Trump makes all moments feel existential

Day in and day out, Jay Kuo chronicles "the condition our condition is in" at The Status Kuo. (Thanks, Kenny Rogers.) He's good at it, as befits an accomplished lawyer, chair of the Human Rights Campaign, Broadway show composer, and doting father.

Sometimes he waxes reflective -- which isn't easy in these times. In The Violence Is the Point,  he takes a careful long view of our ambitious autocrat in chief. 

... Historians and political scientists reviewing the regime’s recent escalations would recognize a familiar pattern.

In “On Violence,” which grew out of a 1969 essay, political theorist Hannah Arendt argued that power and violence are opposites. Power, as she defined it, belongs to people acting together, and it lasts only as long as the group holds. Violence, by contrast, stands in for power once that cooperation starts to slip. “Violence appears where power is in jeopardy,” she wrote, “but left to its own course its end is the disappearance of power.”

Political scientists have since measured the same dynamic. Governments’ use of repression to answer threats to their power and the status quo is so common that scholars gave it a name: the Law of Coercive Responsiveness. Christian Davenport, the University of Michigan political scientist most associated with the dynamic, notes that dissent “has increased repression in every single investigation of the topic,” making it “perhaps the only law” in the study of how states and dissidents interact. His study of the United States from 1948 to 1982 found something more unsettling. Repression tracked the threats that officials declared through speeches, hearings and laws more closely than anything protesters actually did. When those political threats were present, he wrote, “repression increased, regardless of behavioral threats.” A Somali “takeover” of Minnesota, an “invasion” at the border, two dead citizens branded “domestic terrorists”—in each case, the regime manufactures the threat and the crackdown follows. 

So we're recipients of escalating efforts to rub horrific state violence in our faces -- a home invasion by security thugs at a Somali Congresswoman's residence, a proposed public execution, a "whimsical" invocation of nuclear destruction of Los Angeles and San Diego.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s “Strongmen” follows authoritarian leaders from Mussolini to the present, from their rise through their rule to their fall. She identified Trump’s reliance on violence years ago. In the tradition of the fascists, she wrote, he uses his rallies to “train his followers to see violence in a positive light.” That’s why he’s switched from invoking Mobile, Alabama, as a target of nuclear annihilation to a bit about two blue California cities.

Last August, I wrote in The Big Picture about “sadopopulism,” the term coined by historian Timothy Snyder, now at the University of Toronto. He describes it as a kind of “populism where people actually don’t get anything except more pain.” The regime cannot deliver real gains, so it rations suffering and offers its base the consolation of watching others hurt more. I argued then that public opinion “is a barometer of whether Trump’s policies, including sadopopulism, are working or failing.” The barometer now reads failure, and so the regime has doubled down and is escalating.

... We’ve moved from UFC bouts on the White House lawn, to turning nuked California cities into a crowd pleaser to the ultimate spectacle of a planned public execution. In each case, the audience matters as much as the event, if not more. A Law & Society Review study of American executions from 1833 to 1937 found, for example, that the audience was itself part of the event, and that it could grant or deny legitimacy to the execution and to capital punishment as a whole. That’s the very reason why, in December, Hegseth hopes to give Hasan’s execution an audience of anyone with an internet connection. ...

Trump is flailing; all he can think of to do is kill someone.  On the other hand, he's a total chickenshit. His instinct is to TACO, to shy away from the worst in the hope of living to fight another day. 

If unrest reaches a boiling point, history suggests a TACO moment may follow. But just as we witnessed and endured with Jan. 6, the damage to our democracy and the rule of law before Trump finally backs down could be considerable. ...

There's much reason to worry that Trump can make things worse before they get better. but that's all the more reason to do all we can to strip this evil nutcase of as much power as we can in the present.  Read it all from Jay Kuo. 

No kings indeed

So many outrages ... so much to note with horror. DJT sticking his ugly mug on US passports is nowhere near the Mad Toddler's most egregious offense against our democracy and our human decency. 

But I appreciated Adam Gopnik's restrained reflections on the new image in the New Yorker.  

... The President is not a substitute tyrant or king, whose face, like that of the monarch of England (the enemy in the historic event celebrated this year), appears on currency, coins, and postage stamps, but just one more citizen who happens to have been handed a very big job. As that leftist provocateur Ronald Reagan once said, “You don’t become President of the United States. You are given temporary custody of an institution called the Presidency, which belongs to our people.”

