The Trashing of America, Intellectually and Civilly, under Trump and MAGA

Posted on Monday 2 November 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • How Trump is dismantling the American scientific research machine;
  • And how Republicans are trashing decorum and civility;
  • How Trump is deteriorating;
  • Voting recommendations from John Scalzi: don’t vote for Republicans;
  • Max Boot on why Hegseth should go;
  • Tuck Carlson, demon hunter;
  • California’s Prop 40, and Robert Reich’s take on it;
  • From last week, a perspective on Trump’s utter failure.
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Long article on today’s NYT front page.

NY Times, posted 31 Oct 2026: How Trump Is Dismantling America’s Scientific Research Machine, subtitled “The system that has driven life-altering discoveries and helped make the United States a superpower is now under intense strain.”

MAGA presumably doesn’t care. They have their Bibles. The one-time greatest nation in the world is being taken down.

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A Day’s Drive

Posted on Sunday 1 November 2026 by Mark R. Kelly

We took a ‘day off’ yesterday to get out of the house and away from our computers. (That’s the official story.) I had a plan to drive down through Scotts Valley, a part of the Bay Area, seen on TV weather maps, that we’ve never visited, or even driven through. It’s north and just a bit west of Santa Cruz, and includes neighborhoods like Ben Lomond and Bonny Doon that people we know, or have read, once lived in.

Along the way, I wanted to visit Kepler Books, one of the major bookstores in the Bay Area and one which I had never, in the 11 years we’ve lived in Oakland, visited. (It’s an hour’s drive south from us.) So we drove across the 84 bridge — which I’d never been across, another first — and into the rather lush neighborhoods of Atherton and Menlo Park, just north of Stanford.

(In the middle of this drive, my sister in Simi Valley called to tell me that she are her husband are moving to Philadelphia early next year. She has a son who settled there. And so many things she doesn’t like about California. I didn’t ask.)

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Patrick Stewart and Two Notes About Narrative

Posted on Saturday 31 October 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Noting the passing of Patrick Stewart, and how the noble passages spoken by Picard (and written by unmentioned writers) are credited to the actor;
  • Mike Johnson supports Christian Nationalists (while Republicans rant and rave about Muslims and Sharia Law); and Trump claiming a moral Christian high ground;
  • And Ted Chiang remarks on the gap between writers’ intentions and readers’ understandings.
– – –

No wait, three notes about narrative.

Vox, Ian Millhiser, today: Patrick Stewart taught us what good men do with power, subtitled “Great leaders, and great nations, need role models like Jean-Luc Picard.”
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A Muddled Take on Religion v Atheism

Posted on Friday 30 October 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Jack Symes on a third path between religion and atheism, which turns out to be about why the former is taken for granted, and why God is good and not bad;
  • Another essay on what horror films have to say about God;
  • Brief items about the GOP’s plan to make Americans hate Muslims; Christians who think non-Christians shouldn’t serve in Congress; and that guy with two wives who thinks his rationale is Christian.
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This piece appeared over a week ago, but I don’t want to forget it, since it seems to take an approach I find attractive: that many of our philosophical problems exist because we frame them incorrectly. We project human protocols onto the universe at large, to domains where they don’t apply. (And how science fiction helps exercise the mental muscles needed to consider such thoughts.) Alas, now that I’ve read it, I am disappointed.

Big Think, Jack Symes, (17 Oct 2026): Beyond religion and atheism: The secret third answer to big questions, subtitled “Philosopher Jack Symes explores the space between devout religion and atheism.”

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Religion and Aliens

Posted on Thursday 29 October 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Scientific American on how religions might react to the existence of aliens (while ignoring the insights of decades of science fiction writers);
  • Oakland is one of the US’s best cities…;
  • David Wallace-Wells spells out 12 reasons why the Trump era is fading.
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It’s always interesting when the mainstream media takes on a subject thoroughly examined, for decades, by science fiction. Which is to say, don’t expect any new insights here.

Scientific American, Adam Kovac, today: Can the world’s religions survive the existence of aliens?, subtitled “Finding alien life could shake some people to their very souls, but different religions can take very distinct approaches to the existence of extraterrestrial life”

This echoes David Brin’s discussion of the Disclosure Cult.
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More Evenly Distributed

Posted on Wednesday 28 October 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • More of those videos about evolution and homosexuality;
  • Paul Krugman invokes William Gibson in his concerns about AI;
  • Brief items about Orwellian tactics, short-term selfish thinking, and the arrogance of the religious.
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That video I posted yesterday about homosexuality turns out to be last in a series, from a Facebook newsgroup called AD1 Explains, described only as a “Digital Creator.” If you go look at their reels you can scroll down and see many on various topics, including this one.

