Ignorance needs a punching bag

           On a scale of pretentiousness, from 1 (Mr. Rogers) to 10 (Mr. T), Anthony Fauci is a 2 and Rand Paul is a 15.

            Badgering Fauci in a Senate hearing, Paul, who puts more stake in herd immunity than masks, said Fauci is "making policy based on conjecture."

            Science often is based on conjecture, which Rand Paul, a physician himself, should know.

            What Fauci promotes is the best guess of the best medical minds at the Centers for Disease Control. What Paul promotes is his own suppositions.

            Sadly, he also promotes a kind of myth-making that contributes to ignorant acts.

            It goes this way: People who want to reject scientific convention seek out a boogie man.

            We saw that with climate change, aka "Al Gore's global warming theory," disregarding that Gore was simply a vessel speaking the truth held by most climate scientists.

            We see that now with conspiracy types who warn that vaccines are somehow linked to one figure's dark designs -- Bill Gates, George Soros . . .

            Only a degree of separation exists between those who seek to make Fauci a punching bag and those who direct their ire at China, or Chinese-Americans or anyone Oriental, amid the pandemic.

            The insidious lip-baiting by Donald Trump and Republicans about China and the virus serves only to deflect the role Trump played in making the pandemic much worse.

            Whatever the claim, making Fauci the bad guy is outrageous when he is simply acting in consort and consultation with fellow epidemiologists.

            In the hearing last week, Paul said he wanted proof – a study – that wearing masks after vaccination is a necessary step.

            Fauci wouldn't play that game. He said that mask wearing for those vaccinated is simply a precaution because we don't know at this point if people who are immune via vaccination can transmit asymptomatically or if they might be susceptible to new variants of the virus.

            Understand, Rand? The answer is we don't know.

            What Paul is doing is what we've seen done in so many public health issues: the seeding of doubt in science.

            We saw it when the tobacco industry did all in its immense power to plant seeds of doubt in the minds of the public about smoking's link to cancer.

            The very same strategy by some of the same players, has been employed to forestall useful steps to curb carbon-loading in our atmosphere and hence to moderate global temperatures.

            Read all about it in Eric Conway and Naomi Oreske's book about that two-pronged assault on science, "Merchants of Doubt."

            It is very useful for those merchants to make Al Gore the punching bag. It's easier to assail one man than a massive body of scientific inquiry.

            Say what you will about Fauci; it's not HIS science that is at play in this still-tender moment. It's a whole bunch of scientists making a bead on a moving target.

            Only the hawkers of ignorance would make him a target.

            That brings us to the unfathomable rage directed at Asian-Americans – for what?

            We know what.

            Certain individuals, like the man from Mar-a-Lago, know what whatever ails us that might involve reasoned changes in our behavior, they can block by making someone else the villain.

            Mexicans and Central Americans seeking new lives. Black people seeking justice amid unrelenting oppression. Muslims seeking simply to exist among us. Any and all can be made great distractions.

            All it takes is a blowhard and a microphone.

            Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

 

'Doddering Joe' takes off like a geyser

           "President Biden delivered his first prime-time address today to speak about the past year and present a hopeful vision of America in returning to normal, and then the Republicans were given 30 minutes for rebuttal." – Seth Meyers

            So, a joke or not?

            Based on public opinion, the joke is squarely on those who mocked Joe Biden.

            That's "Sleepy Joe," via Donald Trump, "doddering Joe" by Sean Hannity.

            So decrepit. So pitiable.

            Well, pity his foes. Biden has done more in 50 days than any president since FDR.

            Republicans in Congress, in their stout unanimity against the American Rescue Plan, must gulp to see the 70 percent-plus public approval of the measure.

            Even Americans who identify as fiscal conservatives are embracing federal assistance aimed at households rather than board rooms.

            That, of course, brings up the age-old question that Republicans never ask themselves when they control the wheel: What about that deficit?

            In 2017, when Republicans went all in on a $1.9 trillion tax-cut bill weighted almost criminally toward mega corporations and the wealthy, nary a peep escaped their lips about that deficit.

            Similarly, the Republicans couldn't come up with a good reason why those tax cuts were necessary. The economy was robust. Their motive came down to one reason: They did it because they could.

            Economists advise against cutting taxes when the economy is growing. That's what our economy was doing coming out of the Great Recession.

            Who knew a pandemic and job numbers not seen since the Great Depression were around the corner? The GOP's signing off on budget-busting tax cuts was a crass gesture for a party living for the moment, a farmer feeding seed corn to the swine.

            As to Republican criticism that the pandemic package is not solely targeted at the poor, one could ask them: To what targets were your tax cuts directed?

            The Democrats' bill does more for the poor than any piece of legislation since the Great Society.

            First, let's talk about the checks that will go to most Americans. We are talking about two tiers of taxpayers and what those checks will do.

