2015-02-03 – Oy vey and a half! Has the world come to this? Ted Cruz makes more sense on a public issue than Hillary Clinton!

The issue is vaccines and Ted Cruz’ take on them is “Children of course should be vaccinated. . . . Nobody reasonably thinks Chris Christie is opposed to vaccinating kids, other than a bunch of reporters who want to write headlines.”

I hope he’s right.

But I’ve got a beef with Hillary Clinton. Here’s her tweet: “The science is clear: The earth is round, the sky is blue, and #vaccineswork. Let’s protect all our kids. #GrandmothersKnowBest.”

Now, you might say that Cruz and Clinton are on the same page. They agree that kids should be vaccinated. But my reading is that Cruz is criticizing the politicization of the issue and Clinton is adding to the politicization.

I’ve pretty much had it with people calling anti-vaxxers dumb. You can disagree with them (and I do: I’ve written about that before), but if you call them dumb, the discussion is over. (And sorry, I wasn’t as kind in my prior post as I am advocating now.)

Oh! You might say. The science is 99 and 44/100 percent pure on this subject. And I would agree with you. But how do you know that. Did you conduct the scientific trials yourself? No. Of course not. You read about it. And you trusted your source.

We get all red in the face when people don’t accept Science. And we call people dumb. But we’re not scientists. We just trust people who are. Anti-vaxxers trust someone else.

I point this out because the antidote for misplaced trust is entirely different than the antidote for bad science. Calling anti-vaxxers stupid strengthens their misplaced trust. It does not weaken it.

We have a common bond with anti-vaxxers. We love our children and we want them to be safe and healthy. The recent measles outbreak could have been a moment when people who are suspicious of vaccines would see the face of the beast that vaccines have hidden from them—because of their success in preventing disease.

Until we politicize the issue.

If Hillary Clinton and Ted Cruz agree that vaccines work, couldn’t they come together on that issue? Don’t we have any common ground?

Of course, you know the answer to that question. We do have common ground, but our leaders want only to deny that. It used to be that finding common ground was a way to get things done in a democratic society.