Canadian parents killed their kid by withholding medical care in favor of maple syrup and berries

March 10, 2016 • 8:30 am

Even the rational Canadians have a sprinkling of loons among them, and by that I mean human loons, not the ones on the one-dollar coins.  The latest pair is David and Collet Stephan of Alberta, whose son, Ezekiel, became ill with meningitis four years ago. As the CBC reports, Ezekiel was ill for several weeks, but the Stephans, whose family runs Truehope Nutritional Support, a dubious food-supplement company in Raymond, Alberta, didn’t take their child to the doctor. Rather, they dosed him with a mishmash of ineffectual nostrums:

In a bid to boost his immune system, the couple gave the boy — who was lethargic and becoming stiff — various home remedies, such as water with maple syrup, juice with frozen berries and finally a mixture of apple cider vinegar, horse radish root, hot peppers, mashed onion, garlic and ginger root as his condition deteriorated.

Court heard the couple on tape explaining to the police officer that they prefer naturopathic remedies because of their family’s negative experiences with the medical system.

That didn’t work, of course. In the end, Ezekiel worsened, stopped breathing, and was airlifted to Calgary. But it was too late. He died—in March, 2012. Now David and Collet are on trial for “failing to provide the necessities of life” for their son. They’ve pleaded not guilty and have responded by claiming that “they are being unfairly persecuted and that their approach to health should be respected.”

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The late Ezekiel

Someone’s also set up a “Prayers for Ezekiel” Facebook page, with the following last-minute note, and on that page David Stephan defends the family’s actions.

Dear little Ezekiel was brought into the hospital after he stopped breathing on Tuesday night. He was rushed to Calgary and was on life support at the Children’s Hospital. He had no indication of Brain function but his organs were in great condition. The doctors gave us until the middle of Sunday to find improvement. Please send love, healing energy and strength in prayers to Ezekiel’s family. ♥

A heart, for crying out loud: an organ the family apparently doesn’t possess. There was also a “crowdfunder” page for legal defense, but it seems to have disappeared.

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The Stephans family. There are three kids left (note the picture of Ezekiel). What chance do they have?

While religion doesn’t appear to be involved here, faith is—crazy and unsubstantiated faith in the efficacy of these “natural” remedies for meningitis. David and Collet Stephan are due no “respect” for their “approach to health.” That’s equivalent to giving respect to those who think that epilepsy is caused by demonic possession.

We have science now, and we know how to treat meningitis. When caught early, it’s highly curable. Parents have no “right” to neglect cures known to work in favor of those that don’t, and neglectful parents deserve not respect, but scorn, opprobrium, and, yes, jail. If they’re not punished, it sends a message to parents that they can treat their children how they want.

At least the Canadian government is prosecuting them. In the U.S., in most states the Stephans wouldn’t be prosecuted if they pleaded that their treatment was based on religious faith— or, if they were prosecuted, would be given a slap on the wrist. But there should be no exemptions for such child neglect, religious or otherwise. Children are at the mercy of their parents’ faith, and can’t decide for themselves. When parents neglect medical care—which of course is free in Canada—in favor of superstition, and thereby harm their children, they should be punished, severely. Such punishment is known to deter others from curing via “faith”—as it has done with some religious sects in the U.S.

One line of the CBC’s report struck me:

The Crown told court the couple loved their son and are not accused of ignoring or killing him. But they should have sought medical help sooner, the Crown argues.

Yes, they may well have loved their child, but they loved their superstitions more. Were they truly ignorant, or willfully so? If they wanted to use supplements, they could have supplemented the maple syrup with national healthcare.

And what about the Stephan’s other three children? Will they grow up believing in nutritional supplements in place of scientific medicine? If so, they’re the equivalent of Christian Science children who get indoctrinated into that pernicious faith and thus perpetuate the killing of innocent children from generation to generation.

There should be no  exemptions, religious or otherwise, for parents seeking to avoid medical care by treating their children with faith, whether that faith involve God or maple syrup. The Stephans, who show no remorse, should be jailed, and their children given to other families willing to treat them properly when they become ill.

h/t: Russel

p.s. One note: in 47 of the U.S.’s 50 states, parents don’t have to get their kids vaccinated to attend public school if those parents have religious objections. In 20 states, you can get exemptions based on philosophical objections. The disparity between religion and philosophy is telling.

