Irrational Hatred Makes One Irrational

This is about Rod Dreher again, but it's really about, oh, a third of the country.

A third of the country has been convinced, by talk radio, by Fox News, by various other propaganda sources, that immigrants, black people, trans people, and "leftists" (as if we even had any actual leftists in this country), are criminals, fanatics, monsters who are bent on destroying them -- them, personally -- and their children, and their jobs, and everything good about their lives.

Nothing could be further from the truth. As the closest thing to a leftist most of these cowering dupes will ever meet, I can tell you I spent about ten seconds a week thinking about them -- usually just after I have checked Rod Dreher's page in a fit of boredom.

But Rod, like the rest of them, is constantly encouraged in his quivering terror by steady infusions of lies and propaganda. Here, he has been fed a pack of lies by (as he puts it) a "former" "Soviet-bloc" scientist.

This "scientist" agrees with Rod that American liberals are just like Nazis. Also, he agrees with the disinformation -- the propaganda -- being pushed by Murdoch-owned newspapers, claiming that the fires in Australia aren't, in fact, caused by Global Warming, but by the ignorant laws passed by Leftists.

So what does it have to do with the Australia fires, you ask?

Contrary to the popular belief that a fraction of a degree temperature increase set the place ablaze, there is another explanation. For millennia the Aborigines have been practicing ritual bush burning. A while ago the practice was banned because of ecology concerns, environmental protection; to save some odd shrew from being upset. Dead wood accumulated. The whole place burned to the ground. (you can google for it.

We did the same thing to the culture. We banned ritual control burns. We allowed dead wood to accumulate. A single spark and the whole place will be ablaze. We will burn.

First off, his claim is wrong. That's not what caused the fires in Australia, despite what Fox-News outlets claim. Failing to rake leaves in the forests of California is not what has caused the huge fires there, either. Global climate change, by drying out the landscape, is causing these fires.

Second, pay attention to the conclusion this "scientist" draws. The culture, he says, has banned "ritual control burns," allowing "dead wood" to accumulate. And now we will burn?

What do you suppose he means by that, this "scientist"?

And why do you suppose Rod gave him a national platform to voice such an appalling point of view?

This is the real danger of ignorance combined with a steady infusion of propaganda. That such people don't understand, or willfully refuse to understand, the cause and effect of every day events, is a problem, though not a huge one, since most of them have no real influence in the world.

No, the big problem is that ideas such as this one -- that people not like them are "dead wood" to be "ritually burned" in order to protect "us" -- gain currency among the willfully ignorant who have gorged on lies and propaganda.

And that is a real danger.