Free speech damage to American democracy and society

Jackson’s 1945 concurrence is still cited today in court decisions asserting that that under First Amendment law, government cannot impose “guardianship of the public mind”. That free speech principle coexists with laws that allow government regulation of certain kinds of speech, primarily fraud and false advertising, defamation (libel and slander), child porn, incitement to imminent lawless action, true threats, fighting words and some crime-related speech. The line between speech that can be regulated and that which can’t is generally fairly clear. In Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U.S. 323 (1974), the supreme court commented that “Under the First Amendment there is no such thing as a false idea,” while distinguishing ideas from false statements of fact. Some false fact assertions can be regulated subject to constitutional limits.

Honest & dishonest speech

Legal speech includes both honest and dishonest speech. A way to define honest speech in the context of politics, democracy and the rule of law is to say it’s good faith speech intended to inform or persuade on the basis of facts, true truths and sound reasoning, with no conscious intent to deceive or irrationally emotionally manipulate, e.g., by fomenting unwarranted emotions or mindsets such as fear, anger, hate, distrust, bigotry, racism, ect.

For better or worse, that vision of honest speech is unavoidably and blindingly complex. For example, there is no highly accurate way to tell if mistakes in a speech or message are honest or lies intended to deceive or emotionally manipulate. Assessing intent in political speech requires either knowledge the speech at least appears to be honest, or fact and/or reputation checking.

For chronic liars, available evidence can make it rational to distrust and disbelieve everything the liar asserts. For example, Trump has a proven track record of constant lying. Analysis of 1,000 assertions found that 75% of assertions were mostly false, false, or pants on fire. The evidence is clear that it is not always honest mistakes. Being a bullshitter (arguably worse than being a just liar) and a chronic liar, falsehoods dominate Trump’s free speech. Obviously, disbelieving bullshitters and chronic liars in politics is rational. So is seeing them as morally rotted. That may be rational, but humans being rational isn’t often the case with politics.

With most Trump supporters, partisan identity, partisanship and other human factors often override inconvenient facts, truths and sound reasoning.

The damage from demagoguery & propaganda

“VOTER FRAUD IS NOT A CONSPIRACY THEORY, IT IS A FACT!!!” — Trump, Dec. 24, 2020

Tens of millions of Americans continue to believe divisive but repeatedly debunked Trump lies, e.g., the 2020 election was stolen, Trump’s 1/6 insurrectionists were patriots and political prisoners (“It was a beautiful day of love …. mostly peaceful”), Biden, Harris and Democrats are socialist/communist radicals, COVID will just disappear like the flu, open borders are driving a massive crime wave, and other debunked whoppers. Apparently, those debunked whoppers are not debunked in the minds of most Trump supporters.

Trump and MAGA’s pervasive, bad‑faith use of dishonest demagogic speech has grievously damaged American democracy and governance. It has torn American society apart, and destroyed lives and families. By relentlessly promoting his lies and authoritarianism, Trump has convinced about one‑third of Americans and about two‑thirds of Republicans that US elections are rigged and dictatorship is a reasonable option. As intended, that erodes confidence in self‑government and democracy itself. Trump’s and MAGA elites’ dishonest speech drives support for deceived or manipulated election deniers, restrictive voting laws, and even Trump’s 1/6 coup attempt. This combination of persistent dishonest speech that has normalized corruption and authoritarianism for tens of millions of Americans arguably constitutes an existential threat to democracy, the rule of law, civil liberties and honest, transparent governance. (link 1, link 2, link 3)

MAGA’s malicious, demagoguery also damages civil society and commerce. It floods the zone with kleptocratic authoritarian lies, slanders, falsehoods and crackpot conspiracy theories. Rational policy and business decisions become hard to impossible. Immigration and the “open borders crime wave” fantasy normalizes cruel, unwarranted discrimination and social conflict. It is clear that persistent dishonest authoritarian Trump and MAGA speech undermines social trust, while imposing large aggregate costs on the global and US economy. (link 4, link 5, link 6)

Q1: Is the damage to American democracy, rule of law and civil liberties, from from dishonest Trump and MAGA propagandist speech not serious (or even not existent), or if it is serious, is it morally justified?

Q2: Is the honest vs dishonest speech conflict mainly between good and evil, truth and lies/bullshit, democracy and authoritarianism, or something else?

The New Karens

 

It seems that the day of 'Karen' fatigue has finally dawned on us. After years of throwing the name about for any middle-aged woman who is rude or angry, Gen Z have apparently replaced it with something else entirely.

Any guesses?

(If you can't guess, the answer is in the article)

https://www.tyla.com/life/true-life/gen-z-karens-new-name-jessica-why-974366-20251226

Generally, according to social media, what makes you a Karen is being rude to service staff, entitled, racist, problematic, as well as a stereotypically short haircut.

