State-approved brain drain

In the early 1930s, a cadre of scientists in Germany saw the handwriting on the wall with respect to the rising forces of German nationalism, and founded a model for scientific research that they called Deutsche Physik (German physics) or Arische Physik (Aryan physics).  The proponents of this model for science -- including physicists Philipp Lenard and Johannes Stark -- claimed that research had to be state-approved and in line with the ideology of the German nationalist movement, in contrast to the Jüdische Physik (Jewish physics) of Albert Einstein, Erwin Schrödinger, and others.

As the Deutsche Physik movement's stranglehold on science increased, researchers who flouted the new rules were the targets of suppression and outright harassment.  The powers-that-be responded by clamping down further.  All scientific papers had to be approved by a board made up not of scientific peers but of party loyalists.  Because of this, many of the finest minds in Germany fled the country, including not only Einstein and Schrödinger but Leo Szilard, Hans Bethe, Lise Meitner, James Franck, and computer scientist John von Neumann.

When a German journalist spoke to Adolf Hitler about this loss of scientific talent, and asked him who would be the brains of the country if the trend continued, Hitler responded blithely, "I will be the brains."

The new administration here in the United States is evidently taking a page from the Deutsche Physik playbook.  Just yesterday they announced that all research work by scientists associated with the Environmental Protection Agency would have to be evaluated before release on a "case-by-case basis" -- by a panel of non-scientist party loyalists.

"We'll take a look at what's happening so that the voice coming from the EPA is one that's going to reflect the new administration," Doug Ericksen, head of communications for the Trump administration's EPA transition team, told reporters.  "Obviously with a new administration coming in, the transition time, we'll be taking a look at the web pages and the Facebook pages and everything else involved here at EPA. Everything is subject to review."

And if that doesn't draw the comparison with pre-World War II Germany starkly enough, yesterday the chairman of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee -- Lamar Smith, who has had this position for years despite having no scientific training whatsoever -- said, "The national liberal media won’t print [the truth about scientific research], or air it, or post it.  Better to get your news directly from the president.  In fact, it might be the only way to get the unvarnished truth."

Who will be the brains of America once all the scientists have fled harassment and the suppression of their research?  Donald Trump will, of course.  Just listen to Dear Leader and all will be well.

Listen and believe.

The thing is, the universe is not compelled to conform with the political ideology of today's Deutsche Physik movement any more than it was compelled to conform to the one back in 1933. Einstein's Jüdische Physik Theory of Relativity turned out to be correct, and Hitler's insistence on state approval of research, and the resultant brain drain, hamstrung German science for decades.

At least we have some scientists and organizations that are speaking up rather than being cowed.  When the EPA, USDA, and National Parks Service were forbidden to use Twitter and other social media to communicate with the tax-paying public about research and current events (i.e., the facts), many of their staff set up "rogue Twitter accounts" -- allowing free and unfettered communication instead of the two other choices open to them -- quoting the party line, or silence.

But this, of course, is not the way science is supposed to be.  As astrophysicist Katie Mack put it:

Neither the climate nor anything else in the scientific world is responsive to political spin.  Eventually, of course, this will become apparent regardless, as it did with the German physicists -- when they found out that their anti-relativity, anti-quantum mechanics version of things was simply wrong.  The risk is that by the time that happens, it may well be that our best and brightest will have fled to places where scientific research is supported instead of oppressed.

What we have to ask ourselves is whether this is a risk we're willing to take.

And we also need to ask why it makes sense that we have placed the oversight of scientific research into the hands of non-scientists -- worse, anti-scientists -- like Lamar Smith, Dana Rohrabacher, James Inhofe, and yes, Donald Trump.  Are we truly willing to jettison the last two centuries of scientific advancement and dedication to the scientific method in favor of state-sponsored, state-approved, party-line-only pseudoscience?

Because that is the direction we're heading if we don't start speaking up.

It's not what you say, it's how you say it...

There's a controversial idea in the realm of linguistics called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.  Named after linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf, the gist is that the language you speak strongly influences your brain, and your model of the world.  Thus, ideas that are easy to express in one language might be difficult or impossible to express in another.

I'm not just talking about linguistic lacunae, which are "holes" in the lexicon of a language.  An example from English is that we have no generic singular term for cattle.  Think about it; there's sow/boar/pig, billy/nanny/goat, stallion/mare/horse -- but bull/cow... what?  Oddly, we have a plural generic term -- cattle -- but no singular.

