Views from Crestmont Drive

This Is What Will Be

Posted on Thursday 26 June 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

How right-wing violence has become normalized;
How perhaps “totalitarianism” is better than “authoritarianism” for what is going on;
How Republicans trying to roll back same-sex marriage are fighting a losing battle, cf. that Stephen Prothero book;
A psychiatrist explains how changes in definitions of autism resulted in the apparent increase in autism rates;
Bruce Springsteen’s “Magic.”

– – –

Saying violence on the right is “extremist” isn’t correct; violence on the right has become normalized.

NY Times, Jamelle Bouie, 21 Jun 2025: Right-Wing Violence Is Not a Fringe Issue [gift link]

It is simply a fact that the far right has been responsible for most of the political violence committed in the United States since the start of the 21st century, with particular emphasis on the past 10 years of American political life.

Examples from 2017, 2018, 2019, 2022.

What’s critical for us to understand that this isn’t a problem of the fringe. Not only was President Trump permissive of right-wing violence throughout his first term — consider his reaction to the violence in Charlottesville — but after losing his bid for re-election, he also led an organized effort to overturn the results, culminating in a riot in the Capitol. And what was one of his first acts back in office? He pardoned the rioters, in as clear an endorsement of violence on his behalf as one can imagine.

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Maybe “authoritarianism” is no longer the adequate word.

Salon, Mike Lofgren, 22 Jun 2025: America slides into totalitarianism — and it won’t be easy to reverse, subtitled “‘Authoritarianism’ is so 2018 — Donald Trump and his minions want to conquer all of civil society”

We’ve seen a spike over the last few years in the use of the word “authoritarianism.” This is the predictable result of the recent rise of authoritarian regimes which, to a greater or lesser extent, work to subvert and dismantle the institutions and practices of democracy and the rule of law.

A survey of more than 500 political scientists found that they believe the United States is headed towards authoritarian rule. A majority of Americans, according to a PRRI poll, now believes Donald Trump is “a dangerous dictator.” (It remains an enduring mystery why this majority didn’t stumble onto this conclusion before the November election).

There is, of course, another term for modern dictatorial regimes, one that gained considerable currency during the Cold War after the 1951 publication of “The Origins of Totalitarianism” by Hannah Arendt, but which has somewhat fallen out of favor.

How does authoritarianism differ from totalitarianism? There is no precise description of either; like other political terms, they are subject to questionable definitions that often depend on the viewpoint of whoever is using them. Marxist writers shunned the word “totalitarian”; Nazi Germany was invariably referred to as “fascist,” while the Soviet Union was a “people’s democracy.” But “totalitarian” was a favorite term of anti-Communists throughout the Cold War.

Fairly long piece. I’ll quote a couple of their pull-quotes.

Totalitarian leaders tend toward charismatic styles and have a genuine bond of loyalty with their followers, who often express extreme, exaggerated enthusiasm for the leader and his movement.

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America presents a paradox similar to early 20th-century Germany: It leads the world in science and technology, its universities are the finest anywhere, its cities are hubs of economic vitality. Yet much of the interior is economically and culturally backward.

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Political absolutism has been a temptation throughout American history. But its most recent outbreak is unique; the intellectual ground had been prepared by religious fundamentalist theocrats and white supremacists for more than four decades.

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An illustration of the theme of Stephen Prothero’s WHY LIBERALS WIN THE CULTURE WARS (EVEN WHEN THEY LOSE ELECTIONS), which I reviewed here.

NY Times, guest essay by Kristen Soltis Anderson (a Republican pollster!), 22 Jun 2025: Roll Back Legal Same-Sex Marriage? Republicans Are Getting It Wrong. [gift link]

Almost 10 years ago, the Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that same-sex marriage would be legal across the country. Today, sensing a political shift toward socially conservative policy, Republican policymakers in states from Michigan to Tennessee have begun proposing bills that would roll back same-sex marriage.

These lawmakers may discover to their dismay that they have the politics of the issue quite wrong. Though the cultural winds have shifted on many issues, Republican voters are not clamoring for an unraveling of same-sex marriage rights. Republican voters have objected to socially progressive policies that they believe incur a cost to themselves or others, but the experience over the past decade with legal same-sex marriage has persuaded many in the party that it is nothing to be feared.

The last line here evokes the zero-sum thinking of some conservatives, who worry that granting “rights” to people unlike themselves will somehow deprive them of rights. In most cases, it doesn’t work that way.

And yet there’s a paradox in conservative thinking. The writer notes:

There are two main lines of argument that seem to resonate most strongly with Republicans on preserving same-sex marriage: Live and let live, and leave well enough alone.

And follows this line of thought to the end. Without mentioning the strain of conservative (MAGA) thinking, religiously based, that is certain of what is true and right, because Bible. And would repeal marriage equality and many other things that don’t conform to their thinking.

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Someone who was “in the room where it happened” explains. Not that such testimony will have any effect of RFK Jr or any of the others who know what they know, because they just *know*. (Based on primal biases, as I’ve explained.)

NY Times, guest essay by Allen Frances, a psychiatrist, 23 Jun 2025: Autism Rates Have Increased 60-Fold. I Played a Role in That.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of health and human services, is correct that reported autism rates have exploded in the last 30 years — they’ve increased roughly 60-fold — but he is dead wrong about the causes. I should know, because I am partly responsible for the explosion in rates.

The rapid rise in autism cases is not because of vaccines or environmental toxins, but rather is the result of changes in the way that autism is defined and assessed — changes that I helped put into place.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, I was the chair of the task force charged with creating the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or the D.S.M.-IV. Sometimes called the “bible of psychiatry,” the D.S.M. influences medical practice, insurance coverage, education and treatment selection.

And so on. This essay is fascinating for how the writer’s task force tried to balance the needs of care workers, parents, and patients. It included the new diagnosis of “Asperger’s syndrome.” But they didn’t anticipate some of the consequences, e.g. how some school systems over-diagnosed, to enhance their own funding. The writer admits that their conclusions back then had unfortunate consequences. (This is the complexity of real life.) And then concludes:

Mr. Kennedy’s statements that people suffering from autism don’t pay taxes, implying they are useless, has created outrage among patients and families. His proposed autism registry is a scary invasion of privacy.

Figuring out how to accurately diagnose and appropriately treat autism is incredibly hard and the source of many fraught conversations among researchers, clinicians, people who have autism and their families. We need a health secretary with the good judgment to judiciously help us navigate these thorny questions and properly allocate scarce research resources. Instead, we have Mr. Kennedy, who has only served to sow confusion with false promises, to trigger anger with disparaging comments and to replace funding for real science with wasteful false science.

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Note the drop down menus at the top of this page are currently in chaos. I’m experimenting in order to figure out why the ddsmoothmenu functions on sfadb.com aren’t working. (Update 28 Jun: I think these have been fixed. See comments in that day’s post.)

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Listening to Springsteen. I have all 21 studio volumes lined up in a row…

This page quotes a 2007 Springsteen interview about this song:

In an interview dated 17 Oct 2007 and published in Rolling Stone magazine issue # 1038 (01 Nov 2007), Bruce Springsteen told Joe Levy: “The song ‘Magic’ is about living in a time when anything that is true can be made to seem like a lie, and anything that is a lie can be made to seem true. There are people that have taken that as their credo. The classic quote was from one of the Bushies in The New York Times: ‘We make our own reality. You guys report it, we make it.’ I may loathe that statement — the unbelievable stupidity and arrogance of it — more than I loathe ‘Bring it on’ and ‘Mission accomplished.’ That song, it’s all about illusion: ‘Trust none of what you hear / And less of what you’ll see / This is what will be’ — we make it. Until you get to the last verse: ‘There’s a fire down below / It’s coming up here… There’s bodies hanging in the trees / This is what will be.’ That’s the heart of my record right there.”

