We need candidates that flex the empathy muscle

Paul Waldman, in his Substack The Cross Section, discussed why the Democratic Party fears its best candidates. At the top of the article is a photo of Mallory McMorrow running to be the candidate for the US Senate race in Michigan and who is in this situation. She’s a great candidate (I like what she’s done in the Michigan Senate) and described as “young, smart, charismatic, adept at social media.” McMorrow will likely be up against Rep. Haley Stevens. She’s a four-term member of the House from a reasonably safe district and has proven she can win. She doesn’t make voters excited, but doesn’t make them angry. I rebut the comment that Stevens proving she can win makes her a better candidate. McMorrow is currently in the Senate, which means she has also won. A difference is that Stevens is in Washington and McMorrow is in Lansing. The Democratic Party impulse is to clear the field for their preferred candidate by telling McMorrow to hold off until Stevens decides. What the party should do is let all candidates run in the primary and let voters decide. Primaries are good (though not perfect) in showing who is better. Yeah, I know, the voters might decide to approve a candidate that can’t win in the general, and if they do they’ll get to Washington and stir things up too much. The party rewards insiders and discourages innovation. The want to protect their highest-ranking (also known as stodgiest) members. Another young star in the party is Zohran Mamdani, running for mayor of New York. He’s got fresh ideas and is charismatic. And the Democratic establishment is wavering on endorsing him because, as Waldman says, they’re cowards and Mamdani scares them. The mayoral candidate represents a future that doesn’t have a place for the old guard. That cowardice is why so many voters say Democrats are weak. The party “sees the best candidates as a threat and not an opportunity.” Amanda Becker, in an article for The 19th posted on Daily Kos, wrote about Kat Abughazaleh, who is running for the US House from Chicago. She appears to be a punk-rock candidate that the Democratic party in Washington is afraid of.

“This is not just about me getting into Congress — I don’t want to do this for the rest of my life,” Abughazaleh told them of her campaign. “I’m 26 and this is the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done, it is the most exhausting thing I’ve ever done. How do people do this for decades and decades? The conclusion I’ve come to is that they stop doing it right. And what we need right now is representatives that talk to people, that listen to them, that flex empathy like a muscle, and then leave this job … for the next generation.” When Abughazaleh launched her bid to represent Illinois’ 9th District on March 24, her 26th birthday, she joined a growing cohort of young Democrats who have concluded the stakes for democracy are so high — and the party’s old guard is so reluctant to give up power — that they need to push their way into the political arena, even if they are met with resistance. ... Abughazaleh’s campaign slogan is a question: “What if we didn’t suck?” The “we” are Democrats. In a direct-to-camera launch video, she says, “Donald Trump and Elon Musk are dismantling our country piece by piece and so many Democrats seem content to just sit back and let them. So I say it’s time to drop the excuses and grow a f---ing spine.” ... At a Pride Month event, Abughazaleh gave anti-LBGTQ+ protesters the middle finger during a clash, prompting outrage online from the political right. “Yes, I did flip off some bigots for telling children they’d go to hell and, no, I’m not going to apologize,” she said in a video response. The campaign designed a “Kat isn’t sorry” t-shirt with her image, middle finger raised. The shirt urges people to “stand up for trans kids.”

Thinking about these two candidates reminds me I have also long believed the billionaires who are directing the Republican Party also control the Democratic Party. Democrats say great things and did wonderful stuff during the Biden years. But they didn’t do and are not doing things to protect democracy – especially voter rights and banning gerrymandering. Biden also installed Merrick Garland as his Attorney General, which many rightly saw as a guy who would do as little as politically required to prosecute the nasty guy to get him off the stage prior to the 2024 campaign. Democrats, under the control of billionaires, did not and are not interfering with the push to end democracy. I frequently talk about Republicans as doing everything to maintain themselves near the top of the social hierarchy, behind only the rich, who control them. But Democrats also believe in the hierarchy and put their position in their own hierarchy above the needs of the party, the country, and the working and poor people they say they champion. I’m very hopeful for these renegade Democratic candidates will shake up the party – if we have a 2026 election.

No broken laws? Prosecute anyway.

Back in April I complained about emergency alerts being sent to my phone. I was alerted to: Thunderstorms that died out before reaching me. An explosion that happened ten miles away and the alert sent two hours later, which reached me at 6 am. I was not alerted to thunderstorms that hit and were quite strong, one setting off the city’s emergency sirens. I rated the service 0-4. I haven’t gotten any alerts since then. Jennifer Berry Hawes, in an article for ProPublica posted on Daily Kos discussed the federal Integrated Public Alert and Warning System that isn’t getting much use by local officials.

ProPublica identified at least 15 federally declared major disasters since 2016 in which officials in the most-harmed communities failed to send alerts over IPAWS — or sent them only after people were already in the throes of deadly flooding, wildfires or mudslides.

Hawes describes several of those incidents. Reasons why IPAWS isn’t used include insufficient training, insufficient money to connect to the IPAWS system, a variety of other alert systems – none of which get used effectively, fear that the alert would be broadcast too widely and cause traffic jams, fear of sending out alerts to something that might be of no consequence prompting residents to ignore future alerts, or the authorized user for a community is home in bed. So I guess my phone is a part of the IPAWS system (perhaps all phones are) and the Detroit authorities are struggling to figure out how to use it effectively. Back when I worked in IT for the auto industry several colleagues in the department were from India and on work visas. At the time I heard a lot about the H-1B visas used by many tech employers. These were visas held by the employer, which meant the worker was tied to that employer. That meant if the employer was displeased the worker would be sent to their country of origin. That also meant the employer could pay well below what they would have to pay an American worker. H-1B visas are still around and are back in the news. The nasty guy wants to limit the use of these visas as part of his efforts to limit immigration. So he added a $100K fee (followed by confusion on when the fee would apply). Tech companies are bitching and moaning, but most can afford to pay, or hire Americans. Or use code written by AI (a quarter of code already is). Kos of Kos reports the places that can’t afford the fees are rural hospitals. Many doctors there are immigrants on H-1B visas. Its also an area the federal government designates as short on primary care doctors and an area likely to be hit when the Big Brutal Bill’s Medicaid cuts happen. Many rural areas may lose their only doctor. Kos also discussed the nasty guy’s shift away from Russia and towards Ukraine. He tweeted that Ukraine could, with help from NATO, push Russia completely out. Kos works through all the details of this change in position. The question is: Why? Kos answered:

The irony is that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin once had Trump in the palm of his hand. Flattery and promises of a Nobel Peace Prize could have helped him starve Ukraine into submission. But Putin, too arrogant to debase himself and suck up to Trump the way other world leaders did, may have overplayed his hand. And that arrogance might ultimately help doom him. What a crazy twist.

In Thursday’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Paul Krugman comparing the nasty guy to Putin and Hungary’s Victor Orban and their grabs for autocratic rule.

Trump has a significant problem that neither Putin nor Orban faced. When Putin and Orban were consolidating their autocratics (sic), they were genuinely popular. They were perceived by the public as effective and competent leaders. Just nine months into his presidency, Trump, by contrast, is deeply unpopular. He is increasingly seen as chaotic and inept. As David Frum says, this means that he is in a race against time. Can he consolidate power before he loses his aura of inevitability? Will those who run major institutions – particularly corporate CEOs – understand that we are at a crucial juncture, and that by accommodating Trump they have more to lose than by standing up to him? To put it bluntly, is the Jimmy Kimmel affair the harbinger of a failed Trumpian putsch?

Oh, I wish! Yes, Kimmel is back on the air with a lot more people watching his returning monologue than watched the show before it was suspended. Thank you, nasty guy. In the news this week is the nasty guy demanding James Comey and Letitia James be prosecuted by the Department of Justice though there is no evidence of actual crimes. In the comments of the roundup are a pair of tweets. The first by Spencer Hakimian quoting an exchange with the White House Press Secretary:

Reporter: Why won't Trump accept the conclusions of his Justice Department to not bring charges against Letitia James? Leavitt: These people literally tried to ruin his life. He wants to see accountability.

Sarah Longwell responded:

This isn’t just weaponizing the DOJ. It’s inventing crimes. His already weaponized DOJ is saying there’s nothing they can do to prosecute because Letitia James didn’t break any laws. And Trump is saying prosecute anyway, I have a score to settle.

A meme posted by DefendOurConstitution shows a boy with a skeptical expression.

So me, wearing a bulletproof backpack to school with metal detectors, armed guards and routine mass-shooter drills is “the price of freedom”... But you, wearing a mask on Walmart for 10 minutes is “tyranny”?

In Friday’s roundup Greg Dworkin included a tweet by Abbie Richards talking about measles misinformation. She includes a link to more on Media Matters.

If you sow enough doubt and fear and confusion, you can sell more supplements to "bulletproof" your followers immune systems against measles.

Will Bunch tweeted an intro to an article he wrote for the Philadelphia Inquirer about TV stations that are not locally owned.

Folks had no idea who owns their local TV stations - until large, faceless corporations, Sinclair and Nexstar, said they can't watch Jimmy Kimmel because of politics. This is why they've been warning us: media consolidation is a threat to democracy.

Greg Sargent at The New Republic:

Now that Disney and ABC have bucked President Trump’s authoritarian censorship regime and reinstated comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s show, MAGA personalities are in a seething fury. They’re claiming the move insults Charlie Kirk’s memory—Kimmel’s original sin concerned a poorly timed quote about Kirk’s murder—and that this shows Disney hates MAGA’s rank and file. As one influential MAGA figure put it to her followers: “DISNEY LOATHES YOU.”

