It does not matter how smart one may be, he will never get over his ideological bent if he has one.
There is something I call “The Transitive Property of Greatness.” It posits that if a person is great in one thing, we might as well expect that he will succeed in something else. It is the basis for Hollywood stars telling us about climate change: if they are such good actors, they must also know what they are talking about regarding carbon dioxide spewing out of the back of their private jets. The problem with the theory is that it generally does not work. Superstar guard Isiah Thomas was a lousy coach. GOAT Michael Jordan was so-so in his brief professional baseball career. While there are people who have truly succeeded in multiple fields such as doctors who became outstanding investors or Donald Trump, who arguably succeeded both in business and as president, the overall trend is that people do best when they stick to their areas of expertise.
One cannot call Neil deGrasse Tyson dumb. He has a bachelors from Harvard, masters from Texas and a Ph.D. from Columbia. He is considered a world-class astrophysicist and is an accomplished author. With such academic heft behind him, it would seem a big surprise that he has on occasion said some really strange things. In a very recent back-and-forth with Bill Maher, he nonchalantly claimed that men have no physical advantage over women in sports, something that Maher rejected outright. Tyson's argument was made as the basis for allowing guys to participate in women’s sports. This line of reasoning is consistent with previous statements he made claiming that a person might wake up one day and declare that he felt that he was 80% woman, with the next day being something else.
Now, if we look solely at the science, which is the home of Tyson’s expertise, everything he said is nonsense. With few exceptions, pretty much every person in the world is either XX woman or XY man. And the direct comparison of strength, speed, and endurance clearly favors males. I was once looking up material on the subject, and I found that the fastest woman in a 50 meter Olympic race would not have cracked the final eight of the parallel men’s competition. Men’s records for all sports are faster or greater than those of women involved in identical activities. So with the above in mind, how could an accomplished scientist make such insane statements publicly?
There are two possible answers. The first is that he knows the truth but in order to keep in good standing with leftist organizations, professors, students, and funders, he needs to talk the talk. He knows that if he speaks like a scientist and not as a card-carrying man of the left, he may endanger his personal safety, his job, his funding, and his standing as a self-described social justice warrior. There is an alternative explanation. While one would assume that a Ph.D. physicist would know that men are faster and stronger than women, and thus it is unfair that they should be admitted into women’s competitions, it may be that he is so ideologically driven, that he rejects the obvious. In our age, we have such an extraordinary number of people on the left who simply put reality aside and live in a fantasy world of their own making. “The border is closed.” “There is no inflation.” “Joe Biden is as sharp as a tack”. “Donald Trump is a fascist.” “Donald Trump is an antisemite”. This list is obviously by no means limiting. But every statement above is debunked by the reality that people are streaming over the border, Joe Biden is suffering from dementia and Donald Trump has Jewish grandchildren whom he loves. He also displayed no fascist tendencies during his first term in office. The left, because its ideology is completely alienated from what we perceive as reality, must close its mind to the world around it, so that the world will not challenge its deeply held beliefs.
After Donald Trump’s large victory in the Electoral College and popular vote, there were briefly some voices on the left that broke from orthodoxy. “Maybe the Democrats focused too much on trans.” “Maybe they should have closed the border.” “Maybe they should have realized that people can’t afford food and gas.” Those voices were either silenced or tut-tutted into silence. As many conservative commentators have stated, the left has learned nothing from Donald Trump improving in every voting category and state. They can’t let go of their driving ideology that leads to guys winning women’s trophies and dangerous criminals being back on the street in no time. If the left lets in a little sunlight of reality, its entire system would collapse. That is the reason that they are doubling down on woke, trans, protecting illegal aliens, and trying to provoke World War III. The left must remain in its cocoon or change. They don’t want to change. Instead of accepting that the people see the world more like the Republicans, many Democratic officials are gearing up to fight the new administration over removal of illegal aliens and pretty much wherever else they can poke an eye into Republicans and the tens of millions who voted for them.
So where does their groupthink lead them? One has only to look at England where police hand out coffee to Hamas supporters while arresting anyone who might interfere with a pro-Hamas rally. Police arrest pensioners for Facebook posts and judges throw the offenders away for two years or more. Woke is like one of Voldemort’s slithering snakes, that can go anywhere. Donald Trump and his team need to defang the left and make it impossible for them to again do damage on the national stage and later state by state. The ideological left is dangerous to everyone, as evidenced by the cascade of mistakes, lies, and distortions they peddled during the Covid emergency. Look at California where it is all but legal to steal up to $950 per store per day without threat of arrest or prosecution. Look to New York to see people released from jail only to commit murder or theft again. Because leftists ideology is based on Marxist goals and not democratic principles or basic reality, the left is destroying America and all that it stands for.
Donald Trump and his team have a lot on their plate. One thing they need to add is weakening the ideological left at every turn. Many people voted for Trump and other Republicans because they realized that Kalama and gang don’t see any problem in high prices, an open border, weak overseas posture, and increased policing of what people say online. Trump’s numbers went up with every age and every group, because people are sick of woke and the left’s destruction of norms. The new administration will need to make sure that the left loses power in its strongholds such as New York and California. If the leaders there won’t play ball with Washington, then they should see their federal dollars dry up. People in California already look to Nevada to see what life is like in a low-tax, cheaper environment. It’s time to turn the dial to 11 to get blue state voters to drop their woke politicians for once and for all.