Vivek Ramaswamy as Prototypical Republican Candidate

Posted on Wednesday 30 August 2023 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Vox’s Andrew Prokop on how Vivek would “simply just solve American’s tough problems”;
  • NYT’s Michelle Goldeberg on why that some people find Vivek insufferable is exactly why his fans are drawn to him;
  • WaPo’s Paul Waldman on how Republicans are attracted to candidates with no political experience;
  • LGBTQNation’s John Gallagher on how Vivek is willing to say anything to close a deal, and of course how he’s very anti-gay.

I was going to drop the subject, but the more commentaries I read about Vivek Ramaswamy, the more I see him as a perfect example of trends in conservative voting. Trends I’ve noticed for decades. Conservatives (Republicans) like simple-minded solutions to everything; they like celebrities and hucksters.

Vox, Andrew Prokop, 29 Aug 2023: The “I would simply …” candidate, subtitled “Vivek Ramaswamy says he would simply just solve America’s tough problems.”

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Computer, Glasses, Theories

Posted on Tuesday 29 August 2023 by Mark R. Kelly
  • My new laptop;
  • My new glasses;
  • The populist vs. scientific ideas of “theory”.

I ordered a new laptop from Costco, and it arrived today about 4pm, and I’ve spent an hour getting it up and running. My old laptop has gotten cruddy, slower and slower, especially when rebooting, especially when closing and relaunching my browser — I’m still loyal to Firefox. When I’ve shut down the laptop to install updates, I figure at least an hour, on rebooting, before the browser and everything else are working smoothly. Also, its battery is dead; I’ve already replaced it once, and the current battery no longer recharges. That’s not exactly a problem, unless the power goes out; I always leave my laptop plugged in, and never rely on the battery. Furthermore… while I never leave files (Word, Excel, etc.) open overnight, I do sometimes leave them open during lunch, and increasingly, when I return, the app is hung, and I have to shut it down hoping I haven’t lost any work.

Still, I’ve realized that my pattern has been to replace my computer — in the past decade, a laptop connected to a full-sized keyboard and two big monitors — about every six years. The last time was 2017. Before that, 2011. Before that, 2007. So I now have another HP laptop, 17″ screen (this time a touchscreen), with the usual specs. An HP 17-cn3165cl, with Windows 11.

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A New Book About Humanity’s Future, and Meaning

Posted on Monday 28 August 2023 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Cautiously considering the new book by Marcelo Gleiser, which seeks meaning where I think none exists;
  • Items about Mike Pence’s Biblical cherry-picking, how Tennessee is the “worst state for voting rights,” and two takes on Vivek Ramaswamy: “spouting nonsense” and “another crank”.

Here’s the other nonfiction book I alluded to yesterday. This book just came out today; my copy arrived from Amazon this afternoon.

The book is by Marcelo Gleiser and is titled The Dawn of a Mindful Universe: A Manifesto for Humanity’s Future. I’m cautious but curious about this book. I’ve only read short pieces by Gleisner, lately on the Big Think site, and while he’s a physicist and astronomer, he strikes me as a bit soft on the need to assign [human-centered] “meaning” on the universe at large, and to assign faith-based motivations to science. Has he won the Templeton Prize yet? He sounds like a perfect candidate. (Also, it’s published by HarperOne, originally founded as a “New Age” publisher…) Still I’ll give his book a try. The piece at hand is an excerpt from the new book, at Big Think.

Big Think, Marcelo Gleiser, 27 Aug 2023: “Biocentrism”: A scientific answer to the meaning of life, subtitled “Life in the supremely vast cosmos is incredibly rare. We need a new vision for our living planet and for ourselves.”

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Items about the 20% and the 1%

Posted on Sunday 27 August 2023 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Vivek Ramaswamy’s simplistic 10 “truths” includes one about the primacy of the nuclear family (compare my post two days ago);
  • E.J. Dionne Jr. about how Republicans are focused on three different “yesterdays,” all since the 1980s, and not the future;
  • Paul Krugman on the idiocy of Trump’s call for a 10% tariff on all imports;
  • And finally, an excerpt from an interview with Daniel C. Dennett, who has a new book, an autobiography, coming out soon.

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The Outsized Perception of the Danger of Minority Cults

Posted on Saturday 26 August 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

Two pieces for today.

