Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Welcome to CaturSaturday, December 21, 2024, National French Fried Shrimp Day, which reminds me of this video, though it’s not shrimp on offer: (If you don’t remember this movie, you’re too young to be reading this site!)
The Winter Solstice (see “Yule” below) began at 3:24 a.m. Chicago time.
The Senate approved a spending measure early Saturday to keep government money flowing through mid-March, sending it to President Biden for his expected signature and closing a chaotic endgame in Congress minutes after federal funding had lapsed.
The 85-to-11 Senate vote followed earlier House passage of the legislation, which also provided $100 billion in disaster relief for parts of the nation still reeling from storms. The action pushed major spending decisions into 2025 and the first months of the incoming Trump administration and a fully Republican-controlled Congress.
The White House said that President Biden would sign the measure on Saturday and that no agencies would shut down despite the technical lapse in funding.
The end to days of shutdown drama came after House Republicans stripped out a provision demanded by President-elect Donald J. Trump to suspend the federal debt limit and spare him the usually politically charged task of doing so when he takes office. But that demand sparked a revolt by dozens of Republicans on Thursday and led to a major defeat on the House floor.
The measure that ultimately passed kept dollars flowing to federal agencies and prevented a prolonged funding lapse that could have led to government disruptions just days before the holidays.
Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, said the final product was not all Democrats wanted, but avoided a crisis.
Well, that’s that. I wonder if it portends a failure of Congressional Republicans to fall in line behind Trump on everything.
This account of how the White House functioned with an aging leader at the top of its organizational chart is based on interviews with nearly 50 people, including those who participated in or had direct knowledge of the operations.
. . . . The president’s slide has been hard to overlook. While preparing last year for his interview with Robert K. Hur, the special counsel who investigated Biden’s handling of classified documents, the president couldn’t recall lines that his team discussed with him. At events, aides often repeated instructions to him, such as where to enter or exit a stage, that would be obvious to the average person. Biden’s team tapped campaign co-chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg, a Hollywood mogul, to find a voice coach to improve the president’s fading warble.
Biden, now 82, has long operated with a tightknit inner circle of advisers. The protective culture inside the White House was intensified because Biden started his presidency at the height of the Covid pandemic. His staff took great care to prevent him from catching the virus by limiting in-person interactions with him. But the shell constructed for the pandemic was never fully taken down, and his advanced age hardened it.
The structure was also designed to prevent Biden, an undisciplined public speaker throughout his half-century political career, from making gaffes or missteps that could damage his image, create political headaches or upset the world order.
The system put Biden at an unusual remove from cabinet secretaries, the chairs of congressional committees and other high-ranking officials. It also insulated him from the scrutiny of the American public.
. . . The strategies to protect Biden largely worked—until June 27, when Biden stood on an Atlanta debate stage with Trump, searching for words and unable to complete his thoughts on live television. Much of the Democratic establishment had accepted the White House line that Biden was able to take the fight to Trump, even in the face of direct evidence to the contrary.
. . .Yet a sign that the bruising presidential schedule needed to be adjusted for Biden’s advanced age had arisen early on—in just the first few months of his term. Administration officials noticed that the president became tired if meetings went long and would make mistakes.
They issued a directive to some powerful lawmakers and allies seeking one-on-one time: The exchanges should be short and focused, according to people who received the message directly from White House aides.
Ideally, the meetings would start later in the day, since Biden has never been at his best first thing in the morning, some of the people said. His staff made these adjustments to limit potential missteps by Biden, the people said. The president, known for long and rambling sessions, at times pushed in the opposite direction, wanting or just taking more time.
The White House denied that his schedule has been altered due to his age.
If the president was having an off day, meetings could be scrapped altogether. On one such occasion, in the spring of 2021, a national security official explained to another aide why a meeting needed to be rescheduled. “He has good days and bad days, and today was a bad day so we’re going to address this tomorrow,” the former aide recalled the official saying.
Biden remained remarkably insulated from most of his aides, his Cabinet officers, and even pollsters. And, as it said, this was the case from the very beginning of his second term. Just think how different things might be if he’d withdrawn after just two years in office or so. Well, yes, we’d have to put up with Kamala as President, but at least we’d see her mettle in the top job, and other Democratic candidates could throw their hats in the ring. I’m pretty sure that Jill Biden was a major factor in keeping Joe going right up to the end.
*In a piece called “I was right,” Andrew Sullivan pats himself on the back for his presience, also concentrating on Biden’s age problems:
A year ago this week, for example, I made five core claims: “Donald Trump is likely to be the next president of the United States; Ukraine will never win back its lost territory; the two-state solution in Israel/Palestine is dead; DEI is incompatible with a free society; and Joe Biden is too old to be re-elected.”
