Malcolm

 

The Haunting

 

The Struggle

 

Will Wonders Never Cease?

If you're wondering why Zohran Mamdani won the election, it didn't hurt that he consistently showed up as a human being. On the other hand, as time goes on, Andrew Cuomo looks more and more like Emperor Palpatine:

 

 

Even in American politics, it can pay to resist morphing into a reptile.

Another Word to the Wise

 

Living in the USI

 

Like Genocide Joe before him, Donald Jeffrey Epstein Trump has allowed Adolf Netanyahu to use the United States as Israel's "bitch."

But the tide is turning. The MAGAts are beginning to feel the pinch of Epstein Trump's policies. He is clearly out of touch with Reality and, less than a year into his second term, his schtick is wearing thin. 

The price of groceries remains high. Tariffs are not returning heavy industry to the Rust Belt. Taking a wrecking ball to the East Wing of the White House, gold-plating its bathrooms, and hobnobbing with billionaires has even Archie Bunker on edge.

 

Epstein Trump has mused that he would like to bring back public hangings.

A word to the wise: Be careful what you wish for....

It Is High Time to End the Clintonian Pseudo-Left

 

Chris Hedges Gives the Edward Said Memorial Lecture

The Arc of the Moral Universe

 

Capitalism

 

Krishnamurti

 

"No Kings" is Largely Performative Liberal Feel-Good Politics

 The General Strike is the only proven method of mass protest.

Denver Protest

 

Good Better Best

 

Fanon on Violence

 

Lady Macbeth's Dream

                                 Sic semper Genocidaires!

Requiem for the American Dream with Noam Chomsky

You Leave Us No Choice

                     Get with it or get out!

Recent U.S. Political History in a Nutshell

If the 1980s were the decade during which the political heirs of Herbert Hoover began the process of systematically dismantling the New Deal, the 90s were the decade in which the political heirs of FDR offered the neo-liberal "Raw Deal" in its place. 

And when it comes to foreign policy, the entire U.S. political establishment sings from the same hymnal: Imperialists-R-Us.

A Personal Note: In the mid-1990s, I was introduced to the writings of Edward Said and the field of Cultural Studies. It proved a watershed in my political education. But I had been prepared for that moment by reading Dr. King's "Beyond Vietnam" speech, Tolstoy's late writings on nonviolence and religion, and many formative experiences acquired during my undergraduate education, law school, and the practice of law (1980s-1990s). 

Can We Talk?

 

FDR, Anti-Fascist

 

Never Seen Together in the Same Room

Grima Wormtongue: 

 

 Stephen Miller:

 

 

40% of the World's Economy

                                                                              BRICS.

"The Martyrdom of Charlie Kirk": How the Right Is Weaponizing Kirk's Murder

My Worldview in a Nutshell

             From the Mayor of Collegeville, Pennsylvania.

Seen In Denver Colorado

 

Maga Morons - A Short Animated Film

Matthew Cooke for President

                 Time to give the professional pols the boot.

The Latest in Fall Fashion

 

Loyalty to a Foreign State is the First Step to Treason

 Loyalty to a foreign state committing genocide is the final step.

The Universal Flag

 

Sic Semper Tyrannis

                     Neo-Fascists Take Note! 

The Original "Two 'State' Solution"

                                                                 FYI.

The First Step Is Disillusionment

 

 

Trump can't end the Gaza genocide or any war because he does not run the country. The military-industrial-complex has run the country since World War 2. This is not a conspiracy theory—unless President Eisenhower was a conspiracy theorist. It is how empires work. It is business as usual. And war is big business. Vote for whomever you please, but this will not change until the empire is dismantled. 

Stupid Is As Stupid Does

                         The Recession Door Opens.

Who Thought This Was a Bad Idea?

                     Let them be run out of town on a rail.

 

King Lear Syndrome

 

I see many people comparing the present state of political life in the U.S. to the fall of the Roman Empire. 

I find a better analogy in the character of Shakespeare's King Lear, whose hubris alienated those who truly loved him and eventually left him isolated and stark raving mad.

Chris Hedges on the Moral Bankruptcy of Israeli Society

Israeli society cheers on the Gaza slaughterhouse and sees in genocide not a crime, but a utopian fantasy.

