{"id":62989,"date":"2017-05-03T06:30:55","date_gmt":"2017-05-03T11:30:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=62989"},"modified":"2017-05-02T23:17:21","modified_gmt":"2017-05-03T04:17:21","slug":"62989","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=62989","title":{"rendered":"Overpowered By Smug"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In one of the\u00a0most glorious moments in the history of cable television, the late Christopher Hitchens told Bill Maher&#8217;s audience &#8211; basically the same species of smug droogs that dutifully clap on command, just like Jon Stewart&#8217;s and Steven Colbert&#8217;s and Samantha Bee&#8217;s audiences, and those at pretty much every other liberal Bread and Circus show.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/HECI4QK_mXA\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><br \/>\nSHOW MORE<\/p>\n<p>Hitchens didn&#8217;t stanch the wave of smug liberals &#8211; indeed, they&#8217;ve only gotten worse since they&#8217;ve been relegated to the minority.<\/p>\n<p>The left&#8217;s trait &#8211; condescend first (often, lately, by smugly wrapping themselves in a &#8220;scientific&#8221; banner that few understand and fewer still earn &#8211; has been most egregiously on display in last weeks&#8217; flap over Bret Stephens&#8217; apostasy on climate change.<\/p>\n<p>David French on the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/article\/447238\/samantha-bee-bret-stephens-smug-liberal-problem-climate-change-debate\">Smug Liberal plague<\/a>\u00a0and Stephens:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Let\u2019s be clear about what Stephens actually said. Here\u2019s his summary of the current state of climate science: While the modest (0.85 degrees Celsius, or about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit) warming of the Northern Hemisphere since 1880 is indisputable, as is the human influence on that warming, much else that passes as accepted fact is really a matter of probabilities. That\u2019s especially true of the sophisticated but fallible models and simulations by which scientists attempt to peer into the climate future. Here\u2019s the translation: Science teaches us that humans have helped cause global warming, but when we try to forecast the extent of the warming and its effects on our lives, the certainty starts to recede. In addition, the activism has gotten ahead of the science. Indeed, Stephens even quotes the New York Times\u2019 own environmental reporter, Andrew Revkin, who has observed that he \u201csaw a widening gap between what scientists had been learning about global warming and what advocates were claiming as they pushed ever harder to pass climate legislation.\u201d Not only did the \u201chyperbole\u201d not \u201cfit the science at the time,\u201d but \u2014 Stephens writes \u2014 \u201ccensoriously asserting one\u2019s moral superiority and treating skeptics as imbeciles and deplorables wins few converts.\u201d As if on cue, parts of liberal Twitter melted down. Stephens was instantly treated as, yes, an imbecile and a deplorable. Not only did the vast majority of commentators ignore his argument, they treated it as beneath contempt.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I have yet to have a liberal at\u00a0<em>any\u00a0<\/em>level answer this question for me:<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s say, for purposes of argument, that global warming is\u00a0<em>exactly\u00a0<\/em>what the Warmist faith says it is. \u00a0OK &#8211; so why is &#8220;turning the keys to the entire world&#8217;s economy over to the people who&#8217;ve made the Congo a massive lake of blood&#8221; the only possible solution?<\/p>\n<p>I think i know &#8211; but I don&#8217;t think they do.<\/p>\n<p>Liberals? \u00a0Sound off!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In one of the\u00a0most glorious moments in the history of cable television, the late Christopher Hitchens told Bill Maher&#8217;s audience &#8211; basically the same species of smug droogs that dutifully clap on command, just like Jon Stewart&#8217;s and Steven Colbert&#8217;s and Samantha Bee&#8217;s audiences, and those at pretty much every other liberal Bread and Circus [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-global-warmingcoolingchange"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62989"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62989\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62993,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62989\/revisions\/62993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}