I have a bunch of Trump/MAGA kibble today, but I’ll start with two quotes from the enlightened fringe of humanity.
Carl Sagan, from his book with Ann Druyan, SHADOWS OF FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS. (Which I reviewed here.)
“We humans are like a newborn baby left on a doorstep, with no note explaining who it is, where it came from, what hereditary cargo of attributes and disabilities it might be carrying, or who its antecedents might be. We long to see the orphan’s file. Repeatedly, in many cultures, we invented reassuring fantasies about our parents—about how much they loved us, about how heroic and larger than life they were. As orphans do, we sometimes blamed ourselves for having been abandoned. It must have been our fault. We were too sinful, perhaps, or morally incorrigible. Insecure, we clung to these stories, imposing the strictest penalties on any who dared to doubt them. It was better than nothing, better than admitting our ignorance of our own origins, better than acknowledging that we had been left naked and helpless, a foundling on a doorstep.
As the infant is said to feel it is the center of its Universe, so we were once sure, not just of our central position, but that the Universe was made for us. This old, comfortable conceit, this safe view of the world has been crumbling for five centuries. The more we understood of how the world is put together, the less we needed to invoke a God or gods, and the more remote in time and causality any divine intervention had to be. The cost of coming of age is giving up the security blanket. Adolescence is a roller coaster ride.”
Also quoted recently on Facebook:
…And of course now I can’t find it. I think it was by Lawrence Krauss, a comment about how God appeared only briefly to one violent tribe on one insignificant planet in the entire vast universe, and then disappeared. The comment contained a perspective that most people don’t appreciate.
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Moving on.
In case you’re still wondering how far gone into lunacy MAGA and Trump are, consider this.
NY Times, front page today: Do D.E.I. Bike Paths Exist? The Trump Administration Says Yes., subtitled “The administration has revoked funding for bike paths, and encouraged removing some. A cycling advocate said it is playing on the idea of ‘that dork on a bike.'”
Apparently bicycles are woke, or frou-frou, or unmasculine.
Four years ago, after Joe Biden fell from a bike, Donald Trump made a pledge to the American people.
“I will never, ever ride a bicycle,” he declared.
The joke landed because Mr. Trump is known to be more of a limo-and-golf-cart sort of guy. But more recently, his administration has begun acting on its deep aversion to cycling, revoking federal grants for what it calls “D.E.I. bike lanes.”
In a high-profile move earlier this year, the administration even tried to remove a bike lane near the White House.
Sean Duffy, Mr. Trump’s transportation secretary, has argued that when bike lanes cut into space for cars and trucks, the result is more congestion, “longer travel times and wasted fuel.”
No. More people on bikes means fewer cars. It’s not that hard to figure out. Compare Europe. Oh, but MAGA and Trump would never do that.
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Pure motivated reasoning, by people who disdain the poor while pretending to be Christians.
JMG, today: Capitol Hill Christian Org Releases “Study” Declaring That It’s Unbiblical For Government To Help The Poor
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No, he didn’t. These people don’t just have a loose grasp upon reality, they are totally bonkers. Living in a fantasy world.
Friendly Atheist, Hemant Mehta, today: Christian Nationalist preacher claims his ministry has raised “over 50 people” from the dead, subtitled “Andrew Wommack has never offered evidence for his extraordinary ‘miracles’—but he expects followers to believe every word”
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No, this is what being a clueless, arrogant bully looks like.
Right Wing Watch, Kyle Mantyla, yesterday: ‘This Is What Authority Looks Like’: Brigitte Gabriel Gushes Over Trump Renaming Lake Ontario
(Not to mention how many centuries of history Trump thinks he can erase on a whim, and how much infrastructure costs would be to change any amount of documentation and books and atlases and signage to the new name…)
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Robert Reich, yesterday: Who’s Nuts?
Subtitled: Trump’s “artificially fabricated insanity” is worsening, but Americans are on to him.
Worth quoting.
Friends,
I still come across people who believe Trump won the 2020 election, that the attack on the U.S Capitol on January 6, 2021, was an act of patriotism, that Trump’s subsequent indictments and felonies were Biden’s work, that most immigrants are criminals, that Democrats are evil, that Jews are trying to replace white Christians born in America, that Muslims can’t be trusted, that a significant amount of voting is fraudulent, that we’re winning the war against Iran, that the economy has never been as good, that climate change is a hoax, that Canada poses a threat to the United States and it’s only fair for Lake Ontario to be renamed Lake America.
To label these people “deluded” is to overlook an entire world created by Trump and his assistants, Cabinet secretaries, “spokespeople,” other political appointees, Republican enablers in Congress and state legislatures, and billionaire accomplices in the media (Musk, Murdoch, Pichai, Bezos, Zuckerberg, the Ellisons) — all of whom have reinforced Trump’s “artificially fabricated insanity,” as the philosopher Hannah Arendt once termed the technique of totalitarian tyrants.
Google, for example, just updated its Maps application to rename Lake Ontario “Lake America.” ** (It’s already relabeled the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.”)
Totalitarian movements, Arendt wrote, succeed not by convincing people of a specific lie but by creating a consistent, logical fictional world that defies ordinary common sense and human experience.
Which raises the questions that a growing number of Americans are asking: Is Trump insane? Are those who believe Trump’s artificially fabricated world insane? Are they making the rest of us insane?
I don’t think the MAGA folks realize how flabbergasted the rest of us are that they are so deluded. Again, see The Good Liars for a steady stream of MAGA on-the-street interviews, in which they spout nonsense and ignorance. Is this another example of the cognitive limitations of the human species?
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More shutting down research. If there’s no evidence, they can pretend that problems like this don’t exist.
Politico, 30 Aug 2026: USDA cyclospora research projects shelved amid funding cuts and relocations, subtitled “The shuttering of three projects is expected to hinder vital research at a time when consumers are increasingly worried about the safety of the food supply.”
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As are MAGA.
NY Times, Jamelle Bouie, 29 Aug 2026: Trump Is in Open Revolt Against the Constitution [all NYT links are now gift links]
I’ll quote some.
So far, the president’s plot to subvert the integrity of the midterm elections looks like this.
Issue a rule requiring states to give lists of mail-in voters to the Postal Service if their citizens hope to receive mail-in ballots. Knowing that this is a blatantly unconstitutional seizure of the states’ prerogative to run their own elections, count on a federal court to block the rule. Then challenge the injunction, arguing — under the Supreme Court’s “Purcell principle” — that it is too late to make any adjustments to voting procedures, and that the new rules should be treated as the status quo. Then hope that the Supreme Court accepts the argument that the new rules are the status quo and therefore can’t be blocked.
This is rather technical; I’m sure Trump hasn’t figured this out for himself. He has advisors, with their own agendas, like the Project 2025 folks. Again, MAGA conservatives are tribal at base; thus they don’t care about the Constitution, or even about what Jesus said about caring for the poor.
