Trump and MAGA’s War on California

Posted on Saturday 14 June 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • News today: Trump’s parade, No Kings demonstrations, and a dress-up cop shoots Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota;
  • Charlie Warzel on the surfeit of information and how the right can invent via AI narratives to its advantage;
  • Similar gaslighting about Alex Padilla;
  • Sensing the deportation targets are absurd, Trump changes the targets (TACO!);
  • David Barton lies again; Shane Vaughn celebrates an imminent arrival of the end times; and a new entry in “If the US press covered the US the way it covers other countries.”
– – –

Today is Trump’s parade; today hundreds, maybe thousands, of No Kings demonstrations are being held in cities across the nation; and today we woke to learn that two Minnesota lawmakers and their spouses had been shot overnight by someone dressed as a policeman, killing one couple, with a list of other planned targets, include abortion providers and other Democrats.

One way of looking at this is that Trump is an egomaniac, Trump and MAGA have declared war on the blue states and Trump has had the US military invade California with the intent of displacing its elected leaders. Californians are protesting. Of course. And — I’m speculating here — elements of MAGA are taking to violence against those who oppose their king.

The Atlantic, Charlie Warzel, 13 Jun 2025: I’m Running Out of Ways to Explain How Bad This Is (Again), subtitled “The L.A. distortion effect”

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It’s Not Even About Deportation

Posted on Friday 13 June 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • The Alex Padilla incident, and the threat to “liberate” Los Angeles from its lawfully-elected leaders;
  • Trump always thinks protestors are paid demonstrators; why cannot he conceive that people disagree with him on principle?
  • And bonus items!
– – –

Because deportation is a legal process, which Trump and ICE are ignoring. It’s actually a racist, xenophobic drive about routing the nation of non-Whites, by any means. They don’t do “due process.” They just *know* that non-Whites are bad and must be expelled from the country. Or removed from the room.

You can get away with a lot when your fans apparently don’t realize what they’re seeing, even when it’s right in front of them. This has happened before in history; why aren’t more Americans alarmed by this??

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Now a US senator — who happens to be brown-skinned — was forcibly removed from a press conference held by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem (she of brown hair carefully arranged over her shoulders for every photo op) and handcuffed.

LA Times, Gustavo Arellano, 13 Jun 2025: Sen. Alex Padilla’s crime? Being Mexican in MAGA America

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Dr. Christopher Evans, CULTS OF UNREASON

Posted on Thursday 12 June 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

No subtitle (they didn’t do them so often fifty years ago).

(UK, 1973; US: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1974, 258pp, including 5pp index.)

Like Nicholas Humphrey’s LEAPS OF FAITH, discussed a couple weeks ago, this is a book I read decades ago, soon after it came out, and revisited recently to see how what it says fits into my current schema. Since the book came out in 1974, I also have to wonder, at this remove, what prompted me to buy and read it back then? I was a year into college, and had sufficient pocket money to buy books, even a hardcover now and then, but why did I spend $7.95 on *this* book?

I can sort of retrace the trajectory of my thinking and reading experiences. Continue reading →

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It’s Not About Law and Order

Posted on Wednesday 11 June 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Jim Newell and Amanda Marcotte on Stephen Miller’s drive to “grab as many people as possible, regardless of innocence.” and how he grew up in Santa Monica;
  • Fox News, of course, spreads a fantasy depiction of what’s going on in LA;
  • A GOP senator faults California for not thriving, apparently unaware that the state is now the fourth-largest economy in the world;
  • There is the usual misinformation online about the extent of the protests in LA, and AI is part of the problem;
  • Catherine Rampell at WaPo about forces descending on Small Town, U.S.A., clarifying that they’re after “brown-looking people”;
  • The New Yorker puts it gently: Trump’s assertions “did not appear to reflect reality.”;
  • And two comments by Robert Reich, about law and order, and about how we are almost all descendants of immigrants.
– – –

This isn’t about law and order. It’s about this guy’s racism.

Slate, Jim Newell, 11 Jun 2025: The “Big, Beautiful Bill” Hands Stephen Miller the Policy of His Dreams…

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Knowing vs. Believing

Posted on Tuesday 10 June 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • RFK “retires” his vaccine advisory committee (because he knows better);
  • Robert Reich on how the MAGA Inquisition will destroy American science, and Reich tries to understand why;
  • Robert Reich on Trump’s war against California, and the central struggle of civilization;
  • And some movie score music by Carter Burwell.
– – –

 

“There are two different types of people in the world, those who want to know, and those who want to believe.” – Friedrich Nietzsche.

