Index

The New Superstitions

Quoth Robert Heinlein:

A touchstone to determine the actual worth of an “intellectual”–find out how he feels about astrology.

I am quite sure that this was nothing new even when he said it, but I like that version. Since the last “intellectual” of note to actively utilize the services of an astrologer was Nancy Reagan (wife of the sainted Ronnie Raygun) I think we can safely say that astrology has been safely discredited. Unfortunately it has been replaced by several newer superstitions that are not so safely disposed of yet, even though they have as much supporting evidence of their validity as astrology.

One obvious first candidate to replace “astrology” in the above quote is “Fox News”, the very popular American television cult. Members of this group display a complete disregard  (approaching oblivion) for facts that fail to support their fixed world view, and since the majority of what passes for reality for the rest of us is in that category, it is pretty obvious that sooner or later this cult will go down in history next to astrology and the KKK.

Another recent superstition - this one crystallized out of the absurd politics of Ronnie Raygun - is the doctrine of supply side economics. Since most real intellectuals tend to look at economics with the same distaste that they have for astrology, this superstition has a much more limited group of followers, most of which are paid to hold this view. While there may be a few that honestly hold this view within that cloistered circle that is economists, most have more contact with recent reality and are aware of how badly invalidated it has become.

My final candidate for inclusion in this group of crazies is Donald Trump, or more precisely the cult of personality surrounding Presidential candidate Trump, with his massively overexposed campaign targeting anything and everything that requires thought or intelligence to comprehend.  This king of the rednecks with his self-generated image of the rich white guy that says what he wants and gets away with it—and fucks gorgeous models while he does it—has managed to wreck the carefully built camouflage that the Republican core has kept up for decades.  He did this by telling the truth about their aims, and he swiped the core of the party’s redneck white male base in doing so.

History has shown that all of these new superstitions will sooner or later go the way of astrology, but the heartburn they cause and the ignorance and stupidity they promote still need to be pointed out and protested by those of us who cannot help but see that  reason and scientific thought are the only long-term means to survive.