Author: Alan Buddug

One day, I will stop criticizing the Democrats. That day will be when they stop disappointing me.

Let’s get this assassination attempt in perspective.

There are very good reasons why Trump’s popularity relative to Biden hasn’t really changed since the shooting.

First off, people are trying to kill Trump all the time.

• June 18, 2016: A British man at a Trump rally attempted to take a cop’s gun for the purpose of shooting Trump.
• September 6, 2017: A guy tried to kill Trump with a forklift.
• October 1, 2018: A US Navy veteran sent Trump ricin on a letter.
• September 20, 2020: A Canadian had a ricin-laced letter intended for Trump.
• October 2020: The people who wanted to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer also wanted to hang Trump.
• July 13, 2024: A young Republican tried to shoot Trump with an AR-15.

For some reason, the rest of these assassination attempts were fine, but this latest one has Democrats cowering in a posture of surrender. Why?

Second, who created this hazardous conditions that led to the July 13 attempt on Trump’s life?

According to both Republicans and Democrats, the issue is the “heated rhetoric” on both sides. To be clear, what this means is that Democrats have decided that they can no longer state the facts about Trump and Trumpism. I was going to list those facts out, but the essence of it is that Trump would create a fascist dystopia. To be fair, if you’re a fascist, it might be exactly what you want, so a fascist utopia in that case. If a factual recounting of your intentions and behaviors makes people want to kill you, is that the fault of the facts? Wasn’t it the Republicans who said, “Facts don’t care about your feelings”?

Third, when shootings happen, what is it that Republicans say?

After a school shooting in January of this year, Trump told supporters, “We have to get over it.” That’s been a common refrain among Republicans for a very long time regarding gun violence. Their other favorite thing to say is that no amount of bloodshed would justify doing anything about the regulation of firearms — in particular, the AR-15. You see, from time to time, the Tree of Liberty must be fed with the blood of elementary school children.

Fourth, Republicans — and Trump in particular — are constantly encouraging political violence.

Here is a handy list of times Trump called for violence from 2022.

Fifth: When political violence happens, what is it that Republicans say?

When one of their people attacks a Democrat (e.g., when Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul was attacked by crazed Trumper with a hammer), they simultaneously laugh about it and claim they did nothing wrong. They point to the attacker and say he was crazy. Their violent rhetoric could not have possibly contributed to the attack, they say.

Sixth: Republicans are always talking about killing pedophiles.

Why should we be shocked if a Republican actually tried to kill a well-known pedophile? Now, I do realize that most Republicans don’t actually care about pedophiles and that “killing pedophiles” is a dog whistle for killing LGTBQ people, but should we be surprised that a Republican didn’t get the dog whistle and instead took it literally?

Seventh: Republicans are in favor of bullying.

The entire Republican ethos is a toxic fixation on achieving dominance, and the essence of fascism is just bullying writ large. According to people interviewed by the press, the shooter was an outcast who was bullied all the time, and we know that bullying contributes to mental illness and can contribute to an individual choosing violent action. Because the Republicans contribute to a culture of bullying, they are also contributing to the blow-back from bullying. They like to talk about how violence is the result of a toxic culture, and they’re right — they just don’t understand that they’re talking about their own culture.

Eighth: People clearly do not appreciate the scale of the horrific violence perpetuated by the US political system.

On the same day Trump’s ear was tragically pierced by a 22 caliber bullet, hundreds of Palestinians living in Gaza were massacred by the Zionist genocide machine using US munitions provided by the Biden administration. Within the USA, roughly 120 people are shot every day; nearly all of those shootings would have been prevented by more rational policies that valued the well-being of human beings above increasing the wealth of a few people who are already stinking rich. Similarly, about 135 Americans commit suicide every day, and the same kinds of policies that would reduce shootings would reduce suicides as well because fewer people would wish to be dead.

Ninth: Ear piercing is very common in the US.

83% of American women have their ears pierced, and many American men do as well. Yes, it is always a good idea to have a professional piercer provide this service rather than going to a novice with a piercing gun or a maniac wielding an AR-15, but, come on, it was just an ear. Trump himself described the feeling of the injury as “the world’s largest mosquito“. If we start obsessing over every time someone almost got killed in this country, that would take up all our time.

Tenth: What do you call 9 people sitting with a Nazi?

Well, that’s 10 Nazis. They are not “innocent people”. If something happens to those Nazis who are all sitting together, is that really a tragedy, or is it just something that happened? We are now 8 years into this bullshit. Everyone knows what Trump represents. There are no longer any excuses for supporting him in any way. Yes, I realize they are (willfully) ignorant and might have brain damage from lead exposure, COVID-19, and other things, but those excuses only go so far — and at some point, you have to accept that an individual’s brain damage is an inseparable part of them.

Eleventh: It’s looking more and more like the shooter was a Republican.

How can anyone on the left or center-right be held responsible for an act committed by a conservative? Instead of cowering and essentially surrendering, the Biden campaign should be preparing a statement indicating that Trump is so unpopular with conservatives that one tried to kill him. What a loser. Wouldn’t it be better for everyone if he just quit?

What are the Democrats up to?

A few days before the latest assassination attempt, someone on Twitter wrote this:

The Democratic Party is willing to lose to avoid confrontation. They are tragically deferential to institutional power/norms, despite their base pleading with them to do more and to understand these are unprecedented times. They prefer a permanent defensive cowering posture. Their base is begging them to Do Something about abortion, they do nothing. People are begging them to Do Something about Supreme Court overreach, they do nothing. They don’t offer offense of any kind, they hold, then dangle the idea of fixing the problem after the next election. The way they’ve handled the sinking of their presidential nominee in realtime is no different—instead of bold, decisive action, instead of courage, they’ve simply told voters, its out of their hands, there’s nothing they can do, all they can do is leak their dissenting opinions. If Democrats refuse to fight for their own political survival, why should we trust that they’d ever fight for ours.

