- Conservatives: A Christian snowflake says the mere sight of a Pride flag violates his religious beliefs; the demonic UFOs guy has been removed; how fascists think everyone in history much be portrayed as white Europeans (this is about the new movie Odyssey); how the Republican party is pro-life in an extremely limited way; how Fox News has buried the Bill Pulte story; and a video by Lucas Bean about why the right falls for propaganda;
- Tear-downs: How the White House has wrecked weather research;
- In it for the money (greed, or maybe corruption): how ballroom donors have gotten $50B in federal contracts;
- Long piece about tax breaks, and how everyone wants them without understanding the consequences.
Without planning to, I’ve collected items today that populate all three of the broad categories I set up yesterday.
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— Conservative morality is superstitious cave-man tribalism —
- Friendly Atheist, Hemant Mehta, today: Christian employee sues L.A. County over a Pride flag outside the office
- Subtitled: Eric Batman says seeing the flag violates his religious beliefs, but his employer won’t let him work from home all month
- Just seeing that flag violates his religious beliefs, he says. You know how my delicate, snowflake sensibilities are offended by drive virtually anywhere and seeing huge Christian crosses reaching into the sky? Not at all, because they’re not. Our society is not a monoculture. Some Christians seem to have a hard time dealing with this.
- Apparently this is too extreme for some.
- JMG, today (from AP): Archbishop Axes Exorcist After “Demonic UFOs” Rant
- Or perhaps just a public relations problem better buried.
- The Bulwark, Devereaux, today: Why Stone-Faced Fascists Keep Getting Antiquity Wrong
- Subtitled: Online bigotry masquerading as a love of history in the fever swamps of Elon Musk’s X.
- Conservatives think everyone in history (especially Jesus) must be portrayed as white Europeans.
- John Pavlovitz, today: Hi. We’re the Republican Party, And We’re Pro-Life!
- An imaginary dialogue.
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Hey there, we’re the Republican Party, and we’re pro-life!
You are?
Yup!
Cool… so you’re for affordable healthcare for everyone?
Umm, well, not exactly; we can’t just take care of everyone. Can you imagine the cost of that?
I see. But at least you’re in favor of health benefits for the elderly?
Now, that’s a bad example. People are living longer, and that’s simply not financially prudent.
- It goes on like that, for quite some time. Republicans are pro-life only to the extent of being pro-baby, i.e. expanding the tribe. After birth, they’re on their own.
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- This fits the grouping because it’s about loyalty over everything. I’ve mentioned him before, but this is how Fox News is burying the news.
- Media Matters, yesterday: Fox News buries Trump naming Bill Pulte, who has no national security experience, to oversee U.S. intelligence agencies
- Subtitled: Pulte is a real estate nepo baby known for weaponizing his admin position to target Trump’s enemies
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- And this fits here as an example of basic human nature, in particular the extent to which loyalty is valued among conservatives overall.
- Facebook, Lucas Bean, yesterday: Why The Right Falls For Propaganda Easily
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— Destruction, Tear-Downs, Cancellations —
- JMG, today (from Politico): Politico: How The WH Wrecked Weather Research
- “This is the Trump administration strategy in a nutshell: Break things fast before the judicial system can rule … The move to disband the National Center for Atmospheric Research is part of an administration-wide effort to neuter programs related to climate change, which Trump has repeatedly called a hoax.”
— In it for the money —
- JMG, today (from Washington Post): Ballroom Donors Got Over $50B In Federal Contracts
- This is what they mean when they accuse the administration of being corrupt.
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One more piece, to quote from, that doesn’t exactly fit into any of those groups.
NY Times, guest essay by Nathasha Sarin, 2 Jun 2026: No Wonder Everyone’s Rallying Around This Terrible Idea
In a nation seemingly unable to agree on anything, people appear to be converging on one idea: Taxes are bad. In addition to the calls for broad-based middle-class tax cuts, we’re seeing proposed exemptions for teachers, law enforcement officials and boat owners. Call it the Oprah tax code: Tipped workers, YOU get a tax break! Teachers, YOU get a tax break! Overtime workers, YOU get a tax break! These suggestions aren’t coming just from Republicans, the longtime proponents of small government and no-new-tax pledges. Today these ideas are attracting people across the political spectrum, including Democratic lawmakers like the senators Chris Van Hollen and Cory Booker, the latter of whom advocates a system by which “the majority of Americans would not pay federal income taxes.”
This might actually be more of a conservative obsession (and conservatives are notorious for short-term thinking without concern for long-term consequences), but I’ll grant that virtually everyone wants their taxes lowered without worrying about what the government needs to spend and where the money would come from.
The thing is, America is already a low-tax country — far lower, as a share of gross domestic product, than almost all other highly developed economies. Sure, there are wasteful inefficiencies that can and should be eliminated. As DOGE’s rampage shows, however, you can cut enough to ruin a great many lives, but you can’t significantly decrease the government’s expenses, because most of them are baked in.
So if the tax rate goes much lower, it will cease to be possible to run this large and complex country. To some people, that’s the point: to shrink government until it’s small enough that someone can “drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub,” in the memorable phrase of the anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist.
For those who prefer not to live in a failed state, the other option is to keep taxes steady, or even raise them for some who can easily afford the difference, and in exchange give Americans a government that works. A government that builds highways and schools, defends us against adversaries, lifts children out of poverty and supports those who may be displaced by artificial intelligence.
And so on. Ending:
A century ago, the Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. said that “taxes are what we pay for civilized society.” The reverse is true, too. Without taxes, society falls apart. Policymakers would do well to offer a vision of government that all constituents think is worth paying into, rather than racing to the bottom with tax cuts for all, which may feel expedient but will ultimately undermine our capacity to build the society we deserve.
