Never again is now. .. Justice takes sides.

Jemar Tisby, an historian of the justice struggle in Black America, reports from a pilgrimage to Manzanar National Historic Site with the Asian American Center at Fuller Seminary. The Seminary is an evangelical Christian institution which aims to work broadly to encourage awareness of global human diversity. That is, these are ordinary Americans, not Bible-thumping Republican Christian Nationalists.

Tisby's little film (12 minutes) is a fine introduction to the last occasion on which an American government disappeared citizens using the Alien Enemies Act.

Trump sh_t show comes to Martha's Vineyard

Last Tuesday, ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) descended on Martha's Vineyard island, the place Erudite Partner and I sporadically call home. (No, we weren't there.)

This island off Cape Cod is a complicated place. In winter a tough population of about 20,000 -- white New Englanders, members of the indigenous Wampanoag tribe, Black descendants of slavery, Brazilian/Azorean migrants, and so many others -- work to scratch out a living and prepare for the summer influx of 100,000 beach-seeking tourists. It's not an easy place, though it offers a residence to many well-off people, such the Obamas, to give one famous example.

It's no surprise that ICE assumed they could find some out-status migrants in the construction and hospitality workforce. In this, Martha's Vineyard is simply normal for contemporary America.

The MVTimes reports that the ICE raid did not seem particularly targeted. Agents stopped work vans seemingly randomly.

Thiago Alves, owner of Rhode Island–based L&R Electrical Services, said his workers were stopped by ICE on Tuesday morning on the Vineyard, but were sent on their way after they showed their paperwork. 

Alves said that agents were stopping all work trucks, and that his business did not appear to be singled out: “It’s nothing against us.” 

Local immigration advocates responded:

The immigrant community on the Island has been reeling from the recent detentions, many calling out of work. There have been reports of empty lumberyards and construction sites, as well as housecleaners calling out.

“Everybody is so scared,” said Meiroka Nunes, a community organizer from Brazil who has lived on the Island for more than two decades. She has heard from one Brazilian whose husband was detained on Tuesday, and whose wife has not been able to reach him.

Nunes said that she worries about the mental health of Island immigrants who fear they or their family members will be deported. She noted that it’s especially scary on the Vineyard, because there is nowhere to run.

Meanwhile, some Islanders pushed back during the raid:  

One West Tisbury resident personally confronted federal agents in the field, demanding answers while recording a video that has gone viral.

Charlie Giordano, 58, used his phone to document the presence of the federal agents arresting people — some of whom live and work among us — to stand up for what Giordano believes is right at a time when legitimate fear can paralyze some from speaking out. 

“I don’t care for injustice. I don’t care for bullies. I think words are who you want to be, and actions are who you are,” Giordano said in an interview with The MV Times. “Everyone says they would’ve stood up to the Nazis back in the day. This is your chance. We have to safeguard democracy and prevent tyranny.

• • •

As with so much of Trump regime immigration enforcement, ordinary Americans were horrified by the thuggish masks and get-ups worn by the immigration police. This is not what they expect of their cops who are also their neighbors.

• • • 

The Martha's Vineyard raid set off a vigorous back and forth on island social media. The Trump regime does have defenders among the islanders, though these were swamped in the last election.

One writer offered a reminder to most all:

To all my island neighbors making sure our due process rights are protected—thank you.

To all my other neighbors who think due process doesn’t exist because of someone’s immigration status, I’d like to remind you: unless you’re a member of the Wampanoag Tribe, we’re all wash-ashores—I don’t care how many generations you’ve been here.

• • •

It was heartening to read the responses of the Reverend Stephen Harding, Rector at Grace Episcopal Church. as recorded in the MVTimes. This is our church on the island.

“We cannot be silent. If we are silent, we are complicit,” he said, noting that he was only speaking for himself and not others that signed [a religious leaders'] letter. He said that he was disturbed over how the federal agency conducted the arrests, particularly agents that covered their faces. “To do this, in this manner, is shameful. There is no honor. This masked, undercover stuff — they look like bums to me,” Harding said. “If you are going to pull someone out of their car to arrest them, have the integrity to show your face. There is no honor at all in being a bully.”

Harding also said that it didn’t appear that the agents had probable cause to make these arrests.

“It seems there is no probable cause except that they weren’t white,” Harding said. “The idea that anyone can be stopped, pulled over and detained. That is not good. I’m not a constitutional lawyer, but I don’t think that’s legal.”

 • • •

Attorney Jay Kuo has offered an insightful discussion of why Trump's minions wear those masks: 

Asked by CNN why officers have opted to use masks when detaining students, a DHS spokesman said this:

“When our heroic law enforcement officers conduct operations, they clearly identify themselves as police while wearing masks to protect themselves from being targeted by known and suspected terrorist sympathizers.”

In other words, they don‘t want to be doxxed.

Traditionally, agents have donned facial coverings only when the arrest is of some major kingpin or mob boss, where violent retaliation is a real danger. DHS has now taken that same logic and extended it to every official action, on the grounds that the “woke mob” will seek revenge.

 ... The sort of folks who affirmatively want to become ICE and CBP agents, especially under the leadership of ghouls like Stephen Miller and Tom Homan, are nowadays often not true patriots wishing to protect the country.

Far-right militia groups share one thing in common with the DHS agents who are fanning out to detain immigrants: They love to wear face coverings...

The reason fascist zealots don face coverings is so that they can continue to exist anonymously in civil society and not get “canceled” (for example, fired from their jobs or have their businesses boycotted) for their white nationalist hate.

Part of fighting back against the Trump fascists will be to outlaw masks on legitimate law enforcement officers except in very limited circumstances.

Public health crisis: too much sh*t

This truth-telling US Senate candidate, Dr. Annie Andrews, is very unlikely to defeat sitting South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham. In addition to this Democrat, he's also being challenged from his right (!) and will no doubt double down on MAGA. And the state's voters may think that is just fine.

But Andrews sure offers a delicious introduction; she knows how to stick it to the mean-spirited essence that is the contemporary Republican brand. Enjoy. 

On Donald's drive to destroy the production of knowledge

In a statement calling for the defunding of NPR and PBS, the White House complained about a story correctly describing banana slugs as hermaphrodites, describing it as 'woke propaganda.'

