When your tactics depress everyone:
Source: Gallup
When the two leading political parties are exhibiting autocratic tendencies, it’s not surprising that a substantial portion of the electorate is unhappy. However, the Republicans seem a little less conscious of the problem, although cycles of confidence and doubt, correlating to whether the voter prefers the party in power, is well-documented.
Source: Gallup
If the country seems grumpy, here’s why. Just remember to blame everyone.
… dominance.
… bullying.
From lefty blog Maddowblog, a couple of weeks ago:
Caving to the administration never seems to work out well, but institutions keep doing it: “The University of Pennsylvania said on Tuesday that it had struck a deal with the federal government that will limit how transgender people may participate in its athletic programs, bowing to the Trump administration’s new interpretation of the law that bans sex discrimination in education.”
Yes, kowtowing to bullies appalls allies and, worse, encourages the bully to continue to use oppressive tactics – and the Mendacity Machine[1] is undoubtedly a bully.
But transgender athlete participation remains an unsettled issue which requires public, national debate – and that is taking place, albeit quietly, despite the frenzied assertions of the left that such is not needed, that it’s a settled issue. Bunch of amateurs, it turns out.
So those who are opposed to and fearful of the far right wing Trump Administration are finding the ground they’re on to be treacherous quicksand. This is an example of why procedure is so important. This is a lesson to learn from.
For both sides.
A bit ragged, but still out there showing off.
Or a cliff on the highway?
The Epstein Files, alleged to contain information concerning the late financier’s client list for his illegal and sordid operations, whether or not the list exists, appear to be giving President Trump and his MAGA movement an issue to worry over – on opposite sides. Here’s CNN/Politics, summarizing:
In the days since the Trump administration released a memo about Jeffrey Epstein directly at odds with conspiracy theories pushed by the president and some of his top lieutenants, Trump’s movement and most ardent supporters are in revolt.
The Justice Department and the FBI released a memo last week concluding there was no evidence that Epstein had a list of powerful men who participated in his alleged underworld of sex trafficking and pedophilia. It also said the disgraced former financier died by suicide and was not murdered in his New York jail cell.
Yet after years of big promises to the president’s base, the memo failed to produce a smoking gun, undercutting Trump and his team’s own words. And MAGA world isn’t happy, pitting the president’s closest allies against one another.
I think one of the biggest motivations of MAGA is a history of lies from the government power elite since the beginning of the Vietnam War, as documented in the Pentagon Papers, and moving on from there: the invasion of Iraq on the false excuse that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, the lies of Big Tobacco in pursuit of profits, the Catholic Church cover-ups of sexual abuse, and insert your most detested instance of lying here.
So, faced with another power elite that claims it’s unable to deliver the promised goods, MAGA is understandably upset. Here’s the Mendacity Machine[1] himself, via Maddowblog:
Why are we giving publicity to Files written by Obama, Crooked Hillary, Comey, Brennan, and the Losers and Criminals of the Biden Administration. … They created the Epstein Files, just like they created the FAKE Hillary Clinton/Christopher Steele Dossier that they used on me, and now my so-called ‘friends’ are playing right into their hands.
The problem with being a chronic liar, as Heinlein pointed out in one of his novels, is keeping everything consistent. It’s a bit like trying to analyze a system without having all the information – you try to fire up the engine and parts leaning against your coveralls suddenly become blazing hot.
Trump, having lied his way into office again, in order to avoid prosecutions over cases such as unauthorized possession of classified docs, now has to deal with a promise he can’t fulfill.
Or he could, but it’d get him in more trouble. Maybe Trump is in the alleged list of clients of Epstein’s underage sex ring – although the Biden Administration’s failure to reveal that juicy bit is a valid question.
In case my reader has forgotten relevant dates, Benen provides a few:
To the extent that reality still has any relevance in the public discussion, it was the Trump administration that investigated, arrested and charged Epstein. It was during Trump’s first term when Epstein, facing sex trafficking and conspiracy charges, died in 2019 while in custody, and a medical examiner ruled his death a suicide.
But according to Trump, the so-called Epstein files were written by Barack Obama (who left office in early 2017), Hillary Clinton (who left office in early 2013), former FBI Director James Comey (who left office in 2017) and former CIA Director John Brennan (who left office in early 2017).
How could they have “created the Epstein Files” given that they were nowhere near public office when Trump’s own team tried to prosecute him? I haven’t the foggiest idea, and Trump’s weird tantrum never explained how this could even be possible.
I’ve been waiting for a missive from Erick Erickson on the matter out of curiosity as to the Trumpist defense, but nothing so far and I’ve other matters needing attention. Ta.
