Seeds of doubt

It is an incredibly frustrating feature of human psychology that it is far easier to sow doubt than it is to eradicate it.

Once you have introduced any seed of suspicion into someone's brain, it tends to stay planted.  It is even more likely to do so when fertilized by the purveyors of bullshit who have a vested interest in your remaining doubtful.

And in case it's not sufficiently obvious by now, yes, I'm referring to the climate change deniers who are currently driving policy in the United States.  I know I ring the changes on this topic pretty often, and I don't want to bore my readers by turning into some kind of Johnny One-Note, but there were two stories this week that prompted me to write yet another post on the subject.

The first is that COP-21, the Paris Climate Change Conference, has reached a draft agreement on managing the causes and effects of anthropogenic climate change in the 21st century.  The conference was attended by a host of world leaders, including President Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.  And together the leaders and delegates to the conference came up with a draft of a plan that "addresses deforestation, food security, poverty and a host of other issues, with chunks of the document focused on what developed countries can do to reduce carbon dioxide missions by a yet to be determined level by 2050."

[image courtesy of NOAA]

The problem, however, is the same one that plagued the Kyoto Protocols of 1997 and the Bali Accords of 2007; they are only binding if the governments of the countries that are signatories actually agree to abide by them.  And two weeks ago the Senate voted to kill the centerpiece of the Obama administration's efforts to create an American climate change policy, effectively hamstringing any attempt to bring the Paris draft agreement into law here in the United States.

So basically, we're back in the same position as before the conference, which is that the American government is sitting on its collective hands, either saying that addressing the problem is impossible ("economic suicide" is the usual way it's framed), or else that the problem doesn't exist, melting glaciers and unhinged weather be damned.

The second story is the release of a study out of Michigan State University by psychologists Aaron M. McCright,  Meghan Charters, Katherine Dentzman, and Thomas Dietz entitled "Examining the Effectiveness of Climate Change Frames in the Face of a Climate Change Denial Counter-Frame."  And what they found is as illuminating as it is frustrating:

Prior research on the influence of various ways of framing anthropogenic climate change (ACC) do not account for the organized ACC denial in the U.S. media and popular culture, and thus may overestimate these frames' influence in the general public.  We conducted an experiment to examine how Americans' ACC views are influenced by four promising frames for urging action on ACC (economic opportunity, national security, Christian stewardship, and public health)—when these frames appear with an ACC denial counter-frame.  This is the first direct test of how exposure to an ACC denial message influences Americans' ACC views.  Overall, these four positive frames have little to no effect on ACC beliefs.  But exposure to an ACC denial counter-frame does significantly reduce respondents' belief in the reality of ACC, belief about the veracity of climate science, awareness of the consequences of ACC, and support for aggressively attempting to reduce our nation's GHG emissions in the near future.

Put more simply; a message introducing doubt about a claim carries significantly more weight than one that supports the claim.

"The positive frames really don’t move the needle at all," said McCright, "and the presence of the denial counter-frame seems to have a suppressive or a negative effect on people’s climate change belief."

Ed Maibach of George Mason University, who studies the public communication of information on climate change, went even further.  "This research makes clear that ‘don’t worry’ is an inherently more compelling message than ‘you should worry about climate change for this reason’ regardless of what that reason is," Maibach said.

As far as why this is, McCright said that there's a fairly persuasive, although as yet untested, explanation.  "It’s simpler, for one thing," McCright said.  "You don’t have to grasp any science to say, ‘scientists disagree.’  It’s always harder to change people’s opinions than it is to keep the status quo.  And then for the last two decades, the message from the political right has been strong, consistent, and daily."

Which leaves me in the position of wondering whether there is anything at this point that can be done.  The Denial Machine has been incredibly effective, sowing doubt not only about the scientists' motives, but about the data itself.  And once you believe that the data -- i.e., the facts -- are just spin, then you can be talked into believing anything.

