Am I Next?

When masked men wearing no badges start grabbing people off the streets, it's natural to ask "Am I Next?" Los Angeles artists are responding to ICE raids and an attempted federal militarized occupation with images that project the question on downtown buildings, according to a press release from the California Community Foundation. 

The project, "Am I Next?" will feature images, measuring about 20 by 30 feet, to confront attacks on civil liberties and the undermining of democratic norms that weaken civic life. The portraits feature a cross-section of Angelenos united in protest over recent U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service raids that have swept up hundreds of residents—many with no criminal record—and placed them in detention.

"We ask the question, 'Am I Next?' because when basic rights are taken away, anyone can be taken away, for any reason," said CCF President and Chief Executive Officer Miguel A. Santana. "If anyone's right to speak, protest or create can be stripped, if anyone can be targeted for their race, religion, identity or who they love, we are all in danger. Until justice is restored, no one is safe. Not one of us. Any one of us could be next."

 

This is not the first time Californians have asked a similar question. During a political campaign in 1994 when a Republican governor sought to reduce immigrant rights by initiative, opponents also asked "Who's Next?"

In those days, the majority of Californians went along with a fear-based attack on their neighbors. Today the vast majority of Californians have shown, by passing Prop. 50 by a 25 point margin to stiffen opposition in Congress against the Trump regime, that we understand that immigrants are our neighbors and ourselves.

Post election tidbits

Yes, there are other things in life besides fighting fascism and I'm busy with several of them, all to the good. But here are some morsels from Tuesday's national wipe out of MAGA and its ilk.

Let's start with a particular delight:

Alejandra Caraballo‬: 57% of all ad spending by Republicans in the Virginia governors race was on anti trans ads. Just an incredibly mismanaged campaign. Anti-trans politics are a losing issue.

{and] According to the Wapo: A Washington Post-Schar School poll from late last month showed that only about 3 percent of Virginia voters list policies about transgender students as top concerns, compared to far greater concern over economic security and the cost of living. 

Once upon a time, hating on LGBT folks was the right wings' magic bullet. As recently as 2008 in California. But overexposure to nonsense eventually wanes in efficacy. I'll make the bold prediction that trans-hate will also recede as people realize somebody is trying to make them look away from their actual interests and concerns. Here's hoping the process is rapid, though inevitably uneven and painful.

 • • •

We're finally seeing the generational transition of (small "d") democratic power that displaces my Boomer generation. About time.

I often find Jen Rubin annoying, but she sees what's in front of her face:

Democratic stodgy insiders seem not to appreciate that Gen Z-ers and Millenials are also more diverse than older generations. (And many white people in these age brackets have grown up, unlike their parents, among people whose religions, races, ethnicities, and languages differ than their own.) Along comes Mamdani, speaking from an immigrant’s vantage point about the values that have allowed New York to flourish as one of the most diverse cities on the planet. Entirely without pretense, he relates effortlessly with a swath of voters in a way that older, white politicians simply cannot. And while he has a specific religious and racial identity, he has given voice to New Yorkers of all backgrounds who feel overlooked by the white, rich power structure. 

I bet my ancestors thought the end was near when an Irish immigrant wave began to establish its democratic power in New York City in the 1850s. Then came the Italians in the later 19th century; the eastern Europeans in the beginning of the 20th; European-origin Jews by mid-century; and now the offspring of a wider world. Good for New York for continuing its historical role as a landing place for people yearning for a living and "to breathe free."

Another generational transition.

John Ganz celebrates his city, hoping he is seeing a break in a tiresome pattern: 

... Humanity has accomplished something truly incredible and almost utopian in New York: millions of very different types of people living peaceably—and sometimes even amicably—side by side. That’s every bit as real as the death and destruction halfway around the world. For me, New York is the living counterpoint to all that suffering and hate. It’s worth protecting and building upon. In fact, it’s the most important thing: New York City is, in my humble opinion, the greatest accomplishment in the history of human civilization. We’ve long set the standard for art, culture, industry, literature—you name it. Every good and great thing is available here. 

As Pericles said of Athens in the funeral oration, “Because of the greatness of our city, the fruits of the whole earth flow in upon us; so that we enjoy the goods of other countries as freely as our own.” But in politics, we resigned ourselves, with a weary smile, to a certain cynicism. Now we are attempting a politics that lives up to our humane and cosmopolitan aspirations. Wedded to some hard-nosed pragmatism, it might just work. 

Let's hope Mamdani is up to the challenge, as much as a mayor can be. My FIL, a life long New Yorker, called the job the toughest in American politics and he was probably right.

• • •

The man of the hour, Mamdani himself, knows no one succeeds without community: 

... And while we cast our ballots alone, we chose hope together. Hope over tyranny. Hope over big money and small ideas. Hope over despair. 

• • •

Let's give the last word to Bill McKibben, that climate prophet who has taken up the burden of trying to save humanity from ourselves:

Americans showed that the idea of this country is not dead just yet. We elected Muslims to historic office in the two states targeted on 9/11, we elected climate-conscious candidates to help run Georgia’s massive energy system—but more than that we began the repudiation of Trump and Trumpism. 

