Chris Gloninger wove the reality of global heating into his forecasts in the conservative heartland of Iowa. Not everyone was receptive.
Imagine having a belief that is 100% the opposite of science, a belief which is ONLY beneficial to mega corporations, and threatening someone’s life based upon that belief. Sounds like a cult.
Thank god American media is free and not totally a giant propaganda mill like all those evil nations that aren’t America and not as special as America is.
The real crime is intentional sabotage of the educational systems so the voting population has no critical thinking skills. When I was a kid we did an experiment in the 5th grade showing increased Co2 in a glass bottle increases the temperature in the bottle. Now here we are debating the 5G chips in the Covid vaccine and arguing about which media/politician/company is more corrupt or biased. The universe would be better off if a benevolent alien life form exterminated humans and let evolution start over.
As a non American it is always wild to hear such strangely internatilised concepts of how people see the world. This guy received emails saying it was a “liberal conspiracy theory on the weather”, calling climate change a “Biden hoax”. Does someone like that have no concept that this is an issue for the rest of us outside the USA? (Aka the majority of the world). And that it existed for prior administrations too!
I don’t think people that spout death threats on climate change do much thinking at all.
Not destroy, but I think this would apply:
“In a vacuum, nobody can hear you think”
Republicans have been actively attacking and undermining American schools for decades. These depleted schools have produced legions of people who can’t discern truth from falsity and have absolutely no curiosity about the rest of the world. Facebook and the television tell them liberals are bad and the cause of all their problems. They don’t question it.
Yep. An authoritarian upbringing leads to a hierarchical belief system. Changing that requires addressing trauma that they avoided their entire lives, recreating their entire world view, and admitting they were wrong. Such a giant ask for these types of people unfortunately.
People like this have basically no concept of the rest of the world at all. I have talked to many people who don’t understand there is a difference between China and Japan, and think Africa is a country. And they don’t care.
Most likely this person also never thinks about states in the US more than one state away from theirs. When I moved to New England as a kid I had teachers think I was from a foreign country because I moved from New Mexico… I’d have to explain “it’s the state between Arizona and Texas”, and then people would just look confused.
So, no news from the rest of the world filters into their brain at all.
These are the same people who called COVID a hoax perpetrated by Democrats even though it started in China and ravaged the entire planet. They’re insane and deluded from consuming too much propaganda.
It’s crazy to talk to folks with only a couple of grams of brain matter. They say that the weather is changing, but they think magic sky man do it.
Magic sky man scary me no like. Bad man make planet hot because we be naughty.
I used to listen and try to understand when I lived in rural counties in the US. Now all I hear is…
Durrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
I used to listen and try to understand when I lived in rural counties in the US. Now all I hear is…
Durrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
This patronizing attitude is part of the reason politicians like Trump has become popular. He talks to these people who the “civilized” part of the country is totally ignoring. You care about climate change, and so do I. But what if you live near a coal mine that has slowly been phased out? You see your town which your grandfather lived in slowly rots away. You see America as a failing country - you see stores closing. You see people moving away. People dying from opiate overdose. Unemployment and depression
These people have real and legitimate grievances. Their government has failed them - which is why anti-establishment figures like Trump is such a lightning rod for their energy. Then we go and tell them that we need to make sacrifices for the climate. What are they supposed to think? What more do they have to give?
Ignoring these people and pretending like they don’t matter or are totally irrational is going to help lead to fascism in this country. Any real revolutionary movement will have to incorporate the whole of America. We need these people on our side.
Cry me a river. Clinton had a plan to retrain and retool these coal towns your describing into productive green energy leaders and they rejected it because she eats babies and wind farms kill birds, or whatever. They are totally irrational and I’m not going to keep pretending otherwise. The real government failure is lack of education spending and critical thinking skills (thanks GOP) that is going to take generations to correct.
Edit: I’ll add there are sparks of “hope” in rural america now that farmers are seeing the impacts of climate change effecting their yields, I think they are starting to come around. Probably too late, but it’s something…
So how do we prevent the rise of fascism this generation? There’s already serious and increasing calls to violent action, since of which have been acted on, with little to no consequences.
They are totally irrational and I’m not going to keep pretending otherwise
The real government failure is lack of education spending and critical thinking skills (thanks GOP) that is going to take generations to correct.
We do ourselves no favors by reinforcing the cultural divisions drawn by the upper classes “media elite”. We have more in common with rural conservatives than with wealthy liberals, and we should stop pretending otherwise. Continued disenfranchisement only serves to divide us more.
I’ll add there are sparks of “hope” in rural america now that farmers are seeing the impacts of climate change effecting their yields, I think they are starting to come around.
That’s just reality creeping in past the bullshit cultural propaganda of the last 50 years. It has always been true that low-income rural counties share the same problems and interests as the lower class urban progressives. We just need to stop feeding into it.
These people have real and legitimate grievances. Their government has failed them.
Yes, they do and yes, they think it has. The problem is that they have been in the business of voting for people who campaign on the “Government is bad, vote for us and we’ll show you just how bad we can make it.” It’s their own fucking fault that the government doesn’t work as well as it could. And despite their best efforts we still manage to have rural internet to connect them to the world in places where they would never be able to afford it, interstate roads to send their crops to market and bring every modern amenity to their local stores, a national air transport system to bring them a new liver or kidney after they’ve destroyed theirs, working ports to bring their tractors and 4 wheelers and snowmobiles, billions upon billions of dollars in (otherwise unaffordable) crop insurance and price supports for their products, and an army of adjusters with stacks of cash to rebuild after every tornado, flood, heatwave, snowstorm, hurricane, and forest fire.
