Pandemic Contrarianism & the Larger War on Science
Dinosaurs, Vaccines, and an "Expanding Hell."
Before me is a very lovely, very thick hardcover titled: DINOSAURS: The Most Complete, Up to Date Encyclopedia for Dinosaur Lovers of All Ages by Dr. Thomas R. Holtz, Jr. and illustrated by Luis V. Rey. This comprehensive overview is an extensive deep dive into our understanding of the titans which dominated our world countless millions of years ago. There's even an extensive chapter about "The Science of Dinosaur Art," detailing the science employed by paleoartists: the profession of drawing dinosaurs. It's quite the definitive tome about our ancient friends.
Recent events have reminded me of a decades old plot to introduce theology into the public classroom, under the guise of "creation science" and "intelligent design," essentially arguing that all of the scientists and their research into the history of our natural world, going back millions of years, has all been debunked by adding up the ages of everyone in the Bible going back to Adam & Eve! This proves the world is merely 5,000 years old and that man lived alongside the Stegosaurus. This disgraceful attitude is shared by numerous "critics" of the pandemic response, who foolishly argue that we should have done nothing to protect kids from a brand-new SARS virus, who even went so far to deny pediatric COVID-19 deaths as elaborate fictions.
Reactionaries have been at war with scientific reality for literal centuries, as part of a larger political campaign of domination over their fellow human. As the laws of the scientific universe exist govern independently from the perception and influence of humankind, the religious theocrat's claim to dominance over society is thwarted - hence why those who challenge the Church's view of the Earth not being the center of the universe were branded heretical thinkers. As we engineer and deploy tools such as respirators and vaccines to resist viruses that do us harm, like SARS-CoV-2, we resist the very "will of God" over our lives by rejecting the just world fallacy. Reactionaries branded these people as heretical cultists, including NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya who called anyone who resisted COVID-19 a "Covidian."
By prioritizing scientific pursuits over brazen indifference to needless death and suffering, we deny the power and influence of those who seek to control us through elaborate mythologies - an inherently political conflict that all of us must maintain constant vigilance in. It means acknowledging that cranks like economist Jay Bhattacharya are ignorant & incompetent, as the National Institute of Health is finding out in real-time, and denying their elaborate fictions of viral infections protecting against viruses.
Unscientific Saboteurs
While their plot to compromise public education in America was thwarted, "young Earth creationists" never truly vanished. In fact, they're back with a new theory about global warming that's worth a giggle:
“There are two sources of physical evidence that the expansion of hell is the cause of global warming.
1. Seismology 2. Ocean Water Temperature
You may be surprised to know that the expansion of hell is exactly what we may deduce from the available data. Hell is expanding. It's a predictive testable hypothesis. That means it's scientific.”
Of course, the simplest (and much more scientifically accurate) answer is the correct one: that pumping the atmosphere full of greenhouse gasses inevitably alters the environment's capacity to support human life - no daemonic realms required! Assuming one's ignorance over entire scientific fields of study to be of equal value to scientists who have spent much of their lives learning the technical specifics is simply shameful behavior. Instead, a vocal minority of cranks who made it very apparent they knew nothing about pandemics and public health exploited social media to become minor celebrities, and worse, government officials.
It may be fair to say that COVID-19 was the first pandemic for many - perhaps closer to all - of us. Yet, if we saw a full-sized pack of Gigantosaurs stomping down Madison Avenue tomorrow afternoon, ripping apart tourists into edible chunks, we would have some idea of how to respond thanks to the mountains of research from the countless years produced by archaeological study, even if we lack a time machine to witness the terrifying reptiles ourselves. Certainly, no one would be absurd enough to suggest that "we must learn to live with the massive man-eating beasts," letting them run across our playgrounds with reckless abandon, turning children into fleshy gruel.
Yet, there are those who foolishly insisted this would be just fine if it was a new SARS virus instead of a massive carnosaur.
Climate Denialism & COVID Contrarianism
For the better part of the past century, the fossil fuel industry which is rendering the planet uninhabitable for future generations has bankrolled incredible amounts of worthless propaganda to "debunk" the overwhelming majority of climate scientists. In 2020, these same interests bankrolled the Great Barrington Declaration, a useless online petition, after many Americans began working from home instead of driving to and from work. Dr. David Gorksi noticed as much in a 2020 article for Science Based Medicine, yet his warnings weren't heeded:
The wealthy bankrolled all sorts of disgusting anti-science propaganda to delegitimize public health and lifesaving mitigations. While doctors and scientists worked to save lives, they were kneecapped by an all out siege on the facts. Worse yet, liberals who claimed for years to stand for science, started succumbing to this propaganda. This even affected policy decisions.
