{"id":28707,"date":"2026-09-10T17:30:29","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T00:30:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/?p=28707"},"modified":"2026-09-14T16:33:26","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T23:33:26","slug":"rejecting-reality-and-truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2026\/09\/10\/rejecting-reality-and-truth\/","title":{"rendered":"Rejecting Reality, and Truth"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>More about the new UN map of the world; MAGA preferred the previous, less accurate one;<\/li>\n<li>Trump is now bribing American voters;<\/li>\n<li>Republicans defend lying;<\/li>\n<li>Robert Reich calls Trump completely bonkers;<\/li>\n<li>Heather Cox Richardson expands on Trump&#8217;s lies;<\/li>\n<li>Trumps talks out of turn with Iran;<\/li>\n<li>Grindr outage at the GOP convention.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div align=\"center\">&#8211; &#8211; &#8211;<\/div>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.salon.com\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Mercator-GettyImages-2293654033-1536x1037.jpg\" width=\"400\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Salon, Troy Farah, today<\/strong>: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.salon.com\/2026\/09\/10\/our-world-map-is-wrong-maga-likes-it-that-way\/\">Our world map is wrong. MAGA likes it that way<\/a>, subtitled &#8220;Because the US rejects reality, it voted against the UN&#8217;s Correct the Map plan&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Excerpts:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Perhaps this resolution wasn\u2019t as minor as it seemed at first glance. In fact, it could be that the Mercator map explains President Donald Trump\u2019s strange obsession with seizing Greenland. Maybe he really does think it\u2019s that gigantic? Of course, ignorance isn\u2019t Trump\u2019s only possible motivation \u2014 knowing Greenland\u2019s presumed vast troves of natural minerals, some of it comes down to plain old greed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><!--more-->And<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>But that probably isn\u2019t why the U.S. voted no. It seems to be more about childish opposition to anything positive the U.N. might do, no matter how inconsequential, in an effort to delegitimize the body, which has been the target of Republican attacks since its founding. Anti-U.N. sentiment has been a broad part of Trump\u2019s agenda since his first term, from <a href=\"https:\/\/news.un.org\/en\/story\/2026\/01\/1166736\">abandoning<\/a> the organization\u2019s bodies like the World Health Organization and the Framework Convention on Climate Change. Trump has tried to recreate his own U.N., ironically called the \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.salon.com\/2026\/02\/13\/buddhist-monks-vs-trumps-fake-board-of-peace\/\" data-google-interstitial=\"false\">Board of Peace<\/a>,\u201d even though it supports Israel\u2019s ongoing <a href=\"https:\/\/time.com\/article\/2026\/08\/04\/israel-gaza-airstrikes-hamas-disarmament-trump-peace-plan\/\">bombing<\/a> of Gaza and the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. A vote to reject objective reality \u2014 the size of continents on maps \u2014 verges on pure flat-earther nonsense, existing in the same realm as anti-vaccine rhetoric and the denial of climate change caused by humans. In other words, it fits right into the MAGA worldview, which thrives on A.I. slop and disinformation. It\u2019s also a less-than-subtle nod toward the \u201cglory days\u201d of racist colonialism.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Finishing:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>[Stunts like this] work to make the U.S. look even more unserious \u2014 and, ironically, smaller \u2014 on the world stage. If 164 other countries can\u2019t even expect the U.S. to acknowledge basic geography, what does it say about our ability to lead on far more consequential matters? You don\u2019t need a map to see that this is leading nowhere good.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Included here is that map that shows how the African continent could comfortably hold the US, China, India, and some of Europe. Just look at a globe.<\/p>\n<p>I still don&#8217;t care for the new map. The relative sizes are better, but the shapes are distorted, the farther out they are from the center. I still like the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Goode_homolosine_projection\">Goode homolosine projection<\/a>, which reduces the distortion, and also makes it clear that the map is a flattening of a global area.<\/p>\n<p>\\\\\\<\/p>\n<p>More and more I&#8217;m placing political items like this into the box of evidence about the limitations of human cognition.