EUGENICS was promoted as sound science before the broader world realized the human horrors attached to the genetic scam. So was Donald Trump’s crackpot approach to Covid-19, which supposedly could have prevented half a million deaths, but which was hailed by Trump’s wingnuts as “scientific” because it recommended a horse dewormer as cure. Trump supporters still managed to append the seal of credible health science to that reckless, senseless and utterly irresponsible approach. In economics, the “efficiency of the markets” and the demonizing of John Maynard Keynes had been the uber profitable gig of conservative economists until so many modern-day crises required the soundness and wisdom of Keynesian intervention.

“Science and engineering” have been malleable and vulnerable to wingnut interpretation and this has been eminently proven by history. These early purveyors of fake science preceded the internet trolls, but the exuberance and the venom are just about par.

In our sad country, you must have noticed this: the supposed “economic freedom” groups organized and funded like the shadowy Koch-affiliated organizations, groups that have never encountered the world’s poverty and inequality, have the loudest megaphones and biggest media presence. And they employ junk economics, without evidence and data, in the pursuit of sky-is-the-limit economic growth that is agnostic of equity and social justice. And where in this part of Asia are inequality and poverty deeply rooted and intractable? You are looking at one with 110 million people where the top 1 percent vacuums more than 60 percent of the national income year in and year out. For the “economic freedom” groups, growth is all that matters, even if this lifts…