See comments below on the best summary yet of the main issues related to climate change and the link to the movie posted at Wattsupwiththat.com
The human oneness thing again, the struggle against tribalism, Wendell Krossa
Even if multiple-origin theories become more credible (they keep popping up and then disappear), you still have the most critical and common identity markers of all humans on Earth today, the fundamental markers of being human- i.e. human consciousness, human mind, human spirit, and the human self- the foundational realities that mark us all as equal members of the same one human family with the same fundamental identity- human being. We are one family of equals. Get used to it. It is our fundamental reality and identity.
Example of multiple origin theories that regularly pop up:
The identity markers that we give so much prominence to, like race, are peripheral in terms of fundamental biological importance. As one scientist said, on the human genome race/color amounts to nothing of anymore importance than a sunburn. It’s the difference between active melanocytes due to ancestors living for millennia in high sunlight areas, versus inactive melanocytes due to millennia of life in low sunlight regions.
Its as if a black person and a white person stated their differences as “You sunburned people… you not sunburned people”. Kinda petty, huh.
“I am you and you are me and we are all together”, paraphrase of John Lennon’s “I am the Walrus”.
The threat to liberal democracy is now coming from within, Wendell Krossa
Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and others have been warning us about a dangerous shift that has occurred as US intelligence agencies have moved from focusing more solely on threats from foreign enemies to now focusing excessively on “domestic threats”, claiming that Americans are functioning as agents of dangerous foreign governments. The agencies now frame many of their own citizens as the agents of dangerous “disinformation and hate speech” thereby validating US government projects to censor, ban, silence, and even criminalize their own citizens.
The new and intensified framing of “domestic threat” is a charge more commonly levelled toward conservative opinions and speech which exposes the ideological bias behind this project. The charge of domestic threat has also been levelled toward fellow liberals who do not zealously support the far-left Woke Progressive narratives that dominate so many social institutions and agencies.
The Twitter Files revelations exposed this new “counter-populism” crusade, promoted by the FBI, CIA, the Democratic party, and coercively pushed on the social media giants (Twitter, Facebook, Google, etc.).
Add here that “concept creep” has resulted in expanding the “disinformation, hate speech” categorization to include challenge and opposition to Woke Progressivism narratives.
A striking thing here is the cognitive disconnect that is so evident in the “psychological projection” that is commonly voiced today by the liberal side of society. We see this projection as liberals claim that the threat to democracy is coming from the populist or conservative side of our societies. They demonize and smear the populist revolt against elites as a “far right” threat (dog whistle for “White supremacist terrorists”), “far-right” being the go-to smear of far-left Woke Progressives, along with the usual pejoratives of “racist, Nazi, fascist, Russian disinformation agent…”, etc. All smears intended to discredit and silence any opposition to dominating Woke Progressive narratives.
Many agree that the great threat to democracy today is from within our societies, a “domestic” threat. But contrary to the liberal claim that the threat is coming from the conservative side of society, it is the left that has rejected liberal democracy for left-wing authoritarianism (i.e. evident in surveys showing a majority of Democrats favor censorship and banning candidates from elections). The actual threat is from the formerly liberal side, now become “highly illiberal” with its promotion of censorship, banning, and criminalizing of opponents.
Many liberals recognize the threat from their side today, as Bill Burr stated on a Rogan appearance years ago- “Look, I am a lefty but I realize the biggest bullies today are on my side”.
Added note: While the greater threat of authoritarianism emanates from the left side of our societies today, we caution, with “bothsideism”, that the totalitarian impulse is the enemy of us all, a pathology that we all possess within us in the form of the inherited animal impulses to tribalism, domination of others, and punitive destruction of differing/competing others. Our real battle in life is against this inner monster/enemy within us all.
Jordan Peterson gives some sense of how seriously our societies have degenerated before the forces of Woke Progressivism. While he focuses on the education systems, his arguments apply to the wider institutions of our societies, Wendell Krossa
This quote from his article below….
