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.

Tried to balance gun deaths and gun rights, died by gunshot

If you pay any attention to the news you’ve already heard. An Associated Press article posted on Daily Kos reported that conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed at a Utah college event. He was 31. This article goes into more detail than I would prefer. It does say that before the shot rang out Kirk, taking questions from the audience, was talking about mass shootings. He said that there had been “too many” mass shooters that had been transgender. Kirk was a darling of the conservative movement. At age 18 he founded Turning Point USA to better talk to college kids about conservative principles. One thing he did was challenge students to debate him – which I thought was a bit unfair because he was a decade older and had used that time to hone his conservative arguments. Few of the youth could keep up with that and the conservative debate style of conflating ideas. I feel for the students at this event, I hear there were about 3,000 of them, who watched Kirk be assassinated. Definitely traumatizing. Walter Einenkel of Kos gathered together many of the reactions to Kirk’s killing. It seems liberals condemned gun violence and conservatives blamed liberals. Alix Breeden of Kos reported that Speaker Mike Johnson asked the House for a moment of silence for Kirk and his family. Right after that Republicans started shouting at Democrats. Michel Martin and Steve Inskeep of NPR discussed why Kirk was so loved by conservatives. They included some of Kirk’s statements over the years. He had millions of followers on his social media platforms. He was praised for drawing young people to conservatism. Some young people liked that he said what they thought they couldn’t. Others saw his views offensive and hateful. Some of his views: He didn’t like that London has and New York likely will have Muslim mayors. He said transgender people are not real. He claimed Kamala Harris was vice president because she was the DEI candidate. And Kirk’s big quote that is getting a lot of repetition, considering how he died:

I think it's worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational.

I wonder what he thought his God-given rights are and why a gun is needed to protect them. NPR reporter Stephen Fowler said:

It is impossible to overstate the importance of Kirk to an entire generation of young conservatives, and to Republican politicians that benefited from those young conservatives showing up to vote. You could call him many things, an influencer, grassroots organizer, business executive, author, radio show host, an all-around avatar for politically active online and offline Gen Z Americans. When he was 18, just months before President Obama was reelected, he cofounded the group Turning Point USA as this sort of college campus free speech nonprofit.

Fowler added Kirk created Turning Point to “try and save Western civilization.” (From what, I ask.) Those debate he held, not just with students, became content for his media. I’m sure the purpose was see how I destroyed their flimsy arguments! Martin also spoke to Kyle Spencer, a journalist and author of the book, Raising Them Right: The Untold Story About America's Ultraconservative Youth Movement And Its Plot For Power. I’ll let you read it. Kos of Kos discussed the killing and the reaction to it.

If it were up to [progressives], gun violence wouldn’t only matter when conservative royalty is killed. It would also matter when Democratic legislators are murdered, and especially when schoolchildren are slaughtered. But it’s not just the guns. It’s the climate that President Donald Trump and his allies have built. Scholars call it “eliminationist rhetoric”: the idea that political opponents aren’t simply wrong, but evil, dangerous, and must be eradicated. It’s language that leaves no room for disagreement or coexistence, only destruction.

He then had an example of the recent eliminationist rhetoric, what conservatives have been saying since the shooting. Democracy has always been about disagreement. It’s messy and loud. But when one side decides disagreement is intolerable, bloodshed happens. See: Civil War.

Kirk’s family and his children didn’t deserve this. No child who loses a parent to gun violence deserves it. No parent who loses a child to it deserves it. And that is why liberal policies—like universal background checks and bans on weapons of war—would save lives. Maybe they even would have saved Kirk’s. But instead, the right is already escalating... So stop blaming liberals. We hate this shooting as much as conservatives do. The difference is we hate all the other shootings, too.

After Kirk’s death Gaslit Nation posted about it. I haven’t listened to the 20 minutes of audio, so don’t know the details of the argument. However, the printed introduction suggests that Kirk had called for the release of the Epstein files and his assassination was a way to shut him up. Since this was posted the killer has been caught (or turned himself in?), as was reported in the news. The killer is still alive (so many end up dead by police) so maybe he will say why he did it. In Thursday’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin included a tweet by Mike Cerulli that includes a joint statement by the Young Democrats of Connecticut and the Connecticut Young Republicans both condemning Kirk’s killing. I’m pleased to see this show of unity. Dworkin also quoted Steven Beschloss of America, America. I’m not quoting all that Dworkin did so I can leave out a description of the shooting.

But I’m also thinking about all the people in attendance for this public event and all those who watched the video: Political violence has many victims, including those who have the misfortune to witness it. This latest act of violence adds to the terrible trauma that pervades our society. I dread the ripple effects, even while we should all urge restraint rather than fanning the flames.

ABC News reported that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer forced a vote on the release of the Epstein files. It was as an amendment to a defense spending bill. The purpose was to get Republicans on record as for the release or as being part of the coverup. The amendment failed 51-49, which I believe is along party lines, with Republicans rejecting it. In the comments Jesse Duquette listed some of Kirk’s awful comments. I won’t list all of them. This is just a taste of how bad he was.

Black women do not have the processing power to be taken seriously. You have to go steal a white person’s slot. I can’t stand the word “empathy.” I think empathy is a made-up new age term, and it does a lot of damage. LGBTQ is a social contagion. We need armed militias to prevent the diminishing and decreasing of white demographics.

Mark Sumner tweeted:

Everything about Charlie Kirk’s death deserves condemnation. Nothing about Charlie Kirk’s life deserves praise. Even the most egregious death does not elevate his insidious philosophy or hateful actions. That shouldn’t be difficult.

