by David Sassoon 

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There is a category of psychological illusion called "projection" which
serves the purpose of reducing personal anxiety. It's a defense
mechanism in which one attributes one’s own unacceptable or unwanted
thoughts and emotions to others.

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal provided a textbook case of the phenomenon in an editorial called Global Warming as Mass Neurosis. It's yet another installment of exemplary denialist rhetoric in need of some Freudian analysis.

The author, Bret Stephens, accuses those concerned about global
warming of practicing a sick-souled theology. He doesn't realize he's
blaming others for his own illness: his dogmatic embrace and belief in
the perfect functioning of free markets.

It's not clear whether Stephens believes in God, but he does seem to
believe mightily in his Invisible Hand, in the face of rational
evidence to the limits of its perfect functioning.

His faith leads him to deny climate science practiced by climate
scientists in peer-reviewed settings and embrace hearsay science
practiced by political operatives in the world of manipulated public
opinion.

Much of the science has since been discredited. Now it's time for
political scientists, theologians and psychiatrists to weigh in.

It leads him to suspect an anti-capitalist conspiracy, verging on the edge of McCarthyist paranoia.

Socialism may have failed as an economic theory, but global warming
alarmism, with its dire warnings about the consequences of industry and
consumerism, is equally a rebuke to capitalism.

And it leads him, as psychological disturbances of this sort often do, to odd sexual notions.

A light carbon footprint has become the 21st-century equivalent of sexual abstinence.

Au contraire, Mr. Stephens. Make love, not oil war.

Global warming is the mother of all market failures that challenges
your pure faith in the perfection of free markets. And so you lash out,
not recognizing the signs and symptoms of your own distress.

Instead of attacking those who are trying to deal with the reality
of global warming and accusing them of succumbing to mass neurosis, try
looking at the state of your own mental health, and of those around you
in the same ward who share in your dogma and denial.

You are highly qualified, from personal experience, to comment upon
that directly, rather than projecting your own ills upon others.