During World War II, one of the burdens the Japanese unconsciously carried was philosophical: they were always looking for the one great battle that would wipe out the United States.
The United States, while it participated in such battles as those of Midway and Coral Sea, preferred to pick and pick and pick away at the Japanese, stretching and weakening the enemy when it could. Given the superior resources of the United States, as Admiral Yamamoto had pointed out before the war started, it was a foregone conclusion of American victory, absent any superweapons.
So I think E. J. Dionne Jr. is somewhat mistaken if he thinks President-elect Biden’s opening tactic of Listen to the science will win the war in a single battle:
President Trump’s success in politicizing mask-wearing has been destructive to human life. By encouraging his followers to ignore the advice of scientists, Trump has made the pandemic worse. None of this means that repeating “Listen to the science” as a quasi-religious mantra will undo the damage he’s done.
It won’t work because it’s a sentiment that appeals only to the already converted. It feeds the war against expertise that has become a favorite propaganda tool for the political right. And without intending to, it reinforces the deadly and false dichotomies that Trump has ginned up to avoid accountability.
Except it’s not. Listen to the science is a reminder to those who voted for Trump out of habit, or out of allegiance to the words Republican Party, or those who believed the Republican assertions that their opponents are socialists, or devotees of Critical Race Theory, or that Biden is so weak that Harris will push him out and push her own, radical agenda.
As these baseless allegations become apparent for what they are, those who have the ears to listen, the brains to think, and the humility to admit fault will hear and remember Listen to the science. It’s a reminder that, at one time, we put men on the Moon, that we invented vaccines for TB and polio, that we invented machinery to do the hard jobs and the dangerous jobs. To this day, we utilize science to do amazing things.
And, contra-Dionne, it’s a reminder of what the war on expertise has cost us: world leadership, nearly 300,000 lives and counting, farming income, manufacturing jobs, a monstrously inflated Federal deficit, and our honor..
Dionne, unconsciously, wants that home run that solves the problem of the far-frantic-right, and there’s no one that can hit that home run. It takes time for people to think, to act, to acknowledge error, and begin to correct it. Some will come at it quickly, encouraged to return to sanity by the illnesses and deaths of friends and family, or the close observation of the failure of Republican policies. For others, their deadly delusions, whether of a divinity that’s killing them, or a political drama that they can’t have lost, will hold them longer, and only with vast reluctance will they change, a bitter pill that will leave them bitter.
And, of course, there will be a core that won’t change: the leaders addicted to power and prestige, and their followers, those that have made up their minds, they’ll follow Paula White and Kenneth Copeland into the depths of Hell and still chant that This must be Heaven. There will always be those who won’t dare to deny what has made them important, self or in the eyes of others, in the world: the ego is a terrible thing.
But Biden is chipping away at those who can be convinced. He’s not saying, Hey, dumbfucks! See how wrong you were! Now stop being stupid and be a progressive! Progressives can grate on my nerves, too, just as they grate on the nerves of conservatives.
Instead, Listen to the science. Biden’s message is non-threatening, even diplomatic, but it is a reminder that reality will slap away those destructive delusions, and that rationality is how one understands reality.
And, with luck, silently and with an embarrassed air, hundreds, thousands, and eventually even millions of Americans will, so reluctantly, look around at their devastated friends and family, and finally let go of those delusions.
Or at least so I hope.
