Racists Hate Science and Destroy What They Love

Berlin 1945, the end of a racist empire

I just finished a long book about the Holocaust.  The author, Timothy Snyder, begins the book showing that Hitler used the Jim Crow south as a model for the racist state he dreamed of. Hitler also admired America’s long history of betraying and murdering native Americans. He saw the Volga River in Russia as his own Mississippi River and the Slavic people of eastern Europe as the native population to destroy. He would make Germany great and has rich as America by taking over all of eastern Europe and Russia as far as the Volga and getting rid of all the Jews in the process.

Hitler believed that conquest of these lands was necessary because the German land could not support the population of Germany. It is one of the terrible ironies of his anti-intellectualism that he held back the green revolution that would feed all of Europe and much of the world after he was dead, and the fascists were out of power in defeat. By the 1960s every free democratic country could not only feed itself but had surplus food to export. Part of that food surplus went to the Soviet Union because the green revolution there was stopped by the perverse biological beliefs of Joseph Stalin.

In 2016 Trump took control of the Republican Party by being openly racist instead of pretending not to be racist as the party had done since Nixon. Trump has spent three years destroying the environment and laws protecting the environment. He attacks the green new deal and all environmental initiatives as socialism. Like Hitler a century ago Trump is an idiot who could make America better, but his prejudices and hatred of science rule his third-rate mind.  Stupid people are always the most stubborn.

Hitler took control of Germany with the votes and the backing of Evangelical and Catholic Christians by making them so afraid of socialism they embraced Hitler’s racism. The southern churches that backed slavery then Jim Crow laws are now the state church of Trump. They are anti-science, anti-intellectual and they want an apocalypse not a living planet.  If the resistance to environmental progress seems crazy in America it’s because people with vile beliefs and vile goals really are looking forward to Armageddon. 

Snyder’s book: “Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning” traces the history of the Holocaust in every country that the Nazis controlled. Throughout the book the terrible suffering that racism brings to the world is clear. Also clear is the terrible irony that some of that suffering is because racists are anti-science and anti-intellectual and their a thorough stupidity ruins even their own world.

Out of the Cast, Therapy Begins Today

My high-tech arm brace

Today I had went to see my surgeon and to get my first physical therapy session.  The cast came off shortly after I arrived at the office. I got x-rays. The technician doing the x-rays explained very carefully what the doctor needed to see and did her best to make sure I was not in pain. She could see from the previous x-rays that I was a mess or at least my elbow was a mess.

After the x-rays the surgeon came to the exam room. Even with a mask on he had the look of someone who is very happy with their work. He told me that everything looked very solid. He showed me the plates and screws holding it together my humerus bone and my ulna. He told me he had to break the ulna to fix the joint. So, my broken bone count is 40.

The surgeon said the break in my elbow was not because of fragile bones. He said the break would have been the same in a 20-year-old who hit the ground in the same way. That was good to know.

After the doctor left, two medical technicians put me in the device you see in the photo. They said I should keep this on except in the shower. I was happy to know I can take a shower now. It won’t be comfortable sleeping in this, but it won’t be any worse than the cast and the sling.

After the doctor visit, I went to another part of the building and had my first physical therapy session. I will write more about that soon.

Protesting personal protective equipment is sooooooooo American

These guys don't protest helmet rules

In 1981, I was a staff writer at the Elizabethtown Chronicle. I was assigned to write about the anti-helmet law demonstration at the state capital. I was the only motorcyclist on staff and always wore a helmet, so I was not sympathetic with the demonstrators.

I wrote about the demonstration and reported the opinions of the demonstrators as accurately as I could. I remembered some of their arguments from a decade before when I heard the arguments against wearing seat belts. The protesters insisted that riding a motorcycle was just as safe with or without a helmet.

Since it was a weekly newspaper, I had a chance to update my story the next day with a report of the death of a motorcyclist leaving the rally riding home in the middle of the night with a blood alcohol level that made him legally drunk. He died of massive head injuries. Since he was dumb enough to drive a motorcycle while drunk his lifespan was probably destined to be short anyway.

Personal protective equipment has always been controversial in freedom worshipping America. We are free to be as stupid as we want to be. We do not want people to tell us to wear masks or seatbelts or helmets or safety glasses or wash our hands.

We wear personal protective equipment for ourselves and for those who love us and for those who could be hurt if we don’t as in the case of facemasks. The trouble is there is no dramatic feedback for safety. We wear a seat belt and walk away from an accident that could have killed us.

There is an old proverb that says above all do not become a proverb. Do not be that blind man who refused safety glasses at work. And do not be the motorcyclist who protested helmet laws and died on the way home of massive head injuries. Fifty years post mortem you are still a proverb.