Vaccinating For Reality

NINETY THREE PERCENT of Democrats are vaccinated, and for nine percent of Republicans are, according to ABC News, which, despite claims to the contrary made by conservatives concerning the allegedly corrupt liberal mainstream media, is a reliable source. The statistic speaks volumes. It proves what we already knew: that Republicans, aka conservatives, are almost exclusively responsible for the current Covid 19 renewed epidemic in the United States, full stop. Compare the vaccination rate in "red" states to that in "blue" states; the numbers are damning, and they do not lie, cannot be misinterpreted. Acknowledging this, the governor of Arkansas suggested that the reason is a great mistrust of government on the part of conservatives. True enough, but certainly not sufficient justification for behavior which endangers the entire country. The governor failed to mention that government isn't the only established institution distrusted by the conservative community. He failed to include truth, reality, and science in the list, all of which are the same thing. The first two are pursued and elicited by the latter. A healthy skepticism of government, and of all authority, is of course healthy in a free society. Likewise science, and its initial, unproven results. But skepticism about the efficacy of the scientific method is beneficial to no one.  Given time, sciences always provides the truth about nature, of which we are of course an integral part. Science never stop correcting and improving itself until it gets it right. Unlike  human intelligence, science is not limited, or rather, is limited only by the limitations of human intelligence. Show me a person who does not believe in vaccinations, climate change, or human evolution by natural selection, and I will show you a fool,  and, quite likely, a conservative evangelical and Trump supporter. Such people have more assault weapons and Bibles than brains, or so it often seems. Such people deny these three demonstrable, proven realities for only one reason; to acknowledge their factual reality would do damage to their self esteem by challenging their preconceived beliefs, and perhaps even force them to change these false beliefs, which they cling to as a matter of pride. As is often the case, Goethe said it best: "We resist reality only because we fear that we would perish if we accepted it." Sensitive sorts might object to deniers of vaccination efficacy, climate change, and evolution being characterized as "fools". they might assert that doing so is rude and unfair. They might be concealing less noble personal traits behind a thin veneer or pious concern for the treatment of others, and themselves. Actually, it is neither rude nor inappropriate to call a  fool a fool, and any one who refuses to accept obvious reality in preference for self esteem and emotional security is indeed just that, a fool. It is perhaps regrettable that we live in a world in which fools seldom self identify.