- Trump’s vile comments about the deaths of Rob Reiner and his wife, and wondering what kind of people still support him;
- How the MAGA right succumbs to the bias of believing in an ideal past;
- Short takes on Ron Johnson; the world giving up on America; “slop” and “rage bait”; misunderstanding Denmark’s health-care system; the motive for teaching “intelligent design”; and Tom Nichols on Trump.
First, we can’t look away from the despicable comments made by President Trump this morning about the deaths of film director Rob Reiner and his wife yesterday. Any more than we can look away from a train-wreck.
NY Times, 15 Dec 2025: Trump Seizes on Rob Reiner’s Death to Attack the Hollywood Director, subtitled “The president attributed the killing of Rob Reiner and his wife to “Trump derangement syndrome.” There was no indication that the couple’s political beliefs were linked to their deaths.”
These two items reproduce Trump’s post, which I won’t, and comment about it.
The Bulwark, Jonathan V. Last, 15 Dec 2025: America Is an Unserious Country Filled With Unserious People, subtitled “Stories about revealed preferences and who we really are.”
Robert Reich, 15 Dec 2025: Trump’s response to the deaths of Rob and Michele Reiner says it all
Granted, Trump’s post came before the news that Reiner’s son has been arrested in connection with the murders. Trump accused Reiner of suffering from “Trump Derangement Syndrome” because Reiner had supported Democratic causes. Reich:
Three quick points about Trump’s response:
First, this angry, partisan message is utterly inappropriate to the tragedy that has engulfed the Reiner family and the community of people who care about them.
Second, Trump has made it all about himself. It’s not the first time his malignant narcissism has put himself at the center of whatever is preoccupying the public at the moment, but this is one of the most extreme and disgusting examples I’ve seen.
Third, if anyone still harbors any doubt that Trump is losing it — that his mind is in the grip of dementia, also likely paranoia — this post should make it clear. No rational person would post this.
And, it seems to me, no rational person would support anyone who said things like these. But this has been true for years. And still so many people make excuses for him.
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Why? I keep exploring this. Here perhaps is another clue, courtesy a gift link from Steven Pinker on Facebook.
NY Times, opinion David French, 14 Dec 2025: What Happens if You Refuse to Recognize That We Are in a Death Spiral
This is about how the writer discovers a Clubhouse room about whether he was “based or cringe.” His critics (that he was cringe) complained that
…I refused to recognize that America was in a death spiral. The country was in crisis, and I needed to open my eyes, steel my spine and take the necessary, sometimes authoritarian, steps to pull it from the brink.
This isn’t actually a new clue; it’s just another example of a long-identified cognitive bias that valorizes the past — incorrectly. What they believe is not true, as has been established over and over.
This view of America’s glorious past is indispensable to understanding MAGA’s appeal — and the extremism of MAGA youth. After all, the slogan, “Make America Great Again” implies the loss of greatness. This sense of loss provides the intellectual and — crucially — emotional foundation of the right’s authoritarian turn.
It’s hard to overstate how much the new right idealizes America’s past. Online spaces are full of memes and images, for example, of families from the 1950s in idyllic settings, often with the caption, “This is what they took from you.” The memes don’t define who “they” are, but I quickly learned in the Clubhouse conversation that “they” very much included me. My support for free speech, for example, opened the door for depravity, and my defense of due process hindered the rough justice necessary to reclaim America.
It isn’t true because people, everyone, have selective memories: they remember what was good in the past, and forget what was bad. In this situation, they remember when their kind was in charge, and all those different people were out of sight. And now, those different people are are in sight, and thus ruining memories of an idealistic past. Which never existed.
The new right contrasts its vision of a glorious past with a miserable present. This month, Matt Walsh, a popular right-wing podcaster with millions of social media followers, wrote: “It’s an empirical fact that basically everything in our day to day lives has gotten worse over the years. The quality of everything — food, clothing, entertainment, air travel, roads, traffic, infrastructure, housing, etc. — has declined in observable ways.”
And this is simply not true. See Rosling. See Our World in Data. See Pinker.
Walsh’s statement, however, is the opposite of an “empirical fact.” In reality, it’s empirically wrong on many, many counts.
Americans live longer, enjoy higher median wages, live in larger and more luxurious homes, and enjoy more civil liberties and greater access to justice than even the recent past. The starter homes of the 1950s — tiny places that often lacked central air and other modern utilities — would be considered poverty-level accommodations now.
Violent crime is much lower than in decades past, the divorce rate has decreased from its highs in the early 1980s, and the abortion rate (despite recent increases) is far below its early 1980s peaks.
But this is the key problem.
But even as I type these words, I realize their inadequacy. You cannot fact-check a person out of a feeling, and without question, the people I talked to felt — deep in their bones — that something had gone fundamentally wrong in the United States of America and in their lives. And a dry recitation of contrary facts not only did nothing to assuage this feeling of fear and loss; it was positively enraging — cringe, in a word.
They complain about drag queens, and don’t care about the elimination of slavery. They confuse the very short-term with the long-term.
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On this point:
Pew Research Center, 11 Dec 2025: Far more Americans say they’d like to live in the past than in the future
Especially Republicans.
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Short takes from the lunatic fringe.
- Salon, Megan O’Matz, 15 Dec 2025: Ron Johnson endorses discredited doctor’s book on chemical he claims treats autism and cancer
- Chlorine dioxide. I think cases like this belong to psychiatry. What is the motivation of a person who repeatedly strives to discredit the consensus of centuries?
- AlterNet, Naveena Sadasivam, 12 Dec 2025: Opinion: 2025: The year the world gave up on America
- AP News, 14 Dec 2025: Merriam-Webster’s 2025 word of the year is ‘slop’
- While The Oxford Word of the Year is ‘rage bait’
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- Scientific American, 14 Dec 2025: Trump Officials Keep Comparing the U.S.’s Vaccine Schedule to Denmark’s. They’re Missing the Point, subtitled “The U.S.’s and Denmark’s health systems are starkly different, so it makes sense that their vaccination schedules would differ, too”
- Because Trump officials are simpletons. This same misunderstanding is why, despite Trump, no one from Norway would ever want to move to America. They have it so much better where they are.
- CFI, Jeff Dellinger, 15 Dec 2025: “Honest Seekers of Truth” – Requiring ID, WHO Said That, and Unnecessary Goodbyes, the item about the Arizona state senator pushing to teach “intelligent design” along with evolution.
- It’s never about evidence. It’s about human vanity, which is offended by the thought that “people came from monkeys” (which we didn’t, of course; he’s oversimplifying and misunderstanding, as conservatives do).
- Tom Nichols, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College, on Facebook
- “One thing that genuinely mystifies me: Trump is one of the least masculine, least adult people in public life. Needy, whiny, defensive, pleading, scared of women, terrified of more powerful men. I am at a loss as to why his base sees him as manly or strong.”
