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.

We want you here -- but no I.C.E.

Sign at the entrance to a Mission District medical office - click to enlarge

 

That's the Mission way.

Oh, solidarity!

So Wednesday morning, news spread like wildfire (well, like text and other social media) that ICE (or associated masked men) at the San Francisco downtown immigration offices had disappeared a protester on Wednesday who was impeding their removal of their latest immigrant captive. 

The first call on Thursday was to join the crowd outside the immigation offices, but then the San Francisco Labor Council moved the call to the old federal building on Golden Gate with a half hour to rally time. 

Who was going to get there amid changes like that?

Within an hour about 50 people gathered, just in time to learn that ICE's catch (a citizen!) had been released on bond.

Solidarity means showing up and having each others' backs.

• • •

Mission Local has the story: 

A protester arrested by federal agents outside the San Francisco immigration court on Wednesday has been charged with two federal misdemeanors: destruction of property and assaulting, resisting, or impeding a federal officer. 

Bay Area attorneys say this is the first time they can remember such charges filed against a citizen arrested by Department of Homeland Security authorities in San Francisco. While protesters have been charged by federal agents in Los Angeles, moving the practice north is a sign of “escalation,” said Angela Chan, the city’s assistant chief public defender. 

The protester, a U.S. citizen who asked to be identified by her first name, Angélica, was arrested around 10 a.m. yesterday during a chaotic street scene: Video showed ICE agents tackling several protesters to the ground after a crowd tried to stop ICE from transporting an asylum-seeker whom agents had arrested that morning. 

Angélica, a trans woman from an immigrant family, was one of those filmed being zip-tied and led away, her head wrapped in a keffiyeh and held down by officers. Angélica was brought into the Immigration and Customs Enforcement headquarters at 630 Sansome St. without a cellphone, her partner Renee said. A day passed before her family heard from Angélica again. 

Holding a citizen at an ICE building is “unheard of,” Chan said. Earlier this month, ICE agents detained two protesters in downtown San Francisco for the first time in recent memory. ...

Thursday morning whichever feds were responsible for Angélica's abduction produced her for arraignment. The crowd a mile away at the federal building cheered the news of her release.

Angélica comes from a union family: her mother is in SEIU Local 1021, her father belongs to UFCW Local 8, a brother is a Teamster. On this occasion, unions and workers proved they knew what to do.

Not an endorsement. Just an observation.

 

Rather than getting all prissy about Gavin Newsom trolling Donald Trump. Dan Pfeiffer, Obams's former flack, points out we can simply enjoy the show:

Humor Is Good 

Yes, these are deadly serious times, but politics doesn’t have to be drudgery. It can be fun. Humor is allowed—and should be encouraged. Too many people are missing the joke here. ...

Maybe that shouldn’t be surprising. The online Trump flunkies and White House staff are completely humorless, which helps explain why Greg Gutfeld is their patron saint of comedy. Newsom isn’t imitating Trump—he’s satirizing him. The whole point of the posts [on X] is to show how absurd Trump’s social media really is. The fact that the Right is freaking out about Newsom while applauding Trump says it all.

Trump is a shit show -- and a crumbling joke. We should remember that.

Gerrymandering for resistance?

All Californians are being offered a chance to participate in resistance to Trump's effort to eradicate even feeble opposition. Lucky us to have a role, I guess. All Americans don't get such a relatively frictionless opportunity. But we do: on November 4 we'll get to vote on a state redistricting plan that should yield 4 or 5 new Democratic Congresscritters.

It's kind of nauseating to overthrow our own anti-gerrymandering initiative -- but we have to fight and at least this is, not yet, a violent measure unless you are a GOP Congress-member losing your safe seat. 

And it's being led by our very flawed Governor who hopes to ride it to the White House. Sigh. 

Pretty boy puff piece from the Nob Hill Gazette, 2020

I'm a longtime San Franciscan. I know Newsom is a very mixed blessing. Sure, he advanced the cause of gay marriage back in the day. But in the same mayoral season he kicked homeless people for applause lines. Kind of like what he did last spring with trans people. As with all our recent mayors, beginning with Willie Brown, the overriding thrust of his term was to tame this formerly flamboyant city into a sterile corporate headquarters and real estate magnates' paradise.

On the other hand, having Newsom out trying to lead the charge against Trump is a net win. This is how our system is supposed to work: let our pols compete to show they can be the best at enacting their constituents' gut desires.  

