- An essay about how humans raised children in villages, throughout most of history;
- Another essay about how Gen Z-ers are drawn to conservatives Christianity, not because it’s any way true, but because of that same need for community;
- Heather Cox Richardson on Trump’s gross video, and the idea of American government that are being lost;
- Paul Krugman’s theory on the MAGA attacks;
- Brief items about “Democrat programs,” how MAGA reactions to the No King marches proved the protesters right; and brief items about About Adam Serwer, Dinesh D’Souza, MAGA objectors to No Kings, an attack in San Leandro, Chip Roy, communism, and national parks.
Curiously, there are aspects of what we are calling base human nature, that which evolved over hundreds of thousands of years in the ancestral environment, which modern conservatives resist, at least in the US.
NY Times, guest essay by Louise Perry, 14 Oct 2025: It’s Not Normal to Raise Children Like This (gift link)
(I overlooked noting this when it was posted six days ago; it appeared in today’s print edition.)
By “normal” she means what has been common throughout most of human history, going back millennia. And still exists in some enclaves. Beginning:
My friend Elizabeth Oldfield has that rare and precious thing: a village. Hers is in the middle of London, contained within a generously sized family house that is now home to Elizabeth, her husband, their two children, a single female friend and another couple they befriended at church some years ago.
The five adults share the costs of running the house, as well as cooking and other domestic tasks. Elizabeth’s children are never without babysitters, and when or if another baby comes along, everyone will help out. The household regularly hosts dinner parties, many of which I’ve been lucky enough to attend. This being a Christian community — a mini-monastery, almost — the evening usually ends with prayers in the makeshift chapel at the end of the garden. The atmosphere is friendly and busy. No one ever seems lonely at Elizabeth’s house.
We modern people often like to imagine ourselves as autonomous individuals, but in the natural human life cycle we spend a large proportion of our lives dependent on others: as babies, in old age and when sick, pregnant or caring for young children.
During those stretches of dependency, we often feel a longing for something like a village: a group of people who are physically present in our lives and on whom we can depend. This is especially pronounced among the college educated, relatively affluent Americans who moved away from their extended families in pursuit of career opportunities, only to regret that distance when the illusion of autonomy becomes harder to maintain.
In contrast is the relatively modern American notion, at least since the 1950s, of the “nuclear family” — father, mother, children, in a single unshared household. Its priority is a core conservative belief. Its apotheosis may have been the depiction in the 1970s TV show Little House on the Prairie, and its predecessor books and spin-off films and plays. But the title is the giveaway: the family were settlers out in the wilderness, all by themselves. Throughout most of history, humanity has lived in tight communities, tribes or village, usually multi-generational. (The concurrent TV series, The Waltons, was set closer in to civilization, and had grandparents in the same household.) You can see how the expansionist priorities of Americans relied more on self-dependence than shared communities.
To the essay:
Those who ask, “Where is my village?” are right on one point: It’s not normal for parents to raise their children in isolation. For more than 95 percent of our species’ history, we were hunter-gatherers, commonly living in small bands and constantly surrounded by others. Traditionally, it was often postmenopausal women — especially maternal grandmothers — who were most deeply involved in the support of young parents. In fact, some researchers believe that is why humans undergo menopause, a phenomenon seen in only a handful of other species. Our babies come into the world so helpless and the mother-child dyad is vulnerable for such a long time that our ancestors relied on allomaternal assistance to keep their children alive. In other words, they relied on the village.
The articles goes on with examples of social consequences, all the way up to feminism.
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This is related. (Another piece from a week or so ago.)
NY Times, guest essay by Daniel K. Williams, 13 Oct 2025: Why So Many Gen Z-ers Are Drawn to Conservative Christianity
(The context might be the slight upswing in believers vs “nones” in the past couple years.)
About a third of Gen Z-ers are nonreligious. Thirty-eight percent never go to church — a mark of the rise of the Nones, or Americans with no religious affiliation.
But predictions that the Christian right would be moribund with Gen Z-ers have proved false. In the aftermath of Covid — and amid the longing for purpose, community and transcendence that many Gen Z-ers feel — a sizable minority of them have found their answer in conservative Christianity, fueling both a religious and a political revival among these young Americans. They bring a new attitude to the combination of faith and politics, and many see politics as a matter of spiritual warfare.
Of course no one sits down and reads the claims of Christianity, or any other religion, and decides to subscribe to one or the other. It’s all about community, about tribalism. And always the local one.
The essay traces the assumptions of religion in the US through the “cultural shocks of the 1960s and ’70s.” With great detail about various flavors of Christianity — Charismatic, Pentacostal, and their different policies.
Today’s young Christian right voters may be less interested in specific matters of policy than in tribal identity. When the Republican Party abandoned its 40-year commitment to a national abortion ban last year, a few conservative Christians complained, but evangelical support for Mr. Trump remained as strong as ever.
Political activism is less about getting a specific policy outcome and more about electing the candidate who is believed to be on God’s side. And in determining who is on God’s side, what counts is not so much a candidate’s faith or moral virtue but rather the person’s willingness to protect those seen as God’s people — that is, conservative Christians.
…
Gen Z Christian-right activists may soon face the realization that they will not win if their agenda is subject to a democratic vote — which means they will face a choice between feeling that they are a persecuted minority in a democratic system and fighting to be a victorious minority in a nondemocratic one.
