A psyop to destroy manhood

Jelinda Montes, in an article for Uncloseted Media posted on LGBTQNation, discussed “The social psychology behind trans terrorism panic.” The article begins by describing male teens being sucked into alt-right websites. One of those was Joseph McConville, who managed to find his way out. The message he kept hearing was: As a male he’s entitled to everything and soon realized he wouldn’t get it all (he heard this one before he got online). Transgender people are a psyop to destroy manhood – “It’s all about making men hate themselves, to become women, to weaken the American hegemony.” The second part of the article is the anti-trans lies being pushed by various more mainstream media outlets. They’re giving false information to get one to support their position. The third part is why it works. Thekla Morgenroth, a professor of psychology at Purdue University said:

People are very attached to the way that they think about gender because it gives them a sense of certainty—it gives them a sense of who they are and who they’re not. ... Here’s an explanation for why I should be scared. I’m gonna endorse that and I’m gonna believe that regardless of whether that makes logical sense or not.

It is the same method used against gay people and other marginalized people. Frame them as a threat, an issue of protecting the community.

[Joseph Vandello, a psychology professor at the University of South Florida,] says many young men fall for anti-trans narratives because they confirm their place of privilege in the world and validate their insecurities. He coined the term “precarious manhood,” which is the idea that manhood is a social status that has to be won and can be lost. His research indicates that threats to one’s sense of manhood—like trans and queer identities—provoke not only insecurity, but aggression.

Fourth, the way out. Justin Brown-Ramsey was sucked in and found his way out. That happened in college when a professor required him to read about Frederick Douglass, which forced him to engage in ideas outside his usual diet. The phenomenon of getting sucked into the alt-right algorithms fascinated Anthony Slteman, so he began to study how it happened. But he could feel the “empathetic communication” of the network sucking him in. He turned to his professor to keep him grounded. He described the content: “ It’s always framed about fear, anger, and just some sense of belonging.” In Sunday’s pundit roundup for Daily Kos Chitown Kev quoted Cory Doctorow writing for The Guardian.

Donald Trump’s tariffs have opened up a new possibility for the technology we have become increasingly dependent on. Today, nearly all of our tech comes from US companies, and it arrives as a prix fixe meal. If you want to talk with your friends on a Meta platform, you have to let Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg eavesdrop on your conversations. If you want to have a phone that works, you have to let Apple’s Tim Cook suck 30p out of every pound you spend and give him a veto over which software you can run. If you want to search the web, you have to let Google’s Sundar Pichai know what colour underwear you’ve got on. This is a genuinely odd place for digital computers to have got to. Every computer in your life, from your mobile phone to your smart speaker to your laptop to your TV, is theoretically capable of running all programmes, including the ones the manufacturers would really prefer you stay away from. This means that there are no prix fixe menus in technology – everything can be had à la carte. Thanks to the infinite flexibility of computers, every 10-foot fence a US tech boss installs in a digital product you rely on invites a programmer to supply you with a four-metre ladder so you can scamper nimbly over it. However, we adopted laws – at the insistence of the US trade rep – that prohibit programmers from helping you alter the devices you own, in legal ways, if the manufacturer objects. This is one thing that leads to what I refer to as the ens***tification of technology. There is only one reason the world isn’t bursting with wildly profitable products and projects that disens***tify the US’s defective products: its (former) trading partners were bullied into passing an “anti-circumvention” law that bans the kind of reverse-engineering that is the necessary prelude to modifying an existing product to make it work better for its users (at the expense of its manufacturer). But the Trump tariffs change all that. The old bargain – put your own tech sector in chains, expose your people to our plunder of their data and cash, and in return, the US won’t tariff your exports – is dead.

In the comments LEastsound posted a cartoon by Michael de Adder that shows a scene that seems quite accurate to me. It shows a TV with a news program with the banner, “Trump wants Greenland.” In front of the TV is Putin with a big smile, jumping on the furniture, and popping s champagne cork. In the comments of Monday’s roundup paulpro posted a cartoon by Smit. It shows three ICE agents beating a person on the ground. A fourth agent approaches and says, “Make way guys! I, too, wish to cleanse a lifetime of cowardice, inadequacy, powerlessness and resentment through this one glorious act of obscene inhumanity which can’t possibly ever come back to bite us in the ass!” Maybe a decade or so ago people came to Detroit to take photos of the dilapidated buildings. It was called “ruin porn.” In Wednesday’s roundup Greg Dworkin quoted David Frum of The Atlantic who talks about what might be called “revenge porn” or “violence porn.”

For MAGA America, ICE is an instrument for cleansing violence. Visit ICE social-media accounts and you’ll see, again and again, videos of armed force against unarmed individuals, against a soundtrack of pumping music. There’s a montage of aggressive arrests in Minnesota of unarmed, nonwhite men, many of them thrown to the ground and cuffed, set to the 1977 hit “Cold as Ice”: “Someday you’ll pay the price.” A dozen heavily armed and armored agents round up a single unarmed woman in a T-shirt and two similarly defenseless men in California. In Indiana, armored agents throw handcuffs and ankle chains on a big haul of men and shove them in a cell, where they can be seen pacing, weeping, or with their heads plunged in their hands. Rarely do these videos present a situation that couldn’t be managed with a couple of plainclothes officers bearing holstered sidearms. The point is to prove that the fearsome power of the American state is being wielded by righteous MAGA hands against despised MAGA targets.

From the New York Times:

While Mr. Trump still says the ICE agent was acting in self-defense, his latest comments suggest that disrespecting law enforcement could help to justify the killing. The comments raise serious questions about the use of force by those carrying out Mr. Trump’s crackdown on immigration, and they underscore the extent to which Mr. Trump’s impulse is to condemn anything done by his critics and to defend the actions of his supporters.

In the same topic Paul Veronese tweeted:

In his book, "Kent State: What Happened and Why," James Michener concluded the best explanation for why the Ohio National Guard shot and killed multiple students is that the working class males in the Guard couldn't handle disrespect especially from *coeds* (female students).

Wall Street Journal, in an article about the nasty guy complaining about AG Pam Bondi:

“The better an attorney is, the more process-oriented they are going to be, and that is in direct opposition to what Trump wants, which is someone who is outcome-oriented,” said Sarah Isgur, who served as a spokeswoman for Sessions at the Justice Department. “He can never find a great attorney general because, by definition, they can’t be a great lawyer.”

In the comments paulpro posted a meme from Mr. Fish. It shows an ICE agent in full gear and aiming a gun. The caption says, “Only a coward arms himself against the First Amendment.” Mayra tweeted an image of a member of the Klan, a German SS officer, and an ICE agent. The caption says, “History doesn’t repeat. It rebrands.” Also in the comments FarWestGirl posted a long description of projection. It is from Simply Psychology, a website discussing psychological conditions. I’ve mentioned projection many times because the nasty guy and Republicans do it so frequently – enough that some people say every one of their accusations is a confession. The article is long so I’ll post only part of it.

Projection is a psychological defense mechanism that involves attributing one’s undesirable traits, feelings, or impulses to other people. For instance, someone who is dishonest might accuse others of being dishonest, thereby shifting attention away from their dishonesty. How does projection serve as a defense mechanism? + Projection, as a defense mechanism, helps protect the ego from anxiety-provoking thoughts or feelings. + By attributing these unwanted aspects to someone or something else, the individual distances themselves from what they find unacceptable within themselves. + This process helps reduce internal conflict and preserve a more favorable self-image. + For instance, a person who struggles with repressed anger might perceive others as hostile and aggressive, thereby avoiding the anxiety of confronting their own anger. Projection centers on attributing specific traits to others that we deny in ourselves. Sigmund Freud viewed projection as a way for individuals to manage aspects of themselves that contradict their self-concept or violate internalized moral standards. In Freudian theory, this process occurs unconsciously, with individuals unaware of the traits they project onto others. Projection emerges when repression, the primary means of keeping unacceptable material out of consciousness, proves ineffective. Narcissistic Projection: Narcissists will project their own negative qualities, insecurities, or shortcomings onto someone else to protect their fragile self-esteem and maintain their grandiose sense of self.

Back in mid December The Wolfpack posted a cartoon of a discussion between the nasty guy and an elephant:

Please don’t vote to release the Epstein files! Everyone will find out that I’m a pedophile! Hmmm... If we help ya keep the files buried, what’s in it fer us? I’ll give you huge endorsements when you’re up for re-election? Why the hell would we want endorsements from a known pedophile?

