Gaming Out Going Head to Head with the Trumpist Scourge talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/gamin…
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm.bsky.social) February 11, 2025 at 10:06 PM
Wise words from Josh Marshall:
… Where is the resistance? Why is it so muted when it was so hot out of the gate several years ago? First I would say that as a friend of mine noted to me a few weeks ago, it was always the ordinary, normie organizing in groups and clubs in towns and counties around the country that really hobbled President Trump far more than the marches and protests and performative resistance, though those also played a very key and salutary role. (I want to be clear: I’m not deriding those efforts. They played a key role. But it was more secondary than it often seemed.) Second, while it hasn’t yet percolated up to DC journalists, something very dramatic started happening among rank and file Democrats roughly two weeks ago. It only started registering with elected Democrats in DC mid-last-week.
… It’s wrong to say that people voted for every last thing that is happening now or whatever he happened to say at one point or another on the campaign trail. That’s not how voting works. At least a quarter of the electorate votes with only the vaguest sense of what each candidate is proposing. But it is certainly true that almost everyone had a general sense of what kind of person Trump was and what kind of president he’d be. He’d already been president, after all. What’s more, the entire campaign had been run with the clear understanding that Trump winning was a very real possibility. So people couldn’t vote for him thinking it was a throwaway vote with no consequence. He didn’t just slip through. It was a very close election. But he won a plurality if not a majority of the vote and he reclaimed the industrial midwest.
This led not only to a profound demoralization that Democrats are only now emerging from. It also made his presidency seem far less fragile than it had seemed when it was perceived as (and to some degree was) an accident eight years ago. The logic of mass demonstrations and other kinds of performative resistance just doesn’t play the same way. People are also in the midst, very much the targets of, a far-ranging shock and awe campaign from which they are only now after a couple weeks recovering their wits. So some of the difference people are noting isn’t just demoralization or giving up. It’s a rational response to a different set of circumstances. A few big hits won’t end this. This is for the long haul.
There are various things about the Trump I resistance that now seem dated, ephemeral or even cringe. But things evolve. We can look back at those things and learn from the excesses and areas of wasted energy… The situation is different so it calls for different tools and strategies. There’s nothing wrong with that. Some of the Democratic torpor of the first weeks of the second Trump presidency is just what it seems like: demoralization, some people wanting to simply check out. But it is also (and I expect increasingly so over time) an accurate perception that everyone is now in this for the long haul. None of this will be quickly shortcircuited and endurance and canniness are as important as aggression or display.
I’ve been saving this thread for the right moment:
What y'all have to understand is what we were taught about the Civil Rights Movement was distorted and wrong.
It was not a sudden uprising of marches and actions, resulting in quick change.
It was a carefully built machine, with test cases, trials, and planning. Extensive, intensive planning and— Mapsandkeys, same as the other place (@mapsandkeys.bsky.social) February 8, 2025 at 11:09 PM
training. Leaders weren’t magical negroes, born fully equipped to battle racism. They were cultivated, educated, and hardened to withstand fire hoses, dogs, and violence, and to use their voices with careful force.
It was disciplined work, plain and simple, not impulse and scattershot fury.
It was not quick. Whether you take voting rights, desegregation, or something else as your starting point, the Civil Rights Movement began the second slaves were freed. It took one hundred years to coalesce into the movement we studied, however briefly, in school.
Think about that as you call for change.
When you tell other people to engage in civil disobedience, recognize that that isn’t a casual act, especially when you have the audacity to call on Black leaders to engage in it.
Think hard about whether you’re willing to put your own body on the line before you ask someone else to.
One that sticks out to me is if that if you look at any US history textbook, the way its written makes it seem that
– Rosa Parks refused to give up seat
– Bus driver freaked out
– Black voters held bus boycottpretty much instantly.
But there was THREE years of pre-planning before Parks.
— STEMthebleeding (@stemthebleeding.bsky.social) February 9, 2025 at 8:34 AM
3 years of Black people organizing behind the scenes, creating a rideshare network, coordinating with neighbors, creating an entire infrastructure before Rosa Parks acted.
You can't just stage a national boycott in a month.
Not an effective one anyways.
Because they can just – wait you out.
— STEMthebleeding (@stemthebleeding.bsky.social) February 9, 2025 at 8:38 AM
Yes. “People are doing things. You will meet them when YOU start doing things.”
Lots of information and resources in this one.
open.substack.com/pub/sherrily…
— Sherrilyn Ifill (@sifill.bsky.social) February 10, 2025 at 9:43 AM
… When I posted the news on social media, I was struck by how many readers responded with one of three responses: 1) well, it’s too late they’ve already downloaded all of our information; 2) yeah, but who’s going to make them comply; they’ll just ignore it or 3) even if they defy the court’s order and are held in contempt, who will arrest them? And won’t Trump just pardon them?
To be honest, each of these concerns is valid. But the frequency and tone of these responses suggested to me that something more than cynicism was at work. Certainly, people should push back against those who might suggest that the courts alone are the “answer” to this crisis moment. Many of us remember how many “experts” suppressed legitimate alarm during Trump’s first time by encouraging us to “just wait for Robert Mueller’s report.” I am a lawyer and so I believe in the power of law as a tool to fight against injustice. But as a civil rights lawyer, I also know that law alone is insufficient.
I don’t think that it is just skepticism about the effectiveness of legal challenges that is driving the cynicism and resignation I am hearing from people. Because I also see repeated posts and hear in conversation with people around the country the claim that “no one is doing anything.” Even newspapers have reported that there is no resistance this time.
And this is patently untrue. And yet people keep repeating it. Now I agree that most Democrats were unconscionably slow out of the gate until last week. And it’s true that we no longer have the central social media space of Twitter to reliably keep one another informed about campaigns as we did during Trump’s first presidency. But what I hear in the repeated insistence that “no one is doing anything” is the underlying belief that there is nothing that can be done. And this troubles me deeply.
I have come to wonder whether these expressions of despair and surrender are really masking an irrational longing for a magical way out of this nightmare. A hope that some deus ex machina will swoop down and spare us what we are facing. But this moment we find ourselves in is the result of the reckless voting of our fellow Americans in 2024, the failures of our media over decades, the critical political mistakes of our leaders, the short-sighted greed of the corporate community, and the longstanding lack of urgency about repairing the gaping cracks in our democratic infrastructure over far too many years. There is no magical way out.We are reaping what has been sown by many, many years of inattention to the eroding foundations of our democracy and we must face it…
Despair and believing that you are powerless is a form of “obeying in advance” (Timothy Snyder’s term) which ensures the victory of autocracy. I understand the exhaustion, anger, the feeling of being overwhelmed and the grief that those of us who believe in democracy, equality and justice are experiencing right now. And painful as it is, I have accepted that there are no guarantees that we can overcome all that we are facing. But I do know that unless we fight, we cannot prevail.
Fortunately, many people are in fact “doing something.”…
Lots of good suggestions, many of which have already been highlighted by our front-pagers. Read the whole thing, and remember: On social media, Sharing is Caring!
RandomMonster
Marshall really annoys me sometimes with these conclusions with no accompanying evidence of any kind. I lived through that time as an adult. What normie organizing is he talking about?
Elizabelle
Thank you, Anne Laurie. Wise words.
I cannot deal with the daily hair on fire/Democrats are doing it WRONG screeds. This seems a more intelligent approach.
Steve LaBonne
@RandomMonster: To give you one example, sanctuary churches (like my former UU church that housed a young Salvadoran man and his little boy until he won his asylum case under Biden). Multiply that kind of example by thousands. Not as photogenic as marches but actually accomplishing something at non-negligible risk.
Martin
There is another misunderstanding of resistance. We teach that it’s peaceful movements that overcome – MLK, etc. But MLK understood the importance of the Black Panthers to give the country a fork in the road to follow – you can give us rights peacefully, or violently – your choice. Nelson Mandela is held up as another pursuer of the peaceful path, which he initially did, but then formed the MK which conducted sabotage and bombing campaigns. Again, the peaceful movements need the anvil of violence to bang against. Time and again, it is violence that serves as the catalyst for change, and provided that peaceful movement is present, allows for power to be handed to the peaceful leaders.
I suspect that much of the reason there isn’t the same protest energy now is that in 2016 you had a system that we still had faith that a democratic system would be responsive to protest. In 2024, that faith vanished. We have a regime that doesn’t respect the constitution or separation of powers – why would they care about peaceful protests? We have a vacuum of leadership to organize the thing that the administration will respect, which is force – something they are very clear signaling to us. That will likely develop, but it’ll take a bit of time.
When Luigi shooting a healthcare CEO was met by pretty widespread support by non-political people – that was a troubling sign of where we are. Political violence isn’t so far off the table as it should be.
West of the Rockies
Thank you so much for this, Anne.
Is Omnes taking a break? I don’t recall seeing him here for a while.
Kristine
That’s the sense I get online. That somewhere there’s a magician who will fix. One weird trick. You’d think after all that’s happened that it should be obvious there is no magician. There’s just us.
mvr
I do think people are motivated but it is hard to see what is effective right now for us non-lawyer types aside from publicizing the BS as best we can and being ready to help out when opportunities arise. They will as things sink in to those adversely effected. which given their plans seem to be nearly everyone.
The points about the civil rights movement being a long hard battle – one that’s still going on – is surely right but I guess I didn’t think people didn’t know that. I’m by no means the oldest jackal and I remember that from the events I lived through with semi-activist parents.
