The huge decentralized turnout for No Kings Day has shown that grassroots power can be a major force against the momentum of the Trump regime. The protests were auspicious, with 5 million people participating in 2,100 gatherings nationwide. Activists are doing what the national Democratic Party leadership has failed to do – organize effectively and inspire mass action.
What we don’t need now is for newly activated people to catch a ride on plodding Democratic donkeys. The party’s top leadership and a large majority of its elected officials are just too conformist and traditional to creatively confront the magnitude of the unprecedented Trumpist threat to what remains of democracy in the United States.
Two key realities are contradictions that fully co-exist in the real world: The Democratic Party, led by the likes of Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, is in well-earned disrepute, having scant credibility even with most people who detest Trump. And yet, Democratic Party candidates will be the only way possible to end Republican control of Congress via midterm elections next year.
Few congressional Democrats have been able to articulate and fight for a truly progressive populist agenda – to directly challenge the pseudo-populism of MAGA Republicans. Instead, what implicitly comes across is a chorus of calls for a return to the incremental politics of the Biden era.
Awash in corporate cash and milquetoast rhetoric, most Democratic incumbents sound inauthentic while posturing as champions of the working class. For activists to simply cheer them on is hardly the best way to end GOP rule.
. . . The Democratic establishment keeps insisting that the way to get out of the current terrible situation is the same way that we got into it in the first place – with the party catering to corporate America while fueling wars with an ever-bigger military budget and refusing to really fight for people being crushed by modern capitalism.
On Tuesday evening, September 10th, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump squared off in their first and only Presidential debate. The one main takeaway from the debate is that after several decades of lesser-evilism, it has become increasingly difficult to identify who the lesser evil is. This is because the Overton window has shifted so far to the right in the neoliberal era that the space which was once occupied by traditional liberals like FDR and JFK is now a void. The Democrat Party has moved into the realm of Reaganism, adding in a flavor of bourgeois (false) wokeness to soften its loyalty to corporate governance, capitalist degradation, and war. This has left the Republican Party as the forerunners of late capitalism’s slide from covert to overt fascism, albeit not without an internal struggle led by the entrenched neocons who are now jumping ship to join the Reaganist Democrats.
In this decades-long slide toward overt fascism, Republicans have pushed for an expansion of the Southern Strategy into parts of the Midwest and rural coastline, still relying heavily on racist, bigoted, and xenophobic sensationalism to appeal to voters. This remains a successful strategy in 2024 due to the material degradation caused by late capitalism, which has sparked a reactionary response from “middle-class” whites who feel their privileges slipping away and need a bogeyman to blame. In response, Republicans and conservative media feed them with a never-ending list of scapegoats — illegals, criminals, wokeness, Haitians, etc. — designed to provide cover for the real culprits: the capitalist class and corporate governance.
Meanwhile, Democrats have assumed the role of warhawks from the 1980s/90s neocons, using everything from outdated cold-war propaganda to their own brand of xenophobia to push for more wars. The fact that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both praised Reagan during their campaigns, and Harris pulled a similar move with John McCain on Tuesday, suggests this is a conscious and strategic move to express loyalty to the military industrial complex. It's no coincidence that Dick Cheney recently endorsed Harris.
Trump predictably leaned on racist tropes and violent rhetoric that demonizes and dehumanizes our immigrant neighbors, spreads vicious lies about women exercising control over our bodies, and fans the flames of hatred against our LGBTQIA+ family. . . . Have no doubt: Trump has and will continue to advance the interests of Christian Nationalist fundamentalists and white supremacists in his pursuit of unrestrained power.
[Yet in terms of policy] there is very little difference between Kamala Harris and Donald J. Trump.
BOTH Harris and Trump boasted about embracing war criminals and guaranteeing the dominance of American capital at the expense of everything else.
BOTH of them promised to support fracking and bragged about their results in expanding fossil fuel extraction.
BOTH of them promised to continue building our military and stoked military tensions with Iran, China, and Russia.
BOTH agree on giving Israel unilateral authority over our foreign policy decisions in the Middle East.
BOTH agree on unlimited militarization of our border.
BOTH agree that private interests like the profit of fossil fuel companies outweigh the collective interest of the survival of our species and our planet.
The end result is the same. Working people are squeezed back into the meat grinder of our exploitation economy, the American empire remains unchecked, and our planet is burned to ash as our core democratic freedoms – like the rights to protest, boycott, and petition the government for redress of grievances – are crushed.
The banner headline across the top of The New York Times home page – “Harris Puts Trump on Defensive in Fierce Debate” – was accurate enough. But despite the good news for people understandably eager for former President Donald Trump to be defeated, the Harris debate performance was a moral and political tragedy.
In Gaza “now an estimated 40,000 Palestinians are dead,” an ABC News moderator said. “Nearly 100 hostages remain. . . . President Biden has not been able to break through the stalemate. How would you do it?”
Vice President Harris replied with her standard wording: “Israel has a right to defend itself. We would. And how it does so matters. Because it is also true far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed. Children, mothers. What we know is that this war must end. It must when, end immediately, and the way it will end is we need a cease-fire deal and we need the hostages out.”
“End immediately”? Anyone who isn’t in fantasyland knows that the only way to soon end the slaughter of Palestinian civilians would be for the U.S. government – the overwhelmingly biggest supplier of Israel’s armaments – to stop sending weapons to Israel.
Meanwhile, a pivot to advocating for a cut-off of weapons to Israel would help Harris win the presidency. After the debate, the Institute for Middle East Understanding pointed out that the need to halt the weapons is not only moral and legal – it’s also smart politics. Polls are clear that most Americans want to stop arming Israel. In swing states, polling has found that a large number of voters say they’d be more likely to cast a ballot for Harris if she would support a halt.
. . . Israel’s war on 2.2 million people in Gaza has been a supercharged escalation of what Israel had been doing for 75 years, treating human beings as suitable for removal and even destruction. As Israel’s war on Gaza has persisted, the explanations often echoed the post-9/11 rationales for the “war on terror” from the U.S. government: authorizing future crimes against humanity as necessary in the light of certain prior events.