Lindsay Ballant

When Lindsay says, “their base,” she means loyal voters, not the people who the party considers their base — loyal donors — but her point still stands. Then here is what the Biden campaign says about how their strategy will change after the assassination attempt:

Rather than verbally attacking Trump in the coming days, the White House and the Biden campaign will draw on the president’s history of condemning all sorts of political violence including his sharp criticism of the “disorder” created by campus protests over the Israel-Gaza conflict, campaign officials said on condition of anonymity.

Reuters (as quoted here)

Yes, the response of the Democrats is to “both sides” it and attempt to equate protests against a genocide to the attempted assassination. According to The Nation, this is an act of clever marketing rather than a psychotic, immoral betrayal. It could potentially make some sense if they were equating the genocide to the attempted assassination, but no, this is the protests against the genocide that they don’t like.

Some of Biden’s political allies were so demoralized they seem to have preemptively surrendered. On Sunday, Axios quoted a “senior House Democrat” as saying, “We’ve all resigned ourselves to a second Trump presidency.”

“Biden Condemns Political Violence Without Whitewashing Trump” The Nation (July 14, 2024)

Alexandria Ocasio Cortez — one of the few voices from the Democratic party that usually makes sense — demanded the resignation of any senior Democrats that have resigned themselves to a second Trump presidency. I doubt any of them will comply.

If you’re a ‘senior Democrat’ that feels this way, you should absolutely retire and make space for true leadership that refuses to resign themselves to fascism. This kind of leadership is functionally useless to the American people. Retire.

Alexandria Ocasio Cortez

It’s time to end the Democratic party.

While it isn’t clear whether the Democratic party is sincerely incompetent and pathetic or whether they just keep intentionally losing over and over again, it is extremely clear that no one should support them anymore. The only reason you might support the Democratic party is if you are somehow OK with their failures and are fine with the US slipping into authoritarianism as long as it happens slowly.

There’s a lot to complain about, but here are 3 big ones:

• The Democratic party consistently chooses terrible candidates in an effort to appeal to conservatives. Ultimately, this does not work because the Republicans are always one step to the right of the Democrats and will always accuse the Democrat of being a communist no matter how right wing the Democrat is. The higher the office, the worse the candidates they choose.
• The Democratic party will not fight for you. When things get rough, the Democrats curl up in a ball on the floor.
• The Democrats consistently choose to take conservative actions — even when they have control of all three branches of government. For example, the fiasco of the Affordable Care Act was based on a Heritage Foundation proposal — yes, the same Heritage Foundation that hatched Project 2025.

Essentially, the Democrats are always on the verge of surrendering. If the Republicans can be characterized by Narcissistic Personality Disorder (and I think they can), Democrats seem to be co-dependent people-pleasers that are desperate for conservative voters to like them. Another explanation would be that the Democrats are always putting the wishes of the donor class (who are much more wealthy and elderly than the average American) above those of their common constituents — and the donor class is always more afraid of the left than it is of the far right. Maybe the Democrats are just cowards — but it is important to recognize that human death and suffering isn’t what they are afraid of. Rather, they are afraid of disorder, and especially disorder that might affect their standard of living. They don’t mind people suffering and dying as long as that death and suffering benefits them (typically, because it enforces stability).

Perhaps all three of these factors are at play.

How to end the anti-democratic Democrats

The dominance over electoral politics of the Democratic party comes down to 2 things: 1) cultural inertia, and 2) funding. We can address the first by addressing the second.

Instead of donating to the Democratic party, we need to be donating to left-leaning organizations that can distribute funds directly to political campaigns or even sidestep those campaigns and directly provide marketing for those left-leaning candidates. (Sidestepping might be necessary to keep the DNC from getting a cut.) At the very least, a single, clearly leftist donation source would force candidates to treat popular positions as valid. In contrast, an individual making a $5 per month donation does not have enough financial significance to the Democratic party or any individual candidate to warrant serious consideration of their political desires. If there were enough people going along with this strategy, multiple left-wing orgs would be able to successfully participate.

While it seems like Democratic Socialists of America might be the correct organization to take on that role, it’s a complicated situation; there’s also Our Revolution, PSL, and probably many others to consider. The correct org would usually (but not always) be donating to Democratic party candidates, but would never donate to a right-wing Democrat (e.g., Manchin).

The combination of the two-party system and the legality of buying off politicians makes it impossible to democratize the electoral system, but we can get a little closer by starving the Democratic party of direct access to revenue from individuals who are not wealthy. The overall purpose of this strategy is to take party direction away from the people who run the DNC; they’ll say this causes “chaotic messaging” but they really should have thought about that before they decided to work against democracy. The left’s rejection of electoral politics is based on the fact that electoral politics are controlled by the very wealthy; that’s a valid criticism, but it also means that the left has not explored workarounds that might reduce the influence of the wealthy on the electoral system. Such intervention is certainly a lot more important than merely voting.

I didn’t think being an American could become more embarrassing, but here we are. How can anyone take the USA seriously when those two buffoons are our candidates for President?

On the brighter side, though: Apparently, it is now OK to say out loud that Joe Biden should be replaced as the Democratic Party nominee:

The Guardian: Who could replace Joe Biden? Here are six possibilities
BBC: Can Biden be replaced? And who could replace him?
New York Times: President Biden, I’ve seen enough
CNN: What would happen if Biden decided to leave the race?
The Hill: Axelrod to GOP strategists: If Biden is replaced, ‘you guys are in trouble’
The Economist: How could Democrats replace Joe Biden as their candidate for president?
The Atlantic: Dropping Out Is Biden’s Most Patriotic Option
Bloomberg: Democrats Hit Panic Button in Wake of Biden Debate Debacle

Being a leftist means being correct too soon. It’s a corollary to the strange phenomenon where Democrats are always opposed to a genocide after it is over, and, now, to the fact that Joe Biden should not have been the nominee in 2020.

