I wonder how many people realize how much trouble America is in.

 Jim Wright is certainly worried that too many Americans aren't aware of how dangerous the Trump 47 regime is. He compares the more credulous Americans with Timothy Treadwell, aka Grizzly Man. Treadwell thought that he could live among grizzlies and eventually be accepted by them. It eventually got him and his girlfriend killed, as people who have lived near grizzlies predicted.

For Wright, Trump is our grizzly, and he's getting ready to eat us up. I don't disagree. A social media discussion I was recently part of has convinced me that too many people don't realize that we're in a political situation that is different in kind from the politics we've been used to. Their thinking has not been flexible enough to adapt to Trump, and they're still convinced of "bothsidesism," and that our current political life is business as usual.

A friend of mine who is more conservative than I, and who is not in the habit of spouting off about politics, posted a picture of a National Guardsman patrolling Washington, DC, and opined that this was authoritarianism. Some of his more credulous friends apparently think that Trump's deployment of the Guard in liberal cities is well-intentioned and really aimed at fighting a crime emergency.

One points out that there hasn't been a murder in DC in the ten days that the Guard has been patrolling. That's a rather small sample, time wise. I would counsel waiting a little bit before saying, "problem solved!"

Another asks why we don't want a safer capital.

The first has reservations about using the National Guard, but truly believes that Democrat-controlled cities are really having a crime problem and need Trump's help. This is the kind of credulity I'm thinking of. Nobody who is really paying attention thinks that Trump is a truth-teller. It is as though January 6 never happened. They believe that Trump has America's best interests at heart, despite all evidence to the contrary.

When I pointed out to the first commenter that crime was already down in DC, he took issue, informing me that the House of Representatives has opened an investigation into whether DC Mayor Bowser falsified the numbers. The House of Representatives, under Republican control, is Trump's creature, and their investigations have not been in good faith for many years. This person has not noticed that, and I'm afraid that too many people share his mindset.

The time has long passed since our politics has had two parties who deal in good faith. The Republican Party is divided into two groups, in my opinion: those who approve of one party rule, and those too afraid to speak out for fear of their careers being derailed.

Trump is not occupying Democrat-run American cities for their own good, but for purposes of intimidation. And I would posit that, if these occupations become entrenched, the military will be used to intimidate voters. Trump is already trying to ban voting by mail. If he is successful, anybody who wants to vote will have to brave militarized voting locations.

The second person I've mentioned in this post, still thinking in liberal vs. conservative politics as usual terms, compared Trump's deployment of the National Guard to Democrat-run cities to the federal government in the 1960s sending the Guard to the south, as though the two situations were the same. In the Jim Crow south, white people could, and did, murder Blacks with impunity because no jury would convict a white person for a crime against a Black. In addition, there really was a problem of inequality in education between the races that forced integration was the answer to. The notion that there is any such emergency in today's Blue cities is a figment of Trump's imagination, and too many people still believe him.

People need to realize that things have changed and that Trump, like Jim Wright's grizzly bear, has predictable behavior.

Transgressive reading, part 7: Science as a candle in the dark

 The Trump regime is pressuring the various Smithsonian museums to censor our history and now, our art. I don't believe they have used the Nazi phrase, "degenerate art" yet, but they've gone after certain artists for depicting American life that they don't want anybody to look at. History has to be nicey nicey, and to depict the glory of white Americans.

I was going to list some books about the Nazi attacks on modern art in 1937, but most of them seem to be out of print and rather pricey. You can do your own digging online.

I visited Washington, DC, on Saturday to test Trump's assertion that, now that he's deployed the National Guard, the streets are safe, and "the crowds are back!" He picked a bad time to tout throngs of tourists, seeing that school is back in and people aren't bringing their kids to the Mall. For a lovely Saturday, DC was starkly empty. But I imagine that masses of tourists inhabit Trump's fantasy mind, along with treacherous urban streets.

Now that the museums are being told to dismantle exhibits the regime finds unpleasant, I couldn't bear to go into any of them: the art museums; the Museum of Natural History; the Museum of American History; and, especially, the Museum of African American History. I can't go back until the regime is over.

So, as Trump is trying to shut real history and science and art down, what other t transgressive books can I suggest? Get 'em while you can.

How about some science?

Timothy Ferris wrote a book called The Science of Liberty, in which he posits that most scientific progress is made in a liberal environment. Liberalism holds science in a positive light; reading science makes, or should make, a person more liberal. That seems to be borne out (in a negative way) in today's fascist/religious situation.

