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American spiritual connection to scientific progress

I have likely shared versions of this anecdote, and so beg indulgence. During the economic crises of 2007-2009, GM (the carmaker) experienced trials and tribulations of their and others’ making that rattled the china in every state and quite beyond: frozen credit markets and a collapse in sales plus heavy legacy costs (debt) led to its near collapse. GM filed for Chapter 11 re-organization after a bail-out from Uncle Sam.

During this time, I met my friend the poet at our appointed hour and he re-counted a visit earlier that day to a local auto dealership where the salesman finished off his pitch on a new poet truck with the immortal words, “You can’t do anything more patriotic than buy a truck from the General.”

Of course, the poet was nothing if not patriotic.

Parallels to the far-reaching economic and spiritual destruction of that moment are afoot. The so-called Department of Government Efficiency (such a sense of humor) has decimated international aid in a slashing that is already killing hundreds of thousands and now has the American scientific research  ecosystem in its crosshairs.

Climate scientists are being fired and marooned in the dark at a critical juncture.  Government climate research has resurfaced as Climate.us:

Climate.us today launched the full version of its new independent, nonprofit climate information website, creating a public-backed home for trusted climate science at a time when access to federal climate resources has become increasingly vulnerable to disruption.

This is a critical public information effort but step back and do the math on the science. It is untenable to reduce support for climate research to a bake sale. Neither can NIH or NSF survive on charity. The comprehensive network that trains the next generations, tests, trials, safeguards, and incentivizes innovation across the globe is a giant sandbox. This is not a miscalculation, as no calculating occurred. Killing USAID was a crime; this is a mistake. The destruction is not about any single scientific project – this is about killing the American project. Bad for the economy, bad for soft power and national security, a salting of the global dominance for which we stand.

Stand Up For Science.

Like GM but much more so, there is something quintessentially American about scientific progress. We might not even be sure why, and as jingoistic as the words are in sequence, it is just simple, spiritual pride. Connection, not to owning breakthroughs but fostering them, sharing them, being the spring that feeds and from which they emerge.

This is not reform, this is destruction, plain and simple. Undermining expertise by aligning it with political considerations is the very essence of fraud which, if you haven’t noticed, are variations on an old theme.

 

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Answer the door

What are we trying to pretty up, by maintaining fictions that the current state of affairs is somehow normal, that it cannot be as grossly psychopathic for no benefit as it seems? And more importantly, why?

We’ve never had to make the case that maintaining a healthy ecosystem is good. The opposite case seemed self-refuting, until it making it became a badge of honor for disingenuous fraudsters to scare fraidsters, of whom we have plenty plenty and now more than is manageable because the original case that didn’t have to be made at all now seems questionable. Circular is the logic. Refuse to accept it but decline not to acknowledge its presence and malevolence.

Reason has been caught flat-footed in the face of the transparent willingness to lie and scare. Some call it boldness and question whether norms and even constitutional principles can hold. These are quaint notions, a reliance upon and retreat into status that were never anything more than rationalizations for themselves. And as long as they lasted, they bred contempt for any questioning of the status quo. The skullduggery has always been present but for decades channeled mostly yet viciously from pulpits and through direct mail campaigns, seldom wielded openly as the weapons they have become. Those who were getting fleeced should know better, so there was no need to defend them or point out the obvious problems with the arrangement. Or listen to the warnings of those tried.

Reason has not been ready to defend itself. Never felt the need.

Now the need is pounding at the door, and we are trying to act as though we do not hear, might not be home. Maybe the knocking will go away on its own. Consult any car repair manual for a detailed explanation regarding this strategy.

And along with the formerly self-evident case for a healthy ecosystem, add that for democracy, scientific research and discovery, postal delivery, voting rights, civil rights, marriage equality, human rights. Whatever the shape of the latest outrage or their accumulation, it is a symbol of an axiom long considered safe now under assault from all sides, with stunned onlookers staggering backward, wondering WTF and waiting for someone to do something.

And understand these strategies for exactly what they are – efforts to destroy the system.

Knock, knock.

Image: Author photo, Lefkes.

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Sending a Message

ParkingLot

I don’t know which image has the worse better portents – an empty parking lot or a full one.

The question will arise, is the lot half full? But worse cases aside, this isn’t about that. The price of diesel fuel continues to hover right at the point of viability for bio-diesel producers, such that they can’t really plan for anything permanent. Except they can. They don’t, and that’s another story. We thought five-dollar-gas would be here by now and that might be in part one of the reasons why it’s not. The shock that a fear of future economic shocks has itself put into the economy. It verges on the vertiginous, which itself makes all this sound like alliterative playtime. Which it isn’t.

There was a report on Marketplace yesterday about the fate of different kinds of malls in the present economy. In between the stats, something stands out a little more:

Hessam Nadji is managing director at Marcus and Millichap Real Estate Investment Services. He says one reason for the difference is an oversupply of strip malls. They’re cheaper and easier to build than great, big gallerias.

HESSAM NADJI: Because of the housing boom, there was a lot more construction of strip malls in reaction to the overheated housing market than there was construction of new malls.

Plus, he says, big shopping malls are more immune to the recession because — thanks to their food courts and movie theaters — they have an entertainment value that strip malls don’t have.

NADJI: You also have to take a look at the tenant mix that makes up a lot of demand for strip centers. And, unfortunately, a lot of them are local, smaller retailers that are under a lot of pressure right now.

Unlike chain stores that you see in a shopping mall, which don’t have to rely on just one location for business.

Sitting in an idling car in a half-empty parking lot as I was, the bigger message is the most obvious – when does the scale of what we do and what we can do slip, maybe accidentally, back into focus? Economies of scale seemed sexy, but they were nearly the opposite – though not just because objects in the mirror appeared to be closer than they actually were. We mistook the distance for something that didn’t matter, when any self-help book will tell you that the journey is the thing that counts. I think Henry Miller wrote it – happiness is not a destination. It’s a kind of dumb truth, a message we’re trying to send ourselves through the most obtuse signals. It’s why TV is so unintentionally funny.

And sometimes, radio.