it's called "natural selection" for a reason

evolutionary biologist jerry coyne @ whyevolutionistrue:

one reader wanted to know if i was going ask [dr. eugenie scott, former head of the national center for science education (NCSE) and known as "genie" to everyone] about theistic evolution — the view that evolution happened, but was somehow guided by god. they wanted to know if she considered that "real" evolution.

i responded on this site that i hardly wanted to get into a kerfuffle about the issue with genie in public. after all, i know her position on it (theistic evolution is okay), she knows mine, and i didn't want to do battle in public, particularly when she was giving a keynote talk.

but this website is a different matter.

in fact, the question of theistic evolution did come up in genie's Q&A, when one of the audience asked genie whether she considered theistic evolution "science."

the question clearly discomfited her a bit, but i knew how she would answer. she said, correctly, that there are a huge variety of positions falling under "theistic evolution," ranging from pure deism (god created the universe, and then evolution proceeded purely naturalistically) to other forms in which god intervened to a greater or lesser extent. as we know, those interventions range from subtle ones (god tweaked certain mutations making it more likely that they would be more likely to be adaptive, or more likely to create human features), to less subtle (god inserted a soul in the human lineage) to pretty drastic interventions (god let some species evolve naturally, but brought others into existence ex nihilo).

theistic evolution is in fact the most widely accepted form of evolution in america, at least for the evolution of our species. a gallup poll in 2012 showed that 46% of americans thought god created humans ex nihilo within the last 10,000 years, 32% thought that humans evolved, but with the help of god, and only 15% thought that humans evolved without any intervention by god. in other words, roughly one in seven american accepts evolution in the same way scientists do. for every american who accepts naturalistic evolution, more than two accept god-guided evolution. (i think accepting that "god guided the process" rules out pure deism.)

genie said something like this (i didn't write down her words), "what we care about is getting the science accepted, and yes, all of these positions are compatible with science, so i have no problem considering them as science." in other words, she'd be okay if she or the NCSE could simply make religious people accept theistic evolution. for, in her view, they'd be accepting a scientific view rather than a religious one. and then they might be our allies in keeping straight creationism out of public schools.

and here i think genie is wrong — dead wrong.

theistic evolution is neither science nor scientific. while it may help some religious people oppose the teaching of strict creationism in schools (the real goal of the NCSE's accommodationism), it inculcates people with the idea that god and his supernatural acts can work hand-in-hand with physical laws to bring about a process that scientists think is purely naturalistic.

further, we have evidence against certain types of theistic evolution. there doesn't appear to be any telelogical forces driving evolution in a certain direction; there is no evidence that mutations are more likely to be useful when the environment changes, so that mutations for longer fur in mammals would occur more frequently when the climate becomes colder (this is what scientists mean when we say that "mutations are random", although "indifferent" is a better word than "random"); and we don't see violations of darwinian natural selection, that is, we don't see natural selection creating "irreducible complexity," as intelligent-design advocates maintain.

as far as we can see, then, evolution, like all things that occur in nature, is purely naturalistic; it does not require or give evidence for the intervention of a god. as laplace famously said, "we don't need that hypothesis." theistic evolution says otherwise. and that's unscientific. there is, after all, a reason that darwin called his best idea natural selection, not "divinely-aided selection."

think about it. saying that theistic evolution is scientific is equivalent to saying that yes, chemical bonds form between sodium and chloride ions, but those bonds are formed with the help of god. why not have theistic chemistry? or that the universe is expanding, but god is helping it expand. why not have theistic cosmology?

those hypotheses are unscientific because they not only posit an intervention that isn't observed, but invoke a superfluous and supernatural intervention to explain a process that can be explained adequately using pure naturalism. god is a useless "add-on" here, and that's not the way science works. science works best when we make theories that assume no more than we need to. while it's logically possible for god to be guiding particles and directing evolution, we have no evidence that this is true. theistic evolution is not required by science; it is, as we must admit, simply something tacked on to make religious people feel better about a process that, if purely naturalistic, is taken as a direct attack on their worldview.

further, theistic evolution is, to use genie's own term, a "science stopper." if you say that god is making mutations, or expanding the universe, then we need investigate no further. what we don't understand can simply be fobbed off on the will of a divine being. there's need to look for that elusive naturalistic explanation.

the tactic of considering theistic evolution as "scientific" is a purely political one. the NCSE and others (viz., the american association for the advancement of science and the national academy of sciences), feel that to get evolution accepted and taught in schools, we need religious allies. and to get those allies, we have to accept their view that evolution was guided by god, even though we don't believe it ourselves.

