John -- You obviously haven't read Steven Koonin's new book "Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What it Doesn't, and Why It Matters." What you should learn from this book, and many others by eminent scientists, is that climate change, aka global warming, has been distorted and exaggerated for political purposes. Koonin tells us over and over that what the actual science tell us, as outlined in IPCC reports and others, is not the same as what you read in the media and hear from climate activists and politicians.
Also, the suspicion that massive voter fraud was perpetrated to elect Biden has nothing to do with science or anti-science. Statistics -- maybe. The massive vote drops for Biden defy statistical common sense, for example. Forensic audits such as that underway in Arizona will tell us whether the election was stolen -- that's not science, just arithmetic and and matching voter registration rolls to ballots counted.
John, you write brilliantly. One quick suggestion: avoid using the word “prove” when discussing science. The only certainty is that there is no certainty. I’m sure you can find a different word / phrasing that packs the same rhetorical punch.
More to the point here, individuals, whether scientists or laymen, can have greater or lesser tendencies to be doctrinaire or, rather, to give vent to their inclinations to authoritarian responses generally in all kinds of aspects of everyday life. Ideologues are inclined to be ideological and authoritarians inclined to be authoritarian, perhaps over their lives changing the objects or orientations of their inclinations but not the basic inclinations themselves. One's ideological inclinations can, if they touch on one's activities in the practice of a scientific discipline, get in the way of producing good or “better” scientific work-results. But these same don't in and of themselves always make one necessarily “anti-science,” rather, they make one more prone to being mistaken in the practice of science—these are not necessarily the same things and the distinction is significant here. Some are, yes, “anti-science” in their general attitude. But it's very easy to misconstrue as “anti-science” tendencies what are the plain consequences of other inclinations that color one's general views. All science is ultimately done by humans using the tools they devise. And those humans and their tools and methodologies are inherently fallible.
(this revised and corrected copy from my previous and deleted post)
For a critique, I''m obliged to cite the excerpts below which illustrate my points to follow On further reflection, the present essay is a good deal more flawed than I first recognized and I want to touch on why I think so--
(A.) "The Elect reason like Trofim Lysenko and for analogous reasons. Lysenko perverted the scientific endeavor under Stalin, dismissing the tenets of Darwinism and Mendelian genetics because they allowed too much of a role to individual actors, contrary to the focus of Communist ideology on history being shaped by grand, impersonal currents. Scientific research of a great many kinds was shattered in the Soviet Union for decades, and crop yields went down because of Lysenko’s insistence on crackpot notions of agricultural science."
(B.) "The mask-resistant person who sits soberly insisting that Joe Biden stole the election should mystify and appall us no more than the people soberly insisting that microaggressions saddle black people with ongoing PTSD, that organizations will benefit from DEI programs, that any claim of victimization from a descendant of an African slave is automatically valid, that black people should walk in eternal fear of being iced by a cop, that any way that whites and blacks are not equal is due to bigotry “somehow,” and that to disagree with these claims is to be a backwards, heartless pig.”
(C.) "That rhetoric makes perfect sense to them – just as Lysenko thought that the way giraffes’ necks got long was when they stretched upward to eat and this changed the neck genes they passed on to their offspring."
_____________________________
The assertions about Lysenko's rationale and motives (in (A.)) _may_ or may not be true: perhaps Lysenko did regard "the tenets of Darwinism and Mendelian genetics” as ideologically taboo and, if so, perhaps that was, as asserted in John's argument, because, to Lysenko, those tenets “allowed too much of a role to individual actors," that being supposedly “contrary to the focus of Communist ideology” this ideology holdinng “history('s) being shaped by grand, impersonal currents.”
But, if so, then Lysenko's main error was in supposing that "Darwinism," that is, natural selection according to Darwin's exposition of it— never mind, for the moment, Mendel's selective-genetic-trait studies—was anything _other_ than "grand, impersonal currents" par excellence at work.
Because, for grand "impersonal currents," nothing tops Darwin's thesis of natural selection. That Gregor Mendel found he could use naturally-occurring genetic traits to selectively produce in plant and animal stocks certain outcomes seen, from a human society's point of view, as practically desirable does not at all suggest that "Nature" now does or ever has done any such thing.