... The absence of a living monarch on our money, or on our travel documents, was not an accident haphazardly arrived at but a declaration of equality meant to be flourished and displayed. In this way, a reasonable case can be made that the constant volley of insults to the dignity of our democracy is as grave as the bad policy choices: policy choices can change; the decorum of democracy, once defaced, can never be wholly restored.

So, pity the poor passport! To see it so reduced by the whims of a would-be autocrat at the soothing of a cynical sycophant [that would be little Marco Rubio] undermines our faith not just in free travel but in freedom itself. A U.S. passport should bear the image and the imprint of no officeholder of any kind; it should merely let us pass on our journey through the world freely and without hindrance, just as the old one does. 

No Kings - October 17. 

Team work and friendship

Odds are, most of my San Francisco friends will have seen this, because they too will have been on Brad Newsham's mailing list for the visual protests he has been creating on our beaches for the last 20 years. But others may not have have seen it and you might appreciate this tribute to community and creativity and one team member that demonstrates the best of this area. You can find the whole story on Facebook under Brad's name.   

She knows

A Honduran friend who lives in Mexico posted this. I think more North Americans, especially folks in the USofA, might find this exhortation from a champion of global justice worth raising up:  

The rest of the world gets it. Many Australians, not the most pacifist or internationalist of Anglophones, get it: 

In 2025 Navi Pillay received the Sydney Peace Prize and in 2026 she received the Nobel Peace Prize for promoting international law and peace. 

Navi could not be a more deserving winner. Born under apartheid, she fought for justice in South Africa, women’s rights across the world, helped establish rape as an act of genocide, worked for victims of the Rwanda genocide and called out a genocide in Gaza. 

This woman, whose career has included investigating and calling out the most horrible things that humans do to each other, nonetheless believes in the possibilities we can make together.

Though there is too much avoidable human and animal suffering, too much exploitation, too much greed and too much repression around the globe, many -- perhaps most -- peoples live and work in hope of better lives for those who come after. They look forward, not backward ...

I grew up in a country which looked forward, even as it was oblivious to its many advantages and riches. We have lost that. We need to be reminded that we can walk together with others toward a more just and peaceful world.

And then continue the project of hobbling the Orange Toddler ... 

The death penalty to front of mind again

Once again, Americans find ourselves unable to look away from our country's erratic and often irrational enthusiasm for legal killings.

The state of Tennessee ineptly tried to execute convicted killer Christa Pike -- and after torturing her with failed poison shots, sent her to a medical center to be resuscitated and she's back in a state prison. Now what? 

Meanwhile, that preening tough-guy clown Pete Hegseth wants to broadcast the execution of military murderer Major Hasan Piker on a livestream. Hip hip hooray for the firing squad!

Opposing the death penalty is something I've put some time into. In 2012, I was field director for California Prop. 34 which would have ended state executions, while consigning the over 500 imprisoned convicts awaiting capital punishment to sentences of life without parole. The measure failed by popular vote, 52-48. Collectively, the voters wanted to continue the option of legal executions. 

We threw a menu of arguments out to the voters:

• Death cases are wasteful and cost too much because of delays and litigation expenses

• Death is irreversible; some innocent people have been condemned, often because of poverty or bad lawyers

• Death sentences are too often bigoted and racist

• Convicted murderers could be held in prison for life ...

These arguments didn't carry the day. Why did many Californians vote to continue state killing?  

Probably the most important reason we lost that campaign was that we didn't have enough campaign cash to force the issue into the voters' attention. It got lost among the plethora of propositions. In California, you can't pass a new idea without enough money to put it in front of voters through paid media. 

But also, there really was a substantial fraction of the people who believed that a free society needed the option to kill offenders against its good order.  

In my role as field director, I had an unusual opportunity to learn what ordinary people who were honestly concerned by Prop. 34 might be thinking. One of our campaign tactics was to offer a series of "telephone town halls." A prominent local leader (then-Congresswoman Barbara Lee was one) agreed to talk in an open forum with callers about the death penalty and the proposition. 

Unsurprisingly, we screened the calls; the death penalty evokes violent emotions. We didn't want to put people in to talk who couldn't keep their cool while expressing their opinions. I did a lot of the screening, talking with callers before we put them on the air. I'm glad I did. 

Though we got plenty of callers who just wanted to say that they thought death sentences were not fairly applied or who had particular beefs with the criminal justice system, there were also many others who just felt that some crimes created such a rupture in communities that the perpetrators had to die. Their entire understanding of justice would be undermined if murderers could not be executed. 

