{"id":446,"date":"2006-11-20T00:39:07","date_gmt":"2006-11-20T00:39:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/?p=446"},"modified":"2006-11-20T00:39:07","modified_gmt":"2006-11-20T00:39:07","slug":"now-we-have-won","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/?p=446","title":{"rendered":"Now We Have Won"},"content":{"rendered":"

The progressive movement has won two major arguments in the last six months. One, sadly, much too late to do much about it. The other, perilously close to the same.
\nThe war in Iraq<\/b> should never have happened. The invasion of Iraq should not have been undertaken. There were undoubted merits in removing the Hussein regime, but not in those circumstances, not in that way.
\nI walked on several peace marches in 2003, in Glasgow and in Edinburgh, protesting against the coming war. (The one I speak of I wrote about here<\/a>.) I vividly remember crossing North Bridge in Edinburgh and seeing a man, forty-ish and spectacled and ordinary, standing with his arms folded and making eye contact with the marchers and shaking his head. Endlessly, slowly, shaking his head. You Are Wrong. This war is the right thing to do, and this is the way to do it.
\nIt is no longer in dispute that it was not the right thing to do, and that wasn’t the way to do it. Public opinion has settled. We have won that argument.
\nClimate change<\/b> is now on the agenda. A major group of articles in the local newspaper this weekend focused on climate change, with not a word devoted to whether it exists or not. New Zealand’s business-friendly National party made a huge and public u-turn on green issues in general and climate change in particular. Giant icebergs are floating past the NZ city of Dunedin, in sight of shore.
\nI remember at the Edinburgh Book Festival in 2003 I went to an incredible presentation on ecology and social responsibility by Scottish writers Alastair Macintosh and Roger Levett. (I wrote about it here<\/a>.) Sure enough, at the end of the presentation came a question doubting the existence of global warming and climate change.
\nIt is no longer in dispute that climate change is real and caused by human activity. Public opinion has settled. We have won that argument.
\nThe public landscape of ideas<\/b> has shifted irrevocably to accommodate these two victories. The victory for the Democratic party in the US congressional elections has canonised these outcomes. All over the world, media and elected officials are falling over each other to align themselves with the new public opinion. Now that we have won the arguments, what are our concerns?
\nWe must recognise our success. This means two things.
\nFirst, do not waste energy relitigating the argument. We’ve already won. Those who disagree are the minority now; ignore them. Either they will eventually be convinced by the simple prevalence of our ideas – or they were always beyond our reach. Either way, don’t waste time on them. Let them have their letters to the editor and their curmudgeonly comment columns. These people do not matter.<\/i>
\nSecond, push forward. We have won the argument; this does not mean the problems are solved. Far from it. Politicians are quick to claim adherence to a new common sense, but actual change in behaviour is slower to manifest. We must pressure our politicians and other leaders to engage with these issues in a productive way.
\nWinning the argument wasn’t even the first step on the road – it was only, for the first time, pointing people in the right direction. That is a significant achievement, and we’ve earned the right to say “I told you so”, but we better not get too enamoured of our success. There is a long journey ahead, and much work to do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The progressive movement has won two major arguments in the last six months. One, sadly, much too late to do much about it. The other, perilously close to the same. The war in Iraq should never have happened. The invasion of Iraq should not have been undertaken. There were undoubted merits in removing the Hussein … Continue reading Now We Have Won<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8D9ZE-7c","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}