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!

The Paradox Bandwagon.

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

What's going on?

Just another example of the tolerance paradox. It's easy to recognize it when it swings against our convictions, not so much when it turns in our favor. Yet it is exactly when it turns in our favor that it is most dangerous. And yes, I am talking about Mahmoud Khalil.

Mahmoud Khalil is an antisemite. He was issued a student visa and by extension, according to his lawyer, a green card. I have no clue how the visa process works for a student. In my case, my EU passport was my visa and I had to apply for a work permit, a residency permit (green card) and citizenship in that order. I assume Khalil went through a similar process to get his visa turned into a green card. The role his US citizen wife played in it may have been relevant.

There are a number of questions you answer under penalty of perjury when you apply for a green card. Legal residents don't have as many rights as citizens but they have pretty much the same obligations. The difference is you are not required to take an oath of allegiance to the United States, as citizens do, you are just asked if you are willing to, as in willing to become a citizen. You are asked, however, if you ever broke any laws or were ever involved with a terrorist organization.

Of course, 100% of green card applicants reply "no" to both questions and it's on the US government to verify if that's true. I will assume Khalil was vetted and cleared of these obstacles. It's a fair assumption. Then begins the "probation" period that never ends until you become a citizen and is extended to new citizens in many instances. Depending on your actions you may lose the right to both, but it is more difficult to lose citizenship than the right to residency.

Mahmoud Khalil didn't violate the terms of his residency agreement by protesting against Israel, or even by being openly antisemite. As much as we'd like to see hate speech cut off from the first amendment it is not. He may as well have been openly Nazi or advocate for white supremacy or the rise of the Confederacy. Those are 1st amendment rights, no matter how much we wish they weren't. He did do something else, though.

Khalil's actions involved breaking instituted university regulations (which may be interpreted as civil disobedience) but they also damaged property, caused physical harm to others, and threatened a group of students in the process, all the while expressing solidarity with terrorist organizations and glorifying the murder of human beings. The reason I did not identify above which human beings, terrorist organizations or group of students is important.

It is important because if you replace those generalizations by specific people, other than the ones targeted, you get a much clearer picture. Try reading it again using "black students”, "ККК", and "black people". Now read it again using the accurate descriptions: Jewish students, Hamas and Hezbolah, and Jewish people. Any green card holding student involved in racist activities of this nature would be immediately expelled from school and lose the right to reside in the United States.

Apparently, engaging in antisemitic activities is "not as bad" and tolerated. Here's the problem with this situation: Universities do not enforce their own rules regarding protests and they turn a blind eye to blatant crimes, such as damaged property and inflicting physical harm on students and staff. They allow these actions to go unpunished and the situation to escalate. I am all for extreme civil disobedience but it comes with a steep price.

When you engage in civil disobedience you are risking to break the law and the risk things get out of hand is extremely high. There are no legal protections for damages caused or injuries inflicted during protests. Being a "hard core" protester is not a protected activity, nor is standing by watching and cheering. Keep that in mind for our own anti fascist protests. Khalil knew the risks. He said it himself.

"I am here on a foreign visa. That's why for the past six months, l've barely appeared on the media", Khalil stated in April of 2024. He was well aware of what he was doing, he just overestimated the "power" of the green card he got after that. It's not a "get out of jail free" card. Any unlawful activity will be used against a green card holder to revoke that status, meaning deportation with the penalty of no reinstatement.

We should not tolerate those who preach hate, regardless of the hate they preach, but above all we cannot tolerate those who use that intolerance to further their own. No matter what Khalil did he can't just be thrown in a hole and kicked out of the country away from public eyes and without due process. There's ample evidence of his behavior to justify his loss of residency privileges and subsequent deportation. No need to violate his rights in the process or make it "secret".

