An American awakening?

An article by Democracy Docket, Nearly 6 in 10 Americans believe Trump is a ‘potentially dangerous dictator’ who threatens democracy, poll finds, conveys some evidence that a significant number of Americans are finally waking up to the reality of what Trump and MAGA politics and policy are, i.e., dictator and dictatorship. According to this poll data, worries that Trump’s exercise of dictator-level power now goes beyond just Democrats. Roughly two-thirds of independents and majorities of Hispanic Catholics and Protestants see Trump for the authoritarian treat he is.

Whether that poll data translates into a lot of votes against Trump’s MAGA party in Nov. is an open question. That’s just one poll, not proof of a major shift in public sentiment.

However, that poll, together with one described here, Majority of Americans say Trump prioritizes his personal financial interests over U.S. as a whole, indicates that a lot of Americans really are pissed off and are starting to see Trump and MAGA elites for what they are, highly corrupt and anti-democratic authoritarians.

And a 3rd recent poll indicates that public dissatisfaction is common, with ~80% wanting either substantial change or total upheaval in how the US is run. Not surprisingly, about 85%  of voters say the economy is one of the most important issues for their vote in the upcoming election. About 84% say the same about the cost of living. Health care is a top issue for ~69% of voters, and ~64% cite the war with Iran as a top issue. Less than half overall say that immigration and crime are among the most important issues.

Q: Is there a meaningful public awakening underway in American politics, or is evidence like this probably going to translate into few, if any, significant positive changes that voters say they want?

How tyranny grows

France's tyrant party leader Marine Le Pen BS-ing people about 

how she will fix things to make France great again 

Tyranny and tyrants are usually creative and hyper-persistent about gaining power and keeping it. Despite diversity in circumstances, forms of governments and social norms, there are generalizations about how tyrant wannabes go about their business of obliterating opposition, dissent, civil liberties and an even-handed rule of law. A common tactic, maybe the dominant one, is to either foment social unrest, fear, anger, bigotry, and dissatisfaction, or to amplify it when bad sentiments arise more or less spontaneously on their own.

A great example is unfolding now in France. There is an ongoing, widespread national protest against high cost of living (partly caused by Trump’s stupid, unprovoked, now lost Iran war), underfunded public education and public services, and deep dissatisfaction with Macron’s government. So what does the radical right authoritarian movement in France do? It does what tyrants everywhere nearly always do. They fire up their mind-poisoning demagoguery, lies and bullshit rhetoric. They are making a run at killing off France’s democracy, rule of law and civil liberties.

In other words, the radical right tyrant wannabes in France employ the same mind-poisoning demagoguery tactics that America’s radical right tyrant wannabes, i.e., Trump and his MAGA elites, are doing in the US right now.

A NYT article, France’s Far Right Seizes the Moment as Rioting Stuns the Country, is blunt: After riots erupted this weekend in cities across France, its centrist government blamed the main far-left party, accusing its politicians of inciting the violence. That party blamed the government, accusing it of stirring public anger through years of bad governance and heavy-handed policing. What did the main far-right party do? It blamed both, and launched into campaign mode. (emphasis added)

A spokesman for France’s radical right tyranny party commented: “We are paying for decades of being soft on crime, of weak authority, of the moral, psychological, and material disarmament of our internal security forces. ….. People [“honest citizens”] need to wake up now. They need to make the right political choices, and in any case, we stand ready to restore order in the country.”

So there we have it, France’s main tyranny party is going to reinstate national stability, law and order. The way for “honest citizens” to to that is by voting in the coming election for his tyranny party.

That should sound very familiar. America’s tyranny party, the MAGA Party, heavily demagogued national unrest and damage from George Floyd protests into a horror it wasn’t. America’s MAGA demagogues rigidly ignored and denied the fact (not opinion) that nearly all the Floyd protests were peaceful. MAGA demagoguery slandered America’s entire left as radical and lawless. The tyrants in France are doing the exact same thing there to gain power.

