An interesting Q&A about race & racism

Could this be true?

This is sort of interesting, and embarrassing because I was unaware of it:

Q: Does modern science no longer recognize different human races as biologically meaningful?

A: Modern science does not recognize different human races as biologically meaningful categories. The genetic evidence shows that there is no clear biological basis for dividing humans into distinct races.

Human genetic variation is real and widespread, but it is clinal, meaning it varies gradually across geographic regions rather than falling into distinct clusters or races. The vast majority of human genetic diversity exists among individuals within populations, not between different "racial" groups. Genetic studies have consistently shown that humans cannot be divided into biologically distinct subcategories or races. 

While there are some modest genetic differences between human populations adapted to different environments, these differences do not represent deep evolutionary divergence or separate genetic lineages that could define biological races. Traits like skin color are adaptations to specific environmental factors like UV radiation, not indicators of overall genetic differentiation into races. 

The concept of race is a social and cultural construct, not a biological one grounded in genetics. Racial categories are inconsistently defined across societies and do not correspond to objective biological distinctions. As the scientific consensus statement states, "There is no biological basis for 'races.'"

Considered a social construct without inherent physical or biological meaning, which is foundational to the concept of racism.

Wait, what? There is no biological basis for race? But, but, how can there be racism and White Supremacy? There can be bigotry against the ethnicity or culture an alleged race comes from, but not racism. Racism has gone extinct! Science killed it.

Q: 

1. Wadda think about the non-existence of racism as a real, specific thing in people's minds but not in actual reality?

2. Why was I unaware of this? 

Germaine didn't know!?

References:

1. Much of the recent scientific literature on human evolution portrays human populations as separate branches on an evolutionary tree. A tree-like structure among humans has been falsified whenever tested, so this practice is scientifically indefensible. It is also socially irresponsible as these pictorial representations of human evolution have more impact on the general public than nuanced phrases in the text of a scientific paper. Humans have much genetic diversity, but the vast majority of this diversity reflects individual uniqueness and not race. 2013

2. We argue that human races, in the biological sense of local populations adapted to particular environments, do in fact exist; such races are best understood through the common ecological concept of ecotypes. However, human ecotypic races do not in general correspond with ‘folk’ racial categories, largely because many similar ecotypes have multiple independent origins. Consequently, while human natural races exist, they have little or nothing in common with ‘folk’ races. 2022

3. Race Is Real, But It’s Not Genetic -- For over 300 years, socially defined notions of “race” have shaped human lives around the globe—but the category has no biological foundation. Human variation does not stand still. “Race groups” are impossible to define in any stable or universal way. It cannot be done based on biology—not by skin color, bone measurements, or genetics. It cannot be done culturally: Race groupings have changed over time and place throughout history. Science 101: If you cannot define groups consistently, then you cannot make scientific generalizations about them.

A few pundits such as Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute [home of Project 2025 😏] and science writers such as Nicholas Wade, formerly of The New York Times, still argue that even though humans don’t come in fixed, color-coded races, dividing us into races still does a decent job of describing human genetic variation. Their position is shockingly wrong. We’ve known for almost 50 years that race does not describe human genetic variation. 2020

Social institution degeneration: Normalization of American political violence

A NYT article (not paywalled) discusses threats to politicians and officials arising from political extremism, crackpot conspiracy theories and false beliefs:

One Friday last month, Jamie Raskin, a Democratic congressman from Maryland, spent a chunk of his day in court securing a protective order.

It was not his first. Mr. Raskin, who played a leading role in Donald J. Trump’s second impeachment hearing, said he received about 50 menacing calls, emails and letters every month that are turned over to the Capitol Police.

His latest court visit was prompted by a man who showed up at his house and screamed in his face about the Covid-19 vaccine, Mr. Trump’s impeachment and gender-related surgeries. Nearly two years earlier, the same man, with his 3-year-old son in his arms, had yelled profanities at Mr. Raskin at a July 4 parade, according to a police report.

“I told the judge I don’t care about him getting jail time. He just needs some parenting lessons,” Mr. Raskin said.

Mr. Raskin was far from the only government official staring down the uglier side of public service in America in recent weeks. Since late March, bomb threats closed libraries in Durham, N.C.; Reading, Mass.; and Lancaster, Pa., and suspended operations at a courthouse in Franklin County, Pa. In Bakersfield, Calif., an activist protesting the war in Gaza was arrested after telling City Council members: “We’ll see you at your house. We’ll murder you.”