Not so shabby a year later.
Perhaps the most glaringly obvious was Biden’s age problem. In September 2023, I urged him to leave the stage. A year ago I wrote, “The idea that this 81-year-old man could command the country in four years’ time is as delusional as the blithe self-confidence of his team.” That’s long before Ezra Klein cleared his throat. Yesterday the WSJ ran a follow-up to its groundbreaking revelation of Biden’s decrepitude earlier this year. (It tells you something about the state of legacy media that the reporters were harangued for it at the time.) This detail leapt out at me:
In the spring of 2021, a national security official explained to another aide why a meeting needed to be rescheduled. “He has good days and bad days, and today was a bad day so we’re going to address this tomorrow,” the former aide recalled the official saying.
And that was in the first months of his term! The Dish thrice called for his withdrawal so that someone other than Kamala Harris could take the helm. But nah. Biden’s vanity and his wife’s cunning, arrogance, and mendacity won the day.
. . . A year ago I also gave the Democrats some campaign advice: “The way to beat Trump is to compete on policy grounds — controlling mass migration, intensifying law enforcement, touting legislative wins like the CHIPS Act — rather than to disqualify him on grounds that the American public has largely rejected.” So, of course, Harris and her moronic advisers tried to disqualify Trump on grounds that the American public had largely rejected.
Then there’s immigration, an issue whose salience I’ve been banging on about for several years now. Many readers objected. “Bottom line: America’s immigration problem isn’t that we have too many people trying to get here; it’s that we have too few,” one wrote in October 2021. Another wrote six months earlier, “Why only rant about Latinos from failed states seeking a legal entry? It makes you appear racist.” The elite view — what intimidated many, including me, from speaking up — was that anyone opposing mass immigration is a bigot. Many Dishheads agreed. But, whatever your view, I was right about the issue’s overarching importance, wasn’t I? Biden’s choice — and it was a choice — to expedite the entrance of millions of illegal migrants, and to insist that the border was secure the whole time, made his re-election impossible.
. . .And the issue you’ve been most diligent in telling me to shut up about — the transing of children with few safeguards — also turned out to be a big deal. Trump’s ads on Harris being for “they/them” became the most effective he deployed in moving voters against Harris. This year also saw the Cass Review, which confirmedall my worries about the politicization of medicine and the toll of transqueer ideology on gay and lesbian kids.
Harris herself? I stick with my first take: “Harris is one of the weakest and wokest Democratic candidates there is.” I didn’t fall for the “joy” fad and I explained how Trump was obviously winning the campaign war: “The more you are exposed to Harris’ vacuousness, the more the whole fakery of it all sinks in, and the less conceivable she becomes as a president.” It does seem inconceivable now, doesn’t it?
Well, you can’t fault the guy for puffing out his chest a bit. He was right. And I can chime in a bit, as I also called out both Harris, as well as emphasizing the importance of wokeness and immigration. I took plenty of guff for that, especially from people who thought Harris was the cat’s pajamas (n.b., the cat never got out of bed). Sullivan does more than boast, though: he emphasizes, as we’ve discussed her recently, that Democrats are surprisingly loath to back off on the “progressivism” that cost them the Congress and the Presidency: they’re still gung-ho for DEI, CRT, the “sex spectrum,” and so on. As the old folk song goes, “When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?” As for what will happen now that Trump (or Musk) is the Boss, Sullivan simply won’t prognosticate.
*As always on Saturdays, I will steal three items from Nellie Bowles’s weekly Free Press news summary, called this week: “TGIF: The lame duck.”
→ Fight for what matters: The Dems might be out of power right now, but they are using their voices for things that really matter. They are fighting for the bedrock issues that made Democrats the party of the working people, the party of art and freedom and liberal values. Yes, that’s right, they are fighting for more euphemisms. Some real-life examples from the budget, highlighted by Rep. Nancy Mace, who is very amped up lately:
Where previously we could refer to “low-skilled adults,” now we will say “adults with foundational skill needs” (Section 111, Page 958).
Earlier generations might have said “out of school youth.” That’s out. The new phrase is: “opportunity youth” (Section 111, Page 958).
Finally, and once and for all, a “criminal offender” must now be referred to as a “justice-involved individual” (Section 208, Page 1400).
Now, I’m not totally sure who is responsible for this language, but I have my guesses. Sure, Social Security is now given out in a Republican-approved fight club format, where we pit two seniors against each other and the one who lives gets Social Security (that’s how you balance a budget). But do not worry for a second about that, because the Democrats are getting new, special words. I’m not lazy, I’m a time-impacted individual with foundational skill needs.
