Virtually every analyst not at Fox, Newsmax, or in the trump administration has concluded that the strategy of handing Iran the Middle East while provoking them further to cut off the world’s supply of almost everything derived of, or dependent on, fossil fuels (which IS almost everything) is utterly mindless. Trump and Hegseth, however, seem to think that suppressing news of the pain of the Western World, while depleting reserves of energy and munitions needed to defend against a kinetic Iran, is, somehow, going to drive Iran to the negotiating table that we up-ended. It is clearly having the opposite effect. The Iranian strategy is so successful that the Houthis are beginning to emulate it, and have declared that they will impose their will in the Bab-el-Mandeb.

Meanwhile, on the Left, there is much commentary about corruption besetting the United States in general, and the war effort in particular, and most of it is justified. But rampant corruption is hardly new, and it is not the primary reason we are flailing in Iran. Recall that Dick Cheney was the civilian in charge (Hegseth’s counterpart) when he put his old company (Halliburton) in the catbird seat of a massively profitable killing (pun intended), yet General Norman Schwarzkopf and Colin Powell still made it look easy to neatly mow and manicure Iraq in Desert Storm.

Which brings us to the point beyond all the questionable squawking across the political spectrum of comparing the miserable counter-example of Hegseth’s unfolding debacle in Iran to Cheney’s success in Iraq. It illustrates an important lesson:

Bigotry is expensive.

MAGA assumes that the decisive victory of Desert Storm was the result of fighting with inferior people. They view Western civilization as inherently superior, as history’s winners. They will even tell you, unironically, that ‘experts’ of dubious heritage and gender were getting in the way of the white male warriors, that experience is over-rated, and that the US is a great military force not because we are a meritocratic, idealistic nation of laws, but rather because they are divinely entitled to win. Cheney, in contrast, was not so blind as to rid our military of people with experience and funny names like Schwarzkopf, or dismiss brilliant black warriors like Powell.

MAGA want white male warriors fighting — everyone else must step aside and let them handle those inferior Persians.

It isn’t going to script.

The “DEI hires” they chased out weren’t merely just as good as their counterparts from the privileged class. They weren’t graded on a curve. In fact, we had to be the best of the best just to get a seat at the table. There were black female geniuses calculating trajectories for the Apollo missions. To be clear, I do not mean to denigrate the blue-bloods that “had an easy path” to that table, either — they were good, smart, and self-interested enough to be happy to have the most competent people available around it. For 250 years, that has proven to be an unbeatable American formula.

Not any more.

MAGA don’t think that way, and they don’t want to just purge color and femininity. They want to rid the upper echelon of anyone who even seems sympathetic in their disregard of skin color or T-Level. Unfortunately for the rest of us, it turns out those were the same people who didn’t waste much time dismissing the currently failing Iran strategy as a very, very bad idea when it came up shortly after Iran exiled the Shah. It hasn’t become a better idea since then. But the people considering it were not selected for their wisdom.

Bigotry is expensive, as we are re-learning through the “anti DEI” approach of MAGA to warfare.

11 other states in the last decade been above the monetary efficiency threshold for such programs set by the federal government that requires funding be halted. This case might rank as one of the larger examples of similar fraud cases. In most, the reports find the root cause to be that the state allocated insufficient resources to oversee and audit the program. The governor has taken responsibility for the similarly anticipated lapse, though it is unclear what culpability is with that office.

My MAGA neighbors are absolutely incensed by this incident. The focus of their ire is the Somali community, and though none seem to know a single person of Somali heritage, they are literally complaining of being overrun by Somalis who are depleting our national resources through theft. The impetus to their rage seems to be some report by Jesse Watters on FOX news, a report that convinced one to carry a weapon when he goes downtown in our far-away state, because, as he put it, “They will shoot you.” As a personal detail to this anecdote, when I pointed to the insignificance of this instance relative to other examples, most notably Medicare fraud among white Floridians, I was cursed and invited to depart.

I can see how culture might influence how Somalis might view government largess. But little serious effort has gone into understanding whether there is any relationship, let alone whether it is cultural. The fierce and immediate conclusion conservatives have drawn, however, has less to do with this case than the fact that they are apparently addicted to anger and identity politics. In fact, it is hard to envision any genuine justification for the fervent anger and excitement that MAGA has lent this story. What is clear is that there is intense, focused scrutiny on Somalis nation-wide, and more than few instances of innocent, terrified Somalis (and those confused with Somalis) receiving threats of violence and death.

What has become abundantly clear from this and a mind-numbing succession of other examples of demonization, persecution and targeting of ANTIFA, Jews, blacks, Muslims, and now Somalis, is that the anger comes first and the business of rationalization modeled by FOX so-called news is thriving.

Bobby Kennedy’s experiment is, by this one fact, a trade-off of death and misery for at least one thing that we’ve measured very carefully: the benefit of fewer cases of autism. And, when I say we’ve measured it, I mean that over decades we have assembled, sliced, diced, and analyzed every statistic we can find on the relationship between vaccines and autism. That’s because Bobby’s single-minded and probably disingenuous claim that vaccines cause autism has been promulgated by many charlatans besides Bobby for a long time. The result of all that analysis is that the only thing we can find is that one charlatan, whom I will not do the honor of naming, published a paper in a reputable journal, saying that there IS a relationship. That the paper was repudiated and removed by the journal as fraudulent.

Science screwed up, as it sometimes does. That’s it. But that careless-at-best, malicious-at-worst publication represents a very unfortunate quality in some people — the desire for fame power and fortune — and so it happened, and it will kill children and cause disease. And it isn’t over. It won’t go away. Because you can’t disprove a negative.

Science is a very sturdy fabric, but ultimately, it is composed of threads called theories that real scientists are allowed, even encouraged, to constantly challenge and refine. We are never sure of theories. Never. Gravity is theoretical. Newton used it to explain what he saw — how objects fall. Kepler saw that the theory was consistent with what he saw — gravitational orbiting. Then Einstein took what might be a discrepancy in Jupiter’s moons’ orbits, and resolved that with a new theory. That theory was preposterous! That theory was that everything moved through time-space at the same speed. He thought up the most basic, innocuous, unpretentious symbol for it that he could: lower-case ‘c,’ for the constant speed of the universe.

I don’t need to tell you that every student of the scientific discipline called ‘physics’ is quite certain (well, as certain as we can be) that e equals mass times ‘c’ squared. That certainty presumes the ‘theory’ of gravity, though. And without it, Einstein’s theory is very much weaker. You pull the theoretical thread of gravity, the patch of cloth (discipline of physics) frays, and, perhaps the entire quilt of science falls apart. Because gravity is just a theory, and, as I said, you are free to challenge any theory. Good luck.

So, science careens forward. But it screws up, because scientists are humans and humans screw up. To paraphrase Richard Feynman, science is neither simple nor convenient, despite any person’s desire, understandable or perverse.

