Category Archives: Random Blogging

The Car Conundrum

Today, let’s take a break from the continued insanity of our mad would-be King, and consider some of the issues that we policy nerds used to contend with before the nutcase descended on his tacky golden elevator. (Consider this a vacation from the daily hysteria…)

Let’s talk about cars. Automobiles.

I live in a city where the notion of public transportation is incomprehensible to a significant portion of our car-centric population. That love affair with automobiles, along with a flat, mostly open geography, largely explains the lack of density that makes provision of public transport in cities like Indianapolis challenging.

Policy folks who address the issues raised by a population that is massively dependent upon ownership of a working vehicle largely focus on the environmental impact and various public safety concerns, but studies raise numerous other negatives that should be taken into consideration.

A recent article in The Guardian, for example, focused on an aspect of our car-centric culture that most of us haven’t considered. It seems that excessive car dependency leads to unhappiness.

The article notes that the automobile is “the default, and often only, mode of transport for the vast majority of Americans.” More than nine in 10 households have at least one vehicle and 87% of people use their cars every day. In 2025 a record 290 million vehicles were operated on US streets and highways.

 However, this extreme car dependence is affecting Americans’ quality of life, with a new study finding there is a tipping point at which more driving leads to deeper unhappiness. It found that while having a car is better than not for overall life satisfaction, having to drive for more than 50% of the time for out-of-home activities is linked to a decrease in life satisfaction.

The article noted that planning policies and parking construction have encouraged suburban sprawl, construction of strip malls that have more space for cars than people, and the accompanying erosion of shared “third places” where Americans can congregate. As most Americans know, even very short journeys outside the house require a car–the article says that half of all car trips are under three miles.

Even in cities with excellent public transportation, traffic congestion is often brutal. Paul Krugman recently discussed New York’s effort to address that congestion, which is an example of a “negative externality” — a cost people impose on other people. Krugman cites estimates that commuting into lower Manhattan on a weekday imposes $100 or more in costs on other drivers, delivery trucks, and so on. The congestion fee recently imposed on those driving into central Manhattan has vastly reduced that congestion –but as Krugman notes, even in New York, getting that fee imposed was a heavy lift, because a significant number of people evidently feel a “sense of control when driving that makes them reluctant to take mass transit.”

The one thing that may break through this love affair with our very own cars may be the issue of affordability. An article in the Washington Post has confirmed what transportation scholars have consistently preached: owning a car is incredibly expensive. The question isn’t whether to buy a new or used vehicle–the article says they are both debt traps. But as we all know, they are frequently required debt traps.  “For most Americans, a car isn’t a luxury; it’s a requirement to get to work and keep the lights on, food on the table and a roof over their heads.” For increasing numbers of Americans, vehicle costs are starting to rival rent or mortgage payments.

And thanks to America’s aging population, another problem is manifesting. When older folks can no longer drive, those who don’t live in walkable areas are increasingly immobilized and isolated. (Wealthier folks can access Uber or Lyft, but most older Americans cannot.)  

And speaking of affordability in a country where the gap between the rich and the rest continues to grow, the lack of transportation hits hardest on poor people who can’t find work because they can’t afford a car to get them there. (In urban policy and labor economics, this is often described as “spatial mismatch” or “transportation poverty.”) When people who can’t afford a car live in places with weak public transit, they face mutually reinforcing barriers to employment–barriers that are particularly acute in places like Indiana, where jobs are increasingly located in suburban areas, office parks and industrial zones near highways–places generally not served by our limited public transportation systems.

The question–as always–is “what should we do?” 

I look forward to the day when MAGA and Trump are gone, and normal Americans can turn our attention back to issues like this.

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A Summary And A Prescription

In today’s post, I’m citing  two commentaries that describe where we are– and one that outlines what we must do.

Last Monday, Simon Rosenberg’s post at “Hopium Chronicles” included a two-paragraph summary of Trump’s preceding week. I’m quoting both paragraphs in full, because they paint a very clear picture of the time and place we inhabit.

Just in the last few manic days Trump has launched a full out assault on the Fed (see Chairman Powell’s historic video, below). He is threatening to invade Greenland, bomb Iran, struck targets in Syria this weekend, and last night declared himself “Acting President of Venezuela.” He is now fighting with the oil companies over their reluctance to become part of his Venezuelan oil fantasy; threatened the credit card companies with a law that only exists in his mind; sanctioned the killing of Americans by his paramilitaries for dissent; threatened to veto the resumption of the ACA subsidies if passed by the Senate; and with another anemic jobs report on Friday received further confirmation of the failure of his tariffs to deliver for the country, or Republican candidates facing extinction over affordability. The lunatic HHS Secretary is returning America to a pre-modern health era, threatening the lives and health of tens of millions of Americans. Millions of people took to the streets this weekend, many in terrible weather. We are now more than a quarter of the way into the new federal fiscal year without a budget, and the government may run out of money again in 18 days.

