RENDER UNTO TRUMP 

DEC. 6, 2020

White Evangelicals Made a Deal With the Devil. Now What?
By Sarah Jones

The savior. Photo: AFP via Getty Images

In the end, white Christian America stood by its man. The exit polls present an imperfect but definitive picture. At least three-quarters of white Evangelicals voted for Donald Trump in November, a figure largely unchanged from 2016. Evangelicals didn’t win Trump another four years in power, but not for lack of effort. While most of America tired of the president’s impieties, the born-again found in themselves a higher tolerance for sin.

And the sins are legion, lest we forget. He tear-gassed protesters so he could walk to a D.C. church and hold a Bible upside-down in front of it without interference. He lied and cheated, and smeared women who accused him of sexual assault. He separated migrant children from their parents and staffed his administration with white nationalists. Over a quarter of a million Americans died of the coronavirus, while he railed against doctors and scientists trying to save lives. Not even a plague turned Evangelicals from their earthly lord. For Trump, the consequences are political and legal. For Evangelicals, the fallout has a more spiritual quality. What does it profit a faith to gain a whole country and then lose it, along with its own soul?

Evangelicals had more to lose than Republicans, for reasons I learned in church as a child. You can’t evangelize anyone if your testimony is poor. If you disobey your parents, or wear a skirt that falls above your knees, how can anyone believe you’re saved? Another Sunday school lesson, conveniently forgotten? Be sure that your sin will find you out. Evangelicals bought power, and the bill is coming due. The price is their Christian witness, the credibility of their redemption by God. Evangelicalism won’t disappear after Trump, but its alliance with an unpopular and brutal president could alienate all but the most zealous.

To be Evangelical in the 1990s was to learn fear. The world was so dangerous, and our status in it so fragile. The fossil record was a lie, and scientists knew it. You could not watch the Teletubbies because Jerry Falwell thought the purple one was gay. No Disney, either, and not because Walt had been a fascist; Disneyworld allowed a gay-pride day, and in one scene of The Lion King, you could see the stars spell out “sex.” You were lucky to even be alive, to have escaped the abortion mill. The predominantly white Evangelical world in which I was raised had created its own shadow universe, a buffer between it and the hostile world. Our parents could put us in Christian schools or homeschool us; if they did risk public school, we could take shelter with groups like YoungLife and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, which would tell us to make the most of this chance to save souls. We had alternatives for everything; our own pop music, our own kids’ shows, our own versions of biology and U.S. history, and an ecosystem of colleges and universities to train us up in the way we should go: toward the Republican Party, and away from the left, with no equivocation.

Whatever the cause, whatever the rumor, the fear was always the same. It was about power, and what would happen if we lost it. Certain facts, like the whiteness of our congregations and the maleness of our pulpits and the shortcomings of our leaders, were not worth mentioning. You were fighting for God, and God was not racist or sexist; He was only true. The unsaved hated this, it made them angry, and that was proof you were doing the right thing. If “owning the libs” has a discernible origin point, it’s here, in the white Evangelical church.

While I was in college and Trump was still a reality-show star, Evangelicals faced a crisis in the pews. Young people were leaving the church, and they weren’t coming back. The first signs arrived in 2007, in the last hopeful months before the Great Recession. A pair of Christian researchers released a study with troubling implications for the future of the church. Young people aged 16 to 29 were skeptical of Christianity and of Evangelicalism in particular, concluded Dave Kinnaman of the Barna Group and Gabe Lyons of the Fermi Project. “Half of young churchgoers said they perceive Christianity to be judgmental, hypocritical, and too political,” they wrote. Among the unchurched, attitudes were even more negative. A mere 3 percent said they had positive views of Evangelicalism, a precipitous decline from previous generations.

I interviewed Lyons about his research while I was a student journalist at Cedarville University, a conservative Baptist school in Ohio. By the time I graduated, I’d become one of his statistics, an atheist with a minor in Bible. Trump was not even a glimmer in Steve Bannon’s eye, but the Evangelical tradition had already asked me to tolerate many sins. There was George W. Bush and his catastrophic invasion of Iraq; welfare policies that starved the poor; the dehumanization of immigrants, of LGBT people, of women who do not wish to stay pregnant, and my own, non-negotiable submission to men. At some point I realized that I had traveled some distance in my mind, and I could not go back the way I came. I was over it, I was through.

The years after my personal exodus brought with them more proof that the church was in trouble. Partisanship did not entirely explain why. Membership declined fastest in mainline congregations, even though they tend to be more liberal than the independent churches of my youth. Social media has expanded the philosophical marketplace; all Christian traditions face competition from new ideologies for the hearts and minds of the young. But conservative denominations are suffering, too. The Southern Baptist Convention said this June it had experienced its 13th consecutive year of membership decline. By age 22, two-thirds of adults who attend Protestant services as teenagers have dropped out of church for at least a year, LifeWay Research found last year, and a quarter cited political disagreements as the reason. An alliance with a president the young largely hated might not lure new generations to the fold.

Years of attrition have taken a toll on white Evangelicals, said Robert Jones, the author of The End of White Christian America and the founder of the Public Religion Research Institute. “If you go back a couple of election cycles ago, into Barack Obama’s first election, they were 21 percent of the population, and today they are 15 percent of the population,” he told me. The share of Black Evangelicals has remained relatively stable, he added, while the numbers of Latino Evangelicals has grown. And while these groups ostensibly share a religious label, politically they are far apart.

“If I take the religious landscape, and I sort religious groups by their support for one candidate or the other, what inevitably happens is that there are no two groups further away from each other in that sorting than white Evangelical Protestants and African-American Protestants,” Jones said, adding that Latino Evangelicals are “a little more divided.” (Indeed, Trump won significant support from this group in 2020.)

People pray together during the “Evangelicals for Trump” campaign event held at the King Jesus International Ministry as they await the arrival of President Donald Trump on January 3, 2020 in Miami, Florida. Photo: Getty Images

But white Evangelicals are still outliers overall: They’re more conservative than other Protestants, more conservative than Catholics, more conservative, in fact, than any other demographic in the country. The implicit claim of the Moral Majority — that it embodied mainstream opinion — always lacked evidence, but it’s become even less true over time. By the time Trump applied Richard Nixon’s label of a “silent majority” to his own coalition, it barely made sense at all. A bloc that can only take the White House through the Electoral College, and not the popular vote, only to lose it outright four years later, has no claim to majority status. They are a remnant within a remnant, a nation within a nation.

