Acting on absurdities

My grandma used to say, "When someone shows you who they are, believe them -- the first time."

It's good advice, and when I haven't heeded it, I've almost always lived to regret it.  It's not that I think people can't change; it's just that most of them don't.

In the particular case I'm thinking of, though, it's not the first time, nor the tenth, nor (probably) the thousandth time that we've been shown precisely who someone is.  And it will come as no shock to most of you that I, once again, am talking about Donald Trump.

What brought me back to this distasteful topic is the ongoing nonsense about migrants in Springfield, Ohio eating people's pets.  There has been, says both Trump and his running mate J. D. Vance, a "flood" of over twenty thousand Haitian immigrants into Springfield, overcrowding schools, triggering a crime wave, and overwhelming both police and the prior (read "white") residents.

There is not a shred of truth to any of this.  The most recent data shows that there are about 5,200 people from Haiti in all of Ohio.  There is no credible evidence whatsoever that anyone's pets have been killed.  There's no crime wave, no swarm of refugees into schools, no... anything.

But confronted by these facts, both Trump and Vance simply doubled down on the rhetoric, as they always do.  Interviewed on CNN, Vance told Dana Bash that he knew it wasn't true, but that he was allowed "to create stories so that the… media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people."

Funny how when I was little, that was called "lying" and was frowned upon.  When I was a few years older, I found out that's what "bearing false witness against thy neighbor" meant.

You know, that thing in the Ten Commandments?  The same Ten Commandments these people want plastered on every public school classroom wall?

Or does that commandment not apply if thy neighbor has dark skin?

But because anything that comes out of Dear Leader's mouth (or his cronies' mouths) is automatically considered true by his followers, the result has been the college in Springfield holding virtual classes because of malicious and threatening calls, public schools (including an elementary school) on lockdown, and the mayor getting death threats because he had the temerity to state publicly that Trump and Vance had lied.

The reality of Springfield.  Not that you'll hear about this from the Republicans.

It doesn't end there.  The second abortive assassination attempt on Trump led both Vance and Donald Trump Jr. to blame "radical leftists" (despite the fact that neither of the would-be assassins were leftists by any stretch, much less radical ones).  Elon Musk, who just will not keep his fucking mouth shut, commented that it was funny how no one had attempted to assassinate Kamala Harris or Joe Biden, then Vance followed it up with saying that it was the Democrats who need to tone down their rhetoric. 

It's right from Joseph Goebbels's playbook; accuse your opponents of what you're doing yourself.

At this point, if you still support Trump, you own all of this.  Every last scrap of it.  You know who he is, and chances are you've known for a long while.  And if -- every god ever worshiped forbid -- he wins reelection in November, you will own every last thing he does.  Because he's told us, you know?  He's told us over and over and over again.  Here are a few of the things he's said himself -- i.e., this is not me speculating.  This is right from his own mouth.

• There'll be the largest deportation of immigrants (legal and illegal) in American history.
• There'll be sky-high tariffs on imported goods, especially anything from China.  (He seems not to understand that tariffs are not paid by the country the import came from, but by the consumer in the recipient country.)
• He will withdraw all U. S. support for Ukraine.
• He plans to get rid of U. S. military leaders who are "woke" -- defined, of course, however he wants to.
• He will cut funding for any schools that have support systems in place for LGBTQ+ students, and those that have vaccine or mask mandates.  That, too, is "woke."
• He will jail his critics in the press -- and even went so far as to say he'd find a way to silence ordinary citizens who oppose him.

If I wake up on the morning of November 6 and find that Trump has won, you -- his supporters -- will bear the blame for every last horror he perpetrates, everyone whose voice is silenced, every legal asylum seeker who is sent back to face imprisonment, injury, or death.  You will be responsible for every freedom lost to Americans because Donald Trump's fragile ego can't handle being contradicted.  You will be responsible for every queer child who is denied help and who ends up committing suicide.  (And don't @ me about how "this never happens."  The suicide rate among LGBTQ+ teens is four times the average for straight teens.  And I was -- twice -- very nearly one of those queer teens who succeeded.)

If he's reelected, you will swallow the responsibility for all of that, swallow it down to the last vile-tasting drop.