“When the source is polluted, everything downstream is poisoned. That is what has happened. That is why everything appears to be corrupting simultaneously. Hence the increasing unreliableness of professional organizations and governing bodies everywhere; the sad and degenerating state of the legacy media; and the pathetic virtue-signalling and doom-saying hypocrisy and betrayal of the political elite.”
Peterson is a unique voice among many brave crusaders for freedom (others- Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, etc.) who are defending and promoting Classic Liberalism, an approach to organizing human societies that is now embraced more by conservatives as Western “liberals” have largely rejected that true liberalism for anti-democratic Left-wing authoritarianism/collectivism. Peterson, in article below, gives some sense of how dangerous the situation has become now and what needs to be done to save liberalism.
The great project of “destroying democracy to save democracy” adds confusion to the never-ending battle for freedom. Destroying democracy to save democracy is a fallacy promoted by the Woke left that views contemporary free individual democracy (Classic liberal democracy as in Libertarian “Live and let live”) as a perversion of democracy and have, instead, embraced leftist collectivism as their framing of true “democracy”, a system where their views and policies dominate. This is all part of the perversion of language that George Orwell warned us about in “1984”. Where words and terms now mean something opposite to their conventional historical usage.
Now some comment on the Peterson article…
If you are not yet fully ‘woke’, then make yourself fully aware of the battle for freedom that is now being waged across Western societies. Public figures like Jordan Peterson express well the current struggle to prevent the forces of chaos from ruining our societies, and civilization overall.
While good on his argument regarding educational institutions, I would quibble (just a wee little one) with his point made regarding the “Enuma Elish” myth. I would not emphasize the male/female dualism to make that point. It is more generally true that both women and men have contributed to the creation of human civilization that is the creation of order out of the chaos of nature (i.e. the mindless, random forces in wilderness, and the primitive state of early human societies dominated by powerful chiefs/shaman versus powerless commoners). Both sexes have contributed to the historical battle to keep chaos at bay and protect what all humanity values, as expressed in the Classic Liberal principles, laws, institutions that protect the freedom and equality of all members. Equality, based on merit, that is quite different from the “equity of outcomes” advocated by collectivist approaches.
Additionally, as someone publicly stated recently- Why are we again seeing violence erupting in so many places today across the world? I keep pointing to the unleashing of those primitive inherited impulses to tribalism, hatred of differing others, the lust to dominate, and to destroy differing others (impulses that contribute to generating the chaos that undermines what civilizes us). We have long possessed the antidote to that madness, notably the insights from the wisdom sages of our past- for example, the Chinese sage Laotzi who urged- Yes, defend yourself against enemy assaults but then do not gloat triumphantly over your defeated offender but seek instead their restoration/rehabilitation. And of course, the wisdom sage Jesus. Hence, my “obsession” with history’s most profound statement ever on how to maintain peace and order in human society- i.e. “Love your enemies”.
Insights like the Jesus statements on “love your enemy” urge us to radically reframe how we view differing others- i.e. not as enemies deserving exclusion, domination, and punitive treatment but as family, despite their failures/offences. Family that deserve love and rehabilitative care. This is why I keep harping on the core Jesus theme and Campbell’s version of that, along with other insights that help us overcome our deeply ingrained impulses to tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction of differing others.
Peterson, in his article below, points to how Woke corruption has overtaken education, and all else downstream is subsequently rotted and needs radical change, renewal. The courageous spirits among us will have to embrace the hero’s quest and come out publicly to pushback against what has gone wrong. Again, it is critical to note that this struggle to protect freedom from the forces militating against Classic Liberal democracy is more an inner battle against what is behind the public rot- i.e. our inner impulses to tribalism, to domination of differing others, and the related tendency to contribute to the chaos that provides the environment in which totalitarians seek to bring down the existing order and then install their system to dominate others (“police state” projects to restore “peace and order”).
