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Science? History??? Not in MY State (NC)!!! [1]

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Date: 2022-08-22

Alchemy, maybe.

Mark Robinson, currently lieutenant governor of North Carolina and probably candidate for governor in 2024, is one piece of work. Last October he was discovered to have made “some pithy remarks at a church in June” — calling gays and transgenders “filth,” saying guns are a “gift from God,” and that women who are pregnant no longer “own” their bodies.

But now he’s outdone himself. In memoir, NC Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson mulls 2024 run, calls for taking science, history out of elementary schools:

North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson is dropping more hints about a potential run for governor in 2024. And, if elected, he says he’d work to keep science and history out of some elementary school classrooms. He says he’d also seek to eliminate the State Board of Education, end abortion and work to prevent transgender people from serving in the military. . . . Robinson said he’d work to keep history, science and a number of other subjects out of first through fifth grade curricula and instead prioritize reading, writing and math. “In those grades, we don’t need to be teaching social studies,” he writes. “We don’t need to be teaching science. We surely don’t need to be talking about equity and social justice.”

Science? What for?? After all, says Robinson:

“Guess what? Most of the people of North Carolina know global warming is junk science.”

There’s more, but I’ve already lost my appetite, just as I’m about to go help make dinner. If you do choose to wade into the article, keep a stiff drink in hand.

Anyway. . . The thing about science is that works by doubt. I make an observation, make some more, and then come up with a hypothesis to explain what I’ve seen. But that’s just the beginning: I have to test it, refine it, maybe even reject it. And once I’m satisfied, I have to ask others to do the same, but there’s always that doubt whether it’s right or not. Eventually, after enough doubts have been raised and satisfied, it becomes a theory — which is still subject to further doubts. Just ask Newton, perhaps the greatest scientist of all time, whose theory of gravity had to be modified by Laplace and then by Einstein. We’re never completely satisfied.

That doesn’t sit too well with those who want concrete, simple, clear, and unchanging answers. It especially doesn’t sit well at all with the fundies who are convinced that a religious polemic from Roman times that was itself based on Bronze Age ideas about the world is the true and unalterable word of the Lord God Almighty, and if you disagree, there a nice stake over there to burn you at, after which you go to hell for all eternity.

History is a science, not at all by the way, even though the evidence it uses is never as precise as those used in physics or chemistry. I dabble in history these days, and I’m very conscious of the ways the GOP is misusing it. Florida’s Ron DeSantis is the governor currently at the forefront of the new Know-Nothing movement, though Robinson is clearly looking to give him some heavy competition.

Training in science, in history, in social studies, isn’t just about the facts. It’s about learning how to think, to think for oneself, to ask inconvenient and uncomfortable questions, to doubt what you’ve been told by authority. No wonder Robinson and his ilk are trying to squelch it.

I just watched Rachel interview Dr. Fauci, who just announced his retirement at the end of the year. Fauci has spent his career fighting distortions of reality and denial of science (his words), and never before has he been less optimistic about winning that battle.

Autocracy gets and keeps power using the mushroom principle: Keep the people in the dark and feed them shit.

(And by the way, most North Carolinians know damn well that global climate change is real.)

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/8/22/2118186/-Science-History-Not-in-MY-State-NC

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