And from a scientific perspective, it is probable that Bobby’s motivations are perverse. This administration champions the worst of humanity. Bovino. Noem. Homan. Miller. Bondi. Hegseth. That is only a sample of trump’s appointments, but every one is the antithesis of the mission he or she was appointed to represent. As a scientist, you must conclude that the theory that Bobby would be and exception to this rule is very unlikely.

The foundation of science is truth, but truth, in society as well as science, does not exist on an individual level. It is an emergent property, as the things we believe hang together, in combination, reinforcing each other. Our theories can always be challenged. But the reality they constitute will dole out consequnces for those foolish enough to deny the fundamentally correct ones.

And not just South Carolinians, not just children, perhaps not just Americans will die.

Ironically, NYT produces an interview that is a microcosm of the issue — and just as frustrating.

You might watch the whole of the attached piece hoping that these newly unconstrained, former and soon-to-be former legislators might at any moment suggest ways to fix the Senate, but instead, they wax poetic and nostalgic about how things used to work. Three people with political ids the size of Alaska demonstrate that a personality built for politics is not prone to introspection.

The Senate may have worked. Until it didn’t. It still doesn’t. And these politicians have decided to leave, which may have been a concession to reality, because they were also driven out. Can they shed light on what to do about it? Yes, and they do a little of that. But the interview would work a whole other better with what, in polite company, is called “professional help.”

Mostly, they utterly and completely confuse advocacy — unabashed belief and undiluted principle in support of cause — and process — especially, the requirements of compromise — to such an extent that they call the former ‘radical’ and the latter ‘centrist.’ How muddled do you have to be to advocate for a compromise? How can you even arrive at one without presenting the clear contrast of the alternatives? ‘Institutionalism,’ ‘compromise,’ ‘conservatism,’ and ‘bi-partisanship’ are not accomplishments. One can understand how they might be sorely missed, but when those supplant goals, decision making is in a death spiral. Politicians talk that way when they’ve lost the plot.

The natural cycling of partisan majority — a consequence of the two-party system and voter psychology — can influence the path to consensus. But that is a strategic nuance, not a principle. Regardless of that distinction, at one point in the interview, the politicians substantially agree that, should one political party hold sufficient majority to accomplish a partisan goal, they should, on principle, abstain from the achievement until they persuade enough (how many?) of the opposition to vote ‘yea.’ Imagine: One party actually has a great idea — say, to fix healthcare — and sweeps an overwhelming majority against the other — who predominantly represent the entrenched interests of the insurance industry on the issue. What then? Should a good and popular idea not prevail over the urge to protect partisanship? It might be that the voters had a reason for voting for one party over another. Perhaps they prefer a party that does not compromise its core values. Compromise as a goal in its own right might just be a way to keep the cycle of disillusion going — presidential, party A, mid-term, party B, rinse, repeat. A victory for status quo ante!

The idea that the august Senate body is mysteriously abdicating responsibility despite noble intention, while power haplessly “gushes” out like water from a failed dam, is preposterous. Are we to believe that these people have lost the will to exercise power? A Joe Manchin persuaded by his better angels against his primal urges is the stuff of nightmares. No. A toxic combination of tradition and rules has, in the current circumstances, conferred power on weasels and worms, and incentivized lock-step intransigence. These politicians are escaping because they can and, perhaps, because discretion is the better part of valor.

So, let’s stop asking the people who flunked what’s wrong with school. Maybe ask a few political scientists (or, has NYT been gas-lit into joining the anti-expertise, anti-science mob in power these days, too?) One actual idea came of this apology interview: ranked voting. Good idea? Maybe. Let’s try it. Let’s try something. These abstractions — partisanship, radicalism, tradition, incrementalism — are ways to obscure, if not avoid, the ideas we need to talk about to save this Union.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/13/magazine/senators-manchin-flake-smith-interview.html

But it is important to note that the illness that MAGA represents is not exclusive to the United States. There are broken, would-be MAGA personalities the world over. Most notably, in places we have abused. In Ukraine. In Venezuela. Even in Canada. So, the associations with MAGA that the world has formed and will form will not be any more nuanced than those formed by MAGA, and if you want to know what the prevailing view of Americans will soon be — how people will view you as an individual by default, because you are an American — just recall what we assumed about Nazis, or ask a randomly selected MAGA personality to tell you about all Liberals. All Democrats. All Muslims. All foreigners.

Get ready. The Ugly American is about to enjoy an update. The entire world will weld the American identity to the opposite of freedom, bravery, and the rule of law. We will be the New Nazis for a long time, because MAGA mentality is not exclusively American, and prejudice is fairly evenly distributed among humans, regardless of nationality and ethnicity..

It brings to mind an old adage: His strength is is greatest weakness.

Mr. O’Donnell has respect for a generation of lawmakers who were faced with the near-impossible task of forging compromise on a national scale. He knows that, even done well, the job of Senator does not result in wholesale victory and universal benefit, because many aspects of a good compromise are often disappointments. And so, he is sympathetic to the plight of the lawmakers. But, unintentionally, I’m sure, his expression of sympathy for those in the lofty heights of national leadership plays to the general trope against liberals being “out-of-touch” — literally, of “knowing better” than the common man about sacrifice and the exigencies of these United States. Also, Mr. O’Donnell’s lecture has a tone of disrespect, by hinting that those who are making the sacrifice in question are unaware of what they are doing. It hints that those willing to continue the fight should be ashamed. It even appears to assume that some people are insufficiently woke, maybe already in the representative provinces of Republican leaders, perhaps acting in a way not worthy of his target audience.

It makes the listener wonder these things, but only because Mr. O’Donnell is defending the honor of legislative hard workers. Who were, incidentally, still being paid. Handsomely, by most standards. Better than, for example, most of the people who were sacrificing their own pay to join in a battle against an authoritarian regime. And, they are paid to represent us. To make hard decisions on our behalf, on the basis of study and deep insight, yes, but also, to unite us with oratory and leadership skills, in achieving shared goals. Which it seems they were doing well, until they decided that it had gone far enough. Say what you will about the primary merits of the decision, the feeling from those of us led into battle should figure into that decision, and according to snap polls and social media posts, those are feelings primarily of dismay at the outcome.

In the greatest moments of storied American leadership, our leaders call us to make awesome sacrifices. They argue that some ideals are worth even the sacrifice of the lives of those willing to fight and die on our behalf. Especially on this day, we should be contemplating the lessons of sacrifice, remembering people we knew and many we did not, who made our very existence possible.

I don’t presume I could do better than Chuck Schumer, Mr. O’Donnell. But I see things from a perspective that our greatest moments involve unfair and uneven sacrifice. And, while I do not wish to belittle the pain of an economic downturn in Las Vegas, I do wonder if the fight against fascism might not outweigh the effort saved in finding alternatives to keeping LAS transporting an optimal number of gamblers and tourists.