Further on the resort to chaos…
Richard Landes, and others, add critical detail on how revolutionaries have resorted to promoting chaos as a precondition/pretext for their coercive takeover of societies. Marxist, and other crusades, have repeatedly tried to generate chaotic conditions in order to bring about the collapse of the existing order and then populations alarmed by the return to chaos would be more amenable to police state-type salvation responses. Much like Klaus Schwab of the WEF who has expressed his wish to use Covid-type lockdown situations to push his Great Reset of world economies, a system modelled after the Chinese totalitarian system of planned economy.
So also Justin Trudeau expressed that, of all governments, he admired the Chinese dictatorship the most because they know how to get things done, right now…
“There’s a level of admiration I actually have for China because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime”. Well, his Dad was a fanboy of Castro and Mao.
Totalitarians also eventually resort to “exterminate or be exterminated” thinking across a spectrum from milder versions to more outright coercive purification or elimination approaches. Again, see Landes good historical detail on this.
The danger for us all lies in viewing ourselves, in a perversion of the hero’s quest, as engaged in a starkly black and white dualism, as being on the righteous side of a battle against intolerable evil that threatens all life. We overly demonize differing others as “great threats to all that is good”, to then validate censoring, silencing, cancelling, even criminalizing and destroying them. And we add to our self-delusion by convincing ourselves that we are well-intentioned because we are rightly protecting kids against such things as online threats of harmful “disinformation and hate speech”. But then we leave our definition boundaries fuzzy as to what such terms include, and “concept creep” ends up justifying one side to censor the differing opinions of the other side as “disinformation… hate speech”, speech that is simply diverse opinion on varied matters. Again, who gets to define such categories without bias?
And never lose sight of the fact that the real battle takes place inside us all (Solzhenitsyn’s point). The real battle of life involves the dualism of our animal passions against our better angels. That is the enemy, the monster that has to be defeated in order for us to live as truly human. Good news- We have the alternative insights and narrative themes to point us in better directions.
“Jordan Peterson: Our rotten, rotting universities: ‘Elite’ institutions are whale carcasses filled with parasites”, Mar 26, 2024
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/jordan-peterson-our-rotten-rotting-universities
Quotes:
“There has been a spate of articles written lately — and indeed of books — by academics who have become disaffected by the happenings in our much-vaunted institutions of higher education….
“I have for several years been participating, for example, in an email list….
“… the participants have become increasingly likely to identify themselves and to speak and write publicly and damn the consequences. All the people involved have determined despite the cancel culture and reputation-savaging that is part and parcel of the parasite strategy that the situation is so dire that even the risk of career has now become a moral requirement. This is something akin to war.
“The very fact of the existence of this dissident herd, something impossible to imagine five years ago, and its private and secret nature (up until now) is an indication of the absolute and utter rot of the universities. The most shocking example of that ideologically-possessed degeneration was, of course, the recent performances in the U.S. Congress of the Presidents of the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard and MIT. These three “thought leaders” — all women; all flying, of course, the flag of toxic compassion…
“Both Claudine Gay of Harvard and Liz Magil of UPenn resigned deservedly in disgrace immediately afterward…. Even these resignations, however, with all that they signified — to say nothing of the appalling public statements that precipitated them — did comparatively little to truly alert the public to the seriousness of the occupation of their educational institutions from kindergarten through university by the leftist avatars of privileged resentment. Likewise, little was truly done by the institutions in question to address the rot itself, which has truly become (to borrow a hated phrase from the same radicals) systemic.
“How in the world did we get to this point?…
“The parasites — flying, without exception, the flags of the radical left — began to make their appearance and plot their takeover during the turn on tune in drop out hippie 1960s (a mantra developed at the very Department of Psychology I later served in at Harvard itself).
“All the virtues that made these places what they most truly were — all the disciplined striving, the upward aiming, the long apprenticeship, the concern for the truth, the high and discerning intelligence — were disdainfully dismissed by the parasitical invaders as nothing but the expression of arbitrary power and the manifestation of patriarchal and racist oppression….