science makes progress only when it doesn't evoke a god. even the NCSE accepts that "methodological naturalism" — the rejection of divine hypotheses — is the way that science has progressed. so why reject god when you're doing science, but then admit on the sly that he might be in there working away subtly and, perhaps, undetectably? that is a political view, not a scientific one, and it dilutes and pollutes the scientific enterprise. it also gives the public the false idea that theistic evolution is somehow okay with scientists.

it isn't. no evolutionary biologist puts in her scientific papers a note to the effect that god might be involved in the process she's studying. anyone doing that would be laughed out of the field. so if scientists reject theistic evolution in their own work, why accept it when the public believes it? it's pure hypocrisy to do so, and a blatant attempt to coddle believers.

i'd rather stand up for the purity and naturalism of science than accept forms of science that invoke god. yes, i'll be glad to work with religious people to help expel creationism from schools — and theistic evolution is a form of creationism!. what i won't do is give my imprimatur to a form of evolution that includes the supernatural. until we have some evidence for the supernatural in science — and we certainly don't at this point — let's not grant it simply to gain allies. that is a false alliance that, in the end, creates a public misunderstanding of science.

it is ironic that the national center for science education is willing to include theistic evolution as "scientific." it is wrong, it is hypocritical, and it's a cynical political tactic unbecoming to scientists. the NCSE has done terrific work in keeping creationism out of schools. but in saying that theistic evolution is "scientific," as genie did on sunday, we are shooting ourselves in the foot. what is science profited if we help evolution get accepted more widely, but in so doing lose our own scientific soul?

u.s. v. g.o.p.

atul gawande @ the new yorker:

this kind of obstructionism has been seen before. after the supreme court’s ruling in brown v. board of education, in 1954, virginia shut down schools in charlottesville, norfolk, and warren county rather than accept black children in white schools. when the courts forced the schools to open, the governor followed a number of other southern states in instituting hurdles such as “pupil placement” reviews, “freedom of choice” plans that provided nothing of the sort, and incessant legal delays. while in some states meaningful progress occurred rapidly, in others it took many years. we face a similar situation with health-care reform.

"better than science"

after forty long hours in the desert and forty long hours on the mountaintop, indefatigable texas birther rudy davis descends unto youTube to deliver the gospel:

... i probably spent about eighty hours, maybe more, so far researching this, reading books, going to various websites, using the knowledge that i've gained in my physics class — lemmee share a little bit about my background and this isn't me like braggin' on my background, there's nothin' to brag about. y'know, when you ask me about my credentials are, i know how to use a shovel and, uh, i can clean a pretty good litter box, but i did go through four years of college and obtained a electrical engineering degree, with a minor in mechanical engineering, and, um, i passed my calculus classes. i loved calculus, i love math. i, uh, passed my trigonometry, geometry, analytical geometry, um, y'know, physics, uh, thermodynamics — i loved all that stuff. i love, y'know, mathematics and science since it was one of my favorite topics.

i'm not, um, completely ... uneducated. but i'm not the smartest guy in the world either. i'm not here saying i'm smarter than anybody — i think, for these things, the lord has to lead you into this, sort of, belief, uh, and you have to have a biblical perspective in order to understand what i'm about to say ...

and after a short digression into 9-11 trutherism:

... so i want you to think back, y'know, when somebody first told you that, t—, your reaction. 'cause what i'm about to say, i'm not sayin' for shock value. i couldn't care less if you like me or you din't like me, i could care less about, uh, how many subscribers i have. what i'm about to say i'm telling you because i believe it's the truth and i know 99.99 percent of you are going to reject it. i rejected it when i first heard it, until i started lookin' into it more, 'til i started reading my bible, 'til i started, uh, understanding, uh, a little bit more about the things that we've been told, and, uh, i would just ask you to look into it before you jump to the conclusion that i'm an absolute nut. and, again i'm just telling you this because there are — there's gonna be point-zero-zero-zero-one percent of you that, uh, is gonna receive it, just like, just like i received it and just like, y'know, there, there's a few, there's a few that can weed through all the BS that we've been told in this world and see what's goin' on.

but i wanna declare, uh, that i am a geocentrist. and uh, what a geocentrist is, is someone who believes that the earth is the center of the universe and does not move. lemmee say that again. the earth does not move, it does not rotate, it does not revolve, it does not, uh, go around the sun and it does not wobble. the bible says the earth cannot be moved. and, uh, that's what i'm goin' with.

and, y'know, when it comes to copernicus, galileo, uh, kepler, uh, carl sagan and einstein, all of 'em are flim-fam— flam artists. i believe they're all con artists and they're basically in a satanic deception that put forth satan's very, very first blue-ribbon lie. y'know — well, uh, you could go all the way back to the garden of eden, so i wouldn't say it's his first, but, uh, satan's blue-ribbon lie, at least one of them, is that the, uh, earth moves around the sun. okay? that absolutely is not true and i believe it with all my heart.

