And the Moon Rose Over an Open Field

Posted on Friday 5 September 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Paul Krugman, with graphs, wonders why the right rejects progress;
  • Robert Reich on why we don’t trust Donald Trump — because he disregards the truth;
  • Hemant Mehta on how the “nones” aren’t exactly “godless”;
  • How Trump is a Russian asset; how MAGA is rehabilitating Hitler (!); Tom Nichols on how the world no longer takes Trump seriously; and a piece about RFK Jr.’s testimony today before the Senate;
  • And a lovely cover of Simon and Garfunkel’s “America.”
– – –

 

Again today the usual batch of items, a sort of “Goings On Around MAGA USA.” Of them, here’s one that digs deepest into fundamental principles.

Paul Krugman, 3 Sep 2025: Why Does the Right Reject Progress?, subtitled “The perverse push to make America miserable again”

He begins by discussing vaccines, and the resistance to them.

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Posted in Human Nature, Music, Politics, progress, Religion | Comments Off on And the Moon Rose Over an Open Field

Conservative Logic, or Illogic

Posted on Thursday 4 September 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • A note about my post about Atwood’s THE HANDMAID’S TALE;
  • Florida ends vaccines mandates, because you shouldn’t be forced to follow laws, right?;
  • How the GOP suddenly realizes some people should not be allowed guns;
  • How Trump has learned to speak to his MAGA base.
– – –

I just finished a post about Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel THE HANDMAID’S TALE, which is about a religious theocracy that responds to a dramatic change in human fertility. It’s about how human morality adjusts to changing circumstances. And how religions respond by reinforcing the most basic tribal morality: survival above all. That was then; this is now. Such thinking applied to our current environment goes haywire. Conservatives don’t think anything can be learned.

\\\

NY Times, 3 Sep 2025: Florida Moves to End Vaccine Mandates for Schoolchildren, subtitled “The state would be the first to scrap requirements that children be vaccinated to attend school, among other rules.”

Continue reading →

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Margaret Atwood: THE HANDMAID’S TALE

Posted on Thursday 4 September 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

(Houghton Mifflin, Feb. 1986, hardcover, 311pp)

This is the US first edition hardcover, which I bought when it came out (it’s the first printing too), though the book was published in Canada the year before, in 1985. It’s 40 years old! It’s more than half as old as NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR!

When I sat down in June to read or reread a number of apocalyptic novels, this was the one I had first in mind, though of course it’s more of a dystopia than an apocalypse. Continue reading →

Posted in Book Notes, Morality, Religion, science fiction | Comments Off on Margaret Atwood: THE HANDMAID’S TALE

How history, and current events, become approved stories

Posted on Wednesday 3 September 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Humans live by stories: comparing the story of Jesus to the story of the stolen 2020 election;
  • Short items about Cracker Barrel; RFK Jr the vax quack; how women are not people; erasing the existence of gay people from public education; how Trump is delusional and thinks the world loves him;
  • And how crime rates are higher in the red states than in the blue state cities they are sending their National Guard troops to.
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Here’s a piece that might seem cheeky, or offensive (to the easily offended), but is actually a reasonable concern, given how history works and how people create the stories they need.

Free Inquiry, Ronald A. Lindsay, 28 Aug 2025: The Resurrection of Jesus and the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election
Continue reading →

Posted in conservatives, History, Narrative, Politics | Comments Off on How history, and current events, become approved stories

Are There Any “Good Republicans” Left?

Posted on Tuesday 2 September 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Why there seem to be no good Republican politicians;
  • How happy Republicans are to cut benefits to the poor;
  • How Texas is pushing Christianity on public schools;
  • Scientists denounce the administration’s climate report, full of errors and cherry-picked data, that was written to prove what the administration wants to believe;
  • How Elon Musk has tweeked Grok to give MAGA the answers they want;
  • And how most people won’t notice when democracy is gone, as long as their daily lives are not affected.
– – –

[Note: three of the images from JMG are not displaying properly. Click through to the articles to see the images.]

Were there any Good Germans? Are there now any Good Republicans?

We’ve been thinking for a while that there were, maybe a few, but as time passes and the Congress keeps rubber-stamping Trump’s authoritarian, anti-democratic demands/orders, maybe not. This is how politics works. It’s as much about keeping your job, as about supporting governing principles.

LGBTQNation, commentary by John Gallagher, 2 Sep 2025: It’s long past time to acknowledge there are no good Republican politicians

Subtitle: “Trump has set the stakes so high that politicians who stay in the party are complicit in his attack on democracy.”
Continue reading →

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LA Weekend Trip, and Certain Types of Principles

Posted on Monday 1 September 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

We drove from Oakland to LA (Santa Monica area) Friday, and returned home today, avoiding all the predicted holiday weekend traffic by leaving early each time, around 9am. We celebrated my birthday and my partner saw his new granddaughter for the first time. We stayed at the Luskin Conference Center Hotel on the UCLA campus (as we did at Christmas), and I had a chance to wander around the campus a bit more. This time, unlike last year, the Powell Library and UCLA bookstore were both open.