That and so much more – left unsaid from the debate stage, dodged in U.S. mass media, and evaded from the podiums of power in Washington – indict not only the Israeli government but also the U.S. government as an accomplice to mass murder that has escalated into genocide.
Silence is a blanket that smothers genuine democratic discourse and the outcries of moral voices. Making those voices inaudible is a key goal for the functioning of the warfare state.
Trump’s construct of “migrant crime” is a racist myth. This association – more immigrants = more crime – has been repeatedly disproven. If anything, studies and data suggest the opposite: more immigrants = less crime. Let me explain.
Trump Republicans often assess “crime” levels using incarceration, arrest, and murder rates. Every year from 1870 to 2020, immigrants have been incarcerated at a lower rate compared to U.S. citizens. This gap has become even more pronounced since the 1960s. Today, immigrants are 60% less likely to be incarcerated than U.S. citizens. Immigrants are 30% less likely to be incarcerated than White Americans.
In Texas, U.S.-born citizens were between 2 and 4 times more likely to be arrested for violent, drug, and property crimes than undocumented immigrants, according to a study published in 2020.
Since the 1970s, the U.S. murder rate has decreased while the share of the foreign-born U.S. population has increased. While immigration rates declined significantly in 2020, homicide rates rose sharply. While immigration rates started rising in 2021 and 2022, homicide rates leveled out and then declined.
Trump and his political operatives can publicize and make up cases of individuals who happen to be immigrants engaging in violence. But don’t let them distract you for the fact that there’s no link between “migrant” and “crime.” It's a second Trump presidency – not immigrants – that poses a grave threat to the safety and well-being of Americans, of humanity.
[Kamala Harris says] that Americans are “exhausted about the division” – seeming to imply that the country was once solid and unified, fully in agreement on the nature of American values and such matters as who are enemies are. This seems to be one of the media talking points of the moment, which is ironic almost beyond belief. A nation born in a state of legalized slavery has never been a unified nation. What unity that does currently exist isn’t the result of Americans simply deciding to get along – or all agreeing on a specific, external enemy – but rather the result of decades and decades and decades of intense struggle, a la the civil rights movement, the women’s rights movement, the workers’ movements, etc., etc., and the ongoing creation of the country as it exists today.
During the debate, most of what Trump blathered was screw-loose nonsense, mixed, of course, with his special brand of racism, that is to say: the invasion of illegal aliens. This was the issue Trump rambled on about regardless of what he was asked to address, be it the economy, abortion, the January 6 riot, or whatever.
. . . The media consensus seems to be that Harris won the ping-pong game – I mean, the debate – because she spoke with clarity, factual accuracy, and sufficient contempt to continually put Trump in his place. And yes, I get this, she won the ping-pong game. But in her “victory,” what deeper truth did Harris advance? What not-yet-existing country did she envision and present to the American people . . . and the world? I heard the clichés, especially the military clichés, but I didn’t see the vision.
Pundits, a day later, ruminate about who won the September 10th “presidential debate,” but that is the wrong question. The most important revelation from Tuesday night's clusterfuck of bad theater ought to be this: the patient won't survive. The bedridden train-wreck sprawled across the gurney in the hospice unit is the United States of America – and the debate wasn't destined to be revelatory. We already knew that the corpse, writhing and contorting in agony, will need life-support first and a skilled embalmer soon enough. The debate proved for the billionth time that the greatest country on earth has less hope than a popsicle on the surface of the sun.
The debate wasn't about Kamala Harris – she is the default mode, the automatic pilot, a celebration of generic items, a slinky on a long stair case, a golf course watering system in a terminal draught, a row of telephone poles on an endless train ride. Forget about her. She does not exist. AI created her.
This debate was about Donald Trump. If an alien spacecraft lands on your street and parks next to a Honda Fit, the make of the car becomes irrelevant. If you are waking in the morning with a blister on your little toe and notice a tumor growing out of your side as big as the bathroom sink, you no longer attend to the foot discomfort.
Trump is our measuring stick, our gauge of disease, our face of national distress. If Trump had a debate with Jesus himself you wouldn't see it as the bantering back and forth between good and evil – you'd look at Trump and ask, “What the fuck is that?” In any context, Trump does not belong. He is a walking double take. You look at Trump as if your arm falls off and blood streams from your empty shoulder. He is bad shit that should not be there – but there he is.
. . . [Trump] argued back and forth with Kamala Harris about which one fracked the hardest. Picture two arsonists bickering over which one owns the largest gas can, and you get the idea. . . . Can you imagine that maybe a couple billion years hence, a team of alien explorers lands on the burnt remnants of our planet and discovers the video of Tuesday's debate? What will our alien visitors say to one another? Perhaps they'll say, “Those dumb fucks where watching this and chewing on popcorn while their planet roasted.”
No matter which of them wins on November 5, it appears there will be no fundamental disruption of a system in which the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, tens of millions of people lack health care, corporate power continues its reign of economic terror, climate change remains unmitigated, 60 per cent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, and brute force continues to be our main problem-solving modality domestically and internationally.
She is less dangerous in the short term, but they both represent a system that leaves the majority of Americans to fend for themselves within an unjust economy and an increasingly dangerous world.
Image: A scene from a watch party for the U.S. presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump at American Eat Co. in Tucson, Arizona on September 10, 2024. (Photo: Rebecca Noble/AFP via Getty Images)
As the United States barrels towards another presidential election pitting Joe Biden against Donald Trump, a somber reality is setting in for many observers: despite the stark differences between the two men and their visions for America, their rematch represents a broader shift in how democracy functions in the 21st century. Increasingly, elections have become competitions between the ambitions and personalities of individual “great men” rather than contests of ideas or visions for society.
