- The hottest day on Earth, as scientists have anticipated;
- David French on the mindset of MAGA America
As the scientists have been predicting for decades.
NY Times, 6 Jul 2023: Heat Records Are Broken Around the Globe as Earth Warms, Fast, subtitled “From north to south, temperatures are surging as greenhouse gases trap heat in the atmosphere and combine with effects from El Niño.”
The past three days were quite likely the hottest in Earth’s modern history, scientists said on Thursday, as an astonishing surge of heat across the globe continued to shatter temperature records from North America to Antarctica.
…The overall warming of the planet is “well within the realm of what scientists had projected would happen” as humans continue to pump vast amounts of heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, said Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at Berkeley Earth and the payments company Stripe.
On the whole, Earth has warmed roughly 2 degrees Fahrenheit since the 19th century and will continue to grow hotter until humans essentially halt all emissions from fossil fuels and stop deforestation.
Will this convince any of the MAGAites who think climate change is a hoax and those elitist scientists are in a vast conspiracy to… well, whatever is they want to do, control the world? I wouldn’t count on it.
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More about Trump and the MAGAs. (Sigh.) This piece has an unusual insight. It reminds me of an item several weeks ago (it was the letter to the NYT quoted in this post) that suggested that for many people guns, even military-style assault weapons, are adult toys. For people who have nothing better to do.
NY Times, David French, 6 Jul 2023: The Rage and Joy of MAGA America
The columnist reminds his readers that he lives in Tennessee outside Nashville, the world of his friends and many of his family. Where “Everything is normal until, suddenly, it’s not.” With the example of a tweet from Representative Andy Ogles who mixed bromides about Founding Fathers and having a blessed Fourth of July with the offhand remark “Look, the left is trying to destroy our country and our family, and they’re coming after you.” Then, “Be safe. Have fun. God bless America.”
French goes on to try to understand this weird mindset. It’s both anger, and fun. He quotes a 2020 report by Andrew Egger:
For enthusiasts, Trump rallies aren’t just a way to see a favorite politician up close. They are major life events: festive opportunities to get together with like-minded folks and just go crazy about America and all the winning the Trump administration’s doing.
And then French goes on to speculate why reasonable arguments do not reach them.
Why do none of your arguments against Trump penetrate this mind-set? The Trumpists have an easy answer: You’re horrible, and no one should listen to horrible people. Why were Trumpists so vulnerable to insane stolen-election theories? Because they know that you’re horrible and that horrible people are capable of anything, including stealing an election.
…
Trump’s fans, by contrast, don’t understand the effects of that fury because they mainly experience the joy. For them, the MAGA community is kind and welcoming. For them, supporting Trump is fun. Moreover, the MAGA movement is heavily clustered in the South, and Southerners see themselves as the nicest people in America. It feels false to them to be called “mean” or “cruel.” Cruel? No chance. In their minds, they’re the same people they’ve always been — it’s just that they finally understand how bad you are. And by “you,” again, they often mean the caricatures of people they’ve never met.…
They see a country that’s changing around them and they are uncertain about their place in it. But they know they have a place at a Trump rally, surrounded by others — overwhelmingly white, many evangelical — who feel the same way they do.…
Evangelicals are a particularly illustrative case. About half of self-identified evangelicals now attend church monthly or less often. They have religious zeal, but they lack religious community. So they find their band of brothers and sisters in the Trump movement.
Key themes: change, and resistance of change. Tribalism. The decline of church attendance, and the need to find another group to belong to. And resistance to evidence.
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I have another couple links about the state of the economy and how, despite evidence, conservatives still think Biden’s economy is a disaster. Conservatives always think the economy is a disaster under Democratic administrations, despite evidence. (David Brin has many posts about this.) This dovetails with today’s posts, and other recent posts. Now, I’m busy making dinner, and gotta go.
