Sunday, March 22, 2009

Brainstorming a Meme

One of the things that always irritates me is woo projection. And I see a lot of it coming from the far right side of the political spectrum. Everyone remember when Sarah Palin was channeling the ghost of Trofim Lysenko by making fun of fruit fly research? And you've all heard anti-intellectual sentiments.

So, I'm thinking of using "Bourgeoisie" (once I can memorize the spelling) in place of "intellectual" when paraphrasing neocon rambles against science: In Wikipedia, it describes Bourgeoisie as the class "...whose status or power came from employment, education, and wealth..." with my emphasis being added onto the "education" part.

They like to ramble on about how popular their witchcraft hypothesis is, as if truth was determined by how much it lines up with the popular ideology, and not by actual evidence and logic. Lysenko and Stalin hated genetics and the latest synthesis of evolution because they didn't fit with Communist ideology. So, they banned the research of genetics, gulaged and executed evolutionists, and went with some quasi-Lamarckian crank hypothesis with unreproducible results.

That's what I keep thinking about when I hear them go on their relativist rambles.

4 comments:

King Aardvark said...

Well, irrational thinking is what leads to the modern republicans, that's for sure.

You think they'd appreciate people who are successful because of hard work and education, but no.

Tom Foss said...

Sadly, there are plenty of crazies on the left, too. Anti-GMO kooks, Newagers, many of the antivaxxers, and a lot of the conspiracy nuts are on the left side of the spectrum.

Bronze Dog said...

Yup. :(

I tend to make a note to compare some neocons to those sorts to disown both.

Clint Bourgeois said...

Hey, I resemble that remark.