So, rightly understood, there is nothing at all in Darwin's work which should have given the slightest pause to Lysenko (or any other doctrinaire Communist) on ideological grounds.
Indeed, as Michael Flannery cites in "Darwinism and Stalinism" (at https://evolutionnews.org/2012/12/darwinism_and_s2/ | December 12, 2012), F. B. Randall (1965), "Stalin's Russia: An Historical Reconsideration",(p. 69): " He (i.e. Josef Stalin) remained all his life an admirer of Darwin, whose theories had been so exciting and controversial in Stalin's youth." and, further,
(Stalin, to “G. Glurdjidze, a boyhoood friend of Stalin's relates:”...)
" 'I'll lend you a book to read; it will show you that the world and all living things are quite different from what you imagine and all this talk about God is sheer nonsense,' Josef said.
'What book is that?' I enquired.
'Darwin. You must read it.'" ...
(E. Yaroslavsky, (1942) "Landmarks in the Life of Stalin", p. 8)
(B.) Unfortunately for John's argument, these things simply are not analogous at all.
(C.) Lysenko's cited remarks about the evolution of giraffe morphology, while rather clumsily put and a bit reductive, are not, for all that, in its essentials a mistaken view of natural selection's _effects_: while, yes, the giraffes' necks lengthened not due to individuals' strained stretching but, rather, to the advantages of those individual who'd _had_ by birth relatively longer necks in the first place, thus favoring their survival and, by extension, their reproductive prospects. It's in this way that the longer neck is “selected.” We needn't assume, though he may have, that Lysenko imagined there being a “neck 'gene'”.
John, you’re really working overtime to both-sides this issue. Liberals ignoring the social science that the effects of micro-aggressions are exaggerated and that the benefits of diversity training are inconsistent are concerning, and I’m glad you are commenting on this. Abandonment of facts and evidence in favor of the adoption of pseudoscience to justify one’s pre-decided position is reprehensible. But liberals have just been dipping their toes into these waters over the few years compared to conservatives who have submerged themselves for decades without coming up for air. Republicans have abandoned any pretense of valuing scientific evidence against their own unsubstantiated opinions on a myriad of subjects, most notably climate change, not to mention abortion, gun violence, sexual preference/identity, the COVID pandemic, and possibly worst of all lately, the flourishing of democracy itself within our own country. Trump-supporters tried to overthrow a legitimate electoral process on Jan. 6 at the Capitol and are currently trying to subvert the Arizona presidential election outcome in the hopes of being the “first domino” that will overturn election results across the country and somehow catapult Trump back into office. Are you really going to be keeping yourself awake at night worrying about some well-meaning but overzealous and misguided attempts to even the playing field for black folks in this country while reactionaries are trying to steal your country out from under you? It’s like you’re worried about one of your kids playing with matches while your other kid is burning the house down.
Much earlier in these comments, I posted my dissent to John's dismissal of the validity of the 2020 election fraud claims. My comment generated about 16 likes, plus a sizeable thread of differing opinions, some in support, some in opposition. Of the latter, I was asked several times to substantiate my claim of massive voter fraud.
I wrote a 14 page analysis which I released on February 1, 2021 to a circle of friends who, like John, accepted the mainstream media headlines that no fraud had occurred. I believe they (and John) simply relied on the headlines for their position because the subject is too "octopodial" in depth and breadth for most people to understandably not be able to take time to examine for themselves. I spent about fifty hours in a deep dive -- still just a glimmer. Although I am a lawyer of leftist persuasion, any lay person can do this type of investigation as well. Download the study here: https://spaces.hightail.com/space/wBxR282rh5
Nota Bene -- I have not updated my February 1, 2021 findings and obviously, there have been changes in the then pending lawsuits. For example, the Supreme Court threw out the heavily documented Pennsylvania petition -- again on mere procedural grounds. Arizona is currently attempting an audit of Maricopa County votes but faces obstinate opposition from its election commissioners. As I said in my comments below, there is nothing more democratic than a full examination of the people's ballots where a stench of fraud hovers in the air. Audits may well ensue in Wisconsin and Georgia. A judge in Michigan has thrown out attorney Matthew DePerno's substantially documented fraud claim -- again on procedural grounds -- and he vigorously plans an appeal.
