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’

Continue reading →

Posted in Human Progress, Lunacy, Politics, Religion | Comments Off on Is Religion Simply a Massively Multiplayer Role-Playing Game?

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

Continue reading →

Posted in conservatives, Politics, Psychology, Religion | Comments Off on Like Living in Someone Else’s Fantasy Novel

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.

Continue reading →

Posted in Personal history, science fiction | Comments Off on Locus Awards and Being Busy

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’

Continue reading →

Posted in conservatives, History, Psychology | Comments Off on No Shades of Gray

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:

Continue reading →

Posted in Evolution, Music, Psychology | Comments Off on Girls and Boys and Evolutionary Psychology

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.”

Continue reading →

Posted in conservatives, Politics, Psychology, Religion | Comments Off on Police Uniforms and Masks; Humor vs. Anger

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 things 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.”

Continue reading →

Posted in Conservative Resistance, conservatives, Human Nature, Human Progress, Politics, Psychology, Religion | Comments Off on Paleolithic Emotions, Medieval Institutions, and Godlike Technology

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

Continue reading →

Posted in conservatives, Lunacy, Politics | Comments Off on Are Trump and MAGA intending to ethnically cleanse Democrats? Signs Point That Way

Say Black Is White, and Some Will Believe You

Posted on Sunday 15 June 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • The ‘No Kings’ demonstrations yesterday were a huge success, the parade in Washington DC less so;
  • How the White House lies about those demonstrations;
  • How MAGA and Musk are somehow blaming the *left* for the shootings of Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota;
  • With thoughts about the upside-down world of MAGA conservatives.
– – –

As widely covered in the new media, hundreds of “No Kings” demonstrations were held across the country yesterday, Saturday.

A gallery of photos.

Salon, Alan Taylor, 15 Jun 2025: Photos: ‘No Kings’ Protests Across America, subtitled “Yesterday, according to estimates by event organizers, millions marched in protest against the Trump administration, including its recent controversial immigration-enforcement raids. Hundreds of ‘No Kings’ demonstrations took place in cities and towns throughout the U.S.”

Continue reading →

Posted in Lunacy, Politics, Psychology | Comments Off on Say Black Is White, and Some Will Believe You

Trump and MAGA’s War on California

Posted on Saturday 14 June 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • News today: Trump’s parade, No Kings demonstrations, and a dress-up cop shoots Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota;
  • Charlie Warzel on the surfeit of information and how the right can invent via AI narratives to its advantage;
  • Similar gaslighting about Alex Padilla;
  • Sensing the deportation targets are absurd, Trump changes the targets (TACO!);
  • David Barton lies again; Shane Vaughn celebrates an imminent arrival of the end times; and a new entry in “If the US press covered the US the way it covers other countries.”
– – –

Today is Trump’s parade; today hundreds, maybe thousands, of No Kings demonstrations are being held in cities across the nation; and today we woke to learn that two Minnesota lawmakers and their spouses had been shot overnight by someone dressed as a policeman, killing one couple, with a list of other planned targets, include abortion providers and other Democrats.

One way of looking at this is that Trump is an egomaniac, Trump and MAGA have declared war on the blue states and Trump has had the US military invade California with the intent of displacing its elected leaders. Californians are protesting. Of course. And — I’m speculating here — elements of MAGA are taking to violence against those who oppose their king.

The Atlantic, Charlie Warzel, 13 Jun 2025: I’m Running Out of Ways to Explain How Bad This Is (Again), subtitled “The L.A. distortion effect”

Continue reading →

Posted in authoritarianism, Politics, Religion, Tribalism | Comments Off on Trump and MAGA’s War on California