China is the new world leader. If you think otherwise, you haven't been paying attention. One symbol among many: high-speed rail — an infrastructure network that makes America's look like a museum exhibit. Add manufacturing dominance, research investment, and strategic planning that spans decades, not election cycles.
We didn't lose our lead overnight. The GOP defunded it, obstructed it, and called the result patriotism.
I’m reading this article while traveling at about 300 km/h (186 mph) on a TGV train from Lyon to Toulouse. Did you hear about the French consultants who were working on the California high-speed rail project, now dead in the water, who at some point not too long ago threw up their hands and said, essentially, “You guys aren’t serious about this. We’re going home.” And they did. And now, add to that the tRump regime’s paying off the French energy giant TotalEnergy to cancel the leases on two major offshore wind-power projects in NY and NC to the tune of almost $1B? And, to add insult to injury, they’re reinvesting that money in fossil-fuel projects. This is the most heinous, idiotic moves any government could inflict on its citizens.
"A WHOLE CIVIIZATON IS GOING TO DIE TONIGHT, NEVER TO BE BROUGHT BACK AGAIN."
Trump released this lovely epistle around 8am eastern this A.M.. Goes on to say he hopes it doesn't happen but probably will. Iran has until 8pm eastern to comply with his ever-changing demands.
What about U.S. military commanders who have to carry out war crimes including murdering civilians? Could they be prosecuted later as war criminals by a different Administration or World Court? Why do we have to live in such 'interesting' times?
Of course military leaders who carry out war crimes should be prosecuted. Whether they will be is a different story, as the USA is not a part of the International Court. I would think that every soldier, sailor and marine who carries out such orders is open to prosecution as well. The question is whether they have the morality and the courage to stand up to Trump and refuse to carry out such orders.
Senator/Astronaut Mark Kelly made a video telling military commanders they can refuse to obey illegal orders and now he's under 'investigation.' If Trump pulls the trigger, I doubt a mutiny will save us, not to mention Iran.
What's not getting much attention is today Israel is already bombing train stations, bridges and other civilian infrastructure. Netanyahu doesn't seem to care if Trump goes full TACO or not.
Also, the US have ratified the convention on genocide. Agent Orange has threatened genocide, which is already enough for getting the prosecutor on his case, on top of the rapes, in the US. I'd expect the International Courts can go after him for war of aggression after a complaint from any member state of the Court. Prison in the US would be tougher on him than prison in Den Haag.
Read about the prosecutions that followed the massacre in My Lai. Just following orders is not a defense, at least at one time in this country. But of course Republicans have walked away from that. The helicopter gunship that stopped the massacre was flown by real patriots.
I keep hearing 1/3 who enthusiastically support all of this. So where are the 2/3? Writing posts? Analyzing and re-analyzing everything? When will the 2/3 prevail, as we should. (I haven't forgotten the 8+ million who protested, but for DJT and Congress, it was white noise.)
The limitation of the size of the House makes a mockery of democracy. Large portions of the West are made-up of close-to-rotten boroughs. The Senate, at least, is _designed_ to be so, and can not be changed by amendment, but the House was supposed to be more democratic and could be remade so.
I had the same experience from Bordeaux to Paris about a year ago - boggles the mind compared to travel here. I've sort of given up on high speed rail for the US. In our defense we're just too spread out for a nationwide network and after abandoning passenger rail for the Interstate Highway system in the 50's there's no right of way or anything to build on. But yeah, we're not serious in any case.
I think Trump and MAGA are running out of ways to handicap us. I guess we're going to be number one in fossil fuels and military and war crimes it looks like.
You're in good company with your last comment. As Paul Krugman recently noted, I fear we are fast becoming the world's foremost criminal terrorist country.
What? MAGA doesn't know a thing about Iran, and doesn't care. Seriously. They simply follow Dear Leader, and parrot him if asked why. That's all they know how to do.
FOX News remains the gateway to the conservative mind. Even if their almost complete refusal to cover anything Epstein has cost them market share to Newsmax and other smaller competitors.
And the most corrupt. Everything this dark and insane pos does is destroying our nation. My G, we have got to remove him and his sycophantic administration. And file indictment after indictment with a "no pardon" clause.
We are being set up for failure. Add to that the attacks on education, high student debt, and withering away of the Department of Education, and our next generations won't be able to compete globally.
Reminds me of the suppression of Galileo by the Catholic Church. Italy lost her scientific pre-eminence permanently. In America, we are in the thrall of Fundamentalist Christians.
Yes. It reminds me of an argument I had years ago with a born-again Christian dad who was miffed by my bumper stickers on the back of my minivan of the Christian fish with evolutionary legs (I had five of them to represent my five kids). He said, "Did you know Galileo recanted on his deathbed?" and I responded "Maybe so, but he was still right."
One of the things you learn when hanging out among "born-again" Christians enough is that their universe is just crammed to the gills with this kind of just-so story. Some of these become widespread "common knowledge," like Galileo recanting on his deathbed or George Washington saying it was impossible to govern without God and Bible or whatever. But a lot are just made up on the spot by the pastors for the purposes on the story and then never brought up again. The missionary church I was part of for a while once had the pastor claim that he'd successfully converted the head of the secret police in an unspecified islamist regime. I later read a story from a person raised in a similar church that said a missionary returning from Africa once talked about his encounter with a snake demon in the brush. Etc.
It does a lot to explain how they can believe bullshit like "God chose Trump to be his imperfect instrument on Earth" or whatever: they already live in a world that runs on made-up anecdotes. It's like a sci-fi fandom that got really out of hand, to the point that they not only ended up believing that Star Trek literally IS a history of the future, but interpret world events in light of this, and regularly tell each other stories about how that guy they bumped into in that bar is really a Betazoid refugee hiding among the people of Earth.
Fundamentalist religions are training wheels for ignorance. The more outlandish an idea is, the more "faith" it takes to believe in it. And of course in their world, that's a good thing. I hope mankind can survive organized religion.
I once sincerely believed that I could communicate telepathically with the creator of the 2-trillion-galaxy universe. Deprogramming yourself from what you were raised to believe is an experience just short of madness. You have to tease out what you learned that still might be true.
I like how one former Jehovah's Witness described it: "We were taught to gaslight ourselves."
I never heard anything about Galileo Galilei "recanting" on his deathbed. He was originally instructed to keep quiet about the Earth orbiting the Sun by the Jesuits who, though they agreed with him, were obliged to support the Pope in the view that the faithful were "not ready" for such a shocking reversal of the belief that the Sun orbited the Earth...
