- Rebecca Solnit on how the US is destroying itself;
- The significance of Victor Orbán’s loss;
- How Trump thinks religion is about power, not morality;
- Trump’s grotesque AI image depicting himself as a Jesus figure.
I’ve gradually become aware of another savvy political commentator and essayist, Rebecca Solnit, to set along with the three of four others I check out daily. (Richardson, Reich, Krugman, Pavlovitz.) David Brin posts highly about her. This piece was linked from Facebook this morning, and captures the moment. She has a Substack, Meditations in an Emergency, since Jan. 2025. She’s published a number of short books, of which I just bought a couple.
The Guardian, Rebecca Solnit, yesterday: The United States is destroying itself, subtitled “The daily news can’t adequately convey the administration’s sabotaging of our government, economy, alliances and environment”
I’ve mentioned more than once that the actions of the Trump administration are not unlike what a group of infiltrators or saboteurs would do to undermine everything that has until recently made America great. Solnit:
The United States is being murdered, and it’s an inside job. Every department, every branch, every bureau and function of the federal government is being fatally corrupted or altogether dismantled or disabled. All this is common knowledge, but because it dribbles out in news stories about this specific incident or department, the reports never adequately describe an administration sabotaging the functioning of the federal government and also trashing the global economy, international alliances and relationships, and the national and global environment in ways that will have downstream consequences for decades and perhaps, especially when it comes to climate, centuries.
While the insular and ignorant MAGA base doesn’t care. Well, Rome fell too. Human nature hasn’t changed. More:
Across the branches of government, the services that are supposed to protect us – nuclear stockpile monitoring, cybersecurity, counter-terrorism – are being undermined, understaffed or trashed. A different kind of protection that consists of public health, vaccination programs, food safety, clean air and water, social services, civil rights and the rule of law is also under attack. The federal government that serves us is being starved while the federal government that serves the Trump agenda and the oligarchy is glutting itself on taxpayer money, including the grotesque sums dumped on the Department of Homeland Security and the US military now being warped into Pete Hegseth’s twisted vision of a ruthless mercenary force. Hegseth has reportedly stood in the way of promotions for more than a dozen Black and female officers.
The essay goes on and on summarizes events we remember from the past several years. There’s an essential element of human nature here: people don’t notice things that happen slowly enough. And that don’t affect them directly. Ending:
It’s the antidemocratic weaknesses in our system that created the vulnerabilities that let this happen – the electoral college and voter suppression that gave Trump a minority victory in 2016, the gerrymandering that has given a minority party majority power in Congress and statehouses, a grotesquely corrupted and unaccountable supreme court and the corrosive influence of the ultra-wealthy in a system that gives them power on a scale that is a direct assault on democracy. We need to imagine a more democratic, more egalitarian, more generous country, one that operates in recognition of an abundance of wealth that should serve all of us – and nature and future generations too – rather than is driven by the moral poverty of billionaires.
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But the significant news today is that Victor Orbán lost. And replaced by this guy:
The Atlantic, Anne Applebaum, yesterday: Illiberalism Is Not Inevitable, subtitled “If Viktor Orbán can lose, then his Russian and American admirers can lose too.”
In the end, the defeat of Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s autocratic prime minister, required not just an ordinary election campaign or new messaging but rather the construction of a broad, diverse, and patriotic grassroots social movement. And by building exactly that, Hungary’s opposition changed politics around the world.
Orbán’s loss brings to an end the assumption of inevitability that has pervaded the MAGA movement, as well as the belief—also present in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rhetoric—that illiberal parties are somehow destined not just to win but to hold power forever, because they have the support of the “real” people. As it turns out, history doesn’t work like that. “Real” people grow tired of their rulers. Old ideas become stale. Younger people question orthodoxy. Illiberalism leads to corruption. And if Orbán can lose, then his Russian and American admirers can lose too.
My thoughts: Sometimes we assume that dictators like Putin and Orban conduct mock elections but rig the votes so that they always win. So what happened here? Perhaps it’s not so easy to rig elections after all, despite the presumptions of conservatives in the US that every time they lose, elections much have been rigged. Alternative explanation: perhaps conservative ideas are simply losing popularity.
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Dictators like Orban and (would-be dictator) Trump appeal to religions they don’t believe in, and their followers don’t notice, or care.
The Atlantic, David A. Graham, today: The Parable of the President, subtitled “Donald Trump’s criticism of Pope Leo XIV reveals that to him, religion is primarily about power, not morality.”
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Trump posted this AI image last night. Responses have been all over the web. This is idolatry.
Robert Reich, today: Trump’s God Complex is Getting Even Worse, subtitled “He believes he’s the savior, not because he wants to save anyone but because he wants to dominate everyone”
Late Sunday night, Trump posted on Truth Social the most grandiose depiction any U.S. president as ever made of himself.
I’ve reproduced it above. Take a look, and remember: It came from Trump.
What kind of a president would post this of himself?
Today, Trump told reporters that he posted it because he thought it depicted him as a physician. “I thought it was me as a doctor,” he said, adding that news organizations had misinterpreted the image. “It’s supposed to be me as a doctor, making people better, and I do make people better,” he said.
There’s something fundamentally wrong with the man.
And for a long time, I’ve felt that there is something fundamentally wrong with people who support Trump.
At the same time, I have to acknowledge that such people are expressing an inescapable part of human nature, which the species cannot easily escape, or overcome. Some of us understand this.
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