Spurred by a 1995 Warning from Carl Sagan, a Sanity Chat with a Pediatrician Fighting Trumpism

Updated post-stream: I hope you can watch and share this conversation with Irwin Redlener, a pediatrician and public health and family welfare evangelist who is a relentless pursuer of an America, and world, that are safe, nurturing places for children, and the rest of us.

This webcasat came about because of this passage in Carl Sagan’s 1995 book The Demon-Haunted World:

[S]cience is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time - when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness. The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.

Ouch… I was reminded of these words when I saw this graphic floating around Facebook a few days ago. I reposted it a few times. Then the phone rang.

It was my friend and former Columbia colleague Redlener on the line. I got to know him through his work on disaster risk reduction and then as a frequent guest on Sustain What exploring aspects of the pandemic and then his work with his wife Karen Redlener and others in Ukraine - among other things helping teachers and students sustain the emotional health necessary to keep teaching and learning (see the Ukraine Children's Action Project - UCAP). See those webcasts below.

In our phone chat, Redlener described a long friendship with Sagan and lamented that the loss of this scientist and consummate communicator at age 62 left a still-unfilled gap in the fabric of human culture. I agreed wholeheartedly. I only interacted with Sagan a couple of times, in my reporting on nuclear winter in the early 1980s, but his writing and worldview have largely shaped the focus of my reporting. It’s no accident that the name of my New York Times Dot Earth blog echoed Sagan’s famous “Pale Blue Dot” statement.

I also showed this stunning quote from the same book (which I now have to re-read!):

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”

Ouch once again….

In our Sustain What chat we explored everything from Sagan’s legacy to the threats Trump 2.0 and the Republican-controlled Congress pose to children’s health and welfare, the climate and much more.

Watch on Facebook, LinkedIn, X/Twitter (@revkin) or YouTube:

Here’s Redlener’s admonition to journalists, posted on X:

Trump, his Administration, his cronies, their attacks on democracy, the grift, the overturning the world order and the relentless undermining of America's fundamental democratic values dominate the news.

I get it.

So what's not getting sufficient press coverage? Issues like threats to the safety net and programs that protect our most vulnerable children. I'm talking about slashing budgets for nutrition programs, preschool education, Medicaid - and so much more.

I am appalled that programs for veterans are facing cuts that will truly hurt the men and women now in need who defended us. We need far more reporting on these issues.

And our media, traditional & new, must continue to cover the civilians & families impacted by Russia's unconscionable war against Ukraine. Tell whatever news source you depend on to pay more attention to these issues. They need to hear from all of us. (And, if you can, please help us support the kids of Ukraine! https://UCAP.help

He’s been over to Ukraine over half a dozen times to work with children and educators. Learn more in our earlier Sustain What show:

Here’s our October 2020 discussion of the pandemic and the themes in Redlener’s most recent book, The Future of US: What the Dreams of Children Mean for 21st Century America.