Accidentally active

In today's contribution from the Unintentional Irony Department, we have: a New Jersey pharmaceuticals company has issued a recall of some homeopathic "remedies" last week because they contain actual active ingredients.

I wish I was kidding about this. "CVS Homeopathic Infants' Teething Tablets", "Kids Relief Homeopathic Ear Relief Oral Liquid" and "CVS Homeopathic Kids' Ear Relief Liquid," all produced by Raritan Pharmaceuticals and marketed nationwide, are being recalled because they contain "varying levels of belladonna," better known as deadly nightshade.

"The recall is a precautionary action," said Sushant Pradhan, a Raritan Pharmaceuticals representative. "The products contain only about a nanogram of belladonna, which is not toxic to anybody."

But wait a minute.  I thought the whole point of homeopathy was that the less of the original ingredients were, the more potent it becomes.  In that case, shouldn't a nanogram be a fatal dose?

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

In any case, the company wants everyone to know that there haven't been any reports of adverse effects, that the recall was purely to prevent any problems.  And the most amusing thing about all of this is that it's not the first time it's happened; two years ago, a different company had to recall some homeopathic products that were labeled "Penicillum" because they actually contained Penicillum, the mold that produces penicillin, and there was a chance a person with a penicillin allergy could have a reaction, instead of simply consuming a sugar pill, which was apparently their intent.

What pisses me off about all of this is the kid-gloves approach that CNN used in its report (linked above).  Here's an actual quote:

Pradhan acknowledged that there can be a wide range of belladonna levels across homeopathic treatments outside of the recalled products.  Belladonna is used in several alternative medicines: it can be found in homeopathic eye drops and as a cure for upset stomach, he said. 

"This is not your typical medicine," and homeopathic treatments should be used with caution, Pradhan said.  People who use homeopathic treatments may be seeking a healthier, more natural remedy than with modern medicine, he explained, but alternative cures risk being less regulated than standard medications.

No, this is "not your typical medicine" because it's not a medicine at all.  It's a completely useless hyper-diluted bottle of water or sugar pills.  So they may be "seeking a healthier, more natural remedy," but what they're getting is completely worthless except insofar as it might trigger the placebo effect.

Appalling, then, that places like CVS still stock the stuff.  Taking homeopathic "remedies" can stop people from seeking medical care when they need it, and the profit motive still keeps it on the shelves.  (And people accuse "Big Pharma" of being motivated by money.)  If you doubt that homeopathic "remedies" are a fraud and cause damage, take a look at the site What's the Harm?, that documents 437 cases (and counting) of people who have been seriously injured or killed by taking homeopathic "remedies" instead of seeking competent medical attention.

So this started out being funny, and ended up being not so funny after all.  In any case, if the CNN story doesn't put people on notice that they're been hoodwinked, hopefully What's the Harm? will.  I live in hope that the public will start making decisions based on science, facts, and rationality rather than superstitious hocus-pocus, but it's evident from this that we still have a ways to go.

Educating more than the sheep

I have had frequent cause to bemoan the fact that we in the educational establishment are teaching 21st century students using a 19th century model.

Let me explain what I mean.  Back in the 19th and early 20th century, it was critical for a well-educated person to know lots of facts.  If you were conversing with a doctor about your health, and you didn't know the names of basic human organs and tissues, you were likely to be entirely lost, and unless you had a medical text handy, there was no way to figure it all out.  On a less dire level, even when I was a kid (1960s and 70s) if you didn't know something -- perhaps even a simple fact, like what is the name of the cellular structure that provides cells with energy -- you had to go and look it up in an encyclopedia or textbook, if you were lucky enough to own them.  Failing that, you took a lengthy trip to a library to see if you could dig it up.

Or you just decided that it wasn't worth the time and stopped worrying about it.

(Nota bene: it's the mitochondria.)

Now?  Most students have access either to cellphones or to other internet-connective devices.  Access to facts and terminology is trivial.  Sometimes a student will ask me something I don't know the answer to -- such as yesterday, when someone wanted to know the gestation period of a sheep -- and within seconds, answers are being shouted out from all over the room.

(Nota bene: it's 152 days.)

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Far more important than simple facts are two things, one of which is taught less often than mere terminology, and the other of which is hardly taught at all.  The more common one is process.  Not just the name "mitochondria," but how it goes about breaking down glucose to release energy for cellular function.  Not just the names of Mendel's four laws of genetics, but why they work (and why there are cases where they don't -- thus, "non-Mendelian inheritance").

