The time to act is NOW

 

Every day, web sites I read throw me videos, chats, short films. And every day I ignore them. I hate the turn to video -- it's slow and it seldom uses the medium particularly imaginatively. 

 

I'm a fossil; I like good writing and will put in the effort to read it.

 

Yet today I'm posting a powerful nine minute video from historian Heather Cox Richardson. She insists "We Cannot Wait for the Ballot Box in November 2026 | Explainer." 

... The administration is trying desperately to rig the 2026 elections so they don't have to face voters any more. ...

 

... it seems pretty clear that Trump is not in good shape ... these Epstein files that have come out are going to make Republicans look worse and worse ...

 

... As Trump increasingly weakens, you are going to see more and more frenzy to lock up the country because they think that we who believe in democracy don't really have a say in it ... they think we are polluting the country. ...

 

... We have the majority and we feel very strongly about it and we have on our side the great thinkers of the United States ... not the great thinkers of the Nazis [that] they are following ... we have James Madison, and we have Abraham Lincoln, and we have Fanny Lou Hamer ... [these Americans'] principles are very much more the principles of the majority than that a few rich guys ought to rule. ...

 

... It is not a question of waiting until November 2026 to cast a vote. By then the die will be cast. We will know what the future looks like ...

 

... The time to speak up is NOW. ... the time to make sure your neighbors understand what is going on is NOW. ...

 

... NOW is the time as Trump is weak and Republicans recognize that he is weakening to make sure they understand how profoundly unpopular this is ... 

 

... What this is going to look like on the other side, I don't know. Another generation is coming. But we won't have that generation unless we save it NOW. ...

 

... The thing to do is throw your weight in at the local level, the state level, the national lever, talking to people, making sure that individuals truly recognize what is going on ...

 

... The more noise people can make NOW, the better our chances of safeguarding the election in 2026  ... for all the anxiety that people are feeling, turn that anxiety into some kind of action, because sitting around worrying about what is going to come is not going to help you or anybody ... Find a friend ... find something to do ..

 

Trump is not popular ... he's crashing the economy ... think Herbert Hoover, not Mussolini.

 

... Trump only punches down ... the more we can stand up to him and his minions, the more likely they are to back down.

 

... if you can see what is happening, then you can see the pressure points to change what is happening ...

... If this is the world we got, we've got to find out ways to make it better and to preserve our democracy for the people who come after us. ...

The historian has become an organizer. I seldom offer a higher compliment. The moment demands that we all, in our own ways, become organizers for democracy.

Supreme Court legalizes racial profiling. What Constitution is this?

According to the NY Times:

The Supreme Court on Monday lifted a federal judge’s order prohibiting government agents from making indiscriminate immigration-related stops in the Los Angeles area ... The court’s brief order was unsigned and gave no reasons. ...

The court’s three liberal members dissented.

“We should not have to live in a country where the government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish and appears to work a low wage job,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

“Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost,” Justice Sotomayor added, “I dissent.”

... Civil rights groups and several individuals filed suit, accusing the administration of unconstitutional sweeps in which thousands of people had been arrested. They described the encounters in the suit as “indiscriminate immigration operations” that had swept up thousands of day laborers, carwash workers, farmworkers, caregivers and others.

“Individuals with brown skin are approached or pulled aside by unidentified federal agents, suddenly and with a show of force,” the complaint said, “and made to answer questions about who they are and where they are from,” violating the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures.

There will be further litigation, but it seems abundantly clear that this Supreme Court recognizes no constitutional rights for Brown people and people who don't speak English.

This country has been here before. In 1857, a Supreme Court captured by slave-holding interests, declared that African-descended persons did not enjoy the protection of the law.

Chief Justice  Roger Taney:  such persons "had no rights which the white man was bound to respect..."

That time around, the breach of the national legal system led to violence within the states and, soon, the bloody Civil War been the free Union and the enslaving South. The modern court has adopted the same standard. We can only hope we can come out of this without so much violence. If this is really the meaning of the US Constitution, we, the people of these United States, probably cannot come out with that document intact.

Sherrilyn Ifill, one of the nation's leading civil rights lawyers and former head of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, responded to Justice Kavanaugh's airy defense of the Court:

Kavanaugh’s description [of ICE raids] reads as though it were downloaded from the Department of Homeland Security’s website. Almost every word of this is preposterous. “Brief investigative stops” at places where undocumented immigrants are likely to work? What we have seen repeatedly are not “stops.” They are grabs and kidnapping. Most often, no questions are asked. Even when colleagues have insisted that the person targeted by ICE agents are here legally, or that they are citizens, ICE agents proceed to tackle, beat, cuff, and spirit away individuals they have targeted. And we have seen migrants detained and forcibly taken into custody as often in courthouses after immigration hearings, or in neighborhoods cutting lawns as at Home Depot. 

That Kavanaugh could so haplessly could make this statement just days after South Korean nationals authorized to work as engineers at a Georgia EV battery plant were arrested, shackled and taken into custody by ICE after an immigration raid in what has become an international incident, demonstrates how utterly out of touch he is.

Kavanaugh assures us that it is no problem to be apprehended, taken to a facility – perhaps several states away – until you can prove that you are a legal resident or citizen. This is his idea of democracy – a country in which citizens and legal residents who are Black, Latino or Asian, and who happen to work in “locations where people are hired for day jobs” must carry proof of citizenship (their “freedom papers,” if you will) or risk apprehension by masked thugs who will hold them perhaps for months.

The fantasy world Kavanaugh describes is the kind of world in which clueless white men (or deliberately obtuse white men) in positions of power were permitted to languish before the Civil Rights Movement brought the reality of life for marginalized people into American living rooms in technicolor. ...

When a Court legalizes thuggish racist violence, normalizes this, the national rule of law is truly in the toilet. Will the rest of us just carry on silently?

International rules against torture breaking down

Russia wants out of the European Convention for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Punishment which it signed onto 1996. 

