They Haunt His Dreams
I’ve been having a little fun with Jeff Id’s freaky freakouts about the leftist/socialist/Marxist plot take over Western civilization. Over at Lucia’s, I’ve wondered why none of his fellow travelers in the skeptic sphere ever ask him to dial down his paranoid rants against Democrats and environmentalists.
I never got an answer, which I suppose is an answer.
Meanwhile, Jeff’s come over here to say he stands by what he wrote, and challenged me to explain
why my views are wrong
Flummoxed as to how I can explain why it’s a bit of an overreach to call President Obama the “extremist in chief,” or why it’s wrong to regularly characterize Democrats as leftists/socialists, or why it’s utterly delusional to claim that “Obama has many policies which are extremist leftist and some which appear to me to be fully Marxist,” I was getting ready to attempt some rational rejoinder when I saw, over at this Judith Curry thread, the utter futility of such an endeavor. It turns out that Jeff Id is not alone in his paranoia. Here’s a sampling that should give him some comfort. Let’s start with the dept of who knew:
Earth day is Vladimir Lenin’s birthday. I was always under the impression that was intentional.
Ah, yes, it’s all so obvious, the linkage:
Environmentalism, or eco-socialism, is at least as old as Marx. Indeed Marx wrote about, “the metabolic rift between man and nature”. There has always been a strong link between socialism and ecology, especially throughout the 1970″²s in Eastern Europe and onwards into the present day. I don’t believe you can so easily separate the two and perhaps that is why the political imperatives of a lot of AGW “solutions” seem to be more concerned with redistribution and against free market capitalism, then they are about the level of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Fortunately, there are voices of sanity in that thread, as well.
Jeff, all I can say is to keeping checking under your bed every night for those leftist/socialist/Marxist bogeymen.
Because the USSR was a bastion of environmentalism… oh wait!
Futility is the right word.
Jeff is a really good guy with some really strange ideas about domestic politics. Just call it a quirk and move on to what he actually has to say about the math.
Tom,
I realize you like Jeff, and your defense of his character (which I’m not calling into question) is admirable.
If his “quirk” was limited to comment threads, I probably wouldn’t bother at all. But his “quirk” manifests itself quite often on his blog.
That “quirk” is corrosive to rational public dialogue.
You should be talking to him, not me, if you want me to stop spotlighting his “quirk” from time to time.
When can we expect your answer to his challenge to explain why his views are wrong? Should we consider this post your best effort?
Hmm. Seems we can have rational public dialogue, both here and even at Jeff’s site–he let me guest post there in a moment of weakness. Doesn’t seem all that corrosive to me.
In my misspent youth I spent four years in the Navy and five years cutting down trees, and in both cases the bulk of my co-workers were to the right of Jeff, so maybe I’m more habituated to their idiosyncrasies.
Jeff links to (and comments civilly at) Bart Verheggen’s site, and doesn’t let steam come out of his ears when I extol the virtues of Barack Obama and other Dems. Count the skeptic links at any AGW site and their reaction to any positive language about a Republican and get back to me on the reasons for corroded discourse.
is it ok if we point out some of your quirks from time to time Keith 😉
Actually Keith, I heard the marxist boogeymen were having a ribald get together with the tea-party ghouls in your closet. Rumor has it a wraith named Sarah was gonna stop by. Probably just a rumor.
Actually, the Tea Party probably haunts this Congressman’s dreams.
Keith,
I suggest you look in a mirror. Many people from across the spectrum with strong positions on politics use extremist rhetoric to demonize their opponents. That video you linked to is perfect example. In this case you have a killer who has absolutely NOTHING to do with the tea party or right wing politicians being linked to them. It is shameless and certainly more offensive than Jeffs comments about Marxists. Yet you linked to as if it was a reasonable commentary.
Like everyone I have ever met in my life, including all 6 of my brothers and sisters, there are things about them that I find wierd. Doesn’t mean that I tune out anything rational or fun that they have to say.
Keith, I know, believe me, it is hard being a one eyed man in the land of the blind!
@9
I’m gonna have to agree with TimG here to a degree, that video was pretty terrible. I’m no tea partier by any stretch of the imagination but to use the most shrill margins of a movement to paint a picture of the whole is disingenuous. Furthermore, to then say it caused the psychotic behaviour of a young man with no coherent political manifesto and a track record of erratic, nonsensical public outbursts is in my opinion, unsubstantiated. After all, remember <A HREF=”http://tmz.vo.llnwd.net/o28/newsdesk/tmz_documents/0901_demands.pdf“>this</A> guy?
And responses like <A HREF=”http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/01/when-warmistas-attack/“>these</A> ?
Debate in America has <A HREF=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_zTN4BXvYI“>always</A> been coarse and partisan. I’m not so sure that can ever be defused entirely and rigorous, sometimes passionate debate is in my opinion essential to the distillation of ideas. One of the problems I see with the (climate)blogosphere is that instead of the traditional use of rhetoric as a means of persuasion of opponents I see it used as a means of “evisceration” or “skewering”.
My approach to encountering those with differing beliefs/values from myself is to make an effort to respond with curiosity rather than judgment.
Okay, so that was my first time trying to hyperlink and it is obvious I have much to learn. Apologies.
KK
You, as an American citizen, probably do not have the ability to recognize systemic takeovers by Left wing ideology, even it were to happen in more obvious fashion today.