For normal Americans, among the minority paying attention, the impulse is repeatedly to ask WHY? Why do Donald Trump, his MAGAs, and his various enablers among Christian nationalists and techno-utopians, want to tear down contemporary American life and civilization? What do they want?

Assuredly there are many answers: racism, sexism, gender rigidity, greed, vengeance, bruised egos, injured ignorance -- all combined in a toxic stew. 

But a common element is a war against science, against knowledge, against the human quest to accumulate scraps of truth. Adam Server describes where the Magats are trying to take us under the title, The New Dark Age. There's wisdom here; a few highlights:

... destroying American universities will also limit the growth of a Democratic-trending constituency—fewer educated voters will translate to fewer Democrats in office. The tech barons supporting Trump have companies that rely on educated workers, but they want submissive toilers, not active citizens who might conceive of their interests as being different from those of their bosses.

A formal education does not immunize anyone against adopting false beliefs, but two things are true: Many of Trump’s supporters have come to see knowledge-producing institutions and the people who work for them as sources of liberal indoctrination that must be brought to heel or destroyed, and they do not want Americans trusting any sources of authority that are not Trump-aligned. ...

Possible sources of alternative information and different visions of possibility must be stamped out.

... Trump’s attack on knowledge will harm not just the so-called [liberal] elites he and his allies are punishing. The long-term price of solidifying their power in this way will be high—perhaps even higher than Trumpism’s wealthy benefactors expect. One obvious cost is the damage to technological, scientific, and social advancement. Another will be the impossibility of self-governance, because a public denied access to empirical reality cannot engage in self-determination as the Founders imagined.

... By destroying knowledge, including the very scholarship that would study the effects of the administration’s policies on society, the Trump administration and its allies can ensure that their looting of the federal government and public goods can never be fully rectified or punished.

A Magat ascendancy threatens to engulf us in profitable hucksterism, the right spot for an RFK Jr.

For Trump and his allies, this large-scale destruction of the knowledge-production process could be quite lucrative in the short term. Some examples of this, such as Musk using his influence to secure himself federal contracts and the administration removing regulations on pollution on behalf of Trump’s oil-industry allies, are obvious. But fewer restraints on business means more corporations getting away with scamming and exploiting their customers, and more money for unscrupulous hucksters like those surrounding the president.

The disappearance of high-quality empirical evidence means not only fewer rebuttals of right-wing dogmas, but also a bigger market for wellness pseudoscience and other scams—such as Kennedy’s imbecilic suggestion to treat the growing measles outbreak in the Southwest with cod-liver oil. America under Trump is rejecting one of the most effective health-care infrastructures in human history and embracing woo-woo nonsense on par with medieval doctors measuring the four humors.

Server's conclusions are dire.

The book burnings of the past had physical limitations; after all, only the books themselves could be destroyed. 

The Trumpist attack on knowledge, by contrast, threatens not just accumulated knowledge, but also the ability to collect such knowledge in the future. Any pursuit of forbidden ideas, after all, might foster political opposition. Better for Americans to be as gullible and easily manipulated as the people who buy brain pills from right-wing podcasts, use ivermectin to treat COVID, or believe that vaccines are “weapons of mass destruction.” 

This purge will dramatically impair the ability to solve problems, prevent disease, design policy, inform the public, and make technological advancements. 

Like the catastrophic loss of knowledge in Western Europe that followed the fall of Rome, it is a self-inflicted calamity. All that matters to Trumpists is that they can reign unchallenged over the ruins.

My summary cannot do this article justice. Read it all (gift).  

DEI caucus

Trump could hardly have assembled a nastier set of arrogant, incompetent mugs.

Institutional resistance matters and brings assets

In the context of withdrawing from participation in Donald J. Trump's discriminatory refugee program for white Afrikaners, the Most Rev. Sean Rowe, whose elected office of Presiding Bishop makes him the public spokesperson for the institutional Episcopal Church, has called out something vital about the place of churches in the current desperate moment for American democracy.

Graphic by way of Elizabeth Kaeton, Telling Secrets

Churches and other religious institutions are much better situated than much of civil society to repudiate the cruelty and stupidity of DJT and MAGA. At their best, they answer to a different mission than the imperatives of American politics. And they are less dependent financially on a federal government which is being weaponized against both justice and inclusion for all. At least 25 percent of individual "charitable giving" and actual charity still passes through churches in this country; churches have some money to use for the common good.

Church history within civil society is honorable, if spotty. Pre-Civil War abolitionism lived in both Black and white churches. The weak but enduring thread of American principled opposition to our wars has survived on the margins of both Protestant Christianity (Fellowship of Reconciliation) and later, as Catholics entered the American mainstream, in the Vietnam-era Catholic Peace Fellowship with the clerical Berrigan brothers.

The Episcopal Church is often dissed as  "the ruling class at prayer." There's a reason that Bishop Mariann Budde of Washington DC had the chance to call out Trump's threats to so many Americans: the Episcopal Church's so-called National Cathedral screams past riches and power, long attenuated. The building remains a monument to an imperial America; the people of the Episcopal Church (450, 000 weekly attendance in this nation of 340 million) not so much so. Empire was then ... though a good deal of past riches remain.

Previous federal governments have tried to rein in Episcopal churches whose justice mission threatened the authorities; the George W. Bush administration threatened the tax-exempt status of All Saints Pasadena in 2007 for a sermon against the War on Terror. Bunch of trouble makers, that lot!

Part of why Bishops Budde and Rowe can speak out -- and lend moral authority and some material resources to the developing defense against authoritarianism -- is that the people in the pews more or less have their backs. According to right-leaning statistician of US religion Ryan Burge, alone among mainline Christian Protestant denominations, Episcopalians are leaving any past Republican allegiance behind. 

Yes, that even includes the long liberal UCC and Disciples of Christ who seem to have voted in majorities for Trump in 2024. Presbyterians and Lutherans seem pretty evenly split.

Burge concludes:

When you think of the average mainline Protestants, it’s just not accurate to conjure an image of a thirty something pastor wearing a rainbow stole and preaching a sermon about the non-binary nature of the Holy Spirit. Instead, it’s probably a retired school teacher living in a small town in the upper Midwest. And, on average, that person voted for Donald Trump in 2024.

