Crushing Crazy

Below, I'll offer two lists concerning American conservatism. One recounts "conservative" stances that have always been welcome at the negotiating table... in fact we'd be poorer not to have voices speaking up for them and demanding accountability from liberal zealotry. 

The other list - alas - is much longer, case after case in which conservatives destroyed their credibility by screaming against clear science, genuine progress, or honesty itself. Example after example in which time proved them utterly wrong. From tobacco and smog to drug wars and gerrymandering, it's a long litany that our neighbors want desperately to forget.  

And yes, there were liberal errors, too. Two of them on a par with any single item on the conservative list. I'll cite those, down at-bottom.

First though... let's start with the sort of screeching insanity we're getting today.

== And now, this. What has driven our neighbors mad ==

Broadcaster and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones said it was a “form of psychosis” that caused him to believe certain events — like the Sandy Hook massacre — were staged. Jones, who founded InfoWars.com - carried on more than 160 stations - repeatedly called the Sandy Hook shooting a “giant hoax” carried out by crisis actors on behalf of people who oppose the Second Amendment. InfoWars also suggested the September 11 attacks were an inside job orchestrated by the US government.

In a defamation case brought against him by Sandy Hook victims’ families, Jones tried a number of writhing excuses, like: “I’m a performance actor!” Now it’s “a form of psychosis back in the past where I basically thought everything was staged, even though I’ve now learned a lot of times things aren’t staged,” he said. “So I think as a pundit, someone giving an opinion, that, you know, my opinions have been wrong, but they were never wrong consciously to hurt people.”

Putting aside the fate of this spectacularly evil traitor, the more general key words are Credibility and Accountability. Can we find ways to apply them systematically? That is the core question in The Transparent Society. 

I've long pushed that people on the sane-Union side of this culture war demand wagers, since the prospect of having actual stakes dependent on their ravings sends these cultists into blind panic, and can force a few RASRs to start admitting their own political psychoses. 

Dig it, the Sandy Hook parents' lawsuit was essentially a forced wager! It proves I'm right - the essence of this war is not left-right or even Putin-Saudi-Mercer-Koch-Murdoch enemies. The essence is the very existence and primacy of objective reality. Demonstrable facts, and the professions that use them.

I am not the only one who sees around us harbingers of hard times for the American Union. I’ve called this Phase Eight of the U.S. Civil War, a recurring mental illness and curse which dates all the way back to 1778. I’ve touted Sean Smith’s novel Tears of Abraham which portrays how many millions might die, if thing get hot, as our enemies – foreign and domestic – clearly intend.

== Defend the defenders ==

The administration is forming a National Security Council panel stacked with climate deniers, which reports suggest is intended to challenge established science, over-riding widespread opposition from former military officials, security experts, and climate scientists. While the Navy has been furious about denialism for a decade, facing loss of Norfolk, the greatest naval base in the world, plus many others, the Air Force is now learning the cost, with a $5 Billion burden repairing bases just from Hurricane Michael alone… money taken away by Trump’s “emergency” wall grab. 

Meanwhile, the Russians are opening twelve new bases along the increasingly ice-free arctic. And Putin and the Saudis giggle over how easy it has been to lobotomize America.

Liberals, dump your obsolete reflexes! This is a time to recognize the men and women of the U.S. military -- despite their crewcuts -- as allies in saving America and the world. 

Welcome them into our Big Tent of national - and world - salvation.

== Hope for rationality ==

This is worthwhile, even if you already knew some of it from my own postings. “A Field Guide to Bad Faith Arguments: Once you recognize these weak tactics in your mentions, you can easily outwit them.” For example, while climate denialists declare “We need more data and the jury is still out!” the cult has sabotaged satellites, cancelled instruments, banned research and silenced scientists, while claiming that any forward movement would leave us all “shivering in the dark.”

A good faith position would be “let’s find out more while taking policy steps that would help us all, whether or not 99% of scientists prove right.” 

This article covers other specious and valid arguments, and you – yes, you - need these insights to do your duty…

… which is to peel just a few RASRs (Residually Adult-Sane Republicans) out of the Fox-Putin hypnosis orbit and into the light. If each of us can manage just a couple, this phase of the U.S. (and world) civil war – the Idiocracy’s all-out war against smartness and all smart people -- will end in a rout.

 Lies are defeated by competition but it should be fair. See my FACT ACT.

