I realize we have long since passed the point of blog parody, with the number of words written about Revkin's article now exceeding the number of words in the article itself by many orders of magnitude. But I gots more to say -- a big ol' rant I've wanted to get out for a long while.
It seems in retrospect that much of the umbrage the article caused was due to the fact that people misunderstood its main thrust, mainly because it was sloppily written. It fairly begged for misinterpretation.
What Revkin was trying to do is aptly summarized in his comment on RealClimate:
The orthodoxy described on TV, in movie theaters, enviro campaigns etc is that AGW is a realtime crisis that is momentous and huge and terrifying, but can be solved with existing technologies. ... AGW is still mainly portrayed (outside of your rarefied circles) as a problem to be fixed (a raging fire to put out), not a risk to be cut.
Revkin thinks the public only hears from two groups: denialists and people who frame climate change as a huge, immediate crisis that can be solved, rather than an ongoing, long-term risk we need to adjust to. Fair enough. I have my quibbles with that, but put them aside.
The key to the way the article was actually interpreted lies in the first paragraph: "Amid the shouting lately about whether global warming is a human-caused catastrophe or a hoax, some usually staid climate scientists in the usually invisible middle are speaking up."
Amid the shouting, a middle.
I want to say just a little about why people, particularly progressives, familiar with recent political debate in this country react to this framing with (perhaps hair-trigger) outrage. It's a huge topic about which much has been written. I'll just wave my hands in the general direction.
A little pop history. The '60s counter-culture revolution was deeply, deeply galvanizing for many people. Not so much for the hippies themselves, mind you -- the Boomers transitioned fairly seamlessly into toothless feel-good bromides, middle management, and unrepentant consumerism. No, the real legacy of the 60s/early 70s was to freak out conservatives on a primal, lizard-brain level (see: Nixon, Richard M. and descendants). A "culture war" was born, broke the surface with the Reagan Revolution, and continues unabated. The ideological messages were simple: socialism is evil, any use of government on behalf of public welfare amounts to socialism, markets rule, aggressive militarism rules, sex is evil, God rules, and above all -- the central governing principle, the North Star, the lodestone -- beware the dirty hippies.
Beware the dirty hippies. They're immature and irresponsible. They're utopians and dreamers. They meddle with lives and hate Christian values and blame America first and root for terrorists. They want free sex and legalized drugs and mandatory abortion. They want to eat your babies. They heart Satan.
This enormous backlash against revolutionary leftism continued growing and gaining strength long after revolutionary leftism petered out as a political force of any real influence. The narratives and habits of mind bequeathed us by the culture war are with us still, despite the long-ago disappearance of one combatant. It's shadowboxing on a nationwide scale, and it shows no signs of abating.
Any number of examples could be cited. The same dynamic plays out on virtually every issue: there's the virulent far-right position, funded by deep-pocketed reactionaries and pushed by talk radio, an enormous network of mutually reinforcing conservative pundits in every major media outlet, an entire cable news network (three now, really), and numerous powerful politicians in leadership positions in every branch of government. Then there's the avowedly liberal position, represented by some obscure professor or a guy in the comment section of a blog or a random placard at a protest. Then there's the "centrist" position, which is the far-right position with the edges rubbed off.
How does one establish oneself as a "centrist"? Why, by bashing the dirty hippies. After all, if you bash the virulent reactionaries, you're criticizing "real Americans" and the heartland and the baby Jesus. Everybody positions themselves by way of their distance from the -- at this point largely mythical -- dirty hippie. There's no faster route to media exposure for someone on the left that to spend every minute of the day criticizing other people on the left. Mickey Kaus. Joe Klein. Richard Cohen. Joe Lieberman. The list goes on and on.
Nowhere has this dynamic been more clear and more utterly at odds with reality than around the Iraq War. Before the war, there were people who supported war -- both the militarist right and the "liberal hawks" -- and people who opposed war without the U.N.'s imprimatur, i.e., the bulk of the country. The former were "serious" people; the latter were dirty hippies.
Well. We see how the war has gone. It's a cataclysmic disaster by every conceivable metric. The serious people were wrong about everything. Literally everything. The dirty hippies -- the great masses of the public and the very few public figures (Feingold, Gore, Kucinich) who stood with them -- were right. The war went horribly wrong for just the reasons they said it would.
