It challenged his self-conception as an all-powerful ruler

Alysa Liu won the gold medal in women’s figure skating at the Olympics. This is the first Olympic medal for women of the US in 20 years. The talk isn’t so much that she did it, more on how she did it. Mary Louise Kelly of NPR spoke to Chris Schleichter, a former figure skater, who wrote about it. Schleichter said that much of competitive figure skating is about fear. The stakes are high. The judges are there to record every mistake. The skater has invested years of training a lots of money (coaches and ice time are expensive). One misstep can end one’s dreams, as happened to Amber Glenn in the short program. The result is skating not to lose rather than skating to win. But Liu says she has no nerves. She is joyful. She just wants to skate to show people her art. This level of mental health is rare and refreshing. This allows her to be more relaxed and her jumps are bigger and landings more beautiful. She portrayed a party on ice and the crowd was with her. Liu had retired from skating. But she missed it and came back just for the fun. She had done a quadruple jump, but on her return she decided that was too hard on her body. She was not there to earn a medal (though she got the big one). She was there for the fun. Kelly figured out what the lesson is:

Stop worrying about all these achievement yardsticks that we are constantly always measuring ourselves by. Just go out and have some fun.

Schleichter agreed:

I think, yeah. And it's healthy for so many skaters in the sport. Like, every four years, we're only going to send three women to the Olympics. Does that mean that every other girl skating out there is somehow a failure? Shoot for that Olympic goal, but have other measures of success that are healthier and achievable, and you might actually end up getting those along the way. It's really so refreshing to see someone reframe what success in the sport looks like.

I watched Liu’s performance. It was indeed joyful – she had a broad smile the whole time – and wonderful. This is quite the contrast to Ilia Malinin, the “Quad God” who tumbled in his long program. The one who was expected to win gold placed 8th. There were signs the pressure got to him. I’ve mentioned this before. What if athletes did it for the fun and not for the judging, scores, and ranking? I’m not sure how that would affect hockey. For figure skating that would definitely lessen the stress and heighten the beauty. Which will be the case in the Olympic figure skating gala tonight (I keep waiting for that to appear as I stream both NBC and Canada’s CBC – 75 minutes of prime time left). Would people come if there wasn’t a winner? For several years (perhaps 30 years ago) the prominent figure skaters from the World and Olympic competitions would go on tour as a group and put on well attended (as in filling ice arenas) displays. No pressure, fun encouraged. I attended as many as I could and enjoyed them very much. I had written that I thought the first meeting of the nasty guy’s Board of Peace might have been secret. But it wasn’t. Now that I think about it, of course it wasn’t. The nasty guy wanted as much press coverage as possible to demonstrate how wonderful he is. Oliver Willis of Daily Kos wrote about the meeting. The nasty guy’s pals were there, including a few autocrats. France and Britain were not. Cardinal Pietro Parolin of the Vatican said the topic of the meeting – Gaza – should be discussed at the United Nations. Beyond that Willis had little to say, though he concluded:

The “Board of Peace” is a vehicle for Trump to avoid the United Nations, where he has consistently given poorly received speeches that failed to rally international support to his positions. Trump’s most notable U.N.-related moments have had more to do with ranting about malfunctioning escalators than achieving international cooperation. Trump cannot even work alongside regional partners like Canada and Mexico—but he thinks his joke of a “Board of Peace” can supplant the U.N.

The nasty guy’s tariffs – well, one category of tariffs – were struck down by the Supreme Court. I don’t have a full news article about it, though I do have excerpts and some commentary from today’s pundit roundup by Greg Dworkin for Kos. From the Associated Press:

The Supreme Court struck down President Donald Trump’s far-reaching global tariffs on Friday, handing him a significant loss on an issue crucial to his economic agenda. The 6-3 decision centers on tariffs imposed under an emergency powers law, including the sweeping “reciprocal” tariffs he levied on nearly every other country. The high court ruled his use of an emergency powers law to set import duties without Congress was illegal. It’s the first major piece of Trump’s broad agenda to come squarely before the nation’s highest court, which he helped shape with the appointments of three conservative jurists in his first term.

From the Wall Street Journal editorial board:

This is ugly even by Mr. Trump’s standards. He’s accusing them of betraying the U.S. at the behest of nefarious interests he didn’t identify, no doubt because they don’t exist. Asked about Justices Gorsuch and Barrett, whom he appointed, Mr. Trump called them “an embarrassment to their families.” This is rhetoric that could cause some deranged Trump acolyte to turn to violence against a Justice.

A tweet by Jonathan Karl:

Wow. President Trump just accused the Supreme Court majority in the tariffs case as "fools and lapdogs" to "RINOs" and the "radical left" and calls the Justices "very unpatriotic and disloyal to the Constitution." He suggests "foreign" influences drove the decision

A tweet by Dan Pfeiffer:

I keep seeing people say that the SCOTUS ruling on tariffs will help Trump by taking economic matches from the baby. That's wrong. It's almost certainly going to make his political problems worse, because the ruling shines a light on the tariffs, and he is going to use other authorities to raise people's prices.

A tweet by Kyle Cheney highlighted a section of Gorsuch’s concurrence:

...our system of separate powers and checks-and-balances threatens to give way to the continual and permanent accretion of power in the hands of one man. That is no recipe for a republic.

And Cheney added:

It's hard to imagine a ruling that cuts more deeply to the heart of Trump's identity in public life — he has linked his presidency to the ability to use tariffs as a deal-making cudgel and bend other global powers to his will.

In the comments a tweet from David Frum:

Trump could have written and submitted a tariff bill for enactment by Congress. It happened often in the 19th and early 20th centuries. He didn't do that, because the point of the exercise was arbitrary presidential power - and the corruption possibilities that flow from arbitrary power. I suspect the above point is the reason Trump erupted so ferociously today. The Supreme Court did not merely strike down Trump's lawless tariffs. It challenged Trump's self-conception as an all-powerful ruler, who can do as he pleases, answerable to no one.

A tweet by Tim Miller:

It brings me no joy to say this but given the presidents shocking announcement that the Supreme Court is compromised by foreign interests, the next president will have no choice but to replace all 9 members with new justices who have no foreign entanglements.

The news today is the nasty guy imposed a 10% tariff for every country using a different law, which means they can last only five months. Then, because he was still angry, he bumped it to 15%. A cartoon posted by Wolfpack and created by MacKinnon shows Andrew sitting in prison writing a note that says, “Dear Donald, Wish you were here. – Andrew” A cartoon by John Auchter shows a conversation between an elephant and a woman:

Elephant: Good news! As part of $38.3 billion in new federal spending, your government is going to develop a detention center in Romulus, Michigan! Woman: Wait, wait, wait, wait. You’ve been telling me for years there’s no money for heealthcare, education, transportation, energy infrastructure, food – but now there’s plenty for a concentration camp?! Elephant: Look, you gotta understand – government spending is good! It creates jobs! It stimulates the economy! Deficit spending helps pick winners in the marketplace of ... of the ... Woman: Who are you anymore?! Elephant: I ... I don’t know...”

