Is Science Important?

We all understand that our World has been made much better through the advances in science over the past 500+ years. Humans used to believe that the Earth was the center of the Universe and the Sun revolved around it. They also used to believe that the disease came from evil spirits. We now know these things to be untrue, but at one time these were all accepted facts. In each case, one or more Scientists developed theories (Gravity, Germ Theory, etc.) that form some of the most basic underpinnings of science and we now accept as fact.

But two of the most important theories of science today are denied by the Republican Party. These are the theory of Evolution, and the theory of Human induced Climate Change. the evidence for both of these theories is overwhelming in its weight. You can’t begin to explain biology without evoking Evolution – which is a fundamental to Biology as Gravity is to Physics. And you can’t explain any of the changes that we are all experiencing in our daily world (winter without snow, drought, increasingly violent storms, etc.) without Climate Change. Republicans say that the science is “unproven” – which is technically true of virtually every theory, including the theory of Gravity (You explain how the sun exerts a gravitational pull on the Earth across 93 million miles – because nobody ever has). No theory has been “proven” beyond any doubt, but when a theory predicts, with a VERY high degree of confidence, a certain set of results, it becomes adopted as the basis for policy decisions by those in charge. Until now, the US has been a leader in adopting science-based policies, which has been one of many factors that has driven our success over the past two hundred years.

Someone recently offered a simple analogy. If your child was sick, and you took her to 100 doctors, and 98% of them diagnosed the same disease, and gave the same prescription for recovery, would you listen to the opinion of the 98% or the 2% who (loudly) gave a different diagnosis and proposed a different (or no) treatment). With Climate Change, the science is about 98% to 2% today. With Evolution, the science is about 99.5% to 0.5%. Yet Donald Trump thinks is a hoax, and many Republicans in Congress agree. The National Republican’s Platform doesn’t say anything explicit about Evolution, but the Republican Texas Party [http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2012/06/28/the-texas-republican-party-platform/] wants to teach Creationism (Religion) as an alternate to science.

History tells us what happens to nations that deny the evidence of Science and make decisions based on dogma. For forty years, the Soviet Union espoused the theory of Lysenkoism [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism] rather than the theory of genetics (which was not consistent with communist dogma) as the underpinning to its agricultural seed production policies. The results – millions of Soviet citizens starved to death, and the Soviet Union today has ceased to exist.

Now that Republicans have gained control, they are making decisions based on dogma rather than science. In a world dominated by science, where our Nation’s (and the world’s) success is based on maximizing the possibilities that science offers, how can they lead this county forward if the deny basic science?

Science creates our technology and also our weapons. When we deny science, we deny the very thing that keeps our nation strong. Our future is at stake.

The Cowards on Capitol Hill

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It has been well established that Donald Trump colluded with the Russians to steal the 2016 election. But the result of the election was that a number of other Republicans were swept into office along with him – enough to enjoy a majority in both Houses of Congress and and State Legislatures and Governor ships.

Make no mistake – Russia is our enemy. They, and they alone, have the capacity to destroy the United States. And every day they make more provocative and threatening moves which indicate that they can’t be trusted. They are led by a man who is effectively a dictator and who exercises complete control over the State, and nearly complete control over the private sector (if you disagree with him, you will be jailed or killed). Putin is a cold-hearted killer with his finger on thousands of nuclear weapons. He is the most dangerous person on the planet.

If all the Islamic terrorists in the world got together, (which won’t happen because half of them hate the other half) they could kill thousands of Americans – but they could not destroy the US. Nor could North Korea. But they both create a convenient diversion to keep our attention away from the real threat to our existence.

In a world in which party affiliation and loyalty are more important than almost any other characteristic in terms of winning elections, it is natural for the Republicans to circle the wagons upon hearing that their leader is in trouble. And many of them know that if Trump’s win is tainted, then the whole election is tainted – including their majority.