So what's the dynamic now amidst the Beltway chattering classes? Where's the center? Why, it's still in the exact same place! The people who advocated for war, and who advocate for more war, and who were wrong about everything, are still the "serious" people. The people who advocated against this fiasco, and are advocating for ending it, and who were right about everything, are still the dirty hippies who never show up on cable news or in major media op-eds. Expeditious withdrawal is a fringe leftist position, despite being supported by a clear majority of the country.
In other words, the "center" has become utterly detached from facts, substance, or majority opinion. It's an insular, self-sustaining myth, all about the vanity and egos of powerful people in the Beltway clusterfuck. It's about them, their self-flattery, their exclusive club, not Iraq. For a truly parodic example of this dynamic and its incredible staying power, check out Joe Klein's blog post, wherein he informs us that OK, the dirty hippies were right about Iraq, but they still sound silly and their opponents are still more "serious." One can only marvel.
To get back to the topic at hand: The last thing the global warming debate needs is for this kind of dynamic to develop. Really. If for no other reason than my head would explode.
Though I know in the end it isn't, it's easy to mistake Revkin's article for a concerted attempt to establish such a dynamic.
You've got one "side" that's wrong about everything, willfully dishonest, openly in hock to corporate interests, and disdained by every real expert in the area, but nonetheless still taken seriously and quoted frequently in the mainstream media. And then there's the "other side," which has been right about everything but is, in the judgment of the self-appointed hall monitors of public dialogue, too shrill about the whole thing, and thus "extremist."
Then there's the "middle," established by wannabe media stars. It means: same substantive positions as the dirty hippies but not a dirty hippie! One establishes oneself as part of this middle, as always, by criticizing ... no, not the avowed, repeated liars ... but the dirty hippies. You become the media's favorite creature: the liberal who hates liberals, or the green who hates greens, or the person who's right about stuff who hates other people who are right about stuff but who care more than is acceptable in "serious" circles.
It's a big vanity play, a garish, self-involved, decadent distraction. Meanwhile, this debate over too much action vs. too little action vs. just the right action takes place in a context of no action at all. And the people who recognize this madness, who are putting themselves out there, struggling to get some kind of political momentum started, what's their reward? What do they get for their efforts?
They get branded dirty hippies, so we can have a new club of self-appointed centrists. Feh.
Comments
View as Flat
sunflower Posted 12:03 pm
08 Jan 2007
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jjwfmme Posted 12:25 pm
08 Jan 2007
And as you say it's ongoing. If you look at recent history, they should be the ones who aren't respectable. The recent war has been a prime example. The whole war effort was practically an empty shell as far as planning goes. If you read any of the books about it-- George Packer's Assassin's Gate, or Ricks' Fiasco. The whole thing was, as you said, a complete clusterfuck. It's really quite shocking when your read the books. And the media went along for the ride. (I know the MSM thinks us bloggers are so rude for swearing blah blah blah, but whatever.)
So there was no sane planning, but of course there was a phalanx of PR and media. I think this mirrors what we're seeing on other issues, including our own.
My feeling is that people have had enough and that's what the recent elections were about. I think Sidney Blumenthal in this Salon essay got it right. (I've also been spreading around this Jay Rosen post, which I think says a lot about the way the media has been sleepwalking through all this...)
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jjwfmme Posted 12:42 pm
08 Jan 2007
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markbahner Posted 1:26 pm
08 Jan 2007
Yeah, dirty hippies! Like Ron Paul:
(In)famous dirty hippie
Ron Paul, dirty hippie
Mark Bahner
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willa Posted 1:44 pm
08 Jan 2007
I love this post, David. I hope it makes you feel at least a little better to have written it. :)
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caniscandida Posted 5:03 pm
08 Jan 2007
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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bookerly Posted 7:36 pm
08 Jan 2007
Wow, those dirty hippies sound like more fun than killing Iraqi school children!! Where can I find some?? (grin).
Nice post, and entirely accurate. We have allowed the morons who scream the loudest to frame the debate and destroy most attempts at reasonable discourse. From the Al Gore internet robot man to the John Kerry Swift Boat Francophile, we have let them demonize everyone and anyone who disagrees.
Ironically, they don't get it. They think this is all good clean fun, and part of some stupid game they are winning.