But Galileo refused to be silenced and, as a penalty, was confined under house arrest for the remainder of his days (not thrown into prison, as myth would have it).
Lots of the best also stayed because Hitler provided a lot of support for their efforts. The USSR and the USA both worked very hard to grab these people after the war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip
The Jesuit magazine America boasted that Roman Catholics were courted by 47 and helped him win. Who was courted? It’s hierarchal. Did clergy direct parishioners in their voting?
On the west coast, Sen Noel Frame reported “The Department of Justice is effectively teaming up with Washington’s Catholic bishops to overturn the state’s mandatory reporting law, in one of the most aggressive federal moves to back organized religion in recent memory.”
If I’m not RC but my grandchildren are and their church does good work. I hope that fringe MAGA RC clergy don’t jeopardize their tax-exempt status.
The hierarchy of the American clergy, meaning both the USCCB and a shit ton of the clergy below them, are essentially a branch of the Republican Party. Which is basically one beer away from declaring openly that Pope Leo and Pope Francis before him were antipopes on account of their woke tendencies.
I mostly only go at Christmas and Easter these days. You should've heard the preacher at the church I went to last Sunday. If you ever wanted an object lesson in how to commemorate a Lebanese Catholic priest who was killed by the IDF while going out of your way to explain how the IDF are nevertheless not really to blame and also tactfully not mentioning the ongoing mass displacement/killing of millions of Lebanese folks by the IDF, he's your guy.
"And following on from the comment above, I have no doubt that the exceptionally NUTTY Evangelicals et al will be very happy to see a reduction of Scientific thought & exploration as being too pernicious to their own philosophy!!"
I mean, that's kind of the elephant in the room when it comes to all these conversations: ultimately, Republicans are fine with the consequences of all this. So what if America devolves all the way to the status of your stereotypical third world banana republic? Elites live very well in third world banana republics. Even their regular voters would be largely okay with it if it meant the return of a certain kind of patriarchal authority.
Four or five years ago there was an interview of some of the Burmese generals who'd recently overthrown democracy that really captured the way the rich and powerful all over the world have become. The generals admitted that Burma under democracy was better not just for the plebs but even for *themselves.* But they still preferred military dictatorship, because under democracy they simply had less *status*.
That's what we're looking at. I doubt if Republicans are *trying* to bring the U.S. down to the level of Burma - they're too egotistical to admit that that's what their plans amount to. But ultimately, if the result of their policies was that it fell all the way to that point, they'd be fine with it.
"It is better to rule in hell than to serve in heaven."
The current crop of MAGA White Nationalist Christians would be just fine with the world of the 1840s. White rich men on top of the pyramid, the rest of the white men next, then obedient white women. Black / brown / foreign men and women all slaves, for work or other types of use. So what if 80% of the population is on the edge of starvation? The white rich men were happy and were having a field day. And today, the MAGA who aren't rich think, well, at least I'll be second in line for all the perks. That's why they'll wrap themselves in that flag, hold that cross, burn that cross, forever.
We largely have Tricky Dicky and Hank Kissenger to thank for that. They opened trade with China on the "theory" that capitalism is incompatible with communism. What they failed to realize is that China wasn't actually "communist" but fascist. And capitalism is very compatible with fascism. Indeed, there's a point where they merge - and we're living right on that point, right now.
I taught college level Asian history for years, and I always told my classes, "First of all, China is not Communist, no matter what it says. The CCP is just the latest Dynasty. But not much else has changed."
It seems quite quaint that anyone still refers to Russia and China as being "Communist" when they've been practising state capitalism (or you could call it fascism) for decades.
Rich Lowry, editor of National Review, which one time was the “intelectual home” of the conservative movement wrote: Why No One Can Win an Argument with Donald Trump?
"President Trump, too, never loses an exchange on stage or during interviews. He is The O’Reilly Factor squared, liberated from the confines of a studio and bestriding the world with an utterly impregnable confidence that gives him an advantage in almost any circumstance."
It seems that “impregnable confidence” is the “high-sounding” synonym for “invincible ignorance”!
Well, his #1 trait is that he’s a very persuasive con man and his #2 trait is that no one else can ever be right — and that has taken him far in life, despite being #1 a liar and #2 wrong.
You are so right! We visited China a few years ago, and the first thing we noticed was how they have high speed trains from all their airports to their city centers. And highway lights powered by solar panels.! Electric vehicles everywhere. Most Americans have no idea behind we are.
I’ve consulted on science museums in China over the past decade. Their attitude toward science is orthogonal to our current trend. They’re eating our lunch I would tell my family. It’s sad and unnecessary.
Not only does China have all kinds of infrastructure, it has been building infrastructure in other countries. Under its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) launched in 2013, China has financed and built extensive infrastructure—including over 10,000 km of railways, 100,000 km of highways, and numerous ports, bridges, and power plants—across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Key projects include the Laos-China Railway, Indonesia's high-speed rail, the Piraeus Port in Greece, and various African power stations.
So China is building high speed rail in other countries while the US can't build one such project in its own country.
As much as we admire what China has done, I don't want to live there. Not only do I not speak the language but I wouldn't be allowed to read and comment on the PK substack.
We live in a messy society that needs a government and civics course correction. But the institutions including universities that made the US a innovative society are not dead yet. We can exist without high speed rail as fun as that would be.
High speed rail is not about "fun," it's about efficiency and fairness. We can "exist" without anything invented in the past ten thousand years, but few would want to.
Europe and Japan also have high speed rail, so authoritarian governments have no connection with doing the right thing for the people.
And while our universities haven't collapsed yet, make no mistake: if the grant funds and immigration restrictions and all the other cuts and demands made by the Trump regime aren't completely reversed within a few years, they WILL collapse. The best people are already looking to Europe.
I have a very bright, successful MAGA relative who liked the proposed tax cuts, but added to that, he absolutely hated the idea of having a woman in charge.
I have a no-so-bright brother who is a staunch Republican. He made his pile as a stock trader. He's not MAGA enough to be wearing a red hat, but I wouldn't put it past him to put on a bright blue suit with a long red tie.
Well off, educated Republican voters still see their money going to those undeserving people. Their great Christian values makes them look out for only their tribe, destruction of the country be damned.
Their understanding of how anything works in the world is warped by their bigotry.
"The weakness of our intellect is that we mostly just use it to reinforce our beliefs."
- Marcel Pagnol
I'm not sure he was right about most people, but educated Republicans, and there are a lot of them, are sure as hell an object lesson in what that looks like.