I think I thought I was posting the first in this series yesterday, when somehow I posted the last in the series instead. Here’s the first, I hope.

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There Is Nothing Wrong with You

Posted on Tuesday 27 October 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Malcolm Gladwell on misunderstandings about gun violence;
  • Kevin Kelly’s proposal for a universal national service;
  • A video that explains why homosexuality has evolutionary advantages;
  • Jim Palmer on religion’s biggest lie: sin;
  • Brief links about Hegseth’s faith advisor, RFK Jr., how the Supreme Court approves every religious privilege, how Trump seems immune from jail, how Trump has failed, how Trump is sowing doubt about the upcoming elections, how the stamp of MAGA is being cruel, how Robert Reich says Trump wants to imprison him, how a MAGA activist thinks Noah’s flood was due to gay sex orgies (!), how a pastor with two wives thinks God approves of him, how Tony Perkins advises voters to vote according to Biblical values, how red states are restricting education to traditional American themes, and how there’s no evidence that voting machines flip votes.
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A lot of things to note today. Let’s focus on the non-fringy ones first.

LA Times, Shelby Hartman, today: Malcolm Gladwell thinks everything you know about gun violence is probably wrong

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The Disclosure Cult

Posted on Monday 26 October 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • David Brin on the UFO cult, which he now calls the Disclosure cult;
  • A forthcoming book about the nature of human intelligence;
  • Brief items about the term DARVO, Tina Peters’ defense as a “person of faith”, Trump and Republican priorities, and Laura Ingraham’s claim of a leftist plot to overtake the government.
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Let’s lead with this today: the latest David Brin post about the ongoing UFO mania, in which the evidence has never gotten any better than it was 70 years ago. Brin is now calling it the Disclosure cult, and suggest it’s just as crazy as the MAGA cult.

Contrary Brin, David Brin, yesterday 25 Oct: “Disclosure’ UFO cults get worse, even as we try to restore sane politics.

Brin often sounds like a prototypical crazy uncle, except that I think most of his points are valid.

So. Why do I classify UFO nuttery with MAGA? First there’s the blatant overall goal: using X-Files to distract from Eps-Files….
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Failure to Learn

Posted on Sunday 25 October 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Steven Strogatz on the AI crisis in mathematics; is it OK to be given the answers, without figuring them out for ourselves?
  • How religious zealots mock scientific understanding, since scientific conclusions can change;
  • Briefly: another comment about Rubio’s defense of Western civilization; how David French thinks there is no bottom to MAGA; Heather Cox Richardson recounts how the Republican victories in 1920 led to the 1929 Crash; and Nicholas Kristoff on the pillars of our nation — education, immigration, and legal and social norms — that are on the current ballot.
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Humanity only advances by learning from the lessons of the past. No one person can learn everything about modern civilization by themselves, from scratch. But are we now stuck in a cycle of repeated failures, unable to learn? (Or refusal to learn?) (Or failure to launch?)

Is it about the journey, or the destination?

The Atlantic, Steven Strogatz, today: A Mathematician Reads the AI Future, subtitled “My field is as much an expression of the human spirit as music and literature. Is it for the machines now?”

Strogatz is a mathematician and author. I have his book about calculus.
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Passing Through World Fantasy Con 2026

Posted on Saturday 24 October 2026 by Mark R. Kelly

I didn’t attend the World Science Fiction Convention a few months ago, in Anaheim, but I had thought to attend its fantasy counterpart this month since it’s being held in downtown Oakland, just a few miles from me. I wouldn’t need to rent a hotel room; I could drive back and forth each day (even though many of the events at such gatherings occur in the evening, often until late hours, not to mention ordinary gatherings at the bar). But then I waited too long to buy a membership, and found them no longer for sale as of earlier this week, and found daily passes (which Worldcons used to offer) unavailable. Still, inquiries led me to acquire a “Locus staff” badge, and I used it to attend the convention yesterday, Friday, from 10am to 4pm or so. (Not that there were any careful observers keeping non-members out of event rooms.)

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