== Capitalists who get it ==

This is an essential story about an immigrant who became an American business mogul, who now says "Capitalism is committing suicide." With the steady reduction of corporate investment ROI (return on investment) horizons -- from decades down to mere months -- corporate R&D outside of Detroit and Silicon Valley has plummeted, relying ever more on government research that members of the CEO caste then politically disdain. (The Bush-McConnell-Ryan cuts to US science are vastly amplified, under Trump.)

500 golf-buddy members of the CEO-caste ramp-up compensation packages, secretly divvy-up markets and allocate consumers among themselves, "planning" the economy with specificity that's similar to the Chinese Politburo, but without any long view. Moreover, not a single prediction ever made by "Supply Side" (voodoo) economics ever came true. (Repatriations of foreign held profits weren't even a quarter of the amounts predicted under the 2017 tax cuts.)

This was predicted by Adam Smith, who said that top aristocracies will always turn to cheating, vampirism and passive rentier tactics, rather than risky-productive investment. And recall that feudal-syndicate oligarchy was the hateful oppression that American Revolutionaries rose up against.

... and now the topic I teased about, above...

==  A place for conservatism? ==

I call for a Big Tent that welcomes the saner versions of conservatism -- versions that remind us that market competition is the greatest generator of the wealth that then enables good things. Indeed, before the entire movement was suborned by petro-sheiks, coal barons, casino lords, tabloid monsters and re-branded KGB/Kremlin conspirators, there were American conservatives who staked reasonable negotiating positions on:

- generating market alternatives to government solutions...

- reducing the overhead burden of excessive paperwork...

- only 'picking winners and losers" when there's a clear long range need 

          (e.g. sustainable energy)...

- encouraging responsible gun ownership...

- encouraging voluntary service...

- encouraging entrepreneurship...

- encouraging home ownership and a rising middle class...

- ecological stewardship...

- investment in an educated/healthy workforce...

- investment in infrastructure...

- investment in federal R&D beyond most corporate ROI horizons...

- honest, long range thinking in board rooms...

- defending the right of millions to live demure lives without in-your-face 

         shock confrontation.

Alas, out of all of these goals, only a metastacized, bilious version of the last one remains in today's mutant conservatism. The rest have all been functionally (if not polemically) adopted by a liberalism that already had plenty else on its plate. (And yes, Democrats did all the useful DE-regulating; offer me wager stakes on that, please.)

Let's be clear. U.S. Conservatives are in no position to lecture us, given what they’ve allowed to happen to their movement. Moreover, while conservative skepticism-toward-excess-bureaucracy is welcome, when it is sane, we need to recall how often they have simply been wrong, wrong, wrong, and again wrong... and now want us to forget:

Aid to farmers? Never!
Break up monopolies? Never!
Tobacco? No worries...

Cars and Smog...

McCarthyism...

Burning Rivers...

The insane War on Drugs...

Vietnam*...

Resisting Civil Rights* and hating on MLK...

Watergate, defending Nixon long past proof of treason...

Resisting Women’s rights...

Supply Side lies and outright theft of trillions...

Resisting easy fixes to the Ozone Layer...

Unleashing the upsurge in gambling, vice, mafiosi and casino moguls...

Climate Change denialism and science hating...
Claiming moral superiority while Red America scores worse in every moral category
      from teen sex/pregnancy/STD/abortions to domestic violence, alcoholism etc...

Endless Drug War and ever-more supply side never-right voodoo theft...

Most traitor spies since 1955 were Republican...

Most child molester politicians...
Iraq Wars, based on outright lies...
Undermining energy independence...
A proved track record of far worse economic outcomes... 

Gerrymandering and dozens of other blatant cheats...
Open war against all fact-centered professions; science, teaching, journalism, 
        medicine, law and "deep state" public servants...

Kowtowing to Vladimir Putin, Rupert Murdoch, Saudi princess & Trumps...

Skepticism toward "socialism"? Sure, criticism is welcome. But remind your neighbors how incredibly consistently and repeatedly the GOP/dixiecrat stance has been simply, factually wrong.

They know it's about credibility. Name one major gop leader between Reagan and Ryan who was even mentioned at the 2016 Republican Convention. Except for Newt, all were brushed under the rug, including both Bushes, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Dennis (friend to boys) Hastert, Tom (convicted felon) DeLay, Boehner. This shows how writhing ashamed Republicans are, of their record at governance. And if you disavow those past Republican administrations as incompetent, Russia-hating, enterprise-destroying, warmongering liars, then where is your party’s credibility?

