Local author David Sylvester will be interviewed by poet Therese Broderick (my wife) about his recent Erie Canal crime novel, Hung Be the Heavens with Scarlet, at the Albany Main Library, 161 Washington Ave., 2 PM, Tuesday, April 7. Light refreshments served.
Sylvester is a really terrific writer; see a commentary about his work on my blog: https://rationaloptimist.wordpress.com/2025/10/07/still-life-stories-by-david-sylvester/
Isaac Asimov’s 1951 Foundation sci-fi trilogy had a character called “The Mule.” Initially a ridiculous figure, he had one special ability — actual mind reading. Soon he ruled the galaxy.
I saw this as showing the absurdity of psychics’ claims. Anyone truly possessing such paranormal abilities would not be hustling for nickels and dimes.
Trump was likened to The Mule, in skewing history’s trajectory, at a program at the New York State Writers Institute’s recent film festival. An interview with author James Poniewozik about his 2019 book, Audience of One: Trump, Television, and the Fracturing of America.
The film festival, like NYSWI’s book ones, is always a great event. Held at the State University’s Campus Center, after several years I’m finally getting the hang of its labyrinthine layout, finding my way from one venue to another. This time I mostly viewed “experimental” short films. One, “All American Ruins,” concerned an ending gay relationship; I was struck by one brief flash, a face full of intense anguish. The animated “Stuck at the Spaceport” depicts an alien world so engagingly vivid, it was too short.
Back to Poniewozik: he basically situates Trump as a phenomenon of the TV age. Which has already sort of passed, superseded by the internet age. But in TV’s heyday it was a unifying force, with everyone watching just a few channels. America’s culture more uniform than ever before or since (leaving apart non-whites). And with simultaneous nightly news broadcasts, people had little choice but to watch them, exposing them to more substantive — and factual — pictures of the global landscape than most get today.
In contrast to that monoculture, today’s society is fragmented among plethoras of divergent eye candies. Not “e pluribus unum” but its opposite — with people at each other’s throats over issues of which they have little genuine grasp. Literally impressionable — forming opinions based on mere shallow impressions.
Also, TV shows in those 1950s and ’60s tended to be homilies, morality plays, with a hopeful ethos, good always prevailing. Think of Andy Griffith’s Mayberry. This too helped shape the culture. Later, shows became more bleak and cynical — think of the Sopranos. Such romanticization of criminality would have been unthinkable previously.
Perhaps priming America for a Soprano-istic presidency. It’s long seemed that Trump attracts many voters not in spite of his transgressiveness but because of it.
Meantime, TV also cemented his image as a highly successful and powerful business personage, with his show The Apprentice. Endowed with all the accoutrements — the plush boardroom settings, the contestants groveling for his approval. Never mind that his actual business career was bankruptcy-laden and shambolic. To this day, his cultists still venerate this “successful businessman.”
Not only did Trump bootstrap into power by exploiting TV, he himself is TV fixated. Filling his regime with people he’s seen on Fox News. Watching it seems to be his principal White House pastime. Lately his acolytes have been giving him a daily briefing on the Iran war — in video format, natch — mainly images of things being blown up, which he dotes on. Probably the true reason he launched this war.
I keep coming back to the 2006 comedy film Idiocracy. How prescient. I don’t see us getting out of this cultural syndrome.
At our coin club Christmas party, I mentioned to a buddy that the U.S. Mint is planning a Trump coin.
“No way,” he said. “You’re joshing.”
No, this is real, I replied.
“C’mon. You’re just pulling my leg.”
I wasn’t.
The Coin World newspaper (I’ve subscribed for 63 years) always has extensive coverage of proposed commemorative coins. With much about a series marking our 250th anniversary of independence. But oddly, I saw there just a single article illustrating a design portraying Trump — on both sides, no less. You’d think a U.S. coin issue would have to go through a lot of process. Yet it wasn’t even clear how this was happening.
My friend was so skeptical because he knew it’s illegal to put a living person on a U.S. coin. There’ve been a few strange exceptions — but nothing this blatant.
