- Now right-wingers are blaming the Trump assassination attempt on women;
- Those who come out and say that want to impose Christian Nationalism on the nation;
- Paul Krugman on Project 2025, and it would reverse measures established in the 19th century to prevent cronyism and corruption;
- Trump buys into RFK Jr.’s vaccine conspiracy theories; Charlie Kirk think there must be something wrong with men who don’t vote for Trump;
- And on a contrasting note, how Richard Dawkins admires the courage of atheists.
There must be a reason, right? Things just don’t happen for no reason, do they? That would be such a waste of an opportunity for a new conspiracy theory — a new story to explain the world! Any story will do!
Salon, Tatyana Tandanpolie, 16 Jul 2024: “Very clever effort”: Right-wingers find new group to blame over Trump assassination attempt — women, subtitled “Right-wingers claim ‘DEI got someone killed’ because there were women on Trump’s Secret Service detail”
Better yet, impose your preferred story on everyone else. By hook or by crook. Like getting rid of voters who aren’t going to vote your way. Never mind democracy — but we’ve already established that, whatever they say, conservatives don’t believe in democracy.
JMG (from ProPublica), 15 Jul 2024: Billionaire Christians Spend To Purge Over One Million From Voter Rolls, “Return Nation To Biblical Structure”
Also here:
Friendly Atheist, 16 Jul 2024: Ziklag, funded by wealthy donors, wants voter purges and Christian Nationalism, subtitled “Ultra-wealthy donors have a plan to force conservative Christianity upon the nation”
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Krugman on Project 2025.
NY Times, Paul Krugman, 15 Jul 2024: Don’t Lose Sight of Project 2025. That’s the Real Trump.
First, a theme already seen.
Some on the political right are using the attack to imply that the criticism of Trump’s past efforts to overturn the results of the last election, and any suggestion that he poses a threat to democracy, is now out of bounds.
But two things are true at the same time: Political violence is unacceptable, full stop. And the efforts by Trump and his most hard-core supporters to undermine American democracy continue to be unacceptable.
Then Krugman supplies some historical background into how our government came to be, and made fixes to address certain problems, and how Project 2025 would reverse those fixes.
For much of the 19th century the federal government operated on the “spoils system,” in which new administrations fired many officials and replaced them with political supporters. This system had big problems: Many appointees lacked the experience and competence to do their jobs, and the constant turnover was an open invitation to cronyism and corruption.
In 1883, less than two years after President James Garfield was assassinated by a deranged and disgruntled man seeking a political appointment, Congress passed the Pendleton Act, which created a professional civil service in which most employees can’t be fired or demoted for political reasons. There were very good reasons for that reform at the time, but the case for insulating most government employees from partisan pressure is far stronger now.
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More about Republicans believing things that are not true. (They prefer *stories* and are inclined to perceive threats, everywhere.)
CNBC, 16 Jul 2024: Trump endorses vaccine conspiracy theory in leaked call with RFK Jr.
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This is just bizarre.
JMG, from Media Matters, 16 Jul 2024: Kirk: Men Who Don’t Vote Trump After Shooting Have “Something Deeply Disturbing And Wrong” With Them
What a peculiar, tiny little mind he has. What is it ‘man’ means to him? Tribal tough guy?
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Finally, let’s look at this, a piece about people who understand reality as it is, aside from tribal stories.
Jerry Coyne, Why Evolution Is True, 15 Jul 2024: Dawkins extols the courage of atheists
Coyne notes that this Dawkins essay is adapted from his contribution to the book The Four Horsemen: The Conversation that Sparked an Atheist Revolution. (Which I’ve read, but not written up here.) Here’s a key passage, about “the courage of atheism”:
Why did I speak of intellectual courage? Because the human mind, including my own, rebels emotionally against the idea that something as complex as life, and the rest of the expanding universe, could have ‘just happened’. It takes intellectual courage to kick yourself out of your emotional incredulity and persuade yourself that there is no other rational choice. Emotion screams: ‘No, it’s too much to believe! You are trying to tell me the entire universe, including me and the trees and the Great Barrier Reef and the Andromeda Galaxy and a tardigrade’s finger, all came about by mindless atomic collisions, no supervisor, no architect? You cannot be serious. All this complexity and glory stemmed from Nothing and a random quantum fluctuation? Give me a break.’ Reason quietly and soberly replies: ‘Yes. Most of the steps in the chain are well understood, although until recently they weren’t. In the case of the biological steps, they’ve been understood since 1859.
I just finished reading Brian Greene’s Until the End of Time. I’ll detail comments about it soon. (And finish the Pinker book.) And my conclusion, maybe, is today’s title.
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Listening to Peter Gabriel, including one of his most striking songs, San Jacinto, already linked here, at the bottom.
Well, here is the link again.
