#DeathSantis variant continues intensive effort to ban #truth and encourage #hate & us/them-ism, cultism vs."woke" to reality...

Article: Biden Slams Gov. Ron DeSantis' Relentless Push To Dumb Down Florida Education

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/biden-slams-desantis-deteriorating-florida-education_n_63f00cf4e4b0e2590d3d5e4

#Dumbingdown #WarOnReality #woke vs. #GQP #disinformation and #fascism waiting to be unleashed (again) #TrumpVirus

I've written a few long posts in the past couple of days debunking the argument from ignorance, which is a core component of the republican war on science. Another front is the exaggeration of the so-called replication crisis. Yet a third front is the attack on university education which at its core is an attack on the scientific method. Everything we're suffering as a nation traces back to the substitution of dogma for evidence-based policy.

Here are just a few of the consequences, and they are devastating.

-The war on the economy: President Eisenhower was the last Republican to fully embrace Keynesian economics. Since then, Republicans have embraced the tax and spending cuts known as trickle down or supply side economics. Which is unscientific dogma that has proven unsuccessful, and they know this. But then they don't actually succeed in fully implementing the spending cuts, and make up the difference with deficit spending, leading to a 30 trillion national debt. This has stifled US economic growth for decades. And left us with a hugely unequal society, that has tilted power away from the people and put it in the hands of the wealthy.

-The war on public health: from gun violence to vaccinations to the opposition to single payer universal healthcare, Republicans have ignored scientific data regarding outcomes, and suppressed the study of how to improve public health for decades. *This has killed millions of Americans.* At least a million from Covid, and another million and a half from gun violence during my lifetime. That's not even counting the number of people who've died from not being able to afford health care, including mental health care, and treatment for addiction. One of the biggest menaces to public health is poverty, which has been exacerbated by the war on the economy.

-The war on secularism: religious privilege and the rule of law are diametrically opposed. The law protects everyone, religious privilege only protects the few against the rights of the many. The first amendment is ambiguous as to which should take priority. The free exercise clause has been used to enable public funding of religion, grant exceptions to anti-discrimination and civil rights law, and allow individuals to circumvent both the law and corporate policy based on conscience clauses. Science (basic logic, really) proves that secularism grants the most religious freedom. In fact religious freedom can't exist without it, because the infiltration of government and law enforcement with a single dominant religious point of view means that minority belief systems suffer discrimination.

-The war on atheism: Estimates of the percentage of the US population who don't believe in any gods ranges from 4 to 30% or more, depending on how the question is asked. Yet there's only a small handful of politicians who will admit to being atheist. Even at the lowest end of the figure of 4% atheism, there ought to be at least 17 US congressman and 4 US senators who are willing to say they don't believe in god. Usually there's zero or one who are willing to publicly discuss non-belief. And this is largely the result of the argument from ignorance. Which makes people *at best* say they are "agnostics" meaning they can't know whether or not God exists. It's a basic misreading of probability. And a failure of representation.

-The war on education: This goes along with the war on science, but it's also its own battle. Basing educational policy on best outcomes would require early sex education, teaching accurate history, and exploration of critical thinking and power dynamics in society. All these topics have been suppressed, leading to the dumbing down of education, and the production of graduates who are trained to work menial jobs in corporations, but not trained to be citizens.

-The war on the climate: we've known for decades that unchecked global heating from the burning of fossil fuels would eventually kill billions of human beings. This isn't even controversial. Yes you heard that right, I said billions. Climate change has humanity on the path to extinction. This is undeniable, and even the early stages of climate impacts have been devastating to the population. Over 300 million people live in parts of the world where at least for parts of the year, it's too hot for unprotected humans to survive. These no go zones will only increase in the future, leading to mass migration, wars and refugee crises like we've never seen. All because Republicans have successfully introduced doubt of climate science into the minds of just enough of the population.

I could go on but you get the point. Once we allowed power to overrule knowledge, we lost our way as a nation and a world. We will never find it again until we restore knowledge and science to its rightful place, as determinant of policy.

The argument from ignorance is constantly used to raise just enough doubt about the reliability of science to justify not following best practices when they conflict with the desires or bank accounts of powerful people.

#ignorance #waronreality #sabotage #goptraitors #gop #fascism

@rvawonk

High density post you've got there. I like it, if somewhat disturbed!

#WarOnReality #ConspiracyTheory #Troll #TwitterTroll #Twitter #DisinformationCampaign #Russia #RussianTroll