Bryan’s Web (.net)

First watch this. Then read.

For the past 5 and a half years, scientific research - once a trademark of America; an entire category of our collective knowledge in which we were the undisputed leader, and one (if no one else, I will) might even say the crowning achieviement of human civilization, has all but reversed its progress in this country. Where are the advances that we were promised in this new, 21st century? Why have we not lived up to the potential that we have proven time and time again we possess? The blame lies squarely with the current George W. Bush administration, his advisor Karl Rove, and through them the rest of the Republican Party that decide to toe the party line instead of doing what most - or at least some - of them know to be right. Statistically, not every Republican candidate can feel so anti-science, but for some reason it gets them votes, so they stick with what “works”. And they get away with it all by cloaking it in a veil of Religion and homespun, aw-shucks, this is what mah momma thought sayings that appeal to both the less intellectual among us (the people that would rather believe something told to them rather than think about it themselves), and to the religiously devout. Just to be clear here, my problem isn’t with Religion, it’s with what appealing to peoples’ religious beliefs has blinded them to. For instance, take these examples: One group of people in this country believe that we never walked on the moon. Another group believes that the Earth has only been around for about 6,000 years. To anybody with any common sense, both claims seem ludicrous since there’s more than ample scientific evidence to prove that both theories are divergent with history. However! The difference in these theories is that the latter claim is shrouded in religious dogma, which somehow makes invisible the mountain (literally! Sorry… Geology joke) of available empirical evidence. Thus, the second group of voters with misplaced beliefs is much larger. In case you missed that link up there, it mentions that of 34 countries, we rank 33rd in accepting evolution. Right above Turkey. It’s the same thing with evolution, and Stem Cell research, as it is with the two examples that I gave above- George Bush’s Republicans are twisting people’s faith and blinding them to scientific fact. Why argue so vehemently that the destruction of embryos in the name of healing is morally unacceptable, while letting those same embryos be destroyed with nothing learned or gained is fine? Because that is the debate the Mr. Bush and Mr. Rove have laid out, and like a horse pulling a carriage the blinders allow the voters to look in no other direction. In a similar vein to the group of people that believe the Moon landings were faked, there is a group of people that believe that the 9/11 attacks were formulated by our own government. I am certainly not one of those people, but I will note that the event did work in George Bush’s favor, winning him a second term and allowing him to execute his, as we now know pre-planned Iraq invasion. Regime change? I think it’s time for one here at home.

I’d stop there, because that last statement made a powerful point, but I’d like to continue for a bit longer. What are the consequences for continuing down our current path? Toward the division of Red States and Blue? I’d like to point out that historically, what unites a people better than anything else is a common enemy or threat. Terrorism, our only current threat (and the only one for the forseeable future), is, to put it plainly, not big enough. As much as we proclaim “We’re not afraid of Terrorists”, and then institute all deal of measures like we are afraid- our proclamations are true. Nobody in the United States has a fear of Terrorists storming our shores, of Terrorists toppling our government, or of Terrorists turning us into their puppets. During the Cold War, these were the fears. Back then, it was not “Should we research” it was “Do the research, here’s the money, and make sure you beat those Commie bastards to the punch”. And so our parties centered on the choices of Big Government vs. Small Government, both getting basically the same job done, but just determining the best way. After all, both parties were American, inclusively. Parts of a whole. Variations on a capitalist theme, as it were. But those days of cold war and Nuclear Holocaust only half an hour away have now left our collective memory, and it’s my belief that so have our petty arguments over Big vs. Small government. Do both parties still take positions on those cold-war arguments? Of course, but those are not the issues driving elections- they’re not the issues that my generation cares about, and they won’t be again for some time, should things continue the way they are now. Now we’re seeing Republican vs. Democrat, where both parties are American, exclusively. The other party? Well, I don’t know what they are, but they’re certainly Un-American! If things continue down their current path, I can forsee a secession of state(s) within 30-50 years. Will there be fighting? A civil war? Probably not. Don’t believe me? Let’s look at our past. As a new country, we had enemies everywhere. Indians, out west. European Colonies all around us. European countries themselves, some of which we had just pissed off by saying that they couldn’t enforce their views on us. (Sound familiar?) So we expanded, and though we had our spats, we mostly made nice with the europeans, and did some horrible things to the Native Americans, but really, nobody was afraid that they’d topple our government (Sound familiar?). Eventually (about 30-50 years later…) those threats, for the most part (we fought Mexicans along the border in Texas. Sound familiar?), went away, and all we had left to do was talk amongst ourselves. And what did the issues turn to? Slavery. President Lincoln (the guy from the penny ) “did not propose federal laws making slavery unlawful where it already existed“, but opposed starting any new slavery (Stem Cells… Sound familiar?), and that was Slavery, not Medicine. And the South saw this as an affront to their values, because “mah pah says slavery’s okay” (Sound familiar?). Obviously, I worded some of those in ways to make a point, but I believe that there could be some merit to this theory, unless the course of politics changes relatively soon. I’ll leave this long post with a few figures. US Deaths in Operation Desert Storm: 147. US Deaths in Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan): 184. US Deaths in Operation Iraqi Freedom: 2,262.