Two government bodies have a role in coin design — the Commission of Fine Arts (Trump has fired and replaced all its members) and the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee (immune from him.)*
Coin World normally steers clear of anything smacking of politics. Recently it reported, deadpan, on a Republican congressman’s filing a bill to award a Congressional gold medal to a 23-year-old right-wing internet provocateur. I sent a letter-to-editor criticizing the article’s failure to note this is controversial. It wasn’t printed.
But comes now the March 23 issue with a long remarkable article about the CCAC in open revolt against the regime.
Congressional legislation requires CCAC review before any coin design is selected. Looking toward 2026 quarter commemoratives, the CCAC, as the culmination of a lengthy process, sent the Treasury Secretary a set of recommended designs. Which were completely ignored — the mint is moving forward with five totally different ones, never presented to the CCAC as required by law.
The mint seems to justify this glaring illegality by hypothesizing that sometime in the past the CCAC might have had some opportunity to see the new designs. The CCAC rejects this nonsense, and has communicated its outrage to the mint in no uncertain terms.
None of those five quarter designs depicts Trump, and what seems totally bizarre about Coin World’s article is no mention of the separate (gold, naturally) Trump issue. Except, obliquely, once: it quotes the opening statement by CCAC member Donald Scarinci at their February 24 meeting.
He begins by lauding Trump, yet ends with this: “For 250 years since [the Declaration of Independence] was signed, no nation on earth has issued coins with the image of a democratically elected leader during the time of their service. [My emphasis] Only those nations ruled by Kings or dictators display the image of their sitting ruler on the coin of the realm.”
The Mint has now finally made it official that it will issue a Trump gold coin, with a newly revealed facing portrait. While his appointed Fine Arts Commission approved it, the CCAC has refused to consider it. Again, the law requires CCAC review before any new coin design can be used. The Mint is ignoring that, and also invoking some dubious legal theory to evade the prohibition on portraying a living person. Making the coin doubly illegal.
We’ve just learned Trump’s also putting his signature on paper money. All this, we keep hearing, is about his “legacy.” The fool does not see he’s cementing a legacy as one of history’s greatest monsters. We also keep hearing that the American people deserve better. No, we don’t — we voted for this.
Tomorrow there will be the next “No Kings” rallies.
* I’d repeatedly applied for the CCAC, feeling well qualified. In fact I’d been appointed by President Nixon to the 1972 U.S. Assay Commission, tasked with ensuring that coinage met standards. Arguably a bigger deal. That body was soon abolished; and as the youngest of few ex-Commissioners, I have a shot at becoming the last survivor. But I finally gave up on the CCAC.
Because the regime won’t negotiate reasonable restrictions on its ICE paramilitaries, a partial government shutdown has hit not ICE but TSA air travel security operations. With agents unpaid, many skip work, causing long lines at airports.
The regime’s answer is deploying ICE to airports. Just the thing to reassure travelers! While most ICE guys are standing around there doing nothing.
Here’s a better solution:
Abolish TSA. Or, at least, greatly curtail its role, eliminating security lines and all that X-raying. Like at customs checkpoints — allow travelers to walk right through, with some agents stopping only ones who seem suspicious.
What TSA does instead has been called “security theater,” because rather than providing any actual safety, its true role is to create an illusion of it.
There was always something fundamentally bizarre about this picture. Airplanes are a near-miraculous triumph of human technological rationality. Accompanied by a huge system to keep people from deliberately crashing them. Huh? (As if the latter system did that anyway.)
It’s been a quarter century since 9/11. In all that time, there seemingly hasn’t been a repeat, or threat of one. You might suggest TSA is the reason, making another 9/11 impossible. But surely that’s not so. The TSA system is full of holes. Test runs have shown much gets through, and clever determined terrorists can presumably foil it. Moreover, the idea of hijacking planes seems an archaic chimera today. Hacking into computer systems, or using drones, would be better terrorist options. Making TSA’s security theater all the more irrelevant.
So why does it still exist?
One reason is simple human inertia. Doing what we’ve always done, because we’ve always done it. We’re so accustomed to TSA we just don’t stop to question its continuing logic.