In today’s pundit roundup Kev quoted Eduardo Porter, writing his Being There Substack:

It is clever. Taking out president Nicolás Maduro while leaving in place his repressive regime, cutting a deal for Maduro’s vice-president, Delcy Rodríguez to take over the presidency, and allowing the heads of the regime’s repressive apparatus to keep their jobs, will prevent American casualties. The arrangement probably can guarantee some stability in the immediate term. But it will fail. President Trump may believe that America’s show of force will cow Rodríguez et. al. into doing as he says. But his view shares the hubristic myopia that has clouded American interventions over decades now. His nifty trick does nothing to correct the fundamental shortcoming in America’s approach to war, unparalleled at winning battles, but dismally bad at building stable, legitimate equilibria in the places it just blew up. ...Trump’s “regime change without changing regimes,” as Phillips P. O’Brien, a professor of Strategic Studies at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, called it, will also leave a painful mess that will do nothing to improve the lives of Venezuelans. The regime Trump left in Caracas is carrying on with business as usual, It has reportedly unleashed new rounds of repression, imprisoning journalists and ordinary citizens. The State Department in Washington issued an alert noting “reports of groups of armed militias, known as colectivos, setting up roadblocks and searching vehicles for evidence of U.S. citizenship or support for the United States.”

Adam Mahoney of Capital B News wrote about the images of Venezuelans celebrating the departure of Maduro. He made the distinction between the lighter-skinned Venezuelans who are celebrating and darker Venezuelans, the ones with African ancestry, who are not celebrating and are less likely to migrate to the US. Racism is alive there too. In the comments a cartoon by Dave Granlund shows an ICE agent at a pharmacy counter saying, “Got anything for an itchy trigger finger?” A meme posted by exlrrp shows a sign with the head of an ICE agent with the words, “I murder people because a pedophile tells me to.” Lefty Coaster posted that the nasty guy has dementia, then listed common ways dementia changes a person’s behavior.

+ Losing inhibitions + Delusions and paranoia [though he’s been showing that a long time] + Agitation and restlessness + Aggressive behavior As a person’s dementia progresses, they will have more difficulty understanding logic and persuasion, so trying to reason or argue with them is not likely to help.

Tweets posted by exlrrp has one by Brooke Rollins:

We’ve run over 1,000 simulations. It can cost around $3 a meal for a piece of chicken, a piece of broccoli, corn tortilla, and one other thing. So there is a way to do this that actually will save the average American consumer money.

Sara Brnić responded:

I can’t wait to have one piece of chicken, one piece of broccoli and a single corn tortilla with one other thing for dinner every night just so I can afford to still not be able to buy a house!

Chasten Glezman Buttigieg added:

Private jets and tax breaks for them and their rich friends, and one piece of broccoli *AND* a tortilla for you!

Toonerman posted a cartoon of God and Satan (looking quite red) at a bar.

God: I have to admit Beelzbub, getting all those Evangelicals to believe that a racist billionaire that makes fun of disabled folks and dead soldiers, has 5 kids with 3 wives, rapes women and children, incites riots and lies ALL THE FREAKIN’ TIME was sent by me? Ha-ha now that’s pretty darn impressive! Satan: Oh stop it God, you’re making me blush.

Off to the side, “Evangelicals must use an alternative New Testament.” Wolfpack posted a meme titled “Denmark is ready!” It shows Greenland surrounded by a fortress wall made of Legos. Nick Anderson posted a cartoon titled “Supreme Leaders.” It shows the Ayatollah of Iran and the nasty guy both saying, “We have the right to shoot domestic terrorists whose protests challenge the legitimacy of our regime.”

You won’t need a heart

There was a shooting at the school where Niece works as a librarian. She was not on campus at the time. One injured, perpetrator in custody. That’s way too close. The single injury was why it wasn’t in the news – it wasn’t dramatic enough. My Sunday movie was Young Hearts, a movie from Flanders, the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium. The story is about Elias, who is 14. This is a farming community and grandfather owns a farm. This is the time of life when literature class starts talking about love. He has a girlfriend in Valerie. Alexander, also 14, moves in next door. He admits he’s been in love before, and to a boy. Alex had lived in Brussels and rural life is new to him. Elias is glad to show him around. Elias soon falls in love with Alex, but he doesn’t know what to do with the feelings. He doesn’t know any gay people in his community. Isn’t he supposed to be in love with Valerie? How will his parents react? It takes a while, and the loving grandfather, to sort it out. Thankfully, the level of homophobia is quite low. I enjoyed this little movie. The actor who played Elias, Lou Goosens, did a fine job and has a good start on an acting career. Trenz Pruca of the Daily Kos community and author of his own blog looked at average income tax rates over the last six decades. He looked at the effective tax rate for the bottom 50% and middle 40% of taxpayers, then for smaller groups in the higher income levels, so that the top two are the top 0.01% to 0.001% and those above 0.001% of taxpayers. He then discussed his conclusions. I’ll mention his major points. The tax code has become much less progressive. The tax rate of the bottom 90% is roughly unchanged over these decades. When bills are passed they are described as everyone getting a tax cut, but those at the bottom (more accurately, not at the top) see little benefit. Over this time Republican administrations have cut tax rates for those at the top by a big chunk. Democrat administrations do nothing or raise the tax rate at the top by a modest amount. Then Republicans cut them again. Each cut is lower than the time before. These tax cuts are not done because the economy needs them to recover or continue growing. These tax cuts are not “paid for” within the tax system.

The adjustment occurs elsewhere: through higher deficits, increased federal debt issuance, or pressure on non-tax mechanisms such as spending cuts. This directly links the chart to the broader fiscal debates that follow major tax cuts: debt ceilings, entitlement reform, and “tough choices” about public investment. ... For most Americans, this does not arrive as a line item labeled “tax increase.” It arrives as constraints: what government can no longer afford, what benefits must be means-tested, what investments are postponed, what risks are privatized. In that sense, the chart helps explain why debates over Social Security, Medicare, healthcare access, and public investment intensify after periods of elite tax reduction. The system has already made its choice; the argument is over who absorbs the consequences.

Last Thursday, just a day after Renee Good was murdered by ICE officer Jonathan Ross, Emily Singer of Kos discussed the various ways Republicans in the administration and elsewhere praised Ross and slandered Good. Much of what they said was lies, easily shown through the various videos of the incident. No surprise here. Lisa Needham of Kos wrote on the day of the murder that it or something like it was always going to happen. She goes into a lot of detail of how we got here – the nasty guy calling in the National Guard in various cities and courts telling him he can’t. Even so, ICE has been active and brutal, yet ICE goons are the ones claiming to be fearful.

This was a favorite lie that ICE invoked in Illinois and California—basically, if your car happens to be anywhere near an ICE agent, they become so scared that they have to shoot you.

Needham gets to the core of her argument.

Trump desperately wants to invoke the Insurrection Act, which he threatened to do in 2020 during uprisings following the police murder of George Floyd—which, of course, was also in Minneapolis. With that, it’s no surprise that this shooting occurred less than a mile away from George Floyd Square. Trump has already declared that he is allowed to invoke the Insurrection Act if the courts won’t let him send in the National Guard, and … the courts won’t let him send in the National Guard. ... What we have now is a blue city on edge, enraged, and fearful—and Trump likely has a brand-new justification for a military crackdown. And, really, that’s what he wanted all along.

Mark Sumner, Kos staff emeritus, discussed whether Ross can be charged with murder. Short answer: Yes, he can, but it could be a difficult process. Sumner cites a Supreme Court ruling that says the charge is permitted. I thought he was referring to a recent case, but this one is from 1890. In the other big distraction from the Epstein files... Alex Samuels of Kos reported that less than a week after the nasty guy kidnapped Maduro if Venezuela the Senate advanced a resolution that would block using military force there without Congressional approval. All Democrats voted for it and five Republicans did too.

While largely symbolic, Thursday’s vote is a rare bipartisan check on Trump, signaling that even in a polarized Senate, some lawmakers are willing to challenge his lawlessness.

David Horsey posted a cartoon on Kos. It has a caption saying, “Since the precedent has been set...” It shows a Danish news reporter saying, “In response to threats against Greenland, elite Danish forces have raided the White House and taken into custody the corrupt, authoritarian leader of the United States.” Last Wednesday Emily Singer reported:

The Trump team released a new food pyramid Wednesday, and it’s as confusing and completely out-of-touch with reality as the rest of the administration’s actions. The new pyramid is an inverted triangle that features protein, dairy, healthy fats, fruits, and vegetables at the top and whole grains at the bottom. But its guidelines are difficult to understand and fail to address how the Trump administration has been making those foods more expensive and harder to access. ... If the administration actually cared about health, it would be advocating for more assistance for poor communities to be able to access fresh fruits and vegetables, not crusading against them by vilifying food stamps. More than anything, it’s infuriating to watch the Trump administration embrace the very same idea that former first lady Michelle Obama promoted when Barack Obama was president—an idea that the right screamed about, accusing her of trying to create a “nanny state."