That sums it up for me quite well. In today’s roundup Dworkin quoted Cliff Schecter of BlueAmp

In the end, the way to stop this disease—that by numbers as high as 90% Americans support passing measures to end— is actually pretty easy. Because the two political parties have made it simple for us to do the math. One party post-Newtown, the Democratic Party, voted 97% in favor of key measures to stop this sick blight on our society. While the other, Republicans, voted 97% against these common sense reforms (yes, it really is this symmetrical). So to summarize: Vote every single f---ing cowardly, cruel, corrupt Republican out of office. And we’ll put a stop to this child-killing virus.

In the comments a meme posted by exlrrp shows Kirk and the words, “If guns make us so safe, why am I dead?” There are also a lot of cartoons and memes about Kirk’s comment that a few deaths are a rational trade to keep the Second Amendment. Another meme posted by exlrrp shows the introduction of an article (where it was published was not included):

Donald Trump hints at assassination of Hillary Clinton by gun rights supporters. Republican presidential nominee says ‘second amendment people’ could stop Democrat choosing undesirable supreme court justices if she is elected. David Smith, Wed 10 Aug 2016.

The meme continues:

By the way I can pinpoint the exact moment political violence began to be normalized again in the United States.

Now for something different, though this isn’t great. Lisa Needham of Kos reported that the nasty guy’s Food and Drug Administration sent letters to 100 pharmaceutical companies. The letters accuse them of misleading advertising to consumers and demanding compliance. These appear to be form letters and don’t say which ads and how they are misleading, which drugs are involved, and which regulations are being violated. Wrote Needham:

Trump’s attack has nothing to do with actual, genuine concerns about deceptive advertising. Rather, this is about forcing pharmaceutical companies to treat Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s conspiracy theories as if they were science. ... What these fact-free letters are really about is signaling to pharmaceutical companies that they are in for the same treatment as universities and media companies: vague, unsupported assertions of wrongdoing that can only be resolved by giving the administration millions of dollars. And that sure doesn’t look like science.

Needham also wrote about the state of the Internal Revenue service. The nasty guy’s team has made sure it works for only rich people. The Treasury Department is rolling back Biden era rules about prosecuting people and companies for using shady tax shelters. Also, the agency no longer has enough people to delve into the complex audits that rich people file. They can expect smooth sailing. For those who aren’t rich, taxpayer assistance has gotten much harder due to cuts in agents. Also, remaining employees are illegally sharing tax data with the Department of Homeland Security. Alix Breeden of Kos reported that a US District judge gave and order saying Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook can keep her job while the court case plays out. The case is the nasty guy is trying to fire her “for cause,” that she did something illegal on the job. The judge said the nasty guy offered no proof that she was “executing her duties unfaithfully or ineffectively.” What this is really about is the nasty guy wanting to break the independence of the Fed, to get rid of members who refuse to do his bidding.

No recordings, no paperwork, no oversight

Eli Hager, in an article for ProPublica posted on Daily Kos, reported the full story of what happened when the Department of Government Efficiency (remember DOGE?) came to the Social Security Administration. Much of that story comes from Leland Dudek, who was the SSA administrator for about four months last winter and spring. The story opens with Dudek posting a scroll 4 feet by 20 feet on the wall. In tiny print and diagrams it describes what SSA does. But that’s not yet entirely reflected in the agency’s computer systems. The SSA is 90 years old. It’s software dates back to the 1980s and has more than 60 million lines of code. Many things are still done on paper. It has been talking of upgrades for two decades without it happening. So when DOGE called for efficiency and the elimination of waste and promised IT whiz kids to make it happen Dudek thought great, bring it on. Except the other part DOGE called for was the elimination of fraud. And that was much louder than all other goals. Every little discrepancy these green kids found was taken as fraud and blown into a scandal – see the stories of 120 year old people turned into dead people still collecting SS.

They could have worked to modernize Social Security’s legacy software, the current and former staffers say. They could have tried to streamline the stupefying volume of documentation that many Social Security beneficiaries have to provide. They could have built search tools to help staff navigate the agency’s 60,000 pages of policies. (New hires often need at least three years to master the nuances of even one type of case.) They could have done something about wait times for disability claims and appeals, which often take over a year. They did none of these things.

Every time Dudek tried to work around his bosses, which were people at the White House, he would get a call reminding him what he was really supposed to be doing, which was not to make the SSA better. He realized the problem wasn’t the DOGE kids, it was the senior leaders. One example was the SSA Office of Transformation, which had been starting the work of modernizing the SSA systems. He was told the office was wasteful and to cut it. So he started acting the part that the White House wanted, while trying to push what would actually help the SSA. About all that did was make him unemployable after he was forced out. And the turmoil frightened many of the people who depend on their SS checks. It also made their experience working SSA agents on the phone and in person worse. The only good thing is that SS benefits are still being paid. So far. Maria Godoy of NPR discussed the release of Robert Kennedy Jr.’s Make Our Children Healthy Again Strategy. It has 100 recommendations for improving children’s health. Some of the points are good, things like promoting exercise and fitness and teaching good nutrition. But there are also not good things, such as studying the root causes of autism (which aren’t the things he wants to prove) and producing a new vaccine framework (when there is nothing wrong with the old one). There are also loopholes, such as calling on the reduction of unsafe food additives while letting food companies determine the safety and while specifying no penalties for using additives known to be harmful. And there are contradictions, such as calling for fresh local produce in schools after the administration canceled the program that did just that. Leila Fadel of NPR continued the conversation with Barry Popkin, professor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina. Popkin said yes, children’s health is bad. An example is the type of diabetes usually only seen in older adults is now seen in children and teens. But this list does nothing to fix that bad health. “It’s all promises but no teeth.” It’s all about “research, exploration, consideration, but nothing about any regulation or law to mandate change.” Nothing will happen, or at least nothing after Kennedy leaves office.

And you can see that, really, that the food and agriculture sectors that really profit highly from the ultra-processed food they're selling to our children and killing them at the same time, really have gotten to the government so that they had nothing in this document that will lead to any meaningful regulation, law or guideline that will improve America's health.