According to Radio Liberty (thanks to Google translate): 

Putin submitted to the state Duma a draft on the denunciation of the Convention against torture...

After withdrawing from the convention, Russia will no longer be obliged to admit international inspectors to its prisons. Complaints from Russian prisoners to the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture will no longer be considered. 

The United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU) has reported extensive Russian torture of captured Ukrainians.

“Almost every single one of the Ukrainian POWs we interviewed described how Russian servicepersons or officials tortured them during their captivity, using repeated beatings, electric shocks, threats of execution, prolonged stress positions and mock execution. Over half of them were subjected to sexual violence,” said Danielle Bell who heads HRMMU. “Most POWs also recounted the anguish of not being allowed to communicate with their families, and being deprived of adequate food and medical attention.” 

Although the United States has historically been allergic to international treaties which might subject acts by our citizens to international judgement, we signed the analogous United Nations Convention against torture in 1988 and ratified in 1994. 

I doubt somehow doubt that the Trump/Hegseth regime gives a damn about internationally recognized bars to torture. But one hopes most American citizens might.

Trump comes after Black women when he attacks economic stability

Paul Krugman, who is a Nobel prize winner unlike one Orange-tinted pretender, knows the score. It's hard to manage an enormous economy well. Krugman explains this requires a smart balancing act. That's why we have (had?) an independent  Federal Reserve Board, to make economic decisions as impartially as any democratic political system allows.

When the inflation rate is low but the unemployment rate is high, as it was during the Great Recession in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, the Fed should cut the federal funds rate. By lowering the fed funds rate, the Fed makes it cheaper for banks to lend. This boosts the spending and investing activity in the economy and brings unemployment down.

When inflation is high but unemployment is low – that is, when the economy is at risk of overheating -- as it was in 2022, the Fed should raise the fed funds rate. This slows down spending and investing and brings inflation down.

But when the unemployment rate and the inflation rate are both too high — what economists call “stagflation” — the Fed faces a dilemma. Cut the fed funds rate rates to support employment and you risk worsening inflation. Raise the fed funds rate to fight inflation and you risk raising unemployment. With stagflation, there are no easy answers, just a tradeoff of risks.

And this dilemma looks very relevant right now: many economic indicators suggest that the United States will soon undergo at least mild stagflation. ...

Not a moment when you want more buffoons in charge. But here we are with the Orange Madman in the White House.

Most likely, if Trump gets his way with the Fed, the country will drift into an economic doom loop which will be bad for ordinary folks as prices rise and jobs disappear -- and  Donald Trump isn't interested in any of this. He's got a bunch of crackpot ideas which defy the experience of over 100 years of advanced capitalist economies. And he wants unlimited power over the Fed to force it to implement his notions.

Lisa Cook

It should be no surprise that Trump has fixated on a Black woman as the impediment to his economic fantasies. Lisa Cook is an experienced, accomplished economist. And she's the first Black woman ever appointed to the Federal Reserve Board. So Trump's corrupt Department of Justice is accusing her of unproven mortgage malfeasance. Cook properly refuses to resign just because Trump has trumped up a complaint. She's forcing Trump to go to court to try to fire her. Guess sometime down the line we'll get yet another chance to see just how far Trump's supine Supremes will go to please Daddy.

Meanwhile, the Trump economy and especially federal workforce cuts are already disproportionately kicking Black women to the curb.

Erica Green describes the carnage:

... The most recent labor statistics show that nationwide, Black women lost 319,000 jobs in the public and private sectors between February and July of this year, the only major female demographic to experience significant job losses during this five-month period,...

Experts attribute those job losses, in large part, to Mr. Trump’s cuts to federal agencies where Black women are highly concentrated. 

White women saw a job increase of 142,000, and Hispanic women of 176,000, over the same time period. White men saw the largest increase among groups, 365,000, over the same time period. 

Ms. Roy said that with the exception of the pandemic, Black women have never seen such staggering losses in employment. And over the last decade, the experiences of that population have consistently signaled what is to come for others. 

“Black women are the canaries in the coal mine, the exclusion happens to them first,” Ms. Roy said. “And if any other cohort thinks it’s not coming for them, they’re wrong. This is a warning, and it’s a stark one.” 

... a report published by the National Women’s Law Center, which compiled and analyzed the now-deleted O.P.M. [the federal Office of Personnel Management] data, showed that government agencies that were targeted for the deepest cuts had employed the highest percentages of women and people of color. ...

He's coming for all of us who can't pay him off -- but he's coming first for Black women. That's how it works in this country.

Margaret Atwood speaks up for free expression

Wise old women are not always comfortable to have around. Canadian author Margaret Atwood would be the first to agree. Speaking (via Zoom) to the international writers conference of PEN held in Krakow, Poland, on September 2, the 85 year old writer applied her reflections on history to the decline of her country's big neighbor.

... We ourselves are living through what appears to be the collapse of an existing structure of power – that of the United States. Externally, the U.S. seems to be abdicating its position as the dominant world power. Internally, it appears to be turning its back on its one-time much celebrated status as an open, liberal democracy – the torch-carrier for freedom, a beacon of light to oppressed Soviet satellites during the Cold War – and flirting with the very kind of autocracy that it once stood so firmly against.

Outside its borders, other counties are no longer doing what it says – witness Russia, Israel, Ukraine, and India, just for example. Wars and power struggles are breaking out all over. And inside its borders, the present administration seems determined to destroy or co-opt American institutions that have been built up over centuries. A fair voting system, a judiciary independent of the executive power, just to name two. 

The secretary of Health Care, for instance, seems to be conducting some weird Social Darwinist experiment – survival of the fittest – let’s see who lives and who dies if we remove all protection against deadly diseases. What’s the goal? Who even knows? The elimination of poor people, because they aren’t healthy enough? It wouldn’t surprise me. 

The use of the military to intimidate civilians is another signpost; many countries in mid-century Europe were all too familiar with that.

