The guilt of the instigators

A number of years ago, I was talking with a friend about her recent divorce from a man who was a serial philanderer and emotional abuser, and from whom she had separated more than once, always taking him back when he promised reform.  At that point my own divorce was also recent history, and I asked her what she'd come away with after the experience.

She looked thoughtful for a moment, and said, "I think the biggest lesson I learned is, when someone shows you who he truly is, believe it."

As of the time of this writing, the attempted coup against our government by armed rioters is only twenty-four hours old, and already I'm seeing the distraction campaign by Republicans getting into full swing.  "This isn't who we are," the official GOP Twitter account said.  Rudy Giuliani said "stop the violence" after having called for "trial by combat" only hours earlier.  Ivanka Trump asked for the rioters to leave peacefully -- but when the protests started, had said they are "American patriots."  Brit Hume speculated that they were "leftist Antifa in disguise" despite the fact that there are photographs, and the ones who have been identified are all well-known far-right agitators.  Ted Cruz asked for the rioters to disperse -- but still voted against certifying the results of a legitimate, fair election later that evening.  Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham both made speeches against the riots, the move to question the election, and Trump himself.  Twitter suspended Trump's account for twelve hours, supposedly "pending review for permanent deletion."  Several Trump staffers have resigned, and several more are expected to do so in the next day.  Brian Kilmeade and Steve Doocy of Fox News said that Trump "acted very badly" in saying he loved the rioters and that they were "very special."

And on and on.

The problem is: it's too late.  It's way too fucking late to claim the moral high ground, to act as if they haven't supported an amoral psychopath for four years, making excuses for every insane thing he's done all along the way.  Without the support of these people he never would have been nominated, much less elected.  Especially infuriating is the sudden realization by Twitter and Fox News that they're complicit in violent insurrection -- that between the two of them, they created this monster.  Without Twitter and Fox News, and far-right commentators like Rush Limbaugh, Trump would have remained what he was -- a failed businessman and washed-up reality TV star.

And we've been warning for years that this was coming, that the lies and misinformation and polarization were going to have consequences.  I say "we" because I've been writing about the parallels between Trump's rise and Germany in the 1930s since he was nominated.  I was called an alarmist by people on both sides of the aisle.  The conservatives said Trump was a true patriot who cared deeply for the average American; the liberals said he was an incompetent but that the system of checks and balances was there to keep the reins on him.

But people like Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz made sure the checks and balances were never invoked.  They gave Trump carte blanche.  Fox News helped matters along by making sure that any of the innumerable lies and outright insane statements Trump made never got aired, that the loyal viewers only ever saw things that painted him in a positive light.  They created a vision of a man who was a messiah, the only one who could save America from the godless evil liberals...

... and their followers believed it.

Stephen King said -- a long time ago -- "The people who have spent years sowing dragon's teeth seem surprised to find that they have grown an actual dragon."  Trump's enablers created this situation.  Each of them is as culpable as Trump is in what happened on January 6.  They are guilty of the deliberate, calculated deception of a significant percentage of the American citizenry, who were trained to discount every criticism of Trump they heard, and so now... discount every criticism of Trump they hear.

The mealy-mouthed tut-tutting about the violence in the Capitol (and in a number of state capitols as well) can not be allowed to get them off the hook for this.  I'm no expert in jurisprudence, so I am unqualified to weigh in over issues like whether the congresspeople who voted against certification of the election or who instigated the coup attempt could be expelled and/or prosecuted.  But doing nothing -- saying, "Oh, well, it's simmered down, we're okay now" -- will work about as well as when Susan Collins voted against removing Trump after he was impeached early last year, and said, "I think he's learned his lesson."

I guess he hasn't, Senator Collins.

If someone shows you who he truly is, believe it.

Undoing the damage this has done will not be easy or quick.  It'll still be with us long after the windows in the Capitol are replaced, the papers and files that were dumped on the floor are put back, the damage to furniture is repaired.  I don't envy the new administration the work they have ahead.  But if we don't want this to happen again -- which, I trust, is the hope of every American -- we cannot let the ones who did this get away with it.  And I'm not talking only about the participants in the riot.  I'm talking about the ones who created this situation, from Trump on down.  I'm talking about Fox News, OAN, Newsmax, the far-right commentators who built Trump up as a god-figure, the true believers who worship him.  I'm talking about the elected officials who coldly and hypocritically encouraged it -- some of them laughing up their sleeves in private about what a moron Trump is -- because they saw it as a way to fill their own pockets and keep their positions of power.

We need reform, and that doesn't mean accepting that the Democrats have all the answers.  They don't.  It means stopping the continual stream of self-aggrandizing lies.  It means refusing to throw away anything that doesn't immediately appeal to your biases as "fake news."  It means turning off the television and radio and depriving the media that thrives on polarization of the only thing they care about, which is cash from sponsors. 

And it means holding people accountable for what they say or do.  Every damn time.

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What are you afraid of?

It's a question that resonates with a lot of us.  I suffer from chronic anxiety, so what I am afraid of gets magnified a hundredfold in my errant brain -- such as my paralyzing fear of dentists, an unfortunate remnant of a brutal dentist in my childhood, the memories of whom can still make me feel physically ill if I dwell on them.  (Luckily, I have good teeth and rarely need serious dental care.)  We all have fears, reasonable and unreasonable, and some are bad enough to impact our lives in a major way, enough that psychologists and neuroscientists have put considerable time and effort into learning how to quell (or eradicate) the worst of them.

In her wonderful book Nerve: Adventures in the Science of Fear, journalist Eva Holland looks at the psychology of this most basic of emotions -- what we're afraid of, what is happening in our brains when we feel afraid, and the most recently-developed methods to blunt the edge of incapacitating fears.  It's a fascinating look at a part of our own psyches that many of us are reluctant to confront -- but a must-read for anyone who takes the words of the Greek philosopher Pausanias seriously: γνῶθι σεαυτόν (know yourself).

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

Giving no quarter

As of this morning, six explosive devices addressed to prominent critics of Donald Trump have been discovered, one of them (the one mailed to former CIA director John Brennan) found at the headquarters of CNN.  Fortunately, all of them were intercepted and rendered harmless.  As of the writing of this post, it is yet to be determined if any of the devices were capable of detonating, but officials say that they "contained some of the components that would be required to build an operable bomb" and the potential danger was being studied.

Trump was quick to disavow any responsibility for what happened.  In a speech given at the White House, he said, "In these times we have to unify.  We have to come together and send one very clear, strong, unmistakable message that acts or threats of political violence of any kind have no place in the United States of America."

Fine words from a man who has repeatedly vilified the men and women who were the targets, and done whatever he could to sow division, paranoia, and polarization.  Just last week he praised Montana Congressman Greg Gianforte for body slamming a reporter.   He initially condemned a neo-Nazi gathering in Charlottesville, Virginia that resulted in one death and nineteen injuries, but quickly backpedaled, saying, "I think there is blame on both sides.  You look at both sides.  I think there is blame on both sides."  He has called CNN and other members of the mainstream news media "enemies of the people" over and over.  Jeff Zucker, president of CNN, called it correctly.  'There is a total and complete lack of understanding at the White House about the seriousness of their continued attacks on the media.  The President, and especially the White House Press Secretary, should understand their words matter.  Thus far, they have shown no comprehension of that."