The course of action this administration is taking led to the so called "Khalil bandwagon" and makes us have to suffer watching other antisemites rally around yet another "human rights" cause. That's really the worst part of it: watching people who select which humans have rights covered in righteousness, pretending to be on "our side". There's no bandwagon here. We must not allow this process of dealing with foreign chaos agents to become acceptable.

I have stated many times that when democracy fails to uphold the law, fascism will take over and destroy it completely while seeming to protect it. I want people like Mahmoud Khalil to be deported legally as a result of their actions in broad daylight, not in the cover of the night. If you agree with the way this situation is being handled just know the basis for it is the "Immigration and Nationality Act" of 1952, which was used against (you guessed it) Jewish immigrants.

By all means, let's get these foreign Islamic fascists out of our universities and our streets. But let's do it on legal grounds and in public, giving them the right to due process. Not to do it only emboldens both Christian and Islamic fascists to double down on their goals to destroy our democracy. They may come at it from opposing sides, but their name is just the same: fascists. Tolerate either at your own peril. For you will be next.

Ninety, Fifty.

Monday, Monday, Threaders, Threadheads, and all in between. Coffee was good.

90/50.

At the height of richest individual taxes and corporate taxes those were the percentages they paid. In the early 1960s there were around ten billionaires in the US, and only 80 thousand individuals were considered millionaires, according to Oregon State University and Census org. Estimates vary, but not wildly.

High tax rates for corporations and the richest individuals didn’t stop Henry Ford from becoming a billionaire, although taxes weren’t so high in his lifetime and some suggest he got away with paying much less than he should, by those day’s standards. Still he paid a considerable amount and dared double his employees’ minimum wage, although opposing high taxes for the rich, of course.

Elon Musk is no Henry Ford, and the number of billionaires is now more than a thousand times higher than it was long after Ford’s death. As for taxation of the rich, we all know where it went: down to zero in too many cases, thanks to loop holes and deductions. And yet we fund them with government subsidies all the time, to the tune of billions of dollars. It seems logical to fix both cases.

Ending subsidies for billionaires alone would save us a ton of money, and combined with a higher tax on the top richest people and corporations would make government able to maintain and improve our social programs to levels higher than any European country. Yet, the boldest mainstream proposals to “tax the rich” are just cosmetic, and the wildest ones proposed by radicals are just unrealistic.

We should take a look at those free radicals as a way to push mainstream thinking out of the fence and their hypocrisy. They tend to do that and it’s why radical thinking is necessary. It both shows us how crazy the world would be and how we can prevent that from happening. Demand the impossible as a condition for realistic change, remember?

Taxing the rich, individuals and corporations, to levels close to those we knew before the 1970s is not a crazy idea; it’s the logical thing to do. So why are we looking for a 2% tax on them, 88/48 percent points below the highest rate once in effect? Could the fact the ones who could make it happen are beholden to those same billionaires and corporations be the reason why? Hmm…

“Taxing the rich” sounds nice, but as long as the rich own those who would tax them it will never happen. Any politician who promises you increasing taxes for the richest among us without telling you they refuse any “donation” from them is lying. Because those are not donations; they are bribes. Until we find people who make their mission in life to end the role private funding of any kind plays in politics there will be no “taxing the rich”.

We are rapidly approaching a recession, possibly a depression, and all those who pay and buy our politicians are about to become hundreds, thousands of times richer because of it. Sounds like great news for those in their pockets, doesn’t it. No substancial change will happen before we get all private money out of politics except a change for the worse. But only for the 90% plus of us. The others will be just dandy. Politicians included.

Resist & Oppose!

Seeds of Change.

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

Good seeds.

Looks like the planting season is near. Good time to pick the best seeds. From what I see it’s not clear we recognize them, despite all the evidence we have available to help us sort them out.

Democrats are wondering, yet again, how to please everybody to get their votes. The usual strategy hasn’t worked for decades except when coupled with extraordinary circumstances that provided a skewed picture of the electorate: Obama in 2008 and Biden in 2020. They understand this but the temptation to run against TFG again is showing, even if most likely he won’t be on the ballot (knock on wood).

