Though Barack Obama’s first post-presidency speech on April 24 and the March for Science on April 22 were at least partially born out of a need to address dangers presented by the agenda of President Donald Trump and a reinvigorated GOP, both only winked at Trump while embracing a kind of bloodless nonpartisanship.
Changes in the way media is consumed, Obama said, reinforce people’s “own realities to the neglect of a common reality that allows us to have a healthy debate and then try to find common ground and actually move solutions forward.” Like many of Obama’s ideas, his plan to nurture the next generation’s ability to “seize the future” sounded smart, reasonable, and beneficent—but totally removed from the exigency of the moment.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with a pleasant pep rally for science. But you’d be hard-pressed to find many Chicagoans who would argue that science isn’t an essential pursuit that makes our lives better or that scientific facts should be disregarded. The crisis we’re staring down in terms of science funding and climate-change legislation is a political one. Fixing this crisis requires gaining more power, not more awareness.