We even still have to remove our shoes because decades ago one pathetic schlub put explosives in his (but couldn’t even manage to detonate them).
We have trouble rationally assessing risks against costs. Life is full of risks. Of course we should do everything reasonable to minimize them; but “reasonable” includes consideration of cost. Would you spend $1000 to avoid a 1% chance of breaking a finger? In fact we do the equivalent all the time.
Suppose TSA did in fact prevent one 9/11 every decade. A 9/11’s costs are certainly large, including the value of lives lost. (Society does implicitly put a dollar value on a life; that’s what the 9/11 victim compensation scheme did.) But what does the prevention cost us? How much taxpayer money? And that’s far from the only cost. Billions of hours of people’s time wasted in lines has a cost too. And missed flights. Et cetera. The total cost of preventing that one episode surely far exceeds what the episode itself would cost us.
If that sounds callous — in fact we blithely accept far greater tragedies. Car crashes are not even a theoretical risk but a certainty. Killing about 38,000 Americans annually (far more than 9/11). There are things we could do to greatly reduce that carnage. Probably a better bargain than TSA security theater. But we don’t do them.
In 1973 I had a blind date to Mexico. I’d previously bought the ticket, with a different name on it; the airline didn’t even care. You just showed the ticket and waltzed onto the plane. No security theater. Remember those days?
Let’s have them back.
We’re at war in Iran because in 2011, President Obama joked about Trump at a Washington dinner.
That made Obama his bête noire (almost literally, for racist Trump). Obsessed with getting even by reversing everything Obama did. Including tearing up his 2015 deal to curb Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Had Trump not done that, there’d be scant pretext now for attacking Iran.
After last June, when he said he’d “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capability, U.S. intelligence judged that Iran is not seeking a bomb. But our latest attack could actually convince them they need such weapons after all.
Trump also trumpets Iranians’ freedoms. More bullshit, with no organized and armed Iranian opposition; no path for a democratic transition. When protesters did rise up in January, Trump said he had their backs, but did nothing when the regime killed tens of thousands. (And when he did take out Venezuela’s dictator, he then sidelined the organized and popular democratic opposition to instead back another dictator.)
But he really attacked Iran because he thinks it “fun.” He’s said that. Didn’t need much logic for it. While “war” secretary Hegseth is a cartoon caricature of a macho blowhard, reveling in talk about “lethality” and “killing bad guys.”
The global economy (and our own) were already messed up by Trump’s insane tariffs. He launched the Iran war with no idea of the further economic harm. With curtailed energy supplies sending prices through the roof. As if Iran would never have thought of using the Strait of Hormuz as a strategic weapon when attacked. This is already history’s biggest disruption to global oil supplies. An oil spill in the Strait would close it for months.
Trump asked our “allies” to help in the Strait. Our former allies, whom he’d previously totally antagonized. Now he’s berated them for not rushing to help. While saying he doesn’t need them anyway.
So far our actual military casualties have been limited. But I’m recalling the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing, killing 241 U.S. soldiers. Isn’t Iran, for all the damage we’ve inflicted, still capable of a devastating strike, against various U.S. assets throughout the region? We’re whistling past a graveyard.
And the direct cost is huge. Our military power is not infinite. We’ve used up a lot, already running short on some key munitions. Plus concentrating forces in that region, drawing them away from the Pacific — all crippling our ability to deter China from invading Taiwan, which Xi Jinping itches to do.
Meantime, because Iran is fighting us by blocking the world’s access to oil, a Trump counter-measure, to get more oil onto the market, was to lift sanctions upon Russia’s oil sales. Putting billions in Putin’s pocket to help fund his Ukraine atrocities.
And now, guess what other country’s oil sanctions have also been lifted? Wait for it . . . Iran!
Yes; because Iran is fighting us by curbing oil supplies, we’re fighting that by enabling Iran to sell more oil.
A month ago, MAGA ranks overwhelmingly opposed war on Iran, a big reason why they’d supported Trump. Now that he’s done it, they overwhelmingly back it.
Trump says the war is winding down — while our forces there are ramping up. Pundits struggle to parse his thinking. Hello — there isn’t any.