There is so so much more work to do, but as war leader Winston Churchill said after an early triumph in North Africa, “we have reached the end of the beginning.” 

As AOC—for my money perhaps the best political analyst in the country—put it, Americans understood “the assignment of fighting fascism right now. And the assignment is to come together across difference no matter what.”

This little election reminded us that participation in this messy, unjust, yet idealistic country is an unending struggle, but sometimes one that carries a moment.

No wonder the Commonwealth of Virginia turned more blue

It seems appropriate to pass on Diana Butler Bass' observations on what her Fairfax County suburban DC neighbors did yesterday. They have very good reason to hate the MAGA/Trump regime and they showed it.

Inside the tidy houses on my leafy street, they are ANGRY. They are hurt, furious, mad, distressed, and distraught. Because, in nearly every house on my street, Elon Musk, Russell Vought, Mike Johnson, and Donald Trump came calling — and destroyed their family’s sense of vocation, purpose, and well-being. These nice, middle-class families, committed to things like patriotism and service and the common good, had their work and incomes ripped from them in a fury of gleeful destruction. And the very government that once benefited from their labor, now laughs at their trauma.

The leafy suburbs have been, in effect, one more victim of political cruelty and a revenge crusade.

Some of my neighbors hang out signs. Some go to protests and “No Kings” rallies. But mostly, they are an introverted suburban lot. They protest by voting.

And on Tuesday, they turned out in droves to vote.

They voted against Donald Trump. They voted as if their lives and livelihoods — and those of their neighbors — depended on it. (Because they do.)

And they voted up and down tickets, in nearly every hamlet across the Commonwealth for Democrats. Governor, Lt. Governor, and Attorney General (and yes, he had made some awful mistakes in his political career).

The really surprising thing? The people of Virginia handed the House of Delegates to the Democrats. Right now, it appears that Democrats will win 64 house seats, just shy of creating a Democratic supermajority in state government.

I don’t think the Democrats have won this many seats since the Jim Crow era — and things were very, very different back then (and those Jim Crow Democrats were definitely not good for democracy). 

Awaiting Virginia results (Charlotte Rene Woods/Virginia Mercury)

The Washington DC suburbs are not the country. 

But Trump and his Republican enablers have another 12 months largely unhindered by effectual Democratic opposition to tear up the rest of the country as they have these suburbs. Most especially they'll gleefully harm the parts of the country which are the antithesis of MAGA -- racially and ethnically diverse, educated, serious people intent on building a serious future for themselves and their children. 

It will be a struggle. But most of us don't want what MAGA is doing to the country and we intend to take it back.

Election Day in the city

Here in San Francisco, I don't think many of us go to the polls on this day. We mail or drop off our ballots. Though on my walk today, I did see quite a few people wearing the sticker that poll workers pass out. Soon enough we'll know if all sorts of encouraging polls were accurate.

On the eve of New York's mayoral election

New York City is the most Jewish city in the world outside Israel. Somewhere around 12-14 percent of residents are Jewish; that's over 1.3 million residents of the metropolis.

Zohran Mamdani's successful candidacy for mayor has brought focus on the fears and hopes of that constituency. How can a Muslim who is anti-Zionist be poised to win the job of mayor in New York, most likely with solid support of younger New York Jews?

Perhaps he stands for a hope for their city which that old sleaze former state governor Andrew Cuomo and a GOP perennial joke candidate don't offer. I don't live in New York though I once did and have long had family in the city. But I appreciate the observations of Jewish writers who live in the midst of the fray.

Israel's war on Gaza prompted Brookynite John Ganz to reflect broadly on antisemitism and Zionism. He identifies mirroring varieties of racist corruption in the service of power over others.

I want to make one other remark about Zionism and antisemitism. Both confuse cause and effect to a dangerous degree and begin processes unchained from history and common sense. In the radical Zionist worldview, antisemitism is eternal and endemic; hatred of the Jews preexists any Jewish behavior, so Jewish behavior then doesn’t matter. This is how you get the nihilism and denial that allows the Jewish state to indulge in the very types of criminal activities that led to its creation. “They hate us anyway.” This belief engenders a totally irresponsible and immoral attitude. The existence of antisemitism, the Holocaust, and all the historical suffering of the Jews does not make a permanent moral exception of the Jewish people. Accepting that nihilism is to conspire with antisemites in the creation of antisemitic propaganda. 

The antisemite has a remarkably similar logic, but reversed: the Jews are intrinsically, eternally a criminal species; no historical explanation or context is possible or necessary, because the answer is always there: the Jews are evil itself. Does Zionism come out of a particular historical situation? No, it is just one more emanation of this evil. Does Hamas or Palestinian resistance arise out of a particular historical situation and context? No, it is just one more emanation of this evil. 

Both cut themselves loose from historical time and causality and replace it with a mythic world of eternal racial struggle. In such a conception lies the utter devastation of humanity.

Both Zionism and anti-Zionism often try to hide the ball of racism while taking advantage of its emotional appeals. Zionists often rely on propaganda appeals based on preexisting prejudices that hold their enemies to be subhuman savages and barbarians, and anti-Zionists’ propaganda appeals often try to take advantage of or deepen preexisting prejudices against Jews. They both try to distinguish themselves from intrinsically racist discourses but are parasitic upon them. 