The next day Alix Breeden of Kos said the new guidelines “smell a little rotten.” At the news conference unveiling the new diet guidelines there was a lot of declaring these guidelines were free of conflicts of interest from food corporations. Well, that’s good. But then the actual guidelines seem to be the result of conflicts of interest – or maybe the people who put it together are a bunch of quacks. The top example is the recommendation for meat and dairy has been pushed to the top of the chart (meaning we should eat a lot of it), “despite that scientific research says these foods contribute to worsening heart health.” Robert Kennedy Jr. wants to end the “war on saturated fats.” There is some good in his efforts. He wants people to eat less processed foods and more whole foods. But his other weird efforts mean people will be skeptical of the rare good ideas he is promoting. In the comments of Friday’s pundit roundup for Kos are some good cartoons and memes. The Wolfpack posted a cartoon by BabylonBros of the nasty guy interviewing the Tin Man for a job. The nasty guy says, “You won’t need a heart. We’ll start you off working for ICE!” Adam Cochran tweeted about the way the vice nasty defended the Minneapolis killing:

The most insane thing about all this, is just that: -There is no reason to defend this. It’s not political. You could just say: “Officer didn’t follow protocol. Doesn’t reflect our values. Will be held accountable” There is NOTHING to gain from defending this UNLESS you *want* for ICE to have the freedom to kill US citizens for disagreeing with you!

Tom Gauld posted a cartoon for New Scientist marking going back to work after the break. Two scientists are talking:

First: I am a scientist, Martin. My observations must be meticulously documented rigorously analysed and objectively verified. Haste is the enemy of wisdom! Second: But could you share a preliminary appraisal of your general thinking? First: Well, if you insist on a crudely reductive answer, then, yes, I had a nice Christmas.

In Saturday’s pundit roundup Greg Dworkin quoted Lawrence Willerman of Blue Amp asking us whether the country is more like Charlie Kirk or Renee Good.

Renee Good was a queer mother of three. A poet. A neighbor. A human being who cared about her community and the people in it—especially the ones with less power, less safety, and fewer voices. She lived compassion in a way that didn’t require a microphone or a donor list. And that compassion is almost certainly what put her in the path of federal agents who never should have been there, doing a job they were wildly unqualified to do. She did not die because she was reckless. She did not die because she was violent. She did not die because she was dangerous. She died because she cared. She died because she believed that warning her neighbors—her fellow Minneapolis residents—that ICE was conducting raids was the right thing to do. Because she believed community mattered. Because she believed people deserved to know when armed agents of the federal government were sweeping through their lives.

In the comments The Literate Lizard posted a quote by Margaret Atwood:

Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.

A cartoon posted by paulpro and created by Jonesy shows Jesus saying to a crowd, “Blessed are the meek. Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth. Love your enemies. Blessed are the peacemakers.” In the crows is a guy with a MAGA hat saying, “What the hell kind of Christian is this guy anyway?”

How do you tell a parent you sacrificed their child for Big Oil?

This afternoon I watched the live show Dimanche. It’s a combination of mimes and puppets from two award-winning Belgian companies. The setting is a time when climate change is hitting hard. There are two alternating scenes. The first is three intrepid wildlife reporters trying to document the damage in the Arctic. The second is a family trying to live normal lives, first when it is so hot the furniture warps, then during a ferocious windstorm. The first scene with the reporters is them crammed together in a vehicle as they drive to their next location. The fun part is they hold the windshield wipers in their hands and keep them going, thankfully in time to the music on their radio. The rearview mirror, complete with pinetree scent, is also there but the actors have to hold it in place. They are so scrunched together they have to pass wipers and mirror back and forth to be able to open the thermos to get a drink. I found an online photo of that scene here. When they arrive at their site they worry about the ice breaking up. In the family scenes the grandmother is played by a puppet. The family tries to keep her comfortable in the heat. Like the polar bear and flamingo puppets the puppeteers are quite visible, which is part of the fun. When Grandma sits, she does so in the puppeteer’s lap. This was an enjoyable 75 minutes, though it again brings up the question: When are we going to take climate change seriously enough to do something about it? Alas, I’m well aware that the people in charge of the petroleum industry maintain their power over the federal government through the riches they get by requiring we power our lives through their product. A week after Nicolás Maduro was kidnapped I’m finally able to run through the browser tabs of the situation that I’ve collected. If you still need something like this here is last Saturday’s Associated Press article posted on Daily Kos of the military operation and capture. On Monday Emily Singer of Kos wrote about the Democrat’s reaction. Of course, all who were quoted condemned it. Singer’s report included this:

Multiple Democratic lawmakers pointed to Trump's admission aboard Air Force One that he had briefed oil companies ahead of the U.S.’s capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro—and before he notified members of Congress. Clearly, this has nothing to do with illicit drugs and everything to do with Trump wanting to line the pockets of his oil and gas donors. Venezuela has some of the largest oil reserves in the world. Most concerning of all, Trump and his administration appear to have no plan for what comes after Maduro’s capture. That risks further destabilizing the country, echoing the United State’s boondoggle in Iraq, where the U.S.’s regime-change operation lasted nearly two decades, led thousands of American troops to die, and cost hundreds of billions of dollars.

Also on Monday Oliver Willis of Kos reported that Rep. Delia Ramirez of Illinois is one of several House members writing up articles of impeachment against the nasty guy because he kidnapped a foreign leader, a violation of international law. He also violated law by not telling Congress. Of course, there are several other impeachable offenses to go with it: Deporting international students for exercising freedom of speech. Abused the immigration system, starting with the abduction of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. He accepted a bribe from Paramount to approve their merger with Skydance. He received a jet, an air palace, from the Qatari government. He abused presidential powers when he deployed the National Guard to Los Angeles. He is not spending money according to what Congress specified. He’s using the Justice Department for personal retribution. Though getting an impeachment bill out of the House would be close to impossible this year, airing his crimes in the Senate would mean any Republicans who voted to acquit would be tainted going into the 2026 election. Again on Monday Lisa Needham of Kos said the Maduro kidnapping is like Christmas for the DoJ. They were told by U.S. District Judge James Boasberg back in March to turn around a planeload of Venezuelan deportees on their way to prison in El Salvador. Those deportees, and many since, were supposed to get hearings before being flown out. The DOJ has been stonewalling because, gosh, they might not be the gang members the administration says they are. But now with Maduro in custody they’re busy with that and don’t have time to deal with Boasberg’s silly requests. And their next step is to claim that since the US has invaded their home country the are no longer migrants, but enemies. Of course, their real goal is to deport any one they please. Still on Monday Singer documented the similarities between the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and Venezuela today. Both are about oil. Both leaders declared victory early though the situation was far from resolved. And it seems in both cases once the old ruler was removed the American leaders had no idea what to do next.

"Military disasters like the Iraq War robbed this nation of young lives, of billions of dollars, and of our moral standing in the world. How do you look a parent in the eye and tell them you've sacrificed their child's life for Big Oil's bottom line?" James Talarico, a Democratic candidate for Senate in Texas, wrote in a post on X. "As US Senator, I will never vote to send someone's son or daughter to war to make billionaires richer."

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Friday Cheers and Jeers column for Kos quoted some late night commentary.

"President Trump said his new year's resolution this year is 'peace on earth,' and that lasted for just under two days. If you were wondering how bad these Epstein files are for Trump, turns out they're invade-Venezuela bad. This is literally the plot of the movie Wag the Dog: the president gets caught in a sex scandal, so he attacks a smaller country to distract us. And here we are, distracted. After months of escalation, Trump decided Maduro had to go. And yes, he's a criminal and a dictator who's driven his country into financial ruin while he and his family have lined their own pockets. But Maduro is no saint, either." —Jimmy Kimmel “This Minneapolis ICE shooting video has become a political Rorschach test: Some people see a peaceful protester getting murdered, and other people are fascists.” —The Daily Show’s Ronny Chieng "President Trump told House Republicans they have to win the midterms because, 'If we don't win the midterms, they'll find a reason to impeach me.' Of course, the challenge isn’t finding one. Its picking one." —Seth Meyers

Keefknight posted a cartoon on Kos he titled the re-PUBLIC-an Transit Map. It shows an oval with these places endlessly repeated.

