One item today. A long piece from David Brooks, trying to understand how we got here, given history.
The Atlantic, David Books, 8 Jul 2025: Why Do So Many People Think That Trump Is Good?, subtitled “The work of the moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre helps illuminate some central questions of our time.” [gift link]
(First published 1957. Edition here: Orion/Gollancz/SF Masterworks 2003, 178pp, with an introduction by Stephen Baxter)
I’m no expert on Robert A. Heinlein — I still haven’t read Farah Mendlesohn’s book about him — but I have read *almost* all his books at least once (excepting one or two at the very end), and over the past decade have been working my way back through the bulk of them for a second (or third) time. Continue reading
Washington Post, Bruce Partridge, 6 Jul 2025: These scientific advances were ‘Made in the U.S.A.’ Will they continue?, subtitled “America has long led in research. Budget cuts could jeopardize that dominance.”
Just sayin’.
An insight from Adam-Troy Castro, on Facebook, about people who “do their own research”: Sunday, July 6, 2025 at 8:58
Continue reading
From my favorite aggregate site. More evidence of conservative racism. And the idiocy of the extremes.
JMG, 5 Jul 2025: Idaho AG Bans “Everyone Is Welcome” Signs In Schools
Conservatives in America.
The New Republic, 3 Jul 2025: Congress Gives ICE More Money Than It Could Have Ever Imagined, subtitled “It’s impossible to overstate how much power ICE just got from Trump’s budget.”
See how this works? (As usual, follow the money.)
JMG, 3 Jul 2025: Republican Megadonors To Get Tens Of Millions In Federal Contracts To Run Florida’s Concentration Camp
What’s next? Dungeons and shackles? Do Trump voters know what they’ve done? Are they really fine with this? I fear that some of them are.
The New Republic, Melissa Gira Gant, 2 Jul 2025: The Grand Opening of an American Concentration Camp, subtitled “The Republicans are proudly calling it ‘Alligator Alcatraz.’ Let’s call it what it is.”
Sometimes you wonder if lawyers, judges, and justices are so focused on the validity of a particular law that they don’t consider the implications of their ruling. Obsessed with the technical details and missing the big picture.
Slate, Heidi Feldman, 30 Jun 2025: Supreme Court Rules Some Americans Have a Constitutional Right to Insist on Theocracy
(Four Walls Eight Windows, October 1993, 299pp)
In June I focused on reading classic science fiction novels, partly to see how many I could get through in one month, considering other obligations (answer: 6 and a bit), and partly to revisit two novels that have, in the past couple three years, become semi-permanent residents on extended bestseller lists, just as Orwell’s NINETEEN EIGHT-FOUR and Bradbury’s FAHRENHEIT 451 have been for decades.
The first of these is Octavia Butler’s PARABLE OF THE SOWER, from 1993. I read it shortly after it came out (that’s the first edition shown above), and thought it a perfectly decent novel, if not especially outstanding. There have been plenty of other near-future novels about the collapse of society, the survivors having to fend off criminals and live off the land. What made it distinctive, perhaps, is that it was apparently set in Altadena CA, where the author lived at the time, and involved a female black main character. (And that the author was a female black author.)