There are still dissenters. Last year, the outgoing editor of Christianity Today, Mark Galli, called for Trump’s removal from office. Galli wrote the typical approach for his magazine was to “stay above the fray,” and “allow Christians with different political convictions to make their arguments in the public square, to encourage all to pursue justice according to their convictions and treat their political opposition as charitably as possible,” he wrote. But Trump had abused the power of his office and revealed a “grossly deficient moral character.” Galli has since converted to Catholicism, a decision he explained to Religion News Services as being more personal than political.

Others stay. But they can experience a painful friction between their spiritual convictions and political independence. My parents, both pro-life Evangelicals, have now voted against Trump twice. I spoke to another by Skype, not long before the election.

I know Marlena Proper Graves from my days at that Baptist university, when I was an upstart college feminist, and she was a resident director and the spouse of a professor. Now the author of two books on faith and a doctoral candidate at Bowling Green State University, Graves worries about the influence of Trump, and Trump’s party, on her beloved church. The word “Evangelical,” she noted, had always referred to a constellation of beliefs. “You have a relationship with God, God cares about you, God cares about all people, and Christ is central,” she said, ticking them off. “But now it seems to be something of a culture.” That culture is an exclusionary one. “I’ve been disinvited from events because of my views and activism for immigrants, because it’s controversial,” she said.

When Proper was young, she told me, she listened to Christian radio all the time, just like I did. Preachers and commentators like James Dobson, a famed radio personality and the founder of Focus on the Family, would opine on the issues of the day, on morality, and virtue. “All these people would talk about character,” she said. “How you can’t vote for Bill Clinton in particular because of Monica Lewinsky, because he had affairs.” Then came Trump. “People said, first, that they didn’t think he would win. Then it was all about abortion and judges. I felt like I was being punked,” she remembered. But many Evangelicals are in on the joke. Faced with popular rejection and the humiliation of Trump, they declare themselves persecuted, and identify numerous enemies. The mission remains the same: Purify the nation, and pacify the barbarians.

Beyond the usual celebrity-preacher scandals, the faith’s place in the broader Christian right required it to make moral compromises it never tolerated among the rank-and-file members of the flock. Our definition of morality narrowed the further up the pyramid you climbed. For the politicians we backed, it shrank to a pinprick point: Ronald Reagan was divorced. What mattered instead to the Moral Majority was his opposition to abortion, his hippie-bashing, his ability to trade in euphemisms about “states’ rights.” Two Bush presidents later, thrice-married Trump gave Evangelicals the conservative Supreme Court of their dreams.

As hypocritical as white Evangelical support for Trump may look from the outside, the president actually understood his base quite well. Eight years of a Black, liberal president threatened their hegemony. So had the Supreme Court’s ruling legalizing same-sex marriage. Sarah Posner, an investigative journalist and the author of Unholy: Why White Evangelicals Worship at the Altar of Donald Trump, told me that Trump managed to tap into two key Evangelical tendencies. “Those two things were the racial grievances of the white base of the Republican Party, and how televangelism had changed Evangelicalism from the 1970s onward,” she said.

Galli, the former Christianity Today editor, believes Trump also appealed to an entrenched Evangelical sense of marginalization. By the time same-sex marriage was legalized, public opinion on LGBT rights had already liberalized; the gap between white Evangelicals, and everyone else, on matters of sexuality is now wider than it’s ever been. “Here comes Donald Trump, saying it’s okay to be Christian, it’s okay to have your values, it’s okay to practice your values in the public square. And he does this in a very authoritative manner,” Galli explained. Trump didn’t know his Scripture, but he knew there was a war on, and that was enough. The nation’s culture warriors had found their general.

Evangelicals, Galli added, “are deeply suspicious of human authority,” but only to a point. What they may fear, really, is authority they don’t control. “Paradoxically,” he continued, “they are a group that’s attracted to authoritarian leaders, whether that person be a pastor of a megachurch or a dictator.” Those tendencies existed before Trump. With the help of the far-right press, social media, and alternative institutions, they will survive Trump, too.

“I think that the thing that we have to keep our eye on is the ways in which the infrastructure that they built gives them an advantage beyond what their numbers would tell you,” Posner said. Conservative Evangelicals already know that they’re no longer the Moral Majority, and they’ve found a way to make it work for them. “They’ll recognize, for example, that they may be in the minority on LGBTQ rights, but in their view, that’s all the more reason that they should be protected by either the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or the First Amendment, in having the right to discriminate against LGBTQ people.”

That infrastructure still churns out new acolytes, who embrace the worst elements of the tradition we all used to share. The same movement that produced me also spawned Madison Cawthorn, a Republican elected to Congress last month. He was born the year the Southern Baptist Convention first apologized for slavery, and he will be the youngest member of Congress when he takes office in January. He’ll also be one of furthest-right Republicans in office, with a personal life that once again tests the bounds of Evangelical toleration for sin. Women from his Christian homeschooling community in North Carolina and women who studied with him at the conservative Patrick Henry College have accused him repeatedly of sexual harassment and misconduct. A racist website linked to his campaign criticized a local journalist for leaving academia to “work for nonwhite males” like Senator Cory Booker, “who aims to ruin white males.” After he won, he celebrated with a tweet. “Cry more, lib,” he wrote.

There’s time for Cawthorn to self-immolate on a pyre of his own sins before he’s old enough to run for president. But there will be other Cawthorns, other white Evangelical candidates who will try to master Trumpism-without-Trump. They might not need an army to win, either. The GOP already knows it doesn’t have to be popular to stay in power. They need a radical remnant, and a lot of dirty tricks. Republicans can get what they want by suppressing the vote, or by undermining our confidence in elections. They can protect themselves through the subtle tyranny of inequality, which empowers the wealthy while alienating the most under-represented among us. A party out of step with most voters must either reform, or it must cheat. This, too, is something the modern GOP has in common with the Christian right. Democracy is the enemy. People can’t be trusted with their own souls. Leave them to their own devices, and they make the wrong choices, take the easy way out, threaten everything holy. They need a savior, whether they like it or not.

