Category Archives: Politics

Zack Beauchamp, THE REACTIONARY SPIRIT

Posted on Tuesday 14 January 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Subtitled “How American’s Most Insidious Political Tradition Swept the World” (PublicAffairs, July 2024, 262pp including 16pp of acknowledgements, selected bibliography, and index.) Here’s another recent book, which I bought mainly because I’ve seen the author’s name quite a number of … Continue reading →

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Human Nature and Existential Crises

Posted on Monday 13 January 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Yesterday I had an item and some comments about how the inability of many people to recognize existential dangers like climate change may in fact doom the species. (And explain the Fermi Paradox.) Too many people live in fantasy cultural … Continue reading →

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Clearly, We’re Seeing an Infestation of Alien Mind Parasites

Posted on Saturday 11 January 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

This infestation is growing. The symptoms include paranoia, megalomania, delusions, and the perception of demons and/or global conspirators around every corner. The interpretation of extraordinary events (that have rational causes that they do not believe in), but rather see as … Continue reading →

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Bill Adair, BEYOND THE BIG LIE

Posted on Saturday 11 January 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Subtitled “The Epidemic of Political Lying, Why Republicans Do It More, and How It Could Burn Down Our Democracy” (Atria, Oct 2024, xxiii + 273pp, including 55pp of acknowledgements, sources, notes, and index.) This is a recent book, just published … Continue reading →

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Conservative Reactions to the Los Angeles Fires

Posted on Friday 10 January 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

The past few days have been fodder for examples of (conservative) lies, evasions, and misrepresentations, as they react to the fires in Southern California. Conservatives blame the LA fires on the vast world-wide conspiracy theories they are obsessed with; Two … Continue reading →

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So Predictable

Posted on Thursday 9 January 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Trumps lies, or evades, or misrepresents; Conservatives blame everyone they don’t like for the California wildfires; Anita Bryant dies; she was an outlier in her time, but now typical of MAGA; Heather Cox Richardson on the California fires; How Jimmy … Continue reading →

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Conservative Reality, and Reality

Posted on Tuesday 7 January 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

The state of the American economy, vs. conservative dystopian fantasies; How conservatives whitewash the events of January 6th, 2021; How Meta is obeying in advance by removing fact-checkers, and wondering why conservatives object to fact-checkers (where the answer is obvious); … Continue reading →

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George Lakoff, THE POLITICAL MIND

Posted on Monday 6 January 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Subtitled “Why You Can’t Understand 21st-Century American Politics with an 18th-Century Brain” (Viking, June 2008, 292pp, including 20pp of acknowledgements, notes, and index.) Note that the paperback edition from 2009 changed the subtitle to “A Cognitive Scientist’s Guide to Your … Continue reading →

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Knee-Jerk Conservative Reactions

Posted on Friday 3 January 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Conservatives react to the incidents this past week in New Orleans and Las Vegas by blaming their favorite bogeymen. Immigrants! Diversity initiatives! Without evidence, or rationale. As conservatives reject reality, reality-based scientists are rejecting the coming conservative administration, by moving … Continue reading →

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Remembering Y2k; a Political Commentator admits he was wrong; Fallibilism; Reading Lakoff

Posted on Thursday 2 January 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Back to interesting ideas. Heather Cox Richardson recalls Y2K, 25 years ago on January 1st, and how since the problem was fixed (by the scientists and tech guys) some people felt the problem had never been real. As always, she … Continue reading →

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