And yes, liberals make mistakes! Their worst: Vietnam and desegregation through forced school bussing. Republicans supported the former more vigorously than democrats. But the latter was titanically evil and stupid and it did more to shatter the Rooseveltean coalition than anything. So don't automatically assume that everything that's PC is automatically correct. I could name a dozen latter-day rants and exaggerations that some of you push, that are not being helpful right now. 

But I don't dare. And that fact is the most damning of all.

Welcome allies and refugees from the madness/treason. Spread the tent. Defeat monsters. Welcome your neighbors.

The Real Struggle Behind Climate Change - A War on Expertise

The schism over global climate change (GCC) has become an intellectual chasm, across which everyone perceives the other side as Koolaid-drinkers.  Although I have mixed views of my own about the science of GCC, and have closely grilled a number of colleagues who are front-line atmospheric scientists (some at JPL), I'm afraid all the anecdotes and politics-drenched "questions" flying about right now aren't shedding light. They are, in fact, quite beside the point.

 That is because science itself is the main issue: its relevance and utility as a decision-making tool. 

Let there be no mistake, this is all about power, and the struggle goes way back.  In Britain, the "Boffin Principle" long held that technical people have no business making policy suggestions to their betters. In America, waves of anti-intellectual populism - like the 19th Century Know Nothing Party - were  deliberately stoked by aristocracies who saw the new, mental elites as a threat. 

There have been counter-surges. In the 1930s, propelled by ambitious modernism and depression-era desperation, a briefly popular "Technocracy Movement"  held that knowledge and skill should be paramount criteria for positions of leadership. A milder version of this eagerness for expertise was seen from Sputnik through the 1960s and 1970s, with glimmers during the Internet Boom years. (Notably, these were all lush times for science fiction literature.)

Of course, Technocracy was boneheaded and scary - though not as much as the new know-nothing era that we have endured during the last decade or so, a time when things became dicey even for the Civil Service and the U.S. Officer Corps.  Chris Mooney documents how relentless this agenda has been, in The Republican War on Science.  Though, let's be fair.  If films like Avatar are any indication, a variant of dour anti-scientific fever rages on the left, as well.

This is the context in which we should reconsider the Climate Change Denial Movement.  While murky in its scientific assertions -- (some claim the Earth isn't warming, while others say the ice-free Arctic won't be any of our doing) --  the core contention remains remarkably consistent. It holds that the 99% of atmospheric scientists who believe in GCC are suborned, stupid, incompetent, conspiratorial or untrustworthy hacks.

As part of a more general assault on the very notion of expertise, the narrative starts with a truism that is actually true:

 "Not every smart person is wise..."

only then extrapolates it, implicitly, to a blatant falsehood

"all smartypants are unwise, all the time; and my uninformed opinion is equal to any expert testimony."

Does that sound like a polemical stretch?  But it is precisely the implied subtext - a perverse kind of populism - at all levels of the War on Science.  In the specific case of GCC, since almost all top atmospheric scientists accept human-propelled climate change, they must be all cretins, corrupt, or cowards.

Here's a telling point. This uniformity of craven venality has to include even the ambitious postdocs and recently-tenured junior professors who, in every other field, sift constantly for some flaw in the current paradigm in order to go gunning after the big boys and thus make a reputation.  What, even the Young Guns are sellouts?  Even the paladins of skeptical enquiry are conspiring together in a grand cabal to...

...to what?  Ah, now the story gets even better.  All the scientists and post-docs are colluding to foist this scam, in order to win a few ten-thousand dollar grants.  This  loose-change-grubbing, paradigm slavery is cited to explain the GCC imbroglio -- while the oilcos and petroprinces, who operate major propaganda outlets and have TRILLIONS staked in the status quo... they have no agenda at all.

Of course, to typify any lawful profession as across-the-board corrupt or cowardly is absurd, but to so besmirch the one professional cohort that is unambiguously the most brave, individualistic, honest, curious and smart of all, well, there has to be an agenda behind such drivel -- and there is one. The good old Boffin Effect.

My late colleague, Michael Crichton, crystallized it when he claimed "there is no such thing as scientific consensus,"  and thus he deemed it reasonable to ignore measures recommended by 99% of the people who actually know stuff about a problem that might damage our nation and world.

Now, as many of you know, I have my own complaints against expert communities. I'm known for promoting the "Age of Amateurs."  But empowered citizenship should supplement, not replace  the people who actually know the most about a topic. Respect toward professionals is compatible with keeping an eye on them.

