Who gets to embody national identity

Kos of Daily Kos is finally able to tell the story of his website being subpoenaed by the nasty guy’s Department of Justice. The DOJ wanted information about a particular user who was critical of the nasty guy (sheesh, the whole site is!) though there was no threatening language. The order also said there was a gag order around the subpoena. Of course, Kos fought back, refusing to comply, which confused the US attorneys. But lawyers cost money, so he told the story on the site being very careful not to violate the gag order. Members of the community gave enough to lessen the financial worries. The US attorneys threatened search warrants. But three weeks later they dropped the case. Now that the gag order has expired Kos could explain the details. He wrote:

They were counting on fear doing the work for them. They assumed most organizations would comply quietly rather than endure the cost, pressure, and uncertainty of a legal fight. Send a subpoena. Threaten search warrants and public raids. Wrap everything in national security language. And for Trump, that worked out well in those days, when way too many targets simply folded. That’s how authoritarian systems function—not through constant dramatic displays of force, but by making examples out of a few targets so everyone else learns to preemptively comply. But with us, they picked the wrong target. And we were able to stand firm because this community had our backs. Your donations turned what they assumed would be a routine compliance exercise into a time-consuming, difficult legal fight backed by serious counsel and a community unwilling to be intimidated. At some point, they clearly decided to focus on easier targets elsewhere. And that’s the story. The DOJ came after Daily Kos, and we told them to pound sand until they decided to move on.

Speaking of the DOJ... An Associated Press article posted on Kos reported on the nasty guy’s $1.776 billion slush fund meant to pay the Capitol attackers. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has said the creation of the fund will not move forward. There was rejection by the courts and fierce political backlash, even from Republicans, so they canceled the fund. There were two notable things about the announcement. One, the Blanche wouldn’t put the cancellation of the fund in writing (as I heard elsewhere). Two, a secondary proclamation made along with the fund’s creation that the nasty guy, his family, and his companies would not be investigated by the IRS, that part still stands. Emily Singer of Kos reported that a new acting director of National Intelligence has been named. The job opened up when Tulsi Gabbard resigned. She was pretty bad (such as being way too favorable to Russia). The new guy is worse. He’s Bill Pulte. We in Detroit know him as an heir of Pulte Home construction fortune. He has been and will continue to be the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and chairman of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the federal mortgage assistance agencies. Heading National Intelligence will be an additional gig. This is why Pulte is worse: First, he has zero, repeat zero, experience in Intelligence work. Second, he has used his position at FHFA to harass people, including accusing New York Attorney General Letitia James (in the news because she had successfully prosecuted the nasty guy) and Federal Reserve Board Governor Lisa Cook of mortgage fraud. And third, his appointment as “acting” director means he doesn’t face Senate confirmation. His accusations of mortgage fraud mean he has shown he is willing to do the nasty guy’s dirty work. And as the head of National Intelligence he can bend their work from the necessary spying of actual enemies of America and towards spying on the nasty guy’s perceived enemies, as in fellow Americans. Singer wrote: “Pulte’s appointment is so bad that even Republicans are criticizing it.” Singer wished us a happy Pride Month! Then she reported there are a few states that won’t be participating.

But homophobic Republicans are refusing to mark the occasion. Instead, they are replacing Pride with Christian Nationalist-laced celebrations of “fidelity” and the “nuclear family”—which they unsurprisingly declare to be families led by married male-female pairs. At least three states—not surprisingly all of which are in the South—have refused to recognize Pride and instead made their own sad holiday months.

Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas declare June as “Fidelity Month.” In Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee signed a bill that says June is “Nuclear Family Month.” And in Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey declared June as “Strong Families Month.” So continues attempts at our erasure. Back in 2011 I wrote about Zach Wahls. At the time he was a 19 year old college student. The Iowa Senate was hearing testimony about their constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriage. Wahls, raised by a lesbian couple, spoke passionately and articulately against the ban and became an internet sensation. The Senate voted for the ban anyway. At the time the House was controlled by Democrats, so it died. It would have been overturned in 2015. I wrote about Wahls again just after the 2018 election. Then he was 26 and was elected to the Iowa Senate, yes, the place where he made is passionate debut. Wahls is in the political news again. He’s now 34. He was a Democratic candidate for the US Senate. Alas, he didn’t win the primary. Since Iowa is turning against the nasty guy this year Democrats have a better chance to take that Senate seat. But it won’t be Wahls, at least not this time. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, included a tweet from Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York.

Today, I signed an Executive Order temporarily repealing bedtimes in the City of New York so that kids of all ages can watch our team in the NBA Finals. As Mayor, you’re forced to make many difficult decisions. This was not one of them. Go Knicks.

The Obama Presidential Center Museum in Chicago’s South Side will open Juneteenth (June 19th). Kos was invited by a friend to get a preview. He was able to see the whole building (which I’ll let you read about). I will quote some of his impressions.

It was impossible to move through the exhibits without the elephant in the room: the knowledge that everything Barack Obama did, personified, and represented was so deeply offensive to wide swaths of America that the backlash delivered the White House to Donald Trump—twice. And that made the experience disorienting, because the museum itself is a stunning architectural and artistic achievement.

Many museums name wings or galleries after wealthy benefactors. This museum required benefactors to name galleries after someone else. “Wealthy liberal philanthropist Fred Eychaner named his wing after Harold Washington, Chicago’s first Black mayor.” There is also a Worker Appreciation Wall to honor the thousands of people who physically built it. Kos noticed there are many inspiring messages about the nature of democracy placed around the museum.

And somehow, rather than inspiring me, those messages made me angrier. Why would telling people they could improve their communities inspire such hatred? Was it really that offensive to suggest that public service matters? That democracy is participatory? Because this wasn’t simply ideological disagreement. Republicans could have nominated any number of conventional conservatives promising tax cuts and deregulation. Instead, the backlash to Obama became something darker and more existential—a rejection not merely of his policies, but of the broader idea of who fully belongs in America and who gets to embody national identity.

Obama could have placed his museum in downtown Chicago, the polished and safe place. He placed it in the South Side. Kos got the message. This isn’t about reverence for Obama.

Beyond the nostalgia and the optimism was something quieter, but more durable: the belief that ordinary people can help shape the American story.

Brother arrives tomorrow and will stay for the weekend. I’ll post again after he leaves.

Wars are a tool of undermining and undoing democracies

Brother and I had a nice visit. We also had a great lunch with Sister, two Nieces, and Cousin. Sunday evening Brother and I watched a great handbell concert recorded that afternoon. If you want to see what handbells can do this is a wonderful place to start. The performers are 150 of the best handbell musicians around. The event is Distinctly Bronze East 2026 and the concert is here through the end of March. In the handbell world, since the bells are made of bronze, something described as bronze is top level, not like Olympic third place. After Brother arrived midday Friday we didn’t listen to much news. We were a bit surprised Saturday morning on hearing that Israel and the US had bombed Iran. Had we missed something on Friday? No we hadn’t. The start of the war happened overnight. In early afternoon on Saturday Meteor Blades, staff emeritus of Daily Kos reported what we knew of the attack at that time. The post begins with an update with the original story below. Between that and all the other news sources reporting on the war I don’t have anything to add here. News Corpse of the Kos community posted late Saturday commenting on a tweet from the nasty guy that quotes other sources that say the reason why he started the war was because, “Iran tried to interfere in the 2020, 2024 elections to stop Trump.” News Corpse notes that there is no evidence of this allegation. Missing from the nasty guy’s tweet is a discussion of the evidence that Russia did interfere in the 2020 election. Midday on Monday Oliver Willis of Kos reported the nasty guy spent the weekend talking to various news organizations, including some he accused of “fake news,” and seemed to tell each of them a different reason why he issued the orders for the attack. Late Monday afternoon Emily Singer of Kos wrote:

The right-wing pundits who usually defend President Donald Trump's most idiotic moves are not pleased with his decision to start an open-ended war with Iran. They’re issuing surprisingly forceful statements condemning the Trump administration's inability to state a clear rationale for getting into yet another Middle East conflict.

