I figure that, with the election coming up in the next week or so, I’d best input my final two cents about the political system. I’m becoming increasingly disturbed by what I see going on in the conservative spectrum of our national discourse. There’s been quite a bit of outrage over some comments made recently by one Richard Mourdock involving rape, which is only another grain of salt in a wound opened up by Todd Akin’s now-infamous “legitimate rape” statement made while defending pro-life positions. So I say to all self-respecting Americans: hasn’t this gone on long enough? Aren’t we sick of our elected representatives spewing pseudoscience as if they were some kind of political medium? The time to end this anti-intellectualism has come, and unless it does end, Americans are going to suffer because of it.
I first started to pick up on this trend during the rise of the Tea Party movement way back in 2008. There was a great outcry for a grassroots political movement and a return to America’s “glory days” through simplistic, scaled-back governance. Ok, so I can understand if you’re feeling a bit libertarian, and maybe rolling back certain areas of government intervention would be beneficial, but the rhetoric that was thrown around was disgusting. Climate change and evolution were denounced as hoaxes believed only by the “Libtards” who worshipped Obama. There were constantly calls for the removal of political figures simply for the reason that they were well-educated. This was subsequently done in many states. Well, now their replacements are in office, and America is somehow shocked that these are among the most ignorant and divisive of any politicians to date.
Mr. Akin, a tea party favorite, has repeatedly and very publicly stated that he does not think evolution is a scientifically valid theory. This is in addition to his claim that women who are not pregnant can receive abortions. And of course his belief that women can’t get pregnant from rape as long it’s actually rape and she’s not secretly enjoying it. All that would be fine, providing that he’d never occupy a position where he could use his opinions to directly influence people’s lives. Too bad he was elected to a legislative position by people who apparently didn’t care that he believed these things.
Similarly, Paul Broun, who sits on the House Science Committee, claimed, among other scientifically invalid things, that the earth is in fact only 9,000 years old. To be clear, he participates in a body that determines vast amounts of scientific governmental policies. This is anti-intellectualism at its worst—or maybe its finest. Simply because he refuses to believe what the scientific establishment has maintained as truth for the past few centuries or so, he is therefore an upstanding, honest man? I’m sorry, but there’s nothing at work here but sheer paranoia over the idea that someone in the government is trying to pull the wool over our eyes. It’s the political equivalent of a raving lunatic running around with a tinfoil hat, screaming at you: “Wake up sheeple! The government’s known aliens have been visiting us for years, man!”
Frankly, it’s embarrassing to the more moderate members of the Republican party who don’t think that somehow the “Liberal Elites” are out to get them. Unfortunately, extremism has taken hold of their party, and it won’t go away until someone is brave enough to speak out against it from within the party itself.
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