- Sean Hannity thinks the new pope is too liberal, and Hannity (of course) lies about crime;
- MTG thinks Catholics are evil; how RFK Jr thinks that the new Surgeon General being unqualified makes her a perfect choice;
- MAGA’s “soft eugenics” explains why DOGE has cut so many health measures;
- The measure of losing our democracy will be the cost of opposing the government;
- Short takes on defunding libraries, the reasons for DOGE’s cuts, how bike lanes are “communist garbage”, and MAGA’s obsession with traditional binary gender expressions (dolls).
Our first piece today follows up an item posted yesterday. Once again, despite the data, conservatives are lying about crime and immigrants. The MAGA crowd objects to the new Pope as being too woke, too Jesus-like.
JMG, 8 May 2025: “Hannity Attacks New Pope As “Indoctrinated Liberal”
That’s pretty disappointing. Does he not know — do people not know how many Americans were murdered and raped and victims of violent crime because we had open borders?
And:
And nobody’s taking children away from their parents. I mean, it sounds like he’s been indoctrinated into the liberal way of thinking.
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This church has been leaning more left-wing, more left-wing.
To object to children being taken away from the parents — which happened under the Trump administration — is a “liberal way of thinking”? And it’s long been noted that if Jesus showed up today, preaching what he preached, he’d be deported as a woke illegal immigrant.
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And I haven’t even addressed how the extreme MAGA folks think the Catholics are evil. This amuses me. One baseless religious faith against another. Newsweek: Marjorie Taylor Greene Says ‘Evil Being Defeated’ After Pope Francis Death.
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Meanwhile, via JMG, Trump hires yet another Fox News host and that the new Surgeon General is unqualified is what makes her a perfect choice.
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Why is this MAGA administration (in the name of DOGE) cutting back various health-care services, including e.g. a suicide-prevent phone line for LGBTQ folks? Let ’em get sick, let ’em kill themselves, seems to be their policy. This essay explains a lot.
Guardian, Derek Beres, 4 May 2025: Maga’s era of ‘soft eugenics’: let the weak get sick, help the clever breed, subtitled “At the heart of all Trump administration policies is ‘soft eugenics’ thinking – the idea that if you take away life-saving services, then only the strong will survive”
Too much to quote. Key items: Francis Galton, RFK Jr, Elon Musk. Nutrition, measles, autism. Tax benefits for women who have children. (When Kamala Harris advocated something similar, in terms of “child support,” it was condemned by the right as “socialism.”)
And, I might say, not something Jesus would do. (But MAGA aren’t really Christians.)
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You can’t know something unless you can measure it, perhaps.
NY Times, Steven Levitsky, Lucan Way, and Daniel Ziblatt, 8 May 2025: How Will We Know When We Have Lost Our Democracy?
I’ll bold their key point.
How, then, can we tell whether America has crossed the line into authoritarianism? We propose a simple metric: the cost of opposing the government. In democracies, citizens are not punished for peacefully opposing those in power. They need not worry about publishing critical opinions, supporting opposition candidates or engaging in peaceful protest because they know they will not suffer retribution from the government. In fact, the idea of legitimate opposition — that all citizens have a right to criticize, organize opposition to and seek to remove the government through elections — is a foundational principle of democracy.
Under authoritarianism, by contrast, opposition comes with a price. Citizens and organizations that run afoul of the government become targets of a range of punitive measures: Politicians may be investigated and prosecuted on baseless or petty charges, media outlets may be hit with frivolous defamation suits or adverse regulatory rulings, businesses may face tax audits or be denied critical contracts or licenses, universities and other civic institutions may lose essential funding or tax-exempt status, and journalists, activists and other critics may be harassed, threatened or physically attacked by government supporters.
When citizens must think twice about criticizing or opposing the government because they could credibly face government retribution, they no longer live in a full democracy.
By that measure, America has crossed the line into competitive authoritarianism. The Trump administration’s weaponization of government agencies and flurry of punitive actions against critics has raised the cost of opposition for a wide range of Americans.
With many examples that have been obvious all along. I post this with my usual proviso: most people will not notice, or care. Most people will get along with their day-to-day lives. Just as they did in Nazi Germany.
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Short takes.
Slate, Even George W. Bush Liked Libraries, subtitled “How the legal battle to get funding back for the Institute of Museum and Library Services is faring.” (Homepage title: “Why Would Trump Dismantle This Tiny Little Agency That Does So Much Good?”) Well, the answer is obvious.
The Atlantic: The Actual Math Behind DOGE’s Cuts, subtitled “If you thought Elon Musk was really trying to cut costs, you weren’t in on the joke.” Because it was never about saving money. It was about attacking institutions the MAGA government didn’t like. Including folks like Elon Musk, who are out to make more money by privatizing government services.
Similarly. JMG: Newsmax Panel: Bike Lanes Are “Communist Garbage”. Notice how obsessed they are with being “normal”: “I have a car like a normal American.” There is only one proper way to be, you see.
CNN: Why Trump is suddenly fixated on how many dolls kids should have. Because of “the MAGA right’s obsession with traditional, binary gender expressions.”
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And I always have more to discuss tomorrow.
