Not so fast, y'all. Enter COVID. A deadly pandemic hits the U.S. and we're all still arguing over the relative merits and pitfalls of mask-wearing and whether as-yet unproven drugs should be indiscriminately administered anyway. It's proof positive America has swallowed all the spoon-fed bull**** that passes for science in a world where party distinctions and religious beliefs seem to matter more than expertise.

Expertise? What's that?

"Experts" are apparently elitists who desire nothing but to wield their knowledge as political power and make others feel like crap for not having studied as much as they have. Even an overwhelming scientific consensus on any given issue draws mass scrutiny whenever it butts heads with the deeply entrenched convictions of a large, like-minded group of people.

It's why wacko conspiracy theories flourish. When you have to unearth a rabbit hole to find an explanation that fits your preferred reality, really strange stuff creeps out of YouTube. And because millions of other people follow "Weirdo Idea's" Facebook page (scientists, too!), you're more comfortable believing in the truly bizarre and existing in your freaky DIY bubble than accepting the scientific facts you believe you know for sure cannot be true because they conflict with your preexisting perspective.

Anti-science hostility

This hostility toward science also explains why the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), for example, has drastically limited the scope of research it deems acceptable. It's why the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC's) funding has been slashed.

No data? No rules. And I guess that's how some of us like it. But however you feel about government intervention and deregulation, it helps very few of us to ignore the temporarily inconvenient. Not if science is unified in predicting the planet will eventually end up on a ventilator, along with hundreds of thousands of U.S. COVID patients (bit.ly/31KqJaZ), at which point we will surely be arguing over our favorite color.