Singer quoted far right pundit Matt Walsh, who wrote on X:

So far we’ve heard that although we killed the whole Iranian regime, this was not a regime change war. And although we obliterated their nuclear program, we had to do this because of their nuclear program. And although Iran was not planning any attacks on the US, they also might have been, depending on who you ask. And although we are not fighting this war to free the Iranian people, they are now free, or might be, depending on who seizes power, and we have no idea who that will be. The messaging on this thing is, to put it mildly, confused.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos quoted a press release by Maine Sen. Angus King (independent) who a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. He has questions, listed in the release:

1) Why hasn’t President Trump made the case to the American people (and to their representatives in Congress) for such a major commitment of American forces, which could include troops on the ground? 2) Why now? All reports were that negotiations with regard to Iran’s nuclear program were proceeding positively this week with the possibility of a long sought-after diplomatic solution, and there is no indication that new malign actions by the regime were imminent. 3) What, if any, is the plan for an endgame now that the goal has moved from elimination of Iran’s nuclear capacity to regime change? 4) What is the legal and Constitutional authority for this extraordinary action? The Constitution explicitly places the power (and the responsibility) for taking our country into war in the peoples’ representatives in Congress for a reason—the commitment to war is much too important to rest in the hands of one person.

Dan K of the Kos community reported:

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) reports that it is getting a big increase in complaints from troops who are being told that Trump’s attack on Iran is the opening round of the End Times war: MRFF Inundated with Complaints of Gleeful Commanders Telling Troops Iran War is “Part of God’s Divine Plan” to Usher in the Return of Jesus Christ.

Dan K quoted from the MRFF article:

“This morning our commander opened up the combat readiness status briefing by urging us to not be “afraid” as to what is happening with our combat operations in Iran right now. He urged us to tell our troops that this was “all part of God’s divine plan” and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ. He said that “President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.” — MRFF active duty NCO client, writing on behalf of themself and 15 other unit members MRFF has received over 200 calls from more than 50 military installations across all the services since Saturday reporting similar disturbing pronouncements from their Christian zealot commanders. [emphases in original]

Dan K said this idea would not have entered the nasty guy’s head because he would not have known or understood the meaning. But even before Pete Hegseth was sworn in as Secretary of Defense he was known as a religious warrior. A couple links to Hegseth’s statements are provided. Dan K concludes, “Anyone still want to bet this ends well?” Lisa Needham of Kos reported on Tuesday the nasty guy and the State Department have asked Americans, between a half and full million of them, to evacuate from 14 Middle East countries. But the State Department has provided no help in doing so and since the airspace has closed there are no commercial flights. This is in contrast to France, Belgium, and Britain along with the European Union using charter and military flights to get their citizens out. In Monday’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted David French of the New York Times:

Here’s the bottom line: Trump should have gotten congressional approval for striking Iran, or he should not have struck at all. And because he did not obtain congressional approval, he’s diminishing America’s chances for ultimate success and increasing the chances that we make the same mistakes we — and other powerful nations — have made before.

Tom Nichols and Shashank Joshi tweeted that the most abused words since the attack started have been “preemptive” and “imminent.” Will Bunch tweeted a link to an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer. In the tweet Bunch wrote:

No wonder Trump went to war with Iran in the dead of night, with the Capitol empty, most Americans soundly asleep This war is illegal. Full stop. The worst abuse of presidential power in American history aims to cement a dictatorship on U.S. soil.

The title and subtitle of the article:

A mad king’s illegal war on Iran is a cry for regime change ... in Washington. Democracy really did die in darkness as Donald Trump’s unconstitutional war in Iran stamps America as a dictatorship.

Timothy Snyder in his Substack:

From the United States, the most plausible angle of view is domestic politics, not foreign policy. Wars are a tool of undermining and undoing democracies. Given that we have multiple examples of this from both modern and ancient democracy, and given the behavior of Trump and his allies in general, this must be an interpretive method for these attacks. The relationship between foreign war and domestic authoritarianism can take two basic forms: 1) we must all rally because there is a war and everyone who oppose the war is a traitor; 2) we must hold elections under specific conditions favorable to the party in power. This is utterly predictable and should be easy to halt and indeed to reverse.

Jon Ralston quoted and provided a link to an article in the Nevada Independent:

“This is chutzpah taken to a new level, gaslighting done better than Charles Boyer could have executed: Persuade people that elections are compromised so you can compromise elections.” Trump and his enablers are laying the groundwork to muck around in the Nov. election.

In the comments is a cartoon by Toonerman showing Jiminy Cricket talking to Pinocchio, who is looking at articles about what the nasty guy has said.

No Pinoch... it’s still wrong to lie. It always will be, even if you are the president, or a powerful pol, or a religious leader, or a trusted “news network.” Lying corrupts the most important aspect of being human; the ability to make free and rational choices, and by lying, you’re trying to rob others of their freedom to choose rationally. Lying chips away at trust. Liars are losers.

In Tuesday’s roundup Chitown Kev quoted Harold Meyerson of The American Prospect who noted Bush II decapitated the Iraqi regime by forcing out Saddam Hussein. The nasty guy seems to have done the same thing in Iran.

Such are the limits of government decapitations. They are not a form of regime change. Absent the ability of the populace to take the power that should be theirs, decapitations may just be a form of upward mobility for the regime’s surviving elites, now that there are unfilled slots above them.

Vanda Felbab-Brown of The Brookings Institution wrote:

In the first days of airstrikes, the United States and Israel killed the ayatollah as well as several top leaders of the Iranian military and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), adding to those killed in July 2025 during the joint attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities. But the Iranian regime is vast, with sprawling religious authority, layers of officers across various armed branches and militias, and widespread control of the country’s economic assets. Even if the United States and Israel continue mowing down newly-replaced leaders for weeks, the IRGC and various armed forces and their economic assets will not just melt away, even if they eventually fracture. [...] The Trump administration broke a cruel, brutal, and dangerous regime with little clarity, planning, readiness, and accountability for how to foster a new, desirable replacement system.

Sophia Tesfaye of Salon:

The president did not deliver a traditional address to the American people on network television, instead posting a hastily-edited eight-minute video statement to Truth Social. Israel assassinated Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the leader of an adversarial state. American service members are dead — and the president has acknowledged there will likely be more to come. Iranian missiles are flying, hitting Israel and U.S. military outposts and interests throughout the Middle East. And the best the American people receive is a 3 a.m. Truth Social announcement delivered in a MAGA hat. No senior administration officials have appeared on the flagship public affairs programs that, for all their flaws, have long served as a forum for democratic accountability. Instead of structured briefings, Trump spent the weekend personally calling journalists — more than a dozen of them — fielding one or two questions at a time from the comfort of Mar-a-Lago. He spoke with reporters from The Atlantic, the Washington Post, Axios, the New York Times, ABC News and other media outlets, offering a scattershot array of justifications and timelines. To one outlet, the aim is “freedom for the people” of Iran. To another, perhaps this can end “in two or three days” with a deal. To a third, it might take “four to five weeks,” and he has “three very good choices” to take control in Tehran — until, in another conversation, he suggests those choices are dead. [...] Donald Trump’s war on the media has paid off. When the president bypasses traditional forums, it feels like just another norm shattered in an endless stream of shattered norms. When he declines to brief the public in a sustained way, it barely registers. When contradictions pile up, they are chalked up to style rather than substance. In the end, however, the punditry did not need to be coerced into cheerleading. It just needed, as it always has, the opportunity.

The Editorial Board of The New York Times wrote about four law firms that were attacked by the nasty guy and sued him rather than submit. Courts have already struck down the executive orders that attempted to punish them. And now the nasty guy’s administration has accepted defeat.

Nine other firms folded and struck deals intended to mollify the president. The deals included promises to perform millions of dollars of pro bono work on behalf of Trump-friendly clients. These nine firms all failed a high-stakes character test. Their leaders faced a choice between submitting to a bully and doing the right thing. The firms are not household names to most Americans, but it is worth listing them here. We hope that clients looking for fearless attorneys and law students deciding where to work will remember which elite firms were unwilling to fight back. Meekness is not a quality most people seek in a lawyer.

In the comments is a tweet by Saul Staniforth:

Pete Hegseth: "If you kill Americans.. anywhere on earth we will hunt you down without apology & without hesitation and we will kill you" Unless the American is killed by Israelis in the occupied West Bank, in which case we'll do nothing while we continue arming your killers.