Posted in Conservative Resistance, conservatives, Music, Psychology, Science | Comments Off

Paths Away From and To Reality

Posted on Wednesday 25 June 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

“Doing your own research” mostly leads to false conclusions, unless you’ve done your “homework” — i.e. have an education in the subject matter;
Example of a claim about Sodom and Gomorrah and an asteroid or comet airburst;
How simpletons think they can cut costs to “overhead” without realizing what overhead costs do;
A philosophy graduate explains why it’s better to doubt than to know;
With thoughts about whether philosophy is useless, as some scientists say, and how religions establish arbitrary certainty, despite the evidence of the real world.

– – –

Variation on another recurring theme of this blog: the world is more complex than most people think; and most people know less than they think they do. And so draw wrong conclusions.

Big Think, Ethan Siegel, 24 Jun 2025: You can’t do your own research without doing your homework first, subtitled “Here in 2025, many of us claim to come to our own conclusions by doing our own research. Here’s why we’re mostly deluding ourselves.”

Key Takeaways

• Many of us frequently embrace conclusions that are contrary to the scientific consensus, instead preferring to find out what the facts are for ourselves and draw our conclusions based on what we find. • Yet this strategy is usually doomed to failure, as nearly all of us aren’t even competently equipped to do the homework, or accurately understanding the foundational background, necessary to even comprehend the issue at stake. • What most of us call “doing our own research” is wholly unrelated to research of any type, and instead exemplifies what happens when you haven’t even done your homework correctly: we get it wrong when it counts the most.

This isn’t a political essay per se, but it does discuss government agencies that do the work to make sure we (i.e. Americans) don’t have to personally worry about every little thing. EPA, FDA, departments for agriculture, highway safety, weather, disease control.

Yet much of this (and similar) work — work conducted by bona fide experts over many decades — is being or has already been undone, in favor of allowing individuals to fend for themselves, make their own decisions, and do their own research about life-and-death matters like public health, public safety, and issues that affect the long-term future of the planet. The truth is not that consensus undermines science, but rather that our modern rejection of expertise, and our newfound embracing of the “do your own research” ideology, is a recipe for societal disaster. In truth, most of us aren’t even well-enough equipped to do our own homework, much less research, on these and other issues. Here’s what that’s all about.

The key is understanding that we “inhabit a reality that obeys rules and that those rules can be, at least in principle, understood.”

that we have a real, physical, material-based (e.g., made of atoms) system,

that there are underlying rules that govern the behavior of that system,

that we can observe, measure, control the conditions of, and experiment on those systems,

gathering results about what happens to those systems in a repeatable, replicable fashion,

and then that we can draw conclusions about how that system will perform under the real-world conditions we’re likely to encounter.

It goes on with the idea of “doing your homework” and examples of claims made by people who haven’t. “Chemicals,” vaccines, fluoride in water, climate change. Then there’s the denialist playbook, as we’ve read about in two or three different books lately.

As biologist Sean B. Carroll noted, there’s a six-step denialist playbook that seems to work to sway public opinion every time:

Doubt the Science.

Question Scientists’ Motives and Integrity.

Magnify Disagreements Among Scientists and Cite Gadflies as Authorities.

Exaggerate Potential Harm.

Appeal to Personal Freedom.

Reject Whatever Would Repudiate a Key Philosophy.

And concluding:

The path back to reality is instead to value actual expertise, and those who have devoted their lives to the betterment of humanity through discovering scientific truths about reality. This isn’t to say that the notion of a scientific consensus should never be challenged; only that those challenges are only legitimate when they come from experts who’ve already sufficiently and scrupulously done their homework. If we can take this path, and return to reality, then we can once again aspire to having a functional society where we all work together to make policies for the collective long-term good of all. Without it, the thin veneer of civilization is likely doomed to crumble.

My own insight about these matters, another theme of this blog, is something most articles like this never mention. The challenges to science come from deep-seated prejudices, or biases, built by evolution into human nature, because those biases — deference to personal experience, resistance to anything that might like polluting the body — were useful at one time, thousands and millions of years ago. These biases remain in modern human nature, even as our current environment has changed from the ancestral one. Only a relatively small portion of humanity, it seems, has the ability to think around those biases, and understand how they mostly don’t apply in the modern world.

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An example of a specific claim and its retraction.

Scientific American, Mark Boslough, 25 Jun 2025: A Sodom and Gomorrah Story Shows Scientific Facts Aren’t Settled by Public Opinion, subtitled “Claims that an asteroid or comet airburst destroyed the biblical Sodom captured the public’s imagination. Its retraction shows that scientific conclusions aren’t decided by majority rule in the public square”

Personally, I think it a fool’s errand to try to “explain” things reported second/third/fourth/hundredth-hand via oral stories told and retold — usually to make some moral point — before they were ever written down, and then translated and retranslated across different versions of the Bible. It’s building complex infrastructure on a foundation of sand.

Still, let’s see what this article says. It begins by referencing a 2021 claim that a “Tunguska-sized airburst … destroyed a Bronze Age city near the Dead Sea.” How the story went viral, but was then retracted due “to faulty methodology, errors of fact and inappropriate manipulation of digital image data.”

The Sodom airburst paper instead represented the nadir of “science by press release,” in which sensational but thinly supported claims were pitched directly to the media and the public. Press releases, rife with references to Sodom and biblical implications, appeared to be focused as much on titillation as on science.

An example of a meme that, like many other memes, isn’t true.

Contrary to that bastion of error, scientists know that humans use more than 10 percent of their brains, vaccines don’t cause autism, “detox diets” don’t cleanse our bodies, toads don’t give us warts, and bulls don’t hate the color red.

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Simpletons who don’t understand, or dismiss, complexity and subtlety, like the ones currently running our government, are doing real damage.

LA Times, David L. Valentine, 24 Jun 2025: Those cuts to ‘overhead’ costs in research? They do real damage

As a professor at UC Santa Barbara, I research the effects of and solutions to ocean pollution, including oil seeps, spills and offshore DDT. I began my career by investigating the interaction of bacteria and hydrocarbon gases in the ocean, looking at the unusual propensity of microbes to consume gases that bubbled in from beneath the ocean floor. Needed funding came from the greatest basic scientific enterprise in the world, the National Science Foundation.

My research was esoteric, or so my in-laws (and everyone else) thought, until 2010, when the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig exploded and an uncontrolled flow of hydrocarbon liquid and gas jetted into the deep ocean offshore from Louisiana. It was an unmitigated disaster in the Gulf, and suddenly my esoteric work was in demand. Additional support from the National Science Foundation allowed me to go offshore to help figure out what was happening to that petroleum in the deep ocean. I was able to help explain, contextualize and predict what would happen next for anxious residents of the Gulf states — all made possible by the foresight of Vannevar Bush, the original architect of the National Science Foundation.

With discussion of what “overhead” costs cover. Lab coats. Electricity. Disposal of chemicals.

Ending:

The scientific greatness of the United States is fragile. Before the inception of the National Science Foundation, my grandfather was required to learn German for his biochemistry PhD at Penn State because Germany was then the world’s scientific leader. Should the president’s efforts to cut direct and indirect costs come to pass, it may be China tomorrow. That’s why today we need to remind our elected officials that the U.S. scientific enterprise pays exceptional dividends and that chaotic and punitive cuts risk irreparable harm to it.

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Philosophy. Certainty is dangerous.

Washington Post, Clary Doyle, 25 Jun 2025: I just graduated with a philosophy degree. Here’s my message to the Class of 2025., subtitled “Why it’s better to doubt than to know.”

Today, I receive a degree in philosophy. Which, as many of my relatives have pointed out, means it may be a long time before I pay off my loans. So, I am both literally and figuratively indebted to Northwestern because I got to spend the past four years trying to answer questions like: What is the meaning of life? How should I live? And what is the right thing to do?

