The attraction of fear

The question of the day is: why do people continue to support certifiable wackos long after their wacko status has been proved beyond a shadow of a doubt?

Yes, I know, it's when the wacko is espousing a view the wacko-supporter already believes.  But this brings up a deeper question; why do people want to believe ugly counterfactual nonsense?

Unsurprisingly, this topic comes up because of Alex Jones, who is somehow still out there broadcasting on InfoWars despite recently losing an appeal in the million dollar lawsuit for defamation and personal harm filed against him by parents who lost children in the Sandy Hook Massacre, which Jones described as a hoax and/or a false flag.

So you'd think that any credibility Jones had would be down the toilet, but apparently not.  In a story sent to me by my friend and fellow writer Dwayne Lanclos, whose blog The Critical Bible gives a fascinating lens into biblical history and archaeology, we find out that Jones is going strong and still as loony as ever.  Dwayne sent me a link to an article from Media Matters for America, which referenced the ongoing and increasingly bizarre determination by Donald Trump not to admit he made a silly mistake when he included Alabama in amongst states threatened by Hurricane Dorian.  Instead of doing what any normal person would have done -- chuckle and say, "whoa, that was a screw-up -- sorry" -- he not only acted like a toddler, stamping his feet and saying, "No, I was right!  I was right!", but produced a weather map he'd altered himself with a black sharpie as evidence, and weirdest of all, just yesterday tweeted a video of him with the altered map, combined with a cat chasing a laser pointer.

As an aside, how anyone can look at any of this behavior and not think, "Trump has lost his fucking marbles," I have no idea.  But so far, all that's happened is that Lindsay Graham made a statement in an interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News that "a third term is looking better and better."  And no, for the record, I didn't make that up.

Anyhow, Alex Jones decided to weigh in on the Hurricane Dorian/Alabama nonsense, and what he said you really should listen to (there's a video clip on the Media Matters link I posted above).  But in case you don't want to waste five minutes of your life you'll never get back again, here are the main points:

• Hurricane Dorian was directed by "weather weapons" to park over the Bahamas in an effort to discredit climate change denialists (whom Jones calls "realists").
• It was then directed toward Florida to threaten Mar-a-Lago and put Donald Trump at risk of financial loss.
• When Trump made his idiotic gaffe about Alabama, the people operating the "weather weapons" steered Dorian away from its original path to discredit him and make him look foolish.
• It's somehow significant that hurricanes usually originate with low-pressure cells in West Africa.  I have no idea why.

Now, to make it clear: I'm not really commenting on Jones, here.  It's yet to be established whether he believes all the conspiratorial horseshit he says, or if he's "an actor playing a role" (as his lawyer claimed in the custody case over Jones's children, which Jones ultimately lost).  And honestly, I don't really care which it is.

What concerns me are the folks who believe him, of which there is a sizable number to judge by the number of people calling in support during his show.  What in the hell can possibly be appealing about that viewpoint -- that there's some kind of vast conspiracy against Donald Trump, run by mythical people powerful enough to steer a category-5 hurricane?

Speaking of hurricanes, there's the statement by self-styled "Christian prophetess" Kat Kerr, who (1) claimed her prayers were shifting the hurricane's path, and (2) when that didn't work out so well, said that God destroyed the Bahamas on purpose.  Here's the exact quote:

The Bahamas got hit a lot. I am just gonna leak out a little information for you, that people may not even know about, but you need to know that a lot of the human trafficking goes on there, in that very place, and it’s being exposed, because God’s exposing stuff like that. 

… I’m not saying everyone on the island was involved in that, but that is a huge center, where a lot of people who are trapped in human trafficking, and those people doing it, are involved in a huge way, in the Bahamas, they use the Bahamas as part of their transport system… and they actually have tunnels — this is already gonna be in the news — they have tunnels where [they] file through there.  I think the tunnels were wiped out by the storm.

Which, now that I think of it, isn't so far off from a lot of genocidal shit God did in the Old Testament.

