Yearning and Discontent

Posted on Monday 24 February 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Why is half of American cheering for chaos?
  • Jonathan Rauch on “patrimonialism”;
  • DOJ deletes data on cop misconduct; Project 2025 and conspiracy theories; Kari Lake spreads the social security lie; a Trump lie about office workers;
  • Why firing IRS workers during tax season is a huge mistake;
  • Does Putin have something on Trump?, as the US refuses to condemn Russia for invading Ukraine;
  • Why would Trump fire senior military leaders without cause?

I’m thinking this piece aligns with Tom Nichols and James Marriot, whose comments I’ve noted recently. Is there something vaguely or not so vaguely discontent with the ease of the modern world? A yearning for conflict and autocracy that aligns with base human nature?

Washington Post, Shadi Hamid, 25 Feb 2025: Why half of America is cheering for chaos, subtitle “The fight isn’t between the left and right anymore. It’s a clash over the system.”

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Gaslighting Reality

Posted on Sunday 23 February 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Trump’s lying reaches new levels; and Musk’s DARVO strategy. (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender)

– – –

NY Times, Peter Baker, 23 Feb 2025: In Trump’s Alternate Reality, Lies and Distortions Drive Change, subtitle “Condoms for Gaza? Ukraine started the war with Russia? The president’s manipulations of the truth lay the groundwork for radical change.’ [gift link]

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Outdoing Themselves Every Day

Posted on Saturday 22 February 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Musk lays off government workers overseeing his car company;
  • Musk asks federal employees to justify their jobs or be fired;
  • Trump issues an EO stating that only he can interpret the meanings of law;
  • Adam Serwer on how MAGA is about reversing the civil-rights movement.
– – –

It gets worse and worse.

For example, this makes a kind of sense.

AP, 22 Feb 2025: Musk’s cost-cutting team is laying off workers at the auto safety agency overseeing his car company (via)

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Incompetence and Restlessness

Posted on Friday 21 February 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Wired on the incompetence of DOGE;
  • Thoughts about why all this is happening now;
  • Heather Cox Richardson quotes James Marriott of The Times about how the post-World War II liberal order has allowed the seeds of its own destruction to flourish;
  • With a note about Tom Nichols’ latest book, which I’ll write up here soon.
– – –

Wired, Brian Barrett, 20 Feb 2025: The Incompetence of DOGE Is a Feature, Not a Bug, subitled “A series of mistakes by DOGE shows just how arbitrary and destructive this slash-and-burn strategy can get.”

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Sea Change: Living in History, and Most People Not Noticing

Posted on Thursday 20 February 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • By supporting Putin and demonizing Ukraine, the US is withdrawing from the post-World War II world that it created and has supported for 80 years;
  • With comments from Heather Cox Richardson, Nicholas Kristoff, Slate’s Emily Tamkin, and NYT’s Peter Baker;
  • And my observation that most people don’t realize that history is happening around them, and haven’t throughout history.
– – –

Heather Cox Richardson, February 19, 2025

The past week has solidified a sea change in American—and global—history.

A week ago, on Wednesday, February 12, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced at a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group in Brussels, Belgium, that President Donald Trump intended to back away from support for Ukraine in its fight to push back Russia’s invasions of 2014 and 2022.

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A Continual Stream of Lies and Gaslighting

Posted on Wednesday 19 February 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Trump claims Ukraine started the war; Zelensky accuses him of living in “disinformation space”;
  • Musk, corrected about the lie that 150-year-old people are still receiving Social Security, keeps spreading that lie;
  • Tom Nichols on Trump and Musk and Hannity, who have no idea how American democracy works;
  • Thomas L. Friedman on how the world is complex, and how conservatives do not understand this;
  • Dahlia Lithwick realizes DOGE is a protection racket.
– – –

Today’s outrageous statement by Trump, made so casually it’s hard to believe it was a red herring meant to distract the media for a news cycle so they would not notice how Musk continues to dismantle the government; more likely it’s Trump gaslighting the world, sure that whatever he says will be believed by his followers. We’re in Orwell territory, again.

Politico, 19 Feb 2025: Trump blaming Ukraine for Putin’s war leaves Europe reeling subtitled “The U.S. president called out Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy during a diatribe against Kyiv.”

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How Soon Will This Madness End?

