- The assassination of Charlie Kirk, and reflecting on past political assassinations;
- Despite RFK Jr., there is no single cause to autism;
- Braeden Sorbo as another right-wing Republican, like Charlie Kirk, who thinks women shouldn’t have the right to vote;
- Paul Krugman: Being a cultist means never admitting that you were wrong;
- A Fox News Host just wants to kill mentally ill criminals.
Today is the day that 31-year-old right-wing activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated in Utah.
I’ve had occasion to mention Kirk a number of times on my blog as an example of the far right mindset that rejects civil rights, says gay people should be put to death, and tells Taylor Swift to submit to her husband and have lots of a children. A very tribal, even Neanderthal (except that might be an insult to Neanderthals) mindset.
Kirk said there was a cost to the 2nd amendment, widely quoted today. “I think it’s worth it. I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights.”
Be that as it may.
Of course, violence is never the answer, because it doesn’t solve the problem. It just eliminates an arguer. My fascination is this: All the big assassinations in US history — Lincoln, JFK, RFK, MLK — were against progressives. Not that the assassins were politically motivated, though some were. Sure, Reagan was attacked, and Trump was twice, but apparently only by loonies, not anyone trying to make a political statement, or change. So, what’s going on today? They haven’t found the suspect yet. It will be fascinating how this works out.
\\\
Once again, conservatives don’t do complex. They want simple answers, even if they’re wrong.
Scientific American, Allison Parshall, 10 Sept 2025: Autism Has No Single Cause. Here’s How We Know
Subtitled: “Scientists will not find a simple answer to how autism arises, despite Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s promise to announce its causes sometime this month. Here’s what makes the condition so staggeringly complex”
And therefore I’m not going to try to summarize their conclusion. I’ll just quote one example paragraph. Well, two.
“When we say autism, we’re probably talking about autisms,” Mandell says. “We’re probably talking about a lot of different biological pathways to get to a [condition that outwardly] looks similar.”
Over time, the category of autism has been expanding to be useful for more people. The criteria were originally designed around how the condition presented in white, affluent boys, but diagnoses among girls, people of color and adults have been increasing. Also, people who, in previous decades, may have received more generic diagnoses such as “intellectual disability” (which replaced the now offensive term “mental retardation”) are now being diagnosed with more specific labels such as autism. “We’re playing catch-up right now,” Burrows says—and that’s leading to the appearance of a rise in autism’s prevalence in more recent years.
Maybe the divide in the human race isn’t left vs right, conservative vs progress… it’s the ability to understand the world via simplex, vs complex, explanations. The simplex ones are happy with their religious myths.
\\
This mindset is much like Charlie Kirk’s.
Right Wing Watch, Kyle Mantyla, 9 Sept 2025: Braeden Sorbo Declares That Women Should Not Have The Right To Vote
“My stance is a voting system based on Christian morals, which relates to married couples having one joint vote,” Sorbo stated. “It’s not, ‘Oh, women shouldn’t vote,’ it’s that women should vote with their husbands and husbands with their wives. It is this idea that we should be working together because what happened is when we pit the genders against each other, the battle of the sexes, we split everything apart. We took the children out of the home and put them in the government school systems. You put the wife against her husband and the husband against his wife and that is what led to the downfall of America.”
When Harris asked Sorbo what happens to “single women and single men” under such a system, Sorbo declared that “they don’t vote” … unless they are “nuns and priests and celibate religious folk.”
Such a simple-minded view of the world. Everyone has to fit into a single mold, in his world.
\\
Paul Krugman.
Paul Krugman, 10 Sept 2025: When MAGA Prophecy Fails, subtitled “Being a cultist means never admitting that you were wrong”
For Trump made many prophecies about the economic miracles he would achieve as president. “Starting on day one, we will end inflation,” he promised. “We will be slashing energy and electricity prices by half within 12 months, at a maximum 18 months.” He promised to get gasoline below $2 a gallon. And of course he insisted that he would deliver a jobs boom, especially in manufacturing.
Obviously none of that is happening. Tomorrow’s report on consumer prices will probably show inflation running at close to 3 percent, with most economists expecting it to rise in the months ahead. Electricity prices are rising rapidly, while gas is solidly above $3 a gallon. And job growth appears to be stalling.
Furthermore, much of the bad news is Trump’s own fault. His tariffs and deportations are both adding to inflation and, by creating uncertainty, slowing the economy.
But cultists never admit that their prophecies were wrong. Rather than admit that the promised economic miracle isn’t happening, Trump and his minions have gone after the people reporting the bad news, specifically the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which produces both jobs and inflation data.
\\
Here’s the right wing.
(Image link does not work)
JMG, 10 Sept 2025: Fox News Host: “Just Kill” Mentally Ill Criminals [VIDEO]
Who decides who’s mentally ill? Charlie Kirk would say gays are.
