Not Even Wrong

             “This isn't right. This isn't even wrong.” 

        When Wolfgang Pauli wrote these words after reviewing a student's thesis, he couldn't possibly have guessed how relevant his statement would be to today's gaggle of Far Right Presidential wannabees,  sycophants  and wankers.

        To be clear, Pauli's intent was not to prove the thesis incorrect, but even worse, irrelevant. We see all too much of this type of political (un) thought aimed at the current administration. 

        Examples include Donald Trump's blaming the Baltimore riots on President Obama when he tweeted: “Our great African American president hasn’t exactly had a positive impact on the thugs who are happily and openly destroying Baltimore.” This is so left field as to fit the Pauli model. Would Trump have had the Pres adopt all of these urban youth so as to be a constant presence in their lives?  If Trump's illogic is carried to its illogical extreme, George W. Bush bears the responsibility for  Bernie Maddoff's malfeasance, a claim which even the most rabid Bush hater would never dream of making.

        I know, you're asking "Mike what could be worse than that?"  Wait for it. Candidate Mike Huckabee went even farther into left field in 2008 when he said, "America has to import so many workers because for the last 35 years we have aborted more than a million people who would have been in our workforce.”  Of course, we don't have to "import workers" at all, thus the rest is drivel, out Trumping even the Donald. This is also an example of  a statement which was probably made before the maker considered the ludicrous nature of what he said. Pauli alluded to this phenomenon when he said,  “I do not mind if you think slowly, but I do object when you publish more quickly than you think.”  Substitute "speak" for "publish," and we now have "Huckabee's syndrome" This has, of course been engaged in extensively  by imbeciles with names such as Bachmann, Santorum and Walker et al.

        Another potential candidate and sitting idiot, Rick Santorum entered the contest with this; "“I think the right approach is to accept this horribly created — in the sense of rape — but nevertheless a gift in a very broken way, the gift of human life, and accept what God has given to you… rape victims should make the best of a bad situation.”  Equating the product of a sexual assault with a "gift" isn't even wrong, it's insane as well, especially since Santorum's wife availed herself or an abortion simply due to the inconvenience of an unwanted pregnancy due to consensual sex.

        Another "not even wrong" from Mitt Romney follows:  “I believe in an America where millions of Americans believe in an America that’s the America millions of Americans believe in. That’s the America I love.” Authentic Midwestern gibberish!  A close competitor for the prize, however, is  Wayne  Lapierre, the  mouthpiece of the NRA who said this: "“Folks, Brian Williams isn’t the exception. He’s exactly what they’ve taught us to expect from them all. It’s not journalism any more — it’s entertainment, it’s celebrity, it’s agendas and it’s money. All too often, a lie is now an acceptable way of communicating. To the media, a lie has as much value as the truth.” Of course, ol' Wayne while gleefully piling on Brian Williams for exaggerating his claims to having been endangered while in Iraq, would exclude Faux news, the one media outlet which has,  time and time again been damned by their own lies and contradictions. He may not have been wrong about Williams, but indicting all non Faux media one instance and overlooking Faux's history of lies and deceit is Pauliesque.

        Rand Paul is also a contestant, but he actually seems to be just a liar, diametrically wrong, vice tangentially irrelevant.

“Just because a couple people on the Supreme Court declare something to be ‘constitutional’ does not make it so. The whole thing remains unconstitutional. While the court may have erroneously come to the conclusion that the law is allowable, it certainly does nothing to make this mandate or government takeover of our health care right.” (Then perhaps we should revisit Bush v. Gore. Or Citizens United.!) Actually, that’s exactly what it means. When the Supreme Court declares something constitutional, it will remain as such until the Supreme Court declares otherwise or the constitution is amended. Period. Exclamation point. You'd think a Senator would know.....or maybe not.

And then there's this:  "Well, the thing is, we’re all interconnected. There are no rich. There are no middle class. There are no poor. We all are interconnected in the economy. ....We all either work for rich people or we sell stuff to rich people. So just punishing rich people is as bad for the economy as punishing anyone. Let’s not punish anyone. Let’s keep taxes low and let’s cut spending." Obviously if there are no poor, a Paul Presidency would be marked by the demise of welfare? What rich people does Senator Paul work for?

       The hands down winner of the so wrong it's not even wrong derby of 2015, however is actually a doctor who should be a scientist - Ben Carson. I'll list just a soupçon of his "best" work:  

“Why did evolution divert in so many directions — birds, fish, elephants, apes, humans — if there is some force evolving to the maximum? Why isn’t everything a human — a superior human?”  (Darwin just puked in his grave!) The depth of ignorance exhibited here is incredible and too complicated to explain briefly.

