When did we become too lazy to debate?
We no longer have debates. We instead have branding exercises for people too stupid to think, but too vain not to have an opinion. And these cynical appeals are a con, writes Andrew Bolt.
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We no longer have debates. We instead have branding exercises for people too stupid to think but too vain not to have an opinion.
There were two perfect examples in yesterday’s media.
Check this opening paragraph in The Sydney Morning Herald: “The author of a contentious report that predicted Labor’s emissions policies would devastate the economy has defended his findings after it emerged the expert who peer reviewed the research is also helping defend the Trump administration in a historic climate trial.”
See the trick?
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LEFT BLAME GAME FUELLING TRIBAL TENSION
This journalist is talking about a serious report warning that Labor’s global warming plans could cost 300,000 jobs by 2030, but warns that one of the several experts who reviewed it has also given expert advice to — gasp! — Donald Trump’s administration.
Trump! Get it?
Just being associated with the US president is all a brand-thinker of the Left needs to know.
It must mean this expert is a dunce and probably Right-wing fascist. That’s why the report he’s reviewed must be “defended”.
Here’s the second example, this time describing Labor leader Bill Shorten’s reaction to this report, which argues that his plan to slash emissions by 45 per cent over the next decade will also slash wages — by an average of $9000 from what they’d otherwise be.
Shorten’s response: the report’s author was just “Tony Abbott’s favourite researcher’’.
Got it! says the brand-thinker. If this author has anything to do with Brand Abbott I hate it! He’s a sceptic and probably against gay marriage. Not Brand Funky.
You can see why such arguments appeal. They let the lazy form an instant opinion on a report they’re too lazy to read.
But the “Trump expert” is in fact Professor John P. Weyant, director of the Energy Modelling Forum at the prestigious Stanford University.
He is such an expert on climate modelling that he’s one of the leading authors who most helped the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to win a Nobel prize.
And “Abbott’s favourite researcher” is Dr John Fisher, head of BAEconomics and former head of our Bureau of Agricultural Economics.
He, too, worked with the IPCC and was chief climate adviser to three prime ministers, including Labor’s Paul Keating.
That doesn’t mean they must be right, but it does mean the cynical appeals to brand-thinkers — Beware! Trump! Abbott! — are a con.
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