The 5 Senators you mention may have been right, in a practical sense, about yesterday being the breaking point for their constituents. On the other hand, the feedback seems to be that those very constituents feel that their sacrifices and righteous agency were betrayed in a shameful capitulation. They feel that the very, very hard job of Senator includes representing the equally difficult work of constituents, including those who were willing to continue being unemployed and unpaid; represented, at least, as much as casino owners in the donor class, with or without bone spurs. Those constituents have every right to resent that their leaders got so little for their sacrifice.

And to feel that they caved.

These are not healthy people.

Whatever their underlying conditions, the pathological outcome is that they are not reacting to objective reality. They respond to hallucinations. Disappearing caravans of migrants. Fentanyl that grows in a jungle. Small boats that travel triple their limited range to transport drugs to our shores, or nonsensically offload to submarines in heaving seas. Wars to selectively kill non-Christian citizens in Africa. Wars against allies that, contrary to overwhelming contrary experience, result in loyally subjugated colonies. Boast and swagger become assertion, and with repetition, reality. The greatest economy of any President in history. Lower prices. Economic boom. And, in any case where fevered imagination fails to supply alternative facts, then reality must be a hoax, and scientific consensus must be a conspiracy.

For all the insanity, they offer explanations that are straightforward, gratifying solutions that are kinetic and simplistic, and all of it is heavy on emotion and light on intellectual effort. Because of that, their proposition entices a large number of followers. It appeals to the subconsciously desperate, to people who willfully do not believe they will suffer consequences for endorsing an obvious delusion, people with a talent for suppressing common sense. This is especially true among the political class, whose jobs are inherently based in influence, because, for better or worse, our system does not separate politics and governance. As mania consumes the electorate, Congress loses influence. From that perspective, the astounding speed at which Congress has relinquished its own agency is not evidence of enthusiasm or unity. It is a form of desperation.

If all of that seems bleak and inevitable, that is exactly what certain oligarchs, robber barons, and malevolent would-be philosophers would have you believe — that the system is passé, decrepit, and impotent, and that resistance is futile, and the assault inexorable. But is the system really that “broken?” No, it is not, but the part of the process that we are focusing on — the three branches, the procedural aspect of governance — is designed to engage under completely different circumstances than we have now. In our currently un-shared un-reality, it is simply un-reasonable to expect rational debate in congress, in the news media, or anywhere else to resolve into a sensible solution. Sensible solutions that respond to hallucinated challenges do not exist.

We aren’t going to convince MAGA of anything the way things are. Democratic adjustments — new laws regarding money in politics, or gerrymandering, or expanding the court — are agenda items when sanity and shared reality return to government. It may even be that by the time we are capable of creating them, they won’t be necessary, or that the ones we effect now might be counter-productive in healthy democracy (like the CA redistricting). Engaging MAGA might be great for late-night comedic relief, but notably, part of the joke is that MAGA never gets the joke. Sam Clemens put it this way: “Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time, and it annoys the pig.”

But the founders were immensely wise. They designed our system with great redundancy and resilience. The executive has failed. Congress has failed. The judiciary is corrupted and could fail. But, ultimately, democracy is not a means to persuade a majority. It is a system to manifest the inherent wisdom of people as a whole. The founders were mostly men of faith, but the Christian Nationalists have gotten the nature of that faith exactly backwards. Theirs was a faith in humanity, not authority. They had faith that the good judgement shown by most of the people, most the time, as determined by the ballot, yields the best possible approximation of wise governance. They created a system to recover from a baseline of irrational authoritarianism, informed by their own lived experience.

Last night gave me reassurance that they were right.

A Trumpian Archetype in the Putin Origin Story

During the last quarter of the 20th century, Putin took at least two lessons from his formative experiences with the Stasi and KGB in East Germany before returning to Russia: First, that the politics of the oligarchy was very much to the advantage of a short, shy, faceless but clever man with a taste for luxury. Second, that it could all come crashing down, just like the Berlin Wall, should the contagious western spirit of freedom spread any further eastward. So, as Putin retreated to a collapsing USSR in 1990, knowing that Germany was a lost cause and would inevitably be ceded to the west, he became keen to the point of urgency to stem the tide of democratic governance.

More recently, in the early 2010’s, Ukraine’s increasing westward reorientation must have looked to Putin like an intolerable repetition of the East German pattern that had culminated in his retreat to Leningrad. Ukrainian sentiment against his man Yanukovych augured poorly for Russian influence, and it seemed the puppet regime would end in another routing. In late 2013, the crescendo of grumbling against Yanukovych finally ended with his ouster, when, in deference to his Russian master, Yanukovych refused to sign an almost universally popular trade pact between Ukraine and the EU. The people of Ukraine, in contrast, must have seen themselves on the verge of becoming a vassal state, relegated to the task of producing wealth for the Russian oligarchy, and they had had enough. It should surprise no one that the uprising that chased Yanukovych out in 2013 was called the “Revolution of Dignity.”

Here was the problem of Putin’s origin story to plague him again. In order for oligarchs to steal washing machines, their societies need to the ambition to produce them. However, ambitious societies that produce washing machines resent having their washing machines stolen, and inevitably compare themselves to societies where that does not happen. So it was in Ukraine, where the people compared themselves to westerners, and, as East Germany had done, opted to reject Russian domination.

That’s a non-problem for a sociable man, but a dilemma for a sociopathic thug whose wealth and power depend on his and his crony’s ability to steal washing machines. The solution to this dilemma for a man of Putin’s skill set (spy, manipulator) and personality (narcissist) was, of course, subterfuge, with just the barest hint of deniability that left no doubt of his menace, with bonus points for tying the western order in knots.

Thus began the campaign of “little green men,” the fictive and barely plausible narrative of a cadre of polite Ukrainian ultra-patriots who arose to fight for the here-to-fore silent Ukrainians that wished to remain Russian subjects along side the Ukrainian beneficiaries of the oligarchy. Of course, there was, in fact, pro-Russian sentiment to be found in Crimea and the Donbas, but dubiously affiliated soldiers with digitally augmented popular support for their devotion to the Motherland was surely not convincing Ukraine, which continued gravitating west. The ruse was hardly convincing anyone, anywhere, which, of course, Putin knew.

However, Putin’s strategy had its inception long before the “little green men” campaign, and was hardly limited to the short term, Crimea, Donbas or even Ukraine. He believed he could change the world’s perception. With a stealthy combination of digital tools recently made available in the Internet Age and good old-fashioned spy craft, he could impose a less favorable perception of the West, while prestidigitating away the failure of the Soviet Union.

Flash back.