But I’ll let you in on a secret in my field: Philosophers are less concerned with finding the right answers and more concerned with asking the right questions. No one is quite as famous for this as Socrates. When the Oracle of Delphi supposedly prophesied that he was the wisest man in Athens, Socrates was shocked because he was sure that he knew nothing. He then went around all of Athens, meeting with those who called themselves wise, and asked them questions to find out what they knew. And what he discovered was that they, too, knew nothing. So, indeed, he was the wisest man, because at least he knew that he knew nothing.

There’s a strain among some scientists that claims philosophy is useless. Only science can establish provisional truths. I think I slightly disagree. Philosophy will ask, or wonder, why is science pursuing certain questions and not others? Because certain questions appeal to human vanity? A very open question.

The writer tells her personal story.

I grew up in a religious town, to a religious family. My entire life everyone around me championed faith — belief in the unknown and a steadfast trust that things would work out. They urged me to set my doubts aside, but I remember, even back then, my dissatisfaction with blind faith. I pestered our parish priest with questions about why we ought to do what God said, why women couldn’t be priests, and how we could know if God was real.

Going on with what she learned at college. Then about current regressive politics:

We are now in an unprecedented moment in history in which universities like ours are under attack. And why? Because some people believe that in universities we are being inculcated into the cult of science and liberal ideology. But, in fact, the real reason is because we are not being taught faith. We are not learning to blindly believe. We are learning to doubt and to question and to criticize. And, make no mistake, it is precisely this skill that is powerful and is being attacked.

Exactly.

I take religions as cultural mechanisms to establish arbitrary certainty, without any basis in objective reality, for the sake of tribal conformity and solidarity, and simplicity of living. Despite which, there’s always been a minority of people who are curious about what the real, objective world is like. They are the ones who developed science and invented technology and created our modern world.

Posted in Philosophy, Psychology, Religion, Social Progress | Comments Off

Is Religion Simply a Massively Multiplayer Role-Playing Game?

Posted on Tuesday 24 June 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Since it’s obviously not about objective reality.

Lance Wallnau says Trump’s strike on Iran is setting the stage for the Antichrist;
With thoughts about what humanity is “for”;
Trump confuses supercells with sleeper cells;
Vox on how Trump’s actions aren’t actually very popular;
Trump challenges AOC to a cognitive test — sure, bring it on!

– – –

A follow-up to yesterday’s title item.

Right Wing Watch, Kyle Mantyla, 23 Jun 2025: Lance Wallnau Says Trump’s Strike On Iran Is Setting The Stage For ‘The Antichrist Emerging’

I’ll only quote just a bit.

On the supernatural side, Wallnau said that the strike on Iran was setting the stage for the End Times.

“Jesus is coming back and I believe that this is all part of him setting the stage for his return,” Wallnau said. “It’s going to be an opening of the window through the State Department for the gospel of freedom to be preached into the Middle East, into Asia during these a couple of years we’ve got with Trump. We’ve got to move fast [to see] that this Gospel of the Kingdom goes into all the nations.”

Once again, this is nonsense; it’s people acting as if they’re in a demon-haunted fantasy novel, or game: an MMRPG, which I’m going to define as “massively multiplayer role-playing game” an analogy with MMORPG, Massively multiplayer online role-playing game. Religions aren’t online.

The RWW piece has this bio of Lance Wallnau:

A former oil executive turned right-wing evangelist, Wallnau is a self-proclaimed Christian nationalist and a leading proponent of Seven Mountains Dominionism, which seeks to place right-wing Christians atop the seven primary “mountains” that shape society: government, education, media, arts and entertainment, family, religion, and business.

Once again we can step out to the big picture and wonder what humans are for. (But even that begs the question that humans are “for” something. Maybe we just *are*.) Are we servants to a creator who must be worshiped, as slaves worshiped their masters, and should society remain static in order to maintain this function? Or are we an evolved species, a product of the workings of an immense universe, a way in which the universe has become aware of itself, as Carl Sagan put it, and are only beginning our journey into awareness? If there’s anything like “progress” over human history — which I think there has been, in terms of human health and longevity, and in terms of humans understanding their place in the vast universe — it’s not come from religious movements seeking to maintain the status quo.

This seems to be the central issue in the future of the human race.

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Meanwhile, our president, endorsed by those evangelists because he’s fulfilling their prophecies, supposedly, doesn’t know the difference between supercells and sleeper-cells.

JMG, 24 Jun 2025: Trump Says “Biden Let In A Lot Of Supercells” [AUDIO]

“Biden let a lot of supercells into the United States. He was an incompetent president. He had no idea what he was doing. It was gross incompetence. Among everything else, he let a lot of supercells in, many from Iran. But hopefully we’ll take care of them. What Biden did to this country should never be forgotten.” – Trump, speaking to reporters on Air Force One while en route to The Hague.

Clearly, Trump is the incompetent one, and it’s telling that his fans don’t care. (A supercell is a meteorological term.)

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Here we are. Buyer’s Remorse?

Vox, Christian Paz, 24 Jun 2025: Trump keeps reminding the American public to dislike him, subtitled “The public doesn’t like it when the president actually does something.”

President Donald Trump is now the most unpopular he has been during his second term.

More than half of American adults disapprove of the job he is doing, and he’s underwater on nearly every important issue of the day.

The polling averages show this net disapproval clearly: On the economy, he’s down 13 percentage points. On inflation, he’s down 20 points. Even on immigration, he’s down 2 points. (Those negative marks include foreign policy, though it’s too soon to say how the public is reacting to Trump’s decision to join Israel’s bombing of Iran.)

Still, Trump’s popularity decline has been a dramatic development: After entering office with a positive approval rating and popular support for his agenda, he’s squandered much of it away through various political fights, policy decisions, and public spectacles.

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By all means, let’s do this.

JMG, 24 Jun 2025: Trump Challenges “Stupid AOC” To Cognitive Test

Trump:

“Stupid AOC, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of the ‘dumbest’ people in Congress, is now calling for my Impeachment, despite the fact that the Crooked and Corrupt Democrats have already done that twice before.

…

“When we examine her Test Scores, we will find out that she is NOT qualified for office but, nevertheless, far more qualified than Crockett, who is a seriously Low IQ individual, or Ilhan Omar, who does nothing but complain about our Country, yet the Failed Country that she comes from doesn’t have a Government, is drenched in Crime and Poverty, and is rated one of the WORST in the World, if it’s even rated at all. “

Bring it on! Do it live on TV! But it has to be a real, legitimate test. Note again how Trump is obsessed with superficialities: IQ scores (which no one cares about once you’ve been admitted to college, if you have), and ratings.

Posted in Human Progress, Lunacy, Politics, Religion | Comments Off

Like Living in Someone Else’s Fantasy Novel

Posted on Monday 23 June 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Heather Cox Richardson summarizes the past few days and puts events into context;
(With asides about having read Fail-Safe and watched the movie, this past week; and a Facebook meme about Emperor Hirohito bombing Pearl Harbor and then expecting peace);
Trump’s God-talk;
And Kyle Mantyla at Right Wing Watch spelling out why MAGA hopes the Israel/Iran conflict will bring about the End Times.

– – –

First of all, Heather Cox Richardson summarizes the past few days, and puts things in context that at a glance might not have anything to do with one another. But many people have noticed this pattern over the years: Trump diverts attention from a relative failure to something new and outrageous.

Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson: June 22, 2025

Last night, exactly a week after his military parade fizzled and more than five million Americans turned out to protest his administration, President Donald J. Trump announced that the U.S. had bombed three Iranian nuclear sites: Fordo, Natanz, and Esfahan. He assured the American people that the strikes “were a spectacular military success” and that “Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.” “Iran,” he said, “must now make peace.”

