Who told you that women are responsible for your anger?

Why are some people supremacists? There is, of course, a lot to that question and the answer has many parts. I wouldn’t be able to get to all of them in one evening of writing. I’ve been thinking that one part of the answer is that people are taught. That includes fathers passing beliefs to their sons and TV commercials that uphold stereotypes. Jennifer Gerson, writing for The 19th and posted on Daily Kos, discussed people, in this case boys, being taught. Gerson starts by discussing a research report put out by Everytown for Gun Safety, American University’s Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab [PERIL] and the Southern Poverty Law Center. The report found (I’m quoting Gerson, who didn’t indicate she was quoting the report): “Young Americans who identify strongly with gun use and gun ownership often hold male supremacist beliefs and racial resentment.” I want to correct the first two words to say “Young men and boys” because I have doubts about women and girls holding male supremacist beliefs. But that’s not what Gerson wrote and I can see some women agreeing that men are supposed to be superior to them. “The young people who are most closely associated with guns are more likely to be white people who have worse symptoms of anxiety or depression.” “Youth with stronger male supremacist and racist attitudes tend to hold stronger beliefs that adults in schools should be armed, feel safer with guns than without guns, and have stronger trust in the police.” Men were more familiar and agreed more with various “gun narratives.” (I think that term came from the report.) A few of the narratives Gerson included: “Guns allow the weak to stand up to the strong.” “Guns are the best way to defend yourself, loved ones and your community.” “Guns bring families together.” That last statement sounds wrong. I’m not denying that gun people make such a statement. But my view of what guns are and can do – like giving an angsty teen a way to commit suicide – does not at all fit with what promotes love and support within a family. The report discussed masculinity in that the man of the family is supposed to be the provider and protector. That’s dangerous bunk, but we’ll let go for now. In modern society the man may not be the primary provider. But guns and the willingness to be violent with them offer a way to reclaim masculinity as a protector. Yeah, this is tying an outdated concept of masculinity to violence. So where do many boys encounter this mess? Yeah, the internet. Pasha Dashtgard is the director of research at PERIL and an expert on male supremacy and online radicalization. Gerson wrote:

In his own research, Dashtgard regularly sees how low the bar to entry is for young men interacting with male supremacist and white supremacist content. “This isn’t a case of somebody typing in ‘the Holocaust isn’t real,’ but a 14-year old boy who is nervous about talking to women and going on the Internet and searching for tips for how to do that.” From that simple search, he said, many young men are quickly entering into a world of “really awful content” that is rooted in male and white supremacist ideology.

Add to that low bar such things as boys and young men trying to figure out what being a man means in modern society. Gun culture offers “unimpeachable access to masculinity.” Add to that parents who don’t closely monitor what their sons see online (the article doesn’t discuss how difficult such close monitoring would be). And those parents would be shocked to find their children are interacting with white supremacist recruiters. Children need to be taught about media literacy, how to tell what is safe and what is propaganda. There is a lot of talk about feminism and how patriarchy impacts women. But there is little talk about how patriarchy affects boys and men. The boys go to the internet for answers and white supremacist recruiters are waiting for them. Gerson concluded:

The research from Everytown, PERIL and the SPLC also found that 42% of young people said they had easy access to guns in their homes. Dashtgard said that talking about “the gun access problem is too late”—and instead, more focus needs to be put on what is driving men to pick up guns and use them in violent ways. “We need to be targeting young people earlier, and we need to be addressing why are you feeling so angry, what did you read, who did you hear from that women are the ones responsible for your anger?” Dashtgard said.

Laura Clawson of Kos wrote that conservative media and commentators failed in shutting down the new Barbie movie – it has now earned $1 billion globally. So they’re jumping on the Barbie train. As they do they’re saying it isn’t really a feminist movie – it’s really a conservative movie. The reasoning, convoluted as it may be, is something like this: Barbie’s life isn’t enough. Sure, it is sparkly and has no stress, but it is also vapid, meaningless, and loveless. Barbie doesn’t settle down into monogamous heterosexual love and domesticity. All this talk – both the comments that Ken isn’t masculine enough and Barbie’s life is vapid – show how much the movie “is a cultural phenomenon that cannot be ignored.” This morning NPR presented another example of what Republicans say they will do if they retake the White House in 2024. Yesterday I wrote about the plans to reshape the federal administrative state to be answerable to the president instead of Congress and the law. Today the discussion is about climate change and their plans for the Environment Protection Agency. Host Steve Inskeep talked to Mandy Gunasekara, who wrote the EPA section of the Heritage Foundation policy recommendations for the next Republican president. She was also Chief of Staff in the nasty guy administration. The EPA is targeted because it has become “an instrument of overregulation.” Yeah, human caused climate change is real. But, Gunasekara said:

Well, it is overstated. A lot of the general rhetoric - it's more about capturing headlines or pulling from some of the most extreme analyses that are out there. A lot of the rhetoric that the public sees and experiences is based on a picture that's not consistent with what we've seen with observed climate data and that the forecasts actually suggest a mild and manageable climate change in the future.

