'Watching angry commentators on cable news, I’m reminded of H. L. Mencken’s observation: “For every complex problem, there is a solution that is clear, simple, and wrong.”'
Great quote.
I was surprised to see this was written by Mitt Romney, completely missed the page title and only realised at the end
Romney tries really hard to "both sides" this, but he misses an important distinction. The left is supposedly ignoring immigration and national debt. The right is supposedly ignoring climate change and attacks on our political system. I'm willing to grant those for the sake of argument, but here's the difference: the attacks on our political system have made it impossible to solve any of the other problems - even the ones that those supporting the attacks supposedly have as priorities. The only way to avoid a dystopian future (or more dystopian if you really can't resist hyperbole) is to solve that one first. The only way to solve that, in turn, is to stop listening to "both sides" and get the people attacking democracy out of power - ideally behind bars - before it's too late.
Romney's right, but incomplete. Our current problems are made cataclysmic by our also becoming unable to function anymore except by groupthink.
I think our lifeblood is not tribalism — we aren't that alike to divide into only two tribes — I think the real problem is fear. We've allowed ourselves (and the past 30 years of childrearing) to be overwhelmed by it and now can't function without assurance: being in a crowd of others — the most basic form of security known to animalkind — safety in numbers. The result of that now, intellectually, is we simply refuse to entertain ideas or arguments not already endorsed by others. So we cleave to whatever 'gang' is handy, never mind how dysfunctional their agenda or ideas or rationales are.
The hallmark of our times is the death of the individual.
But that's been true in the US for long while (pretty sure any outside observer would agree). How the US dealt with covid compared to the rest of the developed world only made that painfully obvious, but I'm not sure you could demonstrate it's something that's become significantly more extreme recently.
> When entire countries fail to confront serious challenges, it doesn't end well.
At least in the case of global warming, the US are in good company: the whole world is failing (some more, some less, but nevertheless all failing) to confront the challenge.
The only flaw in that line of thinking is that the US bears some responsibility in this. As long as the world's biggest powers are willing to exploit the situation, pretending it's a zero-sum game, the smaller powers can't do much. If the US showed true leadership on carbon emissions, it would bring much of the world with it.
China generates more power from renewables than Europe. Europe has finally gotten some will to get off gas because Putin forced their hand. The US could get their shit together: 80% of US coal plants are uneconomical to continue to run versus firm renewables, EVs are 3-5 times cheaper per mile to operate than a combustion vehicle. $40 trillion dollars of investment capital, greater than the GDP of the US, has divested from fossil fuels. A majority of Americans believe in climate change and support strong government efforts to mitigate it (my citations from another thread below).
But, you’ve got this coalition of entrenched interests and corrupt politicians who are fighting it. So the death gasps continue. Kudos to capitalism in this regard, it will accelerate the transition regardless as renewables and electric mobility learning curves bend adoption and deployment curves closer to vertical.
There are plenty of commons that come with borders, the most trivial of which would be a patch of land used for grazing livestock.
Garrett Hardin himself has acknowledged that he made a mistake with the concept of "the tragedy of the commons". There is no such thing. Commons have all historically been carefully managed by a complex interlocking web of understandings, traditions, rules. The so-called tragedies correspond to (essentially in every case) powerful interests ignoring or overthrowing the management structures governing a commons to pursue their own self-interest.
What I meant was, obviously, that commons are not internally divided, otherwise they would not be commons.
Yes, commons have historically been managed, or should I say coordinated [1], more or less explicitly, exactly so as to avoid the tragedy of unmanaged commons. The environmental awakening in the 20th century was a response to several tragedies of commons hitherto unmanaged, and these tragedies were partially mitigated by nation state level coordination. A couple of decades later humanity succeeded in solving the first truly global tragedy of commons in the history, the depletion of the ozone layer. But that was a relatively easy problem to solve compared to carbon emissions.
