Strega

Appreciate it, PopeBeanie….I just rhyme what the evidence taught.
Gift of the gab, not the gift of God……
Critical thinking’s my creed, skepticism my sport.

Trump & Kabal, and Bannon and Project 2025 behind the scenes make headway while pumping out executive orders and any kind of rage and cult enthusiasm they can stir up to produce distracting headlines. I feel dumb not realizing, up until today, that releasing the Epstein files could have also served that purpose. Unless Trump et al knew it would…[Read more]

jakelafort wrote:
They don’t much care about democracy.

I still have hope they can shed their cult uniforms. They surprised me with their gullibility and falling for a malignant narcissistic style of self-confidence, arrogance, and bullshit “solutions that will save America”, and they WILL suffer some consequences when it hits rural America e…[Read more]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
Please don’t see my criticism as anti-American. I hope it is seen as pro-Enlightenment. I have no tribal attachment, and I can separate the myth from the machinery.

Oh, oh, you talking to us? I don’t think so, and it makes me suspicious, as does much of your other recent writings of thoughtful quality, that you’re w…[Read more]

All insurrectionists (and Christian Nationalists) in the audience, come on down! A president can pardon any and all criminals ahead of time?

16 minutes:

Once you no longer reserve a hidden compartment in your reasoning for “maybe there’s a divine exception,” the entire field of view opens up. You stop having to protect contradictions, and patterns that were once blurred by reverence or taboo become visible. I don’t carry a residual conceptual veto. When you remove that invisible constraint of ma…[Read more]

Have a great week!

Thanks Jake, I was mostly thinking about Ireland when I wrote that :-).

I failed again in my prediction that MAGA would become aware enough of the pain that even they will inevitably feel, e.g. wrt losing health care (and now food support) for low income families. It is happening, but their core love and trust in their father figure/cult leader is largely still there.

As is the hate of libs and any of vestiges of…[Read more]

Unseen wrote:
At that point, our only hope will be the military.

Trump keeps acting stupid and unaccountable, intentionally claiming ignorance of some of the people and policies affected by decisions made by his kabal that are borderline criminal or mafia-like.

To what you’re saying about how the military might be our only hope, the…[Read more]

The Enlightenment was about freeing thought from authority, be that authority religious, royal, or dogmatic. Now the new authorities are hashtags and outrage algorithms. The problem is not just ideological, it’s epistemic. Both the ‘Lunatic Left and Rancid Right’ have abandoned Enlightenment principles like reason, evidence, and open debate in fa…[Read more]

The idea of America; self-determination, free inquiry, equality before the law, is extraordinary. The execution of it has always been messy, compromised, and full of contradictions. Please don’t see my criticism as anti-American. I hope it is seen as pro-Enlightenment. I have no tribal attachment, and I can separate the myth from the machinery. T…[Read more]

@Jakelafort – I agree with the sentiment, but I am more optimistic (or naïve!) about the future. The pace of scientific and technological progress has far outstripped the average person’s ability or willingness to keep up intellectually with these advances. It is not so much that there is a growth in ignorance and stupidity but rather that it now…[Read more]

@Enco – It could be that Tucker Carlson made a balls of his testosterone booster with too much testicle tanning?

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
Simon, the problem with JD Vance isn’t that he “respects” his wife’s atheism — it’s that he doesn’t respect her Hinduism. He’s implying she’s an atheist simply because she isn’t a Christian, which is a rather offensive way to erase a faith practiced by hundreds of millions in India. It’s disingenuous.

[Read more]