If you have access to the NYT, do yourself a favor and read Dr. Parsons op-ed yesterday about how the Trump administration has instructed West Point to stop teaching courses that explore critical race theory, gender studies, and any ethical theory that explains why the military must always remain politically neutral. Professors must submit research proposals to West Point administrators for approval to guarantee that their articles conform to the Trump administration's ideological views. Dr. Parsons is a professor of philosophy at at West Point, where

Shout out to my good friend @Teri_Kanefield She has a brilliant mind and incredible intellectual curiousity. Her blog is a must read. She just wrote a superb summary of political neuroscientist Zmigrod's book "The Ideological Brain.." If you want to understand how even reasonably intelligent MAGATS think and why they fall victim to ideological blindness, you should read Teri's summary of this brilliant book. Here are a few quotes from her blog entry that captures some of Zmigrod's insights.

I want to share with my followers some insightful analysis of how and why we are failing to defend our democracy from Trump's onslaughts against all our civic institutions. Thomas Edsall wrote a very important NYT op-ed today where he asked several professors to explain Trumps' tactics to attack our institutions one by one and why most of them appear to be failing us. Public policy Professor Justin Gest described Trump's strategy: His "key method is to, one by one, eliminate as many independent institutions as possible that are free enough to

Note: Listing all the reasons why the majority of Americans [Magas and far too many blue voters] do not understand that we have already fallen into a fascist abyss: consider the primary building blocks and guardrails for any democracy: 1] the separation of powers doctrine, 2]the constitutional limits on executive power, 3] what executive orders are illegal because they require Congressional authorization like Trump's absurd tariff war and paying a foreign dictatorship millions to imprison American citizens and legal residents, 4] the meaning of the due

I am glad that I grew up in a working class family. My Dad was an atty that none of the rich Boston law firms would hire because he was Italian. For the first decade of his practice, he represented Italian immigrants who frequently could not pay him with $$. If his client was a butcher, we would eat Prime Rib or New York Strip steak for a week. If his client was a cook at an Italian restaurant, we would dine on lasagna or ravioli. My Dad was basically a legal aid lawyer before such entities were created for lower income clients. He always worried

My followers will notice that I might only post Red Sox messages for now. Honestly, I have never been deeply depressed in my life; simply not part of my usually sunny Italian nature. But, what Trump has done to a country I love in just 3 short months has been devastating to me. Then, to add insult to injury, he robbed my soon to be 40yr old son of a decent future by cutting fed grants of funding to state adult group homes. I had anticipated that possibility so I bought a large[for me, not for an affluent person] position in NVDA because I thought it

A dangerous and growing trend in our culture: the lack of reliance on and deference to relevant expertise. One obvious example is Paul Krugman: a brilliant economist who knows far more about the impact of tariffs wars on the world's economy than the dolts and sheep who "advise" Trump. In today's op-ed in the NYT, Krugman explains how Trump's absurdly high tariffs will generate a trade war that will devastate the world's economy as it did in the 1930's. Trump's claim that it will generate billions to the US is not only false, it's irrational. Tariffs

This site generates considerable cognitive dissonance for my beliefs about the future of our democracy. On the one hand, all the hateful MAGA replies to my posts reflect a shocking degree of anger, vitriol, and character assassination. All of them embody a complete absence of any rational analysis about how much Trumps' federal policies and executive orders will badly damage our national economy and undermine MAGAS' economic self-interest. Perhaps what terrifies me the most is that half of our country lacks the capacity to see what is transparently

Last night, a distant relative from the US visited us for dinner. He graduated HLS one yr after I did and went the corporate route that most HLS graduates choose for the lucre. I had not seen him for at least 20 yrs and was surprised by his unannounced arrival in our Mexican rural village that is not exactly a tourist location. Over dinner, I learned that he had been reading my posts here and was very disturbed by their anti-Trump tone. The objective of his visit was to explain why I was not seeing "the big picture"[his words] Despite the presence of

I am a big fan of Mark Twain's common sense and wisdom about human nature; character traits that are in short supply in today's polarized political culture. Thanks to one of my followers [@MLeeBaxter1], I was reminded of one of Twain's remarks that sadly apply all too well to our bi-polar culture. Twain dryly observed that: "It ain't
what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so." MAGA supporters of Trump, most especially the Christian nationalists' segment, have never understood and/or appreciated our

SAD NOTE FOR TODAY-Why aren't Americans appalled that Musk bought Trump's election so he could be Trump's puppeteer? Musk demands a govt shutdown if the debt ceiling is not lifted and Trump follows his marching orders. Why are our national media silent about how a private billionaire who can't even run for POTUS is now our DEFACTO President? Ignorance and Indifference explain why a majority of Americans don't care about the loss of our democracy. I keep waiting for younger Americans [18-30] to wake up and engage in massive peaceful civil

MY QUESTION FOR THE DAY When I was in my early 20's, I was ashamed of my country for sending so many young men to their death in an unjustifable war in Vietnam. Many of my generation started a massive resistance to the war. We marched on the Pentagon as a symbolic protest against LBJ and the military. I lost 2 friends who enlisted to fight. I respected their service and attended their funerals because the majority of us understood that they were loyal Americans who wanted to serve our country and did not realize that the war was unjustifiable.