This phenomenon reflects a contemporary belief in the outsized power of elite individuals – whether CEOs, celebrities, or political leaders – to drive change and shape the world around them. It’s a worldview that has its roots in neoliberal ideology but has morphed into something more extreme: a “cult of personality” that justifies massive inequality and the consolidation of wealth and power in the hands of a small oligarchic class.
The recent Trump-Biden debate served as a grotesque apotheosis of “great man” politics, laying bare the dangerous fallacy of entrusting democracy to the outsized personalities of flawed individuals. What viewers witnessed was not a substantive exchange of ideas, but a sad spectacle of two men desperately clinging to the illusion of their own indispensability.
Trump, the self-styled political outsider, once again displayed his mastery of demagoguery. His performance was a masterclass in manipulative rhetoric, weaving lies and exaggerations to inflame passions and sow doubt. This wasn’t leadership, but a naked display of ego – a man willing to risk democratic norms and institutions to maintain his grip on power and protect his wealth.
Opposite him, Biden struggled to articulate coherent responses, his words often faltering and confused. The toll of age was unmistakable, raising uncomfortable questions about his fitness for office. Yet Biden’s insistence on seeking reelection, despite these obvious challenges, betrays the same hubris that drives Trump – a belief that he alone can guide the nation through troubled waters.
This debate didn’t showcase great men rising to meet history’s challenges. Instead, it revealed the bankruptcy of personality-driven politics. Here were two deeply flawed individuals, propped up by cults of personality, vying for the right to single-handedly shape America’s future.
In its most degenerate form, as we’re witnessing now, this results in the sad spectacle of a democratic election devolving into little more than the narcissistic desire of two powerful old men to cling to power and relevance, even as they and the system they represent show clear signs of terminal decline.
We warned about most of this in 2020 but we were told to shut up and fall in line so we could get the “lesser” evil elected. Many of us did that. In fact, much of the left has made that compromise time after time. We’ve compromised our way to fascism.
– Dana White via Instagram
July 10, 2024
In the system of government envisioned by America’s founding fathers, political leaders exist to represent and serve the people. This can be a fragile ideal. George Washington could have shattered it right from the get go had he wanted to hang onto power. But instead he relinquished his position and retired with honor when the time was right, a choice that – more than any other – made him a foundational hero of American democracy.
Though this principle has survived many crises since then, today it faces arguably its greatest threat yet. Donald Trump has already tried to roll back our democracy once. Now he’s running with an explicit plan to do so, and with the twisted authority of the Supreme Court to back him up.
Of course, to realize his dark vision, Trump needs to win in November. So the most terrifying thing about our current moment is that the presumptive Democratic nominee, President Joe Biden, is by every objective measure, on track to lose reelection. His 37% approval rating makes him historically unpopular, three quarters of Americans do not believe he has the cognitive health to be president, he is consistently losing in swing state polls (where he is polling far behind other Democrats), and his disastrous debate and interview performances show that he is not up to the task of effectively prosecuting the case against Donald Trump.
In this context, it’s easy to understand the anger many Americans have felt at the Democrats – some at high levels within the party but also worryingly large numbers at the grassroots – who’ve been insisting that President Biden deserves our unconditional support.
This is a dangerous claim to make on behalf of any political leader. In a democracy, no individual politician deserves unconditional support. That’s the whole idea behind a government “deriving [its] just powers from the consent of the governed.” Our leaders serve us, not the other way around.
. . . Being president is not a sacrifice. Certainly it’s a tough job, one that requires a lot of energy and endurance. But it’s also the most plushy, prestigious, privileged thing someone could ever do. That’s why Trump wanted the position in the first place, and I understand why Biden, his family, and his team would want four more years with all that power and prominence.
But they aren’t entitled to it. We have a hell of a lot more on the line in this election than one man’s ambitions and ego. The minority of Democrats insisting otherwise resemble nothing so much as a blue-shaded MAGA, not just in their conspiracies and increasingly unhinged perspective on the race, but also because they, too, are trying to drag us down a path that will very likely end in a second Trump presidency.
A large percentage of this country didn’t want either [Trump or Biden]. And now, a little miraculously, they might get what they want after all. If the Democrats have an open convention and pick a new candidate, that person might win easily because he [or she] isn’t one of these two.
Just think: if the DNC had facilitated actual democracy via a robust primary season, including debates, we may well have determined a year ago President Biden’s cognitive limitations and decline. That would have allowed plenty of time for a better-equipped candidate to have emerged and be nominated by “the people” (registered Democratic voters, in this case). But, no, the DNC did what it believes it has the (undemocratic) right to do: anoint a candidate for us and rig the process to ensure his/her victory. That strategy failed in 2016 with Hillary Clinton, and it looks as though it’s going to fail in 2024 with Joe Biden.
– Michael Bayly via Facebook
July 5, 2024
The same people who said we couldn’t consider anyone but Biden because we all had to stand in line, are now saying we can’t consider an open convention because we all have to stand in line. No deviation from the official line of thinking or we’ll lose, ya’ll!! In fact, once you have people convinced that we all have to stand in line, then we’ve lost already.
The moral flaw in all this from the beginning has been the idea that saving democracy is sooo important that we can’t possibly trust democracy to fight off its attackers. But the actual practice of democracy – really letting people have their say, giving everyone a fair shot in the media, allowing the people and not an elite few to determine the upshot of elections – is the ONLY way to fight off attacks on democracy, and those who don’t get that are subconsciously complicit in the attacks.
Almost everyone in Democratic politics and mainstream media owes Rep. Dean Phillips an apology. They claimed he was trying to hurt the Democratic Party by running against Joe Biden when he was doing the opposite. And to Marianne Williamson, who had the courage to say the truth first.
Almost as appalling as President Biden’s debate performance are the efforts of his loyalists to pretend that what 50 million viewers saw and heard didn’t happen or didn’t really matter. What has unfolded in the last few days amounts to a political gaslighting operation by the Biden campaign and supportive pretenders who’ve been trying to erase history as soon as it happened.
