 Grand Theft. Pathological Lying About Global Warming. Attempted Genocide.
Back in February, George Will went into a paroxym of lies about global warming, and WaPo editor Fred Hiatt and Ombudsman Andy Alexander both vigorously defended him. I wrote about this (as well as the work of debunkers--Hilzoy, The Wonk Room) in "George Will, Washington Post: Traitors To Humanity". Now Will is up to his same old tricks. A deeper look is called for this time around--a look into Will's class-based criminal pathology.
George Will is a criminal. In 1980, he helped Ronald Reagan prepare for the presidential debate with Jimmy Carter, using a stolen Carter debate book. Receiving stolen property is a crime. The value of the stolen debate book was incalculable. Possibly enough to cost an election. But certainly enough to qualify as grand theft. That makes receiving it a felony. And George Will is guilty of it. One should always remember this about George Will: He is a criminal. A felon. An unrepentant one. But, then, he is a member of a criminal class--the aristocracy.
When I wrote a diary about narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) last weekend, several commentators made the point that the aristocracy as a class suffered from NPD, and while there are certainly plenty of individual exceptions, the point is most certainly true. And a perfectly straightforward way to show what this means is to look at George Will, and his steadfast refusal to acknowledge any error whatsoever when he gets absolute everything wrong about global warming.
Sane, mature adults make factual claims based on facts, to the best of their knowledge. When challenged in a reasonable manner, they either defend their claims by marshaling facts in support of those claims, or they admit to having made a mistake. But narcissists cannot be bothered with any of this. Engaging in good faith arguments is beneath their exalted sense of dignity. Indeed, the only way that aristocrats know how to settle factual disputes is the same way they settle all disputes: by dueling. Which is to say, by ritualized attempted murder.
Attempts to get George Will to act like a responsible interlocutor on the issue of global warming have failed once again, and this is the simple reason why: he is psychologically incapable of being a responsible interlocutor. He does not recognize anyone else's factual claims. He is an aristocrat. The only thing he recognizes is an offense to honor, from another aristocrat. Nobel Prize-winning scientists be damned. The fricken human race be damned. He is a lord of the realm. Only we don't have such things in America. It's time we remembered that and started acting accordingly. Because George Will is damn sure never going to.
Let's review the evidence, and see what I mean. |
| Clinical Prelude
First off, just to get us oriented, recall that narcissistic personality disorder is chartacterized by at least 5 of the following 9 traits:
1. An exaggerated sense of self-importance
2. Preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
3. Believes he is "special" and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)
4. Requires excessive admiration
5. Has a sense of entitlement
6. Selfishly takes advantage of others to achieve his own ends
7. Lacks empathy
8. Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him
9. Shows arrogant, haughty, patronizing, or contemptuous behaviors or attitudes
There were some criticisms last week about diagnosing an individual (since I'm not a pschotherapist) particularly from affar (since I'm not Bill Frist). So just to make this perfectly clear, I don't give a hoot about what's actually going on inside George Will. What I care about is exhibited behavior, which is part of a set of shared group characteristics, and plausible hypotheses that make the best sense of them possible given the information we have to go on.
So, in short, the above are offered as a set of behavioral benchmarks for future reference.
Do they have anything to do with discovering truth? No, they do not.
Do they have anything to do with impeding discovering the truth? Yes, in fact, quite a bit.
And what about motivations to care if the entire human race is put at risk as a result of one's indifference to the truth? None whatsoever.
Depraved indifference to human life on a limitless scale? "You betcha!"
Will's Petulant Performance
In this new column, Will is once again using a totally bogus argument (it was hotter in 1998!) to claim that global warming doesn't exist--totally decimated as noted at TPM. But that's hardly surprising as it's an argument that's already been totally destroyed--just a few weeks ago, in fact, the last time Will trotted it out.
I began my previous diary, "George Will, Washington Post: Traitors To Humanity" thus:
George Will, "Dark Green Doomsayers", Feb 15:
"according to the U.N. World Meteorological Organization, there has been no recorded global warming for more than a decade"
U.N. World Meteorological Organization, "WMO statement on the status of the global climate in 2007" (pdf), p4:
January 2007 was the warmest January since global surface records were instituted.
Farther down in the diary, I went on to note:
I'll say one thing for George Will: at least the guy believes in recycling--when it comes to global warming lies, that is....
