A col­lec­tion of the most shared posts from My Pub­lic Face­book Page. I do a lot of writ­ing there at the moment. So I use a com­pi­la­tion (with some revi­sion and edit­ing) to fill a post once or twice a month.

I am not going to tell you what to do with this infor­ma­tion. But it is time to start assum­ing that every­one in ICE under­stands the moral impli­ca­tions of fol­low­ing their orders, knows what they are doing, and has decid­ed to obey.

Repub­li­cans have passed a bud­get bill that:

• will dec­i­mate the social safe­ty net
• extends tax cuts for the rich—many per­ma­nent­ly, includ­ing the estate tax
• allo­cates $46 bil­lion into bor­der secu­ri­ty (which means ICE and its secret Police, if you hadn’t real­ized it)
• slash­es Med­ic­aid in a way that sab­o­tages the Afford­able Care Act 
• cuts Covid sup­port to noth­ing right before what is start­ing to look like a con­cern­ing surge 
• lim­its stu­dent access to high­er edu­ca­tion assis­tance
• makes pro­grams like SNAP (food stamps) hard­er to get and MUCH hard­er to keep
• kneecaps the judi­cial branch (essen­tial­ly by restrict­ing its abil­i­ty to hold fed­er­al employ­ees in con­tempt, should they out­right ignore a ruling—sounds like any­one you know?)
• pro­tects AI from pret­ty much any­thing, includ­ing state laws (so much for fed­er­al­ism when it’s not being used to attack abor­tion or keep Jim Crow), but espe­cial­ly for its use as an elec­tion­eer­ing tool

… and does it all to the tune of tril­lions of dol­lars in deficit because Repub­li­cans are tax-and-spend pro­jec­tion­ists.

And yet I still have to watch my friends and MANY of my friends’ friends talk about how there’s no dif­fer­ence between Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats.

You can eas­i­ly cre­ate a list of the bad, cal­low, and tepid char­ac­ter­is­tics of Democ­rats (and believe me, this list would be long), includ­ing gems like uphold­ing racist poli­cies, sup­port­ing geno­cide, capit­u­lat­ing to capitalists—including post-cap­i­tal­ist-hell­hole corporations—and stomp­ing on LGBTQ+ rights… 

But there is not ONE list that you can cre­ate that, when applied to Repub­li­cans, does not turn out to be:

• also true
• usu­al­ly way, way, WAY worse in scope, ani­mos­i­ty, and inten­tion
• also get­ting mil­lions of the most vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple killed for lack of insur­ance, food, and basic neces­si­ties

And every time a per­son says some­thing on this list about Democ­rats, it’s some usu­al­ly white usu­al­ly male, usu­al­ly cishet, usu­al­ly mid­dle class usu­al­ly apa­thet­ic key­board war­rior asshel­met who mis­takes shit­ting in the sand­cas­tle (of every­body actu­al­ly DOING some­thing) for being “Rick and Morty bril­liant,” and who thinks they are “left­is­ter than thou” because they haven’t done the slight­est bit of work, fig­ur­ing out where their puri­ty inter­sects with their prax­is… 

(deep breath)

… I think to myself, it must be so nice to have absolute­ly no one in their lives whose every­day exis­tence will get sub­stan­tial­ly bet­ter or worse based on who is gov­ern­ing them. Absolute­ly NO moral oblig­a­tion to con­sid­er the slight­est bit of prag­ma­tism. Just sit around and wait for “the rev­o­lu­tion,” like left­ist rap­ture that will be here just any fuck­ing sec­ond now.

“Con­ser­vatism con­sists of exact­ly one propo­si­tion, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law pro­tects but does not bind, along­side out-groups whom the law binds but does not pro­tect.”
Frank Wil­hoit

Biden is a “soft tar­get,” so the media don’t risk any­thing ask­ing the “tough ques­tions” about him.

