There Is Always Long Term Progress and Short Term Retreat

Posted on Thursday 14 November 2024 by Mark R. Kelly
  • An essay that proposes that the idea of progress is a myth; I disagree;
  • Quick takes on politics, and crackpots.

OK, I can’t help but follow the political news, but for today’s post I’m sinking links about that to the bottom. Let’s start with something more thoughtful. Here’s a discussion of a serious long-term issue. Is progress a myth? No doubt it depends on one’s definition of progress.

OnlySky, Dale McGowan, 13 Nov 2024: Letting go of my last big myth, subtitled “Burying the myth of god was easy compared to freeing myself from the myth of progress.”

The writer begins by discussing his reaction to the 2024 presidential election, compared to his reaction to the 2016 election.

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Rogue’s Gallery

Posted on Wednesday 13 November 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

A Fox News host for Secretary of Defense. Stephen Miller. Matt Gaetz for…. anything. We shouldn’t be surprised.

  • Evidence that Russia is playing Trump;
  • Trump’s picks for his cabinet are surprising even many Republicans;
  • Why does it take two guys to run a department of efficiency?
  • Elon Musk makes promises without having any idea of what he’s doing;
  • How Trump’s indifference might save the Department of Education;
  • Paul Krugman anticipates the Trump administration cooking the books on inflation;
  • And Peter Wehner on the importance of truth.

Remember how Trump said he was going to end the war in Ukraine on Day One?

Slate, Fred Kaplan, 13 Nov 2024: Trump Thinks Putin Is His Friend. The Russians Just Issued a Humiliating Statement to the Contrary., subtitled “The psychological warfare has begun.”

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This Is What Dictators Do

Posted on Tuesday 12 November 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Many topics today.

  • Trump plans to fire generals who are not “yes men”;
  • RFK Jr. plans to fire scientists who do not subscribe to his anti-scientific ideology;
  • Federal scientists anticipate firings, and the parallel with the Soviet Union and Lysenkoism;
  • Right-wing disinformation caused the “most badly informed electorate in modern American history”;
  • The Department of Education and what conservatives fear their children are being “indoctrinated” into;
  • Big Think’s Ethan Siegel on how political realities do not change scientific ones;
  • How Trump’s antagonism to the “woke” military demonstrates again how he and his followers don’t actually like most Americans;
  • How Christians explain how their “prophets” are right sometimes and wrong other times, and how tribalists always need an enemy;
  • And how this is why MAGA conservatives will never respond to appeals for “unity”.

AlterNet, 12 Nov 2024: ‘Purge anyone who will not be a yes man’: Trump readies order allowing him to fire top generals (from Wall Street Journal)

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Other Shoes Falling

Posted on Monday 11 November 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

The pundits (and the Democrats) have been warning people about the potential consequences of Trump’s planned policies for months, if not years. Most people see higher grocery prices and don’t care about all those theoretical consequences.

  • Paul Krugman explains why Trump’s deportations will drive up grocery bills;
  • How there really is a deep state, but not what Trump says it is, and my take on the “deep state”;
  • How America’s allies around the world are hedging.
– – –

NY Times, Paul Krugman, 11 Nov 2024: Why Trump’s Deportations Will Drive Up Your Grocery Bill [gift link]

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The Parochial and the Cosmic

Posted on Sunday 10 November 2024 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Our mistake was thinking we lived in a better country than we do;
  • The US has lost faith in the American dream;
  • Connie Willis’s detailed daily political summaries are now at CW Daily on Facebook;
  • With today a dozen or more reason why fascism may not succeed in the US;
  • Switching gears: an essay by cosmologist Paul M. Sutter on how the emptiness of the universe gives our lives meaning.

A few more comments on the current situation.

The Guardian, Rebecca Solnit, 7 Nov 2004: Our mistake was to think we lived in a better country than we do, subtitled “Americans will be stuck cleaning up after Maga’s destructive streak because men like this never clean up after themselves”

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Do Trump’s Voters Know What They’ve Done?

Posted on Saturday 9 November 2024 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Jamelle Bouie asks if Trump Voters know what he has planned for them;
  • Heather Cox Richardson observes how on social media Trump voters are alarmed by the implications of Trump’s polices, which somehow they hadn’t noticed before;
  • Two more lists of reasons why Trump won and Harris lost, from Slate and Salon;
  • How I see the big issue as about how humans react to short-term circumstances and cannot process long-term thinking.