Aside: A meme post has gone around on Facebook in the past couple days, which mimics and mocks Trump, pretending to be from Emperor Hirohito:

We have completed our very successful attack on Hawaii. All planes are now outside of America air space. A full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Pearl Harbor. All planes are safely on their way home. Congratulations to our great Japanese Warriors. There is not another military in the World that could have done this. NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE! Thank you for your attention to this matter.

End aside. Back to Richardson:

For the first time in history, the United States dropped its 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOPs)—twelve of them—on another country.

Another aside: in an odd coincidence of my own, as mentioned previous post, I re-read the book Fail-Safe this past week, and watched the movie version last night; a 60-year-old story about the United States dropping atomic bombs for the first time in history. In that case, by accident.

Moving on with Richardson. Trump’s next standard move, yet again, is to walk back his claims.

It was a triumphant moment for the president, but as reporter James Fallows noted, the bombing of Iran would never seem as “successful” as it did when Trump could still say the nuclear sites were obliterated and Iran and its allies had not yet made a move.

Today administration officials began to walk back Trump’s boast. The Wall Street Journal reported that Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine said it was “way too early” to assess the amount of damage. International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi said that “no one, no one, neither us, nobody else, could be able to tell you how much it has been damaged.”

Tonight David E. Sanger of the New York Times reported that there is evidence to suggest that Iran had moved both uranium and equipment from the Fordo site before the strikes.

Trump, of course, is berating any reports that cast any shadow of a doubt of his claims of total victory.

And then, Richardson goes on, the story of the past couple days takes a weird turn into God-talk.

In last night’s speech to the nation, Trump appeared to reach out to the evangelical wing of MAGA that wanted the U.S. to intervene on Israel’s side in its fight against Iran. Trump said: “And I want to just thank everybody and in particular, God, I want to just say we love you, God, and we love our great military, protect them. God bless the Middle East. God bless Israel, and God bless America. Thank you very much. Thank you.”

*Everyone* thinks God is on their side. After patriotism, it’s the refuge of the scoundrel.

And yet, MAGA seems split on these events.

But while the evangelicals in MAGA liked Trump’s bombing of Iran, the isolationist “America First” wing had staunchly opposed it and are adamant that they don’t want to see U.S. involvement in another foreign war. So today, administration officials were on the Sunday talk shows promising that Trump was interested only in stopping Iran’s nuclear ambitions, not in regime change. On ABC’s This Week, Vice President J.D. Vance said explicitly: “We don’t want to achieve regime change.” On X, poster after poster, using the same script, tried to bring America Firsters behind the attack on Iran by posting some version of “If you are upset that Trump took out Obama’s nuclear facilities in Iran, you were never MAGA.”

Some right-wing extremists are condemning Trump for starting a new war, more or less, since he vowed to stop the endless wars started by previous presidents.

JMG, 23 June: MTG Accuses Trump Of “Complete Bait And Switch”

This is especially rich:

Salon, Alex Galbaith, 22 Jun 2025: “Back then we had dumb presidents”: Vance explains key difference in current Middle East war

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There’s something analogous between the cluelessness and myopia of the current administration, beholden as they are to conservative ideologies despite evidence about the real world, and the cluelessness and myopia of the religious, even the intellectually religious, despite the same.

Recent examples of the intellectually religious include stories about William F. Buckley (e.g. in this post), who denied intellectual freedom as “superstition” because he felt the Catholic religion of his childhood was the absolute truth of the universe, and that recent Ross Douthat book in which he advised that religion is good but especially *his* religion because that’s the one that’s true.

The bridge:

The Daily Beast, Catherine Bouris, 22 Jun 2025: Trump’s Strange God Talk Has People Concerned, subtitled “The president’s multiple mentions of ‘God’ in his Saturday address raised eyebrows among his critics.”

And then this, as noted before, several times. Why are so many Americans obsessed with defending Israel? I’m not sure this is generally understood.

Right Wing Watch, Kyle Mantyla, 20 Jun 2025: MAGA Evangelicals Expect The Israel/Iran Conflict To Bring About The End Times

..[R]eligious-right activists have been nearly unanimous in their demand that the Trump administration lend its full support to Israel in the growing conflict.

The reason for this is that Trump’s evangelical base believes that the Bible commands them to support Israel in order to bring about the return of Jesus Christ and the End Times, as former Rep. Michele Bachmann explained during a recent “World Prayer Network” program.

“This is the one thing a president can’t get wrong according to the Bible, according to Joel 3,” Bachmann said. “A president can’t get Israel wrong. They can’t. This is the one most decisive issue that will either take down a presidency or it will lift up and create great promise for a presidency.”

“This is a spiritual battle,” she continued. “Israel’s at her greatest hour of need right now, every nation on Earth should thank Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu. We should all kiss the ground and be so grateful that Benjamin Netanyahu is prime minister and that he had the guts to take on this greatest evil terror state that has defined plans. And so the United States, in my opinion, we need to be decisive. This is not a negotiation. It can never be a negotiation.”

As neither a Christian nor a Jew, I find this dangerously nonsensical. Every religion thinks it’s the only one that possesses the absolute truth. Now the world is on the brink of war, perhaps nuclear war, because of rival supernatural claims to the ultimate truth.

It’s like living in someone else’s fantasy novel.

Posted in conservatives, Politics, Psychology, Religion | Comments Off

Locus Awards and Being Busy

Posted on Sunday 22 June 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Locus Awards; publisher prospects; recent reading.

It’s a truism that the busier one is, the less time one has to jot notes in one’s journal, or write posts on one’s blog. The past few days have been busy, but the business — busy-ness? — is all over now, so I have time this Sunday afternoon to catch up.

Family from LA arrived on Thursday (with a day’s notice): my partner’s younger son and his wife, expecting their first child in July. Their last trip to the Bay Area to see us and various friends and cousins before the baby comes. Dinners out, lunch with cousins, visits to esoteric coffee shops. They left for home this morning, Sunday, after a trip to Boichik Bagels on 6th St. in Berkeley.

Then the Locus Awards were yesterday, Saturday, at the now usual venue, Preservation Park in downtown Oakland. The event was recorded and posted on YouTube:

The highlight might be, early on in the show, a 5-minute video from Connie Willis, who for years hosted the event, but could not attend this time, and so provided a video recap of past years’ events, from signed bananas to Hawaiian shirts. The event proper unfolds like any other awards show: lots of categories, readings of the “nominees,” announcements of the winners, most of whom are not in attendance. Peter S. Beagle was, and the winner of the Best Science Fiction Novel, one Alexander Boldizar, was. I confess I don’t follow (read) most of the current SF/F writers, but I’m *aware* of most of them; yet the winner in this SF Novel category hadn’t even registered with me.

As it happens, which I will reveal here since it’s academic now and no one reads my blog anyway, I saw the complete list of Locus Awards winners as to be published in the July issue of Locus Magazine when Locus HQ sent me a PDF of the issue on Friday, some 10 days before publication, and a day before the awards ceremony. Given the timing, that issue had the full list of Locus Awards winners. And my reaction was, on seeing the winner in this category, who? What book is this? Well OK, I’ll check it out.

And then, quite coincidentally, entering the hall where the awards were to be presented, and seeing a table run by Tachyon publishers Jacob and Rina Weisman full of books to sell at the back of the room, I saw a copy of this Alexander Boldizar book on display. Only one copy. I bought it. It was already signed, and the author attended, but I did not have time to track him down to personalize it for me, as Rina suggested I might.

Nor did I tell anyone why I’d bought it.

Here is my post about about last year’s event. Gail Carriger and Henry Lien were there, and Bob Blough, Jacob Weisman, and Tim Pratt, who has apparently become Tim Melody Pratt, presenting one of the awards.

