Vignettes: Election Marginalia
The last eulogy for the bloody Nazis
“If we know, then we must fight for your life as though it were our own—which it is—and render impassable with our bodies the corridors to the gas chamber. For if they come for you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night.”
James Baldwin
***
The elections are over in roughly 24 hours. Yes, over. The elections have been taking place for at least a few weeks and as I type this nearly 75,000,000 people have already voted, and those who haven’t have only until tomorrow’s evening to cast their vote to save democracy, to restore humanity.
Two weeks ago during one of the last warm weekends of the autumn we went for a walk in Haddonfield1. It was not just nice and contentful to enjoy the last of the warmth the sun will provide for a while while walking the bustling downtown, recognizing some stores and restaurants, wondering about the new ones and reminiscing on those that are now gone. Going into small shops and indulging in pleasantries and carefree chachkas without any anxiety or sense of impending doom… it was a perfect mental and psychological escape from the madness and insanity of the recent days… weeks.
We ended the day in the most perfect way possible. On our way back towards the car, before stopping by our old time favorite british bistro to get the traditional fish and chips we walked into a small independent bookstore. It’s been quite a bit since I’ve gone to a bookstore, like an actual brick and mortar one, even longer since I’ve been to an independent one… largely because these have become almost extinct and Barnes and Nobles of the world are now trying to survive by selling any and all crap they can get their greedy hands on.
Walking in a fairly crowded store, picking up some of the suggested books by the employees to skim over the summary or description found on the back of the cover, scrolling through pages of one book and then another, until I found a random page and read a couple of paragraphs. In many ways, I felt transported 20 if not 30 years back, when there was nary a weekend when we did not go strolling through some town with a bunch of stores and of course spending hours in a vintage or antique bookstore - from Princeton to Cape May and every trip we’ve taken across the globe.
Realizing that it’s been a while since I actually purchased an actual physical book I was determined to not leave the store without one. Luckily for me, especially for this story, I stumbled upon Chuck Klosterman’s The Nineties. As I recently wrote about the Ryan Reynolds ability and capacity to truly encapsulated pop culture into entertainment, Klosterman had the same ability to distill and completely deconstruct the pop culture while making the reader feel like they belong with the discourse of the specific topic, whether it’s killing yourself to live or separating yourself from sex, drugs and cocoa puffs. In a way Klosterman is a reincarnation of Hunter S Thompson for our age and well, every age deserve what it gets.
I plan to read the book over the next few days, mostly to escape to the most calm and somewhat normal era of my five decades on this planet but also to reminisce about the culture that for once I actually felt connected to, because I could relate, because I was a part of it.
Unlike now.
***
Yesterday I saw the meltdown over the Ann Selzer poll that had Kamala Harris up by 3% in Iowa. Quite possibly this poll is an outlier but looking under the hood it makes sense - just check the leads that Kamala has over Trump among women and especially women over 65, those women who actually remember not having the rights to control their own body or have a bank account or a credit card. It’s not forgotten past, it happened in our lifetimes!!
Yet, most other polls have the race essentially tied. Whether it’s popular vote or projected electoral college or the so-called battleground states, it is all within a margin of error. Ann Selzer’s poll notwithstanding, how is it possible that a campaign where Trump and Vance have explicitly attacked: Haitian Americans, Latino Americans, Mexican Americans, African Americans, Puerto Rican Americans, Asian Americans , Indian Americans, Muslim Americans, Jewish Americans, Female Americans, LGBTQ Americans, Americans without children, Americans with disabilities, Native Americans, Catholic Americans, Venezuelan Americans, Veteran Americans, Democratic Americans, Korean Americans, Japanese Americans, Chinese Americans, urban Americans, young Americans, elderly Americans, college-educated Americans and I am sure a few other cohorts I am forgetting at the moment.
How is the race basically tied????
Lies, misogyny, fascism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, armed insurrection, fear mongering, islamophobia, vengeance for perceived slights, sexual assault, anti-semitism, nepotism, and complete destruction of our democracy. That’s all they have. That’s the Republican platform.
How is the race basically tied when one of the contenders openly wandered on live television about a firing squad “taking out” one of his critics2, a woman at that? How is the race tied when they openly promote their Nazi agenda:
Note that the swastika is enveloping the Trump “T” and not the other way around...
How is this race a coin flip when one of the candidates openly mused about journalist being shot, makes crystal clear which side he will be take once he is in power when he says: "Our allies [NATO] are worse than our so-called enemies [Russia]," who says that he shouldn’t have left the White House despite losing, twice3 insinuated that his opponent is a prostitute, appeared to attempt winning oral sex air guitar tournament, and expressed openness to banning vaccines (yes, not simply removing requirements for vaccines, but completely banning them)?
Even considering the wide spread of MAGA and the white supremacy and racism and misogyny common sense states that this should be a landslide rather than a naibitter. What if we have the reverse of 2016 and de-facto repeat of 2022 when the polls underestimated one side or the other respectively? What if Ann Selzer is correct, and the rest of the polls are off and there in fact is a blue tsunami fueled by women standing up for their rights literally being on the ballot? I’ve already written about the failure of the media and the 4th Estate4, but it bears repeating that if Selzer is right, which is a HUGE if, then this is third time in the last few elections when media almost deliberately creating a narrative that is already fueling conspiracy theories and might lead to violent riots.
The fact that this election isn’t a landslide for Harris tells me how just completely fucked this country is, she’s not perfect by any means but Jesus fucking Christ this is the other option.:
Entirely too many Americans have forgotten how awful Trump’s first term was. Well, remember this?
Those are masked National Guard troops on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Now imagine tanks rolling down Pennsylvania Ave. Imagine American soldiers firing on fellow citizens… or just watch Alex Garland’s Civil War.
How are the polls tied??
Not to mention that Polymarket had Trump at close to 62% a few days ago:
If I had more time, I’d write about how it has been manipulated by a wave of pro-Trump bets, how it is impacting the narrative and how despicable the idea of betting on politics is to me, but it is past 9pm on Monday before the Election Day and I want to finish this piece and publish it.
