The Daily Banter Mail Bag!! Republican Climate Change Denial, Dealing With an Obama Loss and More!!

Welcome to this weeks edition of The Daily Banter Mail Bag where Bob Cesca, Chez Pazienza and Ben Cohen answer questions from our readers! Today, we discuss the reasons behind the Right’s denial of climate change, whether the Democrats would ever recover from a Republican victory this year, and how Mitt Romney gets away with pretending to be insane in order to appease the Republican base.

The questions:

Generally speaking, why is the right wing so obtuse on the environment? They deny climate change, discredit sustainable energy technology (the next industrial revolution) while promoting archaic and dirty energy technology (the ill effects too numerous to list), insist that pristine areas be submitted to oil production- hardly a true conservative(by definition) position, and want to annihilate the EPA. This is to name only a few features of their bizarre, self-destructive stance. Why has the environment become an enemy of the right? They need it as much as…well, everyone. – Drew

Chez: Bob and I kind of touched on this sort of thing this week on the podcast. I’m not sure conservatives full-on hate the environment so much as they simply stand stridently against anything the left supports on principle. That’s why things are so galactically fucked-up right now. Yeah, there are outlying idiots like James Inhofe who genuinely believe that the magical Christian overseer they grovel before wouldn’t dare let us destroy ourselves — and I probably don’t even need to mention that there’s nothing funnier/sadder than somebody as dumb as Inhofe actually casting himself as an expert on the environment, in contrast to all those scientists and their fancy book learnin’ — but for the most part it’s a lot simpler than that. Democrats support responsible protective legislation for the environment because they’re a bunch of tree-huggers, so conservatives naturally have to stand against it. It also doesn’t hurt that the GOP has traditionally been in the pocket of those who don’t give a crap about the good of the planet and who seek only to satisfy their greed. These people hate environmental regulation because it interferes with business, supposedly — and we all know how “pro-business” the Republicans are.

Bob: There are two reasons for this. One is somewhat understandable and the other is totally ridiculous. Firstly, conservatives have traditionally believed in very little if any government regulation and consider such power to be an enemy of freedom. For all of its obvious flaws, government — We The People — has a responsibility to protect the Commons. In other words, there are commonly owned elements in the world which we’re all entitled to enjoy: air, water, land. The government’s role is to make sure several wealthy corporate oligarchs don’t destroy those resources for the rest of us. As individuals, we’re powerless to regulate industry. But united in the form of a regulatory body — the government — we have the ability to protect our interests. Additionally, it’s in the best interest of business to protect the Commons as well because if industry makes the planet unsafe for human existence, then freedom from government regulation becomes totally irrelevant. That said, Modern Conservatism isn’t so principled. Too many Modern Conservatives are anti-environment simply because it pisses off liberals. So scam artists and bastards like Glenn Beck tell their audiences to burn tires, to leave their cars idling and to cut down trees on Earth Day. Not because it helps anything. They do it because it pisses off the rest of us. On one hand, this is very effective for the far-right because it’s easy and stupid and plays to the lowest common denominator. On the other hand, it’s a politically untenable position mainly because there aren’t any core values informing it and therefore the approach is thin and temporary.

Bob: I don’t think everything is lost, but we’ll be in terrible shape if Romney wins this November. Not only will the country and the world hang on the brink of more war and more conservative deregulatory economic turmoil, but, as you wrote, it will be yet another victory for ignorance over reason. A Romney victory will signify a victory for cynicism and propaganda over actual results and actual successes. The numbers don’t lie. But the Republicans do. Everyone from Romney to John Boehner to the entire right-wing media apparatus has been lying about the economy from day one. While it’s difficult to overcome this kind of coordinated intellectual violence, it’s not impossible. The Obama campaign has considerable financial resources at its disposal and won’t hesitate to destroy the Romney campaign in every way imaginable. Rest easy for now and let’s regroup in a month or so.

Chez: Romney can win because people are stupid and gullible and because they’re astonishingly adept at staying on message and controlling the narrative. And the narrative they paint isn’t, of course, that they’re holding the country hostage in an attempt to fuck things up so badly that they can get themselves ushered back into power; it’s that things are getting worse under Obama and that’s really all you need to know so, hey, vote Republican. Why are they able to get away with this? Simple. Because the mainstream political press refuses to call them out on it for fear of being tagged as biased and liberal — because conservatives have been really, really good of putting that fear of God into the media for the past few decades. Trust me, you’re not the only one who looks at the unmitigated shit that goes on and wonders how exactly they’re able to get away with it; it’s one of the reasons that I honestly tune out politics every once in a while — just go completely dark. You’d think that people would at least be smart enough to see when they’re being lied to and when the country’s being bent over simply to score political points — and there are in fact some people out there who get what’s happening — but more often than not, vast numbers of people can be swayed by some slick talk and a lot of horseshit rhetoric. And in case you haven’t noticed, that’s all the Republicans — certainly an empty suit like Romney — have.

Bob: Americans have a notoriously short attention span, and as much if not more cynicism than Romney (which is hard to believe). Voters expect people like Romney to reverse their positions, so it really doesn’t matter to Romney because he’s fully aware of and ready to exploit our negative views of politics. It’s really a dastardly campaign strategy, but it’s the core of what Romney is doing — and will continue to do.

Ben: Hi Jeff, if the Obama campaign team are smart (and they are) they are going to use social media to smash Romney for his pandering to the Right. Sadly, Romney is such a phoney, he won’t care or really bother to respond to the allegations of complete dishonesty. If he does, he’ll just lie again even more making him look even more of an idiot. I think Romney is betting that the state of the economy and his ability to just keep showing up will propel him into the White House. It worked during the primaries, and it may work again in the general. It’s not exactly inspiring, but in modern politics, its a propaganda campaign and a numbers game – all of which Romney can do.

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