My blogging has been scarce lately, largely because I don't know what I have to contribute to the discourse any more. Here I was writing coherently about public health and health policy, and writing a book about it in which I lay for for the benefit of humanity what expertise I have gathered over the years -- and now I have to go back revise the whole book, and reconsider what use my expertise may be after all when the policy apparatus of the federal government has gone insane.
I get the basic idea that a small cadre of plutocrats, fronted by a megalomaniacal lunatic, are conspiring to install a fascist oligarchy in the United States. I get that. But I don't get much of the specifics of why they are doing what they are doing with the powers they have arrogated, except for the general idea that they want to create maximum disruption and consternation, and divide and overwhelm any possible opposition. But destroying the scientific enterprise in the United States seems counterproductive for plutocracy. If we fail to create a next generation of scientists, while those who can go oversees, that's not good for the techbros. But maybe they don't believe that. Maybe they think they can take over the scientific enterprise as a proprietary project, that they can own it, and that federally funded research in universities is just competition they don't want.
But applied science -- technology and patents, what makes rich assholes rich -- depends for its raw material on basic science, knowledge about the world that nobody can own and that you can't invest in because there is just no telling what's going to become the basis of technology some day and what that technology might look like. It was 100 years before Einstein's relativity theory became of any actual use, but now it's very important because the Global Positioning System depends on it. The same goes for quantum theory which only became useful with the emergence of microelectronics.
In the area of biology, it took more than 50 years before the fundamental understanding of the biological mechanisms of genetics and the functioning of the eukaryotic cell turned into effective treatments for disease, and now mRNA vaccines, monoclonal antibodies -- and on and on. They can't own science -- though it goes without saying that wanting to is an abomination.
The tariff thing is equally inexplicable, as is the repudiation of alliances, mass deportation (especially given that plutocrats depend on exploitable workers), and most of what they're doing. It just seems delusional to me, utterly insane. But I must be missing something.
3 comments:
Well, I must be missing exactly the same thing. Perhaps it all comes down to the Thanatos (death) drive. After all, it's hard to be wrong about everything -- but they're doing it!
Don - Interesting theory. But let me don my Freudian slip and propose an alternate one:
I've been struggling to understand all the psychiatric analyses of Donald Trump's narcissistic tendencies, and I think I'm getting a clue to the mechanisms involved. Primary is the idea that narcissists feel empty inside and require external verification of their worth, or perhaps their very existence. The catch seems to be that no amount of validation is ever enough to fill their inner void. (I can't grasp this myself, but I'll defer to the experts.)
When this condition is added to intelligence, energy, and ambition a narcissist may look for validation in power or wealth. Since their itch can never be sufficiently scratched this arc leads eventually to dictatorship or oligarchy.
If they actually reach this level they will indeed feel some validation and begin to think of themselves as intrinsically superior, and more intelligent, and wiser, than everybody else. Every success provides feedback to a sort of runaway Dunning-Kruger effect that makes them feel like the rest of the world just supplies toys that they're free to play with in their sandbox. The thought that anything they do could possibly break some of them just never comes up. Hence their lack of concern for what their actions mean for the future of science or medicine - or anything else for that matter.
Or maybe I'm just blowing smoke.
Makes sense, Chucky. Explains how we've arrived at a true kakistocracy. Only a truly insane society (and one in complete denial) could yield to such madness.
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