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.
– – –
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.
\\\
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!”
\\
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.
\\\
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.
\\\
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
How the shooters aren’t necessarily right-wing or left-wing, but simply internet trolls (and anyway, Trump is lying);
While there are right-wingers vowing to take out “progressive leftism”;
Headlines about Trump’s corruption, Hegseth’s warrior culture meeting, that kerfuffle about the UN escalator, why people still fall for predictions of the Rapture, and two items about autism and Tylenol.
– – –
Let’s do this one first. It’s not about politics, per se, it’s about how to understand the world.
We’ve long since established that explaining the evidence doesn’t change anyone’s mind, as the subtitle says here. You have to go deeper. Yes, this is triggered by Trump and RFK Jr. and acetaminophen and autism.
A UK journalist’s characterization of Trump, and America;
Why voters keep shrugging off the corruption of Trump and his staff;
Robert Reich’s characterization of the current occupant of the Oval Office;
And how what astonishes me is how so many people don’t care about any of this.
– – –
A quote going around today on FB, from UK writer Oliver Kornetzky. (Examples: here, and here)
I’ll quote a portion. About Trump:
…the sleaze of a conman, the cowardice of a draft dodger, the gluttony of a parasite, the racism of a Klansman, the sexism of a back-alley creep, the ignorance of a bar-stool drunk, and the greed of a hedge-fund ghoul…
Trump tells pregnant women to fight and not take Tylenol;
The leucovorin-Dr. Oz connection;
About Trump’s bonkers UN speech;
Reactions from AlterNet, PolitiFact, NY Times;
Still baffled why people like Trump.
– – –
Which is worse, Trump and RFK Jr.’s autism nonsense, or Trump standing before world leaders telling them they won’t be great again until they start burning more fossil fuels? The common thread is the imbecile, Trump.
They both appeal to conservatives; on the first point, conservatives distrust “big pharma” and like simplistic answers to everything.
Three more core principles today, illustrated by an essay by a “former creationist” and how she found “following the science” clashed with her culture — and how this conflict is born of ancient biology;
How universities would like to teach how to think;
Paul Krugman on the Trump administration’s undermining American expertise, the latest play being the charge for H-1B visas;
Robert Reich on how the Trump administration “no longer has the smarts to publish facts”;
And JMG items. No, Kat Kerr did not ascend to Heaven to see God and Charlie Kirk.
– – –
Here’s a piece, apropos of the debut of the TV miniseries mentioned in the first paragraph, that illustrates three more core themes, or principles.
1, Honest appraisal of the evidence for disputed topics in science, from evolution to climate change to the global Earth to the efficacy of vaccines, is overwhelming that the consensus views on these topics are correct.
2, Rejection of or resistance to these conclusions is driven by any of various psychological biases, mostly the need not to challenge one’s community and its beliefs.
3, You can’t expect anyone to be convinced, or to change their minds, just by showing them the evidence and expecting them to understand it.
(And this is why ‘wisdom’ is a personal project, as I’ve said, and not the result of any group activity taking place in a sports stadium, a religious congregation, or a concert hall.)
One of the emerging themes on this blog over the years is the idea that human nature evolved over millions of years to enable survival in an ancestral environment that most people no longer live in. In my own reading the idea of an actual human nature appeared first, e.g. in EO Wilson’s ON HUMAN NATURE and Stephen Pinker’s HOW THE MIND WORKS and THE BLANK SLATE, along with examination in modern culture of the consequences of the tendencies of that base human nature. Later came books that identified how those tendencies are increasingly unsuitable in the modern environment; e.g. tribalism/racism is a hindrance to large groups working together to fight existential threats. And even later came writers who distinguish between two, at least, poles of human nature, or expressions of human nature: one that clings to base tendencies (tribalism, et al), and another that is comfortable adjusting to the modern world. It’s not there’s any evolution going on here (not in 10,000 years); it’s that the diversity of human nature allows different groups reaching different conclusions to settle out in different directions. These are things I’ve pieced together myself over the past decade, without having read any general book or textbook on psychology.
But here’s piece in The Guardian that I saw linked today on Facebook that seems to summarize the entire issue in ways that have probably been common among evolutionary psychologists for decades.
The Guardian, Alex Curmi, 21 Sep 2025: How modern life makes us sick – and what to do about it, subtitled “From depression to obesity, the concept of ‘evolutionary mismatch’ can help foster self-compassion and point the way to a more rewarding existence”
Subtitle: The government’s working definition of “hate speech” now seems to include anything that offends Donald Trump personally—including late-night comedy.
The right seems to think that criticizing Charlie Kirk’s positions is the equivalent of “celebrating” his death. Continue reading →
