Change Is A Sound

steelweaver:

So maybe what we have today are not problems, but meta-problems.

It is very useful to confirm our understanding with others, to meet with fellow humans – preferably face-to-face – strength flows from this.

However, disquiet remains - no pre-catastrophic change of course seems in any way likely. What we might call ‘Fabian’ environmentalism has failed.

Occasionally a scientist will be so overcome with horror that he will make a radical public pronouncement – like the drunken uncle at a wedding, he may well be saying what everyone knows to be true, pulling the skeletons out of the family closet for all to see, but, well, it just doesn’t do to say that sort of thing out loud at a formal function.

This is all a little bit strange.  

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I reblogged this once before, but considering that every new day in 2012 brings another example of the GOP not only trying to out-crazy itself but actually SUCCEEDING, it’s instructive to read this again. It is very dense, academic language and I had to look up several terms on Wikipedia, but this - more than any other piece I’ve read about what’s wrong with the GOP - explains contemporary American political discourse.