Simmering dictatorship concerns

NPR reports about concern about the threat of a Trump dictatorship. The issue is still just simmering quietly. We have not yet reached a point of boiling over and erupting public sentiment. Arguably, too many Americans remain insufficiently concerned to lurch into hair-on-fire mode or something vigorous like that. Of course, we won't know what the level of activity in the soup pot full of frogs amounts to until the 2026 mid-terms. That assumes Trump won't cancel them, or much more likely, subvert them and declare MAGA politicians the winners and Dems the losers.

The NPR article says that Sweden's V-Dem Institute, which monitors global democracy, says the US now is an "electoral autocracy." According to V-Dem, 45 countries are in the process of “autocratizing.” The number of autocracies exceeds democracies. 

Electoral autocracy is a hybrid political system where multiparty elections exist and formally determine who governs, but the playing field is so heavily tilted, and liberal‑democratic safeguards so weakened, that the system is effectively authoritarian. India is an example.

Arguably, the NPR article and the experts it quotes continue to understate the gravity and urgency of the threat. A Trump and MAGA elite-driven authoritarian state arising in the US is the undeniable goal of kleptocratic, bigoted MAGA wealth and power politics. Because of that, Dissident Politics gives this NPR reporting a grade of F.

Politics, racism, and the human condition

Various sources reported (and this) that Trump has nominated Jeremy Carl, a self-described champion of white identity, to lead the State Department’s outreach to international organizations. Carl’s 2024 book, The Unprotected Class: How Anti-White Racism Is Tearing America Apart, argues that white Americans face systematic persecution through civil-rights enforcement, DEI programs, immigration policy, and cultural institutions across education, media, law, business, and government. Stripped of its policy language, the argument is a repackaged appeal to the old fear that white people are being replaced and subjugated by non-white Americans and immigrants. Carl makes the fear explicit by endorsing the Great Replacement theory, calling the Civil Rights Act an anti-white weapon, and dismissing Juneteenth as race hustling and white-shaming. Primal fear is the glue that holds debunked American racist narratives together. Carl’s nomination signals that those narratives now have a seat at the center of US foreign policy. (link 1, link 2)

Whether the Senate confirms Carl’s nomination is unclear. At least one Republican senator is uneasy with Carl and opposes his nomination. A Democratic senator referred to Carl as wildly unqualified for this job. (link 3, link 4, link 5)

Research on the 2024 presidential election indicated that four issues were the main drivers of support for Trump, inflation, immigration, the anti‑woke/DEI/transgender politics cluster, and sexist attitudes toward Harris and women leaders. All of those issues were distorted by ruthless MAGA demagoguery, lies, slanders, and irrational emotional manipulation. MAGA propaganda relied heavily on conspiratorial “white replacement” rhetoric, and false and misleading claims about crime, immigration and Harris herself. The anti‑woke cluster of concerns largely reflected perceived status loss by whites and men in a diversifying, more egalitarian society, arguably making it a subtype of racial and gendered status‑threat politics. However, many Trump supporters sincerely describe their concerns as about speech, merit, or religious freedom, even though the overall pattern of attitudes aligns more with defending existing racial and gender hierarchies than with neutral principles alone. (link 6, link 7, link 8, link 9)

MAGA politics, racism & the human condition

Obviously, racism is not a modern invention or a superficial cultural habit. It is deeply rooted in fundamental features of human social cognition and social behavior. Evolutionary psychology and decades of experimental research show that humans automatically (mostly unconsciously) categorize people into in-groups and out-groups. In-group favoritism is a basic feature of social cooperation that can be exploited to produce hostility toward outsiders. MAGA demagoguery is highly focused on exploiting race to produce hostility toward opposition to Trump and MAGA authoritarianism. Data from several million Americans indicate that about 65% display an automatic pro-White/anti-Black bias. That includes members of third-party racial groups such as Asian and Latino Americans who generally have little personal stake in White–Black relations. (link 10, link 11, link 12, link 13)

When people perceive threats to their group’s status, in-group loyalty intensifies and out-group hostility deepens. That dynamic that is especially potent when the threatened group has historically been dominant. In diverse environments, individuals high in authoritarianism become markedly more racially prejudiced and politically intolerant, while non-authoritarians become less so—meaning diversity itself activates a latent authoritarian disposition in those predisposed to it.

MAGA politics exploits these deep-seated human biases with relentless precision. Trump’s rhetoric systematically dehumanizes immigrants, calling them animals, vermin, and an invading force that will make America no longer recognizable. Scholars see that demagogic language as historically associated with genocide and mass violence. Research data indicates that authoritarianism in the United States is raced, and heavily associated with white people. As long as the perceived, demagoguery-boosted racial threat remains a strong presence if American life, authoritarianism will haunt American democracy. American white supremacists and white nationalists are keeping the illusory racial threat alive. (link 14, link 15)

MAGA’s racist policy tactics and manifestations are concrete. Trump’s racial demagoguery and mass deportation campaign includes military-style ICE raids on homes, schools, and churches, with proposals and guidance that would greatly expand warrantless arrests and make civil‑rights accountability far more difficult Now, ICE agents are encouraged to make warrantless arrests and granted effective but illegal immunity for civil-rights violations. Also, DEI programs across federal agencies have been dismantled by executive order on the first day of Trump’s second term, explicitly reversing policies designed to address systemic racial inequality. States including Georgia and Texas have implemented voter-suppression laws and racial gerrymandering that disproportionately strips Black, Latino, and Asian American voters of political power. For example, black mail-ballot use in Georgia fell from 29% to 5%. (link 16, link 17, link 18)

Q1: Do Trump and MAGA elites cynically play the race card, or are their arguments that what they do is fair, warranted and race-neutral?

