Prometheus

 The Trump administration is turning out martyrs to science these days at a near-daily clip. Many of them will forever remain nameless in the media coverage—the countless people who developed the mRNA vaccine, for instance—the victims of the most recent episode in Trump's war on science. 

The work of these researchers saved millions of lives around the world; and spared countless Americans from being hooked to a ventilator in an emergency room—but for their efforts they are now being punished with funding cuts, and their work is to be undone for the crudest culture war reasons. 

What was their crime? The same for which Zeus punished the titan Prometheus, in Byron's telling: in short, their "godlike crime was to be kind / To render with th[eir] precepts less/ The sum of human wretchedness / And strengthen man with his own mind." For this, they are being vilified. 

From one end of government to the other, this administration is set on punishing all the people who dared to "strengthen" us "with our own mind"—such as by providing accurate employment data (for which offense Trump recently fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics). 

The kindness of telling the truth and thereby reducing human wretchedness is a mortal sin in Trump-world. They do not want us strengthened with our own mind—that is the last thing this administration wants. Because then we might behold the emperor's nakedness; see the man behind the curtain. 

We might then—like Heine's Adam—see "how small and insignificant you are / No matter how big you try to make yourself / With all your death and thundering."