How to Fix the Budget; MAGA; Steven Pinker

  • Paul Krugman’s constructive suggestions for fixing the budget;
  • While Trump’s allegiances lie with lower taxes for the rich and cuts to the social safety net for the poor;
  • How MAGA is about bimbos, like Kristi Noem and Sarah Palin, who play dumb;
  • Steven Pinker, in a long essay, defends Harvard against “Harvard Derangement Syndrome,” how some ideas are true that are nevertheless politically incorrect, how federal grants work, and how Harvard and other universities have made the world a better place.
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Let’s start with something positive and productive. Instead of talking about Republicans.

Paul Krugman,23 May 2025: What a Decent Budget Would Look Like, subtitled “Imagining a Congress that was neither cruel nor irresponsible”

OK, I was wrong. I thought House Republicans would pass their surpassingly cruel, utterly irresponsible budget in the dead of night, hoping nobody would notice. And they tried! Debate began at 1 A.M., and if you think that bizarre timing reflected real urgency, I have some $Melania coins you might want to buy.

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Taxes and Benefits, Empathy, Genocide

  • Republicans, predictably, cut taxes for the rich and benefits for the poor. Because the poor deserve their station, apparently (and the rich fund Republicans);
  • Now among Christians empathy is a sin! (Do they actually read their Bibles?);
  • Trump is obsessed with “genocide” of whites in South Africa, and displays phony evidence to prove it.
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This is what Republicans do. You can count on it every time.

(And it’s not only due to their discredited ‘trickle-down economics’ claims. It’s to their peculiarly un-Christian belief that poor people are that way because they’re bad people, or somehow deserve to be poor, and therefore don’t merit government “welfare.”)

The Atlantic, Jonathan Chait, 22 May 2025: The Largest Upward Transfer of Wealth in American History, subtitled “House Republicans voted to advance a bill that would offer lavish tax cuts for the rich while slashing benefits for the poor.”

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Substack as the new Royal Society, vs MAGA waging war on the future

  • Will Substack be the Royal Society of the 21st century?
  • While Trump and MAGA wage war on the future;
  • Robert Reich on *why* Trump and his regime want to destroy every institution in America;
  • And my running theme about the conflict between human nature and the modern world.
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The ongoing story about science fiction is how it’s a vehicle for understanding humanity in a changed environment. As I’ve been saying recently… And so I find this kind of thing interesting.

Big Think, Peter Leyden, 21 May 2025: Why Substack will be the intellectual engine of the 21st century, subtitled “The platform is a digital Royal Society for today’s greatest minds — and it could play an essential role in shaping the next civilization.”

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Taker States and Desi Arnaz

  • Thomas Edsall on the destructiveness of the Trump presidency;
  • As the US discounts investments in the future, China is taking the lead;
  • How Trump World clings to conspiracy theories;
  • And how Trump folks simply stop enforcing rules they don’t like, misunderstand basic legal principles, and prioritize red “taker” states;
  • A remembrance of Desi Arnaz and “I Love Lucy” for an unusual reason.
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The simpletons are destroying what they do not understand. The barbarians are at the gates.

NY Times, guest essay by Thomas B. Edsall, 20 May 2025: ‘I Even Believe He Is Destroying the American Presidency’

As usual Esdall quotes and corresponds with numerous others. I’ll cover just the first.

One thing stands out amid all the chaos, corruption and disorder: the wanton destructiveness of the Trump presidency.

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The Daily News

  • The range of politics reflects the range of human nature;
  • Posts without much comments about military tribunals, hacking the economy, Jeanine Pirro’s black and white worldview, how the Qatar jet deal is Biden’s fault, Paul Krugman on sadistic zombies, and how China will dominate.
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Most of the news on a day to day basis consists of illustrations of how politics works, and how politics reflects the conflicts between different kinds of thinking. Political conflicts are seldom rational disputes about the effects of this or that policy; they’re conflicts between fundamentally different views of the world, and how it should work. Continue reading

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GOP/conservatives and the Rich; and the Countryside; and Star Wars

  • The GOP tax bill will hurt lowest earners and help the rich (of course!);
  • NYT’s Jamelle Bouie on Republican hypocrisy and the countryside;
  • Trek v. Wars, and how Wars reveals conservatives’ authoritarian fantasies.
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NY Times, Tony Romm, 16 May 2025: G.O.P. Tax Bill May Hurt the Lowest Earners and Help the Richest, subtitled “Even though most Americans may see lower taxes, Republicans’ spending cuts could outweigh those benefits and leave some worse off.”

May? May? It’s always happened like that in the past. That’s why some from the left criticize NYT for being too accommodating.

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86 Hypocrisy, Our Puritan Legacy, and Belief in God

  • 86 47, and 86 46;
  • The GOP’s new anti-porn bill, and the US’s puritan legacy;
  • Richard Dawkins on belief in god.
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I almost thought this would be too trivial to mention, except that Heather leads last night’s column with it, and there’s a further salient point she doesn’t mention.

Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson: May 16, 2025.

MAGA world is performing over-the-top outrage over a photo former Federal Bureau of Investigation director James Comey posted on Instagram, where he has been teasing a new novel. The image shows shells on a beach arranged in a popular slogan for opposing President Donald J. Trump: “86”—slang for tossing something away—followed by “47”, a reference to Trump’s presidency.

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Supreme Court, Christian Nationalists, Afrikaners

  • Amanda Marcotte on how the Supreme Court has been captured by far-right conspiracy theories;
  • How the simplest explanation for what’s going on, on several fronts, is basic white supremacy;
  • About Russell Vought;
  • Trump’s morality and his rationale for accepting Afrikaner “refugees”.
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Once again: ideology vs. reality.

Salon, Amanda Marcotte, 26 May 2025: “A court captured by far-right conspiracy theories”: How the GOP drove the Supreme Court off a cliff, subtitled “In her new book ‘Lawless,’ law professor Leah Litman chronicles the collapse of reason at the highest court”

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The Plane. George Saunders. Lying. And AI spam.

  • Will begin posting more about science fiction; see previous post;
  • That Qatari plane is a white elephant they’ve been trying to dump for years;
  • A piece by the novelist George Saunders about the firing of the head of the Library of Congress;
  • Kyle Mantyla at Right Wing Watch about how Christian Nationalists lie;
  • How the Trump administration is canceling grants to study misinformation;
  • And a note about how some of the spam comments I get to this blog are obviously written by AI.
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I need to get back to posting reports of the science fiction I’ve been reading, not just reports of nonfiction. (I don’t call these posts “reviews”.) I read four sf novels in April, and seven back in October; I just posted about one, and I’ll write the rest up here soon.

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So it seems that Qatari 747 they want to gift Trump (when did ‘gift’ become a verb?) is something of a white elephant that they haven’t been able to get rid of. So why not let Trump pay the maintenance costs?

Newsweek, 15 May 2025: Qatar’s Gift to Trump Is Unsold Plane It’s Been Trying to Dump for Years

Meanwhile, US security analysts are forecasting that it will take $1 billion to take the plane apart and put it back together to meet security standards. And will take years. But such a win! Right MAGA fans?

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John Scalzi, WHEN THE MOON HITS YOUR EYE

(Tor, March 2025, 323pp)

John Scalzi is one of the most popular of current science fiction writers, even as he’s not regarded, I think, as a *serious* sf writer by the critics or even readers. He’s entertaining, often humorous or even snarky, and he reworks ideas from traditional sf. His most popular works include a series of space opera novels that began with his first, OLD MAN’S WAR, and a pseudo-parody of Star Trek called REDSHIRTS. He writes in a classic sf mode: take a premise, and see where it goes.

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