Trojan Horse.

Morning, Threaders, Threadheads, and all in between. Black coffee in the storm.

Secular.

The behavior free from religious or spiritual beliefs that guarantees every religion the right to exist is often considered by religious people a negative attitude, more so if they are extreme believers. Usually they complain about it by claiming the exact opposite of what it does, accusing it of restricting religious activity. Bullocks.

Secularism is the umpire that prevents religions from fighting each other to the death in search of hegemonic purity, as defined in each of their holy books. The restrictions it imposes on religions are of political nature, meant to allow each to thrive equally without interfering with the policies society lives by as a whole. The only activity secularism restricts from religions is political activity, something one would expect postmodernists to cheer.

The enthusiastic deconstruction of norms and standards à la Derrida, initiated by the dawn of the last century, misjudged the back door built in the anti binary construct that would allow for clever agents to infiltrate it and corrode it from within: relativism. But they were directed at Western institutions they identified as culprits in the making of an unbalanced world, such as colonial power and Christianity (the twin enfant terribles behind the creation of the Third World).

The basic tenets of postmodernism crumbled under the weight and influence of relativism as soon as it became cultural. Cultural relativism erased every shred of subjectivism and created a sense of cultural identity far from diverse and inclusive, quite the opposite. The exact same things condemned and excised from Western thought were not only permissible but celebrated in the societies Europeans initially dominated and later made up by drawing lines on maps.

Because those societies were victims of modern Europe, they got a pass on modernity itself and were allowed to fester in medieval limbo as a reward for the suffering and injustice initiated by the Crusades and perpetuated by each Cruise missile and drone strike, precision be damned. XXI century warfare still has not shrugged the previous age bellicisms and, of course, all “resistance” is justified and objectively condoned. Relatively speaking, of course.

Postmodernism became a regressive movement through the excesses of cultural relativism that fights with equal fervor the teaching of Christian and Jewish values and the attempts to exclude Muslim ones from academia. The same movement that sought to remove the sword from Christianity (and Judaism) places it firmly and joyfully in the hands of Islam, oblivious to the fact it will undoubtedly be used to strike it down. Cultural relativism is the well fitting suicide vest of the West.

This reality has yet to find an objective secular response that both denounces it and rejects it as inevitable. Like the idiotic protestors who cosplay suicide bombers with fake explosives they believe the suicide vest they strapped to themselves won’t explode. It’s just a prop to get the point across, not a real thing. And yet, all these mostly atheist activists are doing is to glorify and promote the end of what allows them to foolishly celebrate their own demise.

They became what they should despise and are actively destroying the secular societies that gave them freedom of speech as they uphold the exact opposite values like their lives depend on it while walking voluntarily towards their own deaths. A death cult has managed to instill its ideal into those who started out to destroy the very notion of cultists in our society. The back door is wide open and they’re walking right through it.

As we face the challenges posed by an increasingly authoritarian regime, and the threats to our very lives posed by their insanity, we have to confront this reality without reservations. The best way to do it is to recognize cultural relativism as the Trojan Horse it is. Yes, we cheered it and brought it inside our walls ourselves but it’s not too late to destroy it. Objectively.

Is that all there is?

Morning, Threaders, Threadheads, and all in between. More coffee.

Mr. Booker goes to Washington.

25 hours and 4 minutes was what it took for a black Senator to break the previous record for filibustering, held by segregationist Strom Thurmond since 1957, who used it to try to stop the Civil Rights Act that year. Cory Booker did a man’s job and stood up for all of us. What was achieved?

At the 24 hour 19 minute mark, Chuck Schumer interrupted Booker for a question, which Booker initially denied, but good old Chuck didn’t yield and asked if he knew Thurmond’s record had been broken to thunderous applause in the chamber. It was a moment worthy of recognition. Throughout the filibuster many Democratic Senators chipped in with questions, prefaced by deserved words of gratitude and praise for Booker, lauding him as an example to follow.

Cory Booker’s historic filibuster will go down in Congress records as a victory of the black man over the segregationist, right versus wrong, as it should. Unlike the infamous previous record, however, the procedure it broke for the amount of time it lasted will not deserve more than a footnote, since he was not really filibustering the passage of a bill, rather making use of his time to raise awareness to the state of our nation under this administration.

Basically, he stopped the Senate’s “business” for 25 hours and 4 minutes, and in doing so sparked the imagination of people who have been demanding action from Congress to stand up for them. It was a big deal. We need Congress Democrats to stand up like he did, more and more. Will they? I hope so. I hope this extraordinary feat leads to more than an incentive to break his record, like some isolated sports statistic. A curiosity in the Guinness Book of Records.

Although I appreciate the momentousness of the occasion, I couldn’t help but to cringe hearing Shumer’s schmuck voice asking that; asking if Booker realized he just made the Guinness Book. It made it look like that’s all there was to it. And if that’s all there is, like Peggy Lee sang, let’s break out the booze and have a ball. Right? The first thing that happened in the Senate right after Booker’s record breaking speech was the vote to confirm Matt Whitaker as ambassador to NATO.

That was the “business” Booker’s filibuster was holding: to confirm the “toilet guy” as our representative in NATO. Cloture had already been voted on before without noticeable opposition, the vote itself got unanimous consent to proceed. Just another missed opportunity to delay and obstruct the actions of this administration. The footnote no one will notice under Cory Booker’s historic achievement; not exactly the Civil Rights Act of 1957, is it.