Grumpy columnist George Skelton of the LATimes gets it:

“It is really a calculated power grab that dismantles the very safeguards voters put in place,” California Republican Party Chairwoman Corrin Rankin said in a statement last week, echoing other party members. “This is Gavin the Gaslighter overturning the will of the voters and telling you it’s for your own good.”

Power grab? Sure. Overturning the voters’ will? Hardly.

Newsom is asking voters to express a new will–seeking permission to fight back against Trump’s underhanded attempt to redraw congressional districts in Texas and other red states so Republicans can retain control of the U.S. House of Representatives after next year’s midterm elections.

First of all, that anti-gerrymandering vote creating the citizens’ commission was 15 years ago. It was a wise decision and badly needed, and still a wonderful concept in the abstract. But that was then, this is now....

... Second, that 2010 electorate no longer exists. Today’s electorate is substantially different. And it shouldn’t necessarily be tied to the past. ...

So we have to vote for this thing ... maybe even work for it. Now that's a tiresome reality. Newsom is not my leader, but resisting fascism is my cause and this is one bit of what we can do.

Good neighbors in Redwood City

 

A loud and cheerful little posse of anti-ICE protesters offered "a swig of community action" on the streets of downtown Redwood City Tuesday evening. There can be joy while speaking truth.

ICE is a masked, undemocratic secret police force that gives due process the finger and answers only to Donald Trump.

We will not stand by and do nothing while they disappear our community members, leaving nothing but trauma and despair behind. Let's show everyone in Redwood City and San Mateo County that we stand with our immigrant brothers and sisters in their time of need and we will resist ICE with everything we have.

They'll be back next Tuesday.

The questions come back, over and over again

Erudite Partner is up with a new essay, syndicated by TomDispatch, and appearing among other places at the LA Progressive. 

This one is an exercise in reflection on a long life of struggle for more peace, more justice, and basic sanity. It meets our strange, terrifying moment.

On Seeing the Future Too Clearly

... [On living through the Vietnam war...] We may not have foreseen it all — the assassinations, carpet bombings, tiger cages, and the Phoenix Program (the CIA’s first mass torture scheme) — but we were hardly surprised when it all finally came out. Today, there’s a consensus in this country that the Vietnam War was more than a mistake; it was a decade-long exercise in overreach and overkill.

... I sometimes think it’s the fate of many progressives for once in our lives to be right — over and over. This isn’t because we’re particularly good people, although some of my heroes are indeed good people. It’s at least in part because we are people with good luck. 

It’s been our good luck that, at some time in our lives, somebody offered us a place to stand, a viewpoint, an ethical way of grasping the world. ...

The advent of Trump/MAGA fascism demands of us, again, that we ask ourselves, where do we stand and why? 

The Supremes gone rogue

Leah Litman, University of Michigan law prof and former Supreme Court clerk, doesn't mess around. In Lawless, she argues, persuasively and with piercing humor that "the Supreme Court runs on conservative grievance, fringe theories, and bad vibes." Any pretense of deep legal reasoning from the Roberts court's major decisions is just insubstantial smoke covering BS. 

It's a pleasure to get the straight story, even if it is appropriately terrifying.

... the Supreme Court is extremely powerful. It is also poorly understood. The combination makes the Court pretty dangerous. It's easier for the Court to get away with, say, letting aspiring insurrectionists off the hook if people aren't paying attention, or if people think they must have misunderstood what is happening because it couldn't possibly be that ridiculous. 

Except ... it is that ridiculous. ...

It's been a (bad) process getting here. News consumers will recognize some landmarks along the way. 

The country has changed over the last several decades, with more diverse demographics and more inclusive median political views. The changes trend against the Republican Party's view on feminism (or as some Republicans like to call it, the "childless cat ladies") race ("Oh my God, Karen, you can't just ask [African] people why they are white?"), democracy (which some Republicans think is overrated, and maybe unconstitutional), corporate power (which some Republicans think should be virtually unlimited), government itself (which some Republicans think shouldn't exist), and more. Republicans have come to believe the dwindling support for their increasingly fringe views wrongs them. ... 

Since the early 2000s (with roots older than that), the Supreme Court has translated conservative grievance and other bad vibes into bad law. ... It is a little too coincidental that at the very moment Republicans gained a supermajority on the Supreme Court in 2020, the Court suddenly realized that the Constitution required the country to adopt the Republican Party's platform on abortion, voting rights, industry regulation, campaign finance, and a bunch of other stuff, too.

Litman urges us not to confused by mystification around the high court. 