Yeah, that is how I read it. Maybe not praiseworthy but at least as a sort of "well everybody does it so it must be ok" moral stance. Whereas climate change is an objective claim about nature as opposed to a moral imperative.
Cambridge specifically defines it as "to have the same problem as many other people", whereas US dictionaries tend to go with definitions suggesting the other people are "respected" or noteworthy, so perhaps it's a dialectical difference (I'm accustomed to both interpretations but assumed the former in this case).
If the scariest thing in that graph of the earth's estimated global temperature over its lifetime isn't the near vertical upward line at the end it just means you don't believe humanity's existence is particularly significant (which is not an unreasonable conclusion depending on your perspective).
The planet and life in general will thrive no matter what we do. I'd just rather we actually give ourselves a shot of being around a little longer to witness it.
Sea level rises aren't our biggest problem. I'm willing to be a very significant percentage of humanity are not going to be "fine" at all, barring some miraculous changes in our behavior and/or technology.
Would you have claimed humans have coped "fine" with covid? I wouldn't, and I reckon that'll be statistical noise compared to the likely disruptions in the next 50-100 years.
What I find most fascinating is that this reads completely counter to the authors supposed ideology and public positions, in a way that I'm not quite sure where they stand. It keeps changing so much.
While I don't find myself in the author's company politically, I do think that the Mormon center right can be much less aggressive than folks expect from Fox News et al.
The word you’re looking for is hypocrisy. If Mitch really believed in climate change, he could vote to end the fillibuster, pass a green new deal, not appoint judges to the Supreme Court who vote against the EPA. He doesn’t have one ounce of the bravery or leadership he claims to be looking for.
Yes, there are practical differences between two completely different people. There is cynicism, and then there is uninformed doomerism. There are very good websites tracking voting records of senators - maybe you could start there if you really want to know.
Do their voting records reveal them to be anything other than mainstream Republicans? I'll admit that Romney's votes to impeach the man whose endorsement he sought in 2012 were unusually bold,but I can't think of any effect he's had on his party. Quite the opposite actually - at one point Romney claimed he was pro choice, but he's clearly fallen in line. His evolution towards mainstream Republicanism also put him in the comical position of running against the "Romneycare" universal healthcare plan once Democrats adapted it into the Affordable Care Act or "Obamacare".
There's a reason that Romney, McConnell, and Trump share the same party, dysfunctional thought their relationship might be.
One beautiful thing about science is that it doesn’t really matter if you believe in it or not. It’s based on the seeking of truth using a proven method. Those who ignore climate change will suffer, especially those who are poor and uneducated. Luckily, this knowledge is not hard to find these days, and I suspect the youth of the coming generations will take a different outlook of climate change, one irrespective of political belief. At a certain point if you want to continue living your life, you need to accept the facts and vote for positive change. Whether that comes from a blue person or a red person loses its meaning when the world around us burns.
That’s not my argument. Poor people will suffer more by numbers. Poor people are also less educated by numbers. Those with money can move to avoid the soonest impacts, can pay for AC, can pay for rising food prices, etc.
> Even as we watch the reservoirs and lakes of the West go dry, we keep watering our lawns, soaking our golf courses, and growing water-thirsty crops.
Residential water use has plummeted in the west. Some areas, like vegas, use less water than the 70s, not accounting for population changes. Arizona is the second best residential water manager in the world behind Israel. Agriculture uses the lion's share of water and can be cut off when things get really tight.
> As inflation mounts and the national debt balloons, progressive politicians vote for ever more spending.
The US must continue printing debt (expanding money supply) to continue the dollar's status as the reserve currency. And not all spending as bad, much of it can be an investment expecting positive long term returns.
If you want to find bloat, look at our government-subsidized suburban lifestyle and the sheer cost of the massive amount of infrastructure required to maintain it.
> As the ice caps melt and record temperatures make the evening news, we figure that buying a Prius and recycling the boxes from our daily Amazon deliveries will suffice.
