Is this what makes us great?

Stephen Marche in The Atlantic has disquieting thoughts about "Canada's Terrible New Freedom" [paywalled, sorry].

The United States is declining into authoritarianism and threatening Canada’s sovereignty. How can Canada ensure that its political, military, and economic institutions survive?

The threat is not abstract, and is already manifesting itself in more than words.

... Canada is increasing its defense spending and re-arming with Europe, not America. Trump didn’t give us much choice. In March, he announced the next generation of American fighter jets, which Canada has long purchased, by noting that he would sell an inferior version to other countries: “We like to tone them down about 10 percent, which probably makes sense because someday maybe they’re not our allies, right?” The idea that the American military would turn against Canada once seemed absurd. But the absurd has become almost predictable at this point. If the U.S. Marines are coming for American citizens, surely they could come for Canada too.

I always took a measure of pride in knowing that, whatever reservations our international friends might have about our pop culture, our customs, or our arrogance, they recognized that our hearts ultimately were in the right place.

I can no longer take such pride. The heart of the United States now is brutal, selfish, suspicious, and spiteful — which is to say, it's the spitting image of our domestic Dear Leader's.

If you're a citizen of the U.S., does our national change of heart fill you with pride? Do you think that change of heart has made our country great?

Then you have taken Trump's warped values into your own heart. I'm sorry for that because ultimately, they will leave you as embittered, as spiteful, as spiritually empty, and as unloved as he is. I wouldn't wish that on anyone. I wouldn't even wish it on Trump, but it's too late for him. I hope it's not too late for you.

Current U.S. foreign policy reflects and embodies our domestic Dear Leader's pathologies. (So does the country's domestic policy, for that matter.) I'm deeply ashamed of that. None of the United States' traditional allies deserves the chaos and malice aforethought emanating from Washington, D.C. these days. Certainly Canada, of all places, has merited and continues to merit our steadfast friendship.

I hope I live long enough to see that friendship, and many others, reestablished. Until then, great is one thing we won't be.

SCOTUS betrays us again

The right-wing so-called "Justices" of the U.S. Supreme Court has let Elon Musk's DOGE marauders access the highly sensitive personal information held by the Social Security Administration.

The order, which lifts a preliminary injunction wisely granted by a district court (an injunction upheld by a divided Fourth Circuit), was unsigned but noted that Justices Kagan, Jackson, and Sotomayor did not join the majority. Indeed, the bulk of the text of the order is devoted to their objections; the actual reasons for the majority's decision are entirely absent.

This is not a formal decision of the Court: no trial has even occurred. However, you'd think that a Court majority that gave a shit about its own legitimacy in the public's eyes would have explained why it was throwing caution to the wind and giving a bunch of arrogant, reckless, and totally unsupervised Elon Musk zealots unlimited access to our data.

Consider the Court's own summary of what goes into deciding whether to stay a preliminary injunciton. (So we're all on the same page, the "stay applicant" here is the Trump Administration.)

When considering whether to grant a stay, this Court looks to four factors: “(1) whether the stay applicant has made a strong showing that he is likely to succeed on the merits; (2) whether the applicant will be irreparably injured absent a stay; (3) whether issuance of the stay will substantially injure the other parties interested in the proceeding; and (4) where the public interest lies.” [citations omitted]

What makes the right-wing majority think the administration will succeed on the merits, in advance of a trial and in the absence of any evidence?

What irreparable injury will be inflicted if the DOGE pillagers have to wait a while? It's not like Social Security ion't working (setting aside, that is, the Trump Administration's own near-criminal mismanagement of it). Nor is the mission of DOGE, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, so urgent that it can't wait for a judge to review whether or not the administration's wrecking-ball approach to seeking "efficiency" actually passes legal and Constitutional muster.

Considering that "the other parties interested in the proceedings" include every damned citizen of the United States, not to mention lots of legal residents, staying the preliminary injunction — thus, again, permitting the lawless DOGE kids to access some of our most sensitive personal information — sure as hell will "substantially injure" the "other parties". The onus is on the SCOTUS right-wingers to say otherwise.