Things are getting worse, not better, for Republicans and the country. Trump is threatening the fundamental security alliance that has kept us safe and free for 80 years. He is threatening the integrity of our financial system which has made us the wealthiest nation in history. He has walked away from the UN Charter which has created the basic governing rules for nations for 81 years. He snatched a foreign leader from his palace in the middle of the night, without Congressional approval. In the last few days he openly threatened both the oil companies, and the big banks, two powerful Republican-aligned industries who will be loudly complaining to Thune and Johnson today. Last night he declared himself the “Acting President of Venezuela.” He is encouraging his goons to kill Americans on the streets. His public performances and social media posts suggest he has completely lost his shit and it is time now for the keys to be taken away.

Rosenberg is a Democrat–a hated “progressive.” However, Charlie Sykes, was a rock-ribbed conservative pundit. 

Sykes began his post by sharing an editorial cartoon that’s been making the rounds–ICE agents standing over a fallen Statue of Liberty, polishing their guns and explaining that “She was brandishing a torch.” He then pivoted to discussion of “Judgement at Nuremberg” a film he found relevant to the times in which we find ourselves. He then quoted Joe Klein for the “critical parallel.”

Innocent people are being rounded up in the streets of America now. One was killed last week. Too many of our fellow citizens are okay with this.

But they don’t even have the “Good” Nazis’ excuse: they know it’s happening. They see it on tv every night. Their tolerance for this brutality is making our country, palpably, a place it never was before. It is becoming the sort of country that people used to flee… to come to America.

That’s where we are. The critical question, of course, is: where do we go? What must we do? Rick Wilson–another former Republican (and former GOP strategist) has weighed in on that pivotal question.

To stop the immediate crisis, we must weaponize the very “propositional nature” of America. This involves a tactical veto of civil society: a collective refusal by elected leaders, local governments, businesses, the legal community, and civic and religious leaders to facilitate the “will to power.”

By creating friction in the gears of the state, we transform the grim anxiety of the populace into a functional resistance that protects the remaining guardrails of the Republic until the momentum of ICE can be broken at the ballot box.

Then, Wilson writes, we must create a National Commission on the Rule of Law to document every “butcher’s bill” and ensure that names like Renee Good are never forgotten. That Commission must then pursue the active prosecution of every functionary who used the machinery of the state to crush America–the  “American SS and people like Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem, Greg Bovino, and Tom Homan, and the hundreds of lower-ranking DHS and ICE officials who executed these abuses.”

Wilson is right. We must return to an America in which “the rule of law is not a suggestion, but a binding commitment that carries a price for its betrayal.”

We the People can do that.

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Dopamine Nation

Sociologists, political scientists and historians all confirm the effects of rapid social change. For that matter, most Americans recognize those effects: when the world one inhabits seems different every day, when previous cultural assumptions are being upended daily, widespread disorientation and animus shouldn’t surprise us.

We are at one of those moments in human history when change–especially but certainly not exclusively the almost daily advances in technology–challenge the millions of Americans who grew up with telephones anchored to walls, written messages sent via the post office, and cars that required far more extensive human control.

I am one of the millions of older Americans who watch grandchildren using devices we only dimly understand, and struggle to comprehend the dimensions of–and arguments over–Artificial Intelligence. I’m not one of those who reject these creations out of hand, but I do recognize an uncomfortable fact: we really don’t know how these “advances” are changing human and social behavior.

And that admission brings me to what is perhaps the most pervasive and troubling of these new communication mechanisms: the proliferating social media platforms and the algorithms producing the dopamine that keeps users glued to them.

A recent article in Lincoln Square was appropriately titled, “Life Under a Clicktatorship.”

The article began by noting that the faux “Situation Room” portrayed on Trump’s social media during the Maduro kidnapping had (inadvertently?) shown a screen with X in the background.

With the best intelligence systems in the world at their fingertips, they were checking X in the midst of the mission? Combined with the curtains separating some section of Mar‑A‑Lago from the rest of the President’s resort, the images create an almost surreal air. It felt as if a group of twelve-year-old boys in a basement had been handed control of the most lethal military in history—and were using it to boost their online brands.

The article noted that Trump effectively uses social media to draw attention, reshape norms, and fuel conspiracy theories–in this case, turning “avowed MAGA isolationists into enthusiastic colonial imperialists overnight.” But the challenge we face is, as it insists, far more worrisome and widespread than the single talent of our demented President.

Social media operates like a drug. It feeds us dopamine and rewires our brains’ reward pathways, and those “unhealthy dynamics” are made worse by the anonymity offered and (as the article notes) the fact that “standing out online often demands being awful—channeling negative emotions like anger and outrage, usually based on misinformation or conspiracy theories.”