Also exactly like America’s radical right tyranny movement, the French radical right tyranny party has absolutely no plan for how to deal with high living costs and underfunded public services. Those were the triggers that set off the unrest. The French tyrant party ignores those core issues. As usual, the authoritarians deflect to talk about stopping protests with brute force. That is the same thing Trump said he would like to do with peaceful protesters in the US. Stopping protests in France by force will do absolutely nothing at all about honest citizens’ core complaints about a fading standard of living and increasing living costs.

Tyranny vs democracy

In France, this is how tyranny is making a run at power. It is not much different than how American tyrants made their run at power. Americans were unhappy with the old two-party status quo. They wanted major changes. They voted for major change. But they got MAGA with its major changes being cruelty, bigotry, fascism, kleptocracy, and significant loss of the rule of law for the elites and civil liberties for everyone else.

This should not need to be said. But it does need to be said because MAGA’s demagoguery has poisoned so many minds. Democracy is generally better and far more moral than tyranny because it gives people a voice, protects their freedom to criticize government, and lets them replace failed or abusive leaders through elections rather than violence (Our World in Data). Democracy does not eliminate corruption, but free journalism, organized opposition, and meaningful elections give citizens ways to expose wrongdoing and hold rulers accountable. Those are checks that tyranny suppresses or removes (V-Dem’s democratic criteria). Its advantages are also material: democratization raises income per person over the long run, with evidence suggesting improvements in investment, education, and health care (Acemoglu and colleagues). Democracy’s central advantage is not that its leaders are inherently wiser or more virtuous, but that citizens still have mechanisms for challenging crappy leaders and correcting their mistakes.

Q1: Is tyranny, with its usual deep corruption, generally better than democracy because the dictators can shoot protesters dead in the streets, leading to social calm and order, while making the grieving families or estates of the dead pay for all the costs?

Q2: Is there really such a thing as Plato’s benign Philosopher King or dictator, you know, a dictator who shoots us dead in the streets for the “greater good” or whatever lipstick the tyrant puts on murdering people in legitimate public protest?

Note for the trolls: No, this OP is not an endorsement of any violence or lawbreaking in the protests in France or in the Floyd protests in the US, or anywhere else, ever. Such violence is far worse than deplorable because it gives demagogues a great way to slander protestors and downplay or deflect from legit grievances. Demagogues point to the illegality of a few hooligans and thugs who commit violence to smear everyone and everything involved. If anyone is aware of a reasonably effective way to weed out people who join protests for the opportunity to enjoy being violent or to destroy property, let’s hear about it.

Plausible future scenarios

In the wake of the vast damage that Trump and MAGA elites have caused to democracy, the rule of law, the federal government, and our society and economy, one can reasonably see three possibilities for the US. They are (1) mostly likely, we muddle along and continue to slowly decline like we are now, (2) maybe less likely, we enter a period of accelerated and mostly unchecked decline into some miserable, poverty-riddled state of affairs for most Americans, or (3) maybe least likely, America makes some form of a comeback and works toward some semblance of the America’s old position in the world while restoring respect for democracy, the rule of law, civil liberties and the public interest. At the moment it is impossible to know which path we will take.

America’s former allies, now alienated, insulted, and attacked by Trump with his seething hate of democracy and rule of law, might be coaxed back into an at least somewhat friendly but still rather distrustful state of affairs. Some serious apologies will be needed. Of course, that’s something that Trump and MAGA elites are incapable of.

An NYT opinion piece, Three Scenarios for a Leaderless World, sums it up nicely: By now it is clear to most of America and much of the world that America and what it stands for have changed. The dominant face of that change is President Trump and his determined and deliberate efforts to accumulate greater powers than the Constitution apportioned to the president, to create a cult of personality based on grievance and vengeance and to challenge every aspect of the postwar global order, demeaning allies and courting autocrats.

That opinion describes the three future scenarios.

The international system can survive with the US in a seriously degraded form even while American democracy suffers severe, lasting damage. “Muddling along” globally would not necessarily mean that Americans preserve an adequately functioning democracy. Right now under Trump and MAGA elites, the US is losing its democracy and the necessary respect for the rule of law. We are also losing our civil liberties, rights and protections.

