Fact: The past April was the coldest April in twenty years in the United States and the thirteenth coldest in the past 124 years, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Fact: The American southwest was warmer than usual, as were the southern plains, with record dryness in the southwest and mid-Mississippi Valley.

Fact: The United Kingdom had an unusually warm April, with days that were the hottest in 70 years, so hot that horse races were cancelled.

Fact: The German National Meteorological Service reported that April was the hottest month in the recorded history of German weather.

Fact: Italy also had a warm April, with five cities – Trieste, Genoa, Pisa, Venice, and Grosseto – recording record temperatures for the month.

Fact: Australia had a warm April as well, with parts of the country measuring the second hottest April on record.

Fact: On April 30th, a city in Pakistan – Nawabshah – set the world heat record for April, with temperatures reaching 122.4 degrees Fahrenheit in the city of over a million, causing heatstroke deaths, power outages and general misery.

Fact: Even with cold temperatures in North America, world-wide, April 2018 was the third warmest on record.

So… which facts do you choose to believe?

Do you pick the ones that reinforce what you want to believe? Or the ones you’ve experienced? Or do you look at all the facts and try to sort them out?

Can you even sort them out?

I did a quick scan of news stories I could find on April weather that were published in the last month. Out of some 280 stories, only fifteen mentioned the heat in any other part of the world, and only five mentioned the point that April, world-wide, was much hotter than average and the third warmest on record.

Most of the stories available in English focused on the unseasonably cold U.S. weather without any world-wide perspective. That’s understandable in some ways, because news outlets cater to their local constituencies, but it’s also deceptive because it reinforces a very localized perspective.

All of which bring up a question we need to keep asking ourselves. From just where did we get the facts we so blithely trot out to support what we believe?

Although few want to admit it, the reason why “rights” are so often attributed to a deity is because it endows them with a sense of being elevated beyond mere people. This also why commandments and morality are usually tied to religion and presented as being from a superior being. After all, what value is there in rights or moral values because Sam Nobody or Sara Somebody said it they were the way in which people should conduct themselves?

But in fact, the vast majority of legal codes practiced today, while tied to some form of religious faith, either loosely or strictly, were set forth and presented to the people by other people [with the possible exception of the ten commandments, but even then we only have the word of Moses that God inscribed those stone tablets]. As some commenters have pointed out, even the Founding Fathers deferred to a deity, but in fact they were the ones who wrote the actual language of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Why do we have such a problem in admitting that the beliefs and laws that, for the most part, govern us and our behavior were devised by other people? Is it because we don’t like admitting that someone else had a better idea? We certainly accede to the fact that others are physically stronger, or that “might makes right” in terms of war or the threat of largest battalions.

Yet, the idea that someone else might have a better code of behavior, especially one not based on religion, is an anathema to most Americans, and certainly to most Islamic believers. I suspect the only reason most Americans are leery of a theocracy is not because of the idea of a theocracy itself, but because there’s the real danger of the religious values being imposed just might be those of some other faith. That was most certainly the concern of the Founding Fathers.

Then, too, there’s the question of how any deity could grant us “rights.” Proclaiming that such rights are “God-given” doesn’t make it so, although it may legitimize those rights in the eyes of the faithful. But then, maybe that’s the point of the claim. The problem with such “legitimacy,” however, is that when the laws of a country don’t reflect what a given group of believers think is in accord with their faith, they want to change the laws to reflect their faith, regardless of the conflict such changes causes with the beliefs of others.

In practice, human “rights” only exist so long as human beings recognize such rights and conduct themselves in a way that supports those rights. All too often in history, the rights of one group or another, and often their very existence, have been destroyed through intolerance of differences and in the name of another belief, a rather strong indication that no deity created those rights and that no deity actively defends them, only people of both character with the will to act and to oppose injustice.

After literally centuries of oppression and minimization of women, I can understand the fury and anger that fuels much of the Me Too Movement, particularly since I’ve witnessed that on-going and still continuing minimization and disregard by men toward my wife and my daughters. It’s well past time for change, and that change needs to be considerable in scope and duration, but such change isn’t going to take place without passion and, frankly, fury.

Unfortunately, there are also going to be excesses and collateral damage. When there are profound social changes in society, there always are. And there’s the very real danger that those excesses will produce a backlash. In fact, if the excesses are too great, the backlash will also be great.

In addition to the considerable and well-documented revelations about powerful men, from Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby to Donald Trump, there have also been what appear to be charges against other public male figures, and even one female figure, based on far less substance, and in the case of one well-known author, a series of anonymous and undocumented charges, charges that remain without any support, three months later, and, in the case of a respected commentator, a single dubious charge, one refuted by the commentator and roughly sixty other female media personages.

After some forty years as a published author, I do know a considerable number of authors, male and female, and quite a few of the women authors I know are disturbed by some of the anonymous and so far unsupported charges being bandied about.

