What all Americans need to realize is that there is a coup underway in our country. Moments before this excellent piece from The.Ink reached my inbox, another one from the New York Times announced the breaking news that top FBI officials have been told to retire or they will be fired next week. The Trump/Musk oligarchs are rapidly consolidating all federal power in their hands. They will have the military, the FBI, the national security apparatus, and everything else tightly in their grasp. They will find some pretext to declare martial law and we will find ourselves living under an authoritarian regime in which our rights and freedoms are severely limited and people are arbitrarily arrested because they say or do something the Führer doesn't like.
We need a unified mass opposition right now. But how do we get it?
It's sad to say, but we will possibly need martyrs. If some Proud Boy or other goonsquad comes around here, as I have already stated (and I mean it), I will run as fast as I can into a public space, start yelling, and if they aim a gun or (god forbid) shoot me, hope someone has taken a video they can post. I'm old enough to remember Kent State, folks. And Marin Luther King, and Mahatma Ghandi. What are we made of, anyway? If we cherish our little selves above all else, we are lost.
There’s another article in the New York Times this morning about Elon Musk trying to get into the treasury payment system. The acting treasury secretary, resigned. So Elon Musk is trying to take over our monetary payment system.
Just what I want to know--How do we get it, this mass opposition? Anand has written for days about the failure of Democrats to respond adequately. Yes--ask if Trump means desegregation is the cause of the crash. But where is the platform? Where is the microphone? Where are the reporters asking Democratic leaders or any Democrats to respond? The crash happens at 9 pm. The next morning all media eyes and ears are on Trump---not on Senators Whitehouse, Sanders, Hassan, Duckworth etc. How can we change that? Will reporters for the main media be asking the Democratic National Committee Chair when he is elected tomorrow?
Karen Attiah framed it perfectly. “Is Trump saying the crash was caused by desegregating the races?” The logic of that claim is roughly equivalent to whether Justin Bieber caused the Titanic to sink. Thank you for staying ahead of the fallout and filling the void with your analysis. I plan to use it at my next available opportunity.
She was right but not thorough. Resisting desegregation is just one aspect of his basic goal which is to reinstate and/or preserve the privileges of straight white ostensibly Christian males over the rest of us.
Here's my one and only suggestion: Let's just all agree that Trump is a scourge on humanity and quit repeating that every time he gives us more evidence of it, which will leave room to focus on pointing out what he's up to, if we think we understand that.
This is reminding me of the mule, Benjamin, who never spoke out against the increasing authoritarian regime in George Orwell’s novel Animal Farm. He represents the cynical intellectuals. Eventually his best friend was slaughtered. Two things kill a democracy. Apathy and Comfort. Which has handcuffed the Democratic Party right now? Both?
Both. And at their root, a perhaps measured fear of the chaos that can appear at times of great change. So, while we're at resisting the current administration, let's get serious about revoking Citizens United, so EVERYONE doesn't have to drink at the trough of billionaires and corporate "persons" interested in manipulating elections. Shall we?
I get the sense the old guard democratic leadership is making a big assumption that trump and crew will implode and dems will be the sane and sensible ones voters will realise and come back to?? While in the meantime a whole different political and media game is being played and leaving dems in the dust.
One of the issues that I see is that, unlike Canada, Britain and many other nations, in the US, the party out of power doesn’t have a “shadow cabinet” (read Timothy Snyder on this). So for example, in the case of this plane crash, Pete Buttigieg, if he was the shadow “secretary of transportation”, would be the point person responsible for responding about the accident.
Hi. I’m a new subscriber, found you from joint video with Ruth ben Ghiat.
So, I’m getting P.O.’d at tRump blaming DEI for budget freezes, fires and now an airplane crash. Meanwhile, he has nominated a slew of incompetent political hacks to cabinet positions including Kash Patel, Tulsi Gabbard, RFK Jr. not to mention the goner Matt Gaetz. And he wants to replace federal career employees with more political hacks who will do his bidding. What the fuh*? Or maybe he plans to hire all the white guys he just pardoned.
So I propose that we counter his DEI name calling by our own moniker, by calling out all ongoing democracy damage done by incompetent *PHH hires (political hack hires) (pronounced *Fuh-), especially the vengeful ones. Also good for noting “another Phhailure by the PHH team. Or someone come up with a better acronym. WTF for another White Team Failure? But label it for what it is, every time. Let’s decide and make it consistent.
This makes so much sense. I was about to broadcast my shock at a new Wash Post story about how Musk has grabbed control of the Treasury Payment system by ousting the civil servant in charge of it. To me this is a huge red flag. But I feel like the people who should be saying or doing something about this don’t exist?! Is there someone in power who can stop the wholesale take over of our government, its systems? What can we do? What narrative should we use for this lawless coup? I asked chatGPT the risks of this payment system going to DOGE and Musk and all my hunches were confirmed!
I read that this morning also. There are so many fires that are starting. How do we choose which one to try and put out first? I guess that’s the strategy.
Right now dozens of suits are being filed--by different groups representing the particular people being slammed. We need to support those efforts. Everybody doesn't have to do EVERYTHING. We can alert people to what is happening. If we are masochists we can ask trumpites what they think of the crash performance or the funding freeze.
