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"How bad can it be, really, that Trump plans to purge governmental bloat, and now we have Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy in charge of DOGE: Department of Government Efficiency. Elon just tweeted that there are 428 government agencies and he thinks it can be reduced to 99."

I have no love for Trump or Musk. I cannot fathom what Musk might do to the economy to implement his "efficiency" plans. How bad can it be? Mr Shermer, you haven't convinced me! Nether Musk nor Trump are men of good character. (And neither is Joe Rogan.) I strongly doubt their moral fortitude. So I think it's safe to assume they probably would take the country South just to further their personal (emotional, financial, and just plain egotistical) gain. The problem with the new Republican party is that they do not represent much value that I can take stock in. I hope that the incoming administration doesn't F things up. But when they do, I will gleefully vote them out of office. Now it's like one of the ailments that only time will tell the outcome. We are on the Watch and Wait plan. Best wishes!

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When the FDA has a department of nutrition and the USDA has a department of nutrition, why do we need two? When the FDA says quinine is a dangerous drug, and the USDA says it is fine to use it in your gin and tonic, perhaps some rationalization is appropriate.

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Since we are stuck with a two-party system, which seems to encourage more extreme partisan positions and candidates, I enjoy looking for asymmetries.

First, in the 2024 election, plenty of people on both sides of the electorate voted against Trump or Harris as much as for them. But I bet that most people voting against Trump were voting against him as an individual, while people voting against Harris were voting against the Democratic Party agenda. Thus Democrats really do need to reflect and, IMO, reject many of the policies that most Americans don't want.

Second, and related to the first, right now the major parties differ in their desire for change. Some of this is institutional. Almost by definition, progressives want change while conservatives do not. But I am thinking of a more personal and intuitive level. Call it mind your own business or live and let live. I am old enough to remember when the Democrat brand supported personal autonomy while Republicans pushed official conformity. Now it is the opposite. Want to reduce animosity and even hatred of your ideology? Stop insisting that everyone else embrace it.

My third asymmetry also reflects evolving party character. I see Democrats now more by and for the elite classes, including wealthy people and industries, while Republicans have gone populist and bonded with working class people. And despite the rhetoric, Trump's voters were more diverse than Harris'.

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you are absolutely right. the vote against harris was a vote against the democratic party, the prevailing approach of the democrats reeks with the stink of noblesse oblige and hypocrisy. there is a lot of virtue signaling going on here. my liberal neighbors who support defunding the police, decriminalizing theft, and left initiated vandalism, and allowing discrimination against whites and asians (proposition 1 which passed in new york making such discrimination legal -- and which also made "gender affirming care" available to all children without consultation with the parent) mostly have second homes in affluent communities in the berkshires or the hamptons.

for the left, free speech is that of goebbels and stalin--as long as it agrees with the party line, people are free to say it.

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this was an interesting piece although there are several things with which i disagree or that were omitted. responses are in no particular order.

i did not vote for either candidate. the woke democrats arrogantly and undemocratically anointed a woman who was chosen to be vice president for unacceptable political reasons--she was female and she was "black," not because she was the best qualified for the job in the event of the president's death. appearing on joe rogan wasn't going to help. i like you loved hillbilly elegy. despite coming from an intact working class family i found much in it to identify with. and i was disappointed by his switch to the religious right although i think i get it and i believe his family values are good ones

as the result of all three obama administrations. our education system is in shambles, with america ranking far down in terms of educational achievement. atheists like you or anti-racist blacks like john mcwhorter find themselves paying for private education in catholic or other parochial schools to insure that their kids aren't indoctrinated in the scientifically ignorant identitarian ideology and learn the skills necessary to compete in the world. vocational training has disappeared as an option for young people for whom college is not a viable path.

the price of ordinary necessities like food and rent and clothing have risen 2 or 3-fold in less than 10 years. whether this was technically because of inflation or not doesn't matter. it is a reality that struggling working class families face every day.

