Unpleasant truth about Christian nationalism and the damage it causes

In the first 3 minutes of this video, the speaker quotes someone who is honest and blunt about what Christian nationalism (CN) is under MAGA and Trump's toxic influence. In short, MAGA-style CN is intolerant, bigoted, cruel, closed-minded, and deeply hypocritical. The speaker, Jennifer Welsh, is careful to distinguish regular Christians from the theocratic CN wealth and power movement.

Obviously, most CN believers would vehemently disagree with this description of the Trump/MAGA brand of "Christianity". Most of them do not truly understand what they are supporting. Polls indicate that when they are told what they understand, many of them find they are uncomfortable with their brand of Christianity.

Poll data indicates there is a major disconnect between general or rank and file support for vaguely-defined "Christian nation" and CN concepts, and endorsement of Christian nationalism's specific policy agenda. Many rank-and-file supporters simply do not understand what CN leaders advocate. When presented with some details, significant majorities reject core Christian nationalist policies. Hence the need for CN demagoguery weaponized with cruel lies, slanders, irrational emotional manipulation and crackpot reasoning to maintain. That moral rot is necessary for both deceit-driven ignorance and unknowing support for CN elites in power.

Evidence of ignorance includes internal contradictions in CN supporters' views. Among those who say the US should be a Christian nation​, 52% say the government should never declare any official religion. That is a direct contradiction. About 28% actually want Christianity declared as the official faith, while about 52% say government should advocate for moral values shared by SEVERAL religions, not Christian values alone.

What a lot of people do not know or understand, really can get a lot of us killed or seriously damaged. Like demagoguery, ignorance can be deadly.

Qs: Since CN elites are fully aware of majority public sentiment against CN theocracy and policy, what does that say about their personal morality by their knowing use of cruelty, lies, slander, and etc., to deceive people and win their support? Does the means of deceiving people to support CN theocracy amount to moral rot, or a sacred crusade fighting a sacred war to reach sacred Christian theocratic ends that justify morally rotted means? 

Data sources:

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/10/27/views-of-the-u-s-as-a-christian-nation-and-opinions-about-christian-nationalism/

https://religionnews.com/2022/10/27/poll-nearly-half-of-americans-think-the-u-s-should-be-a-christian-nation/

https://prri.org/research/christian-nationalism-across-all-50-states-insights-from-prris-2024-american-values-atlas/

https://ffrf.org/news/releases/good-news-most-americans-continue-to-oppose-christian-nationalism/

A train of thought about rising authoritarianism

CONTEXT

Nowadays, my thinking about politics tends to go back over events and trajectories I've considered multiple times before. Based on their track record, my level of trust in Trump and MAGA elites is nil. That makes sense. Evidence is abundant that they and their motives are morally rotted. That's obvious to almost everyone not trapped in MAGA's demagoguery, lies, slanders, cynical emotional manipulation, bigotry, racism, crackpottery, etc. To most of those trapped minds, MAGA's moral rot is inconceivable and simply not true.

COMMENTARY

A NYT article (not paywalled), How a Scholar Nudged the Supreme Court Toward Its Troop Deployment Ruling, triggered alarms. It instantly elicited a very bad smell, so to speak. The MSM reporting says, more or less, the USSC put the brakes on Trump's efforts to convert America into a military dictatorship. The MSM boobs framed the decision as slapping Trump down or something about like that. My intuition was that (1) the MSM's reporting was dreadfully misplaced, and (2) something really bad had happened in that shadow docket decision. 

Was my intuition right? Yes, it was mostly right. In a long Q&A session with Pxy, I analyzed my reflex assessment. It was basically right. The USSC shadow docket decision wasn't so bad for Trump or the continuing rise of corrupt authoritarianism. Trump is free to continue to build his dictatorship that includes a military police state. 

The MSM reports that the decision seriously limited Trump's power, but the MSM got that wrong. MAGA elites can use different paths to the same end. But why decide this at all? For political reasons, that's why. The three MAGA judges can use this decision to try to hide their pro-kleptocracy and pro-dictatorship sympathies. The decision is MAGA political theater in support of dictatorship and corruption. The three Democratic judges are trapped and powerless to do squat about it.

Pxy's analysis and commentary is TL/TC*/DR. So, I'll post just two of my 7-9 queries. You can probably guess the gist of Pxy's responses to these two.

* TC = too complicated

• This was the last query in the whole Q&A series -- it raises the matter of the one-way ratchet (and this) from democracy to dictatorship I have raised here before: Were the three Democratic judges in a lose-lose situation in this shadow docket decision?

• This query deals with the MSM's constant reporting failures: Your analysis asserts this: "The answer appears to be: treat mainstream media as compromised, seek alternative sources, read critically for structural distortions, and recognize that defending democracy requires building information infrastructure that corporate media can no longer provide." I deal with MAGA people online all of the time. They have been taught to deeply distrust the MSM. Now, with the MSM being compromised as you assert, and I believe to be true, there is no source of authority left to point to. Almost all political discourse has been corrupted into shouting matches over opinions, regardless of whether facts support or contradict those opinions. That is my current experience. Even when I cite rock solid facts that support my arguments, the facts are rejected out of hand by many MAGA people as lies, and I am insulted as a liar, stupid, a communist or something else bad. How the hell can anyone carry on a rational discussion any more? To me, this collapse of trust in facts, sound reasoning, experts and the MSM are harbingers of the failure of our democracy, rule of law and civil liberties. Am I over-reacting here?

Onesies for the little MAGAfers!

Democrat chances in 2026.

 Depends off course which pundits one believes. Which media outlet can spin the likelihood.

So, how about a dose of reality?

The underrated factors limiting the power of a blue wave next year

https://www.politico.com/interactives/2025/democrats-2026-midterm-flips-redistricting-data/

There’s a key factor limiting the power of a potential Democratic surge next year: the number of seats that are realistically competitive.