Martin
@Kristine: I think a lot of that is a product of Americans overall, but Democrats in particular believing that ‘the machine’ which is the system of checks and balances and regular orders and norms and all that would always self correct. That sure, you would sometimes get shitting outcomes but the moral arc of the administrative state bent toward justice.
And there is now this growing realization that machine was fueled by good faith – people that preserved the machine because they believed the machine was good – even if they didn’t agree with the outcome. And that good faith is now gone. The machine not only can be broken, it’s pretty easy to break.
RandomMonster
I’m sure they made a difference in some people’s lives, which is great. Were they what “hobbled” Dump’s first presidency? I don’t think so. I can think of a lot more non-normie factors contributing to the failure of MAGA 1.0 than that, including large scale protests like the women’s march. I think a lot of those factors are (so far) missing this time around.
Bupalos
I just want to underline this, with a note that everything after the first clause outweighs the cited moment by 1000-1. And then also that it left out the key backdrop that global warming and technological disruption and spiraling inequality are forces that add a multiplier of 100.
moonbat
Thank you, AL. Always offering us a bracing and productive way forward.
frosty
Thank you, Anne. The background on the Civil Rights movement is something we should know more about. The only thing I had read is that Rosa Parks’s resistance wasn’t spur of the moment, but well thought out and she was picked purposefully to be the one to do it.
I read a few more of Sherilynn’s links from your post. I hesitate to add her to my daily emails from substackers (there’s so much to read!), but she’s very good. On a par with Krugman and Timothy Snyder.
Bupalos
I think the attitude we need to cultivate is “this won’t be fixed in one month or one year or one decade… and there’s also no time to lose.”
I think one of the salutary things we can do right now is get our focus off of Trump himself and on to the decades of democratic rot that this rat sniffed out.
frosty
A good book about this is This Nonviolent Stuff Will Get You Killed: How Guns Made The Civil Rights Movement Possible. For example, nonviolent civil rights workers received critical support from Black gun owners in the regions where they worked.
tobie
@Kristine: It’s the fantasy that an all-powerful father or a fairy godmother will swoop in to save the day. I understand the impulse even if I also find it childish. This will be a long, slow slog. None of us wanted it, but it’s the situation in which we find ourselves. Strength to all.
Kristine
@Martin:
Yeah. Good faith is pretty much the basis for everything. People stop seeing it. It’s just the way things are…until it isn’t.
Gloria DryGarden
@West of the Rockies: I just checked blue sky. He does a few reposts there, highly relevant stuff, not every day. So, he exists, at least.
West of the Rockies
@Gloria DryGarden:
Thanks. I had a feeling that he was maybe growing weary of the doom and “we’re done for” attitude that (IMO) has grown around here.
Tazj
I would think that something is going to give after the way this administration is screwing with so many people’s lives. Republicans work for the federal government too.
I was just reading about farmers being out of thousands of dollars because they invested in equipment because they were contracted with government. Governor Pritzker was talking about construction projects coming to a halt because funding was stopped. People will be out of work.Foreign aid workers are being left stranded overseas and are escaping with only the clothes on their backs.
I don’t know how long things can go on like this without a backlash.
eclare
I just saw the photo for today, WaterGirl. It’s gorgeous.
YY_Sima Qian
MAGA in action:
What’s in it for TSMC, though?
This is probably the right summary of what MAGA means for US allies & partners:
The US has a lot of leverage over its allies & partners, who spent the last 4 years believing that Trump 45 was the aberration, instead of preparing for it being the new trend. However, there will come a breaking point when the US’ interests & that of its allies/partners are no longer aligned (arguably we are already here), & the differences could no longer be papered over by historical momentum & increasingly unhappy pretense. That latter point will arrive much sooner than people in DC anticipate.
cain
@Martin: It showed the system truly supported CEOs than children.
Jay
@YY_Sima Qian:
No they don’t. In less than 2 weeks, all US orders for specialty aluminum, (rockets, missiles, aircraft) that ALCAN is the only MFGR of, have been cancelled and the product is going to the EU, China, Argentina and Australia instead.
dc
What is this fear of “cringe” crap from these assholes who in theory are on our side? Fuck them! I’m with any anti-fascist who’s going to act against this regime. I don’t care what kind of music you listen to, or if you’re wearing a pink pussy hat, I’m with you. Fuck these “cool kid” assholes. Who do they think did the actual work to get a Democratic House in 2018 or Biden in 2020? A “cringe” woman will save their stupid fucking asses from this regime and they will still turn around make fun of her cringyness on their useless substacks and podcasts. Fuck them.
dc
As far as resistance, it’s not in giant marches, but in smaller actions. I’ve been doing stuff almost every day, fuck these assholes who can’t see beyond DC and their precious social media accounts. Fuck them. How about joining an immigrant protection group, a local civil rights group, calling or writing your electeds (from local to Feds), joining local, smaller protests/rallies for specific causes, and on and on and on? They twiddle their thumbs and stare at their navels and whine. Fuck them.
YY_Sima Qian
Wow, Elon Musk’s son giving Trump the real deal in front of the collected press (click through the links for the videos):
&
As far as I can tell, these clips are not AI generated.
Shalimar
People constantly make the analogy to the 1920s and ’30s and there are a lot of parallels. The common one is to Hitler taking power in 1932 Germany and I think that is apt. The US Constitution is done. Congress has already been neutered, and the courts will be ignored if they try to rule against what the executive branch wants. There will be strong fights from some states, but checks and balances are basically over.
I think the bigger parallel is 1929 in the United States though. This administration is not competent, and the destruction they want is not popular. We have elected our Hoover and he will bring on a depression within the year. The Great Depression was horrible, but it wasn’t the end of the USA. It was the end of Hoover. People will fight back. They will organize. The recovery will be better than the 1930s because we have a lot better idea of what works than we did then. And we will rework our governmental structure so it is stronger than it has been since the hollowing out began with Nixon.
Martin
@YY_Sima Qian: I’ve been arguing for some time now that Intels fabs can really only survive as a US joint venture. Entice Apple/AMD/NVidia/Qualcomm to take an equity stake and guarantee a certain volume of business. That doesn’t require Apple to move off of TSMC – there’s loads of secondary silicon that they can fab at Intel. Same for the others. But the US govt is going to need a domestic producer of silicon and come hell or high water they’ll make it happen either this admin or the next.
Now, the tech transfer from TSMC? That shouldn’t happen.
But what’s in it for TSMC? I guarantee there will be a threat of pulling defense support for Taiwan, so Taiwan will twist arms on our behalf. The pattern here is very simple – the US is going to bully everyone for the next 4 years.
YY_Sima Qian
@Martin: Yes, I do recall our exchange a few weeks ago when I read the 2nd proposal. However, I am certainty the Trump Administration will twist TSMC’s & the Taiwanese government’s arm to allow tech transfer.
On the other side of the coin, surely people in Taiwan are starting to wonder about the solidity of US defense support, let alone coming to TW’s direct aid in the event of an invasion, if not the ruling DPP government then other parts of the society.
Betty Cracker
Great post — thanks, Anne Laurie.
@YY_Sima Qian: I don’t know if the clips are real or not either. One thing that makes me doubt their veracity is that if this really happened in front of a gaggle of reporters with cameras rolling, it would be a bigger story in the mainstream press. I’m not following the news as closely as I used to (too depressing!), so it’s possible I missed it? But it seems like something that explosive would get covered more widely.
Our mainstream press is terrible, of course, and one genuine talent Trump has is the ability to manipulate the media with threats and promises of access and spectacle. But I don’t think they’re so tightly controlled that an incident like this could be so easily contained, especially since it would play into existing narratives. All that said, I’m in favor of any story that has the potential to drive a wedge between Trump and Musk.
YY_Sima Qian
@Betty Cracker: I had the exact same thought, but I am seeing reputable journalists outside of the US MSM retweeting the posts, so… I guess we will see.
I do hope Trump sees them when he is surfing X.
Geminid
@YY_Sima Qian: In tonight’s Ukraine tgread yoou commented on US Gaza policy. I think you were speaking generally, but I have a comment about short term questions that I added to the thread previous to this one. It’s long, but the gist is that the ceasefire at least could still be on track. Hamas said earlier this week that Israel was defaulting on its obligations and this Saturday’s hostage/prisoner exchange was off, but now it could be back on.
Also, there’s some interesting fallout from King Abdullah’s visit that I hope to get to on this thread.
sab
As a white person in America, I found Taylor Branch’s history trilogy on America in the MLK years very informative. Parting the Waters is the first volume. At Canaan’s Edge and Pillars of Fire are the other two.
I read them years ago and they have been sitting on my shelf ever since.
It’s a history of the Civil Rights movement from 1954 on, written by a white southerner who admitted that he was surprised and embarrassed by how little he had known about what was going on in his own region during his lifetime before he began the research for the series.
Eolirin
@RandomMonster: The women’s march and BLM protests accomplished very little. There was no sustained strategy behind them. It’s the same thing as what happened with the Occupy movement.
Once the moment in which they were happening passed everyone moved on and whatever megre gains were made, if and gains were made at all, were rolled back, at least partially but often entirely.
White american men haven’t had to organize since the labor movement, and there hasn’t been much call for white women to really organize since women’s lib in the 60s and 70s. There’s a lack of institutional capacity for it in the culture at this point.
We’ve got a lot of lessons to relearn. And we’re going to have a worse environment to be trying to learn them in than we’ve ever had before. I worry that our social media addicted society with its focus on very instant gratification simply lacks the patience to do the hard grinding work that the moment calls for.