John Kenneth Galbraith: "The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
Thomas Frank's "What's the Matter With Kansas?" told the story of how Sam Brownback and the Kansas Republicans convinced Kansans to vote against their own self interest, to the utter economic devastation of towns all across the state. Multiply that by 49.
Some well educated people still have prejudice - racial, LGBTQ, abortion - and vote based on a single issue. Many may also be wealthy so vote to support GOP tax policy favoring the rich. Education or intelligence is no guarantee of political views that favor what is best for the majority.
Agreed, nor does it mean they are well informed. Book smarts does not always equal street smarts or common sense. Whether one favors “a rising tide lifts all boats” or “only as strong as the weakest link”, they both mean essentially the same thing. Yet, too many people don’t care. Too many fancy themselves as above being affected or that they might one day be the one who is unaffected. Americans, especially, are born and bred on “me me me”. Not even “me and mine” anymore. These people don’t even care about the future they leave to their children and grandchildren so long as they have their money and power in the here and now.
Some are traditional Rs and would never consider voting against them. No major party candidate gets below 40%of the vote. That's a reflex-not a choice.
Yes indeed! Australia is one of the beneficiaries, attracting many American scientists to our shores. Hopefully their continued research in a so-called friendly country will ultimately progress scientific endeavours for the world!
I don't think MAGAs and many other Americans care. Science takes hard work, critical thinking, and patience, attributes that are not appreciated in our instant gratification culture. It is so much easier to simply proclaim America is great and exceptional than to do the hard work of making our country exceptional by normal measures.
This is for sure a massive problem in America as we were already predispositioned to it with our individualistic, celebrity culture. But social media is the bane of the world. Young people, boys especially, seem so averse to any work. They want an easy button. They follow these disgusting influencers, literally buy into their crypto, gambling, high risk trading, etc nonsense. I’ve seen and read plenty of stories. I’ve also seen and listened to it first hand as a high school sub. It’s wild how naive they are…yet they fancy themselves in the know. Not only are they wasting time and money, but they are wasting their brains and chance at education. The irony is that most of them will end up without any skills, academic or social, and they will live the life they are trying to avoid.
And smart people, established and up and comers, have and will also head for the door. It won’t just be a loss of foreign students. Our own young people will become them, heading to other countries for opportunity and building their lives there. My college bound science major has already come to this conclusion before he’s even actually started.
Your son or daughter might consider getting that degree outside the U.S. The quality of scientific education in the U.S. is likely to deteriorate in all but the very top schools, and those schools are the ones currently wearing bulls-eyes.
Exactly, researchers elsewhere will keep innovating, like the Portuguese cancer researcher working in Sweden who just won the 2026 BioInnovation Institute & Science Prize for Innovation for figuring out how to "turn tumors into their own vaccines.*
Article in today's NY Times, about a small Catholic college outside of Chicago, who is deep doo-doo, because fewer foreign students are coming. These students pay the full freight which subsidizes American students. Watch for the closing of these types of schools over the next few years.
Yes, Europe, China and Japan are capable between them of taking up the slack, I'd have thought. But with science you can't have too many cooks, really. The more theories and experiments you can do, the quicker you'll get the breakthroughs.
I wonder who he thinks will be designing and building the next generation of weaponry for his military. In fact, who will be taking the reins at Oak Ridge when he depletes the nuclear arsenal?
Making America dumber- looks like a priority objective for Mr Trump - to the limitless joy of his ” colleagues” Xi and Putin. Any one of Mr Putin’s moles-couldn’t have done a ” better” job.
In conversations with students, they are turning away from advanced education, especially PhDs, because the prospect of a tenure-track position has decreased further than its already low level as those positions are largely funded by government grants. Worse now, those grants fund graduate students, so those stipends are also disappearing. And adding more debt to their already burdensome undergraduate loans becomes a massive disincentive. We are losing a generation of native scientists while also turning away the best foreign talent. Can it be an accident that we are simultaneously ceding leadership in every area that actually made America great?
The debt load required to go to college these days is absolutely insane, and with the number of people who throw tantrums every time you try to address it because Everybody Knows College Kids Are Just Rich Spoiled Brats Who Study Underwater Basket Weaving, it's unlikely to be fixed any time soon. I'm not at all surprised by how it's turned out. I regret going to grad school.
UW-Madison grad in 1983 as a WI resident. My mom gave me check for $500 at the beginning of each semester. That covered tuition, fees, books, my season football tickets and maybe some new clothes. I paid my own rent ($100/mo or so). My parents put me and my 4 siblings through undergrad for the current price of 1 year of tuition/room/board at the same school for 1 student. Today's prices are ridiculous.
There is another reason for the Republican antipathy to science - they are dogmatically opposed to regulation, and science repeatedly points out the need for regulation. Externalities, are not rare, they are almost everywhere.
right! and also requires the govt to guide decisions of the market when needed to bting abput positive change like reducing emissions or encouraging renewables etc.
Terrible! Under this administration, one resource in the United States is growing faster than any other — stupidity, government-approved. With that, this administration is wrecking its own success story — a country once bursting with ideas and diversity in every field, not just in science, is now being steamrolled for political reasons. Unbelievable.
Stupidity is not a resource; it is an intellectual pollutant, that is resistant to degradation. The worst affected MAGA will carry it to their graves.
One of the issues here is the belief in "divine" sources. Ninth century BPE theologians believed that the bible contained all necessary knowledge, so that further study was pointless. In the same way "conservatives" believe that all necessary knowledge is held in their theo-political "bible". And any further study is heresy.
Hostility to reality is the price of admission to the GOP cult: Global warming is a hoax! Just say no to drugs! Tax cuts for the wealthy trickle down to everyone! Saddam was behind the 911 attacks! Trump isn’t a traitor with deep ties to Russia! And he’s definitely not in the Epstein Fury files.
I have trouble with the chicken or the egg. The GOP has their lies and propaganda, but I think it feeds into and confirms the world view of the people who consume it. They only want more of the fuel that feeds their resentment and hatred of Democrats and liberals. Anything else is fake news.
It might take a generation or two for the full impact is visible but the reality is America will have to go to someone else for help. Remember when your favorite place was great but now living on its past reputation.
It’s rich to see the child dictator celebrating the Artemis mission. Yep. Prayer built the rocket and pilots the spacecraft.
The fools behind this anti-intellectualism benefit from scientific advancements every day. Without a trace of irony (a notion beyond their ken) they use smart phones to organize their opposition to science.
Sadly, they won’t be here to suffer the consequences of their ignorance. That will fall on our children, which is why the MAGAts are to be damned.
