The Rejection of Science: How Did It Happen?

Of all the absurdities in modern-day America, none is sadder than our rejection of science, in particular, our broadspread and tightly held beliefs that our scientists are liars and crooks.

This is just one of the tragic outcomes of what happened in the news media business a few decades ago, when some corporate wunderkind woke up one morning with the idea to fashion an industry out of news.  He asked: why are we spending these massive fortunes on journalism, television cameras, and objective TV anchors like Walter Cronkite, when it would be so easy to turn all this into a huge “us-versus-them” drama?  Instead of news at 6 PM and 11 PM, it can be a 24-hour-per-day bonanza, with “breaking news” every few minutes.

Of course, it will come at a cost to the American people, in that it will enable sociopaths to inject a steady diet of bald-faced lies into the news mixture, but, like so many other things, that’s a just a cost of doing business.

Fast forward a few years, and Alex Jones is worth hundreds of million dollars.  More importantly, Donald Trump is the most powerful person on Earth.  When it comes to dealing with a disease like COVID-19, he’s suggesting that we ingest bleach and shine lights into our lungs, all the while saying that Dr. Fauci is a criminal.  No big deal.  A few hundred thousand unnecessary deaths.

The United States came within a gnat’s ass of becoming an authoritarian regime.  Yes, but again, just an acceptable cost.