White Evangelicals Made a Deal With Trump. Now What? (nymag.com)

We Had the Vaccine the Whole Time
By David Wallace-Wells

In August 1957, Dr. Joseph Ballinger gave a nurse at a New York hospital the first H2N2-vaccine shot to be administered in the city. Photo: AP Photo/AP2009

You may be surprised to learn that of the trio of long-awaited coronavirus vaccines, the most promising, Moderna’s mRNA-1273, which reported a 94.5 percent efficacy rate on November 16, had been designed by January 13. This was just two days after the genetic sequence had been made public in an act of scientific and humanitarian generosity that resulted in China’s Yong-Zhen Zhang’s being temporarily forced out of his lab. In Massachusetts, the Moderna vaccine design took all of one weekend. It was completed before China had even acknowledged that the disease could be transmitted from human to human, more than a week before the first confirmed coronavirus case in the United States. By the time the first American death was announced a month later, the vaccine had already been manufactured and shipped to the National Institutes of Health for the beginning of its Phase I clinical trial. This is — as the country and the world are rightly celebrating — the fastest timeline of development in the history of vaccines. It also means that for the entire span of the pandemic in this country, which has already killed more than 250,000 Americans, we had the tools we needed to prevent it .

To be clear, I don’t want to suggest that Moderna should have been allowed to roll out its vaccine in February or even in May, when interim results from its Phase I trial demonstrated its basic safety. “That would be like saying we put a man on the moon and then asking the very same day, ‘What about going to Mars?’ ” says Nicholas Christakis, who directs Yale’s Human Nature Lab and whose new book, Apollo’s Arrow, sketches the way COVID-19 may shape our near-term future. Moderna’s speed was “astonishing,” Christakis says, though the design of other vaccines was nearly as fast: BioNTech with Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca.

Could things have moved faster from design to deployment? Given the grim prospects for winter, it is tempting to wonder. Perhaps, in the future, we will. But given existing vaccine infrastructure, probably not. Already, as Baylor’s Peter Hotez pointed out to me, “Operation Warp Speed” meant running clinical trials simultaneously rather than sequentially, manufacturing the vaccine at the same time, and authorizing the vaccine under “emergency use” in December based only on preliminary data that doesn’t track the long-term durability of protection or even measure the vaccine’s effect on transmission (only how much it protects against disease). And as Georgetown virologist Angela Rasmussen told me, the name itself may have needlessly risked the trust of Americans already concerned about the safety of this, or any, vaccine. Indeed, it would have been difficult in May to find a single credentialed epidemiologist, vaccine researcher, or public-health official recommending a rapid vaccine rollout — though, it’s worth noting, as early as July the MIT Technology Review reported that a group of 70 scientists in the orbit of Harvard and MIT, including “celebrity geneticist” George Church, were taking a totally DIY nasal-spray vaccine, never even intended to be tested, and developed by a personal genomics entrepreneur named Preston Estep (also the author of a self-help-slash-life-extension book called The Mindspan Diet). China began administering a vaccine to its military in June. Russia approved its version in August. And while most American scientists worried about the speed of those rollouts, and the risks they implied, our approach to the pandemic here raises questions, too, about the strange, complicated, often contradictory ways we approach matters of risk and uncertainty during a pandemic — and how, perhaps, we might think about doing things differently next time. That a vaccine was available for the entire brutal duration may be, to future generations trying to draw lessons from our death and suffering, the most tragic, and ironic, feature of this plague.

For all of modern medical history, Christakis writes in Apollo’s Arrow, vaccines and cures for infectious disease have typically arrived, if they arrive, only in the end stage of the disease, once most of the damage had already been done and the death rate had dramatically declined. For measles, for scarlet fever, for tuberculosis, for typhoid, the miracle drugs didn’t bring rampant disease to a sudden end — they shut the door for good on outbreaks that had largely died out already. This phenomenon is called the McKeown hypothesis — that medical interventions tend to play only a small role compared to public-health measures, socioeconomic advances, and the natural dynamics of the disease as it spreads through a population. The new coronavirus vaccines have arrived at what counts as warp speed, but not in time to prevent what CDC director Robert Redfield predicts will be “the most difficult time in the public-health history of this nation,” and do not necessarily represent a reversal of the McKeown hypothesis: The country may still reach herd immunity through natural disease spread, Christakis says, at roughly the same time as the rollout of vaccines is completed. Redfield believes there may be 200,000 more American deaths to come. This would mean what Christakis calls a “once-in-a-century calamity” had unfolded start-to-finish between the time the solution had been found and the time we felt comfortable administering it. A half a million American lives would have been lost in the interim. Around the world, considerably more.

In weighing other risks and uncertainties, Americans have been much less cautious, and not just in the case of marching maskless into Wal-Marts. On March 28, on what would normally be considered very thin evidentiary ground, the FDA issued an emergency-use authorization for the drug hydroxychloroquine. On May 1, it issued an EUA for remdesevir. On August 23, it issued another for convalescent plasma (the practice of injecting antibodies from the blood of recovered patients into those sick with the disease). These were all speculative authorizations — gambles, without concrete evidence, that existing treatments which scientists and doctors had some reason to suspect might help with the treatment of COVID-19 would be both safe and effective. All of these bets were lost. None of them, in the end, proved effective. Hydroxychloroquine, famously, proved dangerous, too, increasing risk of death in patients receiving it. Just one drug, the steroid dexamethasone, has proven to be a worthwhile treatment for COVID-19 in a randomized control trial — though given too early, it too can be dangerous. And at least some of the threefold decline in COVID-19 fatality rates observed over the spring and summer, the University College of London disease geneticist Francois Balloux told me recently, can be attributed to doctors no longer trying so many experimental treatments and focusing instead on the basic, old-fashioned job of simply keeping patients alive.