Then Trump's cronies joined in the fray.  CNN was just "getting what it deserved" for "spewing hate speech 24/7."  "Democrats are worse," one man on Twitter commented, then quoted Cory Booker's comment, "Get in their face," Maxine Waters's "No peace, no sleep," and Hillary Clinton's "We can't be civil until Democrats win."

Because this, apparently, justifies receiving a pipe bomb in the mail.

While other networks were covering the incidents, Fox News was discussing how outrageous it was that Mitch McConnell got heckled in a restaurant.  In fact, Meghan McCain equated getting heckled in a restaurant with receiving a pipe bomb in the mail, in a conversation with Joy Behar on The View.

"Every time [Trump] says things like the press is the enemy of the people, his entire party needs to stand up against him and say something," Behar said.  "Mitch McConnell, where is he?  He’s the leader of this party."

"He’s getting harassed and heckled when he goes out in public to have dinner with his wife," McCain responded.  "So are we."

It didn't take long for a bunch of right-wing talking heads to say not only that liberals were responsible for the pipe bombs because they encourage violence, but that the liberals sent the pipe bombs themselves to make the Republicans look bad.  Chris Swecker, former analyst for the FBI, said in an interview on Fox, "It could be someone who is trying to get the Democratic vote out and incur sympathy."  Pro-Trump media personalities John Cardillo, Ann Coulter, Michael Savage, and Bill Mitchell were quick to agree.

But no one is capable of throwing gasoline on a fire like Rush Limbaugh.  "Republicans just don't do this kind of thing," Limbaugh said.  "You’ve got people trying to harm CNN and Obama and Hillary and Bill Clinton and Debbie 'Blabbermouth' Schultz and, you know, just, it might serve a purpose here."

Okay, you get the picture.

Words matter.  This has progressed far past the usual fractious partisan rhetoric and posturing that has gone on as long as there have been elected offices.  This is a leader -- the President of the United States -- who has over and over used inflammatory rhetoric to stir up his supporters, leading the cry of "lock her up" against Hillary Clinton (who has never been tried for, much less found guilty of, anything).  Ted Cruz, who evidently thought it was a good idea to take a page from Trump's playbook, said that Clinton and Cruz's opponent Beto O'Rourke could "share a double-occupancy cell."

Apparently now it's a crime to be a Democrat.

It's taken a lot to get me involved in politics.  I've said before that I hate politics because half of it is arguing over things that should be self-evident and the other half arguing over things that probably have no feasible solution.  I'm the child of two staunch Republicans, with whom I sometimes disagreed but always respected.  Personally, I've always been kind of a centrist; one of my besetting sins is that I see most things in shades of gray.

But if you still support Donald Trump, you are aiding and abetting someone who not only lies compulsively, not only is a homophobic, misogynistic narcissist, but is appealing to the worst traits in the American personality -- the tribalism, the xenophobia, the racism.  Not only appealing to them, encouraging them, inflaming the fear and the hatred and the polarization.  I usually try to find common ground with people I disagree with, but I'm beginning to think there is no common ground here.

If you voted for Trump, I get it.  He's very good at telling people what they want to hear, convincing them he's got all the answers.  If you still support him, I have nothing more to say to you other than that I will fight what Trump and his cadre stand for with every breath I take.  I'm done with being bipartisan, with trying to be polite to folks who want people like me erased from the earth.

At some point, you have to stop being nice and say "enough."  If there's still dialogue to be had, if they're still convincible, it's still worth talking.  But if not?  The only thing left is to push back with everything you've got.  I'll end with a quote from William Lloyd Garrison: "With reasonable men, I will reason; with humane men, I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they will certainly be lost."

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The Skeptophilia book recommendation of the week is a must-read for anyone interested in languages -- The Last Speakers by linguist K. David Harrison.  Harrison set himself a task to visit places where they speak endangered languages, such as small communities in Siberia, the Outback of Australia, and Central America (where he met a pair of elderly gentlemen who are the last two speakers of an indigenous language -- but they have hated each other for years and neither will say a word to the other).

It's a fascinating, and often elegiac, tribute to the world's linguistic diversity, and tells us a lot about how our mental representation of the world is connected to the language we speak.  Brilliant reading from start to finish.

Probing the scientists

Because we clearly needed something else to be angry about, today we have: a cadre of four senators who are calling for an investigation into the National Science Foundation's grant program designed to educate meteorologists about climate change.

The four senators are James Lankford (Oklahoma), Rand Paul (Kentucky), Ted Cruz (surprise! -- Texas), and James Inhofe (even bigger surprise! -- Oklahoma).  Inhofe, you may remember, is the knuckle-dragger who doesn't know the difference between weather and climate, and illustrated the fact by bringing a snowball onto the floor of the Senate and presenting it as evidence that the world wasn't warming up.

Along the same lines, every time Inhofe eats dinner, world hunger goes away for a while.

The four drafted a request for a probe into the NSF's Climate Central program, stating that it was "not science -- it is propagandizing."

My question is: what would it take to make the NSF's stance on climate "science?"  Saying that fossil fuels are great for the environment because plants like carbon dioxide?  That dumping coal ash into streams -- now completely legal in states that do not have a standard "maximum contaminant level" for water, and have demonstrated the need for "regulatory flexibilities" -- is perfectly safe?  That we should all be optimistic, because even if it does warm up, it'll make the Alaskan tundra nice and toasty warm?

These four -- and others like them -- have zero respect for science.  Science, to them, is what is expedient for their constituents and (especially) the lobbyists who fund their campaigns.  They've somehow confused "peer-reviewed valid science" with "science that aligns with the way I'd like the world to work."

And anything that doesn't align in that fashion is summarily dismissed.  Can't have the universe be inconvenient to your preconceived biases, after all.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Welp.sk, Air pollution, CC BY-SA 3.0]

Ben Strauss, CEO of Climate Central, was (understandably) livid at the impending investigation.  "Climate Central is not an advocacy organization, and the scientific consensus on climate change is not a political viewpoint," Strauss said in an email to NBC News.

Which, I predict, will have exactly zero effect, given that Scott "Fuck Ethics" Pruitt, who said last year that "Science should not be something that's just thrown about to dictate policy in Washington, D. C." is still in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency, despite having amassed more allegations of misconduct in his short tenure than any other appointed or elected official I've ever seen.

So if we shouldn't use science, what should we use to dictate policy?  Astrology?  Divine inspiration?  Thoughts and prayers?

The anti-science bent goes all the way to the top, given that every time any science-related subject is brought up with Donald Trump, he gives evidence of having maxed out his science education when he outgrew My First Big Picture Book of the Universe in second grade.  All you have to do is look at the list of appointments he's made to high government positions to convince yourself that if you're a anti-intellectual young-Earth creationist, you've got a good shot.  (Just to mention one particularly egregious example: Teresa Manning, who was deputy assistant secretary of the Office of Population Affairs, went on record as saying that contraception "does not work to prevent pregnancy."  After making use of the revolving door Trump has installed in all of the government offices, Manning was replaced by Diane Foley, who said that teaching teenagers how to use condoms correctly was "sexual harassment."  Foley's qualification for the post seems to be her tenure as president and CEO of "Life Network," the mission statement of which is to "present the gospel of Jesus Christ.")

