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The big story of the week, which I’m not quite letting go. This could be a growing story that actually has consequences. Unlike so many scandalous incidents by Trump and his MAGA acolytes, that they just get away with.<\/p>\n
This Christian lies.<\/p>\n
JMG, 10 Jan 2026<\/strong>:\u00a0Christian Site Mocks \u201cToxic Empathy\u201d For ICE Victim<\/a><\/p>\n Quoting Ryan Helfenbein in the Christian Post: “This tragedy was entirely avoidable, but because a mother decided her duty to obstruct law enforcement, try to flee, and accelerate straight at them superseded her duty to comply, she is now dead.” Then he quotes scripture, where you can find justification for absolutely anything you want to believe.<\/p>\n She did *not* “accelerate straight at them.” It’s there over and over, in the videos. Why does he lie? Because religious ideology trumps evidence and reason; and everyone not on Trump and MAGA’s side is assumed to be evil and culpable?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \\\\<\/p>\n Stepping out, but illustrating the same broad point.<\/p>\n The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, 6 Jan 2026<\/strong>: MAGA\u2019s Foundational Lie<\/a>, subtitled “The movement claims to stand with the police. Trump\u2019s decision to pardon the cop-beaters of January 6 exposed his movement for what it is.”<\/p>\n Which is as I described yesterday.<\/p>\n \\\\<\/p>\n Stepping out even further.<\/p>\n The Atlantic, Gal Beckerman, 10 Jan 2026<\/strong>: What Stephen Miller Gets Wrong About Human Nature<\/a>, subtitled “The Trump adviser\u2019s assertions about the ‘real world’ reflect a deep misunderstanding of Thomas Hobbes\u2019s dog-eat-dog worldview.”<\/p>\n Once again, there’s the famous dichotomy about the views of human nature as stated by John Locke and Thomas Hobbes.<\/p>\n The 17th-century philosophers each offered a picture of human nature in its rawest form, and they came to different conclusions. Locke, whose ideas were central to the birth of modern democracy, thought that people were capable of reason and moral judgment. Hobbes, on the other hand, believed that we were vicious creatures who needed to be protected from ourselves by a powerful king. Whether a leader is Lockean or Hobbesian really does set the table for the kind of government they want.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And, once again, it’s not one or the other. Humans like to divide issues into bipolar opposites, one or the other. Whereas reality is always a mix of the opposite patterns that humans perceive. (This is the subject of Rutger Bregman’s HUMANKIND, who takes Locke’s side; and Steven Pinker’s books, who considers both sides, but especially how Hobbes’ Leviathan brought order to the world.)<\/p>\n One way to understand the head-spinning nature of being an American over the past couple of decades is that this debate\u2014one that history seemed to have settled in Locke\u2019s favor\u2014is alive again. Barack Obama was a Lockean through and through\u2014insisting, repeatedly, that if citizens were just given accurate information and a fair hearing, they would converge on something like the common good. Then came Donald Trump, Hobbesian extraordinaire, who has often portrayed life under anyone\u2019s leadership but his own much as Hobbes describes the state of nature: \u201csolitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.\u201d (Nasty<\/i> is even one of Trump\u2019s favorite words<\/a>.)<\/p>\n Comments this week from Stephen Miller, the influential deputy chief of staff<\/a> often cast<\/a> as the president\u2019s \u201cbrain,\u201d only reinforced this impression. Miller might have been Hobbes in a skinny tie as he confidently articulated<\/a> what he understood to be the \u201ciron laws of the world since the beginning of time.\u201d His monologue was like something out of the English philosopher\u2019s 1651 political treatise, Leviathan<\/i>: \u201cWe live in a world, in the real world,\u201d he said, \u201cthat is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n But his is the dog-eat-dog world that the idealists, from Jesus to the Founders, sought to overcome. There *can* be a better way. Yet base human nature is never going away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Apropos of nothing else in this post, but anyone following social media will understand. \\\\\\ The big story of the week, which I’m not quite letting go. This could be a growing story that actually has consequences. Unlike so many … Continue reading <\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n