Just another day in MAGAlandia

 

It's MAGA's fault

Nowadays, the news from MAGAlandia is overwhelmingly bad. A few routine reports exemplify the state of collapse the US is in now that we’ve attained the Golden Days of MAGA, or whatever the mess we’re in can be called.

False hopes about Meta

An ABC News report, Major changes coming to Meta after massive settlement, discusses an agreement by Meta (Facebook, Instagram, etc.) to pay up to $18 billion after multiple states sued, claiming the company’s social media platforms harm children. In New Mexico, a federal court ordered Meta to pay $567m for its failure to warn the public about dangers its social media platforms to children. The various reporting indicates that big, pro-public interest changes are coming to Meta.

The various reporting is very likely wrong. The fines might sound like a lot, but they’re not. For context, Meta’s latest financial results reported $61bn in revenue from April to June. That’s up 28% on the same period a year ago. What Meta will do is what any reasonable person in our deregulated capitalist system would expect them to do. The company will appeal decisions against it and make inconsequential cosmetic changes that the company can tout as huge improvements in the company’s toxic business operations.

Why make only cosmetic changes? Revenue and profit. Lots and lots of revenue and profit. Meta’s engagement-and-advertising model behind Instagram and Facebook is worth tens of billions annually. Meta won’t materially change that unless courts force it to change. Unfortunately, our federal courts have been corrupted by Trump and elite MAGA anti-regulation judges and dogma. All of that MAGA-stuff is vehemently anti-public interest and pro-allied special interest. We can therefore expect mostly meaningless hand-waving, crackpottery, and smoke and mirrors from the courts.

Public-interest changes that Meta might make will be structured to look substantial while minimizing damage to the company’s highly profitable business model and profits. For lots of huge, powerful companies like Meta, profits are far more important than public safety or damage to the public interest, including damage to democracy. In these Golden Days of MAGA, money talks, while damaged children and everything else that gets in the way walk. Some new protections for children, if any arise, will minimize damage to profits.

Hackers tinkering with critical water infrastructure

Consider, if you would, how your life might change if fresh water supplies and wastewater treatments were cut off for at least ~4 weeks. A news article, More than 100 water systems were hit in July cyberattacks, reports that Iranian hackers are playing with the controls of our fresh water and waste water treatment and supply systems. Toying with our water systems are just playful little test runs for a larger-scale attack. The hackers targeted water and wastewater facilities across at least a dozen states in July, including internet-exposed programmable logic controllers (PLCs).

Internet-exposed water systems in America’s Water and Wastewater Systems (WWS) Sector, commonly operate by PLCs connected directly to a cellular modem. Connecting PLCs directly to the internet obviously creates significant security risks. The fact that more than 100 internet-exposed water systems were hit in a single month points to a systemic vulnerability across the entire WWS sector. This is not just a series of isolated, unlucky targets.

FWIW, hackers can both change physical water treatment processes, and they can mislead facility operators into believing that water treatment processes are operating normally. Until it becomes clear that there has been an attack, hackers can deceive WWS operators.

MAGA does not take cybersecurity or public safety seriously

Trump and MAGA politics and policy are in power. They are therefore responsible for what happens on their watch.

We all know why state-supported Iranian hackers might be interested in toying with our WWS. Dealing a knockout blow to WWS in major urban areas is hard but not impossible. If our water systems go down for a month, or maybe even just 2 or 3 weeks, that could lead to major economic damage and tens of thousands of deaths. Bottled water might last a couple of days, or possibly a week. But failure of wastewater treatments will collapse sewage handling and treatment within a few days. Increasing numbers of toilets will stop working over time. For some people, it will probably feel like civilization collapse.

Oops, things got a bit out of hand!

Q1: Under MAGA politics and policy, cybersecurity is left voluntary and up to the private sector, but is that sufficient to protect our WWS and our personal safety?

Q2: Is the hack of 100 water systems evidence of the private sector doing a good job of cybersecurity and thus protection of public health and welfare, or is it evidence of capitalist private sector failure?

Q3: Should the burden should be on government and utilities to demonstrate adequate cybersecurity by independent testing, mandatory remediation, and adequately funded redundancy, or should the public just assume that a plan, an advisory, or a manual-operations are adequate to protect us?

Is most of Trump’s damage intentional?

