Laissez-faire Republican Supreme court guts federal ability to deal with climate change

Recently, I have been criticizing and pounding on the bigoted, corrupt, theocratic agenda of the Christian nationalist wing of the Republican Party. But that is only one of the two corrupt, dogmatic ideologies that control the GOP. The other power source that runs the Republican Party is radical right, regulation and government-hating laissez-faire capitalism (LFC). Those people have no social conscience. They have only one moral imperative, namely profit. Dead humans, poisoned humans and extinct species are of no concern. That is merely a small kerfuffle for their public relations (propagandists) people to spin into little or nothing of public importance or concern.

The biggest among the pro-pollution behemoths include the oil and carbon energy sector and the chemical sector. Both make mega-profits from polluting. Exxon-Mobil is front and center in the decades-long sophisticated, money-backed LFC agenda to pollute freely and offload the damage onto society and the environment. They are no succeeding on a gigantic scale.

The Washington Post writes:

The Supreme Court on Thursday sharply cut back the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to reduce the carbon output of existing power plants, a blow to the nation’s chances of averting catastrophic climate change.

The vote was 6 to 3, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. writing for the court’s conservatives.

“Capping carbon dioxide emissions at a level that will force a nationwide transition away from the use of coal to generate electricity may be a sensible ‘solution to the crisis of the day,’ ” Roberts wrote, referring to a court precedent. “But it is not plausible that Congress gave EPA the authority to adopt on its own such a regulatory scheme.”

Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the dissenters, countered: “The Court appoints itself — instead of Congress or the expert agency — the decisionmaker on climate policy. I cannot think of many things more frightening.”

The decision risks putting the United States even further off track from President Biden’s goal of running the U.S. power grid on clean energy by 2035 — and making the entire economy carbon-neutral by 2050.  

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) praised the ruling.

“The Court has undone illegal regulations issued by the EPA without any clear congressional authorization and confirmed that only the people’s representatives in Congress – not unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats – may write our nation’s laws,” McConnell said in a statement.[1]

There we have it. Another long-cherished Republican Party goal has been achieved. America can no longer control carbon dioxide pollution. Now attention will turn to other ways of gutting the power of the EPA to regulate pollution. This LFC assault on the EPA is not over yet. This is just the beginning.

If one listens carefully, one can begin to hear the sounds of (1) money going from trickling up to gushing up into the bank accounts of the elites who profit from polluting, and (2) damage and harm flowing to the masses and the environment. 

Qs: Is it hyperbole or a lie to assert that the Republican Party elites and pro-pollution LFCs 

(i) have no social conscience when it comes to pollution, and/or 

(ii) are overwhelmingly concerned with more profits from pollution for the elites, while offloading as much damage and harm onto the public and the environment? 

Footnote: 

1. McConnell, is a bare-faced liar. Recall what Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) correctly said in 2017 about the gross incompetence of congress in writing laws? Here it is again for those who forgot: 

“. . . . . the people don’t have a way to fire the bureaucrats. What we mostly do around this body is not pass laws. What we mostly decide to do is to give permission to the secretary or the administrator of bureaucracy X, Y or Z to make law-like regulations. That’s mostly what we do here. We go home and we pretend we make laws. No we don’t. We write giant pieces of legislation, 1200 pages, 1500 pages long, that people haven’t read, filled with all these terms that are undefined, and say to secretary of such and such that he shall promulgate rules that do the rest of our dang jobs. That’s why there are so many fights about the executive branch and the judiciary, because this body rarely finishes its work. [joking] And, the House is even worse.”

A call for defending church and state separation against the Christian Taliban

For this blog post,

substitute Santorum with Lauren Boebert 

I have been referring to a key goal of the Republican Party’s Christian nationalist (CN) political-theocratic movement as establishing Christian Sharia. It stands for an America controlled by God’s law, which stands above the US Constitution. What God demands is dictated by self-interested CN elites.

Apparently, some others are seeing the threat in this radical Christian fundamentalist legal attack on the secularism and provisions in the US Constitution that defend it. Secularism, pluralism and church-state separation are now all directly and openly attacked by the CN movement, Republican elites and the neo-fascist propaganda Leviathan that works for them, e.g., Faux News. One other critic of CN theocracy calls it the threat Christian Taliban. The Hill writes:

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) on Wednesday criticized comments that Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) made on Sunday in which she called for ending the separation of church and state in the United States.

Boebert said in a speech at the Cornerstone Christian Center in Basalt, Colo., that she is “tired” of the principle and falsely claimed that the Founding Fathers did not intend to keep religion separate from government.

Kinzinger condemned Boebert’s comments and compared them to the views of the Taliban, the militant Islamic fundamentalist group that rules Afghanistan.

“There is no difference between this and the Taliban. We must oppose the Christian Taliban. I say this as a Christian,” he tweeted.

Boebert argued that the separation of church and state “junk” is not in the Constitution and was only in a letter that “means nothing like they say it does.”

She appeared to be referencing a letter that then-President Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1802 to the Danbury Baptist Church Association in Connecticut. In the letter, Jefferson wrote that the American people had built “a wall of separation between Church and State.”

The constitutional interpretation of separation of church and state comes from the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, which states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”

The Supreme Court applied this provision also to the states through the 14th Amendment’s Due Process Clause, which prohibits states from passing laws that restrict people’s “life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

The same legal arguments from the CN political-theocratic movement openly come up over and over and over now. One cannot deny the fact (not opinion) that the movement wants to gut core constitutional defenses of civil liberties. The radical Taliban Christian tyrants that run the CN movement hate the due process and equal protection clauses of the 14th Amendment. Once those defenses fall to the CNs, the door is wide open to legally and brutally discriminate against hated out groups, especially racial and ethnic minorities, the LGBQT community, Democrats and political opposition generally, atheists, all non-Christians and all women, but especially minority and non-heterosexual women. In CN dogma, women are inferior and subordinate to men.

Core CN dogma is that God chose and still chooses elite and/or wealthy, White, heterosexual men to lead all people everywhere on Earth because they are morally superior to the rest of us. Proof of that is their elite status and/or wealth. They would not be elite or wealthy if God had not chosen them. 

A core CN creation myth is exactly what Taliban Boebert argues, i.e., the separation of church and state is “junk” that is not in the Constitution and was only in a letter that “means nothing like they say it does.” She lies. The Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment separates state from church. There is no religious test for holding office in government, but the CN movement wants to make Christianity a litmus test for holding power in government. In sacred CN dogma, non-Christians cannot hold positions of significant power in government or society generally.

In the 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Association that Taliban Boebert misrepresents (lies about), Thomas Jefferson stated that when the American people adopted the establishment clause they built a “wall of separation between the church and state.” That is the point of the Establishment Clause in the 1st Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

That is why the CN movement hates the 1st Amendment’s Establishment Clause, along with the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses in the 14th Amendment. Those are the key provisions of the US Constitution that block what I call Christian Sharia and Kinzinger calls Christian Taliban.

This points to the reasons why, by the 1980s or earlier (arguably the 1950s in the wake of the horrific Brown v. Board of Education decision that ordered public school desegregation and abolished the separate but equal religious-political myth) the CN fundamentalist movement came to understand that they needed a whole now legal strategy to deal with a secular Constitution. A secular built on church-state separation stood squarely in the way of establishing Christian Sharia or Taliban in the US. Out of those intense White Christian fundamentalist frustrations grew aggressive but crackpot legal theories like Originalism, Strict Constructionism and Textualism that allowed American Christian fundamentalist elites to reinterpret the Constitution in their own personal, corrupt, intolerant Christian theocratic way. 