I didn't think this was the sort of society I wanted to live in, but I came to understand that this was how morality worked for some good people. The experience was educational for me. I could disagree without dismissing their seriousness. How do we live in a world with such differing ideas of justice among well meaning people? Keep talking I guess.

After Prop. 34, although it failed, California has not resumed executions. That electoral effort didn't assemble a majority vote. But the campaign did convert and rally most of the print media outlets in the state to the cause of abolition. And by the time we have lived through the Jerry Brown and Gavin Newsom administrations, both governors who opposed executions, it looks very unlikely we'll dive back into the practice. There are rumors that Newsom will commute the sentences of the 563 prisoners still living under the threat of execution, changing their status to "life without parole."

I wouldn't be surprised if current events cemented majorities in big blue states against the death penalty. Tennessee's stupid cruelty combined with Hegseth ghoulish (and unpopular) firing squad wet dream are doing their part to change opinions.

It's theft and attempted bribes all the way down

via Nathan Newman

Trump is desperate as the midterm elections come closer. He has reached the bribery stage of trying to hang on to power. He has cooked up ... 

• $90 payments to some 20 million Medicare recipients. I actually know people who got this. The money was heisted from a fund designed to explore ways to make Medicare a better program.

• $500 checks to about one million on people who have Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) insurance. ACA coverage became so popular under Biden that funds put aside to advertise the program were unused. The same recipients will learn when they go to reauthorize their coverage next year that their premiums will have been raised an average of 15 percent. 

• $5000 bribe he offers to all if somehow the voters keep his MAGA minions in control of the House and Senate in the midterms. Anyone who believes Donald Trump pays up on his promises hasn't been paying attention. I doubt if even his MAGA crowds in the GOP states he is now touring believe this one. The cost would be $1.2 trillion with no source specified. Apparently Americans don't believe him.

Dumb and dumber. And when it comes down to it, it's our money he is stealing.

We voted!!

   

Have you voted yet? Now is the time!

 

The California Federation of Teachers offers a neat tool which will tell you where you can deposit your ballot right away! Looks like this; click this link.

Send Connie Chan to Congress

It's an unfortunate trait of some politicians to be able, even when right on a particular issue, to make themselves still in the wrong. Scott Wiener exemplifies the type. If he wins election as my Congresscritter replacing Nancy Pelosi, he'll mostly vote in ways I won't find objectionable. He damn well better -- this is San Francisco. But ambition has long made him not a leader of San Franciscans, but an abettor of our tech plutocrats. They are paying for his campaign. And they want him as a voice for them within the Democratic Party in DC.

I want someone in Congress who stands up for the unique eccentricity of the City by the Bay. Though Nancy Pelosi is a plutocrat herself, she got that. Speaker Emerita Pelosi is now one of Connie Chan's lead endorsers along with dozens of Democratic office holders. 

Connie Chan is an immigrant, born in Hong Kong, arriving here at age 13. Coming out of the westside Richmond District, she's been a practical progressive on the Board of Supervisors since 2021. On the job, she's shown she learned how to navigate the push and pull of being a legislator with opinionated constituents and responsibilities to the city as a whole. 

Chan at a teacher's rally at USF

Chan bills herself as a champion of working people. Her partner is a San Francisco firefighter. She has overwhelming support from organized labor, as well as the backing of dozens of community organizations.

This is not an election I find complicated. Will San Francisco opt for one of its own or for the front man for the tech and real estate bros who want to make the city a rich man's playground?

The President has lost it

 

The truth is simple; he's an ignorant, generally malevolent, old guy who has lost his marbles. The contents of that brain always rattled around a bit, but they've gotten looser. There's little left but greed and id. 

 

And the people need to say so loudly, because the media won't. In fact, to sustain the only business model they know, journalism pretends he's functioning within the bounds of normal when he's batshit crazy. 

Trump on his Iran war: 

They can take out a city. Let them take, let them take out Los Angeles; let them take out San Diego. That’s — this is a very small price to pay, and it’s going to be over with very soon. It’s essentially almost over with.

Jennifer Rubin puts the reality succinctly:  

Legacy media’s sanewashing of Trump’s campaign appearances as “speeches” bears less and less resemblance to the reality of his verbal incontinence...

