Instead of being in Congress or on TV, they should be in a court of law answering for the deaths and destroyed families they’ve caused in their quest for political power and advertising dollars...
I had stage 2 Lyme disease; a knew all about Lyme from living in NJ for 25 years but, didn't think it was in GA yet. Well, stupid me, I got bit on a mountain trail where tons of deer forage. I got the bullseye rash, all the symptoms but I thought it was a spider bite because my friend had just been bitten by a spider and she had a rash too. Power of positive persuasion. I ended up getting pretty sick and landing in a hospital on intervenous antibiotics for several days. That's what works on Lyme; not pesticides. So, the moral of the story is, influence of others can convince us of just about anything, if we're not careful. These politicians are just that; politicians. Ron Paul is a sociopath. Ron DeSantis is a sociopath. They will say anything for a buck (hopefully not a deer buck;). Couldn't resist.
This article has provided yet more insight into our nation's health crisis. Thank you!
I would like to add another reason that the working poor turn to alternative health solutions! They CAN'T AFFORD RETAIL MEDICAL CARE! As a young. single mother, I was always able to "work something out" with the pediatricians and medical doctors that I needed to see, but I vowed to stay as healthy as I could to avoid that expense. So I turned to diet, supplements, herbs, and other lifestyle methods.
I am grateful for that path, even though now I am able to afford medical treatments through Medicare, because I use the medical system only when needed. I was particularly thankful for the IRA's lowering of vaccination costs! Some to zero. Medicare is a true gift, but the lifestyle habits and nutrition are my mainstay.
Thanks for the background on this propaganda campaign against COVID vaccines.
I recalled on reading this, the christian attack on evolution aka creationism. It seemed odd this is no longer the rage. What happened after so many years of attacking the schools? I looked up some references and discovered to my surprise we had a supremes case which decided it was unconstitutional. See https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/264/edwards-v-aguillard.
Teachers (science in particular) being forced to teach creationism is against the first amendment's establishment clause! Note the cases came up from laws passed in states like Arkansas and Louisiana.
How is it education is under attack again against teaching history, teaching medical science, teaching CRT, teaching about sex (LGBTQ)? My suspicion is the fascists have found new empowerment in the biased supremes and politicians like DeSantis. Which means creationism's abject failure in 1987 was simply a trial run.
The war on science (which includes evolution) has been won in a majority of (red) states, instead of wastring resources (money and outrage) on evolution, the charter has been enlarged, to include abortion and LGBT concerns)
The war on science is still there, but has been subsumed by ideas that have a visceral tug at the amygdala.
Yep. I'll also assume the 1987 court failure motivated the surge in Federal funding for religious schooling. In those cases, no one was 'forcing' the teacher to cover creationism (or whatever that talibangical school wants to be taught).
What a great reminder/parallel between evolution and these other reality-based subjects. I wonder if the Constitutional lawyers involved in these cases are arguing this? Haven't heard about it.......
I am waiting for that technology that Dr. McCoy used on Star Trek before I spend much time with a doctor. On the other hand, modern medicine helped heal a broken bone, a few infections, and gave me vaccines that have spared me from death and the worst in life.
The behavior we are seeing from the right is fear-based, and if they read the science, they would know they are LIVING in "fight or flight mode" 24/7. They are scared and paranoid all the time and they try to force everyone else to join them.
I too wish we could prosecute the phony bastards involved. If you have time, watch the PBS show American Masters: Dr.Tony Fauci. He says he's made mistakes, but there is no mistake about the fact that he is compassionate, brilliant, and a hero. What the right has done to him is a crime.
Speaking as a long time family doc, I related to and was enlightened by your insights. I have been shocked by the vociferous, even violent, self-destructive wave of anti-vax, altRX, anti-medical science believers who rode the wave to their own death for many. No Nothing anti-science is very dangerous on an individual and society wide basis. I think you correctly and brilliantly capture the ethos behind it. The highly intellectual, academisized, data driven, bureaucratic public health establishment did not have a clue what this was about or how to deal with it. Hundreds of thousands of extra unnecessary deaths occurred. DJT and now DS both plugged into and magnified the dynamic you describe.
I would add that the vibrant anti-science culture also grew out of the SAME years' long political and cultural trends that energized the alienated, insecure, demoralized (and often unemployed) middle and lower classes that were exploited by DJT. Not only was the medical profession arrogantly dismissive of vitamins, of our dietary exploitation by big Agra, and dismissive of common but scientifically mysterious diseases like long lyme and CFS; the medical establishment pushed (or at least tolerated) narcotics to the point of a deadly epidemic, left us prey to the monetary exploitation by pharma and the insurance companies - so care was hard to get or led to personal bankruptcy or family stress - all tolerated or endorsed by a government that coddled the Wall Street, the banks, the rich, put us in massive debt to pay for many useless post secondary education experiences, and slowly sucked away jobs, our homes (see 2008), put us in wars that caused national PTSD that had no patriotic purpose; taking away our security and the social safety net. The irony is that they all turned to ethnonationalism (which seems eager to magnify all these problems while soothing your passions) instead of democratic socialism (which could really make a difference).