 But again, what I wonder is not about Kerr herself, because she's obviously a wingnut, but the people who hear this and go, "Yes, that makes sense!  Hallelujah!"  What could possibly be attractive about a god who destroys an entire fucking country to stop some human traffickers?

Then there's Rick Joyner, head of MorningStar Ministries, who says that Christians need to arm themselves because there's going to be a civil war, and they have to be ready to take out pretty much anyone who isn't a straight white conservative Christian:

We were meant to have militias throughout the country to defend our communities …  I think there is going to be a militia movement that unites and supports and is open about what they are doing and they are going to be trained and prepared to defend their communities. 

If Christians don’t get involved in things like that, [the] wrong people will get in,  Christians need to get in to set the course.  We’re not just going to attack other races; we’re here to defend and support.  Christians have to get engaged in it.  Jesus himself said, "There is a time to sell your coat and buy a sword."  That was the weapon of their day." 

We are entering a time for war and we need to mobilize.

So once again, I'm wondering who hears this, then looks around them and thinks, "Yup, that seems right to me."

Most blatant of all was the exchange between Sohrab Ahmari, op-ed editor of the New York Post and a devout conservative Catholic, and David French of the National Review, in which we find out that Ahmari believes Christians in the United States are literally in danger of being rounded up and killed.

Despite the fact that three-quarters of Americans consider themselves Christian, and Christians are the vast majority in every elected position in the country.

Ahmari said:

Now there are people who are called to [martyrdom], and they’ll face it when it happens, and they should.  And there are also religious people here … priests and so forth, who are called to this sort of heroic life.  But we shouldn’t want that for all Christians while we have political agency...  We should try to forestall the Colosseum.  So that means not Bernie Sanders.

And he wasn't talking about some kind of metaphorical martyrdom, e.g., being pushed out of majority status.  He actually thinks that if Trump doesn't win, we atheists are going to start rounding Christians up and shooting them in the street.

French, for his part, found the whole thing amusing, which it would be if people weren't taking it seriously -- and basing their actions, and their votes, on this kind of fear.   "Do you think Bernie Sanders would bring the Colosseum?" he said.  "He doesn’t even have a plan to deal with Mitch McConnell."  But during the q-and-a period that followed their debate, it was obvious that yes, Ahmari thought that -- and so did some of the audience.  One woman said, "I think socialism is the Colosseum.  Rounding up Christians."

Which also shows that there are people who need a refresher on the definition of "socialism."

Fear is a powerful motivator, and heaven knows Fox News and the extreme right talking heads like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Tucker Carlson have been pushing the fear-message for years: you're at risk, anyone different is evil, prepare to defend yourself, there are sinister forces at work.  And I suspect that part of it is that there is bad stuff in the world, a lot of it random, and it might be more comforting that there's a reason behind it all -- even if the reason is horrible -- than thinking that the universe is simply a chaotic place where sometimes awful things happen to good people.

But still.  I don't see why the people who listen to all of this stuff don't suddenly wake up one morning and go, "Man, this is a terrible thing to believe about my fellow human beings, and a terrible thing to believe about the deity I think controls everything."  But they don't.  Somehow, bafflingly, some folks respond by doubling down their support for a president who seems to be progressively losing his mind, conspiracy theories claiming that The Forces of Evil can steer a hurricane solely to discredit climate change deniers, fear talk about arming yourself against people of other beliefs and other races, a conviction that liberals want nothing more than to round up and kill Christians, and a view of God as a vindictive being who'll destroy several islands in the effort to take out a few bad guys.

And that I truly don't comprehend.

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This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is pure fun: science historian James Burke's Circles: Fifty Round Trips Through History, Technology, Science, and Culture.  Burke made a name for himself with his brilliant show Connections, where he showed how one thing leads to another in discoveries, and sometimes two seemingly unconnected events can have a causal link (my favorite one is his episode about how the invention of the loom led to the invention of the computer).