Those crackpot theories are what Republican CN Supreme Court justices are relying on right now to attack and gut the vitality of the Establishment, Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses. In his concurrence in overturning Roe v. Wade Clarence Thomas directly attacked the scope of the due process clause: 

“In future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell. .... We have a duty to ‘correct the error’ established in those precedents. .... After overruling these demonstrably erroneous decisions, the question would remain whether other constitutional provisions guarantee the myriad rights that our substantive due process cases have generated.”

Once those three clauses fall to the CN theocratic movement, America will in fact be a kleptocratic Christian Sharia or Christian Taliban state. Church-state separation will have been demolished and all the rage, hate, vengeance, bigotry and corruption will gush out to smite all those who God demands to be smitten good and hard, even if it kills some or many of them. There is no reasonable doubt that cruel Sharia-Taliban laws will directly or indirectly kill at least some innocent Americans. 

Qs: Is it unreasonably inaccurate, or even a lie, to argue that the Republican Party’s CN wing 

(i) is attacking the secularism the US Constitution defends, and/or 

(ii) intends to establish God’s religious laws (Christian Sharia or Christian Taliban) above human secular laws the US Constitution is built on? 

Adventures in brains: Liberal ones may not be like conservative ones

Brains 25¢!

AI can predict your political ideology using just a brain scan:

A deep learning AI running on a supercomputer was able to link patterns of brain connectivity to political ideology.

• The AI was about 70% accurate, which is roughly equivalent to predicting a person's political beliefs based on their parents' ideology.

• While the study certainly is stimulating, it's essentially pattern-hunting with big data. Revealing the neurological roots of ideology will be much harder.

Scientists have used brain scanning techniques to delve into the neuroscientific underpinnings of political beliefs before. For example, researchers have found previously that conservatives tend to have more gray matter volume in their amygdala (a region associated with fear, anxiety, and aggression), while liberals tend to have more in their anterior cingulate cortex (tied to, among other things, ethics and morality). Another experiment showed that the brains of liberals and conservatives react differently to “charged” words in political videos.

In the current study, the researchers observed and recorded functional connectivity in the brains of 174 healthy young adult subjects as they performed various simple tasks, such as pressing a pop-up button as quickly as possible for a monetary reward, pairing names with faces, or answering true/false questions about a story they had just read. Subjects also had their brains scanned in a resting state — awake and relaxed, with their eyes closed.

Measuring functional connectivity (FC) is somewhat rare in political neuroscience. FC refers to how different parts of the brain can concurrently show similar activity, as if they are communicating with each other. The researchers utilized a state-of-the-art AI deep learning technique called BrainNetCNN, running on supercomputers at the Ohio Supercomputer Center, to analyze the functional connectivity data from all of the tasks and to correlate them with the subjects’ self-reported political ideology, which was scored on a one to six scale from very liberal to very conservative.

While the study certainly is stimulating, it is essentially pattern-hunting with big data. That’s fine, but a model is only robust and widely applicable if it is based on a large, diverse study group. In this case, the subjects were all young adults, seven out of ten of whom were liberal. So the model may not work if tested on other Americans (or people, in general). Moreover, the AI cannot tell us anything about the neurological roots of ideology; it wasn’t designed to do so. Answering that will be a much taller task.

This is another suggestion, not proof, that there are fundamental differences in liberal compared to conservative brains. If this data could be confirmed and the underlying neurology better understood in bigger studies and different studies, that might point to ways to increase the relative power of messaging based on fact, truth and sound reasoning (honest speech) compared to lies, falsehoods and crackpot motivated reasoning (dark speech, free and unfree). 

Personal thoughts

A personal estimate is that if one says for the sake of argument that the power to persuade, evoke true beliefs and evoke corresponding overt behavior is X, it feels reasonably accurate to think that dark speech has about 3X power to persuade, evoke false beliefs and evoke corresponding overt behavior. That estimate or intuition is based on hints in the data that conservatives might be responsive to triggers to fear, anxiety, and aggression, while liberals may be more responsive to  triggers to ethics and morality. 

The reason I'm interested in possible ways to better understand messaging and how to boost the power of honest speech to elicit beliefs and behaviors, e.g., voting vs. not voting. A basic assumption I base that on is that, in my firm opinion, it is usually better for politics, political outcomes and civilized social progress for most people to believe and act based on honest speech than on dark speech. That accords with my limited knowledge of history and my lifetime of experiences with politics. 

If I am right, then finding ways to elevate the power of honest speech relative to dark speech just might be a factor in reducing the odds of destruction of modern civilization, or on a really bad day, self-annihilation and extinction of the human species. Of course, all of that is also just personal opinion.

I doubt that more than maybe ~10% of adults would disagree with that personal belief. Those who would agree, probably ascribe, consciously or not, to a moral value that the means justify the ends, including using dark speech to deceive and manipulate. Where the currently intractable liberal vs. conservative disagreement lies is in what is fact, truth and sound reasoning and what isn't. The rank and file on both sides firmly believe they usually or almost always rely on honest speech, while the opposition does not. 

Hence my belief in the importance of understanding the neurology of political ideology and the nature and frailty of honest speech (as PD discussed here a couple of days ago) compared to dark speech. If the advantage of the demagogue wielding dark speech relative to a speaker with weaker honest speech could be mostly neutralized, the odds of better outcomes arguably increase somewhat.

Most conservatives will quite probably reject that characterization of the conservative brain and possible neurology as nonsense. Maybe in time those criticisms will be vindicated and those inconvenient possibilities eliminated by reliable data. So in the meantime, we're still stuck with fascinating possibilities but not yet able to draw firm, data-based conclusions. We still don't know about the neurology of political ideology. We also still don't know if it is even possible to empower honest speech so it is at least fairly close to par with dark speech, assuming honest is less powerful than dark. 

One thing we do know. America will remain awash for years or decades in radical right dark speech from trusted but immoral, corrupt Republican elites. That is just not going to change. Maybe that alone is a barrier that any tactic or form of honest speech can never overcome. If so, I'm barking up the wrong tree.

That's where I left that darned thing

Acknowledgment: Thanks to Larry Motuz for point out this article -- it gave me a chance to talk about what this blog is about

Washington Post editors opinion: Our church-state barrier is crumbling

The editors argue:

A conservative Supreme Court majority is redefining the constitutional order — dismissive of Americans’ privacy rights, committed to dangerous pro-gun dogmas and, as the court showed twice this month, alarmingly permissive of mixing religion and government.

The latest example comes in the case of Joseph Kennedy, a high school football assistant coach in Washington state who led prayers on the 50-yard line after games. As they got increasingly ostentatious, the school district asked him to stop. He toned down his prayers, but refused to stop using his privileged access to the 50-yard line to engage in public religious displays in the middle of an official school event while wearing team attire.

The court’s six conservatives sided with the coach, rather than the school district that tried to persuade him to perform his religious observances on his own time and without implying that the school endorsed them. In so doing, the justices practically encouraged school officials to engage in showy displays of religious practice on school grounds, arguing that doing so promotes “learning how to tolerate diverse expressive activities.” The court reached its conclusion only by ignoring massive parts of the factual record. The majority claims Mr. Kennedy’s prayers were “quiet” personal acts during a “brief lull” in his duties following football games. In fact, he was on the clock, supposed to be supervising students after games.

