Running for Your Life: The Republican Social Theories *

I can’t recommend more highly this exuberantly written book on physics by Carlo Rovelli called “Reality Is Not What It Seems http://bit.ly/2ADDcy0.”

In it, Rovelli, the scientist-storyteller, follows on after Albert Einstein to explain the great man’s contributions to human understanding.

While running today (Dec. 7), I had a thought: US Republicans – ie, Trump, McConnell and Ryan – are architects of their own social theories in a manner of which parallels Einstein’s work.

As Rovelli explains, Einstein’s genius was in how he shaped his thinking from those minds who had come before: namely, Democritus, Newton, and Faraday-Maxwell.

Suffice to say, Einstein, in 1905, took the discrete definitions of space, time and particles of Newton to join spacetime, fields (Faraday-Maxwell) and particles. Then, ten years later, he would boil that down to just fields and particles.

Elegant, eh?

Einstein’s contributions are magnificence in simplicity. Answers to the very existence of the world were right there before our noses, and Einstein had the vision to see them.

Similarly, before the first Republican theory of Trump/McConnell/Ryan, the social contract was divided into three main spheres: government, business and workers (unions). In those relatively ancient times, the theory held that outcomes were calculated by interchanges between these three distinct powers.

Ah, but it is the Republican Einsteinian elegance to boil that troika down to one seamless force: business.

Oh, and as Einstein instructs us, the universe is always in motion. Behold the freshly minted Republican social theory courtesy of Alabama GOP senatorial hopeful, Roy Moore: that business ally with Christian orthodoxy in all matters of the social contract.

* With apologies to Einstein’s family and the wonder of his genius

Next: Running for Your Life: Renaissance Reverbs