We see so much of that here.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
So, here is why Trump wants to invade Canada.
https://youtu.be/Wq5nG6IR7fs?si=zw1FWXpwZId4oGLa
Basically, the to deal with National Debt we need immigration to keep the economy growing.
Since the dumbasses want Whites Only immigration and that won’t be enough, President Mushroom Dick’s Big Brain plan is to take over Canada, because Canadians are white, right?
sab
@Eolirin: There is organizing going on quietly. My formerly apolitical daughters in law have been active since Dobbs. One of them is involved in fundraising for our local international institute that helps new immigrants. The institute just got the financial rug pulled out from under, but we locally still have a lot of Nepali and Congolese immigrants who need assistance.
I always thought Musk was sort of an idiot, but maybe dismantling Twitter was a long game and not just an incompetent’s tantrum.
YY_Sima Qian
@Geminid: Yep, saw your earlier comment. King Abdullah II was pretty meek in front of Trump during the meeting at the WH, choosing to butter up the latter & stayed mum while Trump mouthed off all kinds of outrageous comments about Gaza to the press, while avoiding any comment that might be construed as agreeing w/ Trump’s proposals. We can only hope that he was was far firmer in private.
Al Sisi & King Abdullah II can’t possible agree to any plan that involve deportation of Gazans to the Sinai, & eventually the Palestinians of the WB to Jordan. That would spell the ends of their regimes from domestic revolution.
sab
@YY_Sima Qian: Egypt is in an uncomfortable place. Aren’t they almost as big a recipient of US military foreign aid as Israel?
YY_Sima Qian
@sab: They are, but that won’t help the al Sisi regime from domestic revolution if it caves on the ethnic cleansing of the Gazans. It didn’t help Mubarak.
IIRC, much of the Egyptian defense expenditure is financed by the KSA.
sab
@YY_Sima Qian: Thanks. I wasn’t expecting either Egypt or Jordan to cave on Gaza. I was just wondering about their finances if they didn’t.
I was under the impression that Arafat himself was sort of a refugee from Egypt and its politics.
Betty Cracker
@Eolirin: I think the backlash we’re experiencing now belies the assertion that the Women’s March and BLM were inconsequential. It’s true that backlash is currently wiping out all or most of the progress made, but I don’t believe that negates what those movements accomplished in their time or suggests that progress has been rolled back permanently.
It’s a slog, not a sprint, as suggested in the OP.
TBone
Can’t remember dreaming last night but I woke up and started thinking about Joan of Arc. Which led to remembering the time I gave my Dad a photograph of her golden, horseback statue (purchased at the Earth & State fair trade store in Media, PA) ‘Jeanne D’Arc’ in Paris (my parents spent a month in Paris in the summers) for his birthday. Which led to looking up the statue & artist on Wiki, which led to looking at the entry for the French city of Nancy (Mom’s name) and finding out its motto is
Non inultus premor (I am not injured unavenged).
I don’t know why. But I love random learning so it’s all good.
TBone
@Betty Cracker: 1,000% agree
sab
@YY_Sima Qian: As always we need to be reminded that Arabs aren’t a monolith. Palestinians forced into neighboring countries destabilize those countries, as we have seen over the years in Lebanon. Jordan has a delicate balance between its Bedouin and Palestinian citizens. The king is Bedouin, his wife is Palestinian.
sab
@TBone: Re Joan of Arc: and we think being trans is a new thing in the world. Hormone therapy yes. The need for it not so much.
Eolirin
@sab: I do have higher hopes for women than men, generally, on this front. But the last election, and also the way the Obama years went also demonstrated that way too people on our side of the aisle don’t have any capacity for dealing with improvement requiring slow grinding work.
We’re likely about to enter into what will be a generational struggle. Not just a matter of getting through the next four years. The right knows how to do that still, though I think they may be in the process of unlearning it. I’m not sure the left does, though there are definitely people trying.
sab
@TBone: Yikes. My husband’s ex is named Nancy. I hope she never sees that motto. And no, I did not break up their marriage. I wasn’t even living here then.
TBone
@TBone: that statue still speaks to me, with my memories of living on War Trophy Lane in Riddlewood where the gift photo was hung. Jeanne will not leave me alone today. I’ma have to fly to Paris to find out why, I guess. I wish I could have done so when my parents were there… they’d rent an apartment each summer through Untours and I wasn’t invited (they had a flaming romance thing going all their lives together and had already taken us to Europe twice). They wanted the Paris memories for themselves. Mom babysat stepDad when he was wee, she was 7 years older. She was fierce about him and would tell of elbowing her bestie away from pushing his baby carriage.
TBone
@sab: HA!!! Good morning 🌞
TBone
@sab: 💙💜💙
Eolirin
@Betty Cracker: My point is that we’re not treating it like a slog, and so those things were in fact, wasted effort because we didn’t sustain the work after the fact.
It’s not enough to just do what we did, and we haven’t figured that out yet, and that is why we’re losing. That needs to be recognized if we’re going to learn from them and improve. Otherwise we will continue to get rolled by the reactionary backlash.
They weren’t inconsequential, they failed. Things are tangibly worse in real terms on almost all of the issues those movements were fighting for.
Not because of what they succeeded at doing when they happened, which, sure, is why there was a need for a backlash, but because we aren’t doing the work necessary to make those successes endure and become something we can build on.
We cannot just have a big protest movement and no sustained strategy for politicial and cultural change and expect to get anything out of it. It doesn’t work. If we don’t face up to that, we won’t course correct and we won’t bring the right mentality to the fights to come, which are far more likely to be generational than they were a few months ago.
A lot of protest movement stuff feels really good. There’s this big sense of solidarity. But the actual work of translating that into something that affects real change is hard and feels really awful.
One of our largest failings as a society is confusing the feel good for substance, and shying away from the necessity of things feeling awful and still being willing to engage day in and day out for as long as is necessary. We can’t even get people to turn out in an election against a clear threat to democracy because of mild to moderate, not even severe, economic malaise and disillusionment over image issues.
And we have people melting down because politicians aren’t being performative enough for their liking instead of looking for tangible steps that they themselves can take to try to make things better.
We need to grow out of that. Fast.
sab
@TBone: Still night for me.
I cannot figure out this old people napping thing my husband does. He goes down for an hour or two. When I sleep it’s for six plus hours, which means here I am awake at ridiculous hours.
The cats are concerned because if my schedule is out of whack so is their feeding and ltterbox cleaning.
sab
@Eolirin: YES!!
TBone
@sab: my hubby does the same thing! Try as I might, when I most need a nap, the phone rings or something else happens to wake me up. This whole year of 2025 EVERY SINGLE NAP was interrupted just when it was getting good. The vet hospital was the culprit yesterday to confirm appointment for tomorrow.
Hubby blissfully sleeps on the couch through anything the whole time, causing great jealousy by me. Because he has heart issues I let him sleep there every day. He frequently asks me to “put on your TCM channel so I can fall asleep.”
Meanwhile, with Noah’s every 4 hours tube feeding schedule, I am becoming a sleep deprived zombie brain. Today I woke at 3:30am for no good reason and forced myself to stay in bed till 4:30am but couldn’t fall back asleep aaaarrrggghhh
sab
@TBone: Noah is like you have a new baby. He is a lucky cat. I am sure he knows that, or at least knows how important you are to each other.
Geminid
@YY_Sima Qian: Trump’s Gaza plan, if it could be called a plan at all, put King Abdullah in a very dangerous position. His distress was visible Tuesday.
So yesterday, the White House released a video of of Trump speaking from his desk in Oval Office about what a wonderful leader King Abdullah is. It was addressed to the Jordanian people: “You have great king, you’re lucky to have him.” As the Times of Israel and others reported, Trump praised Abdullah to the skies. King Abdullah is one of the two greatest leaders in the world!
Also on Wednesday, Trump’s press secretary Ms. Leavitt finished her daily briefing by reading a statement she attributed to her boss. It stressed that during his meeting with Trump, Abdullah reiterated his stance in favor of allowing Gazans to remain in Gaza while it’s being rebuilt. Leavitt noted that Trump thinks his plan for relocating Gazans elsewhere would be “more majestic” but that Washington would be working with its Arab allies to advance a solution that would bring peace to the Middle East.
“More majestic.” This is a view of Trump’s Gaza plan that I had not taken before! But if it means Trump is praising himself for a job well done (if never actually executed) I can get behind this framing. It conforms to his national security advisor’s framing, that Trump’s Gaza plan was a gambit intended to induce Arab states to come up with their own plans.
Of course the Arabs have had their plans all along. They were waiting for Phase Two of the ceasefire to near completion before they presented them, but now Egypt has “met the moment” by forwarding a plan to rebuild Gaza with the population remaining. One observer snarked that the Arabs just need to name their plan “the Trump Plan,” dangle a Nobel Prize and Trump will go along.
So it looks like Trump might be backing off on his wildcat Gaza scheme, and he’s doing a sort of Michael Jackson Moonwalk. I guess we’ll know for sure before too long.
TBone
@sab: he definitely knows it! I’m way too old to be a new mother, I complained about just that here one day recently, being up at all hours, poop everywhere, having to wipe nose and ass all the time hahaha! Noah no longer needs anything wiped, praise the lort!
TBone
@Geminid: they are also lucky to have their Queen.
Geminid
@TBone: Yes, and Queen Rania had an unusual luncheon guest last month: Melania Trump. A picture of the two ladies dining together at a small, sunlit table was widely circulated on Middle East news sites.
Baud
@Eolirin:
Good comment. I share your view.