One of the harbingers of autocratic takeovers is an attempt to control writers and artists, either by censoring them and dictating to them what sort of art they should produce – we saw a certain amount of that coming from the so-called academic left in North America and Britain over the past decade, twinned with online mobbing generally known as “cancel culture”– or by book banning and the intimidation of universities and media outlets, which we are now seeing on a rather large scale in the United States. The levers are money and lawsuits, but these have been quite effective. Most people with jobs are by nature fearful of challenging authority, or at least any authority with the power to fire them. 

I look back to the French Revolution – the prototype of all revolutions since – and remark merely that one of its first stated goals was freedom of expression, a value it espoused until its leaders gained power. Then, miraculous to behold, strict censorship set in, printing presses were smashed, and those who had published questionable views were beheaded. 

During the Terror, you could be executed for just being suspected of thinking counterrevolutionary thoughts – Thoughtcrime, as Orwell would have it. People entering the United States are currently having their phones and computers searched for evidence of Thoughtcrime against the Trump administration.

Self-supporting writers don’t fear being fired. Their employers are their readers. For this reason, they are often asked to speak about difficult subjects, and to say things publicly that many other people are thinking privately. And that is why I am here with you today – because I don’t have a job. ...

Beware of revolutions, perhaps. We need revolutionary imagination, courage and some visionary energy. But beware of revolutionaries, absolutely. In this, I'm with my old lady comrade.

Trump and MAGA are vicious and dangerous ...

They are also ridiculous. Let's not forget it.

Free DC and Free the USofA!

Friday cat blogging

Do you think Mio would make a good mayor? I think he'd be a contender if we held an election like the one in Somerville, Massachusetts. He projects such gravitas, such sincerity. His platform -- unlimited kibble and unlimited naps for all. 

But the candidates for mayor in the bike path election profiled in the Guardian are outdoor beasts. Mio is under a permanent rule: "cats don't go out." Mostly he seems to understand this. One time when he didn't, he bit a pit bull. Never again!

Kareem speaks up for prayer

Sometimes I think of the great Kareem Abdul Jabar as the last rational man standing. He has studied so hard to come to a rational view of the world and society in which he lives; he seems to ask, why won't the rest of us understand what intellect and inquiry says is obvious?

So it is delicious when Kareem turns his very good brain to prayer in our lives: 

... Following the Minnesota shootings last week that left two children dead and 17 people wounded, former White House Press Secretary under Joe Biden, Jen Psaki, commented that sending “thoughts and prayers” wasn’t doing enough to stem the gun violence plaguing America. Said Psaki: “Prayer is not freaking enough. Prayers does not end school shootings. Prayers do not make parents feel safe sending their kids to school. Prayer does not bring these kids back. Enough with the thoughts and prayers.”

Psaki was articulating what most people outside the gun lobbies and the GOP politicians paid off by the gun lobbies have been saying for years. The states with the highest rates of gun deaths per capita are all red states: Mississippi, Louisiana, and Wyoming. While those states spend so much time making sure women have no say over their own bodies, they spend relatively little time or effort curtailing gun violence. They pass strict laws when it comes to abortion, but when it comes to the violent deaths in their states, they rely on prayer. And the bodies keep piling up.

White House Communications Secretary Steven Cheung sounded very un-Christian when he posted about Psaki: “You are a disgusting human being. I hope you circle back with an apology.” Does this seem like a man who prays at all (except for the swift and painful deaths of his political enemies)? After Trump declared Washington, D.C. to be crime-ridden, why didn’t he and his administration, instead of sending in armed National Guard soldiers, form a prayer circle to pray away the crime?

Because Cheung and Leavitt are in the business of rabid deflecting, they hope to turn Psaki’s reasonable comment into some anti-religious screed. What they fail to acknowledge about people of faith is that they can both pray and take actions to curtail the violence. 

They fail to understand that people may be praying not just for divine intervention, but also for the strength and wisdom to address the problem right here, right now. 

This country was built by many deeply religious people, but they didn’t wait around for their god to build a railroad or deliver cures for diseases: they got off their knees and did the difficult work themselves. Their devotion inspired their deeds.

Psaki did not fault people who pray; she just pointed out that prayer in itself will not solve this problem. 

Prayer helps the devout to connect with their core values and to manifest those values in their communities. To suggest otherwise—as Leavitt and Cheung do—insults the intelligence of all people of faith.  

I can go with that. 

Yes on 50: coming soon to whatever media you consume

Here's what is ahead of us this fall:

Yes, we have to do this -- we have to create more potentially Democratic Congressional seats in California to counter the House seats Republicans are carving out in Texas. In this episode of "they started it," California can't opt out. And won't.

For anyone who has had a hard time finding a place in the mushrooming resistance to Trump/MAGA, here's another all too familiar opportunity to make a difference. Spread the word.

White normalcy in Trump's America

Data journalist and sharp observer Philip Bump took a buy-out from the shrinking, Bezos-trashed Washington Post -- and did the smart thing: he took his family on a road trip in Canada. He wondered if the experience of coming home might be a hassle. Donald Trump's border cops are enjoying a new freedom to lord it over us all; would they come after him?

I was curious what would happen when we tried to reenter the country. I am not an important person, but I am someone who has been at odds with the administration and the Department of Homeland Security particularly. Depending on the extent of the government’s pettiness, some difficulty or delays didn’t seem impossible.

Here, too, I imagined a much worse scenario than would manifest. We pulled up to a checkpoint on a rural road south of Montreal and had a pleasant conversation with the agent in the booth. ... The agent welcomed us back to the U.S. and sent us on our way.

I can identify with that anxiety as I am sure quite a few Americans can. It's not new to many people of color; most of us who are white have never felt it. (Though I did sometimes, when on George W. Bush's no fly list.)

But Bump's reflections really encapsulate the anomalous position that comfortable white Americans can find ourselves in these days -- at least those of us not living in cities where Trump has brought in "his" troops.