In the mid-70’s, during the presidential campaign of Jimmy Carter, Russians were in the midst of the embarrassing retreat that was Glasnost and detente. Putin, however, was a young graduate of Leningrad State who wanted to be a spy, and he had just jointed the KBG. As Russia began to admit Intourist sight-seers, he took to befriending and chatted up (in fluent English) American tourists on the streets of Leningrad, particularly newly minted high-tech graduates taking stock of the world before continuing on to graduate degrees and positions of leadership in the tech economy. Not that he would ignore anyone of wealth, or with associations to industry; Some of it was just practice, banal spy craft, the search for assets and information and the like, but by the numbers, there was unmistakeable interest in probing for information regarding digital computing and communications, especially DARPA technologies, some of which eventually gave rise to the Internet. He became particularly interested in a small clique of political activists exploiting computer analysis and digital communication for political advantage in the Carter campaign. On this group, he fairly lavished attention. He also developed the ability to conceal his contempt for — and a confidence in his ability to manipulate — naive westerners and eastern idealists with the privilege to travel. Those skills, incidentally, turned out to serve him well as a spy in East Germany.

Back to this century.

As Putin came to prominence, his support for digital black arts continued and grew. Whether by prescience or luck, his interest in the moguls of tech had brought with it a bonus in the form of a powerful tool for covert influence through the internet. By the 2010s, the toolset he could use to counter the decline of the Russian empire was finally available to put to use, not only in Ukraine and the other satellite states, but in the West as well. So, if he knew that his little green men were not fooling the world, he also knew that they didn’t have to — that they only had to suffice as part of a larger plan that included a remote CGI phalanx in the West. With a digital army along side a few real, non-virtual actors (some of whom are well-placed politicians), he could fracture US popular support for Ukraine, damage their self-image and faith in western democratic institutions, tarnish the attractive image of American-style democracy (amplifying and exaggerating their very own washing-machine thievery), sow corresponding dismay in Ukraine, and even steal the funds to support his efforts. Putin’s half-century long interest in western tourists, technology’s potential for political application, the lessons of his 1990 retreat from Dresden to Leningrad, his manipulative nature, and his training as a fixer — had finally all come together.  Ladies and gentlemen, we present: Fancy Bear, the original telecommuting remote workforce!

As an aside, the Republican fantasy of Reagan’s single-handed destruction of the Soviet Union is absurd. Russia, and particularly Putin, understood the weakness of hegemony to withstand the siren song of Western benefits long before Gorbachev, but the tools to counter that seduction were still in their infancy. The truth is, the whole “mighty Reagan stares down the Soviet Union” thing caused nothing besides additional resentment during the USSR’s strategic retreat from Berlin.

Anyway, Putin’s plan did not stop at little green men. It did not stop with digital disruption of his targets. It did not even stop with a world-wide propaganda campaign. As the circumstance, history, and personality of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin crystallized into a questionable vindication of the Russian claim to empire and the possible end to the long-suffered shame that was Russia’s slow-moving devolution from great power to global gas station, there was one last, fortuitous element to his plan that turned out so well it surprised even Putin: The cultivation of useful American idiots.

Enter Donald Trump, the ultimate naive, bourgeois, uneducated traveler with pretenses of vast wealth, who wanted nothing more than to follow adoringly in Putin’s footsteps. Trump was putty in Putin’s hands, and had real political prospects, so Putin set about supporting Trump’s ambition. He digitally amplified trump support in the US, pumped enormous funds through the NRA, and hobbled Trump’s opponents. And it worked. Putin had finally installed the ultimate puppet, who could demolish the Western coalition, even incapacitate NATO.

Were Trump not the incompetent, damaged miscreant he is, he might have been re-elected, and we might have witnessed Putin’s triumph over not just Ukraine, but most of Europe, to the adulatory applause of a US President. We barely escaped that outcome, but Putin is not done. With the help of saboteurs and collaborators in our own government, he may yet paralyze the United States and conquer Ukraine. There is a new technology on the horizon — it’s called Generative Artificial Intelligence (Generative AI), and with it, propagandists can conjure fantastic images that are indistinguishable from high-resolution photography. Think: CGI on steroids.. but it is very convincing and getting better all the time.

We may yet be manipulated into the fatal misstep of reelecting Donald Trump. The story is not over.

Yesterday, the attached segment on MSNBC featured an Oklahoma state representative asserting that his state would engage PragerU to provide highest-quality educational materials to Oklahoma. One example cited in the segment was a cartoon (clip shown) of Christopher Columbus rationalizing slavery. At its core, the Oklahoma rep’s justification for such material was that these materials were necessary to compensate and correct for liberal bias in education.

The MSNBC segment is disturbing on several levels. On its surface, the fact that Oklahoma is couching political bias in a simplistic cartoon shows that Oklahoma is indoctrinating children with racist dogma before they posses the ability to reason about it critically. But at another level, it is an even more disturbing demonstration of appallingly inadequate journalism on cable TV.

In the clip, four journalists allow an Oklahoma representative to state, several times, without significant challenge, that the motivation for this indoctrination is to counter the “emotional” liberal bias in the education system with “logic.” It is clear (especially from the painful expressions on the journalists’ faces, and especially Elise Jordan’s apoplectic smirk) that all participants had previously agreed not to challenge the absurdity of the assertion. The net effect is to establish an equivalent, countervailing argument where there is none. And, to be absolutely clear, there could never be one, because the premise of the argument is that there is a choice between logic and emotion in the study of history.

The study of history does indeed involve emotion and logic, especially deductive reasoning to separate what most probably happened from legend and lore. But the bottom line is that the Oklahoma representative is projecting his own emotion onto scholarship, as every one of those journalists was and is aware. History is fundamentally an effort in the painstaking research and evaluation of all available evidence. It can change and more evidence surfaces. It is a matter of deduction, though sometimes that is easier (queue the tape of the event) than other times (piece together thousands of letters from the front). Supported. Not supported. There is no such thing as abstractly ‘woke’ history.

So, yes, I am emotional about that supposedly left-leaning, woke agenda. In particular, it makes me overwhelmingly sad to watch the effort, discipline, and skill of critical thinking slowly erode in our legislature, our grade schools, and in journalism. I would have rather reached this stone’s throw away from life’s end on an up-swing in prospects for American excellence than this apparent abandonment of reason.

When I was young, we were indoctrinated, of course, but not to a particular view of history, but with a bias toward truth, justice, and the American Way (Superman’s motto, for you young people). We had justifiable pride in our nation’s dedication to the truth. And yes, we had to pledge allegiance to the flag and one nation under God. Maybe that was a lesser evil than the over-the-top ecumenical, non-denominational vagueness of woke culture.

