From "What Jonathan Franzen and the Left Get Wrong About Free Speech/Don’t wait for an emergency to criticize dangerous ideas by your allies" by Jonathan Chait (NY Magazine).
Franzen refused to sign a letter. I'm not going to accept Chait's characterization of why he refused, because I can see that Chait is misinterpreting the Lubyanka statement, which I'd read as hyperbole. People who say "It's not the end of the world" don't mean it's not worth worrying about if it's not the actual end of the world.
And I suspect Franzen doesn't like signing his name to other people's writing. He seems to prefer to craft his own very particular statements. I've read a couple books of his essays, including one where he takes on the critics of his remarks about birds and climate change, and I don't think he would appreciate Chait's paraphrase — befuddlementization — of those remarks.
I won't purport to paraphrase it myself, but here's what Franzen wrote in The New Yorker in 2019, "What If We Stopped Pretending?/The climate apocalypse is coming. To prepare for it, we need to admit that we can’t prevent it." It begins:
“There is infinite hope,” Kafka tells us, “only not for us.” This is a fittingly mystical epigram from a writer whose characters strive for ostensibly reachable goals and, tragically or amusingly, never manage to get any closer to them. But it seems to me, in our rapidly darkening world, that the converse of Kafka’s quip is equally true: There is no hope, except for us.
I’m talking, of course, about climate change. The struggle to rein in global carbon emissions and keep the planet from melting down has the feel of Kafka’s fiction. The goal has been clear for thirty years, and despite earnest efforts we’ve made essentially no progress toward reaching it. Today, the scientific evidence verges on irrefutable....
If you care about the planet, and about the people and animals who live on it, there are two ways to think about this. You can keep on hoping that catastrophe is preventable, and feel ever more frustrated or enraged by the world’s inaction. Or you can accept that disaster is coming, and begin to rethink what it means to have hope....
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Franzen is weak. That's a cheap excuse. If he didn't want to sign just because he doesn't want to sign then say so.No need for the hyperbole. Global warming is either bullshit or inevitable. If real, then nothing we do short of killing most of the world's population will make a difference if human agency is part of the cause. But then again a Commie just might want to go that route. Scratch a real Commie hard enough and out comes a Nazi.
I don't blame him at all for his letter signing refusal...those things are almost always disingenuous and stupid...virtue-signaling all the way down.
As for climate change, we will adapt...it's what we do (opposable thumbs and all that).
Besides, better off too warm than too cold.
And this generation of the left now discovers the purpose of the Rule of Law. The last generation of the hard left sought to tear down the establishment, and often succeeded. They seek to replace the old with something new. To make new ways function they now require rules, but without standards have no way to define or calibrate effective and SUSTAINABLE rules.
Politics is either a pendulum or a rotating screw. Each party shifts until it opposes everything values by prior generations.
Be self-aware or face self-destruction.
Yeah all time dumb Chait column.
But good quote from Franzen. I think people aren't optimists or pessimists, but are more likely to be optimistic pessimists or pessimistic optimists.
In other words, some are miserable because they have high hopes for humanity that continually fall short. And others are happy because they have no hope for humanity and their nil expectations are usually exceeded.
Unspoken
Once again Althouse pardons offences from the Left she would never tolerate from the Right.
Or you could try listening to the science. According to the IPCC, which is probably a good proxy for mainstream climate science, climate change is likely to cost 5-10% of world GDP by the end of the century. That's a huge problem, trillions of dollars. It is also nothing like the end of the world. In fact, since world GDP is projected to have grown many times from now to then, they will be much richer than we are. Only somewhat less more richer than they would have been.
Listen to the science. Problem, not the end of the world.
As a younger man, and even a middle aged guy who read a lot and paid attention to the world around me, I used think back to Nazi Germany, Maoist China, Lenin's then Stalin's Russia, and wonder how those people got to the point where they just fell in line. Where they would deny what is happening in front of them, right up to the point where the cattle car doors were shut behind them. Or up to the point where the kids in the area would come to their workplace, scream and shout at them, pull them out and parade them down the street as outcasts, never to be seen again. Or how those who wanted to just try to feed their families, fell into reporting on their neighbors for Stalin's goons. Only to find out that later that their time was also coming, and no one cared that they turned in their neighbors.
