Tennessee: Land of the Scopes Trial, snake worshippers and now vaccine ignorance

Leonard Pitts echo opinion: Ignorance is death- STOP vaccine misinformation!

                         "Inherit the Wind" is critical of creationism.

Maine Writer- We are living in ignorant times.  In Tennessee, the land of the Scopes Monkey Trial, the ignorance has surfaced like snake worshippers charming the serpents out baskets.

By now, surely this is obvious beyond argument to anyone who’s been paying attention. From the Capitol insurrectionist who thought he was storming the White House to Sen. Tim Scott’s claim that “woke supremacy (?) is as bad as white supremacy” to whatever thing Tucker Carlson last said, ignorance is ascendant.

Yet, even by that dubious standard, what happened recently in Tennessee bears note. According to a story by Brett Kelman of the Tennessean newspaper in Nashville, the state, under pressure from Republican lawmakers, fired its top immunization official, Dr. Michelle Fiscus, and shut down all vaccine outreach to young people. Fiscus’ sin? Doing her job, working to increase access to the COVID-19 shot among kids. (Maine Writer- is this the brink of infanticide?)

Specifically, she sent a letter to health care providers reminding them that under the state’s “Mature Minor Doctrine,” they are legally allowed to vaccinate children 14 years or older without parental consent. According to Fiscus, the letter, written in response to requests for guidance made by those administering the shots, utilized language drafted by an attorney for the department of health and was vetted by the governor’s office.

All that notwithstanding, it infuriated some state lawmakers. They used words like “extreme disappointment” and “reprehensible” and talked of closing the health department. Some anonymous person even sent Fiscus a dog muzzle. Then she was fired, and the state shut down all vaccine publicity efforts targeting young people.

This means no postcards sent out to remind kids to get their shots, no nudges on social media, no flyers or advertisements, no events at schools, no outreach whatsoever. And not just for COVID, mind you, but for everything — measles, mumps, tetanus, diphtheria, hepatitis, polio.

In a pandemic.

In a state with a less-than-stellar COVID vaccination rate.

At a time when experts are tracking the rise of a deadlier new COVID variant.

It is hard to imagine behavior dumber, more dangerous, more short-sighted and more downright bass-ackward than that exhibited by Tennessee and its lawmakers.

Which is, unfortunately, right on brand for this country in this era. It was in the 2000s that Stephen Colbert coined the term “truthiness” to describe the right wing’s secession from objective fact, and some of us began to speak of them as living in an “alternate reality.” 

How, we wondered in newspaper columns and speeches, can we have meaningful discourse if we cannot agree on basic facts?

Years later, that concern feels too abstract. The threat turns out to be more visceral and urgent than any of us could have imagined. Yes, some people live in alternate realities. What’s worse, though, is when they have power to impose those realities on the rest of us. That’s what we’re seeing in Tennessee and elsewhere, and the results will be as tragic as they are predictable and preventable.

Ignorance is bliss, they say. But it isn’t.

Ignorance is fever.

Ignorance is chills.

Ignorance is trouble breathing.

Ignorance is an empty seat at the table, a bedroom come suddenly available.

Because ignorance is death.

And while the aphorism isn’t true, can you imagine if it were, if ignorance really were bliss? Disney theme parks would have to find a new slogan.

Right now, Tennessee would be the happiest place on Earth.

Pitts is a columnist for the Miami Herald.

Creationism - a clear right wing creativity deficit

How did our human race, in the United States, become involved with a ridiculous theory about the seven day creation of the world?  Perhaps, long ago, this neat Biblical story worked, when men were trying to cope with our origins. But, right wing concrete religious zealots won't let go of this belief. It's especially troubling in the face of extraordinary biological, astrological and genetic science to demonstrate the ludicrous claims, told as a story in the Bible!  