as for crime, as an 80 year old woman in new york city i find myself afraid to ride the subway because of the presence of psychotic homeless people riding who may or may not focus on me as an object for attack. i see them defecating or lying naked and covered with sores in front of children. i have great sympathy for the working class people of all ethnicities who have to take the subway & or buses for hours each morning and evening to keep the city running, eating and sanitary. the people who live in the public housing projects and in high crime neighborhoods are not people who want the police defunded because they are the people who, with their children, are most likely to be victims of gang & drug related violence.

if the notion is that the continuing tragedy in gaza can be mitigated by negotiating with hamas, then it is wrong. hamas has been given the opportunity for a separate state 5 times since 1922 and 3 times since ww2. financed by iran with the sole intention of eradicating the jewish state, hamas, which does not give a damn about ordinary people living in the area named gaza, declared war on israel by it's barbaric & bloody invasion into israel. i am not jewish but i support the right of a sovereign nation to defend itself from attack (and no one talks about the attacks from hezbollah which were going on simultaneously with the idf's gaza campaign).

i am really appalled by the ugly wave of antisemitism that has reared its head in america & elsewhere (with the insane rationalization that israel is a colonizer in the middle east) and the reaction of the heads of both private and public universities to this disgraceful and frightening phenomenon.

although i support the skeptic society in every way possible for me, i do not believe in either free will or human reason. we are vicious primates, red in tooth claw.

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Agree with everything!

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thank you frau katze. i (like you?) am a cat lady. i have had a long and interesting life, an engaged and varied career. no kids by choice. i am both a divorcee and a widow. a knee jerk liberal in the '60s & '70s, i would say i am now a civic nationalist who finds herself estranged from the progressive/marxist left where many of my old friends remain. i appreciate your support.

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Oh my, you certainly are an American. I take issue with so many of your comments. But I won't waste my time. Israel though is an evil colonizer.

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Too many damned Americans around you? Perhaps you are in the wrong place.

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Yes, I am leaving

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They are evil colonizers but Palestinians are innately lazy and unmotivated which is why other Arabs hold disdain for them.

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Two interesting things about the election (among others) is that (a) the states that Harris won were the states where no ID was required for voting (required in every country in the world, but which Democrats claim is "voter suppression") and (b) 20 million voters have disappeared. Vanished. Gone. These are the 20 million votes with which Biden won in 2020 (the election that the MAGAs wrongfully claim was fraudulent). It is, of course, a coincidence.

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'coincidence' wink wink.... those 20 mil still available when people are not watching closely

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My mistake. When I first wrote this, I was given information that it was 20 million. It is now 8 million.

Still a lot.

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How bad can it be? Trump had a very effective first term (tax cuts for the wealthy, Project Warpspeed). Now that he has battle-tested loyalists nominated for Cabinet positions who aren't blue-haired, nose-ringed, tattooed, out-of-control screaming libtards, we should have normalcy everyone can appreciate. Many people are tired of the last 4 years. A conservative policy that will benefit everyone is finally on the table.

I look forward to the dissolution of the Department of Education, where the wealthy can choose their schools, get tax breaks on their private school education and the middle and low-income citizens can get the trickle-down effects. Being wealthy myself, this is a vastly overdue change to the status quo. For so long, our tax dollars have propped up the low achieving schools overrun with children of single-parent homes. Time for the end of this era.

Ukraine war has to stop. Given Trump's friendship with Putin and his keen negotiating skills, I am sure the Ukrainians will be thrilled to get whatever deal can be struck between the two. The US will be out of the war-bankrolling business.

Since Biden and Obama could not fix the issues with North Korea and China, Trump seems poised to do what they could not. He and the first administration had made so much progress, but did not get to finish the job. Again, Trump's keen intellect and business acumen will bring both countries into line. He did it before, he will do it again.