The traditional social contract is that the people who actually acknowledge how the fuck the universe works (i.e. scientists) accomplish the things that actually keep the country running - from space rockets to computers to lifesaving cures - while the public, or at least the conservative portion of it, just gives all the credit and praise to Capitalist Jesus.
This works because the two are for the most part separate. But with the MAGAification of everything, science is increasingly being torn down as "woke science," and the people who've kind of been carrying the country on their backs the whole time and becoming incapable of doing so.
Good point. Have a relation whose a retired lawyer and election-denying MAGAt. She and husband, also college educated, have three houses and every toy imaginable, from boats to RVs to guns. All they do is complain about how much the government takes. Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask why you must give it anything.
Neurosciences explain behaviors. Stanford’s Robert Sapolsky explains in his book, Behave, that through neuro imaging they see, among other things, that a conservative mind has a larger fear center or amygdala, and that the neurosciences see all conservative views as being rooted in authoritarianism, because they’re driven by the fear of their own death, not civics. This explains all the guns, and why they always want to go back. It also explains their distrust of science.
With science no knowledge is absolute. Everything updates. Sapolsky reports that Conservatives see science updating as ambiguous, and conservatives reject ambiguity - like first no masks, then with updates, “masks are needed with covid.”
Another thing Sapolsky points out is that it’s been known since 1950: further right, lower the IQ, and it’s not seen on the left. Add the effects of bad parenting with the wrong genes and that’s the entire Jan 6 crowd.
Add to all that the reemergence of eugenic thinking among the rich. When you suddenly have massive economic inequality and a surge of wealth at the top, the plutocrats must come up with some reason to legitimate their fortune. The need for validation explodes when others actually challenge their claim to innate superiority. And so, to paraphrase our president, they must have better genes. Musk, Thiel, Altman and the others promoting genetic research to extend their lives and the pass on their superior genes to the next generation fall into this group. And, they reason, those with “inferior” genes are dispensable. Kennedy’s campaign against medical science turns into soft eugenics, killing them softly. With superior genes comes the power to access realities unknown to others. It takes a certain amount of arrogance.
As many have noted, Trump is a classic malignant narcissist. As Erich Fromm argued, scientific thought undermines narcissism. It requires seeing the world as it is and not distorted by one’s narcissistic views. Is it any wonder that science is deteriorating in the US under Trump?
I would suggest that a better analysis is to follow the money. That is, if there are less restrictions on products produced and distributed by business there is more profit. If one looks at the quack medicine and supplement business you see many right wing personalities promoting those products. Science demands that claims and processes meet standards of truth and reliability and that means for many in the shadow health industry that they will lose money. The reality is that science and scientific research has been an important part of the development of the country and its power. It is shame to lose that.
There are two great secular economies in the world - China and Europe. Then there are the two great hydrocarbon-driven theocratic neocolonial regimes - US and Russia. Seeing the secular economies pull ahead of the dirty theocratic ones is surely good news from a humanist point of view? I do feel sorry for the Pope as alone amongst the theocratic rulers he does seem like a good guy, but the rest of that club are nutters.
Undermining science doesn't just slow progress. It hands it to someone else.
China is the new world leader. If you think otherwise, you haven't been paying attention. One symbol among many: high-speed rail — an infrastructure network that makes America's look like a museum exhibit. Add manufacturing dominance, research investment, and strategic planning that spans decades, not election cycles.
We didn't lose our lead overnight. The GOP defunded it, obstructed it, and called the result patriotism.
I’m reading this article while traveling at about 300 km/h (186 mph) on a TGV train from Lyon to Toulouse. Did you hear about the French consultants who were working on the California high-speed rail project, now dead in the water, who at some point not too long ago threw up their hands and said, essentially, “You guys aren’t serious about this. We’re going home.” And they did. And now, add to that the tRump regime’s paying off the French energy giant TotalEnergy to cancel the leases on two major offshore wind-power projects in NY and NC to the tune of almost $1B? And, to add insult to injury, they’re reinvesting that money in fossil-fuel projects. This is the most heinous, idiotic moves any government could inflict on its citizens.
https://www.npr.org/2026/03/23/g-s1-114868/trump-totalenergies-offshore-wind-leases
“Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
"A WHOLE CIVIIZATON IS GOING TO DIE TONIGHT, NEVER TO BE BROUGHT BACK AGAIN."
Trump released this lovely epistle around 8am eastern this A.M.. Goes on to say he hopes it doesn't happen but probably will. Iran has until 8pm eastern to comply with his ever-changing demands.
What about U.S. military commanders who have to carry out war crimes including murdering civilians? Could they be prosecuted later as war criminals by a different Administration or World Court? Why do we have to live in such 'interesting' times?
Anyone perpetrating a war crime, all the way from commander-in-chief to individual soldier can be in the dock for war crimes.
Of course military leaders who carry out war crimes should be prosecuted. Whether they will be is a different story, as the USA is not a part of the International Court. I would think that every soldier, sailor and marine who carries out such orders is open to prosecution as well. The question is whether they have the morality and the courage to stand up to Trump and refuse to carry out such orders.
Senator/Astronaut Mark Kelly made a video telling military commanders they can refuse to obey illegal orders and now he's under 'investigation.' If Trump pulls the trigger, I doubt a mutiny will save us, not to mention Iran.
What's not getting much attention is today Israel is already bombing train stations, bridges and other civilian infrastructure. Netanyahu doesn't seem to care if Trump goes full TACO or not.
Also, the US have ratified the convention on genocide. Agent Orange has threatened genocide, which is already enough for getting the prosecutor on his case, on top of the rapes, in the US. I'd expect the International Courts can go after him for war of aggression after a complaint from any member state of the Court. Prison in the US would be tougher on him than prison in Den Haag.
Read about the prosecutions that followed the massacre in My Lai. Just following orders is not a defense, at least at one time in this country. But of course Republicans have walked away from that. The helicopter gunship that stopped the massacre was flown by real patriots.
You do realize that everything he says actually applies to him so that the civilization that is going to die is his, that is, ours.
"A WHOLE CIVIIZATON IS GOING TO DIE TONIGHT..." says the man killing our own civilization.
The 47th U.S. president was referring, not to Iran, but rather to the USA in 2026. Rest In Pieces.
I blame voters and the ignorance of the american people who diss high speed rail for unspeakable road congestion, anti vax, and anti science ignorance
I keep hearing 1/3 who enthusiastically support all of this. So where are the 2/3? Writing posts? Analyzing and re-analyzing everything? When will the 2/3 prevail, as we should. (I haven't forgotten the 8+ million who protested, but for DJT and Congress, it was white noise.)