Until the final few games of the season, after the district had threatened to discipline him, Mr. Kennedy’s prayers were not personal, as the coach invited students and even opposing teams to join him. They were not limited to the field or the post-game “lull”; he led prayers in the locker room. His acts were not quiet; he gave religious-themed speeches as players knelt around him. . All the while, Mr. Kennedy was supposed to be supervising students in the locker room.

The justices deemed these facts irrelevant, saying the school punished Mr. Kennedy only for his conduct after the season’s final three games, following which he made no lengthy public speeches and did not lead prayers in the locker room, just silently prayed on the 50-yard line as others joined him. The coach, of course, was able to stage his religious display on restricted public property only because he was a school employee working during an official activity core to his employment. 

It is obvious the justices did not put themselves in the shoes of a Jewish, Muslim, Hindu or agnostic student watching from the literal and social sidelines, facing the decision of whether to join a coach on the field or stay true to their religious or nonreligious convictions. Along with another court decision earlier this month, in which the justices ordered the state of Maine to finance tuition at religious schools under a statewide voucher program, the majority appears determined to rule in favor of those seeking to use government resources to advance their religious beliefs — and against those who object to dismantling the wall between church and state.

That lays out the neo-fascist, Christian nationalist attack on church-state separation. 

My criticism is this: Instead of writing "A conservative Supreme Court majority is redefining the constitutional order ....", that should read "A radical right, Christian nationalist Supreme Court majority is redefining the constitutional order ...." 

That incompetence is another example of the mainstream media (i) not seeing the situation we are in, and/or (ii) being subverted or coerced by profit demands into not seeing reality. 

I've said it before and say it again, 

the MSM is duped by the radical right and just doesn't get it.

In normal, unspun reality:

In the faux reality that radical right propaganda has convinced the mainstream media and most of the public is reality, the window is pushed far to the right:

Truth the 1/6 Committee dug up

The testimony in the last couple of hours from the Democrats 1/6 investigation make it clear and undeniable what T**** wanted on 1/6. He wanted to go to the capitol to personally lead the overthrow of the 2020 election and democracy.[1] He physically attacked one his own Secret Service bodyguards in his attempt be to be present in the attack on the Capitol in 1/6. Some observers have argued that he needed to be physically present with the traitors if his coup attempt was to have any chance of success.

The testimony is clear that in 2020, a sitting Republican US president physically attacked one of his own bodyguards in his attempt to overthrow democracy. No doubt, his Christian nationalist and laissez-faire capitalist supporters will spin this new evidence into something that gives the radical right base an escape from the awful reality of Republican Party despotism. Now, more than ever, the GOP base needs an escape from the horrors of inconvenient truth. They need to see T****'s attack on democracy, truth and what is good as a patriotic defense of democracy, truth and good.

Get Rupert Murdoch and Faux News on the klaxon!! Tucker, spin this Republican treason into righteous democracy and truth, right now!! Tucker the bloviator be the right man for the job to save the GOP base from inconvenient truth!

Now, on the neo-fascist agenda is devising the spin needed so that morally rotted neo-fascists like Ron DeSantis can step into T****'s rotten shoes and carry the neo-fascist torch for the neo-fascist GOP.

Or, am I over the top?

Christian crusader wars diversify and intensify

How Christian nationalism deals with

truth, respect, secularism and democracy

Overturning Roe was just the first cannon blast from Christian nationalist theocrats. That was just the opening attack. Remember those crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) I wrote about last week? They're baaack and on the attaaack! Blooomberg writes:

Anti-Abortion Centers Find Pregnant Teens Online, Then Save Their Data

The so-called ‘crisis pregnancy centers’ are turning to social media, including Snap Maps, to lure young people

When Lisa suspected she was pregnant, she did what other teenagers might: She Googled her options to terminate. One of the first links that popped up in the search engine was a clinic in Volusia, Florida, where the 19-year-old lived. The offer of a free pregnancy test tempted Lisa into booking an appointment and she drove there with her boyfriend, parking across the street. It was a small town, and she did not want to be recognized.

The consultation room was filled with posters depicting fetuses with speech bubbles, as if they were asking to be born. Lisa sobbed as one of the women running the clinic confirmed she was pregnant; they had refused to let her take a test home. Lisa needed to return for an ultrasound in four weeks to be certain, and then they could discuss options. But until then, they told her, she absolutely should not go to an abortion clinic. “Maybe you’ll miscarry and then you won’t have any problems,” the woman suggested.

As Lisa started to realize it wasn’t a medical facility, she became terrified for her privacy. “This information can’t go anywhere, right?” she begged a receptionist on her way out the door. “No one is gonna know that I was here?”

The answer wasn’t reassuring. “I remember her saying: ‘Well, honey, this is what happens when you have sex.’”

Lisa, who asked not to be identified by her real name, did manage to get an abortion from a different provider. But she also ended up in a database. The center continued to call her every few weeks to ask for an update on the baby and offer parenting classes. And as women like Lisa around the country are led unsuspectingly into anti-abortion centers, known as “crisis pregnancy centers,” academics and advocates for reproductive rights are concerned about what happens to this potentially incriminating data — especially after abortion becomes illegal in many states following Friday’s Roe v. Wade ruling.

Once states pass laws making abortion and helping someone to get an abortion a felony, maybe first degree murder, then people's social media will lead enraged avenging Christians right to their victims. Who would have ever thought that a blither on a person's Facebook page or a Google search could get a pregnant woman or someone helping her put on death row? 

As far as respect goes, CPCs could not care less about respecting a woman's privacy. Roe was based on a right to privacy that the Christian nationalist God says does not exist. So why would a CPC respect other kinds of privacy, except for their own of course?

Speaking of disrespect, here is some disrespect from Clarence Thomas, along with gigantic hypocrisy: "Clarence Thomas says American citizens are seemingly 'more interested in their iPhones' than 'their Constitution. .... They're interested in what they want rather than what is right as a country. .... Thomas said Scalia had similar sentiments as him about a lack of urgency in protecting liberties." 

Thomas talking about what is right for the country or lack of urgency in protecting liberties?? Thomas and his fellow Christian nationalist theocrats are attacking civil liberties and they say they are the defenders?? 

Give me an effing break. What a lying hypocrite. Thomas wants to convert the US from a secular democracy to a Dark Ages Christian fundamentalist theocracy. Thomas' vision of what's right for the country is cruel, bigoted, iron fisted Christian Sharia law at the center of it all. 

Although he has been criticized for hypocrisy in saying this because he was a radical right Christian fundamentalist himself, Barry Goldwater once warned:

“Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them.”

The Republican Party Christian fundamentalism is undeniably engaged in an all-out war against democracy, secularism, pluralism, two-party rule, and inconvenient fact, truth and sound reasoning. There is no possibility of compromise or mercy from these cruel, enraged, vengeful, Christian warriors. And it is cruelty to treat people like terrified Lisa with callous contempt like ‘Well, honey, this is what happens when you have sex.’ 