It all boils down to what Voltaire said, almost three hundred years ago -- a quote I had on my own classroom wall: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

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The doctor, Donald Trump, and demon sex

As I have mentioned more than once, there's pretty good evidence lately that the aliens who are in charge of the computer simulation we're all trapped in have gotten bored and/or stoned, and now they're just fucking with us.

For example, consider Dr. Stella Immanuel.  Dr. Immanuel has recently become a darling of the pro-Trump faction for her claims that she's cured people with active COVID-19 infections through a combination of hydroxychloroquine, Zithromax (the antibiotic in the "Z-Pak"), and zinc.  She was one of the leading voices at a "summit" hosted by a group calling itself "America's Frontline Doctors," which I have to admit has more gravitas than the more accurate "America's Batshit Conspiracy Theorists."  The misinformation flew at the "summit," including not only that COVID-19 was curable using hydroxychloroquine (multiple studies have found it to have no positive effects on the course of the illness, and a plethora of nasty side effects, some of which can be fatal), but that the pandemic itself was overblown and that masks aren't necessary to prevent its spread.

Trump, of course, loves Dr. Immanuel, because her message is identical to the one he's been pushing for months.  He tweeted a link to a video of Dr. Immanuel defending her coronavirus misinformation, and Donald Jr. retweeted it, calling it a "Must watch!!!"  Then the powers-that-be at both Twitter and Facebook, showing a rare burst of ethical behavior, deleted her video, tagged tweets promoting it as "containing misinformation," and most surprising of all, locked Donald Jr.'s Twitter account for twelve hours.

Dr. Immanuel, though, follows Trump's model in more than just espousing ridiculous pseudoscience; her personal motto is apparently "Death before admitting error."  After her video was taken down, she and Trump both doubled down on her position.  Dr. Immanuel threatened divine intervention, saying that Jesus Christ would destroy Facebook's servers if the video wasn't restored.  (They didn't, and he didn't.)  Trump, on the other hand, took a more mundane approach, if not substantially more sane.  "I can tell you this, she was on air along with many other doctors," he said.  "They were big fans of hydroxychloroquine and I thought she was very impressive in the sense that from where she came, I don't know which country she comes from, but she said that she's had tremendous success with hundreds of different patients, and I thought her voice was an important voice, but I know nothing about her."

The bizarre ideas of this "important voice" go far beyond misinformation about COVID-19, however.  Dr. Immanuel is a veritable fountain of loony beliefs, which include the following:

• The medical establishment is working on medicines that are created from extraterrestrial DNA.
• Gynecological disorders occur when women have dreams about having sex with demons.  It's the "demon sperm" that causes the problem.
• Wet dreams cause erectile dysfunction, once again because they're accompanied by images of having sex.  With demon women, of course.
• The demons themselves, though, aren't just in it for the kicks, but because that's how they reproduce.  "They turn into a woman and then they sleep with the man and collect his sperm," Immanuel said in a sermon at the church she runs in Houston, Texas, called "Firepower Ministries."  "Then they turn into the man and they sleep with a woman and deposit the sperm and reproduce more of themselves."
• She calls herself a "wealth transfer coach."  Presumably that means transferring wealth from your bank account to hers.
• The Illuminati (of course the Illuminati are involved) are trying to destroy the world, and the main way they're doing this has to do with gay marriage.  Don't ask me how that works.
• Part of the government is being run by aliens who are reptilian in appearance, and oddly enough, I don't think she meant Mitch McConnell.
• Scientists are currently working on a vaccine to prevent people from being religious.
• Even children's toys are suspect.  She calls Pokémon "eastern demons," and has a special hatred for the Magic 8-Ball, which is a "psychic object used to start children in witchcraft."  (Sorry, Dr. Immanuel, "My sources say no.")

So this is the person that Donald Trump called "spectacular" and "very respected."

Then others took up the outcry.  Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, said that because Dr. Immanuel and Donald Trump were saying the same thing, she was being "attacked, ridiculed, and discredited" in a deliberate effort to damage Trump's reputation.  (Not, apparently, because what she was saying was certifiable horseshit.)  Simone Gold, one of the leaders of America's Frontline Doctors, said that social media was committing a crime by "censoring Physicians from speaking about COVID-19 and Hydroxychloroquine."  Radio host Mark Levin criticized several media outlets, such as The Daily Beast, for being part of a "vicious smear machine" -- because they'd quoted Dr. Immanuel verbatim.

