Agnotology: The Surge - 14

The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance

The greatest ignorance took the form of a grandiose lie in the year 2014.

Voters identified this bit of ignorance as “Climate change is a hoax” (The People Have Spoken: This Is The Most Brazen Lie of 2014).

This lie is fostered by Oil-Qaeda, the criminal enterprise that kills more people than any other (Oil-Qaeda: The Indictment).

Oil-Qaeda has convinced those in the most powerful seats of the U.S. Congress that this lie is the truth.

You may be wondering "how in the world could that happen?"

More on that shortly.

When governments become criminally insane, as NAZI Germany did for a few years long ago, ignorance in many formats arises.

Eventually this type of wide-spread ignorance gave rise to the discipline of Agnotology, which Dredd Blog introduced in the first post of this series (Agnotology: The Surge, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13).

If you are not yet convinced of the long overdue need for such a discipline, take note

King Denial I

that the première climate change denier is now the chair of a relevant Senate Committee:

This year [Jim Inhofe] takes over the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee — the panel most associated with climate policy oversight — and says he plans to continue his role as a “one-man truth squad” on the issue.

(Washington Post, emphasis added). This Oil-Qaeda operative, "King Denial I", is financed with big dirty oil bucks, and is backed up by probably the largest propaganda campaign of recent history:

Around the world, carbon-based fuels are under attack. Increasingly grim economic pressures, growing popular resistance, and the efforts of government regulators have all shocked the energy industry. Oil prices are falling, colleges and universities are divesting from their carbon stocks, voters are instituting curbs on hydro-fracking, and delegates at the U.N. climate conference in Peru have agreed to impose substantial restrictions on global carbon emissions at a conference in Paris later in the year. All this has been accompanied by what might be viewed as a moral assault on the very act of extracting carbon-based fuels from the earth, in which the major oil, gas, and coal companies find themselves portrayed as the enemies of humankind.

Under such pressures, you might assume that Big Energy would react defensively, perhaps apologizing for its role in spurring climate change while assuming a leadership position in planning for the transition to a post-carbon economy. But you would be wrong: instead of retreating, the major [Oil-Qaeda] companies have gone on the offensive ... minimizing the potential for renewables to replace fossil fuels in just about any imaginable future.

(Carbon Counterattack, How Big Oil Is Responding, emphasis added). This type of doubling down is the signature psychopathology of Oil-Qaeda and its operatives.

Regular readers know that Dredd Blog has noted this cultural disorder in previous posts:

Therefore, both psychopaths and sociopaths are capable of committing heinous crimes; however, the psychopath would commit crimes against family members or “friends” (as well as strangers) and feel little to no remorse.
...
The last main difference between psychopathy and sociopathy is in the presentation. The psychopath is callous, yet charming. He or she will con and manipulate others with charisma and intimidation and can effectively mimic feelings to present as “normal” to society. The psychopath is organized in their criminal thinking and behavior, and can maintain good emotional and physical control, displaying little to no emotional or autonomic arousal, even under situations that most would find threatening or horrifying. The psychopath is keenly aware that what he or she is doing is wrong, but does not care.

(When You Are Governed By Psychopaths - 2, cf. The Peak of Sanity - 5). Regular readers also know that Dredd Blog has often identified this problem as being psychological.

But more than that, it has been identified as an episode of an ongoing mass-murder-suicide (MOMCOM's Mass Suicide & Murder Pact - 5).

The serious danger is quite real, and it is well beyond the time to begin to try to do something about it.

Something besides deluding ourselves that elections alone are a sufficient cure for these psychological problems.

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

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Take heed ...

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Arcade Fire, Rebellion (Lies); lyrics here

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