Alan Alda: I cannot remain silent as Trump rejects
science and endangers lives
Opinion by Alan Alda
Oct. 29, 2020 at 1:19 p.m. CDT
Alan
Alda is an actor, writer and co-founder of the Alan Alda Center for
Communicating Science at Stony Brook University.
Almost 63 million people voted for Donald Trump
in 2016, but in 1983, more than 106 million people watched the last
episode of “M.A.S.H.” So, it seems that by this president’s standard, I’m a
bigger deal than he is.
But I
don’t write here as a formerly famous person; I write just as a citizen who
might have something in common with you. After spending a decade doing
everything I could to get the Equal Rights Amendment ratified, I made a
decision 37 years ago to keep much quieter in public about my political
opinions. If I was going to make a contribution, it should be by doing what I
was good at: writing and acting.
Since
then, I’ve found that one of the things I’m also good at is helping scientists
communicate more clearly. I’ve helped train more than 15,000 scientists around
the world, so science is important to me — as it is to all of us. We swim in a
sea of science, and perhaps, like fish who take water for granted, we take
science for granted. But without it, we would stop breathing.
Which
is where we are now. Science is at stake, as is our very breath.
I’ve
wondered what would tip me over into breaking my silence. Would it be Trump’s
racism, his misogyny, his attack on the free press, his unspeakable cruelty to
children — grabbing them from their parents and then forgetting to return them?
Would it be the overt, brazen attempt to deprive people of their ability to
vote, the right through which all other rights are guarded?
I’m
outraged by all of these things, but what has finally done it for me is
something even more fundamental: You can’t vote if you’re dead.
Trump’s
deceitful assurances that covid-19 is nothing to worry about have laid untold
dead at the feet of this president. And now, his administration is flirting
with a policy to achieve “herd immunity” by following a theory put forth in a
statement known as the Great Barrington Declaration that calls for deliberately
allowing the less vulnerable among us to become infected while somehow
protecting the more vulnerable. The authors call this “focused protection.”
This is
decidedly a minority view, and it has been excoriated by
the world’s leading infectious- disease experts. But the Trump administration
seems willing to let a few hundred thousand people die and hope for the best.
Trump once said he could shoot someone on Fifth
Avenue without consequences. At this moment, we are all on Fifth Avenue.
You,
too, might have been silent until now for fear of intruding on someone else’s
opinions. But is it an intrusion to try to save lives? Is it impolite for the
lemming who notices the cliff to say, “Uh, wait a minute, guys?”
There’s
still time to speak with respect to friends and neighbors. Yelling at each
other across this crazy gap is not accomplishing anything, but listening and
speaking from the heart wouldn’t hurt.
We have
to take care of one another, no matter what our politics are. I don’t take
pleasure in the idea that the people most in danger are Trump’s staff and
family and millions of followers. In the worst cases of covid-19, the
experience — even when not fatal — has been described as a constant feeling of
drowning. I don’t wish that on anyone.
So, I’m
speaking now, and I hope you will, too. Someone you know who hasn’t thought it
necessary to vote might decide to cast a ballot.
I hope
they’ll vote for science. I hope they’ll vote for life.
