A Transformative Arc of Potential Energy

 

Several Tesla vehicles were set on fire in Las Vegas early Tuesday morning, according to police.

This is wrong—violence and vandalism are never the answer.
pic.twitter.com/01l75YXARH

— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) March 18, 2025

I have a deep and intractable vein of cynicism that runs through the entirety of my being--are all the Tesla fires politically demonstrative, or  is it possible that arson and cutting short the life of a piece of technology is not symbolic of a rage against the machine-manufacturer, but a smoke signal that the brand's issues are more immediate? I have wondered what the resale value of a Tesla is and whether that picture is likely to improve. Also, what flat sales mean for Tesla dealerships. And also, whether insurance payouts might be a motivator in some instances.

I'm not accusing people of a widespread conspiracy of bad faith. It's just if there WERE opportunists in the mix, I would totally not be surprised. 

As for me, I dislike criminality as a form of immediate protest. It gets one in more trouble personally than its effectiveness generally warrants and threatens to negatively color the message instead of raising the right kind of consciousness. I like protest movements to follow the rules of drama--start small and build to a place of pity and fear. I am very on the side of Swasticar Art and so on. Damaging other people's property, however, is a TERRIBLE TERRIBLE THING--which can also be done in entertaining ways and might be instructive, but by all means, I do protest it! How Awful! My stars and garters!

This Man is Certifiable

 

Trump: "To be honest with you, Canada only works as a state. We don't need anything they have. As a state it would be one of the great states. This would be the most incredible country visually. If you look at a map, they drew an artificial line right through it." pic.twitter.com/oxzF3jzLOC

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 13, 2025

With respect to our neighbors to the north, my god. I am just so embarrassed and sorry about this delusional halfwit. I knew he was a halfwit, but he managed to keep the worst of it under his MAGA hat for the benefit of his true-believers. I hope they understand how extremely messed up this crap is now, though.

And if they don't, well, I guess I am sorry for them, too. Because that is just one hell of a low and dangerous level of stupid. 

Today. Trump made comments that NATO needs to help with the US acquiring Greenland, which is not going to happen and is profoundly ignorant, as well as having congratulated himself for filling Lake Tulare with reservoir water intended for future irrigation and fire-fighting. He describes this as "invading LA" which is not even remotely a description of how any of this profoundly stupid and useless event occurred. 

Comments by Trump and his cabinet suggest that his intentions with respects to Canada and Greenland are real, and also folks are charged with drafting a Panama Canal strategy. 

This is not Normal

 

How do you confront a man who has done a lot of damage in a very short period of time, and promises to get up in front of the American people and lie about everything? Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D., NM) chose to hold a simple sign: "This is not normal."  (It was snatched from her by Republican Rep. Lance Gooden.)

What the folks who attended or tuned into this speech beheld was a long rally speech--not really like a State of the Union speech at all. Trump called out the head of DOGE, Elon Musk (who isn't supposed to BE the head of DOGE, allegedly, for some sort of legal reason). He dwelled on the ideas of immigrant crime and trans people in sports for some reason. (Divisiveness. Feeding the bigotry beast.)

There will obviously need to be heroic fact-checking. This is a speech where Trump blamed Biden for the economy that he has actually contracted, threatening higher prices and a recession. Economists were not predicting a recession with Biden's policies--only with what Trump has been doing so far. 

But we aren't new to this game. Trump lies. Trump blames other people. Trump comes up with proposals that might just be a puppet show in a madhouse. We are in a trade war with our North American neighbors. Trump has openly sided with Russia in the Russo-Ukrainian war. 

This is, in fact, not normal. A ketamine-fueled megalomaniac with poor sleep habits is Peter-Panning his crazy ass through our government with his Lost Boys, looking to move fast and break stuff--not really understanding what he's breaking, just hoping to get the contracts to fix whatever it is. Daddy Ourbucks rose for a little applause during the speech. 

One could almost wonder why he didn't give speech himself. Shy? 

Your Moment of Law 'n' Order

 

MAGA morons tried to unfurl a giant Trump flag on 5th Ave. outside Trump Tower today….it didn’t go well 🤣

H/t @ScooterCasterNY pic.twitter.com/Yz3Dx9Unff

— Wu Tang is for the Children (@WUTangKids) June 7, 2024

The MAGA folks are very in favor of law and order (uniforms, hassling the riff raff) except when it applies to them. 

