BUSH’S WAR ON SCIENCE CONTINUES.
In "Bush on the couch" (reviewed below), Justin Frank addresses Bush's dogged and stubborn disdain for science. At its root, we have a dissociative disorder, in which Bush, lamentably, exists in a very "internalized" world. Having long since retreated into himself, he has adopted a perverse strain of solipsism as a world view (this is rationalized by the Bush Bowl as "clear vision", deriding those who rationalize and argue outside of the vagaries of Bush's consciousness as the "reality based" community.)
From Bush's point of view, the universe exists in a few cubic inches, right behind his eyes. Anything from the outside world that contradicts whatever preconceptions he already possesses is discounted out of hand- not because he resents the intrusion or holds dear to any particular policy- but because the "real world," to him, is as fictional as a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Why should he bother with "facts" that don't spring, Athena-like, from his own consciousness? From his point of view, he thinks, and thus, it becomes real.
To Bush, integrating external information would be analogous to you or I taking advice from Obi-Wan Kenobi, while watching "Star Wars."
Bush, further (believe it or not) is fully conscious of his analytical and cognitive deficiencies. However, the dissociative disorder will not let him develop beyond mere resentment, and further internalization. If he doesn't understand a concept, or it contradicts his preconceptions (like Global Warming, Evolution, or simple algebra), it just ain't real. When called on it, he might occasionally say that the "jury is still out" on this or that issue, but the gavel has long since descended, as far as he'd concerned.
I could go into the broader implications of this, but we see it playing out right before our eyes: War, a rotten economy, skyrocketing poverty, torture, illegal detentions, rape of the constitution, declining wages- the list goes on, and on, and lamentably on.
And the latest insult:
Bush's 2007 budget slices 2 million from the budget that the EPA needs to keep their research libraries open. Faced with these cuts, the libraries have already begun to close down- and within months, the entire body of research that our tax dollars paid for- research that is well-nigh indispensable in these times, will be shoved in boxes and put in a warehouse, somewhere, never to be seen again. (Read all about it, here.)
Why does this not matter, to Bush? The research that he's consigning to the memory hole contains INFORMATION. What's even worse- it's information that HE didn't come up with, on his own. To him, this is like putting a bunch of TV scripts into cold storage.
This plays so well to his base. I lived down south for 13 years, and the two most common pejoratives I heard were "DamnYankee", and "Pointy-head intellectual." The two were, of course, interchangeable, in many situations. When the two were intermingled, you knew who the culprits were- those evil gay jewish lib'ruls up north, sitting around in their lab coats, deciding how simple poor folk like them were to live...
A patently insane fantasy, but it exists, to this day.
Who knew solipsism would eventually have a political base?