... now do i believe that carl sagan, einstein, kepler, uh ... uh ... copernicus and galileo were in some, y'know, plot where they communicated with each other? no, i don't believe they were communicatin' with each other through the centuries but what i do believe is, uh, that satan allows certain people to be puffed up with pride an' this world promotes, uh people and they get too smart for their, for their own good an' they just put out absolute BS. i mean we've just been lied to upon lied to.

... some people say that y'know, uh "the bible does, does not say how the heavens go, but the bible tells us how to go to heaven." in other words, they're tryin' to say that the bible is not a sci— is not a science book. but i would say that the bible is better than a science book. the bible is better [chuckling] than any science book ever written. and if it says the earth doesn't move, then it doesn't freakin' move. and uh, that's one thing you need to know about me. and, and you may be a christian watching this thinkin' i'm an absolute kook, but know this: when i read that bible, the difference between me and other christians is when i read that bible i believe what it says. i don't try to fit into my little, uh, box of how i think god should be or how the universe should be. if the bible says it, that's the way that it is. and i don't believe the king james bible has any errors.

that's right, folks, a hardcore wingnut conspiracy theorist who never doubted a rumor found in his yahoo inbox is calling a satanic hoax on the last 500 years of scientific discovery. eighty hours of what passes as deep thought in rudy's mind and the bible (king james version only, accept no imitations!) is all any right-thinking patriot needs.

to supply the perfect counterpoint to rudy's admitted defiant anti-intellectualism, enter working physicist sean carroll, someone who's certainly spent more than eighty hours on the subject. sean casually explains what real scientists and real mathematicians already know — the "known knowns", so to speak, wherein neither god nor satan nor any other strange supernatural, metaphysical or paranormal beings, forces or powers are anywhere to be found:

so, the laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely understood. the reason why i emphasize this is because scientists, and skeptics for that matter, love to go right to the unknown things. there are many, many things that are unknown, from dark matter to quantum gravity to finance, okay? but there are also things that are known. and among the things that are known are how the matter around us in our everyday life actually works. and it's not just "we have a theory that works." it's better than that. we know that there are no new parts of nature that we haven't found yet that could exert a substantial influence over our everyday lives. there are no new particles or forces that could be relevant to your everyday life that science hasn't found yet.

... so we've looked. there could be plenty of new particles of nature, but they must be either weakly interacting, too heavy to create or too short-lived to detect. what that means is that they can't possibly be very relevant to your everyday life. they cannot affect your consciousness, you cannot blame them for being in a bad mood. you and everyone you know is made up of the standard model of particle physics and nothing else.

... we've ruled out every possible force that is both long range and strong enough to notice.

... the conclusion is that as far as the immediate world of experience is concerned, as far as what you see and touch and taste and feel as you go through your everyday life, we have the theory. we're done. that does not mean that we understand everything, but the underlying laws that describe what baseballs are made out of, or tables or living beings, we understand that. it's electrons and quarks with masses from the higgs field interacting via those forces. that's the everyday world.

... when it comes to the everyday world, we have figured out what the pieces are and what direction they can move in. that does not make us good world players or chess players. it does constrain the kind of games you can play. if someone has come up with a new chess strategy that involves the rook moving diagonally, you know that you can rule that out without listening to their elaborate presentation on it. likewise, if someone has a great new theory of living their lives that involves homeopathy or astrology, you can tune them out without listening to the details. because just knowing the fact that the standard model of particle physics is the right theory of the matter that makes up the everyday world is immediately enough to rule out a whole host of possible phenomena. anything you can't do with electrons, protons, neutrons, gravity and electromagnetism, you can't do in your basement.

