Mikey Weinstein, of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, wrote an excellent open letter to the US Air Force Academy, pointing out that they’re reaping the consequences of allowing christian nationalists to pack the Air Force leadership.
Last night, I found myself obsessively reading about Hitler’s beer hall putsch. So many journalists are calling Trump’s coup attempt stuff like “the beer belly putsch” etc., that I figure the back-story is probably more interesting.
Hanna Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism has been widely quoted, lately. To say it’s interesting is an understatement, but I have long felt that she’s over-generalizing the commonalities between Stalinism and Hitlerism.
Lately I’ve been playing Pillars of Eternity (which is really good, BTW) and I noticed that the game has been tracking one of my favorite pieces of game-tech: Unity engine.
Nuclear weapons have now been banned.
One of the things I hate about myself is my ADHD-driven tendency to over-commit on projects; it’s simply impossible to do all the things that I plan to do, let alone want to do. Certain things in my life (like posting on the blog) are sometimes painful, because another part of me is going “Woof! Squirrel!” and wants to run around and bark up every tree in 100 acres of forest, instead. So, my TO DO list grows and grows and eventually I have to prune it by deciding that a lot of things just are not ever going to happen.
This year, there are Biden/Harris signs; it’s not all Trump, Trump, Trump.
I’m amazed that nobody seems to be pointing this out.
I make no attempt to conceal the fact that I am a moral nihilist. No, that does not mean I want the world to end in blood and fire – it just means that I am unconvinced by the arguments I’ve heard, so far, that it’s possible to establish a useful, shared, long-term, notion of “right” and “wrong” that is not just someone’s opinion. But my interest in the topic has led me to do a lot of reading because I think it would be nice – unfortunately, so far, I don’t buy it.
There’s a lot of talk going around about whether there’s going to be a civil war in the US. If you’re worried about that, let me adjust your fears, slightly. The situation is dangerous, and we should collectively respond by ruthlessly disempowering the republican party, then turning on the democrats and forcing them to split into progressives and centrists – and then controlling their agenda. That probably won’t happen, so let me just console you about the civil war.