“ObamaCare is the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery.” (based on....?)

“For most of our history, schoolchildren were taught the guiding principles of the Constitution from the earliest age, and even members of Congress with controversial civil rights histories such as the late Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina and Sen. Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia kept a copy of that great document in their jacket pocket to remind them of the responsibilities and limits of governance.”  Yet their understanding didn't stop them from vigorously attempting to subvert the provisions of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments right up to their deaths! This quote belongs here and in the Pauli, "not even wrong" category because the two heroes of the Constitution he mentioned were both KKK members who did everything in their power to subvert the Constitution and keep people like Dr. Ben Carson from having any rights.

        Now that we've examined the extent of sheer ignorance and stupidity in the current crop of GOP hopefuls, it's probably relevant to ask, "How can they be so woefully uninformed (ignorant), mean spirited and downright untruthful?  There are several kinds of truth denial which relate to this. Most of these are anti-science or non-science points of belief which seem to influence  decisions in areas outside the factual. An example would be that someone who refuses the scientific validity of evolution may do so for several reasons.  Most of them are based on pseudo-scientific principles which the ignorant espouse  for reasons most of us can't grasp:

Cargo cult science 

Cargo cult science comprises practices that have the semblance of being scientific, but do not in fact follow the scientific method. Cargo cults—the religious practice that has appeared in many traditional tribal societies in the wake of interaction with technologically advanced cultures—focus on obtaining the material wealth (the "cargo") of the advanced culture through magical means, by building mock aircraft landing strips and the like.

        A real scientist, physicist Richard  Feynman based the phrase on a concept in anthropology, which describes how some pre-scientific cultures interpreted technologically advanced visitors as religious or supernatural figures who brought boons of cargo.  To encourage  a second visit,  natives  engage in complex religious rituals, mirroring the previously observed behavior of the visitors manipulating their machines but without understanding the true nature of those tasks. Just as cargo cultists create mock airports that fail to produce airplanes, "cargo cult scientists" conduct flawed research that superficially resembles the scientific method, but which fails to produce scientifically useful results. Creation "Science", a favorite of many on the Far right fits neatly here.

        Dr. Feynman cautioned that to avoid becoming cargo cult scientists, researchers must avoid fooling themselves, be willing to question and doubt their own theories and their own results, and investigate possible flaws in a theory or an experiment"

        Trickle Down:      

The continuing Far Right use of the term and theory of "trickle down" economics would seem to fall into this category. GOP administrations continue adhering to the concept ( Reagan "supply side" failure, Bush tax cuts) with the same lack of results. They build the runways, no planes land, in spite of the fact that many real economists contradict the theory:

“Trickle-down theory - the less than elegant 
metaphor that if one feeds the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows.” - J. K. Galbraith,  

In New Zealand, Labour Party MP Damien O'Connor has, in the Labour Party campaign launch video for the 2011 general election, called trickle-down economics "the rich pissing on the poor".

A 2012 study by the Tax Justice Network indicates that wealth of the super-rich does not trickle down to improve the economy, but tends to be amassed and sheltered in tax havens with a negative effect on the tax bases of the home economy.

Even the Pope apparently knows better: "Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naive trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralised workings of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting."

      Candidate Romney still clung to the raft in 2012,   although he was a bit hazy in his choice of words, and in some cases self contradictory:  What Romney called trickle-down government was what the rest of the nation calls “government investment.” That investment can come in a variety of forms and not all investments are equal. In the trickle-down theory, the government invested too. It invested in the top one-percent to provide jobs- as they promised- which in turn would strengthen the middle class. That idea- the former trickle-down economy theory- was already a well documented  failure based on a broken trust. It had failed a century before it was re-branded by Reagan. When, in debate,  Romney mocked President Obama by saying three times, “Government doesn’t create jobs” he  contradicted  not only the experts but he was also contradicting Mitt Romney. He had, after all, promised that if elected to "create 12 million new jobs."      

        Data manipulation

Faux News commentator Steven Milloy often invokes the concept of junk science to attack the results of credible scientific research on topics like global warming, ozone depletion, and passive smoking. The credibility of Milloy's website junkscience.com was questioned when  Paul Thacker, a writer for The New Republic, documented that Milloy received funding from Philip Morris, RJR Tobacco, and Exxon Mobil.  Milloy was receiving almost $100,000 a year in consulting fees from Philip Morris while he criticized the evidence regarding the hazards of second-hand smoke as junk science.