Those of us who live and struggle in these arenas have a lot of work to do -- and important friends.

Too hot for PBS

This is the sort of thing that makes it hard to go to the mat for Public Broadcasting as the Republicans, again, seek to kill it off.

The executive producer of the Emmy Award-winning “American Masters” series insisted on removing a scene critical of President Trump from a documentary about the comic artist Art Spiegelman two weeks before it was set to air nationwide on public television stations.

The filmmakers say it is another example of public media organizations bowing to pressure as the Trump administration tries to defund the sector, while the programmers say their decision was a matter of taste.

Alicia Sams, a producer of “Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse,” said in an interview that approximately two weeks before the movie’s April 15 airdate, she received a call from Michael Kantor, the executive producer of “American Masters,” informing her that roughly 90 seconds featuring a cartoon critical of Trump would need to be excised from the film. ...

... Sams pointed out that their film had already been approved for broadcast — the filmmakers agreed it would be shown at 10 p.m. rather than 8 p.m., so that certain obscenities would not need to be blurred or bleeped — and that the call came a week after a Capitol Hill hearing in which Congressional Republicans accused public television and radio executives of biased coverage (the executives denied that accusation in sworn testimony). ...

Here's the offending cartoon. 

Click to enlarge.

 Vintage Spiegelman, it seems to me.

A sign of something

Click to enlarge.

Apparently, beginning around 2010, a larger and larger fraction of the American people realized that Big Business is not their friend and that Labor is their hope. As with so much in public sentiment, can we make this effectual? Same goes for Donald Trump's cratering approval ratings ...

A whiff of optimism

It's hard to be optimistic this week, with the Trump regime working to dump unlucky migrants in South Sudan and the Supremes trashing the organs of the administrative state such as the NLRB -- but I'm open to the thought that there's lots I don't yet know about the resilience of this formerly "free" country. 

David R. Lurie is a New York corporate and securities lawyer who thinks there's more hope for the country than we might think at present. That's what he takes from observing Trumps "cabinet of dunces."

In his second term in office, Trump is, truly, being Trump. He’s rigorously demanding that the government be “operated” the way he conducted business for decades — that is, solely and exclusively for short-term gain and self-aggrandizement. The result, it is becoming clear, is a regime that leaves chaos in its wake instead of creating anything approaching the foundation for a legacy.

Thus, far from setting out to institutionalize a sustainable right-wing revolution — like Ronald Reagan did, with some pernicious success — Trumpers are engaged in a project directed at sabotaging as much of the nation’s government, and destroying as much of its economic and political power, as possible.

While the consequences of this nihilistic assault are likely to be catastrophic, the hopeful possibility is they could also be remarkably short-lived.

The incompetence is the point.

Even those cabinet members who once gave some evidence of brains and sense have to prove their stupidity.

... In an administration in which the sole consistent goals are valorizing Trump and making him as rich as possible, any official who demonstrates an ability to effectively administer and carry out the business of the US government is viewed with profound suspicion. On the other hand, those who are willing to learn incompetence and moral obtuseness are promoted.

[An example.] Trump is now, absurdly, speaking of Rubio as his potential successor to the presidency. This comes after the longtime Russia hawk and promoter of American international leadership has become the willing instrument of Trump’s campaign to undermine it and turn our nation’s longstanding allies into enemies, aligning the United States with pariah nations like Russia and undemocratic ones like El Salvador. Rubio is also serving as the figurehead of Trump’s shambolic gutting of American soft power infrastructure that has left vast numbers of children around the world at risk of starving as food rots in warehouses, and HIV sufferers to die in desperation for lack of lifesaving medication.

... Most of the cronies Trump has placed “in charge” of other critical agencies of the US government did not have to learn to be stupid like Rubio and Bessent. Instead, they were chosen precisely because had established track records of being lazy, ignorant, incurious, and morally obtuse, thus giving Trump confidence they would not bat an eye as the institutions they are charged with administering are destroyed. The examples are becoming chillingly familiar.

Instead of causing despair, Trump's enthusiasm for performative idiocy gives Lurie hope.

... The Trump administration’s illegal sabotage of the nation’s government, while hugely destructive, could also prove largely transitory.

When Trump exits the White House (or is forced to exit) office in a few years, he and his cronies will leave a huge swath of damage in their wake, likely including a record of avoidable epidemics, natural disasters followed by recovery debacles, and a US economy that is facing unprecedented challenges to its international preeminence. Furthermore, entire government departments will have been rendered empty shells, with many still reeling from damage inflicted upon them by Trump and his cronies.

But unlike either FDR or Reagan, Trump the governmental arsonist is highly unlikely to leave behind any substantial institutional or ideological legacy that his successor will have to grapple with. Rather, the next president will be tasked with a massive rebuilding project, much as nations — including this one — have had to reconstruct themselves, sometimes for the better, in the wake of major wars.

The possibility that Trump’s assault will be so cataclysmic as to leave the United States without the democratic institutions required to move beyond the disaster that comprises his regime can not be discounted. But if we succeed in keeping our nation from imploding between now and 2029, putting Trumpism behind us may prove easier than some imagine.

I think there may be something to this: a regime run by a chaos agent who is incapable of envisioning anything more durable than a small time personal con may fail to implant itself when resolutely opposed by a genuinely free-minded people. That's up to us.

• • •

A couple more thoughts:

Yair Rosenberg: Voters sometimes fall for myths, but eventually, like children, they outgrow them." [That one is about Bibi Netanyahu, but seems applicable to our situation as much as that of Israelis.]

Jocelyn Sze: "I’m A Psychologist Who Specializes In Narcissists. ... As our founding documents remind us: 'A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free People.' ...  keep faith in the long game. While narcissistic dynamics rely on urgency and alarm, deep change comes from staying calm, clear and connected. In defending against narcissistic control, the answer is never to mimic harmful tactics — it is to recognize them, grieve their damage, stop enabling them and break out of reactivity. Boundaries, civic mobilization and long-haul strategy are how we begin to heal the democratic spirit. In both therapy and democracy, healing begins the moment we stop reacting and start remembering who we are."