Is normalcy the norm or the exception? Are exceptional events exceptions or the emerging norm? Are my dreams and fears a reflection of my own derangements or of rational consideration of what’s happening?

Or are they just a function of me? We can draw a clear line between what’s happening to me and people like me — primarily meaning White people — and what’s happening to others. ...

My sons have a Mexican great-grandparent and a Native American great-grandparent; if they and I looked more like my wife’s grandmother would our return to the U.S. have been different? It seems clear that our day to day lives would be.

It seems almost certain that this era will substantially shift America’s measurement of its population. 

When the government that’s hyperactively rounding up Hispanic people in particular knocks on your door and asks someone their race, there will be a natural tendency for more people to self-identify as White. 

America had gotten better about recognizing the malleability of these designators. The second Trump era will probably reverse that trend dramatically.

For other Americans, normalcy will remain the norm, helping them maintain sense of distance from what’s happening everywhere else. .... Other people will be separated from their kids by people not wearing any badges at all. 

America is both of those things now, a place where the vacation is ongoing and a place where it has suddenly ended. 

If Trump succeeds in crashing the economy through erratic and crackpot gyrations, more of us will notice that. 

Bump concludes that more regular citizens who can pass as White will see advantage in doing so. (Black people don't get to play, as usual; I bet Trump still thinks DC is Chocolate City, though that is no longer demographically true.) 

But there's another vision of what it means to be an American -- the one about the aspiration for liberty and justice for all -- and that is what we must strive for, if we're to come out of this terrible time.

San Francisco Labor Day 2025

The San Francisco Labor Council, which organized the holiday event, made the choice to gather in a real working class neighborhood (the Mission at 16th Street), offer a short march route to Dolores Park, and enjoy the fortunately sunny day. 

The result left an impression of slightly chaotic, but determined and happy, crowds celebrating each other and denouncing everything the Trump regime stands for.

This was a very urban little march of several thousand determined people, in a fine coalition style.

 

Not for this year, the distinct contingents from particular locals or even the dockworker marching band.

Instead, we're in this together. Close together.

We know what matters ...

...and what's true.

We know who we blame.

We even, broadly, know what we want ...

The San Francisco Chronicle published a short report which caught the flavor of the event:

Bayview resident Diana Oertel said she is not typically active on labor issues, but “it was time to get out again.” She said she didn’t know whether the demonstrations against the Trump administration were having much of an impact.

“You’d have to be cruising at 20,000 feet to know that,” she said. “All we can do is keep chipping away. We don’t work for the president. He works for us.” 

Happy Labor Day 2025!

For union members and friends in San Francisco, the holiday started with a little warm up rally at the old federal building on Golden Gate Avenue. It's often a windswept and slightly desolate expanse of concrete, but not this sunny morning.

Folks know what they want:

• Stop the Illegal Firings of Federal Workers! 

• Protect Unions & Worker Rights Now!

• Save Our Democracy!

And they have friends.

After some short speeches, folks took off to join the larger labor march in the Mission District.

Getting ready for America250 -- and the accompanying history wars

While in New England last spring, in honor of the 250th anniversary of the uprising of North American colonists against the British parliament and monarch, I picked up Rick Atkinson's The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777. Atkinson was a reporter with the Washington Post covering both the first and second American Iraq wars before taking up long form historical writing. His journalism background shows; as in Ken Burns' documentaries, along with care for accuracy, ultimately he is story teller. 

And the result can be gripping.

Here's a taste of Atkinson's description  of one of my more colorful Revolution-era ancestors:

Brigadier General Israel Putnam -- "Old Put" to his men -- was described by the Middlesex Journal as "very strongly made, no fat, all bones and muscles; he has a lisp in his speech and is now upwards of sixty years of age." A wool merchant and farmer from Connecticut, barely literate, Putnam "dared to lead where any dared to follow," one admirer observed; another called him "totally unfit for anything but fighting." Stories had been told about him for decades in New England, most involving peril and great courage: how he once tracked down a wolf preying on his sheep, crawled head first into its den with a birch bark torch to shoot it, then dragged the carcass out by the ears; how in the French war when a fire ignited a barracks, he organized a bucket brigade to save three hundred barrels of gunpowder, tossing pails of water onto the burning rafters from a ladder while wearing soaked mittens cut from a blanket; how he had been captured, starved and tortured by Iroquois in 1758, and only the timely intervention of a French officer kept him from burning at the stake; how, after being shipwrecked on the Cuban coast during the Anglo-American expedition against Havana in 1762, he saved all hands by building rafts from spars and planks; how he fought rebellious Indians near Detroit in Pontiac's War of 1764, and later explored the Mississippi River valley; he had left his plow upon hearing news of Lexington to ride a hundred miles in twenty-four hours to Cambridge. 

Now wearing his scars and scorches like valor ribbons, he was ready ...

All this seems to be true or at least was believed contemporaneously. In the spring of 1775, Putnam led some of the rebel American troops preparing for a British assault on Bunker Hill alongside Boston Harbor. He set a standard for the aroused patriots, but his fellows were not convinced he was the man for the job. 

Astride a lathered white horse, his own halo of tangled white hair instantly recognizable, General Israel Putnam trotted back and forth across the American line in a sleeveless waistcoat, smacking shirkers with the flat of his sword. To an officer pleading with a reluctant militiaman, Putnam snapped, "Run him through if he won't fight." One captain would later reflect that Old Put resembled not a field commander so much as the foreman of "a band of sickle men or ditchers ... He might be brave, and had a certain manliness about him; but, it was thought, and perhaps with reason, he was not what the time required."

In fact, under the leadership of a younger, maybe wiser, Captain Thomas Knowlton of Connecticut, the Americans inflicted huge casualties on British Redcoats ordered to charge up at the Bunker Hill redoubt and so prevailed in the first real battle of the American Revolution.

These snippets gave you a sense of the kind of history Atkinson offers. He's immersed himself in details which can be known about lives of his subjects; the result is both professional and colorful.

