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.
I don’t believe I’ve posted the incomparable Philomena Cunk’s “Moments of Wonder” piece on Christmas, part of Charlie Brooker’s “End of Year Wipe: 2016”. (If I have, forgive me, and watch it if you haven’t already.) Don’t miss the mention of Richard Dawkins at 0:28.
h/t: David
Of course Presidents try to manipulate their images, but really, do they have to generate “laugh tracks” like the canned chuckles that accompanied the t.v. shows of my youth? What Tr*mp did at his CIA speech the other day is equivalent to what the producers did to the talking horse “Mister Ed.” He brought his own laugh track: a bunch of flaks and stooges charged with making him look good.
Here’s Donald Tr*mp’s speech at the CIA, delivered while standing in front of a wall naming all the CIA agents killed in the line of duty. As I’ve pointed out before, there was applause and laughter where it shouldn’t have been—unless all the CIA employees are toadies or Trumpies. Now, as the evidence has come out bit by bit, we know that that laughter and applause was engineered by Tr*mp and his team. First, the speech, though you’ve probably heard it or heard about it:
And then the fallout. It started with a piece by author and comedian Sarah Cooper, “This is psychological warfare“, in which she recounts tales of people who were there, asserting that the applause and laughs came from Trump stooges:
Cooper then quotes an article from Newsweek suggesting the existences of these plants:
But Trump’s seemingly warm reception might have been somewhat manufactured. The Washington Post’s longtime CIA watcher, Greg Miller, tweeted Saturday that the audience was “a self-selected bunch: CIA employees who signed up to come in on a Saturday to see the new POTUS. Mostly Trump voters.” A pool reporter selected to witness the closed event indicated “the cheering and clapping was not from the CIA staffers but people who accompanied Trump,” according to The Post’s fact-checker Glenn Kessler. He later clarified on Twitter that it was “unclear who the people on the side were. But the folks in the front apparently did not react until the end.”
Brennan deplored the rally-style event, according to his former deputy chief of staff Nick Shapiro. Brennan “is deeply saddened and angered at Donald Trump’s despicable display of self-aggrandizement in front of CIA’s Memorial Wall of Agency heroes,” Shapiro said in a statement provided to Newsweek. “Trump should be ashamed of himself.”
But now we have greater certainty, from CBS News as well as PoliticusUSA, that there was indeed a group of people brought by Trump to the CIA, a group whose job was to stand in the front and applaud the Dear Leader at appropriate times, as well as to laugh at his dimwitted humor.
CBS:
Authorities [“US government sources”] are also pushing back against the perception that the CIA workforce was cheering for the president. They say the first three rows in front of the president were largely made up of supporters of Mr. Trump’s campaign.
An official with knowledge of the make-up of the crowd says that there were about 40 people who’d been invited by the Trump, Mike Pence and Rep. Mike Pompeo teams. The Trump team expected Rep. Pompeo, R-Kansas, to be sworn in during the event as the next CIA director, but the vote to confirm him was delayed on Friday by Senate Democrats. Also sitting in the first several rows in front of the president was the CIA’s senior leadership, which was not cheering the remarks.
Officials acknowledge that Mr. Trump does have his supporters within the CIA workforce, many of whom were interspersed among the rank and file standing off to the president’s right.
The report adds that Trump’s stooges and his performance, standing in front of a wall of agents who’d sacrificed their lives, simply made the President’s relationship with the CIA worse than ever:
U.S. government sources tell CBS News that there is a sense of unease in the intelligence community after President Trump’s visit to CIA headquarters on Saturday.
An official said the visit “made relations with the intelligence community worse” and described the visit as “uncomfortable.”
At PoliticusUSA, Sarah Jones concludes:
While Trump supporters have used his Saturday visit to the CIA as proof that everyone who matters loves the new President, in reality his visit did more damage than good.
Trump needed to repair relations with the CIA after spending his time on the trail undermining the intelligence community, but instead he offended them in numerous ways to the degree that they are now confirming to the press that he brought his own cheering audience.