In Circles, he takes us through fifty examples of connections that run in a loop -- jumping from one person or event to the next in his signature whimsical fashion, and somehow ending up in the end right back where he started.  His writing (and his films) always have an air of magic to me.  They're like watching a master conjuror create an illusion, and seeing what he's done with only the vaguest sense of how he pulled it off.

So if you're an aficionado of curiosities of the history of science, get Circles.  You won't be disappointed.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Throw a war, nobody comes

Let's see... Fourth of July.  What shall I do today?  Picnic?  Barbecue?  Play with my dog?  Bonfire?  Go for a swim in my pond?  Shoot off some fireworks?

... or maybe... CIVIL WAR????  *diabolical laughter*

If this is the first you've heard about this, the same goes for me, and that's a little upsetting because I'm supposed to be participating in it, and evidently I missed the memo.  By this point, you probably won't be surprised to hear that the originator of this idea is none other than our friend and Skeptophilia frequent flyer Alex Jones, who had the following to say:

Here's the big announcement.  This July fourth, 2018, historically is the demarcation line.  You can mark as the point at which the global civil war against free humanity and pro-humanity, pro-Renaissance, classical liberal human future, versus the technocracy, the post-humanist, the post-industrialist, take-away-civilization eugenicists.  The Democrats are going to join with the real Nazis, that actually set Hitler up as a beta test -- that's on record -- posing as liberals.  You're either with the technocracy, with the human experimentists, or you're with the resistance.  It's much harder fixing things, and coming together, and believing in humanity, but we can do it, and we've done it, and Trump knows it.  It's about optimism, it's about a future.  We have everything we need, but it won't let the globalists be in total control any more.  No real competition.  So this is the choice you're getting.  July fourth is July fourth worldwide.  We've got to create some hashtags, get everyone involved, this is a time of not getting drunk, not eating a bunch of steaks or whatever.   That's a side issue.  We need to understand there's a global take down of nation states, a global takedown of populations, there is an attempt to get us all at each other's throats, by megabanks who are exempt from everything they're doing.  We have to get out that this is the beginning of a worldwide movement against empires, against royalty, against above-the-law bankers, against them all.  And it's a planetary awakening, 1776 worldwide.  It doesn't mean US control, it doesn't mean... uhhhhh... uhhhhh... no, it means the opposite.  It's soft power.  It's the next level of the Renaissance.... So this July fourth... uhhhhh.... how many years has it been since 1776?  Is it almost 250?  245 years?  Is t 245 years?  242.  I'm just going off the top of my head.  242...  You can mark this moment, July fourth, 242 years later, as the moment everyone will have to pick a side, whether you'll be a conformist with your own destruction, a conformist with the de-industrialization, the post-industrial world of the eugenicists, whether you're going to be strong and stand up to their bullying, stand up to the media, speak out for yourself, be involved, and be on Team Humanity.

Okay, that just leaves me with a few questions:

1. What?
2. What "record" shows that Hitler was a beta test by liberals?  The last thing I thought anyone would call Hitler is liberal.
3. Isn't Trump the one who's giving concessions to the megabanks hand-over-fist, such as the law he signed a month and a half ago weakening all the restrictions on risky speculation that were placed on large banks after the 2008 crash?
4. What?
5. So... instead of eating a bunch of steaks and getting drunk, we should create hashtags to stop global empires?  Because those are our two choices?
6. And all of this has to do with the Renaissance?  Like, Michelangelo and da Vinci and those guys?
7. What happens if it gets to July 5 and I haven't picked a side?
8. What is a "human experimentist?"
9. If I join Team Humanity, do I get a cool costume?  Like, brightly-colored tights with "TH" on the chest?  And a cape?  I've always thought I could seriously rock a cape.
10. What?

The thing that pisses me off the most about all this is that here I am, a fairly left-leaning guy, and there's going to be a Civil War waged by the left, and no one told me.  I mean, I signed up for #LiberalCivilWarTextAlerts and everything, and... nada.  I could have gotten out my musket and polished my bayonet and all, had my uniform dry-cleaned, and stored up some pemmican and beef jerky so I could survive the winter, and here I've been sitting on my ass drinking coffee and deciding how much potato salad to make.