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy given full reign on reducing governmental bloat will be a boon for the economy. As Shermer said, Elon has already deduced that there are 329 governmental agencies that can be cut. The smartest and richest man in the world already has a deep understanding of all these agencies. Like Trump, we should all trust that they know the agencies to be cut. Think about all the money this country will save! Taxes will go down. Another strong effect will be businessmen like Musk and all of the Silicon Valley tech giants and venture capitalists that supported Trump will make so many good jobs for the young men that have been left behind in the wreckage of Obama and Biden.

The Democrats and leftists will be forced to comply with common sense initiatives that are merit-based and not the product of governmental overreach. Trump has modeled this throughout his career, especially in the first term. He has won the power to let Christian white people have a seat at the table again, not be pushed to the side like they were under Biden. Remember how easy things were between 2016 and 2020. Life will be even better now.

Trump has proven to be a great uniter and leader. Remember his calls for peaceful protest on January 6th? Thousands rallied to his cause. Now, everyone will be united under the tent of Americans, not just the GOP. Some will point to the harsh rhetoric of "the enemy within" and "poisoning the blood", but that was just campaign bluster. It is apparent how much Trump loves this country, and we will all benefit from his ability to bring people together.

As Shermer says, it is hilarious how many people who did not vote for Trump say they want to leave the country. His voters never threatened to do that when he lost, they just rolled up their sleeves and went to work. Trump will reassure everyone that they do not have to leave to have a good life, but we will keep laughing at them just to remind them!

Finally, and this is the best part, I absolutely cannot wait for the deportation TV show. Trump, again the master leader and businessman, has appointed Tom Homan and Stephen Miller to handle this difficult task. The left will try and paint this as a negative, but people have had enough of all these illegals in their communities. It is past time to round them up and take them away. Having a constant stream of video of pulling people from their homes will send a message to the rest of the world that you have to be legal to come here.

Well written, Mr. Shermer. I know I share your optimism of Mr. Trump in Making America Great Again!

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A bit optimistic, Michael, but reasonable. And I agree on all your points on how the Harris campaign fumbled the ball.

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I wish all my friends with TDS would read this!

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Michael, you continue to pretend that this is not normal politics. This is not normal politics, but a terrible aberration It’s not normal to reelect the president who made every possible effort he could to overthrow an election, committing numerous crimes in the process. we would not be in this situation had Merrick Garland acted much sooner than he did.

It’s not normal to elect a president about home, a dozen or more prior cabinet officials, including a number of generals and other accomplished people, describe him as a fascist, and a person who wouldn’t who should never be anywhere near the White House.

It is not normal to have a president planning to impose, widescale tariffs, which will amount to a regressive tax on the American public, and and which runs counter to the advice of the community of economists. It is not normal to plan to deport 10 million or so immigrants who form an important part of our labor force (and commit less crime than our US citizens).

It is not normal to make the kind of outrageous cabinet nominations already in process.

In your earlier piece you spoke about the guard rails that would prevent Trump from carrying out his more outlandish proposals. As you know, these are already falling or under attack.

I’ve learned I can count on you to be an apologist for Trump.

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I guess people who like the status quo (with more than a worrisome number of serious flaws and historical crimes) will consider any attempt to change things "not normal".

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The good thing about Trump is that under him, since he does not accept the silly climate change hysteria that has swept the country, the US is less likely to fund the insane proposals from crackpot scientists to do geoengineering research so there is less chance of them screwing up the weather more than is already happening. If Trump puts a hold on that form of hubris anything else he does is justified.

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Climate change is real and needs to be addressed -- denying that in 2024 is proof of one's scientific illiteracy. (If you're not a denialist, I retract my comment.)

I agree that geoengineering is an untested, risky, and unnecessary "solution" to a problem with multiple existing, real solutions: reducing fossil fuel use and increasing solar, wind, and geothermal energy.

The next industrial revolution awaits, with billions in potential profits: the transition to a low-carbon economy.

Fortunately, the US is the Saudi Arabia of renewables. Unfortunately, Trump and company don't understand that and are still beholden to fossil fuel interests, just like decades of Republicans before them.

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George did not say there is no climate change. He's talking about climate change hysteria.