Look, I am old, and I’m getting older every day. That’s how it works. At some point, I am going to stop working and that point should come when I can still do the job. This is how my dignity would be maintained despite what aging does to a person. If I’m 78 fucking years old and they’re still propping me up to do this job, it will end up being an embarrassment to me and a stain on my reputation. Biden is 82 now — we should be helping him with small jobs around the house, and getting him a blanket and a hot chocolate. We should be adjusting the recliner when he falls asleep in it. We should be giving him rides to the store and to church. We should not be making him run the most powerful nation on the planet. And yes, the Democrats should be keeping him around to provide them with his wisdom (it does give me pause to imagine what that might entail), but there’s no way he should be President of the United States.

From the perspective of the left, every candidate the DNC seriously considered in 2020 was completely unacceptable. (They even included a literal billionaire in their lineup!) In addition to being unacceptable, Biden was also absurd. So absurd that I didn’t believe that that Democrats would vote for him, but they disappointed me yet again. I was shocked that he was their nominee. But here we are. Luckily, there are lots of other people available to take the job, and there’s still time to switch.

This just in: He’s not dropping out. He’s even committing to another debate.

This video from 2019 features Meredith Whittaker who is now the president of the Signal Foundation talking about AI, which is one of her areas of expertise. She spent about a year as an advisor on AI to the Federal Trade Commission, and has a background with AI at Google.

Before January 6, 2020, Thom Hartman published a piece about how Republicans planned to steal the election. Democrats mostly responded to it with denial — essentially saying that the scenario he described was not possible because of the strength of our democratic institutions. Even a week after January 6, Democrats were still saying that there was no way that plan could ever work. Well, then people looked at it seriously, and it turns out that if the mob had been more organized and if Mike Pence had gone along with it, their plot to hand the election to Donald Trump would have worked well enough. A system designed to thwart democracy will sometimes thwart it in a way you don’t like.

For details on the 2020 plot, I will refer you to Wikipedia.

There’s a new plan now — designed to fit a new set of circumstances and compensate for past failures — and Democrats are again denying that there’s a danger. In short:

1. Mike Johnson refuses to swear a few new Democrats into Congress on January 3rd, claiming there are “irregularities” in their elections that must be first investigated. This allows the Republicans to still be in control of the House on January 6. They’ve delayed swearing in representatives before, so it is an established practice and appears to be legal.
2. Mike Johnson delays acceptance of the Electoral College certificates of election from a handful of states where Republicans claim there are “problems.” Republicans have repeatedly stated that they believe the House of Representatives is the ultimate arbiter of whether to certify electors from each state, and there’s no precedent regarding whether that is true. If Democrats fought this point in a legal sense, it would go to the Supreme Court, which is controlled by the Republicans; it would likely conclude that Congress should decide the question with legislation.
3. Regardless of how many votes Biden won by, electoral or popular, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives simply refuses to certify the electoral college votes of enough states; as a result, the minimum of 270 isn’t reached. Under the 12th Amendment, like with the election of 1876, that throws the election to the House, where each state gets one vote. While a majority of Americans live in a state run by Democrats, a majority of the states themselves are run by Republicans. Even if Biden has the majority of 269 electoral votes, the Constitution still says the election goes to the House, and the House may choose literally anyone as President.

(Much of the text of the above 3 points is copy-pasted from Thom Hartman’s article.)

The way we would all experience this is that Biden wins on election night, but Republicans immediately start claiming the election was stolen. Over the next few weeks, they claim specific states have a problem. Legal maneuvering begins and continues all the way into January; Republicans successfully stall — they’re good at it. Before January 3rd, Republicans make claims about specific new Democratic party members of the House, and Mike Johnson refuses to seat them on January 3rd pending an investigation. On January 6, Mike Johnson claims that Biden doesn’t actually have 270 electoral votes and announces that the House will choose the President.

This new plan does not depend on a mob of crazed MAGA minions, nor does it depend on Mike Pence. It also avoids the need to send sets of fake electors from some states — a strategy that didn’t work out last time. Rather, it depends on a crew of Republican politicians who sometimes speak out against Trump and his authoritarian aspirations, but always end up doing the wrong thing in the end. If the Democrats want to fight any of this, the best course of action would be to get a time machine, go back to 1977 (for example), and eliminate the electoral college and the other procedural tricks that allow this strategy to work. Since that’s not an option, the Democratic party really needs to think outside the box.

I mean, really outside the box. Outside the box of always trying to get conservatives to like them. Outside the box of standard procedure. Outside the box of civility. Outside the box of preventing conflict by throwing vulnerable people under the bus. I predict that the Democrats will not think outside of the box. My understanding is that the Democrats would rather let the Republicans win than step outside the box. Since the Democratic party isn’t going to be saving the day, we will all just have to cross our fingers and hope that the MAGA’s are too disorganized even within the House of Representatives to make this plan happen.

Hopes and prayers!

PS: This post is in no way meant to dissuade you from voting. Please vote.

There’s an article in the New Yorker from June 10 entitled “Are We Doomed? Here’s how to think about it“. It’s really cute when academics tell people how to think because academics are — let’s say — a little odd. Of the highest relevance in this context is their absolute conviction that academics can solve any problem. It’s a specific and self-serving kind of intense optimism that we also see among liberals/Democrats — the experts will inevitably solve every problem.