But we knew that America’s struggle to first recognize and then correct its flaws is what made it great. A lifetime of learning, and then teaching has not disabused me of that lesson. So, in all its zeal for sanitization, Oklahoma has obviously thrown away the baby in the bathwater — they’ve thrown away what makes America Great in order to tell a more compelling story of how great it is. Ironically, that’s actually a far more emotional choice than any error of liberal education.

https://youtu.be/eKPN8gvKONY

Take, for example, energy. As Paul Krugman points out, there is a complex interplay between supplies, grades, refining capacity, and demand in the OAG industry. Trump never thought about the rickety refinement infrastructure in the US, or the long lead-time to improve it. He did not consider pace at which fracking wells decline in production. And he most certainly did not consider what any of his other economic policies might do to the price of oil. The result is that oil prices have fallen below what the US requires in order to make new drilling worth the price. Trump has made us a net importer again, and it’s not temporary, even assuming the economy roars due to tarrifs. Which it won’t. But donald got the Saudis and similarly short-sighted oil executives to contribute to the trump coffers. It was a veritable gusher for the trump family.

Another example: manufacturing. We can’t even fill the manufacturing jobs we have, and doing so will require a generation be trained to do the work. The manufacturers complain about this very loudly, but here’s the catch: In order to attract a new generation of high-tech workers to fill those jobs, the pay scales have to rise. A lot. Which makes the goods produced expensive. China has the infrastructure, the trained workers (especially product engineers!), and the capacity already. So, then, do tarrifs help that? Well, yes, but only if well-crafted and timed to provide breathing room to stand up an industry that is more productive per worker than China’s, if that is even possible. But, across-the-board, badly-proportioned tariffs on whole countries kill the economy and make the inputs to manufacturing prohibitively expensive. So they’re a lose-lose. Except, once again, trump gets the opportunity to exact significant crypto-meme profits and other sizable emoluments from governments and industries for exceptions to the tariffs he imposes. Good enough for him…

Oh, and speaking of crypto, stablecoin ventures are, like, the simplest business in the world. Take in dollars that you can invest in virtually guaranteed investments like US bonds, cash those bonds in when people want the dollars back, and pocket the interest. Easy-peasy. Finally, a business even trump can’t screw up! Except this is donald we’re talking about. He came this close to tanking the bond market, driving yields up, true, but also shorting his own investments and dislodging the dollar as the world’s currency. So, once again, to butcher Neil Armstrong: short-term pop for a donald, long term destruction of mankind.

The list of examples is so long, this essay went from a comment to a post already — and I could keep going. This is a man who, to be trite, bankrupted something as assured as casinos because he is too impatient and lazy to think beyond immediate effort and initial reward of any situation. In fact, donald is so incredibly true to this flaw, he will tell you that physical exercise without instant gratification is a waste of time (and even there, he cheats at recreation!). He will take any opportunity to profit, even if it eventually costs everyone, including himself, far more than he gains.

The irony is that these schemes don’t ever work out well in the end for trump himself, and the magnitude of his failures always render his grifts paltry by comparison. It is said that donald would be far wealthier today if he had simply kept his inherited fortune in a bank (not to mention he would be far less hated for destroying other lives and fortunes). The aggravating flaw here, judging by his history, is that donald simply does not know when — or how — to stop. Every successive grift ends in ever greater devastation. That’s bad news, given how far he as gotten in his opus magnum vitae of grifting monetization of the US Presidency. The consequences of his presidential failures to date are already ineluctably dire.

MAGAts will tell you that this time will be the exception that proves the rule. Don’t bet on it. Come to think of it, if he keeps going much longer, I might take that unlikely success up as a personal hope. Because, you see, he won’t stop. And the longer he keeps going before he is stopped, given the historical proportion of his failures to his grifts, the closer the world gets to thermonuclear, environmental, biological, or some as-yet-unimagined cataclysm.

Have a nice day.

The weapon of MAGA choice is disorientation. MAGA want you overwhelmed, feeling in the minority, and, most of all, feeling crazy (“trump derangement syndrome”). The want you to feel despair (as Russel Vought would say, “in trauma.”). They want you to feel these things because despair incapacitates, and people in despair do not resist and do not oppose.

So, they spend billions to distort the news. Sometimes it works. (See Sinclair and Digital First Media. And sometimes not; see Elon at Twitter). Or they spend billions to corrupt the authority of fact and law — our judicial system. Sometimes it works. (See Clarence in SCOTUS or Kacsmaryk in Texas. And sometimes not; see, Elon in Wisconsin.) Generally, though, no amount of money can buy enough propaganda to hide all the insanity.

The sane person says either this is completely nuts, or I am. Well guess what? You are fine. But how can you know that?

Notice that their champions are incompetent. Starting with donald, who cannot distinguish really bad, blatant Photoshop from reality, deficit from spending, and, generally, fact from fiction. Or, Pam Bondi, who thinks seizing 20 million of fentanyl pills over the last 3 months has saved hundreds of millions of lives (about half the population of the United States). Or Cash Patel, who, instead of reshaping the FBI as a trump Gestapo, is spending most of his energy in intoxicating frenzies at dance clubs. Or ICE raids and destroys a family that relocated to Oklahoma from Maryland, instead of breaking up a human trafficking operation. Or Pete Hegseth, decompensating before our eyes, desperate for a makeup studio in the Pentagon, either so deluded or so oblivious to think that that is even remotely compatible with a goal of gaining the respect of the warriors class …when he’s not texting battle plans on commercial apps to journalists. Or their economic Guru imagining the authorities he cites in support of his theories, assigning them names that are anagrams of his own, in a quest to demolish an economy that was the envy of the world three months ago, thus turning an astonishing advantage into an epic loss as if the US economy were a trump casino. The list of screw-ups is so long, it is part of its overwhelming nature.

Now consider: Incompetence is almost without exception a general trait.

People who are incoherent mentally are usually incompetent to run their lives. Inversely, people who consistently make a mess of every task generally exhibit similar cognitive disorganization, so much so that it is diagnostic. The exception — savant syndrome — aside from being exceedingly rare, is notably useless when it comes to coping with reality, let alone the ability to provide leadership. So, when you observe spectacular failures of these supposed MAGA Titans in the courts, on the battlefield, in the media, and on the world stage, despite all the effort and the many billions spent to portray success, it should reassure you that they are broken. Not you.

The simple, Ockham-compliant interpretation of the evidence in front of you is not that they are playing some inscrutable, 5-dimensional chess game. Nor is it that these leaders just happen to fail in a reasonable course of action despite, as donald keeps repeating, them being the elite, only the very best of the best available, selected a population of 350 million, to replace the fools and traitors of the Biden administration who just happened to succeed despite being criminally incompetent.

No, it is what it seems. MAGA champions are failing for the obvious reason they are incompetent. Only the incompetent can accept, let alone enthusiastically champion, this addled, incoherent, self-destructive course donald has plotted.