... you cannot bend spoons with your mind — unless your mind tells your other arm to go out and bend the spoon. but you can't just do it with a new force emanating from your cortex because there are no such forces. you cannot predict the future, see around corners, the position of saturn when you were born sadly irrelevant to the rest of your life, blah-blah-blah ...

and in fact we known there is no life after death. sometimes even atheists and skeptics like to be open-minded about this because we haven't done all the right double-blind experiments, blah-blah-blah ... forget it! if you believe in life after death, tell me what particles contain the information that moves your soul from place to place. is it electrons? 'cause those would be easy to notice cause electrons are electrically charged and it's actually quite a lot of charge. is it atoms? but the atoms don't move very much when you die. if you believe that there's some way that you have an immortal soul that travels from place to place, then you're not just saying we don't know how it works, you are saying that our current knowledge of the laws of physics is wrong. which means you better give me a good reason to believe that our current knowledge of the laws of physics is wrong, because it's not, and i'm going to move on to more interesting things.

most of science's work, certainly that part which concerns everday human experience, has been done. science can explain through natural causes everything we do and everything that effects us between waking and sleeping, including waking and sleeping. whatever important unknowns remain lie beyond john q. public's quotidian concerns.

sean argues that even gravity, one of the universe's most ubiquitous, constant and far-reaching forces, can be ignored as "utterly, utterly irrelevant" to our lives since it is also one of the weakest. air travelers might quibble, but his point is that the activity of any purported forces or beings that supposedly affect or manipulate human lives on any regular and significant level would have to be stronger than gravity — and therefore, like gravity, noticable and provable. so we would have already noticed by now if any undiscovered entities were regularly intervening in the world by stopping bullets from hitting people or picking sides at sporting events. and we certainly know enough to ignore out-of-hand rudy's entreaties for us to "educate ourselves" by following up on his so-called research since it defies everything real scientists have discovered.

to justify itself, every religion claims to be not just relevant but inseparable and indispensible to the human experience — all while hiding just beyond reach in the supernatural. but science has yet to find any human activity that can't be explained by some combination of the natural forces we've thus far discovered. despite or because of the worst abuses of religion, the history of science has been the inexorable balkanization of gods and ghosts onto smaller and smaller islands of possibility. sorry rudy, but as of today, atlantis is sunk — even the king james version.

there is a cult of ignorance in the united states, and there has always been. the strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge".
— issac asimov

stuff i don't believe in

1. religion and the supernatural
   • gods and deities
   • angels, demons and the semi-devine
   • heaven, hell and the afterlife
   • ghosts and poltergeists
   • souls, reincarnation and past lives
   • etc
2. prophecy and fortune-telling
3. witchcraft, magic and talismans
4. monsters and weird creatures
   • vampires
   • zombies
   • werewolves
   • fairies and elves
   • big foot, yetis and sasquatch
   • etc
5. pseudoscience and superstition
   • astrology
   • numerology
   • palmistry
   • dowsing
   • deepak chopra
   • etc
6. the paranormal
   • psychic powers
   • clairvoyance
   • telepathy
   • telekenisis
   • astral projection
   • etc
7. science fantasy
   • ufos and alien visitations
   • time travel
   • faster-than-light travel
   • etc
8. conspiracy theory
   • too numerous to list


9. etc

or in other words, just about anything left on the history channel.

while i enjoy speculation as well as anyone, ultimately i believe only in reason, the power of logic and the empirical method of acquiring facts and knowledge through the gathering and testing of evidence. if you come to me professing a belief in ghosts or ufos, don't expect me to take you seriously and do expect me to be skeptical of everything else you say.

the wrong boys

"the evidence shows that mr. paterno was made aware of the 1998 investigation of sandusky, followed it closely, but failed to take any action, even though sandusky had been a key member of his coaching staff for almost 30 years, and had an office just steps away from mr. paterno's," the report's conclusion reads.

"at the very least, mr. paterno could have alerted the entire football staff, in order to prevent sandusky from bringing another child into the lasch building. messrs. spanier, schultz, paterno and curley also failed to alert the board of trustees about the 1998 investigation or take any further action against mr. sandusky. none of them even spoke to sandusky about his conduct.

