- 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.
- Trump Demands Fox Stop Interviewing Democrats (Talk about cancel culture!)
- Pope Leo: “Open Your Arms And Hearts” To Migrants (As if MAGA Christians care what the Pope says, let alone Jesus, who is too woke for many)
- Florida Names College Debate Trophy For Charlie Kirk (This is perverse, since Kirk didn’t debate, he harangued)
- Trump Rages About Judge He Appointed: “Portland Is Burning To The Ground And He Should Be Ashamed” (Portland is *not* burning to the ground. He’s lying, he’s deluded, he’s demented.)
- GOP Rep Demands Federal Investigation After Son’s Iowa High School Mentions “Bisexual Awareness Week” (Because conservatives/the GOP don’t want their children to be even “aware” that such people exist. As I’ve said before, parents are terrified of their children being distracted from providing the next generation.)
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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.