... Trump was more unhinged in Ohio on Saturday, where Trump blathered about James Talarico: “I see that ‘Tala-freako’ in Texas. So he’s been a vaygan' all his life. He’s a vaygan vaygan, I didn’t even know what the hell a vaygan was. A vaygan is vegetables. A vaygan is eating a piece of lettuce all day long.” Ignoring his apparent ignorance of the word ‘vegan,’ the nature of his obscene, irrelevant insults suggests a complete loss of impulse control. These are not “speeches,” but rather psychological breakdowns. But, unfortunately, you would not know it from mainstream media coverage. ...

... Similarly, Trump’s encounter last week with TIME was routinely labeled an “interview.” But an “interview” denotes responsive answers — not a stream of non sequiturs, insults, and outbursts. A few commentators ventured that the session was “grievance”-filled or “emotional,” but even those descriptions falsely suggest some orderly presentation of reality-based complaints in response to questions. ...

... The Mob boss mentality, lack of logical connection between sentence fragments, self-contradictions, and elementary-school-level vocabulary in a froth of vicious anger reflect a deeply unwell mind — albeit notably less so absent in the sanitized version. Obsessive efforts to explain what Trump must mean are indicative of PR; not journalism....

... Aaron Rupar, who assiduously records and posts Trump’s and his minions’ remarks arguably more thoroughly than any journalist, ... put it, “Trump is either unwilling or unable (or maybe both) to answer the questions he’s actually asked, so he just rants and raves while the interviewers do their best to provide structure to his random brain firings.”

As he ages, Trump’s decline will continue (maybe accelerate), meaning this is likely the “best” version of Trump we will see from here on out. Billionaire-owned media has essentially covered up that national crisis, refusing to acknowledge that he is deteriorating mentally and emotionally, just as he is physically (evidenced by bruising, swollen ankles, consistent somnolence). ...

We see it; long experience has convinced me that when the people lead, our "leaders" will eventually follow. When will the big media admit that he has no clothes?

Midterm elections: who votes

One month out from the midterm election date, it might be worthwhile to share some historical facts about the shape of these contests. Who votes in midterns is not quite the same as who votes in presidential years.

These data come from USA Facts which seems a reasonably unbiased interpreter of census and other data. 

Every four years, a pattern repeats: fewer Americans vote in the midterm elections than did in the presidential race before it. It’s a pattern that’s persisted for decades. ...but in the last two election cycles midterm turnout was higher than it was for much of the past four decades. 

... Since 1980, presidential elections have had an average reported voter turnout of 63%. Midterms averaged 48%. Generally, voter turnout drops by an average of about 15 percentage points between a presidential election and the following midterm.

But the 2018 midterms were an exception: turnout fell eight points, the smallest drop in four decades....

Maybe there is something about a Trump and MAGA regime that gooses some voters to turnout in non-presidential years? 

 • In the most recent full election cycle, young people not only had the lowest presidential vote turnout, but they were also the least likely to vote in the midterms. Less than 30% of 18 to 24 year olds voted in the 2022 election. Conversely, people 65 or older had the highest turnout and smallest drop-off. ...

• The likelihood of voting rose with a person's family income in both presidential and midterm elections. The drop between the two, however, was largest among people in families earning between $40,000 to $75,000 a year.  ...

• Married Americans living with their spouse voted at higher rates in both presidential and midterm elections than any other relationship status ... Among other marital statuses, widowed Americans had the smallest turnout drop, eight points, while those who were never married had the largest at 20 points. ...

I wonder whether this is also true for married same sex couples; we're becoming a larger fraction of the married every year.

• Fewer than 40% of Hispanic citizens voted in the last midterm election. Asian turnout dropped the most, falling 20 points from the presidential election. White voters had the highest turnout in both elections. ... 

• Naturalized US citizens born in Canada or Greenland report voting at higher rates even than native-born Americans. European-born Americans voted at similar levels to native-born, while Latin American- and Mexican-born voted at lower levels.

• While African-born citizens voted at similar levels to native-born Americans in the 2020 election, their turnout dropped by 31 percentage points in the 2022 midterm, the largest drop of any of the demographic groups in the data.

Don't let anyone claim this is "a color-blind society." In the most basic activity of civic belonging, race and ethnicity clearly still matter. 

So does economic well-being.

• Renters and unemployed people voted below the national average in both elections and had steeper drops in turnout in midterms than most other groups.

• Americans with a disability also voted less than average in the presidential election, but their midterm drop-off was among the smallest of any group, 11 points, bringing their midterm turnout close to the national average. 