Since FDR there hasn’t been a strong political vision for America. Although the New Deal remains the one truly revolutionary political ideal responsible for uplifting our society and showing what happens when its citizens are respected and supported, it was quickly stopped on its tracks with the help of both parties as they became more and more dependent on the corporate world, to which the New Deal was nothing but bad news.

Years later, when Truman said “Socialism is their name for almost anything that helps all the people”, he was channeling FDR and pointing out, contrary to the beliefs of many, not that what helped the people was Socialism but that Socialism was the label of choice of those who wouldn’t help them. Because neither FDR nor Truman were socialists: they were social democrats. And THOSE are the good seeds we need.

In the bipolar political climate America has lived in practically all its existence, since the last quarter of the XX century aggravated by the corporate greed that permeated it, it is no small task to embrace a new way forward. In a truly healthy democracy both the existing parties should have been broken into smaller ones by now. Republicans into fiscal conservatives, protectionists, and fascists; Democrats into centrist moderates, globalists, and socialists. Or something else.

No matter the form these smaller parties would take the opportunity to break down the system never presented itself. We are too entangled in the two party ways of our bipolar existence. Multiple personality was never our kind of disorder. Perhaps it should have been. Could, should, would is not going to get us anywhere, but looking back at what worked and what didn’t will. Democrats would be wise to engage in that exercise, for it isn’t an unproductive one.

The “isms” of old provide the hindsight we require when choosing the good seeds, for none are found among them. Setting aside the obvious failures of fascism and communism, capitalism and socialism didn’t take either. In all “isms” there are lessons to be learned and considered into new ideals; some put away, some improved, some adopted. The passage of time considered in all these lessons, for History never really exactly repeats itself.

Whenever I hear Democrats stating they are capitalists, to sway the right, or that they are socialists, to appease the left, I cringe. What they are doing is proving they have no way forward except appealing to old “isms” that bore no lasting fruit. I search my memory for a single Democrat who stood up and proclaimed to be a social democrat consistently and find no recollection of such person ever existing.

Yet that is precisely the kind of person we need to bring in the most people into our fold. “Americans will have an aneurysm trying to explain any word with the construct "social" in it (…)” (@guy_fawkes_news) “When will the proletariat understand that fascism is far more dangerous and destructive than social democracy?” (@connierafferty). Two very pertinent observations that encapsulate our conundrum.

The “social construct” we so desperately need in the XXI century will grow from the seeds of our accumulated knowledge, as it always has. It will require contemporary thinking and understanding, because no new construct is new if our own circumstances are left out of it. I know my views are irreparably biased by my European privileged upbringing, but the notion anything with “social” in it immediately translates to “communism”, and fascism “equals” social democracy, always baffles me.

I know it’s a very steep uphill battle to try and educate the masses on what social democracy is. If only FDR and Truman had the clarity of mind to start that process. They did try, but all they did was unintentionally establish a direct connection between social reform and socialism. One that lives in the American subconscious to this day. And yet FDR was truly a social democrat, and so were his achievements.

Of course, the misleading inclusion of “socialist” as identifier of the Soviet Republic took a lion’s share in the immediate connection Americans make when any social construct veers to the left. Because social democracy is liberal in essence it’s no surprise it falls into the communist/fascist false dichotomy that over the years became a partially unsound equivalence. This is why both far right and far left hate social democracy.

Shouldn’t we expect our representatives to rise to this occasion? Is it too much to ask of them? Shouldn’t they lead by example and pick the good seeds we need to plant in order to save our democracy? Shouldn’t they couple the defense of Education with the role of educators? Every “chip in” text and email I get tells me they are not interested in any of it. Only some glimpses of populism a few seem to embrace because so many voted for TFG after voting for Sanders.