Sapir-Whorf goes much deeper than that.  It's not just talking about missing words; it implies that our entire framework for understanding can differ depending on the language we speak.  I ran into the real heart of Sapir-Whorf when I read the splendid book The Last Speakers by K. David Harrison, in which the author traveled with and interviewed people who are the last fluent speakers of some of the planet's dying languages.  The most amazing passages in the book occur when Harrison is in Siberia and is talking to some nomadic hunter-gatherers who speak a language in which there are no words for right, left, in front of, or behind.  Everything is related to the cardinal directions, and to being upstream or downstream of the river they use for travel.  Thus, the computer on which I'm writing this post isn't in front of me; it's northwest of me.  My space heater is north of me, the door of my office east of me.  When Harrison tried to explain our concept of left and right to them, they first didn't even understand what he was talking about, and when they did get it, they laughed.

What an arrogant, narcissistic culture you come from, they told Harrison.  You interpret where everything is relative to your own body?  And if you turn around, everything in the whole world changes position?  And two different people think the same object is in a different place because they're facing different directions?

In this case, it very much appears that the language these Siberian nomads speak alters the way they see the world -- and that model of the world reflects back and alters or constrains the language.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Sapir-Whorf has fallen a bit out of favor in the last couple of decades, and in fact was already waning in influence when I got my M.A. in linguistics in 1996.  But a study that came out this week in the American Journal of Political Science has brought it back to the forefront -- with the claim by Efrén O. Pérez and Margit Tavits that speakers of languages that lack a distinction between present and future tense make different decisions regarding political issues that will have an impact on the future.

In their paper, titled, "Language Shapes People's Time Perception and Support for Future-Oriented Policies," their study looked at bilingually fluent speakers of Estonian (which lacks a future tense) and Russian (which has one).  They found that when those people were interviewed in Russian, they tended to be less supportive of policies that would provide benefits in the long-term future than when they were interviewed in Estonian.

The authors write:

Can the way we speak affect the way we perceive time and think about politics? Languages vary by how much they require speakers to grammatically encode temporal differences.  Futureless tongues (e.g., Estonian) do not oblige speakers to distinguish between the present and future tense, whereas futured tongues do (e.g., Russian).  By grammatically conflating “today” and “tomorrow,” we hypothesize that speakers of futureless tongues will view the future as temporally closer to the present, causing them to discount the future less and support future-oriented policies more.  Using an original survey experiment that randomly assigned the interview language to Estonian/Russian bilinguals, we find support for this proposition and document the absence of this language effect when a policy has no obvious time referent.  We then replicate and extend our principal result through a cross-national analysis of survey data.  Our results imply that language may have significant consequences for mass opinion.

Which I find absolutely fascinating.  I've long been of the opinion that our stances about many things -- not least our political opinions -- are far more fluid than most of us think.  The "well, it's my opinion, of course it's not going to change!" attitude that many of us have simply ignores that fact that most of our decisions are strongly contextual.

And now, it appears that one of those contexts may be the language you're using.

I'm aware that a lot of linguistic researchers these days have some serious doubts about the applicability of Sapir-Whorf, but I still think this is an interesting first look at a case where it may well bear out.

Anyhow, that's our look at some cool new research for today.  Me, I'm off to eat breakfast and get some coffee, which at the moment are southwest of me.

Talk me out of my pessimism. Please.

So I've been getting pretty political lately, here at Skeptophilia headquarters.

Some of you are probably glad to see me address more serious topics, while others might wish I'd get back to Bigfoot and ghosts and UFOs.  For those latter, I'd ask your indulgence for (at least) one more politically-oriented post, that I was spurred to write because of comments from readers.

The conservative members of my audience have responded to my admittedly liberal bias with reactions varying from encouragement to outright scorn.  Some have said, "Come on, now, it's not going to be bad.  Just wait until some of the new administration's ideas are enacted, and you'll see that it'll make things better."  Others have said "buck up, Buttercup" or "suck it up, Snowflake" or other such helpful phrases.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

So I thought, in the interest of trying to understand those who disagree with me -- the basic gist of yesterday's post, and more or less the overarching theme of this entire blog -- I'd address the part of my readership who are saying that things are going to be fine, and ask some specific questions.