As for the doctors who refuse to prescribe hydroxychloroquine for coronavirus infections, Dr. Immanuel said, "You’re no different than a murderer.  You’re no different than Hitler."

Here we have a person who in a sane world would be looked at as a wacko, more to be pitied than censured, but because Donald Trump says he likes her, Trump-supporters nationwide suddenly act as if she's the next Jonas Salk.  (Oh, and simultaneously, they cast Dr. Anthony Fauci -- one of the world's experts in communicable disease research -- as a fool at best and an evil mastermind at worst, for saying such things as "wear a mask in public" and "don't take medications that don't work and can also kill you.")

So that's the upside-down world we currently live in.  I'd like to tell you that things will sort themselves out and that wiser and saner heads will ultimately prevail, but if there's one thing I've learned in the past four years, it's that predicting what will happen next is a loser's game.  I even tried asking the best source I have, hoping to get some clarity, desperately seeking a reason to believe that things will improve soon.

But all it would say is "Reply hazy, try again."

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Being in the middle of a pandemic, we're constantly being urged to wash our hands and/or use hand sanitizer.  It's not a bad idea, of course; multiple studies have shown that communicable diseases spread far less readily if people take the simple precaution of a thirty-second hand-washing with soap.

But as a culture, we're pretty obsessed with cleanliness.  Consider how many commercial products -- soaps, shampoos, body washes, and so on -- are dedicated solely to cleaning our skin.  Then there are all the products intended to return back to our skin and hair what the first set of products removed; the whole range of conditioners, softeners, lotions, and oils.

How much of this is necessary, or even beneficial?  That's the topic of the new book Clean: The New Science of Skin by doctor and journalist James Hamblin, who considers all of this and more -- the role of hyper-cleanliness in allergies, asthma, and eczema, and fascinating and recently-discovered information about our skin microbiome, the bacteria that colonize our skin and which are actually beneficial to our overall health.  Along the way, he questions things a lot of us take for granted... such as whether we should be showering daily.

It's a fascinating read, and looks at the question from a data-based, scientific standpoint.  Hamblin has put together the most recent evidence on how we should treat the surfaces of our own bodies -- and asks questions that are sure to generate a wealth of discussion.

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

Missive from a loser

Nota bene: If you don't want to read a rant, you may want to exit right now.

Yesterday I woke up to news of Donald Trump's El Paso pro-wall rally on just about every media website there is.  Among the highlights were Trump's claim that there were 69,000 people in the crowd (there weren't), that most of the wall is already built (it isn't), and that despite that, we've got a national emergency because we need to build the wall (we don't).  There was a call to Make America Great Again.  *cheers*  America needs secure borders.  *cheers*  Democrats want open borders, free admission to criminals, and eat babies for breakfast.  *cheers*

But all of that is what we've heard over and over (if you're on Twitter, over and over and over and over and over) so it didn't really raise any eyebrows, either with the #Resist or the #MAGA contingents.  It wasn't until I read the comments from Donald Jr. (also greeted with shouts of acclamation) that my blood pressure really started to rise.

Don Jr. threw himself into whipping the crowd into a frenzy, and he did so by pointing out how cool it was to see young people in the crowd.   "You know what I love?" he said, to more cheers.  "I love seeing some young conservatives, ’cuz I know it’s not easy.  Keep up that fight, bring it to your schools.  You don’t have to be indoctrinated by these loser teachers that are trying to sell you on socialism from birth.  You don’t have to do it."

Excuse me?

You think I have time to indoctrinate my students?  I'm too busy giving them a basic grounding in biology to waste class time telling them to become socialists.  In my 32-year career, I have known four -- count 'em, four -- teachers who were clearly partisan and made it clear their students were expected to toe the party line.

And it bears mention that two of them are conservatives and two of them are liberals.

Some of my students last week, learning how to Gram stain bacteria [used with permission]

Even in my Critical Thinking class, which if I were not cautious could turn into a daily biased screed, I struggle constantly to maintain balance and fairly represent all angles.  In our unit on logical fallacies, I make sure that my examples of erroneous thinking are chosen from both sides of the political aisle (yes, I count them).  I make it clear that tossing aside the opposition's viewpoint simply because they are the opposition is as lazy as gullibility.  I tell my conservative students to make a point of checking out MSNBC every so often -- but I also tell my liberal students they need to check out Fox.

