Thanks for the thoughtful reply from outside the US, I appreciate it.

This appears to be a link to the excellent piece you mention.

[irishtimes.com]
Fintan O’Toole: Donald Trump has destroyed the country he promised to make great again
The world has loved, hated and envied the US. Now, for the first time, we pity it
Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 06:00
Fintan O'Toole
The Irish Times

It seems to be subscriber only and so I couldn't read it. I did read it through a third party site where it was posted probably in violation of copyright. At first I posted a link here, but old habits die hard, and I am generally against violating copyright unless it's somehow critical to do so, so I'll just say if anyone really wants to read it, as far as I know, for now, the wording is out there.

[edited]
I had written that I think the US is going through intellectual and moral bankruptcy. But maybe this is too facile, not to mention inappropriately dismissive.

I don't know, I was just out of work and trying to write quickly. I'll try to return to some of this another day. I'll say the currency of political ideas that has been most commonly traded over the last few decades, from all sides of the aisle, has usually struck me as a currency whose value was suspect, and to that extent, as with any large bankruptcy, we've been building up to this point for a long time, and I don't think the situation will be easily remedied. I wonder if this is sort of how it felt to watch Germany imploding circa 1936-1939.

@kmaz I read it on a copy/paste post on FB.
It still beggars the question; "What does Trump have to do or say that will disillusion his base?" Everywhere else in the world, this crisis is seen as a referendum on their respective govts competency. (Can we have a clone of NZs PM please) Yet the US electorate seems utterly blinkered to his mishandling and politicizing the situation, at the cost of so many lives.
Note; We have not fared much better in the UK. The official death count so far is over 30,000. Boris talks a good game but results say otherwise.

@273kelvin

I think the base is fine with him, and I don't think that will ever change. One point to be made about this is that they were so enraged for so many decades by what they saw as the condescending assumptions of so many who opposed them, (or indeed they may simply not care what is right, and they may just like the power grab that a Trump presidency gives them?) that they take every word out of the mouth of Trump as speaking some emotional truth (regardless of its actual content) that can't be countered. Since we are on agnostic.com/humanist.com, there is a question to be explored of the extent to which this ugly anti-intellectual (and maybe amoral?) support stems in part from generations of US citizens drinking the anti-intellectual anti-human koolaid of theistic religions, and I think there is some of that, but it is not as clear-cut as that in my view. I think there are some secular folks out there who support not only Trump but the Republicans with whom he has worked, and there are some theists who have attempted excellent strong smart opposition to the Trump-led American decline.

[edit] I think the present situation is a measure (or "referendum" ) not only of the competency of the government, but of intellectual bankruptcy. Such bankruptcy assessment can't be applied to all individuals within a collective. However, The US is, after all, a "democracy" and while there is a sense that the voters and supporters of Mitch McConnell et. al. are the ones primarily or directly (in the near-term) responsible for this situation, there is also another (limited) sense in which one can criticize the electorate (or, as I like to call ourselves sometimes, ... .all of us on the hiring committee).

If Darwin Awards can sort of be awarded to collectives as well as to individuals, then the US is going for a Darwin award of historic proportions, and has arguably been laying the groundwork for that, particularly with bad philosophy and thinking pervading our society, for a very long time.

@kmaz Oh, you are right about some atheist Republicans. They do have their rather small group on here

@273kelvin

To me it's an open question how many of the folks here are US folks who generally support ... what should I call it... not so much Reagan Republicanism from decades ago, but modern/day full-blown insane Trump/Trumpism.

I can say that I'm wary of any assumption that the US folks here on this site would be dramatically different in this respect than US folks in general. I'd sort of like to think that, but I don't know. A lot of the folks who supported and voted for Trump in 2016 were might in some ways mirror some of the demographics here (not that I really know what the demographics here are. Fwiw, here are the demographics from the 2016 election:

[en.wikipedia.org]

In any case, a harsh lesson or fact-of-life here in the US over the last 3 years has been: No, it was not just 3 people in [fill in a given state here] who voted for this guy and are proud of it. Many of one's friends, family and neighbors, including otherwise capable people, were and still are good with him. Yes, some of the people who voted for Trump might say they were more voting against Hillary, just as I would say that several of my recent Presidential votes were more of an emergency vote, in my view, against the categorically hateful / awful candidate the Republicans put up. Still, I wouldn't be completely shocked if the numbers here reflected a percentage more for him than one might want to guess.

fwiw, a couple of points I use to keep this in perspective:

1. you're not here, and I don't know if you would have run across this story.. the famous basketball player Charles Barkley said about 15 years ago: "....I was a Republican until they lost their minds...."]