The article revolves around a course at the University of Chicago co-taught by an astrophysicist and a “computational scientist and sociologist”. They bring in an expert for each putative source of doom, and there seems to be a lot of emphasis on coming up with a more informed weighing of these different sources of doom.

Importantly, they seem to see the means of doom (e.g., nuclear annihilation, climate change, asteroid strike, AI) as things that exist independently of human society. In some cases, like asteroid strike, that’s mostly true. In most cases, though, the real source of doom is either a caustic culture or two caustic cultures rubbing up against each other and thing the liberal mind is focused on is really the tool rather than the cause. (They do this with guns, too.) In all cases, the source of caustic culture is a group of elites who are floating so high above the rest of society that they believe they are independent of that society and no longer really care if it is destroyed. See, for example: Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Jeffrey Bezos, Joe Biden.

The whole reason we have states engaging in “nuclear deterrence” with one another is because they are controlled by out-of-touch elites who believe that either A) civilization will be destroyed, but my money/power will protect me (perhaps via my various luxury vaults), or B) I would rather destroy the entire world than sacrifice my elite status. It’s the same for many of these other means of destruction. Should we do something about climate change? No, because doing something substantive would sacrifice the status of the elites and they’d rather die than lose their status. Should we prepare for a potential asteroid strike in a meaningful way? No, too expensive — that kind of expenditure would have to be borne by the elites, thus threatening their elite status.

Wherever there are elites, there is intense anxiety that the working class will rise up and take away their status. When the working class does manage to rise up, the elites never get over it; they will obsess about it forever, and in the cases where the revolution was kind, they will lie about it incessantly. See, for example, the Soviet Revolution, the New Deal, Cuba.

In 1860, white people still outnumbered enslaved Black people by a wide margin, even in the south. However, in the context of a plantation, the opposite was true, and it was all too easy to imagine those enslaved people rebelling. Southern whites developed complex systems to protect those plantation owners from the people they were enslaving. In every pro-communist revolution that has occurred, capitalists have sent troops to fight against the revolution; this is not typically because the capitalists care about the country in question, but rather because they fear a trend that will culminate in the revolution arriving at their own doorstep. In the modern-day corporation, the anxiety of the elites comes from a sneaking suspicion that they really don’t know anything about running the corporation. They are always worried that people are not giving 110% effort, and they are extremely concerned that the experts they employ are not working entirely for the benefit of the capitalist.

Traditionally, capitalists have dealt with this anxiety in the context of a corporation via complex procedures and bean counting — i.e., bureaucracy. Fans of capitalism love to rail against “central planning” and “bureaucracy”, and say that public institutions “should be run like a business” but there’s no more centrally planned, bureaucratic and outright authoritarian system than the modern American business. There’s a way out of this inefficient, labyrinthine bureaucracy, though — a solution that also completely solves the anxiety of the capitalist.

Artificial intelligence.

Yes, just replace everyone, from the guy who tightens the nuts on the thing, to the bookkeeper tracking all the beans with machines running artificial intelligence. You can tell it is intelligent because “intelligence” is right in the name. The word “artificial” means not human — so you don’t have to pay it. The important thing, though, from the capitalist perspective is that AI offers the possibility of direct control — no human intermediaries. At some point, the artificial intelligence will be so smart that it will be able to replicate itself, so you won’t even have to hire programmers. (A lot of corporations have already fired programmers and are trying to have AI do their jobs.) This is why “artificial intelligence” is so exciting for everyone right now.

In order to quash their anxiety, capitalists are willing to spend billions of dollars on AI. Just one corporation, Meta, expects to spend $10 billion this year. Google plans to spend $12 billion. The claimed motivations are fuzzy things like “increased revenue” and “cashing in on the boom” but it all comes down to getting rid of workers who have to be paid and, more importantly, have a will of their own. The elites are quite literally always trying to figure out how to re-implement slavery, and this implementation is superficially perfect since no humans are involved.

The obvious problem — the one my dad keeps bringing up — is that if corporations are no longer paying workers, then 99% of people would no longer have money with which to buy the things offered by those corporations. We talk about the “service economy” but even fast food companies are working toward a day when the restaurant will be run by robots. How can this work out?

Well, it cannot, but the real problem is that people don’t understand the true purpose of capitalism. In short, the purpose of capitalism — or the goal of the capitalist — is to not work. The goal of not working may be achieved through any means necessary, certainly this includes “hard work”, but it also includes sacrificing the lives of any other person, or every other person. Put another way, the purpose of capitalism is to elevate the capitalist class above human society; once this has been achieved, there is no need to continue capitalism — or human society. If capitalism ends humanity (with the exception of the capitalist class, which is above humanity) that is good; it is the intended climax of the story of capitalism. If capitalism did not end humanity, it would be like a bomb that never manifests its destiny (by exploding).

We are living in an unfortunate (or perhaps inevitable) intersection of amazingly dangerous technology and outlandishly elevated elites. Those elites are happy to use that amazing technology to further elevate themselves and also wipe out the rest of humanity. Which type of technology the elites use to wipe out the rest of humanity is a bit beside the point, but here are some examples (see if you can match each scenario to a media franchise):

• They can choose to drag their feet on climate change, and then hide in their luxury vaults while the rest of the world starves and burns.
• They can develop AI/robotic soldiers that give the elites direct control of the means of violence from the safety of their luxury vaults.
• They can use nuclear war to wipe out the rest of the world, while they hide in their luxury vaults.
• They can hide in their luxury vaults while the rest of the world is wiped out by some new plague.

(Incidentally, the robot-controlled warfare is already happening; e.g., in South Korea and Israel, they’re using automated machine gun turrets right now.)

