Why Is Trump So Eager to Do Putin's Bidding?

[_MeDotOrg]

Great burn from Stephen Colbert about the summit:

"That makes sense. It is time for Trump's annual employee review."

[_Gunnar]

But what is this thing that Majax calls 'communism'? He doesn't say.

I suspect that it may be a reference to what are (in his view) the dangers to the US that he fears will follow from its participation in international multilateral agreements such as the the Paris Agreement on action to combat climate change, and so on. But past that guess, I am in the dark.

"Communism" has a fairly clear historical meaning, which refers to two things:

1. A supposedly possible state of society based on common ownership, without class conflicts, where everybody contributes according to their abilities, and everybody gets in return what they need.

2. A political movement that aims to promote the ultimate establishment of such a society by the overthrow of existing structures of power, which are said to be controlled by the owners of capital and to function by exploiting those who work for wages.

(By the way: much of my own political life has been spent urging that (1) is not possible, and that hence (2) is misguided and likely to be more destructive than to promote human happiness.)

I don't see what Majax's usage has to do with that (to my mind) normal use of the word 'communism'.

I think the most plausible explanation for Majax's misguided association of government attempts to address and mitigate global warming with communism has been provided by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway in their book, Merchants of Doubt.

Oreskes and Conway write that a handful of politically conservative scientists, with strong ties to particular industries, have "played a disproportionate role in debates about controversial questions".[5]

The authors write that this has resulted in "deliberate obfuscation" of the issues which has had an influence on public opinion and policy-making.[5]The book criticizes the so-called Merchants of Doubt, some predominantly American science key players, above all Bill Nierenberg, Fred Seitz, and Fred Singer. All three are physicists: Singer was a rocket scientist, whereas Nierenberg and Seitz worked on the atomic bomb.[6] They have been active on topics like acid rain, tobacco smoking, global warming and pesticides. The book claims that these scientists have challenged and diluted the scientific consensus in the various fields, as of the dangers of smoking, the effects of acid rain, the existence of the ozone hole, and the existence of anthropogenic climate change.[5] Seitz and Singer have been involved with institutions such as The Heritage Foundation, Competitive Enterprise Institute and George C. Marshall Institute in the United States. Funded by corporations and conservative foundations, these organizations have opposed many forms of state intervention or regulation of U.S. citizens. The book lists similar tactics in each case: "discredit the science, disseminate false information, spread confusion, and promote doubt".[7]

The book states that Seitz, Singer, Nierenberg and Robert Jastrow were all fiercely anti-communist and they viewed government regulation as a step towards socialism and communism. The authors argue that, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, they looked for another great threat to free market capitalism and found it in environmentalism. They feared that an over-reaction to environmental problems would lead to heavy-handed government intervention in the marketplace and intrusion into people's lives.[8] Oreskes and Conway state that the longer the delay the worse these problems get, and the more likely it is that governments will need to take the draconian measures that conservatives and market fundamentalists most fear. They say that Seitz, Singer, Nierenberg and Jastrow denied the scientific evidence, contributed to a strategy of delay, and thereby helped to bring about the situation they most dreaded.[8] The authors have a strong doubt about the ability of the media to differentiate between false truth and the actual science in question; however, they stop short of endorsing censorship in the name of science.[9] The journalistic norm of balanced reporting has helped, according to the authors, to amplify the misleading messages of the contrarians. Oreskes and Conway state: "small numbers of people can have large, negative impacts, especially if they are organised, determined and have access to power".[7]

The main conclusion of the book is that there would have been more progress in policymaking, if not for the influence of the contrarian "experts", which tried on ideological reasons to undermine trust in the science base for regulation.[9] Similar conclusions were already drawn, among others on Frederick Seitz and William Nierenberg in the book Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth about Climate Change (2010) by Australian academic Clive Hamilton.

Majax, is obviously, one of those willfully ignorant fools who bought into the misguided arguments of the above mentioned scientists that any attempt by government to regulate corporations and hold them responsible for polluting the environment and damaging the health and safety of the public is necessarily some sort of communist plot.

[_Gunnar]

Good points, EAllusion. It flabbergasts me that Trump apparently does not even try to hide the fact that he welcomes Russian interference in American elections on his behalf, and his core supporters still blindly support him and make excuses for him! It is a whole new level of abject idiocy that makes even some flat earthers seem smart by comparison!

I know it makes no sense, especially considering how much you've tried to reach out to DJT supporters. You owe me white privilege, BLM burning down Baltimore, St. Louis, over fictional anti police narratives, the party of higher taxes more welfare entitlements, and giving the country away in the name of racial diversity and global warming. What's not to like?

I think your communism is a bigger threat to American freedom than Putin by far.

Contrary to what you seem determined to believe, you don't have to be a Communist to have genuine concerns about global warming, environmental protection, social justice, extreme economic disparity, the lack of universally available and affordable healthcare, etc. On environmental issues in particular, Communism actually has a worse track record than most Western, capitalistic economies. Some of the very worst ecological disasters ever, occurred in Communist or formerly Communist countries such as the USSR and the Eastern Block countries they controlled. Remember Chernobyl? Communism would be the last thing I would turn to for sound, environmental policies, including global warming!

The best things the government can do to mitigate AGW is to encourage and reward entrepreneurial innovation in developing green alternatives to heavy dependence on fossil fuels, stop subsidizing the enormously wealthy and predatory fossil fuel industry, and stop trying to block the spread of solar energy and other green energy sources, which are already cheaper, more efficient, safer and more cost effective, as well as being more environmentally benign. Their potential for job creation and economic stimulation is so tremendous that any who oppose them are idiots--even if they are now involved in or profit from the fossil fuel industry!


