has ever known." 


Here's where things stand around here at Dreaming Up Daily.  The basic science on global heating is settled science: potentially catastrophic and certainly consequential climate change is happening and will continue to happen, as a result of fossil fuel wastes.  The research into past climate change shows it, the models show it, the physics shows it, and very nearly every scientist qualified to evaluate the data agrees.  Some basically fair-minded skeptics fixate on one or two errors or hasty predictions, but the preponderance of evidence is as clear as anything in science gets, short of the law of gravity.

Most of those who oppose this basic conclusion are liars, and the rest are simply wrong.  There are smaller but still important matters of  climate science as well as huge matters of policy that need to be worked on, and that work is delayed by all this defensiveness.  In the end the Climate Crisis simply is, whether everyone believes it or not.  It's time to turn our attention to dealing with it.  And at least around here, that's what the future holds.

Making Progress

A fascinating analysis in the LA Times  on a perceived shift in President Obama's decision-making: after two years experience as President, he's asserting his own judgments earlier and more confidently.  The case in point is the Afghanistan withdrawal decision, which he made quickly and against the advice of the major Generals.

On Afghanistan as well, E.J. Dionne notes President Obama's centered foreign policy decisions, and the move (too slow for some, too fast for others) towards a different way that America relates to the world.

Apropos of the "too slow" folks, Michael Grunwald takes on the chattering left in a funny and pointed critique that even in language (for the blogospheric left, Obama is dad, and for the White House, the blogos are the rebellious teens) supports my "President of Projection" thesis.  Gunwald's examples fit his thesis--major Obama initiatives that the left groused about and considered failures because they didn't get exactly what they wanted, even though what they wanted was politically impossible.   "He’s a politician, not a magician," is Grunwald's takeaway line.  Still, there are other disappointing White House decisions  he doesn't cite that are unexplained.  What he says about Obama and global heating is true; but so is what Al Gore wrote.  On balance though, his conclusion is apt:

"It’s easy for activists to complain about imperfect achievements like the stimulus or Obamacare, especially when they’re not among the 3 million Americans who would’ve been unemployed without the stimulus or the 50 million Americans who would’ve been uninsured without Obamacare. Complaining is what activists do. And bloggers are right that Obama hasn’t made a consistent case for liberal politics or Keynesian economics, allowing anti-government Republicans to hijack the national debate. But making a case is what bloggers are supposed to do. Presidents, on the other hand, are supposed to make progress, whether progressives like it or not."

Meanwhile, just about unnoticed here in North America, the rest of the White House Obamas are in South Africa.  Here they  listen to former resident Noor Ebrahim as they visit the District Six Museum in Cape Town. Ebrahim described the forced segregation that occurred after 1966 when District 6 was declared a "White Group Area." (click on the photo to see the whole scene--I'm not sure why this version cuts part of it out.  I sized it big so their expressions are clear.  Both photos here are White House photos.)

Climate Inside: Roots of Resentment, Overcoming Denial

I’d hoped this post, the last one on this topic for awhile, would be shorter than the rest. Probably it won’t be, but I’ll try to suggest and define rather than fully explain or explore.

Not everybody who seems to deny the Climate Crisis is motivated chiefly by ideology, politics or religious dogma. Nor are they all people getting wealthy from fossil fuels, or getting wealthy by working for people who are getting wealthy from fossil fuels and related industries.

There are skeptics—not so much of the science itself but of scientists. And there are especially people who see this as a class issue, though they might not define it that way.

Americans have been of two minds about scientists and their technology since the dawn of the industrial age. That was especially true during the first decades of thermonuclear threat, when we had Einstein and Doctor Strangelove. It was true in medical science over the years ( Doctor Salk v. Doctor Mengele.)

But in particular ways it also was a religious and class issue. Some historians believe that the fundamentalist Christian opposition to Darwinian evolution in America began with the Eugenics movement of the late 19th through the early 20th century, which used Darwinian evolution as its basis. Civic Biology, the textbook that was at issue in the 1925 Scopes Trial for teaching evolution, included the suggestion that if insane, retarded and epileptic humans were lower animals, “we would probably kill them off to prevent them from spreading.”

There were eugenics laws on the books and others proposed in several states, including one to prevent couples with incompatible Rh factors from having children. Some eugenicists went so far as to advocate certain races and nationalities as inferior and a drag on human development—so Hitler wasn’t crazy all by himself. Immigrants, even the poor (undesirable because of their possible dependency) might justifiably have felt threatened.

