Florida Bans Dictionaries & Human Rights on Global Decline
Florida Bans Dictionaries & Human Rights on Global Decline
UK Bans Calvin Klein Ad for Sexuality, Florida Wants to Ban Dictionaries and Fine Journalists Who Criticize anti-LGBTQ+ Speech, Roger Stone Wanted to Assassinate Dem Congressmen?, Bill Morrissey Sings
What I’m Discussing Today:
Kareem’s Daily Quote: Goethe sends us on a quest to find out what’s “natural.”
Human rights in decline globally as leaders fail to uphold laws, report warns: I never thought the world would choose to go backward when it came to human rights.
Book Ban in Florida District Now Includes Dictionaries: What better way to “protect the children” than by taking away their dictionaries?
Roger Stone Discussed Assassinating Dems Before 2020 Election: Trump’s pal wants to kill for Trump? Shouldn’t we be more surprised?
Florida GOP proposes sex affidavits and ‘grooming’ bans in slate of anti-LGBTQ bills: They want to criminalize criticizing anti-LGBTQ+ statements. The end of free speech is happening now.
FKA twigs Calls Out ‘Double Standards’ After Her Calvin Klein Advert Is Banned in the U.K.: It’s admirable that the UK wants to address the use of sex to sell products, but this is not the way.
Kareem’s Video Break: Jon Batiste demonstrates how one classical piece of music can be interpreted in different genres. Amazing.
Bill Morrissey Sings “Handsome Molly”: This haunting song about longing and loneliness is pure poetry.
Kareem’s Daily Quote
The unnatural, that too is natural.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
People have a strange relationship with Nature. On one hand, we love to admire its wondrous beauty and marvel at its diversity of life and ingenuity of creation. On the other hand, from the moment we are conceived, Nature is trying to kill us with diseases and disasters. We’re like Indiana Jones dodging hidden arrows, and avoiding lethal trap doors, all while admiring the cleverness of those who designed the instruments of our death. It’s like living with an abusive parent who lavishes praise and presents on us one day and smacks us around the next.
Nature isn’t an entity—it’s a manufacturing process. Part of that process is to produce human beings, which it does with the efficiency of a factory, rolling people off conveyor belts with frightening frequency: 385,000 are born each day, 140 million a year. As with any manufacturing process, not every widget comes out exactly the same each time. It’s like on The Great British Bake Off when contestants are tasked with baking something they’ve successfully made dozens of times, yet, suddenly their pastry doesn’t turn out the same as before. People are born without limbs, organs, and brains. They are born with predispositions toward diseases or other infirmities. Sometimes they only grow to 1’9” tall like Chandra Dangi, or they grow to 7’2” like me. Nature did all that.
Yet, we are quick to condemn certain behaviors in humans as “unnatural” when by definition that would be impossible. If it exists in nature, it’s natural. What we mean by “unnatural” is that certain behavior is uncomfortable, unfamiliar, uncommon—incompatible with our current values—but certainly not unnatural. Sometimes, people are just born that way.
Genetic studies have found that genes have a huge influence on whether you prefer coffee to tea, how much you enjoy exercise, whether you prefer team sports over solitary sports, and even what hobbies you do. Nature did that.
I hear a lot of people trying to simplify gender identity based on the binary of penis or vagina. How smug such simple-minded reductivism is. Rather than attempting to understand the complexities of human development, these people are signaling how everything in their world can be reduced to elementary common sense. Yes, it makes things nice and tidy for those who fear just how unsimple nature is. But it doesn’t reflect reality. As with any manufacturing process, there will be variations of the original design. In some animals, like turtles, the outside temperature during the pregnancy determines what gender the offspring will be. This is called temperature-dependent sex determination (TSD). Want to know if it’s going to be a boy or a girl, check the thermometer.