The government has not failed them, they have failed their government. Their hand is out whenever they have a bad day, but their memory is wiped out every time they see that all those benefits might cost money.
There’s only so much handholding you can do for people who actively refuse to listen to facts and science that tell them their way of life, based on the mining of fossil fuels, is long past being sustainable. The best I can offer is my sympathies that they ignored the same writing on the wall that the rest of us have been reading for a couple of decades. It’s on Daddy and Grandpa for not telling their kids that the “family business” is a bad future career choice and not directing them towards something with a more sustainable outlook.
The people who IDOLIZE Timothy McVeigh will never be on your side I hate to break it to you.
And Fascism is already here. The Nazi rally’s at Madison Square Garden in the 1930’s was an indication of that.
And the Civil War, that was Americas brand of Fascism at the time.
These folks believe in Gods kingdom as the ONLY reality, they don’t look at the world through your lens.
The coal mine closing, rural lands becoming industrial, Sacklers killing their innocent kids, that’s not what drives them.
Fighting the spiritual war is the only thing to do because everything else is literally out of their control.
Their ill placed revenge is always going to be a vote against you.
They were bred that way. We can’t change it. They have to, and that ain’t likely.
Check out Deer Hunting With Jesus by Joe Bageant. It’s a rednecks view of his own people and some predictions that came true.
Yeah we absolutely need to find ways to revitalize the rust belt and Appalachia in climate friendly ways. But it should be remembered that when they’re offered compromises that help them I’ve seen plenty get mad. Like yeah Appalachia has suffered for coal’s death, but the jobs aren’t coming back. It just doesn’t take a town to level mountains for coal. And nobody has suffered more for coal’s presence than small coal towns. They’re still poisoned from the mining runoff. And even without decarbonizing coal isn’t coming back. It’s too expensive and inefficient compared to solar and natural gas.
I agree with the idea behind this post, and its why I always approach right wingers with an attitude of education. Their opinons (which themselves are caused by legitimate grievances) are accellerated by ignorance. They cant argue or debate because their viewpoint is not a realistic representation of what has to be done. Their platform has turned into a joke, and thats honestly disappointing to see.
The increase in right-wing extremism is only fueling further ignorance, and radicalized ideas never hold up in any kind of evidence-based debate.
That’s a cherry picked example. Most of these people have jobs outside of the coal industry. That isn’t why they are like this
The point wasn’t the rare coal town but the perception that pervades the rural areas of this country. It doesn’t have to be coal towns - there are similar stories for all smallish cities across the Rust Belt for example. You’re focusing on a specific when really the point is that fascism grows only in poor economic situations.
These people are legitimately suffering and they are turning to hate as a response. Trust me, you or me could have easily been in their shoes had we been in their position. But just like they have been swayed to hate, I think it’s possible to sway them to socialism as long as you call it something other than socialism.
Zizek has talked about this before where Trump supporters in 2016 were a hair’s breadth away from being Bernie supporters. While a bit of a dramatic statement, there is some truth in this. When the economic situation is unstable, radicalism grows in both directions - left and right. Which is why around the same time period we saw an openly socialist candidate for president in the US receive about 6% of the general vote - while we also saw massive Nazi rallies in New York City.
Everything is connected. We are fighting for the hearts and minds of the same people.
If you live somewhere where there’s no work, and you don’t do anything to help yourself, I don’t really have much sympathy. That’s not the government’s problem, it’s yours.
Now if you’re disabled or something that’s a different story, and we do have programs to help those people. But “regular” people who can’t understand that times change shouldn’t hold everyone else back.
I’m going to address a single point here; these people grievances are at this point, unfortunately, the consequences to their own actions.
Hillary had a clear path for moving these rurale areas into future looking manufacturing jobs, and people who would have been helped by those exact investments laughed her off and voted for Trump in trove. Then Trump closed plenty of factories while just boating he’d save jobs the same days those jobs were laid off.
The government didn’t fail them. They failed the government.
We’ll say it again, for the people in the back: it doesn’t matter whether you believe in potentially lethal threats or not.
They’ll still kill you. And if you ignore them and pretend they don’t exist, they’ll usually kill you much, much faster than if you were actively trying to mitigate them.
These same morons chose to mass die of Covid. They will again in the next pandemic. And they will of climate change. Unless we organize and start electing people who pass climate laws pretty quickly.
Listen, and understand. Those climate change denying NPCs are out there. They can’t be bargained with. They can’t be reasoned with. They don’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And they will absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.
Why do so many conservatives resort to intimidation, “death threats”, and violence to reinforce their beliefs? The current Conservative movement seems to be based as much on fear and retribution as anything else. Meanwhile, they get their panties in a bunch when someone calls them “deplorable”…
Why do so many conservatives resort to intimidation, “death threats”, and violence to reinforce their beliefs?
It’s the conspiracy theory mindset:
They convince themselves they are geniuses because they “know” something scientists deny, and they “saw through the lies”, etc.
So when somone they previously listened to speaks against the conspiracy, all they hear is someone they trusted calling them stupid. And they project their own self-hatred onto that person.
I’ve been told that a lot of irrational anger has its roots in control, including lack of control.
If that’s true, then I think those that quickly resort to violence in defense of their ideology, do so since they fear losing control of how they hold that ideology in high esteem.
