“You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.”
-Daniel Patrick Moynihan
RIGHT CAPTION - THESE ARE FACTS. People write facts in things like textbooks, international treaties and scientific journals.
This posting is about the real-life struggle between truth and opinion, opinion about truth and the truth about opinion. I get the irony that my criticism in the blog following circles like a buzzard in those who confuse fact from the opinion of others.
It was a stale November when I escaped the wind, rain and foul manure stench of the Columbian bog. The air above Washington was becoming stagnant; the winds of change were caught in the doldrums, somewhere just above the Senate floor where novelty and inspiration enigmatically eddy.
A few days of sunshine and fresh air on the South Floridian coast, were thought would do one well. Perhaps one could be rejuvenated by some refreshing sea breeze of sober fact and reason. My good friend was organizing an event in Boca Raton for the legendary Al Gore, who was promoting his new book, Our Choice and Zack’s invitation seemed like a good excuse to get out of town for the weekend and clear my head. Perhaps as a citizen of the Republic of Rhetoric, in the District of Dispute I’d lost my patience waiting for composed argument.
Palm Beach is very near to the Bermuda Triangle. Perhaps that’s why it is a showcase for the wacky.
Think of bat-winged ballots, chads hanging like limp palm fronds and several hundred nearly blind liberal senior citizens who accidentally voted for Pat Buchanan.
Think of joggers on the beach near Boca Raton, quizzically noticing a type of Howl’s moving extraterrestrial castle hovering over the surf on a sunny Saturday morning, then laughing it off as they treat themselves to skim soy mochachinos and cranberry scones. Such a scene could be an overly complicated allegory of the comfort-seeking behavior of suburban America: witnessing firsthand fantastic unnatural phenomenon that could spell doom for all of human civilization - then going on seconds later pretending that it couldn’t possibly affect their primetime viewing schedule or their conversations about what amazing things were happening on reality TV. It just could be an allegory.
Think of a golf cart tricked out with fluorescent lights and flat-screened TVs, piloted by an eighty year old cruising the strip on a Friday night.
Think of throngs of people calling themselves tea baggers, protesting fact, lynching science and stoning reason.
Now you have a sense of it. Being on a permanent vacation in the Sun Belt - like in Florida, Arizona or California sometimes gives those who live there license to leave their senses.
And South Florida in particular is a truly bizarre place. But the weather is nice there and I almost had a respite. On a Friday the 13th, I found myself walking for miles along a bucolic white sandy beach, free of superficialities and ruminations of consequence alike.
The next day, I was lulled out of my sea calm; rudely awakened on the front lines of a rowdy insurrection against science and reason. It could have been Galileo’s 16th century Italy. The geocentric mob was blood thirsty. They were ready to string up their heretics. It was reported that they had already strung up a Congresswoman in New York… …or at least chased her out of town with lit torches.
What I found in Florida that weekend was that things in our peculiar political climate were every bit as bad as they seemed in Washington, and maybe much worse. Whereas the folks in Washington know the facts and play rhetoric to their political advantage, folks in other parts of the country don’t know the facts, don’t care to know them, and what is absolutely the most reprehensible: they exhibit open disdain for the facts and a unrestrained glee to burn the messenger.
The mob was foaming at the mouth. Was it a severe case of misinformation? No other putrid affliction besides rabies or Rupert Murdoch could possibly describe their horrendous behavior.
With my glowing optimism (I am after all, but an American), I expected the Al Gore event at Mizner Park to be something like a quiet college lecture outdoors on a balmy Saturday evening. Instead, 200 hate-filled teabaggers screamed from the small park across the street throughout the 90 minute course of Mr. Gore’s presentation, as if he was promoting the flooding of Florida to save the environment. In fact, he was simply stating that the environment must be saved to stave off the flooding of Florida.
At the end of the night, the well-read book club liberals and young college students left still convinced of their position, and this, Al's well paid-audience was simply even more disgusted with what they considered to be club-weilding knuckle draggers outside the gate. Ironically, it was the teabaggers themselves who were taxing the event and threatening the very fringes of private property. Thus they achieved nothing but further dishonoring themselves and their cause; demonstraing for local television cameras how incredibly dimwitted, callous and inconsiderate a mob can be.
“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'" -Isaac Asimov
Global warming shouldn’t be a controversial topic. It is widely accepted FACT that the planet’s climate is changing. I’d quote copious sources, if I’d think the occasional skeptic who happened across my blog would read them. The summer Arctic ice is 50% of what it was 50 years ago. I can’t pay for your flight to the pole, and anyway you wouldn’t go if I could, so I must be lying about the whole thing.
If you’re still skeptical that the world is warming nowadays, chances are you probably aren’t really well read on the subject, and might not care so much about the “subjective” opinions of international organizations and scientists. What’s actually causing the polar ice caps to melt is a far more controversial topic, although the number of those with PhDs claiming it’s a purely natural (i.e. conveniently non-human) phenomenon is fast dwindling.
“…you don’t believe in global warming? You’re wrong, but I’ll let you enjoy it until your beach house gets washed away. But if you also don’t believe the world is getting more crowded with more aspiring Americans — and that ignoring that will play to the strength of our worst enemies, while responding to it with clean energy will play to the strength of our best technologies — then you’re willfully blind, and you’re hurting America’s future to boot.”
-Tom Friedman, New York Times
18 November 2009
And if the venemous spite of the right wing wasn’t bad enough, some random disenchanted Microsoft executive evidently had threatened to “sabotage” the event. No kidding! My eyes were glued to the heights of the amphitheater’s projection tower the entire night, waiting for a glimpse of an Armani-suited nitwit climbing the clock tower in his Cole Haan loafers, knife-in-teeth aspiring to cut the cord and redeem his silicone honor.
CAPTION BELOW - THESE PEOPLE ARE EXPRESSING OPINIONS. OPINIONS are things that are not always true, and cannot be independently verified. Opinions are expressed by many. Bimbos, shock jocks, movie stars, snowmobile racers, and even dogs have opinions. For example - Dog A like Kibbles & Bits and Dog B likes Purina. Both dogs may or may not have rabies.
Poor Al Gore. This guy just keeps getting a raw deal in Palm Beach County.
“He who follows truth too closely at the heels might get kicked in the teeth.”
-Sir Walter Ralegh