Almost three years to go. It will get worse.
The seeming rise of inequality is a big concern. “Tax the rich” a frequent refrain. Billionaire Warren Buffett once famously said he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary. Bernie Sanders talks as though billionairehood should be disallowed.
There’s a lot of plain old envy. A friend obsesses that Bill Gates just has too much, you’d think it makes her poorer. Indeed, it’s often said the rich “take” their wealth from the rest. But while some may be “robber barons,” the real route to riches has always been creating value for others — goods and services people want or need and willingly buy.
In contrast, zero-sum thinking assumes anyone gains only at someone else’s expense. Forgetting that no transaction happens unless benefiting both sides. Enlarging the pie for everyone. That’s basically how Gates got rich.
So the ultra-rich’s existence is not a problem. Not by itself impairing the well-being of the masses, which should instead be our focus. And in fact, notwithstanding extremes of wealth, ordinary people have become much better off.
For most of our history, nearly everyone was squalidly poor, with very few rich. And practically no economic growth. That’s changed dramatically in the two centuries following the Industrial Revolution. Not only producing economic growth, but spreading it, with mass affluence replacing mass poverty. Compared to the past, today’s inequality is really an inequality of riches. And while it’s said the middle class is hollowing out, mainly this isn’t people falling out of it but rising out of it.
Looking globally, inequality has decreased since WWII simply by virtue of economic growth rates in developing nations exceeding those in advanced ones. Freer trade a big factor. As a result (while many reflexively suppose poverty is always rising), far fewer people, worldwide, now suffer real deprivation.
The “tax the rich” trope implies we don’t already do so, at least not enough. Often pointing to the 1950’s top 91% income tax bracket. In reality, with deductions and loopholes, nobody ever paid so much. Whereas nowadays the top 1% of earners pay about 40% of all federal tax revenue (up from 33% in 2001). The top 0.01% pay around a third of their income.
That reflects a tax system premised on richer people able to pay more. We can argue over exactly how much more might be fair. But fairness should not mean punitiveness; nobody should be taxed just for the sake of making them less rich. Rather, only because the money’s needed.
The Economist recently presented an analysis of this whole inequality and taxation issue. Arguing that high taxes can be economically damaging, disincentivizing effort. Citing, for example, recent research showing that higher income tax rates correlate with fewer patent filings, because the potential reward is reduced. And people are not captives, they can move to avoid taxes. High-tax New York has the nation’s lowest population growth rate.
Meantime, says The Economist, the rich world does more redistribution than ever. In America, economic inequality has risen in recent decades, but that’s before you count government taxation and spending. Top earners again do pay a lot of tax, while federal benefits going to the lowest earners have risen greatly. All in, America now redistributes about twice as much as in the 1960s, offsetting much of the inequality rise. Though the Trump regime has partially reversed this.
Also noted is that whereas European social spending somewhat exceeds America’s, they finance it more through “broad-based levies,” like 20% VAT or sales taxes, which disproportionately hit ordinary people — whereas the U.S. taxes less overall, but with a system that soaks the rich more. In fact, for 80% of Americans, today’s percentage tax burden is far lower than in the ’60s and ’70s (a big factor being expansion of the earned income tax credit).
But we need more tax revenue. Government deficit spending is out of control, funded by borrowing, with resulting interest costs eating up ever more of the budget, a doom loop. Taxing just fat-cats couldn’t come close to what’s needed. While a broad-based tax rise is politically impossible, especially with “affordability” such a big concern. Given all this, Trump cutting taxes mainly on the rich was, let’s just say, ill-advised.
Trump has been trumpeting a Trump Class Battleship — to trump all others — as central to a plan for juicing up our navy, which has languished while China aggressively expands its own.
The Economist calls this part of a “garish proposal” for a “Golden Fleet.” Trump’s love for all things golden (and garish) is evidenced by the White House almost sinking under the weight of all the gold (or is it gilt?) ornamentation he’s larded into it, so he can feel like some potentate. And this new battleship would feed two other Trump cravings — his narcissist lust to have things named for himself — and bigness for bigness’ sake.