Apparently, Biden’s ego has proven to be much more resilient than his cognition, while loved ones and sycophants in concentric inner and outer circles cling desperately to talking points that are patently dishonest, often preposterous, and virulently dangerous for prospects of preventing a second Trump presidency.
By whistling past the graveyard of Biden’s credibility as a viable candidate in 2024, the pretenders are doing a huge disservice to all who want to avert a full takeover of the U.S. government by the fascistic Republican Party.
A new poll shows that 72% of Americans think Biden should drop out. If 7 out of 10 Americans think your candidate shouldn’t even be in the race, can anyone really be so deluded as to think that you have the right candidate? This is a slow-motion suicide of the Democratic Party.
– Cenk Uygur via Instagram
June 30, 2024
Refusing to quit is not always heroic resilience. It’s often stubborn rigidity.
Walking away from a losing battle is not a failure of grit. It’s a triumph of wisdom.
Service is not only about stepping up to lead. It’s also about having the courage to step aside.
We have become, by the tens and tens of millions, deeply removed from nominal reality. Trump can say virtually anything and we will not flinch. If he came out with an executive order (after being installed to power) criminalizing public statements affirming the theory of evolution few would be startled. If he denies voting rights to the unemployed, or gives two votes to gun owners there might be a muffled response of dismay, but no sustained outrage.
The issue most confronting the U.S. is not Biden’s senility, but the fact that we live in a rhinoceros infested land. All that stands between the US and a consolidated fascist state is a senile, morally defective man who never had more than average talent to begin with. Are we okay with that?
The whole point should not be Biden’s cognitive capacity (he is fucking senile and was barely capable in his mediocre prime), but the lost ability of self-scrutiny. Why do we sleepily gaze at herds of fascist rhinoceros and pretend that we see nothing? [Note: In Eugène Ionesco’s 1959 play Rhinoceros, a staple of the post-war absurdist repertoire, the rhinoceros symbolize fascists.] The members of a sane society would be thundering angrily through the streets given the choice between a smoldering ghost and an aspiring Nazi monster.
Who chose these two? Why are 50 million people curled up on couches, wrapped around plastic bowls of popcorn while these terrible, inept, and heartless fools cough up lies and trivial asides? We reflect upon levels of dementia and Nazi wannabe evil as if they were existential givens. Of course we all must decide on November 5th which genocidaire we prefer, the one who bombed the children of Gaza or the one vowing to deport up to 20 million innocent people. Do we pick the one who can barely remember his own name or the guy with a swirling vortex of hatred orbiting his eyeballs?
Who in the press watched the debate and screamed “What the fuck?!” Which pundits ask the public to take to the streets and demand a do-over? This election is a farce – the dying throes of a criminal society, the death spasms of a plundering oligarchy that once devoured most of the world and now cannibalizes its own.
A new survey released Wednesday found that with days to go until former U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to be formally nominated as the GOP presidential candidate, a majority of Americans believe the far-right Project 2025 agenda represents what Trump stands for – and shows how a victory by the Republican would endanger people across the country.
The progressive messaging firm Navigator Research conducted the survey of 1,000 registered voters from June 20-24, with the goal of learning how Democrats and rights advocates should frame Project 2025 ahead of the November election.
The group found that opponents of the right-wing project, spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, may have an uphill battle to ensure American voters are aware of the policy blueprint, which calls for a nationwide abortion ban, mass deportation of immigrants, the repeal of climate safety regulations, elimination of the Department of Educations and shrinking of other agencies, and consolidation of power within the presidency.
The survey described Project 2025 as “a series of conservative policy proposals aimed at reshaping the executive branch of the federal government if a Republican is elected president in 2024,” and found that 77% of respondents had heard “little” or “nothing” about the agenda.
But after hearing two one-sentence descriptions of the plan – one in support and one opposing – the respondents opposed Project 2025 by an 18-point margin, with 49% in opposition.
Sixty-three percent of Americans surveyed said the agenda represents Trump’s policy priorities, even though the former president has taken pains to distance himself from Project 2025 in recent days, saying last week that he knows “nothing about” the plan and has “no idea who is behind it.” Nearly 90% of Democrats said they believe Project 2025 reflects the top priorities of Trump, who said late last year that he plans to be a dictator only on “Day One” of his second term, should he win the election. Sixty-two percent of independents and 42% of Republicans who do not identify with the MAGA movement led by the former president said Project 2025 represents Trump’s agenda.
The top concern expressed by respondents from across the political spectrum was that Project 2025 is “an unprecedented, extreme Republican plan that will fundamentally alter the American government, making Trump even more dangerous in a second term by granting him presidential powers like no president before him has ever had.”
Ian Smith, director of polling and analytics for Navigator Research, said the poll reflects that Americans were “concerned by the conservative push to consolidate presidential power around Trump” even before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled earlier this month that presidents have “absolute immunity” for actions they take in relation to their “official” duties.
“What’s behind the fears of how Project 2025 would change the presidency is what Trump would do with that power,” said Smith. “As Americans learn about the extreme anti-abortion, economic, and administrative policies proposed by Project 2025, independents almost universally oppose it, and even Republicans are divided on whether they support this vision for the country.”
Sixty-two percent of Americans said Project 2025 would have a negative effect on their family, including 70% of independents and nearly half of non-MAGA Republicans.
Just stop with the “But Trump is worse so shut up” nonsense. Everyone, and I mean everyone calling for Biden to step down thinks Trump is worse. That’s WHY they want someone with a fighting chance of beating him. They are actually taking the threat of Trump MORE seriously.
– S.E. Cupp via Instagram
July 10, 2024
Authoritarianism and Donald Trump aren’t the only threats our democracy faces. An arthritic status quo, unable or unwilling to respond to in any way to the concerns of voters, who just received new and urgent information about their candidate, also erodes confidence and faith in the system of government.