The New York Post tweeted a video of dancers at the Lincoln Memorial protesting by enacting the shootings by ICE of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. The video is less than 2 minutes.

The neurotic need for endless conflict, incompatible with joy

I’ve been thinking about the power of the social hierarchy for several years now and frequently apply my thoughts to current events. One of the questions that came to mind was whether those towards the top of the hierarchy were happy. They seemed to obsess over their position in the hierarchy. So what did it bring them? The American Declaration of Independence famously says we people have the right to the “pursuit of happiness.” It doesn’t list any other emotion. So are they happy? What online research I could find (and could understand) didn’t say much about this question. The Gaslit Nation bonus episode for last week posed the question, “Do fascists feel joy?” Yes, I was intrigued. It’s close enough to my original question and now I have the time to explore it. Because it is a bonus episode it is available only to members (which I am). So my link may not work for you. Also, bonus episodes do not get a transcript. I listened to the audio, pausing frequently to write down ideas. A lot of what follows is a summary of what was said. Only once did I check to make sure the quote was accurate. Beyond a prelude the speaker was Andrea Chalupa, host of Gaslit Nation. From that prelude: How did Communists maintain their power? It wasn’t because people believed their lies, but because too many people were willing to let the lies persist. They wanted to go along to get along, to not threaten the system so it would not threaten them. The example was shopkeepers posting signs that agreed with the lies of the regime. But one one person can break the fantasy. A shopkeeper could stop putting up the sign. On to the main discussion. Do fascists feel joy? That they don’t seems obvious. They don’t have empathy. They are cruel and they push out those not extreme enough, not cruel enough. Trump’s rallies shows people who are laughing and appearing to have a good time. But is it joy? George Orwell wrote a review of Hitler’s Mein Kampf in 1940. He noted that socialism and capitalism offer people a good time. Fascism offers struggle, danger, and death. “The fascist psychological profile is driven by a neurotic need for endless conflict, which is incompatible with the contentment or life affirming nature that we all know as joy.” Note the “endless conflict” – the nasty guy invaded Venezuela, then seemed to drop that to push an invasion of Greenland. That is like ICE using tear gas in Minneapolis after Renee Good was murdered, to maintain the level of conflict. This episode was recorded before Alex Pretti was murdered. So fascism offers a “better” time than what capitalism offers. That better time is being hyper vigilant of enemies within and without, which is endless conflict. Yeah, that doesn’t seem like a better offer. Stick with me a moment. Why do people want endless conflict? That’s how they were raised. They had a domineering father. Hitler then praised those types of fathers. A proto-Nazi movement declared that dominance is the only way to deal with a chaotic world. In this case “chaos” included feminism and LGBTQ rights. In the 1920s and 1930s Germany was the leading center of research into psychology and philosophy. So when Hitler came along these researchers began to study him and his movement. Fascism is a way for the masses to express themselves without giving them any power. The elements of their rallies are designed to create a state of mass intoxication. A researcher saw that the self-alienation was so complete people could feel their own destruction as a form of pleasure. The cruelty is a dopamine hit derived from inflicting pain on someone else. It is glee that comes from the violence of domination. What they were feeling wasn’t and isn’t joy. It was the thrill of dominance, the high of the mob. Fascism is a death cult, and requires an enemy. In contrast, joy is life affirming. That cruelty is funded by corporations that want the destruction of the labor movement, of liberals, and of feminists all wanting to challenge the patriarchy corporations want to maintain. Why discuss their lack of joy? Because it exposes their weakness. The fascist high is not sustainable. It is fast and hot. It needs continuing escalation. It needs new enemies to destroy to maintain the level of stimulation. It is exhausting. But it is also never enough. So the Democrat’s plan to wait it out won’t work. Such a movement is already dead inside. Their laughter is empty. They are brittle. Their movement will eventually collapse. True joy, the kind that sustains resistance, is a renewable energy. That comes from love and community. We must keep going and do so in joy until the fascists collapse. So find and keep joy in your life. It is the best revenge. All that was the first 19 minutes of the recording. The remaining 15 minutes was a discussion of self care with Vatican reporter Colleen Dulle. She wrote the book, “Struck Down, Not Destroyed: Keeping the Faith as a Vatican Reporter.” One thing Dulle reported on was MAGA attempting a siege of the Vatican. It seems the Vatican can’t reform fast enough to withstand the effort. And one needed reform is to let women be priests to fill the desperate need for priests. The self care discussion was about how Dulle cares for herself. I’ve seen Chalupa’s standard list of questions for these things and quickly saw one person’s self care may not apply to another. So I didn’t finish the recording. A thought from me. People who followed Hitler wanted more of what they knew from growing up. The same seems true for many of the people who adore the nasty guy. That means how we raise our children needs an overhaul with a greater emphasis on love and community while limiting dominance. And in the meantime a lot of people need a great deal of therapy and our country isn’t set up to give it. Our culture considers children raised to be highly patriarchal to be raised properly.

The assumption of obedience to a corrupt court persists

Christopher Armitage of the Daily Kos community wrote about the Supreme Court and asks: “When should you stop following a court's rulings?” At least three justices have accepted bribes – those gifts from billionaires with cases before the court. They didn’t disclose – which is fraud. But no one will try to hold them accountable and even though they’ve lost legitimacy the assumption of obedience persists.

The Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder. That ruling made it easier to suppress votes in ways that benefit Republicans. The Court blessed partisan gerrymandering in Rucho v. Common Cause, making it easier to rig maps in ways that benefit Republicans. The Court unleashed unlimited dark money in Citizens United v. FEC, making it easier to buy elections in ways that benefit Republicans. The Court granted sweeping presidential immunity in Trump v. United States, shielding election interference that benefits Republicans. Call it what it is: a pattern. Every ruling expands the power of the faction that controls the Court while shrinking the ability of anyone else to challenge that control. ... So when someone says “just win the next election and expand the Court,” what they’re actually proposing is this: Win an election the Court has made easier to rig. Overcome maps the Court has made easier to gerrymander. Outspend dark money the Court has made unlimited. Then use that victory to reform an institution that will rule your reform unconstitutional the moment you try it.

A court is legitimate through two things: process and substance. Process legitimacy is when the members are properly appointed, it follows its own precedents, and acts neutrally. Substance legitimacy means rulings are grounded in law, and show sound reasoning instead of ideologically desired outcomes. Here are reasons to declare illegitimacy: The court doesn’t follow rules or changes the rules to protect its misconduct. It legalizes violations after they occur and when caught. The court is corrupt in that it receives benefits from those with cases before it. The court blocks ethics reform, rules in its own favor, and creates its own immunity. There can be no external accountability. Then it shields the corrupt person who helped capture the court. They discipline lower courts but not themselves. Because the Senate is also captured they are beyond democratic reform and replacements will continue the pattern. They sit beyond electoral reach (originally thought to be a good thing). So why do we insist compliance to their rulings remains the right choice? Of course, the people who benefit from their corrupt rulings declare compliance is best. But not for the rest of us. Those who insist on compliance say not complying is worse – we would get chaos, institutional breakdown, and Constitutional crisis. But what if compliance is causing those things?

