A beautiful weekend here in the Bay Area.
We’re witnessing the downfall of the United States as an idealistic nation that for many decades has led the world on enlightenment principles and scientific achievements. At the same time, most people won’t notice this downfall. And it’s happened before.
- Why doesn’t MAGA care that Musk donated hundreds of millions and is getting government contracts worth billions?
- Another explanation of why conservatives do not prevail in academia;
- Why not pray to God for everything? (Because prayer doesn’t work, and God is an illusion);
- And how a dual state is arising in the US, as it did in Nazi Germany.
NY Times, Eric Lipton, 23 Mar 2025: Musk Is Positioned to Profit Off Billions in New Government Contracts
Subtitled: “The boost in federal spending for SpaceX will come in part as a result of actions by President Trump and Elon Musk’s allies and employees who hold government positions. Supporters say he has the best technology.”
Musk donates something like $288 million to the Trump campaign, and now he gets all these huge government contracts. Does no one in MAGAland care about this?
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Washington Post, Megan McArdle, 23 Mar 2025: Abandoning DEI won’t fix academia’s left-leaning problem, subtitled “Creating a balance of viewpoints on campuses requires more than discarding diversity statements.”
This is not the problem some make it out to be. (After all, since conservatives are against education, why do they want to be part of academia? Well, sorta answers itself.) Here’s a case where the AI-generated summary of reader comments sounds spot-on, posted at the bottom of this article:
The comments largely argue that conservative ideas struggle in academia due to their perceived lack of alignment with scientific evidence and critical thinking, which are core to academic inquiry. Many commenters suggest that the underrepresentation of conservatives in academia is not due to bias but rather a result of conservative ideologies often conflicting with established facts and evidence-based research. Some comments highlight that academia naturally leans liberal because education tends to broaden perspectives, leading to more progressive views. Others note that conservative priorities, such as financial gain, may not align with the academic pursuit of knowledge.
Yes. Yes. Exactly. Precisely the point.
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Compare this characterization of the vision of what universities should be about, according to the Trump administration, from this NYT piece a few days ago
Teach what you must, defend “the American tradition and Western civilization,” prepare people for the work force, and limit protests and research.
In other words: preserve the status quo. Do not question received wisdom. Defer to tradition.
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Why didn’t they think of this earlier?
People for the American Way/Right Wing Watch, Kyle Mantyla, 21 Mar 2025: Phillip Jauregui Calls On God To Stop Judges From Ruling Against The Trump Administration
Why not just call on God for *everything*?? (Because: it doesn’t actually work. It never works. If it seems to work, it’s coincidence. That’s the essence of biased thinking, remembering the hits, disregarding the many more misses. Another example of how humans, in general, aren’t actually very smart.)
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I’ve mentioned that many people don’t pay much attention to politics, and wouldn’t notice of a fascist government took over and all the ideals of US Constitution disappeared, as long as their day to day lives were not affected. Never mind those other people whose lives have been destroyed. This has happened before. This is the point where empathy, or denial of empathy, plays.
The Atlantic, Aziz Huq, 23 Mar 2025: America Is Watching the Rise of a Dual State, subtitled “For most people, the courts will continue to operate as usual—until they don’t.”
The point here is that’s “a mistake to think that even the Nazis would entirely dispense with normal laws.”
As Fraenkel explained it, a lawless dictatorship does not arise simply by snuffing out the ordinary legal system of rules, procedures, and precedents. To the contrary, that system—which he called the “normative state”—remains in place while dictatorial power spreads across society. What happens, Fraenkel explained, is insidious. Rather than completely eliminating the normative state, the Nazi regime slowly created a parallel zone in which “unlimited arbitrariness and violence unchecked by any legal guarantees” reigned freely. In this domain, which Fraenkel called the “prerogative state,” ordinary law didn’t apply. (A prerogative power is one that allows a person such as a monarch to act without regard to the laws on the books; theorists from John Locke onward have offered various formulations of the idea.) In this prerogative state, judges and other legal actors deferred to the racist hierarchies and ruthless expediencies of the Nazi regime.
