Paleolithic Emotions, Medieval Institutions, and Godlike Technology

Posted on Tuesday 17 June 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • EO Wilson on the real problem of humanity;
  • Conservatives think you can command things into existence, despite the evidence of the real world; re: Trump’s tariffs on aluminum;
  • With my comments about modern technology and globalism;
  • How the Minnesota killer was deep into a Christian movement about spiritual warfare and demon-possessed politicians;
  • With my comments about religion as community vs religion as faith in supernatural claims;
  • And how America, if it was once “exceptional,” isn’t anymore, because Trump.
– – –

Things come around again. It’s all one world. Here’s a quote from E.O. Wilson that I read years ago in one of his books, and now appreciate anew given my recent readings in human nature and politics. He understood.

“The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.”

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Are Trump and MAGA intending to ethnically cleanse Democrats? Signs Point That Way

Posted on Monday 16 June 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Paul Krugman and Guardian on how the parade was a flop, while No Kings Day was a hit;
  • Photos from Trump’s military parade;
  • Motivated reasoning and conspiracy theories about the Minnesota shootings, even though the facts are apparent enough (and implicate a right-wing, religious, shooter);
  • Bigger picture: Trump takes aim at states’ rights — at least, blue states’ rights;
  • And he wants VA doctors to refuse treatment to Democrats (!?);
  • Is this building up to some kind of ethnic cleansing of Democrats?
  • Adam Serwer’s “tyrant test”;
  • And Fox News.
– – –

First, just to restate the situation.

Paul Krugman, 16 Jun 2025: Trump’s parade flopped. No Kings Day was a hit.

America is no longer a full-fledged democracy. We are currently living under a version of competitive authoritarianism — a system that (like Orban’s Hungary or Erdogan’s Turkey) is still democratic on paper but in which a ruling party no longer takes democracy’s rules seriously. As a result those in power

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Say Black Is White, and Some Will Believe You

Posted on Sunday 15 June 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • The ‘No Kings’ demonstrations yesterday were a huge success, the parade in Washington DC less so;
  • How the White House lies about those demonstrations;
  • How MAGA and Musk are somehow blaming the *left* for the shootings of Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota;
  • With thoughts about the upside-down world of MAGA conservatives.
– – –

As widely covered in the new media, hundreds of “No Kings” demonstrations were held across the country yesterday, Saturday.

A gallery of photos.

Salon, Alan Taylor, 15 Jun 2025: Photos: ‘No Kings’ Protests Across America, subtitled “Yesterday, according to estimates by event organizers, millions marched in protest against the Trump administration, including its recent controversial immigration-enforcement raids. Hundreds of ‘No Kings’ demonstrations took place in cities and towns throughout the U.S.”

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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??

\

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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