As I watch our academicians, media, politicians, and now corporate 'leaders' first change the language, then submit themselves to living under the new language and new rules, and enforcing others to do so, or be cast out, I've come to understand how the Nazis, Soviets, Maoist Communists were able to control their people. The people went along with it until it was too dangerous to do otherwise. They were OK with it as long as those 'other bad people' were the ones being attacked. But eventually, they run out of 'other people'.
Franzen is a fool. He's not the first, nor will he be the last. But he is so full of himself and his own prejudices, he cannot see others on the right being shut out, removed from jobs, opportunities, and the entire media- with a couple of small exceptions. They are removed for how they think, or words they use. He thinks this is just fine. He cannot see the destruction of the Western world around him, which is a shame in a famous fiction writer, a supposed thinker. He thinks all of this is, so far, OK. And it is. Until it's his time. And, as history has shown us, without a doubt, unless the course is changed, his time is coming, too.
For such a sharp-eyed satirist, Franzen is suspiciously gullible on the subject of AGW. And some other lefty political notions, for that matter. Guess it's his religion. He still wrote a touching book in The Corrections, and a fairly funny one in Freedom.
From the piece:
The illiberal left’s power cannot and will not resemble a 20th-century totalitarian horror, because it lacks state power.
Does it, though? Certainly it possesses some forms of state power - the current executive and (half of the) legislative branches are happy to allow the social media wing of the "illiberal left" not only to avoid even criticism for acting like editors rather than common carriers, but also actively to perform viewpoint censorship and denial of service to those holding the censored viewpoints. (I think conservatives, who in the early days of the interwebs supported the right of budding social media companies to act like any old companies, have now realized that these companies' dominance in both their field and in American life means that they aren't just any old companies. They are indeed Ma Bell.)
Chait says that a "20th-century totalitarian horror" resulting from the authoritarian left (though he uses "illiberal" instead) is not possible because they don't have the power to imprison - "only" to take a person's livelihood and turn him into a pariah. (By implication, a "20th-century totalitarian horror" is the only kind of authoritarianism he appears to think is worthy of avoiding. Other types of authoritarianism are apparently no big deal.) So he's helpfully defined someone else's terms in a way that protects his own opinion. Not at all a cheat, Chait.
And of course there is also the mandatory reference to the Republican Party's "descent into authoritarianism," offered (as always) without evidence.
"Today, the scientific evidence [of climate change] verges on irrefutable...."
No lesser authority than AOC has reliably determined that we have fewer than ten years left to save the world from AGW (or is it AG cooling? I get confused.) Now we're being told that it only verges on being irrefutable. Which I believe implies it is still refutable. Get back to me when you're a little more certain that the world can only be saved if we all agree to starve in the dark.
...when 'people start being sent off to Lubyanka' — the headquarters of the Soviet secret police — 'for having said the wrong thing to the wrong person...
...or losing your job because of some comment in your high school yearbook 20 years ago, or being denied the right to peaceably assemble (form a Campus Conservative Club), or being the target of unusual prosecutorial indiscretion re. statements made to the FBI.
"If you care about the planet, and about the people and animals who live on it, there are two ways to think about this. You can keep on hoping that catastrophe is preventable, and feel ever more frustrated or enraged by the world’s inaction. Or you can accept that disaster is coming, and begin to rethink what it means to have hope...."
Or you can come to understand what fiction is.
As a kid I loved math and it came easy. Took a standardized math test in the 60's for Minnesota middle school kids as a sixth grader. That meant the seventh and eighth graders in the state took the same test. Kids as many as two grades ahead of me. I received the highest score in the state.