"in short, nothing was done and sandusky was allowed to continue with impunity."

quote of the day

courtesy of pz meyers, one-man walking existential threat to church ladies everywhere:

i have zero sympathy for intelligent people who stand before a grandiose monument to lies, an institution that is anti-scientific, anti-rational, and ultimately anti-human, in a place where children are being actively miseducated, an edifice dedicated to an abiding intellectual evil, and choose to complain about how those ghastly atheists are ruining everything. those people can just fuck off.

almost famous

dreams die hard, sometimes.

thankfully this time, for the sake of everyone within the probable blast range of this aspiring young celebrity, his dreams of glory fell victim to the same reckless killer that's snuffed the dreams of many a would-be super-predator — his own lack of maturity:

sisseton, SD — an 18-year-old high school student stockpiled bomb-making materials in his bedroom and wrote about wanting to blow up his school, target individuals he hated, rape women and "become the world's most infamous sociopath," authorities said. joseph thomas hansen, of claire city, was arrested aug. 23 after someone tipped off a police school resource officer that hansen had talked about an attack, authorities said. ... hansen pleaded not guilty tuesday to selling, transporting or possessing an explosive device and possessing substances with the intent to make a destructive device, and is due back in court sept. 14. if convicted of all charges, he could face up to 25 years in prison, jackley said. ... during a search of hansen's room, investigators found a list hansen wrote of things he wanted to do, including blow up sisseton high school — where he was set to begin his senior year the day after his arrest — torture and rape women and "become the world's most infamous sociopath," according to an affidavit filed monday. he listed 39 people he hated and the reasons why, and he researched the 1999 columbine school massacre in littleton, colo., in which two student gunmen killed 12 classmates and a teacher and wounded 26 others before committing suicide, investigators said. detectives also found drawings of swastikas, documents outlining two attempts to make napalm, instructional materials on how to make bombs, four guns and a video showing two explosive devices detonating, according to the affidavit. two people whose names were redacted in the affidavit told roberts county sheriff's investigators that hansen told them he "had enough fireworks to blow up sisseton and that the first day of school would be a short one," the court documents state. during an initial interview with police, hansen said he was fascinated by mass murder, read books on the subject and wanted to know what makes killers tick, authorities said. he also expressed an interest in the marine corps, demolitions and becoming a criminal profiler, according to the court documents. ... amanda ostby, a 24-year-old hairdresser at little shop for hair in claire city, said she was shocked by the arrest. "he was a nice kid, well mannered," said ostby. "he was a super nice kid so it's pretty unbelievable."

hansen sounds like a highly motivated young man and he seems to have come close to realizing his dream, since it appears that, above and beyond petty teen revenge, spattering his name across the pages of history was his real ambition. he "wanted to know what makes killers tick" and immersed himself in his chosen craft for a shot at outclassing everyone that's come before him.

but most sociopaths with violent tendencies succumb to those yearnings well before the time they reach a level of emotional maturity and intellectual aptitude that might help them better resist crime, better plan bigger and more ambitious crimes and better evade detection and capture. once captured, all development not related to simply surviving in prison comes to an abrupt halt. this means that unless they are born in an essentially lawless culture that exploits their talents and gives them license to operate freely and openly (think hitler's germany or pol pot's cambodia), most sociopaths fail to advance to the higher levels of sociability and status that would make them as dangerous and terrible as any tyrant straight out of history, such as vlad the impaler. the upwardly-mobile ted bundy was the exception that proves the rule and outside of hollywood there are no hannibal lecters. such monsters can only be scripted, not born.

so a closer inspection of hansen's dreams reveals some of their more childish aspects. he wanted to both blow up his school, for starters, as well as torture and rape (and presumably kill) women. it is difficult to envision how he hoped to fulfill both, since his first wish, without an escape plan, amounts to an apocalyptic suicidal act, while the second demands a commitment to an continuing career. one is the act of a mass murderer and the other is the act of a serial killer. one brings instant notoriety, the other requires prolonged anonymity. a person cannot have both and, after hansen's arrest, it is all but certain that, beyond the scope of local news, he will never have either.

hansen's dreams need not have ended this way. his interest in "the marine corps, demolitions and becoming a criminal profiler" shows that he knew full well that there are options on the civil side of the law for people like him who are attracted to high-octane violence. unless, that is, one is dreaming of instant fame ...

quote of the day

sherry melby, moron:

i don't think evolution should be associated with our school.

bonus from mike howard, student:

the theory of evolution never even crossed my mind.

horseshit

adele fergusen's column is a huge pile of manure — and those are the author's own words, not mine.

not that i disagree.

in her march 13 political column, "why do blacks continue to support democrats?", that appeared in the kitsap peninsula business journal — which has already scrubbed the article from its site — adele enjoined her "black brothers and sisters" to abandon their "perpetual victimhood" and recognize that their past enslavement was in fact "the work of god", and that being bought and shipped as cargo was their big ticket to the so-called land of the free.

along the way, in building her case against the democratic party, she takes aim at those who criticized president bush at the february 7th funeral for coretta scott king and fires several shots at unions. curiously, she cites not a single positive reason for blacks to support the republican party.