I know I'm prone to hyperbole at times, but I don't think it's overstating the case to say that the people in charge right now wouldn't know a valid, evidence-based scientific argument if it walked up and bit them on the ass.

I'm finding it harder and harder to stay optimistic, here.  The pro-Trump faction, along with their answer to a North-Korea-style state sponsored media (Fox News), have done their job too well.  When we've devolved from respecting the research of the people who actually understand how the world works to accepting whatever Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity say without question, we've entered a realm where facts -- hell, reality -- doesn't matter.  As I've said before, once you teach people to doubt the data, you not only can convince them of anything, no logical argument you could craft will ever change their minds.

As a long-ago environmental science student of mine said, things are going to have to get a whole lot worse before people will wake up.  We've already seen prolonged droughts, killer storms, blistering heat waves, and various other weather weirdness that (taken together) form a pattern that is incontrovertible.  But for most people in the United States, it hasn't become dire enough yet.  We can still sit in our comfortable homes, go to the grocery store to pick up food, turn on the tap and get clean water, cool things off with air conditioning.

Once those things start being affected by climate change -- when we get jolted out of our complacency, and say, "Hey, maybe the scientists were right after all!" -- I'm afraid it will be too late to do anything.

Which is just what Paul, Lankford, Cruz, and Inhofe want.  They're just counting on it being delayed long enough for them to retire with cocky grins and full bank accounts.

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This week's book recommendation is the biography of one of the most inspirational figures in science; the geneticist Barbara McClintock.  A Feeling for the Organism by Evelyn Fox Keller not only explains to the reader McClintock's groundbreaking research into how transposable elements ("jumping genes") work, but is a deft portrait of a researcher who refused to accept no for an answer.  McClintock did her work at a time when few women were scientists, and even fewer were mavericks who stood their ground and went against the conventional paradigm of how things are.  McClintock was one -- and eventually found the recognition she deserved for her pioneering work with a Nobel Prize.

Tell me what you like

I always wince a little when I see those silly things pop up on Facebook that say things like, "Can you see the number in the pattern?  Only geniuses can!  Click 'like' if you see it, then share."  And, "Are you one of the 5% of people who can think of a city starting with the letter E?  Reply with your answers!"

I'm certainly no expert in online data analysis, but those seem to me to be obvious attempts to get people to click or respond for some purpose other than the (stupid) stated one.  People still share these things all over the place, much to my perplexity.

What I didn't realize is how deep this particular rabbit hole can go.  Until I read an article that came out last week in Motherboard called "The Data That Turned the World Upside Down," by Hannes Grassegger and Mikael Krogerus, that illustrates a far darker reason for worry regarding where we place our online clicks.

The article describes the science of psychometrics -- using patterns of responses to predict personalities, behaviors, even things like religious affiliation and membership in political parties.  Psychometric analysis used to rely on test subjects filling out lengthy questionnaires, and even then it wasn't very accurate.

But a psychologist named Michal Kosinski found a better way to do it, using data we didn't even know we were providing -- using patterns of "likes" and "shares" on Facebook.

Kosinski had discovered something groundbreaking -- that although one person's "likes" on Facebook doesn't tell you very much, when you look at aggregate data from millions of people, you can use what people click "like" on to make startlingly accurate predictions about who they are and what they do.   Grassegger and Krogerus write:

Remarkably reliable deductions could be drawn from simple online actions. For example, men who “liked” the cosmetics brand MAC were slightly more likely to be gay; one of the best indicators for heterosexuality was “liking” Wu-Tang Clan.  Followers of Lady Gaga were most probably extroverts, while those who “liked” philosophy tended to be introverts.  While each piece of such information is too weak to produce a reliable prediction, when tens, hundreds, or thousands of individual data points are combined, the resulting predictions become really accurate.

By 2012, Kosinski and his team had refined their model so well that it could predict race (95% accuracy), sexual orientation (88% accuracy), political party (85% accuracy), and hundreds of other metrics, up to and including whether or not your parents were divorced.  (I wrote about some of Kosinski's early results in a post back in 2013.)

The precision was frightening, and the more data they had access to, the better it got.  A study of Kosinski's algorithm showed that ten "likes" were sufficient to allow the model to know a person better than an average work colleague; seventy, and it exceeded what a person's friends knew; 150, what their parents knew; and 300, what their partner knew.  Studies showed that targeting advertisements on Facebook based on psychometric data resulted in 63% more clicks than did non-targeted ads.

So it was only a matter of time before the politicians got wind of this.  Because not only can your data be used to predict your personality, the overall data can be used to identify people with a particular set of traits -- such as undecided voters.

Enter Alexander Nix, CEO of Cambridge Analytica, an online data analysis firm, and one of the big guns with respect to both the recent U.S. election and the Brexit vote.  Because Nix started using Kosinski's algorithm to target individuals for political advertising.

"Only 18 months ago, Senator Cruz was one of the less popular candidates," Nix said in a speech political analysts in June 2016.  "Less than 40 percent of the population had heard of him...  So how did he do this?  A really ridiculous idea.  The idea that all women should receive the same message because of their gender—or all African Americans because of their race."

Nix went on to explain that through psychometrics, political candidates can create laser-focus appeals to specific people.  The approach became "different messages for different voters," and Donald Trump's team embraced the model with enthusiasm.  Grassegger and Krogerus write:

On the day of the third presidential debate between Trump and Clinton, Trump’s team tested 175,000 different ad variations for his arguments, in order to find the right versions above all via Facebook.  The messages differed for the most part only in microscopic details, in order to target the recipients in the optimal psychological way: different headings, colors, captions, with a photo or video...  In the Miami district of Little Haiti, for instance, Trump’s campaign provided inhabitants with news about the failure of the Clinton Foundation following the earthquake in Haiti, in order to keep them from voting for Hillary Clinton.  This was one of the goals: to keep potential Clinton voters (which include wavering left-wingers, African-Americans, and young women) away from the ballot box, to “suppress” their vote, as one senior campaign official told Bloomberg in the weeks before the election.  These “dark posts”—sponsored news-feed-style ads in Facebook timelines that can only be seen by users with specific profiles—included videos aimed at African-Americans in which Hillary Clinton refers to black men as predators, for example.

All in all, the Trump campaign paid between $5 and $15 million to Cambridge Analytica for their services -- the total amount is disputed.

Of course, it's impossible to know how much this swayed the results of the election, but given the amount of money Trump and others have spent to use this algorithm, it's hard to imagine that it had no effect.

All of which is not to say that you shouldn't "like" anything on Facebook.  Honestly, I'm unconcerned about what Alexander Nix might make of the fact that I like Linkin Park, H. P. Lovecraft, and various pages about running, scuba diving, and birdwatching.  It's more that we should be aware that the ads we're seeing -- especially about important things like political races -- are almost certainly not random any more.  They are crafted to appeal to our personalities, interests, and biases, using the data we've inadvertently provided, meaning that if we're not cognizant of how to view them, we're very likely to fall for their manipulation.

