- Self-destruction: Of the US military, of the Kennedy Center;
- How MAGA’s religious freedom doesn’t apply to Muslims;
- Dimwits: Darline Graham, advocates for “conservative-based” science, a GOP nominee who thinks humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time;
- Liars, vanity projects (Trump already has a secret bunker), woke paintings;
- Mahler’s 6th, by Michael Tilson Thomas.
Today in American self-destruction. There seem to be a couple such items every day.
NY Times, yesterday: Hegseth’s Purge of Top Generals Leaves the Army Rudderless, subtitled “The leadership vacuum comes as the Army is trying to adapt to a new kind of war dominated by deadly drones.”
I don’t quite see how learning to deal with drones is related to firing a bunch of senior military officials.
Could it have anything to do with this? Friendly Atheist, yesterday: Pete Hegseth is bringing Christian propaganda to schools on military bases, subtitled “A Hillsdale College-linked textbook whitewashes Christianity, vilifies Islam, and distorts history for the children of U.S. service members”.
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NY Times, yesterday: Trump Lawyers Warn That Kennedy Center Might Need Demolition if Not Fixed, subtitled “In a court filing about honoring President Trump on the facade, the administration said that without a proper renovation the building might need to be ‘taken down.'”
Why did we never hear about the supposedly decrepit state of the Kennedy Center until Trump took it over? Because it’s not about that. If he can’t get what he wants, he’ll just tear it down.
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The first item above relates to others about the particular way conservatives think about religious freedom.
Right Wing Watch, Kyle Mantyla, 24 Aug 2026: TX State Rep. Andy Hopper Is Plotting Myriad Ways To ‘Make Life Very Uncomfortable’ For Muslims
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JMG, today: FRC: The Girl Scouts’ Brand Has Become “Islamized”
JMG, yesterday: Hegseth’s Pastor: End Citizenship Of Mamdani Voters
Whereas Christians feel completely entitled–
JMG, yesterday: South Korea Convicts Pastors For Disrupting Flight
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Dimwits
JMG, today: Darline Graham: My Parents Worked Long Hard Hours And Died Young, Govt-Run Health Care Is A Bad Idea
Well, maybe if they’d had better health-care, they wouldn’t have died so young.
(Once again, conservatives mostly hate government-run programs because they would deprive billionaires of opportunities for becoming even wealthier, once things are privatized. And conservatives dream of a world in which they, too, have a chance to become wealthy.)
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Yahoo! News / Scientific American, Adam Kovac, yesterday: In a 2023 interview, Trump’s new FDA pick laid out a vision for ‘conservative-based’ science, subtitled “In a 2023 podcast interview, Heidi Overton called for the creation of “alternate systems” for publishing research that would back conservative policy”
This is not how science works. This is how confirmation bias and wishful thinking works.
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Friendly Atheist, Hemant Mehta, 24 Aug 2026: The GOP nominee for governor of Illinois doesn’t want to talk about his Creationist beliefs, subtitled “Republican Darren Bailey thinks humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time, and he’s very upset people keep bringing it up”
He is either a religiously-addled dimwit, or illiterate about the nature of reality and how to draw conclusions, or both.
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Right Wing Watch, Peter Montgomery, 24 Aug 2026: Trump’s Prayer Warriors Lie About New Jersey Shield Law
They do so love to feel persecuted.
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So… did Trump not know about this? Or is he ignoring it and claiming national security as an excuse to get his vanity project the Big Beautiful Ballroom built?
The New Republic, 24 Aug 2026: Trump’s White House Ballroom Defense Unravels as Secret Bunker Exposed, subtitled “Trump claims he needs the White House ballroom for national security. But the White House already has a secret bunker.”
Also at Washington Post (which apparently broke the story), 23 Aug 2026: Secret White House bunker undercuts Trump’s ballroom lawsuit, ex-officials say, subtitled “The White House already has a nuclear-proof facility buried deep underground and built in secret after 9/11.”
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Tribalism
The Atlantic, Shane Harris, yesterday: The Qataris Gave Trump an Airplane. He Crippled Their Country in Return., subtitled “The tiny Gulf state is learning that the U.S. president doesn’t always keep his end of the deal.”
Hasn’t everyone learned by now that Trump never keeps his promises? He stiffs his lawyers and his contractors!
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NY Times, 24 Aug 2026: Trump Officials Propose Sale of ‘Woke’ Painting by Kehinde Wiley, subtitled “The State Department recently removed the painting of Dominicans from a U.S. embassy, noting it was by the artist who made Barack Obama’s presidential portrait.”
Woke seems to be anything the tiny MAGA minds don’t understand or find new and disturbing. JMG’s piece on this has this quote:
Key quote from Bluesky: “We’ve reached the ‘degenerative art’ stage of fascism.”
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Today’s music.
Mahler’s 6th grabs you by the lapels and barely lets go, for an hour and a half, except to close you into an embrace. Some think that his 2nd and 3rd were a kind of pillar of his achievement (it was the 2nd that was featured in the recent Leonard Bernstein film), the 4th pleasant but incidental, and the 5th and 6th his most intense visions of worlds that he explores in every tiny detail. The 7th was intriguing if weird, the 8th a choral piece which I’ve never taken to; and then the 9th and 10th further, refined, more ethereal visions.
This video is great because it shows you the players and the conductor, in a way you could never see even at a live performance.
