WTF are you doing?

A couple of weeks away from Election Day, in spite of the clear and present danger posed by the current regime, the opposition to it is still haunted by some of its members embrace of antisemitism - explicit or implicit; aware or mislead. It’s the uncommitted ghost of elections past coming back around, and it’s a serious threat to an otherwise slam dunk election.

Being a Zionist progressive (in the true sense of progress, opposed to conservative stagnation), and an agnostic gentile, I find reasons to be concerned - and frustrated - not only on the far left encroached in the Democratic Party but also in relatively small, but very vocal, sectors of the Jewish community that align with the fascist regime. My “How can any Jew vote for a Nazi?” meme comes to mind. How, indeed.

In an effort to move voters away from the Democrats, these right wing voices make the same exacerbating argument the far left uses against Israel: in both cases, the fact that some are wrong makes the group they belong to insufferable; the DSA infiltration of the Democratic Party makes all Democrats rabid antisemites and the Kahanist infiltration of the Israeli government makes all Israelis (and by extension all Jews) staunch fascists. Populism at its finest.

As a defender of Democracy AND Israel, and once more as a Zionist, my main concern is on the left side of the equation, but this duality of disinformation efforts brings me to how I react to it when faced with antisemitism coming from my Democratic friends. If you are a liberal Zionist, you know what I am talking about. Politics is always on the table these days, when you are aware of what’s going on, and conversations with also aware friends are frequent.

The disappointment, the rage, the deep seeded anger, the unlikely hope, the need for real change, all these things are shared in that awareness and make such conversations happen in a very like minded setting. Until someone says: “I checked Sherrod Brown and he is not taking money from AIPAC.” Excuse me? As like minded as I am, I am NOT like that. My immediate reaction to this particular situation (yes, it did happen) was “I don’t give a fuck if he gets AIPAC money.”

I do give a fuck if ANY politician gets money from ANY PAC, but that’s the current nature of the game, with Citizens United active and zero election reform that removes all money from electoral campaigns. This particular friend is in the misguided category, not extreme at all; they are in fact surprised by how much more extreme my views are than theirs, in some cases, and this is the only contentious point in an otherwise excellent relationship. But it’s a point I never let slide.

I absolutely agree that when it comes to antisemitism (and fascism) there are those who can’t be trusted to have honest conversations. They are chaos agents or useful idiots and lack the willingness or the intellect to discuss politics. This is where I imagine how some of my Jewish thriends, who never voted Republican in their lives, must feel when during an otherwise like minded conversation about Israel someone comes out and praises Itamar Ben-Gvir. Or Trump.

This to say that, despite these serious kinds of shortcomings, some friendships can be maintained and conversations must continue. We’re not all the same, and none of us are perfect. I am convinced that the majority of those on the wrong side of history don’t know enough history to even pick a side. They just go along. It’s the old sitting at a table with a Nazi allegory; if you find 10 people sitting at a table with a Nazi, you got 11 Nazis at a table.

Only if one of those 10 people is your friend, or relative, and you walk past the table without stopping and asking them what the fuck do they think they’re doing, you become a Nazi enabler. It is your responsibility to speak up and fight against injustice. Do not look away, change subject, or ignore it. Whether we’re talking about a fellow Democrat or a fellow Jew expressing support for anti democratic values under false pretenses, never give it a pass because of who they are.

Chances are reason will prevail, and you will be able to inform and help them see how wrong they are. And if that doesn’t happen, so be it. Friendships and family ties will be broken by intolerance; nothing one can do about extreme prejudice, but you must never give up the fight. It’s hard and frustrating, but no one said it would be easy. And remember who we are fighting against on the big stage, so we can defeat it.

If we do not defeat this fascist regime in November, even with some shady characters on the Democratic side of the ballot, these difficult conversations we have will not be possible anymore. So keep having them while you can; stand up for what’s right, and never ever give an inch to antisemitism or fascism. The world can only change for the better with room to maneuver. Let’s make room first, and then we can change it.

Drink coffee. Vote wisely. Fuck fascism.

Theater of the Absurd.

The war in Iran rages on. The discrepancies between the IDF and the US armed forces strategies start to show: Bibi’s intentions have been clear from the start, albeit the shared hail Mary appeal to the Iranian people to rise up, issued in the first days of the war, stated by both him and the felon in chief, who has come up with too many rationales for the US involvement to keep track of. Yet we are at war and this is what war looks like.