I took all the math I could in high school and then went on to the University of Minnesota as a math major. Switched to majoring in music shortly there after. Glad I did; what a ride! In life, my need for math has never exceeded algebra and geometry. If you need help building a high-quality, heated dog house...
I said all that to say this. I read a lot. More than most and also watch anything that interests me on TV. Everything. A few nights ago, I saw a documentary on chaos theory, fractal geometry and whatnot. And while never having been exposed to these ideas before, due to my math education it made perfect sense to me, unfolding right before me as it always did. I was pretty darn amazed, let me tell you.
And then it dawned on me. While it wasn't mentioned in the documentary, even though the earth is getting warmer, there is no way possible that anyone can predict climate change or make conclusions about what to do about it. Too many variables.
How about when the government maintains lists that they then send to social media giants to silence voices the government considers dangerous or mis-information.
Is that when we object? Cause that's happening as told by Jen Psaki in her official role.
"when 'people start being sent off to Lubyanka'"
Hyperbole, OK. More precisely, he means, when . . . when what? Brendan Eich or David Shor or Roseanne losing their jobs? Brett Weinstein running afoul of of the Evergreen PC mob? Andrew Sullivan having to leave NYM, Glenn Greenwald The Intercept? RBG getting posthumously censored by the ACLU?
When do anecdotes become data, and data form a trend? When will "liberals" not only reclaim the right to question conventional progressive wisdom, but in fact question it?
Illiberal Left you mean like Maxine the Mouth and the "squad"? They got the Border Enforcement off the horses and on the desks. That kind of power that they lack? At 70+ years, I've lived through many cycles of climate hysteria. Al gore seems to be able to find the "ten more years" until the end of days. AGW is neurosis on steroids.
As I watch our academicians, media, politicians, and now corporate 'leaders' first change the language, then submit themselves to living under the new language and new rules, and enforcing others to do so, or be cast out, I've come to understand how the Nazis, Soviets, Maoist Communists were able to control their people.
I had a discussion with my stepson (new college grad) about "liberal" professors. I told him that it was not the true liberals who created a hostile atmosphere for learning and discussion, but the Marxists. Once they discovered postmodernism, they were off to the races to create the perfect Soviet world, using students as their guinea pigs and the vanguard for their revolution.
I explained that college liberals were mostly cowards afraid to stand up to the mob. Franzen is one such liberal.
American Citizens: "Please leave us alone."
Uniparty drones: "Racist Fascist! You re inciting violence and must be censored! People who deny climate change will kill us all if we don't get power over everyone immediately."
Ann Althouse: This is fine. I am "cruelly neutral."
Franzen is the perfect "intellectual."
90% of university professors and "intellectuals" are completely useless and completely lack perspective.
His adherence to the Church of Global Warming is particularly pathetic. Climate Nazi's are completely incapable of thinking for themselves. For this they killed the scientific method.
Crocodile.
If you guys don't get the reference, take a breath and think about it.
WRT climate change, I don’t agree with his premise but I agree with his conclusion.
I'm an opto-pessimist. It takes a long time for a democracy to make up its mind to act. In such a regime most people are busy doing what they want, fulfilling a plan. If something is obviously wrong they want it an election to correct it. It's kind of absurd to expect an election to correct a problem if the problem is vote counting. But in this country most people have a lot to lose and so they won't move except slowly. I personally am sure they will move in the end and with sudden startling speed when they do. In my view people in a democracy get converted in small batches, some by one event, some by another. I think we all know that people in Afghanistan who supported us are being "marched to the Lubyanka." Minds are changing for that. Jonathan Chait, however, probably is thinking about all the lefty petitions about free speech he's seen. And when he can't get traction on this now, his mind will change. But he won't attract me to his cause because prolifers are always being suppressed. And he won't want prolifers near his cause. Or Army people. We'll just be there like three pick-up sticks - crossed, tangled. More sticks falling all the time. Then by cause of something no worse than all that came before, suddenly it all lines up. Fort Sumter was not the worst thing the Confederates did. But when they did that, there was a war. Joe Biden will do something stupid - count on him.
