No Kings

 Maybe you recognize the name and face of David Brooks.  He's a conservative columnist for the New York Times and the intellectual conservative voice paired with a liberal on the Friday night news commentary on the PBS News Hour.  Even if he's not actually one of the Brooks Brothers, he looks like he was born in a Brooks Brothers suit.  He is not exactly a revolutionary guy.  The strongest banner he could come up with for his latest column repeats the words "Not Normal."

Nevertheless his latest Times column says this: "It’s time for a comprehensive national civic uprising. It’s time for Americans in universities, law, business, nonprofits and the scientific community, and civil servants and beyond to form one coordinated mass movement."

He makes his case at some length and ends with a line that echoes words by someone he may never have quoted before:  "We have nothing to lose but our chains." 

He is of course referring to organized resistance against King Chaos.  And he is saying pretty much what Rachel Maddow has been saying every day on MSNBC.  Consider Rachel and Brooks on the same side of the barricade. That's where we are at the end of this week.

This week has been notable for several rhetorical threats to basic Constitutional rights by King Chaos and his minions, including Chaos and his Lord High Executioner Musk saying they would "love" to send American citizens to El Salvador gulags. And please note this non-technicality: it is not a prison.  It is by strict definition a concentration camp: it is a place where inmates "are not indicted or convicted of any crime by judicial process," according to the Holocaust Encyclopedia. Inmates there are not "incarcerated" which means confined after trial and conviction for a stated period under law, and with legal rights.  In El Salvador they are held indefinitely and incommunicado without the most basic legal and human rights.  The term for that is "liquidated."  Just as they were not "deported," which requires hearings and a finding and a legal process. These men were kidnapped and disappeared.

This week has also been notable for two strong court decisions and three very strong and very clear federal court opinions, two of them in the case of Abrego Garcia, including the most important so far by an honored conservative judge of the 4th District Court of Appeals appointed by Reagan.  They are clear and direct. 

This week will also be remembered for the publication of two documents: a letter sent by the Chaos White House to Harvard, expressing its comprehensive and self-contradictory demands, and Harvard's letter in response refusing to accede to those obviously unconstitutional demands. Those demands were then clearly revealed as extortion, when the Chaos administration withdrew a couple of billion dollars of federal support for Harvard (including support for its Public Health school and Medical school and research), and then threatened to revoke the university's tax exempt status and disallow its international students, more violations of yet more laws.  

Harvard's stand emboldened other universities, some of which are planning ahead of time and banding together in mutual defense treaties, or academic NATOs.  A couple of big law firms have also resisted and taken Chaos to court--and won.  Now others are looking to create self-defense alliances, and even some that capitulated are taking another look at their agreements.

Less publicized but perhaps just as consequential, the state of California has sued the Chaos administration because their tariffs are unconstitutional. California is the country's leading agricultural and manufacturing state, and seeks relief from economic harm caused by these illegal tariffs.  That counts a lot in court.

The chair of the Federal Reserve reported on the economic outlook, placing his considerable authority behind the predictions of likely stagflation caused by the tariffs.  King Chaos responded by vilifying him and calling for his removal.

But it is the Harvard refusal that is causing the most excitement, and has the greater symbolic power, not only because it is the premier university in the country with many powerful alumni, but because it is the oldest--it is about 150 years older than the Constitution--and it is in that part of the country where America first rebelled against the tyranny of a king.

This weekend also happens to be the 250th anniversary of the first engagements in that rebellion: The "one if by land, two if by sea" lanterns in Boston's Old North Church and Paul  Revere's ride, and then the battles of Lexington and Concord.  

This Saturday is another nationally scheduled day for demonstrations across the country, at state houses and court houses in all fifty states.  This time the theme is simply: No Kings.  Consider this your Paul Revere alert.

Where We Are (part 2)

This is part 2 of 2.  Part 1 is here.

5.  The Rest of the World

With malice aforethought, the Chaos administration immediately set out to wreck America's relationships with virtually every country in the world (except Russia), beginning with our closest friend and most steadfast allies.  Employing his characteristic badgering rhetoric, King Chaos pushed the absurd notion of annexing Canada as the 51st state.  After offending its national honor, he threatened Canada's economy (and that of Mexico) with tariffs.  