The treatment dilemmas facing physicians and patients in the early stages of a novel pandemic are, of course, not the same as the dilemma of rushing a new vaccine to a still-healthy population — we defer to the judgment of desperate patients, with physicians inclined to try to help them, but not to the desires of vaccine candidates, no matter how desperate. An unsafe vaccine, like the one for polio that killed ten and paralyzed 200 in 1955, could cause medical disaster and public-health backlash — though, as Balloux points out, since none of the new coronavirus vaccines use real viral material, that kind of accident, which affected one in a thousand recipients, would be impossible. (These days, one adverse impact in a million is the rule-of-thumb threshold of acceptability.) An ineffective vaccine could also give false security to those receiving it, thereby helping spread the disease by providing population-scale license to irresponsible behavior (indoor parties, say, or masklessness). But on other matters of population-level guidance, our messaging about risk has been erratic all year, too. In February and March, we were warned against the use of masks, in part on the grounds that a false sense of security would lead to irresponsible behavior — on balance, perhaps the most consequential public-health mistake in the whole horrid pandemic. In April, with schools already shut, we closed playgrounds. In May, beaches — unable or unwilling to live with even the very-close-to-zero risk of socializing outside (often shaming those who gathered there anyway). But in September, we opened bars and restaurants and gyms, inviting pandemic spread even as we knew the seasonality of the disease would make everything much riskier in the fall. The whole time, we also knew that the Moderna vaccine was essentially safe. We were just waiting to know for sure that it worked, too.

None of the scientists I spoke to for this story were at all surprised by either outcome — all said they expected the vaccines were safe and effective all along. Which has made a number of them wonder whether, in the future, at least, we might find a way to do things differently — without even thinking in terms of trade-offs. Rethinking our approach to vaccine development, they told me, could mean moving faster without moving any more recklessly. A layperson might look at the 2020 timelines and question whether, in the case of an onrushing pandemic, a lengthy Phase III trial — which tests for efficacy — is necessary. But the scientists I spoke to about the way this pandemic may reshape future vaccine development were more focused on how to accelerate or skip Phase I, which tests for safety. More precisely, they thought it would be possible to do all the research, development, preclinical testing, and Phase I trials for new viral pandemics before those new viruses had even emerged — to have those vaccines sitting on the shelf and ready to go when they did. They also thought it was possible to do this for nearly the entire universe of potential future viral pandemics — at least 90 percent of them, one of them told me, and likely more.

As Hotez explained to me, the major reason this vaccine timeline has shrunk is that much of the research and preclinical animal testing was done in the aftermath of the 2003 SARS pandemic (that is, for instance, how we knew to target the spike protein). This would be the model. Scientists have a very clear sense of which virus families have pandemic potential, and given the resemblance of those viruses, can develop not only vaccines for all of them but also ones that could easily be tweaked to respond to new variants within those families.

“We do this every year for influenza,” Rasmussen says. “We don’t know which influenza viruses are going to be circulating, so we make our best guess. And then we formulate that into a vaccine using essentially the same technology platform that all the other influenza vaccines are based on.” The whole process takes a few months, and utilizes a “platform” that we already know is basically safe. With enough funding, you could do the same for viral pandemics, and indeed conduct Phase I trials for the entire set of possible future outbreaks before any of them made themselves known to the public. In the case of a pandemic produced by a new strain in these families, you might want to do some limited additional safety testing, but because the most consequential adverse effects take place in the days right after the vaccine is given, that additional diligence could be almost immediate.

We Had the COVID-19 Vaccine the Whole Time (nymag.com)

Why Some People Refuse to Wear COVID Masks

Consider seven reasons for resistance to public health measures.

Thomas Henricks Ph.D.
The Pathways of Experience
Posted Dec 06, 2020

All of us have tasks we don’t enjoy. We grumble about hauling the garbage to the street, cleaning the toilet, or taking the dog out at night. However, we also know that these jobs need doing and it is our responsibility to do them. They serve purposes we acknowledge. That ability, to command our lazier or more rebellious impulses, is what it means to be an adult. Or so we tell ourselves.

More difficult to accept are duties assigned to us by others, or even by society as a whole. Laws tell us to fasten seat belts, and observe speed limits, while driving. We are to wear a helmet when riding a motorcycle or bicycle. We need hunting and fishing licenses before pursuing those activities. We must submit to background checks before buying firearms. We cannot dump trash wherever we want. We have to pay taxes.

Some people see these basic responsibilities of citizenship as infringements on liberty. They view the United States as a country that grants individuals the right to do whatever they want when they want. And woe to anyone who interferes with that quest.

I describe these matters because of an article in the news a couple days ago about a bowling alley manager in Maryland who asked a group of his patrons to wear masks. That group of eight men beat him severely, with punches and kicks, before leaving the premises. They remain at large.

This is surely an extreme case. But most of us have seen unmasked individuals in stores, malls, sports arenas, airports, and other places of public congregation. In college towns, like the one I live in, it is easy to spot mask-less students partying.

Based on my own observations, I can report that most of the non-compliers are white. They are usually under the age of fifty. If clothing is an indicator, they seem to be working class or middle class. Most are men, but there are also many women. Tattoos are common; so are t-shirts with gun and motorcycle themes. Profoundly, they have a defiant look in their eyes as if daring someone to say something to them.

None of this would matter were the corona virus not raging in the nation. Record numbers are finding themselves infected, and dying. The health experts tell us the best course is to wear a mask, wash our hands, and maintain distance from others. We are to do this not just to protect ourselves but also to protect other people. So why do some people refuse? Below are seven reasons.

Denial. It is perhaps human nature to minimize the dangers we face and by that act to gain confidence for our daily affairs. In that spirit, we sometimes eat and drink excessively, speed in our cars, fudge on our taxes, cheat on our partners, and so forth. What’s the harm? Anyway, we won’t get caught.

Denial can feature a dismissal of circumstances (“I don’t see this as a problem”) and of consequence (“I don’t think this will affect me or the people I care about”). There is denial of involvement (“I’m not part of this situation”) and of responsibility (“I’m not to blame for what is happening”).

