If this really is true, then greed really isn't good, after all. It really isn't the way to maximize the best possible outcome. We really do need to come together and act collectively. Government isn't always the problem. It's sometimes the solution. And, so their whole intellectual scaffolding collapses. So, they'd rather deny the science.

Trump walked into a media setting for which he was far better suited than the other contenders because he actually knows how to do reality TV and made them all look like pretenders. And I would argue that our news media has only gotten worse since Trump got in office. Trump is media crack. The ratings have never been higher. The reason CNN would run an hour of an empty podium waiting for him to show up during the campaign is because they were terrified if they turned away from Trump their rating would go down.

Most of you didn't think that helping people share books would be a subversive act...Yet the fact is that you have chosen a profession that has become radical.

And that is what is behind the abrupt rise in climate change denial among hardcore conservatives: they have come to understand that as soon as they admit that climate change is real, they will lose the central ideological battle of our time—whether we need to plan and manage our societies to reflect our goals and values, or whether that task can be left to the magic of the market.

When it comes to paying contractors, the sky is the limit; when it comes to financing the basic functions of the state, the coffers are empty.

But we need to be very clear: because of our decades of collective denial, no gradual, incremental options are now available to us.

Extreme violence has a way of preventing us from seeing the interests it serves.