Here in Pennsylvania, we actually had Republican state congressional members get real BIG MAD at the state house when confronted with the actual heroes of 1/6-Republican members get real BIG MAD at the state house when confronted with the actual heroes of 1/6--the police who put their bodies on the line for actual law and order, instead of responding to the whims of a con artist who wanted an insurrection because the Constitutional way of doing things wasn't good enough for him.  (The man who lied about the election he LOST and now wants to pretend the people who pepper sprayed and beat cops with improvised and purposefully brought weapons was political prisoners and heroes." 

Which shows how the GOP seems to feel about things. Being hypocrites and all. And this brings me back around to how the GOP still wants to defund the police--because they "feel" they are going after the wrong people. 

It seems like Republicans don't want to address the elephant in the room--they want cops to selectively ignore the "right (wing) people" and only pursue the "woke and broke". 

When they talk about anything being "free and fair"--I am not sure what they think either "free" or "fair" mean--they have whole other definitions for these things than the dictionary.  But I will assume from their ideas of freedom and fairness regarding their understanding of "equal treatment under the law" that they....

Mean nothing at all. 

I Guess You Can't

 

I know. Things you see on Twitter might just be for provocation and engagement and not serious. But my stars and garters:

You can't hijack planes. You can't throw Molotovs. What is this world coming to? 

Look, I'm all for a good boycott, a march, a strongly worded letter to the editor, a ripping blog post, and some bang-up trolling, but yeah, how you do protest--the medium, if you will, is the message. I don't really have a problem with hunger strikes, for example. I just think like, a 12 hour fast is humorous when that's normal. Some people diet doing a 18 hour fast.  Every day. I think blocking streets is fucked up if you block ambulances. I am not sure how stopping people from getting home at rush hour is supposed to influence them to do anything in particular but be mad at being inconvenienced. Ditto messing with holiday parades and church functions--I mean: Give people their own spaces. Respect.

I also think heckling politicians is mostly great because they signed up for some trouble, but people who dump manure on the property of someone who isn't even Speaker of the House anymore is disgusting. Trying to co-opt every event is kind of disrespectful to other causes. Also, what if people were working on a solution, and activists were just barking up the wrong tree and slamming the ones who were, actually, doing the work? 

What if self-immolation was the waste of a life where so much good could be done besides? 

I just think you should put your good where it will do the most. It just won't matter if your heart is in the right place if your ass isn't. 

Bella Ciao

 

Persian version of the 19th century Italian protest folk song, Bella Ciao. #MahsaAmini #IranProtests pic.twitter.com/DZq4MHJbbU

— Habib Khan (@HabibKhanT) September 24, 2022

Bella ciao,

Ukrainian soldiers singing the the Italian anti-fascist resistance anthem 'Bella Ciao'.pic.twitter.com/918S2NQK9o

— The Intellectualist (@highbrow_nobrow) September 28, 2022

Bella, ciao, ciao, ciao.

UPDATE: So, I have always associated this song with anti-fascism, but there is some historical doubt whether the Italian antifascisti used it during WW2 (it certainly became a thing afterwards), but I came across this neat thing when checking Wikipedia about the melody:

A possible origin of the melody was identified by researcher Fausto Giovannardi, following the discovery of a Yiddish melody (Koilen song) recorded by a Klezmer accordionist of Ukrainian origin, Mishka Ziganoff, in 1919 in New York. According to the scholar Rod Hamilton of The British Library in London, "Koilen" would be a version of "Dus Zekele Koilen" (The bag of coal), of which there are various versions dating back to the 1920s.^[13][14]

So, in being sung by the Ukrainian soldiers, it was like the song found its' way home. The song Italians know as being a song that was about field workers in Italy, is in Yiddish about finding coal to heat one's home because without it, it means disaster for everyone's health. 

