Saturday, March 22, 2025

Bunker Hill


The onslaught of Chaos continues at a bewildering pace.  There's too much to absorb, too much to understand.  The news is heartbreaking on a human level, and heartbreaking for those who see the future as well as current implications and devastation.

The news media is overwhelmed, especially in this era of reduced news space and rampant trivialities on every front page of every major news outlet at least in their Internet form.  Even the courts have been slow to see the threats to what holds our society together, and once those are gone, there is only the slow or fast extinction of civilization.  The bulwarks of our society have many serious flaws but they are now facing erasure: the rule of law, equal protection, due process, regard for the environment that sustains us, institutional integrity, organized empathy, to name a few. 

But people feel it--they are feeling fear, and expressing it as anger.  They are shouting at their Republican representatives for what they are doing and endorsing being done by the Chaos administration and the Lord High Executioner Musk.  But they are also shouting at their Democratic representatives for not fighting back with more urgency and force.

For the times are urgent.  Dismantling government agencies weakens this country for the stern tests ahead as well as the very near future, when students look for college loans, or adequate schools, and middle class Americans as well as the poor look for medical care support.


Having stopped programs that sent food and medicine to deeply needy people abroad--to the extent of letting food rot on American docks--Chaos has now "suspended" federal support for food going to food banks across America in coming months, many in rural areas--which therefore get hit twice, with farmers seeing their markets disappear.  I find this a lot more disturbing and consequential that the surrender of rich but cowardly universities and a rich but cowardly law firm that are laughably making deals (i.e. paying extortion) to the Chaos administration that will never hold up its end of the bargain they think they've made. (However, the precedent of a private company--that law firm-- being forced to/ agreeing to dump its diversity programs should be highlighted.) Of course that extortion is itself immensely destructive, especially as it will be applied to institutions and people with fewer resources.

Elected Democrats are divided by what seems like only different strategies.  Some follow the advice articulated by James Carville to do nothing, let Chaos have his way (they are a minority in Congress anyway) until the administration subverts itself.  Live to fight another day.

Others want to more strongly define and confront the Chaos.  In Congress, they were willing to let the government shut down rather than submit to extortion and vote for a horrific budget. The first side--with the Senate minority leader prominent among them-- said that Chaos could have done more damage with the government shut. 

 And who knows, he might be right. But it's beyond strategies now.  It's about seeing the true proportions of what's happening, and the extent and depth of the damage, how it will ripple out, how many people it will hurt, what it will do to future emergencies, and the civic and social suffering and breakdown that might very well follow.  And how painfully difficult and expensive it will be to rebuild systems and institutions, if that's even possible.

Let me say it again: no foreign enemy, even in war or Cold War or terrorism, over any time period, has done as much lethal damage to the American government as Chaos and his minions in the past two months.

It's about standing up for what has given us some protection we depend on.  It's about standing up for who we are, or at least who we want to be.


Not so long ago--and in some ways, still ongoing--there was this argument that Democrats had to tack towards some undefined center to return to electability.  Anyone still saying that is living in the past.  It's not about anybody's preferences anymore.  It's about survival.

One of the prime areas under siege is the Social Security system.  Thousands of employees are being shed while new demands for their time and presence are being heaped on.  And all for no defensible reason.  Social Security fraud is very low and its administrative costs are even lower--probably the best of any agency that large in the world.

Seventy million of us right now depend on those checks, and millions more eventually will.  In one day, the current chief of Social Security threatened to shut the whole thing down because he couldn't interpret a court decision, and the Secretary of Commerce said that anybody who complains about not getting their check is a fraudster.

Also on Friday, Rachel Maddow interviewed Martin O'Malley, former governor of Maryland and under Biden the head of Social Security.  According to him, the Chaos administration has already done "90% of what's necessary" to destroy the Social Security Administration.  And then he said this: "This should be the Democrats' Bunker Hill, upon which the party is willing to die."


That is the seriousness of the moment, and that is the urgency.  The Battle of Bunker Hill was the first major engagement of the American Revolution.  On the third try, the British army took the hill from the vastly outnumbered Americans, who had run out of ammunition. But the victory was more costly to the British.