Second Nota Bene --- Virtually every claim I made in my little study carries a hyperlink. I have not double checked those links of late but I do not doubt that many of them have likely been censored and deleted, Soviet-style. Big Tech is in lockstep with the Democrats and does not want any evidence of fraud tainting the laughable -- actually, lamentable -- Official Narrative that the 2020 elections were free and fair.
Finally, I feel I must say that I'm non-partisan. I voted, but could not bring myself to vote for either Trump or Biden. My interest in studying the 2020 election was solely for the integrity of democracy. If you read my study, I make this clear in the beginning and the conclusion.
I have to correct a false picture I l left of Ignaz Semmelweiss and his ability to withstand his peers' criticisms. He ended his days despairing and in an asylum. Thus, I am a world away from such a sorry fate. I certainly needn't despair over the extent of idiocy and gullibility on the part of vast numbers of the general public. Semmelweiss needed more in the courage of his convictions. In his defense, the spectacle of so many lives being needlessly lost, wasted, through his own medical profession's stunning and arrogant stupidity broke him.
Even today, the number of lives lost to the work of contemporary received opinions' errors is surely incalculable. I'm not going to have a break-down over that fact. This is the way of human nature and people in all times. As someone wrote and put in the mouth of his character, "Puck", "Lord, what fools these mortals be!"
I would argue that the balance of the critical comments concerning JM's post further prove JM's essential point. Obviously motivated by partisan interests, many who apparently have scant to zero training in science have offered trollishly inane and laughably dismissible claims about JM's familiarity with scientific methodology, climate change, masks, election fraud, etc. None of those topics/issues are as binary as either the Left or Right often argue. If I were to generalize, I would argue that across a range of issues the Left too frequently reacts with hysteria and the Right is frequently too dismissive of evidence. Both sides seek to use science to further their political agenda. JM's article correctly argues that —despite their lip service to science — the Elect (I prefer to call them neoracists) and many progressives are as dismissive of science as those on the Right that they frequently and vociferously denounce as anti-science when that science interferes with their attempts to reshape society, enact wealth transfer schemes, etc. In fact, I think JM leaves on the table the argument that progressive leftists are now trying to achieve many of the same changes (e.g., social restructuring, weakening America's global influence, wealth transfer, etc.) via race-based arguments that they have been unable to achieve with anti-capitalism and climate change-based movements. Regardless, I think many of the partisan comments herein support JM's contention that the ranks of the partisans —both Left and Right are filled with those ignorant of science, how science works, etc. neither side has the high ground across a range of issues. The unwashed —again both Left and Right — often just don't know what they don't know, and/or they are so partisan that they intentionally cherry pick science in order to distort it and claim it for their cause. It's a grey world. Science evolves as data evolves. It is never settled, yet we also can't ignore the the current weight of evidence with regard to issues.
John, I'm already on record here (and elsewhere) as your admiring reader. I needn't agree with you on every point of every controversy to recognize that yours are so very often (even usually!) exceptional insights into things. That's why it doesn't bother me that we disagree about the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential outcome, putting Mr. Biden in office. As with those future historians you mention, I believe that one day you, too, shall subscribe to the view that the election was from the earliest days an elaborate program of corruption on the part of the national Democratic party's elite. Elections, like life, can go wrong, can have corrupt outcomes; they come and go and today's officials, elected as heroes, can become tomorrow's discredited fools, recognized as such, at length, even by their former fans.
I no more believe that everything is explainable as the result of diabolical conspiracies than I believe that nothing is explainable as that. By the time one reaches my age, if not much before, many people can grasp that electoral politics are practically by nature and by definition "works of conspiracy." There is nothing particularly more conspiratorial in our times. They're also perhaps not even particularly more corrupt than is usually the case. But I suspect that they're significantly more cynical than has been the case over the past century and, having lived through the Nixon years, that is really saying something.
