“We never talk about climate change anymore.”
“We are in the midst of the great reset.”
“A reset? You think the climate is resetting itself?”
“Oh god no. We are totally screwed on that front. But we are resetting the public discourse on climate change. The oil companies, the industrialists, the GOP, they won. They lied to preserve their profits and then obscured their mendacity with misinformation, devious marketing, and a good old-fashioned bonanza of populist nonsense. Can you believe they got people to parrot oil-company propaganda for free and argue, with a straight face, that scientists are getting rich off climate change research?!?”
“Yeah, hilarious. But we are going to have to face the truth of climate change at some point. And sooner than expected. How are they going to spin that?”
“That’s the beauty of the reset. They don’t have to. We stop talking about climate change for a few years, we erase a bit of the science, and once we are inundated with fires and floods and poison monkeys, we won’t have time to argue about who lied to who. Think about it: our overflowing rivers will be clogged with bodies, and you want to blame Exxon? Stop being petty and give them a tax break. They can use your money fix the problem. Or do you want more people to die???”
“You’ve thought a lot about this. Sounds like you have your own set of voices in your head…”
“Of course. There are miles of tape, going back decades, of me, and people like me, going on Fox News to deny the reality of climate change. To lie. And those lies created a world where people will starve, people will die, and our children will have to adapt and sacrifice to survive in a much less hospitable world. So we have to erase the record. If they know the truth, no one will forgive us.”
“How can you erase that? You said yourself, it’s all on tape, an extensive and permanent record of you being either a moron or an asshole about climate change.”
“Mind the gap.”
“What?”
“Again, bow down to the power of the reset. If we put a little gap in the discourse, no one’s going back to dig through that Everest of Misinfo. Especially when so many of us were spewing it everywhere. Give it a few years, and then no one will remember what we were arguing about. Take NewsNation for example: if you wait long enough, even a creep like Bill O’Reilly can get back on television.”
“But Trump never stops talking about windmills and cancer and wet magnets. He’s not gonna shut up.”
“Sure. But we all get a good laugh from that, right? That’s Trump’s secret power: he’s always been an idiot. Even now, we can’t separate the dementia from the stupid in that gruel sloshing around in his head. No way will our descendants believe anyone in our time took serious scientific, medical, or really any advice from that nitwit. We just have to keep quiet for a bit longer…”
“But we are talking about it now—”
“Smoke bomb!”
