Tim Blair writes at The Telegraph blogs about weepy Bill McKibben as examined by a specialist.
![BillMcKibben%28photocreditSteveLiptay%29-lowres[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/billmckibben28photocreditsteveliptay29-lowres1.jpg?quality=83)
Stanley Kurtz examines our old pal Bill McKibben, whose warming obsession evolved from his cravings for victimhood:
In a 1996 piece titled “Job and Matthew,” McKibben describes his arrival at college in 1978 as a liberal-leaning student with a suburban Protestant background. “My leftism grew more righteous in college,” he says, “but still there was something pro forma about it.” The problem? “Being white, male, straight, and of impeccably middle-class background, I could not realistically claim to be a victim of anything.”
At one point, in what he calls a “loony” attempt to claim the mantle of victimhood, McKibben nearly convinced himself that he was part Irish so he could don a black armband as Bobby Sands and fellow members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army died in a hunger strike. Yet even as he failed to persuade himself he was Irish, McKibben continued to enthusiastically support every leftist-approved victim group he could find. Nonetheless, something was missing. None of these causes seemed truly his own. When McKibben almost single-handedly turned global warming into a public issue in 1989, his problem was solved. Now everyone could be a victim …
Global warming allows the upper-middle-class to join the proletariat, cloaking erstwhile oppressors in the mantle of righteous victimhood.
Good call.
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For the record, IMHO and based on some of his current behavior, I’m pretty sure Bill McKibben is becoming a danger to himself and others.
Related articles
- Bill McKibben’s excellent eco-hypocrisy (wattsupwiththat.com)
- The Wannabe Oppressed (educationviews.org)
- Despite being disgusted with Gore for selling out to Al Jazeera, Warmist Bill McKibben’s global warming documentary to premier on fossil fuel funded Al Jazeera (climatedepot.com)
- This week’s ‘Al Gore Jr. Eco-Hypocrisy Award’ goes to 350.org founder Bill McKibben [pic] (twitchy.com)
h/t to Verity Jones
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I wish I had coined that, most eloquent summary of the inner Sydney/Melbourne Latte Left extremists for AGW;
A danger to himself and others, should we tip his local law enforcement for a non-consensual mental evaluation committal, thereby prohibiting his gun ownership?
Bill McKibben is a classic example of cause addiction.
If you live a pointless, comfortable, life, the urge to make your life meaningful to both yourselves and others can become overpowering. So you desperately look for a supposed wrong to right.
Most of the world’s greatest despots suffer(ed) from cause addiction, which usually morphs rapidly into egomania and the manic conviction you are always right and consequently no dissenting opinion can ever be tolerated.
The problem is cause addiction can bring with it enormous economic and personal freedom costs to those around you.
The idea of ‘original sin’ is deeply engrained in the Christian consciousness.
It is inextricably linked with being born.
Breathing air and exhaling CO2 is simply a modified form of ‘original sin’.
There is something to this in the larger AGW community as well.
It makes sense that for those who need to be victims in order to feel validated would find AGW a particularly attractive faith.
It enables the believer to imprint patterns on the weather and draw big lessons from it, while still feeling all sciencey.
Adam Bandt, Greens MP, is blaming climate change (Assumed human induced as its not stated) for the bush fires here in NSW, Australia. Well, a stupendously stupid comment from the Greens was inevitable. However, given that the (Their) claim that AGW climate change (AGWCC) is GLOBAL, how does AGWCC know where NSW is, let alone where Australia is? CO2, the gas that I smarter than the average 5th grader.
So the Unproven theory became his claim to victimhood in 1989? And I never heard of him until about two years ago?
FAIL.
Nonetheless, something was missing. None of these causes seemed truly his own. When McKibben almost single-handedly turned global warming into a public issue in 1989, his problem was solved. Now everyone could be a victim …
In a similar vein, Dale Vince lived in a converted ex-army truck for years while he persuaded the government that we needed a green energy revolution. He now owns Ecotricity and makes millions from the subsidies, paid in part by poor pensioners living in fuel poverty, which come from levies on our fuel bills.
For a real hoot, read not only the misanthropic self-absorption McKibben displays in the article and then read the comments. Very revealing indeed.
What was (and remains) missing in McKibbin’s live is gratitude. I really do not know why so many middle-class people seem determined to feel guilty that their families and the rest of the productive people in this society have worked so hard to ensure that they have more options and resources than in any prior age of human history.