Which scientists gave her the “mild and manageable” conclusion? She would not name them. All the bad outcomes predicted by the Pentagon, NASA, NOAA, and others? Get past the political talking points and look at the data, Gunasekara says, and things aren’t that bad. Those scary predictions are “a favored tool that the left uses to scare the American public into accepting their ineffective, liberty-crushing regulations.” Inskeep then talked to Julia Simon, who covers climate solutions for NPR and listened to the conversation. She said:

As you can hear, these days, conservatives are often less likely to deny climate change, but they are discounting the urgency. They are attacking the solutions. There's a lot of emphasis here on things like electrification of appliances, electric cars, this idea that climate solutions deprive people of choice and that these things don't work. ... Broadly speaking, this critique is inaccurate. Many things like electric cars or efficient appliances do work and are even popular, though the technology is still evolving. ... Ultimately, if the ideas in this report are implemented, it would take apart lots of climate solutions, agency by agency. And that would have very real impacts on reducing the country's planet-heating emissions.

Inskeep concluded:

Now, we reached out again to The Heritage Foundation to ask which climate scientists they consulted. A spokesman replies that they consult, quote, “many scientists and respect their desire to provide this guidance in confidence.”

And we are left with a strong impression of who those “scientists” are. Or aren’t. In an Earth Matters report for Kos Meteor Blades discussed that latest work of Mike Huckabee. He’s an evangelical minister, former governor of Arkansas, and twice ran for the Republican nomination for president. He co-founded and runs Ever Bright, which markets “Kids Guides” on various subjects to make sure kids get a conservative indoctrination. This appears in an Earth Matters report because one of those is, “The Kids Guide to the Truth About Climate Change.” Yeah, when something by a known conservative has “the Truth About” in the title alarm bells go off and red flags pop up. Keerti Gopal of Inside Climate News summed it up: “It’s propaganda.” Gopal wrote the goal is erode public confidence in the science. They agree the climate is warming, but the effects are overblown. Blades included an example from the kid’s guide. It shows the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere from 400,000 years ago to the present day. It shows a few peaks approaching 280 parts per million and the present day coming up to that. The problem is a lie by omission. The “present day” of the guide is 1950. In 2022 the CO2 level wasn’t 280 but 417, way above the peaks of the last 400K years. Gopal wrote:

Allison Fisher, who reviewed the guide for Media Matters, said one of the main dangers of materials that deny the severity of climate change like Huckabee’s guide is that they deliberately undermine children’s scientific education. Such materials also take away crucial context for a generation that is already experiencing the impacts of climate change, she added. “They’re not just trying to create climate skeptics,” Fisher said. “They’re actually eroding trust in science and the scientific community.”

In shorter stories in the same Earth Matters report Blades discussed an article from AlterNet. Four senators – Sanders, Markey, Merkley, and Warren – wrote a letter to AG Merrick Garland urging him to file suit against the fossil fuel industry

for its longstanding and carefully coordinated campaign to mislead consumers and discredit climate science in pursuit of massive profits. The actions of ExxonMobil, Shell, and potentially other fossil fuel companies represent a clear violation of federal racketeering laws, truth in advertising laws, consumer protection laws, and potentially other laws, and the Department must act swiftly to hold them accountable for their unlawful actions. ... More than 40 states and municipalities have filed lawsuits that seek to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for their illegal campaign of misinformation around the global crisis of climate change. The Department of Justice must join the fight and work with partners at the Federal Trade Commission and other law enforcement agencies to file suits against all those who participated in the fossil fuel industry’s illegal conspiracy of lies and deception under federal racketeering laws, truth in advertising laws, consumer protection laws, and any other applicable federal law. The future of our planet depends on it.

There are also a pair of stories are about uses of old coal mines. One is to cover them with solar panels, which is better than putting solar panels over farmland. Another option is to grow food in raised beds. The Dewey Prairie Garden in Jewett, Texas sits over an old mine and produced 10,000 pounds of produce for food pantries since it began in April 2022. Blades also included a the first frame of a thread. I found the whole thing on Thread Reader. It is by Prof. Katharine Hayhoe, director of the Climate Science Center of Texas Tech University. That first frame says:

For the last few years, “climate activists are setting the wildfires” (to fake climate risks?!) was the dominant denial talking point; but now it’s gone even further…claims that the fires were set to clear areas for wind farms, critical mineral extraction, and more.

Sheesh. Deniers are relentless. A Hayhoe thread from May discusses historic temperature measurements. Many charts go back to 1850 because that’s when we had enough thermometers to get a global temperature average. A chart of global averages shows a rise since about 1925. The oldest thermometer based records go back to 1678 in central England. That shows a big rise starting about 1990. Hayhoe then discussed “natural thermometers” such as “historical records, bloom & harvest dates, pollen records, ice cores, etc.” Showing data for 2000 years demonstrates how anomalous the temps of the last 50 years have been. She also has charts going back 12K, 800K, and 500M years. She concludes:

Climate action isn't about "saving the planet"; Earth will endure. It's about saving US, us humans and the myriad of species we share this world with. We're not fighting for a planet; we're fighting for a safe and sustainable home for us all.