Even today some conservatives see abortion and birth control, population control and by extension environmentalism (because it is argued that it values other life over human life, and because environmentalists are concerned about overpopulation) as modern eugenics.

So there is perhaps a sense that science is a tool of the educated and wealthy to oppress the less educated non-wealthy. In any case, wealth and class do enter into the Climate Crisis debate.

That seems essentially to be what’s behind the sneers aimed at Hollywood stars who try to increase awareness of the Climate Crisis. The message they get is that these “superior’ people are telling them that that the Climate Crisis is caused by what they do to live their own lives. By their cars, their electricity, the accoutrements of their hard-won lifestyles. All that has to change. But what does that mean?

What a lot of non-wealthy people in non-Hollywood hear is that they’re supposed to get rid of the vehicles they’ve built a life around, and buy a hybrid, which they can’t afford. They also can’t afford to install solar panels or any of the other costly changes to their homes that would reduce their carbon footprint. And to give up their cars and their big screen TVs is giving up about all the relief they’ve got from arrogant moronic bosses and stupid hard work. Yet if they don’t, those Hollywood people will look down on them from their shiny new Priuses—which they’re driving to their private jets.

There are several reactions here. First, a lot of people are helpless to make such major changes on their own. And second, they see people advocating such changes as hypocrites in their own lives. All of this came down on Al Gore like a ton of bricks after he joined with Hollywood to make a glossy movie of An Inconvenient Truth. His energy use, his travel, and the money he made from his advocacy were subjects of political invective, which spoke to even those who didn’t care that he was once the Democratic candidate for President.

Add to the perceived call for people to make such radical changes in their lives the current lack of obvious impact of this “theoretical” crisis some time in the future, and some people see the Climate Crisis as the self-indulgent hysteria of those loony Hollywood liberals, so out of touch with what ordinary lives are like.

This image has recently been extended with high absurdity to climate scientists, who are supposedly advocating climate change for the money. In a sense it’s a class thing (though academics are typically on the low end of professional incomes) for there’s probably a residual sense of smart people as being stuck-up and superior. (Rich industrialists avoid this because they advocate the “American” lifestyle that people are pursuing, that depends on fossil fuels, and therefore is what is making them rich.)

Still, all of this is grist for the political mill of FOX and others who turn class resentment (which they of course would never call it) against advocates for action to address the Climate Crisis (along with a grab-bag of other associations, including the attempt to make labor unions appear to be among the privileged. Now with a black President, the race projections can adhere to the federal government, as well as those pushing from underneath—immigrants taking jobs away or any minorities "living free off taxpayer money.")  It all plays into the conviction, common to both the religious right and the otherwise far right, that the facts these scientists and environmentalists etc. assert are only expressions of their political point of view, meant to persuade (or trick) people into supporting their political side.  Any assertion of a scientific process or sincere observation is dismissed.  It's all us vs. them. 

All of this makes people more susceptible to related political arguments such as the reputed cost in taxes to address environmental concerns, and the predicted bad effects on business and therefore jobs. But it all especially makes denial possible—both the comforting denial of the Climate Crisis science (grasping at every reassurance by any putative scientist or expert) and the psychological denial that narcoticizes doubts about the effects of one’s politics or lifestyle, let alone the future of one’s children and grandchildren and the planet itself.


copyright 2001 by Melo-D

 Psychological denial is a natural human tendency that can be healthy and useful, but can also be suicidal. The antidote is to know that denial is a natural response of the unconscious, and it is up to the conscious mind to decide when it is useful and when it is harmful.

Nothing could be more natural in response to the threats that the Climate Crisis poses: the quick degradation of the world we have known, and perhaps even its end. Who would want to face that? Who has the psychological strength to face it head on, constantly?

I’ve read a lot on this subject and related works about energy and environment, particularly by Mark Hertsgaard, Bill McKibben, David Orr, Jim Kunstler, Jane Jacobs, Stephan Faris, and on and on. None of it has been easy to read or absorb. Now I’m working my way through Paul Gilding’s The Great Disruption—generally billed as a comparatively optimistic book that nevertheless assumes global apocalypse. I’m taking it slow with lots of breaks for walks in our June green loveliness, and old David Tennant Doctor Who episodes.

