It's not everything, but it's one thing.

 

Happy to be out Saturday with a few million of my closest friends. Thanks to everyone who joined in. See you next time!

Save America Rally

When the Nazis came for the communists, I kept quiet; 

I wasn't a communist.

When they came for the trade unionists, I kept quiet;
I wasn't a trade unionist.

When they locked up the social democrats, I kept quiet;
I wasn't a social democrat.

When they locked up the Jews, I kept quiet;
I wasn't a Jew.

When they came for me, there was no one left to protest

—Martin Niemöller


Marc Elias, lawyer and voting rights expert, Democracy Docket founder, referenced Niemöller's poem earlier this month and said something that I've often thought about and one thing I don't remember ever thinking about before. Elias reminded his viewers of what is often thought of as the central message of the poem, that "It is important that you stand up not just when it is threatening you..."

Then he talked to and about people who have ignored the present crisis, have pretended it's got nothing to do with them, who have been telling themselves that everybody does this shit and "It's just politics," people for whom opposing the Trump regime has been too onerous or pointless or scary, and Elias asks, "Are we just too early in the poem?"

If you haven't been in the fight because you think it's about someone else and it's their fight, please take a look around and see how deep into the poem we are already, and think about what the end of it looks like. 

It's already too late to stop some troops from invading some of our cities, to stop some thousands of people from being kidnapped and disappeared into gulags here and abroad, and too late to prevent some hundreds of families from being devastated.

It's already too late to protect some hundreds of students from being damaged, detained, and/or deported because of their political views.

It's already too late to keep some tens of thousands of public employees from losing their jobs, too late for some kids who have already died because food and medicine was halted or withheld, too late to dodge state censorship, too late to avoid tariff inflation, too late to keep the Justice Department from becoming Trump's private vigilante enforcer. 

But it's not too late for the rest, the people who haven't yet been fired or kidnapped or silenced or killed. It's not too late for the people who are about to be thrown out or priced out of their health insurance and the healthcare it pays for. It's not too late to push back, to oppose this regime and the destruction of our democracy.

If you haven't been in the fight up until now, maybe because it's a lot of work and you think it hasn't touched you yet, it will. Look closer and I think you'll see it already has. 

If you haven't been in the fight because you don't know what to do, there are lots of lists out there if you look. Here's some of the things we've been doing:

• Call the electeds whose job it is to fight for us. You might say this is pretty old-fashioned, but these are old fashioned people with thinking stuck in 1980. It just might work with them.
• We can stop giving money to politicians who won't fight and give it to those who will.

We can stop supporting 

• Companies who are in on it, who give to inauguration committees and buy up meme coins. 
• Companies that print lies because the truth is too dangerous and the lies are so profitable. 
• Companies that smile and say "Thank you, Sir. May I have another?" just so they can hold on to their little piece of what they used to have and have betrayed so completely.
• Companies who accept contracts to build concentration camps, and who buy slaves from them to come pick their strawberries.

• We can stand outside federal buildings and ICE motels and detention facilities and shout.
• We can shout and whistle and video the goons when they show up.

There are lots of people writing good stuff about how to resist and, ultimately, build an opposition.

And you know what else we can do? We can MARCH! 

Trump seems poised to invoke the insurrection act over a rebellion that does not exist. It is fabricated, a fever dream of the Borg collective that includes Noem, Miller, Homan, Bondi and of course, Trump. Maybe Trump thinks it's a rebellion against the United States of Trump. Nevertheless, he thinks he's the king, the country, the world, and he thinks he can do whatever he wants to protect himself from those who disagree and oppose him.

That, of course, means more military troops patrolling more U.S. cities, making arrests and canceling the First Amendment. That won't mean we will lose the ability to protest. It means we will have lost the right to. But we haven't lost it yet. Even though the Trump regime is trying to take it away, and some of us are content to give it away, it's not gone. Not yet. 

So come on out. What are you waiting for? If you hate everything that's going on right now, come out. If you have one pet peeve, one thing about the way the Government is behaving that really grinds your gears, come out. If you have heard that we're all antifa or Hamas, BLM terrorists, Marxists, whatever, and you don't want to take Mike Johnson's word or Stephen Miller's word for it, come out and see for yourself. 

If all you are hearing is that this is a "Hate America Rally," a dangerous free-for-all full of dangerous people, first of all change the channel. 

First, don't be scared. If you can't do that, at least remember that they are ten times more scared than you are. You can tell from the overheated screeching and name-calling. They have staked everything on this authoritarian takeover. They know they are wrong and we are right. They know what their lives will be like if they lose. Ask yourself, "Why are these guys, Mike Johnson and the rest, pro-King?"  

Imagine what Thomas Paine and his buddies might have thought in this moment. Imagine what they would have done. Never mind, we don't have to imagine. "No Kings" is about the most American idea there is. 

Wherever you are in the country, there is arally within driving distance. (Click here for a map and more information.) Now is the time to stand up and stand against the king and for the country we want to be.

If you've heard about Stalin, or Mussolini, or Hitler and wondered what you would have done at the time, you're doing it now. If you're in downtown L.A., I'll see you there. You know what to do.

***

And don't forget: As of this writing we can still vote. In California, Prop 50 allows the legislature to temporarily redraw congressional districts in response to Republican gerrymandering. It levels the playing field for the time being. Voting now makes voting later meaningful--even possible--in 2026 and in 2028. Please vote. Act now, before it's too late.

Because, as the saying goes, you can't vote out a dictator. 

One good thing.

