Knee-Jerk Conservative Reactions

Posted on Friday 3 January 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Conservatives react to the incidents this past week in New Orleans and Las Vegas by blaming their favorite bogeymen. Immigrants! Diversity initiatives! Without evidence, or rationale.
  • As conservatives reject reality, reality-based scientists are rejecting the coming conservative administration, by moving overseas.
——

 

All right, let’s see what the conservative loonies are up to this week. Conservatives just can’t help themselves. Whatever happens in the world — this past week, an ISIS-inspired truck driver in New Orleans, and a Cybertruck driver in Las Vegas — they’re sure their favorite bogeymen are to blame. (Without evidence.) Immigrants! Diversity initiatives! These people are motivated by mindless fear.

Salon, Amanda Marcotte, 3 Jan 2025: New year, same Trump: MAGA pounces on New Orleans tragedy to spread disinformation, subtitled “The president-elect’s barrage of lies encourages his followers to reject reality even harder”

Continue reading →

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What Conservatives Want to Conserve

Posted on Friday 3 January 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Another passage from Lakoff, with my interpolations. From page 68:

In its moral basis and its content, conservatism is centered on the politics of authority, obedience, and discipline. This content is profoundly antidemocratic, whereas our country was founded on opposition to authoritarianism. Yet conservatism also lays exclusive claim to patriotism. There is a contradiction here. How do conservatives get around it?

The answer can be found in the word “conservatism” itself. Those who call themselves by that label typically say they are in favor of conserving the best of past traditions. —

We could stop right there. Continue reading →

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Remembering Y2k; a Political Commentator admits he was wrong; Fallibilism; Reading Lakoff

Posted on Thursday 2 January 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Back to interesting ideas.

Heather Cox Richardson recalls Y2K, 25 years ago on January 1st, and how since the problem was fixed (by the scientists and tech guys) some people felt the problem had never been real. As always, she provides straightforward discussion of the background and circumstances, including the religious doomsayers who thought — as they did the previous millennium — that the world was about to end. Key point:

Heather Cox Richardson: January 1, 2025

Crises get a lot of attention, but the quiet work of fixing them gets less. Continue reading →

Posted in Book Notes, Human Nature, Politics, Technology | Comments Off on Remembering Y2k; a Political Commentator admits he was wrong; Fallibilism; Reading Lakoff

Consolidations and Resolutions

Posted on Wednesday 1 January 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

More discussion today of what I got done in 2024, and about my ongoing project that will extend into 2025. This is to start consolidating all my writing ideas from the past decade into some overall framework. I’ve been doing that in one way or another in various files for a decade now. More seriously, I began that in a couple ways in 2024.

First, the essay I wrote for Gary Westfahl in 2023, Continue reading →

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End of Year 2024

Posted on Tuesday 31 December 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

I don’t do this every year, but today I’m inclined to write about what’s gone on this past year, what if anything I’ve “accomplished,” and what if any “progress” I’ve made toward long-term goals.

About books read, settling Larry’s estate, current health and projects in work, music listened to, Y’s trip to China, and our two new cats.

First, a metric I’ve tracked for decades: how many books did I read this year? Continue reading →

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Why People Believe True Things

Posted on Monday 30 December 2024 by Mark R. Kelly
  • A deep inspection of an essay linked by David Brooks in his essay linked yesterday, much aligned with my current themes, with a key takeaway about the idea of “misinformation”;
  • And links to two other pieces I’ll explore later.
——

Let’s look at this piece directly.

Dan Williams, 28 Jul 2024: Why do people believe true things?, subtitled “Ignorance and misperceptions are not puzzling. The challenge is to explain why some people see reality accurately.”

Continue reading →

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End of Year Summaries

Posted on Sunday 29 December 2024 by Mark R. Kelly
  • David Brooks’ favorite essays include one about how Trump’s people have no clue about how to fix complex problems, and one about why people believe *true* things;
  • Two pieces from The Atlantic about 77 facts from 2024, and important breakthroughs in 2024;
  • And Heather Cox Richardson’s take on the civil war among MAGA Republicans.
– – –

NY Times, Opinion by David Brooks, 26 Dec 2024: The Sidney Awards

These are “awards” that Brooks personally announces for his favorite essays of the past year, from “small and medium-size publications,” i.e. avoiding the big papers and magazines. I’m noting this to note a couple of his selections that appeal to me and my big themes. First this:

Continue reading →

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Driving the I5, and Varieties of Dining Experience

Posted on Saturday 28 December 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Another quick trip from the Bay Area to LA over the past few days of the Christmas Holiday, constrained as usual by work schedules.

It’s a 370 mile trip, from our place in Oakland to the West LA area where we stayed. We had good fortune in that our drives there and back slipped between the series of rainstorms that have hit Northern California over the past couple weeks. Continue reading →

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Muddling Through Somehow

Posted on Tuesday 24 December 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Since today is Christmas Eve, yesterday must have been Christmas Adam, right? (First I’ve heard about this.)

NY Times, 22 Dec 2024: Behold! ‘Christmas Adam’ Is Born., subtitled “First there was Christmas Eve … and then a new celebration was created.”

This is how religion works. Similar to the way everyone knows that Jesus was born on December 25th.

Continue reading →

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The Certitude of the Religious

Posted on Monday 23 December 2024 by Mark R. Kelly
  • David French asks and tries to explain why Christians are so cruel;
  • David Brooks writes about his experience of faith;
  • And Kurt Gray about misunderstanding human nature.
– – –

Of course I’m sure they would deny this. Passing the truth along to other people, even imposing it on them, isn’t cruel, it’s kind, to their way of thinking. This is what all the missionaries thought, and still think.

NY Times, Opinion by David French, 22 Dec 2024: Why Are So Many Christians So Cruel?

Continue reading →

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