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I am concerned about one thing, above all, understanding how and why humanity escaped (at last) from its old, vicious cycle of feudalism and began a tremendous enlightenment. One that included vital things like science, democracy, human rights and science fiction. I’ve come to see that openness — including openness to free-flowing criticism — has been the key. Secrecy is the thing that makes every evil far worse. And it is especially pernicious when practiced by the mighty. But the real irony is inside the sci fi community. The trend toward feudal-romantic fantasy may seem harmless. But dreaming wistfully about kings and lords and secretive, domineering wizards is simply betrayal. Pure and simple. Those bastards were the enemy for 6,000 years. Some kings and wizards were less bad than others. But they were all “dark lords.” We are the heirs of the greatest heroes who ever lived. Pericles, Franklin, Faraday, Lincoln, Einstein. Any one of whom was worth every elf and dragon and fairy ever imagined. David Brin ☀

Supply Side holds that you best stimulate economic activity by Increasing the net wealth possessed by society’s top echelons — people and groups who have no urgent material needs. Instead of spending it on direct “demand” purchases, these wealth-owners will invest any marginal wealth-gain (say from tax cuts) on things that increase “supply” — factories, new businesses, innovative goods and services. Thus the name Supply-Side. Interestingly, the most famous proponent of this approach was Karl Marx, who maintained that the owner-capitalist class propels industrial development by re-investing profits in plants and equipment, thus building up society’s capital stock and the means of production. SSE is, in that respect, an entirely Marxist theory. David Brin ☀

It was the great historian, Arnold Toynbee, who I believe got it right. After studying dozens of past cycles, he declared that civilizations thrive when they invest faith and hope in their creative minorities. When they see the future as a destination and willingly adapt new ways to reach it. Toynbee — after surveying many tales of rise and fall — concluded that cultures start to decline when those creative minorities become distrusted, or are starved of capital, or left out in the cold. Or when they are shunned by those in power. I mention this, because the clear and distinct pattern the we see in the latest phase of the American Civil War… similar to what occcured in earlier phases… has been an underlying theme of populist hatred for society’s brightest and most skilled. David Brin ☀

The Skeptic admits that these fellow have Trillions (with a T) staked on preserving that status quo — on preventing America from moving toward energy efficiency and independence. He admits that a conspiracy among fifty petro oligarchs seems a lot more plausible than some convoluted cabal to “push green technologies” — a supposed conspiracy involving tens of thousands of diverse people, most of them nerdy blabbermouths, squabbling over far smaller sums of money. Further, the Skeptic admits something pretty darned creepy and suspicious — that the main “news” outlets pushing the Denier Movement are largely owned by those same petro-moguls. (Just one Saudi prince holds 7% of Fox, while other princes own smaller shares, plus a lot of Rupert Murdoch’s debt, stock and commercial paper. Russian oligarchs and international oil companies own more.) Because of this, the Skeptic has moved away from getting any of his news or sense of “reality” from propagandists who are paid to keep America divided, weak, passively addicted to dependence, respectful of aristocracy, and mired in “culture war.” The Denier, in contrast, suckles from the Fox-Limbaugh machine. He shrugs off any notion that oil sheiks, Russian oligarchs or Exxon moguls could possibly have any agenda, or ever, ever connive together. They are pure as driven snow… compared to weather scientists. Right. Elaborating a bit: the Skeptic has noticed that the Denier Movement is directly correlated with a particular “side” in America’s calamitous, self-destructive Culture War. The same side that includes “Creation Science.” The same side that oversaw the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression, based on mythological asset bubbles and magical “financial instruments.” The same side that promised us “energy independence” then sabotaged every single effort, including all of the energy-related research that might have helped us get off the oil-teat. (And that research gap is a bigger smoking gun to pay attention-to than carbon credits.) David Brin ☀

