Who should be speaking out strongly on Global Warming’s impacts? On the relationship of Global Warming to mounting storm and other threats to the nation? Who should lead the discussion about how federal flood policy has increased vulnerability to storms? Who should undertake the challenge of communicating how storms (worsened by Global Warming’s impact) threaten offshore energy infrastructure? If you answered “environmentalists”, Fred Krupp of Environmental Defense would say that you’re wrong. Guess what Fred … you’re wrong. And recklessly so.

George Lakoff wants to give to truth all the advantages that propagandists have bestowed upon the lie.

The American right wing faces a serious public relations problem, which is that their ideas, honestly presented, would largely fail to capture enough people’s enthusiasm to win elections. It’s a built-in downside when your philosophy elevates the interests of an elite few over the many; the many will not like it. So the only hope for continued movement in the conservative movement is to argue dishonestly, through fear and distraction, to incite panicked decisions instead of slow, thoughtful ones. Unfortunately for the right wing, our system is a deliberative democracy, and thus tends to bend towards the left with time.