Especially since -- and this is the kicker -- all the major recommended actions to deal with Global Climate Change are things we should be doing, anyway.

That's the most bizarre aspect.  I'd listen patiently to GGC Deniers and strive to answer their endlessly refurbished narratives, if they would only say the following first:

"Okay, I'll admit we need more efficiency and sustainability, desperately, in order to regain energy independence, improve productivity, erase the huge leverage of hostile foreign petro-powers, reduce pollution, secure our defense, and ease a vampiric drain on our economy.  Waste-not and a-penny-saved and cleanliness-is-next-to-godliness used to be good conservative attitudes. And so, for those reasons alone, let's join together and make a big (and genuine*) push for efficiency."Oh, and by the way, I don't believe in Global Climate Change, but these measures would also help deal with that too.

"There, are you happy?  Now, as gentlemen, and more in a spirit of curiosity than polemics, can we please corner some atmospheric scientists and force them into an extended teach-in, to answer some inconvenient questions?"

When I meet a conservative who says all that (and I have), I am all kisses and flowers. And so will be all the atmospheres guys I know. That kind of statement is logical, patriotic and worthy of respect. It deserves eye-to-eye answers.

 But that isn't the faux-narrative.  Instead it boils down to "I hate smartypants."  And it is thereupon understandable that (being human) the boffins are losing patience with the new Know Nothings.

David Brin
http://www.davidbrin.com

*PS... the word "genuine" is important.  Paying lip-service to "energy independence," while sabotaging it relentlessly, was something diametrically opposite to patriotism.

==Continue to: Distinguishing Clime "Deniers" from "Skeptics"

Then There is the T Word!

Last time, I weighed in about the missing "V Word"... asking why even opponents to the Iraq Mess aren't mentioning the greatest American mistake of the 20th Century, our misguided and disastrous intervention in Vietnam.

Yes, there are differences aplenty. Still, the similarities are so numberous; they imply that at least we ought to be considering what went wrong then... and what mistakes we might be repeating now. The budget-busting, inflation-spurring, readiness-diminishing, alliance rupturing, World-popularity-destroying, and internally-nation-dividing effects are all too similar to blithely dismiss.

Nor should the hypocrisies go unchallenged. For three decades we heard ninnies declare that we "lost Vietnam because politicians interfered in military affairs"... only to see professional military judgements trampled beyond belief in Iraq, by a clade of draft-dodging preppies who always know-better and can never acknowledge a mistake.

Both land wars of attrition in Asia showed diametrically opposite decision-making skills from the agile, quick-effective methodologies used in the Balkans... methodologies that were refined by the US Officer Corps - in collaboration with allies - in direct effort to AVOID quagmires like Vietnam.

Only now, with newspapers mentioning "ink-blot counterinsurgency tactics"... while never mentioning where the technique was last tried (!!) we appear to see an almost psychotic "V Avoidance" from not only the Messopotamia's defenders, but its critics, as well.

Now bear with me while we veer from the "V Word" over to another ghost at the banquet, that nobody seems inclined to mention...

... the "T Word."

I'm talking about Tobacco.

For a while now, I've been trying to picture the some kind of parallel to the jibbering dance-of-distraction that we are seeing from the "it's not proved yet" anti-global warming crowd. Their frantic need to discredit the entire scientific community. Michael Crichton's astonishing claim that "consensus has no meaning" in science. (So a political party that wins questionable elections by slim pluralities somehow has a huge "mandate"... but a belief shared by 90% of reputable scientists can be dismissed out of hand?)

Yes, we have seen this kind of frenetic holding-onto obsolete and reactionary opinions, before. Racism and sexism, for example. In fact (here Brin goes again!) the left has its own loony shiboleths and hypocrisies, aplenty! Though usually less harmful ones.

Then it struck me when we last saw the closest parallel. TOBACCO AND CANCER!

Recall how the behavior on the part of elite "suits" could only be called identical!

Hypocrites and self interested liars would BOTH claim that "there is not enough evidence, WHILE strenuously blocking the research that would get the evidence!

The same anti-science maneuvering, while chest-thumping that science has no such thing as "consensus." The same relentless refusal to see any public good... or the blatantly obvious truth, that some things are so dangerous that better-safe-than-sorry is a reasonable proposition.

In other words, those who say that it is perfectly okay to go about fouling our own nest should be the ones with a burden of proof, called upon to offer evidence, instead of the other way around.