Listen to Rush claim that he has never made any personal attacks on any Democrats, and understand that he REALLY believes this. Scary.
(I will quibble with the list of people you say are on the left. But not with the general idea.)
It is an old tactic, pick those whom you want to represent the opponents positions, and use them as the spokespeople of the opposition. Here are my nominees. I want Rev. Al Sharpton to be the official spokesperson for Christianity (he is because I say he is), Jim Hightower can speak for Southerners along with Molly Ivins, Abraham Lincoln speaks for Republicans (oh, he is dead, well, we'll find them someone else to represent them in another century or two), David Roberts can represent conservatives (I swear he is to the right of me!), and CanisCandida can speak for intellectuals (no on is better). And so on...
Gee, what an interesting debate we would have if this was what our Sunday Panel shows looked like!
The mass media in America is dominated by an insane (and not too bright) oilagarchy which seems to feel that as long as Americans have beer, bikinis and football, not much else is neccessary.
Oh, burn a dirty hippie at the stake once in a while.
An American teacher I know (who is much more conservative than I am) despairs that America is destroying itself.
I have been considering changing my nic to Cassandra.
patrick
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Professor H Posted 11:45 pm
08 Jan 2007
BTW, same effect is seen with feminism; people are only too happy to point out that they're not feminists.
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jjwfmme Posted 12:03 am
09 Jan 2007
Us and Juan Williams on Fox News:
Sometimes I just want to scream. You guys have been going on since this thing began. I mean, you don't give credit to people, Nancy Pelosi, Howard Dean, Barbara Lee, people who said from the start this is a mistake...
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froggy Posted 12:46 am
09 Jan 2007
i dont get people...
froggy
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Adam Browning Posted 1:39 am
09 Jan 2007
Get Some Sun: http://www.votesolar.org
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jjwfmme Posted 2:01 am
09 Jan 2007
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apsmith Posted 2:15 am
09 Jan 2007
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PPLE Posted 4:21 am
09 Jan 2007
To Wit:
The Gaia Hypothesis is anything but New Age: Gaia describes a universe in which individuals are twigs on an exquisitely branchy tree, implicitly therefore with a consciousness (though the Gaia Hypothesis does not address this question) that is but the pinpoint of the greater tree-consciousness -- or as our pagan ancestors believed, the extended consciousness of our mother the goddess focused to an infinity of individual pinpoints whether inanimate or animate: Ed Sander's "tiny sparks of the universe." Hence Taliesin's "there is nothing in which I have not been"; hence too the formidable logic behind the central chant of the Ghost Dance: "we shall live again." And -- if I may return once more to the analogy of the branchy tree -- beyond this there is the greater community of treeness, what Gary Snyder aptly calls "Earth Household," the implicitly socialist, implicitly communalist realm of being that was instinctively recognized by most of humanity throughout most of its history -- that is, until the advent of patriarchy spawned the absolutism of Abrahamic separatism which in turn produced capitalism and is now predictably metastasizing into fascism: its ultimate form -- of which New Age is a vital support-element.
Indeed New Age is the diametrical opposite of Gaian community and solidarity. New Age is the quintessence of existential isolationism, the ultimate (and ultimately selfish) exclamation of the fascist concept of ubermenschen und untermenschen, man and superman -- and thus absolute self-centeredness rationalized as maximum virtue -- in exactly the same way capitalism is absolute greed rationalized as maximum virtue.
To enlarge slightly on something I recently wrote (in a New-Age-infested venue from which I was ousted for daring to express these very observations): never mind that the core of New Age doctrine is a fuck-you-I-am-god belief that can only further defiance of the environmental mandates of Earth Household; the fascism implicit in the New Age credo lies in the fact that -- even more than the doctrines of Abrahamic religion (which divide all the word into the ubermenschen of the "saved" and the untermenschen of the "damned") -- the mind-over-matter dogma of the New Age cleaves humanity into the "evolved souls" of the "fully conscious" or "enlightened" elite (those "spiritually progressed beings" -- hence "progressives" -- allegedly able to control their own fates merely by the power of their own thoughts), and the dunce-cap proletariat of the "un-evolved" masses, (all the rest of us who for whatever reason refuse to accept the New Age gospel). And just as the Christians elevate wealth to proof of divine favor, denounce the poor as "sinners" and rail that our poverty is proof of our "sin," so do the New Agers exalt riches as proof of enlightenment, dismiss poverty as nothing more than a "self-destructive lifestyle choice" and sneer at us poor as "hopelessly un-evolved." In either case, what is deftly ignored is the fact that capitalism is a slave ideology -- a giant pyramid scam fueled by the ever-worsening survival struggles of an ever-expanding underclass increasingly condemned to inescapable wretchedness.