But if you ever want evi­dence that the Fourth Estate has been ruined by cap­i­tal­ism (like every­thing else), watch them tear into the guy who stepped aside while vir­tu­al­ly ignor­ing the sto­ries of naked cor­rup­tion, bribery, incom­pe­tence, tax fraud, fail­ure to dis­close assets, mas­sive bud­get deficits, human rights vio­la­tions, and the oblit­er­a­tion of social safe­ty nets so that the rich­est one per­cent can keep their tax cuts. Also vir­tu­al­ly ignor­ing Project 2025 and that it is basi­cal­ly pro­ceed­ing exact­ly as planned and will ensure a per­ma­nent Repub­li­can hege­mo­ny in the US. Oh, and of course, that means you would believe 47 is a sta­ble genius in the best shape of any­one on Earth since Gre­co-Roman times. Even Biden’s com­plic­i­ty in geno­cide hasn’t got­ten as much atten­tion as his health, and that’s actu­al­ly a thing worth col­umn inch­es.

Biden’s health is easy clicks by spine­less media.

There ARE plan­ta­tions that focus on the bru­tal­i­ty and atroc­i­ty of chat­tel slav­ery.

But you always—fucking ALWAYS—hear about “pre­serv­ing our his­to­ry” when it comes to ante­bel­lum nos­tal­gia, stat­ues of trai­tors, and the flags of insur­rec­tion­ist slaver trash.

Think about it. The oth­er plan­ta­tions are lit­er­al­ly just as much about “our his­to­ry.” Pos­si­bly more, as they offer an unvar­nished and hon­est look at the way one group of humans oppressed anoth­er. But white suprema­cy knows bet­ter than to come out and say, “Yeah, I am nos­tal­gic for the days of white suprema­cy when my excep­tion­al com­fort exist­ed because of unpaid labor,” so it does a lit­tle soft-shoe tap dance of faux-naif plau­si­ble deni­a­bil­i­ty and pre­tends it’s being super slick… which it nev­er ever is, because there’s always a dou­ble stan­dard there. A dou­ble stan­dard that reveals the bull­shit.

Reminder that the ACLU has an app called Mobile Jus­tice for record­ing police inter­ac­tions. Bystanders have pow­er. If you record direct­ly from that app, it streams your video to the ACLU for safe­keep­ing, just in case your phone is tak­en from you at the scene. It can be accessed in the future if it becomes impor­tant. In Cal­i­for­nia, the app is called CA Jus­tice, and it streams direct­ly to an ACLU chap­ter in Cal­i­for­nia. You nev­er know when you might need it.

Also remem­ber that you can be com­pelled to use bio­met­rics (like facial recog­ni­tion or thumbprint) to open your phone, but not your numer­i­cal pass­word, so dis­able the for­mer before you go into a sit­u­a­tion where your phone might be seized. 

So I guess we weren’t real­ly over­re­act­ing, were we?

We were right. Again. You were wrong. Again. Just like when you said no one would sep­a­rate fam­i­lies. Just like when you said no one would be okay with white suprema­cy. Just like when you said no one would “let” him try to sub­vert an elec­tion. Just like when you said Repub­li­cans wouldn’t stand by if he was guilty.

Now it’s kid­nap­pings into unmarked vans, a war­mon­ger­ing for­eign pol­i­cy, an absolute­ly tanked-out econ­o­my because “tar­iffs are hard,” the turn­ing over our pri­vate infor­ma­tion and the gut­ting of pro­grams by an unelect­ed bil­lion­aire who didn’t know the first thing about what the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment does, trash­ing our alliances, talk­ing about annex­ing Cana­da, war in the Mid­dle East… 

And we were right. Again. And you were wrong. Again.

And yeah, for some of you… when you said both par­ties were exact­ly the same. Health­care shut down for mil­lions. Repro­duc­tive health shut down in many states. Inclu­sion and diver­si­ty being scrubbed overnight so the good ol’ boys racist nepo­tism club can re-estab­lish dom­i­nance.

And cur­rent­ly, we’re all rerun­ning all those smug con­de­scend­ing con­ver­sa­tions in our head where you told us that there was no POSSIBLE WAY that con­ser­v­a­tives in their right minds would real­ly come after Roe v. Wade. There was no POSSIBLE WAY that ICE would be like the SS and kid­nap peo­ple into unmarked vans. Could we please calm down? Could we please not cat­a­stro­phize every sin­gle elec­tion as vital­ly impor­tant? Must every election’s stakes be so hyper­bol­ic? Could we please stop over­re­act­ing?

