Jonathan Chait brought my attention to some exciting news, Snowball-Chucking, Science-Hating Senator May Crash Paris Climate Talks. Yes, it’s our old friend James Inhofe — back in the news to bring the Truth™ to the people of the world. That Truth™ is, of course, that global warming is a hoax and that he can prove it because it snows in the winter. Inhofe is thinking of going the United Nations Conference on Climate Change, “I’ll repeat what I’ve done several times before, which is to go over and be the bad guy, the one-man truth squad, and tell the truth, that they’re going to be lied to by the Obama administration.”

This is sounding kind of hollow now. After all, it isn’t just Obama who takes global warming seriously. The governments of India and China and pretty much every other place on Earth take it seriously. Inhofe probably acts as a kind of argument for doing something about climate change. It’s the same as crazy people marching the streets shouting, “The end is nigh!” They always make me feel that everything is okay. If they weren’t so obviously crazy, I might be worried. Of course, the people of the world might start worrying about America in a general sense, but I can’t say that is unreasonable.

Such a stunt sounds so much like what a bunch of born again Christians would do. He’s certain he knows the truth. There is literally no way he will ever be convinced. I have to admit, that I’ve been somewhat deluded these past few years. I’ve thought that in ten or twenty years, all these global warming deniers would be unable to resist the plain facts. But that isn’t true. James Inhofe will never accept that global warming is happening, just as George Will won’t. It really doesn’t matter how long they live or what they see.

I talk a lot around here about how reasoning doesn’t work the way that we think it does. In general, people decide on something and then use their mighty brains to rationalize why they are right. But it does seem that not all people are alike in this regard. Some people are more open to new information than others. In particular, there are ways to turn off reflection. Fideism is a good way to do this. And it really doesn’t matter if it is through a dogmatic religion or an ossified ideology. In this case, we are not even talking about conservatism or “free market” absolutism. In Inhofe’s case, it is just a rejection of anything that he sees as liberal.

So imagine twenty years from now and global warming mitigation is costing the world trillions of dollars ever year. Inhofe is already 80 years old. He’ll be dead. George Will is 74, so he’ll probably be dead. But there will be a lot of living global warming deniers from today. And they’ll have a reason that they were right all along. There’s always a reason. If you are determined to believe something, you will find a way. But it doesn’t matter, because the damage will have been done. What’s more, even if all the Inhofes and Wills beg for forgiveness, they will still be out there denying any new threat to our safety and preaching their convenient Truth™.

Hello folks! I guess I’m going to kind of live blog this thing. I have beer, so it’s okay.

Update

I ended up watching the rest of it. But I couldn’t continue commenting. It is all nonsense. But what most comes out is how complaining about the media is the biggest applause line. What is that all about? The Republicans don’t seem to care about any policy. It is all culture war stuff.

What’s more, there was all this nonsense about the candidates patting themselves on the back over their discussion of “policy” and “ideas.” There are none. It is all reactionary. They are against what the Democrats are for and they are for… They don’t say. And that’s because the only thing they really believe in is lowering taxes on the rich. Yet one of them will get roughly 50% of the vote in just over a year.

Paul Bibeau wrote a great, but deeply disturbing, article yesterday, I Actually Spent the Day Arguing With a Conservative About Whether Slavery Was Bad. Now this is the guy who writes ghost stories about Ronald Reagan, first person notes from a psychopathic Willy Wonka, and Tom Cruise as an immortal Übermensch. So you never know. But this article was straight reporting. And really, we all know its true because we’ve all interacted with these kinds of people. The internet is filled with them.

The argument was over at The Federalist — generally considered a place for smart conservatives. So if you think that Corey Robin is wrong and that conservatism isn’t just a reactionary movement against non-elites, think again. This kind of racism is at the very core of conservative thought. It’s just that it mostly stayed unspoken until the anonymity of the internet arrived. In this case, what most bothered me was this bit, “They got houses or cabins with food, and someone to draw water for them. Most of them were healthier than Africans at the time, and economically, they were better compensated than white workers.” The “they” in this case are slaves in America.

I’ve heard this exact same argument made multiple times by people around the internet. It is usually not made by people who think of themselves as white supremacists (although the guy in question didn’t seem to have a problem with the moniker). But for whatever reason (eg, they are racists) they find it necessary to apologize for slavery. The argument usually goes something like, “Slaves were incredibly valuable! Slave owners treated them very well!” This is at best extremely ignorant. But mostly, it is ideological commitment. They don’t want to admit that anything was wrong in the past.