In my last post, which was a while ago, I wrote: : "There is a real, if messy, pro-democracy movement in the United States. The official leadership of the Democratic Party just isn't part of it. We need new management."

Some things have changed since then, and some things haven't. Democratic leadership did rise to this particular occasion by (so far) refusing to strike a shitty, illusory deal, and instead allowing  Republicans to shut down the Government and at least symbolically "defund" the murder mayhem machine. True, the regime is stealing funding approved by Congress for other purposes and redirecting it to their Secret Police and other favored horrors, but that's them breaking the law. As I've written before, there is value in forcing them to break the law in order to do the things they want to do.

Also, I still think the "health care health care health care" strategy is limited and could, under a more strategic regime, box the Dems into providing votes for a phantom deal. However, it is working right now and the Government is "unfunded" as we speak. It's not a perfect plan, but anything that makes dictatorship more difficult for them is worth doing. Sand in the gears, resist at all levels, make it hurt. And we know it's causing Mike Johnson and Republicans at least some pain because the Republican shutdown has got them pretending to care about someone else's pain, in this case the people they are not paying and the people they are throwing out of their jobs altogether.

So let's put this to rest right now: Every single one of the firings we are seeing was written on Project 2025 stone tablets well before Trump2 stumbled into the now-gold-plated office. 

Democrats should reset their talking points to include: 

1. Republicans run the entire Government. If Government isn't running, it's the Republicans not running it. 

2. Republicans blaming Dems for the firings of workers or shuttering of agencies or impending plane crashes is fucking ridiculous. The destruction they are visiting on the country--including the illegal firings--was inevitable once Trump was re-elected.

Republicans and so-called Conservatives have been working on and planning to and salivating over gutting the federal government for years. Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 was in the works in 2022, and its little brother, Trump's Agenda 47, oozed out of the cesspit the next year (Go back and take a look if you have the stomach for it; yes, he did in fact tell us exactly what he planned to do. Anyone pretending they "didn't vote for this" is either lying, delusional, or too stupid to live free. And anyone pretending that the pretenders aren't pretending should not be listened to). Grover Norquist joined Ronald Reagan's "Government is the problem" team in the 1980's. Point is, this is a decades-long project and Dems got nothing to do with it.

There is literally NOTHING any of us can NOT do that will keep them from doing what they want to do, intend to do, have already planned to do anyway. They will never stop. We will have to DO THINGS to stop them. 

And any Democrats wobbling over ridiculous Republican accusations (every accusation is a confession) or soggy "Won't Democrats pay a price?" questions from NewsBots or pointing fingers at other Dems for being too much or not enough, should be fired into the sun and replaced with humans who understand the war we're fighting and the battlefield on which we're fighting it.

So we have done this. We have called and written our leaders and they have, so far, stood strong in this one battle. We'll see about tomorrow.

Throw the bums out.

There is a real, if messy, pro-democracy movement in the United States. The official leadership of the Democratic Party just isn't part of it. We need new management.

I've been working on this for awhile. Then there was this over the weekend:

SCHUMER: I hope and pray that that Trump will sit down with us and negotiate BASH: And if he doesn't, I'm just confirming that you'll vote no. Is that correct? SCHUMER: We are hoping that he will negotiate with us BASH: And if he doesn't? SCHUMER: We must get a better bill than what they have

[image or embed]

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) September 21, 2025 at 6:13 AM

Are you kidding me? For the love of everything we once thought was holy, get rid of this fucking bum--and all the other bums, too.

For years, we in the "progressive wing" of the Democratic Party, aka "Democrats," have been disparaged by Establishment Dems, aka "we got ours." We've been taken for granted, insulted, and publicly ridiculed by Rahm Emanuelites who figured we'd have no choice but to shut up and support "the lesser of two evils." I guess they forgot that staying home is a choice, too (see 2016 and 2024).

Anyway, I fervently hope that in the coming brawl over leadership and the direction of the Party... Pause. I hate that phrase. It is such a weasel way to say you kinda believe in something without holding yourself accountable for ever making it happen or even really trying to. "We're the Party of equal justice" is a slogan. It is not the same thing as saying "We are going to pass police reform and if we don't pass it, we'll bring it up again and again until we do." And it is nothing like actually doing it. That's what "the direction of the Party" should mean, but it's not what they mean.

So, no more "direction of the Party." Maybe "purpose of the Party." Or maybe it's better to focus on "purpose of the office holder," because that's really what the fight is about. Anyway, I hope that in the coming brawl between the "Simmer down; it'll all work out" Establishment Dems and the "tooth and nail" Dems over leadership in the Party, and I pray to Vince Lombardi there is one, we finally get the leaders we deserve and  the country desperately needs: leaders who recognize the moment, understand the peril, and are prepared to fight for our survival. 

As many have said, the divide in the Democratic Party is less about specific principles and more about the stomach to fight for them. In this breach there is an opportunity for new and more ferocious ideas not just about tactics but objectives. What is the purpose of our institutional leaders? Are they functionaries obsessed with scratching out another term? Or are they in office to serve us, their constituents, and prepared to do things--even really hard, risky, important things-- for us? I'd argue that's the essential question. All other questions--about policy and tactics--flow from it.

Dems and their consultants want to argue over whether to focus on inflation or immigration or Ukraine or Elon Fucking Musk for fuck's sake. There are so many outrages that many Dems see a juicy opportunity to choose their preferred violation and complain that other Dems are focusing on the wrong one. That's a sucker's game. 

