Assuming there isn't much new other than my role in the community of science scholarship, I'll attempt a descriptive of the internal dialogue within the scientific community. Here as of December 2016 it's as if scientist are being asked to focus on science and not fear or politics. The unfotunate reality, is the trans-disciplinary world in which we live in. One needs only survey the history of the Sigma Xi Society to note the interconnections amongst disciplines that have buttressed humanity from "war against all" during and through war.
Sadly, it's as if today, the imperative focus for scientist equates that the scientist of tomorrow are being asked today not to flinch while a republic of the minority has placed them on notice that they intend to conduct an anterior transverse abdominal deep tissue evisceration. Further, the scientist is asked to focus inwards to overcome any homeostat while she or he merely observes the operation without an anesthetic.
Socio-political science is detracting from the other disciplines and now forces interlocution from it's compatriots to achieve systems level homeostasis. I personally ran to science to achieve contributive relevance in the larger socio-economic context; after being jostled about in sea change for far too long in the state of Michigan.
Our democracy, or their republic then? Which way to go forward? Some supposed well intentioned dynamic tension in our polity to preserve it's posterity? If the former is true, then also the coinage "we are a democratic-republic"; who has said this before? A democacy is clearly a construction that suits the majority of folks, and a republic is clearly a form of polity that allows power and authority and exchange to be controlled by a well resourced minority. So if there is a pendulum theory assumption, and anything dynamic is truly at play, we are in republic phase without doubt. We are being asked to trust that this pole will return inertia past the middle balance. I will gladly assume that, but please remember that there are other factors worthy of careful consideration that do effect the rate of flux where we at best, assume constants. One degree of geographic distance creates exponential shifts at a temporal spatial and distal observation with any projection.
Science is attempting to be objectively removed from the proximal tumult in what is a commonwealth. If then there is no honor amongst thieves. And the construct of thievery is relative to who's pointing the finger on the ideological spectrum. With integrity being the integral, and disingenuous devices justifying a method of recoupment. What was stolen? If the republic supposes it has primacy to the factors of production based on some contract or the constitution, then what has the democracy, in a social contract? If the concept of integrity is now unmoored so as to mean some relative construction, then where could there be any agreement for any contract? What is science without agreement? What is society without a societal contract? What about legitimacy, are there those that believe that legitimacy could be derived without honor and integrity? That is what it is looking like, that the system of morals needed to succeed in this experiment that I lack is amorality. Say it isn't so please, or say it blatantly so!
In name we are United and this is supposedly by design for the purposes of liberty. Liberty for who? There has been on several occasions in the sphere, the intimation that the only rule is that lying is allowed! Truth, then is only a limited construct that is posited afterwards. However, I'm willing to bet my life that if I begin lying to the republic to which I have pledged allegiance, as a means to an end, I will be subject to hyper scrutiny and jail or worse as the result. So the majority in the democracy really has no claim to wealth is the drawn conclusion. This as empirical fact could certainly easily be posited when looking naively across the distribution of the socio-economic landscape. I will still hope for a better deal than this, but I know that I have already pledged my allegiance to being lied to without recourse. Please educate me where my reasoning is off in this obserrvation, for hope, I am most definitely amenable to change my thinking, literally. I have observed a castigation of the premise of hope, I don't understand this ethic; because I perceive it as a denial of the promise of the American experiment, in favor of a nihilism of the strongest masses or the workers and thus the builders of this enterprise. If they were distined to never partake, then America has failed alot already, as at least we know of some past instances of success in economic mobility. The current dynamic isn't Darwinian, or Spartanesque so what's going on? Is it fulfillment of the proverbial meek inheriting the earth? Well then, it also says "the wealth of the ......." Haven't we really succeeded tremendously as a nation?