The interesting thing is that they are planning to do all this. They just don’t know which of these events will the “The Event” — and they don’t care. They don’t feel like they’re part of humanity anymore and they are more than ready to sacrifice us all to whatever cosmic horror happens to pop up. They are more than willing to be that cosmic horror. In a society this advanced, there is but one doom, and it is the rich.

I strongly recommend that you read Douglas Rushkoff’s essay, “Survival of the Richest: The wealthy are plotting to leave us behind” (unfortunately, it is now behind a paywall, but it is worth it to find an archive of it or even create an account on Medium). And then, Rushkoff also has a book by the same name that is worth your time.

It’s Pride month! Hooray!

For some reason, Columbia doesn’t do Pride until September. OK, we actually know the reason. It’s because the University of Missouri is not in session in June, and most of the students aren’t here. They’re spending the summer with their parents, typically, and will attend Pride events in that area, so it isn’t like they are missing Pride, exactly. And that gets down to the real reason Columbia’s Pride is in September — because that gives Boone County area vendors a chance to make a lot more money than they would have in June.

Rainbow capitalism. You can tell a lot about a person’s politics from their relationship to it:

Liberals love rainbow capitalism because they think including everyone in an orgy of consumerism is the pinnacle of human civilization. It’s the same thinking that leads them to conclude that the prison-industrial complex is OK, so long as the prison guards are diverse or at least reflect the same demographics as the prisoners. If only we had more trans drone pilots, right?

Conservatives love the capitalism but hate the rainbow, or rather, are very, very angry that the rainbow was stolen from Christianity, even though the actual story was originally Jewish and the phenomenon itself naturally precedes the formulation of either religious tradition (it would have been created at “Let there be light!” rather than at the end of the Flood). All rainbows should be Christian, you see, but now people with pronouns are displaying the rainbow and that’s wrong.

Leftists love the rainbow but hate the capitalism.

The first Pride was a riot. Rather than buying rainbow-themed merch, the authentic way to celebrate it would be to throw a brick at someone who is either violating your right to assemble or imposing their religious belief on your behavior (both are part of the First Amendment in the US). That would include anyone saying, “Oh, you can assemble, just not here, on public property,” or, “You can be gay as long as no one knows.”

Despite all that, me and my family will definitely be going in September (and we’re trying to figure out if we can attend Pride in KC or St. Louis this year). It’s great to see so many people who normally live in fear of some right-winger attacking them for their sexuality or gender expression having fun and being themselves. While the rainbow capitalism itself is gross, it is also reassuring because in the context of capitalism, support of the capitalist class for your particular marginalized group is the most important thing there is. When they decide they can’t suck any more value out of you, that’s when you’re in trouble.

Yesterday’s Heather Cox Richardson email contains what I believe to be her worst take ever. Here’s a quote:

The roots of today’s protests lie in an investigation by the Republican-dominated House Committee on Education and the Workforce, chaired by Virginia Foxx (R-NC). The committee announced the investigation on December 7, two days after its members spent more than five hours grilling then-president of Harvard University Claudine Gay, then-president of University of Pennsylvania Liz Magill, and president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sally Kornbluth on how their universities were handling student protests against Israel over its military response to Hamas’s attack of October 7.

The actual roots of today’s protests are the fact that the United States of America, under the Biden administration, has sent billions of dollars worth of military hardware to the Israeli government since October 7 and the Israeli government is using that hardware to conduct a genocide against the Palestinian people, making US citizens complicit in a genocide that we would be intervening in if we were the heroic nation we pretend to be. Biden, specifically, has declared himself a Zionist and says he will back Israel no matter what they do. The students are typically asking for no more than that their universities divest of any connection to the nation of Israel.

The Democratic Party establishment and its minions (including Heather Cox Richardson) are trying to pretend that Joe Biden’s Zionism is not a direct threat to his election chances and are trying to convince us that Biden is good because of all the emergency supplies he is now sending to the people whose lives he helped to destroy. Not only are they blaming the Republicans, apparently, but they’re also blaming Russia, et al. Again, from Heather Cox Richardson:

Steven Lee Myers and Tiffany Hsu of the New York Times reported today that Russia, China, and Iran are amplifying the protests “to score geopolitical points abroad and stoke tensions within the United States,” as well as to “undermine President Biden’s reelection prospects.” 

The fun thing about this ongoing trend of blaming Russia is that most of what Russia is pointing out or amplifying is true. The same thing happened during the 2016 election, with Russian propagandists merely posting videos of Hillary Clinton simply expressing herself (e.g., the famous “super predators” speech, or her talking about being a “Goldwater Girl”, or how much she loves Henry Kissinger). Somehow, just showing the world what the Democratic Party stands for is “misinformation”. Certainly, it is true that Russia is villainous, but if your position is so tenuous that simply repeating the truth undermines you, then perhaps you should choose a better position.

The US Supreme Court continues to be a vehicle for advancing fascism, which comes as no surprise to the left. Meanwhile, though, liberals continue to be surprised, and I have to wonder when (or if) they will finally understand how this works. In essence, the Supreme Court has decided to delay their decision on Presidential immunity until after the election. If Trump wins the election, they can conclude that the President has absolute immunity; if Trump loses, they can conclude that the President does not have absolute immunity.

The court has moved very quickly in prior cases involving presidential power, deciding the Watergate tapes case against President Richard Nixon just 16 days after arguments. Earlier this year, it took the justices less than a month to rule unanimously that states couldn’t kick Trump off the ballot.

Supreme Court seems skeptical of Trump’s claim of absolute immunity but decision’s timing is unclear (AP)

Why oh why can’t they take care of this decision as quickly as those past decisions? Well, if they did the right thing and released their decision now, then one of two things would happen: Either Trump’s legal problems would rapidly become insurmountable (and his presidential campaign would collapse) or the Supreme Court would be giving the Biden administration tacit permission to assassinate Trump.