Whitaker’s confirmation got a yes vote from the Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, while another Democrat, Pat Murray, didn’t vote. Just business as usual in the US Senate, after a 25 hour stand for what is right. Does it matter? After last night’s Florida election for the House of Representatives, when the chance to flip two seats was unsurprisingly lost, looks like we’re in the same place, even if Wisconsin saved the night, to Elon Musk’s chagrin.

Cory Booker’s timing was picked to coincide with those elections and it captured national attention and headlines for the duration. It was not used to stall or oppose any landmark legislation but ALL legislative processes that enable this administration’s wrecking ball policies. It can and should be used every single time, whether the order of business is cutting Medicaid or confirming some “toilet guy” to a government position. It doesn’t matter. Every single time.

Cory Booker didn’t just find out some extraordinary way to interfere with Senate business. It was there to be used each time another sycophant was confirmed. It was not. Will it be used again? Will Democrats learn to use it at every turn, or will they sit around and wait for 2026 as Schumer proposed, with an occasional vote in favor of the other side? The 25 hour filibuster was an extraordinary use of an ordinary Congress rule: as long as a Senator holds the floor nothing else matters.

In an age of advertising political campaigns, where fancy buses and merchandising, tv ads and more and more open bribery substitute policy and ideas, it’s essential to shine a bright light on the issues people are voting for.  Capturing the news cycle attention for extended periods of time while pursuing that objective is a very effective way of doing just that. That is the lesson Booker learned from John Lewis. That’s the necessary good trouble we need.

The people are grateful for Cory Booker’s exceptional action and are now more galvanized. One can hope Congress Democrats learn from it and choose, like him, to take a stand whenever they can, for as long as possible, every single time. Time will tell. Time we unfortunately don’t have plenty of. Here’s hoping this is not all there is.

Fear.

Another Sunday, Threaders, Threadheads, and all in between. Coffee is always black.

Sting’s “Nothing like the Sun” came out in 1987. I had the vinyl. Among its songs was “They Dance Alone”. It immediately struck me for what it was. I had experienced a fascist dictatorship first hand as a child and witnessed fear in the eyes of grownups. The fear of disappearing.

Back then, before the military coup turned popular revolution of 1974, the entity in charge of controlling and crushing dissent was the infamous PIDE (the hated Portuguese acronym for State Defense International Police). Their station in Porto, where I was born, was situated next to one of the city’s largest cemeteries and rumor had it there was a tunnel between the two, along which the bodies of arrested dissenters were taken to unmarked graves in the dead of night.

Renamed DGS (Directorate-General of Security) in 1968, PIDE/DGS is to this day remembered for its cruelty and fanaticism. On April 25, 1974, the day of the coup that ended 48 years of fascism in Portugal, the only fatal casualties were four civilians shot by PIDE agents who opened fire from inside the secret police headquarters in Lisbon, surrounded by the armed forces movement. One agent was also shot dead. I can’t help to think about our country and what’s happening with ICE.

More than any other agency connected to Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has that same nasty sound that Directorate-General of Security had. Very euphemistic and ominous. And more and more ambiguous, overreaching, and secretive. While it is true that immigration requires lawful control and management, the fact that ordinary law enforcement agencies, from the border to our cities, were deemed ineffective to deal with it always worried me.

The creation of ICE in 2003 was a direct consequence of 9/11. As many of the provisions of the Patriot Act, the ones in the Homeland Security Act were far too ambitious, inadequate, and open ended. We suffer to this day from those laws allegedly unintended consequences. I don’t believe they were unintended. They were stepping stones to reach the point we’re at today and by not recognizing them as such, and correcting them when we could, we opened the door to this reality.

Like many other extreme measures supposed to increase our “security”, ICE’s birth was made possible out of fear. Someone really bad was plotting our destruction, from within and from outside, and somehow the existing law enforcement agencies (which in our case were already some of the largest and well equipped in the world) were not enough to handle it. “Special measures” were required. Since its inception, many have called for the extinction of ICE. They were correct.

Like the defunct Portuguese “State Defense” police, initially meant to keep bad actors away from our borders, I predict ICE will morph into a broader “Directorate-General of Security”, whatever they choose to call it, to try and hide its revealed euphemism and unlawful acts in a new coat of paint at the same time its mission is expanded from immigration control to actual population control, regardless of status. The “enemy within” will in fact be us. All of us.

As expected, the people being taken off the streets as they go about their lives, going out to meet friends or taking out the trash, went from immigrants to legal residents and pretty soon naturalized citizens. Their common traits are not where they are from; they’re from everywhere, from Latin America to the Middle East, from Canada to Russia. They only have one thing in common: dissent in any form. Real or perceived dissent. It doesn’t matter.

We’re not Pinochet’s Chile yet, or Salazar’s Portugal, but we’re moving fast towards it. The rule of law is already gone from the actions taken by ICE; there are no warrants, no probable cause brought to a judge that justifies them. The proof is some of its arrests are foiled by mere bystanders who choose to oppose them and defy them. Fear is not great enough yet, but it’s growing. We can’t allow it.

The images of people being snatched off the street are meant to grow that fear; to make us run our blinders shut and stay home, hoping they won’t knock on our doors, and thankful they don’t. They don’t have warrants, they have screenshots or copies of words spoken against the government’s authority. It doesn’t matter what the words really mean, there is no process due to establish it. The mere perception is enough. The message is clear: mind what you say.