Given that there is a Cult of Trump, and that it is next to impossible to deprogram a cult (that is how we get religions, cults with a mass and socially approved following).
My only thoughts then, the less of them, the better for society and us. As Napoleon said"Don't correct your enemy when he is making a mistake"
One thing that is so daunting is the many layers of psychological defenses. Like "whacka mole," first they say"It's just the flu." Then if grandma dies, they say "It's only because she was old." If it's pointed out that twice as many Trump-loving grandmas died, they say you're lying. (and their trigger-finger itches) Whoever else died, died of something else, because Covid is (revert to "just the flu), but it's also a real thing engineered in China (with the help of Dr. Fauci) And if only the pond-scum treatment and the wormer had been mass-distributed, nobody would have died, and nobody died of them, you're a liar and my trigger-finger is itching again.....And I'm probably only scratching the surface of the crazy-making, because I don't go to those websites, where I gather there is an endless menu of responses to "own the lib," which is more important than life itself! Oh, whoops! Life at fertilization. Forgot.....
There is no discussion, no debate, no conversation with them, they keep moving the goal posts, because the subject is an excuse it is irrelevant. I don't even try, I just tell them to shove it, but in an unpolite manner.
The subject is "liberalism" or what they call liberalism, a term (liberal) that encapsulates everything that is a threat to male (mostly white) Christian hegemony.. aka patriarchalism.
I hesitate to confine it to whites, as increasingly it includes a lot of people of color, especially males. Males in the American Descendants of Slaves (ADOS) community and males in the Hispanic community. both communities are by and large misogynistic and homophobic, perhaps because there are is more homosexuality in both than commonly recognized or discussed.
I have noticed that those cultures where the male is coddled from infancy, which has a plethora of "Momma's Boys", like Arab, Italian, Hispanic, and ADOS also are extremely misogynistic and homophobic.. I am sure that some will take exception to that statement, but I've seen 30,630 sunrises and sunsets been around the wrold, lived in different cultures and have had a lot of experiences most people have never had, so pretty sure that my generalization is accurate.
Anyway, these psychosexual fears, that have long lay hidden, have been given license by Trump to come out of the closet.
“Why are So Many Republicans Embracing Quack Science?” The simplest explanation is that too many millions of Americans have been the victims of learning to be bad at learning thus making them vulnerable to the grifters that want their votes and their money. But, what is the root cause of Republicans eschewing critical thinking and embracing the ivermectinizing of their cult? I believe it shares the same root cause with all the other bad things in our world, and that is the morbidly rich who exploit their powers of corporate personhood. In perhaps the most important anti-promotion-of-our-general-welfare choice ever made, Reagan’s defunding of public education created a significant population of poorly educated racists just ripe for the grifting of Trump and his acolytes. Although they are unlikely to engage their critical thinking skills to acknowledge that they’ve been played, I always thought that if Trump did a good job of allocuting to his crimes, some of his marks could be won over.
I am a H.S. drop out, who went on to earn a Bachelors and Masters degree. I spent three years in ninth grade (1954-1956) because of the poor quality of education, incompetent teachers, I was bored and they were incompetent. I am an autodidact and I educated myself in the Public Library, result I took the HS GED and AA GED on the same day, while stationed on the D.E.W. line and passed both,later I graduated from University in two years with a 3.74 GPA, and later from my Masters with a 3.74 GPA. High School in the 1950's didn't teach anything, or (and this was in an upper class neighborhood in Philadelphia) the teachers were incompetent, and a couple of them were psychologically dysfunctional.
At least they taught Civics. There were three roads to graduation,General (which was college prep), Home Economics (to make good obedient housewives) and vocational, to turn out cabinet makers, auto mechanics and electricians.
If public education went downhill with Reagan, then it is irredeemable.
Wasn't it James Madison that veto'd a bill that would have given money to churches to aid the poor?
If you let the thief into the house he will rob or kill you. If you let a vampire in, it will suck your blood (OK I don't believe in vampires but that is a very apt mataphor).
You had to go and ask. Why do Republicans do what they do? You’ve partially answered the question. Easy solutions, quick fixes, arrogance, fear, and pure selfishness are certainly valid answers.
But, why do I feel like I’m in a bubble? I keep hearing about our own thousand points of light. Still, they don’t add up to much in a dark universe. The daily messages of action, condemnation, and hopefulness mixed with re-emerging hopelessness seem too much like a tempest in a teapot. Despair is not an option. But I have to delude myself at least fifty percent of the time to avoid despair. Are progressives really making progress, or are we treading water, or even losing ground? How much of our hope is just denial?