Those who refuse to wear masks during these virus times may tell themselves all these things. Refusers can say they don’t know anyone who has gotten the virus. They may claim the virus is concentrated in communities different from their own and far away from them. Most of the people who die from this pandemic are over 65 or have preexisting health problems, so this problem, or so the refuser thinks, is unlikely to affect “them.” Extremely, and some do say this, the whole matter is a “hoax.” At any rate, they are not responsible for other people’s problems.article continues after advertisement

Fatalism. I had a colleague-friend who served as a fighter pilot in three wars (World War II, Korea, and Viet Nam). He and his fellow pilots faced danger by believing that they would complete their missions until their “number was up.” As they saw it, there are many factors beyond one’s control. At some point, people bow to fate.

Religious people may rephrase this by affirming that their life is in God’s hands. If God decides that I ˗ or my loved ones ˗ must suffer, so be it.

Some people take that attitude toward the virus. “Let God’s will be done.” It is a curious combination of comfort and bravado, which is easier to maintain when other people are victims of the scourge. When family and friends start to fall, the bravado pales.

Fear of Change. Contemporary societies are replete with change. Populations grow. Urban settlements extend. There are new patterns of immigration, travel, and international commerce. The occupational structure shifts. Technology creates new possibilities of living. Nature itself strains under all this trafficking.

Most of us adjust to such changes and address them as we can. Our beliefs, manners, and activities are different from those of our parents and grandparents. But others do not change so easily. Particularly in rural areas and small towns, people hold to older models of living. Certain visions of family, faith, and fortitude prevail. There is resistance to rules established by distant and differently situated others, especially as enactments of federal government. There is some sense that people should “know their place” or “stay with their own kind.” The dominant members of the community defend these customs as “our ways of living.”article continues after advertisement

Oriented by beliefs like these, refusers may equate the current virus with these modern changes. The disease is presumably a foreign import (the “China Flu,” as the President called it). Initially, it spread fastest within urban areas and dense settlements like nursing homes and factories. Minority people suffered disproportionately. It has resulted in recommendations and mandates from state and national leaders. Those recommendations rely on the scientific knowledge of highly educated “experts.” Are these distant others the same people who would restrict gun rights, impose environmental regulations, promote same-sex marriages, support high levels of immigration, encourage advancements for women and minorities, facilitate abortions, and otherwise weaken local and family authority? Are “we” with “our” taxes to pay for “their” changes?

The cult of self-interest. Most of us would acknowledge that we have commitments to self-protection and self-satisfaction. Again, those tendencies are probably in our nature, drives that help us survive. However, few of us would defend rampant individualism as a style of life appropriate to a vast, complicated society like the United States.

That said, our country does encourage us to guard our rights for self-determination, to make “free” choices to go places and do things, and then to decorate ourselves with our possessions and accomplishments. We are, by most accounts, a status-oriented, acquisitive people. At least that is what we learn from the marketing division of our businesses. article continues after advertisement

Unfortunately, the deeper lesson of such acquisition is that people should armor themselves with private property and protect those domains strenuously from intruders. Guns, dogs, fences, and the like are part of the plan. In the same way, we may resist deep involvement with people beyond our immediate families. We learn to trust our own judgment, even when we know little about the issues at hand.

The virus has aggravated some of those tendencies. In part, that means limiting our contacts with people outside our households. Mask wearers do this to protect themselves – and to protect others. Mask refusers care little about the germs they spread to others. And if other people are wearing masks, that reduces the danger to them. In both instances, selfishness prevails.
The shame-anger conversion. All of us are sensitive to issues of social respect – and disrespect. If challenged on these matters, we push back. Those tendencies magnify in a country dominated by an individualist mythology, one where where most people consider themselves different from others or even “unique.”article continues after advertisement

Unfortunately, respect is unequally distributed. Some people experience diminished economic standing, difficult lives, and general social disregard. They – and people like them – are not the subjects of television shows and movies. Rarely do leaders consult them on matters of public policy. Although their work is extremely important for the running of the nation, they receive little recognition, or appropriate pay and benefits, for this service.

Higher placed people may demean that large swath of Americans as less educated, mean-spirited, and backward in their beliefs. Their commitment to family and local community may stand at odds with broad visions of societal transformation. Seemingly, so does their religious traditionalism.

For some then, mask refusal is an act of defiance against those who claim to “know better” than they do. Psychologist Helen Lewis explained how the sense of “unacknowledged shame” (based on longstanding threats to social reputability) sometimes spills as aggression. After all, anger feels good. Anger makes others feel bad. Angry displays may reset the balance of relationships, if only for the moment.

Group loyalty. Our individualist culture encourages us to make our own choices and live with the consequences. However, few of us operate that way. We have families and friends. We gather with community members, workmates, and church members. Although we present our attitudes as our own, they arise through these social filters.

It matters then that groups of people hold similar beliefs. The eight unmasked men at the bowling alley were there together. So are the unmasked kids at the campus parties. Commonly, one sees groups of working people, uniformly masked or oppositely, unmasked. Even mask refusers in stores and other places of public congregation can spot others of their ilk. All that lends a kind of courage, an affirmation that the refusers’ ways are reasonable.

It compounds the matter when vast numbers of the public, assembled as a political party, are sympathetic to these views. Or when the highest-ranking politicians minimize the danger of the situation. “Is the crisis overblown? People I trust seem to think so.”

Countervailing Information. Throughout American history, people have held opposing political beliefs and expressed these in their voting. Everyone anticipated that the banker and factory owner would vote one way and the laboring man another. For the most part, people kept their views to themselves. Placards and flags were not prominent on neighborhood lawns. After the election, people accepted the fact that their candidate had won or lost and moved ahead with their lives.

Nowadays, political beliefs are consolidated and maintained. A good portion of this is due to media sources, that is, certain television channels, radio stations, and websites that people can turn to for one-sided versions of current events. These outlets are extensive enough that one need not listen to broader-based, or public-minded, commentators for any their news. Indeed, there are publicly circulated extremist viewpoints that the virus is one part of a vast political conspiracy by a “deep state” bureaucracy to unseat a popular President and to replace him with someone more congenial to their progressive agenda.

In all these ways, mask refusers finds their rationales, leaders, and allies. Firmly stationed, they will not disappear soon. Nor is it likely that they will capitulate to the next stage of the battle, the quest for national vaccination.


About the Author


Thomas Henricks, Ph.D., is Danieley Professor of Sociology and Distinguished University Professor at Elon University.