Anthropologists trace the genetic code of Neanderthals to prehistoric Europe. Yet it's remotely possible some of those early humanoid beings were somehow transformed into right wing political creationists, who walk among us, in the United States. This preposterous theory, in my mind, makes more sense than Creationism. It's possible some Americans are the only genus of humans on earth who still harbor a belief in Creationism. As a matter of fact, I doubt Neanderthals would've been naive enough to develop a concrete interpretation of the creation of the universe. Worse, this myth of how the earth was created continues in spite of clear and overwhelmingly convincing evidence to the contrary.

We're learning from Bill Nye the Science Guy that the Creationism belief system is unique to Americans. It's like they'd believe the flat earth theory, if they could get away with saying it's true. Thankfully satellites can draw the distinction between flat and round.

Incredulously, a Pew Poll reports that one-third of Americans reject the theory of evolution, which likely means they're subject to belief in Creationism.

Spencer Tracy (left) in a brilliant 1960 movie with Frederic March,  in "Inherit the Wind" based on a real life trial of a teacher accused of teaching evolution, in 1925, in Tennessee.

Creationism beliefs prevent creativity. It's an entirely concrete belief system, where facts are irrelevant and no science whatsoever is allowed.

Newsmax reports:
Bill Nye to Newsmax TV: 
Evolution Denial 'Unique' to US
 
The United States is alone among developed and technologically advanced countries in allowing creationists to influence or impede the teaching of evolution, science advocate and television personality Bill Nye told "MidPoint" host Ed Berliner on Newsmax TV, on Tuesday.

"It's unique to the U.S.," Nye, former host of the PBS children's program, "The Science Guy," said of the conflict between creationism and evolution that is playing out in some local school districts. "We don't have this problem anywhere else."




Author of a new book, "Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation," Nye has been campaigning in earnest this year for the unfettered teaching of evolution, arguing that to deny it to kids is to stunt their intellectual development and raise "a generation of young people that can't think."

In February, Nye debated Ken Ham, founder of the Creationist Museum, in Ham's home base of Kentucky.

"I'm trying to spread the word," said Nye, adding that the Kentucky debate "was a case where I went in the lion's den, and my goal was to raise awareness of this extraordinary worldview that's in our midst here in the world's technologically most advanced society."

Nye said that Ham's operation spends large sums "indoctrinating" schoolchildren through DVD's, curriculum materials, posters, workbooks and quizzes meant to prove the world is 6,000 years old and was created as told in the Bible's Genesis chapters.

He said that resistance to evolution — which he called "a fact of life" and "the fundamental idea in all of biology" — is not limited to Kentucky.

"The problem is we have adults who have very strong, conservative views that are reluctant to let kids learn about evolution," Nye said, citing "people who get on school boards and want to introduce doubt about the main idea in biology."

Nye acknowledged that the concept of life evolving on a 4.5 billion-year-old planet "is just literally impossible for almost all of us to imagine," but he said that the refusal to try — and to object on religious grounds — is just a manifestation of humanity's unease with mortality.

"I think it's the troubling and compelling fact of life: We're all gonna die," he said.

"But whatever you believe," he said, "whatever deity or higher power you might believe in, the earth is not 6,000 years old."



School children taught creationism "will not be able to participate in the future" like children taught evolution, said Nye, "because they will not have this fundamental idea that you can question things, you can think critically, and you can use skeptical thought to learn about nature.

"These children will have to suppress everything they can see in nature to try to get a worldview that's compatible with the adults in whom they trust and rely on for subsistence," he said.

It's impossible to defend Creationism. As a matter of fact, it's a waste of money to even consider this as a viable theory because it's been completely disproven.  Believing in Creationism is even more dangerous than a fundamental interpretation of the Bible. Rather, Creationism leads the believer into fanciful thinking about other scientific theories, like the moon being made of green cheese, or Adam and Eve being the first human being on earth. 

It's time to create a Viking funeral for Creationism and send the theories off to sail in the mythical land of Valhalla.