The worst of the past? The protocols of primitive human nature? Are they aware of this?
Washington Post, opinion by Theodore R. Johnson, today: Trump wants to make America 1988 again, subtitled “Four decades after Willie Horton, the president still invokes the politics of the past.”
On a North Carolina tarmac last week, President Donald Trump reminded the country that MAGA’s preferred version of America is one from a bygone era.
… Rather than outline a vision for tomorrow, Trump’s pitch leaned on the party’s most shopworn frameworks: law and order’s tough-on-crime posturing, the Southern strategy’s exploitation of racial division, and the infamous intersection of the two — the Willie Horton ad, which first aired 38 years ago this week.
With details and examples.
Reaching back four decades for a campaign attack line underscores that Trump and MAGA champion a backward-looking politics less interested in the country’s future than in resurrecting its past. The slogan “Make America Great Again” itself is further evidence: Political scientists have found that the phrase evokes national nostalgia, and Trump’s 2016 campaign fused that sentiment with hard-line nationalism and strongman rule. This is a signature of revanchist movements, usually fueled by grievances, an obsession with redeeming a perceived loss of status, and the desire to reverse progress and restore an old order.
This item aligns with the one yesterday about anti-vaxxers.
The essence of the conservative mindset. Like graduating from high school and then never reading another book again. And never having to deal with those smarty-pants kids ever again.
By grounding its appeal in bygone eras, MAGA delivers a bygone politics better suited for relitigating bruised egos than managing modern realities.
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Trump was played. He got essentially the agreement with Greenland we already had.
The Week, yesterday: Evening Review
Is the Greenland deal a victory for Trump?
After months of threats to annex Greenland, President Donald Trump signed a deal today that gives the U.S. “permanent control over security” in the semiautonomous Danish territory, he said to the U.N. General Assembly in New York City. “From now on, no U.S. adversary can ever have a base in Greenland, have a military presence in Greenland or make sensitive investments in Greenland without our express written approval.” The deal is considered a win for both sides. But as ever with Trump, the “devil is in the details,” said Barron’s.
…
It’s “perhaps a triumph of optics,” said Marc Jacobsen at Al Jazeera. Despite all the backslapping in the White House, changes to the existing arrangement appear to be “relatively limited.” This is a “testament to the negotiating skills of the Danish and Greenlandic representatives,” who have given Trump the “opportunity to claim the victory he needed, while preserving sovereignty.”
A “wise Danish politician once said that you can achieve almost anything if you are willing to let others take the credit,” said Henrik Dahl, a Danish member of the European Parliament, to The Telegraph. “So let us give Donald Trump the credit for something very close to the status quo.”
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Conservative superficiality.
JMG, today: Megyn Kelly Attacks “Homely” CNN Hosts: “Ugh”
Fox understands you got to put some bells and whistles on this thing, you got to make the screen pop, you’ve got to keep things dynamic, and they know how to do it.
“They’ve been doing it for 30 years now and the others have never gotten it. Never. Just to give you one basic example, why are there so many homely people up and down the rundown of CNN to this day? Roger Ailes would never have allowed it!
This aligns with the Mar-a-Lago face and other Beauty trends among American conservatives [Wikipedia]
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An exception that proves the rule?
Washington Post, opinion by Dave McCormack, Republican, US senator from Pennsylvania, today: I’m a Republican senator. America needs more science, not less., subtitled “America should invest in medical research, not retreat from it.”
He begins with an anecdote. And he’s worried about competition with China.
Conservatives should recognize that basic research, like national security, is a public good that private capital rarely funds. Businesses excel at turning discoveries into products and jobs, but foundational science pays off too slowly and uncertainly. Government fills the gap, funding the long-term, high-risk work that businesses turn into breakthroughs with stunning payoffs for society.
Yes, conservatives should. But that requires long-term thinking. Perhaps business numbers could persuade?
The federal government spends $7 trillion a year, yet less than 1 percent goes to NIH research. That sliver delivers outsize returns.