TBone
@Geminid: I bet she has more recent photos of Melanie than Donold does hahaha!
Queen Rania is an advocate for childhood as well as adult education and thus she stole my heart. I suspect that she has greater influence than she is allowed to be overt about.
Baud
@Geminid:
I don’t know what will happen there, but he backs off a lot. He does real damage, but a lot of what he does is manufacture content for the media and his supporters.
Geminid
@Baud: Unlike most of his ideas, Trump’s Gaza was very controversial among his supporters. I think that’s one reason why Trump’s people started backpeddling the day after he announced it.
sab
@Geminid: Real estate developers are rarely in agreement with anyone else in their political orbit.
Betty Cracker
@Eolirin: Could be we’re talking past each other, but the point I’m trying to make is that protests, demands for performative action, etc., are part of the slog. A critical and necessary component of the movement for sustained change.
That’s true even if people on the same side don’t agree on tactics and waste energy arguing about it and impugning each other’s character and integrity, which is all too common around here these days, even among the relatively homogeneous group in this space who share the same goals.
I don’t think you’re wrong when you say people confuse feel-good, performative shit over grinding, incremental change. That’s human nature, and I agree it’s entirely possible that tendency is amplified as attention spans grow shorter.
But it does seem like you’re dismissing the value of protests and in-your-face activism, as if there’s a binary choice between that and sustained engagement. I don’t believe it is a binary choice, and I believe there’s lots of interplay between the two and that both are necessary. (Anyone else remember ACT UP?)
For example, the organizing around the Women’s March got a lot of apathetic people off the sidelines, inspired many to run for office at all sorts of levels and gave others are reason to stay involved in politics to this very day. Did it end sexism? Did the groups involved stay cohesive? Did it effect change that was impervious to backlash? Well, no. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t worthwhile and that people whom it inspired and influenced are uninvolved now.
Ditto BLM and, to cite one offshoot, its effect on corporate policies, which is now being reversed. Corporations are almost without exception either amoral or actively evil. They didn’t implement DEI policies (mostly window dressing, it must be acknowledged) because they suddenly grew a conscience after George Floyd’s murder. Their customers demanded it, and they responded.
Did that all go away because it sparked the current backlash? I don’t think it did. Corporations are responding to the backlash now, but that doesn’t mean the people who wanted them to do better changed their minds. It’s an overinterpretation of the meaning of the last election results, IMO.
Lack of sustained focus is a huge obstacle — we agree there. Magical thinking is an enormous problem too. And yeah, people need to wake up and fast. But IMO, the solution isn’t to conclude protests and constituent demands for action on the part of political leaders as always worthless or counterproductive. All of it has its place in a larger movement to drive change, and hopefully, please FSM, lasting change. I think that’s one of the lessons of the past too.
Eolirin
@Baud: In the end, this kind of thing can only go on for so long before everyone starts ignoring that the US has an opinion.
Especially since we’re embarking down a road that will lead to an economic decoupling between us and the rest of the world, as well as a hollowing out of the institutions that provide us with any competitive advantage.
As disruptive as that’ll be for everyone, once the rest of the world adapts, we’ll have almost no soft power left.
So unless we start actively invading countries that aren’t doing what we want, there really won’t be much reason for anyone to bother.
sab
The white men have taken over.
Those of us who benefitted from DEI (let’s hire the most competent, even if they aren’t white men) really need to start fighting. I realize it will be a slog. I am a 70 year old woman. My whole career has been a slog. I hope for better for my granddaughter.
sab
@Eolirin: Yikes but true. Unfortunately Republicans won’t believe it. As always, we are a big country out in the boondocks ( i.e. not Europe or Asia.) If we don’t accept what we are and behave accordingly the RTW will ignore us.
Baud
@Eolirin:
Right. As long as the US is under the throes of Trumpism, I don’t see why we should have soft power. I don’t like Russian soft power either. I wish we didn’t pose a risk of hard power right now.
Baud
@sab:
White men were always in charge. They’ve just gotten more cruel in the face of the uplifting of others.
YY_Sima Qian
@Geminid: Yeah, there is a pattern w/ Trump. He will shy away from anything that will obviously blow up in his face in the short term, & try to claim victory in the retreat, & the MSM will carry water for him just from the sigh of relief that he will not immediately carry through whatever harebrained scheme that he had thrown out there.
The problem is that he doesn’t know what might blow up, someone he is willing to listen to has to spoon feed him the risk. That makes him vulnerable to manipulation by the unscrupulous, & there are now many more of such sociopaths & psychopaths than the start (or even the end) of his 1st term.
I am afraid whatever happens in the next couple of months is not the last we will hear from Trump about Canada, Mexico, Greenland, the Panama Canal, or Gaza
If Trump has any core beliefs, it is in the power of tariffs, coercion, might makes right.
Professor Bigfoot
@Shalimar: Joe Biden demonstrated what works, and Americans* told him to fuck off.
I am not sanguine.
TBone
@Betty Cracker: I am still listening and here for every word of what both of you’ve said. Action by protest plants seeds. Watering is up to us too. Being quiet and behaved is only good if you’re trying to get into the country club or a cotillion. Gloves off is my style.
Well behaved women rarely make history, which ties in with my (involuntary though it is) Joan of Arc theme today.
Eolirin
@Betty Cracker: I never said those things though.
I said only that they accomplished very little and because of the lack of sustained follow through.
So yes, we’re talking past each other. You’re responding to something I didn’t intend to be implying about their value. I don’t think we shouldn’t do large protests. But if we’re not going to do the other stuff, it isn’t going to matter in the end. It’s insufficient. That doesn’t mean it isn’t necessary though!
I think we agree more or less completely on this.
Though, to the context of the thread, I’d strongly challenge anyone who thinks the protesting did anything to hobble the Trump administration. About the only thing that really did that was cluelessness and institutional resistance. Both of which are far less of an obstacle this time around. But that’s a different criteria entirely.
CCL
@Geminid: At a town hall with my congressional representative and state attorney general last night, they addressed concerns from many callers asking either “what are you doing?” or “what can we do?”
Similar I think to your comment, they pointed out that Orange Menace backed off on Medicaid cuts because of the blowback from Republican Governors lighting up the White House phones.
Our Atty General also mentioned that they have been anticipating lots of the administration’s actions, which is why those lawsuits get filed almost immediately…they were prepped in advance (if I understood correctly what they were saying).
Finally, my Rep asked attendees that if we’ve been personally affected, call, contact to let them know. They need those stories.
TBone
@Eolirin: Occupy (in which I participated in several ways) led to Strike Debt! which in turn led to medical debt being purchased (forgiven) for pennies on the dollar, which then led to student debt forgiveness…
Just saying.
(I made the cover of TIME that year hahahaha!)
Eolirin
@TBone: The student debt situation was not resolved properly, will now backslide horrifically, and became a political liability, or at the very least failed to be of political benefit, in large part because we didn’t sustain effort properly. And so we’re going to have to have that fight all over again some number of years down the road.
TBone
@CCL: which State? In PA we have a Dem Guv, but our Atty. General (Dave Sunday) is now a Rethug aaarrggh
Sunday’s Contact page notes, in bold, red lettering:
Baud
@Professor Bigfoot:
Cultural change will need to precede political change. I don’t see it happening yet, but it’s early.
TBone
@Eolirin: I’m a glass half full gal. I don’t see the empty half.
Real people benefitted in huge ways, and they’ll not soon forget it.
ETA our work NEVER ceases and it has always been thus.
YY_Sima Qian
@Eolirin: Education should not be an artificially scarce resource to begin w/. Student debt relief is just a band aid that does nothing to solve the fundamental perversion w/ the American education system.
Likewise w/ housing & healthcare, none of which should be left to the profit maximization motives of the [in reality highly distorted & oligopolistic] “market”.
sab
@Eolirin: Now every bank or other “financial institution” is allowed to student lend, with the borrowers having no bankruptcy protection.
We bailed out the borrowers from the government but everyone else is still on the hook and angry.
And now Trump wants to be a Not Quite A Bank ( real banks are under the Federal Reserve behavior rules).
Princess
@RandomMonster: Normie organizing? Indivisible, Sister District, the various anti-gun groups, just for starters. Ask Kay or Nellie or several others on here. Mostly organized and staffed by groups of middle-aged normie Black and white liberal women so the NYT is not interested. There’s lots going on always but you need to realize shouting on the internet is not actually activism, put your phone down, and see what’s happening in your community to find them.
Baud
@sab:
Isn’t that the essence of MAGA? Resentment because someone else gets some help.
sab
@YY_Sima Qian: Yes. If you are bright enough to be accepted we should fund a place for you.
How the phuck did not so bright Kushner get in line ahead of others. Either these institutions are meritoriously elite or they are just eliteism for the dim but rich.
Baud
@Princess:
That’s my impression too. The real work isn’t the stuff that goes viral on social media or covered by the media.
sab
@Baud: Especially where the someone elses worked harder and therfore got ahead while not white male.
Professor Bigfoot
@sab: I have 4 cats; and i had 6 enormous litterboxes for them.
One room dedicated to them, with an exhaust fan in the window always blowing out; and STILL sometimes you could smell it in that room.
Mrs. B found an “automatic litter box” on MacBid, got it pretty inexpensive. Ultimately got three of ’em.
It makes an ENORMOUS difference– I only have to “service” the litter boxes once a week; and there’s no smell (removed the exhaust fan from the window and closed it, too!)
The true “LItter Robot” is spendy AF; but these knock-offs have served me very well.
sab
@Princess: Yes.