We cannot allow them to break our spirits. Yet how many of our institutions seem to have been hijacked and warped to implement the breaking of spirits? No, I’m not even talking about the “school-to-prison pipeline”. I’m talking about the US Supreme Court, the Congress, the hostile workplace, and the everyday public school where arbitrary authority has been institutionalized for the express purpose of suppressing, dampening, confining, and breaking EVERY child’s spirit before their spirit has seen the light of day.
I have spoken the truth. No one wants to hear the truth. NO ONE. I have violated the taboo. Public schools have wrought “miracles”. Or, at least they are reputed to have done so, and indeed they COULD have done much for society.
However, those same people who are now banning books and churning out fascist laws were the one’s who insisted that the people could not be trusted to make good use of schools unless they were compelled by law to do so. They brought the poison to the table and everyone thought it was going to be okay because kids must have discipline. Order, structure, and control are absolutely essential in the (small) minds of the influential elites. They altered the idea of learning and the pursuit of knowledge and truth and created places where there would always and forever be authorities to formulate and decree for the rest of us what truth and knowledge would be, and they call it curriculum and “education”.
Dogma, trivia, and testing are now the daily fare of students. Within the hierarchy there are the exceptional few, the winners, the leaders, and the academically talented. The rest will find Facebook, Fox “news”, and their ilk, and abstain religiously from books. They flock to the conspiracy theories, the quack or pseudoscience, and the comforting certainty of religion because the answers were given to them on the multiple-choice tests, denying them the felt need or opportunity to create their own awareness and knowledge and to discover their own reality through living in a real environment.
The milieu matters. What children sense and intuit matters. What they feel, and experience, and believe matters. Arbitrary and anonymous authority is not just a wet blanket and a dark cloud. It is the uninspiring, inimical, and unalloyed message that the people will not learn without a teacher and that they will not endure without the leader’s constant guiding and often controlling hand. It is the belief that their thoughts, perceptions, and beliefs cannot be relied upon. We, of all people, are supposed to be aware of this. We surely do know better. It is the antithesis of the essence of democracy.
I had counted on finding people here who could see through the smoke and mirrors. That has always been my downfall. I cannot stop hoping.
You've got a very valid point Robert. I was educated in the public school system in the 50's and got a good education including how to use critical thinking, something that hasn't been taught for decades. They've dumbed down education so people can't even reason through what's being jammed down their throats.
Thank you for the positive feedback. Let me respond with 2 thoughts. I graduated in 1959 and I do not believe that I learned much critical thinking from my school experience or that it was superior to what we have today. I don't call it a system. School under the traditional paradigm has always been organized chaos. Critical thinking, in my estimation, is not something that can be taught as a subject or learned in a classroom, especially when the environment is illogical and fabricated, prefabricated, or contrived. I suspect you learned critical thinking via trial and error, observation, a lot of reading and contemplation, and real life experience. They didn't "dumb down" education, because school is not education. They dumbed down school because school as currently experienced and for well over a century exists to establish a certain kind of passive and unthinking citizen. Education requires initiative, autonomy, self-respect, engagement, and self-directed efforts and goals, all which are undermined and discouraged for most students. Compulsory attendance is a sure formula for minimizing education. Look for a video about the TX teacher Sophie Marie today under "People are That brainwashed".
Ron DeSantis: " ... I would have fired somebody like Fauci. I think that he got way too big for his britches, and I think he did a lot of damage." ...Says an arrogant little pissant in platform shoes. https://youtu.be/w98XWZ980f4
And Republicans' other darling, who claims to be all about "law and order," has so many state and federal and civil and criminal charges pending against him that it's hard to keep track.
The death of irony is alive and well in "real America." Fascism under "God" -- "It is the way."
Irony: here are secondary ed. districts all over trying to encourage STEM aspirations, and the kid goes home and Dad and Mom are hating on Fauci and all that?
So many issues and perspectives. I am concerned that there are persons and politicians in this country who would prefer to encourage gun ownership and insurrection over teaching critical thinking/reasoning in our schools. Thinking/reasoning citizens are a threat to the fascist/authoritarian dictator or quasi-dictator. This, I believe, is why the Right so energetically supports book banning and the teaching of any narrative that questions "American Exceptionalism." That said, conspiracy theory thinking is appealing, I know as I have dabbled in a little of it myself. When you fear you are largely powerless, it is attractive to read or listen to the folks who are telling you that no one, no part of the "establishment" is accurate or truthful. The "establishment" (and this is the government, the school system, etc) is deliberately promoting lies and false information. Clearly all of the researchers are liars. Only certain people who question every maxim and propose alternate hypotheses are being truthful. Science, is our best bet. Science, when practiced faithfully, requires evidence derived from multiple lines of inquiry, subjected to review and replication before it is accepted as theory. Science and scientists are not perfect, but I will place my confidence in the scientific process over the quackery promoted by the "influencers" of this world.