Yet again blaming individuals' choices when large corporations are by far the largest global polluters. As well, this applies to a thin slice of the global population. most people, even in the US, can't afford to think about climate change. For example, higher gas prices translate to questions on whether there will be enough food on the table, or whether it's even worth the time to go to work anymore.
> When TV news outlets broadcast video after video of people illegally crossing the nation’s southern border, many of us change the channel.
Illegal border crossings have been declining and were at the lowest point in the last 10 years before Biden. There has been a huge amount of discussion about this politically, a large amount of Americans do consider this a big problem.
> Residential water use has plummeted in the west. Some areas, like vegas, use less water than the 70s, not accounting for population changes.
What's the point of this argument? Vegas population has increased more than 10x since the 70s, why would we not account for population growth when discussing the usage of a limited resource?
Does this include the suburbs of Las Vegas? A quick google search gives a report that the whole state of Nevada as a whole has increased their water use (edit: at least for domestic usage). This is in line with most of the population moving out of city centers as people moved into the suburbs that has happened for the last few decades.[0]
Anyway, the fact that the water use of the state as a whole has increased throws out any suggestion that "here, this one segment of the state has decreased their usage" as if that is a serious argument against the rise of water consumption being an issue.
[0] It's a report with data until 1995 but lucky for us it compares levels with 1970 and it did increase significantly
EDIT: sorry, figure 1-3
According to that graph 2020 usage is almost identical to 2003. So the only significant drop happened between 2002 and 2003. Not to nitpick, just to emphasize that the missing data from 1970 to 2002 could contain numerous large changes too.
1. improvements in domestic water usage arising from changes to in-home fixtures and appliances. Per capita use in cities across the US southwest has dropped by 30% or more over the last few decades.
2. switching over to grey/recycled water usage for a huge chunk of municipal water irrigation (eg. city parks, highway medians etc.). This uses a significant amount of water, and switching to water that has already been used once has a dramatic impact.
> > As the ice caps melt and record temperatures make the evening news, we figure that buying a Prius and recycling the boxes from our daily Amazon deliveries will suffice.
> Yet again blaming individuals' choices when large corporations are by far the largest global polluters
That's not how I read this at all. Rather it's attacking the idea that a few individuals doing the "right thing" can make a difference, when really we need to tackle the larger problem such as corporations.
Indirectly, corporations are doing what is being dictated by the individuals. They produce what we are willing to buy. If we only buy the cheapest stuff, ignore how it is made and its impact on the environment that is what corporation will make. Unless we vote for governments that will make laws that will force these corporations to not offer environmental unfriendly products.
In the end there's more responsibility to the individual that we are willing to admit.
I do not think "agriculture[...] can be cut off when things get really tight." Everyone in the US has been bleeting about inflation for months, suppressing food production would make people slam their cars into buildings.
Something tells me that residential water rationing will be less palatable to the West's population than "California Almonds will be significantly more expensive this season".
That argument would work much better if corporations weren't explicitly designated legal persons for various purposes related to contracts and liability.
Don’t you think that law is a bit too convenient? Instead of individuals maintaining liability for their actions, now there is some legal entity to blame. It doesn’t matter what the law says. All of these amoral decisions are made by people.
A person makes the decisions on what packaging Amazon uses. A person makes the decision to purchase goods from Amazon. A person makes the decision to not propose regulations.
Corporations are logical entities made up of individuals. Individuals still make the choices. Individuals must be accountable.
I encourage you to read more on how the monetary system works. Debt = more currency for use around the world. We need to continuously increase money supply to keep the dollar from appreciating too much and causing a disastrous level of deflation.
Of course borrowing is not sustainable, but the alternative is not sustainable faster.