All of the outrages are one thing. This is not a zero-sum engagement. Everybody can pick their battles, but it's the same war. With Trump, each single act is just a dot. Step back and it's one picture and that picture is dictatorship. You either have the guts to fight everywhere all at once, or you don't.

As Bryan Tyler Cohen put it, "We are sick and tired of being the party of strongly-worded letters. We are sick and tired of putting up with half-assed fights that ultimately end in capitulation because of norms or the parliamentarian or the filibuster." We can't afford this anymore. 

And there's this, from Mehdi Hasan, responding to Establishment Dems who whine that "Just because they don't play by the rules doesn't mean we shouldn't." Hasan's answer? "No, that's exactly what it means."

Also from Hasan: "You can't play this whole moral high ground game [where] Well, you know, they're going to do this stuff but we're going to stay pure. Doesn't work like that. You do that and you lose. And it's worse than just losing; you do that and you abandon your constituents who need you."

And in the process, I would argue, you repudiate the very values you are claiming to uphold by failing to fight to defend them.

You never see that shit stopping Republicans.

It's ludicrous to think that, in the face of dictatorship, decorum and bipartisanship have any value except as shields for the spineless. We're protesting in the streets. We're boycotting. We need leaders who will match our desperation and use every tool available to stop the march of tyranny. We need leaders who say, "We're doing it. Stop us if you can." Time to use this power for good.

The present vintage of Democratic leaders, Establishment Dems, are not prepared to engage in the necessary form of combat.

To call them feckless and incompetent is to let them off the hook with a punchline or a shrug. They don't just shrink from fights, they hide from them. Sometimes they actively undermine them. They don't see this as a fight for the nation but as a turf battle over power and consulting fees. It is about self-preservation, not service. 

As Nicolle Wallace put it, "How do you get the leaders to respond to the members who are responding to the public?" And, Democratic "leaders seem to be marching to their own drum." 

Pressure. Jeffries doesn't match AOC and Schumer doesn't appear to live on the same planet as Chris Murphy and Chris Van Hollen and Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. Get rid of the bums at the top. We only survive if the collaborators are replaced. 

In the meantime, they will only do even part of the part-right thing if the pressure from constituents exceeds the pressure from donors and future employers and their lobbyists. Now is the time for pressure. The Government has become a murder machine. Shut it down. Defund the Government.

Make Establishment Dems have to make the choice for a change. Let them have to compromise and vote for the lesser of two evils. Let them have to figure out whether they can match the fire and fierceness of their constituents, or step aside and go hide under the bed. Let the heroes take over.

It's past time. It could be the last time we have the chance, at least in my lifetime. 

Defund the Government.

I rarely post anymore. It's depressing shout-writing the same things over and over again. And I've only been doing it for a couple of years. My stomach aches and my heart breaks for writers like Sarah Kendzior, Driftglass, Elie Mystal, and so many others who have been telling the truth to a deaf world for decades.

So,  because all the years are running together and it's (almost?) too late, and because I can't face the prospect of coming up with a new way to say we're dying, and because I'm too craven to admit it, I'm re-posting this from 2024 which includes a warning from A.R. Moxon (emphasis mine):

Either they get their way, and society is no longer accessible to most of us, or they don't, and everyone including them gets to access society. Therefore, I think they shouldn't get their way or be treated as if they should. These are people who intend to destroy whatever they need to in order to rule over our lives to secure their own personal enrichment and comfort, and are so confident in their success that they announce their intent. They do not care about you, and they certainly do not care about your good faith efforts beyond the extent to which they make it easier for them to seize control. They will never give you credit for working to find their rationales reasonable. They will never return the benefit of the doubt you extend. Our mission is not finding ways to work with them. Our mission is finding ways to sabotage their efforts and to keep their targets as safe from them as we can.

Almost. Too. Late. Of course it is too late for thousands of people fired for preposterous reasons or no reason at all, and it is too late for perhaps thousands ripped from their homes and families and sent to secret prisons here and abroad, and it is too late for the kids who have died because their food and medicine was withdrawn. It is too late for many, many people.

But it is not to late for lots of others who are not yet imprisoned, or prosecuted for speech, or thrown off Medicaid or had their Medicare reduced or their Social Security "impounded." It's not too late for the communities whose hospitals have not yet closed. It's not too late for those about to lose their jobs because of tariffs or for those who will be forced to feed their kids or pay the rent because of inflation.

And even though it's too late for more than 65,000 Palestinians in Gaza, and pressuring Israel to stop the destruction of Gaza and the ongoing assault on the West Bank will no doubt require regime change in the U.S., it's not too late to stop further funding of genocide there.

Defund the government. The pain we feel will be real, not like the synthetic discomfort of those who refuse to act on our behalf as they protect their privilege and serve their biggest donors. We can be sure that the regime will divert resources, preserving favored programs and policies at our expense. They will punish us for as long as they can, as long as they can afford to. But it cannot last forever, unlike the punishment and shame that accompanies capitulation.

The future looks bleak but it isn't yet written. We can still do one thing if we can get the witless, gutless Democrats in what used to be called "Congress" to do it: We can stop the money. By which I mean, they can stop the money. If only. 

We are, all of us, now divided not left from right or conservative from progressive, but those who will act to save the country from those who, for whatever reason, will not. 

"Until we do the good things the Republicans fascists want to stop and stop the bad things Republicans fascists want to do, the existence of the Democratic Party United States is purely theoretical. If we don't do them soon now, that existence will be merely allegorical." 

Or "historical," and we all know what they are doing to history. 

Fight or flight? Where you gonna go?

Reposted, because we're still in the shit and we're running out of time and I can't think of another way to say "We're dying."

