- In Trump’s America, it’s every parent and child is out for themselves;
- Who decides who’s Christian? The government?
- Fox News says the Qatari bribe to Trump is fine because FDR gave three planes to the Saudis… 80 years ago;
- Robert Reich responds to RFK Jr. about Trump and oligarchs;
- And Günter Wand conducts the apocalyptic finale of Bruckner’s 8th.
Another sign of the regressive nature of Trump and MAGA. There is no society; we’re all a bunch of self-interested individuals in competition with each other. Tribalism. So much for the dreams of the Founders.
NY Times, guest essay by Pepper Stetler, 11 May 2025: In Trump’s America, All Parents and Children for Themselves
For almost 50 years, parents of students with disabilities have relied on federal oversight to ensure that their children receive a fair education. But under the proposed budget, money earmarked for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) comes with a promise to limit the federal government’s role in education and provide states with greater flexibility, which could mean drastically reducing oversight of how states use that money.
To me and many other parents of the 7.5 million public school students in the country served by IDEA, Mr. Trump’s efforts to eliminate the Department of Education and potentially just give IDEA funding directly to the states is our worst nightmare.
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Who decides? That was the point of keeping religion out of government, and vice versa.
The Atlantic, Elizabeth Bruenig, 12 May 2025: Who Counts as Christian? subtitled “A new initiative will necessitate that the Trump administration makes difficult judgment calls about the faith.”
During his campaign, Donald Trump told Christian supporters that if he became president, they would never have to vote again, because “we’ll have it fixed so good.” Now he’s trying to follow through on his promise by establishing a task force charged with “eradicating anti-Christian bias.” But Christians shouldn’t conclude that this new commission will necessarily defend their interests, let alone fix it “so good.” Eliminating anti-Christian bias will require the task force (and thereby the government) to rule on what exactly constitutes authentic Christian belief and practice—not a straightforward determination to make, nor one that should be entrusted to the Trump administration.
With examples that suggest Christians should be let off the hook for violating laws that anyone else would be arrested for.
This passage is striking, for revealing how quickly a social trend can happen.
There was a time when American Christianity and the liberal state were less frequently in conflict because Christianity was so overwhelmingly dominant in society. But the recent decline of Christianity has changed that. In 1980, more than 90 percent of Americans identified themselves as Christian; today, only 62 percent say they’re followers of Christ. And though recent research suggests that the long-term decrease in Christian affiliation may have halted, the story of the past half century of American Christianity must be read through the lens of these gradual losses and their consequences. The faith no longer has the near-total sociocultural hegemony over American life that it once enjoyed; largely gone are the days of routine prayers and Bible readings in public schools, the suspension of commerce on Sundays, and the broad assumption that whoever you happen to meet will almost certainly be Christian.
Nothing is stable in human affairs. Oh, maybe for a few hundred years, or even a couple thousand. While reality endures.
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More about that Qatari plane. Bribe.
Media Matters, Matt Gertz, 12 May 2025: Fox’s comically pathetic spin for a foreign government gifting Trump a $400 million plane
Because it isn’t the first time a government has given away a plane. It happened 80 years ago!
“Well, Brian, it’s not the first time we’ve had airline diplomacy in the region,” Tomlinson replied. “Let’s go back to after the Yalta Conference, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt gifted three airliners to the Saudis to kickstart Saudi airlines. So this has happened before.”
That Tomlinson had to go back 80 years to identify a point of comparison, only to come up with something so absurdly off-base, is pretty damning.
See previous post summarizing a portion of that Tim Urban book. This is the attorney spin, with Fox acting like Trump’s attorney: It’s their job to win, nothing can alter their allegiance, and they know their conclusion in advance.
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Robert Reich, 13 May 2025: The single stupidest statement about Trump ever made, subtitled “RFK Jr. doesn’t just kiss Trump’s derriere. He lies through his teeth.”
It begins:
RFK Jr.: “Elizabeth Warren or Robert Reich saying that President Trump is on the side of the oligarchs, there has never been a president more willing to stand up to the oligarchs than President Donald Trump.”
Friends,
I can take only so much sycophantic bullsh*t from Trump’s Cabinet, but When RFK Jr. says there’s never been a president more willing to stand up to the oligarchs than President Donald Trump, I’ve got to respond.
It’s the oligarchy that put Trump into the presidency. He’s doing their work.
A half-century ago, when America had a large and growing middle class, those on the “left” wanted stronger social safety nets and more public investment in schools, roads, and research. Those on the “right” sought greater reliance on the free market.
But as power and wealth have moved to the top, everyone else — whether on the old right or the old left — has become disempowered and less secure.
Today the great divide is not between left and right. It’s between democracy and oligarchy.
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Democracy and the rule of law are *hard*. Humans are inclined to fall back to default human nature, in which tribes were led by authoritarian leaders, and the myths of each tribe were their common reality.
(Similarly: science fiction is hard; fantasy is easy. Science is hard; religion is easy. And so on.)
It’s remarkable that humans, living in tribes in an ancient environment, managed to developed cognitive skills that have enabled us to think new things beyond rote survival. How did this happen? Bronowski suggested it was a series of climate changes. Change, throughout history, is what has driven evolution.
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The final movement of Bruckner’s 8th has been described as a vision of the apocalypse.
Channeling, perhaps, Jim Svejda, about his description of this movement. As it happens, my set of Bruckner symphonies are those released in the ’70s and ’80s by EMI, conducted by Günter Wand. Who here is, obviously, much older. Perhaps alarmingly so.
Bruckner’s symphonies are like cathedrals. All very similar, but each one slightly different, and the later ones steadily more grand.