So as frustrating as it is to those of us who would like to pass along a habitable world to our children and grandchildren, the Paris Conference is likely to follow in the path laid out by so many others, in accomplishing nothing but a lot of talk.  And here in the United States, we still have the Congress led by science deniers who either are willfully ignorant or else are willing to exchange long-term ecological stability for short-term expediency and greed.  

You have to wonder how history will look at us, today, sitting here going "la-la-la-la-la-la, not listening" while for forty years the scientists have tried to warn us about the impending catastrophe.  The phrase "fiddling while Rome burns" comes to mind, along with the corollary that Nero is not a figure whom our leaders should be striving to emulate.

The pseudoscience that wouldn't die

I was chatting with a couple of students yesterday, and the subject turned to aliens.  Conversations seem to get steered that way when I'm around.  It's odd.

Anyhow, one of the students said, "Let's say humans developed interstellar space flight.  And we went to another star system.  And let's say that on one of the planets in that star system there was intelligent, but non-technologically advanced, life.  Don't you think that humans would appear like gods to them?"

I said that was probably so, and quoted the line from Arthur C. Clarke, that "To the primitive mind, any sufficiently advanced technology would be indistinguishable from magic."

"So," the student said, "if advanced aliens had come to Earth, thousands of years ago, wouldn't they have appeared like gods?  And become the focal points of religions?"

A little more hesitantly, I said, "Well, yes, probably."

And then he said, "Don't you think it's hard to believe that a bunch of primitive humans were able to build the pyramids, and Stonehenge, and all?"

And at that point, I said, "Good lord, you haven't been reading Chariots of the Gods, have you?"

This book, written by Erich von Däniken in 1968, is like the Creature That Wouldn't Die.  Like the Hydra, it just keeps regrowing heads and coming back at you again.  In fact, Chariots of the Gods was only the first of a series of books by von Däniken, all claiming that the Earth had been visited by Ancient Astronauts.  When Chariots of the Gods hit the bestseller list, he followed it up with repeated riffs on the same theme, to wit:  Gods from Outer Space; The Gold of the Gods; In Search of Ancient Gods; Miracles of the Gods; Signs of the Gods; Pathways to the Gods; and Enough About The Gods, Already, Let's Talk About Something Else.

Obviously, I made the last one up, because von Däniken at age 80 is still blithering on about the Gods.  His books have sold 62 million copies, have been translated into 32 languages, and his ideas formed the basis of a theme park in Switzerland, thus further reinforcing my belief that skepticism will never be the lucrative profession that woo-wooism is.

A statue from the late Jomon period of Japan (1000-400 B.C.E.), which Erich von Däniken thinks can only be explained as a space-suited alien, since humans obviously never include weird imaginary creatures in their mythological art.  [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

You might ask what von Däniken's evidence is, other than the argument from incredulity ("wow! The pyramids are really big!  I can't imagine making a pyramid, myself.  Therefore they must have been designed and constructed by aliens!").  Here are a few pieces of evidence that von Däniken claims support the Ancient Astronaut hypothesis.

• The Antikythera mechanism.  This complex "mechanical computer," found in a shipwreck dated to about 150 BCE, contains a series of nested gears and was used to calculate astronomical positions.  Von Däniken claims it is of alien manufacture, despite the fact that similar devices are mentioned in Greek and Roman literature, including Cicero's De Re Publica, in which its invention is credited to Archimedes.
• The Piri Reis map.  This map, dating to 1513, "could only have been drawn using an aerial perspective," von Däniken claims.  In other words, it was drawn looking down from a spacecraft.  Unfortunately for von Däniken's theory, human sailors were quite good at drawing maps, because those who weren't quickly became fish bait.  The antecedents of the Piri Reis map have been identified, and include ten maps of Arab origin, four of Portuguese origin, and one map drawn by Christopher Columbus himself.
• The Moai, or Easter Island statues.  These are pretty cool, but in my mind only demonstrate what you can accomplish with a lot of slave labor.
• A "non-rusting" iron pillar in India, that supposedly didn't rust because it was some kind of alien alloy.  When von Däniken's books became popular, naturally skeptics wanted to go to India to check out this story.  They found the pillar, and you'll never guess what it was covered with?  Rust. If you can imagine.  Being that this was kind of conclusive, von Däniken backed off from this claim, and said in an interview with Playboy, "We can forget about this iron thing."

