News today about a South Carolina judge, who had ruled against Trump, who saw her house burned to the ground;
How ICE goons welcome their jobs;
Trump’s lies about murders in Portland, and Osama Bin Laden;
Robert Reich on how Trump sees truth only on TV.
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The crazy news today, reported even on NBC TV this morning, is that the home of a South Carolina judge who ruled against Trump exploded Saturday and burned to the ground. MAGA had been doxing her.
Andrew O’Hehir at Salon describes Trump’s war on reality, concerning Venezuela;
Bits from JMG about Democrats, the Pope, a debate trophy named for Charlie Kirk; how Trump lies about Portland burning to the ground; and how the GOP doesn’t want children to know that bisexuals exist;
And a long piece about whether the Autism spectrum should be split apart.
How the current administration loves to fire people;
Trump’s license to kill, from a man who wants the Nobel Peace Prize;
Heather Cox Richardson on Trump’s hate, and Russell Vought;
A Trump memo that casts atheists as terrorists; how other nations are issuing travel warnings about the US; and how a MAGA guy thinks the oppression of blacks in America is their fault.
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The current administration loves to fire people. It’s another example of how they’re eager to tear down, since they don’t know how to build up.
It’s now undeniable that American democracy is in very big trouble. An autocratic president, abetted by collaborators in the Supreme Court and the Republican party, is actively attempting to use the military, the Justice Department, regulatory agencies, trade policy, voting rolls, federal spending, and any other weapon he can get his hands on to punish his critics and lock in permanent power. Yet it still comes as a shock to have the dire state that the country is in confirmed by the experts.
The US is now rated as an “illiberal democracy.” The legacy media is in denial. Krugman reviews charts showing the increased left-right divide over recent decades. No crystal clear answer, of course. He concludes:
Anyway, the answer to that question is that there are a lot of potential explanations, ranging from rising income inequality and the power of the plutocracy, to the problems of left-behind regions, to men not working, to the injured pride of white men who feel that they have lost their dignity and their privilege, to the social anomie caused by the Internet. Also, racism never went away and has become increasingly overt again. I take all of these issues seriously, but don’t have firm views about their relative responsibility for our current moment of democratic peril.
Economic inequality brought on by globalization and neoliberal policies.
Racism, nativism, and religious bigotry on the part of populations that have been losing status.
Broad sociological changes that have sorted people by education and residence, and resentment at the dominance of elites and experts.
The special talents of individual demagogues like Donald Trump.
The failures of mainstream political parties to deliver growth, jobs, security, and infrastructure.
Dislike or hatred of the progressive Left’s cultural agenda.
Failures of leadership of the progressive Left.
Human nature and our proclivities towards violence, hatred, and exclusion.
Social media and the internet.
Then he says:
I myself have contributed to this literature, and like everyone else ticked off cause #9, social media and the internet, as one of the contributing factors. However, after pondering these questions for nearly a decade, I have come to conclude that technology broadly and the internet in particular stand out as the most salient explanations for why global populism has arisen in this particular historical period, and why it has taken the particular form that it has.
Then he goes through the weaknesses of arguments blaming the first eight items.
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Of course, you’re not supposed to have “faith” in science, you’re supposed to understand it. Adam Frank.
Again, it’s about the internet and in particular the “manosphere” —
— a loose network of podcasts, YouTubers and other male influencers. I’ve appeared on some of the manosphere’s most popular shows, including Joe Rogan’s. I’ve watched how curiosity about science can slide into conspiracy-tinged mazes rooted in misinformation. And I believe the first step out of the maze for young men begins by reasserting to them the virtue of hard work — an often grueling but indispensable part of finding the right answers in science.
The internet, and social media, are corroding the rules of discourse that have been built up over centuries.
The manosphere can foster genuine interest in science among young listeners. But framing science as a debate to be won makes it easy to paint established scientists as opponents who must be overcome. And one of the easiest ways to win the debate is to suggest scientists are either self-satisfied elites who won’t consider new ideas or, worse, liars who know the truth and are hiding it.