John Karalis added:

*Offer not valid in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Commenter kurious quoted an article from Raw Story about military commanders saying the Iran attack will bring about the End Times. Here’s a bit of the quote:

"Many of their commanders are especially delighted with how graphic this battle will be zeroing in on how bloody all of this must become in order to fulfill and be in 100 percent accordance with fundamentalist Christian end of the world eschatology," MRFF president Mikey Weinstein added.

Babylonbros posted a cartoon showing two people arguing:

One: Let’s go Trump!! Taking care of Israel and taking out Iran! Two: I’m writing that down! One: Okay. Two: Sign it, please! One: Okay. Two: Now date it! One: Okay. – Why? Two: I’m going to show it to you the minute yo blame the price of gas on Democrats!

AMusingFool responded to the comments, “Maybe this war will turn out fine.”

Just want to flag this line. There’s no such thing as a war turning out fine. Might end up as a geopolitical win, but that requires ignoring a s***-ton of terrible stuff in the middle.

Raging Pencils posted a cartoon showing a discussion between a teacher and student Billy:

Teacher: Billy, can you tell us the three branches of government? Billy: Sure! Reality TV, Fox News, and the Heritage Foundation. Teacher: Not quite, Billy. Try again. Billy: How about the extortionists, the lap-dogs, and the jaundiced? Teacher: Now Billy... Billy: Malfeasance, incompetence and sadism? Quisling day-care, the confederate short-bus, and pay-for-play due process? Teacher: Uhhhh... Billy: Child-f***ers, conservative enablers, and racists royalists! Am I getting warmer? Teacher, with head on desk, “Hot. Red hot.”

The depth of active resistance in Minneapolis

This afternoon I braved the cold (temperature warmed up to 10F!) to go to the Detroit Film Theater to see The Glassworker. Director Usman Riaz set up Mano Animation Studio in Karachi, Pakistan. He learned how to do it from Studio Ghibli and elsewhere. The Ghibli influence is there (many of the images are quite beautiful) but this is a Pakistan story. At the start of the film are a few live action minutes in which Riaz talks about establishing the studio. All the images are to be hand drawn, though they’re drawn onto a computer screen instead of paper. He assembled quite a team and expressed thanks for help from those outside the studio. That story is about Vincent Oliver, trained as a glass artist since he was a boy. The son’s talent soon passes the father’s. While still a schoolboy he meets Alliz. She’s new to town, daughter of Colonel Amano. She’s as gifted on the violin as Vincent is in glass. Amano is in town to prepare for war. Soon many of the older boys are wearing military tunics. But Vincent’s father Tomas is a pacifist. Vincent hears people describe him as the son of the coward. That puts a strain on the growing friendship between Vincent and Alliz. Then Amano threatens Tomas to get him to work for the war effort. The story goes from there. I very much enjoyed the story and recommend it (I see it is available for streaming). However, some of the scenes are intense, so this animation is not for little kids (a young child in the audience wailed at a sad scene). I began to wonder who this film is for. Pakistan? America? The mouths don’t quite match the words, but that is typical in a dubbed movie (and IMDb lists the vocal cast as for the “English Version”), though all the names appear to be Pakistani (and they spoke with American accents). The source of the wondering is because the sign on Tomas’ shop says, “Oliver Glass” in English and a letter Vincent reads appears to be in English (and Vincent’s name doesn’t sound like a Pakistani name). Are those original or did the Studio create alternate scenes for originals in Urdu (I had to look that up)? Or do enough people in Pakistan know English through its colonial history? In today’s pundit roundup for Daily Kos Greg Dworkin included a tweet from Ana Marie Cox on the ICE invasion of Minneapolis. I then looked at the original.

I know people keep saying this but it’s hard to communicate the depth of active resistance here. Like, I’m on random cafes and people are checking in for observation shifts. Signs everywhere. Folks in visibility vests on the corners. It’s wild. Absolutely wild. And that’s just on the surface! I’m also discovering the spread of second and third tier support no one is seeing. I have never ever seen anything like this. I have seen communities organize around natural disasters in a somewhat similar way but obv that wasn’t 80% SECRET.

One of the many comments to Cox, this one by Otto Simm.

These local invasions are meant in part to train Nazi feds for larger offensives, but they’re training the opposition, too. Lessons and tactics are being shared and as a result every fascist invasion seeking to incite violence will fail earlier and with fewer casualties.

Another reply to Cox led me to this thread by Sinister Minnesotan, Quantum Hamologist. Here’s the start and end:

I need to write a long-form piece about how dang *Minnesotan* the resistance to ICE is here. You have a metro population that quietly got itself organized in a completely decentralized way, and everyone just got down to work. And it's clearly sending the feds into a tailspin. So what makes it "Minnesotan"? The "quietly" and "decentralized" bits are a big part of it; everyone who's out there did so because they independently decided something needed doing. Taking responsibility and not sitting around jawing about it is A Thing here. And sure, sometimes it sucks. ... At some point in the past, I pointed out that the number of Minnesotans out in the freezing cold for something that was neither ice fishing nor sports was *remarkable*. I really can't explain how, on one level, what's happening is entirely abnormal; but on another, it's just 100% Minnesota.

Dworkin quoted the New York Times

The action on Friday, which unfolded in subzero temperatures, was the most widespread and organized demonstration since federal agents arrived in Minneapolis more than six weeks ago. It was aimed at pressuring the federal government to pull thousands of its agents from the streets. Businesses, many of them locally owned, closed their doors to halt economic activity, saying that losing a day’s revenue was worth the cost to be part of the effort to end the immigration enforcement. “There’s a time to stand up for things, and this is it,” said Alison Kirwin, the owner of Al’s Breakfast, a Minneapolis restaurant that closed on Friday. “If it takes away from a day of our income, that is worthwhile.”

The Washington Post on the nasty guy and Greenland:

The brazen ultimatum — give up Greenland or face tariffs — elicited a level of unity that largely had eluded the leaders of the 27-nation E.U. in the year since Trump’s second inauguration.

Joyce Vance in her Civil Discourse on Substack:

ICE seems to be arguing that if they think a non-citizen for whom there is a final order of deportation is in a house, they can blow right past the Fourth Amendment, take the doors off the house if they aren’t admitted voluntarily, and go right in. But the Fourth Amendment doesn’t change just because ICE says so. The Supreme Court has made it clear that a search warrant must be signed by a “judicial officer” or a “magistrate.” Their signature on the warrant says that they have reviewed the evidence that the agents believe constitutes probable cause to justify a search, and they agree that it is sufficient to breach the wall otherwise established by the Fourth Amendment and allow law enforcement into a private home (or car, or private areas of a business, etc.). The idea is that a detached, neutral judge—not someone involved in investigating a case or “on the same side” as law enforcement—should evaluate the evidence before a search warrant or an arrest warrant is issued.

Down in the comments Pierre Polyester of Canada posted a meme of the nasty guy’s 10 biggest lies during his speech at Davos (which implies there were a lot more than ten lies). I will list only a couple:

Lie: US paid 100% of NATO Truth: US pays ~16% of NATO budget Lie: US gave Greenland back [as part of the 1951 treaty] Truth: Denmark always owned Greenland.

On Thursday Lisa Needham of Kos wrote about a memo from ICE that overrides the Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure. Since ICE officials know busting down doors without a warrant is illegal, the memo has been passed along secretly. It’s based partly on executive orders from the nasty guy (which are not law or part of the Constitution) and some of it is derived from recent rulings from the Supreme Court – the Kavanaugh Stops that allow for racial profiling. In Monday’s pundit roundup, both in the body and a ways down in the comments, are several memes and tweets of the nasty guy chasing after various prizes. I’m sure most of them were AI generated. A tweet by David Frum:

ICE should return to being a police force. No masks. No combat gear. No armored vehicles. They should audit employers suspected of employing illegal labor - and enforce deportation orders - with badges, warrants, and professional manners. "Demilitarize ICE" not "Abolish ICE."