***
In recent weeks I’ve written plenty about Trump and the rise of fascism. With hours to go before the election is over, I should not be writing another piece on the topic. There is so much that I should write about or am already working on - from needing to do more research on Jewish folklore to the essay on evolution of filmmaking in the 90s to an introspection into my apparent OCD… or perhaps a response to Klosterman if his recollection of the 90s would ruin my melodramatic sense of nostalgia. I want to write about capitalism and technofascism unrelated to the current elections. I want to explore my past traumas and examine the scars that need to heal in order for me to be full, to be myself. There is a lot that I want or need to write and yet here I am, writing about Trump, fascism and Nazis yet again.
What pisses me off is the same thing as upsets Michelle Obama: "Can someone tell me why we are once again holding Kamala to a higher standard than her opponent? We expect her to be intelligent and articulate. To have a clear set of policies. To never show too much anger. To prove time and time again that she belongs. But for Trump, we expect nothing at all."
Riddle me this. Why does the Black woman in this race keep having to "prove herself" when the old white guy has already shown he's unfit? Kamala Harris will be the first president in history with experience in all three branches of government—judicial, legislative, and executive. So to say this woman is "not qualified" or experienced to be president is solely based on racism and misogyny.
***
I see TRUMP/VANCE 2024 signs on lawns around my neighborhood, and when I see them, I know there is somebody inside that house who cannot be trusted, who is either eager to bring menace and death to others, or is willing to allow such things to secure an unnatural advantage. And I know there might be some people inside that house who quietly fear that person with good reason. There are tens of millions of such people. It's a bad feeling.
Trump is not even hiding this: “Can you imagine a wife not telling a husband who she's voting for? Did you ever hear anything like that? Even if you had a horrible -- if you had a bad relationship, you're gonna tell your husband.”
Why am I telling you these things? Because the other day we went to walk the dog and I curiously checked out lawn signs, seeing more and more MAGA ones sprinkle around our fairly well-off professional educated younger populated neighborhood.
There is one house around the corner from us that started flying an oversized Trump flag sometime in September. I gritted my teeth every time we had to drive or walk past the house seeing the flag fly in the cool autumn breeze. To make it worse, for Halloween, they installed a 12-foot skeleton on one side of the flag and a trio of what looks like goblins or orcs on the other side, which creates a very ironic visual.
Why I am telling you these things? Because at least I can appreciate the “courage” of those who put up Trump/MAGA signs/flags. They take pride in their sense of superiority based on nothing but the perceived skin color, they take joy is watching the “other” suffer, and they are not ashamed to fly the flag and be open about their fascism. In the last couple of months the number of American flags flown on houses around our neighborhood exploded with roughly 30% of homes now proudly flying The Stars and Stripes as a display of their deep patriotism. There is one house a couple of blocks over that in a span of a week went from displaying one American flag to five. Yet, I have to wonder what that really means as ostensibly half of the country feels it is patriotic to want to “cleanse the blood of the nation” from the “vermin” like me.
Yes it pisses me off that “they” took the most American symbol there is, the Star-Spangled Banner and hoisted it as a patriotic expression in support of the people who attempted to overthrow the constitution of the United States less than 4 years ago. it is the same flag that they will wave while forcing 30 million people like me into concentration camps.
Is it too much to ask to go back to some sort of normalcy, when an American flag identified a proud American and not be a proxy for neo-Nazis?
MAGA is currently promising to violently deport 30 million people in a bloody purge; significant hardship and economic depression; elimination of health care for millions; banning vaccines and eventually bringing back measles and polio all under the American flag?
Fuck no. They can believe in any version of the Arian paradise, but they better give us our flag back.
***
***
We are in 2024 and women are afraid to tell their husbands they are not voting for a man who wants to take away their bodily autonomy, and deny freedoms and human rights to others. He’s promising to lock up women who disobey him, or help others travel across state lines. Look at what this “pastor” from Arizona thinks:
We can’t talk about justice while also villainizing women who have been intentionally made powerless by patriarchal white supremacy. We can’t talk about racial justice without naming the way patriarchy is foundational to white supremacy, and the ways “powerful qualities” of the patriarchy—control, domination, gatekeeping, entitlement, resource control—are the foundations of this country.
When women can’t tell their husbands they are voting for Harris, it might seem like “silent resistance” to pressure all around them. But the reality is it’s also one of the few times they can exercise their personal agency. But only in private. And many are scared to do that.
It’s such a sickness that women can’t tell their husbands they like Harris, because their husbands are so deeply against any shift from the white-male-centric status quo they have benefited from for so long. Even when it hurts their wives, sisters, mothers, daughters.
The response was the perfect speech by Michelle Obama in Michigan. Ladies and gentlemen, if you're looking for "When They Go Low, We Go High" Michelle Obama, she has left the building what we saw instead was "Motherfucker That… former president, you came after my family and women's choice" Michelle Obama and she was more perfect than ever:
I want the men in the arena to bear with me on this, because there’s more at stake than just protecting a woman’s choice to give birth. […]5
So I am asking y’all from the core of my being to take our lives seriously. Please do not put our lives in the hands of politicians, mostly men who have no clue or do not care about what we as women are going through, who don’t fully grasp the broad-reaching health implications that their misguided policies will have on our health outcomes
Women rights are more than just a choice to have bodily autonomy. It is being treated as human beings. We have such deeply ingrained misogynistic approach to women, it’s horrifying. If you are a cis man like myself, you likely have a mother, a wife, perhaps a sister or a daughter or a niece or a grandmother. Are you okay with Trump’s Director of White House personnel John McEntee saying “Sorry, we want male only voting. The 19th might have to go.” That’s certainly a strategic choice one week before the election? I mean it is 2024 and women are afraid to vote for their choice, it is 2024 and women health is still such an afterthought that a member of Congress has to livestream her OBGYN appointment to show the world the ridiculous amount of pain every woman has to go to through regularly just to ensure that she is healthy! I mean forget the idea of imagining men giving birth or even having a period, how about men getting the same level of treatment from healthcare professional as women do?