The lives and societies, hopes and dreams, customs and manners, of both Brits and American colonists are almost unimaginable 250 years on. As we approach the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence next year, we need to realize that these people really were different; they were not just like us except with different technology and different clothes.

And I am not sure that highly competent, attractive, recitation of their stories makes for adequate understanding of this history. 

There's a different kind of historical writing that leads in a another direction from story telling about the past. Kevin M. Levin is a contemporary scholar of the Civil War period who thinks hard about the varieties and uses of history. Here he writes about Ken Burns' documentaries but I think the ideas are applicable to Atkinson's American Revolution volumes (there are three).

[Burns] is a storyteller and his intended audience is Americans of all walks of life. ... It is true that stories about the past do not exist in some abstract objective realm which historians pull from, but Burns may have also been trying to remind his audience that while his work is dependent on generations of historians, it is not a work of critical/analytical history.

In other words, there is a difference between the way academic historians engage a historiography in framing and researching a specific subject and the ways in which any historical documentary is, to one degree or another, influenced by the current historical zeitgeist.

Levin also reminds us that : 

The practice of history and collective memory (though there is some overlap) represent two different approaches to the past.

I love the storytelling kind of history. I was raised on a series called "Landmark Books" which taught  dramatic historical moment to children in the 1950s. But as an adult, I want something more from accounts of the past. I cannot avoid seeking to discern how those people back then created what I see around me, about the often improbable changes their lives and societies launched (whether they knew it or not). I don't want this implicit; I ask the historian to combine with the most scrupulous accuracy possible a clear declaration of whatever their history might tell them about how then led to now. 

Many (most?) historians don't want to throw down in that manner; but they all do implicitly. History offers a snippet of usable truth when it is conscious and contentious about its assumptions, biases, and values. That is more than storytelling.

"Cameras are treated as weapons ... those who hold them as combatants."

On this quiet Sunday morning while reading my daily quota of news, this image stopped me cold:

The story, from the journal +972, begins: 

Maryam Abu Daqqa was my friend. She was a photojournalist and a mother. On Monday, she was killed by the Israeli army in a “double tap” attack on Nasser Hospital, along with four other journalists. She was 32 years old.

I first met Maryam in 2015 during a photography course in the Italian center in Gaza City, where she was one of the trainees. I was drawn to her energy. I remember thinking how quickly she spoke, as if she had more ideas than time to express them.

She came from Abasan, east of Khan Younis, an agricultural town famous for its fruits, vegetables, and delicious cuisine. Whenever I reported on farming there, I knew I could turn to her. She was always ready to help, and her photos of the village and its people never failed to inspire me.

At first, I didn’t know that Maryam was a mother. One day before the war, while I was working in Abasan, I heard a boy call out to her: “Mom!” I was surprised. She laughed and introduced me to her son. “This is Ghaith,” she said proudly. “He is my man, and he will protect me when he grows up.” She told me all of her work was for him. ...

You can read it all.  You should.

* +972 refers to the international area code for Israel/Palestine. 

Good read for a Saturday morning.

Bill McKibben offers an assessment of whether Trump can really prevent the rest of the world from shifting away from carbon-derived energy -- or whether he is just impoverishing the USofA. Read all about it.

Trump is weak and failing; we're getting stronger

The Labor Day weekend seems a good moment to pass along one of Simon Rosenberg's insightful rants about the Orange Parasite in Chief:

I’ve come to believe that the central project now of Trump and his allies is to get up everyday and work to construct this illusion of strength for Trump who is clearly in physical, cognitive and political decline.  

They slather him with his favorite burnt orange, coif and dye whatever it is that is on his head, tighten the bulging girdle, message his swollen ankles and legs, pump whatever it is they are pumping into him intravenously, wrap him in his long red tie and blue suit, show him fake right-wing polls to comfort and buoy him, and then roll him out at some staged event where someone ritualistically bends the knee and then he rallies to play “TRUMP” one more incoherent time.  

The wild over the top bending of the knee shitshow we saw yesterday at the Cabinet meeting was something that only a weak, insecure and diminished leader would need. It’s all a show, a terrible show that is without doubt the unGreatest show on Earth today, a pathetic show that still works for the old faithful but is losing its audience and relevance, daily. 

As we often say here two things can be true at the same time: 

1) Trump is doing enormous harm to the country; is breaking things that will be difficult if not impossible to repair; and he has escalated and become far more dangerous in August  

2) “Trump” the brand is in significant decline, and losing its hold on the public and the power to persuade; Democrats keep overperforming in elections and we should be viewing the fall and 2026 elections as ones of opportunity and expansion. In 2018, 2020, 2022 and 2023 we seized the opportunity the ugliness of MAGA presented us. We failed to do it in 2024. In 2025 and 2026 we must lift ourselves up and once again seize the opportunity that is clearly in front of us now.

I think Trump escalated in August because he feels his powers ebbing, and is desperately trying everything he can to restore his STRENGTH, VIRILITY and POWER. Despite his efforts it isn’t working. 

So anticipate more escalation, more efforts to steal seats, rig the elections, weaken and degrade his opposition and a him growing more distant from the public. It is something that I’ve called the vicious cycle of a declining strongman, and yes we are in the midst of it today.

That means we all have a lot of work to do. 

• • • 

Stephen Robinson inventories Trump's visible physical decline.

The White House is lying about Trump's health.  Their explanations are absurd and it's time to start asking questions. 

... Something clearly is up with the 79-year-old president, and the official explanations don’t make sense. That’s not surprising given that Trump is a world historical liar surrounded by toadies who surrendered their shame long ago. But it’s past time for reporters to ask some questions.

... How sick is Trump? ... It’s reasonable to question the Trump administration’s candor about his actual condition. In April, Barbabella released a glowing physical exam that declared, “President Trump remains in excellent health, exhibiting robust cardiac, pulmonary, neurological, and general physical function.” Has Trump’s health declined since then, or was Barbabella misleading people?