ETA: Even the fossil fuel industry is acknowledging that renewable energy is more cost effective!

(CNN)You wouldn't expect a museum dedicated to the coal industry to run on anything other than coal -- but a mining museum in Kentucky is soon to be solar powered.

The Kentucky Coal Mining Museum in Benham, owned by Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College, is switching to solar power to save money. The museum, which memorializes Kentucky's history in coal mining, is modernizing with a new form of cheaper energy.

Communications director Brandon Robinson told CNN affiliate WYMT that the project "will help save at least eight to ten thousand dollars, off the energy costs on this building alone."

[_MeDotOrg]

Global warming that Gunnar seems to care so deeply about is more of an effort to establish global communism than it is to stop climate change.

ajax, have you ever looked at the environmental record of the Soviet Union? Chernobyl?

If an environmental concern conflicted with those of a 5-year plan, guess which one emerged victorious? Communism, an ideology primarily concerned with the state controlling the means of production, was not terribly concerned about environmental niceties. The reactor that exploded at Chernobyl was exported to Finland, only the export version shipped with with a containment vessel lacking from the domestic version.

I think what you're doing is conflating the fear of communism with necessity of international cooperation. Global Warming is global problem, but we would be foolish to think that it is the only one mankind will face. As more and more people populate the planet, the less individual freedom each person will have with respect to their habits of consumption. If every family on earth drove a gas powered SUV and had American patterns of consumption, our planet would be in far worse shape environmentally.

And even if there is a magic pill for global warming: cold fusion or cheap solar or biochemical energy production, I don't think mankind will have won, but merely dodged a bullet. It's just a matter of time before another pattern of consumption will reach a point where some sort of global cooperation will be required to divert disaster.

The fact that this is happening and will continue to happen is not a declaration of victory for one ideology over another. But as long as mankind's population continues to grow, the problems of increased production and consumption will never be solved. Something has to give: the number of people or the amount of consumption. Both curves cannot continue to rise indefinitely.

[_Gunnar]

MeDotOrg is right. No matter what we do, population and per capita consumption cannot both continue to rise at present rates for long. Either there must be a worldwide agreement to voluntarily limit both population growth and consumption rates, or there must be a drastic reduction in human life expectancy and huge increase in death rates due to starvation, war and pestilence when the human population exceeds the capacity of the earth to sustain it. Any conceivable efforts to prevent that inevitability that doesn't include somehow ending exponential growth in population and consumption rates can do no more than temporarily postpone it, and make the disaster all the worse when it finally happens anyway. This is not a matter of communist, liberal, ideological or political hype. It is a matter of basic, irrefutable and irrevocable arithmetic that God Almighty himself cannot deny without revealing himself to be a liar or fool or both.

[_ajax18]

https://www.investors.com/politics/edit ... admits-it/

A decent explanation on the connection of global warming and communism.

[_EAllusion]

The idea that global warming is a communist scheme comes from the notion that international collective regulation of economic activity is necessary to combat it, and that in of itself is a prelude to communist control of industry. The full conspiracy is that academia is full of leftists who are fabricating global warming hysteria as a mere pretext for international government control of industry.

It's one of those bananas ideas that someone like Ajax would never think or care about if not for the cross-breeding of ideas within his conservative media sources. He's in it for the racism, but somehow he's all of a sudden a staunch opponent of climate science. It's kinda wild when you really think about it.

It's also a reminder of how powerful the merchants of doubt ended up getting. Global warming is not too dissimilar from ozone depleting chemicals in terms of global threat caused by individual polluters scattered around the planet. Yet, international action on that was largely successful and the worst of the global consequences were averted (for now). It is a major environmental success story. In fact, the US's cooperation and leadership on the issue occurred under Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

This did not usher in global communism, but it is instructive about how conservatism degraded in the following years.

[_Some Schmo]

Of course there's a connection between communism and climate change, just like there's a solid connection between bestiality and Drumpf support. It's soooo obvious, who could possibly doubt it?

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Gents,

He doesn't read your responses, and he certainly won't answer your questions. He just lacks the ability beyond a bit of transactional knowledge (Google searches). It is what it is.

Granted, we're all dependent on the Googles these days, but with Ajax there's a conspicuous lack of philosophical training that underscores the pedagogical training his mother missed out on when she was certified as a home school teacher from the Sears catalog.

- Doc

[_canpakes]

https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/climate-change-a-back-door-to-communism-and-the-united-nations-admits-it/

A decent explanation on the connection of global warming and communism.

Where's the explanation? This is a 4-year old article quoting one ex-communist with an agenda, preceded by a fabricated and implied assertion never made by the person listed.

Christiana Figueres, with the lumpy title of executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), came right out and said it: Democracy is a poor political system for fighting global warming. The really good model is communist China

Figueres never said that democracy is a poor political system for fighting global warming. Look it up. Her comment to China only states the obvious - that they're finally realizing that they have to change their ways, and are doing so.

In fact, if you look up what she has actually said over the years, you'd see just where she stands on western efforts on climate change. You'd realize that you'd been lied to once again by yet another bullshitter, just like so many others who believe that you're too stupid to ever check out the koolaid that they're pumping down your throat.

But, hey - go ahead and believe the old ex-commie and the unknown dude fabricating BS in an online editorial, over the work of more than 30,000 scientists and 12,000 peer-reviewed research articles. That makes sense, right? ; )