- How energy independence, which even Fox News once thought could avoid the quandary we now face in the Strait or Hormuz, is now regarded as a scam by the likes of JD Vance;
- How Trump and MAGA are all for religious freedom… for Christians, but definitely not for Muslims;
- While MAGA Christians want to repeal the 19th amendment and be much more intolerant toward ‘Satanic’ nonbelievers;
- The White House Cage Match, and a Newsmax Host’s eagerness to punch people: are conservatives prone to settling disputes with violence? (Also yesterday’s item about guns);
- The kids are all right, say new studies, better than previous generations, and the various psychological reasons many people believe otherwise.
We have only conservatives to blame.
Media Matters, Allison Fisher, 18 Mar 2026: Fox personalities used to claim that energy independence would shield the US from potential retaliatory action by Iran — such as closing the Strait of Hormuz, subtitled “As gas prices rise, the network has scarcely invoked the concept of ‘energy independence,’ mentioning it a fraction as often as it did during the start of the Russia-Ukraine war”
Hmm, why would that be? Perhaps because the current administration thinks energy independence is a scam.
JMG, via Poke and New Republic: Vance: Take Comfort That Gas Prices Are Worse For US Allies Because “They Focused On Green Energy Scams”
They’re not scams; they’re what are necessary to avoid all the ill effects of continuing to use fossil fuels. He’s a dolt, pandering to conservative resistance to anything new and strange.
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More on Christian intolerance, out loud. NYT summarizes recent examples.
NY Times, Editorial Board: Trump’s Hypocrisy on Religious Freedom
Religious freedom for Trump and American conservatives is only about Christians.
The Trump administration holds itself up as a defender of religious freedom. It has created a Religious Liberty Commission, increased funding for faith-based schools and changed vaccine policies to allow more religious exemptions. It ordered a Christmas Day missile attack in Nigeria on what President Trump described as a terrorist group that was killing Christians. The administration has punished universities in the name of preventing antisemitism. “I’ve done more for religion than any other president,” Mr. Trump claimed at the National Prayer Breakfast this year.
Yet there is an exception to this effort. Mr. Trump and his Republican Party appear uninterested in protecting the religious rights of Muslims. Instead, they are often hostile to Islam.
Recalling the Muslim ban. Tommy Tuberville, Brandon Gill, Randy Fine, Andy Ogles. Once again, the first lesson of comparative religion for American conservatives: all religions except your own are crazy and dangerous. (And the others likely think the same about yours.)
To me, they’re all equally crazy and dangerous. Examples.
Right Wing Watch, Kyle Mantyla, 18 Mar 2026: ‘Good Christian Sexism’: Dale Partridge Seeks To Repeal The 19th Amendment In The Next Decade
He has a book coming up, called “19 Reasons to Repeal the 19th Amendment,” which is what gave women the right to vote in 1920.
Mantyla concludes noting this:
In addition to some “good Christian sexism,” Partridge’s comments reveal some fundamental misunderstanding about how our government works. The 19th Amendment is part of the Constitution and therefore could not be repealed or ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court—it would take the kind of state-by-state fight that led to the amendment’s ratification. Good luck with that.
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Again I’ll note my position about this: MAGA Christians do not actually believe in the American Constitution and its Amendments, nor Democracy, and they don’t entirely believe in their Bible either, since they are very selective in what they quote. They’re actually just primitive tribalists who would impose their blinkered values about the world on everyone else, since they think maybe they can. I’m sure other pious groups around the world wish they could do the same, in the name of *their* religion.
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One more.
JMG, quoting a speech given to “loud applause from a large audience”: MAGA Christian Nationalist: Tolerance Of Nonbelievers Is From Satan, “We Need To Be A Lot More Intolerant”
Look how he spins it:
“We are way too tolerant as a people and a nation. There’s biblical precedent for that. They didn’t tolerate this kind of behavior in ancient Israel. They didn’t tolerate it in Jesus’s time. Jesus was very direct about this kind of stuff.
“We teach this incredibly nice, sanitized version, I would say an effeminized version, of Jesus. This is a man who made a cat o’ ‘nine tails and went in to kick the tables over and screamed at people and called them vipers for sinning, for doing terrible things against the law of God.”
You know what? I *don’t care* whatever biblical precedents there might be for whatever he believes, and nor do most Americans. We live by the Constitution, not by the Bible or any other ancient religious text. They never seem to understand this.
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Two more.
JMG, from Axios: Trump: WH Cage Match Is “Hottest Ticket I’ve Seen”
and
JMG: Newsmax Host: Punching People Makes Things Better
See the connection? How do we not see these people as brute savages, whose only recourse to settling disputes is violence?
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Ending on an upbeat note, another example of how the world is actually a better place than many people, especially conservatives, think.
Scientific American, Melinda Wenner Moyer, 17 Mar 2026: The kids are all right, subtitled “Surprising studies show young people are doing better than previous generations in many ways”
Long piece with both anecdotes and studies. (I’ll note it’s a truism that “kids these days” never meet the standards of their forebears; this has always been true; it’s another example of the “good ol’ days” fallacy.)
If you were to ask most people how kids are doing these days, you’d probably get an earful of complaints and concerns. Compared with children from past generations, kids today are often portrayed as being less mentally healthy, less resilient and less empathetic. “America’s Children Are Unwell,” read a New York Times headline last November; online magazine Parents recently ran “How to Know if Your Kid Is a Narcissist—and What to Do about It.” In a 2025 Common Sense Media survey of 1,300 nationally representative parents, 61 percent said they believe kids today lag behind past generations in their morals and values, and more than half said youth today are less resilient and independent.
Although quality data are sparse, the research that does exist suggests a different narrative—one in which kids are faring better in many ways than those of previous generations. Studies suggest youths are more empathetic and less narcissistic than in the past, as well as more open-minded and inclusive. Drug use is down, youth violence has dropped and teen pregnancies have declined. IQs have gone up, and kids exhibit more self-restraint and patience than they did 50 years ago.
With detailed consideration of various reasons why. No simple answer. Cognitive biases, social media, exposure to the world, the way we focus on the negative…
This new, more positive discovery didn’t get nearly as much media coverage as the one published in 2011, which Konrath found frustrating. “I have to say that I’ve noticed good news is not as popular as bad news,” she says. Recent science supports her assertion: a 2025 study found that negative and alarming articles about children are more likely to go viral than nuanced and balanced stories.
This is what media literacy — and real world literacy — is about, and it’s an individual project. An individual responsibility.