“Get on board or shut the fuck up” is not a particularly compelling pro-democracy bumper sticker.
“Look at Project 2025, pay no attention to our zombie candidate” isn’t gonna fly. If the Dems actually wanna stop Project 2025, they need to find a new candidate. Immediately.
[Biden’s] doubling down is really frustrating Democrats on Capitol Hill and in his campaign. . . . There’s an overwhelming frustration at the fact that he has decided that, no matter what, he is not going to get out [of the race]. It’s almost Trumpian in the way Biden has decided it’s either him or the party is going to go down.
. . . [Biden has] almost taken the path of Republicans – [saying] no matter what, I’m not going to change; I’m not going to course-correct; I’m just going to double down. It’s worked for Republicans, and I think Biden’s taken a blueprint from it.
[The voices calling for Biden to step aside] are only going to grow. . . . And if Biden doesn’t do well then down-ticket [Democrats] don’t do well. And so democracy’s on the line. And this idea that it’s Biden or nothing risks everything – from a national abortion ban to the implementation of Project 2025.
At the end of the day we’re going to have to take responsibility for this thing. We’ve got to stop out-sourcing the future of our country, the future of our democracy to politicians.
We’re going to have to take responsibility. And we have to understand that the choice may be between an “old” feeble man and a convicted felon, a crook, a fascist. We have to understand that and we have to do all the work that’s possible, all the work that is available to us to keep him out of office. And that is our responsibility. . . . At the end of the day it is our responsibility at the voting booth to save this country.
And finally, here’s the interview that ABC News Live did last night (7/9/24) with progressive Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson. As a supporter of Marianne’s candidacy, I’m elated to finally see her being interviewed by a mainstream media outlet. It’s a solid 10-minute interview, one in which Marianne’s on fire! I hope it’s the first of many more appearances by this Cassandra of U.S. politics, as we sorely need her wisdom and clarity.
I conclude this post by sharing the following YouTube comments on Marianne’s interview.
• Just compare this with Joe Biden’s ABC interview. There’s no question who’s more qualified for President.
• This is the single most succinct and well-articulated reasoning behind why Biden should not run that I’ve heard yet. Props to Marianne!
• Marrianne has eloquently conveyed everything I think majority of us Americans are feeling. Democrats stop gaslighting your base.
• Thanks ABC for finally acting like the 4th estate and allowing Marianne Williamson on. Bring her back often and watch your ratings climb.
• The powerful distinction Marianne made here about people voting for false hope over no hope gave me chills. The depth, clarity, and implications of that statement are profound. Thank you, Marianne, for all that you bring to the table. Every single time. You are certainly offering hope in these unbelievable times.
• I appreciate the knowledge of history Marianne shares with us. I also applaud how she separates the Soul of the Democratic Party from the Machine of the Democratic Party.
• There’s a reason why the corporate political machine despises this lady.
• This woman has an impeccable understanding of PR and politics.
• Wow! A major network just remembered that Marianne exists. Better late than never.
• Marianne nails it, and she is a running candidate. She has my vote. This is what we the world needs: a strong and well-spoken candidate that can take Trump down in a minute.
• Thank you, Marianne, for continuing to tell it like it is, with compassion, conviction, and integrity – everything we need in a leader!
• Her ability to maintain control and concisely convey her message is a crucial leadership trait.
• Damn, that was impressive, Marianne!
• This may be the best response I’ve read or heard to this crisis over the last 10+ days! Speaking the truth of how so many of us are feeling right now. Bravo!
• In a perfect world, Biden would step down, and Williamson would take his place as the nominee.
• As a disillusioned Democrat appalled by the White House and the president’s lies and behavior, I can’t believe I’m actually sitting here considering voting for (writing-in) Marianna Williamson. Guess I’m going to become an independent now.
• I am an Independent who leans right in my beliefs so I will be voting for Donald Trump. But I can always appreciate someone from the opposing party at least being sensible in what they are saying, and that is what this woman is doing in this interview, so she at least has my respect.
• I’m a Trump supporter but if she’s on the ballot, I’d consider it.
• Marianne, you can defeat Trump! You will motivate, inspire, and bring hope to our country when we need it most. You are a serious candidate and the only one who speaks to the needs of the American people. I want to hear you at an open convention in August. We have time!
• Please give me the chance to vote for this person.
What happened last night was a tremendous disaster for efforts to defeat Donald Trump. What happened was a complete catastrophe that was self-inflicted by Joe Biden. We should be super clear about this. Biden showed, without any doubt, that he is clearly impaired. He is in no way up to the job of defeating Donald Trump. And in the history of presidential debates, no performance has ever come near being as disastrous as what Biden turned in. It was a gift to the extreme right wing, an enormous present to the neofascist Republican Party.
And what I think we have to look at now is the response from the Democratic Party establishment. We had, for instance, in the spin room last night after this disastrous debate, the governor of California, Gavin Newsom, saying that Democrats are united fully behind President Biden. That’s preposterous. And it would be political suicide for the Democratic Party to proceed that way.
I think what we need to look at now is the imperative of a grassroots uprising from liberals, from progressives, from so-called moderates, who don’t want a return to four horrific years of Donald Trump, that show all signs of being far worse than the previous four years with Trump. What is necessary is something called democracy – lower case “d” – democratic activity, where people all around this country, starting today, calling upon anybody they have elected with a “D” after their name, a senator, a representative, demanding that they get real about where we are right now.
Where we are right now is that unless, very quickly, we’ve got Joe Biden no longer at the top of this ticket or on the ticket of the Democratic Party, it is a gold-plated invitation to a victory not only for Trump, but an entire extreme right-wing agenda.
So, I think we have to now organize swiftly. The crisis of the moment is extreme. And that calls upon us to end this pattern of Democrats in Congress serving as enablers for a president who absolutely is impaired and unable to get the job done to stop a fascist wave in this country.
