Pulling Bolts Out of the Ferris Wheel

Posted on Monday 26 January 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Train Dreams
  • Republicans on the need to carry guns;
  • How the truth in Minneapolis is whatever Trump says it is;
  • And how the administration altered images and made false posts;
  • Heather Cox Richardson on KQED Forum this morning;
  • Brief items about the Minnesota COC, a pro-ICE church, and the Mississippi governor.
– – –

We watched a lovely movie last night called Train Dreams; it’s one of the Best Picture nominees for the Oscar this year. It’s dramatic and meditative, and resembles the films of Terrence Malick, as I noticed and the link here confirms, with its narration and lingering shots and occasional flashes of what may be hallucinations or memories or something supernatural. The early part of the film concerns the main character working as a logger clearing hillsides for railway construction in the Pacific Northwest. And one character says:

This world is intricately stitched together, boys.

Every thread we pull, we know not how it affects the design of things.

We’re but children on this earth, pulling bolts out of the Ferris wheel, thinking ourselves to be gods.

This is enlightened thinking, likely due to Denis Johnson, who wrote the 2011 novella the movie is based on. (The entire script, or transcript, is online.)

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Meanwhile, turning to current events, here’s an apt comment from Facebook:

Republicans spent 50 years arguing people need to carry guns to protect against government tyranny, then the minute someone carries a gun to protect against government tyranny they side with the government.

Even the IRA had something to say about the administration’s claims that the latest victim’s carrying of a gun somehow made his killing justifiable. NYT: Gun Activists Bridle at Suggestion That Pistol Justified Killing

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Meanwhile this afternoon the Trump administration has started pulling back, slightly. The Border Patrol chief has been fired: Greg Bovino Loses His Job

But this morning they were sticking to their lies.

NY Times, 25 Jan 2026: For Trump, the Truth in Minneapolis Is What He Says It Is, subtitled “The Trump team has advanced one-sided narratives to justify each of the killings, even when bystander video shows something else entirely.”

Headline on the print homepage today: “Video Footage Doesn’t Stop Trump From Telling a Different Story.” (He can always count on some of his fans to believe him.)

Key passage:

Mr. Trump has found that putting out a story line early and repeating it often can, with the help of an ideological media and online surround-sound machine, convince a sizable share of the public that does not credit contrary evidence. Even after investigations, recounts and his own advisers and attorney general refuted Mr. Trump’s claim that he won the 2020 election, polls show that most Republicans still believe the election was stolen.

And so Mr. Trump and his team have taken the same reality-bending approach to the violence in Minneapolis in evident hopes of persuading the president’s political base, at least, that the protesters were responsible for their own deaths and that “the victims are the Border Patrol agents,” as Gregory Bovino, the official in charge of Mr. Trump’s Border Patrol operations, put it on CNN on Sunday.

Associated:

NY Times, 25 Jan 2026: False Posts and Altered Images Distort Views of Minnesota Shooting, subtitled “Some social media posts tried to warp the evidence of the killing of a nurse in Minneapolis, including in ways intended to support the Trump administration’s narrative about it.”

Across social media, pro-Trump influencers and others muddled the evidence of the killing of a nurse in Minneapolis on Saturday with social media posts that included misdirection and fabricated content.

“Misdirection and fabricated content.” Do we need more media literacy? Evidence shows education does not work. People dig in to the beliefs that define themselves, that make them feel comfortable. Is it inescapable human nature, the inability to acknowledge reality?

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Heather Cox Richardson was on KQED’s Forum talk show this morning: KQED, Alexis Madrigal, 26 Jan 2026: Heather Cox Richardson on Trump’s Impact on Democracy

Remarkably, since this isn’t always true, there’s a partial transcript already in place. Which allows me to quote one of the two points I noticed in particular.

Alexis Madrigal: We all know what happened this weekend: a federal agent shot and killed Alex Pretti. How are you processing what happened?

Heather Cox Richardson: First of all, I think it’s significant that you said all of us know. In a country where many people don’t closely follow the news or events outside their immediate communities, the fact that this killing—like Renee Goode’s—has broken through is a big deal.

Most people *don’t* follow the news. Later in the broadcast she tried to define different kinds of voters, the extreme ones being those who don’t follow the news but simply vote for (say) the Republicans, because *that’s what they’ve always done.* Nothing the current warped Republican administration could persuade them to vote differently.

And there was a later comment concerned the ‘normalcy bias,’ the assumption that what has existed for most of one’s life must surely continue to exist. Going to, once again, Richardson’s description of the post-World War II order, in which the US has set the standard for world order — which seems abruptly to have ended. (See my posts about her latest book here.)

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Briefly noted headlines.

Posted in authoritarianism, Human Nature, Movies, Politics | Comments Off on Pulling Bolts Out of the Ferris Wheel

The Latest ICE Killing

Posted on Sunday 25 January 2026 by Mark R. Kelly

 

More takes on the latest ICE killing.

Heather Cox Richardson, January 24, 2026

It looked like an execution.

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Paul Krugman, 25 Jan 2026: Monsters, subtitled “And their enablers are accessories to murder”

It has been clear for a long time, to anyone willing to see, that the people running the federal government — Trump, Miller, Noem, Bovino and more — are monsters. It has been equally obvious that ICE and the Border Patrol are now filled with sadistic thugs. Yet many people — almost the entire GOP, everyone serving in the Trump administration, some Democrats, a significant part of the media — were too cowardly to admit the obvious.

