Irony may be defined as something that goes against expectation, especially radically so. It is the basis of much of literature and films – the small guy who defeats the far larger opponent. David and Goliath – the ruddy runt of Jesse’s brood, defeating with a simple sling and a handful of smooth rocks the boasting behemoth Goliath, brandishing sword and spear. Alanis Morrissette gets irony wrong in her eponymous song: It’s not ironic when it rains on your wedding day, for that’s sort of expected. It’s ironic when you plan your wedding for a locale where it only rains a few days a year – say, Arica, Chile – and one of those days ends up being the one you book for your wedding.
But irony may also stray into the realm of sin (cf., CCC, 2481). It’s the opposite of boasting, for instead of exaggerating the truth, one minimizes it, say, in mocking the characteristics of oneself or another, often for some sort of belittling or even nefarious end. He couldn’t fight his way out of a wet paper bag was popular when I was in school – or, he’s so ugly even she would date him.
Hypocrisy may be seen as a kind of irony, when someone acts contrary to what one might expect, given their professed beliefs and principles. It’s why sexual misdeeds are worse in a priest, who is professed to chastity, than in a layman, who is not.
At the COP 30 is meeting in Brazil, ironies – here, hypocrisies – were rife. The climate zealots who consider every tree sacred, had hundreds of thousands of the pristine Amazonian rainforest cut down to make a four-lane highway for their chauffeured limousines. They fly in on private jets – hundreds of them – spewing the dreaded CO2. Then, just as the conference on how to stop global warming begins, a record-breaking cold front descends from the Arctic, plunging the whole of America, even Sunny Florida into a mini-ice-age. You’d think Gaia would be more amenable to their agenda. Of course, they’d claim that cold is also caused by excess CO2, which apparently can heat up as well as cool down the world. This is likely why they’ve adopted the more convenient and ever-pliable ‘climate change’, rather than the traditional ‘global warming’, except, again, when it does get a bit warm here and there, as in, say, summer.
But, in all scientific seriousness – remember those days? – if everything is climate change, then nothing is. I’m not sure how this classifies as science, for it is untestable, not open to disproof, and hence, an act of faith.
And if they really believed what they’re saying, why not stay home, and if you must meet, do so by Zoom? But there’s Gavin Newsom, governor of California, perhaps future president of American, and one of the most zealous of climate disciples, departing from his energy-guzzling 5,600 square foot mansion – replete with six bedrooms, five-and-a-half bathrooms, swimming pool and spa – and jetting thousands of miles to Brazil to lecture the attendees on the dangers of emitting too much carbon.
How, by the bye, does a politician on a fixed government salary get a property on what’s locally known as ‘billionaire’s row’? Even if he is independently wealthy, or made profitable investments, is it fitting for a leader of a purported democratic republic to live so far removed from the people he professes to govern? See Newsom’s intractable refusal to admit education vouchers for parents, and freedom of choice, forcing them into the defunct public system, all the while his own children attend expensive elite private schools.
One lifestyle for me, an another for thee.
And, as a recent headline has it, when indigenous activists breached the security perimeter, the venue was instantly transformed into a hyper-militarized war zone. All this to protect the ‘elites’ who are all for open borders untrammeled ‘climate migration’ and tearing down walls.
Irony abounding.
