Dealing with MAGA supporters & their empty demagoguery

The metaphor: We get empty, cynical demagoguery, slanders  

and drivel from authoritarian leaders 

in response to huge, real threats and problems

(the Martian heat ray machines)

In response, the crowd eats it up and blithers 

mindlessly back at the demagogues' empty rhetoric 

At BNR, hard core Trump and MAGA supporters routinely attack, insult and/or criticize me. A few minutes ago, I wrote out my view of the situation and posted it to one of my frequent insulters and critics. Their comments was that logic alone can't explain or deal with all of politics. That was a clever attack on my reliance on facts, robust truths and sound (less biased or good faith) reasoning. My response:

Logic alone might not be rationally convincing about all things all the time. But it damn well needs to be explained when it fails. And, when it fails, we are left with personal judgments and opinions. There is a leap from (1) pure facts to (2) true or robust truths (beliefs that most reasonably less biased/partisan people believe are true) to (3) personal judgments and opinions based on the facts and robust truths.

I find that ~99.9% of the time in political disagreements I engage in, the failure of my interlocutors to deal with simple facts and robust truths I assert reveal their weakness, irrationality, bad faith engagement, and/or blind, irrational partisanship of their arguments.

The most common responses I get from people who can't handle inconvenient facts or truths I raise are (a) insults (a form of logic flaw, and evidence of bad faith), (b) deflections (evidence of bad faith), (c) logic flaws (straw man arguments, false dilemma arguments, etc., also evidence of bad faith), or (d) silence (more evidence of bad faith). I see those a-d responses all the time. I've been seeing it for over 20 years. That's how I know that when I ask someone to show the evidence or truth (1 and 2) they rely on for their opinions (3), they resort to one or more of a, b, c or d.

How often do my interlocutors come back at me with solid fact evidence? That happens in about 1 in every 300 to 400 disagreements I get entangled with.

I got facts and logic (roughly, often sound reason) on my side. Most MAGA people got just opinions on theirs. I believe that is usually why they refuse to engage with the facts and truths I assert in defense of my own judgments and opinions. They shoot opinion blanks, while I shoot fact and truth bullets.

Any thoughts, criticisms, feelings, etc.? Arrogant or condescending? Reasonable? Something else?

Thoughts about the complex problem of consciousness

For whatever reasons consciousness fascinates me but also always confuses me. That makes me frustrated. An expert commenting here suggested I read some Susan Blackmore. I got her 2017 2nd ed. book, Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction[1] and came across what is the best clarifying, frustration-reducing explanation I've encountered so far. 

Blackmore wrote this about subjective feelings of pain, which are mediated by C-fibers in the body which send impulses to the spinal cord which sends impulses that wind up triggering neural activity in several parts of the brain:

"Which is the case with pain? Maybe the physical changes cause the pain in which case we have the hard problem. Maybe the pain causes the physical changes, in which case we need a supernatural theory. Maybe something else causes both, but we have no idea what. Or maybe they really are the same thing. Many materialists argue for this last explanation, but if this was true we have absolutely no idea of how it could be true. How could pain actually be the firing of my C-fibers?"

My translation into simpler language:

When we talk about pain, there are several possibilities.

The physical processes in the body such as nerve firing or brain activity cause the feeling of pain. But if that's the case, we face the "hard problem of consciousness", namely why and how those physical processes give rise to any subjective experience at all. The hard problem of consciousness is how to explain why and how physical processes in the brain give rise to any subjective experience. Why is there "something it is like" to feel pain, see red, or taste coffee? Even if we fully understand the brain's mechanisms and functions, the hard problem asks why those mechanisms are accompanied by conscious feeling rather than functioning in the dark with no subjective experience, like a zombie.

Alternatively, maybe the conscious feeling of pain causes physical changes in the body or brain. That view implies that subjective experience can independently influence the physical world. That requires a kind of non-physical or supernatural explanation, typically some form of "dualism" where the material brain is one thing and consciousness is different and immaterial.

A third possibility is that some unknown underlying factor causes both the physical changes and the subjective sensation. Currently we have no idea what such a factor might be. Also a form of dualism.

The fourth possibility as many materialist believers claim, is that the physical and the experiential or subjective feelings are not two different things at all. Instead, pain is identical to the firing of C-fibers and associated brain activity. But if that's true, we don't have a plausible explanation of how identity between a subjective feeling and a physical process could work or exist. We don't know how the qualitative sensation of hurting could literally be a pattern of nerve firings. As far as we think we know, we are not zombies.

Better understanding seems to be slowly dawning. Hope springs eternal. 

😊

Footnote:

1. This short book is in Oxford's Very Short Introduction series of books written by experts in their fields. The books are not high-level academia, but also not high school. They seem to be targeted at undergraduates in college or university. So far, there's about 820 of these excellent little books, with the list at this link.  

