Alien Worldview

Wow. Just wow.

When Todd Akin went off on his ignorant rant about “lady parts,” it prompted a number of folks to turn over the rock under which he and his fellow “conservatives” live–and it turns out his crazy isn’t limited to women’s reproduction.

Salon raised the reasonable question, “why is this guy on the House science subcommittee?” and quoted the genius on climate change: “In Missouri when we go from winter to spring, that’s a good climate change. I don’t want to stop that climate change you know. Who in the world wants to put politicians in charge of the weather anyways?”

Unsurprisingly, Akin also rejects the “theory” of evolution.

The article also noted Akin’s firm grasp of history, made clear in his belief that the Pilgrims came to the New World to escape socialism. (He must get his history lessons from David Barton.)

This would all be funny if Akin were the only elected official with this sort of delusional worldview. But what’s really scary is how many “fellow travelers” he has. Several of them are in Indiana. A friend of mine shared a You Tube in which Linda Lawson berated Eric Turner for expressing his opposition to the “rape or incest” exception by explaining that women would pretend to be raped in order to obtain an abortion.

I don’t get it.

How do these willfully ignorant culture warriors get elected? What is it about women and science and basic logic that repels them?

And most important, what will it take to engineer a return to sanity?

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What Planet Did You Say This Is?

During a televised interview, Missouri Representative Todd Akin, who is running for the U.S. Senate against incumbent Claire McCaskill, was asked about his position on abortion. Rep. Akin favors a complete ban, with no exception for rape or incest. He explained that an exception for rape was unnecessary, since victims of legitimate rape don’t get pregnant. The woman’s body “has a way to deal with that.”

Leaving aside the question of what constitutes “legitimate” rape, the more important questions are how this moron has managed to get elected, and how he won a statewide Republican primary. (He evidently serves on the House Subcommittee on Science, no less–a terrifying prospect.)

According to various reports, Akin sponsored legislation that would redefine rape in federal law to limit funding for abortion providers, and has a long track record of uninformed and extreme views about women’s health. He has a consistently radical  voting record on women’s issues, wants to ban the morning-after pill, and–my personal favorite– has expressed concern that criminalizing marital rape gives women “a legal weapon to beat up on the husband” during a divorce.

This guy is a real piece of work.

But before we laugh too hard at the people who actually voted to place this man in a position of authority, perhaps we should look at one of the men we have sent to Congress. Not only sent to Congress, but are likely to elevate to the top position in the state.

Google–as I did–Pence and Akin. You’ll find that they have co-sponsored several measures–one that would have distinguished between “forcible” and “other” rapes, one to de-fund Planned Parenthood, one to get rid of the Department of Energy, another to make English America’s “official” language….In fact, when I searched for “Pence Akin co-sponsor,” I got 1,730,000 hits. Obviously, hundreds if not thousands were duplicates, and thousands of others were perfectly innocuous… still, it became clear scrolling through them that Akin and Pence are cut from the same (poorly woven) cloth.

The only difference is that Mike Pence understands–as Akin clearly does not–that he needs to reinvent himself as someone who actually cares about Indiana’s economy and job creation, rather than the social issues which have been his major focus as a congressperson.

Unlike Akin, he realizes he needs to soft-pedal the crazy.

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Are We There Yet?

Two and a half more months of content-free campaign ads for state and local offices.

Two and a half more months of spin, hyperbole and outright falsehoods from national campaigns and the Super Pacs that support them.

Two and a half more months of voters being addressed as if we are idiots–and two and a half more months during which large numbers of voters behave as if they are–filling the comments sections of blogs with invective, treating complicated issues as if they are simple and obvious, and displaying racism, homophobia and anti-immigrant bigotries.

Elections, as political philosophers remind us, are a sign of human progress, a civilized substitute for warfare and other uses of force to settle our differences. Looked at in that light, perhaps the “dirty tricks,” the inane debates, the “win at all costs” behaviors are understandable, if unattractive.

Maybe we should just learn to live with the reality that elections aren’t really about ideas and competing policies, but more like sporting events where crowds root for those they’ve identified as their “team,” irrespective of the merits and sportsmanship of that team’s players. Maybe we should learn to accept that civilization is just a veneer, that reasoned argumentation based upon evidence and verification is still beyond us.

Maybe we should just accept that we’re not there yet.

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A Bigger Pie

I think it was Mark Twain who said “It isn’t what you don’t know that hurts you–it’s what you know for certain that just ain’t so.”

Political debate these days is awash with “facts” that “just ain’t so.” One of those “facts” is that immigrants take jobs from Americans, and that raising the number of foreign-born people we allow to enter the country legally each year would worsen unemployment. A recent study by the Fiscal Policy Institute tells a very different story.

The Institute looked at incorporation figures and determined that immigrants own 18% of all small businesses in the U.S. In other words, more than one in six small businesses is owned by an immigrant. Those businesses employ an estimated 4.7 million workers, and generate some $776 billion dollars in revenue.

That immigrants gravitate to ownership shouldn’t surprise us. You have to be a risk taker to leave the place of your birth and move to a foreign country. Anti-immigrant attitudes make it more difficult for educated and skilled immigrants to find management and professional positions with American-owned firms. So, disproportionately, immigrants start their own small businesses, and small businesses are far and away the largest generators of employment. Small businesses–not massive corporations–are the real “job creators.”

The notion that immigration slows job growth is rooted in a “zero sum” worldview, the belief that the economy is like a pie. In that view, there is a fixed amount of pie, and if you get a bigger slice, mine will be smaller–if an immigrant gets a job, that’s one job fewer for Americans.

The virtue of capitalism is that it encourages people to bake more pie. And that is precisely what immigrants are doing.

Somehow, I doubt that this evidence will make much difference to those who want to raise the gangplank and keep those “others” out. What we know that “just ain’t so” keeps getting in the way of acting in our own best interests.

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Short Story

A couple of days ago, a good friend (male) confided that he’d gone in for his annual checkup, and his doctor had found prostate cancer. Fortunately, it was very early, and the prognosis for full recovery is excellent. His surgery would be outpatient, and he’d be home the next day.

I commented that this was exactly why those annual exams are so important, especially for those of us getting along in years. He nodded his head, and proceeded to share a story.

He has a friend–a tennis buddy–who skipped those check-ups for three years. When he finally went to the doctor, he also had prostate cancer, but it was already stage four. They could slow it down, and give him an extra year–perhaps two. But that was it.

He’d skipped those physicals because he’d been between jobs, and without health insurance.

With all the talk about “Obamacare” and the focus on costs and mandates and political ideologies, we sometimes forget the consequences of our current system for real people. This man will die many years before he otherwise would. Those are years he won’t spend with his wife, won’t watch his children and grandchildren mature and grow, or play tennis with my friend.

If you don’t care about the human equation, I’ll just point out that these are also years he won’t pay taxes, and that the medical costs of treating him at this stage vastly exceed the costs of curing my friend at an early stage of the disease–prevention and early interventions are far less costly than later treatment.

Sometimes, a story tells the story.

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