Here We Are: Stupid America

Posted on Thursday 13 March 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Frank Bruni on the Trump administration’s undercutting of America’s superpower;
  • How the current secretary of defense thinks climate change is “crap”;
  • Facts about the 19 programs dismissed as “waste”;
  • Blast from the past: how Indiana tried to redefine Pi, to simplify reality;
  • Thomas L. Friedman on America’s “great unraveling”;
  • How zero-sum game Trump is obsessed with America being “ripped-off”;
  • How the EPA is now focused on cutting costs (not on public health).
– – –

NY Times, Frank Bruni, 13 Mar 2025: America Can’t Be Great if America Is Stupid

Among our most significant competitive advantages are our scientists, our laboratories, our system of higher education. They’re a kind of superpower, their output an engine of our wealth — of frontier-expanding technology, medical breakthroughs and production innovations that enrich companies as they improve lives.

But Trump doesn’t seem to get that. Doesn’t want to get that. Gets only that the wonky and effete denizens of the world of ideas aren’t his people, aren’t guaranteed supporters, don’t lavishly praise him and sometimes dare to disparage him. They need their comeuppance, no matter how much damage it does to everyone else.

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MAGA and “Waste”

Posted on Wednesday 12 March 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Brian Klaas at The Atlantic on Elon Musk’s flawed view of “waste,” i.e. any kind of preventative measures to spend money now to avoid spending much more money later;
  • And simpleton measures about measles from RFK Jr.
  • Paul Krugman on how the two most powerful men in America have gone stark raving mad.

I am fairly certain that none of the DOGE-driven cuts in government employment are the result of any kind of considered analysis. Just fire half of them, seems to be the reasoning, and the half we’ll choose will be the newest hires. That’s the depth of their analysis. This is combined with what I’ve long observed to be the relative simple-mindedness of conservatives. The MAGA fans cheering DOGE on are thinking, how could some Washington agency need 25,000 employees? If I can’t imagine what 25,000 people could possibly be doing, then they must be bloat. Get rid of ’em! How they decide that 10% of the staff should be cut, or 25%, or 50%, seems to be arbitrary. They have no idea.

Side issue: sure, there’s always *some* inefficiency in every organization. But there’s a point at which working to root out that inefficiency costs more than the inefficiency itself. Zealots seem not to realize this.

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This piece is about how the zealots think preventative measures are “waste.” They prefer immediate profits, and the costs of disasters that could have been prevented will be borne by someone else.

The Atlantic, Brian Klaas, 12 Mar 2025: DOGE Is Courting Catastrophic Risk, subtitled “Musk has turned a dangerously flawed view of ‘waste’ into a philosophy of government.”

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So Much for Free Speech

Posted on Tuesday 11 March 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Now the Trump team is arresting people simply for expressing opinions the administration doesn’t like, from Robert Reich and Adam Serwer;
  • That list of forbidden words; Egg prices are because Easter?!; Fox blames stock market plunge on Biden;
  • Heather Cox Richardson on the stock market and how Trump is a dodgy salesman;
  • Now they say climate change is good; how Americans are now the bad guys;
  • Paul Krugman and MAGA paranoia, with a chart showing how the US right aligns with other extreme nations.

Robert Reich, 11 Mar 2025: The Trump regime will arrest some of you in the middle of the night because you spoke your mind.

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An Actual Reason to be Against Education

Posted on Monday 10 March 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Robert Reich warns that universities will be the next target;
  • Amanda Marcotte wonders why Pete Hegseth’s paranoia would ban “Enola Gay”.

Robert Reich’s first post today echoes my topic yesterday. But let’s ask again: is this only about federal control and civil rights? Answer: No, it’s something deeper, a step in a familiar playbook…

Robert Reich, 10 Mar 2025: The universities are next

He begins by reminding us of the current state of things.

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Why Are Conservatives Against Education?

