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.

Today on Air America wit Andrew Vergonlina & Logan Pollard

Today on Air America with Andrew Vergolina & Logan Pollard

Last December, the White House simply refused to open an e-mail from the Environmental Protection Agency because it contained the unwelcome conclusion that greenhouse gas emissions pose a threat to public health and therefore need to be regulated. The EPA finding was a response "to a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that required it to determine whether greenhouse gases represent a danger to health or the environment," the New York Times reported on Wednesday.

Faced with the proverbial inconvenient truth, the White House not only refused to open the e-mail, they ordered Jason Burnett, the EPA official who sent the document, to "recall it," according to the Washington Post.