Even as this year’s election results have left many in the party encouraged they can mount a massive blue wave, next year’s battleground is a far cry from 2018 — with fewer Republican-held seats for Democrats to easily target.

Gerrymandering is the major cause of the shrinking House map. Even before some states redrew their maps this year — and others potentially do so early next year — partisan redistricting after the 2020 U.S. Census had already left fewer battlegrounds on the table. After the 2020 election, for example, there were 93 congressional districts that had been within 10 points at the presidential level. But when the maps were redrawn, there were just 79 such districts.

BUT.............

In a wave year, Democrats can still play in some truly red seats. 

Snowflake's bold prediction: The Blue Wave will win the House, but not the Senate.

The fusion of Christianity and capitalism

These assertions triggered some thoughts: "America isn't a Christian nation. It is a capitalist nation that has used Christianity as a tool for profit and it continues to do so."

The statement is highly consistent with historical, sociological, and legal trajectory of the US. It is reductive but captures a dominant reality: American Christianity and American capitalism have fused. The latter usually shapes and controls the former. In particular, the current legal trajectory of American Christianity is it imposition by the six Christian theocrats that dominate the USSC. They are well on their way to imposing Christian religious belief and rights above all other rights. That is theocracy, the opposite of secularism. 

Forgotten and distorted history

As is always prudent when thinking about unregulated capitalism, an inherently immoral, authoritarian endeavor, keeping an eye on where power and wealth tends to flow helps keep less distorted reality in sight. Contrary to the popular narrative of a linear religious founding, the modern concept of America as a unified "Christian Nation" was significantly engineered in the mid-20th century as a political weapon against the New Deal. The capitalists of the time, just like the ones now, hated the New Deal.

Historians have documented the rise of the Christian Libertarian Alliance. In the 1930s and 40s, corporate leaders operating under the National Association of Manufacturers allied with conservative clergy to rebrand unregulated capitalism as a core tenet of Christianity.

Those elites didn't just reframe capitalism, they reframed freedom. Their alliance sought to dismantle the New Deal's freedom from want, which implied government welfare. That was to be replaced by freedom of contract and freedom of unregulated markets. By linking capitalism to God's will, they successfully framed government regulation not just as bad economics, but as pagan statism and other very bad things.

The result was no surprise. Integrating Under God into the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954, and In God We Trust as the national motto in 1956, were not returns to 1776. They were but Cold War-era branding exercises that sanctified the American capitalist economic system against godless communism.

The claim that Christianity has been used as a tool for profit is most visibly validated by the systematic transformation of religious holidays into engines of consumer spending. In the 19th century, Department stores like Macy's, and Wanamaker's transformed Christmas from a religious feast with a rowdy carnival to a domestic, gift-giving mandate. Santa Claus was standardized by Thomas Nast and Coca-Cola marketing to drive 4th quarter retail solvency.

Similarly, in the 1870s, milliners and clothiers converted Easter from a religious observance of the resurrection of Jesus into a spectacle of new spring clothing. The Easter Parade was started as a display of new spring clothing, not a religious procession. In the 1980s, capitalism sink its claws into Halloween and transformed it from a localized prank night into a multi-billion dollar season by candy manufacturers and costume retailers. It's now the second-largest commercial holiday.

Sacred rest vs. sacred retail hours

Arguably, the repeal of nationwide Sunday Blue Laws is the smoking gun for the dominance of capitalism over Christianity. When the religious imperative to keep the Sabbath holy clashed with the commercial imperative to maximize retail hours, the laws were repealed across the country. The Christian Nation effectively voted that shopping was more sacred than holy rest.

Regarding the flow of power and wealth

Finally, what about the flow power and wealth? Also no surprise there. 

In recent decades, the language of religious freedom has been weaponized to transfer power from the public sphere to private corporations. The USSC invented the corporate "soul" in its 2014 Hobby Lobby decision. The USSC’s decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby was a critical turning point. By granting closely held corporations rights previously reserved for human beings, including the right to a religious conscience, the court allowed commercial entities to opt out of a number of federal laws. The law that triggered that lawsuit specifically, was the Obamacare's contraception mandate.

The Hobby Lobby decision granted corporate owners commercial interest the power to override the public interest, e.g., universal healthcare access, by claiming a religious shield. It is not It is not merely the case that the state is becoming religious. More importantly, corporations are adopting the legal privileges of religion to evade state regulation. and social obligations.

Circling back to the opening assertions, America isn't a Christian nation. It is a capitalist nation that has used Christianity as a tool for profit and it continues to do so, one can argue that the statements are accurate from a both a sociological and a historical perspective. Yes indeed, millions of Americans practice a genuine, non-commercial faith. But that does not change the fact that the institutional function of Christianity in American society has been that of a chaplain and quiet enforcer supporting capitalism's wealth and power goals. 

And us deceived and betrayed taxpayers are supporting and empowering it, whether we know it or not, or if we do, whether we like it or not.

Sources: 

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/04/corporate-america-invented-religious-right-conservative-roosevelt-princeton-117030/ 

https://newrepublic.com/article/121564/gods-and-profits-how-capitalism-and-christianity-aligned-america

https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/sunday-blue-laws/

https://openlibrary.org/books/OL7756407M/Consumer_Rites

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/122132/the-battle-for-christmas-by-stephen-nissenbaum/

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/573/682/

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00213624.2019.1594528

Exactly what did DOGE do? Exactly what MAGA intended it to do

The NYT and other sources have reported on the cost-benefit of DOGE. Although the DOGE initiative was billed as cost cutting and saving, that was never a credible description of intent. Instead, it looked like and actually was primarily an effort to intimidate federal workers, and begin to disrupt and weaken public interest functions such as protections for consumers, workers, federal employees and the environment. And as usual for MAGA operations, Trump and MAGA elites lied about it. One analysis found actual savings were about 3% of what DOGE claimed.