The way forward is hard and it does not include turning the worst basic instincts of the people from one uneducated populism to another. It depends on educating Americans on what social democracy really is. And embrace it once and for all. That is the real fight we must engage in, if we are to save our democracy without a blood bath. There’s still time. Let’s go for it.

Resist & Oppose!

The Little Steps Doctrine.

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

Photo Op.

After the announcement by Hakeem Jeffries that Democrats will stop saving Republicans from themselves and not vote for the one month Continuing Resolution that would allow government funding until April it seems like a shutdown is eminent. But is it?

I often wonder why Democrats are lost in terms of a coordinated response to any threat posed by the reactionary GOP, now turned full blown fascist, and mince no words exposing them as collaborators. Is this a new phenomenon, though? To me, and I may be wrong, it seems like the obvious answer has always been to present the American people with a solid progressive program. Looking back, closely, into what progressive ideas were advanced by Democrats, that never happened.

I am not talking about the extreme nonsense proposed by so called socialist democrats, who still live in the XIX century, fighting Industrial Revolution demons. No, shutting down all fossil fuel production is not the solution, nor is outlawing private property, and certainly not killing all the Jews on Earth or converting our society into Sharia Law versions of tolerant delusion. See how quickly the Socialist Democrat ideology derails into nonsense? That’s not it.

While some of those delusional left wing Democrats seek to prevent people from having elective surgeries or driving expensive cars or being rewarded fairly for their individual achievements, dreaming of all cooperative enterprises and yet another form of government control, those who would be wise to embrace social democracy fail to do so at every turn. The ACA is the crown jewel of progressive achievement and yet it’s no more than a hand out to the insurance industry.

Other initiatives, like the Green New Deal, end up being diluted into Infrastructure bills that, while incrementally beneficial like the ACA, end up falling short of being truly revolutionary and include plenty of benefits to corporations, often many times superior to those we, the people, get from them. Being revolutionary in government is different from being revolutionary on the streets. A truly revolutionary government is precisely what prevents a street revolution.

Contrary to popular belief, the main objective of a social democratic society is to make the individual happy. At its apex, social democracy makes every individual happier, which ensures society itself is happy. Happiness is an elusive concept and if it is impossible to achieve in concrete terms it’s also possible to reach by pursuing it fiercely and in so doing making sure each individual is respected and granted the basic rights at its foundation.

We are not looking for chimeras or utopian ideas but for what others already achieved. The most advanced societies in the world got started by social democratic ideals and while their citizens have not attained “blissful happiness” they are pretty happy individuals. So happy they don’t realize it and start taking it for granted. But that’s another story. The point is we know how it’s done. So why don’t we do it here?

It was not until the 1970s, after top individual tax rates fell from around 90% and corporate tax rates from about 50%, that we began to see the expansion of private charities. Until then they were mainly driven by mutual funds, with few exceptions, like the one instituted by Henry Ford. Charities multiplied exponentially and became a very profitable business with a virtual nonprofit disguise. America is not only addicted to charity, it’s controlled by “charitable” people.

This appalling aspect of American society is one that illustrates how the illusion of care is institutionalized and how beholden Democrats became to those who benefit from it: from the suburbs of Detroit to the slums of Kinshasa. And you can always contribute $19.99 a month to save the Polar bears too, if you are so inclined. This inability to solve our problems, local and global, is not a result of lack of imagination but of lack of will.

In a globalized economy, in a world where problems became everyone’s concern, global complexity became an excuse for local inaction. It also became a rallying cry for populist nationalist movements: why send money overseas when children are hungry on our shores? This dark picture is the backdrop for the unwillingness to solve problems in a true progressive way. Incremental progress is a reality but it became something else as Democrats embraced the Little Steps doctrine.

Nothing meaningful ever gets done because of it and the proponents of this doctrine range from Bernie Sanders to Barack Obama. The “little steps” became shorter and shorter and are now Democrats favorite excuse for getting nothing substantive done. When they tell us they got the Republicans “on the run” you may want to look closer. You will find Democrats running alongside them. This unwillingness Democrats show to change our society is by design.

