Scott McMahan

I'm not surprised that the liberal intelligentsia of the world has given a favorite son publicity and recognition.

I'm not surprised at how the world has molded a man into a messiah of a new cause that they've created and rallied around him. And I'm not surprised at how he has risen to play this role like he was born for it.

I'm not surprised that questionable science has become dogma with which we're not allowed to disagree.

What has genuinely surprised me is how quickly the world has grabbed onto the next end-of-the-world scenario and is not letting go. This one happens to be global warming, which is pointing to the immediate end of the world if we don't all believe in the cause and make it the most important thing in our lives. For "global warming" you can substitute Y2K or whatever other doomsday scenarios you remember from the past.

At the time, I thought that after the hyperbolic, alarmist end-of-the-world scenario of Y2K that people would have learned their lesson and it would take several generations for another one to come along. I thought that the end-of-the-world prophets would be laughed at and scorned, because no one would be willing to so soon believe another Y2K story of the end of the world.

Global warming may or may not be real, but the cult of global warming is real, and it wants everyone to put its prophets and messiahs at the center of our attention. Their leverage is simply the end of the world as we know it, which seems to be motivating a lot of people. Unlike Y2K, global warming will be the demise of the planet at some indefinite time in the future after we're all dead, so they have leverage over our need to protect our children, too.

If you want to read a good commentary on this need for people to invent Messiahs, you can't do better than the Dune series by Frank Herbert, especially God Emperor of Dune. The hapless Leto II, prisoner of his own messiah machine for centuries, tries to teach the human race not to believe in messiahs by oppressing them for centuries. He is a product of his oppressive machine as much as it is a product of his plan. He finally dies to stop it and free the human race. But did they learn? (One reason why I do not like the idea of Herbert's family "finishing" the stories is that Herbert never answers this question, and it's better left unanswered in the books so you'll think about it.)