 

The home page

Part of the 1st page of the 

list of short intro books

I plan to get Moral Responsibility 

when it comes out in Nov. 2026 --

morality is another endlessly fascinating topic --

morality is at the heart of pragmatic rationalism,

my anti-ideology, anti-bias political ideology

Wearing down the defenders of the environment

Context

Most Americans don't know it but MAGA elite and bigoted, Christian nationalist theocrat Russell Vought is arguably the 2nd most powerful American today. He likes to fly under the radar. He once promised this to federal employees if Trump won the 2024 election: “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work… We want their funding to be shut down… We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected… We want to put them in trauma”. 

It isn't just federal employees that authoritarian MAGA ideology needs to break. America's authoritarian MAGA wealth and power movement needs to neutralize the same kinds of pro-democracy and pro-rule of law opposition that all corrupt tyranny movements need to subdue. A prime target for MAGA's transfer of wealth and power from the public interest to allied special interests is the environment and its defenders. 

Some recent reporting indicates that active environmentalists are wearing down and weakening. MAGA is winning its pro-pollution war. The defenders start from a position of weakness, unlike (1) the huge, powerful corporations like Exxon-Mobil that profit from pollution, and (2) intense government hater ideology that falsely argues that unregulated free markets will solve our problems, while government regulation can only make them worse. Wealth and power are, as usual, at the heart of this political and social war. 

The WD4C program (working dogs for 

conservation) provides support dogs to try to

reduce mental distress among conservationists

From eco-grief to eco-depression

The defender's weaknesses: One source reports that the environmentalism movement never considered the mental well-being of working conservationists. Those jobs are characterized by low wages, exploitative practices such as endless volunteering or unpaid internships, job insecurity, low benefits and high expectations for work that are sometimes unrealistic. Not surprisingly in view of the intense hostility that Trump and powerful MAGA elites hold for environmentalism (and democracy generally), mental problems among environmental workers are becoming more common. 

A 2023 research paper found that about 28% of conservationists were experiencing moderate to severe distress. The distress includes paranoia, panic attacks, depression, and suicide. Ecologic anxiety and climate distress foment adverse psychological and emotional responses to the dark future that climate change can lead to. 

Reasons for mental breakdown are obvious in the data. A World Wildlife Federation study found that global wildlife populations fell by 73% from 1970 to 2020. That is a staggering, shocking loss. Other research found that ~90% of global fisheries are either maxed out or overfished. Fisheries failure is one facet of ocean health decline. And there is the always denied, distorted or otherwise MAGA-spun reality that the world has heated up almost 1.5ᵒ C (2.7ᵒ F) in less than 200 years. The MAGA-denied impacts are pile up and there is no end in sight.

Being human, a growing belief among conservationists is that current evidence of climate breakdown and biodiversity loss is at a point where many activists no longer believe that we can recover anymore. Conservationists are feeling grief and loss very acutely not only because they directly experience it constantly. 

MAGA's intense hostility 

Conservationists are also aware of the ferocious hostility and hate of them and environmentalism that flows every day from Trump, MAGA elites and the pro-pollution sector of the US economy. For example, on Jan. 22, 2026 at a White House event, Trump mocked climate advocates as "environmental insurrectionists", accusing them of using bad weather to push a climate scam and job‑killing regulations. In Sept. of 2025, at Trump’s UN General Assembly address, he blamed radicalized environmentalists for trying to shut down factories and hurting the economy. MAGA makes it crystal clear where MAGA stands on the issue of environmentalism -- it is just a hoax.

Idaho Fish and Wildlife Office biologists hike at sunrise 

surveying greater sage-grouse in Owyhee County Idaho

People who aren't conservationists relate to the natural world and its beauty many different ways. A non-paywalled NYT opinion, The Badlands Hold Me as I Grieve, links one woman's grief with nature's beauty: "I have a kind of game I play with grief, imagining the birds I see are the people I’ve lost." She took this night picture of a hoot owl in her back yard in South Dakota:

 Personally, I mourn the avoidable loss of species and natural beauty that global warming caused. I see it here in the mountains in San Diego county. I feel some of the grief and mental distress. I know that Trump and MAGA are going to cause a lot more damage and continue to tell us it's just a hoax or something else ludicrous. Much of MAGA's damage will be either irreversible or very hard to reverse.  

Pardons for Sale: Trump’s Vision of Justice for the Right Kind of Criminals

Trump has turned his presidential pardon power into a sleazy, cash‑drenched patronage machine. This shows cynical indifference to law and harm done to ordinary people. His pardon of nursing‑home magnate Joseph Schwartz, who defrauded the government of nearly $39 million in payroll taxes and helped collapse a multistate nursing‑home chain, wiped out prison time, fines, and $5 million in restitution after Schwartz had served only a few months. This contempt for victims and for the sentencing judge, who had rejected leniency because of the scale of the fraud, signals a president who treats justice as an opportunity to harvest cash by selling access to his presidential pardon power. Link 1, link 2