Inventing reality

It's understandable that people get upset when the world turns out to work differently than they wanted or expected.  We all have our preconceived notions and our biases, and it can be jarring when those turn out to be false.

This only becomes a problem, however, when we look at the facts and evidence, plug our ears, and say "La la la la la la la, not listening."

It will come as no surprise that I'm once again talking about climate change, a topic on which I have rung the changes so many times that I've lost count.  But I was more or less forced to return to the subject by not one, nor two, but three news stories that appeared one after another over at the r/skeptic subreddit, and which left me seeing red to the extent that I have to pass along the anger to all of my readers.

You're welcome.

The first article comes from the Orlando Sentinel, and is called, "Voters Need Truth About 'Clean Coal.'"  Those of you who watched the second presidential debate will no doubt recall that the topic came up with respect to energy policy.  We need to restore mining jobs in places like West Virginia and Pennsylvania, because there's "clean coal" which is environmentally friendly and won't cause all sorts of ecological havoc.

Well, the article calls that out for the nonsense it is in no uncertain terms:

Back in this circumstance called reality, what's actually happened in the energy sector is that much of the world has been moving away from coal for decades. U.S. mining jobs have been mostly in decline since the 1980s...  [T]he U.S. needs to take the threat from air pollution and climate change seriously. If we artificially boost demand for coal simply to put miners back to work, the country will pay through the nose — not only in higher energy costs but in human health and lives.  The toxins produced by burning coal, such as sulfur dioxide, ground-level ozone, heavy metals and particulates, contribute to four out of the five leading causes of death, including heart disease and cancer. 

And climate change could prove just as life-threatening as rising sea levels, record-breaking heatwaves, droughts, floods, declining food production and other related effects take hold. 

None of those problems go away if we simply refuse to believe in them.  Coal's decline isn't a product of politics; it's a function of chemistry.

Then we had an article in The Guardian entitled "Climate Scientists Publish a Paper Debunking Ted Cruz," responding to a presentation in a hearing run by Senator Ted Cruz in the Senate Committee on Commerce last year.  Cruz had invited climate change denier John Christy to testify (speaking of having an agenda).  And Christy told the senators two things; that mid-tropospheric temperatures were rising three times slower than climate models predicted, and (more damning still) there had been no measurable warming of the troposphere for the past 18 years.

Well, it would be damning if it were true.  Which it isn't.  The study just released was unequivocal:

[T]his recent paper did a few things. First, they took the contrarian argument that the mid-troposphere temperatures have been rising at only 1/3 the rate predicted by models. They found that Christy’s team neglected the contamination of the cooling in the upper stratosphere. When they applied this correction, they found that Christy’s claim was incorrect. Differences between modeled and observed warming rates were much smaller, and had known explanations.

Next, the authors asked whether it is true that there has been no warming in the lower atmosphere (troposphere) in the past 18 years. They found that for five of the six groups that provide satellite temperature analysis, this claim was also incorrect. 

Finally, they asked whether it is true that the temperature changes in different layers of the atmosphere are in disagreement in models and measurements. Their result is that when temperature changes in different layers of the atmosphere are compared, one of three satellite records is in close agreement with the climate models.

Last, we had Representative Ken Buck of Colorado making the statement that talk of climate change was endangering Americans by deflecting their attention away from more important stuff.  "When we distract our military with a radical climate change agenda," Buck said, "we detract from their main purpose of defending America from enemies like ISIS."  He was explaining why he had introduced an amendment to the Defense Appropriation Bill, asking them to cut funding for a directive called "Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience."

The only problem with this, according to an article in the Denver Post, is that Buck's claim is directly contradicting statements issued from the Department of Defense.  Who would, you'd think, know what they were talking about on the topic.  The DoD has said outright that climate change would lead to "prominent military vulnerabilities," that the Department would "need to adjust to the impacts of climate change on our facilities and military capabilities," and that 18 military installations in the United States are directly threatened by sea level rise.

Worse still -- for Buck's claims, anyhow -- is the statement from James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, who said that climate change is "an underlying meta-driver of unpredictable instability."

[image courtesy of NOAA]

Which is it exactly.  We're perturbing the climate at a rate higher than anything we find in the geological record, and it's no particular surprise that it is responding erratically, and from a human viewpoint, catastrophically.  While no one day of bad weather can be directly attributable to climate change, the pattern we've seen lately of larger storms (and storms taking different tracks than usual), droughts, floods, and other climatic weirdness all adds up to something the climate models have been telling us for years -- that dumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in the amounts we've been doing for the past hundred years is causing huge climatic changes that may already be beyond our powers to mitigate.

But back to my original point.  I can understand the desire by Cruz, Buck, Trump, and others for the world to be other than it is.  Hell, I get why the coal miners are upset; their jobs are vanishing.  But there are bigger issues at stake here, like the long-term habitability of the planet, and (in the short term) environmental devastation that could compromise the living space and agricultural production for millions of people.

So very sorry that the world doesn't conform to your desires.  That's true for many of us, and the appropriate response is, "Tough shit."  Part of being an adult is facing up to it when things aren't the way we want them to be, not stomping our feet, clinging to our invented version of reality, and saying, "But I want it this way!"  Climate change exists, whether we want it to or not, and the effects are increasingly looking catastrophic.  Best we stop trying to push an agenda based on our desires and tackle the problem head-on.

Suppressing reality

Back in the 1950s, scientists were beginning to identify a causal connection between smoking and lung cancer.  Prior to that, there was an extensive advertising campaign to convince the public that smoking was actually good for your health:

Once the connection between tobacco use and a whole host of ailments became clear, tobacco company executives were quick to see what was happening -- and to launch their own disinformation campaign.  Public relations firm Hill & Knowlton, hired to manage the situation, made their approach clear in documents that have only recently come to light:

We have one essential job -- which can be simply said: Stop public panic…  There is only one problem – confidence, and how to establish it; public assurance, and how to create it...  And, most important, how to free millions of Americans from the guilty fear that is going to arise deep in their biological depths – regardless of any pooh-poohing logic -- every time they light a cigarette.

Industry officials made sure that the consumers viewed them as open and transparent, not to mention caring about their customers' health.  A 1953 public statement from the Tobacco Industry Research Committee included the following disingenuous comment:

We will never produce and market a product shown to be the cause of any serious human ailment…  The Committee will undertake to keep the public informed of such facts as may be developed relating to cigarette smoking and health and other pertinent matters.

Except for the fact that they were doing exactly that -- doing everything in their power to cast doubt upon the research, and actively suppressing the research of scientists who were working in the field.  In 1954, TIRC issued a "Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers:"

Distinguished authorities point out:

1. That medical research of recent years indicates many possible causes of lung cancer.
2. That there is no agreement among the authorities regarding what the cause is.
3. That there is no proof that cigarette smoking is one of the causes.
4. That statistics purporting to link smoking with the disease could apply with equal force to any one of many other aspects of modern life. Indeed the validity of the statistics themselves are questioned by numerous scientists.