Q2: Is Trump a racist, or is he non-racist but cynically playing the race card as part of his personal wealth and power campaign?

BNR just blew up as free access to news reporting goes up in smoke

Stick with me on this -- it ain't gonna go where most would expect.

BNR is a strange half-MAGA, half-something else mostly normal blog I've been posting at recently. It  shut down its posting of news articles as of this morning or sometime last night. Here's BNR's notice.

Based on zero information I instantly strongly suspected two things. First, copyright infringement. Second, the unobvious twist here, Trump and MAGA.

Copyright and the free markets 

Recently news media in the UK started getting extremely aggressive about enforcing copyrights of several thousand online UK media sources. That caused BNR to stop posting anything from those sources such as The Independent and The Guardian. In the last few months, ~4-6 months, I've noticed a limiting of free access to US news sources online. Major news and politics-related info content aggregators like r/politics, r/law and r/scotus were posting from a shrinking number of sites where content from articles was still not paywalled. And, many not paywalled places were starting to demand ad blockers to be shut off or no access allowed. Intense economic pressure was closing in on free online content. Lots of sites were putting paywalls in place or forcing people to be subject to endless obnoxious, aggressive and just plain stupid ads.

Trump and MAGA

Authoritarianism, unregulated capitalism 

are inherently incompatible with professional journalism

This argument is complicated but can be boiled down to this. Trump and MAGA elites have made very clear, public and undeniable their seething contempt and hate of professional news reporting. The reasons for that are obvious -- honest, professional journalism is a major threat to all kinds of authoritarianism and kleptocracy. Dictators hate it. So to theocrats, oligarchs, military juntas, thieves and rigid ideologues.

Trump's threats to mainstream news and social media sources have been clear, public and aggressive. We all saw how Trump's threats collapsed Jeff Bezos into a steaming pile of complicity with the WaPo, causing that formerly top notch newspaper to die in darkness. We all saw Trump and MAGA elites defund NPR and PBS. We also witnessed a corrupt authoritarian MAGA oligarch force a radical Zionist propagandist, Bari Weiss, to take over at CBS News. Some of you have read PD's brilliant analyses of what is going on with the mainstream media (and some other things), clearly showing a state of collapse from fear of Trump and MAGA, reluctant complicity and probably more than a little sympathetic authoritarian sentiment (analysis 1, analysis 2, analysis 3, analysis 4, analysis 5, analysis 6). 

In my firm opinion, we're on our own. No one can save us except ourselves. The MSM is toast. The Democratic Party remains weak, divided, clueless, and I now begin to suspect more than a little sympathetic to authoritarianism and corruption. The Christian church is split, with vast power in its aggressive, bigoted, theocratic Christian nationalism. The real, pro-democracy, tolerant Christians appear to be weak, divided, and confused or paralyzed. Universities have been cowed into complicity. The business community is, or appears to be, mostly cowed into silence or supportive of oligarchy, Christian nationalist theocracy and/or a Trump dictatorship-kleptocracy.

All that's left in defense of democracy appears to be mostly the 2026 mid-term elections. As PD pointed out in his analysis, Trump and MAGA elites are now desperately trying to subvert those elections. 

In my opinion, what is happened to BNR fits easily into the larger picture of Trump and MAGA authoritarianism slowly engulfing and smothering what's left of pro-democracy resistance. Instead of government propping up professional reporting and public interest broadcasting, e.g., NPR and PBS, the Trump and his MAGA government are doing their very best to kill as much professional reporting as they can by public threats and whatever else they can do in secrecy. They can do a hell of a lot in secrecy. Essentially all the available evidence points to Trump and MAGA elites doing as much damage to our democracy and rule of law in as much secrecy as they can, as fast as they can.

Q: Has Germaine gone off his meds and started spewing blither and falsehoods like Trump now routinely spews? Or, is there maybe something to the argument that we're in very deep shit with Trump and elite MAGA authoritarianism and corruption? 

AI WARNING.....

 

Glorified Ad or Grave Warning? The Internet Debates Mega-Viral Economic Doomsday Article About AI Revolution

An article warning humans that artificial intelligence (AI) would soon replace just about everyone went viral on social media on Tuesday, sparking a debate over whether the text was a legitimate warning or an “AI-generated word salad” intended as a glorified advertisement.