Live your life without fear of death

My Sunday movie was My Sunshine, a Japanese movie that seems appropriate leading up to the Olympics next month. It’s appropriate to me because about all I watch of the Olympics are the opening and closing ceremonies and the figure skating. The setting is on Hokkaido, the northern island of Japan. The exact city might have been mentioned on a sign or building but was not translated. Takuya is in his young teens and occasionally stutters. He is the goalie of his hockey team and not good at it. The figure skating class takes over the rink when the hockey team is done and Takuya becomes enamored with Sakura, one of the better ones and quite good. Movie descriptions say she is from Tokyo but no reason is given for why she is here and not there. Takuya tries mimicking the spins he sees Sakura do, but doesn’t do well in hockey skates. Her coach watches him and offers his old figure skates (amazingly they fit!) and offers to given him lessons for free – there are a lot of girl figure skaters and not enough boys. As Takuya improves the coach suggests he and Sakura become an ice dancing team. Her mother thinks she’s better than that. I enjoyed it. It’s a good film but I would not say it’s a great film. Now for some spoilers. There are a couple reasons for mentioning them. One is the description of the movie isn’t right. It implies that Takuya and Sakura grow close and experience young love. They become a decent dancing pair, but I didn’t see them become more than friends. The other reason is about the coach. The movie says that he is from Tokyo. The implied question is why is he here in northern Japan and not Tokyo or other big city – he is good enough to coach the impressive Sakura. We eventually see the reason – he’s gay. And attitudes in northern Japan are still quite conservative. So there is no final triumphant showing at the ice dancing competition. That the coach is gay is not in the description and I didn’t know that when choosing this film. Back to the description. It has the phrase, “unspoken feelings begin to surface,” implying a growing love between Takuya and Sakura. But the “unspoken feelings” are between the coach and his lover, as far as I can tell, and they don’t “begin to surface.” With all that I’m not sure how I would have succinctly described this movie. Tovia Smith of NPR reported that Bishop Rob Hirschfeld of the Episcopal Church in New Hampshire told a community of faith leaders about the “cruelty, the injustice and the horror … unleashed in Minneapolis.” Then he warned of “a new era of martyrdom.” When talking to a reporter he said:

I've asked them to get their affairs in order to make sure they have their wills written, because it may be that now is no longer the time for statements, but for us with our bodies to stand between the powers of this world and the most vulnerable.

Yeah, that went viral. Some faith leaders responded by essentially saying glad he said that. They’ve been thinking something similar and feel relief that someone spoke out. Others wondered if they would be that brave, but know they need to move beyond taking no risk. Others said this didn’t diffuse tension, it seemed more of a war cry. The church should be about peacemaking and to build bridges. I add that ICE isn’t about to diffuse tension or make peace, though building bridges to conservatives is a big help, but outside of ICE protests. Another opinion is that they didn’t sign up to be a martyr, they have a family and congregation who rely on them. I add the family is definitely a concern, but the congregation will survive, get another pastor, and might appreciate the example. Hirschfeld replied to criticism:

What I said to the clergy (was) “I'm just asking you to live your life without fear of death. Be prepared. I'm not asking you to go look for that bullet.” I'm simply saying be ready, have your affairs in order, have your soul ready, in case you find yourself in trouble.

That trouble may not come from ICE agents. New Hampshire is an open carry state and rallies and vigils prompt MAGA people to counterprotest, which could turn violent. Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin said that if Hirschfeld wanted to stand with the vulnerable he should stand with the ICE agents. Yeah, that sort of inverse logic is expected.

Make repression backfire

I finished the book Gay Bar by Jeremy Atherton Lin. Me intrigued by gay bars? I’ve been in a gay bar definitely once, I doubt more than that. That once was the /aut/ bar in Ann Arbor I think when the gay owners announced they were retiring. I thought I should go there before it closes. So I went when it was still daylight, ate my supper, and left. Before or after that I visited the LGBTQ bookstore next door owned by the same couple, also about to close. Before then I think the only time I went into any type of bar for drinking (as opposed for a meal at a “bar and grill”) was when I was in college and I went with my girlfriend (before I realized I’m gay) and her parents. They had booze. I didn’t. During my life I think I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve consumed alcohol and have fingers left over. I don’t like the taste and see no need to be under the influence. So why would I buy a book about gay bars? I’m not sure I have an answer for that. I did hear or read a review of the book that said it was quite good. So when I was in an LGBTQ bookstore (this one in Royal Oak) and saw it, I bought it. Then I let it sit on the shelf for a few years. The subtitle “Why We Went Out” isn’t quite right. Atherton Lin does cover that – briefly – and hits the usual reasons: A safe place to be ourselves. A place to be a part of our community. A place to cruise. A place to develop resistance and activism. The book really is about the gay bars he and his partner frequented (or merely visited) in California (where he’s from) and England (where his partner is from). I understand he needed to give his partner an alias to protect privacy, but that alias is Famous Blue Raincoat, usually shortened to Famous. Only in the acknowledgments did he say the name came from a Leonard Cohen song, whose lyrics are weird enough I’m not sure what they’re saying. For each of the bars they visit the author describes the place, the clientele, some of the interesting things that happened to him there, and some of the history of the place. He also tries to describe what it all means, and I don’t think that was so successful. As for some of the history, one of the bars was on Villiers St. in London. George Villiers was a favorite of King James I – yeah, the sponsor of the translation of the Bible many conservatives insist is the only correct one was gay. So the king bestowed this chunk of real estate along the Strand. Having gay pubs in the area around Villiers St. is quite appropriate. He discusses a skinhead attack and followed that up with gay men adopting the skinhead look. Did they do it because they wanted to beat up people who attacked their kind? Perhaps. Or maybe when one looks that tough people don’t mess with them. In the last decade he noticed a lot of pubs on London’s South Bank showing the pride flag. Were they welcoming LGBTQ people? Or was that a way to keep another type of customer out? I didn’t read the second half of the first chapter because what I read seemed to be one excuse for sex after another. If the second chapter wasn’t any better I was going to drop the book. Thankfully, it was better and I can say overall I enjoyed the book. Atherton Lin has a second book out. This one is about the difficulties of gay relationships, like his, where the partners are from different countries. He is a good enough writer that I should put it on my to-buy list. Astead Henderson of the show Today, Explained from Vox and heard on NPR talked to Chanté Joseph about an article she wrote for Vogue titled “Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?” I worked from the transcript. There is a growing trend to hide the face of the boyfriend, sometimes even the groom, on social media. Why? Some of it is privacy. Some of it is because when they guy cheats on her she doesn’t want to edit her social media account. Some of it is because the woman has created a brand around herself and announcing a boyfriend would interrupt that brand. And some of it... Scoring a boyfriend used to give a sense of achievement. But with conservatives touting tradwives, a straight romantic relationship seems archaic, co-opted by the right. Joseph had to clarify to readers she wasn’t attacking women or their relationships. She was not shaming them for finding love. Love is wonderful.

But I'm saying that there is a way that men have been allowed to behave and act in society for so long that has only gotten worse.

Then she discussed men’s reaction to her article.

And but then obviously there was a lot of hateful abuse, a lot of racist abuse. Men talking about the way that they'd want to see me abused and die. And it was really awful. And I think I definitely struck a nerve, particularly with men.

Women are now more educated than men. They have their jobs and are running households. They are seeing they don’t need men. So men are feeling the dating space is the last place they can have true domination. They used to have power over a great many spaces and they are losing that. Joseph mentioned the book The Tragedy of Heterosexuality by Professor Jane Ward. A chapter is about the things queer people say about their straight friends when those friends aren’t around. The conclusion seems to be “straight culture is very embarrassing.” Joseph said that when boys message her saying how worried they are she tells them to be aware of what media is teaching them about what to believe about women. Social media tries to reach boys when they are young. As for young women they are delighted to learn that having a boyfriend does not have to be the most important thing. They can be a good and fascinating person by themselves. In the second half of the program Henderson spoke to Jane Ward, professor of feminist and queer studies at UC Santa Barbara. They discussed the book mentioned above. What got her writing the book is hearing from lesbians wondering if straight people were okay, hearing straight women wish they were lesbian. Ward laid out the contradiction at the heart of modern straight identity that started in the early 20th century. The idea of companionate marriage develops, in contrast to how marriage was seen for centuries. Men are supposed to care about women and their wellbeing. There is supposed to be mutual respect. Men are supposed to actually like and love their woman. But these men “are still raised in a misogynistic culture, one that normalizes boys and men's hatred of girls and women.” We’ve developed a new type of marriage without undoing the “centuries of patriarchy and misogyny that are pretty foundational to the human experience.” Mainstream culture hasn’t been able to cross that gap. There is hope. Recognizing that contradiction and discussing it is a start. So is recognizing the current norm isn’t working. But we haven’t figured out the replacement yet, so there is a lot of uncertainty and anxiety. This seems to contribute to women becoming more liberal while men are becoming more conservative. Ward says the solution is feminism, that men embrace feminism. Men can

demonstrate that they actually like women so much, they're sooooo heterosexual that they actually like women. They want to listen to women talk. They care about women's ideas. They want to follow women's leadership. ... They're friends with women. They watch movies about women. They read books written by women. I mean, it's just kind of amazing how narrowly we have defined heterosexual masculinity.