The bulk of Republican legislators are lawyers. By now many of them have come to the obvious conclusion that Trump is guilty.  And perhaps many of them already know more of the truth than has been made public. But their willingness to stick with someone who helped Russia steal elections means that they are also collaborating with the enemy. This cannot be excused. If they were true Patriots, they would abandon Trump now while they still have a shred of self-respect and decency.

But they will not. They try to cripple and obscure the work of the committees because they know that the results will make them look bad.

Eventually the truth will be made public. And Republican cowards will look VERY BAD. There’s another word that can be used to describe them: Traitors.

The Big Question

We thought that the big question was: Did Trump collaborate with the Russians to sabotage Hillary’s campaign? We don’t yet know the truth – but let’s look at what we do know:

  1. Trump’s businesses have been in deep financial trouble a number of times over the past ten years – and many of them went bankrupt. But in the midst of the financial crisis, when nobody was lending money, all Trump’s financial problems went away – because of huge influx of money. We know that, through a few slips of the tongue, the Russians have been the source of millions of dollars to the Trump organization. When Trump talks about investments in Russia, he chooses his words carefully, “I have nothing in Russia”, which may be true, but the real question is: “What does Russia have invested in Trump?” Given that Russia is a kleptocracy, with all major public and private companies run by Putin’s cronies, if he owes money to any Russian banks then he owes it to Putin. And if he owes millions (or billions), then Putin OWNS Trump.
  2. Trump won’t release his tax returns despite the fact that it is costing him the trust and votes of many people. Why would he do that? Because there is something in his tax returns that will devastate his credibility. What could be that damaging? Certainly not that he’s rich, or that he has not been paying taxes – those are established facts and have even been touted by Trump as a sign that “I’m smart”. No, it’s something really bad that would turn his voters away. It’s not hard to figure out that the only thing that would be so bad as to suffer the loss of so many voters is that the Tax returns would show the loan repayments to Russian banks. Nothing else makes sense.
  3. During the 2016 campaign, Trump’s team met with the Russians a massive number of times (reported to be as many as 20). Many of these messages were in European or Asian locations. Why would a busy person need to travel to Europe or Asia to have a discussion? Because what they have to say is so secretive that they don’t want anyone to know that the meeting is occurring. Of course some of the meetings were in the US, and many of those were short. (How long does it take to say “Yes, we will do your bidding?”). There are no legitimate political reasons for this number of secretive meetings – but there if there was collusion on a regular basis, it would take quite a bit of coordination – which explains the need for a large number of meetings.
  4. We have the special case of Michael Flynn. He was so sure of himself in the weeks after Trump was elected (do you remember how crazy that period was?) that he didn’t even bother to hide his tracks when he met with the Russians. Then he lied about it, and Trump reluctantly tossed him overboard. But Trump couldn’t have Flynn telling the truth, because that would cause the whole thing to collapse. So he pressured James Comey to let Flynn go – knowing that he committed a crime in doing so – because he believed the risks of committing Obstruction of Justice were smaller than the risks of Flynn going public with his story.
  5. Now we come to Trump’s obsession with the various investigations. Why is he so obsessed? Why did he fire Comey when he was thinking about the “Russia thing”? Is it because he has nothing to hide? If that was the case, he’d show all his cards which would make the whole thing go away. But instead he’s doing everything that a guilty party would do. He’s impugning the integrity of the people involved, of the institutions themselves, and of course of the press who merely reports what those in his administration are telling them.

But now that we have the details of Flynn’s activities, we see that the question has changed. It’s not a question of collusion, but a question of Treason. What else would you call betraying your country for personal gain? When Flynn told Russian Ambassador Kislyak that the incoming Trump administration would undo the punishments that had just been issued by the President of the US, he was betraying his country.

This cannot be allowed to stand. Trump must go. If there are any Patriots in the Republican Party, they need to stand up now – or be forever dammed as traitors.Hocking Hills April 2005 Upper falls cropped

Stay tuned.