2. In my view, many US citizens, going back to the 90s, invested so much time listening to, and to some extent buying into, right-wing radio, print and TV, and so much of this included making a cottage industry of hating on Hillary Clinton and the Clintons in general (since the early 90s) that by the time she ran for President, and by the time there was arguably manipulation of the Democratic primaries to help her win the primary in 2016, millions of Americans (my wild guess) had in effect backed themselves intellectually into a corner which involved them absolutely not voting for her. If someone has told me, for 25 years, that they utterly hate or despise or dislike or distrust a given person, and will never vote for that person to be President, .... then, whether I think they are right or not to distrust that candidate.... when it comes time to cast the vote, I should not be surprised if that voter does everything in their power to vote against the person whom they have declared they oppose so strongly. Democrats who at the time wanted to argue some of this ... (that it was unreasonable to hate Hillary, etc.) were missing the point - the point here I think was that they were very much not listening to their fellow US citizens. I hate that so many of my fellow Americans invested 25 years in such pathetic shallow thinking and muddy waters, but they did, and that was the reality of it, and I dislike Democratic party decision-makers and thought-leaders for not reflecting in their key decisions a better understanding of this reality.

@kmaz My impression of the political demographics on here is that it is a-typical of the US in general. The lack of religious thinking automatically removes not only the alt-right Christians but also a broad spectrum of "God and country" flag waivers. The few Trumpers left are heavily outnumbered and as such can be popular as a pork pie at a bar-mitzvah. So I think many tend to leave.
The 2016 election was a huge foot-shooting exercise for the Demographic party. Whilst Trump's slogan was "MAGA" Hillarys was "It's my turn".

@273kelvin

It was interesting to me how the US had a last chance to get rid of its historically disastrous and awful elected head of state just before and as the key early pandemic decisions needed to be made - decisions that could so obviously (to many thinking people in that moment) have saved so many lives and so much capital and public health) - and yet we decided not to get rid of that historically awful head of state - and so we in the electorate in effect added to our responsibility for his actions and inactions. I'm not an expert in US history, but the President who has been coming to mind since it became apparent that the Republicans were not going to put up for election anything other than a nasty pretext at a freedom-protecting person .... is Andrew Johnson who I believe came after Lincoln and was impeached but not removed. It seems to me a long time ago that I heard that the remainder of his Presidency amounted to Congress largely ignoring him and going about the country's business, but at other times I've heard differently, so I'm not sure. I'm not trying to say the parallels here are that strong, I'm just saying my probably botched understanding of the Johnson Presidency has come to mind here and there.

While at times I have wondered to what extent the views and level of thinking on this site, on various issues, may speak well for atheist thinking (to the extent that some of the people on the site will cop to atheism), at other times I am disappointed (though not surprised).

Focusing for a moment on the issue of widespread US voter support for Trump and, by extension, for historically deficient pandemic response that has resulted in dozens of thousands of extra deaths so far, .... and which has arguably resulted in hundreds of billions of dollars, if not trillions of dollars, in extra damage to the economy so far, ... I'm wary of the extent to which I need to learn the lesson of the 2016 vote. There are more voters of that sort around than some of us sometimes want to admit to ourselves, and some of them are not theists. They may tend to quiet down in the face of what they see as unlistening tone-deaf progressive or liberal nonsense, but they are there. I'm going to guess that there are a few more here than I sometimes want to believe. It's not just a matter of Trump voters, but also of folks who may have had the sense to vote against him, but who still buy into a fair amount of the right-wing pseudo-liberty-loving agenda. I've said to folks many times over the last 20-30 years, and I'll repeat here for any atheist that might find it of use to think over (though I've had to block three of the folks here, so I"m not sure how many it would then apply to) - if you are voting for the Republicans and think that you are voting for such principles as:

• some way of looking at things that is opposed to welfare statism and supports a "stand-on-your-own-two-feet" approach to life,
• basic protection of property rights and individual liberties and rugged individualism and Constitutional Rights.
• basic protections of free markets

.... if you think than in voting for such Republicans as Mitch McConnell that generally you are supporting these things, then I'm sorry, but I have to be blunt: How stupid can you be? This is not to say that those principles are to be taken as assumed correct or perfect, and it is not to ignore that sometimes US voters casting votes for Republicans are actually intending to convey more of a disgust with the Democrats than a support of a Republican (just as I in voting Democrat am often to some degree attempting to convey somewhat the opposite). However, it is to say that I know that this is part of what is on the mind of some US voters going with Republicans, and I know that appealing to these principles and related ones is part of the pitch of many Republican politicians, and I just want to get across to some of my fellow US voters if they are of a mind to consider it, that for the most part many Republican elected officials at the federal and sometimes at the state level are several parsecs away from standing up with real consistency for what those voters think of as good principles.....

At the same time I would have to admit that part of it is also that whatever good I myself may have found in those principles at one time has in my view, in some ways, been subverted or evolved or mangled away in various intellectual bankruptcy proceedings at both parties and elsewhere.

Ok, but how does that relate to what I've written? I don't automatically reject anything from CNN, but could you provide a slightly better summary of what they say and how it relates?

I can't quite figure out if it's here or somewhere else.

[cnn.com]

@kmaz you were outlying aspects of the events. Just another source that addresses events.

@t1nick

Ok, thanks, I"ll keep my eye out for a link or maybe on one of my internet radio stations.

@kmaz

I looked for one and couldnt find. My not be released as a podcast yet. But should be in a week or two.

@t1nick

Ok, thx.

@Fred_Snerd not advocating for ads, instead I prefer honest and direct as you but coupled with brevity, like most members here we don't have too much time in our hands to read long winded rants that can be edited to be sharp and to the point.