  • • •

The apparently tireless Jay Kuo meanwhile catalogues four areas in which Trump is revealing his weakness while pretending to be strong.

The Emperor Has No Claws

Trump is but a paper tiger in the very places he asserts he can act with impunity. ...

The law

Trump knows he can’t pass most of his fascist agenda through Congress due to the power of Democrats in the Senate to filibuster any such legislation. (His “One Big Beautiful Bill” was not subject to filibuster under the reconciliation rules.) So he’s trying to accomplish by executive orders what he can’t achieve by normal legislative means.

But the President’s ability to change the game on the ground through executive order is nearly always limited by law, and even the Trump White House knows that its actions will have to pass legal muster. ...

The Blue States

The U.S. is a bit better suited than smaller nations to withstand a fascist assault by the head of the federal government precisely because it has divided the power of government between Washington D.C. and the 50 states. Our Constitution specifies in the Tenth Amendment that “powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” That is a general statement of the limits of federal power, but it has some real consequences for dangerous federal overreach. ...

The civil service

As the self-proclaimed “unitary executive,” at whose pleasure all employees of the government are supposed to serve, at least in his mind, Trump has sought to control the Executive Branch from top to bottom. And he has demanded unquestioning fealty from every official, even while demanding they bend or break the rules, especially around the politicization of their authority.

... This has created a crisis of morale within every corner of the federal government and prompted several high-profile public resignations, including three from top officials at the Centers for Disease Control yesterday. Talented workers have been departing in droves, leaving many parts of the government paralyzed from staff shortages. ...

The People

Many of us are familiar with the massive shows of opposition organized by groups such as Fifty Fifty-One and No Kings, where millions of citizens have turned out in streets and squares in thousands of locations across every state to oppose Trump’s fascism. More such protests are planned, and they are likely to grow in size and intensity, especially if Trump escalates his troop deployments.

We’re also now familiar with scenes of citizens bravely standing up to Trump’s thugs. Across social media, and as reported on by local news, ordinary people are confronting ICE, demanding to see warrants, filming their abuses, and shaming them for hiding their identities with facial coverings. Rather than cower in fear from the SS-like behavior of ICE, the public is accosting, recording and holding federal agents accountable. We are building an ethos of resistance to counter the MAGA ethos of fascism.

... In Los Angeles, grand juries reportedly have been refusing to indict protestors arrested during the ICE protests ...

There's a Labor Day rally on Monday most everywhere there is organized labor -- and a heck of a lot of places that aren't yet so lucky. Be there. 

Of course resistance lives. The people do their thing.

The major media aren't headlining this, but people in the directly occupied areas of the our country where Trump has implanted our soldiers and his ICE goons are finding ways to oppose the regime. The story is still out there; you just have to look around.

Los Angeles saw the first of the Orange Pretender's martial assaults. It's good to know that people have figured out what to do. They are determined and creative:

How LA is uniting to provide mutual aid for those impacted by ICE raids 

... Through fundraisers, grocery deliveries, “adopt a corner” initiatives, rapid response ICE watch committees and more, the community in Los Angeles has been coming together with volunteers to support and uplift their neighbors.

“It’s really a beautiful city that comes together during hard times, and from the fires we’ve seen it, and now with the raids,” said Janet Martinez, co-founder and vice executive director of Comunidades Indigenas en Liderazgo, or CIELO, an Indigenous women-led organization that is bringing visibility and resources to the Indigenous migrant communities.

Martinez said that CIELO has worked with a network of about 30 volunteers to pack and deliver about 1,200 boxes of groceries to Indigenous immigrant families in Los Angeles that are afraid to leave their homes due to the ongoing raids. Her organization has always supported immigrant communities, but their work stepped up following the raids.

... the NDLON (National Day Labor Organizing Network) created an “adopt a day laborer corner” that trains and encourages non-vulnerable people to support their local day laborers who are at risk of being targeted and kidnapped by ICE. Their trainings have been attended by more than 800 volunteers across the country who would reach out to NDLON asking how they can help.

While NDLON has only worked with day laborers in the past, they are realizing that solidarity is needed, especially at a time when day laborers, including those at Home Depot corners and worker centers, are being kidnapped by ICE. She said they have more than 25 corners in the different Home Depots in Los Angeles where groups of people go almost every day to support their neighbors and create community by physically standing with them, alerting them of nearby ICE activity and bringing them food and coffee. 

... “We go by a saying ‘solo el pueblo salva al pueblo’ — ‘only the people save the people,’” Figueroa said. “We haven’t worked with non-vulnerable people before, but we are realizing that that is really needed. This attack is actually intense and unprecedented, so we are listening to people that want to step up and support, and then trying to work with them too.” ...

Do read all of this story of people taking their lives, families, and communities in their own hands. Even with 10000 more ICE thugs being hired, LA is too big and too united for the fascists to triumph over its people. By definition, these are survivors.

 • • •

Meanwhile in occupied Washington DC, the people aren't cowed. 

The Resistance is Active in DC—You’re Just Not Looking Closely Enough 

... While it’s accurate to say there hasn’t been anything close to a modern-day March on Washington since Trump brought in the National Guard to address DC’s purported crime problem, the DC locals who are wrestling with the increased presence of law enforcement say that’s for good reason. 

Megaphones and mass demonstrations are unlikely to mollify the hazards of a heightened police state—and these tactics may even exacerbate what Trump-opposing locals fear most: bigger dispatches of law enforcement, which could target more immigrants and other vulnerable populations.

“Being a middle-aged white man, I can be outside and keep an eye on what’s happening,” says Andrew Hall, a DC resident of 19 years who lingered around the corner of 14th and U St NW around 9:30 p.m., after a concert protesting the National Guard presence ended. “It’s not safe for others to be out in public, or even go to the grocery store right now.”

... an array of ordinary DC residents [are] documenting what’s happening in their neighborhoods and mobilizing pop-up actions based on the information being shared.

