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COMMENTARY
June 7, 2008
Obamania
The term “reality check” is often used by the media in assessing the claims of politicians. It could also be applied to electorates, and a nice Gallup poll this week invites us to do just that. It was a test of popular belief in “global warming,” with the usual leading question to suggest the “correct” (i.e. politically correct) answer. So, after a nudge and a wink, 61 percent of Americans are now true believers in this scientistic cult phenomenon, up from 48 percent in 1997.The numbers get interesting when broken down by party allegiance. Among Republican voters, the number of true believers has actually fallen from 47 to 41 percent over the last decade; but among Democrats, it has risen dramatically, from 46 to 76 percent. What makes this such a priceless reality check, is that we can now compare the results to global average temperatures. There was indeed a “global warming” trend for several decades. It ended in 1998. Temperatures then began falling, very slightly, and recently have begun to plunge -- just as in the past. That is to say, warming cycles are followed by cooling cycles. (And vice versa!) To put this plainly: as the evidence for continuous “man-made” global warming disappears, belief subsides among Republicans. But among Democrats it increases, radically. Democrats respond better to words, and the repetition of them. For the one thing that has increased hugely, in the last decade, is the propaganda for “global warming.” I have myself observed this distinction between the Right and Left sides of mainstream electorates in most other Western countries: the Right tends to believe in facts, the Left to believe in “theories”; and as we advance through post-modern irrationalism, those theories become battier and battier. The trend towards “global crazing” was not always there, however. If we go back half a century, differences between Liberals and Conservatives up here, as between Democrats and Republicans down there, did not hinge on “ability to discern reality.” On the facts of life; on moral, legal, and religious principles; on the need to keep government out of our lives and resist tyranny in any other form, there was broad agreement. A “very liberal” voter from the 1950s would pass for a “rightwing dinosaur” today. This has become a signal threat to democracy. For where we once had broad agreement on facts, and relatively mild disagreements on what should be done about them, we now have one-half of the electorate drifting off into Cloud Cuckooland. I have attributed this to many things, but chiefly to the effects of mass urbanization. People living in vast conurbations become disconnected from nature, and thus increasingly suggestible. The press of crowds enforces conformity, so that we get “school of fish” movements in public opinion. The individual fish believes that the direction of the school has been determined by “experts,” and anyway fears being eaten if he deviates from the consensus in any way. And then you realize that the “experts” are people like Al Gore, and it is too late to panic. So, returning Stateside: we now have, on the Democrat side, the ideal presidential candidate in Barack Obama. Untested and inexperienced, coming from a Chicago wardheel background that does not bear a moment’s examination, he is a master of theatrical words and suggestion. Though eloquent and convincing only when speaking from a teleprompter, he has the wit to avoid spontaneous interactions, and the ability to recover, once back in front of his teleprompter, from extraordinary gaffes. “Change we can believe in!” is one of several blank-content slogans that put an almost sexual thrill into his starry-eyed supporters. Consider this modest remark by Mr Obama, while receiving the nomination on Tuesday: “I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” It is when such lines are put in cold print, instead of into the mouth of a very fine actor, that the true chill begins to run up one’s spine. Mr Obama had only 143 days of sessional experience in the U.S. Senate, before his Presidential campaign began, so that his positions on most issues cannot be known. But when he was there, his voting record was farthest Left of all 100 senators. Imagine him as President.rn David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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