And while that may be reassuring, it is not a justification of inaction or simply waiting for them to fail. Complacency would be as bad as being frozen in despair. Unopposed incompetence will end in real disaster. But understanding the reality can make you more confident, able to do the work of dealing with it. And it will be work. A lot of work.

In your heart, you always knew. Intricate scheming accounts for far fewer bad outcomes than incompetence. Clusterf^%&s outnumber conspiracies — especially successful conspiracies — a bazillion to one. Idiocy is legion.

But the whole MAGA thing is as bonkers as it looks.

One early spring morning, I decided to build a bird house, so I went to my father’s workbench and started hammering. But, since I didn’t want to work in the basement on such a fine day, I took the cans of nails outside to work. Cans? Yes. My father kept nails, sorted by size and type, in coffee cans (Yuban and Chock Full O’ Nults, mostly).

When I had pieced together a pretty good bird house approximation for a 5 year old, I went to find a tree outside my bedroom window to hand the bird house, leaving a mess of tools and material by the side of the house, which I soon forgot about. It began to rain.

Two mornings later, my father woke me early, clearly very angry. He had seen his tools and the cans by the side of the house, with a surprising (to me) coating of rust already forming on them. He was flush and loud, which was so uncharacteristic, I still can think of only one other occasion where he was anything other than quietly stoic (another time I disappointed him. Another story for a later date). I simply didn’t understand how some rust on a hammer and saw, let alone a bunch of loose nails, could raise his ire like that. But, he was seriously angry.

The following Sunday, he did something that I think might qualify legally as child abuse in this day and age: He made me put on my work overalls and dragged me down to the town dump. I spend the day in the lumber, pulling and straightening nails. My hands were bruised, splintered, and scraped, and by the dusk, I was crying, exhausted from filling just two cans with barely usable nails.

I did not understand then, and, to be honest, It seemed almost insane to me for most of my life.

As the Sun rises this morning, I am mostly appalled by the casual way in which this trump cult has discarded civil liberties that we bled and some died to retain. But, for some reason, today I exposed myself to some corporate “news.” I made myself listen to some selfish and spoiled children-in-adult-bodies treat a world-wide economic depression as if it were an inconvenient sour taste of a medicinal cure, with the kind of pedantic, certain arrogance only the ignorant and privileged can muster.

I thought of the lesson of the nails, and my dad’s memory, and I cried. I wished I could thank him for going to that effort, for the care that it took to absorb the pain and do what he had to do to convey that facsimile of his experience. And I thought:

If only there were some way to take the DOGE brats, the trump kids, and half the spoiled MAGAts to the town dump to pull and straighten nails.

Which brings me to trump. Sparking world economic recession with trade policy, making incendiary comments to, if not outright threatening allies, blundering toward planetary incineration by (pick one: global climate shift or rogue regimes with nukes)... Nero is back, baby, and this time his fiddle is *nuclear*. Or maybe your main character of choice is Musk. I don’t think it matters. In fact, neither one of these men really matters one billionth as much as how desperately they wish they did. It’s not that these people are not important; it’s just that they are more convenient than crucial — they are in the right place at the right time. Because we are creatures of narrative, and they serve as history’s villainous main characters.

But the question arises “How is that possible? Are they a special breed of political or technical genius? Instruments of an Almighty? What is the superpower they possess to warp us all?” The answer is simply that they are neither special nor super-human. They are typical, examples of common, weak men with deficient super-egos. They are neither anointed nor super-human. They fulfill no prophesy, and these are not the End Times (which, to an atheist, is itself an absurd example of human hubris. Time is incomprehensibly vast relative to the reign of humanity). The problem is, really, us other folk. We bear the responsibility for electing them and for enriching them.

Unfortunately, it is easier for us to recognize evil in its aftermath, as a third party, than it is to see it in the moment and in person. If you doubt that try telling anyone that they are about to make a stupid mistake (assuming you don’t recall predicting, to no avail, almost *everything* trump is doing now). So, instead, we imbue evil with all manner of irresistibility, invincibility, genius and cunning in retrospect. Better that than admit to themselves and others that we were insufficient to avoid it.

Because evil is usually banal, it succeeds spectacularly, all the time, without an arch villain, mastermind, or invincible adversary. Donald is insidious, pernicious, and vile, so people would rather think of him as sinister and cunning, rather than think of themselves as susceptible to his devastating malice (see ETTD). But from all available evidence, he is of average intelligence, utterly lacking in discipline, and is so prone to gratification and self-aggrandizement as to be incapable of executing any scheme more intricate than smash and grab. And you know this. That makes him a dire threat, not the problem, and it makes it self-deluding, and therefore dangerous, to think otherwise.

That goes for more than evil characters like donald. No one wants to admit they didn’t really see something obvious. You won’t hear people tell you they fell for “but her emails” and then passed on the Iranian hack of the trump campaign out of bias. No one will tell you they literally bought one story but not the other out of the vicissitude of public appetite. But you will hear them rail (not without justification, mind you) about corporate media’s concerted effort to shape public opinion.

Well, yes, donald is an incessant schemer. The media is completely biased. And we are not great learners as a species.

So some lessons that take a lifetime to learn must be learned over and over, the mortal danger of authoritarianism chief among them. It may be a small quibble that we give donald too much blame, but it is an important one. There are and always will be a lot of people who’d rather not learn life lessons, not just passively, but actively — even to the point of banning and burning books. Maybe there are some people who benefit by having morality reduced to angels and devils. But the rest of us should not take the easy route.

With what I hope is due respect,  the moral arc of the universe is just faith on a cosmic scale. At human scale, the interested are limited to deciding whether to earn the scars of learning without having possibly any, let alone a perceptible, effect on the moral universe. I pray (in the colloquial sense) we do just that. For the faith and humanity of it.

So here is another one of my psyPSAs: You are NOT crazy (as far as I know, anyway). Also, it IS NOT GASLIGHTING. (Rainbow, music, “the more you know…”)

Let me explain.

I do not mean to flatter you, but you probably have better than average ratiocinitive powers or a more-completely-developed sense of integrity than the average citizen (or both). An affinity for critical reasoning might not allow you to accept certain assertions, no matter how confidently expressed, especially when they are counter to logic, in opposition to expertise, and perhaps contrary to your own observation. You are, perhaps, constitutionally incompatible with accepting that trickle-down economics is about to work any time now, or that acts of (trade) war on allies is prudent diplomacy, or that Ukraine attacked itself, and most certainly not believing that donald trump is a stable genius. And, integrity — that is, being consistent with self — precludes your adoption under social pressure of the predominant beliefs of some tribe.

So you don’t have it in you to allow society to dictate your understanding. Isn’t that a good thing?