“Those who levied such accusations and whose victimized proclaiming was so cowardly accepted, abetted and even admired (“they’re so brave”) by the targets of their shaming had the doors to the warehouse guiltily flung open to them. They came flooding in, consequentially, multiplying the number of sham disciplines and positions, demolishing one by one everyone who opposed their ideological and self-absorbed acting or indicated its essentially narcissistic and shallow nature.
“This was the invasion of academia by the poseurs and charlatans of the permissive, infantilizing, accusatory mob; the radical feminists, the grievance studies “scholars,” the post-modernists allied so corruptly and unforgivably with the philosophical Marxists, the do-gooding activists, the rainbow-banner bearing hedonists of pride, even the outright communists — the whole bloody mess of those claiming no other motivation but compassion and care for the marginalized but actually doing nothing other than raping and pillaging the brand….
“When the source is polluted, everything downstream is poisoned. That is what has happened. That is why everything appears to be corrupting simultaneously. Hence the increasing unreliableness of professional organizations and governing bodies everywhere; the sad and degenerating state of the legacy media; and the pathetic virtue-signalling and doom-saying hypocrisy and betrayal of the political elite….
“…. (a professor leaving his corrupted educational institution) he believes that the universities are so rotten they simply cannot be saved….
“My daughter and I and our team will soon be launching Peterson Academy, an online educational institution… There are other such efforts in the works. The most well-known and advertised is, perhaps, the new University of Austin in Texas, founded in part by the now-independent journalist Bari Weiss, once of the New York Times…
“Consider the recent and arguably analogous case of Twitter, Elon Musk’s recent purchase, a very large and powerful institution, and a stellar example of invasion by the woke mob (something that has also happened, by the way, to Disney and Google). Musk fired something approximating 80 per cent of the employees of his newly and bravely purchased company. Why? Because they did nothing but consume resources….
“The universities are in the same state as pre-Musk Twitter — no; worse….
“The situation is even more serious on the administrative side. Ninety per cent of that lot should go….
“They have also allowed their journals to become corrupted and their science and research programs to degenerate into propaganda…
“It is now impossible to obtain “research funding” without writing an oath of fealty to the radical left…
“Why then are the voices of conservative and genuinely liberal protest increasingly emerging among a small but growing minority of academics? Because the captain is truly intoxicated, and the ship is truly in peril. An increasing number therefore now see that they have more to lose by remaining silent than by pointing and speaking out….
“There’s a lesson here for everyone out in the real world, too, beyond academia, now marred and lessened by the workings of the Luciferian intellectuals: get your house in order, gird your loins, look at the mess that is making itself manifest in front of you, wherever you are, say your piece, and get to work.
“Before the goddess of chaos makes her full appearance — and prevails.”
National Post (end of article)
Another on educational rot…
This illustrates Peterson’s article on how “rotten” North American education has become, and how the rot has polluted downstream in main media, politics, and government agencies. Peterson was right that this is how the new totalitarianism works its way across our societies. All the contributing research from historians and independent journalists note the varied strains of this new Marxist collectivism fulfilling its “long-game” approach with success.
“Woke teachers openly preach as common-sense colleagues are silenced: Promoters of decolonization, social justice and ‘anti-oppression education’ enjoy the support of the education system”, Jamie Sarkonak, Mar. 27, 2024
Quote from below- “Critical thinking would involve teaching students to contemplate more than one perspective.”
Note the bullying and threats that inevitably follow any questioning, challenge, skepticism to the Woke indoctrination.
More on bullying over gender issues
Added notes to the Peterson article: In the movie “Will” the police supervisor prepares new Dutch police recruits to work under Nazi occupation during WW2. He gives the recruits a warning that touches on “the banality of evil”, that so many people see what is happening around them and yet they choose to stand by silently and just observe, not willing to suffer the cost of speaking out against tyrannical mobs (mobs that are often a minority of a society as surveys show).
