Brain Worms

 It is not a secret that the Right in this country has embarked upon a quest to elevate ignorance and bigotry as a form of political purity. Trumpism is a lot of things, but it's mostly about mean spirited stupidity.

Not to engage in whataboutism, but there is a similar problem on the Left. Jon Chait has been cataloguing the problem of leftist intolerance and quasi-authoritarianism and he demonstrates the negative impact of this when it comes to climate policy. Reading what the Climate-Justice movement wants to do about climate is just mind-numbingly stupid. 

As Chait notes, they start from a legitimate position: negative environmental impacts have the greatest effect on poorer communities, which are usually minority communities. The natural solution is to direct resources to those communities and make sure that the typically powerless communities have a say...but not a veto. NIMBYism is not a strictly middle class phenomenon. 

Instead, we get a movement whose ultimate goal is the overthrow of neoliberal capitalism, and they then squeeze other ideas through a climate lens. The most aggravating aspect of the "climate emergency" is how half-assed the purported climate groups are in looking for solutions. If you want to be absolutely certain that we address the presence of carbon in the atmosphere, then you HAVE to look at nuclear and direct air carbon capture. You HAVE to look at geothermal, as well as solar and wind. Instead, climate-justice groups oppose these because a large corporation would be necessary to build nuclear and geothermal plants and if direct air capture ever became feasible, it would lessen the need to destroy capitalism.

More fundamentally, there is a brain worm in certain left wing circles that symbolism - whether language or action - is more important than institutions. Glibly, this is what happens when you let English majors address social concerns. You get a ten page position paper on the oppression of pronouns but you don't set up an office in the Department of Health and Human Services to guide and counsel transgender people. If someone wants to be called "they" I do my best to accommodate them, because I don't want to be an asshole, but that doesn't do shit to change how Trans people are treated. In fact, if anything, it focuses the outrage of the Right.

During the Civil Rights Movement, there was a lot of agita over whether to use the word "Negro," "Black," "Afro-American," or "African-American." But ultimately, the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act were more important in elevating the status of Blacks in the South and across the country and current efforts to erase those laws are more important than whether one says "black," "Black" or "Person of Color." Still, there seems to be a weird fascination that changing language will change institutions. I haven't seen the evidence from history to suggest that's true.

The only example I can see is that calling yourself a climate-justice group means that you actually ignore climate.