“The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.”— Coco Chanel
Dvid Kurtz in TPM today pithily nails the threat we face :
Beating back the flames of fascism while the fascists fan the flames of global warming is the dual-threat 21st-century apocalypse that I can still scarcely get my head around.
And yet, we must not despair. The struggle continues.
Whether I like it or not, I’m pretty much compelled to read the news every day adn sometimes I read something that I simply must share because of how it clarifies the current situation or for what it memorializes or for how it inspires. Yesterday was one of those days when reading Heather Cox Richardson’s account of how citizens in Surprise, Arizona, are reacting to ICE buying a giant warehouse the size of 7 football fields, in their community. ICE hasn’t said exactly why it bought the building, but it’s a good bet it’s to house prisoners before deporting them. Government officials in Surprise said they don’t know what ICE plans to do with the building but, “It’s important to note, Federal projects are not subject to local regulations, such as zoning.”
The citizens of Surprise aren’t having that:
On Tuesday, February 3, more than a thousand people turned out for the Surprise City Council meeting to oppose the establishment of the federal detention center. One of the speakers reminded the council of Ohrdruf, the first Nazi camp liberated by U.S. troops, on April 4, 1945. He said:
“The U.S. Army brought the leading citizens of Ohrdruf to tour the facility, which turned out to be part of the Buchenwald network of concentration camps. A U.S. Army colonel told the German civilians who viewed the scenes without muttering a word that they were to blame. One of the Germans replied that what happened in the camp was ‘done by a few people,’ and ‘you cannot blame us all.’ And the American, who could have been any one of our grandfathers, said: ‘This was done by those that the German people chose to lead them, and all are responsible.’
“The morning after the tour, the mayor of Ohrdruf killed himself. And maybe he did not know the full extent of the outrages that were committed in his community, but he knew enough. And we don’t know exactly how ICE will use this warehouse. But we know enough. I ask you to consider what the mayor of Ohrdruf might have thought before he died. Maybe he felt like a victim. He might have thought, ‘How is this my fault? I had no jurisdiction over this.’ Maybe he would have said, ‘This site was not subject to local zoning, what could I do?’ But I think, when he reflected on the suffering that occurred at this camp, just outside of town, that those words would have sounded hollow even to him. Because in his heart he knew, as we do, that we are all responsible for what happens in our community.”
We are all responsible. We can’t just be “good Germans” and go along with things we know are wrong. I don’t know what the good people of Surprise, Arizona can do to stop this detention center, but they have taken the first steps. Getting the word out that this is happening is another step. Encouraging every other community where ICE tries to build a new camp or prison to mobilize against it is another step. Lending our voices and our money to the effort is another. One step at a time, it must continue. We are all responsible so we all have to do whatever we can.
Bruce Springsteen wrote and released a great song this week that everyone needs to hear: The Streets of Minneapolis (YT link, but it’s also available on Apple Music, and probably elsewhere). It would be fantastic if this became the number one song in the country with wall to wall play everywhere, but that seems like too much to hope for. Still, let’s do our part — play and share!
In a similar vein, though apparently largely produced via AI(?) is ICE, F**K You by scaredketchup. It definitely captures the moment.
Finally, everyone’s favorite singers, the Marsh Family, has released Minnesota, an adaptation of “San Francisco (Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair).” Also great.
Josh Marshall has a great piece today about the insanity of the argument for the ICE military invasion forces wearing masks. He likens it to the same upside down logic of anti-accountability that says that the superrich oligarchs who give millions of dollars to buy elections need to be able to do so in secret or anonymously so they won’t have to face any negative repercussions that might come from their exercise of such extreme power:
ICE masking and the need for billionaire anonymity certainly aren’t the same argument. But I don’t think I’m far out on a limb in thinking that they share a common DNA. The people with all the power need to be insulated from the effects of wielding that kind of power. It’s a whole framework of anti-accountability that has infiltrated our civic discourse. The people with all the power need to have even more power to protect them from the effects of being so powerful in the first place. Or with ICE, you can hardly expect people to abuse their policing authority quite so aggressively if you’re not going to allow them to do it anonymously.
We have alwasy been at war with Eastasia….
Josh Marshall on what we must do in order to make a better, stronger, more democratic and egailtairan society and governmental system post-Trump:
Get a trifecta, kill the filibuster and you can do it all on simple majority votes.
Well, if that’s all we need to do, let’s go!
I don’t mean to be cynical. I hope we can do exactly this. It’s just…. Wow. In the world we’re in, it’s like asking for a series of cosmic miracles…
Josh Marshall has been exploring the idea that today’s centibillionaires are 21st century Nabobs, by which he means they are monsters who have made massive amounts of money by breaking or simply disregarding all the rules and norms of our societies and who have thereby become some powerful that even world governments have little control over them anymore. It’s a very interesting analogy and gives a lot of insight into what is happening, but also how we must respond. Following up, Marshall writes:
A few months ago, I said that the greatest proof case for Trump’s claims about the corruption of the American elite was the ease with which he plowed through it. This isn’t just a bit of clever inversion or word play. It’s foundational to understanding everything.
It’s a simple observation, but profound because it gets to what is arguably the most important point of all of this, which is that “The old system, whatever its merits, is clearly and unequivocally broken and something new has to be built in its place. Something stronger, something more ready to use and comfortable using political power.”