From Bloomberg:

Epstein was drawn to what he saw as the finest things in life. The substantial wealth he acquired after leaving Bear Stearns in 1981 to advise the ultrarich afforded him a Boeing 727, one of Manhattan’s largest townhouses and his own Caribbean island. And when his own hour of terror dawned in 2005, following a tip to police in Palm Beach County from the family of a teenage girl, he didn’t rely on just one champion or defender, his inbox shows, but a collection of elite professionals. Though lawyers, academics and media advisers helped him in different ways and to different extents, his network included past and future White House officials, a top Hollywood publicist, a former child-exploitation prosecutor and renowned researchers, including one on his way to winning a Nobel Prize. That support for Epstein—who harmed more than 1,000 people, according to the US Justice Department—came when he needed it most. The professionals who surrounded Epstein defended and deflected, coached and countermessaged, burnished and polished. Together, they helped extend Epstein’s influence and freedom, even lending an air of invincibility. His reckoning was postponed until 2019, when federal prosecutors charged him with trafficking minors. Weeks later, he was found dead in jail in New York City awaiting trial.

From NBC News:

Whether she intended it or not, the 39-year-old [MI state senator Mallory] McMorrow started a trend of Democratic outsiders end-running party leaders to launch their campaigns, sometimes in explicit opposition to them. The movement is fueled by a crisis of confidence among Democratic voters in their own party, which is giving encouragement to the types of nontraditional candidates who have been walloped by leadership-aligned rivals in the past. Altogether, ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, the moves have created a number of crowded and competitive-looking Democratic Senate primaries — contests that have often seen party leaders leap in to anoint favorites in recent years. Democratic angst following the loss to President Donald Trump last year has contributed to the trend in at least five races that could determine the majority, from core battlegrounds like Michigan and Maine to long-shot targets like Iowa and Texas.

A pair of tweets, first from Ken Klippenstein:

Chuck Schumer says "even though Democrats' numbers are low," that's fine because they're still higher than that of Republicans. "In a couple of the races where we have the two candidates, we win!"

Lis Smith responded:

With all due respect, this is simply not it. GOP numbers declining doesn't mean Dems will necessarily benefit- polls show that loud & clear. Democrats MUST improve their standing w/the American people & can only do that by putting forth a compelling vision of their own.

I’ve been hearing about the nasty guy threatening to fire, not furlough, federal employees if there is no budget deal and the government has to shut down. I’ve also been hearing about the response from Democrats. This is what Politico wrote about that:

Among the Democrats still standing firm against a Republican-led seven-week funding punt include those representing many of thousands public employees who would be most at risk if President Donald Trump and OMB director Russ Vought follow through on their threats. “Whether there’s a shutdown or not, they just keep firing government employees,” said Rep. Glenn Ivey, who represents part of Washington’s Maryland suburbs. “I don’t know that capitulating on this front slows that down. In fact, it might actually encourage them to think that they can stay on the track that they’re currently on.” Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland called the threats “mafia-style blackmail” in a statement, adding that the potential layoffs are “likely illegal.” Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia said, “For Trump, people’s lives and livelihoods are just bargaining chips.”

In the comments is a tweet from David Frum with a link to his article in The Atlantic. Alas, the full article is restricted to subscribers.

Trump hates Comey because Comey's FBI investigated Trump's Russia connections. But Trump *indicted* Comey not just for payback. Trump is testing whether he can misuse prosecutions to pervert the 2026 elections.

Oliver Willis of Kos discussed why conservatives hate free speech as part of his series on explaining the right. And I think he got it right. After citing several instances of attempts at limiting speech Willis wrote:

Conservatism has a serious problem when it comes to competing in an open war of ideas. Many conservative priorities, like racism and economic policies bent around the desires of the ultra-wealthy, are not popular with the public at large. To allow an open exchange of ideas is to allow for the chance that liberalism and the Democratic Party might succeed. Instead, conservatives have sought to rig the system. In an electoral sense, that has led to policies like gerrymandering congressional districts, redrawing borders to ensure Republicans win seats even in areas where Democrats would have a plurality or majority in a fair system. The same practice is being borne out by the right’s crusade against the First Amendment. If ideas they don’t like are banned from public discourse, the right “wins” arguments by default. Not only does attacking speech change the rules to favor the right, but it undermines the foundation of the United States. The Revolutionary War and the subsequent drafting of the Constitution and the ratification of the Bill of Rights were meant to protect America. Battles like World War II were fought to defend the continued existence of those rights against the threat of fascism. Hundreds of thousands of people died defending those rights.

Radical gay theater lost its danger

I finished the book I Was Better Last Night by Harvey Fierstein. It’s his autobiography published in 2022. He calls it a memoir because it deals mostly with his life in the theater. I think it is more of a biography because it deals with a lot more than his theater life. His life in theater has been significant. From the start he was an out gay man. He frequently played female roles in drag. He won Tony Awards for writing Torch Song Trilogy and La Cage Aux Folles. He won Tonys for acting in Torch Song Trilogy and as Edna in Hairspray. He also wrote Kinky Boots, turned Newsies from a Disney flop movie into a successful Broadway musical, wrote Casa Valentina, and an updated TV version of The Wiz. His acting also includes a long stint as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof. Of course, there were many other scripts and acting jobs. Fierstein didn’t study theater. He studied art, both in an arts high school and college. The art got him into theater when he was asked to make posters for a play and a friend convinced him to audition. Much of his 20s was as a starving actor, living rent free in a basement apartment and acting in Off-Off-Broadway. He started writing theater because one of the directors said write something for me. And he discovered he was good at it. Torch Song began as an actual trilogy of full length plays, together running over five hours. Fierstein shortened it to four hours when performed as a set, and to two hours when the movie was made. I haven’t seen the movie and it’s now on my watch list. He wrote the first of the plays in 1977 and the combined version was on Broadway in the early 1980s. I saw Newsies when a tour came to Detroit and I enjoyed it. Same for Kinky Boots. I saw La Cage a year ago at the Stratford Festival in Canada and thought it delightful. I saw Casa Valentina in a local Detroit production in 2018, and again very much enjoyed it. It’s the story of men who go to a resort in the Catskills in the 1960s so they can spend the weekend dressed as women. I wrote about it here. Fierstein’s description of each show includes the process of creating it. Sometimes it goes smoothly, many times it doesn’t. He explains how to get from idea to actors on stage with an audience. When a show doesn’t go well he explains how it gets fixed. Fierstein introduces us to Richie Jackson, the man who became his assistant, agent, and manager. He describes Jackson as seeing Torch Song as a teen whose mother said if he ever came out she would not treat him like the mother in the show did. I recognized Jackson from his book, Gay Like Me, A Father Writes to His Son where he told that story and knew that Jackson was the husband in the book Following Foo: The Electronic Adventures of the Chestnut Man, by BD Wong. Only now do I see I misspelled Jackson’s first name in both of those earlier posts, adding a “t”. Jackson was the power behind a revival of Torch Song in 2017 because it had meant so much to him as a teen. This time Fierstein was too old to be in the cast. But while watching it he felt a big difference. It wasn’t dangerous. When first on Broadway the concept of a drag queen wasn’t well known and felt scary. The audience was mostly straight people and the gay people who attended were afraid of being outed. The cast was afraid of the vice squad waiting in the wings to handcuff them at the end of the show. The gay character at the center of the show wanting the same kind of life as his parents – spouse and kids – was seen as reactionary. All that gave the show an undercurrent of danger. In 2017, 35 years later everyone knew what a drag queen was. The audience was mostly LGBTQ people and rightly assumed the theater was a safe space where they could be totally out. The cast knew they would not damage their career by playing gay (and most were gay). That a gay character would want the same life as his parents was seen as normal. The show had lost its danger. The radical ideas had come true. I very much enjoyed the book. Fierstein is a fine writer and his story is a fascinating and compelling one. Yesterday I wrote about a cartoon that compared the funeral of Nazi Horst Wessel to the funeral of Charlie Kirk. I listen to About Time, the afternoon classical music show on the Canadian Broadcast Corporation hosted by Tom Allen. The show has a Thursday series on stories and music between 1872 (after Germany invaded Paris) and 1939 (just before Germany invaded Paris again). And today’s episode was about Horst Wessel. The time was the late 1920s. Because France demanded Germany pay ruinous reparations for the damage of the Great War, Germany’s economy was in a shambles and inflation was quite high, so high that no one could make economic plans. The future of young men like Wessel was bleak. He joined the Nazi party. Under the guidance of Goebbels, the chief Nazi propagandist, Wessel became a street fighter in Berlin, fighting Communist youth, also looking for a way out of the economic collapse. In 1930 Wessel’s landlady was Communist. She told the Communist street fighters Wessel was behind in his rent. The fighters pulled him from the apartment and beat him. He lived another six weeks, dying from sepsis. Even before he died Goebbels was already capitalizing on his death, turning him into a Nazi martyr. The funeral, as I mentioned yesterday, was a major propaganda event with, I think, 30,000 attending. There was praise for Wessel and what a fine Nazi he was along with a lot denunciation of leftists. By the time the Nazis came to power in 1933 nearly all Nazis knew of Wessel – or at least of the myth created around Wessel. Wessel did write the words (set to a borrowed tune) that became a Nazi anthem. Allen did not play that anthem, but did play a parody Spike Jones created in 1943. Spike Jones was famous for his parodies of classical music. Allen also played Berlin cabaret songs of the 1920s and ‘30s and several pieces by Richard Wagner, who was a favorite of the Nazis. My friend and debate partner sent me an article about Climate Trace, an organization that displays pollution and greenhouse gas data for the world. They base their maps on satellite and remote sensing equipment. They are able to display what the source of the pollutants are – oil refining, manufacturing, transportation, and many other sectors. So I tried it and looked at sites around Detroit. First, the site can really bog down my browser. Second, it showed a site rather close to my house. Once I managed to click on it (the dot was small) I was given data for a place that doesn’t exist. And third, though the article on CNN that my friend sent me says this is a new way to look at things, back in 2021 I wrote about a similar map put out by ProPublica. That one was much easier to use and I didn’t find any false data.