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Robert Reich, 25 Jan 2026: Sunday thought: Enough, subtitled “Time for a truly massive general strike”

Enough.

I believe the shots that killed Alex Pretti and Renee Good are the shots heard ‘round the world that will topple the Trump regime.

From Minneapolis to Davos, people are joining together against Trump’s tyranny.

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John Pavlovitz, 24 Jan 2026: ICE Destroyed Alex Pretti’s Body. The Trump Administration Assassinated His Character. Conservative Americans Are Fine With That.

One of the saddest things about Alex Pretti’s murder is that I can imagine the conversations right now by my former friends, distant family members, neighbors, and people I used to pastor:

“Oh, he was threatening them!”

“He came at them with a gun. They were just defending themselves.”

“He was another Leftist extremist!”

“That’s what you get when you attack officers.”

This is the mass delusion being curated again.

They will believe Donald Trump, JD Vance, Kristi Noem, Kash Patel, Pam Bondi, and Karoline Leavitt, and not their own eyes.

They will convince themselves that the truth is not the truth, because otherwise they will need to come to terms with the reality that they are complicit in this, that they have created this monster, that they have failed their nation and their faith, that everything we’ve warned them about for ten years is now here.

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The Atlantic, Jonathan Rauch, 25 Jan 2026: Yes, It’s Fascism, subtitled “Until recently, I thought it a term best avoided. But now, the resemblances are too many and too strong to deny.”

Until recently, I resisted using the F-word to describe President Trump. For one thing, there were too many elements of classical fascism that didn’t seem to fit. For another, the term has been overused to the point of meaninglessness, especially by left-leaning types who call you a fascist if you oppose abortion or affirmative action. For yet another, the term is hazily defined, even by its adherents. From the beginning, fascism has been an incoherent doctrine, and even today scholars can’t agree on its definition. Italy’s original version differed from Germany’s, which differed from Spain’s, which differed from Japan’s.

… …

When the facts change, I change my mind. Recent events have brought Trump’s governing style into sharper focus. Fascist best describes it, and reluctance to use the term has now become perverse. That is not because of any one or two things he and his administration have done but because of the totality. Fascism is not a territory with clearly marked boundaries but a constellation of characteristics. When you view the stars together, the constellation plainly appears.

Then follows discussions of those stars.

  • Demolition of norms
  • Glorification of violence
  • Might is right
  • Politicized law enforcement
  • Dehumanization
  • Police-state tactics
  • Undermining elections
  • What private is public
  • Attacks on news media
  • Territorial and military aggression
  • Transnational reach
  • Blood-and-soil nationalism
  • White and Christian nationalism
  • Mobs and street thugs
  • Leader aggrandizement
  • Alternative facts
  • Politics as war
  • Governing as revolution

Concluding,

So the United States, once the world’s exemplary liberal democracy, is now a hybrid state combining a fascist leader and a liberal Constitution; but no, it has not fallen to fascism. And it will not.

In which case, is there any point in calling Trump a fascist, even if true? Doesn’t that alienate his voters? Wouldn’t it be better just to describe his actions without labeling him controversially?

Until recently, I thought so. No longer. The resemblances are too many and too strong to deny. Americans who support liberal democracy need to recognize what we’re dealing with in order to cope with it, and to recognize something, one must name it. Trump has revealed himself, and we must name what we see.

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Maybe this is redundant.

Vox, Zack Beauchamp, 25 Jan 2026: The killing of Alex Pretti is a grim turning point, subtitled “Trump’s authoritarianism is becoming less subtle — and more vicious.”

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Once again, conservatives always think the worst of everyone. Trump = MAGA = ICE = good, therefore anyone ICE kills must be bad. Very simplistic thinking. Never mind the video evidence.

Media Matters, Matt Gertz, 25 Jan 2026: The Fox News response to the federal government execution of Alex Pretti sets a new level of depravity

Fox News once postured as the patriotic opposition to purported government tyranny, with the network’s stars wrapping themselves in the mantle of the American Revolution and the U.S. Constitution. Right now, its primary purpose is to explain to viewers why it is good that masked agents of the state are executing Americans on the street.

Comparing the analyses of the major news sources, who did investigations and looked at evidence, with the quick assumptions of Fox news. Conservative demonize the ‘other’, and they don’t do evidence. They lie in defense of their assumptions.

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Other pieces.

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Now Trump is saying that only criminals carry guns. (And therefore deserve to be murdered by ICE.) How about that, 2nd amendment fans?

Posted in authoritarianism, Conservative Resistance, conservatives, Politics | Comments Off on The Latest ICE Killing

Disintegration

Posted on Saturday 24 January 2026 by Mark R. Kelly

Another day, another killing by the trigger-happy hooligans of ICE.

NY Times: Minneapolis Live Updates: Videos Appear to Contradict Federal Account of Killing

Subtitled: “An I.C.U. nurse shot by federal agents was an American citizen with no criminal record, the city police chief said. A New York Times video analysis shows he was holding a phone, not a gun.”

The official narrative is calling the victim a “domestic terrorist,” because he was carrying a gun — which is perfectly legal, as Republicans have made sure for decades — which somehow justified the killing, despite the video evidence showing the contrary. You can’t believe anything the administration says.

And this.

CNN: Minnesota officials at odds with DHS over account of Minneapolis man fatally shot by Border Patrol agent

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And another day of the steady slide of the US into historical irrelevance. Headlines from the New York Times today, the print edition.

