The Paradox of MAGA

My fascination with this ICE killing in Minnesota is, again, that it’s a perfect example of the paradox of MAGA, if not of conservatives in general. They claim to be Christians, and to revere the Constitution and the US Founders, yet behave in ways that utterly contradict those philosophies. Rather, they act like xenophobic tribalists to whom everyone else on the planet is evil or subhuman. I conclude that the Bible and the Constitution are to them merely totems that mark tribal solidarity; they don’t actually understand, or follow, them.

Sampling today’s posts.

Slate, Molly Olmstead, 9 Jan 2026: They Didn’t Even Need a Deepfake, subtitled “A.I. was going to be what broke our shared reality. It turns out, it wasn’t needed.”

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ICE Thugs

  • Today’s posts are about the Minnesota ICE killing and the responses, from Trump and Vance to Jesse Bering, Jonathan V. Last, and others.
  • An essay by Elay Shech about why we should trust science even though it keeps changing. (Because there is no alternative.)
– – –

So yesterday an ICE agent shot and killed a woman in her SUV in Minneapolis, and the usual suspects were quick to say the shooting was justified because the woman was obviously a left-wing radical terrorist, or something, without of course having any evidence to support that charge. Fortunately there were people there who took videos of the event — in fact there are volunteer groups who attend ICE raids specifically to capture evidence of what they’re doing — which undercut the knee-jerk accusations of Tramp and Vance and others. Here’s a current status:

CNN, analysis by Aaron Blake, 8 Jan 2026: JD Vance just sharply undercut the Trump team’s ICE shooting narrative
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Our Outlaw Nation

This popped up on Facebook, but I don’t subscribe to the magazine and can only see this much of the article. It’s about the new book by Johan Norberg, which came out in September. It’s on my TBR shelf.

The Economist, 1 May 2025: How golden ages really start—and end, subtitled “The greatest civilisations of the past 3,000 years were the opposite of MAGA”

The way to start a “golden age” is to erect big, beautiful barriers to keep out foreign goods and people. That, at least, is the view of the most powerful man on the planet. Johan Norberg, a Swedish historian, makes the opposite case. In “Peak Human”, Mr Norberg charts the rise and fall of golden ages around the world over the past three millennia, ranging from Athens to the Anglosphere via the Abbasid caliphate. He finds that the polities that outshone their peers did so because they were more open: to trade, to strangers and to ideas that discomfited the mighty. When they closed up again, they lost their shine.

Just in case anyone still has delusions of grandeur concerning MAGA, or Trump.

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Five Years Since a Day that Will Live in Infamy

  • Articles about the anniversary of January 6th.
  • MAGA cognitive dissonance.
  • Loyalty over expertise — CBS Evening News.
  • Headlines about whether narrative defeats reason, conservative hysteria over Chick-fil-A and a gay couple, and the Pentagon’s petty attack on Sen. Mark Kelly.
  • Umberto Eco’s list of traits of fascism.
  • And Springsteen’s “Soul Driver.”
– – –

Once again, the MAGA crowd, and their glorious leader Trump, don’t care about law and order or principles, only tribal loyalty.

Slate, Russel Payne, 6 Jan 2026: We learned nothing from Jan. 6, subtitled “Evidence Trump tried to overturn the election 5 years ago is ‘overwhelming.’ There haven’t been any consequences”

After a mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, it appeared the attack would result in a rare moment of reckoning in American politics — at least for a moment. Even hardline GOP politicians had distanced themselves from Trump, then President Joe Biden was in charge and Congress and the Department of Justice were investigating both the attack and the plot to overturn the 2020 election behind it.

Five years later, any accountability, political or legal, that Trump and his allies faced has been erased.

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A Return to the Original Mission: Impossible Presumption

  • Conservatives want to see media — now CBS — that tells them what they already believe;
  • How Trump has made fools out of his populist supporters;
  • How the “Donroe Doctrine” is now in effect;
  • And how all of this reflects the theme of the original 1960s “Mission: Impossible.”
– – –

Slate, Jill Filipovic, 5 Jan 2026: The Big Problem With Conservatives’ Favorite Criticism of the Media

Beginning:

In 2026, there’s one easy resolution we should all commit to: Be better consumers of media.

