Verucasaltism

I just gave him a big shoutout and, yes, I'm usually completely down with Charlie Pierce. But I think he's missed his target here when he says that George Effing Will is trying to equate climate-change-denialism with "science".

He puts up this Will quote from his WaPo column and no, I'm not going to link to the insufferable sonofabitch but Pierce does if you want to read his condescending little screed. In it Will says of the current Roman Catholic pontiff:

"He stands against modernity, rationality, science and, ultimately, the spontaneous creativity of open societies in which people and their desires are not problems but precious resources. Americans cannot simultaneously honor him and celebrate their nation's premises."

and what Pierce picks from this chunky nougat of fuck is that Will is claiming that pretending that human beings are not substantially changing our planet's environment is "scientific" and "rational" and that to suggest that they are, or might at least be doing enough to support some serious investment in changing that, is to be against "modernity, rationality...and science".

But I think that Will's point is really worse than that. It's in his conclusion that this concern for things like planetary temperature is an attempt to destroy "...the spontaneous creativity of open societies in which people and their desires are not problems but precious resources." and that "...celebrat(ing the) nation's premises." involves subordinating everything else to "people and their desires."

Now this isn't an elusive or subtle idea. In its simplest form it's just what Veruca Salt wanted from Willy Wonka: everything, the whole world, and right fucking now. It's greed, raw, naked greed. It's selfishness on a Randian scale, the "desire" is simply that everyone and everything else owes me what I want and more and right this very second. Call it the "rollin' coal" theory of social responsibility. Or call it what it really is; the morals of a four-year-old...or Veruca fricking Salt.

And I agree that a hell of a lot of human history has been about people trying to get everything yesterday. But should that really be "our nation's premise"? Should we really be all about trying to be bigger, fatter, richer, stronger, happier than everything and anything regardless of the cost? Is that a "precious resource" or more likely to be a "problem"?

George Effing Will in his capacity as the nation's Republican Intellectual wants to tell you we should be, and it is.

Bullshit.

He's a Bad Egg, and so is his argument. Hell, so is any argument that is nothing but fucking Verucasaltism in a goddamn prom dress.