Where is Mark Twain when we need him most?
By Ricardo Leiva
From the Emilio Ichikawa blog
(“Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please”.) – Mark Twain
Senator Marco Rubio declares: “I think there are multiple theories out there on how the universe was created and I think this is a country where people should have the opportunity to teach them all.”
The problem is that, in American popular nonculture, a “theory” is the same as an OPINION. In other words, Marco Rubio demonstrates that his mental process, though expressed in Spanish, is completely “Made in the U.S.A.”
In the United States today, there is a whole series of words that are used incorrectly and have an enormous impact on politics.
For example, when someone wishes to express a thought, he says “I feel that such-and-such,” as if what he feels and what he thinks were synonymous. By equating what is felt and what is thought, well, any feeling is the same as any thought.
That “democratization” and “equalization” of feeling with thinking implies that what I or you or anyone feels is the same as what someone “thinks.” In other words, thought stops having a logic, objective, verifiable or observable connotation. What I feel, for example, is equivalent to what science – through a scientific logical process – discovers.
Also, belief is mistaken for certainty, as in “I believe that the Earth rotates,” which reveals to us that some people do not seem to know “with total certainty” if the Earth rotates or if its rotation is a mere belief. And so on. Of course, all this is part of the vulgar lack of culture that exists in the U.S., which every elementary- or high-school teacher or college professor discovers quickly enough in his career.
It is not surprising, therefore, that Marco Rubio “believes” that every “theory” about the origins of the Earth – or global warming, or if Martians landed in Area 51, or if a UFO fell near Roswell – should be made known.
A population that operates within those frames of reference will elect as its representatives those politicians who also “think” or “feel” that this is the best country in the world and that the nation’s fathers were guided by an Anglo-Saxon god.
Enlightenment – what is that? I imagine that if it were an elementary-school requirement to read Thomas Paine’ book “The Age of Reason” – the theory of U.S. independence – or the abridged and revised Bible kept by Jefferson, the founders of the U.S. nation would be accused of being a bunch of secular humanists (an opprobrious appellation among the ill-called conservatives.)
Sure, what’s most likely is that Marco Rubio “believes” in the rapture, i.e., the end of the world for the chosen ones, but has no idea of when the solar system was originated.
We need another Mark Twain.
