Symptoms of Truth Decay

Hello. Today’s Gene Pool will examine an attitudinal cancer that has been nibbling away at the soul of our country, one that is often identified as a problem but seldom as our central problem, which apparently is that a megalomaniacal tyrant wannabe, a criminally inclined unapologetic racist, a recidivist sexual abuser and an avowed enemy of democracy, a neofascist nativist, a man contemptuous of heroes and admiring of murderous autocrats — that this garrulous, paranoid stinkbug appears poised to retake the White House and enslave all of us who decline to let him enrich himself through naked self-interest and common graft.

All true, and dreadful, but central to that central problem is that attitudinal cancer eating at the imbecilic, gullible nature of a huge chunk of the American populace. We shall address this issue head on, but first you have to take some frivolous, pointless polls analyzing idiotic hypothetical situations. These came mostly from readers.

Poll One

A chicken who is trained to play flawless tic-tac-toe is up against a chess grandmaster who is from Azerbaijan, where tic-tac-toe is unknown. The rules are explained to him. He is given one minute to digest them. The games begin. With a draw, a new game is started, until someone wins or two hours have elapsed. First move alternates.

Poll Two

It is 2009. Usain Bolt is at the starting line. Next to Bolt is a regulation yellow city school bus, engine running, but filled with 50 squirmy nine-year-olds. The tape is 200 meters away. The street is flat. The gun fires.

Poll Three

Organizers of a “Battle of the Bands” for charity hire two accomplished bandleaders (it doesn’t matter what genre they specialize in). One bandleader is told he or she can only hire percussionists. The other can only hire horn players (no woodwinds).

Poll 4

Two contestants, each of whom must fill the cargo area of two identical moving trucks. It is 15 feet long by 7 feet wide by 7 feet high. They each get a hand truck and each can work with two burly, muscular assistants supplied to them; the four assistants, who must act only on the contestants’ directions, are identical quadruplets, well muscled. The two contestants are working the same building, a mansion with many rooms and many hundreds of articles of furniture. With a 90-minute limit, their job is to cram the most poundage of furniture into their truck — ideally to fill it with no gaps. The contestants are Wally, a 45-year-old professional furniture mover and Willis Gibson, the 13-year-old kid who just became the world’s greatest Tetris player ever by being the first person ever to defeat the game.

Poll Five.

Mustang Ranch A: Enthusiastic pros with some significant miles on their odometers, but who are patient and empathetic, inventive, intelligent, interesting, and quite skilled in the craft. Across the street is Mustang Ranch B: Young, gorgeous, vapid stereotypical bimbos who have the ardor, encouragement, and skill of a cadaver. Most of the clients are truckers.

In case you hadn’t figured it out, these polls were mostly reader-generated, in response to my challenge in the Weekend Gene Pool to imitate typically male idiot sports hypotheticals (Say, “Could Rafael Nadal defeat a middle school tennis whiz if Rafael’s racquet was a cast iron frying pan?”) but expand them to non-sports subjects. Most people submitted anonymously, but Jon Ketzner had the courage not to, and we applaud him, particularly since his was the Mustang Ranch.

Good. On to the death of Democracy.

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But first, please send in your questions and observations, which I will try to answer in real time. See if you can find the nearest orange button, and send them there.

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The Death of Democracy

Five Great Thinkers, on the noble value of Truth:

“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” — Arthur Schopenhauer

“I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.” — Abraham Lincoln

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty — that is all ye know on Earth, and all ye need to know.” — John Keats

“Sometimes, [a man] will stumble over the truth. Then he will pick himself up, dust himself off and proceed on as though nothing had happened.’’ — Winston Churchill

“Look, you just tell them and they believe it. That’s it! You just tell them and they believe. They just do." — Donald Trump, to Billy Bush, on how to mainstream a lie.

