Category Archives: Random Blogging

Epistemic Breakdown

Epistemic breakdown is a fancy way of saying “destruction of a shared reality.” As a recent essay pointed out, that destruction is politically useful.

We’ve just seen an example in the administration’s propaganda about the murder of Renee Good. “Don’t believe your lying eyes”– believe the “revised” reality we offer instead. But that example is a small part of a sustained assault.

If–like so many Americans–you’ve found the administration’s attacks on science and education mystifying, the essay offers a frightening and detailed explanation.

If you can convince a large segment of the population that experts cannot be trusted, institutions are corrupt, objective truth doesn’t exist, and loyalty matters more than evidence, then power no longer depends on performance or results. It depends on identity and obedience.

Science, especially, has characteristics that the author notes are fatal to authoritarian politics: it produces falsifiable claims that can be tested, and if found to be wrong, require us to update our beliefs. Science is also institutionally distributed. No single leader controls it. Like most scholarship, it requires peer review and subsequent replication. And–importantly–research undermines what the essay calls “charismatic authority.” Scholars and data don’t demand loyalty.

Authoritarian movements cannot survive in an environment where people accept that some claims are simply false, expertise matters, and reality constrains power. So science isn’t debated, it’s delegitimized.

Anti-vaccine rhetoric is particularly effective because vaccines sit at the intersection of government authority, personal autonomy, fear of harm, complex science, and immediate bodily stakes. That makes them ideal for narrative manipulation.

Anti-vax rhetoric accomplishes several things simultaneously: it reframes public health as tyranny, converts inconvenience into persecution, turns expertise into elitism, casts personal feeling as equal to evidence, and creates an “us versus them” moral divide.

Once that framing is accepted, any future policy can be painted the same way: climate action, election integrity, court decisions, civil rights protections.

The essay makes a further point that is hard to believe, given the sheer incompetence and lunacy on display in this administration: the author claims that the lies are often “deliberately obvious.” The objective is a demonstration of loyalty; those who accept the blatant lies prove their loyalty. Those who reject or dispute them self-identify as outsiders, as people who cannot be trusted. As the author points out, this is a tactic used in cults and authoritarian regimes. “The lie becomes a bonding ritual, not a claim about reality.”

When propaganda and lies are understood in this way, it becomes clear why “fact-checking” doesn’t work.

The endless cycle of “Trump said X, but actually Y” doesn’t expose the strategy, it amplifies it. Every fact-check is free publicity. Every debunking is another news cycle. The lie has already done its work by the time anyone “corrects” it.

From a power perspective, this strategy delivers a base that cannot be peeled away by evidence, immunity from scandal or failure, a permanent grievance engine, justification for extraordinary measures, and a population conditioned to accept coercion “in defense of freedom.”

It also creates an enemy class: scientists, journalists, doctors, judges, educators. Once labeled as corrupt, they can be ignored, sidelined, or purged.

The essay provides a long list of the way the strategy has been–and is being–employed, and it will look very familiar to those of us who have been blindsided by assertions that are self-evidently bonkers: vaccines don’t work, elections have been rigged, public schools are indoctrinating our children, etc. etc.

Historians are just beginning to trace the way in which the Right has developed and pursued  this strategy over the past 50 years. (The essay includes a timeline, and it names names.) It didn’t start as a coherent plan, but it developed into one over time. As the timeline shows, the destruction of Americans’ shared reality wasn’t random or accidental–it was built systematically “by specific people making specific moves at specific times, each building on what came before.”

The author breaks the history down into segments: the blueprint, the think-tank infrastructure, the merging of religion and politics, the building of the political machine, and so on. You really need to click through and read the lengthy essay in its entirety–it explains what the author calls the “parallel reality structure” we now inhabit–built by a stolen Supreme Court and nurtured by constant norm destruction, media capture, and Project 2025.

When courts enable rather than restrain, legislatures normalize rather than confront, executives reward loyalty over law, media profits from distortion, and capital hedges instead of resists, elite-led correction becomes structurally improbable.

For U.S. democracy to survive, enough ordinary Americans need to make authoritarianism too costly.

I know it’s long, but read the whole thing.

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Cities

Wonder why Trump sends his SS troops–aka ICE–to cities? And why the people who live in those cities can be counted on to mount a resistance?

The nation’s cities are Blue, of course–studies show that every urban area over half a million people votes Democratic. There’s evidently something about density, about living near other people, that makes folks more likely to be “woke”– a term that actually denotes a degree of humanity and tolerance utterly lacking in the MAGA base. (There’s even data showing that people who live in more dense areas of America’s small towns tend to be more liberal than those in the more sparsely populated neighborhoods of those same towns.)

The American Prospect recently addressed the administration’s hatred of America’s cities. Harold Meyerson writes that

For leaders in search of uniform compliance, cities are inherently troublesome. They are, by their very nature, diverse: It’s cities to which both foreign and domestic immigrants flock, because it’s cities where there’s work. Worse yet, most successful cities foster some level of cross-group tolerance, or even, in the best cases, cross-group solidarity, as a necessary modus vivendi for keeping a city up and running. Partly in consequence, cities develop distinct cultures reflective of their diversity and their urbanity.

That’s why the current generation of our planet’s autocrats often lack support from their nations’ cities. Budapest has never voted for Viktor Orbán; Istanbul is a thorn in the side of Recep Erdoğan. A Muslim Labourite has been mayor of London since 2016, even as no major American city can be found that’s voted for Donald Trump in any of the past three presidential elections.