The real point here isn’t just that Donald Trump is very insecure, but more importantly that he tried to mislead the public into seeing the CIA as a partisan agency that wholly supported his very divisive campaign and now presidency. By doing that, Trump is working toward his larger goal of undermining the American voters’ trust in our government and media.
h/t: Matthew Cobb
When I read the title of this piece in PuffHo’s “Religion” section, “I am no better than Dylann Roof“, I took it as a determinist: all of us are capable of doing what Roof did if we had a certain combination of genes and environments. (As you may recall, Roof murdered 9 African-Americans at a Church in Charleston, South Carolina, and has been convicted and sentenced to death.) Of course even a determinist would still use use the word “better,” in that the author of the piece, believer Jonathan Walton, surely was not as bad for society as was Roof.
Author Walton is identified as “InterVarsity’s NYCUP Director, founder of the LoGOFF Movement and co-founder of Good Journey Stores. Jonathan works to call students and community leaders to put their faith into concrete, sustainable, Christ-like action.” This gives us a clue that he’s going to talk not about determinism, but God. But Walton does mention circumstances in Roof’s background that could have prompted his murderous acts, though it’s seen more as a historical background than as an environment that could affect Roof’s brain and his actions:
“Additionally, to call Roof uniquely evil, as Ta-Nehisi Coates has also pointed out, is to ignore the history that made him possible. Roof is not a historical anomaly as much as a representation of a past that America prefers to sweep under its rug rather than commit to cleaning up. When Roof told Tywanza Sanders, one of the victims in the church, “You rape our women and you’re taking over our country and you have to go,” he was echoing a vast history that has used such rationale to decimate black lives. Killing Roof does nothing other than soothe the moral conscience of a country that would rather not reckon with the forces that created and cultivated his ideology.”
One can interpret this simply as Roof’s act resulting in part from endemic racism that he internalized. And I agree with Walton that killing Roof does nothing positive: it is a retributive punishment levied for having made the “wrong choice”—when the right choice wasn’t possible.
But the real reason the author is no better than Dylann Roof is religious, and to me makes no sense:
Every person is made in the image of God ― including me, my wife, my daughter and Dylann Roof. There is nothing that I can do for God to love me any more or any less. There is nothing that I could say to compromise God’s desire to be close to me, to know me and for me to be close and know Him. And that is the same for Dylann Roof.
Think about that. I presume that author Walton believes that God gave us true libertarian free will, so that Roof did indeed choose to murder others when he might not have. Nevertheless, despite the misuse of this free will, God still loves him! What that means is that no matter how badly you act, no matter how many humans you murder or mistreat, God loves you just as much. What unites Roof and Walton is the fact that they are both sinners. No matter that some sins are worse than others (is murder as bad as masturbation?); all sins can be expunged if you simply accept Jesus as your savior.
That is the old doctrine of sola fide, salvation (or “justification”) through faith rather than works: no matter how bad a life you’ve lived, if you accept Jesus into your heart in your last moments, all will be forgiven and you’ll find a place in Heaven. That would hold, to use an extreme example, even for Hitler. Now, not all faiths adhere to this doctrine: it’s historically Protestant, and Catholics aren’t on board with it—as you know from having to confess your sins.
Sola fide is one of the things that theologians argue about but can never resolve because there’s no way to settle the issue, even in the Bible. For Scripture itself can be interpreted to favor justification through faith or justification through acts, depending on which verses you choose. It’s simply made-up stuff, but stuff that has conditioned the lives and behaviors of millions of people.
I have to say that if you’re a Christian who really believes that people can choose how to behave, the only kind of God that makes sense is one who rewards people for their acts and not their belief in Jesus. After all, think of the millions of people who reject Jesus simply because they weren’t exposed to Christianity: both before Christianity was founded and those who live in countries dominated by other faiths. Are they doomed for a circumstance that they didn’t choose, or because of when they were born?
Sola fide makes no sense to me, but it’s the basis of Walton’s article, an article in which he spreads a dubious theology all over HuffPo (and where’s the opposite view?). He ends with the explicit doctrine, expressed in rather infelicitious prose:
Dylann Roof might be sick, demented, or mentally ill ― but for sure he is sinful. His heart is deceitfully wicked above all things. And the only medication that cures this ailment is the love of Jesus. And those beautiful men and women that he murdered were studying the Jesus who died that we all might have life and have it abundantly ― including Dylann Roof. Not just the folks who do everything right or excluding those who do evil. That is the scandalous grace of God. That is precisely why we study scripture as followers of Jesus. Because when we don’t, we mistake the laws of America for the Law of God and they are clearly not the same.