And it’s unclear to me if either can be separated from them. At some point, argue long enough, and they will both exclaim, “They are just a different breed!” They are lower, more evil, more prone to violence, etc. 

The ascendancy of Donald Trump's neo-Nazi fans make clearer thinking about the persistence of vicious antisemitism all the more essential.

• • •

Peter Beinart comes to New York's electoral moment full of passion. For him, the dismissal by some older Jewish leaders of Mamdani reveals a form of idolatry. I don't usually post longer [8 minutes] videos here, but I strongly recommend experiencing Peter's heart-filled little sermon: What Will Establishment Jewish Leaders Sacrifice to Defeat Mamdani?

She cries out against a corrupted faith

She's not pulling any punches. Anthea Butler chairs the Religious Studies department of the University of Pennsylvania. She begins her history and jeremiad White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America with this uncompromising declaration:

Evangelicals, you have a problem. That problem is racism. 

... why do people who identify as as evangelicals vote over and over again for political figures who in speech and deed do not evince the Christian qualities that evangelicalism espouses? 

My answer is that evangelicalism is not a simply religious group at all. Rather, it is a nationalistic political movement whose purpose is to support the hegemony of white Christian men over and against the flourishing of others. 

... evangelicalism is an Americanized Christianity born in the context of white Christian slaveholders. ... Racism in evangelicalism is not only about individual sin. It is about corporate sins of a religious movement that continues to believe itself good and that good is predicated on whiteness and the proximity to power. 

... As an African American woman who once trained in an evangelical seminary, I don't say these thing lightly... Whether ignoring race or hiding behind race, the evangelical whitewashing of race and racism does not work anymore.

This little book recounts the history which led to the evangelical "problem."

From the time that the first Africans were kidnapped to this country as slaves, enslavers sought to ensure the parts of the Christian bible to which they were exposed emphasized obedience to masters. 

... there was even a slave Bible produced in England that omitted passages about freedom.

In the 19th century abolitionists led by Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison repudiated and also reshaped American Christianity; after the Civil War freed the slaves, many Christian denominations split into northern and southern fractions over the continuing challenge of freed Black people in "their" society. The South got the KKK; in the immediate post war period, northern denominations aided education for the freed people. 

But by the early 20th century, Jim Crow segregation and repression were the rule most everywhere. White fundamentalists and Pentecostals created an extensive infrastructure in the interwar era; in the 1950s, Billy Graham became the archetypal white evangelist. Butler describes his uneven outreach to Christian formations of color. By the last decades of the 20th century, white evangelicals had become the base of the current right wing Republican party, organized by the Christian Coalition against abortion, feminism, desegregation of evangelical colleges, and gays. They were ripe for the picking by Donald Trump and MAGA.

Growing up Christian in Los Angeles in the 1980s and 90s, Anthea Butler thought she was part of this movement -- until she discovered she wasn't.

Once upon a time, I was an evangelical. A Pentecostal, to be exact. I was happily ensconced in the Church on the Way and preparing to start Fuller Seminary in the fall of 1992. That spring, the Rodney King verdict came down and the riots happened. I had a front row seat to one of the ways that evangelicals decided to deal with this traumatic event. Evangelical churches decided to come together under the aegis of Church on the Way's Pastor Hayford to hold what they called a "Love LA" service ... It was to be a healing celebration, a chance for racial reconciliation.  

For me, it was the moment I found out that despite my frenetic activity and full-steam participation in the church, I was invisible. For the service, I was sitting by Hayford's mother, who knew me from several other events. She turned to me at the greeting time and said, 'Welcome to Church on the Way.' At that moment, I knew that no matter how much I had worked or served or prayed with people, I was simply a Black person visiting the Church on the Way. Much like many evangelicals of color, I was just a Black person in this white woman's space. I was welcome due to the situation, but I could not possibly be a member of the church she belonged to. That moment encapsulated for me what evangelical attempts at interracial cooperation accomplished. Invisibility.

Butler goes on to ask, what went wrong in the evangelical movement?

... This is a movement that could have and should have moved on from its roots in nineteenth-century racism and slavery revealed in this book. Yet it has not. And that is due to the choices made by leaders and followers within the evangelical movement. 

Why have evangelicals and their leadership made choices over and over again to embrace racism? Because it is what has allowed them to attain and hold political power. ... 

... When evangelicals married their educational and religious institutions to nationalism and political power starting in the 1950s, they gained a foothold that has now become a stronghold. Evangelicals became well educated, and they shaped their historical narrative more around theology and esoteric boundaries, mostly white cultural boundaries, ignoring their social and historical connections to broader American life. ... Trump isn't the reason why evangelicals turned to racism. They were racist all along. 

... class and wealth have encouraged evangelicals to hold onto racism tightly as part of their belief about capitalism, God, and nation. ... 