Frank recalls a guy he talked with on a plane about ancient aliens. And ends,
If I could talk to that young man on the plane again, I would not simply tell him to exercise caution when it comes to fringe experts. I would instead explain the long traditions of scientific discipline and determination that built the jet he’s flying in. Einstein’s relativity, evolution and genetics, climate physics on any planet (even alien ones) — these topics are a thousand times more compelling than faked moon landings because they are not the fever-dreams of hucksters but a direct vision of nature’s outrageous beauty and complexity. Make the effort to walk down that road, embrace its honesty and humility and you’ll be hooked forever.
And wondering when their “Two Minutes Hate” will appear.
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Fortunately, in this case they’re not very bright.
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Ten days or so ago, at Charlie Kirk’s funeral, after Kirk’s wife said she forgives the killer, Trump got up and said that he disagreed with Charlie, and her, on that point.
Reactions to the Hegseth and Trump speeches from Tom Nichols, David Ignatius, Paul Krugman, Heather Cox Richardson, and others;
More examples of how the right, not the left, is promoting political violence;
And Amanda Marcotte about how Christian music signals the limitations of Christian influence.
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Again, not to dwell, but at least to note. These are comments, not summaries.
The Atlantic, Tom Nichols, 30 Sept 2025: The Commander in Chief Is Not Okay subtitled “Trump put on a disturbing show for America’s generals and admirals.”
This farrago of fantasy, menace, and autocratic peacocking is the kind of thing that the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan evocatively called “boob bait for the Bubbas” and that George Orwell might have called “prolefeed.” Continue reading →
Posted inconservatives, Lunacy, Music, Religion|Comments Off on Reactions to the Hegseth and Trump Speeches to the Military. And Christian Music.
About the Trump/Hegseth speeches today to US military leaders;
Short items about how psychotic drugs are to blame for Charlie Kirk’s killing; how the Rapture has been rescheduled; and how marriage equality is to blame for Charlie Kirk’s murder;
Paul Krugman about the doomed attempt to revive the coal industry.
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Today US military leaders from around the world were ordered to a meeting with Trump and Hegseth in at Quantico in Virginia so they could be lectured to about warrior culture and not being overweight. Apparently it was pretty cringy. I saw a photo several times on Facebook of the military personnel in the audience with uncomfortable expressions on their faces, including one literally face-palming; but I didn’t save a link. Without belaboring this, some links.
Slate, Heather Cox Richardson, and Robert Reich on Trump’s AI video about “medbeds”; Reich explicitly links it to Trump’s dementia;
Short items about the Michigan mass shooter, government enforcement of Turning Point Clubs; tariffs on foreign-made movies; and banning the phrase “climate change” in the Energy Department.
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Apparently this “medbed” fantasy is more significant than I thought, yesterday. It comes up today in three of my daily reads.
The assassination of Charlie Kirk has led to more than shock, grief and a demand that the killer be brought to justice. Pugnacious and divisive in life, Mr. Kirk has been canonized in death as a saint of civil discourse. His murder has unleashed a furious assault by the Trump administration and its supporters against their political enemies, including anyone who demurs from this beatification.
And then ties it to his book’s theme.
In 1960, the economist Thomas Schelling identified this kind of phenomenon as one of many striking social events driven by “common knowledge”: the state in which everyone knows something, everyone knows that everyone else knows that thing and so on. The phenomenon, which was further explored by the anthropologist John Tooby, may be called a communal outrage.
And then he goes on with details with how the reaction to Charlie Kirk are an example of this communal outrage (and, oh by the way, veiled threats of political violence against the left).
The post-Kirk crackdown is an example of this lashing out. The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, used the language of a mafia thug (“we can do this the easy way or the hard way”) to pressure ABC to take action against the talk-show host Jimmy Kimmel. Attorney General Pam Bondi warned, “We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech” — a category protected under the First Amendment. (After bipartisan backlash, supported by quotations from Mr. Kirk himself, Ms. Bondi defined “hate speech” as threats of violence.) President Trump’s adviser Stephen Miller threatened, “With God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have” to “identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy” left-wing political organizations that he said constitute “a vast domestic terror movement.”