How the hell am I supposed to wage a good war on the side of my Imperialist Eugenicist Post-Industrialist Above-the Law brethren if I only find out I'm involved the day it starts?

I swear, it's enough to make a guy think Alex Jones is pulling all this stuff out of his ass, or something.

[Image is in the Public Domain]

Anyhow.  I'm pretty discouraged by this.  In fact, I'm pissed off enough that I think I might just sit this one out.  If the Super-evil Globalists can't even be bothered to let all of their Liberal Cronies know what they're planning, fuck 'em.  I'm just going to go with my original plan to go for a swim, play with my dog, and have a bonfire.

But when tomorrow comes, and everything is still pretty much loping along as it always has, there will be one thing we can count on; Alex Jones will never admit that he was wrong.  Just like he's been all the other times he's predicted that the Democrats were going to launch a war to end humanity.

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This week's book recommendation is from one of my favorite writers and documentary producers, Irish science historian James Burke.  Burke became famous for his series Connections, in which he explored the one-thing-leads-to-another phenomenon which led to so many pivotal discoveries -- if you've seen any of the episodes of Connections, you'll know what I mean when I say that it is just mindblowing fun to watch how this man's brain works.  In his book The Pinball Effect, Burke investigates the role of serendipity -- resulting in another tremendously entertaining and illuminating read.

Faith in the facts

I keep waiting for a day to go by in which someone in the Trump administration doesn't say something completely batshit insane.

The latest person to try to reach the summit of Mount Lunacy is Dr. Mark Green, nominee for Army Secretary, who apparently got his Ph.D. from Big Bob's Discount Diploma Warehouse.  Because besides such bizarre statements as "the government exists... to crush evil," particularly evil in the form of transgender people who are just looking for a quiet place to pee, Green has gone on record as saying that he not only doesn't accept evolution, he doesn't believe in...

... the Theory of Relativity.

In a speech that focused not on what he would do in his role as Army Secretary, but on The Universe According To Mark Green, he said, "The theory of relativity is a theory and some people accept it, but that requires somewhat of a degree of faith."

No.  No, no, no.  Faith is exactly what it doesn't take.  Although religious folks will probably disagree with me on this definition, faith is essentially believing in stuff for which you have no evidence; and as such, I've never really understood the distinction between "faith" and "delusion."  All that it takes to accept the Theory of Relativity is understanding the evidence that has been amassed in its favor.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

And at this point, the evidence is overwhelming.  Given its staggering conclusions -- weirdness like time dilation, the speed of light being the ultimate universal speed limit, and warped space -- it is understandable that after it was published, scientists wanted to make sure that Einstein was right.  So they immediately began designing experiments to test Einstein's theoretical predictions.

Needless to say, every single one of the experiments has supported that Einstein was 100% correct.  Every time there's some sort of suspected glitch -- like six years ago, when physicists at CERN thought they had detected a faster-than-light neutrino -- it's turned out to be an experimental error or an uncontrolled variable.  At this point, media should simply have a one-click method for punching in the headline "EINSTEIN VINDICATED AGAIN" whenever this sort of thing happens.

What is funniest about all of this is that the technology Green would be overseeing, as Army Secretary, includes SatNav guidance systems that use GPS coordinates -- which have to take relativistic effects into account.  If you decide that you "don't have enough faith" to accept relativity, your navigational systems will gradually drift out of sync with the Earth (i.e., with reality), and your multi-million-dollar tanks will end up driving directly off of cliffs.

So you need exactly zero faith to accept relativity.  Or evolution, or cosmology, or plate tectonics, or radioisotope dating, or any of the other scientifically sound models that Green and his ilk tend to jettison.  All you need to do is to take the time to learn some science.  What does take faith, however, is accepting that anyone who has as little knowledge of the real world as Mark Green does has any business running an entire branch of the military.

