Amidst wailing and gnashing of teeth, reason and truth died yesterday.
There are three things to blame.
1) The consistent decline and devaluation of an honest 4th Estate. The media has become so embroiled in the "scoop" mentality that it is willing to allow bias and lies in as fact. Journalism is dead and our new president could not be happier. You no longer report, you editorialize everything into sound bites that will get the most ad revenue. You are broken.
2) Your faith. You sat back and let prayer decide the future of this country. You are a testament to the wrong-mindedness of belief. Your fundamentalists elected someone who should never have been in the running for president. If that is what your fundamentals are, you need to rethink the whole system. Your reliance on prayer has cost us the world's respect and our country has no dignity left because of you. Next time, start a conversation with your neighbor and ask them what you can do to help their situation improve.
3) A short collective memory and unwillingness to speak up. We have proven, as a nation, that it does not matter how many times you lie in public, if you have the ability to believe your own lies and push them forward, you will win every time. This is true in elections, and this is true in life. You know that friend who insists acupuncture works for them therefore it must be science? That's the friend you never correct. You never ask them to read that scientific paper because you don't want to rock the boat. Well guess what? This is your fault, too.
That's all I have at 4:30 am. I can't breathe, and I certainly can't sleep. This is permanently on the internet now, like every other opinion out there. And like those opinions, it doesn't matter because it's too late.
Wednesday, November 9, 2016
Thursday, September 17, 2015
manufactured doubt
In which I regurgitate opinions, and encourage some reading.
Quotes from Merchants of Doubt, by Naome Oreskes & Erik M. Conway:
On peddling false information: "Magical thinking still informs the position of many who oppose environmental regulation. As recently as 2007, the George Marshall Institute continued to insist that the damages associated with acid rain were always 'largely hypothetical,' and that'further scientific investigation revealed that most of them were not in fact occurring.' The Institute cited no studies to support this extraordinary claim."
On political motivation for anti-science mentality: "Some environmentalists no doubt are Socialists, but in our experience few climate scientists are. Moreover, even if all environmentalists were socialists, it does not follow that global warming is a myth."
On global warming: "Imagine a gigantic banquet. Hundreds of millions of people come to eat. They eat and drink to their hearts' content...Then, one day, a man arrives, wearing a white dinner jacket. He says he is holding the bill. Not surprisingly, the diners are in shock. Some begin to deny that this is their bill. Others deny that there even is a bill. Still others deny that they partook of the meal. One diner suggests that the man is not really a waiter, but only trying to get attention for himself or to raise money for his own projects. Finally, the group concludes that if they simply ignore the waiter, he will go away."
Quotes from Merchants of Doubt, by Naome Oreskes & Erik M. Conway:
On peddling false information: "Magical thinking still informs the position of many who oppose environmental regulation. As recently as 2007, the George Marshall Institute continued to insist that the damages associated with acid rain were always 'largely hypothetical,' and that'further scientific investigation revealed that most of them were not in fact occurring.' The Institute cited no studies to support this extraordinary claim."
On political motivation for anti-science mentality: "Some environmentalists no doubt are Socialists, but in our experience few climate scientists are. Moreover, even if all environmentalists were socialists, it does not follow that global warming is a myth."
On global warming: "Imagine a gigantic banquet. Hundreds of millions of people come to eat. They eat and drink to their hearts' content...Then, one day, a man arrives, wearing a white dinner jacket. He says he is holding the bill. Not surprisingly, the diners are in shock. Some begin to deny that this is their bill. Others deny that there even is a bill. Still others deny that they partook of the meal. One diner suggests that the man is not really a waiter, but only trying to get attention for himself or to raise money for his own projects. Finally, the group concludes that if they simply ignore the waiter, he will go away."
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