The Right Concedes The Climate Is Changing, But With A Catch

MAGA Scapegoats Are Immigrants, Jews, And A Sinister Plot To Manipulate Weather

Flooding in the 28th Street Subway Station in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood on Monday evening, top, and below, Fox News engages in the latest right-wing conspiracy to explain climate change - liberals manipulating extreme weather events.

I’ve only ever been ratioed¹ once on social media that I can remember.

It happened during the pandemic when I suggested that COVID restrictions and mandates would lead to a massive right-wing backlash that would imperil much of the social and economic progress that we had made as a society since the mid-20th Century. I warned that the resentment over having society and lives turned upside down over a virus that killed fewer than one percent of the people it infected would eviscerate trust in the institutions and ideals that were the foundations of modern society, and play right into the hands of fascism.

The response I received from my critics was fierce, and most focused on a single point of contention. They believed, unlike me, that the situation would become so dire that those who thought COVID mandates and restrictions were unjust attacks on their freedoms would certainly realize they were necessary for humanity’s survival, and they would bend to reality. They echoed that belief regarding climate change. Once the effects of climate change became so dramatic and directly affected their way of life, skeptics on the right would admit they were wrong and embrace environmentalism. It echoes the climax of the 2004 film The Day After Tomorrow, where, after most of the United States is rendered uninhabitable by a climate change-induced ice age, the Dick Cheney doppelganger vice president, who has now become acting president of a nation exiled to Mexico, apologizes for not believing the experts about the risk. That was a movie; however, this is real life.

My counterargument was that those who didn’t want to accept reality would find some crazy excuse or rationale to continue to deny it or blame the people pushing liberal policies, even if they had to invent one. Like the idea that COVID was manufactured, possibly by Dr. Anthony Fauci, to install a global left-wing totalitarian hegemony - which is now standard belief among MAGA - I suggested half of America would cling to a belief that climate change is being caused not by the polluting actions of everyday humans, but by a liberal cabal manipulating the weather to force people into endorsing environmental causes or having those policies forced upon the population.

I was told I was crazy. I was being too cynical and too defeatist. I should stop concern-trolling. Time and reality were on our side.

And yet…