One thing that would help the health of children is money ffor school food programs that pay for eliminating ultra-processed foods and regulation to require it. But that won’t happen. Alix Breeden of Kos adds a bit more:

According to Marion Nestle, New York University professor emerita of nutrition, food studies, and public health, the report doesn’t have much substance. “The report seems to twist itself into knots to make it clear that it will not be infringing upon food companies,” Nestle said in an email to NBC News. “MAHA has so much bipartisan support. This was the time to regulate food marketing to kids — not ‘explore.’” She went on to say that the report is “short of specifics and weak on regulatory actions,” echoing a similar sentiment from professionals when the preliminary report leaked.

At the bottom of the article is a quote from Kennedy:

We had lots of guns when we were kids. Kids brought guns to school and were encouraged to do so. And nobody was walking into schools and shooting people. There are many things that could explain this. One is the dependence on psychiatric drugs.

I’m pretty sure my student handbook for high school said that a student caught with a gun at school would be expelled. I never saw a gun at school (or anywhere else, though I didn’t go into the town gun shop because my family didn’t hunt). I never heard of a bring your gun to school day. So I rate his first two sentences as false. That bit about nobody shooting people in schools is true. We didn’t practice lockdowns and didn’t need to. But at the time the rate of gun ownership was quite low. At the ending of this quote is Kennedy trying to link psychiatric drugs given to students with school gun deaths? The kids aren’t doing the killing. Fadel spoke to reporter Adrian Florido about the recent Supreme Court order that lifted the temporary order that banned ICE from doing aggressive immigration sweeps in Los Angeles. The order was brief, unsigned, and included no reasoning, meaning it was from the shadow docket. The order means ICE can resume targeting people based solely on skin color, accent, and occupation; what the ACLU called blatant racial profiling. Florido said:

In a concurrence, Justice Brett Kavanaugh cited an estimate that 10% of LA's population is undocumented and said race can be relevant when agents are determining whether they suspect someone is in the country illegally. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a dissent. And she wrote, quote, “we should not have to live in a country where the government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish and appears to work a low-wage job.”

A reminder that Sotomayor is Latina. There is an underlying court case. The lower court said these sweeps cannot happen while the case proceeds. The Supremes said the sweeps can. And the order will probably affect what ICE does in Chicago and other cities. Fadel and Steve Inskeep then spoke to Sarah Isgur, editor of SCOTUSblog, who recently interviewed Justice Amy Coney Barrett about the shadow docket. A Supreme Court case takes time to read through the briefings, hold oral arguments, and write the opinions. That takes several months to a year or two. The purpose of the emergency (shadow) docket is what should the law be between now and when the case is officially decided. Even so this can have permanent effects that can not reversed even if the eventual decision goes the other way. An example is a person deported now. Other examples are everything the nasty guy does through executive order, such as whether he can fire the head of the Federal Trade Commission. A problem is the orders are not explained and they usually (almost always?) favor the nasty guy. These orders leave lower courts caught between previous Supreme precedents and what these order say. This post includes a bit of that Barrett interview. She admits the emergency docket does not allow the justices to think about the issue, there is less information, and no time for reasoned opinions. Isgur says these nine people don’t really know how to handle the emergency docket and with the start of their term next month they’re going to be hit with a lot of cases coming from all those executive orders, cases like can the president invoke tariffs or fire a Federal Reserve governor. Another issue is what should be the status quo. The emergency docket is supposed to protect the status quo while the case is being decided. Is the status quo what was in effect before the president took office? Or, as the nasty guy’s team claims (and has Biden’s team claimed before them), since he is voted in by the people and is there only four years should his orders be status quo? Lisa Needham of Kos added her take on the Supreme Court orders.

The now familiar 6-3 lineup at the United States Supreme Court just threw out decades of settled law so that President Donald Trump’s roving bands of masked federal agents in Los Angeles can engage in a little light racial profiling, as a treat, and can continue scooping up people based on nothing more than looking Latino, speaking Spanish, and working at a low-wage job like a car wash. You know the drill. A lower-court judge wrote a detailed, thoughtful, lengthy opinion about how this practice was 100% racial profiling and ordered the government to stop doing it. The Trump administration ran to the Supreme Court to say that the world would crumble if they couldn’t racially profile brown people in Los Angeles right away, and the Supreme Court obliged by staying the lower court’s order. That stay prevents the lower court’s order from going into effect, so federal agents can continue this straight-up racist, unconstitutional behavior. ... Does arresting or detaining people for no reason at all violate the Fourth Amendment’s requirement that probable cause is required to search or seize someone? It sure does! If a police officer wants to stop someone on the street and search them, they have to have a level of reasonable suspicion about that particular person, such as believing they are armed and about to commit a crime. Law enforcement officers have to be able to justify stopping specific people based on specific concerns rather than being able to stop whole groups of people based on shared characteristics. ... Justice Sonia Sotomayor pulled no punches, even refusing to engage in the faux-civility of the tradition of saying “I respectfully dissent.” Nope, here it is just “I dissent.” While that may seem like a nerdy, legalistic, tiny thing to focus on, in the context of how the justices communicate with one another through their opinions, it’s Sotomayor saying the actions and reasoning—or lack thereof—of her colleagues are not worthy of respect.

Needham also reported some of the ICE ways of doing business have changed for the worse. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem says ICE agents are facing assaults (what the rest of us would consider freedom of speech). Filming of ICE agents isn’t allowed. No Supreme Court ruling has said one way or the other, though numerous state courts have rules that is a protected right. ICE agents used to be required to document the specific person they want to arrest, giving lots of details, and getting supervisor approval. Now they just arrest who they please. DHS is blocking members of Congress from doing their ICE facility oversight duties without prior approval, while the law says approval can’t be required. And DHS has shut down the oversight office, freezing 500 civil rights cases.

