Competence vs. Competition

Posted on Monday 23 February 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Olympics thoughts: zero-sum games; competence vs competition;
  • Amanda Marcotte on the violence and propaganda from the DHS;
  • Zack Beauchamp on how to stop a dictator: make the threat obvious;
  • Tom Nichols on the Republican Party’s Nazi problem;
  • Short items about book bans, Christian theocracy, hanging people in the streets, and how conservatives have claimed voter fraud for decades.
– – –

As I finish this post, let me see if I can squeeze this in. I’ve never been all that interested in sports, of any kind. I do watch the Olympics, to see performances of skill and beauty, but I don’t actually care about who wins. Sports is a zero-sum game. Unlike the Olympics, professional sports picks teams that don’t actually represent the cities they supposedly represent; they’re arbitrary. Sports is a sublimation of warfare, and if sports keeps cultures from actual warfare, that’s fine. If it attracts the attention of millions or billions of people around the world who might otherwise direct their aggressive instincts elsewhere… that’s fine.

Continue reading →

Posted in conservatives, Human Nature, Politics | Comments Off on Competence vs. Competition

Another Take on the Left/Right Divide

Posted on Sunday 22 February 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Kalen Dion on the right/left divide: homogeneity/diversity, and all that implies;
  • What do historians mean that tomorrow won’t be better than today? Because human nature;
  • The modern economy and the limits of human cognition;
  • Conservative values: the Biblical right to the entire Middle East; how morality can come only from God (Coyne counters); deport Native Americans;
  • Trump’s hospital ship to Greenland.
– – –

Busy day yesterday with events in the city. Stopped at Borderlands Books for the first time in years. Yes, they do carry the SF magazines, but not yet the Jan/Feb issues of Analog and Asimov’s, let alone Mar/Apr.

\\\

Here’s a post from Facebook today by someone named Kalen Dion, a poet, author, and visual artist. Never heard of him. Is Fb smart enough to show me short essays about human nature and the left/right divide, no matter who they’re by? Otherwise I’m not sure why I would have seen this.

The right wants homogeny.

The left wants diversity.

Continue reading →

Posted in conservatives, Human Nature, Human Progress | Comments Off on Another Take on the Left/Right Divide

Whatever They Can Get Away With

Posted on Friday 20 February 2026 by Mark R. Kelly

Short items today

  • Trump’s move to demolish greenhouse gas standards is based on a (admittedly technical) lie;
  • America is experiencing a tourism slump (because… one guess);
  • About Trump’s “cartoonish” monuments to himself;
  • How Trump makes his own voters suffer;
  • How Democrats might take advantage of Trump’s claims he “fixed” the affordability crisis;
  • And more items about renaming the Palm Beach Intl Airport; Sean Feucht’s long hair; Trump telling soldiers to vote GOP; Trump officials want to rebuilt the WHO access that they cancelled for three times the cost; Statin hysteria; how trust in clergy hits a new low; Trump’s sons blame their own corruption on all of us (and our pesky laws); and Hegseth inviting a Christian Nationalist extremist to lead a Pentagon worship service.
– – –

Today is the day the Supreme Court ruled that Trump’s tariffs are illegal. Much consternation is about the land.

\\

A bunch of short items today, which I don’t need to quote from or comment about very much.

Continue reading →

Posted in Conservative Resistance, Human Nature, Religion | Comments Off on Whatever They Can Get Away With

Does Western Civilization Depend on Christian Monotheism?

Posted on Thursday 19 February 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Challenging David Brooks, the retiring NYT columnist, and his idea of building a humanist culture, from Bruce Ledewitz and Robert Reich;
  • Brooks’ problem, claims Ledewitz, is that Brooks can’t let go of religion; “the past collapsed for a reason”;
  • And Reich challenges him on issues of inequality.
– – –

Not unrelated to yesterday’s items. Two writers respond to the retirement of David Brooks from the NYT by examining the worldview he espoused — another version of restoring Western Civilization — and its crucial flaw: his unwillingness to let go of the presumptions of monotheism and learn what science has discovered about the actual world.

OnlySky, Bruce Ledewitz, 18 Feb 2026: David Brooks wants to rebuild a humanistic culture, subtitled “To rediscover our values, we first have to forge a new foundation for them.”

Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Human Progress, Politics, Religion | Comments Off on Does Western Civilization Depend on Christian Monotheism?

Are There Superior Civilizations?

Posted on Wednesday 18 February 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Reactions to a speech by Marco Rubio claiming the superiority of Western Civilization over all others, by Bret Stephens, Eliot A. Cohen, Jamelle Bouie;
  • Noting again Jared Diamond, who explained decades ago why the fact that the Enlightenment et al originated in Europe doesn’t mean white men are superior to all others;
  • And by the way Trump is building concentration camps.
– – –

There are divergent takes on a speech given by Marco Rubio in Europe the other day.

NY Times, opinion by Bret Stephens, 17 Feb 2026: Western Civ Can Save Us — Again

But the title in print, in this morning’s paper, was “The Only Civilization Worth Defending.”

And I thought, seriously? Isn’t this a little like saying, the only religion that is true is mine — because it’s mine?