one of these days before i die, i hope to see a shift in the attitudes of so many of my black brothers and sisters in this great country we share, from perpetual victimhood, to pride in their achievements on the road from slave to american citizen. remember ronald reagan’s story about the kid who had to shovel a huge pile of manure? he went about it with such joy he was asked why and said, “with all that manure, there’s got to be a pony in there somewhere.” the pony hidden in slavery is the fact that it was the ticket to america for black people. i have long urged blacks to consider their presence here as the work of god, who wanted to bring them to this raw, new country and used slavery to achieve it. a harsh life, to be sure, but many immigrants suffered hardships and indignations as indentured servants. their descendants rose above it. you don’t hear them bemoaning their forebears’ life the way some blacks can’t rise above the fact theirs were slaves. besides freedom, a job and a roof over their heads, they all sought respect. but even after all these years, too many have yet to realize that to get respect, you have to give it. the treatment given president bush at coretta king’s funeral was shameful. and these weren’t poor, uneducated black people who “dissed” him. they were among the country’s top-drawer blacks, there to bury black royalty. while bush got the cold shoulder, former president clinton was welcomed as if he still held the office. it mystifies me why the black population remains in thrall to the democratic party. black parents want a good education for their children yet they are consistently denied two opportunities that have proven enormously helpful in the few places where they are allowed because the d’s oppose them. school vouchers and charter schools. the teacher unions, among top contributors to the democratic party, oppose them for fear of losing control of the public schools which continue to turn out kids who have to be slipped through graduation by finding alternatives to standard requirements for learning, and where black kids fall behind whites. and what the teacher unions are against, the democrats are against. many a school board member is a democratic activist there to be on the ground floor against vouchers and charter schools. in the few places where vouchers to attend private schools and innovative charter schools are allowed, the unions file lawsuits claiming damage to the public schools by diverting the voucher money to poor families and limiting as much as possible the number of students who can attend the charters. they won one in florida last month. sure, the ultimate solution is to jack up the performance of the public schools, but so long as the unions are running the show, that isn’t going to happen. the unions don’t care if you’re a good teacher, just that you’re a member and pay your dues. it is nearly impossible to get rid of an incompetent teacher. their interest is themselves, not the kids, and their answer to the poor performance of the schools is more money. black students regularly trail white students because they get the more inexperienced and less qualified teachers and are plagued by low expectations. results of the use of vouchers and charter schools have been outstanding, yet the democrats say no, so why do black parents support them? why do they act the victim? blacks have no cesar chavez. jesse jackson isn’t going to buck the democratic party. neither is the naacp. black parents should confront democratic leaders at all levels and demand these tools of learning be made available or expanded or don’t count on our vote for your candidates. you’ve let the unions keep your kids down too long already. (adele ferguson can be reached at p.o. box 69, hansville, wa., 98340.)

as in my previous post "shaft's final solution" i'm not going to bother enumerating the absurdities in this column. i'm fascinated instead by two specific points.

first, obviously, racism manifests itself not just in the form of hatred, genocidal or otherwise. hatred is just the most visible and destructive manifestation of racism. affection, in a very counter-intuitive manner, can be another manifestation, whose pernicious effects are much more subtle:

patronize: 1. treat with an apparent kindness that betrays a feeling of superiority.

adele addresses african americans as her "brothers and sisters" but clearly she adopts the patronizing tone of the sweetly-scolding grandmother, who of course knows what is best for her troubled and "mystifying" charges.

second, it is amusingly ironic that adele utterly fails to grasp the point of reagan's joke about the pony, the point being of course that the pony doesn't exist.

by insisting that somewhere in the steaming pile of manure of slavery there actually existed a "hidden pony", adele only shows herself to be as hopelessly deluded as the child joyfully shovelling away.

shaft's final solution

kamau rashidi kambon wants to kill white people.

not just some white people. not just any white people. kambon wants to "exterminate white people off the face of the planet."

who is kamau rashidi kambon? according to wikipedia, kambon is a multi-degreed educator, author and spokesman on issues of concern to african americans.