In the mix of these words are some that cause us repulsion, some that we sympathize with, others we have no particular feelings about. But they all have dissenting qualities and that is why they are mixed together, regardless of who wrote or said them. Soon the fear will grow into what we allow ourselves to say or write. Don’t let it. Each word left unsaid is a light that goes out and permits darkness to expand. Keep talking about it; writing about it. It’s important.

The changes we need will only happen if we keep fighting for them; if we deny fear to take hold. Don’t let it get to the point Chile or Portugal once did. We still can stop it. We must stop it. Don’t be afraid.

“One day we'll dance on their graves; one day we'll sing our freedom. One day we'll laugh in our joy, and we'll dance.”

April 5 is coming.

Nuance asks for Clarity first.

Morning, Threaders, Threadheads, and all in between. Coffee helps.

“The whole world must see that Israel must exist and has the right to exist, and is one of the great outposts of democracy in the world.”

MLK Jr., October, 1967

These words are undeniably from MLK Jr. himself. You can see him saying them in footage from an interview. And yet…

When King spoke those words only three years had passed since the notion of a Palestinian nationality was crafted by an Egyptian named Yasser Arafat. At the height of the civil rights movement, the American Jewish community supported it and joined in out of their identification with the plight of Black Americans. This connection has always been present and many have tried to sever it from the start.

Those who claim MLK Jr. “didn’t mean what he said” point to the controversial “Letter to an Anti-Zionist Friend”, attributed to King but disputed as verifiably his. Although in this letter the idea of anti-Zionism being nothing but antisemitism is approached, they quickly jump to the conclusion that, since there was an effort to “falsify” King’s ideas on the matter, what he demonstrably said didn’t mean what it seems to.

The Soviet Era campaign against Israel, completed with the USSR express support for Arafat’s Fatah, later not so overtly given by virtue of Black September, was in its early years back in 1967. King also tied his views on the Soviet Union with the fight of the Jewish people for survival: “We cannot sit complacently by the wayside while our Jewish brothers in the Soviet Union face the possible extinction of their cultural and spiritual life”, he stated clearly.

All this to say that anytime you see people talking about MLK Jr. as a defender of Palestinian rights against Israel’s right to exist they always do so conditionally, arguing he wouldn’t show any support for Israel had he lived longer or was alive today. “But did he support Israel in the war? Why didn’t he visit Israel?” These questions emerge even in Harvard papers who advocate for a more nuanced approach to King’s views on Israel and Palestine.

It’s almost as if, unable to sever the ties between the struggle of MLK Jr. and that of the Jewish people, they take refuge in nuance as a first step to proclaim he would say different had he the chance to see the whole picture today. Nuance isn’t the problem; it never was. The problem, to these people, is clarity. Like Arafat, they squirm in the corners they back themselves into, forced to admit Israel exists, only to break out in favor of a one Arab state where the Jewish state lives.

We still struggle with the notion of systemic racism but at least that fact has left the fringes of political discourse and finally took center stage. Not so with antisemitism. And yet, any Jew will probably tell you they feel like Mohamed Ali when he described the reality of life in America for black people. A thousand friendly snakes will not shield them from the ten thousand rushing towards the open door. Like the black man, the Jew’s best course of action is to close the door.

Which brings us to “Islamophobia”. While racism and antisemitism are openly regarded as “gross exaggerations” of systemic oppression, “Islamophobia” is more often than not described as an undeniable reality, not underlying but at the very surface of our society, not just systemic but especially endemic. “Everyone knows that”. And yet, like the snakes in Ali’s analogy, what are we, Westerners, supposed to do as we watch ten thousand Muslims rushing towards our door?

While all evidence points to most ten thousand being hateful and fundamentally engaged in a Da’wah dressed Jihad, there’s the case to be made for the one thousand who are modernists and capable of coexisting with us. But like Mohamed Ali said, they all look alike. Better close the door. The parallel with the snake analogy breaks here, when applied to fundamentalist Islam. What became systemic, in Western societies, was the belief Islam is a religion of peace.

Just as it became norm to justify the visible traits of hegemonic theocracy in Islamic societies as “respectable cultural features” at the exact same time we rebel against the same regarding Christian (and Jewish/Israeli) societies. The Achilles heel of the State of Israel is its strength: to this day, the effort to build a modern, secular, inclusive, democratic society goes on in Israel. Another imperfect democracy. “Shocking”, I know.

Because of the unique Jewish identity, the eternal mix between religion and nationality illustrated by the obstacles preventing Israel from adopting a form of Constitutional structure, our efforts to superimpose Western blueprints on Israel are doomed to fail. The more you dive into it, the more a two state solution becomes obvious. And yet, despite all this, Arab Israelis consider themselves to live better lives than most Arabs in their own countries.

That fact, which is not contradictory of the differences between the lives of Jewish and Arab Israelis, is hardly mentioned in the West. Just like the ongoing demonstrations of Palestinians against Hamas in Gaza are conveniently ignored in the news. Nuance is not the enemy: clarity is. Hamas is a terrorist organization. Israel has the right to exist. Making pro Palestinian supporters agree to such simple truths is like pulling teeth.

To Black Americans, same as to Jewish Americans, the ten thousand snakes are a clear and present danger. They can feel it in their bones. To most of the rest of us, it is finally becoming clear how that feels like, as we close the door ourselves on our very own families and friends who turned out to be among the hateful, although they look just like us. Perhaps now clarity will prevail before nuance can be invoked. Nuance asks for clarity first. We should be wise to understand this.

“I Don’t Recall.”