Well, that crazy feeling you get as a result ain’t pleasant, which explains the frequent posts here on Substack, proclaiming that there are FOUR lights, seeking reassurance, perhaps, because while people are certain enough that what MAGA is selling is prime bovine fertilizer, they are also compelled to seek another explanation for the dimness (forgive me) of it all. Unfortunately, the most common one — that MAGA are ‘gaslighting’ us — is, imho, incorrect.

Let me throw out a few semi-clinical terms. First, projection: This refers to the tendency of people to superimpose their own motivation on others, usually to explain or excuse their own reaction or behavior. (Think of who is complaining about cheating in elections,, and who is actually cheating, for example). Let me suggest to you that you might be projecting to think that MAGA are ‘gaslighting’ us. I mean, that makes perfect sense, and, no doubt, some are. But it makes too much sense. If you were spouting that tripe, you would be ignoring obvious fact and simple reason, and, therefore you would have to be intentional, that is, lying for the obvious effect, because any audience like you could instantly demolish such nonsense. But they are not you.

Which brings me to another term: Normal range. Used in the clinical sense, ‘normal’ refers to a statistical distribution — the so-called ‘bell curve.’ And it applies to those two characteristics we just mentioned: intelligence and integrity. Remember me suggesting that you might just be better than average — above the mean, to the right-hand side — in a few of these characteristics? Well, here’s a bit of statistics: to the extent that these characteristics are independent, when you combine them in one person, that person moves further up the curve. Simply put, a person who is both intelligent and well-adjusted is more rare than one with either characteristic. The more, the more rare.

So what I’m saying is this: Own your advantages and stop projecting them on MAGA. You might also be at a disadvantage here based on some other normal curve for both positive characteristics (humility) and negative (narcissism). By the time you multiply them all together, your self-doubt is less prudent than it is dangerous. They are not clever. They are wrong.

I’d actually go a bit further, and it might make you sad. Assume they are not gaslighting. As hard as it is to do, assume that trump and MAGA genuinely think what they say. Rather, consider where the average MAGA is on the curves of intelligence, integrity, curiosity, empathy, narcissism, privilege, … when you implore them to think about consequences. If they had all the characteristics required to evaluate your argument, would you even have to argue? If they had the wattage to deduce the consequences, would you even have to explain? It may be that the only thing that can dislodge them from absolute conviction is the horrible consequences. Would that donald had not been spared those; we might not be where we are today.

All the energy you put into consideration and outreach may be less useful than preparing strategies to combat, avert, cope, repair and recover from the devastation that they will cause.

The great @johncleese said it simply, and perhaps best: You cannot explain to the stupid person that they are stupid. They lack the skill to understand.

It was the genius of our founders’ egalitarian vision that protected society from domination at the hands of resentful billionaires. Informed by a free press, educated citizens were supposed to inevitably exercise their equal vote to compel their representatives to pass laws that curb monopolies, protect the commons, and restore the most egregious imbalances of power. And in the history of our republic, the aggregation of the people, through their representatives, have indeed always pushed back, enacted laws, and thus preserved their sovereignty.

Human nature being what it is, though, the wealthy, and even the well-off, do not see and do not care that their privilege and wealth derive of social abundance. They see any society that forces them to contribute back to it as the enemy. So they scheme, again and again, to free themselves of what they regard as constraints to their wealth and influence.

Their latest attempt has been a multi-pronged, all-fronts assault. The wealthy have commandeered the free press in the era of electronic media. (This is not new. William Randolph Hurst, for example, need cede nothing to Zuck, Musk, Murdoch, or Besos.) The attack on public education never ended. Devos is just the latest lieutenant in an assault that stretches back through the voucher movement, religious schools, and home-school movement at least since State v. Peterman. And, of course, money in politics is nothing even remotely innovative. But what kept all these assaults at bay in the past has been that notion of “one man, one vote.”

So, why is it different this time? Actually, it may not be. We may yet find our way out. But this time, we are coming precariously close to not, as Franklin suggested, being able to keep our Republic. This time, the wealthy are attacking in a disciplined, comprehensive, patient and coordinated way that is unprecedented.

And this time, they are also attacking the notion of egalitarianism itself in new and distinct ways, in order to disable the mechanism by which the people have historically restored the balance of power. They weaken it by altering the definition of its subject — the people — to include corporations, by including expenditure in the previously exclusively innate list of activities of the people, and by abnegating all responsibility for ensuring that free speech is responsible and factual.

First, the wealthy prepared the assault the old-fashioned way: through corruption. They bribed and bought the Supreme Court and its gate-keepers (the congress that confirms justices).

Next, the Supreme Court then did the ‘redefining.’ SCOTUS conferred personhood on corporations (redefined the subject) and redefined ‘free speech’ to include spending (redefined subjects’ activity), and relieved publishers of responsibility for content.

This represented a significant shift in input to the people’s representatives — from the aggregate, naturally moderate influence of human citizens, as expressed by their vote, to the will of a synthetic constituency of corporate-persons as expressed by expenditures (underwritten by dark money of unknown provenance, under the cloak of a Super PAC). The media has become an unmoderated, powerful megaphone for propaganda for those who fund it — giving effective control of the mood and message to the wealthy.

So, the representatives of our republic still respond to the voice of the people. It’s just that that now that money is speech and corporations can speak, the voice of money drowns out the collective expression of those our founders thought were “the people.” In turn, our representatives respond only to the wealthy, and they do not seem to understand or care that they are crushing the Republic. And this time, they seem unable or unwilling to respond to the angry, loud protests of constituents.

Why?

As Upton Sinclair once quipped, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

It’s pure MAGA. All that phallic imagery and prurient interest. It’s the stuff of sniggering little boys who turn their fear of girls into performative hatred, who can’t get beyond the fact that some sentences contains the word ‘condom.’ But, humor me as I take it seriously for a moment. Why the militant (terrorism and bombs?) overtone? The obsession with sex and all the “locker-room talk,” as Melania puts it? In general, why all the bravado, bullying, and fixation on height and hair?

The answer is that the performance compensates for a sense of inadequacy. They all involve milestones on the progression to adulthood — the arrival of potency, strength, prowess. More to the point, they all involve immature reactions to those essentially physical developments, typically, reactions that people evince in early puberty, as they learn to moderate and gain self-control.

Psychologists are fond of pointing out that maturity and chronology are, at best, only loosely related. (One surpisingly common epiphany in analysis occurs when a patient discovers instances where he or she has overtaken a parent’s maturity, which unblocks a desperately sought path to understanding and ultimate forgiveness.) Also notably, maturity is not singular, and people can mature emotionally, ethically, morally, and logically at wildly disparate rates. A period of high IQ, low EQ is more common for boys than the reverse, and so it is common to see adolescents boys, especially less physically developed boys, either brag about superior IQ or berate sensitivity.

These things are all normal, in the sense that they occur in a normal range with the occasional instance of both prodigy and stunted growth. At the upper end of the normal curve, the case of accelerated physical and retarded psychological growth produces a bully, and natural social affinity and segregation (along with pecking order that discounts mental maturity) produces a clique or a gang.

