-
- Today’s neighborhood cookies party.
- Fareed Zakaria how democracy depends on its institutions;
- The Trump administration will indoctrinate Federal employees with MAGA training;
- A West Virginia mayor reject a Pagan float in a Christmas Parade;
- How Trump is stocking his cabinet with criminals, and plans to pardon other criminals.
Today we attended a neighborhood “Holiday Cookies” part, around the corner and down Crestmont from our place. I made “Mexican Wedding Cookies,” which used to be called “Mexican Wedding Cakes” in my family cookbook. It’s odd how in the first five years we lived here (we’ve been here almost 10 years!, since Feb 2015), we barely met any of our neighbors. Now, gradually, we’re meeting more and more. Of course it’s helped that since the pandemic, and everyone working from home, and my exercise (walking) requirements, we go for walks virtually every day, and have more opportunity to run into our neighbors.
\\\
Opinion piece by Fareed Zakaria, whose 2020 book I quite admired.
Washington Post, Fareed Zakaria, 6 Dec 2024: Why democracies, from South Korea to France to the U.S., are in crisis, subtitled “To save liberal democracy, save its institutions.”
It has been quite a week across the world. South Korea’s president placed the country under martial law but was rebuffed by parliament, which is now taking steps to impeach him. In France, the prime minister and his government received a vote of no confidence for the first time in more than 60 years. These seemingly disparate events do have a common underlying theme: a crisis of democratic institutions.
This recalls Jonathan Rauch’s THE CONSTITUTION OF KNOWLEDGE (review concludes here) which is precisely about the institutions and norms that enable our culture to survive.
The common theme is that people increasingly do not trust traditional democratic institutions and the elites who run them.
…
We are living through a period of rapid change, what I have called an “age of revolutions” — economic, technological and cultural. Old patterns are being cast aside.…
People have often noted the decline of trust in many societies, especially in the United States. But, as the writer Derek Thompson has noted, what is really happening is not just a decline but also a shift in trust. People have lost trust in the medical establishment and are placing their trust increasingly in podcasters such as Andrew Huberman and Peter Attia (and even politicians such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr.). They have lost trust in traditional media and are transferring that trust to individual journalists and commentators. Tens of millions of Republicans lost faith in their party and pinned their hopes on a single individual: Donald Trump. This shift from institutions to individuals is enabled by new technologies that allow individuals to have the kind of reach and influence that was once the preserve of large organizations.
Once again: the scourge of social media is that it erodes the institutions that have enabled large nations to grow, in exchange for the tribal thinking of fixating on the single “wise” member of the tribe. A retreat.
If, out of frustration with our current, transitory problems, we give up on the enduring institutions that have built liberal democracy, we will be turning our backs on one of humankind’s most significant achievements in modern history.
\\\
Conservatives complain about “woke” indoctrination, but they’re happy to impose their own MAGA indoctrination on others.
Washington Post, 8 Dec 2024: Federal employees scramble to insulate themselves from Trump’s purge, subtitled “Career civil servants are scrubbing social media, changing job titles and looking for private sector work over fear that Trump might fire them”
Aggregate site JMG characterizes the article as Federal Civil Servants Scramble To Shield Themselves As House Republicans Plot Mandatory MAGA Training
So if conservatives resent training in the values of diversity, say, what would MAGA training be about? Aside from the greatness of America and of Trump? Perhaps the values of exclusivity and the virtues of white male Christian rule?
\\\
Cluelessness.
Friendly Atheist, Hemant Mehta, 6 Dec 2024: A West Virginia mayor kicked a Pagan group out of a Christmas parade, subtitled “The Appalachian Pagan Ministry was told their religious affiliation was the reason they couldn’t participate in the Parkersburg Christmas Parade”
The article doesn’t make the point, but I will: is that mayor aware of how much Christmas paraphernalia is Pagan based? Or are there passages in the Bible about Santa Claus and Christmas trees?
\\\
The way Trump’s cabinet is shaping up, his administration will be run by criminals, and the criminals who have supported him will be freed.
NY Times, 8 Dec 2024: Trump Signals an Aggressive Opening, Threatening ‘Jail’ for Cheney and Others, subtitled “In his first sit-down broadcast network interview since winning re-election, President-elect Donald J. Trump vowed to pardon Capitol attackers and to try to end automatic citizenship for children of immigrants.”
Meanwhile:
NY Times, 8 Dec 2024: Fact-Checking Trump on ‘Meet the Press’: Tariffs, Immigration and More, subtitled “The president-elect repeated several false and inaccurate claims on a range of topics that were staples of his 2024 campaign.”
President-elect Donald J. Trump, in his first sit-down broadcast interview since his re-election last month, repeated several false and inaccurate claims on a range of topics that were staples of his 2024 campaign.
In the interview, which aired on Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Mr. Trump miscast the effect of tariffs, vastly overstated the number of unauthorized immigrants released under the Biden administration, falsely claimed that crime was at “an all-time high,” misleadingly described military spending under the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and exaggerated his own polling, among other specious statements.
As long as his supporters keep voting for him despite his lies, he’ll keep lying. Because many of his supporters believe the lies. Because they don’t know any better.
