Unsightly Mental Blemishes

Well, so far as I’ve heard Zuck hasn’t been given the layoff notice he so richly deserves, but according to Thomas Jay Thompson on LinkedIn, he’s giving them out to employees working on his former baby …

Meta Plans to Cut Reality Labs Jobs as Spending Shifts Toward A.I.

Just read in The New York Times that Meta has reportedly decided to reduce headcount in its Reality Labs division. This reflects a meaningful shift in how one of the world’s largest technology companies is allocating capital in response to consumer behavior.

While the cuts represent a small share of Meta’s overall workforce, they are concentrated in the unit most closely associated with its long term metaverse strategy.

Economically, this is less about layoffs and more about revealed demand. The metaverse was positioned as an inevitable evolution of digital interaction, commerce, and social connection. Yet sustained investment did not translate into mass adoption.

Which I read to mean Metaverse is an official flop, as many have predicted, and it’s the employees who are taking the hit for Zuck’s misreading of the future.

When it should be Zuck.

Look, I don’t monitor Meta Platforms, yet I’m aware this is at least the second big project disaster in his tenure, the first being the mishandling of Facebook through avarice in the form of the Cambridge Analytica debacle and the overly commercial aspect of Facebook.

But with 95+% of their revenues coming from advertising, blunders that drive away users is the mark of a disaster waiting to happen. The board of Meta Platforms should seriously consider getting rid of Zuck.

In our last episode concerning stealing from Venezuela, ExxonMobil’s CEO described the situation as “uninvestible,” a description which made President, excuse me, El Presidente’ Trump deeply unhappy.

But the story doesn’t stop there. Both Professor Richardson and MS NOW reporter Sydney Carruth have reports on the continuing soap opera; this is from the former:

Trump’s threats against Greenland came at a meeting with oil executives. When he attacked Venezuela to capture Maduro, Trump told reporters that United States oil companies would spend billions of dollars to fix the badly broken infrastructure of oil extraction in that country. But apparently the oil companies had not gotten the memo. They have said that they are not currently interested in investing in Venezuela because they have no idea how badly oil infrastructure there has degraded and no sense of who will run the co

2007 nationalization of their companies from the sale of Venezuelan oil Trump has promised to control. ConocoPhillips, for example, claims it is owed about $12 billion. “We’re not going to look at what people lost in the past, because that was their fault,” Trump told them. “That was a different president. You’re going to make a lot of money, but we’re not going to go back.”

In other words, no reparations from the guy who stands to make scads of money. Just make him scads of money and maybe they’ll make some, too.

The key part of predicting someone’s actions is to understand their goal, and that’s been a problem with President Trump. I continue to find Chad Bauman’s hypothesis from 2020 both persuasive and perversely charming:

The president’s admiration for prosperity theology is well-documented. He was raised in Manhattan’s Marble Collegiate Church, which was pastored by Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, whose The Power of Positive Thinking, was a key text in the prosperity movement and took the nation by storm. Similarly, the president’s spiritual advisor, Paula White-Cain, is a prominent contemporary figure in the movement, having survived a 2007 investigation opened by Republican Senator Charles Grassley into her finances (and those of several other prosperity preachers).

As election returns showed the president’s early lead evaporating into the ether last Wednesday, White-Cain broadcasted a prayer service in which she spoke in tongues, called on God to discharge angels from Africa to aid the president’s reelection, and rap-prophesied that she could hear “victory, victory, victory, victory in the quarters of heaven.”

It’s like a particularly ghastly version of confirmation bias. I have lots of money, here’s a religion celebrating wealth, therefore it must be right and I’d better accumulate more to earn God’s approval and admiration.

That makes even this old agnostic a bit gaggy, as it’s such a perversion of the old message of the Christ. It relieves Trump of moral duties and lets him pursue a single goal without regard to the moral collateral damage, as it elevates wealth above all.

And it means that Trump isn’t trying to improve the world – only his bank account. Thus $TRUMP, all the kitsch he sells, all of his antics.