Canada responded promptly and decisively, and I don't mean just Canada's leaders. The call to boycott American products was answered, and the igniting of national identity propelled the Liberal Party in power from likely defeat to almost certain victory in upcoming elections.  Its new Prime Minister Mark Carney is just about the perfect person to organize Canada's defense, a financial expert who helped steer the UK through the disaster of Brexit (though it was not a total escape by any means.)  Right now he's hardening his anti-US rhetoric in advance of the election and it is a popular stance.  Canadian travel and tourism to the US is way down.

At the same time, Chaos all but abandoned Ukraine, with Chaos and with his v.p. tag-teamed their bullying of its president in the Oval Office, surely one of the most shameful moments hosted there.  This and other veiled threats to the western alliance alarmed the UK and European allies.  Very soon nobody was even trying to be polite anymore. Scorn for Chaos was and is public and harsh.

So now the EU countries and Canada in particular are talking about joint efforts that circumvent the US.  For instance, more European money for self-defense is likely to be a boon to Canadian manufacturing, so when the US finally backs off, those same markets and supplies of steel and cars from Canada may well be already taken.  

The absurd tariffs imposed on China remain from the proposed absurd tariffs on the rest of the world, though even the remaining 10% is higher even than the 1930s tariffs that led directly to the Great Depression.  But China is much smarter at this game, politically and economically. China has begun a number of ways to target Red State economies in the US, and now key tech industries that weaken the nation as a whole.  When it comes to the spiraling effects of these tariffs and counter-moves, the Chinese are likely to be far more resilient.  Just ask yourself which country is more likely to bear the pain?

What's interesting about the rest of the world is, unlike some Americans and American institutions, they don't respond to bullying and extortion.  But other countries may well make deals that are face-saving for Chaos, especially if these countries are used to dealing with corrupt regimes.

On the PBS News Hour, conservative columnist David Brooks recently described it this way, speaking of both other countries and businesses within the US begging for tariff exceptions: "What do businesses do who want to stay alive?  They have to bribe the political leaders who run the tariffs.  What do we have to give?  Who do we have to give it to?"  This puts King Chaos, Brooks said, "in the center of a web of corruption."

If there is any global or domestic strategy to Chaos creating chaos, it is this: America and the world depend on the US for "clear laws that apply to everyone," Brooks said.  "We no longer live in that system."  It is pretty much the definition of criminal rule.

6. Chaos

I don't know how productive it is to seek motives for the chaos that Chaos is producing, but some are plain enough.  As David Brooks indicates, chaos creates the condition for corruption--meaning money, perks and power.  Few barely notice how openly Chaos and his minions misuse their offices to make money.  Widespread chaos plus his unassailable power make him the biggest Crime Boss in the world, and he is acting like it.

King Chaos spent four years in mortal fear of dying in prison, and now he is unleashing his terror-born retribution against any person or institution that made him feel that fear.  He appointed  inept toadies with no qualifications except greed and personal loyalty to him--they stuck by him in his days of trembling.  

That extreme right ideologies provided him a blueprint for destroying the federal government was highly convenient, but the purpose--besides a generalized revenge--is also political.  Government workers and government unions are a powerful force that aligns mostly with Democrats.  A recent Atlantic article maintains that it is broader than this: that the  professional/managerial class as a whole has turned away from his R party to Democrats and their issues, more than symbolized by support for diversity, equity and inclusion.  

Chaos is himself too chaotic to do all this by himself.  After all, his chief strategy in life and politics is to get himself and his photo in the news every single day--even every single hour.  He does this by being as outrageous as possible, and the media eats it up every time.  This was obvious again in the 2024 campaign coverage.  But his outrages are talk, and very often lies, even about what he is doing or intends to do.  That's been true since he broke into political awareness when he got lots of attention questioning President Obama's birthplace.  He knows that the follow-up story (if it ever appears) won't get as much attention, and anyway he's said or done something else outrageous to blot out everything else.

