Skip to main content

Invincible Ignorance

In a show of hands, a number of Republican Presidential candidates indicated they did not believe in evolution.  Others waffled.


How can this be?  Is this not the 21st century!  It used to be!


With only reluctant exception, the candidates also say they do not believe that human activity has anything important to do with climate change.  If every Nobel Prize winner in Economics said that this is the time for governments to borrow a lot of money and provide jobs for millions of people--as FDR once did--the Republican Presidential aspirants would say, "No!"; that governments are the problem, and that government jobs (police, fire, parks, roads, regulations, food safety, the military, etc.) are not real jobs.  


The earth is flat.  There was a flood over all the earth.  Jesus is coming on a cloud to drill for oil in the Everglades.  The Bible is a road atlas, and God told Michele Bachmann to run for office, and for Mitt Romney to wear special underwear.  Rick Perry is John the Baptist in boots.


"Science says the earth is billions of years old," they say, "but God says, right here in the Bible, on page 1, that. . . ."  Their audiences cheer for executions in Texas by the hundreds, for denying health care to anyone who cannot, or has not, paid for it, and for water-boarding suspects.  


They believe that ancient mythology should be taught in our public schools as an alternative to what we know is true:  i.e., that the universe is very old, it is evolving, and CO2 emissions are raising hell with the global climate.  


If those people have their way, Republicans will become a party in defense of ignorance.  Deliberate ignorance.  Arrogant ignorance.  Dangerous ignorance.  


I don't really care whether Michele Bachmann is happy to have Marcus as the head of their household, but HPV vaccinations do not cause mental retardation.  I don't care whether Mitt Romney thinks an angel landed on a hill in New York, or whether Rick Perry thinks the earth was created in six days, nor do I care that John McCain wets a finger to gauge the wind before he decides whether evolution is real.  I do care that they are willing to deny the best of what we know to be true.


Catholics have a marvelous medieval term:  invincible ignorance.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard
1 comment
Read more

That's all we want: fairness! Not more guns and more war! Fairness!

The five police officers who were killed in Dallas are certainly not the officers who killed innocent citizens. There is more than enough tragedy to go around. "What is happening to our country?", Mari asked this morning. I had no answer.  We do have an answer.  We do not want to say it. There are lots of answers, all of them pertinent. We are a racist society, like most human societies. We are a society in the midst of enormous changes-- social, political, economic--and we do not know what to do about it. We are divided unsustainably into absurdly rich, and an enormous number of crumbling middle class families, and poor. We have guns everywhere; military guns, guns just for killing people, cheap guns, heroes carrying guns into churches and supermarkets, idiots who think guns ought to be allowed in bars and schools and ball games and beauty parlors and political rallies. Our political process is almost useless. There are good people in Congress, but there...
Post a Comment
Read more

On Watching a Formerly Sane Man Descend into Abject Religion

If you read the previous post, you know the apparatus, pictured here, is a torture machine. There are ten of them in our house, purportedly to circulate air to dry out all the problems caused by a water leak. We live in Tucson:  it has not rained in Tucson since the Gadsden Purchase. A mudslide the size of the one in Washington State could course through our neighborhood and it would be bone-dry and stone-hard before it quit moving. I suspect it is the CIA, and probably the Border Patrol! We are, after all, only about a hundred miles from the border. I fully expect a large suburban assault vehicle to pull up to the house, and for lots of people with UPPER CASE LETTERS on their shirts to interrogate us, and I will have to explain that all the drugs I use come from Walgreens and Total Wine. But it won't work.  Our minds are going. We are getting short with each other and, if they promise to turn off the fans, I will confess to having invented the Arab...
Post a Comment
Read more