Gold for Souls

This morning, I discovered the business and political media buzzing about what the Bandit did or didn't say. Buzzz ... Buzzz ... Bizzzzz. That's what I got out out of it; perhaps because I wasn't paying attention.

I did notice a fuss being made about SCIENCE. The Bandit said something about the United States falling behind for lack of scientists and engineers. Of course, that is not news; in fact, it's a very old problem, decades old. But, I am glad it has finally come to the Prez's attention  I am so glad he feels something must be done, even if belatedly. This may even be a turning point for the Bandit, because he will have to change a lot of his policies to encourage more science.

The easy, obvious example is, of course, stem cell research. Everyone knows about that one. Maybe the Bandit has had a change of heart, and no longer feels that scientists who use embryos in research are ghouls. That would be a monumental change! Such a change of heart may have major implications for his policies on abortion, RU-486 and other sanctions now oppressing women.

As the Catholic Church and other tyrannies have found out, especially since the Renaissance, keeping scientists, and artists, too, is a trying business. The Great Genius, Joe Stalin, had them arrested and locked up in his Gulag. The best of them, like Alexander Solzhenitsyn, were sent to sharashkas, where they could work in reasonably livable circumstances. The Soviet Bomb was designed in sharashkas. Stalin also made sure all the great works of art and science produced in the Gulag were preserved for the greater good of the Proletarian State. Unlike Hitler, but like the Inquisitors, Uncle Joe wasn't a book burner. Stalin gives us the clearest perception of the costs and benefits of intellectuals: knowledge is power, so must be confined to trustworthy heads. The cost-benefit equation goes nuts when that stuff gets out and around.

But, I don't know if our Fascist Bandit is smart enough to understand all of that. There's something about Fascists - Hitler comes to mind - that have a difficulty, an uneasiness, around creative people. Hitler couldn't stand Jews, so he banished Jewish Science and, with that, any possibility of quickly making The Bomb. It turns out that way most of the time for tyrants, because there is some hidden connection between being obnoxious and being smart.

Or, maybe the connection isn't so hidden. If you find out how things really work, then, most of the time, you also discover that most people are deluded. You discover that society is built on lies and  deceit, fraud upon fraud, just to benefit those who get what they want. When the hypocrisy of the ruling classes is exposed, it is very upsetting to most people. So, keeping artists and scientists is a demanding task, just like having a movie star mistress. They can expose their keepers.

This being so, many intellectuals live weird lives, which the authorities are powerless to do anything about. (Stalin's solution was the isolated sharashkas.) After all, what can you do when they've picked your locks? So, you have to pay them off, and try to keep them quiet. That's why Oppenhemier could be put in charge of remote Los Alamos. The Brit, Alan Turing, was kept near his computing work by his workaholism and his homosexuality. Those gentlemen were indispensable during the War, inventing Bombs and Computers, but when the times outran them, they were persecuted. Under pressure, Turing committed suicide. Oppenheimer died young.

But, perhaps I wander too far afield. What is the Bandit going to do with the legions of strange, gay, bearded, dopey intellectuals that he will encourage? (Or, maybe they are like quarks, up, down, strange, charmed, top and bottom, and inseparable from their quarky partners?) I know he believes he is going to get the straight, business man type - like the Republican "scientists" he digs out of the second and third tiers. That's why the Bandit's money will go to the hard sciences. Those other things - literature, sociology psychology - are far too risky to fund. Conservatives have always been like that my whole life.

The trouble is, most of the scientists I've known like to listen to classical music. Many of them PLAY the stuff. Or, they hang out with the avante garde artists, and have an unfortunate tendency to go to coffee houses. It's true the people recruited for places like Livermore and Los Alamos tend to be very straight laced. It's just as true that the most creative work isn't done on site. There are all these research grants that people work on in their remote labs. Most creative people don't like being penned in and cooped up. Stalin got away with it, but only because the alternative was shipment to the outer Gulag and death. Most societies cannot manage such an intense control.

So, I foresee problems in the Bandit's change of heart, which I suspect is not all that changed. Does he intend to set up a Gulag to handle the problem? Is he encouraging social revolution? Is he about to give up his born-again self, go back to drinking, and actually be a normal person?