I only used the examples of diseases that have Virtually disappeared after a vaccine was implemented for each one. I didn't mean to imply that all disease has been irradicated. I take supplements to boost my system. What is Steiner's complete name. I would be interested in looking up what he has to add to the conversation.
Rudolph Steiner was a significant Victorian German intellectual, probably the premier Goethe scholar of his time, and, I think, (personally) a person of some kind of extrasensory perception.
He was associated with the Theosophical Society led by Madame Blavatsky, but....complicated.
My respectful take on him is that he drew on a very sophisticated conventional background to INTERPRET seeings outside of what most of us don't see. I think his heritage passes the "first do no harm" test. Link above.
Thom, maybe just a word by you about the non-Republican other anti-VAXers, some of whom, otherwise, I consider admirable thinkers?
No time to look up all the right words involved here, but some links out there initially showed strong profit-motives in creating vaccines in the first place, this fueling many who have been against the vaccines from the beginning.
I remember reading an in-depth article showing how pharmaceuticals, or a couple individuals digging for profits, created the first formula, making it so very sensitive that the slightest sign of abnormality required the first vaccine, and that remaining the "bottom line proof" vaccine through most of the pandemic, I believe.
Another group saying, we'll never get wholesale immunity, unless we let older people and others immune compromised die, by we all not taking the vaccinations, this the way to crowd immunity, some of their older followers, saying, "I'm willing to die."
These same people, of course, pledging not to wear masks: "Our and our children's life experiences would be warped by these severe requirements."
Unable to agree with these other conclusions, I continue to wear my mask, last night's news saying there's another Covid variant out there, and I so appreciate fewer colds and flus.
The whole premise of Capitalism is rewarding somebody or -bodies for doing the RIGHT thing by enriching them. So, your concern is, they got rewarded for doing WRONG? I am sympathetic with your confusion. Jeese. Are there actually old folks out there saying, I'll die if I can infect my grandkids so they may or may not have some resistance? I am privileged to be in a location where the infection rate is very low: high adoption of vacc's. If not, I would definitely continue my mask: still conscious of too much crowding anywhere.
Yes, "I'll die," was the offer, and somehow, like very private schooling, was allowing kids and parents not to be vaccinated. The history of very successful vaccines for so many earlier threats to health, you'd think would support their validity and the necessity for them, in the view of these other individuals.
Oh my, you are living in a bubble if you really believe what you said, that "there are no contrary messages being suppressed." Check out the many doctors and nurses who have spoken out, and lost their licenses, or been fired, or various other consequences. There are a plethora of what you term "conspiracy theories" for the simple reason that the mainstream medias (owned by large corporations with financial interests) are the ones that have been doing the suppressing. People have taken to alternate sources to discover the truth, and of course, they're being labelled conspiracy theories.
You say millions have died from Covid, but neglect to mention the interesting fact that flu deaths took a surprising decline. Is it possible that hospitals were given more money if they labelled a death a Covid death than if it were a flu death? Sounds to me like you need to broaden your intake of information -- don't just listen to what Thom, or even the MSM, tells you.
OK, so "conventional" explanation of drop in flu deaths is that the same precautions: social isolation and mask-wearing, that were advised to try to avoid Covid, resulted in avoidance of Flu. Maverick, you need to have some documentation/ evidence that 1)hospitals got some bonus on Covid attribution, and 2) that test results for diagnosis were falsified, not to mention symptoms. With respect, "Is it possible that...." sounds like the script from "Ancient Aliens."
There was an anti vaxx movement before Trump, but it was limited to a resistance to the MMR vaccine, when my children were vaccinated there were separate shots for each and no shot for rubella, then they reformuate into one shot, and added mercury to extend it's shelf life, and after that there was an increase in autism. (I I know a controversial claim), just stating facts and time sequence.
Trump weaponized the anti vaxx idea. First he denied COVID19, tried to squash the stats, then a major donor that made money off hydryoxychloroquine and then Ivermectine filled his pockets and he started to advocate those as cures and prophylaxis. And the lemmings of the cult jumped on board.
Outside of the fact that these fools who get sick, affect my insurance premium, I really don't care if they get sick and die. It may sound heartless, but as the population of these cultists decrease, the propensity for the survival of democracy increases.
We are at war, and we know who the enemy is, the less of them, the better.
For instance Ukraine, as the stock of Orc's diminishes, the chances for Ukraine remaining an independent democracy increases.