Process, though, is hard to teach.  It requires not only that the teacher thoroughly understand it, but that (s)he finds ways to make the subject accessible to students.  It's much easier simply to teach laundry lists of disconnected facts and terms -- but I would question if such a thing is actually "education."

Teaching process, though, is downright common when compared to the other more important skill, which is how to tell false claims from true ones.  Okay, fine, you can look something up on your cellphone, tell us the gestation period of a sheep in five seconds flat.  How do you know if it's right?  How could you tell if it were false?  What does it mean if the source of the information has a bias or an agenda -- admittedly unlikely in the case of pregnant sheep, but a huge deal with respect to science, current events, or politics?

The sad truth that today's students are not being taught to sift fact from fiction was highlighted by a study released last week by some researchers at Stanford University that came to the rather horrifying conclusion that middle, high school, and college students, when presented with various combinations of news articles, opinions, outright falsehoods, biased stories, "sponsored content" (i.e., advertisements), and unsupported claims, couldn't tell one from the other.  Across the board, students scored very poorly on their ability to question source validity, discern bias, and tell real news from fake news.

"Many assume that because young people are fluent in social media they are equally savvy about what they find there," said Sam Wineburg, lead author of the study.  "Our work shows the opposite... What we see is a rash of fake news going on that people pass on without thinking.  And we really can't blame young people because we've never taught them to do otherwise."

To combat this, however, would take a major overhaul of the way we teach.  Unlikely, given the increasing reliance on easy-to-measure "learning standards" -- most of which are taught and assessed using shallow, vocabulary-based factoids, not deep understanding (which is hard to quantify, and therefore to the policy wonks at the state and federal Departments of Education, doesn't seem to matter).  Couple this with the ongoing slicing of funding from public schools, and you can easily see why there's a significant incentive to keep doing things the old way.

But as the study by Wineburg et al. shows, what we're doing is inadequate for preparing young people to be smart consumers of media in the 21st century.  It's no wonder "fake news" has gotten such traction; the consumers can't tell it from the real thing.  Unsurprising, too, that our tendency to place ourselves in echo chambers where we only hear opinions we already believed, and therefore are unlikely to question them, makes for increasing political polarization and people making decisions based on what they think they understand rather than the actual facts.

If this is going to change, we'll need a bottom-up revamping of how teaching is done, and a rethinking of what it means to educate children in the 21st century.  Otherwise, we'll fall victim to the old adage -- "If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got."

Defending science vs. defunding science

I keep wanting to bring you some good news, honestly I do.  But lately all I've seen is more reason to fuel my inner pessimist.

The latest assault on any Pollyannas that are still floating around comes from Bob Walker, senior adviser to President-elect Trump, who has stated the incoming administration's intent to defund NASA's Earth Sciences Division.  In an interview with The Guardian, Walker said:

NASA’s Earth Science Division is set to be stripped of funding in favor of exploration of deep space, with the president-elect having set a goal during the campaign to explore the entire solar system by the end of the century.

Which might, on first glance, not sound that bad, just a defunding of one program in favor of another...  Until you realize that the Earth Sciences Division is the branch of NASA that is studying climate change.

Then, if you're like me, you have an "aha" moment.

Walker went on to say:

My guess is that it would be difficult to stop all ongoing NASA programs but future programs should definitely be placed with other agencies.  I believe that climate research is necessary but it has been heavily politicized, which has undermined a lot of the work that researchers have been doing.  Mr Trump’s decisions will be based upon solid science, not politicized science.

In other words, the climate scientists have not come to the conclusion the President-elect and his advisers want, so time to pull funding from the bastards and hand the money to agencies that will come to the politically expedient conclusions.

And who, exactly, is at fault for "politicizing" climate science?  It certainly isn't the climate scientists themselves, who are simply studying the data itself (i.e., the facts) and would be much happier if the politicians and petroleum lobby would just butt the hell out.  It's legislators like James "Senator Snowball" Inhofe and Lamar "Harass 'Em Till They Give Up" Smith.  And, it must be said, the President-elect himself, who went on record as saying that climate change was a "hoax perpetrated by the Chinese."

Hell, climate change denial is a part of the Republican Party platform.  They have received millions of dollars from the fossil fuel industry to finance a disinformation program, all too similar to the one waged against the medical establishment by the tobacco industry to weaken the public perception of the connection between smoking and cancer.