Some industry operatives actually thought about trying to turn the crisis into an opportunity.  A researcher at Philip Morris wrote:

Evidence is building up that heavy smoking contributes to lung cancer.  But there could be benefits to any company with the intestinal fortitude to jump on the other side of the fence, admitting that cigarettes are hazardous.  Just look what a wealth of ammunition would be at his disposal to attack the other companies who did not have safe cigarettes.

That three-pronged approach -- discredit the scientists, sow doubt in the minds of ordinary citizens, and portray the industry as caring and concerned -- must be sounding awfully familiar, if you've been reading the news lately.  Because we're seeing the whole scenario play out again, this time with regards to climate change.

The scientists don't agree.  There is no consensus.  Besides, the climate researchers who argue the most vehemently that anthropogenic climate change is happening are probably being paid to say so by eco-wackos like Earth First.  And think about it -- wouldn't it be nice if the world warmed up a little?  Just think, upstate New York would be snow-free.  You could grow palm trees in Maine.  And in any case, doing anything about it would be (choose any that you think apply): (1) economic suicide; (2) disastrous for states that depend on oil, gas, and coal; (3) the cause of massive unemployment; or (4) impossible in any case.

This cynical move by the fossil fuel industry to play on the doubts, fears, and ignorance of the general public is exactly analogous to the strategies of the tobacco industry fifty years ago.  Of course, in the latter case, the facts eventually came out despite their best efforts, along with their role in trying to cover up the correlation.  And now, it's to be hoped that history is once again repeating itself, with the Department of Justice getting involved -- and pursuing an investigation to find out whether industry giants like Exxon-Mobil actively suppressed climate change research, and lied to their investors about the dangers.

Like back in the 1950s, however, the industry has political clout, and there are elected officials whose debt to the corporate world is higher than their ethical standards.  Just last week, five senators -- Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, Jeff Sessions, David Vitter, and David Perdue -- signed a letter demanding that the Department of Justice halt their inquiries.  "We write today to demand that the Department of Justice (DoJ) immediately cease its ongoing use of law enforcement resources to stifle private debate on one of the most controversial public issues of our time," the letter states.

The problem is, it's not controversial any more, any more than the connection between tobacco and lung cancer was controversial fifty years ago.  This is a manufactured controversy, with one aim in mind -- providing protection for fossil fuel markets.  The industry, and their mouthpieces in so-called "think tanks" like the Heartland Institute, know full well that what they are doing is affecting global temperatures.  Anyone who can read a scientific paper can no longer claim that the issue is undecided.  What they are doing is denying reality to save their profit margin, damn the cost to the future.

And that future is looking like it's coming awfully soon.  Sea level rise is already taking its toll -- interesting that David Vitter's home state of Louisiana is one of the first places to see the effects, with a coastal island called Isle St. Charles having already lost over 50% of its land area to flooding from rising waters in the Gulf of Mexico.  Its residents have applied for, and received, a $48 million grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development -- not for levees and flood mitigation, but simply to resettle as eco-refugees.

It's to be hoped that the officials in the Department of Justice will respond appropriately to Cruz, Vitter, et al., to wit, with a phrase that ends with "... and the horse you rode in on."  I'm optimistic that just as with the lung cancer deniers back in the 50s, today's climate change deniers will eventually be steamrolled by facts, evidence, and research.  The dangers of tobacco became public too late to save tens of thousands of lives, however -- perhaps we'll wise up sooner this time.

The enemy of my enemy is... um... wait.

In today's news from the Unintentional Irony Department, we have religious wingnut and young-earth creationist Ted Cruz calling the anti-GMO cadre "anti-science zealots."

"People who decide that is what they want, they can pay for it already, but we shouldn’t let anti-science zealotry shutdown the ability to produce low-cost quality food for billions across the globe," Cruz said. "GMOs help to provide food for people across the globe and strengthen farms across the nation...  The people who oppose GMOs and want to buy organic food can do that."

Then, because there is no bizarre news story that someone can't comment on so as to make it way more bizarre, we have Ted Cruz being called out by none other than Mike "The Health Ranger" Adams of Natural News, who believes that vaccines cause autism and that the United States government is deliberately and callously killing us all with "chemicals":

[Cruz] insults all those Americans who share ever rising concerns over food pesticides, herbicides and chemical contaminants that the scientific literature overwhelmingly proves can cause cancer.  If only guns could provide personal protection against pesticides, then Ted Cruz might find himself on the right side of this argument... but that's not how chemistry works.  Chemicals are insidious, slow, invisible killers that commit violence on a cellular basis, day after day, meal after meal, until the victim is rendered diseased and ultimately dead.  The primary defense against chemical violence is CHEMICAL AVOIDANCE.

Yup.  That'll work.  Avoid all chemicals.  Presumably including water, oxygen, vitamins, proteins, DNA, and RNA.  Because "that's how chemistry works."

Ted Cruz, as visualized by Mike Adams

He then hits Cruz where it hurts -- his faith:

Perhaps even worse than the betrayal of fundamental constitutional principles of liberty, by going all-in for Monsanto, Ted Cruz joins forces with the most evil corporate entity on planet Earth.  Because Ted Cruz claims to be a supporter of Christianity, Biblical principles and God's creation, his betrayal on GMOs is far more than a political betrayal; it is spiritual treason against God.

And if you haven't already done enough damage smacking your head against your computer keyboard, Adams goes on to tell us that humans were intended by god to do selective breeding, but not to do any other kind of genetic modification:

Monsanto has taken a corn crop that was perfected through natural selective breeding by early humans, then turned it into a food POISON that damages the kidneys, liver and reproductive organs.  This is a treasonous act against humanity, Mother Nature and even God. 

By supporting Monsanto, Ted Cuz[sic] is openly encouraging a devious corporate entity that systematically violates the laws of Mother Nature and believes that Man's engineered (poisonous) seeds are superior to God's seeds that gave rise to nutritious corn via natural selection (humans working in harmony with nature to gradually shape phenotype genetic expression of food crops).

And the coup de grâce comes at the end, where Adams calls Monsanto "Monsatan" and says that by supporting GMOs, Cruz is "aligning himself with the devil."

So we first have climate change and evolution denier Ted Cruz calling the anti-GMOers anti-science, and the vaccines-cause-autism, chemtrail-believing anti-GMOers countering that Cruz has sold his soul to the devil.  Me, I'm wondering what I should think.  My inclination is to let Adams and Cruz fight to the death, because either way, rationalism wins.  But the whole thing reminds me again of the Senegalese saying I have quoted more than once:  "There are forty different kinds of lunacy, but only one kind of common sense."

Voting for the voice of god

Below I present to you a series of quotes.  You'll see a pattern pretty quickly.

