Don’t Look Up is no masterpiece. It definitely ain’t Kubrick. But it is good. It is farcical and funny, and it hits many targets very well. The fact that so, so many smug reviewers got it so, so smugly wrong is as good a summary as any of the movie’s value. Continue reading “Look Up”
scottmarsh.com.au
Australia is on fire. Which has led to pretty much the whole country, and a good part of the planet, telling Scott “Morals” Morrison to go fuck himself. But supposedly Morals “understands“, and can see why people “fixate“, and “doesn’t take these things personally“.
You’re wrong, Morals. It is personal. Many, many people are disgusted by your person. They are disgusted because you’re a sanctimonious, unprincipled, greasy huckstering halfwit who deserves to fry in Hell if only for the sheer loathsome meaninglessness of your government. Fuck you, fuck the mining lizardmen and Murdoch gargoyles who cover for you, and fuck all the dumb fucks who allowed themselves to be conned into voting for you.
There are two types of climate denialism. The first type, practised by Liberals and Republicans and Murdoch hacks, is to deny the science, to deny that humans have been and are continuing to heat the planet in an unsustainable manner. The second type, practised by pretty much everyone else, is to deny the politics and the psychology, to deny that human society appears incapable of altering its behaviour sufficiently to deal with scientific reality.
The New Yorker has just published an essay by Jonathan Franzen on this second type of denialism, on the refusal to confront our current and impending death. Franzen’s essay is gentle, heartfelt, pleading and depressing. The essay, along with its author, has also been condemned far and wide.
Franzen’s essay has not convinced me that we are doomed. Much more convincing has been the vicious and fundamentally empty response, which does nothing so much as to prove Franzen’s point.
Australian is going to the polls today, with that smirking, right wing clown attempting to be elected Prime Minister. And of course we’ll all be cheering for him to beat Scott Morrison.
The fact that the ignorant, science denying, happy clapping, coal-hugging thug pictured above even has a shot at winning indicates the appalling low level of political discourse. We shouldn’t be surprised, of course, but for some reason we are.
Back in 2014, the Maths Masters wrote a column on then Prime Minster Tony Abbott’s climate denialism, entitled How to be Liberal with the Truth. Our editor rejected the column as a “diatribe”, which was fair enough, and we took the rejection in our stride. Nonetheless, our editor passed the diatribe to the Age‘s op-ed desk which published the column as Tony Abbott is a liar: It’s a mathematical truth. Our diatribe was a hit.
The diatribe ended with a prediction:
But what of Tony? Will he be remembered as a liar? Probably, but probably he’ll be remembered for much more. Eventually, and more likely sooner rather than later, global warming will be undeniable. Truly undeniable.Which means Abbott should go down in history as the Australian Prime Minister, the last Australian Prime Minister, to deny physical reality.
We were wrong then. But, maybe now Australia will finally be done with anti-science idiots.
Geez, Australians are dumb. And Queenslanders are dumber.