They are as guilty of the corporation take over of every aspect of society (especially the government) as anyone else. The platitudes and the meek calls for bipartisanship are not new. One day they sit quietly, embarrassed by those who stand up, the next they show up on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, as if they are the reincarnation of John Lewis. I miss him… In this country where so many have suffered for so long we keep talking about their suffering as new.

Fingers are pointed at those in power as if all the problems in the world just started because of them. The reality is the suffering has been here for a very long time and those who now accuse others of causing it missed every chance to end it. On purpose. On purpose by refusing to fight both the excesses of Republicans and some of their fellow Democrats that they keep as pets to appease the uneducated masses. On purpose by denying social democracy a chance.

To my dismay, I see a Democratic Party beholden to those we fight, in a perpetual photo op I no longer can stomach. I realize we are on our own, with few exceptions that are rendered irrelevant by the party’s Little Steps doctrine that now feels like it’s going backwards. In a world of ping pong paddles choose to hold a walking cane. It’s up to us to lead now. Maybe we can make them follow.

Resist & Oppose!

Silence.

Morning, Threaders, Threadheads, and all in between. Strong black coffee.

Democracy dies in silence.

People assume this silence comes during the rise of authoritarian regimes when those who should speak up do not. It doesn’t. The silence that kills Democracy comes before. You don’t notice it because it is wrapped in tolerance to the point where empathy is used as a weapon against it.

Elisabeth Bumiller wrote a piece for the New York Times with the opening title “People Are Going Silent”. I know it’s the @nytimes but it’s worth the read. It’s an analysis of the present situation, where those who should speak up see their convictions fade away in fear. This is the silence that comes after the one that is responsible for their cowardice. This silence is not Democracy’s assassin: it’s Democracy’s pallbearer.

Democracy is a Phoenix. It has in itself the power to rise from its own ashes; yet we must remember that among its ashes are those of many people, innocent and guilty, who are consumed by its burning death. History has shown us this over and over and I fear we have learned nothing from it. An ideal as strong as Democracy is eternal but humans are not. There will be no rising from the dead for us.

Courage is what makes us go into battle with this knowledge. Cowardice is avoiding the fight because of it. Before the silence swiftly expanding before us, carrying Democracy to its grave, came the one responsible for its death. The one that matters most. Now they tell us empathy is Democracy’s greatest weakness as if such aberration deserves debate and consideration. And yet it makes perfect sense.

We allowed this idea to grow among those who despaired watching Democracy fail to address its true weakness: tolerance. Not only are we inclined to tolerate discussions of how empathy is dangerous, we were inclined to allow the debate of the intolerable as normal democratic discourse. We did not silence hate when we could: we made hate acceptable as part of a healthy debate of ideas. We allowed hate to transform into an ideal and welcomed its ideologues to the table as equals.

We went as far as qualifying hate and ranking its disassembled parts one by one, as if some are less hateful or even not hateful at all but misconceptions of hatred. All lives matter became the quiet mantra of this trend, one that is unspoken and yet found in every aspect of this perverse behavior that mixes equality with equity and extends a hand to all human beings of “good will”. We so quickly forgot the lessons of the Civil Rights movement.

Dressed in our tolerant robes we opened our arms to all because free speech is the corner stone of Democracy and in doing so we crushed its true foundation beneath it: the law. It is much easier to break the law than to make it better. It is also easier to keep a broken law than to fix it. We brushed the law into the courts for interpretation and allowed them to become instruments of political interests, no matter which.

Our legislators were given permission to stop legislating altogether and what was left of our Democratic process was slowly handed over to judges, supposed to make up for the lack of courage of the lawmakers. And when the courts obviously failed this task they were accused of all our troubles and misfortunes. Fault became a ball thrown around and never to be held, and in doing so we transform the meaning of tolerance, weakening it to the point where empathy becomes “the problem”.