In fact, piece after piece of von Däniken's "evidence" falls apart if you analyze it, and try not to be swayed by his hyperdramatic statements that always seem to include phrases like "can only be explained by," "scientists are baffled by," and "a mystery beyond human ken."  In fact, von Däniken's books were written because they make money, and are, simply put, pseudoscientific tripe.  The best debunking of his claims was Ronald Story's 1976 book The Space Gods Revealed, which is a page-by-page refutation of all of von Däniken's claims, and remains to this day one of the best skeptical analyses of pseudoscience ever written.

So, sad to say, my student's faith in the Ancient Gods is ill-founded.  A shame, really, because I would like nothing better than concrete evidence of alien civilizations.  But if you want me to accept the extraordinary claim of alien visitations in Earth's distant past, you're going to have to give me evidence a little more extraordinary than a rusty post, a map, and some big stone statues.

Astrological philosobabble

I really get annoyed when apparently intelligent people do something that lends credence to nonsense.

I know it's probably a waste of perfectly good ire.  Confirmation bias and the believe-what-you-want-to-believe tendency of the human brain make fighting this sort of thing a largely fruitless pursuit.

But man, my job would be so much easier if smart people didn't go to such lengths to defend pseudoscience.

The latest attempt to legitimize bullshit comes from British philosopher Martin Cohen, who in his recent book Paradigm Shift: How Expert Opinions Keep Changing on Life, the Universe and Everything describes why we scientific types should give another look to astrology.  (And honorable mention goes to The Irish Times for writing an apparently serious article praising his stance.)

The Twelve Astrological Signs, from Opus Medico-Chymicum by Johann Daniel Mylius (1618) [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Cohen is basing his claim on a slightly more sophisticated version of the naïve question I hear from high schoolers; "If science changes all the time, this could all be proven wrong tomorrow, so why are we learning this stuff?"  "Expert opinions" -- including not only opinions about what is right, but what is wrong -- fluctuate.  So we shouldn't dismiss astrology, even though Cohen admits it "is easy – laughably easy – to debunk using conventional methods and ideas."

After this glimmer of sense, he goes on to say:

On the other hand – and this is really the subtext of the entire social science debate over Paradigm Shift – convention is a poor guide to anything. 

Mainstream science regularly rules definitively on things about which, in fact, the state of knowledge really only allows tentative opinions.  In science, the measure is usefulness; we should give astrology the same chance.

No, sorry.  In science, the measure is consonance with the evidence -- usefulness be damned.  Any utility to scientific discoveries comes after they have been supported by hard data.

What about the fact that astrology traffics in broad-brush predictions that can be interpreted any way you like, leading believers to overestimate its accuracy?  This, Cohen says, is a strength, not a weakness:

By presenting ambiguous, vague answers, astrology pushes the seeker to extract information that is really not so much there in the answer but in their own subconscious. It unblocks our minds and frees them to see things in a new way...  Actually, I’m not sure that I do want to give the nod to the description of astrology as a poor predictor, as that reinforces the stereotype image of the subject as given in newspaper columns.  My suggestion is to see it as a tool for interpreting the world, and in particular each individual’s relationship to it – I mean, in psychological terms.  This way, I think, astrology is full of rich and subtle insights.  How it arrives at them is of little importance.

In other words, as long as you feel the answer is right for you, it's right.  To hell with whether there's any mechanism by which it could work.

