Preface. Before the election, it was widely known that Trump was a gangster who bragged about grabbing women’s asses, lied over 30,000 times during his term, went bankrupt 4 times, and much more. So how could people have voted for him? Here’s a concise summary from Psychology Today.
Preface. This is a book review of “Pandemic Politics” about the myriad ways Trump mishandled the covid-19 pandemic. With the 2024 election coming up, it is a good time to remember how spectacularly Trump failed in managing covid-19.
In 2016 Trump said “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?” He was far too modest, he killed hundreds of thousands of Americans and lost few supporters.
Preface (long). Over time the planks grew more and more religious, stopped mentioning voting rights in 1980 as well as a war on regulations, stopped supporting the equal rights for women, could care less about abortion to being against it to gain more votes.
A few from the 2024 platform: Drill baby drill, complete the border wall, carry out the largest deportation operation in American history, use existing Federal Law to keep foreign Christian-hating Communists, Marxists, and Socialists out of America, defend the right to mine Bitcoin, support AI Development rooted in Free Speech and Human Flourishing
Preface. A book review of: Garcia, H. 2019. Sex, Power, and Partisanship. How evolutionary science makes sense of our political divide.
Although Chris Mooney’s book “The Republican Brain” was brilliant, it didn’t address that politics must surely go back to the origin of modern humans 300,000 years ago.
Garcia’s book addresses this, looking at politics from an evolutionary point of view. One finding I thought quite interesting was why women tend to be more liberal and men more conservative as can be seen in the 2024 U.S. election, men favor right-wing extremist Trump 25 points more than women in North Carolina, 19 points more in Michigan, 20 points more in Wisconsin, and 12 points more in Georgia & Pennsylvania.
“Evolutionary psychology is a field that rests on the understanding that we humans have spent 99% of our history in small bands of hunter-gatherers, living in environments very different from those in which we currently reside. Survival in those environments was harsh, with perpetual threats from predators, starvation, disease, and violence from outside tribes. These are the environments in which our political predispositions evolved.”
Preface. This is a book review of Belew’s “Bring the war home: The white power movement and paramilitary America”.
In hard times in the future, racist white republican groups, many who were or are in the military, could make regions of the country deadly for minorities, liberals, non-Christian religious groups ad so on, forming small armies going home to home to take food, cattle, money, guns, and anything else of value.
Belew documents how they have far more guns and other weapons than you can possibly imagine from bank robberies, dozens of illegal and often violent crimes, and selling drugs. Above all, stockpiles of weaponry that military men have stolen from where they’re stationed:
Preface. This is a book review with excerpts from the first half of “How Democracies Die” by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. A few main points:
We tend to think of democracies dying at the hands of men with guns. But democracies may die at the hands of elected leaders—presidents or prime ministers who subvert the very process that brought them to power. Some of these leaders dismantle democracy quickly, as Hitler did in the wake of the 1933 Reichstag fire in Germany. Or erode slowly, in barely visible steps. Newspapers still publish but are bought off or bullied into self-censorship. Citizens continue to criticize the government but often find themselves facing tax or other legal troubles. This sows public confusion. People do not immediately realize what is happening. Many continue to believe they are living under a democracy.
Preface.
This is a book review of “Conservatives without Conscience” by John Dean.
It is the best book I’ve read in explaining the history of conservatism and leaders like Newt Gingrich on the increasing authoritarianism of Republicans, It also explains why authoritarian Republicans, who tend to have been selected and voted in by evangelicals, have no morals and act against the nation’s best interests. And why they don’t criticize Trump’s racist, sexist, war mongering tweets.
Preface. One of the many items I found of interest in this book “The Power Worshippers” was that it wasn’t until 1979, six years after Roe v Wade, that conservative activists seized on abortion not for moral reasons, but as a way to deny President Jimmy Carter because he was threatening to tax religious segregated (racist) schools.
Preface. This is a book review that has key excerpts of “Foxocracy”, by Tobin Smith, who worked at Fox for 14 years and was friends with Roger Ailes as well as the staff that decided what the propaganda of the day would be. He learned all about the psychology behind the show, including using techniques of Nazi propaganda.
What’s most alarming is that millions of families have been torn apart when members have gone down the Foxhole. It is addictive, because like World Wrestling Entertainment, the right-wing newscasters win every time against purposefully chosen much weaker liberal punching-bags. It’s a good feeling for the majority of fox viewers, many of them among the 54% of America’s working poor who are barely getting by.
The Trump WWE fans don’t care if the game is rigged, they know WWE is rigged, but are addicted to the fuzzy warm feelings they get when their team wins. So they don’t mind being fooled by Fox. Top that off with a large percentage of Fox viewers being evangelists who believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible. Who could possibly be easier to fool? They don’t want facts. They don’t care about facts, they are cult members who will likely never snap out of it because they don’t want to.
Preface. This is a book review of Joe Bageant’s 2008 Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America’s Class War. Joe Bageant grew up in poor, conservative Winchester Virginia, which is like tens of thousands of other small towns in America. He is one of the few who escaped and got a college education. When he retired there in 1999, he knew hundreds of people, and gives readers a visceral, gut-level understanding of what life is like in Republican bible-belt territory. He paints vivid portraits of the locals he knows and cares about, the feudal economics that keep them poor, how Christian fundamentalism is woven into their lives, and why they vote against their own interests. And he is quite funny.