NY Times: China Wins as Trump Cedes Leadership of the Global Economy, subtitled “The president used a keynote speech at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland to renounce the last vestiges of the liberal democratic order.”

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NY Times, 23 Jan 2026: Rejecting Decades of Science, Vaccine Panel Chair Says Polio and Other Shots Should Be Optional, subtitled “Dr. Kirk Milhoan, a pediatric cardiologist who leads the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, said a person’s right to refuse a vaccine outweighed concerns about illness or death from infectious diseases.”

Does he not realize that the rejection of vaccines leads to the infections of others? It’s not all about you.

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NY Times, 21 Jan 2026: Trump’s E.P.A. Has Put a Value on Human Life: Zero Dollars, subtitled “The Environmental Protection Agency has stopped estimating the dollar value of lives saved in the cost-benefit analyses for new pollution rules.”

The photo shows LA smog in 1979. Which I remember.

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NY Times, 22 Jan 2026: National Park Service Dismantles Slavery Exhibit in Philadelphia, subtitled “The exhibit memorialized nine people enslaved by George Washington. The Park Service said it was being removed in accordance with a directive from President Trump.”

This is what we call Orwellian. Erase history that challenges the legitimacy of the current administration. White supremacy. Nothing was ever done wrong.

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There are several interesting items on today’s page at The Week. I’ll quote this one, from Kevin D. Williamson in The Dispatch.

Donald Trump aspires to be the sort of man Xi Jinping is, the sort of man Vladimir Putin is, the sort of man Li Peng was when he ruthlessly suppressed the Tiananmen Square demonstrations—a vicious act of repression that Trump has spoken of admiringly. The acts of unjustifiable violence and extralegal threats carried out by his agents are, manifestly, to Trump’s taste. He is an Iranian ayatollah at heart—fundamentally totalitarian. And he seems to desire violence. Why wouldn’t he? He has the guns and the gun thugs. Where there are genuine acts of violence being perpetrated against federal agents, those carrying out such acts are giving the Trump administration what it desires: a pretext for escalation.

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It’s only going to get worse.

Posted in authoritarianism, Conservative Resistance, conservatives, Politics | Comments Off on Disintegration

Is There a Coming Crackup? Can We Recover?

Posted on Friday 23 January 2026 by Mark R. Kelly

Maybe. Maybe.

  • Jonathan Chait wonders why conservatives defend ICE;
  • How the administration lies and alters evidence;
  • Anne Applebaum on the administration’s attacks on science, medicine, culture, and education;
  • Adam Lee offers some perspective on recovering from autocracy;
  • David Brooks sees a coming Trump crackup;
  • And other items noted without quoting or commenting.
– – –

How do we understand this?

The Atlantic, Jonathan Chait, 22 Jan 2026: Why Conservatives Defend ICE, subtitled “Republicans deplore the mayhem in Minnesota—but blame protesters and Democrats for it.”

The Department of Homeland Security, communicating with the public through its official account on X, sent an ominous message last week: “FEAR NOT, GREAT PEOPLE OF MINNESOTA, THE DAY OF RECKONING & RETRIBUTION IS COMING!”

What ensued, as you might expect when a heavily armed security agency announces an operation in terms typically employed by comic-book-movie villains, was chaos. ICE agents, many of them masked, went on to detain citizens and noncitizens alike. They threatened and sometimes employed violence, provoking widespread protests.

Republicans have deplored the mayhem in Minnesota. But they don’t hold the agency that set it off responsible. Instead they’ve condemned the protesters and the Democratic politicians who encouraged them. When President Trump undertakes a policy or goal that the rest of his party cannot bring itself to endorse, his allies’ usual move is to attribute a different and more noble motivation to him, while shifting the blame to his opponents. So it is in Minnesota.

How to understand this? To me it resembles the excuse of the sports bar bully: your face got in the way of my fist, so it’s your fault.

For example:

The premise underpinning this argument is that ICE is acting legally and in the service of legitimate immigration-enforcement goals. That assumption is difficult to square with on-the-ground reporting. The shooting death of Renee Nicole Good is the most high-profile incident, but the Journal found that the episode “shares characteristics with others the Journal reviewed: Agents box in a vehicle, try to remove an individual, block attempts to flee, then fire”—tactics that violate law-enforcement protocol.

And more examples. Concluding:

Conservatives are making the same error they made during the civil-rights era, when outlets such as National Review dismissed protesters as criminals. It is fair enough to give law enforcement some benefit of the doubt, but treating its actions as presumptively legitimate even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary gives license to the sort of despotism that is staring us in the face.

And yet, I don’t understand this. Is it due to the conservative/Christian attitude of assuming other people are automatically bad? Is it a lack of empathy?

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Especially when the administration alters the evidence and lies about it.

JMG/NY Times, 23 Jan 2026: WH Also Darkened Protester’s Skin In Fake Image

“The memes will continue.” Why should anyone trust anything that comes out of the White House?

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Similarly, on a broader scale.

The Atlantic, Anne Applebaum, 23 Jan 2026: Defund Science, Distort Culture, Mock Education, subtitled “It’s not just about cuts to research. It’s about power.”

This is an interview with cancer scientist Joan Brugge, who comments in the intro,

I never imagined that it would be possible that funding for lifesaving research would be terminated for issues that were totally unrelated to the quality of the work or the progress that we had made in the work.

