- Robert Reich on the Commie threat, a tired Republican charge, recalling McCarthy;
- Lazy Republican thinking about communism and current kids these days;
- Twisted thinking about religious liberty;
- A video of Paula White, presidential spiritual advisor;
- Stephen Miller, divine providence, and mental illness;
- Recognizing The Good Liars and the work they do to challenge MAGA folks;
- And how folks who don’t align with tribal Christian values are “divisive radicals,” at the Smithsonian.
Anything more about the 250th? Or about Trump? Of course there is!
Robert Reich, today: Why Is He Using the Communist Trump Card?, subtitled “He’s run out of other cards.”
(The image is of an anti-communist comic book published in 1947.)
Trump has run out of cards to play in the midterm elections, which is why he’s now talking about the “communist menace.”
He can’t talk about the economy, because prices continue to rise faster than wages, which means most Americans are getting poorer. He can’t talk about foreign policy, because his war in Iran has been a debacle, his tariffs are an utter failure, and he obviously hasn’t settled the war in Ukraine on “Day 1.” He can’t talk about immigration, because his raids and mass deportations have become so unpopular.
So, facing the midterm elections, what’s left?
He’s resorting to the oldest of right-wing tropes — accusing Democrats (especially a rising generation of new, young, vigorous Democratic politicians) of being commies.
… [quoting Trump] …
Oh, please.
Conservatives have no new ideas; they just recycle old attacks. Do kids these days remember McCarthy?
Communism was the scare word used by right-wingers after World Wars I and II to crack the whip on the left. It provoked witch hunts and ruined careers.
It made former Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy a one-man bomb squad in the early 1950s, when he ridiculed the “pitiful squealing” of “those egg-sucking phony liberals” who “would hold sacrosanct those Communists and queers,” and forced American citizens to “name names.”
McCarthyism was a by-product of the Republican Party’s postwar effort to eradicate the New Deal. The GOP had portrayed the midterm election of 1946 as a “battle between Republicanism and communism,” and the Republican National Committee chairman claimed that the federal bureaucracy was filled with “pink puppets.”
Reich goes on, in some detail.
But, hey, isn’t progress being made? At least Trump isn’t calling Democrats “queers”!
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JMG, yesterday: Leavitt Doubles Down On “Lazy Indoctrinated” Gen Z
I care enough about our country to tell uncomfortable truths. And it’s an undeniable fact that a growing number of young people in our country are falling for the lies of socialism and communism, sold to them by anti-American politicians who’ve never built anything, offer no real solutions, and are intent on tearing down everything that makes this country great.
She has no idea what communism actually is. Just something that she doesn’t like. Also, it’s Trump and MAGA currently tearing things down, hasn’t she noticed? And again, this is just another example of “kids these days,” a complaint heard throughout recorded history.
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Perspective and scales.
Vox, Christian Paz, yesterday: The twisted history Trump’s White House is using to redefine religious freedom, subtitled “Is religious freedom on the retreat in America? A Trump commission certainly believes that to be true.”
Things change.
When the Founding Fathers began their work to unify the colonies, America’s religious landscape looked nothing like today’s marketplace of ideas. Mainline Protestants — Anglicans, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Puritans, Quakers, and Lutherans — dominated the budding nation, and Protestant Christianity was fused with public life.
To talk of religious liberty back then was a question of how to handle these various Protestant denominations and, essentially, keep them from killing or oppressing each other. There were hardly any Catholics; there were very few Jewish people; there were essentially no Muslims, Hindus, or Buddhists. What the Founding Fathers eventually arrived at was a plan for tolerance — an early version of freedom from official religions and a freedom to exercise faith without being punished.
Yet a new draft report from a Trump administration task force presents a competing vision of America’s tradition of religious liberty — one that argues that the Founders wanted as much religion, everywhere, as possible — and that makes the case that our understanding of religious freedom has been corrupted by 20th-century European secularists and radical progressives aiming to eliminate religion from public life.
Seriously? I’m willing to believe that the founders held some fundamental assumptions about the value of religion, even if they didn’t want to endorse any particular flavor. But in this case it’s special pleading. You can’t read Thomas Paine’s THE AGE OF REASON (review here) and conclude he had any respect for any Bible-based religion.
Late last week, the Trump administration’s Religious Liberty Commission, housed within the Department of Justice, released a draft 224-page report pushing the idea that belief in God should be the bedrock of American law and society, and proposing dozens of policy proposals and legal recommendations to restore the place of religion in daily life. It argues that when the Founders chose to declare independence, drafted up the Constitution, and debated the Bill of Rights, they “drew from religious traditions of man being made in the image of God,” and that belief in a Christian God was the starting point for individual rights. “The uniquely American approach to religious liberty,” they argue, is one “in which religion is not merely indulged by the government, but rather honored as a natural right, fundamental to the flourishing of a free society.”
Obviously conservatives want to retain the cultural presumptions of the Founders. Never mind that we’ve learned so much more in the past 250 years, and it does not include learning about religion, it involves learning why religion is an atavism.
The current administration’s support for Christian religion, and its disdain for non-Christian religions, includes this person: “Presidential Spiritual Advisor” Paula White, see in the above photo at far left in the white suit.
I watched all 1:45. She’s insane. (And who’s that guy walking back and forth?)
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JMG, yesterday, from Yahoo News: Voldemort: Trump Is President By “Divine Providence”
Nope. This is a kind of mental illness. A sin of pride, as I suggested a few posts ago. This reminds me of the case, I think in Oliver Sacks, of several prisoner inmates who apparently sincerely believed that each of them was Jesus.
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I’ve seen videos on Facebook from this guy for years. He stands with a microphone among MAGA crowds and nonchalantly asks passing folks questions about Trump and social issues. And whatever they say, he challenges them mildly, but not aggressively, and lets them say what they say. He’s a brave person.
Boing Boing, Grant St. Clair, 3 Jul 2026: The Good Liars find state fair MAGA fans who rank Trump over God
Time and time again, I count myself lucky that The Good Liars are willing to wade into the backwoods of MAGA country so I don’t have to. They’ve made an extremely stable career out of showing up at Trump-centric events and documenting them in their attendees’ own words, and it doesn’t get much more Trump-centric than the Great American State Fair.
And here they are on Facebook: The Good Liars, with 902K followers.
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Education and experience are radical and divisive.
JMG, yesterday: White House: Smithsonian Is Run By “Divisive Radicals” (via AP)
A White House report brands the leadership of the Smithsonian Institution, especially at the National Museum of American History, as radical activists who cannot be trusted, indicating that President Donald Trump may be preparing to install his own team.
Because their conclusions do not align with tribal Christian values. This is so obvious.