When will it dawn on y’all with your polit­i­cal ratio­nal­iza­tions (regard­less of what dri­ves them?) that we know what we’re talk­ing about? Pol­i­tics is not this mil­que­toast mod­er­ate utopia where noth­ing big can ever REALLY hap­pen because there’s some adult in the room. They’ve been mov­ing the ball down the field (in the incre­men­tal changes that left­ists won’t deign to con­sid­er a viable strat­e­gy) for thir­ty years, and now they’re get­ting every­thing they want—which hap­pens to be white male suprema­cy and full-throat­ed fas­cism. Both par­ties do NOT want the same things. (Even if they some­times want SOME of the same things.) We say the stakes are high because they usu­al­ly are—even if that hap­pens to be every. sin­gle. elec­tion. (Because that’s been demon­stra­bly true for the past quar­ter decade—and before 9/11, it was still most­ly true if you weren’t a white dude.)

Democ­rats might not be able to make every­thing bet­ter (espe­cial­ly in one elec­tion cycle… win­ning only about a third of the time and late­ly, often by razor-thin majori­ties), but when one side is will­ing to cheat, dis­en­fran­chise, sup­press, steal, excuse vio­lence and lie about the col­or of the sky to win, things can absolute­ly get worse.

What right will have to be stripped away? What harm must be inflict­ed before “they can’t do that…” or “it can’t hap­pen here” is replaced by the under­stand­ing that Repub­li­cans are at least two gen­er­a­tions out from this idea of “the hon­or­able oppo­si­tion” with some slight­ly mis­guid­ed means to their noble ends. (Which is at LEAST a twee lit­tle idea from the 70s.)

They want to HURT us. 

If you under­stand the stolen val­or of a civil­ian wear­ing a nation’s offi­cial armed forces uni­form (com­plete with unearned medals and rank insignia) as a cos­tume, then you under­stand about 90% of cul­tur­al appro­pri­a­tion.

You just pre­tend you don’t because you don’t WANT to have to put down the cul­ture you feel enti­tled to con­sume.

If you are con­di­tioned to see bot­tom-up violence—things like prop­er­ty dam­age or riots, as hor­ri­ble scary things. If they are (to you) great vio­la­tions of the social con­tract and in need of imme­di­ate crim­i­nal jus­tice reper­cus­sions…

Then you look at top-down vio­lence, like police bru­tal­i­ty, mil­i­tary actions, cor­po­ra­tions let­ting peo­ple die or suf­fer to pro­tect their share­hold­ers or bot­tom lines… or you look at struc­tur­al [sys­temic?] vio­lence, like the gears and levers of pow­er that work against BIPOC and oth­er mar­gin­al­ized groups… and all you see is some sort of regret­table byprod­uct of the greater good of cap­i­tal­ism or social order…

Even when top-down vio­lence destroys far more lives, liveli­hoods, and health on any giv­en busi­ness-as-usu­al day than bot­tom-up vio­lence could ever hope to in its most flash­point moments.

You might want to think about unpack­ing that bull­shit.

It is encul­tur­a­tion and indoc­tri­na­tion that essen­tial­ly amount to a life­time of pro­pa­gan­da and brain­wash­ing. There is no rea­son­able jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the image of a burn­ing car or trash can caus­ing you a greater emo­tion­al response than the reports of med­ical insur­ance com­pa­nies deny­ing cov­er­age as a mat­ter of busi­ness mod­el because a cer­tain per­cent­age of turned down claimants will give up or die before they have a chance to file an appeal—and that’s good for busi­ness. Or than an ecosys­tem destroyed because a tanker spilled oil. Or than the over-polic­ing of entire com­mu­ni­ties of col­or. Or than cen­turies of look­ing the oth­er way about sex­u­al abuse scan­dals. Or… 

