Two Weeks To Go

Two weeks. As of today it is two weeks until the US midterm elections, and one way or another scientific and medical research in this country is heading for a profound shift. Because the rest of the country is heading for one as well.

Of course, it already has as of the last election, and I’ve detailed that in a series of posts over the last couple of years here. This is the most recent one. I’m not sure that I recommend reading all of them over again, because the immediate issues that they raise have changed over time. But the larger issues are the same, damn them. If you look at the entries, you will find that my reactions include despair and disbelief, mixed in with plenty of anger and alarm. I think that’s the only reasonable response to what’s happened. We are faced, as I’ve said before, with an administration that despises the system of US government research funding and is making every effort to beat it to death.

There are still some people who are having difficulty reaching that conclusion, and while I sympathize (it’s one of those statements that is almost too simple to grasp), I would urge them to wake up and look around. Over and over, various parts of this government have tried to destroy federally funded research by whatever means they can come up with, and when one method doesn’t work, they move on to another. The shovel blade comes swinging down over and over; the boot keeps coming in.

This is of a piece with the Trump administration’s approach to all other functions of government. These are treated as if the US were a large organized crime syndicate, run by the sort of people who find that worldview comfortable and convenient. It is of course an utter disaster from any angle you choose to look at it - horrible damage is being done not not only to US science, but to the economy, to foreign affairs, to domestic policy, to constitutional law, to business and regulation, to the social fabric in general and really just about any other function that government might touch on. The rot of arrogance, corruption, and sheer incompetence pervades everything. 

Reading dystopian fiction growing up, I find that what no one predicted well was how incredibly stupid and embarrassing such a system could be. You almost feel stupid yourself complaining about that aspect when so many more destructive things are going on, but watching (for example) Robert F. Kennedy run HHS or Pete Hegseth run the Defense Department just leaves a person staring in disbelief at how idiotically things are going. I feel (along with many others) as if I’ve been living inside a particularly vile nightmare ever since the last election.

But (to call back to James Joyce) perhaps this history is a nightmare that we can awaken from. Indications are that the Republican Party - which is the Trump Party and has been for a long time now - will lose very badly in this election, and I cannot wait to see it. If the Democrats take the House and indeed the Senate, my hope is that they will rip into the doings of this administration by every means available. I have completely lost my senses of decorum and reasonableness about this by now: I want RFK Jr. impeached and removed. I want Pete Hegseth impeached and removed, and I don’t want anyone to think that it’s OK to stop there. We have serious problems with the Executive Branch, and thanks to the Supreme Court - who should not escape scrutiny and reform, either - that Executive Branch is the most bloated with power it has ever been. There is a lot to do, and I am truly not in a reach-across-the-aisle mood about it. We are in one of the worst crises in US history, and we’d better act like it.

I have worries. I do not expect Trump to take a huge electoral defeat calmly, and I cannot predict what destructive ideas he might come up with to avoid it. He himself is a fundamentally lazy, arrogant, and stupid man, and he is very much showing the effects of his age at this point. But he has younger, more vigorous hangers-on who are just as vile, and I can’t predict what they might do to hold onto power, either. This may well not go smoothly.

Two weeks to go. The election might mark the beginning of a Second Reconstruction (suggested motto: “Let’s Do It Right This Time”), or it might be the start of something much worse. Two weeks. Good luck to us all.