And Russia is threatening Europe about interrupting a part of their winter heating supply in order to try and gain some kind of leverage they have no business asking for over other peoples' freedom and right to choose their government.  It is beautiful to me that this song has been used by movements for human dignity all over the world. Because what it speaks to, in the Italian lyrics, is resistance. It means there are conditions under which no one would want to live, and the fight against the intolerable.

My support is always with those who fight for their dignity, and against the oppressor. Fuck Putin. Fuck the Ayatollah. Fuck Christian Nationalism. Fuck every death-dealing oppressor of the human spirit and denier of human dignity. 

The Sign Didn't Have To Say Anything

 

A young Russian woman demonstrating with a blank sign was arrested by the police in Nizhny Novgorod today. pic.twitter.com/GwMFv0aIgm

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) March 13, 2022

All there is to say is so obvious it projects onto the blank space with a reproof larger than words. The space was enough to hint at the spaces where lives, where villages, used to be. The vacancy spoke all by itself of the emptiness of a soul who would perpetrate such an enormity. The blank sign acted as a mirror, and the state did not like what it saw.

I wish her well, because that space projected her will to speak out, even if there were no words,

UPDATE: This sign, however, did say something:

The presenter at the Russian state television was speaking about Belarus-Russia collaboration, when a woman just ran onto the stage with a sign that said, “Stop the war! Don’t believe propaganda! They’re lying to you here!” pic.twitter.com/MHQFMbQfom

— Franak Viačorka (@franakviacorka) March 14, 2022

If it's true that for evil to prosper, all it needs is for good people to do nothing, then I desperately hope that good people doing something can stop it. It is our only hope.

Where I Defend Kyle Rittenhouse

 

Let me take a departure for a minute from what you know are my stances to acknowledge a handful of things: the overlap between justice and the law is not a perfect circle. A judgement can be legally accurate while still being ethically or morally disappointing at best and supporting a dangerous or untimely precedent at worst. We don't have to love the outcome of the Rittenhouse decision to come away with the idea that the right to self-defense, even if it is broad and subject to conjecture about state of mind on the part of a person who has taken life, isn't something that should be denied someone just because their background doesn't comport with our ideas of the ideal self-defense scenario. 

I'm going to perform a teeth-gritting exercise about what we can know from this case, and I don't think anyone will be happy with it, not even myself. Kyle Rittenhouse is an under-parented kid who thought he was doing something he needed to that he entirely did not. He was on the side, to the best of his teenage education, of law and order. The side where the cops were. He was not any more racist than the people he was surrounded with (you know, regular white folks). He considered the city of Kenosha his community even though he did not live there, because he had family there and had worked there. And he acquired an AR-15 because guns are for self-defense, and he was in a place he competently understood to be dangerous based on his understanding of what he had read and seen on the news, and wanted to also be dangerous. Because self-defense. The thing he went into danger to do. 

To be exact, even if no son of mine would ever, etc., Kyle Rittenhouse looks like he could be my kid. So I get what his sources of information were and the biases he grew up with. And this isn't a privileged kid in spite of his whiteness. He was only privileged in that our laws were so constructed to be very broad with respects to self-defense and the Castle doctrine has, over the years with the help of the NRA and other pressure groups, made the frontier logic of the Wild West, the duty to never retreat anywhere if you happen to be armed, the law of the land. In a gunfight, it privileges the one who lives and can take the stand to testify to his state of mind, As the survivor of a gunfight, Rittenhouse has emerged from a gantlet to arrive at another kind of challenge. 

His lionization by the actually worst people. Like the Proud Boys, the association with which, while Rittenhouse was out on bail, was something not viewed by the jury, and also, it was irrelevant to his case, having happened afterwards. 

Tom Cotton: Literally or Seriously?

On Fox & Friends, Sen. Tom Cotton compares protesters to the Confederacy: "These insurrectionists in the streets of Portland are little different from the insurrectionists who seceded from the union in 1861 in South Carolina, and tried to take over Fort Sumter." pic.twitter.com/7ylYh3N1dB

— Bobby Lewis (@revrrlewis) July 21, 2020

Um, so, should we be raising statues to the Portland protesters then?