Beginning at the end of Feb. 2025, Trump’s actions in office started to look personally significantly intentionally destructive. It didn’t feel like just incompetence causing unintended damage. If so, one could argue that there is nothing incompetent in destruction if what he is trying to do. Since then, the feeling of intentional destruction has grown continuously. But so far, I’ve found little reporting, analysis, or commentary focused on intentional destruction. In view of how important this would be if it were true, what I found so far is scattered and isolated, e.g., a politician, a commentator, a historian expert on fascism and authoritarianism, a liberal think tank, and a prominent business school.

A Raw Story article, Tanking economy spurs stunning conclusion from analyst: Trump’s doing it ‘deliberately’, again raises this point. The analyst, James Downie (a opinion journalist/commentator) discussed in that article argues that unlike ordinary presidential economic failures, many of the bad outcomes under Trump are the predictable results of his or his administration’s actions.

So far, Trump appears willing to impose large, foreseeable harms to institutions, targeted groups, international cooperation, and selected parts of the economy in pursuit of personal objectives such as personal power, political dominance, fomented symbolic conflict (culture war), or rewarding favored constituencies/donors.

In view of the circumstances, it is reasonable to infer a destructive intent. Trump was repeatedly warned about foreseeable, avoidable damages, but went ahead anyway. He repeatedly ignored warnings, rejected less destructive alternatives, and continued bad behavior even after the damage was real and obvious. That does not amount to mind-reading. It is just a normal evidence-based way drawing conclusions about purpose from Trump’s sustained pattern of destructive behavior.

Relevant evidence of Trump’s destructive intent includes (1) Trump’s statements of contempt for the targeted individuals or institutions, indifference to its beneficiaries, and sometimes open approval of the harm, (2) a repeated pattern of damaging choices that produce the same destructive effects, (3) clear warnings of damage beforehand from knowledgeable officials, affected institutions, courts, markets, or experts, (4) feasible alternatives that would achieve the stated goal with significantly less collateral damage, and (5) persistence or escalation after harmful effects become undeniable.

Why would he do this?

Trump’s lust for vengeance is well-known. He tries to get even for real and imagined wrongs. He believes in asymmetric retaliation, “hit back 100 times harder than you’ve been hit”. Vengeance could explain some of his damage but not all.

Also, Trump’s character has a prominent kleptocratic/grifter component. His scams and grifts are well-documented. Greed could be another motive for some of his damage. By limiting or destroying democratic restraints on his power, his capacity to reach for wealth and power increases. Dismantling anti-corruption safeguards is a transactional model where self-interest and well-connected insiders and interests push aside public-service functions and norms. And since the USSC immunized Trump against liability for crimes he commits in office, the chances of him facing jail time or even prosecution are quite low, essentially almost zero.

Finally, all of those sources of destructive motive, personal grievance, authoritarian-kleptocratic power-seeking, and self-enrichment, could be mutually reinforcing. In other words, he could have multiple motives for causing so much damage to any given target.

Q: How likely is it that most of Trump’s damage to democracy, and rights and protections for citizens and the public interest is intentional and not mostly due to incompetence?

Regarding blogging about politics as a hobby

 

Context

America is at a major turning point about whether our experiment in self-governance will either continue to succeed for the foreseeable future or revert to the mean or norm, ending in some form of failure. The historical norm is most people living most of the time under various forms of tyranny, oppression, bigotry and corruption. The existence of modern democracies with citizens enjoying a non-trivial degree of wealth and power since the mid-1800s is far from the historical mean or norm. The likelihood of America’s near-term fate of continuing success or democratic collapse and failure ought to become pretty clear within the next ~2½ years. How the 2026 midterm elections play out could show the likely outcome if failure is in the cards. Continuing success is likely to take longer to project with reasonable confidence.

Democracy is rare – source

Online American pro-democracy politics as a hobby

Given the rarity of democracy, the importance of the US in world affairs and the human capacity to self-annihilate or at least collapse modern civilization, dealing with politics in some fashion is a reasonable thing to spend some free time with. Being grounded in all aspects of human cognitive biology and social behavior, politics is absolutely fascinating.

Being a hobby, there’s no external pressure for it to accomplish anything. Some people engage in online politics as trolls. Trolling can be seen as a politics-related hobby. Trolls like to provoke emotional reactions like anger or resentment for personal fun, self-satisfaction or even virtue signaling to like minded people. They engage in bad faith, with little to no concern for truth or whatever wreckage they leave in their wake. They happily do their troll hobby regardless of adverse consequences to anyone or anything else.