The posturing, the belittling, the proud lack of empathy

My Sunday movie was The History of Sound. I saw it in an actual movie theater and for the third time in my life I was the only person in the audience. This is the story of Lionel. He was was born about the turn of the 20th century in rural Kentucky, where he grew up. His father taught him a lot of folk songs. A music teacher recognized his talent and arranged for him to attend the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. One evening in a tavern her hears the guy at the piano singing one of the songs he learned from his father. This is David and they strike up a friendship and fall in bed together. Lionel goes back to Kentucky. Soon David sends a letter proposing the two of them hike through rural Maine stopping along the way to record the songs the locals sing. They even tote around an Edison recording machine, the one with the wax cylinders. When they get back to Boston David is called up for duty in the Great War. Lionel is spared because he wears glasses. After the war David says he is staying at the college where he teaches and suggests Lionel is such a good singer he could get a job anywhere in the world. He does, but that doesn’t satisfy. Much of the music for the film is the folk songs they record, listen to, and sing. This is a rich part of American musical history. The movie also has some background music. Paul Mescal, the actor who played Lionel looked a bit older than the college student he was playing. Josh O’Connor who played David looked older than that. We were well into the movie before I figured out David wasn’t a fellow student, but a college instructor. I also learned from IMDb that neither lead actor is American – O’Connor is English and Mescal is Irish. Strange for such an American story. I’m not sure if this is a gay love story. There is certainly gay sex, but there is hetero sex too. And Lionel isn’t sure what to make of their relationship. I very much enjoyed this movie. D’Anne Witkowski, in her Creep of the Week column for Between the Lines, wrote about how conservatives talk about Charlie Kirk’s civility – and demanding liberals be civil in return – because Kirk was able to broadcast their beliefs in a “civil” manner. But those beliefs are still vile. I had written Kirk was known for inviting debate, though his “debates” were set up to show liberals in a bad light, to show Kirk winning. In another post I wrote that maybe he wasn’t so bad, that he genuinely wanted to hear another person’s opinion. Witkowski said I was right the first time.

But to claim that Kirk was some kind of paragon of free speech devoted to the free exchange of ideas is simply false. Sure, he invited debate. He was, in fact, under a tent that said "debate me” when he was killed. But he did not invite a dialog. He did not listen. Not in a meaningful way. He did not seek to understand where other people were coming from. Debate, for Kirk, was a game of one-upsmanship. He was exceptionally good at interjecting and interrupting to dominate any and all exchanges. It was, in fact, the very thing he was doing when he was killed. He was interrupting the person “debating” him to control the narrative. It was something that a lot of people liked about Kirk. He was very alpha in his approach to “debate.” It’s something that a lot of people like about Trump, too. The posturing, the belittling, the proud lack of empathy with an emphasis on cruelty. It’s a type of masculinity that is, sadly, highly valued in American culture. It’s often called “toxic” masculinity. I, personally, find it abhorrent. In a culture where toxic masculinity rules — and in this moment, it absolutely does — there’s a winner-take-all attitude toward the things we all need to participate in that whole “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” thing. Under toxic masculinity rule, there is no need to take care of the most vulnerable among us. Because they are getting exactly what they deserve. Which is nothing.

Two things can be true. Kirk said vile things. He didn’t deserve to be murdered. Oliver Willis of Daily Kos discussed Kirk’s memorial service on Sunday (so we didn’t have to watch it – and I didn’t). To sum it up: The grieving widow and the nasty guy turned Kirk’s hate from a memorial service into a campaign rally. It included a lot of whitewashing Kirk’s record and vowing vengeance on the left. AKALib of the Kos community gathered together reviews of the nasty guy’s speech at the United Nations general assembly. It was an international embarrassment, but very much true to form for this guy.

Trump’s nearly 56-minute address (it was scheduled for 15 minutes) to the United Nations General Assembly was both appalling and disgusting in how he turned it into his hate-filled campaign-like speech targeted to satisfy members of his cult.

A post by lamina566 of the Kos community talked about questions liars ask to manipulate people and derail a discussion. The author took college classes in Logic and Stoicism and recently watched a video on “The Stoic Habit.” These five questions are pulled from the video. This post includes a lot of discussion on how the questioner is trying to flip the discussion and a way to respond to the question. I’ll summarize. 1. Why are you being so sensitive? Response: I’m not sensitive, I’m observant. Does that make you uncomfortable? 2. You trust me, right? Trust is earned. If you’re asking you know you don’t have it. Response: Are you asking me to ignore my judgment? 3. Are you accusing me of something? Response: Maintain eye contact for several seconds, then “Should I be?” 4. Would I ever lie to you? That isn’t a question, it’s theater, meant to demand trust. Response: “Would I know if you did?” 5. Can’t we just move on? It’s a way to escape accountability. Response: “I’ll move on when I understand what happened.” The liar’s purpose is to exhaust you until you’re too tired to keep searching for the truth. Alex Samuels of Kos explored the idea of moving to Canada or some other country to get away from the horrors of the nasty guy, MAGA, and their destruction of democracy. Yeah, web searches for moving to Canada spiked after the 2024 election. Those searching were presumably Democrats, though there were reports of Republicans expecting to do the same if Harris had won. A new survey by the Pew Research Center suggests moving to another country might not fix what one is running from. They surveyed adults across 25 countries. In 20 of them majorities of adults say their nation’s political system needs significant change. In 7 of them about 80% of adults said the same. In all but a few countries “sizable portions of the population are pessimistic about whether reform is even possible.” Democracy forces compromise, but if the democracy isn’t functioning well, getting something accomplished can be hard. One reason why compromise may be difficult in some countries is because voting systems are winner-take-all. When I lived in Germany decades ago colleagues explained to me that so many seats are allocated directly to candidates (who are members of a party) and other seats are allocated to parties. Voters vote for both the candidate and the party. Then the party seats are allocated according to the percentages each party got in the vote. The candidate part might be winner-take-all. The party part isn’t. I will not guarantee I heard or remembered all that accurately. Samuels wrote:

While it’s tempting to blame “the other party” or fantasize about starting fresh in a new country, dissatisfaction with politics is widespread worldwide. The U.S. stands out for its particularly low trust in elected officials and extreme polarization—but the desire to escape isn’t uniquely American. Pew’s data suggests that leaving may not give you the political reprieve you’re expecting.

This post and the survey doesn’t consider whether another country’s politics is to the left or right of the US. I had reported a while back that Canada’s is far to the left of ours. And that may be enough for a refuge. In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin included a tweet from Magdi Jacobs:

Just a reminder: any & every issue that possibly divides Democrats is regularly used against us on social media by foreign, especially Russian, interference campaigns. The "source" of the issue could be organically American or not. Either way it will be amplified by bots/trolls.

In the comments are a lot of cartoons and memes about the recent big press conference in which Robert Kennedy Jr. and the nasty guy blamed Tylenol for the rise in autism. Of course, they provided no scientific evidence and the medical community says there is none. Frank Amari posted a cartoon by Dennis Goris. It shows a bullet and a Tylenol tablet. The caption says, “Only one of these this has been proven to harm children. The other will come with a warning label.” There are also many memes about the nasty guy’s speech at the UN. One meme is from Joe Walsh, who tweeted: “Every single word he says here is a lie. Every single word.” Alas, the gathered world leaders had to witness the speech. A meme posted by paulpro (author not identified) shows a young woman talking to a young man:

I see, so if I don’t have sex with you I’m a prude bitch, if I use the pill I’m a slut, if I get pregnant I’m an idiot and if I choose abortion I’m Satan. Yay.

A cartoon posted by paulpro and created by Sophie Labelle of Assigned Male shows a reporter stopping a man on the street, “Sir! In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s death, do you think the left is incapable of respectful debates?” The man responds with many ways in which Kirk did not engage in respectful debates. I took a look at Labelle’s Bluesky account and saw this cartoon: “The government won’t tell you that they are fascist, but they will tell you that anti-fascists are their enemies.” Another of Labelle’s cartoons talked about Horst Wessel. He was a skilled public speaker for the Nazi party and wrote the song that became the Nazi anthem. He died in 1930 during a forcible attempt to evict him for unpaid rent. And...

Goebbels, the Nazi chief propagandist, had been looking for someone to turn into a Christian martyr for the party and drum up enrollment. He turned Wessel’s funeral into a major propaganda event full of speeches antagonizing leftists. Thinking about him today for no particular reason.

