{"id":24351,"date":"2025-04-06T17:33:21","date_gmt":"2025-04-07T00:33:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/?p=24351"},"modified":"2025-05-02T11:36:42","modified_gmt":"2025-05-02T18:36:42","slug":"yesterdays-protests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2025\/04\/06\/yesterdays-protests\/","title":{"rendered":"About Yesterday&#8217;s Protests"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>Against Trump and Musk;<\/li>\n<li>Anti-DEI is whitewashing the history of the Underground Railroad;<\/li>\n<li>Jill Lepore on Elon Musk and his retro ideas;<\/li>\n<li>A Vox piece about astrology that panders to believers;<\/li>\n<li>And about Brandolini&#8217;s Law, in which debunking misinformation takes an order of magnitude longer than creating it in the first place.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div align=\"center\">&#8211; &#8211; &#8211;<\/div>\n<p>The major political news today is about the protests staged yesterday against Trump and Musk, in all 50 states. Here&#8217;s a set of 29 photos of them.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.theatlantic.com\/thumbor\/6BGbYeLj3F0bm0STL9DCUAnNdpQ=\/1200x800\/media\/img\/photo\/2025\/04\/photos-nationwide-protests-against\/a01_RC2URDAXQNTH\/original.jpg\" width=\"400\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>The Atlantic, Alan Taylor, 6 Apr 2025<\/strong>: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/photo\/2025\/04\/photos-nationwide-protests-against-trump-and-musk\/682320\/\">Photos: Nationwide Protests Against Trump and Musk<\/a><br \/>\n<!--more--><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Yesterday, more than 1,200 demonstrations were held across the country, described by organizers as a \u201cNational Day of Action,\u201d against the policies and actions of President Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Thousands took part in these \u201cHands Off!\u201d protests, gathering and marching in small towns, big cities, and state capitols. Gathered below are images from some of the demonstrations in Massachusetts, Georgia, California, Florida, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Arizona, Washington, D.C., and more.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>\\\\<\/p>\n<p>Otherwise, there&#8217;s the steady flow of more-or-less outrageous moves by the current administration to dismantle the government and to erase history.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-apps\/imrs.php?src=https:\/\/arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com\/public\/4LI2LQME3FDTNCKFBLZESTQV2I.jpg&amp;w=1440&amp;impolicy=high_res\" width=\"400\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Washington Post, 6 Apr 2025<\/strong>: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/investigations\/2025\/04\/06\/national-park-service-underground-railroad-history-slavery\/\">Amid anti-DEI push, National Park Service rewrites history of Underground Railroad<\/a>, subtitled &#8220;Since Trump took office, the park service \u2014- an agency charged with preserving American history \u2014- has changed how its website describes key moments from slavery to Jim Crow.&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8230;a Washington Post review of websites operated by the National Park Service \u2014 among the key agencies charged with the preservation of American history \u2014 found that edits on dozens of pages since Trump\u2019s inauguration have already softened descriptions of some of the most shameful moments of the nation\u2019s past.<\/p>\n<p>Some were edited to remove references to slavery. On other pages, statements on the historic struggle of Black Americans for their rights were cut or softened, as were references to present-day echoes of racial division. The Post compared webpages as of late March to earlier versions preserved online by the Internet Archive\u2019s Wayback Machine.<\/p>\n<p>Changes in images, descriptions and even individual words have subtly reshaped the meaning of notable moments and key figures dating to the nation\u2019s founding \u2014 abolitionist John Brown\u2019s doomed raid, the battle at Appomattox and school integration by the Little Rock Nine.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I goes on at some length. Specific examples:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A reference to other \u201censlaved African Americans\u201d in that region was changed to \u201censlaved workers.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Proclamations that the students \u201copened doors\u201d for others pursuing \u201cequality and education around the world\u201d were edited on at least six pages to remove the word \u201cequality.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The general theme of efforts like these to soften history is to avoid saying anything that would discomfort whites. To discomfort whites by reminding them of what their ancestors did would be &#8220;divisive.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\<\/p>\n<p>Jill Lepore.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/04\/04\/opinion\/04lepore\/04lepore-superJumbo.png?quality=75&amp;auto=webp\" width=\"300\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>NY Times, Jill Lepore, 4 Apr 2025<\/strong>: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/04\/04\/opinion\/elon-musk-doge-technocracy.html\">The Failed Ideas That Drive Elon Musk<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The theme here is:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Mr. Musk has long presented himself to the world as a futurist. Yet, notwithstanding the gadgets [ &#8230; ] few figures in public life are more shackled to the past.