- How that DeSantis/Newsom debate revealed “the space between red and blue states”;
- Short items about folding paper to reach the Moon (the answer is 42), and Christian ideas about good and evil, beating up gay children, and Trump as God’s gift to mankind.
I have a bunch of links from the past couple weeks and even before that I can post quickly, but in looking for something more substantial that I can quote from to begin the post…. Let’s try this.
I’ve posted a couple items recently about the stark difference between how conservatives/Republicans and liberals/Democrats would run the government. (I’ll insert links here shortly.) Here’s another, a link collected back on 3 Dec, which I’ve not seemed to have used yet. It’s about the “debate” between Newsom and DeSantis, back at the end of November.
The Atlantic, Ronald Brownstein, 3 Dec 2023: What the DeSantis and Newsom Debate Really Revealed, subtitled “The space between red and blue states”
The best way to understand last week’s unusual debate between Governors Gavin Newsom of California and Ron DeSantis of Florida is to think of them less as representatives of different political parties than as ambassadors from different countries.
Thursday night’s debate on Fox News probably won’t much change the arc of either man’s career. DeSantis is still losing altitude in the 2024 GOP presidential race, and Newsom still faces years of auditioning before Democratic leaders and voters for a possible 2028 presidential-nomination run.
What I’m fascinated about is this.
The best way to understand last week’s unusual debate between Governors Gavin Newsom of California and Ron DeSantis of Florida is to think of them less as representatives of different political parties than as ambassadors from different countries.
…
What the debate did reveal was how wide a chasm has opened between red and blue states. The governors spent the session wrangling over the relative merits of two utterly divergent models for organizing government and society. It was something like watching an argument over whether the liberal government in France or the conservative government in England produces better outcomes for its people.…
On issues including voting, LGBTQ rights, classroom censorship, book bans, public protest, and, most prominent, access to abortion, red states are imposing restrictions that are universally rejected in blue states. As Newsom argued in an interview with me a few hours before he went onstage, “This assault on our rights and the weaponization of grievance” is designed to “bring us back to … the pre-1960s world” in which people’s rights depended on their zip code. Under DeSantis, Florida has been a leader in that process, creating policies, such as limits on classroom discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity, widely emulated across other red states.
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So then some shorter items.
Big Think, Ethan Siegel, 8 Jan 2024: How many times must you fold a paper to reach the Moon?, subtitled “Each time you fold a piece of paper, you double the paper’s thickness. It doesn’t take all that long to even reach the Moon.”
This is similar to the ancient puzzle about doubling the amount on a chessboard from one square to the next. (It was even invoked on the very early Star Trek episode “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” by Sulu.)
The answer to this one: 42. Surprised, amazed? This is yet another example of the limitations of human intuitions.
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Yet more simplistic thinking.
Slate, Molly Omstead, 6 Jan 2024: The Radical Evangelicals Who Helped Push Jan. 6 to Wage War on “Demonic Influence”, subtitled “Mike Johnson has deep ties to groups that encouraged the Capitol raid—out of conviction that they’re in a literal battle between supernatural forces of good and evil.”
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LGBTQNation, 8 Jan 2024: MAGA pundits want Christians to beat up kids with same-sex parents, subtitled “We need to beat up gay children to maintain good behavior, say a trio of Christian Nationalists.”
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Hemant Mehta, Friendly Atheist, 8 Jan 2024: “God gave us Trump,” says lie-filled propaganda video spread by Trump, subtitled “The ad, made by a conservative propagandist, treats Trump as God’s gift to mankind”
To me this discredits Christian religious ideology, even more so than all the studies about the contingency of its religion and the dicey origins of its holy book. Which is to say: is Trump the best that God could do?? Trump is so much more easily explained by cult and tribal psychology.