... Access to power made evangelicalism brittle, and unforgiving. Ideology trumped the gospel. Loving your neighbor turned into loving only those who believe as you do. As a result, evangelicals live in silos to keep themselves pure. ... And, as a result, evangelicals are regarded with disdain by the broader public. Evangelicals wear this as a badge of honor and as a sign of persecution of Christians. Evangelicals are not being persecuted in America. They are being called to account.

Butler speaks directly to others with whom she has shared an evangelical Christian commitment:

... Ask yourself, What are you leaving as the posterity of American evangelicalism? What are the organizations you support leaving behind? Can you see past the individual sin of racism and understand that your votes, your choices, your actions participated in white supremacy and racist policies and policing? ... 

If you asked such questions, you would probably lose friends, and you might even lose your church. Yes, I am asking a lot of you. To step out of the comfortable place you reside in while the world burns is difficult. It is, however, worth it. If you feel one ounce of conviction, then there is hope for you. There may even be hope for our nation. 

I hope these words find root in you. I hope they trouble you. I hope they sear your soul. I hope they make you change. There is only a little time left, but there is time. The time is now.

When Donald Trump won a second term with evangelical acclamation, Butler wrote a preface to a second edition of her book -- a plea that is anguished but determined:

In this dangerous moment for American democracy, White Evangelical Racism continues to provide a concise history of the motivations and goals of evangelicals who seek to create a white Christian nation, where everyone, no matter what race, ethnicity, or creed, will have to live with their leadership and laws. It is not enough for them to have influence with politicians and legislatures, or schools teaching Christian texts. They want Jesus -- or more precisely their view of Jesus -- and by association themselves, to be the center and leaders of civic life in America. Their oft vaunted appeals to the founding of America as a Christian nation are not only a distortion of the nation's history. They are evangelicals' claim to rule and reign in the here and now. 

As you engage this history, think abut what will happen if the United States becomes a theocracy. Consider if you want to live with people who believe that whiteness is the framework, culture should be only "Anglo-Saxon," and religious freedom is only for people who think and believe as they do. 

These are the stakes.

Elections for grown ups; we can do better

As we wait to see how high profile votes in New York City, New Jersey, and Virginia turn out on Tuesday, Philip Bump, data guru formerly of the Bezos Wapo and now out on his own at pbump.net, offers some sensible observations on the thousands of elections he has seen come and go. Professional consultants peddle their snake oil (usually promoting "moderation") to Democrats, but this is what he sees.

Politics has become nationalized and that national conversation benefits the right. So if your campaign recommendations center on meeting Americans where they are, you’re often going to be arguing for acquiescence to right-wing policies and rhetorical frames. You’re going to be agreeing to battle the right in the right’s stadium in a game where the right empowers itself to change the rules. And you’re going to reinforce the idea that Democrats don’t have core beliefs of their own.

Zohran Mamdani

What if, instead, Democrats ran on what they believe in, in terms that sincerely reflect those beliefs? There’s still the problem of the national environment and its accompanying media universe, but by taking this approach candidates can at least better avoid charges that they’re simply pandering or using poll-tested rhetoric. Sincerity can be an affect, certainly, but it’s a lot easier to come off as sincere if you’re actually sincere.

Advocates for following public opinion polling might counter that this approach means endorsing ideas that aren’t popular. 

And, yes. It sure does. But public opinion is not static. We’ve seen, even just this year, how views of major issues like immigration have shifted in response to sincere rhetoric about what’s happening. 

The job of an elected official is to represent their constituents but the job of a candidate isn’t simply to tell those constituents what they want to hear. It’s to make a case as a prospective leader, not a dutiful follower. 

Don't any of these commentators remember Obama -- a Black man forced by skin color to "run on what he believed in"? That the consultant admonition to try to soft pedal what candidates actually think the country needs keeps recurring is testament to the greed of campaign consultants and the timidity of too many Democrats running for office. 

And yet, the Republican Congress is showing itself to be even more vacuous. Do they believe in anything? Perhaps their own inflated importance, though if they don't meet, not even that.

Naturally there is room for any actor with conviction -- even if that conviction is something like "I'm a deserving imposter who wants to steal your country blind." Sigh. 

Halloween cat blogging

 

Out and about in the 'hood, you might see Mio or Janeway in our front window, but this season there are so many feline competitors for your attention.

 

This one presents no threat. Too cute for my taste.

 

Not so sure about this one.

 

Looks more like a pillow than a cat.

 

This one on the sidewalk has more character, though a bit cute.

While two go full ferocity ...

Let them go hungry!

It's not okay to keep food which is readily available from reaching people who are hungry. Period. 

Yet that is what Budget Tsar Russell Vought is doing in order to try to force Democratic Senators to pass Republicans' big bill which takes money from healthcare and gives it as tax breaks to Donald's billionaire buddies. 

Along with other lawlessness, there goes SNAP food aid and some fishermen for desert.

Economist Paul Krugman summarizes this move:

Despite the government shutdown, the SNAP program isn’t out of money. In fact, it has $5 billion in contingency funds, intended as a reserve to be tapped in emergencies. And if the imminent cutoff of crucial food aid for 40 million people isn’t an emergency, what is? ...