He then goes on to tell us about the "spooky coincidence" that the "Four Horsemen" of atheism -- Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens -- are all Aries.  The chance of any four randomly chosen people all being the same sign is (1/12) raised to the fourth power, or about one in 20,000.  Which seems like slim odds, until you realize that given the current human population, there are 350,000 such "spooky coincidences" in the world.  Look for long enough, and you'll find more than one cluster of superficially similar people with the same signs -- it's just the law of large numbers at work.

Of course, the claim also ignores a huge study done in England twelve years ago of "time twins" -- people born within minutes of each other who, if any of the claims of astrology are correct, should have similar personalities, tendencies, and fates.  Unsurprisingly, the study found no support whatsoever for any of it.

No matter, Cohen said.  This isn't about physical mechanisms or hard data, it's about "mystical correspondences."

"Why should [the predictions of astrology be accurate], though?" Cohen goes on to say.  "The world changes in innumerable ways at every instant. So what might have been going to happen in one possible world no longer needs to happen in the next....  If astrological predictions really were true, then they would be useless.  The conceit is that we can both benefit from a prediction and still be free to change the future."

Which should win some kind of award for Mushy Philosobabble, and also is awfully convenient.  It doesn't matter if your model accurately predicts anything, or has a basis in reality.  If you find it useful in guiding your life, then whether it lines up with what we know about the real world is irrelevant.

Being a rationalist materialist type, it's no wonder that I read this entire piece while making frustrated little growling noises.  I'm sorry, Mr. Cohen; the truth does matter, and I'm not defining "truth" as being "whatever you decide sounds appealing."  Science gives us an algorithm by which to determine if a claim has validity.  It may well be the only such algorithm that actually works.

So my general sense is that what Martin Cohen is urging us to do is to abandon evidence as the sine qua non of understanding, and look for "mystical knowledge" in whatever bit of pseudoscientific horseshit happens to suit our fancy.  Which is about as opposite to my standard for approaching the world as it could be.

But I probably only say that because I'm a Scorpio.

Interesting times

A few days ago, I started reading Michio Kaku's wonderful book Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century.  The book is fascinating, buoyed up by Kaku's ebullient writing style and endless optimism about our future, touching on the possibilities of artificial intelligence, planet-wide information systems with unfettered access for all, medical advances that could extend (healthy) life span to perhaps twice what it is now, and the ability to harness clean energy sources that are for all intents and purposes inexhaustible.  He suggests that our species, in a time that on the grand scale is a snap of the fingers, will be heading for the stars.

At the same time, here on Earth things are looking pretty awful, as if we'd finally succumbed to the Chinese curse "May you live in interesting times."  Only a few hours ago, we here in the United States had yet another senseless mass shooting, this time an attack on a center for the developmentally disabled in San Bernardino, California.  The attack left fourteen confirmed dead and an equal number injured; the suspects are, at the time of this writing, still at large, and their motives for attacking the center are unknown.  Just a few days ago, an ultrareligious right-winger killed three people and wounded nine at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs.  Many have linked the attack to vitriolic rhetoric from so-called Pro-Lifers like Joshua Feuerstein, who has suggested that doctors who perform abortions deserve to be murdered.  We have one presidential candidate who has openly praised noted conspiracy theorist loon Alex Jones; another claimed yesterday that "the majority of violent criminals are Democrats."  Further afield, the UK Parliament has given the go-ahead for bombing Syria, ISIS has murdered a Russian captive in retaliation for air strikes against ISIS-held areas, our "allies" in Saudi Arabia are very likely in the next few days to behead Ali Al-Nimr, a protestor who was arrested when he was only 17, and in general the world just seems to be a fucked-up morass of misery, hatred, horror, and death.

I'm an optimistic guy, for the most part.  I have always been firmly convinced that most people, most of the time, are doing their level best to act morally and responsibly.  I've also been a strong believer in the idea that you don't have to agree with someone in order to get along with them.  I've had more than one cheerful pint of beer with a friend whose political views are (to say the least) opposite to mine.  I'm a staunch atheist, but have dear friends who are Jews, Christians, Buddhists, and Wiccans. (I'm not leaving out Muslims deliberately; I just don't happen to be close pals with any.)