A Florida man was sentenced to 14 months in prison for leaving a voice mail message promising to “come kill” Chief Justice John Roberts.

And Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, refused to rule out violence if he were to lose in November. “It always depends on the fairness of the election,” he said in an interview late last month.

This was just a typical month in American public life, where a steady undercurrent of violence and physical risk has become a new normal. From City Hall to Congress, public officials increasingly describe threats and harassment as a routine part of their jobs. Often masked by online anonymity and propelled by extreme political views, the barrage of menace has changed how public officials do their work, terrified their families and driven some from public life altogether.

By almost all measures, the evidence of the trend is striking. Last year, more than 450 federal judges were targeted with threats, a roughly 150 percent increase from 2019, according to the United States Marshals Service. The U.S. Capitol Police investigated more than 8,000 threats to members of Congress last year, up more than 50 percent from 2018. The agency recently added three full-time prosecutors to handle the volume.

More than 80 percent of local officials said they had been threatened or harassed, according to a survey conducted in 2021 by the National League of Cities.

“People are threatening not just the prosecutor, the special counsel, the judge but also family members,” said Ronald L. Davis, director of the U.S. Marshals Service. Lisa Monaco, the deputy attorney general, said she saw “an environment where disagreement is increasingly tipping over” into “violent threats.”

The mass shootings at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018 and the Tops Friendly supermarket in Buffalo in 2022 were both carried out by perpetrators who expressed extreme right-wing views. Trump supporters’ riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was one of the largest acts of political violence in modern American history.

Others — including an Ohio man’s shootout with state troopers after the F.B.I. searched Mr. Trump’s home and shootings at the homes of Democratic officials in New Mexico — fall out of the headlines quickly.

Surveys have found increasing public support for politicized violence among both Republicans and Democrats in recent years. A study released last fall by the University of California, Davis, found that nearly one in three respondents considered violence justified to advance some political objectives, including “to stop an election from being stolen.”

“Although actual acts of political violence in America are still quite low compared to some other countries, we’re now in a position where there has been enough violence that the threats are credible,” said Rachel Kleinfeld, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who studies political violence.

Violence — and the threat of it — has been a part of American politics since the nation’s founding. But experts describe this moment as particularly volatile, thanks in great part to social media platforms that can amplify anonymous outrage, spread misinformation and conspiracy theories and turn a little-known public employee into a target.

No politician has harnessed the ferocious power of those platforms like Mr. Trump. The former president has long used personal attacks as a strategy to intimidate his adversaries. As he campaigns to return to the White House, he has turned that tactic on the judges and prosecutors involved in his various legal cases, all of whom have subsequently been threatened.

Democrats by and large have been the loudest voices in trying to quell political violence, although many on the right have accused them of insufficiently condemning unruly left-wing protesters on college campuses and at the homes of Supreme Court justices.

There is little research on the political views of those behind the onslaught of abuse. Some surveys show that Republican officeholders are more likely to report being targeted, often from members of their own party. Research does show, however, that recent acts of political violence are more likely to be carried out by perpetrators aligned with right-wing causes and beliefs.

Senator Mitt Romney, a Republican from Utah who is retiring at the end of this year, told a biographer that some G.O.P. lawmakers voted not to impeach and convict Mr. Trump after the Jan. 6 attack because they were afraid for their safety if they crossed his supporters. Mr. Romney did not identify the legislators by name and declined an interview for this article.

Andrew Hitt, the former head of the Republican Party in Wisconsin, agreed to go along with the Trump campaign’s failed scheme to overturn the 2020 election because he was “scared to death,” he told “60 Minutes.”

“It was not a safe time,” he said. 

Local libraries have also become targets amid a heated campaign to ban books and cancel events aimed at members of the L.G.B.T.Q. community. Bomb threats were reported by 32 of the American Library Association’s member institutions last year, compared with two the year before and none in 2021. 

Carolyn Foote, a retired librarian in Austin, Texas, who co-founded a group that supports librarians, said her members had become used to being called “pedophile, groomer, pornographer.”

Proving that ugly and hostile language has crossed the line from First Amendment-protected speech to credible threat can be difficult. Experts say prosecutions became even harder last year after the Supreme Court raised the bar for what qualifies as a credible threat, ruling that the person making the threat has to “have some subjective understanding of the threatening nature of his statements.”

