The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

A new Gallup poll found that Americans who actually have confidence in science fell from 70% in 1975 to 64% today. In other words, over a third of us don’t really buy into that science crap. Republicans used to believe the earth rotated around the sun, something on the order of 72% of them, but in this Age of Enlightenment we live in now, the era that finds conspiracies in everything from presidential elections to microwave implants in their toilet paper, the Grand Old Party folks who believe in rationality dropped below half to 45%. What, you’re surprised?

Maybe you don’t believe Q exists, that Qanon is just a bunch of crackpots who eat magic mushrooms on their breakfast toast, that evolution is real and that the universe operates on the laws of physics. Most Republicans don’t and more than 1/3rd of all of us don’t. So okay, you probably got bored in class when quantum physics sailed over your head and calculus just made your head hurt. Egghead stuff, no doubt just weirdo formulas and hard to understand folderol. Easier to wrap your mind around Bigfoot and watch documentaries about aliens building the pyramids, right? And forget about the Big Bang theory of the universe when you can just watch Big Bang the sitcom.

The way things are trending we’ll be having the Monkey Trials again before very long and the Catholic Church can bring back the Inquisition for the apostates who refuse to believe the earth is the absolute center of the cosmos. 40% of Republicans already have declared they will not, no way, put a vaccine in their arm or the arms of their kids. Some think the Covid is a hoax, that 600,000 deaths are really from underlying conditions, that the vaccine contains micro –transmitters so the government or Bill Gates can track them 24/7, that old Doc Fauci is really the devil incarnate. If you can believe Democrats are kidnapping children, storing them in a D.C. pizza parlor for their sexual and gastronomical appetites, well, it’s pretty hard to imagine what is beyond their imagination.

I suppose if the modern world is moving so fast into a strange future, the folks who feel most threatened by the coming changes might hang on to magical thinking. If they think their white privilege is under assault, well, why not turn the channel back to Ozzie and Harriet, spend half the day scrolling Facebook for posts with similar fears and keep on listening to the talking heads on cable who monetize paranoia and dread? Gravity? Just bunk. Evolution? Don’t make me laugh! Climate change? Who ya kidding?? E=mc squared? Huh??? Take two supplements and call me in the morning. You’re gonna be just fine.

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