Earlier this month Alabama’s à la Rob wrote about a new “textbook” for homeschoolers, Facts, Nor Fear: Teaching Children About The Environment. It’s really not humorous when non-scientists delve into science.
It is valuable as a model of propaganda technique in general, and of anti-regulatory rhetorical strategies in particular. Its method mostly consists of amassing anecdotes, omitting unfriendly evidence (while preaching about respect for “science”), and keeping strict silence about topics that cannot be easily spun. There’s not a peep about toxic or nuclear waste, for instance, or about human health problems stemming from pollution.
This “textbook” is so off the wall that it credited the Bald Eagle’s comeback, not to the banning of DDT, but to “a surge in American patriotism”. This is why children are not allowed to play with matches.
A few weeks later, à la Rob followed up with Hitler, Stlain and Rachel Carson?
Now I find that Aaron Swartz has the back story to a bizarre right-wing version of recent history, in which DDT is good for us, banning it has killed poor little innocents in Africa (via malaria), and Rachel Carson is the moral equivalent of Hitler.
When the Radical Right delves into subjects that are out of their expertise, the results would be laughable if not for the serious misinformation that they pass on: think Teagbagging, Creationism and Global Warming. Now their bashing environmental science. Just another example of why children are told not to run with scissors.