In the article posted by AI company CEO Matt Shumer, social media users were warned that the AI revolution could come far sooner than most expected.

Shumer warned that lawyers, finance experts, journalists, marketing copywriters, programmers, workers in the health industry, and customer service agents would all soon be on the chopping block to be replaced by AI, with AI systems on track to “replace human judgment, creativity, strategic thinking,” and even “empathy.”

While the article went hugely viral on social media, amassing 33 million views and 53,000 likes on Elon Musk’s X, Shumer’s claims were shot down by many skeptics.

“It’s depressing how widely shared and read this is. It’s AI-generated word salad posted by someone with a vested interest in spreading AI hype,” weighed in Front Porch Republic editor Jeffrey Bilbro. “AI is ‘big,’ I guess, but its effects will be much more complicated and variegated than this ‘essay’ implies.”

Others, including The Washington Post’s Megan McArdle, argued that the fact that an AI-written article could ignite such a firestorm was evidence in favor of Shumer’s thesis.

“If ‘AI-generated word salad’ can convince a bunch of folks that AI will be the biggest disruption since man tamed fire … well, you should update your priors in favor of AI being incredibly disruptive,” argued McArdle.

Critics described the article as “delusional,” “bullsh*t,” and a barely disguised ad.

https://www.mediaite.com/media/tech/glorified-ad-or-grave-warning-the-internet-debates-mega-viral-economic-doomsday-article-about-ai-revolution/ 

Only question I have is how soon will AI replace Germaine or myself?? 😕

 

The Machinery Is Being Built: What Eight Days in February Revealed About November 2026

 

[This essay condenses findings from a 37-page report documenting Trump administration activity February 2-10, 2026, with comprehensive sourcing.  Full report available here]

On February 2, President Trump said Republicans should "nationalize" elections and "take over" voting in "15 different places." Six days later, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries responded: "What Donald Trump wants to do is try to nationalize the election. Translation: steal it."

Elite consensus now openly acknowledges the stakes. If you've been trying to follow the news and feeling like the pieces don't quite add up to adequate response—this is why. The question is whether we can see the whole picture clearly enough, quickly enough, to respond before the window closes.

The Problem We Face

Here's what makes this moment different from the daily chaos of Trump 1.0: mainstream media covers the pieces  with varying degrees of (in)accuracy, but more importantly they are covered and interpreted separately. Immigration reporters cover ICE expansion. Election reporters cover voter roll litigation. Investigative teams document detention facility construction. Each story appears in its own section, its own day, its own frame.

This fragmentation isn't accidental—it's structural. And it may serve consolidation of authoritarian power by preventing us from seeing what's actually being built: integrated infrastructure across three domains, all converging on a single November Elections 2026 deadline.

I wrote this to explain why the daily news feels increasingly fragmented, as if incapable of or unwilling to report what many of us can see happening in real time; and why institutions seem unable to respond to it adequately. I integrated just eight days of coverage across different beats in a report this week, and a systematic picture emerged that no single outlet I'm aware of has presented to the public.

Though I've written about this problem before here, the stakes are now much higher. The integrated operations of the Trump administration are outpacing institutional capacity to respond in the decisive months between now and the election. What follows is documentation of what eight days in early Feb. revealed.

 

What Eight Days Revealed

Between February 2 and 10, three systems advanced simultaneously:

Operational Capacity: WIRED published leaked documents showing ICE and Border Patrol securing 150+ new field office locations across nearly every state. Not temporary surge capacity—multi-year leases establishing permanent presence near schools, medical facilities, places of worship. Detention capacity expanding to 150,000 beds (five times current levels), with warehouse-scale facilities under construction. Personnel doubled from 11,000 to 22,000+ agents. All funded through $75-80 billion in multi-year appropriations independent of annual budgets—meaning shutdown threats are theater that affects TSA and FEMA but leaves enforcement fully operational.

Voter Suppression Systems: DOJ demanding complete voter rolls from all 50 states, including Social Security numbers, driver's licenses, email addresses, phone numbers, party registration, and voting history. Three federal judges ruled against DOJ in four days (Oregon, California, Michigan), with judges explicitly questioning DOJ's trustworthiness. Meanwhile, Palantir's $60+ million system integrates voter data with Medicaid/SNAP databases, DMV records, and facial recognition into "confidence scores" for bulk deportation processing. And Reuters reported ICE maintains a surveillance database tracking 655+ individuals prosecuted for observing immigration operations—a pre-election target list of civically engaged activists.

Institutional Constraint Neutralization: Fifth Circuit eliminated bond hearings for broad categories of detainees (mandatory indefinite detention). A Biden-appointed judge struck down California's ban on masked immigration enforcement. Congress questioned agency heads while Tom Homan—the actual operational commander—was absent, running enforcement from the White House as unconfirmed advisor bypassing normal oversight.