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk from January to May 2025, claimed to have saved the federal government between $150 billion and $199 billion through widespread cuts to contracts, grants, and federal employment. However, comprehensive analysis by The New York Times, the Cato Institute, the Partnership for Public Service, and other authoritative sources reveals the claims are false. Federal spending actually increased during DOGE's tenure. Many of its largest savings claims were demonstrable lies. DOGE probably cost taxpayers more than it saved when accounting for lost tax revenue, rehiring expenses, and productivity losses.

Project 2025 explicitly outlined plans to dismantle federal agencies and the administrative state before DOGE was announced. Russell Vought, a key DOGE architect, was a Project 2025 author who explicitly stated the goal was to put federal workers in trauma in 2023. In a 2023 speech Vought, now the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, attacked federal workers explicitly, saying "We want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains"​, "We want to put them in trauma"​, and "We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected".

The obvious problems with bureaucrats doing their jobs is that they get in the way of dictatorship and kleptocracy. They clearly need to go.

Thus, Project 2025, Trump's history, and the broader MAGA agenda made the actual anti-public interest intent clear from the beginning. Taking the "cost-cutting" rhetoric at face value was and still is irrational when all evidence pointed to MAGA's anti-public interest goals.

From the Trump and elite MAGA point of view, it was MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! 👍 for DOGE.

How a person sees things can depend on their point of view. 

Trump, with his cruelty and lawlessness

A couple of months ago, a post here focused on reporting about the fall of CBS News to the authoritarian, kleptocratic MAGA dark side. At that time, Bari Weiss, a vehemently pro-Trump, radical Zionist propagandist was put in charge by a pro-Trump billionaire's fortune and power, David Ellis. Last Sunday, Weiss censored reporting about Trump's cruelty and lawlessness in a segment that was to be aired on 60 Minutes. 

Weiss censored the segment because it plainly shows exactly what Trump is doing. At least at the moment, the segment can be viewed at this link. CBS has been trying hard to protect Trump by blocking this video to hide from the public what Trump is doing. This video may disappear.

Reasonable people should be furious with Trump, MAGA elites and their morally rotted demagoguery

Various sources are reporting that the corrupt, lying Trump administration released a faked photo allegedly from the Epstein files. MAGA's intent is to smear Democrats with a fake photo. The reporting says that the photo was taken years ago at a Democratic Party fundraiser. The photo shows Bill Clinton, Michael Jackson, Diana Ross and the redacted images of two children. The redactions were allegedly "to protect their identity" the children's identities as victims of Epstein sex trafficking. The reporting says that it's a lie. The reporting claims that children were Diana Ross' kids and they were at a Democratic Party fundraiser, not sex trafficked minors in some hellhole sex den.

Here's the reason for fury. I was unable to find the original photo online, so I have no way to verify that MAGA scumbags working for Trump lied about the origin of the photo. It is perfectly believable that Trump and his morally rotted scumbags would try such a dirty trick. But given decades of constant disinformation that MAGA and its predecessors have poisoned American society with, I want to see the original, unredacted photo for myself as proof that MAGA scumbags tried to lie to us by smearing Clinton and Democrats. 

One can rationally be furious at years of MAGA's shameless, morally rotted lying and slandering. That created the conditions for deep distrust. Also, years of failure by the mainstream media's poor quality reporting is just enough to tip too many people into distrust of most or nearly all of what the MSM reports.

Absent the proof of seeing the original photo, one is left to form an opinion without that evidence. The track record of constant, shameless mendacity of Trump and his MAGA scumbags is crystal clear. Yes, they lie to us all the time. So despite too many inexcusable MSM failures, one can still reasonably believe the MSM's reporting that Trump is yet again again insulting us by lying to us with his faked photo. 

But, take that belief with a grain of salt. 

Irrational cynicism or rational skepticism?

With a "no conclusion without primary evidence" mindset, it's a matter of of intellectual humility and "evidence‑first" thinking. Some experts now argue is necessary to resist demagoguery and motivated reasoning from any side. One can argue that fury at this situation is appropriate. 

The erosion of public trust is not just random cultural drift. The state of moral rot in American politics is the result of years of bad choices by parties, media corporations, and demagogic actors who accumulate wealth and power from a public wandering in a permanent epistemic fog. As Steve Banon eloquently puts it, the demagogues' mind fogging tactic is called flooding the zone with shit.​ That society-bamboozling tactic dates back at least to the 1800s with the rise of mass media sources. Recent research on demagogues and social media reveals that demagogues weaponize platforms by constantly generating controversies, lies, and outrages so that fact‑checking cannot keep up and citizens lose any stable sense of what is real.

The demagogue's goal

From a pro-democracy point of view, refusing to draw strong conclusions without seeing the original evidence is not irrational cynicism. It is rational, protective skepticism in a deliberately poisoned society.

Whose fault is all of this? My estimate:

Years of demagoguery by anti-democracy special interests (Fox News, etc.), MAGA and MAGA predecessors: ~45%

Years of MSM reporting failure: ~20% 

Unwarranted public ignorance and false beliefs: ~35%

Obviously, opinions will differ.

Proving Santa is a Real person

 If he weren't, would NORAD be involved in tracking him?

This Christmas season marks seven decades of the North American Aerospace Defense Command tracking Santa Claus on radar as he flies his reindeer-powered sleigh around the globe. 

"NORAD tracks Santa, but only Santa knows his route, which means we cannot predict where and when he will arrive at your house," said a senior NORAD official. 

