British geneticist Steve Jones said recently "I don't engage with creationists directly," because when he had they had frequently quoted him out of context or accused him of lying. "If somebody has decided to believe something - whatever the evidence - then there is nothing you can do about it." And I have seen similar comments from climatologists, who after 15 years have given up bothering to argue with climate deniers.
I can understand those views. I have similarly given up arguing with people who think that capitalism has triumphed, and that all we need to do is complete the privatisation of every aspect of the economy, and promote more free trade agreements and globalisation.
There just isn't time to argue this stuff any more, there is too much to do cleaning up the mess that has been caused by unfettered free market capitalism, energy companies and their collaborators, and fundamentalist religions at work in schools.
And yet, and yet, and yet. One hundred and fifty years ago, under unfettered free market capitalism run by the paleo-conservatives, slavery was in full swing, and the air in cities was choking smog, and small children worked in factories, and sewage poured into drinking water, and men died in coal mines, and religious leaders controlled every aspect of society and individual belief, and there were huge gaps between rich and poor. And it ended not because the bad guys saw the error of their ways, but because progressives engaged them, spoke out, argued, protested, wrote, kept poking and prodding away until it stopped.
We have gone back to those bad old days. It would have seemed impossible even just ten years ago, but the last few years have seen the resurgence of the neo-conservatives. Who would have thought that the ideas of industrial robber barons of the mid-nineteenth century about imperialism and the white man's burden, about crushing the unions and the poor, about the literal truth of the Bible and its account of Genesis and the dominion of humans over the natural world, about the absolute precedence of property rights over all other right, about the irrelevance of society, and about the need to operate unfettered by any concern for the environment or social consequence, would in the 21st century be again successfully promoted by the governing classes and their media outlets?
We have to start all over again, like Sisyphus, starting from the bottom of the hill to roll the stone up again. In the nineteenth century, voices raised, here and there, by enlightened and brave people, gradually brought change. The voices are needed again now. Not everyone yet knows that the voices of neoconservatives and fundies are the voices of fools. Those of us on the left, it seems, have to keep pointing to the lack of clothes on the emperor over and over again. Come on Steve, back into the fray.