The limitation of the size of the House makes a mockery of democracy. Large portions of the West are made-up of close-to-rotten boroughs. The Senate, at least, is _designed_ to be so, and can not be changed by amendment, but the House was supposed to be more democratic and could be remade so.
I had the same experience from Bordeaux to Paris about a year ago - boggles the mind compared to travel here. I've sort of given up on high speed rail for the US. In our defense we're just too spread out for a nationwide network and after abandoning passenger rail for the Interstate Highway system in the 50's there's no right of way or anything to build on. But yeah, we're not serious in any case.
I think Trump and MAGA are running out of ways to handicap us. I guess we're going to be number one in fossil fuels and military and war crimes it looks like.
You're in good company with your last comment. As Paul Krugman recently noted, I fear we are fast becoming the world's foremost criminal terrorist country.
Rivaled only by "our greatest ally", Israel.
MAGA are busy defending Trump because of how bad the Iranian regime is. But Trump is starting to act like them.
What? MAGA doesn't know a thing about Iran, and doesn't care. Seriously. They simply follow Dear Leader, and parrot him if asked why. That's all they know how to do.
More specifically, they believe whatever FOX News sez. This week, 83% of conservatives who watch FOX News approved of the war; compared to only 58% who do not. https://navigatorresearch.org/media-consumption-and-views-on-the-iran-war/
FOX News remains the gateway to the conservative mind. Even if their almost complete refusal to cover anything Epstein has cost them market share to Newsmax and other smaller competitors.
I am so embarassed for my country. And I know my parents are spinning in their graves. Both Depression and WWII alums.
I never thought I'd be someone who'd say this, but I'm glad my mom is not alive to see this. It would break her heart.
And the most corrupt. Everything this dark and insane pos does is destroying our nation. My G, we have got to remove him and his sycophantic administration. And file indictment after indictment with a "no pardon" clause.
The hostility of MAGA to wind and solar energy is unremitting.
Even pre-Trump, they were denying climate change.
We are being set up for failure. Add to that the attacks on education, high student debt, and withering away of the Department of Education, and our next generations won't be able to compete globally.
My fear as well. They are crippling future generations.
Reminds me of the suppression of Galileo by the Catholic Church. Italy lost her scientific pre-eminence permanently. In America, we are in the thrall of Fundamentalist Christians.
Yes. It reminds me of an argument I had years ago with a born-again Christian dad who was miffed by my bumper stickers on the back of my minivan of the Christian fish with evolutionary legs (I had five of them to represent my five kids). He said, "Did you know Galileo recanted on his deathbed?" and I responded "Maybe so, but he was still right."
One of the things you learn when hanging out among "born-again" Christians enough is that their universe is just crammed to the gills with this kind of just-so story. Some of these become widespread "common knowledge," like Galileo recanting on his deathbed or George Washington saying it was impossible to govern without God and Bible or whatever. But a lot are just made up on the spot by the pastors for the purposes on the story and then never brought up again. The missionary church I was part of for a while once had the pastor claim that he'd successfully converted the head of the secret police in an unspecified islamist regime. I later read a story from a person raised in a similar church that said a missionary returning from Africa once talked about his encounter with a snake demon in the brush. Etc.
It does a lot to explain how they can believe bullshit like "God chose Trump to be his imperfect instrument on Earth" or whatever: they already live in a world that runs on made-up anecdotes. It's like a sci-fi fandom that got really out of hand, to the point that they not only ended up believing that Star Trek literally IS a history of the future, but interpret world events in light of this, and regularly tell each other stories about how that guy they bumped into in that bar is really a Betazoid refugee hiding among the people of Earth.
Fundamentalist religions are training wheels for ignorance. The more outlandish an idea is, the more "faith" it takes to believe in it. And of course in their world, that's a good thing. I hope mankind can survive organized religion.
I once sincerely believed that I could communicate telepathically with the creator of the 2-trillion-galaxy universe. Deprogramming yourself from what you were raised to believe is an experience just short of madness. You have to tease out what you learned that still might be true.
I like how one former Jehovah's Witness described it: "We were taught to gaslight ourselves."
If our American mullahs have their way, we will be living in a theocracy no different from Iran's.
Our only hope is that the common decency--and common sense--of the bulk of Americans keeps our religious minority in its place.
Well said, sir. Yes, the extreme dangers stemming from the American Taliban.
"Und sie bewegt sich doch" (And yet it moves) as Brecht famously put in his play..
I never heard anything about Galileo Galilei "recanting" on his deathbed. He was originally instructed to keep quiet about the Earth orbiting the Sun by the Jesuits who, though they agreed with him, were obliged to support the Pope in the view that the faithful were "not ready" for such a shocking reversal of the belief that the Sun orbited the Earth...
But Galileo refused to be silenced and, as a penalty, was confined under house arrest for the remainder of his days (not thrown into prison, as myth would have it).
Apparently the deathbed recanting is not true.
I didn't think so!
Galileo did recant, but not on his deathbed. During the trial, he recanted to avoid being judged as a heretic, which might have led to his execution.
In modern terms, you might call this recanting part of a plea bargain. The sincerity, of course, is doubtful.
"Eppur si muove!"
Europe was the center of world science until Hitler came along. Lots of the best scientists in the world left Europe for the U.S. to escape the Nazis.
Lots of the best also stayed because Hitler provided a lot of support for their efforts. The USSR and the USA both worked very hard to grab these people after the war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip
I'll believe in your science, as long as you agree my earth is flat...
The Jesuit magazine America boasted that Roman Catholics were courted by 47 and helped him win. Who was courted? It’s hierarchal. Did clergy direct parishioners in their voting?
On the west coast, Sen Noel Frame reported “The Department of Justice is effectively teaming up with Washington’s Catholic bishops to overturn the state’s mandatory reporting law, in one of the most aggressive federal moves to back organized religion in recent memory.”
If I’m not RC but my grandchildren are and their church does good work. I hope that fringe MAGA RC clergy don’t jeopardize their tax-exempt status.
https://www.noelframe.com/news/trump-and-the-catholic-church-fight-a-law-requiring-clergy-to-report-child-abuse#:~:text=Trump%20and%20the%20Catholic%20Church,for%20State%20Senate%20%2D%2036th%20LD.
Https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2024/11/06/catholic-vote-trump-reaction-249204/
The hierarchy of the American clergy, meaning both the USCCB and a shit ton of the clergy below them, are essentially a branch of the Republican Party. Which is basically one beer away from declaring openly that Pope Leo and Pope Francis before him were antipopes on account of their woke tendencies.
