When I see someone acting the fool or expressing patently ridiculous notions, my instinct is to Sheldon-up and tell them in no uncertain terms that they are an idiot (or whatever might be appropriate). I feel relatively free to do this because I am just some random schmoe. I’m not running for office. I hold no power, political or otherwise, and nobody – so far as I’m aware – counts me as their representative.
My “free speech rights” would of course not be curtailed were I to become a politician or the President For Life of some advocacy group. However, I’d have to be a Grade-A Moron to not curtail my *own* speech were I to become such an individual. Your average jerk can, for example, generally express racist, sexist or just plain dumbass views with relatively little threat to their livelihoods, so long as they do so away from work. But a politician, athlete, actor, singer or any other Public Person who expresses the same views, even in a non-work setting, puts his future at risk (see: Jimmy the Greek, Mel Gibson, even Gilbert Gottfried).
Outside of a cult, you’re never likely to find even close allies who agree with you on *everything.* And while good friends can give each other crap, going public and talking smack about your allies – especially calling them names – is ill-advised. And if’n yer anything like a politician, you’d think that that would be monumentally *stupid.* And yet… it happens.
For example, take the National Geographic Channel documentary “Mars: Making the New Earth.” It’s an hour long (well, 45 or so minutes once you chop out the commercials) show from, I think, late 2010 on the subject of terraforming Mars. Most of the interviews are with Chris McKay, a planetary scientist at NASA-Ames. On such topics, he’s really pretty much of a go-to expert. Where this becomes relevant to my yammerings is when the discussion turns to the idea of whether or not we *should* terraform Mars if it turns out that there is an existing Martian microbe ecosystem, either active or dormant. This discussion starts at about 2:10 here:
[youtube zwFgujBYLCg]
At about 5:00, McKay suggests that if there is already life on Mars, we should leave the planet alone.
Now, I disagree. If it turns out there is an active technological civilization living under the surface… sure, leave ’em alone. But if native life on Mars is just Martian bacteria, maybe evolved all the way up to fungus…. meh, screw ’em. Native Martian life is, in that case, at it’s endpoint. Given how essentially dead the planet is, that life is never going to evolve anywhere on its own. The only way Mars is going to become a living world is if we *make* it a living world. And I just can’t get that worked up about the rights and dignity of bacteria, neato-keen and scientifically fascinating though it might be.
But keep watching the video clip. At about 5:50, another opinion is interjected. It is an opinion that accords much more closely with mine than McKays does. But unlike my meaningless blog-post-opinion, this is a supposedly Important Guy, in a position of some political prominence. Does he say “I disagree and here’s why?” No, he calls McKays position irrational and “lunacy.”
Yeah, that’ll win ’em over.
That sort of thing makes for good TV, I suppose, but piss-poor diplomacy.