And here’s the thing: a significant portion of the poverty-stricken look at him and sees someone who’s not starving, who has a future of being somebody, and for those whose faith is weak because it didn’t result in at least food on the table, it’s quite the lure. Just as democracy is not magical, neither is Christianity. If each doesn’t come through and help ensure survival of a society, then it’ll be discarded, exchanged for something else that seems a better choice.

For those who try to forecast Trump’s actions, his religious background may turn out to be the key neglected component for explaining his fascination with wealth.

I suppose his ego requires it, regardless of what he thinks the VP of Venezuela is doing:

Trump has just declared himself the "acting president of Venezuela" over on Truth Social in case you're wondering about his mental health.

— Mueller, She Wrote (@muellershewrote.com) 2026-01-12T01:43:01.790Z

I could have sworn he said the VP of Venezuela would work with the Americans, which I took to mean she would be President of Venezuela now.

As whoever wrote that BlueSky post says, this has serious implications about the American President’s mental health. If he had a credible sense of humor, I’d add it to the list, but Trump’s sense of humor, like everything else, is deployed strictly to enhance his social standing.

Although he doesn’t seem to be much skilled at it.

It’ll be interesting to see if he tries to actually fulfill the role in some way, or if it’s more a ceremonial claim. After all, the old Roman emperors usually meant it when they conquered a country, assigning someone the task of managing the new holding and to put down the usual uprisings.

And the International Criminal Court in The Hague may find the original post to be very interesting, as the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Maduro by American forces, himself arguably a dictator, may be considered a war of aggression. This bit of evidence might be taken to contradict American government claims that the kidnapping was strictly a law enforcement action, and, since it comes from the lips fingertips of the ringleader of the alleged crime, that being Mr Trump, it might be taken as authoritative.

Says the obsolete software engineer.

If it weren’t for the horde of armed ICE agents, and the tragic collection of dead folks of various nationalities down in Venezuela and at least one here in Minnesota I’d almost have to say this is degenerating into a comedic play, but I shan’t because my heart is breaking for all these folks who’ve died to sooth Trump’s ego and, if you’re of a conspiratorial bent, whoever has busily been perverting both the right and left in this country, infusing them with unwarranted arrogance and trace elements of anger and hatred.

I was not aware that there were such things as college micro-influencers:

If any school can claim the title of America’s “college of influencers,” it’s the University of Miami, with its palm-lined walkways, pool in the center of campus and long list of ultra-viral alumni. It’s where Alix Earle became one of the biggest influencers in the world, posting TikToks from her Coral Gables dorm room about acne, outfits and her breakup with a professional baseball player when she was a marketing major in the early 2020s. …

Higher education has by and large embraced influencer culture, which already dominates beauty, travel, health and so much of everyday society. Plenty of schools, like Miami, funnel marketing dollars toward student creators as a recruiting tool or have embraced the RushTok phenomenon of viral sorority selections. [WaPo]

It used to be that one of the priorities of college, for many new students, was finding the appropriate church to attend. Not only did it serve spiritual needs, but it was the start of the social network that most students needed, for both in-college support and post-college career building.

As religion’s dominance over society has faded, fraternities and sororities stepped in to fill the void to some rough extent, but now they seem to be fading as the hyper-individualism of the age has taken over. But that doesn’t obviate the new student’s need for a social directory, knowing how to behave, etc, and, while yes, blogs and AIs can provide such services, a micro-influencer is more entertaining and even uptodate on current events. Unlike other services, a micro-influencer’s pushed by the lure of revenue to be uptodate.

So I’m not so sure about this statement:

[Nikki Pindor’s] followers may love her for her candor, but Pindor’s under no illusion about her impact. “We’re just entertainment,” she said. “We’re not doctors or politicians. Unless you’re raising awareness for something real, your contribution isn’t that deep.”

They may be more important than Pindor thinks.

Over the last few days I know I read a short post from someone concerning the Department of Justice being understaffed, but I can’t find it. Here’s an earlier post on The Hill alluding to this situation:

Welcome to the dumbing down of the Department of Justice, where the smartest and most experienced prosecutors are resigning or being dismissed; partisan, substandard lawyers are replacing them; and the department’s mission is reshaped to serve the president’s political and vengeance agenda — and to investigate bizarre conspiracy theories.