It would indeed be a behemoth three to four times larger than our current combat ships. And Trump says (though preposterously as usual) it will be “a hundred times more powerful than any battleship ever built.”
“Fighting the last war” is a cliche, but full of truth, especially in our own time when technology is so changing the face of warfare (as seen in Ukraine, with battlefields dominated by drones). Trump’s immense galleon would not be fighting the last war, but rather ones older still. Not since the 1940s have any ships of this general sort been commissioned.
And how exactly might these be used, in a modern war scenario? Hard to see, actually. The Economist does say the idea would “trade speed and range for armour and firepower.” Seems a lousy tradeoff, with hobbled speed enabling target vessels to elude the firepower. And the stupendous cost of $15 billion each (even without the customary overruns) would mean a further tradeoff, of having fewer vessels rather than many. Putting most of our eggs in this one basket.
It’s been ages since battleships played any real role in war. Not in the current Iran conflict. Conceivably it could happen if China attacks Taiwan; but that will likely come before any Trump Class ships can get built. Anyhow, concentrating our strength in a few monster vessels, rather than an agile dispersed fleet, would be a huge strategic gift to China.
A massive Trump battleship, like a musclebound giant, lumbering slow, would be a sitting duck for China to obliterate, whatever its armor. (As my wife remarked, “How ya gonna hide that thing?”) And losing just one would be a devastating blow, crippling our ability to combat China’s Taiwan assault.
Meantime though, would President TACO — caring nothing for democracy or a rules based world order — even deign to risk those ships to fight for Taiwan, against an authoritarian Chinese ruler he enviously admires?
So why build them? Not vessels of war but of ego.
“The Librarians” is a 2025 film by Kim Snyder. My ex-librarian wife and I attended a screening, with a panel discussion, by the New York State Writers Institute. It’s about book purgings, with school librarians attacked by right-wing political agitators. Texas and Florida are epicenters.
“Moms for Liberty” is a leading front group. They like to sound grass-roots, but this is part of a well-funded national effort, pouring money into local school board elections. It’s not originating with concerned parents, but rather whipped up by calculating political operators, exploiting this as a wedge issue. Books in libraries were never previously a problem.
While many major societal institutions have crumpled to Trump regime dictates, librarians seem to be a major exception. Heroically bearing up to attacks that aren’t just verbiage. Quite a few have lost their jobs; many threatened with physical violence.
The film portrays mostly the librarians, but the other side gets a fair hearing, in their own words (which don’t do them credit). They want to ban any books about race issues, or having to do with sex or sexuality, especially non-conforming. Labelled “pornography,” with librarians accused of “grooming” children for aberrant sexual abuse.
Thus the mantra of “protecting children,” a constant right-wing trope, across a range of issues. It’s dishonest. They’re sure not protecting kids from ICE’s depredations; many who are U.S. citizens have had parents torn away; in fact many children themselves have been victimized. And while anti-abortion activists like to say they’re protecting the unborn, once born those children are of no concern to these crusaders, supporting policies that impoverish their families.
The whole “grooming” panic is a fraud too. As if kids are forced to read deviant pornography so they’ll be willing pedo victims. Never happened. Librarians may help youngsters by suggesting appropriate books, but don’t shove books at them. And their attackers, mounting moralistic high horses to beat upon the word “pornography,” don’t know what they’re talking about.
The film portrayed one movement activist, Courtney Gore, elected to a Texas school board determined to battle pornography in libraries. But, assiduously investigating, she could find none. Reporting this publicly, she was viciously attacked.
What this movement is trying to “protect” children against is learning about life and reality. About the diversity of human beings.
Another woman was shown, at a public meeting, vehemently invoking the Bible to condemn any portrayal of gays in library books. Then we meet her gay son, who was kicked out of the family. He speaks at another meeting, of how as a child he’d been inculcated with the Bible — a book full of murder, rape, genocide, slavery, and other horrors. His mother was present there too but kept her distance, unrepentant. This seemed very very sad.
