08-14-2021, 03:40 AM
(08-13-2021, 10:32 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: The PBS Newshour commentators tonight mentioned three of these great defeats tonight. They ended up admitting that they could provide no optimism.
Michael Gerson mentioned the decline of science and truth, saying that rejection of expertise and discernment of truth has hampered our attempts to deal with climate change, and this denialism has now been extended to the covid crisis and vaccines. This war against truth, which former Republican Gerson attributed largely to Republicans, is definitely an attack on America, like the one in 9-11 by Al Qaeda that we could now face again-- and which the attackers of truth also deny.
As for Afghanistan: it was only a matter of time. This reminds me of the swift collapse of the Republic of Vietnam in 1975. It is unfortunate that Afghanistan never had a chance to establish the sorts of institutions that could allow a stable social order; it is too poor and isolated for that.
The rest: it is a conflict between faith and reason. Faith might give one an edge in a life-and-death situation. Good reason exists for chaplains in hospitals, especially when the most drastic of medical procedures are high-stakes gambles with life and death irrespective of the skill of the physician. if faith is necessary for dealing with grief (as in, your mother who just died of cancer is in heaven where there is no cancer... and whatever was nasty in her life), then so be it.
Were life 100% rational we would be cold thinking machines unable to enjoy art, music, drama, poetry, comedy, natural beauty, or athletic achievement. Irrational hope may be all that keeps one from utmost despair. This said, non-rational solutions, such as faith in something dubious when science has a reasonably-certain explanation and practical application are pointless. So it is with all crackpot thought, whether in science, history, psychology, or economics.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.