Humans are obsessed with free will, believing that every action is self-determined and therefore deserving of either reward or punishment. Masters of our own fate and all that. But Nature is indifferent to human notions. Experts have determined that there are many prenatal influences that can lead to same-sex orientation: which hormones are dominant inside the womb and reactions of the mother’s immune system. When it comes to nature, things are not as simple as we’d like to think. There are over 500 species of fish that change gender as adults. Clownfish start life as males and later turn into females. Kobudai start as females and then turn into males. Gender changes can be caused by age, size, or social status. And it’s all natural.
Some people know from an early age that their mental gender doesn’t match their genitals. That makes logical sense when considering all the variables that go into producing a human being. It’s pure math. What’s interesting is that people are willing to accept when someone is born with “gifts” like eidetic memory (total recall) or the ability to play the piano at age three or do calculus at six. Geniuses we accept because it seems to aggrandize being human. They are natural manifestations of human exceptionalism. Being transgender or gay follows the same math. But that brings out fear in some because it emphasizes what little control we have in nature. How helpless we are as humans, and how fragile our notion of free will can be.
If we really wanted to show off the full potential of being human despite the massive influence of Nature, we’d celebrate our full spectrum of human behavior by showing compassion and support rather than fear and loathing. That we can act with grace in the face of fear is the highest achievement of being human. And it’s 100% natural.
This Week in the Assault on Human Rights
On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I thought it would be appropriate to take a look at the state of the fight for human rights which is his legacy. Dr. King said, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” But he knew that the arc doesn’t bend by itself, it requires those of us who believe in social justice to put our shoulders to that stubborn arc and apply pressure. Celebrating Dr. King’s life means not just appreciating his words, but acting on them. It’s not enough to think the right thoughts, we’ve got to do the right thing.
Human rights in decline globally as leaders fail to uphold laws, report warns (The Guardian)
SUMMARY: Human rights across the world are in a parlous state as leaders shun their obligations to uphold international law, according to the annual report of Human Rights Watch (HRW).
In its 2024 world report, HRW warns grimly of escalating human rights crises around the globe, with wartime atrocities increasing, suppression of human rights defenders on the rise, and universal human rights principles and laws being attacked and undermined by governments.
The report highlights political leaders’ increasing disregard for international human rights laws. The report says “selective government outrage and transactional diplomacy” and double standards in recognising international human rights laws has put countless lives at risk.
Tirana Hassan, executive director of HRW, said: “There is a persistent assault on human rights spreading around the world as governments turn away from their legal obligations on human rights for short-term political gains and seek to consolidate power.”
MY TAKE: These findings are no surprise as those of us following politics right here in the U.S. know. Here’s what a U.S. Senator said: “We will resist to the bitter end any measure or any movement which would tend to bring about social equality and intermingling and amalgamation of the races in our [Southern] states.” That was said by Sen. Richard Russell (D-Ga.) during a filibuster in which he was trying to prevent the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. What saddens me is that with the slightest tweak, this could be exactly what Trump, Haley, DeSantis, Abbott, and dozens of other politicians are saying today. Except they’ve expanded their targets of suppression to include women, immigrants, and LGBTQ+. The more enemies they can claim are hiding under the bed, the more frightened followers they get.
When I watch movies in which the supervillain is attempting to take over the world through some nefarious plan, I often wonder, “Then what?” Let’s say, you succeed. What are your plans then? Sit on a throne and complain about all your responsibilities? How will your life be better? I think of this when I witness Americans trying to destroy what America stands for all while they are shouting about patriotism and gun rights and communists. What’s still shocking to me is that after all these years, and all we’ve learned about their destructive behavior, anybody actually follows these people. The lessons of history are lost on those unaware of history.
The key lesson, of course, is that when one group tries to take away the rights of another, it is only a matter of time before their own rights will be taken away by a different group. It’s Game of Thrones. But when a society values the rights of everyone, there’s no need for jostling for power over others, no need to hunch over your pile of possessions with a sharp stick to keep others away. Not when we can all sit together around the campfire and share.