Well people, that is the contemptuous disrespect that Christian nationalism shows to everyone who crosses their sacred lines. God does not tolerate miscreants or their bad behaviors. He will smite them hard. Miscreants will be re-educated, shut up, discriminated against, oppressed, put in jail and/or put to death.

What about Loving, and the due process and establishment clauses?

The Christians elites, bigoted and racist as they are, will probably not overturn Loving v. Virginia for now. The 1967 Loving decision made interracial marriage legal. That decision held that bans on interracial marriage violate the Equal Protection Clause and Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Since Thomas is a Black married to a White wife, the bigoted White theocrats on the Supreme Court will probably let that minor inconvenience in the eyes of God slide, as long as Thomas is alive. 

But make no mistake, high priority Christian nationalist legal goals include gutting the due process clause and the establishment clauses of the Constitution. Both stand squarely in the way of establishing the bigoted, (I really do mean bigoted) kleptocratic theocracy that God demands America to be. After Thomas is gone, Loving will probably be gone too.[1] 

The establishment clause is now pretty close to being obliterated. Just a few more pro-Christianity Supreme Court decisions will finish it off for good. 

People, we are at war!

Footnote: 

1. Maybe that overstates the case, but maybe it doesn't. These people are hard core fundamentalists. That sacred ideology that includes the central dogma that White people are morally superior and chosen by God to rule over all others. The Christian nationalists will vehemently deny all of the criticisms I am levelling at them here. Their arguments are that they are defending liberty and making America into what it should be in accord with the Constitution. They say the US Constitution is a religious document, but that is a colossal lie. It is a secular document.

One of the core problems here is that Christian nationalists are chronic, shameless liars. To get put on the bench, they all told us that Roe v. Wade is settled law. Like hell it was settled law. Christian nationalists lie about their religious crusade to make America theocratic and kleptocratic again. This is not new. Christian nationalists have been liars for decades. Liars deserve no credibility or trust because they earned none.

I'll keep warning in defense of democracy until they come for me and force me to shut up. Then, I suppose I'll shut up.

Thomas' concurrence in Dobbs, 

the case that overturned Roe v. Wade

Due process cases that Thomas wants to overturn

or as he puts it, "reconsider":

Griswold: The Constitution protects the right of marital privacy 

against state restrictions on contraception

Lawrence: criminal punishment laws against sodomy are unconstitutional

Obergefell: same-sex marriage is a constitutional right

That is only part of the poison the on the 

Christian nationalist legal agenda

Gun owners: They play, we pay

Proud gun owner passing his gun skills 

to the next generation

Gun people have their ever-expanding rights to own, carry and blaze away in the safety of stand your ground laws. Taxpayers have their ever-expanding costs to try to harden American society into a gigantic fortress that gun owners cannot penetrate to cause mass slaughter of innocents. Seems like something here just isn't quite fair. The New York Times writes:

Schools Are Spending Billions on High-Tech Defense for Mass Shootings

In 2021, schools and colleges in the United States spent an estimated $3.1 billion on security products and services, compared with $2.7 million in 2017, according to Omdia, a market-research company. Security trade groups have lobbied for hundreds of millions of dollars in federal and state funding for school safety measures. The gun legislation that Congress passed last week includes an additional $300 million to bolster school security.

Security and technology directors at half a dozen school districts said in interviews that some products were vital. One pointed to security camera systems that had helped his district observe and gauge the severity of school fires. Others mentioned crisis-alert technology that the school staff may use to summon help during an emergency.

The district officials offered more varied opinions on the sophisticated-sounding systems — like high-tech threat detectors — that promise to heighten security through the use of artificial intelligence.

But there is little hard evidence to suggest that safety technologies have prevented or mitigated catastrophic school events like mass shootings, according to a 2016 report on school safety technology by researchers at Johns Hopkins University.

Qs: Why don't gun owners pay annual fees to cover the social costs of their playtime with guns? Why do taxpayers who do not own guns have to pay?

A: Because, Republican Party, NRA, gun manufacturers and campaign contributions to politicians to buy opposition to gun regulations and taxes on the individual and social costs of gun ownership.

Q: How much harm and cost do guns inflict on society?

A: By one estimate about 40,000 deaths, 80,000 non-lethal injuries and $280 billion/year, but that is before one adds the costs to turn schools into little fortresses.

Q: Are American taxpayers stupid?

A: Not the ones who own guns, the stupid ones subsidize gun owners, and gun makers get huge profits, with that wealth trickling up to all kinds of elites who profit from gun sales and various damages.

Proud gun owner learning 

safety protocols

Hannah Arendt: Truth, Facts and Lying in Politics

 In 1967, Hannah Arendt published an essay entitled Truth and Politics in The New Yorker (it later appeared with revisions in the book, Between The Past and The Future). Though originally written as a response to critics she felt had lied about her coverage of the Eichmann trials,  the thinking  catalyzed by these concerns led to ideas and insights of much more general import, and well worth evaluating today in an age where distinctions between facts, conspiracy theories and lies seem to swirl around us in a miasma of misinformation, shaping everything from policy and elections in gov't to media/social media to everyday interactions in our dangerously conflicted society. As we try to understand a world in which lies and truths appear to be interchangeable  categories ("alternative facts"), and where the most egregious lying imaginable in the public realm has the potential to wreck our system of government, possibly once and for all, the topic of the essay could not be more important. It is among Arendt's most thought-provoking essays from her late period, whether one agrees or takes exception to the conclusions she reaches. Here I summarize some of the main theses in the piece concisely and in the context of our own political situation in the US.

Arendt begins by stating that not all truths are alike in their nature and status. We may speak of scientific truths, moral truths,  religious truths, historical truths, psychological truths, and-- most importantly for this essay-- factual truths. She divides these various types of truth up into 2 categories: "factual truths" and "rational truths." The definitions are useful descriptions or heuristics rather than epistemic claims. AS Arendt puts it, "I shall use this distinction for the sake of convenience [emph added] without discussing its intrinsic legitimacy."(Truth and Politics: p. 2) The purpose of this convenient distinction is to compare and contrast the outcomes when rational truths vs. factual truths come into conflict with political authorities and power structures.

Rational truths include the accepted truths of mathematics, science, philosophy and religion, among others. Factual truths are derived from observation and experience (e.g. historical records, eyewitness accounts,  etc.). The first claim she makes is that while rational truths and factual truths can both be lost or wiped out when they bump up against political powers, factual truths (i.e. knowledge of actual events, people, and actions such as those journalists cover) are far more vulnerable to erasure at the hands of political authorities than rational truths.

One can imagine, for example, knowledge of basic arithmetic being lost, or for some reason  banned by fanatical anti-mathematical clerics or something. All the text books would be burned, like in Bradburry's  Farenheit 451. Yet it is certainly not impossible that later generations would devise systems like addition and subtraction for themselves based on their own rational capacities.  At more abstract levels the likelihood or reestablishing rational truths gets slimmer but is still possible. Imagine General Relativity, Copernican Heliocentrism, or Euclidean geometry being banned for whatever reason (as the Church banned Heliocentrism in the 17th C). Perhaps such knowledge would eventually perish like so many books reduced to dust. And yet, Arendt claims, it is at least imaginable that some of these truths would emerge from later inquiries because they are based on reasoning and ideas rather than fleeting and unique events in history that must be witnessed and recorded to exist at all.  Factual Truths (e.g. Stalin and Hitler made a pact in 1939; Nixon bombed Cambodia illegally during Vietnam; Trump lost the 2020 election and no investigation has since uncovered "fraud" as he and others claim occurred) are MUCH easier to stamp out, to obliterate from public discourse when they inconvenience those in power. They are based on records rather than reasoning. The question that arises here is "How are factual truths obliterated in modern societies?" According to Arendt, it happens by means of what she calls *organized lying.* The facts are "lied away," as she puts it. 