Readers’ wildlife photos

March 10, 2016 • 7:15 am
Last month Robert Lang sent some lovely photos of hummingbirds, which have at last reached the front of the queue.
From a recent trip to Costa Rica, we saw some beautiful hummingbirds at the Monteverde Biological Reserve and lower down on the slopes of Arenal volcano. At Monteverde, there is a hummingbird gallery with feeders set up that attract a wide variety to both the feeders and the general area, but we also saw several birds up along the mountain trails.
A Green-Crowned Brilliant (Heliodoxa jacula):
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The most striking was the Violet Sabrewing (Campylopterus hemileucurus):
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The colors come from diffraction of microstructure in the feathers, and so the color varies strongly with angle. From many angles, the Violet Sabrewing looks dark blue, but its downcurved bill is fairly distinctive:
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And a Purple-Throated Mountaingem (Lampornis calolaemus). Why no purple throat? This is a female.
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My favorite photo was of a Rufous-Tailed Hummingbird (Amazilia tzacatl), which we saw on a farm near Arenal volcano:
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And another photo that shows the entire bird for identification:
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Last, a shot of one of the feeders at Mondeverde. I wasn’t able to ID any of these; if any readers can assist, I’d be most appreciative.
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And, from Oz, some stars from reader Tim Anderson:
This is a picture of the Orion Nebula (Messier Catalogue number 42 – it sits at the tip of Orion’s “sword”). At this time of year in Australia, the Orion constellation is high in the sky early in the night, making it easy to find.
This picture is a single 60-second image taken with an Atik Infinity astronomical camera through an 80mm aperture telescope. The sky is heavily light polluted from surrounding streetlights (which explains the rather foggy background), but it captured a lot of the complex dust clouds around the nebula core.
o3-1

Thursday: Hili dialogue

March 10, 2016 • 6:17 am

One week from today I’ll be arriving in India. Yay! I’m visiting friends in Delhi, then spending 6 days or so in Bangalore, where I’ll be studying and photographing Mr. Das and his 40 cats, all with the aim of writing a children’s book based on this fascinating man. Finally, I fly to Bhubaneswar to fulfill the formal reason for my visit: two talks at the Institute of Life Sciences, part of the Indian Government’s Department of Biotechnology. Fun and noms in store!

On this day in 1804, the U.S. acquired the Louisiana Purchase: a tremendous bargain engineered by Thomas Jefferson. In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell made the first telephone call (“Mr. Watson, come here–I want you”), and, in 2000, the dot.com boom ended as the NASDAQ index reached its peak. Notable births on March 10 include Clare Booth Luce (1903), James Earl Ray (1928), Chuck Norris (1940), Sharon Stone (1958), and Dr. Devious (1989). Those who died on this day include Harriet Tubman (1913) and Zelda Fitzgerald (1948, in a fire at the mental institution where she lived). It’s also Tibetan Uprising Day.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej and Hili are having almost incomprehensible conversations. This one came with an explanation from Malgorzata: “Explanation: Hili wants to appear more erudite than she is. She doesn’t know what Nicomachean Ethics is. She thinks it is just ‘ethics’, like ‘work ethics’. So Andrzej is teasing her.”

Hili: What is nicomachean ethics?
A: A kind of non-governmental activity.
(Photo: Sarah Lawson)
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In Polish:
Hili: Co to jest etyka nikomachejska?
Ja: Rodzaj działalności pozarządowej.
(Zdjęcie: Sarah Lawson)
*********

Out in Winnipeg, Gus has nearly destroyed his Ikea box:

And another, with this explanation from Gus’s staff:

Here’s another video from today. He loves the combination of the catnip toy and the box. Lately, he will play hockey with the toy all over the living room, pick it up in his mouth and trot into the box to gnaw on it. It’s funny to watch. Shredding of the box has abated–it must be getting close to the way he wants it.

Bad news for International Women’s Day: murderers of Afghan woman suddenly let off lightly

March 9, 2016 • 1:45 pm

On March 23 of last year (has it been that long?), I reported a travesty in Afghanistan: a 27-year-old woman named Farakhunda was falsely accused of burning a Qur’an—the charges were cooked up—and then was brutally tortured, stoned, burned and murdered by a mob. Even if she had burned a Qur’an it would be barbaric, but it turned out that she hadn’t done that.