He goes on to show a map of where the resulting hunger will be worst; looks to me as if the harm will be most severe in some native tribal areas and in pockets of the deep South that vote for Trump. They are beating up on the most vulnerable people, a lot their own supporters.

The Orange Toddler has other priorities. Like extorting the government for $230 billion in compensation for investigating his crimes during the previous administration.

And turning the People's House into a tacky monument to himself.

SNAP is a pillar of my working poor neighborhood. The little stores will be in trouble, as well as families, many of which include workers who simply don't make enough to get by without help.

This is what MAGA grievance has wrought. 

Alone in public amid randomness and isolation

John Della Volpe introduces himself: 

For more than two decades, I’ve been embedded in the land of young Americans. First millennials, and now Gen Z with an eye on Gen Alpha. From my perch since 2000 as polling director at Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics, at SocialSphere, and as the dad of a few Zoomers and one Zillennial — I spend most of my time talking with, surveying, and thinking about young Americans. 

In the context of New Yorker's mayoral election, he's been talking with young citizens of that city. He reports: After Everything, They Still Want In. You can read it all at the link. 

Twelve young New Yorkers — disillusioned with both parties, abandoned by institutions, and living under daily pressure — still believe in something better. ...

All under 30. Some were born there, some were not. All living in the tension between loving New York and questioning whether it loves them back.

“We love it here,” one said. “But it doesn’t always love us back.”

The conversation didn’t spiral. Everyone stayed grounded. They were proud to live in the “greatest city in the world” — but honest about how much it costs them, in every sense.

He covers ten points; I found myself reflecting on this one:

#7: Fear is everywhere. So is numbness.

Almost every participant described feeling physically unsafe at some point in the last month.

“You’re always calculating... Should I step in? Should I run? Am I going to get hurt just trying to help someone?”

“They’re not there to protect people. They’re there to write tickets.”

The problem wasn’t just crime. It was the feeling of being left alone with it.

I tried to think how this was the same and different from what I felt when I lived for awhile, a long time ago, in the great city. So I raised the question to Della Volpe and he responded: 

janinsanfran: Can you expand on what the fear is about? I know New Yorkers who feel that NYC feels safer than it ever has. 

Lived there myself as a very young person in the 70s -- very sporadically, but not uniformly, seemed unsafe then, in what was then thought a very unsafe area. 

These folks feel what they feel and we must honor that -- but that conclusion seems something that could be expanded on. 

Della Volpe: You’re right — the fear young New Yorkers describe isn’t the same one older generations remember. It’s not about crime rates; it’s about randomness, isolation, and trust.

They’re afraid that anything can happen anywhere — a shove on the platform, a stranger following them — and no one will step in. It’s the sense of being alone in public that feels new.

And even when they know the data shows record-low crime, they don’t feel it. The fear now is less about danger itself, and more about whether anyone — the police, the city, other people — will show up when it happens.

In that gap between statistics and experience, you can feel how much trust has frayed.

Let's hope the experience of the Mamdani campaign is breaking through this isolation. Effectual campaigns can do that. If Mamdani's mayoral term can deliver on some of its promise, that would help too.

On strategic incompetence

As folks who read this blog may know, my Erudite Partner is a regular contributor to the little lefty opinion syndication service, Tom Dispatch. Today he offers her latest commentary on the condition of our condition is in: Trump is Bad at Running the Country But Sometimes That’s Good for Him.

When Tom releases one of her articles, Tom writes his own introduction. Today's Tom commentary is something I want to offer for itself. Here's Tom: 

A plea scratched on a bench in immigration court ... Free my Uncle!

Honestly, who could believe it, if — that is — we weren’t actually living through it? And maybe even then?

I mean, once upon a time, Donald Trump would have been unimaginable as president (or do I mean king, emperor, or simply madman?) of the United States. Hey, you know, the guy who can only imagine White South Africans and right-wing (if not absolutely fascistic) Europeans as immigrants to this country and certainly not anyone from “shithole countries”!

I’d hate to tell my grandfather, who arrived here as a teenager on a ship in the early 1890s with the equivalent of 50 cents in his pocket and, though an impoverished Jewish kid from (now embattled) Lviv, was allowed to stay. ...

Rebecca goes on to explain what she learned in another authoritarian regime and what she is learning accompanying immigrants to their ordeals with Donald Trump's immigration court non-system. Read all about it.

Ronald Reagan against crazy tariffs

  

This ad was posted by the Canadian province (that's Canadian for "state") of Ontario. Ontario is Canada's most populous subdivision, the most industrialized, and contains some of the country's most important cities, including Toronto and the national capital, Ottawa. 

Not surprisingly, the Orange Toddler threw a hissy fit seeing the Republican icon's free trade convictions thrown back at him. 

Ottawa took it down but the point was made, especially for Canadians: the current US incumbent is nuts. 

Where peace once prevailed

Once upon a time, I sailed my little Sunfish dinghy from Grand Island across the Niagara River to eat a picnic lunch. This was just a normal September outing. Today I imagine the Border Patrol might shoot a missile at me.

Peace Bridge between Buffalo. NY and Canada in 2007. Somehow I doubt this image is what that once-tranquil border looks like today.