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A free country and society is also critical. Assuming you are not proposing a climate crisis, and emergency government powers as the solution, then let the markets, and individual people, find solutions.

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Trump's got some great ideas, but you just can't rely on him to appoint the right people around him. So, 'wokeness' won't be the official DEI framework in the government anymore. But still don't expect merit-based picks; expect those based on loyalty, which is just as useless. I mean, ffs, the man nominated an accused sex trafficker to the AG position! And a chick with questionable ties to terrorist groups to be the *national intelligence* officer. Trump is going to appoint a bunch of the usual loons like he did last time. Although, arguably, RFK Sr, for all his faults, is a better choice than Rachel Levine. RFK doesn't pretend not to be a man.

Expect more of the usual chaos. At least this is the chaos we know, rather than the one we didn't. And Harris would have been another kind of Really Gawdawful President.

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Absolutely fabulous explanation of what we have just been through! Thank you so much for your clarity of thought and your cogent assessment of our political situation!

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The government is a bloated whale. There are more civilian employees in the Dept of Defence than soldiers. There were very few 4 star generals in with now there are 40. Get federal employees out of DC.

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Thank you for this insightful article. I find little here worth even a quibble. Just as with trans issues, though, a very significant majority of the US population does support at least some restrictions on abortion, whether the timing, or the method, or the reason. And with the states having control over the issue now, abortion no longer resonated to the same degree.

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Although I enjoyed this article, it contains some misinformation pertaining to inflation and crime during the Biden-Harris administration.

The September jobs report was released the first week of October, the last one before the election. The Bureau of Labor Statistics always does their best to suggest a spectacular rate of job creation while hiding any problems. And, if a Democrat is in the Whitehouse, the corporate press goes wild with celebration.

If you take a deep dive into the data, however, the picture doesn't look so rosey. First, nearly half of the new jobs were part-time jobs. Second, government employment made up a substantial number of the new hires. Third, there has been no net job creation among native-born workers, but rather an overall loss of half a million, even as 1.4 million foreign-born workers had been hired. After the government jobs are subtracted, the unemployment rate did not fall but rose from 4.2 percent to 4.5 percent.

A report by the Brownstone Institute documents that inflation has run twice the rate of government numbers. Instead of losing 20 percent of value over four years, the dollar has lost fully 40 percent of value. Once you merge those numbers with existing GDP data to come up with real output, it turns out that the U.S. economy has been in recession since the first quarter of 2022. The U.S. economy never really recovered from lockdowns and has been sinking for two years.

Shermer echoes pro-Biden-Harris media outlets who say that crime rates have declined over the past few years. However, most of the media lack an understanding of (or willfully ignore) the differing statistics being presented. There are two primary sources for crime data, both from the Department of Justice. The first is the FBI data, which records the number of crimes reported to law enforcement. The second is the National Crime Victimization Survey, which surveys approximately 240,000 individuals annually to gauge the overall level of reported and unreported crime.

It is well known that the majority of violent and property crimes go unreported to the police, as confirmed by the National Crime Victimization data. For example, around 42 percent of violent crimes are reported, while only 32 percent of property crimes are reported. Additionally, the rate of unreported crimes has been subject to significant fluctuations in recent years.

In large cities with populations exceeding one million, there has been a consistent decline in the arrest rate for violent crimes, which was around 44 percent prior to the COVID pandemic. This rate started dropping in 2020 and reached 20 percent by 2022, marking a decline of over 50 percent.

It is important to note that these statistics pertain to reported crimes only. When considering both reported and unreported crimes, the arrest rate for violent offenses drops to a mere 8 percent, while the corresponding rate for total property crimes stands at just 1 percent. Not everyone who is arrested is charged, let alone prosecuted and convicted. This has resulted in a significant disparity between the amount of crime actually being committed and the amount of crime being reported.

Historically, the FBI reported crime data and the National Crime Victimization data moved in tandem. However, over the past three years, they have shown a perfect negative correlation. To illustrate, in 2022, the most recent year for which we have National Crime Victimization data, the FBI reported a 2 percent decrease in violent crimes, while the National Crime Victimization data indicated a 42 percent increase in total violent crime.