I mostly only go at Christmas and Easter these days. You should've heard the preacher at the church I went to last Sunday. If you ever wanted an object lesson in how to commemorate a Lebanese Catholic priest who was killed by the IDF while going out of your way to explain how the IDF are nevertheless not really to blame and also tactfully not mentioning the ongoing mass displacement/killing of millions of Lebanese folks by the IDF, he's your guy.
The new Pope Leo has infuriated MAGA by criticizing Trump’s Iran war.
Respect for the pope!
There’s room for improvement with Leo re: survivors of church CSA. SNAP has “grave concerns.” https://www.newsweek.com/survivors-clergy-abuse-group-pope-leo-zero-tolerance-2069855
I’m sure there is. Not Catholic myself.
I’m sorry. Too angry. I do know some good christian people and know they are not all complicit, but they are not stopping the lies.
!
"And following on from the comment above, I have no doubt that the exceptionally NUTTY Evangelicals et al will be very happy to see a reduction of Scientific thought & exploration as being too pernicious to their own philosophy!!"
I mean, that's kind of the elephant in the room when it comes to all these conversations: ultimately, Republicans are fine with the consequences of all this. So what if America devolves all the way to the status of your stereotypical third world banana republic? Elites live very well in third world banana republics. Even their regular voters would be largely okay with it if it meant the return of a certain kind of patriarchal authority.
Four or five years ago there was an interview of some of the Burmese generals who'd recently overthrown democracy that really captured the way the rich and powerful all over the world have become. The generals admitted that Burma under democracy was better not just for the plebs but even for *themselves.* But they still preferred military dictatorship, because under democracy they simply had less *status*.
That's what we're looking at. I doubt if Republicans are *trying* to bring the U.S. down to the level of Burma - they're too egotistical to admit that that's what their plans amount to. But ultimately, if the result of their policies was that it fell all the way to that point, they'd be fine with it.
"It is better to rule in hell than to serve in heaven."
The current crop of MAGA White Nationalist Christians would be just fine with the world of the 1840s. White rich men on top of the pyramid, the rest of the white men next, then obedient white women. Black / brown / foreign men and women all slaves, for work or other types of use. So what if 80% of the population is on the edge of starvation? The white rich men were happy and were having a field day. And today, the MAGA who aren't rich think, well, at least I'll be second in line for all the perks. That's why they'll wrap themselves in that flag, hold that cross, burn that cross, forever.
We largely have Tricky Dicky and Hank Kissenger to thank for that. They opened trade with China on the "theory" that capitalism is incompatible with communism. What they failed to realize is that China wasn't actually "communist" but fascist. And capitalism is very compatible with fascism. Indeed, there's a point where they merge - and we're living right on that point, right now.
I taught college level Asian history for years, and I always told my classes, "First of all, China is not Communist, no matter what it says. The CCP is just the latest Dynasty. But not much else has changed."
It seems quite quaint that anyone still refers to Russia and China as being "Communist" when they've been practising state capitalism (or you could call it fascism) for decades.
Winston, excellent observation!!
Rich Lowry, editor of National Review, which one time was the “intelectual home” of the conservative movement wrote: Why No One Can Win an Argument with Donald Trump?
"President Trump, too, never loses an exchange on stage or during interviews. He is The O’Reilly Factor squared, liberated from the confines of a studio and bestriding the world with an utterly impregnable confidence that gives him an advantage in almost any circumstance."
It seems that “impregnable confidence” is the “high-sounding” synonym for “invincible ignorance”!
https://marcusnunes.substack.com/p/when-invincible-ignorance-dominates
Well, his #1 trait is that he’s a very persuasive con man and his #2 trait is that no one else can ever be right — and that has taken him far in life, despite being #1 a liar and #2 wrong.
He fools only himself and his cult. To the rest of us, he is utterly transparent — as clear as a windowpane, as empty as the frame.
You are so right! We visited China a few years ago, and the first thing we noticed was how they have high speed trains from all their airports to their city centers. And highway lights powered by solar panels.! Electric vehicles everywhere. Most Americans have no idea behind we are.
I’ve consulted on science museums in China over the past decade. Their attitude toward science is orthogonal to our current trend. They’re eating our lunch I would tell my family. It’s sad and unnecessary.
Not only does China have all kinds of infrastructure, it has been building infrastructure in other countries. Under its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) launched in 2013, China has financed and built extensive infrastructure—including over 10,000 km of railways, 100,000 km of highways, and numerous ports, bridges, and power plants—across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Key projects include the Laos-China Railway, Indonesia's high-speed rail, the Piraeus Port in Greece, and various African power stations.
So China is building high speed rail in other countries while the US can't build one such project in its own country.
As much as we admire what China has done, I don't want to live there. Not only do I not speak the language but I wouldn't be allowed to read and comment on the PK substack.
We live in a messy society that needs a government and civics course correction. But the institutions including universities that made the US a innovative society are not dead yet. We can exist without high speed rail as fun as that would be.
High speed rail is not about "fun," it's about efficiency and fairness. We can "exist" without anything invented in the past ten thousand years, but few would want to.
Europe and Japan also have high speed rail, so authoritarian governments have no connection with doing the right thing for the people.
And while our universities haven't collapsed yet, make no mistake: if the grant funds and immigration restrictions and all the other cuts and demands made by the Trump regime aren't completely reversed within a few years, they WILL collapse. The best people are already looking to Europe.
Without a doubt.
Well said!
Making America Great Again apparently does not include anything that might make America great at all--or even make America good or acceptable.
But this is what one must expect when we put people of below-average intellect in charge of anything more complex than a shovel.
MAGA's are not all of below-average intellect. I know of many who are well educated and wealthy. They are guided by greed not their intellect.
Yes, and those people know how to attract the uneducated by exploiting their prejudices and making them false promises.
I was refering to Trump and his MAGA cabinet--intellectual pygmys, one and all.
I have a very bright, successful MAGA relative who liked the proposed tax cuts, but added to that, he absolutely hated the idea of having a woman in charge.
I have a no-so-bright brother who is a staunch Republican. He made his pile as a stock trader. He's not MAGA enough to be wearing a red hat, but I wouldn't put it past him to put on a bright blue suit with a long red tie.
Well off, educated Republican voters still see their money going to those undeserving people. Their great Christian values makes them look out for only their tribe, destruction of the country be damned.
Their understanding of how anything works in the world is warped by their bigotry.
