Latter Day Skiffy Flix: STTNG: Encounter at Farpoint

Posted on Thursday 19 March 2026 by Mark R. Kelly

A couple evenings ago I rewatched the pilot episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, called “Encounter at Farpoint,” for the first time since I watched it as the series premiere back in 1987.

Some background and context. I was 11 years old when the original Star Trek series, later dubbed TOS (the original series), debuted in 1966, and I was a fan of the show and then increasingly obsessed with the show when, after it was cancelled by NBC after three years, it went into syndication. Meaning that reruns of the original episodes were shown, often five times a week on weeknights at 5pm or 6pm, on local channels (different in every city) and not the networks. The early 1970s were long before the internet, and only a couple books had been published about the show, including THE MAKING OF STAR TREK by Stephen Whitfield, in 1968, which covered only the first two seasons, and two books by David Gerrold, including THE WORLD OF STAR TREK, in 1973 or so. In the meantime an obsessive fan of the show like me would take notes and compile lists of the episodes and their writers and guest stars and the names of the planets in each episode and each episode’s stardate. (How frustrating that a few episodes had no stardate!) Others had similar ideas and published “concordances” for the show, first in the fan press and later from professional publishers.

Years and years passed; by 1987, when TNG premiered, four of the Trek movies had been release, using the cast of the original series.

By that time the powers that be at Paramount decided the time was ripe for another TV series, and so many of the original producers and writers, like Gene Roddenberry, David Gerrold, and D.C. Fontana, were brought in to create the concept for a new show. It had a completely different cast, and a completely new Enterprise, being set some 95 years after the original show. The pilot, this episode, was approved, and the show went into production, then shown in syndication — that is, not on one of the networks, CBS or NBC or ABC, but on local channels, in most of the nation. (I don’t remember what local channel in LA I saw it on.)

By 1987 I had a VCR and, if I recall correctly, taped all the TNG episodes so I could rewatch them at my leisure. (Again: this was ages before streaming.) (By that time Paramount was releasing VCR episodes of TOS, generally two episodes per tape, and I bought a few, but nothing like a complete set.) TNG was on for seven years, and as I recall I saw every episode except for one. For some reason, I missed one, one I can’t even identify now.

But by 1994 or so when the show ended, I had moved on to so many other things that I never did watch all those videotapes I made of the TNG episodes. And eventually they got thrown away, as all my videotapes did. (By the ’90s everyone watched DVDs, not videotapes, and a few favorite movies I’d had on videotape I bought again on DVD. I still have lots of DVDs.) In all the years since 1994 the only time I’ve rewatched any of the TNG episodes was, oddly, when I was in the hospital about five years ago, and one of the channels on its internal TV system was showing TNG reruns. I watched five or six. After 25 years, mostly unfamiliar.

And oh by the way — I have sampled but have never followed any of the other Trek series. Not Deep Space 9, not Voyager, not Discovery, not Picard, not Lower Decks. OK, I did watch the Animated Series way back in 1973 or so, and in fact I bought the DVD set of that, but have still not rewatched it. Perhaps I will. I did watch a few episodes of the latest show, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, until it started getting silly. And I watched two or three episodes of Star Fleet Academy. Too many better things to watch.

(I’m not sure what to think of the obsessive fans who have watched all the shows. Some 960 episodes altogether, according to Google. I’ve been obsessed in my own way, about various things over periods of time, so I’m not going to judge. There are only so many things anyone can do.)

Still, with my partner away on a trip beginning last weekend, something prompted my curiosity and I decided to find out if TNG was available for streaming anywhere.

Yes, on Amazon Prime. So I watched that premiere episode. It was initially broadcast as two parts, but is an hour and half as a single episode.

There is so much documentation online about this episode, and all the others that followed, that I don’t feel compelled to write a detailed plot summary, as I have for the early ’40s and ’50s and ’60s movies that I’ve called Skiffy Flix on this site. Links about this episode are shown below. I’ll just record some of my reactions to watching it.