We are often prone to thinking that the biggest threat to facts is false belief/crackpot theory/bullshit and the like. But the biggest threat comes not from merely false belief but deliberate falsehood/lying.While the opposite of a true mathematical result is an "error," and the opposite of a presumed scientific truth is a "falsehood," the opposite of factual truths on the public record  is a "lie." This doesn't mean there are no innocent mistakes in the recording of facts, by, for example, journalists. But these failed efforts to record actualities accurately--errata-- are not fundamentally *opposed* to factual truths. Indeed they are accidents that occur while acting as a "truth-teller" or chronicler of facts. So unlike other domains of truth, the opposite of factual truth is the lie, and in particular "organized lying." What, then,  is the main danger of lying in politics?

Often we fear that the danger of lies is that they can come to replace factual truth, or provide a substitute for the public record, which serves as an orienting consensus in an otherwise diverse society. The fear, these days, is expressed in terms of some "alternative facts" coming to replace actualities. This is not the ultimate threat, thinks Arendt.  There is a point beyond which lying becomes incompatible with social stability and common understandings necessary for survival and shared life. You can only get so far in establishing "alternate accounts" of the facts without utterly destabilizing the fabric of reality itself. Taken far enough, the content of lies (be it conspiracy theories or arbitrary misstatements that attack facts) result not in a substitute for the shared public realm of acknowledged facts, but in confusion, disorientation and conflict over what is real-- and over what is really happening. Thus the ultimate threat isn't the content of the lying itself (though this obviously has proximate importance) but rather it is the coordinated and concerted effort to undermine or obliterate facts that threaten those in power for one reason or another. Publicly acknowledged and shared factual truth constitutes a minimal basis for any overlapping consensus within which we can communicate at all. It is one of the main ingredients in the very fabric of social existence, and it can't be replaced by lies. The fantasies of organized lying  and factual truths can't function in equivalent ways. One reflects a reasonably accurate grasp of realities we cannot escape--i.e. the social, historical realities within which we must exist and act-- while the fantastic lies have no ground at all. Once the ground of truth is lost, just about anything goes. As Arendt puts it famously elsewhere, the result is that "Nothing is true and everything is possible." In Truth and Politics, she writes that, "[truth] is limited to those things that men cannot change at will...[adding] Conceptually, we may call truth what we cannot change; metaphorically, it is the ground we walk on and the sky that stretches above us."(T&P:p. 19)

Factual truths, then, function to check arbitrary power from destroying our access to shared reality. This leads to a discussion of the importance of those public institutions "established and supported by the powers that be, in which contrary to all political rules, truth and truthfulness have always constituted the highest criterion of speech and endeavor."(T&P:17) In this connection, she mentions the importance in modern open societies of the independent judiciary, research centers and universities, government archives, et al. What all such domains share is a commitment to impartiality.  "Whether these places of higher learning are in private or public hands"  she writes,  "is of no great importance; not only their integrity but their very existence depends on the good will of the government anyway...Very unwelcome truths have emerged from the universities, and very unwelcome judgments have been handed down from the bench time and time again." (T&P: p. 17). But we must not take these "refuges of truth" for granted, as they are, along with the free press, vulnerable to the whims of political power-- even in "open societies" ruled by constitutions. Without real journalism, as opposed to what we call "fake news,"  she remarks, "we should never find our bearings in an ever-changing world and, in the most literal sense, we would never know where we are." This is the desired outcome of organized lying. So political lying typically targets not just recorded truths in the public realm, but the institutions in which disinterested studies and impartial determinations are made. Universities, the free press and independent judiciaries are often the first casualties of organized political lying campaigns. Over the past decade, we've seen a disturbing trend along just such lines in Hungary, Poland and a few other countries in Europe. Trump's effort to "drain the swamp" is largely tantamount to erasing the institutional memory-system of our "bloated government departments." Attempts to neutralize agencies like the EPA by staffing it with opponents of environmentalism also belie the desire to "lie away" even important scientific truths we face in the age of global warming. The list goes on and on. Organized lying depends on the dismantling of as many centers of relatively impartial inquiry as possible, and again this reveals the true goal not as one of "replacing" a world anchored by generally accurate public understandings, but destroying that world in service to the caprice of the will to domination, and not the will to truth.  The manipulation of social reality allows those in power to get away with almost anything, and then make up rationalizations as they go along.

Take the example of "memory laws" in which history is turned into official doctrine. In Turkey, one can't say there was an Armenian Genocide. In Poland, one can't say there were collaborators in WW2. In China, Tiananmen Square never happened, and surviving witnesses are carefully monitored to this day. (Louissa Lim's book, The People's Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited,  describes that sad affair). Thus, lying in politics relies heavily on creating "public enemies." Recall Trump said the NY Times is "an enemy of the people"-- and though many laughed at the time, he soon stopped taking any questions he didn't like in press conferences, saying only  three words instead, "That's fake news." Perhaps the most concise statement he made along these Arendtian lines is when he told an audience, "What you're seeing and reading is not what's  happening." https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2018/07/24/donald-trump-what-youre-seeing-not-whats-happening-tapper-sot-vpx.cnn  So we see in modern authoritarian politics, as with the totalitarian states of the 20th century, an attempt not to replace truth with some other stable "alternate reality" as some fear, but to make it seem that factual truths are really just so many "opinions." You think Trump lost, but I have a "different opinion"--  an "alternative account." That's the sort of attitude toward facts operative in the domain of organized lying.. Of course, there are areas in which citizens disagree because they hold different opinions-- a hallmark of free society. But these are opinions ABOUT agreed facts, not just opinions about other  opinions of opinions, ad infinitum with no bottom line or basis for mediation. If the distinction between these is lost or blurred, the results are disastrous. We already see a world in which people who live in the same cities seem to be denizens of utterly different universes as far as their basic beliefs about the world and reality are concerned. Some of us are able to remember that not so long ago this was simply not the case.

Once factual truths are leveled out and treated like mere opinions, there is no longer a possibility for shared understandings of reality to serve as a legitimate basis for debating and discussing policies as responses to situations and problems that are agreed upon on the basis of public records, journalism, social science etc. Suppose we are debating responses to urban crime or unemployment. We can only disagree meaningfully and offer our opinions on the topic if we at least agree on statements of crime rates or unemployment. In some political speeches these are almost completely fudged in order to achieve some political goal which treats such facts as mere obstacles to power.  Then the description of society and its problems and needed policies no longer rests on shared knowledge but becomes malleable in the hands of those who fabricate and deceive in order to impose their will on society with impunity. This , for Arendt,  is the heart of the fascist project. She writes:

"The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that lies will now be accepted as truths, and truths defamed as lies, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world-- and the categories of truth vs. falsehoods is among the mental means to this end-- is being destroyed." (TP: p. 16)

So the goal is to render populations susceptible to the arbitrary refashioning of the public stock of knowledge on which political acts and decisions are based. Power determines alleged facticity, and the possibility of critique, dissent or simply holding authorities to accounts based on accurate knowledge is short-circuited. Facts then become radically free . That is, the usual constraints of accuracy are entirely loosened so that authorities can say things one day and contradict them, or say they never said them at all the next day. They can rewrite history to subserve their own ends. They can categorize whole groups as "criminals," "traitors," or "public enemies" with no burden of objective evidence at all.