Now… there is no excuse for unprofessional behavior and particularly not behavior that degrades or damages others, especially women, given the abuse and minimization they’ve endured for years, but charges of abuse and minimization need to be documented and accusers need to put their names on the line and not hide behind anonymity. In those cases where the accuser fears retribution, evidence is still required.

There’s also one other danger that needs to be avoided, especially in the field of writing, and that’s equating criticism and considered judgment with gender-based minimization. Men and women can both write great books. They can also write terrible books. If a man believes a woman’s book is poorly written, and says so, that’s not minimization – even if others think he’s wrong. The book or story is not the person – even though all of us authors do in fact take it personally when we get negative criticism.

On the other hand, when authors’ advances and/or royalties are based in any degree on gender, rather than on sales or projected sales, or when female authors get less publisher support when they have comparable sales levels to male authors, those are examples of gender-based discrimination and totally unacceptable. But we need to keep in mind the difference between criticism or literary opinion and actual discrimination. And, yes, a negative comment or review can harm an author, but so long as the negativity is based on the book and not the author, that’s fair game. Over the years, I’ve occasionally gotten some terrible reviews. I never cared about, and often never knew, the gender of the reviewer. Books and their reviews need to stand on their own.

However… for all that I’ve just written… there is going to be collateral damage. I can only hope that it’s kept to a minimum, because the backlash could even be worse. After all, for better or worse, isn’t backlash one of the reasons why we ended up with President Trump?

Today, the local newspaper featured a letter from a reader who was totally irate about the stance of a previous reader, who had suggested that some gun-control legislation was in order. The irate commenter stated that no one had the right to infringe or abrogate his “God-given rights” to carry weapons.

I’ve heard and seen that wording and argument more than a few times over the last few years, until I’d like to stuff the barrel of a weapon down the throat of any idiot who utters any more nonsense about God-given rights, especially about weapons. I’ve read the Bible more than a few times, and I’ve never come across any mention of the right to bear weapons. Yes, the God of the Old Testament often exhorted his chosen people to take up arms, but it’s never stated that there’s an absolute right to carry any weapon you choose in any circumstance. I’ve read the Koran, admittedly in translation, and I’ve gotten the same impression about Allah, but, since I can’t read Arabic, I have to rely on the translation.

Even if a holy text did state something like that, the “word” comes through prophets and not directly from the deity, and given that all individuals have agendas, I’d have to express some doubts. In addition, there’s the rather large problem that the Constitution expresses a separation of Church and state, and definitely does not endorse any specific deity…or that deity’s commands… as statutory or Constitutional law.

Now, many of these individuals citing “God-given rights” may think that they’re quoting the Founding Fathers. They’re not. The Declaration of Independence clearly states: “all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness….” Three specific rights, and not one deals with weapons, and as for the other rights, they’re never mentioned, especially not in terms of firearms. The Constitution allows firearms under certain conditions, but the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that reasonable limitations on that right are allowable and permitted, and that right wasn’t granted by any deity, but by men who framed our governmental system.

In tradition in practice, “rights” are set forth by men and women, usually men, and whether they believe they’re acting out the will of a deity, those rights exist under human law, and not under a divine command. Besides which, if you read the Bible closely, the Christian God isn’t even consistent with what the prophets reveal about him, especially in regard to killing.

So… lay off the crap about “God-given rights,” especially with regard to firearms. Just confine the debate to the existing legal structure and what might actually work… or might not, and why.

Like most of what Donald Trump says, there’s a grain of truth in his claims about “false news,” and it’s a grain of truth that most reputable news organizations are essentially ignoring, and by doing so, are acting against their own best interests… and the best interests of the rest of us.

That grain of truth is that too many news media people are acting and reporting on rumors and rumors of rumors all too often before coming anywhere close to reporting hard facts.

Why? There are two reasons. First, to call a spade a spade, a large percentage of mainstream media analysts and reporters dislike him, and that intense dislike blinds them to the fact that they’re often cutting corners and not getting all the facts. Each time they print an incorrect rumor or incorrect charge, they’re reinforcing Trump’s contention that they’re printing “fake news.”

Second, news media has been captured by the profit motive, excessively captured, so that getting the first scoop, whether correct or not, too often trumps [pun intended] accurate and factual coverage.

Part of this need for speed comes from a realization that the public attention span is so short that by the time the actual facts surface, most of the audience has lost interest. But news media are supposed to make money, or at least not lose it, and waiting until facts can be confirmed costs circulation and ratings… and money. And money trumps accuracy, these days, in every way.

Most people have forgotten that the time between the Watergate burglary and the time Nixon was forced to resign was two years and three months. Even the Woodward and Bernstein article that revealed the scope of the Nixon campaign in the burglary wasn’t published until October 10, 1972, almost four months after the burglary, and it took almost two more years for all the depth of White House involvement to become public and for Nixon to be charged with impeachment by the House.

So let’s hear it for profit at any cost, regardless of what those costs are.