  • First, the new Enterprise. The movies had already upgraded the original Enterprise, generally in ways that made it look swoopier, more aerodynamic. Which is pointless of course, in space. The original Enterprise had a geometric symmetry (which I discussed here) that, to me, suggested some higher-dimensional alignment, perhaps in they way in went into warp drive — but this is idle speculation. That movie and TV designers kept making the Enterprise more aerodynamic, and then imagined other starships as merely being pieces of the Enterprise reassembled in different configurations (just one warp nacelle instead of two, for example), indicated to me a lack of imagination, and the fallacy of projecting local circumstances to situations they do not belong. This new Enterprise was apparently much much larger (though it’s hard to tell given that the relative proportions of this to the original were roughly the same) but with an attenuated rear end. The purpose of the curvy sections holding up the nacelles? Mindless aesthetics, as far as I can tell. (And of course there’s no “holding up,” since…)
  • This episode made a big point about the ability of the saucer section of the Enterprise to separate from the lower section, a point which had been established in the original show, but IIRC, never used until one of the movies. (Don’t remember which one.) Not sure I ever understood the point. It’s not as if either section could descend into the atmosphere of a planet. Only the lower section had warp drive. The saucer had impulse drive, which limited it to sub-light velocities. Again IIRC.
  • About this episode: I had forgotten that this was when the character Q was first introduced. In fact my vague recollection of this episode was that it involved an Enterprise visit to some sophisticated starbase, or something. That must have been a different episode.
  • The episode is in part the origin story of all the characters, showing or recalling how they first meet or met, in a way TOS never depicted. Data even has to explain himself as an android (to an elderly McCoy, in a cameo appearance by DeForrest Kelley).
  • It’s significant that there’s a conversation between Riker and Picard about the advisability of the latter beaming down the planet. This was a major complaint by David Gerrold in his book THE WORLD OF STAR TREK, that it’s implausible for the captain of the ship to beam down every week into potentially dangerous circumstances. Of course the rationale for that was, especially in the ’60 with limited budgets and casts, producers would use their lead actors in every possible scene. In this way TNG advanced the concept over TOS.
  • The most striking element is the conceit that, as Picard keeps explaining to Q, humanity has evolved over the past 400 years, has ‘grown’, and is no longer the quarrelsome, violent species that once existed. It’s striking because, as has become apparent in recent decades, it’s so naive. There’s no evolution of human nature possible in 400 years, and if anything we see progressive movements undermined by conservative ones over and over, in a kind of inevitable cycle (that personally I’m not sure humanity will ever escape). Still, this was a premise that series creator Gene Roddenberry kept insisting on, to the point that he drove writers away with the stricture that there could be no true conflict between characters. Where is the drama then? How do you write stories in which people are not in conflict with each other? (Well, perhaps stories that are only about alien puzzles to solve. But those aren’t dramatic.)
  • The bottom line about this episode is that it’s about yet another test of humanity. I say yet another because it was an old idea in science fiction. Aliens demand that humanity explain itself, or demonstrate its fitness, in order to join the galactic community, or even to survive. (The most famous earlier example I can think of is Robert A. Heinlein’s HAVE SPACESUIT — WILL TRAVEL, in which the protagonist is confronted by a galactic council demanding the same defense of humanity. Oh, and the 1950s film The Day the Earth Stood Still.) But then Trek was seldom notable for original ideas. Roddenberry and his writers drew on a history of written science fiction going back to the 1930s that entailed galactic empires, other planets with strange species, hostile aliens, friendly aliens.
  • The best thing Star Trek did was to introduce these ideas to a mass audience. They’ve become part of popular culture.

Links, the last two with detailed plot summaries:

Wikipedia: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Wikipedia: List of Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes
Wikipedia: Encounter at Farpoint
Memory Alpha: Encounter at Farpoint (episode) with a very detailed plot summary

Posted in Personal history, science fiction, Skiffy Flix, Star Trek | Comments Off on Latter Day Skiffy Flix: STTNG: Encounter at Farpoint

Increasing Willful Ignorance and Intolerance

Posted on Thursday 19 March 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • 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.

\\\

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.

\

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.

\

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.

\

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?

