Since the flat earth brigade believes that climate change is a made-up hoax perpetrated by a nefarious cabal of evil “scientists”, hair furor has decided to eliminate all NASA climate research. This will be just the tip of the iceberg of the gop’s obsession with only allowing faux fax that correspond to their post-truth world view. It’s now highly likely that not only will they disappear the department, they’re also likely to disappear all the data they’ve collected as well. Which got me to thinking: what other inconvenient facts are they likely to disappear?
“Scienc-y” stuff: EPA data on environmental hazards? Gone. Database of chemical pollutants or superfund sites to be cleaned up? Gone. Also, any damage caused by air and water pollution, or the hazards of fracking, strip mining or any other industrial process they don’t like. Data of leaking lead pipes or oil spills or routes of bomb trains throughout the country. Health records on the impact of environmental hazards or dangerous chemicals on people. The fossil record showing how evolution has changed our planet over time. Food safety records from Big Agra — you mean, you actually think that mouse droppings or rat feces in your food is a bad thing??? Evidence that abstinence training or gay “conversion therapy” is completely ineffective or actually harmful. Any scientific data they don’t like or that “hinders” corporations that are just doing God’s work and their “right” to profit at all costs, without any consideration of the harm they cause to people or our environment — all gone. In one fell swoop, it’s all good!
Historical “facts”: All that stuff about the Civil War war of northern aggression — of course, it had nnnnnothing to do with that whole “slavery” issue. It was all about “states’ rights”. So expect all those pictures of slaves immigrants suffering in horrific conditions to disappear. Slave “narratives” alleging horrendous conditions — gone. Pictures of slaves fitted with torturous devices or scarred from brutal whips — poof, they’re all gone too. Every single “slave” was happy — really, really happy. No lynchings, no whips, no chains or violence. Slave “markets” were just that century’s version of the south’s “Next Top Model”! Enter lovely pictures of happy, smiling, joyous slaves immigrants who were all so thankful that they had the chance to endure despicable treatment, toil in barbaric conditions enjoy southern hospitality!
Japanese interment camps? Luxurious protective custody to “shelter” them from the hazards of war (although as bigtimecynic points out, this was done under FDR, so it’s possible that this might stay). History of our country breaking every single treaty with Native Americans, or evidence of how our country has mistreated them? All gone.
Economic “data”: Evidence that the economy does better under Democrats? Well, that’s obviously gone. Any CBO, GAO, Bureau of Economic Analysis or economic indicators that don’t agree with them — gone. Tax data on how tax cuts don’t work. Information on tax expenditures (aka, loopholes) and who benefits from them (clue: nnnnnever the Top 10%). Fraud or oversight data of how defense companies have systematically defrauded taxpayers or how Wall Street continues to loot and pillage every last one of us. Yeah — that stuff’s gone too.
Expect voodoo math in the form of any gop tax cut scam and complete voodoo economics on how budget-busting tax cuts will wipe out the deficit in 10 years. But don’t expect to find anything about how their budget hides a $2.7 trillion hole.
Education creation science and charter schools as gospel: Data on “best practices” or evidence that even hints that anything that teachers do is vital, important or of any value at all. Comparisons of how charter schools students do no better than public school students.
So, if you rely on any type of federal database — from the National Archives to ERIC and everything in between — download your data now. Because their idea of an encroaching universe of inconvenient facts, truth and science is already pretty frightening. But under hair furor and his team of paranoid and demented lunatics, that universe is likely to only grow and grow and grow ...