Trump has built a lucrative “pardon industry” that now sells access and influence to rich felons. To buy a pardon, each criminal launders about $1 million to Trump through operatives and lobbyists with personal connections to the president and his inner circle. The official clemency list is a roll call of tax cheats, securities fraudsters, murderers, corrupt politicians, foreign influence peddlers, and January 6 and 2020‑election traitors. Trump rewards loyalty, ideological alignment, or personal usefulness in his calculation of who gets pardoned. He operates a pay‑to‑play get out of fines and jail (not for free) for criminals. Trump's moral rot openly mocks the rule‑of‑law ideal that justice cannot be bought. Link 3, link 4

Estimates are that Trump’s pardons and clemency grants have eliminated almost $2 billion in court‑ordered financial penalties, including restitution, fines, and forfeitures. Of that, more than $1.3 billion was owed directly to crime victims in restitution. In other words, Trump shafted the victims of pardoned criminals' crimes in return for payment from the criminals themselves. So far, his pardons have taken about $1.3 billion from innocent crime victims. Link 5, link 6

Criminals buying pardons for cash is MAGA law and order in action, right? /s

Q: Is Trump's pardons for cash evidence that he really is on the little guy's side, as he always claims, or is it evidence he is on the big guy's side and, more or less, could not care less about shafting little regular people who have been harmed by criminals?

Link to the DoJ's list of Trump pardons since Jan. 2025: https://www.justice.gov/pardon/clemency-grants-president-donald-j-trump-2025-present

Montana Wyoming Colorado Nebraska South Dakota North Dakota Iowa Minnesota

 If you live in or near those states you better have your fall-out shelters updated and well stocked.

The most dangerous US states if WW3 breaks out

Looking at Scientific American’s fallout maps of nuclear attacks on missile silos in the US to identify which states would be the most affected, the publication found that these eight locations would be the most affected by radiation exposure risk:

• Montana
• Wyoming
• Colorado
• Nebraska
• South Dakota
• North Dakota
• Iowa
• Minnesota

https://www.tyla.com/news/ww3-most-dangerous-us-states-nuclear-attack-002539-20260302

DAMN, way too close to Canada, time for me to move to Nunavut. 

An interesting commentary about retirement

Comments by a retired woman are quoted in a NYT opinion (not paywalled). The retired woman says it all for millions of average Americans.

“I’m 65 years old. I’m legally blind. I’m on disability. I went to my doc, and I lost 28 pounds in the last year. I did not need to lose 28 pounds. I did not try to lose 28 pounds. I lost the 28 pounds because I cannot afford to eat anymore.”

She can afford no more than $65/month for food.

Millions of Americans her age and younger are facing the similar dismal retirements and retirement prospects. Too many younger people can afford to save much or anything for their retirement. Millions of retired people are in bad situations. 

Elite MAGA's response: Get a job, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and stop whining.

Another MAGA policy goal is to offload risk onto individuals and let them sink or swim on their own.  MAGA elites have no empathy. But they're in power and calling the shots. If they get their way, they will stay in power and keep calling the shots, whether its legal or lethal or not.

The increasing CO2 level affects human blood

The science

An interesting recent research paper (February 26, 2026), Carbon dioxide overload, detected in human blood, suggests a potentially toxic atmosphere within 50 years, documents the change in acidity (pH) of human blood from 1999 to 2020. That is not surprising in view of the increase in CO2 levels from ~380 ppm in 1999 to ~414 ppm in 2020.

The researchers found that average levels of serum bicarbonate, a chemical marker closely linked to carbon dioxide in the body, have risen by about 7% since 1999. Over the same period, average calcium and phosphorus levels in human blood has declined. There is a gradual shift in blood chemistry that mirrors the rise in atmospheric CO2.

The physicists at phys.org published a lay audience commentary on this paper, including some comments by the two authors. One commented that the data suggest to him that our our bodies are not adapting well and we may be close to limits that our blood chemistry can handle for CO2.

Currently, adverse health impacts are speculative and hard to quantify. This research adds to evidence of an emerging dimension of climate risk that extends beyond heat waves, extreme weather, sea-level rise, and crackpot climate science denial.

Context & commentary

Humans existed mostly in times when CO2 levels were mostly fairly close to about 300 ppm or less, so what we are now in is uncharted territory. Humans came on the scene about 150,000 years ago. Obviously, we have no choice but to inhale more CO2 as its level in air continues to rise. That is expected to increasingly affect blood bicarbonate, calcium and phosphorous levels. Under the current trend, the air we breathe will become increasingly powerful, eventually becoming toxic decades from now. We do not know what non-trivial effects, if any, on human health this altered state of blood chemistry is having right now. A lot more research needs to be done.

The researchers say that going forward, all the data now clearly indicates that biomarkers like blood bicarbonate levels in humans and other species need to be tracked along with traditional global warming indicators.

Q1: Which global warming threat do you feel is greatest, heat waves, extreme weather, sea-level rise, or crackpot climate science denial?