. . . [T]o solve this problem, we would need an immediate and drastic change for implanting backbones into the Democrats in the House and the Senate. It would be an extraordinary effort that would be necessary, most importantly, to get Biden to finally agree that he’s not up to the job and to say that he’s voluntarily going to be a one-term president. That is the clearest glide path to getting Biden out of the way so we have a chance to get an actual strong candidate in there to save the country and the world from Trump.
If Biden isn’t willing to do that – and I’ve got to say, he’s been surrounded by sycophants and flunkies, not only in the White House and the Democratic National Committee, but, in effect, in Congress – if Biden is not willing to do that, then we need to have an enormous uprising. And as usual, it would start with and depend on organizing at the grassroots and insisting that power comes from the base of the Democratic Party, from people rather than elites deciding to do X, Y, Z.
Image: Former President Donald Trump (left) and President Joe Biden clash during the first presidential debate of the 2024 election season. (Photo: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds / AFP via Getty Images)
Today I share a second compilation of perspectives and voices on the ongoing crisis in Israel and Gaza. I consider all of these voices to be ones of both reason and compassion. I hope you do too. (NOTE: For the first compilation, click here.)
_____________________
I start with a link to John Oliver’s informed and helpful perspective on the ongoing conflict between the Israeli government and Hamas, the political and military organization governing the Gaza Strip of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. Oliver shared his perspective on the November 13, 2023 episode of his HBO show Last Week Tonight. To watch this highly informative and insightful 30-minute segment, click here.
Next is Daniel Levy, president of the U.S./Middle East Project and a former Israeli peace negotiator at Taba under Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and under Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin during Oslo B negotiations. Levy was interviewed December 21, 2023 by Al Jazeera’s Dareen Abughaida, a Palestinian-Lebanese broadcast journalist based in Doha, Qatar.
The October 7 [2023] attack by Hamas on Israelis was horrific and brutal and a war crime. It is right to call it such. But when describing the killing and maiming of thousands of Palestinian children by the Israeli armed forces and by Israeli illegal settlers, the carpet bombing of refugees and hospitals, the use of starvation as a weapon of war, the illegal kidnapping, imprisonment and holding hostage of Palestinian children for years, the genocide in plain sight of Palestinians, then the BBC and the CBC do not call this 'brutal' or 'horrific.' They practice a racist, political double standard that oils and enables crimes against humanity. . . . Supporting genocide now, as Canada, the USA, Germany and European countries are doing, is not the answer. It does not provide safety for Israelis. It does not stop antisemitism. It fuels the cycle of violence and hatred. It endangers all humanity.
Declaring, “We are outraged, we are heartbroken,” hundreds of protesters turned out to block President Biden’s motorcade en route to his [March 7] State of the Union speech, forcing cars to take “the long way” to the Capitol. Demonstrators from Jewish Voice for Peace and other groups said they were “holding a people's state of the union” to call for an end to U.S funding for Israel’s assault on Gaza. “We know the state of the union,” they said. “It’s a state of genocide.”
Concluding a day-long series of protests across Washington DC, hundreds of people in black shirts reading “Not In Our Name” and “Biden’s Legacy = Genocide” sat and stood along Pennsylvania Avenue near the Capitol, delaying Biden’s speech by about a half hour.
. . . Among those participating were members of the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization that works in Gaza and the West Bank trying to serve hot meals and find food and water for the displaced. “The Biden Administration has the power, and the responsibility, to stop the killing,” said AFSC General Secretary Joyce Ajlouny. “It is a cruel irony to drop food when at the same time the U.S. is funding the dropping of bombs.” Others argued that acts of civil disobedience are “the bare minimum” by way of response to an administration that has “lost (its) moral standing” by facilitating the slaughter of 30,000 civilians. “The State of the Union is genocide,” said one JVP member. “We will not accept a president who claims to be fighting for democracy while ignoring the majority of people he represents.”
The following is a statement written by Arundhati Roy and delivered on her behalf at the meeting of Working People Against Apartheid and Genocide in Gaza, at the Press Club, New Delhi, on Thursday March 7, 2024. The remarks were first published by Scroll, an independent media outlet in India.
The richest, most powerful countries in the Western world, those who believe themselves to be the keepers of the flame of the modern world’s commitment to democracy and human rights, are openly financing and applauding Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The Gaza strip has been turned into a concentration camp. Those who have not already been killed are being starved to death. Almost the entire population of Gaza has been displaced. Their homes, hospitals, universities, museums, and infrastructure of every kind has been reduced to rubble. Their children have been murdered. Their past has been vaporized. Their future is hard to see.
Even though the highest court in the world believes that almost every indicator seems to meet the legal definition of genocide, IDF soldiers continue to put out their mocking “victory videos” celebrating what almost looks like fiendish rituals. They believe that there is no power in the world that will hold them to account. But they are wrong. They and their children’s children will be haunted by what they have done. They will have to live with the loathing and the abhorrence the world feels for them. And hopefully one day everybody – on all sides of this conflict – who has committed war crimes will be tried and punished for them, keeping in mind that there is no equivalence between crimes committed while resisting Apartheid and Occupation, and crimes committed while enforcing them.
Racism is of course the keystone of any act of genocide. The rhetoric of the highest officials of the Israeli state has, ever since Israel came into existence, dehumanized Palestinians and likened them to vermin and insects, just like the Nazis once dehumanized Jews. It is as though that evil serum never went away and is now only being recirculated. The “Never” has been excised from that powerful slogan “Never Again”. And we are left only with “Again.”
President Joe Biden, head of state of the richest, most powerful country in the world, is helpless before Israel, even though Israel would not exist without US funding. It’s as though the dependent has taken over the benefactor. The optics say so. Like a geriatric child, Joe Biden appears on camera licking an ice-cream cone and vaguely mumbling about a ceasefire, while Israeli government and military officials openly defy him and vow to finish what they have started. To try and stop the hemorrhaging of the votes of millions of young Americans who will not stand for this slaughter in their name, Kamala Harris, US vice-president, has been tasked with the job of calling for a ceasefire, while billions of US dollars continue to flow to enable the genocide.