In Bakersfield, Calif., a lawyer for Riddhi Patel, the activist who spoke of murdering City Council members after urging them to take up a Gaza cease-fire resolution, said her statement was not a crime. She has pleaded not guilty to 21 felony charges.

“It’s clear that this was not a true criminal threat, which under California law must be, among other things, credible, specific, immediate and unconditional,” said Peter Kang, the public defender of Kern County, which includes Bakersfield. “Instead, what we hear are Ms. Patel’s strong, passionate expressions, which fall within the bounds of constitutionally protected speech.”

It is fair and rational to consider people who issue threats to be violent extremists. Some are leftists and most are rightists. It is also fair and rational to consider Trump and authoritarian radical right propaganda media like Faux News to be major influencers in normalizing violent extremism. For example, both Trump and Faux have publicly defended and justified the violence of the traitors engaging in the 1/6 coup attempt. Faux publicly downplayed the violence and defended them. Trump says he will pardon all of them as patriots if he is re-elected. 

In terms of blame, this estimate seems reasonable and rational:

America’s radical right authoritarianism and its supporters: ~90% at fault (~85-95%)

Everything and everyone else: ~10% at fault

Qs: Is that estimate of blame reasonable and rational? Regarding normalization of violent extremism, the US Supreme Court more helpful than harmful?

Regarding the power of relentless propaganda to dehumanize and harden minds

An aspect of the Israel-Palestine horror that has been of personal interest is how the Israeli people view the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack, the ensuing Gaza war and what they want after the war ends. The polling I've seen so far indicates that majority public opinion has hardened into deep anger and desire for revenge. A NYT opinion (not paywalled) exemplifies the situation:

The View Within Israel Turns Bleak

It was the pictures of Palestinians swimming and sunning at a Gaza beach that rubbed Yehuda Shlezinger, an Israeli journalist, the wrong way. Stylish in round red glasses and a faint scruff of beard, Mr. Shlezinger unloaded his revulsion at the “disturbing” pictures while appearing on Israel’s Channel 12.

“These people there deserve death, a hard death, an agonizing death, and instead we see them enjoying on the beach and having fun,” complained Mr. Shlezinger, the religious affairs correspondent for the widely circulated right-wing Israel Hayom newspaper. “We should have seen a lot more revenge there,” Mr. Shlezinger unrepentantly added. “A lot more rivers of Gazans’ blood.”

It would be nice to think that Mr. Shlezinger is a fringe figure or that Israelis would be shocked by his bloody fantasies. But he’s not, and many wouldn’t be.

Israel has hardened, and the signs of it are in plain view. Dehumanizing language and promises of annihilation from military and political leaders. Polls that found wide support for the policies that have wreaked devastation and starvation in Gaza. Selfies of Israeli soldiers preening proudly in bomb-crushed Palestinian neighborhoods. A crackdown on even mild forms of dissent among Israelis.

This bleak ideological landscape emerged slowly and then, on Oct. 7, all at once.

The massacre and kidnappings of that day, predictably, brought a public thirst for revenge. But in truth, by the time Hamas killers rampaged through the kibbutzim — in a bitter twist, home to some of the holdout peaceniks — many Israelis had long since come to regard Palestinians as a threat best locked away. America’s romantic mythology and wishful thinking about Israel encourage a tendency to see Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the main cause of the ruthlessness in Gaza, where Israel has killed more than 35,000 people. The unpopular, scandal-ridden premier makes a convincing ogre in an oversimplified story.

But Israel’s slaughter in Gaza, the creeping famine, the wholesale destruction of neighborhoods — this, polling suggests, is the war the Israeli public wanted. A January survey found that 94 percent of Jewish Israelis said the force being used against Gaza was appropriate or even insufficient. In February, a poll found that most Jewish Israelis opposed food and medicine getting into Gaza. It was not Mr. Netanyahu alone but also his war cabinet members (including Benny Gantz, often invoked as the moderate alternative to Mr. Netanyahu) who unanimously rejected a Hamas deal to free Israeli hostages and, instead, began an assault on the city of Rafah, overflowing with displaced civilians.
The Israeli left — the factions that criticize the occupation of Palestinian lands and favor negotiations and peace instead — is now a withered stump of a once-vigorous movement. In recent years, the attitudes of many Israelis toward the “Palestinian problem” have ranged largely from detached fatigue to the hard-line belief that driving Palestinians off their land and into submission is God’s work.  

