When I see people rave about Gavin Newsom "standing up to" the president, especially if they say it takes a bully to fight a bully, I remember spring 2020 & the hero narrative around Andrew F. Cuomo.

Not that Gavin is doing anything Cuomo-bad (that we know of). Still, beware of just-so narrative!

4. The attempts to redefine truth wouldn't be nearly so bad if it weren't also for the making people sick and the putting people in camps.

Antoni also wants to get rid of monthly jobs reports on the theory that they aren't accurate enough. (The quarterly reports are more accurate.) They are imperfect but still have tremendous information value to anyone whose goal is somethign other than fluffing the president.

3. EJ Antoni, newly of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, claims that "tariffs, by definition, cannot be inflationary." There is a fixed set of assumptions under which that would be true in the very short run, if you ignore supply shocks (which no respectable economist would).

2. Jay Bhattacharya of the NIH claims that the mRNA vaccine platform is "no longer viable." Doesn't matter whether this is a genuine belief or a licking of the boot; either way this type of thinking comes at a staggering cost in human lives.

1. An audit of the Smithsonian will "ensure alignment with the president’s directive to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions." The worst Orwellian language is so hackneyed.

News, 2025-08-12

I already covered a lot of this in my post about the white supremacist march in Charlottesville eight years ago today.

Yesterday a Wall Street Journal headline claimed that "The U.S. Marches Toward State Capitalism." Fascism by any other name...

I don't know how to convince people who are in denial about their support for fascism. I do know this kind of convincing is necessary for any kind of peaceful, ballot-based threat mitigation.

You should mind the brand new, sweeping audit of the Smithsonian to make sure that we're only telling the version of history our president likes. The woman in charge of this saw some exhibit she didn't like, complained to him about it, and now here we are.

Too many "good people" don't mind that our president paved over the Rose Garden (it's OK not to mind that) or that he's sexually assaulted dozens of people includling children (apathy about that one is inexcusable) or that he dismantled social safety nets (somewhere in between).

Nor is this a red/blue thing. Anywhere in the U.S. you'll see similar sentiment on your town's Facebook group. If the town has enough self-regard you'll also see "authenticity" gatekeeping based on how many generations of one's family have lived in the same place.

But the "good people" of the world sometimes have to look at homeless encampments, which they then declare to be a problem. The "good people" feign concern for then unhoused but then support the raids that separate people from their friends and their (meager) possessions.

Some will also mention forced hospitalization. Mental health diagnoses have been weaponized for far too long. On everything from neurodivergence to gender identity the definitions that the authoritarians want to apply would be way too dangerous to way too many people I know and love.

As for DC: Our president has demanded that the unhoused leave the city or face jail time. (Before you mention shelters, some people have many valid reasons not to go there.) Homelessness is not in itself illegal, but way too many of your peers want it to be.

I mentioned DHS propaganda. The latest explicitly references a 1978 book, titled Which Way Western Man?, by a white nationalist. That book is, among other things, virulently anti-Semitic.

I do want to demean and denigrate the people whose worldview has been tainted by hearing about (and spreading) third- and fourth-hand stories, that they then use to excuse (or actively support!) the most inhumane police tactics.

Digression: Someone tried to rob me at knifepoint once. Kenmore Square, 1999, 4 a.m., empty street. thir I twisted out of his grasp and yelled obscenities at him until realizing I should probably start sprinting away. I don't want to demean or denigrate anyone who has survived worse.

Remember the dumb cliche that "A conservative is a liberal who's been mugged"? Mugging itself is so rare now compared to the 1970s. Shoplifting happens -- but so does wage theft. Not nearly enough people are outraged about white-collar crime.

DC is at a 30-year low for violent crime. Someone named Will Chamberlain is skeptical, because at L'Enfant Plaza he saw a kid on an ATV "doing a wheelie." Fear of crime (no matter how absurd that fear is) will long outlive crime itself.

About those Guard troops: As Adam Kinzinger points out, each of them "has a family, a job, school, or something that they are leaving to do their duty." Kinzinger is right that "to rip these people from their lives for a show… is awful."

These days the Department of Defense is trying to purge books that have diverse or dissenting viewpoints. Homeland Security wants people to "Defend [their] culture!" The president called out the National Guard because one of his college age flunkies got beaten up by teenagers.

The fascists around us...

Eight years ago today white supremacists marched on Charlottesville. One committed vehicular homicide. That was the rally with torches and the time that our president referred to "good people on both sides." The grain of truth to that statement is exactly the problem.

Today's Bandle (#1091) seems like the quintessential "pop culture thing from America that flopped here but was huge in Europe." Putting two and two together this was the song they played nearly every break in the action at the 2024 Paris Olympiad. (At least events I watched on TV)

6. I never wrote about the idiot who shot up the Centers for Disease Control because he blamed vaccines for his health issues. He caused senseless deaths, but orders of magitude fewer than the anti-vax nutjobs will end up causing through bad policy decisions.

5. Partly related to tariffs, never forget that Tim Cook literally went to the White House, gave our president a gift, and got a special exemption from tariffs that would have hurt Apple. One thing that used to make America special is the (rare of the world) lack of this greased-palm shit.

4. You should follow Justin Wolfers if you want expert analysis of the tariff shenanigans, including the second (perhaps not the last?) of the 90-day pauses.

3. Meanwhile... Kim Davis, the thrice-married former Kentucky clerk, is still trying to get Obergefell overturned. Don't trust anyone who says this can't happen, especially anyone who also predicted that Roe would never be overtuned.

W. Kamau Bell (@wkamaubell) on Threads The official response from @replsimon on today’s Trump press conference threatening Americans.✊🏿

2. The legal backing for this is D.C.-specific (and timebound), which didn't stop our president from threatening other cities (Oakland, for example). Here is Lateefah Simon's (my Rep's) response, as amplified by W. Kamau Bell: www.threads.com/@wkamaubell/...

1. National Guard troops are in Washington D.C. (only 1678 days too late). Despite the facial justification for this, violent crime in D.C. has hit a 30-year low.