GOP take over Tax Cuts for the Rich!! Deficit balloons Economy tanks (and we’re en route to:) Start Oil War Dems take over Dems raise taxes to cut deficit Repugs run on cutting taxes

Paul Fell posted a cartoon of a fortune teller and customer reacting to the crystal ball that exploded. The fortune teller says, “You just had to ask what Trump was going to do in 2026, didn’t you...?!

Being non compliant should not result in being dead

I had heard about this particular Republican maneuver last month. I had heard about the consequences of it. I had heard Democrats complain about it. But the major news sources I regularly listen to or read didn’t explain how it happened. So when another chapter of the saga was in the news I looked up the story in Michigan Advance. Back on December 11 Ben Solis of MA wrote:

GOP members of the House Appropriations Committee, who control the majority, voted along party lines to employ a little-used provision in the Management and Budget Act that allows either House or Senate appropriators to disapprove any newly requested work projects. The vote allowed the committee, chaired by state Rep. Ann Bollin (R-Brighton Township), to cut more than a half-billion dollars in current work project spending.

Elsewhere Solis explained the total amount of money was “nearly $645 million.” A few things about this: This was a committee, not the full Michigan House. The funds had previously been approved by the full House (controlled by Republicans) the full Senate (controlled by Democrats) and signed by the governor (a Democrat) as part of the state’s annual budget, which had been signed about a week late. The various groups had negotiated an agreement acceptable to all. That “little-used provision” is not described nor explained, leaving one to wonder how it gives a mere committee the power to overturn duly enacted spending laws agreed to by the full legislature and governor. This is another hardball tactic by Michigan Republicans. After 40 years of Republican control of the legislature fairly drawn maps allowed Democrats to control both chambers in 2022 and they made good use of their time. In the 2024 election the House reverted to Republicans by a tiny margin (the Senate was not up for election). Matt Hall was elected Speaker and he has been trying to do as much damage as he can (but that would take up more time than I’m willing to devote to it). But this effort wasn’t led by Hall, though he gave his full support. It was led by Rep. Ann Bollin, who chairs the Appropriations Committee. These agency projects have long been her target. Hall reviewed the list of cuts with Republicans so that it would not alienate them. That means all the cuts would have great effect Democrats and little effect on Republicans. Bollin said the Democrats on the committee had seen the list of cuts for 30 days and that her door was always open for discussion. One can imagine Democrats thinking such discussion would not be on the record and not be worth the effort. But at the committee meeting Bollin did not allow discussion but went straight to the vote. The line given by Hall and Bollin was they were stopping “waste, fraud, and abuse,” the old line Republicans have been proclaiming for quite some time as an excuse to cut things they don’t like. Alas, media doesn’t ask (at least doesn’t get an answer to) what the meaning of waste, fraud, and abuse is that Republicans are using. It’s also annoying that “fraud” has come to mean a reason to eliminate a program rather than enact rules to lessen or prevent the fraud. It’s also annoying the phrase is applied only to programs Democrats sponsor and not programs Republicans sponsor, even though cronyism, as in fraud and abuse, is more likely. Some of the programs targeted are the Holocaust Memorial Center, a program that provides mental health services for kids who have been sexually assaulted, a program that helps kids with cancer, temporary assistance for needy families, nurse workforce development, continued assistance to Flint because of their water crisis over ten years ago, and many more. Of course, there will now be efforts by Democrats to revoke that “little-used provision.” On December 10 Katherine Dailey of MA reported on the press conference Bollin and Hall gave to celebrate and defend their maneuver. It’s the same blather as one expects from Republicans these days. On December 17 Dailey reported that the Michigan House passed a bill to restore most of the $645 million that House Republicans blocked. Five Republican senators voted in favor. Since then the House hasn’t touched it. What brought this story back to my attention was the news, as reported by Michigan Public and Solis of MA, that Democrats had asked Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel for her opinion on the maneuver and she gave it. She said it was unconstitutional because no committee should have the power to undo what the full legislature had passed. This is an opinion without the force of a court decision. As expected Hall will take it to court. Bollin said her opinion was more “a political defense of Democrats’ pet projects than an objective legal analysis.” She pointed out the statute was enacted in the 1980s, so it is legal. This maneuver may not have been used before. And “legal” is not the same as “unconstitutional” and Bollin seems eager to confuse the two. Then there was lots of language about thwarting Democrat pet projects, again eagerly confusing that with real needs of residents. Kyle Davidson of MA reported this afternoon that Hall and Bollin have filed that lawsuit against Nessel. They described Nessel as on “a power-trip.” More on the shooting of a woman in a car by ICE agents in Minneapolis a couple days ago. Steve Inskeep of NPR spoke to Juliette Kayyem, assistant secretary for Intergovernmental Affairs at the Department of Homeland Security in the Obama administration. They discussed the shortened training ICE agents are getting because the nasty guy is demanding they be put on the job as quickly as possible. That means they don’t have time to develop the judgment they need. Then Kayyam said:

Just take a step back 'cause it's the responsibility of law enforcement to do two things. One is to preserve life. And second is to deescalate any situation that they might view or might be perceived as being hostile. Look, giving every narrative that the White House wants me to believe about or wants us to believe about Miss Good, the victim, assuming she was hostile, she was an activist, all of it, although none of that has been proved true. But even assuming their narrative, honestly, so what, right? I mean, in other words, the whole point of law enforcement is people are often not compliant. That doesn't result in death of them, right? And that is - and that's why we have to think about use of force protocols not as an on-off switch. This is what we often - you know, people talk about it in the political space, well, she was not compliant, therefore, she's dead. Right? That's - it doesn't work that way. Use of force is about a graduated escalation so that you don't get to a shooting immediately. And you didn't see any of that in any of the videos.

Daily Kos community member commander ogg noted the shooter has been identified as Jonathan Ross. Videos have shown his life was not in danger. News reports say he had been dragged by a car a year before.

I believe it was not fear that drove Ross’s action but anger. He was determined to show this b***H that she could not defy him. So in a moment of stupidity he disregarded all of his training (if you believe DHS he had over a decade of experience) and elected to be Judge, Jury and executioner. Did getting seriously injured less than a year earlier affect his judgement? Maybe? Should Ross have gotten counseling if he noticed any anger issues? Definitely. Were his Superiors aware of any behavior changes? Who can say? And should they have ordered Ross to seek counseling if they had? Well uh yeah. Is any of this justification for murdering an innocent citizen? Not only no but H*ll No.

Asterisks in the original. Stwriley of the Kos community posted the statement that Becca Good released to Minnesota Public Radio. Becca Good is the wife of murdered Renee Good. She is now left to raise their six-year-old son. I’ll reproduce only Becca’s last paragraph, which is a great one.

We thank you for the privacy you are granting our family as we grieve. We thank you for ensuring that Renee’s legacy is one of kindness and love. We honor her memory by living her values: rejecting hate and choosing compassion, turning away from fear and pursuing peace, refusing division and knowing we must come together to build a world where we all come home safe to the people we love.

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.

All violence is wielded in support of the hierarchy

Back on the day after Thanksgiving (yeah, this one has been sitting in a browser tab since then) Thom Hartmann of the Daily Kos community and an independent pundit described a time in American history similar to now when democracy was at risk. That time was when John Adams, our second president, was in office.

Adams and his Federalist cronies, using war hysteria with France as a wedge issue, were pushing the Alien & Sedition Acts through Congress, and even threw into prison Democratic Congressman Matthew Lyon of Vermont for speaking out against the Federalists on the floor of the House of Representatives. Adams was leading the United States in the direction of a fascistic state with a spectacularly successful strategy of vilifying Jefferson and his Party as anti-American and pro-French. He was America’s first Trump, albeit nowhere near as toxic or psychopathic.