And also, there is a dis­tinct dou­ble stan­dard, when it comes to left vs. right vio­lence, that plays into the fact that the left can’t ever do any­thing right accept­able? good enough? [left can’t do right] (because they have pro­vid­ed a speed bump to white male suprema­cy), so it is ALWAYS okay to dunk on the left. That is the rel­a­tive accept­abil­i­ty of para­mil­i­tary groups, vio­lent thoughts and expres­sions, and the shocked dis­missal of those men­tal­ly unsta­ble lone wolves who engage in sto­chas­tic ter­ror­ism when it (inevitably) does hap­pen. On the left, we can’t even express the sat­is­fac­tion in the death of a SCOTUS judge who prob­a­bly caused more death with a pen than any Amer­i­can “left­ist” since Appo­mat­tox with­out some pearl-clutch­ing lec­ture about pro­pri­ety.

Non-vio­lence is a tac­tic, and it’s obvi­ous­ly impor­tant to under­stand why the right and the cur­rent regime both so bad­ly want esca­la­tion. But believ­ing that some­one who has tried every oth­er avenue of redress for injus­tice and inequal­i­ty has no right… ever… under any cir­cum­stance… to become vio­lent will ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS help the oppres­sor. It’s just one more way the oppres­sion works.

USA­ians are par­tic­u­lar­ly sus­cep­ti­ble to this bot­tom-up vs. top-down dou­ble stan­dard, and need to work par­tic­u­lar­ly hard to unpack it. Even though we have had our share of unions vs. Pinker­tons vio­lent his­to­ry, and our coun­try was found­ed on rebel­lion, and we go kick the crap out of any­one who has oil, sug­ar cane, what­ev­er we want, and we have been at war most of our his­to­ry but for about two decades since our found­ing, we have this mantra that vio­lence is nev­er the answer… A very delib­er­ate and cal­cu­lat­ed pro­pa­gan­da cam­paign about the immoral­i­ty of all vio­lence (that is not car­ried out by the state) has been waged on us since the late 1960s and the move­ment then. It’s why even mod­er­ates (and no small num­ber of lib­er­als) often fall over them­selves to jus­ti­fy police bru­tal­i­ty or mil­i­tary action, but basi­cal­ly preach paci­fism for civil­ians.

That’s con­di­tion­ing.

And it would be use­ful to unpack this con­di­tion­ing if for no oth­er rea­son than to real­ize how grotesque­ly, breath­tak­ing­ly worse top-down vio­lence is on its most sub­dued day than any­thing you see over and over on the news because there was a plume of smoke or some­thing.

Democ­rats do not rep­re­sent me, but if I am giv­en the choice between A) full-throat­ed author­i­tar­i­an fas­cism and harm to every mar­gin­al­ized com­mu­ni­ty I can think of, or B)a polit­i­cal land­scape where I can at least do the work of left­ism with­out look­ing over my shoul­der for unmarked vans… 

And if I under­stand that I can­not “opt out” of being gov­erned by one of these two groups and that giv­ing away my pow­er with regards to this choice allows some­one else to make the choice FOR me, and that there will not be NO gov­ern­ment if I choose to abstain… 

And if I fur­ther under­stand that EVERY. SINGLE. GOAL. I have as a left­ist will be more dif­fi­cult with option A than option B… And if I fur­ther under­stand that the rea­sons for that range all the way, from the fact that some peo­ple are unable to help sim­ply because sur­vival has become so dif­fi­cult, to the fact of the total dis­re­gard of those free­doms under which build­ing par­al­lel infra­struc­tures is pos­si­ble…  

And if I fur­ther under­stand that every left­ist activism group that I admire has out­lined the same strat­e­gy to vote not for what one (cap­i­tal B) BELIEVES in, but to vote for those whom they are most eas­i­ly able to manip­u­late and/or defeat… 

And if I fur­ther under­stand that we are not talk­ing about polit­i­cal and social abstrac­tions of my ide­al­ism but grit­ty prag­mat­ic real­i­ty in which peo­ple are los­ing their health­care, los­ing their liveli­hoods, los­ing their hous­ing, los­ing their health­care, los­ing body auton­o­my, being ille­gal­ly deport­ed, being arrest­ed for ques­tion­ing, being harmed, being killed even, all while white male suprema­cy is mov­ing from the shad­ows of social cen­sure into the full light of day… 

If I fur­ther under­stand all that… I’m going to pick option B.

