In 1997, the brilliant, wise and sage astrophysicist Carl Sagan wrote: “In popularizing science and trying to make its methods and findings accessible to non-scientists, it then follows that not explaining science seems to me to be perverse. And there is another reason: Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America when we are only a service and information economy, when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues, when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority, unable to distinguish between that feels good and what is true. We have arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements, including intelligent voting, depends profoundly on science and technology. We have arranged society such that few understand science and technology. Sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power will blow up in our faces.”
Standing next to the deceitful Steve Bannon at the Conservative Political Action Committee, or CPAC, Sarah Palin spoke: “We can’t give up on the other corrupt acts that put our country in the position we are in, like the 30,000 emails that were erased and, ‘Oh, that was OK that crooked Hillary did that.’ Benghazi. Oh, my gosh. All these things were, ‘Oh, yeah, we’re going to investigate.’ Congress should be having these badass huge rallies on the steps of the Capitol, and it should be Congressmen, they have a platform. They should be having these press conferences. They should be having these fireside chats. They should do whatever they can to get out these with a message to the public to let them know what’s going on. I don’t know why they don’t seize the opportunity.” Absolute unintelligible balderdash, no?
Sagan described the Baloney Detection Kit, which provides many “tools,” but I distill it to the tools for rational and skeptical thinking; it must also teach us what not to do. As Thomas Paine wrote in “The Age of Reason”: “It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief that mental lying, infidelity, has produced in society … and he has thus prepared himself for the commission of every crime.” Consider the bamboozlers’ lineup today in Alaska and America: Palin, Donald Trump, the U.S. Supreme Court, Mike Dunleavy and Dave Bronson, for starters. The Baloney Detection Meter registers highest red alert. Danger.Remarkable, then, that throughout history, so many brilliant minds could envision such frightening and moral American societal consequences.
— Peter O. Mjos
Anchorage
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