“I don’t recall.”

Tulsi Gabbard, DNI, and John Ratcliffe, CIA director, don’t recall. They also can’t say or don’t know. Sure, Signal is encrypted and has been in use by the CIA. How? That’s worth looking into, but judging by an earlier Pentagon warning against the use of that end-to-end encrypted app (we all have access to) it is safe to assume the DOD uses it as well. At least until the warning was issued.

Obviously, whatever the parameters for using Signal in Defense and Intelligence business were (are?) they don’t involve discussing matters not approved for public knowledge. That’s the point here, that transcends the classification of the matters discussed. As senator Mark Kelly pointed out, during the Select Committee on Intelligence Hearing this morning, “controlled unclassified information” is not admitted on unsecured platforms. Both Gabbard and Ratcliffe were unaware of this.

For a moment they didn’t even seem to understand what controlled unclassified information is, let alone the protocols for its discussion over communication platforms. They also seemed confused about the level of classification of the matters discussed in the so called “Houthi Signal chat group”. They were presented information regarding a projected military operation over an unsecured platform and their reaction to it was that it must be unclassified.

Think about this for a minute. A projected military operation is being discussed over unsecured comms and, because the Secretary of Defense and a National Security advisor are on it, this information is assumed as not classified. Now, pretending we are ignorant and consider any plans to attack a foreign country, in particular when such attack is imminent, as unclassified information, our common sense would at least realize it is not approved for disclosure over unsecured lines.

The reason for it is obvious to any six year old, but apparently not to the heads of the DNI or the CIA, never mind the Secretary of Defense. As I write these words, the declassification by magical thinking justification is already making its way to the news, but that doesn’t include controlled unclassified information. Although I will not be surprised if the ability to remove control from such material can also happen by magically thinking about it.

All these incredibly stupid excuses and arguments defending what is possibly the worst intelligence self inflicted breach in our history only reveal the level of incompetence that exists at the highest levels of our government. Plus their relentless impulse to lie. Gabbard and Ratcliffe may be incompetent but they surely are capable of remembering details regarding a high level conversation about an attack on another country 10 days ago.

To believe otherwise and assume that they actually “don’t recall” such details only means they are totally inept to perform their jobs at the top of the intelligence community. Even the uniformed officers in that hearing couldn’t bring themselves to answer simple direct questions for fear of appearing critical of the event at hand. They did look very uncomfortable, though. At least they didn’t use “I don’t recall” in their illusive answers.

I know what to expect from all this. Nothing. I don’t expect anyone to be fired; I don’t expect Signal to stop being used like this; I don’t expect any meaningful results from a hypothetical FBI investigation I doubt will even happen, except maybe in a paper covered in random words of exoneration, maybe followed by another hearing with similar results. The Secretary of Defense appears to be drunk half the time and that’s acceptable. Why should anything happen now?

These hearings will not make this government do anything. The courts are barely functioning; do you really think Congress will do something about this that will force the Executive to “see the error of their ways”? Not going to happen. But hearings like this serve a very important purpose. They show the country what is going on and who these people really are. The government will do nothing. Congress will do nothing. But the country might. The country should.

Under God on Sundays.

Morning, Threaders, Threadheads, and all in between. Coffee in a cold Spring Sunday.

True believers.

Imagine a world where Christian communities and their religious leaders tried to impose their system of beliefs upon others. Wait… Just look out the window; you don’t have to imagine it. It’s happening right here. It’s called theocracy and it’s being espoused by many politicians. It hides in plain sight.

While the technocrats may be atheists, for the most part, they provide cover for the religious motivations of the fascist kleptocrats who are pushing the theocratic agenda. They are all wrapped into one, as long as their interests align, but the truth is the religious aspects of their agenda, although mingled with more mundane ones, are obvious. From abortion to gay marriage, from the women’s right to vote to denying transgender expression, they try to impose their views on others.

Western societies have found their way to secular living, relegating our predominant religion to the personal sphere but, like everything else prone to excesses, the separation of church and state needs constant scrutiny and checks to prevent the insidious return to a religion based political system, in which the law is subjected to the interpretation of “holy scripture”. In 1954 the words “under God” were added to the pledge of allegiance.

Although it may be argued that each individual may be thinking of their own God when saying it, the implication is the nation is united under one God, even if “one” is missing from the text. It was a small step destined to become a giant leap for Christianity in the United States. You can decline to end your swearing in a court of law by stating “so help me God” if you’re not religious, or affirm your oath of office on something other than a bible, but that’s an individual perk.

Collectively, we remain “one nation under (one) God”. Many of us say the pledge of allegiance in the morning and join a pro choice rally in the afternoon, oblivious to this fact. As if being a Christian is no longer a matter of faith or it allows for a selective approach to the dogmas upon which religion is founded. Millions of people in the West have become accustomed to calling themselves Christians because they attend mass on Sunday. Basically that’s what “under God” means to them.

This subconscious complicity in the acceptance of religion into the political fabric of Western societies not only undermines the separation of church and state but it allows the skewed perspective many have of what religion itself is and, by extension, projects that perspective onto all religions, aided and abetted by notions of tolerance that are as misguided as “under God on Sundays” is.

This explains not why so many have no problem taking to the streets in support of those whose religion has achieved political predominance, but it does explain why many others who don’t participate in such activities still accept them as protected speech. They often excuse those excesses as cultural features to be respected. Sure enough, 9 out of 10 times they do demonstrate against the excesses of “their religion”, against the God they live “under”, even if just on Sundays.