We need and appreciate your wisdom--even when, sometimes, you get something important importantly wrong. The thing which separates you from so many is that, clearly, your mind is open to evidence and reason where those of others just are not.
For me, much of the evidence and the reason which goes with it tells me that, indeed, the 2020 presidential election was stolen in the worst ways and to the great harm of all of us, those involved in the theft included. That's what makes this kind of treachery so terrible: its harms spare no one. Those who perpetrated it, _knowing_ what they've done, who now complacently believe that "we got away with it" could not be more wrong. And that view is precisely why their failures of reason and understanding make them such dangerous and destructive actors in political life.
These lessons are going to continue to be terribly painful and terribly costly to learn.
But you're among those who _can_ learn them. For that I am grateful and I'll continue to read your essays and admire you for them.
I thought this would be the essay where you finally talked about the unscientific gender science that the Elect has contorted itself to adopt. That's a whole leap beyond faux social science--it's faux science science!
For all of you conservatives who are complaining about John's more progressive statements and references: can you please spread the word that many of us on the left are absolutely not supporting Wokeism and CRT in its extremes (as carefully described in this Substack series.)
It bothers me when the entire left (which extends pretty far into the erstwhile center these days) gets breathlessly straw-manned by the right on radical left positions that most of us liberals likewise condemn.
I've said before that the only difference between the extreme right and extreme left is that the right executes astronomers and the left biologists. The right can't handle the truth about the universe, and the left can't handle the truth about ourselves.
More reading recommendations:
"The Panic Pandemic" : Fearmongering from journalists, scientists, and politicians did more harm than the virus.
John Tierney
@ CITY JOURNAL's magazine
Link: https://www.city-journal.org/panic-pandemic
Summer 2021
TAGS: Covid-19, Economy, finance, and budgets
John -- You obviously haven't read Steven Koonin's new book "Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What it Doesn't, and Why It Matters." What you should learn from this book, and many others by eminent scientists, is that climate change, aka global warming, has been distorted and exaggerated for political purposes. Koonin tells us over and over that what the actual science tell us, as outlined in IPCC reports and others, is not the same as what you read in the media and hear from climate activists and politicians.
Also, the suspicion that massive voter fraud was perpetrated to elect Biden has nothing to do with science or anti-science. Statistics -- maybe. The massive vote drops for Biden defy statistical common sense, for example. Forensic audits such as that underway in Arizona will tell us whether the election was stolen -- that's not science, just arithmetic and and matching voter registration rolls to ballots counted.
But otherwise, you're right on.
Funny, I compared Fauci to Lysenko. Lysenko is getting around these days: https://scareballoon.substack.com/p/plague-journal-may-2020-yellow-journalism
John, you write brilliantly. One quick suggestion: avoid using the word “prove” when discussing science. The only certainty is that there is no certainty. I’m sure you can find a different word / phrasing that packs the same rhetorical punch.
You are a hero, John.
Also:
“These programs neither further diversify the workplace nor foster interethnic harmony (and in fact, if anything, increase it).”
Did you mean to say “decrease” it?
More to the point here, individuals, whether scientists or laymen, can have greater or lesser tendencies to be doctrinaire or, rather, to give vent to their inclinations to authoritarian responses generally in all kinds of aspects of everyday life. Ideologues are inclined to be ideological and authoritarians inclined to be authoritarian, perhaps over their lives changing the objects or orientations of their inclinations but not the basic inclinations themselves. One's ideological inclinations can, if they touch on one's activities in the practice of a scientific discipline, get in the way of producing good or “better” scientific work-results. But these same don't in and of themselves always make one necessarily “anti-science,” rather, they make one more prone to being mistaken in the practice of science—these are not necessarily the same things and the distinction is significant here. Some are, yes, “anti-science” in their general attitude. But it's very easy to misconstrue as “anti-science” tendencies what are the plain consequences of other inclinations that color one's general views. All science is ultimately done by humans using the tools they devise. And those humans and their tools and methodologies are inherently fallible.