No recordings, no paperwork, no oversight. DHS is systematically eliminating every way we have to keep tabs on law enforcement to ensure that Trump’s immigration crackdown, no matter how illegal or violent, can’t be stopped.

In Tuesday’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Politico:

The justices, who apparently divided 6-3 along ideological lines, put on hold a federal district judge’s order that reined in what critics called “roving” raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That judge had found the tactics were likely unconstitutional because agents were detaining people without probable cause at car washes, bus stops and Home Depot parking lots based on stereotypes. The high court’s majority offered no explanation for its decision to grant the Trump administration’s emergency appeal to block the district judge’s order. However, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote separately in support of the decision, saying it was reasonable to briefly question people who meet multiple “common sense” criteria for possible illegal presence — including employment in day labor or construction, and limited English proficiency.

That little bit about “common sense” is partly why Sotomayor lost respect for the decision. In the comments Matt Davies posted a cartoon titled “Supreme Court guide to use of race in admission:” Over the entrance to a university is “Not OK.” Over the doors of an ICE detention van is “OK.” David Wolfe tweeted, “Children are born perfect without the need for toxic injections. Once vaccinated, the brain and body are harmed forever.” Dr. Neil Stone, infectious diseases doctor, responded, “Before vaccines, 1 in 5 kids never made it to their first birthday.” I add: What’s the evidence that the brain and body of an infant are harmed? Every vaccine must document they aren’t harmful to the vast number of people who take them. Acyn tweeted a quote from the vice nasty, “The bad news is...one of the pollsters once told me, anger usually wins midterm elections and because we done so much of what we said we are going to do, people are angry.” Gavin Newsom responded: “JD Vance admits he policies are wildly unpopular on national television.” In the comments of Wednesday’s roundup is a meme by Dan Pfeiffer,

There are only two possibilities – John Roberts is so afraid of a constitutional crisis that he will give Trump everything he wants, or Roberts is 100% in on the MAGA project to destroy our democracy.

Or both? Way down in the comments is a cartoon by the Naked Pastor. Under a banner saying these are the “Lost sayings of Jesus” Jesus is talking to a group of women. “Beware when men write something and claim it is inspired by God, for then you can’t dispute it.”

Another novel about correcting the past

My Sunday movie was Strictly Ballroom. This was Baz Luhrmann’s first firm, released in 1992. This movie was recommended several years ago by a pioneering handbell person – pioneering in that she and her handbell team played in a jazz style at a time when handbells were almost entirely in churches, schools, and community groups that put on concerts of the traditional handbell repertoire. Yes, that story is important. The movie is fiction and centers on Scott Hastings. He’s the son of Shirley and Doug who run a dance studio in Australia. Scott is considered the likely winner of the next ballroom dance competition. Ballroom dance competitions have prescribed dances done in specified ways. The score (as implied by the movie) is based on how well the couple does the designated steps and what individual flair they bring. Scott is getting bored with it, so adds his own steps, confusing his partner and losing a preliminary contest. His mother is furious. Fran, a beginner, volunteers to be Scott’s new partner. She wants to dance his way. She catches on quite quickly. Of course, the new pairing faces a great deal of pressure from Mom and the leadership in the ballroom dance community who are very much in support of tradition. Though we know where this is going getting there is quite delightful, with a lot of beautiful dancing. I enjoyed this one. The handbell pioneer was right – the ways handbells had been done was restrictive, though few recognized there were alternatives. Now in my handbell performance group we have a much broader style of repertoire to choose from. We’ve even done jazz style pieces, though fully written out, not improvised. I finished the book To Turn the Tide by S. M. Stirling. It’s a time travel novel, similar to A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain and the series of Conrad Stargard novels by Leo Frankowski I wrote about in May, in which the protagonist is thrust back in time and makes changes in the technology and society. There are, of course, many other examples of this type of story. In this story college professor and retired military Arthur and grad students Mark (neurodivergent), Filipa (Korean lesbian), Paula (Black), and Jeremy are sent back to Vindobona of 165 CE. This is the height of the Roman Empire and the town is where Vienna would eventually be built. They are sent back just as the nukes start flying at the start of WWIII. They know the world of their originating time and the machine that sent them back are gone. Ancient Rome is the research specialty of all of them, so they aren’t completely clueless of the society they’re dumped into (though their Latin sounds way to scholarly). They are also sent back with a ton of equipment (yep, a literal metric ton), including books about modern technology, a pile of coins appropriate to the time (so they’re comparatively rich) but looking way too new, medication, and their cell phones with solar chargers. They can’t call, but pocket computers are mighty helpful. My first beef is there is a guy who saw the war coming and prepared for the jump back in time, both assembling the ton of equipment and leading the development of the time machine. But the team sent back seemed tricked into the trip rather than being trained into the venture. In an afterward the author confirms they were tricked. But I’m puzzled about why. They didn’t want to leave families? They didn’t believe that war was coming? Once in 165 CE their riches and knowledge quickly get them a sponsor and a work space. They introduce what they call Type A inventions – things the locals had the technology to build but never had the idea. That included the wheelbarrow, spinning wheel, threshing machine, stirrups (not being a horse person I had no idea how important stirrups are), and paper. And gunpowder. That last one is important because the barbarians on the other side of the Danube River will attack in a year or so (according to our history) and the war will go on for 14 years. That’s quite similar to Conrad of the Frankowski books needing to get Poland ready for the Mongol hordes. Arthur quickly adopts the name Artorius. His battle skills and the innovations of the team quickly draw the attention of Emperor Marcus Arelius, who in this portrayal is quite smart and astute. My second beef with the story is the author portrays the many battle scenes in much more detail than I liked. The damage a projectile propelled by gunpowder can do to a human body doesn’t need to be repeated so much. I mostly enjoyed the tale and its telling. I got into it enough that I found a map of the Roman world. But… The rest of this section contains spoilers. Here is the big beef with the story. The implication (perhaps explicitly stated) is the purpose of going back to the height of the Roman Empire is so those from the 21st century can change the course of history so that WWIII and its nuclear devastation doesn’t happen. In my opinion this goal isn’t achieved. Or the author thinks what his characters do will achieve it and I strongly disagree with him. What I expected – why I bought the book – was the Artorius and his colleagues would start spreading the ideas of equality, democracy, and other ideas about building up inclusion and peace, even if they had to fight a few battles before the ideas took hold. I expected they would boost the wealth of the “barbarians” beyond their borders so there would be less desire to invade and more desire to keep valuable trade flowing – which is what the European Union has accomplished since WWII. The answer the author provides is the opposite: conquest. He seems to think extending the Empire will also extend Pax Romana. But we in the 21st century, if we pay any attention to history, know well the costs of conquest and colonialism. Rome might fare well and protect itself. But the peoples who were pushed aside (and killed) to allow Rome’s peace would not agree. Just ask the indigenous peoples across the world. Putting all this into terms I’ve been using a lot lately... That WWIII happened because one or more countries said I’m better than you, so I will retaliate to your insults. Each country is scrambling to establish themselves in the social hierarchy. And it escalates from there. I believe that all evil is because of trying to enforce the hierarchy. In the same way Rome is declaring itself to be better, higher in position, than the peoples around it. Rome may have legitimate reasons for its claim (though that might be because we have a history of Rome, and not nearly so much history of the Germanic tribes). But enforcing the hierarchy in the 2nd century will do nothing to reduce the hierarchy of the 21st. The author, of course, recommends the sequels. So far, only one sequel is in print. And to me its plot comes across as silly. At the same time the team was sent from Vienna to Vindabona a Chinese team was also sent back to 165 CE. And they fight with the implication that civilization is in peril. So, no, I’m not going to read the second or third books in the series to see if the author eventually comes around to what I think needs to happen in the 2nd century to make for a peaceful 21st. Last week I wrote about the International Association of Genocide Scholars declaring that what Israel is doing in Gaza is genocide. My friend and debate partner, after praising recent posts, responded:

Wikipedia says the International Association of Genocide Scholars has "over 500 members", but let's work with your figure of 500. Then about 120 of its members showed their inability to differentiate between genocide and warfare against militarized facilities, about 20 correctly disagreed with the mistaken 120 – and the other roughly 360 members (the vast majority) had something better to do with their time.

Demolition at the White House with no oversight

Kos of Daily Kos wrote about the scam PACs of the 2024 election cycle. These are groups that sent emails and texts that screamed, “Donate! Help us defeat...” They raked in $678 million and less than $11 million went to Democratic candidates or the party. “This is theft—pure and simple—bleeding the progressive movement dry while the right builds real power.” These PACs did spend some money on campaigns – on political ads. Kos calls them “grossly inefficient.” Better to spend the money on voter registration and door-knocking. The main point is Democrats will have a hard time winning while these organizations still exist. Better that we citizens donate directly to candidates. That got me wondering. Did the Democratic Party know about these groups? Did they let them stay in operation? Think they were doing good work? Try to shut them down? Or were they really Republican organizations pretending to be progressive to suck money out of the progressive cause? Yeah, that last bit sounds all “deep state” and conspiracy minded, but since this is about Republicans who have proved how willing they are to ruthlessly cheat I wouldn’t be surprised if is was true. Kos also wrote about the latest from Sen. Rick Scott, Florida Republican. In response to Zohran Mamdani doing quite well running for New York mayor as a Democratic Socialist, Scott introduced a resolution in the Senate declaring socialism to be the greatest threat to the nation. He claims “it is a proven path to tyranny, starvation, and death.” Scandinavia would disagree. Their socialist democracies are doing quite well, thank you. It seems the nasty guy would also disagree. Maybe not in words, but in actions. He has been doing quite a lot to interfere with capitalism. He’s demanded the purge of DEI programs, bullied executives, and demanded an ownership stake in Intel. Maybe Scott should have a chat with the nasty guy? Emily Singer of Kos wrote that about the jobs numbers released on Friday. The June numbers were revised downward to a loss of 13,000 jobs. July numbers were revised up a bit (I had heard early reports elsewhere that the July revision was also down). And in August a measly 22,000 jobs were added. A month ago the jobs numbers were bad enough the nasty guy fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This month he posted about – Jeffrey Epstein. Lisa Needham of Kos reported that the nasty guy is ready to start work on his ballroom. The first part is demolition of some parts of the East and West Wings. The nasty guy named Will Scharf to be the head of the National Capital Planning Commission, the organization that oversees and approves changes to the White House. And Scharf says the NCPC has no jurisdiction over the demolition process. Mighty convenient. I previously wrote the nasty guy said it would be paid for through donations – as in another way to bribe him. Needham concluded:

So, let’s recap. We don’t get to know anything about the demolition of the White House, because there is no oversight and no approval process. And we don’t know anything about what the ballroom will actually look like, because there are no building plans yet. Then we don’t get to know anything about the contractor [who is named] because they didn’t have to go through an approval process. And we don’t know how it is being paid for. All we really do know is that, because Trump is involved, it is going to be tacky as hell.

Singer reported that recent comments from Robert Kennedy Jr. imply he is laying the groundwork so he can limit the access to mifepristone, one of the two medical abortion drugs. Sister sent me a link to an article in Smithsonian Magazine, written by Brandon Tensley. It is a short article about Frank Kameny. He was an astronomer with the Army Map Service, but fired because he was gay. This was a part of the Lavender Scare of the 1950s when being gay was considered a governmental security risk because gay men could be blackmailed. He appealed his firing all the way to the Supreme Court, which declined to hear his case. A year before Stonewall he coined the slogan “Gay Is Good.” He was an early activist in the LGBTQ struggle for equality. He played a big role in getting the American Psychiatric Association to say homosexuality was not a mental illness. I had heard much of that before. There is a bit I didn’t know. Kameny kept notebooks. Two of them are now in the Archives Center of the National Museum of American History. Included in the notebooks is information about what bars and restaurants he had been to were gay-friendly. What Kameny intended to do with those recommendations is not known. Since he didn’t publish them perhaps they were only for the use of himself and friends. However, this article speculates if he had published them they would have been the first LGBTQ equivalent of the Green Book which black travelers used to avoid discriminatory businesses during Jim Crow.