I had stage 2 Lyme disease; a knew all about Lyme from living in NJ for 25 years but, didn't think it was in GA yet. Well, stupid me, I got bit on a mountain trail where tons of deer forage. I got the bullseye rash, all the symptoms but I thought it was a spider bite because my friend had just been bitten by a spider and she had a rash too. Power of positive persuasion. I ended up getting pretty sick and landing in a hospital on intervenous antibiotics for several days. That's what works on Lyme; not pesticides. So, the moral of the story is, influence of others can convince us of just about anything, if we're not careful. These politicians are just that; politicians. Ron Paul is a sociopath. Ron DeSantis is a sociopath. They will say anything for a buck (hopefully not a deer buck;). Couldn't resist.
This article has provided yet more insight into our nation's health crisis. Thank you!
I would like to add another reason that the working poor turn to alternative health solutions! They CAN'T AFFORD RETAIL MEDICAL CARE! As a young. single mother, I was always able to "work something out" with the pediatricians and medical doctors that I needed to see, but I vowed to stay as healthy as I could to avoid that expense. So I turned to diet, supplements, herbs, and other lifestyle methods.
I am grateful for that path, even though now I am able to afford medical treatments through Medicare, because I use the medical system only when needed. I was particularly thankful for the IRA's lowering of vaccination costs! Some to zero. Medicare is a true gift, but the lifestyle habits and nutrition are my mainstay.
Thanks for the background on this propaganda campaign against COVID vaccines.
I recalled on reading this, the christian attack on evolution aka creationism. It seemed odd this is no longer the rage. What happened after so many years of attacking the schools? I looked up some references and discovered to my surprise we had a supremes case which decided it was unconstitutional. See https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/264/edwards-v-aguillard.
Teachers (science in particular) being forced to teach creationism is against the first amendment's establishment clause! Note the cases came up from laws passed in states like Arkansas and Louisiana.
How is it education is under attack again against teaching history, teaching medical science, teaching CRT, teaching about sex (LGBTQ)? My suspicion is the fascists have found new empowerment in the biased supremes and politicians like DeSantis. Which means creationism's abject failure in 1987 was simply a trial run.
The war on science (which includes evolution) has been won in a majority of (red) states, instead of wastring resources (money and outrage) on evolution, the charter has been enlarged, to include abortion and LGBT concerns)
The war on science is still there, but has been subsumed by ideas that have a visceral tug at the amygdala.
Yep. I'll also assume the 1987 court failure motivated the surge in Federal funding for religious schooling. In those cases, no one was 'forcing' the teacher to cover creationism (or whatever that talibangical school wants to be taught).
Whoa! "Talibangelical!" Do I source it to you? What a beaut!
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Talibangelical
;)
What a great reminder/parallel between evolution and these other reality-based subjects. I wonder if the Constitutional lawyers involved in these cases are arguing this? Haven't heard about it.......
I am waiting for that technology that Dr. McCoy used on Star Trek before I spend much time with a doctor. On the other hand, modern medicine helped heal a broken bone, a few infections, and gave me vaccines that have spared me from death and the worst in life.
The behavior we are seeing from the right is fear-based, and if they read the science, they would know they are LIVING in "fight or flight mode" 24/7. They are scared and paranoid all the time and they try to force everyone else to join them.
I too wish we could prosecute the phony bastards involved. If you have time, watch the PBS show American Masters: Dr.Tony Fauci. He says he's made mistakes, but there is no mistake about the fact that he is compassionate, brilliant, and a hero. What the right has done to him is a crime.
The phony bastards are killing their own electorate. Persons who have a modicum of critical thinking skills are not buying into the b.s..
Speaking as a long time family doc, I related to and was enlightened by your insights. I have been shocked by the vociferous, even violent, self-destructive wave of anti-vax, altRX, anti-medical science believers who rode the wave to their own death for many. No Nothing anti-science is very dangerous on an individual and society wide basis. I think you correctly and brilliantly capture the ethos behind it. The highly intellectual, academisized, data driven, bureaucratic public health establishment did not have a clue what this was about or how to deal with it. Hundreds of thousands of extra unnecessary deaths occurred. DJT and now DS both plugged into and magnified the dynamic you describe.
I would add that the vibrant anti-science culture also grew out of the SAME years' long political and cultural trends that energized the alienated, insecure, demoralized (and often unemployed) middle and lower classes that were exploited by DJT. Not only was the medical profession arrogantly dismissive of vitamins, of our dietary exploitation by big Agra, and dismissive of common but scientifically mysterious diseases like long lyme and CFS; the medical establishment pushed (or at least tolerated) narcotics to the point of a deadly epidemic, left us prey to the monetary exploitation by pharma and the insurance companies - so care was hard to get or led to personal bankruptcy or family stress - all tolerated or endorsed by a government that coddled the Wall Street, the banks, the rich, put us in massive debt to pay for many useless post secondary education experiences, and slowly sucked away jobs, our homes (see 2008), put us in wars that caused national PTSD that had no patriotic purpose; taking away our security and the social safety net. The irony is that they all turned to ethnonationalism (which seems eager to magnify all these problems while soothing your passions) instead of democratic socialism (which could really make a difference).