Not even considering the violence extreme Christian beliefs provokes, which is very small when compared to the one provoked by extreme Islamic beliefs, the fact many oppose a Christian take over of of our society at the exact same time they promote Sharia Law abiding systems is astounding. How many abortion clinics were bombed? How many doctors who provided abortion were murdered? The violent manifestation of Christian extremism is never excused by “cultural norms”.

The vast majority of Christians condemns those terrorist actions by people who share their religion because they think they can do that without sharing their beliefs. The Sunday church goers and the self flagellating fanatics are not the same and yet they’re all Christians. The misconception of what religion means and actually is makes us tolerate excessive manifestations that eventually lead to the bombing of abortion clinics or legislation meant to extinguish them.

The idea there is an Islamic counterpart to our Sunday morning Christianity is preposterous, but that is exactly what rests on the Western subconscious tolerance for the intolerable. We project our idea of religion onto others and when that becomes ridiculously impossible we turn to “cultural differences” as an excuse. As if we should tolerate a culture that kept the practice of human sacrifice for hundreds of years up to this day.

Our colonial guilt runs so deep that we see the defense of our highest moral values as perverse as that of our worst amoral ideals. This is why otherwise perfectly rational people can’t bring themselves to condemn the very same things in others they so clearly oppose in themselves. Unfortunately, this lack of moral courage and clarity affects some of the politicians who are at the forefront of the fight against the rise of fascism.

Knowing this and the stakes we are up against we, who see both, must find a way to work in this environment, together with them. Be that as it may, we cannot make excuses for them or pretend it’s not a dangerous path to take. We need to make clear, through our words and our deeds, that no extreme religious beliefs are acceptable and no mix between religion and politics can be tolerated. This includes faith based actions in a public context. Like praying.

These evangelical religious rituals we are witnessing in the White House are the exact same as those performed by rows of believers lined up on the street praying towards Mecca. They are both intolerable insertions of religion in the public sphere, meant to normalize and impose the practice of religious rituals in public as an integral part of society. The imposition of religious beliefs will follow. If you oppose some you must oppose all, especially if you only go to church on Sunday.

The Last of Us.

Morning, Threaders, Threadheads, and all in between. Black is the coffee.

First they came for…

Life was perhaps simpler when Martin Niemöller wrote that poem. They don’t ask for papers anymore; they ask for phones. Who did they come for first? Do you remember? Was it the LGBTQ? Or the transgender? Or the Press? Or the immigrants? Does it matter?

Our country is collapsing into fascism while some wait for elections. Some won’t have to wait long; April 1 is around the corner. We will see what happens, though I expect any result favorable to Democrats to be contested, no matter the margins. Although we are not a declared fascist dictatorship we are already living in one. The collapse is imminent and the signs are everywhere. If by some miracle the House of Representatives turns Democrat I predict Martial Law will follow.

What was it Stephen Miller said? “A growing portion of the hard left has been violently radicalized. The left must never be returned to a position of national power.” He’s not joking. What can they do to stop us? Everything they want. “No District Court Judge, or any Judge, can assume the duties of the President of the United States. Only Crime and Chaos would result.” That’s a direct quote from our new dictator. So you can stop guessing who they came after first.

I am not leaving the US. I am a naturalized citizen. My rights mean nothing. I am a prisoner in my own country. They came for many before they came for me; I tried to warn you, I did what I could and it wasn’t enough. I am confined to these words, since my reality prevents me from doing much else. I wish I could take to the streets and bring you with me, but I can’t. I wish you could feel my pain each time I ask you to go out and fight when all I can do is this.

Yet this is enough to put me in as much danger as those on the streets. Perhaps even more. It doesn’t matter who they came for first; they’re coming for us now, no matter who we are. Speaking up against the government is no longer all it takes: you’re not even allowed the right to think against it by writing against it. We who write our words on our phones are all modern versions of Anne Frank, locked in our country’s attic. At least that’s what it feels like to me.

Not being Jewish, I feel I must apologize for the analogy, and yet it is perhaps the fact I am practically confined to my home that brings it to mind, as I watch from the window the world falling into pieces outside. I keep writing my thoughts knowing similar thoughts of others are getting them thrown in dark places as they get caught going about their lives. One day soon they may break into my attic, shackle my hands and feet and put me away. My papers will not matter. My phone will.

My family will be abandoned to the charity of strangers, without me, and unable to do much on my behalf. And still I keep my diary updated, with the rage born of not being able to do much else. My thoughts are my crime, I am well aware, but I cannot keep them to myself. I never did. I am a serial thought criminal and I am conscious of what that means. For now, as I and others write in the illusion of safety provided by our attics, confinement may not feel that bad, but it is.

Thousands who live without these constraints are able to do more and go out to protest, as they should; they must turn to millions. Still they are barely protected by rights being eroded more and more each day. And they certainly have none if they are foolish enough to leave the country and try to come back, especially if they are not white born citizens. That’s also an illusion. It won’t last long. It may not matter who they came for first, but it’s obvious who they will come for last.

If like me you are white of European descent, born or naturalized citizen, that would be who. There will be no one left to speak up for us. Our privilege is our weapon: it allows us to stay in the fight longer, to speak louder, even if our days are numbered. Don’t waste that advantage and do the best you can with it while it lasts. Freedom of speech may be under attack but it is the process we are due that is being taken away. That is the existential threat we face as a democracy.