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The biggest danger facing America is Donald Trump. We all know that. But the greatest factor in neatly delivering this greatest danger to our doors is the erosion of truth as something to be desired — indeed, as something that even exists. Without that belief, if truth is malleable or ignorable, if facts don’t matter, the center does not hold. All contentions, however odious and bizarre, are potentially equally valid. There is no shame in saying them. Truths becomes lies become truths, and the central tenet of democracy — that an informed electorate is a free nation — is kaput. I’ve been thinking about this for about a week, after seeing this Twitter post:

Yes, the degree to which the simpleminded xenophobe made a fool of himself was delicious, but something happened afterwards that was chilling. The poster, Jesse Kelly, is not just some ignorant schmuck. He is an ignorant schmuck who is a right-wing radio host with a big following.

When it instantly became obvious, from comments, that his post was comically misinformed, he did not do what most non-MAGA people would: own it, make fun of yourself, set the record straight, and move on. Jesse Kelly feels no need to do so. He is empowered by TrumpWorld, where truth is without dignity or even meaning. Instead, he doubled down, grumbling in a followup tweet that he thought Twitter believed in free speech, and that he had a Constitutional right to his opinions, and that his viewpoints were being dishonored. He never acknowledged his pomposity-driven error. (He took down this followup pea-brained bluster tweet eventually, without explanation.)

Now comes last Friday, when Donald Trump shovels a leprous video out on his Truth Social abattoir. It is titled “God Made Trump.” Yes, that is what it’s about. God made Trump as a gift to the world. It has to be watched to be believed.

Thousands have seen it and applauded. It’s not just a suppurating boil of absurd lies, it is unattributed stolen material. As of last week, most of the media hadn’t seemed to figure it out. The entire script was adapted to mimic a famous speech given in 1978 by radio personality Paul Harvey in an elegant tribute not to Donald Trump — who at the time was beginning to amass properties that he would drive into bankruptcy a decade later — but to the noble American farmer. (Watch the video. Donald Trump, um, never had to deliver one of his grandchildren, that’s something farmers and other hoi polloi sometimes have to do.) It’s unclear whether whoever made this video intended it as anti-Trump parody — possibly, but probably not — but clearly Trump, who sent it out on social media, saw nothing suspicious in this over-the-top, fawning piece of goo.

Last week also, Twitter users were informed that a woman named Kristina Karamo lost her job as head of the Michigan Republican Party because it was discovered she had once secretly worked for Democrats. A string of Twitter denunciations followed about this traitor to the Holy Cause. Alas, no actual news stories mentioned any such problem. They did mention the real reason she was canned was that her fundraising incompetency has cost the party many, many tens of thousands of dollars, and also because she is an embarrassing, scary dingbat who espouses the QAnon conspiracy theory that a shadowy cabal of elites are harvesting children’s organs, that yoga is a satanic ritual, that Beyonce and Jay-Z are “satanists, and that Cardi B is a “tool of Lucifer.” None of that would have looked good for Republicans, so the issue became her disloyalty to the noble Grand Old Party. Much more popular with the tweeps.

Truth decay, to my thinking, is the main reason we are imperiled by Trump. I agree with Lincoln. All that needs to happen for democracy to flourish is that people need to be told the truth. That’s all. Is it now impossible?

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Okay, we are oozing menacingly into the real-time segment of the Gene Pool, where I respond to your in-game questions and observations, which you deliver to me by finding the nearest orange button.

Today’s questions and observations will be varied, but will center on the challenge posed in the Weekend Gene Pool, which asked readers to assess two hypothetical sports questions. Here they are:

Two wily NBA coaches are each asked to assemble a team that will play one big game for charity. The teams will be composed of any nine men the coaches wish, chosen from current NBA rosters. The bragging stakes are high and both teams will want to win. Coach A must choose only players who are six foot two or shorter. Coach B must choose only players who are seven foot or taller. Normal NBA rules apply. Which team will probably win?

Aaand:

Two wily Major League Baseball managers are asked to assemble a team that will play one big game for charity. The teams will be composed of any fifteen men the manager wishes, chosen from current MLB rosters. The bragging stakes are high and both teams will want to win. Manager Y must choose only pitchers. Manager Z must choose only catchers. Normal MLB rules apply. Which team will probably win?

The responses to these inane polls were all over the map. There was nothing resembling any sort of consensus. But I also asked you to write in to this chat to explain / defend your votes, and received a hemorrhage of responses, largely from men, I suspect. I will be printing a small printing a small proportion of them, and then hit you with a haymaker.