Update a minute later: Erickson’s missive arrives in the mailbox – begging everyone to take a break from politics. Well.
A moment of tenderness between a man and his meal.
The 2024 remake of vampire classic Nosferatu (1922), also entitled Nosferatu (2024), has mistaken the terror and fright of realism as being a reasonable stand-in for the incomprehensible horror of the Divine. In both versions, which tell essentially the same story, the victims of the vampire, Count Orlok, are not terrible human beings in their own right. They have their entirely human flaws of temper, of ignoring the needy, and other unfortunate characteristics, but they are neither horrific nor amplified to intolerable magnitudes.
Thus, the twin afflictions of the Count’s depradations on the humans of Wisburg, Germany in the early 1800s, and the terrible plague that accompanies the Count, are not punishments for misdeeds, individual or collective. This is not a story concerning how karma punishes miscreants, or superior beings correcting human behavior with the biggest rod possible. No.
This is about the realm of the Divine impinging on the human world, driven by the near-incomprehensible needs of Count Orlok. In essence, humans scuttle away from the Divine as it eats its way through Wisburg.
And the movie-makers’ aesthetic choices alter the affects of the story on the audience. The portrayals of creatures and events in the 1922 version are bizarre, outré, almost incomprehensible. The 2024 version has horrific visions, but they lack the oomph that pushes the audience over the edge and into the pool of the unknowable, of sensing our bodies submerge in a pool of something soul-threatening. The blood spatters and dead bodies and plague of the 2024 version may be graphic and technically highly competent, but they lack that element of Divine mystery that has terrorized mankind over the centuries.
And the 1922 version of Nosferatu has that edge to its eddies of emotion.
I do not wish to disparage the 2024 version, but in the end that version is limited by the aesthetic choices of the movie-makers. The 1922 version has the limitations of a young artistic form, yet it almost feels as if the team of movie-makers, headed by Director F. W. Murnau, turned that to their advantage. The chaotic vortex of the Divine impacts human society, destroying all regardless of crime. Can you feel your skin burn from its relentless consumption?
That’s the real Nosferatu.
And I hope you enjoy.
Some of these would work in a production of A MIDSUMMER’S NIGHT DREAM:
Professor Turchin’s Secular Cycles, his and Sergey Nefedov’s review of structural demographic theory and how it applies to several case studies of agrarian societies, comes in two parts. The first is the integrative phase, where land is cheap, the hinterlands are empty but populating, the non-elites are in demand and growing, the elite is small, and prosperity is stable or increasing.
The second is the disintegrative phase, in which prosperity is declining for the non-elites, the elite is overpopulated and fighting among themselves, often existentially, to retain their positions, land is ruinously expensive for the non-elite due to overpopulation, famine may be rampant, and the hinterlands are emptying out of everyone but wealthy land-owners and their minions.
I think, with all due respect to the fact that we are no longer an agrarian society, that the dominance of the technological facet of our society doesn’t invalidate the application of Secular Cycles to Western Civ, but instead accelerates cycles.
So when I read this passage from Steve Benen, it seemed eerily familiar:
If the GOP bill becomes law [and it has – haw], millions will lose their health care coverage. Millions will be hungrier. Rural hospitals will close. The debt will grow by trillions of dollars. Struggling families will have less money in their pockets. Businesses that rely on immigrant labor will fail.
And the vice president apparently wants the Americans who will be worse off to believe all of these consequences should be seen as “immaterial.” ICE raids matter, the Ohio Republican effectively argued, and nothing else does.
Rural hospitals closing, immigration being choked off. If that’s what happens, the hinterlands are going to be squeezed by removing medical services and labor, and, watching influencers left and right, it’s not hard to believe the elite is under a lot of pressure to grow unsustainably as non-elite scrabble to join the elite, and children of the elite, many or even most not really qualified, try to refuse to slide into the abyss of, well, being mundane.
It’s Turchin and Nefedov’s application of structural demographic theory, albeit on a smaller time scale.
What haven’t we seen so far? Civil war. Violence has been isolated and generally originates with fringe players who believe too earnestly in their ideologies. Erickson would probably disagree,
Our democracy is fine. Progressives are not. They are deeply unwell and talking themselves towards violence.
But as he can’t be bothered to mention the Hortman assassination here in Minnesota, originating with a far-right fringer, we can conclude Erickson is a partisan, not a neutral pundit, and thus loses value as a prognosticator. Still, I think every liberal in the land would benefit from meditating on this paragraph, from the same post:
Instead of looking in the mirror to assess why voters rejected them, progressives have chosen to blame the voter, declare democracy dead, and they will head towards violence to take back what they think is theirs.