There have been changes in reporting rules starting in 2021, and by 2022, around 92 percent of police departments were no longer providing any data to the FBI. This is a drastic increase from the 3 percent who didn't provide data in 2020. Some police departments still display crime data on their websites but don't give the data to the FBI. Ignorant or dishonest politicians and journalists have used the enormous reduction in reported FBI data to fool voters into thinking that crime has decreased under the Biden-Harris Administration, when crime has actually increased greatly.

Another issue that arises is the downgrading of crimes in various locations, such as New York City. Alvin Bragg, has downgraded 60 percent of violent felonies, predominantly aggravated assaults. This is primarily due to his refusal to prosecute individuals for firearms offenses. By failing to prosecute offenders for weapons offenses, Bragg has effectively downgraded a significant portion of these felonies from aggravated assaults to simple assaults. This manipulation of crime classifications influences the FBI’s crime data, as the FBI only includes aggravated assaults in its violent crime statistics, excluding simple assaults. Consequently, reclassifying these crimes leads to a reduction in the reported crime figures presented by the FBI.

However, the national crime victimization data captures these incidents, as it collects information from individuals who have experienced crimes. For instance, if a person reports being assaulted with a gun, the national crime victimization data records it as an aggravated assault, while the FBI’s data does not acknowledge it as such.

Recently the FBI very quietly published revised data for the period, which shows what most Americans already knew: violent crime HAS NOT decreased. The report, which still represents just a fraction of crime, was revised to show an increase in violent crime including an additional:

1,699 murders

7,780 rapes

33,459 robberies

37,091 aggravated assaults

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The FBI revised crime numbers up. And the BLS always revises job numbers, mostly down, and sometimes by tens of thousands.

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Re job data, the media was ecstatic over the Obama job numbers, too, totally ignoring the fact that it was September 2016 where the number of full-time jobs equaled that on the day Obama was elected in 2008. Perhaps because of the ACA discouraging people from hiring full time workers and trying to keep them less than 19 hours, people often had to have multiple part time jobs to survive. Each of those jobs counted as a job created for the department of Labor, but I would suggest that most people with 1 40 hour job are better off financially and have more security than those with 2 18 hour a week jobs, which don't have benefits.

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I hope Trump is not blocked from achieving his promises so that if dems can cheat their way into dominance again in four years we'll have built enough structural base so as to be able to withstand another assault on the country. What he has promised is very good..... the people have awakened to the evil dems have and will do.... so don't know if we will go backwards but don't know who will replace Trump when he leaves

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Michael, there may very well be areas that may not suffer lasting damage due to who wins presidential and Congressional elections. However with the set of issues on which you and I have worked together for now thirty years, the cluster of concerns that come under the rubric of the separation of church and state, the president and the Senate can, and have caused, lasting havoc.

Had Clinton won in 2016, and not Trump, which means if she had filled the three Supreme Court seats that Trump filled, we wouldn’t’ have suffered the horrendous losses that we endured these past few years. There is now a six to three religious right wing super-majority on the Court because Trump won the 2016 election and because Republicans had a majority in the Senate, when he nominated his three justices.

In 2022, alone, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and allowed a football coach in Bremerton, Washington, to conduct large scale Christian prayers with his players, the opposing team, and members of the audience, all during games at a public high school. The latter case was decided in favor of the coach, even though the record showed that an atheist player said that he felt compelled to participate in the prayers out of fear of losing playing time.

In issuing these rulings, the Court majority said that in looking at Constitutional rights cases, particularly the Establishment Clause–which the Court has recognized since 1947 as requiring government neutrality in matter of religion–they will now look to historical practices. This means they have abandoned the two pillars of even mainstream conservative constitutional analysis: looking to the text of the constitutional provision in question and looking to the intent of the Framers.