I asked two of my friends to take the poll, and offer their analysis. They are two of the most experienced and finest sportswriters around: Dave Kindred, who has been inducted into the U.S. Basketball Writers Hall of Fame^, and the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association Hall of Fame; and Tom Boswell, now retired from The Washington Post, who is the best baseball writer who ever lived. (Tom disputes this. It is the only thing he has ever been wrong about.)

So here we go with your fervent, earnest analyses, after which you will shamefully read, from Kindred and Boswell, The Truth (to elegantly wrap up the overall subject of this Gene Pool).

Reminder: If you are reading this in real time, please keep refreshing the page to see new questions and answers, and you definitely do not wish to miss The Truth.

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Q: The baseball one is easier. The best hitting pitchers will do okay but still get beaten up by the best hitting catchers. However, the catchers, while pitching, will get destroyed by the best hitting pitchers (think Ohtani, ) who do okay against real pitchers but will feast on “batting practice”-level catcher (as pitchers).

A: Please.  Ohtani is intentionally walked in every at bat, even if it walks in a run.  There will be strategy, you know. For example, the team of pitchers won’t have all great pitchers. It’ll have two great pitchers, two very good ones, and the rest will be chosen entirely for their hitting and fielding skills. Obviously.

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Q: The teams that seems to have the disadvantage (the puny guys, and the team that has NO pitchers) always wins because they’re motivated.  I see this in my pickup soccer games - when we have an odd number of players, the team that’s one short wins even when it’s 4 vs 5.

A: So you are applying the ethos of the sandlot to a game between highly motivated, professional, competitive maniacs? I see.

By the way, there is a pretty solid answer to Poll Question 2. I researched it, using, among other things, this highly technical bus acceleration study. Usain wins handily, probably by five meters or more. Usain’s acceleration is almost instantaeous, and will hit 25 miles an hour real quick. The bus, especially loaded with kids, might hit 40 miles an hour by the tape, but by before it gets near that, Usain has a substantial lead and has already been running 16 seconds. He’ll hit the tape at 19.7 seconds. No way the bus closes that gap in four seconds.

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Q: Something that bothers me, and possibly only me... Why do so many say "try and" when they really mean "try to"?  Even Cynthia (from Barney and Clyde) said it to Santa on Dec 17.

A: Yes, she did.

It will perhaps not surprise you that lexicographers love talking about this subject.  Merriam Webster has an enormous explanation online about why both formulations are worthy, but “try and” is more venerable.  Language expert E.B. White used it, as did Hemingway.  It dates to the 1600s.  “Try to” is newer and more versatile.   I dare you to read this insuperably long Merriam-Webster entry.  I dare you. (Okay, if you are a professional copyeditor, you probably already have.)

TIMELY TIP: If you’re reading this right now, on an email: Click here to get to my webpage, then click on the top headline (In this case, “Symptoms of Tooth…”) for the full column, and comments, and real-time questions and answers. And you can refresh and see new questions and answers that appear as I regularly update the post.

And speaking of refreshing, here is a refreshingly straightforward plea for alms. We need it. It will be an alms-length transaction.

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Q: Well, these games are hypotheticals, and it’s for charity. So it should be fun. Let’s mix things up a bit and stage a boxing tournament between the tall guys on Team B vs. the catchers (in crouching position) on Team Z. Who wins? Everybody getting to witness that visual. – Hildy Zampella

A: The catchers have to remain in a crouch??  That’s nuts.  We need to tweak the rules.   Either eliminate the crouch or add the crotch.  Uppercuts to the groin are permitted.  

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Q: I’m sure you’ve seen this, but on the off chance you haven’t: Unfortunately the picture won’t paste into this. 

"This is the largest fossilized human turd ever found. It belonged to a sick Viking in the 9th Century AD, and has been valued at $39,000".

The large, “precious” Poop, officially known as the Lloyds Bank Coprolite, the word “Coprolite” simply meaning fossilized dung. This 1200 year old log that is thought to be the largest recorded in human history.

At 8 inches long and 2 inches wide, specimen was discovered in York, northwest England in 1972 by construction workers during the building of a Lloyds TSB branch, in an area once ruled by Norse warriors. 

