The Casual Blog

Tag: denialism

July 24, 2024

Heat, horses, and Poverty

High temperatures and high humidity in Raleigh have made outdoor activities pretty miserable.  Stuck inside more,  I finally managed to sort through the pictures I took in May of the wild horses at Corolla, NC.  I saw thirty-some in one day in a pasture and on the beach.  

The horses had some disagreements between their family groups, which resulted in a few chases and kicks.  They could run very fast, but mostly they just grazed peacefully or enjoyed the ocean breeze.  They seemed to have a good attitude towards life.  

Again, about that heat:  we’re regularly setting new records for highs in these parts, as is the planet as a whole.  And of course, with the heat come other problems, like  floods, draughts, tornados, hurricanes, and wildfires, not to mention famines, water shortages, pandemics, failed economies, mass migration, and war.  It’s gotten harder and harder to deny we have a climate crisis that we created and we must address, although some still do.

Denialism is a core plank of the Trump movement.  One of the projects in Project 2025, the detailed list of policies proposed by Trump administration veterans and aspirants, includes the break up of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.  NOAA is the parent of the national Weather Service, which provides the raw data for most of the weather reporting that industry, the military, and you and me rely on.  According to Project 2025, NOAA is “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry.”  Who knew?

Along with muzzling or dismembering NOAA, Project 2025 proposes downsizing agencies focusing on climate research, including the EPA, weakening environmental regulations, curtailing renewable energy support, and expanding fossil fuel development.  Trump told a group of oil execs that for $1 billion in contributions, he’d allow new oil drilling projects and reverse regulations that limited their profits.  

It’s shameful, but not surprising, that fossil fuel interests find it normal to put profits above all else, but it’s hard to understand why others not mad with greed would be willing to go along with a program to further degrade the environment.  The Trump-MAGA opposition to climate mitigation could be partly about wishful thinking, as in, we wish we didn’t have this terrible problem which will be hard to address, so let’s pretend we don’t.  And of course, Trumpists are inclined to oppose anything that non-Trumpists support, up to and including trying to save the planet.  

Anyhow, as most people surely know by now, our planet is in dire straits, and without strong measures the climate emergency will become an ever-widening disaster.  The Biden presidency took some meaningful steps toward addressing this emergency, including the Inflation Reduction Act, but much more is needed.  It’s a safe bet that a Harris administration will continue this work. If you are considering voting for Trump, I hope you will reconsider and instead support facing and fixing our climate crisis.  

If you can stand one more serious subject: I finished reading Poverty, by America, by Matthew Desmond, and recommend it.  I knew, as we all know, that we have poverty in the US, but in this short book Desmond brought it into better focus, in a way that was at once challenging and surprisingly hopeful.  

Poverty, by America helps us understand that poverty doesn’t just mean not having inadequate housing or other necessities.  It also means insecurity and anxiety, health problems, depression, addiction, and other personal difficulties. 

Desmond challenges the narrative that poverty is inevitable and the poor are mainly responsible for it. At the same time, he isn’t buying the idea that the wealthy are mainly responsible for their own good fortune, rather than the beneficiaries of lucky birth circumstances and government preferences.  The extreme inequality between rich and poor in America is deplorable, and indefensible.

It isn’t pleasant to realize that most of us who are not poor have acquiesced in this system, and are to some degree complicit in it.  We like having low prices, and adopt the narrative that that requires low-paid labor.  Most of us aren’t really opposed to government assistance.  Indeed, the non-poor are by far the greatest beneficiaries of government welfare, through such subsidies to the well-to-do as the mortgage interest deduction, favorable tax rates for capital gains, and student loans.  

This is a longstanding and chronic situation, but Desmond refuses to give up hope.  He points out both small and large reforms that would ameliorate poverty.  One main one is to quit tolerating tax cheating by the wealthy and raise their taxes to something closer to the historical and international norm.  The additional revenue could fund better schools, better housing, and better opportunities.  

December 20, 2020

Still in the tunnel, trying to address pandemic denialism

On the news this week, there were a lot of shots of the first covid-19 shots, and it was surprisingly cheering. Nurses were sticking needles into shoulders.  At first I flinched at the sight, but I got over that in short order.  Developing safe and effective vaccines in record time was an extraordinary achievement, for which gratitude is in order.  There seems to be a light at the end of the pandemic tunnel.  

For the moment, though, the pandemic is still raging, and we’re still in the tunnel.  Especially in the short days and long nights of the holiday season, it’s difficult.  We miss getting together with friends and loved ones.  Masks and social distancing are still no fun.  Infection rates and death rates are still high, and we’re running low on good cheer.

There really doesn’t seem to be any reasonable choice except to press on with medically recommended safety measures, especially when it looks like there’s a good chance we’ll make it back to happier life.  That’s why it keeps surprising me that a good many Trumpists choose to refuse masks as a political statement and continue holding get-togethers as though they think the pandemic is a gigantic hoax.

At first I thought this might be caused by pure ignorance, and surely there’s some of that.  But for some, pandemic denialism seems to be tied to a fairly elaborate set of ideas that are woven into our culture.  It might help to tease them out.

Part of pandemic denialist thinking involves taking the idea of individual freedom to a perverse, though also  logical, conclusion.  The extreme idea that personal freedom should be completely unrestrained sees mask requirements as un-American tyranny.  The denialist feels that he or she is standing up for principle and resisting oppression.  

Preferring to symbolically defend an exaggerated, idealized notion of freedom rather than to avoid serious illness or death is hard to understand.  Denialist thinking must have some other drivers.  For one, there’s the frustration, sadness, and boredom many of us are experiencing.  Also, there’s economic pressure, including the urgent need to earn enough for gas, food, and rent, which are pressing problems for many, including some denialists.  At some point, a reasonable person might well choose the possibility of death from covid-19 over actual hunger.  

But for many mask opponents, there’s still food in the pantry, and starvation is not the issue.  Their pandemic denialism is closely connected to other kinds of denialism, including denial of man-made climate change and of racial equality.  These ideas all have in common a rejection of science and other expertise.  

This mindset seems self-defeating — indeed,  self-destructive — but it makes a strange kind of sense.  Accepting the authority of science and consensus views of experts would make it impossible to maintain certain parts of the denialist world view.  

For example, traditional views of racial hierarchies (with distinct races, and some understood to be inferior to others) are inconsistent with genetic research.  Similarly, the traditional view of nature  as limitless and existing solely to satisfy human appetites is undermined by ecology.  Likewise, creationism can’t comfortably co-exist with evolution.  

Even if pandemic denialists weren’t counter-science, they’d still be driven by polarization.  Extreme denialists have dug in on the notion that liberals are dangerous and not to be trusted on anything.  Denialists will be inclined to believe the opposite of whatever liberals say, simply because they think the source is not only wrong, but evil. 

So how do you have a discussion on pandemic safety with a denialist, if you’re not one?  Very carefully!  We don’t want to get them even more upset, and logic and facts just won’t work.  I’m still holding onto hope that respect and compassion, consistently applied, will eventually build understanding and trust.  In the meantime, it’s a good idea to  keep using masks and get in line as soon as possible for the vaccine. 

I took the pictures here one morning last week at Shelley Lake in Raleigh.