You’d think at this point that when a pundit felt the compulsion to call Paul Krugman “shrill,” that pundit would pause as the word made its initial journey from diaphragm to mouth, and think long about aborting the mission before full-blown enunciation.

Why?  Because, in relation to just about every major issue that Krugman has supposedly been ”shrill, shrill, shrill” about (the Iraq War, Bush’s tax cuts, the housing bubble, the general fucked-uppedness of the Bush administration, etc.), he has looked overly timid in retrospect.  Cautious to a fault.

But then, as President Bush reminded us in his usual eloquence: “Ours is a society where things are like instant, so therefore, history almost is like so far back it doesn’t count.”  Enter, Andrew Stuttaford:

There are indeed reasonable grounds for believing that man is having/could have a significant impact on the climate (just as there are reasonable grounds to suspect that man’s impact on the climate may be reduced to insignificance by countervailing natural factors). But for those inclined to believe in a hoax, shrill, hysterical language such as Krugman’s is only like [sic] to reinforce their suspicions…

For what offense is Krugman once again being bemoaned as strident, uncivil and overly impassioned – that is, in what way will Krugman’s words eventually appear calm, measured and complacent in hindsight?

A handful of these no votes came from representatives who considered the [Waxman-Markley] bill too weak, but most rejected the bill because they rejected the whole notion that we have to do something about greenhouse gases. And as I watched the deniers make their arguments, I couldn’t help thinking that I was watching a form of treason — treason against the planet. [...]

Still, is it fair to call climate denial a form of treason? Isn’t it politics as usual?

Yes, it is — and that’s why it’s unforgivable.

Do you remember the days when Bush administration officials claimed that terrorism posed an “existential threat” to America, a threat in whose face normal rules no longer applied? That was hyperbole — but the existential threat from climate change is all too real.

Yet the deniers are choosing, willfully, to ignore that threat, placing future generations of Americans in grave danger, simply because it’s in their political interest to pretend that there’s nothing to worry about. If that’s not betrayal, I don’t know what is. 

What this tells me, based on Krugman’s Law of Shrillness and Accuracy, is that we are all fucked. Proper fucked? Yes, Tommy, proper fucked.

Given that The Toot’s clarion call for primary challenges for those Dems that opposed the public option in health care legislation has already yielded results (if you ignore chronology, actual level of influence and several other key factors), and given that it’s one of the few tools available to those that want to push feckless incumbents, consider this another such call: Dems that screw up global warming legislation should face serious primary challenges come hunting season.

Whatever you want to call them – if “traitor” is too strong a word for a politician that values campaign contributions more than the welfare of the planet and its billions of inhabitants – they need to be replaced. 

(links via the Jameson Family Jamboree)