“Van Jones is the gift that keeps on giving,” writes Glenn Reynolds, along with a letter from one of his readers:
“It’s interesting. People that keep saying America doesn’t have to be a military power are just thrilled to use extraordinary police powers on America’s citizens. I wonder if the two positions are related?”
It’s yet another example of the moral equivalent of war, or as Julia Gorin wrote in the Christian Science Monitor back in 2006, Freud called it displacement — which dovetails well with Van’s truther/green supremacist worldview:
It’s a peculiar thing that as the threat of global terrorism reaches a crescendo, so apparently does the threat of global warming – at least that’s what some would have us believe.
Tough language is borrowed from the war on terror and applied to the war on weather. “I really consider this a national security issue,” says celebrity activist and “An Inconvenient Truth” producer Laurie David. “Truth” star Al Gore calls global warming a “planetary emergency.” Bill Clinton’s first worry is climate change: “It’s the only thing that I believe has the power to fundamentally end the march of civilization as we know it.”
Freud called it displacement. People fixate on the environment when they can’t deal with real threats. Combating the climate gives nonhawks a chance to look tough. They can flex their muscle for Mother Nature, take a preemptive strike at an SUV. Forget the Patriot Act, it’s Kyoto that’ll save you.
Especially when Satan is everywhere…
Related: And speaking of would-be green supremacists, Thomas Friedman’s not going to like this one bit.
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