• It’s the natural law of God. We have a theocracy right now.  You know, the only thing worse than not being elected president would be to be elected president without God’s blessing. I can’t think of a worse place in the world to be than in the Oval Office without God’s hand upon you.  -- Mike Huckabee
• It was as if there was a presence of the Holy Spirit in the room and we all were at awe and Ted, all that came out of his mouth, he said, ‘Here am I Lord, use me.  Here am I Lord, I surrender to whatever Your will for my life is.’  And it was at that time that he felt a peace about running for president of the United States. -- Rafael Cruz, speaking of his son, Senator Ted Cruz
• I feel fingers [of god]...  I finally said, ‘Lord if you truly want me to do this, you’ll have to open the doors, because I’m certainly not going to kick them down.  And if you open the doors I will walk through them.  And as long as you hold them open, I will walk through them...  I believe God will make it clear to me if that’s something I’m supposed to do.  I will run if God grabs me by the collar and asks me to run. -- Ben Carson
• Our goal is eternity.  The purpose of our life is to cooperate with God’s plan, and I believe that's what this [the presidential race] is about...  To those who much has been given, much is expected, and we will be asked to account for that, whether your treasures are stored up on earth or in heaven.  And to me, I try to allow that to influence me in everything that I do. -- Marco Rubio
• We have prayed a lot about this decision, and we believe with all our hearts that this [Santorum running for president] is what God wants. -- Rick Santorum
• My relationship with God drives every major decision in my life.  Our country is at a crossroads and we need a proven conservative leader who is not afraid to fight for what is right — even when it’s not politically expedient.  My decisions are guided by my relationship with God. -- Scott Walker
• He and his wife believe they are touched by God, and that this is his time.  It's like – they can't lose – that's the sense of it.  I don't know if he'll win the nomination, but I'm absolutely sure he'll be one of the last two Republicans standing. -- an anonymous supporter and financier, speaking of Governor Rick Perry

So what we have here is a host of presidential candidates who are all basically claiming that god told them personally that he wanted them to run.  Fortunately, one of them at least is aware that god can't simultaneously support everybody:

I think sometimes, while people say, “we’re praying about this, we’re asking God,” that’s fine, but it seems like the criteria that I’ve been told for selecting candidates seems very secular.  It’s about well, this person is polling well, this person has the cash.  And I’m thinking, you know if these guys were going up against Goliath they would’ve insisted that it was the big guy, with the king’s armor—they never would’ve allowed that shepherd boy with the five smooth stones, and with Gideon’s army, they would’ve run for cover when God got Gideon’s army down to 300. -- Mike Huckabee, speaking about his rivals Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz

But of course, since he's implying that because of all of this, god's supporting him, I'm not sure we've gained any ground, here.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

And of course, the other problem is that the unifying theme between all of these guys is that none of them are going to get the Republican nomination.  (We could argue over whether Ted Cruz still has a shot, but I think that realistically, he's done for.)  So what's going on here?  Was god trolling all of them?  Or saying, basically, "Yes.  It's my will that you run" without adding, "... but you're all gonna lose."  Or just telling them what they wanted to hear, because the almighty didn't want to hurt their feelings?

The problem is exactly what Susan B. Anthony observed -- "I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because it so often coincides with their own desires."

So anyway, it's all rather amusing to we non-religious types that one of the only Republican candidates who didn't claim to be anointed by god -- Donald Trump -- is looking like a shoo-in for the nomination.  Of course, the downside is that Donald Trump winning the nomination doesn't only mean that the God Squad didn't get it, but that, um, Donald Trump will have won the nomination.  So my laughter is ringing a little hollow at the moment.

Maybe god could tell Donald that he was destined to become president.  Given god's batting average so far, it'd pretty much assure that he'd lose.

Justice denied

Because we clearly needed something to make American politics even weirder and more contentious, five days ago Antonin Scalia decided to die suddenly on the day of a Republican presidential debate.

Of course, it wasn't only the candidates who responded with pithy, and at times completely inexplicable, commentary on the legacy of Justice Scalia and the future of the Supreme Court.  But Ted Cruz was certainly one of the first, wasting no time in urging his colleagues in the Senate to block any nominee President Obama brings forward to replace Scalia.  This move set off shrill commentary from both sides of the political spectrum, often from people who apparently consider themselves constitutional law scholars even though they have never read anything longer than the message inside a fortune cookie, and all of which ended up bouncing around on Facebook and Twitter for days.

Then things got crazier still.  Despite the fact that Scalia was 79, overweight, had high blood pressure and a history of heart problems, and had recently been told that he was too weak to undergo rotator cuff surgery, many people decided that there was no way a man that healthy could die suddenly of natural causes.  The conspiracy theories began to multiply like mushrooms after a rainstorm, particularly when it was announced that Scalia would not be autopsied given that his doctor was comfortable signing a death certificate citing natural causes without it.

And of course, leading the way was none other than Donald Trump, who claimed that Scalia was smothered in his sleep.

"They say they found a pillow on his face," Trump said, on Michael Savage's radio show Savage Nation, "which is a pretty unusual place to find a pillow."  Because any Black Ops hit man who was trying to murder a public official and make it look like death from natural causes would clearly be so stupid that he would leave the murder weapon sitting right on the victim's face.

John Poindexter, owner of the Cibolo Creek Ranch in Shafter, Texas, where Scalia died, tried to clarify.  "I think enough disclosures were made and what I said precisely was accurate.  He had a pillow over his head, not over his face as some have been saying.  The pillow was against the headboard and over his head when he was discovered.  He looked like someone who had had a restful night's sleep.  There was no evidence of anything else."

Of course, that only made things look more suspicious.  Alex Jones had an "emergency transmission" on his Facebook site, asking whether Scalia was murdered, but apparently not knowing enough about the situation to realize that the Justice's first name was "Antonin," not "Anthony."  Despite this, he said that Scalia wasn't going to be the last murder of a prominent conservative, and suggested that Texas Governor Greg Abbott might be next:

Scalia walked into the perfect bear trap...  Maybe they’ll find the governor with a pillow over his face, maybe that’s the new thing.  All of these conservatives that are fighting back that are real conservatives, they are all being found with pillows over their faces...  This is it.  This is the final assault.  This is the beginning of the final war.

Then, because apparently Alex Jones was lonely being the only clinically insane person commenting on the situation, we had this:

Can I get some agreement here, from both my conservative and liberal readers, that Michele Bachmann really needs to get back on her meds?

But if you think that's as weird as it gets, you really don't get how deeply crazy some Americans are.  Extremely evangelical pastor Rick Wiles decided to weigh in, and he said that Scalia was clearly murdered by President Obama, possibly with his bare hands.  How did he reach this conclusion?

Numerology, of course.

The 13th was the 44th day of 2016.  Obama is the 44th president of the United States, so you have this numerology thing taking place. 

The man who killed Justice Scalia deliberately left the pillow on his face as a message to everybody else: 'Don’t mess with us, we can murder a justice and get away with it...'  Officials in Washington are all terrified.  Deep down they know, the regime murdered a justice…  This is the way a dictatorial, fascist, police state regime takes control of a nation.  Barack Obama is the most lawless president we have ever had in the history of this great country, but his lawlessness is a catalyst to wake up the sleeping giant.

But no episode of Insanity On Parade would be complete without a contribution from Glenn Beck, and I'm happy to say that he doesn't disappoint.  Beck lays the death of Justice Scalia at the feet of god himself, and said that god had a purpose in offing Scalia when he did: to incite Americans to vote for Ted Cruz.