The news today has been full of the story of a white woman in Minneapolis, Renee Good, who didn’t act in the way ICE agents wanted, so they shot through the windshield of her car, killing her. The mayor of Minneapolis used foul language to tell ICE to leave. Kristi Noem of Homeland Security almost immediately began to vilify Good. Minnesota police discovered the FBI wouldn’t share findings, preventing the state team from being able to conduct an independent investigation, so we know whatever the FBI gives us for their report will be filled with lies. Gaslit Nation released an episode featuring Annie, a listener from Minneapolis. There’s 15 minutes of audio, though I’ll stick to the lengthy description, which includes references. Annie is pleased Minnesota politicians are taking the ICE occupation more seriously. That’s good, but their response should be so much more. It should be real resistance.

Actual resistance could look like tracking ICE apprehensions and accounting for all victims, running a support hotline for impacted families, providing legal aid to immigrants, tracking ICE locations and sharing this information with immigrants at risk, maintaining a list of ICE license plates, serving as constitutional observers during ICE stops, or even just lifting up the work of rapid response networks and encouraging residents to participate. None of this has been happening, and that probably won’t change, but I now have a tiny bit of hope that it might. ... Today, [Mayor] Jacob Frey told ICE to “get the f*ck out of Minneapolis,” but he didn’t say what he will do if they don’t. We need to be thinking about resistance dynamics. When ICE does not get out of Minneapolis, what action will the City take? What actions are we taking to back up our demands?

Annie linked to a recent video by Tad Stoermer, a historian of resistance movements, talking about the “loyal opposition.” That’s when the opposition party treats dictators as a normal political opponent, they are loyal to the system the dictator is operating in. But that teaches people the wrong lesson about resistance. It says this is the only response, this is how serious people handle it. A loyal opposition that talks about affordability while the dictator is invading other nations and threatening the stability of NATO and the world is saying it’s not that bad. Real resistance develops organizing infrastructure and networks, build parallel institutions. See: Underground Railroad. The loyal opposition sucks up energy that could be used to build resistance infrastructure. I see Congressional Democrats are complaining about both affordability and the Venezuela invasion. But there is a difference between complaining and real resistance.

The phrase that keeps repeating in my head today is “Make repression backfire.” Collectively, let’s channel our grief and rage into making state repression backfire and building a real resistance movement that will allow us to protect people, take back power, and build the world we need.

Policy: drive liberals to anger, then mock them

My Sunday movie was Episode 1 of American Revolution by Ken Burns. I haven’t watched episodes 2-4 and probably won’t get to 5 and 6 unless I can find a way to stream them over the next several weeks. I’ll have to check whether PBS allows non-members to stream their shows. This episode covers 1754 to 1775. The story starts with the Seven Year War (French and Indian War) in 1754. It was actually a global war. These were George Washington’s first battles. He was part of the British military and those battles convinced him the British could be defeated. This was at a time the people still thought of themselves as British. The mainland (rather than the Caribbean) colonies were quite diverse. People came from various European countries in addition to England. There were also African slaves and indigenous people. How could such diversity be united into one country? The greater the percent of slaves in a colony, the more prosperous it was. Caribbean colonies were quite prosperous. New England colonies were not. England paid more attention to the Caribbean. Those who came to the American colonies were people who wanted their own plot of land. They did not want to work for the local aristocracy. There was a continuing demand for more land but the only available land was controlled by the natives. That meant violence. To reduce that violence Britain said no spreading beyond the Appalachian Mountains. Colonists said nope. Britain sent troops to enforce their edict. But the British government, having fought four wars (or maybe that was wars on four continents?), was deeply in debt. They decided the colonies should pay for the troops – the troops that prevented them from spreading west. Thus the Stamp Act. And that created the idea of no taxation without representation. Most of the episode is about the government in London enacting more ways to bring its colonies under control and the colonists rejecting them and becoming more united in their rejection. Then came Lexington and Concord, the first deaths, and the British retreat. Before then each colony had its own relationship with London, some rejecting the meddling and calling for defiance and others enjoying profitable relations they wanted to continue. But Lexington and Concord prompted a more unified view that the political links to England needed to be severed. I am impressed with the large range of artwork the series used to illustrate the scenes. Of course most of it I hadn’t seen before. I was amused at the painting of the young George Washington. I appreciate the show talked about the contradiction between colonists described themselves as slaves to England while having African slaves in their homes. I’ll have more to say about that when I finish the book I’m reading and about a third of the way through. When the nasty guy reclaimed the Oval Office Niece told me she wanted to get out of the country, though she doesn’t feel she is ready to support herself through such a drastic changes. Alix Breeden of Daily Kos reported:

A recent Gallup poll found that 40% of U.S. women aged 15 to 44 said that they would move to another country permanently if given the opportunity—a jump of 10% since 2014. This increase seems to be exclusive to the United States, with other countries reporting fairly consistent numbers between 20% and 30%.

The nasty guy in the Oval Office is not the only reason, though a big one. There is a general sense the US is becoming increasingly unfriendly to women, and has been since about 2016. In the last year both in Britain and Canada there has been an increase in the Americans applying for citizenship. Americans living outside considering renouncing citizenship has jumped from 30% to 49%. Reasons for the desire to leave are restrictions on abortion and reproductive rights, the cost of giving birth is going up (as health insurance is getting much more expensive), and masculinity is getting more toxic. Dan Gearino, in an article for Inside Climate News posted on Kos, reported there are some things people on the left and right agree on. One is a “skepticism of entrenched power and a desire to dismantle systems that they think have ceased to serve everyday people.” And that includes increasing distrust for data centers.

Much of the discussion is about data centers, which are often large developments used to support cloud computing or artificial intelligence. But the underlying issues are broader, touching on the power of tech companies. For people who live near proposed data centers, there is an additional sense of powerlessness, which Inside Climate News has documented across the country, including the backlash to a plan for a huge data center in Bessemer, Alabama. “It’s about big tech,” Olson said. “To steal Bernie’s words, [it’s about] these big tech oligarchs that are calling all the shots at every single level of government right now.”

Gearino included poll results showing that for most things more people (and in some areas many more people) believe AI makes things worse and not better. The problem could be lessened if those wanting to build data centers talk about local benefits. The locals already hear about the high use of water and the likelihood of electrical bills going up. Companies are not working to alleviate those concerns. As for the benefits, some experts ask are there any? As part of the series on Explaining the Right Oliver Willis of Kos discusses how Republicans became shameless hypocrites. An example of them being hypocrites goes back to the 1990s when Speaker Newt Gingrich was portraying Republicans as the party of “family values” during the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal while Gingrich was cheating on his wife as she fought cancer and eventually married his mistress. Of course, there are a lot of more recent examples.

For years, conservatives have made the concept of “owning the libs” central to their political ideology. The idea is to engage in behavior and use rhetoric that supposedly makes liberals angry, driving them to exhibit this anger, which conservatives then mock. Even if their behavior doesn’t provoke a tantrum, conservatives have elevated this brand of mockery above nearly everything else, including policy and ideology. This has resulted in the right, including right-wing media like Fox News, becoming fixated on “culture war” issues.

Since Gingrich was “owning the libs” his own infidelity got a pass.

This creates a permission structure on the right where Republicans are allowed to be contradictory, as long as a liberal somewhere is purportedly mad about it. But this kind of posture has a limit.