That last bit shows a sign outside the arena where Kirk’s funeral was held. In Sunday’s pundit roundup Chitown Kev quoted Michael Bader of Salon:

We are experiencing extreme moral injury, every single day. So what do I mean by moral injury? That can happen when a soldier is ordered to torture, abuse or kill an enemy combatant or, worse yet, to harm civilians. Or when a drone operator learns, after an attack, that his drone killed several children. Or when a nurse administers a painful treatment to a terminally ill patient, knowing it is not likely to change the patient’s ultimate fate in any way. Or when, during the COVID pandemic, medical professionals were forced to make impossible choices due to resource shortages — to decide who got ventilators, to ration out protective equipment or to work in conditions they knew were unsafe for their patients or themselves. Those situations, and others like them, are classic examples of moral injury. The individual afflicted feels guilt, shame and anger, but ultimately, and perhaps more important, feels — and is — objectively helpless to do anything about it. The nurse or the soldier in most such situations is not experiencing direct physical harm. The harm is psychic and moral, reflecting a conflict between deeply held ethical beliefs and behaviors that violate these beliefs, particularly behaviors over which one has little or no control. [...] I believe that under Donald Trump, millions upon millions of people are enduring daily moral injuries that are extremely harmful to psychological well-being.

In the comments paulpro posted a cartoon (author not identified) showing Charlie Kirk arriving at the gates of Heaven and, surprise!, he’s welcomed by a black woman. Scott Horton posted a cartoon by Matt Wuerker showing a dam on a river labeled “Journalism” showing some big cracks as the lake behind it is the dumping grounds for sludge coming from pipes labeled, “Propaganda, Conspiracy Theories, Fake News,” and more. No longer available is a tweet of two men dropping off a plastic spine at ABC, the company that let Jimmy Kimmel go.

A spine is a terrible thing to waste

Lisa Needham of Daily Kos wrote about the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel’s show on ABC.

Man, you gotta hand it to ABC. The speed with which it will knuckle under to President Donald Trump is really impressive. It took only a few hours for the powers that be to indefinitely sideline award-winning late-night host Jimmy Kimmel after the Trump administration expressed displeasure with Kimmel’s recent monologue. ... Of course, ABC has always been good about capitulating to Trump quickly. After he won the 2024 election, ABC executives didn’t even bother to wait until he took office before handing him $16 million in the hopes his administration would leave them alone. Suckers. That $16 million, ostensibly paid to settle a meritless defamation lawsuit Trump filed, didn’t buy them anything. You can’t negotiate with terrorists. All ABC did was show how willing it was to accede to Trump’s demands.

In a monologue Kimmel said that MAGA was using Kirk’s death to score political points. Which is true. Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr went all mob boss and threatened ABC. Nexstar Media, which owns a lot of TV stations, said it would not air Kimmel’s show. ABC pulled Kimmel’s show. Needham noted that Nexstar just signed a $6.2 billion deal with a rival that needs approval from the nasty guy administration. This was the same situation for CBS and its parent Paramount wanting to merge with Skydance that prompted the firing of Stephen Colbert. Sinclair, the owner of the most ABC affiliate stations, also expressed disapproval of Kimmel. On hearing the news that ABC succumbed, the nasty guy tweeted that “Jimmy and Seth” are next in his crosshairs. That’s Fallon and Meyers.

Trump will just keep coming after any media company that ever speaks ill of him or his fellow travelers, and no amount of money is going to fix that. Unless ABC wants to turn into Fox or Newsmax, this is their future.

On Friday NPR host Leila Fadel spoke to NPR senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith about the situation. They started with a recording of Carr.

I don't think this is the last shoe to drop. This is a massive shift that's taking place in the media ecosystem, and I think the consequences are going to continue to flow.

The FCC threatening to pull broadcast licenses over what a performer said does not appear to be legal, but when has that stopped the nasty guy? The FCC does have the power to investigate and fine stations and pull licenses when necessary. It also approves mergers, giving Carr significant leverage. Yes, Carr is doing this on behalf of the nasty guy, who has been campaigning against Kimmel and network TV in general for months. And yes, First Amendment advocates are raising alarms. Ilya Somin is a constitutional law expert at the libertarian Cato Institute said, as reported by Keith, “Government power is obviously being weaponized against speech.” And this case is not complicated. That NPR story was followed by host Steve Inskeep talking to Robert Corn-Revere, formerly a lawyer at the FCC and is now at FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a free speech organization. Corn-Revere said for the entire existence of the FCC it has been governed by the First Amendment and the Communications Act, both prohibit a federal agency from exercising censorship. The FCC doesn’t license networks, only stations. But both Carr and the nasty guy believe they can pressure networks into making network decisions, and they are doing just that. The FCC was designed to be independent of the presidency to be bipartisan and independent of politics. The nasty guy claims there is no independence, which is a fundamental shift. Corn-Revere is very much bothered by the corporations backing down in the face of pressure – “A spine is a terrible thing to waste.” Bill in Portland, Maine usually starts his Friday Cheers and Jeers posts for Kos with late night commentary. Yesterday, he devoted it to quotes of Kimmel with one a year going back to 2018, except for 2023 when the writers union was on strike. Here are a couple of them:

"Many people are still resisting the covid vaccine in favor of the paste they use to de-worm horses, so much so that horse owners are having trouble finding it. One feed store in Las Vegas had to post this sign: 'Ivermectin will only be sold to horse owners—must show pic of you and your horse.' Can you imagine? You won't go to Walgreen's to get a free vaccine, but you'll spend four hours photoshopping your body onto a Clydesdale.” —2021 "The Brooklyn Public library has a great program called Books Unbanned that provides online access to banned books to anyone between the ages of 13 and 21, including young people in other states where they're banning kids from reading these great books because their parents are stupid—they're banning anything that isn’t a Cheesecake Factory menu in some of these states. But this is why I love Brooklyn: even the librarians here are giving the middle finger to these people." —2022 (while airing his show from his hometown)

Yesterday Gaslit Nation posted an episode titled KPop Demon Hunters Antifa. I didn’t listen to the 27 minutes of audio, but I read through the show description. It begins:

A Gaslit Nation listener once asked me: What’s the canary in the coal mine for American democracy? My answer: when they come for the comedians. Because when authoritarians kill the jokes, they kill the dissent. Look at Russia. In Putin’s early years, Kukly, a wildly popular political satire by smack-talking puppets, mocked him mercilessly. One of his first moves? Force media consolidation. Suddenly, the show vanished. Fast forward 25 years to today, you can’t hold an anti-war sign in Moscow without being arrested.

When Kukly was on more than half the nation’s TV sets were tuned in to it. Nexstar and Sinclair are “Republican-aligned networks with monopoly-level reach.” They may have pressured Disney, owner of ABC, but Disney did it to itself. They gave the “convicted felon a $15 million ‘charitable contribution’ to his ‘presidential library’ to settle a defamation suit.” It surrendered and that paved the way for mainstream media to capitulate. America’s greatest export is culture, humor, and art. An example is KPop Demon Hunters, the most watched show on Netflix. Since fascist hate truth and humor the best way to fight back is for every one of us to point out the truth and have fun doing it. NPR noted Kimmel’s monologue mentioned that he talked about Kirk’s death. NPR didn’t mention what Gaslit Nation did, that Kimmel also talked about the Epstein cover-up. The response to Kirk’s murder is part of that cover-up. In Friday’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin started with a quote from Dan Pfeiffer of The Message Box. The key sentence from the quote:

Well, the MAGA Right is on the verge of controlling the vast majority of the American media ecosystem.

Brian Stelter tweeted:

KEY to the story about ABC suspending Kimmel's show: Nexstar and Sinclair, two big owners of ABC-affiliated stations, both need FCC approval for pending deals. With a lot of $$ on the line, both have reason to curry favor with the Trump admin. Both decided to yank Kimmel's show.

In the comments costal resistance posted words from cartoonist Ann Telnaes, who left a comfy newspaper job over a disagreement of the suitability of a cartoon. The words are beside a jester in a noose.

With ridicule, irony, and exaggeration editorial cartoonists provoke, challenge, irritate, and frankly, make powerful people angry. That’s why autocrats especially, do not like editorial cartoons which target them. They don’t like their corrupt actions being exposed and they don’t like being laughed at.

A meme posted by exlrrp and written by Qasim Rashid:

ABC fires Kimmel for mocking Trump CBS fires Colbert for mocking Trump ABC fires Moran for slamming Miller MSNBC fires Dowd for calling out hate speech. Fox protects Brian Kilmeade as he calls for Nazi state murder of homeless. Corporate Media has Failed Us. And as the receipts show, this Trump regime knows exactly what its doing as it enacts fascism.

Jon Cooper posted a cartoon by Dave Whamond showing a Museum of History. Near the rubble of the Pillars of Democracy is a display case showing a “Talk Show Host, Circa 2025.” A father and son discuss the display:

Father: Unfortunately, they all died off around 2025, son! They used to tell jokes every night. Son: What’s a joke? Father: A joke is something said to provoke laughter – they died out around then too.

Home of the Brave tweeted a moment of Colbert’s monologue discussing Kimmel:

Nexstar has a major merger coming up before the Trump administration. A company apparently capitulating to the whims of the president in order to ensure their merger goes through? Has that ever happened before? I'm being told not to answer that question.