Friday cat blogging

At home with the cats, I sometimes think I'm being sternly warned -- might I go away again and leave Mio alone with the annoying Janeway? Better not even think of it.

Really he's just a fuzzy lover boy, here in his odalisque pose in a sunbeam with his head in Erudite Partner's knitting.

Checking in on Ukraine's war

Donald Trump may blunder about, mostly just licking Vladimir Putin's ass, and pretending he's ending the war of the Russian invasion of Ukraine -- but as in most things Trump, the reality is elsewhere. And there are multiple reports that indicate that 1) Europe knows it must step up in order to defend itself from the smothering Russian offensive and 2) Ukraine is far more united and able to fight on without much US help than we've been told.

On the first point, Finnish security expert Minna Ålander explains: 

What often escapes the public’s notice – partially because so much is happening and it’s hard to keep track of all the news items – is that Ukraine’s defence industry is being swiftly integrated into the emerging European Defence Industrial and Technological Base (EDIB). Most importantly, it is not just charity but a win-win situation: Ukraine’s self-sufficiency is improved by increased own production and European defence companies get in on the latest innovations from the Ukrainian battlefield. A year ago, in May 2024, the EU hosted the first EU-Ukraine Defence Industries Forum in a series of multilateral defence industrial events that the government of Ukraine launched in 2023. In September 2024, the EU also opened a Defence Innovation Office in Kyiv.

In a proper Orwellian sense, the EU has mobilised €11.1 bn from the European Peace Facility for military support for Ukraine, and has an additional €50 bn Ukraine Facility to bolster Ukraine’s resilience, to support its EU integration process, and de-risk investment in Ukraine. The support is both grant- and loan-based, including a €35 billion loan to be repaid with revenue from the frozen Russian assets. ...

By working together with Ukraine, European companies are not only increasing Ukraine’s own production capacity but also learning directly from Ukraine’s battlefield experience – something that will help Europe not only to replace US capabilities, but to think ahead.

But what of the long suffering Ukrainians, now engaged in a war in which their longtime US backers are changing sides? Because they have no choice -- no chance of national or even personal survival if they back off -- they fight on. The Atlantic reporter Anne Applebaum has made the pilgrimage to Ukraine recently. 

... Ukrainians believe the war will continue, and the prospect no longer scares them. Partly this is because they have no other choice. Unlike the Russians, who could withdraw from the battlefield and go home at any time, the Ukrainians cannot withdraw from the battlefield. If they do, they will lose their civilization, their language, and their freedom. Under Russian occupation, the mayor of Lviv and the journalists at the Lviv Media Forum would end up in prison or dead, just like their murdered and imprisoned colleagues in Russian-occupied Ukraine today.

More to the point, Ukrainians are confident that they can continue fighting, even without the same level of American support. The Ukrainian army is not retaking territory, as it did in the autumn of 2022, nor does it have plans for a major new counteroffensive. But neither is it losing. The tanks and heavy equipment that Ukraine needed from others don’t matter as much as they did two years ago. The Ukrainians still need American intelligence and anti-missile defenses to protect civilians in their cities. They still get weapons and ammunition from Europe. But on the frontline, this conflict has become a drone war, and Ukraine both produces drones—more than 2 million last year, probably twice that many this year—and builds software and systems to run them. In February, a Ukrainian unit deployed the first of what it hopes will be several hundred fighting robots. Last month, a Ukrainian sea drone took down a Russian airplane. One brigade has designed a drone that can reliably take out a Shahed, the Iranian drones that are used to kill Ukrainian civilians.

... The results are visible on the ground. Remember, if you can, the panic that accompanied news reports from Ukraine nine months ago: The city of Pokrovsk was about to fall, a calamity that many believed might precipitate the collapse of the whole front line. But Pokrovsk did not fall. The Russians continue to attack that region: On May 15 alone, Ukrainian soldiers based on the Pokrovsk front line repelled 74 separate assaults and offensive actions. But in recent months, the front line has hardly moved. ...

This is a gift link to Applebaum's story of her visit. Well worth your time.

White supremacism: the challenge of the 21st century

Erudite Partner argues "Under Trump, racism isn’t just the subtext, it’s the text."

She carefully lays out how Trump's implementation of Project 2025 replicates in 21st century reality the "Negro Removal" that was national and local urban planning in the 1960s and 70s. 

Policies that appear to be “race neutral” can have racialized effects. The phrase “urban renewal” says nothing about uprooting Black communities, yet that is what it achieved in practice. Just as earlier federal policies led to the removal of Black communities from the hearts of hundreds of U.S. cities, the Trump administration’s apparently race-neutral attack on supposed waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal workforce is guaranteed to disproportionately remove Black workers from federal employment. Together with the planned ejection of millions of immigrants, and following the Project 2025 playbook, Trump, Elon Musk, and their minions like Stephen Miller are doing their best to Make America White Again. (As if it ever was!)

... you can expect to see further erasures of African Americans from any arena this administration enters. As Washington Post columnist Theodore T. Johnson writes,

“Not only does this White House see race; it is also a preoccupation: One of its first executive orders enacted an anti-diversity agenda that purged women, people of color and programs from federal websites and libraries. Trump directed the firing of multiple generals and admirals who are Black, female, or responsible for the military following the rule of law.”

Recent weeks have seen the purging (and in some cases, embarrassed restoration) of any number of Black historical figures, including Jackie Robinson, Harriet Tubman, and the Tuskegee Airmen, from government websites. ...

This is what the country is up against.  Are we willing to go there?

Testimony. Listen up.

Mission District walls speak.

I think they can turn it down a notch, not be so forceful. 

Then they dig into our pockets and put everything on the ground. Then if they find drugs or anything they take us to jail. We'll get out in a couple of days.

But you know, I think there's better ways to do it. A lot of us don't want to keep getting high. We are looking for help or housing.

I'm home in the City by the Bay where no amount of newcomer gentrification erases the underlying struggles.

Traveling blog break

I don't think I can yet blame this on Donald Trump's meddling with the weather service (NOAA) or the FAA (air traffic control and airports). But nonetheless yesterday was such a miserable travel day from Martha's Vineyard to San Francisco that I need to take the weekend off from posting here.

Proud history here. Click to read.