The limit is that it works great with other Republicans or MAGAs. It doesn’t work for anyone else and voters who aren’t Republicans are quite willing to throw them out of office. Emily Singer of Kos lists reasons why Democrats won the shutdown. I’ll let you read her explanations. Democrats brought health care to the forefront. Polls showed voters blamed Republicans more than Democrats. The nasty guy’s approval fell dramatically, going from -12 to -16. The shutdown gave Democrats a ton of campaign material for next year’s midterms, such as the nasty guy’s Great Gatsby party, which widely polled as inappropriate spending. On Sunday’s All Things Considered on NPR host Sacha Pfeiffer and St. Louis Public Radio reporter Hiba Ahmad discussed the tornado that hit St. Louis last May and toured some of the damage that is still quite evident six months later. Then they turned it into a discussion of the nasty guy’s desire to turn FEMA over to the states. They talked to Mayor Cara Spencer, who summarized the reason to keep FEMA national:

My argument would be that, as a nation, we would be better off, more efficient and certainly more effective if we centralize and share the resources and expertise across the nation for very unusual events, rather than saddling every single municipal government to being able to respond to what may or may not happen in the lifetime of each of those cities.

The article mentions Enright Ave of St. Louis as one that was hit hard by the tornado. There were other places hit harder, but the article doesn’t explain their location. I went looking at Enright Ave. through Google Street View and found something fascinating. Start on the avenue just east of Union Blvd. Google Maps say they rolled down the street in May 2025. The houses look to be in great shape. Then take a step east and the images are of July 2025. A lot of homes are damaged – windows gone or boarded up, walls and roofs missing and some covered in blue tarps, stacks of salvaged bricks, and piles of trash. This allows a person to compare a few houses before and after and to see the destruction on down the street. I then wondered, did the Google Street View people do this intentionally? If so, thank you. Yeah, this is the view of the street in July, six to eight weeks after the tornado. The NPR article says the street isn’t much different six months later. And that’s because the nasty guy and his desire to oppress those not in his billionaire class.

You are going to lecture America about law and order?

The big story of the weekend and week is the protests in Los Angeles and the nasty guy’s oversize response. A Martínez of NPR spoke to Rep. Nanette Barragán, D-Los Angeles and chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. I’m working from the news story corresponding to their discussion. Many immigrants look for day jobs at work sites outside of Home Depot. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raided those sites. They were not targeting criminals, as the nasty guy said they were after. They were sweeping up friends and neighbors. The residents protested the ICE raids, which had detained more than 100 people. I’ll combine that with a discussion between Leila Fadel of NPR and Hina Shamsi, the ACLU's National Security Project director. Again, I’m working from the news article. Those demonstrators clashed with police. The nasty guy used the clashes as a reason to sign an order to deploy 2,000 National Guardsmen into the city. This was over the objection of Gov. Gavin Newsom. The deployment was to protect ICE agents from “violent mobs” who “fueled lawless chaos.” Shamsi discussed the authority for the nasty guy to give that order. His use of the National Guard in domestic situations are reserved for actual emergencies, such as an actual war or armed rebellion. That’s not what this is. Instead, this is a dangerous abuse of power. The memo didn’t place a geographic or time limit on the deployment. Shamsi sees this as the nasty guy writing himself a blank check to use the Guard in other place where people are using their free speech to protest dangerous ICE raids that are snatching neighbors. Handling protesting crowds are not what the federal troops are trained for. This is an escalating show of strength that could have deadly results. The legality of that memo will be tested in courts. Oliver Willis of Daily Kos added more. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said the chaos was provoked by the nasty guy. The raids caused fear and panic. Newsom said the state is suing the nasty guy. One reason for the raids is the ICE agents are pressured to get their arrest numbers up. The threats are coming from Stephen Miller, the nasty guy aide in charge of anti-immigrant policies. The effort is to report higher numbers for the fear factor, even if the numbers aren’t real. Willis wrote:

Trump wants an excuse to attack the left and continue to justify his anti-immigrant bigotry, so he will continue to escalate. And while things seem to finally be calming down in downtown LA, protests are expected in more than a dozen cities nationwide.

Emily Singer of Kos reported that 22 Democratic governors -- as in all of them but Newsom – signed on to a statement supporting Newsom’s position and condemning the nasty guy’s deployment of the National Guard to squash protests against ICE raids. The nasty guy falsely claimed the protests “constitute a form of rebellion” requiring a military response. But a National Guard presence only inflamed protests. Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona wrote on X:

Reminder just because Donald Trump wants to inflame tensions doesn’t mean you have to play along. Don’t loot, don’t assault police officers, protest peacefully. Trump and Miller will do this in every Blue city whenever they want to distract from something unpopular, like their Medicaid cuts.

Walter Einenkel of Kos wrote about Sen. Chris Murphy’s protest of the nasty guy’s actions. Murphy said this on MSNBC:

“Donald Trump only cares about protests when they're opposing him. Every single day we should be reminding the American public that there were protesters at the Capitol fighting for Donald Trump to install him in power permanently on January 6 of 2021, who beat the hell out of police officers with metal poles and tasers and are out on the street today,” he said. Murphy added that Trump’s unbalanced approach to power, sending in the National Guard despite state and local law enforcement’s objections, is “fundamentally undemocratic,” and a dangerous endorsement of violence. “The message is simply, if you're violent in service of a Republican cause, you'll get a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card. But if you're engaged in protest against the administration, well then we're sending in the National Guard,” he continued.

Willis reported that Tom Homan, the border czar said Gov. Newsom and Mayor Bass could be targeted for arrest if their actions hindered ICE. “It’s a felony to impede law enforcement doing their job.” Newsom responded, “Come and get me, tough guy. I don't give a damn. It won’t stop me from standing up for California.” When a news anchor asked Homan for comment he said, “I never threatened to arrest Gov. Newsom, so I’m not biting off of that, that reporter’s dishonest.” When the nasty guy was asked about what Homan first said he thought it was great. Einenkel reported on what the nasty guy said to reporters:

The people that are causing the problem are professional agitators. They're insurrectionist[s]. They're bad people. They should be in jail.

Einenkel wrote:

The hypocrisy of labeling protesters “insurrectionists” after pardoning more than 1,500 convicted ones earlier this year is breathtaking. Even more staggering is the continued insistence of right-wing hot air balloons like Trump that any large protests against his unpopular policies are somehow deep state-funded, fabricated operations.

A reminder that such hypocrisy is a display of their power – they can be highly hypocritical and we can’t do anything about it. Einenkel reported on House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ response to the nasty guy’s comment.

You know what he did on Day 1? He pardoned hundreds of violent felons who brutally beat police officers. That's the insurrection. The notion that Donald Trump and his minions—his sycophants here in the House of Representatives or in the Senate, who are nothing more than a reckless rubber stamp for Donald Trump's extreme agenda—are going to lecture America about issues of law and order? Get lost. We’re not feeling you at all. You have zero credibility on this issue.

Pedro Molina posted a cartoon on Kos. It shows several headlines – Economy in Danger, Plans to Cut Medicare, Putin Mocks Trump, Sky-Rocketing prices, ICE Abuses – all obscured by the smoke from a tear gas canister. Willis reported several instances of criminals who impersonated ICE agents. One zip tied the wrists of a legal immigrant and stole $1000 in cash. A pair in South Carolina harassed a Latino man by threatening to send him back to Mexico. A man in Florida harassed two Latino migrants by demanding they prove their immigration status. There are many more instances.

Criminal elements are taking advantage of Trump’s embrace of these authoritarian techniques in yet another way that crime is enabled by Trump’s actions. Instead of directing the government to fight crime in a traditional manner, Trump has pushed the false narrative that immigrant crime is more of a problem than homegrown threats. This pivot has provided the pretext ICE cosplayers need to rob more auto repair shops, harass innocent people, and continue terrorizing communities.

In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin included a couple quotes to pass on. First is from Steven Beschloss of America America who titled his piece Trump Wanted This Escalation:

Trump’s directive yesterday stated, “To the extent that protests or acts of violence directly inhibit the execution of the laws, they constitute a form of rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.” Note the words: “a form of rebellion.” And note the further escalation by Defense Secretary and Trump sycophant Pete Hegseth who posted this on social media: “The DeptofDefense is mobilizing the National Guard IMMEDIATELY to support federal law enforcement in Los Angeles. And, if violence continues, active duty Marines at Camp Pendleton will also be mobilized—they are on high alert.” ... Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass’ response to the federal actions: "These tactics sow terror in our communities and disrupt basic principles of safety in our city.”