‘If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament’ said Florence Kennedy. Remember this in the voting booth.
***
A friend recently posted on Facebook: “I’ve been wondering for months how folks reconcile their pro-Ukraine/pro-Israel positions while voting Republican or Democrat. Apparently, it’s by deciding that “well, nothing can help _____anymore, so I will vote for ______to support ______.” Fascinating how cognitive dissonance works in people…”
I won’t talk about Ukraine or Israel today, at least I’ll try not, to keep this essay under a bajillion words, but I’ll say that it’s very easy to explain on the so-called Republican side. The one core issue that drives MAGA is the superiority they feel over the rest of us, “the other,” be it women, immigrants, non-whites, etc.
This is precisely how you end up witnessing the Halloween parade in Mount Pleasant, a small rural Pennsylvania town, that featured Vice President Harris in chains behind a golf cart bearing American flags and Donald Trump campaign signs. This is how you normalize violence. A sitting VP in chains, as though she has been the victim of a coup or some other authoritarian action.
AR Moxon writes: “Every day has another dozen examples, clear evidence that the Trump cult known as the Republican Party cares for nothing except for its own supremacy, the domination of its whiteness and its maleness and the violent domination of a blasphemous religion they call "christianity." A small city in Pennsylvania had a Halloween parade that featured a Kamala Harris effigy being led on a chain from the back of a truck. Ho-hum, white supremacy and political violence with overtones of lynching and slavery. Par for the course.”
That’s before we get to skin color and open nostalgia for slavery and witchburning. I mean here we have a religious-rights activist Gordon Klingenschmitt saying that "if you're following Satan, you're probably for abortion and probably for Harris."
We went from “lock her up” to “burn the witch” in less than a decade. But her emails, right?
My only response to my friend was that this cognitive dissonance is about to elect Nazis into power.
I did not have it in me to argue with others in comments.
It feels completely ridiculous that at this point there are those who are allegedly undecided (what the bloody fuck do you need to know to decide???), but than there are millions of those who willingly support patricidal white christian supremacy even though they are not white, male, or christian.
It feels like screaming into a void. Everyone has made up their mind, even if for vast majority the process included consumption of entirely too much propaganda and misinformation…
***
In the end, I lied. Sort of.
Rather than responding directly to a comment, I decided to write about it here. You see, one of the commenters linked to a Twitter post that unironically flips everything upside down like it’s the opposite day:
As a Jewish person voting Republican for the first time, there’s something that’s hitting me in the gut, something that feels too close to home. Watching how easily people on the left led by Kamala Harris throw around words like “Hitler” and “Nazi.” on Trump and on republicans, almost like it’s a game, is offensive beyond words. These aren’t just terms to toss into a political debate for shock value. For Jews, these terms hold the weight of millions of lives lost because of the Holocaust’s horror, and the sheer destruction aimed at wiping us off the map. But what scares me even more is that the same people who casually call Trump and Republicans “Nazis” also label Israel—a country built as a refuge, a safe place after the horrors of the Holocaust—as “genocidal.” They’re pushing to ban arms to Israel, calling for its hands to be tied, for the only Jewish state to be left vulnerable to those who openly call for its destruction. This isn’t just hypocrisy; it’s a chilling echo of the very things they claim to stand against. The Holocaust is still a part of my family’s story. My great-grandparents were survivors, they lost parents, siblings, children and friends. They wore numbers on their arms, scars of what happens when people look the other way, when words are used to dehumanize and destroy. To see leaders today abuse these words, to twist “Hitler” and “Nazi” into political weapons, makes me wonder if they’ve forgotten—or if they even care—what they really mean. Worse, it’s coming from the same voices pushing to take away Israel’s ability to defend itself, to protect the lives of its people. How can I and any other Jewish person trust leaders who treat our history, our survival, like political gains? This election, for me, isn’t about party lines; it’s about who will stand by us and who will betray us. It’s about who respects our history, our right to defend our only homeland, and who casually strips that away. This isn’t just politics. This is our survival, our right to exist safely and without fear, and I won’t let those who call for our destruction hide behind empty and twisted words that have haunted my family for generations, and say what you will about Trump, but he won’t exploit words like “Hitler” and “Nazi” for political gains, while the other side does it as frequently as drinking water. That’s why I can’t vote for Democrats, and I will vote for Trump. And If you, my fellow American non-Jews, think they’ll only target Jews, you’re mistaken. As the saying goes: first, they come for the Saturday people, and then they come for the Sunday people6.
Some of this resonates perfectly with JD Vance saying: “they decided to compare us to literal Nazis for gathering at Madison Square Garden and celebrating the United States of America. They’re the same people who have no plans. All they have is hatred of their fellow citizens.”
Neither myself, nor I am sure anyone else and that includes Kamala Harris are casually calling Trump and Republicans “Nazis” or “Fascists” - there’s plenty of evidence from the rhetoric at their rallies, to the ongoing campaign of disinformation aimed at increasing racial tensions and hatred by establishing “the other,” whether it is immigrant “vermin” or “strong and intelligent women who are bound to vote as their husband deems appropriate.” If you have ever seen movie The Siege, it is like Trump and Vance decided that Bruce Willis’ character was the good guy and decided to triple down on that. I could write a book on this topic. I am sure some folks already have.
There’s also nothing obscene or ridiculous in criticizing Israeli apartheid and the ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing in Gaza. The state of Israel is indeed a country built as a refuge is anything but unless you are Jewish. Israel was meant to be home to the diaspora Jews but it was never meant to be an ethnostate. More importantly, it is because of Holocaust and all the other horrors in history, we should heed to what those examples are teaching us and that’s simple - if you are Jewish, you oppose fascism and take any potential threat of Nazism seriously. You make damn sure that “Never Again” means preventing a kristallnacht like “very rough and bloody day” necessary to teach “them a lesson.”