But in the current atmosphere, when the tenor of the news seems to be paralleling the diminishment of the light as we approach the winter solstice, it's hard to keep those ideals in mind.  It becomes increasingly easy to give in to despair, to decide that humanity isn't really worth saving, that any good we do is outweighed by the tremendous evils that we visit on each other for reasons of religion, race, belief, and sometimes for no reason at all.

Still, we do some beautiful things sometimes.  Billionaire Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has pledged 99% of his share revenues to charities connected with personalized learning, curing diseases, connecting people and community building.  The Planned Parenthood clinic that was attacked has been the focus of two separate fundraising drives, one through GoFundMe and the other through YouCaring.

But I keep coming back to the heartache of why we, here in the 21st century, are still having to face people being murdered for wanting control of their own bodies, for wanting to be able to speak freely and criticize their governments, for simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.  It's so far from Kaku's idyllic space-age wonderland that I find myself wondering if the human race will survive long enough to meet even one of his high-flown predictions.

I think the solution lies with the like-minded sticking together, and telling each other that there are still good people in the world, that we will make it through these dark times.  That the days will lengthen, winter will warm into spring, and (perhaps even!) the news will one day be dominated by positive stories.  We have to remain optimistic; if we don't, if the good people of the world give up and succumb to despair, then the evil really will have won.

[image courtesy of NASA]

I will leave you with a poem that I first discovered when I was 13 years old.  I still can't read it without choking up; not too long ago I tried to read it out loud to my son when he was going through a rough patch, and we both ended up bawling.  I think it's more relevant now than when it was written by Max Ehrmann, almost a hundred years ago.

Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be critical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass.
Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings;
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.
With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be careful. Strive to be happy.

Sanitizing history

An online acquaintance of mine made an interesting statement a couple of days ago.

"The Europeans didn't just bring exploitation and disease to North America, they brought war.  The Native Americans didn't even fight wars until after the Europeans arrived."

I asked him how he knew this, and he said he'd read it in a book, and then posted a link from a Yahoo! Answers page.  I gave a verbal shrug, and sort of said, "Okay, then," and didn't push the topic any further.  But I've been thinking about it ever since.

Why do we need to have certain ethnic groups be characterized by a nearly mythical goodness?

How often have we heard that before the Europeans arrived, the Natives were "in touch with the land," that they respected the Great Spirit, asked animals' permission before hunting, never took more than their fair share of what nature had to offer?  And now, this gentleman claims that they also never made war on each other until the Europeans arrived and taught them to do so.  I've heard similar claims made for other groups -- most commonly the Celts, who have also been mythologized to a fare-thee-well, to the point that since the mid-1800s there have been quasi-religious groups of "druids" who have tried to emulate what they think the Celts were doing back then.  More recently, the Afrocentrist movement has claimed that all good things came from Africa, and the extreme wing of that school of thought calls dark-skinned people "Sun People" and light-skinned people "Ice People" -- with all of the value judgments that those terms imply.

There are a couple of problems with all of this -- one of them academic, one of them common-sense.

The academic problem is that because all three of those groups left next to no tangible records, we really don't have all that clear a picture of what they were doing before they were contacted by societies who did write things down.  And when that contact occurred, the records left weren't exactly unbiased -- it's hard to know how much to believe of (for example) what the Romans wrote about the Celts.  Trying to piece together what was going on in the years prior to such contact is decidedly non-trivial, and has to be inferred from archaeological evidence and such indirect evidence as patterns of linguistic distribution.