Ha--I kid, but you knew that. It's kind of hard to tell when Sen. Cotton is kidding and it's kind of hard to take someone saying that seriously. It's just goddamn stupid. They aren't trying to secede from the US, they want the US actually support the rights enumerated in the Constitution. His comment could be considered a kind of hyperbole, but it's only hyperbole if that isn't how the person saying it seems to think and talk all the time.

This is why I hold that the best way to treat Cotton (see here, and here, and here, and here) as a dangerous fuckwit. Treat the culture war like Confederate secessionists, and then what? Have a new civil war? (There's imagery Trump uses a lot, also.) It's obscene.

The Little Rally that Couldn't

Joy: Everyone is shocked.. This was an easy setup for Brad Parscale... They completely messed it up. Brad Parscale is now furiously trying to tweet excuses... There’s a lot of twitter traffic that says he was played by young people and K-pop fans who ordered tickets... pic.twitter.com/nFeA93LTX9

— Acyn Torabi (@Acyn) June 21, 2020

The weird thing is, the scheme to reserve tickets was known days ahead of the rally, but the Trump campaign was still bragging about how many tickets were being reserved, as if they genuinely expected a really large crowd, anyway. Then, instead of either acknowledging what we all know, they could have at least tried chalking it up to fears over COVID-19, instead of what they ultimately went with:

Radical protestors, fueled by a week of apocalyptic media coverage, interfered with @realDonaldTrump supporters at the rally.

They even blocked access to the metal detectors, preventing people from entering.

Thanks to the 1,000s who made it anyway!https://t.co/eM2nohMEy6

— Brad Parscale (@parscale) June 20, 2020

Huh. It was the infamous Antifa ninjas, which is why it was so hard to see them there. Also, I thought Trump was pretty sure the Tulsa police were going to be stopping all of that. (Also, Trump rallies have had protesters before. Much of the hoopla about the dangers of Antifa comes from....well, Trump.)

The reality is, how many people are still excited about Trump's act? He did 15 minutes on how he really can drink water but his arm was all tuckered out from 600 salutes, and man, what a slippery ramp West Point had. Like, he was devoting time to criticism from a whole week ago, that should have been forgotten by now. Did they show up to hear him confess about slowing down COVID-19 testing and calling the disease that has now killed 120K Americans the "Kung flu" (so these things could be walked back by the White House as "jokes")?

It was suggested by some that Trump had this rally not so much for the sake of campaigning (in a state he won handily in 2016) but for the sake of his ego. I'm not sure it did anything for either his campaign or his morale.

President Bunkerboy Has a Theory

In Trump's stable genius mind, a 75 year old man would crack his skull on purpose to make the cops look bad:

"He fell harder than was pushed."

And was apparently doing some antifa super soldier stuff to police radios. Because why not?
Also, he tags in OANN: to back up this nonsense, I suppose.

His mind is a series of trapdoors--just when you think Trump can get no lower, there's just more and nastier below.

UPDATE:  Oh. It's disinfo. Got it.

Pepper and No Taste

"Pepper spray is not a chemical irritant. It's not chemical" -- AG Barr uses painstaking distinctions to defend the use of force against protesters near the White House last Monday pic.twitter.com/CQbtqLwfIk

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 7, 2020

Even spit is made of chemicals, but I wouldn't spit on Barr if he was on fire. Imagine the absurdity of making this nonsense distinction over exactly what chemical was used to disperse, people, though. Why would people even use pepper spray if it wasn't an irritant? (Have you ever touched your face after slicing jalapenos?)

Of course, he's lying. The US Park Police already pretty much admitted tear gas was used. I don't even think he cares whether we believe him or not--it's an "in your face" lie. A toxic irritant.

It's Kind of a Wall, Right?

More fencing going up around the White House complex early this morning pic.twitter.com/VLBRnx1lgz

— Betsy Klein (@betsy_klein) June 4, 2020

And it's in black! But just so you know, Trump isn't either a bunker boy, and he was only there for like a minute, and it was to inspect it, and you're the bunker boy!


UPDATE: Is he building himself more of a Green Zone or is it more like a self-detention camp one wonders entirely idly, and will he be on hand to enjoy the protest on Saturday? Or will it be inspection time again? It is understood border patrol and prison guards are among the multiple alphabet-soup agencies who have been called to the general area.