Steve Brodner tweeted:

The Real Reason Kimmel Had to Go. This suspension of Jimmy Kimmel came after local station oligarchs Nexstar and Sinclair pressured FCC cchair, Trumpoodle Brendan Carr. Trumpist Nexstar is seeking FCC approval of a $6.2 billion acquisition of rival broadcaster Tegna. It would then control 80% of TV households across 44 states.

I note that other reporting says the pressure was the other way around, Carr pressuring Nexstar and Sinclair. As for that 80% number, how does the network control TV households? Can they get only one station? Does the network control all the stations of all the networks in these areas? Perhaps the attached link, which I didn’t follow, might clear that up. Andy Paterson posted a cartoon showing a man opening the front door to be faced with a large number of guardsmen. He says, “Honey, did you post something negative about the regime?” And a cartoon for fun. This one by Ellis Rosen. It shows passengers in an airplane. They hear, “This is your captain speaking. We may hit some turbulence as I write ‘Marry Me Samantha’ in the sky for a few extra bucks.” In Saturday’s roundup Dworkin quoted the Dallas Morning News discussing Sen. Ted Cruz.

The Texas Republican also emphasized how much he hates what Kimmel said about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk — and how much he likes and works closely with Carr. Having high-ranking federal officials threaten a network in such a way, however, is “dangerous as hell” because it presents a slippery slope that could end with conservatives facing government censorship down the road, Cruz said. “If the government gets in the business of saying, ‘We don’t like what you the media have said, we’re going to ban you from the airwaves if you don’t say what we like,’ that will end up bad for conservatives,” Cruz said on his Friday podcast.

For once Cruz is right. Tweets from Ken Dilanian:

Two people familiar with the matter tell @MSNBC that the Trump administration is preparing to fire the US attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia today over his refusal to bring charges against the New York Attorney General. Career prosecutors do not believe the charges are warranted. The Trump-appointed prosecutor who refused to charge one of Trump’s enemies has now been forced out of office, and the United States is confronting something we have never seen before: A president essentially ordering his DoJ to charge someone with a crime, regardless of whether the people whose job it is to evaluate the case think there is insufficient evidence.

That is or is very close to saying charge them with a crime, make one up if you have to. In the comments is a tweet from Carr showing a man with a wolfish grin. The face is vaguely familiar and looks like someone from a horror or thriller movie (which I don’t watch). Kevin McHale responded: “This was all in Project 2025 btw.” JPHill added: “Had to double check this was real. It is. This is Trump’s FCC chair.” Will Stancil concluded: “Dictatorship has arrived. They think they’re far enough along they can start bragging about it.” Bill Bramhall posted a cartoon of a couple in bed watching TV. The man says, “Who cares if the government cancels TV shows? We still can read an approved book.”

Wrong to celebrate someone's death, wrong to distort their life

By the time I think I might get caught up in reading the news, more news happens. So I’m still a bit behind. On Tuesday Oliver Willis of Daily Kos wrote on a topic that for me is quickly getting old:

Conservatives are engaged in a coast-to-coast witch hunt meant to punish people who aren’t marching in lockstep with the right’s attempts to lionize slain bigot Charlie Kirk. In a push led by Republican lawmakers, people are being hounded, fired, and even arrested for not going along with the right’s sanitized narrative of Kirk’s life. Kirk spent his years as a political influencer and organizer attacking the rights of trans people, women, racial minorities, and others. He promoted baseless smears and conspiracy theories and delighted in antagonizing his political rivals. Kirk even belittled the dangers of the gun violence that ultimately took his life. The right is now pushing for all of this to be forgotten in favor of a cleaned-up version of Kirk that emphasizes the loss experienced by his friends and family while omitting the harm he did to public discourse.

Willis then provides many examples. In Sunday’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Heather Cox Richardson of the Substack Letters from an American. She talked about Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook who the nasty guy tried to fire because of the claim she had declared two homes to be her principle residence to get better mortgage rates.

It appears the documents that director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency Bill Pulte used to accuse her of mortgage fraud were standardized forms that her personal application specifying the house was a second home overrode. It also appears that Cook never applied for a primary residence tax exemption for the Georgia home and that she referred to the home on official documents as a “2nd home.” ... Trump hoped to use the allegations against Cook to advance his control of the Federal Reserve. Now the revelation that those allegations appear to be false highlights the degree to which this administration is attempting to achieve control of the country by pushing a false narrative and getting what its officers want before reality catches up. Senator Joe McCarthy (R-WI) pioneered this technique in the 1950s when he would grab media attention with outrageous statements and outright lies that destroyed lives, then flit to the next target, leaving fact checkers panting in his wake. By the time they proved he was lying, the news cycle had leaped far ahead, and the corrections got nowhere near the attention the lies had.

In the comments is a cartoon by Graeme MacKay. It shows street signs at the intersection of “1st Amendment” and “2nd Amendment.” At the base of the signs is a memorial to Charlie Kirk. Filling the intersection is an accident where a car labeled “Intolerant rhetoric” has been smashed by a car labeled “Gun freedom.” Off to the side a man asks, “Which car was he in?” A woman replies, “Both.” In the comments of Tuesday’s roundup are several good memes and cartoons. Nick Anderson drew one titled Republican Politicians. It shows a family posing in front of a Christmas tree for the seasonal photo. Dad, Mom, and the kids each have a high powered gun. Mom looks at her watch and says, “We need to wrap this up. I don’t want to be late to my press conference condemning leftists for promoting violence.” Dr. MacLeod cartoons shows two men talking:

Red hat: I can’t believe these disgusting people saying bad things about a man who has been assassinated. No hat: Do you mean like when Charlie Kirk said that Martin Luther King was “awful” and that he was “not a good person”?

A meme posted by Feminist News Now:

The truly, truly strange thing about Kirk is that I have not seen his supporters quote one statement by him that illustrates his supposed nobility of character. Normally, when a civil rights leader is assassinated, their supporters spend days reciting their greatest quotes and preachings. So, it’s notable that the right has devoted the past two days trying to get Olive Garden waitresses fired for being critical, while completely avoiding his body of work.

A meme posted by exlrrp and written by AesPolitics says, “I remember a time when shootings like these didn’t end with the sitting president blaming 48.3% of the country for something they didn’t even do.” Trilemma posted a cartoon based on the well known trio of figures that include the words “Hear no evil...” This time is is three men in red hats that have the words, “See no crimes. Hear no facts. Speak no truth.” In Wednesday’s roundup Greg Dworkin quoted Berny Belvedere of The UnPopulist discussed what the nasty guy has done in response to Charlie Kirk’s murder, then wrote:

But he has already proved, yet again, that he represents a radical departure from past presidents in similar circumstances. Those presidents did not shy away from calling out the perpetrators or the destructive ideologies they stood for—but neither did they cynically seize on such occasions and use them to turbocharge a partisan crackdown on political opponents. It is really important to understand the contrast between Trump’s behavior and those of previous presidents for two reasons: First, to get a clear measure of the extent of our moral descent. And second, to fully understand the authoritarian dangers our republic is facing.

David Russell Moore, on his own website wrote:

There’s a fixation, in online political debate, about voting in federal elections held every two years. Liberals tend to lash out at progressives or independents who suggest they might not vote for Democratic candidates. So much political oxygen gets taken up by the debate over Biden-vs.-Trump. Voting becomes an obsessive focus because Democratic Party leaders fight efforts to create official channels where changes to policy, like U.S. support for Israel’s war on Gaza, can be openly debated and formally considered. Free technology tools and meaningful deliberation programs that would increase participation within the party, often called “liquid democracy,” are unused. There’s little discussion on MSNBC, Pod Save America, or in New York Times op-eds about practical ways the Democratic Party could increase participation among its members in the here and now. By keeping such reform options in the dark, party leaders succeed in keeping them off the table. Even in the age of social media, the Democratic Party remains a stubbornly closed-off enterprise. At the top, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) is a private corporation, as opposed to a membership organization like a labor union, and its leaders have impunity over how they set and enforce party rules. For decades, DNC insiders have gone to war to prevent basic transparency and grassroots reform efforts from gaining steam.

That last paragraph has a dozen links to articles detailing the points Moore is making. Kevin Kruse wrote about what others are calling the whitewashing of Kirk’s legacy.

As the nation reckons with the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, there has been a notable trend from mainstream pundits and press outlets. They have tended to downplay or outright ignore the ugly things that he said and instead to stress the polite ways he said them. It's an emphasis on style over substance. This approach has been widespread in the punditocracy, which has almost uniformly moved to hold Kirk up as a rare avatar of civil disagreement in an uncivil era. Ezra Klein's opinion piece in the New York Times, literally titled "Charlie Kirk Was Practicing Politics the Right Way," is a perfect example of this argument, but only the most prominent. Just this morning, a journalist with The Atlantic Monthly stirred up Bluesky by asserting flatly that Kirk was admirable because he "argued with civility." While I think it's absolutely wrong to celebrate someone's death, I think it's equally wrong to distort their life after they're gone. These pundits' paeans to Charlie Kirk's "civil" approach to politics ignore the many illustrations of his incivility. He had a record of making anti-Semitic comments, racist and sexist comments, attacks on religious minorities and immigrants that extended to spouting and defending the white supremacist "great replacement theory" that presents immigration of non-whites as a sinister conspiracy to destroy America.

In the comments exlrrp posted a meme by The Complex Rebel discussing the political organization Kirk founded at age 18.