This whole book-banning movement is spurred by Christianity and supposed Biblical dictates. Actually much sexual stuff okayed in the Bible would outrage any normal person today — treating women as commodities — while the book hardly even mentions same-sex relations. But these Bible-thumpers latch onto that (while ignoring so much else) because they’re hung up about sex in general and freaked out in particular by gay and transgender people. With whom they can’t relate as fellow humans.
“Hate the sin but love the sinner” is not their mindset. (Not that gayness is sinful in any rational moral sense.) What the film depicts is downright hatred. Showing us yet again that religion, far from promoting morality and goodness, often does the opposite, so scrambling believers’ brains that they can’t tell right from wrong. Their whole moral vision skewed by falsehood.
What they also want to “protect” children from is racial concerns. Thus the effort to ban any books by or about Black people — especially addressing slavery. It’s ironic that folks who screamed that removing Confederate monuments was “erasing history” want to erase slavery’s history — as though the Civil War had nothing to do with that anyway! Now the racist Trump regime is pushing this great cover-up.
They oppose portraying American history as all bad (“bad,bad,bad,bad,” one voice in the film said). But they want to make it all good, zero bad. However, America’s greatness does not lie with a sanitized version of our history — rather, with an honest one, showing that we’ve progressed, faced up to our past failings, and worked fix them. That made me proud of my country.
Those history scrubbers plead against making white kids feel bad about themselves over slavery. Well, slavery was a monstrous crime, which everyone should feel bad about. But that’s not the same as personal guilt. One panelist discussing the film, Roger Green, said the movement underestimates children, who are perfectly capable of understanding this.
It’s actually these white nationalists themselves who are still fixated on slavery and race. Slavery and its reverberations continue looming large in American society today, because they can’t let it go. They’re the ones who cannot put it all behind us and move on. Just like with gay and trans people, they can’t relate to Blacks as just fellow human beings.
As ever, the ugly racist behavior of white supremacists proves them the inferior ones. And that racist hostility toward non-whites is the core ethos of today’s right-wing Republicanism. Everything else is window-dressing.
Auction 131 now posted at:
http://www.fsrcoin.com/ii.html OR
http://www.biddr.com/auctions/fsrcoin/browse?a=6842 (showing current bid levels)
593 lots. N0 BUYER FEE. Live bidding April 18. Includes ancients, early world coins, British, German, Chinese, etc; group lots, literature, and fixed price specials.
Happy hunting,
Frank S. Robinson
Last April I wrote about a wonderful New York City conference run by James (“It’s the Economy, Stupid”) Carville’s “Democracy Matters” organization. My wife Therese and I attended another on March 3, intensively dissecting the political landscape.
Upon arrival, at the luxury Lotte Hotel, we encountered Carville in the elevator, which did not stop at the correct floor. Therese found how to get us all there. (We later learned these were the first working elevators in America!)
I wrote that the previous event had not a single word of bullshit (contrasting with the Republican side). That was true again. And while Democrats then were reeling from the 2024 election, this time the vibe was more upbeat.
We’ve wondered when the MAGA cult fever would break. Today it’s riven by divisions, as Trump’s approval ratings sink, from so much awfulness — tariffs, Epstein, ICE, now the Iran war. And while Democrats were even less popular, that too seems to be changing. So winning the House of Representatives looks highly likely (despite gerrymandering), and Senate prospects brighten. Dems need to gain four seats, and more look in play than previously thought. I’m starting to smell a “wave election.”
Begala
Paul Begala, former Bill Clinton advisor and legendary political strategist, did many interviews. First with Colorado Rep. Jason Crow, participant in the famous video reminding military folks not to obey illegal orders. Crow now heads the Democrats’ congressional campaign; seems doing a great job recruiting electable candidates, many from outside politics who’ve really done something. And he said many who’d voted Trump now realize he’s stabbed them in the back.
Polling expert Molly Murphy said many 2024 voters thought the economy had been better under Trump; but it’s not now; and they’re not buying his blaming Biden. Twenty percent of Trump voters say they regret that vote (something quite unusual).
Carville quoted Texas senate candidate Jasmine Crockett saying non-white Trump voters showed a “slave mentality.” Not the way to win their hearts! He opined that Harris lost not because she’s a Black woman but because voters wanted a change, and she wasn’t offering that.