– – –

CNN, 9 Jun 2025: RFK Jr. removes all current members of CDC vaccine advisory committee

And

CNBC, 9 Jun 2025: RFK Jr. removes all members of CDC panel advising U.S. on vaccines

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The Insurrectionists Within

Posted on Monday 9 June 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • No, Los Angeles is not burning down. Trump and his minions are lying. And whatever is happening recently, they started it. And apparently they have motives to start it.
  • Also, Los Angeles is huge;
  • David A. Graham in The Atlantic: Trump is like a bad parent, “never there when you need him but eager to stick his nose in your business when you don’t want him to”;
  • Philip Bump on Trump’s incessant need to quash critics;
  • Trump’s view of law and order: “Can’t you just shoot them?”;
  • David French on how America is no longer a stable country.
– – –

To hear Trump and his minions like Hegseth and Bondi (children playing at being adults) you’d think California was as devastated as the Gaza Strip, and Californians should all be grateful to Fearless Leader for trying to save us from our criminal governor.

It’s nonsense of course. Here are James Woods (the actor) and Ted Cruz spreading a photo of a car in flames that is actually from the 2020 George Floyd protests. Here’s Trump saying LA “would have been completely obliterated” were it not for the National Guard he sent it. Tommy Tuberville calls LA “a third world county” with “anarchists” in charge, and Gavin Newsom reminds him that Alabama has 3X the homicide rate of California. Continue reading →

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Clooney’s Murrow; Trump Calls Out the National Guard

Posted on Sunday 8 June 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Clooney’s Good Night, and Good Luck;
  • Trump calls out the National Guard (what’s next? Martial Law?);
  • Louisiana bans chemtrails;
  • Trump’s big bill prioritizes the religious right (of course)
– – –

First of all. We watched the live stream of George Clooney’s Broadway play “Good Night, and Good Luck” yesterday afternoon (it began at 4pm West Coast time), on CNN. We’d seen the 2005 film starring David Strathairn. The Broadway version stars George Clooney as Edward R. Murrow. I think Strathairn might have been the better impersonation, but Clooney is the more powerful actor. I was impressed by the stage settings: the multiple sets on one stage that the lighting kept redirecting among; the occasional overlapping scenes in different places. But I’ve seen a couple Broadway shows ever; perhaps such stage-work legerdemain is routine. Clooney is very good, though he couldn’t keep his own self from sometimes seeping through — there’s a line half way through about Americans leaving for Europe, and Clooney couldn’t help a self-deprecating smirk.

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Meltdown; Reign of Errors; People Trump doesn’t want to exist; Harari on humans in 1000 years

Posted on Friday 6 June 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Details of the Trump/Musk meltdown;
  • The Trump administration’s reign of errors;
  • Such as DOGE firing people and quickly hiring them back;
  • The people Trump doesn’t want to exist;
  • Yuval Noah Harari on how humans won’t exist in 1000 years, perhaps not even 100.
– – –

Heather Cox Richardson, June 5, 2025, summarizes the Trump Musk public fight. Selection:

Musk’s behavior is erratic in its own right, but if there is anything but pique behind it, it appears he is threatening Trump by making a play to control the Republican Party. In response to a post by conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer suggesting that Republican lawmakers are unsure if they should side with Trump or Musk, Musk wrote: “Oh and some food for thought as they ponder that question: Trump has 3.5 years left as President, but I will be around for 40+ years.”

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They Said It Wouldn’t Last, and It Hasn’t

Posted on Thursday 5 June 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • The Trump/Musk bromance implodes;
  • Hannity lies about the impact of the “big beautiful bill”;
  • Republicans try to discredit experts warning about the cost of tax cuts;
  • David French on Joni Ernst, and how Christianity has become a vertical, not horizontal, faith;
  • David Brooks on world-shifting political movements and how it’s somehow the Democrats’ fault for not properly responding to the current populist movement here and around the world; with my comments.
– – –

And, Jeffrey Epstein!

ABC News, 5 Jun 2025: Trump Musk feud explodes with claim president is in Epstein files, subtitled “Trump has not responded to Musk’s attack regarding the alleged sex trafficker.”

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Harvey Milk, DEI, Lysenko, Jesus

Posted on Wednesday 4 June 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Pete Hegseth orders removal of Harvey Milk’s name from an oil tanker as part of reestablishing “the warrior culture”;
  • Trump fires head of the National Portrait Gallery, because ridding the government of DEI is about “the mere presence of nonwhites and women the president doesn’t like in positions of authority.”
  • The administration now wants to regulate science, with Heather Cox Richardson recalling how that worked out for the Soviets with Lysenko;
  • And how Joni Ernst’s “we’re all going to die” is grounded in religion fatalism, and a reliance on belief in Jesus Christ.
– – –

The Trump administration is upfront with its bigotry.

Salon, Blaise Malley, 3 Jun 2025: “Shameful, vindictive erasure”: Hegseth orders removal of Harvey Milk’s name from Navy ship, subtitled “One defense official told reporters that announcing the renaming during Pride Month was intentional”

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