Sunday, May 19, 2024

Time flies. This is from a couple of years ago. A lot has changed, but most of the important stuff hasn't. Alas.

The way the political world in the United States is now constituted, power is a zero sum game. There is no compromise. One side will act and exist, the other will fail to act and disappear. We must act or we don't exist. 

Until we do the good things the Republicans want to stop, and until we stop the bad things Republicans want to do, the existence of the Democratic Party is purely theoretical. If we don't do it now, the party and the republic will be merely historical.

Reposting this from June of 2022. Inspired by A.R. Moxon

A.R. Moxon @JuliusGoat writes the independent publication The Reframe. He's a wonderful, sharp writer and you should check out his work if you're not already familiar with it. His latest, "Lying to Fascists," discusses the trend of American fascists publicly rejecting democracy and law and declaring their vision for the future of the country. 

Using examples from Harrison Butker's Handmaid's Tale medley of nostalgic misogyny and racism, to Texas governor Greg Abbott's big heart for the right kind of murderers, to Supreme Court Justice(?!) Sam Alito finally coming out of the MAGA closet, Moxon makes the case that, with the threat level hovering somewhere between SEVERE and CRITICAL, now might be a good time to stop giving "[t]hese Americans who want to kill Americans" all this quaint credit for good faith and the benefit of the doubt.

Instead, he warns (emphasis mine):

Either they get their way, and society is no longer accessible to most of us, or they don't, and everyone including them gets to access society. Therefore, I think they shouldn't get their way or be treated as if they should. These are people who intend to destroy whatever they need to in order to rule over our lives to secure their own personal enrichment and comfort, and are so confident in their success that they announce their intent. They do not care about you, and they certainly do not care about your good faith efforts beyond the extent to which they make it easier for them to seize control. They will never give you credit for working to find their rationales reasonable. They will never return the benefit of the doubt you extend. Our mission is not finding ways to work with them. Our mission is finding ways to sabotage their efforts and to keep their targets as safe from them as we can.

It should be clear by now that the fascists will do anything to achieve their aim of power and control. There is no limit. And they will not stop. They can only be stopped, but only if we have the awareness and the willingness to do what needs to be done.

Moxon's piece is a good one and offers some principles and specific strategies for how we might go about saving the Republic. I encourage you to read it.

When I did, it inspired me and reminded me of this one of mine from June of '22. 

"This time, it's political."

This is going to be part rant, part call for help, and it's going to be long. If you want, you can tune back in next week for a regularly scheduled post on charter schools.  But if we don't deal with this it won't even matter.

I try not to write explicitly about politics in this blog. It's probably a holdover from my teaching days when I avoided sharing my politics with students. I was trying to teach them to think for themselves, after all.

So when a student would ask who I supported or voted for, I would often just give them what I stood for and let them figure it out.

"I'm for high taxes on the rich, assistance for the poor, less funding for the police and military and more funding for schools and libraries and parks and transit. I support DREAM, DACA, amnesty, and a path to citizenship for anybody who wants it. I'm against putting kids in cages. I'm for clean energy and at least trying to save our lives on this planet."

That usually did the trick. They got the picture. 

I don't have students to worry about anymore, and I've changed my mind about this blog--at least for now. I need to talk to you about politics.

The school battles we're fighting today, over "CRT," LGBTQ+ rights, identity inclusiveness and trans kids, "parent rights" and banned books and school "choice" and school funding and teachers unions and whether to do anything about what-the-fuck actual murders of school children are, of course, fundamentally political. And, fundamentally, they are part of the same big war we're fighting over voting rights and police reform and climate change. It's a war that has only two sides.

The Republican Party, one of the two major political parties operating in the United States is despicable, and the people who love them and work for them are despicable, too. Some of my friends say they're crazy but they are not crazy. Their fans may be nuts, but the Republican Party and the apparatchiks who do damage on a national-now-global scale are perfectly rational. 

Their actions serve a strategic purpose: holding on to power. In their drive for political power, Republicans and their media cheerleaders have cultivated a constituency addicted to conspiracy and grievance and the taste of blood. The party is now completely devoted to supplying their acolytes with enough rage to keep them coming back for more. 

On the other hand, the Democratic Party is in love with its own virtue. It's dedicated to preserving a romantic narrative of democracy and bipartisanship, and the fiction that if only we make the best argument in a nice way we will persuade our adversaries (don't say enemies) and win the day. Or maybe there's nothing we can do because the Senate. Or maybe the Constitution. 

This will not last forever. We will either become all one thing, or all the other.

In order to survive, we have to act, and our first act has to be telling the truth about Republicans. Every time we or our elected leaders (Senator Schumer? Mr. President?) make believe that Republicans are like us, that they care about the country or *regular folks* or anything in the universe except power, we lose a battle and they win one. 

They weaponize our credulousness as proof of our impotence and they are not wrong. And when they do, their numbers grow and a few more of us give up and stay home, convinced our leaders don't see what we see or know what we know. 

The president, the vice, from the White House podium, on national tv, they need to say it, out loud and every time. Every member of Congress, every governor, state legislator, city council and school board member at every rally, in every interview, needs to tell the truth: 

As long as Republicans believe that people who disagree with them are illegitimate, that guns > children's lives, that elections they lose are fraudulent, that crimes they commit are not crimes, that climate change is a hoax, or that history ought to be a soft pillow for racists and the truth is a matter of opinion, there are no good Republicans. 

