A Conservative shows off his stupidity over why he thinks US Liberals are “dumbest creatures o
I was going to let this one go by. I really was. But it’s such a good example of how conservatives use the “Big Lie” of 1984 to paint their enemies as guilty of what they themselves are guilty of, while painting themselves as the opposite of what they are. No, really, I’m not just being biased or hypocritical, even though that’s what they’d say (without providing facts).
Anyway, from The Telegraph comes…
The Science is Settled: US Liberals really are the dumbest creatures on the planet. I’ll have to remember the name James Delingpole so next time I see it, I can put him below Anne Coulter on my list of conservative idiots who have less than nothing to contribute to healthy discussion about any issue of importance.
Here is the first choice quote:
“No really they’re stupid because they’re not interested in facts. They just want to construct their pretty little narrative about the world, regardless of whether or not it has any bearing on reality. And then they want to dump it on us. And ruin our lives. So not just stupid but evil too.”
That’s from his “libertarian friend” and he thought (I’m sure!) the words were “very harsh” until he watched a video of Chris Matthews on Hardball talking with some others about global warming issues. Then, guess what, he changed his mind! Wow!
Then he says:
They [Matthews et al.] think the main reasons for the public’s growing scepticism on Climate Change are 1. The media has been far too balanced on the subject and is not pushing the eco-message hard enough. 2. Big business is funding Climate Denialism. 3. Evil Conservatives - led by Evil Talk Show Hosts Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck - are deliberately telling lies about Climate Change. 4. The Republican party is “anti-science”.
Delingpole then “refutes” the points in a stupid, clumsy fashion, mostly by waving his hands and blustering.
The first issue is one that takes more than a single statement to support or refute. You’ve got to know the state of the world to know what is appropriate, but while I am an optimistic guy, the environment is a troubling problem and I know when it comes to climate change that the media fails. They do want “balance” so even if 99% of scientists have reached a conclusion, they’ll trot out one of the rare ones with an opposing viewpoint to “balance” the story, which of course unbalances it. There aren’t always two equal sides to every story. Even so, Delingpole’s one lin refutation is not a climate change story, but a story about oceanic disaster as “proving” somehow that the media is not balanced and does push the eco-message hard enough. So…where is the eco-action to match? But it’s definitely true that so-called “balance bias” has been helping climate change deniers and the US Liberals aren’t wrong about it.
Second issue. Delingpole doesn’t say anything denying it, wisely, just complains that other groups spend more actually spreading the word about what scientists have actually figured out. Just this week I saw variations of this story discussing how Exxon-Mobil has been funding climate deniers, particulary Willie Soon who has a background in astrophysics.
Third issue. Ha ha! Our boy is showing his chutzpah now! I remember Rush Limbaugh back in the 1990s going on and on and on about how volcanoes put out more CO2 than humans do, which meant that human-created CO2 could not be a problem. Or sometimes he was talking about CFCs and the ozone layer. Either way, that’s a lie. Unless Delingpole thinks it’s ok to ignore facts in favor of a pre-existing bias? Naw…that’s the lying liberals lying about the never lying Rush Limbaugh…
Final issue. Great balls of fire chutzpah! The Republican War on Science makes a great starting place to read about the facts of the matter. The Republicans have politicized science in an attempt to suppress evidence that might lead to policies they don’t like.
I’m not going to paint ever conservative out there as one of the “dumbest creatures on the planet.” I will call this one individual out for being one of the most offensively hypocritical creatures on the planet, and likely one of the most biased (I’ll assume he’s not an idiot and when he’s wrong, he’s intentionally wrong to make people mad).
This opinion piece is polarizing. It tries to confuse the issues of science and science reporting that Chris Matthews and friends have correctly identified. It’s just ridiculous that any media venue, even one with an open political slant, would publish error-ridden and offensive crap like this in anything but remarkably overriding bias, or in search of flame bait to drive up hits and revenue. I bet Delingpole is the same, feeling smart and smug that he’s brought himself so much attention and gotten people to snap at each other over political leaning rather than over issues he doesn’t want anything done about.
Originally published at Mike Brotherton: SF Writer. You can comment here or there.