Party of Hypocrites

Posted on Tuesday 21 January 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Trump’s pardons of the January 6th rioters was an act of contempt, and a violation of the Constitutional standards he claims to uphold;
  • Trump and his minions show contempt for an Episcopal bishop at Washington’s National Cathedral who pled for mercy to gays and transgenders;
  • Connie Willis on Biden’s pardons and the rationales for them that Trump and his fans cannot comprehend.

Following directly from previous post. What Trump did do on his first day in office was pardon some 1500 rioters (he called them hostages!!) who attacked the Capital in 2021. So much for the party of law and order (thought it’s not the first time).

NY Times, Opinion by the Editorial Board, 20 Jan 2025: Trump’s Opening Act of Contempt
Continue reading →

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A New Cycle of Doom: Trump’s Second Inauguration

Posted on Monday 20 January 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • What I said about the inaugurations 4 and 8 years ago;
  • About Trump’s inauguration this morning, a fact-check of his speech, and how he did not place his hand on the Bible;
  • Paul Krugman on lies, David A. Graham on Trump’s 19th-century imperialism, Frank Bruni on Trump’s most memorable line;
  • And AP’s site tracking Trump’s presidential promises, which I look forward to checking frequently.

So this time I did watch Trump’s inauguration. Continue reading →

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For Certain Values of Great

Posted on Sunday 19 January 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

From Facebook, a few days ago. The science fiction writer Robert Charles Wilson attempts to summarize the current condition in a single sentence.

Facebook, Robert Charles Wilson, 11 Jan 2025: via David Gerrold.

The concentration of wealth is driving novel communication technologies that are creating a tsunami of misinformation that enables the emergence of far-right political entities that further protect and capture wealth by gutting democratic governance and suppressing knowledge about climate and environmental emergencies through the devaluation of education and science at a time when artificial intelligence begins to transform the nature of war and competition for resources risks armed conflict between nuclear-armed nations no longer constrained by a liberal ideology of cooperation and human rights.

Inequality and oligarchs, check. Misinformation, check. Suppressing knowledge about climate change, check. AI, check. …

\\

NY Times, Opinion by Jamelle Bouie, 15 Jan 2025: You’ll Never Guess Who Trump’s New Favorite President Is

When was America great? What does MAGA want to go back to? Trump never says exactly.
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Immigration, Economic Growth, and the Limits of the Planet

Posted on Saturday 18 January 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • NYT has ideas about regulating immigration, given the assumption that America needs more people;
  • Paul Krugman looks at economic growth (and Scott Bessent);
  • But neither of them addresses the impact of continued economic growth, or expansion of the population, on the Earth’s biosphere and the survival of the human race.

I find this piece interesting, but for reasons different than a concern about the immigration crisis.

NY Times, Opinion by The Editorial Board, 10 Jan 2025: A Big Idea to Solve America’s Immigration Mess

The problem is immigration, the board says, and the inability to regulate it. (But the real problem is something else, I would say.)
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Lakoff on “Privateering,” and the Consequences of Shrinking the Government

Posted on Friday 17 January 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

More things are fitting together. Conservatives, be careful what you wish for.

Chapter 7 of the Lakoff book, THE POLITICAL MIND, which I passed over in my review, is about what he calls “privateering.”

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Cynics, Conspiracies, and the Oligarchy

Posted on Friday 17 January 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • RFK Jr. is a cynic, not a skeptic;
  • Conservatives would rather punish California than deal with the climate crisis;
  • Paul Krugman on how Trump has no plans, only yes-men;
  • Why the decline of DEI is a worry;
  • Peter Thiel now apparently really believes the conspiracies he’s been floating;
  • MAGA is getting an oligarchy, not lower grocery prices;
  • Trump has found two, even three, MAGA allies in Hollywood to give made-up positions to;
  • The common good vs. putting conditions on California wildfire aid;
  • Crossing the 1.5 degree mark and the descent into nationalism.

It’s always been necessary to clarify the difference between a skeptic and a cynic. RFK Jr. pretends to be the former, but is really the latter.

NY Times, Paul A. Offit, 13 Jan 2025: Don’t Call Kennedy a Vaccine Skeptic. Call Him What He Is: A Cynic.

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Jonathan Haidt, THE ANXIOUS GENERATION

Posted on Thursday 16 January 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Subtitled “How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness”
(Penguin Press, March 2024, 385pp, including 90pp of acknowledgements, notes, references, and index.)

Here’s the latest by the author of one of my favorite books, THE RIGHTEOUS MIND (review ends here), whose past couple books have directly addressed current social issues. In 2018 there was THE CODDLING OF THE AMERICAN MIND, co-written with Greg Lukianoff, (review here). (Lukianoff went on to write THE CANCELLING OF THE AMERICAN MIND with a different coauthor, in 2023; I haven’t read it yet.) Now we have by Haidt alone this book, about the effects of smartphones and social media. As causing mental illness.

Right away I am skeptical. Continue reading →

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Competence Is Beside the Point

Posted on Wednesday 15 January 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Several items today about the confirmation hearings for Pete Hegseth and Pam Bondi; “Anonymous smears” and “I am not familiar with that statement”; competence isn’t the point, loyalty and disruption are.
  • The consequences of a “woefully uninformed electorate” and whether humanity might survive existential crises that the uninformed cannot comprehend.

My initial reaction to hearings like those today of potential cabinet members is to wonder, is that the best Republicans can do? Can they find no one with more experience for their proposed jobs, no one without clouds of accusations of financial or sexual or alcoholic impropriety? No one with a clue? As this first piece notes, those are the wrong questions. Trump doesn’t *want* smart or virtuous or principled people; he wants people who are unswervingly loyal and will follow his orders without question. That they’re dumb is therefore a feature; that they cheat on their wives is a feature, because it reassures the cultists that when *they* cheat on their wives, it’s OK, because everyone does it! This is the morality of the Republican party. It doesn’t matter that they’re all incompetent.

Slate, Fred Kaplan, 15 Jan 2025: That May Have Been the Most Antagonistic Confirmation Hearing I’ve Ever Seen, subtitled “Is Pete Hegseth qualified to run the military? Wrong question.”
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MAGA Delusions About Health

Posted on Tuesday 14 January 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Just finished a book write-up, so a relatively short post today about current events.

  • MAGA delusions about health;
  • How Republican policies will make things worse, and how they don’t realize this.

If it’s Tuesday, there’s a Science Section of the NY Times. Here’s the lead piece today. As about so many other things, many people (but in particular conservatives and MAGAfolk) live with the fantasy that the past was somehow better than the present. It’s selective memory and the glow of childhood, perhaps. It doesn’t stand up to evidence. Everyone smoked in the old days — my parents chain-smoked throughout my childhood. And even doctors smoked, in TV commercials — see here. People forget.

NY Times, Gina Kolata, 13 Jan 2025: Have Americans Ever Really Been Healthy?, subtitled “Medical historians say that the phrase ‘Make America Healthy Again’ obscures a past during which this country’s people ate, smoked and drank things that mostly left them unwell.” [gift link]
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Zack Beauchamp, THE REACTIONARY SPIRIT

Posted on Tuesday 14 January 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Subtitled “How American’s Most Insidious Political Tradition Swept the World”
(PublicAffairs, July 2024, 262pp including 16pp of acknowledgements, selected bibliography, and index.)

Here’s another recent book, which I bought mainly because I’ve seen the author’s name quite a number of times in recent years attached to articles I found astute enough to quote here. And, it addresses a key question that I have ideas about but no firm conclusion: what does the apparent retreat in America and other nations from democracy and toward authoritarianism mean? Continue reading →

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