Consider what continued compliance produces. Elections become progressively less fair as voter suppression and gerrymandering compound. Dark money becomes progressively more dominant as disclosure requirements weaken. Executive power becomes progressively less accountable as immunity doctrines expand. And the institution blessing all of this becomes progressively less reformable as it rules every reform unconstitutional. That trajectory produces crisis in slow motion. Rights erode, dark money floods in, executive power escapes accountability, and nobody panics because it happens gradually enough for the captors to consolidate. The people telling us to work within the system call this stability. Following the rulings of a captured Court doesn’t prevent the breakdown. It paces the breakdown in a way that benefits the people breaking it.

We can’t wait for this system to fix itself, because it is working exactly as intended. So what to do? The states can assert their own sovereignty. Pass laws to protect residents from federal corruption. Enforce laws in ways that don’t need federal cooperation. Establish their own financing to avoid federal restrictions. Work with like-minded states. Yes, this is legal. Yes, the courts will rule against it. Yes, it will force a Constitutional confrontation. But that’s coming anyway so states should act while they still have leverage in the face of rising autocracy. A court’s authority depends of people agreeing to be bound by its decisions, which is earned and not automatic. Courts earn authority by acting legitimately. This court is daring someone to do something about their corruption. At some point states will. We need to be ready. I thought a bit about states establishing their own financing. Many, perhaps most, states led by Democrats, send more to Washington in taxes than they receive back in government benefits. That’s definitely true of California. Most states, perhaps all, led by Republicans receive more in federal benefits than they pay in taxes. One obvious source of financing is for a state to say the federal government is corrupt so send all your federal taxes to the state treasury. That will definitely bring the confrontation Armitage describes. Which is why it might be worth trying. Well, look at that: A week ago an Associated Press article posted on Kos reported the Supremes refused to allow the nasty guy to deploy National Guard troops to Chicago. The decision was 6-3 with Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch dissenting. This is not a final ruling. Yet, before it is finalized it can affect other lawsuits challenging attempts to deploy the Guard to other Democratic-led cities. Do not take this one ruling as a contradiction of all of Armitage’s discussion above. Another AP article on Kos discusses the “epidemic of loneliness” in America. We’re less likely to join groups, either civic, union, or church, less likely to hang out in bars and coffee shops. We have fewer friends and trust others less. So no surprise we feel lonely and isolated. Loneliness has health risks, including dementia, depression, and early death. It also increases political polarization. Destructive business schedules and excessive social media both cause loneliness and are an effect of loneliness. Those with lower education, usually meaning lower income, tend to be more lonely. Many people now mistrust the social organizations, the civic, union, and church groups, because they have been betrayed. These groups can be harsh on dissenters. Many people now prize personal autonomy, but that doesn’t make for happiness and creates lots of social problems. People and groups are starting to do something about it. Formal programs and less structured events like potluck suppers are appearing. The Weave: Social Fabric Project connects community builders and trains people in building skills. People in every community have decided to take this on. In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Amanda Marcotte of Salon:

But Trump’s most loyal voters, the MAGA base, have developed elaborate mythologies to deny the truth about the president. In their imaginations, he’s not a pathetic genital-grabbing predator but a knightly hero, sent by God to wage war on pedophiles and rapists. Not the real ones, of course, who Trump is more likely to defend; MAGA prefers to fear imaginary pedophiles and rapists. They project their own sins onto innocent people — often LGBTQ+ people or Democratic figures — and avoid thinking too hard about their lavish support for a man whose vile predilections haven’t been hidden. [...] The MAGA base convinced themselves the Epstein files would expose their opponents. But Trump knows that the Epstein files are a mirror that reflects what his supporters actually voted for: a world where men like Trump and his friends can get away with decades of sexual violence.

Thomas Edsall of the New York Times noted the nasty guy is getting away with corruption that would have been a disaster for any previous president, both Republican and Democrat. Then he gets into why.

The lack of guilt felt by Trump. Enforcement of and obedience to norms in a democracy require recognition of the importance of those norms. Trump shrugs those norms off. In most but not all of these cases, he is unapologetic and transparent about what he is doing, enabling him to avoid the trap that ensnared Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, both of whom discovered that the cover-up is often worse than the crime. [...] Structural frailty. American democracy and the Constitution are not equipped to deal in an effective and timely manner with a president who aggressively and willfully tramples the law. [...]

In the comments exlrrp posted a meme with the author’s name redacted.

My uncle said he wouldn’t discuss Trump with me unless I said one good thing he’s done so I said he’s normalizing makeup for men and it didn’t go as I planned.

Afra Kroon posted a cartoon by Ivan Ehlers showing two men in MAGA caps. One says, “I don’t care what the Epstein files say... I’d rather have a pedophile rapist grifting the country than admit I was ever wrong.” A tweet from Brian Allen:

JD Vance just said the quiet part out loud. On camera, he admitted that Jared Kushner – Trump’s son-in-law, with no official government role – is the “investor” in the Middle East “peace” talks. Read that again. U.S. foreign policy outsourced to a family business deal.

Just below that is a meme:

The left says corrupt billionaires are the problem. The right says corrupt government is the problem. And I’m here like, you do realize corrupt billionaires are running the corrupt government, right?