            The first is low-income people for whom those checks will pay for rent and heat.

            The second, those less distressed financially, will use their checks to repair a roof or put some money down on a replacement vehicle.

            That spending will mean jobs for those desperate to get off unemployment.

            Beyond those checks, Biden's signature is going to mean transformational assistance for the less privileged.

            It will extend unemployment. It will make unemployment benefits during the pandemic nontaxable.

            It will dramatically increase the child tax credit and the earned income tax credit, lifting millions of American families above the poverty level.

            That's not all. It will provide additional subsidies to make the Affordable Care Act more affordable. It will provide small business loans and assistance to restaurants.

            The support for the Democrats plan, after electing a Democratic president and congressional majority, may signal that the nation is turning the page from trickle-down mythology.  It's harder to convince a majority of voters that "government is the problem." A system of untenable inequality is the problem.

            Could it be that this nation no longer is under the voodoo spell of Reaganomics and the top-down, trickle-down approach to addressing the nation's ailments?

            With a transfer of assets from social programs to the military and the wealthy through regressive taxes, Republican rule was never about fiscal austerity. It was about unfairness.

            If it were about austerity, the deficit would have been tamed.

            The fact is that Democratic presidents have been more successful through the years in reducing deficits. However, Democrats also have shown that when the economy is flagging, they are willing to step up with a bold rescue.

            Our new president, true to his promise, has stepped up to lift both the nation and its neediest out of despair.

            We have gone from trickle-down to geyser-up. Let's see which gets us higher.

            Sleepy Joe? Doddering Joe? Let me suggest a nickname more suitable for this president as he dedicates himself to the nation's needs geyser-style: Old Faithful.

            Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com. 

Build the wall -- at Texas' entry to New Mexico

            In his 2013 best-seller "Spillover" (subtitle: "Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic"), David Quammen used quotation marks to introduce "superspreader" to the reading masses.

            Wholly unneeded keystrokes now -- the meaning self-evident -- I doubt a single Republican flinched to see Trump rallies denounced as superspreader events, because they were, unapologetically so.

            To that category add the recent CPAC spread-fest and boos for the word "masks." Add a certain Jan. 6 rally and riot. And to the list now, add the state of Texas.

            One could quibble semantically, since Quammen's definition is meant for a party of one "who directly infects far more people than does the typical infected patient."

            So, award the title to Greg Abbott.

            By dropping any pretense of fighting the spread of the disease with state mandates, Texas' governor has done his part to assure that the pandemic, like March, will not recede with a whimper.

            It wasn't going to anyway, despite the false sense of security underlying the loosening of restrictions. The virus will just be that much more recalcitrant because of policymakers more interested in commerce than lives lost.

            It's not too late, however, to dent the tide of suffering. To that end, I have a special request for New Mexico.

            Build a wall – at the town of Texline, if nowhere else.

            Texline, on U.S. 287, is the sleepy gateway where the Lone Star State cedes northward to the Land of Enchantment.

            Texline means much to me. Growing up in Colorado with kin down south (both parents born in Texas) the state-line marker in Texas' sandstone image staged countless family photos.

            Later I got a newspaper job in my folks' home state, and it served the same purpose for my children when we traveled north.

            Now I live in Colorado, and it is a threat to us all that people who might boo masks are traveling up U.S. 287 to pack the ski lifts during spring break.

            It also is alarming that young people without a care heard the "all clear" from Abbott and will make the reverse trip down 287 from up north, headed for Texas' beaches and all that aerosolized merriment.

            Dear New Mexico: Stop this before it's too late.

            Nothing grand needed, nothing worthy of Donald Trump's signature. Just a chain-link fence, and a yellow-and-red "We take pandemics seriously" sign with the state insignia.

Texas is not taking it seriously. Abbott gave lip service to "personal vigilance" against the disease. He knows, however, that his directive has promoted just the opposite.

            He knows that people will die so that cash registers will ring.

            In my time in Texas I interviewed Abbott several times as state Supreme Court justice and attorney general. I never thought of him as a goon.

            When given a chance to explain his rationale for this decision, however, he sure came off like one.

            He didn't even attempt to defend it on health-policy grounds. When asked about President Biden's rightful criticism of it, he said Biden "is bringing illegal immigrants into the state of Texas and then releasing them" -- them and their germs.

            Abbott clearly has learned the art of deflection at the knee of the master – he whose irresponsibility as president was and is central to the fates of more than 500,000 dead Americans and so many more who suffer today.

            By contrast, Joe Biden is doing everything he can to save lives.

            The galling thing about the debate about masks is that there's even a debate. The bottom line about mask-wearing is that it shows you care about your fellow man. Supposedly that's what Christians do.

            Regardless of where you live and what your governor has said or done, wear one.

            And New Mexico, build that wall.

            Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.