“The issues of settlements or relations with Palestinians were off the table for years,” Tamar Hermann told me. “The status quo was OK for Israelis.”

Ms. Hermann, a senior research fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, is one of the country’s most respected experts on Israeli public opinion. In recent years, she said, Palestinians hardly caught the attention of Israeli Jews. She and her colleagues periodically made lists of issues and asked respondents to rank them in order of importance. It didn’t matter how many choices the pollsters presented, she said — resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict came in last in almost all measurements.

“It was totally ignored,” she said. Israel’s uneasy detachment turned to rage on Oct. 7.

A handful of songs with lyrics calling for the annihilation of a dehumanized enemy have been circulated in Israel these past months, including “Launch,” a hip-hop glorification of the military promising “from kisses to guns, until Gaza is erased” .... “There is no forgiveness for swarms of rats,” another song goes. “They will die in their rat holes.”

Israeli shops hawk trendy products like a bumper sticker that reads, “Finish them,” and a pendant cut into the shape of Israel, with East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza seamlessly attached.

So many questions and ways to look at it

In view of the Hamas horror of Oct. 7, is it unreasonable or too biased to attribute the dehumanization and attitude hardening of the Israeli public to propaganda? After all, the murderous Hamas terror attack was an unspeakable evil. Yes, it arguably is too biased if one considers the horrible event that triggered the massive public opinion hardening of mind and dehumanization of all Palestinians. 

But what if one looks at all events from ~1946-1948 to 2024? or ~1500 to 2024? Could the horror of Oct. 7 be seen as a final cry of rage and anguish from a group of people who have been oppressed and imprisoned since 1948? Well, Hamas is not all Palestinians. The truth includes the fact, not opinion, that for decades Gaza has been an open air prison and Palestinians in the West Bank have been illegally forced into smaller and smaller areas of land. For decades, extremist Israeli propaganda has dehumanized all Palestinians, not just Hamas.

1517 to 1950

This is messy, isn't it?

This 12 minute video discusses the related topic of what is going on with the Palestinians living in the West Bank. That has nothing to do with Hamas because the Palestinian Authority governs the West Bank, not Hamas. This exemplifies the hardened attitude of Israel toward all Palestinians, not just those in Gaza or just Hamas fighters.

Is the democratic West cynical & hypocritical about

human rights for Russia vs for Israel?

This discusses some evidence that is true

The American Autocracy Threat Tracker

It is encouraging that more groups are waking up to the kleptocratic authoritarian threat that Trump and the Republican Party poses to democracy, civil liberties and the rule law. Someone ought to start keeping tabs on all the threats the thugs are publicly making in their lust for power and wealth at the expense of democracy, the law and our liberties. Oh, someone is keeping tabs. Good.

Last February, the group Just Security published a comprehensive list of threats to democracy that Trump and the Republican Party have made publicly. Just Security includes experts in government and democracy such as Norman L. Eisen, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Siven Watt, Andrew Warren, Jacob Kovacs-Goodman and Francois Barrilleaux. The list is updated when America's authoritarian radical right publicly issues new threats to impose dictatorship and kleptocracy on the American people, the law and government. Just Security writes in part (the intro is very long and detailed):

This autocracy threat tracker is also available as a PDF file. The tracker was originally published on February 26, 2024 and is continually updated.

Introduction

Former President Donald Trump has said he will be a dictator on “day one.” He and his advisors and associates have publicly discussed hundreds of further actions to be taken during a second Trump presidency that directly threaten democracy, the rule of law, as well as U.S. (and global) security. These vary from Trump breaking the law and abusing power in areas like immigration roundups and energy extraction; to summarily and baselessly firing tens of thousands of civil servants whom he perceives as adversaries; to prosecuting his political opponents for personal gain and even hinting at executing some of them; to pardoning some of the convicted January 6th rioters he views as “great patriots,” “hostages,” and “wrongfully imprisoned.” We track all of these promises, plans, and pronouncements here and we will continue to update them.