(Do Trump fans even hear of incidents like these? I suspect they are not reported by the likes of Fox New or Daily Caller.)
Then Pinker reviews comparable historical incidents, and how such incidents involve “two coordination problems. The first problem is a contest for dominance: for respect, standing, honor, face, deference.”
While human nature has evolved various methods of dealing with these, so that every little disagreement doesn’t erupt into violence. Eventually, we get to this core issue.
It’s often been pointed out that Mr. Trump and the MAGA movement have a chronic sense of being disrespected. Mr. Trump fumed for decades about being looked down on by coastal elites, and his pique has grown with each investigation, indictment and impeachment. For many of his followers, these insults merged with a smoldering resentment at the creeping takeover by leftist values in public life, from government mandates to popular entertainment.
Mr. Kirk’s killing is, for all of them, a perfect outrage incident. As an advocate of MAGA willing to take the battle to the enemy, Mr. Kirk was a pre-eminent symbol of the coalition. And his suspected killer, an internet-addled loner with a gun, nonetheless has enough left-adjacent trappings (a transgender partner, some antifascist memes) that he can be mentally fitted into a vast liberal conspiracy. The shooting was an unendurable public offense, which mobilized the coalition to muster its forces, in this case a combination of government muscle and social media shaming mobs, to rectify the affront.
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You could hardly ask for more explicit evidence of political violence being driven by the right (not the left).
The Daily Caller, a prominent conservative online publication, published an opinion column on Friday explicitly calling for violence in response to physical assaults on conservatives in America.
The column, written by editor at large Geoffrey Ingersoll and promoted near the top of the site, argues that “patriots” should use force because law enforcement officials do not adequately protect conservatives, including Charlie Kirk, the activist assassinated this month.
“Is this a call for violence?” the third paragraph says. “Yes. Explicitly it is.”
“I want blood in the streets,” he added in the column, which ran with the headline “Enough Is Enough … I Choose VIOLENCE!”
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Today’s Trumpian idiocy. I’ve often noted that conservatives, especially MAGA/Trump fans, have a loose grip on reality. They don’t “believe” well-established scientific conclusions, preferring simplistic, nonsensical explanations, or even religious myths. Here’s an example of the opposite: they’re willing to believe things that, if they knew anything about anything, couldn’t possibly be true.
It’s as if he’s confusing science fiction films, or even Star Trek TOS, with reality. But it’s not just Trump; it’s an ongoing QAnon conspiracy theory.
“Medbeds” is a conspiracy that has spread extensively through far-right, QAnon circles. The idea is that the American government has access to futuristic medical pods that can cure any disease and even regrow limbs, but liberals have been hiding this information from the American public. One sect of QAnon believes the government is using a medbed to keep JFK alive.
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Then there’s the shooting at a Mormon Church in Michigan this morning. Of course everyone is eager to identify the shooter and discover his motives. I’ve seen one Facebook post (a graphic) that claimed the shooter was a military vet and flew a Trump flag in front of his house some years ago. And that supports certain narratives. But don’t trust Facebook memes. Wait for better evidence.
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György Ligeti – Atmospheres
This is an astonishing piece of music that can change forever what you think an orchestra can do. Or, it changed for me, back in 1968 when I heard this piece on the soundtrack of 2001: A Space Odyssey. It is not electronic music; it is orchestral music, using micro polyphony, in which all the instruments are playing micro-tonal sounds, not all on a specific key, that creates unworldly sounds.
I am listening to the dozen or so Ligeti CDs that I have, and will discuss more later.
Posted inMusic, Politics, Psychology|Comments Off on Steven Pinker, Right-Wing Threats of Violence, and Ligeti’s Atmospheres
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