Intergalactic Treason!

All day I've been sort of avoiding thinking about Paul Krugman's use of the word "traitor" to describe the GOP and Democratic House members who voted against the climate-change bill:

A handful of these no votes came from representatives who considered the bill too weak, but most rejected the bill because they rejected the whole notion that we have to do something about greenhouse gases. And as I watched the deniers make their arguments, I couldn't help thinking that I was watching a form of treason — treason against the planet.

I frankly thought "treason against the planet" was something the Captain Planet writers might have decided was just too corny, and therefore I wished he'd come up with a different term. Though towards the end of the column Krugman does explain himself somewhat:

Still, is it fair to call climate denial a form of treason? Isn't it politics as usual?

Yes, it is — and that's why it's unforgivable.

Do you remember the days when Bush administration officials claimed that terrorism posed an "existential threat" to America, a threat in whose face normal rules no longer applied? That was hyperbole — but the existential threat from climate change is all too real.

Yet the deniers are choosing, willfully, to ignore that threat, placing future generations of Americans in grave danger, simply because it's in their political interest to pretend that there's nothing to worry about. If that's not betrayal, I don't know what is. 

That's about right; climate change really is such a threat, and the behavior of the GOP particularly in regards to this crisis is astonishingly horrible (or it would be if it weren't just them being their usual tedious selves). Hence, by any petard-hoisting standard if the wingnut notion of "treason" circa 2002-3 had any empirical valence whatsoever, James Inhofe makes Benedict Arnold look like he just wasn't nothing.

However, this argument does not totally answer the potential problems with the word "traitor." John Cole objects to Krugman on the grounds that "treason" is a "loaded term," which it is -- though, and this is not precisely to disagree with John, it seems to me that the trouble is that the term has become unloaded after its promiscuous usage on the part of radical Bushite extremists. "Treason" used to have a generally accepted meaning, and now it doesn't, having become just one more wildly devalued, thoroughly trashed national asset. Now "a traitor" is merely someone not worth paying attention to who should be at best laughed at, and at worst locked up. And that's it. Any other meaning has been wrung out like the juice from last month's lemons.

But then this line of reasoning, misfortunately, brings us back by a process of commodious recirculation to one of the central preoccupations of this blog, namely, analysis of the "conservative" effort to establish a monopoly over the dominant definition of legitimate discourse, and the central role played by notions of "civility" in this struggle. (This is why I wasn't eager to think about Krugman's column; I'm too busy right now for this shit.)

Climate change is the most perfect example of what I mean. When these people were in power, it was suppress by force; now, it's try to get in the back-door by claiming preposterous grievance, and they're seizing on Krugman's column like leeches who got turned into vampires. Take for instance the always silly Andrew Stuttaford, pretending that Krugman Has Gone Too Far and Now Can We Please Just Speak Civilly?

Krugman's one good point was that GOP Representative Broun (he's the strange fellow who tried to ban Playboy from the PX) had slipped into conspiracism when he alleged that the notion of (I presume) man-made climate change was a "hoax." Broun's claim is, of course, nonsense. There are indeed reasonable grounds for believing that man is having/could have a significant impact on the climate (just as there are reasonable grounds to suspect that man's impact on the climate may be reduced to insignificance by countervailing natural factors). But for those inclined to believe in a hoax, shrill, hysterical language such as Krugman's is only like to reinforce their suspicions.

Which is pretty classic stuff. As it turns out, no, as a matter of fact, this is not a matter for calm, polite debate: if you "suspect that man's impact on the climate may be reduced to insignificance by countervailing natural factors," why, you're a clown, and if you're in the House of Representatives and you think this, or pretend to, you're a dangerous clown (more so than most ordinary clowns, even, who are, of course, already plenty frightening).

"Civility" is the last refuge of bullshit artists; it's the bunker they hole up in when they hear the guns of reality booming close.

So as to whether or not Krugman should have said "traitor," well, he seems to have pissed off precisely the people who I most enjoy seeing pissed off, and I have to confess, I never ask for much more. And Mac liked the column, and he's punk rock. So there!

Also, Jules Crittenden wants me to fuck him, but I don't think I will.

MORE. The proof, as always, is in the puling.

Comments

[ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©]

Damn Crit is dumb.