The erosion of Justice is happening before our eyes. Your rights mean nothing: if you find yourself shackled like Hannibal Lecter and thrown into a cell with no food and water, even if you are lucky to have a high profile lawyer take your case, chances are you will remain in that hole for weeks, months, before the courts can rescue you. Assuming they can still rescue you. This is why we shouldn’t be cheering for people who appear to deserve being penalized to be put away like this.

Sure, there are foreign students who through their actions deserve losing their privileges. Sure there are Hispanic gang members that have no place running free on our streets. But when you cheer for their disappearance without due process you are ignoring the fact others who deserve none of that are being punished the same way. And there’s no longer the matter of you possibly being next. You WILL be next. You ARE next, already.

Few people in Congress act like they know this to be true. Most are in denial, still unsure where it is we are. One day we are close to a crisis, the next we’re in a crisis… They say whatever seems to attract more people to “chip in”, like they believe money and a privileged seat will save them. Them. Not us. Our politicians are running for their panic rooms and abandoning us to the slaughter. They think they will be safe inside and one day this will be over and they can come out.

With few exceptions, we have been abandoned. Even those few who speak up don’t realize what’s at stake and if they do they are still hesitant to say it clearly. The specter of civil war models their message. They are afraid. Only one thing can save us now: massive peaceful civil disobedience. Unless you want a war. Then go ahead and start blowing shit up. Good luck with that. In case you missed it, the military won’t save you, so take up arms at your own peril.

The time to rise up peacefully came already. Each day we don’t is a missed opportunity to fix this mess our country became. When will that happen? Today, I hope. Tomorrow, maybe. It’s never too late, but the more we hesitate the more harm will come. This is it, my friends. Every day, ordinary people are being empowered to act upon their worst instincts, guided by their own cruelty, fear, or lack of moral courage. They are not many, but they are all in the right places.

They are in Congress, in government, in the DOJ and the DOD, all the way down to the one holding your phone at a point of entry and deciding to shackle you and put you away as an enemy of the state. There’s them and there’s us. We may be run by fascists but there’s too many of us to be run over if we rise. We can do that or we can wait as they pick us up, one by one. I made my choice long ago. Time for you to choose. What are you prepared to do?

Resist & Oppose!

Imminent Collapse.

Hump day is here, Threaders, Threadheads, and all in between. So is coffee.

Collapsing.

I can’t believe there are still people who think we are not in a Constitutional crisis. That started on January 20, thriends. We are now in the collapsing stage. The one that needs to happen before the collapse. And it’s going down faster than most expected.

How many times were we warned about the three conditions for any authoritarian regime to take control? First, get the Executive branch and expand its powers; second, make the Legislative branch irrelevant by neutralizing its oversight, bypassing its authority to approve laws or turn it into a rubber stamp for those advanced by the Executive; third, turn Justice into an arm of its own designs, ignore the courts, criminalize dissenting judges, and dismantle the Judicial branch.

We’ve been on phase three for a while and it’s getting worse. The pathetic excuse Schumer used for allowing the CR to pass in exchange for nothing is the courts wouldn’t be able to work during a shutdown and the Executive would go unchallenged for the duration. The challenges courts pose the Executive have been ignored, downplayed, and are now being openly opposed by none other than the Department of Justice itself. For Justice to prevail it must be respected.

What Schumer pretends to ignore (he doesn’t, he’s just banking on his privilege) is this government has no respect for Justice. No one, other than the Executive branch, can uphold the law. We reached the point in this crisis where Justice is no longer defined by the courts but by its department, one that has declared all judicial actions against the government illegal. The collapse has begun. From now on, only the Executive has the power to decide what is legal.

As Justice crumbles around us, issuing last minute desperate rulings, these are slow walked into execution, namely the ones supposed to reinstate agencies that by now are all but wiped out. Sure, get everyone back to work at USAID may sound good but the truth is USAID is gone and it would take many months to get it back to where it was the day DOGE walked through their doors. Any agency affected by its wrecking ball requires two things to get back to work: will and competence.

The heads of the erased departments now answer to DOGE, even reinstated ones. The agencies’ assets are either gone or extremely damaged. To repair and rebuild would require a full throttle effort by senior staff, backed by the provider of the means necessary, which includes a lot of money. Ordinarily, that task would be fulfilled by Congress. No more. The provider of the conditions necessary for rebuilding the wrecked agencies is the Executive now. Through DOGE.

In the illusion these are ordinary times for Justice that Schumer and others want to live in, these obstacles would be swiftly handled by the courts through follow up rulings of contempt and orders of expedited execution, enforced by heavy penalties, from fines to incarceration. Considering the only way to enforce these measures is by the DOJ’s ability to do so, that’s not going to happen. On the contrary: any judges willing to order those measures may find the DOJ against them.

All this not even considering the time wasted on appeals and bureaucratic stonewalling, like hiring back people and placing them in empty buildings with nothing to work with. Eventually, after months of accumulated damage and harm, each of these cases will arrive at the Supreme Court. Remember how TFG thanked Roberts on a hot mic during the Joint Session? That may have been too much for two Justices: Roberts and Barret. Yes, they are corrupt shills but don’t advertise it publicly.

On top of that blatant display of corruption caught by a hot mic, the SCOTUS members enjoy their power very much and now some are realizing that power is becoming useless. Roberts recent statement regarding TFG’s intention to impeach judges who oppose him was a shy attempt to take that power back but it’s too little, too late. They gave it away when they declared presidents are immune to the rule of law, the day Sottomayor feared for our democracy.