Israel is a very small country with a population of 10 million people. The Israelis have been fighting a war of survival since 1947 and defending their sovereignty since the dawn of their independence in 1948. They have no people to spare and no room to maneuver. Every casualty is a terrible loss and every inch of land is more precious than anywhere else in the world. This is why when threatened, Israel projects its power beyond its borders and preemptive warfare is key to victory.

No matter who holds power in Israel, these facts never change; the only difference lays in the tactics, timing and execution - and that is a very important distinction but, in effect, the fundamentals of Israel’s military response to threats to its territory remain, regardless of the composition of the Knesset. This abstraction helps to understand the context of Israel’s position in this war, however I fear it is not enough to make it acceptable to the world at large, this time.

It is not about the sound logic of a small country with no room for strategic movement within its borders, but about the credibility and integrity of the two leaders allied against the Iranian regime. Both are untrustworthy criminals who cling to power to escape justice, who desperately are trying to destroy their respective judicial systems and are doing all they can to ensure electoral success at the expense of electoral integrity. Not the kind of people you trust to start a war.

Once again: Israel has a case for making sure the Iranian government is set back decades in terms of its military capability, but the US only gets to benefit from that if it declares itself clearly acting on behalf of that goal. For Israel, the benefits of this achievement are clear and immediate, for the US they are distant in time and space, making them hard to justify from a stand alone perspective. The fundamental difference between the two countries is the threat level.

To an American citizen, the Iranian regime is almost an abstract threat; the full extent of its terror both in Iran and around the world is not as obvious. To an Israeli, that threat is only too real and immediately recognized. Any significant increase in Iran’s military power poses an existential threat to Israel, not to the United States. When that happens, any Israeli government has no difficulty making its case to the people. This is not true outside Israel.

Israelis fight for their freedom every single day. They have been doing it since 1948; meanwhile the rest of the world is distracted by big things and insignificant ones, from the Cold War to the price of the gallon of gas, and since the Soviet era they have been effectively infected by the anti-Zionist virus, which is no small factor in this equation. This brings us home, to the effects of and reactions to the current war.

Living in a democracy can be a bïtch. There’s all sorts of things to consider when it comes to analyzing matters of this magnitude, the most important of which is building a case to justify whatever action is required. Because of our people’s understanding of the Middle East, and taking into account what I mentioned above, coupled with our infamous record of interventions in that part of the world, making the case for war with Iran is extremely difficult.

The diaspora people living in the US make it even harder: Israeli Americans and Iranian Americans don’t need much convincing about the need to inflict maximum damage to the Iranian regime, while those of Arab origins who align with Palestinian interests see a weakened Iranian theocracy as a threat to their aspirations, which basically are summarized by the destruction of Israel. In this scenario, the bulk of the people from these regions living in the US are themselves threatened.

This is where tribal extremism comes into play: to the uneducated, the uninvested, or the radical, stereotypes are easy. Jews want to kill Arabs, Arabs want to kill Westerners, Persians want to make Iran great again. Basically, every Jew, Arab and Persian in the United States becomes, respectively, a Kahanist, a Jihadi, or a Pahlavi hard liner. The fact there are enough sympathizers of all these radical views among each of these diasporas to reinforce this nonsense doesn’t help.

Quick note on the “make Iran great again” crowd: it is what it sounds like; diaspora Iranians who would love to have a government similar to our current one in Tehran. The Shah himself muddying the waters by declaring to be a transitional figure at the same time he is scheduled to show up at CPAC, on the same stage Viktor Orbán stood. Several Iranian voices in the diaspora frequently quote and amplify MAGA die hard Christian nationalists. Make Iran great again, indeed.

The results are not only harmful to any of the rational arguments made against the Ayatollah’s regime: they have the potential to become catastrophic as a consequence of the chaos they create. Case in point: Jake Lang. A seemingly irrelevant antisemitic scoundrel who shows up to promote the inane “Islamophobia” concept any chance he gets; which begs the question: is he really that irrelevant or is he a symptom marker? I believe he is the latter.

Leading an “anti-Islam” protest in NYC, aimed at Mamdani, he purposefully aligns himself with the Jewish community that expresses legitimate concerns about the NY city mayor’s views regarding Israel. The optics are deceiving but accepted by the uneducated masses: a neo-Nazi takes action against a figure identified as a threat by the Jewish community so Jews must really be neo-Nazis after all. If this sounds stupid to you, as it does to me, it’s because you know what Palestine is.