Fighter pilots have intercepted Santa many times over the years. When they do, the pilots tip their wings in greetings and often take photos, the official said. 

https://www.war.gov/News/Feature-Stories/Story/Article/4361832/norad-celebrates-70-years-of-tracking-santa/

On Dec. 24, trackers worldwide can call 1-877-HI-NORAD (1-877-446-6723) to ask our live operators about Santa’s location from 4 a.m. to midnight MST. Additionally, we are introducing a web-based calling option so children without the means to reach NORAD via phone number can call the NORAD Tracks Santa Operations Center directly from our noradsanta.org website. Virtual translation services will also be able to support more than 200 languages via our call center. While live operators will be unavailable after midnight MST, trackers can continue to follow Santa’s flight until 3 a.m. on Dec. 25 by calling and listening to our Interactive Voice Response system or visiting our website.

NORAD Tracks Santa is a global experience, and the U.S. and Canadian personnel of NORAD are proud to continue the tradition of delighting families everywhere.......

https://www.norad.mil/Newsroom/Press-Releases/Article/4344350/norad-ready-to-track-

santas-flight-for-70th-anniversary-year/

https://www.noradsanta.org/en/

In the spirit of the Season please ignore that NORAD is now under the Department of War. 

Theocracy threat

The danger of religious zealotry

Nowadays, unease with religion is a sentiment that is increasingly being voiced. That's for darned good reasons. For example take these comments from NYT opinionator Ezra Klein's opinion directly states the concern (not paywalled):

Religion is one of the most dangerous forces on earth.

If you’ve ever encountered true fundamentalists, you know why. When you combine eternal stakes with absolute certainty, it produces the kind of people who are happy to be cruel in the name of God.

In fact, they can view their cruelty as a form of kindness. If they treat you with decency, doesn’t that make you comfortable in your sin? It’s important for them to take opportunities to confront people when you can — in other words, to tell people that they’re wrong, often in the most strident of ways. How else will they understand the gravity of their own sin?

To the fundamentalist, disagreement is proof of apostasy. But it can be even worse than that — if you’re wrong, then you might lead other people into error, and that makes you dangerous.

That’s one reason fundamentalists of all stripes are often such zealous censors. A fundamentalist can see every person who’s wrong as a kind of Patient Zero in a potential pandemic of paganism.

Patient zero? Yup. Some of those are lurking around here somewhere. As the Daleks like to say, Exterminate! Exterminate! Exterminate!

A true believer dealing with patient zero

Rational reasons for distrust: The redacted Epstein files

By now, nearly everyone who is paying attention and not trapped in the Trump/MAGA cult/tribe/demagoguery understands that they are routinely being lied to, slandered, insulted, emotionally manipulated and so forth. Years ago, the situation progressed far beyond the point of there being good rational arguments that Trump or MAGA elites could be trusted.

Nonetheless, tens of millions of adult Americans still trust Trump and MAGA demagoguery at least enough to continue to support them. That constitutes an ongoing, major threat to US democracy, rule of law and civil liberties.

Various news sources are reporting about the Epstein files that were released yesterday by the DOJ. Trump's personal law firm. What MAGA elites released is what reasonable people can now expect, nothingburgers that protect MAGA and Trump, with their deep corruption, moral sleaze and blatant authoritarianism. One report indicates that out of several thousand pages of documents that the MAGA DOJ released, at least 550 pages were completely redacted or blacked out. 

One can be confident that anything bad or criminal in the documents related to Trump and his key allies was redacted to protect them. That just what a personal law firm does for its clients.

It is possible that at least some of the redactions were for legitimate purposes, e.g., to protect innocent victims' identity. But one can still be confident that redactions to protect Trump and his allies are also present and probably dominant.

That distrust is just a rational result after years and thousands of lies and betrayals by Trump and MAGA elites. What is remarkable is the tens of millions who actually still believe him and MAGA elites.

Professional journalism as critical democratic infrastructure

By now it is clear that professional journalism (PJ) and the MSM (mainstream media) generally are failing and collapsing. Under MAGA authoritarianism and corruption, PJ is inherently and unavoidably inimical to and incompatible with unregulated capitalism. Even NPR and PBS have capitulated to threats by Trump and elite MAGA authoritarians. Nearly all current MSM reporting about Trump and MAGA authoritarianism and corruption is shallow and timid. MSM reporting focuses mostly on procedural trivia. That avoids even mentioning the ghastly adverse impacts on democracy, the rule of law, civil liberties and profound corruption that now runs rampant in the federal government and commerce. 

The MSM makes itself look like its doing serious reporting by deflecting to trivia. But to a large extent, the MSM is not what it tries to make itself look like. American PJ is now a lot more mirage than reality.

The main culprit driving the collapse of the MSM is corporate and investor ownership spurred on by the routinely ruthless, cruel and immoral profit motive. Money and power talks while everything else walks, including pluralistic morality and honesty. 

Capitalism has its own set of moral vales. They are called the profit motive.

What about democracy and the rule of law?

It is definitely time to see PJ for what it can be, and arguably what it is supposed to be but isn't. It is critical democracy infrastructure.[1] It cannot fulfil its function if it is trapped and subdued by the profit motive. Many times here, I've asserted that facts, true truth and sound reasoning are almost always inherently and intractably incompatible with unregulated capitalism. The moral logic is simple.

When a society is deceived or kept ignorant of the information and reasoning they need to be aware of for self-governance, their power to decide their own fate on the basis of facts, true truths and sound reasoning has been taken from them by those to deceive and hide information that is inconvenient to themselves. That is the epitome of authoritarianism. It is anti-democratic behavior, pure and simple.

That is why tyrants, demagogues, theocrats, oligarchs, dictators, and kleptocrats all hate PJ. They hate it. They all want to neuter PJ and make it shut up. That is historical and current fact, not opinion.  

If one accepts that analysis as basically true, then it it easy to see the argument that PJ is critical infrastructure democracy needs to fend off authoritarianism. This is not remotely close to rocket science. It is simple, rational thinking based on a few key facts. Middle school-level stuff, unless one is deceived and manipulated. For the deceived and manipulated, it is rocket science.

What, if anything, can be done?