Being such as it is, it is unfair of you to criticize Jeff who, if anything, approaching the same question from first principles. He recognizes that there is a problem, and there always exists a problem and in this, he is one step ahead. He is one step ahead of those who want to pretend and declare – “well it is only a carbon tax, everything else still remains capitalist, cap and trade is actually capitalist, it is only the healthcare system’s ills we want to solve by ‘reforming’ it”.
You ought not to criticize him because you are united with him in recognizing that a fully socialized state is a horror. You’ll probably balk only when the long queues for bread show up, he gets upset a little earlier.
Oh, I see. He’s a prophet. Yes, the Marxist takeover is just around the corner. Perhaps I would see it more clearly if I watched the movie Reds every Earth Day.
This Marxism/environmentalism thing seems to have one major flaw: red China isn’t green. Sure, nor is it all that Marxist but – Christ – neither are carbon taxes.
Dog willing, the ‘OMG SOCIALISM” drama queen cranks like Jeff Id and Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck and much of the Tea Party currently infesting the public discourse will just be an interesting blip in the history books one day, just like the Know-Nothings and Birchers are now….it’s just too bad we have to live at the same time they do.
As for the ‘fully socialized state’ — please provide an example here, Shub — what’s the hideous model we’re so obviously heading for, that we need to put the brakes on things like health care reform and regulation of greenhouse gas emissions? Canada? England? Sweden? Stalinist Russia?
“Marxist takeover”
?
I do not understand this.
You mention in your post that you tried a rational rejoinder to Jeff but gave up when the target of such a rejoinder seemed so far out, that it just wouldn’t make sense. You then point out a reader pointing out the shared origins of ‘socialism and ecology’ in Europe as an justification.
Whether you like this or not, the comment has some truth in it.
Are you claiming that the ‘climate solutions’ are not structured on Lefist ideas? Definitionally, they seem to clearly be leftist in origin and nature. Jeff is approaching the issue in the same fashion – by using definitions, from first principles. There is nothing prophetic about this. Libertarians do this all the time. Even leftists do this all the time.
If you have to dissuade Jeff from what you percieve are his paranoid rants against Obama’s socialism, you will need to clearly spell out how Obama’s policies – to the extent we actually can see them – are not ‘socialist’. Just guffawing at Jeff surely is not going to help.
Look at the health care ‘reform’. Initially Obama’s plans looked clear – he focused on the obvious ills of American healthcare even his political opponents agreed were undeniably present. Somewhere midway, it became apparent his plans involve taking away facilities and benefits from people who presently have them – the root cause for the tea-party anger and their WTF. Later other aspects became clear – his envisioned restructuring involved taking away money from the more lucrative medical specialties and funnelling money and milksops to his nurses union buddies.
Obama is attempting to de-technicalize, de-sciencify medical practice. To hand back patient care to lesser minions and run services by buffing up trained hands rather than by thinking minds – these are cheap and shop-worn 50-year old ideas, and not legislative innovations. Large parts of the rest of the world, have tried to make them work and simply given up and hushed up these types of fantasies. True, no one wants to fall sick and everyone wants to follow good preventive practices no doubt, but when they do fall ill they want to go to the best doctor.
The rules for the atmosphere are no different. The atmosphere ‘belongs’ to everyone no doubt, but only in an illusory sense. It is iust as saying everyone deserves good health and well-being or ‘freedom from hunger’ or ‘education’. But just as all do not get the best healthcare, all do not get to put the same amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. Trying to equalize this capacity *is* socialist/Marxist/Leninist/leftist, whatever you want to call it – in its nature.
Shub,
This all depends on how loosely one defines “socialist”. His healthcare policies are collectivist, yes, but – then – I don’t think that’s too revolutionary: Bush’s foreign policies were extremely collectivistic. Some of his policies might – in a very minor way – redistribute wealth from those who have a lot of it to those who don’t. If that’s true then it’s socialistic, yes, but at the bottom of a scale that’s so wide that it’s equivalent to “mild afternoon in May” in contrast with a Marxist’s “sunny day in the Sahara”. Ultimately one cannot be even vaguely Marxist while cutting deals with Big Pharma. It’s much nearer to corporatism.
Steven
I know these ‘please provide an example’ arguments. They will take us nowhere.
The US, with its registered nurses, certified registered nurse anesthetists, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, advanced practice nurses, and the doctors of nursing practice, is taking off in a direction quite unique, one would think.
“Dog willing, the “˜OMG SOCIALISM” drama queen cranks like Jeff Id and Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck and much of the Tea Party currently infesting the public discourse…”
Ahh, the new civility. BTW, who is Dog?
“what’s the hideous model we’re so obviously heading for..”
Moody’s and S&P are considering downgrading US debt, for starters.
FWIW, if there is any link between environmentalism and an extreme political ideology it would be on the far right. Marxism held that industrial production was the highest economic good. Nature worship, as it were, was much more closely associated with the nobility (who owned the damn land and everything on it). This is not an endorsement of either the far left or right.
If anything it shows how historically ignorant Jeff is
‘Nature worship’ was if anything as much a product of 18th century Romanticism drawing from Rousseau who fathered the French Revolution.
That certainly caught the nobility by surprise, eh?
Moreover the elites in modern day America and Britain occupy the entire political spectrum, somewhat unlike the past. In recent history – i.e., post 1960s, mass environmentalism is firmly wedded to the Left, even as elitist environmentalism appears to draw from Fabian socialism, fraternity-style Gaia-pagan cultism and mere aristocratic vestigial hobbyism.
KK, comment is stuck in moderation. This is just FYI.