Posted on Tuesday 18 February 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

I keep thinking this has to implode, sooner rather than later. Trump and/or Musk will do something so egregious, so dangerous, that *someone* will step up to reign them in, even if very carefully, behind the scenes, so as not to upset the clueless MAGA supporters.

  • The Trump team keeps firing essential workers, perhaps by “accident,” now officials working on bird flu, and FAA employees despite several recent plane crashes, and earlier, the nuclear stockpile team.
  • Trump speaks like a true dictator about saving the country;
  • Trump and Musk’s claims of abuse have no evidence;
  • The immigrant taking away American jobs is… Elon Musk;
  • They want to throw people in jail;
  • How evil is the absence of empathy;
  • Measles outbreaks are linked to religious schools;
  • Is Donald Trump more like Hitler or August Caesar? Both;
  • Heather Cox Richardson on the “liberal consensus” and how the majority of Americans don’t actually want to get rid of government programs.

Examples of the first item today and yesterday.

NBC News, 18 Feb 2025: USDA says it accidentally fired officials working on bird flu and is trying to rehire them

Also:

NBC News, 17 Feb 2025: Hundreds of FAA employees are let go as Trump’s mass layoffs continue, subtitled “Nearly 300 Federal Aviation Administration employees were fired just weeks after a midair collision over Washington, D.C., killed 67 people.”

Not to mention the Delta rollover plane crash in Toronto yesterday.

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Mark Lilla, IGNORANCE AND BLISS

Posted on Monday 17 February 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Subtitled “On Wanting Not to Know”
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Dec. 2024, 239p, including 12p notes and acknowledgments)

This is a little book published just a couple months ago that appealed for a couple reasons. First, I read the author’s previous book, THE ONCE AND FUTURE LIBERAL (review here), which was a decent-enough summary of various political matters, if not especially revelatory. And second, this book suggests it might inform associated themes about disinformation and fake news, about why people would prefer conspiracy theories to objective truth.

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Today’s Political Readings from Facebook and Substack

Posted on Saturday 15 February 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Musk’s boys don’t know Cobol; Robert Reich accuses MSM of being wishy-washy about the coup; Paul Krugman on the Trump administration suppressing health information; Connie Willis on Trump’s “massacre” of attorneys who resigned rather than drop charges against Eric Adams.

– – –

First, a possible explanation for that bizarre claim by Musk that he’d found 150-year-old Social Security recipients.

Facebook post by Christopher Rowe, 14 Feb 2025:

Most of Musk’s stuff is done out of simple hatred and naked ambition, but one shouldn’t overlook the great percentage that comes from simple incompetence. (This isn’t even to get started on his hypocrisy, such as implementing drug testing on federal employees who’ve never had them imposed under any administration–the guy has bragged about doing hallucinogens and smoked pot during an interview). These people have done more to spit on the US in six weeks than Andrew “Trail of Tears” Jackson did in eight years.

Well… this is plausible, about Musk’s kids, despite being computer programmers, are likely uninformed about older computer languages. They’re young. Anything to substantiate this? Let’s Google. OK, here’s this.

Daily Kos, 14 Feb 2025: Nope. There are no 150-year-olds on Social Security. It’s COBOL!

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What They Mean By Traditional

Posted on Saturday 15 February 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Family arriving today for the weekend, so just a few quick items for now.

  • DOGE is about putting “traditional” Americans back in charge;
  • Where Nazi flags are fine, and Pride flags are banned;
  • Musk is about purging federal workers to replace them with theocrats and fanatics;
  • RFK Jr.: it takes an engineer to build a bridge but any a-hole can blow it up;
  • Conservatives were outraged over Obama’s executive orders, not so much about Trump’s;
  • Trump officials “accidentally” fired people in charge of US nuclear weapon security;
  • Trump wants to destroy all academia, not just the woke parts;
  • Republicans are just fine with letting Musk gut the government;
  • Actual judicial sleaze is Trump’s A.G. trying to get those charges against Eric Adams dismissed.

\\

Slate, Ben Mathis-Lilly, 14 Feb 2025: What the DOGE Takeover Really Means, subtitled “In the dark corners of social media where Elon Musk and the people who aspire to work for him live, it’s clear: This is about putting ‘traditional’ Americans back in charge.”

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