Q2: Are you unconcerned about this change in your own blood chemistry or in your family’s blood chemistry?

Q3: Is this research just more lies from allegedly corrupt or socialist scientists, is it lies from or Chinese agents trying to destroy the American economy with their alleged cynical lies and crackpot science?

Reputable climate change info resources

If you are faced with crackpot climate science denial and are unsure of how to respond, just direct them to one or more of these three sites. It reduces your cognitive load a lot. And, if you’re interested, you can learn about actual climate science in language you can understand.

Skeptical Science: systematically catalogs common climate denial myths and provides clear, referenced rebuttals at multiple technical levels, including non-science level.

NASA Climate: describes evidence and offers concise, visual, rigorously sourced explanations that directly undercut major climate science denial arguments about warming trends, causes, and projections.

US EPA Climate Change: provides plain-language explanations, data, and FAQs that debunk most standard climate science denial talking points by walking through the observational evidence and attribution science.

The Bullshit Asymmetry Principle: BS, Lies and Crackpottery Are Easy, Debunking Is Hard

Context

One thing that many vocal supporters of Trump and MAGA politics have in common is an “allergy” to actual facts and sound reasoning. When presented with inconvenient information and sources, most of them reject the supporting information and reasoning out of hand. Some, with no stated reasons I’m aware of, absolutely refuse to even look at the source information. Apparently, they know their position is based mostly on falsehoods and crackpot arguments, i.e., logically flawed. Asserting falsehoods and crackpot reasoning is almost always fast, easy and fun. But, as some people here understand, explaining and debunking MAGA falsehoods and crackpottery takes a lot of time and effort. It’s not fast or easy, but it can still be fun!

A recent example of me wrestling with a crackpot argument is at these three links, link 1 (the crackpottery), link 2 (debunk, part 1), link 3 (debunk, part 2).

The Brandolini asymmetry principle

In January 2013, Italian programmer Alberto Brandolini watched former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi sparring with a journalist on an Italian political talk show. He just finished reading Daniel Kahneman’s masterpiece of cognitive biology, Thinking, Fast and Slow. From that collision of cognitive science with political theater, he distilled an observation into a single tweet that became known as Brandolini’s Law, or the Bullshit Asymmetry Principle. The Asymmetry Principle is simple: “The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude greater than that needed to produce it”. Yeah, but if it’s obvious in hindsight, why was no one saying it long before Brandolini? (link 4, link 5, link 6)

Anyway, the principle gave a name to was something people had long felt intuitively, namely that fabricating a false claim takes seconds, but dismantling it demands research, evidence, and careful argumentation. As Jonathan Swift observed centuries earlier, “Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it”. Brandolini simply quantified the asymmetry for the digital age. Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West of the University of Washington later built an entire university course and a book, Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World, around this insight. They argued that unmanaged bullshit now saturates every corner of society and spreads across networks much the way diseases do. (link 7)

The asymmetry phenomenon is not just anecdotal. It is rooted in well-documented cognitive vulnerabilities. The illusory truth effect, first identified by psychologist Lynn Hasher and colleagues, demonstrates that simply repeating a false statement increases people’s perception that it is true, even when they previously knew it was incorrect. Each repetition exploits the brain’s tendency to mistake familiarity for accuracy. Research by Gordon Pennycook and David Rand at MIT found that susceptibility to fake news is driven more by lazy or crackpot thinking and partisan bias than sound reasoning. That kind of mindset usually fails to engage slow, hard analytic reasoning. Social science research indicates that people who are susceptible to pseudo-profound bullshit are significantly worse at distinguishing fake news from real news. Meanwhile, confirmation bias causes people to selectively seek and accept information that aligns with their preexisting beliefs, further insulating false claims from scrutiny. These cognitive shortcuts, e.g., familiarity heuristics, motivated reasoning, and unconscious open-mindedness to weak claims, constitute fertile ground for misinformation to take root with minimal effort from its creators. (link 8, link 9, link 10, link 11)

Research indicates that humans tend to spread false news more readily because it is usually to be more novel and emotionally arousing. That triggers reactions of surprise and emotions such as disgust or anger that drive spreading of falsehoods and crackpottery. By contrast on the debunking side, researchers have identified the continued influence effect of falsehoods/crackpottery even after a correction is issued and accepted. For better or worse, the original misinformation continues to shape people’s reasoning and memory. Researchers synthesized the findings in The Debunking Handbook 2020. That is a consensus document by 22 scholars detailing why effective debunking requires not just a retraction but a factual alternative explanation to fill the causal gap the myth once occupied. That task is far more time- and labor-intensive than the making up an original lie. (link 12, link 13, link 14)