\\\

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.

Posted in Conservative Resistance, conservatives, Psychology | Comments Off on Increasing Willful Ignorance and Intolerance

The War, the Economy, and Religion

Posted on Wednesday 18 March 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Yet more commentators on the stupidity of this war with Iran, from Adam Lee, Suzanne Maloney, and Susan B. Glasser;
  • How the economies under Biden and Trump aren’t that much different;
  • Brief items about why conservatives need guns, Christian Nationalists who admit they mean to impose their morality on everyone, how the transgender plague is driven by demons, hurricanes, tricks, and Christian theology;
  • And two examples of the first lesson of comparative religion, for conservatives.
– – –

Adam Lee on the war.

OnlySky, Adam Lee, 18 Mar 2026: The colossal stupidity of war with Iran, subtitled “An unwinnable war without a goal and with consequences for the world.”

If anyone still doubted that Donald Trump will be remembered as the worst president of all time, he’s doing his best to eliminate that doubt.

Last month, America and Israel launched a surprise attack on Iran, assassinating Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and senior Iranian military officials. (We also accidentally bombed a school, killing over a hundred children.)

This is all the more hypocritical because isolationism used to be one of Trump’s defining policy stances. As a candidate, he railed against politicians whom he said would get us bogged down in wars:

Followed by quotes of X/Twitter posts from 2012 and 2013 in which Trump predicted that Obama would start a war since his “poll numbers are in a tailspin” (which probably wasn’t true).

Now he’s tossed that promise aside, just like he’s discarded every other principle he ever paid lip service to. He’s committed all the evils he promised, plus all the evils he denounced.

The sheer stupidity, incuriosity, and smugly self-satisfied ignorance of this administration defies belief. Even Trump doesn’t know why we’re at war. He and his henchmen have offered a fog bank of shifting justifications about why he did this—to bring about regime change? to end Iran’s nuclear program? to heed Israel’s wishes? or something else entirely?

Lee goes on to point out how nations less reliant on fossil fuels will be less impacted by this war. (But then it’s been obvious for decades that the world needs to transition away from fossil fuels, for many reasons; Trump simply denies all those reasons, because he wants to recreate the world he grew up in, as conservatives are wont to do.) Lee doesn’t at all approve of the Iranian government, “a cabal of fanatical, violently repressive theocrats” who deserve to be replaced. But you can’t do it by bombing the country, as past interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan have shown. But some people do not learn from the past.

\\

And by the way, the US had a treaty with Iran, under Obama. Trump tore it up because, well, Obama.

NY Times, guest essay by Suzanne Maloney, 18 Mar 2026: The Alternative to Obama’s Nuclear Deal Was War. Why Did Trump Tear It Up?

In 2015, President Barack Obama and the leaders of Britain, China, France, Germany, Iran, Russia and the European Union reached an agreement formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that imposed restrictions across the spectrum of Iran’s nuclear activities.

The product of years of diplomacy, the plan elevated a technically complex national security challenge into a fierce political debate split largely along partisan lines. A few months before the deal was signed, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, addressed a joint session of Congress — at Republicans’ invitation — to campaign against it.

Critics said it wasn’t harsh enough. It wasn’t perfect. (Is anything?) The alternative was war. Well, here we are: Trump tore it up, and started a war!

\\

Another take. We’ve seen this comparison before.

The New Yorker, Susan B. Glasser, 12 Mar 2026: The War Trump Doesn’t Want to Talk About

Subtitle: “We won,” the President who’s treating the conflict with Iran like a video game says, but “we’re not finished yet.”

\\\

On another topic.

NY Times, guest essay by Jason Furman (chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers from 2013 to 2017), 18 Mar 2026: If You Hate Trump’s Economy, I Have News for You [gift link]

As a candidate, Donald Trump called the economy under President Joe Biden a “nightmare.” As president, he says the United States is “bigger, better, richer and stronger than ever before.” Democratic rhetoric has shifted just as sharply, from Vice President Kamala Harris touting the U.S. economy as “the strongest in the world” during the 2024 campaign to Democrats today decrying an “affordability crisis.” And that was before gas prices jumped more than $0.50 a gallon in the wake of the Iran strikes.