Then from Applebaum’s intro:

Today’s episode examines the administration’s attacks on science, medicine, culture, and education—a combination of verbal threats and funding cuts that look very much like an attempt to control knowledge. Maybe there’s a broader goal, too: to build distrust, and, ultimately, to reshape all Americans’ perceptions of reality. I know that sounds dramatic, but I spent many years writing about authoritarian regimes, and almost all of them try to undermine admired institutions, in order to radically alter the way people think.

And this would be why Canada and Europe are leaving the US behind.

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Some perspective.

OnlySky, Adam Lee, 23 Jan 2026: American autocracy, subtitled “The U.S. government is at war with its own people. Other countries’ experience gives us a guide for what to do.”

Those of us who voted for Kamala Harris can only say, “We told you so.”

We’re a year into Donald Trump’s second term, and it’s as horrendous as progressives knew it would be. He’s wrecking democratic norms, weaponizing the federal government and flouting the law at every turn, acting like a mad child-king or a petty dictator bent on settling scores.

He’s pardoning his criminal allies and bringing sham prosecutions against rivals. He’s bombing and invading other countries without even a pretense of congressional approval. He’s deposed the leadership of Venezuela, not to bring democracy, but to run the nation as a colonized fiefdom. He’s threatening our (former?) allies around the world with invasion and annexation. He’s unilaterally imposing ruinous tariffs and trying to cut off federal funding to force states, cities, universities, law firms and the media to bend to his whims.

And so on: ICE, Renee Good.

Is there hope for the restoration of democracy and a better future? Or should we write America off as a failed experiment?

Longish piece, keying off a piece by Steven Levitsky, and reviewing history since Reagan. All is not lost. Let’s look at the article’s conclusion.

Autocracy isn’t inevitable or inescapable. Other nations that have gone through periods of authoritarian rule have thrown off the yoke and become democratic again. That experience gives the population a collective memory of how to resist effectively, which can be put into practice the next time someone tries.

South Korea was a military dictatorship as recently as 1987, but a massive democratic uprising forced the government to allow constitutional reform and free elections. South Koreans learned from that history, and when President Yoon Suk Yeol tried to declare martial law in 2024, he was swiftly defeated, removed from power, and sentenced.

Brazil, too, endured twenty years of dictatorship established by a U.S.-backed coup, ending in redemocratization in the 1980s. That experience is why President Jair Bolsonaro’s failed coup in 2022 ended in prison terms for him and his supporters, unlike in the U.S.

America should learn and take heart from these and other examples of successful resistance to autocracy. The path ahead is dark, and there will be more suffering and tragedy, but all hope isn’t lost. Democracy is worth defending. We’ve thrown off self-proclaimed absolute rulers before, and if need be, we can do it again.

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Is this a sign of hope?

NY Times, opinion by David Brooks, 23 Jan 2026: The Coming Trump Crackup

We are in the middle of at least four unravelings: The unraveling of the postwar international order. The unraveling of domestic tranquility wherever Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents bring down their jackboots. The further unraveling of the democratic order, with attacks on Fed independence and — excuse the pun — trumped-up prosecutions of political opponents. Finally, the unraveling of President Trump’s mind.

And,

And no, I don’t think America is headed toward anything like a Rome-style collapse. Our institutions are too strong, and our people, deep down, still have the same democratic values.

But I do know that events are being propelled by one man’s damaged psyche. History does not record many cases in which a power-mad leader careening toward tyranny suddenly regained his senses and became more moderate. On the contrary, the normal course of the disease is toward ever-accelerating deterioration and debauchery.

With comments about Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Tacitus, and Sallust.

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Noted, with no time to quote or comment:

Posted in authoritarianism, conservatives, Religion | Comments Off on Is There a Coming Crackup? Can We Recover?

A New World Order

Posted on Thursday 22 January 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • How Canada and Europe, in response to Trump and MAGA, are bringing about a new world order that sidelines the US;
  • And how the US is sinking into totalitarianism;
  • How Trump thinks he made a deal about Greenland while actually accomplishing nothing;
  • Listening to Sibelius.
– – –

The significant speech at Davos wasn’t Trump’s, it was Canadian prime minister Mark Carney’s. Again, we’re living in history.

Vox, Caitlin Dewey, 21 Jan 2026: Canada’s prime minister just declared the end of the world as we know it, subtitled “Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s historic speech, explained.”

Since World War II, Mark Carney told the crowd in Davos, Switzerland, global politics have largely adhered to a system of norms that prioritized shared prosperity and cooperation. But as President Donald Trump lays waste to those norms, long-time US allies — Canada included — are taking steps to counter America’s influence, even after Trump’s current term.

It’s hard to overstate just how new and strange that is: America’s nearest neighbor, and closest ally, calling for the development of a new world order that sidelines the US. “When historians look back at this era, this speech by Mark Carney will be seen as an inflection point,” wrote Lulu Garcia-Navarro, a New York Times journalist.

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And here.

NY Times, opinion by David French, 22 Jan 2026: The Carney Doctrine

There will be more twists and turns, highs and lows, but I’m afraid it’s time to recognize a sad reality: It’s over.

This week, two things happened that, taken together, send a clear signal to the United States and the world: The American-led alliance of democracies is in the midst of a rupture. We have broken faith with our allies, and our allies are choosing resistance over submission to Trump’s aggression and greed.

Before we get to the dramatic developments in Davos, Switzerland, let’s set the stage. On Sunday night we learned that President Trump sent the Norwegian prime minister, Jonas Gahr Store, a message that can only be described as deranged and delusional. You may have read it before, but please read it again.

