I’m aghast at Trump’s election victory, as are virtually all my friends, for reasons that have been listed over and over in editorials and private conversations. There’s no point in reiterating them. An email I just received from a long-time friend said, “I’m devastated and in mourning after Nov. 8. Am ashamed and embarrassed to be an American and wish I were young enough to go somewhere else.” She is in her mid-nineties. Everyone (or at least more people than those who voted for Trump) knew how unqualified and disreputable he was to become president, but it didn’t matter enough to deny him victory.
One of Trump’s liabilities that especially offends me as a scientist is his disregard of truth. Fact checks indicate somewhere in the neighborhood of 70-90% of Trumps insidious comments are false. Is this the demise of truth or the triumph of lies? It hardly matters, since it amounts to the same thing. Facts seem to have become no more than chips in a poker game, and it’s a dangerous gamble.
How ironic in our age of science and advanced technology, that falsehoods reign supreme for personal gain and power. What to trust when faced with a barrage of contradictory opinions and outright lies without apology and stated as incontestable truths? How dangerous that people believe what they want to with disregard for facts and truth.
And why agree to have all sides of an issue carry equal weights, which clearly they don’t? President George W. Bush thought that evolution and creationism should be taught in schools as competing theories. “Let the students decide which they prefer,” he said, since it’s all conjecture after all. Evolution conjecture!! So much for the revolution of molecular genetics. And divided we stand: the two “theories” seem tied in the United States!
But why am I surprised? It’s been creeping up on us for a long time. As a government scientist, I witnessed honest employees twist and turn however possible to negotiate absurd regulations, with everyone fully aware that truth is being manipulated. Knowledgeable acceptance of lies may be as bad, or perhaps even worse, than the lies themselves.
Truth is elusive enough for a scientist (are the data correct, is the interpretation proper), that witnessing overt lies and half-truths accepted at the highest level of government in the United States sends chills of horror and fear.
What happened to honesty and truth? Even more complex: what happened to make lies believed or accepted? Is this still the country I have cherished all my life?
Joram, you have put the feelings I have been pondering over so well into words that express my views. What has happened to our country — the one that accepts and cherishes differences inn religious beliefs, learns and assimilates from getting to know other cultures, and just generally accepts and was based on diversity? Where is the feeling lof love for our fellow occupants of this planet? Have you any ideas on how to realistically help overcome this disturbing mood I am feeling among most of my friends? I do not have the answer, except to fight it personally, one-on-one, as I see it, but I feel there should be more we can do to stop this growth of hate.