Drowning out their voices with an Air Force flyover

Kos of Daily Kos reported that the MAGA faithful do have limits. When the nasty guy posts to his Truth Social account there are a lot of responses that praise him for whatever he said. But this time not. The nasty guy posted that prices are way down. The faithful, who can see that prices at the grocery store, gas pump, rent bill, and insurance bill are still quite high, actually disagreed with him. That means Democrats have an opening in proclaiming the nasty guy lied and his policies are doing the opposite of what he said. But Democrats actually have to walk through that opening – and then actually have to enact policies to lower prices (or boost pay). So far they haven’t been good at either. Oliver Willis of Kos reported that survivors of Epstein’s sexual abuse are speaking out, demanding the nasty guy end the coverup. They appeared on NBC’s Today show and ABC’s Good Morning America. They called on Congress to release the files. Democrats are on their side, Republicans say a release isn’t necessary. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos added that the survivors also held a press conference on the steps of the Capitol, calling for the release of the files. The nasty guy ordered an Air Force flyover to drown out their voices. Alix Breeden of Kos reported more than a thousand current and former Health and Human Services employees signed a letter demanding Robert F Kennedy Jr. resign as secretary. The letter says his actions compromise the health of the nation. The public version of the letter (and I imagine the copy given to RFK) did not list the names. The copies given to Congress did. RFK went before a senate committee yesterday. The reports I’ve read and heard have only given snippets of the three hour grilling. One such report is by Walter Einenkel of Kos. Congressional Republicans did not give Kennedy an easy time, though I heard that Republicans refused the Democratic demand that Kennedy give an oath that he’s telling the truth, and subject to perjury if he doesn’t. Breeden reported that about the only people still on his side are the two that count – the nasty guy and vice nasty. Yes, impeachment of cabinet secretaries is a thing, but not likely in this Congress. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin has a lot of quotes about Kennedy’s grilling, including this tweet from Larry Sabato:

I’ve watched 100s of congressional hearings over 55 years. Rarely if ever have I seen a witness so thoroughly destroyed as RFK Jr has been today.

There’s also an example that Kennedy lied, showing why Republicans didn’t want him under oath. In the comments are a few good memes and cartoons. One posted by paulpro, author unknown, shows three soldiers picking up litter in DC. One says, “Who would have guessed that some much of the trash we picked up in D.C. would be shredded paper with the name Epstein on them.” A tweet by Mickey Lenin commented on the jobs report released today: “Job growth missed expectations with only 22K created and nearly every sector losing jobs except healthcare. As an added bonus, June and July job numbers were revised lower yet again. Ketchup Alert Level 3.” A tweet by Tim Stevens discussed news I heard on NPR, though Stevens linked to one on BBC:

American Government to global automakers: We’ll make your cars impossibly expensive with tariffs unless you build them in the U.S. Also the American Government: Build a factory here and we’ll arrest the workers you bring in to get it operational.

From a tweet by Will Sommer: “Interesting: James O’Keefe put out a video today showing a DOJ official saying any Republicans would be edited out of the Epstein files.” The Naked Pastor posted a cartoon of Jesus holding a sign that says, “Free watermelon,” as he thinks, “I can’t believe I have to speak in code about an active genocide just so I don’t offend the very people who claim to follow me!”

Republicans need to watch more Sesame Street to learn to share

In today’s pundit roundup for Daily Kos Chitown Kev quoted Robin Pogrebin and Graham Bowley of the New York Times discussing a response to the nasty guy’s demands that the Smithsonian museums remove displays he doesn’t like:

The Smithsonian offered the first indication on Wednesday afternoon when Lonnie G. Bunch III, the Smithsonian’s secretary, sent a letter to the staff indicating that the institution had agreed to set up a team to review turning over materials to the White House, as requested, but to do so as an autonomous institution. “I take my responsibility to steward the institution on behalf of the American people very seriously,” the letter to staff said, adding, “Our independence is paramount.” [...] While complimenting Mr. Trump’s “admiration and regard for the Smithsonian,” Mr. Bunch told the staff that his response to the White House, sent in a letter on Tuesday, had reiterated the institution’s intention to rigorously review its content for inappropriate partisanship. But he said it would be the Smithsonian, not the executive branch, that would direct the effort. “Our own review of content to ensure our programming is nonpartisan and factual is ongoing, and it is consistent with our authority over our programming and content,” Mr. Bunch wrote in his letter to the staff.

Those bits about “inappropriate partisanship” and “nonpartisan and factual” along with “not the executive branch” mean to me that the Smithsonian will not bend the knee to the nasty guy. Paul Krugman wrote:

Donald Trump loves emergencies. He has been in office less than 8 months, but has already formally declared 9 national emergencies, as well as a “crime emergency” in Washington DC. He’s probably about to use similar claims about an urban crime emergency to send the National Guard into Chicago — which, as Jeff Asher notes, “has likely had fewer shootings this year than any year since 1965 or 1966.” As far as I can tell, so far all of Trump’s claims about emergency have been false excuses for power grabs. There is no national crime wave demanding military action — America’s big cities are, on average, safer than they’ve been since the 1960s. There is no economic emergency to justify the highest tariffs in 90 years — Trump himself keeps insisting that the U.S. economy is doing great. Given this pattern, the scariest words in the English language right now may be “Trump officials declare that we are facing a national emergency.” So I got a sinking feeling when I saw Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, saying that the administration may soon declare a national housing emergency.

