The Heartless Heartland Institute and Nazi Tourettes

The other week the Right-wing Heartland Institute began putting up posters with a picture of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski (scary that my spellchecker knows the word “Unabomber”) and the text “I still believe in Global Warming, do you?” They promise to follow this up with similar posters featuring Adolf Hitler, Stalin, Ted Bundy and Charles Manson.

In essence to the Heartland institute belief in global warming => you are a terrorist/ psycho/  commie/ fascist (all at the same time!)

Now for sure, some crazy extremists have taken the environmental message way too far, but that doesn’t mean you get to tar everyone with the same brush. By that same logic I could argue that all American Christians are terrorists, as one or two of them took to blowing up abortion clinic’s or federal buildings. I could argue that all Muslims are wife beaters and terrorists (due to a few of them flying planes into buildings). I could say that all republicans are thieves because a couple of politicians from that party stole public money or that all catholic priests are paedophiles and evangelical preachers are all gay. And of course Brevik (a euro skeptic, global warming denying child killer) means I could sling all sorts of mud around, if I thought like the Heartland institute.

All these posters demonstrate is the narrow, closed minded nature of the right wing and global warming deniers plus their inability to accept new ideas. Anyone who opposes them, surely must have an “agenda” or be somehow satanic or evil (just read any right-wing blog or conservapedia for an example of such paranoia). Go onto a right wing blog and pretty quickly someone there will resort to name calling, claiming you’re “elitist” or an “enviro-nazi”.

As this video from The Daily Show’s Lewis Black shows, a American conservatives, notably Glenn Beck, suffer from a condition called “Nazi Tourettes”. Where they’re way out of any debate, when logic fails (or what passes for logic from conservatives!) means they inevitably resort to ad hominem comments and claim that everyone who disagrees with them is “like Hitler” (to quote an example from Glenn Beck “Hitler’s enemy, the jew, Al Gore’s enemy Global Warming”). Better still after they’ve looked up ad hominem in the dictionary, they’ll often accuse you of this in return (for proving that they’re arguments simply don’t stand up to rational scrutiny). And no, before anyone asks I don’t think conservatives are familiar with Godwin’s Law.

Inevitably the Heartland’s tactic’s have backfired, badly! They have been derided by critics. Many leading company’s, such as State Farm, Diageo, GM, and many others  have dropped their funding of the Heartland institute, leading to them to pull the plug on the whole silly enterprise.

And of course, quite a few humorists have been having a pop at these posters…such as putting up their own versions, such as with Hitler and a tag line saying “I still think kittens are cute, do you?”