J.B.S. Haldane (credit: Wikipedia) 

Lighter Thoughts For More Hopeful Times 

A month since my last post. Well, it is the festive season. But no excuses. Instead, let’s get on to the more important points.

One of the things I keep hearing in conversations with friends and online is the claim that Trump’s followers seem incomprehensible to many people of liberal sympathies. “How can those people still give their loyalty and support to this spoiled, sociopathic clown?” And the liberals sometimes make other, equally confrontational remarks. These don’t show much respect for some of our fellow citizens, but I admit that I have said similar things myself in the past four years.

However, I came across some material just a few days ago that made me take another look at, and have another think about, the gap between the two political camps – pro Donald and anti.

What I have found is more reassuring than disturbing so I want to share it with readers. Back in the times two or three generations ago, there were people of great intelligence who gave an all but unshakeable loyalty to “world socialism”. What that meant was that thousands of distinguished men and women, ones who had achieved great honor in their fields, kept making excuses for the main champion of Marxist ideals, namely the USSR, in spite of mounting evidence that its leaders were doing greater and greater atrocities to their own citizens, and some were even flying in the face of science itself.

J.B.S. Haldane and several of his colleagues in Biology, for example, began to defend a warped version of the theory of evolution called “Lysenkoism”. It had been thought up by a Russian scientist named “Trofim Lysenko”, and essentially it flew right back in the face of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. According to Lysenko, species could be made to change their DNA and the traits that they would pass on to their young by stressing, even physically altering, the parents. Surgically alter the udder of a cow, and her calves will ever after have udders like the one made by the veterinary surgeons for the mother. Similar changes to all species could be made. Darwinian evolution, in reply, says “Absolutely not. The gene code passed on to the next generation of any species will mainly be the one that the parent generation had when it was conceived.” There is some evidence today that some epigenetic changes can be passed on to a parent’s descendants, but for the most part, the Darwinian answer holds. Living things evolve, mostly, by genetic variation and natural selection. A slower but safer way.

                  

                                          Trofim Lysenko (credit: Wikipedia) 

But Darwinism did not suit Marxist ideology, so Darwin’s theory, at the will of party bullies in Moscow, supposedly had to bow to “scientific socialism”.  

Surely no real scientists would buy into and support such absurdity, you say? Oh, yes they did. And so did philosophers in their field and economists in theirs and so on. And yes, to reiterate, even scientists were called upon to trim their views to suit the party’s will and many did.

Haldane, to his credit, dodged and dodged the issue when he was called upon to comment on Lysenkoism. But he should have spoken out emphatically against it. Science deals with reality as it is, and no, that is not a matter of opinion. It may take some time and research to get the facts clear, but the facts are always just what they are, not what any person, no matter who he/she is supposed to be in the human made power structures, says they are. They just are. We study them and adapt to them or we sicken and die. That’s the bottom line. And by the way, Lysenkoism all but destroyed Soviet agriculture for decades. 

Why would I find this information I came across recently kind of reassuring? Because it shows us, that even in these times, there is nothing new here. Smart people being blinded by wishful thinking have always been around. And just like in past times, the truth will come out in the end, though we may have to do some suffering to get to it. The Marxists occasioned Joseph McCarthy and his followers in the U.S. in the 50’s, one group of nuts opposed by another group of nuts. But they are both gone now. Like Donny Johnny soon will be. Sensible heads will  prevail, and it looks now like there won’t have to be a bunch of blood shed to bring about his removal from power. Which is what democracy is for, isn’t it?

              

                                          Abraham Lincoln (credit: Wikipedia) 

It’s Lincoln who is supposed to have said, “You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”

In the shadow of the mushroom cloud, still folks, have an honest day.