- Trump presumes to close Venezuelan airspace, as part of his campaign against drug smugglers, while pardoning a former Honduran president sentenced to prison for drug smuggling;
- About the new Connie Willis Daily website;
- The global decline in murder;
- Short takes on COVID vaccine deaths, Hitler Youth reborn, and Trump’s continued innumeracy.
By what possible authority can Trump say this and expect it to happen? Oh, I forgot, he thinks he’s a king.
NY Times, 29 Nov 2025: Trump Declares Venezuelan Airspace Closed, subtitled “President Trump said days earlier that the United States could ‘very soon’ expand its campaign of killing people at sea suspected of drug trafficking to attacking Venezuelan territory.”
And because, given his extra-judicial attacks on boats in that area, he’s obviously intent on starting a war.
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But given that, what’s the possible rationale for *this*?
Washington Post, 28 Nov 2025: Trump plans to pardon former Honduran president convicted of drug trafficking, subtitled “Former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández was sentenced to 45 years in prison for running a ‘narco-state’ that helped send cocaine to the United States.”
Trump says it’s because Hernández was “treated very harshly and unfairly” which doesn’t seem quite as bad as Pete Hegseth wantonly killing even survivors of some of those boats near Venezuela. Oh, and because he’s supporting a government that’s friendly to him. There’s always some reason like this underneath the stated reasons.
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I’ve linked a few times to a daily newsletter by the science fiction writer Connie Willis, who’s been doing long daily posts about the latest political news for at least a couple years on Facebook. Until Facebook disabled her account, a day or two ago, without explanation, according to her followers on Facebook. So now she has a separate site for her daily posts (aside from her other sites like https://azsf.net/cwblog/) called http://cwdaily.net/.
Today’s post is KILL EM ALL!, about what I mentioned in passing yesterday.
Both of the linked sites include a Thanksgiving post, e.g. Thanksgiving, listing all her favorites things that she’s thankful fore. Connie Willis is cheerful and charming, a news and politics junky and CNN fan as long as I’ve known her (I was in a Green Room with her when news of Princess Diana’s death was announced), and she has a hard, determined edge to her political opinions.
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Some facts and one chart about something conservatives don’t believe, that murder (and other violence, per Steven Pinker) has in fact declined in recent decades.
Vox, Bryan Walsh, 29 Nov 2025: The global decline in murder, explained in one chart, subtitled “The world is aging out of killing one another.”
This is, I would say, part of the transition from a globe full of tribal cultures to global society, which conservatives hate. But the article:
One source of good news — favored both by me and, apparently, venture capitalists — is what’s known as a “narrative violation.” A narrative violation occurs when everyone thinks one thing, but the actual evidence suggests the opposite.
And few narratives are more persistently violated than one common belief: “Violent crime is always going up.”
A 2023 survey from IPSOS of people in 30 countries found that 70 percent of respondents thought the world was becoming more violent and dangerous. Here in the US, majorities have told pollsters almost every year since the early 1990s that violent crime is going up. And other surveys indicate that many people around the world insist that life was better and often safer 50 years ago than it is today.
So, that’s the narrative. Here’s the violation: When you actually look at data on murder, it shows that the world has largely been getting safer, both as compared to the more distant past and in this century. I wrote earlier this year about how the 1990s were actually an extraordinarily violent decade in the US and how violent crime in the US this year may be headed towards record lows, even as many Americans — including the President — insist it isn’t.
With references to Steven Pinker. Let me note that term “narrative violations.” There’s an element of human psychology here, of course; conservatives, in particular, are extremely sensitive to threats, and thus fear change and ‘the other’. If violence were reduced to one murder a year, they would fret about that.
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Short takes. The first one relates to the previous item.
- JMG, 29 Nov 2025: FDA Claims COVID Vaccine Killed At Least 10 Children, linking to NY Times: F.D.A. Seeks More Oversight of Vaccine Trials and Approvals, subtitled “The agency’s top vaccine regulator proposed broad changes, claiming that a new review linked 10 children’s deaths to the Covid vaccine. But public health experts questioned the findings, wanting to examine the data.” — — Even if true, so what? How many people would have died without the vaccine? But conservatives don’t do math, or understand risk analysis.
- JMG, 29 Nov 2025 (from Associated Press): Thousands Clash With Police As Germany’s Far-Right Party Reestablishes Its Hitler Youth Division. — — Base human nature will never go away.
- JMG, 29 Nov 2025: Trump: Republicans Should Win Midterms In “Record Numbers” Because I’ve Brought Drug Costs Down 700% — — Hasn’t *anyone* explained the mathematical nonsense of such a claim? Either his staff has, and he doesn’t understand and keeps saying it anyway because the rubes will be impressed by big numbers. Or they haven’t.