On Beck's weekly radio show, his co-host Pat Gray lamented the Justice's untimely death.  "I couldn't help but wonder, why?" Gray said.  "Why now?  Why did you have to take Antonin now?"  And Beck, as always, was ready to address the question with his usual realistic approach.

Pat, I think I have an answer for you on that. 

The lord is saying, I just woke the American people up.  I took them out of the game show moment and woke enough of them up to say, 'Look how close your liberty is to being lost.'  The Constitution is hanging by a thread.  That thread has just been cut.  And the only way that we survive now is if we have a true constitutionalist as president.

Beck was immediately taken to task by Christians who questioned his view that god would knock off someone merely to make a point with the survivors, even though in the bible god does that sort of thing every other page.  But Beck shares with Donald Trump the personal motto, "Death Before Backing Down," and responded thusly:

(P)erhaps God allowed Scalia to die at this time to wake America up to how close we are to the loss of our freedom.  I happen to believe in divine providence.  Americans historically have.  Maybe you do not.  That is your choice and I do not mock you for not.  Why mock me for believing in a traditional view of God? 

Fall to your knees and pray to God to reveal to you what the hour is.  This is your last call, America!  Stand with the man I believe was raised for this hour, Ted Cruz!

So anyway.  I don't think we've nearly seen the last of the wild theories surrounding Scalia's death.  After all, it's over fifty years since Kennedy was killed, and people are still arguing about that one -- and in that case, there was no doubt that it was a murder.  The whole thing makes me vaguely embarrassed to admit that I'm an American when I go overseas, you know?  Not that I'm not proud of my country or unpatriotic or any of that sort of thing, but because we do seem to have way more than our fair share of extremely loud lunatics.  I'd rather not have to spend my time convincing the people I meet while traveling that no, I don't support Donald Trump, that yes, I do think the world is more than 6,000 years old, and that no, I have no idea why the Kardashians are still in the news.  And the fact that we apparently can't accept that a 79 year old man with a weak heart couldn't die of natural causes in his sleep without some kind of evil conspiracy being involved makes me want to polish up my Norwegian so I can claim I'm only visiting the United States on a work visa.

Political astrology

There is one word that makes me see red, skepticism-wise, and that word is "clickbait."

Clickbait articles, sensationalized bullshit that has as its only point inducing gullible people to click on links and therefore generate advertising revenue, are bad enough from an ethical standpoint.  But what really torques me about this sort of thing is the fact that many of the clickers end up believing what they read, regardless of the reliability of the source.  The strategy started with such dubious sites as The Weekly World News and Above Top Secret, but has moved its way into more mainstream media (The Daily Mail has adopted this approach to the extent that most of us refer to it as The Daily Fail).  And now, it has moved all the way up to the media source on which I found a clickbait article yesterday...

... none other than CNN.

The article in question, which required the collaboration of no less than three authors -- Pamela Boykoff, Alexandra Field, and Jason Kwok -- is entitled, "2016 Election: Which Candidate Will Triumph in the Year of the Monkey?"  And it is about -- yes -- using feng shui and Chinese astrology to predict who's going to win in November.

[image courtesy of photographer Jakub Hałun and the Wikimedia Commons]

The worst part about this is that it's not even in some kind of "Weird Stuff" category of CNN's webpage.  It's filed squarely under CNN Politics.  Let me be clear about this: this is not politics.  This is pseudoscientific nonsense.  Let me give you a taste of what's on it, so you don't have to click on the link and give them ad money yourself:

With the Year of the Monkey and the New Hampshire primary upon us, CNN asked Hong Kong fortune teller Priscilla Lam to divine the fates of the candidates battling it out for the U.S. presidency. 

A practitioner of feng shui, the ancient Chinese system of summoning good luck, she combined the art of face reading with analysis of the candidates' birthdays and current life cycles according to the Chinese Zodiac. 

She says the new lunar year will fuel good fortune for "earth dog" Donald Trump, while also lighting a fire under Hillary Clinton. 

Bernie Sanders' missing metal is a problem with older voters and the fighting elements of fire, and water might just leave Marco Rubio all wet.  And don't ask about Ted Cruz's face reading. 

Lam says she is "about 80%" confident in her predictions for the 2016 election. Those sound like pretty good odds.

So, yeah.  That's the level of political reporting we're seeing.  Trump's going to do well because he's an "earth dog."  Hillary Clinton's on fire.

And trust me, I don't even want to think about Ted Cruz's face, much less read it.

If we further peruse the article, we find out that Donald Trump has "a lot of sunshine in his favor."  that Hillary Clinton "has flexible lips," that Marco Rubio's "nose is okay -- it means management skill or power," and that Ted Cruz is in trouble because "in his birthday there is no wood... if you burn the wood, the fire can come up."

Whatever the fuck that means.

And the whole time I'm looking at this, I'm thinking, "how the hell is this news?"

The answer, of course, is that it isn't.  This is clickbait.  But the problem is, seeing such nonsense on a an internationally-known news media source gives it a veneer of authority, and reinforces the belief people have in such pseudoscientific claptrap.

So I'm really not able to laugh this sort of thing off.  I spend enough time, as a high school science teacher, trying to instill in students a good understanding of how the universe works, along with some skills regarding telling truth from falsehood.  Having something like this in mainstream media just makes my job that much harder, something I very much don't need.  Fighting the creationists and the climate-change deniers is bad enough; I really don't want to have to do battle with the Chinese astrologers as well.

Conducting the Crazy Train

I keep wanting to avoid writing blog posts on the topic of politics, and the politicians keep not letting me.

This time it's Ted Cruz who appears in Skeptophilia based on statements from him and his campaign officials that leave me no possible conclusion other than that the whole lot of them seem like raving lunatics.

This is, by itself, not that worrisome.  Lunatics have been running for public office since time immemorial (I'm lookin' at you, Lyndon LaRouche), and mostly they have been unsuccessful.  Even though there's a flush of early support, eventually people recognize the nutjobs for what they are, and they (the nutjobs) end up getting caught on the unpleasant end of a landslide.

This time, though, it doesn't seem to be happening.  There are lots of nuts still in the running, and Ted Cruz is currently polling at 10%.  Now this may not seem like a lot, but recall that the Loony Vote is now being spread out amongst a bunch of candidates.  If any of them drop out, you can expect Cruz's support to rise.

That's despite the fact that he and his staffers keep saying things that, under other circumstances, would qualify you for a psychiatric evaluation.

[image courtesy of photograph Gage Skidmore and the Wikimedia Commons]

Let's start with the co-chair of Cruz's campaign in Virginia, Cynthia Dunbar.  Dunbar was once a member of the Texas State Board of Education, during which time she said her sworn duty was to fix the "biblically-illiterate society" we live in.  Given the current textbook mess in Texas, it seems like she and her colleagues have achieved their aim pretty well, even though the downside is that they are promoting the teaching of a mythologically-based doctrine as if it were actual accurate history and science.

Unsurprisingly, this strategy heavily depends on making shit up.  About her support of American history texts that make it sound like Moses brought the Constitution along with the Ten Commandments when he descended from Mount Sinai, Dunbar said, "One of my favorite historians — brilliant, brilliant man — says that 94 percent of the quotes of the founding fathers contemporaneous to our nation’s founding were either directly or indirectly from holy scripture. We know what that means when we say ‘directly’ — they’re quoting scripture.  What does it mean when we say ‘indirectly’?  They were quoting men who were quoting scripture."