French comments about the letter, and how “Congress is led by invertebrates — with many of them apparently convinced that he’ll subjugate the world in much the same way that he subjugated them, through threats, bluster and the unyielding support of millions in the MAGA mob.”

On Tuesday, however, the prime minister of Canada, Mark Carney, said no. He delivered what might be the most important address of Trump’s second term so far. To enthusiastic applause in Davos, he articulated a vision of how the “middle powers” — nations like Canada — should respond to the great powers. It is decidedly not according to Trump’s plan.

First, Carney spoke the plain truth. “For decades,” Carney said, “countries like Canada prospered under what we called the rules-based international order. We joined its institutions, we praised its principles, we benefited from its predictability. And because of that, we could pursue values-based foreign policies under its protection.”

But, Carney said, this order was always “partially false.” We knew “that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient. That trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And we knew that international law applied with varying rigor depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.”

Of course that world order, which Heather Cox Richardson and others have described as running the world for the past three quarters of a century with the US seemingly in the lead, has always been aspirational, just as constitutional notions of freedom and justice for all have been aspirational. But now the US, apparently, is giving up, sinking back into a tribal swamp where priorities are selfishness, xenophobia, and religious fundamentalism. And so the world is ready to move on without us.

And even though Trump himself will eventually be gone, our former allies will know this:

They now know that there is considerable appetite in the American population for at least some form of Trumpism. They know that one of the two American parties is firmly in the hands of people — including Vice President JD Vance — who may even be more hostile to NATO than Trump himself. They’ve watched as former Trump opponents, men like Marco Rubio, have been assimilated into the MAGA machine.

As long as that is true, that means the Western alliance will always be precarious. You cannot build an enduring economic order or a stable defense strategy when chaos and confusion are always one election away.

Somehow, American “exceptionalism” is at the core of this problem. It’s about the arrogance of Americans thinking we’re exceptional.

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Or unable to resist succumbing to the totalitarian trends that other nations succumbed to and overcame. Once again, base human nature lies within all of us, even those educated enough to understand the value of cosmopolitan, shared values. Perhaps every population is one demagogue away from…

The Atlantic, Ali Breland, 21 Jan 2026: The Trump Administration Is Publishing a Stream of Nazi Propaganda, subtitled “Government social-media managers have transformed official feeds.”

The U.S. Labor Department is embracing Nazi slogans and tropes, the Pentagon’s research office is deploying neo-Nazi graphic elements in its social-media feeds, and the Department of Homeland Security recently posted lyrics mimicking a popular song by a band with ties to an ethno-nationalist social club.

The official social-media channels of the Trump administration have become unrelenting streams of xenophobic and Nazi-coded messages and imagery. The leaders of these departments so far refuse to answer questions about their social-media strategies, but the trend is impossible to miss: Across the federal government, officials are advocating for a radical new understanding of the American idea, one rooted not in the vision of the Founders, but in the ideologies of European fascists.

With many examples.

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Meanwhile, someone apparently assuaged Trump to settle with the agreement that’s been in place since 1951, that the US has free reign in Greenland (which Trump has confused with Iceland) to establish military bases there. Trump declares the win!

The Week, Morning Report, 22 Jan 2026: Trump backs off Greenland threats, declares ‘deal’

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Listening to Sibelius again this week. Years ago I had a set of his symphonies on EMI, four CDs for the seven symphonies. (Given to me, I think, by Larry Kramer, who worked at the parent company of EMI.) In trying to find them a few months ago, I could only find three of the CDs. Missing the disc with symphonies 4 and 6. Finally, I went to Amazon to find a complete set, and settled on this one:

And it’s fine. Listening to number 6 right now, the one I’m least familiar with.

And yet. My favorite is Sibelius’ 1st. Maybe because I first heard it at a significant time in my life.

 

Posted in authoritarianism, conservatives, History, Music | Comments Off on A New World Order

Trump’s Lunacy and Conservative Regression

Posted on Wednesday 21 January 2026 by Mark R. Kelly

What will it take for Republicans, or anyone, to stop him?

Slate, Fred Kapan, 20 Jan 2026: Yes, the Greenland Obsession Is a New Level of Madness for Trump, subtitled “The Mad King era is upon us. Will the people with the power to do something about it do anything at all?”

The question of the moment: When will a mere handful of Republican lawmakers come to their senses? That’s all it would take for them to be described in their obituaries as saviors of democracy rather than enablers of its collapse.

The premise here is that some of these politicians are smart enough to notice that their party’s leader, President Donald Trump, has gone bonkers—that his longtime tendency to conflate his ego’s impulses with the nation’s interests has hardened into psychogenic disorders of unprecedented intensity among previous occupants of the Oval Office—and that this merging is having dreadful consequences at home and abroad.

Then quoting that letter to Norway, and unpacking it.

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And

LBVTQNation, Alex Bollinger, 20 Jan 2026: Trump is threatening world peace with his Greenland talk. It’s time for Congress to impeach him., subtitled “People treat him like a toddler babbling incoherently when he’s the president of the United States mobilizing for war.”

Over the long weekend, two things were clear. First, Donald Trump has completely lost his mind. And, second, he will invade Greenland unless someone stops him.

And that someone should be Congress. If starting a war of choice with Europe that could kill millions over a block of ice isn’t a “high crime and misdemeanor,” an abuse of the power the American people decided to entrust him with, then nothing is. The fact that he started all this Greenland talk immediately after running on a “peace” message in the 2024 elections shows he intentionally deceived voters on this matter.