It's easy to think of the Vineyard as a kind of precious retreat from American reality -- until reminded by experience that it is also a somewhat remote rock on the edge the Atlantic. And in the offseason, which is when we visit, the island is populated by incredibly tough, hard working folks who have to live off the short summer tourist season.

Our flight off island to Logan airport in Boston on a tiny regional airline, Cape Air, was cancelled at the last minute on Saturday; something about a torn up runway at the hub. So getting off the island suddenly turned into a marathon.

There was no way to catch our long flight home out of Boston. A lot of airline wrangling by Erudite Partner finally got us a different night reservation from Boston -- which would only work out if we could rush to a mid-afternoon ferry to Woods Hole, followed by an hour and a half bus trip. 

We managed all that and got seated around 9:30 EDT on a Jetblue cross country plane, only to sit for an hour and half on the runway, waiting for a bank of thunder storms somewhere on the route to clear. Finally got home at 2:30 PDT, grateful for pick up by insomniac house partner.

Is there a genocide of white South Africans as Trump claims?

Reporting in the U.S. on the Afrikaner "refugees" -- some nearly 60 white people -- that Donald Trump has imported to this country is driving me nuts. Even media nearly as unsympathetic to this human migration stunt as I am seem to me to fail to convey the many complexities of South Africa. I'm not claiming to know all the ins and outs of South Africa as it exists today, but I did live there briefly in 1990 working on an independent anti-apartheid newspaper and came away with some basics that are missing from many accounts.

Some of my observations:

• The local Black-led independence party that led the struggle against white rule, the African National Congress (ANC), has won majorities ever since the first free election in 1994. But it's majorities have declined over time and today it governs in coalition with the Democracy Alliance which has a history as white-oriented party.

• Despite its many faults, including corruption, the ANC has continued to stand proudly for the self-expression of peoples enduring European rule, including the people of Palestine/Israel. We can suspect that the racial views of Afrikaners are akin to white Mississippi in 1963. Most Black South Africans, knowing racism, assume Palestinians have lived under something like the apartheid regime. When the issue is the oppression and genocide of a people, nuance gets lost. (Properly on this in my view, but that's another topic.)

• Rather importantly, given where Donald Trump probably gets his "information," Elon Musk is NOT an Afrikaner. He's from the wealthy English-speaking former ruling imperial class of the country, a man unreformed after the fall of white rule apparently. 

The BBC has published a very helpful explainer that rings true: 

South African History Online sums up Afrikaner identity by pointing out that "the modern Afrikaner is descended mainly from Western Europeans who settled on the southern tip of Africa during the middle of the 17th Century".

A mixture of Dutch (34.8%), German (33.7%) and French (13.2%) settlers, they formed a "unique cultural group" which identified itself "completely with African soil", South African History Online noted.

Their language, Afrikaans, is quite similar to Dutch.

But as they planted their roots in Africa, Afrikaners, as well as other white communities, forced black people to leave their land.

As was true in the United States, this small colonizing minority population could only rule by repressing the vast majority population, indigenous Black and later "coloured" people of Asian and mixed race backgrounds. Unlike in the U.S., neither Afrikaners nor later British imperialists succeeded in killing off the "others," remaining a well-off, empowered minority. They therefore put the others to work on farms and in mines.

In 1948, South Africa's Afrikaner-led government introduced apartheid, or apartness, taking racial segregation to a more extreme level.

This included laws which banned marriages across racial lines, reserved many skilled and semi-skilled jobs for white people, and forced black people to live in what were called townships and homelands.

They were also denied a decent education, with Afrikaner leader Hendrik Verwoerd infamously remarking in the 1950s that "blacks should never be shown the greener pastures of education. They should know their station in life is to be hewers of wood and drawers of water".

Afrikaner dominance of South Africa ended in 1994, when black people were allowed to vote for the first time in a nationwide election, bringing Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress (ANC) to power.

Afrikaners currently number more than 2.5 million out of a population of more than 60 million ...

... South Africa's most recent census, done in 2022, shows that Coloureds, (an officially used term meaning people of mixed racial origin) are the largest minority, making up 8% of the population. They are followed by white people, including Afrikaners, at 7%, and Asians at 3%.

The ANC has stood for what South Africans call "non-racial" government. There's plenty of grievance and prejudice, but by and large Afrikaners can have a chance in the country, certainly better chances than the Black African majority.

Even though white-minority rule ended in 1994, its effects are still being felt.

Average living standards are far higher for the white community than black people.

White people occupy 62.1% of top management posts, despite only accounting for 7.7% of the country's economically active population, according to a recent report by South Africa's Commission for Employment Equity.

The government has enacted a number of laws to try and redressing the balance, such as the Broad-Based Economic Empowerment and Employment Equity Acts. An amended version of the second act imposes strict hiring targets for non-white employees.

As in the U.S., this official affirmative action policy is not popular with white people who previously didn't have to compete so hard. The ANC's coalition partner, the Democracy Alliance, is challenging the acts in court.

Elon is telling Trump lies about his interactions with South Africa, according to its government:

... Trump's close adviser Elon Musk, who was born in South Africa, has referred to the country's "racist ownership laws", alleging that his satellite internet service provider Starlink was "not allowed to operate in South Africa simply because I'm not black".

To operate in South Africa, Starlink needs to obtain network and service licences, which both require 30% ownership by historically disadvantaged groups.

This mainly refers to South Africa's majority black population, which was shut out of the economy during the racist system of apartheid.

The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) - a regulatory body in the telecommunications and broadcasting sectors - told the BBC that Starlink had never submitted an application for a licence....

Only a small minority of Afrikaners are thrilled with Trump's offer of refugee status: 

After Trump's offer, Afrikaner lobby group Solidarity posted an article on its website headlined: "Ten historical reasons to stay in South Africa".

In parliament last week, the leader of the right-wing Freedom Front Plus party said they were committed to South Africa.

"We are bound to Africa and will build a future for ourselves and our children here," Corné Mulder said.

Let's give the president of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, the last word here:

[He] has said it was "completely false" to claim that "people of a certain race or culture are being targeted for persecution".

Referring to the first group who have moved to the U.S., he said: "They are leaving because they don't want to embrace the changes that are taking place in our country and our constitution."

