Many topics today.
- Trump plans to fire generals who are not “yes men”;
- RFK Jr. plans to fire scientists who do not subscribe to his anti-scientific ideology;
- Federal scientists anticipate firings, and the parallel with the Soviet Union and Lysenkoism;
- Right-wing disinformation caused the “most badly informed electorate in modern American history”;
- The Department of Education and what conservatives fear their children are being “indoctrinated” into;
- Big Think’s Ethan Siegel on how political realities do not change scientific ones;
- How Trump’s antagonism to the “woke” military demonstrates again how he and his followers don’t actually like most Americans;
- How Christians explain how their “prophets” are right sometimes and wrong other times, and how tribalists always need an enemy;
- And how this is why MAGA conservatives will never respond to appeals for “unity”.
AlterNet, 12 Nov 2024: ‘Purge anyone who will not be a yes man’: Trump readies order allowing him to fire top generals (from Wall Street Journal)
The Trump transition team is currently preparing an executive order that would allow him to pave the way for new military leadership that is squarely in the MAGA camp. The draft order would create a so-called “warrior board” made up of retired senior U.S. military personnel who would recommend the firing of generals and admirals who are “lacking in requisite leadership qualities.”
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And this is what the Soviet Union did
JMG, 12 Nov 2024: RFK Vows To Fire 600 NIH Scientists On “Day One” (from Mother Jones)
This is rich:
He also returned to his hobby horse, claiming links between vaccines and a spread in autism. “I never saw anybody who was autistic when I was a kid,” Kennedy claimed. “Never.” Experts believe that autism was underdiagnosed until recent decades; the earliest prevalence weren’t conducted until the 1960s and ‘70s.
Like homosexuals, the autistic have always been with us. Before that word was used, they were “special” or “touched” or they were kept in the corner out of view. He’s naive, or a bit dim.
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On the same note (via JMG)
Axios, 12 Nov 2024: Trump’s return could speed up federal scientist exits
Why it matters: Public health efforts were weakened by misinformation and distrust during the COVID pandemic, but a brain drain of the nation’s top scientific minds could hobble research and dissolve institutional knowledge at agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration, National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Conservatives and dictatorships alike seem to be driven by ideology (even superstition) and go to great lengths to diminish, dismiss, and deny actual facts. Good luck handling the next pandemic with that.
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Wikipedia, Lysenkoism
In the mid-20th century the Soviets rejected (Darwinian) natural selection, favoring Lamarckism (the inheritance of acquired characteristics).
More than 3,000 mainstream biologists were dismissed or imprisoned, and numerous scientists were executed in the Soviet campaign to suppress scientific opponents. The president of the Soviet Agriculture Academy, Nikolai Vavilov, who had been Lysenko’s mentor, but later denounced him, was sent to prison and died there, while Soviet genetics research was effectively destroyed. Research and teaching in the fields of neurophysiology, cell biology, and many other biological disciplines were harmed or banned.
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So among the many reasons Trump won: right-wing disinformation.
Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin, 12 Nov 2024: Opinion | Democrats need to reclaim reality from the right-wing disinformation machine, subtitled “Disinformation has taken hold over democracy.”
Citing the Philadelphia Inquirer [paywalled]:
Donald Trump was returned to power by the most badly informed electorate in modern American history.
For example,
In the right-wing media’s world, the economy is in a shambles, crime is surging, and kids are being lured into sex-reassignment surgery.
None of these things is true.
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Why are conservatives so afraid of education? What do they fear their children are being “indoctrinated” into?
CNN, 12 Nov 2024: Trump wants to shut down the Department of Education. Here’s what that could mean
“We will drain the government education swamp and stop the abuse of your taxpayer dollars to indoctrinate America’s youth with all sorts of things that you don’t want to have our youth hearing,” Trump said.
What don’t parents want their youth hearing? Well, obviously, I gather: anything real that would challenge their ideologies, and religions. The existence of gays, of transgenders; of actual science, including evolution; of actual history, which isn’t a teleological path to the US. Like many political issues, this one makes sense in psychological terms: the resistance to tribal-based morality to the reality of the actual world. Humans perhaps do survive best inside of bubbles.
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Thus.
Big Think, Ethan Siegel, 12 Nov 2024: Political realities do not change scientific ones, subtitled “In partisan political times, recognizing the scientific truth is more important than ever. Scientists must be vocal and clear about reality.”
Key Takeaways
• For many decades now, scientists have had to combat misinformation from political and corporate forces about the scientific reality of many aspects of life and human activity on Earth. • From the health hazards of smoking to the realities of a warming planet to the safety and efficacy of vaccines to fluoridated drinking water and much more, science gets politicized whenever it threatens someone’s bottom line. • Many scientists, science communicators, and science journalists are reacting in an unprofessional and unsound manner to the current political climate. The correct course of action is simple: just tell the actual scientific truth.
Long piece with graphs and images, and six steps for communicating science to the masses. All good stuff, but too detailed and abstruse to work for most people… given the simplistic reasons they voted in this last election.
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Here lies some kind of consensus theme, at least for today.