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/09\/09\/multimedia\/09midterms-trump-dividend-ltvh\/09midterms-trump-dividend-ltvh-superJumbo.jpg?quality=75&amp;auto=webp\" width=\"400\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>NY Times, Katie Rogers, today<\/strong>: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/09\/10\/us\/politics\/trump-dividend-5000-dollar-checks.html?unlocked_article_code=1.AFE.j-I1.GxT2iYyr_WBb&amp;smid=url-share\">Pleading for Votes, Trump Tries a New Spin on an Old Promise: Free Money<\/a>, subtitled &#8220;In his convention speech, the president floated the idea of a $5,000 &#8216;Trump Dividend&#8217; for every adult American if Republicans keep control of Congress. The idea, like many others, may not come to pass.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Who believes this will ever happen? Presumably Trump thinks MAGA does.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In several cases, the money Mr. Trump has promised in the past has not materialized. He has proposed <a class=\"css-povzk\" title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/12\/17\/us\/politics\/trump-cash-payments.html\">$2,000 checks based on tariff revenues<\/a> (in an interview with The New York Times in January, he said that money could arrive by the end of this year). He has also floated the idea of <a class=\"css-povzk\" title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/02\/20\/business\/dealbook\/trump-doge-dividend.html\">$5,000 payments<\/a> from money saved by eliminating thousands of federal jobs, and <a class=\"css-povzk\" title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/abcnews.com\/Health\/trumps-idea-pay-americans-directly-health-care\/story?id=127410223\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">assorted payments to Americans<\/a> from government health care subsidies.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"css-12m5bll evys1bk0\">But Mr. Trump\u2019s latest notion would be exorbitantly expensive.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-12m5bll evys1bk0\">It would cost more than $1.3 trillion to send $5,000 checks to each of the roughly 270 million adults in the U.S., making such a plan almost prohibitively costly for a country with <a class=\"css-povzk\" title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/08\/19\/business\/economy\/us-debt-40-trillion.html\">a $40 trillion national debt<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-12m5bll evys1bk0\">Mr. Trump said that the money would come with just one caveat: It must be spent in the United States.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>And how would that be enforced?<\/p>\n<p>\\<\/p>\n<p>More lies.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>JMG,<\/strong> from <strong>Mediaite,<\/strong> today: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.joemygod.com\/2026\/09\/trump-lies-that-ex-nc-gov-roy-cooper-released-killer\/\">Trump Lies That Ex-NC Gov. Roy Cooper Released Killer<\/a><\/li>\n<li><strong>NY Times, Frank Bruni and Bret Stephens in dialogue, today<\/strong>: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/09\/10\/opinion\/trump-midterms-dallas-convention.html?unlocked_article_code=1.AFE.BliW.7vuFucn7GRg4&amp;smid=url-share\">It\u2019s My Party and I\u2019ll Lie if I Want To<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\\<\/p>\n<p>What&#8217;s frightening is how so many people do not see this.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!49LS!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc3ae634e-65fd-4cde-9437-986f378c29d6_960x640.webp\" width=\"400\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Robert Reich, yesterday<\/strong>: <a href=\"https:\/\/robertreich.substack.com\/p\/trump-is-totally-utterly-and-completely\">Trump is Totally, Utterly, and Completely Bonkers<\/a>, subtitled &#8220;The question is when, if, and how Congress will stop him&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>He\u2019s not just an old crazy ego-maniac. He\u2019s now clearly looney-tunes, out of his head, stark-raving mad.<\/p>\n<p>Lake America? New America (because New Mexico is a \u201ccheating state\u201d he didn\u2019t carry)? \u201cwe own the moon\u201d? the Arc de Trump? &#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Maybe lots of people are now laughing at him, but I\u2019m not. There used to be guardrails, but now there are none.<\/p>\n<p>If the crazy SOB says let the missiles fly, I honestly fear that those two idiots Hegseth and Caine will do it.<\/p>\n<p>Either every last Republican at the federal level is treasonously irresponsible (which I really don\u2019t want to believe) or they\u2019re trying to ride things out until the election, and then they\u2019ll take action.<\/p>\n<p>They\u2019re afraid that if they do something to Trump now, the MAGA hordes will stay home on Election Day and they\u2019ll all lose their jobs. So they wait until the election, for better or for worse, and then they join the Dems in invoking the 25th, or in impeachment and conviction.