Ever feel like the Big Bang has happened again, that truth and a sense of shame are hurtling outward from the explosion of new media created by the arrival of the Internet? What else can explain the lunacy of public debate today? Imagine arriving on earth and observing grown, seemingly sane people running for their lives based on a videotape from an obviously unbalanced religious fanatic in a bathrobe living in a cave in Pakistan. (Go to my online-only Between Issues column to read about Bin Ladden’s low-tax pitch to Americans www.metronc.com).
Or an alleged killer — who took out his wife years ago with a knife but got off because a jury member was a devotee of “critical race theory” — dominating the headlines for a home invasion in a hotel room to steal back sports memorabilia. The same week, a discredited former anchorman for a major television network grabs headlines for filing a lawsuit against his former employer, claiming he was forced to admit his mistakes, and furthermore, he didn’t make them — his employees and co-workers did it, and he was forced to take the fall. Problem is he did engage in the worst sort of journalism, the kind we’re getting used to today.
Public policy based on huge lies has become a commonplace. We were told in 1968 in the book The Population Bomb that high birth rates spelled doom for the planet — that by the year 2000 there would be no water, no oil, no food and no us if we didn’t stop having babies. This false doctrine spawned a new dimension of the environmental movement, adding all mankind to the enemies list of global polluters. Suddenly, everyone was guilty for destroying Mother Earth. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, adherents to world socialism shifted into the green camp. Formerly committed to saving the working classes from exploitation by the capitalist oligarchs, they are now out to save no less than the planet itself. Thus, the term “man-made” is parked in front of references to global warming, making it clear we are all on the list to be re-educated or eliminated for not toeing the party line.
We should know by now that nations that fell for the birth rate scare are in deep trouble, like in Europe where economic growth has been snuffed out due to declining populations. Believing the population lie has added another fearful dimension: the importation of guest workers to pick up the slack — Muslim guest workers for the most part. Another big lie adopted by the environmental Left, nay a mantra, is the diminishing supply of fossil fuels, meaning get out of your car and take government-sponsored public transportation. This particular whooper has led to gridlock due to the curtailment of road-building in the US as traffic planners rhapsodize about rail transit to solve the problem.
Is there any truth anywhere in the diatribes from the social engineers? Not only is the bugaboo of population growth that was supposed to end life on earth a falsehood, but the supply of fossil fuels, it turns out, is capacious beyond measure. That’s two big lies right there in the bosom of the environmental movement. But what about the biggest public policy bunko scheme of them all: global warming? Once again, the big bang of false data flying through space dominates the debate. Yes, the earth could be warming, as climate changes in cycles over millions and millions of years. But no, it might not be a bad thing for earth and its inhabitants if the earth warms. And no, no, no, it is not caused by human beings.
In a mysterious amalgam of low human self-esteem and a gigantic collective ego, people out there actually believe the scant existence of mankind on this vast planet — where weather and climate are caused by an almost immeasurable force — the sun — is a consequential factor in the glacially slow gyrations of global climate. But since we are living in the big bang of lies, eager beavers manufacture computer models proving that man can do something about it. The bigger the hypothetical lie, the more they work away, piling data upon data until they have created a new reality composed entirely of their own making. Big lies wrapped in a righteous agenda inside a misguided political theory are masquerading as truth.
These same “climatologists” can’t even predict hurricanes, much less how the paltry handiwork of industrial man can affect the mood of nature. It’s preposterous, but then so is just about everything else coming over the wire these days. In the modern big bang, the obvious becomes complex, lies morph into artificial truth and the end of times feels quite close.
Notes From La-La Land
You only have to look down the road at the city of Durham to witness the disintegration of truth in these clamorous times. District Attorney Mike Nifong’s behavior mirrors the chaos in public policy debates. With the assuredness of global warming advocates, he believed the lacrosse players were guilty of the charges he brought, and he set out to prove it no matter what the facts indicated. Again, righteousness replaced facts, and the lies necessary to maintain his demented reality became his truth.
•••
Now that the families of the accused boys have fought back and won, it is appropriate to revisit the trial of Michael Peterson, convicted in Durham with evidence that was entirely concocted by the DA who preceded Nifong. Revelations in the lacrosse players’ case demonstrate that something is indeed rotten in the courthouse in Durham. Perhaps an owl really did attack Kathleen Peterson. It makes more sense than a blow poke.
•••
Another example of believing so hard you make it so is the antics of the anti-Iraq War dissidents who keep trotting out reasons to cut and run, but offer no alternative to the consequences. The old Vietnam War tactics aren’t working: Mass demonstrations draw only handfuls of protestors; despite valorous rhetoric from The New York Times, Congress — even after pulling an all-nighter — can’t get a bill to force withdrawal; NPR’s disingenuous scheme to broadcast the names of KIAs stationed at North Carolina bases, but rarely from here, doesn’t resonate; efforts to organize military personnel and their families fall on deaf ears (this is an all-volunteer force, after all, with most recruits anxious to engage in combat); and the latest effort, to accuse Americans of accepting the war because we aren’t forced to make sacrifices at home (“We go shopping,” as one public radio guest put it) is meeting with the same public disdain.
Consequently, presidential candidates are learning to tread carefully about the War, especially the Democrat hopefuls who wheeled out into the hustings thinking they had an issue that would ensure victory. What they discovered is that Americans aren’t fools, and have little faith anymore in the hate George Bush anti-war agenda emanating from the mass media propaganda machinery. They know that Iraq is the frontline in the war on terrorists. And they appreciate the reality there has been no attack on US soil since 9/11.