Well, I did a little research. There are various estimates about the the health of American slaves. I wish all these people would read Edward Baptist’s The Half Has Never Been Told. But our white supremacist friend claims that slaves were healthier than they would have been in African. I think it is worth while to look seriously at life expectancies. According to Our World in Data, the life expectancy in Africa in 1850 was roughly 26 (or perhaps mid-30s); in America it was 35. But of course, that number for America isn’t for slaves.

Luckily, I found the following nifty data from the 1860 US census. It provides a breakdown of slaves by age for 1850. (The 1860 numbers are similar, but there is a typo in the table, so I’m not using it.) Here it is:

Based upon this, we can see that slaves didn’t live long. They tended to die very young. Data from Louis Israel Dublin’s Length of Life (see the same website) indicates that in 1850, African Americans in Massachusetts had a life expectancy slightly higher than that of whites: just short of 40 years. In Maryland, the number for slaves was a bit lower: 38. But in Louisiana, it was 29. This is, of course, due to child mortality. Blacks in the south had a 50% child mortality rate compared to 25% for whites. Slaves were not treated well — especially compared to whites.

The most screwed up people I’ve ever known have always been those people who can never admit to being wrong about anything. It is only through admission of error that we can learn and grow. This happens with societies too. You would think after all these years, we would be beyond arguing if slavery was a good thing or not. But as far as I can tell, this argument is coming back. Slavery was unbelievably barbaric and cruel. Slavery is one of our two biggest sins. We didn’t do a favor for anyone. We enriched ourselves using the sweat and blood of others.

Matt Taibbi put last week’s Benghazi hearing into a broader context that I think is really important, Trey Gowdy Just Elected Hillary Clinton President. If you know Taibbi’s work, you know that he is no fan of Clinton. And he is none too happy that Trey Gowdy and company made even him sympathetic to her. In fact, this is exactly what I was thinking, “Actually many people would have lost it early on and grabbed Gowdy by his goofy silver fro-hawk somewhere in hour six or seven, a fact that made Hillary by contrast look patient and presidential, in ways her campaign had been unable to achieve all year.” I believe I wrote the same thing last week, although mine involved a knife.

But that’s just politics. That’s not the broader context. As much as Taibbi might have major problems with Clinton — far bigger than my policy disagreements — he doesn’t doubt her basic humanity. But that is the base assumption of the Republicans on the House Select Committee on Benghazi. Taibbi put it perfectly, “Hillary has a lot of flaws, but we’re supposed to believe that she doesn’t have a problem with dead Americans? Seriously?” Well, yes: seriously. Of course Taibbi knows that. And it isn’t just Clinton.

Taibbi mentioned the fact that certain people had a tendency to dehumanize Bush when he was in office. “This is the same kind of abject stupidity we saw in the 9/11 Truth movement, which believed unquestioningly that a whole bund of Bush administration officials was willing to see Americans murdered en masse in order to further some convoluted world domination scheme.” But as Taibbi well knows, this was a very small group with no actual power. And of course, they weren’t liberals — conspiracy theorists tend to be in some incoherent realm that is both extreme right and extreme left.

Today, we live in a world where the Republican base — created largely by Fox News and hate radio — believes that liberals are at best naive in allowing the evil doers to take over the US, or actively evil and treasonous in trying to do that very thing themselves. This is not, of course, new. We saw it throughout the Clinton presidency and it was simply recycled for Obama. Some people claim that we shouldn’t elect Clinton because it will just create more scandal mongering from the Republicans. This is indeed a naive notion. Regardless of what Democrat becomes president, there will be more of this. That’s because Democrats are traitors by definition in the Republican mind.

So that is what was most horrifying to watch last week. It wasn’t an attack on Hillary Clinton but on all liberals — and even conservatives who are not of the crazy persuasion. We are not real citizens or even perhaps humans. And this is what allows the Republicans to continue to get elected despite only have policies that benefit the rich and powerful. Their voters believe that voting for that kind of thing is better than the alternative where they lose everything. And they would be right, if that were the actual choice. Of course, it isn’t.

What’s most interesting is that the Republican base ultimately acts the way the conspiracy theorists do. A couple of months ago, I wrote about this, Conspiracy Theories and the Yield to Real Power. By focusing on fake threats, these people allow real threats to have their way. And that is what the Republican base does: better to vote in favor of real threats to their livelihood and freedom rather than vote for Hillary Clinton who literally wants to kill ambassadors — and by extension, other regular Americans.