Conservatives, Conspiracies, and Reality

Posted on Friday 2 May 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • White evangelicals still see Trump as ethical and honest, which to me calls into question their moral compass;
  • Trump’s 2026 budget is more for the military and less for everything else, a typical Republican proposal;
  • Separation of church and state is anti-Catholic bigotry?
  • RFK Jr doesn’t believe in germ theory… which explains a lot;
  • And by the way RFK Jr is profiting from the anti-vaccine lobby;
  • Thoughts for today: How all this fits together;
  • RFK Jr and the fallacy of “doing your own research.”
– – –

I’ve seen this same Pew survey cited elsewhere (e.g. here). And the observation is a familiar one.

Friendly Atheist, Hemant Mehta, 2 May 2025: White evangelicals still see Trump as ethical and honest, but atheists know better, subtitled “A new survey shows that atheists are far more critical of Trump’s lies, corruption, and incompetence than white evangelicals”

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Credulity, Innumeracy, and Alarmism

Posted on Thursday 1 May 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • More about Pam Bondi’s nonsensical claim that Trump has saved 258 million lives by seizing fentanyl;
  • Has it occurred to Red States to extend tariffs to Blue States, and only buy products from other Red States? How would that work out?
  • How conservatives invent problems to be concerned about (while denying real, existential problems like climate change), currently busy passing laws against weather control and “furries” in classrooms.
– – –

In complete contrast to the brilliant men (and a few women) throughout history who have helped humanity understand its place in a vast, ancient universe that perhaps had no beginning at all (as recounted in the book I just summarized last post), are the politicians and their cronies that Americans keep electing to national office. Some of them anyway.

Plenty of people noticed that absurd claim by attorney general Pam Bondi that Trump has somehow saved 258 million lives, just in the first 100 days of his office, by seizing fentanyl laced pills. How to demonstrate credulity and innumeracy.

Slate, Jim Newell, 1 May 2025: The DOJ Says Trump Has Saved 258 Million Lives. I Asked Them What That’s Based On., subtitled “‘Are you ready for this, media?’ No, actually!”

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Timothy Ferris, COMING OF AGE IN THE MILKY WAY

Posted on Thursday 1 May 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

(Morrow, 1988, 495pp, including 107pp of appendices (a glossary and a timeline history of the universe), notes, bibliography, and index)

This is the first big substantial nonfiction book I’ve read in a while, especially one specifically about science. Ferris is a science writer who began with THE RED LIMIT (1977) which I read years ago, a couple coffee table books of astronomical photos, GALAXIES and SPACE SHOTS, in the early 1980s, before this book in 1988. And I have three of his later books that also look substantial, and that I’ll get to eventually.

This book speaks to one of my key interests: how humanity came to understand how big, and how old, the universe is. The ancients (like those who wrote the holy books) knew a world only as big as the far horizon, and as old as their oldest stories. I’m already familiar with many of the steps between then and now, through accounts in any number of books about basic science, but here the whole story, along axes of space, time, and creation, is summarized, with a particular emphasis on both the techniques that revealed humanity’s increased understanding of the real world and on the individuals who made these discoveries. There’s much more about the personalities of famous names from history here than in those other books.

And I particularly appreciate the theme represented by the title. Continue reading →

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Three Perspectives on Trump’s First 100 Days

Posted on Wednesday 30 April 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • NY Times summarizes Trump’s first 100 days;
  • The Atlantic on how Trump voters like what they see;
  • My comments about the theme of Tom Nichols’ books — people are bored with success — and the implications this has for the science-fictional dreams of utopia;
  • Two items about Trump supporters;
  • And how Trump *really* believes that doctored photo about MS-13; how Trump, like Kim Jong-Il, has his cabinet praise Glorious Leader; and how Pam Bondi claims that fentanyl busts have save 119, or is it 258?, million American lives.
  • How Trump took credit for the good economy under Biden, and blames the bad economy under his administration on Biden.
– – –

Today is one of those occasions when seeing the front page of the actual print paper is much more dramatic than seeing the same content, spread out over several days, on a website.

Click for larger image.

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Edward O. Wilson: LETTERS TO A YOUNG SCIENTIST

Posted on Wednesday 30 April 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

(Liveright, 2013, 244pp, including 4pp of acknowledgements and photo credits)

This is one of Wilson’s later, perhaps lesser books, compared to his earlier tomes like ON HUMAN NATURE and CONSILIENCE. It’s more like THE ORIGINS OF CREATIVITY and GENESIS (both reviewed on this blog): a little meandering, repeating points he’s made elsewhere, and semi-autobiographical. Those are not problems if you haven’t read many of his books; there is still enough wisdom in this book to make it worth reading.

