Comments from Facebook; What the Conversion Therapy Case is About

Posted on Thursday 9 October 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Recalling the Nazi rallies in left-wing areas of Germany;
  • How the Nazis based their policies on segregated America;
  • How right-wingers admit “it’s harder to discredit the left because the left is almost always telling the truth”;
  • Conservative justices imply queer kids are born hating themselves;
  • The Supreme Court fights over whether medical expertise actually exists;
  • Conservatives want to talk to other peoples’ kids in order to shame them about sex.
– – –

Today, I resolved the issue with SFADB on the Locus server, as detailed in posts on Facebook.

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Ramez Naam quoting Lee J. Carter.

The history of Nazis holding rallies in left-wing areas of Weimar Germany, instigating street fights, and then telling the press that only they could save Germany from the “violent communists” seems like an important thing for people to be studying right now.

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This is something quoted from PBS American Experience season 36 episode 1 “Nazi Town USA”, and season 30 episode 9 “The Eugenics Crusade”, per Greg Bossert.

berecker:

Hey fellow white folks:

If you’re flabbergasted that we are “turning into nazi Germany” perhaps it’s worth remembering that the Nazis based many of their policies on… segregated *America.* This is not new, we were nazis before the nazis were nazis.

shutupfraulein:

Nazi historian here. I’m so glad to see something else saying this! The Nazis also sent officials to the US on study abroad and “holiday” to specifically study how the US implemented “racial” law. The US was always the blueprint.

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And I’ve seen this one before.

vexwerewolf:

Right-wingers literally straight-up admitting “it’s harder to discredit the left because the left is almost always telling the truth”

Quoting:

The problem with left-leaning media is they’re intrinsically more strict with their propaganda to only using verifiable sources so it’s really hard to poke holes in their ideology and arguments in comparison to a lot of low quality rightwing content.

That makes attacking their points with fact checkers not very effective unless the fact checkers use misinformation tactics as well.

In essence people on the right have to work harder and more creatively to push their agendas as statics and studies usually aren’t on our side.

Again, as the saying goes: reality has a liberal bias.

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Currently the Supreme Court is weighing on laws that prohibit gender conversion therapy. Several sites characterize this as a war against medical experts, as opposed to intuitive blocks against free speech.

Salon, Amanda Marcotte, 8 Oct 2025: How SCOTUS erased the abuse of LGBTQ kids, subtitled “In conversion therapy case, conservative justices imply queer kids are born hating themselves”

After the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Tuesday about a Colorado law prohibiting state-licensed therapists from offering conversion therapy to LGBTQ clients, there is one area in which the left and right can agree: A lot of LGBTQ youth struggle with feelings of shame, fear and even an urge to self-harm. But it was clear there was fierce disagreement about the source of these feelings.

The left shares the view of the American Psychological Association, which argued in an amicus brief that this form of psychological distress in queer people, especially minors, is a result of “minority stress and stigma” and “systemic barriers to mental, physical, relational, and sexual flourishing.” This is a jargon-y way of saying that being raised to think your very identity is wrong can make a person feel bad about themselves. The treatment, then, is to counteract hateful messages with “affirming” therapy that holds that “variances in human sexuality, gender identity, and gender expression are normal.”

But to Kaley Chiles, a Christian evangelical therapist who sued the state to be able to offer conversion therapy, internalized queerphobia is an inborn quality. In her world, and presumably those of her attorney and the conservative justices, Lady Gaga’s queer anthem “Born This Way” shouldn’t be about LGBTQ identities, but about the wish of a person to “fix” whatever makes them different.

This Christian take is very reductive, as usual. There are plenty of people just fine with their identities; it’s not true that, as many conservatives apparently think, everyone else shares their opinions and prejudices. At base, perhaps this issue is simply about the conservative drive to impose conformity and eliminate individuality.

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It’s also about this.

Vox, Ian Millhiser, 7 Oct 2025: The Supreme Court fights over whether medical expertise actually exists, subtitled “The Republican justices seem eager to kill state bans on anti-LGBTQ conversion therapy.”

That is, it’s also about the tendency of base human nature to be driven by intuition and “common sense” and reject evidence that the world might actually be different.

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And it’s about this.

LGBTQNation, Alex Bollinger, 9 Oct 2025: The conversion therapy case shows conservatives want to talk kids about sex but only to shame them, subtitled “The right has said for years that talking about LGBTQ+ with kids ‘sexualizes’ them. Now they’re begging the Supreme Court to shame kids about sex.”

Again, this boils down to the priorities of base human nature to advantage reproduction at every possible turn, and discourage anything that might preclude or distract from reproduction. This is a base conservative value; that’s why their bans on abortion and contraception. The situation results in this situation, as this piece opens:

A conservative Christian is literally asking the Supreme Court to give her permission to talk to minors who are not her children about sex. And the right is more than ok with it. Shockingly, despite all their rhetoric about how no one should talk to kids about sex except for their parents, they’re on her side because she shares their ideological agenda.

Posted in Conservative Resistance, History, The Gays | Leave a comment

How Tribal Loyalty Overrides Evidence of Incompetence

Posted on Tuesday 7 October 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • How MAGA will never accept “I told you so”:
  • Robert Reich on why Trump keeps dismantling agencies;
  • Short items about overthrowing the government, primitive morality, yet another prediction of the rapture, Biblical morality to justify the killing of black men, the idea of firing 500K federal workers, the scam of “ethical IVF”, and phony AI songs in tribute to Charlie Kirk.
– – –

 

This first piece aligns with one of my core provisional conclusions: you can’t change people’s minds with evidence. Most people are driven by loyalty to their tribe.

Caption: “President Trump’s deployment of federal agents to Portland doesn’t create its own reality. There is no crisis to justify this response. (Spencer Platt / Getty Images)”

LA Times, Robert Repino, 7 Oct 2025: As Trump’s reign implodes, tell MAGA ‘I told you so’

I once held what seemed to be a perfectly rational belief: that even the staunchest supporters of Donald Trump would change their minds once his incompetence and hatred directly affected them. That logic tracked with the dominant narrative of the last decade, going back to when pundits first claimed that Trump supporters were motivated not by hatred but by something called “economic anxiety.”

Whereas they express their hatred every day.

Trump’s economy has now arrived, and it’s as catastrophic as the experts predicted. Despite his promises not only to curb inflation but also to bring prices down, there is no relief in sight, because Trump never had a plan for dealing with any of that. Housing remains out of reach for many, unemployment is rising, and, thanks to the Big Beautiful Bill Act, Medicaid is about to eject millions of recipients to help offset a budget-busting tax cut for rich people.

With examples of red states and red counties losing services due to Trump’s tariffs and budget cuts.

But there should be good news too, right? We’ll see that the Trump movement really was about economic anxiety all along, because supporters will surely renounce Trump now that his promise to fix the economy on day one (along with Ukraine and Gaza) is more than 200 days late.

Stages of denial:

But no. We all know what’s going to happen instead. Trump supporters will progress through the same stages of denial that we saw during the pandemic. First, they’ll say that what’s happening isn’t really happening. Then they’ll say it’s not that bad. Then they’ll accuse Democrats of politicizing the issue. All while their own lives are threatened. Or destroyed.

And blame, some of this from the left:

While that position evolves, we’ll continue to hear the tired claim that left-leaning politicians and celebrities are to blame, because they pushed people away with their wokeness. According to this interpretation, Trump supporters have been mostly concerned with kitchen-table issues, and charges of cultish behavior and xenophobia are overblown accusations from the left. If only the mean liberals would stop complaining about racism, then MAGA would be nicer!

Nonsense, says I.

…for years now conservatives have been lecturing the country on how to respectfully talk to MAGA supporters and — surprise! — it turns out that they’ve been acting in bad faith all along. Instead of encouraging better conversations, Trump apologists sought to control the discourse by invalidating any and all criticism, and by cultivating a sense of apathy so bottomless it could excuse anything. In their world, Trump supporters can never be held responsible for what they’ve done. In their world, calling out bigotry is the real bigotry. They see resisting cruelty as worse than actual cruelty.

There’s more, but that’s a good note to end on.

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Trump and his people keep firing people and dismantling agencies. Why would that be?

Robert Reich, 7 Oct 2025: What Trump doesn’t want us to know about ourselves, subtitled “How Trump is systematically concealing America from Americans”

Flying blind is dangerous, but it’s what Trump and his lackeys are forcing America to do.

For starters, the current government shutdown means that critical economic statistics — such as job numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that normally would have appeared last Friday — are delayed. No one knows when they’ll appear.

The BLS also produces data on inflation and wages — also delayed.

At a time when there’s reason to worry that the American economy is weakening — when Trump’s tariffs (import taxes) are pushing prices higher, his ICE dragnet is causing labor shortages, and he is asserting control over the Fed’s interest-rate decisions — turning the lights off on the economy is a particularly bad idea.

But even if the government weren’t shuttered, Trump is still turning out the lights.

And,

Besides, Trump doesn’t like data. He eschews facts. He wants investors and consumers — and everyone else — to be in the dark, because then he can lie without fear of factual contradiction. He can create even more of a fantasy world. He can pretend that he’s been wildly successful even when he’s been a terrible failure.

Concluding:

The lights are going out across America.

The problems that we as a nation have sought to illuminate, so that we can remedy them, are disappearing — not because the problems are disappearing or have been remedied, but because we will no longer know about them.

It is impossible to protect American consumers, workers, investors, families, and children without adequate data. Trump and his lackeys have little or no interest in protecting them — and even less in allowing Americans to know how little they care.

When this Trump daymare is over, one of our first priorities must be to restore all the ways of knowing what’s happening to Americans — and dedicate ourselves and the nation to sharing the truth.

Thought here: yes, we might be in the end times, for America, but not because of any religious prophecy, but because the very people who believe in religious prophecies are dismantling the American system.

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Short items.

Or perhaps conservatives have…

Posted in Conservative Resistance, conservatives, Politics, Psychology | Leave a comment

MAGA Retribution?

Posted on Monday 6 October 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • How ICE goons welcome their jobs;
  • News today about a South Carolina judge, who had ruled against Trump, saw her house burned to the ground;
  • Trump’s lies about murders in Portland, and Osama Bin Laden;
  • Robert Reich on how Trump sees truth only on TV.
– – –

Random comment on Facebook:

“One thing that comes through awfully clearly in these ICE videos is how many of these goons gravitated toward the job because being able to assault people with impunity is a big thrill for them.”

This might apply to Trump and his cabinet as well.

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The crazy news today, reported even on NBC TV this morning, is that the home of a South Carolina judge who ruled against Trump exploded Saturday and burned to the ground. MAGA had been doxing her.

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Seriously, MAGA would do this? Of course they would.

JMG, from Time Magazine: Arson Destroys SC Home Of Judge Criticized By DOJ

The 69-year-old judge had received death threats in the weeks leading up to the fire, multiple sources told FITSNews. Last month, Goodstein had temporarily blocked the state’s election commission from releasing its voter files to the Department of Justice, a decision that was openly criticized by Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon and later reversed by the state Supreme Court.

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What’s telling is Stephen Miller’s outrage at the very idea of any connection of this event with MAGA. Thou dost protest too much.

AlterNet, Lesley Abravanel, 6 Oct 2025: ‘Deeply warped’: Trump aide melts down when MAGA is blamed for judge’s house fire

Miller immediately melted down on X, calling Goldman “deeply warped and vile,” saying, “There is a large and growing movement of leftwing terrorism in this country. It is well organized and funded. And it is shielded by far-left Democrat judges, prosecutors and attorneys general. The only remedy is to use legitimate state power to dismantle terrorism and terror networks.”

Miller continued his rant, saying, “While the Trump Administration has launched the first-ever government-wide effort to combat and prosecute illegal doxing, sinister threats and political violence you continue to push despicable lies, demented smears, malicious defamation and foment unrest. Despicable.”

Another take at JMG, which nicknames Miller as Voldemort: Voldemort Rages After MAGA Blamed For Arson At South Carolina Home Of Judge Criticized By The DOJ

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Trump and his administration lie every day.

And many others I could link.

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Robert Reich sees a big picture. Trump doesn’t read, anything, he just watches TV. (Which makes the idea of a Trump Presidential Library a joke.)

Robert Reich, 6 Oct 2025: The Mad King’s Television subtitled “How Trump is making potentially lethal decisions”

When over the weekend federal Judge Karin Immergut (a Trump appointee) blocked Trump from deploying Oregon’s National Guard to Portland, Trump said she “should be ashamed of herself” because “Portland is burning to the ground.”

Trump promptly ordered the California National Guard to Portland.

Apart from the obvious question of how Trump can so blatantly defy a federal judge, there’s a deeper puzzle here. Where did he get the idea Portland is burning to the ground?

It turns out,

On September 5, 2025, “Fox News aired a report on Portland ICE protests that included misleading clips from Portland protests in 2020. Shortly thereafter, President Trump appeared to reference events in the same misleading Fox News report when speaking to the press. A reporter asked which city President Trump planned to send troops to next, and he said he was considering targeting Portland because of news coverage the night before.

You would think that, if Portland were actually burning down, there would be videos on all the news media and social media of such horrific events. In fact, TV coverage shows there are a couple dozen protestors walking up and down sidewalks in front the ICE detention facility in Portland, along a block or so.

The gist here seems to be — Trump sends troops into cities he doesn’t like, who are protesting the violent incursions of ICE agents, and thus *creating* the purported violence he claims a need to fight. And that will lead to…

Posted in Lunacy, Politics | Leave a comment

Shades of Autism

Posted on Sunday 5 October 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Andrew O’Hehir at Salon describes Trump’s war on reality;
  • Bits from JMG about Democrats, the Pope, a debate trophy named for Charlie Kirk; how Trump lies about Portland burning to the ground; and how the GOP doesn’t want children to know that bisexuals exist;
  • And a long piece about whether the Autism spectrum should be split apart.
– – –

A familiar theme, noted yet again.

Salon, Andrew O’Hehir, 5 Oct 2025: Trump’s phony war on Venezuela — and his larger war on reality, subtitled “Why is Trump attacking Venezuela? All the usual reasons: Wounded pride, limitless greed and conspiracy theories”

Listing various random events that may be part of a bigger scheme.

Viewed through the distortion lens of Trumpism, those things no longer appear as disconnected or nonsensical but as parts of a grand plan, squares stitched into the great MAGA quilt of meaning. In fact, if we take a closer look at Trump’s phony war with Venezuela, which seems to defy any rational explanation (and isn’t exactly a war with Venezuela; we’ll get to that), it turns out to embody all the elements of a much larger full-spectrum war against reality.

That larger war is breathtaking in its scale and ambition but also severely limited in scope, since a central tenet of the MAGA agenda is to pick easy targets and avoid overt military conflict with actual adversaries. It’s a campaign, albeit a frequently erratic and incompetent one, to push that agenda as far as it will go in every possible direction and, along the way, to establish Trump as a world-historical figure, a latter-day Caesar or Charlemagne or Lenin. (It was grimly amusing to learn that Trump had never heard of William the Conqueror; by his own account, he told King Charles, “That’s the coolest name I’ve ever heard.”)

It that sounds preposterous and doomed to fail, well, sure. That doesn’t mean it won’t change the world in unpredictable ways for years to come, beyond the lifespan of anyone reading this today. It’s conventional to observe that Trump’s promise to make America great again has always implied an impossible return to an imaginary past that never existed: bits of the 1950s, the 1890s and the antebellum South, all stirred into Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America” commercials. …

But, we know this already.

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Short bits from JMG.

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This article suggests a good point. Where useful distinctions can be made, they should be made. (And that doesn’t mean that science has “changed its mind” or any such nonsense. “Refined its conclusions” would be more accurate, since science has always done that.)

NY Times, Azeen Ghorayshi, 1 Oct 2025 (though in today’s print paper): Should the Autism Spectrum Be Split Apart?, subtitled “Families of people with severe autism say the repeated expansion of the diagnosis pushed them to the sidelines. A new focus on the disorder has opened the way for them to argue their cause.”

At the time Jodie’s diagnosis was first made, the definition of autism was expanding, as it would continue to do over the next 25 years. Once primarily limited to severely disabled people, autism began to be viewed as a spectrum that included far less impaired children and adults. Along the way, it also became an identity, embraced by college graduates and even by some of the world’s most successful people, like Elon Musk and Bill Gates.

Or like Hugo Gernsback (see the book Neurotribes), or like me (see this post.)

It’s the extreme cases that RFK Jr referred to:

Speaking of autistic children in the spring, Mr. Kennedy said, “These are kids who will never pay taxes, they’ll never hold a job, they’ll never play baseball, they’ll never write a poem, they’ll never go out on a date.”

He is conflating profound autism with non-profound autism. The latter cases have increased, because of expanding definitions of autism. The point of the article is that those parents who live with children with profound autism are feeling sidelined. Yet profound autism is as rare as it’s ever been.

As always, I am limiting my takes on articles like these. I only quote a bit. There is much more detail at this one. This piece is particularly effective since it deals with real cases.

Posted in Conservative Resistance, conservatives, Politics, Psychology, reality, Thinking | Leave a comment

Tearing Down

Posted on Saturday 4 October 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • How the current administration loves to fire people;
  • Trump’s license to kill, from a man who wants the Nobel Peace Prize;
  • Heather Cox Richardson on Trump’s hate, and Russell Vought;
  • A Trump memo that casts atheists as terrorists; how other nations are issuing travel warnings about the US; and how a MAGA guy thinks the oppression of blacks in America is their fault.
– – –

The current administration loves to fire people. It’s another example of how they’re eager to tear down, since they don’t know how to build.

NY Times, 2 Oct 2025: After Declining to Give Trump a Sword for King Charles, a Museum Leader Is Out, subtitled “The departure of Todd Arrington, who led the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum, came after the administration sought a sword from its collection as a gift for King Charles.”

Trump wanted to take an artifact out of a public museum, its collection the property of the US government, and the American people, and which does not belong to Trump.

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Also:

Politico, 3 Oct 2025: Hegseth fires top Navy official, subtitled “Jon Harrison is the latest Pentagon official who Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has removed from office.”

With no particular reason given.

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Reuters, 3 Oct 2025: FBI agent relieved of duty over refusing Comey perp walk, four people familiar say

The administration wanted the agent to arrange a “perp walk” in front of news media cameras.

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More about the president who thinks he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize.

Salon, Heather Digby Parton, 4 Oct 2025: Donald Trump believes he has a license to kill, subtitled “After saying the U.S. is at war, POTUS takes out another Venezuelan boat”

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And more about Trump’s hate, and Russell Vought.

Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson, 3 Oct 2025: October 3, 2025

Although President Donald J. Trump has not appeared in public since Tuesday, his social media account has been posting up a storm. Just three weeks ago, administration officials were insisting that Democrats were responsible for hateful political speech. Trump’s account last night posted images of prominent Democrats, including former President Joe Biden, with the heading “THE PARTY OF HATE, EVIL, AND SATAN.” It went on to say: “The Democratic Party is Dead! They have no leadership! [N]o message! [N]o hope! [T]heir only message for America is to hate Trump!”

…

Russell Vought is not an elected official. He is best known for his contributions to Project 2025, a plan for gutting the U.S. government and installing a theocratic dictatorship. Project 2025 was so unpopular when it came to light last summer—only 4% of voters who knew about it wanted to see it enacted—that Trump insisted he had nothing to do with it. Trolling the American people with the idea that Congress has no power and Russell Vought is running the government to destroy it is an odd choice for a president who is already deeply unpopular.

With braggadocio about shooting up another boat off the coast of Venezuela.

And this, which is telling. Conservatives always believe in an ideal fantasy world in the past.

If Trump’s reliance on unelected bureaucrats to run his administration has led officials astray, another video posted by the Department of Homeland Security today seemed to offer a different window onto what the president is trying to accomplish. The video shows a bar with words in a font that mimics that of early video games, saying: “LIFE AFTER ALL CRIMINAL ALIENS ARE DEPORTED.” Behind the bar runs a series of images of the United States in the late 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s. It shows Trump himself as a young man and what appears to be the Trump Tower in New York City in the early 1980s.

The nostalgic hope for reclaiming Trump’s glory days has tucked within it the McDonalds Mac Tonight moon image, an image used by white supremacists.

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Deference to the past. Declaring atheists are terrorists.

Friendly Atheist, Hemant Mehta, 2 Oct 2025: Trump’s NSPM-7 memo casts critics of Christianity as enemies of the state

Subtitled: The memo weaponizes federal task forces to go after those who challenge “traditional American views on family, religion, and morality”

Sinking deeper and deeper into fascism. Or perhaps religious theocracy.

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These other countries must know something that many Americans deny.

Boing Boing, 1 Oct 2025: The number of countries issuing travel warnings about the U.S. is growing

Canada, Ireland, The Netherlands, Belgium, New Zealand, England, Denmark, China, Australia.

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I think that white supremacists must still think that people in Africa live in grass huts; that only America and maybe Europe is civilized.

Right Wing Watch, Kyle Mantyla, 1 Oct 2025: Joel Webbon Has A Message For Black People Regarding America’s History Of Oppression: ‘It’s Your Fault’

Mind-boggling. It’s their fault that white people who settled the New World then raided Africa for slaves?

Posted in authoritarianism, Politics, Psychology | Leave a comment

More on why what’s going on is going on

Posted on Friday 3 October 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Paul Krugman on the decline of American democracy, since Nixon;
  • Francis Fukuyama blames social media and the internet as the prime cause, over eight others, for the global populist wave;
  • Adam Frank on why young men are losing faith in science: because the “manosphere” turns every issue into a debate that must be won;
  • Short items about Vance, Trump, Stephen Wolfe, and ICE Barbie.
– – –

 

It’s been going on for some time.

Paul Krugman, 3 Oct 2025: Declining American Democracy: Trump is a Symptom, Not the Cause, subtitled “The modern GOP is inherently authoritarian”

Opening:

It’s now undeniable that American democracy is in very big trouble. An autocratic president, abetted by collaborators in the Supreme Court and the Republican party, is actively attempting to use the military, the Justice Department, regulatory agencies, trade policy, voting rolls, federal spending, and any other weapon he can get his hands on to punish his critics and lock in permanent power. Yet it still comes as a shock to have the dire state that the country is in confirmed by the experts.

The US is now rated as an “illiberal democracy.” The legacy media is in denial. Krugman reviews charts showing the increased left-right divide over recent decades. No crystal clear answer, of course. He concludes:

Anyway, the answer to that question is that there are a lot of potential explanations, ranging from rising income inequality and the power of the plutocracy, to the problems of left-behind regions, to men not working, to the injured pride of white men who feel that they have lost their dignity and their privilege, to the social anomie caused by the Internet. Also, racism never went away and has become increasingly overt again. I take all of these issues seriously, but don’t have firm views about their relative responsibility for our current moment of democratic peril.

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Via Steven Pinker on Facebook:

Persuasion, Francis Fukuyama, 2 Oct 2025: It’s the Internet, Stupid
What caused the global populist wave? Blame the screens.

He recites the standard list of causes:

  1. Economic inequality brought on by globalization and neoliberal policies.
  2. Racism, nativism, and religious bigotry on the part of populations that have been losing status.
  3. Broad sociological changes that have sorted people by education and residence, and resentment at the dominance of elites and experts.
  4. The special talents of individual demagogues like Donald Trump.
  5. The failures of mainstream political parties to deliver growth, jobs, security, and infrastructure.
  6. Dislike or hatred of the progressive Left’s cultural agenda.
  7. Failures of leadership of the progressive Left.
  8. Human nature and our proclivities towards violence, hatred, and exclusion.
  9. Social media and the internet.

Then he says:

I myself have contributed to this literature, and like everyone else ticked off cause #9, social media and the internet, as one of the contributing factors. However, after pondering these questions for nearly a decade, I have come to conclude that technology broadly and the internet in particular stand out as the most salient explanations for why global populism has arisen in this particular historical period, and why it has taken the particular form that it has.

Then he goes through the weaknesses of arguments blaming the first eight items.

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Of course, you’re not supposed to have “faith” in science, you’re supposed to understand it. Adam Frank.

NY Times, opinion guest essay by Adam Frank, 3 Oct 2025: Why Young Men Are Losing Faith in Science

Again, it’s about the internet and in particular the “manosphere” —

— a loose network of podcasts, YouTubers and other male influencers. I’ve appeared on some of the manosphere’s most popular shows, including Joe Rogan’s. I’ve watched how curiosity about science can slide into conspiracy-tinged mazes rooted in misinformation. And I believe the first step out of the maze for young men begins by reasserting to them the virtue of hard work — an often grueling but indispensable part of finding the right answers in science.

The internet, and social media, are corroding the rules of discourse that have been built up over centuries.

The manosphere can foster genuine interest in science among young listeners. But framing science as a debate to be won makes it easy to paint established scientists as opponents who must be overcome. And one of the easiest ways to win the debate is to suggest scientists are either self-satisfied elites who won’t consider new ideas or, worse, liars who know the truth and are hiding it.

Frank recalls a guy he talked with on a plane about ancient aliens. And ends,

If I could talk to that young man on the plane again, I would not simply tell him to exercise caution when it comes to fringe experts. I would instead explain the long traditions of scientific discipline and determination that built the jet he’s flying in. Einstein’s relativity, evolution and genetics, climate physics on any planet (even alien ones) — these topics are a thousand times more compelling than faked moon landings because they are not the fever-dreams of hucksters but a direct vision of nature’s outrageous beauty and complexity. Make the effort to walk down that road, embrace its honesty and humility and you’ll be hooked forever.

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Short items.

Posted in Conservative Resistance, Politics, Psychology, Science | Leave a comment

Sometimes They Really Are Out to Get You

Posted on Thursday 2 October 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Evidence of Republican hate of the Left;
  • And evidence about their incompetence;
  • And wondering when their “Two Minutes Hate” will appear.
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Fortunately, in this case they’re not very bright.

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Ten days or so ago, at Charlie Kirk’s funeral, after Kirk’s wife said she forgives the killer, Trump got up and said that he disagreed with Charlie, and her, on that point.

Guardian: 21 Sept 2025: Charlie Kirk memorial: Trump says he ‘hates’ his opponents at event attended by tens of thousands

At one point, Trump mentioned that, shortly before he died, Kirk told a staff member he was not afraid of students who disagreed with him in the crowd at Utah Valley University. “I’m not here to fight them – I want them to know them and love them,” Trump quoted Kirk as saying. “In that private moment on his dying day, we find everything we need to know about who Charlie Kirk truly was.”

“He did not hate his opponents, he wanted the best for them,” Trump said, before breaking from his prepared remarks to add: “That’s where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponents, and I don’t want the best for them, I’m sorry.”

And in the videos of that talk, you can see how Trump emphasized the word “hate,” almost in a boastful, prideful sort of way. That’s the Christian plan, right?

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Today’s NY Times.

NY Times, 1 Oct 2025: White House Uses Shutdown to Maximize Pain and Punish Political Foes, subtitled “The Trump administration forged ahead with plans to conduct mass layoffs, as the fiscal standoff appeared to intensify.”

(Title in print: “Trump Uses Shutdown To Punish Blue States As Layoffs Grow Near,” subtitled “An Apparent Effort to Inflict Pain as a Fight Intensifies”)

The Trump administration took steps on Wednesday to maximize the pain of the government shutdown, halting billions of dollars in funds for Democratic-led states while readying a plan to lay off potentially droves of civil servants imminently.

(Note that Republicans are still unable to get their rival party’s name correctly; they keep saying “Democrat” states. They are either not very bright, or being deliberately malicious.)

In a series of social media posts, Russell T. Vought, the White House budget director, said the administration had paused or moved to cancel the delivery of about $26 billion in previously approved funds across a range of programs, describing the money as wasteful or in need of further review.

The timing seemed to be no mere coincidence, nor were Mr. Vought’s choices of location. He said the administration was terminating one tranche of funds, totaling about $8 billion, because it was “Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda,” a move that affected projects in 16 states, most of which are led by Democrats.

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Another example of how Republicans are either not very bright, or are being malicious. They keep lying about this.

Media Matters, 30 Sept 2025: Right-wing media run wild with the blatantly false claim that Democrats are shutting down the government to secure “health care for illegals”

The issue is not about illegals. Pay attention.

Right-wing media are pushing a lie that Democrats are threatening to shut down the government over “free health care for illegal immigrants” and want to “blow up the budget” for “illegal aliens” even though undocumented immigrants are not eligible for federally funded health benefits.

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Fortunately, as I said above…

NY Times, opinion by David French, 2 Oct 2025: Incompetence Isn’t an Upgrade Over D.E.I.

One of the most important distinctions in politics is the difference between people who are mainly motivated to vote against their opponents rather than for their allies. Their hatred or fear of their opponents is far more important than their embrace of any particular policy or ideology.

Recall Trump’s hate, noted above.

This concept, called “negative partisanship,” is spreading like a virus across American politics, and it’s reaching its culmination in Donald Trump’s Republican Party. Ben Shapiro, one of the most popular right-wing podcasters in America, recently spoke with my colleague Ezra Klein and described the modern G.O.P. perfectly.

“I think that on the right there is such a rage that has arisen,” he said, “at least on part of the right, that the tendency is to just rip things out by their roots, rather than trying to correct or even determining whether the thing can be corrected.”

The Republican Party, Klein replied, “isn’t conservative anymore. It’s counterrevolutionary.”

“It’s anti-left,” Shapiro responded.

One of my running themes, at a big picture level, is that most people defer to their community’s standards of morality and belief, simply for the sake of identity. It’s much easier to sign over one’s beliefs to a single holy book, and to follow the wisdom of the community, than to bother trying to understand the reality of the world, the universe, or even other people in the world different from yourself. Why bother? As long as you keep in your bubble, you can live out your life completely unaware of anything about anything outside one’s immediate zone. But humanity cannot survive living like that indefinitely.

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One more.

Paul Krugman, 2 Oct 2025: An Autocracy of Dunces, subtitled “How stone-faced generals, Wall Street pushback, and a government shutdown may save America’s quickly declining democracy”

If America still had a fully functioning democracy, Donald Trump’s speech Tuesday to the assembled generals would have ended his presidency. Trump treated the event like a political rally and was clearly taken aback by the refusal of the audience to applaud or laugh at his jokes. Delivering a nakedly partisan speech to a mandated assembly of military officers was a gross violation of the Hatch Act. The content —telling the officers to be ready to use force against U.S. citizens — was clearly an impeachable offense. In an earlier era, Trump’s incoherent ranting would have paved the way for his immediate removal from office under the 25th Amendment.

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Still they don’t have to be bright to conduct rallies and rail against the liberal elites. In fact, their ignorance is their strength. How soon until we get to this?

Wikipedia: Two Minutes Hate

Quoting George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.

The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp.

I’d be surprised if many of Trump’s rallies don’t already include moments like this.

Posted in authoritarianism, Lunacy, Politics, Religion | Leave a comment

Reactions to the Hegseth and Trump Speeches to the Military. And Christian Music.

Posted on Wednesday 1 October 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Reactions to the Hegseth and Trump speeches from Tom Nichols, David Ignatius, Paul Krugman, Heather Cox Richardson, and others;
  • More examples of how the right, not the left, is promoting political violence;
  • And Amanda Marcotte about how Christian music signals the limitations of Christian influence.
– – –

Again, not to dwell, but at least to note. These are comments, not summaries.

The Atlantic, Tom Nichols, 30 Sept 2025: The Commander in Chief Is Not Okay subtitled “Trump put on a disturbing show for America’s generals and admirals.”

This farrago of fantasy, menace, and autocratic peacocking is the kind of thing that the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan evocatively called “boob bait for the Bubbas” and that George Orwell might have called “prolefeed.” It’s one thing to serve it up to an adoring MAGA crowd: They know that most of it is nonsense and only some of it is real. They find it entertaining, and they can take or leave as much of Trump’s rhetorical junk-food buffet as they would like. It is another thing entirely to aim this kind of sludge at military officers, who are trained and acculturated to treat every word from the president with respect, and to regard his thoughts as policy.

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Washington Post, David Ignatius, 30 Sept 2025: Trump and Hegseth’s backward-facing message to the generals, subtitled “A preoccupation with ‘woke’ culture and “enemies” won’t prepare the military for the high-tech demands of 21st-century war.”

Here’s the scariest part about Tuesday’s military pep rally: President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — in their focus on grooming, fitness standards and “the enemy within” — seem oblivious to the reality that 21st-century combat will be dominated by drones and artificial intelligence, plus commanders who understand these high-tech weapons.

…

Hegseth is so intent on creating a tough military that having a smart one appears secondary. He wants to restore the old-time, gung ho imagery. Basic training that’s “scary, tough and disciplined.” Drill sergeants who can “instill healthy fear” and “put their hands on recruits.” Hegseth seems convinced that how soldiers fight depends on how they look. “The era of unprofessional appearance is over,” he said. “No more beardos.” Maybe he doesn’t remember the unshaven “dogfaces” of Bill Mauldin’s cartoons during World War II.

Idealizing an obsolete past, as conservatives are wont to do.

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Similarly from Paul Krugman.

Paul Krugman, 1 Oct 2025: Bulging Biceps Don’t Win Modern Wars, subtitled “Hegseth’s speech was vile. It was also stupid.”

Why did Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary — he may call himself secretary of war, but Congress has not, in fact, voted to change his department’s name — summon 800 top generals and admirals to Washington? I admit that I feared the worst — that he would demand that they pledge personal fealty to Donald Trump. But no: They were summoned to listen to a speech about “lethality,” followed by a highly political speech by Trump himself.

How do you achieve lethality, according to Hegseth? By telling the military that it’s OK to engage in hazing, sexual abuse and bigotry — he didn’t say that explicitly, but that was his clear message. Also, war crimes are no big deal. And members of the military, including the top brass, must shave their beards, lose weight and do pullups.

Hegseth’s speech was morally vile. It was also, however, profoundly stupid. Hegseth seems to have gotten his ideas about what an effective military looks like by watching the movie 300.

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Others:

“They looked at him falling downstairs every day. Every day, the guy [Biden] is falling downstairs. He said, It’s not our President. We can’t have it. I’m very careful. You know, when I walk downstairs for, like, a month, stairs, like these stairs, I’m very—I walk very slowly. Nobody has to set a record. Just try not to fall, because it doesn’t work out well. A few of our presidents have fallen and it became a part of their legacy. We don’t want that. You walk nice and easy. You’re not having—you don’t have to set any record. Be cool. Be cool when you walk down, but don’t—don’t pop down the stairs. So one thing with Obama, I had zero respect for him as a President, but he would bop down those stairs. I’ve never seen it. Da-da, da-da, da-da, bop, bop, bop. He’d go down the stairs. Wouldn’t hold on. I said, It’s great. I don’t want to do it. I guess I could do it. But eventually, bad things are going to happen, and it only takes once. But he did a lousy job as president. A year ago, we were a dead country. We were dead. This country was going to hell.”

You really admire this guy, Republicans?

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More about which ‘side’ is promoting political violence.

Salon, Sophia Tesfaye, 1 Oct 2025: Do Fox News hosts support political violence? Yes, no, sort of, subtitled “Jesse Watters’ comments about bombing the UN is just the latest example of a trend”

There is an apparent and dangerous double standard at Fox News, cable television’s most-watched network. Inflammatory rhetoric, and even the incitement and praise of violence, is simply laughed off under the auspices of humor and pushed aside by a brief or private apology. 

“There is nothing funny or ironic in calling for the bombing, the gassing, the destruction of this building,” United Nations spokesperson Stephane Dujarric explained to reporters after Fox News host Jesse Watters said the United Nations building in New York should be “bombed” or “gassed” after President Donald Trump experienced technical problems — a malfunctioning escalator and teleprompter that Watters called sabotage and an “insurrection” — during his General Assembly address last week.

“What we need to do is either leave the UN or we need to bomb it,” Watters stated on the Sept. 23 episode of “The Five.” He continued: “Maybe gas it?…We need to destroy it.”

Barely containing her laughter, co-host Dana Perino, a former White House spokesperson for former President George W. Bush, responded, “Let’s not do that.” 

And oh, by the way, about that escalator, and teleprompter.

He blamed UN staffers for sabotaging Trump’s appearance and jeopardizing his safety, a sentiment echoed by the White House. “I hope they get to the bottom of it,” the Fox News host said. “And I hope they really injure, emotionally, the people that did it.”

But, as the UN made clear, the escalator suddenly stopped after a White House videographer accidentally triggered a safety mechanism. Regarding the teleprompter issues, UN officials stated that the White House was operating it.

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One more.

JMG, 1 Oct 2025: Voldemort To Troops In Memphis: “You Are Unleashed, It’s Over, They Have No Idea How Ruthless We Are”

“I see the guns and badges in this room. You are unleashed. Whatever you need to get done, we are gonna get it done. … The gangbangers that you deal with — they think they’re ruthless? They have no idea how ruthless we are. They think they’re tough? They have no idea how tough we are. They think they’re hardcore? We are so much more hardcore than they are. And we have the entire weight of the United States government behind us. When President Trump makes a decision, this team behind me executes.” – Stephen Miller, literally shouting today in Memphis with Pete Hegseth, Pam Bondi, and Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee.

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And now for something completely different.

Salon, Amanda Marcotte, 1 Oct 2025: MAGA can’t expand its base — and Christian music tells us why, subtitled “The songs from Charlie Kirk’s memorial exposed a serious problem”

I’ve mentioned before how on drives down the I-5 from the Bay Area to LA (and back), the majority of radio stations (even on FM) are devoted to Christian music. You can tell within 5 or 10 seconds because the lyrics include “Jesus” or “God” or “blessings” in every other line. And the music itself is insufferably bland. Marcotte identifies the core reason.

Passing over some discussion of Trump’s unpopularity. Getting to the Charlie Kirk memorial.

The musicians who performed at Kirk’s memorial hailed exclusively from the niche worlds of contemporary Christian music (CCM) and worship music. CCM, while lucrative for musicians, is mostly the domain of artists who don’t have enough juice to cross over into the more desirable secular market. Traditionally, those artists who do manage to transition — think Creed or Evanescence — drop the “Christian” moniker and will even insist that they never intended to be categorized as such. Worship music, a genre that was popularized in the late 1990s and early 2000s by groups like Hillsong — a band affiliated with a controversial church in Sydney, Australia — and singer-songwriters like Chris Tomlin, who performed at the memorial, bills itself as producing modern hymns built around simple choruses.

…

Look, we’re all very worried here about rising fascism. But it’s time to take a deep breath and remember this: If Christian music appealed to anyone outside the white evangelical world, we’d have seen evidence of it by now. CCM has been around for decades, and yet it remains what it always was — watered down versions of sounds that were popular on the radio years ago.

Exactly. You can’t listen to this music without being struck by how … simple-minded it is. Centuries ago, religion inspired great art and great music. In music, I would cite Bach offhand, and Bruckner. No doubt others. But this musical example, as much as any other, shows how the influence of religion has diminished in high culture, if not popular culture. Religion hasn’t inspired great art for centuries.

Popular music may not be satanic, but MAGA is right to see it as mostly liberal. That’s why they fear it. Far from avoiding transcendent artistic experiences, the left can lay claim to most of them. Most everything from Taylor Swift to the grittiest punk music is made by people on the left. That’s why evangelicals want their kids to avoid it. They rightly believe that it’s hard to go back to mediocrity after you’ve tasted excellence.

Posted in conservatives, Lunacy, Music, Religion | Leave a comment

Military Orders, and Coal Obsession

Posted on Tuesday 30 September 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • About the Trump/Hegseth speeches today to US military leaders;
  • Short items about how psychotic drugs are to blame for Charlie Kirk’s killing; how the Rapture has been rescheduled; and how marriage equality is to blame for Charlie Kirk’s murder;
  • Paul Krugman about the doomed attempt to revive the coal industry.
– – –

 

Today US military leaders from around the world were ordered to a meeting with Trump and Hegseth in Virginia so they could be lectured to about warrior culture and not being overweight. Apparently it was pretty cringy. I saw a photo several times on Facebook of the military personnel in the audience with uncomfortable expressions on their faces, including one literally face-palming; but I didn’t save a link. Without belaboring this, some links.

Guardian, 30 Sept 2025: Trump defends troops in US cities after Hegseth decries military DEI efforts, subtitled “President and defense chief delivered pair of incendiary speeches to a crowd of hundreds of generals and admirals”

At an address of assembled generals and admirals, Pete Hegseth, the US defense secretary, outlined changes to military policy and philosophy in a set of 10 directives meant to change organizational culture around fitness, race and gender, describing the previous state of military affairs as the “woke department”.

Donald Trump followed Hegseth’s call to embrace the virtues of lethality as a doctrine with a suggestion buried in an hour-long campaign-style speech that the gathering of officers and senior enlisted advisers should consider targeting US cities and civilian populations as a training exercise.

“We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military – national guard, but military – because we’re going into Chicago very soon, that’s a big city with an incompetent governor,” Trump said, attacking JB Pritzker, the Illinois governor.

And: The Guardian: No more ‘woke’ in the US military: key takeaways from Pete Hegseth’s speech

Woke is out; diversity is unwelcome; look the part, shave, and don’t be fat; women are expendable. Never mind that Trump, and many of the generals, are fat.

Wait– I found the photo.

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Slate, Fred Kaplan, 30 Sept 2025: Trump Just Gave the Military an Extremely Sinister Mission, subtitled “The U.S. president just told military leaders that one of their main missions soon will be to defeat ‘the enemy from within.'”

Before a gathering of the nation’s highest-ranking military officers, President Donald Trump unloaded what may be the most repellent, unhinged, and—in the few moments when he got to his point—frightening speeches by any American president ever.

In a 75-minute ramble, much of it improvised on the familiar themes of his campaign rallies, the commander in chief skewered Joe Biden (“this guy who had no clue”), even Biden’s autopen signature (“I love my signature, everybody loves my signature,” he boasted), the “sleazebags” in the “fake media,” George Soros, the Democratic Party (“they don’t treat you with respect, they’re Democrats, they never do”), several “stupid” Democratic mayors—and touted himself as the savior of the military and the nation (“I rebuilt the military. … I have settled so many wars. … I know more about deals than anybody”).

One can imagine what was going through the minds of the hundreds of generals and admirals, who had once saluted Biden and Obama as their commanders, who had come up through the ranks with an apolitical ethos, and who must have been at that moment wondering what kinds of orders they might have to follow—or consider not following—from this crude man who now has the attack plans and nuclear codes at his side.

Just the latest antics from our mad king and his unqualified acolyte.

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For the record:

CNN, today: Fact check: Trump makes numerous false claims to generals and admirals, some about the military

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Short items.

AlterNet, Carl Gibson, 29 Sept 2025: We have a massive problem’: Steve Bannon gives two-word explanation for MAGA mass shooter

Investigators say Sanford harbored hostile feelings toward the Mormons, and had previously been in a relationship with a Mormon woman. Sanford was an apparent Trump supporter, and was once photographed in a t-shirt that read “Trump 2020: Make Liberals Cry Again.” He also had a Trump sign outside of his home. But despite all of the shooter’s apparent affiliations with the MAGA movement, Bannon took efforts to distance the shooter from the pro-Trump community, and blamed the attack on “psychotic drugs” before quickly pivoting from the topic entirely.

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JMG, 29 Sept 2025: The Rapture Has Been Rescheduled For Next Tuesday

Nope, won’t happen. They never learn. I think we need to understand religious zealots like this as… mentally challenged. As is the population that believes him. They will always be with us. Joe comments:

Read the full article. I just scrolled through the viral TikTok hashtag #RaptureTok and yes, they’re all back at it again. No word, though, about the people who last week quit their jobs and gave away their cars.

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Here’s a new one.

Right Wing Watch, Peter Montgomery, 30 Sept 2025: Liberty Counsel’s Mat Staver Blames Marriage Equality Ruling for Charlie Kirk’s Murder

Once again: motivated thinking. Putting the conclusion first and then searching for reasons. Blaming everything bad on people you already don’t like.

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Finishing today with a relatively substantial piece. Though it’s not a new issue.

Paul Krugman, 30 Sept 2025: Fossil Fuels and Fossilized Minds, subtitled “What’s driving the doomed attempt to revive coal?”

I’ve just gotten back from the Netherlands, which is famous for its picturesque windmills. But wind power in Holland is more than a historical curiosity. There are also modern wind turbines almost everywhere you look, both onshore and off. And the ground is covered with dead birds and whales.

OK, not really. Wind power is, in fact, far cleaner and safer than burning fossil fuels. And I personally like the sight of wind turbines. After all, I value the comforts of modern civilization and find it reassuring to see the power needed to provide those comforts generated without harmful emissions.

But Donald Trump, as everyone knows, hates wind power and loves coal. Both passions are deeply irrational. Yet they are shaping policy.

Trump, as we’ve seen, seems bent on returning the to the 1980s, or perhaps the 1880s. This is the essence of conservative resistance to change…

Krugman explains that coal hasn’t been a significant source of energy for decades, and explains why.

So what happened to all the coal jobs? Basically, workers were displaced first by giant power shovels (strip mining), then by explosives used to blow the tops off mountains, exposing the coal beneath. By using these techniques, in 2008 coal companies were able to produce twice as much coal as they did in 1950, while employing 80 percent fewer workers.

And so on. While addressing Trump’s nonsensical claims about wind power — like, that China doesn’t use it.

Posted in Conservative Resistance, conservatives, Lunacy, Politics | Comments Off on Military Orders, and Coal Obsession

Medbed Fantasies and Trump’s Dementia

Posted on Monday 29 September 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Slate, Heather Cox Richardson, and Robert Reich on Trump’s AI video about “medbeds”; Reich explicitly links it to Trump’s dementia;
  • Short items about the Michigan mass shooter, government enforcement of Turning Point Clubs; tariffs on foreign-made movies; and banning the phrase “climate change” in the Energy Department.
– – –

 

Apparently this “medbed” fantasy is more significant than I thought, yesterday. It comes up today in three of my daily reads.

Slate, Molly Olmstead, 29 Sept 2025: Trump Just Promoted One of the Nation’s Cruelest Conspiracy Theories, subtitle “Why did the president post and delete a fake video of himself promising a miracle? Let’s get into it.”

The writer opens:

Over the weekend, the president of the United States posted an A.I.-generated video of himself making a major announcement. The post, which was made on TruthSocial, prompted an online furor among those familiar with conspiracy theories, because it promoted a particularly fringe one, even by the standards of an administration that has pushed anti-vaccine paranoia onto the public and advanced widespread falsehoods about a presidential election. The theory, which revolves around something called a “medbed,” is pulled from the strangest, most paranoid corners of the conspiracy world—not something one of the most powerful world leaders should be tapped into. Let’s get into it.

Then she goes step by step through the story: what exactly happened? what did the video say? what’s a medbed? And so on. A sample.

OK, then. What is a medbed?

To be abundantly clear, medbeds are not real. But per the conspiracy theory, a medbed is a kind of extremely advanced technology capable of healing the human body of literally everything, including natural aging. They’re often thought of as pods of some kind. In the telling of the conspiracy theory, it may have an alien origin or a mystical origin or just be breathtakingly advanced science. A medbed has no limits to what it can do.

My goodness. Where does that come from?

Mostly, it comes from the QAnon world. For years, Q influencers have hyped it as a way to promise a kind of golden future on the other side of their revolution. Medbeds are one of the many exciting promises that were supposed to come after the Storm, the long-promised mass roundup of the evil cabal members at the center of the QAnon conspiracy theories. At times, medbeds have also been useful for connected conspiracy theories, explaining how some figure—an assassinated John F. Kennedy, for example—who should have died long ago is still alive.

And how it’s related to QAnon. And how the video may cause sick people real harm.

Trump deleted the video, limiting its harm to some degree, but some will choose to see the deletion not as a retraction but as part of the secret form of communication he uses for his most devoted followers. Trump has a huge audience, and he’s a near-messianic figure for some of these people; even if the medbed post was meant as a joke—and nothing he has said or written has indicated it was—people will almost certainly latch onto this post as a coded message, telling them to turn away from the corrupt medical community and hold out for something better. For people facing life-threatening illnesses, such false hope can be deadly.

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Heather Cox Richardson gives the story the lead in her daily news blog. She summarizes, with only the faintest editorialization.

Letters from an American: 28 Sept 2025

Late last night, President Donald J. Trump shared on social media a deep fake video that appeared to be a clip from his daughter-in-law Lara Trump’s Fox News talk show My View. In the video’s split screen, Lara Trump, on the left, says: “President Donald J. Trump has announced a historic new healthcare system, the launch of America’s first MedBed hospitals and a national MedBed card for every citizen.” As she speaks, the video shows a building with the caption: “MEDBED HOSPITALS: THE NEW ERA IN HEALTHCARE.”

Then the video shows a clip of Trump saying: “Every American will soon receive their own MedBed card.” As the video shows what looks like a futuristic hospital, complete with what appear to be podlike beds, he continues: “With it, you’ll have guaranteed access to our new hospitals led by the top doctors in the nation, equipped with the most advanced technology in the world.”

…

MedBeds are imaginary magical beds, sort of like a tanning bed, that diagnose or cure health problems instantly and painlessly. The idea is popular in QAnon forums, and believers claim that Trump is already secretly installing the beds in hospitals.

…

If MedBeds were real and “every citizen” could use them, as the deep fake video suggests, no one would need to worry about losing their healthcare insurance.

Someone took the video down from Trump’s timeline this morning.

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The left isn’t interested in violence against MAGA; the left is interesting in reigning in Trump’s dementia.

Robert Reich, 29 Sept 2025: Again: Why isn’t the media reporting on Trump’s growing dementia?, subtitled “Trump’s increasingly bizarre behavior can no longer be attributed to a calculated ‘strategy.'”

Over the weekend, on his Truth Social, Trump shared a video purporting to be a segment on Fox News — it wasn’t — in which an AI-generated, deepfaked version of himself sat in the White House and promised that “every American will soon receive their own MedBed card” that will grant them access to new “MedBed hospitals.”

What?

Believers in the “MedBed” conspiracy theory think certain hospital beds are loaded with futuristic technology that can reverse any disease, regenerate limbs, and de-age people. No one has an actual photo of these beds because they don’t exist.

Reich goes on with other Trump stories about the FBI being part of January 6th, and sending the military to Portland, OR. Then:

What’s been the media’s response to Trump’s bonkers postings and announcements this weekend? Nada. The media either ignored them, mentioned them as part of Trump’s “strategy,” or assumed Trump was just being Trump.

But there’s another explanation.

Trump is showing growing signs of dementia. He’s increasingly unhinged. He’s 79 years old with a family history of dementia. He could well be going nuts.

Again and again, think what the right would have said if Biden had done or said similar things. There’s the emerging theme that Trump’s dementia is like the naked emperor, whom no one wanted to be the first to point out that he had no clothes.

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More right-wing craziness as compiled by JMG.

Posted in conservatives, Lunacy, Psychology | Comments Off on Medbed Fantasies and Trump’s Dementia