"Where the public interest lies" is in protecting our sensitive personal information from parties who have no damned business accessing it because they are in no legal jeopardy if they misuse their access. Again, the onus is on the SCOTUS right-wingers to explain why that's not the case.

But of course, those arrogant, dictator-friendly assholes in the right-wing majority on SCOTUS say nothing — literally not one word — to justify their aiding and abetting of Trump's autocratic power grab.

Why? Because they know no justification is possible — not if you believe in democracy and the rule of law, that is.

Which those arrogant, dictator-friendly assholes in the right-wing majority on SCOTUS emphatically do not.

To the regime's troops

Donald Trump, our domestic Dear Leader, is gutting the federal government without rhyme or reason. The one thing he can be counted on not to gut, though, are the security forces.

In the U.S. we're not accustomed to thinking in terms of "security forces". That term is reserved for other nations, covering the gamut of police, intelligence, and military personnel. In the U.S., when someone is arrested or federal property must be protected, we speak of the specific responsible agency: the FBI, the Park Service, ICE, etc.

However, those agencies and all the others operated by the federal government, like the CIA (which legally cannot operate domestically), the NSA, and the forces under the jurisdiction of the Department of Defense, can be thought of as the "security forces" of the U.S. government — and right now, they all answer to our domestic Dear Leader. He can behave like the tinpot dictators he so adores because when literal push comes to literal shove, he can call on hundreds of thousands of members of the security forces to do the dirty work.

So I address myself to you members of those security forces, because you are in a difficult moral position.

I'm sure you tell yourselves that your job is to follow orders from your superiors. So long as you do that, you say to yourselves, you aren't morally or even legally responsible for your actions.

That only gets you so far, though.

Admittedly, you almost certainly don't have enough information to judge whether the person you're hustling into your SUV off a quiet street is actually a criminal, or even a threat. You assume your bosses — the whole chain of command, in fact — are acting in good faith.

However, you do have enough agency — that is, enough free will and moral responsibility — to judge how valid that assumption of your superiors' good faith is.

You don't live under a rock. Can you defend the deportation of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, which even this administration admitted was an "administrative error"? Can you believe Trump's claim that his administration has no power to bring him back to the U.S., when this administration is paying El Salvador to hold prisoners there? Isn't it obvious that the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, would have Abrego Garcia back on a plane to the U.S. in a heartbeat if Trump asked?

Given that Trump lies so brazenly about his ability to get Abrego Garcia back to the U.S., how much confidence can you have that he acts in good faith about, well, anything? How confident can you be that Abrego Garcia is an isolated "error", that there aren't more innocent victims?

Remember, too, that Abrego Garcia has been ordered returned to the U.S. by the U.S. Supreme Court so he can be given due process, which neither he nor anyone else deported to that El Salvadoran prison has gotten. In leaving Abrego Garcia to rot in El Salvador, Trump is defying the Supreme Court.

If he doesn't consider himself bound by the orders of the Supreme Court, then what constrains him? "The law" doesn't constrain a ruler if he claims the right to say what the law is, which is what Trump has done.

How is he different from a dictator?

Your orders ultimately derive from Trump's wishes. How confident can you be that what you're doing is consistent with the actual law, much less with morality and true justice, when the man at the top no longer respects any of those things?

Trump has claimed power for himself that no man has ever claimed in this country's history, because claiming it would be unconstitutional.

You swore an oath to the Constitution, not to any one man. Whatever problems you hoped to alleviate by becoming a sworn peace officer or member of the military, can you in good conscience be part of a regime that no longer respects or abides by the Constitution?

A regime that tolerates no dissent and uses you to crush it?

A regime whose security forces, including you, abduct people off the street without identifying themselves?

A regime that uses you to deport legal residents without trial? (Those people wouldn't comply if they weren't being held at the point of your gun.)