Zero interest in refugees starving and dying

Detroit Film Theater is doing an end-of-year silent film festival with live music. Last evening I saw a couple Charlie Chaplin films. Today I skipped Mary Pickford’s Sparrows and I plan to see the end of the festival tomorrow afternoon. Last evening started with three short films with a Christmas theme. There wasn’t much to the first and second. The third was interesting because it was made in Russia. St. Nicholas, as a Christmas tree ornament, comes to life, goes out into the snow, and conjures to wake bugs and a frog to come to his Christmas party. The first of the Chaplin films was The Rink from 1916 where Chaplin as the Tramp is both a waiter at a restaurant and a skater at the adjacent roller skating ring. He’s not good at all at being a waiter, but on wheels he is quite good and can do a great comedic tumble (one wonders about the skill of the others he tumbled). The simple plot is to keep Mr. Stout away from the young Edna. I saw in the credits and confirmed in Wikipedia that Mrs. Stout was played by a man, Henry Bergman. Put a guy in the right costume and have no way to record the voice and only the credits will give him away. This film’s Wikipedia page includes the entire 25 minutes. The second Chaplin film was A Night in the Show from 1915. This time Chaplin didn’t play the Tramp. The movie is about all the things that go wrong in the audience during a vaudeville show – Chaplin is on the main floor as the gentleman Mr. Pest and also in the balcony with the common people as Mr. Rowdy. Again, Wikipedia includes the whole 24 minute film. I actually got tired of these two because the humor seems rather juvenile. That prompted me to look up Chaplin and his filmography. For 1914 it lists three dozen movies, about three a month. Chaplin’s famous movies are from the 1920s, when he successfully mixed comedy and pathos. Maybe for a Sunday movie sometime soon I should peruse this filmography page and watch some of the more famous movies. These will have the score that Chaplin composed for them. Nick Licata of the Daily Kos community discussed the nasty guy’s most serious illness. There has been lots of speculation about his health, mostly because he is obviously deteriorating and his released medical reports are not credible. However, the most serious is not physical, it’s mental. There are nine symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder. The only previous president accused of being a narcissist was Nixon and he exhibited only two: a willingness to exploit others and fantasies about deserving success. The nasty guy exhibits those two plus belief in superiority (“the most dangerous trait that the leader of a democratic republic could exhibit”), grandiose sense of self-importance as in exaggerating achievements, frequent envy as in belittling the achievements of others, entitlement as in anger when people don’t appease him, lack of empathy, arrogance, and a need for admiration as in cabinet meetings where each member gushes with adulation. Yup, that’s all nine. Licata is not the first to see the nasty guy suffers from NPS, though he post is the first time I’ve seen a list of symptoms. When a person has NPS they refuse treatment because they don’t believe they are ill. Friends must intervene (and I’ve heard elsewhere even that won’t lead to healing because the patient won’t cooperate with treatment). The only ones who can intervene are Republicans. And they aren’t. About all they are doing now is trying to distance themselves from him. What they should be doing is removing him from office. Republicans may like the nasty guy undermining the country’s democratic institutions. But he is also undermining the integrity and popularity of their party. That will affect future elections. Brett Murphy and Anna Maria Barry-Jester with photography by Brian Otieno, in an article for ProPublica posted on Kos, wrote about the effect of killing off USAID in the Kakuma Refugee Camp in northwest Kenya. The refugees are mostly people who fled the wars in Sudan. At the start of 2025 there were about 720,000 refugees in the camp and it is the third largest camp in the world. In 2024 USAID provided $112 million to feed the people there and had done so for many years. The 2025 assistance was canceled in January. The rest of the article is mostly about two things. The first is the cut in the food for the camp’s residents. An adult should get 2,100 calories a day according to humanitarians. But with the cut in aid about a fifth of the residents will receive 840 calories (about 40% of what is needed), another third will get 400 calories (less than 20% of what is need), and the rest, almost half, will get nothing.

[Dragica] Pajevic ended her presentation by relaying a truism that she said a government official in Liberia had once told her: The only difference between life and death during a famine is WFP [World Food Program] and the U.S. government, its largest donor. “The one who’s not hungry cannot understand the beastly pain of hunger,” Pajevic said, “and what a person is willing to do just to tame that beastly pain.”

That presentation involves the second thing. The presentation was made at a luxury hotel in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital in July. In attendance were American officials on a world tour “to conduct exit interviews with USAID’s top experts, who were being forced out of the agency amid the administration’s stated commitment to austerity.” They had a hefty expense account to travel first class. When the US embassy in Nairobi heard the tour would stop there they set up the face-to-face meeting with Pajevic. And here’s the second thing: WFP officials had been getting a runaround but at the meeting the US officials showed complete indifference to refugees starving and dying. “There was just zero interest in the subject matter,” said a USAID official.

This was something different: an American-made hunger crisis. So far this year, community health workers have referred almost 12,000 malnourished children for immediate medical attention. “What has come with Trump, I’ve never experienced anything like it,” said one aid worker who has been in Kakuma for decades. “It’s huge and brutal and traumatizing.”

Some of the refugees are trying to leave the camp. But they don’t have a good way to do that and don’t have a place to go. An American-made hunger crisis. In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin included a pair of tweets. The first was by Stephen Miller, the guy pushing the deportation of anyone not white.

Watched the Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra Family Christmas with my kids. Imagine watching that and thinking America needed infinity migrants from the third world.

Catherine Rampell responded:

Some people will commit human rights violations rather than go to therapy.

Others pointed out Martin and Sinatra were the sons of immigrants from Italy, a despised country at the time. Paul Waldman of The Cross Section discussed comments by the vice nasty at the annual Turning Point USA conference.

“I refuse to apologize for being white” has long been a mantra of segregationists and Klansmen, an outgrowth of the fear that any sort of equality for racial minorities — legal, economic, educational — by definition meant putting whites in a subservient position, forced to hang their heads and apologize. Equality is perceived to be a reversal of the racial hierarchy: If we’re not in a state of privilege, free to abuse our lessers, then it can only mean we are being abused. So who exactly has been demanding that JD Vance apologize for being white? Has that ever happened to him, a single time? Of course not. But this is a key element of Trumpism, of which Vance would like to be the heir: You have been humiliated, it says, but I will let you stand tall again. You, white people — and especially white men — have been hounded and oppressed, but those days are finally over.

Note the bit about equality and the reversal of the racial hierarchy. Those high in the hierarchy can’t conceive of a world without a hierarchy. So talk of improving the lives of one race implies the loss of status, being made subservient, of another race and they are convinced those they abused will then abuse them. Also this strange idea: Not being allowed to abuse is itself abuse. In the comments is a cartoon by Randy Bish. It says, “It’s a sad day when your government can afford to zip tie children... but can’t afford to feed them.” In response to renewed talk of acquiring Greenland, this time appointing some government official to go there Anne Applebaum tweeted:

They have never explained what they need Greenland FOR. There is no possible use of the territory that has not already been negotiated with the Danes. This can only be an attempt to align the US with Russia, China and other predator states

In response to a tweet by the nasty guy discussing the possibility of marble armrests for the Kennedy Center, which he sullied with his name, Turnbull tweeted:

Listen up, peasants, there is no affordability crisis and if you can’t afford healthcare, blame it on the Democrats. Now, congratulate me on the marble armrests I’m installing, at great expense to the taxpayers, in the cultural arts center that I’ve named after myself.

Brian Allen tweeted:

Trump is literally selling pardons. According to the WSJ, there’s an “official track” and a faster one where you corner him at Mar-a-Lago, say the magic words “unjust persecution,” and walk away clean. Lobbyists quote prices up to $6M. No process. No ethics. Just cash and proximity. This is raw corruption in plain sight.

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.

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.

Institutionalize racism into our federal government

I don’t pay attention to what goes on in popular music – classical is my thing. A couple interviews in Pridesource prompted me to listen to a couple songs – songs with definitely queer lyrics. Ben Platt became famous as the lead in Dear Evan Hanson that was a big hit on Broadway and ran for long enough that Platt became obviously too old for the teenage character he was playing. He has acted elsewhere and recently released his third studio album. The album cover shows Platt and his soon to be husband in a 1950s convertible making out. The song on this album I listened to is “Andrew.” It is a lament of a gay boy who has a crush on his straight male friend, an Andrew. The friend doesn’t seem aware the gay boy would be delighted with a kiss, but the gay boy knows he won’t ever get one. It’s all a cruel joke with no one to blame. Lyrics here. The other singer is Orville Peck. He sings country and is openly gay. He also just released an album, one of collaborations with other country singers. He’s been performing wearing a mask because it helps him feel more comfortable and vulnerable, though in his interview he said with each album the mask feels less important. The song is “Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly Fond of Each Other.” This song was written way back in 1981 by Latin country musician Ned Sublette. Willie Nelson sang it as a solo back in 2006 – he’s quite the ally. This version is Peck and Nelson alternating verses – Peck has rich sonorous voice. The first verse, which Peck sings, is:

Well, there's many a strange impulse out on the plains of West Texas There's many a young boy who feels things he can't comprehend And a small town don't like it when somebody falls between sexes No, a small town don't like it when a cowboy has feelings for men

And the second half of Nelson’s verse:

Well, a cowboy may brag about things that he's done with his women But the ones who brag loudest are the ones that are most likely queer

Both songs are easily found on YouTube. I finished the book Dearborn, by Ghassan Zeineddine. Dearborn is the suburb directly to the west of Detroit. The city used to have a highly racist mayor at a time when Detroit was becoming increasingly black. The Detroit metro area has the highest population of Arabs outside the Middle East and many of them moved to Dearborn. The city has such a large Arab population the mayor is now Arab and it was the center of protests against Biden for his support of Israel in the Gaza war. The book is ten stories of Arab-Americans living in Dearborn. The people in these stories came from Lebanon or had ancestors who did, so many stories feature why they left – a civil war and a war with Israel would do it. Some of the newer arrivals are afraid of being caught by ICE. A few are hoping for the big sign of success – their company is successful enough they can put their face on a billboard. Some women tell of when they were a teenager and a young man showed up at the house and proposed marriage. Single men and women are expected to live with their parents, no matter their age, until they are married. After the 9/11 attacks they become wary of the FBI. There is even a story of a transgender person, a father and husband who would rather dress as a woman – and quite glad Muslim women can wear garments that cover all but the eyes. I very much enjoyed these stories. I was surprised to learn in the author’s biography that he probably never lived in Dearborn. When he mentions locations and street names I thought all but one were accurate. The one that wasn’t referenced a nursing home on Ford Rd. at the highway. There are two places where a highway is near or crosses Ford Rd. I don’t see a nursing home at either of them. A few days ago I wrote about the mattering movement, the effort to help children and youth feel they matter. On Saturday on NPR reporter Cory Turner visited one elementary school in the Livingston Union School District in California’s Central Valley. The reason for the visit is a kindergarten class that has exceptionally low absenteeism, not just in the post pandemic era of lots of children missing lots of school days, but for several years before. Sujie Shin of the California Collaborative for Educational Excellence says there is a basic question related to a child’s success in school: “Is there an adult at school that cares about you - yes or no? That's it.” In another kindergarten class across town Diana Dickey greets each child. When one child is not there they move the child’s photo inside a big heart. That tells children when they’re not there they are missed. Another kindergarten cheers when all students are there. When one boy feels apprehensive about coming another boy waits and they walk in together. The parents are delighted with the school and that their children want to go and are disappointed they don’t go on weekends. Turner said:

By building a school culture where the children feel valued, Mrs. Dickey says students also learn to value and help each other.

The children feel valued. They learn to value each other. That’s the mattering movement. It is giving the students a grounding in mental health. My Sunday movie was Absolute Beginners, episodes 1 and 2 out of six. It is a film out of Poland, so Netflix dubbed it and actor’s lips don’t match the English. This time other actors are credited with the dubbing. Niko and Lena are two high school seniors trying to get into film school. They have been friends since quite young, almost brother and sister, and their parents share a cottage at a seaside resort. When the story begins they have a week to make the film that they’ll submit with the application. But as they get to the sex scene Niko refuses. Also at the resort is a basketball training camp. Igor is the captain of the team. He has a troubled past he hasn’t talked about yet. Scouts will be at the weekend game, a chance for him to go on to something better. Igor has a girlfriend Malwina, whom he’s known all of four days. She’s the daughter of the couple who own the restaurant and feels she will get left behind when Igor moves on. As the second episode ends Lena’s parents say they need to sell their share of the cottage and Niko’s parents don’t have enough to buy them out. Also, Lena tells Igor she has just the right part for him in her movie, the obvious implication is that Igor will replace Niko in the sex scene. I wrote about Justice Alito flying two flags as symbols of support for the 2021 Capitol attack. Daily Kos community member davidkc asks the important question: If that flag flying was in 2021 why is the Washington Post reporting it now? WaPo had an article written three years ago. They didn’t publish it. In it they described the upside-down American flag as a “political charged symbol.” Yet, they said the argument between Martha-Ann Alito and a neighbor that supposedly prompted her to display the inverted flag was not clearly “rooted in politics.” Which prompts many of us to say: Huh? My friend and debate partner sent me a link to this article, written by Aaron Pellish of CNN, about Chase Oliver winning the nomination for president of the Libertarian Party. My friend sent it to me because Oliver is gay. A gay presidential candidate! He’s also quite young – 38. This article says Oliver’s win signifies an embrace of “wokeness,” though I can’t tell if the person saying that thinks that’s a good thing or bad thing. Back in 2017, when I was working to collect signatures for the anti-gerrymandering proposal that passed in 2018, I spent an afternoon at a table outside the convention for the Libertarian Party of Michigan. The state chair and a few others signed. The convention as a whole voted to reject it. From what little I could hear from my table and from what I’d read elsewhere my feelings of the Libertarians is quite simple. They are so anti-tax their philosophy comes across as “I got mine. Too bad you don’t got yours.” Dartagnan of the Kos community wrote about one aspect of the proposed nasty guy administration and the Project 2025 document supporting it. This piece would “institutionalize racism and racial bias into our federal government.” It would accomplish that by redefining “racism,” which would redefine all the laws that mention racism and are meant to alleviate oppression of non-white people. Dartagnan wrote:

For them, “racism” is quite literally reimagined and reconfigured as anything that they perceive as a threat to the continued hegemony of white Americans. We are already seeing an implicit reappraisal of “racism” and civil liberties in several Republican-dominated states, as white people seek to preserve and maintain the racial dominance they have enjoyed in this country since the days of its founding.

Racism becomes defined as oppression by non-white people against white people. So “affirmative action” becomes “affirmative discrimination.”

In recent years, the Republican Party has consciously and deliberately abandoned almost all efforts to present itself as anything but a group devoted to maintaining white power and white supremacy. The political weapon they choose to wield: blame. White Americans—particularly middle- and working-class white Americans—are routinely indoctrinated by right-wing media to believe that their inability to make economic headway in American society is due to the encroachment of other races upon their “status” as white people.

Examples of the lies they use in their blame: Other races are willing to accept lower pay so white people’s pay can’t be increased. Black people are blamed for the high cost of health care, Medicare, and Social Security. Racial preferences hold white people back. Corporate DEI programs discriminate against whites. Nothing in those examples are true, though they are still potent. I’ll try a rewrite those examples to be closer to the truth: Corporations underpay non-white people and use that as an excuse to deny wage increases to white people. Corporations insert themselves between patients and their health care. Rich people block being taxed fairly and Social Security is denied enough money. As for racial preferences and DEI programs white people interpret non-whites being treated equal to themselves as discrimination.

Put bluntly, white people do not need such protections. Civil rights laws were not passed to rectify injustice against white people, because white people—particularly white men—are the nation’s most wealthy, most politically dominant, and by far the most privileged American citizens. Anti-discrimination laws will probably never change that dynamic, but they do preserve some degree of equal opportunity and protection from this country’s apparently immutable racism. Nevertheless, emboldened by a right-wing Supreme Court demonstrably hostile to racial equity, Project 2025’s proponents see this as their moment.