These characteristics of social media have been shown to have a profound effect on voter behavior. They also affect how policymakers use public power. The author argues–pretty persuasively–that the members of Trump’s administration aren’t just using social media to support their preferred narratives. There is evidence that many of them are deeply addicted to it.

We would be concerned if a senior government official was an alcoholic or drug addict, knowing it could impair judgment and decisionmaking. But we should be equally concerned about Pete Hegseth and Elon Musk’s social media compulsions—just as much as their alcohol or ketamine use, respectively.

The Trump administration is made up of a cabinet of posters. For many, that’s how they won Trump’s attention. The head of the FBI, for example, is a podcaster—that’s his main qualifier for the job.

They view the world through a social media lens in a way that is plausibly corrupting their judgment and undermining their performance.

Thanks to the nature of the current information environment, most Americans occupy information “bubbles.” I certainly do, and I rather imagine most of my subscribers are right in there with me. That said, most ordinary people still don’t spend much time on social media–a fact that motivates those the article dubs “outrage farmers” to compete for followers by engaging in outrage and employing bots programmed to exacerbate division.

Those who spend excessive time online exhibit more and more extreme behaviors in order to keep the dopamine coming. And as the author points out, living in these bubbles distorts reality far more for the rich and powerful, who already have limited contact with ordinary people.

When government officials are addicted to social media, they prioritize pleasing their audiences rather than their constituents.

For instance, the Podcaster/Director of the FBI reportedly fired veteran FBI leaders to curry favor with online critics. USAID was the first federal agency killed by online conspiracy theories—with tragic results.

At a time when Americans are already deeply polarized–social media addiction is deepening our divisions. It’s a problem.

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She’s Right And She’s Right

A recent essay by Mona Charen in The Bulwark stirred an old memory. Many–many–years ago, I debated Charen at a local synagogue. I no longer recall the reason or the subject; we were both considered conservative Republicans at the time, although my very foggy recollection is that she was much farther to the Right (or wrong) on whatever issue it was. (Permit me to note that back then “the Right” was considerably more “woke” than it is today. As I often point out, I was pro-choice, pro gay rights and pro women serving in combat when I won a Republican primary in 1980.)

In any event, kudos to Charen these days. She is a vocal member of the Never Trump contingent, and an editor of The Bulwark, a decidedly anti-MAGA publication. In a recent essay, she critiqued Trump’s recent prime-time speech, under the headline “Can we get that 18 minutes back?” In the process, she made some very good points.

She began with an entirely appropriate sentiment, quoting someone named Tim Miller: “I was embarrassed. It’s really unbelievably stupid that we’re here, that this person is the president, and that that was real—that was not a spoof.”

Charen characterized the speech as “a waste of 18 minutes of prime time,” but admitted she’d nevertheless been relieved–at least Trump hadn’t used the time to declare war on Venezuela, which she’d feared.

There’s another reason for my sense of relief. Last night’s speech reveals Trump has no sense of how he might save his foundering presidency, or even much of an inclination to try to do so. Indeed, yesterday’s Republican meltdown in the House in the face of increased health insurance costs, a faltering economy, and the deadline for the release of the Epstein files tomorrow—all of these suggest a rough holiday season for the administration.

Which is good. A weaker Trump administration is better for America.

Charen then reminded readers that any former President would have used the occasion of a prime-time speech to reflect upon–or at least reference–the previous week’s tragedies. During that week, two U.S. soldiers had been killed in Syria, students were killed in yet another mass shooting at Brown, there had been an attack with multiple fatalities on Jews celebrating Hanukkah in Sydney, and the tragic, horrible murder of Rob and Michele Reiner. Trump ignored even a perfunctory reference to any of those events, although he had previously posted truly despicable “thoughts” on the Reiner tragedy to his vanity platform, Truth Social.

Charen then addressed a central quote from the speech–Trump’s assertion that “One year ago our country was dead. We were absolutely dead, but now we’re the hottest country anywhere in the world. And that’s said by every single leader that I’ve spoken to over the last five months.”

Trump has bragged before that he’s received such praise, naming those who have purportedly flattered him: Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, “the king of Saudi Arabia,” “the emir of Qatar,” the prime minister of Hungary, and “every leader of NATO.” As Charen notes,

Trump is, of course, lying. Some foreign leaders, to flatter him and mitigate their risk of exorbitant tariffs, have probably told him he’s doing a great job. But it’s absurd to imagine that all the presidents and prime ministers of NATO countries have told him (as Trump has alleged more than once) that America was dead a year ago. To say such a thing wouldn’t just overtax their tolerance for self-abasing dishonesty, it would damage their post-Trump relations with the United States.

So why does Trump keep boasting that they said it? Because he’s a pathological narcissist. And because he thinks it will impress Americans.

If Trump really thinks rational Americans will be impressed by these transparent lies, he’s even stupider–and more demented–than previously thought.

