CONSERVATIVE EVOLUTION?

 

Ever since Ronald Reagan joined the Republican party with the Christian fundamentalists, many Republicans have tried to pass legislation that allowed creationism to be taught in public schools, or at least they tried to undermine the theory of evolution.  When courts rejected the teaching of creationism, given that things like carbon dating and fossil evidence revealed that the earth is billions of years old and not around 12 thousand as the creationists said, they eventually came up with a new idea sometime in the 1990's: intelligent design.  This belief accepted that evolution did indeed happen, but it was guided by a divine being all the way.  (And while they never explicitly said who that divine being might be, I'm guessing they weren't thinking of Vishnu.)  It was a sneaky way to bring a modified (and yes, evolved) form of creationism into public schools.  Thankfully, this theory was rejected as the religious indoctrination it was  in 2005 when a George W Bush appointed judge made a strong ruling against it.

But conservatives learned the lesson of evolving their beliefs to fit with the times more, and they have continued in other ways.  For example, for years the Republican party openly attacked homosexuals as "unnatural", and President Bush's claim that he wanted to put a ban on gay marriage into the US constitution is probably what won him a second term in 2004.  But now that gay marriage has been legal for years and polls show around 70% of Americans support it, conservatives have pivoted to attack trans people far more than gay, lesbian or bisexual people.  Sadly, this makes sense, given that according to a recent NPR poll, only about 0.6% of American adults call themselves trans, which means that large numbers of Americans have never met a trans person before, making them easy to demonize.  And the right can pounce on any number of issues, from which bathrooms trans people can use to pronoun preferences, inflating something that affects less than 1% of the population into a polarizing issue.  Hopefully, this kind of hate will eventually wear out as an issue as more Americans come to realize that trans people are just people who want to feel comfortable in their own bodies.  But don't expect the Republicans to stop attacking the rights of trans people anytime soon.

The last version of modern conservative evolution can be found in their feelings about climate change: for years the Republican party has dismissed the idea as a hoax (Donald Trump once tweeted out: "Let's continue to destroy the competitiveness of our factories & manufacturing so we can fight mythical global warming. China is so happy!").  On this issue they put themselves to the right not only in this country, but really, the whole globe as well, with the Republican party being the only major political party in the entire world to deny the science of climate change. For decades, this was easy for the party to do, with proof of the effects of climate change hard to show to the average American.  But now that each summer seems to bring more global record heat temperatures, along with drought and wildfires, continuing to say that climate change doesn't exist is getting harder and harder.  So once again they have evolved, saying that moving too fast on the issue would harm the economy (as if putting out record wildfires every year is cheap!).  Or, as Republican Senator Mike Capo of Idaho put it, “I’m not in a position to tell you what the solution is, but for the president to shut down the production of oil and gas in the United States is not going to help." (This is a mischaracterization of what Joe Biden wants to do, instead of shutting down oil and gas, he wants to incentivize using renewable energy sources and electric vehicles).  So, instead of denying climate change, Republicans are now  just saying that we should continue to burn fossil fuels and not worry about it, or propose "solutions" that are currently not viable, like carbon capture and clean coal. They also add that giving financial government incentives to renewable energy companies makes the federal government pick winners in the free market (of course, they don't mention the 20 billion dollars a year oil companies get in tax breaks and incentives).   In a way, this downplaying of the worst crisis the world is facing is even worse than the denial of that crisis they've pushed for years.  Now some Republicans have offered up conservative blueprints for dealing with the issue, but none of them want to stop or slow our country's continued mining and usage of fossil fuels. Even the common sense idea that American kitchens should transition from gas burning to electric stovetops, which would be both better for the environment and safer, has become a political issue, with Republicans condemning the idea.

While the Republican stance of climate change is depressing, there was good news out of congress recently, with Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Senator who has killed so many climate change deals, said that he has agreed to support a new bill.  Even with out any Republican votes, the bill looks likely to pass in the Senate.  While this bill may not be perfect (it has some carve outs for oil and coal interests in Manchin's state), it still would be the largest bill dealing with the climate change issue in our nation's history; it's effect would be, according to the New York Times, transformational.  So, there is some hope that our nation will do something about this pressing issue.  No thanks to the Republican party, though.