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And he appends this <strong>NYT<\/strong> piece by Peter Baker: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/09\/09\/us\/politics\/trump-social-media-ai-reality.html?unlocked_article_code=1.AVE.U4ql.Q6yRsI4EVRWM&amp;smid=url-share\">60 Posts in 10 Hours: How Trump\u2019s Social Media Reflects His Version of Reality<\/a><\/p>\n<p>It describes many of the AI slop images posted on Trump Social last weekend. Which I&#8217;m guessing Fox News is too smart to show, and so most MAGAites will never see them. Except for the very hardcore.<\/p>\n<p>\\\\\\<\/p>\n<p>But there&#8217;s more. Heather Cox Richardson describes some of the more:<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!0m7P!,e_trim:10:white\/e_trim:10:transparent\/h_106,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe1b1ec0c-7e59-4f5d-990f-e1e4f3427b57_1344x256.png\" width=\"400\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Letters from an American, yesterday<\/strong>: <a href=\"https:\/\/heathercoxrichardson.substack.com\/p\/september-9-2026\">September 9, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Yesterday, at a White House event honoring those who sacrificed their lives on 9\/11, President Donald Trump went off script and claimed he had taken a crew downtown \u201cright after this happened. They were, they had no hesitation. Everybody went down with me. We went down as a big group of people. Wasn\u2019t too much we could do, I\u2019ll be honest. It was raw. Nobody\u2019s seen anything like it ever. We had other buildings. United States Steel Building was creaking. Really creaking. And we thought it was going to fall down. The truth is it creaked a lot. It creaked. It still creaks, but uh, it never came down. And uh, I\u2019ll never forget two firemen. We thought it was coming down on top of us and two firemen\u2014big strong guys, and I\u2019m not the smallest guy in the world\u2014they grabbed me under the arm, said, \u2018Got to get out of here.\u2019 And they literally lifted me up. This is not easy to do. I\u2019m big. They lifted me up and they started running with me. I said, \u2018Fellas, I can run myself.\u2019 But they were amazing. But they thought it was coming down. It didn\u2019t come down, U.S. Steel.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In fact, as CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale reported, there is no evidence for any of this story.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>He just makes stuff up, and his MAGA fans eat it up.<\/p>\n<p>\\<\/p>\n<p>One more.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/compote.slate.com\/images\/fb3f1bed-0480-4ae6-b991-975b6bacb7fe.jpeg?crop=4543%2C3029%2Cx0%2Cy0&amp;width=840\" width=\"400\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Slate, Fred Kaplan, today<\/strong>: <a href=\"https:\/\/slate.com\/news-and-politics\/2026\/09\/trump-iran-war-nuclear-weapons-republican-convention.html\">This Trump Speech Sent a Dangerous Message to Iran\u200d\u2014and the Rest of the World<\/a>, subtitled &#8220;Even he should know better than to say things like this out loud.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>About nuclear bombs.<\/p>\n<p>\\<\/p>\n<p>And this. Which seems to happen regularly at such events.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.joemygod.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/GrindrWallStreet-1-660x330.jpg\" width=\"300\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>JMG,<\/strong> from <strong>AlterNet,<\/strong> today: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.joemygod.com\/2026\/09\/report-grindr-sees-outage-during-gop-convention\/\">REPORT: Grindr Sees Outage During GOP Convention<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Grindr, you understand, is a gay hookup app.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>More about the new UN map of the world; MAGA preferred the previous, less accurate one; Trump is now bribing American voters; Republicans defend lying; Robert Reich calls Trump completely bonkers; Heather Cox Richardson expands on Trump&#8217;s lies; Trumps talks &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2026\/09\/10\/rejecting-reality-and-truth\/\">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":[90,54,89],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conservatives","category-politics","category-reality"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28707","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=28707"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28707\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28755,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28707\/revisions\/28755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}