This is the struggle for humanity to mature beyond tribalistic morality and the pulls of tribal human nature to keep us all fighting with one another.
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Some words from Heather Cox Richardson. She describes Trump’s gross video, then moves on the larger issues.
Letters from an American, 19 Oct 2025: October 19, 2025
The idea that leaders must attract voters with reasoned arguments to win power and must concede power when their opponents win has been the central premise of American government since 1800. In that year, after a charged election in which each side accused the other of trying to destroy the country, Federalist John Adams turned the reins of government over to the leader of the opposition, Thomas Jefferson. That peaceful transfer of power not only protected the people, it protected leaders who had lost the support of voters, giving them a way to leave office safely and either retire or regroup to make another run at power.
The peaceful transfer of power symbolized the nation’s political system and became the hallmark of the United States of America. It lasted until January 6, 2021, when sitting president Trump refused to accept the voters’ election of Democrat Joe Biden, the leader of the opposition.
Now back in power, Trump and his loyalists are continuing to undermine the idea of politics, policies, and debate, trying instead to delegitimize the Democratic opposition altogether. Yesterday, during the protests, President Donald Trump, Vice President J.D Vance, and the official White House social media account posted a video of Trump placing a royal crown on his head, draping a royal robe around his shoulders, and unsheathing and brandishing a sword (an image that raises questions about why Trump wanted one of General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s swords so badly that he had the museum director who refused to hand it over fired). In the video, Democratic leaders including former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and what appears to be Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) first kneel and then bow to Trump.
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Paul Krugman, 20 Oct 2025: Civil Resistance Confronts the Autocracy, subtitled “While MAGA’s spin was both insane and revealing, the No Kings Day 2 Marches were a major step towards taking our country back.”
Last Saturday’s No Kings Day 2 was awesome to behold. The very best of America shone through. From coast to coast, in big cities and small, in red states as well as blue states, Americans peacefully marched to uphold our humanity as a country and to show our solidarity against autocracy and lawlessness.
And also awesome were the right-wing attacks on Kings Day 2 participants in the days before the rallies. They were so extreme and so unhinged, so utterly disconnected from reality, that they defeated their ostensible purpose of intimidating the marchers into silence. While the rest of us saw families, old people, young people, folks in funny costumes, many of them waving the Stars and Stripes, MAGA saw criminals and America-haters.
He has a theory about the deeper purpose of the MAGA attacks.
What I would argue is that a similar process of self-reinforcement applies to telling lies that serve the autocrat’s ego. Call it “mendacity inflation.” Trump insists that he’s overwhelmingly popular and that only a lunatic fringe disapproves of his presidency. Well, to show loyalty his hangers-on must go further, declaring that grandmothers and parents pushing prams down 7th Avenue are illegal aliens and violent criminals. The humiliating absurdity is a feature, not a bug. Simply lying about demonstrators isn’t enough; to prove their MAGA mettle people in Trump’s orbit must tell lies that are grotesque and ridiculous.
Of course, this is exactly analogous to the notion that one proves one’s loyalty to tribal beliefs, or modern religions, by claiming to believe even the most absurd things about those beliefs. It proves your mettle. (Reality is beside the point.)
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And let’s round up the rest of today’s links briefly.
Salon, 20 Oct 2025: Trump’s attempt to gut special education office has some conservative parents on edge, subtitled “Trump called them cuts to “Democrat programs,” but children across the nation would be impacted”
What are Trump’s ‘Democrat programs’? You can bet, anything that benefits anyone other than straight white Christians. Trump’s is a white supremacist administration.
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Salon, Sophia Tesfaye, 20 Oct 2025: Massive “No Kings” protests short-circuit MAGA’s mockery, subtitled “MAGA reacts to “No Kings” by immediately proving protesters right”
Same point:
CNN, analysis by Stephen Collinson, 20 Oct 2025: Trump’s response to ‘No Kings’ marches only proved the protesters’ point
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- The Atlantic, Adam Serwer (of “the cruelty is the point” fame), 20 Oct 2025: The ‘Anti-Woke’ Tax That All Americans Are Paying, subtitled “Better broke than woke, right?” — “Woke” means nothing except whatever MAGA doesn’t like, especially any form of egalitarianism;
- JMG: D’Souza Claims Not To Know Pro-Slavery, Death To Gays Hegseth Pastor (D’Souza Was Just On His Show);
- JMG: VIRAL VIDEO: Cultist Brutally Faceplants After Shouting Homophobic Slurs At Denver “No Kings Day” Protesters — again, all the violence at the No Kings Day demonstrations were from MAGA objectors;
- JMG: Video Shows Arson Of CA Gay Couple’s Pride Flag — in San Leandro, near us! More tribal conservative resistance; their inability to get along with people unlike themselves;
- JMG: GOP Rep: “Radical Marxist Islamist Democrats Can’t Handle The Truth That Jesus Is Their King” [VIDEO] — This is Chip Roy. Imagine him being subject to lectures by imams about their truths that he rejects;
- JMG: GOP Rep: No Kings Protesters Rallied For Communism — absolute nonsense. She has no idea what that word means;
- JMG: Burgum To Fire Hundreds At Major National Parks — they’re dismantling the nation. Who are these people?