Kim Stanley Robinson describes the Revolution from the American point of view in this way: Lose, lose, lose, lose, lose, win.

Caring about living to fight another day isn't going to cut it in these circumstances. More than thirty thousand people showed up in Denver to hear Bernie Sanders and AOC make the case for meeting the moment.  Probably no one knows just how to defeat Chaos, or apart from the courts how to defend against it.  But the seriousness of what they are doing demands that they be engaged. The Democrats and whatever allies they still have in the anti-Chaos Republicans that stuck their necks out for Harris, need to give it all they've got.  Now.



Wednesday, March 19, 2025

The Good News

Boston

 I never thought I'd be looking to Rachel Maddow for the good news.  But it seems she's making a concerted effort to start her nightly program with the positives, and it's certainly heartening to me.

Often she starts with a roundup of anti-Chaos demonstrations that are happening in big places and a lot of small places, including in red states, but that aren't otherwise being widely covered.

Just on Tuesday she had video from West Virginia, Colorado and Greensboro, North Carolina, focusing this time on citizen-sponsored town hall meetings for Republican members of Congress who are too frightened to hold one: about a thousand people gathered to hear the Piedmont Raging Grannies musically ask where Senator Tom Tillis was hiding, in three part harmony.

Greensboro is an interesting case, for in the past few weeks there have been also separate demonstrations protesting the Chaos betrayal of Ukraine and on Chaos immigration policy. I count at least three with different emphases in Harrisburg, PA, and these aren't isolated examples.

Boise, Idaho

 On Monday Rachel covered demos in Tucson, Boise (Idaho), Kansas City and a big demo at a Tesla dealership in Leon Springs, Texas.  She also highlighted truly huge demonstrations in Hungary against Chaos hero Viktor Urban, and against Putin in Romania and elsewhere in Eastern Europe.  

Again I am impressed by the homemade signs at the local demos, many expressing in a few words the heart of the matter.  I'm also noticing a lot of signs with the words Fascist, Dictator and Hitler on them.  These signs and demos reveal what there has been reason to doubt: a lot of Americans value the federal government and the services it provides to them and those they know, as well as the federal employees they know (remember that some 80% of them work outside Washington), and the worth to their communities of federal or federally support facilities near them.  

Also they reveal the depth of support for Ukraine and the extent of opposition to Putin's Russia.  The cozying up to Russia and Putin by Republican politicians in recent years may have cast doubt on the public sentiment against them, and support for Ukraine.  And as Rachel emphasizes, it's not just the demonstrations that tell this tale: the latest NBC poll finds support for Putin at all of 3%, and support for Ukraine at 61% with only 2% supporting Russia. But a near majority sees Chaos as supporting Russia.

Leon Springs, Texas

These provide evidence of some bedrock commitments that again have been all but dismissed by the bullies in Washington: against an American dictator, and for the rule of law.  There's been some impressive community defense for people outrageously manhandled by ICE and Immigration. This last alone may reflect a reawakening of empathy for the victims of injustice, as well as the reflexive knowledge that they too may someday--or soon--need to depend on due process and the protections of the law.  Or they may need emergency services, even weather reports, as well as health safeguards, clean air and water.  
The support for USAID also suggests more emotional commitment to the foreign aid that shares food and medicine to less fortunate parts of the world.

People are certainly upset at how they themselves might be affected, by Social Security cuts, Medicaid, education and so on, not to mention inflation from tariffs.  And they see the simple craziness of making enemies of Canada, Denmark and all of Europe

Rachel is often able to follow up reports on demos with Chaos defeats in federal court, especially those ordering the undoing of much of the Muskovite damage, by reading from court transcripts and opinions.  Again, you'd expect a lot of judicial language, but these statements and orders are often very pointed and very succinct.  One refers to the shutting down of the USAID agency as having "likely violated the United States Constitution in multiple ways."

