Well, it's starting to look like the ones who hate science aren't too fond of math either... It adds up if you think about it :) I finally broke down and took a gander at the election results in case you couldn't tell. For years I've said that Trump is a symptom rather than the illness that afflicts this country, and the results coming in seem to confirm this. It seems that there are two fundamentally different and opposing notions of what this country is and represents, a divide that is deeper and more all encompassing than any one politician or issue. My biggest fear is that this impasse will be resolved with violence rather than words.
I'm a big history buff and our civil war of 1861-1865 has been one of my particular focuses. I was curious one night and did the math, if there was a civil war today and deaths as a percentage of the population were the same as in our first domestic spat, we would be looking at something on the order of six million dead. This ignores the fact that the scale of modern warfare is far greater and involves considerably higher civilian casualties than was the case in the 1860s. If this is settled with guns I fear America will end up looking like Aleppo.
I grew up in a culture and community rife with ignorance and anti-intellectualism, in a county that went for Trump in this election by more than 4 to 1. I'd always chalked up much of that to the poverty and isolation of the area but the widespread support Trump continues to enjoy makes me suspect that the problem is more general than that. The pervasive despair, the lack of both opportunity and hope of better futures, along with the feeling that the city dwellers and liberals look down upon and misunderstand us was a constant undercurrent in the collective psyche of the community I grew up in. I suspect that this a more general feeling, common especially in those areas seemingly left behind by time and 'progress' and also what underpins much of Trump's enduring support.
My question is, how do we bridge the gap? How do we address the very real issues that underlie these starkly opposed worldviews, as well as the unsavory and unjust acts some are more than happy to countenance to support them? We can either resolve this like adults with words or like children and fight it out, either way it is incumbent upon us to do something, shouting, threats, and name calling damn sure ain't cutting it. I will be the first to tell you I don't have the answers (and I suspect you wouldn't believe me if I claimed to) but until we start talking about the problems definitely won't get anywhere in resolving them.
All I know is that these next couple months are going to be real interesting...
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(First photo is from the balloon release for Breonna Taylor's birthday, second is from Derby day, and the last is from July after NFAC had marched out)
Beautiful
Thanks!