Runaway selection is killing people.
Some of you might have seen one of my earlier essays comparing trends in Republican politics with runaway selection in evolution. If longer tail feathers attract peahens, tail feathers on peacocks will lengthen over generations to the point that the feathers might actually limit the bird's ability to move or hide. Likewise, during the late 1980's and 1990's, we saw talk radio and right-wing media pushing for increasingly conservative Republicans, to the point where being able to shout "USA, USA, USA!" louder than another candidate is more important than a demonstrated ability to read and write. Hence the madness we're dealing with.
I keep hoping that the next election cycle will break this trend - that the selection has now created political peacocks that can no longer walk or fly because of their outsized tail feathers, and a large enough number of Republicans will say "enough." They're stuck between two rocks - they can't win the primaries without the redhatter base, but are starting to find it more difficult to win the general election with it. The 2020 election burst any remaining bubbles of hope I had that we'd already gotten there - but clearly, we're not.
And now, it's starting to cost lives and throwing those of us still alive into a tailspin of confusion.
My home state does not allow school districts to issue mask mandates. Its legislature and governor don't seem too interested in promoting vaccinations, either.
State policy, technically speaking, applies to K-12 education. It doesn't actually include universities. But the state Board of Regents has decided to see things otherwise, and so we're now the only Big 10 institution without a mask mandate.
The city council has issued a mask mandate. It's supposed to cover all public buildings in town. But the local school district is saying it won't comply - and frankly, I understand that decision, even if i dislike it. The district went to court over an in-person teaching mandate last fall and lost. It cost them a lot of money. And the higher-ups at my university have announced we're taking our marching orders from the BoR. Indeed, for a short time, we were issued "guidelines" that all but forbade us from talking about vaccines or masks with only the narrowest of exceptions. (I have no idea how the Department of Epidemiology would have dealt with it.). It was reversed almost as soon as the rest of the country noticed it, but the fact that the people supervising the whole institution felt obliged to bow before bullshit, being given to them by people who know it's bullshit but feel either entitled or constrained to pretend it's not, is alarming.
I happen to know some of these administrators. Not one of them is anti-mask or anti-vaccine. I'm pretty sure they've all been vaccinated, and I always see them wearing a mask on campus. But they have to walk a fine line between what they know is right and what they think they can actually do. Meanwhile, the BoR is walking a tightrope between the state capitol and physical reality.
Some of the right-wingers in the legislature may believe the it's-not-that-bad-and-vaccines-are-unsafe-and-masks-don't-help-and-don't-impose-tyranny-on-me bologna, but most don't. The same is as true of Washington as it is Des Moines.
This is all because of the runaway selection that was left to run at liberty for the past 40 years. I suspect the governor of our state knows full well that vaccines and masks save lives, but she won't allow herself to see past the next election. Get past one rock, and hope the next one isn't that bad.
Everyone on campus knows masks and vaccines are necessary if we want this thing to end, but there's always someone higher up the food chain who thinks they have to pretend otherwise. And it eventually loops back on itself to the knobs don't seem to actually care that what they see with their own eyes, and hear with their own ears, is inconsistent with what they're told to believe.
This all has to stop, and I believe it will - but when? In my lifetime? I used to think so, but I'm not so sure. When politicians can't be made to put the real world ahead of the warped view of a handful of outspoken but ill-informed voters who think they're the majority, we're hosed.
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but who am I to say. …
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