Anyhow, there you have it: our "alternative fact" of the day.  It's almost as good as the "alternative fact" of the day before, which came straight from Dear Leader Trump, to wit: Andrew Jackson was a good guy with a "big heart" who "was really angry about what he saw happening with the Civil War."  Oh, and the Civil War could "have all been worked out," and that "people don't ask the question" about why the Civil War started.

Except, of course, for the thousands of historians who have been writing about the causes of the Civil War for decades.  And Andrew "Big Heart" Jackson was responsible for the forced deportation of fifteen thousand Native Americans from their ancestral homes, in one of the biggest forced relocations ever perpetrated, and in which a quarter of them died of disease, starvation, and exposure.

Oh, yeah, and I don't think Jackson was particularly angry about the Civil War, given that he died sixteen years before it started.

So it'd be nice if our leaders would stop saying things that turn the United States into a world-wide laughingstock.  I'm planning on going to Ecuador this summer, and I'd really like it if I don't have to tell the Ecuadorians I meet that just because I'm an American doesn't mean I'm an ignorant, raving loon.  Thank you.

Secession talk

I mentioned yesterday that the tactics being employed by the ultra-religious faction in the United States were seeming increasingly desperate.  And in a rather troubling example of synchronicity, just after publishing yesterday's post, I ran across an article in the Washington Times wherein we read that Douglas MacKinnon, a conservative columnist, author, and former speechwriter for Presidents Reagan and Bush I, is recommending that the southern states secede.

My first thought was, "Didn't they try this once?  And it didn't end so well?"

Sure, says MacKinnon.  The Confederacy had seceded "peacefully" and "legally," and then "President Lincoln waged an illegal war."

Makes you wonder about the whole Fort Sumter thing, doesn't it?  Never mind, MacKinnon probably would say that the North should have abandoned the place and given up.  It was their fault they fought back, ya know?

His argument only gets more bizarre from there, though.  The reason MacKinnon wants the South to re-secede is mostly religion.  Oh, yeah, and guns and evil environmentalists:

A growing number of our leaders seem determined to erase our borders... [to] do away with the rule-of-law, expand the nanny state into a theology, bankrupt or punish American companies in the name of fighting climate change, do away with the Second Amendment, censor or demonize the history of western civilization and replace it with multiculturalism, give every kid a trophy and turn them into wimps… and attack all faith in God with a particular and unhinged bias against the Christian faith.

Righty-o.  And what would he call this new god-fearing, gun-loving, zero-tree-hugger nation?

"Reagan."  I'm not making this up.  At least, MacKinnon said, until they could come up with a better name.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

"I simply want those who believe the downward spiral of our country is irreversible, to know that an option to preserve their values does exist," MacKinnon said.

It's all too easy to laugh at the likes of MacKinnon.  After all, his decrying of the United States as becoming a "nanny state," and then saying that the South should rise up and be a pinnacle of economic rectitude, ignores the fact that three of the top four states that rely most heavily on federal assistance are Mississippi (#1), Alabama (#3), and Louisiana (#4).  And despite the ongoing fear-talk that President Obama is COMING FOR OUR GUNS, he's nearing the end of his second term, and guess what?  Guns still abound.  If he's after the guns, dude better get his ass in gear, because he's wasted six years not confiscating guns and destroying the Second Amendment.  If he procrastinates further, he'll only have himself to blame when we remain as heavily armed as ever.

But if MacKinnon thinks that even in the South there's uniformity of belief, he's delusional.  Okay, a lot of the Southeast is heavily conservative and majority Christian, but "majority" doesn't mean "unanimity."  What are the southern atheists, liberals, and environmentalists to do?

Leave, is my guess.  I've heard it before, but usually referring to the United States as a whole; "America is a Christian nation.  If you don't like it, get out."

So there's our wacko screed of the day.  I live in hope that people like MacKinnon are a dying breed, but even if I'm right, they don't seem to be ready to Go Gentle Into That Good Night.  They're apparently more about the "rage, rage" part.