All good points. Sorry I’m coming from a non US perspective where climate change denialism is present, but less fervent. I like your definition of “truth from a rarified point of view”, though I might also considered non-rarified or pervasive, and factually well substantiated truths can be used as propaganda as well. The 95%+ consensus of scientists on climate change is both factually/meaningfully/importantly true and also used with a propagandistic flavour in many examples of political persuasion for example.

My post was more aiming at acknowledging propaganda as a vehicle of persuasion for any and differing representations of reality (political groups) that exists in parallel with the the establishment of facts of reality. Some representations will adhere more or less with the factual arguments.

An interesting exercise is to replace “Communism is bad” with “Climate change is coming” and interrogate how we feel about that and why.

It is interesting to reflect that propaganda is involved for all kinds of policy application, including science. As someone trained in sciences, it’s always a bit uncomfortable seeing folks extolling science as the exclusive solution to everything. The role of science in society is deeply tied up with values, norms, and policy. I think it’s always good to have a healthy dose of critical self reflection, so we can engage better on the level of humanized reasoning, rather than on the level of regurgitated propaganda.

2048

You forgot, corporations are people too. And who are the most important people in the world??

If they set a 10 year goal it may take 20 years to hit 80% of goals, if they set a 20 year goal it’ll take 40 years to hit 50%, if they set a 50 year goal…

Nobody thinks this is a realistic goal, but the target gives a concrete number to set a mandate on which actually pragmatic policies, funding projects, and incentives can hang their hat on to keep the ball rolling.

With big infrastructure developments, nobody wants to buy into realistic goals, it’s too costly, and there’s never enough political will. You set overly ambitious goals so you can get people to buy in and then the project is too big to fail, so you end up paying what it actually costs, and you try to mitigate waste, unanticipated problems, corruption, and poor management along the way.

That’s not an insult, it’s a specific form of trolling/harassment called sealioning.

Same reason for every animal resource: over exploitation of the resource, habitat destruction/pollution, and climate change. This isn’t a recent thing, salmon stocks have been declining over the last 4 decades. The response to this decline of course has been to continue extracting the same amount year over year.

Same reason most people recommend gettinf a Honda/Toyota when asked for a general recommendation for a car. If you need to ask the question, then your needs are probably not that specialized. So something generally reliable, widely accessible, and good value would be appropriate. Lenovo still tends to fit that description.