I don’t care if it makes me a “shit­ty left­ist bootlick­er.”

I will work the oth­er 729 days (every two years) to make the world a bet­ter place in MY way. But one Tues­day every cou­ple of years, I’m going to pick option B.

I think David Hogg said more than he knew or meant to when he told Bill Maher (to applause and a the­atri­cal hand­shake) that young Democ­rats just want to get laid. Hogg said the qui­et part out loud with­out even real­iz­ing that’s what he was doing.

What he dis­missed in that screed were the issues of our time. Big­otry. Misog­y­ny. Trans­pho­bia. And racism in every form, both overt and sub­tle.

He said that peo­ple don’t want to think about that—they don’t want to be told they’re not doing a great job by (bare­ly) clear­ing the dirt-low bar of “Don’t lit­er­al­ly be a fas­cist.” They don’t want to tack­le the eugen­ics-lev­el big­otry on the right. They just want to get some nook­ie. They don’t want to frame them­selves as absolute­ly pos­i­tive­ly against white male suprema­cy because they kind of have to court it as well.

Cheers and applause. But can we reframe it?

“Let’s for­get all this equal­i­ty and inclu­sion and diver­si­ty stuff and keep our white peo­ple fucked and hap­py. Let’s focus on mid­dle-class incomes and white people’s finances, and if that means we’re silenc­ing some mar­gin­al­ized folks, ehh. Nobody wants to be made to feel bad about that stuff.”

THAT’S what he said.

And THAT’S why Repub­li­cans keep win­ning. That’s why 15–20 points worth of white peo­ple vote against their own eco­nom­ic self-inter­est in every elec­tion since the Civ­il Rights Move­ment. That’s why wives, on the whole, do not “break off” from their hus­bands once in the vot­ing booths. Because we live in a coun­try that doesn’t like to feel bad fee-fees by con­fronting the fact that “This is not who we are” is, actu­al­ly, EXACTLY THE FUCK WHO WE ARE.

We are a deeply racist and, in all oth­er ways, big­ot­ed soci­ety. It is not just a “lega­cy.” It is all around us to this day. It’s not a brand­ing issue that the DNC needs to some­how learn to spoon-feed to “rur­al” (that means white) vot­ers with­out con­de­scend­ing to them. It will nev­er be a brand­ing issue. They know what they’re vot­ing for. It’s white male suprema­cy.

Some­one imper­son­at­ing an offi­cer car­ried out an assas­si­na­tion, but sure, tell me how we should trust the word of plain­clothes peo­ple in masks who won’t iden­ti­fy them­selves to shove peo­ple into unmarked vans.

NRA: We need guns. We need absolute­ly no restric­tions on guns. If we want grenade launch­ers and machine guns, those need to be pur­chasable with­out a wait­ing peri­od.

Peo­ple: “Why exact­ly? I’m not say­ing NO guns, but why do you need that many and for them to be that pow­er­ful?”

NRA: “The gov­ern­ment must know that it can’t over­step. We have to be able to vio­lent­ly resist tyran­ny. What if peo­ple work­ing for the gov­ern­ment with masks and no iden­ti­fi­ca­tion come to take you away in an unmarked van? You won’t be able to stop them, but they’ll think twice if you might be armed and you can fight back. They will vio­late our rights if we let them! A gov­ern­ment should fear its peo­ple. THE STATE CANNOT HAVE A MONOPOLY ON VIOLENCE.”

Gov­ern­ment: ~sends masked peo­ple with no iden­ti­fi­ca­tion to kid­nap peo­ple in unmarked vans~

NRA: … 

Peo­ple: … 

NRA: … 

Peo­ple: Well?

NRA: “We also hate BIPOC.”