Much discussion focused on working class voters and young men in particular. Today’s big electoral dividing line is educational level; and while most highly educated voters back Democrats, they’re a minority. High percentages of young men feel very stressed, unable to meet societal expectations to be family providers and protectors. Needing multiple jobs to keep heads above water. Vulnerable to homelessness. Only a quarter think Trump is delivering.
Another panel addressing these matters included former DNC Chair and Labor Secretary Tom Perez, and ex-Governor Steve Bullock of Montana. Arguing that one’s politics are often shaped by culture. There’s much feeling that flush educated elites exploit the rest; student loan forgiveness, for example, seen as unfairly benefiting better-off people at the expense of ones worse off.
Former MSNBC host Katie Phang discussed how the right gained media dominance — with extreme voices to the fore. Creeps like Nick Fuentes; Andrew Tate; and Nick Shirley, whose very dubious video alleging Minneapolis day care fraud sparked much of the mayhem there. One I’d never even heard of, “Clavicular,” just turned twenty, is a big if weird thing online. Fuentes says Trump is not Nazi enough. This crap is disgracefully pushed at people by Social media algorithms.
But MAGA cultists are not just insane. Their main attractor is being part of a group or community, their new families. (Such is the vibe at Trump rallies.) Providing a sense of validation and power which they otherwise feel the culture denies them.
Phang pointed to the “election fraud” nonsense as a “through-line,” resulting in Trump elevating really sketchy people, and feeding into the war on immigrants. Looking to deploy ICE and other armed forces during voting. Assaulting freedom of information, as with the arrests of journalists like Don Lemon. While “mainstream media” is often intimidated, neutered, and even taken over outright by powerful pro-Trump operators.
Begala interviewed noted historian Heather Cox Richardson. Who opined we’re actually on the cusp of a new progressive era, a reaction against widespread feelings of societal unfairness. Trump was supported as an antidote, the radical right’s fantasy president. But they increasingly realize he’s a wrecker (epitomized again by the Iran war). Richardson noted that in polls, an extraordinary 51% now strongly disapprove of him. But it’s hard for cultists to face that they’ve lived a lie for so long. The crazier your beliefs, the more you have to believe them.
Richardson said ideas change the world. And the “heteronormative” nuclear family has never truly reigned in America; a better policy orientation for Democrats would center upon children. Globally, the post-WWII world order is falling apart, replaced by a “variable geometry,” with groups of nations working together and separately at the same time. (Trump’s horrible alternative is a world ruled by three giant spheres of influence.)
There was mention of Vance’s presidential prospects. In the Q&A, I asked why Donald Junior wouldn’t run? And win the nomination? (Just based on his name.) But he was dismissed as lacking the capability. More likely: Tucker Carlson.
Yikes.
Okay, not entirely uplifting. But the evening sessions were. Begala interviewed two terrific gubernatorial candidates. Florida’s David Jolly was a Republican Congressman (2014-17) who switched. He explained he’d had three basic values: an economy working for everyone; government improving our lives; and everyone’s rights protected and dignity respected. Like me, he left the Republican party when its ethos became perverted against those values. (How sad that so few Republicans have done likewise.)
Iowa’s Rob Small was all about connecting with people on a personal level; making it inclusive, not exclusionary (like Republicans do). Partisan invective doesn’t help. He said people vote their values, not necessarily their economic interests (something I’ve long said when left-wingers whine that voters betray their economic interests).
The finale was Begala with Kentucky Governor (and presidential possibility) Andy Beshear. He said people are not as political as we think (echoing previous points about culture’s salience). They’re most concerned with life issues. We mustn’t mistake kindness for weakness. And Democrats must talk like normal human beings — like, saying “hunger” rather than “food insecurity.”
As the program and dinner were ending, Texas senate primary votes were being reported, with the moderate (more electable) Democrat, James Talarico, beating Crockett. Carville stood up, got the room’s attention, and shouted, “We’re gonna win the fuckin’ Senate!”
The Rational Pessimist 
