I would guess that very few pundits know enough about Newtonian mechanics to misapply it. Typical pundit ignorance extends a lot farther than that, as when Norman Podhoretz, back in 2002, asked Jeffrey Goldberg “What’s a Kurd, anyway?”

Knowledge is irrelevant, in any case. In the be vast majority of cases, a pundit’s job is to be a cheerleader, not an analyst.  An accurate analyst would irritate the hell out of most readers.

And if we ever run into some serious problem that could be solved, but only by numerate, scientifically literate politicians, we’re doomed.

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