The Rosetta Stone

How do we know these aren't separate controversies occurring simultaneously? Because Attorney General Pam Bondi told us.

Her January 24 letter to Minnesota Governor Walz explicitly demanded three things as conditions for considering operational changes in Minneapolis: complete voter registration rolls, all Medicaid and SNAP recipient data, and state law enforcement cooperation with ICE.

This is documentary proof. Not interpretation—proof cited by federal judges as evidence DOJ "could [no longer] be taken at its word" and seeks to "abridge the right of many Americans to cast their ballots."

Immigration enforcement creates leverage for data extraction. Data extraction enables voter identification and intimidation. Operational capacity enables removal. All converging on November.

The Timeline Is Arithmetic, Not Rhetoric

All systems operational by November 2026. That's not hyperbole—it's construction timelines:

• ICE office leases being signed now on multi-year terms

• Detention warehouses have summer completion targets

• Hiring surges ongoing

• Voter roll litigation will extend months past deadline regardless of outcome

The infrastructure will be operational for the midterm election whether or not courts rule favorably or Congress passes restrictions. This isn't about legal permission—it's about physical capacity becoming reality while opposition negotiates over guardrails.

Why Institutions Seem Unable to Respond

Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, asked about threats against officers: "Let me send a message to anyone who thinks they can intimidate us: You will fail. We are only getting started."

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, same day: "The clock is ticking for Republicans to negotiate seriously with Democrats to rein in ICE."

Two parallel realities. Schumer negotiates over masks, warrants, body cameras. Lyons announces operations are escalating. Democrats propose legislation requiring Trump's signature. Republicans fund enforcement independently for multiple years. Democratic timelines unfold over months. Enforcement operates daily.

The tempo mismatch appears decisive. And it's not just tempo—it's fragmentation. Only three states (New York, Massachusetts, Maine) have enacted coordinated restrictions on ICE cooperation. If that expanded to 10-15 states acting simultaneously, the operational friction would multiply significantly. But sequential resistance allows operations to shift to less-resistant jurisdictions. Coordinated multi-state action could -- potentially-- overwhelm federal administrative capacity to adjust.

That's not happening.

What Scholars Are Saying

In December 2025, Steven Levitsky, Lucan Way, and Daniel Ziblatt—authors of How Democracies Die—published "The Price of American Authoritarianism" in Foreign Affairs. Their assessment: the United States has crossed the threshold from democracy to competitive authoritarianism—a system where elections are held and opposition operates, but the playing field is systematically tilted through state institutions.

What we may be witnessing now is the consolidation phase: infrastructure build-out that makes the regime type change irreversible. Whether consolidation locks in, they wrote, depends on "how citizens and institutions respond in coming months."

Nine months remain. The machinery is being built. The question is whether we can integrate understanding and coordinate operationally fast enough to disrupt construction before the system becomes operational.

Why This Matters

If the news seems to fragment into disconnected outrages that somehow don't add up to adequate response, that fragmentation is real and structural. Seeing it clearly, together, refusing to accept the fragmentation even when our institutions can't—that matters. Not because it guarantees we can stop what's being built, but because witnessing together while there's still time is what we owe each other and the future.

This is for the record. For future understanding of how consolidation succeeded or failed despite being visible to anyone willing to integrate the evidence. And for the possibility, however small, that someone positioned to disrupt construction gains the clarity needed to act.

Nine months remain. The machinery is being built. What emerges will be determined not by what public negotiations promise, but by what operational infrastructure accomplishes—and whether enough of us see clearly enough, quickly enough, to disrupt construction before it's complete. We can't know if that's possible. But we can refuse to look away. That's what we owe each other, and everyone who comes after.

---

Key Sources:

• Levitsky, Way & Ziblatt, "The Price of American Authoritarianism," Foreign Affairs, December 2025

• Bondi letter to Governor Walz, January 24, 2026: Minnesota SOS

• WIRED: "ICE Is Expanding Across the US at Breakneck Speed", February 10, 2026

• Reuters: "ICE is cracking down on people who follow them", February 10, 2026

• Oregon v. DOJ, California v. DOJ, Michigan v. DOJ (February 7-10, 2026): Federal court rulings blocking voter roll demands

• House Homeland Security Committee hearing, February 10, 2026 (Lyons testimony)

   [Comprehensive bibliography follows full report here] 

A MAGA politician has a mini-epiphany - "wow"

The Hill writes:

Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) said Monday she now understands “what the big deal is” after reviewing unredacted files tied to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

“I’ve not been one of the members who has glommed on to this as an issue,” Lummis said in an interview with journalist Pablo Manríquez. “I’ve sort of intentionally deferred to others to find out about it. But 9-year-old victims … wow.”

“I’ve sort of intentionally deferred to others to find out about it. But 9-year-old victims … wow. Well, initially, my reaction to all this was, ‘I don’t care. I don’t know what the big deal is.’ But now I see what the big deal is, and it was worth investigating,” she added. “And the members of Congress that have been pushing this were not wrong. So that’s really my only reaction.”