From Heather Cox Richardson’s April 25 email:

“I am in shock that a lawyer stood in the U.S. Supreme Court and said that a president could assassinate his political opponent and it would be immune as ‘an official act,’” lawyer Marc Elias, whose firm defends democratic election laws, wrote today on social media. He added: “I am in despair that several Justices seemed to think this answer made perfect sense.”

Shocked! Shocked is what Marc Elias is.

Did everyone forget that moment in 2016 when Trump bragged that he could commit murder and get away with it? And the right wing just nodded in approval?

“I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?” Trump remarked at a campaign stop at Dordt College in Sioux Center, Iowa. “It’s, like, incredible.”

Donald Trump: ‘I Could … Shoot Somebody, And I Wouldn’t Lose Any Voters’

Central to fascist thought is the idea that they, and their leader specifically, has a sort of political super-legitimacy that allows the leader to literally do whatever they want. As the in-group, the law is supposed to protect them but not bind them, while it simultaneously binds their enemies without providing protection (per Wilhoit). This was described by Nixon in 1977 thusly:

Well, when the president does it … that means that it is not illegal. […] Exactly … exactly… if the president … if, for example, the president approves something … approves an action, ah … because of the national security or in this case because of a threat to internal peace and order of, ah … ah … significant magnitude … then … the president’s decision in that instance is one, ah … that enables those who carry it out to carry it out without violating a law. Otherwise they’re in an impossible position.

Transcript of David Frost’s Interview with Richard Nixon

How did we get here? Well, those naughty leftists didn’t vote for Hillary! I’m kidding, of course. The way we got here was that Barack Obama was elected fair and square and when he attempted to nominate a Supreme Court Justice (Merrick Garland), the Republicans refused to even begin the process of approving the nomination; Obama didn’t fight back (that would have been disruptive). That was in March of 2016, and Trump didn’t win the Republican nomination until May. This was a pre-Trump Republican party which makes it clear that what we now call Trumpism pre-dates Trump; the Republicans have had something very wrong with them since the late 1970’s when far-right Christian racists grabbed control of the party, but as the Nixon quote from 1977 points out, there was something rotten even before that.

Do I think Biden would actually assassinate Trump? No. Democrats have a well-established habit of pulling their punches for the stated purpose of promoting national unity, but I also doubt that far-right conservatives want to risk granting that kind of power to near-right (possibly medium-right at this point) liberals.

The even bigger problem is the decades-long trend of both parties giving more and more power to the Presidency. Now, we are having a serious conversation as a nation about whether the President is a mere mortal or, instead, a God-Emperor. Certainly, the US has a history of authoritarian actions, but they’re usually conducted in secret and then revealed decades later, when that action is irrelevant and beyond the practical ability of the law to address it. Now, though, we are on the verge of having an executive branch that can do whatever it wants, and tell us about it without fear of consequences because the chief executive is immune from prosecution forever and has the ability to pardon his minions.

No Democrat or Republican can be trusted with that kind of power because they both serve a powerful minority group — the billionaire class. Clearly, billionaires do not agree about everything, and they’re not necessarily well-organized, but they’re still the class of people that controls our government, and they agree that non-billionaires just don’t matter.

One of the dangers of conflating liberals with the left is that it creates this illusion that liberal authoritarianism is not possible. It is, however, entirely possible and many American voters are really feeling that right now. The Biden administration started out reflecting the views of the average Democratic Party voter (near right) pretty well, but as time has gone on, it has gotten increasingly right wing, and it seems like the primary reason is Joe Biden himself taking charge of the administration.

The latest thing would be Biden signing the TikTok ban into law which essentially silences the voices of younger Americans who are strongly against the Israeli genocide of Palestinians and creates the precedent for banning any foreign-owned media that the US government dislikes. Given that all domestically-owned media in the US is under the firm control of the billionaire class, this would exacerbate the already dire lack of free (i.e., not controlled by US billionaires) media in the US. To be clear, politicians are making these decisions because their primary duty is to the billionaire class, not the average voter.

One of the themes of George Orwell’s 1984 was about propaganda, and the control of media. Basically, if you control all the media, then you can claim anything you want about today’s reality, and you can portray the past any way you want. The quote is:

“Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past,” repeated Winston obediently. “Who controls the present controls the past,” said O’Brien, nodding his head with slow approval.

On April 23, Biden condemned “anti-Semitic protests” and people who “don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians”. This kind of gaslighting is a classic fascist move; though, I suppose someone could try to make the argument that Biden is simply mistaken rather than purposefully evil. Regardless of his intent, though, Biden himself has become part of the flow of misinformation that Americans are experiencing, and the single biggest obstacle to his own re-election in November.

Trump currently leads Biden in national polls, and is significantly ahead of Biden in swing states, which are really what matters thanks to the anti-democratic electoral college. (If you are a leftist living in Missouri, for example, you can vote for whoever you want!) Therefore, my guess is that the Supreme Court will conclude that the President has total immunity from prosecution, like a God-Emperor, and then the Democratic Party will shrug dramatically because their donors would rather accept full-blown fascism than risk the chaos that would result from any kind of effective resistance.

The Biden administration is claiming that it has closed the gun show loophole, but the actual change they made is very minor and will make no difference.

What we typically call the “gun show loophole” is simply the part of federal law that allows individuals to sell their personal guns to other individuals without performing a background check. I said “sell” but this law also applies to any transfer between individuals, including transferring a gun to a friend or relative without any money changing hands. These legal firearm transfers would always be used guns, and they are still completely legal despite the Biden administration’s rule changes.