Don’t think that they will stop at undocumented immigrants with skin darker than yours - to them you are the same “vermin,” the same “animals.” Our ancestors, whether those who perished in the Holocaust or those who survived to give us a chance at a life, all of them would be appalled at the acceptance of Trump by any Jewish person.
It really does not matter whether you are Arab American or Jewish American or Zionist or Muslim or whatever. Donald Trump is not on your side, his Presidency will make things worse no matter what your current opinion or perspective might be.
"America is for Americans and Americans only." Stephen Miller announced earlier. Stephen Miller is a “better” Jewish front man for fascism than Rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf. It’s shameful and horrifying, but at the same time he is practically a reincarnation of Goebbels, not just in appearance but in his rhetoric. See the quote at the beginning of this paragraph.
“His chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff7, for example, said, and these are his words, that Trump is fascist to the core,” Michelle Obama said in Michigan. “So I hope you’ll forgive me if I’m a little frustrated that some of us are choosing to ignore Donald Trump’s gross incompetence while asking Kamala to dazzle us at every turn.”
Noah Berlatsky writes,
The thing about the ADL is that it has traditionally been dedicated to fighting antisemitism ‘by making common cause with other communities against the far right.’ So yes, the ADL was very concerned with antisemitism. But *because it was concerned with antisemitism’ it did a lot of work pushing back against white nationalism, racism, and bigotry of all kinds. It was a leader in working against fascism and racism. It's abandoned that now. All it cares about is attacking critics of Israel. It refuses to rebuke Trump because Trump is a self-proclaimed zionist, and that's all it really cares about now. Fascism showed up, and one of the leading antifascist organizations just decided, "oh, ethnonationalism is the way to go then." This is part of the broader failure of liberal zionism. It's just become increasingly clear that you can be liberal or you can be a zionist, but not both. ADL chose to stop being liberal. If Trump starts throwing progressive Jews into camps, the ADL will say nothing. It'll probably cheer Trump on.
Unlike the current ADL leadership, the former is correct when Abraham Foxman says: “The gas chambers in Auschwitz did not begin with bricks, they began with words,ugly hateful,words against Jews and other minorities. Jewish tradition teaches us words can hurt , words can kill. The blatant words of hate ,racism, antisemitism,Islamophobia,misogyny at yesterday’s MSG Trump rally are dangerous and must be condemned .Enuf is enuf!”
Too many American Jews, however, are thinking Trump is better for the Jewish people and Israel than Kamala. They are aware that Trump is a Nazi and an antisemite. They just believe in the ethnostate and hate the left more.
The point here is that fascism is on full display, openly: no dog whistles, no plausible deniability. It's a show of power and an another attempt to make this look and feel normal.
***
1. “the belief [that the] white race is inherently superior to other races and that white people should have control over people of other races.” Example: Adolph Hitler
2. “the social, economic, and political systems that collectively enable white people to maintain power over people of other races.” Example: the New York Times
Michael Harriot is absolutely correct when he writes in A Problem in ‘White Supremacy.’ Who said anything about Hitler?:
On Tuesday, October 23, 2024, the NY Times didn’t call Trump a white supremacist.
In an October 22 NY Times article, former Trump administration Chief of Staff John F. Kelly warns that “Trump would rule like a dictator.” Kelly’s bombshell interview with Michael S. Schmidt — which has yet to appear on the front page of the Times (or the Washington Post or Politico or Axios)– defines fascism as “a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader.” And, according to Kelly, Trump fits the bill.
“Certainly the former president is in the far-right area,” said Kelly. “He’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators — he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.” And if you think that sounds kinda Hitlerish, a scant 1308 words into the article, Schmidt and the Times bring up the genocidal8, dictatorial white supremacist GOAT: “He commented more than once that, ‘You know, Hitler did some good things, too,” Kelly added.
Adolph Hitler was a white supremacist.
In order to not call Donald Trump a white supremacist, you’d wouldn’t just have to ignore Gen. Kelly, you’d also have to overlook the things Trump wrote, the things he said, the things he did, his social agenda, his economic policies, his political team and the actual dictionary. But apparently, America’s media is willing to do that.
In America, the press is a social, political and economic necessity that provides citizens with the unadulterated truth.
And if they don’t, they are nothing more than “social, economic, and political systems that collectively enable white people to maintain power over people of other races.”
The other day Trump said: “Think of the words.. towns that have been invaded and conquered. They've been conquered, they've been conquered.. And we have a lot of towns that haven't yet been infected .”"Infected." This is dangerous language, just like his "vermin" and "poisoning the blood" comments. It is meant to dehumanize people. Ir is fascism at its core and it is quite Hitler-esque.
More Trump: "The United States is an occupied country." This is occupation claim is straight out of mass shooter manifestos. Noah Berlatsky writes: “It's a reverse colonial narrative. These are popular on the far right precisely because they are useful in justifying any extreme of violence. Reverse colonial narratives are popular in fiction; war of the worlds, what if they invaded us, etc. They also were core to Nazi thinking. "The Jews are invading and undermining and controlling us," etc. Jews were associated with immigrants, so Nazis essentially conflated immigration with colonization. Same with the great replacement theory. The whole point of that conspiracy theory is that white people are essentially a colonized people subjugated by growing immigration. That justifies "anticolonial" terrorist violence to ward off the existential threat. Great replacement/soros conspiracy theories, which Trump cosigned, led to the worst antisemitic massacre in US history in 2018.”
