A Speculation on Obama and Thorium

My first reaction to Obama could kill fossil fuels overnight with a nuclear dash for thorium was that there's no way a professional leftist would support nukes. I then recalled the left-wing tendency (earlier mentioned here) to reinvent right-wing ideas and pretend they originated them.

Let's see… This reinvention usually requires the ability to blame conservatives for the problem they're trying to solve. (They don't always have to do this—they can sometimes rely on the assumption that anything that sounds odd could never have anything to do with conservatism—but the association between us reactionaries and nukes is a little too clear cut.) They could quite easily blame right-wing fossil-fuel interests or the depleted-uranium industry. They can even use the common trope that “capitalists don't pay any attention past the current quarter” (which doesn't explain Silicon Valley). (Blaming capitalists for not innovating in the face of regulatory uncertainty is an up-and-coming left-wing cliche.) They can try for an unnecessary subsidy, wait for libertarians to criticize it, and then use that as a reason to blame us.

In other words, brace yourselves.