DYLAN; COMMODITY FETISH*

The Dylan catalogue, a 60-year rock 'n' roll odyssey, is sold

 

© Provided by The Canadian Press

NEW YORK — Bob Dylan’s entire catalogue of songs dating back 60 years is being acquired by Universal Music Publishing Group.

The catalogue contains 600 song copyrights including “Blowin’ In The Wind,” “The Times They Are a-Changin’,” “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door,” and “Tangled Up In Blue."

Dylan topped the Rolling Stone list of the 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time in 2015 and the song “Like A Rolling Stone” was named by the magazine as the best ever written.

Dylan was influenced and bluesman Robert Johnson and Woody Guthrie, but added a lyrical depth to his music that eventually earned him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016. He was the first songwriter to receive the award.

Financial terms were not disclosed Monday, but the catalogue may be the most prized in the music industry. Four years ago, when Michael Jackson’s estate sold the remaining half-share that it owned in the artist's catalogue, it fetched $750 million.

“Brilliant and moving, inspiring and beautiful, insightful and provocative, his songs are timeless—whether they were written more than half a century ago or yesterday," said Sir Lucian Grainge, CEO of Universal Music Group, in a prepared statement.

Dylan’s songs have been recorded more than 6,000 times, by various artists from dozens of countries, cultures and music genres, including the Jimi Hendrix version of “All Along The Watchtower."

Joan Baez, Bryan Ferry and the folk singer Odetta put out tribute albums, though his influence cannot be measured. Patti Smith, Adele and Sting contributed to an album honouring Dylan for his human rights work in 2012.

The sale of Dylan's musical catalogue comes a few weeks after the singer-songwriter’s musings about anti-Semitism and unpublished song lyrics sold at auction for a total of $495,000.

Dylan first entered the public consciousness with New York City’s Greenwich Village folk scene during the early 1960s. When he brought an electric guitar on stage in 1965, he split the music community in what was then considered a radical departure for an artist.

Dylan then produced three albums back to back in just over a year that changed the course of rock ‘n’ roll that decade, starting with “Bringing It All Back Home."

Dylan has sold more than 125 million records globally.

The Associated Press

*ACCORDING TO HIS CONTEMPORARY ADVERSARY; PHIL OCHS

Holocaust victims suing Germany and Hungary have their day at the US Supreme Court on Monday

By Ariane de Vogue, CNN Supreme Court Reporter 

The Supreme Court on Monday will delve into atrocities committed during World War II and hear two cases brought by victims and their family members who are seeking compensation for property they say was stolen from them during the Holocaust.

© Tobias Schwarz/AFP/Getty Images 

A visitor looks at the the cupola reliquary (Kuppelreliquar) of the so-called "Welfenschatz" (Guelph Treasure) displayed at the Kunstgewerbemuseum (Museum of Decorative Arts) in Berlin.

The justices will ultimately decide whether the cases against Germany and Hungary can proceed in US courts.

The court's decision could open the door to the possibility of similar lawsuits against foreign countries but also raises difficult questions about entangling the judiciary in matters concerning sensitive foreign policy questions.

At issue is a federal law that allows suits against a foreign government when a property is taken "in violation of international law." The US Justice Department is siding with lawyers for Germany and Hungary arguing the cases should be dismissed.

The lawsuit against Hungary was initially brought in 2010 by 14 Jewish survivors, including four United States citizens, who sued Hungary and its state-run railway company seeking compensation for property that was stolen from their families in 1941. They say their possessions and those of their families were taken from them as they boarded trains destined for concentration camps and they seek to represent a class of victims who have been injured in similar ways.

While the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act generally provides immunity to foreign states from suits in US courts, the plaintiffs argue their case falls into an exception because the goods were stolen in violation of international law.

"Hungary committed in the 1947 peace treaty to fully compensate its victim and it has never done so," Sarah Harrington, a lawyer for the victims, said in an interview. "Congress said courts could hear these claims and even the United States has said there is a moral imperative to provide justice for Holocaust victims in their lifetime."

But lawyers for Hungary say that such litigation would interfere with the foreign policy of the United States, and that US courts have long dismissed such claims so as to avoid "international discord."


"Adjudicating these claims would inevitably disrupt foreign relations and could expose the United States to similar treatment by other nations' judges," Gregory Silbert, a lawyer for Hungary, told the justices in court papers. He stressed that Hungary has made "substantial, additional payments to Holocaust victims and Jewish organizations." The "tens of billions of dollars" the plaintiffs might seek would "devastate Hungary's economy," Silbert argues.

The US Justice Department has filed a court brief in favor of Hungary's position. Acting Solicitor General Jeff Wall said the United States "deplores the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime" and it has supported efforts to provide their victims with remedies for "egregious wrongs."

Yet in the case at hand, Wall said the US has "paramount interest" in ensuring that its foreign partners handle the dispute, arguing that litigation in US courts could "undermine that objective." He said that courts have long recognized that in appropriate cases judges could voluntarily defer to another nation to resolve the dispute.

A district court dismissed the lawsuit -- and declined to get involved-- holding that the survivors should have first tried to file suit in Hungary. A US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed that ruling.

The second case, Germany v. Phillipp, takes a closer look at the reach of the law as it applies to the heirs of several Jewish art dealers who did business in Germany in the 1930s.

They seek to recover an art collection of medieval relics and devotional art dated from the 11th to 15th centuries. In court papers their heirs say they were forced to sell the art to the Nazi-controlled State of Prussia at a price much less than the art was worth. They lost a claim in Germany after an advisory commission concluded that the sale of the art "was not a compulsory sale due to persecution."

They then filed suit in US courts seeking the return of the art, or $250 million, or both

Nicholas M. O'Donnell, a lawyer for the victims, said that in 1935 the "Nazis -- led by Hermann Goering and for Hitler's personal benefit -- forced the sale of the collection at issue in this case" known as the Welfenschatz.

"If such a coerced sale is not a taking in violation of international law, then nothing is," he said.

The DC Circuit Court of Appeals held that under the FSIA, the suit could go forward.