The real-world stakes of asymmetry are enormous. The American Psychological Association asserts that people are more likely to believe misinformation when it comes from in-group sources. Nowadays, appeals to emotions like fear and outrage are easily manufactured on a large scale on social media. Vaccine misinformation alone cost an estimated $2 billion in preventable hospitalization costs and contributed to 45,000 avertable deaths in the United States in 2021. A 2019 University of Baltimore study estimated the global economic toll of fake news at roughly $78 billion per year in stock market losses, revenue declines, and reputational damage. Brandolini’s Law describes not just a rhetorical inconvenience but a structural vulnerability of democratic discourse and democracy itself. Bad-faith actors and ignorant people, can flood the information ecosystem with cheap shot lies and falsehoods. The liars know the truth but they also seem to know that truth will always be playing catch-up, which is a losing game. (link 15, link 16, link 17)

Conclusion

It takes some courage to confront people honestly, knowing that truth and sound reasoning are weaker than dishonest speech. It is much harder to debunk lies, slanders, crackpottery and all the rest of the rhetorical tools and tricks that demagogues have at their disposal. It just ain’t a fair fight. The human mind is rigged by evolution to give the advantage to the deceivers and their cynical, dishonest speech. But, people on the side of truth, sound reason and honest speech have no principled, honest choice but to play the hand nature and evolution gave us. If we loose, nearly all of us will be royally screwed by MAGA tyranny, ghastly corruption and arrogant cruelty.

MAGA's cynical, morally corrupt rewrite of social science and history

When MAGA is in charge, social science and history just ain't what they used to be. An Inside Higher Ed article, Florida Introduces ‘Sanitized’ Sociology Textbook, makes clear a false history that MAGA elites want to con everyone into false beliefs about human history. 

Florida MAGA officials rewrote an introductory sociology textbook for public universities. MAGA's version of sociology is packaged on a drastically shortened, “sanitized” textbook that strips out core sociological content. Information about race, gender, sexuality, inequality and systemic power are mostly gone. For the course to retain “general education” status  in the Florida university system, this MAGA propaganda has to be used as the primary textbook. 

The new MAGA-approved textbook is a heavily edited version of an open-source Introduction to Sociology 3e. It is cut from 669 pages to 267 pages. Entire chapters on media and technology, global inequality, race and ethnicity, social stratification, and gender, sex and sexuality simply vanished. A section on government-led genocide of Native Americans was removed. Use of the term “transgender” drops from 68 uses to one, and “racism” from 115 uses to six. All discussion of systemic or structural racism, which faculty describe as a core concept of the field, is deleted in its entirety.  

Legal impetus for MAGA's perversion of history and sociology comes Florida’s 2023 Senate Bill 266. That law bans general-education courses from teaching “identity politics,” “distorting” historical events, or using theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression and privilege are inherent in U.S. institutions. State MAGA politicians have cynically attacked sociology as ideologically “hijacked,” “mushy,” and lacking the kind of academic rigor they falsely claim to want. This is just part of MAGA's broader attempt to hide, deny or delegitimize inconvenient sociology and history.

Death of democracy by thousands of cuts

Trump's grifter nominee for 

Surgeon General

The obscure example of the grifter Surgeon General

Trump recently nominated Casey Means as surgeon general, America’s top public‑health messenger. She is grossly unqualified for the job, but Trump likes her style. Means is a physician who left surgical training to become a wellness influencer and entrepreneur, building a brand on warning people not to trust mainstream doctors and promoting “root‑cause” health products and protocols with scant evidence. Reporting notes that she has sold supplements and other wellness products, aligned with anti‑vaccine figures like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. She allowed her medical license to lapse, even as she positions herself as a visionary who sees through “corrupt” conventional medicine. This obscure personnel move captures the larger catastrophic transition. The United States is drifting from flawed but mostly rule‑bound democracy toward a more openly corrupt, propaganda‑driven, authoritarian politics. That accelerating trend tracks closely with Trump’s rise since 2016. (link 1, link 2, link 3, link 4)

Trump’s nomination of Means reflects the broader MAGA demagoguery pattern. Sophisticated grifters and cranks who thrive on misinformation, crackpottery and conspiratorial rhetoric are elevated because they weaponize distrust of institutions and expertise. Her message that doctors and public‑health institutions are fundamentally untrustworthy fits with a media ecosystem where “disinformation doctors” exploit professional credentials to spread vaccine and other falsehoods, often for fame, power or profit. Public‑health experts now warn that coordinated health misinformation erodes trust, worsens outcomes, and makes it far easier for political demagogues to present themselves as lone truth‑tellers against a system that demagogues falsely claim is rigged and malevolent. (link 2, link 5, link 6)

The problem for democracy from too much distrust

American democracy depends on a critical mass of people believing that facts exist, that expertise is real, and that institutions, though imperfect, are at least somewhat accountable. Today that belief is being steadily hollowed out by a tidal wave of propaganda that intentionally blurs the line between truth and grift. Research on recent U.S. elections shows that systematic disinformation—amplified by social media and foreign and domestic actors—has fueled false beliefs about fraud, depressed confidence in vote counting, and deepened polarization. At the same time, broad public trust in the federal government has been stuck below 30 percent for nearly two decades, with recent readings in the teens and single digits for many groups. (link 7, link 8, link 9)

