Easy Virtue

Everyone wants to feel like they're doing something important. Everyone wants to feel like they're making a difference. No one wants to put in a lot of effort. No one wants to be criticized or take social risks.

This is the key to Social Justice, the Global Warming Climate Change movement included.

When it comes to plastics in the ocean and CO2 in the air, China is the main source and their emission graphs are nearly vertical. Here in California, we've made plastic straws illegal and have divested ourselves of "dirty" sources of electricity. Neither action means anything in any real sense. We could be burning plastic straws to generate electricity and it wouldn't make any global difference because China's contributions dwarf ours.

Straws and electricity do provide us invaluable benefits, however. They make us feel good. We can pretend we're doing something. They also give us what we crave - someone to hate. A great movement can exist without a belief in God, but never without a belief in the devil. You need someone to blame and despise, someone who you can use as a comparison to prove your moral superiority.

Like this. You can post things like this all day long on Facebook and you'll get nothing but praise.

The ubiquitous howls of "Racism!" are the same thing. It's easy, there's no risk and it accomplishes nothing except to make us feel good. This morning, I used the Dot Map and Great Schools website to looks at standardized test scores. I defy anyone to try that and tell me that culture isn't the dominant factor by at least an order of magnitude.

Like China polluting the globe while we whip ourselves like flagellants, culture and behavior determine outcomes while we check under our beds for White Supremacists.

What if we were honest? What then? Well, we'd have to confront China. We'd have to stand firm for traditional marriage and sexual morality. Those would be difficult and risky. Yuck!

Not only that, confronting China and popular culture would be to admit that we're not the center of the world. We're not really that important. Until China changes their behavior, until the culture stops equating all families, nothing is going to change no matter how many straws you use and how many social justice posts you like on Facebook.

Until then, we can all feel good about ourselves. We might as well. It's not like we're doing anything real.