Lee Zeldin has voted against issues that would improve our environment 96% of the time. He pledged to reverse New York's ban on fracking during an unsuccessful run for governor in 2022. EPA for him.
RFK Jr. suggests we ignore the empirical evidence from centuries of medicine to follow his notions and whims. Trump chose him to be the Health and Human Services Secretary. Of course.
Linda McMahon has spent most of her life in professional wrestling. A millionaire many times over but with no background in educational theory and very little in the field itself—peg her as the new Education Secretary.
These three names, among others, highlight not merely a distrust of science, but an antipathy toward it and those who subscribe to it. Remember back to the time before tobacco was the demon child—remember how many millions of advertising dollars were used in advertising and government payoffs to keep the sale of cigarettes soaring? Big Tobacco denigrated scientific findings and might still be doing so if their own arrogance hadn't stopped them Thanks, Joe Camel, for being the bridge too far.
Now we see the same approach to health and the environment, but also education. Most of the cuts to the education budget will have little or no effect on what happens in local schools, but will seriously impede studies that try to uncover reasons why kids sometimes fail and how those failures can be prevented. No doubt self-centered taxpayers dream of the day when they no longer have to fund public schools. That's the problem with dreams—unless you're Hamlet, you're sure of waking up, and when you're awake, those tax dollars will be somewhere else other than in your bank account. A rocket to Mars? A Tesla truck?
My issues with RFK, Zeldin, Patel, Gabbard, and others are mainly political. These "chosen" loyalists are not going to uphold the Constitution or work in anyone's best interest except their own and their dear leader's.
McMahon is different. She's not a bad person, but she is unqualified. And for Trump, that's her strength. If she can somehow decimate our democratized education system, the MAGA party will end up with a public even more ignorant of issues—and of history—than they are today. Seventy-seven million Americans living in the world's greatest nation voted to make America great again(!) and for the man who promised to change everything! An educated populace would have known better.
It has become a tired meme to compare Trump to Hitler, but people conversant with history might remember that in Hitler's first major speech as Chancellor, he declared that Germany was in ruins due to previous leaders and Communists (for Trump, immigrants), and promised to restore Germany to its former greatness within four years under Nazi leadership. He also vowed to take decisive action against those who opposed his vision. Sound familiar? Comparisons may be odious, but sometimes we ignore them at our own peril.
We're not Germany in the 1930s—we're not suffering the ravages of a humiliating defeat in World War I. Moreover, there's always room for improvement—in the education system as much as anywhere else. Why not turn the experts loose as we did in 1957 when Russia launched a satellite, or in the 1960s when JFK promised to put a man on the moon, or in 2020 when Trump, yeah, even that guy, put together a group that created a vaccine ready for public use within one year and saved countless lives
Instead, it's amateur hour. We keep hiring Homer Simpson to monitor the nuclear plant. When it does finally melt down, let's not act surprised.
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