We are saved by grace through faith so that no man can boast. It is not my actions that set me apart but only God’s grace. I have put my trust in the Living God and it is His work on the Cross and my faith in Him that saved me. Thus it is not my actions that save or condemn me, but the condition of my heart. And what the Bible says about Dylan Roof is also what it says about me. So instead of picking up a stone to kill him and gnashing my teeth in anger and disgust, I will pick up the Gospel of John and do like Cynthia, Susan, Ethel, Depayne, Clemente, Tywanza, Daniel, Sharonda and Myra and ponder instead what kind of Jesus cries out for His murderers to be forgiven; not for them to be killed.
Aren’t you glad that you don’t believe in this kind of nonsense?
Because I’ve been under the weather, I haven’t yet posted on the “alternative facts” issue, and I see from the discussion thread that several readers are aware of it. In brief, Tr*mp and his minions have spent their first three days in office not only dismantling the accomplishments of the last administration, but in waging war against the press (a familiar tactic of totalitarian regimes), and, of course, lying.
The clips and articles below show two things: a). the Tr*mp administration’s willingness to lie when convenient, and then to dissimulate and waffle when caught on those lies; and b). the clashes between the press and the administration that are going to be common within the next four (or, God help us, eight) years.
And it introduces the a new mantra that, I suspect, will be with us for as long as Tr*mp: “alternative facts.” “Alternative facts” are, in fact, lies—the lies that Tr*mp et al. introduce in place of truths reported by the press. As a superannuated scientist, I’m especially offended by this notion: something is (unless it’s ambiguous) either a fact or not a fact, and cannot simultaneously be both—unless you’re Schödinger’s cat.
So, first we have Tr*mp’s press secretary, Sean Spicer, using his initial press conference to attack press reports about the relatively sparse attendance at Tr*mp’s inauguration (compared to Obama’s inaugurations), the BustGate issue, and to tout Tr*mp’s “triumphant” reception at the CIA. Spicer took no questions: not a good start for relations between the media and the government.
In a great piece by Chris Cillizilla, the Washington Post has annotated some of Spicer’s remarks. You’ll see that some of the statements are highlighted in yellow, and if you click on those you’ll see the reporter’s take on Spicer’s remarks. There are many lies, a few truths, and a lot of equivocation. This use of the “Genius” feature to highlight statements is a very nice thing.
Here’s the video: start at 1:18. Then read the piece highlighted above.
And here’s a remarkable exchange (also written up in The Post) between Chuck Todd, reporter and moderator of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” and Kellyanne Conway, officially named as “Counselor” to President Tr*mp.
Todd presses Conway to explain why Spicer was trotted out to lie to the press in his first public appearance (Todd is talking about the attendance at the inauguration). Conway’s non-response is simply a threat to the press: “If we’re going to keep referring to our Press Secretary in those types of terms, we’re going have to rethink our relationship here.” She then brings up the Martin Luther King, Jr. bust, a press error that was immediately corrected. (Spicer, of course, did not correct his lies.)
At 1:32 Todd, exercised at Conway’s refusal to answer his question, presses her to explain why Spicer lied in his first appearance. She responds that “You’re saying it’s a falsehood, and. . . Sean Spicer gave ‘alternative facts.'” Todd gets even more worked up and says, “Alternative facts are not facts. . . they’re falsehoods.” (See Cillizilla’s piece to see how factual the “alternative facts” are.)
Todd’s right. Conway went on equivocating and bringing up other issues: she’s a master at midirection and dissimulating, but she’s not going to win over the press.
This exchange, which took place two days after Trump was inaugurated, is a harbinger of what we’re in for. Thank Ceiling Cat that America has a free press and won’t passively put up with lies. For its part, the Trump administration will do everything it can to mock the press, but it can do little to muzzle it given we have the First Amendment. Let us hope that people like Todd will keep pressing the Administration when they lie and equivocate. It can’t help but come across to at least some of the American people.
Fasten your seat belts; we’re in for a bumpy ride.
Alternative facts, indeed!
And, for more grins (we must not lose our sense of humor):
h/t: Hempenstein
by Grania
Welcome to a new week. Alas, Jerry and the co-authors of the original Hili Dialogues, Andrzej and Malgorzata are all ill. I hope you will join me in sending all three good wishes and a speedy recovery.