Continue reading →

Posted in conservatives, History, Human Nature | Comments Off on Are There Superior Civilizations?

Religious Motivations

Posted on Tuesday 17 February 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Jerry Coyne challenges claims of a religious revival in America;
  • Review of a book called “Why I Am Not an Atheist” by Christopher Beha;
  • And a NYT essay by author Christopher Beha.
– – –

A couple items about religion today.

Even the best of the media love to identify supposed “trends,” especially if they’re counter-intuitive. Thus there have been articles in newspapers and online about how the decline in religiosity in America is reversing. Wishful thinking, by some?

Jerry Coyne, 17 Feb 2026: There isn’t a revival of religion in America
Continue reading →

Posted in Human Nature, Psychology, Religion | Comments Off on Religious Motivations

Visually Stunning

Posted on Monday 16 February 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • More about conservative comments about San Francisco;
  • Paul Krugman wonders why MAGA hates the planet;
  • How conservatives prioritize big families: quantity over quality;
  • Connecting dots between mentions of Tom Holland and his book DOMINION;
  • The MAGA attitude of contempt for others, as seen recently by Pam Bondi;
  • And some early Philip Glass: A Madrigal Opera.

Which locals come to take for granted, of course.

\\\

Another item about conservative hatred of San Francisco.

Salon, Sophia Tesfaye, 10 Feb 2026: Super Bowl bursts popular right-wing media myth, subtitled “Conservative commentators and podcast bros backtrack on what they’ve said about San Francisco”

I always thought the idea of San Francisco as a dystopian nightmare was some kind of bit. An exaggeration made meme, something people said with a wink to signal their politics more than their understanding of reality. I didn’t realize just how many Americans actually believe it so deeply that they could travel across the country, step off a plane and walk through one of the most visually stunning cities on the continent — only to be shocked that they were lied to.

Continue reading →

Posted in Conservative Resistance, Music, Politics, Science | Comments Off on Visually Stunning

The Clash Within

Posted on Sunday 15 February 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • How there isn’t a clash of civilizations (e.g. Christian vs. Muslim) so much as a clash between modernity and those who resent it: WOKE vs MAGA;
  • Items about ensuring the “right” people will vote, the erosion of the separation of church and state, Trump’s relentless self-promotion, and how the destruction of the US vaccine market will hurt the entire world;
  • Philip Glass’s Glassworks.
– – –

Another big picture piece today.

Thumbnail history. In the early 1990s Francis Fukuyama published a book called The End of History and the Last Man which argued, in part, that liberal democracy was winning the international war of governments. Samuel P. Huntington wrote a response called the Clash of Civilizations that objected to Fukuyama’s thesis. A few years later 9/11 happened, which seemed to discredit Fukuyama and confirm Huntington.

The present article, if I can guess before I read it, says the true clash isn’t between different cultures or religions, it’s internal — a clash between basic (even primitive) and advanced human nature. MAGA vs. WOKE. Continue reading →

Posted in Conservative Resistance, History, Human Nature, Human Progress, Music | Comments Off on The Clash Within

The Trump Administration Declines All Knowledge

Posted on Saturday 14 February 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Satire from The Atlantic based on the Trump administration’s renunciation of scientific conclusions about climate change;
  • Conflicted ideas about the state of the world;
  • How Gallup will stop tracking presidential approval rates;
  • Another movement from Akhnaten: Attack and Fall
– – –

Suitable for this administration, and the MAGA crowd. (And the flat-earth crowd.)

The Atlantic, Alexandra Petri, 14 Feb 2026: Trump Administration Announces That We Don’t Know Where the Sun Goes at Night, subtitled “After deciding carbon dioxide does no harm, it was the logical next move.”

A new ruling from the Trump administration says that when the sun disappears at night, we don’t know where it goes. All remaining top scientists have been taken from their positions and tasked with getting to the bottom of this.

Continue reading →

Posted in Conservative Resistance, Lunacy, Music, Politics | Comments Off on The Trump Administration Declines All Knowledge

Regressing to Might Makes Right

Posted on Friday 13 February 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • How Trump is reviving pagan values in which might makes right, while historian Tom Holland gives Christianity all the credit for ideas of inherent morality (ideas the administration is ignoring), which I dispute;
  • Author Rod Dreher think the Enlightenment was a mistake, and would prefer the certitudes of Middle Age religion;
  • Germany understands that Trump has destroyed the world’s rules-based order;
  • Charts showing the increasing isolation of the US on the world stage;
  • Brief items on Trump’s racism, a white nationalist up for Senate confirmation, and how trust in American healt care has plummeted since RFK Jr. took over;
  • Philip Glass’s “Hymn to the Sun,” from Akhnaten.
– – –

As I’ve been saying. They’re all hypocrites — they’re primitive, racist tribalists who openly flout the ideals they claim to venerate, the ideals that people better than them have established in recent centuries.

NY Times, guest essay by Leighton Woodhouse, 11 Feb 2026: Donald Trump, Pagan King [gift link]

Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada recently described the world that President Trump is dragging us into with this aphorism: “The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.”

Continue reading →

Posted in Music, Politics | Comments Off on Regressing to Might Makes Right