Yeah, the same Democratic Party is in operation today. Thomas Jefferson was vice president at the time when the top guy and his vice could be from different parties. Jefferson was a Democrat. He tried to stop the Alien & Sedition Acts, but Adams’ party controlled Congress. When the bills were signed Jefferson left town (I think this was Philadelphia) until his own inauguration to replace Adams, who thankfully was in office only one term. Adams used the Acts to threaten to imprison those who attempted to repeal them. He shut down nearly 30 newspapers, throwing their staff in prison, including Benjamin Franklin Bache, grandson of Benjamin Franklin. People who commented against Adams were also sent to prison. Adams needed only a few months to silence the opposition. Jefferson worked with pamphleteers, the independent press of the time. They printed posters and leaflets decrying Adams’ lies and supporting Jefferson. Of course, Adams used newspapers loyal to him to attack Jefferson and his colleagues. Adams was trying to destroy Jefferson’s Democrats. Hmm. A question: If Jefferson was not in town, how did he preside over the Senate? It was his voice that kept Democratic senators united in opposition. Jefferson’s next bit of support came from the states. Several of them opposed the shutdown of their newspapers and the use of the Army to threaten their protesters. Jefferson had to prevent his supporters from responding in violence, which would have given Adams a chance to declare an insurrection. That would have ended democracy. But the 1800 election was coming and Adams knew a war, even a little one, would boost his chances. The war didn’t happen. The country was tired of Adams’ abuse of power and Jefferson was elected. An early act was to free the newspaper people. Over the next two decades Adam’s Federalist Party disintegrated. A big thank you to the independent press of the time. And a big thank you to the independent press of today that will continue to report the truth. We need to support them. In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted the New York Times discussing comments by Stephen Miller, the guy making this administration as racist as possible:

“We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” Mr. Miller told Jake Tapper of CNN on Monday, during a combative appearance in which he was pressed on Mr. Trump’s long-held desire to control Greenland.

That’s the language of someone obsessed with the social hierarchy and his place high in it. There is a way to tell: All violence, all “force,” is wielded in support of the hierarchy, in support of one person saying I’m better than you. Vaughn Sterling tweeted:

Industry sources tell CNN that American oil executives are unlikely to dive headfirst into Venezuela for multiple reasons: The situation on the ground remains very uncertain, Venezuela’s oil industry is in shambles and Caracas has a history of seizing US oil assets.

Juliette Kayyem added:

I am curious who was whispering in Trump's ear about Venezuelan oil being easily accessible (it isn't) and coveted by the industry (it isn't). Is there some industry friend? Rubio? Miller? Beyond the legality and lack of planning, isn't the narrative now that Trump got duped?

Another quote from the NYT

In Venezuela, there have been signs of an intensifying crackdown by the government, with the so-called colectivos, or armed government militias, out in full force on the streets of the capital in recent days. Some citizens said the colectivos had been interrogating people and searching their phones for signs of support for the U.S. attacks. At least 14 journalists have been detained, and at least two people have been arrested for celebrating Mr. Maduro’s capture. Mr. Trump, when asked by reporters on Sunday whether he had discussed with the Venezuelan government the release of political prisoners or the return of opposition politicians to the country, seemed to foreshadow his plans. “We haven’t gotten to that yet,” he said. “What we want to do now is fix up the oil.”

As bad as Maduro was to Venezuelans the nasty guy seems to make their lives worse. This is repeated by LuluNYT (involved in writing the above article?) who adds an important question:

Speaking to people I know inside Venezuela and they tell me armed gangs (basically paramilitary gangs allied to the government) are roaming the streets, arrests of journalists are taking place, and the new/old government is undergoing a wave of repression. Is this what the US means by being in control?

This first stat is a bit annoying. From a Reuters report on a Reuters/Ipsos poll:

Trump’s approval rating rises to 42% 60% of Republicans support sending US troops to Venezuela About the same number favor controlling Venezuela's oil fields The two-day poll showed 65% of Republicans back the military operation ordered by Republican President Donald Trump, compared to 11% of Democrats and 23% of independents.

Cliff Schecter of Blue Amp discussing Democrat messaging over the next year.

So providing the simple straightforward narrative of Trump, and contrasting who we are, sharing what we do and how we fight him, is crucial. It goes like this:

Trump and his coterie of cruel, transactional, rich-beyond-consequence f---sticks are destroying our democracy and economy to pocket our paychecks and ban our freedoms. The Thiels, Musks, Bezos’, Zuckerbergs, Ellisons and other self-anointed ruling families meet in backrooms to decide our rights, economic station, our very lives…as they divvy up their billions they gain at our expense. They are, in every sense, the exact conspiracy The Right’s imagined about The Left for decades.

This is the message we must take into 2026 if we want an FDR-like blowout that turns out the Democratic base—even those who haven’t voted in years—-wins over a chunk of Republicans, and overwhelmingly cleans up among independents.

In the comments is a cartoon by Mike Luckovich showing a big mushroom cloud. One guy comments to another:

Is this a distraction from the taking economy, the cognitive decline, the corruption, or the Epstein files?...

Clay Jones posted a cartoon of the nasty guy looking in an empty prison cell. He asks, “Where’s Maduro?” The guard replies, “ICE deported him back to Venezuela...” The Naked Pastor has a cartoon of Jesus talking to the nasty guy using words from the Bible’s books of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, “You say peace, peace, when there is no peace!” Bishtoons posted one of a weary old man saying, “Greenland? All I wanted was healthcare.” Bill Bramhall posted a cartoon of a man and woman watching TV. He says, “Can you name one thing Greenland has that we really need?” She replies, “Universal free health care.” Of course, lots more cartoons about Venezuelan oil.

Democracy is not exported by missile strike

My Sunday movie was Swan Song, a documentary about putting on the ballet Swan Lake. The title has a second meaning in that it was the last production by former ballet star and artistic director Karen Kain. Kain was a big deal in Canadian ballet. She became a principle dancer and a star at a young age, even becoming a protegé of Rudolf Nureyev. She has a painting of herself done by Andy Warhol. After she retired from dancing she joined the leadership of the National Ballet of Canada and rose to becoming the artistic director. Back in 2020 Kain decided the NBC’s production of Swan Lake would be her last. She wanted something different than the standard treatment the ballet usually got. But COVID delayed that for a couple years. This documentary is about what has to happen to get the show from concept to opening night. Swan Lake is a ballet by Peter Tchaikovsky. An evil guy turns women into swans. Through the help of the Swan Queen they try to get their humanity back – and that’s about all I know about the plot. There are principle dancers, though a major part of this ballet is the corps de ballet, the women who portray all those swans. This production might have had a corps of two dozen. And that’s what makes this ballet difficult, these two dozen dancers have to move in synchronization or the critics will pounce. The film shows Kain at work guiding the production. She was in charge, but she wasn’t the choreographer, working out what each dancer did when. That was done by Robert Binet. So there are several scenes where Binet shows Kain what the dancers have done so far and does that meet with her approval. We also see some of the life of principle dancer Jurgita Dronina, who played the Swan Queen. Her life started in the Soviet Union. Her family escaped when it collapsed. We also see Shae Estrada, who is in the corps who faces tensions because she doesn’t fit in. She’s also a lesbian, though that doesn’t seem to be the source of tension. Something this film doesn’t show is the scenery design and what goes into that. We see some of the scenery being made and some of the installation at the theater, but not the design. As opening night approaches and the company shifts from the studio to the stage with scenery, lighting, and costumes, a lot of adjustments need to be made. Kain and Binet hope it all gels by the time they are before an audience. Since the show is so strenuous there are four sets of principle dancers that rotate the roles. But the corps has to rehearse with all four sets. I quite enjoyed it. I’ve written about capitalism needs to be strongly regulated to survive and thrive, and to be compatible with democracy. I did a long post on that based on articles by Trenz Pruca. Daily Kos community member dratler says there is a country that is regulating capitalism quite well so that their economy is thriving and doing all the things that capitalism does best. From my earlier post an easy guess is that country is not the US, where late stage capitalism is making a mess of things. No, this country is China. While democracy is not a part of the Chinese system...

China’s great industrial firms are beating ours, Europe’s and even some in Japan in productivity, price and more recently quality. They are nearly all privately owned and privately run and therefore “capitalistic” in every sense. In this respect, they resemble the robust private firms of the postwar US.

We used to have such a robust economy. That was after WWII when capitalism gave us an amazing array of innovative goods and services. That was also a time when business was strictly regulated and antitrust laws were enforced. Those in control may be the Chinese Communist Party, but their handling of the economy is nothing like the state control of the Soviet Union. Many in US politics see “Communist” in the name and don’t see how it differs from the disastrous Soviet model. The author returns the focus to the US, listing three (out of many) signs that US capitalism is collapsing. The first is “financialization,” which is making money without producing anything. An example is the huge number of private equity firms that buy up property or companies, load them with debt to finance the purchase, then squeeze out all the wealth they can before letting the husk file for bankruptcy. Workers and other shareholders get little to nothing. Another example is cryptocurrencies. Do we really need a replacement for money, credit cards, and internet services like PayPal that already thrive? The only people who benefit from crypto are criminals. The second sign of economic decline is the crash in the rate of real innovation (by this dratler excludes software, which just improves productivity).