Today is the day that Nixon announced a peace accord had been reached in Vietnam (1973), and in 2003 NASA detected the last signal from Pioneer 10 as it sailed out of the Solar System. That was one of the probes that holds the gold plaques that were recommended by Carl Sagan containing a “Message from Earth”, cramming as much information as possible about our species and its achievements without using words. Can you identify what all this stuff means?
It is also the anniversary of the death (1976) of Paul Robeson, bass singer and activist. Instead of playing one of his more well-known performances from operas, I’ll show this video of Robeson singing a song that shows both sides of the main interests in his life: music and activism. This is “Warszawianka“, sung in both Polish and English. If you are interested in the Polish and English lyrics and a little of their history, you can read them here.
And finally we have the words of the day from Dobrzyń.
A: What are you looking there for?
Hili: Digital truth.
In Polish:
Ja: Czego tam szukasz?
Hili: Cyfrowej prawdy.
Note from JAC: I am slowly clawing my way back to the land of the living, and will rest a bit this morning before essaying a walk to work. There I’ll see if I can do anything substantive, as I have a piece of writing on deadline as well as some posts planned for here. Meanwhile, Grania (peace be upon her) called my attention to some get-well kitteh cards, which include this gem:
And I’ll add that today is the birthday of Ed Roberts (1939-1965), a disability-rights activist and the first student with severe disabilities to attend the University of California. (He was paralyzed from the neck down by polio.) Google has honored him today with a Doodle:
Finally, here’s an old “60 Minutes” piece on Roberts:
Sadly, there was only one entry in my contest on Squirrel Appreciation Day, involving readers sending a good picture of themselves helping squirrels. (Don’t you people like squirrels?) The good news is that the single entry was a great picture, and so reader Christopher Moss wins a free copy of Faith Versus Fact with a fact-based squirrel drawn in. (Of course, all animals are fact based since none of them are crazy enough to believe in gods.)
His notes are indented:
I read your post and ran out to grab a photo of one of the three red squirrels that come to be fed on my deck.This one happens to be #2 with respect to dominance as far as I can tell, basing this on who chases off whom. He is nowhere near as fat as #1! It’s interesting to see how they have become much more tolerant of each other as the weather has become colder—my understanding is that this is expected as they have to huddle up together to keep warm whilst they take their long sleeps through the winter. Perhaps we humans might concede that those we sleep with are to be treated differently when we are out at the restaurant!
Yesterday, one day after their inauguration, Vice-Pr*s*d*nt Pence and Pr*s*d*nt Trump addressed the CIA at their headquarters in Langley, perhaps to assure them that the new administration was on board with them. (Trump had been critical of our intelligence agencies during the campaign.)
Politico has posted the full text of both men’s remarks to the CIA, and you should read it if a.) you need confirmation of how clueless Trump is (Pence’s words were pretty tame) or b.) you want a good laugh. I’d use the word “insane,” but that’s considered ableist.
For what we see here is nothing more than a “Trump mind dump.” It’s as if he hadn’t prepared anything, was slightly stoned, and just decided to talk as if he were on a reality show. Not only that, but once again he decided to go after the press. His target was Time Magazine, which had apparently criticized him for removing a bust of Martin Luther King, Jr. from the Oval Office. Trump says that was untrue, but why the hell did he even bring it up (as well as his general dislike of the media) at a CIA briefing?
I’ll give just two excerpts from The Donald’s remarks. The first refers to Representative Mike Pompeo (a Republican from Kansas), whom Trump has nominated to be head of the CIA. Pompeo, by the way, has told Congress that, if confirmed, he would consider bringing back “enhanced interrogation methods (aka torture), including waterboarding.
Note that the speech is punctuated with laughter, which, given the fact that it wasn’t funny, means that the CIA is full of either Trumpies or toadies.
Here are Trump’s words to the CIA:
But Mike [Pompeo] was literally — I had a group of — what, we had nine different people? Now, I must say, I didn’t mind cancelling eight appointments. That wasn’t the worst thing in the world. But I met him and I said, he is so good. Number one in his class at West Point.
