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Science isn’t like religion, where people can just agree to disagree, and nobody has to prove what they believe.
Science is not politics, where people with different perspectives can find common ground, and maybe ‘split the difference’.
Science, and the scientific method form a way of seeking answers to questions that predate the search. This search doesn’t bend in order to protect the feelings of people who disagree with established scientific consensus, but who bring no new scientific evidence to back up that disagreement. Science only yields to better science.
The Earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old. For the first billion years or so, it was barren, followed by around 3.5 billion years of evolving life. It’s fine for people to enjoy folkloric origin stories, but science is not going to split the difference with them. There is a scientific answer (refer back to the beginning of this paragraph).
Mythology has not always yielded easily to the advance of science. Galileo’s insistence that the Earth was not the center of the universe cost him a stretch in the Pope’s jail. There are people among us who fear that learning how life has evolved, and continues to evolve, might land them an eternal stretch in Hell.
People who have been taught from childhood to fear and distrust science are easy prey for those who tell them that human industrial activity plays no role in our changing climate, or that vaccines may cause people to become autistic.
In our current, highly-charged time, the predators are out in force, and thriving, as we face the very real fears of the current pandemic. They prey on an eclectic range of existing fears (science, government, internationalism), and meld it into belief in an incoherent plot to invent or exaggerate the pandemic itself, for some unclear nefarious reason. Even some people I know, like, and respect seem to have fallen prey to this narrative. The predators sound reasonable; they couch their conspiracies in the language of science - and may even enlist a rogue scientist to bolster their story. But it’s what Richard Feynman called ‘Cargo-Cult Science’, which looks real, but has no substance. I find myself torn between just saying nothing, to avoid insulting my friends, or attempting to help reintroduce reality - all the while knowing that my ‘retail’ efforts at teaching science may well be quickly countered by a return to the nonstop wholesale torrent of propaganda that introduced the conspiracy theories in the first place, and continues to feed them.
Many of our fellow citizens are desperate to get back to work, and renew their livelihood. For some workers, this makes sense, but this desperation is being used by players who don’t give a shit about the workers, but are manipulating them for advantage – and will put many workers in danger, and cost lives.
When a state reopens an occupation, it’s only superficially voluntary. Under the emergency declaration, self-employed people—hairdressers, massage therapists, for example—are able to access unemployment insurance payments to tide them over. But as soon as the state of emergency ‘ends’, so do the payments.
But, in order to work, these people must wear PPE comparable to what is worn in an ICU. Being self-employed, they have to procure it themselves. And because much of it is in short supply, they have to compete with hospitals to get it … not a promising proposition. Oh, and thanks to the tax ‘reform’ a couple years ago, this PPE is not tax deductible, even if they can find it.
And it’s almost certain that their business will be dismal. Clientele will be skittish to come back, and are hardly beckoned closer by the image of PPE that hasn’t been changed since the last client.
This is being sold to desperate workers as an opportunity to return to normalcy. But it’s not an opportunity at all; it is a no-win extortion scheme, which will deepen the financial suffering of the working poor, regardless of which choice they make.
Forty years ago, when I moved to the Portland area from Bend, Mount Saint Helens had already begun rumbling. It didn’t seem to amount to much, and after a while had become something of a joke. You started seeing people wearing tee-shirts that said ‘I survived ‘Mount Saint Helens - April 1980’, and maybe had an image of a sad little steam plume urping out of a mountaintop.
I guess I’ve always had a bit of a morbid sense of humor. When the volcano blew on May 18, burying hundreds of square miles of timberland, and more than a few people, I couldn’t help but wonder out loud how many victims had been incinerated and buried in their ‘I survived Mount Saint Helens’ tee-shirts. I didn’t think it was funny – just ironic.
They say that ‘history doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes’. As people champ at the bit to get out and mingle, because they assume the worst of the current pandemic is behind us, it feels eerily familiar – the difference being, if they’re wrong, it’s not just them they put at risk; they will bring the volcano home with them, and incinerate their loved ones.
Many intelligent, educated people must be looking back now with some regret for all the times they offered unsolicited help with grammar or spelling, science facts, or in adding geographical/historic context to current events.
It may have been done with the best of intentions, but without sufficient insight and empathy. Surely, we should have known that when the masses of the ignorant brought a leader to power, they’d remember these kind gestures—not with gratitude, but with humiliation—and would respond with anger and vengeance, attacking anything that represented civility, decorum, intelligence, or order in our society.
Bottom line … there are two possible outcomes of today’s action in the US House of Representatives;
The House may vote to impeach the Current Occupant of the White House, on a largely party-line vote. The Senate will fail in its duty to conduct a meaningful trial, and the C.O. will retain his office. His behavior will become even more juvenile, vindictive, and criminal than it has been; comfortable in the impunity provided by the results in the Senate. Republicans will claim that the fact that none of them voted to impeach is proof that this is a partisan impeachment process – but the reality is simply that their party discipline makes them accessories-after-the-fact for Trump’s criminality. Enough people will buy the Republican line that many key battleground states may well go to Trump in the next election.
The other possibility is that enough Democrats ignore the clear evidence presented to them, and fear for their reelection—or recognize the futility of passing this on to the Senate, only for it to die there—and vote against impeachment, killing the process here. The Republican fable about the partisan nature of the accusations, and the acceleration of Trump’s misbehavior will be exactly the same as in the first scenario. In addition, the Democrats will face the perception that they are too weak and fragmented to uphold the law. This would likely be even more costly among voters in battleground states.
So, which is the correct action?
I feel that it is the duty of the House to pass these articles of impeachment, calling out the criminality of this man, despite the certainty that there will be no enforcement action by the Senate. We owe it to posterity that a meaningful response to these offenses be written into history – whatever the consequences. Failure to act in the face of obvious guilt encourages further offenses, lies to the future, and diminishes the role of congress as a co-equal branch of government
There needs to be a trial in the Senate, even though the chances of the Current Occupant’s conviction and removal from office are vanishingly slight.
It may be impossible at this point to prevent our nation from descending into an extended period of darkness, but the historical record of this time—and of those who endeavor today to prevent or slow this descent must be preserved. It may not bubble back to public consciousness in this country in our lifetimes, but this must be documented for the rest of the world, and for posterity.
When we have a normal, healthy admiration for a leader or other public figure, evidence that they are incompetent, corrupt, or otherwise unfit will compromise our support, and threaten those bonds of admiration.
It’s different when we have given over a portion of our identity to the one we admire. When that occurs, revelations of that person’s corruption may be perceived as a threat not just to the other, but to our judgment; even to ourselves. It is a natural reaction, in this situation, to try to minimize these revelations.
In the extreme, people may have entirely subsumed their identity into that of their leader. Accusations are felt deeply and personally – and rejected at a wall of cognitive dissonance. Counterintuitively, the more serious the charge—and the clearer and more undeniable the evidence—the more they are rejected, and the more closely these followers will cleave to their leader.
Leaders may cynically lock down their hold on followers by intentionally making absurd statements, then repeating them incessantly. This serves two purpose with followers; as a loyalty test, and as a training tool, to reduce their will question anything their leader says.
“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”
- Voltaire