Salon, Lucian K. Truscott IV, 12 Nov 2024: Donald Trump versus the “woke” military: More proof he hates America, subtitled “America’s tremendous military diversity reflects who we are now. Trump wants to undo that, but he will fail”
Concerning Memorial Day, Veterans Day, and that Gen. C.Q. Brown, apparently at the top of Trump’s “woke” list.
Let’s stop right here in our celebration of Veterans Day and discuss this wholly invented and utterly bogus issue of the “woke” military. First of all, among the veterans whose service is being honored today are hundreds of thousands of people who are not white straight males. About 16 percent of those serving across all branches of the military are Black; about 17 percent are female. A 2015 report by the Rand Corporation, put out four years after Barack Obama signed the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Act, found that about 6 percent, or 120,000 service members, identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual. Until then, identifying as any one of those sexual persuasions was illegal and punishable by expulsion from the service with a less than honorable discharge.
I mentioned this a few posts ago with that map of places in the US Trump demonizes, or celebrates. He demonizes the big cities — where most of the population is. He demonizes as “woke” recognition of those who are not white, male, Christian, or straight. How much of the country is left?
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And this theme can’t help but slide into religion, and the religious right’s selective acknowledgement of the fulfillment of their “prophets.”
Slate, Molly Olmstead, 12 Nov 2024: The Christian “Prophets” Who Said God Would Put Trump Back in Office Are Beyond Excited, subtitled “But the devil’s in the details.”
I mentioned a few posts ago: how do the religious explain their prophecies that fail vs those that pan out? Why didn’t Trump win four years ago? Answers are left as an exercise for the reader. And here:
In 2020 it seemed that a message from God had gotten garbled. That is, at least, if you were listening to some of the Christian MAGA figures who foretold Trump’s sweeping victory that year, claiming that they had received divine messages from God about it.
Far-right evangelical Christian leaders, mostly of independent charismatic churches or who have online followings invested in Trumpism, had declared with celestial clarity that Trump would win in 2020. Anything that stood in his way would be counter to God’s plans.
When he lost, these same Christians were left facing two possibilities: Either they had not worked or prayed hard enough to fulfill God’s will, or Trump had fulfilled the prophecies only in a technical sense, by winning the election, but was being robbed of the office. Karrie Gaspard-Hogewood, a sociologist at Tulane University who studies neo-charismatic Christianity, characterizes this thinking as “God can’t be wrong, so it must be some kind of human error or nefariousness or cheating.”
This, the writer goes on, is why they firmly believed the 2020 election was stolen (apparently the Democrats wielded more power than the prophets). But as things turned out, they can rationalize anything.
Dutch Sheets, an influential self-described prophet and apostle, said in his daily worship broadcast last week that he realized that God had a plan. He quoted the right-wing influencer known as DC Draino, who pointed out that Trump would have been stymied by Democrats in Congress had he won in 2020. “It had to happen this way,” Sheets said. “We don’t always know God’s plans. He reserves the right not to tell us in advance, but we trust him.”
Obviously, by such thinking, you can explain *anything*, including events that simply happen randomly. And we’re back to human psychology, and its inability to perceive and understand the real world, including chance, and cause and effect.
And here’s a key, which again goes to human psychology, and tribalism.
It’s all very exciting for far-right Christians. But there’s a very small downside to Trump’s victory, experts say. The charismatic leaders who build careers off proclaiming their resistance to the Satanic evil of the Biden administration will now have to pivot to find an appropriate enemy. During the first Trump administration, it was Congress. But with Republicans dominating the executive branch and, at this point, at least one chamber of Congress, these Christians will now have to get more creative. “Raging against demonic forces when there are no Democrats in charge of anything anywhere rings thin,” said Paul Djupe, a political scientist at Denison University.
Gaspard-Hogewood predicted there would be a shift away from preaching about Democrats and toward more formless evils. “You’ve got to start focusing on different enemies if you’re going to keep this momentum alive,” she said. “It’s time to switch enemies: ‘Let’s double down on transgenderism. Let’s start talking about socialism.’ ”
The essence of tribalism is that you always need an enemy. So while gays have become mainstreamed, the right is now switching to transgenderism. They will always find a new demon to fight.
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That’s what this is all about. A celebration of selective prophecies.
Right Wing Watch, 8 Nov 2024: Dominionists Celebrate Trump’s ‘Miracle’ Victory: ‘We’re Just Getting Started’
I’m not going to quote.
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Finally for today, a piece about why repeated calls for unity will not work.
Salon, Amanda Marcotte, 12 Nov 2024: Biden wants Americans to “bring down the temperature” — but MAGA will not let that happen, subtitled “In conversations with Republican voters, we learned why they shun ‘unity'”
Again, tribalistic conservatives always need an enemy.
[W]e can expect the next four years to be the same stream of unhinged vitriol and lies aimed at immigrants, journalists, independent women, LGBTQ people, racial minorities or anyone else belonging to Trump’s “enemies within” category. That’s because MAGA is a fascist movement, and fascism needs to offer up a constant stream of imaginary “enemies” to their supporters, to keep them paranoid and enthralled.