During the late nineteenth and the last century, we Americans made or rapidly adopted most of the innovations that make our modern world. They include electric lighting, airplanes, electric grids, voice recording, broadcast radio, antibiotics, television, high-altitude flight (with pressurized cabins), rocket ships for space flight, digital computers, transistors, chips full of tiny transistors, minicomputers, microcomputers/PCs, MRIs, CAT scans, cells phones, smart phones, genomic medicine, and now “designer drugs” conceived by computers analyzing possible chemical compounds. Yet since Apple introduced the first smart phone nearly twenty years ago, I can’t think of any physical invention (except perhaps genomic medicine and designer drugs) that we Americans produced or rapidly adopted that is remotely comparable in economic potential to any of those in the previous paragraph.

And the software improvements – social media and AI – have many undesirable side effects. The third sign is marketing, advertising, public relations, and propaganda all combined into the word promotion or “promo.” In all forms it is the effort of getting people to do thing, not in their own best interest, but in the interest of the information provider. Much (most? all?) is based on things not true. Disinformation rivals facts. An example of promo is web searches. One had been able to used logic operators, such as “this” and “not that” to search directly for something. Now the search results are flooded by paid promotions to prioritize their links, whether the match is close or not. And I’m pretty sure “not that” searching does not work. AI is supposedly free of that promo pressure, but likely won’t stay that way. Besides, isn’t the power and wonderfulness of AI also propaganda?

It’s the capitalism of a self-indulgent, self-regarding, under-educated, over-egoed and exploitive computer/financial class that has no clue about physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, medicine or the histories of successful human societies. It’s a recipe for the most rapid decline of a successful capitalist democracy in human history. ... The essence of today’s China is a vast state-capitalist nation, ruled by smart, practical leaders (many of them trained as engineers) whose main motivators appear to be not their own private wealth, but their nation’s advancement. If you’d ask me to compare the leadership of China’s elite with the “leadership” of our tech-bro class and the likes of Elon Musk, I’d say there isn’t even a contest. Intelligence, experience, practical knowledge, genuine scientific curiosity and real patriotism beat ego, self-regard, self-aggrandizement and self-enrichment as useful character traits and motivations every time.

Before you complain, I’m very aware that China does not permit many rights I hold dear, the top being freedom of speech that includes the freedom to criticize the government. I don’t want to live in such a country. But we can admire and learn from the way the Chinese regulate capitalism. In Sunday’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted an editorial in El País discussing the nasty guy’s operation to kidnap Maduro of Venezuela.

Donald Trump’s decision caps a year of impulsive, personalistic foreign policy that ignores multilateral norms. Trump is not acting here as a guarantor of democracy, but rather placing force above the rule of law. Other powers will take note of these new rules as they look at Taiwan or Ukraine. Pointing this out is not a defense of the Venezuelan regime, but a warning: democracy is not exported by missile strike, nor imposed from the air —much less when invoked by someone who has repeatedly shown contempt for institutions.[...] Added to this political ambition is another, no less alarming: the announcement that U.S. companies will take over Venezuela’s oil industry to “make money,” reinforcing the perception that the intervention is not aimed at restoring rights, but at managing power and wealth. Even if the reconstruction of devastated infrastructure is invoked, this amounts to the forcible external appropriation of natural resources, blurring the line between aid, investment, and economic domination.

Collette Capriles of the New York Times

For Venezuelans, our situation will not be fixed by Mr. Maduro’s departure, let alone by a foreign occupying force. We are not a nation held together by a government or a social contract, but a collection of individuals trapped in a struggle for survival. Replacing the man at the top will not dismantle the web of bosses, private loyalties, corrupt practices and institutional ruins that have replaced public life here.

Whitney Neulich, Sophie Hills, and Caitlin Babcock of Christian Science Monitor

“If the United States asserts the right to use military force to invade and capture foreign leaders it accuses of criminal conduct, what prevents China from claiming the same authority over Taiwan’s leadership? What stops [Russian leader] Vladimir Putin from asserting similar justification to abduct Ukraine’s president?” asked Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the Democratic vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, following Saturday’s operation. “Once this line is crossed, the rules that restrain global chaos begin to collapse, and authoritarian regimes will be the first to exploit it.”

In the comments there are, of course, many memes and cartoons about Venezuela. That includes a meme posted by exlrrp:

Anyone who has a problem with Maduro being captured and brought to justice should review the following footage of what Maduro did to his own people. THIS IS WHO YOU STAND WITH COMMIES. Free Venezuela!

Mickey Lenin responded:

The city of Portland would like a word.

Oliver Burdick tweeted:

Homosexuality is a different type of evil. The Bible rarely refers to something as “an abomination.”

Dr. Kevin M. Young responded

Sweet Summer Child, the Bible lists at least FORTY-TWO different things as an "abomination" (תּוֹעֵבַה). That isn't a rarity; it's one of the most common words the Bible uses for anything that is taboo. The 42+ include: — Businessmen who lie — Using faulty weights/measures — Divorce — Breaking Fri/Saturday Sabbath — Arrogance Oh, it also lists "those who bring false witness or stir up conflict in a community" as an abomination, like you are here. That, along with your arrogance and (I presume) your lack of keeping the Sabbath each Fri/Sat, YOU ARE AN ABOMINATION THRICE OVER. So you might as well go ahead and have sex with that dude.

Melanie D’Arrigo tweeted:

Trump’s billionaire allies now control X, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, TikTok, Truth and Twitch. They own Fox News, CBS, WaPo, WSJ and NY Post — plus 185+ local tv stations and news in 100 markets. They control the AI you're asking for answers, the algorithms feeding you content, your personal data you've given up for access, and the devices you rely on. The news and your privacy are now what Trump and his billionaire pals say it is. This is all by design.

That tweet includes a chart of which rich dude owns what. Larry & David Ellison: CBS News, CBS, Paramount+, plutoTV, TikTok. Mark Zuckerberg: Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and a few more logos I’m not familiar with. Murdoch Family: Fox (including News, Business, TV stations), tubi, Wall Street Journal, New York Post. Sinclair Family: 185+ local news affiliates of ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, and CW, plus The Baltimore Sun. Jeff Bezos: The WashingtonPost, Prime Video, twitch, Wondery. Alphabet Inc.: Google, YouTube, Android, Google Play, Gemini, Blogger (where these words get posted). Elon Musk: X, XA, Grok. Apple Corp.: Apple, AppleTV, iTunes, Apple Intelligence. Sam Altman: ChatGPT. Every so often I’m reminded Doonsbury by Garry Trudeau is still around. His comic from Sunday is pretty good.

The rules of capitalism don’t force their different choices

This morning I ate breakfast to the news that the US Military, under orders from the nasty guy, swooped into Venezuela and kidnapped President Nicolás Maduro, taking him into US custody to stand trial for drug related crimes. I haven’t paid much attention to the new since and switched radio stations to avoid his speech and the analysis of it. I’m sure you can find plenty of details at your favorite news source (at least one with a strong acquaintance with truth). So I won’t go into details. I’ll only say the nasty guy has pulled America to the low level of Russia by invading another country without military provocation. In the comments of today’s pundit roundup for Daily Kos are lots of tweets with images and videos of the US operation. Among those is a meme posted by Mel Ankoly:

If we elect Trump, we will be at war within 6 months. -- Kamala Harris

Gosh, off by only five months! This roundup is by Greg Dworkin who quoted a New York Times opinion piece about the January 6 Capitol attack. That day the rioters and nasty guy lost and it was seen as a turning point.

That day was indeed a turning point, but not the one it first seemed to be. It was a turning point toward a version of Mr. Trump who is even more lawless than the one who governed the country in his first term. It heralded a culture of political unaccountability, in which people who violently attacked Congress and beat police officers escaped without lasting consequence. The politicians and pundits who had egged on the attack with their lies escaped, as well. The aftermath of Jan. 6 made the Republican Party even more feckless, beholden to one man and willing to pervert reality to serve his interests. Once Mr. Trump won election again in 2024, despite his role in encouraging the riot and his many distortions about it, it emboldened him to govern in defiance of the Constitution, without regard for the truth and with malice toward those who stand up to his abuses

. Democrats could have gone a long way to bolster democracy by prosecuting the nasty guy for his various crimes (many more than just instigating that riot). And they didn’t. Pamela Herd and Don Moynihan of their Substack quoted a bit of Zohran Mamdani’s inauguration speech as he starts his term as governor of New York City.

What we achieve together will reach across the five boroughs and it will resonate far beyond. There are many who will be watching. They want to know if the left can govern. They want to know if the struggles that afflict them can be solved. They want to know if it is right to hope again.

