[Vision2020] Grand Old Planet

[Art Deco]

  [image: The New York Times] <http://www.nytimes.com/>

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November 22, 2012
Grand Old Planet By PAUL
KRUGMAN<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/paulkrugman/index.html>

Earlier this week, GQ magazine published an interview with Senator Marco
Rubio<http://www.gq.com/news-politics/politics/201212/marco-rubio-interview-gq-december-2012>,
whom many consider a contender for the 2016 Republican presidential
nomination, in which Mr. Rubio was asked how old the earth is. After
declaring “I’m not a scientist, man,” the senator went into desperate
evasive action, ending with the declaration that “it’s one of the great
mysteries.”

It’s funny stuff, and conservatives would like us to forget about it as
soon as possible. Hey, they say, he was just pandering to likely voters in
the 2016 Republican primaries — a claim that for some reason is supposed to
comfort us.

*But we shouldn’t let go that easily. Reading Mr. Rubio’s interview is like
driving through a deeply eroded canyon; all at once, you can clearly see
what lies below the superficial landscape. Like striated rock beds that
speak of deep time, his inability to acknowledge scientific evidence speaks
of the anti-rational mind-set that has taken over his political party. *

* *By the way, that question didn’t come out of the blue. As speaker of the
Florida House of Representatives, Mr. Rubio provided powerful aid to
creationists trying to water down science education. In one interview, he
compared the teaching of evolution to Communist indoctrination
tactics<http://gofbw.com/News.asp?ID=8473>— although he graciously
added that “I’m not equating the evolution people
with Fidel Castro.” Gee, thanks.

*What was Mr. Rubio’s complaint about science teaching? That it might
undermine children’s faith in what their parents told them to believe. And
right there you have the modern G.O.P.’s attitude, not just toward biology,
but toward everything: If evidence seems to contradict faith, suppress the
evidence. *

* *The most obvious example other than evolution is man-made climate
change. As the evidence for a warming planet becomes ever stronger — and
ever scarier — the G.O.P. has buried deeper into denial, into assertions
that the whole thing is a hoax concocted by a vast conspiracy of
scientists. And this denial has been accompanied by frantic efforts to
silence and punish anyone reporting the inconvenient facts.

But the same phenomenon is visible in many other fields. The most recent
demonstration came in the matter of election polls. Coming into the recent
election, state-level polling clearly pointed to an Obama victory — yet
more or less the whole Republican Party refused to acknowledge this
reality. Instead, pundits and politicians alike fiercely denied the numbers
and personally attacked anyone pointing out the obvious; the demonizing of
The Times’s Nate Silver, in particular, was remarkable to behold.

What accounts for this pattern of denial? Earlier this year, the science
writer Chris Mooney published “The Republican Brain,” which was not, as you
might think, a partisan screed. It was, instead, a survey of the
now-extensive research<http://grist.org/politics/a-chat-with-chris-mooney-about-the-republican-brain/>linking
political views to personality types. As Mr. Mooney showed, modern
American conservatism is highly correlated with authoritarian inclinations
— and authoritarians are strongly inclined to reject any evidence
contradicting their prior beliefs. Today’s Republicans cocoon themselves in
an alternate reality defined by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and The Wall Street
Journal’s editorial page, and only on rare occasions — like on election
night — encounter any hint that what they believe might not be true.

And, no, it’s not symmetric. Liberals, being human, often give in to
wishful thinking — but not in the same systematic, all-encompassing way.

Coming back to the age of the earth: Does it matter? No, says Mr. Rubio,
pronouncing it “a dispute amongst theologians” — what about the geologists?
— that has “has nothing to do with the gross domestic product or economic
growth of the United States.” But he couldn’t be more wrong.

We are, after all, living in an era when science plays a crucial economic
role. How are we going to search effectively for natural resources if
schools trying to teach modern geology must give equal time to claims that
the world is only 6.000 years old? How are we going to stay competitive in
biotechnology if biology classes avoid any material that might offend
creationists?

*And then there’s the matter of using evidence to shape economic policy.
You may have read about the recent study from the Congressional Research
Service <http://graphics8.nytimes.com/news/business/0915taxesandeconomy.pdf>finding
no empirical support for the dogma that cutting taxes on the
wealthy leads to higher economic growth. How did Republicans respond? By
suppressing the
report<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/02/business/questions-raised-on-withdrawal-of-congressional-research-services-report-on-tax-rates.html>
.* On economics, as in hard science, modern conservatives don’t want to
hear anything challenging their preconceptions — and they don’t want anyone
else to hear about it, either.

So don’t shrug off Mr. Rubio’s awkward moment. His inability to deal with
geological evidence was symptomatic of a much broader problem — one that
may, in the end, set America on a path of inexorable decline.


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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