The supervisor first gives the recruits general instructions on their duties as officers who will act as buffers between the Nazis and Dutch population. He says, “That is the official part…. Now off the record. Please shut the door. All you learned in training won’t help you at all. There is only one thing to get into your fucking skulls.”
He then begins to sing a children’s song about a bear buttering bread to eat. He comes to this part of the song, “You will stand by and watch”. “That’s the thing to remember”, he emphasizes. “You will stand by and watch”. Or will you?
Later, two of the recruits become involved in an incident where they have to protect Jews from capture by a Nazi and unintentionally kill the Nazi in the process. As the Nazi leaders later line up the recruits to demand who killed their fellow Nazi, the two young men stand by and watch, in horror, as the Nazis shoot many of their fellow officers in retaliation. Cowardly, they refuse to speak out and spare their fellow recruits, refuse to admit their guilt, and choose to “stand by and watch” the murder of many other innocent recruits.
As I watched this movie, I thought also of that question posed by the young lady working in a Holocaust memorial organization who wondered aloud how so many “good Germans” allowed themselves to become caught up in the Nazi madness. On hearing her, I thought of the decarbonization crusade that is devastating our societies today. How many just silently stand by and watch the alarmist narrative dominate public discourse, news media, and deny the good science that is telling us that there is no “climate crisis”. Too many “stand by and watch” as our societies are ruined by the irrational “madness of crowds” crusade to ban fossil fuels.
This site repeatedly posts the central theme of Historical Jesus as in the Matthew 5:38-48, or the better Luke 6: 27-36 version. Why such intense interest (obsession?) in those statements? Because better than any other set of similar statements they tell us how to solve tribalism, defuse hatred of differing others/enemies, and how to restore and rehabilitate offenders and thereby restore peace and security in our societies. This central message of Jesus is still unequalled in its potency to reframe theology (i.e. ultimate ideals), human narratives, ethics, and consequent outcomes in human societies, Wendell Krossa
The Jesus’ teaching contains….
(1) The single most profound insight into theology ever made by anyone- i.e. That God is non-retaliatory, unconditional love of a scandalously inexpressible nature, even offensively generous to many good, moral people who demand some form of retribution as true justice (i.e. reward the good, punish the bad as in traditional eye for eye justice systems). The Jesus insight on theology overturns the entire history of mythical/religious ideas of deity.
(2) In his “stunning new theology” Jesus presented a singularly critical insight into the nature of ultimate reality, and that was insight into the essence of a truly comprehensive TOE (a “Theory of Everything” that is not philosophical materialist). And please don’t tell me that science will ultimately get us to a materialist TOE. It will do no such thing.
(3) His statement of the nature of Love at core of all reality and life, offered the best insight into the meaning of existence, the purpose of the cosmos, life, and human history- all questions/issues that find ultimate answers in the ideal of love.
People across history have speculated on the nature of deity and understood that as the ultimate human ideal and authority that provides answers to why we exist, what our lives should be about, our purpose in living as consciously human, how we should behave (i.e. deity providing the ultimate inspiration, guidance, validation for how we should live).
(4) Jesus offered the highest expression/definition of love in his behavior based on similar belief statement, notably in the precept to “Love your enemies because God does”. That is the ultimate reach of fully humane love.
(5) He also then set the highest reach of the hero’s quest to be fully and maturely human.
(6) Jesus offered the most potent means of overcoming our worst impulses to tribal separation and opposition, hatred, and vengeful violence against differing others, in his urging to “love your enemies”. Liberation from our worst impulses is the greatest liberation of all, the liberation of mind and spirit at the deepest levels of consciousness and emotion, motivation, response/behavior, liberation from the darkest impulses within us all. It is the victory in the greatest battle of all that takes place inside each of us, against our real enemy and monster.
All in a six-word statement- “Love your enemy because God does”. Do that and be like God.