(this revised and corrected copy from my previous and deleted post)
For a critique, I''m obliged to cite the excerpts below which illustrate my points to follow On further reflection, the present essay is a good deal more flawed than I first recognized and I want to touch on why I think so--
(A.) "The Elect reason like Trofim Lysenko and for analogous reasons. Lysenko perverted the scientific endeavor under Stalin, dismissing the tenets of Darwinism and Mendelian genetics because they allowed too much of a role to individual actors, contrary to the focus of Communist ideology on history being shaped by grand, impersonal currents. Scientific research of a great many kinds was shattered in the Soviet Union for decades, and crop yields went down because of Lysenko’s insistence on crackpot notions of agricultural science."
(B.) "The mask-resistant person who sits soberly insisting that Joe Biden stole the election should mystify and appall us no more than the people soberly insisting that microaggressions saddle black people with ongoing PTSD, that organizations will benefit from DEI programs, that any claim of victimization from a descendant of an African slave is automatically valid, that black people should walk in eternal fear of being iced by a cop, that any way that whites and blacks are not equal is due to bigotry “somehow,” and that to disagree with these claims is to be a backwards, heartless pig.”
(C.) "That rhetoric makes perfect sense to them – just as Lysenko thought that the way giraffes’ necks got long was when they stretched upward to eat and this changed the neck genes they passed on to their offspring."
_____________________________
The assertions about Lysenko's rationale and motives (in (A.)) _may_ or may not be true: perhaps Lysenko did regard "the tenets of Darwinism and Mendelian genetics” as ideologically taboo and, if so, perhaps that was, as asserted in John's argument, because, to Lysenko, those tenets “allowed too much of a role to individual actors," that being supposedly “contrary to the focus of Communist ideology” this ideology holdinng “history('s) being shaped by grand, impersonal currents.”
But, if so, then Lysenko's main error was in supposing that "Darwinism," that is, natural selection according to Darwin's exposition of it— never mind, for the moment, Mendel's selective-genetic-trait studies—was anything _other_ than "grand, impersonal currents" par excellence at work.
Because, for grand "impersonal currents," nothing tops Darwin's thesis of natural selection. That Gregor Mendel found he could use naturally-occurring genetic traits to selectively produce in plant and animal stocks certain outcomes seen, from a human society's point of view, as practically desirable does not at all suggest that "Nature" now does or ever has done any such thing.
So, rightly understood, there is nothing at all in Darwin's work which should have given the slightest pause to Lysenko (or any other doctrinaire Communist) on ideological grounds.
Indeed, as Michael Flannery cites in "Darwinism and Stalinism" (at https://evolutionnews.org/2012/12/darwinism_and_s2/ | December 12, 2012), F. B. Randall (1965), "Stalin's Russia: An Historical Reconsideration",(p. 69): " He (i.e. Josef Stalin) remained all his life an admirer of Darwin, whose theories had been so exciting and controversial in Stalin's youth." and, further,
(Stalin, to “G. Glurdjidze, a boyhoood friend of Stalin's relates:”...)
" 'I'll lend you a book to read; it will show you that the world and all living things are quite different from what you imagine and all this talk about God is sheer nonsense,' Josef said.
'What book is that?' I enquired.
'Darwin. You must read it.'" ...
(E. Yaroslavsky, (1942) "Landmarks in the Life of Stalin", p. 8)
(B.) Unfortunately for John's argument, these things simply are not analogous at all.
(C.) Lysenko's cited remarks about the evolution of giraffe morphology, while rather clumsily put and a bit reductive, are not, for all that, in its essentials a mistaken view of natural selection's _effects_: while, yes, the giraffes' necks lengthened not due to individuals' strained stretching but, rather, to the advantages of those individual who'd _had_ by birth relatively longer necks in the first place, thus favoring their survival and, by extension, their reproductive prospects. It's in this way that the longer neck is “selected.” We needn't assume, though he may have, that Lysenko imagined there being a “neck 'gene'”.