An example of this from the 1/6 hearings is found in an interview with former AG Barr. He recalls conversations with Trump in which the latter would say things like, "I have evidence from Pennsylvania, you have to do something about that." Barr would say, "We investigated that claim, Sir, it doesn't check, it's simply not true." Barr recalls that Trump seemed "totally unconcerned with the facts" as he would effortlessly switch to some other allegation as if he had not registered the FACT that the first claim was being dismissed as false. He would say something like "Well what about the evidence I gave you from Georgia?" Barr went on to say, "I thought, 'boy, he's really detached from reality if he believes this stuff.'" I'm not sure Barr understood that what he was so surprised to see was no different from the way Trump had dismissed photographic evidence regarding the size of the crowd at his inauguration in 2017, when he insisted it was "the biggest crowd ever...bigger than Obama's inaugural" etc. The press treated that like it was merely some character flaw, a narcissistic personality disorder, etc. Even if that part is true, it is less important for Arendt than the real goal of such unremitting lying on all matters great and small. The real aim is to eradicate the distinction between facts and lies. After a while, GOP stalwarts asked about Trump's endless stream of obvious lies just submitted to their validity. They accepted the lies by adopting a blase attitude towards them, thus according the fact/lie distinction little importance. In such a blase mode it was no longer difficult let the lies stand simply by NOT refuting or denying them. I remember Pence being asked about some obvious lies and accusatory statements made by Trump in a speech in an interview. Asked if he agreed with the content of the lies, Pence simply said, "I think it's just Trump being Trump." This elides the entire fact/lie distinction by stating a banal truism, a tautology to be precise. Soon enough, "It's just Trump being Trump" or similar stock phrases became the common currency of his enablers. Barr was surely among them. Did none of these people realize that they too had become "detached from reality" (as Barr put it recently)  simply by accepting this discourse of lies as legitimate? 

Arendt thinks that to some extent, those implicated in organized lying like this are self-deceived. This is not to say they deeply and sincerely believe any of these things. No, these aren't held as deep convictions. Rather, the perpetrators don't really care about the truth/lie distinction except in cases where they must cover their asses. (And if they take all of this a bridge to far, they may well fail even to do that and be caught off guard). As long as  they can get away with it, they focus not on the true/false distinction but the distinction between gaining and losing power and the ability to dominate others. To a large extent, they stop questioning themselves about what is true and false, except in cases where their own power hangs in the balance. Otherwise, while delivering a speech or message, they likely do not notice that they are lying. It has become a default mode of operating in most situations. Arendt likens this mentality to "Madison Avenue Advertising" culture. Here we can think of politicians who "believe their own propaganda" or "get high on their own supply." Apparently, for example, Rumsfeld and others in the Bush Administration really believed US invaders and occupiers would be "greeted as liberators." The poor planning that resulted landed them in a quagmire. They bought their own lies. It seems Putin similarly somehow believed his own propaganda about Ukranians embracing Russian invaders as liberators-- and planned a victory statement for Feb. 28, a mere 4 days after "special military operations" began. This self-deception-- which can be ones' undoing-- is an occupational hazard faced by the authoritarian or fascist leader accustomed to the flattery of yes-men rather than quality information.

Here I have only summarized a few of the arguments advanced by Arendt because they are especially relevant to our situation today. But for the sake of clarity, Arendt does recognize that the truth is much more than just a collection of recorded facts. The latter are the indispensable basis for other forms such as scientific and philosophical truths. When organized lying becomes pervasive,  telling the truth or reporting facts becomes a form of political action, says Arendt. The journalist who digs for truth in Russia or China may well end up on a hit-list and become a dissident or honored hero, where in a society that takes free press for granted, it seems that simply reporting facts is apolitical. But Arendt is also aware that the truths we live by also include principles, values, norms and stories that lend meaning to these facts. Storytellers, historians, philosophers, religious figures and others have always played an important role in establishing moral, social and political understandings such as those encoded in laws and principles undergirding society, culture, law and the political domain. The values, for example, of liberty and equality, are not recorded facts. But they have been part of the commonly understood "World" inhabited by those of us who live in liberal or social democracies. I did not think it was as important to discuss her thoughts on how such "rational truths"  function, since the prerequisite for them is still, as she said, the kind of knowledge we need simply to "literally know where we are." And it appears such knowledge is now endangered here.

(This OP also appears on the Books&Ideas blog here: https://disqus.com/home/forum/books-ideas-blog/ )

References/related reading:

 

 -Hannah Arendt:  Truth and Politics  (Between The Past and The Future: Penguin press  1977 Ch.7 Truth and Politcs pp. 223-260 or available as free stand-alone essay online)

-Frederica Merenda:  Reading Arendt to Rethink Truth  ( Democracy and Fake News Routledge, 2021 article by Frederica  Merenda page 19-30)

Possible Questions:

-Do you agree with Arendt's claim that the ultimate goal of political lying is NOT to replace one stable truth with some alternative to it, but rather to destroy the distinction between factual truths and mere opinions so that those in power can stipulate what counts as true with no regard to consistency or stability at all? 

-If Arendt's account is correct, it would seem to follow that the relatively accountable and honest institutions she mentions (free press, universities, various governmental departments that collect and disseminate information etc.) are of vital importance. But she doesn't make any suggestions in this essay regarding how to safeguard the integrity of such institutions. Do you have any ideas about how to do that in the face of a politically motivated all-out assault on factual truth?

Oil companies continue to subvert climate change efforts

A Scientific American article, Subverting Climate Science in the Classroom, comments:

In a drab hearing room in Austin, Tex., members of the State Board of Education, seated at small desks arranged in a broad, socially distanced circle, debated whether eighth grade science students should be required to “describe efforts to mitigate climate change.” One board member, a longtime public school science teacher, argued in favor of the proposed new requirement. Another, an in-house attorney for Shell Oil Company, argued to kill it.

The attorney won. In the end, the board voted to require that eighth grade science students “describe the carbon cycle” instead.

Over the past two years school board meetings around the country have erupted into shout fests over face masks, reading lists and whether to ban education about structural racism in classrooms. In Texas, a quieter political agenda played out during the lightly attended process to set science education standards—guidelines for what students should learn in each subject and grade level. For the first time, the state board considered requiring that students learn something about human-caused climate change. That requirement came under tense dispute between industry representatives interested in encouraging positive goodwill about fossil fuels and education advocates who think students should learn the science underlying the climate crisis unfolding around them.

In 2020 two major education advocacy groups—the National Center for Science Education and the Texas Freedom Network—hired experts to grade the science standards of all 50 states and Washington, D.C., based on how they covered the climate crisis. Thirty states and D.C. made As or Bs. Texas was one of six states that made an F. But because Texas is one of the largest textbook purchasers in the nation—and because its elected 15-member State Board of Education has a history of applying a conservative political lens to those textbooks—publishers pay close attention to Texas standards as they create materials they then sell to schools across America. As a former science textbook editor once told me, “I never heard anyone explicitly say, ‘We can't talk about environmentalism because of Texas.’ But we all kind of knew. Everybody kind of knows.” In this way, the proceedings in an Austin boardroom influence what millions of children nationwide are taught. 