The most profound set of words ever uttered encompassing the ultimate ethic with the ultimate theology.
I know of no other set of statements that take us to such ultimate ideal, meaning, purpose.
This interesting comment from Mexican president Obrador– “Mexican president says the ‘flow of migrants will continue’ unless the US meets his demands: Interviewer recalled that critics derided Obrador’s requests as ‘diplomatic blackmail’”, Alexander Hall, Mar. 26, 2024
https://www.foxnews.com/media/mexican-president-says-flow-migrants-continue-unless-us-meets-demands
Quotes:
“Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador warned on Sunday during an interview with 60 Minutes that unless the United States complies with Latin America’s requests for aid, the tide of migrants will continue….
“”Everybody thinks you have the power in this moment to slow down migration. Do you plan to?” “60 Minutes” correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi said asked Obrador….
“”We do, and want to continue doing it. But we do want for the root causes to be attended to, for them to be seriously looked at,” a translator interpreted Obrador’s response from Spanish.
“Alfonsi noted Obrador’s demands for the U.S. to send $20 billion a year to Latin America countries, lift sanctions on Venezuela, end the Cuban embargo and legalize millions of Mexicans that are living in the U.S.”
Response to Obrador’s comments: Send more money, deal with root causes? Huh? Root causes? How about promoting better governance so people would not have to flee South American countries? How about such nations dealing with root causes themselves like the refusal to implement the fundamental institutions of Classic Liberalism or liberal democracy as outlined by Daniel Hannan and William Bernstein in their good histories of what contributes to successful human society.
Western governments sent $1.3 trillion to Africa over 40-50 years, and it did little to advance the societies receiving that foreign aid. One African economist said- Stop sending aid as most of it goes to corrupt leaders and elites.
History affirms that successful societies are built on the institutions that create the liberal democracy atmosphere where the people of any society can then get busy creating prosperity and making their countries successful- i.e. by protecting private property rights, by enacting systems of law that protect the freedom and rights of all equally, by using more rational approaches to problem solving (good science), and by building communications/transportation infrastructure that will help citizens engage commerce freely. Add the importance of protecting a genuinely free press to hold elites responsible for creating and maintaining the proper institutions for a successful society. It may take decades to shift toward these Classic Liberal approaches. It did not happen overnight in Western societies.
Sources: Daniel Hannan’s “Inventing Freedom”, William Bernstein’s “The Birth of Plenty”.
This older (2009) article from The Guardian- “Everybody knows it doesn’t work”, Aida Edemariam.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2009/feb/19/dambisa-moyo-dead-aid-africa
Quotes:
“Despite receiving more than $1 trillion from the west over the last half century, Africa remains in dire economic straits. Dambisa Moyo thinks aid is to blame and should stop now. She talks to Aida Edemariam…
“She (Dambisa Moyo) makes it clear at the outset what kind of aid she means. She does not mean humanitarian or emergency aid, mobilised in response to calamities; she does not mean charity-based aid, given to specific organisations and people on the ground, in order to achieve specific things (she sits on the boards of several charities, one of which distributes antiretrovirals); she is hopeful about a new attitude to food aid, whereby the money is used to buy food from farmers within a country, and then distribute it to those in need, instead of flooding the place with foreign food that undercuts local growers. What she means is “systemic aid”, the vast sums regularly transferred from government to government, or via institutions such as the World Bank.”
And this all-too-common statement of irrational anti-science lunacy- That we can turn a CO2 knob and control climate. We endlessly hear the public alarmism narrative that we must cut CO2 emissions drastically and immediately in order to keep temperatures from rising past another 1.5 degrees C. The apocalypse number. As if there is a proven causal relationship (“scientific consensus”) between human emissions of CO2 and warming temperatures. There is no such final conclusion, as the best atmospheric physicists have told us (Sources: co2coalition.org, Wattsupwiththat.com, etc.).