The Jake Lang case study is but a small example of the confusion that is being created, by design, around the war in Iran. Those praising TFG for his role in this war, especially those of Jewish and Persian origins, should take notice it was presented to the military as a holy war, falling a little short of calling it a Crusade. If that doesn’t give you pause I don’t know what will. The Iranian people will be lost in a conflict that barely used it as an excuse. That is the tragedy.

The reality is, in spite of the legitimacy of the Iranian diaspora’s aspirations, they will live to fight another day while many in Iran will not, and those who manage to survive the war they apparently can’t take advantage of, and the ongoing brutal crackdown of their fanatical regime, will continue to suffer the ineptitude of a global community that will gladly throw them under the bus for $2 a gallon of gas. There’s no moral clarity here.

Iran deserves to be free, but all the wrong people are in charge. How ironic is it the best chance for the Iranians to free themselves happened as a result of the actions of people who couldn’t care less about them. There are rumors of dissent among the ranks of the Iranian regular military and, at this point, the hope of a civil war between them and the IRGC seems like the Iranians best chance. A long shot, a terrible prospect, the result of 47 years of various forms of appeasement.

Diplomacy may still have a part in this play, but only when this act is over. And not a soul in this planet knows how it will end; not even the very few among us who know exactly why it really started. Will Iran be free of its regime? Will a more radical one emerge? No one really knows. The reality is most of us can only try to change the play writers, so the next act can at least look rational, because right now it’s just bat shit crazy. The theater of the absurd.

Don’t fake it. Make it.

The master plan doesn’t exist. There is a theory that pretends to explain why exactly seven democrats voted yes on the government funding bill that includes more money for ICE: it states that ICE is already funded “for years to come” by the so called “big beautiful bill” and the negative impact of a shut down would deny Democrats the ability to win the midterms. It also states that there are provisions for ICE accountability and oversight, negotiated into the bill passed yesterday.

According to this theory, Democrats in the House cleverly expressed a large majority of no votes, demanded by the people, and selected the exact number of yes votes from members in red or very purple districts to “take the fall”, ensuring the objectives I mentioned. Sounds like a plan, Stan? Not really. Never mind all the facts that make this “plan” a bad one, the main reason this is hog wash is that if it were true it didn’t need to be a secret. They could have explained it to us.

I believe either there was no such plan or they knew the rationale for it wouldn’t pass the smell test with us. I’m inclined towards the no plan hypothesis. I also believe there was plenty of negotiations to keep ICE active, because that was telegraphed by members of the House and Senate during the past weeks: the body cams, the training, the oversight, all the provisions regarding ICE were put out there by senior Democrats, and each time we told them no.

If indeed there was a plan to sacrifice the exact number of House Democrats on the altar of public opinion, it was not designed to stop ICE but to stop us from going ape shit on all of them and allow the Democratic leadership to save face. Everyone knows the costs of a government shut down but we also know the cost of surrendering to fascism. Each time we miss the opportunity to push for real change, in the current political environment, we’re giving up without a fight.

The idea ICE can be reined in by oversight and body cams is ludicrous. This isn’t political chess; it’s political suicide. If there was indeed a way to achieve positive results without a government shut down there are no reasons to keep it a secret, and to pretend this was some sort of master plan on a chess board is gaslighting. There was no plan. Only the delusional survival game of politicians who put their careers ahead of our needs. They think they can make it to the midterms.

Their position, in real terms, is that there will be an inevitable blue wave in November, caused by the fascist policies and actions of the regime. It feels like every Renee Good, every Liam Conejo Ramos, represent a few more thousand votes for them, which is a terrible thing to say and yet they do nothing but pay lip service to them. The doom sayers will tell you there’s nothing they can do but weather the storm until November. I call bullshit.

More importantly than shutting down the government at every spending bill vote they can slow it down to lethargic levels just by using Congress procedural norms. They can call a quorum for every single vote on every single issue, they can filibuster every single debate, they can delay every single nomination, they can stay in session indefinitely and describe the horrors we are experiencing in excruciating detail every single day. They do none of this consistently. Only occasionally.

The result? If you google “filibuster” you will find out that Cory Booker holds the record for it, a session I remember well as I watched live the senator keeping an eye on the clock as the seconds to said record were running and his colleagues interrupted him to celebrate the achievement. We got a record. Yay, I guess. I hope the few dollars he got from it were worth it: more and more these actions look like fund raising events. Because that’s all they are, in the end.