For those of you thinking, "Bullshit. I'm a Republican and I don't believe those things," you are deluding yourselves and you should stop. Tell the truth: Either you do believe those things, in which case you're a terrible person and fuck you, or you are no longer a Republican. Congratulations.

Telling the truth is not easy and getting people to listen is ten times harder in this  putrid media backwash where corporations whose mission should be to inform us have defaulted to predetermined narratives; faulty assumptions; and timid, shrugging commentary when they aren't snickering and rolling their eyes.

The media--both Big and Social--take for granted that Republicans will obstruct. What did you expect? The reporters bat their eyes and swoon over the big, strong Rs who never give an inch while shaking their heads and snickering at the "we wanted to" Ds for even trying. Silly geese. More on this to come. 

So what can we do? We need the news. Democrats need networks to interview us and invite us on shows and ask us questions and cover campaigns and spotlight our issues. We know we can't depend on the media to be fair or shrewd, and we can't count on them to rise above their both-sides horse race "journalism." Still, facts do not speak for themselves. Facts have to be spoken by someone. 

So when the media fails and falls back on their assumptions and tired tropes, we need to push back. For most of us, that might look like the simple civic engagement that almost nobody does. For example, every time we see a ridiculous, mis-framed article in The New York Times or a vapid false equivalency on MSNBC or CNN, you and I can write letters (does anyone still?) and send emails and call our media faves to hold them to account. We can call out our local papers and radio stations. We can complain louder and louder until they hear us or hang up. We can cancel subscriptions. 

Every time one of our representatives in government does an interview where the news personality starts with "Why can't Democrats..." they need to confront that reporter and challenge the premise of the question. Everybody on the planet should understand the formula by now. We need to push back on the notion that it's our job to make the Republicans better people. We just need to beat them.

Every time Democrats tell the truth about Republicans instead of pretending they are like us, we win. We need to support candidates who will tell the truth in the White House and in Congress, but also for city council and school board where we need to show up to meetings and tell the truth ourselves. All of us can tell the truth in posts online and we can follow other people who do. We can tell our friends and our families (ouch!) the truth about Republicans especially if they are Republicans. Remember when your racist buddy used to send you racist shit about Obama? We can make our friends crazy with the actual truth. 

Honesty is an act of war. Each moment of truth is an attack on the life of the liars. Words alone won't stop the Republicans, but the truth is a prerequisite for victory. 

Now some really bad news. It's not just politics anymore. Republicans today are not only bent on the elimination of all opposition political-cultural-historical-pastoral, they and their party are armed and aimed at the entire tragically incomplete American project. All of their power-- cultural, economical, policial/judicial, as well as political-- is threatened by the prospect of an equitable, multi-racial democracy, and they mean to kill it. 

The Republican Party is a black hole at the center of our democracy. Built out of paranoia and anger, it depends for its survival on its ability to block light from getting through. Gun safety? Blocked. Voting rights? Blocked. Environmental protection? Renewable energy? Blocked. Police reform? Racial equity? Blocked. Economic justice, reproductive rights, workers rights, civil rights, business regulation, consumer protection, free and fair elections, the fucking post office? Forget about it. 

Obstruction works. It's how Medicare for All, Merrick Garland, and two impeachments were blocked. It's how George W. Bush became president, for fuck's sake. It's how eighteen-year-olds are able to buy weapons of war. Obstruction, blocking the aspirations of their foes is fundamental. It's the very core of minority power. 

Republican ideas, such as they are, are racist and hateful and generally unpopular, so the party only exists today as a nullifying force, material only to the extent it can stop progress and "own the libs." Which it does. Brilliantly. 

Under these circumstances, Republicans' refusal to compromise becomes existential. When Democrats pursue it we look weak and when we inevitably settle for a deal on their terms, we are the ones compromised. Look at the gun proposal that Senator Murphy and others had to beg for. I'm smart enough and old enough to know that something is better than nothing. But everyone knows that even if it ever gets written and if it ever gets passed, it won't be nearly adequate. 

That's why Democrats have to come out right now and say loudly and unambiguously that this is just a first step, that we are going to keep working for expanded background checks and a ban on the sale of war weapons. And I don't mean just the tens of thousands of us who marched yesterday, I mean Chris Murphy and Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden--the people who actually have a say in what we settle for. 

Otherwise, even before the game plays out where McConnell waits for things to cool off and for another story to dominate the news squirrel! and for Democratic leaders to give up, Rank-and-file Democrats are already disappointed and discouraged, largely because we don't have confidence that our reps will continue to fight for what we actually need.

Meanwhile, Republicans are gleeful that we have given them the opportunity to appear reasonable to The New York Times, while at the same time they are winking reassurances to the gun fetishists that nothing is going to change. Which gives them the chance to say they tried but We told you gun regulation wouldn't work.

There will never be genuine compromise from the Republicans because if the Republican Party were to allow actual, real progress, if even a little bit of light pierced the umbra, its structural integrity would fail and it would collapse. 

And don't even kid yourself: It's foolish to look for individual members to break free and "vote their consciences" or "do the right thing." Even setting aside the twin deviants Cheney and Kinsinger (Update: *Kinzinger), who in spite of their atrocious voting records have stood against their party (and been bounced as a result), the occasional unicorn won't overcome the filibuster, and where are we? No, their unity is essential to their power, and power is the only reason they exist. 

The Democratic Party is all that stands between the Republicans and the ending of American Democracy. And no matter how damaged and defective we are, what comes next is worse. We can't afford to waste our time taking each other apart. I know there's a fight among Democrats over whether our leaders are doing enough to earn the votes of would-be supporters. I get it. I've been in that fight, too. But, at least for now, it's the wrong fight. 