Thus we see the true function of New Age dogma: to replace the dying dogmas of Abrahamic religion and thereby reinforce the genuinely Nazi ethos at the core of capitalism. Just as Christian capitalists relentlessly savage their workers but find reassurance of their righteousness in church on Sunday, so now New Age executives do likewise in the privacy of their own posh dwellings: they chant some self-affirming mantra and assure themselves of their superiority merely by believing they can "visualize peace." Thus too the so-called New Age is merely the latest attempt to rationalize capitalism -- the most ecocidally parasitic, genocidally selfish ethos in human experience -- a fact proven beyond a scintilla of doubt by the huge corporate beneficence that finances the propagation of New Age beliefs. By contrast, the Gaia Hypothesis is positively subversive: it is the missing link that harmonizes ecology with socialism and -- by implication -- bonds spirituality and science in a mutually supportive manner unknown since the rise of patriarchy. It does all this because it brings us back, via science, to the ecological interdependence of all being -- the ancient knowledge that if one part of Earth Household becomes so predatory it jeopardizes the whole, the entirety of the household is programmed to rise against it and kill it: precisely the self-inflicted apocalypse we now euphemistically describe as global warming. To which adherents of the New Age -- defiantly self-centered to the pollution-bitter end -- will no doubt respond with yet another bumper-sticker: "visualize global cooling."
http://blog.mu.nu/cgi/blup.cgi?entry_id=210748
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PPLE Posted 4:25 am
09 Jan 2007
NOTHING will be done by Democrats to stop the American Holocaust that has been going on across the planet for the last sixty years since the end of WW2 and the nazi-infested CIA was created.
Nazi-infested CIA?
Why yes indeed.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB146/index.htm
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kmp Posted 4:33 am
09 Jan 2007
Personally, as I can see the direction the MSM are heading, I suggest we start soliciting right now to cover Dave's medical bills.
http://www.savedaveshead.org
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ratshark Posted 4:57 am
10 Jan 2007
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pbearden47 Posted 8:38 am
10 Jan 2007
I consider myself a mild-mannered, well-mannered and confident middle-aged (a little past) woman in the south. I don't press my opinions on people, but I'm not shy about stating my views and feelings. Since I was a teenager during the 60s, I get branded as a hippie by young whippersnappers who have no idea of what they're talking about - it just feels like a good insult to them. I've been called a feminazi because I really think women should have equal pay, and I informed this person that I'm proud to be a feminist. I was called a socialist because I voted for George McGovern back in the day. Tree-hugger, pinko commie lover. I'm not patriotic because I think invading a middle east country with no provocation is the stupidest act ever. People think "liberal" is the worst insult, and I just say look it up in the dictionary - doesn't sound so bad.
So - stop the labeling and let's start discussing the issues and solving the problems. Respect and good manners aren't such a bad idea for any of us.
Aunt Phyllis
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JoeyDiana Posted 4:59 am
12 Jan 2007
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Amfora Posted 1:06 am
07 Mar 2008
Plus cool music and permanent euphoria from freedom feeling. Great life-style and quite eco-friendly! I'm for hippie, free love with condoms and variable intimate life with sex toys. "You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one" (c)Lenon
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amazingdrx Posted 2:55 am
07 Mar 2008
You are describing the culural dialectic DR.
Revkin is a traitor. A mass delusional media sellout. A sophist. He pretends to possess principles, but really does not.
Using principle to destroy it? To benefit your own bottomline that is benefitted by the corporate bottomline? Well we are in a material (corporate) world, aren't we material girl? Does Revkin giggle and pose like maddona in an 80s video when he cashes his check?
He claims the progressive heritage, but does not do his part to keep it going. Recognize anyone we all know? Know thyselves, oh dirty hippies. All material girls now.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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LegumeSam Posted 4:39 am
07 Mar 2008
http://www.dailykos.com/User/Cassiodorus
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