Project 2025 establishes white supremacy as national policy. Aldous Pennyfarthing of Kos quoted an Associated Press article:

A new report released Tuesday by States United Action, a group that tracks election deniers, said nearly one-third of the lawmakers in Congress supported in some way Trump’s bid to overturn the 2020 results or otherwise cast doubt on the reliability of elections. Several more are hoping to join them, running for election this year to the House and Senate.

Pennyfarthing adds:

More specifically, States United Action found that 170 representatives and senators of the total 535 Congress members are election deniers of some kind. Meanwhile, the group determined that two new Senate candidates and 17 new House candidates fall into the same category.

Clio2 of the Kos community wrote this month’s installment of LGBTQI+ Literature. The topic is autobiographies of intersex women. Amazingly, three such autobiographies were published last year. They are by Pidgeon Pagonis, Caster Semenya, and Alicia Roth Weigel. I had heard of Semenya before, but not the other two. Pagonis described surgeries to “fix” her, to remove the male portions of her anatomy. The surgeries were done without her informed consent (for some of them she was too young to consent). Things were not explained well to her parents either. All of the surgeries were cosmetic and not necessary. Pagonis is not working to get such intersex surgeries banned. While growing up in South Africa Semenya discovered she could run really fast. Soon she was entered into races, which was a big help to her family’s finances. When she began to break records she was subjected to a full gynecological exam. Only then did she learn “she had no uterus, no fallopian tubes, and a pair of undescended testicles that produced an elevated level of testosterone in her blood compared with most women.” And the sports community put her through hell. Even so, she brought home a silver medal from one Olympics and a gold from the next. Weigel also had surgery at a young age to remove undescended testicles. Her parents were told it should be done because they might become cancerous (the truth and logic of that is doubtful). After learning about intersex at 27 she became an advocate against the gender binary. That made her a public figure and a target for threats. Clio2 wrote:

Under the orders of -- perhaps not coincidentally, male -- authority figures, each of them subjected to drastic, involuntary medical interventions designed to remodel their bodies, surgically and/or chemically. In order to conform them more closely to a certain conceptual archetype of female. To render them, in effect, "female enough." ... A notion that also is deployed to buttress "traditional" power relations, including racism and the subordination of women. In line with which interest, exceptions must be erased. While "protecting children" is invoked as cover for "protecting the status quo."

A quote from Pagonis’ book:

We are raised to believe that you should just be able to glance at someone for a split second and know not only what lies between their legs but between their ears....[T]here is also supposed to be an inherent synchronicity between the two.

Weigel noted the contradiction of bills in which trans kids who want gender-affirming care are denied that care and in the same bill intersex kids who haven’t asked for such care yet have it forced on them. The demand to “fix” intersex kids is a piece of the demand to prohibit treating trans kids and the demand to “cure” gay people. And that is all wrapped up in misogyny, racism, and all the other things where one group oppresses another.

A balanced life instead of gilded pressure cooker

I heard part of this story on the radio and was intrigued. So I found it online. As part of the NPR show Here & Now host Deepa Fernandes (I think, she didn’t say her name) talked to Jennifer Wallace about her book Never Enough, When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic – and What We Can Do About It. The audio is ten minutes. We can pressure our kids too much. Achievement becomes toxic when a child believes they’re only lovable when they’re achieving. Setbacks aren’t seen as a setback but as proof to the child that they’re worthless. It’s harmful to mental health. Parents think that things like achievement test coaches are a help but each achievement bumps the child into harder challenges and life becomes only about achievement. It can lead to high rates of anxiety and of substance abuse. Kids refer to it as the gilded pressure cooker. Back in the 70s there was more slack in the system. A parent didn’t need to demand perfect performance from their child to be sure the child could do at least as well as themselves. In contrast, modern parents see the middle class eroding with a lot of economic uncertainty. So they try to give their child, starting from a very young age, all the economic advantages they can. That includes everything that might look good on a college application – extra curriculars, sports, volunteer work, and more. The child has no time to be a child. They learn their mental health can be sacrificed on the altar of achievement. Parents of healthy youth recognize they needed teach their children about how to have a balanced life, one without the need to escape through drugs or alcohol. They insist on down time, family time, and outside time. They teach their children they matter outside of their achievements. There is a “mattering movement” that teaches children have value in their core, outside of their achievements. A second component is children are taught to also add value. This protects the children from the anxiety that comes from stress. Some children were never taught that they matter. Others were never taught to add value to people other than themselves. The second part is social proof that they matter. Too many youth associate a good life with going to a top tier college. Parents need to reject that myth. Instead, they need to talk about the components of a good life – good relationships, purposeful work, and a feeling of making a positive impact in their world. Of course, I did a search for “mattering movement” and found it at thematteringmovement.com. It says it is co-founded by Wallace and inspired by her book, mentioned above. The site offers, new in 2024, curriculum for grades 6-12, professional development for teachers, and will soon have a guide for parents. What I saw looks like it is well supported by scientific studies. I went to one of the articles in the curriculum. This one is by Zach Mercurio. It explains what mattering is and why it is important. Then it explains three broad things one can do to help others see that they matter. First, notice them. Make eye contact. Ask how they’re doing. Don’t brush past them on the way to the coffee pot, instead ask if they want a cup. Second, acknowledge their unique strengths and talents. Instead of saying “good job,” describe how their strengths they showed and what the impact those strengths had on the situation. Third, make sure others know they aren’t disposable, that they and their talents are essential to the whole. The radio segment and the movement caught my attention because of how much I’ve been thinking about the social hierarchy and how much effort those higher in the hierarchy put out to maintain their position or to climb higher. A big part of the hierarchy is comparing oneself to others – I’m better than those people. A big part of maintaining their place in the hierarchy is by making the lives of those in lower positions to be worse, also known as oppression. When parents are frantic to make sure their children do as well as they do part of the reason is they don’t want their children to fall lower in the hierarchy. From the audio I got the impression that the anxiety tends to come from families on the upper side of middle class. These tend to be parents more concerned about their position in the hierarchy. So the big question is what does our society need to teach everyone so people don’t need to compare themselves to others, that each person feels they are valued for who they are and what they can do without basing their identity on whether they are better than someone else. People need to learn how to be complete within themselves. This mattering movement sounds like it is a good start. Some fun stuff. A cartoon by Zachary Kanin, posted to New Yorker Humor, shows a king lamenting, “I want to be feared as a tyrant, loved as a father, and revered as a god, but I also want them to think I’m funny.” Tom Gauld of New Scientist posted a cartoon with the caption, “Every Friday, a truck pulls up at the Mathematics Department to collect all the used numbers. They will be cleaned, sorted, and sold on to manufacturers of calendars, rulers, and clocks.” Matt of the Political Cartoon gallery of London posted a cartoon of a couple coming out of a restaurant. The man says, “It was delicious, but the Chinese fortune cookies were alarmingly well informed.” Massimo poses if a person on one side of the world puts a piece of bread on the ground at the same time as someone on the exact opposite side of the world does the same have they made an earth sandwich? What’s the ratio of bread to filling?

