Grim Pickens  

Grist has a report on the bemused T Boone Pickens, who can't comprehend the manic obsession conservatives have with drilling for oil as the one and only approach to energy policy while rejecting wind power out of hand - Grim Pickens. For some reason voting for the Democrats is still out of the question though, even if the alternative is a crazed pack of neanderthals who don't understand the phrase "finite oil supply".

Lobbying for his plan to sharply ramp up renewables, the billionaire oilman has been brought face to face with the Big Energy Lie -- the absurd notion that either John McCain or the Republicans in Congress actually believe in an "all of the above" energy policy.

In my interview with Pickens last month, he was able to offer only the blandest reply to a question pointing out that Dems back renewables but the GOP doesn't: "So let me ask you, how do we, how do we get Republicans to support that kind of investment in renewables?" See his rambling answer here.

Think Progress reports on a sadder but wiser (and far more cogent) Pickens at the National Press Club yesterday:

Q: You told The New York Times last month that you'd never vote for a Democrat. Are you finding that difficult in reaching out to Democrats then with your plan? [...]

Pickens: So I am having no problem working with the Democrats. Having a little problem working with the Republicans. They don't like it because I want to do more than just drill. And they, somehow have gotten it, a lot of them have, that you can drill your way out of this. But you can't do it. There's not enough oil there to do it.

...
Assuming Republicans (including John McCain) continue blocking an intelligent energy policy -- and blocking a vital climate policy, for that matter -- this may well be our new mantra, the mantra of self-destruction:

They don't like it because I want to do more than just drill.

Still, you can't really feel too sorry for the billionaire über-conservative oil man who helped get Bush re-elected by funding of the Swift boat ads, who supports John McCain now, and who dumbed down his own message on drilling, presumably after pushback from his Big Oil buddies -- see his "Drill, drill, drill" ad.

Again, if you back McCain and the GOP, then you must want energy policies that will leave this country forever crippled economically, forever vulnerable to the whims of the oil-producing nations like Russia, Venezuela, and the Persian Gulf states.

Every election season, commentators trot out the old statistics about how more education makes people more likely to support Democrats, more studies are published on how liberal Daily Show viewers are so well-informed, and various smart people try to explain why anyone would ever vote for a Republican, against their "self-interest." This month has seen three alarming and remarkable scientific investigations into Americans' inexplicable habit of voting for George Bush and John McCain. Which means: trend! Hooray! Let's take a look at what America's top scienticians say about [these Republican] losers and their stupid voting: ...

Conservatives Refuse to Believe "Facts"

The most upsetting and alarming research? Probably Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler's backfire effect study. In that, the political scientists took two groups of volunteers and gave them the Bush administration's prewar claims that Iraq was a threat and had weapons of mass destruction.

One group was given a refutation — the comprehensive 2004 Duelfer report that concluded that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction before the United States invaded in 2003. Thirty-four percent of conservatives told only about the Bush administration's claims thought Iraq had hidden or destroyed its weapons before the U.S. invasion, but 64 percent of conservatives who heard both claim and refutation thought that Iraq really did have the weapons. The refutation, in other words, made the misinformation worse.

This "backfire" effect only worked on conservatives. Even when they varied the source of the refutations, it made no difference—corrections from the New York Times and Fox News both caused conservatives to believe the lies even harder. In other words, objective truth is dead, observable reality is a fairy tale, etc.

Conservatives Have An Entirely Different Moral Code

This should bring you down, a little bit. Jonathan Haidt, a psychologist, wrote a lengthy anthropological investigation into why people vote for Republicans. It's not the Thomas Frank "they are distracted by bullshit" explanation, though it is related: they have different cultural standards of ethics and morality! Liberals and college students define morality as "how we treat each other," conservatives attach more significance to "supporting essential institutions, and living in a sanctified and noble way." Liberals recognize fairness and care as important moral virtues, conservatives add to that loyalty, respect for authority, and duty. The educated moral relativism worldview is fundamentally incompatible with the way like 50% of America thinks, and stereotypes about out-of-touch elitist coastal democrats are basically correct. Sigh.

So What Have We Learned?

Conservatives respond instinctually, not rationally, to scary images, "facts," and institutions. Whether this is innate and biological or cultural seems still up in the air. Democrats can't win with logical arguments or even appeals to the innate rightness of concepts like "diversity" and "tolerance," because those aren't considered essentially good and important by the voters they're trying to appeal to. This does suggest that an appeal to old New Deal institutional concepts like the Welfare State might actually be effective, if they're wrapped in the flag and a sense of duty. Also scientists still consider the majority of Americans to be like a fascinating exotic backwards tribe and the ... country is doomed.