And yet, as I learned when I watched 40 hours of live and archived board hearings, reviewed scores of public records and interviewed 15 people involved in the standard-setting process, members of the fossil-fuel industry participated in each stage of the Texas science standards adoption process, working to influence what children learn in the industry's favor. Texas education officials convened teams of volunteers to rewrite the existing standards, and industry members volunteered for those writing teams and shaped the language around energy and climate. Industry members rallied to testify each time proposals to revise standards got a public hearing. When the board considered the rewritten standards for final approval, the industry appealed to members to advance their favored amendments, ensuring that the seemingly local drama in Austin will have outsized consequences.

Right, they all knew. Textbook publishers all knew. The oil companies deny it. But they know all about their own the lies of omission and subversion tactics, plausible deniability be damned. So do Republican politicians, their wealthy donors and the neo-fascist propaganda Leviathan, e.g., Faux News. 

The public doesn't know it. Our children don't know it. They know, we don't. 

Mushrooms: 

Keep 'em in the dark and feed 'em bullshit

Profits from pollution go to the elites at the top, including textbook publishers, while damage caused by lies, ignorance, corruption and subversion flows directly to (i) democracy and transparency, (ii) respect for inconvenient truth, (iii) the environment, and (iv) the public interest. That's just what the marriage of laissez-faire capitalism with Republican Party neo-fascism looks like. It was made in hell and it operates from there with all the morality and social conscience that hell affords, i.e., essentially none at all.

A rant about America's subverted mainstream media (MSM)

Over the last 6 years or so, what appears to be a lethal flaw in the MSM has come into personal view. Other observers saw it before and voiced the concern. 

Specifically, the MSM almost always treats corporate, religious and Republican Party lies, subversion, slanders, corruption and anti-democratic behaviors as just mere conservative politics or just expressing a conservative point of view. This article is a perfect example of excusing morally and socially inexcusable bad behavior with opiates like "its elected 15-member State Board of Education has a history of applying a conservative political lens to those textbooks."

A conservative lens my ass. It is undeniable subversion and corruption of public education for the benefit of everyone who privatizes and trickles up profits from pollution, while they gleefully socialize all the harm. To do that, neo-fascists and the corrupt capitalists have to keep us mushrooms as ignorant and disinformed as they possibly can. If the author of this article would have written something like "its elected 15-member State Board of Education has a history of applying subversion and a corrupt, radical conservative (or neo-fascist) political lens to those textbooks," that would have been accurate. 

This rant is not just about how the MSM deals with climate change. In recent days, the same professional malpractice by the MSM hit a crescendo. MSM pablum and pap was flowing thick and constant in the wake of the Republican Christian nationalist Supreme Court decisions to (1) overturn Roe v. Wade, and (2) to give religious fanatics massive access to tax dollars. Christian nationalists who run the private religious schools are now taxpayer funded. Those religious schools openly discriminate against non-believers, the LGBQT community and anyone else their vengeful, bigoted God deems unworthy and in need of discrimination and oppression. 

Now Christian nationalists have finally forced us idiot taxpayers to pay for their fortresses of hate they call schools. Those fortresses not only subvert children's education, e.g., downplaying climate change, but they also openly oppose civil liberties for all except themselves. This is not just about religious freedom, it is about anti-democratic subversion, lies, corruption and greed. 

In recent months this tendency to soften the reality of what American political and religious and conservatism has become has been been constant. On NPR, grotesque MSM deference to concepts like corruption, subversion, conservatism and religious freedom was horrendous. It raises a question, why support something that is too much in opposition to democracy, truth, civil liberties, etc.? I see the same problem with the New York Times and Washington Post. They just don't get it. 

Q: Does this rant articulate a reality that is as important and pervasive in the MSM as portrayed here, or is that perception more illusion than real? Or, should the MSM maintain respect for subversion, anti-democratic behaviors and corruption for some reason(s), e.g., to maintain (arguably non-existent) credibility with radical right Republicans, or to not offend advertisers, etc.?

What good is it?

In response to the Roe overturn yesterday, a young lady on Twitter asked an interesting question that has stuck with me:

“Has anything good ever come out of Christianity?”

A simple, out of the mouths of babes, kind of question.  I have to admit, I’m hard pressed to think of anything.  Maybe feelings of solace, for those who feel otherwise hopeless in this life, and think they have nowhere else to turn??  But other than such mental comfort, what real good has Christianity ever produced?  On the contrary, it’s showcased a lot of not-so-good role modeling.

If you stand back and look at it, the religion has remarkably survived, even thrived, on hearsay (word of mouth) and rather flimsy circumstantial evidence.  Objectively, there is no direct evidence of any of its claims, including that of the rather bipolar God it portrays.

To me, the whole biblical narrative is rather depressing.  Jesus being treated really badly by his contemporaries.  Stories of rape (which is, btw, how Jesus’s life got started) and other sexual perversions.  Threats of Hell for non-believers and what it takes to self-preserve (attain Heaven); self-preservation being a basal instinct.  Seriously, what is there to like about the religion?  Seems kinda useless to me, but… (yes, that’s just me).

Here's the question: Can you think of anything good that has ever come out of Christianity?  I’m listening.

Supreme Court strikes down Roe v. Wade

The Supreme Court has just published its decision to strike down the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. NBC News writes:

The Supreme Court on Friday overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling that guaranteed a constitutional right to an abortion in a 6-3 vote, a momentous break from a half century of rulings on one of the nation’s most controversial issues. About half the states have already indicated they would move to ban the procedure.

The neo-fascist Republican plan to make America Christian Sharia again is well underway. Red states are going to get rid of abortion, make it a felony and then pass laws to get rid of birth control. Christian nationalists are rejoicing. The rest of us mourn the needless, unjustifiable loss of an important civil liberty.

You're screwed

Regarding the Supreme Court decision to ban gun regulations

The Supreme Court ruled that Americans have a broad right to carry guns in public. That eliminates the New York law. The NRA and gun manufacturers will now file more to obliterate more state and federal gun control laws. California, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts and New Jersey, where about a quarter of all Americans live will be forced to rewrite their laws.

The New York Times writes: 

The 6-to-3 decision again illustrated the power of the six conservative justices, all of whom voted to strike down the New York law, in setting the national agenda on social issues. The court’s three liberal members dissented.

The Second Amendment, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the majority, protects “an individual’s right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home.” States can continue to prohibit guns in some locations like schools and government buildings, Justice Thomas wrote, but the ruling left open where exactly such bans might be allowed.  

The share prices of firearms manufacturers rose on Wall Street, with Smith & Wesson climbing more than 9 percent.  

The majority opinion announced a general standard by which courts must now judge restrictions on gun rights, one that relies on historical assessments: “The government must demonstrate that the regulation is consistent with this nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”

Commentators on NPR noted yesterday that the majority decision completely ignored the most inconvenient aspects of America's historical tradition of firearm regulation. This is an example of the now standard neo-fascist Republican tactic of ignoring, denying, distorting or downplaying inconvenient fact, truth and sound reasoning. That is a necessary element of the rigid ideologue's mindset. Convenient or not, facts and logic do not care about any ideology, political, religious or otherwise. But ideologues care so much that they easily rationalize the inconvenient into something easily swept aside.

