Do you think America entered a mini Dark Age when Bush stepped into office?

Question

IOWA CITY, Iowa Oct 26, 2004 — The Bush administration is trying to stifle scientific evidence of the dangers of global warming in an effort to keep the public uninformed, a NASA scientist said Tuesday night.

"In my more than three decades in government, I have never seen anything approaching the degree to which information flow from scientists to the public has been screened and controlled as it is now," James E. Hansen told a University of Iowa audience.

Hansen is director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York and has twice briefed a task force headed by Vice President Dick Cheney on global warming.

Hansen said the administration wants to hear only scientific results that "fit predetermined, inflexible positions." Evidence that would raise concerns about the dangers of climate change is often dismissed as not being of sufficient interest to the public.

http://www.space.com/news/bush_warming_041027.html

Answer 1

no

Answer 2

The question is more interesting for its form than its substance.

We need to understand, first, what is meant by "Dark Age" in this context. The 'Dark Ages' that refer to Europe from the 6th to 10th Centuries were triggered by the fall of Rome and a general social disintegration. That is not what is going on at this time in the USA. It might well be what is happening in the Near East, but that's another thread somewhere.
In a narrower sense, the Dark Ages could refer to the period of theocratic suppression of freedom of thought. The repression continued through the high middle ages and well into the Renaissance. Galileo lived in the 1600's long, long after the Dark Ages were over.

This should not be construed as a 'grammar flame' or anything remotely like one. It is an observation that the term 'Dark Age' is a value-laden phrase, more rhetorical than appropriate to the question.

The idea that the Bush administration is anti-atheist science, pro-Bible, and all that jazz .....is yesterday's news. What I wish to call attention to is that the poster of the question is injecting inflammatory rhetoric into a dispute that is already on fire quite nicely, thank you.

I took a break over the Memorial Day Weekend and did a few things that have re-centered me. I think that it's high time that those who have a serious point to make should start toning down the fireworks.
This does not mean that I do not think that Bush, Cheney, Rove and a bunch of other nasties should not be removed from office and face significant losses of personal liberty. But it does mean that I will endeavor to tone down my own contribution to the firestorm of rhetoric, and return to a more considered, thoughtful way of participating.
I invite the right wing to do the same.

Answer 3

Calling it a mini Dark Age is a bit too dramatic, but there can be no doubt that this administration's conservative religious agenda has changed the climate in which scientific agencies that report directly to the White House conduct and report their investigations.

The effects of the administration's attitudes diminish in the rest of the scientific community quite rapidly as the distance from Bush and Cheney increases. The university laboratories around the country seem to be working just as they always have,

Answer 4

It is sad that we have a government that - when presented with facts - chooses to 'cherry pick' or manipulate that information. I don't believe it's a dark age - any darkness is decades old. We used to believe what the government said, now, we question everything the government says. This poisoning harms us all - left and right.

When political decisions are made on whether the consequences can be traced back to a person, instead of 'doing the right thing', we will continue to pay for wrong headed decisions for decades to come.

Answer 5

that somewhat relies upon on the incoming populations of united statesa.. the fact is human beings at the instant are not breeding quickly sufficient. The Immigrants are breeding speedier. as a result, the destiny would be for the immigrants infants. they'll dictate the time-honored of our lifestyle and could the two lead us to a dismal age or to a diverse golden age. At one time the Irish the place the scourge of united statesa., now their are extra Irish in united statesa. then in eire. So, if the hot immigrants have confidence that god is extra powerful then technology. Then we can exchange right into a non secular state.

Answer 6

The effects of this Dark Age activity--pseudo-religious political advocates of tyrannos, government by one man--are undoubtedly damaging. Once in the late Medieval period when secular governors gained political power over their illegal worldly-religious opponents for power in the churches, men began to free themselves from the tyrannies over thought, learning, education, publication, travel, liberty and scientific inquiry which had created and needlessly prolonged the Dark Age (410AD-930AD) for another 500 years (930AD--1470AD).
Clearly the idea that George W. Bush--or any mystically-inspired pseudo-religious infallibility-pretending imperial president should be the arbiter of what is real within the universe--the de facto annunciator of a public-authority
fantasy to replace space-time secular reality--is far more disturbing and potentially dangerous as an idea than is any specific attack on constitutional rights the administration's leaders could possibly mount.

Such an insane pretension strikes I suggest at the foundations of reality-based, individual-rights-based, categorical-definition based human thought and the constitutional regulation of human marketplace interactions.
The new Age began in 1994 after the final murder of the Renaissance Age (1470AD--1994AD). We are therefore at the beginning of a new age, I assert, the USer Age, and it will last about 520--540 years as all the other have. But it can also be poisoned and warped from the beginning, especially at the beginning, by pseudo-religious interferers, apologists and rationalizers; indeed this very process has already dismayed many.
So the answer to your thoughtful question is yes--a new Dark Age is threatened; and it may take 500 years to be caused. And Mr. Bush is as much its personally impotent and rather disconcepted mental product as he is the abettor of those who are helping to bring it about for their own sick purposes.
But what I suggest we must concern ourselves with now is not the coming possible Dark Age but what we can do to end the insane and destructive advocacy of that which would cause It to happen; I mean the hyping, lying about, pushing, intruding and criminal advocating and practicing of pseudo-religious monarchy by an imperial president, and by collectivistic tsars of corporations, financial cartels, media tsars, academic tsars, anti-rights courts, bureaus, departments and false-definers everywhere. We will die not of the caliber of minds Mr. Bush represents, i suggest, bur rather of their fellow-travelers. Of those who enable, excuse and make excuses for so-called leaders who are in truth misleaders, pragmatic-utterly impractical mentalities who lack realism, honesty, honor, direction, capability and any reason to be elevated above honest men--their betters.

Unless the postmodernism such men advocate is fought at the core--on the ground of their denying and replacing and ignoring what is real--they will retain a strangehold on those philosophical sellout who dictate over our media, publishing, political and investment circles. and institutions for no reason whatever. And the rest of us, arguably some with many times their probity and intellect, will have no lives worth the living, no rights worth the mentioning and no future worth the undergoing.
That will be darkness enough, I suggest, for men to endure long before a true Dark Age is caused.

Answer 7

Overall, no. However, concerning some divisions of science such as stem cell research, yes. Bush put a big damper on issues like stem cell research and gave other countries a chance to leap ahead.

Answer 8

We are marching backward on things dealing with science with the influence of the Religious Right on the Republican Party they deny any thing that is scientific.

Answer 9

Oh please, as opposed to the whitewashing of history books to eliminate the MWP?

Tree lines were higher, crop yields skyrocketed, plant and animal species both wild and domestic thrived closer to the poles than they do now, areas that are now permafrost were farmed, inlets and bays that are now ice bound for most of the year were sailed in and out of, mountain passes now iced over were major trade routes - - it was warmer during the MWP and during the Holocene Maximum than it is today and it was comparably warm during the later Roman period.

Answer 10

Dark age/middle age. Yeah.

Answer 11

ItsJustMe:

If the economy is "booming" and taxes are "lower", how come the average middle class American, like me, is financially in the toilet????

I'm with blueridge on this one. Bush is an incompitent *** and has ruined this country.