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Lepore sees US history much as Heather Cox Richardson does, and reflects on a key turning point.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In 1932, when civilization stood at another fork in the road, the United States chose liberal democracy, and Franklin Roosevelt, who promised \u201ca new deal for the American people.\u201d In his first 100 days, Mr. Roosevelt. signed 99 executive orders, and Congress passed more than 75 laws, beginning the work of rebuilding the country by establishing a series of government agencies to regulate the economy, provide jobs, aid the poor and construct public works.<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Musk is attempting to go back to that fork and choose a different path.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Thus,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Much of what he has sought to dismantle, from antipoverty programs to national parks, have their origins in the New Deal. Mr. Roosevelt\u2019s Works Progress Administration provided 8.5 million Americans with jobs; Mr. Musk has measured his achievement by the number of jobs he has eliminated.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And then explores Musks&#8217; grandfather Joshua Haldeman:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>a cowboy, chiropractor, conspiracy theorist and amateur aviator known as the Flying Haldeman. Mr. Musk\u2019s grandfather was also a flamboyant leader of the political movement known as technocracy.<\/p>\n<p>Leading technocrats proposed replacing democratically elected officials and civil servants \u2014 indeed, all of government \u2014 with an army of scientists and engineers under what they called a technate. Some also wanted to annex Canada and Mexico. At technocracy\u2019s height, one branch of the movement had more than a quarter of a million members.<\/p>\n<p>Under the technate, humans would no longer have names; they would have numbers. One technocrat went by 1x1809x56. (Mr. Musk has a son named X \u00c6 A-12.) Mr. Haldeman, who had lost his Saskatchewan farm during the Depression, became the movement\u2019s leader in Canada. He was technocrat No. 10450-1.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Technocrats argued that liberal democracy had failed. One Technocracy Incorporated pamphlet explained how the movement \u201cdoes not subscribe to the basic tenet of the democratic ideal, namely that all men are created free and equal.\u201d In the modern world, only scientists and engineers have the intelligence and education to understand the industrial operations that lie at the heart of the economy. Mr. Scott\u2019s army of technocrats would eliminate most government services: \u201cEven our postal system, our highways, our Coast Guard could be made much more efficient.\u201d Overlapping agencies could be shuttered, and \u201c90 percent of the courts could be abolished.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Some fascinating history I was unaware of. Technocracy failed because democracy succeeded, Lepore explains. She goes on to consider Marc Andreessen&#8217;s &#8220;Techno-Optimist Manifesto&#8221; of statements:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>We can advance to a far superior way of living and of being.<br \/>\nWe have the tools, the systems, the ideas.<br \/>\nWe have the will. \u2026<br \/>\nWe believe this is why our descendants will live in the stars. \u2026<br \/>\nWe believe in greatness. \u2026<br \/>\nWe believe in ambition, aggression, persistence, relentlessness \u2014 strength.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This sounds like a lot of science-fictional visions, but also like fascism.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Muskism isn\u2019t the beginning of the future. It\u2019s the end of a story that started more than a century ago, in the conflict between capital and labor and between autocracy and democracy. The Gilded Age of robber barons and wage-labor strikes gave rise to the Bolshevik Revolution, Communism, the first Red Scare, World War I and Fascism. That battle of ideas produced the technocracy movement, and far more lastingly, it also produced the New Deal and modern American liberalism. Technocracy lost because technocracy is incompatible with freedom.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>There&#8217;s also the problem identified in that book <b>The Misinformation Age<\/b> (review <a href=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2025\/03\/02\/cailin-oconnor-and-james-owen-weatherall-the-misinformation-age\/\">here<\/a>) in which complex technological issues are voted, if indirectly, by a general population that doesn&#8217;t know what they&#8217;re talking about. How would we solve this problem without instituting a technocracy, or a fascist government? I&#8217;ve long thought that some basic literacy test (in science, technology, and civics principally) might be required to be able to vote, but of course that raises all sorts of additional problems. (Once again, I think of those Facebook\/TikTok videos of people on the street who cannot answer the question of what continent they&#8217;re standing on.) I don&#8217;t have even a provisional conclusion about this.