What is this tolerance supposed to accomplish? What are we tolerating that we should not? The root and the cause of all our problems: poverty and hate. We didn’t just become numb to hate but especially to its instigator: poverty. We wilfully ignored it and denied it. We still do. “No democracy this old or this rich has ever broken down”, says Steven Levitsky, a Harvard professor. “Rich” is the key word. We’re not rich. Far from it.

We may be the richest country in the world, but we are also one of the most unbalanced, where the top 10% of households hold over two-thirds of the country's wealth. That makes us a poor country, outside of the illusion of GDP charts and stock market analysis. Housing, health, and education are luxuries too many can’t afford or can barely have. The poverty resulting from this reality is both material and spiritual, becoming a breeding ground for hate.

Even highly educated and truly rich countries face problems posed by excessive tolerance, but when the absence of education joins hands with unbalanced wealth distribution, tolerance and empathy wither to the point of rupture. Societies tolerant of poverty become tolerant of hate because they need escape valves for the building pressure that threatens them; and the most effective escape valve for the poor and the uneducated is hate.

Poverty and hate are intertwined and we ignore them at our own peril. In doing so we open the door to those who offer the ones affected by both an easy way out. They come with solutions that are simple and effective and immediate. The poor and the hateful are to be dealt with, they say, but not through messy legislative processes they quickly accuse of generating them. Law and Order is not the answer. Order alone can save us. Law is the problem.

Those pesky legislators are to blame (which is true) and as such must be replaced by an enlightened ruler who will restore Order. As appealing as this may be to the uneducated poor it is appalling to the few educated among us, who understand what it means. Poverty will not be eradicated, it will be swept away from view. Hate will not be eliminated from speech: speech itself will be destroyed. Those of us who claim to fight for the right of others to speak will perish with it.

Freedom of speech means nothing without reason and tolerance becomes nonsense when it allows the intolerant to grow strong in its warm embrace. When Democracy stays silent in the face of poverty and hatred, no matter which, it dies. The silence we face afterwards is nothing but that of hope, walking on the ashes of our foolishness, as we watch Democracy being laid to rest. It will rise again. But not for us.

Let us not die in silence.

Dancing on a pile of rubble.

Morning, Threaders, Threadheads, and all in between. Black coffee, please.

Demolition.

By definition it implies collapse. There’s a perception laws are being upheld against the government’s thousand illegal actions, maybe even the hope for enforcement against itself, given the SCOTUS last ruling on USAID funds. We are deep into a Constitutional crisis, but the demolition is ongoing. Strong.

USAID is a case study in demolition; the proof collapse is not just an abstract post crisis event but an actual process happening in real time. The demolition crews are busy doing what they were hired for. They shut down the logistics, fire the personnel, freeze contracts and funding, force the people in charge to move out and find an alternative to their lives and their families lives. The results of the demolition are the immediate collapse of the targeted institution.

They are no longer able to do their job, the people they’re supposed to be helping and the assets they’re supposed to care for are abandoned to their fate. Then a few good lawyers step in and if they are lucky they find a judge with integrity. If they are really lucky the SCOTUS may even uphold the favorable ruling. They show up at the site they allegedly saved with a court order that says: “All good!” And they find themselves standing on a pile of rubble.

They saved nothing. It’s all gone. They just got a (maybe) permission to rebuild from scratch. Who will rebuild the collapsed institution? The very same people who demolished it. Even assuming they will, every step will require yet another judicial uphill battle. While all this happens, the infrastructure is gone, the logistics are gone, the few people who are told to come back to work have no phones, no computers, no money (the cheque is in the mail), and no directives.

Now it’s the Department of Education’s turn. Its new Secretary is about to enter the last phase of her “final mission”, as directed by an unlawful executive order. I am certain some court, somewhere, will “stop it” in the terms described above. It will stop nothing. By the time the order arrives at the site it will find a pile of rubble. Then there will be a victory dance on it and the order to rebuild. An order directed at the demolition team.

