Blinded by the Right
As the Taliban (‘students’) of Afghanistan outlaw and destroy musical instruments and music, let’s take a look at the American Taliban.
Being already ‘right,’ America’s Right has done everything it can to ignore facts, delete data, blind scientist, defund programming, and end regulation. In their mind, all pollution is grandfathered and just a mild harmless side effect (acceptable collateral damage) of sacred economic growth. Deaths that accrue from the pollutions effect only ‘downstream’ poor and ‘up wind’ ‘others’ that are inconsequential to America’s perpetual growth goals.
“When the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) was enacted in 1976, it grandfathered in thousands of unevaluated chemicals that were in commerce at the time. The old law failed to provide EPA with the tools to evaluate chemicals and to require companies to generate and provide data on chemicals they produced.”
The NRA won’t let the government learn about guns.
“The NRA and its supporters in Congress had made clear that the CDC had to avoid any studies that could be perceived as anti-gun efforts. CDC funding for research relating to firearms became almost nonexistent. As noted by Kellermann and Rivara, “Precisely what was or was not permitted under the clause was unclear. But no federal employee was willing to risk his or her career or the agency’s funding to find out.”
One of many dumb governors of Texas, Rick Perry forgets what he doesn’t want the government to have.
— Saturday Night Live has fun with this.
Regan set an anti-environmental example that later Republican presidents copied —that damaged and destroyed America’s environment and environmental policy with reckless abandon.
— George H W Bush is an exception here and he tried to be more reasonable (one of the reasons he lost re-election).
— George W. Bush sets a new lower standard. … goodbye Kyoto Protocol
In this article the Sierra Club was quoted saying, “"The Bush administration has introduced this pervasive rot into the federal government which has undermined the rule of law, undermined science, undermined basic competence and rendered government agencies unable to do their most basic function even if they wanted to.”
— Donald Trump. …goodbye Paris Climate Accords
Remember Rick Perry …put an enemy in leadership at each government agency.
In the chapter on capitalism of the book Isms, it says that the top and most important of the 8 characteristics of liberal democratic free market societies is “rational empiricism.” ‘Seeing’ reality and thinking clearly about it is the only way to make the best decisions for the people of a free society. Thank you John Locke. :)