While the narrative on both sides has done a 180-degree turn, the economy itself has not. It didn’t change after tariffs were rolled out. It didn’t change after A.I. became more widely adopted. The economy over the last year has looked a lot as it did in 2024. I don’t expect it to change because of the latest disappointing numbers on jobs, fluctuations in the gross domestic product or the start of the Iran war, either.

…

While the narrative on both sides has done a 180-degree turn, the economy itself has not. It didn’t change after tariffs were rolled out. It didn’t change after A.I. became more widely adopted. The economy over the last year has looked a lot as it did in 2024. I don’t expect it to change because of the latest disappointing numbers on jobs, fluctuations in the gross domestic product or the start of the Iran war, either.

Why? Part of this is partisan motivated thinking: whatever the other side did, or is doing, must be bad. More fundamentally, the economy is enormously complex and not easily swayed by this or that change in strategy or policy. Nor do presidents have the micromanagement powers many voters think they do.

That the 2025 numbers looked much like the 2024 numbers should not be that surprising. The American economy, like an ocean liner, is extremely hard to turn. The best guess of what will happen next year is that the economy will continue doing what it did last year.

…

Perhaps the most common mistake is to overrate the importance of the president. Sometimes presidents can make a big difference, but usually the aggregate economic effects of their policies are smaller — for good or ill — than their supporters or detractors would have you believe.

Concluding:

This does not mean presidents don’t matter for the economy. I believe the economy would be even better today were it not for Mr. Trump’s reckless tariffs and his Middle East adventures. It means, however, that we should probably be more honest about judging the economy and more explicitly admitting that our opinion is based on much more than interest rates or inflation or even our own economic circumstances.

My take on the Trump economy is that I haven’t felt any personal pain at all, but then I’m stable, not trying to buy a house or a car, and not struggling to make ends meet the way many young families might be. My take is just that Trump promised many things — cut prices in half! yadda yadda — that of course have never happened. (Because he has no direct control over them, but his MAGA fans don’t understand that.)

\\\

Briefly noted.

  • They’re quite upfront about it.
  • Right Wing Watch, Kyle Mantyla, 17 Mar 2026: William Wolfe Admits Christian Nationalists ‘Are Going To Impose [Our Morality] Upon You’
  • The other problem is that he’s so certain what God’s morality is. “If you don’t like it, I’m sorry, but this is good and right and just if it lines up with God’s standards and I am going to enforce my morality on you inasmuch as our morality is God’s morality.”
  • Is all of Leviticus God’s morality? If not, how does he decide which parts are, and which aren’t?

\

The first lesson of comparative religion, for conservatives, with two examples.

Jerry Coyne, Why Evolution is True: Jesus ‘n’ Mo ‘n’ Scientology

He discusses the latest cartoon from the long-running Jesus and Mo strip, shown above.

And:

NY Times, Robert Draper, 16 Mar 2026 (on today’s front page): ‘It Doesn’t Need to Be Here’: The Right Vilifies a Muslim School in Alabama, subtitled “A local campaign against the small school reflects growing Islamophobia in conservative enclaves in America and among G.O.P. officials.”

Do I need to spell this out? All religions seem crazy, even dangerous, to people who follow other religions. The lack of self-awareness about such prejudices continues to astound me, especially in this age of global information. But it’s true of most people, the most conservatives ones anyway, on Earth.

Posted in conservatives, Politics, Religion | Comments Off on The War, the Economy, and Religion

Is Trump Insane, Delusional, or Merely an Inveterate Liar?

Posted on Tuesday 17 March 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Trump claims a former president supports his actions in Iran; the four living former presidents all deny it;
  • Many on the extreme right sound insane to the rest of us, with examples;
  • Trump is pressuring the media to support his war, as authoritarians do;
  • Yet another example of how Trump is only transactional, without principles;
  • John Pavlovitz on how MAGA Americans will feign ignorance of the Trump administration, jut as Germans did about the NAZIs.
  • A report on the health of Democracies around the world is unsurprising concerning the US;
  • Anne Applebaum on how everyone but Trump understands what he’s done;
  • Philip Glass’s Monsters of Grace.
– – –

Today’s story about crazy Trump.