Regarding MAGA’s erosion of US democracy, V-Dem’s 2026 assessment reports that the US Liberal Democracy Index score dropped by 24% in one year, with its ranking falling from 20th to 51st among 179 countries. Rapid concentration of presidential power was central to the decline. Those are changes argue strongly against treating the present situation as just ordinary partisan turbulence.

Unfortunately ordinary partisan turbulence is how the MSM and both main parties are generally treating the current political bitterness and authoritarian (fascist, actually) dysfunction. As gramps liked to say in his occasional moments of grumpiness, “they’re worthless as teats on a boar”. Nowadays, that description is a major understatement. They’re arguably seriously worse than worthless.

For what its worth, if anything, my AI analyzes this a bit differently.

Q1: Can one reasonably believe the three scenarios the NYT opinion posits are the most likely outcomes once cult leader Trump drops dead of whatever it is that plagues him?

Q2: Are the MSM and both major political parties merely they’re worthless as teats on a boar, or are they worse than that?

Q3: Collectively, are MAGA politics, tactics and policy reasonably described as an American form of fascism, or is that still too harsh an assessment?

Environmental degradation updates

 The term environmental degradation can also be referred to as climate change and pollution. The concept includes both global warming and toxic pollution.

Toxic pollution update

A SciAm article, Microplastics are linked to inflammation—scientists might have finally worked out why, discusses recent research about how microplastics might cause inflammation in humans and animals. The research that SciAm discusses was recently published in the Nature paper, Intrinsic physicochemical activity at microplastic–water interfaces. Short story kept short, with tiny microplastic particles in the micron (millionth of a meter) range, about the size of many bacteria, the interface or surface of the particle in water radically changes the local water chemistry. Water’s normal ability to hydrogen bond is disrupted at plastic particle surfaces because the plastics are water repellant (hydrophobic).

Examination of the chemistry at particle surfaces shows that highly reactive molecules are created and those appear to cause inflammation. Before this research, bulk plastics like water bottles were presumed to be inert or chemically not reactive. Before now, no one had looked for the status of chemistry of microplastics in water. A researcher commented that “for microplastics, this is especially important because fragmentation creates enormous amounts of new surface area”. As particle size decreases, the surface to volume ratio increases, creating a large surface area for microscopic plastic particles.

The paper reports that hydroxyl radicals, •OH, are formed in water that has microplastic particles in it. Hydroxyl radicals are very toxic. It is still unknown whether and to what extent the human body eventually converts microplastics in tissues into harmless end products. That may never happen. There is not yet evidence that the body reliably “digests” common microplastics into benign substances. At present, there isn’t even good measurements of how long different plastic particles last in the body. Research has shown that microplastics are present in human tissues. Their effects on human health are still uncertain, but early findings suggest harm, especially from chronic inflammation.

Fluorescent die in water was used to visualize the presence of reactive molecules at particle surfaces

Biological damage from reactive species

Global warming update

A SciAm article, Earth’s ‘life support systems’ are breaking down, climate scientists warn, reports that climate science experts say Earth is undergoing a “rapid destabilization” due to global warming. The SciAm article is reporting about a research paper, The 2026 state of the climate report: challenges and opportunities, that updates vital signs that track the state of Earth’s climate systems. The report is the latest in a series called the “State of the Climate”. For their report, climate science researchers measure 16 key markers of Earth’s climate. Seven of these have now reached “record extremes”. One author comments: “We are increasingly concerned about the risk of crossing climate tipping points that could lead to irreversible changes”.

The authors write: We are witnessing the rapid destabilization of the Earth’s climate system. This is no longer a warning for the future; it is a diagnosis of the present. Earth’s life-support systems are being pushed beyond stable limits, with changes unfolding faster than our ability to respond. Human activities are driving profound shifts in the atmosphere, oceans, and biosphere.

Q1: Are you comfortable with microplastics in your body doing Dog only knows what to it, for Dog only knows how long?

Q2: Are these observations that some people make about global warming and the degree of human-non-response to it reasonable and rational (paraphrasing): We are playing Russian Roulette with the climate because our climate situation could be far worse than we know because he has passed a tipping point(s) that cannot be undone if we stay on our current failing response trajectory?