In dissent, Breyer argued that “the court’s near-exclusive reliance on history is not only unnecessary, it is deeply impractical. It imposes a task on the lower courts that judges cannot easily accomplish.” And that impracticality is exactly what the neo-fascist Republican majority wanted. This highlights a critically important aspect of the radical right legal strategy to limit the scope of government regulation. By citing vague "principles" such as historical tradition, the radicals leave themselves plenty of room to expand the reach of their own vague ruling. 

The day is coming when most folks will be carrying a loaded gun and gun violence will increase. Then the Republicans will blame the Democrats and liberals for the violence. In response, who knows what the Democrats and liberals might do, if anything. One thing is sure, the executives at Smith & Wesson are breaking out the champagne while they watch the value of their stock rise along with the body count. And, those Republican politicians who take gun money are assured of a continuous flow of cash for service for decades to come.

Regarding the US military budget & federal debt

Common Dreams writes:

'Unconscionable': House Committee Adds $37 Billion 

to Biden's $813 Billion Military Budget

The proposed increase costs 10 times more than preserving the free school lunch program that Congress is allowing to expire "because it's 'too expensive,'" Public Citizen noted.

The Biden administration's March request for $813 billion in military spending for Fiscal Year 2023 already marked a $31 billion increase over the current, historically large sum of $782 billion.

During its markup of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the House Armed Services Committee approved by a 42-17 margin Rep. Jared Golden's (D-Maine) amendment to boost the topline budget by $37 billion.

One can reasonably imagine that the extra $37 billion is for Ukraine and the cost will be added to the federal debt. Things like this are what make the Democrats look too much like the Republicans for my taste. 

We get endless military spending by both parties with vast debt but Republican animosity toward domestic spending and taxes. Complaints always come from Republicans about debt to block domestic spending but never military spending. In large part, our out of control situation reflects the success of the Republican Starve the Beast strategy. Sooner or later the federal debt will come crashing down and most average Americans will experience great pain and suffering.

Wikipedia: Starving the beast is a political strategy employed by American conservatives to limit government spending by cutting taxes, in order to deprive the federal government of revenue in a deliberate effort to force it to reduce spending. The term "the beast", in this context, refers to the United States Federal Government and the programs it funds, using mainly American taxpayer dollars, particularly social programs such as education, welfare, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

On the books debt = a shockingly unmanageable ~$30 trillion

That plus off the books debt = ~$100 trillion

American politics: An escape from freedom and a return to the Dark Ages

Freedom is frightening -- Why?

The fall of reality and enlightenment rationality

to dark ages emotion, bias, and moral cowardice

By now it is clear and undeniable that the GOP stands firmly opposed to democracy, free elections, secularism, pluralism, regulations on businesses and all inconvenient fact, truth and sound reasoning (IFTSR). IFTSR no longer matter. What feels good and self-affirming matters. That sentiment of going with your guts, emotions, biases, intuitions and tribe-cult over IFTSR seems to be something that increasing numbers of Republicans are willing to say in public. 

This mass phenomenon of mental retreat to pre-Enlightenment dark ages seems to be real, not a mirage. It came up when Tucker Carlson admitted in court under oath that he was a liar and no one should believe him. The judge agreed that sane people would not believe the things he said. Despite that public admission, there was no blowback or damage to Carlson's career. His audience does not care about IFTSR. They need to feel good about themselves. They consciously know or unconsciously sense that IFTSR clearly stands against them. They need to find a way to make the cognitive dissonance that IFTSR causes go away. 

So why bother with any concern about IFTSR? Why not just admit that feeling good about one's self is more important than the painful cognitive dissonance? Facing and accepting IFTSR takes moral courage. Believing in comforting lies, falsehoods and crackpot motivated reasoning (LFCMR) is far more pleasant and simple. Moral cowardice feels soooo good. And, it's soooo easy and the smug self-righteousness that comes with good feelings is a blast. So why not just give in and enjoy the fantasy ride?

Moral authority for believing LFCMR comes the the highest political, religious and social authority among the elites that control the Republican Party and its propaganda Leviathan. Those elites are ruthless, professional liars, emotional manipulators and radical crackpots. They have less than no concern for IFTSR. They hate it, deny it, distort it and constantly attack it. Well, if the elites that run your cult or tribe rely heavily on LFCMR, then why not accept it as some form of truth? 

LFCMR certainly feels right, so maybe it is right, IFTSR be damned. 

In my opinion, that "logic" constitutes a basis to mostly understand what most rank and file Republicans are thinking and feeling as they continue to support what is now known to be gigantic lies and even the violent 1/6 coup attempt the GOP leadership downplays as "legitimate political discourse." The elites know exactly what they are doing and what they want, power and wealth. Democracy and free elections stand in the way of power and wealth, so those are under direct attack. 

Really? Come on, this can't be possible!

"Escape From Freedom is an analysis of the phenomenon of man's anxiety engendered by the breakdown of the Medieval World in which, in spite of many dangers, he felt himself secure and safe. .... modern man is still anxious and tempted to surrender his freedoms to dictators of all kinds, or to lose it by transforming himself into a small cog in the machine, well fed and well clothed, yet not a free man but an automaton. .... There can be no doubt that in this last quarter of a century the reasons for man's fear of freedom, for his anxiety and willingness to become an automaton, have not only continued but have greatly increased." -- Erich Fromm, Escape From Freedom, 1941

There is precedent for a mass public mental retreat from political and social IFTSR into political and social LFCMR. It was described by psychiatrist Erich Fromm in his 1941 masterpiece on this issue, Escape From Freedom (book review here). Fromm argued that many people are alienated and overwhelmed by complex modern societies. There is just too much complexity, ambiguity and IFTSR in democracy, tolerance and pluralism. The human mind did not 

evolve the mental capacity to deal calmly and rationally with all of this. 

“. . . . the typical citizen drops down to a lower level of mental performance as soon as he enters the political field. He argues and analyzes in a way which he would readily recognize as infantile within the sphere of his real interests. . . . cherished ideas and judgments we bring to politics are stereotypes and simplifications with little room for adjustment as the facts change. . . . . the real environment is altogether too big, too complex, and too fleeting for direct acquaintance. We are not equipped to deal with so much subtlety, so much variety, so many permutations and combinations. Although we have to act in that environment, we have to reconstruct it on a simpler model before we can manage it.” -- Social scientists Chris Achen and Larry Bartels, Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government, 2016 (book review here)  

Matters are made much worse when the public is constantly bombarded with divisive, confusing, distracting and fear-fomenting LFCMR by social, religious and political leaders. For example, consider Faux News and Tucker Carlson's self-professed tactic of lying, deceiving and dividing society for his livelihood. Consider the torrent of gigantic pro-authoritarian, anti-democracy lies and slanders the ex-president constantly spews. Deceptive, manipulative LFCMR propaganda and tactics offer millions of uncomfortable, frightened Americans the escape from freedom, rationality and cognitive dissonance they desperately seek. They are seeking peace and reassurance from people and interests who intend to deliver neither.

Q: Is it likely that as time passes, most Republicans will openly retreat from cold reality and escape to comforting authoritarian LFCMR, or has that already happened?