"...a political tendency that denies...."

Dear Dr. Bones,

These peanut-gallery peanuts I find interesting, though Perfesser Doctor Paulus von Krugman may not. [0] Still, no stimulus from Above would presumably have meant no response from below.

A mob of persons rushing to pat ourselves on the virtual back like this ought to alarm anybooby lucky enough to have been expensively semieducated. More so, when making fun of mental cripples is the mobsters’ chief M.O. -- "The conservative mind requires bias to sustain" &c. Or how about, "Studying new ideas can change your ideology."?

The perfesserial stimulus was similar enough to be under that cloud too, or at least under a pretty eminent paenumbra: "the tendency of people who actually know science to reject a political tendency that denies climate change and is broadly hostile to the theory of evolution."

A new customer / patient / victim of the NYTC might guess that K. does not often try to park this brand of conceptual bicycle: if he did, one would not encounter a mere ‘tendency’ mythologically inflated into an accountable agent, nay, swollen up, like Mr. Toad of Toad Hall, even unto a Personage of Denial! ’Tis like what happens to poor Ms. Natura Selectrix in even some of the best-Ph.D.'ed accounts of the monkey business. [1]

What "denies climate change" is plain enough: the interests of a few secret-sector business corporations and the vociferations of their hired-hand lobbyists. The late Miss Rand of Petersburg proved, quite amazingly, that one can make neomythology even out of that unpromising raw material. Not, however, a very *good* neomythology.

What "is [broadly] hostile to the theory of evolution" involves a far more complicated chain of human events, one there are several godzillion books about already and no doubt as many more to come. Here at the lower end of the chain, it is difficult to imagine how anybooby now alive can gain or lose in the pocketbook from one particular History of Organisms being the case.

On the other hand, the first time we got the run around this track, the CCUSA comrades of the day, who seem to have been smarter than their successors, ‘tended’ -- there's that word! -- to like the Gospel according to St. Charles, which let them make themselves out well-pruned American Beauty roses and maybe even foreshadowed the Bad Poor eventually goin’ the way of all trilobites, sing "¡Glory! ¡¡Hallelujah!!"

That self-backpattin’ had nothing to do with Dame Science, as almost all the godzillion books point out, usually pretty sternly. Possibly the bookies protest the so-called "Social Darwinism" just a little too much, however? After all, the upmarket apologizers for Rockefeller and Gould and Carneìgie and Morgan &c. &c. *did* want to be on Dame Science's side, comprehendin’ or miscomprehendin’ or uncomprehendin’. [2]

I don't say such a thought should count for very much, but ¿must it count for utterly nothing?

¡Happy days! (through affordable constitutioncare)
--JHM

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[0] Golly, though, there are an AWFUL lotta them: 301 and counting -- for a sidescribble and not the mainring!


[1] "Broadly hostile" tends to suggest that the mental cripples in question have received a certain degree of professional attention. Dame Science has recently ascertained ¿don't you know? that the hypothesis of a precise and narrowly focused antipathy to Darwinism out there in Televisionland cannot be . . . sustained.

I'll beg pardon if I am wrong, but meanwhile, I think K. is bluffing to cover up the fact that he scarcely ever thinks about such unpleasant stuff.

A lot of this particular self-backpatting shtyk paints itself into the same corner: having once set up to play Sir Launcelot to Guinevere the Science Queen, the apprentice paladin feels obliged to pretend that her every syllable reflects years and years of labóratorious white-coatèd research, whereas in fact there is not much to distinguish her from a common foxcuckoo lyin’ back on its potatoecouch for an injection of rupertnews.

(( However, my ’tis-the-thought-that-counts appeal further on above is good enough for us silly lieberal-demoncrat geese as well as for the virile ganders of Rio Limbaugh: unlike foxcuckoos an’ couchpotatoes, Krugman groupies have managed to grasp how well it looks to at least *look* earnest and labóratorious in the path of Verity. Naturally permissible exuberance must be checked well short of "We hereby officially thank Father Zeus that He did not create *us* dittobrains." ))


[2] Talk about ‘appeasement’! I am happy to report that these wannabe Slaves of Science eventually got a suitable comeuppance. Or at least I think they did. I mean, ¿did all that fellow-travelin’ with Darwin ever rake a single undeniable dime into the Coffers of Great Wealth that would not have come in without it?

Though the CCUSA classes under the now banner of Neocomrade Th. J. Donohue be distinctly less bestembright than were their sires of yore, I don't believe that their abandonin’ the attempt to recruit Ms. Natura Selectrix to help prop up "free enterprise" and the AEIdeology is an evidence of the brain rot at Hooverville. To ditch the neomythological damsel was a straightforward matter of sellin’ off an unprofitable sideline, neither especially clever nor especially foolish, just "business as usual."

But Mammon knows best.