Of course, as Meyerson points out, Orbán hasn’t sent troops into Budapest, and Erdoğan hasn’t tried to subdue Istanbul. Our mad would-be king is threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act and to send the Army into Minneapolis to protect his SS troops while they seize people who, as Meyerson says, “look suspiciously brown.”

If there was any doubt that ICE is a recreation of the Gestapo, its recruitment materials –rife with retreads of Nazi slogans–should disabuse us of that doubt. The administration is clearly aiming to attract white nationalists who share a hatred for the diversity that characterizes the nation’s urban centers.

Meyerson says comparisons with the Gestapo and the Klan are incomplete– that a glance through history provides other apt comparisons: Trump as a 21st-century version of Attila or Genghis Khan,

heading a horde that is defined by an exterminationist loathing of cities and all that they stand for and promote. Their diversity, their toleration, their culture, their solidarity across racial and other lines—all are threats to the horde’s and its ruler’s autocratic monoculture.

That attitude goes a long way toward explaining the administration’s inhumane response to the murder of city dwellers, and its immediate, blatantly dishonest characterizations of these victims.

The pictures coming out of Minneapolis–the videos captured by cell phone cameras and photojournalists– are mind-blowing. The reactions of the legitimate, elected officials of the city and state have not only been entirely appropriate, they’ve echoed the reactions of those of us who never in a million years anticipated that we would live to see such things happen on the streets of an American city at the direction of an American president. Neither the Mayor nor the Governor has held back–both have “told it like it is.”

And “like it is” is shocking and heartbreaking.

For years, the extremist fringe on the political Right has lusted for a race war. Most rational Americans have gone about our businesses ignoring that fringe and its threats, dismissing the White Supremacists and Neo-Nazis as mentally ill and assuming that these deranged folks represented a small minority. Thankfully, they are a minority, but a majority of Americans failed to vote in 2024, and they were able to elect one of their own.

And he has assembled an administration composed of people who are just as profoundly sick and malevolent as he is.

In the absence of a functioning Congress and an honorable Supreme Court, it increasingly looks as if it will be up to those of us in the cities–the urban folks Trump hates– to power the resistance and reclaim the America that respected and obeyed the Constitution and the rule of law.

Minneapolis is leading the way.

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Then And Now

A good friend with whom I lunch regularly used to be a high school history teacher. She is tormented by what she sees as clear parallels between Nazi Germany in the 1930s and America under Trump, and for anyone familiar with that history, it’s hard to disagree with her.

I thought about our conversations when I read a recent guest essay in the New York Times.

The author began by sharing his recollection of rooting through a pile of items in a flea market in the early 1940s, and finding an old diary–the product of a German soldier from WWII. As he wrote, he might have missed it, but being Jewish, books adorned with eagles perched on swastikas tended to catch his eye.

The diary was in German, which he couldn’t read, but it was the black-and-white photographs of the soldier’s life that interested him: the diarist’s photo in his sharp new uniform, pictures with his fellow soldiers, others with what appeared to be his family at a festive dinner, and several of the soldier with a pretty young woman–perhaps his wife or girlfriend.

What was most notable was what I didn’t find: There were no photos of death camps, or mass graves, or starving prisoners. Instead, there was one of him with his parents in front of their house. Proud.

The absence of any visual representation of the horrors being visited on Germany’s Jews (and gays and gypsies..) reminded the author of his family’s characterization of Germans. All Germans. His grandparents’ families had been murdered in the Holocaust, and to them, all Germans were “hateful, fascist murderers — fools who could be led by a fearmonger to commit atrocities he claimed were necessary and good.”

His family often expressed thankfulness that “we were not like them.” Americans were different.

I recalled that certainty in recent days, reading about the murder of Renee Nicole Good. I read about how the Trump administration quickly labeled her a terrorist. About how federal officials blocked the investigation by the state of Minnesota. About how our leaders accused her of trying to ram an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agent when the videos of the incident seemed to clearly show otherwise. “Who are you going to believe,” asked Chico Marx, “me or your own eyes?” I suppose, in the eyes of this administration, that makes me a Marxist now.

None of this surprised me. After all, the shooting was just one day after the administration published a propaganda website saying the Jan. 6 insurrection was the fault of the Democrats and the Capitol Police.

As the author then writes, any belief that “Americans are different” will be rebutted by a visit to social media.

On several social media platforms, he encountered Americans who believed the Trump administration without question, who repeated the government accusations that Good was a “paid agitator” who got what she deserved, that the armed agent was a hero, “defending his nation from undesirables.” 

Past or present, it’s not the leaders who disappoint me. It’s the led…

But I miss those days.

I miss the comfort of believing Germans were different.

I miss believing that we Americans could never be led by a fearmonger to commit atrocities he claimed were necessary and good.

I miss believing we are not like them.

I could have written that essay–or something similar. I too was raised in a family horrified by the atrocities of the holocaust, and convinced that there must be something twisted and different in the German psyche that allowed ordinary Germans to ignore the camps, the mass graves and smells from the crematoria, that allowed them to agree with their government that eradicating millions of people was for the good of the nation, that people who were different–people who worshipped differently or loved differently– were no better than vermin and that their extermination wasn’t cause for concern. 

There is one important difference between today’s America and Germany in the 1930s, and I cling to it. A huge percentage of Americans have seen the videos of Good’s murder, and the millions who aren’t substituting the administration’s propaganda for the evidence of their own eyes are taking to the streets. And Minnesota’s Governor made a magnificent speech in which he pulled no punches, praising the resistance in that state.

The country is being tested. And as I keep assuring my friend, I do believe a majority of Americans will prove to be different from the “good Germans” who closed their eyes and went along.

I sure hope I’m right…..

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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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