Mayday, Mayday

The photo on the left was an example of Nazi irony: the Nazis expected work without freedom, unless you consider death a kind of freedom. The photo on the right (from a protest against state COVID-19 restrictions in Illinois) seems to be intended, in one light, in a non-ironic way: Having the choice to work (to open businesses) is freedom. But there is also an ironic way of looking at it: other people's labor make the protester free. An open hair salon means someone else works on a person's hair, a restaurant means someone else prepares a meal and deals with the dirty dishes.

These protests are about other people's labor, and other people's exposure to a disease that can be deadly. Being International Workers' Day, it's a good time to point out that loosening restrictions doesn't make many workers free: it gives them the choice of working and being exposed to a disease that can kill, or not working and being unable to collect any kind of benefits--giving them the likelihood of sickness on one end, food insecurity and the threat of homelessness on the other. "Opening the state" sounds like freedom, but it means businesses are forced to open, make arrangements for social distancing at their place of business (which might mean costly alterations) and trying to smartly schedule staffing--and may still not translate into adequate custom to justify the overhead--because most people are still scared to do commerce as usual (and rightly so!).

The paradigm is one in which retail service workers or public transit workers can become ill because of other people's personal decisions. These people are just trying to put food on the table and live their lives, and the freedom to serve other people so that they can pay their bills shouldn't equal death for them.

"Economic Anxiety"

Now this is happening. pic.twitter.com/w1CkLB3T3s

— Leon Hendrix (@LeonHendrix) April 30, 2020

There has never been a better case for economic anxiety being some kind of reason for what folks do, and yet, based on this clip from yesterday's protest in Lansing to open up restrictions due to the pandemic, I still can't help but think there's something else going on here.

UPDATE: There was more where that came from, and while I agree Trump frees these people to act however, we saw this same thing with Tea Party folk all through the Obama years. And yes, indeed, GOP leadership and elected officials are fine with it.

Perspective

Two nurses, who have witnessed first hand the toll Covid is taking in Colorado, stood up and peacefully counter protested. Here is how they were treated. I had join them. pic.twitter.com/iJnNcqZxSv

— Marc Zenn (@MarcZenn) April 19, 2020

The woman's sign, above, actually reads "LAND of the FREE", so that, for a person seeing it from a distance, only "LAND" and "FREE" can be read. It's possible that she never considered the perspective of her sign from the pulled-back, digitally-distanced view, anymore than she considered what it meant to tell anyone to go to China while her vehicle sat in the midst of a country that was truly Number One--in coronavirus fatalities. The disconnect between her sign and her vocalizations and objective reality might not come home to her even after an internet roasting, because her media isn't my media.  Her LAND and her idea of FREE are different than mine.

This is a thing I've puzzled over--the idea of red and blue America superimposed like transparencies over the same geographical map. But I think the perspective to keep in mind here is more than conservative vs. liberal. Freedom doesn't just mean individual rights but also personal accountability. A society doesn't just mean enforceable public law, but democratic community decision-making.

Deep down, I want to believe that responsible adults possess the personal accountability to determine if they can responsibly open their businesses while practicing social distancing and strict hygiene. I'd like to think that communities will determine the "market", so to speak, of public commerce by choosing to go out less even if more spaces are available, by being scrupulous about how they congregate, etc.

But the gun-toting perspective-less cuddle-puddle of the protesters makes me think that the level of responsibility required to save possibly tens of thousands of lives, can not possibly rest in the hands of feeble fucking idiots who wear flags and think waving slogans about negates the best possible information we have gotten from science and the actual death toll occurring right in front of us.

When I see this glib dimwit and her sign:

There’s a mommy and a daddy who work as first responders to save miserable lives like yours. They want their 5 year old daughter back. Wipe that grin off your ugly face, this isn’t a game. Fuck your haircut and fuck you. pic.twitter.com/8xquC4mcuE

— Michael Ⓜ️ (@michaelschweitz) April 20, 2020

(The sad story of the 5 year old is here.)

I consider I've been cutting my own hair since I was a broke college student, well over twenty-five years ago during the first recession I recall, and by the way, who is even seeing this woman or her dumb hair that anyone should risk dying over it? If she truly wants a haircut, scissors are cheap and YouTube (for many excellent tutorials) is free. If she wants to not look like a fool, sorry, game over. She already does.