  • A Salon essay that suggests that the “mainstream media” has a far wider effect on the US population than the fringe, Trump/Fox-supporting media, than most of us realize (and how that’s a good thing); and how attention to the latter by the former is skewing some of our worries about the fate of America and its politics;
  • Amanda Marcotte on how that poll that showed 71% of Trump voters trust him for the truth above all others demonstrates cult thinking.

\

Could this be some good news?

Salon, Dennis Aftergut and Philip Allen Lacovara, 23 Aug 2023: The mainstream media is winning the war against “fake news”, subtitled “Why ‘factual truth’ matters so much in fraught times”

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The Obsolete Ideal of the Nuclear Family?

Posted on Saturday 26 August 2023 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Two pieces about how the idealistic nuclear family beloved by conservatives has been an aberration in human history and is perhaps no longer suited for the modern world;
  • Pondering the hunter-gatherer lifestyle, and Cain and Abel;
  • Items about Trump and the Nazi’s playbook; when the GOP likes big government; and Vivek Ramaswamy’s claims about climate change;
  • And Nicholas Kristof summarizes recent trends about the decline of religious faith in America.

It’s been my impression (I don’t have a quick link to cite) that one of the MAGA points is that the traditional nuclear family is threatened by modernity, and ideally society should return to those traditional roles. Father, who goes to work; mother, who stays home; children, who go to school. But in fact my understanding is that the nuclear family is a relatively modern invention, of the past century, perhaps enabled by the rise in America of suburbia and car culture. Hillary Clinton’s “it takes a village” remark was reviled by conservatives, whose ideas about an idea past go back only to the 1950s; but they have a very limited perspective of human history.

Big Think, Mauro F. Guillén, 24 Aug 2023: Why we must replace the American nuclear family with a “postgenerational” society, subtitled “Ideal models of family life have been broken by societal, technological, and cultural shifts — and we need to rethink our options.”

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Commentaries about Last Night’s Republican Debate

Posted on Thursday 24 August 2023 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Various reactions to the Republican debate, with its themes of science denial, and lying to a base that feeds on lies;
  • Robert Reich on Republicans’ denial of climate change.

I watched bits of it. I’m relying on the commentaries published today. Beginning with some headlines. And subtitles.

Salon, Amanda Marcotte, 24 Aug 2023: Why do Republicans even bother with this whole farce?, subtitled “Trump wasn’t there, but we saw why he’s leading: GOP voters don’t care about substance, just unjustified grievances”

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Freedom, Liberty, and Religion

Posted on Wednesday 23 August 2023 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Liberty and freedom, vs. conformity to religion;
  • More on how some Christians now think Jesus was too “woke”;
  • How Republicans politicians lie, because it works: their “distorted reality insulates right-wing media consumers from contradictions and challenges to their beliefs”;
  • And a revisit to a 2014 essay by a writer whose “father lost his mind” to Fox News.

Here’s an essay with what may seem like a startling premise, but one which actually is implicit in many cultures.

Adam Lee, OnlySky, 21 Aug 2023: Don’t be yourself

Overview:
A growing movement of Christian evangelicals decries “expressive individualism,” or in other words, the freedom to make your own choices and decide what to do with your own life.

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Explaining Trump and his Followers; Conservatives’ Lies about Heartstopper

Posted on Tuesday 22 August 2023 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Two kinds of boomers, and the naivete of older people about how social media works;
  • Why Republican voters believe Trump — it’s all about their feelings of victimhood;
  • An example of how pearl-clutching conservatives lie about Heartstopper.

Not one but two articles today whose headlines purport to offer explanations for Trump and his followers.

Slate, Ben Mathis-Lilley, 22 Aug 2023: The Georgia Trump Trial Will Be, Above All, the Final War Between the Two Kinds of Boomers on the Internet, subtitled “Hillary Clinton did not invent AIDS. (We’ll get into why that’s relevant.)”

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Conservatives and Mental Health

Posted on Monday 21 August 2023 by Mark R. Kelly
  • How Republican fears reveal their own mental health crisis;
  • How Trump voters trust him more than family, friends, or clergy;
  • How the worst people run for office (from Adam Grant), and how SF has anticipated this (from Isaac Asimov).

This seems plausible enough, given evidence every day.

Salon, Kirk Swearingen, 20 Aug 2023: Guns, Republicans and “manliness”: We all suffer from the right’s mental health crisis, subtitled “Republican men seem massively troubled about their masculinity — and that’s literally causing death and suffering”

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