And this is why the politics of the Left in the U.S. since 2016 have been so disappointing. The people who are thinking big (progressives and socialists) have been shut out of power and told to keep their mouths shut so the mealy-mouthed small-thinker establishmentarians can win. Or, as Marshall puts it:
Nothing is more enervating, demoralizing or hopeless than being the upholders of the proprieties of a vanquished order. Simple rule-following or, even worse, norms-following is simply too thin a reed for any political movement or political party. We have laws not simply to have laws but because the law is the only possible brake on the strong trampling over and exploiting the weak. And if some people become too strong, it becomes impossible for any of us, individually or collectively, to be truly free. This could scarcely be more relevant to an era in which the rest of us appear to live more or less at the sufferance of a few handfuls of centi-billionaires who have graduated beyond the obstacles of consequences or law.
Enervating, demoralizing, and hopeless pretty much describes the Democratic party recently except for the stand they managed to take in October over the budget. But even that showed how small they were thinking and how they don’t seem to understand that the system in which they’ve operated their whole lives is gone and we need an entirely new, much more aggressive, much bigger plan to put the U.S. on a solid footing for a free, Democratic, equitable, diverse, and sustainable future. The problem is even bigger when you consider that our politics going forward must also address establishing not just a new U.S. order but a new world order since Trump has basically destroyed or is currently destroying the order that has prevailed and kept us safe and mostly at peace for the last 80 years. When are they going to get it?
It’s hard for any of us to imagine what needs to be done, let alone do it. When everything you’ve always known and put your faith in and built your life and even your identity on and around is being blown to bits like a tiny boat in the ocean (call it what it is: murder!), it’s hard enough to even understand what is happening, let alone formulate a plan to stop it and put that plan into action. That’s why we need more of what Marshall is doing, beating the drum of supreme court and filibuster reform, for example. This kind of thing gives us targets to aim for, even if we aren’t sure how to reach them yet.
Another example of thinking big to fit this truly existential time came recently from Jonathan Last, editor of The Bulwark (which, sadly, I can’t read bc it’s a Substack and Substack is just another silo for information and the enshittification of the web), when he appeared on Slate’s What Next Podcast. It’s a short podcast and worth your time, but the gist is that Last was frustrated that the Democrats were only asking to restore insurance premium subsidies during the funding showdown that shut down the government. Why, he asked, weren’t they demanding D.C. statehood? And six more justices on the supreme court? And more? Why are they thinking so small? And even though there’s no chance any of those things will happen with MAGA control of every part of government, the point is that the conversation about major, revolutionary change has already begun. The MAGAts started it and they have obviously started making those major changes, too. That’s what broke the system. Now, Democrats, and every other party or group that can oppose what’s happening, need to think bigger, act bigger, be more aggressive, or the new world that we will inhabit all too soon will be the MAGAt world.
So… We need to reform the Supreme Court, end the fillibuster, make D.C. and Peurto Rico states, and…. what else?
The Democrats had a great election day in virtually every race last Tuesday, but there has still been a lot of talk about what this means for Democrats and the Left going forward. Josh Marshall clarifies the strategy perfectly:
A number of morning-after reviews I’ve seen say that the Democrats had had a great night but still hadn’t addressed their “civil war” — the battle over whether to run “moderates” or “progressives.” Is it a future of Spanbergers or Mamdanis?
That doesn’t seem quite right to me. They have a pretty good model: find candidates suited to their constituencies and focus on cost of living issues and opposition to Donald Trump’s autocracy. Full stop. It’s not more complicated than that. That’s your opposition message.
Focus. Keep it simple. Stay woke!
The news of the moment is that Trump is trying to send National Guard troops into Los Angeles, allegedly to protect ICE agents who have been aggressively arresting peaceful working people in that city. Emptywheel has a great summary of what is happening, but what Trump (or more accurately, Steven Miller) is doing all boils down to this:
“Create chaos, and then use that chaos to try to codify authoritarian power.”
They’re creating what they hope will be “RIOTS AND LOOTING” so they can scare everyone into passage of their One Big Abomination Bill to pour money into deportations, cut taxes for the wealthy, and cut medicare, medicaid, SNAP, and whatever little social safety net remaining. This is the playbook: “Create chaos, and then use that chaos to try to codify authoritarian power.”
This is what’s happening right now.
John Ganz summarizes the current situation perfectly:
This regime can give no actual account of itself that stands up to the merest scrutiny: It’s all nonsense and lies. This is a government of crackpots and charlatans, for crackpots and charlatans, by crackpots and charlatans. Anyone who believes any of its justifications and apologies is allowing himself to be deliberately confused or, even more pathetically, is indulging in absurd fantasies of racial or national rejuvenation amid the ruin of a great civilization. The people in charge want to replace thinking human beings with AI and an underclass of serfs they keep docile with digital slop. Ultimately, that is its only logic and its only rationale: domination, subjugation, repression.
Crackpots and charlatans who are obsessed with domination, subjugation, repression pretty much nails it.
Impeach and prosecute them all. Josh Marshall’s DOJ in Exile must happen so that the prosecutions can begin immediately once people who will actually uphold their oaths to the Constitution are in office. More on that here and it looks like maybe also something happening at The Marshall Project?
Trump and the Magats are trying to humiliate and control Columbia University by taking away $400 million in federal funding. Columbia is a private university with an endowment of $14.8 billion. What the hell is Columbia doing making a single conecssion to this regime? It’s unconscionable. Pathetic.
Why can’t people and institutions with actual power and independence stand up to this regime?
🤯