A new website went up: Vote Sanity! Vote Sanity calls attention to how so many candidates’ views are not extreme but, well, simply leave the reservation.
As Billy Wimsatt put it:
My Fellow Sane Americans,
What does it say about us that the most effective counterweight to the Tea Party is not a political party or leader, but a comedian?
We are concerned about our country.
…because creating good jobs in a 21st century global economy, educating our children, developing energy sources that don’t destroy our air and water, and protecting our country from terrorists are not easy challenges to solve;
…because in today’s political debate partisanship, inertia, self-interest, corruption, and stupidity have more power than good ideas;
…because the most reasonable political analysis we know of can be found on a comedy channel. . . .because the Naked Cowboy is planning to run for president . . . because thousands of Americans are traveling across country to rally for . . . reasonableness.
But mostly we are concerned because several of our fellow citizens seem to think that electing a bunch of nut bags is a viable solution.
It is not.
The project asks for all of us to sign a pledge to “vote sanity” on 2 November:
We pledge to Vote Sanity on November 2nd, because we know that if Sanity prevails, our country’s brightest days are ahead.
And if it doesn’t, we are totally screwed.
Vote Sanity discusses “ten signs that someone is a complete whack-a-doodle” and lays out some key maladies and provides some examples of possible sufferers:
Pica (pronounced /’pa?k?/ PYE-k?) is a medical disorder characterized by an appetite for non-nutritive substances (e.g. clay, soil, chalk, paper, soap,etc.)
Potential sufferer(s): Glenn Beck (chalk)
Intermittent explosive disorder is a behavioral disorder characterized by extreme expressions of anger, often to the point of uncontrollable rage, that are disproportionate to the situation at hand.
Possible sufferer(s): Carl ‘Take You Out’ Paladino
Psychopathology is a disorder characterized by an abnormal lack of empathy combined with strongly amoral conduct but masked by an ability to appear outwardly normal.
Potential Sufferer(s): Michelle Bachman
Mass hysteria is a socio-psychological phenomenon of the manifestation of the same or similar hysterical symptoms by more than one person.
Potential Sufferer(s): All Republican Tea Party candidates
Narcissistic personality disorder is a pathological disorder characterized by obsessive love of one’ s self. Patients crave admiration and exhibit a driving need to be worshiped. A narcissist excessive need for attention may lead him or her to enter beauty pageants or politics. Or both.
Potential sufferer(s): Sarah Palin and John Boehner
Neo-phobia Fear of new things or experiences, common in aging animals.
Potential Sufferer(s): Newt Gingrich (particularly fearful of Sarah Palin who has lapped him)
Anti-Science Syndrome
Sadly, the Vote Sanity team failed to keep up with the diagnosis of maladies. They don’t discuss how anti-science syndrome suffers threaten lives. What is “anti-science syndrome”, you might ask.
In early 2009, Joe Romm laid out the preliminary diagnostician’s tool for anti-science syndrome . As he noted,
Like most syndromes, anti-science syndrome [ASS] is a collection of symptoms that individually may not be serious, but taken together can be quite dangerous — at least it can be dangerous to the health and well-being of humanity if enough people actually believe the victims.
Romm laid out three key elements in the realm of climatology and climate science that are indicative of an ASS sufferer
- Focuses attacks on non-scientists.
- Repetition of long-debunked denier talking points, commonly without links to supporting material.
- Scientists (and others) who restate and republishing claims widely debunked in the scientific literature.
Romm suggested that there are many people who fit the whole diagnostic list and are appropriately referred to as A.S.S.-wholes.
Sadly, anti-science syndrome (often with money interests fostering the anti-science attitudes) is influencing public opinion and policy, creating real risks and causing real damage. The mother of all arenas, in terms of financial interests and impacts on humanity? Climate Change science.
The fossil foolish and related interests have, quite literally, many $trillions at stake and they are willing to spend $billions to protect $10s of billions of profits. And, there efforts have been paying off. Even as the scientific understanding of climate change increases, even as the world increasingly demonstrates warming and increasingly chaotic weather patterns, even as … there is (again) increasing confusion in the American electorate about climate change science. (Actually, there is increasing certainty within one party: certainty that the scientific community is engaged in a massive fraud and that climate change is not an issue meriting concern or action.) The 2010 election risks a serious shift in Congress away from any substantive (truthful) understanding of climate science and away from any willingness to engage in serious discussion about actions to mitigate climate change.
These Climate Zombies are essentially the epitome of Anti-Science Syndrome suffering Haters Of a Livable Economic System. They are willing to sacrifice others at the altar of a false deity of “free-market capitalism” unbounded by regulation and unconstrained about concerns for “externalities”. And, sacrifice is a quite accurate term with humanity’s impact on the climate system already tipping the scales to contribute (massively) to other species extinctions and to human deaths (through droughts, disasters, and other climate chaos impacts). Their Anti-Science Syndrome suffering, if given even more power, will threaten even more lives in the years to come.
PS: Do you remember?