Eolirin
@YY_Sima Qian: Which was at the core of the Occupy movement’s critique, but the lack of tangible planning around political objectives and sustained focus on accomplishing those objectives left it in a poor position to try to address. We could have gotten some of the antitrust action Biden started trying to do going sooner if we had had a more focused and sustained movement.
We unfortunately would not have made much progress on systematic funding reforms for higher education because we had a Republican Senate. And then we had a senate majority that relied on Manchin and Sinema.
But we also should have been able to tie the Occupy themes into a support for Hillary Clinton, and we failed to do that too, instead weaponizing it against her in favor of Trump of all people, not that the movement had nearly as much cultural signficance at that point, which is also part of the problem.
Biden was only able to go so far on starting to push back against the financialization of pretty much every aspect of our society, and without sustained efforts to engender popular support to continue to push in that direction, even less can be accomplished.
This is another area where cultural change has to happen first.
Princess
@Kristine: Another one weird trick is fantasizing about political violence from someone else, as Martin does in a comment above you. I dunno, I may be wrong but I don’t see where that’s coming from yet. People will have to feel they have absolutely nothing to lose before that happens. I think average Democratic voters still have a lot to lose and non-voters are too apathetic and hopeless.
sab
@Professor Bigfoot: We have eight litterboxes, but only three are really active. What brand are your successful automatic boxes?
ETA We have to change our active litterboxes daily, and the cats would prefer we do it two or three times a day. A couple of automatic litter boxes would be a godsend for every cat.
TBone
@TBone: DUH life without coffee and added sleep deprivation is sucky. I don’t need to fly to Paris, I can go to Philly! We have our own Joan!
https://www.associationforpublicart.org/artwork/joan-of-arc/
Baud
@Kristine:
Agree. Messianism is widespread.
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: Indeed; but I put this current backlash in the context of The Redemption– when white Southerners ended Reconstruction through fire and terror.
Baud
@Princess:
There could be lone wolves like Luigi. Large scale action seems further off.
Baud
@Professor Bigfoot:
Definitely the apt historical parallel.
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: When it comes down to it, they are convinced that ONLY straight white Christians are true, legitimate citizens of the United States, and anyone else is a thief and a usurper taking from their “hard earned tax dollars.”
YY_Sima Qian
@sab: IIRC, the Ivies & other elite universities all reserve at least a third of their enrollment slots for legacies (which is still competitive but much less than the rat race forced on the proles). Then there is the large monetary contributions from the rich to grease the way in, not to mention outright corrupt practices such as “Varsity Blues”. These elite institutions honestly believe they represent meritocracy, technocracy & intellectual diversity, but in reality are now corporate entities largely beholden to the powers that be, the conventional wisdom, the accepted mainstream.
A consideration for the admissions offices is whether the prospective student might eventually become part of the elite that will be in positions of power & influence, will enhance the prestige of their alma maters, & will fatten the endowment funds. The degree at which inflation in the cost of higher education (private or state endowed) has outpaced CPI over the past 3 decades is mind boggling.
I say all of that as an alum of an Ivy school who largely enjoyed & valued my experience, & who is not above considerations of taking advantage of the admissions policy for legacies to give my daughters a boost, when the time comes a decade+ hence.
Eolirin
@Princess: It’s already started to happen, see: Luigi.
And it’s not a good thing. It’s the end state of a failing society.
But the analysis that Martin presents is fundamentally correct; if the US government and the corporate structures that people need to rely on are not responsive to the needs of the people, there is no solution that does not ultimately include political violence, even if just as a foil for non violent alternatives. Whether the state can effectively suppress opposition then becomes the primary open question.
I do not view this as something to be longed for, but an indictment of our failures as a society to take the necessary collective action to avoid getting to this place.
jefft452
“something very dramatic started happening among rank and file Democrats roughly two weeks ago. It only started registering with elected Democrats in DC mid-last-week.”
Shumer and Jeffries are upset that the rank and file are calling them
They are too busy sucking up to Silicon Valley tech bros
Princess
@Betty Cracker: I agree. They worked so hard on the right and the left to destroy and discredit the Women’s March — and largely succeeded, which is why we don’t see it now. They didn’t do it because it had no effect. But the value of marches is not that you have a march and the other side gives up. The value of a march is that it mobilizes people who don’t normally get involved and brings them together to do smaller, more sustained action. Every march I went to between 2016 and 20 had people singing others up for stuff, for more long-term action. Marches bring your allies out of the woodwork.
TBone
@Professor Bigfoot: count me as a proud thief then, please. I’ll take from the rich to give to the poor every single time.
sab
@YY_Sima Qian: TCSM = Texas chainsaw massacre or TeChnoSurveillance counterMeasures or something else entirely.
satby
How about it? Agree completely.
TBone
@Princess: amen, sista.
Glory b
@Eolirin: I think most black people might agree with you about BLM.
My daughter was very involved locally, even got a moment in ABC national news. The local groups were upset about the national leaders squandering money (buying a house in Malibu as a safe house?), hiring relatives, not supporting local groups, that she and many others got fed up and quit.
The young leadership didn’t think older people could tell them anything, they never considered tax an registration ramifications, ultimately, it fell apart.
This is kind of unusual. As I’ve mentioned here before, black young people tend not to have the built in disdain for our elders that whites seem to show. We have always operated like it’s us against the world.
Black parents have always warned their children about not following behind “your little white friends ” because they can escape trouble in ways black youth won’t be able to.
Eolirin
@YY_Sima Qian: The Ivies are ultimately a small portion of higher education and the bigger story is the chronic underfunding of state universities.
Baud
@Professor Bigfoot:
People believe what they want to believe.
Professor Bigfoot
@sab: One of ’em is a “Tuya,” and the other two I never even noticed a brand name on them.
MacBid is a site that auctions off Amazon and Walmart returns. We got two of these (at least, this is the one that looks like the one!) and while still not cheap, since I’m the cat-wrangler they’ve been a godsend. I HATED that job, and now it’s a breeze.
(Turns out I just wasn’t scooping ENOUGH, as I’m going through a lot more litter than before– but again, I’m good with that.)
sab
@YY_Sima Qian: I don’t have a problem with limited legacies. They fund stuff. It just seems like they aren’t so limited. Violin and skating lessons since age three are not affordable for normal people.Maybe they should have been saving for college instead like the rest of us.
Glory b
@TBone: AND the things about it most black people remember were escorting John Lewis out of their space when he came to talk with them about strategy, and the deaths of 2 black teens at the hands of Occupy “security” that was covered up.
Princess
@Baud: I think Luigi was a one-off. Everyone wants another Luigi; no one wants to be another Luigi. But we’ll see.
sab
@sab: Oops. Musk not Trump. I have a hard time remembering who is the actual president.
TBone
Randomly found algorithmic mood music I didn’t know about till right now
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lrYob4NyZ3Q
TBone
@Glory b: I feel like you all are owed an apology then.
And I didn’t even see your comment until after I posted the song above.
Baud
@Princess:
Luigi is also a rich white dude. Public might react differently if other types of people start revolting.
Professor Bigfoot
@Princess: Yeah, but the skipping dipshit goes everywhere with a tiny human shield nowadays.
So while the actual Luigi may have been a one-off, the fear of another Luigi definitely has an effect.
sab
@Princess: I don’t even know if Luigi was right. My husband got catastrophically bad back surgery. He would have been better off if insurance had said NO.
ETA He would still have the same pain, but without the MRSA infection and lifetime antibiotics that upset his stomach. His whole life now is eating on schedule so the antibiotics don’t upset his stomach. And when his stomach is upset it is very upset. Not mere queasy. Barfing in the bathroom for an hour upset.
Betty Cracker
@Eolirin: To the extent protests like the Women’s March inspired people to run for office, organize and retake the House in 2018, they at least helped to hobble Trump 1.0. IIRC, several women who won VA House of Delegates seats in 2017, shifting the balance of power in that chamber and building momentum for retaking the U.S. House the following year, cited the Women’s March as inspiration.
Eolirin
@Princess: If we include political violence from the right, there’s a lot more Luigis. As evidenced by the people taking shots at Trump, that violence won’t all be targeting MAGA enemies but will become increasingly indiscriminate.
Princess
@Betty Cracker: yes, Run for Something was another great movement that came out of it. People were terrified of the Women’s March. They worked hard to kill it, discrediting the symbols, attacking the marchers as Trump voters, the whole Wine Mom slur. We see traces of that stuff on BJ sometimes. Millions of women who had never marched for anything before, got involved.
YY_Sima Qian
@Eolirin: Absolutely. & since the state funded schools are the much more affordable & accessible option for the vast majority, their decline makes everything worse in terms of social mobility, equal opportunity, income disparity. & that underfunding is set to become much worse, especially w/ the cuts to the NSF & NIH, as well as the nativist turn against international students (starting w/ those from the PRC).
We might soon have the situation where all of the STEM research outside of the most well endowed institutions will have to fight for defense dollars, but w/ fewer international students to fill out the graduate programs.
MomSense
@Eolirin:
There was no interest by the local organizers where I live to use the marches as a way to build a movement and continue to make concrete change. It was like they had seen photos and videos of marches and thought that they brought insta-change.
Eolirin
@Betty Cracker: I’m not sure retaking the House actually shifted as much as people might give it credit for. It’s not like the Republicans were succeeding in getting legislation through other than that one tax bill, and it’s not like any of the congressional investigations ultimately changed much in the way of how they were behaving.
