Skeptics, Freedom, and Shmaltz

This week's episode of FRONTLINE is an investigation of climate change deniers. These people are very creepy. They are soldiers, fighting for the truth!  The truth is, obviously, the opposite of whatever "they" say, because, y'know, control!  Open your eyes to the truth!

Deniers attend (paid, surely) events in fancy hotel ballrooms to hear from top skeptics, and no one is more credible than British "scholars".  There has to be some irony that to this day a "knowledgeable Brit" gives comfort to Americans nervous about their country falling into tyranny.

Then came the backdrop for the event.

Gold torches!  The bearers of holy freedom! 

I guess I'm just impressed with the shmaltz of groups that provide paths to "freedom."  This past weekend I drove past the Mormon church in San Diego.  It was quite possibly the cheesiest thing I'd ever seen.  Planted beside the 5 South, it is by far the most attention-grabbing building south of Disneyland.  

But you have to give it credit.  I'm sure if you're poor and in need of direction, why not go for the glossiest church?  You want the iPad of salvation or an HP Touchpad?

This of course applies to all of mankind, I'm sure.  The Romans were the worst at shmaltz. But as we move increasingly into a new gilded age, shmaltz will surely be returning with a vengeance.

Shmaltz seems to be a strategy when you instantly want to carve out attention to a new idea, or identity.  Create an eyesore and then just scream "SEE!?"  It's deeply insecure.  It requires you to acknowledge it, and then accept it, because how could it be so big if it wasn't acceptable.  It is the opposite of humility and doubt, and all the qualities we admire in mankind.  It aspires to transcend those values, in order to convince people of a superior way, one that you can participate in.  After all, it's not minds you're after.  It's the mindless.

Or maybe it's not a strategy.  Maybe it's a lack of creativity in the wingnut community.  Maybe century-old movements in art are still too offensive in the face of Jesus.  Subtlety is the work of Satan!

Strategy or not, when you get behind the shmaltz, it always ends the same way.