Turning Point wasn’t grassroots. Bradley Impact fund alone dumped $8,100,000 USD into Kirk’s machine then added a $108,000,000 war chest for 2024. Billionaires fund the class war. Charlie Kirk sold it as a race war. The money keeps them rich. The hate keeps us divided. That’s the playbook.

Also posted by exlrrp are a pair of tweets: First by Charlie Kirk: “Kentanji (sic) Brown Jackson is a diversity hire. She is only there because she’s a black woman.” Alex Cole responded, “Ketanji graduated magna cum laude from Harvard. You dropped out of community college to cosplay as a fascist. ‘Diversity hire’ is what racists say when a Black woman earns something they never could.” A meme from former GOP Congressman Joe Walsh:

When I was a tea party Congressman and right wing radio talker, I made fun of the snowflakes on the left who couldn’t handle speech that offended them. Well lookie here. Now the free speech wussies, the way too easily triggered/offended snowflakes, are all on the MAGA right. Hilarious.

A meme from chescaleigh: “If glorifying violence is so bad, why did y’all make Kyle Rittenhouse a celebrity?” A meme posted by exlrrp shows the rainbow crosswalk near the Pulse nightclub site, where dozens of people were gunned down, had been painted over. “Next time you think art doesn’t matter; just think about how scared, in 2025, the fascists are of sidewalk chalk.” In Thursday’s roundup Kev quoted Jake Lamut of Wired. Here’s a bit of it:

As time went on, there appeared to be only one source of true unity: Agreement between the ultra MAGA and Silicon Valley wings of the party over who the they responsible for Kirk’s murder really is. It’s anyone Republican leaders want it to be. According to one expert, that’s the entire point...

Lily Conway of The Contrarian discussed the messages on Kirk’s shooters unfired cartridges:

For someone unfamiliar with the tactics and communication styles of the online alt-right, these messages may appear as a jumble of nonsense (or even leftist messaging, especially the second and third engravings). However, the alt-right does not communicate through straightforward, earnest speech. Rather, it “weaponizes irony to attract and radicalize potential supporters, challenge progressive ideologies and institutions, redpill normies, and create a toxic counterpublic.” They communicate through terse, coded, and generally offensive phrases meant to signal group recognition. Nothing is said in earnest–in fact, any expression of earnestness is roundly mocked. Every true meaning is hidden under double or triple layers of irony only accessible to the in-group. As Julia Rose DeCook argues, “trolling itself has become a kind of political aesthetic and identity.” Indeed, it’s not unreasonable to question if these users carry any political ideology beyond mockery, irony, and bitter cynicism.

In the comments exlrrp posted a meme from Jojo from Jerz:

So let me see if I have this right, the same Republicans who are saying Charlie Kirk was murdered for exercising his freedom of speech because he said things some didn’t like, are punishing people for exercising their freedom of speech because they said things they didn’t like?!”

A cartoon posted by paulpro and created by Dr. Seuss shows the sideshow at a circus. A man is on stage with his jacket labeled “Appeaser.” Between his jacket and trousers are suspenders and no body. The barker says, “And on this platform, the most amazing marvel of the age! He lives; he talks...yet he has no guts!”

Running at warp speed into government censorship

I finished the book Gaslighting; Recognize Manipulative and Emotionally Abusive People – and Break Free, by Stephanie Moulton Sarkis, PhD. She’s a therapist working in Tampa and a specialist in gaslighting. I bought the book thinking it would describe gaslighting in great detail while standing a ways away and discussing well known gaslighters. But it is much more up close and personal – how to deal with a gaslighter in your life. The term comes from a 1938 play and 1944 movie in which a man convinces a woman she is going crazy because she is told and begins to believe things that are clearly not true. Some of the traits: A gaslighter can be charming, but is overly controlling and abusive. They pit people against each other, they don’t accept responsibility, they mistreat people with less power and use their weakness against them, they obsess over their accomplishments and image, they want you to fawn over them, they con people, they lie, they isolate others as a way to control, the few compliments they give out are more like insults, they require loyalty but don’t give it, and more. Many gaslighters have suffered a narcissistic injury a profound and deep threat to their self-worth or self-esteem. Yeah, that very much sounds like the guy sitting in the Oval Office. And I’m not the first to make that connection. It is one reason why I bought the book. People who have lived with a gaslighter for a long time may not recognize what a healthy relationship looks like. That’s one reason they stay in it. The other is they keep hoping the gaslighter will change, as he says he will do and never does. So most of the book is about what to do when in a relationship with a gaslighter. Short answer: leave. He’s not going to change. The relationship will only get worse. Sarkis describes how to leave and how complete the break needs to be. But sometimes complete separation isn’t possible. Such as when the gaslighter is a coworker, neighbor, your sibling and your parent will try to keep the connection, your ex and you still have to co-parent, or your ex’s new partner. Sarkis then provides a lot of help in how to treat the gaslighter to maintain your own sanity, the sanity of your children, and your reputation. There is also a chapter on what to do when the gaslighter is a politician. The last chapter is if you realize you might be a gaslighter. Sarkis makes a distinction between a gaslighter and one who has learned gaslighting behavior because that’s all they’ve known. A gaslighter will not see they have a problem and will not seek counseling. So if you do recognize such behaviors in yourself you’re not a gaslighter and there is hope to learn how to build healthy relationships. In that chapter Sarkis describes various methods of counseling so that a person can choose what is right for them. Sarkis also lists resources for therapists, attorneys, employee rights, and help for minors, coparenting, domestic violence, and suicide. Thankfully, no one I’m directly involved with is a gaslighter, so this book isn’t directly useful to me. However, it is a necessary and important resource to those who have to deal with one. I will donate this book to a young man I know. Last Saturday on NPR host Alisa Chang spoke to Jude Joffe-Block and Huo Jingnan, also of NPR, about those who criticized Charlie Kirk after his assassinated last week and are losing their jobs. This is three days after Kirk died. Joffe-Block said:

Kirk's supporters and high-profile, right-wing influencers, along with some elected officials, have been mobilizing to get people fired for posting in a celebratory way about Kirk's murder.

Those celebratory comments seem, to me, rather mild, such as saying: hate begets hate, zero sympathy. A reminder, Kirk had made incendiary remarks about races, immigrants, transgender people, and others. The types of people being fired include “teachers, civil servants, nurses, doctors” and I’m sure many others. Whether their firings violate Free Speech depends on the job and what was said, but in many cases no laws were violated. This effort is troubling in an important way. Conservative influencers on social media highlight cases and, the troubling part, Republican officials then call for their firing. One of those was Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn and another was Republican Rep. Clay Higgins from Louisiana. Rebekah Tromble, a First Amendment expert said:

We are running at essentially warp speed directly into maybe an even worse moment of government repression and censorship than we witnessed during the McCarthy era.

Joffe-Block again:

You know, the internet is definitely built for these kinds of crowdsourcing projects. You know, Charlie Kirk himself rose to fame for creating a watch list, encouraging students to report professors they consider to be radical left.

On Sunday NPR host Scott Detrow spoke to reporter Luke Garrett. They started with a comment by Utah Governor Spencer Cox:

We can confirm that his roommate was indeed a boyfriend who is transitioning from male to female.

That seems to fuel the Republican claim that Tyler Robinson, the shooter, was under the influence of the radical Left. Did Robinson shoot Kirk because of Kirk’s criticism of transgender rights? While the roommate and the rest of the Robinson family are cooperating with authorities, Tyler is not. His motives remain unknown. Cox, even before the shooting, has been a leading voice for peace and calm. He made the rounds of Sunday talk shows asking whether we want to be a nation of civility or violence. He also called people to get off their devices and have real relationships. Republicans have taken up booing him. Garrett said:

So members of Congress have less security than the president and are often in very public spaces, similar to the one where Kirk was in right before he died. And Oklahoma Senator James Lankford said, something has really changed on Capitol Hill. He told CNN that lawmakers have received 14,000 threats in 2025 alone. That's around 50 threats every day.

Lankford called for the temperature to be turned down on Capitol Hill and the White House. On Monday Walter Einenkel of Daily Kos reported that Stephen Miller, the guy behind making sure White House policy is as racist as possible, gave his response to Kirk’s assassination. I won’t quote his nasty words, only that, as Einenkel wrote, the nasty guy administration “would harness the anger over Kirk’s death to dismantle what he described as a coordinated ‘terrorist’ left.” And he’ll do it in Charlie’s name. From what little I know of Kirk and his willingness to debate opponents he would not want the destruction of the Left be done in his name. Then again, he did say some vile things about the left. On Tuesday Emily Singer of Kos reported that AG Pam Bondi declared she will bring the full force of the Department of Justice down on those who spouted “hate speech” against Kirk or any conservative activist. She has no understanding of Free Speech and that any words, except those that defame or that threaten or incite violence, cannot be made illegal. But Bondi contradicts Kirk:

"Hate speech does not exist legally in America. There's ugly speech. There's gross speech. There's evil speech. And ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment," Kirk wrote in May 2024 in a post on X. "Keep America free."

Even when conservative commentators quickly schooled Bondi on Free Speech, she still didn’t get it. I don’t want to find out how loosely Bondi defines “hate speech.” On Monday Einenkel quoted Secretary of State Marco Rubio:

Once a society loses the ability of people with strong disagreements to engage in discourse, then the only option you're left with is either silence or violence. Neither one of which is acceptable. Both are very destructive.