I don’t think he gets the Why, only the What. The Why is that the Democrats look like autocrats, just like the Republicans – although I’m hoping the Minnesota brand of Republicans, being the up close witnesses of one of their own shooting up the opposition, will be retreating to more civilized positions.
We shall see.
Synoptic scale meteorology:
In meteorology, the synoptic scale (also called the large scale or cyclonic scale) is a horizontal length scale of the order of 1,000 km (620 mi) or more.[1] This corresponds to a horizontal scale typical of mid-latitude depressions (e.g. extratropical cyclones). Most high- and low-pressure areas seen on weather maps (such as surface weather analyses) are synoptic-scale systems, driven by the location of Rossby waves in their respective hemisphere. Low-pressure areas and their related frontal zones occur on the leading edge of a trough within the Rossby wave pattern, while high-pressure areas form on the back edge of the trough. Most precipitation areas occur near frontal zones. The word synoptic is derived from the Ancient Greek word συνοπτικός (sunoptikós), meaning “seen together”. [Wikipedia]
Ryan Hall, an Internet weather analyst and owner of a lovely voice, uses synoptic frequently in his discussions of weather forecasts, such as this one here.
I’ll leave it to the reader to actually find it. Yes, I do assume his synoptic is Synoptic scale meteorology.
Oh, another lily picture!
Bonus lupine!
Erick Erickson, backer of the Mendacity Machine[1], is upset.
When [President Trump’s Attorney General Pam] Bondi did the initial disclosures about Epstein and trotted the hyper online right to the White House, Bondi blamed Patel and the FBI for not providing her with all the documents.
Bondi also went on Fox News with John Roberts. Roberts asked, “The DOJ may be releasing the list of Jeffrey Epstein’s clients. That’s gonna happen?”
Bondi responded, “It’s sitting on my desk right now.” …
But no, it apparently wasn’t.
She lied to the American public.
She lied to the President’s MAGA base.
She deflected the blame on the FBI.
And therefore,
If only because she lied to the President’s base and many of his most ardent online supporters, she should resign or be fired.
A sad day for Erickson, but not for the reasons he imagines. Given Trump’s long history of lying, is it any surprise that he’s hired professional liars as well? That he’s hired people he dominates and manipulates because that’s what his fragile ego requires of him?
I’m shocked that Erickson doesn’t get this. If none of this occurred to him, then it’s a very sad day for him.
Or is this someone else using the propaganda arm of the GOP to try to force Bondi out? It seems unlikely, but not impossible.
1 I.e., President Trump, notorious for not being able to open his mouth without dribbling out a lie or three.
Just for fun.
I was quite disappointed, if perhaps not surprised, to run across this:
I see George Will is trying a bit of sleight of hand when it comes to spending on political races:
On [June 18th], peak absurdity reaches the Supreme Court. It must decide whether a compelling government interest is served by limiting “coordination” between parties and their candidates. Lest the parties corrupt their own nominees?
Notice the subtle bullying of the intellectual process by suggesting that this is obviously ridiculous. But let’s think about it this way: Are candidates and their parties inseparable entities?
No. Many candidates, especially in the past, held certain positions at variance with their national party’s interest. In fact, it was quite a common phenomenon; today, it’s a bit less common.
Candidates are also mutable. There’s an old trope about the well-intentioned innocent entering politics, and exiting umpteen years later covered in shame. It’s not a myth. Is it that hard to see a Party transforming the earnest politician into a self-serving wretch? No. The reverse is more difficult, but I think that historians will point to Mr Trump as a prime example of a candidate effectively corrupting a Party through the mechanisms of persecution of the earnest and the induction of the corrupt.
Actual quid pro quo corruption involving donors is rare. Abundant research confirms what common sense suggests: Political contributions move to politicians’ issue positions, not the other way around. Teachers unions generally support Democrats for the same reason opponents of gun restrictions generally support Republicans: the parties’ preexisting beliefs.
Abundant research doesn’t mean it was insightful research. After all, dishonest candidates, outside of Mr Trump, do not want to be caught being corrupt as the electorate puts a great deal of value on the honesty of candidates. Worse yet, Mr Will hits the big red button: Common sense. This is another bullying phrase that should never be used when it comes to politics, usually because scaling solutions to 300 million people is a delicate proposition. I still apply it in this distantly related area, as ethics are, as Mr. Heinlein once noted, the most important aspect of a political candidate, and coercing ethics from an unethical candidate is a tricky thing to do.