Seriously? He is a member of a sacrificial death cult, yet doesn’t feel victimized. Why is he so hard on himself?
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/the-knack-how-to-diagnose-middleclass-guilt-by-aric-sigman-1150033.html
“Middle-class guilt is a post-modern condition in which the patient experiences a collective embarrassment of riches which leaves her in a state of chronic unease. Often, the patient will identify with and adopt the social characteristics of the object of their guilt, by, for example, speaking in a manner at odds with their own background. Male sufferers can be observed surreptitiously trading in cricket bats and rugby balls in favour of footballs. They will display a chronic pitying of choice “minorities” and a spirited proclivity to “celebrate multiculturalism” and generally “make a difference”. The patient will denounce their own “comfortable, insular, bourgeois” culture and, in an attempt to bond with the chosen minorities, may exhibit signs of ethno-empathy. This can involve the Anglo-Saxon placing their hair in dreadlocks. There are often signs of an increased interest in world music, and the patient indulges in a yearly pilgrimage to the Notting Hill Carnival.
Guilty urbanites shun the leafy counties, and move to rougher areas such as Brixton or St Paul’s, where their feelings of guilt are intensified by exposure to Big Issue sellers. Paradoxically, they will ruminate over their “difficult decision” to send their progeny to public school as opposed to the local comprehensive which is busy embracing diversity. There is as yet, no cure, though research continues … as does hand-wringing.”
I was surrounded by it all at university in the 60s when 98 of a 100 in my faculty were privately educated and just two of us were not.
Now they are in positions of authority and have carried their baggage with them.
He is a victim of not being a victim.
In the UK ‘public schools’ provide a private education. State schools cater for the rest.
Not sure how such a misleading nomenclature initially rose.
As long as you keep him powerless, he is not a danger to anyone, including himself. The problem with McKibben’s is they seek a cause to espouse, but not believe in. Did he go on that hunger strike? No. Will he help with the problem of AGW (by his own solutions)? No. Like all other socialists, the solutions are for the little people, not the leaders.
It’s truly amazing (and disgusting) that so many are able to live so comfortably, by taking advantage of the masses of the helpless and ignorant, while doing little real work and contributing so little of value, and blaming those who live as comfortably as they do.
“I could not realistically claim to be a victim of anything.”
Except his own stupidity of course.
Interesting related link:
http://www.city-journal.org/2012/22_2_apocalyptic-daze.html
“What is surprising is that the mood of catastrophe prevails especially in the West, as if it were particular to privileged peoples. Despite the economic crises of the last few years, people live better in Europe and the United States than anywhere else, which is why migrants the world over want to come to those places. Yet never have we been so inclined to condemn our societies.”
The message: we must feel very guilty, but there is a glimmer of hope/ solution presented by the greenies….
Here is a video about victims.
When I was in boot camp in the ’60s I met folks who were constantly whining, complaining, and finding the dark side of everything. It was then I learned that there are some people who can only be truly happy when they are most miserable.
One of the lessons of the Viet Nam War is that constant moaning and griping and annoying others around you enough that they wish you were dead is not a trait conducive to real-world survival.
McKibben is a victim, all right. He has been victimized by his own self-centered craving for attention.
The squeaking wheel gets the grease, but it is also the forst one to get replaced.
To be fair, people have the right to consider themselves victims (real or imaginary) as much as they please. It’s their live. The line is crossed, however, when the modern twist on victimhood makes these people believe that they are entitled to deny others the right to speak or simply exist.
*life
Mckibben is clearly psychologically unbalanced, but the scary thing is the high proportion of people among the general populus who evince similar characteristics vis-a-vis the climate change debate. We are not talking about a small proportion here. In fact this is the most worrying aspect of the whole CAGW issue. With the death of mainstream religion , more and more people are seeking an ersatz and the church of global warming is an attractive institution for many of them. Like all religions , reality and empirical data will influence neither their belief nor their actions. Worrying times ahead.
Years ago, when rich, upper class English families had a “reject’ like Bill, they would ship him off to Canada or Australia. They were “Remittance Men” . They were paid to get the hell out of the country, and stay out, so as not to embarass the family.
@Tadchem
The squeaking wheel gets the grease, but it is also the first one to get replaced
Brilliant – QOTW for me!