Like, I’m happy to give credit for it helping improve political outcomes, but the reason why I’m saying hobbling the Trump administration is a different criteria is because congress is not actually an effective check on the executive’s power when the executive is willing to be lawless.
The people who really hobbled the first Trump administration were all inside the executive branch. They’ve learned from that and it’ll be far less effective this time around, though they’re also breaking the apparatus of government in how they’ve compensated, which will have dire consequences, but also limit how much power they can weild.
Princess
@Eolirin: Well, you and Martin can wait for someone else to assassinate you out of your problems I guess. I’d say though that the experience of the 60s and 70s does not suggest to me that political assassination is a cure. Bluntly, the people who do it are all a little nuts, and I include Luigi, and are unlikely to move the needle in a direction we want.
Subsole
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Isn’t that…pretty much Putin’s plan on Ukraine?
sab
@Glory b: I always suspected the Occupy people would be on board with Musk if not Trump. Elite college grads whose expectations didn’t pan out. Why the phuck were they on Wall Street to begin with?
Professor Bigfoot
@Princess: Like the meme of the Black woman, amidst all those white women in their pink pussy hats, carrying a sign saying “white women voted for Trump?”
sab
@Princess: I hope Sirhan Sirhan dies in prison for the harm he did his people in Palestine, not just harm to us in USA.
ETA I know he was very young and also drunk, but the damage was extensive.
ETA And I am not an overall Kennedy fan. I think RFK Jr is the absolute worst but not the only bad Kennedy.
zhena gogolia
Thanks for the post, AL.
Leto
Where is all that money going? Oh: Trumpov administration set to purchase $400M worth of “armored” Swastikars
Apparently the language was changed from “armored Tesla” to “armored electric vehicle” after Maddow’s piece on it last night.
sentient ai from the future
@Princess: marches show the powerful and powerless alike the limits of that power in the face of mass action.
And are also usually a pretty good time.
YY_Sima Qian
@sab: These days, violin/piano & skating/tennis lessons are the table stakes to be in the consideration for admission to the institutions, not necessarily a path toward meaningful scholarship dollars
The fact that the institutions need to give legacies preferential treatment to attain funding is itself a perversion.
Eolirin
@Princess: I don’t think you understood what I said. Let me try again.
Political violence is a consequence, something which becomes inevitable, and which is part of the dynamic which, if you’re very lucky, leads to the other parts of the solution working. It is not something that solves the problem through its own action. It is not a cure. It is a symptom of disease. Part of the fever that allows the possibility of healing. It can also be outright fatal.
You do not want to be in a position in which it is part of the story, no more than you want to be running a fever of 103, it means that you are so sick you might not survive, but we are rapidly approaching a situation in which there is no way for it not to be.
Kay
@YY_Sima Qian:
There’s a Samsung washing machine plant in SC. It’s located there partly because of Trump’s 2016 – 20 tariffs. Much fanfare about the revitalization of “good manufacturing jobs”, except they’re not that good. They pay 16 or 17 an hour. The plant doesn’t give back much to the community either, because of tax breaks and incentives. People there are generally disappointed – they thought it would be better. Oh, and the cost of the machines went up, so American consumers are paying for making washing machines in SC. The price increase is bigger than the net benefit of the new plant.
They don’t want ” manufacturing jobs” – they want a 1969 economy with high tax rates and strong wages and unions and one earner married households. They associate that with manufacturing but they won’t get it because that’s not actually what “manufacturing” means. People have almost turned the word into a term of art, where it means a set of good things from the past. They’re going to be disappointed.
sab
@MomSense: So currently, a lot of non-marchers are organizing. And we should get on board. They are out there.
TBone
@sab: my years of antibiotics for Lyme feels your pain! I hope he uses good probiotics (prolly didn’t need to even say that). Also, kefir and sauerkraut and kimchi (fermented foods really help).
YY_Sima Qian
@sab: TSMC is Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited, the leading manufacturer of advanced chips for the likes of Apple, Qualcomm, Nvidia, etc. They absolutely dominate the most advanced process nodes, such as 5 nm and lower.
TBone
@Betty Cracker: 🎯
artem1s
marches and performance art was just the tip of the spear that brought the civil right movement into our collective consciousness.
the GOP systematic overthrow of voting rights, voting suppression and gerrymandering is exactly the same thing. only the Jim Crow movement didn’t stop working when the ink was dry on the on civil rights act. The Bush Crime family spent decades polishing up W so he would pass the fundamentalist’s smell test and so they could leverage the ‘moral’ high ground away from the American Monarchy of the Kennedy block of the Democratic Party. Libertarians have been undermining our state’s ability to govern on behalf of ‘the people’ for decades.
American’s still, to this day, wishes for some goodhair white daddy to fix us and so we systematically tear apart the POC and women who have been grinding away for decades. We punish them instead of the perpetrators because they won’t yield up the magic rainbow wand to someone who will ‘do something’ and has ‘good optics’ and the ‘right messaging’. America never believed in ‘doing the hard things’. They just want to show up at the Superbowl and sit in the owner’s box and take credit for everyone else’s hard work. Watergate was made for TV and the media learned the lesson early that American’s love booing the bad guys more than they do celebrating the untermenschen and a well run government.
Even now, the first protests are about “I want my agencies’ money back” NOT protecting the federal, state, and local civil servants who have made our well run government the envy of the whole world. We work because they work. No one gives them a Nobel Prize or a ticker tape parade when a port authority or airport goes back online. That’s just another day ending in Y for them. And now that it’s all falling apart we’re screaming at them to ‘do something’ and berating them for ‘cooperating’ when all they are doing is keeping the wheels turning and trying to ride out the storm that was inflicted on them as much as it was on us.
sab
@Kay: My blue collar stepsons don’t work in factories, and both of their wives work This is what they expect. Life as normal in the twentyfirst century. Trump tariffs will upend their lives.
sab
@YY_Sima Qian: Thank you. Google is not very informative outside of its advertiser base.
TBone
In lieu of Strange Fruit mood music
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-Wtj59opWKg
(Mom’s maiden name)
Eolirin
@artem1s: This.
sab
@TBone: Sauerkraut just got my ears pointed forward.
ETA I love kimchi, but apparently my neighborhood doesn’t. Our local Korean grocery closed. They were not friendly to white customers and we have almost no Koreans in our neighborhood. So not much of a customer base.
MomSense
@sab:
I’m one of them. Currently fundraising because of cuts to programs to help asylum seekers.
Just saying that the organizers of both of those protests locally were not interested in more than the marches so other organizations basically approached participants and recruited them to their organizations. It was just a really weird situation.
NotMax
@Kay
Not to mention that Samsung white goods are notorious for being unreliable.
Princess
@Professor Bigfoot: that’s the kind of thing I’m thinking of. White women did vote for Trump, of course. They were not the women at the marches. And it would have been helpful to keep more of those white women who hated and feared Trump more active. That photo went hugely viral among the white women in my circles. Another thing I think of is the attack on pussy hats as being anti trans women. And from the right/centre, there were attacks on the organizers as being too left.
Raoul Paste
This entire AL post and the comments have been re-orienting. I just wanted to acknowledge that, and now I have to go off and be a responsible adult today.
NotMax
@TBone
Does dill pickle soup count?
Kay
I really get tired of the dismissal of protest movements. You’re not going to build anything “long term” if you sneer at everyone who organizes anything outside the Democratic Party. There’s a strong sexist streak that runs thru the criticism, too, because most ground level organizing is done by women.
The theme is there is no legitimate or “serious” political speech or actions outside the very narrow permissible actions of voting for Democrats or donating to Democrats, that anything else is a waste. Well, guess what? You have to.persuade other people to join you and this absolutely barren, grim, utilitarian approach where you direct what they do and say for max “efficiency” or something isn’t going to get you any followers.
It isn’t childish to seek community or get angry or look for like minded individuals and join with them in wearing hats or marching or talking. Its HUMAN. And its how you build a movement.
TBone
@sab: Kefir tastes just like a yogurt milkshake!
Sauerkraut I have to force down (I buy the raw, crunchy kind).
You can easily make your own if desired. Well, not easily, unless you have a grating wheel for your food processor.
NotMax
@Kay
Just tell me it’s still okay to sneer at Jon Stewart.
Kay
Its also ridiculous to say politicians don’t need to be good speakers. Yes, they do. Words are the tools of the trade. They pass meaningful legislation maybe once a decade – their whole job in between that is to talk in a way that people understand, that people find inspiring, that persuades.
If they’re not good speakers but have other talents, fine, but its a lack and ideally one would look for someone both competent and a good speaker – that’s better.
YY_Sima Qian
@Kay: Yes, that is one of the key points of the article from Jason Furman I posted a couple of days ago. Even if the white collar jobs from re-shored advanced manufacturing are well paid, as engineering jobs in chip fabs tend to be (even in TSMC where the employees are relatively well paid but are also put under enormous pressure & heavily overworked), they will not be numerous enough to make difference.
TBone
@NotMax: OOOH it is SO time to make that again!!! The weather says eff you but I says eff you back! Snow, sleet, and icy rain all day yesterday and today. Pickled hot vichyssoise hits the SPOT with fresh dill mmmmmmmmm
schrodingers_cat
@Professor Bigfoot: It wasn’t just the MAGAs that told him to fuck off. He was unpopular with the Bernie leftists right out of the gate.
TBone
@TBone: I don’t use all the pickles this calls for, only half is plenty.
https://themodernnonna.com/creamy-dill-pickle-soup/
Spanish Moss
I think these points about the long haul of the civil rights movement are important. However, as we contemplate the role of violence, I think we also need to recognize how the world has changed since those days.
