Mike’s Midterm Tsunami Truth #23

We Believe in Science. And that’s why we will win.

There comes that moment when, sadly, a person breaks. Breaks from reality. Breaks from what they know to be certain truths. Even breaks from themself. 

Have you ever had this happen to someone you know and perhaps love? Or maybe it happened to you? I’m not talking about one day you just get up from the cubicle you’ve worked in for 20 years and simply walk out the door, never to return to a job you’ve come to loathe because now you’ve decided you are going to help save the bees or go back to school to study butterflies, or maybe take your meager savings and buy a small farm or devote your life to being a subway conductor (my personal fantasy). Those would all be significant breaks from how you spent the first half of your adult life, and if you suddenly did any of these, your loved ones and close friends might think you’ve lost your mind. 

But that would not be the case. In fact, you might have saved your mind (and your life) by finally doing the thing you’ve always wanted to do. And soon, some of those close to you will see the truth of that. You’re now happier, more engaged, an exuberance that few had ever seen. 

So sometimes a break is good. Maybe you’ve decided to switch from being a Presbyterian to becoming a Unitarian — or no religion at all. Yesterday you were a Red Sox fan, today you’re cheering for the Yankees. Blue was always my favorite color but now I seem to be painting everything yellow. I have not gone bonkers, and if you see me driving the A Train out to the Rockaways one afternoon, please don’t judge me or worry that I won’t ever make another movie. I might just be filming “My Year Conducting the A Train”, a documentary on our need for better mass transit. 

But what happens when your brother-in-law one day tells you that the climate crisis is a hoax. Or that Bill Gates has convinced the government to place a tracking device in each vaccine shot. Or that the earth is flat, dentistry is quackery, and the public schools are the groomers of an eventual nation that will soon be 100% homosexual. 

What do you do when their break from reality is that severe? A break where they claim to have actual evidence that everything they are telling you is “true.” 

I just tested negative, finally, for Covid! I am no longer contagious! And I feel at least 80% better (still a bit exhausted). I never had to spend a night in the hospital. I didn’t die. Why is that? Because, as I told you in my podcast this week, I believe in science and medicine and people I trust who have devoted their lives to keeping the rest of us alive. And that belief I’m sure has helped me once again. It’s because I was fully vaccinated and always masked around others, because I socially distanced and washed my hands a half-dozen times a day, I didn’t get Covid in its earlier, more deadly strains. I followed the science and the doctors’ orders and knowing this whole time that I and 90% of us would eventually get Covid, I held it at bay until its fifth variant was too weak to kill me. The vaccine shots I knew were never supposed to prevent me from getting Covid — they were there to help assist an immune system that would eventually have to fight this virus and get me well within a few days or weeks. 

And that’s what it did. Over 100 million Americans have lived to tell the story I just told. 

And sadly, a million+ didn’t make it. Many had existing conditions that perhaps doomed them. But thousands upon thousands are dead because they didn’t trust science or the government or the pharmaceutical companies. I do not trust most parts of the government and none of the profit-hungry pharmaceutical corporations. 

But I don’t believe in throwing out the baby with the stinky bath water. There are so many good things government does for us and can do for us. And we need drugs! In the past 100 years our life expectancy has nearly doubled — thanks to medicine (until the Trump years when we dropped from 78.8 years to 76.1 years old). Historians in the future will never understand why, when Covid-19 appeared, the President at that time called it a hoax and fought the scientists who wanted to save our lives. His reckless, heartless attempts to lie to his own supporters — who then didn’t get vaccinated, and didn’t wear masks — caused hundreds of thousands of them to die. What leader throughout history would kill off his own followers? Insanity! Does he not realize when we win on November 8th by 100,000 votes, it may be because he essentially killed them? Isn’t that ironic?

But Trump is not alone. There are other examples in history of deaths caused by people who rejected science:

• The American Airlines Flight 965 Boeing 757 jet that the pilots flew into a mountain in Buga, Colombia because they didn’t believe their plane’s own computer that was yelling at them that they were flying… into a mountain!;

• The Adriatic Energy Corporation ignored warnings from numerous science-based geologists and engineers in 1963 against filling the Vajont Dam in Italy too quickly. And then — BOOM! The result: 2,000 dead Italians.