But citing abundant research that corruption is rare without acknowledging the difficulties inherent in such research is the sort of thing that makes my skin crawl.
The takeaway? When someone tries to intellectually bully you, look around for the curtain. Pull it back. See what’s cowering in the corner.
In case you’re wondering how the fringe is dealing with the tragic results of the flooding in Texas, here’s a sample from fringe figure and candidate for the House of Representatives from Georgia Kandiss Taylor:
They want us to believe it’s all just natural. The hurricanes. The floods. The droughts. The tornadoes. The fires. …
[Some liberal quasi-quotes]
These people are so brainwashed they sound like programmed zombies. They twist and pervert every word, not because they’re right, but because they can’t handle the truth.
Let’s talk geoengineering. Let’s talk cloud seeding. Let’s talk HAARP, stratospheric aerosol injection, solar radiation management, and weather weaponization.
Yes…those are real terms. Real programs. And they’ve been around for decades. You don’t need a degree in rocket science. You just need eyes to see and ears to hear.
So let’s take this apart, shall we?
Then it gets kinda … funny.
What’s happening is not normal.
What’s happening is not natural.
What’s happening is FAKE!
What does fake mean? Those citizens of Texas weren’t killed?
No. She seeks to use fake as a linkage word from her religious tenet that anthropogenic climate change does not exist to the disaster in Texas. It’s clumsy, ungrammatical, and induces uncertainty in her meanings – probably not what she wants.
But she wants power, recognition, and prestige, and better a clumsily written calumny of the liberals than silence.
Because this tragedy is just the sort of thing that happens when climate change hits. Lives are lost, property destroyed, and the fringe-right loses the interest of independents who, until now, feared losing social position and, well, change in general. I can sympathize with the latter.
They were told repeatedly that climate change is a lie.
Then that it’s happening, a little, but it’s from a natural source.
But each bit of evidence that is injurious to those independent citizens also reduces the fringe-right’s influence and power. Every independent that walks away from the position of denying anthropogenic climate change reduces the fringe-right’s power.
And so we get confusing, twisted messages such as Taylor’s.
Engram:
An engram refers to the hypothetical physical or biochemical changes in the brain that are thought to be the basis of memory. It is a neurological trace that represents the storage of information or experiences in the brain. [Psychology.tips]
For usage, I shan’t cite The Ultimate Computer from the original Star Trek series, but rather “Your forgotten memories continue to influence the choices you make,” Chris Simms, NewScientist (28 June 2025, paywall):
Our memories can be defined in different ways. One is based on what people report, such as recalling what they ate for dinner last night or what happened on their seventh birthday. Another way is in terms of an enduring pattern or circuit of cells and connections in the brain, known as an engram, that constitutes the biological representation of a remembered experience.
It has been thought by many researchers that when you forget something, the engram related to that memory vanishes. However, research in mice suggests that forgotten memories can persist, they just can’t be consciously recalled.
Fascinating.
When considering privately funded satellites, Elon Musk comes to mind as the funder of the development of the Starlink network. This report, from NewScientist (28 June 2025, paywall), must be concerning to him:
The asteroid 2024 YR4, which was once thought to be on a collision course with Earth, may still pose a threat to the planet. There is still a chance the space rock could smash into the moon, and the resulting explosion could shower Earth with a cloud of satellite-destroying shrapnel. …
The chance of a collision with the moon, however, has slowly been increasing, and now stands at 4.3 per cent based on the last observations taken before the asteroid flew out of view of our telescopes until 2028. And according to Paul Wiegert at the University of Western Ontario in Canada and his colleagues, such a collision could still cause significant damage to Earth’s satellites. …
Wiegert and his team calculated that 2024 YR4 could create a kilometre-wide crater on the moon – the largest lunar impact for at least the past 5000 years, though relatively small compared with a typical crater. An impact of this size would eject a cloud of debris into space, and by simulating its potential behaviour 10,000 times, the team found that this could cause Earth’s satellites to experience a level of collisions equivalent to what we would expect to see in years or even decades, but occurring in just a few days.
They do state that, depending on conditions, satellites may be damaged rather than destroyed, but since satellites are difficult to repair, this, too, is serious. Replacement may be the only option.
Or maybe the asteroid will miss the Earth and Moon.
It occurred to me yesterday that Wisdom is the Prey of Age.
Or, more accurately, Wisdom is the anti-prey of Age. For those of a literal bent.
Although those with a literal bent would, by nature, not use such a phrase.