This trust collapse creates an opening for three interlocking flavors of kleptocratic authoritarianism. First, a personalized Trumpist dictatorship uses executive power for self‑protection and revenge, following the global pattern of “executive aggrandizement” that weakens oversight, attacks independent institutions, and normalizes election denialism. Second, a billionaire‑corporate oligarchy leverages deregulation, dark money, and captured media to tilt policy toward a tiny donor class, a trend supercharged by the Citizens United decision and subsequent campaign‑finance rulings. Third, a Christian nationalist project seeks to entrench minority rule under the banner of “taking back” a Christian nation, using structural biases like the Senate and Electoral College to impose the values of a shrinking faction on a diverse public. (link 10, link 11, link 12, link 13, link 14)

Conclusion

All three major strands of American authoritarianism now vying for long-term power, dictatorship, oligarchy and fundamentalist Christian theocracy, depend on the same dishonest information strategy. All three knowingly train people to distrust accountable expertise and democratic institutions while embracing charismatic figures who weaponize grievance and identity to deceive the public. Years of radical‑right demagoguery and organized disinformation have changed the mental environment that Americans live in. That has made sophisticated propaganda and organized grift feel normal and even virtuous to far too many Americans. They are deceived and betrayed. The Means nomination is just one corrupt, authoritarian cut among thousands. It exemplifies how far we’ve fallen when Trump’s morally depraved authoritarian government, awash in public‑health and democratic crises, selects as the nation’s doctor, a dishonest crackpot grifter whose career was built on persuading the public that its doctors cannot be trusted. (link 15, link 2)

State of the Union

 What are your predictions?

Will the Dems boycott? I don't think they should, they should attend, not create a fuss, but sit stoically silent. Might drive Trump nuts. Others think a boycott would send a louder message.

Should the men's gold metal hockey team boycott the State in solidarity with the women's gold metal hockey team who are going to boycott? 

Will he ridicule the Supremes? As they will have a front row seat.

Will he somehow be measured or go off the rails?

AND.............

Should we revisit this thread tomorrow to see how many of our predictions came true? 

Regarding the flow of wealth and power under Trump and MAGA politics

 Conclusion

Since taking office in Jan. 2025, Trump and MAGA elites in power have ruthlessly pursued a coherent, systematic transfer of power from working people, consumers, minority communities, and the general public to corporations, wealthy donors, and political elites. By defunding agencies (CFPB), stripping them of quorums (NLRB), revoking foundational legal authorities (EPA), weaponizing licensing (FCC), neutralizing enforcement (FEC, OSHA, HUD), rolling back civil rights protections (EEOC), and dismantling oversight institutions (Department of Education), the Trump-MAGA agenda has not merely shifted policy preferences. As promised in Project 2025, Trump/MAGA has structurally dismantled the institutional infrastructure that balanced private power against the public interest. The overwhelming beneficiaries are the wealthy and powerful who least need government protection. The clear losers are average Americans who most depend on it.

One could reasonably call what is happening to us, trickle-up economics and government. If that seems implausible, consider the following examples of what is going on.

The Great Upward Transfer: How Trump and MAGA Policies Shift Wealth and Power from the Public to Elites and Big Corporations

The second Trump administration, guided heavily by the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 authoritarian blueprint, has systematically weakened, defunded, or captured federal agencies whose core missions protected workers, consumers, minority communities, and the public interest. The net effect is an unprecedented, gigantic upward transfer of power and wealth from ordinary Americans to corporations, billionaires, and political allies.

National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)

On January 27, 2025, Trump fired NLRB member Gwynne Wilcox. She was the first Black woman to serve on the Board. He also terminated pro-union General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, leaving the agency without a quorum to decide cases. With the Board paralyzed, employers face no federal adjudicator for unfair labor practice charges. The new acting general counsel has moved to rescind Biden-era memos that had expanded protections against non-compete agreements and employer-led captive-audience meetings. A separate executive order stripped collective bargaining rights from over one million federal workers. The result: employers gain leverage, and workers lose their primary federal mechanism for organizing and resolving disputes. (link 1, link 2)

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)

Acting Director Russell Vought ordered all CFPB supervision, investigation, enforcement, and rulemaking to cease. DOGE associates shuttered the agency’s Washington offices, and by late 2025 Vought refused to request any funding from the Federal Reserve, threatening to defund the agency entirely. Since its creation, the CFPB had returned more than $21 billion to consumers and served as the sole independent federal enforcer of consumer financial law. Its dismantlement signals open season for predatory lenders and financial fraud. A coalition of state attorneys general has sued to block defunding, pointing out that it amounts to a huge handout by cheating American workers. (link 3, link 4)