Right now with MAGA authoritarianism and demagoguery in power and control, nothing can be done to protect PJ. Complicit and/or supportive corporate ownership will made damned sure that the MSM will continue to weaken and fade as a pro-democracy institution. In time MAGA and authoritarianism will convert what is left of PJ and the MSM into pro-authoritarian, pro-corruption demagoguery sources just like Fox News has been for years.

In a hypothetical better world, most Americans could come to see that PJ and themselves being less deceived and manipulated are critically necessary for defense of democracy. People acting on their own cannot gather the information they need to self-govern. They must rely on trustworthy PJ. Right now, that is politically impossible for too many people. MAGA demagoguery and irrational emotional manipulation had captured and hold the minds of tens of millions of Americans. Those minds have empowered the rise of deeply corrupt American authoritarianism.

As long as the price of groceries and rent stay low enough, Americans probably will choose to keep deeply corrupt American authoritarianism in power. In politics, people vote what they perceives as their interests, even if what they perceive is a demagogic mirage. Many simply don't vote on the basis of abstractions like democracy, the rule of law or civil liberties.

In the hypothetical better world, our government would support and protect PJ and its defense of facts, true truths and sound reasoning, which amounts to a defense of democracy, the rule of law and civil liberties. Sadly, in our actual real world our government is now a bitter enemy of PJ. A hypothetical moral government would treat PJ as critical infrastructure for democracy. At the moment, our government is an opposite immoral beast.

A hypothetical better world where government treats journalism as infrastructure does exist. Sweden and other Nordic countries fund public media through dedicated taxes handled separately from annual budgets. There are arms-length buffers protecting editorial PJ independence from political pressure, unlike what has happened in the US. Research shows publicly funded journalism sometimes is more aggressive (and this) in covering government than commercial counterparts. It is also more accountable to communities than to shareholders.

 

Footnote:

1. Research solidly supports the assertion (and this) that professional journalism is critical democratic infrastructure. The relationship between journalism and democratic health is now one of the most empirically robust findings in media studies: local newspaper closures correlate with lower voter turnout, reduced civic engagement, higher municipal borrowing costs (indicating less accountability), and increased political polarization. Scholars explicitly frame PJ as essential democratic infrastructure that cannot function properly under pure market logic, i.e., the profit motive.

Claims that tyrants, oligarchs, theocrats, and authoritarians generally target PJ is historical and current fact (and this). The authoritarian playbook across Hungary, Turkey, Russia, Egypt, Philippines, and the US follows a consistent pattern. They buy up independent media through allies, redirect state advertising to compliant outlets, and use libel laws and licensing threats to silence critics, imprison journalists, and create legal frameworks that criminalize dissent.

Regarding Trump's speech last night and MSM complicity

Yesterday, I wrote to PBS and NPR asking them to not broadcast Trump's speech. That is because one could reasonably expect his speech to be mostly anti-democratic, authoritarian demagoguery heavily larded with lies, slanders, crackpot reasoning and deranged blither. Why bother broadcasting malicious evil? After all, PBS and NPR could easily just summarize the speech after it was over instead of giving Trump and his evil millions of dollars worth of free advertising.

When I checked this morning, both apparently broadcast it live. No surprise there. Willing or not, PBS and NPR are complicit in MAGA demagoguery, authoritarianism and corruption. Those two sources betrayed us and our democracy. Along with the rest of the MSM (mainstream media), they get a well-deserved grade of F-.

What was the speech?

One can ask, was the speech mostly authoritarian demagoguery, mostly democratic honest speech, or mostly something else? Was it larded with lies, slanders and crackpot reasoning as usual? The answers are no surprise. It was mostly authoritarian demagoguery and larded with lies, slanders and crackpot reasoning.

PolitiFact pointed out numerous lies and misleading assertions. Some of the lies, e.g., drug prices have dropped by 100% or more, are not just blatant lies, but insulting lies. Trump claimed
he worked to "slash prices on drugs and pharmaceuticals by as much as 400, 500, and even 600%". However, none of that sleaze fazes most Trump supporters. They rationalize Trump's lies into nothingburgers like this:

Trump repeated a series of debunked lies and introduced new whoppers. His lies included fibs about inflation, gas prices, job growth, investment totals and the trajectory of the cost of living. Independent data sharply contradicted some of his claims, such as an 18 trillion dollar investment and his assertion of broad “price drops”. He exaggerated reality by large margins.

Why did everyone broadcast it?

Given that everyone knew in advance that Trump would spew toxic lies, slanders and crackpottery, why broadcast it? Why did the MSM broadcast Trump's filth, insults and lies? Was it a mostly matter of complicity due to sympathetic corporate and investor ownership? Was it mostly due to incompetence and/or stupidity? Something else?

Available evidence leads to a reasonable belief that the MSM's decision to broadcast Trump's malicious speech reflects primarily corporate profit-seeking combined with intimidation. It was not primarily a matter of good-faith news judgment or shocking incompetence/stupidity. Everyone knew in advance exactly what Trump would deliver. He delivered as expected.

Networks deliberately broke precedent by airing this overtly partisan address. Now, contrast that with how the MSM treated Biden. In 2022, the major broadcast networks refused Biden primetime access for a democracy speech, dismissing it as too political. Instead they aired reruns of Law & Order and Young Sheldon. But those same networks preempted season finales of major shows, e.g., Survivor on CBS and The Floor on Fox, to carry Trump's transparently partisan attack speech that the White House itself billed as touting "historic accomplishments" rather than announcing policy or addressing any crisis.

Does anyone see any hypocrisy here?

What about PBS and NPR?: PBS and NPR probably broadcast the speech primarily out of fear of Trump's threats, not profit motive. They don't operate on an advertising-based profit model like commercial networks. PBS and NPR were still fighting lawsuits against Trump's defunding order as of yesterday. They very likely calculated that refusing to air a presidential address, despite it being pure propaganda, would​provide evidence supporting Trump's "biased media" claims in pending court cases. In turn, that would give him additional justification for further attacks and revocation of their broadcast licenses. In essence, Trump now has the power to coerce collaboration by institutions Trump is in the process of actively destroying.