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Then there was the Davos speech, earlier today.

The New Republic, Malcolm Ferguson, 21 Jan 2026: Trump Embarrasses All of America in Slurred, Disjointed Davos Speech, subtitled “Donald Trump gave a terrible speech to a dead silent room at the World Economic Forum.”

President Trump delivered yet another rambling, long-winded speech Wednesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, using the massive world stage to rail against windmills, complain for the umpteenth time about how the 2020 election was rigged, reaffirm his desire to seize Greenland from Denmark, and take credit for every good thing in the world.

The room was dead silent virtually the entire time.

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Once again, why do evangelicals support Trump? To me that support completely discredits them from any kind of moral authority.

The Atlantic, Peter Wehner, 21 Jan 2026: MAGA Jesus Is Not the Real Jesus, subtitled “Trump is causing incalculable damage to the Christian faith, yet most evangelicals will never break with him.”

How Kristi Noem quotes Bible verses; how ICE promotional videos emphasize militaristic images.

The message the Trump administration is sending is not subtle: ICE is doing the work of God. The brutal and sometimes lethal tactics being used by a growing number of ICE agents are divinely sanctioned. Come join this holy campaign.

Leni Riefenstahl would have approved.

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Moving on to other conservative themes.

JMG, 20 Jan 2026: Perkins: ICE Protesters At “New Level Of God-Hatred”

See piece above. It’s significant that Tony Perkins equates opposition to ICE thuggery with “God-hatred.” Joe notes, “Perkins has never said a word about the many times right wing Christians have invaded pro-LGBTQ churches to scream about Satan and sodomy.”

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The Atlantic, Rina Raphael, 20 Jan 2026: America’s Would-Be Surgeon General Says to Trust Your ‘Heart Intelligence’, subtitled “Casey Means thinks improving health is a spiritual project.”

Regressing toward intuitive superstition.

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Slate, Shannon Palus, 20 Jan 2026: The Quiet Misogyny of RFK Jr.’s War on Science, subtitled “The burdens of so many of these proposals fall disproportionately on women, and moms in particular.”

I don’t think he’s smart enough for this to be intentional. Again, he’s just regressing toward an anti-scientific, intuitive, worldview.

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NY Times, 17 Jan 2026: After Renee Good Killing, Derisive Term for White Women Spreads on the Far Right, subtitled “Vocal Trump supporters are demonizing Renee Good, her partner and their allies, with some even using an acronym: AWFUL, or Affluent White Female Urban Liberal.”

Conservatives are so terrified of anyone unlike themselves, they are always finding new groups to hate.

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NY Times, Jessica Grose opinion, 21 Jan 2026: The Heritage Foundation Wants to Send American Women Back Half a Century

Again, it’s always worth wondering what it is conservatives want to conserve. Earlier, I’ve concluded that what they want to preserve is pre-Enlightenment thinking, i.e. the priorities of base human nature: tribalism and reproduction, expanding the tribe. And so here we go:

In the very first paragraph of the Heritage Foundation’s lengthy new policy paper, “Saving America by Saving the Family,” the authors go all the way back to 1776 for inspiration. “In understanding their crowning achievement, Americans must recognize that the founding fathers were, quite literally, fathers: Fifty-four of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence married and had a total of 337 children among them — an average of six each.”

Reading this, I wondered: Are they counting the six children Thomas Jefferson had with Sally Hemings — whom he enslaved and who could not legally refuse unwanted sex — or not? What kind of example is that supposed to set?

That’s just the opening salvo of this confused, retrograde report, which leaves out a lot of important details from its rose-colored history of marriage and family in the United States. It’s a curious set of guidelines for the future, since it seems mired in culture war battles from the 20th century, unable to face the past 60 years of change.

Conservatives don’t do change.

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Yet again.

JMG, 21 Jan 2026: TN Bill Would Legalize Anti-LGBTQ Discrimination

They’ll get away with whatever they can. Just imagine American society if they got away with everything they want.

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Long interactive piece at NYT.

NY Times, Editorial Board, 20 Jan 2026: How Trump Has Pocketed $1,408,500,000

Many, many examples. Yet again: they’re all about making money.

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Quote seen on Fb today:

James Baldwin: “People cling to religion not because it is true, but because it gives them permission to feel righteous while being cruel.”

Posted in conservatives, Lunacy, Politics, Religion | Comments Off on Trump’s Lunacy and Conservative Regression

Conservative v. Progressive Projects, the Arc of History, and Autism

Posted on Tuesday 20 January 2026 by Mark R. Kelly

Recent thoughts.

Inchoate conclusions. Provisional ideas. Things that have occurred to me. Promoting further explorations. Taking a day off from the news. No pics.

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About human nature and the arc of history.

First, broadly, the conservative project is to maintain the status quo; each generation should produce another as much like its as possible. And to expand. Have lots of babies, and thus prohibit abortion and homosexuality and any “lifestyle” that would inhibit having children and expanding the population. So that the next generation will be just like the current one, and the previous one, forever.

The progressive project is to improve the lives of the next generation… to make each generation’s lives better than the ones before. To expand options, not restrict them. To allow people to make decisions about their own lives, without religious or government coercion. To learn, to correct the policies of previous generations, to acknowledge reality and learn from it.

Once again: each of these drives is inherent in human nature, a human nature that resides within all of us, but expressed to varying degrees based on upbringing and society.