Franzen?
Chiat?
Who?
When did journalism become about the self-indulgent?
It's like watching the Emmy's on TV.
I don't know what could be more simplistic -- and wrong -- than to suggest the climate issue offers just two ways to think. It is, Franzen says, an "inevitable" catastrophe, or a "preventable" catastrophe. I am sorry, but despite what he also says -- "Today, the scientific evidence verges on irrefutable" -- there is no unitary THE "scientific evidence" at all, and most of the vastly complex evidence about a thousand mechanisms and cycles and chains of causation is far too murky and uncertain to either be confirmed solidly or refuted, let alone termed a "catastrophe." Unless you start with "catastrophe" in your heart of hearts and build out from there.
If you expect intellectuals to save you, you are doomed.
The only tragedy here is the intellectual somehow thinks he's important.
"Too many variables."
Strongly agree.
Did someone say 'trend'?
I quote Prof van Creveld from a lecture on Youtube:
A trend is a trend is a trend,
The question is, will it bend,
Or be pushed off course,
By an unforeseen force,
And come to a premature end?
And, his recent posts at As I Please are worth a read.
"Or you can accept that disaster is coming..."
Anyone claiming to predict the future needs to show a track record of having done so previously. Preferably on more than one occasion.
People have been shouting "THE END IS NIGH!" for the entirety of my life. It used to be the subject of cartoonists instead of a prescription for mankind.
We talk about climate change but the actual average surface temperature has not increased after 40 years of extreme scaremongering. A whole generation of children has been scared by their teachers, taught that we are all doomed and that many of us don’t care about “saving the planet” and we’re probably racist to boot. How long will parents allow this institutional child abuse? Many are fleeing the monopoly educrat establishment. These gullible pseudo-intellectuals are a related problem. Their arrogance exceeds their intellect in my opinion.
"First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out, because we're all going to die in the gulag. So I decided to save birds."
MikeR said...Or you could try listening to the science.
The problem is, climate is a science in its infancy. They have no business making grand pronouncements about anything. They simply don’t know enough yet.
Take your example of a reliable scientific body—the IPCC. Ignore for now the rampant conflicts of interest that the UN, is it too often does, completely ignores. The IPCC has been around long enough that we can look at some of their predictions and see how they’re doing. They are batting zero. Every prediction of the climate scientists that can be tested has been wrong. And how have they responded? Well, a real scientist would conclude his hypothesis is wrong and start over. The climate scientists of the IPCC, with a strong assist from their cheering section in the media, circle the wagons to defend the theory and double down on their already disproven claims.
That’s not what science is supposed to look like.
---Unless you start with "catastrophe" in your heart of hearts and build out from there.[Jon Burack]
Right. Have you read his books? Franzen doesn't like people much, if at all. That's why he's a satirist, and that's why he's a bird-watcher. Much happier with no human beings around at all.
Quick step from disliking people to grabbing at the AGW religious prophecy -- including a condemnation of human selfishness, ignorance, or venality. He already believes it's all three.
The basic premise of science is: "Here's my idea. Here's my data. Prove me wrong."
Climate "science" says: "Here's my idea. You can't see my data. Obey"
We should seriously consider global warming hysteria as a psychological problem. We are so full of hubris to think we can control the earth’s climate when all science points to the human contribution to climate change as very small, yet the alarmists feel a need to totally change society to fulfill their internal psychological needs. If they really believed that global warming is an existential threat then they would push 3rd and 4th generation clean nuclear as the source of power that offers the best solution given what we know about the science of power generation today. But people with a psychological need to restructure society cannot stand a solution like nuclear that solves the problem without society restructuring.
Millennial ago people like there withdrew to monasteries to war sack cloth and ashes to meet their psychological needs. In the modern world the hubris has grown along with the ability to project their psychological problems on the world. I say ignore them unless and until they get serious about solutions beyond changing the world in a grand experiment concocted in their heads involving catastrophe for others in population control, standards of living, acceptable duration of life, etc.