• The Donner Party trying to make it across the Sierra Nevadas during a blizzard because they didn’t believe in the science of weather;

• The Mayflower, whose navigator didn’t know the science of how to read the stars in the sky (the science of astronomy), so in November they ended up in Massachusetts instead of Virginia where almost half of them didn’t survive the winter;

• The great film director Billy Wilder (“Some Like It Hot”, “The Apartment”) who, on the day after Hitler was inaugurated, immediately got on a train and left forever to Paris, and then to America. Lucky for him, he believed in political science. 

Science — and my belief in it — saved me from Covid. It’s over. I’m alive!

Thanks to all of you for the good karma you sent my way, not to mention some of your great chicken soup recipes you passed on to me! 

It feels so good to be alive! I’ve just made a list of why it’s great to be alive:

• I got to see the riveting season finale last night of The Handmaid’s Tale. I was so moved by its, yes, humanity. Can’t wait for Season 6!

• I get to go to my first play in three years: Samuel L. Jackson in August Wilson’s “The Piano Lesson.” Directed by his wife, LaTanya Richardson Jackson. Sounds amazing!

• Last month, an old friend from 40 years ago suddenly reappeared! Wow!

• During the pandemic, while isolated at home, I began four new projects — which one will I now complete first?! This is exciting. 

• I’ve always wanted to visit Montevideo. And to go to the only state I haven’t been to: Wyoming. 

• I’m going to finally climb the 6 highest “peaks” in New England. Sounds more impressive than it is, but still, why not?

• And I can’t leave until I help us get the Equal Rights Amendment for women (ERA) into our Constitution. Also, no exit for me until everyone in this country has free universal health care, just like my Canadian cousins do! Plus, I want to ride on the first of hundreds of bullet trains still to be built in this country. I want to be there on the day our prisons are virtually emptied and the 147 Senators and members of Congress who betrayed us on Jan 6th are convicted and sent to a work release camp in Flint to help replace all the poisoned water pipes and home plumbing and to help build affordable housing there to honor the city that gave birth to the union movement and the American middle class. 

• Finally, I want to witness us offering remorse and granting restitution to the current descendants of those Black and Native Americans who have suffered for centuries — and who still today occupy the lowest rungs of our economic ladder. I want to see its end and I believe I will. 

Now more than ever I’m convinced that the side that believes in science — those voters who haven’t broken with reality — are the ones who will prevail. 

Don’t be afraid. Enlightenment kills all fear.

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ICYMI:

Mike’s Midterm Tsunami of Truths:

Truth #1: The Campaign

Truth #2: Even a kid from 4th hour Trig class can beat this crowd

Truth #3: The Haters, the Bigots and the Supremacists Always Lose in the End

Truth #4: Introducing The Whackadoodle 10

Truth #5: Trump is not the Big Bad Wolf. But he is very afraid of You.

Truth #6: The Easy-to-Digest Republican Party Platform

Truth #7: Biden, Don’t F**k with Me

Truth #8: If you’re not registered, you can’t Roe, Roe, Roe the Vote!

Truth #9: Why will we win? Because the American people hate fascism.

Truth #10: Meet Blake Masters, Whackadoodle No. 9

Truth #11: 147 Reasons We Will Win on November 8th

Truth #12: Biden just gave us a boost and a toke.

Truth #13: Women. That’s it.

Truth #14: If the Mainstream Media Thinks There’s a Chance We May Be Right about Roevember, Watch Out.

Truth #15: Republican candidate for Governor of Pennsylvania, Whackadoodle No. 8

Truth #16: As Alex Jones has now been fined a billion dollars for his lies, that is nothing compared to the punishment other Republicans are going to get on November 8th.

Truth #17: Early Voting, Mail-in Voting, Dropbox Voting — These Were Made for Libs, Hard Workers, Book Readers, Artists, Busy Parents, Slackers, and Progressives like us! In other words, The Majority!

Truth #18: The Good Queen vs. The Mad King

Truth #19: A Workers' Revolt Extends to the Voting Booth

Truth #20: We Are in Charge

Truth #21: Don’t believe it.

Truth #22: If the election is about inflation and the economy, THANK GOD — We Win

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