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:
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.
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.