Tulsa Test for Science Denial and Racism

Trump’s upcoming self-fest in Tulsa will be an interesting experiment to demonstrate how well denial and passionate belief can or cannot change physical reality. Crowded together with no masks but fervently believing that the Covid-19 is a progressive hoax or a conspiracy against our “Freedom” will prevent contagion from spreading through this group, right? Or if they turn up with many cases of new infection and bring it home to their families and communities, then we will know for sure that the power of belief, however it may be massed among many, cannot change reality, and does not work as a strategy for dealing with real-world conditions.

And this, in turn, will confirm or disprove the general idea that denial has the power to change the reality of scientifically proven ideas, such as the benefits of vaccination, the reality of climate change, and the falsity of the racist proposition that humans can be ranked in a hierarchy of worthiness. It’s all on one thread: denial of climate science, denial of medical science and denial of anthropology.

All of the above are being stirred into one pot by Trump and his followers in Tulsa. The selection of this place and its initial choice of date are designed to encourage the racist faction that Trump believes to be the majority of American voters. It’s no accident or mistake that they chose to hold their rally on the site of one of the worst genocidal massacres in American history against the most successful Black community, and picking Juneteenth as the opening date was intended as a slap in the face to all opponents of racism.

And what, exactly, is racism? It is not sufficient to speak of it in terms of injustice and cruelty. It is a system of belief, and it is a false belief, so those who support it are not merely vicious, but are completely mistaken, and therefore out-and-out fools. The idea that the races and cultures of mankind can be ranked in some sort of hierarchy with the White European on top was always pseudoscience created to promote a political agenda of slavery and colonialism.

It was disproven around the turn of the century by the great anthropologist Franz Boas, the distinguished American Museum of Natural History curator and Columbia University professor. He established by observation that various cultures thought to be primitive and simple were nothing of the kind, but were well adapted to their various environments in complex and sophisticated ways. Boas explaIned that all human beings were equally endowed with intellectual abilities and moral sensibilities.

By the 1920s, only a handful of academic holdouts like Carleton Coon continued to assert the pseudoscience of racial hierarchy or White European superiority. The American South continued to cling to this false belief for political and economic reasons to justify gross abuse and injustice. And that American example was pounced on by the Nazis in Germany as a model to follow in their disgusting genocidal schemes.

More recently, we have the writings of Jared Diamond in 1997, explaining the development in Europe of a culture that came to dominate the world being the result of fortunate environmental and historical circumstances, and not evidence of any intrinsic racial superiority. For details, see his fascinating study titled Guns, Germs and Steel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel

And now back to Trump, who was raised as a racist by a father who built segregated housing. He’s a case study in narcissism, and has no doubt that whatever he thinks to be true is also believed by most people. And further, that whatever he believes is true, no matter what proof otherwise may be presented. He is playing to an audience that believes as he does, in racism and science denial. But his most mistaken belief is that the majority of American voters will agree with him. He has his little hard core of cultists, but they are nowhere near a majority, and most Americans are now fed up with his nonsense and incompetence and are ready to push him aside. Chances are good that many of his fervent supporters in Tulsa will die or be too sick to vote by November.