And what of our country?
It is well known that our prime minister is an intimate friend of Benjamin Netanyahu and there is no doubt where his sympathies lie. India is no longer a friend of Palestine. When the bombing began, thousands of Modi’s supporters put up the Israeli flag as their DP on social media. They helped spread the vilest disinformation on behalf of Israel and the IDF. Even though the Indian government has now stepped back into a more neutral position – our foreign policy triumph is that we manage to be on all sides at once, we can be pro- as well as anti-genocide – the government has clearly indicated that it will act decisively against any pro-Palestine protestors.
And now, while the US exports what it has in abundant surplus – weapons and money to aid Israel’s genocide – India too is exporting what our country has in abundant surplus: the unemployed poor to replace the Palestinian workers who will no longer be given work permits to enter Israel. (I’m guessing there will be no Muslims among the new recruits.) People who are desperate enough to risk their lives in a war zone. People desperate enough to tolerate overt Israeli racism against Indians. You can see it expressed on social media, if you care to look. US money and Indian poverty combine to oil Israel’s genocidal war machine. What a terrible, unthinkable, shame.
The Palestinians, facing down the most powerful countries in the world, left virtually alone even by their allies, have suffered immeasurably. But they have won this war. They, their journalists, their doctors, their rescue teams their poets, academics, spokespeople, and even their children have conducted themselves with a courage and dignity that has inspired the rest of the world. The young generation in the Western world, particularly the new generation of young Jewish people in the US, have seen through the brainwashing and propaganda and have recognized apartheid and genocide for what it is. The governments of the most powerful countries in the Western world have lost their dignity, and any respect they might have had. Yet again. But the millions of protestors on the streets of Europe and the US are the hope for the future of the world.
Almost 80 years ago, the world made a pledge not to let the horrors of the Holocaust repeat. And yet, they are repeating today in Gaza.
Right: A father kisses the body of his child killed by the Israeli army, at Abu Yousef al-Najjar hospital in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on January 13, 2024 (Photo: Reuters/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa)
. . . In the 1940s, Jews across Europe were forced into ghettos and concentration camps where they faced starvation, abuse and mass death. The Nazis used hunger as a method of control and dehumanisation. The constant threat of violence, deportation, and death destroyed bodies and souls.
Tales we have heard about the ghettos and concentration camps echo today in Gaza, where 2.3 million of us are crammed into ever-dwindling areas and forced to endure unliveable conditions. When you put side by side the accounts of atrocities both of these peoples faced, you will see that history is repeating itself, only this time the entire world is watching and it is doing nothing to stop it.
The solemn vow of “never again”, birthed from the ashes of the Holocaust, was meant to prevent the repetition of its horrors. The commitment etched into the collective conscience of the world was a promise to vulnerable peoples across the world that they would be protected, that their tormentors would be stopped.
Yet, as we turn our gaze towards the ongoing Palestinian struggle, this pledge rings hollow. The shadows of past atrocities linger in the present-day experiences of the Palestinian people.
. . . In these dark times, “never again” cannot remain a mere phrase of remembrance; it must become a call to action. The world must act on its pledge to uphold the dignity and rights of all people, in every corner of the world and prevent yet another genocide from taking place.
Following is U.K.-based Novaro Media’s March 8 report on the situation in Gaza. It features excerpts from a recent CNN report, along with commentary from Novaro Media hosts Michael Walker and Aaron Bastani.
If we condemn Hamas for its October 7 attacks in Israel, we’re not accused of anti-Arab bigotry. Nor should we be. Nothing could possibly justify the atrocities that Hamas committed against hundreds of civilians, who were the majority of the 1,200 people killed as a result of the attacks by Hamas forces. And nothing can justify the taking of civilian hostages.
But if we condemn Israel for its actions since then, we might be accused of antisemitism. Meanwhile, nothing could possibly justify the atrocities by Israel in Gaza, where the death toll is now estimated at 32,000, while uncounted thousands of other Palestinian people are buried under rubble. Seventy percent of the victims have been children and women.
. . . While Israel continues to slaughter children, women and men – no more guilty of anything than a crowd you might see at a local supermarket – the extreme misuse of the “antisemitism” charge often boils down to: Be quiet. Don’t protest. Don’t even speak up.
Of course antisemitism does exist in the United States and the rest of the world, and it should be condemned. At the same time, to cry wolf – to misuse the term to try to intimidate people into silence while Israel’s atrocities continue in Gaza – is an abuse of the word antisemitism and a disservice to everyone who wants a single standard of human rights.
Next is another segment from Novaro Media. This one is from March 16 and focuses on broadcaster, political commentator, and author Mehdi Hasan’s informed critique of television personality Piers Morgan’s “racist double standards” when it comes to his coverage of Gaza and Israel.
Cruelty upon cruelty: Today is Mother’s Day in Gaza, and across the Arab world. Still the slaughter, the wounding, trauma, hunger go on. Israel has killed over 12,000 Palestinian children, with many thousands more injured or orphaned ; each day, 37 more mothers are killed. Those who survive battle to keep their children alive, and mourn those they’ve lost.
“The children are always ours,” said James Baldwin. But in Gaza, says one mother, “Today, like all mothers, I feel broken.”
This year, the Mother’s Day marked each March 21 is, for Gazans, a bloody travesty. The numbers still numb: More than 31,988 people have been killed in the ongoing) Israeli assault; another 74,188 have been injured, including over 32,800 children and 25,000 women, and 25,000 children have lost one or both parents.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society estimates this Mother’s Day would have been commemorated by 37 mothers killed; it was also marked by Israeli forces denying 28 Palestinian detained mothers from seeing their children. To date, Israel's “there-are-no-innocents” air campaign has dropped over 29,000 bombs, many of them 2,000-pound munitions that maim or kill within a quarter mile – often in so-called “safe zones” or “safe corridors” where Israel has told Gazans to go. Meanwhile, their relentless blockade has left at least half the population at imminent risk of famine; in recent weeks, at least several dozen children have starved to death.
