Yesterday’s Op-Ed column in the New York Times by Paul Krugman, is quite disturbing to read. In essence the GOP contenders appear to be frantically striving to present themselves as complete lunatics. He puts it more politely and uses the term, “Anti-Science” (well it is the NYT, they tend not to publish if you use terms such as “Clueless Gobshite”, even if it is accurate). He writes:
Mr. Perry, the governor of Texas, recently made headlines by dismissing evolution as “just a theory,” one that has “got some gaps in it” — an observation that will come as news to the vast majority of biologists. But what really got peoples’ attention was what he said about climate change: “I think there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects. And I think we are seeing almost weekly, or even daily, scientists are coming forward and questioning the original idea that man-made global warming is what is causing the climate to change.”
That’s a remarkable statement — or maybe the right adjective is “vile.”
The second part of Mr. Perry’s statement is, as it happens, just false: the scientific consensus about man-made global warming — which includes 97 percent to 98 percent of researchers in the field, according to the National Academy of Sciences — is getting stronger, not weaker, as the evidence for climate change just keeps mounting.
The rest is just as shocking, and it is more of the same. You can read it all here. I do encourage you to read it, not because I happen to agree, but because it really matters. Ponder over it and consider that we appear to be seriously considering electing an individual to the highest office who is quite frankly delusional and has no grasp on reality. Now that is a truly scary thought.
Paul Krugman, sums it up like this …
Now, we don’t know who will win next year’s presidential election. But the odds are that one of these years the world’s greatest nation will find itself ruled by a party that is aggressively anti-science, indeed anti-knowledge. And, in a time of severe challenges — environmental, economic, and more — that’s a terrifying prospect.
So what is actually going on here is in effect what can be termed a reverse takeover. Once upon a time, not too many decades ago, the GOP made a decision to utilize belief as a political tool to simply leverage more votes and popularity, and also as a means of manipulating large factions of the population into falling into step with their tune. Now however things have changed, and ‘belief’ is instead utilizing the GOP as a means to incarnate their insane beliefs into policy. What makes contenders such as Perry a truly terrifying prospect is that he is not just mouthing what the masses want to hear for votes, he actually believes.
My last word is a movie cliché, but what the heck, it fits …”don’t just be afraid … be very afraid”.