The huge poo had another red-letter moment in 1991 when dung scientist Dr. Andrew Jones appraised the piece in the name of insurance. “This is the most exciting piece of excrement I’ve ever seen,” he told the Wall Street Journal at the time. “In its own way, it’s as irreplaceable as the Crown Jewels.”

Paleoscatologists have been able to discern much from the girthy deposit, including that its producer ate mostly meat and bread was likely a Viking, lived in approximately the 9th Century AD, and had a gut full of parasites. Indeed, the manure was found to be infested with Whipworm and Maw-worm eggs, suggesting the Viking often had an upset stomach and other gastrointestinal problems.

Today, the log resides in a glass box at the Jorvik Viking Centre, York, England; where, in 2003, visitors dropped it, breaking it into three pieces. It has since been repaired.

The Centre is proud to call itself the turd’s final resting place, even hosting a virtual workshop in February called “Poo Day!” in which fans learned about the dung’s significance. 

A: Never think that the Gene Pool fails to help the readers any way it can, or that our priorities are mismanaged..  We searched and searched and got the photo for you.  

Here is the art. 

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Q: My answers were both affected by the way the games have changed. 

Fifty years ago, I might have gone with the shorter NBA players and the baseball catchers. In 2024, I choose the opposite.

Today, choosing the NBA big men was the easy choice. Seven-footers used to be mostly stiffs who parked under the basket and couldn't move outside the paint. You could run around them and draw fouls and shoot 3-pointers over their heads. Today you could fill a team with big guys who can also move fast, defend the perimeter, shoot 3-pointers, and keep up with speedy, smaller guys. No brainer.

The baseball question is trickier, because every MLB player has played every position, and was probably the best pitcher on his high school team, so they all can hit and pitch to some degree. 

Fifty years ago, I might've gone with the catchers because the catcher is likely the smartest guy on the squad, and some of the best hitters in baseball were catchers. Pitchers, meanwhile, didn't get to the pros and attend "pitching labs" where they learned to add 6 mph to their 4-seamers and 6" of fade to their sliders, and add a 4th and 5th pitch to their repertoires. So on those occasions when a position player was called on to pitch, the difference wasn't as dramatic as it is now.

In 2024, young catching prospects who are also elite hitters (like Bryce Harper) get converted to another position to get them to the majors more quickly. This means that today you'd have a hard time filling a team with catchers who collectively get on base much.

So a hand-picked team of pitchers who throw 102mph 4-seamers and 95mph breaking pitches will likely shut out a bunch of light-hitting catchers.

But what about the DH? Pitchers don't hit anymore. They're all out of practice. True. But they wouldn't be facing major league pitching, and they are athletes. They'll take some bathing practice, and heir high school-level selves will manage to eke out a winning run against guys tossing high school-level 85 mph "fastballs."

A: An excellent, thoughtful analysis. Maybe the best so far, if wrong in some ways. To avoid boring non-sports fans, this may stand for all the many dozens of others I got. You will soon get the definitive answers from Mr. Kindred and Mr. Boswell.

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Q: Twenty-five years ago, the shorter players might have had a chance. Nowadays the seven-footers handle the ball so well that they could most always get the ball up the court, and then score at will. Even if the short guys' coaches had them playing aggressive defense, trying to steal off the dribble, the giants could advance the ball with overhead passes, en route to scoring at will.

The pitchers team would crush the catchers. As helpless as pitchers often appear against major league pitching, they are still elite athletes, who would clobber balls pitched by catchers. Meanwhile the catchers would hit their usual .220-240 against major league pitchers. Most major league pitchers were likely over .300 hitters in high school ball, and that's the level of pitching they would face in this scenario.

A: Okay, this was good too. Here come the experts. It may take two minutes to wrangle them in. They had Opinions.

Kindred wrote short. Boswell wrote long. Both wrote good.

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From Dave Kindred: 

Aside from the question of finding nine guys 6-2 or smaller, the real question is how do the little guys ever score when a 7-footer is in their face or swatting shots away at the rim.  Big boys by 30. 

