"Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses"

Much of the public has come to believe that anyone who is skeptical about the dangers of global warming is an enemy of the environment. The skeptics now have the difficult task of convincing the public that the opposite is true. Many of the skeptics are passionate environmentalists. They are horrified to see the obsession with global warming distracting public attention from what they see as more serious and more immediate dangers to the planet, including problems of nuclear weaponry, environmental degradation, and social injustice.

That, Mr. Bones, comes from "Theoretical physicist and mathematician Freeman Dyson" .

Any fool can see why the slaves of Murdoch and Mammon accounted the passage "notable and quotable." Yet do they and their masters really prefer that the lower orders take to worrying about social injustice -- or even about nukes and toxic messes -- rather than about the pretended global warming?

Considering the average level of prudence exhibited by the Harvard Victory School MBA classes, probably these junior journalistic jingos are perfectly serious and sincere. They are also none too bright, not bright enough to notice that the other three phenomena mentioned are egregiously plutocratogenic in nature, whereas the weather can, with some show of plausibility and reasonable hopes of credibility, still be blamed on Father Zeus acting alone.

The kiddies’ inconsiderate imprudence liked the idea of highjackin’ Dr. Dyson, and the fact that he will squirm to read it must have made it seem even a niftier idea. Though generally unintelligent, the HVS MBA's are not so far down the Great Chain as to suppose that this victim is anythin’ but a victim. Nobody who uses a firebrand soundbite like "social injustice" without sarcasm is a true friend and ideobuddy to Jingodom. Obviously.

Thus the HVS MBA crew were attemptin’ a somewhat delicate polemical maneuvre here, quotin’ one of their faction’s enemies to insinuate that rank-and-file enemies of their faction are imbeciles. Their ploy logically required that Dr. Dyson himself be portrayed as a non-imbecile, so that his testimony about what jerks the rest of ’em are has some weight attached to it. So far, so good -- good, if one sympathizes with the juvenile jingo faction -- but then they run off the rails. Having set up Freeman Dyson as a non-imbecile, the kiddies quite needlessly inform their masters' corporation’s customers exactly which -- in context, presumptively non-imbecile -- things he thinks should be worries about more than anthropogenic climate change. Anybody with half a brain worth tyin’ behind her back would have simply omitted the words "including problems of nuclear weaponry, environmental degradation, and social injustice."

Mammon and Murdoch will suffer no harm at all from the vague suggestion that something is more worthy of concern than the pretended global warming. Indeed, M&M must think that themselves. But there was no reason whatever to put Dr. Dyson’s subversive ideas about exactly which things these are into their customers’ head. [1]

But God knows best. Happy days.


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[1] An objector might object that Wall Street Jingo customers can be counted on instantly to despise and reject such enemy poison gas as "problems of nuclear weaponry, environmental degradation, and social injustice." I daresay many of the lemmin’s are perfectly reliable in that department, and the kid scribblers do actually rely on that knee jerk pretty heavily. But in this instance it will not do its usual trick. Should the customers decide that Dr. Dyson must be the kind of professorial imbecile who believes in "social justice," why on Gore’s green earth should they pay attention to anythin’ he says?