In the densely populated Northwest DC neighborhood of Columbia Heights on Tuesday, for example, locals noticed about a dozen Homeland Security personnel outside a metro station. “ICE go home!” some 150-plus people chanted at the agents, several of whom had their faces covered with masks. The growing crowd and their handheld cameras were apparently enough to deter the ICE agents from the area, which has a high population of Black and Hispanic residents. ...

 • • •

Local District television WUSA9 reports from street concerts under the occupation: 

... Go-Go music, a homegrown genre in D.C., served as both a cultural and emotional centerpiece of the rally. As TOB played live, residents chanted and held signs denouncing what they called an overreach of federal power.

“Every resistance step is a good step,” said Dean Hunter, a longtime resident. “There’s absolutely no circumstance that would justify this policing invasion of Washington, D.C.”

Ty Hobson-Powell, another speaker at the event, emphasized the importance of civic resistance. 

“It is the most American thing that we can do — to push back against the overreach of government,” he said. "Now is a moment for dc to come together. We are a resilient city, that we are a community oriented city. We are a city that has its problems, sure. But a city that can solve them all on its own."

... President Trump, in a recent statement, defended the federal presence in D.C., saying: “This place was emblematic of it... They had horrible crime. It was worse than ever. I think right now it’s better than it has been in years.”

D.C. leaders disagree.

“He’s not based in truth, and I don’t believe a word he says,” said D.C. Councilmember Robert White. ...

Once upon a time ('80s, '90s?) there was a little lefty group that styled itself "No Business as Usual." Though the group is long gone, perhaps we are coming into a time when our Orange Aspiring Despot needs to be met with a national movement adopting that slogan. Just saying ...

Not homeless enough for the city with hearts

 

Today families, teachers, children, and friends organized through the activist group Faith in Action rallied outside Cesar Chavez School to highlight how San Francisco city policies are failing students like Samara. 

Samara is a 7-year-old girl with complex medical conditions, who has spent the last 2 years living in homeless shelters with her family. She’s had multiple surgeries over the past month and is getting ready to leave the hospital soon. But according to the City, Samara and her family do not qualify for any housing assistance because a computer says they do not have enough points and therefore they are not “homeless enough”.

 

The families described their predicament. Where are they supposed to go if turned down by a city computer?

... safe, decent homes, and the dignity of our families cannot be determined by points on a computer. 

San Franciscans are urged to call the mayor -- this is no way to run a city that prides itself on its heart.

Our history of racial terrorism cannot be wished or washed away

Next month, Colbert I. King will retire from the Washington Post. He's 85 years old and has seen the District of Columbia change, suffer, and revitalize. 

Educated in the DC public schools, he graduated from Howard University and served in the military. He then "worked as special officer for the United States Department of State through 1970, eventually leaving over objections to the Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO)." (COINTELPRO was a covert FBI program under J. Edgar Hoover, which spied on and disrupted insurgent political activists, including civil rights and anti-Vietnam war leaders.) King then held a series of government posts culminating in an appointment to the World Bank under Jimmy Carter. After a stint in banking, he joined the Post in 1990. (Bio via Wikipedia)

In a city where the federal government often overshadows the lives and struggles of the residents, King frequently has written of and for his city.

King's response to the Trump regime's military occupation of DC was published in the WaPo over last weekend. (gift article)

The spirit of Old Dixie rises in D.C.
“The South will rise again” was not just the wistful rallying cry of the defeated Confederacy. It was also the South’s declaration that the day would come when rules would be restored to the liking of militarily vanquished White people left smoldering below the Mason-Dixon Line.

That day might have arrived this week when National Guard troops from Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina and Tennessee were deployed to D.C. as part of President Donald Trump’s takeover of law enforcement in our nation’s capital. ...

King knows what he's seeing in his city.

... the District is a bit player in a larger and more pernicious Trump-led movement: namely, to snuff out efforts to achieve racial equality, to silence talk about race, to show disrespect for Black leadership, and to pretend that America is now, henceforth and forevermore, deemed a color-blind but unmistakenly White-dominated country.

Trump is bent on suppressing the reality of America’s legacy of racial discrimination and well-documented, intergenerational transmission of present-day inequality.

He proclaims himself sick and tired of the Smithsonian’s focus on, as he put it on Truth Social, “how bad Slavery was.” ...  But to appreciate this critical juncture — to come to grips with the retrograde, self-defeating course we are now on — Americans must revisit critical chapters in our history. No matter how painful that is. 

Moreover, racism still shapes lives in the District.

Trump might declare race irrelevant. But that will not make it so in life in the District of Columbia — or elsewhere in America.

Race shows up in the experiences of D.C. residents having to endure the restoration of Confederate statues honoring men who fought to preserve slavery. It reeks out of the mouth of a president who denounces their hometown as a hotbed of “savagery, filth and scum.” Race rears its head when a president pretends that race-linked gaps don’t exist in society due to race-related historical and present-day events.

The Confederacy was crushed, but its spirit exists. It should be captured and displayed as part of our nation’s story.

My Union ancestors who fought the Confederacy called it "The Rebellion." The South's shameful legacy is what Trump wants to revive. King concludes with a question:

Trump’s path is no secret. What is ours?

Too bad about Cracker Barrel

 

As these dis-United States sink into fascism, the right-wing mob's grievance of the day feels too entertaining to ignore. There's a MAGA faction that feels the new (boring, very corporate) Cracker Barrel logo is a defamation of all that is good, patriotic, and holy. 

 

Maybe you've encountered Cracker Barrel, the imitation old white men's diner, at some desolate Interstate interchange? 

 

John Ganz delightfully deconstructs this kerfuffle. 

... It’s sort of pathetic to reflect that we have so few—maybe no—authentic and unmediated experiences that the thing that now really upsets people is an alteration of a simulation of authenticity. 

It’s felt as a loss of national identity on par with the defacement George Washington, because our national identity is now just corporate brands and consumerism. It’s no different than the “trad wife” fantasy, which is also a simulation and simulacrum of pre-modern living. 