To be clear, prey is the definitional subject of the mechanism by which something extends its existence via consumption; yet, Wisdom consumption appears to be a paradox, as consumption, or reduction of something into its constituents for appropriation by another entity, reduces the probability of age-extension.
And this is why inappropriate metaphor employment is in violation of the World Constitution.
Chimeritope technology:
The team identified the piece of OspC, known as an epitope, that triggers the immune response and found that was the part that varies so widely worldwide. Based on [an] earlier epiphany in [Dr. Richard T. Marconi’s] lab, the team then invented a next-generation process they call chimeritope technology. Using this approach, they designed a DNA molecule comprising the epitope encoding sequences from several different variants of OspC. The word chimeritope is formed from the words chimeric — joining together parts of different organisms — and epitope. [VCU Health]
Epitope:
An epitope, also known as antigenic determinant, is the part of an antigen that is recognized by the immune system, specifically by antibodies, B cells, or T cells. The part of an antibody that binds to the epitope is called a paratope. Although epitopes are usually non-self proteins, sequences derived from the host that can be recognized (as in the case of autoimmune diseases) are also epitopes. [Wikipedia]
Noted in “Why Lyme disease and other tick-borne conditions are on the rise,” Carrie Arnold, NewScientist (21 June 2025, paywall):
Using a new technique that he and his lab dubbed “chimeritope technology”, they stitched together small snippets of different OspC protein antigens that provoked an immune response. This super protein proved effective enough for a vaccine for dogs that was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in 2016. A human vaccine is on its way – Marconi’s lab is currently working with the National Institutes of Health to get it into human trials and then on to market in the next several years.
The same Marconi as above. OspC is used by the responsible bacteria to evade the human immune system, and there’s twenty one known variants; thus the need for chimeritope technology to construct a vaccine that applies to all those variants.
“Waddya mean, paintball?!”
Tollbooth (2021; US title: The Toll) is a tidy example of modern film noir. Multiple gangs wish control of a tollbooth in the Welsh hinterlands. In it lives the leader, if he does indeed lead anyone, of one of the gangs, a bookish man who still manages to indulge in a certain amount of violence.
Into this comes a policewoman who is damaged by the mysterious death of her brother a year earlier; upholding the public weal somehow seems hollow in his absence. The antics of triplets, dancing in the shadow of Death, clownish gangs looking to acquire the booth, even the arrival of a gang boss from the old days, boastful and annoying, fails to improve her mood.
And then everyone meets for the final standoff. Welsh inscrutability vs the modern age.
Like the Welsh personality, this story doesn’t invite you in; you may have to break a window and stick your head in. But if you like a certain melancholic uncertainty in your life, Tollbooth will deliver for you.
It seemed like a good composition.
I do feel sorry for Erick Erickson, I really do. He so wants to be part of the political system of the United States, but both Parties are really going downhill, as I noted here.
And now he notes it here.
We are expected to cheer on the One Big Beautiful Bill Act because it is the Republican bill.
This Republican bill adds to the deficit, adds to the debt, picks winners and losers, raises the debt ceiling beyond the $37 trillion in existing debt, and just rearranges deck chairs as the nation sinks into insolvency. It is fiscally irresponsible.
Without its passage, taxes will go up. That is the only real justification for this legislation. But taxes are going to go up on everyone significantly eventually because this legislation does not seriously tackle the issues of our fiscal solvency and uses sleights of hand to suggest any real benefit.
The Senate version of the plan will raise the debt ceiling $5 trillion. The House wanted to raise it $4 trillion. We will be crossing $40 trillion in debt soon.
I cannot help but notice how he clings to the spectre of higher taxes as if it’s the worst thing in the world, even worse than those baby-killers he imagines exists. But this paragraph is better yet:
This piece of legislation will not win or lose an election in November of next year. But it will also not have the stimulative effect so many of its cheerleaders want to claim. It may offset some of the costs of tariffs, but will saddle us with more debt and ultimately drive up interest rates to burden Americans, disincentivize the creation of families, and put more young workers on the path towards socialism as they blame market forces instead of Washington for their economic stagnation.
Erickson recognizes the Republican tenet of lower taxes – never mind cutting health-enhancement measures that improve worker productivity – do have a limit.
But will he recognize the corruption endemic to the Republicans? I’m sure he knows the Democrats’ ideology is the anchor around their necks, and not the pro-choice position; but the moral character of his fellow conservatives is doing worse than the Democrats, so far as I can see.
Go read his piece. It’s a painful bit of agony, and I do mean it when I say I feel sorry for him. But it’s his problem, not mine.
