Sea Change: Living in History, and Most People Not Noticing

Posted on Thursday 20 February 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • By supporting Putin and demonizing Ukraine, the US is withdrawing from the post-World War II world that it created and has supported for 80 years;
  • With comments from Heather Cox Richardson, Nicholas Kristoff, Slate’s Emily Tamkin, and NYT’s Peter Baker;
  • And my observation that most people don’t realize that history is happening around them, and haven’t throughout history.
– – –

Heather Cox Richardson, February 19, 2025

The past week has solidified a sea change in American—and global—history.

A week ago, on Wednesday, February 12, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced at a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group in Brussels, Belgium, that President Donald Trump intended to back away from support for Ukraine in its fight to push back Russia’s invasions of 2014 and 2022.

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A Continual Stream of Lies and Gaslighting

Posted on Wednesday 19 February 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Trump claims Ukraine started the war; Zelensky accuses him of living in “disinformation space”;
  • Musk, corrected about the lie that 150-year-old people are still receiving Social Security, keeps spreading that lie;
  • Tom Nichols on Trump and Musk and Hannity, who have no idea how American democracy works;
  • Thomas L. Friedman on how the world is complex, and how conservatives do not understand this;
  • Dahlia Lithwick realizes DOGE is a protection racket.
– – –

Today’s outrageous statement by Trump, made so casually it’s hard to believe it was a red herring meant to distract the media for a news cycle so they would not notice how Musk continues to dismantle the government; more likely it’s Trump gaslighting the world, sure that whatever he says will be believed by his followers. We’re in Orwell territory, again.

Politico, 19 Feb 2025: Trump blaming Ukraine for Putin’s war leaves Europe reeling subtitled “The U.S. president called out Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy during a diatribe against Kyiv.”

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How Soon Will This Madness End?

Posted on Tuesday 18 February 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

I keep thinking this has to implode, sooner rather than later. Trump and/or Musk will do something so egregious, so dangerous, that *someone* will step up to reign them in, even if very carefully, behind the scenes, so as not to upset the clueless MAGA supporters.

  • The Trump team keeps firing essential workers, perhaps by “accident,” now officials working on bird flu, and FAA employees despite several recent plane crashes, and earlier, the nuclear stockpile team.
  • Trump speaks like a true dictator about saving the country;
  • Trump and Musk’s claims of abuse have no evidence;
  • The immigrant taking away American jobs is… Elon Musk;
  • They want to throw people in jail;
  • How evil is the absence of empathy;
  • Measles outbreaks are linked to religious schools;
  • Is Donald Trump more like Hitler or August Caesar? Both;
  • Heather Cox Richardson on the “liberal consensus” and how the majority of Americans don’t actually want to get rid of government programs.

Examples of the first item today and yesterday.

NBC News, 18 Feb 2025: USDA says it accidentally fired officials working on bird flu and is trying to rehire them

Also:

NBC News, 17 Feb 2025: Hundreds of FAA employees are let go as Trump’s mass layoffs continue, subtitled “Nearly 300 Federal Aviation Administration employees were fired just weeks after a midair collision over Washington, D.C., killed 67 people.”

Not to mention the Delta rollover plane crash in Toronto yesterday.

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Mark Lilla, IGNORANCE AND BLISS

Posted on Monday 17 February 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Subtitled “On Wanting Not to Know”
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Dec. 2024, 239p, including 12p notes and acknowledgments)

This is a little book published just a couple months ago that appealed for a couple reasons. First, I read the author’s previous book, THE ONCE AND FUTURE LIBERAL (review here), which was a decent-enough summary of various political matters, if not especially revelatory. And second, this book suggests it might inform associated themes about disinformation and fake news, about why people would prefer conspiracy theories to objective truth.

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Today’s Political Readings from Facebook and Substack

Posted on Saturday 15 February 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Musk’s boys don’t know Cobol; Robert Reich accuses MSM of being wishy-washy about the coup; Paul Krugman on the Trump administration suppressing health information; Connie Willis on Trump’s “massacre” of attorneys who resigned rather than drop charges against Eric Adams.

– – –

First, a possible explanation for that bizarre claim by Musk that he’d found 150-year-old Social Security recipients.

Facebook post by Christopher Rowe, 14 Feb 2025:

Most of Musk’s stuff is done out of simple hatred and naked ambition, but one shouldn’t overlook the great percentage that comes from simple incompetence. (This isn’t even to get started on his hypocrisy, such as implementing drug testing on federal employees who’ve never had them imposed under any administration–the guy has bragged about doing hallucinogens and smoked pot during an interview). These people have done more to spit on the US in six weeks than Andrew “Trail of Tears” Jackson did in eight years.

Well… this is plausible, about Musk’s kids, despite being computer programmers, are likely uninformed about older computer languages. They’re young. Anything to substantiate this? Let’s Google. OK, here’s this.

Daily Kos, 14 Feb 2025: Nope. There are no 150-year-olds on Social Security. It’s COBOL!

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What They Mean By Traditional

Posted on Saturday 15 February 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Family arriving today for the weekend, so just a few quick items for now.

