THE CONTINUING ASSAULT ON SCIENCE

"Supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way, and I think you said you’re going to test that too. Sounds interesting. And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute—one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside? Or almost a cleaning?"


Since the coronavirus pandemic began around January, tt seems that each new day brings another embarrassing moment from our commander in chief.  From downplaying the threat at first, to his cheerleading the use  of hydroxychloroquine (which his own FDA has said could actually be dangerous), to the truly insane quote above in which he clearly seems to be suggesting that injecting disinfectants can quickly kill the virus, it seems that there is nothing the president won't say in his desire for a quick cure for the virus.
And this latest insanity will follow the pattern that we've seen over and over again since he first announced his candidacy: his people will say his was misquoted or misunderstood, he will blow it off as a joke (he claims he was being sarcastic) and his lackeys in the right wing media will defend him and find a way to make his insanity seem reasonable.  And then in two days he'll say some new idiotic thing and it will start all over again.  Meanwhile, around forty percent of  the country will still support him, because they stood by him after his bragging about sexually assaulting women and defending white supremacist protesters, why should this latest craziness be any different?
Should we expect anything different from the  modern Republican party?  I recently blogged about how the presidency of Ronald Reagan still casts a shadow over America in how much it moved the country to the right.  I was mostly talking about his economic policies, but he also completely changed the Republican party when he decided to join forces with the Christian Fundamentalist movement.  While not all Republicans are Fundamentalists, almost all Fundamentalists are Republicans.  Today's  Republican party has basically split into three groups: Christian Fundamentalists who oppose abortion and equal rights for LGBT people,  white blue collar workers who respond to race based arguments against non white people (especially immigrants), and rich people  who want more and more tax cuts and roll backs of environmental regulations for the companies they often run. (There is, of course, some overlap between the three). 
This alliance can seem odd at times: consider that the Fundamentalists refuse to believe in fossils as evidence of the earth being billions of years old.  Meanwhile, oil executives have gotten rich selling a product that is itself a fossil! But at the end of the day, they can all agree on one thing: they hate science. 
 A 2009 pew poll of scientists in America found that only six percent of them were Republicans.   Such an overwhelming number should be a surprise, but is it really?  Republicans are the only major political party in the entire world to deny the existence of climate change, but then, why is it hard to deny climate change when for decades they have fought against teaching evolution in schools?  They loved it decades ago when  Reagan  appointed James Watt to the secretary of the interior, even after Watt once testified to congress that "I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns" while discussing national preservation.  Why would Trump be any different to them?
Trump's continuing (and confounding) popularity with the Republican party shows that he has been able to play to all three wings of the party: appointing conservative anti abortion judges here, rolling back environmental regulations there,  while also making  some racially charged statements,  and passing a huge tax cut that favored the rich, achieving the kind of crazy triangulation that means that the party will never turn on him, even when he suggests that people should inject bleach! 
If there's any kind of upside to this, it's that even Trump's people realize that his words could actually be dangerous and are considering cutting back his daily press briefings.  Given that those briefings have become nothing more than another chance for Trump to brag, lie, and bully reporters, that should be for the best.  But the only real hope that Trump can do no more damage is for him to lose and lose decisively in the upcoming election.  America has to put this mistake behind us and start trusting science over a blustering egotist and the extremist party he leads.