This is the context in which we should reconsider the Climate Change Denial Movement. While murky in its scientific assertions — (some claim the Earth isn’t warming, while others say the ice-free Arctic won’t be any of our doing) — the core contention remains remarkably consistent. It holds that the 99% of atmospheric scientists who believe in GCC are suborned, stupid, incompetent, conspiratorial or untrustworthy hacks. As part of a more general assault on the very notion of expertise, the narrative starts with a truism that is actually true: “Not every smart person is wise…” only then extrapolates it, implicitly, to a blatant falsehood “all smartypants are unwise, all the time; and my uninformed opinion is equal to any expert testimony.” Does that sound like a polemical stretch? But it is precisely the implied subtext - a perverse kind of populism - at all levels of the War on Science. In the specific case of GCC, since almost all top atmospheric scientists accept human-propelled climate change, they must be all cretins, corrupt, or cowards. David Brin ☀

Indeed, the top liberal agenda right now should be to help more Blue Dogs win in contested districts! Recruit decent, progressive, if sometimes a bit too-crewcut ex-military men and women to run against the loony culture warriors, everywhere possible. Help the GOP to continue along in a long, self-chosen path, marginalizing itself into the New Know Nothings, and thus finally put the once-great party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower out of its terminal illness. And, if the predictable result is to eventually split the Democratic Party in two? Into a Liberal party (mostly free of loony lefties) and a Decent-Moderate Conservative/Libertarian Party (free of monstrously crazy neocons)? Well, it may surprise you to learn that this exact thing happened before, earlier in the life of the republic. David Brin ☀

Let’s make this situation plain; on the republican side, there is no bargaining, dickering, haggling, persuading, pleading-to-conscience, intercession, arbitration, or mediation — nor efforts to find common ground of any kind with the majority party, representing more than half of America. They do not seek to come up with incremental steps toward creating new laws, amending old ones or allocating tax dollars These “delegates” do not serve their constituents or the districts. They are party men, first and last. David Brin ☀

In fact, there has been only one top-nation that ever avoided the addiction to imperial mercantilism, and that was the United States of America. Upon finding itself the overwhelmingly dominant power, at the end of World War II, the U.S. had ample opportunity to impose its own vision upon the system of international trade. And it did. Only, at this crucial moment, something special happened. At the behest of Marshall and his advisors. America became the first pax-power in history to deliberately establish counter-mercantilist commerce flows. A trade regime that favored the manufactures of many foreign/poor countries over those in the homeland. Nations crippled by war, or by millennia of mismanagement, were allowed to maintain high tariffs, keeping out American manufactures, while sending shiploads from their own factories to the U.S., almost duty free. Moreover, despite the ongoing political tussle of two political parties and sometimes noisy aggravation over ever-mounting deficits, each administration since Marshall’s time kept fealty with this compact — to such a degree that the world’s peoples by now simply take it for granted. Forgetting all of history and ignoring the self-destructive behavior of other empires, we all have tended to assume that counter-mercantilist trade flows are somehow a natural state of affairs! But they aren’t. They are an invention, as unique and new and as American as the airplane, or the photocopier, or rock n’ roll. David Brin ☀

When, oh when, will liberals come to realize that the Left has been at-best only a part-time and problematic friend? That socialism may work in helping redress injustices (free education and all that) but it is absolutely lousy at generating the sort of economy that is wealthy enough to take on big projects? Good capitalism, the truly competitive and open and accountable kind — bulwarked by lots of startups and small businesses that unleash creativity — has always done better under democrats! So why not crow about it? Show the statistics. Embrace the “first liberal,” Adam Smith, who above all denounced and despised crony conspiratorial aristocratic monopolists? Why allow the shills of monopoly to pretend that corporate gigantism has anything, whatsoever, to do with free markets? David Brin ☀

