Devotion to Discovery
When you learn more, you can change your mind and go a different direction, evolving your perspective.
As Neil DeGrasseTyson says, “Science is devotion to discovery and religion is devotion to ignorance.” We experience a gradual slope downward when we stop leading with science, and that’s the track America is on if we don’t protect democracy.
White nationalists and members of the Christian Identity movement believe that life was better for them at a different time and want to go back to a place in history that they believe is better. It is “true or false.” They are placing a vision in their heads of a time when they felt they had more. Now they have less, so they lash out and try to live according to a divine set of rules (in this case The Bible). Then they ask all the rest of us to follow those rules. Meanwhile, there are many things from the rules that do not make sense in any world.
Dictators rise when income inequality comes into play. Right now in the U.S. the uneven distribution of wealth is driving us toward an oligarchy if we don’t awaken our democracy.
This authoritarian monster is trying to raise its ugly head.
This has been a process that has gone on across the last 60 years and many of us were unaware of it with all of our exigencies of life. It started in 1954 with the Eisenhower Administration when “Under God” was added into the Pledge of Allegiance and continued in 1957 when In God We Trust was printed on our paper currency.
Then in the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan abolished the Fairness Doctrine from the FCC and broke the unions by firing all of the air traffic controllers. With actions like this, the oligarch regime is breaking down each piece of democracy to enable authoritarian rule.
Part of the resistance towards accepting oligarchy or authoritarian government---it gets to be too much---results in violent riots (instead of peaceful demonstration). Consider The Watts Riots of 1965 and The Rodney King Riots of 1992.
Peaceful demonstrations for Black Lives Matters got a bad name because of actions like President Trump sending militia to the scenes.
Continuing into the new century, the reversal of Roe v. Wade in 2022 is part of the Christian Nationalist plot to control the government and rule by their misogynistic fairy-tale beliefs.
It is scary to have an authoritarian; it hasn’t worked elsewhere and we don’t want to bring it here to the United States. We have a messy democracy where we’re best when we govern toward the center, compromising like Tip O’Neill and Bob Dole used to do. This is “Normalcy.”
Biden has achieved many accomplishments, including:
- Lowering costs for families’ every day expenses
- More people working than ever before
- Rebuilding infrastructure
- Passing the first meaningful gun violence reduction legislation in 30 years
Biden has also brought Normalcy back to the White House and the Administration.
Meanwhile, the authoritarian government wants to get everything their way, without negotiation. The Right is stuck in 1975 and doesn't want to admit all of the progress that we’ve made as Paul Krugman states in a November 6, 2023 New York TImes article, Why does the Right hate America? As he eloquently closes the piece, it is your right to follow traditional social relationships and forms of religion, but “don’t claim, falsely, that society is collapsing because it doesn’t match your preferences or blame liberalism for every social problem.”
We seem to think our life is okay, but everywhere is terrible. But, we need to get out and objectively look around to see that progress is everywhere. As a lifelong learner, I have a devotion to discovery. I believe it is our responsibility to lift our heads out of the sand and discover what’s around us.