pgwenthold
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Sep 19, 2001
- Messages
- 21,822
Yeah, the one statement in the letter that jumped out to me was something like, "I don't know who he is listening to. He isn't listening to us."At Unbiased Science Jess Steier wrote about the events this week: "And then came Dr. Demetre Daskalakis's resignation letter—a document that should be required reading for anyone who still believes this is about 'different scientific opinions.' 'I have never experienced such radical non-transparency, nor have I seen such unskilled manipulation of data to achieve a political end rather than the good of the American people.' He warned that we're heading toward "a pre-vaccine era where only the strong will survive." He wrote about 'people of dubious intent and more dubious scientific rigor' now in charge of vaccine policy...This isn't about industry influence—most of these career scientists could have made five times their government salary in the private sector. This is about the fundamental rejection of expertise itself."
This has kind of been my take recently - who informs these guys?
I mean, who is advising Trump on his policies? I think we deserve to know. Does he have advisers, if so, what is their expertise? And if he doesn't have advisers, what is his sources of information?
Many have pointed out the absolute idiocy of the ignorance he exhibits, in trivial ways. I mean, he is the President of the US and has access to any source he wants, but he still pulls out trivially ignorant stuff. The best example I know is his using bleach to kill covid nonsense. I mean, the question, "Why can't someone come up with a way to inject this into your body?" question is not, on the whole, a dumb question. But the President doesn't need to be asking that at a friggin press conference. There are 10s of thousands of people in industry and academia who have spent their lives trying to address that exact question, and if he just asked someone in his office, they'd have the world's leading experts from the NIH in Bethesda come and explain exactly why they can't. But that is the kind of thing intellectuals do. It's what Bill Clinton would have done, or Barack Obama.
Does he really just think he knows everything about everything? Or is he just swallowing a bunch of crap from whoever sucks up the hardest? Seriously, as the President he has the right to call Miss Cleo if he wants, but we also have the right to know that the President is basing policy on the advice of Miss Cleo. I mean, if he did that you would hear all the MAGAts claim they believe in psychics, but at least we'd know.
Talking Trump is off topic, but the idea is the same for RFK. He's come out and said, "Don't take my advice." But then, who's advice should we take? And who is he listening to?