She Blinded Me...With Science!

Okay, although I don't like it, I have come to grips with the fact that the Republican Party is, at its heart, anti-science. The fact is, there are a lot of stupid people out there, with very silly beliefs. Someone has to represent their interests.

But I've always thought that the anti-science tenets came in two basic flavors. The first is pro-religious. Charles Darwin says that we descended from monkeys, but Pastor William, when he's not busy fondling small boys, says that we were created in the image of god. I like feeling special, rather than just being a monkey with a job (LJ, I'm looking at you here), so I'm going with the second story. Hence, evolution must be wrong, or at least 'controversial', or at the very least, 'hey, it's just a theory.'

The second, more important flavor of Republican anti-science beliefs is pro-corporate. Science says that it's a problem for our power plants to be dumping mercury and smog precursors into the atmosphere? That's ridiculous. How would you like to go back to a world lit by candles and whale oil lamps. No? Didn't think so. Electricity is good, therefore whatever we have to do to get it must be okay.

Similarly, driving cars is a good thing, would you like to go back to riding a horse to get anywhere? No? Then, there must not be such a thing as global warming. Oh, wait, the data is incontrovertible? Well, it's just natural climate cycling, not anthropomorphic. Oh, it is caused by people? Well, the outcomes will be neutral, or maybe even positive. More summer weather! Who doesn't like warm weather? Communists? Besides, putting a tax on carbon will destroy our economy, we could never afford it. And besides, if China doesn't do anything, then any improvements we make will be dwarfed by their coal-burning plants. So it's hopeless to even try.

So, again, while I don't like it, I've come to accept the battle lines. But, when I read about things like John McCain pandering to the 'mercury in vaccines causes autism' crowd, I lose all hope. Good lord, it's supposed to be the wacko left-wingers who accuse Big Pharma of killing our babies with poisonous vaccines, while Republicans defend the interests of their major donors. Especially given that, in this case, they happen to be right! Removing thimerosol from childhood vaccines has done exactly, ummm, nothing to halt the increase in autism diagnoses the last few years.

Please, for the love of all that is holy, can we try very hard not to elect this man, who only has informed opinions on issues which involve dropping bombs on people with funny-sounding names, and has incredibly ill-informed opinions on those topics? It's fine to have your supposed strengths be in the fields of national security. But we've seen what happens the last 8 years when we have a President whose interest wanes in topics which aren't of direct, personal interest to him. I don't think the one thing we need is more of that.