The books I’ve been reading recently reinforce the impressions I’ve had about the evolution of the universe, of life, and of society. I’ll expand on those books soon.

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Related: what is human perception exactly and how can we depend on it? In particular, what is autism? I’m beginning to think that the idea of autism is a category error. The books I’ve been reading, by Hoffman, Tong, and Azarian, stress the idea that humans don’t perceive “reality”, not only because our senses are limited, but because as creatures optimized for survival, we only need to create models in our heads of what reality is about to the extent that we need to understand protocols for survival.

Where does autism fit into this? Well, because some autistic folks are literal-minded and not prone to superstitions or religious beliefs. This is significant. It indicates a range of human perception that is different from the one primed for survival. Diversity. A few of us, perhaps, are able to detect reality without giving in to superstition or religious beliefs. Yet again: it’s not binary. It’s a range, exhibited differently in every one of us.

The popular notions about autism are simplistic, at best. I will explore this further.

Posted in Human Nature | Comments Off on Conservative v. Progressive Projects, the Arc of History, and Autism

The Latest About Mad King Donald

Posted on Monday 19 January 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Trump’s letter to Norway, about threatening a hostile takeover of Greenland because he didn’t win a Nobel Prize, written as if by a petulant 12-year-old child;
  • With big picture comments by Tom Nichols;
  • While Trump voters think he’s doing a great job! And my take on this;
  • How Christian fundamentalists are salivating about the end of the world;
  • MLK and civil rights and how conservatives would ‘cancel’ them, and how young Americans are turning against gay people;
  • And how every mark of social progress throughout history has been opposed by conservatives.
– – –

Lots of discussion today about this.

CNN, 19 Jan 2026: Trump ties efforts to acquire Greenland to failure to win Nobel Peace Prize

This link updates latest news on the topic.

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The Atlantic, Anne Applebaum, 19 Jan 2026: Trump’s Letter to Norway Should Be the Last Straw, subtitled “Will Republicans in Congress ever step in?”

This piece includes the text of the letter.

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JMG and many others note Norwegian PM Hits Back At Trump: Greenland Belongs To Denmark, We Have Nothing To Do With Nobel Prize

My take on this is that Trump doesn’t care; the country should *order* the Nobel committee to give him the award. That’s what Trump would do. Has done.

Cartoons on Fb today show people current and imaginary, donating their prizes to Trump in front of the White House, to his juvenile glee.

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Another piece I saw today described the latter as being written by a “petulant 12-year-old.” Similarly:

AlterNet, 19 Jan 2026: European officials are mocking ‘child’ Trump with meme of Norway letter written in crayon

(The photo is actually Trump at an Easter Egg Roll.)

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Tom Nichols looks at the big picture.

The Atlantic, Tom Nichols, 19 Jan 2026: The Military Is Being Forced to Plan for an Unthinkable Betrayal, subtitled “Attacking an ally would be a perversion of everything the armed forces have been trained to do.”

The United States is a global superpower, and its military trains for war in every domain. During my years as a military educator, I saw American officers wrestle with any number of scenarios designed to challenge their thinking and force them to adapt to surprises. One case we never considered, however, was how to betray and attack our own allies. We did not ask what to do if the president becomes a threatening megalomaniac who tells one of our oldest friends, Norway, that because the Nobel Committee in Oslo refuses to give him a trophy, he no longer feels “an obligation to think purely of Peace” and can instead turn his mind toward planning to wage war against NATO.

As my colleague Anne Applebaum wrote today, Donald Trump’s threatening message to the Norwegian prime minister should, in any responsible democracy, force the rest of the U.S. political system to act to control him. The president is talking about an invasion that would require “citizens of a treaty ally,” as she put it, “to become American against their will,” all because he “now genuinely lives in a different reality.” And yet neither Congress nor the sycophants in the White House seem willing to stop him.

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No one will stop him. His fans *love* him. And all of Trump’s political sycophants know that. They will never overthrow him.

NY Times, long graphic piece, 15 Jan 2026: 11 Pro-Trump Republican Voters on What They Like So Far and What They Don’t

Here are the participants.

This is one in a long series of NYT group interviews. The first question to this group is: “If you had to describe how Donald Trump’s second term is going in just one word, what would that one word be?”

Some of the answers: Great! Excellent! Awesome!

Of course many of their explanations reveal their susceptibility to misinformation. Mostly they’re impressed by his forcefulness, and his attempts to accomplish what he promised in his campaign. Never mind that, according to most sources, he’s failed at accomplishing most of those goals. My take is that these people are just happy that someone with their own prejudices and hatreds (of illegals especially) is in charge of things, no matter how incompetently.

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On a related matter. Look how the fundamentalist Christians are salivating about the end of the world. Dangers of religion example 5,271,009.

JMG, 19 Jan 2026: Christian Site: Trump’s “Board Of Peace” Will Hasten The End Times And The Antichrist Will Rise To Power

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The theme of the day should be about Martin Luther King, Jr., and civil rights, and how conservatives want to erase his legacy (and the holiday) and civil rights.

Today, obviously inspired by the success of the TV series Heated Rivalry, NY Times notes this.

NY Times, Tessa E.S. Charlesworth and Eli J. Finkel (research psychologists who study bias and political partisanship), 19 Jan 2026: Americans Are Turning Against Gay People [gift link]

The remarkable success of “Heated Rivalry,” the steamy new television series about closeted gay hockey players, has been widely taken as yet another sign of social progress — evidence that acceptance of queer love continues to grow.