While Will and the Post tried desperately to minimize the scope of Will's travesty Will's first column was all about recycling a set of well-worn lies that global warming denialists have been recycling for more than a decade now:
(1) The explicit lie that climate scientists and responsible journalists touted dire alarms over global cooling in the 1970s.
(2) The explicit lie that the latest data shows global warming is not happening after all.
(3) The implicit lies that there isn't an overwhelming scientific consensus in support of global warming.
Of course, the consensus was much more tentative back in 1995, when I first started debating such issues online. Scientists are a very cautious lot, particularly when it comes to reaching conclusions as a group. But even then, there were no published, peer-reviewed articles that clearly challenged the consensus. There was plenty of questioning going on, which is perfectly normal: that's how science works. But when the questioning made it into print, with hard data, and passed the bar of peer review, there was not one paper that any denialist could point to that supported their position
I went on to note that full extent of the scientific consensus was not realized until 2004, when historian of science Naomi Naomi Oreskes published a survey of the scientific literature Science magazine in December 2004, "BEYOND THE IVORY TOWER: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change". You see, the proposition "there's a debate among climate scientists over whether man-made global warming is real," is itself a scientifically testable proposition. Oreskes tested it, and found it to be false. There are indeed scientists who argue against man-made global warming. They just haven't managed to come up with scientific arguments that pass muster with the anonymous peer review process used to keep the junk out of professional scientific journals.
The Cultural Big Picture
This is indicative of a much larger cultural phenomena: how the reality-oriented bourgeoisie (broadly conceived to include professionals) managed to work their way out from under the sway of the religious/aristocratic dominance, and their authoritarian epistemologies ("Why? Because I say so!" "Por que? Porque lo dijo!") But the authoritarian/aristocratic power never really gave up the fight, as George Will's denialist columns so richly demonstrate.
Reality-based logic says that the truth of a proposition depends on the ability of a competent advocate to demonstrate its validity, and to respond to all well-grounded challenges. Thus, both reality itself and a critical engagement with other reality-based specialists are foundational.
The authoritarian logic is utterly different. It says that the truth of a proposition depends on the authority of whoever makes the statement. And that authority comes from, well, whoever the authoritarians claim it comes from--God, tradition, made up quotes by Thomas Jefferson circulated on the internet, whatever floats your boat. "Weak" does not begin to describe this "intellectual" position. Question it once, seriously, and it all falls apart like a pack of cards. The point is, the authoritarian position depends on preventing serious questioning, shutting it off completely where possible, suppressing it even, and obfuscating all questioning than somehow manages to leak through (as was seen in the WaPos defense of Will the last time around.)
There are three sorts of interactions one can think about here. First, there are factual disputes in the bourgeois reality-based world, which are settled by evidence and argument. This is true of scientific disputes as well as legal ones, and is a powerful prototype for resolving professional and even personal disputes as well. Second, there are disputes in the religious/aristocratic world, which are resolved either by recourse to authority or by force, be it war, a duel or contest of strength. While factual disputes hold a special significance in the reality-based realm, they are utterly marginal in the religious/aristocratic world. What matters is not facts, but power. Facts are what we say they are, as Ron Suskind was curtly reminded.
This brings us to the third sorts of disputes, those between the two worlds--the reality-based world vs. the authoritarian. Attempts to resolve these by normal reality-based means are doomed to failure. The Washington Post clearly demonstrates why. It keeps trying to pretend that Will is a good faith reality-based interlocutor, when he is actually nothing of the sort. And the most they pretend, the more they become just like him: an authoritarian bad-faith actor.
For the reality-based world to effectively respond to and defend itself against the authoritarian world, it must not simply rely on its own internal guidelines--though of course, it should certainly do that, and recognize that Will and his ilk do not qualify for inclusion in the realm of rational discourse. The reality-based world must do more than that, however. It has to become self-aware, self-reflective, capable of regarding itself as an object, in the sense of Kegan's Level 5. And it has to realize that it inevitably shares some of the authoritarian models characteristics, since force and power inevitably hold sway in many sorts of bourgeois disputes.
Indeed, the clearest understanding of genius of modern liberalism--from its roots in religious tolerance to its touting of markets, its classical core that even most conservatives approve of--is that it works by developing structures, practices and values that work to product a harmonization of self-interest and the common good (disinterest, altruism, benevolence, etc.) This realization, however, makes no sense if one denies that fact that self-interest persists--the very same sort of self-interest that is the sole, unregulated concern of the unreconstructed narcissist, and which is only restricted by arbitrary authority in the religious/authoritarian world. |