First, it's undeniable that President Trump and his new appointees -- not to mention the Republican-controlled House and Senate -- have a lot of us pretty worried.  And despite the "Snowflake" and "Buttercup" responders, it's not simply because we're pissed at having lost.  I'm 56, and I remember vividly the presidencies of Reagan and both Bushes, and I can never recall being this specifically upset at this many things, this early into the administration.  Without even trying hard, I came up with the following, all of which happened in the last few weeks:

• In a move much like Canadian former Prime Minister Stephen Harper's gag rule on scientists, the US Department of Agriculture has forbidden scientists at the Agriculture Research Services to communicate with the public about taxpayer-funded work.  "Starting immediately and until further notice, ARS will not release any public-facing documents," Sharon Drumm, chief of staff for ARS, wrote in a department-wide email.  "This includes, but is not limited to, news releases, photos, fact sheets, news feeds, and social media content."  And just yesterday, a similar order was given to staff at the Environmental Protection Agency -- no press releases, no blogging or tweeting by scientists, no new content on the EPA website.
• Before Trump was even inaugurated, the Republican-led Congress voted to block an amendment protecting people with pre-existing conditions from losing health insurance coverage; voted away the provision that allows children to stay on their parents' insurance until age 26; defeated a bill that would have insurance cover the costs of contraception; and denied an expansion of veterans' health care benefits.
• The Trump administration is reversing a mortgage-fee cut intended to help low-income and first-time home buyers easier access to mortgages.  Even Trump's supporters were surprised at how fast this one came.  "Wasn't expecting it -- and have no insight into how it all happened," one lobbyist said.
• In the face of virulent opposition from Native Americans and environmental groups, Trump has signed an executive order to force a move-forward on both the Dakota Access and Keystone Pipelines -- despite the fact that the first is routed through sovereign tribal lands, and that long-distance oil pipelines have been demonstrated over and over to be prone to leaks, resulting in fouled land and water.
• Congress has voted to rescind an Obama administration Stream Protection Rule, which requires coal mining operations to monitor water quality downstream of their mines -- even if those streams provide drinking water to downstream communities.
• A long-planned Climate and Health Summit in Atlanta, sponsored by the CDC, has been abruptly cancelled.  No reason was given in the terse email to staff notifying them of the decision, but Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, said that the decision was made to "preemptively call off the event, rather than risk running afoul of an incoming president who has repeatedly called climate change a hoax and has nominated climate change skeptics to his Cabinet."
• Speaking of the Cabinet, there has been widespread criticism of Trump's choice of Rex Tillerson to the post of Secretary of State, due to his conflicts of interest regarding business deals with Russia.  Rick Perry, nominee for Secretary of Energy, is on the board of the company building the Dakota Access Pipeline.  Tom Price, nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services, has a portfolio of nearly a quarter of million dollars invested in the pharmaceuticals industry -- an industry the HHS Secretary would be expected to regulate.  Last, there's Trump's own business-related conflicts of interest, which he has repeatedly refused to address.
• A bill has been quietly introduced into the House -- H.R. 193 -- calling for the United States to sever all ties with the United Nations.  It's called the "American Sovereignty Act of 2017" and if passed, would cut off all U.S. support for U.N. activities, including peacekeeping and diplomatic missions.
• In a move that has drawn comparisons to Kim Jong-Un's requirement that his birthday be celebrated as a national holiday with parades and parties, Donald Trump has issued an executive order declaring the day of his inauguration as a new national holiday, the "National Day of Patriotic Devotion."

Okay.  You get the picture.

I've been dragged, rather unwillingly, into political discourse largely because I am so alarmed at the direction our leaders are taking.  Honestly, I used the words "liberal bias" earlier, but I'm really more of a centrist; I do think we need to rein in spending, I do think we've got a good bit of government bloat, and I do think the "nanny state" concept -- protecting people from their own stupidity and poor judgment -- has gotten out of hand.  But this?  I look at this list of actions, all in a little over two months since the election, with nothing short of horror.  I see a corporate interests über alles approach, a move toward less transparency, a morass of conflicts of interest, a complete disregard for any kind of consideration of the environment, and a reckless surge forward to reverse changes in policy on medical insurance coverage and lending practices without any clear vision of how to improve them -- or what impact those might have on low-income families.

So, conservative readers: you tell me not to worry, that everything will be fine, that Trump et al. are going to Make America Great Again.  Okay, convince me.  However I think Donald Trump is kind of repellent, personally, I have no desire to see him fail.

The stakes are way too high.