Her initial reaction was ‘I don’t care’. Her only reactions are “wow” and that people in congress wanting to investigate weren’t wrong. Wonderful. That's blistering, over the horizon insight and analysis. /s 

This is a candid glimpse into the mind of the standard-issue congressional MAGA Republican. Lummis represents classic MAGA incompetence coupled plus classic callousness, apathy, stupidity, and Dog only knows what other moral horrors lurk in her black MAGA character.

Q: Is it over the top or simply wrong to harshly criticize Lummis and all other congressional MAGA Republicans like this? If there are exceptions, who are they? 

Analysis of political polarization in the US

A recent research paper, A new measure of issue polarization using k-means clustering: US trends 1988–2024 and predictors of polarization across the world, describes results researchers got from trying to measure political polarization over time and across countries. Trying to assess political polarization has been messy and error-prone. This paper describes the use of a data collection and analysis method they call k-means clustering (KMC). KMC appears to afford a better way to assess what issues are dividing Americans so bitterly and thus threatening our democracy, rule of law and civil liberties.

In this paper, scientists tracked polarization over time and compared it across countries. Instead of relying on whether people call themselves "liberal" or "conservative," or "Democrat" or "Republican," the researchers used KMC, a computer algorithm. The algorithm looks at how people actually answer a wide range of policy questions, then sorts them into groups of like-minded people from the ground up, without any named political labels. Polarization was measured by separation (how far apart groups are in their views), cohesion (how much people within each group agree with one another), and size (groups sizes compared). That is new in analysis of political polarization. Clusters of issues were assessed in the groups, e.g., abortion, gun control, immigration, gender roles, social values, etc.

The results are interesting. First, KMC analysis found polarization increased in the USA from 1988 to 2024, driven almost completely by a period of rising separation between clusters of beliefs from 2008 to 2020. Data from across the world indicated that mass issue polarization is driven primarily by disagreement over cultural issues, but that varied according to each nation's Human Development Index (HDI), a measure of health (life expectancy at birth), education level (years of schooling) and standard of living (income). Since 1988, the US has been more highly polarized compared to high HDI countries.

Most of the increasing polarization came from the groups moving farther apart from each other on issues. not from people in each group becoming more uniform, or from one side growing much larger than the other.

Data analysis indicated that people's opinions become more "packaged" or clustered. In 1988, someone with right-leaning views on the economy didn't necessarily oppose abortion. Today, positions on different issues increasingly go together in a bundle. If you know someone's view on one topic, you can more reliably guess their views on many others. Interestingly, data analysis also indicated that some of American society was liberalizing, with the left-leaning cluster being significantly more socially liberal in 2024 than in 1988, while the right-leaning cluster was rather stable becoming only slightly more conservative.

What that data and analysis does not capture is radicalization of the right-leaning cluster. It is only slightly more conservative on the issues analyzed, immigration, taxes, gun regulations, social spending, etc. But support for radical right authoritarianism, e.g., supporting strong leaders breaking laws to set things right, or loss of respect for democratic norms and institutions, is a different political dimension than what this research paper analyzed. 

In other words, many or most conservatives (about half the country) generally hold about the same policy views they held in 2008 (abortion probably being an exception), but became more authoritarian in how they believe those policies should be implemented (another link). Meanwhile, about half of the US, more or less liberalized and retained their support for democracy and the rule of law.

A consciousness science update

A current SciAm article, Why consciousness is the hardest problem in science, summarizes the state of the art. In a nutshell, it's stuck. There are 29 theories but we don't have technology that's sophisticated and sensitive enough to detect enough in the staggering complexity of normal brain activity. We can't tell one theory from the other. Some of the theories are backed by no experimental evidence. A unifying experimental observation and consensus belief is that, whatever it is, consciousness is very complex and is grounded in diffuse brain activity. It can't yet be pinned down to small parts of the brain.

 

Two of the leading theories are the global workspace theory (GWT) and the integrated information theory (IIT, mentioned below).

Current thinking is that consciousness has three dimensions, all of which vary in a range of states from full off to on. The dimensions are described in the image below.

Philosophers and scientists still struggle to simply define consciousness without falling back on what it feels like to experience something. Philosophers call that “definition by pointing.” There is a way to measure an approximate degree of consciousness that expert consensus believes is real and clinically useful. The measure is called the perturbational complexity index or PCI. PCI is a crude measure of consciousness, but it reliably estimates someone’s status on the spectrum of consciousness. The SciAm article describes PCI like this:

It suggests that complexity is an important part of a conscious brain. In an awake or dreaming brain, diverse networks of neurons are in constant back-and-forth communication with one another. In this way, conscious brain activity is both differentiated (or rich in information) and integrated (forming one unified whole)—principles that Massimini borrowed from IIT, the theory that doesn’t begin with the brain. These interactions build up complexity, or what IIT theorists call a “cause-effect structure,” so that when you stimulate one part of a conscious brain, other parts respond.

