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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Homeopathy goes to Haiti

Well, in today's contribution from the I Despair For Humanity Department, we have a report in courtesy of Sharon Hill's wonderful site Doubtful News that a group called "Homeopaths Without Borders" is going to Haiti.

At first, I thought that (despite Hill's outstanding reputation for veracity) this couldn't possibly be real.  But no, sad to say, Homeopaths Without Borders does exist, and on their website (here) they describe their most recent project:

Homeopaths Without Borders (HWB) staff and volunteers are busy preparing for the organization’s final trip in 2012 to Haiti. Leaving on November 4, this team will fulfill two missions during a two-week stay. HWB Education Director, Karen Allen and Executive Director Holly Manoogian will be joined by Marina Braun, CCH and Mikael Manoogian.

First, the team will be in Port-au-Prince to complete the final session of the Fundamentals Program—a foundational curriculum in homeopathic therapeutics incorporating theoretical and clinical training. Fifteen students are preparing to complete their requirements for graduation at the end of the week.

The second part of the mission brings the team to Belle Anse for the first of four week-long trainings in the Fundamentals Program. In Belle Anse, they will join Bekert Descollines of Belle Anse Timoun Family School, who has convened the 30 students for the course.

Words cannot convey how outraged I am about this.

Homeopathy is, pure and simple, quackery.  When you take a homeopathic "remedy" you are consuming either a sugar pill or else pure water, depending on whether it's in solid or liquid form.  The process of serial dilution used in creating these "remedies" removes every last potentially bioactive molecule, and there is nothing left but the carrier -- generally either lactose or water.  (For a wonderful summary of the scientific impossibility of homeopathic claims, go here.)

Unconvinced?  Here's a list of people who have died while under the care of homeopaths, most from disorders that would have been treatable had they been given standard medical care.   Note that they include a number of children.  Pets aren't immune to this kind of neglect, either; just last week, a woman in Britain was fined £1000 and banned from keeping animals for three years after courts heard how she refused to give anything but homeopathic "remedies" to two dogs with advanced mange.  (One of the dogs was ill enough that it had to be euthanized.)  [Source]

And now, these people are going to spread their foolish, counterfactual nonsense to Haiti.  And train others in how to use their useless "remedies."  Bad enough that they push these "remedies" on people in places like the USA, the UK, and Australia; given our access to information, and good public education systems, there is an argument to be made that it's our fault if we fall prey to these snake oil salesmen.

But don't places like Haiti have enough problems, what with natural disasters, some of the highest poverty levels in the world, lack of access to clean food and water, and lack of access to standard medical care?  Now, what we have on top of that is people from "Homeopaths Without Borders" coming in, and convincing sick Haitians that all they need to do is to take "potentiated remedies imprinted with the vibrations of the biological molecules that were present" (if you don't believe that this is what they're claiming, check out this article from Natural News).  And talking Haitian doctors and nurses into doing the same thing for their patients.  If this doesn't constitute the encouragement of medical neglect, I don't know what does.

It may well be that the "Homeopaths Without Borders" sincerely believe that they are doing the right thing.  So did the parents of Gloria Thomas, age 9 months, whose father gave her homeopathic remedies instead of an antibiotic when she contracted a skin infection.  She died.  So did the homeopath who told 55-year-old Jacqueline Alderslade that her asthma medication was contributing to her asthma, to stop taking her medication and to take a "remedy" instead.  She died after an asthma attack that almost certainly would have responded to conventional treatment.  So did the homeopath who told 52-year-old diabetic Russell Jenkins to treat a cut on his foot with honey instead of an antibiotic salve.  The wound became gangrenous, his foot had to be amputated, and he died shortly thereafter of blood sepsis.

Getting the picture?

It doesn't matter whether they think they're doing the right thing.  It doesn't matter that they claim that science is blind, that we skeptics are ignoring all of the vibrations and potentiations and whatnot because we're closed-minded.  It doesn't matter if they claim that controlled studies show that homeopathy works.  The fact is, there has not been a single reputable controlled study that has shown homeopathic "remedies" to have any effect at all beyond one: the placebo effect.  And the people who are spreading this nonsense to Haiti should be turned away at the borders.