I'm sorry I clicked that link...it should be marked "Not Safe For Sentient Beings".
~

[SteveB]

OK, maybe there is something to this global warming stuff, but pretending it's all a hoax really pisses of the liberals, and sheer, planet-destroying spite is the renewable resource that powers Jules Crittenden:

My energy/economic salvation/foreign policy panacea? A V-8 engine in every driveway. Here’s how it works. Instead of buying GM, we as taxpayers should be given incentives to buy GMs. As long as we’re spending billions upon billions to save the economy and save the planet, let’s give every taxpayer … by which I mean people who actually pay taxes … a big fat tax break for the Ford, GM or Chrysler muscle car or SUV of their choice. Big enough that no one will care that if gas is $3, $4 or $5 a gallon … lot the people who work for a living, pay taxes, and are eligible for that tax break, that is. Big economy booster that will burn all that oil up quicker, and be a lot more fun than putting around in electric wieniemobiles like someone’s elderly aunt. The auto and energy companies can use the dough for the switchover to hydrogen, so we can keep driving around in V8s after the gas is gone.

[Dr Dick]

Calls for civility invariably mean, "Why yes, I am a mendacious, insane cretin, but do have the decency not to mention that in public. Please try to address my rambling, counterfactual, paranoid maunderings on their merits."

And Cretinden needs to go fuck his oh-so-sanctimonious self.

[Scott Supak]

Hey, hey, kids! I just drove here to your birthday party at a hundred miles an hour in my Hummer, straight from Republican headquarters, and I've only got a few minutes before I race off to an opening of a coal-fired generating plant that will provide all the power I need to extract oil from rocks! So, let's watch this cartoon while I grab a smoke!

[/dangerous clown]

[Davis]

Using Cheney's 1% rule, they therefore think that there is less than a 1% chance that the scientists are right.

That Crittenden guy says that decreasing dependence on foreign oil is also a bad thing. Why? Our interest in the Middle East would decrease and China's would increase.

By the way the civility-bunker analogy is excellent.

[actor212]

I thought his description was not only accurate, but fair.

After all, if terrorism is an attack on the very security of our nation, and to aid and abet terrorists to destroy a city like, say, Miami, is a treasonous act, then to aid and abet climate change to flood that self-same city and cause equal and likely greater destruction is in and of itself an act of terrorism.

Ergo, treason. Ergo, traitor.

[minusp]

Calls for civility invariably mean, "Why yes, I am a mendacious, insane cretin, but do have the decency not to mention that in public. Please try to address my rambling, counterfactual, paranoid maunderings as if they had merits."

It is worthwhile to note that a call for "civility" nearly always demands an acceptance of the validity of the fallacious argument.

[Professor Fate]

Piss on them from a great height.

[SteveB]

Davis:
Good point about Cheney's 1% doctrine (have to try that out on our local climate-change-denialist sometime) but they're even crazier than that.

Suppose that all us wacky tree-huggers are wrong about climate change - what's the worse that happens? A country with a $15 trillion GDP spends a trillion or two vastly improving its energy efficiency and creating millions of jobs? We suffer the tragedy of being prematurely prepared for when the oil does run out?

Compare that with their favorite application of the 1% doctrine, Iraq - where being wrong meant trillions squandered, and a million dead.

The more I read people like Crittenden, the more I'm convinced that it's nothing more than "Al Gore is for it and so I'm agin' it!" Helluva reason to risk the world your grandchildren are going to inherit.

[actor212]

Steve, these were people who, when Katrina was bearing down on Louisiana, and had a near 100% chance of drowning Norleans, wouldn't lift a finger or spend a dime to get a few hundred thousand indigent folks out of the way and then raged afterwards about their tough luck.

[daphne]

Bring on the drinking game: Every time a conservative calls Krugman "shrill"...

[Interrobang]

Yanno, back in the day, those so-called electric weeniemobiles looked pretty sharp, and went just as fast as their gas-guzzling competitors. (The Milburn sports car went 40mph, in 1918.)

Just think how awesome electric cars would have been if car makers had continued building them constantly for the last ninety freakin' years.

(Nope, no innovation at all in the last 90 years. None whatsoever.)

Unfortunately, the very company Crittenden wants to prop up with tax money (that'd be GM, for those of you playing at home) did its level billionaire best to keep anyone from doing that work -- and destroyed every other non-gas-powered form of transportation while they were at it. Thanks ever ever ever so much, guys.

Which is just one of the many (I'm sure) reasons why Crittenden is so full of shit he ought to change his name...