Given that there is a Cult of Trump, and that it is next to impossible to deprogram a cult (that is how we get religions, cults with a mass and socially approved following).
My only thoughts then, the less of them, the better for society and us. As Napoleon said"Don't correct your enemy when he is making a mistake"
One thing that is so daunting is the many layers of psychological defenses. Like "whacka mole," first they say"It's just the flu." Then if grandma dies, they say "It's only because she was old." If it's pointed out that twice as many Trump-loving grandmas died, they say you're lying. (and their trigger-finger itches) Whoever else died, died of something else, because Covid is (revert to "just the flu), but it's also a real thing engineered in China (with the help of Dr. Fauci) And if only the pond-scum treatment and the wormer had been mass-distributed, nobody would have died, and nobody died of them, you're a liar and my trigger-finger is itching again.....And I'm probably only scratching the surface of the crazy-making, because I don't go to those websites, where I gather there is an endless menu of responses to "own the lib," which is more important than life itself! Oh, whoops! Life at fertilization. Forgot.....
There is no discussion, no debate, no conversation with them, they keep moving the goal posts, because the subject is an excuse it is irrelevant. I don't even try, I just tell them to shove it, but in an unpolite manner.
The subject is "liberalism" or what they call liberalism, a term (liberal) that encapsulates everything that is a threat to male (mostly white) Christian hegemony.. aka patriarchalism.
I hesitate to confine it to whites, as increasingly it includes a lot of people of color, especially males. Males in the American Descendants of Slaves (ADOS) community and males in the Hispanic community. both communities are by and large misogynistic and homophobic, perhaps because there are is more homosexuality in both than commonly recognized or discussed.
I have noticed that those cultures where the male is coddled from infancy, which has a plethora of "Momma's Boys", like Arab, Italian, Hispanic, and ADOS also are extremely misogynistic and homophobic.. I am sure that some will take exception to that statement, but I've seen 30,630 sunrises and sunsets been around the wrold, lived in different cultures and have had a lot of experiences most people have never had, so pretty sure that my generalization is accurate.
Anyway, these psychosexual fears, that have long lay hidden, have been given license by Trump to come out of the closet.
“Why are So Many Republicans Embracing Quack Science?” The simplest explanation is that too many millions of Americans have been the victims of learning to be bad at learning thus making them vulnerable to the grifters that want their votes and their money. But, what is the root cause of Republicans eschewing critical thinking and embracing the ivermectinizing of their cult? I believe it shares the same root cause with all the other bad things in our world, and that is the morbidly rich who exploit their powers of corporate personhood. In perhaps the most important anti-promotion-of-our-general-welfare choice ever made, Reagan’s defunding of public education created a significant population of poorly educated racists just ripe for the grifting of Trump and his acolytes. Although they are unlikely to engage their critical thinking skills to acknowledge that they’ve been played, I always thought that if Trump did a good job of allocuting to his crimes, some of his marks could be won over.
I am a H.S. drop out, who went on to earn a Bachelors and Masters degree. I spent three years in ninth grade (1954-1956) because of the poor quality of education, incompetent teachers, I was bored and they were incompetent. I am an autodidact and I educated myself in the Public Library, result I took the HS GED and AA GED on the same day, while stationed on the D.E.W. line and passed both,later I graduated from University in two years with a 3.74 GPA, and later from my Masters with a 3.74 GPA. High School in the 1950's didn't teach anything, or (and this was in an upper class neighborhood in Philadelphia) the teachers were incompetent, and a couple of them were psychologically dysfunctional.
At least they taught Civics. There were three roads to graduation,General (which was college prep), Home Economics (to make good obedient housewives) and vocational, to turn out cabinet makers, auto mechanics and electricians.
If public education went downhill with Reagan, then it is irredeemable.
These drugs also cause infertility. Let’s Go Darwin. #Karma has a funny bone.
I like. Infertility and ideological suicide. The death of a cult. Love it.
Wasn't it James Madison that veto'd a bill that would have given money to churches to aid the poor?
If you let the thief into the house he will rob or kill you. If you let a vampire in, it will suck your blood (OK I don't believe in vampires but that is a very apt mataphor).
You had to go and ask. Why do Republicans do what they do? You’ve partially answered the question. Easy solutions, quick fixes, arrogance, fear, and pure selfishness are certainly valid answers.
But, why do I feel like I’m in a bubble? I keep hearing about our own thousand points of light. Still, they don’t add up to much in a dark universe. The daily messages of action, condemnation, and hopefulness mixed with re-emerging hopelessness seem too much like a tempest in a teapot. Despair is not an option. But I have to delude myself at least fifty percent of the time to avoid despair. Are progressives really making progress, or are we treading water, or even losing ground? How much of our hope is just denial?