Ten experienced, high-quality federal prosecutors left the department over its decision to drop corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams in an apparent quid quo pro for his support for Trump’s immigration crackdown. Over two-thirds of the attorneys in the department’s Civil Rights Division have left because its mission has been twisted from enforcing civil rights to enforcing Trump’s executive orders. Trump aides forced out most of the lawyers in the Public Integrity Section because prosecuting corrupt Washington officials evidently is less important than deporting undocumented immigrants who work hard, pay taxes and have committed no crimes.

Who is filling the vacuum? Start with Ed Martin Jr., a Missouri lawyer and conservative activist with no prosecutorial experience, who is the subject of pending disciplinary proceedings and who had once been found in contempt for failing to obey a court order. Trump nominated him to be U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, but he proved too extreme even for Republican senators. Trump had to withdraw his nomination, but Martin was then installed in multiple high-ranking Justice Department roles that bypass Senate confirmation.

Since then, several Trump-nominated U. S. Attorneys have been rejected by the courts as not being properly nominated; Jeanine Pirro of Fox News fame and now US Attorney for Washington, DC, keeps failing to secure grand jury indictments, suggesting incompetence or a tin ear; and, in general, AG Pam Bondi’s minions continually fail in court.

All of this has made me wonder how other Departments of the government are doing, manpower-wise. We all remember DOGE demanding many personnel should be dismissed, and then begging them to return. So … how’s Treasury doing? Defense? Agriculture? Commerce?

Is our deflating government approaching the flap about stage, unable to function, leaving the President even more incompetent to the demands of leadership, such as his planned invasion of Greenland?

And, finally, I wonder if Mayor Frey of Minneapolis, or Governor Walz of Minnesota, currently occupied with ICE agents who are harassing citizens, have offered those agents asylum, although that’d be logistically difficult to guarantee; however, Canada might be capable of making such an offer to ICE agents worried about simply resigning.

Hmmmmmmm.

It’s films like these that challenge the inveterate quipper.

Zero Theorem (2013) is a movie by Terry Gilliam, which is enough for some folks. But for those who wish to soldier on, this story is an imaginative attempt to prove the universe in which we live is a swirling black hole of unintelligible nonsense.

Qohen Leth is a worker-bee mathematician working for an oligarch. He’s been assigned the task of proving 1 = 0. Minutely managed, Leth has long ago mostly lost his mind, but whether this is due to the irrational society in which he lives or the vortex of irrationality that is, metaphorically, next door is entirely unclear.

As he approaches success, his life becomes more irrational and insane, and, in the end, we’re not even sure he lives in a universe, or a computer simulation.

It’s all a madcap attempt to entertain philosophy in a fictional story, and it helps to be in a mood when watching this. I’ll just finish by observing that I have no idea what might be that mood.

I hustled outside to flutter the shutter a few times this morning. Here are my favorites:

CNN has a summary report that I thought iconic of the clumsy ways of President Trump:

• Oil plans: President Donald Trump said he will personally decide which US companies can enter Venezuela and rebuild its oil industry. Oil executives largely declined to commit to such a deal during a White House meeting today, with ExxonMobil’s CEO warning the country is “uninvestible” in its current state.

Does uninvestible mean the technical challenges render the project of stealing Venezuela’s oil too expensive given the current market price of oil? That’s congruent with the Epstein “we need a distraction!” Files hypothesis, and with Trump’s tendency to do things with little forethought.

Or does it mean the Venezuelan’s attitude makes the project too dangerous? Again, a forethought problem, but correctable if enough of them are bribed/moved/or even killed.

If you think, well, he wouldn’t do that last one, you’re still not taking this seriously enough. Go back and study this pathological narcissist and his immense, yet frail, personality. Think about this hypothesized drive to acquire wealth so that, when he dies, he can buy himself a favored position in heaven.

It ain’t morality that’ll stop him.

And maybe not his family, either. They’ve really dropped out of sight, haven’t they?

The Creator (2023) takes a different tack when it comes to the Artificial Intelligence / Robot trope.

Rather than menacing killers or benevolent overlords, it makes the arguably more likely assumption that AI robots will suffer the same travails as do we humans, from the various physical ills and injuries that afflict tangible creatures, to the delicate problems of intelligence and emotion, to, on the other end of the spectrum, those philosophical questions that plague intelligent creatures, including Why am I hear? What should I be doing? Why is this happening?