When children are present in a time of genocide, writes Palestinian pediatrician Sabreen Akhter, they are always the most afflicted. and the most in need of protection. When children are in a place that is bombed, they die more often than adults due to their smaller bodies and organs: “When you bomb a place with children in it, your primary intention is to kill all the children first.” When they’re in a place lacking sustenance, they die more quickly: “When you cut off water and food to a population with children, your primary intention is to starve all the children first.” When they're without housing and exposed to the elements, they are more traumatized, and die more rapidly.
A U.N panel said Thursday Israel appears “calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinian children.” At least, urges Al-Jazeera, “Know their names.” Last month, they compiled perhaps half the names of the young dead known to them when the total was 11,500; even then, it takes over seven minutes to scroll through.
For mothers who survive, their daily mission is to keep alive the children who remain to them. A 29-year-old mother of three whose husband was killed in a recent “flour massacre” – while trying to feed his children – struggles to feed her five-month-old, because her breasts have almost no milk from lack of food and “deep sadness”: “The baby keeps crying all day and night.
A 49-year-old mother hasn’t seen her only son, Ahmed, 16, since he rushed to the nearby scene of an Israeli air strike in October; she believes he was killed but has been unable to find or retrieve his body from the rubble.
Nada Abu Aita, a 32-year-old “mother missing her mother” – who fled to Rafah – gave birth to her first son a month before the war and is fighting to “keep him alive, or stay alive for him.” “I sometimes look into (his) eyes and I want to apologize for bringing him into this life,” she says. “I am afraid I will lose him, and I am afraid I will be killed because he would be left alone.”
And Alaa el-Qatrawi, a 33-year-old, PhD-educated poet and teacher, lost all four of her children in December. Separated from her husband, she saw them only part-time and last heard from them trapped amidst fighting when they called to beg, “Mama, get us out of here” – which she tried, but failed to do. Much later, her brother-in-law found their bodies. Lovingly, she names them: “Yamen, eight years old. The twins Orchid and Kanan, six years old. And Carmel, three years old.” She speaks of them in the present tense: “They’re beautiful . . . They’re so smart and funny . . . Kenan loves fruit . . . I would put some next to him when he sleeps (for) when he wakes up.” She had been trying to arrange to move her children to Dubai “for a better future”; she'd bought Orchid “a princess dress” for summer, “and now summer will come and Orchid isn't here to wear it.” In earlier wars, she’d written prose or poetry; in this one, she can’t.
“What can a grieving mother say about her children?” she asks. No words.
And finally, here is Al Jazeera’s Dareen Abughaida’s December 29, 2023 interview with Dr. Omar Suleiman, an American Muslim scholar, civil rights leader, writer, public speaker, and founder of Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research. In this interview, Dr. Suleiman talks about the oppression of pro-Palestinian voices in the west, and the growing Islamophobia and how it lends itself to racism.
I established The Wild Reed in 2006 as a sign of solidarity with all who are dedicated to living lives of integrity – though, in particular, with gay people seeking to be true to both the gift of their sexuality and their Catholic faith. The Wild Reed's original by-line read, “Thoughts and reflections from a progressive, gay, Catholic perspective.” As you can see, it reads differently now. This is because my journey has, in many ways, taken me beyond, or perhaps better still, deeper into the realities that the words “progressive,” “gay,” and “Catholic” seek to describe.
Even though reeds can symbolize frailty, they may also represent the strength found in flexibility. Popular wisdom says that the green reed which bends in the wind is stronger than the mighty oak which breaks in a storm. Tall green reeds are associated with water, fertility, abundance, wealth, and rebirth. The sound of a reed pipe is often considered the voice of a soul pining for God or a lost love.
On September 24, 2012,Michael BaylyofCatholics for Marriage Equality MNwas interviewed by Suzanne Linton of Our World Today about same-sex relationships and why Catholics can vote 'no' on the proposed Minnesota anti-marriage equality amendment.
"I believe your blog to be of utmost importance for all people regardless of their orientation. . . . Thank you for your blog and the care and dedication that you give in bringing the TRUTH to everyone."– William
"Michael, if there is ever a moment in your day or in your life when you feel low and despondent and wonder whether what you are doing is anything worthwhile, think of this: thanks to your writing on the internet, a young man miles away is now willing to embrace life completely and use his talents and passions unashamedly to celebrate God and his creation. Any success I face in the future and any lives I touch would have been made possible thanks to you and your honesty and wisdom."– AB
"Since I discovered your blog I have felt so much more encouraged and inspired knowing that I'm not the only gay guy in the Catholic Church trying to balance my Faith and my sexuality. Continue being a beacon of hope and a guide to the future within our Church!"– Phillip
"Your posts about Catholic issues are always informative and well researched, and I especially appreciate your photography and the personal posts about your own experience. I'm very glad I found your blog and that I've had the chance to get to know you."– Crystal
"Thank you for taking the time to create this fantastic blog. It is so inspiring!"– George
"I cannot claim to be an expert on Catholic blogs, but from what I've seen, The Wild Reed ranks among the very best."– Kevin
"Reading your blog leaves me with the consolation of knowing that the words Catholic, gay and progressive are not mutually exclusive.."– Patrick
"I grieve for the Roman institution’s betrayal of God’s invitation to change. I fear that somewhere in the midst of this denial is a great sin that rests on the shoulders of those who lead and those who passively follow. But knowing that there are voices, voices of the prophets out there gives me hope. Please keep up the good work."– Peter
"I ran across your blog the other day looking for something else. I stopped to look at it and then bookmarked it because you have written some excellent articles that I want to read. I find your writing to be insightful and interesting and I'm looking forward to reading more of it. Keep up the good work. We really, really need sane people with a voice these days."– Jane Gael
"Michael, your site is like water in the desert."– Jayden
