Ritualized Mendacity

On this day:

1826
Samuel Morey patents the internal combustion engine.
1865
American Civil War: Battle of Five Forks – In Siege of Petersburg, Confederate General Robert E. Lee begins his final offensive.
1873
The British steamer RMS Atlantic sinks off Nova Scotia, killing 547.
1924
Adolf Hitler is sentenced to five years in jail for his participation in the “Beer Hall Putsch”. However, he spends only nine months in jail, during which he writes Mein Kampf.
1939
Generalísimo Francisco Franco of the Spanish State announces the end of the Spanish Civil War, when the last of the Republican forces surrender.
1944
Navigation errors lead to an accidental American bombing of the Swiss city of Schaffhausen.
1949
The Canadian government repeals Japanese Canadian internment after seven years.
1957
The BBC broadcasts the spaghetti tree hoax on its current affairs programme Panorama.

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“If you can detach yourself temperamentally from the crowd, you'll get very rich. You won't have to be very bright. It doesn't take brains. It takes temperament.”--Buffett

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Newly released photos appeared to show the husband of former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem cross-dressing in private messages to several women.


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“It was once believed that clones were identical to the original, but it has become clear through this study that mutations occur at a rate three times higher than in offspring born through natural mating.” That quote is one of the clearest summaries of why the study matters: genome sequencing showed that cloned mice were not preserving a perfect copy of the donor. Instead, the defects kept being passed forward, with no genetic reshuffling to help remove them.--project head, Wakayama

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"We're not a rich country. We're a debtor nation," then-candidate Trump told The Washington Post in an interview on March 31, 2016 (a full transcript was published two days later). "We've got to get rid of the $19 trillion in debt."

How long would it take to do that, asked the Post's Bob Woodward.

"Fairly quickly," Trump replied. When pressed for a more specific answer, Trump provided a shocking timeline. "Well, I would say over a period of eight years."

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Ritualized Mendacity

April Fool's Day, once an opportunity for annoying dim-wits, has become a national Holy Day of Obligation. The silliest frauds are presented as accurate with the straightest of faces. Social lies are routine.

Just like daily life.

In our modern culture of unchallenged opportunism and mendacity, April Fool's Day has become more of a cautionary tale.

The lead singer of the New York Times’ 1619 Project, Nikole Hannah-Jones, is on record calling the white race “the biggest murderer, rapist, pillager, and thief in the modern world.” Despite this, the 1619 educational curriculum—much of which conveys basically the same point of view—is one of the more popular educational supplements in American schools. Major magazines and journals, at the level of Salon, quite regularly run articles with titles like “White Men Must Be Stopped–the Future of Mankind Depends on It.” Maybe we have become so tolerant, so non-judgmental, we will tolerate anything. 

As Sec. Mayorkas said, "The border is closed."

April Fools' Day has become a welcome day of benign jokes and foolishness amidst our days of serious lies, manipulation, and propaganda. There have been some real efforts made at its comic relief. In 1957, the BBC reported that Swiss farmers were experiencing a record spaghetti crop and showed footage of people harvesting noodles from trees. In 1985, Sports Illustrated tricked many of its readers when it ran a made-up article about a rookie pitcher named Sidd Finch who could throw a fastball over 168 miles per hour. In 1996, Taco Bell, the fast-food restaurant chain, duped people when it announced it had agreed to purchase Philadelphia’s Liberty Bell and intended to rename it the Taco Liberty Bell. In 1998, after Burger King advertised a “Left-Handed Whopper,” scores of clueless customers requested the fake sandwich.
There is probably little to learn about humans through this. Most of us, simply by observing politics, know that some people will believe anything.

The origin of April Fools' Day is uncertain. The best explanation is the confusion caused by the change of the New Year from April First to January First.
Ancient cultures, including those of the Romans and Hindus, celebrated New Year's Day on or around April 1. It closely follows the vernal equinox (March 20th or March 21st). In medieval times, much of Europe celebrated March 25, the Feast of Annunciation, as the beginning of the new year.
In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII ordered a new calendar (the Gregorian Calendar) to replace the old Julian Calendar. The new calendar called for New Year's Day to be celebrated Jan. 1.
It is said that some refused to accept the new calendar and became the object of ridicule at that time of year.

In a great story, Joseph Boskin, a professor of history at Boston University, explained that the practice began during the reign of Constantine, when a group of court jesters and fools told the Roman emperor that they could do a better job of running the empire. Constantine, amused, allowed a jester named Kugel to be king for one day. Kugel passed an edict calling for absurdity on that day, and the custom became an annual event.
"In a way," explained Prof. Boskin, "it was a very serious day. In those times, fools were really wise men. It was the role of jesters to put things in perspective with humor."
This explanation was brought to the public's attention in an Associated Press article printed by many newspapers in 1983. Wonderfully, Boskin had made the whole thing up. It took a couple of weeks for the AP to realize that they'd been victims of an April Fools' joke themselves.

So, enjoy your spaghetti or your left-handed whopper. You need the break.