The Nature of Things

Have you heard about this letter to the editor from a Canadian citizen in British Columbia? It's been making a bit of a stir on the internet this week. It might be a bit difficult to read in that format, so here is the text: "Many of us Canadians are confused by the U.S. midterm elections. Consider, right now in America, corporate profits are at record highs, the country's adding 200,000 jobs per month, unemployment is below 6%, U.S. gross national product growth is the best of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. The dollar is at its strongest levels in years, the stock market is near record highs, gasoline prices are falling, there's no inflation, interest rates are the lowest in 30 years, U.S. oil imports are declining, U.S. oil production is rapidly increasing, the deficit is rapidly declining, and the wealthy are still making astonishing amounts of money. "America is leading the world once again and respected internation...

That's what you've heard recently if you have ventured into the right-wing echo chamber. It starts with Fox News and resounds through various fear-mongering websites and is finally spouted through the megaphones of people like Ted Cruz and Steve King and Joe Wilson. It becomes a torrent of sound with which the simple unembellished truth cannot compete. The voices of those who try to impart common sense and actual scientific facts about this disease are drowned out. And that's how we get people in small towns and villages and large cities all over the country totally panicked that the Ebola monster is coming for them. Maybe through ISIS or Hamas fighters infecting themselves then sneaking over our southern border to spread disease throughout the country. (Did you ever notice how in these narratives the enemy is always sneaking over the SOUTHERN border? Now, I wonder why that would be? Obviously, their maps are defective and do not inform them that we also have a much longer...