Last month, Gallup released a poll showing that while a majority of U.S. adults have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in science, Republicans’ confidence in science has sharply declined over the past four decades, from 70 percent in 1975 to 45 percent in 2021. Democrats, however, have seen an increase in confidence in science over the same period, with 67 percent having “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in science in 1975 and 79 percent saying the same in 2021.
“It appears that science, like many other issues, has become a politicized topic,” says Gallup senior editor Jeffrey Jones.
That is most definitely true.
But what is science? Is it knowledge gained by objective observation and experimentation? It would be great if that were the case, but lately, “science” has come to mean “what the left says is true, and must not be questioned.” As a result, Republicans have lost confidence in “science” because we’re constantly told that “science” is whatever is politically convenient for the political left at any given time and that this “science” is settled and cannot be challenged.
This is why Republicans have lost confidence in science. We’re constantly told science is what the left says it says. We haven’t so much lost confidence in objective science. Still, we acknowledge that the gatekeepers of science have politicized it to the point where questioning the orthodoxy might actually make you a criminal.
And I’m not exaggerating. Below are three issues where the left has done just that—politicized the science and criminalized those who question it.
Climate Change
Despite claims that “climate change” is settled science, we’ve seen predictions repeatedly change and climate models proved wrong. In my lifetime alone, we’ve had both global warming and global cooling as the primary threat before settling on the accepted, all-inclusive “climate change.” Common weather events like hurricanes and tornadoes are immediately blamed on “climate change.”
But even the loudest proponents of the man-made climate change theory don’t seem to buy it. For example, despite insisting that climate change is “fact” and calling the debate “settled,” in 2019 Barack Obama bought an $11.75 million beachside home on Martha’s Vineyard just a few feet above sea level. So much for the “fact” that sea levels are rising because of man-made climate change, right?
Not only has it become taboo to question climate change, but Democrats want climate change skeptics to be prosecuted as criminals.
But the climate science ruse is bigger than just climate change. Those fancy electric cars that the left claims are better for the environment aren’t so green after all. Neither are solar and wind energy. But guess who doesn’t want to hear it? Green energy proponents may have good intentions, but in the end, so-called green energy alternatives to fossil fuels are just expensive virtue-signaling that often gets subsidized by the taxpayers because people think it’s better for the environment when it’s no better than fossil fuels during its life cycle. Meanwhile, those subsidies aimed at making these technologies more accessible to consumers actually de-incentivize innovation that could make them less impactful on the environment and more affordable. But, again, tell that to your neighbor with the electric car and the solar panels on their roof. But, of course, they don’t want to hear that either. “It’s green energy!” they’ll say, and they’ll blame you for driving a gas guzzler and not putting wind turbines on your property.
Because science!
Gender Theory
If you were in a coma for the last twenty years, you’d wake up thinking the world had gone crazy. Sex and gender are now considered two different things. Gender is now a social construct. Men can get pregnant! Not only are you now expected to know these things, but you must also accept them as fact or face the consequences.
Yet modern gender theory is just a hot mess that is constantly changing with the political winds. How many genders are there? 72? Hundreds? Infinite? Is gender static or fluid? We’re supposed to believe there are more than two genders, yet proponents of this theory can’t even tell you how many or what they are. What does that tell you? Does that suggest the theory that there are more than two genders is rooted in science or social pressure? Despite the lack of consensus on this from proponents of modern gender theory, we’re told to accept it as a scientific fact. Then, seemingly overnight, everyone and their birthing person started declaring their preferred pronouns and that to knowingly “misgender” someone is a hate crime.