I'm a facts-and-evidence kind of guy, and I'm listening.  I promise to consider carefully what you say, if for no other reason because I hate being a gloom-and-doom pessimist. 

On the other hand, if all you have to say is "suck it up, Snowflake," my response is gonna be "go to hell."  So be forewarned.

Red truth, blue truth

At the same time that social media has opened up possibilities for long-distance (and cross-cultural) contact, and allowed us to befriend people we've never met, it also has had the effect of creating nearly impermeable echo chambers that do nothing but reinforce confirmation bias about our own beliefs and the worst stereotypes about those who disagree.

This is being highlighted in a rather terrifying fashion by The Wall Street Journal in their feature "Blue Feed, Red Feed," which they describe as follows:

To demonstrate how reality may differ for different Facebook users, The Wall Street Journal created two feeds, one “blue” and the other “red.”  If a source appears in the red feed, a majority of the articles shared from the source were classified as “very conservatively aligned” in a large 2015 Facebook study.  For the blue feed, a majority of each source’s articles aligned “very liberal.”  These aren't intended to resemble actual individual news feeds.  Instead, they are rare side-by-side looks at real conversations from different perspectives.

It's worth taking a look.  Here's a small sampling of a "red feed" for the recent "alternative facts" interview with Kellyanne Conway:

AWFUL LIBERAL Hack Chuck Todd Attacks #Trump – Kellyanne Conway Rips Him Apart (VIDEO)
Jim Hoft Jan 22nd, 2017 10:39 am 273 Comments
The liberal media today is in the sewer.
More Americans believe in Sasquatch than the crap coming from the liberal media.
After eight years of slobbering all over failed President and liar Barack Obama the media has suddenly decided to take on this new administration.
Today Chuck Todd went after Donald Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway on Meet the Press.
Kellyanne Conway ripped him a new one.
Notice how this condescending ass snickers as Kellyanne answers his question!

The Trump administration should boycott this horrible show immediately.

Contrast this with the "blue feed" on the same topic:

If you are puzzled by the bizarre "press conference" put on by the White House press secretary this evening (angrily claiming that Trump's inauguration had the largest audience in history, accusing them of faking photos and lying about attendance), let me help explain it. This spectacle served three purposes: 

1. Establishing a norm with the press: they will be told things that are obviously wrong and they will have no opportunity to ask questions. That way, they will be grateful if they get anything more at any press conference. This is the PR equivalent of "negging," the odious pick-up practice of a particular kind of horrible person (e.g., Donald Trump). 

2. Increasing the separation between Trump's base (1/3 of the population) from everybody else (the remaining 2/3). By being told something that is obviously wrong—that there is no evidence for and all evidence against, that anybody with eyes can see is wrong—they are forced to pick whether they are going to believe Trump or their lying eyes. The gamble here—likely to pay off—is that they will believe Trump. This means that they will regard media outlets that report the truth as "fake news" (because otherwise they'd be forced to confront their cognitive dissonance.) 

3. Creating a sense of uncertainty about whether facts are knowable, among a certain chunk of the population (which is a taking a page from the Kremlin, for whom this is their preferred disinformation tactic). A third of the population will say "clearly the White House is lying," a third will say "if Trump says it, it must be true," and the remaining third will say "gosh, I guess this is unknowable." The idea isn't to convince these people of untrue things, it's to fatigue them, so that they will stay out of the political process entirely, regarding the truth as just too difficult to determine. 

This is laying important groundwork for the months ahead. If Trump's White House is willing to lie about something as obviously, unquestionably fake as this, just imagine what else they'll lie about. In particular, things that the public cannot possibly verify the truth of. It's gonna get real bad.

It's not like they're looking at the same thing from two different angles; it's more like these people aren't living in the same universe.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Add into the mix a paper published this week in PNAS Online by Michela Del Vicario, Alessandro Bessi, Fabiana Zollo, Fabio Petroni, Antonio Scala, Guido Caldarelli, H. Eugene Stanley, and Walter Quattrociocchi of the Laboratory of Computational Social Science in Lucca, Italy.  The study, called "The Spreading of Misinformation Online," not only describes the dangers of the echo chamber effect apropos of social media, but the worse problem that it insulates us from correcting our own understanding  when we're in the wrong. The authors write:

Digital misinformation has become so pervasive in online social media that it has been listed by the WEF as one of the main threats to human society.  Whether a news item, either substantiated or not, is accepted as true by a user may be strongly affected by social norms or by how much it coheres with the user’s system of beliefs.  Many mechanisms cause false information to gain acceptance, which in turn generate false beliefs that, once adopted by an individual, are highly resistant to correction...  Our findings show that users mostly tend to select and share content related to a specific narrative and to ignore the rest.  In particular, we show that social homogeneity is the primary driver of content diffusion, and one frequent result is the formation of homogeneous, polarized clusters.  Most of the times the information is taken by a friend having the same profile (polarization)––i.e., belonging to the same echo chamber...  Users tend to aggregate in communities of interest, which causes reinforcement and fosters confirmation bias, segregation, and polarization.  This comes at the expense of the quality of the information and leads to proliferation of biased narratives fomented by unsubstantiated rumors, mistrust, and paranoia.

It would be easy to jump from there to the conclusion that there's no way to tell what the truth is, that we're all so insulated in our comfortable cocoons of self-approval that we'll never be able to see out.  That's unwarrantedly pessimistic, however.  There is a method for determining the truth; it involves using evidence (i.e. facts), logic, and an unrelenting determination to steer clear of partisan spin.  Giving up and saying "No one can know the truth" is exactly as unproductive as saying "my side is always right."

Still, all kind-hearted ecumenism aside, I'll end with a quote from the eminent Richard Dawkins: "When two opposing points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie somewhere in the middle.  It is possible for one side to be simply wrong."

An obituary for facts

Of all of the things to be appalled about over the last few days -- and there is a wide selection to choose from, something for everyone -- nothing chilled me like the announcement by White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer that the crowds attending Donald Trump's inauguration set a record.

"This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period," Spicer said.  "That's what you guys should be writing and covering."

Which, of course, is blatantly and demonstrably false.

Then, when Trump spokesperson Kellyanne Conway was asked about Spicer's claim on NBC's Meet the Press, she said that it wasn't a lie -- that Spicer had simply given the public "alternative facts."

On the face of it, this may seem like a small matter -- the people who are in charge of presenting Donald Trump's public face to the media stretching the truth to assuage the new president's ego.  But think about it.  What Spicer and Conway are saying is, "Facts don't matter.  Accurate reporting doesn't matter.  All that matters is believing what you're told."

And even more terrifying is that Trump's followers, by and large, did believe what Spicer and Conway said.  "I don't believe one damned thing that comes from the crooked, bought-and-sold mainstream media," one person posted on Facebook.

"The liberal press will do anything to disparage our president," said another.  "No lie is too big or too small as long as it casts him in a hateful light."

This last one is the same person who posted the following photograph:

And I've already seen the following three times, with a caption of "Finally allowed back in the White House:"

We're being consistently steered away from respecting facts and evidence toward ideology, belief, confirmation bias, and a cult of personality -- an approach far more consistent with North Korea than with the United States, where Dear Leader is the center of near-worship on the basis of everything from his flawless statesmanship to his golf game.

But that's the direction we're heading.  Unsurprising, then, that governmental positions are being filled with people who have the same attitude-- predominantly climate change deniers (Tom Price, Rex Tillerson, and Scott Pruitt) and young-Earth creationists (Betsy DeVos, Ben Carson, Jeff Sessions, and Vice-President Mike Pence himself).  None of these views are based on logic, rationality, or fact; they're either blind, doctrinaire belief in the face of evidence, or confirmation bias to accept a claim because it's politically or economically expedient.

What blows my mind is how far this ignore-the-facts approach can take you.  If you believe that the crowds at Trump's inauguration were yuuuge, then that's what they were, photographs (or any other evidence) be damned.  If you think the Earth is 6,000 years old, none of the mountains of evidence showing this to be untrue will convince you -- but you will swallow that Beowulf was an "eyewitness account of dinosaurs showing that they coexisted with humans," as was just claimed this week by Answers in Genesis spokesperson and "scientist" Andrew Snelling.

And once you believe that facts and evidence don't matter, it's apparently a small step to believing that a thin-skinned, narcissistic egomaniac who is a serial adulterer and (by his own admission) guilty of sexual assault could be the anointed one of god.

As George Orwell put it in 1984, "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.  It was their final, most essential command."

We've got a rough road ahead.  I'm cheered by the numbers of people who turned out for the Women's Marches Against Trump -- literally millions of people came out for what were almost entirely peaceful demonstrations against what this administration stands for.  But we've got our work cut out for us.  We have elected and appointed officials, and (apparently) a significant slice of the voting public, who have written the obituary for a fact-based understanding of the world, in favor of "alternative facts" that fit the way they wish things were.  And I'm at a loss for how to approach this.  Because once you've decided that anything other than evidence is the best guide to determining the truth, I have no idea how you could be convinced that you were wrong about any belief you might hold.