He has some reasonable ideas. Double NIH’s budget (“These are big numbers, but if they yield discoveries that trim the nation’s $5.3 trillion health bill by just 1 percent, they will more than pay for themselves.’), prioritize merit-based science (instead of demonizing DEI), and demand accountability.
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The fascist core of MAGA.
NY Times, David French, 20 Sep 2026: Vance Has a Twisted Idea of What It Means to Be American
Fascism, in Heather Cox Richardson’s nutshell definition, is about people who think they are better than others and so deserve to rule.
A Heritage American, in their formulation, is someone who can trace his lineage back to the founding of the country, preferably even before. Not long ago, a person posted a chart online. You get an A grade if you’re “colonial old stock,” meaning your ancestors came here between 1607 and 1789. You get a B if you’re “antebellum stock,” a C if you’re an “Ellis Islander.” You get a D if you or your ancestors arrived after World War II.
I suppose my ancestors, and those of my siblings and cousins, are “Ellis Islanders.” They arrived from Ireland and other places in the Europe in the mid 19th century. See my brief Family Timeline and the more detailed Family Trees.
And what do those grades mean? You should essentially view them as categories of citizenship, or as Vance put it in a speech to the Claremont Institute, arguably the foremost think tank of MAGA America, “I think the people whose ancestors fought in the Civil War have a hell of a lot more claim over America than the people who say they don’t belong.”
Of course this is precisely what the Founding Fathers tried to overcome, what with their words about equality.
The entire concept is toxic and pernicious. A citizen is a citizen, regardless of his or her parents’ ancestry. And while I’m certainly influenced by my ancestors, I’m not a more worthy person because they existed. The Declaration of Independence had it right: We are all equal — morally, culturally and legally.
French, being French, has ideas for instilling something better.
I’m concerned that ideas like Heritage American arise in part because we’ve created a vacuum. By not instilling a robust sense of what it means to be a citizen of the United States and a patriot in our younger generation, we’ve allowed malignant people and malignant ideas to fill the void. They’ve turned something good — an interest in our roots and pride in our families — into something dark.
But with great blessings come great responsibilities. At their best, my ancestors gave me an example to aspire to. I can learn from their mistakes and failures as well. Learning about my Confederate ancestors was important to my own moral development. That uncomfortable history has led me to remind myself that my community is not always right and that sometimes it is necessary to disagree with and potentially defy the culture and even the church from which you came.
Realizing the past was not perfect is a significant achievement for a conservative.
Gratitude, humility, responsibility: Those are the virtues our overlapping histories — personal, familial, national — should instill. But the new right turns that upside-down. It replaces gratitude with a sense of entitlement, humility with arrogance, and a sense of duty with the will to power and the right to dominate.
The piece ends by quoting Abraham Lincoln.
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Catching up on links that can be quickly noted.
- Naturally, this falls apart under scrutiny.
- Friendly Atheist, Hemant Mehta, yesterday: Trump’s “Top 250 Victories for People of Faith” collapse under scrutiny
- Subtitled: “The White House padded its list with exaggerations, repeated claims, and policies benefiting conservative Christians at everyone else’s expense”
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- This is not surprising.
- Of course they would, and did. It’s easy to do. Why wouldn’t they?
- NY Times, 18 Sep 2026: Russia Aims to Inject Chaos Into Elections, U.S. Intelligence Finds
- Subtitled: The Kremlin is once again seeking to undermine confidence in American democracy with online influence campaigns, U.S. officials said.
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- AMV on Facebook
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People who care about winning an argument rather than understanding reality demand binary “yes or no” answers because binary questions strip away nuance. It is a cheap, intellectually dishonest trap designed to force a complex system into a soundbite they can easily misrepresent.
- Again, this a clear conservative/progressive divide. Simplex v Complex.
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- Media Matters, 17 Sep 2026: Gas and diesel prices are soaring. Right-wing media figures promised that wouldn’t happen.
- Subtitled: Right-wing media knew that soaring gas prices would be trouble for the midterms — and assured their audiences repeatedly that they’d come back down
- But who believes right-wing media? Only the cult.
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