Queen Boudicca of the Celts by Joseph Martin Kronheim (1855) [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

In preparation for writing this, I tried to find out what was actually known to anthropologists about the nature of society in pre-Columbian North America, and the answer is: surprisingly little.  I'm no anthropologist myself, so am unqualified to make a firm judgment, but what did strike me about the papers I read is that they don't even necessarily agree with each other.  The tangible artifacts left behind by some groups (e.g. the Pueblo cultures of the US Southwest) seem to suggest a peaceful agricultural existence, but that, too, is a guess.  It seems fairly certain that the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) tribes of the Northeastern US did a good bit of fighting with the Algonquian tribes of Eastern Canada -- those groups were "traditional enemies" and apparently were happily beating each other up long before the French and English arrived and made things worse.  Certainly the Aztecs, Maya, and Incas of Central and South America were not exactly what you might call peaceful by nature -- stone carvings show Aztec priests ripping the hearts from living sacrificial victims, and at least some of those victims appear from the carvings to have been prisoners of war.

My second objection is purely common sense; while some cultural values seem to me to be better than others, I just don't believe that whole groups of people were somehow "nicer" than others.  Consider what a future anthropologist might make of our current "warlike" American culture -- in the last hundred years we have certainly fought a great many times in places around the globe, for a variety of purposes, and during that time have diverted a large percentage of our resources into weaponry and the military.  What does that mean about us as a people?  My general feeling is "not much."  If you look around you, you'll find mean people, nice people, aggressive people, gentle people, and pretty much the gamut of whatever set of opposite traits you choose.  Sure, our militarism is connected to our citizenry -- the military decisions are made by our leaders, who are elected by us -- but a future mythologizer who came up with a concept of American People As Evil Bloodthirsty Imperialists would be missing the truth by a mile.  (As would a concept of Americans As Courageous, World-Saving Warriors.)

Please note that I am in no way trying to excuse what our, or any other culture's, militarism actually accomplished.  What the Europeans did to the Native Americans and the Africans, what the British did to the Australian Natives, what the Romans (and later the English) did to the Celts, are inexcusable tragedies.  But the cultures who were the victims of these atrocities were not themselves perfect.  It is easy, out of our pity for the losers, to make them into creatures of myth, as having lived in an Eden until the nasty aggressors came in and fucked it up.

As always, reality is complex and messy, and doesn't fit neatly into pigeonholes.  It might be appealing to believe that the Celts were the Mystical, Nature-Worshiping People of the Sacred Forest prior to their being beaten to a pulp by a whole succession of cultures.  But this is a myth, just like the Native American as Noble Protector of the Environment and the African cultures as warm-hearted, creative Sun People.  No culture is perfect, no ethnic group without flaws, and it is only our desire to have an ideal to espouse that makes us ascribe such characteristics to the inhabitants of the past.

Follow the money

There is nothing like blatant hypocrisy to put me in a blood-boiling rage.

It's even worse when the hypocrisy is coupled with mealy-mouthed self-righteousness.  That puts me in a condition that calls to mind the word "apoplexy."

And as Exhibit A, I give you: Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, chairman of the House Committee on Space, Science, and Technology.

How Smith ended up in a leadership role in the oversight of scientific research is one of those mysteries that even the Peter Principle is insufficient to explain.  Whenever Representative Smith opens his mouth, he utters such moronic statements that you have to wonder how he successfully got out of grade school, much less how he got elected to public office.  This is the man who said in 2009,  "The greatest threat to America is not necessarily a recession or even another terrorist attack. The greatest threat to America is a liberal media bias."  He claimed in 2014 that the policy of allowing immigrants to achieve US citizenship by serving in the military -- a policy that has been in place since the country's founding, and the awarding of citizenship to Baron von Steuben by George Washington -- was "President Obama aiding and abetting an immigrant crime spree."

But on no topic has he as vividly illustrated an understanding of the world that would be sub-par for an eighth grader as on climate science.  Smith is a diehard climate change denier, and in fact wrote an op-ed piece in 2013 that contained the mind-boggling line, "Contrary to the claims of those who want to strictly regulate carbon dioxide emissions and increase the cost of energy for all Americans, there is a great amount of uncertainty associated with climate science."