→ LuigiMania continues: LuigiMania has entered its second week. A new poll came out showing just how profoundly ruined our youth are: Fully 41 percent of voters under 30 claim that his alleged assassination of Brian Thompson was “acceptable.” Acceptable is an odd word here. It’s surprisingly ambivalent, oddly milquetoast from these murder sympathizers. I was expecting something more along the lines of “righteous” or “completely justified” from our young’uns.
As if trying to make him even more attractive and alluring to Gen Z, New York authorities charged Luigi with terrorism, given the political bent of his purported assassination. One DJ, perhaps in recognition of his newly acquired status as terror-adjacent (all the cool kids are), projected photos of Luigi that pulsed to the beat of the music. I only hope the cover had to be paid in Monopoly money out of respect.
LuigiMania is spreading in D.C. faster than Covid at the French Laundry. Take Chris Murphy, the very patrician, very normal Connecticut senator. He called for an overhaul of the Democratic Party in the wake of Trump’s victory. He said his party was “beyond small fixes.” But alas, even he has been felled by Luigi’s beautiful Italian eyes:
I think that political leaders in this country need to be part of this conversation that’s happening all over the country in the wake of the shooting of the UnitedHealthcare CEO. I know that it’s fraught, I know that it’s uncomfortable, but this is really important.
→ MAHA you didn’t: There is much I love about MAHA. As a mom of small children, I’m always scanning their faces and testing their responses for signs of anything strange or unusual. I get real close to their faces and say, “Did the teacher at school give you an unauthorized lollipop today?” Bar brings nonorganic mac and cheese into the house and I throw it out, all in one motion. I recently threw out my black plastic spatula. And I stand with MAHA when I say that my primary care physician, my psychiatrist, and my pediatrician all go by one name: Reddit. But god, I wish RFK would quit some of the vaccine stuff. He posted about how the HPV vaccine causes cervical cancer (Nope! Not true!) just this week:
“There’s no vaccine that is safe and effective,” he said on a podcast, adding that the polio vaccine is behind the rise in cancer and has killed more people than polio ever did. I guess that one got bad enough that even Trumpo weighed in this week during a press conference: “You’re not going to lose the polio vaccine,” he said. Thanks?
*The Los Angeles Chargers of the NFL made the first fair-catch kick in, yes, 48 years. The AP explains:
Of all the rules in football, Jim Harbaugh considers the obscure fair-catch kick to be his favorite.
The Los Angeles Chargers coach had the opportunity to try one Thursday night for only the second time in his career.
This time, his kicker got three points from one of the most unusual plays in the sport.
“I’ve been trying to get one of those every game. Cam Dicker stepped up and made it. It was huge and got the momentum back,” Harbaugh said.
Those points began the Chargers’ comeback as they rallied for a 34-27 victory, finishing the game on a 24-6 run.
For football obsessives like Harbaugh who relish oddities and unprecedented feats, Dicker’s kick was delightful.
The seldom-used rule allows a team that has just made a fair catch to try a free kick for three points. The kick is attempted from the line of scrimmage, and the defenders all must stand 10 yards away.
The play hardly ever happens because teams almost never find themselves in circumstances to make such a kick feasible. Only five NFL teams had previously tried the kick in the 21st century, and nobody had successfully executed it since Ray Wersching did it for the San Diego Chargers 48 years ago.
Here’s a video:
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is mourning the onset of winter (the Vistula is in the background).
From Masih, what I think is a five-minute segment on Iranian television demonizing her and arguing that she’s working in collusion with the U.S. to undermine the theocracy. Worth a five-minute watch to see how the regime goes after dissidents.
در همین صداوسیما اول نافرمانیهای خیابانی در کمپینهای #آزادیهای_یواشکی و #چهارشنبه_های_سفید را انکار کردند، بعد تحقیر کردند و گفتند مسیح فاحشه و صیغهای است و به او تجاوز شده، سپس مبارزان کمپین را زندانی کردند و تهمت زدند که از مسیح پول گرفتید، به خودم گفتند پول گرفتی تا… pic.twitter.com/QLF78Sw8bX
From Luana, a survey from Finland on sex differences in wokeness. Women are woker on every count, which makes sense as they’re more religious and more empathic. (Embedding not possible so I use a screenshot). The red dots (women) are always woker than the blue ones (men):
Greta, who’s a big fan of Hamas, gets pwned (from Malgorzata):
Greta Thunberg just got trolled in Georgia. A guy pretended to hold an anti-Israel poster, but in reality it said:
“Palestine never existed. Israel is a country of heroes. ”
how do they determine where the kick should be made if the fair catch failed?
Seems they two positions were way apart – ~30 then ~50…
This is really cool I’ll have to read the rule on that video again.
… [re reads ] ahh, the penalty brought the line up, to 57. I guess that’s it.
… nice work, Prof. Cobb!
