- Thomas B. Edsall on the roots of MAGA’s distrust of science;
- Hemant Mehta on evangelicals and public schools.
NY Times, guest essay by Thomas B. Edsall, 11 Sep 2024: MAGA vs. Science Is No Contest [Gift Link]
I’ve mentioned before that Edsall’s occasional columns are rather like my blog posts, in that they link and quote from a variety of different sources to illuminate a particular theme from various angles. This column is about conservative, in particular MAGA, antipathy toward science. Well, we know what. Can we extract any general principles? Rather that quote his quotes I’ll just bullet point the key ideas that jump out at me.
- Many more Republicans distrust science than Democrats;
- Distrust was exacerbated by the Covid crisis;
- Anti-science conspiracies have become identified with the MAGA movement;
- The divide between parties emerged in the 1960s, as science began impacting the production industries. The EPA, OSHA, clean air and water acts — these constrained industrial activities and business interests, which were always championed by conservatives. (My comment: In general, this is a case of If it impacts my livelihood or my profits, I don’t believe in it.)
- And then there’s conservative religiosity, in which people who understand basic physics and biology, for example, nevertheless prefer supernatural explanations over natural ones;
- There’s also a divide between those who are risk tolerant, and those who are risk-adverse (white men tend to be the former);
- And the scientific community itself has at times censored itself, which contributes toward mistrust by outsiders.
Edsall ends,
When Ronald Reagan quipped in 1986, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help,’” he was signaling the escalation of the conservative antigovernment movement.
The Republican Party signed on and hasn’t let go. Over the following decades, that message has become ever more entrenched. Trump and his MAGA movement have been occupied since 2015 not only with spreading incessant lies but also with disbursing a corrosive loss of faith, leaving advances in modern science as one of many casualties.
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Here’s another longish piece that relates to the above, in its discussion of how some parents avoid public schools for the risk them undermining the religious faith they want to instill in their children.
Hemant Mehta, Friendly Atheist, 12 Sep 2024: Evangelical writer faces backlash after saying public schools might be worthwhile, subtitled “A Christianity Today editor made a religious case for sending kids to public schools. Readers couldn’t handle it.” Mehta begins:
Last year, the Washington Post ran a really fascinating article about a Christian couple with four kids that decided to (gasp) send their kids to a public school. The parents, Christina and Aaron Beall, were about as conservative as you could get. They were both products of Christian home-schooling and fundamentalist cultures.
They grew up believing birth control was evil, Creationism was true, and dinosaurs were on Noah’s Ark. They also thought public schools were “indoctrination camps” run by the government in part to turn children against Christianity. So of course they assumed they would home-school their own kids.
First of all, this supports my suspicion about most home-schooling: it’s done by Christian parents who don’t want their children exposed to secular teaching that would undermine the religious myths the children have been taught all their lives.
Second, I covered that WaPo article at the time, here, and linked Hemant’s reaction to it at the time.
Third, the current piece is about an analogous issue. As the title says. The writer’s “case” for public schools is an odd one.
[Stefani] McDade writes that “the Christian case for public schooling is worth revisiting.” While it would be nice if she called out some of those lies in the evangelical world about public schools, she avoids doing that entirely. Nor does she offer any criticisms of home-schooling. Instead, she argues that public schools are worth revisiting because they’re a test of faith—kids get to experience being in an environment where not everyone shares their beliefs! They might be asked about why they believe what they believe! They’ll have to defend their faith from a young age! (She and her husband currently plan to send their kid to public school when she’s old enough.)
McDade herself was transferred to a public school during the sixth grade, and had to read “apologetics books so I would know how to respond when someone attacked my views.” Mehta is not sympathetic to her problems. And finds her article deficient. Yet he is amazed by the Christian backlash to the article — comments documented at Current by John Fea. Examples: Public schools are where “people who hate God and want to train them in paganism.” “6 year-olds aren’t ready for spiritual combat.” “God-haters.” “Government indoctrination and grooming.” Mehta concludes,
Just a whole bunch of conspiracy-driven crazies who have absolutely no clue what goes on in public schools… yet they know it’s evil. All the while, there are countless Christians who sent their kids to public schools anyway, whatever their fears may have been, and discovered they had been lied to about what goes on inside.
Another generalization about the world today: the sheer size of modern society, notably in the US (as a multicultural society), is that it allows for all sorts of mutually-incompatible subcultures to co-exist, even if they believe false things about one another. Sure, at one level, society needs common rules, and a common understanding of the world, to function; but at another level, the local level, alternate realities can and do endure. (Especially at the individual level. Every person is their own reality.)
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Most mornings I reread, polish, and copy-edit my post from the evening before. If this comment is still here, I have not yet done so for this post.