I remember both fondly. On my first visit to the campus, in August 1973 before I began my freshman year that Fall, I visited the bookstore and found books in the science fiction section I’d never seen before, not in the local paperback shops, or the Pickwick or Walden bookstores in the malls. They were Ballard’s THE VOICES OF TIME, Moorcock’s BEHOLD THE MAN, Disch’s CAMP CONCENTRATION, and Lafferty’s THE DEVIL IS DEAD. (I confess I never have gotten around to reading that last one.)

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Posted in Human Nature, Personal history | Comments Off on LA Weekend Trip, and Certain Types of Principles

Greed, and Heaven

Posted on Thursday 28 August 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Thom Hartmann on the motivation of Republicans: Greed;
  • Brief items about Trump as dictator; why Trump talks about heaven; Robert Reich on how to respond to Trump’s lies about “crime wave” (point out Trump’s violations); the suspended postal shipments to the US because of Trump’s tariffs; how ICE is capturing fire fighters while on duty; the relentless cruel campaign against Kilmar Abrego Garcia; and more about how women should submit, JFK Jr.s magical powers of diagnosis, and lowering standards.
– – –

 

Another quick batch. Which to begin with?

Here’s a writer and radio host I’ve been aware of for a while but not followed closely. Addressing that question about what really motivates Republicans (and those who vote for them).

The Hartmann Report, Thom Hartmann, 28 Aug 2025: The Long Con: Why Every Republican Policy—From Guns to Healthcare to Taxes—Harms the Public & Enriches the Few

Continue reading →

Posted in Conservative Resistance, conservatives, Human Nature | Comments Off on Greed, and Heaven

The Disappearance of Linus

Posted on Wednesday 27 August 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Distracted the past couple days by the disappearance of Linus. I mentioned this on Facebook last night. Maybe he’ll come back.

Click for much larger image. I posted this on Facebook, yesterday the 26th.

Our beloved Linus, who appeared exactly one year ago yesterday with his mother on our back patio, has disappeared. Mother and later kittens were given up to East Bay SPCA, and quickly adopted. Linus grew up outdoors, and while we have tried to make him happy as an indoor cat, we’ve indulged his pining for outdoors — he looks outside the dining room sliding glass doors, and yowls — to let him go outside. He rolls around on his back on the patio pavement, and he has always come back in 2 or 3 hours. But I let him out yesterday at 3pm, and he has not come back, in over 24 hours.

Yes, I’ve read articles about how outdoor cats can be gone for days or weeks, and eventually return. I hope so.

I look over to the window where he would reappear every 10 minutes. Well, 5.

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Posted in authoritarianism, Human Nature, Politics, Psychology | Comments Off on The Disappearance of Linus

Conservative Motivations and Magical Thinking

Posted on Monday 25 August 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Recalling how conservative motivations echo Hutson’s 7 laws of magical thinking;
  • Examples of banning flag burning, removing the rainbow crosswalk in Orland, and French Gallic culture;
  • Hemant Mehta examines why the Jehovah’s Witnesses have relaxed their prohibition against higher education;
  • And Frank Bruni and why Trump is bleeding American campuses dry;
– – –

 

My discussions the past two or three days about what really motivates conservatives, especially the MAGA folks, not being principles like the Constitution or even everyday law and order, made me recall a nonfiction book I read several years ago, Matthew Hutson’s THE 7 LAWS OF MAGICAL THINKING (review here). As I’ve noted before, many of these books about psychology and human nature overlap in topics even if they use different terminology. Thus the protocols of tribal thinking are analogous to the naive ways of perceiving the world (Bering) and to the intuitive ways of perceiving the world that Hutson calls “magical thinking.” Recalling his seven:

  1. Objects carry essences;
  2. Symbols have power;
  3. Actions have distant consequences;
  4. The mind knows no bounds;
  5. The soul lives on;
  6. The world is alive;
  7. Everything happens for a reason.

The conservatives mindset essentially incorporates these elements of “magical thinking,” in that these elements are prioritized over secular principles. Examples from today:

AP News, 25 Aug 2025: Trump moves to ban flag burning despite Supreme Court ruling that Constitution allows it

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Posted in conservatives, Music, Politics, Psychology | Comments Off on Conservative Motivations and Magical Thinking

Frightened Conservatives’ Paranoid Fantasies

Posted on Sunday 24 August 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Tribal thinking: Jan 6 rioters: good, pardoned; prosecutors following law and order: bad, fired;
  • Troops for Chicago, New York, Baltimore? It’s the revolt of the rubes;
  • With a US map showing the concentrations of blue and red;
  • How Gavin Newsom is spoofing Trump, and the right hasn’t yet quite gotten it. Insight from Tom Nichols.
– – –

At some point you have to stop giving these people the benefit of the doubt, because of their presumed high-minded holiness, since in this country at least we’re supposed to be deferential to religious faith; and call them out for what they are — cultists, driven by ignorance, tribal loyalty, and a quest for power. Certainly not law and order. Or principles.

NY Times, 24 Aug 2025: Reframing Jan. 6: After the Pardons, the Purge, subtitled “In its campaign of ‘uprooting the foot soldiers, the Trump Justice Department has fired or demoted more than two dozen Jan. 6 prosecutors, even as those they sent to prison walk free.”

Continue reading →

Posted in Conservative Resistance, Politics | Comments Off on Frightened Conservatives’ Paranoid Fantasies