We have a political culture, for lack of a more accurate term, in which the nuance/complexity of a given issue is generally crushed under the dualistic false equivalency favored by corporate sponsors and those millions who crave certainty and don’t like a lot of confusing detail. Raise the issue of massive American poverty, the shrinking middle class and the increasing income chasm between the super-wealthy and everybody else? Class warfare, unless you’re on the winning side, in which case, taste dictates not bringing up the ugly subject.
This automatic black and white analysis with its bogus equivalencies is not done by chance. It is supported by research– people want their answers simple. If 99.5% of climate scientists have documented the rise of CO2 in the atmosphere, rising ocean temperatures, the melting of polar ice, the cluster of alarming evidence that we are heading toward a man-made tipping point on the way to massive earth-wide disaster, there is another side to the story.
For one thing 99.5% is not 100%, let us not forget that. And then there’s the machine that influences public opinion, and it runs on millions of dollars. It provides comforting certainty in an uncertain world by confirming what we’d all like to believe.
The fossil fuel industry and others profiting handsomely from the status quo have the dough and the motivation to dispute burning carbon’s role in Climate Change. The rest, as they say, acrimonious, corporately sponsored public debate between Climate Change Skeptics and Global Warming Alarmists.
Al Gore, with his depressing Power Point presentation? Alarmist. Guy with an on-line doctorate from Holy Trinity University reassuring his audience that man’s activities have nothing to do with global warming? Skeptic. Now, be logical: who do you believe, an alarmist or a skeptic?
The alarmist is emotional, the skeptic rational. So who’s more credible on such an important and potentially frightening issue? Of course, victims of crime tend to be alarmed and emotional, but why bring that up? The tens of millions spent by the main polluting industries have influenced a large segment of the American populace to believe that the “liberals” and their godless scientists are alarmists perpetrating a hoax. Manipulating the true facts because they hate our freedom. Case closed, next.
Theory of evolution vs. Intelligent Design– an unproven “theory” vs. God’s infinite wisdom as the ultimate genius designer. Death Tax vs. Paris Hilton Tax– a ruthless tax levied on your death by a relentlessly invasive government vs. a tax effecting only the heirs of the very wealthy, an affirmation of a dead billionaire’s right to pass along every hard-earned cent without inheritance tax. Collateral Damage vs. War Crimes– bad things happen during war vs. the quaint notion that killing innocent non-combatants is often a war crime.
My father died full of regret that he’d seen the world as black and white, rather than the full-color, vibrant, finely gradated world it truly is. There are plenty of desperate idiots here, no doubt, and violent people, and even the most evil convince themselves they are doing the right thing. But the world itself, as God made it, is an endlessly fascinating kaleidoscope of color, a cornucopia of subtle and sometimes wonderful textures, tastes, smells, things to touch.
To proportionality, then. If someone hurts you, a friend of many years you rarely see, and you are committed to mildness, what to do? If you never get a chance to talk about it, and are feeling overwhelmed, you might write about it, try to comb through what happened. I have a blahg with two or three regular readers. I posted something about inexplicably insensitive behavior I experienced at the hands of two friends recently. The post may have stung the anonymous persons described unsympathetically.
The stung party writes something in return, an email from a conspicuously fake address. Knowing that I am having a devilishly hard time rolling the massive rock of my idealistic program up a hill alone, and how impossible it’s been so far to find true allies, he sends the kind of note I’ve been longing to receive, someone who gets the program’s potential, loves it, offers some of the very expertise I’m seeking.
And in the body of the email, while he is dancing out, in the manner of the dancing sadist in Reservoir Dogs, on his toes and grooving as he cuts off the ears of his bound, gasoline soaked victim, this “don’t you wish somebody actually cared like this?”, he turns his stiletto heel once, twice, comparing his fictional self to Mother Theresa, and mocking the program I have been working on, unpaid, for three years, the program I am staking my life on.
A proportional response? Only if you believe a ten year war in Iraq was a proportional response to the 9/11 attack justified by WMD, Saddam’s connections to Bin Laden, Freedom on the March, Oil to pay for the War, strategic geo-political considerations, Supporting our troops, war on those who hate our freedom, war on terror, war to end war, shock and awe, whatever. “Whatever”, by the way, is the most convincing rationale of those listed above and one of the few that is not either an outright, intentional lie or a tissue of smelly ruminant feces.
If my friend was hurt by my confusion as to why he’d lie to me, stated so bluntly and inappropriately in this “public” space, there were many less bitchy ways he could have brought my insensitivity to my attention. But that surely couldn’t have been as much fun as dancing like that. Hurt real good, must have been very satisfying, even if a bit cowardly. Rage is rarely pretty, even when it feels justified.