NOTE ABOUT DRAMATIC CHANGE RE MY FOLLOWERS: As my old followers from 2014 know, I have been posting explanations for: 1]why our national media had failed to warn us of the dangers a Trump election posed for our democracy in 2016 and again in 2024. 2] I have also used my experience as one of the first national TV legal analysts for ABC News in the 90's to explain why TV News had morphed into an entertainment medium and 3] why most of the current crop of pundits were creating a false narrative to explain why the DOJ did not immediately indict

I just got off the phone with a life-long Brit friend who works for their intelligence service. The Brits and the Israelis both believe Trump is doing Putin's bidding as his absurd cabinet appointments are all hostile to the agencies they might be heading. My friend concluded our our conversation with a dire warning: Western European countries are now assuming that they can no longer rely on the US if any foreign intervention into their countries occur. In essence, he was saying NATO will be their only protector as Trump confirms a new isolationist

My Dad was a good man but an alcoholic for most of his life. He asked me to attend one meeting of the AA group for family members of alcoholics. I was a rebellious teenager who didn't want to go but Dad gave me no choice. I learned one very important lesson at that meeting that has stuck with me ever since. If you refuse to acknowledge an illness, you can't possibly change it. The reason I have been so critical of our national media reporters and columnists is the application of that principle to our current grave situation where our democracy is

THINGS I CAN NO LONGER TOLERATE PART 2 I am reading with horror how very astute and intelligent observers like Tom Nichols [@RadioFreeTom] are arguing that the precedent Biden has just established by pardoning his son will give Trump full license to abuse the same pardoning power I have already shown how the doctrine of selective prosecution as well as the vital concern that defendants convicted for the same crime with no prior record receive equal treatment of probation without any degree of imprisonment provide 2 independent legal justifications for

I was looking forward to staying up tonight to see if KH won Pennsylvania I have a good friend who lives in CENTER CITY. He took his only 3 week vacation from work to do canvassing all over the state for those 3 weeks ending yesterday. He told me that he is optimistic that KH will eke out a nail biting finish for one reason: many Republican women who have Maga partners told him that they have never voted for a Democrat in their lives but will "quietly" vote for KH to protect their daughters. When my friend asked them what they meant by voting

My post yesterday went viral but some of the reactions to it surprised me. Several posters asked me why I had not addressed the question of what caused this shift in our epistemology. The reason why I did not do so is quite simple. I try to stay in my lane of expertise:

https://twitter.com/arenella1/status/1832084977242288136

criminal law and the fields of moral philosophy and moral psychology that examine what capacities we need to become fully accountable moral agents as well as the factors that diminish or destroy the development of these capacities. In short, I did not want to speculate about what

One remarkable aspect of our current cultural situation is the shift in the epistemology used by a majority of Americans. These voters believe their values and beliefs offer the most reliable basis for accepting or rejecting the alleged facts reported by our media. I first noticed this shift when teaching the last generation of law students at UCLA. If the 'best and brightest' young adults use this epistemology when arguing about contested facts, we are in trouble. One example: Acceptance or rejection of the normative principle that

When we had 2 legitimate political parties that shared the necessity of defending our democracy and the rule of law, the media's both-sides attempt to balance conflicting policy positions was defensible because neither party engaged in 'alternative facts" or disinformation campaigns. However, starting with the Reagan era, the Republican Party shifted gears to a policy of redistributing wealth from the middle and working classes to the rich oligarchs. From that point on, our national media failed to inform the public about the consequences of this

I usually do not watch voting rallies but I was curious to see how Walz performed in Las Vegas. He is a natural! Comparing him to Vance is like night and day. I am one of those empaths[can you tell how proud I am about that attribute? I believe its source came from an emotionally abusive mother who I had to watch carefully as a child to see if she was exhibiting an emotional vibe/warning sign that she was about to dump on me] Vance comes off as one of the most inauthentic politicians I have ever watched. In contrast, Walz shines with a very