I voted for Al Gore. People who voted for Ralph Nader were wrong. I voted for Hillary Clinton. People who voted for Jill Stein and that Johnson guy were idiots. I voted for Biden. I wanted Warren. Others wanted Bernie--twice. People who didn't vote because they wanted somebody else don't understand how elections work. 

We shouldn't be accused of treason every time we criticize the party,  but there are only two sides in this fight. If the people we elected to fight for us are not prepared to do that, we'll get new ones. But we can't afford to sit it out.

Our only hope, and the only hope for the country, is to defeat all Republicans, and I don't just mean elect more Democrats. Obviously we need to do that; anyone who thinks the gun bill wouldn't be better if we had ten more Democrats in the Senate is deluded or trolling. But simply electing more Democrats is not enough if the ones we elect fail to act, even with the future of the country hanging in the balance. 

When I say Democrats need to defeat Republicans, I mean we need to destroy them. We have to smash them and their loathsome ideology. They are fascists. They are powerful and intensely committed. They will not quit. They will not be defeated by good intentions. 

Democrats need to do things. Being right, being the good guys, is not enough. People want wins. The Democratic Party needs to deliver. Every action we complete is a battle won. Every time we actually do something Republicans want to stop, or stop something they want to do, they lose a battle and a piece of their power.

Democrats don't need our elected leaders to deliver everything right now. We need our leaders to fight for everything, all the time. We need better gun safety measures. Fight for them. We need voter protections. You need to fight for them. We need legislation to save our lives on this planet. Fight! Sometimes it feels like you don't even think these things are important.

And don't hand us the bullshit "can't do it alone" and "we need more dems" excuses. We know that. We're voting for that. If you want people to keep fighting for you, if you want us to make calls, knock on doors, "chip in$10," if you want us to join, stand up together, resist, and March For Our Lives, you have to fight for us.

Every bill passed, debated or even introduced (Schumer!), every executive order signed (Biden! Defense Production Act! State of Emergency over firearms!), every postmaster general replaced (Mr. President, how in the hell can we not get this done?), every court case won, every seat flipped, every time we Run for Something and every time we win -- every righteous thing we DO, is a tiny little Gettysburg or Yorktown. Every time we "wanted to" or "wish we could have," or piss our "what if they do it back to us / they'll just undo it anyway" pants, the opposite is true. Right now we are losing the war.

The way the political world in the United States is now constituted, power is a zero sum game. There is no compromise. One side will act and exist, the other will fail to act and disappear. We must act or we don't exist. 

And all the fights over schools and libraries will be over. All the other fights, too.

Until we do the good things the Republicans want to stop and stop the bad things Republicans want to do, the existence of the Democratic Party is purely theoretical. If we don't do them soon, that existence will be merely allegorical.

You know what to do.

 

Now that things are headed for what many of us expected and feared and warned about, lots of people have opinions about how we're dealing with the end of our lives as we had known them. After having built careers and homes and families on the trust that the country we learned about in school or the movies or on Schoolhouse Rock was a country of progress and laws and due process and human rights, we are finding out that it was all so fragile that a few very rich people united with a bunch of very craven people and a huge bunch of not very nice people can take what we built and turn it into dust. And we're mad.

So a lot of people are scared now, not of the rich-craven-not very nice people who are blowing everything we built to smithereens--no--they're scared of us being too mad about it. They've got all kinds of ideas about how loud we should be and what kind of flags we should be waving. It's what I call the "Don't make Daddy mad" strategy promoted to soothe the "I've got really nice stuff please don't break anything" anxiety rampant among some very comfortable nervous talkers. 

Once again, Dems and some Progressives either don't really believe in a pluralistic, multiracial democratic republic and are looking for a workaround, or they are kidding themselves into thinking there is something we can do that is nice enough or reasonable enough to keep the bad guys from doing what they want to do. That if we only Good Guys! hard enough, the country will wake up one morning and think, "I've been on the wrong side all along." Best of all, it won't cost or break anything.

Ironically, that's exactly what a lot of frustrated Democrats rejected in 2024 when they stayed home. They knew, as anyone should, that this level of infection does not cure itself; it requires aggressive intervention, and if you're not part of that solution, you're part of the problem.

It is astounding that Democrats still exist who think there is anything we/they can not do that will make Republicans not do something. These squishy Dems and pseudos are not simply timid or ambitious or greedy. They are out of time, living and working in a world that doesn't exist anymore. This is a fighting moment, and it's going to get messy. 

If we're actually going to have the conversation about how to behave at a demonstration of solidarity and resistance, I offer my personal perspective: 

First: Resist. Obstruct. Protest. Lots of folks say "Protest! but peacefully!" and I agree, but it's not only up to us. I say, let the cops supply the violence--they're experts--but be prepared. There are trainings that can help. If you are given a choice, respond in a way that keeps you safe. We have a lot of protests ahead of us, and we're going to need everybody.

Also, in my opinion, if you are dressed in black from head to toe, masked and throwing bottles at the cops or burning cars, you're not helping. You're just another problem for me.

Second: If at any point you can't tell the difference between your protest and a middle school lunchroom on a particularly bad day, check yourself. We're fighting over the future of the world not who talked shit about whose boyfriend. 

Third: Opinions differ, but I say wave whatever the fuck flag you want. Just for reference:

Excited onlookers wave to members of the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing Band during the New York City St. Patrick’s Day parade March 17 (2009).