This is a digital and financial coup, and much of the power grab is motivated by greed. As the Trump administration continues to make terrible decisions, the adverse effects on businesses and the economy will become more widespread. Will our new oligarchs continue to kiss Trump’s ring then? As the personal lives of more voters become affected, will fear of voter anger over Trump policies make politicians fear a different kind of primary?
I don’t think violence will be helpful, we don’t want to give Trump a reason to declare martial law. Look at what Musk did, he seized the computer systems. Violence is not the right response to this kind of coup, we need to be thinking of our strategies differently in this digital age. It really is a brave new world.
Kay
@YY_Sima Qian:
There’s actually a tier below “white collar” or engineering in modern manufacturing that pays well – (very) skilled trades.
We have a fully automated plant here – they make plastic pop bottles. The plant is essentially one big machine, its a system that fills a plant sized area. A small group of skilled and specially trained mechanics run the whole thing. My son did the wiring and worked with them – they’re making 100 to 120. Its just that there’s only 20 of them.
sab
@MomSense: Isn’t that how this stuff works? People on the same side have different skill sets. Organizing protests v organizing local community activity? Both always recruiting. One group’s recruits feel more comfortable elsewhere.
Eolirin
@Kay: I have no idea what you’re responding to, because none of that is happening in this thread.
Professor Bigfoot
@sab: All my life I thought kimchi had to be this horrid, rancid stuff— right down to using it as as metaphor: “you’re in deep kimchi now!”
To my surprise and delight, I had kimchi the first time on a business trip to Korea… and I loved it.
And now that I think of it, I wonder if lutefisk is as horrid as I’ve been assured…
lowtechcyclist
@YY_Sima Qian:
Um, who??
I had to Google to find out that TSMC = Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. I gather this is a major company, rather than some podunk outfit. But I still don’t know enough about it to understand what you and Martin are talking about.
gvg
@Shalimar: The US Constitution is not done. It is stuck in our heads. We won’t be able to take it out. What is going to happen is we are going to realize and start saying that certain parts of our government are in violation. The part we haven’t delt with before is when the Supreme Court is one of the violators. We need to elect a Congress that will face that and impeach Court members for well argued violations.
At this point I feel they are taking bribes especially and I suspect some of them are taking foreign bribes.
The ruling on Presidential immunity is contrary to the Constitution, clearly. I think the whole deference of the Justice department not indicting a sitting President since Nixon was suspect too, but I don’t think that went before the court.
The reason we haven’t delt with these things before is the voters. Most voters understand the implcations of history poorly and also cause and effect of a whole bunch of things. They blame the wrong things for problems.
Kay
Its also really hard to organize people. If you didn’t like Occupy or the Women’s March or BLM I have an idea – you do it. You organize the perfect Goldilocks movement that doesn’t offend anyone or inconvenience anyone and is orderly and efficient and perfectly representative.
Good luck! Those of us who have been doing it are tired of getting shit on and told we’re doing it wrong by people who dont do shit other than criticize.
I’m sure all the serious thinkers sneering at the pussy hats will do a better job. Lets see it. Get going.
Professor Bigfoot
@gvg: I’ve long believed that conservatives would overthrow the Constitution they claim to revere because it permitted a Black man to be President, twice.
It occurs to me that the opportunity for personal enrichment drives the leaders of the conservative movement; and they’re harvesting like mad.
400 million for armored swasticars?
sab
@sab: Isn’t recruiting the whole point of protesting?
Also too Black Lives Matter didn’t fail. They just shut down when they saw that martial law rules were becoming an option. Don’t work against your own interests
ETA I am sure BLM people are still out there.
MomSense
@sab:
Yes, it was just an awkward situation locally. We did a lot of recruiting at the marches, got some good people elected as DAs and state legislators. We just had to be careful because the organizers were not on board.
Suzanne
@Kay:
Also, I will note…. I usually find out about other organizing when I attend protests.
The other thing that makes me crazy about this….. what do we actually want people to do? Specifically? “Organizing” is not specific and is beyond most people’s skill sets and life constraints. Do you want people to donate money? Do you want them to come to meetings? When are those meetings? What are those meetings for? Do you want phone calls, postcards, door knocking, fliers put up on windows and power poles? Specific calls to action. I’m frustrated to the point that I am ignoring everything that doesn’t have a specific, directed call to actual action.
I have attended multiple community organizing meetings in my own neighborhood, which is 75% Democratic. Guess what? I’m usually one of three or four people there. I take time out of my own life to do this, and that’s fine, but I don’t have much time and I need to be selective with how I spend it. Everybody at these meetings is nice, nobody has any goal in mind besides voting for the right people, which everyone there does already. Not effective. Not productive.
MomSense
@Kay:
I made so many of those hats! I remember some republicans saying there was no way they were handmade and that Soros probably paid to have them manufactured.
sab
@Professor Bigfoot: If you are brave enough to try lutefisk, let me know. I was married to a Minnesotan, granted he was Jewish not Scandanavian. He let me eat kippers ( current husband does not) but not a word about lutefisk. Which tells me a lot.
Matt McIrvin
@Professor Bigfoot: The HMart (big Korean supermarket) in Burlington, MA has a food court with stalls offering various Asian cuisines. But to remind you where you are, even if they’re nominally Japanese or Vietnamese or Chinese, they all seem to serve you a side of kimchi with your meal. And that’s a highlight. I love the stuff so much.
Kay
@Eolirin:
How do you know organizers are “expecting immediate results” and all the other patronizing criticism on this thread? Have you talked to them? Attended one of their meetings?
I’ve never once met one who expected immediate results or used “magical thinking” or any of the rest of this bullshit. They’re people who persuade other people to do things. Nothing magical or childish about it.
sab
@Suzanne: Yes! Recruiting is the point of protests.
Matt McIrvin
@Professor Bigfoot: It’s a bust-out, all right.
We have a tradition of turning mobsters and frauds into folk heroes, but I think there’s a limit to how much direct looting of the government people will take. Trump’s fans still believe he’s somehow “draining the swamp” but I have to believe this is an angle to pursue on the margins.
Kay
@MomSense:
I didn’t go but I was so grateful to you- all. Gave me hope and energy to do my thing locally. Ignore the naysayers. They couldn’t get 5 people together to do anything.
Spanish Moss
I think marches as a form of protest are important because they keep the issues in the news and bring motivated people together. Politicians notice them. However, I don’t think people like Mark Zuckerberg give a fig about that type of protest. To make them reconsider how they wield their influence they need to be hit in their pocketbooks. To that end, in addition to marches I would like to see more organized boycotts: cancelling of accounts, no more purchases through certain businesses, etc.
Kay
@Suzanne:
Right. The action item. Because no one will remain in a movement that asks nothing of them. You’re there to DO and they’re not giving you anything other than “vote or donate to Democrats” which you’re already doing, and that’s why there’s only 3 or 4 people there.
Suzanne
@sab: A big point of protests is to experience solidarity, to realize that there are others who share your viewpoint. When people feel that they are alone, they believe they are likely to be ineffective, and thus don’t take any action.
What a lot of our discussion around here really fails to grapple with is that actual persuasion is incredibly difficult. So we focus on trying to inspire squishes instead.
YY_Sima Qian
@lowtechcyclist: Please see my reply to sab at #139. The Biden Administration enticed (via the CHIPS Act) & coerced TSMC & the Taiwanese government to make significant capital investment in manufacturing plant for the most advanced process nodes (5, 3 & 2 nm) in Arizona. The plants recent staring mass production. Now the Trump Administration is coercing TSMC & the Taiwanese government to help underwrite the rescue & revitalization of Intel as the “truly American (MAGA!)” supplier, that will eventually be a competitor to TSMC.
Suzanne
@Kay: I’m not just there to DO…. Quite frankly, I’m there to be told what to do. I am a person with kids and a job and family obligations and hobbies. I do not have any especially relevant skills in this arena. I have a couple of spare hours a week and a few hundred dollars every election cycle.
Donating some small amount of money is a thing I can do. Protesting is a specific thing I can do. Phone calls, with scripts, are things I can do on a lunch break. Fantastic. So I get pissed off when people shit on protesting…. because that is what those people can do. That’s what they can contribute. Stop diminishing the contributions of our allies.
MomSense
@Kay:
Our local yarn shops became distribution centers. We would bring hats and put them in huge bags and then women transported them in their minivans and gave them out at the marches. It was crazy. So much fun. We did a lot of organizing and recruiting at those marches.
The problem is sustaining that energy. It can’t turn into the democratic town committee because those meetings are insufferable but at the same time we do need to get good people in office. I think the best organizing I’ve seen in recent memory (aside from the Obama campaigns) was the work to get the ACA passed. That was because the unions like SEIU and AFL CIO put up serious money in the form of the cutest darn young organizers you’ve ever seen. Seriously they were at my house every other day and we would take scooter breaks and go around the neighborhood with the little kids then back to phone calls for our next event. We did have rallies and we also had press events and parties and all kinds of activities that brought media coverage.
YY_Sima Qian
@Kay: In a semiconductor fab (& a display factory, a solar panel factory, a highly automated EV assembly plant), the “skilled trades” are white collar engineers, too.
stinger
@Suzanne:
This is why I push for people attending meetings of the school board or their city council or the Planning and Zoning Commission or the county board of supervisors or the Commission on Aging…. Again, you’ll likely be one of three or four people in the audience, but your presence will be more powerful, because at these meetings decisions get made that affect daily lives. “Community organizing” is already happening — at these boards and commissions that have actual power.