© Felipe Trueba/EPA/Shutterstock 

A silver bust reliquary and other items that are part of the Guelph Treasure are exhibited at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Berlin, Germany.

102 species are facing extinction in B.C., here's how they can be saved

Ecosystems in British Columbia are rich in biodiversity, but 102 species in the Fraser River estuary are at risk of being functionally extinct in just 25 years unless a multi-government plan is implemented, says a study from the University of British Columbia (UBC).

102 species are facing extinction in B.C., but scientists say they can be saved

The Fraser River estuary is a unique environment in Canada — the southern portion of the freshwater river meets with the Pacific Ocean, creating an intertidal marsh ecosystem full of nutrients needed by both salmon and birds as they migrate. The estuary also influences the lives of more than three million people living in the Lower Mainland, since it is the heart of several industries and the region’s culture.

Given both the economic and intrinsic value of the Fraser River, the researchers set out to determine how the most at-risk species could be protected in the most cost-effective way. These at-risk species include southern resident killer whales, salmon, and sturgeon.

Members from Coast Salish First Nation communities, government officials, industry experts, academics, and NGOs worked with the researchers to select 102 species living in the estuary that would benefit the most from conservation management. The researchers’ main goal was to use scientific information and input from experts to conserve the most species for the lowest cost so both the environment and human interests are benefitted.

© Provided by The Weather Network Credit: Fernando Lessa

Aquatic species are suffering from a number of environmental stressors, including pollution and climate change. 

The researchers designed the Priority Threat Management (PTM) approach, which they say is a strategy that will conserve species and allow for shared decision‐making authority between several stakeholders, including First Nations groups as well as municipal, provincial, and federal governments. This approach, which focuses on co-governance, differs from traditional conservation research, which typically identifies the threats species are facing as opposed to the most cost-effective management strategies that will reduce or eliminate the threats.

Some of the strategies considered in this study include problematic species management, transportation regulation, aquatic disease control, pollution control, private land management, and public land management. Calculations revealed that co-governance increased the feasibility of all strategies to differing degrees and found that strategies involving many municipalities benefitted the most. The increase in feasibility was also connected to improved cost-effectiveness of management strategies and the ability to conserve a higher number of species.

© Provided by The Weather Network  Credit: Alex Harris

Researchers collecting data along the Fraser River.

“To conserve all species groups at a 50 per cent threshold without co‐governance, all strategies are required at a total estimated cost of $326 million. Whereas, when including co‐governance, only four management strategies (public land management, green infrastructure, pollution control, and aquatic habitat restoration) are needed to ensure all species have a better than even chance of persisting, costing an estimated $223 million and saving $104  million,” the study says.

The study revealed that two of the most cost-effective strategies, transport regulation and pollution control, would help 96 per cent of the species survive in the estuary over the next 25 years. However, these strategies still do not protect southern resident killer whales, monarch butterflies, western bumblebees, and barn swallows and the researchers say that conserving these species requires additional management and investment.

© Provided by The Weather Network  Credit: Jason Puddifoot

The Fraser River habitat is essential to the health of migratory birds.

The overall cost of the study’s conservation management plan is approximately $381 million over 25 years, which is equivalent to $15 million annually or $6 per person in the Greater Vancouver Area annually. The researchers say that though this might seem like a staggering cost, the potential financial return-on-investment is impressive. In 1998, the value of fisheries in the Fraser River basin was $300 million annually due to the productivity and health of the fisheries as well as the thriving whale tourism industry.

Southern resident killer whales are facing extinction for several reasons including pollution and a low supply of salmon, which is their main food source. The Fraser River estuary once supported the largest wild salmon runs on Earth, but this species is rapidly dwindling due to pollution, resource exploitation, urban sprawl, and climate change. Many international estuaries are facing the same predicament — a significant loss of biodiversity that may never be fully restored

The study says that over half of the world’s population lives in urban areas, which will be home to more than five billion people by 2030. “Managing these areas for conservation benefits is critical if we are to avert significant global biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse,” the study says.

Thumbnail credit: Tom Middleton

I’m an astronomer and I think aliens may be out there – but UFO sightings aren’t persuasive

Many people who say they have seen UFOs are either dog walkers or smokers.

Aaron Foster/THeImage Bank/Getty Images

If intelligent aliens visit the Earth, it would be one of the most profound events in human history.

Surveys show that nearly half of Americans believe that aliens have visited the Earth, either in the ancient past or recently. That percentage has been increasing. Belief in alien visitation is greater than belief that Bigfoot is a real creature, but less than belief that places can be haunted by spirits.

Scientists dismiss these beliefs as not representing real physical phenomena. They don’t deny the existence of intelligent aliens. But they set a high bar for proof that we’ve been visited by creatures from another star system. As Carl Sagan said, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

I’m a professor of astronomy who has written extensively on the search for life in the universe. I also teach a free online class on astrobiology. Full disclosure: I have not personally seen a UFO.
Unidentified flying objects

UFO means unidentified flying object.

Nothing more, nothing less.

There’s a long history of UFO sightings. Air Force studies of UFOs have been going on since the 1940s. In the United States, “ground zero” for UFOs occurred in 1947 in Roswell, New Mexico. The fact that the Roswell incident was soon explained as the crash landing of a military high-altitude balloon didn’t stem a tide of new sightings. The majority of UFOs appear to people in the United States. It’s curious that Asia and Africa have so few sightings despite their large populations, and even more surprising that the sightings stop at the Canadian and Mexican borders.

Most UFOs have mundane explanations. Over half can be attributed to meteors, fireballs and the planet Venus. Such bright objects are familiar to astronomers but are often not recognized by members of the public. Reports of visits from UFOs inexplicably peaked about six years ago.

Many people who say they have seen UFOs are either dog walkers or smokers. Why? Because they’re outside the most. Sightings concentrate in evening hours, particularly on Fridays, when many people are relaxing with one or more drinks.

A few people, like former NASA employee James Oberg, have the fortitude to track down and find conventional explanations for decades of UFO sightings. Most astronomers find the hypothesis of alien visits implausible, so they concentrate their energy on the exciting scientific search for life beyond the Earth.
Most UFO sightings have been in the United States.
Are we alone?

