Meanwhile, In The Universe Next Door…
John Quiggin at Crooked Timber brings to our attention this not-so startling study, showing that:
[…] since 1972, at least 90 per cent of the books that have been published disputing mainstream environmental science have been produced by rightwing thinktanks or authors affiliated with such thinktanks. Symmetrically, at least 90 per cent of the rightwing thinktanks in the study contributed to this literature.
John draws a parallel with Jorge Luis Borges’ Library of Tlön. Which is just absurd.
In Borges’ story, a group of wealthy elites are trying to reshape the world by replacing all standard, observable knowledge with bizarre pseudoscience and quasi-religious platonic ideals. Obviously, such a group of individuals, were they to exist, would be a collection of the word’s most deluded, sociopathic assholes with delusions of grandeur. No such people could ever attain any level of power without quickly exposing themselves as frauds. q.e.d., as they say.
Though if Dick Chaney was secretly the Heresiarch of Uqbar, it would explains the man-sized safe in his office…