But Gary K. Wolfe, long-time Locus reviewer, was there, with his partner Dale Weatherwax Hanes, who seemed to remember meeting me, though not vice versa. We all sat at the same table together, as the buffet began (dumplings and rice from some place in the city, not great), and chatted about his reviews, and the editor and publisher I’m currently working with. I think the result of that conversation is that I will have difficulty finding a publisher for my book for any but a very small prospective audience. McFarland, perhaps, which is where Gary Westfahl publishes. Other respectable folks have published there — David Brin, Howard Hendrix. But McFarland pays nothing to contributors, and publishes only 300 copies for sale mostly to libraries.

Here’s McFarland’s page for the book in which my essay will appear, now scheduled for October: Reimagining Science Fiction, subtitled “Essays on 21st Century Ideas and Authors”

Meanwhile, this past month I’ve been reading and rereading several classic SF novels, especially a couple dystopian novels that in the last year or two have taken up near-permanent residence on the extended bestseller lists: Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. In between those, three others about nuclear apocalypses: Pat Frank’s Alas, Babylon, Nevil Shute’s On the Beach, and Burdick & Wheeler’s Fail-Safe. I’d read all of these once before except for the Shute. I plan to wrap up with the Atwood this coming week, and then get back to sfadb updates, and blog posts about reading these books and others.

Posted in Personal history, science fiction | Comments Off

No Shades of Gray

Posted on Friday 20 June 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Trump wants national parks to reflect only patriotic history;
Trump thinks if you’re not on his side then you “hate America”;
Yet another example: Beware “common sense”;
Short items: Atheists in prison; Trump officials reverse ICE guidelines, again and again; Brian Karem on how we’ve become a failed nation-state in just 150 days.

– – –

Again: everything, for conservatives, must be reduced to simplistic terms, black and white, good and evil. And America must always have been good. Also: another snitch line!

LA Times, 19 Jun 2025: Trump bans ‘negative’ signage at national parks, asks visitors to report text deemed ‘unpatriotic’

In his ongoing war on “woke,” President Trump has instructed the National Park Service to scrub any language he would deem negative, unpatriotic or smacking of “improper partisan ideology” from signs and presentations visitors encounter at national parks and historic sites.

Instead, his administration has ordered the national parks and hundreds of other monuments and museums supervised by the Department of the Interior to ensure that all of their signage reminds Americans of our “extraordinary heritage, consistent progress toward becoming a more perfect Union, and unmatched record of advancing liberty, prosperity and human flourishing.”

Those marching orders, which went into effect late last week, have left Trump opponents and free speech advocates gasping in disbelief, wondering how park employees are supposed to put a sunny spin on monuments acknowledging slavery, Jim Crow laws and the fight for civil rights. And how they’ll square the story of Japanese Americans shipped off to incarceration camps during World War II with an “unmatched record of advancing liberty.”

Of course the Trump administration, in its cluelessness, is the current impediment toward “advancing liberty, prosperity and human flourishing.”

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Yet again: for conservatives everything is either black or white.

Washington Post, opinion by Monica Hesse, 10 Jun 2025: Trump’s lazy insult for liberals is deeply confusing, subtitled “Who gets to define patriotism?”

You hear this over and over again from Trump: if you don’t support him, if you’re not part of MAGA, you must “hate America.” Demonstrating over and over what a simpleton he is. And his fans.

“These Radical Left Democrats are sick of mind, hate our country,” he wrote on Truth Social last weekend. “This is people that hate our country,” he said in a speech last week about protesters. Every time I flip on Fox News, a host or commentator is talking about how liberals hate America, and the insult always takes a beat to register, because — who, me? I’m the dork who has a National Parks Passport to get stamped when I visit the Indiana Dunes.

This has become a central political division in our country. The right accuses the left of hating the United States; the left responds that protest is American (but also, is Finland accepting expats right now?).

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Another running theme on this blog: beware “common sense.”

LA Times, Voices, Veronique de Rugy, 18 Jun 2025: So regulators can just make rules by gut instinct now?

If you think federal regulators care about data-driven, evidence-based policymaking, a case currently before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit will leave you scratching your head.

The case involves a terrible Biden administration regulation driven by Big Labor. In defending this regulation, which mandates that crews on freight trains include at least two people, attorneys for the U.S. Department of Transportation leaned heavily not on data or evidence, but on “common sense.”

This, of course, is about a lot more than trains. It’s a microcosm of a much larger issue.

Study the history of science and technology, and you quickly realize that “common sense” is an appeal to the familiar and the known. It’s reliable only as a rule-of-thumb in applying experience with everyday situations. But when dealing with new knowledge, with new situations, it can be misleading at best. The advancements of the Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution came from dealing with new evidence at face value, not to the extent it conformed with something already familiar.

You might agree that two is better than one, but if “common sense” is the new legal standard, then anything goes.

What’s next? Regulating package-delivery drones because “it feels safer” to keep humans on some kind of joystick? Requiring every grocery store to have cashiers at every checkout lane — even if 90% of customers use self-checkout — because “it feels more secure” to see someone behind the counter?

Safety and security are obviously important. That’s exactly why we should demand real evidence.

Because, to belabor the point, evidence often challenges intuitive “common sense,” especially in novel situations.

The essay goes on to explain the political motivations of the current challenge to the rule.

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Short items.

We’ve heard this one before:

Friendly Atheist, Hemant Mehta, 20 Jun 2025: In 2025, atheists make up only 0.07% of the federal prison population, subtitled “Newly released numbers show self-identified atheists make up a mere fraction of federal inmates—far below their share in the general U.S. population”

Which is to say… believers are getting locked up for crimes more than non-believers are. Following a (supernaturally-based) religion does not make you more moral, to the extent that morality relates to breaking the law.

Look! He’s changed his mind again!

Washington Post, 16 Jun 2025: Trump officials reverse guidance exempting farms, hotels from immigration raids, subtitled “ICE agents have been told to continue conducting enforcement operations at agricultural businesses despite concerns about negative effects on the food industry.”

Oh but this was several days ago. And judging from headlines, he’s changed his mind a couple more times since.

Girls and Boys and Evolutionary Psychology

Posted on Thursday 19 June 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Apparently there’s a worldwide shift in preference for baby girls over baby boys, reversing an age-old bias;
The article cited doesn’t explain the evolutionary rationales for these shifting preferences, but I will;
And Sophie’s Choice;
And it reveals reasons why girls, in their own way, are smarter than boys;
And music by Jocelyn Pook.

– – –

Is this real? What would explain it?

Vox, Bryan Walsh, 15 Jun 2025: The stunning reversal of humanity’s oldest bias, subtitled “Everyone wants to be a girl dad now.”

This piece discusses the evidence, which seems legitimate enough, without at all wondering how the bias toward boys arose in the first place, or why it would be changing now. It begins:

Perhaps the oldest, most pernicious form of human bias is that of men toward women. It often started at the moment of birth. In ancient Athens, at a public ceremony called the amphidromia, fathers would inspect a newborn and decide whether it would be part of the family, or be cast away. One often socially acceptable reason for abandoning the baby: It was a girl.

Female infanticide has been distressingly common in many societies — and its practice is not just ancient history. In 1990, the Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen looked at birth ratios in Asia, North Africa, and China and calculated that more than 100 million women were essentially “missing” — meaning that, based on the normal ratio of boys to girls at birth and the longevity of both genders, there was a huge missing number of girls who should have been born, but weren’t.

Pause right here. Why would a bias for boys exist in the first place? This an easy question given any understanding of human evolution, and of evolutionary psychology. (Which I’ve explored in many books discussed on this site.) First: boys can, potentially, have many more children than girls can. Just think it through. Second, especially in primitive societies, men were valued for their strength and aggression… against men from other tribes. (Tiptree captured this thought well in one of her stories.) And even in more advanced societies, men are regarded as relatively expendable. Women and children are to be saved first. Because, spelling this out, if humanity, or even one tribe, were reduced to just a handful of members, it would do better with several girls/women and one boy/man, than the reverse. (There’s a genuine rationale for the society in Margaret Atwood’s THE HANDMAID’S TALE, even if it’s abhorrent by our current society’s standards.)