South Africa is one of the most violent and complicated places I have ever spent time. As is usual with Trump and MAGA, they are not doing justice to the intricacy of the nation. Complexity is hard.

Friday cat blogging

Sadly, these are the only cats I've encountered lately. Soon I'll be back to the usual felines; missing Mio and Janeway!

A rapid response to emulate

Democrats won another election in a somewhat unlikely (or at least divided) place on Tuesday. A Democrat evicted a longtime sitting GOP mayor in Omaha on Tuesday.

John Ewing Jr. was elected Omaha’s first Black mayor on Tuesday, defeating the city’s three-term Republican mayor, Jean Stothert, in a race where Democrats sought to tie her to President Donald Trump’s unpopular agenda — another warning sign for Republicans in a critical battleground area.

Omaha and its suburbs have played a unique role in national politics, as the “blue dot” in a conservative state that wields an unusual amount of power in presidential contests. Though Democrats outnumber Republicans in the city limits of Omaha, Stothert kept her seat over three terms by building a broad-based coalition that included the city’s many independent voters. But Ewing’s campaign and Democrats sought to tie her to economic uncertainty and anger about Trump, whom she backed in 2024.

Ewing said Tuesday night that his victory belonged to “every resident of the city of Omaha” and that his campaign had demonstrated that when voters unite around shared values “we can achieve remarkable things.” Washington Post.

Congratulations to Mayor Ewing!

Delving a little further into the Omaha election, there seems to have been more going on here than bounce-back, anti-Trump energy among frequent Democratic voters. We saw that in 2017 and we're seeing it again this year. When DJT is not on the ballot, he's poison for Republican candidates.

Stothert was a seasoned mayor; she'd been through past campaigns and she and her people thought they could appeal to an issue that divides Democrats: 

 As she campaigned for a fourth term, Ms. Stothert, who is the first woman to lead Omaha, emphasized her record on development and public safety. But she also waded into cultural issues by trying to make bathroom use and sports participation by transgender people a campaign issue. New York Times.

Mr. Ewing didn't want to engage, but the Nebraska Democratic Party came in with a counter attack:

Not  bad -- reveal voters obsessed with trans folk in bathrooms as the slightly prurient scolds they are. Apparently citizens of Omaha didn't want to go there.

This might not work everywhere, but it is better than Democrats running and hiding at the first mention of their transgender constituents.

Trump encourages us all to release our inner crook

What Trump's exuberant corruption seeks to make us: a nation of envious cheats who yearn to emulate his delight in breaking the common good for personal gain. He's a pathetic specimen of a human; we sometimes do better.

This is a test. Paul Waldman laments: 

[The] norm of honesty is what Trump attacks so directly. Just as he encourages his followers to be sexist and cruel, he encourages everyone to grab what they can, laws and rules and basic ethical standards be damned. The president really is a role model, and unlike just about every corrupt official our country has ever produced, he isn’t even trying to hide how corrupt he is. It’s right out in the open for all to see. His message isn’t that he’s clean, it’s that everyone is dirty, so grab what you can.

That’s what makes it so dangerous. By the time these four years are over, domestic and foreign interests who want some policy favor — a tariff waiver, a change in regulation, an arms sale — will probably have deposited billions of dollars directly into Trump’s pockets. “I could be a stupid person and say, ‘Oh no, we don’t want a free plane,’” he said by way of explaining why he’ll take the Qatari jet. As far as he’s concerned, if you don’t cash in on public office, you’re just a sucker. After two terms of graft, to too many people it will just seem like common sense.

G. Elliot Morris is insightful about why the mainstream media is so inept and inadequate when it comes to calling out Trump's criminality. He introduces an English word coinage (highlighted below) which I think may come in handy in our current circumstances.

... today, when one is factual about Trump, one comes off as a partisan. In his second term, the president is breaking so many laws and political norms that when you cover them each on their own, you come off as an anti-Trump Democratic pundit with “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” ...

This is all just a series of business decisions for most media institutions. Thirty years ago, I imagine network news would have done a whole show about how our politics was being corrupted by foreign influence, or some such. But given that factfulness has been polarized, we live in a media environment where news companies have business incentives to “moderate” their language on norm violations — else they risk alienating half of the country. With declining media ad rates, it becomes matter of paying the bills whether pissing off viewers is worth telling the story (or, in this case, “being ‘factful.’”)

... when you say the president shouldn’t accept a $400 million plane because the Emoluments Clause exists, and this seems kinda nasty and not something elected leaders should be doing, you are coded as pro-Democrat/center left/whatever.

I guess that perception is just the price one pays for covering the world as it is. I am happy to be writing for an audience that values the facts above everything else.

Morris, having been let go by ABC News, has launched his own polling interpretation site, Strength in Numbers.

Jumping jacks can't replace incompetence

One wonders how members of the US military react to the bellicose, largely incompetent Trump regime. A friend who is in the National Guard reports that not much has changed during their stints of service, but that co-workers feel hopeful that at least their immediate leadership won't be doing anything illegal or immoral.

However reporting suggests there is lots of evidence that the TV-lightweight Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is not inspiring confidence in the ranks. They weren't looking for a poseur, an actor playing at being a tough guy. 

Military.com covers the armed forces with journalistic integrity. It reports that Hegseth is no inspiraton: 

Instead of the standard suit and tie, he regularly appears in khaki hiking pants, rolled-up sleeves that reveal tattooed forearms and occasionally a trucker hat emblazoned with an American flag. He often posts videos and photos of himself working out with troops.

But that carefully curated image -- so different from past defense secretaries -- may not be totally landing with the rank and file. Interviews with service members and a review of hundreds of social media posts on message boards suggest the image the Pentagon chief is trying to project is seen by some as overly manufactured and desperate for affirmation.

"He seems too preoccupied with his personal brand," one Army captain told Military.com on the condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation. "This is the 'vet bro' Pentagon."

Across military Reddit forums and enlisted meme pages, Hegseth has become a regular target of satire, often referred to with nicknames such as "DUI Hire," "Whiskey Leaks" and "Kegseth." The references allude to past controversies, including alleged alcohol abuse and an incident in which he shared sensitive Yemen attack plan details in an unsecured Signal group chat that included a journalist.