We assess there is a significant risk of autocracy should Trump regain the presidency. Trump has said he would deploy the military against civilian protestors and his advisors have developed plans for using the Insurrection Act, said he would invoke the Alien Enemies Act to conduct deportations of non-citizens, continued to threaten legally-established abortion rights, and even had his lawyers argue that a president should be immune from prosecution if he directed SEAL Team Six to assassinate a political opponent. Trump also seeks the power to protect his personal wealth as he faces staggering civil fines, and to bolster his immunity as he faces 88 criminal charges in prosecutions in different parts of the country. He has predicted a “bloodbath” if he is not elected (although his meaning has been contested, with some saying he was referring to violence and others that “Trump was talking about US automakers.”) At a Veterans Day rally last year, Trump said he would “root out” political opponents who “live like vermin within the confines of our country” warning that the greatest threats come “from within” (words that, according to ABC News and others, “echoed those of past fascist dictators like Hitler and Benito Mussolini,” and alarmed historians.)

While Trump has claimed he will be a dictator for only the first day of his administration, his promise to do so—even for 24 hours—is antithetical to American democracy and consistent with the history of authoritarianism. Dictatorial powers, once assumed, are rarely relinquished. Moreover, Trump cannot possibly achieve his stated goals for the use of that power (in immigration and energy policy) in one day, meaning that his “dictatorship” would of necessity likely last much longer.

Many of Trump’s former Cabinet officials and advisors—those with the most experience watching him govern behind the scenes—believe he poses a grave danger to the country. John Bolton, Trump’s former National Security Advisor, said, “I think Trump will cause significant damage in a second term, damage that in some cases will be irreparable.” Trump’s former chief of staff, John Kelly, said that the former president praised Adolf Hitler’s ability to rebuild Germany’s economy, and admired his maintaining “loyalty” of his senior Nazi officials. Alyssa Farah Griffin, former Trump White House Director of Strategic Communications, noted, “Fundamentally, a second Trump term could mean the end of American democracy as we know it, and I don’t say that lightly.” Mark Esper, Trump’s former defense secretary, has warned of “more … hyper-aggressive behavior” by Trump if he takes office, recounting when Trump asked if demonstrators gathering around the White House following the death of George Floyd could be shot.

Trump’s dictatorial aspirations are complemented by an extensive pre-election plan to fundamentally alter the nature of American government: the Heritage Foundation’s 2025 Presidential Transition Project (Project 2025). Created by Trump allies and staffed by those including his past and likely future administration appointees, it is in the words of Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts, a plan for “institutionalizing Trumpism.” Trump has returned the compliment, saying of Roberts (and Heritage) that he’s “doing an unbelievable job, he’s bringing it back to levels we’ve never seen … thank you Kevin.”

Project 2025’s plans are set forth in an 887-page document entitled “Mandate for Leadership: the Conservative Promise.” It details a program to consolidate power in the executive branch, deconstruct the federal administration, and strip remaining agencies of their independence. It proposes to dismantle or radically overhaul the Departments of Justice and State; eliminate the Departments of Homeland Security, Education, and Commerce; radically repurpose other agencies; and eviscerate the professional civil service. Project 2025 is complemented by other 2025 planning efforts by, for example, the America First Policy Institute, the Center for Renewing America, and the Conservative Partnership Institute.

Trump and his associates are reportedly discussing building an administration around loyalists who would “stretch legal and governance boundaries” to accommodate an “aggressive use of the vast powers of the executive branch” (in the words of Project 2025). Among those Axios reported to be under discussion for senior government posts are Stephen Miller, Kash Patel, Steve Bannon, and Jeffrey Clark, who is currently under indictment in Georgia for his role in the fake electors scheme and a co-conspirator in the federal election indictment.

When Trump assumed office in 2017, he and his associates did not have such well developed policies and personnel in waiting. Indeed, he made the “mistake” of including people in senior administration positions who remained loyal to the Constitution. As Sec. Esper told Bill Kirstol in an April 17, 2024, interview, “There were guard rails in place, guard rail number one being the prospect of reelection, and number two being the people he brought in around him. Some of those guard rails won’t be there in number two.” A few days later, RNC Co-Chair Lara Trump told an audience to a round of applause, “He’s not worried about winning another election. It’s four years of scorched earth when Donald Trump retakes the White House.”  