March for Justice and Community Graham, North Carolina (2020 July)

Anthony Crider, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Chicago Pride Parade 2011

nathanmac87, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

A flag is not going to tip the scales of history or cost you or "the movement" the support of anyone who wasn't already looking for an excuse. If it makes you proud, be proud.

Do the training. Be loud. Be visible. Have some fun if you can. Beyond that, it's not-very-complicated golden rule stuff: Don't be an asshole. 

However, and this is important, don't automatically assume that following these or any other rules will protect you from asshole behavior from them. We may very well get gassed for standing still, or for not standing still. We may be pushed, hit with batons and "less-lethal" rounds for not doing exactly what we're told or in spite of doing what we're told. It's what fascists do. Prepare.

We didn't make the world; we're just trying to make it into something we can live in. And Democratic leaders who are afraid to get their hands dirty should just shut the fuck up and take a vacation. 

And, if they are thinking they can just lay low, or put out press releases trying to hoodwink us into thinking they're actually doing something, and then pop back up once this is "over"-- either to take charge again after we've saved the country or to lead the post-apocalypse resistance after the catastrophe they helped create--they are delusional and fuck them. 

That's it.

Be careful. Take a moment to appreciate the importance of what we are trying to do.

See you out there.

LAUSD

I've written before about Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Alberto Carvalho and the courageous administrators and staff who turned away ICE body snatchers in April. 

That seems like forever ago now as the Trump administration has turned the intimidation up to 11 and, in addition to countless other outrages, has stationed "federal vans" within blocks of schools in an apparent effort to terrorize students and their families into self-disappearing before ICE does it for them.

Against this backdrop of military troops in the streets and new threats seemingly every day coming from the regime, it takes courage to stand up to bullies wielding state power. 

I may disagree with Supt. Carvalho over other aspects of public education, but on this most important element, we agree entirely.

Everybody has the chance to do the right thing. Not everybody will. This is the right thing.

Why is everything so fucked up? revisited

Don't-give-a-fuck Republicans are preparing to cut Medicare, Medicaid, nutrition assistance, education, research, national parks, clean energy, and agencies such as the EPA and BLM and NASA, and programs like USAID (and what else? even Congress hasn't read the damn bill), all in exchange for mass deportations, a bigger defense budget, and humongous tax cuts largely for billionaires (which is cool because the bill also cuts IRS enforcement focused on billionaires!), I thought it would be a good time to re-up this simple Q & A for how everything got so fucked up. Here goes.

                     The answer to all your questions is: Money.

According to teevee host and former sportswriter Tony Kornheiser, television producer and network big shot Don Ohlmeyer once told him, "The answer to all your questions is: Money."

When we try and figure out how we got into this mess, I'm sure many of us can point to our own favorite incident, policy, condition, cause, or villain, as the reason things are so fucked up. When it comes up among friends, individual lists grow and merge into a gigantic trail of crimes and outrages and, of course, they and we are all correct. I don't even have to open my mouth anymore. When it's my turn everyone just shouts "Reagan!" before I can open my mouth. 

Turns out I may have a case, of sorts. 

A working paper from RAND released in February examines income inequality among U.S. workers. It builds upon an earlier study, and RAND describes it this way: "This short analysis extends the results from a prior study about the gap between what the majority of workers earned from 1975 to 2018 and what they would have earned with more evenly distributed income growth (Price and Edwards, 2020)." It's a short, clear, easy read and I encourage you to take a look at it here, but the money shot is as follows (emphasis mine):

These values are intended to provide an indication of the scale of rising inequality and its durability over the last nearly five decades. Looking at the net effects of these trends, if we had the income distribution from 1975, the majority of workers (the bottom 90 percent by income) would have made an additional $3.9 trillion dollars in 2023. Cumulatively, the gap between what workers from 1975 to 2023 earned and what they would have earned with the counterfactual income distribution amounts to $79 trillion (in 2023 dollars). Compared to the $47 trillion from the 2020 study, the additional $32 trillion dollars comes from extending the time-period by five years, inflating from 2018 to 2023, and additional growth in inequality.

Seventy-nine trillion dollars is a lot of money. A lot of child care and college educations and homes that could have been passed down to help create generational wealth. Instead, "the bottom 90 percent" did not fully participate in the growth of the American economy they helped produce. You know who did? You know who reaped their own benefits and a giant share of everybody else's? Sure you do. 

And not for nothing, there's this from the RAND paper:

For three decades following the Second World War, incomes for workers across the income distribution grew at the same pace as the broader economy. This changed in the late 1970s, when earnings growth began disproportionately flowing to those with the highest incomes leading to four decades of rising inequality.

Here it is graphically, from the Economic Policy Institute:

The late 1970's. Arthur Laffer. Jack Kemp. William Roth. Voodoo supply-side trickle down "economics." And do you know who endorsed this nonsense, who ran on it and was elected in 1980? Sure you do. 

That is a huge part of how we went from thirteen U.S. billionaires in 1980 to over 900 today (+ around 7000 percent). Since geographical distinctions are not what they used to be, it's also instructive to note that Forbes reports its own count as rising from 140 billionaires worldwide in 1987 to 3,028 today. Up 2162% give or take. It's been a good run if you're a billionaire and/or heir to one. For the rest of us, not so great. 

And that is a big reason why everything is so fucked up.

Thanks for reading. Speak to you soon. 

Addicted to rage

People used to ask of Trump supporters, "How can they vote for this piece of shit?" or something similar. I used to answer, "Because he hates the people they hate." 