After the shit shows that were the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns, the military has struggled to professionalize and diversify its personnel. The Trump boys want to go back to the good old days of Abu Ghraib and no constraints from the laws of war. And Hegseth seems to yearn for a military mostly of white men that does not exist. In 2019, 17.5 percent of enlisted personnel were women; a little over 30 percent were non-white. (Some overlap there, obviously.) And he's kicking out perhaps some 15,000 successfully serving trans folk.

Hegseth is not in tune with the force he is supposed to lead:

Many who spoke with Military.com remarked that the military, especially the rank and file, don't have time to be focused on the kind of policy moves that Hegseth is making. They are more concerned with their day-to-day lives in the military -- an area that Hegseth and his team have largely been silent on in their view.

"It's a lot of 'look at me' stuff. He has said nothing about quality of life," Rob Evans, an Army veteran whose Yelp-style app Hots & Cots collects reviews of housing and dining facilities on military bases. "If he's for the troops, why has he not touched on quality-of-life challenges, whether that's food or housing?"

... Ultimately, several service members told Military.com they feel Hegseth's idea of what a defense secretary is expected to do doesn't line up with what the job actually requires of him.

"He'd make a great company commander," one officer said. "But that's not the job he's in right now."

Meanwhile, online, one Reddit member who is widely known on the Navy’s forum as a recently retired Navy captain, recently wrote that Hegseth and others in the Trump administration “are not the leaders we need or deserve.”

“If you are left leaning, Hegseth only serves to poke at and antagonize you. If you are right leaning, he only serves to embarrass and demoralize you with his incompetence,” they added.

Hegseth's antics are not a hit with people who take their missions seriously.

Donald's new toy

The gold toilet man is a happy fellow today. Let's do our bit to sour the grin on the crook.

Motherhood in Kyiv in war time

Ukrainian journalist Myroslava Tanska-Vikulova is choosing to have a child now, in the midst of war and air raids.

Why I’m giving birth in a warzone:

... Andrii, my husband, and I had talked about having a child for a long time. But no one prepares you for what it's like to wait for new life while others are dying every day.

At first, I was silent, even to him. It seemed better to keep it to myself – a secret, small light in the great darkness. But I knew I couldn't stay silent for long. This news, so big and so fragile, was about to break.

That evening, I prepared dinner — something tasty and homemade: potatoes baked in clay pots with meat and sour cream (I would say it's a traditional Ukrainian dish). ...

That evening, there was silence in the candlelit apartment, with no sirens – a miracle in itself. I handed him the box, holding my breath as if I were about to jump into an abyss. He opened it... and remained silent.

The silence seemed to last forever. Then he looked up: "Is it true?"

No, I'm f**king kidding, I thought, but instead I nodded in the affirmative.

His face conveyed it all – joy, shock, but mostly fear. Not just of becoming a father, but of raising a child in a war-torn country.

This wasn’t just two lines on a pregnancy test; it’s a vow – to protect our child, and to endure. And that vow feels even heavier than the emergency suitcase we usually grab during an air raid. ...

Read it all here.  

Smoke rises in the sky over Kyiv after a Russian missile strike on Sunday morning. Photograph: Gleb Garanich/Reuters

I now have only two months left before I give birth... I just hope everything works out — that I make it to the hospital, that Andrii is there, and that there are no Russian attacks that day.

But despite everything, I believe that everything will be alright, and I will give birth in Kyiv.

... Being pregnant during the war presents another challenge. Have you ever been in a bomb shelter? If you haven't, I hope you never have to. The closest bomb shelter to my house is the subway. If you have ever been in the subway, you know that it is very cold, especially in winter. Additionally, there is limited seating space, making it challenging for pregnant women to stand.

Usually, my husband handles it — he wakes me when explosions shake our apartment in the night, checks how serious the attack is, and decides whether we need to rush to the subway. Last time, we drove because I was already walking slowly.

Carrying two cats, a blanket for warmth, and a chair to sit on makes getting to the shelter a struggle. I can’t imagine doing it all with a stroller.

... Having a child during a war isn’t just about fear and uncertainty; it’s about endless love. It’s the realization that, even though we are afraid, we are also ready to protect a whole new world from all the bad things out there. ...

Brave woman; brave nation.

Mother's Day 2025 rogue's gallery

Here's my mother, Martha Sidway Adams, posing with her offspring (me). This is probably about 1950. I suspect we had come from church. She looks happy and proud. I look rather miserable in those clothes, not surprisingly.

Here's my grandmother, Amelia Roberts Sidway, formally posed with her offspring in 1910. This photographer knew how to frame a shot. The standing child, my aunt Margaret, likes the pose, while my two year old mother looks a little discomfited. As was common at the time, my grandmother had already lost two children to childhood illnesses. She had reason to be happy and grateful for these healthy specimens.

Standing up for law and the Constitution against two-bit fascists

U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of the U.S. Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, reamed Donald Trump's preening cabinet secretary Kristi Neom in a budget hearing last week. Apparently there is no part of her job she's actually doing -- except play acting tough girl for the cameras and Donald.

Murphy is unremarkable to look at, but he's prepared and knows his stuff. This is longer than clips I usually post, but absolutely worth watching as a lesson in how government is supposed to work. 

Not only that, Murphy is morally outraged by Noem's complicity in the Trump regime's disappearing unlucky migrants like Kilmar Abrego Garcia to foreign torture prisons. Worth your time!

The crypto scam: still nothing but a con for crooks

Mission District, SF

According to NBC News:

Today a growing number of people in the United States have crypto kiosks at their local grocery stores or gas stations. There are roughly 30,000 bitcoin ATMs (BTMs) in the United States, according to Coin ATM Radar, a website that tracks them. The Coinstar machine where they haul in loose change for cash might now also sell bitcoin. Bitcoin Depot, North America’s largest BTM operator, has kiosks in 48 states and is still expanding. The operators can charge users hefty transaction fees, and the stores often receive payment for hosting the BTMs.

These machines (and other brands) are in every corner store in my home neighborhood which is full of poor workers and immigrants. Can't blame the folks who take a flyer on this thing; I've even seen charities boasting they'll take contributions in crypto. It must be real, right?