We will see Roberts and Barret, perhaps even Kavanaugh, joining the liberal justices in opinions and rulings meant to push back against TFG. His reaction will be the same as it has been: he will take to SM and call them “communists” and will use his immune power to dare them with two words: “make me”. While Pam Bondi smiles and waves behind him. The crisis has turned to the collapsing of our Constitution. It’s falling to the ground.

Who can stop it? Only we can. While most of our elected representatives spend their time in panels and press conferences, wishing this will go away on its own, dreaming of the day TFG is gone and the GOP will return to its “good old days”, we must take to the streets. Spring is here. It’s time to head to Washington DC by the tens of thousands and keep doing it until we are heard. What should we demand? The end of this government and the creation of an interim administration.

New elections run by a temporary government while Justice takes over and prosecutes all actors involved in this coup, who will obviously not be a part of it. What else is there to demand? A remake of 2024 with TFG running for a third term and Musk’s hackers deep into our electoral system? No. We must demand the end of this madness and a new beginning. The interim administration must create exceptional measures to guarantee everyone can vote freely.

From making sure the election is run properly to instituting an exceptional period for voting, similar to a holiday, together with early voting and mail in voting. And no more old rules. Every seat in Congress would get a reboot. Everybody would need to run for office again. Can it be done? Is it too much to ask? It can be done. It’s not too much to ask. Let’s take to the streets by the hundreds of thousands and find out who is with us. Time to reboot.

Resist & Oppose!

Not like us.

Morning, Threaders, Threadheads, and all in between. Lots of coffee. Black.

Not like us.

Following the divide in the Democratic Party after the shameful action of 10 of its senators, another looms large over our ranks. A much more dangerous one. It is being fostered by the usual horse shoe ends that nearly meet. We should be aware of it and prepare for it.

Democracy’s weaknesses are exploited by the extreme right and the extreme left with equal enthusiasm; without our pushback they will inevitably break through and prevail. They are both not interested in dialogue or reason. And they both have their own interpretation of the law, which is resumed to making it the affair of the State through the imposition of its Order. No Law and Order, remember? Just Order is enough. Our opposition “leadership” has let us down so it’s up to us.

More and more we take to the streets. The protests are growing and won’t stop; there’s too much to protest against so the reasons for protesting lead to different organizing tactics, be it by Tesla dealerships or government agency buildings, from town halls to the federal Capitol itself. It’s inevitable. Permeating all these demonstrations is one method and one message: their peaceful nature and opposing the fascist government. These are fundamental to success.

So far there has been no violent clashes between protesters and police. Some arrests were made. Some BLM activists suggest this is due to the majority of the protesters being white, implying the police is less inclined to use rubber bullets and attack dogs on a white crowd. From the images I have seen this is nonsense; there are people of all colors at these protests, especially in urban areas. The reason is, in my view, so far they have been peaceful.

That will not last. As the protests grow the violent pushback will happen, regardless of their peaceful nature. This may not last either, as the results of the fascist policies become deadlier and people’s despair bigger. While we must resist the urge to turn violent we must prepare for that possibility. This is the essence of a revolt: at some point violence will erupt, either from the police (or military) sent to crush protesters or by protesters themselves.

On the government side, the justification for violence is based on its view of Order and its self proclaimed authority to protect it by any means necessary. That’s the hallmark of fascism. On the protesters side, becoming violent is the result of a reaction to more and more draconian government policies and the real harm that fuels their revolt. As our loved ones start to go hungry, get sick, homeless, and eventually die, revolt becomes violent.

The results of protesting peacefully are palpable and it works wonders when people take to the streets immediately, to prevent bad things from happening. We have seen some examples of this already. We have been assisted in these efforts by the courts, who provide a window of opportunity to protest against measures still in the works. This has been the goal of most demonstrations: to not obey in advance; to be proactive rather than reactive. And it’s working in some cases.

However, resistance is a reaction. We had our chance to proactively address the establishment of a fascist government. We failed. We can (and must) proactively resist its objectives but we are doomed to react to the existing government itself. For it is real. How that reaction is carried out, how resistance works, is not simple. The divisions we experienced, proactively resisting before fascism was installed, are now exacerbated.

The vast majority of us are fighting for our country and democracy. We are fighting to restore the rule of law. To make order rely on that law and to do so by making government work for the people. But some among us have no such interests. They are not fighting this government: they are fighting against the idea of democracy itself and any government that is based on it. In their minds, democracy has failed. Irredeemably.

How do I know this? They are the same people who had no problem going against the only way to prevent this from happening: voting for Kamala Harris. While most of them are brainless puppets they are still dangerous puppets, guided by those who created the “Abandon Harris” movement. They don’t have the courage of conviction because the true conviction of their puppeteers is not to free anything but to destroy everything. That’s not a good idea to present the people with.

So they wrap themselves in the disguise of human rights and they pick themselves a flawless escape goat: the Jews. Finally they got what they wanted: a fascist government at home. They can now pretend to fight fascism while promoting their own. At home as abroad, their goal is not to defeat fascist inspired governments. The playbook is the same for our country as it is for Israel. Destroy everything. This is a different fight; one between Christian/Jewish fascists and Islamic fascists.

I included Jewish right wing extremists because the Israeli government is trying to do exactly the same things our current government is trying to do: turn democracy into a shell that houses authoritarian rule. The subversion of the law, the search for absolute executive power, the diminishing of social freedoms and rights are parallel actions between the US and the Israeli governments. A large number of us, citizens of the US and Jewish people, fight against this.

