The World and Everything in It - April 23, 2021

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning!

In the wake of the George Floyd verdict, some political leaders are saying murder convictions in this case are not enough. We’ll ask John Stonestreet about these reactions.

MEGAN BASHAM, HOST: That’s ahead on Culture Friday.

And I’ll review an Oscar-winner that bucked the recent trend of Best Picture nominees that leave audiences depressed.

Plus, Word Play with George Grant. This month’s lesson is one you don’t want to miss.

BROWN: It’s Friday, April 23rd. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

BASHAM: And I’m Megan Basham. Good morning!

BROWN: Time for news! Here’s Anna Johansen Brown.

ANNA JOHANSEN BROWN, NEWS ANCHOR: Biden hosts virtual climate summit » President Joe Biden opened a virtual climate summit on Thursday by making a new commitment to reduce greenhouse gases. He vowed the United States would cut fossil fuel emissions up to 52 percent by 2030.

BIDEN: The signs are unmistakable. The science is undeniable, but the cost of inaction keeps mounting. The United States isn't waiting. We are resolving to take action, not only our federal government, but our cities and our states all across our country, small businesses, large businesses, large corporations, American workers in every field.

Biden’s plan would nearly double the reductions the Obama administration pledged to make under the 2015 Paris climate agreement. He also pledged to double U.S. funding for climate initiatives in less wealthy countries by 2024. And he said the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation would make one-third of its new investments climate-focused within two years.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, speaking through an interpreter, welcomed Biden’s proposals.

MERKEL: I am delighted to see that the United States is back—back to work together with us in climate politics because there can be no doubt about the world needing your contribution if we are going to meet our ambitious goals.

Forty world leaders joined the video conference. Many made their own pledges to reduce carbon emissions. Russia and China did not.

And Senator Marco Rubio said U.S. efforts are meaningless without comparable commitments from Beijing.

RUBIO: They’re the world’s leading polluter in terms of emissions of carbon. Even as they’re here at the summit, they’re funding billions of dollars of fossil-fuel powered plants all over the world, including within China. Their emissions continue to climb. And that’s what I always tell people, that U.S. action alone is irrelevant when you have countries like China who continue to increase their emissions. And they’re not going to stop doing it.

The summit attendees will reconvene again today for another round of virtual talks.

House passes bill to make Washington, D.C., 51st state » The U.S. House has approved a measure that would make Washington, D.C., the nation’s 51st state. Speaker Nancy Pelosi framed the issue as one of fairness.

PELOSI: For more than two centuries, the people of Washington, D.C., have been denied their right to participate in our and their democracy.

Although Washington has its own local elected leaders, it is a federal district. That means Congress has the power to veto or alter any local laws.

But Republicans say the issue has nothing to do with giving the city’s residents more of a say in their own affairs. Congressman Kevin McCarthy said it’s all about control of the federal government.

MCCARTHY: The House Democrats are moving on D.C. statehood, another ploy to consolidate power so they can jam through socialist policies like the Green New Deal, court-packing, and defunding police.

The bill would give the new state one representative in the House and two senators, all of which would most likely be Democrats.

The measure passed on a party-line vote. Democrats don’t have enough votes in the Senate to overcome a Republican filibuster. But even if they did, the bill would likely face legal challenges.

India breaks record for most COVID cases » India passed a grim milestone in the pandemic on Thursday. The country reported nearly 315,000 new infections, a global daily record.

India has logged almost 16 million cases since the pandemic began. But that’s still only a fraction of the country’s 1.4 billion people.

Dr. K. Srinath Reddy is president of the India Public Health Foundation. He said the country thought it had passed the worst of the pandemic.

REDDY: We were lulled into a sense of complacency. Because the various measures of the pandemic, whether it was the daily case count, or the daily death count, or even the test-positivity rates, all of them started declining.

The surge in new cases has strained the medical system to the breaking point. Many hospitals are reporting shortages of beds and medicine. But the biggest concern is oxygen.

The New Delhi High Court has ordered the government to divert oxygen from industrial use to hospitals. The judges called the situation a national emergency.

Healthcare workers are administering 2.7 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines each day. But less than 10 percent of Indians have gotten a shot.

Biden gives tax credit to businesses to encourage vaccination » Vaccination rates in the United States are much higher. More than half of U.S. residents have received at least one shot. And the government reported Wednesday that manufacturers are sending providers 28 million new doses each week.

But the pace of vaccinations has started to slow. And the Biden administration wants to give people added incentive to get the shot.

BIDEN: Until you are fully vaccinated, you are still vulnerable. The vaccine can save your life. The second reason to get vaccinated is to protect your community, your family, your friends and your neighbors.

On Wednesday, the president urged large employers to give workers time off to get the shot. And he announced a tax credit for small businesses to provide paid leave for employees who want to get vaccinated. It would also cover time off employees need to recover from side effects.

The roughly $500 dollar per employee per day credit is part of the $1.9 trillion virus relief package passed last month.

Putin announces troop pullback in Ukraine » Russia’s defense minister made a surprise announcement Thursday.

SHOIGU: MAN SPEAKING RUSSIAN

Troops massed on the border with eastern Ukraine are coming home. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said the military exercises in Crimea and wide swathes of western Russia are over.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy welcomed the news.

Zelenskyy and Western leaders had voiced concern about the troop buildup in recent weeks. And Russian President Vladimir Putin showed no signs of backing down.

But the troop pullback is only a partial de-escalation. Heavy weapons deployed to western Russia will stay put. Shoigu said Moscow plans another massive military exercise in the region later this year.

I’m Anna Johansen Brown.

Straight ahead: reactions to the verdict in Derek Chauvin’s murder trial.