Tuesday, I spent the day at the Texas Capitol for a hearing on education vouchers cloaked in 'School Choice". Managed to be seated in main hearing room where for 8 hours we were not allowed to have water bottles. How's that for a control mechanism? The ploy is to underfund public education, finance private institutions, and allow church and state to disappear. Will keep showing up.
Brilliant. This is what I shout: Do not accept the premise. Make a lateral move without living the issue open. But you have to do it quickly, and that means you have to pay attention all the damned time. Anand, I will share this piece with my activist messaging group. Thank you.
I think I am seeing plenty of meta level comments in the intellectualish sort of stuff I follow like Attiah’s excellent question. But what I wonder is whether only we intellectuals — we few, we happy few — are seeing it. How can we change the minds of the sort of people who voted for Trump so that they don’t make that same mistake again?
DEI is a thing. DEI when spoken by a Republican is a euphemism. Same thing as happened with "woke." Or for that matter, "Marxist." It means "I don' WIKE it" with a racist and anti-woman slant.
DEI doesn't say you should hire the less competent. DEI says that you can't assume that minorities and women are less competent, and that therefore you should just ignore them in your hiring practices. Trump and his trumpeters don't get the difference--whether actually don't get or pretend to don't get to rope in all the people who really don't get it, I don't know.
The one that is bugging me right now is "Trump fires XXX" where XXX is in a job that has a statutory procedure for firing. Trump "YELLS" you're fired, but it doesn't do squat if he hasn't walked the statutory walk. The correct usage is "trump tries to fire" (along with "and getting sued for it" we hope. )
Here we are, talking at each other, and while perhaps a psychological palliative it is not exactly how a "meaning making movement" is fomented. Maybe we should be pushing along with Indivisible and figure out HOW to make this organization more VISIBLE.
Why do people insist it's about race when DEI ecompasses so much more? Trump's focus on the "A" in DEIA for disability access as less desirable than rapey, tatooed talk show hosts really tips his hand. It's fundamentally about the denial of vulnerability, the definition of masculinity. He's driven by psychological need, but so much more primitive than the educated espouse.
What all Americans need to realize is that there is a coup underway in our country. Moments before this excellent piece from The.Ink reached my inbox, another one from the New York Times announced the breaking news that top FBI officials have been told to retire or they will be fired next week. The Trump/Musk oligarchs are rapidly consolidating all federal power in their hands. They will have the military, the FBI, the national security apparatus, and everything else tightly in their grasp. They will find some pretext to declare martial law and we will find ourselves living under an authoritarian regime in which our rights and freedoms are severely limited and people are arbitrarily arrested because they say or do something the Führer doesn't like.
We need a unified mass opposition right now. But how do we get it?
It's sad to say, but we will possibly need martyrs. If some Proud Boy or other goonsquad comes around here, as I have already stated (and I mean it), I will run as fast as I can into a public space, start yelling, and if they aim a gun or (god forbid) shoot me, hope someone has taken a video they can post. I'm old enough to remember Kent State, folks. And Marin Luther King, and Mahatma Ghandi. What are we made of, anyway? If we cherish our little selves above all else, we are lost.
There’s another article in the New York Times this morning about Elon Musk trying to get into the treasury payment system. The acting treasury secretary, resigned. So Elon Musk is trying to take over our monetary payment system.
How did it help that he resigned? Like the head of aviation safety and Christopher Wray. and and.
Just what I want to know--How do we get it, this mass opposition? Anand has written for days about the failure of Democrats to respond adequately. Yes--ask if Trump means desegregation is the cause of the crash. But where is the platform? Where is the microphone? Where are the reporters asking Democratic leaders or any Democrats to respond? The crash happens at 9 pm. The next morning all media eyes and ears are on Trump---not on Senators Whitehouse, Sanders, Hassan, Duckworth etc. How can we change that? Will reporters for the main media be asking the Democratic National Committee Chair when he is elected tomorrow?
I hope they stick around to be fired. They'll then get unemployment while looking for their next job.
Karen Attiah framed it perfectly. “Is Trump saying the crash was caused by desegregating the races?” The logic of that claim is roughly equivalent to whether Justin Bieber caused the Titanic to sink. Thank you for staying ahead of the fallout and filling the void with your analysis. I plan to use it at my next available opportunity.
She was right but not thorough. Resisting desegregation is just one aspect of his basic goal which is to reinstate and/or preserve the privileges of straight white ostensibly Christian males over the rest of us.
Here's my one and only suggestion: Let's just all agree that Trump is a scourge on humanity and quit repeating that every time he gives us more evidence of it, which will leave room to focus on pointing out what he's up to, if we think we understand that.
This is reminding me of the mule, Benjamin, who never spoke out against the increasing authoritarian regime in George Orwell’s novel Animal Farm. He represents the cynical intellectuals. Eventually his best friend was slaughtered. Two things kill a democracy. Apathy and Comfort. Which has handcuffed the Democratic Party right now? Both?