Second, in a tweet Bill Kristol included a tweet by Terry Moran:

The thing about Stephen Miller is not that he is the brains behind Trumpism. Yes, he is one of the people who conceptualizes the impulses of the Trumpist movement and translates them into policy. But that’s not what’s interesting about Miller. It’s not his brains. It’s his bile. Miller is a man who is richly endowed with the capacity for hatred. He’s a world-class hater. You can see this just by looking at him because you can see that his hatreds are his spiritual nourishment. He eats his hate. Trump is a world-class hater. But his hatred only a means to an end, and that end is his own glorification. That’s his spiritual nourishment.

In the comments exlrrp posted a meme showing a much younger nasty guy with Jeffrey Epstein and a woman with just enough clothes. The caption says, “Trump sent troops into L.A. to distract you from this.” Further down exlrrp posted this tweeted exchange:

Nasty guy: Low-selling author Isaac Marion wrote an “apocalyptic” novel that’s clearly an attack on me. Biased and very boring. Not a good writer! Isaac Marion: It’s more an attack on the selfishness and fear that poisons humanity, but sure, it can be about you if you want.

I highly doubt the nasty guy read Marion’s book. Also in the comments is a tweet by Sen. Scott Wiener:

Vance calls the LA protests an “invasion.” 4 min later, Miller calls it an “insurrection.” 29 min later, Hegseth threatens to send in Marines. It’s like clockwork. They’ve chomped at the bit for months for a pretext to declare martial law under pretext of insurrection/invasion.

Just below that is a tweet by Adam Cochran. It shows a news release from the Los Angeles Police Department. Cochran added:

Even the LAPD is saying the protests are peaceful and managed (i.e. it is not an uncontrolled insurrection requiring the National Guard). Do you know how f---ing out of line you have to be, to be so authoritarian that the LAPD is siding with the protesters?!

That’s followed by a tweet from Mohammad Safa:

If the United States saw what the United States is doing in the United States, the United States would invade the United States to liberate the United States from the tyranny of the United States.

A tweet from Mike Nellis:

They're so desperate to escalate the situation in Los Angeles, they're sharing video of a car burning from FIVE YEARS AGO.

And one just for fun: A cartoon by Wayno shows Mr. Spock on a desolate planet surface speaking into his communicator: “Mister Scott, I’ve fallen and I can’t beam up.” In a second pundit roundup Chitown Kev quoted Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times:

It’s important to understand that for this administration, protests needn’t be violent to be considered an illegitimate uprising. The presidential memorandum calling out the National Guard refers to both violent acts and any protests that “inhibit” law enforcement. That definition would seem to include peaceful demonstrations around the site of ICE raids. In May, for example, armed federal agents stormed two popular Italian restaurants in San Diego looking for undocumented workers; they handcuffed staff members and took four people into custody. As they did so, an outraged crowd gathered outside, chanting “shame” and for a time blocking the agents from leaving. Under Trump’s order, the military could target these people as insurrectionists. The administration, after all, has every reason to want to intimidate those who might take part in civil disobedience. Violent protests play into its hands; peaceful ones threaten the absurd narrative it’s trying to bludgeon America into accepting.

And Chris Geidner of LawDork:

One of Trump’s...favorite methods of addressing a perceived threat is to declare a problem and then over-respond to the problem he has invented, thus expanding the scale of the problem as part of his self-imagined creation. That, of course, is the reason why Trump is pretending that the National Guard is needed in Los Angeles. Say there’s a problem, create new rules or restrictions, and justify future escalations based on opposition to the new rules.

Mary Louise Kelly of NPR talked to colleague Lisa Hagen, who looked at pro-nasty guy media spaces to see how his supporters were talking about Los Angeles. Hagen said:

The two words I'm hearing the most are insurrection and invasion. There's been a lot of focus on images of demonstrators waving foreign flags.

About foreign flags, one conservative voice said, “This is what invading armies do.” Invasion and insurrection are two different things being blended together across conservative media. This could criminalize any protester, citizen or not. The nasty guy has long been using the word invasion. He first used it to describe asylum seekers and gangs. Now he’s broadening the term to include anyone here illegally. The Alien Enemies Act has already been invoked as justification to suspend due process for the Venezuelan immigrants accused of being gang members. The Insurrection Act may be invoked next. That “would allow the president to use the armed forces to take any measures he considers necessary to suppress an insurrection.” The problem is that the nasty guy is trying to claim that if he says it’s an insurrection he gets to use the Insurrection Act. Alas, both of those acts haven’t had a lot of legal testing. The conservative line used to be we don't hate immigrants. We just want them to come here legally. Voices are now saying, “ban all third-world immigration, legal or illegal.” Kos of Kos says the deployment of National Guard troops to Los Angeles is personal because the deployment includes his son. That son was called to help with the aftermath of the Altadena fire in January. Even after his official deployment ended he still helps out several times a week. As for the current activation Kos wrote:

You can’t imagine the rage I feel. Trump has spent his entire presidency railing against dissent. Now that he’s losing in Congress, in the courts, and in the court of public opinion, he’s escalating—using peaceful protests as a pretext for his dream of military dictatorship. In January, my son and his fellow first responders were welcomed by Southern Californians with food, gifts, and gratitude. Today, Trump is sending them into those same communities as symbols of repression. He’s destroyed the goodwill they built—and he doesn’t care. He wants confrontation. He wants escalation. He wants violence, because he thinks it gives him license to go even further.

The father is scared, but proud of his son. He’s also “burning with righteous fury.” In the comments Albanius quoted Malcom Nance and his Substack Special Intelligence, where he recommends, “strategic ridicule including dance parties, led by patriotic military veterans.” From Nance:

Right now, Trump’s narrative is that he is using tough, lethal armed soldiers and marines to snatch a city from foreign invaders. We must change that false narrative into harsh reality: A moron Presidrent and a drunk Secretary of Defense has taken good soldiers from training and has transformed them into a bunch of under equipped, under fed, hapless yutzes who have now been assigned to the stupidest duty in the world. The best way to do that is to utilize former military personnel and retired veterans to take to the front line in Los Angeles and form Dumb Deployment Intervention Platoons (DDIPs). These DDIPs will use tried and tested techniques honed over hundreds of years of American soldiering to mock stupid decisions on and off the battlefield. And this one is a doozy. Our DDIPs will also explain to the media just exactly how ridiculous and silly it was for Trump to order Marines to conduct an operational deployment to West Hollywood.

Dance party as resistance? I like that idea. In a third pundit roundup, this one by Dworkin, he included a tweet by G Elliott Morris:

Brand-new polling from YouGov out this morning finds Trump's actions re: LA underwater — and double-digit disapproval on sending in Marines. This should be a reality check for those people arguing the protests inherently help Trump bc his immigration approval # is positive.

And a tweet by Jon Favreau:

Every paragraph of this WSJ story is more shocking than the last: "Agents didn’t need to develop target lists of immigrants suspected of being in the U.S. illegally, a longstanding practice, Miller said. Instead, he directed them to target Home Depot, where day laborers typically gather for hire, or 7-Eleven convenience stores. Miller bet that he and a handful of agents could go out on the streets of Washington, D.C., and arrest 30 people right away."

Alas, the part that X allows me to see does not include a link to the WSJ story. In a fourth pundit roundup Chitown Kev quoted Anne Applebaum of The Atlantic compared the nasty guy to the Bolsheviks and the Maoists. Here’s a bit:

Trump faces the same choice as his revolutionary predecessors: Give up—or radicalize. Find compromises—or polarize society further. Slow down—or use violence. Like his revolutionary predecessors, Trump has chosen radicalization and polarization, and he is openly seeking to provoke violence.

In the comments exlrrp posted a meme from Occupy Democrats: “Notice how it’s no longer ‘State’s Rights’ since Republicans control the federal government.” There are also two sets of cartoons about the comment about foreign flags. One shows a guy waving the Mexican flag and a bystander says, “We have to hire Mexicans to do the rioting Americans won’t do.” Other memes and cartoons note how many MAGA followers, especially during the Capitol attack, carried Confederate flags, which are not American flags. Another Occupy Democrats meme says, “So when a guy waves a Confederate flag to celebrate heritage it’s ok, but when a guy waves a Mexican flag to celebrate his heritage he’s an ‘insurrectionist?’ I’m going to start waving a Mexican flag to troll the snowflakes offended by it.” I like this one: rugbymom posted a few tweets under the heading, “Resistance takes many forms, including the supremely gloriously petty.” The tweets say, “At the Kennedy Center, half the theater just started clapping when a group of drag queens showed up to find their seats at opening night of Les Miserables, which Trump, Melania, Vance and their top allies have all come out to see.” I hope they waited until the nasty guy was seated. And lpeacock posted a tweet from BrooklynDad:

Good morning and Happy Thursday to everyone who appreciates the delicious irony of trump going to see Les Misérables at the Kennedy Center, a show about a country fighting a tyrannical king, and trump got his ass mercilessly BOOED.