Kay
@MomSense:
I have a big house and I love having people so I housed a lot of the young organizers. It really is fun. I miss that kind of energy in the D party – I’m afraid social media has replaced it. Such a sad, shitty replacement, Facebook or Twitter. No wonder people are depressed.
Suzanne
@stinger: As someone who has attended dozens of City Council meetings and P&Z stuff…. I disagree somewhat. It’s, of course, good to educate oneself about local issues, and contact your local pols about your positions. If you’re going to speak and make a public comment, awesome. But if you’re just going to sit there and watch…. why go? They don’t, like, poll the audience. Attending meetings isn’t productive in and of itself. Thats what I mean about organizing needing specific and actionable goals.
Professor Bigfoot
@NotMax: If I can’t flip Jon <spit> motherfucking <spit> Stewart off, then I’m out.
Because seriously, fuck that guy, sideways, with rusty farm implements.
Him and Bill Maher both.
George
Maybe other commenters have already mentioned this, but what seems unique to me about the current chaos, and even going back to FFOTUS’ first term, is that there is absolutely no internal resistance or debate within the GOP itself. The few GOP members in the House who dared to raise their voices in protest–e.g., Liz Cheney–got primaried and are now cooling their heels outside of government.
It is one thing if party members are loyal to a set of ideas or an ideology. In such cases, I think there is room for fact-based debate that might change minds or that might lead to healthy political compromises.
It is another if party members are loyal to one person. That is where the GOP is now. Anything tied to old-school Republicanism or conservatism has been discarded. The sole purpose now of GOP politicians is to serve their cult leader. In that regard, the GOP of today is not much different than Maoists in China or Stalinists in the USSR back in the day.
That is what makes resistance now such a difficult thing–no matter how much anyone argues that the sky is blue, as long as FFOTUS tells cult members that the sky is green, and as long as the mainstream media report it as a “both sides” issue, they will believe the sky is green.
The only thing that might wake up cult members to reality is pain–economic, physical, whatever. Even then, though, there likely are millions of cult members who don’t mind the pain, or who perhaps welcome the pain because it means that the goals of the cult are being met, or who believe that any pain is actually caused by whomever their cult leader says is causing it.
Kay
@MomSense:
Indivisible has been organizing a lot of the calls to Congress. Democrats in Congress were mad because they are receiving too many calls. Voters are literally CALLING them and they’re mad, because who needs voters, right? So unserious!
Republicans embrace their base while Democrats hate their base and want to put them on a shelf and take them down every two years to re elect incumbents. Its a problem. Not of the base. Of elected Democrats. They can’t be bothered with us.
Eolirin
@Suzanne: As you’ve pointed out, where we continue to fall down is the call to action step after that. We need to figure out how to get better at that.
Professor Bigfoot
@schrodingers_cat: Ah yes, the folk who inspired Bigfoot’s Maxim:
“There is no horseshoe. There is only white people who are at best uncomfortable with any power being held in Black hands. Those white people are at all points of the ‘left-right’ spectrum.”
Professor Bigfoot
I most certainly agree; but I want to point out that we are not advocating violence, but conservatives have been stockpiling firearms and ammunition since the Clinton administration.
We also have historical examples such as the Red Summer of 1919 and the sack of Black Wall Street in Tulsa; once again, they are the bringers of violence.
During the heyday of the Civil Rights Movement, how do you think those freedom riders and marchers were protected from Klan violence?
Let me recommend a couple of books to you– “Negroes with Guns,” by Robert F. Williams, who gives you a first hand account of how armed Black people defended themselves against white supremacist violence; and also “Negroes and the Gun: The Black Tradition of Arms” by Nicholas Johnson.
Finally there’s the wisdom of our sainted elder, Fannie Lou Hamer:
We don’t choose violence. We don’t want violence. But we will respond to violence perpetrated against us.
The movement understood that while we eschew political violence, we retain the right of individual self defense.
Spanish Moss
@Professor Bigfoot: Thanks for the recommendations, they both look very interesting!
schrodingers_cat
Is it only me who finds Josh Marshall’s writing style pedantic and boring. I cannot make it through more than 2 paragraphs.
schrodingers_cat
@Professor Bigfoot: Add the media to the Biden detractors right from the get go. White people were just not comfortable with Biden.
YY_Sima Qian
@George: Heh, a few China Watchers have suggested that what DOGE is doing to the federal bureaucracy has echoes of Mao utilizing the fervent Red Guards to wage revolution against the CPC nomenklatura during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution
1st time as tragedy, 2nd time as [nonetheless damaging] farce.
Geminid
@Professor Bigfoot: Back in the 1990s James Farmer gave a talk at Washington and Lee College, about his experiences organizing in Mississippi in the early 1960s. I listened to it on the public radio affiliate based in Lexington, Virginia.
Farmer spoke of a time he came very close to being lynched. It was nighttime in a remote Mississippi town, and a mob had surrounded the funeral home where he and some local Black people had holed up. The mob included Mississippi state troopers and they demanded Farmer be handed over.
Farmer believed in Non-Violence and was afraid the others would be killed, so he offered to give himself up. But the Black people had a different idea. They had him get in a coffin, loaded him in a hearse and then five of the younger men drove him out.
When they got to a safe place in a larger town and Farmer climbed out of the coffin, he saw the men were heavily armed. They told him they knew he was Non-Violent so they didn’t tell him the plan back at the funeral home. We all fought in Korea, they said, and those cops knew better than to stop us.
George
@schrodingers_cat:
You are not alone. Marshall is indeed pedantic and boring. He writes at the same level as the “one weird trick” advertisements that currently infest the Internet.
UncleEbeneezer
@Professor Bigfoot: I had the privilege of working with a man (on police reform in Pasadena) who spent part of his youth down South in the civil rights movement and told a story of spending one harrowing night holding a shotgun and standing guard in Fannie Lou Hamer’s home while the Klan circled them in pickup trucks. Dale Gronemeier: an extraordinary example of Jewish-Black solidarity.
RandomMonster
Okay, but a bunch of local normie Zoom meetings and activities didn’t change the elections either.
UncleEbeneezer
BLM had its fair share of problems. Not just the big story about one of its’ founders using money to buy a big house (which honestly doesn’t really bother me that much but I understand why it upset a lot of people and was a very bad look), but also back in Los Angeles, one of the leading voices of BLM-LA, Professor Melina Abdullah decided to join the ticket with Cornel West to try to hand the Presidency back to Trump. She spent all of 2024 doing nothing but bashing Biden/Harris over Gaza and saying absolutely nothing about the importance of stopping Trump. For all the good that BLM did in highlighting the problem of racism in US policing they were also jaw-droppingly naive/apathetic to the bigger political picture when elections were on the line.
stinger
@Suzanne: Yes, this is a long-term action for people who might not know where to start — a first step in getting involved. Attend and listen, learn how the process works and what the roadblocks are and who the movers are. Over time, attendees may feel informed enough, feel “known” enough, that they might even run for one of those positions. Political organizing needs goals, as you rightly point out. These commission already have goals, budgets, etc. Decisions are made at these meetings, and regular attendees can influence those decisions. Or at least when you attend your neighborhood groups you’ll have solid info to work with.
It’s pretty sad to read minutes of a town council or P&Z meeting, where decisions were made about new sewer lines (and the company awarded the business is a brother-in-law of the mayor) or a new single-family housing development is approved, and “There were no public comments.” Of course they don’t poll the audience before voting — they are elected representatives. But you can speak up during public comment time, or chat up board members afterward, or otherwise gradually get informed and involved and have influence.
Maybe my suggestion is more useful for small-town residents than people in big cities.
TBone
@Kay: you hit that nail right on its head – took the wind out of many sails.
UncleEbeneezer
@RandomMonster: The Women’s March was crucial in laying the organizing foundation for 2018 and played a big role in us taking back the House (which saved Obamacare), impeaching Trump, etc. I know because I ran an Indivisible group filled with women we mostly met through the Women’s March, we organized, mailed 20K postcards to voters in CA-25 and elected the first Dem (Katie Hill) in that district in ages and she helped protect the ACA. Likewise, saying Black Lives Matter didn’t make a difference is just not true. The energy spawned from that movement absolutely helped us get a Civilian Oversight Committee in Pasadena, and helped get several good racial justice bills passed in Los Angeles/CA too. The bill to make it illegal to discriminate against Black employees based on their natural hair, for example, probably would have never happened without BLM.
RandomMonster
@UncleEbeneezer: I’m with you! I think the marches were effective resistance to Trump 1.0. My original objection in this thread was to Marshall asserting (with no evidence or examples) that normie something-something contributed more to Trump’s failure the first time around.
Kay
@TBone:
I’m tired of organizing. I want someone else to do it. Since there are so many BJ experts on effective political action that upsets no one I await their instructions.
If the plan is “do nothing”, well, we’re already doing that.
Plan beats no plan. Always. If they don’t like the plans of the icky, unserious girls then they should start something of their own. I’m in! I’m sure it will be great.
Elizabelle
@Geminid: OMG, that is a great story. Rest in power, James Farmer and the Korean vets who saved him.
Colette South
@schrodingers_cat: I’m with you: Pedantic, boring, and self-congratulatory.
TBone
@Kay: icky girls club has become the Women on Fire Department in my world. I’m waiting for the proper timing, it’s everything. Worldwide history lesson from 2011:
https://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2101745_2102132_2102373,00.html
TBone
@UncleEbeneezer:
@Geminid:
Wow, thank you for those true tales!