sabato 15 aprile 2006

Una teocrazia dotata di armi nucleari

No, non stiamo parlando dell’Iran, ma degli Stati Uniti d’America. Sul peso crescente dei fondamentalisti cristiani all’interno del Partito Repubblicano, e sulle note propensioni religiose di George W. Bush, ci informa Kevin Phillips («Theocons and Theocrats», The Nation, 1 Maggio) sul numero di The Nation prossimamente in edicola. La prospettiva è agghiacciante; ma forse il male contiene in sé anche la propria cura:

Beyond the judiciary, pressure for theological correctness became overt in federal government relationships with the varieties of science – from climatology to geology, and even entomology – that can conflict with the Book of Genesis. For the growing number of elected officials who uphold Genesis, the Almighty, not carbon dioxide, brings about climate change. The consequences here go far beyond the evolution-doubting books being sold by the National Park Service or inconvenient information about climate change or caribou habitats in oil lands being deleted from government websites. In Texas, where the cotton industry is plagued by a moth in which an immunity to pesticides has evolved, a frustrated entomologist commented, “It’s amazing that cotton growers are having to deal with these pests in the very states whose legislatures are so hostile to the theory of evolution. Because it is evolution they are struggling against in their fields every season.” Meanwhile, the bigger message – depressingly reminiscent of our imperial predecessors – is that science in the United States is already in trouble. Irving Weissman, a stem-cell researcher, told the Boston Globe, “You are going to start picking up Nature and Science and all the great [research] journals, and you are going to read about how South Koreans and Chinese and Singaporeans are making advances that the rest of us can’t even study.”
Nel mondo di oggi non si rimane molto a lungo superpotenze, con certe politiche.

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