"The weakness of our intellect is that we mostly just use it to reinforce our beliefs."
- Marcel Pagnol
I'm not sure he was right about most people, but educated Republicans, and there are a lot of them, are sure as hell an object lesson in what that looks like.
until they need some life saving medical procedure or drug then scour the earth with their largess to find it but the hell with their fellow public
Greed, bigotry, self-delusion.
John Kenneth Galbraith: "The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
Thomas Frank's "What's the Matter With Kansas?" told the story of how Sam Brownback and the Kansas Republicans convinced Kansans to vote against their own self interest, to the utter economic devastation of towns all across the state. Multiply that by 49.
Some well educated people still have prejudice - racial, LGBTQ, abortion - and vote based on a single issue. Many may also be wealthy so vote to support GOP tax policy favoring the rich. Education or intelligence is no guarantee of political views that favor what is best for the majority.
Agreed, nor does it mean they are well informed. Book smarts does not always equal street smarts or common sense. Whether one favors “a rising tide lifts all boats” or “only as strong as the weakest link”, they both mean essentially the same thing. Yet, too many people don’t care. Too many fancy themselves as above being affected or that they might one day be the one who is unaffected. Americans, especially, are born and bred on “me me me”. Not even “me and mine” anymore. These people don’t even care about the future they leave to their children and grandchildren so long as they have their money and power in the here and now.
Hate rules the right
In that case: the reason was racism.
Don’t discount sexism.
Some are traditional Rs and would never consider voting against them. No major party candidate gets below 40%of the vote. That's a reflex-not a choice.
Intelligent people can be as hateful as dummies.
Yes indeed! Australia is one of the beneficiaries, attracting many American scientists to our shores. Hopefully their continued research in a so-called friendly country will ultimately progress scientific endeavours for the world!
I don't think MAGAs and many other Americans care. Science takes hard work, critical thinking, and patience, attributes that are not appreciated in our instant gratification culture. It is so much easier to simply proclaim America is great and exceptional than to do the hard work of making our country exceptional by normal measures.
This is for sure a massive problem in America as we were already predispositioned to it with our individualistic, celebrity culture. But social media is the bane of the world. Young people, boys especially, seem so averse to any work. They want an easy button. They follow these disgusting influencers, literally buy into their crypto, gambling, high risk trading, etc nonsense. I’ve seen and read plenty of stories. I’ve also seen and listened to it first hand as a high school sub. It’s wild how naive they are…yet they fancy themselves in the know. Not only are they wasting time and money, but they are wasting their brains and chance at education. The irony is that most of them will end up without any skills, academic or social, and they will live the life they are trying to avoid.
…in their mom’s basement.
When you have half the country voting to turn the clock back - what would you expect.
And smart people, established and up and comers, have and will also head for the door. It won’t just be a loss of foreign students. Our own young people will become them, heading to other countries for opportunity and building their lives there. My college bound science major has already come to this conclusion before he’s even actually started.
Your son or daughter might consider getting that degree outside the U.S. The quality of scientific education in the U.S. is likely to deteriorate in all but the very top schools, and those schools are the ones currently wearing bulls-eyes.
Exactly, researchers elsewhere will keep innovating, like the Portuguese cancer researcher working in Sweden who just won the 2026 BioInnovation Institute & Science Prize for Innovation for figuring out how to "turn tumors into their own vaccines.*
https://www.aaas.org/news/prize-winners-research-reprograms-tumor-cells-trigger-antitumor-immunity
The biggest loss is the 50% reduction in the number of student visas, and it will only get worse if the orange clown persists.
Article in today's NY Times, about a small Catholic college outside of Chicago, who is deep doo-doo, because fewer foreign students are coming. These students pay the full freight which subsidizes American students. Watch for the closing of these types of schools over the next few years.
Trump is Russel Vought's surrogate.
💯 Same with literacy. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/10/education-decline-low-expectations/684526/
Yes, Europe, China and Japan are capable between them of taking up the slack, I'd have thought. But with science you can't have too many cooks, really. The more theories and experiments you can do, the quicker you'll get the breakthroughs.
Who could that be?
Agreed. The work will go on, it will just go on somewhere else.
China
I wonder who he thinks will be designing and building the next generation of weaponry for his military. In fact, who will be taking the reins at Oak Ridge when he depletes the nuclear arsenal?
Making America dumber- looks like a priority objective for Mr Trump - to the limitless joy of his ” colleagues” Xi and Putin. Any one of Mr Putin’s moles-couldn’t have done a ” better” job.
Part of the problem with Trump, is he doesn't like anyone smarter than himself.
Which puts the bar pretty low.
Thus his cabinet, his resentment of Zelensky, etc.
"I like the uneducated!"
Of course... far easier to manipulate.
And the true statement, "Smart people don't like me."
Krasnov *is* one of Putin's moles.
Making America Dumber has an uncomfortable resonance with Mutual Assured Destruction, and Trump is impatient to play with his nuclear weapons
Well, both of them abbreviate to the same acronym. And that's applicable to this administration.
MADA—Make America Dumb Again!
In conversations with students, they are turning away from advanced education, especially PhDs, because the prospect of a tenure-track position has decreased further than its already low level as those positions are largely funded by government grants. Worse now, those grants fund graduate students, so those stipends are also disappearing. And adding more debt to their already burdensome undergraduate loans becomes a massive disincentive. We are losing a generation of native scientists while also turning away the best foreign talent. Can it be an accident that we are simultaneously ceding leadership in every area that actually made America great?
The debt load required to go to college these days is absolutely insane, and with the number of people who throw tantrums every time you try to address it because Everybody Knows College Kids Are Just Rich Spoiled Brats Who Study Underwater Basket Weaving, it's unlikely to be fixed any time soon. I'm not at all surprised by how it's turned out. I regret going to grad school.
I’m grateful that I did it in the late 80s/early 90s when I could get a full scholarship and there were jobs waiting for me.
Late 2000s/early 2010s for me. Ah well.
Early '80s for my graduate degree, and I got one of those stipends as a teaching assistant.
UW-Madison grad in 1983 as a WI resident. My mom gave me check for $500 at the beginning of each semester. That covered tuition, fees, books, my season football tickets and maybe some new clothes. I paid my own rent ($100/mo or so). My parents put me and my 4 siblings through undergrad for the current price of 1 year of tuition/room/board at the same school for 1 student. Today's prices are ridiculous.
What’s the saying that Paul sometimes quotes – facts of a well-known liberal bias? Something like that
"Facts have a well-known liberal bias."
In other words, some conservative precepts are not evidence-based.