Back in the comments are a couple cartoons by Toonerman, both having to do with the alleged theft by Somali child care companies that prompted the nasty guy to cut funding for all child care providers. The first one:

Right-wing YouTube influencer Nick Shirly took a guy named Dave and a video camera on a snowy, cold day to Minneapolis and attempted to walk into Somali run daycare centers without any challenge. Two grown men with a camera wanting to take video of other people’s children. Sounds like perverts to me.

And the second

Minnesotan Aimee Bick – founder of Feeding the Future and ring leader of a massive fraud and theft operation was found guilty of stealing $250 million of federal COVID relief funds and pocketing millions herself. She is NOT SOMALIAN. You can tell because of her accent. But you won’t hear Trump or his fascist friend mention Aimee... because she’s white!”

In Friday’s pundit roundup Dworkin Paul Waldman of Public Notice discussing the nasty guy building monuments to himself.

It goes beyond an exercise in branding. Trump is seeking a physical legacy, a collection of signs and structures that will pay eternal tribute to his greatness. Which is why it is so important — and why it will be so rewarding — for the next Democratic president to tear it all down and smash it to bits. This isn’t just about petty revenge, even if there is undoubtedly some of that going on here. Emerging from this dark period in our history will require a sweeping, comprehensive strategy of repudiation and repair, one that encompasses the substantive, the procedural, and the symbolic. Fortunately, removing the physical remnants of Trumpism will be much simpler than reconstituting the federal workforce or rebuilding our security alliances.

In the comments there is a tweet by End Wokeness:

NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani: “We’ll replace rugged individualism with collectivism.”

Rotimi Adeoye responded:

For people who have a problem with this statement, maybe before you start pearl-clutching ask why rugged individualism clearly isn’t resonating anymore—so much so that someone like Zohran, who openly criticizes it, could get elected in the first place.

A cartoon posted by LEastsound and created by Benjamin Slyngstad. It shows the nasty guy falling asleep while on either side...

Marco Rubio Suck-up of State: No one has ever slept through a meeting like you, sir. Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Beer: You are truly leading the war on wokeness, Mr. Presideint.

Karmadog tweeted, showing the net worth of several people:

Donald Trump $5.4B Elon Musk, co-chair of DOGE, $300+B Warren Stephens, Ambassador to UK, $3.3B Charles Kushner, Ambassador to France (and father of Jared), $2.9B Linda McMahon, Education Secretary, $2.6B Howard Lutnick, Commerce Secretary, $2B If #oligarchy is too strange a word, how about we call them: Yacht Nazis!

Rep. Andy Ogles tweeted an image of a soldier ready for the Crusades with the caption, “We must stand and reaffirm that this is a Christian Nation. This is a battle of good vs evil.” Greg Nunziata responded:

It’s not necessarily a good thing, but it is an interesting thing, that protestant MAGA types love to appropriate Catholic history and iconography.

Christopher Hale tweeted:

Pope Leo XIV ended 2025 with a fierce warning: “Stop using religion to conquer markets and justify violence.” He followed that warning with a challenge: stop fearing strangers — and start welcoming them as neighbors.

Aaron Rupar tweeted the Nick Shirly video (well, I think it is, I didn’t watch it), adding:

uhhh yeah I can see why these childcare properties weren't eager to let in some rando dudes asking "where are the kids?"

Andrew Lawrence added:

like 75% of dem messaging right now should be “the party led by epsteins best friend is breaking into pre-k childcare centers so they can record your toddlers and put the videos on internet”

Mark Sumner Kos staff emeritus wrote about why Warmart is bad and Costco is good. This is a time where I wish my blogging skills (and maybe blogging tools) allowed me to do a side-to-side comparison. I’ll have to put one below the other. Before I get to that, both are highly successful companies (though it looks like Costco outperformed Walmart in the stock market). Both are pursuing their individual business plans without government coercion. They have just followed very different strategies. Walmart: + Has 10,700 stores including supercenters and Sam’s Clubs, founded in 1962. + Each supercenter has about 300 employees, they earn an hourly wage of $14-$19 an hour. + Stingy with benefits. + It tops the list of largest employers whose workers receive Medicaid and SNAP. + When Walmart moves into a community it depresses wages, which can drain the local talent. + A store manager can be paid $500,000 with assistants earning almost as much. The pay gap between the bottom and top is high. + Turnover can reach as high as 75% when similar companies might see 60% turnover. + Climbing the company ladder is the only way to improve one’s pay. It is difficult and fiercely competitive but with no corporate assistance for improvement. + They are ruthless with suppliers, demanding extremely low prices for shelf space in their stores. + They undercut every local retailer until the nearby town is hollowed out. Then it raises prices. + One supercenter can have 120K to 150K products. Customers see Walmart as their only shopping destination. + Their profits come from squeezing suppliers. + Walmart can so thoroughly hollow out the economics of a region it has to close stores for low performance. Costco: + Has 914 Costco Warehouses. It grew out of Price Club in 1983. + Each store has about 350-500 employees. Starting wage is $21 an hour and the average is $31. + Generous with benefits. + Costco employees don’t need Medicaid and SNAP. + When Costco moves into a community it can raise wages and strengthen local economies. + A Costco store manager earns $150,000 a year. The CEO earns $13 million in salary and stock options. The pay gap between the bottom and top is low. + The pay is high enough employees have to jump to another industry or get a college degree to do better. Annual turnover is below 6%. + There is an extensive employee development program. It does quite well from employees suggesting improvements. It saves on recruiting and basic training of new hires. + They serve as a supplement and supplier to local retail stores. They provide items others can’t and can provide items in bulk that other retailers can buy. A consumer may not buy a bulk package of rice, but a restaurant and school system does. + A Costco Warehouse has about 4,000 items and few of them are there consistently. Costco is only one place where its customers shop. + Their profits come from their memberships which have a renewable rate of 90%. + Costco doesn’t need to close stores, though it has replaced some of its earlier and smaller stores. Again, no one, including government, is forcing either company to follow their business strategy. The rules of capitalism aren’t forcing them either. They made choices they way they did because they want to. I see it as Walmart striving for the top of the social hierarchy – the managers and owners want to be high in the hierarchy and everyone else – employees and local economy – is oppressed to make their position look better. In contrast Costco works in community. We’re all in this together, we’re all equal. We’ll provide a service to help you in providing yours.

Remember that part about how the average Walmart supercenter has about 25% fewer employees than the average Costco Warehouse? Those fewer employees have to deal with 30 times as many items, more frequent restocking, and do it while getting less pay and fewer benefits. They work harder for less. By design. For stores that damage their local economy, and which are much more likely to simply pack up and leave. That's all a choice.

For the record, I shop at neither, though both are within four miles. I avoid Walmart because of their rapacious policies. I avoid Costco because as a family of one their membership fee and their emphasis on bulk items, which I would have a hard time storing or using before they spoil, is a bit much. I also wouldn’t want to wait in the long Costco gas lines.

The right has a great deal more “pearl-clutching energy”