"These programs neither further diversify the workplace nor foster interethnic harmony (and in fact, if anything, increase it)."
Could you possibly mean "decrease it"? (I am taking "it" to mean "interethnic harmony."
John, you’re really working overtime to both-sides this issue. Liberals ignoring the social science that the effects of micro-aggressions are exaggerated and that the benefits of diversity training are inconsistent are concerning, and I’m glad you are commenting on this. Abandonment of facts and evidence in favor of the adoption of pseudoscience to justify one’s pre-decided position is reprehensible. But liberals have just been dipping their toes into these waters over the few years compared to conservatives who have submerged themselves for decades without coming up for air. Republicans have abandoned any pretense of valuing scientific evidence against their own unsubstantiated opinions on a myriad of subjects, most notably climate change, not to mention abortion, gun violence, sexual preference/identity, the COVID pandemic, and possibly worst of all lately, the flourishing of democracy itself within our own country. Trump-supporters tried to overthrow a legitimate electoral process on Jan. 6 at the Capitol and are currently trying to subvert the Arizona presidential election outcome in the hopes of being the “first domino” that will overturn election results across the country and somehow catapult Trump back into office. Are you really going to be keeping yourself awake at night worrying about some well-meaning but overzealous and misguided attempts to even the playing field for black folks in this country while reactionaries are trying to steal your country out from under you? It’s like you’re worried about one of your kids playing with matches while your other kid is burning the house down.
Much earlier in these comments, I posted my dissent to John's dismissal of the validity of the 2020 election fraud claims. My comment generated about 16 likes, plus a sizeable thread of differing opinions, some in support, some in opposition. Of the latter, I was asked several times to substantiate my claim of massive voter fraud.
I wrote a 14 page analysis which I released on February 1, 2021 to a circle of friends who, like John, accepted the mainstream media headlines that no fraud had occurred. I believe they (and John) simply relied on the headlines for their position because the subject is too "octopodial" in depth and breadth for most people to understandably not be able to take time to examine for themselves. I spent about fifty hours in a deep dive -- still just a glimmer. Although I am a lawyer of leftist persuasion, any lay person can do this type of investigation as well. Download the study here: https://spaces.hightail.com/space/wBxR282rh5
Nota Bene -- I have not updated my February 1, 2021 findings and obviously, there have been changes in the then pending lawsuits. For example, the Supreme Court threw out the heavily documented Pennsylvania petition -- again on mere procedural grounds. Arizona is currently attempting an audit of Maricopa County votes but faces obstinate opposition from its election commissioners. As I said in my comments below, there is nothing more democratic than a full examination of the people's ballots where a stench of fraud hovers in the air. Audits may well ensue in Wisconsin and Georgia. A judge in Michigan has thrown out attorney Matthew DePerno's substantially documented fraud claim -- again on procedural grounds -- and he vigorously plans an appeal.
Second Nota Bene --- Virtually every claim I made in my little study carries a hyperlink. I have not double checked those links of late but I do not doubt that many of them have likely been censored and deleted, Soviet-style. Big Tech is in lockstep with the Democrats and does not want any evidence of fraud tainting the laughable -- actually, lamentable -- Official Narrative that the 2020 elections were free and fair.
Finally, I feel I must say that I'm non-partisan. I voted, but could not bring myself to vote for either Trump or Biden. My interest in studying the 2020 election was solely for the integrity of democracy. If you read my study, I make this clear in the beginning and the conclusion.
I have to correct a false picture I l left of Ignaz Semmelweiss and his ability to withstand his peers' criticisms. He ended his days despairing and in an asylum. Thus, I am a world away from such a sorry fate. I certainly needn't despair over the extent of idiocy and gullibility on the part of vast numbers of the general public. Semmelweiss needed more in the courage of his convictions. In his defense, the spectacle of so many lives being needlessly lost, wasted, through his own medical profession's stunning and arrogant stupidity broke him.
Even today, the number of lives lost to the work of contemporary received opinions' errors is surely incalculable. I'm not going to have a break-down over that fact. This is the way of human nature and people in all times. As someone wrote and put in the mouth of his character, "Puck", "Lord, what fools these mortals be!"