We cannot allow them to break our spirits. Yet how many of our institutions seem to have been hijacked and warped to implement the breaking of spirits? No, I’m not even talking about the “school-to-prison pipeline”. I’m talking about the US Supreme Court, the Congress, the hostile workplace, and the everyday public school where arbitrary authority has been institutionalized for the express purpose of suppressing, dampening, confining, and breaking EVERY child’s spirit before their spirit has seen the light of day.
I have spoken the truth. No one wants to hear the truth. NO ONE. I have violated the taboo. Public schools have wrought “miracles”. Or, at least they are reputed to have done so, and indeed they COULD have done much for society.
However, those same people who are now banning books and churning out fascist laws were the one’s who insisted that the people could not be trusted to make good use of schools unless they were compelled by law to do so. They brought the poison to the table and everyone thought it was going to be okay because kids must have discipline. Order, structure, and control are absolutely essential in the (small) minds of the influential elites. They altered the idea of learning and the pursuit of knowledge and truth and created places where there would always and forever be authorities to formulate and decree for the rest of us what truth and knowledge would be, and they call it curriculum and “education”.
Dogma, trivia, and testing are now the daily fare of students. Within the hierarchy there are the exceptional few, the winners, the leaders, and the academically talented. The rest will find Facebook, Fox “news”, and their ilk, and abstain religiously from books. They flock to the conspiracy theories, the quack or pseudoscience, and the comforting certainty of religion because the answers were given to them on the multiple-choice tests, denying them the felt need or opportunity to create their own awareness and knowledge and to discover their own reality through living in a real environment.
The milieu matters. What children sense and intuit matters. What they feel, and experience, and believe matters. Arbitrary and anonymous authority is not just a wet blanket and a dark cloud. It is the uninspiring, inimical, and unalloyed message that the people will not learn without a teacher and that they will not endure without the leader’s constant guiding and often controlling hand. It is the belief that their thoughts, perceptions, and beliefs cannot be relied upon. We, of all people, are supposed to be aware of this. We surely do know better. It is the antithesis of the essence of democracy.
I had counted on finding people here who could see through the smoke and mirrors. That has always been my downfall. I cannot stop hoping.
You've got a very valid point Robert. I was educated in the public school system in the 50's and got a good education including how to use critical thinking, something that hasn't been taught for decades. They've dumbed down education so people can't even reason through what's being jammed down their throats.
Thank you for the positive feedback. Let me respond with 2 thoughts. I graduated in 1959 and I do not believe that I learned much critical thinking from my school experience or that it was superior to what we have today. I don't call it a system. School under the traditional paradigm has always been organized chaos. Critical thinking, in my estimation, is not something that can be taught as a subject or learned in a classroom, especially when the environment is illogical and fabricated, prefabricated, or contrived. I suspect you learned critical thinking via trial and error, observation, a lot of reading and contemplation, and real life experience. They didn't "dumb down" education, because school is not education. They dumbed down school because school as currently experienced and for well over a century exists to establish a certain kind of passive and unthinking citizen. Education requires initiative, autonomy, self-respect, engagement, and self-directed efforts and goals, all which are undermined and discouraged for most students. Compulsory attendance is a sure formula for minimizing education. Look for a video about the TX teacher Sophie Marie today under "People are That brainwashed".
Ron DeSantis: " ... I would have fired somebody like Fauci. I think that he got way too big for his britches, and I think he did a lot of damage." ...Says an arrogant little pissant in platform shoes. https://youtu.be/w98XWZ980f4
And Republicans' other darling, who claims to be all about "law and order," has so many state and federal and civil and criminal charges pending against him that it's hard to keep track.
The death of irony is alive and well in "real America." Fascism under "God" -- "It is the way."
Irony: here are secondary ed. districts all over trying to encourage STEM aspirations, and the kid goes home and Dad and Mom are hating on Fauci and all that?
Thanks, that was enlightening.
So many issues and perspectives. I am concerned that there are persons and politicians in this country who would prefer to encourage gun ownership and insurrection over teaching critical thinking/reasoning in our schools. Thinking/reasoning citizens are a threat to the fascist/authoritarian dictator or quasi-dictator. This, I believe, is why the Right so energetically supports book banning and the teaching of any narrative that questions "American Exceptionalism." That said, conspiracy theory thinking is appealing, I know as I have dabbled in a little of it myself. When you fear you are largely powerless, it is attractive to read or listen to the folks who are telling you that no one, no part of the "establishment" is accurate or truthful. The "establishment" (and this is the government, the school system, etc) is deliberately promoting lies and false information. Clearly all of the researchers are liars. Only certain people who question every maxim and propose alternate hypotheses are being truthful. Science, is our best bet. Science, when practiced faithfully, requires evidence derived from multiple lines of inquiry, subjected to review and replication before it is accepted as theory. Science and scientists are not perfect, but I will place my confidence in the scientific process over the quackery promoted by the "influencers" of this world.