I love that Hili and her staff can take walks through the fresh air of the orchard and down along the river. Must be an invigorating break after being inside all winter’s day.
The Continuing Resolution proves, as all CRs do, that the GOP is not serious about fiscal conservatism. The debt is almost past management, and they are part of the reason. That is one of the reasons that, although I consider myself conservative, I have never been a Republican.
It’s amazing that Joe Biden’s capacity to govern, and the role his staff and Cabinet played in covering it up, is not a scandal. How many decisions were made in his name? Remember when they said that videos like the one of him wondering off at the NATO summit were fakes?
I agree it should be a scandal. But mainstream news media will be softer on democratic administrations.
And to think that we could have gotten 4 more years of the same ‘hide the president’ infrastructure if Harris had won.
It’s true. I think there will be more people who’ve had direct contact with the Biden administration who will flesh out this shocking picture even more. It’s becoming even more clear that the power of the pardon also needs to be expunged.
The latter will be fairly impossible to get rid of, but it should be expunged after past (and near future) examples of its being heavily abused. Trump will pardon the Jan 6 insurrectionists.
And unbelievably Biden was planning on ANOTHER FOUR YEARS!
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn) tells it like it is on the budget mess: “They write the bill. They post the bill. They agreed on a bill. And you know what? They got scared because President Musk told them, President Musk said, don’t do it, don’t do it. Shut the government down. Imagine. What does he know about what people go through is when the government shuts down. Are his employees furloughed? Hell no. Is he furloughed? No. And when you shut the government down, people don’t get paid. And maybe if none of us got paid, if the government shut down, some people on the other side of the aisle would feel differently about where we’re going in this effort.”
They have kicked the can down the road for a few months. Expect continual chaotic political theatre every time a budget must be passed or the debt ceiling addressed.
Is Hili one of those cats that are looking for a door into summer?
Many of us readers on this site are very glad that puberty blockers are starting to be prohibited for minors, that mastectomies and hysterectomies in youth with gender dysphoria are starting to be scrutinized.
I would like to propose that we not provide estradiol to men wishing to look more feminine and testosterone to women who wish to have more body hair and aggression. There are only two sexes. If a man believes he is a woman (or is convinced he would be happier if he could modify his body to approximate a woman)–that is a profound psychological problem.
Granting someone who has such a serious problem her request should not be indulged by physicians or society. Health insurance companies should never pay for medications or surgery without a medical indication–an objective, verifiable condition. Psychology and psychiatry should help these poor people feel happier about who they are.
All the above should apply to minors. But for adults? Well, there are adults who continue to maintain that their gender is the wrong one and there are such adults where these procedures have helped them. We don’t know how the brain decides anyones’ gender, cis- or trans, and so I can accept that this claim is true because they insist that it is so, against considerable ostracization.
Mark, I too am libertarian when it comes to adults choosing medical “transition.” But that is mainly because I believe that psychology and psychiatry are very limited in what they can do. If some adults experience dysphoria, and think such transition will be palliative, well, good luck to them–but patients should be fully aware of the risks and limitations of the “treatments,” and less invasive (and drastic) measures should be tried first.
But,
We don’t know how the brain decides anyones’ gender, cis- or trans.
Well, we don’t have a good definition of “gender” (or “gender identity,”) so we can’t know what it is the brain might be “deciding.” We DO have evidence that some people have dysphoria, and we also have evidence that such dysphoria is not one thing. There seem to be different kinds, with different etiologies.
And dysphoria can resolve on its own over time.
I think that the notion that there is “a gender” is a fiction popularized by trans activists. Many “trans women” are autogynephiles driven by paraphilia to live out their fantasies; these men aren’t particularly feminine. And plenty of feminine men and masculine women freely express their sex atypical personalities, and live happily in their bodies with no need to claim a trans identity–though some go through a period of youthful “gender dysphoria” which likely has more to do with homophobia than with a special “transgender” identity requiring treatment.
I can accept that this claim is true because they insist that it is so, against considerable ostracization.
Argumentum ad martyrdom doesn’t work for Christianity, either.
Ours is a one-deer model.
Given President Biden’s infirmities, it seems that the country was run by a consortium of unelected operatives the past four years. And the Democrats were telling us that they were going to save our democracy? Uh huh.
“Women are woker on every count, which makes sense as they’re more religious and more empathic.”
But the predominance of women as faculty, students, administrators, and practitioners across various academic disciplines and professional fields probably has nothing to do with the advancing Wokeness in those fields. Certainly not. One day we will, as a society, be mature enough to openly discuss the fact—without charges of sexism—that female-dominated professional subcultures have both positive and negative aspects just as do male. We are not yet that society.
I disagree with Prof. Coyne here. To me, women are woker on every count because wokeness is, at least for now, the position of power, and women are more conformist. Wokeness, similarly to every ideology known to me, has been created and enforced predominantly by men.