Isn’t it interesting that the same people who are alarmists about global warming are hot on pursuing ways to extend life or even make life never end? Of course, that is for them and not others, all part of their narcissism and other psychological problems.
'Scratch a real Commie hard enough and out comes a Nazi'
In Poland they called them 'Red Fascists'.
Franzen’s a boring, prejudiced, asshole fraud. Bitching about super prisons without ever wondering why we need them. No psycho ever raped and killed his mommy. At least Roth could compose a sentence. And this is why he’s unserious about free speech. He has his.
There never were that many WASPS, and they certainly weren’t after him. Ditto that guy who uses lots of punctuation marks and thinks it’s cool, obviously never having heard of Tristam Shandy.
actual average surface temperature
------------
how is this even defined or derived?
and for any given value where is isotherm on global map?
then there is lower and higher on each side and heat flow process of thermodynamics.
Achilles said...
American Citizens: "Please leave us alone."
Uniparty drones: "Racist Fascist! You re inciting violence and must be censored! People who deny climate change will kill us all if we don't get power over everyone immediately."
Ann Althouse: This is fine. I am "cruelly neutral."
--------
Just to be clear all around -
Achilles : are you saying cruel neutrality = Professora is conceding power to Uniparty and abdicating her agency / independence
“We talk about climate change but the actual average surface temperature has not increased after 40 years of extreme scaremongering.”
They called it Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW) until that theory was falsified, because the Earth was not really warming. So, they are now trying Climate Change, which is unfalsifiable. That is because whatever happens, whether it be more hurricanes or fewer, bigger or smaller hurricanes, more rain or less, etc, is all proof of Climate Change. Everything proves it, so you cannot set up a test that can falsify the theory. Conveniently, they use all the old data, models, and graphs, and keep talking about the Earth heating up, but now call it Climate Change. That is pretty much how you know that it is Cargo Cult religion, and not real science. So, whenever you hear about Climate Change, just remember, changing the name from CAGW was an admission that it isn’t science, but rather religion.
“actual average surface temperature”
------------
“how is this even defined or derived?”
Satellites actually do a decent job of determining that. Or most of it, depending on their orbits. So, Climate Scientists naturally adjusted the satellite temperatures to match the heavily funded and interpolated terrestrial figures.
That’s certainly how I read Achilles’s post. FWIW, I agree with him.
>>I saw a documentary on chaos theory, fractal geometry and whatnot
I wouldn't be surprised if it was covered in the documentary, but I recall James Gleick's "Chaos" as covering that ground quite well. I'm pretty sure I read it when it first came out almost 35 years ago. I was vaguely familiar with fractals before that (I started out and stayed as a math major before going to law school, after getting four years of free tuition at a Jesuit high school as a prize for coming in second at their first 7th grade math contest and acing the BC calculus AP exam my junior year), but that book was the first I had ever heard of chaos theory, the butterfly effect, and strange attractors. Good stuff. As I write this, the book is sitting on a bookshelf about six feet away; maybe I should reread it.
--gpm
Plus ca change. Plus c'est la meme. Public intellectualism=absurdity.
here's what Franzen wrote in The New Yorker in 2019, "What If We Stopped Pretending?/The climate apocalypse is coming. To prepare for it, we need to admit that we can’t prevent it."
But the whole point is pretense.
They all know the "climate apocalypse" isn't coming. They use threats of it to build political power.
Giving up the "do this to stop the oncoming climate apocalypse!" would cut the Left's power.
As that's the only thing they actually care about, that's "bad"
MikeR said...
Or you could try listening to the science. According to the IPCC, which is probably a good proxy for mainstream climate science, climate change is likely to cost 5-10% of world GDP by the end of the century. That's a huge problem, trillions of dollars.
Except that all the "green" bullshit to "prevent climate change" will cut far more than 10% off of world GDP by the end of the century if actually followed.
So following the IPCC, the best choice is to do nothing
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