Her murder became a cause celebre for Afghan women, including those brave feminists campaigning against the repression of women in their land. Here’s Farakhunda’s coffin being borne by sad and angry women:

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Eventually 49 men were arrested for the murder, with four sentenced to death. So far so good—except that I don’t sanction the death penalty.

Now, however, a New York Times investigation has found that virtually all of those arrested have either had their sentences reduces to very little prison time, or have been let off the hook completely.

Those men were sentenced to death last year in what briefly looked like a rare moment of justice for Afghan women, and other convictions seemed imminent. But in the months afterward, as detailed last year in an investigation by The New York Times, failures at every stage of the justice process surfaced. Clear leads did not turn into arrests, and tough sentences were drastically reduced — including for those four men identified at the center of the violence, who had their death sentences turned into as little as 10 years in prison.

And now things have gotten worse:

Afghanistan’s Supreme Court has confirmed the decision to vacate those four death sentences, and nine other defendants also had their sentences reduced. Word of that decision came late Monday in a restrained announcement by the attorney general, and all day Tuesday it became the inescapable backdrop for International Women’s Day observations in Kabul.

. . . Of 49 men originally arrested in Farkhunda’s killing, only 13 have so far been given serious penalties — nearly all of them greatly reduced on appeal. All the death sentences were vacated.

In addition, many activists claim that some of those most responsible — and identified in cellphone video of the killing — have still not been arrested. “I believe the main perpetrators of this case, those who were behind it, are still not brought to justice,” said a female senator, Anarkali Honaryar.

. . . . . . Nineteen of the people arrested in connection with Farkhunda’s death were police officers accused of failing to intervene to save her; most of the policemen were given token penalties, such as pay reductions or cancellation of leave time while on duty.

Afghanistan’s First Lady, Rula Ghani, expressed her sorrow about these reduced sentences while addressing a gathering for International Women’s Day, but assured the listeners that reform was on the way. One can hope. . .

This travesty of justice is not that surprising, but it’s infuriating. I don’t mind the death sentences being vacated, but ten years in prison—is that enough?  And what about those who have simply been slapped on the wrist, or not arrested at all? If you’ve seen the videos (an informative BBC documentary is here, but be warned that it contains gruesome scenes), you’ll know that this was a brutal and bloody killing, and that the police stood by twiddling their thumbs while it happened.

It’s all a sad reminder that while women face inequities everywhere, one of the worst places to be a member of that sex is in the Middle East. I look forward to the day when Western Leftists and feminists recognize this, and, instead of turning their heads, make common cause with their sisters in the East.

Farkhunda
Farakunda

BioLogos tells “The Big Story”, becomes less scientific and more evangelical

March 9, 2016 • 12:30 pm

I haven’t been to the BioLogos site in a while, but I hied myself over there yesterday, and was appalled—but not surprised—to see that the site has become yet more evangelical while moving even farther away from scientific evolution. (Remember that the organization was founded by Francis Collins and Karl Giberson, both of whom have left it, to try to push evangelical Christians toward a scientific view of evolution.) Instead, the reverse movement has happened: Biologos has become less scientific and more evangelical.  And the evolution they’re pushing is no longer scientific, but theistic. In fact, it comes pretty close to Intelligent Design.

First of all, though, BioLogos now has a “faith statement” that resembles those of religious schools like Wheaton College or Bob Jones University. Have a gander:

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One wonders, given BioLogos‘s professed penchant for science, how they know the things above they profess to know. There are, for example, several empirical claims in “What we believe”, like the existence and resurrection of Jesus, the efficacy of prayer, the existence of miraclex, and the implied existence of an afterlife and heaven, all of which contradict claims of other faiths. How does BioLogos know that these claims are right and that contradictory claims, like those of Judaism or Islam, are wrong? Where’s the evidnce?