A man who has never healed from his childhood trauma

I finished the book This is Your Brain on Music by Daniel Levitin. The book is very much a brain science book, written for the layman. It starts with how the brain processes the signals it gets from the ears and goes from there. Some of the things the author discusses: Air pressure fluctuations stimulate hairs in the inner ear with each hair triggering at a particular frequency. So the brain has to reconstruct all those frequency signals into the sound of a flute or trumpet or piano or drum. When both a flute and trumpet playing how does it decide these frequencies belong to the flute and those to the trumpet? By age five hearing kids have absorbed the structures of the music of their culture. They may not know the names musicians apply to these structures (keys, chords, phrases, and all the rest), but they understand when something fits the structure and when it does not. Kids a bit older are able to tell this piece of music fits these structures (hip hop), and that piece fits those structures (church hymns). A great deal of listening to music is creating expectations of what comes next according to the structures we’ve internalized. We are intrigued when a composer defies those expectations. Great composers balance expectation confirmation and defiance in interesting ways. People with “perfect pitch” are able to hear a pitch and identify the letter name associated with it. But a lot of people, maybe a large majority, have good pitch memory, just missing the piece of assigning the letter name. Levitin told of a study in which he asked non musicians to sing their favorite song. Most sang it close to the pitch of the original recorded singer and at the same tempo. The cerebellum is the old part of the brain, the “lizard brain.” It is the brain’s timekeeper – otherwise we wouldn’t be able to walk. It is also the place of emotions – if it wasn’t we wouldn’t react to fear fast enough. This is where music and emotions come together. Is music an evolutionary adaptation or an evolutionary byproduct of some other adaptation. The author says it is the first one. Otherwise it would have died out by now. What has kept music a part of human experience for well over 50 thousand years is its use in building community and in courtship. Only in the last 500 years have we turned music into something where people listen to experts. Before then practically everyone in the community was involved in creating music or dancing to it. As for courtship, teens are the ones most eager to form bands, and rock stars sure attract groupies. I found it fascinating. Walter Einenkel of Daily Kos reported the conspiracy theories around Taylor Swift being a part of defense psyops (which I’ve written about) are getting so strong the Department of Defense issued a denial.

Department spokesperson Sabrina Singh told Politico, “We know all too well the dangers of conspiracy theories, so to set the record straight—Taylor Swift is not part of a DOD psychological operation. Period.”

I can imagine some of those believing that theory saying: Since Swift is part of a secret operation (so secret they claim even Swift isn’t aware of it) of course they’re going to deny it! Once some of these theories get going attempts to refute them will have zero effect. Rich Snowdon of the Kos community wrote a short post:

Whenever I hear MAGAs claim they love Trump, I want to say… If you really loved him, you’d gather a group and go do an intervention. Because this is a man who has never healed from his childhood trauma. And who brags compulsively but never feels worthy. And who sucks attention from the whole world but it’s never enough. And who will die without ever having one true friend. And… Are you okay with this?

Commenter niemann, who is a therapist, wrote that when people are strong narcissists they can’t be helped. Their narcissism won’t let them. I add: I don’t think MAGA people love the nasty guy. Instead, they love what he intends to do with his narcissism. Which means they won’t do an intervention. Commenter jds1978 suggests it is the nasty guy followers that need the intervention. Charles Jay of the Kos community wrote about the nasty guy’s claim that he has legal immunity for things he did while in the Oval Office. Jay noted Rolling Stone reported he and his allies are plotting to give presidents a legal shield for life. If he wins in 2024. Jay listed a few leaders of democratic countries that have been convicted of crimes, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi being one of them. There is also Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who tried to jigger the legal system to get immunity, which prompted massive protests. There are at least two world leaders who do have life immunity. One of them is Putin who got the Duma to legislate it back in 2020. That prompted opposition leader Alexey Navalny to tweet, “Why does Putin need an immunity law now?” The rationale for Putin’s immunity seems to be the same one the nasty guy has given. What if he does something his successor doesn’t like and prosecutes him for it? The other with lifetime immunity, as of last month, is President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus. He’s been in power for almost 30 years. This law also gives immunity to his family and bans opposition leaders not living in Belarus from running in future elections. Do we want to be like Russia and Belarus? No need to answer – I’m well aware many Americans do want that. Mark Sumner of Kos reported another development in the case of the nasty guy storing classified documents in his Mar-a-Lago estate. There were two rooms the FBI did not search. Special Counsel Jack Smith knows about them because of testimony from witnesses. One is a closet. Workers at the estate were surprised when the nasty guy had the locks on the closet changed and that he, not the Secret Service, kept the key. The FBI decided it wasn’t worth breaking the door. The other is accessed through a door in his bedroom that is behind a dresser and TV. Not surprising the FBI missed it. It might be a wiring closet for the TV that has a lot more in it. Smith does not know what is in these rooms. And if the FBI goes back to search those rooms it is quite likely the contents have been moved. Jay reported on the travails of Rudy Giuliani, now in bankruptcy court. As part of bankruptcy proceedings Giuliani is required to list is assets and debts. In the assets column is “possible claim for unpaid legal fees against Donald J. Trump.”

Last summer, CNN reported that Giuliani and his then-attorney Robert Costello traveled to Mar-a-Lago “to make a personal and desperate appeal” to Trump to pay legal bills amounting to seven figures. And now it seems the student has become the master as Costello and his firm have since sued Giuliani for $1.4 million in unpaid legal bills.

All that Giuliani did for the nasty guy after the 2020 election and all he has to show for it is an unpaid bill and lawsuits. Aldous Pennyfarthing of the Kos community discussed an article in Politico saying the nasty guy’s campaign has spent more than $50 million on legal fees in 2023. Those legal fees don’t look to be incurred by what the campaign did, but by what the man did. Meaning his campaign donors are paying his legal expenses for his crimes. Which makes a bit of sense – his legal difficulties are his most reliable fundraiser. He had his biggest fundraising day the day after he was indicted in Atlanta and his mug shot was plastered over all sorts of campaign merch. However, it does explain why his campaign is not doing campaign rallies free to attendees. The rallies being done now are put on by Republican state parties and the audience must purchase tickets. The nasty guy is not the only one with cash problems. The entire Republican party does too. Kerry Eleveld of Kos has details of how much the money is not rolling in. Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel is the reason:

But The Bulwark's Tim Miller broadened the lens on RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel's disastrous leadership of the organization. "It’s pretty astonishing that they have stuck with Ronna for over a half decade despite the fact that she has failed on every possible metric: electoral, moral, public relations, fundraising," Miller observed. McDaniel has failed by nearly every metric but one: Her Donald Trump sycophancy is on point, and that's all that really matters in today's Republican Party.