I am growing old and tired. I have no fucks left to give. I became a citizen of this once great nation knowing it was great because of its promise: the promise to be better, to do better, to evolve. I pledge allegiance to the flag I always revered as a symbol of freedom over Nazism only to see it desecrated by fascists who fly it as their own. This country has not lost all hope because of those who fight for that exact promise and see the flag as I do. But it’s getting harder.

I never imagined I would become citizen and watch my country of choice turn into a dystopian nightmare, where fascists with antisemitic roots become champions in defense against antisemitism at the same time democrats with civil rights roots rally around Islamic fascism and terrorism apologists; a world where victims are only believed if they are the right kind of victims at the same time history is being erased and rewritten before our eyes. Yet here I am. Yet here we are.

At least I can still vote. For now. I can still do everything I can to make a difference. I can still hope we got a shot at this. We can do it together, no matter what we believe in, as long as it’s not fascism - ANY kind of fascism. I never fell for selective outrage and I can see those who practice it in the trenches with the rest of us. We can deal with them later. I don’t expect their help: they are performers in their own fascist play. This is not new. This is exactly the same.

Everything I wrote about during the campaign of 2024 is as valid today as it was then. The people who allowed fascism to take power by clinging to their delusions of political purity will never vote for Democratic candidates. They see Social Democracy as just another form of “capitalist” system. They may vote for some “Socialist Democrats” running as Democratic Party candidates and you know what? That’s fucked up but we can deal with them as we save our democracy. Fuck them.

Their appeal will fade as their true colors are revealed and, right now, every single vote against the regime counts. Think of them as the Soviets in WW2. I hope that, at the very least, they think of us too as the Western Allies of old and don’t fuck this up. I don’t place much trust in that hope, but the fight is on and we HAVE to win. Like in 2024 I place my hope in those who usually don’t vote because the bad is getting terribly worse, but I am not too sure about them either.

In retrospect, however, after the orange turd’s first term it was the decisive factor: a lot of people who didn’t use to vote got off their indifference and voted against the government. That did not happen in 2024, but it can happen now, as it did in 2020. I do hope so. Still, unlike our disappointing Democratic members of Congress, I don’t think victory is assured in November. We must fight.

That fight includes holding their feet to the fire, vote in every primary like our lives depend on it and after that close ranks and put an end to this fascist regime. Like in the fight against Nazi Germany, victory is the goal. We can deal with “the Soviets” later. I know a lot of people suffered after VE Day, and I know we lost Eastern Europe to keep Western Europe free. But it doesn’t have to be like that again. Now we know what happened after, and we are ready to fight it as well.

Keep demanding the impossible. Keep telling our elected officials to fight. Yes, fuck it, shut it down: stop pretending they’re playing a secret game of chess. We see them. Demand they use every tool at their disposal to grind this regime to a halt. Let them know they can try to run from abolishing ICE, but they can’t hide. We know who they are and we will never forget or forgive. But keep your eyes on the fucking ball. And fucking FIGHT.

Birth of a Cuckoo.

What a day it is. The joy that emanates from last night’s foreseeable blue wave, and its promise of a coming 2026 blue tsunami, is a much needed boost for hope. Our hope.

I see it from the national perspective: California passing Prop 50 by huge numbers, in an election with no names on the ballot, proves ideas still mobilize people to vote.

Virginia, birthplace of our nation, turning full blue with its first woman governor. New Jersey mirroring the same energy. Smaller but very significant wins in Georgia and Florida and, of all places, Mississippi. The winds of change are picking up speed. We will see change in our lifetime. It’s a pretty big fucking deal and we should truly rejoice in this outcome and what it means.

This is our nation waking up, finally, to its true power: the power of the people.

And then there’s New York City. Not State. City. The Big Apple is its own universe; a cosmopolitan microcosm that embodies the Spirit of America. The place of all places made by immigrants and their bright minds who became the gatekeepers of the “land of the free”, the gate through which the huddled masses came into this country, yearning to breathe freedom. The cosmopolitan NYC we all feel connected to by virtue of this reality. Through its glories and shortcomings it became a symbol.

A symbol of hope; a symbol of the undying resolve to progressive values, to mind blowing innovation, through a mix of creative thinking in engineering, in artistic expression, in social processes, in scientific achievement. Behind every aspect of this symbolism, the ingenuity of the human mind and the resilience of the human spirit, stood the immigrant, yearning to breathe free.

After World War Two was over (not just then but especially since then) it’s undeniable that the Jewish immigrants came to personify this spirit in a particular manner: NYC became their home away from home and they love it fiercely for it. A place, like Israel, where they could breathe free, safe from the horrors they experienced in Europe. In the place where most Jews live together outside Israel, they became the thread that stitched the city’s fabric together in ways great and small.