Both. And at their root, a perhaps measured fear of the chaos that can appear at times of great change. So, while we're at resisting the current administration, let's get serious about revoking Citizens United, so EVERYONE doesn't have to drink at the trough of billionaires and corporate "persons" interested in manipulating elections. Shall we?
My wife is teaching this book in English class, and she keeps discussing the parallels in our present moment
I hope that she's not in an area where that will get her fired.
We live in Washington state. She is very safe!!
me too. Living here makes all this seem even more unreal than it must in red states.
I get the sense the old guard democratic leadership is making a big assumption that trump and crew will implode and dems will be the sane and sensible ones voters will realise and come back to?? While in the meantime a whole different political and media game is being played and leaving dems in the dust.
One of the issues that I see is that, unlike Canada, Britain and many other nations, in the US, the party out of power doesn’t have a “shadow cabinet” (read Timothy Snyder on this). So for example, in the case of this plane crash, Pete Buttigieg, if he was the shadow “secretary of transportation”, would be the point person responsible for responding about the accident.
See https://snyder.substack.com/p/shadow-cabinet
An excellent idea. I hope former Biden or Obama cabinet members will figure out how to do it.
Hi. I’m a new subscriber, found you from joint video with Ruth ben Ghiat.
So, I’m getting P.O.’d at tRump blaming DEI for budget freezes, fires and now an airplane crash. Meanwhile, he has nominated a slew of incompetent political hacks to cabinet positions including Kash Patel, Tulsi Gabbard, RFK Jr. not to mention the goner Matt Gaetz. And he wants to replace federal career employees with more political hacks who will do his bidding. What the fuh*? Or maybe he plans to hire all the white guys he just pardoned.
So I propose that we counter his DEI name calling by our own moniker, by calling out all ongoing democracy damage done by incompetent *PHH hires (political hack hires) (pronounced *Fuh-), especially the vengeful ones. Also good for noting “another Phhailure by the PHH team. Or someone come up with a better acronym. WTF for another White Team Failure? But label it for what it is, every time. Let’s decide and make it consistent.
This makes so much sense. I was about to broadcast my shock at a new Wash Post story about how Musk has grabbed control of the Treasury Payment system by ousting the civil servant in charge of it. To me this is a huge red flag. But I feel like the people who should be saying or doing something about this don’t exist?! Is there someone in power who can stop the wholesale take over of our government, its systems? What can we do? What narrative should we use for this lawless coup? I asked chatGPT the risks of this payment system going to DOGE and Musk and all my hunches were confirmed!
I read that this morning also. There are so many fires that are starting. How do we choose which one to try and put out first? I guess that’s the strategy.
Right now dozens of suits are being filed--by different groups representing the particular people being slammed. We need to support those efforts. Everybody doesn't have to do EVERYTHING. We can alert people to what is happening. If we are masochists we can ask trumpites what they think of the crash performance or the funding freeze.
Yes!! Exactly!!!
Tuesday, I spent the day at the Texas Capitol for a hearing on education vouchers cloaked in 'School Choice". Managed to be seated in main hearing room where for 8 hours we were not allowed to have water bottles. How's that for a control mechanism? The ploy is to underfund public education, finance private institutions, and allow church and state to disappear. Will keep showing up.
You need to quit complaining about what somebody isn't doing well enough to suit you and start doing it yourself. All of you are driving me nuts .
Basically said this above!
Brilliant. This is what I shout: Do not accept the premise. Make a lateral move without living the issue open. But you have to do it quickly, and that means you have to pay attention all the damned time. Anand, I will share this piece with my activist messaging group. Thank you.
I think I am seeing plenty of meta level comments in the intellectualish sort of stuff I follow like Attiah’s excellent question. But what I wonder is whether only we intellectuals — we few, we happy few — are seeing it. How can we change the minds of the sort of people who voted for Trump so that they don’t make that same mistake again?
DEI is a thing. DEI when spoken by a Republican is a euphemism. Same thing as happened with "woke." Or for that matter, "Marxist." It means "I don' WIKE it" with a racist and anti-woman slant.
DEI doesn't say you should hire the less competent. DEI says that you can't assume that minorities and women are less competent, and that therefore you should just ignore them in your hiring practices. Trump and his trumpeters don't get the difference--whether actually don't get or pretend to don't get to rope in all the people who really don't get it, I don't know.
The one that is bugging me right now is "Trump fires XXX" where XXX is in a job that has a statutory procedure for firing. Trump "YELLS" you're fired, but it doesn't do squat if he hasn't walked the statutory walk. The correct usage is "trump tries to fire" (along with "and getting sued for it" we hope. )
Here we are, talking at each other, and while perhaps a psychological palliative it is not exactly how a "meaning making movement" is fomented. Maybe we should be pushing along with Indivisible and figure out HOW to make this organization more VISIBLE.
Why do people insist it's about race when DEI ecompasses so much more? Trump's focus on the "A" in DEIA for disability access as less desirable than rapey, tatooed talk show hosts really tips his hand. It's fundamentally about the denial of vulnerability, the definition of masculinity. He's driven by psychological need, but so much more primitive than the educated espouse.
Howzat for narrative?