Further, the organization not only avows the existence of miracles, but also appears to be flirting not with intelligent design (the first sentence in bold below was bolded by me,  while the bits in paragraph 2 were bolded by BioLogos):

But while we accept the scientific evidence for evolution, BioLogos emphatically rejects Evolutionism, the atheistic worldview that so often accompanies the acceptance of biological evolution in public discussion. Evolutionism is a kind of scientism, which holds that all of reality can in principle be explained by science. In contrast, BioLogos believes that science is limited to explaining the natural world, and that supernatural events like miracles are part of reality too.

In contrast to EC [Evolutionary Creationism] YEC [Young Earth Creationism], and OEC [Old Earth Creationism], Intelligent Design (ID) does not explicitly align itself with Christianity. It claims that the existence of an intelligent cause of the universe and of the development of life is a testable scientific hypothesis. ID arguments often point to parts of scientific theories where there is no consensus and claim that the best solution is to appeal to the direct action of an intelligent designer. At BioLogos, we believe that our intelligent God designed the universe, but we do not see scientific or biblical reasons to give up on pursuing natural explanations for how God governs natural phenomena. We believe that scientific explanations complement a robust theological understanding of God’s role as designer, creator, and sustainer of the universe.

By accepting supernatural events like miracles, they are joining science with theology in a way they say they don’t (see the video in which BioLogos President Deborah Haarsma claims that there’s no conflict betwen science and religion). If miracles are really “part of reality”, then they can be documented. So which “miracles” does BioLogos accept? By all means let us have a list. Of course one of these is the Resurrection, the linchpin of Christianity, and that itself is a form of Intelligent Design. Once you accept the Resurrection, it’s not much of a leap to believe that God could have created a flagellum—or the Cambrian Explosion.

The second paragraph, while rejecting most forms of creationism, doesn’t do so with Intelligent Design Creationism (ID). While they’re cagey about it, what BioLogos professes, as you’ll see in the video below, is a form of Intelligent Design, one in which God apparently engineered not only the Big Bang, but also the evolution of humans in a specific place: on Earth. That might have involved supernatural processes, and in that case it would be an instance of ID.

Below is a new video, “The Big Story,” that’s appeared on the BioLogos site. It’s narrated by Reverend Leonard J. Vander Zee, a former Minister of the Christian Reformed Church.  Here’s he’s doing the classical accommodationist tap dance, arguing that evolution was simply God’s way of making humans. I urge you to listen to it, but defy you to do so without gritting your teeth. For this is Sophisticated Theology™ at its best. Seriously, take 12 minutes of your time to listen to what passes for sophisticated theological lucubration:

There are a number of problems with this story. Why, for instance, is (as Vander Zee argues) the Bible “the true story of the whole world”, but, as the Reverend also admits, gives only a knowledge of the ancient world that its inhabitants had? If the Bible is the “inspired and authoritative word of God”, why didn’t God tell the authors of Scripture to mention evolution?

And why did God use evolution instead of creationism to bring humans into being? It’s no good for theists to respond, “Because that’s the way God did it.” They have to give us a credible explanation. The usual one is that evolution is more “creative” that ex nihilo creation, but of course evolution involves immense amounts of suffering via natural selection, as well as the extinction, without descendants, of more than 99% of the species that ever lived. Why all that waste? If you say, “God’s nature and ways are inscrutable,” then you lay yourself open to the question, “Well, then how do you know that God is good, or all the other stuff you profess in your statement of belief?”

The big problem of theistic evolution is its clear odor of special pleading, and its failure to convincingly explain why God would go through a 14-billion-year rigamarole just to create a single species on a single planet to worship Him. It’s a lot of superfluous work, and the evolutionary explanation is just not convincing to those who aren’t already in the asylum. If only people like Vander Zee would use their considerable intellect for real work, rather than trying to reassure their fellow inmates that their delusions are real!

Note as well the teleology that pervades Vander Zee’s Big Story. God is constantly intervening to make evolution work the right way. E.g.,  “God caused matter to win out” (as opposed to the annihilation of matter by antimatter) after The Big Bang. And “God was delighted that it all went just according to plan.” Ah, a plan—it’s not naturalistic after all. And why would God be “delighted”? He’s omnipotent, for crying out loud—what he plans must occur.

And this: “The laughter of the Trinity rang through the cosmos. Everything was just right for the next step—life.” Clearly God’s running the whole show, step by planned step. (How can the Trinity laugh, by the way?)