Quotes:
“The federal republic of Germany has already consumed more CO2 than would be allocated to it if the world still wants to achieve the so-called 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) target… Climate science has always warned that the window in which Germany can make a sufficient and fair contribution to maintaining the 1.5-degree limit is closing…”
“At the Paris climate conference in 2015, the nations of the world committed to limiting the rise of man-made global warming to a maximum of 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100…”
And this from Michael Shellenberger: “It’s All Much Worse Than I Thought: The corporate media are all-in on government censorship”, Mar. 26, 2024
https://public.substack.com/p/its-all-much-worse-than-i-thought
Quotes:
“Over the last three years, we have come to learn of the role that our own government officials have played in demanding censorship by social media platforms. Some of this censorship was overt, particularly as it related to COVID. However, some of it was also done in secrecy, as we discovered in the Twitter Files. Many of us thought that once we had uncovered the censorship, governments would be sufficiently embarrassed to stop doing it. And to some extent, that has been the case.
“But now, governments around the world are stepping up their efforts to demand more censorship…. Major media outlets are currently working with government-funded censorship activists at the University of Washington and Stanford Internet Observatory to demand greater censorship in the name of “saving Democracy.”
“Without a doubt, those of us who have uncovered censorship have had an impact. On “60 Minutes” last Sunday, the government-funded advocates of censorship at the University of Washington said they have stopped demanding censorship of social media platforms…
“But governments, government-funded NGOs, and the news media have been relentless in their demands for a crackdown on speech they deem hateful and false…
“The 60 Minutes segment was particularly shocking. Lesly Stahl never mentioned the mass censorship of accurate information about COVID’S origins, COVID vaccines, and lockdowns. She falsely suggested that shining a light on the censorship activists was tantamount to persecution. And she suggested that if the government didn’t do more to censor misinformation, Trump supporters would overthrow the government, which is a form of disinformation aimed at scaring people into giving up our first and most fundamental freedom….
“The media have a direct financial interest in the government censoring independent media. They are openly partisan and anti-Trump. They appear to believe that Trump’s support rests on misinformation and that freedom of speech makes it possible. There are irrational emotional forces at play here, too. Many people are so offended by Trump and his supporters and feel so entitled that they want the government to censor them. The combination of all of that fear and loathing goes a long way to explaining why support among Democrats for the government to engage in online censorship rose from 40 to 70 percent between 2018 and 2023….
“And the demand for censorship by conservatives of pro-Palestinian voices suggests that the sentiment is increasingly becoming bipartisan, with both Republicans and Democrats demanding that their enemies be silenced.”
If you have not yet seen it, here it the link to one of the best summaries of the main issues regarding climate change. This particular summary was posted on H. Sterling Burnett’s “Climate Change Weekly #501”.
Movie is available at https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/03/20/climate-the-movie-watch-here/
Quotes:
“About Climate: The Movie (The Cold Truth) by Director Martin Durkin and Producer Tom Nelson
“This film exposes the climate alarm as an invented scare without any basis in science. It shows that mainstream studies and official data do not support the claim that we are witnessing an increase in extreme weather events—hurricanes, droughts, heatwaves, wildfires, and all the rest. It emphatically counters the claim that current temperatures and levels of atmospheric CO2 are unusually and worryingly high. On the contrary, it is very clearly the case, as can be seen in all mainstream studies, that, compared to the last half billion years of Earth’s history, both current temperatures and CO2 levels are extremely and unusually low. We are currently in an ice age. It also shows that there is no evidence that changing levels of CO2 (it has changed many times) has ever ‘driven’ climate change in the past.
“Why then, are we told, again and again, that ‘catastrophic man-made climate-change’ is an irrefutable fact? Why are we told that there is no evidence that contradicts it? Why are we told that anyone who questions ‘climate chaos’ is a ‘flat-earther’ and a ‘science-denier’?