To finish off the story Eleveld discussed how well Biden’s fundraising is doing. Joan McCarter of Kos wrote about Republicans linking aid to Ukraine with reform at the southern border. But that border bill, now close to ready, seems to be put on hold because the nasty guy wants immigration as a campaign issue. So are Republicans using the holdup in the border bill as an excuse to deny aid to Ukraine? Some are beginning to talk about going back to approve the aid package. Though if Speaker Johnson does a few on the far right consider that a reason for triggering his ouster. Johnson could sidestep the issue and allow Democrats, with Johnson’s tacit permission for a few Republicans to join them, to present Ukrainian aid in a discharge petition that requires a floor vote, bypassing committees. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted several people discussing how good the economy is. He included a tweet by Mike Walker with a link to an article on Mediaite. A blurb from the article says:

Fox News commentator Dagen McDowell warned Republicans not to run on the economy in the upcoming election because “it’s good” right now.

Dworkin also quoted an article on CNN that reported that senior House Republicans are realizing their efforts to impeach Biden probably won’t go anywhere. Too many think impeaching in an election year to be too politically perilous. There are maybe 20 House Republicans who are not convinced there is evidence for impeachment. That’s in a House with a two-vote margin. How good is the economy? Sumner reported Fox News says it’s good.

Dr. Anonymous is important to LGBTQ history

Two weeks ago I wrote about nuclear fusion as a source of energy, a source that’s quite clean in contrast to highly dangerous nuclear fission. I wrote about it because Lawrence Livermore National Lab announced they had achieved more energy from the fusion than needed to fire that lasers that made the fusion happen – if one ignores the hundred times that energy needed to get the lasers ready to fire. Mark Sumner of Daily Kos wrote a good explanation of what fusion is and what was actually achieved at the lab this month. He reviewed the history of the research, including the different ways that fusion could be triggered. Then he discussed the progress being made by other methods of achieving fusion. He included a few videos for more information. Sumner concluded that the constant refrain of fusion always being “20 to 30 years away” is probably no longer accurate. Clean commercially available fusion energy might happen sooner than that. Joan McCarter of Kos wrote that Republicans seemed determined to continue imposing far right policies even though such policies are quite unpopular. One would think the issue of abortion contributing to their November losses would prompt them to rethink their plans. But no. This discussion was brought on by a South Carolina legislator who proposed an amendment to the state constitution to define gender “without regard to an individual’s psychological, chosen or subjective experience of gender.” Take that you pesky trans people! Wrote McCarter:

Both the midterm results and exit polling from November’s ballot demonstrate just how much the general public doesn’t want lawmakers to be obsessing over anti-LGBTQ+ crap. Just 5% of voters said transgender health care and participation in sports mattered to them in this election. The majority were electing a record number of LGBTQ+ candidates, with 1,065 openly LGBTQ+ people running, and 340 winning.

Trans people aren’t the only ones being hit. There are copycat “Don’t Say Gay” bills and a “Women’s Bill of Rights” (and we know how fake that will be because the right to an abortion isn’t included). It is all part of an effort to be seen as the “protector” of women and children when women and children need protection from them. So why are they doing all this unpopular stuff? Because all of these far right issues will be challenged in court. And many will go all the way to the Supreme Court, which is now stacked in their favor. Adam Zyglis has an appropriate cartoon. It shows an elephant cramming a cork in a teacher’s mouth. As a way of understanding the war in Ukraine Sumner reviewed the TV series Andor. It’s part of the Star Wars universe and Sumner says it is quite good – much better than the usual story in the franchise. I won’t attempt to discuss the story. Instead, I’ll mention some of the things that Sumner says contribute to a Fascist regime. The first is the relationship between capitalism and fascism:

The authoritarian government is happy to tolerate both the corporate structure and the corporate police so long as capitalism is sufficient to keep the people distracted from concerns about the empire. Keeping those workers at the ragged edge, where they worry more about feeding their families is the goal. But the fascists don’t hesitate to directly take the reins when they believe the corporate rulers aren’t being adequately oppressive.

Keeping workers so poor that they’re focused on feeding their families means they’re not focused on the brutality of the regime. The next topic is colonialism.

Notably, the indigenous population hasn’t been killed directly. Instead, they’ve been driven off their land, directed into “enterprise zones” where they can engage in labor that serves the empire. ... The world on which this act takes place is one in which the government has demonstrated it’s ability to erase the local culture. Not only have the indigenous people been removed from their land, their cultural practices have been undercut by limits on important ceremonies. There has also been active cultural appropriation, in which the empire has replaced portions of the rituals of these “simple” local people. ... If all this sounds like what the United States did (and does) to Native Americas, it’s meant to. The forcing of people that were spread thinly across large areas into small industrial zones is also spot on to how colonialism was practiced in Africa and elsewhere. Colonialism serves those in power. Fascism maintains itself by removing any competitors. If religion or cultural traditions can be warped to serve the authoritarian regime, they’re supported. If not, they’re removed.

And there is the prison system.

Once in the prison, Andor learns that even the pretense of his sentence is not maintained. For both those who resist their captivity, and those who cooperate, the end result is the same — a lifetime of doing free labor for the empire; a crushing, mind-numbing, never ending production line in which they are all engaged in building what, pointedly, turn out to be fresh tools of oppression. It’s only here, in this final arc, that Andor steps back from his personal needs to realize that it’s not enough to hate the system. He has to take steps to end that system.

I saw a tweet by Mary Doherty a couple weeks ago mentioning an event important to LGBTQ history that happened 50 years ago. It’s an event I knew about, though it is good to get the background story and be reminded of its importance. The tweet linked to a news article. I decided to read the full article and was surprised it was dated May 2, 2022. The article is on NBC News and is by Jillian Eugenios. That historical event 50 years ago was when Dr. Henry Anonymous spoke to the American Psychiatric Association while wearing a Nixon mask, a wig, and a too big tux and using a microphone that disguised his voice. He began his speech by saying “I am a homosexual, I am a psychiatrist.” The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is a guidebook for psychiatrists. When the first edition of the DSM was published in 1952 homosexuality was classified as a mental disorder. Acceptable cures included chemical castration, electroconvulsive therapy and lobotomy – yeah, severe treatments. A homosexual could be denied a mortgage and insurance, fired from a job, and institutionalized. Same-sex activities were criminialized. Activists were pressuring the APA to change – their refrain was “Stop talking about us and start talking to us!” They had stormed the APA conference in 1970 and 1971. So a panel was created for the 1972 conference. I had heard elsewhere that psychiatrists based their diagnosis on the number of gay men they saw who were in a bad mental place – not catching on the men didn’t want to be gay because of the extreme social pressure placed on them. Psychiatrists didn’t see the gay men who were content and well-adjusted and functioning just fine. That’s why they wanted the APA to talk to them. The organizers thought a gay psychiatrist would be appropriate for the panel. Only one member of the underground Gay-P-A agreed to participate, but only if disguised because he could lose his job. So Dr. John Fryer became Dr. Anonymous. His speech prompted homosexuality to be removed from the DSM in 1973. Declaring homosexuality was not a mental disorder, but just another variation in the spectrum of humanity, the rationalization for discrimination was removed. Bigotry couldn’t hide behind psychiatry. LGBTQ people felt freer in coming out. Anti sodomy laws began to be overturned. The speech by Dr. Anonymous is as important to LGBTQ history as the Stonewall riots.