Other people engage with online politics in good faith to try to make things better as they see the concept of “better”. Most of them hope that their efforts can help at least a little. And for most good-faith operators there probably is some satisfaction in at least trying to engage, even if there’s no way to know what impact that may have.

What can reasonably be done, if anything?

Decades of radical right propaganda-demagoguery has deeply polarized American society. For tens of millions of Americans, it has normalized lies, deceit, bigotry, authoritarianism, corruption, and crackpot reasoning and rhetoric. To be fair, the left vs right difference is a matter of asymmetry, not an absolute. Some radical and non-radical left propaganda-demagoguery has polarized some on the left. Affective polarization, i.e., mutual dislike and distrust between Democratic and Republican self-identities, is significant.

Given the deep polarization and distrust, what can one reasonably hope to accomplish doing online politics in defense of democracy, the rule of law and civil liberties? For most people, little to nothing that’s tangible can reasonably be expected. But that’s fine for a hobby. There is no demand or requirement for any tangible or positive outcome.

But for people of good will acting in good faith, there are some things worth knowing. Social science makes clear that trolls and other closed-minded operators usually cannot be convinced of anything they have mental or social barriers against believing in. Their minds change on their own terms, for their own reasons. Externally presented facts, robust truths and sound, good faith reasoning that are inconvenient are usually not persuasive. For people with closed minds, mental factors such as self-identity, group or tribe loyalties, moral values and inherent biases are what controls beliefs and behaviors.

So what can be done, if anything, to better align-one’s politics hobby with current polarized American political and social reality? Welp, a realistic objective is to understand that a recitation of facts or a clear rationale will not cut through an identity-based falsehood or flawed reasoning. Instead, one can try to convey truth in a minimally painful way for open-minded people. Human beings have evolved mechanisms to evade inconvenient truths, particularly when truth conflicts with self identity or social belonging.

For example, try to separate facts from what might be humiliating identity threats. It means: when discussing political claims, distinguish between evidence about what people or institutions have done and language that others may hear as an attack on their personal worth, group status, or moral identity. A statement can be factually true but framed in a way that makes its target feel shamed or insulted. That tends to cause defensiveness and make careful evaluation of the evidence less likely or impossible.

Also, one can (1) try to emphasize shared values before presenting disputed or inconvenient evidence, and (2) point out emotional manipulation, scapegoating, unfalsifiable claims, and logic flaws such as ad hominem attacks, and false dilemma and straw man deflections. Those tactics tend to reduce perceptions of insult or threat to people who are in disagreement. In short, try to make friends or at least neutrals out of people you disagree with. If they see you as an enemy or insulting, they are much less likely to give your evidence and reasoning fair consideration.

Q: Are trolls and others who operate in bad faith worth the cognitive effort and emotional cost of trying to deal with respectfully or in good faith, e.g., when the cognitive load to deal with bad faith is much higher than the cognitive load needed to spew it?

Bad faith operators have a huge advantage

Info links:

Democracy — data about the rise of modern democracies

In most countries, democracy is a recent achievement. Dictatorship is far from a distant memory

Cultural Cognition and Public Policy — Our point isn’t that citizens behave duplicitously when they consider and debate such issues [abortion, environmental policy, etc.]. Rather, our argument is that cultural commitments operate as a kind of heuristic [mental shortcut] in the rational processing of information on public policy matters. ….. The people they trust, naturally, are the ones who share their values—and who as a result of this same dynamic and others are predisposed to a particular view. As a result, even citizens who earnestly consider empirical policy issues in an open-minded and wholly instrumental way will align themselves into warring cultural factions. ….. The key to debiasing here is to frame empirical information in terms that make assent to it compatible with, rather than antagonistic to, the commitments of individuals of diverse cultural persuasions. (emphasis added — it’s easier said than done)

Will the Dem establishment sell out to Trump and MAGA tyranny? There’s so damn much money there!

Three power centers

Although there are many factions and interests competing for influence in the rambunctious Dem Party, three major, non-homogenous groups seem to be crystallizing into more or less coherent power centers. One is the democratic socialists. They are leftist radicals who are so angry at how capitalism has screwed them over that they want to replace it with honest to Dog socialism. Those people are never going to get what they want, but they’re giving it the old college try anyway.

The next big power center is around groups of more or less moderate Dems who go by the label social democrats. In general, those people want to reasonably re-regulate capitalism like it was in the pre-radical right tyranny & corruption MAGA days. They want to leave capitalism mostly intact as it is, while trying to bring it back under a reasonable degree of pro-public interest control. In terms of policy, that’s where bipartisan majority or near-majority public opinion generally lies on many or maybe most major policy issues.