We're screwed. So is our democracy, rule of law, civil liberties, and transparency and honesty in government. 

From the dark free speech files: The rising scourge of the vaccine denial religion

Hand-to-hand combat

with crackpots

For better or worse, inventing and spewing anti-vaccine lies and crackpottery is protected free speech. Actually, it is for the worse for public health, democracy, respect for experts and empirical facts. Arguably devastating. Yes, vaccine denial is inherently anti-democratic at least in terms of state of mind. When the denial mindset manifests in politics, it is in fact anti-democracy.

A NYT opinion (not paywalled) discusses the ongoing rise and toxic influence of vaccine denialism. Innocent people will be needlessly and avoidably killed. But, a pile of corpses doesn't faze vaccine crackpots and deniers. Vaccine denial is and probably always has been, more or less, a faith-based religion, not science. Anti-vaccine religion, like all or nearly all others, cannot be rationally engaged with.

What is troubling about this opinion by a non-expert is their observation that even trying to calmly and respectfully engage with vaccine deniers may be more damaging than beneficial. That is something I do not recall having heard before, but maybe my memory is faulty on this point.

The NYT opinionator, Jessica Grose, is not a vaccine expert. She is an opinion person. She describes a YouTube program where a vaccine science believer, Dr. Mikhail Varshavski, a New Jersey-based family medicine physician. He is also a medical social media influencer better known as Dr. Mike. On the show, he tussled with vaccine science deniers for a few hours and they bickered about how good or bad a job RFK Jr. is doing with public health and public health matters. 

Gorse believes that Kennedy’s supporters do not have a reasonable grasp of the science they argue. I agree with that. Despite truth in some of the facts they recite, the facts are usually grossly distorted, or cherry picked and taken out of context. Their arguments fail on fundamental principles of fact, reason, science and last but maybe equally important, the Principle of Charity. 

Gorse commented that she wrote a column suggesting that public debates like this one with Dr. Mike would be a useful way to rebuild Americans' trust in vaccines. She believed in the sunshine effect of publicly airing anti-vaccine arguments and debunking them with evidence and reason. Apparently, the Dr. Mike episode and other things changed her mind about that. She lost faith that debating staunch advocates of Kennedy's crackpot public health agenda can build public trust back. 

Her core conclusion is that in a format where someone with real scientific expertise is put on the same level as an passionate layperson, is not going to work as long as Kennedy is in office. She wrote:

As of Dec. 12, there were 126 confirmed cases of measles in an ongoing outbreak in South Carolina, and 119 of those cases were among unvaccinated people. Almost all of the people affected were under 18. The United States is on track to lose its measles elimination status. While a vast majority of parents are still giving their children basic childhood inoculations, anti-vaccine influencers continue to chip away at the public’s trust.

I could probably be construed as a public health influencer, and I will continue to write about these issues, even though I worry that it is increasingly futile. I just think they are wasting their time debating MAHA types on social media or podcasts.

I agree in part with her analysis and conclusion. But the problem is broader, deeper and more threatening than just Kennedy's seriously threatening public health crackpottery. The big problem is decades of bigoted, corrupt, authoritarian demagoguery by MAGA propagandists and their recent predecessors like Rush Limbaugh and Fox News. This is not a problem confined to public health disasters like Trump putting the crackpot Kennedy in power. This same problem now pervades and poisons most or all of government and most or all pro-democracy, pro-public interest government functions. The American public has been taught and learned to (i) trust demagoguery, crackpots and intolerant authoritarianism, and (ii) distrust actual experts and tolerant democracy.

Our situation cannot be undone just by making Kennedy go away. It very likely cannot be undone even by making Trump go away. MAGA has sunk deep roots into (1) the minds of tens of millions of Americans, and (2) pro-democracy and pro-public interest federal functions. That did not happen overnight or in a year. It took decades and tens of billions of dollars to poison, persuade and trap those minds. It was a massive, prolonged war for minds. MAGA authoritarianism won. That war and trapped enough minds so that MAGA authoritarianism is in power.

The thing is though, Gorse and others have not figured out an effective way to combat pro-authoritarian MAGA demagoguery. Unfortunately, there probably is no effective way to do that. That belief is based on the usual culprits, human cognitive biology and social behavior. The ineffective sunshine method to kill nonsense that Gorse still engages with despite her lost faith, is probably the best non-violent weapon that pro-democracy, pro-truth people have to fight with. 

Although fighting dark free speech and demagoguery with honest speech isn't fully effective, maybe it will be just barely effective enough to save our democracy and rule of law. However, if anyone has a better weapon or tactic to suggest, it would be great to hear about it.

MAGA continues to cynically dismantle public interest protections

 In Project 2025, one of the high priority targets to destroy was the CFPB (Consumer Finance Protection Bureau). That federal agency protected consumer finance activity, including protections against discrimination in lending to women and minorities. Soon after being sworn in, Trump halted most CFPB consumer protection activities related to fair lending enforcement based on disparate impact and systemic discrimination. It now focuses on small matters. 

To make matters worse for the public interest, the MAGA CFPB is proposing new rules that will essentially eliminate key protections for woman and minorities. Trump's April 2025 Executive Order on Restoring Equality of Opportunity inspired the proposed new rules. The anti-consumer sleight of hand here is by now a standard MAGA tactic to drain power from citizen protections and shift it to special interests, financial institutions in this case. The old CFPB has rules against discriminating against women and minorities. The new proposed rules calls those old ones discriminatory. The new proposal will eliminate those protections almost completely, if not completely. As usual, MAGA elites leave a fig leaf in place to hide the gaping wound the new rules will inflict. 

