CSotD: Invincible ignorance
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At the end of yesterday's screed posting, I promised to be funny today. It wasn't a lie. I just didn't know what would turn up on today's menu to be commented upon.
But Joe Heller's take on climate change and science deniers is kind of funny, except, y'know, for the part where the fool votes. But he didn't draw that part.
What I particularly like about this is the smug, imperturbable confidence of the guy: Heller held back from portraying him as a looney in a Napoleon hat, because that's not who we have to worry about. It's the person who genuinely, sincerely doesn't get it.
Not just that he doesn't get climate change. He doesn't get the distinction between fact and opinion.
He doesn't get post-Enlightenment science, the kind where, instead of finding ways to prove what you believe, you find ways to investigate what is.
And these smug, confident dunces are everywhere. They are egged on by outright fraud, certainly. On the Media — one of my regular weekly stops — just did an entire show on bad medical science, and some of it's funny but mostly it's sad and scary, because people do make life decisions based on things that just aren't so.
These gullible true-believers are not running around in tinfoil beanies. They are perfectly normal people who genuinely don't understand how the world works, how we sort truth, not simply from lies, but from error. Like Dylan's Mr. Jones, they do know that something is going on here, but they don't know what it is.
And they aren't all rightwingers. There's a substantial group that knows climate-change deniers are fools, and who become livid over anti-vaxxers, but then turn around and accept that GMOs are dangerous, content to base their firm belief on fear of the new, peer pressure and vague, non-reviewed studies.
Well, that and the fact that Monsanto is a group of corporate bastards, which may be why they accept climate change as a proven fact: Not because 97 percent of climate scientists accept it, but because the oil companies are bastards.
And they are bastards. That's not science, but it is true. And I really like the understatement of this Tim Eagan cartoon, which touches on, but is not dependent on, that fact.
The oil and coal companies are indeed actively lying in order to confuse people. I've just started seeing those moronic commercials again that say that, if you have a pension, you own an energy company, because oil stocks are in most pension portfolios.
Yeah, you own an oil company. And, if you ever put presents under the Christmas tree and told the kids Santa brought them, you're an actor.
Go tell Francis Ford Coppola you want to star in his next movie.
But, evil oil barons aside, what I really like is the bland "business as usual" theme.
There have been several cartoons responding to that recent report on climate change, but a lot of them either draw on the tinfoil-crazy aspect of deniers or paint the oil companies and their Republican allies as villains.
And, sure, a lot of deniers are absolute lunatics and the rightwing plutocrats are villains, happy to actively capitalize on ignorance and paranoia. The disinformation on climate change rivals the work of the Tobacco Institute.
But despite their predominance in on-line comments sections, I don't think actual, delusional, slavering screwballs are a huge demographic or anywhere near the threat as are nice, normal, unintentionally and innocently ignorant people who just don't get it.
Okay, this one's funny
Oh, never mind. This isn't funny either. It's just depressing. But it was on topic. I should get partial credit.
So should Sir Bedivere.
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