While UFOs continue to swirl in the popular culture, scientists are trying to answer the big question that is raised by UFOs: Are we alone?

Astronomers have discovered over 4,000 exoplanets, or planets orbiting other stars, a number that doubles every two years. Some of these exoplanets are considered habitable, since they are close to the Earth’s mass and at the right distance from their stars to have water on their surfaces. The nearest of these habitable planets are less than 20 light years away, in our cosmic “back yard.” Extrapolating from these results leads to a projection of 300 million habitable worlds in our galaxy. Each of these Earth-like planets is a potential biological experiment, and there have been billions of years since they formed for life to develop and for intelligence and technology to emerge.

Astronomers are very confident there is life beyond the Earth. As astronomer and ace exoplanet-hunter Geoff Marcy, puts it, “The universe is apparently bulging at the seams with the ingredients of biology.” There are many steps in the progression from Earths with suitable conditions for life to intelligent aliens hopping from star to star. Astronomers use the Drake Equation to estimate the number of technological alien civilizations in our galaxy. There are many uncertainties in the Drake Equation, but interpreting it in the light of recent exoplanet discoveries makes it very unlikely that we are the only, or the first, advanced civilization.

This confidence has fueled an active search for intelligent life, which has been unsuccessful so far. So researchers have recast the question “Are we alone?” to “Where are they?”

The absence of evidence for intelligent aliens is called the Fermi Paradox. Even if intelligent aliens do exist, there are a number of reasons why we might not have found them and they might not have found us. Scientists do not discount the idea of aliens. But they aren’t convinced by the evidence to date because it is unreliable, or because there are so many other more mundane explanations.
Modern myth and religion

UFOs are part of the landscape of conspiracy theories, including accounts of abduction by aliens and crop circles created by aliens. I remain skeptical that intelligent beings with vastly superior technology would travel trillion of miles just to press down our wheat.

It’s useful to consider UFOs as a cultural phenomenon. Diana Pasulka, a professor at the University of North Carolina, notes that myths and religions are both means for dealing with unimaginable experiences. To my mind, UFOs have become a kind of new American religion.

So no, I don’t think belief in UFOs is crazy, because some flying objects are unidentified, and the existence of intelligent aliens is scientifically plausible.

But a study of young adults did find that UFO belief is associated with schizotypal personality, a tendency toward social anxiety, paranoid ideas and transient psychosis. If you believe in UFOs, you might look at what other unconventional beliefs you have.

I’m not signing on to the UFO “religion,” so call me an agnostic. I recall the aphorism popularized by Carl Sagan,

 “It pays to keep an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out.” 

December 4, 2020

Author
 

Chris Impey

University Distinguished Professor of Astronomy, University of Arizona
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Chris Impey receives funding from the National Science Foundation.
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#SPACERACE2.0

Chinese probe orbiting moon with Earth-bound samples

BEIJING — A Chinese probe was orbiting the moon on Monday in preparation for the returning of samples of the lunar surface to Earth for the first time in almost 45 years.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

The ascent module of the Chang’e 5 spacecraft transferred a container with 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds) of samples after docking with the robot spacecraft on Sunday and was then cut free.

The orbiter and reentry vehicle will circle the moon for another week awaiting a narrow time window to make the roughly three-day, 383,000-kilometre (238,000-mile) journey back to Earth. It will first “bounce" off the Earth's atmosphere to slow its speed before the reentry vehicle separates and floats down on parachutes to land on the vast steppes of Inner Mongolia, where China's Shenzhou crewed spaceships have also made their landings.

If the mission succeeds, it will make China the third country after the United States and former Soviet Union to bring moon rocks to Earth. They will be the first fresh samples of the lunar surface obtained by scientists since the Soviet Union’s Luna 24 probe in 1976.

The Chang’e 5 ascent stage blasted off from the moon’s surface on Friday, leaving behind the lander module flying the Chinese flag, according to the China National Space Agency, which also released a photo taken by the orbiter showing it approaching for its rendezvous with the ascender, a sliver of the Earth seen in the background.

That marked the first time China had succeeded in lifting off a spacecraft from a celestial body, while no country had previously achieved the tricky feat of executing a robotic docking in lunar orbit. Controllers on Earth had to deal with distance and time lag while precisely manoeuvring a clamp into position with almost no room for error.

The 23-day mission has been front page news in state media for days, paired with reports that China has officially lifted all of its citizens out of the most grinding form of poverty. Along with being a propaganda coup for the ruling Communist Party, the dual stories illustrate the vast economic and technological advances China has made since it became just the third country in history to launch a person into space in 2003.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying praised the “courage to explore, overcome difficulties and pay hard efforts" of those who made the mission possible.

“The entirety of the Chinese people are proud of the efforts and wisdom of the Chinese lunar exploration researchers," Hua told reporters Monday at a daily briefing.

By way of cautious incremental steps, China is now in the midst of a series of ambitious missions that include a probe en route to Mars and the development of a reusable space plane about which little information has been provided.

The Chang’e lunar program, named after the ancient Chinese moon goddess, has also been operating the Chang’e 4 probe on the moon’s less explored far side for the past two years, while the Chang’e 3 rover launched seven years ago continues to send back data.

Future plans call for returning a human to the moon five decades after American astronauts, along with a possible permanent moon base, although no timeline has been offered. China is also building a permanent space station to begin operating as early as 2022.

U.S. opposition has prevented China's secretive, military-backed program from participating in the International Space Station, although the CNSA has been expanding its ties with other programs, including the European Space Agency, which has helped guide Chang’e 5 on its mission.

Chang’e 5 touched down Dec. 1 on the Sea of Storms on the moon’s near side close to a formation called the Mons Rumker, an area believed to have been the site of ancient volcanic activity.

The rocks and other debris were obtained both by drilling into the moon's crust and by scooping directly off the surface. They are thought to possibly be billions of years younger than those brought back earlier and may offer insights into the moon's history as well as that of other bodies in our solar system.

The lunar exploration program has set up dedicated labs to analyze the samples for age and composition. China is also expected to share some part of them with other countries, as was done with the hundreds of kilograms (pounds) of rocks, sand, dust and other samples obtained by the U.S. and the former Soviet Union.

The Associated Press