Distracted the past couple days by the disappearance of Linus. I mentioned this on Facebook last night. Maybe he’ll come back.
Click for much larger image. I posted this on Facebook, yesterday the 26th.
Our beloved Linus, who appeared exactly one year ago yesterday with his mother on our back patio, has disappeared. Mother and later kittens were given up to East Bay SPCA, and quickly adopted. Linus grew up outdoors, and while we have tried to make him happy as an indoor cat, we’ve indulged his pining for outdoors — he looks outside the dining room sliding glass doors, and yowls — to let him go outside. He rolls around on his back on the patio pavement, and he has always come back in 2 or 3 hours. But I let him out yesterday at 3pm, and he has not come back, in over 24 hours.
Yes, I’ve read articles about how outdoor cats can be gone for days or weeks, and eventually return. I hope so.
I look over to the window where he would reappear every 10 minutes. Well, 5.
Meanwhile, finished proofing my essay for Gary Westfahl’s book due in October: Reimagining Science Fiction: Essays on 21st Century Ideas and Authors.
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Today, a bunch of links from recent days without much quoting or discussion. But there is a theme here. Addressing politics is not about debating issues, like the effect of tax cuts. It’s become a battle between primitive and advanced human nature. And that’s why I keep compiling these.
On that note, let’s begin with this.
Robert Reich, 26 Aug 2025: Trump’s downfall, subtitled “Fascist capitalism will do him in”
Friends,
I’m old enough to remember when American politics was divided between those who wanted less government (they were called “conservatives,” or the Right) and those who wanted more social safety nets (called “progressives,” or the Left).
It’s hard to find Right or Left these days. Instead we have something no one has ever seen in America — a personal takeover of nearly all the institutions of government and, increasingly, the private sector, by a would-be dictator.
He goes on to spell out the ways, including some of the items compiled recently
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Do Trump’s fans not care that his government is trying to run the business world? What’s the word for that again…?
Futurism, Noor Al-Sibai, 25 Aug 2025: Trump Embraces Socialism, Nationalizes Failing Chipmaker, subtitled “This is socialism with an R next to its name.”
In today’s news: Trump plans many more such “deals.”
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If he’s the president, he can do anything. He’s said as much.
AlterNet, David Badash, 27 Aug 2025: Trump seizes control of Union Station operations
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As I’ve said before, conservatives seem to want a leader who can do all their thinking for them.
CNN, analysis by Aaron Blake, 26 Aug 2025: Trump says many people might want a dictator. Yes, many of his people.
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She spells it out.
Heather Cox Richardson, August 26, 2025
Today, for the second time in as many days, President Donald J. Trump suggested that Americans want a dictator. In a meeting in the Cabinet Room that lasted more than three hours, during which he listened to the fulsome praise of his cabinet officers and kept his hands below the table, seemingly to hide the bad bruising on his right hand, Trump said: “The line is that I’m a dictator, but I stop crime. So a lot of people say, ‘You know, if that’s the case, I’d rather have a dictator.’”
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Trump’s typically childish view of the world: his opponents are “evil.”
NBC News: ‘They’re going to be brought down’: Trump vows to go after Biden’s advisers, subtitled “President Donald Trump on Monday called his predecessor’s team ‘evil people.'”
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Media Matters, Jason Campbell, 25 Aug 25: As mass deportation intensifies, right-wing media expand their aim to include American citizens, subtitled “MAGA volk: Right-wing media personalities are expanding their hostility toward undocumented immigrants and now are targeting naturalized and native-born citizens in an assault on American identity”
This is about “stock” and how long one’s ancestors have been in the US. Nothing, once again, about principles or allegiance to them. It’s about “blood and soil.” Tribalism.
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Better to destroy than support those dirty foreigners.
The Atlantic, Hana Kiros, 26 Aug 2025: Inside the USAID Fire Sale, subtitled “Around the world, defibrillators, motorbikes, and water towers are being donated, sold, or simply abandoned.”
There was an earlier story about destroying contraceptives rather than allow them to be distributed.
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Worth sharing the image.
Washington Post, Carolina A. Miranda, 26 Aug 2025: Preposterous ICE videos have a holy war to sell you, subtitled “Religious-themed government videos portray a grim, never-ending battle between us and them.”
Because simple-minded religious imagery (good v. evil) appeals to those, like MAGA, who hold simple-minded views of the world (us v. them).
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MAGA doesn’t care about science, never mind its economic benefits.
Big Think, Ethan Siegel, 20 Aug 2025: NASA chief to defy agency’s charter, terminating science
Subtitle: NASA’s 1958 charter’s top priority was, “the expansion of human knowledge of phenomena in the atmosphere and space.” Is this how it ends?
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Own the libs, or something like that.
Salon, Amanda Marcotte, 25 Aug 2025: MAGA knows DC takeover isn’t about crime — which is why they love it, subtitled “Trump’s war on the Smithsonian reveals that this is about childish resentment, not safety”
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He’s delusional.
JMG, 25 Aug 2025: WaPo: The Nobel Prize Committee Loathes Trump
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Searching for support for the things you want to believe is exactly the wrong way to do it.
Scientific American, Simon Makin, 25 Aug 2025: How You Search the Internet Can Reinforce Your Beliefs—Without You Realizing It, subtitled “Users’ Internet search questions can strengthen echo chambers, even on factual topics, but there are simple ways to lessen the effect”
I don’t think I’ve ever searched the internet to find out whether this or that is true. There are too many obviously unreliable sources, given that you have any kind of basic education. The internet will confirm *anything* you want to believe. Rather: develop a set of reliable sources, check them daily or weekly, and draw your conclusions from them. Right-wing and conspiracy-minded sites don’t count. Learn to tell the difference between them and reliable sources.
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NY Times, 21 Aug 2025: F.B.I. Plans to Lower Recruiting Standards, Alarming Agents, subtitled “The plan appears to be part of a broader effort to shift the agency’s focus from tracking national security threats to fighting crime.”
You have to wonder, what kind of personality is eager to join ICE? That’s why there were recruiting standards. This has been said even about the presidency, that anyone eager to become president probably should be disqualified. (Alternatives have been put forth in science fiction stories.)
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I may have noted a story like this before.
LA Times, 22 Aug 2025: Gavin Newsom has driven Fox News completely crazy
They’re clueless.
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At least a few are fighting back against ignorance and superstition.
Scientific American, 25 Aug 2025: RFK, Jr., Demanded a Vaccine Study Be Retracted—The Journal Said No
Subtitled:In a rare move for a U.S. public official, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., called for a paper that found no link between aluminum in vaccines and disease to be retracted. The journal rejected the request
It’s not so much superstition, I suppose, as the base fear of contamination that so alarms conservatives — mercury! aluminum! — without any interest in the complex processes that create vaccines.
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It’s about power, and authoritarianism.
Slate, Matt Watkins, 25 Aug 2025: Trump Wants to Send the National Guard to Chicago. It’s Clear What This Is Really About.
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And more about authoritarianism.
The Atlantic, David Frum, 25 Aug 2025: Trump Is Sending a Terrifyingly Clear Message, subtitled “The president is going after his enemies and undermining the American system.”
