Recent investigative journalism features highlight what many have long suspected: career charlatans are deeply entrenched in the American criminal justice system. What this has led to is a kind of "spoils system" whereby unjust punishments are meted out on often entirely innocent parties, in many cases essentially ruining their lives, for the explicit purpose of collecting large professional fees for providing allegedly expert testimony against them.
It's tempting to shrug your shoulders and mutter something like "only in America." But these are only token examples of what is in reality a much wider problem. We need to confront head-on, in the words of Daniel Quinn (remember that guy? No, he wasn't on TV), the "man-eating Minotaur" at the heart of traditional religious ideology. Where else would such a culture of cruelty come from? No wonder so many of them don't like science. Very little of this would be possible in a society in full possession of its critical / analytical toolkit. Instead, "skepticism" as an idea has somehow become associated with partisans of the new right when, ironically, they are, fairly reliably, extremely credulous in comparison to those they take to be their opponents.
(See also: The Thing directed by John Carpenter).
"Who is number one?"
"That would be telling. We want information... information... information..."
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