Four Years; and Primitive, Atavistic Tendencies

Posted on Thursday 29 May 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Four years since my heart transplant;
  • David Brooks on loyalty to home vs loyalty to abstractions; human nature; and how Trumpism is an attempt “to reduce us to our most primitive, atavistic tendencies.”;
  • Thus: Trump fired the historians whose job was to oversee an unbiased account of US foreign policy;
  • RFK Jr defends his report via fabricated studies;
  • And how even some Trump supporters are realizing that Trump is losing it (and Elon seeing his DOGE efforts undercut by the massive new GOP budget);
– – –

Four years since heart and kidney transplants, so another round of annual tests this week, including blood draws. Everything’s fine. The cardiologist says, he loves seeing us guys (my partner Y always goes with me), because you have so few problems! We sit in the office and chat about where the kids are going or have gone to college… This time’s most alarming incident: I got a bruise on my left arm a few weeks ago. They did a scan. It’s fine.

\\\

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Self-destruction, Mafia Politics, TACO, What Aligns the Right, Bread and Circuses

Posted on Wednesday 28 May 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Paul Krugman on the economic damage of America’s withdrawal from the world;
  • You can get away with anything if you donate enough to Trump;
  • TACO: Trump Always Chickens Out;
  • Zack Beauchamp on how the right isn’t driven by materialism, but by their culture;
  • And how billion-dollar Sports Stadiums seem to be the best American can do.
– – –

Another round.

Paul Krugman, 28 My 2025: America Turns Its Back on the World subtitled “Blocking foreign students is an act of self-destruction — and self-betrayal”

Beginning with an anecdote:

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America, increasingly anti-science and anti-intellectual, was founded by religious fanatics, as perhaps most Americans do not realize

Posted on Tuesday 27 May 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • How America is becoming anti-science and anti-intellectual, with a comment by David Brin;
  • Adam Serwer on Trump’s attack on knowledge itself, with my comments about how most people won’t notice, but the world and history will;
  • How Americans venerate ancestors who were, in fact, religious fanatics, with seven Puritan credos that reflect base human nature;
  • And ideas for a secular story of existence, which, I suspect is probably not possible.
– – –

NY Times, TheUpshot, 22 May 2025: Trump Has Cut Science Funding to Its Lowest Level in Decades [gift link]

The National Science Foundation, which funds much of the fundamental scientific research at American universities, is awarding new grants at the slowest pace in at least 35 years.

The funding decreases touch virtually every area of science — extending far beyond the diversity programs and other “woke” targets that the Trump administration says it wants to cut.

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Education, Religion, Policies that Don’t Work, the Revolt Against Expertise

Posted on Sunday 25 May 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Heather Cox Richard on the history of government suppression of education, especially as inspired by religion;
  • The GOP keeps promoting policies that history has shown don’t work;
  • The revolt against expertise, yet again.
– – –

Heather Cox Richardson reviews the history of government suppression of education.

Letters from an American: May 24, 2025

Beginning with the Trump administration telling Harvard this past week that it can no longer enroll foreign students, which are about a quarter of the student body there. (Why does the government think it can tell a private university what it can and cannot do?)

While President Donald J. Trump might well have his own reasons for hating a university famous for its brain power, the anti-intellectual impulse behind Trump’s attacks on higher education has a long history in the United States.

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Nicholas Humphrey, LEAPS OF FAITH

Posted on Saturday 24 May 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Subtitle: “Science, Miracles, and the Search for Supernatural Consolation”

(Basic Books, Jan. 1996, 244pp, including 20pp notes and index)
(Chatto & Windus, 1995, as Soul Searching: Human Nature and Supernatural Belief)

Here’s a book I read when it came out, back in 1996 — I think I was intrigued by the “search for supernatural consolation” part, which appealed to my impression that religion is more about psychological need that consideration of what is actually true — and picked up again last week to reconsider in light my current ideas of how basic human nature is reacting to the modern world, an environment so different from the one our minds evolved in.

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Crime, Hypocrisy, Fraud & Abuse, Doing Your Own Research, Cafeteria Religion, and Christian Presumption

Posted on Saturday 24 May 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Crime rates are falling; crime is not a national emergency; Why do people think otherwise?
  • Republicans criticize Democrats for what they are doing now;
  • Why do Republicans think there is so much fraud and abuse everywhere?
  • Why “doing your own research” is not plausible;
  • JD Vance and cafeteria religion;
  • Why do Christians presume they have the advantage in the Supreme Court?
– – –

Once again people, crime rates are *falling*. They’ve been falling since the 1990s, except for a blip aligned with the pandemic. There is no emergency in the way conservatives insist.

Vox, Bryan Walsh 24 May 2025: Something remarkable is happening with violent crime rates in the US, subtitled “Americans remained scared of violent crime. The numbers tell a different story.”

The astounding drop in violent crime that began in the 1990s and extended through the mid-2010s is one of the most important — and most underappreciated — good news stories of recent memory. That made its reversal during the pandemic so worrying.

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How to Fix the Budget; MAGA; Steven Pinker

Posted on Friday 23 May 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • 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.
– – –

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

Posted on Thursday 22 May 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • 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.
– – –

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

Posted on Wednesday 21 May 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • 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.
– – –

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

Posted on Tuesday 20 May 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • 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.
– – –

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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