Diamond has been popular with tech billionaires and the like, who enjoy Diamond’s scientific arguments for the politically correct position they need to believe in for their own safety, far more interesting than the derisible Theory offered by postmodernist academics.
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Diamond is aware that his realism and ability to compare and contrast mark him as a potential crimethinker. For example, he made famous an aerial view of
Hispaniola where you can see the national border between deforested, eroded Haiti and verdant Dominican Republic. In his 2005 book about ecological negligence,
Collapse, he even dared suggest that the DR dictator Trujillo’s policy of welcoming white immigrants contributes to it being less dystopian than Haiti.
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So why the distinction between what the very smart Diamond worries about in his own mind and what he puts in his books? Blogger Paleo Retiree offered an acute if uncharitable theory at
Uncouth Reflections:
…Diamond revealed that he took up writing the big books for the popular audience when he became a parent…. He’d simply come down with what afflicts so many people when they have kids: a bad case of the Worthies. Where his big books go, his main concern hasn’t been to share his knowledge and his thinking. It’s “What shall we tell the children?” My conclusion: maybe Diamond’s books are best taken as morality fables for overgrown kids.