Trump says he can tell if an immigrant is “good or bad” based on how they look and that “America is a garbage can for the world.” He says that “It’s the people that surround her, they’re scum, they're scum, and they want to take down our country. They are absolute garbage.” I came here, well technically I was brought here by my parents, to escape the hellscape of one authoritarian ethnostate My family goes back to the Middle East, Eastern Europe and East Asia. I believe America is the greatest nation on earth, warts and all, the American dream is real, and being a melting pot is part of what makes America so great. Elie Mystal says it perfectly though, supporting Michael Harriot: “What we’re seeing is racist white folks do what they always do: insult other people, then somehow make the conversation all about white folks, their feelings, and their issues. It’s always an attempt to recenter the conversation on whites. Trump and MAGA haven’t addressed the Puerto Rican9 comments other than to say “I love Puerto Ricans” like they’re freaking Jerry Maguire, and “get over it, it was a joke, shut up.” But now they’ve got their guy in a literal garbage truck10, to tote around white tears. For them, the entire world is about white people, and their feelings, and their grievances, and their self-victimization. It’s pathetic. But it’s also the only way they know how to be.”
Every day has another dozen examples, clear evidence that the Trump cult known as the Republican Party cares for nothing except for its own supremacy, the domination of its whiteness and its maleness and the violent domination of a blasphemous religion they call "christianity.11"
Elie is also right when writing about Trump's "secret plan" with Mike Johnson to steal the election being more devious than you probably think. It's not just electing Trump via the House. It's decreasing the overall number of electoral votes until Trump wins a majority. If you suddenly are reminded of Jim Crow and 3/5th compromise, there’s a good reason. Scroll up and re-read the first part of this vignette.
Just like the press and other institutions if you are minimizing the threat, if you spreading any of the vile fascist and at time Nazi propaganda and misinformation, or if you are not actively campaigning against the onslaught of fascism, you are simply normalizing and legitimizing it while simultaneously making a common cause with this evil.
Perhaps the most stark example of how far the 4th Estate has fallen is the interview given to Ben Smith at Semafor by the Executive Editor of the New York Times, Joe Kahn12. It is completely insane to me that someone in this role, I am speaking of Kahn of course, doesn’t understand that democracy isn’t an issue that matters because of public opinion, it is the issue that makes free public opinion possible. What clearly jumps at me reading the interview is this pervasive sense among self-ascribed centrist elites that by the summer of 2020, “woke” radicalism had been allowed to go too far and the elites see it as their mission to turn the tide. More terrifying is that the very same sense has captured large swaths of self-ascribed centrist middle class who suddenly realised that they are not socially liberal or politically centrist and those who are scare them more than those on far right really should.
Kahn describes the summer of 2020 as “a crazy period” that “frayed nerves everywhere.” He denounces the “excesses of the period,” meaning the spread of “woke” ideas and too much anti-Trumpism inside and outside the NYT. “A period of peak cultural angst,” he calls it. This is precisely the spirit that was fueling the elite centrist support for the crackdown on college protesters in the spring of this year: an acute anxiety that things have gone too far, that these “woke radicals” who were given too much rope during the Trump era urgently need to be reined in.
The mass protests in the summer of 2020 loom almost as large in the elite centrist mind as they do in the imagination of the fascist far-right, where it’s become dogma to regard the protests as the the “extreme Left” assault on “real” America. The prevailing view among the center is that we need to turn the clock back, to a time before what they see as the current excesses of radical leftism, “wokeism,” identity politics, “cancel culture…”
Too much “chaos,” too much “unrest” and “turmoil.” Even if that entails legitimizing, enablish, and making a common cause with fascism.
So when I see a dear friend of mine write an incredibly thoughtful and long post about his thoughts and his emotions in these turbulent times, I was nodding as every word, every sentence, every paragraph perfectly resonated with my own growing anxiety and sense of doom…. that is until he introduced the refrain of “Hold the Center”as the rallying cry in this crisis. My only response was to agree with 99% of his writing but to add that “fuck center, fuck all of them who choose comfort and self-interest over fighting for what’s right, for slowly, gradually but surely normalizing, legitimizing and making common cause with fascism.”
The bloody French figured out that the most important thing to do is defeat fascists. Granted, once the election was over, the center conveniently aligned with the fascist in fear of the left. But why is this so hard for comfortable US leftists to understand, if we want to avoid “unified Reich,” we need the most broad anti-fascist coalition from Dick fucking Cheney to Bernie Sanders and AOC. Yet the center often gives in to fear. Just look at the decision of WaPo to not publish a presidential endorsement.
***
Twelve Million Deportations. That’s the most optimistic scenario. That’s roughly how many undocumented immigrants are in the United States. Yet, Trump, Vance, Miller and the rest of the fascist cabal keeps announcing ludicrous numbers - 15 million, 20 million, 23 million, maybe 30 million. At this rate they are openly threatening to deport roughly 10% of the entire population of the United States. In “And an altered America” Timothy Snyder writes: “Such a huge mission will effectively redefine the purpose of law enforcement: the principle is no longer to make all people feel safe, but to make some people unsafe. And of course the diversion of law enforcement resources to deportation means that crimes will not be investigated or prosecuted. So some people will be radically less safe, but everyone regardless of status will in fact be less safe.”
Such an enormous deportation will requires an army of informers. People who denounce their neighbors or coworkers will be presented as positive examples. Denunciation then becomes a culture. The deep purpose of a mass deportation is to establish a new sort of politics, a politics of us-and-them, which means (at first) everyone else against the Latinos but over time the scope will gradually increase to capture all sorts of “animals.”
All of this is also entirely too familiar because the establishing us vs them mentality across the nation does quickly lead to an army of informers, where spying on your neighbors, coworkers, friends will be the norm, completely accepted and lauded. How do I know? Because I grew up in the culture of denunciation, where it was always us against them and it was our duty to do the right thing no matter what. I grew up in the context of Pavlik Morozov being a national hero so spying and informing is entirely too familiar to me13.
Moreover, technically, “race” doesn't exist. It is simply a cultural construct which has no roots in science. "Racism" is the process of constructing an identity to discriminate against and then discriminating against it. One can create racialized identities around just about anything from skin color to religion to gender to ideology, and yes, to geography. So yes, attacking Puerto Rico using racist tropes is racist. "X isn't a race" is a huge tell that you're a racist, because it shows that you think race is real.