But during dreamless sleep or when someone is under anesthesia, all that communication goes away. “Everything collapses,” Massimini says. “The cathedral falls apart.” Slow brain waves travel across the cortex as neurons cycle rhythmically between two electric states. In the “silent periods” between the waves, neurons enter what’s called a down state, in which they can’t respond to electric signals from their neighbors. This state is why there’s silence when you stimulate an unconscious brain with TMS: “No feedback, no unity, no complexity,” he says.

The SciAm article mentions the hostility that mainstream science still has for possible non-materialist explanations because that drifts into spiritualism/religion. After a massive study to failed to prove or disprove the leading IIT and GWT theories, some scientists got very upset. They publicly called IIT pseudoscience because they believed IIT strayed from materialism into dualism (spirituality or religion). SciAm writes:

 

An open letter calling IIT pseudoscience was published online in September 2023, signed by 124 researchers in or adjacent to the field. The argument focused less on the theory than on its coverage in the media, which the letter’s authors saw as credulous. The authors also took issue with the panpsychist implications of IIT, highlighting descriptions of it as unscientific and “magicalist.” “These bold claims threaten to delegitimize the scientific study of consciousness,” many of the authors wrote in a follow-up article.

The prospect that the field could lose its legitimacy hung over the fight. One side feared IIT’s reputation would drag consciousness science even further toward the fringes, and the other worried that publicly tarring one theory with a “pseudoscience” label would lead to the downfall of the entire field.

What a mess. Scientists still cannot even entertain the possibility of a partial non-physical or immaterial explanation for consciousness without the whole field getting in an uproar. Of course, the press, being the sensationalist, for profit beast it is, one can see why scientists worry about how the science related to IIT will be misunderstood and abused. 

The problem is that there could still be material things we know nothing about, can't even detect yet, that could be a part of consciousness. It is still possible that the immaterial has nothing to do with spirituality or religion, but is something still beyond our ability to detect and understand.

This tension between the immaterial (religious, spiritual) and the material does not seem likely to go away in the near term. We're stuck with it.

Lying & deceit: Moral Choice in Politics

In her 1999 book, Lying: Moral Choice in public and Private Life, moral philosopher Sissela Bok lays out an intelligent but simple analysis of the power and effect of lying and deceit in democracy and politics. By contrast with a democracy, the leader’s lies and deceit in authoritarian states don’t make much difference to average people. They have little to no power. They have to live under their leadership regardless of how morally depraved, reality-detached, cruel, bigoted, or corrupt it may be.

The image below is a tally PolitiFact’s assessment of 1,000 of Trump’s statements. That data makes clear why the topic of lying and deceit in democracy, is critically and urgently important in America today.

Bok’s basic argument is simple and rational. Specifically, when people have been deceived and they act on false beliefs, their power to decide how to act based on facts, truths and sound reasoning has been taken from them without their consent or knowledge. Common sense and contemporary research tell us that deceit is inherently authoritarian, therefore anti-democracy. (link 1, link 2, link 3, link 4)

Also, Bok and some others assert that lying and deceit are almost always inherently immoral. Arguably, they are evil when actions by deceived people based on false beliefs lead to unnecessary harm or deaths. That argument is simple logic. A rock solid example of unnecessary harm and death from deceit is people who have been convinced by anti-vaccine liars and crackpots. Some of those deceived people refuse to get vaccinated against COVID or other infections. Some of them get infected and die. Some infect others who die. (link 5, link 6)

Finally, research and history both indicate that irrational emotional manipulation is the single most effective persuasion weapon that demagogues and authoritarians have in gaining power to deceive and destroy democracy. Fomenting fear, anger, and identity-based resentment constitutes the most powerful weapon demagogues have. It works by (1) suppressing conscious reasoning, (2) creating "winner-take-all" attention narrowing that excludes contrary evidence like actual facts, and (3) exploiting unconscious cognitive biases and heuristics that replace careful reasoning with visceral, emotional responses. (link 7, link 8, link 9, link 10)

Wikipedia describes demagoguery like this: The central feature of demagoguery is persuasion by means of passion, shutting down reasoned thinking and consideration of alternatives. Demagogues pander to passion, prejudice, bigotry, and ignorance, not facts and reason, because this is the most effective tool to exploit human beings.

Q1: Can a person reasonably believe that lies and deceit from Trump and MAGA elites are at least immoral, or even evil?

Q2: Are most rank and file Trump supporters immoral or evil, or are they mostly good people who have been deceived and manipulated, whereby deceit has absolved them of responsibility for their actions?

Who watches the Super Bore anyways?

 Worse - who watches the half-time show?

Not like Bruce Springsteen is gonna be playing during the half-time show, that might make it a worthwhile watch. 

It just ain't 2009 any more. 

Now you get someone who calls himself Bad Bunny?

Bad Bunny was crowned last year by Spotify as the most listened-to musical artist in the world.

