Originally Posted by
Diesel
Don't make disingenuous references to your ability to be "convinced" of anything that you don't already believe. It's a tactic of middle school debaters and Trumpists.
I will say that the US was founded on and relies on, in part, Enlightenment ideals. World civilization was transformed in a way that has not often occurred in humanity's history. Understandings in science, advancements in technology, and observations that could be made for the first time allowed us to develop a scientific method. We clarified the distinctions between fact, theory, opinion, and falsehood. We committed ourselves to logic, reason, liberty, equality, and freedom. We replaced god and superstition and conjecture with evidence-based data in the fields and areas that we could. That unprecedented advancement continued for hundreds of years. Scientists and researchers observed more about the natural world. They tested hypotheses. They drew deeper lines between what we do understand, what we can understand, and what we just don't know yet. It was a time when medicine could save lives that could never have been saved before, when human beings launched themselves into and then returned from space, when travel became convenient (sort of), and communication became instantaneous.
Cue the age of anti-intellectualism and its adherents: Populist right wingers with nationalistic and self interests. A group of people with no formal training, no contradictory evidence, and no logical explanations for anything who "don't agree" with science. They think education is at best, unimportant, and at worst, mind control that their philosophical opponents administer. They don't know what a fact is. They think that an "opinion" that purple means dinosaur and that 2 + 2 = 5 is just as valid and useful as admitting that purple is a color, dinosaurs are extinct, and 2 + 2 = 4. They believe in the wildest conspiracy theories that I think have ever existed. We no longer share a common language. I don't mean linguistically. I mean that Trumpists have no attachment to reality. It is as useful to involve a Trumist in an important consideration as it is to involve a 100-year-old schizophrenic with advanced Alzheimer's.
That is why Trumpists do not belong in a civilized society.
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