Pitchers can pitch.  Period.  Full stop.  Maybe they used to be hitters and fielders somewhere, but not in the Big Leagues.  Catchers know how to play baseball.  Catchers by the mercy rule, 18-2.  

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From Boswell: 

I think the giants would beat the 6-foot-2 humans, probably by a lot.

First, what would the STYLE of the game be? The guards would want to press, probably full court, and fast break as much as possible, just like smaller teams usually do.

But it wouldn't work out well for them, either offensively or defensively, and they'd be forced into a mostly half-court game where the big guys would have LOTS of advantages.   

The proper way to beat a press is by passing, especially OVER defenders, rather than dribbling through the pressure. Embiid, Wemby, etc could cope with pressure. So, you'd have a half-court game. When the guards had the ball in half-court offense, the giants would always be conscious of "keeping two men back" to prevent fast breaks. (Hell, you can't send five 7-footers to the glass all at once anyway.)

The giants would control the defensive glass so easily that they'd constantly be sending out guys on fly patterns for long passes and break aways. 

The giants would bother the three-point shooting of the guards more than the little guys would bother the shooting of the giants --which would be "they can't bother them AT ALL." You'd never keep the ball out of the low post because 6-foot-2 can't "front" 7-foot-1. It'd be layup, dunk and baby-hook drill all night. 

The edge in offensive rebounds would be huge, far greater than any turnover advantage that the guards could get with steals by using their quickness. This would lead to a BIG edge in total shot attempts for the 7-footers. I once heard legendary HS coach Morgan Wootten tell his DeMatha team at halftime, "Gentleman, you can shoot too much, you can dribble too much, you can even pass too much. But you can't REBOUND too much." 

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That said, the pitchers would beat the catchers. 

Plenty of pitchers can hit well in high school or college. The catchers wouldn't even be as good at pitching as a mediocre college pitching staff. Also, the catcher's throwing motion is not a natural pitching motion. That's why most "emergency" pitchers in blow outs are OFers or strong-armed infielders who have more fluid motions and don't "throw like catchers."

Every position player thinks he has a slider or a curveball. But they're pretty humble. One exception: Before a WS game I was standing with Giants manager Bruce Bochey in front of the dugout during BP. Various Giants were warming up playing catch right in front of us. One player had a vicious lefthanded slider that his playing-catch partner could barely handle. I said something like, "Put this guy in your bullpen." Bochey said, "It's Pablo (Sandoval). He's ambidextrous" His RIGHT-HANDED third baseman was snapping off sliders throwing lefthanded! "You gotta understand --these guys AREN'T NORMAL PEOPLE," said Bochey. "They can do things you can barely believe."    

One other thought: the catchers aren't trained pitchers and would probably walk lots of hitters, handing another edge to the team of pitchers.   

On the other hand, we already know --roughly-- how many runs a lineup entirely of catchers would hit against a major league caliber pitching staff: about 4.5 runs a game. That's what they do for a living, so their "form" is no mystery. IMO, the pitchers would easily score more.  

*The pitchers would be at home on the mound and wouldn't be intimidated at the plate. They'd hold their own as hitters, especially because you'd PICK pitchers with an eye to their combo skills, including decent hitting. On defense, the pitchers would do fine. They all shag in the outfield. They all have strong enough arms to play the infield. And they all practice fielding grounders. But how would those catchers do at SS and in the OF? 

Of course, you'd have to find a pitcher who can catch a MLB pitcher!   

*The catchers would be out of position on defense, out of their element on the mound and no more comfortable at the plate than they usually are. As a group, the pitchers would even be faster base runners. 

Also, the catchers would have to semi-intentionally walk Ohtani every time he came up! Another edge to the pitchers. 

It's a good thing you're playing these games for charity, 'cause THINGS COULD GET UGLY.

This is Gene: One of the highlights of my life will be that Boswell made two points that I thought of before I saw his answers. One, that Ohtani would get routinely walked, and the second that the pitchers absolutely need to find a pitcher who could competently catch a top-level major league pitcher. Absent that, the game is a fiasco won by the catchers, I think.

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Q: How would a top soccer team of 15-year-old boys do against the best women soccer players in the world? As you might have guessed, it's actually not a hypothetical: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/carli-lloyd-lost-15-year-old-boys_n_654e31e3e4b0c9f2465fd8f0 (though it was a friendly match, not an official competition, so the results are suggestive rather than definitive.)