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

In February 2026, the MAGA EPA moved to annul the 2009 Endangerment Finding—the legal foundation for all federal greenhouse gas regulation under the Clean Air Act. The White House called it “the most significant deregulatory measure in American history”. Throughout 2025, the agency rolled back 31 key environmental rules on clean air, clean water, and climate, revoked California’s vehicle-emissions waiver, and reconsidered wastewater regulations for oil and gas companies under the banner of “unleashing American energy”. The beneficiaries are fossil fuel producers and automakers, while the costs fall on public health and the climate. Rescinding the Endangerment Finding removes the legal basis for most federal greenhouse gas regulation under the Clean Air Act. That will lock in higher emissions and make national climate targets impossible to meet. Corporations and wealthy owners will accumulate hundreds of billions per year, while costs to consumers will be tens of billions/year. (link 5, link 6)

Federal Communications Commission (FCC)

Under MAGA Chairman Brendan Carr, the FCC removed net neutrality rules in July 2025 without public comment, stripping the agency of Title II authority over broadband providers. Carr has also weaponized the agency’s licensing power to coerce telecom giants Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T into abandoning DEI programs as a condition of merger and spectrum approvals. This transforms the FCC from a public-interest regulator into an instrument that enforces MAGA authoritarianism and benefits dominant carriers. By giving the largest carriers greater freedom to favor their own services and penalize rivals, while extracting anti‑DEI concessions as the price of regulatory approval, these moves channel additional monopoly/oligopoly revenues and political influence to corporate executives and investors, while leaving citizens with higher prices, fewer choices, and greater vulnerability to viewpoint discrimination online. (link 7, link 8, link 9)

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)

In January 2026, the EEOC voted 2-1 to rescind its comprehensive 2024 workplace harassment guidance without notice or comment. That move primarily targets protections for transgender and LGBTQ+ workers. Chair Andrea Lucas has declared that “biological sex is binary and immutable,” narrowing the reach of the Supreme Court’s Bostock decision. The rollback leaves employers without updated federal guidance and LGBTQ+ workers with diminished recourse against workplace harassment. In essence, MAGA policy has declared open season on LGBQT people, to the delight of anti-LGBQT bigots everywhere! (link 10, link 11)

Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)

OSHA workplace inspections dropped 20% over a six-month period in 2025 compared to 2024, and the agency lost nearly 300 employees. The administration froze pending regulations including the Heat Injury and Illness Prevention standard, proposed eliminating medical evaluations for respirator users, and sought to exempt “inherently risky” professions from general duty protections. Fewer inspections and weaker rules mean higher injury and fatality risks for workers, while employers enjoy reduced compliance costs. Employers are happy about this wonderful policy. (link 12, link 13)

Concluding remarks: If one does a little searching it is easy to see the same thing happening in every federal agency, just as Project 2025 promised. That includes the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (gutted worker protections), the Securities and Exchange Commission (killed corporate securities regulations and laws), the Federal Trade Commission (gutted anti-trust law enforcement), the Federal Election Commission (further legalization of corruption in elections), the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (gutted workplace harassment regulations; the LGBQT community targeted for legalized discrimination and harassment), the DOJ Civil Rights Division (all lawsuits over civil rights violations stopped dead in their tracks), the Internal Revenue Service (nearly all audits of large businesses stopped dead), etc. The list goes on and on just like this.

It is painfully obvious and undeniable that laws and protections for consumers, workers and the environment are being, or have been, gutted or eliminated. Trump and MAGA policies are transferring vast amounts of wealth and power from average citizens, workers and the public interest to wealthy or powerful individuals and businesses. Across the federal government, Trump has canceled 145 enforcement actions against 153 corporations in its first year. 40% of those involved consumer protection violations. Another 18 actions involved worker protection violations. This pattern of gutting enforcement while leaving laws intact constitutes a de facto authoritarian framework where corporate misconduct and law breaking faces no significant federal consequences. Trump and MAGA have declared open season on consumers, workers and the environment.

Q: Are Trump and MAGA elites in power in the federal government working to (1) protect and expand rights and protections for average citizens and democracy, or (2) are they shafting the masses while transferring wealth and power to elite people and businesses in pursuit of a kleptocratic MAGA dictatorship, or (3) something else?

The moral values inherent in democracy

Context

Extensive research in moral and political psychology shows that for politics most people do not primarily rely on facts, truths, and conscious reasoning. Instead we are mostly guided by emotions, moral values, identity, biases, partisan and group loyalties, and social context. Perception itself is filtered through these lenses, so people quite literally see and interpret “the same” political reality differently. (link 1, link 2)

In The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values (2010), neuroscientist Sam Harris argued that science could, in principle, ground objective moral values in facts about the well‑being of people. But he didn’t claim that science had already identified a list of universal human values. In 2016, S. Matthew Liao’s book, Moral Brains: The Neuroscience of Morality, brought together leading neuroscientists and philosophers and showed that the neuroscience of morality still is far from explaining it. At present, science has not found a consensus list of universal moral values, let alone ones tailored to secular liberal democracy. One person’s morality can be immorality or even evil to others, e.g., abortion. (link 3, link 4)

Authoritarianism vs. democracy

In modern authoritarian regimes, e.g., dictatorships, oligarchies, theocracies, and kleptocracies, the regime’s survival does not depend on accurately informing ordinary people or respecting their independent moral judgment. Average citizens have little real political power, so it doesn’t much matter if their narratives are false, incoherent, openly cruel or anything else. People just have to survive under the regime’s rhetoric.