The Jewish immigrants did not weave this fabric on their own, did not throw it over anything that was there before, did not try to make NYC a Jewish city. They did it by coming together with those who came before them, not replacing the fabric but becoming a unifying thread of it, improving it, strengthening it. Knowing only too well what it is to be persecuted, they stood with the Muslim community after 9/11. To them, “we are all New Yorkers” weren’t just words.

Human beings of all faiths perished in the Twin Towers, Muslims and Jews alike. They were all New Yorkers. In that fateful moment the city became the center of the world and its cosmopolitan roots emerged to save it and rebuild it. If there ever was a time when the mayor of New York could have made the jump from Broadway to the National Stage that was 9/11. It didn’t happen. The Mayor of NYC rules over its own micro universe and thrives or fails according to its rules.

The NYC Mayor’s thread is supposed to strengthen the city’s fabric, to become a part of it. Can Zohran Mamdani achieve this?

Considering the unequivocal presence of a strong Jewish thread in the fabric of New York the answer is no. Mamdani’s words may seem to address it. In his first speech as Mayor elect he did mention fighting antisemitism. En passant. It didn’t sound like it was heartfelt. I don’t think it is.

Those excited by Zohran Mamdani’s youth and ideas, by his extraordinary rise from nobody to Mayor of NYC, are as foolish to see it as the future of the Democratic Party as the Republicans who are now working overtime to make him the leader of the Democratic Party. They are both wrong and it won’t stick. And it is not just the unique character of the City or the fact that a Mayor is the ultimate city dweller, focused on local affairs. It’s the fact that Zohran Mamdani is not a Democrat.

Can you imagine an elected Republican telling those who elected him thank you but I want you to know I am a Democrat? That is what Mamdani did, yesterday. He admitted to all who could hear him that he used the Democratic ticket to be elected but he is really not a Democrat. But thank you, anyway. I have said before that Democrats reluctance to embrace social democracy would pave the way for third party candidates to lay their eggs in their nest. Zohran is the ultimate cuckoo chick.

But it’s not his socialist agenda that bothers me. A socialist party should be welcomed in a democracy. It has its place. It bugs me that they choose to place their eggs in the Democratic Party’s nest due to the party’s own failure to make the distinction between social democracy and democratic socialism, but that dog will never hunt and the impact of it will haunt us still but what worries me, as it worries the Jewish community in NYC, is what’s behind his brand of “socialism”.

Zohran Mamdani did not run on his antisemitic beliefs and yet everything about him leads to them as the core of his political agenda. He is a privileged child, a bourgeois chique revolutionary, a populist with a silver spoon in his mouth. One needs to look no further than his campaign finances to realize the interests behind him. Those interests will demand a return on investment. There are no PAC contributions free from that kind of return.

I am not worried about what Mamdani’s victory means for the future of the Democratic Party nationally. I am worried about NYC. I am worried about it electing someone whose main objective, concealed under social justice goals, is not to strengthen the city’s fabric but to engage in dismantling it by cutting one of its most important threads out. The saddest part of it all is someone like Zohran Mamdani would be the perfect person to fight antisemitism and expose anti-Zionism.

But his heart would need to be in the right place in order to do that. It is not. Yes, I like many of “his ideas”; ideals that should be espoused by Democrats, still too afraid of social democracy to reject the democratic socialist eggs in their nest. It’s just that those ideas were used to lure the masses to his side and are but stepping stones to allow the interests who bankrolled him the return on their investment.

New York is not a Jewish city, but it can’t be the New York we came to love without the Jewish community. This isn’t about taxing the rich, making life affordable and living dignified. All these things are needed and must happen. This is about not understanding the way NYC’s heart beats and trying to transplant another heart into its body. It’s a doomed surgical procedure. The delusional may rejoice at the idea of it, but the body will reject it. I hope New York will keep its heart. Time will tell.

Two years.

On this day in 2023, Hamas made a decision to strike at the Jews who dreamed of coexistence. The Jews most engaged in helping their Arab neighbors. Young Jews dancing for a better world, Jewish families who had welcomed Gazans into their homes, Jewish children. Jewish babies. The horror was not meant to free anyone. It was meant to kill all hope for peace and destroy Gaza. To reignite the cinders of war into a blazing fire. And they danced in the streets, celebrating the horror.