But this time, Dunbar is aiming higher.  She doesn't just want religion taught in public school, she wants to do away with secular education entirely:

It’s what I call the seed policy.  If you think about it, every major social issue you’re encountering as legislators actually directs back to what it talks about it in Genesis, ‘if I would put enmity between you and the seed of the woman.’  Because what happens, what is abortion?  Abortion is the destruction of the seed.  What is homosexuality?  It is the prevention of the seed.  And what is education? It is potential deception of the seed...  When we have 88 to 90 percent, which is approximately the number of the students that are being educated within our socialized education system, effectively indoctrinating our children with our own tax dollars, guess what?  We lose every other issue.  We lose life, we lose marriage — we lose all of it.  So I think this is the linchpin issue.

Now, lest you think that Dunbar is only a staffer whose ideas don't accurately reflect those of her boss, Cruz himself demonstrated his position as conductor of the Crazy Train this week with his claim that if he doesn't win, hordes of raving atheists will descend upon Arlington Cemetery and start defiling graves:

We're just steps away from the chisels at Arlington coming out to remove crosses and stars of David from tombstones.  It could happen if five liberals dominate the Supreme Court.

Right.  Because we atheists have nothing better to do than to find tombstones of the devout, and cut away every mention of religion.  And dance on the graves while doing it, probably.

What is wryly amusing about all of this is that the kind of thing Cruz is talking about -- a group of ideologues stepping in and demanding that everyone think like they do, or else -- is a sentiment you hear way more from the extremely religious than you do from the non-religious.  Most of us non-religious people like to use our free time to kick back with a beer, not in figuring out new and improved ways of oppressing everyone who disagrees with us.

But of course, "Hey, I've talked with religious people and non-religious people, and most of 'em on both sides are pretty nice," is not a talking point that gets you votes with Cruz's constituency.  Cruz's constituency thrives on fear.  If it turns out that the people they revile actually turn out to have no intention of forcing anyone else to believe anything, the whole thing collapses like a punctured balloon.

And they can't have that.  So they make up stories of deceived "seed" and atheists attacking headstones with chisels.

In my moments of yearning, I wish that once -- just once -- we could have an election where there was calm, rational discussion of the issues, followed by people voting for the candidate whose solutions to our problems seemed the most likely to succeed.  Instead, what we have is a race where all the candidates seem determined to win votes by out-wackoing all of the others.

Okay, back to writing on topics that like Bigfoot and ghosts and psychics.  At least that's a pretend world that makes me happy.

An appeal to conservatives

Can I ask my readers who are conservative to stop for a moment, take a deep breath, and listen to what the leaders in the race for the Republican nomination for president are actually saying?

And I'm not talking about the usual issues over which Democrats and Republicans spar -- raising or lowering taxes, increasing or decreasing government spending, more or less involvement of the federal government in the day-to-day lives of American citizens.  Those issues we can talk about, even if we may not all end up agreeing.  I'm talking about stuff that is taking a relatively apolitical guy like myself and shaking me up to the point that I'm wondering if I should be making sure my passport is in order before next November.

Yes, I know, we're all sick unto death of hearing about Trump.  But each time the reasonable amongst us -- liberal and conservative -- have predicted that he'd crossed some kind of moral and ethical line, and that surely his campaign would flare out, his poll numbers have risen.  It's as if some sort of groundswell of lunatic xenophobia and paranoia had been there in the United States this whole time, waiting for its chosen messiah to arrive.

[image courtesy of photographer Michael Vadon and the Wikimedia Commons]

And in the latest salvo, he's saying that we should cut off access to the internet -- that too much freedom of speech is a bad thing.

I had to read this article twice, and listen to the video clip, to convince myself that this wasn't some kind of spoof from The Onion.  But no, he really did say the following:

We’re losing a lot of people because of the internet.  We have to see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what’s happening.  We have to talk to them about, maybe in certain areas, closing that internet up in some ways.   

Somebody will say, "Oh freedom of speech, freedom of speech.’"

These are foolish people.

And the conservatives were concerned that Obama was going to flout the Constitution?

Oh, but that's just Trump, people are saying.  There's no way he'll win the nomination.

You know what?  There are two problems with this statement.  The first is that it's almost certainly wrong.  I think he has a damn good chance of winning enough delegates in the Republican primary to take the nomination -- unless the delegates, urged on by the Republican National Committee, try to create some kind of end run around the nomination process to block him, which will result in (at the very least) the GOP tearing itself apart from the inside out.

But the second problem is that the alternatives aren't much better.  Ted Cruz is in the news today, too, for... being unwilling to criticize Trump:

I do not believe that the world needs my voice added to the chorus of critics [of Trump].  And listen, I commend Donald Trump for standing up and focusing America’s attention on the need to secure our borders... I continue to like and respect Donald Trump.  While other candidates in this race have gone out of their way to throw rocks at him, to insult him, I have consistently declined to do so and I have no intention of changing that now.

It's easy enough to say that Cruz is saying this out of political expediency -- that he is still hoping to create an upsurge in support as the reasonable alternative to Trump, or (perhaps) make a case for his being a choice for vice president should Trump take the nomination.  Either way, it's disingenuous at best, and downright scary at worst.

Because you know what?  Everywhere Trump goes, he is met with crowds of supporters who are willing to sieg heil to what at least Lindsey Graham has the balls to say is a "race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot who doesn’t represent my party."  Here we have a guy who is basically trying to reintroduce the requirement that people of a certain religion be barred from entering the country even if they're US citizens, and go around wearing identification tags sewn onto their clothing, and there is a substantial fraction of Americans who are shouting, "Hell yes!"

Look, I am no apologist for Islam.  I think that it (1) is an incorrect view of the universe, (2) has encouraged misogyny, violence, and repression of basic human freedoms, and (3) is largely responsible for the morass of misery in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria.  (I am in no way trying to minimize other contributors to the problems of the Middle East, least of all American meddling, but the contribution to the overall awfulness by Islam is not inconsequential.)

But to demonize 1.6 billion people -- 20% of the world's population -- as wanting to destroy our country is terrifyingly like the sort of anti-Jewish propaganda that was rife in Germany before World War II.

I have a lot of conservative friends, and a good many liberal ones as well, and despite our differences we pretty much get along.  My own attitude toward politics is usually one of vague bafflement; to me, most political questions boil down either to things that are blitheringly obvious (like whether climate change is happening, or if LGBT individuals should be allowed to marry) or else are such an intractable mess that there probably is no real solution (like how to balance the federal budget and fix the oversight of the American health care system).

But for cryin' in the sink, can we all just step back for a moment, and forget our favorite political labels, and look at what these people are saying?  Because it's leading our country down a very scary path, and one that's been trodden before.  Where it leads is, to put it simply, hell on earth.

And if the unthinkable happens, and a fascist ideologue like Donald Trump ends up being elected president, my wife and I are going to have to give some very serious thought about whether life as expats might actually be the best overall choice.