It’s not only a problem of Constitutional crisis when the perpetrator condemned by the court is the enforcer supposed to correct it. It’s a matter of a collapsed system whose authors are the demolition managers the courts direct to rebuild their handy work. “Sorry, your honor, we know how to blow shit up. No clue how to put it back together.” All the appointees this administration got through Congress (plus Musk Incorporated) are demolition managers.

They don’t know how to run things except to the ground. They have no clue how things work because demolitions don’t require such knowledge. And it’s no consolation they are not experts: they really don’t know where the best place to put the charges is, but at the end of the day it doesn’t take a demolition expert to blow shit up. It’s actually much worse. It’s like bringing down a high rise in the middle of a city block without a controlled implosion. It’s chaos.

But chaos is the point. Expertise is not a requirement for these demolition teams. It’s actually not welcomed. The sloppier, the better. As I see it, “response teams” are not the solution to this crisis, just as FEMA is not a solution for hurricanes. Response teams just help after the catastrophe has happened. These illegal actions by our government are as inevitable as a natural disaster. It is the nature of this administration to destroy everything, just as a hurricane would.

The solution to this type of catastrophe is not to respond to it. It’s to limit the damage to the maximum extent by early warnings, preemptive actions, and safeguards to protect the most of the people and structures that will inevitably be affected. Including those affected down the damaged pipeline. Response is NOT a strategy to prevent collapse. Response happens AFTER the collapse. And when the responders who are expected to fix the damage are the ones who caused it…

This is why I get so mad and frustrated at Congress Democrats who come to us with warnings of catastrophes we already are aware of, assuring us their response is being studied in their little response groups and panels. We know collapse will happen, what we want to know is what’s being done to prevent the damage from being irreparable. And how soon can we reverse this chaos.

It’s like watching climate change happening without doing anything to prevent its inevitable impact but assuring us that once half the Eastern seaboard is gone there will be a great response. Not to worry. We have no use for response; we need preemptive and preventive actions. We know damage WILL happen, there’s no stopping it in this crisis. Collapse is not imminent, it’s happening. How much of it can we prevent and how many people and infrastructure can we protect?

The only way to stop this madness is to change the government. Together with those efforts, Democrats need to stop responding and start preemptively acting to preserve and protect as much as they can. This is the kind of leadership we need. I don’t see it, but I still hope it will happen. It better happen fast, though, or we will be doing our victory dance on a pile of rubble.

Resist & Oppose!

Fight the fuck back!

Morning, Threaders, Threadheads, and all in between. Not enough coffee!

I didn’t watch. I didn’t have to.

I didn’t watch the rebuttal either.

I saw clips after. Not of him, though. I saw clips of the Congress Democrats. And clips of the rebuttal. And I read your words through the whole thing. I have some words too.

Dear Congress Democrats,

How are you doing this morning? Pretty good? It’s March 5; rise, shine, and fundraise! You’re only 12 hours behind speaker emerita Pelosi, who started texting people to “chip in” from her seat in Congress as the speech began. Have you learn nothing from her? Chop, chop! Time to monetize those lies, folks. Am I right? I mean, what else can you do? Well, let me tell you something…

You can grow a fucking spine, for starters. I know. People are bashing you left and right and I should bite my tongue and feel real sorry cause you work so hard for us browsing the internet for things to copy paste back to us and sending us desperate pleas for five bucks because “we’re losing, but with your bucks we can win.” I don’t give a fuck so I will just tell you like it is even if you won’t listen. Somebody will. Maybe.

What we witnessed last night was you, Congress Democrats, have no clue what you are doing. You had like 10 different strategies going into that speech and none of them worked: including the one where you should sit down and take it like good boys and girls. The only one that would have made a difference was lost in the chaotic performance of all the others: walking out. Yes, you should have stood up and walked out. All of you.