(And: this bias is reflected in — at the risk of a spoiler for anyone who has not read the book or seen the movie — Sophie’s Choice.)

Moving on:

But in one of the most important social shifts of our time, that bias is changing. In a great cover story earlier this month, The Economist reported that the number of annual excess male births has fallen from a peak of 1.7 million in 2000 to around 200,000, which puts it back within the biologically standard birth ratio of 105 boys for every 100 girls. Countries that once had highly skewed sex ratios — like South Korea, which saw almost 116 boys born for every 100 girls in 1990 — now have normal or near-normal ratios.

There’s the link to the Economist article, but I’m not a subscriber so I can’t see it.

And then there’s this:

So how, exactly, have we overcome a prejudice that seemed so embedded in human society?

For one, we have relaxed discrimination against girls and women in other ways — in school and in the workplace. With fewer limits, girls are outperforming boys in the classroom. In the most recent international PISA tests, considered the gold standard for evaluating student performance around the world, 15-year-old girls beat their male counterparts in reading in 79 out of 81 participating countries or economies, while the historic male advantage in math scores has fallen to single digits.

Girls are also dominating in higher education, with 113 female students at that level for every 100 male students. While women continue to earn less than men, the gender pay gap has been shrinking, and in a number of urban areas in the US, young women have actually been outearning young men.

One more bit:

Parents around the world may now prefer girls partly because they see them as more likely to take care of them in their old age — meaning a different kind of bias against women, that they are more natural caretakers, may be paradoxically driving the decline in prejudice against girls at birth.

Now, all of this is *very* interesting, and it’s another reflection of how humanity’s environment has changed from the ancestral one to the modern one. The world is filling up; people in wealthier countries realize they don’t need to have as many kids as the ancients did, in part because of higher childhood survival rates. (Because science.) This has been recognized for some time. Further, to the extent that tribal warfare is diminishing, the value of men as aggressive fighters is diminishing, though of course men might deny that. (They transfer their aggressions to sports, perhaps.)

Most fascinating is how, once social strictures are eliminated, women do better at intellectual topics than do men. It’s easy to speculate why. Raising a child is a far more demanding, intellectual task, than the things men do, which are fathering children, and fighting other men.

Again, this article misses the underlying rationales for these demographic shifts. It ends:

But make no mistake — the decline of boy preference is a clear mark of social progress, one measured in millions of girls’ lives saved. And maybe one Father’s Day, not too long from now, we’ll reach the point where daughters and sons are simply children: equally loved and equally welcomed.

Sure, fine.

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Jocelyn Pook. Some of this music was used in Stanley Kubrick’s last film, Eyes Wide Shut, which is how it came to my attention. (Alas, this YouTube video include commercials.)

Posted in Evolution, Music, Psychology | Comments Off

Police Uniforms and Masks; Humor vs. Anger

Posted on Wednesday 18 June 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

- How fake police wear uniforms, and secret police (ICE) wears face masks;
- Robert Reich on the most regressive bill in history;
- The lack of conservative humor;
- Becoming aware of Rebecca Solnit;
- And short items about how Trump cut the suicide prevention hotline for gay people; how support for Israel, no matter what it does, is justified as “Biblical”; and how “deeply religious” is an alarm bell.

– – –

So last week a man dressed up as a policeman shot several Minnesota Democrats and killed two of them. Meanwhile, ICE goes around nabbing people off the street while wearing no uniforms at all, providing no credentials of being law enforcement, and masking their faces. The situation is getting worse. Trumps fans, not paying close attention, presumably think this is what they voted for.

Slate, Sam Adams, 17 Jun 2025: Does America Have Secret Police Now?, subtitled “Of all the things this Trump term, the rapid normalization of masked law enforcement disturbs me the most.”

This is partly about yet another arrest of a politician.

…I watched the video of federal agents handcuffing New York City Comptroller Brad Lander inside an immigration courthouse in lower Manhattan after he demanded to see a judicial warrant for the migrant man they were attempting to arrest. Lander, who is also running for mayor in New York’s Democratic primary, is a familiar face around the courthouse. The agents knew exactly whom they were taking into custody: Minutes beforehand, a reporter heard one asking another, “Do you want to arrest the comptroller?” But who those agents were, or even who they worked for, is more difficult to pin down. Because, in what has become a familiar—and, if you spend enough time on the internet, practically daily—sight, they were hiding their faces behind masks. Even as the New York Times’ story on the situation carried the headline that Lander had been “arrested by ICE,” in the body of the article, the reporter hedged his bets, identifying the individuals only as “several men who appear to be law enforcement officers.”

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Similarly, is this what Trump fans voted for? I continue to think that conservative voters are being snookered into supporting Republican politicians who pander to their religious scruples, while the priorities of the politicians are to get elected and cut taxes for the wealthy, their biggest supporters.

Robert Reich, 16 Jun 2025: The Most Regressive Bill in, well, History, subtitled “Trump Republicans want to take from the poor and working class and give to the rich”

Friends,

The giant Trump Republican bill now before the Senate — Trump’s so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” — cuts taxes for high earners and reduces benefits for the poor and working class.

This would make it more regressive — harming low-income Americans while benefiting high-income Americans — than any major tax or entitlement law in many decades, if not in history, according to new estimates by the Congressional Budget Office.

Now, when you look at this graph, it looks alarming. Such high and low spikes. But the height of the spikes may be an artifact of graph software (like that on my Apple Watch that adjusts the scale of steps watched whenever the range includes an unusually high number of steps on a given day) and not malicious intent.

Reich has a point. Republicans manage to advantage the rich and disadvantage the poor, every single time. But when you think about it, 2.3% or even 3.9% will probably get lost in the noise. People won’t notice.

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One of my Facebook friends posted this today:

Thinking about the No Kings marches of last weekend. I was struck, as always, by the happy number of clever signs, everything from poetry to puns — but I don’t remember seeing anything comparable from right-wing gatherings.

Am I missing something here?

I’ll quote (anonymously) two of the comments:

It strikes me that right-wing people have both (1) little creative ability at the level of protest signs and activities, and (2) absolutely ZERO sense of humor. All I ever see when driving past right-wing demos or seeing them on TV is just hate, hate, hate.

\

I think conservatives are driven more by fear and emotion than by logic and intelligence. It’s awfully hard to be witty when you’re scared and angry. Their humor tends towards insults and slurs as a result.

I’ve noted the parts about lack of sense of humor before. Trump, e.g., only smiles when he’s smirking or sneering. He’s never actually happy or joyful.

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I am gradually becoming aware of Rebecca Solnit, whose posts I now see on Facebook. She’s a writer of a couple dozen books; Wikipedia says “She has written on a variety of subjects, including feminism, the environment, politics, place, and art.”

She’s just started a new newsletter at Meditations in an Emergency (not at Substack, for what that’s worth).

She was interviewed on KQED’s Forum this morning: Rebecca Solnit on Approaching These Times with Hope, Imagination and Perseverance.

I mention this because in the radio interview she discusses her distinction between “isolationists” and “interconnectionists.” And said many profound things. The former aligns with conservatives who think they can live alone and don’t need government. The latter align with those who see the world globally and understand that global problems cannot be solved locally. It’s another perspective on the great divide in the expression of human nature. I’ll check back to see if KQED posts a transcript, and/or figure out which of her many books might discuss this topic.

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Salon, Garrett Owen, 18 Jun 2025: “Devastated and heartbroken”: Trump cuts LGBTQ+ youth services on 988 suicide hotline, subtitled “The Trump administration ends the option for LGBTQ callers to speak with specialists in LGBTQ mental health”

They removed the Press 3 option. Conservatives seems not to mind if gays commit suicide.

Once again, support for Israel is rooted in Biblical theology — despite any atrocities the modern state of Israel might be committing.