Good to hear it! Alas, one doubts Rubio was talking about his own Republican party and trying to get it to tone down. He was almost surely trying to describe the Left and Democrats. Quite rich from the guy who threatened deportation as a way to silence dissent. Lisa Needham of Kos wrote that Republicans aren’t even pretending to care about Free Speech anymore.

The Republican Party’s commitment to free speech has never been full-throated. Rather, their approach has been more of a “free speech for me but not for thee” sort of thing at the best of times. But in the wake of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk’s shooting death, even the nominal lip service conservatives give to the First Amendment is wholly out the window. In its place, we now have pretty much every textbook violation of the First Amendment you can imagine. Lucky us.

Needham then gives many examples. That includes the nasty guy calling for an investigation into is funding all that “alleged nefarious liberal slander of Kirk,” I’m sure the answer is “nobody.” We’re all willing to call out Kirk’s harmful comments for free – does that imply Republicans won’t say anything without being bribed? But even if there was a money trail, the conservative Supreme Court ruling on Citizens United should keep the benefactor protected. Singer sums up the situation well with the opening paragraph of a post:

Conservatives have come up with a host of measures they want taken to avenge right-wing activist Charlie Kirk's murder—none of which include gun reforms.

Feeding young men a steady diet of grievance

My Sunday movie was Just Friends, a Netherlands movie released in 2018. It’s less than 90 minutes. It’s a gay love story. One of the lads in Joris. His father died ten years ago when Joris was 11. The movie opened with the family reclaiming the urn holding the father’s ashes. I pieced together that urns are held in a mausoleum for ten years and Mom didn’t want to pay the rent for another ten years. She has her own issues around being widowed so young. Joris tries to leave the urn somewhere around the house, but it is always returned to him. He wants a connection with his father, but not through the urn. Yad is the other lad. He had been a medical student in Amsterdam, but after passing out at a party he returns home to the community where he grew up. His mother is annoyed he has no occupational ambition. He gets a job as a domestic for a woman living in senior housing – who happens to be Joris’ grandmother. When the two lads meet they immediately start flirting. Did they sense the other is gay? Since both are out to their families had Grandma told her help about her son? A problem in the budding relationship is that Joris’ mom isn’t so keen on Yad being Muslim. He was born in Syria and the family moved to Netherlands as refugees, where he grew up. The story goes where expected. I may say that a lot, but it isn’t always a bad thing. I enjoyed it. Kos of Daily Kos discussed the gender gap as political chasm. He begins with stats to show the stark difference between young women voting for Harris and young men voting for the nasty guy. Then Kos included a tweet by Steve Kornacki about the results of a poll he helped conduct through NBC News Decision Desk. It asked Gen Z adults, men who voted for the nasty guy and women who voted for Harris, whether various things were important to their personal definition of success. I’m pretty sure the numbers represent the percent of respondents who said an item is important. Some of the items are similar in both groups. 21% of both men and women said having no debt was part of their personal definition of success. Making family and community proud was similar, 23% of men, 19% of women. 33% of men and 32% of women said financial independence was important. Then the items with widely differing importance. 34% of men but 6% of women said having children was important to success. 29% of men but 6% of women thought being married was important. Having money to do things you want, 28% men, 46% women. Having a fulfilling job, 30% men and 51% women. Having emotional stability, 9% men, 39% women. Kos wrote:

Both men and women highly value financial independence and a fulfilling career, but women—with higher educational attainment—are increasingly competing for and winning those opportunities. That leaves a generation of men who want families and children—while their female peers don’t—struggling to secure careers in increasingly competitive fields. Enter the manosphere and its influencers—a sprawling network of podcasts, YouTube channels, and social media accounts feeding young men a steady diet of grievance. The core message is always the same: Men are owed women—women to bear their children, keep their homes, and provide sex.

If men don’t get what they’re owed, they blame feminism, liberalism, and “woke culture” as corrupting women away from their biological destinies. This worldview, pushed by the manosphere, tells men they’re victims. The message is the same:

True masculinity means reasserting rigid gender hierarchies—by any force necessary. It’s toxic and dangerous. These ideas don’t just encourage resentment; they legitimize violence. When men are told that society has “stolen” their futures, it doesn’t take much for frustration to turn into radicalization.

Alienated and disaffected young men are a threat to both left and right – to the right if they feel betrayed or ignored. Radicalized young men are combustible. We channel their energy constructively or we face violence. Oliver Willis of Kos, as part of his series on Explaining the Right, he takes on why conservatives love guns so much. I think he gets quite close to the answer I’ve come up with. He of course begins by listing some of the statements over the years of conservatives declaring their love for guns, or at least their refusal to regulate guns. And that love is much more than the NRA handing out lots of money.

Conservatism embraces gun culture as an attempt to control things. Much like right-wing fear of diverse cities, conservatism asserts gun rights—despite the threat to public safety—because guns are seen as a way to control things. The right has a deep-seated issue with growing gender and racial diversity, so guns are seen as a way to keep that in check. Guns are also used by the right to reinforce a culture of faux machismo. Many on the right believe that owning and using guns is a display of strength, while they deride purported feminine weakness from groups like Moms Demand Action for opposing gun violence.

Using guns to keep things in check doesn’t say what “in check” means and why they want to control things. So to my understanding: Guns are the best way to enforce the social hierarchy. They prove the person with the gun is socially superior to the one they’re aiming at. If the target dies the death shows the shooter is superior because the shooter was able to take the life. If the gun doesn’t go off it’s usually because the target managed some act of submission, of acknowledging the superiority of the other. The nasty guy is in England to visit royalty. There was also a far right rally with a turnout that was maybe up to 150,000, way too high for comfort. NPR host Mary Louise Kelly spoke to Clive Lewis, a member of Parliament with British-Caribbean ancestry. Lewis could look down at the crowd from his window. Many held far right banners and many others were people he knew – old school chums and neighbors. He recognized these people liked what they’re hearing but aren’t yet far right. Some of that feeling of being powerless comes from many British institutions – railways, health system, water system – that have been hollowed out. The people have lost trust and feel they’re not being heard. Lewis talked about fellow MP Nigel Farange. He champions wealth, but is now moving towards a position of public-private partnerships. It is those on the right who are the first to say we hear you and will change things. Lewis said he saw American conservatives use Charlie Kirk’s assassination as an opportunity to increase political repression, to say their freedom of speech has greater weight than other’s. From what Lewis said I saw another instance of the pattern that is playing out in America. The rich cause public services to disintegrate and oppress the poor by limiting their opportunities. Then the rich are much faster at capitalizing on the angst. They blame immigrants and offer solutions that protect their own position. All of it can stir up the voters. None of it will actually make their lives better. The rich still control everything to protect their position at the top of the hierarchy. In Monday’s pundit roundup Greg Dworkin of Kos quoted a pair of tweets. First Meghan McCain, daughter of the late Sen. John McCain:

I think the fundamental difference between the right and the left in this country is that the left glorifies death - particularly of adversaries and the right does not. And it’s not something I think I really have fully faced until Charlie’s assassination. And it’s petrifying.

That reminds me: From the right an accusation is actually a confession. But on to a rebuttal from Sarah Longwell:

One reason you get deranged takes like this from people who used to oppose Trump, is that the mental and moral gymnastics it took to become a Trump supporter/apologist requires a simple mantra, “The Left is worse.” So you work to constantly convince yourself that’s true.

Max Burns tweeted a thread now on Threadreader:

A Gen Z colleague described the "blackpill mindset" to me in a way I'd never heard before: For younger kids today, especially men, there's a pressure to either "get rich at any cost" or "get famous at any cost." They use irony and crude memes to mask the deep anxiety they feel. What stood out to this person was the "lol nothing matters" attitude Kirk's assassin tried so hard to project in his ironic bullet inscriptions, political-but-mostly-stupid meme Halloween costumes, and the gamer culture he was steeped in. His politics almost feel secondary. We're seeing an uptick in "ironic" phrases written on bullet casings and manifestos that are peppered with Very Online references meant to be read and understood not by the media, but by these shooters' online peers. They want to be remembered as the people who "went for it." It speaks to an alienation that younger Americans (disproportionately men) try to heal not through therapy but through online game communities, Discord, and validating themselves online. Their goal isn't news coverage - it's to be cheered on their niche forums of choice.

In the comments the cartoon Twonks comments on fitness devices.

Woman: Right, I’m heading out for a walk. Couch potato man: Can you take my watch with you?

A conservative martyr, but not conservative enough

The story of Charlie Kirk’s assassination continues. A suspect is in custody. I’ll get to him soon. Oliver Willis of Daily Kos reported that the nasty guy announced the capture on Fox & Friends. That seems to be his favorite show. But why not a police official at a press conference making that announcement?

Trump expressed his excitement not for the justice of catching the person who allegedly murdered his friend, but he was instead animated by how the news would help Fox’s ratings. Trump has often expressed more interest in television ratings than in basic human decency.

Willis also reported that Kirk’s legacy is already being whitewashed. One example of many:

Rachel Bade, Politico’s Capitol bureau chief, wrote, “Agree with him or not, Charlie Kirk was a force of nature who embraced open debate and engaging with those who disagreed with him.”