Iowa Senator Joni Ernst just blew off questions about Medicaid cuts with "We all are going to die" and everyone thinks her voters might turn on her. Maybe, if--and only if--they see the cuts hurting them more than they can stand and not hurting the people they hate enough. 

But even then it's not likely. As Steve M @stevemnomoremister.bsky.social‬ puts it, "They live in a permanent state of rage against Democrats and every group identified with Democrats, and the rage is their joy. All she has to do is persuade them she's offending us and she's home free."

True, but I think it's even more than that. I think these people are addicted to their hatred, and to the simultaneous feelings of victimhood and superiority that fuel their anger. Now for the standard caveat: It's not all of them. Which is beside the point and which is BS anyway and gives them too much credit for being humans and not enough blame for being rationalizing self-justifying snakes. 

You can't listen to all the racist shit and braggadocious dimwittery that comes out of Trump's mouth and then say, "Yeah, I wouldn't have said it that way" and "I'm not always comfortable with his style," and then come back with "But he's tough!" and "Businessman!" unless a big part of you is okay with all of it.

And you can't listen to him lying about everything and then believe him about anything, not even the things you really really want to be true, unless your whole self is okay with all of that, too.

These people are addicted to rage, so when Joni Ernst says "We're all going to die" or Mike Johnson lies to them about Medicaid cuts or Stephen Miller threatens due process, they don't think he means their due process. And then they imagine and fantasize about the people they think will be hurt, and they get that rush, and the only thing the rage pushers could ever do to lose them would be to not give them the drug.

So if, after Trump's COVID debacle and Jan. 6 and stolen boxes of secrets, and after snatching people off the streets and deporting American citizens and playing tariff roulette with the economy, and after turning the presidency into his own personal ATM and after inviting a drug addict in to take all the data and fire all the people, you're wondering why he's still cool with FORTY-FIVE PERCENT "of those polled," don't wonder.

Whether they are mainlining Trump's lunacy or think of themselves as weekend recreational users, they are addicts obsessed with their next fix. There is nothing Trump & Co can do to lose them. 

Ask yourself, "What would a crack dealer have to do that would be so bad that a crackhead would turn down a free hit?"

Nobody's fooled, just pretending.

They are liars. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson told Jake Tapper Sunday on CNN that he didn't know anything about Trump's crypto-grift bribe banquet last week, hadn't even heard about it. He also lied about the cuts to Medicaid buried in the--and I'm only going to write this one time because I believe words have meanings--One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Variously punctuated, weirdly redundant, and predictably aggrandizing, the Act is so bad that liars have a lot to choose from as they defend it. 

The Congressional Budget Office projects that, if the Act becomes law, it will indeed require a cut of almost a trillion dollars to Medicaid and SNAP. For those keeping score, that's the opposite of what Mike "We are not cutting Medicaid in this package" Johnson lied on air this morning before following up with the hilariously accurate, "There’s a lot of misinformation out there about this.” Johnson is able to tell many lies in a short period of time, but he can't compete with serial liar, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.

While not as slick as Johnson, Leavitt makes up for it in her passion for talking points and ass-kissing. For example, other features-not-bugs in the OBBBA include making 2017 Trump 1 tax cuts "permanent," expanding the deficit by almost four trillion dollars, thus requiring all those cuts and blowing a hole in whatever deficit rhetoric Republicans can still muster. All to give the top 20% of taxpayers a big, beautiful tax break while the bottom 20% gets less than bupkis. 

Nevertheless, when asked about the deficit Leavitt flatly lied, "This bill does not add to the deficit," and cited the president's own Council of Economic Advisors, who fantasize that increased growth will offset the tax cuts. Sound familiar? Leavitt doubled down, asserting that not only was there no increase to the deficit, but "There's $1.6 trillion worth of savings in this bill." 

According to the once-respectable Washington Post, Trump lied over 30,000 times his first go-round, and there are a gazillion more examples of the Trump 2 regime lying to the country. From DHS head Kristi Noem lying about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, to Government lawyers lying to the courts, to Stephen Miller lying about due process and election fraud and a Supreme Court decision, to fill in the blank about fill in the blank. JD Vance lies about what he's told to lie about.  And of course, Trump lies about everything. There are too many to count, let alone list. 

I've written about this before. If they are breathing, they are lying.

Some of them might be fanatics devoted to their MAGA god. For some the lying may be a demonstration of loyalty because they're scared or ambitious. They want to please the boss. It's hard to know whether or not Stephen Miller or Karoline Leavitt really believe the things they're saying, but with others it's clear. In the end, it really doesn't make much difference. These people are lost, either delusionary or corrupted beyond redemption.  

But what about us? What happens to a society, a country, to millions of people when nothing is true anymore? That's not quite right. There are still true things, but they're being rubbed out by the liars. The lies never stop and they hang in the atmosphere like sand in an endless storm. They choke us and stick to our skin as we move through the world and live our lives.

It's starting to get to me. I know they are lying. My friends know they are lying. Even most of them know they're lying. The media has become more forceful in pointing out the lies. But the storm never stops.

We can't get away from it. It's poisoning the air we breathe. But we have to breathe, don't we? We go on with our lives because what else is there to do? We pretend that it will stop, that something will happen. We pretend that someone will make them stop lying and just let us breathe. 

I'm going to stop thinking about the liars. They're easy to figure out. It's the people who are being lied to that I worry about. What is going to happen to us? What should we do? Should we be angrier? Should we ignore it? How can you ignore something when every day you can feel it on your skin and in your throat? 

They know they are lying. We know they are lying. We all know they are lying, but we just go along and pretend. And it's really starting to bug me.