I'm not sure in what BizarroWorld a near 100% consensus amongst climate researchers constitutes "a great amount of uncertainty," but that is evidently Lamar's viewpoint.

[image courtesy of NASA]

What is most appalling about all of this is that one of the rallying cries of the deniers is "follow the money" -- implying that the scientists are getting rich off of fat government research grants, so they have every reason to cook the data to make it look like the world is warming up.  If there was no anthropogenic climate change, Lamar suggests, the funds would dry up.  So the scientists are inventing an ecological crisis in order to feather their own nests.

You have to wonder how the scientists are also conspiring to make the glaciers melt, surface seawater heat up, and creating an El Niño that is shaping up to the the most powerful one since records have been kept.  Mighty desperate, those scientists, to go to those kinds of lengths.

But you haven't heard the most appalling part yet.  Lamar Smith, who brands climate scientists as self-serving liars who are making shit up so they can get money, is now threatening Kathryn Sullivan, the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, with a subpoena -- in a move that is hinted to be only the first of a sweeping attack on anyone influential who is researching anthropogenic effects on climate.

"NOAA needs to come clean about why they altered the data to get the results they needed to advance this administration’s extreme climate change agenda," Smith said, a statement that ranks right up there with "When did you stop beating your wife?" in the Heads-I-Win, Tails-You-Lose department.

Of course, there are people who are just tickled to pieces about Smith's campaign of harassment.  Robert E. Murray, head of Murray Energy, the largest privately-held coal mining company in the US, thinks that Lamar is just wonderful.  The climate researchers are "not telling hardly any truth" [sic] about what the global climate is doing.  The world is actually cooling off, Murray says, which I'm sure will be a tremendous relief to all of you who listened to the scientists when they said that 2015 is almost certain to be the hottest year ever, shattering all previous records by a considerable margin.

Don't listen to those damn ivory-tower thermometer-wielding geeks, Murray says.  "They’re crony capitalists.  They’re making a fortune off of you the taxpayer."

And if you're not already mad enough, guess who funded the gathering at which Murray dispensed his wisdom?  The Texas Public Policy Foundation, a "nonpartisan research institute" that is still completely nonpartisan and unbiased after receiving the bulk of its funding from Koch Industries, Crownquest Oil & Gas, AEP Texas, ExxonMobil, VF-Russia, Texas Western Energy Corporation, ConocoPhillips, Devon Energy, Chevron, and Henry Petroleum LP.

Speaking of following the money.

And outside, the world continues to warm, the ice caps continue to melt, and the weather continues to destabilize.  As we speak, the United Nations Conference on Climate Change is going on, a conference that is very likely to follow in the footsteps of the ones before it in accomplishing nothing -- because science research oversight in our country is being kept in a stranglehold by anti-science loons like Lamar Smith and his counterpart, James Inhofe of Oklahoma, another climate change denier who astonishingly enough has ended up chairing the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.

You know, by nature I'm an optimist.  I like to think that most of the time, most of us are doing the best we can to live according to our moral codes.  But when I find out about stuff like this, I start slipping over to the world of the conspiracy theorists, and that worries me.  I don't like to think that our country is being led by people who know full well that we're headed for an ecological catastrophe, and from a combination of greed, short-sightedness, and stupidity are willfully lying to the American people about it.

But increasingly, that's what looks like is happening.

The road to hell

The transition of a culture into fascism is seldom sudden.  It's a slow slide, urged forward by fear and xenophobia, and often catalyzed by the appearance of a charismatic figure who spouts jingoistic talking points, pounding the table and telling everyone that he has the answers, that all will be well if they just vote for him.

And one of the first things that often happens is that his followers, buoyed up by the heady air of finally having a leader who is saying all of the things they've felt for years, begin to shout down the opposition.  Inevitably violence occurs, and a protestor at a rally is beaten up for having the wrong views.  The charismatic leader doesn't chide his followers for their actions; oh, no.   He urges his followers on, suggests that the victim deserved the beating -- which of course fosters further violence and more fear on the part of anyone courageous enough to dissent.