I would argue that the balance of the critical comments concerning JM's post further prove JM's essential point. Obviously motivated by partisan interests, many who apparently have scant to zero training in science have offered trollishly inane and laughably dismissible claims about JM's familiarity with scientific methodology, climate change, masks, election fraud, etc. None of those topics/issues are as binary as either the Left or Right often argue. If I were to generalize, I would argue that across a range of issues the Left too frequently reacts with hysteria and the Right is frequently too dismissive of evidence. Both sides seek to use science to further their political agenda. JM's article correctly argues that —despite their lip service to science — the Elect (I prefer to call them neoracists) and many progressives are as dismissive of science as those on the Right that they frequently and vociferously denounce as anti-science when that science interferes with their attempts to reshape society, enact wealth transfer schemes, etc. In fact, I think JM leaves on the table the argument that progressive leftists are now trying to achieve many of the same changes (e.g., social restructuring, weakening America's global influence, wealth transfer, etc.) via race-based arguments that they have been unable to achieve with anti-capitalism and climate change-based movements. Regardless, I think many of the partisan comments herein support JM's contention that the ranks of the partisans —both Left and Right are filled with those ignorant of science, how science works, etc. neither side has the high ground across a range of issues. The unwashed —again both Left and Right — often just don't know what they don't know, and/or they are so partisan that they intentionally cherry pick science in order to distort it and claim it for their cause. It's a grey world. Science evolves as data evolves. It is never settled, yet we also can't ignore the the current weight of evidence with regard to issues.
John, I'm already on record here (and elsewhere) as your admiring reader. I needn't agree with you on every point of every controversy to recognize that yours are so very often (even usually!) exceptional insights into things. That's why it doesn't bother me that we disagree about the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential outcome, putting Mr. Biden in office. As with those future historians you mention, I believe that one day you, too, shall subscribe to the view that the election was from the earliest days an elaborate program of corruption on the part of the national Democratic party's elite. Elections, like life, can go wrong, can have corrupt outcomes; they come and go and today's officials, elected as heroes, can become tomorrow's discredited fools, recognized as such, at length, even by their former fans.
I no more believe that everything is explainable as the result of diabolical conspiracies than I believe that nothing is explainable as that. By the time one reaches my age, if not much before, many people can grasp that electoral politics are practically by nature and by definition "works of conspiracy." There is nothing particularly more conspiratorial in our times. They're also perhaps not even particularly more corrupt than is usually the case. But I suspect that they're significantly more cynical than has been the case over the past century and, having lived through the Nixon years, that is really saying something.
We need and appreciate your wisdom--even when, sometimes, you get something important importantly wrong. The thing which separates you from so many is that, clearly, your mind is open to evidence and reason where those of others just are not.
For me, much of the evidence and the reason which goes with it tells me that, indeed, the 2020 presidential election was stolen in the worst ways and to the great harm of all of us, those involved in the theft included. That's what makes this kind of treachery so terrible: its harms spare no one. Those who perpetrated it, _knowing_ what they've done, who now complacently believe that "we got away with it" could not be more wrong. And that view is precisely why their failures of reason and understanding make them such dangerous and destructive actors in political life.
These lessons are going to continue to be terribly painful and terribly costly to learn.
But you're among those who _can_ learn them. For that I am grateful and I'll continue to read your essays and admire you for them.
I thought this would be the essay where you finally talked about the unscientific gender science that the Elect has contorted itself to adopt. That's a whole leap beyond faux social science--it's faux science science!
For all of you conservatives who are complaining about John's more progressive statements and references: can you please spread the word that many of us on the left are absolutely not supporting Wokeism and CRT in its extremes (as carefully described in this Substack series.)
It bothers me when the entire left (which extends pretty far into the erstwhile center these days) gets breathlessly straw-manned by the right on radical left positions that most of us liberals likewise condemn.
I've said before that the only difference between the extreme right and extreme left is that the right executes astronomers and the left biologists. The right can't handle the truth about the universe, and the left can't handle the truth about ourselves.