As Vander Zee continued, he astonished me by claiming that God decided to put humans on Earth, focussing on the solar system and on the “one planet [that] orbited at right distance with light and heat optimal for life.” This, of course, means that the evolution of humans in God’s image was planned to happen on our planet, and therefore the evolution of humans was inevitable on Earth rather than elsewhere. As I show in Faith Versus Fact, such a statement is scientifically dubious based on what we know about evolution. Given billions of planets or gazillions of multiverses, you could make a case that intelligent life would evolve somewhere in the Universe, but not necessarily on Earth. Yet I’ve been criticized for arguing that Christians claim that human evolution was inevitable on this planet. Well, many of them do, and Vander Zee is one.

Other questions arise. Why did God make Earth so inhospitable for humans? Most of it is covered in water where we can’t live, and the planet is regularly roiled by earthquakes and other phenomena that kill us off. A lot of it is too cold and unproductive to support our species. Really, couldn’t have God done better than that?

It’s time to realize that theistic evolution, the teleological view of the process now touted by BioLogos, is both scientifically and theologically dubious. People like Vander Zee may be paid to transform scientific necessities into theological virtues, but we still have theological questions that they are obliged to answer.

I was recently accused of being so strident that I’d called religious people “morons.” I replied that I’d never done that, and challenged my interlocutor to give me a citation. He couldn’t. But when you listen to people like Vander Zee spout this kind of gibberish, it’s hard to refrain from at least calling their beliefs not only unsupported and incredibl, but also childish. The video above is simply twelve minutes of a laughable fairy tale, and shame on those who’ve convinced themselves it’s true.

George Martin died

March 9, 2016 • 10:38 am

According to the New York Times and other venues, George Martin, the hugely talented arranger and producer whose contributions to the Beatles’ albums got him dubbed “the fifth Beatle”, has died at 90. He was in fact SIR George Martin, knighted for his work. It’s hard to imagine the Beatles without him: songs like Eleanor Rigby, Penny Lane, In My Life, Yesterday, Strawberry Fields Forever, and the underappreciated Good Night would have been very different without him.

Twi**er is full of encomiums for the man; here’s a tw**t by Ringo:

There’s also a lovely statement by Paul McCartney on his website, which includes this:

It’s hard to choose favourite memories of my time with George, there are so many but one that comes to mind was the time I brought the song ‘Yesterday’ to a recording session and the guys in the band suggested that I sang it solo and accompany myself on guitar. After I had done this George Martin said to me, “Paul I have an idea of putting a string quartet on the record”. I said, “Oh no George, we are a rock and roll band and I don’t think it’s a good idea”.  With the gentle bedside manner of a great producer he said to me, “Let us try it and if it doesn’t work we won’t use it and we’ll go with your solo version”.  I agreed to this and went round to his house the next day to work on the arrangement.

He took my chords that I showed him and spread the notes out across the piano, putting the cello in the low octave and the first violin in a high octave and gave me my first lesson in how strings were voiced for a quartet. When we recorded the string quartet at Abbey Road, it was so thrilling to know his idea was so correct that I went round telling people about it for weeks. His idea obviously worked because the song subsequently became one of the most recorded songs ever with versions by Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Ray Charles, Marvin Gaye and thousands more.

Martin himself was a talented musician, and the first thing I thought of when I heard of his death was his piano playing on the bridge of one of the most beautiful Beatles songs, “In My Life”. From Wikipedia:

The song was recorded on 18 October 1965, and was complete except for the instrumental bridge .At that time, Lennon had not decided what instrument to use, but he subsequently asked George Martin to play a piano solo, suggesting “something Baroque-sounding”. Martin wrote a Bach-influenced piece that he found he could not play at the song’s tempo. On 22 October, the solo was recorded with the tape running at half speed, so when played back at normal pace the piano was twice as fast and an octave higher, solving the performance challenge and also giving the solo a unique timbre, reminiscent of a harpsichord.

You can hear that bridge between 1:28 and 1:47 in the original recording:

Martin worked with many other groups; his contributions were immense, and the Times piece details many of them, giving statements of remembrance and sorrow from his friends and admirers—including the Prime Minister.