You see this across the reactionary right, and it would be amusing if it didn’t muster real political energy: people genuinely angry over the loss of comforting consumer experiences. ...

It’s tempting to look down on people for this, but on further thought, it reflects a deep spiritual poverty in our country. The right is capitalizing on this spiritual poverty, both politically and literally, and saying, “Yes, theyyyyyyyy are taking yourrrr beloved things.” 

This forecloses anybody asking whether we might deserve more. 

An actual small town in America might have problems with drugs, unemployment, it might be reduced essentially to a ruin, but as long as Cracker Barrel or the equivalent exists, people can feel okay about the country. 

The question is never raised, “Hey, why are we being fed commoditized slop all the time?” It becomes, “I want the red-brand slop, bring me my red-brand slop!”

... Conservatism is now the protection and hoarding of old-seeming simulations, hence all the AI-generated “traditionalism.”

Naturally, this brings me to fascism. On the one hand, fascism might seem to be an awkward fit because there was still some volkisch referent, a memory of pastoral existence, in the fascist imaginary. But that, too, was already a kitschy simulacrum of the pre-modern past. ...

Cultural poverty follows material poverty all the way down in too many of our lives. 

Might Ukraine be winning its war against Russia? We wouldn't know.

The last few weeks of "diplomacy" over Russia's intent to destroy the independent nation of Ukraine have been pretty nauseating. Serious Americans should concede the obvious: our president gets his jollies from acting as Putin's ventriloquist's dummy, while Ukrainians struggle to stay alive and keep a weak and divided Europe on side. It's all just noise, empty noise for Ukrainians for whom the war is about life and death. Meanwhile the American media deliver up the nonsense as if it were meaningful.

Retired Australian General Mick Ryan studies wars, visits wars, and is the sort of guy who makes speeches at international "security"  conferences. His serious view of the Ukraine war is quite different from the common blather: 

Russia’s ability to convince certain foreign politicians that it is winning the war greatly exceeds its ability to actually do so.

There is an often-used metaphor that is employed to challenge Russian narratives about success in this war. It goes like this:

Imagine it is 2006. It is three years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq. After three years, America has only succeeded in taking 20% of the country, has not yet toppled Saddam Hussein, and has suffered over one million casualties. Would we view this as ‘winning’?

I think it is a useful framework for examining military and strategic success and failure in this war. But I would add another layer to this metaphor which, I believe, really brings home the precarious position that Russia is in. The additional layer is this:

Imagine again that it is 2006, and in addition to the ongoing operations in Iraq with the conditions described previously, that Iraq is undertaking a widespread serious of strikes against oil and gas production, refining and storage facilities across America.

Do we seriously think that this would not have a massive impact on American politics, war policy and the economy? It would certainly have an influence on domestic views of winning and losing and would objectively indicate that America was not winning.

This is the situation that Russia now faces. It is making only minor gains on the ground for massive human and material losses. It is facing an expanding series of Ukrainian strikes against economic and military targets in Russia that it appears powerless to stop.

Let me restate my hypothesis: Ukraine’s long-range strike operations reinforce that Russia cannot win this war.

Yes, our media breathlessly report the U.S. is blocking Ukraine from using U.S.-supplied missiles to attack Russian oil depots.  But Ukrainians, fighting for their lives, have developed their own sophisticated arms industry; Ukraine [is] becoming the ‘Silicon Valley’ of defense as startups develop long-range drones and missiles.

“Fighting in the air is our only real asymmetric advantage on the battlefield at the moment. We don’t have as much manpower or money as they have,” said Iryna Terekh, head of production at Fire Point.

Terekh spoke as she surveyed dozens of “deep-strike drones” that had recently come off the assembly line and would soon be used by Ukrainian forces to attack arms depots, oil refineries and other targets vital to the Kremlin’s war machine and economy.

Spurred by its existential fight against Russia — and limited military assistance from Western allies — Ukraine has fast become a global center for defense innovation. The goal is to match, if not outmuscle, Russia’s capabilities...

Maybe Trump can kill off this development for Putin. But it's going to be hard. The U.S. can no longer count on being able to tell other countries to jump and having them ask "how high?" And the intellectual habits of the U.S. "defense" establishment make Ukraine's increasing independence unimaginable among Trump's lackeys.

Paul Krugman recently shared thoughts about elite mind rot among U.S. "intellectual experts" with Phillips P. O'Brien. Krugman is a Nobel prize winning economist who remains broadly curious; O'Brien is an historian of strategic studies at St. Andrews University in Scotland who watches wars. They agree that conventional wisdom can be both extremely durable and simply false.

O’Brien: ... it's a fraternity of failure. So many people were so wrong that it's much easier for them to defend each other and keep hiring each other and keep referring to each other than admit that they all screwed up and don't know what they're talking about. So it was a community that failed, not just a few people, a whole community failed.

And that community existed in the analytical community, it existed in the intelligence community, it existed in the Pentagon and the ministries of defense. And instead of having a real introspection—like what the heck have we got wrong?—they have gone into self-defense mode. Everyone got it wrong. And that somehow makes it okay. We all got it wrong. And all that means is that the same people who got it wrong to begin with are getting it wrong now, but they're being treated as if they have any idea of what they're talking about when they don't.

Krugman: The parallel in economics is there were a lot of people predicting that getting down from the high inflation of 2022 would require mass unemployment which was utterly wrong. And, you know, we all make bad forecasts, but it was clearly analytically wrong. It just had the wrong model of what this inflation was about. And those same people are still out there, you know, talking to Bloomberg every couple of days and making confident pronouncements. So, yeah.

O’Brien: I mean, we’ve all seen community behavior where a community would rather defend itself than actually look at its own methods, it seems to me. And that's what we're seeing now. Protection of reputation is all. In towns like Washington, New York, Boston, whatever, it's so important to be smart, and to be seen to be smart.

Meanwhile Trump sucks up to Russia's mad nationalist dictator and Russia's killing machine grinds on.