MAGA cynically frames its proposal as restoring "meritocracy" and "colorblindness". But its practical effect is to remove the main legal tools the CFPB had to challenge systemic discrimination and to prohibit programs designed to specifically help underserved groups. Under the new rules, a borrower can no longer challenge lender policies that are neutral on paper but discriminatory in practice. Thanks to MAGA, redlining with its segregated neighborhoods is making a comeback!

The new rules also requiring proof of explicit intentional discrimination, "disparate treatment". That effectively legalizes institutional practices that discriminate against women and minorities, as long as a lender does not explicitly say they have a discriminatory motive or reason for denying loans to target groups. 

What are the primary motives here? Probably greed first followed by inherent MAGA bigotry-racism-misogyny. In a December 14, 2025 letter, the American Banking Association explicitly endorsed removing protections for minorities and women. The banks complained about "regulatory ambiguity" and "arbitrary government enforcement" to cover profit motive lust. While big banks previously claimed to support DEI, they now actively support removing the rules that enforce it. MAGA's demagogic "woke" panic and a crackpot "debanking" narrative provide perfect cover. Banks now claim (1) they are being forced to stop the illusory "discriminating against conservatives" (debanking) narrative, and (2) removing disparate impact is just "restoring meritocracy". Meanwhile, the financial institutions will quietly pocket profits from deregulation.

MAGA's and the banks' mendacity and cynicism in this are jaw-dropping to say the least.

Scientific measurement of routine 

MAGA demagoguery

MAGA's authoritarian surveillance state

The bad news continues to flow as our democracy, rule of law and civil liberties continue to fade.

MAGA's authoritarian surveillance state gains reach and power 

The HDS (Department of Homeland Security) is proposing a vast expansion in government surveillance reach and power. This is aggressive and intrusive based on no evidence and crackpot reasoning. What DHS proposes is a drastic, unconstitutional expansion of the MAGA's surveillance state capabilities. The fig leaf to hide the illegality and authoritarianism is alleged border security needs. In recent years, the CBP (Customs and Border Control) increased biometric data collection, but this specific vast expansion crosses red lines regarding privacy, genetic sovereignty, and guilt-by-association.

The most radical shift is the expansion of "biometrics" to explicitly include DNA and iris scans for nearly all Form I-94 applicants (all tourists, business travelers, students and foreign workers). Before this, biometrics were limited to fingerprints and face photos. 

Requiring DNA submission for routine tourist or business travel treats every entrant as a criminal suspect. DNA collection is usually reserved for arrestees, not tourists or business travelers. There is no immediate security utility for DNA in a typical border crossing scenario that fingerprints or face photos do not already provide.

But wait!! There's much more: Worse than all of that, the proposed changes mandate collecting intrusive data about a traveler's family. That includes (1) family member telephone numbers used in the last five years, and (2)​ family member dates of birth, places of birth, and residencies. By demanding 5 years of phone history for family members, the government is effectively building a surveillance database of people who are not crossing the border. That includes millions of US citizens who are related to foreign visitors. This requirement means that a traveler's eligibility can depend on the conduct or identity of their remote relatives. It is a classic tool of authoritarian regimes to leverage family data to pressure or monitor individuals.

The perjury trap: The 5-year data requirement requirement is administratively absurd. Most people cannot accurately recall every family member phone number over a five-year period. This intentionally creates a perjury trap. Inevitable minor errors can be used to deny entry or revoke visas later. 

Unneeded and unjustifiable: Although the stated goal is identity verification, current e-Passports (with chips), facial recognition, and 10-print fingerprinting is already statistically almost perfect for proving identity. Adding iris and DNA would yield diminishing very little added security while exponentially increasing privacy risk.

The DHS notice cites an "unanticipated event" to justify an emergency clearance, but it fails to explain why historic family phone numbers are suddenly critical for national security. Common sense says it will rarely be useful. However, this vague justification is evidence the MAGA government is fabricating a crisis to permanently expand its authoritarian powers. These changes transform the I-94 from a travel document into a comprehensive intelligence dossier. It demands that visitors surrender not just their own privacy (genetic data), but the privacy of their entire family tree (contact history).

Why I keep taking insults and reality-detached nonsense from MAGA people

Occasionally someone muses out loud about why I keep doing this in view of its apparent futility. Short answer is that this is the best means of defense of democracy, rule of law and civil liberties I can contribute to with what I believe to be at least some modest degree of competence. Obviously, MAGA people would vigorously disagree, to say the least.

If I recall right, the social science research I'm aware of that touches on the problem of being unable to speak rationally to closed minded people raises two points:

MAGA's Epistemic exhaustion tactic

    Point 1. Over time, speaking truth to closed minds occasionally gets through and creates some reasonable doubt, even if those minds do not change. Reasonable doubt is better than no doubt or cynicism. Reasonable doubt (evidence and reason-based, healthy skepticism) also tends to humanize the targets of false beliefs, e.g., just about everyone who disagrees with a MAGA person about something in politics.

Research indicates that not all "doubt" is the same. Doubt created by honest speech typically fosters skepticism, while doubt created by demagoguery tends to foster cynicism. Demagogues use toxic doubt as a shield against trust. It cynically leads people to falsely assume that everyone they disagree with is lying, corrupt, or self-interested.

Studies show that cynicism (sometimes called "cynical hostility") is correlated with lower cognitive ability, poor mental health, and crucially, dehumanization.

Demagogues don't just lead people to doubt a fact; they get them doubt the existence of truth itself. This state has been called epistemic arrogance" or epistemic exhaustion." That mental state leads people to view others not as mistaken (human) but as intentional deceptive manipulators (monsters), which justifies their dehumanization.

Epistemic exhaustion is a mental state of cognitive fatigue that occurs when people are forced to constantly evaluate conflicting information, defend their reality against gaslighting, or navigate a flood of lies, i.e., Trump's and Steve Bannon's Flood the Zone With Shit tactic (Putin does zone flooding too).