The justices are not pulling Jedi mind tricks that people simply do and cannot understand. It's not like these guys (and Amy) are among the Nine Greatest Legal Minds in the Country. Heck, some of them are just nepo babies [she means Neil Gorsuch, remember him?] . ... These are exactly the kind of people you might expect to be appointed under a rigged system that is controlled by some out-of-touch weirdos. The minority-ruling party that gave the justices their jobs is currently gripped by some kind of antidemocratic fever dream, unconcerned with such things as law, facts, and will of the American people. 

Okay -- this book is not just denunciation of the limited qualifications of the Republicans on the current court. Litman carefully dissects the Court's rulings in five vital spheres in which they are working on enshrining reactionary legal theories. These are the chapters: on women's freedom -- The Ken-Surrection of the Courts; on LGBT rights -- "You Can't Sit with Us!"; on voting rights -- Winter Is Coming; on enabling oligarchs -- There's Always Money in America; toward dismantling the state as we know it -- The American Psychos of the Supreme Court.

Litman is not optimistic, but she remains hopeful that if the people are able to understand that the Court has gone bonkers, we'll figure out how to fix it. We really don't want to be ruled by cranks in black robes.

Okay, that got bleak. In my defense, this is a nonfiction book about the Supreme Court, and the Court is broken and is going to take an awful lot to fix. ... The world is not going to get better because we want it to and big changes will obviously take time ... So let's get started.

Imagine yourself at the beginning of the end of one of the great legal dramas of our time, when the law professor says to Elle, "If you are going to let one stupid prick ruin your life, you're not the girl I thought you were." 

Only now she's saying, "If you're going to let one stupid Court ruin your democracy, you're not the girl (or boy, or nonbinary reader) I thought you were." 

... They've stolen a Court and they are practically daring anyone to challenge them. It's time to call their bluff. 

I found this book a surprisingly enjoyable romp through the wilds of Republican legal malfeasance. The details were not new to me; I follow this stuff. But I love Litman's attitude; we could all use more of it.

• • •

You can follow a wealth of writing and writers who unpack legal developments for untutored citizens. Some of my current favorites include Jay Kuo, Chris Geidner at Law Dork, and Joyce Vance at Civil Discourse. We don't have to be mystified by law; we've got a right to demand that whatever law we live under should be "of the people, by the people, and for the people" in President Lincoln's words.

Fight the Trump Takeover: Sausalito, Marin County, California

Marin County locals turned out on Bridgeway in Sausalito on Saturday to give the Orange Man a piece of their minds. Many signs were quite militant.

Indivisible Marin called for the demonstration as part the local manifestation of what they call national "Fight the Trump Takeover" protests: 

"The state of Texas is attempting to redistrict to steal five Democrat-held congressional districts to rig the 2026 midterms. It’s all being done at the behest of Trump. He knows he can't win any other way. And Trump isn’t stopping in Texas. He’s targeting Missouri, Ohio, Florida, and every state he can twist to help him steal Congress next year. This is about the future of our democracy and the time to fight this power grab is NOW."

These Marinites get it. Their signs speak less to particular Trumpian issues, injustices and crimes, but more to a general feeling of disgust.

 

Trump can, and does, try to "flood the zone with shit" and distract us through the sheer volume of his outrages against our country and historic democracy. But instead of overwhelming us, these little protests -- again and again -- seem to bring out new people activated by new depravity. These folks aren't giving up.

A practical guide to clearing the Trump-induced fog

At The Status Kuo, rights activist Jay Kuo offers a useful framework for rejecting the onslaught of BS that defines the Trump era.

Preparing mental defenses for a world of alternative realities

Trump’s lies are so legion, and his attacks upon our institutions and norms so widespread, that it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. The media, when it is doing its job, at best fact-checks the fake stories and reports. 

But missing from all of this is a solid way to bucket the lies and build resilience to them.Today I want to talk about four strategies to diminish the effect of Trump’s manipulations and lies. These aren’t exhaustive, but they can be helpful to keep us all from being washed away in the flood.

First, recognize gaslighting. A steady stream of lies can make anyone begin to question reality. As an abusive bully, Trump gaslights instinctively as a way to dominate. He wants us all to feel like we’re the crazy ones, not him. A way to defeat this, quite simply, is to reassert the truth publicly.

For example, Trump regularly claims that Ukraine is responsible for the war. He has repeated that lie so many times that his followers have bought into it. The indisputable truth, which we all experienced in real time in February of 2022, is that Russia invaded Ukraine. We shouldn’t have to keep repeating this, but it is necessary in the face of Trump’s stream of lies, and it helps the people of Ukraine feel a little less crazy from hearing the upside down version all the time.