It’s not young contrarians buying into this nonsense either. Reputable medical organizations are endorsing radical ideas about sex and gender as well. Back in June, the American Medical Association (AMA) said that sex should be removed as a legal designation on public birth certificates because it can lead to discrimination against those who ultimately don’t identify with their biological sex. Oh, I’m sorry, I mean the sex they were designated with at birth based on their genitalia. The American Medical Association also endorses letting young children transition. In other words, placating their gender dysphoria and allowing them to take life-altering hormones, thus doing irreversible damage. Never mind that as many as 95 percent of gender-dysphoric children eventually grow out of it. Never mind that as many as 1 out of 5 transgender individuals experience transition regret. Never mind the fact that transgender ideology is loaded with paradoxes. Never mind that the largest study of transgender adult twins disproved the theory that people are born in the wrong body.
None of that matters because, according to the left, the science is settled. If you question it, you’re a bigot. Heck, if you don’t let your child transition or refuse to use their preferred pronouns, you might just get arrested. The same goes for female athletes forced to compete with biological men who identify as women. Proponents claim there’s a medical and scientific consensus among the medical community on modern gender theory when that is most certainly not the case. Sadly, medical doctors who disagree with transgenderism are largely silenced, and potentially out of a job, because to even have the debate is considered bigotry.
How can Republicans have confidence in science when those who are telling us what the science says aren’t confident enough in their position not to silence the opposition and criminalize the debate?
COVID
Perhaps the most significant issue of the day in which politics seems to influence the science is COVID-19.
The issue of masking has been a continuous tug of war, with Dr. Anthyony Fauci, the director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), originally telling us in the early days of the pandemic we don’t have to wear masks before later telling us we had to. It wasn’t until a year later that we found out Fauci said that typical cloth masks don’t even protect people from the COVID-19 virus. “Masks are really for infected people to protect them from spreading infection to people who are not infected rather than protecting uninfected people from acquiring infection,” Fauci wrote on February 5, 2020. “The typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through the material.”
But hey, if you violate a mask mandate, you could get arrested. Because “the science says masks work” even though they really don’t. And what about those lockdowns? Studies have shown they don’t slow the spread of COVID, but try telling that to those people who are just desperate to do something because at least then it looks like you’re addressing the issue… even if you’re not.
Last year, when President Trump touted hydroxychloroquine as a potential gamechanger in the fight against COVID, the media went to war on him, accused him of “selling snake oil,” and buried stories of people successfully treated with the drug. They promoted studies claiming the drug increased mortality and buried studies showing huge improvements in mortality rates. As data continued to show that hydroxychloroquine was actually effective in treating COVID-19, doctors who spoke out in support of the drug were censored. The impact of this media assault was catastrophic. One analysis suggests that over 2.6 million lives worldwide have been unnecessarily lost because hydroxychloroquine was not widely used as a COVID therapeutic. When it came to defeating COVID, science wasn’t as important as defeating Trump.
But, even with Trump out of office, the media is choosing fear over science–all with the help of the Biden administration. Biden recently claimed that the Delta variant is more deadly than the original strain of COVID. This is false. The Delta variant, while more contagious, has a case fatality ratio (CFR) of .3 percent. The original strain of the virus had a CFR of 2 percent. Do the math.
The Biden administration’s messaging on vaccinations has also been inconsistent, particularly concerning the latest CDC recommendation that fully vaccinated people must wear masks in school. Getting vaccinated is supposed to protect us from COVID, and for some time, the CDC said it was okay for fully vaccinated people to go maskless, but now it’s not. Why? Because of the Delta variant, even though “breakthrough” infections are extremely rare, according to the CDC. Oh, and CDC Director Rochelle Walensky even admitted on CNN that “we don’t have any evidence” that the Delta variant makes kids sicker. But, the fully vaccinated must wear masks again, not because of “the children,” but because of the teachers unions that lobbied the CDC. Yes, science evolves as we gain a greater understanding of things, but the CDC’s new recommendations have nothing to do with science.
Walensky is now saying that we can defeat the Delta variant of COVID in a few weeks. Apparently, she forgot that we’re now past the 500th day of “15 Days to Slow the Spread” of COVID–so pardon me if I’m skeptical.
And until the left stops politicizing science, I always will be.