Fear Won. That’s what hurts.

Oliver Willis of Daily Kos listed the seven worst things the nasty guy said he plans to do on his first day. 1. Mass deportations creating economic and social chaos. 2. Target transgender children and their mental health. 3. Reinstate his Muslim travel ban. 4. End birthright citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants, erasing a basic American value. 5. Cut funding to schools that teach real history, such as slavery and Jim Crow. 6. Oppose vaccine mandates, enabling childhood illness. Quite the contrast to saying how precious the unborn are. 7. Repeal emission mandates, increasing pollution and speeding climate change, even though Biden’s goal of making half of US auto sale be electric vehicles enriches the nasty guy’s buddy Elon Musk. Walter Einenkel of Kos posted Jimmy Kimmel’s opening monologue from Wednesday night. He talked about his disappointment in the election results. He does get a bit emotional as he lists all the people who will be hurt by the election results. That includes all those who voted for the nasty guy, though they don’t know it yet. The segment is 16 minutes. Einenkel also posted the opening monologue of Stephen Colbert on Wednesday’s The Late Show. He eloquently begins with a swear word. The video is nine minutes. He’s asked by people saying isn’t having the nasty guy in office a source of a lot of material for comedians? He replies that’s similar to someone with diarrhea giving the custodian a lot of material to work with. One would rather not. Also...

The first time Donald Trump was elected, he started as a joke and ended as a tragedy. This time, he starts as a tragedy. Who knows what he'll end as. A limerick?

Emily Singer of Kos reported several Democratic governors are trying to protect their states from what the nasty guy might do. Gavin Newsom of California wants his legislature to return for a special session to pass more funding for the California Department of Justice. He’s pretty sure they’ll need the money for lawsuits against the nasty guy’s actions. Important areas are protecting reproductive freedom and protecting LGBTQ people. Other governors getting ready include Massachusetts, Washington, New York, and Illinois. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin had a few interesting quotes. John Burn-Murdock of Financial Times shows a chart with the percent rise or fall in vote share for governing parties in national elections in developed countries. The chart goes back to the late 1940s. The caption says, “Every governing party facing election in a developed country this year lost vote share, the first time this has ever happened.” Perhaps we should be pleased Harris and Democrats lost the least, though we didn’t have any margin to spare. Burn-Murdock added:

The economic and geopolitical conditions of the past year or two have created arguably the most hostile environment in history for incumbent parties and politicians across the developed world.

Sharon Quinsaat in Hawaii told of her experience encountering a native she calls Lily who regards the nasty guy as a demi-god.

She showed me on her phone the stuff she reads and listens to everyday. I have never heard of them before, but we listened to them together. The conspiracy theories in these sites are WILD, to say the least. But she is convinced they are true. I have my research assistants look at these sites and influencer/analyst because they are so new to me. Lily and I are living in two different worlds.

John Sides tweeted:

Like clockwork, commentators interpret elections as ideological mandates. Trump wins, so voters hate progressives and want conservatism. Here's why that's wrong. 1) It doesn't help explain why parties *of all ideologies* lost vote share post-COVID. 2) It exaggerates how much voters vote based on policy. So much polisci shows how difficult that is, and how in fact it's often the reverse: voters choose polices based on whatever their preferred candidate is advocating. 3) The big LOL comes when the new party takes power and goes in the direction that voters allegedly "wanted." And then voters...go in the opposite direction! This is the thermostatic model of public opinion.

There are cartoons and memes in the comments. A couple of memes were posted by exlrrp. The first is from Mike Wise:

It’s not just that Trump won. It’s that Joe Rogan, Dana White and Brett Favre won. Jailed insurrectionists won. The Alitos and the Thomases won. Vladimir Putin won. Racism won. Misogyny won. Sexism won. Global warming won. Xenophobia won. Most of all: Fear Won. That’s what hurts.

And exlrrp quoted a meme by Mehdi Hasan that fits in with reports that when the nasty guy was declared the winner all talk of election fraud stopped.

So to be clear, Dems rigged the election against Trump in 2020 but then just ... forgot to do so again this time around?

Matt posted a cartoon of a man sitting on the steps of his house with a bat in his lap and crying. His wife tells the neighbor, “He’d set his heart on storming the Capitol.” Banx has a cartoon of a wife saying to her husband, “I though we were going to contest the result?” Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid’s Tale, tweeted a cartoon by Whamond showing a monther and daughter in handmaid robes and bonnets. The daughter speaks first:

But why didn’t you vote against them Mom? Why didn’t you try to stop them from taking it all away? Well, back then, prices were quite high, honey...

PittsburghLiberal of the Kos community lists twenty reasons why fascism may not take hold in the US. I note the “may.” This post begins with two truths. First, we are not to “blame” for the outcome. Republicans have been heading in this direction for quite a while. Many of us have worked hard to stop the slide and have had success in many areas. Second, there are many Americans who are not hyper-radicalized and don’t understand the dangers of fascism. We must face this moment by considering there may be tyranny and mass executions. Even so, there compelling reasons why fascism may not succeed here. I won’t list all twenty. We’re much more racially and ethnically diverse so isolating and persecuting minorities will be harder. Many states will lead resistance. Overall resistance is well-organized and well-financed. We have a well established democratic tradition that didn’t have time to develop in Germany or Russia. Germany was defeated by democracies, which helped discredit democracy. Major democracies are our allies. Modern technology makes capturing and sharing abuses of power easier. We know the nasty guy and we know the authoritarian playbook. We can prepare. Jailing or murdering celebrities who oppose him would be politically untenable. The nasty guy is in cognitive decline and his only ambition is himself. He’s not an ideologue. If he can’t go on he has no successor with the same draw and party support. Republicans are prone to infighting. They’re evil, but not smart. A lot of effort will go into denying reality, which will constrain them. There is no credible external threat to be used as a foil. The military leadership is apolitical and the many of the soldiers are people of color. Andrea Chalupa of Gaslit Nation has been hosting a salon over Zoom as a way of forming community and helping people work through their feelings. She sent an email Thursday evening with a link to the recording of Thursday’s salon. I don’t know if it is for members only. It begins with the image from the Sound of Music, the moment when Baron Von Trapp pulls down the Nazi flag and rips it in half. Then Chalupa offers a to-do list. And that list makes the situation of life under fascism a lot more real. Again, I won’t list everything in her list. Offer your talents to the resistance. We’ll need lawyers, security (including cybersecurity), health and mental health healers, archivist, and many more. Your talents might be needed. Commit to staying human. Don’t rip apart fellow resisters. Commit to the community and collective safety. Check in on the vulnerable. Take time for art. When scared turn to love. Ignore harassment. Get away and help others get away. If you can’t, film them. Assume your phone is a listening device and that AI is scanning everything online. Do sensitive things without technology. Commit to nonviolence. They want us to be violent so they have a reason to outviolence us. If we pledge to nonviolence we can tell those calling for violence are a regime plant. Create a bag in case you have to flee – passports, cash, ID, water, masks, solar charger for phone, protein bars. Keep a journal describing life now so over time you can tell how you and society have changed. Buy paper books of American history, including of the nasty guy years, because they will attempt to rewrite history. Local elections still matter. Vote and consider running. Be careful of what you drink and eat, especially meat, as consumer protections are rolled back. Give children and grandchildren a fascist free bubble for as long as possible. Remind teens of their power. All we can do is slow them down. If you work in government stay there to help slow down their work. I’ve been writing this resistance blog for almost 17 years. I’ve done it anonymously because this threat has been visible since I started. But I have no doubt that a determined official can figure out who I am. I probably should go find that post from a decade ago that includes a photo taken at a protest that includes me. Then again, with the internet archive I may already be too late.