Answer: No.

NY Times, Jamelle Bouie, 9 Nov 2024: What Do Trump Voters Know About the Future He Has Planned for Them?

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Lessons and Narratives

Posted on Friday 8 November 2024 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Everyone has theories and lessons to be drawn from the election results; Robert Reich rejects several and offers his own;
  • The focus on the current economy is just another example of short-term thinking, at the expense of bigger issues;
  • Disinformation and propaganda were key as well;
  • Items about what the world thinks, American’s dark age, how the consequences will be dire, preparing for the Trump sequel, and weaponizing the First Amendment;
  • And Adam Lee on heading into the dark, but reassuring us it won’t last forever.

It happens after every election, I’m sure, but this time the Monday-morning-quarterbacking (is that the right term?) seems especially extensive. Everyone has their own theory about what the Democrats did wrong, or what Kamala did wrong, or why voters cared about this and not that. The trouble with these is, they’re all ex post facto. If the problems were as obvious as the commentators seem to think, why weren’t they pointed out ahead of time? On the contrary, most Democrats and commentators seemed quite optimistic leading up the election…

So let’s start with Robert Reich’s piece. (In another couple days, maybe, I’ll move to non-political subjects. Maybe even science fiction!)

Robert Reich, 8 Nov 2024: The Lesson, subtitled “The real lesson we should draw from what occurred Tuesday”

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More Aftermath

Posted on Thursday 7 November 2024 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Heather Cox Richardson summarizes;
  • Frank Bruni on the running theme that most voters don’t pay attention to the big picture;
  • RFK Jr and the role of disinformation, perhaps the worst plague of the 21st century;
  • More about who we are and the illiberal trend around the world;
  • And how Trump believers feel validated: God is on their side! Keep smart people out of Daddy’s cabinet! Impose “rough justice” on anchors and outlets that criticized Trump; how prosecutors deserve execution; how women are property; how Jack Smith should be imprisoned.

To cut through the opinionated commentaries about what happened in this week’s election, here’s historian Heather Cox Richard’s very matter-of-fact account.

Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson, 6 Nov 2024: November 6, 2024

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This Is Who Some of Us Are

Posted on Wednesday 6 November 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Astonishingly, Trump won the presidency again. Despite everything.

  • Slate: Americans just voted to burn it all to the ground;
  • Trump supporters are calling for executions; and how they laugh at Trump rallies;
  • Zack Beauchamp on Trump’s existential threat, and some hope for optimism;
  • Robert Reich on the Resistance;
  • Tom Nichols suggests that the danger of a Trump administration might be undercut by his incompetence;
  • Personal comments about sexism and racism; how Democrats are not denouncing the results as evidence of cheating; how it will be interesting to track Trump’s promises/threats against results; and how I find this result more shocking than the one in 2016.

Or to the rest of the world, this is what Americans are. This too shall pass.

Slate, Christina Cauterucci, 6 Nov 2024: Americans Just Voted to Burn It All to the Ground, subtitled “This is an even more decisive turning point than 2016.”

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An Election About Elections

Posted on Tuesday 5 November 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

We won’t know today.

  • David A. Graham at The Atlantic about how this election is a test;
  • Evidence about how European nations would vote in today’s US presidential election;
  • More about the Republican backlash to the idea that women can think for themselves;
  • Short items about educated women, submission to Christ, how Democrats are demonic, how RFK would remove fluoride, and how today Trump uttered 15 falsehoods in 15 minutes.

The Atlantic, David A. Graham, 5 Nov 2024: This Is a Test, subtitled “Can the country pass?”

This is an election about elections.

One of the two leading candidates in the race, Donald Trump, has not only demonstrated a long-running skepticism of rule of law; he is also the only president in American history to attempt to remain in office after losing an election. This election is a test: Can the American public resoundingly reject a man who has not merely been a chaotic extremist but has also attacked the American system of republican government itself?

No, because to many Americans, Trump represents something more important than the “American system of government,” despite how much they claim to venerate the Constitution. Graham concludes,

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