That is some perspective, no?

And when Trump thinks that because these people are waving flags it means they love America, I have to say "No, it means they love flags." They love the symbolism, and don't give a shit for what any of it actually means. Which says a lot about his attitude as well.

Freedom and Responsibility

WATCH: Rod Meloni, of WDIV-TV, reports from Lansing, Michigan, where protesters in cars and on foot show opposition against the state's stay-at-home order.

"A lot of people feeling like their liberty has been infringed upon."https://t.co/6rNgiD1dKu

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) April 15, 2020

There were some weird scenes in Lansing this Wednesday as a caravan against Governor Whitmer's stay-at-home order descended to protest on the grounds that they feel their rights are being infringed. There were some open-carry folks and some Confederate-flag waving folks and some people did even have masks (because there's a virus going around, you know) and they honked at mostly-empty government buildings (because many state employees are working at home) and they blocked the entrance of a local hospital and held up some ambulances. It was observed that the overall impression was something like that of a Trump rally; indeed, there were several Trump signs to be seen.

Similar protests have been engaged in Idaho, in Ohio, and in Kentucky. It's a bit reminiscent of Tea Party rallies (remember when those were a thing?), which were largely against government regulations and especially when those regulations had to do with health care, during the Obama Administration.

As with evangelical church gatherings in defiance of local stay-at-home orders, there's a lot of talk about rights, but little talk of responsibility. I feel like a good discussion could be had (probably one that needs more depth than I can manage in a blog post) about how to exercise one's rights responsibly (the sort of thing that often comes up in, for example, 1st and 2nd amendment discussions). There should be some room for discussion, but these protests seem to be taking part partially in an aura of denial of the point of the stay-at-home directives (the actual lethal pathogen wreaking havoc on lives, businesses and the health care system). They seem to operate from President Trump's early claims that the seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic was overstated by the media as a kind of hoax. (Something Trump himself has now pulled back on.)

An Historical Mistake

We made a mistake.

As the National Archives of the United States, we are and have always been completely committed to preserving our archival holdings, without alteration. pic.twitter.com/VTWOS4R7GY

— US National Archives (@USNatArchives) January 18, 2020

The US National Archives has apologized for a mistake that seems of timely importance--they prominently featured a licensed display that blurred out the messages of signs carried during the 2017 Women's March. In the messages being blurred out in a selective way that eliminated the name "Trump" and blurred out "controversial" references to female anatomy, these amendments significantly lost the meanings those signs very much intended to convey:

One of the photos of the Washington march, taken by Mario Tama, a photographer for Getty Images, showed a sea of protesters holding signs criticizing Trump, The Post reported.

The National Archives, which featured the photo in its exhibit, blurred Mr. Trump’s name on a sign that originally read “God Hates Trump.” Another sign “Trump & GOP — Hands Off Women” also has the word Trump blurred out, The Post reported.

A sign with the word “vagina” was also blurred and the word “pussy” was erased from another sign. The references to the female anatomy were a rebuke of Mr. Trump’s comments about women in a 2005 recording that captured him boasting how he used his celebrity status to force himself on women, even groping their private parts.

Those words were altered because the museum has many young visitors and there was concern they might be inappropriate, Ms. Kleiman told The Post.

The Women's March came about as a reaction to Trump's election as a multiply-accused and self-described sexual assaulter, and as a politician who was certain to appoint judges who would rule against necessary women's healthcare and other legislation that protects our bodies, our self-determination, our access to equal opportunities and compensation. The words that were supposed to be potentially inappropriate for young museum-goers are either correct anatomical terms or vernacular words used by the president himself, for organs roughly 51% of people happen to have, which should make them commonplace enough not to offend anyone in a rational society.

Many people marched in many parts of the world that day because they wanted to establish that the voices of women mattered--a very good reason for a display depicting those demonstrators to render those words accurately, not blur them, because those words were what the march was about! It simply is not possible to divorce that march, or the following marches, from the politics of our time, and doing so seems like the exact opposite of what history should be for. A faithful archive of the conflicts of moments in time.