James Luther Adams was one of those victims, and was lucky to get away as more-or-less unscathed as he did:

I didn’t know what was going to happen to me.  Was he going to beat me up because of what I had been saying?...  He shouted at me... "You damn fool, don’t you know that here today you keep your mouth shut or you’ll get your head bashed in... You know what I have done.  I’ve saved you from getting beaten up.  They were not going to continue arguing with you.  You were going to be lying flat on the pavement."

And throughout it all, the moderate rationalists look at each other in amazement, saying, "How can this happen?"  Some deride the leader as a fool, a buffoon with no experience in government and even less credibility.  As if that has any effect on people who are reacting through fear and the sudden thrilling awareness that the leader has just given you carte blanche to beat the shit out of anyone who says the wrong thing.

The fear is fed by a knowledge of there being terrible societal inequities, and the sense that the problems can only be righted by a complete overturning of government.  In the words of an ordinary citizen, "Of course all the little people who had small savings were wiped out.  But the big factories and banking houses and multimillionaires didn’t seem to be affected at all.  They went right on piling up their millions.  Those big holdings were protected somehow from loss.  But the mass of the people were completely broke.  And we asked ourselves, 'How can that happen?'...  But after that, even those people who used to save didn’t trust money anymore, or the government.  We decided to have a high time whenever we had any spare money, which wasn’t often. "

Small wonder that such conditions foster distrust, suspicion, and anger.  And then, along comes someone who says he can fix all that:

We deceive ourselves if we believe that the people want to be governed by majorities.  No, you don't know the people.  This people doesn't want to lose itself in “majorities.”  It doesn't want to be involved in great plans.  It wants a leadership in which it can believe, nothing more.

And still the moderates stand around, shaking their heads in dismay, and doing little else.

Anyone who disagrees is ridiculed or denounced.  Critics are publicly humiliated and made to apologize for their audacity, and sued for defamation if they refuse.

Then the propaganda machine goes into overdrive convincing people that the entire country is going to hell if the election goes the other way:

This man who, because of his extraordinary knowledge and ability in all areas, was able to rise from nothing to his present position as the leader... despite tremendous resistance, is perhaps the only one who has the ability to master the enormous tasks, rescuing the nation at the eleventh hour from its almost hopeless situation.  Led by fate, he followed his path. It would not be the first time in history that [we were] rescued by the right man in our greatest need.

And of course, the final step is turning that anger and fear against a common enemy, someone who can act as a scapegoat.  After all, there has to be a means for directing the rage; the revolution can't be too complete, or it will destroy the very structure to which the leaders are trying to ascend.  So who's to blame?

The poor and powerless, of course.

The more economic difficulties increase, the more immigration will be seen as a burden... In this struggle... there’s only a clear either/or.  Any half measure leads to one’s own destruction.  The world [of these people] must be destroyed if humanity wants to live; there is no other choice than to fight a pitiless battle against [them] in every form.

Amazingly, people fall for it.  Fact-checking, pointing out the lies and half-truths, doesn't alter the trajectory by one millimeter.  In a direct quote that you would think would be enough by itself to wake people up: "Credibility doesn't matter.  The winner will not be asked whether he told the truth."

But still his poll numbers climb, until what looked like a ridiculous bid for attention by a narcissistic troll has become a threat to the founding principles of the entire country.

And at some point, we look around us in horror, and say, "How did we get here?"  There was no single turning point, no sudden overthrow -- just a gentle, smooth slide into being governed by the worst people in the world.

[image courtesy of photograph Robert F. W. Whitlock and the Wikimedia Commons]

Oh, but wait.  All of the quotes and references above were taken directly from primary documents regarding the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in pre-World War II Germany.

Who did you think I was talking about?