Now, I know a lot about West Point. I’m a person that very strongly believes in academics. In fact, every time I say I had an uncle who was a great professor at MIT for 35 years who did a fantastic job in so many different ways, academically — was an academic genius — and then they say, is Donald Trump an intellectual? Trust me, I’m like a smart persona. (Laughter.) And I recognized immediately. So he was number one at West Point, and he was also essentially number one at Harvard Law School. And then he decided to go into the military. And he ran for Congress. And everything he’s done has been a homerun. People like him, but much more importantly to me, everybody respects him. And when I told Paul Ryan that I wanted to do this, I would say he may be the only person that was not totally thrilled — right, Mike? Because he said, I don’t want to lose this guy.
But you will be getting a total star. You’re going to be getting a total gem. He’s a gem. (Applause.) You’ll see. You’ll see. And many of you know him anyway. But you’re going to see. And again, we have some great people going in. But this one is something — is going to be very special, because this is one, if I had to name the most important, this would certainly be perhaps — you know, in certain ways, you could say my most important. You do the job like everybody in this room is capable of doing. And the generals are wonderful, and the fighting is wonderful. But if you give them the right direction, boy, does the fighting become easier. And, boy, do we lose so fewer lives, and win so quickly. And that’s what we have to do. We have to start winning again.
If I bolded everything that was unseemly in that statement (“the fighting is wonderful,” etc.), it would all be bolded. But wait–there’s more! This followed the remarks above:
You know, when I was young and when I was — of course, I feel young. I feel like I’m 30, 35, 39. (Laughter.) Somebody said, are you young? I said, I think I’m young. You know, I was stopping — when we were in the final month of that campaign, four stops, five stops, seven stops. Speeches, speeches, in front of 25,000, 30,000 people, 15,000, 19,000 from stop to stop. I feel young.
After that one expects to hear something like, “I’ll be here all week, folks. Be sure to try the roast beef!”
Then he takes on the media. Why on earth did he add stuff like this? Read it carefully, as it’s larded with narcissism.
And the reason you’re my first stop is that, as you know, I have a running war with the media. They are among the most dishonest human beings on Earth. (Laughter and applause.) And they sort of made it sound like I had a feud with the intelligence community. And I just want to let you know, the reason you’re the number-one stop is exactly the opposite — exactly. And they understand that, too.
. . . We had another one [a supposed lie by the media] yesterday, which was interesting. In the Oval Office there’s a beautiful statue of Dr. Martin Luther King. And I also happen to like Churchill, Winston Churchill. I think most of us like Churchill. He doesn’t come from our country, but had a lot to do with it. Helped us; real ally. And, as you know, the Churchill statue was taken out — the bust. And as you also probably have read, the Prime Minister is coming over to our country very shortly. And they wanted to know whether or not I’d like it back. I say, absolutely, but in the meantime we have a bust of Churchill.
So a reporter for Time magazine — and I have been on there cover, like, 14 or 15 times. I think we have the all-time record in the history of Time Magazine. Like, if Tom Brady is on the cover, it’s one time, because he won the Super Bowl or something, right? (Laughter.) I’ve been on it for 15 times this year. I don’t think that’s a record, Mike, that can ever be broken. Do you agree with that? What do you think?
But I will say that they said — it was very interesting — that Donald Trump took down the bust, the statue, of Dr. Martin Luther King. And it was right there. But there was a cameraman that was in front of it. (Laughter.) So Zeke — Zeke from Time Magazine writes a story about I took down. I would never do that because I have great respect for Dr. Martin Luther King. But this is how dishonest the media is.
Now, the big story — the retraction was, like, where? Was it a line? Or do they even bother putting it in? So I only like to say that because I love honesty. I like honest reporting.
Certainly he does, so long as the “honesty” is favorable to himself.
Oy!
h/t: Matthew Cobb
What I thought was a mild cold has developed into a bad cold, and though it didn’t reach the flu stage, I suspect I’ve got one of those viruses that’s on the spectrum. (I did get my flu shot last fall, as all of you should have.)
At any rate, after a day in bed I’m on the mend, and if the laws of physics are salubrious, I’ll be posting again tomorrow. In the meantime, Greg has promised to put up one post today, and if you’ve come over here and don’t find anything, my apologies.
I suggest—and this is an experiment—that readers may want to have a discussion thread: bring up those things that are on your mind (politics, science, whatever); and we’ll see if this works.
As for me, unshaven and unwashed, I’m throwing on my clothes, driving to the store, and loading up on juice and soup.
Onwards and upwards.