Beware the bamboozle

Some people have all the best lines.

Think of Albus Dumbledore, headmaster at Hogwarts, who after an attack by Lord Voldemort, tells Harry Potter and his classmates, “Dark times lie ahead of us, and there will be a time when we must choose between what is easy and what is right.”

Even better is Tyrion Lannister, in “Game of Thrones.” An aristocratic dwarf who likes wine, women and debate, Tyrion is underestimated by many — at their peril. When Hizdahr, a slave master, defends his way of life, Tyrion responds, “It’s easy to confuse ‘what is’ with ‘what ought to be,’ especially when ‘what is’ has worked out in your favor.”

Hizdahr doesn’t care about fairness. He doesn’t care about equality or truth. He cares about money and power — and has his. For those in the fighting pits far below, tough luck.

Today, we recognize slavery as a moral evil of the past. We tell ourselves we’re better. Yet the destruction of our democracy and livable world is being wrought right now by the Hizdahrs of America, a powerful white elite who’d watch the world burn to make their profits. One in particular who has his own memorable lines:

“One day, it’s like a miracle — (COVID-19) will disappear.”

“Mexico is going to pay for the wall.”

“Global warming is a total, and very expensive, hoax!”

It’s our job to determine which lines are wise, and which are lies. It’s our job to be smart; to choose not what’s easy, but what’s right. It’s our job, as informed citizens, to shake off any magical thinking and please-be-true conspiracy theories that might satisfy our prejudices, and instead ask what’s really true, no matter how upsetting those truths may be.

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this,” astrophysicist Carl Sagan reminds us. “If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”

That charlatan today is a chronic liar enabled by his powerful Republican acolytes. Look closely. Our own congressional delegation is addicted to dark money and business as usual; an oil-based economy. What’s easy over what’s right. Like Hizdahr and his fellow slavers, they are too comfortable, closed-minded and afraid to champion the future we all desperately need.

COVID-19, handled so poorly in this country, will be a mere preamble to the chaos — an “unimaginable hell,” says the United Nations — that will be wrought by runaway climate change. Unless we act now, and choose what “ought to be” over “what is.” Unless we cut global fossil fuel emissions by 50% by 2030, and go carbon-neutral by 2050.

The human race now burns so much oil and coal that it sends 2.4 million pounds of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, into our atmosphere every second of every day. It has to change. And it can, through a global effort spearheaded in part by an Alaska willing to wake up. If not, then welcome to chaos. Hothouse Earth. Welcome to a world of warm, rising, acidic seas with no more salmon.

Will we stay with our unbridled oil economy? Or will we vote blue in November and begin to move boldly into a vibrant new clean energy future of innovation, science, health and truth?

Soon after he met Tyrion, Hizdahr’s world came crashing down. He thought, because he had power, he had wisdom. He did not.

Kim Heacox is the author of many books, including five published by National Geographic. A former park ranger in Glacier Bay, Denali and Katmai national parks, he lives in Gustavus.

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