- Train Dreams
- Republicans on the need to carry guns;
- How the truth in Minneapolis is whatever Trump says it is;
- And how the administration altered images and made false posts;
- Heather Cox Richardson on KQED Forum this morning;
- Brief items about the Minnesota COC, a pro-ICE church, and the Mississippi governor.
We watched a lovely movie last night called Train Dreams; it’s one of the Best Picture nominees for the Oscar this year. It’s dramatic and meditative, and resembles the films of Terrence Malick, as I noticed and the link here confirms, with its narration and lingering shots and occasional flashes of what may be hallucinations or memories or something supernatural. The early part of the film concerns the main character working as a logger clearing hillsides for railway construction in the Pacific Northwest. And one character says:
This world is intricately stitched together, boys.
Every thread we pull, we know not how it affects the design of things.
We’re but children on this earth, pulling bolts out of the Ferris wheel, thinking ourselves to be gods.
This is enlightened thinking, likely due to Denis Johnson, who wrote the 2011 novella the movie is based on. (The entire script, or transcript, is online.)
\\
Meanwhile, turning to current events, here’s an apt comment from Facebook:
Republicans spent 50 years arguing people need to carry guns to protect against government tyranny, then the minute someone carries a gun to protect against government tyranny they side with the government.
Even the IRA had something to say about the administration’s claims that the latest victim’s carrying of a gun somehow made his killing justifiable. NYT: Gun Activists Bridle at Suggestion That Pistol Justified Killing
\\\
Meanwhile this afternoon the Trump administration has started pulling back, slightly. The Border Patrol chief has been fired: Greg Bovino Loses His Job
But this morning they were sticking to their lies.
NY Times, 25 Jan 2026: For Trump, the Truth in Minneapolis Is What He Says It Is, subtitled “The Trump team has advanced one-sided narratives to justify each of the killings, even when bystander video shows something else entirely.”
Headline on the print homepage today: “Video Footage Doesn’t Stop Trump From Telling a Different Story.” (He can always count on some of his fans to believe him.)
Key passage:
Mr. Trump has found that putting out a story line early and repeating it often can, with the help of an ideological media and online surround-sound machine, convince a sizable share of the public that does not credit contrary evidence. Even after investigations, recounts and his own advisers and attorney general refuted Mr. Trump’s claim that he won the 2020 election, polls show that most Republicans still believe the election was stolen.
And so Mr. Trump and his team have taken the same reality-bending approach to the violence in Minneapolis in evident hopes of persuading the president’s political base, at least, that the protesters were responsible for their own deaths and that “the victims are the Border Patrol agents,” as Gregory Bovino, the official in charge of Mr. Trump’s Border Patrol operations, put it on CNN on Sunday.
Associated:
NY Times, 25 Jan 2026: False Posts and Altered Images Distort Views of Minnesota Shooting, subtitled “Some social media posts tried to warp the evidence of the killing of a nurse in Minneapolis, including in ways intended to support the Trump administration’s narrative about it.”
Across social media, pro-Trump influencers and others muddled the evidence of the killing of a nurse in Minneapolis on Saturday with social media posts that included misdirection and fabricated content.
“Misdirection and fabricated content.” Do we need more media literacy? Evidence shows education does not work. People dig in to the beliefs that define themselves, that make them feel comfortable. Is it inescapable human nature, the inability to acknowledge reality?
\\
Heather Cox Richardson was on KQED’s Forum talk show this morning: KQED, Alexis Madrigal, 26 Jan 2026: Heather Cox Richardson on Trump’s Impact on Democracy
Remarkably, since this isn’t always true, there’s a partial transcript already in place. Which allows me to quote one of the two points I noticed in particular.
Alexis Madrigal: We all know what happened this weekend: a federal agent shot and killed Alex Pretti. How are you processing what happened?
Heather Cox Richardson: First of all, I think it’s significant that you said all of us know. In a country where many people don’t closely follow the news or events outside their immediate communities, the fact that this killing—like Renee Goode’s—has broken through is a big deal.
Most people *don’t* follow the news. Later in the broadcast she tried to define different kinds of voters, the extreme ones being those who don’t follow the news but simply vote for (say) the Republicans, because *that’s what they’ve always done.* Nothing the current warped Republican administration could persuade them to vote differently.
And there was a later comment concerned the ‘normalcy bias,’ the assumption that what has existed for most of one’s life must surely continue to exist. Going to, once again, Richardson’s description of the post-World War II order, in which the US has set the standard for world order — which seems abruptly to have ended. (See my posts about her latest book here.)
\\
Briefly noted headlines.
- JMG, from the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce: 60+ Major Minnesota Corporations: End This Now
- Salon, Amanda Marcotte, 26 Jan 2026: The pro-ICE church is worse than you think, subtitled “Cities Church in St. Paul is the persecutor, not the persecuted” (Christians have a persecution complex.)
- JMG, from Mississippi Free Press: Mississippi Gov: Alex Pretti Was Part Of “Lawless Horde” (No, he’s delusional, or simply bigoted.)