So: loser?  Excuse me?  I have thrown everything I have into teaching, on a daily basis, for over three decades.  I buy about a third of the lab supplies I use because our budgets have been cut to the bone and I'm unwilling to eliminate labs because we can no longer afford them.  I, and most of my colleagues, are at school well before the contract requires and stay there long after the contract says we could go home.  Teaching is a fun, frustrating, rewarding, exhausting career, and I hope I have touched some lives the way mine has been touched.  I still am thankful beyond words for the likes of Ms. Jane Miller (my high school biology teacher), Ms. Bev Authement (high school creative writing), and Dr. Harvey Pousson (college calculus).  They altered the course of my life, and I model much of my teaching on the kind, compassionate, interesting, funny style they brought to the classroom.

It's nothing short of appalling to be called a "loser" by a guy who has from kindergarten on gone to expensive, exclusive private schools, who never had to work a day in his life, who has been handed everything on a silver platter, and who still thinks he has the right to criticize people who work long hours in meaningful careers each and every day.  Even more appalling is that the #MAGA crowd thought what he was saying was just the cat's pajamas.  Damn liberal teachers, indoctrinating our young folks.  I'll definitely vote against the school budget next time it comes around.

And of course, I'm under no illusions as to why he's doing this.  I wouldn't call either Donald, Senior or Junior, smart, but they are not lacking in a low, animal cunning.  Not only does this message play well to their supporters -- tyrants keeping their followers feeling endangered and besieged is a strategy with a long and inglorious history -- but it also insulates them against even hearing another side to the issues.  Which is exactly what the Trumps want.  Create an airtight, vacuum-sealed echo chamber, and don't even let a hint of the opposition's argument cross.  Represent everything the liberals say in straw-man arguments, convince the true believers that all they need to do is listen to Dear Leader and his son and everything will be fine.

It makes me despair a little for the future of America.  I have a naturally optimistic bent -- as I've said before, it'd be silly to be a teacher if I was a pessimist -- but stuff like this makes me think we haven't hit rock bottom yet.  The fight back upwards is going to be a long and arduous one.  And I, for one, am thankful that there are teachers who are still out there giving our children the tools they need to see foolish propaganda for what it is.

But on a more personal note, to Junior himself; how dare you disparage me and my colleagues when I doubt you have set foot in a public school in your entire life.  Your ignorance and snide arrogance are stomach-turning to anyone who knows what actually happens in schools.  So I'll end with saying this, from the bottom of my heart, and I hope you're listening:

You can go to hell.

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A particularly disturbing field in biology is parasitology, because parasites are (let's face it) icky.  But it's not just the critters that get into you and try to eat you for dinner that are awful; because some parasites have evolved even more sinister tricks.

There's the jewel wasp, that turns parasitized cockroaches into zombies while their larvae eat the roach from the inside out.  There's the fungus that makes caterpillars go to the highest branch of a tree and then explode, showering their friends and relatives with spores.   Mice whose brains are parasitized by Toxoplasma gondii become completely unafraid, and actually attracted to the scent of cat pee -- making them more likely to be eaten and pass the microbe on to a feline host.

Not dinnertime reading, but fascinating nonetheless, is Matt Simon's investigation of such phenomena in his book Plight of the Living Dead.  It may make you reluctant to leave your house, but trust me, you will not be able to put it down.

Advice from the ignorant

I have never been a police officer.  No one in my family is a police officer.  I have not studied criminal justice; most of what I know about the legal system has been gleaned from television shows like Law & Order, which, to be honest, I have watched less than a dozen times total.  I've only visited a police station a handful of times, and each time spent less than a half-hour there.

Now stand by while I tell you everything that is wrong with our justice system, and furthermore, how to fix it.

Did you wince a little?  I hope so.  But this election season has been rife with ignorant self-proclaimed experts who know exactly what to do about everything despite having neither the experience nor the facts to base their opinion on.  And for a sterling example of this, let's look at the speech given by Donald Trump, Jr., two days ago on the final night of the Republican National Convention.