Specifically, the new rules require anyone who either:

• rents a table at a gun show and sells guns or
• places an ad announcing that they will be selling guns at a gun show

to have a Federal Firearms License. While this may change things hypothetically, my opinion is that it will not affect anyone; I will explain more below. The law states that you can sell your personal guns (any number of guns) without having an FFL. You just can’t engage in the business of selling guns without an FFL, nor can you sell new guns (you must go through an FFL to receive a new gun). However, the law is unclear about what it means to be “in the business” of selling guns, so that’s why there are executive branch rules that reflect how the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (for example) is interpreting the law.

Basically, the Biden administration is taking advantage of America’s lack of fluency in firearm law (which, to be fair, is quite convoluted) to create the impression that they’ve done something substantive here in this election season. Roughly 86% of Americans support universal background checks, so closing the “gun show loophole” (legal personal sales made at a gun show without a background check) might get Biden more votes in November. But the rule change did not close the “gun show loophole”. I’m putting that in quotes because it isn’t a loophole — it’s just part of the law.

Approximately 5000 gun shows happen in the US each year. At these gun shows, more than half of the vendors will be gun stores attempting to sell some guns in a market relatively far from their brick-and-mortar store. These guns stores have a Federal Firearms License. If you buy a gun from them, they will either do the instant background check on the spot or (more likely) they will help you locate a Federal Firearms License holder in your area so they can ship the gun there for you to pick up on the next business day. Your local FFL holder (gun shop) will do the background check and charge you between $20 and $30 for that service. I’ve also seen local vendors at gun shows, and they sometimes offer to put your name on a gun (reserve it) so you can pick it up at their store (after a background check).

At a gun show, there are also other vendors. There might be a vendor who sells army surplus (but not guns), or a vendor that sells knives (which are not regulated in most states). There’s definitely going to be a vendor selling “Let’s Go Brandon” merchandise. In addition to all these vendors (who have rented tables at the event), there are customers, and a few of those customers show up with a gun from their personal collection that they want to sell. The person at the door puts a zip-tie on it to make it inoperable, and they usually wear a sign on their back explaining that they’re selling this gun. This is completely legal, and the Biden administration’s rule change does not affect a person selling a gun in this way.

What the change does affect is a hypothetical (or, you might say, fantasy) vendor who has rented a table at the gun show, and is selling guns, but does not have a Federal Firearms License. Maybe this person exists. I don’t know. I have never seen such a person at a gun show. Gun control groups have a lot of “information” about these hypothetical illegal vendors — which were already illegal before this rule change happened — but it really seems like a very rare occurrence. It seems like gun control advocates are just using this narrative to create a lot of anxiety and justify their position. If these illegal vendors exist, why wasn’t the government doing something about them already?

Maybe the Biden administration rule change would make it slightly harder for this hypothetical (fantasy) vendor to do their nefarious illegal deed, but that assumes that the government is willing to kick the hornets nest of conservativism by showing up and making vendors prove they have an FFL. They could have done this already!

The new rules state that that anyone who rents a table at a gun show and sells guns or places an ad announcing that they will be selling guns at a gun show must have an FFL, so at best, a bureaucrat would be assigned to both contacting gun show organizers to ask them to provide information about the people who rented tables and looking for ads from individuals announcing that they will be selling guns at a gun show. Whether some federal agency will show up to arrest those suspected of violating these rules is unknown (again, nearly half the vendors are non-firearm vendors), but I think it is very unlikely. We don’t want a gun show Waco, after all.

The federal government is very concerned about causing a violent conservative freakout. Specifically, Waco and Ruby Ridge have become rallying cries for far-right psychos who think any government push-back against fascism is authoritarianism. While both of those events were clear law enforcement failures, the federal government learned the wrong lesson. Instead of coming up with better procedures for apprehending nazis who have broken the law, they decided to just not try.

One person it might affect — which, again, I’ve never seen at a gun show — is someone who suddenly needs to get rid of a lot of guns from their personal collection. Perhaps they just need some cash and have lost interest in their collection (or parts of it). Perhaps they inherited a bunch of guns and want to get rid of them without paying a commission to a middle man. Now that the rules have changed, that person will no longer be able to rent a table at a gun show to sell their guns. They can, however, walk around with a bucket full of guns and a sign on their back. They can still sell the guns, they just can’t be comfortable while doing it. They might have to leave some in their trunk until they’ve sold everything in the bucket; the bucket is only so big, after all.

If we get back to that hypothetical illegal gun vendor at the gun show, what’s to stop that person from having an associate walk around with a bucket of guns? Yes, I realize that it is technically illegal now, but, again, these supposed unlicensed gun vendors at gun shows were already illegal because they were engaging in the business of firearms sales without having an FFL. The obvious reason for the rule change is to create the illusion of action to win votes.

There it is. The Biden administration’s pretend closing of the gun show loophole is another example of Democrats in action… or should I say Democrats’ inaction? eh? eh?

There’s a lot more detail compared to what I’ve addressed, but it is all here in the White House fact sheet on the new rules:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/04/11/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-announces-new-action-to-implement-bipartisan-safer-communities-act-expanding-firearm-background-checks-to-fight-gun-crime/

Just keep in mind that for everything they’re mentioning as being addressed by the new rules, they were addressed by the old rules and could have been stopped by law enforcement making an effort to stop illegal activities at gun shows by physically going there. That didn’t happen and it isn’t going to happen.

Can our civilization survive climate change? There’s no short answer to that.

People are strongly motivated to believe that climate change can be overcome, and not only overcome, but overcome in such way that their standard of living is maintained, or even improved. They are also strongly motivated to reject any conclusions regarding climate change that are sad or that imply that their personal behavior will be responsible for a catastrophe.