Secular democracy is supposed to work differently. In theory, an informed electorate chooses representatives in free and fair elections. Those representatives serve the public interest within a framework of constitutional constraints. However, political science shows that this idealized picture fits poorly with how mass opinion and elections actually work. In Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government (2016), Chris Achen and Larry Bartels argue that ordinary citizens’ political thinking is often closer to group loyalty and tribal identification than to the informed, policy‑driven reasoning assumed in textbook democracy.​ They characterize people’s political reasoning and behavior as “infantile”. (link 5, link 6)

A universal moral value hypothesis for democracy

Despite the mess in science, a hypothesis is that a small set of semi‑universal moral value clusters is baked into the concept of secular, liberal democracy. These moral values are simple to grasp, but hard to apply cleanly in practice. Some experts have argued for reasoning that is compatible with these proposed moral values. (link 7, link 8, link 9)

The three proposed clusters of moral values could be support for:

1. Democracy, the rule of law, civil liberties, and honest, competent, transparent government because that is morally superior and preferable to all forms of authoritarian rule.
2. Government and policy should prioritize the public interest over special interests, while minimizing harms both to (a) democracy, the rule of law, civil liberties, and honest governance, and (b) all affected people, groups, and interests.
3. Moral, pro‑democracy political reasoning and engagement should be grounded, as far as possible, in good‑faith respect for and acceptance of facts, robust truths, and sound reasoning, even when these are inconvenient.

This is not a claim that everyone lives up to these values. But they do seem to function as widely shared moral standards that most people at least rhetorically say they believe in.

Evidence of universality 1: authoritarian rhetoric and behavior

Two kinds of evidence suggest that these moral clusters have a powerful, near‑universal pull. The first comes from how authoritarians talk and act. Modern authoritarian leaders generally do not openly say they reject democracy, rule of law, or civil liberties. Instead, they loudly insist that they, not their opponents, are the true defenders of “the people,” “law and order,” “freedom,” and “the national interest,” even as they dismantle those things in practice.​ (link 10)

Post‑World War II, most authoritarian regimes adopt democratic and “people’s” branding. For example, consider the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea or other “people’s republics”. They hold elections that are plainly shams. But they are carefully preserved as symbols of popular consent. The same holds for Russia under its brutal dictator Putin. Putin has never canceled a national election, but he has subverted them. Political scientists often describe such systems as “electoral autocracies” precisely because they mimic democratic forms and language while hollowing out their substance.​ Some experts now classify the US as a “competitive authoritarian” state, not a democracy.

If democracy, rule of law, civil liberties, and service to the public interest were not widely perceived as morally superior, authoritarians would have far less incentive to appropriate that vocabulary rather than openly celebrating their naked domination. Their propaganda strategy shows that they clearly understand that trying to convince people these values are bad or immoral would be nearly impossible. Instead of changing minds, it is far easier to hijack democratic values rhetorically while betraying them in practice.

Evidence of universality 2: lived experience and survey data

The second line of evidence comes from common experience and large‑scale survey research. In ordinary political conversations, very few people openly say they prefer dictatorship, theocracy, oligarchy, or kleptocracy over democracy. Likewise, almost no one volunteers that they intentionally lie, reject inconvenient facts, or embrace crackpot reasoning because “the end justifies the means,” or that they want special interests served at the expense of the public interest.

These everyday observations are consistent with systematic survey data. The World Values Survey and related polling consistently find high global support for democracy in principle. For example, one summary reports that more than 82% of respondents worldwide say that having a democratic system of government is a good thing. A 2024 Ipsos poll for the Halifax Security Forum likewise found that 81% of people across 30 countries believe that democracy, human rights, and the rule of law are universal values that all nations deserve and can aspire to, rather than uniquely Western ideals. (link 11, link 12, link 13)

Among people doing politics, one rarely or never encounters anyone who openly say they favor dictatorship, oligarchy, theocracy, or kleptocracy over democracy. A person encounters few or no people who proudly say they lie or employ bad‑faith reasoning in their politics. More than a few people act in ways that oppose democratic and truth‑seeking values, but consciously or not, they feel pressure to deny that and claim those values as their own. (link 14, link 15, link 16)

Q1: How many people doing or discussing politics have you encountered that say their engagement with politics relies significantly or mostly on lies, deceit, fake facts, fomenting unwarranted, divisive emotional reactions, and/or crackpot reasoning/conspiracy theories?

Q2: How many people doing or discussing politics have you encountered that say they prefer dictatorship, oligarchy, theocracy or kleptocracy over democracy or secular democracy?