To rely on historical practices is to allow society’s past misinterpretations of the Constitution to prevail over what it says and what it was intended to say. Ten years after the First Amendment was ratified, the government was still prosecuting people under the Sedition Act, for essentially criticizing President John Adams. Throughout the 19th Century and into the 20th, in many jurisdictions, atheists were not permitted to testify in court. These are examples of clearly unconstitutional government practices. Yet, since they are part of our nation’s historical practices, would the Court today allow them to trump (pun intended) the text of constitutional provisions and the original intent of the Framers?

Also, let’s play Justice Alito’s game and throw it back at him. In his majority opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, he wrote that abortion rights were not part of our nation’s longstanding historical practices. Actually, since the rights provided by Roe were at the time 49.5 years old, I think we can argue that this was long enough for the constitutional right to abortion to be deemed part of our nation’s legally protected landscape.

There is also a danger that there will be a sufficient number of religious right wing judges and justices at all levels of the federal judiciary, so that state and local public school boards will finally be able to teach creationism and intelligent design. We could also see, for the first time in more than 60 years, the reintroduction of official public school prayers.

Michael, in the spring of 1995, you had me speak to a gathering of the Skeptic Society on the threat of the religious right and a possible takeover of the Supreme Court by justices sympathetic to their position. Last year, in August of 2023, you and I did a two hour podcast on how the separation of church and state has been eroded by the current religious right super-majority, consisting of Chief Justice Roberts along with associate justices, Alito, Barrett, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Thomas.

For this discussion, let’s focus on avoiding government imposed favoritism for religion, over secular beliefs and values. In this regard, Trump’s election in 2016–and again just last week–is a horrendous event, along with a Republican controlled Senate to confirm his religious oppressive judges and justices.

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Let me ask: do you think only people with specific religious beliefs might think that a fetus is somehow akin to personhood, and deserving of rights?

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This is a good question. I believe that overwhelmingly people who would ban abortion prior to viability are motivated by religious beliefs. This is why Roe v Wade got it right. It did not sweep with a broad brush but was a very nuanced decision, that allowed states to recognize greater fetal rights passed viability.

Certainly those who believe that a fertilized egg is akin to personhood, come to this from a religious point of view. The view that personhood rights attach to the fertilized egg upon implantation on the uterine wall is also a religious one. The view that heartbeat starts at six weeks is also based on religion, because what they are lamenting is electrical impulses in a stem that will later develop into a heart.

However, the viability standard is still viable, if you'll pardon the pun. Some say that the concept of viability is shaky for pro choice advocates, because the fetus can survive outside the womb earlier and earlier. However, the fact that science can physically relocate a fetus outside the womb into some kind of artificial incubation system, does not accelerate the intrinsic development of the fetus. What if the a relocation can occur at 10 weeks? Does that mean that we have to now say viability occurs as early as ten weeks?

For those who want to focus exclusively on gestational development, to the exclusion of the desires of the woman, the ability to relocate a fetus earlier and earlier does not speed up biological fetal development. So, you will virtually always hear, now there may be a few exceptions, objections to pre viability abortions coming from religious objectors.

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Thanks for your thoughtful reply.

I do agree that many who oppose all abortions are motivated by religious perspectives of person-hood and rights. Of course many apply this kind of thinking to other issues, like capital punishment.

But I want to propose that the all-or-nothing personhood crowds (intentionally?) misunderstand biology, and perhaps ethics. Is it possible to consider an intermediate state of life, not fully human, but not an inanimate or a least meaningful life form?

Think of pets and other animals. Most Americans do not consider pets as people (except in some weird personal emotional space). But we also consider them as living things with more significance than a broccoli plant. In fact, we have federal and local law and codes that reflect this, from the Animal Welfare act of 1966 to countless local ordinances intended to provide protection, especially for appealing animals like dogs and cats. To perhaps stretch a point a bit, these laws--and social consensus--make it illegal and immoral to dispose of unwanted pets through inhumane methods.

Could this apply to a human fetus? At some early stage of gestation, not a "person", but also not "nothing"? And what difference would this make?

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