He leaves the details to others, most obvious his Lord High Executioner (as the now former Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson calls him), Elon Musk.  But others have identified the Chaos whisperer in the White House as Stephen Miller, an extreme right ideologue to the point of fascist racism.  Naturally he is in charge of immigration policy, but he does much more than that. It's suggested he is the real chief of staff. I look at photos and video of him and I clearly see Roy Cohn, once Joe McCarthy's right hand man and a personal mentor to Chaos himself.  It's especially clear in those dead eyes.  He is the voice of evil behind the Chaos.

If there is any surprise in the Chaos cabinet, it is secretary of state Rubio, who is proving to be a lot more fascistic than expected.  He vociferously defends arbitrarily disappearing people, even to El Salvador hellhole prisons, and reportedly has instructed state department employees to inform on each other if any "anti-Christian" views are expressed.

 And I cannot tell you how personally painful it is to me to observe the actions and hear the words of the son of a political figure I deeply admired and still mourn.  I still consider myself a Robert Kennedy Democrat, though now I have to add "senior" to the name. 

It was not hard to see what was coming, at least in outline.  It's why I re-named him Chaos even before he took office.  But the extent of it, and the daily barrage of ever more basic attacks on the foundations of this democracy, the stability of this country and the world, continue to escalate the shock. 

 Among the latest, this regime is admittedly declaring living people as dead.  Declaring them dead to Social Security, which is a direct attack on their identities, making them non-persons, unable to work or bank or anything that requires the Social Security number.  It is an SS attack on Social Security, and the victims--as with other lawless Hitlerian moves, are alleged immigrants. But who believes they will stop there.

This chaos attacks the foundations of the national and world economy as well as our government and its functions.  For working economies need stability.  Nobody is going to invest in chaos.  The stability of US government bonds (for example) has been a consistent strength through every crisis, until now.  Nobody knows what the rules are anymore, or if there are any.  Just as nobody knows what the tariffs are or will be, or who or what is exempt. (Over the weekend various members of the administration have had different though equally tortured explanations of the technology exceptions that do or do not exist.)

It is impossible to even find something that Chaos has not wounded or destroyed: support for education, science crucial in many ways, for veterans, disabled and elders on Social Security, for healthcare, and for immigrants and asylum seekers or anyone on a visa.  For the government's own ability to collect the taxes that supports it. For equal justice under the law, and several of the Bill of Rights. They used force of arms to destroy a little non-governmental agency whose sole purpose was to help resolve dangerous disputes and foster peace in the world.

 By stopping food and medical help to poor and distant countries, and with cuts to such programs and offices as those monitoring cyber warfare from abroad, as well as scary incompetence, they have made  America less safe and more vulnerable in the world.

To my knowledge no one else has said this yet but me, so I will repeat it once more: No enemy--in war, terrorism, cold war, subversion or economic attack--has done more damage to the US government than Chaos has in less than three months, and is continuing to do.  Though the rest of the world will feel damage from tariffs and so on, it will not be as devastating as the damage to the United States.

7.  What We're Not Talking About

The daily assault of devastation is all but impossible to keep up with, let alone absorb in any way.  But among the things we are no longer talking about is abortion.  Anti-abortion laws and policies in various states are just as oppressive, cruel and demented, and women and families continue to suffer because of them.  But women and the issue of abortion did not win the election for Kamala Harris, so there is silence.  Besides, it's probably too "woke" to mention.

But the obvious thing we aren't talking about is the onrushing catastrophe of climate distortion, the single greatest threat to the future. Chaos is working with vicious intent to reverse the Biden administrations efforts, which qualified as a good start and surprisingly effective. Chaos is intent on doing as much additional environmental damage as possible.  And once again, climate distortion doesn't exist by edict of King Chaos.

Unfortunately it does exist. Gathering and disseminating information--even about the weather--is curtailed or forbidden at the US federal level, but many states and lots of other countries are doing it. And the onrushing is rushing even faster.  The effects soon will be unignorable, and we will be less prepared to deal with them.  And less able to even try to save the future from the end of life as we know it.  But we don't talk about that.  How could we?  Other catastrophe seems much nearer.  

But some people will be talking about it: at the San Francisco Climate Week gatherings, beginning next weekend.

This is part 2 of 2.  Part 1 is here.