Second, understand his true targets. Punishing people who tell the truth doesn’t just impact those people negatively; it spreads a chill making others less willing to step forward. Trump knows that he only has to strike out against a handful of universities (or banks, law firms, media companies, you name it) and the ones he didn’t hit will think twice about crossing him. 

At least that is Trump’s hope. This is why Prof. Timothy’s Snyder’s first rule for resisting fascism is to not capitulate in advance. It’s one thing to fold your hand if Trump actually targets you. Few can withstand the full force of the government. But it’s entirely another to give up without a fight. Within our communities, professional associations, schools and social networks, we need to be on the lookout for capitulation and to call it out.

Third, watch for “alternative facts.” Kellyanne Conway was roundly mocked during Trump’s first term for coining the term, but this is a real and dangerous threat today. Examples range from what we saw this week from Trump’s Heritage Foundation economist presenting bogus and improbable “household income” gains to RFK Jr.’s ideologically motivated quest to link vaccines to autism.

The first sign that alternative facts are coming is that they will get rid of official science or fact-based reporting, just as they have done with the BLS Commissioner and her findings. This opens the door to subjective reports that are more favorable to the Trump regime. When you see them purging scientists, data analysts and statisticians, understand that they are paving the way for alternative facts. We must identify these publicly and call for all to reject them.

Fourth, listen for dogwhistles. We have witnessed Trump’s nonstop attacks on academic and scientific institutions, DEI and any critiques of our history. Most understand that this is red meat for his MAGA base. But the reason these attacks are effective often goes unsaid.

Trump has riled up uneducated voters and pumped them full of grievances, identifying “elites,” “illegal immigrants” and “DEI” as the cause of their economic problems, rather than the corporations and uber wealthy who are robbing them blind and actively destroying their remaining social safety nets. He has even managed to convince some liberals that the reason universities must be punished is because they allowed antisemitism to spread unchecked.

The fact is, Trump doesn’t give a damn about antisemitism, or the plight of the working poor, or women athletes. He’s using these wedges to advance his own attacks upon the parts of civil society most likely to oppose him effectively.

It sure looks as if we're all going to get better and better at this as the Trump show ages and decays. 

Friday cat blogging

You may be asking: "don't you feed that cat?" Of course we do. But regular supplies of cat food and cat treats don't discourage her from chasing her favorite flavor: plastic! My watch band is often at risk of those teeth also. Here, the EP is trying to gently recapture the remote. 

On the birthday of Social Security

 

Historian Heather Cox Richardson explains what the people of these United States won 90 years ago.

On August 14, 1935, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law. ... The Social Security Act established a federal system of old-age benefits; unemployment insurance; aid to homeless, dependent, and neglected children; funds to promote maternal and child welfare; and public health services. It was a sweeping reworking of the relationship between the government and its citizens, using the power of taxation to pool funds to provide a basic social safety net. 

The current Trump regime is out to destroy the system, of course. More for their billionaire buddies, less for the people. They are also striving to reduce the workforce that keeps our safety net, such as it is, functioning.

So some of the people turned out at the Federal Building in San Francisco to say "no"!

Solidarity mattered in 1935 and it matters today.

Resistance rises

Experts agree: millions of Americans are showing up in the streets, non-violently, in response to the second Trump regime.

The best known scholar of contemporary popular protest in the United States is probably Erica Chenoweth from the Harvard Kennedy School. Along with co-authors Soha Hammam, Jeremy Pressman, and Christopher Wiley Shay, they report:

New data shows No Kings was one of the largest days of protest in US history 

The historic number of [June 14] No Kings Day protesters and their expansive geographic spread are signs of a growing and durable pro-democracy movement. 

... While media attention is often focused on actors acquiescing to Trump’s demands, in the streets the popular protest movement continues to push back against the administration with notable persistence over time. Consistent with our past reporting, 2025 so far has seen far more protests than were recorded at this time in 2017 — a trend that continues through at least the end of July.

... In addition to the number of protests taking place, there are, of course, other indicators of the growing commitment of protesters to participate in a durable pro-democracy movement. One indicator is the willingness to participate in peaceful protests despite the threat of political violence. Tens of thousands turned out in Saint Paul despite the killing and attempted killing of several Minnesota lawmakers and their spouses the morning of the No Kings protests on June 14, followed by a warning of potential targeting of protesters by the at-large gunman. One peaceful marcher was killed in Salt Lake City by an armed volunteer who fired shots at a nearby armed man, who was also wounded. Counter-protesters in several locations around the country brandished weapons at No Kings protesters. However, those incidents of violence were exceptions — over 99.5 percent of reported protests had no injuries or property damage, with the latter reported in only 10 locations (just under 0.5 percent). 