I finished the book Following the Equator by Mark Twain. Through more than 700 pages and with lots of photos and drawings he describes his year-long trip around the world. The trip may have started in Southampton, England, which he doesn’t mention until the end and doesn’t include the trip across the Atlantic and across America. Most of the book is his visits of several months each to Australia, India, and South Africa. He also describes visits to Fiji, New Zealand, and Mauritius. He couldn’t go ashore in Hawaii because of a cholera outbreak. He took this trip in 1895-96 to give lectures, which was a major source of income. In the book he rarely mentions the lectures and doesn’t describe what he said. At the beginning of the book he mentions the date but not the year. He does mention seeing a lunar eclipse on September 4, and an online NASA catalog showed an eclipse on that date in 1895. In each place he describes his travels by train and ship and includes encounters with locals and descriptions of local customs and history. A regular travel book. When an incident jars his memory he’ll tell a story about something that happened in England or America. Along with that he includes much praise of the indigenous people and some condemnation of the European colonizers. Some of the highlights of the story: His condemnation of the Queensland, Australia slave trade. South Pacific islands were raided to supply workers for the sugar cane fields of Queensland. This is brutal work. The only good thing is the slavery was for three years rather than life. Twain says the Australians claim the experience “civilized” those they enslaved, but such “civilization” didn’t last long. That doesn’t mean the freed men returned to savagery, but that the definition of civilized was meaningless. Twain tells the story of Cecil Rhodes in Australia finding a newspaper clipping in a shark that told of impending war. The shark had come from England a lot faster than a ship could. Rhodes used the information to make himself rich. In South Africa he talks again of Rhodes, texplaining about how much he ruled over the country, both in and out of the government. So I looked up Rhodes in Wikipedia. It talks about how much Rhodes was involved in the formation of the De Beers diamond company, which became close to a worldwide monopoly. The man created Rhodesia and is buried there, though modern locals aren’t too happy about that. Wikipedia also says there is evidence to say Rhodes was gay. The page mentions Twain writing about Rhodes in this book then adds a footnote saying the story of the shark was not true. Yup, not all of the stories and incidents Twain tells are true (a shark that visits both England and Sydney in a week?). And that’s not really a surprise, though it leaves one wondering which stories were not true. In India Twain describes over many pages the Thuggees, a group that worshiped a god that demanded they murder. They committed many (tens of thousands?) in the early 1800s. Twain credits the British for stopping the Thuggees, and goes on to say that’s why the British rule of India was a benefit. He takes a train trip into the Himalayas. That was nice. What was better was the trip down. It was by handcar where the only control was the brake. The 35 mile downward ride was the delight of the year. I enjoyed the book, though by the end I felt it was too long. It does have a lot of Twain’s dry humor and I’m pleased at his support for indigenous people, who in his telling don’t seem so backward and inferior as the white people justifying colonization claimed at the time. During 2025 I read 44 books. Lake Superior State University released its annual list of words that should be banished for “mis-, mal-, over-use, or general uselessness.” 2026 marks the golden anniversary of the list. This year’s offenders: 6-7, that popular phrase that has no meaning. Massive, for incorrect use and overuse. Incentivize, where motivate should be enough. Full stop, where a period should be enough. My bad, an infantile way to apologize. And for general overuse: Demure, Cooked, Gifted, Perfect, and Reach out. This year LSSU included a list of repeat offenders, words that refused to stay banished. Banished three times is the phrase, At the End of the Day. Words and phrases banished twice are: Absolutely, Awesome, Game Changer, and Hot Water Heater (water already hot doesn’t need to be heated, it’s just a water heater). At the start of last week Jacob Wendler of Politico reported that a dozen staffers of the Heritage Foundation, the people who created Project 2025, left that group and went to Advancing American Freedom, which was founded by former vice nasty Mike Pence. Those that left were the heads of the legal, economic, and data analysis teams and several members of their teams. The reason for their departure stems from Tucker Carlson airing a friendly interview with Nick Fuentes in October. Fuentes is a strong antisemite. Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation stood by Carlson’s decision to interview Fuentes. Several conservative voices rebuked Roberts. That turned into an internal squabble at HF, with some saying antisemitism has no place there and others saying only so much dissent is permitted at HF. Some reports imply those who left HF were terminated, others say the departures were voluntary. Even so, an HF spokesman seems glad they’re gone and replacements will make them stronger. However, the infighting is reverberating through the Republican Party. Kate Plummer of Newsweek explains the situation in more detail and used the headline “The Heritage Foundation is Imploding.” I would be delighted if the Heritage Foundation fell apart. But I’m skeptical it will happen soon. Steve Inskeep of NPR spoke to Republican strategist Marc Short, who is also described as the chairman of AAF. Short described the HF story from the AAF viewpoint. He went on to describe general conservative goals. As a part of those goals Short complained about the government “picking winners and losers.” They want “a limited role of government in the economy and allowing the marketplace to thrive.” My first reaction to that is they want limited government because government protects the little guy. And I guess “thrive” now has a definition of making money any way they can, including fleecing customers and polluting the environment. My second reaction goes back to a post in November where I discussed late-stage capitalism. Democracy and capitalism exist together only when democracy tightly controls capitalism. Short is saying an important part of conservatism is rejecting those tight controls and letting capitalism continue to its end stage where billionaires control everything. Alas, conservatives have a few key phrases they repeat whenever they can and media, including NPR, don’t delve into what is meant by that. The way conservatives say it limited government is a good thing. But, as we’ve seen in the last year, limited government in practice means no consumer protections (goodbye CFPB), no environmental protections (goodbye EPA), and no safety net for the poor (goodbye affordable care act premium support). And Inskeep didn’t delve into that. This seems to fit right in. Two weeks ago Oliver Willis of Daily Kos, as part of his series of Explaining the Right wrote about Why Republican scandals and misdeeds get a pass. I’m sure I’ve written many times of something the nasty guy or Republicans did and note that if Biden or Obama had done them they would have been quickly impeached and convicted, while Republicans remain unscathed. Willis gives other examples of other Democrats who faced tough scrutiny that sometimes ended their careers for things that were much less severe than what Republicans now commit seemingly daily.

Why does this happen, and with such regularity? The mainstream media has an institutional bias towards both-sidesism, which is the notion that the Democratic and Republican parties and the related liberal and conservative movements engage in outrages at the same pace. This simply isn’t true by any objective measure.

Another reason is that for over six decades the right has relentlessly been “working the refs,” hitting the media with false allegations of bias. The media now consistently rolls over for the right – yet still gets attacked for bias. A third reason is the right has a great deal more “pearl-clutching energy.” They remained outraged over liberal misdeeds with more noise and for a longer time than the left can maintain over conservative misdeeds. I’ll add a fourth reason – many mainstream media outlets are owned by billionaires or others who have a large stake in conservative goals. So they’re inherently biased. Willis wrote that media companies can take things only so far. They fail when Americans can see the truth with their own eyes. Right now no amount of spin can mask the problems in the economy. At the top of today’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev included a photo of the midnight swearing in of Zohran Mamdani as the mayor of New York City. It was done a subway station that’s no longer used that leads directly into City Hall. It’s a pretty location. Mamdani had a second swearing in, this time during the day, on City Hall steps, and with the public able to attend. Kev quoted Hayes Brown of MSNOW discussing the many artists who have canceled gigs at the Kennedy Center, especially after the nasty guy added his nasty name to the building. Ric Grenell, president of the Center, called these artists “far-left political activists.” Brown wrote:

Grenell essentially accusing performers of being performative illustrates an utter lack of understanding about the arts and audience. It’s as though his mind cannot fathom why an artist might decide to withhold their work from certain audiences at certain venues. And as though there is not a rich tradition of art as protest in this country, either in boldly staging performances calling out injustice or in shunning stages that demanded segregated audiences.

Then Brown discussed Grenell’s focus on “sound fiscal policy.” He wants arts that actually sell tickets and make a profit. That misses the point of arts. It is why most arts institutions, including the Kennedy Center, are non-profit. Arts are important whether or not they make a profit. The Nation magazine reposted a 2015 essay from Toni Morrison that gives another reason for what Grenell is really up to.

Dictators and tyrants routinely begin their reigns and sustain their power with the deliberate and calculated destruction of art: the censorship and book-burning of unpoliced prose, the harassment and detention of painters, journalists, poets, playwrights, novelists, essayists. This is the first step of a despot whose instinctive acts of malevolence are not simply mindless or evil; they are also perceptive. Such despots know very well that their strategy of repression will allow the real tools of oppressive power to flourish. Their plan is simple: 1. Select a useful enemy—an “Other”—to convert rage into conflict, even war. 2. Limit or erase the imagination that art provides, as well as the critical thinking of scholars and journalists. 3. Distract with toys, dreams of loot, and themes of superior religion or defiant national pride that enshrine past hurts and humiliations.

In the comments is a tweet by Prof. Peter Hotez:

Year One MAHA: 1. Measles returns to America 2. Pertussis returns to America 3. Chronic hepatitis liver cancer returns 4. Pandemic preparedness gone 5. Swung & missed on autism 6. CDC disassembled 7. Biotech industry shutting down 8. Brain drain underway.

I see that as more oppression by the wealthy. Those near the top of the social hierarchy and most invested in their position make their lives appear better by making the lives of others worse. Killing others off through unrestrained disease is one way to accomplish that goal. That tweet was followed by one by Dan Diamond. It includes a link to a Washington Post article that is the source and includes a way for a person to look up the stats of their own county. Diamond wrote:

5 million-plus kindergartners now live in counties where schools don’t have “herd immunity” for measles, Washington Post reporters found.

A comment by pelagicray lamented the destruction of the federal executive branch, which included...

That came with significant deaths, many infant and children deaths, from USAID shutdown so chaotic medicine and food went bad in warehouses rather than into a final distribution. That is on us. We let it happen. While many of us voted for the good, collectively it is on all of us. A piece in the U.S. Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health notes

The Trump administration’s decision to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths from infectious diseases and malnutrition, according to Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Atul Gawande.

After all that something light and sweet. Rund Abdelfatah, host of NPR’s Throughline brought to All Things Considered and 8-minute segment on the history of chocolate. The link also has a transcript.