Posted on Sunday 9 March 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Two pieces about the Department of Education;
  • Trump’s contradictions are a feature, not a bug?
  • Musk doesn’t understand government (it’s not a business);
  • Trump doesn’t criticize Putin because he’s planning his own invasion?
  • Tom Nichols on the Pentagon’s DEI panic;
  • Trump doesn’t know how to run an empire.

Why are conservatives so anxious to dismantle DoE? Is it their knee-jerk resentment of any kind of federal authority, imposition of standards, of regulations? Is it that students of one state cannot be expected to match the achievements of students of other states? (An argument I read against Common Core, years ago.)

NY Times, Michael C. Bender, 6 Mar 2025: Why Republicans Want to Dismantle the Education Department, subtitled “President Trump’s fixation reinvigorated the debate over the role of the federal government in education, and created a powerful point of unity between the factions of his party.”

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A MAGA Feed, and DST

Posted on Saturday 8 March 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • A MAGA feed;
  • A solution to the Daylight Saving Time debate.
– – –

For today, I want to examine this piece closely. The polarization of American society may mean that the two sides disagree, but perhaps also that they don’t even understand each other, and may perhaps seal themselves off from each other’s points of view.

Slate, Luke Winkie, 8 Mar 2025: I Wanted One Day of Peace on the Internet, subtitled “So I swapped my feeds for a dose of what it’s like to live in the certainty of MAGA land.”

The word “certainty” strikes me immediately. How are they so certain? Because they live in their bubble, I’d guess, and conservatives tend toward black and white thinking. But I’ll begin at the beginning.

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Tyson & Walker, TO INFINITY AND BEYOND

Posted on Saturday 8 March 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Neil deGrasse Tyson and Lindsey Nyx Walker
Subtitled “A Journey of Cosmic Discovery”
(National Geographic, Sep. 2023, 319pp, including 16pp acknowledgements, further reading, illustrations credits, and index.)

This is literally a heavier-than-usual book that is nevertheless a light-weight read (even if some of its subject matter isn’t light-weight itself). The coauthor is a senior producer and head writer at StarTalk, a podcast I see snippets of on Facebook but have never listened to regularly. The book is heavily illustrated, both with photographs and artist conceptions, and the subject matter is fairly basic, so that I could compare this on both counts to the Dawkins book I wrote up here last month.

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Simplicity and Idiocy

Posted on Friday 7 March 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • American idiocy;
  • War images flagged for removal in Pentagon DEI purge;
  • Why are conservatives obsessed with the debunked link between vaccines and autism?
  • Trump and Musk are ungoverning;

I admit that I follow a Facebook group called America’s Cultural Decline Into Idiocy. It consists of group members posting examples (by others) of what they take as idiocy, for example someone who did not understand the movie:

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Tom Nichols, OUR OWN WORST ENEMY

Posted on Friday 7 March 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Subtitled “The Assault From Within on Modern Democracy”
(Oxford, August 2021, xvii + 245pp, including 25pp notes and index)

Here’s the last of several books about current issues that I read in December and January. I read this one because I liked the author’s previous book, THE DEATH OF EXPERTISE (reviewed here). And this one has an unexpected counter-intuitive thesis: that the discontent in the modern world is derived from how successful we’ve been in creating it.

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As with previous reviews, my complete notes are below, following this summary set of bullets. Continue reading →

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Back and Forth, On and Off

Posted on Thursday 6 March 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • CDC recalls fired workers;
  • Tariffs are delayed again;
  • Why would Trump want to destabilize the country?
  • Texas would make identifying as transgender a felon;
  • Trump blames the victims;
  • TN names July a month of “fasting and prayer”;
  • Miracles are happening every day because Trump is listening to the prophets.
– – –

Trump has no plan. He has bluster, and a magic toy he’s discovered that he thinks can solve everything: tariffs. But he can’t make up his mind. On again, off again. Even his supporters are becoming discontent.

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AP News, 5 Mar 2025: ‘Read this e-mail immediately’: CDC tells about 180 fired employees to come back to work

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