on october 14, 2005, at the "hurricane katrina & issues facing african americans" symposium hosted at washington, d.c.'s howard university and broadcast live on c-span, kambon made the following remarks, transcribed in their entirety:

i want to say a couple of things, and i really don't want you all to miss me before we get ready to go. my wife was here and she was the president of the association of black psychologists a couple of years ago and she was responsible for taking about five hundred people including about three hundred black psychologists to ghana, west africa for their national conference. the reason i point that out is because i want to say a couple of things and i'm gonna go out of bounds with what i have to say, relative to what we've been talking about. first of all, i grew up in brooklyn, and i saw, looking back on my life, i saw about thirty of my friends die. y'know, getting shot, overdosing on drugs, any number of things that took them off the planet, y'know, beautiful brothers. so as i started to become more conscious, i looked around, i started asking this very important question, i think the most important question that i asked myself and that you can ask yourself is "why?" and i wanted to find out what was going on. so i began to change. i began to examine everything, i don't like to use the word "critically", but i started to really check things out. so i went through a very very serious change. i mean serious change. and what my wife and i did, we decided that we were going to drop out from this system. we delivered two of three of our children at home using midwives. she didn't take any medication, we didn't go to a doctor. she talked me into doing that, but it was a beautiful experience for me to be there to help deliver our children. they were born, by the way, two years apart on the same day, and our oldest daughter helped us deliver our children. we also changed our diets. we saw the hospital system was killing our people, so we changed our diets. we have been vegan for about thirty years. that means no meat ... [applause] no meat at all in any form, no dairy products, no sugar, no white flour, the same thing that dr. whittaker talked about. because we understood that we were in a war. i want to emphasize that to you. we are in a war. we left new york and went to north carolina and we, and really, it's on her again, we decided that we were not going to go in debt because the new form of slavery was economic slavery. and we got some land, we were very fortunate, and we built our own house. we built a log house. took us sixteen months, we worked night and day, every day, for the sixteen months, and she was out there with a chain saw, in the cold, in the rain, and we worked and we built the house so we would not have to give white people any money. i taught on the college level for a number of years at a so-called "black college", and i'm down against "black colleges", i'm'a tell you straight up, 'cause of some of the madness that's going on in these schools. but what i want to say is that there are two things going on on the planet now. one is that when white people came to us and said we're going to free you, we're going to emancipate you from the plantation, what they did was extended the boundaries of the plantation and made it a international plantation. made us think that we were free. in addition to that they made every white person on earth a plantation master or owner. so there are two things in operation. we are in an international prison. not just in america but everywhere we go our people are dying. so the things that are in operation on this planet is that white people want to kill us. i want you to understand that. they want to kill you. and it has nothing to do with what kind of degree you have, what kind of car you have, what kind of title you have, what fraternity you belong to, what religion you belong to, they want to kill you because that is part of their plan. there are any number of reasons why they want to do that but i'm not gonna waste my time trying to figure out why they want to kill us. but i know that's what they want to do. and they want to do it in many different ways — psychological, economic, cultural, spiritual, social, biological, chemical, electromagnetic — they want to kill you. but they also want to make money in the process of your death. now i saw a brother when i was coming in and he was smoking a cigarette. so now he going to kill himself but they're going to make money off of his death process. the other thing is that they want us to — if they don't kill us, like they tried to kill the brother by beating him up in new orleans, they don't kill us that way, or shooting like they killed the brother in cincinatti, or like they killed malice green in detroit, or like they killed gammage up in pittsburgh, if they don't come out, right, and kill us straight, they want to get us to kill ourselves. now these are the only two operations on the planet. the other thing is that there's only one nigger on the planet — i never use that word. this is the first time i've used, i don't even think that word — but there's only one nigger on the planet. and the nigger that's on the planet is the one that is destroying the water, the one that's polluting the air, the one that is exploiting people and resources, and the only nigger on the planet is the white man and the white woman. and that our people are not niggers, we are imitation niggers. now what we have to do is we have to devise a system or a plan for ourselves, and i said earlier that each one of you is a system. and everything that you do, every thought that you think, either you are supporting white world terror domination, by your actions, what you buy, what you wear, where you go, what you eat, how you use your time, you are either supporting the white people in their process of death, or you're for african liberation, it's one or the other. and if we don't use our time wisely, then we are engaging in a form of subtle suicide, because as i said earlier their system is still going on. they still have these images on t.v. that are going on, they're still warehousing our children in the special ed, giving them ritalin, there're no jobs, we filling the hospitals, so their system is not stopping. and then finally, i want to say that we need one idea. and we're not thinking about a solution to the problem. we're dealing with all these other things but these are diversions from the solution to the problem. and we have to start to think about a solution to the problem so that these young brothers and sisters who are here now, who are fifteen, sixteen and seventeen, are not here twenty-five years later talking about these same problems. now how do i know that the white people know that we are going to come up with a solution to the problem? i know it because they have retina scans, they have what they call "racial profiling", dna banks, and they are monitoring our people, to try to prevent the one person from coming up with the one idea. and the one idea is how we are going to exterminate white people, because that in my estimation is the only conclusion that i have come to. we have to exterminate white people off of the face of the planet to solve this problem. [sparse applause] now i don't care whether you clap or not, but i'm saying to you that we need to solve this problem because they are going to kill us. and i will leave on that. so we have to just set up our own system and stop playing and get very serious and not be diverted from coming up with a solution to the problem, and the problem on the planet is white people. [sparse applause]