But even as I let myself respond with denial for awhile, I know what my ultimate responsibility is. I also know that just because this information hurts—and I wish it weren’t true so much that I can barely allow myself to accept it—this response doesn’t mean the information isn’t true. And the science behind it is profound and unforgiving.

Here’s my way of seeing all this: humanity has been a successful species largely because humans have the ability to think about the future. Like other intelligent species—perhaps all species, in a way—we are on the lookout for two things: danger and opportunity. Our survival depends on anticipating danger before it overwhelms us, and on perceiving, imagining and acting on opportunities that enhance our survival. Keeping out of the lion’s mouth and finding new sources of food and water are the templates of our survival.

We can see that other animal species are also keen on sensing and avoiding danger, and on seeking out and taking advantage of opportunities. But humanity developed a kind of consciousness that made it incredibly adaptable.

Consciousness has another particular function for us, that serves these purposes. We can identify our own impulses and to some extent control their expression according to whether they will have a desirable effect. This causes more trouble for our unconscious, but it is a tremendous advantage for our species.

The Climate Crisis is the greatest test we’ve had so far of our ability to think about the future with a complexity that matches the complexities governing that future. Thinking about the Climate Crisis, even as an abstract problem, is difficult. It involves such arcane concepts as lag times, feedback effects, tipping points. (Though I suspect it is a crisis that aboriginal humans would grasp in general without these concepts, simply by applying their observations of relevant experience in nature.)

It is a test as well of our psychological and social intelligence. It is perhaps our ultimate test.

Gilding and others note that there is a record of human societies facing and overcoming a crisis, though as Jared Diamond has chronicled, there is also a record of human societies collapsing because they could not see or face a crisis.

So we have a chance. And there are ways forward--to doing our best to deal with the effects while we do our best to attack the causes and prevent the worst from happening, if that's still possible. This has to be the message. It will require leadership. That’s why for all I admire about President Obama, I think it’s healthy that Al Gore called him out in his Rolling Stone article (published today.) After noting all of President Obama’s accomplishments in reducing greenhouse gases and seeding American green energy, Gore is direct:

“Yet without presidential leadership that focuses intensely on making the public aware of the reality we face, nothing will change. The real power of any president, as Richard Neustadt wrote, is "the power to persuade." Yet President Obama has never presented to the American people the magnitude of the climate crisis. He has simply not made the case for action. He has not defended the science against the ongoing, withering and dishonest attacks. Nor has he provided a presidential venue for the scientific community — including our own National Academy — to bring the reality of the science before the public.

Here is the core of it: we are destroying the climate balance that is essential to the survival of our civilization. This is not a distant or abstract threat; it is happening now. The United States is the only nation that can rally a global effort to save our future. And the president is the only person who can rally the United States.”

(Gore was also measured and specific, unlike the inflated and deliberately offensive charges by Joe Romm at Climate Progress. Yet it must be said that Gore didn’t make the Climate Crisis central to either of his presidential campaigns, and the progress while he was vice-president was even less impressive than Obama’s.)

Denial can’t blind us. That’s profoundly self-destructive. The media’s habits are well known—as Jon Stewart says, the so-called news media of our era fixates on the sensationalistic, and on simplistic presentation—what Stewart calls laziness. Gore goes after them as well on the Climate Crisis issue.

George Soros (in the New York Review of Books of June 23) applies the concept of denial to the public dialogue in our putatively free and open society. He notes that the American public is generally averse to facing harsh realities. “When reality is unpleasant, illusions offer an attractive escape route. In difficult times unscrupulous manipulators enjoy a competitive advantage over those who seek to confront reality... The two trends taken together—the reluctance to face harsh reality coupled with the refinement in the techniques of deception—explain why America is failing to meet the requirements of an open society. ”

As for the class component, given my own background and current income (which would have to double for me to make it up to the “low income” category) I can understand some of these feelings. But while I’m sad that I can’t afford a Prius, I don’t feel guilty about it, and certainly don’t feel hypocritical for driving my old Volvo, though I don't drive it much. I believe that a lot of working people would respond to leadership on this issue, though it might take a pretty clear crisis. Still, a crisis relatable to global heating in itself is not enough—leadership is still required. The time may not yet have come in a political sense, but it won’t wait much longer.