What does one do to relieve a “housing emergency”? With the nasty guy supplying the solution I don’t want to find out. I can imagine it being (and would be horrified if it was) making more housing available by throwing immigrants out of their homes so white people could move in. The only (humane) relief I can see is building more housing. From the federal government side that means proving ways to encourage builders to build (I’ll leave the details to those who know). But that’s not what the nasty guy and Congressional Republicans are promoting. Also, there is that bit about the nasty guy saying the economy is doing great while also justifying tariffs because there is an economic emergency. The left side of his mouth doesn’t know what the right side is saying. In the comments a meme posted by exlrrp plays into the speculation that the nasty guy isn’t well:

Trump goes 2 full days without an impeachable offense, and we all just assume he’s dead.

Another meme posted by exlrrp, original author not given.

“Why should coal miners pay for PBS”? This was an actual question asked by the Trump administration yesterday. Obviously a blatantly stupid question. We have questions too. Why should a poor black family in Detroit pay for the president to go golfing? Why should a single mother of 3 who’s working two jobs in Louisianan be denied health-care so that the CEO Aetna can get a tax-break? Why is the guy washing dishes in Baton Rouge paying for the President’s wife’s secret service protection so she can live comfortably in NYC? We could do this all day. But here’s the real question in the Trump administration and the Republicans who empower him need to answer: Do you have a heart? Did no one teach you to care about your neighbors? Do you know what “empathy” means? Did no one ever teach you to “share” when you were in kindergarten? Have you never heard the phrase “do unto others”? I can’t think of a group of people who need to watch Sesame Street MORE than the Republican Party. Perhaps they would learn some common decency.

A third meme posted by exlrrp, this one from Allenanalysis:

The Trump White House is threatening Republican lawmakers – saying if they sign Congressman Thomas Massie’s petition to release the Epstein files, it’ll be treated as a “hostile act.” That’s not how innocent people act. That’s how coverups get enforced.

Chitown Kev quoted the first tweet in a thread by Michael Harriot, black historian. I found the whole thread on Treadreader. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson mentioned land built by slaves. Sen. Ted Cruz asked “Which slaves built Chicago?” Which is enough to get Harriot started. Slavery was first brought to Illinois to work the salt mines (yeah, I didn’t know Illinois had salt mines, though I’ve visited the salt mines below Detroit). When Illinois became a state, it was declared free – with the exception of the salt mines. Blacks quickly learned to avoid being enslaved and forced into the mines they needed to move to Chicago. A third of the state’s revenue came from the salt mines. That money was channeled into building the biggest railroad, the Illinois Central. George Pullman got the idea of a hotel on wheels, the Pullman train cars. That prompted the developing the Chicago neighborhood of Pullman. Many leaders of the civil rights movement, such as Thurgood Marshall, were Pullman Porters. So, yeah, the money to build Chicago and turn it into a railroad hub came from slave labor. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported on what Rep. Joe Neguse, a Colorado Democrat, said on the House floor. He refers to CRAs, Congressional Review Acts, a tool to overturn agency rules, such as California’s Clean Air Act waivers.

It's unclear to me when Republicans are going to stop complaining and actually do something to address the challenges that face our country. They spend more time talking about Joe Biden than they do about reducing costs. Every sentence from that side of the aisle: Biden, a verb, an adjective, and more coal—that's essentially the sum total of every sentence. I know that more of my colleagues are going to come to the floor here to engage in debate on, I don't know—how many CRAs are they putting on the floor today? Three. Four. Five? All we do around here is CRAs. So I encourage them, as they're watching, to please when you come to the floor, maybe spend some time talking about your affirmative vision for the country, and not so much time talking about the prior president

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The Constitution was written to frustrate ambition

Jasciu of the Daily Kos community started a post with:

For nearly two and a half centuries, the American experiment has endured by virtue of its capacity to restrain power. The Constitution was less a blueprint for efficiency than for frustration: ambition checking ambition, institutions restraining one another, power fractured and parceled out to preserve liberty. Yet over the last century, one of the most profound threats to this equilibrium has crept in largely unchallenged. Two entities—the political party and the modern corporation—have come to wield a quiet dominance over the electoral system, the judiciary, and the regulatory state, placing organized selfish power at the very heart of our republic.

They propose an amendment to the US Constitution to remedy the problem. I won’t quote the whole text, but here are the main points. No political party shall administer elections. Elections shall be conducted by nonpartisan bodies. No political party shall control or influence the nomination of judges. [Michigan Supreme Court justices are nominated by the parties, then run as “nonpartisan.”] Corporations are not persons with political rights. They shall not finance elections. Corporations shall not have control over regulatory agencies. The author does recognize the difficulty, close to impossibility, of getting this amendment approved in the current political climate. Commenters added other needed amendments or sections of broader amendments. From iyouwemeus: A corporation shall not be equated with a natural person or citizen. Money shall not be considered speech. Money to influence any part of government shall be transparent and controlled by law. A corporation owning more than one type of media outlet shall provide balanced and truthful news and free political advertising. Bots generated by AI shall not be equated to a natural person and shall be identified. From btfjd: Abolish the filibuster. Increase the size of the Supreme Court. From dfhamel: The filibuster must be active – a senator actually talking on the Senate floor. Rules for the House that don’t change when the party in power changes. Supreme Court Justices, Department of Justice leadership, and FBI leadership must be independent from the president. Instead of appointed by the president they should voted on by the people after a vigorous vetting system. I would add more: Congressional and state legislature districts shall be drawn by citizen redistricting commissions representing the political parties and citizen diversity. The right to vote shall not be denied. Ryan Krugman, in an article for Inside Climate News posted on Kos, wrote that there is a Make Billionaires Pay march planned for September 20 in New York City, which is during the United Nations General Assembly when many world leaders will be in town. They will be protesting more than inequality; they also have demands for climate and social justice. Billionaires are targeted because they are pushing and profiting off the climate crisis. They even profit off the people displaced by the climate crisis by those people being caught in low-wage work. They also profit by being in the detention business. The climate movement is getting good at building solidarity with other social movements. That includes being involved in the Black Lives Matter protests. In Tuesday’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Mike Lofgren of Salon. Here’s a bit of the quote:

If you pay attention to the details, America is rapidly transforming from a service state — one that provides education, health care, infrastructure and parks to its citizens — into a carceral state that punishes and imprisons them.