        Tobacco industry documents reveal that Philip Morris executives conceived of the "Whitecoat Project" in the 1980s as a response to emerging scientific data on the harmfulness of second-hand smoke. The goal of the Whitecoat Project, as conceived by Philip Morris and other tobacco companies, was to use ostensibly independent "scientific consultants" to spread doubt in the public mind about scientific data through invoking concepts like junk science

Denialism:

Denialism is exhibited by individuals choosing to deny reality as a way to avoid dealing with an uncomfortable truth. This also fits the nature of those who need to believe in their particular supernatural religion to the extent that they simply refuse to consider anything which scientifically refutes or conflicts with any facet of their mythology.  Paul O'Shea refers to it as " The refusal to accept an empirically verifiable reality. It is an essentially irrational action that withholds validation of a historical experience or event. "  In science, denialism generally manifests as  the rejection of basic concepts that are undisputed and well-supported parts of the scientific consensus on a topic in favor of ideas that are both radical and controversial. A facet of this is the  generation of a controversy through attempts to deny that a consensus exists.  Motivations and causes for denialism have been proposed, including religious beliefs and self-interest, or as a psychological defense mechanism against disturbing ideas. Some major examples exhibited by this year's GOP crop include:

Climate change:

Rarely has any essentially scientific topic been so politicized as climate change. International corporations, such as ExxonMobil, have contributed to "fake citizens' groups and bogus scientific bodies" that claim that the science of global warming is inconclusive.  ExxonMobil does not deny having made such  financial contributions, but maintains that the company's financial support for scientific reports did not mean it influenced the outcome of those studies.  Newsweek and Mother Jones and other periodicals have published articles stating corporations are 
funding the "denial industry".

Consumer protection: 

Denialism manifests as  the use of rhetorical techniques and predictable tactics to erect barriers to debate and consideration of any type of reform, regardless of the facts."  The Bush Administration's replacement of previous science advisers with industry experts or scientists tied to industry, and its refusal to submit the Kyoto Protocol for ratification due to uncertainties they asserted were present in the climate change issue, have been cited as examples of politically motivated denialism. Certainly the demonstrable success of the Affordable Care Act has fed into 
the continual Far Right denial of factual data 

The Holocaust:

The term has been used with "Holocaust denialism" as "the refusal to accept an empirically verifiable reality. It is an essentially irrational action that withholds validation of a historical experience or event. The general concept  of  genocide denial, of which holocaust denial is a subset, is a form of denialism for political reasons.  Genocide denialism or the biases which may precipitate it has been seen  in some American Holocaust deniers, Ted Nugent's rants against native Americans and many Far Rightists attitudes toward minorities

Evolution:

Religious beliefs may, and in many cases on the Far Right, do prompt an individual to deny the validity of the scientific theory of evolution. Evolution remains an undisputed fact within the scientific community and in academia, where the level of support for evolution is essentially universal, yet this view is often met with opposition by biblical literalists.  The alternative view is often presented as a literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis's creation myth. A significant number of Christians, highly incensed  by the use of the word "Myth" to describe the Genesis version, are quick to scoff at other cultures' explanations for the same situation. 

      Many fundamentalist Christians teach creationism as if it were fact under the banners of creation science and intelligent design. Beliefs that typically coincide with creationism include the belief in the global flood myth, geocentrism, and the belief that the Earth is only 6,000-10,000 years old. These beliefs are viewed as pseudoscience in the scientific community and are widely regarded as erroneous.

Historical denialism:

This is especially troubling because rather than denying the ocurrence of "unpleasant" historical events, the denial is of their relevance. Removing events such as Japanese internment, treatment of American Indians, atrocities against minorities, and discussion of political dissidence from High School textbooks, is seen by many on the right in the Heartland as not only appropriate, but necessary to "protect" students by shaping their thinking. Of course, while denying, for example, that there was any real unjustified persecution of American political dissidents in the McCarthy era, historical revisionists are engaging in precisely the same type of reality alteration as the Soviets did under Stalin.    

Genetically modified foods:

There is broad scientific consensus that food on the market derived from GM crops poses no greater risk to human health than conventional food. However, opponents have objected to GM foods on grounds including safety. Some restaurants are even touting their non-use of GM foods as a noble and consumer centered undertaking, when they are actually feeding and profiting on the subject matter. 

     It is troubling that so many who would make national policy are so intellectually challenged. It is even more troubling that they would have zero compunction in forcing the rest of us to adhere to or be constrained by their Medieval superstitions and warped perceptions of reality.