If you see a problem that women predominate among students and certain job positions, I’d like to see what measures you would find appropriate. Maybe to reduce the share of women by appointing more men, regardless of competence?
I’d suggest to look at differences between the USA and the numerous countries where women also study and work but somehow do not create woke insanity.
Maya, nothing about being a woman suggests a person will be Woke—or that a man will not be. For goodness’ sake, just look at all the women who voted for Trump, or all the ones who are conservative Christians, or, as you note, all the ones in countries that Woke has passed by. Moreover, some of the most successful efforts to counter Wokeness have been waged by women. Whether Wokeness spreads because of empathy, conformity, communal engagement, fear of ostracization, desire to help people, a misdirected “religious” or paternal / maternal impulse, ideology, opportunism, whatever, addressing any problem begins with acknowledging a problem—to include all possible reasons for the problem.
As I mentioned, the problem is concentrated in certain academic disciplines and certain professional fields—mostly in the Anglosphere. And it is spreading, but some areas of professional life seem more resistant. Why? Are practitioners in these fields less conformist? More tolerant of dissent? More dedicated to objectivity? More prone to call bullshit no matter who gets offended? Does this correlate with the population of men and women? Is there a causal relationship? Is it connected to age, socioeconomic background, education pedigree, and so on? You appear to want to rule out a priori even the possibility that women can create and enforce a toxic workplace in a particularly Woke manner—complete with its conformity, empathy, and enforcement by reputation destruction. (Yet you have no objections to asserting that men invented the ideology and are thus the root cause of the problem.) I am simply suggesting that, given the results of the survey Jerry posted and others I have seen, women appear to be more likely to succumb to and enforce a Woke culture than are men. It’s an empirical matter and it should be explored, but as I said, we are not mature enough to do so because few want to deal with the blowback and charges of sexism.
If we were to establish a correlation—or even causation—between the existing (or growing) population of women in a discipline and the degree of Wokeness, would that be an argument to remove women? No, just as I wouldn’t argue for removing men en masse despite the toxic workplace and dysfunction that men can sometimes create. (And it certainly wouldn’t be a reason to disenfranchise women.) But just as men are quite capable of screwing up in particularly masculine ways the organizations that they dominate, women are capable of ruining organizations in particularly feminine ways. We now freely talk about the former; few talk about or even acknowledge the latter. We need to talk about both and find the proper approach, potential balance, and relative contributions of the stereotypically masculine (be they men or women) and feminine (be they men or women) given the mission of a given institution. At the extremes, we wouldn’t want the ethos of the kindergarten in our special operations forces; and you wouldn’t want the special ops guys running our daycare centers with their particular culture. And as academia goes, we certainly don’t need rampant conformity, public shaming, subjectivity run amok, “my truth” touted from the podium, the belittling of merit, and the stifling of challenge and dissent—from men or from women.
Thank you for the clarification, Doug.
I didn’t mean that men are the root cause of the wokeness problem (sorry if it has sounded to imply this), just that the handful of individuals who created this ideology were mostly men, similarly to the creators of other ideologies, both good and bad.
The practices in my country about dealing with a too high F/M ratio:
The education system, with its inevitable demands of obedience, discipline and systematic work, is better suited for feminine personalities. Hence, at entrance exams, no matter how you organize them, girls are on average better than boys. To prevent excessive feminization of university courses, you have to introduce a frank sex quota, with open listing how many slots are given to girls and how many to boys.
This is a deviation from merit-based admission that creates bitter experiences for girls who are left out despite having higher scores than some admitted boys. Nevertheless, the system works, as long as the course is desired by applicants. If the course is not much desired, the system fails, because boys cannot fill their quota and the free slots are filled with girls. Worse, many of the boys admitted with D or whatever is the minimum passing grade later turn out to be academically unfit.
With the job positions, it is easier. If the workforce is unduly feminized, this is a sure indicator that the salary is too low for the required qualifications and repels male applicants. Raise the pay until capable men show up.
The camel happily eats a cactus (!) but doesn’t like a lemon.
The lemon is sour. But even apart from the spikes I wouldn’t have thought a cactus would be tasty.
Poor camel was really offended! I’m particularly surprised because my neighbor’s goat happily eats all sorts of stuff that I feed him seamlessly in succession, like banana peels, onions, lemons or lemon peels, back to onions, then apples, tea bags (staple removed), etc. And he also eats stuff that’s quite thorny, like rose branches. Nothing anywhere near as thorny at those cacti in Western PA, tho.
