I came across something interesting today. I got my mail and found out that on one of my mailing lists, someone strongly objected to the list moderator encouraging people to go see An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore's movie about global warming. He dismissed the movie as “political propaganda.” It struck me that this sounded like a catch-phrase, so I did a Google search for the phrases “An Inconvenient Truth” and “political propaganda” together. Surprise, surprise. All sorts of right-leaning web sites popped up, using those exact phrases. Click here to see the results for yourself.

In short, people on the right are engaged in faith-based politics. Whatever they don't want to believe, because it contradicts their particular political ideology, they don't believe. They have faith that their political leaders are correct, and they repeat the convenient catch-phrases verbatim. Much like your mother telling you not to speak to that Jewish kid because his parents have strange ideas about religion. The devil is out to deceive you, and will use non-believers to make you doubt your own faith. Therefore, avoid them at all costs!

The one familiar refrain that you see the most in the Google searches in people saying “don't see this movie,” and, as I said, dismissing is as “political propaganda.” You see, the Right doesn't believe that global warming exists. They say it's all part of a natural cycle. They have lots of compensated “scientists” who are willing to come forward and essentially say, “I don't care what the evidence suggests, this could conceivably, possibly, be nothing at all to worry about.” And, of course, the Right-Wing pundits shout “Aha!”

When a tiger is about to eat a hole in your ass, you can close your eyes all you want to and insist that said tiger is not real, but you will die all the same. That's the position we're in. Global warming over the long-haul threatens the very existence of human life on this planet. But we can't get past these people who simply refuse to belive the evidence. These are the same people who arrested Galileo. The same people who brought charges against John Scopes. How do you communicate with people who will respond to whatever irrefutable facts you bring them with “I don't believe that”?

You can't.