Global warming is killing the conifers of the Sierra. The US Geological Survey, after tracking tree mortality over two decades in Sequoia and Yosemite national parks, has concluded that Sierra forests are “sensitive to temperature-driven increases in drought, making them vulnerable to extensive die-back during otherwise normal periods of reduced precipitation.”
Of course that’s just the view of reputable scientists. The screeching howler monkeys of the right will no doubt furiously fling alternative explanations. Sunspots. “Natural cyclical die-off.” God’s wrath. Liberals.
Liberals . . . yeah . . . that's it. For while liberals supposedly seek to save trees, in fact they act to kill them. Just as liberals who purport to protect miners, really work to bury them. And liberals who supposedly support the troops, strive, in truth, and ceaselessly, to abandon them.
We have entered the post-Enlightenment age. Sense has been overthrown: nonsense sits upon the throne. Come over the fold, and see.
It is amusing that anti-global-warming hysterics routinely couple their denials of climate change with tantrums about “liberalism.” Because without the tolerance fostered by liberalism, such goofballs would be cooling their bastinadoed heels in a musty dungeon somewhere. Prior to the Enlightenment, that quintessentially liberal phenomenon, heretics were not permitted to ceaselessly spout foolishness. Those who denied reality, defined then by the church, were silenced, tortured, and killed.
These days, of course, and thanks to Enlightenment liberalism, just about anybody, no matter how ignorant, ill-informed, mendacious, or even downright dangerous, is entitled to voice an opinion . . . and cast a vote. Which is why millions upon millions of people who believe that Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs to church were twice able to elevate to the US presidency a missing link who believes, in re evolution, that "the jury is still out."
In recent years anti-Enlightenment crusaders have shrewdly learned to turn the organs of liberalism to their advantage. The media is an inherently liberal Enlightenment institution, soberly devoted to presenting “both sides” of public issues. So, today, on the subject of global warming, some guy who looks at a thermometer is allowed to prance through the press--even unto Drudge--with as much authority as someone with a PhD in climatology and biogeography, i.e., someone who actually knows what s/he’s talking about. As a despicable quack like Bill Frist can team with a fascist propagandist like Sean Hannity to pronounce Terri Schiavo "aware and responsive," and be treated as seriously as the doctors who actually examined her, and determined that her skull, as the autopsy later definitively proved, was pretty much a hollowed-out gourd.
And now we have this shameless, mendacious, Yahweh-besotted predatory capitalist Robert Murray, six of his workers trapped in his mine that over the past three months alone has been cited 32 times for safety violations, claiming that the cave-in was caused by an earthquake, when, in truth, and as area geologists have confirmed, the so-called “earthquake” was in fact caused by the cave-in.
But Murray will have none of that. “From our mining experience, we know this was an earthquake,” intoned Murray.
Is Murray a geologist? No. Is he scientifically qualified to discern an earthquake from an earwig? No. Was he even there when the supposed earthquake occurred? No. But it’s his opinion: he says it: therefore, it "might" be true. Soberly it is reported, in the MSM, as if it should be seriously considered, as one of "both sides."
Like a Bushite boldly invoking "executive privilege," Murray now refuses even to discuss the subject:
Speaking to reporters today, Murray again dismissed the scientists' assertion and said he would no longer speak about it.
Murray has learned well from George II.
The US, said George II, had to invade and occupy Iraq because Al Qaeda dwelled in that country. Did, in truth, Al Qaeda exist in Iraq? No. That was a lie. Today, George II says the US must not end its occupation of Iraq, because Al Qaeda is there. Is Al Qaeda today in Iraq? Yes. Why? Because the US is there. He said it: it was a lie: he then made it true. Magic!
Lie that Al Qaeda is in Iraq, then behave so as to actually bring Al Qaeda into Iraq. Cause an earthquake with your mine collapse, then claim the mine collapse was caused by an earthquake. Wingnut logic. A pre-Enlightenment relict.
Actually, and unfortunately, we are now in post-Enlightenment times. Facts, proof, reality, common sense, even physical laws--these, as a member of BushCo bluntly informed Ron Suskind shortly before the 2004 election, simply do not reflect "the way the world really works anymore."
The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''
What we are currently "left to just study" is the "reality" that the "surge" in Iraq is a thundering success. As occams hatchet diaried Thursday evening, the footpads of the right are even now out ringing the tocsin for this truth; as McJoan front-paged yesterday, the MSM is senselessly hallucinating that even prominent Democrats have conceded the success of this manful stand by George W. Bush.
That all of this is a lie matters less than that George W. Bush and Sean Hannity proclaim it to be true . . . and that the MSM is content to report it, soberly, judiciously, as if it were true.
Reality, facts, reason, truth--that's so "old school," man. This is the post-reality age, dad. Get with it.
Mine-owner Murray is certainly with it. He's out there demonstrating that he's learned another valuable lesson from George II: blame the messenger. As indications emerged that perhaps Murray had allowed his mine to devolve into a death-trap, under a federal administration that didn’t give two shits if mines devolved into death-traps, Murray complained:
“It seems to me the media are more concerned about trying to place the blame than they are about the families and the actual rescue effort underground.”
See? The media doesn't really care about the miners. It just wants to shower blame, insidiously pursuing its dastardly agenda, identified by Murray as "destroying the American economy and causing the deterioration of the American way of life."
Dang--that's just like in Iraq! People in the media, well-known in Rushspeak as "the willing accomplices" of the Democratic Party, don't really care about the troops: they just "hate Bush," and will do anything, anything--sacrifice our soldiers, sacrifice even the security of our country itself--to bring him down. For the war in Iraq can never be lost in Iraq: it can only be lost at home. Just like Vietnam. Remember! It is a known fact that it was only Walter Cronkite, with an assist from John Kerry, who lost the war in Vietnam.
Pre-Enlightenment, it was easy to identify the cause of all ills: Satan.
Post-Enlightenment, it is equally easy to identify the cause of all ills: liberals.
Trees dying? Liberals stop the logging that would keep our forests safe. Mines collapsing? Liberals impose crushing regulatory burdens that plunge mine-owners into such penury that they are unable to keep our mines safe. Iraq going badly? Liberals actively undermine our president at home, while opposing every effort to keep our troops safe overseas.
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain! Fell trees! Burn coal! Support the troops! Stick a hatpin through your frontal lobe!
And love Big Brother.
Dang, Ethel, guess it were them sunspots, killin’ all them trees, after all. That, and them dern lib’ruls, a-course. Shame, too, what them lib'ruls done, to them poor sufferin' miners. Dern shame. Jist like in I-Raq. Oh well. What say we saddle up the T-Rex, and ride on into church?