Only you can decide whether this is a regime you can support.

Only you can decide whether you can do more good by resigning now, or by resisting from within for as long as the regime allows.

Only you can decide whether you will be able to look your children and grandchildren in the eye, and tell them that you fulfilled your Constitutional oath by following the orders of a man who betrayed his own, and know whether you're telling them the truth.

You cannot avoid making this decision every day you help to keep the regime in power.

If enough of you honor your oaths and your consciences, you can render a lawless, faithless president impotent to subvert the consitutional order further.

You are not solely responsible for restoring that constitutional order: we all have a part to play. But you will be singularly responsible if you help this lawless, faithless president to become a tyrant, ending our republic.

Krugman puts the election in perspective

Every so often, somebody echoes my own bewilderment about some nuttiness that has overtaken the populace.

This time it's New York Times columnist Paul Krugman in a piece headlined, "Why I Am Now Deeply Worried for America".

... I am, for the first time, profoundly concerned about the nation’s future. It now seems entirely possible that within the next year, American democracy could be irretrievably altered.

And the final blow won’t be the rise of political extremism — that rise certainly created the preconditions for disaster, but it has been part of the landscape for some time now. No, what may turn this menace into catastrophe is the way the hand-wringing over Biden’s age has overshadowed the real stakes in the 2024 election.

Like Krugman and virtually everyone else, I'd prefer that we were led by someone younger. I don't see immediately concerning dementia in Biden's gaffes but there's no denying that when an obviously elderly person makes such mistakes, it creates a measure of concern in onlookers. We don't need such concerns about our president (or senators, or House representatives).

But — and again, like Krugman — I look at the alternative, and then I stop fretting about Biden's age.

Maybe some people are impressed by the fact that Trump talks loud and mean. But what about what he’s actually saying in his speeches? They’re frequently rambling word salads, full of bizarre claims like his assertion on Friday that if he loses in November, “they’re going to change the name of Pennsylvania.”

Not to mention confusing Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi and mistaking E. Jean Carroll for one of his ex-wives.

As I also wrote last week, Trump’s speeches make me remember my father’s awful last year, when he suffered from sundowning — bouts of incoherence and belligerence after dark. And we’re supposed to be worried about Biden’s mental state?

If your gut prefers a forceful fathead to a soft-spoken but cogent man, now is the time to put your gut in its place and see things clearly. A loud, energetic coot who demontrated his love of autocracy, contempt for the law (not to mention morality), mile-wide mean streak, and boundless lust for money during his first term of office cannot be allowed a second term, no matter how uneasy you might be about his opponent's health.

Most of us wish we could vote for someone other than these two elderly men. Well, absent some stunning turn of events, that won't be an option in November.

Remember how you woke up every day during Trump's term dreading that he'd done something terrifyingly imbecilic or cruel or corrupt, and more often than not your fear was justified.

Under no circumstances can you vote for a demonstrably feckless, dishonest, self-deluded, corrupt man-toddler. Nor can you just sit on your hands, or throw them up in exasperation, and refuse to vote. No.

You must get over your unease with Biden and vote for him in November, because the alternative is simply unacceptable under any circumstances.

Oh Elon, just stop talking

The headline of the New York Times piece is "Elon Musk, on Rehabilitation Tour, Calls Himself ‘Aspirationally Jewish’".

"Aspirationally Jewish"? Really?

Elon Musk made his remarks after a tour of Auschwitz, the infamous Nazi death camp in southern Poland. Now, to be clear, I hope Musk was moved by what he saw. I hope the visit truly changed his heart by making him comprehend, at least a little, just how fucking not funny or daring his dalliances with and encouragement of white supremacists have been. In a word, I hope he has matured.

But if this passage is any indication, he faces an uphill battle to convince us he has learned anything.

Speaking later at a conference on antisemitism organized by the [European Jewish Association] in the nearby Polish city of Krakow, Mr. Musk said he had been “somewhat naïve” about the dangers posed by anti-Jewish sentiment because “in the circles I move in, I see no antisemitism.”

