The Greenville residents were first outta the shoot in the name calling wars during the early days of the global warming debates when they started tarring those who disagreed with the name 'deniers'. The Mud Report has tried for years to avoid the pejorative term at first by trying to re-define opponents as skeptics. But that never really caught on because almost everybody was skeptical. Another post tried to show how all sides, all people really, deny those truths that inconveniently don't mesh well with their worldview. But now, as of today, mr. mud and The Mud Report are taking the pledge. The pledge to never [after this post] use the loaded name of 'denier' to describe those who are stating their version of the 'truth'.
What does in denial mean? Wikipedia says: Denial is a defense mechanism postulated by Sigmund Freud, in which a person is faced with a fact that is too uncomfortable to accept...Fact being the operative word IMO. A 'fact' is something that's indisputable. Global Warming is obviously not indisputable. You might say one who disagrees with your 'truth' is mistaken, misguided or even wrong, all fine, none of them IMO implies that the adversary knows your truth to be true but, for some reason, denies it.
Another online popular definition from Yahoo is: "refusal to acknowledge existence of something: a refusal to believe in something or admit that something exists". Here the crucial word is admit. A person can only admit what they believe to be true. The opponents of Global Warming Theory aren't 'denying' anything. they embrace their reality just as avidly as the proponents embrace theirs.
The Greenville residents are not only using the term 'denier' as an elitist bullying tactic to rally their base around the worthiness of their version of the 'truth', but incorrectly to boot. 'Denier' is dismissive, a terrible foundation to build mutual respect upon eh. 'Denier is divisive, derisive and offensive so i won't use it, from now on it'll be rebar in the Greenville abutment. If in the future, for brevity's sake, The Mud Report can't use a descriptive phrase and instead must choose a single word - it'll be opponents.
So the Greenville abutment, Greenville's connection to this communication bridge is the showing of mutual respect for its opponents by taking the first step of ending the tarring of those opponents by name calling. It's just the first step toward acknowledging that there is no absolute right or wrong and that we're all in this together.
Tomorrow we'll work on building the Growthton abutment and try to bury a few more devise terms there too.