The Biden Administration employed Brown University's Ashish Jha as COVID Czar, who was a stalwart champion of Brown University economist Emily Oster, who took funding from Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg, and other billionaires to insist that a new SARS virus is harmless for children. Mainstream publications such as The New York Times and The Atlantic sung Oster's praises, while also legitimizing anti-vaccine arguments from all sorts of dishonest propagandists. The Democrat Party is being lobbied heavily to embrace an "Abundance" platform, based on a book by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, which argues that masking doesn't work and that the National Institute of Health should be run like a business. Twitter user “rhubarb snackowksi” sums up this embarrassing tripe quite well:
“your book is grounded in the myth of the frontier, you donkey”
After decades of insisting they were the smartest people in the room, American liberalism is surrendering to the anti-vaccine movement and the larger war upon science itself, totally submissive to the whims of reactionary mythologists.
This is less of a "left/right divide" and more about the arrogance of the wealthy, who have constructed a new mythology centering them as the heroes of modern society: as a "Captain of Industry," the facts are what I say they are, Mother Nature's laws be damned. This is the sort of immature depravity that liberalism is supposed to be defending working families against. Tragically, the temptations of personal wealth have corrupted the obligations of too many they owe to the American public they were elected to represent - mythologies about "generative artificial intelligence" (literally none of the terms in this brand are accurate) have totally poisoned the well about a series of software products that produce a massive amount of pollution, and cause all sorts of other horrific problems for society, have become mainstream - with nothing to show for it.
“Fuckin thing is going to start giving us medicines called like Deccolððğ and recommends to give you 33333 grams of it” -Reddit User Rexicon1 reacts to the news story “FDA’s AI tool for medical devices struggles with simple tasks”
"Grok" was deployed in the name of "government efficiency" to destroy America's scientific research capacity, "MAHA" is producing worthless spam articles with imagined citations, and "Elsa" will now be compromising the Food & Drug Administration. Yet, liberal pundits like Derek Thompson still fantasize about a day where an "AI Agent" plans his child's birthday party for him.
Oh, and would you like to know a fun side effect of unchecked climate collapse? More pandemics like COVID-19.
No Time for Cowardice
The Democrat Party burned over a billion dollars in 2024 to suffer a humiliating defeat to Donald Trump, including $111 million on online ads begging for donations - losing them every swing state in the process. Now, they plan to burn millions more dollars on a new grift working with white supremacist Richard Hanania: "Connecting with Young Men," while idly standing by and letting former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, a notorious creep who got countless New Yorkers killed by sending COVID-19 patients to crowded nursing homes, try to run for Mayor of New York City on their ticket. Apparently, the Democrat Party thinks liberalism needs to be more like Donald Trump, and less like anything respectable.
Gee, one sure has to wonder just why people tune out and stay home on Election Day.
Surrendering to reactionary mythologies such as anti-vaccine quackery and outright "race science," in Hanania's instance, American liberalism is teaching these "young men" (and women!) that the Democrat Party will not fight for them, as America regresses into an irrelevant backwater dump of anti-intellectualism. That's the "connection" being made. Turning things around means taking a bold stand on some pretty basic positions like, "yes, kids should be vaccinated and boosted against COVID-19," and publicly condemning the exploitative sham artists of the anti-vaccine movement that are currently demolishing public health in America.
Taking a brave stand against the reactionary mythologies that seek to dominate our lives - from abortion bans to racism to vaccine denials - is an incredibly low bar to clear, and yet, we have an opposition so excited to give this all up in exchange for nothing more than empty promises and worthless symbolism.
The larger war against scientific liberty, from vaccines to climate collapse to even dinosaurs, is a political conflict in which one side seeks dominance over other's lives through the enforcement of obscene mythologies, wielding unchecked power to exploit and harm others. This conflict isn't won by finding some sort of mythical "compromise" in which throwing trans people under the bus, or suggesting kids aren't harmed by repeated SARS-CoV-2 infections, somehow becomes the acceptable liberal norm. That's surrender and a passive endorsement of the worldview of these abrasive, sadistic cranks who have already destroyed far too many lives by spreading disinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The American people must demand real accountability.
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