Others around the world, who unlike Israel are not involved in a concrete war of survival, fall for the “human rights” disguise of those to whom human rights mean nothing and, with the excuse of Christian fascist governments they helped elect, once again promote their old aspirations: to defeat democracy from the left flank. Their logic is the same as those rushing us from the right flank. Once they both manage to destroy us they will find themselves face to face.

Be careful who you stand with against tyranny, for some are fighting for their own. You can recognize them because they bring Palestinian flags to protests meant to save America. They are the ones, given the chance, shouting “death” to the country and the democracy we are trying to save; just like Mahmoud Khalil did. A senior activist with Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), Khalil endorsed and promoted October 7 levels of violence as “resistance”.

Not just in Israel but right here, in the US. The fact Marco Rubio is an idiot who can’t articulate ideas past his master’s own doesn’t mean Khalil is a “nice young man” (he’s 31 years old, btw). In the same way, it is not freedom of speech that is under assault in Khalil’s case: it’s the rule of law itself. The same rule of law Khalil and his acolytes oppose. So beware who stands by your side. They will abandon you soon enough, just as they abandoned Harris.

Fight ALL fascists.

A Tale of Two Radicals.

Morning, Threaders, Threadheads, and all in between. Coffee in the rain again.

Consequences.

They are a result of our actions and choices up to and including what we say. We may have freedom of speech but speech is not free from consequences. We all have felt this in our lives, talking with friends. They get closer or cut us loose as a result of our speech. It defines us.

The more radical your speech becomes, the less reasonable friends you are left with and you tend to gravitate to other radical thinkers or attract them to you. Radical is a good word. We need radical thinking and radical change. It’s easy to embrace radical ideas in a world requiring radical change. “Rad” is cool and will remain cool as the fuel feeding the engine of change. It’s also a great risk.

Being radical effectively requires a lot of effort and critical thinking. What are we doing? How are we going to change the world? How far are we willing to go and, very important, what are the consequences? Being radical can also help us identify opposing radicals and learn from them. “Know your enemy” implies the ability to recognize their impulses and what they may lead to. Like looking in a mirror. Knowing our enemy both helps us to fight it and understand our own radicalism.

The benefits from studying a radical enemy are not just reflected on our strategy to defeat it, but especially on how we progress. How we avoid turning radical into extreme. How we allow room for reason in our strategic and tactical processes. Or not. It may well teach us to be like them. Fire with fire, and all that. Radicals can be reasoned with, extremists cannot.

Going back to one of my previous pieces, that’s the reason why Europeans were able to improve their democracies faster than we could, in America. And that extends to all the Americas with the notable exception of Canada, by virtue of its commonwealth nature. You see, social democracy was born and raised in the dialogue between two radicals, capitalism and socialism, while rejecting two extremes, fascism and communism. We never had that.

In the United States, especially since the 1980s, we were all capitalists. To say otherwise will, to this day, throw you into an imaginary field of dreams, bad dreams, where fascism and communism merge in the collective psyche as one: socialism. We never allowed socialism to emerge as a partner to be reasoned with and as a result we allowed the radical capitalist thought to slip into the realm of the extreme, where it withered and died alone, becoming this thing we have today.

We haven’t been capitalists for a very long time. We keep using the word but it lost its meaning. Without a middle class to support it and in the absence of a radical friend to make it realize its excesses, it morphed into a cult driven by kleptocrats and technocrats, where the first are insatiable thieves and the second their tool makers. They would eventually merge into kleptotechs for which Elon Musk is the poster child. The epitome of a system in which people are redundant.

The few kleptocratic fools who started the downfall of capitalism are waking up to this reality: without the knowledge to morph into kleptotechs they are becoming redundant as well, hostages to those who can, with the literal flip of a switch, make them disappear, like their beloved extreme capitalism did, smothered by the new greed: the one technology delivered, unimaginable at the time its predecessor was engendered by Reagan, who had no clue what technocracy was.

Did any of us? As I turned on my little Apple computer and later even sent my first email I certainly didn’t. Too much capitalism didn’t get us here; no socialism did. Without it there is no reasonable exchange of ideas and no progress. I may not agree with some views expressed by socialists in the Democratic Party, the so called democratic socialists, but without them we’ll never have a reasonable discussion that will allow us to move forward.

Regrettably, that discussion can only take place inside the Democratic Party itself. There are no longer any reasonable interlocutors in the Republican Party. This means changes to our political system will take longer and be harder to achieve, but from this internal discussion the Democrats may just avoid our greatest enemy: the rise of a third party on our left flank. Those 10 spineless Democratic senators who voted for cloture yesterday did a lot more damage than you may think.

The continuing acquiescence towards the old ways, the failure to oppose this Republican Party in all things, and the disgusting flirting with fascists, combined with a decades long stonewalling of socialists inside the party itself have been feeding the third party beasts and transforming them from radical to extreme, to the point where they can’t be reasoned with. Yesterday’s failure to stand up against fascism opened the door, again, to the third party extravaganza.

If this attitude persists, if we keep pushing socialists back in the Democratic Party and fail to grow a steel spine in the face of a fascist kleptotechcratic coup, we will cause a wave of dissension benefiting third parties that will destroy any hopes of wining an election again. If we ever get elections worthy of their name after so much caving. So let’s be radical recognizing these facts. It’s the only way to protect us from extremism. Of any kind.

Resist & Oppose!