On one hand, where I want to give Mitt Romney some benefit of the doubt for being sincere (and he probably is somewhat) in his conviction where he eventually stood against the leader of his own political party, he did, in the beginning, try to rosy up to Trump in the early months, producing a now infamous photo of him looking rather submissive, smiling with Trump at a dinner table after opposing him during the 2016 primaries. It's telling that only after failing to actually be chosen for a position in the administration did he begin his brand of pitching to the "centrist" crowd as a voice against Trump while voting with him a good fraction of the time in the senate.
One of the under appreciated outgrowths of the Trump years is the rise of a crop of "centrist"-leaning conservatives who really agreed with Trump on almost all of his actually achieved policy goals but really just disagreed with his supposed incompetence or brashness or with the attempted insurrection, but had Trump had a different demeanor, they'd be along for the ride.
There's a reason Mitt Romney and Donald Trump are members of the same party (and Mitt Romney considered Trump's endorsement key in 2012). There's also a reason that Vladimir Putin considered it relevant to his interests to tip the scales to their party in 2016.
> I hope for a president who can rise above the din to unite us behind the truth.
That was Bernie Sanders. Every debate, every mud sling, every derail, Sanders was a guy who would put the conversation back on track on doing what's right for the American people.
We have a completely bifurcated ontology. Just as one minority sees their other group as being left behind, another sees their other-group as having a now-completely false consciousness. Imo, we are alien tribes to one another, and I look at western democracies and see the same separation that precedes litigating a divorce. I can score points on people I disagree with all day, but I don't bother because those points are worthless and not redeemable for anything good in the world.
To expand that analogy, most divorces try to start as reasonable, but once you are actually free of one another in the separation, it becomes a war for the previously shared resources and custody, enabled and inflamed by people who get paid out of the shared pot either way, and any courtesy or civility is leveraged back as weakness. These differences become so irreconcilable that we have evolved a completely parallel court system to handle it. The whole process of litigating a divorce is debasing and shameful for everyone involved, and almost nobody gets out with their basic human dignity intact. It's a useful analogy because everywhere I have seen it, it's a microcosm of war.
What does a good outcome look like? In time the hostilities cool to where it's no longer an animal fight for survival. Typically in a divorce, women get the home and the kids, and men get some freedom to start another family, and some limited opportunity via visitation to guide their kids and help them become fully actualized people. Generally, the women go on to find new supportive companions, and the men move on and rebuild as best they can. This analogy I think is very close to the culture war divide, where, if we take it any deeper, it becomes just as much of a quagmire as who's right and wrong in a family dissolution as it is for red/blue, but it's useful to abstract it out with an analogy so we can look seriously at what I foresee we are very likely to be confronted with.
To me, Romney is like the sensitive ponytailed new friend who starts hanging around under the pretext of helping, but he's just another vulture circling a struggling relationship looking to make vulnerable people dependent on him. The cultural divide in America has always existed, but it has only really become dangerous because of carpet bagging opportunists who don't believe in truth whispering in the ears of the primary parties. People presenting themselves as centerists are usually just fluid and unprincipled, and by inserting themselves between mostly stable complementary sides, and by dissolving edges and boundaries, they create new distance that puts themselves in the middle. It makes them manipulative and dishonest brokers.
I am not a centerist, because I think our political differences are complimentary and mutually moderating forces that truly build one other and benefit us all. The proposal I would make would be that we agree to recognize that America has made good lives and a society together, and this attracts interlopers who would like a piece of what you have built together, and they use some very appealing and seductive techniques to try to lever themselves between you. They appeal to our feelings of outrage, pride, envy, aggrievement, and shame, among others. It's a very old trick, and it works in the microcosm as well as in the macro.
I live in a country where politicians preach togetherness and unity but always with themselves in the middle, and mainly spend their efforts trying shame anyone who isn't interested in their meddling as illiberal, oppressive and revanchist. If only we were as intolerant of their sleaze as we have become of each other, there might be a way to hold this thing together. If not, it will be sad, but I think we all know how this goes.
Great quote.
I was surprised to see this was written by Mitt Romney, completely missed the page title and only realised at the end