Plus, George Grant makes an understatement.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday, April 23rd, 2021. Glad you’ve joined us for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

MEGAN BASHAM, HOST: And I’m Megan Basham. After months of tense waiting that often included riots, a jury found former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin guilty on all counts of the murder of George Floyd.

However, the message many national leaders offered after the verdict is that it is not enough. More must be done, they say, to address systemic racism.

Here’s Vice President Kamala Harris:

HARRIS: A measure of justice isn’t the same as equal justice. This verdict brings us a step closer and, the fact is, we still have work to do. We still must reform the system.

And here’s President Joe Biden:

It was a murder in the full light of day, and it ripped the blinders off for the whole world to see the systemic racism the Vice President just referred to. The systemic racism that is a stain on our nation’s soul. The knee on the neck of justice for black Americans.

BROWN: Well, it is Culture Friday and joining us now is John Stonestreet, president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast. John, good morning.

JOHN STONESTREET, GUEST: Good morning.

BROWN: So John, I think we all breathed a sigh of relief when it became clear that Tuesday night was going to be peaceful. However, it seems like we’re still going to be hearing a lot about this case, because it sounds like some leaders are still planning to use it to advance a policy agenda. Where do you see things going from here?

STONESTREET: I think we're going to hear a lot more about this case. But even more than that, we're gonna hear about the next case and the next case and the next case. In fact, the day wasn't even over before we heard about the tragic shooting of a teenage girl in a neighborhood near Columbus, Ohio. And it's another story, right, where you have a white cop and an African American person involved. And you also have tons of extenuating circumstances. So in other words, the peacefulness of Tuesday night was was really short lived. In fact, it didn't even extend through Tuesday night, you know.

And in Ohio, the problem here, there's a lot of problems here. First of all, this was an awful, awful case. When we talk about what happened with George Floyd, what happened with Derek Chauven, the, what it triggered in the United States was at a at a brand new level of intensity, and that's not going away. The other issue that we're dealing with is that we're at a place where people aren't waiting for the evidence. People are already assuming an answer, based on, you know, preconceived notions that are almost purely politically driven. And that's a devastating way to try to move forward around hardship or confusion.

Look, you know, on at face value, there was a trial. There was a jury of peers. There was a guilty verdict that was returned. I mean, in other words, the, the system did what the system is supposed to do, but that's not enough, right? People are asking this case to carry a load of weight that it just cannot do. This will not be, you know, one of the kind of the great moments, and you know, racial unification. It just won't. Because of what's happening is those putting so much weight on this case, one direction or another, are doing it with a worldview that’s simply too small.

And here's what I mean by that. Every worldview has to account for what is wrong with the world. There's one group of people looking at this and all of evil, they see as being systemic. That's the explanation for everything. On the other hand, you have people who are reacting against the overt accusation of systemic racism, in particular, for to be the explanation for almost everything, and saying, "Well, there is no such thing as systemic evil." The Scripture is really clear on this, that evil is personally caused. It's sourced in individual choices. And yet it can take on this systemic reality. It can actually infiltrate the world. And if we don't see the the capacity of sin and evil to be both of those things, we're never going to be able to look at a situation like this one or any other one, and have any sort of rational or coherent or complete or helpful analysis that can help us move forward past things. And so that's the infection, and we're seeing it now.

BROWN: You know, John, you mentioned looking at this case on its own merits, and I have to bring up Congresswoman Maxine Waters—her call for protesters to get more confrontational if a guilty verdict wasn't reached. And President Biden, though he said it after the jury was sequestered, said he hoped that they would reach the right verdict. So there was a message out there that the country would see retribution if the jury didn't reach a certain decision. In terms of how we pursue justice in this country, what kind of precedent do you think that sets?

STONESTREET: Well, look, I don't think it sets a precedent. I mean, you know, Maxine Waters and President Biden aren't the first ones to try to use some sort of political leverage or bully pulpit to, you know, add some weight onto one side of the scales of justice. I mean, this has been going on for a long time. Now listen, I think it's unwise. I think it was almost damaging to the result of the the trial. I don't think—there was actually an argument being made that particularly Congresswoman Waters’ decision to weigh in the way she did could have resulted in a mistrial. Boy, that would have been a travesty of justice to say the least. So it's certainly unwise, and it's being done in the context of two additional realities. One, it's the context of everything being seen through the lens of structural structural racism, whether or not it should be whether or not it fits into that narrative at all. So for example, there’s this incredibly terrible event that took place and the police release video of it immediately in Columbus.

And the president weighed in immediately on what it was. I mean, look, there's enough just in that video itself, to not immediately attribute this to anything structural or systemic or racist at all. There's a whole lot of details yet to come out, for example, it was just a remarkably unwise thing to do. So that's the first context, is that this is the hammer looking for a nail.

The other context of the comments from the congresswoman and from President Biden is that everything is done louder and universal in a way that wasn't even possible in times past. You know, I think it was Soren Kierkegaard of all people, Chuck Colson used to quote this all the time, who said something along the lines of, if anyone ever invented a box by which they could speak to the whole world at the same time, that person must immediately be stopped, or else they would cause an incredible amount of damage. Well, of course, that cat's way out of the bag. We've had that box for a long time. And now the box is in everybody's hand. And so that level of influence makes it very, very difficult to even imagine that something like a fair trial could be had. Or if a fair trial is had that someone won't undermine it at the last minute by saying something really foolish.

BROWN: John, shifting gears just a bit. Now I'd like to get your take on what's happening here in Georgia where I live. A group of pastors representing more than 1,000 churches is calling on a boycott of the Home Depot. Here's pastor Jamal Bryant.

BRYANT: We are calling out not just for churches, but for construction teams and demolition crews to get all of your resources, not from Home Depot. Today we’re calling for every person of conscience not only in GA but around the country to take a critical stance.

Why the boycott? To protest the new voting law Governor Brian Kemp signed last month. The faith leaders want Home Depot to do what Delta Airlines, Coca Cola, and others have done. And that is to condemn the law. And here's Governor Kemp.

KEMP: Home Depot did not ask to be in this political fight. It’s unfair to them, their families, and their livelihoods to be targeted.

Now, John, Home Depot is clearly trying to stay out of politics. The company issued a statement, all the elections should be accessible, fair, and secure, and support broad voter participation. So I have to ask, is it unreasonable for Home Depot to want to stay out of this?

STONESTREET: You know, what happens if we penalize every organization for not picking a political side, it's not unreasonable at all for Home Depot to want to stay out of this. It might be unrealistic, though, because this is the Brave New World. It dates back to 2014, when we saw the corporate world engage itself in a political or cultural war sort of issue. And it was, and since that time, we've seen how powerful corporations can be in moving the cultural needle one way or the other.

And we have had now a growing expectation that everybody has to say something. And if you don't say something, or if you don't take a stand and so on, even if it has nothing to do with you, you know, I this is a really bad place to be in. It's certainly bad for business. Um, you know, that's a problem. When politics demands of business things that it shouldn't demand of business, that's a problem as well. And you just kind of see that these lines are becoming fuzzier and blurrier and more problematic here as we go along. And it's it's not a good way to do life together. It's not good to have these expectations.

And of course, that's without even talking about the issue in this particular story, which is the Georgia voting law that Governor Kemp signed—which is, by the way, no more restrictive than laws that are in all kinds of states that have had things like mail in ballots for a long time, including Colorado. So you know, this is, you know, a tail wagging the dog sort of story, for sure. And, you know, and again, if we want to talk about unwise political statements, for the President Biden to call this the new Jim Crow was just incredibly irresponsible and vindictive and hard on business. And it does seem, though, that this is the contingency plan that corporations and businesses now need to have in place. It's kind of what it means to do business in this time in this place.

BROWN: Well, John Stonestreet is president of the Colson Center and host of the BreakPoint podcast. Thanks so much, John.

BASHAM: Thanks, John.

STONESTREET: Thank you both.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Well, we know the young learn from the old. That’s not just true for people. It’s true for birds, too.

But something’s gone wrong for an endangered black and yellow bird species in Australia, the regent honeyeater. The males are not learning the love song they need to sing to attract the females.

SOUND: BIRD SINGING

That’s the mating song, the one that’ll please the females. The males have to learn it from the father birds.

But when young males don’t have proper role models, they learn the wrong songs from the wrong birds. Like this:

SOUND: BIRD SINGING

And the lady regent honeyeaters? Just not impressed with that.

Only a few hundred of these birds remain, so it’s a serious problem. Scientists are experimenting with birds bred in captivity and playing the right songs captured on tape.

MEGAN BASHAM, HOST: There’s an application to humans in that I think.

Indeed there is! It’s The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Friday, April 23rd.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mryna Brown.

MEGAN BASHAM, HOST: And I’m Megan Basham. Coming up next: a Best Picture winner worth revisiting.

You know Myrna, in a rant last week that went viral, talk show host Bill Maher complained about how depressing the movies competing for Oscars this Sunday are.

MAHER: Look, I don’t have to leave the theater whistling, but would it kill you once in a while to make a movie that doesn’t make me want to take a bath with the toaster? We all had a rough year. A little escapism would have been appreciated.

While I liked several of this year’s Best Picture nominees, Maher has a point: None of them exactly qualify as high-energy or upbeat. Perhaps that’s why, long before Covid struck, the Academy Awards were already in a ratings free fall.

The Best Picture winner from 2013, a year that saw an Oscar ratings uptick, incidentally, was different.

CLIP: OK, you’ve got six people hiding out in a town of, what, 4 million people, all of whom chant death to America all the livelong day. You want to set up a movie in a week. You want to lie to Hollywood, a town where everybody lives for a living. Then you’re going to sneak 007 over here into a country that wants CIA blood on their breakfast cereal, and you’re gonna walk the Brady Bunch out of the most watched city in the world. Past about 100 militia at the airport. That’s right. Look, I’ve got to tell you, we did suicide missions in the army that had better odds than this.

The year is 1979. Mobs of angry Muslims stand outside the gates of the American Embassy, burning American flags, throwing rocks, and chanting in Farsi. Standing next to a window inside the building, two diplomats stare out at the crowd.

CLIP: The carnival’s a little bigger today. That glass is bulletproof right? Well, they’ve never been tested.

Then a group of militants leap the fence and swarm the compound, screaming mantras of revenge against “The Great Satan.” They crowbar their way in, blindfolding U.S. operatives and dragging them into the streets, stopping only to destroy sensitive information. Given that this outpost sits in known hostile territory, we’re shocked to see just how minimal security is.

CLIP: They need an hour to burn the classified. I need you to hold. If you shoot one person, they’re going to kill everyone of us in here.

What I’ve just described isn’t an historical reenactment but the opening scene from Ben Affleck’s 2012 film, Argo. A spy thriller that would probably be criticized for being too wild, too implausible, too Hollywood, if it all hadn’t really happened.

CLIP: Six people’s lives depend on this. It’s not enough. If we’re gonna fool these people, it has to be big. And it has to have something that says it’s authentic. I did a movie with Rock Hudson one time. If you want to sell a lie, you get the press to sell it for you.

Argo is based on the book Master of Disguise by former CIA “exfiltration specialist” Tony Mendez, played by Affleck. It relates the true, utterly incredible series of events that led to the rescue of six American diplomats in the middle of the Iran hostage crisis.

During the tumult of the embassy takeover, six mid-level attachés manage to escape through a back door and make it to the Canadian embassy.

CLIP: Mark, we are in the only building with direct access to the street. If we are going to go, we need to go now. Yeah, I’m in. Yeah, let’s go.

CIA bosses agree Mendez’s plan to extract them is the best bad idea they have. He will pose as a Canadian film producer whose crew is scouting locations for his sci-fi movie, “Argo.”

CLIP: OK you know those science fiction movies? Star Trek. Star Wars. They need an exotic location to shoot. Moonscape, Mars, desert, you know. Now imagine this—there’s a Canadian film crew on a location scout for a science-fiction movie. We put it out there. The Canadian producers put it out there that we’re looking at Egypt, Istanbul. And then we go to the consulate and say, hey, we want to look at Iran too. I fly into Tehran, we all fly out together as a film crew. Done.

To make the cover believable, Mendez requires not only the cooperation of higher-ups at the State Department, but also a couple of allies in Tinsel Town. One is John Chambers, the Oscar-winning make-up artist for Planet of the Apes, played by the always-great John Goodman.

CLIP: I need you to help me make a fake movie. You came to the right place. So you want to come to Hollywood and act like a big shot? Yes. Without actually doing anything? No. You’ll fit right in.

The other is industry old-timer Lester Siegel, a composite character hilariously played by Alan Arkin.

CLIP: How about The Horses of Achilles? No good, nobody does westerns anymore. It’s ancient Troy. If it’s got horses in it, it’s a western. It doesn’t matter, it’s a fake movie. If I’m doing a fake movie, it’s going to be a fake hit.

Yet despite the context of complicated geopolitics, Argo is surprisingly nonpartisan. Affleck isn’t interested in assigning blame, but giving credit.

In this way, Argo serves not only as an expertly wrought piece of storytelling but also an act of patriotic tribute. Though I have to note here that this tribute comes with frequent use of R-rated language. Still, to be fair, the film’s oft-repeated F-bomb catchphrase was not the screenwriter’s invention. It was the actual tagline Mendez and his co-conspirators gave his mission.

For the rare feat of making a political movie that never lectured but actually entertained Americans across the ideological spectrum, Affleck more than deserved his Oscar for Best Picture.

MEGAN BASHAM, HOST: Today is Friday, April 23rd. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Megan Basham.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. Our resident wordsmith George Grant is here now to explain some speech we all use but probably don’t know what it’s called.

BASHAM: Listen up! You won’t be sorry!

GEORGE GRANT, COMMENTATOR: In the opening scene of L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz, a cyclone suddenly sweeps Dorothy and Toto away to a strangely unfamiliar landscape. Dorothy remarks, “Toto, I’ve got a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.” In Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, Don Corleone delivers the chilling line, “I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.” Following a terrifying encounter with a great white shark in Peter Benchley’s Jaws, Brody quips to Quint and Hooper, “You’re going to need a bigger boat.” In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet when Mercutio is stabbed, he jests, “Ay, ay, a scratch, a scratch. But, ’tis enough. Where is my page? Go, villain, fetch a surgeon.”

Each of these is an example of what grammarians call litotes or understatement. A litotes is the opposite of an hyperbole. It is a positive statement expressed by the negation of its opposite. It is often used for ironic emphasis.

Sometimes litotes can come in the form of a double negative, such as when we say that something is “not unlike” another thing—when what we mean that it is actually quite “similar” to it. A friend asks us how we are, and we respond, “Not bad. Not bad at all.” But what we mean is that we’re doing pretty well. We’re given a new opportunity by our boss and we say, “Thank you. I promise, you won’t regret this.” But what we really mean is that we’ll do a great job, and the boss will be delighted. When someone rudely suggests, “He’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer,” or “She’s not the brightest crayon in the pack,” what they’re saying is they’re not exactly Einsteins. We probably could just say that “we’re happy” rather than “we’re not altogether unhappy,” but the litotes “not unhappy” offers a slightly nuanced meaning that “happy” does not.

The use of litotes is a common literary device in Anglo-Saxon and Old English poetry. So, examples abound in the Beowulf epic abound. Thus, when the hero Beowulf is rewarded for killing the monster Grendel, the poet asserts, “It was hardly a shame to be showered with such gifts.” And later, “He raised the hard weapon by the hilt, angry and resolute—the sword was by no means useless to the warrior.”

Litotes are even used in the Bible. The Lord promises the prophet Jeremiah, “I will multiply them, and they shall not be few; I will make them honored, and they shall not be small” (Jeremiah 30:19). The Apostle Paul quotes from the prophecy of Isaiah saying, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die” (1 Corinthians 15:32; Isaiah 22:13).

At time when overstatement and hyperbole seem to rule the day—we don’t just have stars anymore: we have to have superstars and megastars; we have to have clickbait declarations of the best, the worst, the biggest, the greatest, the most unprecedented—so perhaps, a liberal dose of litotes could more than a little refreshing. And, that’s putting it mildly.

I’m George Grant.

MEGAN BASHAM, HOST: It takes a team to put this program together and deliver it to you each morning.

Thanks are in order:

Joel Belz, Anna Johansen Brown, Kent Covington, Nick Eicher, Katie Gaultney, George Grant, Kim Henderson, Onize Ohikere, Mary Reichard, Liz Reith, Jenny Rough, Sarah Schweinsberg, Cal Thomas, and Steve West.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Johnny Franklin and Carl Peetz are our audio engineers. Leigh Jones is managing editor. Paul Butler is executive producer. And Marvin Olasky is editor in chief.

And you! You’ve made it possible for us to bring Christian journalism to the marketplace of ideas. Thank you!

"For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them."

Have a great weekend, and worship with your brothers and sisters in Christ.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning!

In the wake of the George Floyd verdict, some political leaders are saying murder convictions in this case are not enough. We’ll ask John Stonestreet about these reactions.

MEGAN BASHAM, HOST: That’s ahead on Culture Friday.

And I’ll review an Oscar-winner that bucked the recent trend of Best Picture nominees that leave audiences depressed.

Plus, Word Play with George Grant. This month’s lesson is one you don’t want to miss.

BROWN: It’s Friday, April 23rd. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

BASHAM: And I’m Megan Basham. Good morning!

BROWN: Time for news! Here’s Anna Johansen Brown.

ANNA JOHANSEN BROWN, NEWS ANCHOR: Biden hosts virtual climate summit » President Joe Biden opened a virtual climate summit on Thursday by making a new commitment to reduce greenhouse gases. He vowed the United States would cut fossil fuel emissions up to 52 percent by 2030.

BIDEN: The signs are unmistakable. The science is undeniable, but the cost of inaction keeps mounting. The United States isn't waiting. We are resolving to take action, not only our federal government, but our cities and our states all across our country, small businesses, large businesses, large corporations, American workers in every field.

Biden’s plan would nearly double the reductions the Obama administration pledged to make under the 2015 Paris climate agreement. He also pledged to double U.S. funding for climate initiatives in less wealthy countries by 2024. And he said the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation would make one-third of its new investments climate-focused within two years.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, speaking through an interpreter, welcomed Biden’s proposals.

MERKEL: I am delighted to see that the United States is back—back to work together with us in climate politics because there can be no doubt about the world needing your contribution if we are going to meet our ambitious goals.

Forty world leaders joined the video conference. Many made their own pledges to reduce carbon emissions. Russia and China did not.

And Senator Marco Rubio said U.S. efforts are meaningless without comparable commitments from Beijing.

RUBIO: They’re the world’s leading polluter in terms of emissions of carbon. Even as they’re here at the summit, they’re funding billions of dollars of fossil-fuel powered plants all over the world, including within China. Their emissions continue to climb. And that’s what I always tell people, that U.S. action alone is irrelevant when you have countries like China who continue to increase their emissions. And they’re not going to stop doing it.

The summit attendees will reconvene again today for another round of virtual talks.

House passes bill to make Washington, D.C., 51st state » The U.S. House has approved a measure that would make Washington, D.C., the nation’s 51st state. Speaker Nancy Pelosi framed the issue as one of fairness.

PELOSI: For more than two centuries, the people of Washington, D.C., have been denied their right to participate in our and their democracy.

Although Washington has its own local elected leaders, it is a federal district. That means Congress has the power to veto or alter any local laws.

But Republicans say the issue has nothing to do with giving the city’s residents more of a say in their own affairs. Congressman Kevin McCarthy said it’s all about control of the federal government.

MCCARTHY: The House Democrats are moving on D.C. statehood, another ploy to consolidate power so they can jam through socialist policies like the Green New Deal, court-packing, and defunding police.

The bill would give the new state one representative in the House and two senators, all of which would most likely be Democrats.

The measure passed on a party-line vote. Democrats don’t have enough votes in the Senate to overcome a Republican filibuster. But even if they did, the bill would likely face legal challenges.

India breaks record for most COVID cases » India passed a grim milestone in the pandemic on Thursday. The country reported nearly 315,000 new infections, a global daily record.

India has logged almost 16 million cases since the pandemic began. But that’s still only a fraction of the country’s 1.4 billion people.

Dr. K. Srinath Reddy is president of the India Public Health Foundation. He said the country thought it had passed the worst of the pandemic.

REDDY: We were lulled into a sense of complacency. Because the various measures of the pandemic, whether it was the daily case count, or the daily death count, or even the test-positivity rates, all of them started declining.

The surge in new cases has strained the medical system to the breaking point. Many hospitals are reporting shortages of beds and medicine. But the biggest concern is oxygen.

The New Delhi High Court has ordered the government to divert oxygen from industrial use to hospitals. The judges called the situation a national emergency.

Healthcare workers are administering 2.7 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines each day. But less than 10 percent of Indians have gotten a shot.

Biden gives tax credit to businesses to encourage vaccination » Vaccination rates in the United States are much higher. More than half of U.S. residents have received at least one shot. And the government reported Wednesday that manufacturers are sending providers 28 million new doses each week.

But the pace of vaccinations has started to slow. And the Biden administration wants to give people added incentive to get the shot.

BIDEN: Until you are fully vaccinated, you are still vulnerable. The vaccine can save your life. The second reason to get vaccinated is to protect your community, your family, your friends and your neighbors.

On Wednesday, the president urged large employers to give workers time off to get the shot. And he announced a tax credit for small businesses to provide paid leave for employees who want to get vaccinated. It would also cover time off employees need to recover from side effects.

The roughly $500 dollar per employee per day credit is part of the $1.9 trillion virus relief package passed last month.

Putin announces troop pullback in Ukraine » Russia’s defense minister made a surprise announcement Thursday.

SHOIGU: MAN SPEAKING RUSSIAN

Troops massed on the border with eastern Ukraine are coming home. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said the military exercises in Crimea and wide swathes of western Russia are over.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy welcomed the news.

Zelenskyy and Western leaders had voiced concern about the troop buildup in recent weeks. And Russian President Vladimir Putin showed no signs of backing down.

But the troop pullback is only a partial de-escalation. Heavy weapons deployed to western Russia will stay put. Shoigu said Moscow plans another massive military exercise in the region later this year.

I’m Anna Johansen Brown.

Straight ahead: reactions to the verdict in Derek Chauvin’s murder trial.

Plus, George Grant makes an understatement.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday, April 23rd, 2021. Glad you’ve joined us for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

MEGAN BASHAM, HOST: And I’m Megan Basham. After months of tense waiting that often included riots, a jury found former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin guilty on all counts of the murder of George Floyd.

However, the message many national leaders offered after the verdict is that it is not enough. More must be done, they say, to address systemic racism.

Here’s Vice President Kamala Harris:

HARRIS: A measure of justice isn’t the same as equal justice. This verdict brings us a step closer and, the fact is, we still have work to do. We still must reform the system.

And here’s President Joe Biden:

It was a murder in the full light of day, and it ripped the blinders off for the whole world to see the systemic racism the Vice President just referred to. The systemic racism that is a stain on our nation’s soul. The knee on the neck of justice for black Americans.

BROWN: Well, it is Culture Friday and joining us now is John Stonestreet, president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast. John, good morning.

JOHN STONESTREET, GUEST: Good morning.

BROWN: So John, I think we all breathed a sigh of relief when it became clear that Tuesday night was going to be peaceful. However, it seems like we’re still going to be hearing a lot about this case, because it sounds like some leaders are still planning to use it to advance a policy agenda. Where do you see things going from here?

STONESTREET: I think we're going to hear a lot more about this case. But even more than that, we're gonna hear about the next case and the next case and the next case. In fact, the day wasn't even over before we heard about the tragic shooting of a teenage girl in a neighborhood near Columbus, Ohio. And it's another story, right, where you have a white cop and an African American person involved. And you also have tons of extenuating circumstances. So in other words, the peacefulness of Tuesday night was was really short lived. In fact, it didn't even extend through Tuesday night, you know.

And in Ohio, the problem here, there's a lot of problems here. First of all, this was an awful, awful case. When we talk about what happened with George Floyd, what happened with Derek Chauven, the, what it triggered in the United States was at a at a brand new level of intensity, and that's not going away. The other issue that we're dealing with is that we're at a place where people aren't waiting for the evidence. People are already assuming an answer, based on, you know, preconceived notions that are almost purely politically driven. And that's a devastating way to try to move forward around hardship or confusion.

Look, you know, on at face value, there was a trial. There was a jury of peers. There was a guilty verdict that was returned. I mean, in other words, the, the system did what the system is supposed to do, but that's not enough, right? People are asking this case to carry a load of weight that it just cannot do. This will not be, you know, one of the kind of the great moments, and you know, racial unification. It just won't. Because of what's happening is those putting so much weight on this case, one direction or another, are doing it with a worldview that’s simply too small.

And here's what I mean by that. Every worldview has to account for what is wrong with the world. There's one group of people looking at this and all of evil, they see as being systemic. That's the explanation for everything. On the other hand, you have people who are reacting against the overt accusation of systemic racism, in particular, for to be the explanation for almost everything, and saying, "Well, there is no such thing as systemic evil." The Scripture is really clear on this, that evil is personally caused. It's sourced in individual choices. And yet it can take on this systemic reality. It can actually infiltrate the world. And if we don't see the the capacity of sin and evil to be both of those things, we're never going to be able to look at a situation like this one or any other one, and have any sort of rational or coherent or complete or helpful analysis that can help us move forward past things. And so that's the infection, and we're seeing it now.

BROWN: You know, John, you mentioned looking at this case on its own merits, and I have to bring up Congresswoman Maxine Waters—her call for protesters to get more confrontational if a guilty verdict wasn't reached. And President Biden, though he said it after the jury was sequestered, said he hoped that they would reach the right verdict. So there was a message out there that the country would see retribution if the jury didn't reach a certain decision. In terms of how we pursue justice in this country, what kind of precedent do you think that sets?

STONESTREET: Well, look, I don't think it sets a precedent. I mean, you know, Maxine Waters and President Biden aren't the first ones to try to use some sort of political leverage or bully pulpit to, you know, add some weight onto one side of the scales of justice. I mean, this has been going on for a long time. Now listen, I think it's unwise. I think it was almost damaging to the result of the the trial. I don't think—there was actually an argument being made that particularly Congresswoman Waters’ decision to weigh in the way she did could have resulted in a mistrial. Boy, that would have been a travesty of justice to say the least. So it's certainly unwise, and it's being done in the context of two additional realities. One, it's the context of everything being seen through the lens of structural structural racism, whether or not it should be whether or not it fits into that narrative at all. So for example, there’s this incredibly terrible event that took place and the police release video of it immediately in Columbus.

And the president weighed in immediately on what it was. I mean, look, there's enough just in that video itself, to not immediately attribute this to anything structural or systemic or racist at all. There's a whole lot of details yet to come out, for example, it was just a remarkably unwise thing to do. So that's the first context, is that this is the hammer looking for a nail.

The other context of the comments from the congresswoman and from President Biden is that everything is done louder and universal in a way that wasn't even possible in times past. You know, I think it was Soren Kierkegaard of all people, Chuck Colson used to quote this all the time, who said something along the lines of, if anyone ever invented a box by which they could speak to the whole world at the same time, that person must immediately be stopped, or else they would cause an incredible amount of damage. Well, of course, that cat's way out of the bag. We've had that box for a long time. And now the box is in everybody's hand. And so that level of influence makes it very, very difficult to even imagine that something like a fair trial could be had. Or if a fair trial is had that someone won't undermine it at the last minute by saying something really foolish.

BROWN: John, shifting gears just a bit. Now I'd like to get your take on what's happening here in Georgia where I live. A group of pastors representing more than 1,000 churches is calling on a boycott of the Home Depot. Here's pastor Jamal Bryant.

BRYANT: We are calling out not just for churches, but for construction teams and demolition crews to get all of your resources, not from Home Depot. Today we’re calling for every person of conscience not only in GA but around the country to take a critical stance.

Why the boycott? To protest the new voting law Governor Brian Kemp signed last month. The faith leaders want Home Depot to do what Delta Airlines, Coca Cola, and others have done. And that is to condemn the law. And here's Governor Kemp.

KEMP: Home Depot did not ask to be in this political fight. It’s unfair to them, their families, and their livelihoods to be targeted.

Now, John, Home Depot is clearly trying to stay out of politics. The company issued a statement, all the elections should be accessible, fair, and secure, and support broad voter participation. So I have to ask, is it unreasonable for Home Depot to want to stay out of this?

STONESTREET: You know, what happens if we penalize every organization for not picking a political side, it's not unreasonable at all for Home Depot to want to stay out of this. It might be unrealistic, though, because this is the Brave New World. It dates back to 2014, when we saw the corporate world engage itself in a political or cultural war sort of issue. And it was, and since that time, we've seen how powerful corporations can be in moving the cultural needle one way or the other.

And we have had now a growing expectation that everybody has to say something. And if you don't say something, or if you don't take a stand and so on, even if it has nothing to do with you, you know, I this is a really bad place to be in. It's certainly bad for business. Um, you know, that's a problem. When politics demands of business things that it shouldn't demand of business, that's a problem as well. And you just kind of see that these lines are becoming fuzzier and blurrier and more problematic here as we go along. And it's it's not a good way to do life together. It's not good to have these expectations.

And of course, that's without even talking about the issue in this particular story, which is the Georgia voting law that Governor Kemp signed—which is, by the way, no more restrictive than laws that are in all kinds of states that have had things like mail in ballots for a long time, including Colorado. So you know, this is, you know, a tail wagging the dog sort of story, for sure. And, you know, and again, if we want to talk about unwise political statements, for the President Biden to call this the new Jim Crow was just incredibly irresponsible and vindictive and hard on business. And it does seem, though, that this is the contingency plan that corporations and businesses now need to have in place. It's kind of what it means to do business in this time in this place.

MB: Well, John Stonestreet is president of the Colson Center and host of the BreakPoint podcast. Thanks so much, John.

MB: Thanks, John.

STONESTREET: Thank you both.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Well, we know the young learn from the old. That’s not just true for people. It’s true for birds, too.

But something’s gone wrong for an endangered black and yellow bird species in Australia, the regent honeyeater. The males are not learning the love song they need to sing to attract the females.

SOUND: BIRD SINGING

That’s the mating song, the one that’ll please the females. The males have to learn it from the father birds.

But when young males don’t have proper role models, they learn the wrong songs from the wrong birds. Like this:

SOUND: BIRD SINGING

And the lady regent honeyeaters? Just not impressed with that.

Only a few hundred of these birds remain, so it’s a serious problem. Scientists are experimenting with birds bred in captivity and playing the right songs captured on tape.

MEGAN BASHAM, HOST: There’s an application to humans in that I think.

Indeed there is! It’s The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Friday, April 23rd.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mryna Brown.

MEGAN BASHAM, HOST: And I’m Megan Basham. Coming up next: a Best Picture winner worth revisiting.

You know Myrna, in a rant last week that went viral, talk show host Bill Maher complained about how depressing the movies competing for Oscars this Sunday are.

MAHER: Look, I don’t have to leave the theater whistling, but would it kill you once in a while to make a movie that doesn’t make me want to take a bath with the toaster? We all had a rough year. A little escapism would have been appreciated.

While I liked several of this year’s Best Picture nominees, Maher has a point: None of them exactly qualify as high-energy or upbeat. Perhaps that’s why, long before Covid struck, the Academy Awards were already in a ratings free fall.

The Best Picture winner from 2013, a year that saw an Oscar ratings uptick, incidentally, was different.

CLIP: OK, you’ve got six people hiding out in a town of, what, 4 million people, all of whom chant death to America all the livelong day. You want to set up a movie in a week. You want to lie to Hollywood, a town where everybody lives for a living. Then you’re going to sneak 007 over here into a country that wants CIA blood on their breakfast cereal, and you’re gonna walk the Brady Bunch out of the most watched city in the world. Past about 100 militia at the airport. That’s right... look, I’ve got to tell you, we did suicide missions in the army that had better odds than this.

The year is 1979. Mobs of angry Muslims stand outside the gates of the American Embassy, burning American flags, throwing rocks, and chanting in Farsi. Standing next to a window inside the building, two diplomats stare out at the crowd.

CLIP: The carnival’s a little bigger today. That glass is bulletproof right? Well, they’ve never been tested.

Then a group of militants leap the fence and swarm the compound, screaming mantras of revenge against “The Great Satan.” They crowbar their way in, blindfolding U.S. operatives and dragging them into the streets, stopping only to destroy sensitive information. Given that this outpost sits in known hostile territory, we’re shocked to see just how minimal security is.

CLIP: They need an hour to burn the classified. I need you to hold. If you shoot one person, they’re going to kill everyone of us in here.

What I’ve just described isn’t an historical reenactment but the opening scene from Ben Affleck’s 2012 film, Argo. A spy thriller that would probably be criticized for being too wild, too implausible, too Hollywood, if it all hadn’t really happened.

CLIP: Six people’s lives depend on this. It’s not enough. If we’re gonna fool these people, it has to be big. And it has to have something that says it’s authentic. I did a movie with Rock Hudson one time. If you want to sell a lie, you get the press to sell it for you.

Argo is based on the book Master of Disguise by former CIA “exfiltration specialist” Tony Mendez, played by Affleck. It relates the true, utterly incredible series of events that led to the rescue of six American diplomats in the middle of the Iran hostage crisis.