NY Times, 16 Mar 2026: Trump Claims an Ex-President Confided His Regrets on Iran. But Who?, subtitled “The New York Times reached out to people close to President Trump’s predecessors. They disputed Mr. Trump’s claims.”

President Trump claimed on Monday that a former president told him privately that “I wish I did what you did” in attacking Iran and killing its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Speaking to reporters at the White House, Mr. Trump would not identify which of the four living predecessors he was referring to.

“He said, ‘I wish I did what you did,’” Mr. Trump said. “I don’t want to get into ‘who,’ I don’t want to get him into trouble.”

All of the four living ex-presidents have denied any such conversation. Is Trump delusional? Insane? Lying by rote as he always does?

This story has been all over the media, and Facebook. One wag on Facebook suggested that 47 had a conversation with 45.

\\\

A lot of people on the right sound insane to many of the rest of us. They are steeped in fantasy and privilege and religious zealotry, and not grounded in reality.

\\\

Stepping out.

Salon, Sophia Tesfaye: Trump wants to punish media for his unpopular war, subtitled “The president and FCC Chair Brendan Carr are threatening journalists and broadcasters for their coverage of Iran”

This is what authoritarians do. And it’s happened before.

NY Times, Michelle Goldberg, 16 Mar 2026: Trump Is Trying to Bully America Into Supporting His War. It Won’t Work.

\\

Trump and his supports have no principles. They only make deals. They are purely transactional.

Via JMG, NY Times, 16 Mar 2026: U.S. Considers Withholding H.I.V. Aid Unless Zambia Expands Minerals Access, subtitled “A draft State Department memo outlines ways the Trump administration may ratchet up pressure on the African country by ending health support ‘on a massive scale.'”

That people in Zambia may die is irrelevant to them. And you see these kinds of stories almost every day.

\

As I said yesterday.

The Bulwark, Andrew Egger: How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, subtitled “First insult them for years. Then demand their help.”

\\

A while back I mentioned the title of a book that would well apply to the current situation: One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This.

John Pavlovitz: How Will This End for MAGA Americans? The Same Way It Did for NAZI Germans: Feigned Ignorance

As horrifying and sad as it is watching the worst inhumanity of the past repeating itself in the place we call home, it does allow us to look back and get some idea as to where we’re likely headed.

For students of History, the last two years here in America have been one long experience of Déjà vu of the worst kind: a growing assemblage of governmental red flag overreach, incendiary rhetoric designed to dehumanize an entire segment of the population, a steady failure of both systems and sanity, and the mass delusion of otherwise reasonable people who gladly enabled a fragile lunatic’s sickening rise.

For those of us fortunate enough not to have had our brains rotted and our souls devoured by the decade-long death cult of an orange imbecile here in America, we’ve endeavored to understand how people around us succumbed to a hollow ruse that either intelligence or empathy should have seen through.

We’ve repeatedly beaten our heads against the wall trying (and failing) to find new ways to reach into the stupor of their blind adoration and pull them into moral clarity, none of which proved successful.

And, we’ve attempted to predict just when (if ever) they would awaken from this ten-year racist fever-dream and come to terms with the multitude of horrors they’ve co-authored with their votes and their undying allegiance.

If recent history is any indication, we’d better not hold our breath.

\\

This report has been anticipated.

Slate, Christopher Ingraham: They’ve Been Measuring the Health of Democracies for Years. Guess What Their New Report Says About America.

You can guess. The graphs look like this:

Once again, MAGA Americans won’t notice, or care.

\\

And finally, a big piece by Anne Applebaum.

The Atlantic, Anne Applebaum, 17 Mar 2026: Everyone but Trump Understands What He’s Done, subtitled “Allied leaders know that any positive gesture they make will count for nothing.”

