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Setting record straight

Yet again, I have garnered the attention of a local right-wing writer who feels the incessant need to tell me how wrong, liberal, Marxist, etc., I happen to be — liberal and Marxist being labels he obviously finds derogatory. Allow me to retort once more to the never-ending stream of delusional nonsense he has spewed.

In bankruptcy court filings in 2016, Peabody Energy, formerly America’s largest coal company, revealed that it had provided funding to organizations and individuals, including the two industry-backed contrarian scientists the author provided as a refutation to my claims, Roy Spencer and Richard Lindzen. You can find this yourself in an article published in The Guardian on June 13, 2016 entitled “Biggest Coal Company Funds Dozens of Groups Questioning Climate Change.” It’s not uncommon for the fossil fuels and related industries to fund denial groups including trade associations, corporate lobbying groups, industry front groups and conservative think tanks, as the article states. The author would know this if he were interested in climate and atmospheric and related fields of science, but he isn’t; he’s interested in ideologically motivated “gotcha'” nonsense to divide people and to defame actual science and scientists.

As far as the author’s call for me to present evidence of white provocateurs and police officers being involved in starting or escalating rioting and looting, I point the author and you readers to reporting done by the Minneapolis Star Tribune entitled “Minneapolis Police Say ‘Umbrella Man’ Was a White Supremacist Trying to Instigate George Floyd Rioting” and to reporting by Reuters entitled “U.S. Assessment Finds Opportunists Drive Protest Violence, Not Extremists.”

These are just two among many examples. That’s not to say that all rioting and looting in these protests has been done by whites or police officers. To quote Dr. MLK Jr., “A riot is the language of the unheard.” Systemic and institutionalized racism in our justice system and beyond has gone on long enough and must be stopped. Since the peaceful Movement for Black Lives and the peaceful protests of folks like Colin K kneeling during the national anthem have been mocked and derided and dismissed by the likes of the author I’m replying to, sometimes disruption and even destruction will occur. Without condoning or endorsing it, I do call for a redress of the grievances expressed.

The author’s claims that BLM is a Marxist movement is drivel from the willfully ignorant bubble he encapsulates himself in and I dismiss it without further response. The author’s assertion that China is our enemy is in some ways accurate. Nation states conduct espionage and steal intellectual property and there is some level of tension among nations of the world at all times, and China and the U.S. are no exceptions. But antagonizing China does nothing but prop up egos of folks like the author I’m addressing.

Confederates were not Americans. The Confederacy, as I stated before, was a secessionist movement from America to preserve and expand African slavery and it was defeated by the Union, a.k.a America. Memorials and monuments to this traitorous and racist movement should be removed. I would say that publicly in Alabama as well.

The author says he’s not a racist. OK. Well, dismissing BLM as a “Marxist” movement — aside from showing the author’s total lack of understanding of Marxism — and defending the Confederacy are acts of racism, as is dismissing institutionalized and systemic racism in America. Don’t be surprised when conveying racism if it is insinuated or outright stated that you are a racist.

No apology is due and none will be given. I’ll close by saying I have no interest in knowing the author AT ALL.

Eric Engle

Parkersburg

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