George and the lads:

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Jesus ‘n’ Mo ‘n’ Euthyphro

March 9, 2016 • 10:10 am

Today’s Jesus and Mo, called, “strong,” is a reference to this bit of the hadith:Volume 4, Book 52, Number 261:

Narrated Anas bin Malik:

A group of eight men from the tribe of ‘Ukil came to the Prophet and then they found the climate of Medina unsuitable for them. So, they said, “O Allah’s Apostle! Provide us with some milk.” Allah’s Apostle said, “I recommend that you should join the herd of camels.” So they went and drank the urine and the milk of the camels (as a medicine) till they became healthy and fat. Then they killed the shepherd and drove away the camels, and they became unbelievers after they were Muslims. When the Prophet was informed by a shouter for help, he sent some men in their pursuit, and before the sun rose high, they were brought, and he had their hands and feet cut off. Then he ordered for nails which were heated and passed over their eyes, and whey were left in the Harra (i.e. rocky land in Medina). They asked for water, and nobody provided them with water till they died (Abu Qilaba, a sub-narrator said, “They committed murder and theft and fought against Allah and His Apostle, and spread evil in the land.”)

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This is absolutely identical with the Christian practice of ignoring those verses of the Bible (or orders of God) that they don’t like, casting them as metaphors, while taking the stuff they do like as true—the “essence of Christianity.” And it shows, as did Plato in his Euthyphro dialogue, that morality does not derive from god, but from other sources, and can only be supported by religious dicta. I consider that ancient dialogue to remain one of the best contributions of philosophy to practical discourse. Pity religious people pay no attention to it.

 

 

It’s going to be a bizarre election year

March 9, 2016 • 9:15 am

When I went to bed last night, I was pretty sure that Hillary Clinton would win not only the Mississippi primary (the Clintons always get heavy support from black voters), but the populous state of Michigan as well. I also thought, or rather hoped, that Donald Trump, now the target of heavy criticism by the doyens of his party, would lose in most of the four states having Republican primaries.

I was wrong.

Clinton won Mississippi handily—there was no doubt about that—but Sanders had a narrow win over Clinton in Michigan, a diverse state where his victory shows he has broad appeal (figures below from the New York Times). 
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Had Clinton won Michigan, it would have been all over for Sanders. The smart betting is still on Clinton to take the nomination, but this is going to be a drawn-out process, and every victory Sanders gains gives him more momentum. Still, Clinton is way ahead on delegates.

In the GOP race, Trump won three out of four states, beating Cruz by at least 8 percentage points. Cruz won in Idaho, but didn’t pick up many delegates in that depopulated state. Marco Rubio is basically now out of contention, though I once thought him the prime pick for a Republican nominee. (Who could have anticipated Trump’s victories?)
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It’s still a good bet that Clinton will win the Democratic nomination, but the Republican Party leaders are appalled by the prospect of running Trump against anyone. Not just because he seems unelectable (I’m getting less sure of that), but because he is the embodiment of greed, ambition, bigotry, and dislike of the marginalized. Of course, all that means is that he’s simply instantiates in a clear way the values of the GOP, but they don’t like those being so out in the open! Trump is in fact the very product of what Republicans stand for: he’s a monster they created, but now they don’t like it. They want those values, but expressed sotto voce, and by a slicker candidate.

The Times shows how a floor fight at July’s Republican convention in Cleveland could depose Trump, but that will leave the GOP with a last-minute candidate who would have to campaign furiously to stand a chance of beating Clinton. For I still think she’ll be the nominee, and though I’m growing less keen on her all the time (where is Elizabeth Warren?), she’s better than any Republican by a long shot. Most of the polls still show Clinton winning were she to face Trump in November, but don’t forget what happened in 2008. And even a Democratic victory won’t be the panacea we want, for if Congress remains Republican—don’t forget to vote for your Senators and Representatives!—we’ll have at least another four years of acrimony and stalemate. The only saving grace is that, even if Republicans succeed in postponing the choice of Antonin Scalia’s replacement until after January, we’ll still have a chance for a more liberal Supreme Court.

At times like these, I always think of the question that H. L. Mencken posed to himself, along with supplying the answer:

Q: If you find so much that is unworthy of reverence in the United States, then why do you live here?
A: Why do men go to zoos?