 

The New York Times reports what Donald Trump's trade and verbal war with Canada is doing to the Niagara Frontier this fall. The two country's integrated economies and cultures have been torn apart.

... Canadians have been scarce at cultural attractions, sporting events and shopping malls in the area since President Trump threatened Canada with tariffs two weeks into his second administration (following through on those threats March 4), and spoke of adding the country as the 51st state.

But that absence has been deeply felt, said Anthony Sprague, general manager of the Buffalo Bisons baseball club, the top minor-league affiliate of the Toronto Blue Jays, who are facing off against the Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series. Canadians typically comprise a quarter of the club’s fan base at its downtown Buffalo stadium, he said. This season, that share has shrunk to 10 percent.

The team began receiving season ticket cancellations even before the baseball season got underway in March, Mr. Sprague said. “The narrative was all the same: ‘Nothing against you guys, we love you guys, but we need to take a stand by not coming across the border.’”

Tensions aren’t likely to dissipate anytime soon after Mr. Trump declared an immediate end to trade negotiations Thursday. His decision followed an angry post on Truth Social over an ad sponsored by the province of Ontario featuring President Ronald Reagan denouncing the use of tariffs. ...

The linked article is granular and devastating. Maybe both sides will have to rename the historic bridge?

Arrogant vandalism

She's not preaching this weekend; it's a week off. But she's got a righteous admonition for the Orange Toddler. The Rev. Dr. Elizabeth Kaeton is disgusted and appropriately wroth.

... We shouldn’t be surprised, I suppose. We are surrounded by destruction on every level, so that the insecurities of one man-boy will be assuaged.

The destruction of the East Wing of the White House stands as a raw, open wound, created by the crass, morally bankrupt, blind arrogance of a narcissist with sociopathic tendencies.

It looks like the kind of revenge Osama bin Laden couldn’t even delight in imagining.

It’s the visualization of all of the other signs and symbols of his arrogance: rewriting history, ignoring foundational constitutional rights like freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and due process.

... Why is he doing all this? Apparently, because he thinks he can. And, it makes him feel big and strong because he’s getting his “vengeance”.

... What’s to be done? Well, short of getting Chuck Schumer to write another sternly worded letter, the best course of action seems to be exactly what we are doing: Holding the line on decency, morality, and democratic process while we work the judicial system and put them on record to uphold the law and the Constitution.

... The opposite of arrogance is not humility.

The opposite of arrogance is integrity.

It’s the ability to tell the truth with honesty and authenticity, even when the temptation is to give in to the pressure to conform to the will of those in power.

It’s the conviction to speak out for what’s right, even when your voice shakes.

... I don’t know how this will all end, if Democracy is finally being tested beyond its limits. I only know that this version of Democracy has lasted longer than any modern despot or dictator. ...

I'd call that preaching for such a time as this. 

A reprieve perhaps -- and a Bay Resistance show of force

For the moment, Donald Trump's invasion of San Francisco (and perhaps the rest of the Bay?) is on hold. Our billionaires apparently weighed in. 

Joe Eskenazi at Mission Local describes what might better be described as a pause than a Trump stand down. 

And, just like that, a daylong crisis and flood-the-zone news cycle across the Bay Area regarding the imminent deployment of border protection agents to the region was quelled. Or not: Oakland mayor Barbara Lee said the president didn’t call her. Lurie and other local leaders are taking the president’s words to mean that the rest of the Bay Area will be spared — but there was no overt pledge regarding that.  

It’s great for the people of San Francisco that the president has capriciously decided to unsend the troops he capriciously decided to send. But the real story here is, per the president’s summation of his discussion with Lurie on social media, that the Commander-in-Chief is overtly stating that he is basing a domestic military deployment upon what local “friends of mine” (billionaire CEOs Jensen Huang of NVIDIA and local boy Marc Benioff of Salesforce) lobbied him to do. Trump also noted that Lurie asked him “very nicely” not to establish a military beachhead in San Francisco. 

All for the good. But what if Huang and Benioff had been in the mood for a military parade and called for sending in the troops? What if Lurie had been less polite? 

If things had gone even slightly differently, it stands to reason that federal immigration agents and/or armed troops could be rolling through the city by now. ...

Though our billionaires and millionaires think they are kings of the city and the world, they do in the end want their enterprises to run with as little friction as possible. To most of us in San Francisco, the tech workers who the sector brings here look like gentrifiers. But they would not warm to a martial law state where neighbors are snatched off the street by anonymous thugs. I think we can trust that. And our billionaires don't want the hassle of their employees being upset. So they have an interest in trying to distract Trump.

What a world! 

• • •

Meanwhile, organized by the Bay Resistance coalition, we are readying ourselves for whatever the fascists bring on our area, no less today than yesterday. Several thousand of us gathered at Embarcadero Plaza last evening.

This was an activist bunch -- union members, campaigners for Prop. 50, immigrant welfare non-profits -- all riled up to act.

Yet despite the looming threat, the same joy in finding each other that we saw during the NO KINGS demos was here too.