Donald Trump does not think strategically. Nor does he think historically, geographically, or even rationally. He does not connect actions he takes on one day to events that occur weeks later. He does not think about how his behavior in one place will change the behavior of other people in other places.

He does not consider the wider implications of his decisions. He does not take responsibility when these decisions go wrong. Instead, he acts on whim and impulse, and when he changes his mind—when he feels new whims and new impulses—he simply lies about whatever he said or did before.

And it goes on with the progress of the Iran war and whether something might finally be breaking in Trump. Ending:

The result: Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has declared that Canada will not participate in the “offensive operations of Israel and the U.S., and it never will.” German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius says, “This is not our war, and we didn’t start it.” The Spanish prime minister refused to let the United States use bases for the beginning of the war. The U.K. and France might send some ships to protect their own bases or allies in the Gulf, but neither will send their soldiers or sailors into offensive operations started without their assent.

This isn’t cowardice. It’s a calculation: If allied leaders thought that their sacrifice might count for something in Washington, they might choose differently. But most of them have stopped trying to find the hidden logic behind Trump’s actions, and they understand that any contribution they make will count for nothing. A few days or weeks later, Trump will not even remember that it happened.

As I’ve said before, what startles me is not that there are such people like Trump in the world, but that so many other people support such a person and don’t care or don’t notice.

\\\

I’ve been working my way through my Philip Glass CDs, some of them that I’ve only listened to once or twice when I first bought them without really absorbing them. Here’s one, recorded in 2007, called MONSTERS OF GRACE, which is remarkable mostly for its orchestration. I’ve been listening to it repeatedly for three days. There’s no complete recording on YouTube, but here’s the second track, which provide a good sample flavor. (Except that the four vocalists, who sound very familiar from at least one earlier Glass work I can’t place, aren’t in this track.)

Posted in conservatives, Lunacy, Music, Politics | Comments Off on Is Trump Insane, Delusional, or Merely an Inveterate Liar?

Clueless, Stupid, and Cruel

Posted on Monday 16 March 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • The status of Trump’s war in Iran;
  • Paul Krugman explains that America is not respected around the world;
  • And how George Orwell foresaw this;
  • Robert Reich on Trump’s stupidest cabinet member: Pete Hegseth;
  • How Hegseth doesn’t understand “no quarter” any more than he understands “rules of engagement”;
  • Brief items about Peter Thiel’s antichrist fixation; grandparents who remember what vaccines were for; the pointless voter fraud bill; how conservative Christians aren’t helping their cause; how the Trump administration is now forced to hire migrant workers (to replace those who were deported); and about the DOGE dolts who mindlessly slashed DEI programs and didn’t actually save any money.
– – –

Recently in the Iran war: Trump has declared the mission complete, or nearly complete, or maybe complete in a few more weeks, but even if it’s complete now, he’s thinking of bombing them some more just for fun. Also, he’s asking all the American “allies” he has insulted with tariffs this past year for help clearing the Strait of Hormuz, and they have declined or not responded, while dolts like Newt Gingrich suggest using nuclear bombs to clear a new pathway that avoids the Strait. These people are clueless.

Thus.

Paul Krugman, 16 Mar 2026: No, America is Not Respected, subtitled “Thanks to Trump, we’re held in contempt even by our closest allies”

Continue reading →

Posted in conservatives, Lunacy, Politics | Comments Off on Clueless, Stupid, and Cruel

Carl Sagan & Ann Druyan: SHADOWS OF FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS

Posted on Monday 16 March 2026 by Mark R. Kelly

Subtitled: A Search for Who We Are
(Random House, Oct 1992, xvi + 505pp, including 85pp of notes, permissions acknowledgements, and index.)


This is perhaps Carl Sagan’s most substantial book, on the grounds that it’s through-written as a single composition; it’s not a compilation or fix-up of previously written magazine pieces, as THE DEMON-HAUNTED WORLD was, or an edited series of lectures, as THE VARIETIES OF SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE WAS, or aligned by chapter to episodes of a TV show, like COSMOS was, or a book aligned to an earlier book, like THE PALE BLUE DOT was.