<\/p>\n<p>\\\\\\<\/p>\n<p>A perennial issue. That this is nonsense was obvious to me once I considered it at age 12 or 13 &#8212; having already the learned the basics of of astronomy &#8212; and Carl Sagan was patient enough to explain why it&#8217;s nonsense in his book and TV series <strong><em>Cosmos<\/em><\/strong> back in 1980. (See my review <a href=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2020\/12\/11\/carl-sagan-cosmos-1980\/\">here<\/a>, under chapter 3.)<\/p>\n<p>My answer: because most people are not well-educated, and many people prefer simple answers. But let&#8217;s see what the article says.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.vox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/03\/GettyImages-1942933509.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C16.666666666667%2C100%2C66.666666666667&amp;w=1200\" width=\"400\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Vox, Alex Abad-Santos, 4 Apr 2025<\/strong>: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/explain-it-to-me\/405150\/astrology-signs-spring-equinox-truth-beliefs\">Why are so many people into astrology?<\/a>, subtitled &#8220;Astrology\u2019s enormous appeal, explained for believers and skeptics.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This relates directly to the previous item, of course.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The simple answer might be that people around the world find validation and self-reflection in astrology. The idea that the stars and planets can affect our personal lives and shape who we are as people may never convince its harshest skeptics, but for many it makes as much sense as anything else our confusing, frustrating, thrilling, comedic existence has to offer.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It goes on with minutia about sun signs and whatnot.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The gist: All of these things ideally help us tell a bigger story about the person we think we are, the person we were, and the person we aspire to be.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>But this piece thinks skepticism about astrology is somehow perverse; it gives no time to any actual scientific reasons why astrology is nonsense, the way Sagan did.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cA skeptic saying, \u2018I don\u2019t believe in astrology,\u2019 is like someone saying, \u2018I don\u2019t believe in maps,\u2019 or, \u2018I don\u2019t believe in instruction manuals.\u2019 Whether or not you choose to engage with it means nothing,\u201d Register says. \u201cYou can go through life just fine without maps or instruction manuals and figure it all out yourself, but those tools can make things way easier on you.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>No. That&#8217;s nonsense. Maps and instruction manuals have direct correspondence with the real world. Astrology does not.<\/p>\n<p>Big picture: this is part of primitive, tribal thinking, in which perceived patterns are taken as more important than pesky evidence about how the real world actually works. It comforts people, and that&#8217;s the best thing that can be said about it. And at worst, it deludes people into thinking they have some understanding, or even control, of a world they don&#8217;t understand. That will not end well.<\/p>\n<p>\\\\\\<\/p>\n<p>One more. Via some post on Facebook, here&#8217;s the idea of Brandolini&#8217;s law. This is the image I saw on Facebook:<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/fbbrandolinilaw.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/fbbrandolinilaw.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"350\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s <strong>Wikipedia:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Brandolini%27s_law\">Brandolini&#8217;s law<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Brandolini&#8217;s law (or the bullshit asymmetry principle) is an internet adage coined in 2013 by Italian programmer Alberto Brandolini. It compares the considerable effort of debunking misinformation to the relative ease of creating it in the first place. The law states:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The rise of easy popularization of ideas through the internet has greatly increased the relevant examples, but the asymmetry principle itself has long been recognized.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Yet again, this circles back to primitive thinking. It&#8217;s easier to believe simple, intuitive things, than to take the time to understand why intuitive things are not true. The obvious examples are left as an exercise for the reader.<\/p>\n<p>This law is analogous to the truism that it&#8217;s easier to destroy, than the build. The current administration is bent on destroying what past generations have built.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Against Trump and Musk; Anti-DEI is whitewashing the history of the Underground Railroad; Jill Lepore on Elon Musk and his retro ideas; A Vox piece about astrology that panders to believers; And about Brandolini&#8217;s Law, in which debunking misinformation takes &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2025\/04\/06\/yesterdays-protests\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-psychology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24351"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24351\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24577,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24351\/revisions\/24577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}