Speaking of race, recently Trump said that “250 million Americans are not garbage,” We all know that the US population is about 340 million… and even with the wildest 30 million estimates from MAGAist in terms of undocumented immigrants, the maths does not add up at first glance. Where did Trump get this 250 million number? Well a folks, we got hours to close the chapter on this racist, misogynistic, bigot.
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Trump famously said: ‘I Need the Kind of Generals That Hitler Had’
Trump’s Adolf Hitler had 'some good ideas' is not simply a confirmation of Trump’s depravity, no, it is denunciation of us as a civilization: a fifth of Gen Z Americans believe according to Daily Mail poll that Hitler had some good ideas.
When broken down by age group, 21 percent of those under the age of 29 said Hitler had good ideas, compared with 16 percent of those between the ages of 30 and 49, seven percent for voters between 50 and 64 and just five percent for those over 6. Our failure of education and fighting misinformation has come to this. Over 40% of Gen Zers think that Hitler was not undeniably evil with no redeeming features.
Perhaps that’s why we can’t have normalcy back. Perhaps that’s why the polls are razor thin close and giving me anxiety and hyperventilation. Because what’s really scary is not Kennedy as HHS director, Cannon as AG, Miller as Secretary of State, Gabbard as Secretary of Defense. Musk as a czar of austerity meant to starve those not deemed worthy… it’s the growing possibility of next wave of Hitlerjugend being almost half of the next generation.
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Speaking of Elon and the patriotism of the American flag. Is not it ironic that are most responsible for our current situation - Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and David Sucks - are all products of South African apartheid?
Bloomberg News analyzed more than 53,000 posts sent from Musk’s Twitter account between 2011 and 2024 to determine which topics he prioritized -- and which received the most engagement. Anti-immigration and voter fraud conspiracies top the list.
I honestly don’t know what’s worse: Elon’s apparently regular and nonchalant offers to impregnate women, including publically to Taylor Swift or his now repeated attempts to instigate assasinations or his $1million a day illegal scheme to attempt to literally buy the election or his recent attacks on Eminem and Cardi B14.
Speaking of Elon, an excess of billionaires is destabilising politics, and cognitive dissonance, Dave Troy writes:
If this country collapses, it will be because of cognitive dissonance and our refusal to believe what we don’t wish to believe. Putin is using Musk to attempt a strategic takeover of the United States, in partnership with China. They will default on US debt and tank the dollar. This does not serve American interests in the least, yet MAGA is already being prepared to accept “hardships” as we go through this wrenching collapse. How far they go depends only on how soon people wake up to their true intentions. Knowing this information in advance is useless if no one will accept it. So why will no one accept it? Billionaire control of media, feckless TV news that creates infantile cognitive frames, and various factions that think (mostly wrongly) they somehow will benefit. If Trump is elected, and hell is unleashed next year, don’t say “we had no idea.” The truth is that no one who mattered cared.
Elon’s PAC is running this teenaged boy level message about how Kamala is a “c-word:”
Elon Musk admitted that he knows that Donald Trump’s policies if elected president would crash the economy, but thinks that the price is worth it. It’s not just Elon. American oligarchs are selling out democracy to curry favor with Trump
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Another friend recently posted on Facebook that “I will be voting for Kamala, but I will also be holding my nose more than ever” adding later that “if he literally didn't try to steal the last election, Putin-style, "I just need to find N votes", I'd probably overlook the rest. This, I simply can't.”
It took every ounce of my self control to resist responding right then and there in not very intelligent or appropriate terms. However, now that it’s been a few days, I can calmly wonder how can anyone say or even think something like that? How do you overlook the threat of deporting 30 million people? How do you disregard the almost certainty of rescinding most of the rights for women? How do you overlook openly Nazi rhetoric that threatens all of us who are not white christian males?
To me, that’s a very cavalier attitude in the face of oncoming global fascism. What’s worse is that there were plenty of comments about not voting at all or wishing for any “normie” Republican instead of Trump to have a “reasonable” choice. Not voting, similar to voting for any 3rd party15 - be it Russian asset Jill Stein or brain-wormed RFK or whoever - is a vote for Trump and fascism. As for “normie” Republicans, I think they are either as extinct as the Dodo bird or as mythical as the tooth fairy. Name one elected Republican who is not retiring who openly admits to Donald Trump losing 2020 election. Chances are, you can’t, not on the national level at least. A whole lot of them had a chance not once, but twice to hold Trump responsible but refused to do so out of fear or self-interest or both.
Better yet, name me nationally well known Republicans who openly criticized and denounced Mark Robinson16, the self-proclaimed Black Nazi. Yes, we are seeing more and more endorsements from local Republicans or folks who are retired or not running for re-election. Mind you, arguably the biggest Republican critic of Trump in Congress, Mitt Romney, who is not running for re-election is still refusing to openly endorse Kamala - because he is afraid for what will happen to his 25 grandchildren. Think about that for a minute!!
It’s not just Trump, I’ve said it before and will say it again, he is simply a symptom. It’s the entire Republican party that has transformed into a christian neo-nazi ethnocult17.
The Democratic party is not moving to the left. Most definitely not to the far-left. Au contraire, the Democratic party is slowly but surely moving further and further to the right. LINK
Is there a small although very vocal minority on the fringes? Yes, of course. There always has been but that’s gaslighting of the world by Trump, Musk and their ilk. Left and especially the far left is at the historic low globally with nary a major country where the current person in power, whether President or Prime Minister, is a liberal. The most left party across the Western world, the Labour, won a historic landslide election on a promise of liberal lefty policies… and is now polling on par with the Tories after not even 4 months since the election.
The myth of the scary far-left is exactly what pushes the center into the embrace with the far right, enables the center to gradually normalize, legitimize and eventually make common case with fascism. The only problem is that outside of the pro-Russian propaganda bubble, the world is on the brink of fascist takeover and the center is willingly and happily cooperating.