Um, duh? I find myself often wondering... "what would Cotton Mather think?" Or Silas Marner, or the other founding Puritans? Yes, they might not like tolerance of gays... or tolerance of any kind. But let's put that part of it aside. There were other values. Other aspects of conservatism in the American sense. Aspects that conservatives still claim to support... and get away with the claim only because people let them!

Prudence.
Pay-as-you go refusal to go into debt.
Waste-not, Want-not.
A stitch in time, saves nine.
Mind your own business.
It takes a Village.

I could go on and on, but this is another topic. ("How the hell did Democrats become the party of puritan conservative values?")

Getting back to the issue at hand... let's consider the T Word... and whether these dipso-kleptos really are as smart as they think they are.

One the one hand: it is clear to any sensible person what they are doing. They aren't idiots. They KNOW the climate is changing and there will be huge disruptions. Watch land purchases and shifts in the stock market. These guys have a LOT of equities that will be dogs in the new era. they need time to dump them and reposition! That's got to be the core reason for the delaying tactics.

On the other hand,will this really work? Just look at tobacco! The precendents must be terrifying. Because the Tobacco industry stonewalled, they were later judged at fault for billions in liability claims. Today, the entire industry backpedals like mad, spewing warnings about health risks... too late for millions.

Don't these anti-climate-change people realize that this precedent WILL apply to them? Has it even occurred to them that the civilization that's been harmed by their shuffle and delay act may want... well... compensation when the heat hits the fan? Indeed, when the damage looks vastly greater than that from tobacco, can they really trust their lawyers’ assurances that they are personally insulated?

As in tobacco, is this liability thing that may cause a turnaround? A change in attitude, suddely seeing-the-light?

The likelihood, looking ever-greater in this heat wave, that The People may not LET them sit on their new, reconfigured portfolios?

Not when the rivers run dry and the sands begin to blow.

------

And now for something Completely Different....

An appeal from a bright young writer, Jeff Carlson. (We’re working together on a project!) Jeff doesn’t have my vast coterie of pre-readers, savvy and picky and oh so good at CITOKATE! Hence, I am passing on this request for him:

A Call For Genius !

I am paying a small shot at fame and a free autographed copy of my first novel… for the name of my first novel… Yes, does that make sense?

My editor tells me the marketing dept. at Ace/Berkley feels that the title we’ve been using all this time is a bit “soft” and instead they’d prefer something grabby, evocative and amazing. Well, right.

Oof. To me, it’s always been THE INVISIBLE SEA. Briefly, the book is about a medical nanotech prototype that gets loose and devours all warm-blooded life below 10,000 feet elevation. No mammals. No birds. Entire nations throw on top of each other as they fight for land. Loads of action, intrigue, surprise twists, our heroes running around at great personal risk, you know the drill. And of course it's impossible to see the machine plague covering the entire world except for a few high islands because the nanos are microscopic. Hence the title. But apparently it’s too artsy.

Here’s what my agent had to say:

>> Very likely they are anticipating how major accounts (esp. Barnes & Noble) will react and order. B&N and a handful of other chains are 50% of book sales. If these few key buyers don't like the title, think it's too "soft", or whatever, well, then you're screwed. They want to be sure that B&N will place a healthy order. To an extent, I see their point. What B&N wants, they tend to get. It is possible that early feelers even have been put out. That happens. In any event, sales and marketing people are very twitchy about things like titles since it makes such a difference to whether they can "sell in" or not.

And my editor:

>> The concern is it doesn't convey the content of the book. Obviously, once you start reading it's apparent how the title relates, but the book needs to attract people from the cover and title alone--otherwise they won't even open the book and find out what "the invisible sea" is. I think something that indicates the nanotech plague / post-apocalyptic / survivalist nature of the book would be ideal.

Sadly, the best I’ve been able to come up with so far are substitutes like THE KILLING SEA or cheesy clunkers that sound like made-for-tv-movies such as NANO PLAGUE or WORLD OF DEATH. Or, when I’m feeling despondent, great stuff like THE TOTALLY COOL GLOBAL MUTHAFUCKA.

I think what they’re really looking for is something broadly commercial like SURVIVOR or even HIGHLANDER, but of course those have been done.

Heeeeeeeeelp! Help me! Aieeeee! Ug! Ohhhh. AYAAAIEEEEEEE!

I think I'd rather re-name our kids...

Jeff
jeffcarlson@astound.net