A: This shocks me!

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This is Gene. I feel that I should say that there is probably a Correct Answer to Poll Three. I didn’t feel that way until I discussed the question with Rachel, and she said something definitive: “Remember, a xylophone is a percussion instrument.” As are multi-tone steel drums.

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Q: Regarding your anecdote in the Weekend Gene Pool about the Asian DMV clerk who had tried pastrami for the first time, in New York, and loved it, then latched on the Jewish guy – you – for advice on where to get good pastrami in D.C:  You’re right.  The meats that get passed off as "pastrami" around here are an abomination. YES real Romanian pastrami is very well marbled (that's the foodie term for "fatty"), and people around here don't seem to get it.   What is your favorite New York pastrami place? 

A: This will sound like a copout, but the best pastrami in New York is just about any pastrami in New York.  They must compete with each other.  They are not going to “trim the fat” because skinny goys want it that way. 

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Q: HawkRapids-The shorter basketball players would have the advantage because they could pressure the seven footers and make it difficult for them to get the ball upcourt. Steals, speed and turnovers would be decisive.

.

A: I think you overemphasize the pressure.  I would think the big guys would have to barely dribble.  They high-arc the balls to each other in a bucket brigade.

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This is Gene, and this headline just moved on the NYT:

Judges Seem Skeptical of Trump’s Claim of Immunity

I am getting excited.

Q: What quality do you look for most in submitted questions? Humor, truthiness, punctuation, political purity? Lot of mine seem to get bounced.

A: I suspect they get bounced because you ask questions like this.  I am looking for one thing: Interesting and entertaining questions and observations, and/or questions and observations that give me an opportunity for an interesting and entertaining answer. 

Q: Regarding the terrible lede by Ross Douthat.  Ross is a douche.  And unless you're planning to give the land back to the people mentioned in a land acknowledgment or pay them for it, how is a land acknowledgment _not_ just performative?  To this center-left guy it just seems like rubbing the fact in the faces of indigenous people.

A: While i don’t disagree with your political analysis, i fear you missed the point of my peroration. 

This was the lede:

In the debate about whether to take the woke version of progressivism seriously as a revolutionary ideology or whether to regard it primarily as a kind of performative intra-elite signaling, the “land acknowledgment” phenomenon has always loomed as the strongest exhibit for the it’s-all-just-performance case.

Mr. Douthat’s lede, which I called the worst writing I’d seen in a long time, was itself performative, and precious, and mannered, and navel-gazing, and incomprehensible to someone not bathed in the maximum elitist jargon of the left.  It gives us lefties a bad name.

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Q: You are spot-on about the effects of GPS and turn-by-turn directions on its users.  Some time ago I made a conscious decision to not use turn-by-turn directions unless in dire circumstances.  I have always prided myself on having an excellent sense of direction and location and I want to maintain that.  I use my phone as my map, and I'll study directions intently before driving somewhere new.  It costs me some time, an occasional wrong turn, and occasional interpersonal drama with a GPS-addled numpty.  But I consider my life to be much richer for it.

A: Well, i have a similar curmudgeonly intransigence against modernity, as some of my readers know.  I am the guy who shaves with a straight razor made in the 1950s in the Soviet Union.  

Q: Your comment about GPS making us all incapable of finding our way around by ourselves reminded me of when I worked in retail many years ago. We had an old fashioned (even for that time) cash register. You rang up the sale, and it gave you the total. The customer forked over the money and you gave them change back. You had to calculate the amount of change yourself. I’m not very good with math, but I could do this with ease. We replaced our register with a fancy new one, where you entered in the amount of money the customer gave you and it told you how much change to give the customer. I swear that within two days of using this thing I would look to see how much to give the customer if they handed me a ten dollar bill for a five dollar sale.  – Sean Clinchy

A: Thank you. 

This is Gene, and I am calling us down. PLEASE keep sending in questions and observations, which I will answer in Thursday’s Invitational Gene Pool. Send em to the nearest orange button.

And while you are pushing buttons haphardly: