On the one hand,
- A Truth+ movie about ‘Lizard People’;
- RFK Jr vows to stop chemtrails;
- Democrats have a ‘dictatorship mentality’?
- Texas Christians presume to spend a month celebrating God’s promises;
- Tom Nichols on a witch hunt at the State Department;
- When rain falls, Trump takes credit; when it stops, Biden’s to blame;
- Making misinformation great again, on the Internet;
- How MAGA’s favorite fantasy, The Turner Diaries, is about genocide against racial minorities.
On the other hand,
- Adam Lee on how if America won’t build the future, China will;
- How America’s fourth estate — journalism — has and is keeping us advised of the lawlessness on the right.
On the one hand…
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Talking Points Memo, Hunter Walker, 6 May 2025: President Trump’s Media Company Is Offering Movies About ‘Lizard People’ And Other Wild Conspiracy Theories, subtitled “Among other things, movies on the Truth+ streaming service have suggested Jesus Christ and Buddha are aliens.” (via)
This bizarre narrative echoes a paranoia about shadowy reptilians that has persisted for decades on the absolute fringes of the conspiracy theory movement. However, in this case, the story of “serpent or lizard-like aliens” who are secretly wielding influence over the human race isn’t coming from some pamphlet or dark corner of the internet. It is among the most watched films available for streaming on a service run by a multibillion dollar media company that is owned by the President of the United States.
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RFK vows to stop chemtrails.
PolitiFact, 5 May 2025: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stated on April 29, 2025 in a town hall event: DARPA is spraying the skies with chemicals that are in jet fuel.
Rating: Pants On Fire!
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Projection.
Ring Wing Watch, Kyle Mantyla, 5 May 2025: Michele Bachmann Says Democrats Have ‘A Dictatorship Mentality’
They aren’t focused on solving problems. They aren’t [focused] on making our lives better or bringing down costs. What do they want? They want power. So these are the last people we should ever give power to because they want power for power’s sake.”
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Dim, or arrogant?
Friendly Atheist, 6 May 2025: Texas lawmakers want a month-long celebration of God’s promises in the Bible, subtitled “With ‘Promise Month,’ politicians are pushing a Christian agenda in a secular democracy”
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Which problems is this solving?
The Atlantic, Tom Nichols, 1 May 2025: A Witch Hunt at the State Department, subtitled “Trump’s commissars are looking for ideological enemies.”
Considering how obsessed Trump’s top people are with calling everything “communism,” it’s ironic how much this whole business seems like a page from Soviet history, with Party commissars trying to identify ideological saboteurs in their midst. Under Stalin, such contacts with unapproved persons, or even with people once trusted who had fallen under suspicion, could carry fatal consequences. Trumpism is more like the later regime under Leonid Brezhnev: Apparatchiks who ran afoul of new guidance or who might have been associated with people now out of favor could find themselves out of a job, demoted to menial work, or even prosecuted for petty infractions of the law.
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(This is from 10 days ago.)
The Bulwark, William Kristol, Andrew Egger, and Jim Swift, 1 May 2025: Donald Trump, an All-Powerful President With No Power at All, subtitled “When the rain falls, Trump wants credit. When the rain stops, Biden’s to blame.”
This crown-on, crown-off posture has become a regular thing for Trump. One moment, he’s the master of the universe, demanding total prostration from world leaders and government officials and taking credit for all blessings that may rain on the lives of the people. The next moment, he’s a very smol bean working with limited knowledge and a limited toolset, and why are you bullying him by asking him whether the law requires him to give hearings to deportees?
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Make Disinformation Great Again
The Atlantic, Kaitlyn Tiffany, 5 May 2025: We’re Back to the Actually Internet, subtitled “Fact-checking is out, ‘Community Notes’ are in.”
Meta’s abandonment of traditional fact-checking may be cynical, but misinformation is also an intractable problem. Fact-checking assumes that if you can get a trustworthy source to provide better information, you can save people from believing false claims. But people have different ideas of what makes a trustworthy source, and there are times when people want to believe wrong things. How can you stop them? And, the second question that platforms are now asking themselves: How hard should you try?
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And their go-to conspiracy theory is…?
Salon, Gregg Barak, 30 Apr 2025: MAGA returns to a fave fantasy to tune out Trump’s troubles, subtitled “The right’s go-to conspiracy theory can help explain why Trump’s base won’t drop him anytime soon”
There has been much attention rightly paid to Project 2025 during the first 100 days of the second Trump administration. However, not enough attention has been paid to modern America’s original manual of hatred, “The Turner Diaries.”
First published in 1978 and recently banned by Jeff Bezos’ Amazon following the assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, thanks to the combined minds of Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, this racist dystopian novel about a white supremacist insurrection undergirds the Trumpian worldview. In a nutshell, the book is an apocalyptic tale of genocide against racial minorities set in a near-future America.
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On the other hand…
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A recurring theme of late.
OnlySky, Adam Lee, 22 Apr 2025: If America won’t build the future, China will gladly do it, subtitled “The US isn’t the only nation capable of technological progress.”
While the US is lobotomizing itself by purging scientists and starving universities of research grants, our main competitor, China, is forging ahead.
The example of the essay being a nuclear power plant fueled by thorium.
From the standpoint of our shared humanity, I believe we should welcome this news. It would be wrong to give in to provincialism, believing that nothing counts unless America does it. Progress is progress, wherever it happens and whoever achieves it.
In the long run, scientific and technological achievement benefits all of humanity. New discoveries spread and diffuse until they’re part of the common knowledge base of the world, which raises everyone’s living standards. …
At this moment of history, when some nations are falling under the shadow of malignant anti-intellectualism, it’s reassuring to know that progress is continuing somewhere. Even if the US is marching backwards, we’re not dragging the rest of the world with us. Smarter nations will continue to fund research, make discoveries, and build the future whether we join in or not.
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Room for optimism.
Salon, Lucian K. Truscott IV, 6 May 2025: Our fourth branch of government is saving us, subtitled “There is only one reason why our country has survived this terrible storm of political lawlessness”
When Donald Trump appeared on a national television program and told “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker that he does not know whether he is compelled as president to uphold the Constitution, America was hit with an unforeseen and unprecedented question: Just how far gone are we as a country?
The answer is, pretty far.
Recalling Nixon and Watergate, Reagan and Iran-Contra, Gingrich, Bush. And then recent positive signs, such as Substack.
A new ecosystem of news gathering and distribution has sprung up because people are unhappy with mainstream media outlets such as the Washington Post — which has caved to Trump under the ownership of Trump-suck-up Jeff Bezos — and the New York Times, which almost daily seems to come up with story headlines and reports that minimize Trump’s anti-democratic behavior and policies. People are subscribing to Substack columns and other online outlets that provide reports and analysis that fill in the blanks left by the fading and failing MSM. An entire world of podcasts and video reporting has sprung up to repair and replace cable and network news outlets that are increasingly seen as irrelevant to what people want and need.
…
The answer to lies is to speak the truth. The answer to repression is to stand up and take a stand. The answer to fear is courage. The answer to the attempted closing of American political life is taking to the streets. The answer to authoritarianism is political freedom. The answer to feeling alone is standing together.
Study history. It’s the same in every repressive regime. And we know that because of what the journalists managed to report, despite attempts by the authoritarians to shut them down.