Los Angeles has been substantially destroyed by a nuclear bomb, planted and triggered by the artificial intelligence community. The response of the Americans is to begin hunting down the robots, who live in mixed communities large and small in the Far East.

We meet infiltration agent Sergeant Joshua Taylor in New Asia. He has met and married a local named Maya, who is pregnant; an extraction team, detecting the possible presence of Nirmata, the leader of the AI robots, forcibly removes Taylor before U. S. S. NOMAD hits the area with a missile. Taylor survives.

But with his wife gone, he is broken, and that makes him easy prey for a fake wife – or so his team believes. When he disappears into New Asia, they pursue, almost frantically.

But Taylor finds Nirmata, who is a five year old boy robot, and the real chase is on. Full of action sequences, this is a rare movie in which philosophy is successfully mixed in with action.

I shan’t spoil this any more, but it’s worth the time to watch if you want your mind and emotions stretched. I don’t know how I missed this when it first came out, but it’s well done, both as a story and a production. It may have a trifle of commercial slickness, but Strongly Recommended.

Speaker Johnson (R-LA) and Senate Majority Leader Thune (R-SD) seem to be having a bit of a disagreement:

The Senate unanimously approved a measure Thursday to display an existing plaque honoring the officers who protected the Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021 riot.

Congress passed a law in March 2022 mandating the plaque, but years later it has yet to be installed. Speaker Mike Johnson has argued the project is “not implementable,” and the Justice Department has maintained in litigation that an existing plaque does not comply with the law because it lists the departments who responded, not the individual officers.

The measure on Thursday, led by Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), sought to address the long-running political squabble.

“Squabble”? No, this is Trump waging war on the police who stopped his insurrectionists from illegally interfering with the vote-counting process, and this is Speaker Johnson, one of the weakest Speakers in the history of the House, and probably weakest members of the House ever, zealously doing the bidding of the man who handed him the honor of the Speakership. It’s been reported that the government website devoted to the insurrection has been whitewashed to make it appear the police instigated the incident, and the plaque would be discordant with this fanciful version of reality.

But, with this measure passed, Thune and the balance of the Senate has refused to erase reality.

This is emblematic of the choice that has been coming slowly into focus for every right-winger since the insurrection: did President Trump actually win the 2020 election, as he claims, or does he simply lie about it every time he opens his mouth – and, by implication, about just about everything else?

AND … whether each Republican sees the massive mendacity of many lead GOP officials, including the Mendacity Machine himself, as reason to leave the right, or is their faux-grasp^[1] on power so important to their egos that truth and honesty is disregarded by them, as we’ve already seen with the current Cabinet members?

That is, the Republicans are now, individually, faced with a choice: Erase the historical perceptions of reality in their insane dash for absolute power that will, I think, result in a Republican Party-level internecine war between people with surnames such as Vance (R), Johnson (R-LA), Johnson (Ron, R-WI), Fuentes, Paxton (R-TX), Emmer (R-MN), Vought (Dir of CFPB), two dozen pastors, three dozen “prophets,” and so many others as soon as Trump disappears from the scene. Folks, I have a bad feeling that the far-right, jealous fourth-raters all, are about to literally tear themselves apart in a spate of automatic weapons and blood, and I’m not speaking metaphorically. As observed by historians and structural demographers such as Turchin, countries lacking a generally recognized external existential threat can fall victim to internal conflict; I would add … when the arrogance of the rivals is well out of alignment with reality.^[2] Generally, this continues until the bulgy-eyed types are all dead and everyone else is so horrified that compromise becomes a good word, again. Let’s hope the speedy demon of technology enables us to figure this out in weeks and not decades.

Keep your heads down, folks, and keep an eye on the far-left as well; they have a history of trying to sail in as an ally of the center when the right collapses. To paraphrase Franklin, we only get to be a democracy so long as we work to keep it that way.

Wild prediction of the day: Once Trump realizes he’s not in control, he’ll commit suicide. Within six months, I’d say.