• Veterans and government workers stood out at the other end. Both voted well above average in both elections with drop-offs at or below the national average.

It's not clear in this data whether blue (Democratic) states had more or less drop off than red (Republican) states. Maybe it can matter whether people feel they have something/someone vital to vote for -- or against?  I sure hope so.

AI leads to brain rot?

I found this New York Times exploration of the implications of AI interesting. You might also. Gift link.

Other findings of this study presented in graphic form are less discouraging about where the AI boom is leading us. AI-native young people may be able to use it to assist solid learning. Or, as seems too common today, maybe not.

 

We seem fated to find out. 

There's much to vote on: local San Francisco ballot measures

Yesterday I worked my way through the 13 California state propositions voters are up against. Whew! 

Here I'll survey the 10 local measures San Franciscans face on the November ballot. A lot of discernment is asked of us. This exercise, as it always does, makes me wonder whether so much direct democracy -- direct legislating by the people -- has the results we might wish. But Californians like our system, so here we are again.

San Francisco local measures have letters, rather than the numbers used for the State offerings. Here we go:

Measure A: Proponents claim this one would clean up accreted inefficiencies and oddities in the current shape of city government, many derived from a 30 year old city charter which was a fix for the same sort of problems when we passed that one. City government has become a bit of a Winchester Mystery House, as anyone who has had to deal with it has discovered. Measure A is a complex set of tweaks and fixes supported by the current ruling establishment: Mayor Lurie and his tech bro and real estate sponsors. The outspent opposition is the Coalition on Homelessness. I confess to having a lot more trust in that organization than in the current city government. As I often feel, the devil will be in the details. I don't trust 'em. NO

Measure B: For a Public Bank ... this is my Supervisor Jackie Fielder's hobby horse. She has managed to line up Supervisors, labor, and civic organizations in favor. Seems worth trying. YES on B

Measure C: Increase City Contributions to the Housing Trust Fund. This is such a no-brainer that the only opposition are local Republicans. Anything that might increase housing availability for regular non-billionaires is okay by me. YES

Measure D: Would increase the number of voter signatures to get a measure on the ballot from 2 percent to 8 percent of the electorate. This looks to me like an effort to hobble direct citizen input into policy. I get the impulse. But I've run signature collection efforts. They are hard and expensive. Would legitimate grassroots efforts to put questions on the ballot be priced out? Quite likely. The big boys will always be able to pay to play. Let's keep San Francisco its fractious self. I'm a NO

Measure E: This one untangles city contracting processes. As with Measure A, I'm instinctively sympathetic. City government is an over-complicated mess. But do I trust the current powers that be? No, I do not. Guess I'm a suspicious NO

Measure F: Allows reorganization of city government by the present mayor and his corporate appointees. Again, I get the impulse. City government is a mess. It has accreted epicycles of poor management. But do we trust Daniel Lurie and his billionaire backers to preserve a San Francisco which represents the City's remarkable quirky diversity? I don't. Again, NO

Measure G: Reopen Sunset Dunes Park to cars. Hopefully this time will be the charm and this bad idea will finally go away. We've already voted it down twice. I understand there are folks who live in the Sunset District who find the park inconvenient, but this has been one of the great improvements to the city in the recent decade. NO

Measure H: Parcel tax to fund MUNI. We need public transport; this is a city, not a suburb. And so we have to pay for it. Only opposition is the Republican Party. 'Nuff said. YES

Measure I: Set aside part of a transfer tax on real estate sales of over $10 million too be used for affordable housing. This has an "only in San Francisco" feel. We passed a similar measure in 2020 but the current powers that be have evaded turning over and using the money. Housing and tenant advocates, community organizations, and some of labor support this one. Some construction unions say no. But really, let's make the richest us among contribute to the community's needs. YES

Measure J: Ensures the city gets a cut when big real estate deals happen through foreclosure. Transfers of commercial, industrial and large residential properties would trigger the tax. Seems reasonable. Nobody comes out against this expect Quentin Kopp (a name that will trigger longtime San Franciscans). YES

This survey highlights that Mayor Lurie and the billionaires think this election is an opportunity to use San Francisco residents' discontents to cut back on the vigorous citizen engagement with the local government which has always characterized this quirky, sometimes manic city. I, for one, don't feel that government by the plutocrats has earned our trust. (After all, I live in the Mission, turf they leave to rot.) So let's use the election to slap back at our overlords. 

Vote NO on D, E, and F and let 'em know, they must do better.