Many around the world will remember the victims of October 7 today. Many around the world will hope for the return of the remaining hostages and the end of this war today. Many but not enough. Many but not most. Too many others will celebrate this day, turning the monsters behind its horror into victims. Glorifying death. Calling for more death. Peace will be the last thing on the minds of too many around the world. Hate consumes them.

As a gentile who stood by Israel long before October 7, while dreaming of coexistence as did the kibuttznikim who were slaughtered that day, I feel more closely the disappointment and the anger of the Jewish people towards a world that did not miss the opportunity to show hate instead of love, in ways silent and thunderous. The silence still remains and for it I am most ashamed today.

It is beyond me that among the words barked at millions through the microphones of a bloodlust media none are directed at those who created the horrors of this day. Not one. All I hear in them is hate. A special kind of hate: hate for the Jews. Too many will celebrate this hate today. Far too many more will stay silent as they witness this. For that I am ashamed today. I feel part of the collective failure that the world has become.

I remember the signs of hope and despair along these two years. Despair reinvented into yet more hope and yet so much that nearly drowned it. The faces of hope denied stay with me. Hersh, Shiri, Ariel and Kfir the most. They stand in my mind for all the others whose lives, as theirs, were viciously taken. I think of them today. Their memory will remain a blessing.

On this day, my thoughts are for peace and the safe return of the hostages still in Gaza, and if I had to choose one person to speak to I would choose Yarden Bibas, and I would tell him how sorry I am that I have failed him. That the world has failed him. Two years later there is still a chance for a small measure of redemption that means everything for those whose loved ones remain captive. I hope with all my heart it comes true. Two years later I hope it’s not too late.

I hope it’s not too late for the hostages, not too late for ending the war, and not too late for the eyes of the world to open. In the midst of despair hope must rise. Like a blessing.

Am Yisrael Chai. 🟦

This Fourth.

4th of July. 249 years passed.

There’s no reason to celebrate this year. The specter of next year’s 250th anniversary looms large over the horizon. What have we become…

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” These words have been eroding from Lady Liberty’s stone for longer than we care to admit, and now that they’ve almost faded away we can read them clearer than ever. Like we feel the presence of a loved one after he or she is gone. Will we see the meaning of Emma Lazarus’ words restored in our lifetime? Who knows…

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

The most powerful and beautiful words in our Declaration of Independence ring desperately today, for they seem no longer to apply to this once great nation: great in its pursuit of happiness, not in happiness itself. The misinterpretation of the American Dream haunts us.

It was never about being happy at all costs. It was about pursuing happiness against all odds, in an imperfect union meant to become more perfect by the actions of the many and the few chosen by them. Greatness is to be achieved in this pursuit, not in the illusion of an arrival to such an impossible destination. The United States of America were never great, but they were the greatest in such an endeavor: progress, evolution, possibility. It’s all gone. We’re stagnant.

“We the people.” The Constitution leaves no room for doubt as to what Tocqueville witnessed first hand: we were always meant to be a Democracy. Those three simple words define it from the start of our foundation in the rule of law itself. For there is no Democracy without law and no people can govern outside of it. In its stead the words “We the Monarch” seem more appropriate. Or, to be exact, “We the Dictator”. This Independence Day we observe the end of Democracy.

As the aberration known as “Big Beautiful Bill” passed the hurdles of Congress and is signed into law myself and millions of Americans are bracing for impact; expected after the 2026 midterms, because the fascist party knows not to hit us with it before that. My family will be among the most affected and we are afraid for the future. How long we can survive has become the most important question. Others will experience the devastation before us. Those disappearing from life as we speak.

We live in a fascist state where the same troops that liberated concentration camps in Europe in 1945 are now mobilized to guard them on our soil. Where 10,000 goons are about to be hired to reinforce a secret police meant for more than catching criminals. A fascist state where this secret police will have unlimited power to remove any one of us from society and life itself. A fascist state where due process is dead. Where the law is drawn by one man’s pen. “We the Dictator.”

This Independence Day is held upon all these abominations meant to destroy freedom in all its forms. The next steps were foretold in the fascist manifesto we all got the chance to read before hand: Project 2025. The next steps will ensure fascism endures by denying us the right to vote freely. What forms these steps will take are becoming clear as what is left of our Judicial system is hard at work to dismantle every part of our electoral system that allows for free and fair elections.

Will the 2026 midterm elections be held with these measures in place? Will they be postponed by the stroke of a pen until they are, as it happened already in Miami. It’s no longer a remote possibility but a certainty. The rule of law is not just dying; it’s committing suicide before our eyes. While the establishment seeks to preserve the fascist dictator through his own Justice Department, the remaining judiciary looking to obstruct and resist is left with inconsequential rulings.