Oh, but do go on about how the nasty liberals and crooked climate scientists are the ones who politicized this.

[image courtesy of NASA]

Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy was unequivocal about what a terrible move this is:

If this slashing of NASA Earth science comes to pass, it will be a disaster for humanity.  This is no exaggeration: NASA is the leading agency in studying the effects of global warming on the planet, in measuring the changes in our atmosphere, our oceans, the weather, and yes, the climate as temperatures increase.  They have a fleet of spacecraft observing the Earth, and plans for more to better understand our environment.  That’s all on the chopping block now.

Equally strong were the words from Kevin Trenberth, senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research:

It could put us back into the ‘dark ages’ of almost the pre-satellite era. It would be extremely short sighted...  We live on planet Earth and there is much to discover, and it is essential to track and monitor many things from space.  Information on planet Earth and its atmosphere and oceans is essential for our way of life.  Space research is a luxury, Earth observations are essential.

Interesting that all of this is taking place during a year when there has been record heat and drought and a record low in the Arctic sea ice.  Interesting, too, that the military industrial complex has no problems whatsoever in accepting this "politicized science;" this summer a top military advisory board stated that climate change was a "threat to national security" and that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's most recent report was a "clarion call to action."

So there you have it.  Another reason for weeping into your coffee, at least if you have respect for science and give a damn about the long-term habitability of the Earth.  Me, I'm just apprehensive about what I'm going to find out when I read the news tomorrow.

The end of the social experiment

In case I needed another reason to be glad that I'm only a few years from retirement, a few days ago President-elect Trump nominated Betsy DeVos to the post of Secretary of Education.

Betsy DeVos [image courtesy of photographer Keith A. Almli and the Wikimedia Commons]

It would be hard to find a less qualified person.  It is debatable whether DeVos has ever set foot in a public school.  She did not attend one as a child, nor did she send her own children there.  She does not have a degree in education, nor has she ever taught, even in a private school.  Her sole connection to schools is her near-rabid support of vouchers, which would funnel money away from public schools and into private (including religious) schools.

It's worse, however, than a simple lack of qualifications.  The Acton Institute, where DeVos is a board member, recently published a piece called "Bring Back Child Labor: Work is a Gift Our Kids Can Handle" which included passages like the following:

Operating out of a justified fear of the harsh excesses of “harder times,” we have allowed our cultural attitudes to swing too far in the opposite direction, distorting work as a “necessary obligation of adulthood,” a gift too dangerous for kids.  Working from these same distorted attitudes, the Washington Post recently published what it described as a “haunting” photo montage of child laborers from America’s rougher past. 

The photos surely point to times of extreme lack, of stress and pain.  But as Jeffrey Tucker rightly detects, they also represent the faces of those who are actively building enterprises and cities, using their gifts to serve their communities, and setting the foundation of a flourishing nation, in turn.

The author, Joseph Sunde, was the recipient of a firestorm of criticism over the article, so he changed the title to remove the "Bring Back Child Labor" part, and appended the following disclaimer:

Given the recent attention drawn to this post, permit me to clarify that I do NOT endorse replacing education with paid labor, nor do I support sending our children back into the coal mines or other high-risk jobs, nor do I support getting rid of mandatory education at elementary and middle-school ages.

No?  So what does "Bring Back Child Labor" mean?

What is the most maddening about all of this is that the majority of students I teach do work, and I see the stress that they deal with trying to juggle school, homework, job, extracurricular activities, and family obligations.  The idea that kids today are lazy whiners who need a return to some 1920s-style discipline is a convenient falsehood for those who want to gut the public school system.

DeVos and the Acton Institute are deeply invested in what amounts to defunding public education.  They focused for a time on Michigan, trying to push a "school choice" agenda there (an effort that was ultimately unsuccessful), showering huge amounts of money and gifts on Republican candidates in exchange for their support.  Detroit Free Press writer Stephen Henderson denounced DeVos as engaging in "a spending spree that would swell to $1.45 million in contributions to the party and to individual candidates by the end of July," adding that "in Michigan, children’s education has been squandered in the name of a reform “experiment," driven by ideologies that put faith in markets, alone, as the best arbiters of quality, and so heavily financed by donors like the DeVos clan that nearly no other voices get heard in the educational conversation."

Michigan Board of Education President John Austin, in an apt if somewhat mixed metaphor, said that "It’s like putting the fox in charge of the henhouse, and hand-feeding it schoolchildren...  DeVos’s agenda is to break the public education system, not educate kids, and replace it with a for-profit model."