  • DOGE is about putting “traditional” Americans back in charge;
  • Where Nazi flags are fine, and Pride flags are banned;
  • Musk is about purging federal workers to replace them with theocrats and fanatics;
  • RFK Jr.: it takes an engineer to build a bridge but any a-hole can blow it up;
  • Conservatives were outraged over Obama’s executive orders, not so much about Trump’s;
  • Trump officials “accidentally” fired people in charge of US nuclear weapon security;
  • Trump wants to destroy all academia, not just the woke parts;
  • Republicans are just fine with letting Musk gut the government;
  • Actual judicial sleaze is Trump’s A.G. trying to get those charges against Eric Adams dismissed.

\\

Slate, Ben Mathis-Lilly, 14 Feb 2025: What the DOGE Takeover Really Means, subtitled “In the dark corners of social media where Elon Musk and the people who aspire to work for him live, it’s clear: This is about putting ‘traditional’ Americans back in charge.”

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Richard Dawkins: THE MAGIC OF REALITY

Posted on Friday 14 February 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Subtitled: How We Know What’s Really True
Illustrated by Dave McKean
(Free Press, Oct. 2011, 271pp, including 6p of index and acknowledgements)

When I was organizing my nonfiction books notes and posts last December, I was surprised that I had nothing on this book, though I was sure I read it. My records show I read it shortly after publication, in 2011. I suppose the reason I didn’t write up any notes is that it’s Dawkins-lite, somewhat like FLIGHTS OF FANCY (review here), heavily illustrated and aimed at, perhaps, younger readers. The themes are pretty basic. Still, those themes are also fundamental. So I reread the book last month, to capture the book’s ideas here. There are three essential ideas.

The first essential idea is in the subtitle. The book is a tour of a several basic scientific topics, not just to provide the current state of knowledge on those topics, but to explain *how* people reached these conclusions. You don’t get that in intro science courses in high school or even college, unless you specifically take history of science courses. (At least, in my experience.) Thus some people are put off by what they see as the impudence or even arrogance of scientists dictating what’s true and what’s not — especially when what they claim to be true conflicts with religious myths.

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And They’re Doing It All In Plain Sight

Posted on Thursday 13 February 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Paul Krugman about Elon Musk, fraudster;
  • Brian Tyler Cohen on how Musk’s search for fraud is only to advance his personal interests;
  • How if Musk were trying to find fraudulent spending, he would have gone in with accountants, not computer programmers, with a link to USASpending.gov;
  • Connie Willis summarizes the press conference with Elon Musk, and Trump in the background;
  • Short items: about 218 GOP representatives who have no purpose but to make up hysterical lies; RFK Jr. confirmed, why not a flat earther to head NASA?; How Ted Cruz thinks studying solar eclipses is “woke”; how Europe no longer relies on the US as a reliable ally; how Trump is pondering the birthright citizenship of Native Americans; how DEI is the new N-word; and how the removal of the T from LGBTQ is an Orwellian rewriting of history.

Paul Krugman, 13 Feb 2025: Elon Musk Is Faking It, subtitled “The fraudster who cried ‘fraud'”

Krugman starts with that howler about how USAID supposedly spent $50 million on condoms to Hamas. There was no evidence. Continue reading →

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Diversity is Out, Racism is In

Posted on Wednesday 12 February 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Military veterans say the trans ban is logistical nonsense;
  • How Musk and Vance stood up for a self-avowed racist;
  • How Trump and his administration are intentionally on the wrong side of history, favoring “competent white men”;
  • How philosopher Richard Rorty anticipated a renewed era of public cruelty;
  • How Republicans love spending cuts, just not in their own states;
  • Another view from Canada: “It’s been nice knowing you.”
– – –

Slate, Timothy Soseki Kudo, Lindsey Melki, and Kenneth Zavada, 12 Feb 2025: We Served in the Military. Trump Has No Idea How Much Damage He’s Just Done to It., subtitled “The trans ban isn’t just immoral. It’s logistical nonsense.”

However, as military veterans, we know that this [Trump’s] order will accomplish exactly the opposite. When it’s 5 degrees out and expected to drop, and it’s you and your battle buddy’s turn on night watch to share a sleeping bag in the snow-covered mudhole the two of you have spent the past 12 hours digging, the last thing on anyone’s mind is gender or sex. In those moments, all that matters is a person’s character and the mutual trust that comes from living and training together until you’re certain you have each other’s back.

Trump, recall, had bone splints.
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Not-a-Surprises

Posted on Tuesday 11 February 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

I see TV commercials about health insurance that complain about “bills” and “not-a-bills”. I get plenty of both too.

  • Not-a-surprise: Trump and Musk are really after tax cuts for the wealthy.
  • Trump doesn’t grasp the point of foreign aid;
  • Conservatives upset by the Super Bowl half-time show are apparently for diversity after all;
  • How the Trump administration thinks America is full of the wrong kind of people;
  • A Thomas B. Edsall round-up on this attack against modern American liberalism;
  • Links about Musk and taxpayer-funded research, how Trump is emulating Hungary’s Orbán, and how maybe Trump’s zone-flooding can’t go on forever;
  • Not-a-surprise: A Trump admin puts election security staffers, whose job is to ensure the security of US elections, on leave.
– – –

This is the least surprising thing yet.

Slate, Alexander Sammon, 1 Feb 2025: This Is Not About Cost Cutting, subtitled “What Trump and Musk really want out of their government rampage is hiding in plain sight.”
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