We are a diverse lot here. Folks from all walks of life. CZ is right in that these topics tend to spread divisiveness and create hard feelings. I liked the PragerU video because it seemed to provide some clarity in a time where the propaganda machines are really being cranked-up, but I can see where it's not helpful here. This coming year will be a hard one in the sense that we all will be barraged with information & ideas that we're either uncomfortable with or that we find quite repulsive. The world has come a long way from Joseph Goebbels and his famous "Nazi Propaganda" and the slick and swarmy stuff being produced now is clearly much more effective, dangerously so. There aren't many folks here who are still unformed in their opinions, most have picked their sides and are now invested heavily in them (their "rice bowl", so to speak).

If you're older and/or have a background in science or engineering, you'll likely remember a time when the science was "sacrosanct", where the only way one could discern how the forces of the universe worked was to be focused purely on the science and not on the various human components (emotions, greed, needs, etc.) that would try to infect it. But...scientists are an interesting lot. They have egos (and sometimes families) that they need to feed, and they are quite good at reading how the winds are blowing in any set of circumstances. The work of scientists has been affected by this for some time now (Wernher Von Braun, the head or our early American space program here was also a full-blown Nazi in the beginning of his career, look up "Operation Paperclip" sometime). Science now seems to mainly get used (by the forces that can afford to fund the studies) to justify a position on a particular subject. If a study doesn't produce the results that are desired by the funding party, it mostly gets buried. The offending scientists then can be punished by having their qualifications questioned or even being effectively "deplatformed" by losing their funding or positions at the institutions they work through. This has had chilling effects on how scientists conduct their work going forward, understandably. It would seem that both "free speech" and "science" are quite threatened by the forces that are being arrayed in advance of the coming election this November.

My education was in the earth sciences (geology) and my work has been in first, the oil & gas industry, and then in the environmental remediation industry. I have largely functioned as a federal contractor and later (briefly) as a government scientist and, accordingly, my opinions are formed by those experiences. I suspect that soon I will also be concerned for my social security and my medicare, but that won't abrogate my understanding about how much I see this country changing. All of our rights and liberties (for guns, hunting, & everything else we hold dear) are threatened by folks who purely vote their "feelings" and then for their perceived "security" without thinking of the consequences of that shallow enterprise.