Charen closed her essay by citing (and refuting) Trump’s insistence that he’s bringing prices down. Evidently, he expects Americans to believe his lie and ignore the contrary evidence they encounter daily. He seems to believe that Americans will believe him that they’re doing well, because (he says) Putin, Xi, and MBS have told him so.

The Bulwark, Lincoln Square and several other publications established by Never Trump former Republicans stir memories of the “before times,” when pundits, strategists and other assorted political junkies across the political spectrum argued about policy and what constituted good governance.

Given the ongoing takeover of legacy news sources like CBS by cronies benefitting financially from the antics of our demented would-be King, those Never Trumpers are providing a valuable service.

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Explaining MAGA

I have frequently cited research showing that racial resentment is the single most predictive element of a vote for Trump, and his administration has rewarded those voters with its efforts to elevate White “Christian” men and erase efforts at fairness and inclusion. They don’t even bother to hide their intentions anymore–J.D. Vance was recently quoted saying “You don’t have to apologize for being White anymore.”

Attributing Trump’s election to racism is fair, but insufficient. Despite Trump’s recent assertion that he “created” MAGA, America’s racism and misogyny are hardly new. The much harder question is “what sort of individual harbors these beliefs?

A recent, lengthy essay from The Rational League explored that question.

As the author noted, observers tend to dismiss bigotry as stupidity, malice, or moral collapse, but such explanations are intellectually lazy. “They flatter the observer while obscuring the phenomenon they claim to diagnose.” Such explanations also fail to explain the internal consistency of the MAGA movement, its ability to persist in the face of contradiction, the way it transforms norm violations into virtues, or why Its exposure to contrary evidence actually can harden belief rather than weaken it.

The essay does a deep dive into the psychological literature, and concludes that some people filter information through a different lens–one based upon “threat perception, authority preference, group identity, and moral reclassification.” In other words, they filter reality differently. The author says that MAGA folks’ worldview  didn’t arise from madness, “but from a system that works, psychologically, emotionally, and politically, for those who inhabit it.”

What is that worldview, and where did it come from?

Long before a person encounters slogans, parties, or leaders, they acquire something more durable: a way of relating to uncertainty, authority, and threat.

Longitudinal research tracking individuals from infancy into adulthood shows that political orientation is shaped not only by what parents say, but by how they raise their children, and by how those children respond to the world around them. In Developmental Antecedents of Political Ideology, Fraley, Griffin, Belsky, and Roisman followed participants from birth to age eighteen and found that parents who endorsed more authoritarian child-rearing attitudes when their children were just one month old were significantly more likely to have children who later identified as conservative. Parents who endorsed more egalitarian and autonomy-supportive attitudes predicted the opposite outcome.

The scholarship suggests that children raised by parents who emphasized obedience, rule-following, and deference to authority are more likely to adopt political beliefs that emphasize those same principles. Furthermore, individual temperaments compound the effect. Children with higher levels of fearfulness in early childhood have been found to be more likely to identify as conservative in later years.

It isn’t just parenting style; as twin studies have demonstrated, there are also shared genetic influences. (Party identity isn’t inherited,  but “threat sensitivity, need for order, and discomfort with ambiguity” are heritable traits that often find partisan and/or ideological expression.)

None of this implies inevitability. A child raised with strict norms does not automatically become authoritarian, just as a fearful temperament does not mandate political rigidity. What this research establishes is something subtler and more consequential: that some individuals enter adulthood with a heightened preference for order, stability, and authority as psychological goods. These preferences remain largely dormant until circumstances give them political meaning.

The scholarship shows that, in periods of social change–especially the growth of cultural pluralism– conservatives react with efforts to reduce uncertainty, restore order, and defend existing social structures. They have a preference for “certainty over ambiguity and security over openness.” As the author notes, “Order must be imposed, and dominance must be maintained.”

This is where collective narcissism comes in.

Collective narcissism is described as an emotional investment in an inflated image of one’s ingroup. Its function is psychological, not ideological, and It

transforms threat into insult. Disagreement becomes betrayal. Constraint becomes humiliation. Because the ingroup’s greatness is experienced as both exceptional and insufficiently recognized, any challenge, real or imagined, demands retaliation. The leader who promises restoration, recognition, and vengeance is no longer merely persuasive; they become necessary.

As the essay notes, the left is not immune to bias, groupthink, or moral error. MAGA, however, represents a particular configuration of psychological traits, “activated by threat, reinforced by grievance, and stabilized by identity, that is not mirrored on the left at comparable scale or intensity.”

The danger of the MAGA lens is not that it abandons reason, but that it applies reason in service of a closed moral system, one capable of justifying coercion as protection, exclusion as fairness, and domination as restoration once the conditions are met.

There is much more, and I strongly recommend reading the entire linked essay.

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