“Maybe it's just easier, psychologically, to swallow the lie that these scientists who devote their lives to their work are actually greedy deceivers and left-wing extremists — and that we should instead put our faith in the pseudoscientists financed by large carbon polluters whose business plans depend on their continued use of the atmospheric commons as a place to dump their gaseous, heat-trapping waste without limit or constraint, free of charge,” Gore writes. “The truth is this: What we are doing is functionally insane. If we do not change this pattern, we will condemn our children and all future generations to struggle with ecological curses for several millennia to come. “

Gore and Soros and others have identified political and social factors. I’ve tried to add two other considerations: in this particular post, a suggestion that class is part of the puzzle, and in this series, that concepts exist to explain some of the psyche’s role, and even more importantly, suggest conceptual tools for  understanding what’s going on within us. By making these responses conscious, they are available for us to evaluate and to take into consideration, as we decide how we are to act to address this mortal challenge.

Climate Inside: Varieties of Denalists

Before I get to the reasonable concerns behind some Climate Crisis denial, a few other reasons why some people are Climate Crisis denialists.

The word "denial" in this context is a bit tricky, since it denotes a psychological response but also a position on the issue by people who deny that global heating is happening, etc.--but not because they are "in denial."  They've got other reasons, though in the end, those reasons are "inside."

The first group of denialists are those who maintain their position (global heating isn't happening, or it isn't all that bad, or it's not caused by humans and we can't do anything about it, at least not without wrecking the economy etc.) because it is in their economic self-interest to do so.  These range from the fossil fuel industrialists to those they hire to doggedly and often viciously promote this line, to others who simply work for these companies and others related to them, who more distantly and more modestly depend on them economically.  They are in the situation famously described by Upton Sinclair, who said "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."  

Though they adapt to the latest media, the propaganda approach driven by these corporate zealots and their hired p.r. guns is time-tested, and yet both the public and the media seem always to fall for the same program.  It is most familiar in its present form from the massive campaigns run by the tobacco companies just a decade or two ago to convince us that scientists were biased in claiming that smoking is bad for your health, and anyway the economy and America's freedoms couldn't survive regulation of smoking.

 But as Paul Gilding reminds us in The Great Disruption, their basic attacks on Climate Crisis science were on view in the 1960s attacks sponsored by big chemical companies against Rachel Carson and Silent Spring, her landmark book on the dangers of DDT and other pesticides: she was hysterical and not acting as a scientist, and if her warnings on pesticides were heeded it would mean economic ruin and "the end of all human progress."  There were even snide observations that her warnings about extinctions were disproven when there seemed to be plenty of birds still around.  Recall of course the snide observations that the globe can't be heating with all these snowstorms.  (Here's an interesting blog post on the war against Rachel Carson and its similarity to the tobacco company strategy.)


The second group, related to the first, are those who are dependent on an ideology and political affiliation--often financially supported by fossil fuel and related corporate interests--that has made Climate Crisis denialism an article of their faith.  They tend towards the most virulent and mendacious forms of "it's all a hoax," that is, an insidious, deliberate and systematic deception by their political opponents: one more way of demonizing their enemies and making their supporters afraid so they'll close ranks.

  They are nourished by what has become a powerful network of institutions and relationships.  Their roots are in the late 60s and 70s, as chronicled recently by Eric Alterman in The Nation (March 28, 2011), as "a series of right-wing institutions to undermine the bipartisan establishment and recast its view of reality"  Along with far right "think tanks" there were political organizations that found and fostered young talent, and nurtured several generations of right wing activists from the 1980s forward.  Then came right wing talk radio, and Rupert Murdoch's newspapers and FOX news.

The Climate Crisis became a political issue for a variety of reasons, I suspect: mostly at the behest of corporate financiers of the right, but the political label became easier when Al Gore, the Democratic candidate for President, became the foremost voice on the Climate Crisis.

In any case, it has become a very political issue for the right, and the insulated world of right wing ideology has stepped up its rigidity and discipline on this issue as well as others.  The virulence of all of this, I am convinced, has been further strengthened by the Internet.  Right wing blog sites were early adopters, and in many ways set the tone for current Internet behavior: a tone of fanaticism, of bullying and attack with no boundaries.  They were also early in instituting a hive mind on their sites, a Borg-like sense of  membership and self-absorption, a contagion that some lefty sites have caught.

I've mentioned before the propensity of right wingers to stick with the media that always reflects their views: the Limbaughs of radio and Fox News primarily.  (The difference is that non-wingers might gravitate towards advocacy sources on the left but also read or watch other sources, especially for news and other content.  But then, the pure right winger believes that everything from the New York Times to Scientific American  is intently spewing left wing propaganda.)  But according to Eli Pariser in his book The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You,  as reviewed by Sue Halpern in the New York Review, another feature of the Internet may mean that variety of information sources is less accessible for everyone than we might believe.