“Two-thirds of my friends are Jewish,” he said. “I’m Jewish by association. I’m aspirationally Jewish.”

In the circles I move in, I see no drug abuse. Does that mean drug abuse doesn't exist? Or might it mean I don't know what drug abuse looks like, perhaps because it's so widespread that I think it's normal?

If two-thirds of my friends are Christian, am I Christian by association? If I'm aspirationally Christian, does that somehow make me Christian?

(That would be a pretty sweet deal, getting the perks without going to church or believing Jesus died for my sins. Somehow I doubt it works that way.)

If Musk's profoundly insulting remarks belong anywhere, it would be in the mouth of a cringey, profoundly tone-deaf character in a modern sitcom. (And for that sitcom to get away with it, the show would have to be exquisitely well-written.)

Either Musk is one of those cringey, exquisitely tone-deaf people, or he's punking us in the mistaken belief he's being funny. (Come to think of it, both could be true.)

Either way, Elon, just stop talking.

Israel has the leader it chose

The New York Times' Thomas Friedman is worried for Israel. (The opinion piece is probably paywalled, like most NYT content.)

After traveling around Israel and the West Bank, I now understand why so much has changed. It is crystal clear to me that Israel is in real danger — more danger than at any other time since its War of Independence in 1948.

Friedman sees three major threats: fanatical Islamists who are better-armed and better-organized than they ever have been, surrounding Israel on all sides; the need to maintain international support from as many other nations as possible even as Israel pursues the kind of house-to-house combat that inevitably kills many innocent civilians and therefore arouses international condemnation; and finally, "the worst leader in [Israel's] history — maybe in all of Jewish history", who is temperamentally incapable of taking any steps toward a two-state solution, the only way for Israel to survive (or so I gather is Friedman's opinion).

Here's Friedman's recommendation for the first step Israelis should take toward finding a way out of this disaster.

The sooner Israel replaces Netanyahu and his far-right allies with a true center-left-center-right national unity government, the better chance it has to hold together during what is going to be a hellish war and aftermath.

Um, okay, yes, in the abstract, that's a good idea. But haven't you missed something, Tom?

Yes, those far-right fanatics who are slavering for a fully Orthodox Jewish state, shorn of the secularism that has been part of Israel's body politic since the beginning, are indeed unfit to govern. They proved it by leading Israel into this crisis. Bibi himself is an awful leader for Israel right now: by thoroughly dividing and distracting Israelis, convincing many that they had more to fear from his power grab than from any external enemy, he likely kept the military from noticing the signs of the impending attack.

However, Bibi and his allies didn't gerrymander their way into power, as Republicans have in the U.S. The extremists who surround Bibi reflect a large and growing fraction of the Israeli population.

How, Tom, is Israel supposed to create your magical center-left-center-right unity government when a huge chunk of the population is hard-right?

Bibi is in some ways uniquely bad as a leader but getting rid of him wouldn't change the bitter divisions in the population that put him in power.

R.I.P John Klezdy

You probably never heard of John Klezdy, even if you live in Illinois. You probably never heard the band for which he was lead singer, the Effigies.

These things make me sad because the Effigies are, in my not-so-modest opinion, one of the greatest unsung bands of my lifetime.

What really saddens me, though, is that John Kezdy died Saturday at the age of 64.

His death doesn't just sadden me, though: it angers me. I'm not sure why. He died a few days after he crashed into a van while cycling and I think I'm pissed because accidents are mostly preventable. I'm probably also pissed that we live in a world where a kick-ass songwriter and singer can perish without his music having reached the millions of people who need to hear his music, even if they never knew they needed it.

But I think I'm mostly pissed because John Klezdy is dead while so many overrated, overblown, and overexposed mediocrities breathe on, churning out sonic manure, sometimes to great acclaim.

John Klezdy died too fucking early. Fuck this world.