- Thanksgiving with an Asian family;
- A Facebook graphic about hospitals and who gets the money;
- Carl Sagan on Who Speaks for Earth?
- Recalling quotes by E.O. Wilson and Robert A. Heinlein;
- Don D’Ammassa on humanity’s death spiral;
- NYT articles on Russia’s Nazi narrative about Ukraine, and how the UK public thinks immigration is up even as it’s down.
Another family get-together yesterday evening of course, after cooking and prepping until late afternoon. (Curious thing: the American style I grew up with would hold holiday dinners, on Thanksgiving and Christmas Day, at mid-afternoon, 2pm or 3pm. The Chinese/Asian extended families of my partners sit down to dinner at 5pm.) And we bought a Christmas tree today.
This year I am thankful that Trump and MAGA have not *quite* destroyed everything that America has been aspiring to for two and half centuries. And I’m grateful that, after two and a half years of intermittent work, my essay for Gary Westfahl has finally been published.
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So let’s see. We could dwell on specific outrages — Hegseth: Kill ’em all!; Trump latest tirades and childish responses to reporters — but let’s look at some higher-level generalizations instead.
Beginning with this graphic that’s been floating around on Facebook for several years, and popped up again today. It captures a certain kind of capitalist/conservative worldview, that society is compose of corporate money-makers, and moochers, and the only real purpose of life is to make money. And ironically, both groups will claim to be Christian.
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From a Carl Sagan thread on Facebook.
Facebook, 23 Nov 2025: Saganism’s Post
From the chapter in COSMOS, “Who Speaks for Earth?”
“As the ancient myth makers knew we’re children equally of the earth and the sky. In our tenure on this planet we’ve accumulated dangerous evolutionary baggage, propensities for aggression and ritual, submission to leaders, hostility to outsiders, all of which puts our survival in some doubt. But we’ve also acquired compassion for others, love for our children, a desire to learn from history and experience and a great soaring passionate intelligence, the clear tools for our continued survival and prosperity. Which aspects of our nature will prevail is uncertain, particularly when our visions and prospects are bound to one small part of the small planet Earth.”
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I’ll quote E.O. Wilson once more:
“The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.”
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And here’s a famous quote from the science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein.
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And then, from one of my Facebook friends who is a prolific commentator in the field but whom I don’t think I’ve ever actually met in person.
Facebook, 23 Nov 2025: Don D’Ammassa’s Post
Anybody with even elementary understanding of psychology and politics knows that humanity is on a death spiral. The minority who believe in empathy, acceptance, inclusion, and kindness are crippled because these are not survival traits. There is no great moral authority/god who will make us rise above ourselves, and nature dictates just the opposite. Pretending that we will do better is just self delusion. At the same time, the science fiction convention that more benevolent aliens will raise us from our squalor is equally stupid. They are subject to the same rules of survival. The universe is not required to submit to our moral platitudes.
I don’t think I agree entirely; Don is more cynical than I am. In fact, in a constant theme on this blog, the things he cites as “not survival traits” *are* survival traits for a global population composed of many formerly separate tribes who, in growing, have to learn to get along with one another. I think that’s still possible, but as Don notes in a comment, the danger now is that if tribal forces win out, they can easily destroy the planet’s ecology, or even through nuclear war the entire planet.
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OK, two items in today’s NY Times. Analogous in their way. It’s the end of the month so I can spend my unused allotment of gift links.
NY Times, Greg Jaffe and Paul Sonne, 24 Nov 2025: He Saw the Best of America and Then Fought for Russia in Ukraine, subtitled “Col. Andrei Demurenko’s war story began at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., at a moment of hope and peace. It ended with a mortar blast in Ukraine.” (gift link)
Why? Because a story he was told, took hold. (Humans are driven by stories, not reality. Perhaps because stories are so easy to tell, and reality is so difficult to verify. Or actually: stories make sense of the world in human terms, that are favorable to the storytellers.)
Even after his time in the United States, Colonel Demurenko still believed the Kremlin narrative that Ukrainian “Nazis,” backed by the United States and the West, were threatening Russia’s existence. He had absorbed these distortions so completely that by 2023 he had come out of retirement to wage war in Ukraine.
Even after his time in the United States, Colonel Demurenko still believed the Kremlin narrative that Ukrainian “Nazis,” backed by the United States and the West, were threatening Russia’s existence. He had absorbed these distortions so completely that by 2023 he had come out of retirement to wage war in Ukraine.
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NY Times, 27 Nov 2025: The British Public Thinks Immigration Is Up. It’s Actually Down, Sharply. (gift link), subtitled “Net migration to Britain has fallen by almost 80 percent from its 2023 peak, according to data released on Thursday.”
When Shabana Mahmood, Britain’s Home Secretary, announced restrictive new measures last week aimed at cracking down on legal immigration, she used dire language to bolster her case.
“The pace and scale of migration in this country has been destabilizing,” she said in a speech to Parliament. She warned of “unprecedented levels of migration in recent years” and vowed that with her new policies: “That will now change.”
In fact, it already has.
Official data released Thursday showed that net migration to Britain fell sharply in the 12 months leading up to June, to 204,000 people, down from the previous year’s total of 649,000.
Those numbers continue a downward trend in Britain. Net migration — the number of people who arrived, minus the number of people who left — almost halved in 2024, the result of tougher rules announced at the end of the previous Conservative government, and of changes in global migration patterns.
No matter reality, conservatives are always deeply concerned about crime and immigration. No matter whether statistics go down. These are the narrative threat in their lives. They are always afraid.
