Kevin McCarthy Lies About American History and Elon Musk Promotes Debunked Conspiracy
Sports Illustrated Secretly Used AI Authors, Rival Candidate Accuses Rep. Ilhan Omar of Not Being Attractive Enough to Represent, Henry Mancini Transports Us to the Irish Countryside
What I’m Discussing Today:
Kareem’s Daily Quote: Charles Darwin explains the most important characteristic for the survival of species. I discuss what it means to our daily lives.
Kevin McCarthy Proud to Be Wrong About History: He did go to high school, right? He should correct mistakes, not broadcast them to the public, right?
Sports Illustrated Secretly Used AI Authors: They even gave them fake bios and photos. A blow to journalistic integrity that threatens to affect the sanctity of other news outlets.
Elon Musk Still Crazy After All These Rants: He went to Israel to rehab his antisemitic rant—and came back to endorse a long-debunked conspiracy theory. Does this man know how to read a newspaper?
Rival Candidate Accuses Rep. Ilhan Omar of Not Being Attractive Enough to Represent: I’m waiting on his swimsuit photos to decide how smart he is.
Kareem’s Video Break: This is supposed to be an ad, but the product seems like an afterthought in this funny and artistic short film.
What I’m Reading: A clever Audible Original offers a clever, twisty tale that turns the Sherlock Holmes/Prof. Moriarty rivalry on its head.
Henry Mancini Plays: Want to be transported to a relaxing Irish countryside? This song will do it—and no TSA fondling.
Kareem’s Daily Quote
It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.
Professor Leon C. Megginson paraphrasing Charles Darwin
I feel a little rattled whenever a favorite TV show gets canceled (Billions, come back!) or I read about the bankruptcy of American icons like Sears and JCPenney (I still miss the catalogs). Such change feels like a dark disturbance in the Force.
We all know that change is inevitable—like puberty, menopause, and a new Dr. Who. The challenge is to recognize which changes are good so we can encourage them, and which are bad so we can prevent them.
Not everybody likes change. Some fear change because they feel like they are suddenly thrust into a foreign country where they don’t speak the language and don’t understand the customs. Afraid of being marginalized, conservatives often make fun of newfangled ideas, technology, slang, music, fashion, and whatever else stinks of unfamiliarity. The plethora of personal pronouns has sent some into a dizzying spiral too confused to add “they” to their lexicon. They complain that these changes are often accompanied by increased immorality, laziness, and possibly poor personal hygiene. They defend the old ways and traditions as if their lives depended on them.
This unflinching defense of the past is because they see change as diminishing their importance in the future. The U.S. is increasingly moving away from church attendance and affiliation, which has made some evangelicals fight harder to push religion into schools while banning books they think might turn children away from traditional beliefs. It is projected that the U.S. will have a non-White majority by 2045, so the GOP has amped up its efforts to make it harder for non-White minorities to vote. Reduce their voice and power now so they won’t be a threat in the future.
As history has proven, these efforts are ultimately futile. Their small victories along the way only humiliate themselves and shame their descendants. They will be vilified along with proponents of slavery and opponents of women’s suffrage. All because they feared change.
In the 1970 movie Getting Straight about campus protests, graduate student Harry is arguing with the university president as students riot around them. The president, unwilling to acknowledge what the violence around him means, insists he must rule as he always ruled—with parental strictness. Harry tells him those days have passed: “Stop trying to hold back the hands of the clock! It'll tear your arms out!”
Even well-meaning Holden Caulfield in J.D. Salinger’s classic novel The Catcher in the Rye comes to understand that his Quixotic quest to protect children from growing up and losing their innocence to the corruption of adulthood is a losing cause. In the end, he watches his younger sister on a carousel leaning precariously to grab a ring and realizes he must squelch his impulse to protect her: “The thing with kids is, if they want to grab for the golden ring, you have to let them do it, and not say anything. If they fall off, they fall off, but it's bad if you say anything to them.”
In “Revolution 1” The Beatles sing, “Well, you know/We all want to change the world.” The problem is that we’re not always talking about the same thing when we talk about change. Sometimes politicians use the word change but they mean the opposite of progressive change; they mean reverting to some nostalgic past when dinosaurs like them ruled the Earth. That’s why when they speak vaguely about bringing about change, we have to force them to define the specifics.
Here are my specifics: Change is about improving lives by making sure that everyone has equal opportunities and choices in controlling their lives. Equally, change means stopping any behavior that exploits, harms, or belittles people. To bring about that change is not always a passive sofa-and-Netflix-friendly activity. It requires action.
Newton’s First Law of Motion states that a body at rest remains at rest, especially when the body is as heavy as our snack-sodden society. His Second Law states that a body in motion at a constant velocity will remain in motion in a straight line unless acted upon by an outside force. When applied to social change, that means we the people have got to get that body moving in a straight line toward progress, all the while guarding against interference from selfish outside forces trying to impede change for their own enrichment. That usually involves a combination of public peaceful protest, voting, and speaking out in your community.
Darwin made clear that strength and intelligence aren’t enough to ensure survival—we also need to adapt to change. And sometimes survival means we need to instigate change. As civil rights leader and congressman John Lewis said: “When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, it’s my philosophy that you have a moral obligation to get in trouble, to make some noise, to point people in a different direction.”
If ever there was a time to make some noise, this is it.