During the tumult of the embassy takeover, six mid-level attachés manage to escape through a back door and make it to the Canadian embassy.

CLIP: Mark, we are in the only building with direct access to the street. If we are going to go, we need to go now. Yeah, I’m in. Yeah, let’s go.

CIA bosses agree Mendez’s plan to extract them is the best bad idea they have. He will pose as a Canadian film producer whose crew is scouting locations for his sci-fi movie, “Argo.”

CLIP: OK you know those science fiction movies? Star Trek. Star Wars. They need an exotic location to shoot. Moonscape, Mars, desert, you know. Now imagine this—there’s a Canadian film crew on a location scout for a science-fiction movie. We put it out there. The Canadian producers put it out there that we’re looking at Egypt, Istanbul. And then we go to the consulate and say, hey, we want to look at Iran too. I fly into Tehran, we all fly out together as a film crew. Done.

To make the cover believable, Mendez requires not only the cooperation of higher-ups at the State Department, but also a couple of allies in Tinsel Town. One is John Chambers, the Oscar-winning make-up artist for Planet of the Apes, played by the always-great John Goodman.

CLIP: I need you to help me make a fake movie. You came to the right place. So you want to come to Hollywood and act like a big shot? Yes. Without actually doing anything? No. You’ll fit right in.

The other is industry old-timer Lester Siegel, a composite character hilariously played by Alan Arkin.

CLIP: How about The Horses of Achilles? No good, nobody does westerns anymore. It’s ancient Troy. If it’s got horses in it, it’s a western. It doesn’t matter, it’s a fake movie. If I’m doing a fake movie, it’s going to be a fake hit.

Yet despite the context of complicated geopolitics, Argo is surprisingly nonpartisan. Affleck isn’t interested in assigning blame, but giving credit.

In this way, Argo serves not only as an expertly wrought piece of storytelling but also an act of patriotic tribute. Though I have to note here that this tribute comes with frequent use of R-rated language. Still, to be fair, the film’s oft-repeated F-bomb catchphrase was not the screenwriter’s invention. It was the actual tagline Mendez and his co-conspirators gave his mission.

For the rare feat of making a political movie that never lectured but actually entertained Americans across the ideological spectrum, Affleck more than deserved his Oscar for Best Picture.

MEGAN BASHAM, HOST: Today is Friday, April 23rd. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Megan Basham.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. Our resident wordsmith George Grant is here now to explain some speech we all use but probably don’t know what it’s called.

BASHAM: Listen up! You won’t be sorry!

GEORGE GRANT, COMMENTATOR: In the opening scene of L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz, a cyclone suddenly sweeps Dorothy and Toto away to a strangely unfamiliar landscape. Dorothy remarks, “Toto, I’ve got a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.” In Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, Don Corleone delivers the chilling line, “I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.” Following a terrifying encounter with a great white shark in Peter Benchley’s Jaws, Brody quips to Quint and Hooper, “You’re going to need a bigger boat.” In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet when Mercutio is stabbed, he jests, “Ay, ay, a scratch, a scratch. But, ’tis enough. Where is my page? Go, villain, fetch a surgeon.”

Each of these is an example of what grammarians call litotes or understatement. A litotes is the opposite of an hyperbole. It is a positive statement expressed by the negation of its opposite. It is often used for ironic emphasis.

Sometimes litotes can come in the form of a double negative, such as when we say that something is “not unlike” another thing—when what we mean that it is actually quite “similar” to it. A friend asks us how we are, and we respond, “Not bad. Not bad at all.” But what we mean is that we’re doing pretty well. We’re given a new opportunity by our boss and we say, “Thank you. I promise, you won’t regret this.” But what we really mean is that we’ll do a great job, and the boss will be delighted. When someone rudely suggests, “He’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer,” or “She’s not the brightest crayon in the pack,” what they’re saying is they’re not exactly Einsteins. We probably could just say that “we’re happy” rather than “we’re not altogether unhappy,” but the litotes “not unhappy” offers a slightly nuanced meaning that “happy” does not.

The use of litotes is a common literary device in Anglo-Saxon and Old English poetry. So, examples abound in the Beowulf epic abound. Thus, when the hero Beowulf is rewarded for killing the monster Grendel, the poet asserts, “It was hardly a shame to be showered with such gifts.” And later, “He raised the hard weapon by the hilt, angry and resolute—the sword was by no means useless to the warrior.”

Litotes are even used in the Bible. The Lord promises the prophet Jeremiah, “I will multiply them, and they shall not be few; I will make them honored, and they shall not be small” (Jeremiah 30:19). The Apostle Paul quotes from the prophecy of Isaiah saying, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die” (1 Corinthians 15:32; Isaiah 22:13).

At time when overstatement and hyperbole seem to rule the day—we don’t just have stars anymore: we have to have superstars and megastars; we have to have clickbait declarations of the best, the worst, the biggest, the greatest, the most unprecedented—so perhaps, a liberal dose of litotes could more than a little refreshing. And, that’s putting it mildly.

I’m George Grant.

MEGAN BASHAM, HOST: It takes a team to put this program together and deliver it to you each morning.

Thanks are in order:

Joel Belz, Anna Johansen Brown, Kent Covington, Nick Eicher, Katie Gaultney, George Grant, Kim Henderson, Onize Ohikere, Mary Reichard, Liz Reith, Jenny Rough, Sarah Schweinsberg, Cal Thomas, and Steve West.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Johnny Franklin and Carl Peetz are our audio engineers. Leigh Jones is managing editor. Paul Butler is executive producer. And Marvin Olasky is editor in chief.

And you! You’ve made it possible for us to bring Christian journalism to the marketplace of ideas. Thank you!

"For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them."

Have a great weekend, and worship with your brothers and sisters in Christ.

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