Hanson strikes some excellent professorial blows of the sort that can be adopted for disruption by going through examples of Obama putting ideology ahead of available facts. Hanson baits us with superstition then supplies examples of Obama ignoring statistics in favor of progressive policy. Rather quickly the charges against Obama shift from superstitious in the title, to unscientific in the next few paragraphs, to ignores available data thereafter.
Obama's idea of science is reductionists, it relies on consensus of professors, not a particularly courageous bunch, and if their agreement advances progressive agenda then it becomes fact. And from this view of how Obama embraces science we can imagine that Newton, Galileo and Darwin as exemplars of groupthink having worked through consensus with support of status-quo institutions and universities advancing majority-held theories.
Brilliant. That takes two paragraphs, and I think that might be the best bit.
Hanson uses stem cell research for example. This is a particular point of nettlesome annoyance because there is nothing at all scientific in this stance. I've heard more people chime in on this vociferously without knowing what they are talking about save for what they drew from Moveon.org so they all say the same thing about Republicans being unscientific when it is actually they, and now the president is crowing about victory on this matter from the same place of pure ideologic ignorance. Straight up.
This is where Hanson uses "anti-science" and "anti-factual" in place of superstition.
Obama warns about backlash against Muslims following Islamic terror attacks while statistic show clearly and repeatedly and variously that Jews need protection. Hanson fleshes out his description of this with examples through three paragraphs.
Obama associates San Bernardino with no fly list either ignoring or conflating the terror watch list while no connection between these things is shown to exist.
Obama rejects Keystone pipeline on ideologic grounds ignoring all arguments contrary.
Hanson devotes a devastating paragraph to changing NASA's foremost mission to outreach to Muslim groups to make them feel better about their contribution to science, math and engineering. Hanson asks readers to imagine a future Republican president converting federal department to outreach to Christian populations to make them feel better about their contributions to science, math and engineering.
Obama blithely connects California drought to climate change, flies out there to do it, while ignoring all other factors. Three long paragraphs discussing the fish, progressive policy, El Nino, and actual science indicating that extra coolness is chief among the problem and not extra heat, that is, El Nino not as strong as usual among many other factors.
Hanson now describes Obama's approach to the natural world as "privileging ideology over facts." This is the description he settles with. Superstitious, to unscientific, to unreceptive to available data , to privileging ideology over facts.
Is that so bad? Privileging ideology over facts.
Hanson discusses Benghazi killings without lingering, moving directly to Michael Brown's death in Ferguson in the same paragraph finishing with flawed 1 in 5 females raped on campus studies debunked by facts and still "resurrected for its electoral utility."
Hanson concludes Obama does not believe in science because science is blind. Our age requires social justice be affected by any means necessary even when that means denying scientific method and facts themselves.
Nice. I was really hoping this article would be about bizarre rituals and possibly goats, and chickens, and candles. The superstition part is not developed. I was hoping for more. Hanson switches superstition for ideology without exploring the magical thinking. There is a lot of potential for discussing how superstition pervades the ideology but Hanson does not do that. Hanson shows that Obama accepts different facts. Say, for Keystone, Obama is looking past fossil fuels, it's a thing with him and with them, dirty fuel, they hate that. We can sympathize with that. Obama cannot have a pipeline mar the map of his administration. That would be Obama advancing something that Obama and many others want desperately to move away from. They're fine with all the anti-science, anti-logic, anti-economics, anti-energy self sufficiency of the present. None of that matters. The truth of the future they envision is not powered by coal and oil. So whatever it takes to get there. Obama's superstition, his secular-religion that is irrational and unscientific, can be described sympathetically.
10 comments:
Churchill said that half of what he knew was wrong, but the trouble was he didn't know which half. When you stop to think about it, being right half the time isn't so bad. A .500 batting average as it were.......That's the advantage of democracies. The leaders are sometimes mistaken and wrong headed, but their failures are generally not catastrophic. Wilson, Lloyd George, and Clemanceau weren't particularly wise or visionary in the way they managed WWI and the peace that followed. But put their failures into perspective. The Kaiser, Ludendorff, the Tsar, and Lenin show how a leader can take a country past failure and into cataclysm.........I suppose future historians will discover something that Obama got right. It's theoretically possible. But for now we can take comfort in the fact that he was a failure and not a catastrophe. If Hillary wins, the slow leak will continue, but we'll probably survive.
Obama associates San Bernardino with no fly list either ignoring or conflating the terror watch list while no connection between these things is shown to exist.
From The Weekly Standard...
In the interview, Knox asked Obama about Ibrahim al Qosi, a Guantanamo detainee transferred by the Obama administration to Sudan in July 2012, who recently resurfaced as a leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula...
"I am absolutely persuaded, as are my top intelligence and military advisers, that Guantanamo is used as a recruitment tool for organizations like ISIS," Obama began. "And if we want to fight 'em, then we can't give 'em these kinds of excuses."
There is no reason that Obama would need to be "persuaded" of something that can be easily demonstrated. Either Guantanamo is a major recruitment tool or it's not.
Guantanamo rarely appears in jihadist propaganda, whether ISIS or al Qaeda, and reviews of recent propaganda materials from ISIS and al Qaeda – online videos and audio recordings, glossy magazines, etc. – found very few mentions of the facility.
0bama needs to get together with a voodoo high priest and slaughter a chicken to get rid of those superstitions.
IOW, Pissy is an ignoramus who thinks if he says something because it advances the agenda, it doesn't leave a great gaping hole by which it can be rebutted.
Is Hanson saying that progressivism itself is a superstition?
By definition an ideologue is superstitious. And Obama is an ideologue in spades. That's right, I said IN SPADES.
Oh, you naughty boy.
Superstition is a bad sign.
I'm Virgo, what's your sign, Legs?
he truth of the future they envision is not powered by coal and oil. So whatever it takes to get there.
Actually it doesn't take much to get "there." Just stop it all. The problem is "there" is not where they think they are going with their pipe dreams.
"There" is pre-industrial, no plastics, no synthetics, no jets, wearing Mahatma Ghandi handwoven undies, no manicured golf courses, no A/C, and heaven knows how the O's would get to Hawaii in the bitter winter which back here cannot be heated by fossil fuel and heaven knows there ain't enough winter sun to go around. Brrrr.
Be careful what you wish for lefties. Cause the conservative preppers will have you beat cold.
Post a Comment