The morality of it

    Point 2. In a democracy, there arguably is a moral duty to stand up for and constantly defend empirical facts and sound reasoning. Both are inherently pro-democracy by virtue of dispelling false beliefs. False beliefs instilled by demagogues take from people their power to think, decide and act on the basis of facts and sound reasoning, with that power flowing to the deceivers and manipulators.

A stupidometer

All of that is why I keep doing this and continue to take insults and stupid shit from arrogant, insulting people who are almost always uninformed but firmly believe they know what they are talking about. And they believe they are rational. I'm fighting in defense of democracy, the rule law and civil liberties as best I know how.

This is trench warfare, hand-to-hand combat against malicious, vicious MAGA demagoguery and sleaze. If we don't fight against it, we're definitely f*#@%^d. And maybe we're f*#@%^d even if we do fight against it. That's just my humble opinion.

MAGA's unprincipled legal reasoning supporting American authoritarianism

Context

A constant in recent MAGA legal reasoning at the USSC is use of law as a means to authoritarian ends by the six Republicans. Such weaponization converts the law from from a system of neutral principles binding more or less on all into a tool for advancing partisan political agendas or private benefits. The consequences ripple through every foundation of democratic society, including morality, democratic institutions, and the rule of law itself.

When law becomes weaponized for partisan purposes, it loses its pro-democracy moral authority. The law's legitimacy comes mostly from the idea that it represents a system of neutral, impartial principles. The law has intrinsic moral value because it structures political, commercial, and social relationships around principles of even-handedness and predictability.

Democracy and the law requires institutions that operate independently of corrupting partisan and special interest influence, particularly those responsible for accountability and justice. Judicial independence is a fundamental guarantee of a fair trial. That helps ensure that courts remain accountable to the Constitution and laws, not to politicians, demagogues, ideologies or special interests. When legal institutions are captured for partisan ends, independence is lost.

Unprincipled, dishonest MAGA judging

An article published by The New Republic discusses an example of the unprincipled, dishonest legal reasoning. MAGA USSC judges now routinely resort to this deplorable state of affairs when facts and principled, honest legal reasoning cannot lead to partisan MAGA outcomes. The article focuses on Chief Justice John Roberts weaponization Federalist No. 70 to enable and protect a unitary president who is above the law.

The bit about putting Trump above the law came in the 2024 USSC decision in Trump v. US, which granted broad immunity from prosecution of crimes a president commits while in office. In essence, Trump cannot be prosecuted for committing crimes while he is in office, including serious felonies. The legal reasoning to support that grievous wound on our democracy and rule of law is based on lies and dishonest reasoning that Roberts dreamed up to support his vision of a corrupt American dictator.

In granting above the law status to a US president, Roberts intentionally misinterpreted Alexander Hamilton's Federalist No. 70. He had to do that to justify creating an authoritarian vision of presidential supremacy, now called the unitary executive. In Trump v. US, the grant of criminal immunity for crimes in office actually upends Hamilton's commentary about executive accountability. Advocates of  unitary-executive theory, including Roberts, have weaponized select phrases in Federalist No. 70 regarding "energy in the executive" and "decision, activity, secrecy, and dispatch". MAGA elites and Roberts use those comments to argue for essentially unrestrainable presidential power. That completely ignores Hamilton's equal emphasis on accountability mechanisms to restrain a rogue president.

Hamilton never argued for a unitary president like what Roberts and the other five MAGA USSC judges now support. In an earlier 2020 case, Seila Law v. CFPB, Roberts falsely claimed that Hamilton viewed legislative power as a "special threat to individual liberty" while treating the executive as uniquely democratic. He just made that up. That directly contradicts Hamilton's text, which only observed that legislative debate, while sometimes obstructive, promotes deliberation and circumspection as checks on majority excesses. Hamilton never characterized Congress as a major threat. Roberts himself made up that unprincipled falsehood himself.

In his criminal immunity decision, Roberts cherry-picked Hamilton's comments about presidential "vigor" while ignoring passages about the need to keep a president restrained and accountable.​ He also decontextualized quotes in Seila Law. There, Roberts used Hamilton's warning about "jarrings of parties" in a plural executive (not a unitary executive) as if it applied to legislative-executive separation of powers. What the unprincipled, authoritarian Roberts did was to claim a need for presidential immunity, calling it a constitutional necessity. But in fact no such necessity exists. He asserted that prosecution would paralyze the presidency, but that was a claim that Hamilton never made. Only Roberts and the other five MAGA USSC judges make that claim.

Authoritarian MAGA legal reasoning asserts that presidential immunity exists because MAGA wants to build an unaccountable unitary executive with dictator-level power. The constitution itself does not provide a compelling case that a US president needs to have immunity for crimes he commits while in office. So, MAGA judges simply made up an unpersuasive reason for immunity.

Are they really that ignorant?

The TNR article comments that the Heritage Foundation's Kevin Roberts (an important Project 2025 author) celebrated the Trump immunity decision by telling Americans to read No. 70 over Independence Day. He apparently believe that text, which is not part of the US Constitution, supports the idea of an American dictatorship. That text argues the opposite of what Roberts wants us to celebrate. Readers of Federalist No. 70 will find that Hamilton's clear intent was to explain why the presidency ought to be be constrained by the rule of law, not freed from it as Roberts and the other MAGA judges have done.

Hamilton's presidency was envisioned as energetic yet prosecutable. That contradicts Roberts' invented presidential immunity holding. Roberts' vision makes presidents "sacred and inviolable" like the British kings Hamilton explicitly rejected.

It is also worth noting that nothing in the US Constitution explicitly says that a president is above the law and not accountable for their crimes. That is a cynical fabrication. It was made up by activist authoritarian MAGA judges in their quest to kill democracy and the rule of law. They need to do that to establish a deeply corrupt, American authoritarian MAGA state.