Umm, ok, if they say so, never heard of him 😒

So, with that in mind, we need some real time AMERICAN music as an alternative:

• Kid Rock has been named as the headliner of Turning Point USA's conservative alternative to the Super Bowl LX halftime show.
• The organization co-founded by late right-wing activist Charlie Kirk previously said the event would be designed around "faith, family and freedom" and feature as a potential music genre "Anything in English."
• Bad Bunny's selection as this year's Super Bowl halftime performer sparked conservative backlash, for his choice of Spanish as the dominant language of his music and for his past criticisms of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
• https://ew.com/kid-rock-headlining-conservative-alternative-to-super-bowl-halftime-show-11897759
  

Well, ya might not like his politics, but at least it's ROCK 'N ROLL!

Trump is insane

Really, he's just plain nuts. And a liar, hypocrite and morally rotted monster. His looney-tunes EO says in part:

The Government of Cuba has taken extraordinary actions that harm and threaten the United States. The regime aligns itself with — and provides support for — numerous hostile countries, transnational terrorist groups, and malign actors adverse to the United States, including the Government of the Russian Federation (Russia), the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the Government of Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah.

I find that the policies, practices, and actions of the Government of Cuba directly threaten the safety, national security, and foreign policy of the United States. ..... The policies, practices, and actions of the Government of Cuba are also repugnant to the moral and political values of democratic and free societies and conflict with the foreign policy of the United States to encourage peaceful change in Cuba and to promote democracy, the principle of free expression and press, the rule of law, and respect for human rights throughout the world.

Hypocrisy unleashed

A core hypocrisy is that the EO spins a targeted secondary‑sanctions tariff scheme as a defense of “democracy,” “rule of law,” and “human rights” but at the same time the United States arms, shields, and trades heavily with other governments that commit far more extensive abuses, sponsor destabilizing wars, and host U.S. military/intelligence infrastructure without being threatened with comparable penalties.

Trump denounces Cuba for persecuting political opponents, suppressing free speech and press, restricting civil society and torture, and calls its actions “repugnant to the moral and political values of democratic and free societies”. But Trump policy continues extensive security and economic cooperation with brutal dictatorships like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, and others. There is plenty of well‑documented arbitrary detention, torture, and suppression of dissent there  in those Trump-holes. With Trump, economic interests routinely override democracy and human rights concerns in Middle Eastern and other allied thugships (dictatorships).

But the peanuts are not fooled.

Peanut 1: As a Nobel peace prize contender, he wants to non-peacefully take over Cuba and other places. Sounds like a good strategy.

Peanut 2: He didn't win a peace prize from some random organization, the soccer people I think, which he had no reason to even consider himself in the running for. So now he has no obligation to think about peace!

Peanut 3: Accusing others of what you are doing is a core feature of fascism.

Peanut 4 to 3: And toddlers.

Peanut 5: Arrest Don Lemon!!

Peanut 6 to 5: The Epstein files!! Release the Epstein files.

Peanut 7 to 6: They have been released. Trump is a sick pedo. But, he's gonna sue the “third‑rate writer” Michael Wolff, again! 

Peanut 8: In some ways, despite what many say, these are EXTREMELY precedented times.

Peanut 9 to 8: Annoyingly, you're right. 🤔

Peanut 10: Cuba broke into my home last night, and violated my human rights. I’m roughly 1,500 miles away. If it happened to me, it could happen to you. 

Peanut 11: Nailed it! Cuba is in for some Trump ‘freedom’! Buy $Trump memecoin now!

Peanut 12: I very much miss looking up to people.

Peanut 13: Ffs!

Peanut 14: Civilized countries should give some nukes to Cuba. It's the only way of keeping out the Americans.

People we have admired.......

 Inspired by Germaine's last thread on .............

Presidential rankings by experts and the public

I am sure historians have painted all kinds of flattering or not so flattering pictures of historical figures, not just political.

We were "taught" to admire Abraham Lincoln, encouraged to admire Nelson Mandela, and if from a religious background, to worship Jesus Christ.

However, as I stated on that previous thread, if we opt to dig deeper into someone's past we might find things about them less admirable. We might even find criticisms of our heroes.

So, I am going to ask a simple question and hope participants will just ................ well.............. participate on the question................ rather than KNOCK someone else's answer. Disagree sure, that is what discussions are all about. 

Without knowing the full context of a person or history of a person, or knowing some or what YOU believe you know about someone from history, can you name 10 people you truly admired and still admire?

Of course our top 10 will change with the wind or change with new knowledge, but generally speaking............

For me:

Albert Einstein

Abraham Lincoln

Oskar Schindler

Mahatma Gandhi

Martin Luther King Jr. 

Malala Yousafzai

Leonardo Di Vinci

Marie Curie

Helen Keller

Terry Fox 

Honorable mention, Jesus, IF he was a real person, and IF he did spread the message of love (despite how the Church paints him)