- A NYT Scale of markers of democratic erosion;
- Heather Cox Richardson’s even-handed assessment of the SNAP crisis;
- Jerry Coyne dismantles Arthur C. Brooks’ arguments for not dismissing the idea of God;
- (And my take on how the common conceptions of God betray a several lack of imagination, even a conceptual limit to human cognition);
- Short takes on the SNAP program, how ticket sales at the Kennedy Center have plummeted, and the newly MAGA CBS News has fired it’s climate change team;
- Even shorter takes from the fringe.
Two days ago I noted an essay that described five ways you can tell when America has become a dictatorship.
Today comes an analogous, much more elaborate piece at NYT, designed to be scrolled through, listing 12 “markers of democratic erosion,” with scales showing how far along we are along each one, moving away from democracy.
NY Times, Editorial Board, 31 Oct 2025: Are We Losing Our Democracy?
Countries that slide from democracy toward autocracy tend to follow similar patterns. To measure what is happening in the United States, the Times editorial board has compiled a list of 12 markers of democratic erosion, with help from scholars who have studied this phenomenon. The sobering reality is that the United States has regressed, to different degrees, on all 12.
Our country is still not close to being a true autocracy, in the mold of Russia or China. But once countries begin taking steps away from democracy, the march often continues. We offer these 12 markers as a warning of how much Americans have already lost and how much more we still could lose.
I’ll screen-capture the first.
Followed by two paragraphs of background, then a “Bottom Line” assessment:
Many forms of speech and dissent remain vibrant in the United States. But the president has tried to dull them. His evident goal is to cause Americans to fear they will pay a price for criticizing him, his allies or his agenda.
The other markers are:
2, An authoritarian persecutes political opponents. Trump has.
3, An authoritarian bypasses the legislature. Trump has started to.
4, An authoritarian uses the military for domestic control. Trump has started to.
5, An authoritarian defies the courts. Trump has started to.
6, An authoritarian declares national emergencies on false pretenses. Trump has.
7, An authoritarian vilifies marginalized groups. Trump has.
8, An authoritarian controls information and the news media. Trump has started to.
9, An authoritarian tries to take over universities. Trump has started to.
10, An authoritarian creates a cult of personality. Trump has.
11, An authoritarian uses power for personal profit. Trump has.
12, An authoritarian manipulates the law to stay in power. Trump has started to.
Concluding,
The clearest sign that a democracy has died is that a leader and his party make it impossible for their opponents to win an election and hold power. Once that stage is reached, however, the change is extremely difficult to reverse. And aspiring authoritarians use other excesses, like a cowed legislature and judiciary, to lock in their power.
The United States is not an autocracy today. It still has a mostly free press and independent judiciary, and millions of Americans recently attended the “No Kings” protests. But it has started down an anti-democratic path, and many Americans — including people in positions of power — remain far too complacent about the threat.
The 12 benchmarks in this editorial offer a way to understand and measure how much further Mr. Trump goes in the months and years ahead. We plan to update this index in 2026.
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Heather Cox Richardson’s typically even-handed assessment of where we are re: SNAP.
Letters from an American, 30 Oct 2025: October 30, 2025
House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) continues to try to pin the upcoming catastrophic lapse in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) funding on the Democrats. But with the U.S. Department of Agriculture sitting on $6 billion in funds Congress appropriated for just such an event, the Treasury finding $20 billion to prop up Trump ally Javier Milei in Argentina, Johnson refusing to bring the House into regular session to negotiate an end to the government shutdown, and President Donald J. Trump demanding $230 million in damages from the American taxpayer, bulldozing the East Wing of the White House to build a gold-plated ballroom that will dwarf the existing White House, and traveling to Asia, where South Korean leadership courted him by giving him a gold crown and serving him brownies topped with edible gold, blaming any funding shortfall on Democrats is a hard sell.
Of course it goes on.
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I’m noting this piece because it’s current, because it’s analogous to a piece noted Monday on Charles Murray’s “God-sized hole,” and because arguments like this betray a certain psychological desperation not unlike the motivations of political conservatives.