 Another decision voided the attempted ban of transgender people in the military without any cause given, and that these individuals are to be accorded the equal protection under law "that the military defends every day." The decision concludes:  "In the self-evident truth that 'all people are created equal,' all means all.  Nothing more. And certainly nothing less."

Kansas City

An earlier decision ordering the re-hiring of thousands of federal workers sharply criticized the Muskovite method of firing probationary employees wholesale with terse emails claiming they were fired for performance issues, without any evidence or due process, and in one case the judge chose as an example, with documented counter-evidence of superlative evaluations. The judge noted the particular brutality of this tactic, for by calling the firings for bad performance, the workers couldn't get unemployment insurance payments, and poor performance would be part of their record when applying for other jobs.


All these persistent local demonstrations on various issues raises the question of when there might be really big central demonstrations uniting the issues.  And what the response of the Chaos bullies will be to those.  We may find out soon.  The national organization Indivisible has responded to requests from local groups and has called for a "nationwide mobilization" on Saturday April 5, with the simple theme HANDS OFF!  (Rachel had the president of this group on her show last week to announce this.)  Many of the demos now organizing for that day are still local, including big cities, but also including Washington, DC.  

It's too bad that Democratic politicians aren't as direct and eloquent as these signs and these court decisions. But it is better anyway that the eloquence and energy are coming from the people.  As bad as things are and as they quickly could become, it would be worse to see complete apathy from an unresisting public.  These demonstrations have made a good start.  And as one sign proclaimed, courage is contagious.  

"Push-back works," is Rachel's mantra.  (She also has the perfect demeanor to embody the sense of tragic absurdity we're living through.)  Whether it will work well enough and soon enough, who knows.  But it's a good feeling, and I'll take what I can get.

Sunday, March 16, 2025

The United States Is Now A Prison

 

Japanese internment camp in the US

The story is still unfolding regarding the deportation of alleged Venezuelan gang members to prisons in El Salvador, despite a federal court judge's order to stop the deportation, even to the extent of turning the planes around.  Though the Chaos administration claims these people were outside the US by the time the order was given, the White House press secretary and others are asserting that the judge has no jurisdiction.  King Chaos invoked a 1798 law previously used a few times during a war, including the rationale for the infamous Japanese-American internment camps during World War II (and lest it be forgotten, at least one Italian internment camp.)  

This is the most blatant act of defiance of a court order so far. But there have been others, especially relating to border issues. Though no evidence has been presented that any or all of the deported and now imprisoned people were gang members, there is at least the appearance of eliminating danger.  Not so in the case of Dr. Rasha Alawieh, a medical specialist in the crucial area of kidney transplants, and a Brown University medical school professor.  On returning from a visit to family in Lebanon, she presented her valid visa and was detained, and then later put on a plane to Paris presumably to connect with a flight to Lebanon.  In other words, she was expelled, even though the US Customs and Border Protection officials who held her were informed that there was a federal court order to prevent her immediate deportation, and to provide 48 hours notice of their intentions.

  Later the judge who issued the order said from the bench that there was reason to believe his order was willfully disobeyed.  Again, a case of open defiance of the rule of law.


Except for the timely court orders, these are not isolated incidents.  There's a story on the Internet about a Canadian woman attempting to renew her work visa at the southern border who was summarily dumped into a privately run prison and left there in primitive and unsanitary conditions.  She encountered other women there who had no idea why they were being held, or even where they were.

There are many other reports of harassment at the northern border as well, including of Canadian citizens.  What a lot of these incidents have in common is people being jailed without being charged before a court, without access to attorneys, perhaps transported to a prison far away if not summarily deported. 

Given other circumstances, Canadians are not eager to travel to the US anyway, but this alone makes that dangerous.  It is dangerous as well for anyone to attempt to leave the country.  Brown University has already advised its employees to avoid foreign travel.  But even that may not be enough.  There are several reported and documented instances of US residents clearly on the legal path to citizenship being stopped at airports from domestic flights, detained and imprisoned.

 When the government uses arbitrary and unchecked power with impunity, eventually no one is safe. The United States is now a de facto prison run by lawless authoritarian thugs.