"out of bounds" did he say? let's try "out to lunch".

i could enumerate the many ways in which kambon's remarks are absurd, but i would be belaboring the obvious, and that sort of accounting is not the reason why i chose to post this article and not why i find his remarks so fascinating.

i've often heard that racism is rooted in ignorance, but clearly there are many racists like kambon who are intelligent and well-educated. in fact, kambon himself invites us along on his intellectual journey, which he describes as the result of a search for answers to deeply compelling questions about black mortality in america. what most people, and most evidently kambon, do not recognize is how the vehicle we choose for the journey drives us towards the conclusions we reach at the end.

kambon's choice of vehicle was probably the most fateful choice in his search: he decided to withdraw from society.

and what my wife and i did, we decided that we were going to drop out from this system.

like ted kaczynski, the so-called "unabomber", kambon decided to go meditate in a cabin.

one profound effect of this type of isolation is a loss of perspective. on a very basic level everyone believes that they are right in what they think. we have to, because otherwise we could not justify the things that we do. but social contact provides other voices as yardsticks against which we may measure our beliefs.

another profound effect of isolation is the emergence of misanthropic tendencies. most people have some level of antisocial impulses and our belief in our own correctness keeps us in conflict with everyone who does not think as we do. they must be wrong. they are either stupid or blind or brainwashed or misguided. they have to be — for how can i be right if they are not wrong?

when a person becomes isolated, whether by choice or circumstance, the misanthopic voices, no longer required to rebut the opinions of others, begin to sound more and more convincing, and are free to roam, grow louder and dominate, especially if the person listening is not particularly stable or equanimous or mature. it is also worth noting that whatever siren song these misanthopic voices might be singing, it might not always be pleasant, but it is usually personally gratifying for the listener.

but isolation in itself probably did not drive kambon to his final solution, or at least drive him to take his solution on tour. since there are no prior records of his making public charges like these, presumably he had been quietly nursing his ideas in his log cabin for a number of years, until some catalyzing event finally compelled him to openly proselytize genocide.

which brings us to hurricane katrina.

the catastrophic failure of government at every level that doomed a historic hub of african american culture must have come as the ultimate vindication of the most horrific schemes whispered to kambon in his nightmares. of course white people are trying to kill black people. all black people. white people obviously no longer felt the need for either subtlety or patience. if there remained any chance of saving his people, kambon could no longer afford to remain silent. one cannot miss the hints of messianism in his voice:

and then finally, i want to say that we need one idea. ... they are monitoring our people, to try to prevent the one person from coming up with the one idea.

kambon is not alone in his feelings. indeed, the aftermath of katrina made it impossible for anyone, white or black or lime-green, not to question the commitment of the bush administration to the well-being — even survival — of minority citizenry. no one can forget grammy-winning rapper kanye west's spontaneous on-air indictment during the september 2nd nationally broadcast nbc "concert for hurricane relief" telethon:

i hate the way they portray us in the media. if you see a black family, it says they're looting. see a white family, it says they're looking for food. and you know that it's been five days, because most of the people are black. and even for me to complain about it, i would be a hypocrite because i’ve tried to turn away from the tv, because it's too hard to watch. we already realize a lot of people that could help are at war right now, fighting another way, and they have given them permission to go down and shoot us. ... george bush doesn’t care about black people.

after the 9/11 attacks, bush enjoyed a robust 51% approval rating among blacks, but it had dropped to 19% by the time katrina hit. after the disaster an nbc/wall street journal poll pegged his approval rating at an unheard-of 2%, "one of the biggest free-falls in the history of presidential polling". given its statistical margin of error of ±3.4%, it might as well have been zero.

in his 2000 run for the white house george bush made a famous pledge: "i'm a uniter, not a divider." six years later, race relations have never been more strained, and now we can add one more genocidal voice to the mix. never more hollow does that pledge ring.