Jerry Coyne, 31 Oct 2025: More god-touting, this time in The Atlantic (There’s an archive link here)
This concerns an essay by Arthur C. Brooks, an Atlantic regular not to be confused with David Brooks, who really does seem to have a Godly itch he is looking for ways to scratch.
Coyne’s take:
Brooks’s argument comes down to this syllogism (examples come from both me and Brooks):
a.) Science accepts a lot of things we can’t see directly, like quantum phenomenon, electrons, or the use of infrared radiation and electricity as ways animals use to detect their environment. Those phenomena have subsequently been verified, though science still is studying things we can’t yet verify, like dark matter and energy
b.) Similarly, humans accept a lot of things we can’t see—most notably God
c.) Therefore, just as we shouldn’t dismiss the non-seeable phenomena of science, we shouldn’t dismiss the existence of gods.
You’ve probably already detected the fallacy in this argument, but I’ll wait a bit until you read Brooks’s piece.
The fallacy is that even if we can’t “see” certain things, like quarks, we still have *evidence* that they exist. (The image above is apparently an example.) Unlike God.
But what testable predictions of an unseen God can Brooks make? He doesn’t give us any; he just compares science and religion without mentioning the crucial role of testability.
Coyne goes on to take out several other specious arguments that Brooks makes, not for proving God, but simply for not dismissing the idea.
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My take on the matter of God’s existence is along several familiar lines. Different religions, even sects within Christianity, have different ideas about the nature of God and the rules he follows. Even Catholicism with its litany of saints betrays the polytheism inherent in most religions, which derives from animism, and that from pareidolia, the perception of meaningful patterns in natural events, in primitive human nature. Religion, especially Christianity, is a projection of human verities on the cosmos at large — the idea that, since people have fathers, so too must the universe. It betrays a severe lack of imagination, and perhaps indicates a conceptual limitation to human cognition.
It’s not that some people *can* imagine orders to the cosmos and all the reality that transcend — there’s that word again — the vagaries of the human biological experience.
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We can summarize today’s political items in bullet points.
- Salon, Sophia Tesfaye, 31 Oct 2025: MAGA salivates at the chance to cut off food stamps, subtitled: “SNAP benefits are set to lapse — and the right is spreading tired, racist tropes about recipients” —- Again, we can check off the themes: conservatives think the worst of other people; and they think nothing of lying, or using racist tropes.
- Washington Post, 31 Oct 2025: Kennedy Center ticket sales have plummeted since Trump takeover, subtitled “Nearly nine months into the president’s oversight, sales for orchestra, theater and dance performances are the worst they’ve been since the pandemic, according to a Washington Post analysis.” —-Apparently the acts suitable for the Trump agenda are not selling very well; I suspect this relates to topics I mentioned here.
- JMG, 31 Oct 2025: Newly MAGA CBS News Fires Its Climate Change Team —- The ascension of Bari Weiss at CBS signals to many that MAGA has taken over the network’s news.
The Fringe:
- JMG, 31 Oct 2025: Beck Host: The “Evil Spiritual Principalities Of Halloween Are Intertwined With Pride And LGBTQ Pride” —- Ignoramus.
- JMG, 31 Oct 2025: Walsh: Let Noncitizen SNAP Recipients Starve To Death —- Christian charity!
- Right Wing Watch, 30 Oct 2025: Joel Webbon Says Women Are Dumb, Wicked, Vile Whores —- Cave man morality!
- JMG, 31 Oct 2025: Trump Lies That Canada Apologized For Reagan Ad —- No, he didn’t. Flat out lying.
- JMG, 30 Oct 2025: Baptist Leader: If Democrats Take Power, We’ll All Be Imprisoned By “Gay Race Communist Security State” —- Nonsense. He’s a delusional lunatic.
- NY Times, Rachael Bedard, 30 Oct 2025: The Doctor Who Hates Medicine —- Typically in the Trump administration, a nominee to a post who doesn’t believe in her department’s mission.