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Trump 100

Posted on Tuesday 29 April 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Trump’s 100 days, with charts;
  • Even the conservative Wall Street Journal considers Trump’s a “failed presidency”;
  • Now the administration is looking to jail journalists;
  • How MAGA loves public meltdowns;
  • How Hegseth boasts of axing a program as “woke” that was created during Trump’s first administration;
  • And how Trump believes taxing billionaires would hurt poor people’s feelings;
  • And my recollection of the reason poor people don’t want to tax the rich — because they secretly hope they too will become rich one day.
– – –

Many such pieces today.

Washington Post, 29 Apr 2025: Trump’s first 100 days, in 10 charts, subtitled “Executive orders are up, while the S&P 500 and Trump’s approval rating are down.”
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Chris Mooney, THE REPUBLICAN WAR ON SCIENCE

Posted on Tuesday 29 April 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

(Basic Books, 2005, 342pp, including 86pp of interview credits, other credits, notes, and index.)

This is journalist Mooney’s first book, from 20 years ago, and it’s especially apropos to look back at now given the hostility to and/or misunderstanding of science by the current administration. Back in 2015 — 10 years ago! — I read the author’s 2012 book, THE REPUBLICAN BRAIN, and reviewed it here. Very broadly, this first book documents the extent Republicans were hostile to science, from the 1960s through the early 2000s, while the second book sought to understand why. (And that entailed how variations in human personality traits have lead to different takes on the world, especially in a present society that is so different than the ancestral environment where our minds evolved.)

Gist

The 10,000 foot view: Republicans’ increased hostility toward science came, beginning in the late 1950s, from its incursions into religious and business interests. Thus the antipathy toward regulations. (In parallel, not discussed in the book, is the right’s antipathy toward civil rights and the 1960s “counter-culture.”)
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Who’s Happiest and Why?

Posted on Monday 28 April 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Phil Zuckerman on that World Happiness Report;
  • A NYT article about alternatives to religion;
  • Recalling mythos and logos;
  • Richard Dawkins on how reality is so much more interesting than religion,
  • And Vox on social trends that may affect religious affiliations.
– – –

I’ve seen cautionary notes about this World Happiness Report on the grounds that the results are self-reported and based on only a single question (how happy are you?) on a scale of 1 to 10. At the same time, the report (at the link) seems exhaustive, in that the results are correlated with variables about GDP per capita, healthy life expectancy, social support, freedom, generosity, and the absence of corruption. And there do seem to be strong correlations between happiness and lack of religious belief.

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Tribal Warpaint

Posted on Sunday 27 April 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • How Trump doesn’t want to govern, and rejects the idea of American government as a collaboration;
  • How the idea of consumer choice led to the idea of being gay;
  • Trump and covid.gov rewrite the history, as authoritarians do;
  • How Trump has severed America from the world in 100 days;
  • Another item about JFK Jr.’s upside-down understanding of science;
  • Guardian’s Simon Tisdall on how Trump will destroy himself;
  • How MAGA Glam is, it seems to me, tribal warpaint;
  • And how MAGA supporters claim divine intervention to save Trump from assassination;
  • And my take on such claims, and the idea of a father-figure god.
– – –

No doubt there’s a hierarchy of systems of government, that fairly obviously would align with the political spectrum in the US, with (as it seems) MAGA Republicans on one end, and Democracy at the other. For example.

NY Times, Jamelle Bouie, 26 Apr 2025: Trump Doesn’t Want to Govern
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History Rhymes? Will Humanity Ever Advance?

Posted on Saturday 26 April 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • How history rhymes, about tariffs: Smoot-Hawley and Trump;
  • How Musk lives fantasies about expanding the population (of people like him) without a grasp on numbers;
  • How DOGE has cost taxpayers $135B, while claiming to have saved $160B — even that is far less than its goal.
– – –

The experts understand, and the science fiction writers imagine, realms beyond the conception of the vast majority of ordinary people. Science fiction, I think, is about speculating what lies beyond the most abstruse things the experts understand. That’s a core theme here. Will humanity ever advance? Or are we forever mired in primitive thinking?

LA Times, Veronique de Rugy, 24 Apr 2025: Economic nostalgia woos voters, but it leads to terrible policies
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