I only used the examples of diseases that have Virtually disappeared after a vaccine was implemented for each one. I didn't mean to imply that all disease has been irradicated. I take supplements to boost my system. What is Steiner's complete name. I would be interested in looking up what he has to add to the conversation.
https://www.steinerwaldorf.org/covid-vaccinations-advice-to-schools/
Rudolph Steiner was a significant Victorian German intellectual, probably the premier Goethe scholar of his time, and, I think, (personally) a person of some kind of extrasensory perception.
He was associated with the Theosophical Society led by Madame Blavatsky, but....complicated.
My respectful take on him is that he drew on a very sophisticated conventional background to INTERPRET seeings outside of what most of us don't see. I think his heritage passes the "first do no harm" test. Link above.
Thanks, I'll check him out
Thom, maybe just a word by you about the non-Republican other anti-VAXers, some of whom, otherwise, I consider admirable thinkers?
No time to look up all the right words involved here, but some links out there initially showed strong profit-motives in creating vaccines in the first place, this fueling many who have been against the vaccines from the beginning.
I remember reading an in-depth article showing how pharmaceuticals, or a couple individuals digging for profits, created the first formula, making it so very sensitive that the slightest sign of abnormality required the first vaccine, and that remaining the "bottom line proof" vaccine through most of the pandemic, I believe.
Another group saying, we'll never get wholesale immunity, unless we let older people and others immune compromised die, by we all not taking the vaccinations, this the way to crowd immunity, some of their older followers, saying, "I'm willing to die."
These same people, of course, pledging not to wear masks: "Our and our children's life experiences would be warped by these severe requirements."
Unable to agree with these other conclusions, I continue to wear my mask, last night's news saying there's another Covid variant out there, and I so appreciate fewer colds and flus.
The whole premise of Capitalism is rewarding somebody or -bodies for doing the RIGHT thing by enriching them. So, your concern is, they got rewarded for doing WRONG? I am sympathetic with your confusion. Jeese. Are there actually old folks out there saying, I'll die if I can infect my grandkids so they may or may not have some resistance? I am privileged to be in a location where the infection rate is very low: high adoption of vacc's. If not, I would definitely continue my mask: still conscious of too much crowding anywhere.
Yes, "I'll die," was the offer, and somehow, like very private schooling, was allowing kids and parents not to be vaccinated. The history of very successful vaccines for so many earlier threats to health, you'd think would support their validity and the necessity for them, in the view of these other individuals.
Oh my, you are living in a bubble if you really believe what you said, that "there are no contrary messages being suppressed." Check out the many doctors and nurses who have spoken out, and lost their licenses, or been fired, or various other consequences. There are a plethora of what you term "conspiracy theories" for the simple reason that the mainstream medias (owned by large corporations with financial interests) are the ones that have been doing the suppressing. People have taken to alternate sources to discover the truth, and of course, they're being labelled conspiracy theories.
You say millions have died from Covid, but neglect to mention the interesting fact that flu deaths took a surprising decline. Is it possible that hospitals were given more money if they labelled a death a Covid death than if it were a flu death? Sounds to me like you need to broaden your intake of information -- don't just listen to what Thom, or even the MSM, tells you.
OK, so "conventional" explanation of drop in flu deaths is that the same precautions: social isolation and mask-wearing, that were advised to try to avoid Covid, resulted in avoidance of Flu. Maverick, you need to have some documentation/ evidence that 1)hospitals got some bonus on Covid attribution, and 2) that test results for diagnosis were falsified, not to mention symptoms. With respect, "Is it possible that...." sounds like the script from "Ancient Aliens."
There was an anti vaxx movement before Trump, but it was limited to a resistance to the MMR vaccine, when my children were vaccinated there were separate shots for each and no shot for rubella, then they reformuate into one shot, and added mercury to extend it's shelf life, and after that there was an increase in autism. (I I know a controversial claim), just stating facts and time sequence.
Trump weaponized the anti vaxx idea. First he denied COVID19, tried to squash the stats, then a major donor that made money off hydryoxychloroquine and then Ivermectine filled his pockets and he started to advocate those as cures and prophylaxis. And the lemmings of the cult jumped on board.
Outside of the fact that these fools who get sick, affect my insurance premium, I really don't care if they get sick and die. It may sound heartless, but as the population of these cultists decrease, the propensity for the survival of democracy increases.
We are at war, and we know who the enemy is, the less of them, the better.
For instance Ukraine, as the stock of Orc's diminishes, the chances for Ukraine remaining an independent democracy increases.