¹ Faux-grasp is the phrase I use because, like any tin-pot dictator, Trump doesn’t share power.

² In our case, to one side I’d state that No, God doesn’t take sides, the Divine may not even exist, and to the other, No, your favored latest academic fad in governance does not entitle you to act the part of autocrats.

Steve Benen hasn’t descended far enough into the far-away land of … farce:

As policy priorities go, [America buying Greenland] seems plainly ridiculous. And yet it also raises a host of new and related questions: Where exactly does Trump intend to get the money to buy a massive arctic island that isn’t for sale? Is he going to ask Congress to appropriate the funds? Would GOP lawmakers be willing to write an enormous check?

And how embarrassed is the House speaker right now after his “took it as a joke” line has been publicly discredited by his ostensible allies?

The entire endeavor is descending quickly into farce.

I think the Danes should tot up the estimated value of the various precious metals Greenland contains, multiply by ten to cover the value brought by the Danes who’d become Americans and accompanying infrastructure, and then notify the United States that they can open the bidding with that number, with paperwork certifying they have that much money in cash.

And then wait for other bids.

I wonder how Alaskans will feel about Trump offering to sell Alaska back to Russia in order to buy Greenland. You just know Trump would jump at the opportunity if that’d bring in enough money to make the Greenland, excuse me, Trump-land buy. Russian bloggers have, I hear, been speculating that Russia may reacquire Alaska in the near future, in all seriousness.

Farce is in the eye of the beholder.

This is hot? Are you a lunatic?!

Undertaking Betty (2002; Brit. Plots with a View (UK)) is a pleasant British farce in which a British undertaker, faced with a chance to steal away the woman who he lost to a slicker competitor, must make his move while facing down an American competitor, his objet’ desire dies, and then her husband dies.

The bag of tricks of the latter is appalling.

This is one where the specifics may escape your predictive capabilities, but each twist is unsurprising, yet fun. I don’t recommend it as I’ve already forgotten most of it three weeks later, but there’s nothing awful about this, excepting a haircut or two, but neither is there anything exceptional.

While I remain convinced that Paramount Skydance, helmed by David Ellison and backed by father Larry Ellison, will acquire Warner Bros and associated properties due to the Ellison’s association with President Trump, and stifling Netflix’s acquisition attempt, Warner Bros themselves continues to play the game by the rules, or at least what I expect are the rules:

Warner Bros. on Wednesday unanimously rejected Paramount’s revised offer to acquire the production studio, saying the hostile bid is still too risky for shareholders to accept, despite the guaranteed financial backing Paramount pegged to its $108.4 billion offer in December.

Netflix and Paramount Skydance have been locked in a race to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, which announced late last year that it had entered into an $83 billion deal with Netflix for its studios and the HBO Max streaming platform. That prompted Paramount CEO David Ellison to mount a hostile takeover bid. Paramount has since made eight offers to Warner Bros., all of which have been rejected by the board out of concern over the risk presented by debt, financial backing and large fees if the deal were to collapse.

In a letter to shareholders, the Warner Bros. Discovery board said that Paramount’s revised $30-per-share offer is still too risky because it relies on an “extraordinary amount of debt financing,” adding that the leveraged buyout threatens shareholders with “considerable value destruction.” [MS NOW]

If the Netflix deal is nixed by, well, Trump, will Warner Bros bravely refuse the Paramount Skydance offering and continue to be independent?

We replaced our dolomite back porch last spring with pavers, but retained and used the best of the old dolomite for designs. Here it’s January, and the pavers drained well during the January thaw, the dolomite … not so much.

The death by ICE agent of Renee Good in Minneapolis is a tragedy – and, for the good of the nation, must be dealt with rigorously in the context of the accusations and rebuttals flung about by Governor Walz, Mayor Frey, and Secretary Noem.

We are a nation of Law and Truth, so the Mendacity Machine^[1] should be, for the good of the Nation’s soul, ignored.

In a sober court of law, attended by a duly appointed jury, the truth can, hopefully, be ascertained. If the jury observes an attempt to kill the ICE agent who will stand accused, then little more need be done.

If the ICE agent is observed to have broken the law in the discharge of his weapon, off to prison for manslaughter or whatever the district attorney determines is appropriate.