We wish we could share that optimism. Unfortunately, new research that one of us, Professor Charlesworth, helped conduct reveals a darker truth: The decades-long rise in the acceptance of gay people in the United States peaked around 2020 and has sharply reversed since then. The popularity of “Heated Rivalry,” it seems, is a welcome burst of enthusiasm for gay life in a new era of anti-gay prejudice.

This reversal stunned us. In the two decades before 2020, visibility, recognition and legal inclusion of gays and lesbians progressed in lock step — larger and more prominent Pride parades, rainbow-lit landmarks, federal legalization of same-sex marriage. That progress translated into something remarkable: Americans’ bias against gay people declined faster than any other bias ever tracked in social surveys.

And summarized at AlterNet today by David Badash: Anti-gay bias surging ‘sharply’ among least expected groups: report

I suppose that this is part of the general retreat from Enlightenment values, from the civil rights values of the 1960s, and a regression to conservative, tribal values, as I’ve discussed many times here. Such cultural attitudes wax and wane… but generally arc forward, as MLK claimed.

Today’s Forum on KQED discussed this matter:

KQED, Alexis Madrigal, 19 Jan 2026: Reflecting on Martin Luther King Jr.’s Legacy in the Age of Trump

For once there’s a transcript at this link, or a partial one. I’ll just mention one comment that I recall: that for every supposed mark of what we now recognize as progress — eliminating slavery, granting women the right to vote, granting everyone civil rights, granting gays the right to get married — there were always people pushing back against it. And these are the conservatives.

In passing again I wonder: why the conservative push to install the Ten Commandments everywhere? It’s described as Christian messaging, but it’s not — it’s Old Testament messaging. Tribal values. Jesus said much more. Jesus was liberal, even woke.

Posted in conservatives, Human Nature, Lunacy, Politics | Comments Off on The Latest About Mad King Donald

Trying to Understand How Modern Life Makes Sense in Larger Contexts

Posted on Sunday 18 January 2026 by Mark R. Kelly

I like to think that this blog isn’t about politics, per se, but about following current events and trying to make sense of them in larger contexts, especially the broad contexts both of history and of what science fiction explores. Though again today, I am cramped for time, so let’s note these items relatively quickly. And obviously I don’t have any final answers.

Update 20jan26:

  • How Trump is fighting half of America;
  • How for Trump justice means vengeance;
  • How Trump is trashing America.
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AlterNet, Alex Henderson, 18 Jan 2026: Inside Trump’s ‘retribution’ against ‘half of America’

AlterNet is essentially a consolidation site (as JMG is), and this item is based on an MS Now (formerly MSNBC) piece by Paul Waldman (formerly of Washington Post).

MS Now, Paul Waldman, 18 Jan 2026: The president of the United States is at war with his own country, subtitled “The Trump administration is engaged in a comprehensive war, and its enemy is half of America.”

Is this not obvious or do I need to quote? OK I’ll quote.

Trump can’t just shut off all federal funding to states he doesn’t like. But no one doubts he would if he could — or doubts he’s trying to. This is more than bloviation. Something important and dangerous is happening. The Trump administration is engaged in a comprehensive war, and its enemy is half of America. This war is being waged in rhetoric and regulation, budget cuts and violence. Its aim is to tear the country in two.

There is no precedent in modern times for this; one might make an analogy to Reconstruction in the wake of the Civil War, in which the federal government forced the South to accept democracy. But that was for the best of reasons, and Trump’s attempt to bend blue states to his will is for the worst.

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This states something fairly obvious.

NY Times, The Editorial Board, 17 Jan 2026: For Trump, Justice Means Vengeance

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And this.

The New Yorker, Susan B. Glasser, 15 Jan 2026: The Minnesota War Zone Is Trump’s Most Trumpian Accomplishment, subtitled “The President may have started out by trash-talking America; one year into his second term, he is simply trashing it.”

Posted in authoritarianism, Conservative Resistance, Human Nature, Politics | Comments Off on Trying to Understand How Modern Life Makes Sense in Larger Contexts

Trek and Woke, Perception and Reality, Art and Truth

Posted on Saturday 17 January 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Stephen Miller accuses the new Trek series of being woke, with my comments on how the original Trek series was extremely woke, especially for its era;
  • An interview with Anil Seth about deep reality and whether it’s built by human perception, coincidentally reflecting the themes of books I’m currently reading;
  • Jerry Coyne about whether art is truth;
  • Brahms’ 4th.
– – –

More evidence of the cluelessness of the folks in the Trump administration. This concerns the debut of a new Trek series called “Starfleet Academy,” which I haven’t seen.

(Image from Facebook.)

HuffPost, 16 Jan 2026: Stephen Miller Mocked For Begging William Shatner To Save ‘Star Trek’ From Wokeness, subtitled Many people interpreted Miller’s X post as a variation of “show me you don’t understand the point of ‘Star Trek’ without saying you don’t understand the point of ‘Star Trek.'”

The Independent, 16 Jan 2026: Stephen Miller ridiculed over his next target – saving ‘woke’ Star Trek, subtitled “White House adviser says the popular science fiction franchise should boldly go back to 94 year-old William Shatner”

Because ‘woke,’ to the modern conservative, means acknowledging the existence of anyone who is not (human), white, straight, Christian, and male.

Continue reading →

Posted in conservatives, Evolution, Human Nature, Music, science fiction, Star Trek | Comments Off on Trek and Woke, Perception and Reality, Art and Truth