Pariser notes that Google searches are now personalized, so that your searches yield results ranked in part according to searches you've previously made, similar to how Netflix and Amazon come up with titles they think you will like. As Halpern writes "In other words, there is no standard Google anymore.” It’s as if we looked up the same topic in an encyclopedia and each found different entries—but of course we would not assume they were different since we’d be consulting what we thought to be a standard reference....Among the many insidious consequences of this individualization is that by tailoring the information you receive to the algorithm’s perception of who you are, a perception that it constructs out of fifty-seven variables, Google directs you to material that is most likely to reinforce your own worldview, ideology, and assumptions.

Pariser specifically relates this to climate change.  "Pariser suggests, for example, that a search for proof about climate change will turn up different results for an environmental activist than it would for an oil company executive and, one assumes, a different result for a person whom the algorithm understands to be a Democrat than for one it supposes to be a Republican."

But Helpern makes a larger connection, covering the entire phenomenon of information by means of ideology, whether deliberate or as a byproduct of  Internet algorithms or social networks:   "Why this matters is captured in a study in the spring issue of Sociological Quarterly, which echoes Pariser’s concern that when ideology drives the dissemination of information, knowledge is compromised. The study, which examined attitudes toward global warming among Republicans and Democrats in the years between 2001 and 2010, found that in those nine years, as the scientific consensus on climate change coalesced and became nearly universal, the percentage of Republicans who said that the planet was beginning to warm dropped precipitously, from 49 percent to 29 percent. For Democrats, the percentage went up, from 60 percent to 70 percent. It was as if the groups were getting different messages about the science, and most likely they were. The consequence, as the study’s authors point out, was to stymie any real debate on public policy. This is Pariser’s point exactly, and his concern: that by having our own ideas bounce back at us, we inadvertently indoctrinate ourselves with our own ideas. “Democracy requires citizens to see things from one another’s point of view, but instead we’re more and more enclosed in our own bubbles,” he writes. “Democracy requires a reliance on shared facts; instead we’re being offered parallel but separate universes.”



There is another category of denialists, both political and ideologically related to both the self-interested industrialists and right wing political ideologues.  That's at least one politicized wing of Evangelical Christians.

Perhaps all of us are guilty of not consciously understanding where our assumptions come from.  But I know that I need to be reminded of how differently some people think about public policy issues--and in this case, how stringently dogmatic their views are, regardless of how they seem in the public arena.

Michelle Golberg's piece on Michele Bachmann in the Daily Beast is the latest reminder of this mindset.  Just how an anti-gay convinction is justified from the contradictory record of the Bible, let alone what the Bible has to say about climate change, is really beside the point.  The point is that these issues have incorporated as dogma, often due to the influence of particular charismatic clergy-- in Bachmann's case, of Francis Schaeffer:

  A key moment in her [Bachmann's] political evolution, as for many of her generation, a was the film series "How Should We Then Live" by the theologian Francis Schaeffer, who is widely credited for mobilizing evangelicals against abortion, an issue most had previously ignored. A Presbyterian minister, Schaeffer argued that our entire perception of reality depends on our worldview, and that only those with the right one can understand the true nature of things. Christianity, he argued, is "a whole system of truth, and this system is the only system that will stand up to all the questions that are presented to us as we face the reality of existence." Theories or assertions from outside this system—evolution, for example—can be dismissed as the product of mistaken premises.

This accounts for some of the bafflement that occasionally greets Bachmann's statements. "Michele Bachmann says certain things that sound crazy to the general public," says author Frank Schaeffer, Francis Schaeffer's son and former collaborator. "But to anybody raised in the environment of the evangelical right wing, what she says makes perfect sense."

The dogmatism of the true believers, most obvious when linked to religion but also part of the glue for  the hordes of social networking ideologues, seems as impervious to factual information and ethical arguments as do the perhaps cynical but self-interested positions of fossil fuel corporatists and their propagandists.  Probably most of them will never change, and it's fruitless to think they can be reached with fact and argument.

 But some among all these groups may be reached,especially when some of their legitimate concerns--the concerns as well of denialists outside these categories-- are explored.  Now for sure that's next time.