 

Let's hope the pause granted to our billionaires (with an assist from our firm resistance) also applies to the city with a Black woman mayor and beyond.

 

The crowd looked often like friends standing together -- because that is what it was.

To be continued, for sure ...

Friday cat blogging

Cats don't want no kings -- unless perhaps they are wearing the crown.

So the occupation of Northern California begins ...

This morning some large number of protesters who object to the Trump/ICE-etc. goon squad occupying the Coast Guard facility in Alameda made their presence known on the road outside.

A friend in the area sent along this commentary:

Click to enlarge.

 Apparently in the next few days, the Bay's determination and resilience will be put to the test. We love our neighbors!

Seems appropriate

This picture is from New York City, said to be in response the arrival of a convoy of ICE occupiers. 

Trump is threatening to send his goons to San Francisco. We won't make their mission of civic destruction easy. If the Supreme Court continues to fail, liberty is up to us.

Nuggets from Paul Krugman

Busy today -- so I'll pass along some thoughts from the eminent economist and all round decent observer of American follies. 

After the No Kings demonstrations, Krugman seeks to understand why these big actions seemed to unhinge MAGA's always loosely ordered psyche. 

Civil Resistance Confronts the Autocracy

... to show their fealty to Dear Leader, Republicans must engage in bizarre rhetoric....

... what are we to make of the completely unhinged things Republicans were saying in advance of the protests? 

... Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, attacked the whole Democratic base:

The Democrat Party’s main constituency are made up of Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens, and violent criminals.

These claims were all self-evidently absurd. So why make them? CNN says that it was a “weird strategy”: Calling grandmothers Hamas terrorists won’t convince anyone who isn’t already deep in the MAGA tank and will backfire as those not in the tank see the disconnect between this rhetoric and the reality of the protests.

But it all makes sense once you realize that what we have been seeing in operation isn’t the Trump administration’s strategy for dealing with its critics. It is, instead, the strategies of individual MAGA apparatchiks for dealing with He Who Must Be Obeyed. ...

Krugman has a label and an explanation for this weird behavior from Trump's circle:

... telling lies ... serves the autocrat’s ego. Call it “mendacity inflation.” Trump insists that he’s overwhelmingly popular and that only a lunatic fringe disapproves of his presidency. Well, to show loyalty his hangers-on must go further, declaring that grandmothers and parents pushing prams down 7th Avenue are illegal aliens and violent criminals. The humiliating absurdity is a feature, not a bug. 

Simply lying about demonstrators isn’t enough; to prove their MAGA mettle; people in Trump’s orbit must tell lies that are grotesque and ridiculous.

Again, what’s historically odd about this is that while Trump’s personal depravity may match that of historical autocrats, his power doesn’t. Call him Caligula, if you like, but he can’t order Senators — even Republican Senators — to commit suicide. ... 

One is moved to ask "Yet?" Republicans seem pretty far gone ...

• • •

Today, Krugman goes for Trump's insane essence. He's a mad king now.

... it takes the power of the presidency to threaten the lives and livelihoods of millions of people. And Trump is doing just that – he is descending into states of delusion that are as he would say, like nothing anyone has seen before (notwithstanding Nixon’s nighttime drunken tirades).

On Sunday, the day after millions of Americans marched in the massive No Kings Day protests, Trump dismissed them:

The demonstrations were very small, very ineffective and the people were whacked out. When you look at those people, those are not representative of the people of our country.

Does Trump actually believe that? I suspect that he does. ... There are many, many more examples of Trump’s delusions. He really does seem to believe that Portland is “war-ravaged,” that Chicago is full of “beautiful Black women in MAGA hats” begging him to stop crime, that China is going to cave to his trade demands, that gasoline is $1.99 a gallon, that he will lower drug prices by 500%, and much more.

Granted, previous presidents have also been surrounded by flatterers. In the case of George W. Bush, it’s unlikely that we would have been lied into the Iraq War without Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz assuring him that we would be welcomed as liberators. And we know now that Biden’s inner circle hid his increasing physical frailty from the public and even from his own cabinet members.

Yet Trump’s disconnect from reality is uniquely destructive. No previous president has tried to overturn an election, sought to use the military against U.S. citizens, or sought to use the Justice Department as his own personal vendetta machine. 

The difference is that he’s the first president to live in an autocratic bubble, surrounded by a cult of personality within which nobody dares to criticize him, tell him uncomfortable truths or refuse to engage in blatantly illegal acts.

Furthermore, Trump is clearly getting worse, growing even more out of touch with each passing week. Regardless of whether it’s advancing age or growing frustration, even Trump, I think, realizes that his efforts to suppress all opposition are running into serious resistance. Putting out an AI video of himself dumping shit on protestors suggests panic, not strength. But his claims about what’s happening in America and the world keep getting stranger and wilder.

And Trump’s denial of reality is already having devastating consequences for America, with more to come. ...

We're in for a wild ride.  We don't know how it ends. There remains a fragility to MAGA's grasp on dictatorial power, complicated by its submission to a crazy man and the existence of a massive, probably majority, resistance. Like Krugman, I find it possible that the people will create enough friction so that things will come apart and massive change will happen. To what end? Time will tell.