And if you needed anything else, there's also a good likelihood that she's an Intelligent Design Creationist.  She grew up in the Calvinist Christian Reformed Church; her parents, Edgar and Elsa (Brockhuizen) Prince, are major donors to the Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council;  and her husband, Dick DeVos, came right out with "teach the controversy" bullshit when he was running for Michigan governor in 2006:

I would like to see the ideas of intelligent design — that many scientists are now suggesting is a very viable alternative theory — that that theory and others that would be considered credible would expose our students to more ideas, not less.

By the same argument, I suppose teaching students alchemy in chemistry class and astrology in physics class would "expose them to more ideas, not less."

And funny how whenever one of these clowns tries to ramrod ID or creationism into public school classrooms, they always say that "many scientists" are in favor of it without telling us who these scientists are.  "Cite your sources" apparently doesn't carry any weight in politics, for some reason.

So in the next four years -- assuming DeVos is confirmed, which is likely given the Republican majority in both the Senate and the House -- look for a further siphoning of funds away from public schools, more emphasis on draining resources and talent from poor inner-city schools, and more efforts to hamstring science education.  I've taught for thirty years, and I've weathered some ups and downs in that time, but I can't recall a point at which I felt so genuinely pessimistic about the future of public education.  In a purely selfish sense, I'm glad I'm retiring, probably some time in the next five years, and can get myself right out of this mess.  But it breaks my heart that this great social experiment in educating all children, regardless of socioeconomic status, race, or religion, may be coming to an end.

Mouse talk

Being a linguistics geek, I've always been fascinated with the mechanisms of communication.  My interests span such topics as the evolution of human language, how one language (or culture) influences another (the topic of my master's thesis), the question of how we would understand language in a signal from an extraterrestrial intelligence, and whether vocal communication in other species is actually language.

The conventional answer to the last question has usually been "no."  Language, as defined by linguistics, is "arbitrary symbolic communication."  The arbitrary part is because except in certain rare cases, such as onomatopoeic words ("pop," "splat," "bang," etc.), there is no logical connection between the sound of a word and its referent.  Except in our minds, there is nothing especially doggy about the sound of the word "dog."

So is vocal communication in other animals language?  The singing of songbirds is clearly communication, but it lacks one important characteristics of human language; the flexible productive ability of language to communicate different concepts in different contexts.  Birdsong is for the most part (within a species) limited in range to a few different sounds, and once learned, never changes.

Some species, however, get closer to language than that.  Some birds, notably corvids, have a wide range of vocalizations, and are also some of the most intelligent birds.  Dogs vary their tones depending on context -- I can tell from the tone of my dog's barks whether he's seen a squirrel, someone's knocked on the front door, he wants to be let in, he's hungry, or my wife's just come home.  One step closer are whales and dolphins, whose vocal communication appears to be complex and responsive -- but whether it qualifies as true language is an unsettled question.

However, a new study, which appeared this week in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, suggests that human language may not be as far removed from vocalizations in other animals as we may have thought.  The paper, entitled "A FOX-P2 Mutation Implicated in Human Speech Deficits Alters Sequencing of Ultrasonic Vocalizations in Adult Male Mice," by Jonathan Chabout, Erich D. Jarvis et al., has shown that mice have the "Forkhead Box Protein 2" (FOX-P2) gene, just as humans do -- and a mutation in that gene impairs vocal communication in mice, just as it does in humans.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

"This study supports the ‘continuum hypothesis,’ which is that FOX-P2 affects the vocal production of all mammals, and not just humans," Jarvis said.  "Mice do not have the complex vocal learning behavior of humans and song-learning birds.  Nonetheless, we find that the same FOX-P2 mutation in mice and in humans leads to overlapping effects on sequencing of vocalizations. In particular, against a background of preserved syllable acoustic structure, we see reductions in the length and complexity of syllable sequences."

I find this fascinating, because I've always been of the opinion that there's a lot more going on inside the brains of non-human animals than we've typically been willing to acknowledge, and a great deal more similarity than difference between human cognition and cognition in other mammals.  So in a way, I find this result unsurprising.

But still, what was drilled into me in my college linguistics classes -- that humans were the only animals that had language, and that there was a hard-and-fast divide between the vocalizations of humans and those in other species -- was a surprisingly deep-seated bias.  It's one I'm glad to jettison, however.  My other geeky passion is evolutionary biology, so the idea that there is an unbroken continuum in the animal world in terms of what we have to say, and the genetic underpinning thereof, is pretty damn cool.