Heaven knows I'm not infallible myself, but I do have one thing going for me; if you think I'm wrong, show me the evidence.  I might not like it, but faced with the facts, I'll have no recourse but to say, "Huh.  I guess I was wrong, then."  But if the media lies 100% of the time (except when they say something you happen to have already believed), when your favorite political figure has no flaws and was elevated to the position by god himself, when the hard evidence itself is suspect -- you have erected an impenetrable wall around yourself, locking yourself in with nothing but your ideology for company.

And a nation full of people like that might be the most dangerous thing in the world.

Protecting the arts from ideology

It's the end of first semester at my school, which means my Critical Thinking classes are finishing up and ready to move on, and I'm preparing to start with a whole new group in a week and a half.  The first semester students are currently working on their final papers, which is a critical analysis of how their thinking has changed since the beginning of the class.

I received one paper early -- they're not officially due until next Thursday -- and one paragraph from it stood out.  The student wrote:

One thing that has become apparent to me through this course is that you can't separate critical thinking from creativity.  Critical thinking really means applying creativity and a broader perspective to everything -- seeing that there are many paths to understanding, and for most things in life, there is no single right answer.  This is why I believe that cutting arts education, which is happening in many schools, will have negative impacts on every subject.  By eliminating the arts, we are taking away one of the fundamentally unique things about being human -- the ability to create something entirely new.  How can we find creative solutions to problems if we've been taught that the most creative endeavors have no value?

Well, first, her perceptivity absolutely took my breath away.  Her observations are not only spot-on, they are even more pertinent than she may have realized, because just yesterday an announcement was made that the Trump administration is considering balancing the federal budget by (amongst other things) eliminating the National Endowment for the Arts.

It brings to mind a similar move that was proposed in England during World War II -- to eliminate funding for the arts in favor of diverting the money to the military.  Winston Churchill famously responded, "Then what are we fighting for?"

Which is it exactly.  Our lives are made immeasurably richer because of the arts -- not only art per se, but writing, music, theater, film, and dance.  The NEA has supported arts and artists of all genres, not to mention programs to encourage the next generation of creative young people.  So you might be asking yourself, why would the new administration target such an organization?

Make no mistake about it; this is an ideologically-based salvo.  It's not about saving money.  The NEA's contribution to the federal budget last year was $148 million out of a $3.9 trillion total, a portion that Philip Bump explains thusly:

If you were at Thanksgiving and demanded a slice of pecan pie proportionate to 2016 NEA spending relative to the federal budget, you'd end up with a piece of pie that would need to be sliced off with a finely-tuned laser.  Put another way, if you make $50,000 a year, spending the equivalent of what the government spends on these three programs would be like spending less than $10.

The conservative powers-that-be have targeted the arts for one reason and one reason only; artists are not controllable.  If you give people the power to create, they will do so -- but won't necessarily create something that makes your political party, religion, or gender comfortable.  One of the most widely-publicized examples of this is the NEA-supported work of American photographer Andres Serrano, who made headlines (and received death threats) for his piece Piss Christ, which was a photograph of a crucifix submerged in a jar of urine.

Sometimes the role of art is to shock, to jolt us out of our complacency.  I know as a writer, I am conscious of the fact that I'm writing to entertain -- but at the same time, if my readers' brains are the same when they're done with my book as they were when they started, I've failed.  All of the arts are about expanding our awareness -- twisting our minds around so we see things in a different way.

That twisting process isn't necessarily comfortable.  And for those of us who value conformity -- those who would like to see everyone follow the rules and march in tempo and draw inside the lines -- it can be profoundly frightening.  But that's exactly why we need the arts.  The capacity for turning your brain around and altering your perspective is not learned by rote.

And we'll need that sort of creativity, considering some of the issues we're currently facing.  As Albert Einstein put it, "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."

So this ideological shot-across-the-bow needs to be fought, and fought hard, even if you haven't always agreed with every project the NEA has supported.  We need our artists, and more importantly, we need our government and business leaders, our doctors, scientists, educators, and engineers to have the skills that the arts teach.  As my student put it -- if we devalue the arts, we devalue the creative approach to all aspects of life.