We ignore leaders who promise dictatorship—and those who enable them—at our own peril. To see what America might become under Trump’s authoritarian aspirations, we should look at the regimes of other contemporary autocrats, especially as Trump has been mirroring recent autocratic moves in Hungary and elsewhere. With great fanfare, Trump recently welcomed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to his Mar-a-Lago resort, Florida, and has long expressed his admiration for Orbán’s leadership. The Hungarian’s self-proclaimed drive toward an “illiberal state” has seen extensive democratic backsliding. He packed the judiciary to place that branch of government squarely under his control; rewrote election laws to retain his legislative majority; censored the press; used law enforcement to persecute his enemies; and changed Hungary’s constitution to help achieve his autocratic goals—and he took that “blueprint on dismantling democracy to Mar-a-Lago.” Trump and Orbán’s continuing public alignment on key policy issues also “threatens trans-Atlantic security,”—despite Orban’s repeated claims to the contrary—with the pair reportedly aligning on, among other this, the Russian-Ukraine war and eyeing an end to U.S. funding and aid to Ukraine. The United States, like many other functioning democracies, is hardly immune from backsliding and lurching toward autocracy.

Part of the pdf list of public threats

Partisanship can amount to a divorce from reality; An early warning about DJT

A NYT opinion by David French discusses the usually unpleasant epiphany that some blind partisans feel when they take off the loyalty blindfold and see the divorce from reality it caused:

I Was a Republican Partisan. 

It Altered the Way I Saw the World.

[Intro: Discussion of polls being wrong, but caution about dismissing all of them when they are consistent for a significant period of time]

The purpose of this newsletter isn’t to adjudicate the polling dispute but to show an example of how the partisan mind works and how partisans process negative information. I could use any number of other examples. In a column last week, my colleague Ross Douthat rightly observed that “we are constantly urged to ‘stand with Israel’ when it’s unclear if Israel knows what it’s doing.” [Israel knows exactly what it is doing, French and Douthat are shockingly naive on this point]

I remember when supporters of Operation Iraqi Freedom constantly hyped good news from the battlefield and minimized bad news — right until the bad news became so overwhelming that the need for a radical strategy change was clear to everyone, from the soldier walking the streets of Baghdad to President George W. Bush and his team of national security advisers.

In 2020, when I was doing research for my book about the growing danger of partisan division, I began to learn more about what extreme partisanship does not only to our hearts but also to our minds. It can deeply and profoundly distort the way we view the world. We become so emotionally and spiritually invested in the outcome of a political contest that we can inadvertently become disconnected from reality.

To put it another way: Our heart connects with our mind in such a way that the heart demands that the mind conform to its deepest desires. When a partisan encounters negative information, it can often trigger the emotional equivalent of a fight-or-flight response. This applies not just to negative arguments but also to negative facts. To deal with the emotional response, we seek different arguments and alternative facts.

If you are a true partisan, you essentially become an unpaid lawyer for your side. Every “good” fact that bolsters your argument is magnified. Every “bad” fact is minimized or rationalized. When partisanship reaches its worst point, every positive claim about your side is automatically believed, and every negative allegation is automatically disbelieved. In fact, allegations of wrongdoing directed at your side are treated as acts of aggression — proof that “they” are trying to destroy “us.”

You see this reality most plainly in the daily Republican theatrics surrounding Trump’s criminal indictments. Rather than wrestle seriously with the profoundly troubling claims against him, they treat the criminal cases as proof of Democratic perfidy. They believe every claim against Hunter and Joe Biden and not a single claim against Trump.

The result is a kind of divorce from reality.

I have some rules to help temper my worst partisan impulses. Among them: Expose yourself to the best of the other side’s point of view — including the best essays, podcasts and books. Also, when you encounter a new idea, learn about it from its proponents before you read its opponents.

And when you encounter bad news about a cause that you hold dear — whether it’s a presidential campaign, an international conflict or even a claim against a person you admire, take a close and careful look at the evidence. Your opponent may be right, your friend may be wrong, and your emotions will often lead you astray.

By golly, I do believe that Mr. French has gone woke about human cognitive biology and social behavior. Bravo, Mr. French! 👏👍

_____________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________

This is an article Washington Monthly published Jan. 31, 2017, 11 days after Trump was sworn into office:

The 12 Early Warning Signs of Fascism

Guess how many Trump has already checked off

If you go to the U.S. Holocaust Museum, you can see a sign hanging there that tells you what to look for if you’re worried that your country may be slipping into fascism. Let’s take a look at their twelve [14 actually] early warning signs of fascism.

