I heard Ariana Huffington say to Charlie Rose the other night: There’s only one side to some issues. Slavery is wrong. The Holocaust occurred. Global warming. These issues are no longer debated.
She said the media foments discontent by continuing to play to the only remaining “kook” of a Holocaust denier, global warming denier, or slavery promoter.
This is kind of not to the point, but who publicly promotes slavery? I mean, who sits down with Larry King or Keith Oberman and says, I’ve got slaves and we’re all better off for it?
I’ve not heard anyone say “slavery was great” but I have, on many occassions, heard people say that if it weren’t for slavery, American blacks would be dying in Africa, so we should be grateful to white men for making our lives and opportunities here in America possible.
Outright promotion is something I haven’t seen. But there are plenty of apologists that are more than willing to downplay the horrors and highlight any noxious line of thinking that supports their idea that blacks should feel grateful to whites for being brought to this land and “civilised.”
FIFY
In my high school humanities class, there was a student who adamantly believed that the holocaust never happened. His reasoning was “there’s no way people could do that to one another.” He said this in the face of one of the teachers, who had herself survived a Ukrainian labor camp. Although not a Nazi concentration camp, it was equally as terrible.
This was the same kid who believed “Iraq isn’t a country, just a huge band of terrorists. There are no civilians.”
I can’t imagine how people can grow up, this day and age, so deluded.
How do you know that? just because he said it doesn’t mean he believes it, people will do anything for attention, which i suspect he received much of for his actions.
As for the subject of this thread, surely no-one can deny global warming? they can argue if it matters, if we should be worried, if we’re causing it, but presumably the increase in the average global temperature is a matter of scientific record.
I’m sorry but I had to reproduce this entire post. It is so inconsistent, especially the last sentence. How can you be so deluded not being able to imagine how completely deluded almost everyone around you is?
Slavery is still practiced in various places around the world. Fortunately I don’t hear debates about whether it’s a good idea or not.
Holocaust denyers (how do you spell that?) will probably never go away completely, but I agree with Ariana in terms of them neither needing nor deserving a mouthpiece in the mass media. Sometimes it’s okay for a journalist to say “no, you’re dead wrong, grow up” without stepping outside their detatched objectivity.
With global warming I haven’t heard much recently of people denying the stuff that’s been documented, but as previously stated, that just leaves lots of room to argue about what to do.
All granted. But I was actually thinking of current modern slavery.
Deniers. 
(I’m a proofreader.)
Gotcha. In that case, no, I’ve not run into either apologists or supporters.
I don’t understand how people can deny the Holocaust ever happening. My Grandma’s entire family was burnt alive from the Nazi’s. She is the only Holocaust survivor in her family (she somehow survived Auschwitz). If the Holocaust never happened, where did all my great aunts and uncles go?
Secondly, I think around 40% of the population does not believe in global warming 
May sound dumb, but their are very many who simply don’t believe in it.
I hate to be nit-picky, but what do you mean by global warming? Do you mean the human-influenced climate change, or just the increase in temperature? Because I know quite a few people who aren’t convinced we’ve done it, but none of them deny the increasing temperatures.
There is no limit to human stupidity or stubbornness. It is a non-exhaustable natural resource. Ever heard of the Flat Earth Society? Enjoy reading their web site. I love how their “Evidence” page is under construction!
There are always people who will refuse to believe something. Tell a town full of people that they have to leave because the dam is finished and it’s all going to be underwater soon. There’s usually at least one person who refuses to go.
More holocaust-related, look at how many people there still are out there who think skin color makes some people better than others. Examples are endless.
I’m rather upset that that reporter is comparing denial of human impact upon the climate change to slavery or the holocaust. That’s really stupid. For one thing, slavery and the holocaust was humans committing crimes against their own, And if there’s one thing that shouldn’t be argued about it’s that fact that humans don’t know how to predict the weather.
I think that site is satirical…
So science can’t make reasonable predictions about the weather? They don’t understand climate?
Wow! Universities that offer meteorology are complete frauds?
I am a left wing enviro guy
Seriously, we are all being exposed to mercury in the air, lead everywhere. There is a thick coat of green panic growing under my sink etc. LOL I wish more voters cared about real hazards. 
I still have a hard time sweating global warming. My research says we should be entering the end of the brief 12,00 year inter glacial warming period.
I predict that based on the past earth ( geological rock interpretations), the glaciers ass has not been handed to them. We will freeze our buts off soon.
Sorry,
geologist speak. You won’t see much observable in your life time. But say 500 years down the road, I say 50/50 warmer or colder.
5000 years, up times street, and it will be really , really, cold IMHO.
I base this projection on a study of the earths climate ( generally accepted) that says it was mega super god damned cold until 10,00 years ago.
And that it was frozzen ffen beyond all god zappin before that for like hundreds of thousands of years. Seriously.
So maybe humans aren’t the cancer of earth .
A serious, pragmatic assessment of earths climate will show it is not stable. I would be amazed if 100,000 years from now, the ice had not reclaimed earth.
Well, OK, I won’t be amazed unless I was frozen with frog genes or something.
I’m a serious enviro guy, but CO 2 has upsides.
Plants love the shit. they call it sunshine oxygen.
Why sweat it?
Oddly enough, while most agree humans are bad for the planet, few a rooting for their extinction. That’s still a 2-sided issue.
… or, maybe they are. The out-of-control growth of human population would seem to compare with the out-of-control growth of cells in cancer.
[opinion] Overpopulation of the planet is a far worse problem than “global warming”. [/opinion]