And to the artists, writers, musicians, actors, dancers, and all other creative people out there: keep creating.  Keep exploring, keep pushing the boundaries, keep making us see the universe in a different way.  Don't let your unique voice be silenced.  Even though things seem dark right now, recall what one of my favorite visionaries -- J. R. R. Tolkien -- put in the mouth of his iconic character Frodo Baggins, as he faced the overwhelming might of Mordor:  "They cannot win forever."

Giving incompetence a chance

One of the most common things that has been said to me by Trump supporters is "give him a chance to govern."  And although I've been pretty vocal in my criticism of the President-elect, his rhetoric, and his decisions, no one would be happier than me if the prognostications of doom I'm hearing don't come true.  After all, the health of our democracy, our standing in the world, and the long-term survivability of the planet is far more important than any schadenfreude I would get from seeing someone I don't like fail.

But as far as giving people a chance, there are times when what a person says or does makes me disinclined to put them in the position of being able to do worse -- or simply to follow through on what they've already said.  I'm under no obligation to "give a chance" to someone who has shown no sign of competence.

Which brings me to Betsy DeVos.

I was appalled enough when she was first nominated for the position of Secretary of Education.  DeVos is a multi-millionaire whose staunch support of vouchers and charter schools in her home state of Michigan has been, by and large, an abysmal failure.  In an article written last month for the Detroit Free Press, Stephen Henderson has outlined the results -- a weakened public school system, and a host of charter schools whose lack of oversight has generated year after year of failure.  (One of them, Hope Academy of Grand River and Livernois, scored in the first percentile for academic performance in 2013 -- and despite of that, two years later had its charter renewed.)

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

I still held out a modicum of hope that her confirmation hearing would show that she wasn't as bad as she seemed.  That hope, unfortunately, was destined to be dashed.  Her testimony at the hearing was a rambling, disjointed birdwalk that at times left me thinking, "What did she just say?"  She showed herself to be unprepared -- no, worse, she showed herself to be entirely incompetent.  As an example, she revealed during questioning that she didn't know the difference between academic proficiency and academic growth, terms that any first-year teacher would know.

As should the Secretary of Education.

It'd be nice to think this was just a stumble.  We all do that sometimes -- choke on something we should have known, or do know, and afterwards think, "Wow, I sure screwed that up."  But the entire hearing was full of "stumbles" like this.  When Virginia Senator Tim Kaine asked her if she supported compliance with the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act as a requirement for receiving federal funding, she replied, "I think that's a matter best left to the states."

So wait a moment.  It's up to the states to determine if they'll follow a federal law?  One that mandates equal access to facilities and services for all students, regardless of disabilities?

That response, however, became a refrain.  On a question regarding guns in schools asked by Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, she once again said, "I think that's best left for states and locales to decide."  Allow me to point out that Murphy represents the district in Connecticut where the Sandy Hook massacre took place.  When he understandably responded with incredulity, DeVos went into a bizarre description of how she knows of a school in Wyoming where they keep a gun to protect students from "potential grizzlies."

The response was so weird that #PotentialGrizzlies trended on Twitter for hours afterward.

Most of her testimony was a rather clumsy dance to avoid answering questions directly.  When given a long list of statistics regarding the failure of schools in Detroit, she responded that she thought Detroit schools were actually doing quite well.  Asked about her stance on science education, apropos of the teaching of evolution and climate change, she said, "I support the teaching of great science."

Well, forgive me for being a little dubious on that point, given DeVos's history of supporting groups like Focus on the Family and the Foundation for Traditional Values, both of which have worked tirelessly to eliminate the teaching of evolution in public schools.  Not to mention her own words, "Our desire is to confront the culture in ways that will continue to advance God's kingdom."

The supporters of the President-elect are saying, "Give her a chance."  Well, you know what?  I am under no obligation to "give a chance" to a person who has shown herself to be wildly unqualified for the job she's been nominated for.

Imagine if this was the approach taken in business.  A CEO interviews a candidate for a job, and the prospective employee refuses to give direct answers to questions, and in general shows himself to be a terrible choice for the job.  If the CEO didn't hire him, would you tell him, "You should have given him a chance?"

Worse still is the realization that the "chance" we're being asked to take here is to risk the education of millions of children.  We have no option at this point but to give Donald Trump a chance; after today, he'll be the president whether we like it or not.  We are not, however, required to give a chance to his incompetent nominees.

That's why we have confirmation hearings.