... Popular mobilization through protest is neither the entirety of the opposition to the Trump administration nor sufficient in and of itself to compel change. But historically, the mass public — in tandem with other societal actors like opposition politicians, lawyers, labor unions and courts — is likely to continue to play a crucial role in the U.S. and elsewhere in standing for the rule of law and democratic norms. 

And we don't quit.

* In three national mass trainings since mid-July under the banner One Million Rising, hundreds of thousands of people have been introduced via zoom to the basics of organizing opposition to the Trump regime. Participation has been huge:

• 250,000+ people have been skilled up and are ready to take action.
• 1300+ subsequent in person gatherings have taken place.
• 400+ more gatherings are scheduled.

There's always room for more people to get involved; visit One Million Rising, view the trainings. (If you are an old time agitator like me, and already embedded in a community of resistance, you might able to skip to Session 3 which offers three specific action options. )

* Now Trump has directly sent his personal secret police (ICE, SS, FBI, etc.) and troops into DC. But the people of the capital are not giving up. Check out Free DC for the latest. Note especially the call to allies across the country.

* And let's not forget that the brave people of Los Angeles have gotten themselves together to resist Trump's first experiment with occupying a blue city. Our media have been neglecting this story, but we can all learn from Michelle Goldberg's tale of resistance: They Saw Their Neighbors Taken Away by ICE. Then They Made a Plan. 

We can do this; in fact, we are doing it!

She knows what to do with bars ...

  

When the Orange Man militarized DC on Monday, Erica Berg took her protest straight to the White House.

 

Seems like this is a moment to find a local protest this weekend - and apparently every weekend for the foreseeable future. 

Release the files!

From where I sit -- both lesbian and old -- Jeffrey Epstein seems such an obvious predatory creep (as does the Donald) that it is hard to imagine that he was able to pull off his sex capers with "voluntary" cooperation of even the most young, confused, and materially desperate girls. Their survival instincts should have said "run, don't walk, out of here." But Epstein did his business. He was slime -- as was and is his buddy-in-crime who has gone on to broader scale infamies.

(If you want to understand how Epstein, Maxwell, and Co. ever pulled off their schemes,  I'd recommend Peggy Orenstein's Girls and Sex which describes well how the culture makes girls vulnerable to predators.)

So now we are living in the backwash of Epstein and the sprawling conspiracy theories his crimes have become a part of. 

Irish observer Fintan O'Toole takes a swing at the meaning of the Epstein moment and the difficulties it makes for the Donald: 

For Trump, the great problem of the Jeffrey Epstein story is that it is the point at which paranoid fantasy melds into grotesque reality. ...

... As [James] Ball, [investigator of the QAnon conspiracy] puts it, Trump serves in the QAnon worldview as “the genius mastermind orchestrating an equally complicated counter-movement” against the satanic cabal. The Epstein files are not just records of a criminal investigation, they are an updating of the Book of Revelation. To reveal them is to open the Seventh Seal and release God’s judgment onto the earth. How can the savior simply shrug and murmur that there is no seventh seal? 

It says a great deal about contemporary America that Trump’s breach of faith with this apocalyptic narrative is, for much of his political base, a far bigger betrayal than taking away its health care or failing to bring down food prices.

On August 5 the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee issued subpoenas for several witnesses to appear at planning hearings into Epstein’s crimes, including Bill and Hillary Clinton. But he also served the Justice Department a subpoena demanding that it produce its Epstein-related files by August 19. 

If Trump orders the department not to comply, he becomes part of the great conspiracy. This would become a satisfyingly shocking twist in this paranoid story: the good guy was actually the archvillain all along. 

If he allows it to comply, he feeds the beast he is trying to kill. We know that the release of documents never stops the search for the ultimate exposure of the plot. It gives the searchers a vast new terrain of clues and anomalies to explore, a giant new web of connections to map. 

And if Trump tries a middle course, releasing the documents with references to himself redacted, he merely proves that he has something to hide.

Will this bring him down? Almost certainly not. But it may deprive him of his greatest asset: his immunity from scandal. It is a force field that, once breached, ceases to function. 

If he loses his power to decree that all evidence of his misdeeds is a hoax, the rest of his term will be soundtracked not by the sweet melancholy of “Memory” but by the more agonized strains of “Suspicious Minds.”

Release the files now!