An old roommate had a 19th century medical text in his collection. A section on amputations was written so breezily that (approximately) “unless you are a fool or an idiot” anyone could do it. During the Black Plague outbreak of 1347 – 1350, proposed treatments for that included:
* Rubbing onions, herbs or a chopped up snake (if available) on the boils or cutting up a pigeon and rubbing it over an infected body.
* Drinking vinegar, eating crushed minerals, arsenic, mercury or even ten-year-old treacle!
As we struggle with a 21st century plague, William Saletan worries that a threat Donald Trump unleashed greater than himself is “an all-out attack on the principle that facts must be respected.”
Saletan writes, “What Trump has brought to the United States is ruthless, relentless, denialist propaganda at a scale we used to see only in dictatorships.”
Progressives and conservatives have long debated what is and is not. What is objective fact verses what constitutes spin, truthiness or “true facts.” But propaganda has overtaken public debate and click-worthy online content to the point that reality these days is something akin to “choose your own adventure.” Objective fact is a “do your research” activity for QAnons and others who don’t simply accept the reality presented them by a trusted propagandist. For heaven’s sake, Trump proposed trying injecting patients with disinfectant to cure COVID-19.
Science that allowed us to leave behind bloodletting and chopped-up snakes and pigeons cures is under attack:
Why is science so effective? Because it constantly tests its theories against reality. It seeks out, accepts, and learns from falsification. That’s what Vice President Kamala Harris, in remarks last week, said she had learned from her mother, an endocrinologist: “She instilled in me a fundamental belief in the importance of collecting and analyzing data, facts, of forming a hypothesis, and recognizing that it’s not a failure to reevaluate that hypothesis when the facts don’t add up.” In science, discovering you were wrong isn’t failure. It’s progress.
Scientists take this process of testing and reevaluation for granted. To them, it’s common sense. But it’s more than that. It’s an ethic. No law of nature forces you to test your theories against evidence or to admit, when those theories don’t check out, that you were wrong. Scientists concede error, often grudgingly, because their peers demand it. Science has a culture of falsification.
Politics doesn’t. When political promises don’t pan out—wars turn into quagmires, public schools underperform, or tax cuts fail to pay for themselves—politicians invent excuses. This has always been a problem, but it’s getting worse. Trump and his acolytes don’t just spin facts; they completely disregard them. They repeat fantastic lies about election fraud, and when they’re confronted with contrary evidence, they’re not even embarrassed.
It is tempting to tell Republicans just to go to hell, Saletan notes. The propagandists are predominantly on their side of the aisle. But they thrive on polarization. To combat this slide toward a new Dark Age, Saletan suggests “a fact-based alliance that crosses party lines.” It means crediting figures on the right when they speak fact:
It means supporting Sen. Mitt Romney, Rep. Liz Cheney, and other Republicans when they speak the truth. It means seriously engaging fact-based journalism at the Dispatch, the Bulwark, National Review, and other publications in the center and on the right. It means distinguishing the sins of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush from the pathologies of Trump and Newt Gingrich. In this fight, we need everyone who’s willing to play by the rules of deliberative democracy.
That kind of trust will have to be earned. But I am not averse to throwing non-cash “Scooby snacks” at them when they show they demonstrate they inhabit the same century as I do.