WUWT reader M. Paul writes: Sometimes a new word emerges that neatly encapsulates a set of complex ideas. We have recently seen such a word enter the lexicon: Grubering.
For those of you who missed it, an MIT Professor named Jonathan Gruber has been caught on video describing all the various ways that he helped the Obama Administration to deceive the public regarding the true nature of Obamacare.
People are now referring to what the Obamacare campaigners did as “Grubering”. Grubering is when politicians or their segregates engage in a campaign of exaggeration and outright lies in order to “sell” the public on a particular policy initiative. The justification for Grubering is that the public is too “stupid” to understand the topic and, should they be exposed to the true facts, would likely come to the “wrong” conclusion. Grubering is based on the idea that only the erudite academics can possibly know what’s best of the little people. Jefferson would be turning in his grave.
I think that no other word describes what we have seen in the climate debate quite as well as Grubering. The Climategate emails are full of discussions about how to “sell” the public on CAGW through a campaign of lies and exaggerations. There are many discussion about how the public could not possibly understand such a complex subject.
The late Steven Schneider puts it succinctly:
On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but — which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This ‘double ethical bind’ we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.
Our critics sometimes dismiss skeptics as “conspiracy theorists” noting how unlikely it would be that thousands of scientists would collude. They miss the point. We now know that Grubering takes place — we see it laid bare in the Obamacare campaign. It was not strictly a “conspiracy”. Rather it was an arrogant belief that lying was necessary to persuade a “stupid” public to adopt the policy preferences of the politicians and the academics in their employ. Its Noble Cause Corruption, not conspiracy, that is at the root of this behavior.
“Climate Grubering” — its a powerful new word that can help us to describe what’s been going on.
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Grubering: Deliberate obfuscation, misrepresentation, and lack of transparency for the advancement of a political goal.
Doesn’t misrepresentation include obfuscation and opacity? How about this instead?
Grubering: haughty misrepresentation
Umm. did you miss the most important parallel between grubering and warmism?
Dr. Gruber is best known among academics for the quality of his work modelling policy response in the health care businesses – and yet essentially all of the results he’s published with respect policy responses to both Romney care and Obama care have proven wrong.
It seems that only a portion of the public was deceived. Apparently the only ones deceived were the ones who consider themselves smarter than everyone else, the ones who arrogantly dismiss contradictory opinions as “poorly informed”, the ones who think truth has a bias toward their side.
There’s another large group of people who seem to act this way.
gmmay70, 11/18/14 @ur momisugly 6:25 pm said re the ACA, the public was deceived. The credit you, like Gruber, give is not factual. No one was deceived. The public had no vote in the matter. The 2200 page bill was not available in time to be read before Congress voted on it. Besides, what we got was not what was in the bill anyway, and never will be. It’s another “comprehensive” act, meaning that the regulations are written and rewritten by unelected, unknown bureau agents with neither public participation nor knowledge. The President first lied about its major provisions, than has been changing it willy-nilly to steer elections and to keep it from going under.
It won’t float. It needs to be repealed, and replaced with nothing called comprehensive. The lesson for the immigration bill is the same: Congress should pass deregulation bills and nothing comprehensive.
A petition to reverse any Federal Regulation should result in it being nullified pending an Act of Congress.
One thing Gruber seems not to have learned with his Harvard PhD is that a nationalized industry, lacking consumer choice among competitors, has neither a pricing nor a quality control mechanism. Talk about your stupids! Nationalizing the health insurance industry is certain to destroy the healthcare delivery system.
Nationalizing the fossil fuel industry is sure to destroy the energy sector and US exceptionalism for anything. Barry Obama learned his economics from chants in his madrassa, and then, as Barrack, at Reverend Wright’s knee.
What I – as European – find the most incomprehensible is that the USA did not have any system of national health care, nor why anybody would be against it.
Hans Erren writes “the USA did not have any system of national health care, nor why anybody would be against it.”
1. Liberty. That answer is extremely simple and also largely unknown to my European ancestors. In order to provide something, someone else must be compelled to it. Since no one wants to be compelled, there isn’t a lot of providing.
2. No Sovereign. Europeans are accustomed to having a sovereign even if he/she doesn’t do much, it is your final authority, the ultimate owner. The United States has no sovereign. This difference is subtle but pervasive.
3. Size. Just to drive to see a futbol game is half again more distance than Hungary is wide. Much of it is sparsely settled, and the law *does* require equality of laws, and that means the same national anything must be available to a rancher in Montana as a citizen of San Francisco. That’s impossible.
4. Diversity. Most Americans have not consciously subscribed to ANY social contract (see Rosseau). Many choices exist with hugely varying expectations and obligations; usually high expectation and low obligation. Europeans, on the other hand, have strong nationalistic and usually socialistic expectations.
5. Socialism — the enemy of liberty. Back when the United States had almost no socialism, it hardly mattered whether anyone here was actually a citizen. Many of my ancestors spoke Norwegian and never did learn English. I’m not entirely sure whether they bothered with citizenship. Now of course it matters quite a lot. Consider Sweden — I was amazed to discover it isn’t even legal to earn money after you retire.
Where it works, it works well, for reasons that are NOT exportable to the United States, or to Russia for that matter. But even where it works (Sweden, Iceland), socialism invites parasites — some rich, many poor, who for various reasons are not subscribed to the social contract.
@Hans Erren : “What I – as European – find the most incomprehensible is …..why anybody would be against it”
The fact that even “well informed” journalists in Europe will give you no other explication than that your average American is an utter fool and pathologically averse to change (Yes, that is the prevailing narrative over here) … says it all about the level of integrity of the European media.
Hans, read “Michael 2” instead of European newspapers. 😉
TinyCO2
November 16, 2014 at 6:36 am
“swift boating ”
Kerry was a Gruber. He deserved swift boating. “Swift boating” is the telling of inconvenient truths. Of course the object of those truths will try to turn it into something else. Calling it a “smear campaign” is one way of dealing with it.
Michael 2
November 20, 2014 at 11:27 am
Democrats are the party of “Everything not forbidden is compulsory”.
You left out the Republicans.
Republicans are the party of “Everything not compulsory is forbidden”.
dbstealey
November 17, 2014 at 4:05 pm
I know that. I was Sect’y/Treas of my local Libertarian Club for 3 years.
Michael 2
November 17, 2014 at 1:57 pm
I was thinking of the Republican Party as it exists in America today. About 1/4 libertarian and the rest of a Statist bent. Here is a better explanation from a while ago:
The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition. Thus we have two great types — the advanced person who rushes us into ruin, and the retrospective person who admires the ruins. He admires them especially by moonlight, not to say moonshine. Each new blunder of the progressive or prig becomes instantly a legend of immemorial antiquity for the snob. This is called the balance, or mutual check, in our Constitution. — G.K. Chesterton
Thanks, M Simon. A good description!