The Lahtinen survey, if true and representative, shows why women should not have the vote in Finland. Clear majorities of women seem to believe several foolish and dangerous things, that no majority of men do. This would make it hard for the country to elect sensible legislators unless there is a minority-rule mechanism in there that suppresses these feminine views. I wish it could be put down to greater religiosity in women but I don’t know if that’s true that Finnish women are particularly religious in absolute numbers or excessively so compared to men to explain these results. Did female Harris voters in the U.S. strike you as more religious than the ones who supported Donald Trump?
These are not “feminine” views, these are power views. Women are more conformist than men, that’s why they are also more religious in societies where religion is supposed to be a good thing.
As for the idea to disenfranchise groups of responsible adult citizens because they are more likely to vote the wrong way, I don’t know where to begin, so I put a full stop before even beginning.
Delurking for the first and last time on this site which I’ve followed for a decade now : this is what it’s come to ? Women should be denied the vote ? Majorities of men do not believe foolish things on the same level ? For a person who delights in pointing out other people’s overgeneralisations and logical fallacies I find this rather hypocritical.
LOL, you high bro? Where does it say that I think women should be denied the vote? Let me do you a big favor and ban you for stupidity. You can still lurk here, but you cannot post here. What a maroon!
Prof. Coyne, you didn’t say that women should be denied the vote, but a commenter did (No. 11), and it went unchallenged, so Swiss Jan naturally concluded that you agreed with this opinion, or at least found it acceptable.
Above, another commenter (No. 9) opined that the high proportion of female students, faculty, teachers and administrations was the cause for the US wokeness problem, and this should be openly discussed. It apparently escaped his notion that other Western countries also allow women to study and teach, yet have not gone woke.
I must admit that I am deeply shocked by such “women are the problem” views expressed in intelligent, educated circles.
Swiss Jan’s comment is clearly a response to Leslie’s comment 11 who argues that Finish women should be denied the vote for having the wrong opinions. It’s not a general comment on the post itself. There isn’t anything particularly objectionable in it (in contrast with Leslie’s distasteful remarks about women’s voting).
Thank you, Jan.
It was another reader who said that. Reconsider.
I agree, Jan. I was shocked reading that. But I suppose I’m agreeing with you because I’m a woman and “more conformist.”
As I don’t subscribe to Sullivan’s Substack I didn’t read the article. I wonder if he also crowed about his good Catholic Christian “ambulating cadaver” dig at Biden.
how do they determine where the kick should be made if the fair catch failed?
Seems they two positions were way apart – ~30 then ~50…
This is really cool I’ll have to read the rule on that video again.
… [re reads ] ahh, the penalty brought the line up, to 57. I guess that’s it.
… nice work, Prof. Cobb!
I love that Hili and her staff can take walks through the fresh air of the orchard and down along the river. Must be an invigorating break after being inside all winter’s day.
The Continuing Resolution proves, as all CRs do, that the GOP is not serious about fiscal conservatism. The debt is almost past management, and they are part of the reason. That is one of the reasons that, although I consider myself conservative, I have never been a Republican.
It’s amazing that Joe Biden’s capacity to govern, and the role his staff and Cabinet played in covering it up, is not a scandal. How many decisions were made in his name? Remember when they said that videos like the one of him wondering off at the NATO summit were fakes?
I agree it should be a scandal. But mainstream news media will be softer on democratic administrations.
And to think that we could have gotten 4 more years of the same ‘hide the president’ infrastructure if Harris had won.
It’s true. I think there will be more people who’ve had direct contact with the Biden administration who will flesh out this shocking picture even more. It’s becoming even more clear that the power of the pardon also needs to be expunged.
The latter will be fairly impossible to get rid of, but it should be expunged after past (and near future) examples of its being heavily abused. Trump will pardon the Jan 6 insurrectionists.
And unbelievably Biden was planning on ANOTHER FOUR YEARS!
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn) tells it like it is on the budget mess: “They write the bill. They post the bill. They agreed on a bill. And you know what? They got scared because President Musk told them, President Musk said, don’t do it, don’t do it. Shut the government down. Imagine. What does he know about what people go through is when the government shuts down. Are his employees furloughed? Hell no. Is he furloughed? No. And when you shut the government down, people don’t get paid. And maybe if none of us got paid, if the government shut down, some people on the other side of the aisle would feel differently about where we’re going in this effort.”
They have kicked the can down the road for a few months. Expect continual chaotic political theatre every time a budget must be passed or the debt ceiling addressed.
Is Hili one of those cats that are looking for a door into summer?
Many of us readers on this site are very glad that puberty blockers are starting to be prohibited for minors, that mastectomies and hysterectomies in youth with gender dysphoria are starting to be scrutinized.
I would like to propose that we not provide estradiol to men wishing to look more feminine and testosterone to women who wish to have more body hair and aggression. There are only two sexes. If a man believes he is a woman (or is convinced he would be happier if he could modify his body to approximate a woman)–that is a profound psychological problem.
