Civil Commotion

The New York Times is reporting that a gay purge is underway in Chechnya.

While abuses by security services in the region, where Russia fought a two-decade war against Islamic insurgents, have long been a stain on President Vladimir V. Putin’s human rights record, gay people had not previously been targeted on a wide scale.

The men were detained “in connection with their nontraditional sexual orientation, or suspicion of such,” the newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, reported, citing Russian federal law enforcement officials, who blamed the local authorities.

By Saturday, the paper reported, and an analyst of the region with her own sources confirmed, that more than 100 gay men had been detained. The newspaper had the names of three murder victims, and suspected many others had died in extrajudicial killings.

This will probably please our domestic loonies and firm-up support for Friend-of-Vladimir Trump.

I don’t like hardly anything that’s on Trump’s to-do list, but he is right that the so-called Freedom Caucus is a destructive presence in our national life, and I’m in favor of (almost) anything that diminishes their influence.

I am certainly guilty of that.

When a surgical intervention saves a life, for instance, and some moron shouts “Praise God!!” — I am invariably annoyed.

No. Do not thank The Invisible Wizard In The Sky. Thank the …

• Engineers who spent years mastering their field so that they could design and fabricate the tools and instruments the surgeon used, and that will monitor the patient’s recovery.

• And the Surgeon who spent years mastering his specialty so that he would be ready at a moments notice to open-up the body of another human being and repair it.

• And the researchers who spent years developing the medicines that will kill invasive bacteria and control normal physiological reactions in order to help the body heal.

• And the nurses who have spent years training to be prepared to intervene if things go sideways.

Thank the long continuum of thinking adults who defied your ignorant superstitions, and prevailed against them, in spite of all your conniving to protect your make-believe. That’s who deserves the gratitude.

Reality is no longer a datum that Republicans consult. But reality always has the last word.