How about a few classics? Darwin is quite readable and engaging. The Voyage of the Beagle is an account of his South American adventure, and how the things he saw and samples he collected solidified his views on evolution. Origin of Species lays out his great theory of evolution by natural selection. Darwin was a very exacting scientist, and reading about some of his experiments amazed me in how rigorous the science was. I came away from Origin thinking that there was no more to be said after that book. Following Origin, Darwin wrote The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. Many people may have been fine with the idea of evolution as it pertained to plants and animals, but they were very reluctant to conclude that humans were included in evolution: humans were thought to have been created by God separately from the rest of the animal kingdom. So, Darwin wrote this book to show continuity between humans and animals when it came to emotion. That led him to his doorstopper of a book, Descent of Man. That book plainly shows that evolution also led to homo sapiens. Descent of Man is not particularly readable, but the slog is worth it.

Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. "Hey, farmer farmer, put away the DDT, man!" as Joni Mitchell sang. Carson waged her campaign against pesticides, and the result of listening to her warnings was, among other things, bringing back the bald eagle.

And how about a little cosmology that shows how the universe could come to be without a creator?

One of the things religious people ask the atheists is, if there is no God, why is there something rather than nothing? The simple answer is the question, "Why does the answer to that question have to be God? Why doesn't 'We don't know yet' suffice?"

Check out Lawrence M. Krauss's A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing. For some scientists, there being "something" is more natural and likely than there being "nothing." Lots of cosmology and quantum physics in this book. My mind stretches, partially successfully, to understand the science.

Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan wrote a true classic, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, in which they argue for better scientific education for the public. What makes science different from other practices? The scientific method is self-correcting. Scientists observe nature, make predictions, and then test those predictions with experiments. They post their findings in scientific journals, and their fellow-scientists do more experiments to see if their results agree or disagree with the original researchers'. The scientific method takes us out of the darkness of superstition, pseudo-science, and anti-science. This book is more urgently needed than ever in the Trump-RFK Jr. era.

Get 'em while you can, before they start policing bookstores.

Trump's takeover of the District of Columbia

 The Wall Street Journal says that Trump will deploy the National Guard in DC, and take over DC's police department.

He claims there's a crime wave, and that DC is one of the most dangerous cities in the world. That, of course, is his lying pretext for this latest power grab.

The only crime wave in the District emanates from the house at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Northwest. A raid is in order, but I don't know who would do it.

As for Trump ordering the National Guard to DC, WHEN WILL SOMEBODY SAY NO?

The main problem with Project 2025

 Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts has claimed that "the left has taken over our institutions." What I think Project 2025 comes down to is that the things people learn in school (especially the public schools) and college undermine the authority of parents. The kids come home with their science homework, which contradicts the beliefs of the Christian authoritarian parent.

And that's the problem in a nutshell.

The Christian right is wrong about science, and insists that only ideas forged 2,000 years ago are true. I say 2,000 years, although it seems to me that the Christian right finds the New Testament inconvenient, so maybe their idea of truth predates Jesus.

Science keeps whittling away at belief in God, and the authoritarian parent is not happy with newfangled ideas that undermine the patriarch's authority.

The Christian right is wrong about science and, therefore, they are wrong about evolution, homosexuality, the age of the earth, sex and gender, morality, climate change, racial equality, women's rights, which bathroom a person should use, and every one of today's various cultural controversies.

Yes, I have included morality. It is often said that science cannot tell a person how to be moral. But in my opinion, the more up-to-date a person is in scientific matters, the more information they have on what helps and what hurts. That's the crux of morality, as I see it. Don't make other people suffer, and try to alleviate suffering when you see it.

So, for example, seeing homosexuality as a sin will cause suffering. Calling homosexuality a "lifestyle" is a mistake. If your child is gay, it's not because some evil person has preyed upon them and "turned" them. Science tells us that your child was born that way. They know who and what they are. Throwing them out of the house, or subjecting them to some kind of "cure" is to treat them cruelly. Respecting your children is as important as their respecting you.

So, you're a man who is a member of the Christian right, and your authority must be respected in your household. The problem is that most of what you believe is wrong.

As a footnote, I would recommend to the reader a book by Timothy Ferris, The Science of Liberty, in which he argues that scientific progress and liberalism go hand in hand. Liberalism encourages science, and understanding science should make a person more liberal. And we can all see what the Trump regime has done to science.