No Kings was food for my soul

I'm still living in the backwash of what we did on Saturday. NO KINGS was a fine denunciation of the MAGA regime's atrocities against immigrants, against workers, against truth, against our democracy. But it was also a gushing release of emotions that the Trump emergency constrains. We risk missing out on feeling some of what keeps us human, perhaps because we can't afford to bare or bear those feelings in this awful time.

So on Saturday, some of us expressed emotions which living in Trump's America has repressed.

That's long been a San Francisco sentiment. This city knows that.

We're not asking for a life of emotional ease.

Though it hurts, we don't give in.

We make the choice to celebrate what matters, even if we dress as clowns to do it.

We trust we can get to the other side ... most of us anyway. Yes! 

Libertarian rule-of-law guy Radley Balko is not at all an habitual protester. Often, more a cranky critic. But he found emotional sustenance in Saturday's marches.   

What I saw at Saturday’s protest was a celebration of the values that truly make us great, even as we haven’t always lived up to them — the rule of law, constitutionalism, skepticism of power, empathy and compassion, civil liberties, and — yes — diversity. ...

If I had to sum up my own feelings about the protest in Nashville in a word, I’d go with nourishing. It felt good. It felt good to stand with neighbors who understand what we’re up against.

Joyful NO KINGS in San Francisco

  

As Erudite Partner has observed, Donald Trump has no sense of humor. Neither does MAGA. It's all about grievance all the way down.

We do have a sense of humor. 

And under a bright sun and warm breezes, tens of thousands of us marched down Market Street yesterday, delighting in walking together against the grim destruction being inflicted on our people and country.

 The frogs were with us, even when we're angry.

 

Somehow, for the time being, we're all going the same direction ...

 

A few observations on a delight-filled day:

• We talk about wanting diverse crowds. This event certainly was that: young, old, and in-between; white, Black, Latino, Asian and many of that ubiquitous Californian kind, those whose ethnicity is not visually discernible. 
• The crowd was culturally diverse: service union members, Democratic party stalwarts, pro-Palestinian protesters, church contingents, LGBTQ+ clusters, teachers and nurses, several bands, and just San Franciscans. For all the tech bro hoopla, that's still our crazy city.
• The crowd was politically diverse: campaigners for Prop. 50 found themselves alongside little leftist sects trying to propagate their line (always hard when the people are moving at scale.)

A successful big rally generates good news coverage. The San Francisco Chronicle did a good job on No Kings Day around the Bay. 

G.Elliott Morris, statistician and data guru at Strength in Numbers, set himself the task of figuring out how many people participated across the country. His headline: Second "No Kings Day" protests likely the largest single-day political demonstration since 1970, with 4.2-7.6 million participants.

I hate the crowd count game, but this one is probably as sound as we'll get. As interesting, in the linked article, is Morris' conclusion that ongoing anti-fascist actions are vastly broader and more widespread than in the first Trump term.

No Kings began to meet the moment. We need to continue to buckle down against MAGA's cruelty and injustice ... 

Happy NO KINGS day!

I'll be out today, and I hope you will be too. No Kings is where it is at today.

I'll pass along the some tempered optimism about our struggle from Garrett Graff --  a former editor of Politico and prolific author of journalistic histories of the events that shape our present country.

Why I Have Hope for America

... Whenever and however Donald Trump exits the stage, there just isn’t anyone who will step into the MAGA movement’s shoes — there are plenty of people who will try, from JD Vance to Marco Rubio to Ron DeSantis to Don Jr. to Ted Cruz, but the thing we’ve seen over and over across the last decade is that no one is Donald Trump. Vice President JD Vance, an incredibly awkward and unfunny Trump-lite who is widely despised by both sides, is most certainly not Donald Trump.

Trump has built in MAGA not a movement but a personality cult — a fragile coalition of anti-government extremists, white nationalists, conspiracists, disaffected people hurt by globalization, and a lot of low-information voters whose brains have been fried by right-wing media and social media algorithms.

Post-Trump, the MAGA cult will likely splinter and fracture into bitter power-hungry factions, many of which will be terrified about their own culpability to criminal, civil, or other public accountability. That fragile coalition is unlikely to survive months past Trump himself — and if and when that collapse happens, the reality of #1 (“there are more of us than of them”), powered by the history and mission of #2 (“the dream of America is a country that gets more just and more free”), will have an important opening and opportunity.

If civil society and good people, like the millions who will march this weekend at the No Kings protests, can stay strong, vocal, and active in the months and years ahead, there’s plenty of reason to believe that the United States — or at least parts of the United States — can begin to repair the damage done by Trumpism and continue to advance our national, collective 250-year-old dream of a multiracial democracy more just, more equal, and more free.

The damage that Trump has already done to our government, our institutions, and our civic national fabric will be real and lasting. We will never be the country we were before Donald Trump corruptly won the election in 2016 with Russia’s help, but someday — across years and decades, and maybe not even during my lifetime but perhaps during my childrens’ lifetime — we can strive to work together to ensure that the country we hand off to future generations is better than the one we’ve inherited. 

 We are the people we've been waiting for ...