1. Powerful and continuing nationalism
2. Disdain for human rights
3. Identification of enemies as a unifying cause
4. Rampant sexism
5. Controlled mass media
6. Obsession with national security
7. Religion and government intertwined
8. Corporate power protected
9. Labor power suppressed
10. Disdain for intellectual and the arts
11. Obsession with crime and punishment
12. Rampant cronyism and corruption

You can follow the links above, but it shouldn’t be necessary if you’ve been paying any attention. Trump’s message is based on putting America “first,” making America “great again,” and is clearly a powerful form of nationalism that we’re also seeing arise in other countries in Europe and Asia.

Trump’s disdain for human rights is legend, but examples include his desire to kill the relatives of terrorists (something he accomplished this week), his insistence that he’ll do “worse than waterboarding” and his statement in the White House that “torture absolutely works.”

Trump has used Mexican “rapists” and Islamic terrorists as unifying enemies. This tactic is actually perhaps the core of his political strategy.

Trump’s sexism is one of the most transparent and well-established things we know about him.

Just this week, Trump advocated that someone friendly to him buy the New York Times. His chief adviser Steve Bannon comes from the Breitbart media dynamo and has told the media to shut their mouth. So far, Trumpists do not own much of the media, so they seek to marginalize and intimidate them. In any case, Fox News does a pretty good job on their own, and the right owns talk radio.

As for entwining religion and government, that can be seen in Mike Pence’s entire political career, but it’s also evident in the way that Trump has nakedly tried to make his immigration ban apply more fully to Muslims than to Christians. The Republican Party has had fascist tendencies in this regard that long predate Trump, but Trump has really run with (white) Christian nationalism as a fundamental part of his appeal. He cast himself as the defender of this group.

Trump has appointed the richest cabinet in history and proposes corporate friendly policies to match.

His nominee for Labor Secretary is a strong opponent of organized labor and Trump has had a poor relationship with labor in his business career. Most recently, this has been in the news in relation to the labor force at his Las Vegas hotel. Overall, Trump will go after unions across the board, especially public service unions and government employees.

So, there you have it. Twelve early signs of fascism, and Trump and his movement have already checked 11 of the boxes and are assured of checking the twelfth.

Project 2025 about public education and just about everything else

The conservative threat is real, not a mirage

America’s authoritarian radical right has laid out its policy wish list in a document called Project 2025. Most of the policies are radical. They typically involve a taking power from the federal government and individual citizens. The stolen power* will flow to states and powerful, wealthy elites and special interests. Project 2025 is truly an authoritarian manifesto aimed at neutering democracy, the rule of law and civil liberties. If Project 2025 is mostly implemented, Americans will be governed by some form of a combination of (1) kleptocratic dictatorship, (2) kleptocratic, bigoted Christian fundamentalist theocracy, and (3) kleptocratic, unregulated capitalist plutocracy. The 887 page manifesto is online at this link.

* Stolen because a majority of Americans would oppose most of what is in Project 2025 if they understood what it advocates implementing

One of the Project 2025 goals is gutting public education. That is a cherished goal of America's Christian nationalism (CN) wealth and power political movement. The CN goal is to eventually replace all secular education with mandatory Christian religious “education”, whatever that is.

Commentary from a North Carolina news source:

The Trump team’s radical plan to gut American public education

Not surprisingly, low-income children of color are among the chief targets

In many ways, it’s one of the great mysteries of modern American policy debates: What does the political right aim to achieve by destroying public education?

The idea of siphoning off billions of public dollars to fund private school vouchers is more obvious: It’s a straight money [and power] grab that abets the longstanding desire of many people of means to avoid having to send their children to melting pot schools that include poor kids and kids of different races and ability levels.

But why the relentless attack on the public schools and the kids and families who remain in them?

Is it simply a matter of the fact that – as Willie Sutton infamously said of the banks he robbed – “that’s where the money is”?

Is it born of that strange passion still found in some corners of the market fundamentalist right that all things public are inherently evil and a threat to their “freedom”?

Is it just a function of the fact that public schools in states like North Carolina have become majority-minority?

Whatever the explanation, it’s impossible to deny that such a mission of destruction is a top conservative priority these days and well underway in many places.

The document is chockful of remarkably extreme objectives in dozens of areas, but few are more striking than the field of public education, where the plan calls for:

• Ending the nation’s oldest and largest federal program for the support of public education – Title I.
• Gutting the nation’s free school meals program.
• Eliminating the Head Start program.

Title I is the nation’s signature initiative for aiding schools with large numbers of low-income students. In the current fiscal year, $20.5 billion has been allocated across the nation. Ninety percent of the nation’s school districts and all 115 in North Carolina benefit. About half the public schools in North Carolina, as well as many private schools, receive Title I funding.

