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Quantum Politics: Schrödinger Joe and the GOP War on Science [1]

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Date: 2024-06-22  

For a party so dedicated for so many years to attacks on science — climate change denial, vaccine disinformation, oldies but goodies like the creation vs. evolution brouhaha, new classics like ivermectin as a miracle COVID cure — the GOP undeniably has found one area of science it loves: quantum physics.

You are in all likelihood aware of Schrödinger’s cat, the infamous feline that exists simultaneously alive and dead, the result of a sealed box, a poison gas capsule, and the indeterminate-until-observed nature of the universe at the quantum level. Einstein could not believe in this state of affairs, but for today’s Republican party and the vast right-wing media ecosphere — no problem!

The GOP has in fact succeeded at something many physicists would say is not possible: causing an actual human being to exist in a state of quantum superposition, said human being no less than the President of the United States, Joseph R. Biden. Biden exists now — at least in the fevered imagination of self-proclaimed conservatives — in two mutually incompatible states: doddering old man clearly suffering from dementia, and Machiavellian mastermind who has spent years leading a corrupt crime family while also manipulating the fabled Deep State into unleashing sham investigations and bogus trials against his political enemies.

Both of these things cannot be true, of course, but perhaps it is pointless to argue this with the Biden-haters because to them, both Bidens are possible. In fact, for political purposes, both Bidens are necessary: the President exists in that state of quantum indeterminacy until observed by a conservative, at which point the wave function collapses and Biden resolves into whichever version serves the rhetorical needs of the moment.

I don’t know if Erwin Schrödinger loved cats, hated them, or was indifferent. But there is no doubt about the GOP’s state of mind against President Biden: a poisonous mixture of hate and fear, unleashed at rallies and in political ads and TV interviews in whatever ratio necessary to conjure the imagined Biden they want their audience to see. There is no other outcome of this wave function, at least in our level of the multiverse. They hate and fear him, and as a result will stop at nothing to demonize and belittle him, mutually contradictory impulses (He’s a menace to America and the rule of law! He’s pathetic and feeble!) fed by the same stream of desperation, misplaced rage, and self-delusion.

Of course, if a conservative doesn’t want to appear sympathetic to science as a result of their belief in Biden’s impossible dual nature, they can cite poetry as their source of inspiration instead. Walt Whitman once wrote “Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself (I am large, I contain multitudes).”

But then again, Whitman is now held as a queer icon, so perhaps the conservatives will stick to the physics.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/6/22/2247946/-Quantum-Politics-Schr-dinger-Joe-and-the-GOP-War-on-Science?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

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