And on the grounds that it takes a wide perspective, a sort of 10,000 foot view of a period of history not examined by most books about evolution, or the cosmos, or human history. It’s about the history of life up until humanity’s ancestors came on the stage, and so it outlines how and why life on Earth came to be, and how things like competition and violence necessarily came to characterize life on Earth.

Continue reading →

Posted in Book Notes, History, Human Nature, Human Progress | Comments Off on Carl Sagan & Ann Druyan: SHADOWS OF FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS

The Most Dangerous Vision

Posted on Sunday 15 March 2026 by Mark R. Kelly

A brief post today, after a long afternoon/evening watching the Oscars. (On the West Coast, what with pre-shows, it ran from mid-afternoon to nearly 8pm.)

So instead of linking news or opinion items today, let me note a nascent thought of mine that’s emerged in recent weeks. I’ll begin with a reminder that every post like this, every post other than objective linking and quoting, is a first draft of sorts, a record of today’s thoughts that might undergo rethinking tomorrow, or next week, or next month. Just as what I opined yesterday, or last month, or five years ago isn’t necessarily what I’d say today. (Usually, when I look back at old posts, I’m bothered only by inexact wording, not ideas I’ve completely abandoned. For some of these ideas it’s important to state things precisely, lest people read into them things I didn’t mean. You know the examples.)

Continue reading →

Posted in Philosophy, science fiction | Comments Off on The Most Dangerous Vision

What Western Civilization is Actually About

Posted on Saturday 14 March 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Francis Fukuyama, responding to Marco Rubio, on how Western Civilization is more about the Enlightenment than religious faith;
  • And Boston Globe via Steven Pinker on that Tennessee congressman’s anti-Muslim screed;
  • Briefly noted items about Trump’s shoe tests and their Soviet odor, Trump’s disconnect with reality, video games, non-Protestant events, forcing student-led prayer, destroying DC architecture, more about the Beha book, dismantling a renowned science lab, Trump’s sons cashing in on drones, weakening limits on a cancer-causing gas, and the eternal sea of misinformation about vaccines.
– – –

Persuasion, Francis Fukuyama, 3 Mar 2026: What “Western Civilization” Really Means, subtitled “It has less to do with faith — and more to do with the Enlightenment — than Marco Rubio thinks.”

Continue reading →

Posted in conservatives, Culture, History, Religion | Comments Off on What Western Civilization is Actually About

Movie relevance, conservative intuition, unbothered people, Paul and Heather

Posted on Friday 13 March 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • How A House of Dynamite, not nominated for any Oscars, is more important and relevant than any of the pictures nominated, and a great movie;
  • Trump needs to “feel it in my bones” to make a decision, which is precisely the conservative limitation to learning;
  • John Pavlovitz has had it with unbothered people;
  • Paul Krugman chats with Heather Cox Richardson.
– – –

I appreciate this nod. This is a movie I watched twice in two nights, late last year, as discussed here. It’s important and relevant in a way none of the actual Best Picture nominees are. (Well, One Battle After Another might be just as close, in a different way. But not Sinners, as effective as that film is.) And it’s well-made and suspenseful.

And especially considering the current political situation.

Slate, Ian Prasad Philbrick, 13 Mar 2026: The Oscars Are This Weekend. The Movie We Should All Be Talking About Isn’t Even Nominated.

Continue reading →

Posted in Economics, Human Nature, Movies | Comments Off on Movie relevance, conservative intuition, unbothered people, Paul and Heather

Stupid vs. Evil

Posted on Thursday 12 March 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Robert Reich’s take on what the two US political parties think of each other, and my interpretation of conservative thinking;
  • About Pete Hegseth and how he sees moral purpose in war as a weakness;
  • Another item about parental rights, concerning social media; and my thoughts about this complex subject.
– – –

Another take on the spectrum of human nature.

Robert Reich, 10 Mar 2026: Why do Americans hate each other while Canadians love each other?, subtitled “Could it have something to do with our politics? With the sociopath in the Oval?”

Continue reading →

Posted in Human Nature, Morality, Politics | Comments Off on Stupid vs. Evil