Five channels plus the facts

Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt of New York University has pioneered research into what he calls the "five channels of morality" -- the five foundations of human morals and ethics worldwide.  These are compassion/harm, fairness/cheating, in-group loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and purity/degradation.

As Haidt describes in a wonderful TED talk called "The Moral Roots of Liberals and Conservatives," liberals tend to have a "two-channel" model of morality (placing emphasis on compassion and fairness) whereas conservatives have a "five-channel" model (placing nearly equal emphasis on all five moral bases).  (And if you decide to listen to his talk, especially those of you of the conservative persuasion, don't get pissed off and shut it off after the first five minutes -- because it sounds like he's hammering on the conservatives at first, but takes a rather surprising right-hand turn halfway in and makes a powerful point that we all have something to learn from the other side.)

Four researchers at Cornell University have used Haidt's model to analyze why some people are so reluctant to take action on climate change, and to see if there's a way to frame the problem that might be more successful at convincing the folks who are currently sitting on their hands.  Janis Dickinson (Natural Resources),  Poppy McLeod (Communication), Robert Bloomfield (Management and Accounting), and Shorna Allred (Natural Resources) released a paper last week in PLOS-One called, "Which Moral Foundations Predict Willingness to Make Lifestyle Changes to Avert Climate Change in the USA?"  Their research found, perhaps unsurprisingly, that an identification with morality based on compassion and fairness predicted a desire to act on climate change, whereas an emphasis on in-group loyalty, authority, and purity predicted a reluctance to act.

The unsurprising part is that, by and large, the liberals have been pushing for action for years and the conservatives resisting it.  (An overgeneralization, I realize, as there are exceptions on both sides, but it's largely true.)  And since Haidt showed that the two-channel model corresponded to a liberal outlook and the five-channel model a conservative outlook, it's not to be wondered at that the correlation holds with respect to climate change.

What I still don't get, however, is why so many conservatives still don't believe in climate change.  I mean, consider it this way.  Suppose there's good reason to believe that there's a violent intruder, bent on causing you harm, in your house.  There are various courses of action you could take -- hide, flee, fight back, call the police -- but under no circumstances is it helpful, or even logical, to pretend that the intruder doesn't exist.

This seems to me to be the stance being taken by the vast majority of the conservatives currently in congress, not to mention the leaders of the incoming administration.  The evidence is at this point completely incontrovertible; not only is the world warming and the climate destabilizing, but the cause is fossil fuel burning, and we are fast approaching a point of no return, if we haven't already gotten there.

Consider just one metric, which is on my mind because the latest report just came out a few days ago -- the extent of polar sea ice.  The Cryospheric Science Laboratory at NASA announced that both the Arctic and Antarctic ice pack are currently at record lows -- and that air temperatures in the Arctic, in November, are 35 degrees above average.

Yes, you read that right, and it's not a typo.  Last week it was raining near the North Pole, in November.

The climate scientists themselves are in no doubt about what this all means.  "The interaction between Arctic ocean temperatures and the loss of ice formation leading to continuing record minimums is clearly a climate change signal," said Thomas Mote, Professor of Geography at the University of Georgia.

[image courtesy of NASA]

I can understand, even if I disagree with, the stance that we shouldn't act on climate change.  The arguments could be from the standpoint that divesting from fossil fuels would destroy our economic infrastructure, that renewables aren't currently set to take up the slack and/or would be too expensive to install on a national scale, or even that it's too late to do anything anyhow.  I've even heard people (Matt Ridley comes to mind) say things like "humans have weathered much worse than this before now, we'll be fine."

All of those things we can talk about.  They're a little like deciding what's the right approach to the intruder in my earlier analogy.  But the stance that congressional leaders like James Inhofe, Lamar Smith, and Dana Rohrabacher are taking is not to question what we should do about climate change, but to question whether it's happening at all.

And that, honestly, has nothing to do with Haidt's "five-channel" model of conservative morality.  That's simply insane.

I do think that the research by Dickinson et al. is valuable in that both conservatives and liberals have a lot to learn about talking to each other in a way that the other side will understand and respect.  In many ways, neither side speaks the other's language.  But at some point, there's the issue not simply of talking policy, but taking the attitude that what the science tells us is true.

