Shapin: "Is There A Crisis Of Truth?"

Well, it's Shapin doing Shapin...so no surprises. I've probably even complained about this very piece before. Might still be worth a quick read. Shapin seems really sure of only two things: (a) Trump is a paradigm of falsehood and (b) climate change is real. It's pretty funny that he's wrong about both of them--bad as Trump might be on this score. But the "alternate facts" BS--a deliberate misinterpretation--can only be stretched so far...  As usual, I'll point out that the PC left is far, far, far more the enemy of truth than is Trump. And one of the things they're apparently most wrong about is climate catastrophism. It's really kinda perfect that Shapin, who is so skeptical about truth, is so credulous about such obviously shaky, highly-politicized bullshit. He does have a good point--familiar though it is--that people don't so much know about science as they know about society--and on that basis trust science. Obama--revered though he is by "the party of science"--doesn't know any more science than Trump does. According to Shapin, however, he "knows where to look" to find the right deliverances of science. Wrong again, Shapin--I'd be willing to be a little bit that Trump would come out ahead in an actual match-up. The left is currently so delusional--blinded as it is by ideology--that it has become the most important purveyor of pseudoscience--(trans)gender ideology, climate apocalypticism, "social constructionism" of all kinds--especially concerning race--and the pseudosocialscience of BLM &co.  Just for starters...

   It's also pretty hilarious that he contrasts the (bad) Breitbart with the (good, reliable) NYT... The sins of the latter against truth are probably far greater than that of the former, actually...though the Times has had more opportunities, so the comparison isn't quite fair. Find me a Breitbartian Russiagate, or 1619 Project or Ukrainian-famine-denial... Not that Breitbart is so virtuous...but the very fact that the comparison is less clear than Shapin thinks it is says a lot.

   Funny thing about the left: it's made its own skepticism / relativism / nihilism about science into a self-fulfilling prophecy... They've long claimed that science was ideological all the way down... That's never been true...but it's also never been truer than it has become since the left took it all over...