Seems shorn of excitement, doesn’t it? Where’s the protests and excitement? Well, I understand we (I live in a suburb of St Paul, MN, across the river from Minneapolis) had a lovely moving memorial for the victim, Mz Good. Peaceful protests convey to the nation the importance of considering whether the ICE agents are truly operating in an honest manner, which is to say arresting violent criminals, or if they’re a sloppy ad hoc army spreading terror.

I can’t tell from here. We really require good investigation and a cessation of the arrogance found on both sides of the aisle. Sadly, we won’t get either.

I expect a rocky ride.

¹ For newcomers and the forgetful, I refer, of course, to Donald J. Trump.

When it comes to targets, cartoonist Mike Smith has a different take.

Prediction: if the United States does take possession of Greenland, the name will change. It won’t be a native name, if such even exists.

It’ll be Trump-land, or something close to that. He can’t resist putting his name on everything.

This post is for completeness, really. Long-term readers may recall the dam on the Klamath River in Oregon had been taken down, and a chinook salmon run took place a short while later. Dan Bacher on Daily Kos now reports on more progress on the human side of things:

As salmon return to the headwaters of the Klamath River for the first time in over 100 years after the removal of four dams, the newly formed Klamath Indigenous Land Trust (KILT) and PacifiCorp announced the landmark purchase of 10,000 acres in and around the former reservoir reach of the river, according to a press statement.

Representatives of the trust say the transaction represents “one of the largest private land purchases by an Indigenous-led land trust in U.S. history.”

“Dam removal allowed the salmon to return home. Returning these lands to Indigenous care ensures that home will be a place where they can flourish and recover,” said Molli Myers (Karuk), President of the Klamath Indigenous Land Trust Board of Directors. “Our communities spent generations fighting for this moment and we honor our ancestors who carried this vision forward. The healing that’s underway is real, and this acquisition reflects the future we’re building together as people of the Klamath Basin.”

Hopefully the Klamath Indigenous Land Trust Board is up to the job.

In the context of the Greenland issue, White House aide Stephen Miller was caught making an intellectual error:

“We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” [White House aide Stephen Miller] said. “These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.” [Deccan Herald]

How very Mencken of Miller. H. L. Mencken once said, or perhaps wrote,

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.

Here, the question is How does the world work? Miller hasn’t thought this through, no doubt because it sounds so right to him.

But does he want to hire 24 hour bodyguards for himself and his family? Deal with kidnapped children?

The best societies agree to rules of law so that everyone can feel mildly safe. Defending all one values 24 hours a day means little or nothing else is accomplished. And many, many people die, leading to heartbreak and travail.

Someone needs to clout Miller upside the head, but I doubt it’d help.

Cryptic pregnancy:

Former Rep Greene (R-GA) impertinently asks some pertinent questions:

Mexican cartels are primarily and overwhelmingly responsible for killing Americans with deadly drugs.

If U.S. military action and regime change in Venezuela was really about saving American lives from deadly drugs then why hasn’t the Trump admin taken action against Mexican cartels?

And if prosecuting narco terrorists is a high priority then why did President Trump pardon the former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez who was convicted and sentenced for 45 years for trafficking hundreds of tons of cocaine into America? Ironically cocaine is the same drug that Venezuela primarily traffics into the U.S.

The next obvious observation is that by removing Maduro this is a clear move for control over Venezuelan oil supplies that will ensure stability for the next obvious regime change war in Iran.

And of course why is it ok for America to militarily invade, bomb, and arrest a foreign leader but Russia is evil for invading Ukraine and China is bad for aggression against Taiwan? Is it only ok if we do it? (I’m not endorsing Russia or China) [X]

There’s more, but it’s enough to to remove most doubts that Greene is behind this push. It also explains Erick Erickson’s post earlier today in which he excoriates certain members of the far right for not getting behind the President:

Tucker Carlson is opposed to what Donald Trump just did.

Steve Bannon, who worked to rehabilitate Jeffrey Epstein’s image, is opposed to what Donald Trump just did.

Candace Owens is opposed to what Donald Trump just did.

