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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Human Nature and Existential Crises

Posted on Monday 13 January 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Yesterday I had an item and some comments about how the inability of many people to recognize existential dangers like climate change may in fact doom the species. (And explain the Fermi Paradox.) Too many people live in fantasy cultural and religious bubbles, focused on near-term thinking and resistant to understanding evidence of the world, and how the world is changing. Gradually, they may die out, leaving the world to those who *can* understand and adjust accordingly. Those will be the progressives and ‘globalists’ that the conservatives despise. Or, the conservatives will resist taking any action against such threats, turning every try into petty partisan bickering, and bring all of us down with them.

Salon, Brian Karem, 13 Jan 2025: The LA conflagration: It is now painfully clear what matters, subtitled “The wildfires in Los Angeles are a harbinger of our doom — yet ultimately leave me with hope”

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The California Fires and What They Reveal

Posted on Sunday 12 January 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • The despicable Donald Trump ignorantly criticizes California politicians, rather than offering any sympathy for the victims of the recent fires;
  • How well-intentioned policies from decades ago are partly responsible for the fires;
  • How humans might be doomed by their own human nature;
  • Another Mel Gibson screed;
  • And my take on the real reason behind why so many people want to think evolution, or climate change, is false.
– – –

What a despicable person.

NY Times, 12 Jan 2025: Trump Calls Officials Handling Los Angeles Wildfires ‘Incompetent’

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Clearly, We’re Seeing an Infestation of Alien Mind Parasites

Posted on Saturday 11 January 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

This infestation is growing. The symptoms include paranoia, megalomania, delusions, and the perception of demons and/or global conspirators around every corner. The interpretation of extraordinary events (that have rational causes that they do not believe in), but rather see as evidence of a paranoid, fantastical, irrational worldview.

Salon, Matthew Rozsa, 11 Jan 2025: Los Angeles wildfires have become perfect fuel for Trump and climate denial, subtitled “Misinformation is spreading rapidly as experts say climate change is the likely accelerant for California’s crisis”

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Bill Adair, BEYOND THE BIG LIE

Posted on Saturday 11 January 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Subtitled “The Epidemic of Political Lying, Why Republicans Do It More, and How It Could Burn Down Our Democracy”
(Atria, Oct 2024, xxiii + 273pp, including 55pp of acknowledgements, sources, notes, and index.)

This is a recent book, just published in October, on a very timely subject. The author, I didn’t realize when I bought the book, created the PoliFact website, already my personal go-to source for fact-checking. The second phrase in the subtitle is what drew me in; do Republicans really lie more (though that’s certainly my impression), and if so, *why* do they lie more? Continue reading →

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Conservative Reactions to the Los Angeles Fires

Posted on Friday 10 January 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

The past few days have been fodder for examples of (conservative) lies, evasions, and misrepresentations, as they react to the fires in Southern California.

  • Conservatives blame the LA fires on the vast world-wide conspiracy theories they are obsessed with;
  • Two examples from Facebook about naive half-baked ideas about how the fires were a conspiracy, or could have been avoided;
  • NYT on how the intensity of these fires is actually (of course) the result of climate change, as well as bad urban planning decades ago;
  • Salon’s Amanda Marcotte on Fox News’ incoherent spin on the California fires;
  • Short items about how Trump lies, and the upside-down thinking of Newsmax;
  • And a quote from Bertrand Russell.
– – –

 

We should have seen this one coming. Not the fires —  the conservative reactions. Especially about the one thing they seem most afraid of.

Slate, Ben Mathis-Lilley, 9 Jan 2025: Elon Musk Endorses Alex Jones’ Claim That the Los Angeles Fires Were Set Intentionally, subtitled “Big if true.”

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