When a man achieves the status of legend he becomes immortal. Robin Hood, William Wallace, and countless folk-heroes through the centuries became larger than life, their exploits pushing into the realm of the supernatural. Ideas cannot be killed as easily as flesh and blood. Once the story builds steam only the head of the man in a basket can deter the believing crowds. But if there is no body, then the hero is still out there, performing legendary feats increasing in fame and implausibility. Songs are sung of his his deeds, glasses are raised in his honor.
Scapegoats can climb to similar legend status, but in the opposite direction: if there is sufficient cause, there is no odious act that cannot be laid on their head. At one time, a feasible connection between the perp and a heinous event could be reasonably drawn, the culprit arrested and dealt with. But when those in power understand that the free floating anxiety in the atmosphere can be condensed onto the flank of a scapegoat, it can then be blamed for all sorts of high villainy it hasn’t a thing to do with. The Jews in Germany, Trotsky in Russia, Marie Antoinette in France; history is replete with these unfortunate billies.
Yes, once the populace has bought into the legend of the scapegoat there is nothing it cannot be blamed for, no deed it cannot accomplish, no matter how far fetched, and the countryside is unified in the manhunt. In fact, we got a one ourselves right here in ‘Murica.
Climate change has become our scapegoat of legend, of the kind folktale villains are made of. Once it was a man who could be killed by falsification, by any one of a number of its failed predictions. Now, it is beyond all that, living large in the immortality of unfalsifiability. Its name is on the wanted posters across the land for both extreme warming and cooling events, flooding and drought, fires and hurricanes and stacking death tolls. It has been implicated in increasing shark attacks in Florida and chlamydia rates in koalas, proliferating cancers and gender inequality, multiplying heart attacks and kidney disease, shrinking IQ scores, shriveling fertility rates, skyrocketing suicide attempts, snowballing murder rates, fueling mental health disorders, and trebling the number of child brides in Kenya. And if that weren’t enough, climate change is intractably and irrevocably rrrrrrrrracist!
Hark! What is that clear sound, ringing like a bell on Christmas? It is the voice of that brave and debonaire hero, in his left hand a sword and in his right hand the blueprints of how to save the world from this fretful villain (oddly printed on the same stock as the wanted posters). Salvation from all the woes wrought by this Global Outlaw is at hand if only, if only, we would give him but the power to do so.
Thought Butter 