Marjorie Taylor Green is opposed to what Donald Trump just did.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, Zohran Mamdani, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping — they are all on the side of the Woke Reich in opposition to what Donald Trump did.

If we could ignore all of them, we should. But they do have large followings and shape a lot of online conversations. I say that because I know few people offline who really pay attention to them. But a lot of online conversations drift offline.

The problem for the right these days is that the fringe of the right online is loud and assertive and risks placing much of the right in a bubble in the way the loud online left got Democrats in a bubble, such that they still believe boys can magically become girls.

I think some of these right-wingers are earnest in their reactions, such as Greene, while others, like Bannon, are trying to take influence away from the President and his minions through strategic positions that they believe will appeal to the MAGA base. In this case, the Trump campaign promise not to get involved in foreign wars.

Meanwhile, Erickson carefully lumps Greene, et al, with the progressives he repeatedly claims are nuts.

This’ll be interesting. I wouldn’t put money on anything, but some members of Congress may be in more trouble than they know if they back the President – and if they don’t.

Governor Walz (D-MN) just announced he’s not running for re-election, which would be his third term, so once again Minnesota will not have a three-peat governor.

I’ve been wondering if Walz was going to be stubborn and drag down the Minnesota Democrats, as while I doubt there was an intent to permit the crimes, it has become big enough to suggest a failure to manage effectively. By exiting the race, voters can vote for whoever wins the primary. Lt Governor Flanagan (D-MN), currently running for Senator Smith’s (D-MN) seat, might consider running for the governor’s seat, which may be more attainable.

We shall see.

Long-term readers will remember the prediction that the Republicans would accelerate right as they fight to move up the social prestige ladder of the conservatives. Because the right has been successfully trained to consider purity golden and compromise loathesome, the ambitious, arrogant gits on the right would have de facto contests to show who is most pure and, thus, claim for themselves a golden calf to sit upon.

Yes, I did write golden calf, and that’s to emphasize the role the clerics have played in relentlessly telling their base that the Divine is on their side, even though he doesn’t speak to them, and, of course, Neither the clerics nor the base can be wrong. As Senator Goldwater (R-AZ) said back when I was a kid (the 1960s):

Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them.

Back on point, here’s the latest subject of a right-winger trying to move up the right-wing social ladder through a demonstration of purity:

In case this X post disappears:

BREAKING – Streamer Asmongold says the Somalian fraud is far larger than just arresting a few Somalians, that entire families must be denaturalized and deported, and that the officials who allowed it to happen must face treason and capital punishment charges or he is done voting.

Followed by a stream from ‘Asmongold,’ aka Zack Hoyt. I didn’t actually listen to the stream, as the summary seems enough for me. Ja’han Jones of MS NOW contributes this:

“If JD Vance does not push for treason with capital punishment against Tim Walz, do not vote for him,” [Hoyt] said. “If Trump does not deliver that, do not vote for him. Unless the most extreme, dramatic, brutal, aggressive option is on the table, I’m staying home.”

Elon Musk joined in, as did others, according to Jones.

Where does this go now? Well, it’s up to the conservative base. If they desert Hoyt, rejecting him as the power-hungry fool he appears to be, then we may be on our way back to sanity. That base is already suffering shocks from President Trump’s tariffs, foreign wars, deeply embarrassing Cabinet, and the symptoms of dementia he puts on display every day. Calls for capital punishment for failing to prevent fraud is so utterly ridiculous that they should reject it, and those who call for it.

But they may cling to their allegiances, because falling down the social prestige ladder is a real blow to the ego. What I see as a truly shattering blow to the plausibility of Trump and MAGA may not be enough drive them away just yet. If so, I fear we’ll be seeing more wild-eyed propositions from idiots.

Sheesh.

… it is known, for example, that hurricanes tend to kill more people if they have feminine names, because they are perceived as less dangerous, meaning people are less likely to take adequate precautions. [“Why do we feel the need to humanise everything, from dogs to cars?“, Elle Hunt in a book review, NewScientist (27 December 2025, paywall)]

I suppose if we labeled them with numbers some folks would think that’s a severity rating; animal names, danger ratings; etc. Our tendency to look for hierarchies here in the West is either inborn or a product of society.

And does it really need a re-think?