Is it just a game?
by digby
The climate march on Sunday featured the usual colorful array of citizens and the usual mocking by the other side. Just as we on the left mocked the Tea Partiers a couple of years back for their misspelled signs and funny costumes, so too the right wingers had a gay old time making fun of the marchers for climate change awareness. I think that’s probably always been the way of things.
But this one should be a bit different than your usual politics/team sport/war I would think. I guess I just can’t get past the idea that conservatives have decided that this is a hoax at worst or something they just have no need to worry about at best. This really isn’t a partisan issue, but they’ve decided it is and are trating it as such.
The mockery of the people at the march yesterday is probably fine, if mean. But I’ve been plenty mean myself on similar occasions so I’m not going to get on my high horse. But the mockery of the issue itself is something else again — and the ignorant, head-in-the-sand pride they take in denying that scientific consensus exists on this or that the threat is even worth taking seriously is a big problem.
Here’s just one example of their juvenile “cleverness” about the issue itself from Twitchy:
That’s truly Pee-Wee Herman level discourse.
Consider that the mockery the left deployed against the Tea Party was in service of a moderate set of health care reforms — reforms which can be rolled back by a Republican congress if the people decide they don’t like them. Climate change cannot be “rolled back” with a simple vote. Unlike health care or the deficit or “gun rights” this issue is beyond the usual politics and transcends ideology. If there are arguments to be made about what to do or how to do it, that’s one thing. But this silly denialism is just depressing. By the time these people realize that this isn’t the usual partisan game it will be too late.