The more severe cases of delayed maturity occur in the most permissive environments, often generational (immature, permissive parenting). Whereas most bullies learn the limits of intimidation at odds with the real world, or at least a taller bully (or their parents), some are spared the consequences, through luck, wealth, or continual rescue — much to their detriment. Some combination of emotional underdevelopment, early physical development, uncommon privilege, and pivotal social position is almost always the nourishing agar of tyrannical behavior.

All this is not to say that the grade school model perfectly describes our politics, and certainly does not suggest dealing with real peril as we might adolescent misbehavior. But it is useful in forming expectations, for avoiding repeated disappointment as we wait for donald and his band of pretend adults to finally and for once adequately prepare for, or rise to the occasion.

He never will. None of them can. They don’t even see the distinction.

The middle-class and wealthy investors mostly don’t, usually because they don’t think deeply about it at all. They believe the market will go up. That’s what they voted for. Many are Fox viewers, and they buy what Fox is selling, so they have some barely examined (which is not to say unenthusiastic — those two things are different) narratives about migrants, gays, and patriotism.

The very wealthy are a mix of do and don’t, usually because they do not care. They think they will increase their fortunes, enjoy more tax cuts to cement their status, and can afford to insulate themselves from the chaos of the implosion.

To the extent that trolls care, some are ideologues, paid to foment the kind of fear and loathing that is tearing the US apart right now. Others feel pity for the US, but, generally, it’s just a job for them. Some have barely examined destructive fantasies, or are just vandals and/or delinquents who, in years past, would never have had the deliciously enraged feedback from spray painting foul language and pictures on public venues that they now get in near-real time from their juvenile posting. Some are just wannabes, and they are performing for their friends. To impress the cool kids. Most are just attending a metaphorical tailgate party, and will disappear like a party crashers when the bad stuff happens. Some trolls will evaporate, relieved that their job is done. Some will pretend they were on the other side when the tide turns.

The fearful (some of the very people asking that very “Don’t they know” question) are a mixed bag of understanding. Unfortunately, just being on the left does not automatically imply awareness of the danger of trump. Some are just as afraid of anarchy and corruption as MAGAs are of the caravans of mythical marauding migrants. The fact that one is likely and the other has been somewhere between a hoax and a joke doesn’t change anything. On the other hand, the vulnerable have good reason to be fearful. So, whether justifiably or by nature, the fearful understand to widely varying degrees.

The plurality of desperate, near-desperate, and lost — the so-called “fly-overs” — also represent a mixture of awareness. Generally less well healed (boat payments notwithstanding!), they include uneducated in history (especially, the generally poorly educated that trump told you he just loves), and a few who are quite knowledgeable, but just beaten down, lacking in bandwidth to cope or even pay attention. Whether they are genuine victims of society or prone to victimhood, they feel that tearing it all down is change, and any change is either good, or bad enough for the objects of their resentment to grant their misery company. They might think that the reason they are losing is because of some vague, historical cause. Or that they have the right to be winners, while they unconsciously participate in their own undoing. Some make believe that they are comrades in arms, even buddies of the oligarchs exploiting them. (The oligarchs, for their part, are happy to play to that fantasy.) Much like gambling addicts, most lose for mundane and obvious reasons, and  many of them will be haplessly complicit in the combination surrendering-fleecing to come. Each has a unique level of understanding.

Politicians (elected and otherwise) who are in on the scam mostly do understand. But most are also sociopaths, to varying degrees, who will do well in the short term, reveling in the spoils that fall to them from assisting in the pillaging the richest nation on Earth. They may be right, at least for the period of history that concerns them. The most aware (and trump himself) may be psychological oddities. The least aware may be products of disinformation and ignorance (both pitiful and loathsome).

Whatever the sub-group, as for trump voters as a whole, there is a spectrum of understanding. In the end, there seems to be little correlation. No matter how one divvies up Americans for the purposes of responsibility, the answer is much the same. Some know trump is malicious, some don’t, and few fully anticipate and accept the depth of depravity to come.  It all suggests that there is no clan, party, ethnicity, race, status of citizenship or social rank, or propensity to vote that accounts for donald trump. Not immigrants, Jews, Whites, Nationalists, MAGAts, Liberals, Conservatives, coastal elites, Ivy League grads, or third-party devotees. No single cross-tab.

So, the question doesn’t seem very useful. It seems there is no “they” and every kind of “they,” and “they” have a plethora of understandings. The agency behind trump has no obvious primary social category, despite the fact that it might appeal more to some group (like the extremely wealthy). That goes for external groups, too. Whether Russia and China have noticed and marshaled an army of influencers to hasten our downfall might be beside the point. Those who understand, to whatever depth and from whatever perspective, are, literally and figuratively, all over the map.

And that’s not the only trick in this question. Understanding may not be of primary importance at all. The United States is, uniquely, the manifestation of an idea that can be held by anyone willing to be dedicated to that idea, primarily that We the People are collectively responsible for our own destiny. Implicitly, because we are independent of a monarch or some other external authority, we are mutually dependent and responsible to each other as a consequence. In that case, the only classification that matters concerns people who sincerely hold that belief and are committed to demonstrating it through responsible action. Deeply understanding the implications of that commitment is not necessary.

Well, then. Do they understand? That’s one screwed-up question. As is the assumption of a broken subset of us. The assumption that we need to enlighten that subset. The assumption that education is even applicable to the issue.

But there is some advantage in re-framing the question in terms of commitment. It allows us to stop wasting the effort to make ourselves understood. It is easier to see, where understanding is not. Most of all, rededication is a concentration of the best effort to prevail, and it attracts others waaay better than preaching.

Our nation is on the brink of failure due to the erosion of fundamental principles that we failed to propagate through the generations. Simply put, our nation has lost the thread of conviction and dedication. MAGA, essentially a statement of primacy and privilege, is at minimum and by definition, antithetical to it. A lot of never-trumpers don’t seem that committed to it, either. And, in a way, the lack of shared national commitment is, without the avenue to appeal to logic, a worse predicament than a lack of understanding — still, with no more group affinity for commitment than there is for understanding.

But if enough can be weaned of grievance and encouraged to help, it doesn’t take much more than that. Despite what trump is pushing, he has no mandate, and we are about to have a two-year demonstration that trumpism is the bad idea that we are trying to explain it is. The lie machine is powerful, and it will take credit for America’s forward momentum, but real-world consequence and pain is hard to hypnotize away. Many can choose not to understand, but most cannot choose not to feel.

It’s now a race. We are about to learn whether the depredation of trumpism can destroy democracy before we can revive the spirit of America.

To paraphrase President Lincoln, the real question is whether we are willing and able to rededicate ourselves to the American proposition.