So last night, I finally saw "Merchants of Doubt."
Never mind the clarity and information presented regarding my "pet" subject, Anthropogenic Global Climate Change," (which is why I was so interested in seeing the movie), what I got out of the movie was a whole lot more, and even more important.
Short review below the squiggle.
I don't know how you guys did it.
Listening to Marc Morano, Fred Singer, and particularly the expert witness for the flame retardant legislation, was positively jaw-dropping. I can only assume that these guys are such true believers of their "greater good" ideology that they cannot even see the evil in their words and actions.
Evil.
It's a word I use in my writing of fantasy books (where evil is embodied by certain monsters, so you take out your big sword and disembody it), but one I rarely ascribe to actual human beings...Hitler, Stalin, you get the picture.
In this case, there's no other word.
The insightful approach used in the work of following the ideology instead of simply the money, shined a bright light for me regarding the people with whom I often argue on social media. Ideology trumps fact: it's really as simple as that, and as powerful as that.
Watching the denier at the microphone screaming at Michael Shermer at the conference is akin to B-roll footage of every argument with climate change deniers I've seen on Facebook. The sheer fury of the man - I thought he was going to run up and punch Shermer, or worse - presented the physical violence of cognitive dissonance.
Deniers call "warmists" a cult - and that is probably the greatest example of projection I've ever witnessed.
I could never understand, for example, how anyone could see a clip of Newt Gingrich (or other Republican pols, for that matter) sitting with Nancy Pelosi in 2008 and talking about how we had to act immediately to fix this urgent problem of Climate Change, and not realize that the GOP vomit being spewed today isn't even believed by the pukers.
Particularly powerful were the clips of Singer and Seitz illustrating the 3-pronged tactic, which alone should end the debate, and would end the debate among rational human beings.
In one speech, they say there is no warming.
In another, there is, but it's not caused by us.
In a third, there is, and we're doing it, but the cost of fixing it would be worse.
Clever and effective, unfortunately, but what is astonishing is that if you show those clips to a true (dis)believer, he or she will, at the end, argue all three points, and not even realize the contradiction.
So, Dear Erik Conway, thank you for this work. It is an important tool in understanding the tall and thick brick wall we who believe in the function of a government to work for the common good are up against in dealing with the modern conservative movement.
For everyone else who might read this, if you haven't seen "Merchants of Doubt," do so immediately. It is exactly the emotional armor you'll wear comfortably when carrying on the most important debate of our time.
R.A. Salvatore