As a result, it is hard for anyone to talk about climate change realistically. The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) is the UN group officially tasked with collating official reports on the state of climate science; it has no power to enforce anything. The IPCC’s method for communicating the perils of climate change is to provide a series of hypothetical scenarios; e.g., if we do nothing, outcome A, if we do this, outcome B, if we do that, outcome C. When people read an IPCC report (or the journalism based on it), they are motivated to think, “Oh, OK, it is under control; clearly, we will do option C because that is the good option.” Then, however, no one does option C. They don’t even do option B.

Joe Biden’s most progressive environmental program in history resulted in an increase in US oil production to the highest level in history! Oil is the primary driver of the overall increase in carbon emissions. While the US did manage to decrease emissions by about 2% in 2023 while growing the economy by 2.4%, this is all largely a shell game with emissions being relocated to the “world’s factory” in Asia (and China in particular). Regardless of the details, the reduction in emissions isn’t even enough for the US, specifically, to reach its 2030 goals.

Look at this graph. That’s world CO2 production from 1750 to 2022. You’ll notice that production is leveling off (almost entirely due to natural demographic processes rather than something purposeful), but at a very, very high level of emissions. Scientists first figured out the relationship between CO2 and climate in 1896. Look at that graph again and the level of CO2 in 1896. As things got worse, scientists became more and more alarmed, including scientists working for major oil companies. In the 1980’s, they started to get a bit panicked. Look at that graph again. My point is that we are far, far beyond the “bad level” of CO2.

In fact, if you read the IPCC reports, they actually suggest that our net carbon emissions must drop to net zero emissions by 2050 or our civilization will not continue. Look at that graph again. That would mean that emissions would have to drop to the 1750 level by 2050.

The word “net” does offer a possibility, though. We could remove CO2 from the atmosphere to get to that net carbon level. However, the scale of the problem is too great for the available technology to adequately address it. In the US, there are currently 15 carbon sequestration projects, but they only capture 0.4% of US emissions. Since the US de-industrialized (sending its production capacity overseas), we really need to look at the total CO2 sequestered globally — or at the very least in China, which is now the world’s factory (because they successfully seized the means of production). Globally, we are currently sequestering 2 billion tons of carbon annually out of 35 billion tons produced. Sequestering enough carbon to solve the problem this way is simply not feasible. Part of the problem is that carbon sequestration technology produces more carbon emissions.

Let’s imagine that we are able to sequester half of global carbon emissions. That’s unlikely, but our civilization would still be ended by climate change under these circumstances. We need to reduce our energy use dramatically (look at the chart again) to get to net zero and save our civilization. This is a problem because our civilization is based on a form of capitalism that requires constant growth (otherwise, you’ll have a recession, then a depression, then a collapse). Capitalism just means a class of people owns the equipment required for mass production of goods, but in our version of capitalism, there is a sub-class of capitalists called “bankers”. Bankers make loans with interest, and the other capitalists want to pay off the loans but also make a profit. This is essentially how our society decides what projects go forward; the bankers decide by making loans. For this process to work (and not collapse), the economy must perpetually grow.

The good news is that everything bankers do can be done with democratic allocation of resources instead. The bad news is that what I just described is socialism — and honestly, pretty close to communism. While getting rid of bankers would solve a lot of unrelated problems with society, the people and nations who are effectively in control of this situation will not allow the banking system to be traded for a socialist economy even if the capitalist class were allowed to continue to exist. Therefore, getting rid of the banking system would require a violent revolution (which would also get rid of capitalism).

Let’s say that we had a successful violent revolution, so we’ve replaced the global banking system (and capitalism) with a socialist system that democratically allocates resources instead of letting capitalists and bankers make those decisions. Let’s also say we have succeeded in sequestering half of global carbon emissions as well. Does that solve the problem? No. We would need further changes, such as:

• Near elimination of compressor-based air conditioning
• Near elimination of air travel
• Localization of food production
• Drastic reduction in international shipping (and trade)
• Drastic reduction in volume of consumer products produced
• Drastic reduction in volume of energy-consuming consumer products in use
• Relocation of people living in environmentally absurd locations (e.g., Las Vegas)
• Drastic reduction in meat consumption

Maybe all of those would not be required. Pick half. You see the problem, though, right?

Unless things are in horrible shape already, we aren’t going to do what is necessary. As far as I can tell, we aren’t even going to take power away from the global banking system. Once things are in horrible shape, it is too late because there is up to a 30-year lag between when we take action and when the full impact of released carbon takes place.

I do, however, think it is possible to make it through this and I don’t think we should give up.

There’s a scifi story by Isaac Asmiov (contained in the book “I, Robot”) called “Escape!”) where scientists ask the world’s smartest supercomputer to design a hyperspatial drive (spoilers ahead). The computer is constrained by Asimov’s laws of robotics, which includes preventing the computer from harming a human being. The robot produces a hyperspatial ship and presents it to the humans, but it is clearly some kind of weird practical joke in that there are no controls in the ship and the computer refuses to explain it. Well, the thing works just fine, but it turns out that the crew of the ship ceases to exist for a moment during the hyperspatial jump. It’s OK — it’s only for a moment.

The question we’re facing is: Can our civilization survive climate change?

The answer is yes. But also no.

This civilization, as it is, cannot survive climate change. The civilization that can survive climate change is very different from what we have now. Perhaps there’s a way to allow the current civilization to blink out of existence for a moment, and something new to take its place. The key might be in working class people deciding that, rather than trying to burn everything down, they’re just going to start doing things the right way. It’s entirely possible to simply ignore the bankers, capitalists and their political lackeys and just work things out with each other directly. This change is by no means inevitable, but if we don’t make that change, there will be no technologically-advanced human society going forward.