Little is said about what he said that was so disagreeable. Willis fills in some of that and concluded:

Kirk’s killing was wrong. It was an outgrowth of the pro-gun culture that he himself helped foster. But he wasn’t a good person, and the news media and others should not erase what the man stood for throughout his time in the public eye.

Alex Samuels of Kos reported:

Lawmakers from both parties spoke out against political violence in the wake of conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s killing. But while Democrats zeroed in on the country’s lax gun laws, President Donald Trump and many of his allies on the right wasted no time in blaming the “radical left.” Minutes after Kirk, a close Trump ally, was shot and killed while speaking at a Utah college campus on Wednesday, the far-right corners of the internet exploded. Influencers, extremist communities—and even onetime co-president Elon Musk—flooded social media with calls for revenge. “This is a war, this is a war, this is a war,” Alex Jones, the school-shooting conspiracy theorist, declared on Infowars, setting the tone for the night.

Jones was far from the only voice. One was Musk who posted, “The Left is the party of murder.” That reminds me of the saying that an accusation by a Republican is actually a confession. Willis reported that many conservatives, including the White House, are comparing Kirk’s death to the 9/11 attack. Kirk was killed on the 24th anniversary of that awful day. Willis concluded:

Nearly 3,000 innocent people were killed on 9/11. They were parents, children, siblings, and friends. They weren’t hatemongers, and they aren’t the same as Kirk at all.

Walter Einenkel of Kos reported Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez talked to the press. She said:

There is no understanding, as we know publicly, of who this individual is, what their motivations were, where they came from. Whether it's a member of Congress, whether it is the president of the United States—to assume and assert and cast blame when the FBI has failed to even apprehend the assailant is absolutely an irresponsible action. People can finger point all they want. Look at the record. Look at the actions of what we are doing. I don't think a single person who has dedicated their entire career to preventing gun safety legislation from getting passed in this House has any right to blame anybody else but themselves for what is happening.

Lisa Needham of Kos reported:

Leave it to President Donald Trump’s administration to turn the shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk into a way to attack immigrants and suppress the free speech of people that Trumpers don’t like. It’s a two-fer of terrible. The State Department didn’t waste a moment in letting everyone know how blatantly it was going to weaponize Kirk’s death. Less than 24 hours after the shooting, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau posted on X that “foreigners who glorify violence and hatred are not welcome visitors to our country” and directed consular officials to “undertake appropriate action.” ... This all boils down to ostensible right-wing free speech champions demanding that the government actively suppress speech they don’t like, on pain of deportation. Put another way, it’s an assertion that the First Amendment literally does not protect mildly negative speech about Charlie Kirk. … No one was ever going to stop the right from turning Kirk into a conservative martyr. But it’s downright infuriating that the government wants to use its power to demand that we all do the same.

I doubt foreigners are the ones glorifying violence. Emily Singer of Kos reported that far right house Republicans sent a letter Speaker Mike Johnson calling for a select committee to investigate the “radical left.” They are placing blame and harassing opponents “the best way they know how—the formation of a useless select committee that will waste taxpayer resources and not accomplish anything.” Yeah, they’ve done this sort of thing many times before. Samuels reported on a poll that shows what people believe about political violence, then compared that to studies of such violence. First the poll: Of all US adults, a third say left-wing violence is more of a problem, a third say the same of right-wing violence, and the final third are not sure. Breaking the data down by party, 62% of Democrats say right-wing violence is a bigger problem and 66% of Republicans say left-wing violence is a bigger problem. Contrast that with a 2021 study in the journal Criminology, Criminal Justice, Law & Society that looked at ideologically motivated killings from 1990-2020 and found 84.4% were the actions of far-right extremists. Studies that include more recent data are just as lopsided. Why such a big difference between perception and reality? One reason is how incidents are presented. “Violence against right-wing figures is often assumed to originate from the left, but that’s not always the case.” Samuels cautions that right-wing violence isn’t just in the past. It is an active and large threat. From the way the right talks there will be more attacks. Nick Anderson posted a cartoon on Kos showing a man in a suit in front of the Capitol. He says, “It’s imperative that we tone down our rhetoric during this dangerously polarized political environment.” Beside his words: “Translation: you have to curb your First Amendment rights so we can have unfettered Second Amendment rights.” Kos of Kos wrote that a Wall Street Journal article, since rewritten, said there was evidence of “expressions of transgender and antifascist ideology.” Updates had more caution, but MAGA social media “blasted out the tale of a transgender antifa assassin to millions.” It was a push to support calls for censorship and violence. Many of the quotes above amplified that. But the alleged shooter, Tyler Robinson, now in custody upends their narrative. He’s white and gun-loving. Evidence points to someone who spent a lot of time online and spent a lot of time in “toxic gamer and meme culture.” One result is the nasty guy is back to talking about his ballroom. And the rest of of the conservative universe...

Suddenly, it’s all compassion. “We know Charlie Kirk would want us to pray for such an evil, and lost individual like Tyler Robinson to find Jesus Christ,” tweeted Republican Rep. Nancy Mace. It’s fascinating how quickly the hate machine turned into a forgiveness machine. In one way, we may have avoided giving them the boogeyman they so desperately wanted, and in doing so, we may have staved off further death and violence. It’s still early, though. Who knows what the spin could be in a week. But in the end, we still want fewer guns in the world and fewer victims of gun violence. And they get to carry on as if nothing happened, creating a martyr out of someone who encouraged this Wild West world that we’re stuck living in—and that ultimately claimed him, too.

In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin started with a report from Politico, summarized as: FBI director Kash Patel is, with this shooting, shown to be in way over his head. And commentators on the right are noticing. A tweet from Zaid Jilani:

This is going to expose me as a gamer but both the arrows and the fascist reference they mention for the shooters ammo are direct references to the video game Helldivers 2 and are common memes.

A tweet from Leila Claire:

I don’t want to be the first person to point this out, but to gamers “Bella Ciao” was not a song sung by “anti-fascists” but a collectible and the background music in a main quest in Far Cry 6, which is probably REAL relevant given his other gaming references.

A tweet from Zachary Carter:

I see no point in searching for left/right valence in Tyler Robinson. He fits the school shooter archetype: young, disaffected, ideologically amorphous, extremely online and raised in gun culture. The theater of such violence is just expanding to include political assassination.

Alex Nowrasteh, in his own blog has a table of political motivated terrorism since 2020. Out of 81 incidents, 21% were from Islamism, 22% from the left, and 54% from the right. Yesterday I had mentioned Kirk debated opponents and suggested he had a big advantage and used the resulting video for ridicule. I may not have been entirely correct. Brian Rosenwald, in his own Substack, mentioned that Kirk was admired for his willingness to debate opponents. That little bit implies the debates may not have been as sinister as I assumed. At the top of the comments is a cartoon posted by paulpro and created by Sophie Labelle. The text is long, so I’ll summarize. It explains Groypers as a far right group led by Nick Fuentes. Their “Groyper wars” target the left, but also mainstream conservatives. Kirk was a target because he was “a fake conservative” – he accepted debate with Jewish and gay people. Groypers routinely tried to force him in debate to take extreme positions. Groypers use progressive symbols to confuse people, which is how “Bella Ciao” is a theme song. The reference to Helldivers 2 is code for total annihilation. The last panel:

Tyler Robinson is a soldier in the Groyper wars who has fallen so deep into internet culture that most people can’t even recognize it.

A meme posed by exlrrp shows several far right voices declaring Civil war. It then includes a tweet from Alex Cole of ACNewsitics, “Not a single ‘This is Civil War’ post all day? What happened, MAGA?” Under that is:

Civil War cancelled. It was a gun loving White Conservative man from a Christian Conservative family from the ultra Conservative State, Utah. Not a tran, foreigner or left, but one of their own. F--- the Right for their sick false accusations.

Another meme posted by exlrrp, though it doesn’t say who or what is being quoted.

Major breaking: “According to Utah officials and police interviews with his family, Tyler Robinson hated Charlie Kirk because Kirk wasn’t conservative enough. (Robinson reportedly admired far-far-right Nick Fuentes). Republicans are now scrubbing X posts about Democrats faster than the DOJ erased Trump’s name from the Epstein files!”

A meme posted by exlrrp has the words, “Tyler Robinson’s mom, Amber Jones Robinson, quickly erased photos from her Facebook.” The photos show many family members, including Amber, with guns. A meme posted by ACNewsitics includes a quote from Joey Mannarino, “Tyler was radicalized at college because colleges are liberal indoctrination centers.” Below that are the words, “MAGAs realize that they can’t blame trans people, gays, Black people, immigrants, or Democrats for one of their own. So they blame college!” A meme posted by exlrrp includes the tweet by Rep. Nancy Mace, one of the right’s firebrands, that I quoted above. “We know Charlie Kirk would want us to pray for such an evil, and lost individual like Tyler Robinson to find Jesus Christ. We will try to do the same.” Mickey Lenin responded, “The whiplash from the tone shift after discovering he’s one of theirs is amazing to watch.” A cartoon by the Naked Pastor is captioned “Some baggage can’t come with you.” It shows the gates of heaven. Signs say “All Welcome” and “No weapons allowed.” A man wearing several weapons walks away. A tweet by CNN includes before and after photos and a link to an article. The text says:

Satellite images reveal wide destruction in Gaza City as Israel steps up assault. In the weeks since Israel announced plans to take over Gaza City, its military has destroyed or damaged over 1,800 buildings in and around the city.