The Shared Mythological History of Israel and the US (w/ Joan Scott)

The Epstein Files Are Not Going Away | Explainer

I Never Thought I'd Miss these Days

 But, in this Summer of our discontent, I do miss them.

Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Trump?

                 I doubt it's Rupert Murdoch.

Jeffrey Epstein Is a Policy Issue

Jeffrey Epstein Is a Policy Issue: It’s about elite impunity, the defining issue in America for more than two decades.

MAGAt-in-Chief Betrays the MAGAt Minions

 

It’s so funny how Trump has stopped even pretending to be a populist. As soon as he was re-elected he was just “Yeah okay so Israel comes first and forget everything I said about free speech and the Ukraine war is continuing and there will be no Epstein investigation, fuck you.”

Politics 101

 

Mamdani Stands Tall

                 Why? Because he's smart and not craven.

Trump and that "Epstein Creep"

 Get your Trump edition of the Bible and read all about it.

The U.S. Government Is A Protection Racket

            RESIST. REFUSE. RENOUNCE.

Trump's Big Beautiful Bill

 

Will the MAGA-crowd continue to say, "Thank you, Sir! May I have another?" when they are experiencing the effects of this latest edition of Voodoo Economics? Transferring wealth from the middle and working classes to the 1% must have its limits, no? 

But when they are mad as hell and unwilling to take it anymore, where will they turn? To the feckless and often loathsome Democrats? Therein lies the rub.

One Mamdani is not enough. And the hour is getting late. 

Zohran is the real MAGA

Our Mamdani Moment

Let us begin with the cultural forces that have shaped Donald Trump and his ilk.

Trump is a combination of two toxic tendencies that are as American as apple pie: the rapacious capitalism that resulted in the Virginia plantation (Jamestown, 1607) and the sanctimoniousness of the Massachusetts Bay settlement (Plymouth, 1630). 

Otherwise, as a humanoid (I won’t say “human being”), he is pretty much an empty suit. Deeply insecure, always crying for attention, it’s pretty clear he never received much in the way of love as a child. He surrounds himself with yes-men and yes-women until they stop telling him what he wants to hear about himself and then he shows them the door. 

My own disenchantment with the USA—as opposed to what Bruce Springsteen calls “the America we hold in our hearts”— began to take shape in law school. 

 

It was there that I was expected to accept as normal the disconnect between the story we tell about ourselves (e.g., “everyone is equal before the law,” “reason is enshrined in the law,” “judges are not politicians,” etc.) and what I witnessed in the cases I was assigned to read and the court proceedings I was assigned to observe. 

 

Try as I might, I could never stop minding the gap. This sent me back to studying philosophy, religion, history, and literature. I now find myself in the same boat, "Sailing After Lunch," with Wallace Stevens: "A most inappropriate man/In a most unpropitious place." But I digress...

The major media treat Trump as an aberration because, frankly, it’s embarrassing to accept how very American he really is. They also inflate him as some omnipotent evil genius: as such, he provides them with convenient cover for their own moral cowardice and complicity. Many weak-kneed Liberals ride that train to the same arse-covering destination, by the way. 

 

But there are the Zohrans among us who have no stake in maintaining the white supremacist status quo: thank you Lyndon Johnson for expanding immigration from Africa and Asia in 1965, and thank you Max Weber for teaching us that history is the record of unintended consequences. 

 

Moreover, Mamdani has no stake in the rich-get-richer-while-the-poor-get-poorer economy. The thing you always have to watch out for, of course, are the sell-outs (take Barack Obama, please). 

Zohran’s "Left pluralist” instead of Left or Right populist politics is Whitmanian at its core: Leaves of Grass is shockingly pluralist for its time (the “Left” part comes from Whitman’s devotion first to Andrew Jackson and then to Abraham Lincoln). As for the pluralism, well, Whitman told us himself: he was large; he contained multitudes. This, too, is America.

But now that Mamdani has caught the attention of the murderous white supremacist elite and its lackeys in the major media, we must keep him in our prayers. We know what happened to King, to Malcolm, to Medgar Evers, etc., etc., etc. 

 

To his everlasting credit, Zohran Mamdani has found the crack where the light gets in. May he rip it wide open…

This Is How the Great Satan Operates

 

Senator Loathesome