JMG, 18 Jun 2025: GOP Rep: US Must Defend Israel Because “It’s Biblical”

And this situation rings true.

The Bulwark, Mona Charen, 18 Jun 2025: The Growing Threat of Homegrown Religious Extremism, subtitled “The alleged Minnesota assassin was known as a ‘deeply religious’ Christian man. That should be an alarm bell for all of us.”

Because “deeply religious” means irrational. And deeply tribal, and antagonistic to people unlike themselves.

Posted in conservatives, Politics, Psychology, Religion | Comments Off

Paleolithic Emotions, Medieval Institutions, and Godlike Technology

Posted on Tuesday 17 June 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

EO Wilson on the real problem of humanity;
Conservatives think you can command thing into existence, despite the evidence of the real world; re: Trump’s tariffs on aluminum;
With my comments about modern technology and globalism;
How the Minnesota killer was deep into a Christian movement about spiritual warfare and demon-possessed politicians;
With my comments about religion as community vs religion as faith in supernatural claims;
And how America, if it was once “exceptional,” isn’t anymore, because Trump.

– – –

Things come around again. It’s all one world. Here’s a quote from E.O. Wilson that I read years ago in one of his books, and now appreciate anew given my recent readings in human nature and politics. He understood.

“The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.”

I find it stated in his book THE ORIGINS OF CREATIVITY from 2017, reviewed here. Though he might well have stated it earlier.

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Once again (a running theme): conservatives think you can command things into existence. They don’t do evidence.

Washington Post, Ed Conway, 17 Jun 2025: Trump’s tariffs are running up against the limits of nature, subtitled “U.S. geography makes it difficult to produce more aluminum — even with a 50 percent tariff for motivation.”

There is, on the face of it, a clear logic behind President Donald Trump’s decision this month to raise the tariff on imported aluminum from 25 percent to 50 percent. He thinks the United States is too dependent on imports and that China is too dominant in the production of this essential metal. In theory, a tariff might spark renewed production in the U.S.

Unfortunately for Trump’s ambitions, the deeper you delve into the weird and wonderful world of aluminum, the more you realize there are physical limits that make a resurgence of U.S. production unlikely.

The article goes on to explain why.

This is another example of how the United States cannot zip itself off from the rest of the world, and insist that it manufacture everything here. Any more than a single state can decide to charge tariffs on products ‘imported’ from other states, and manufacture everything in-state.

Hundreds of years ago, people *did* make due with whatever was at hand. Trains and ocean shipping gradually made trade easier among nations, and across continents. The complexity of the modern world with its magical technology is the result of an interconnected globe. That’s how we have everything from cheap bananas year-round to iPhones made from rare earth minerals mined in China.

Reject globalism, and you’re back to localized existence and a smaller, isolated world. That has an appeal for many people; recalls the TV series Little House on the Prairie and The Waltons. And the key issue is modern politics, is that that’s want many people *want*. Or say they want, using their iPhones. Or their PCs, using a global internet enabled by satellites orbiting a world some of them think is flat.

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Let’s get back to that Minnesota killer.

The Atlantic, Stephanie McCrummen, 17 Jun 2025: The Minnesota Suspect’s Radical Spiritual World, subtitled “Before Vance Boelter was accused of killing a Democratic state lawmaker, he had an active, even grandiose, religious life.”

The emerging biography of Vance Boelter suggests a partial answer, one that involves his contact with a charismatic Christian movement whose leaders speak of spiritual warfare, an army of God, and demon-possessed politicians, and which has already proved, during the January 6 insurrection, its ability to mobilize followers to act.

And

To some degree, the roots of Boelter’s beliefs can be traced to a Bible college he attended in Dallas called Christ for the Nations Institute. A school official confirmed to me that Boelter graduated in 1990 with a diploma in practical theology.

Little known to outsiders, the college is a prominent training institution for charismatic Christians. It was co-founded in 1970 by a Pentecostal evangelist named James Gordon Lindsay, a disciple of the New Order of the Latter Rain, one of many revivalist movements that took hold around the country after World War II. Followers believed that an outpouring of the Holy Spirit was under way, raising up new apostles and prophets and a global End Times army to battle Satanic forces and establish God’s kingdom on Earth. Although Pentecostal churches at the time rejected Latter Rain ideas as unscriptural, the concepts lived on at Christ for the Nations, which has become a hub for the modern incarnation of the movement, known as the New Apostolic Reformation. NAR ideas have spread far and wide through megachurches, global networks of apostles and prophets, and a media ecosystem of online ministries, books, and podcasts, becoming a grassroots engine of the Christian Right.

Sigh. How to account for religion, any religion? Another theme of this blog. It’s a cultural artifact, it’s a tribal mechanism for enforcing solidarity, and it accounts for the psychological tendency, especially in childhood, for perceiving causes in nature.

I think most modern people who profess to follow religions do so in a social sense. They like the feeling of solidarity within a like-minded community. They like the feeling of shared values, however vaguely defined. And most of them — as Steven Pinker has observed — do not actually believe in the literal truth of the supernatural claims in the Bible, or other religious books. The evidence of the actual world around us is enough to dissuade them of that.

The problem comes with those who do.

“Everyone brings faith to their life and the things they do—the question is, in what ways does your faith inform your actions and your decision making?” he told me. “Without knowing exactly what motivated the shooter, we can say that being oriented into this kind of NAR thinking, to my mind, it’s just a matter of time before an individual or group of individuals take some kind of action against the enemies of God and the demons in their midst.”

No, everyone does *not* bring “faith” — belief in imaginary things — to their lives. It’s those who have not who have built our modern world, which has not depended on “faith.”

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If American was once “exceptional,” it isn’t any more. Because Trump.

Washington Post, Gene Sperling, 16 Jun 2025: The worst thing Trump is doing to the economy isn’t tariffs, subtitled “Fidelity to blind justice and institutional integrity made the U.S. economy exceptional. No more.”

A major component of this American economic exceptionalism has been our demonstrated fidelity to serious economic norms, nonpolitical economic institutions and the rule of law.

I should leave it there. Read it again. This is what MAGA and Trump are doing away with.

But there’s a great ending here, about what investors in the US would be thinking now.

Consider what a multinational CEO contemplating new production in the United States must consider: Will they be subject to lawless executive orders that cancel federal contracts based on political resentment? Will defying the whims of administration policy trigger the kind of relentless government attack now facing Harvard? Will refusing to let the White House dictate pricing and production choices lead to the president threatening a company-specific tariff rate — as we are now seeing with Apple? With Trump accepting a luxury plane from Qatar and openly hosting a “pay to play” dinner for a family-owned company, will what Griffin called a “terrifying” swift rise of “crony capitalism” mean subtle or even coercive pressure to enrich the president’s family? With the president suggesting he’s willing to flout the law and have the IRS revoke the tax-exempt status of certain U.S. institutions — and with a House reconciliation bill that would allow the president the power to raise taxes by 5 to 20 percentage points on foreign investors if he finds their home country has engaged in “discriminatory” taxes — will any company with foreign headquarters still believe they will receive impartial tax treatment from our government? Will such companies send their best talent to help run U.S. facilities if their executives and family members could get locked up for weeks on end, as has already happened to several individuals with valid work and travel visas?

If American exceptionalism meant one thing, it was not having to ask these questions. Restoring the nation’s economic brand will require congressional and business leaders, along with dedicated citizens, to demand that a national commitment to serious economic policy norms and the rule of law is not a thing of the past.

Posted in Conservative Resistance, conservatives, Human Nature, Human Progress, Politics, Psychology, Religion | Comments Off

Are Trump and MAGA intending to ethnically cleanse Democrats? Signs Point That Way

Posted on Monday 16 June 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Paul Krugman and Guardian on how the parade was a flop, while No Kings Day was a hit;
Photos from Trump’s military parade;
Motivated reasoning and conspiracy theories about the Minnesota shootings, even though the facts are apparent enough (and implicate a right-wing, religious, shooter);
Bigger picture: Trump takes aim at states’ rights — at least, blue states’ rights;
And he wants VA doctors to refuse treatment to Democrats (!?);
Is this building up to some kind of ethnic cleansing of Democrats?
Adam Serwer’s “tyrant test”;
And Fox News.

