Now it is confession time.
On a cold winter day, not only was I at the rally, not only was I at the march, but I was inside of the Capitol.
It is hard to describe the cacophony of the amplified voices and the buzzing crowd and shouts and cheers and jeers and applause reverberating within the labyrinth of marble corridors. There was sheer electricity in the air, and one could barely hear or understand a person an elbow length away let alone the speaker front and center, such is the ear-splitting noise.
And the march, oh, the march! A thousand took to motion as if one.
One felt less like an insignificant one and so much more like an empowered and integral part of a much greater whole during that march! A look over the shoulder revealed a seemingly endless stream of humanity taking up the rear, while out front was an equally endless stream leading the charge. Messengers with bullhorns roused the marchers into a frenzy and whipped the marchers into angry retort. The messengers had the power to have the marchers shake their heads in disbelief or hang their heads in sorrow.
The rally itself was rousing and emotional and infuriating and hopeful. The protesters hung on every word and rode upon waves of enthusiasm laced with anger. When a gasp surged through the crowd, it was the gasp of a thousand. When anger swelled it was the swollen anger of a thousand. When hearts were broken it was the shattered hearts of a thousand. And that joining of a thousand became an all-powerful one.
The message was simple. Ignoring hard facts, inserting falsehood, and killing advancement would drive our Country and her people backwards. The solution offered was to fight, to fight like hell and keep things moving forward.
There were a few things that certainly did not happen on this day of Peace and Love.
Members of law enforcement and the capitol police were not attacked, injured or harassed. Public property was not violated, breached, damaged, nor defecated upon. Legislators did not flee for their lives, and nobody was injured. And nowhere to be seen was a face painted and shirtless chucklehead parading about with buffalo horns atop of his head.
On March 7, 2025, that day of Peace and Love, supporters of science and scientific research gathered at our state Capitol in Madison, Wisconsin, for the Stand Up for Science Rally.
There were many speakers that day including a survivor who told of her heroic tale of battling thyroid cancer and a farmer who stated farmers “do their best until something better comes along”. The common threads winding through each of the speeches were the impacts that science and research had in saving lives, reducing human suffering, responsibly feeding an increasingly hungry planet, as well as simply making the world a better and safer place to live.
And much of that that science and research is now in grave danger of funding cuts simply because of certain benign key words in the grant titles such as “female” or “diversity”, with agricultural research grant titles being a prime example.
For 6000 years humans have known that monoculture agriculture is a path to failure and starvation. And the opposite of crop-monoculture is crop-diversity, which equates to success and plenty. Yet there is a war on the word “diversity” being waged by a Special K stuffed narcissist billionaire that is being carried out by his hapless lackeys apparently searching for keywords rather than doing the hard work of doing the hard work. This inept buffoonery leads to the headlines about transgenic mice that leads to the rest of the world laughing at our sheer absurdity and stupidity.
And it can lead to good science being tossed into a trash bin.
It is not rocket science to understand that today’s research and science-based initiatives become tomorrow’s medical or technological breakthroughs. It is not rocket science to understand that killing off these science-based initiatives allows others the competitive advantage that we have long strived toward and held. Fun fact-rocket science has been brought to us through research and science-based initiatives.
And as everything these days happens to be, this March 7, 2025, Day of Peace and Love was very political in nature. But there were no vitriolic election lies or conspiracy theories. There was no fearmongering or hate speech. There was no scapegoating nor the creation of any boogeyman, real or imagined. And when the speakers talked about elections, they did not instruct anyone to vote for any specific candidate nor was there pathetic whining about hair brained conspiracy theories or the peddling of unsubstantiated lies.
The speakers simply asked that everyone in attendance get out and vote.
Which brings up a very good point. There is an election on April 1st in Wisconsin.
Please, everybody, get out and vote.
The Unexpected Minimalist 