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Thomas Zimmer writes:
The political system that was stable for most of U.S. history was a white man’s democracy, or racial caste democracy. There is absolutely nothing old or consolidated about *multiracial, pluralistic democracy* in America. It only started less than 60 years ago. And because the anti-egalitarian, anti-pluralistic ideas didn’t just vanish into thin air in the 1960s, the conflict over whether or not democracy should be allowed to endure and prosper has been the central fault line in U.S. politics ever since. That is why Reconstruction is such a key historical reference. America’s first attempt at biracial democracy was quickly drowned in ostensibly “race-neutral” laws and escalating white reactionary violence. It took a century to get the country back to that level of democracy. People need to accept that things can change – in either direction: It really could get much, much worse. But it could also get better. There is nothing inevitable about either doom or progress. We are neither fated nor guaranteed to experience the status quo for all eternity.
But something has changed. Something undeniable. Trump’s communication skills are disappearing faster than snow in late April. He has always rambled and “weaved”, but the incoherence at this moment is striking18. Then, there is the canceling of events and interviews citing “exhaustion.” Just looking at the man reveals, beyond question, a person who is losing the war to time. Rallies where he stops questions to simply stand and listen to music for upwards of thirty minutes, or just…nods off.
Perhaps there is still hope, because the worst case scenario is that Trump wins and JD Vance quickly becomes President allowing the transnational crime syndicate masquerading as a government to firmly establish the new “unified Reich.”
Let’s hope. No. Let’s make sure it does not happen.
Let’s stand tall and say “Never Again” and mean it.
Never again to fascism. Never again to hatred. Never again to people being dehumanized for who they are.
As they said the last time we had to rise up against global fascism: “No Pasaran!”
Harris gives closing argument speech at the Ellipse, offering "a different path" than Trump. Vice President Harris: “The patriots at Normandy, Selma, Seneca Falls, and Stonewall… They did not sacrifice only to see us cede our freedoms and submit to the will of another petty tyrant. The United States is the greatest idea humanity ever devised. In 7 days, let us turn the page and start writing the next great chapter in the most extraordinary story ever told.”
"A generation that cannot endure boredom will be a generation of little men, of men unduly divorced from the slow processes of nature, of men in whom every vital impulse slowly withers, as though they were cut flowers in a vase."
Bertrand Russell
Yes, the real town of Haddonfield in New Jersey really was the inspiration for the Ohio version in the a certain horror movies.
Trump on Liz Cheney: "Let's put her with a rifle standing there with 9 barrels shooting at her. Let's see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face." Good for Liz to respond with: “This is how dictators destroy free nations. They threaten those who speak against them with death. We cannot entrust our country and our freedom to a petty, vindictive, cruel, unstable man who wants to be a tyrant.”
What’s worse is that the media has given Trump a pass on this. Either they ignored it, or they downplayed it, or they tried to sanewash it. Make no mistake, though, this is twice in a span of a couple of weeks where Trump and his campaign suggested that a Black woman running for President is a prostitute!!
Here’s the full text of that part of Michelle Obama’s speech: “I want the men in the arena to bear with me on this, because there’s more at stake than just protecting a woman’s choice to give birth.
And sadly, we as women and girls have not been socialized to talk openly about our reproductive health. We’ve been taught instead to feel shame and to hide how our bodies work. Some young girls enter puberty not knowing what to expect. Too many of us suffer with severe cramps and nausea for days on end, every single month. And then on the other end of the reproductive timeline, too many women my age have no idea what’s going on with our bodies as we battle through menopause and debilitating hot flashes and depression.
See, fellas, most of us women, we suck up our pain, and we deal with it alone. We don’t share our experiences with anyone, not with our partners, or our friends, or even our doctors. Look, a woman’s body is complicated business, y’all. Yes, it brings life, and that’s a beautiful thing. But even when we are not bearing children, there is so much that can go wrong at any moment. Every woman here knows what I’m talking about. An unexpected lump, an abnormal pap smear or mammogram, an infection, a blockage, all of which could be early signs of a variety of life-threatening cancers.
And in those terrifying moments when something goes wrong, y’all, which will happen at some point to the vast majority of women in this country, let me tell you, it feels like the floor falls out from under us. In those moments, all we have to rely on is our medical system. In those dark moments, all we have to rely on is our faith in a higher power and the experience of doctors to get us the care we need in a timely manner.
And look, I don’t expect any man to fully grasp how vulnerable this makes us feel. To understand the complexities of our reproductive health experiences. In all honesty, most of us as women don’t fully understand the breadth and depth of our own reproductive lives. You know? And that’s because our experiences are often neglected by science. There’s a huge disparity in research funding for women’s health. And if you happen to look like me and report pain, you’re more likely to be ignored. Even by your own doctors, studies show.
There are good reasons why so many women and physicians are horrified by what’s happened since Donald Trump’s justices overturned Roe v. Wade. We’re seeing women scrambling across state lines to get the care they need. Just this week, a major medical journal reported that after Roe was overturned, infant mortality in this country rose, in large part because women are being forced to carry fetuses that won’t survive to term. One woman spent 22 days in jail on murder charges after she miscarried in her own bathroom. We are seeing doctors unsure if they can treat ectopic pregnancies. Doctors being told they can’t treat a woman until she becomes so close to death that only a life-of-the-mother exception will allow them to act.
So just imagine the profound effects for all of us if Donald Trump wins this election. In states that are already putting abortion bans into effect, his FDA could further outlaw patchwork systems of telehealth appointments and mail-order pills, thereby eliminating the last remaining protections for women in those states. He could take actions that effectively ban abortion nationwide, which would put all of us in danger, no matter what state we live in. We will see more doctors hesitating or shying away from providing life-saving treatments because they are worried about being arrested.
So do you think Donald Trump is thinking about the consequences for the millions of women who will be living in medical deserts? Does anyone think he has the emotional maturity and foresight to come up with a plan to protect us? Y’all, we are teetering on the edge. Even before these state bans, America was already lagging behind every other wealthy nation on measures like maternal mortality and paid leave.
