Darkest Days

Posted on Wednesday 9 July 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Shorter items today.

  • The Supreme Court and “emergencies”;
  • How Trump reflexively blames Biden;
  • And how Trump takes credit for what Biden actually did;
  • The confusion over Epstein conspiracy theories;
  • Trump wants more factories, but is expelling the workers who might work in them;
  • They want Medicaid recipients to replace immigrants in the farms???
  • Our $178 billion police state;
  • How guys want to burn things, and so resent renewable energy;
  • The familiar racism in the NYC mayoral race;
  • Robert Reich on how the budget for ICE will just encourage them;
  • Where does opting-out undermine public education?
  • Another example of conservative who don’t believe in climate change (which is real) but do believe in weather control (which is not);
  • The latest example of spreading false Christian Nationalist history.
  • And a brief musical thought.
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Slate, Mark Joseph Stern, 8 Jul 2025: The Bleak Unifying Principle of This Supreme Court Term subtitled “It’s an emergency whenever Trump says so.”

Trump gets his way by declaring everything an emergency, and the Supreme Court is obliged to let Trump do what he wants, because, well, it’s an emergency

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CNN, analysis by Aaron Blake, 8 Jul 2025: After disasters like the Texas flood, Trump reflexively blames Biden

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David Brooks on Alasdair MacIntyre and How We Got to Where We Are

Posted on Tuesday 8 July 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

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]

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Robert A. Heinlein: THE DOOR INTO SUMMER

Posted on Tuesday 8 July 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

(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 →

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What Is America Thinking?

Posted on Monday 7 July 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Will scientific advances by the US continue? Do most Americans care?
  • My take on the big picture of the cultural change in the US, and other societies;
  • Heather Cox Richardson, and Nitish Pahwa at Slate, summarize what’s to blame for the Texas floods: the denial of climate change, and the appeal of absurd conspiracy theories;
  • The problem of original intent, as demonstrated by that law school paper about white supremacy that won an award.
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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.”

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How Doing Your Own Research Actually Works, and the Texas Floods

Posted on Sunday 6 July 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Adam-Troy Castro on people who “do their own research”;
  • And how RFK Jr. is ignoring decades of research into autism that have already answered his questions;
  • Debates about whether Trump/MAGA’s cuts to weather agencies had a role to play in the Texas floods;
  • And standard Republican reactions: “All we know how to do is pray”; This isn’t the time to talk about weather agencies; and somehow or another, the Democrats must be to blame.
  • Yes, MAGA is reveling in the abuse of migrants;
  • And a history of US immigration, on CBS Sunday Morning today.
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Just sayin’.

An insight from Adam-Troy Castro, on Facebook, about people who “do their own research”: Sunday, July 6, 2025 at 8:58
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True Colors

Posted on Saturday 5 July 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • More conservative racism: Everyone is *not* welcome; Laura Loomer would boycott brands that don’t use white actors in their TV commercials;
  • MTG thinks evildoers are using weather control to create the deadly floods in Texas;
  • Meanwhile, people who know real things have been warning about the effects of climate change for decades — of course;
  • Yet another Republican (the “Jesus. Guns. Babies.” lady) thinks the Texas floods have been faked;
  • And Timothy Snyder on concentration camps and the potential in the Constitution’s 13th Amendment to allow slavery for punishments of crimes.
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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

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So Many People to Hate!

Posted on Friday 4 July 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • ICE now has a budget bigger than all but 15 countries’ military budgets;
  • Why has funding for ICE has ballooned, compared to previous presidents?;
  • Trump says he wants to deport bad people born in the US, too;
  • Trump wants to host a UFC Fight on White House grounds;
  • Robert Charles Wilson on the current times, and how science fiction might respond to them; how “change is inevitable” and how decency is more likely to build a sustainable human civilization.
– – –

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.”

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How It Works. How They Work.

Posted on Thursday 3 July 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • How it works: Republican megadonors get megacontracts to run ICE concentration camps;
  • How they work:
    • Republicans are even less pluralistic than they’ve ever been;
    • Robert Reich on the familiar reasons authoritarians suppress education, and what “conservative ideas” might possibly be;
    • Short items about prison costs, Christians who want to execute gays, and the White House invoking Satan.
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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

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Now It’s Concentration Camps

Posted on Wednesday 2 July 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Concentration Camps, and Republican salivation to send 65 million immigrants to the alligators;
  • Trump thinks brain scans measure IQ;
  • American science’s brain drain;
  • How societies maintain national myths to survive.
– – –

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.”

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Implications

Posted on Tuesday 1 July 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Do justices not foresee consequences?
  • Heather Cox Richardson on the big beautiful bill;
  • How JD Vance reveals the administration’s true motivations; cruelty is the thing;
  • Jonathan Chait on Republicans’ “incomprehensibly reckless plan”;
  • Robert Reich on conservatives’ animosity to empathy (never mind Jesus Christ);
  • Initial thoughts about Springsteen’s “Western Stars”.
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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

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