Nope, it's not. Here's economist Paul Krugman with the true story: 

Crypto Is Still for Criming

... the entire crypto enterprise is corrupt. Money-laundering and scams that exploit naïve investors aren’t unfortunate behavior that taints a potentially useful enterprise. For crypto, they are the whole game, more or less the only reason cryptocurrencies exist.

That may sound like an extreme statement, but you should bear in mind that Bitcoin, the original cryptocurrency, was created in 2008. That makes cryptocurrency ancient by tech standards — not much younger than the iPhone, much older than Apple Pay. Ever since crypto’s invention, enthusiasts have promised that blockchain tokens will find widespread legal use cases, displacing conventional means of payment, any day now. But it keeps not happening.

At this point, 17 years after crypto arrived on the scene, there are still no — I repeat, no — significant legal use cases. This is despite many efforts to make crypto a real medium of exchange. ...

But if crypto has no legitimate uses, why are crypto assets worth more than $3 trillion? Well, the marketing of crypto has been brilliant, with many small investors in particular still being sucked in by the combination of technobabble and libertarian derp. Promotion of crypto by legitimate enterprises, which profit from crypto sales, has been relentless. Venmo is a digital payment system that actually works and is in widespread use — even the fruit and vegetable stand around the corner from me takes it. But every time I use Venmo it tries to sell me crypto:

And while crypto has failed to find legitimate uses, it has flourished as a vehicle for illegitimate uses: extortion, money-laundering and, as we’ve seen, bribes to politicians....

Ah, now we know why Donald Trump and his merry band of crooks have become crypto evangelists. Just another way to rob the American people ...

For the papal election

Not sure where I grabbed this, but it seems appropriate for the moment. For good or ill, the institution of the Roman Catholic Church will do what it does. The message of Jesus will be made more widely accessible in consequence. Or not. That does not depend on the Church as institution. Dorothy would hate my saying that. But she knew it. God and humanity are complicated and messy.

UPDATE: Well, who'd have thought it! Time will tell.

Genders diverge

In the contemporary USofA, girls and boys take different paths. The following visuals document the different life choices and life trajectories of the two genders.

Only in Vermont are boys keeping up with girls in high school completion. The South is notably weak in getting boys through high school.

It probably should not come as a surprise: Black and Hispanic boys lag behind all others in high school completions, while White boys only graduate at a slightly higher rate than Black girls. Everyone else is way ahead.

When it it comes to college degrees, the gap widens. Since 1980, women students have been increasing their share of BAs and MAs -- can dominance in PhDs and professional degrees be far behind?

The increasing dominance of women in the high school teaching profession may have something to do with whether boys believe completing education is important. Or it may not? But if we're not willing to pay teachers, a picture like this is not surprising. Teaching is hard; we don't pay for it. And you can still get women workers for less ...

I'm all for women getting ahead, but the divergence has to exacerbate the tensions which give us the Know-Nothing MAGA moment.

We need boundaries and a new aspirational consensus

Once upon a time, it used to be possible to assume that most Americans had, if not a considerd opinion, still an instinctive revulsion against Nazis. Those were the bad guys ...

No more. Elon, his incel acolytes, and his fanbase get their jollies from playing at fascism. One has to assume that many of these guys (yes, they are mostly guys) know little of what they are aping, because there's no evidence they know much about anything. Elon may be a deeper case; the South African class and milieu from which he emerged was often authentically fascist as they struggled to hang on to their white European privileges over the nation's Black majority.

Thomas Zimmer is a German, a professor of contemporary history at Georgetown University. He knows a thing or two about fascism. He reports that many in German society are trying to hold the line against resurgent neo-Nazis:

News broke Friday morning that Germany’s domestic intelligence service is now officially classifying the AfD as a “confirmed rightwing extremist” group. The decision came after three years of investigating the party and was presented in a 1,100-page report. ...

Zimmer explains carefully that the Alternative for Germany (AfD) can be accurately called "neo-Nazi" by US readers. All the other German political parties, much as they oppose each other, agree not to work with the neo-Nazis which made electing a coalition Chancellor, the Conservative Friedrich Merz, a messy process. But German civil society got it done; for the time being, their neo-Nazis are excluded from power despite winning 20 percent of the vote in the last election.

No surprise -- JD Vance and the MAGAts love them some AfD and disdain Merz.

Zimmer then looks at what the rise of German neo-Nazis might imply about parallel developments in US politics: 

This is a remarkable moment in U.S. history. The fact that a movement that openly embraces the German Far Right, the party of German Neo-Nazis, was able to first take over the Republican Party and then the American government signals the complete dissolution of something we might call an anti-fascist consensus. 

The term is imperfect and perhaps even problematic. There was certainly never a universally shared consensus in America that the key elements of Nazi politics and ideology were bad. But there was nevertheless some agreement across the mainstream political spectrum that America had fought a righteous and noble war against Hitler. American society celebrated and revered its “Greatest Generation” and the soldiers who defeated the Nazis; American popular culture used the Nazis as a representation of ultimate evil. Anyone openly siding against this agreement would have had to expect to pay a price – politically, socially, and culturally. 

In post-1945 America, this was obviously never enough, in and of itself, to turn the nation from a racial caste system to a fully realized multiracial, pluralistic democracy. But it did provide those who desired egalitarian pluralism with a strong argument they could deploy in their struggle against rightwing extremism – it helped police the boundaries of what was considered acceptable within mainstream politics and “respectable” society.

That is evidently no longer the case. MAGA is now in power. This breakdown of boundaries did not happen overnight. It took decades for the most extreme factions to pull the entire “conservative” coalition further and further to the Right – and for the more moderate people, all those who might have objected to the idea of supporting German Neo-Nazis, to be ostracized. 

It will likely take decades to get the country out of this mess, which requires not just political change, but a fundamental reform of political and social culture. If a stable democracy that deserves the name is ever to emerge from this, America will have to restore some boundaries. We need to reimagine an anti-fascist consensus not in service of a purely restorative project, but as a reminder of the nation’s egalitarian aspirations, as a plea to finally defeat those anti-democratic forces in our midst and push America forward. 

You are siding with the German Neo-Nazis? That makes you the bad guys. In a society that cannot hold even that basic line, democracy stands little chance.

I'm up for giving democracy a chance. No more MAGAts and Nazis!