MAGA is killing American Science…and America

 

Powerful piece in the Economist recently, “MAGA’s assault on science is an act of grievous self-harm.” In it, the editors note that the Trump Administration’s current attack on science is among the worst things that’s ever happened to the United States. It is driving the best researchers out of the country, and depriving us of myriad scientific and technical advances – the sort of thing that builds economies and prosperity.

It concludes (chillingly) that what Trump and his minions are doing is effectively turning over the future to China, and anyone else who might hate us.

Conservatives Hate Science

You mean I'm not God?

So I read with much interest a recent article in EurekaAlert!, a publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Entitled “Conservative Americans consistently distrust science,” the piece noted that recent surveys indicated that American conservatives distrust and dislike science – and not just science that contradicts their beliefs (i.e., evolution and climate change) but science in general. They just don’t like it. Period.

In particular, they don’t like science because it says everything can and should be questioned. Nothing is immune to examination. Which is another way of saying that their own beliefs could be disproven.

And, in their vast narcissism, that is unthinkable. Conservatives of the MAGA variety must be utterly correct. They are infallible. When they speak it is ex cathedra.

And so science, for them, is blasphemy. It interferes, you see, with the everlasting worship…

Of themselves.