As Emil Bove put it: “Fuck the courts.” He knows they have no power left, for the enforcement of the law is in the hands of those needing the law enforced upon them. Fascism regards only its own directions and writes the law to fit them, while designating unlawful any legal action or concept that goes against it. In this new order, Congress is powerless by advancing obedience while fascists control both chambers of legislature and oversight.

We are left with record breaking speeches and cosmetic changes that do nothing to stop the march towards fascism as its boots already walk over Congress with little resistance. It will soon, like the Courts, find out there’s nothing to be done except raise awareness and try to delay the seemingly inevitable disaster. What is the point of these fights in Congress and in the Courts? Only one: to buy us some time. We have been for years the ONLY ones capable of standing up for Democracy.

There’s no time to waste (as if there ever was) waiting for elections that may never come. A lot needs to happen right now, before 2026. It’s up to us alone. Congress and the Courts can only buy us some time. The question is: what are we going to do with it?

This Independence Day is a good day to think about that. And do something.

The fight is on.

No Mercy.

Good day to you, Threadheads, Threaders, and all in between. Coffee will last.

No mercy.

It’s been a while. The trials and tribulations of life and the resulting stress had me at a loss for words. Much needed words that need a cool head to sound right. I think I am ready, and I hope you are too. So, my thriends, walk with me.

By now we can all drop any shred of hope for a standard political resolution to our problems. And it’s time we drop the correctness political discourse depends on in a democracy. So let’s start there: we are no longer a democracy when it comes to the way we are governed. We still have good reason to trust our votes matter but all else is gone; even the confidence our votes will be respected, regardless of their merit and importance.

Everything Project 2025 projected is coming to pass. And then some. We have some of the worst people in the world in charge of our lives, from our health to our security. The only thing that matters to them is the health and security of their dictator. They live to serve him. Another act we must drop: the GOP is no longer a party subjected to democratic rule. It’s a fascist party. Make America Great Again is a fascist slogan. Say it. It’s a fascist slogan.

The only thing capable of holding us somewhat together as a nation still aspiring democratic values is the rule of law, of which the corner stone is due process. Due process is the only thing we must cling to, even when it applies to hateful people deserving no other mercy. No mercy means no quarter and anything goes: EXCEPT due process. That must stand no matter what, lest we become the monsters we fight against.

Mixed with the hundreds, thousands of innocents being dragged out of the street by our own Gestapo, aka ICE, are very dangerous people who deserve nothing but DUE PROCESS, so they can be punished under the rule of law. Another act we have to drop: ICE is a fascist secret police, like the Gestapo. Say it: ICE is the new Gestapo. It needs to be disbanded and most of their members put to trial and punished with DUE PROCESS. That is the essence of our fight.

Women are already living in Gilead. By extension so are we all. Drop the normalization of the way women are being treated all across the country as if they are isolated cases: they are the norm. The living incubators, the imprisoned who had a miscarriage, the forbidden to travel. They are one step away from color coded dresses but they already are living under his eye. Say it: women have lost their rights. It’s done. Do not sugar coat it.

Disabled people, including our veterans, are being sentenced to death right now. Not tomorrow. Today. The already little protections they had are not going away: they are gone. It’s only a matter of time before they are hit with a sledgehammer. It’s inevitable. Many will die. Say it: America is killing disabled people. Don’t be afraid of the truth. Face it. Use it. Fight.

Our protections, mediocre as they were, from bad actors like predator landlords, women abusers, child molesters, greedy corporations, medical malpractice, you name it, are all gone. It’s open season on the weak. And what’s left of the middle class, already a caricature, is dead. Millionaires are now the struggling middle class, the rest is but a withering working class, blue and white colared, waiting for the death blow. We are a collapsing society in a fascist country. Say it.

Our children are being funneled into a system of education meant to push out the most vulnerable and indoctrinate the ones still capable of attending it. The same people who claim to defend us from antisemitism are banning the diary of Anne Frank in schools and using the Palestinian extremists to keep universities closed to all who seek knowledge, quickly transforming education, from top to bottom, into a tool of the fascist state. This includes military schools and academies.

LGBTQ+ people and all non white people are being discriminated and persecuted at all levels. Xenophobia and Racism prevail with a new name: DEI. They no longer need the F word or the N word. All they have to say is DEI. America is a misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, antisemitic, racist country. And many revel in it. No mercy for them. They are not our equals. They need to be punished with DUE PROCESS. Say it: we are a xenophobic racist country. We always were.