Granting someone who has such a serious problem her request should not be indulged by physicians or society. Health insurance companies should never pay for medications or surgery without a medical indication–an objective, verifiable condition. Psychology and psychiatry should help these poor people feel happier about who they are.
All the above should apply to minors. But for adults? Well, there are adults who continue to maintain that their gender is the wrong one and there are such adults where these procedures have helped them. We don’t know how the brain decides anyones’ gender, cis- or trans, and so I can accept that this claim is true because they insist that it is so, against considerable ostracization.
Mark, I too am libertarian when it comes to adults choosing medical “transition.” But that is mainly because I believe that psychology and psychiatry are very limited in what they can do. If some adults experience dysphoria, and think such transition will be palliative, well, good luck to them–but patients should be fully aware of the risks and limitations of the “treatments,” and less invasive (and drastic) measures should be tried first.
But,
Well, we don’t have a good definition of “gender” (or “gender identity,”) so we can’t know what it is the brain might be “deciding.” We DO have evidence that some people have dysphoria, and we also have evidence that such dysphoria is not one thing. There seem to be different kinds, with different etiologies.
And dysphoria can resolve on its own over time.
I think that the notion that there is “a gender” is a fiction popularized by trans activists. Many “trans women” are autogynephiles driven by paraphilia to live out their fantasies; these men aren’t particularly feminine. And plenty of feminine men and masculine women freely express their sex atypical personalities, and live happily in their bodies with no need to claim a trans identity–though some go through a period of youthful “gender dysphoria” which likely has more to do with homophobia than with a special “transgender” identity requiring treatment.
Argumentum ad martyrdom doesn’t work for Christianity, either.
Ours is a one-deer model.
Given President Biden’s infirmities, it seems that the country was run by a consortium of unelected operatives the past four years. And the Democrats were telling us that they were going to save our democracy? Uh huh.
“Women are woker on every count, which makes sense as they’re more religious and more empathic.”
But the predominance of women as faculty, students, administrators, and practitioners across various academic disciplines and professional fields probably has nothing to do with the advancing Wokeness in those fields. Certainly not. One day we will, as a society, be mature enough to openly discuss the fact—without charges of sexism—that female-dominated professional subcultures have both positive and negative aspects just as do male. We are not yet that society.
I disagree with Prof. Coyne here. To me, women are woker on every count because wokeness is, at least for now, the position of power, and women are more conformist. Wokeness, similarly to every ideology known to me, has been created and enforced predominantly by men.
If you see a problem that women predominate among students and certain job positions, I’d like to see what measures you would find appropriate. Maybe to reduce the share of women by appointing more men, regardless of competence?
I’d suggest to look at differences between the USA and the numerous countries where women also study and work but somehow do not create woke insanity.
Maya, nothing about being a woman suggests a person will be Woke—or that a man will not be. For goodness’ sake, just look at all the women who voted for Trump, or all the ones who are conservative Christians, or, as you note, all the ones in countries that Woke has passed by. Moreover, some of the most successful efforts to counter Wokeness have been waged by women. Whether Wokeness spreads because of empathy, conformity, communal engagement, fear of ostracization, desire to help people, a misdirected “religious” or paternal / maternal impulse, ideology, opportunism, whatever, addressing any problem begins with acknowledging a problem—to include all possible reasons for the problem.
As I mentioned, the problem is concentrated in certain academic disciplines and certain professional fields—mostly in the Anglosphere. And it is spreading, but some areas of professional life seem more resistant. Why? Are practitioners in these fields less conformist? More tolerant of dissent? More dedicated to objectivity? More prone to call bullshit no matter who gets offended? Does this correlate with the population of men and women? Is there a causal relationship? Is it connected to age, socioeconomic background, education pedigree, and so on? You appear to want to rule out a priori even the possibility that women can create and enforce a toxic workplace in a particularly Woke manner—complete with its conformity, empathy, and enforcement by reputation destruction. (Yet you have no objections to asserting that men invented the ideology and are thus the root cause of the problem.) I am simply suggesting that, given the results of the survey Jerry posted and others I have seen, women appear to be more likely to succumb to and enforce a Woke culture than are men. It’s an empirical matter and it should be explored, but as I said, we are not mature enough to do so because few want to deal with the blowback and charges of sexism.