According to surveys taken across much of the last decade, the average Republican is now behind the average Democrat by more than a year of schooling — and this despite the Democrats still representing society’s poor and underprivileged.   What could this mean? Other than reflecting a party-migration by nearly everybody in America with real expertise or a post-graduate degree? Including, lately, a great many members of the US military’s Senior Officer Corps.  (Except for MBAs, of course.  Funny — they still tilt toward the Grand Old Party.)   Seriously, might the “Republican War on Science” and George Bush’s war against the US Civil Service, plus Culture War animosity in red counties toward Urban America, all be rooted in something deeper and more fundamental than anything that’s spoken aloud?  Deeper than the run of the mill talking points? At this juncture, I am willing to wager that Culture War has almost nothing to do with race, or even region.  Certainly not classic “conservative” policies, since Barry Goldwater would be a democrat, today.   No, it is — to some large extent — about something puerile and basic.   Hating smartypantses. David Brin ☀

In fact, I find illusory “cycles” far less rewarding than the notion of “attractor states”… or pitfalls that seem relentlessly to pull in cultures, because of repetitive traits in human nature. Oligarchic feudalism is one such attractor. (Find the exceptions: agrarian societies that avoided this trap. I can name only eight.) Another attractor is fear-driven xenophobia. Machismo is one more. Put a dozen or so of these together and you start getting a really good picture of our tragic history.  (And yes, because these themes keep recurring, matters can thus look a bit cyclical.  But that’s like saying the fundamental reason that a car moves is because the wheels turn.) But leadership also matters, e.g. Athenian democracy did not fail till Pericles died, and then just barely. And that is where miracles keep happening to America.  here America finds NEW attractor states…. bad presidents are followed by good ones, citizenship triumphs (barely) over anomie and cynicism, and seminal decisions transform the world. David Brin ☀

Do these Hollywood studio folks — most of them devout Democrats — ever wonder why our civilization is turning anti-science and giving itself over to superstition? They wring their hands over a rising age of culture war and lost-confidence, while they are churning out relentless propaganda preaching the same tedious message — that progress is hopeless and technology only menacing. And that the default moral and wise choice should always be Just Say No To Change. Even worse, nearly every product they put out proclaims that the People are always stupid. Some democrats. David Brin ☀

…today’s Republican Establishment seems not only incapable but uninterested in negotiation or deliberation. It isn’t just the dogmatism, or lockstep partisanship, or Koolaid fantasies spun -up by the Murdoch-Limbaugh hate machine.  Heck, even though “culture war” is verifiably the worst direct treason against the United States of America since Fort Sumter, that isn’t what boggles most. It’s the stupidity. The vast and nearly uniform dumbitudinousness of ignoring what has happened to conservatism… David Brin ☀

The noive of doze guys!  The Nazis burned Darwin’s Origin of Species!  The fundies’ insane position, that secularism leads to reduced compassion and morality and thus to increased violence runs diametrically opposite to every fact about the last 4,000 years.  And especially the last fifty.  If you rightfully classify both Communism and Nazism as quasi-religious mystical cults, then Dawkins et. al. are perfectly within their rights to claim that many parts of organized religion have been major drivers of human agression and pain.  Certainly, as we’ve seen, Red America has nothing to say to Blue America about morality, or teaching children to lead decent, responsible and ethical lives, since they fall far behind blue states and our cities in every moral category that can be measured by statistics, from divorce to domestic violence to homicide to STDs and teen pregnancy.  A certain amount of militant rejection of such BS is called for. David Brin ☀

The liberal and conservative movements ARE fundamentally different, today.  Both contain some good ideas, deepdown.  Both contain some crazies.  The crucial distinction is that one of these movements keeps its lunatics marginalized. Its leaders perpetually try — hit or miss — to re-awaken the American genius for honorable negotiation and pragmatic problem-solving. The other side may have some genuine ideas, lying dormant under the snows.  But all its potential good has been rendered useless, by giving itself over, body and soul, to its psychopathic wing.   Do not hate American Conservatism.  Pity it.  Pray for the fever to break and for our fellow citizens to rise out of delirium, to rejoin us at the dinner table conversation about human destiny. And defeat them with reason, until they do. David Brin ☀