Those being taken to black sites and foreign prisons could be us. Those being shot in the street for being Jewish could be us. Those losing their children could be us. Those in charge of enforcing the law don’t have need for any laws. All they need are orders. And they are executing them. So what if the piece of shit in charge of Homeland Security had no idea what Habeas Corpus is? Get over it. It matters no more. We are not walking into fascism. This is fascism. Say it.

The strong man rationale applied to things that should bother us and must be addressed and resolved, from banned books to charter schools, from masked secret police officers to eugenics doctors, from terrorist sympathizing students to street criminals, is throwing thousands of good innocent people into the fascist grinder with no recourse. The rule of law hangs by a thread when law enforcement is ruled by fascists. No due process is the end.

And the only thing that separates us from what is happening in Israel is war. For now. Those who claim to be Zionists are being smothered by the actions of a fascist government and branded as baby eating monsters, just as those of us who claim to be Americans are being branded with Gilead’s burning iron. The world hates Israel and America. We are perceived as monsters by allowing monsters to rule us. Say it: we are perceived as monsters.

Monsters that need to be shot on the street, like the Jewish couple was in DC. Free Palestine means kill Jews. As it was in Nazi Germany so it is here, now. We are all but animals to them. And we will be put down if we don’t fight back. The police will not help us. They are controlled by fascists. The courts may try to, but don’t be surprised if you are taken away by masked goons as you leave court just as the so called immigrants are now. There is no more law. Only fascism.

It’s fight or flight time, thriends. Choose if you can for now is the time to decide. IF you can. Me, I have no choice. With my severe limitations I must fight. I can’t leave. Stop pretending there is time. There is none. Stop making heroes out of politicians who only live to disappoint us. They are rotten, most of them. Even the nice ones. YOU are it. Believe in yourself. Everything goes, except due process. So know it’s time to fight. And FIGHT.

No mercy.

Not throwing away our shot.

Happy Easter, Threaders, Threadheads, and all in between. Coffee is nice.

A new tomorrow.

Four million people on a holiday weekend went into the streets to stand for the rule of law and due process. At last, tyranny is the main concern. Tyranny became a kitchen table issue. About time.

I watch Hamilton a lot. Like a favorite song that plays on repeat. Can’t help but to compare those revolutionary days with ours. We have a new king to defeat and a new country to build. Will we miss this chance? Will we wait for the wind to take us where our will should? What will this revolution mean if we forget we are the wind that needs to fill our sails? It’s up to us to demand it.

It feels like our Constitution has failed us, but it was us who failed it. We stopped looking at it as a living document and enshrined it for the future, placing it on a pedestal made of the honor of men. Men who more often than not are not honorable. We counted on the very thing men held high to keep them honorable. The design was not flawed. We were. We lost trust in our government for lack of its virtue as we lost our own.

Now we are by the dawn of a new age, fighting in a new revolution. For it to amount to something significant the result must be new as well. We must not be fighting to preserve our Constitution but to bring it back to life. The tyranny we oppose was engendered through the cracks in it as it withered on the flawed pedestal we placed it on. To ensure it does not surface again we need to renew it.

Long gone seem the days of Constitutional crisis now that we watch it collapsing. The speed of the ongoing collapse is what made tyranny the people’s main concern, instead of the border or the economy. The way our government works became clear as we watched it collapse and now everyone sees how the issues usually discussed around kitchen tables are all connected and dependent on the health of democracy.

Fighting for the soul of our nation has turned into a concrete reality and not just a verse from a poetic aspiration. It is now essential. And clear. I am yet to see the rising leaders of this revolution to proclaim this goal of renewal and Constitutional rebirth. It must come after what has turned into a battle we cannot afford to lose. Those words of reassurance are needed from them. Words of warning and alarm are now less needed than those pointing the way forward.

The millions gathered every day a Hands Off national event happens are thirsty for those words and already awake. We need to see the future through the eyes of our leaders and hear them talk about it in no uncertain terms. Like the original revolutionaries of 1776 we have a country to build after victory comes. And it will come. It’s time to start building its new foundations by planning ahead and stating our goals.

Whatever comes next must be new and progressive. These times are made for glory and vision. We must have that vision in our minds and hearts and demand it from our leaders. This is the opportunity of a lifetime, 250 years later. This is it. Whatever we do, we cannot be throwing away our shot.

Resist. Oppose. Rebuild.

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.