– – –

First, just to restate the situation.

Paul Krugman, 16 Jun 2025: Trump’s parade flopped. No Kings Day was a hit.

America is no longer a full-fledged democracy. We are currently living under a version of competitive authoritarianism — a system that (like Orban’s Hungary or Erdogan’s Turkey) is still democratic on paper but in which a ruling party no longer takes democracy’s rules seriously. As a result those in power

violate those rules so often and to such an extent … that the regime fails to meet conventional minimum standards for democracy.

Trumpists, however, haven’t yet fully consolidated their hold. America still has a chance of reclaiming itself from the grip of brazen corruption, mindless destruction, and contempt both for the rule of law and for our erstwhile allies. We don’t have to become a country bullied into submission.

But we’re teetering on the edge, and one of the most important ways we can step back from that edge is for ordinary Americans to engage in mass protests.

Another view.

The Guardian, J Oliver Conroy in Washington, 15 Jun 2025: Trump coveted a military spectacle but his parade proved underwhelming: ‘Just kind of lame’

Subtitled “Trump’s army parade was neither the totalitarian North Korean spectacle that critics had grimly predicted, nor the triumph of Maga nationalism fans craved”

And a few of my Facebook friends have reposted this item from a group called The Trumpland Diary:

I WATCHED THE ENTIRE MILITARY PARADE SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO, with a long description and several photos, including one of a very disgruntled looking Trump.

Here’s that image.

And while I realize that Facebook posts from random unknown people aren’t worth much, I saw another today, several times, about how the US Army “phoned it in.” Not marching in step, and so on.

Back to the shootings in Minnesota.

Salon, Amanda Marcotte, 16 Jun 2025: Conspiracy theories about Minnesota shooter aren’t just deflection. They’re dangerous, subtitled “False counter-narratives signal to other terrorists that MAGA has their back”

Since the tragic events in Minnesota on early Saturday morning that left two dead and two others in critical condition, state authorities have painted a clear picture of what Vance Boelter, 57, is accused of doing. They say Boelter murdered former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark, and also shot State Sen. John Hoffman and his wife Yvette. Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minn., called the shootings “a politically motivated assassination” targeting Democrats. Police recovered a list of around 70 potential targets, including politicians, community leaders and abortion providers. All the listed politicians were Democrats. According to the New York Times, Boelter’s roommate and longtime friend says the suspected shooter voted for Donald Trump. Boelter’s online activities show he is a right-wing Christian who opposes abortion and denies that LGBTQ identities are real. While we don’t yet have the text of the manifesto Boelter left behind, it’s fairly obvious what’s likely to be in it.

Motivate reasoning is taking every new fact as evidence, no matter how twisted, for one’s preconceived narrative.

Despite these facts, it didn’t take long for MAGA forces online to snap into action with a false counter-narrative: that Boelter is a left-winger and Republicans are the real victims. Trump’s traveling companion Laura Loomer falsely claimed Boelter “was friends with Walz” and was associated with the “No Kings” protests. “The organizers of NO KINGS and @GovTimWalz need to be detained by the FBI and interrogated,” she demanded. Dating “guru”-turned-MAGA influencer Mike Cernovich also blamed Walz, claiming the governor had Hortman — who was actually Walz’s friend — “executed” for voting one time with Republicans on a bill. “MORE DEMOCRAT TERR0RISM!” screamed Nick Sortor, a far right influencer with over a million followers on X. Glenn Beck, Breitbart and other far-right outlets went to work on Facebook, suggesting to their audiences that Walz was responsible for the shooting, even though he was on the list of Boelter’s targets. Charlie Kirk of Turning Points USA blamed the shooting of Democratic lawmakers and their family members on anyone who objects to rising fascism.

I think that subtitle is significant: “False counter-narratives signal to other terrorists that MAGA has their back”

Other details.

PolitiFact, 15 Jun 2025: How conservative X accounts promoted wild theory implicating Gov. Tim Walz in lawmaker’s killing

Whereas the facts seem plain. (Omitting photos from these pieces.)

AP News, 16 Jun 2025: Friends say Minnesota shooting suspect was deeply religious and conservative

And

NPR, 16 Jun 2025: The suspect in the shooting of 2 Minnesota lawmakers had a ‘hit list’ of 45 officials

Authorities in Minnesota said Monday that the man arrested in a Saturday attack that killed one state lawmaker and left another wounded had a “hit list” of 45 elected officials — all Democrats.

Stepping out to the big picture.

Salon, Heather Digby Parton, 16 Jun 2025: Trump takes aim at states’ rights, and the Constitution, subtitled “”The once hallowed GOP concept is under threat by a would-be king”

Conservatives defend states’ rights when they want to excuse their own behavior, but deny such rights to blue states that Trump and MAGA want to control.

The current example is Trump’s redirection of ICE to target blue states: “In a Sunday night rant on Truth Social, he ordered ICE to step up its raids in cities and states that are run by his political enemies…” But I won’t quote Trump.

It’s not about law and order, or even immigration.

Trump is being very clear here about why he’s targeting these cities. It’s not because of immigration, although he’s using that as an excuse. After all, two of the three states with the largest populations of undocumented people are the red states of Texas and Florida. And in recent days, Trump has exempted the agriculture, hospitality, and meatpacking industries, which apparently aren’t part of the “Democratic Power Center.” (The construction and manufacturing sectors better get on the ball and start doing some serious bootlicking.) No, he sees this as a way to start a conflagration in these cities, giving him the excuse to supersede the power of elected state and local officials by sending in troops, whether it be federalizing state National Guards or sending in active duty Marines.

And then there’s this, today.

JMG, 16 Jun 2025: New Order Lets VA Doctors Refuse To Treat Democrats

Quoting The Guardian, 16 Jun 2025: ‘Extremely disturbing and unethical’: new rules allow VA doctors to refuse to treat Democrats, unmarried veterans, subtitled “Department of Veterans Affairs says the changes come in response to a Trump executive order ‘defending women’”

Doctors at Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals nationwide could refuse to treat unmarried veterans and Democrats under new hospital guidelines imposed following an executive order by Donald Trump.

The new rules, obtained by the Guardian, also apply to psychologists, dentists and a host of other occupations. They have already gone into effect in at least some VA medical centers.

(Why are the “unmarried” a target? I’m guessing they think that’s code for “gay” because they don’t realize that gays can get married. Until the Supreme Court repeals that one too.)

\\\

Adam Serwer is the author of The Cruelty Is the Point: The Past, Present, and Future of Trump’s America, a book in my TBR stack.

The Atlantic, Adam Serwer, 16 Jun 2025: The Tyrant Test, subtitled “A leader who uses military force to suppress his political opposition ought to lose the right to govern.”

\\\

So what is this all adding up to? Trump targets blue states and blue cities, he wants to deny healthcare to Democrats! Protesters against authoritarianism are often accused of over-reacting. (“Trump Derangement Syndrome”) It won’t be that bad. But maybe it will be. If Trump and MAGA wanted to literally disappear the left, the Democrats in blue cities, the scientists in elite universities, wouldn’t these be their first steps? It’s happened before.

This is hilarious.

JMG, 16 Jun 2025: Fox Host: “No Kings” Protesters Were “Green-Haired, Soy-Fed, Bitter, Disgruntled, Vampire-Looking Leftists”

While this Fox host Tomi Lahren has her long blond hair carefully draped forward over her shoulders. As so many of them do. And anyone who does not conform to the current conservative standard, is weird, in one way or another. This is another measure of a cult.

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