They want a civ­il war so fuck­ing bad you can HEAR them sali­vat­ing. Their calls for action use vio­lent lan­guage and are often explic­it calls for vio­lence. They talk casu­al­ly of unaliv­ing the woke. They speak of wars that are com­ing. Their rhetoric is one of rebel­lion when they are not in pow­er and cleans­ing when they are. They talk about reprisals that will destroy us.

And then when some sto­chas­tic ter­ror­ist comes along and does exact­ly what they’ve been writ­ing about for years in every lit­tle cor­ner of the Inter­net they can con­trol or take over (with­out being kicked out for hate speech)… 

When some­one does exact­ly pre­cise­ly explic­it­ly what they talk about ad nau­se­am… they pre­tend there’s no pos­si­ble way to know it was polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed.

As if there wasn’t a man­i­festo.

As if there wasn’t a list of tar­gets.

As if this was the first time it has ever hap­pened.

You know I’ve spent thir­ty years talk­ing about who con­ser­v­a­tives were and about their val­ue sys­tems.

I’ve point­ed out so many things, so many times.

That the dou­ble stan­dard betrays that it wasn’t about “states’ rights” at all. (That was just their last refuge for racism, attacks on body auton­o­my, and theoc­ra­cy.) 

That their con­cerns over doc­u­men­ta­tion had noth­ing to do with rea­son­able immi­gra­tion reform, and that it was about racism.

That they didn’t give a SHIT about the Bill of Rights unless it was about the Sec­ond Amend­ment (and that when it came to THAT, they didn’t want guns because of some valiant hypo­thet­i­cal bat­tle against gov­ern­ment over­reach, they want­ed them because they scare POC and lib­er­als, and they des­per­ate­ly want an excuse for vig­i­lante jus­tice). 

I watched them put fed­er­al agents in their god­damn sniper crosshairs when it was about where their fuck­ing cows could eat, and then turn around and talk about “respect­ing the law” when some win­dows got bro­ken (often by cops) in a protest. 

I point­ed out that the “scorched earth” pro­to­col of Newt Gin­grich got trac­tion dur­ing Oba­ma (NOT CLINTON and also not real­ly Biden) because of racism. 

I watched groups dressed up like they were fuck­ing rev­o­lu­tion­ary war reen­ac­tors not being able to actu­al­ly artic­u­late what they were actu­al­ly against except “Oba­ma” (using the most vile and racist attacks imag­in­able), and even the ones that could kind of tell me “deficit spend­ing and high­er tax­es” didn’t notice that a) that wasn’t actu­al­ly hap­pen­ing and b) has been worse under every Repub­li­can for five decades. Guess who hasn’t flipped sides even though the “big beau­ti­ful betray­al” is filled with 2.4 TRILLION in deficit spend­ing?

And for that ENTIRE time of point­ing out what actu­al­ly moti­vates con­ser­v­a­tives (big­otry), they would clutch pearls and fall over to the ground, howl­ing like an inter­na­tion­al men’s soc­cer play­er who felt the wind on their leg from a cleat. How DARE I impugn their pris­tine moti­va­tions? And mod­er­ates (and no small num­ber of lib­er­als) would con­de­scend­ing­ly lec­ture me on bring­ing every­one to the table, and how they raised some good points and had dif­fer­ent val­ue sys­tems, and I shouldn’t attempt to judge their hearts by any­thing so reduc­tive.

And here we are. Now they’re say­ing the qui­et part out loud from the rooftops. And they are EXACTLY who I said they were (real­ly, who THEY said they were) from the very begin­ning. They are the rob­ber barons stok­ing the hearts of big­ots to vote against their own inter­ests and the big­ots who are too big­ot­ed to give a shit that they’re being played.

Con­sid­er­ing that almost every­thing that has hap­pened so far has gone exact­ly accord­ing to the Project 2025 play­book, it is asi­nine to think there’s a water’s edge where the Repub­li­cans, or the leader of their par­ty, will sim­ply stop.

So many of us keep wait­ing for there to be an adult in the room and keep doing sur­prised Pikachu faces when not only there isn’t, but they do exact­ly what they said they were going to do.