When Al Green did just that, and was thrown out because he reminded the dear leader he has no mandate to destroy Medicaid, you ALL remained in your seats. In the absence of a plan for concerted action, Al Green tried to give you a chance to do something. And you ALL failed miserably. You just sat there, most of you with embarrassment stamped on your faces, like schoolchildren afraid of being scolded and marched out of class by the sergeant at arms. You were embarrassed by Al Green.

He was raining on your rainbow parades: the one where you applauded a little to “respect the office”; the one where you booed from the comfort of your off camera anonymity; the one where you raised your little signs that didn’t even match (dear God, you couldn’t even get that one right); the one where you just sat in pink looking pink; or the one where you got up and walked out in little groups or one by one, ignored by the cameras to the delight of the fascists.

In summary, you showed us you don’t have a clue how to fight back. You have many ideas, most of them mediocre or really bad, the few good ones being drowned by the sheer amount of the former. You showed us your leadership is worried about decorum and status quo and chip in texting and little else. You showed us no solidarity with those among you who tried to do something and just how upset you were by those who tried.

As the endless speech progressed, your lack of respect for yourselves was laying the ground for your idea of an “epic rebuttal”, and on cue, a nice white woman, alone with the mandatory 4 or 5 American flags behind her, told us nice things about Ronald Reagan for about 11 minutes. At least it was just 11 minutes, but we got the message: Turd bad, Reagan good. And please chip in to help Reagan win. I really don’t know if to laugh, cry or just throw up.

Many Americans were already ashamed of what our country is becoming. After last night we are now ashamed of what you, Congress Democrats, have become. Shame on you. Shame on those of you who are doubling down on your donation emails after what you consider a great night and shame on you who are coming to Jesus this morning and saying you should have walked out. No shit. We told you to walk out before, but you were too busy to listen, counting the pennies of the fools who still chip in.

The few among you who are trying to fight back are crying in the wilderness of Congress, sidelined by your overall lack of vision and integrity. Your entire strategy for the resistance is summarized by last night’s actions: coordinated outfits, uncoordinated signs, decorum, chip in texting, and Ronald Reagan. Good luck with that. As for the so very few who are trying to break through the stagnant lot you became: thank you. But you’re not enough.

The little that is being done by a few Congress people is lost as random, isolated acts of kindness towards a frustrated audience of millions who take to the streets comforted by them but with little hopes they will do much to change the course of the Democratic Party. Jasmine Crockett tells Musk to fuck off and Ken Martin feels obligated to tell him to go to hell and the next one will say the next watered down platitude available. Decorum.

Jasmine Crockett calls TFG Putin’s ho and Elissa Slotkin calls him the destroyer of Reagan’s memory. After tonight, despite the calls to “preserve and protect” Jasmine Crockett (what!?), it was clear she should have delivered the rebuttal; not from home but from the steps of the Capitol with all 260 democrats present after walking out. You don’t want to “protect” her. You are protecting yourselves from her.

Not just from her, but from the other few who tell it like it is and spell out “fascism” and “treason”. You are so afraid to ignite the spark that will cause a civil war that you completely miss the burning embers you are standing on. You are tragically leading us into violence by refusing to act; by “being nice”; by ignoring us. Yes, we are out on the streets but without your support and respect our frustration will grow into anger and soon all bets are off.

If the worst should happen, the crowds without leadership will become mobs. The peaceful protests will transform into riots, with people in full black riot gear clashing with the police, while keffiyeh wrapped idiots will beat up anyone holding an American flag, and the eat the rich crazies will burn down middle class neighborhoods cause they look nice. Chaos. They will start shooting us in the legs. If we’re lucky. And that will be on you, Congress Democrats.

Grow a fucking spine. If you want to prevent a war on the streets fight one in Congress. Get your shit together and fight back as one. We are watching and we are ready. And start by shutting the fuck up about Reagan, already. He’s the reason we’re here. One of you had a little sign that read: “This is not normal”. We know.

Fight. The fuck. Back.