I don't want to assume that the Archive's act of "forgetting" was at political direction (is a FOIA pending, though?) because I think sometimes, institutions can be guilty of shying away from controversy in the vague idea of being inclusive, and inadvertently excluding people whose truths are uncomfortable in a way that reinforces a dominant narrative. This isn't a case, necessarily, of the US National Archive silencing a minority voice to support a dominant narrative though--it really seems to me like they messed up and muted a dominant voice (the diverse and multicultural Women's March contingent) to pacify the minority narrative of people who would complain loudest at the idea that "Trump" is a dirty word for some, and "vagina" is not.

The Trump government will not have the last word on our history. The US National Archive should reflect that. Censorship is a kind of lie.

Impeachment Eve

All over the country, there were protests this evening in support of impeaching the president. Numerous newspaper op-eds have been written in support of impeachment. On this night, some House representatives are considering their choice and what it means for their political future, some are considering what it means for their country's future, and, sad to say, some will go to sleep tonight mad as hell that this choice was ever laid on them, blaming liberals, or the whistleblower, or the media, that it had ever come to this, because it just doesn't occur to them that the guy to blame for Trump's impeachment is--himself. 

Just asked Trump in the Oval Office if he takes any responsibilty for the fact that he’s about to be impeached. His response: “Zero.”

— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) December 17, 2019

That certainly seems to be the way Trump himself views this impeachment process. In a six-page letter, which seems like a patchwork quilt of self-pitying and indignant Tweets, he blasted the Democrats, but his letter was full of false claims. He compared himself to the victims of the witch trials, which is just nonsense.  He wants to unload about whether he got a chance to defend himself when his pet senators McConnell and Graham have already boasted about wanting to fix up his trial, and will block possibly even more damning testimony. 

Maybe Trump understands full well that there are people who have never liked him (many because of his rank and obvious misogyny), but he doesn't understand why--we watched him. We've seen his personal and business wreckage, his sloppy behavior, his rage and his vindictiveness. We see it as unfitness.  And while I totally understand that he has his supporters, they have to confront that what he has done and has been doing and will continue to do is use the office for his own ends, and our national security and reputation will suffer as a result. (So far they probably haven't really confronted it all yet. And not for the first time.) 

The vote is expected to be basically down to the party line, with some defections in redder areas, but I expect Pelosi still can count and the impeachment is assured. I think it is correct, and as it is defined by the Constitution, it is proper and timely. 

Bravo. Impeachment above all is an act of popular sovereignty, and people should be on the streets day after day to protest this president's abuses of the public trust. https://t.co/XyMdQUX1gK

— Richard Stengel (@stengel) December 18, 2019

No one is above the law.

Unintended Consequences

Although the Trump Administration is coloring an upcoming executive order that will redefine Judaism as a nationality rather than a religion as a means of combating anti-Semitism, I'm deeply skeptical. A nationality implies that all persons considered "Jewish" are of a particular nation--presumably Israel, but this doesn't take into account that American Jews are American, and hail from many different geographical areas. It isn't just a way of blurring out the identity of Jews as Americans, but it feels a little like a form of erasure of the diversity of the diaspora. 

Also, it is a mistake to associate disagreement with the policies of a nation, Israel, in the form of its current government, with a hatred for Jewish people--these things are quite different. Americans are not a monolith, and American Jews are not a monolith; there is diversity of opinion, which includes proponents of BDS regarding the treatment of Palestinians in Israeli territory. This move appears to conflate freedom of speech against policies with hate speech against people--it limits freedom of political speech and action in a way that is shocking for an administration that found there were good people on "both sides" of a conflict where one side chanted "Jews will not replace us." (And whose greatest apologists on Fox News often cite Soros conspiracy theories.)

It also perpetuates a trope about dual allegiance by Jewish people to their home country and their larger identity as Jews. There is nothing about this that will not have unintended consequences, but the Trump Administration being what it is, I struggle to understand which parts are the fully unintended ones.  Singling out people by nationality simply has a bad historical precedent. This administration has tried a Muslim ban and centered it on certain countries, and has detained people of many countries who seek immigration or asylum under heinous conditions. I don't like the looks of this lurch towards Nuremberg.