But there’s the third group, roughly the old Dem “establishment”. Those people and interests are mostly major donors, corporate “neoliberal” Dems, elected politicians and organized labor. That cluster of groups is starting to give off a very unfriendly vibe. The donor and corporate Dems have most of the power because they have most of the cash. As we all know, money is power. We do have a pay-to-play two-party political system.

What is that smell?

For average, normal people sensitive to the possibility of being sold out by politicians in power, a NYT article, Jeffries and Kushner Meet Privately as Midterm Attacks Fly, instantly raises a huge red flag about the direction the elite Dem establishment might want to take the party. They may want to sell out to Trump and MAGA to protect their wealth and power. That is not new. People and interests like Bezos, Zuckerberg and some big law firms have already sold out for the same reasons, i.e., protecting their wealth and power.

Jeffries is an elite Dem establishment-aligned creature. He was picked for power by Nancy Pelosi, James Clyburn and Steny Hoyer. They are the epitome of the elite Dem establishment that helped get us into the gigantic messes we’re in right now. It was Pelosi who once seriously believed it was OK for members of congress, their families, and staff to engage in insider trading, i.e., securities fraud. She reluctantly backed away from her support when it was pointed out that insider trading was securities fraud. Pelosi came from corporate wealth, corporate thinking and natural corporate sympathy to oligarchy (a form of authoritarianism). Her innate sympathy for that kind of crime is understandable.

As is well-known, Kushner is not a neutral bipartisan policy broker. He is Trump’s son-in-law, a former senior White House official, and an influential outside adviser. His political and business interests are completely entwined with Trump and MAGA politics and policy. Kushner and his family seem to be about as honest as a $4 bill or a Trump cell phone (and this).

The problem with the Jeffries-Kushner meeting is simple, it was in secret and what it was about is unknown. We are kept in the dark. There is no public account of the meeting’s commitments, limits, or agenda. It was said to focus on “common ground” matters. However, “common ground” is often politician-speak for rigged deals the elites want kept in secret. Assertions of “common ground” can also normalize the Trump administration that elite Democrats publicly and accurately say is corrupt and authoritarian. This smells rotten. It feel like the start of a sell-out in progress.

The open question is whether the Democratic establishment will use House power to defend congressional authority, investigate corruption, enforce subpoenas, curb conflicts of interest, and protect democratic institutions, or whether it will protect elite interests, donor access, and a narrow, authoritarian conception of bipartisan governance. Jeffries must answer such questions transparently and honestly. Vague assurances coming from the old Dem establishment about finding common ground are not remotely close to reassuring. That “explanation” is deeply troubling and not close to convincing.

Q1: Is distrust of the Dem establishment, Pelosi and Jeffries for example, coupled with MAGA’s overt authoritarianism and corruption, probably why there is rising power centered on replacing capitalism with true socialism?

Q2: Do you believe that reasonable compromise is necessary for a democracy to function reasonably well, while refusal to compromise based on political power alone is the epitome of authoritarianism, e.g., MAGA authoritarianism?

Q3: Is it plausible that reasonable compromise replaced only with finding common ground amounts to a reasonably functional form of democracy?

Info sources:

What The Word ‘Compromise’ Really Means — Reporter Leslie Stahl said governing means compromising. House speaker John Boehner replied that it means “finding common ground.” When pressed, he said, “I reject the word.”

Boehner: ‘I Reject The Word’ Compromise — BOEHNER: I made it clear I am not going to compromise on my principles, nor am I going to compromise the will of the American people. STAHL: What are you saying? You’re saying, “I want common ground, but I’m not gonna compromise.” I don’t understand that. I really don’t. BOEHNER: When you say the word “compromise,” a lot of Americans look up and go, “Uh oh, they’re gonna sell me out.” And so finding common ground, I think, makes more sense.

The Mindsets of Political Compromise — In this analysis, political compromise is seen as necessary for democratic governance to exist. It describes how permanent campaigning and unreasonable distrust make compromise difficult, often impossible.

Compromise and Democracy: How They Get Along — John Stuart Mill: “an indispensable requisite in the practical conduct of politics is the readiness to compromise, a willingness to concede something to opponents and to shape good measures so as to be as little offensive as possible to persons of the opposite view”.