And that is neither conservative nor liberal nor anything else.  Despite what the politicians would have you believe, scientific facts have no spin.

Making the world safe for hypocrisy

Republicans are currently having a meltdown over the reception that Vice President-elect Mike Pence got when he showed up at a performance of the Broadway musical Hamilton a couple of nights ago.

President-elect Trump, never one to sit by silently when Twitter is waiting, jumped in with the following: "Our wonderful future V.P. Mike Pence was harassed last night at the theater by the cast of Hamilton, cameras blazing.  This should not happen!" and followed it up with "The Theater must always be a safe and special place.  The cast of Hamilton was very rude last night to a very good man, Mike Pence.  Apologize!"

The rumor went around that the cast had booed Pence, and that started up the outrage machine.  "Boycott Hamilton!" trended on Twitter, which is kind of funny in that the musical is sold out months in advance, so any potential boycotters would have a long wait.

But what is appalling about all of this is that as usual, these people are reacting to what they think happened, not to what actually happened.  So let's start by setting the record straight.  The cast did not boo Pence; the audience did, and then the cast told them to stop.  Here's a transcript of what the cast said:

There’s nothing to boo here, ladies and gentlemen.  There’s nothing to boo here.  We’re all here sharing a story of love.  Vice President-elect Pence, we welcome you and we truly thank you for joining us here at Hamilton: An American Musical...  We, sir, we are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights, sir.  But we truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and to work on behalf of all of us.  All of us.

That is the message that President-elect Trump called "harassment" and for which he demanded an apology.

I thought this called for a response.  My initial thought, which ended with "... and the horse you rode in on," on reconsideration struck me as lacking in subtlety and depth of thought.  So here is a more measured, nuanced take on the whole thing.

The group who is screeching that Hamilton should be boycotted is by and large composed of the same people who flipped out when Starbucks changed their cup design, saying Americans should boycott the coffee company because they're "anti-Christmas and anti-Christian."  They are the ones who had conniptions at the protests over Trump's policies that have been staged in cities throughout the United States, and who have even suggested making such demonstrations criminal offenses.  They are the ones who claim that every time anyone demands separation of church and state, it's a direct attack on freedom of religion.

And yet, with no apparent sense of hypocrisy, the loudest "freedom of religion" types are now the ones who are actively supporting a government registry for Muslims, including those who are American citizens.  The ones who are having a meltdown over what the cast of Hamilton said to Mike Pence are the same ones who don't bat an eye at people who call the Obamas every derogatory name you can think of (the most recent being the characterization of the First Lady by a West Virginia mayor as "an ape in heels").  The ones who think that Mike Pence is such a delicate snowflake that the cast of Hamilton should apologize for hurting his feelings are the ones who ridicule liberals as "whiny safe-spacers" who "can't stand it if everyone doesn't get a trophy" when there is a demand that the incoming administration treat all Americans, including LGBT individuals, atheists, and minorities, with respect and equal access to rights.

In other words: "a safe and special place" means that Americans can feel free to ridicule, degrade, and strip the rights from anyone who isn't a white Christian, but if those who are on the receiving end of such treatment respond, it's "harassment."  Freedom of speech and freedom of religion only apply if they're the right speech and the right religion.

I've been trying like hell to stay out of politics, but I think this marks the point where I've given up resisting.  I see our country heading toward a very, very scary place, led by a cadre of people who take umbrage at anything outside of their narrow little worldview, demanding apologies of people who challenge them and (when those are not forthcoming) responding with vitriol, hate speech, and threats.

So, frankly, I've had it.  My previous posts on recent political developments, where I tried to be measured and polite, to ask for reconciliation and compassion, were met with comments such as (these are direct quotes) "Stop your fucking whining, you lost" and "Get over yourself" and "I bet you'd never call out the ultra-left-wingers for all the shit they do."  (The latter, at least, should be obviously wrong to anyone who has read this blog for any length of time; I've always thought of myself as an equal-opportunity critic.)

So fuck being apolitical.  At this point, not to speak up against what is happening in this country would be tantamount to supporting it.  So this may lose me blog followers at best, and friends at worst, but don't expect me to stay silent.  I am hereby vowing to call out hypocrisy wherever I see it (and yes, that includes the liberals), to stand up for the people that the incoming administration has vowed to oppress, to be an advocate even if it puts me right in the bullseye.

In other words: I am choosing to place myself right outside the "safe space."  Deal with it.  You, and the horse you rode in on.