"Climate Hubrists" : deniers of any limits to human ability to control reality

I separate Holocaust deniers from Climate Change deniers, I really do.

Most Holocaust deniers deny that the event ever happened - and continue to deny that, even in their heart of hearts.

But Climate Change deniers only pretend in public that they believe human-originated harmful Climate Change isn't happening and won't happen.

What they really and not so secretly believe - in their particular heart of hearts - is that Man can easily solve any bad climate change, or indeed any other global disaster that might happen, as fast and as easily as any comic book Super Hero might.

why focus on Allied FAILURES of WWII ?

Why not focus on the Axis failures of WWII ?

Why not, you say, use a sawed-off shotgun at short range on a big fish in a small barrel ?

Hum, tempting  - too tempting obviously for all the world's Rogue Boomers - people like Stephen Harper and Tony Abbott : 'we won the war, did nothing wrong, so no need to change nothing, carry on, business  as usual.'

Rogue Boomers with short noses are more than usually handicapped by nature - being so unable to see beyond the end of it.

All three sides* in WWII expected a short cheap war - and all sides were wrong : that is the real lesson of WWII : the naivete easy optimism of pre-war Modernity and Scientism was revealed to all - or rather should have been.

(*Because remember, for a shamefully long time, the majority of the world's population was not at Germany or Britain's side but rather was Neutral.)

We don't have to wait till the current climate change crisis plays out to drawn the needed lesson that there is no pointing denying that there are limits to human abilities to control unpleasant change.

We already had the lesson - and the exam - during the six bloody and long and disappointing years of WWII : when time and time again all sides were told that a technology breakthrough, a new superweapon, would end the war quickly, cheaply and painlessly.

The truth be known, the WWII traffic in super hero instant solutions between children's comic books and senior leaders' Minute books are unceasing ....

'Rogue Boomers' : Running our world ; ruining our planet

When one thinks of Rogue Boomers, one immediately thinks of people like prime ministers Stephen Harper (born 1959) and Tony Abbott (born 1957) --- and not just because they are currently leading the charge (from the rear) against doing anything substantial about man-made climate disaster.

Rather it is something so unexpected about the vivid contrast between their still-baby faces and their totally Old School ways of thinking that humans can control the natural world - thinking we'd might expect more from their grandfathers, let alone their fathers.

Yes, those I call Noir's Children , the most vocal (and regrettably the smallest) segment of the Boomer kids got it, successfully absorbed the dire lessons (on all sides) from WWII , and adjusted their thinking.

But the Rogue Boomers ( the silent majority of my Boomer generation) carried right on as if nothing had changed, still believing in the simplistic old pre-war ways , despite Science (reluctantly) revealing an ever more complicated world.

It was as if they were to be frozen in aspic, forever locked into a time warp with the first generation of comic book super heroes.

Entombed forever within WWII's golden age of superheroes, superpowers, super-weapons and super-easy solutions to controlling unpleasant reality....

Noir's Children : the teenagers who MADE Mo go Po

Noir's Children (my particular birth cohort of 1940-1956) those of us born 'after the Fall of France but before the Rise of Elvis' - were virtually unique in being perfectly comfortable living inside TWO whales .

Medicalizing Modernity : a few vigilante superheroes against the many democratic un-superheroes

We have traditionally considered super heroes to be 'super' because their various strengths are clearly superior to those of ordinary beings, but this could be the wrong way to view their 'super-ness'.

We can instead think of super as simply meaning bigger and fewer.

This is because the basic laws of physics with regard to mass, energy and space suggest that fewer big things can occupy a given niche than can many small things.

Hold that thought as we turn to that time-honoured fictional small frontier town beset upon by outlaws.

Martin Henry Dawson : against a city - and an age - of Super Heroes, the story of an un-superhero

1875 -1965 was an age of Scientism and of Super (hyper) Modernity --- an era of unlimited faith in the abilities of technocratic elites (a view at least held by other technocratic elites).

un-superheroes : Earthlings --- not super heroes , not Skygods

Joe and Willie , PBI , not Captain America or Bomber Command.

Down in dirt , muddling through , boots on the ground .

When hyper-modern technology fails : send in the shovels ...

the Super-Modern Era : the hyper-arrogant era of Supermen and Ubermensch

The current term 'Super Heroes', though not the age old concept , first fully emerged at the apogee of the super-modern era (the New York's World Fair ,circa 1939-1940) and have tagged along with us ever since.

Their continuing popularity - and not just among 15 year old boys - is a useful measure of the strength of belief in Super-Modern ideas , 70 years into this era of the post-Modern.

The other measure is, of course, support for the climate deniers.

Their chief funders and cheerleaders are old men (born on both sides of 1930) who were those same young 15 year old boys who first read of the original comic book super heroes.

Gosh Koch : comic books form the deep ideology of the climate denying network ?

Who would ever have thought that ?

Super Heroes started WWII -- but only un-superheroes could end it ...

It flatters us greatly to focus upon WWII as simply a war between good (us) and evil (them).

This, rather than accurately/painfully contrasting the high expectations of all sides in September 1939 (and many other such key dates throughout the six year conflict) with the depressing reality of September 1945.

1940s Super-Heroes : each an intoxicating - toxic - mix of muscles, magic, machine and mind

Comic Books in 1940 would never profess that "Might is Right" , rather that "Only Might can Do Right" .

But first : why then the need for a secret ID , if one is truly omnipotent ?

Gotham's wartime unfits rescued natural lifesaving penicillin-for-all

Wartime Gotham's concrete jungle was crawling with comic book Super Heroes and their opponents.

After all ,most of today's best known super heroes were created during the war years.

These Super Heroes did their stuff on some very mean streets that also managed to look a whole lot like the actual streets of Manhattan , circa 1940.

(And more than seventy five years later, they still do !)

I find it hard to feel totally upbeat about Super Heroes - they hold too many overtones of 1940 Hitler's Ubermensch to make me very comfortable.

I can't accept that people who aren't physically extraordinary - or indeed not even ordinarily physical fit - can't make perfectly good heroes.

In fact, I'd argue their task of heroism is much harder to achieve .

because they are not blessed with either Superman's gift of super-special physical powers or Batman's extraordinary-honed human skills (and wealth).

In that same concrete jungle that was 1940 Gotham for example ,Dr Henry Dawson's team of unfits could hardly muster a half dozen ordinarily full functioning limbs between them.

But who can say than anything morally greater ever came out of WWII's bad news war than their unlikely success in rescuing natural lifesaving penicillin-for-all from the meanness of the Allied medical-scientific establishment?