There is another reason for the Republican antipathy to science - they are dogmatically opposed to regulation, and science repeatedly points out the need for regulation. Externalities, are not rare, they are almost everywhere.
right! and also requires the govt to guide decisions of the market when needed to bting abput positive change like reducing emissions or encouraging renewables etc.
Nice one. They howl that pesky regulations stifle innovation! Translation: they cut into my profits. The through line with Rs is “me, myself, and I”.
Terrible! Under this administration, one resource in the United States is growing faster than any other — stupidity, government-approved. With that, this administration is wrecking its own success story — a country once bursting with ideas and diversity in every field, not just in science, is now being steamrolled for political reasons. Unbelievable.
Stupidity is not a resource; it is an intellectual pollutant, that is resistant to degradation. The worst affected MAGA will carry it to their graves.
One of the issues here is the belief in "divine" sources. Ninth century BPE theologians believed that the bible contained all necessary knowledge, so that further study was pointless. In the same way "conservatives" believe that all necessary knowledge is held in their theo-political "bible". And any further study is heresy.
Hostility to reality is the price of admission to the GOP cult: Global warming is a hoax! Just say no to drugs! Tax cuts for the wealthy trickle down to everyone! Saddam was behind the 911 attacks! Trump isn’t a traitor with deep ties to Russia! And he’s definitely not in the Epstein Fury files.
I have trouble with the chicken or the egg. The GOP has their lies and propaganda, but I think it feeds into and confirms the world view of the people who consume it. They only want more of the fuel that feeds their resentment and hatred of Democrats and liberals. Anything else is fake news.
Hatred of liberals is everywhere in MAGA.
Facts in general, have a hard life in Magaville.
Facts are prohibited in Magaville
The Party told you to ignore the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.
According to Kelly Ann Conway they just have ‘alternative’ facts.
They have their own set of "facts."
Once the leading nation in research in all fields - no more - Yes China.
Once we were the paragon of civil rights - no more
Once we were the leading country in promoting peace - no more
Once we had a function demoracy - no more
Once we had two parties that debate based on facts - no more
What happened? Money in politics - the internet confirming people's ignorance.
Once we were the leading democracy, now we are listed as a failed or failing one.
Why? Unlimited money in politics and that hate sells! Hate is the rights base.
The Stone Age sounds about right for Trump and his Republican underlings. They are destroying America.
They don't want to go back to the stone ago, just back to before the defeat of the confederacy.
Sad but true. The Civil War never ended.
General Sherman was not thorough enough.
Sherman was thorough enough. Lincoln picked the wrong vice-president.
It might take a generation or two for the full impact is visible but the reality is America will have to go to someone else for help. Remember when your favorite place was great but now living on its past reputation.
Sad future
Not only did the Civil war never end but in the end the confederacy actually prevailed.
The title of Heather Cox Richardson's book is "How the South Won the Civil War."
It’s rich to see the child dictator celebrating the Artemis mission. Yep. Prayer built the rocket and pilots the spacecraft.
The fools behind this anti-intellectualism benefit from scientific advancements every day. Without a trace of irony (a notion beyond their ken) they use smart phones to organize their opposition to science.
Sadly, they won’t be here to suffer the consequences of their ignorance. That will fall on our children, which is why the MAGAts are to be damned.
The traditional social contract is that the people who actually acknowledge how the fuck the universe works (i.e. scientists) accomplish the things that actually keep the country running - from space rockets to computers to lifesaving cures - while the public, or at least the conservative portion of it, just gives all the credit and praise to Capitalist Jesus.
This works because the two are for the most part separate. But with the MAGAification of everything, science is increasingly being torn down as "woke science," and the people who've kind of been carrying the country on their backs the whole time and becoming incapable of doing so.
Good point. Have a relation whose a retired lawyer and election-denying MAGAt. She and husband, also college educated, have three houses and every toy imaginable, from boats to RVs to guns. All they do is complain about how much the government takes. Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask why you must give it anything.
Neurosciences explain behaviors. Stanford’s Robert Sapolsky explains in his book, Behave, that through neuro imaging they see, among other things, that a conservative mind has a larger fear center or amygdala, and that the neurosciences see all conservative views as being rooted in authoritarianism, because they’re driven by the fear of their own death, not civics. This explains all the guns, and why they always want to go back. It also explains their distrust of science.
With science no knowledge is absolute. Everything updates. Sapolsky reports that Conservatives see science updating as ambiguous, and conservatives reject ambiguity - like first no masks, then with updates, “masks are needed with covid.”
Another thing Sapolsky points out is that it’s been known since 1950: further right, lower the IQ, and it’s not seen on the left. Add the effects of bad parenting with the wrong genes and that’s the entire Jan 6 crowd.
Absolutely no free will.
Add to all that the reemergence of eugenic thinking among the rich. When you suddenly have massive economic inequality and a surge of wealth at the top, the plutocrats must come up with some reason to legitimate their fortune. The need for validation explodes when others actually challenge their claim to innate superiority. And so, to paraphrase our president, they must have better genes. Musk, Thiel, Altman and the others promoting genetic research to extend their lives and the pass on their superior genes to the next generation fall into this group. And, they reason, those with “inferior” genes are dispensable. Kennedy’s campaign against medical science turns into soft eugenics, killing them softly. With superior genes comes the power to access realities unknown to others. It takes a certain amount of arrogance.
Yeah, I think it's not discussed enough just how much eugenic thinking is making a comeback. Covid should've been a wakeup call if nothing else.
I keep thinking that this is the manifestation when the bullies and the jocks from High School take over the country.
As many have noted, Trump is a classic malignant narcissist. As Erich Fromm argued, scientific thought undermines narcissism. It requires seeing the world as it is and not distorted by one’s narcissistic views. Is it any wonder that science is deteriorating in the US under Trump?
I would suggest that a better analysis is to follow the money. That is, if there are less restrictions on products produced and distributed by business there is more profit. If one looks at the quack medicine and supplement business you see many right wing personalities promoting those products. Science demands that claims and processes meet standards of truth and reliability and that means for many in the shadow health industry that they will lose money. The reality is that science and scientific research has been an important part of the development of the country and its power. It is shame to lose that.
There are two great secular economies in the world - China and Europe. Then there are the two great hydrocarbon-driven theocratic neocolonial regimes - US and Russia. Seeing the secular economies pull ahead of the dirty theocratic ones is surely good news from a humanist point of view? I do feel sorry for the Pope as alone amongst the theocratic rulers he does seem like a good guy, but the rest of that club are nutters.