Kev added:

I’ll say it again: Trump imagined designing a wall to keep people output wall can function to keep people in as well. It’s the reason why the metaphor always seemed ominous to me.

Here’s also a portion of the quote by Lorenzo Tondo of The Guardian:

Out of the International Association of Genocide Scholars’s (IAGS) 500 members, 28% took part in the vote. Of those who voted, 86% supported the resolution. The resolution states that “Israel’s policies and actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide in article II of the United Nations convention for the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide (1948).” ... The resolution said the IAGS recognised that “since the horrific Hamas-led attack of 7 October 2023, which itself constitutes international crimes”, the government of Israel had engaged in systematic and widespread crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide, including indiscriminate and deliberate attacks against the civilians and civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, homes and commercial buildings, of Gaza.

From Paul Sonne of the New York Times:

Now, Mr. Putin’s fortunes have changed — and so has the world. Nowhere was that more apparent in recent days than in Tianjin, China, where leaders from member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Eurasian security grouping, met on Monday alongside heads of state from other countries. Mr. Putin used his stage to publicly blame the West for the war in Ukraine. He gleefully held hands with Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India and erupted in laughs as the pair joined in a huddle with the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping. Leaders from Iran, Nepal, Tajikistan, Turkey and Vietnam glad-handed Mr. Putin in private meetings that ran past midnight.[...] The elephant in the room was President Trump, who has helped end Mr. Putin’s isolation, both by welcoming him to U.S. soil for the first time in a decade and by clashing with leaders from Brazil, India and South Africa, pushing them closer to Mr. Putin. Mr. Trump’s relationship with Mr. Modi has unraveled as New Delhi has resisted pressure from Washington to credit the U.S. leader with ending the military conflict between India and Pakistan. Mr. Trump has piled tariffs on India in response, singling out New Delhi for buying Russian oil.

In the comments is a cartoon by Bill Bramhall. It shows RFK Jr. pushing a woman off the roof of a building renamed “Department of Health and Human Sacrifices.” Chacal suggests perhaps that could be shortened to “Department of Health and Harm.” A meme posted by exlrrp and from funny snarky joke shows a perky woman holding a teacup saying in response to the nasty guy’s lack of public appearances and speculation of his health:

I can’t believe it’s already is-he-dead-yet season. I still have my holy-s***-he’s gonna-start-WWIII decorations up.

In today’s roundup Greg Dworkin quoted Jeff Tiedrich’s personal blog.

Let me state right up top that I didn’t believe any of this past weekend’s rumors that Dear Leader had shuffled off this mortal coil. But clearly, something is very wrong with Donny, and it’s being covered up — and because it’s this White House, staffed by the most incompetent clownf***ers ever to have f***ed clowns, it’s being covered up in the most inept manner possible.

On the same topic, in the comments exlrrp posted a meme with the words, “Have we been seeing Trump lately, or is it his doppleganger?” Beside a photo of the nasty guy is a woman with a very similar face and hair style.

Cleaning up DC – with a litter bag

Chloris of the Daily Kos community wrote that the nasty guy hasn’t been seen much in the last few days and there is a lot of speculation about his health. But this isn’t about his health, rather about what may happen if he is no longer able to carry out his duties (or has died). Some thoughts both from the author and from commenters. The powers will prop him up as long as possible. They won’t want to lose their power. If he dies MAGA will demand a state funeral (while the rest of us dance in the streets). What if he’s comatose? Will invoking the 25th Amendment fracture MAGA? What policies would change is speculation. Tax cuts to billionaires would stay. Would the nasty guy’s hatred for windmills remain? What happens to Tariffs? Ukraine? The vice nasty has changed positions so many times there’s no way to guess how he’ll act if he gets into the Oval Office. Will Republicans follow (fear) him as they did the nasty guy? He can still do a lot of damage. Reportedly, Stephen Miller, the author of the current deportation system and a lot of other racist policy, doesn’t get along with the vice nasty. Will he be booted? Most of Mainstream Media is owned by rich guys and that won’t change. But independent media is springing up. MAGA is devoted to the man. If he goes will they stay home in future elections? Will the rest of us stay engaged once he’s gone? Republicans will still be there and in power. If he dies MAGA will claim the “deep state” offed him. And the big question: How can the rest of us plan to take advantage of the situation? Oliver Willis of Kos wrote that the “military invasion is cleaning up DC” – as in collecting litter in the National Mall. But safety vests over camo fatigues kinda defeats the purpose of one or the other. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported California Gov. Gavin Newsom had a response to the nasty guy’s threat of sending troops to Los Angeles and other big cities because crime was so bad. Newsom said:

Mississippi leads the nation as the No. 1 murder state in America. I imagine this, in particular, may resonate with the President of the United States. It's got a murder rate that’s 180%—180%—higher than Los Angeles. It’s interesting, L.A. has more people—these are all per capita numbers. Perhaps the president could deploy the National Guard in every corner of Mississippi. The murder rate is out of control there. Carnage. ... If the president is sincere about the issue of crime and violence, there's no question in my mind that he'll likely be sending the troops into Louisiana, Mississippi, to address the just the unconscionable wave of violence that continues to plague those states.