“The film explores the nature of the consensus behind climate change. It describes the origins of the climate funding bandwagon, and the rise of the trillion-dollar climate industry. It describes the hundreds of thousands of jobs that depend on the climate crisis. It explains the enormous pressure on scientists and others not to question the climate alarm: the withdrawal of funds, rejection by science journals, social ostracism.
“But the climate alarm is much more than a funding and jobs bandwagon. The film explores the politics of climate. From the beginning, the climate scare was political. The culprit was free-market industrial capitalism. The solution was higher taxes and more regulation. From the start, the climate alarm appealed to, and has been adopted and promoted by, those groups who favor bigger government.
“This is the unspoken political divide behind the climate alarm. The climate scare appeals especially to all those in the sprawling publicly-funded establishment. This includes the largely publicly-funded Western intelligentsia, for whom climate has become a moral cause. In these circles, to criticize or question the climate alarm has become a breach of social etiquette.
“The film was shot on location in the U.S., Israel, Kenya, and the UK.
“The film includes interviews with a number of very prominent scientists, including Professor Steven Koonin (author of ‘Unsettled’, a former provost and vice-president of Caltech), Professor Dick Lindzen (formerly professor of meteorology at Harvard and MIT), Professor Will Happer (professor of physics at Princeton), Dr. John Clauser (winner of the Nobel prize in Physics in 2022), Professor Nir Shaviv (Racah Institute of Physics), and others.”
Add this summary of facts in the movie: “Annotated Bibliography for Climate: The Movie”, Andy May, Mar. 26, 2024
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/03/26/annotated-bibliography-for-climate-the-movie/
Quotes:
“Many viewers of Climate: The Movie have asked for more information on the topics discussed. In response, I selected the following 70 key statements from the movie and provide references and context for the statements here. Sometimes the statements are slightly paraphrased from what was said for brevity. The statements are listed in the same order as they appear in the movie. The references, illustrations, and links below are my attempt to clarify the statements, provide context, and support the idea behind the phrase or sentence.
“I received help from Dr. Willie Soon and Marty Cornell in building this bibliography. My thanks to both.”
And this also from Burnett’s “Climate Change Weekly #501”.
“Weather Extremes Are Little Changed, New Report Shows”
Quotes:
“A new report published by The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) debunks oft-made claims that extreme weather, such as droughts, floods, heatwaves, hurricanes, tornadoes, and wildfires, have become more common and more intense in recent decades as a result of human caused climate change.
“Written by physicist Ralph Alexander, Ph.D., it presents long-term observational data and historical newspaper accounts of weather to “document multiple examples of past extremes that matched or exceeded anything experienced in the present-day world,” as Benny Peiser, Ph.D., director of the GWPF, writes in in an article on Climate Change Dispatch.
“In the paper’s executive summary, Alexander writes brief descriptions of some of the conclusions presented in the report, such as:
“Heatwaves of the last few decades pale in comparison to those of the 1930s—a period whose importance is frequently downplayed by the media and environmental activists. The evidence shows that the record heat of that time was not confined to the U.S. ‘Dust Bowl’, but extended throughout much of North America, as well as to other countries, such as France, India, and Australia.
“Major floods today are no more common nor deadly or disruptive than any of the thousands of floods in the past, ….
“Severe droughts have been a continuing feature of the Earth’s climate for millennia, despite the brouhaha in the mainstream media over the extended drought in Europe during the summer of 2022. Not only was the European drought not unprecedented, but there have been numerous longer and drier droughts throughout history, including during the past century.
““That so many people are unaware of past extremes shows that collective memories of extreme weather are short-lived,” Alexander told Peiser, describing why he wrote the report. “The perception that extreme weather events are increasing in frequency and severity is primarily a consequence of new information technology—the Internet and smartphones—which have revolutionized communication and made us much more aware of such disasters in all corners of the world than we were 50 or 100 years ago … amplified by the mainstream media, eager to promote the latest climate scare.””
Sources: Climate Change Dispatch; The Global Warming Policy Foundation