So we could be right back to the days before Roe, which many young people here don’t even remember. The days when abortion wasn’t as safe as it is today. The days when the number of mothers of color dying in childbirth was 30 to 40 percent higher than when it was under Roe.
So to the men who love us, let me just try to paint a picture of what it will feel like if America, the wealthiest nation on earth, keeps revoking basic care from its women and how it will affect every single woman in your life. Your girlfriend could be the one in legal jeopardy if she needs a pill from out of state or overseas or if she has to travel across state lines because the local clinic closed up. Your wife or mother could be the ones at higher risk of dying from undiagnosed cervical cancer because they have no access to regular gynecological care. Your daughter could be the one too terrified to call the doctor if she’s bleeding during an unexpected pregnancy. Your niece could be the one miscarrying in her bathtub after the hospital turned her away.
And this will not just affect women. It will affect you and your sons. The devastating consequences of teen pregnancy won’t just be borne by young girls, but also by the young men who are the fathers. They too will have their dreams of going to college. Their entire future is totally upended by an unwanted pregnancy.
If you and your partner are expecting a child, you will be right by her side at the checkup, terrified if her blood pressure is too high or if there’s an issue with the placenta or if the ultrasound shows that the embryo was implanted in the wrong place and the doctors aren’t sure that they can intervene to keep the woman you love safe. If your wife is shivering and bleeding on the operating room table during a routine delivery gone bad, her pressure dropping as she loses more and more blood or some unforeseen infection spreads and her doctors aren’t sure if they can act, you will be the one praying that it’s not too late. You will be the one pleading for somebody, anybody, to do something. And then there is the tragic but very real possibility that in the worst case scenario, you just might be the one holding flowers at the funeral. You might be the one left to raise your children alone.
See, these are just some of the ways women die during childbirth. And I don’t want to be a downer, y’all. But in many cases, there is no warning and things go bad very quickly. And when it happens, every second of hesitation or delay can lead to devastating outcomes. So I am asking y’all from the core of my being to take our lives seriously. Please do not put our lives in the hands of politicians, mostly men who have no clue or do not care about what we as women are going through, who don’t fully grasp the broad-reaching health implications that their misguided policies will have on our health outcomes.”
The perception is wide spread on the right. Here’s an article stating that “Jews for Harris" is, as the joke goes, kind of like "chickens for Chick-fil-A." Forget the Middle East. At home, a Harris-Walz admin would inculcate Jew-hatred through educational, legal, and other institutional means.
Mind you, it’s more than just Gen John Kelly:
Perhaps the best response from the avalanche of Puerto Rican celebrity responses was Aubrey Plaza.
Here’s another great essay on white supremacy and the ideology of lies.
This Joe Kahn’s view of criticism via NPR. On criticism from the left: "There's a desire to see one of the leading, journalistic institutions in American life be a full-throated supporter of the view that many on the left have, which is that Donald Trump is an existential threat to our society, and that all of The New York Times coverage should be uniform in emphasizing that point day in and day out … We don't see that as our proper role.”
The unwillingness to engage thoughtful critics, the failure to do any introspection about things like headlines, the circling of the wagons, is so dismaying.
Much of what Trump is planning is borrowed whole cloth from Russia and Soviet Union, both the present day and the past it builds on. Look up the legend of Pavlik Morozov and how this myth inspired a government-imposed culture of betraying family members for wrongthink: Sleepwalking in a Snitch State.
Cardi’s response was perfect: “I’m not a puppet Elon.. I’m a daughter of two immigrant parents that had to work their ass off to provide for me! I’m a product of welfare, I’m a product of section 8, I’m a product of poverty and I’m a product of what happens when the system is set up against you….But you don’t know nothing about that. You don’t know not one thing about the American struggle…. PS fix my algorithm”
I reiterate that I say this as a person who voted 3rd party in at least 4 if not 5 straight Presidential elections prior to 2016.
Ever since the CNN revelations about Mark Robinson, the number of folks being identified or self-proclaiming to be Nazis is starting to grow at a very alarming rate. A fringe commentator — whose account endorsed threads praising Adolf Hitler and pushing claims about a “Jew World Order” — recently said that she’s “part of” and “working with” Trump’s transition team to help close friend Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
A short collection of Trump’s recent gaffes:
Trump wants to give immigrants “serial numbers.” Just think of the context and connotations. The other day, it was the 83rd anniversary of Nazi Germany mandate for Jews to wear a yellow Star of David on their clothing, aiming to isolate and humiliate them, marking the escalation of anti-Semitism and culminating in the Final Solution with “serial numbers.”
Trump’s anti-immigrant and especially anti-White sentiment in Trump’s speeches is now dialed up to 12 (out of 10):
“They are illegal immigrants as far as I’m concerned.” — Trump claims legal Haitian immigrants in Ohio are actually illegal immigrants.
“They will walk into your kitchen, they'll cut your throat."
“The migrants have taken over our hospitals. They've taken over our schools.”
Trump leans heavily into race science by telling Hugh Hewitt that you can tell whether migrants are predisposed to committing murder by "their genes." "We got a lot of bad genes in our country right now," he adds. Zero mention of Trump’s “bad genes” comment on the NYT homepage. There’s a mention of it several pages down on the WaPo homepage. Trump is trafficking in Nazi race science and has promised to put migrants into camps. The lack of coverage is unacceptable. Obviously he has “good genes” as he says things like this: "I didn't have to be here. I could be in a beautiful beach. I could be in a gorgeous beach somewhere in the world. The sun beaming down in this beautiful body in a bathing suit."
Trump: “You’re gonna die.”
Trump: “That beautiful white skin that I have would be nice and tan. I have the whitest skin because I never have time to go out in the sun. I have that beautiful white. It could’ve been beautiful tan.” Not very subtle, is he?
Trump: "I want to protect the women of our country ... I'm gonna do it whether the women like it or not."
Trump: “Cows will disappear if I lose.”
Trump: “We had stupid generals, like Milley and Mattis, weak, stupid people.”