If we were to establish a correlation—or even causation—between the existing (or growing) population of women in a discipline and the degree of Wokeness, would that be an argument to remove women? No, just as I wouldn’t argue for removing men en masse despite the toxic workplace and dysfunction that men can sometimes create. (And it certainly wouldn’t be a reason to disenfranchise women.) But just as men are quite capable of screwing up in particularly masculine ways the organizations that they dominate, women are capable of ruining organizations in particularly feminine ways. We now freely talk about the former; few talk about or even acknowledge the latter. We need to talk about both and find the proper approach, potential balance, and relative contributions of the stereotypically masculine (be they men or women) and feminine (be they men or women) given the mission of a given institution. At the extremes, we wouldn’t want the ethos of the kindergarten in our special operations forces; and you wouldn’t want the special ops guys running our daycare centers with their particular culture. And as academia goes, we certainly don’t need rampant conformity, public shaming, subjectivity run amok, “my truth” touted from the podium, the belittling of merit, and the stifling of challenge and dissent—from men or from women.
Thank you for the clarification, Doug.
I didn’t mean that men are the root cause of the wokeness problem (sorry if it has sounded to imply this), just that the handful of individuals who created this ideology were mostly men, similarly to the creators of other ideologies, both good and bad.
The practices in my country about dealing with a too high F/M ratio:
The education system, with its inevitable demands of obedience, discipline and systematic work, is better suited for feminine personalities. Hence, at entrance exams, no matter how you organize them, girls are on average better than boys. To prevent excessive feminization of university courses, you have to introduce a frank sex quota, with open listing how many slots are given to girls and how many to boys.
This is a deviation from merit-based admission that creates bitter experiences for girls who are left out despite having higher scores than some admitted boys. Nevertheless, the system works, as long as the course is desired by applicants. If the course is not much desired, the system fails, because boys cannot fill their quota and the free slots are filled with girls. Worse, many of the boys admitted with D or whatever is the minimum passing grade later turn out to be academically unfit.
With the job positions, it is easier. If the workforce is unduly feminized, this is a sure indicator that the salary is too low for the required qualifications and repels male applicants. Raise the pay until capable men show up.
The camel happily eats a cactus (!) but doesn’t like a lemon.
The lemon is sour. But even apart from the spikes I wouldn’t have thought a cactus would be tasty.
Poor camel was really offended! I’m particularly surprised because my neighbor’s goat happily eats all sorts of stuff that I feed him seamlessly in succession, like banana peels, onions, lemons or lemon peels, back to onions, then apples, tea bags (staple removed), etc. And he also eats stuff that’s quite thorny, like rose branches. Nothing anywhere near as thorny at those cacti in Western PA, tho.
The Lahtinen survey, if true and representative, shows why women should not have the vote in Finland. Clear majorities of women seem to believe several foolish and dangerous things, that no majority of men do. This would make it hard for the country to elect sensible legislators unless there is a minority-rule mechanism in there that suppresses these feminine views. I wish it could be put down to greater religiosity in women but I don’t know if that’s true that Finnish women are particularly religious in absolute numbers or excessively so compared to men to explain these results. Did female Harris voters in the U.S. strike you as more religious than the ones who supported Donald Trump?
These are not “feminine” views, these are power views. Women are more conformist than men, that’s why they are also more religious in societies where religion is supposed to be a good thing.
As for the idea to disenfranchise groups of responsible adult citizens because they are more likely to vote the wrong way, I don’t know where to begin, so I put a full stop before even beginning.
Delurking for the first and last time on this site which I’ve followed for a decade now : this is what it’s come to ? Women should be denied the vote ? Majorities of men do not believe foolish things on the same level ? For a person who delights in pointing out other people’s overgeneralisations and logical fallacies I find this rather hypocritical.
LOL, you high bro? Where does it say that I think women should be denied the vote? Let me do you a big favor and ban you for stupidity. You can still lurk here, but you cannot post here. What a maroon!
Prof. Coyne, you didn’t say that women should be denied the vote, but a commenter did (No. 11), and it went unchallenged, so Swiss Jan naturally concluded that you agreed with this opinion, or at least found it acceptable.
Above, another commenter (No. 9) opined that the high proportion of female students, faculty, teachers and administrations was the cause for the US wokeness problem, and this should be openly discussed. It apparently escaped his notion that other Western countries also allow women to study and teach, yet have not gone woke.
I must admit that I am deeply shocked by such “women are the problem” views expressed in intelligent, educated circles.
Swiss Jan’s comment is clearly a response to Leslie’s comment 11 who argues that Finish women should be denied the vote for having the wrong opinions. It’s not a general comment on the post itself. There isn’t anything particularly objectionable in it (in contrast with Leslie’s distasteful remarks about women’s voting).
Thank you, Jan.
It was another reader who said that. Reconsider.
I agree, Jan. I was shocked reading that. But I suppose I’m agreeing with you because I’m a woman and “more conformist.”
As I don’t subscribe to Sullivan’s Substack I didn’t read the article. I wonder if he also crowed about his good Catholic Christian “ambulating cadaver” dig at Biden.