Trump Jr. spent a lot of his time railing against the public school system, despite the fact that he (1) is neither a teacher nor an administrator, (2) has never studied educational policy, and (3) for fuck's sake, didn't even attend a public school.  Nevertheless, here's what he said about our national educational policy, with a few interjected comments from me:

The other party gave us public schools that far too often fail our students, especially those who have no options.

Which party is it, exactly, that has across the nation gutted the public school system by cutting funding to the bone, resulting in loss of teachers, curriculum, and services?   To take just one of many examples, consider Republican Governor Sam Brownback of Kansas, who just this year signed legislation that would allow parents to divert 70% of the tax money earmarked for education into religious schools -- and this after he already cut $45 million in funding for public schools in 2015.

Growing up, my siblings and I we were truly fortunate to have choices and options that others don’t have.  We want all Americans to have those same opportunities. 

You want every American child to attend a well-funded private school?  Paid for how, exactly?

Our schools used to be an elevator to the middle class. Now they’re stalled on the ground floor.  They’re like Soviet-era department stores that are run for the benefit of the clerks and not the customers, for the teachers and the administrators and not the students.

Bullshit.  Spend any time at all inside a typical public school and you'll find out that's wrong in under five minutes.  In fact, I'll issue an open invitation to Trump Jr., or anyone else for that matter, to spend a day in my classroom this fall.  Let's see if afterwards you think that what happens there is done for my benefit, or for the benefit of the principal and superintendent.

You know why other countries do better on K through 12?  They let parents choose where to send their own children to school. 

Is there a stronger word than bullshit?  Let's look at one example of a country often touted as achieving educational excellence: Finland.  Their success story -- student scores on standardized tests ranking 2nd in the world in science, 3rd in reading, and 6th in math, with a 93% high school graduation rate nationwide -- has zilch to do with "parental choice."  According to an article on the Finnish educational system by LynNell Hancock that appeared in Smithsonian:

There are no mandated standardized tests in Finland, apart from one exam at the end of students’ senior year in high school.  There are no rankings, no comparisons or competition between students, schools or regions.  Finland’s schools are publicly funded.  The people in the government agencies running them, from national officials to local authorities, are educators, not business people, military leaders or career politicians. Every school has the same national goals and draws from the same pool of university-trained educators.  The result is that a Finnish child has a good shot at getting the same quality education no matter whether he or she lives in a rural village or a university town.  The differences between weakest and strongest students are the smallest in the world, according to the most recent survey by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).  “Equality is the most important word in Finnish education. All political parties on the right and left agree on this,” said Olli Luukkainen, president of Finland’s powerful teachers union.

But do go on, Mr. Trump Jr., as if you actually had the slightest idea what you're talking about:

That’s called competition. It’s called the free market. And it’s what the other party fears.

No, we don't fear competition, and contrary to what people like you would have the public believe, teachers like myself don't fear accountability.  What we want is fair, equitable measures of student success, both to evaluate students and to evaluate teachers.  What we don't need is a bunch of politicians making pronouncements on a subject about which they are completely ignorant.

They fear it because they’re more concerned about protecting the jobs of tenured teachers than serving the students in desperate need of a good education.

I don't know a single teacher who is in favor of tenure protecting substandard teachers.  The tenure rules are there for a reason -- to give protection to teachers from capricious administrators, and to ensure due process.  No one in education is in favor of tenure abuses like the so called "rubber rooms" where poor teachers are corralled because they can't be fired.  But this problem can be fixed without jettisoning the entire system.

They want to run everything top-down from Washington.  They tell us they’re the experts and they know what’s best.

So instead, we're supposed to listen to you because you are an expert and you know what's best?

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

You want to know how to fix the system?  Adequate funding and fair fund distribution formulas.  Strong curricula that are not beholden to test-for-profit firms like Pearson Education.  Support for teachers in inner cities and other places where poverty, broken families, drugs, and gangs play a role in the failure of schools.  Powerful, dynamic teacher training programs.  Salaries and benefits that are sufficient to attract the best teachers, stopping the bleed-out of talent we're seeing across the United States because of poor working conditions and vilification of the entire profession.

Last -- the one thing you and I might agree on -- put the oversight of education into the hands of the people who know the most about it, and get the know-nothing politicians to keep their noses out of it.

But that includes you, Mr. Trump Jr.