Traditional media is in crisis, thanks to a combination of Trump administration attacks, corporate takeovers, and technological innovations. Social media sites compete for our attention by offering us addictive little bites: outrage-bait tweets and short-form shock-value TikTok videos, served up according to algorithms that track how long we linger and feed us more and more of what keeps us locked in (which is often what makes us angry).

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Where We Are, 4 Jan 2026

  • Several headlines about America’s attack on Venezuela;
  • Trump’s peculiar animosity against the Kennedys;
  • And two ideas about patriotism.
– – –

The State of the Union.

Just some headlines. American seems never to overcome its historical sins.

The Guardian, Tiago Togero, 3 Jan 2026: ‘Naked imperialism’: how Trump intervention in Venezuela is a return to form for the US, subitled “Most of the Americas have suffered from interference from their powerful northern neighbour – and are usually the worse off for it”

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Clear Thoughts About Religion

A couple items on religion today.

As I’ve said, there is someone who signs themselves AMV posting in a FB newgroup I’m following who has been tackling religious talking points with great clarity and insight. Here’s one from this morning, accompanied by the above graphic.

FB, Atheists Against Pseudoscientific Nonsense, 3 Jan 2026

Evolution is not harshly attacked by many Christians because of pride or misunderstanding alone, but because of what it logically entails. If evolution is true, and the evidence is overwhelming, then humanity did not begin with two individuals, but with a population. No first man and woman means no literal Adam and Eve. No Adam and Eve means no Garden of Eden, no magical tree, no talking serpent, no forbidden fruit, and no fall from grace.

And without original sin, the entire theological scaffolding collapses. If humans were never “fallen,” then there is nothing to redeem, no cosmic debt to pay, and no necessity for Jesus as a sacrificial solution. Christianity, as traditionally taught, stops being a story of salvation and becomes a story built on a myth that no longer holds.

That is why evolution is existentially threatening to the doctrine. Accepting it requires either radically reinterpreting scripture or admitting that foundational claims were symbolic at best and wrong at worst. This is not merely an emotional issue for believers; it is an institutional one. If the core narrative fails, so does the authority built on it. For pastors and religious institutions, this is not abstract philosophy, it is the risk of losing legitimacy, influence, and income; the grift is over.

So the rejection of evolution is not really about “humans coming from monkeys,” a strawman no biologist supports, and hurt egos. It is about preserving a story that cannot survive contact with population genetics, fossil records, and basic biology. When a belief system depends on denying reality to remain intact, the problem is not the science.

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Is Reading a Vice? No.

  • Adam Kirsch at The Atlantic suggests that reading is a vice;
  • Paul Krugman on the Heritage Foundation;
  • Robert Reich on the Trump administration’s policy of hate;
  • Short items about everyone laughing at Trump; a measles outbreak at the Noah’s Ark Museum; how the Trump administration admits to stealing artists’ work; and how CBS is going MAGA.
– – –

Beginning with a counter-intuitive think piece.

The Atlantic, Adam Kirsch, 2 Jan 2026: Reading Is a Vice, subtitled “Being a reader means cultivating a relationship with the world that, by most standards, can seem pointless and counterproductive.”
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Ethnic Cleansing and Collective Effervescence

  • The Department of Homeland Security imagines a future in which 1/3 of the American population is deported;
  • The idea of “collective effervescence”;
  • Brief posts about the dirty 1970s; Trump and aspirin; Florida giving God citations passes; and items from JMG.
– – –

This is going around on Facebook today.

This is bonkers — they want to deport almost 1/3 of the nation?? — but also revealing. MAGA and the Trump aren’t just racists and xenophobes and white supremacists, they’re itching to ethnically cleanse the United States. Who at DHS is responsible for this??

Here’s an item about it here at Huffington Post.

The US is reverting to primitive, tribal human nature.

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Where We Are, Here at the End of 2025

  • How Trump has made the government smaller, but not more efficient or dependable;
  • Example of shutting down NASA’s library;
  • Example of cuts to science research;
  • How Trump prefers “vibes” to data;
  • New Yorker’s Susan B. Glasser wonders how people let this happen;
  • And a collage of lists about 2025.
– – –

NY Times, Eileen Sullivan, 30 Dec 2025: Trump Upended the Federal Government. The Full Scope of the Impact Is Still Unclear., subtitled “President Trump achieved his goal of shrinking the work force. But many current and former officials say the government is less dependable and efficient than it was a year ago.” [gift link]
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