Amazingly, however, Project 2025 calls for “phasing” Title I out of existence and turning the responsibility over to the states. North Carolinians familiar with their General Assembly’s cheapskate approach to funding schools will find that notion laughable.

And the same is true with the other proposed draconian cuts.

Free school meals – an initiative that has been expanded wisely and to great benefit in recent years – is one of the most obvious and affordable things the U.S. government does to directly enhance the lives of millions of children.

Given the intense hostility of the authors of Project 2025 to domestic and social welfare spending, it is reasonable to assume that the unspoken intent of Project 2025 is complete elimination of federal programs like free school meals and food stamps. The language of the document is more moderate and speaks only of “reform” and means testing of various programs to stop “misuse” of taxpayer money.

For example, at page 298, Project 2025 calls for separating the agricultural provisions of the annual farm bill from the nutrition provisions. This would be the first step in completely eliminating federal food programs because the the radical right has to protect the farm bill to keep rural voters in line. Years ago, Democrats explicitly combined food programs with the farm bill to insure that government haters would refuse to pass food programs while passing the farm bill.

Q: It is reasonable to distrust the expressed intentions of Project 2025 in view of the authors’ radicalism, hate of government, hate of domestic spending programs and sympathy for authoritarianism?[1]

Footnote: 

1. Project 2025 authors include fanatic Trump supporter Peter Navarro, presently in jail for contempt of congress. Trump and his campaign are openly collaborating with key Project 2025 proponents. One source comments:

The Mandate’s veneer of exhausting technocratic detail, focused mostly on the federal bureaucracy, sits easily alongside a Trumpian project of revenge and retribution. It is the substance behind the showmanship of the Trump rallies.

Developing transition plans for a presidential candidate is normal practice in the US. What is not normal about Project 2025, with its intertwined domestic and international agenda, are the plans themselves. Those for climate and the global environment, defense and security, the global economic system and the institutions of American democracy more broadly aim for nothing less than the total dismantling and restructure of both American life and the world as we know it.

The unapologetic agenda, according to Heritage Foundation president Kevin D. Roberts, is to “defeat the anti-American left – at home and abroad.”  

Recommendations include completely abolishing the US Federal Reserve in favor of a system of “free banking”, the total reversal of all the Biden administration’s climate policies, a dramatic increase in fossil fuel extraction and use, ending economic engagement with China, expanding the nuclear arsenal and a “comprehensive cost-benefit analysis of U.S. participation in all international organizations” including the UN and its agencies. And that’s not all.

Wikipedia comments, highlighting the authoritarianism (autocrat and plutocrat) and hate of government that dominates the document:

Project 2025, also known as the Presidential Transition Project, is a collection of policy proposals to thoroughly reshape the U.S. federal government in the event of a Republican victory in the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Established in 2022, the project aims to recruit tens of thousands of conservatives to the District of Columbia to replace existing federal civil servants—whom Republicans characterize as part of the “deep state”—and to further the objectives of the next Republican president. It adopts a maximalist version of the unitary executive theory—which asserts that the president has absolute power over the executive branch upon inauguration. Unitary executive theory is an interpretation of Article II of the Constitution of the United States. 

Project 2025 envisions widespread changes across the entire government, particularly with regard to economic and social policies and the role of the federal government and its agencies. The plan proposes slashing funding for the Department of Justice, dismantling the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security, sharply reducing environmental and climate change regulations to favor of fossil fuel production, eliminating the Department of Commerce, and ending the independence of various federal agencies such as the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission. The blueprint seeks to institute tax cuts, though its writers disagree on the wisdom of protectionism.  

Project 2025 recommends abolishing the Department of Education, whose programs would be either transferred to other government agencies, or terminated. Scientific research would only receive federal funding if it suits conservative principles.  

The Project urges the government to explicitly reject abortion as health care and to restrict access to contraception.  

The Project advises the future president to immediately deploy the military for domestic law enforcement and to direct the DOJ to pursue Trump's adversaries by invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807. It recommends the arrest, detention, and deportation of undocumented immigrants across the country. It promotes capital punishment and the speedy “finality” of such sentences. Project director Paul Dans, a former Trump administration official, explained that Project 2025 is “systematically preparing to march into office and bring a new army, aligned, trained, and essentially weaponized conservatives ready to do battle against the deep state.”