Neo-Fascist? Time To Drop The "Neo" When Describing Trump

Out of the bunker and...





Jim Acosta on CNN: "We are descending into something that is not the United States of America tonight; there's just no other way to put it... Donald Trump did not do this by himself tonight. There were other White House officials, military officials, federal employees paid for with our tax dollars. And our tax dollars were used to teargas fellow Americans. That's what happened tonight in the nation's capital and the entire world was watching."

And yeah, this was all done because Trumpanzee-- a notorious coward-- was embarrassed that it leaked out by the media that he was cowering and trembling in the White House bunker on Friday night when protestors in Lafayette Square were hurling curses at him. "They wanted a disruptor," said Anderson Cooper on TV last night. "That's what a disruption is."

Last night the Washington Post had its A-Team on the case: Phil Rucker, Robert Costa, Josh Dawsey and Seung Min Kim, writing about how the authoritarian orange blob "militarized the federal response to protests of racial inequality that have erupted in cities across America late Monday, as authorities fired tear gas at people protesting peacefully near the White House to disperse crowds moments before Trump staged a photo opportunity there. Trump forced a brazen inflammation of the crisis convulsing the country by calling the nationwide demonstrations 'acts of domestic terror,' declaring himself the 'president of law and order' and taking the rare step of mobilizing the military to use force to quell the unrest. In a move denounced by critics as authoritarian, the commander in chief threatened to deploy troops to 'quickly solve the problem' if state and local authorities did not immediately regain control of their streets, which he said had been overtaken by 'professional anarchists' and 'violent mobs.'"

This morning, the Religion News Service reported that ahead of the blasphemous Trumpanzee Bible photo op, police forcibly expelled the priest from St. John's church.

During an interview on CNN, Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde, of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, condemned the flaming asshole for clearing out peaceful protesters with rubber bullets and tear gas in order to stage his photo op in front of her church: "I am outraged… Everything he has said and done is to inflame violence. I am beyond. We need moral leadership, and he’s done everything to divide us, and has just used one of the most sacred symbols of the Judeo-Christian tradition... I just can’t believe what my eyes have seen tonight."

All the people I communicate with who are reliable-- if moronic-- Trumpist parrots of the far right are convinced nothing is going on but looting. One of the most obtuse Trumpists I've ever met-- other than my brother-in-law-- sent me this message yesterday: "They burned the historic church in DC, St John’s Church. This isn’t about justice, it’s all looting, many of these businesses were already on the verge of bankruptcy. Many don’t have insurance because they couldn’t afford it. What’s sad is even those with insurance have no money left and now have lost their business." he said there's no evidence that the cop who murdered George Floyd is a racist because-- and I swear I'm not making this up-- "His wife was asian, one of the cops was Latino, one was asian, one was black and one was white. I actually belong to a facebook group on police brutality and there are plenty of police killing white people too. I just don’t see the dichotomy of the 1960s civil rights era and now, a black man became president by popular and electoral vote. There really isn't institutionalized racism anymore, in Miami the arrest records show that most of the arrest were out of state people. The same seems to be for every state, this is organized, people are inciting violence and anarchy... I think these riots are about looting and getting free stuff. That seems to be what everyone is doing, looting stores. Small businesses owned by people who have run out of money, out of insurance, and now they have nothing. The crimes committed by these riots far outweigh the police brutality that preceded it. We cannot condone these riots, have you seen the ghetto ass thugs who are doing this? It is scary and violent and they are happy smiling getting free shit from stores. This has nothing to do with the protests of the 60s for civil rights." OK? Now you know exactly what they're saying on White House news outlets like Fox News and on hate talk radio.

But not everyone on the right was happy with Trump's photo op. According to Axios, "Not everyone in the White House was thrilled with the church photo op. One senior aide [likely Miller] was exuberantly telling friends the photograph of him holding a Bible in front of the church that had been attacked by vandals was an 'iconic' moment for the president. But a senior White House official told Axios that when they saw the tear gas clearing the crowd for Trump to walk to the church with his entourage: 'I’ve never been more ashamed. I’m really honestly disgusted. I’m sick to my stomach. And they’re all celebrating it. They’re very very proud of themselves.'"

Paul Ryan's former top aide, Brendan Buck: "We long ago lost sight of normal, but this was a singularly immoral act. The president used force against American citizens, not to protect property, but to soothe his own insecurities. We will all move on to the next outrage, but this was a true abuse of power and should not be forgotten."

Even Tucker Carlson is having some misgivings about the fascist president he reflexively backs, tepidly criticizing Trump's abilities as a leader and Kushner-in-law's worth, asserting on Fox News that "No one has more contempt for the president’s supporters" than Jared, who he accused of breaking from Trump’s platform and talking Trump out of taking decisive actions.

Mark Leibovich for the NY Times yesterday: Trump Vowed to Disrupt Washington. Now He Faces Disruption in the Streets. "One of the recurring themes of the last three and a half years is that President Trump has disrupted Washington, just as his voters demanded. This is true in a certain sense: The Trump White House has been a chaotic drama, a procession of scandals, leaks, investigations, feuding protagonists and trampled norms. But one of the overlooked realities of the reality show is that the day-to-day existence of so-called official Washington has felt anything but disrupted. This gilded capital has actually been a serene and lovely place to live, work and visit, at least for those who can afford it. The trend has only accelerated through what until recently was the booming economy of the Trump presidency."

These last months, though, have been something else entirely. The reality has relegated the TV maestro in the White House to something of a sideshow.

In recent nights, the streets around the White House have been clogged with thousands of protesters, demonstrating against the police killing last week in Minneapolis of George Floyd, an African-American man. The crowds have been multiracial and comprised a free-for-all of purposes. Landmark restaurants, offices and a historic church have been burned and vandalized. By Monday, Mayor Muriel E. Bowser had set a curfew of 7 p.m. and activated the National Guard.

“Donald Trump is just a social media personality to us, the guy who told us to drink bleach,” said Artinese Campbell, 33, an African-American woman who has lived her whole life in Washington and who had come downtown Monday afternoon, just a few blocks from the White House, to visit her bank before it was boarded up and closed early in anticipation of another night of protests. She said she was sympathetic to the cause of the protesters but hoped they remained peaceful and had no plans to stick around to find out.

“I think most of us are numb to presidents who come in and talk about ‘change,’” Ms. Campbell said. “Nothing really changes if you’re black in America.”

...One thing was certain: No one was bemoaning the “shattered norms” perpetrated by the Trump administration or celebrating the “peaceful transfer of power” that may or may not occur in a few months. Television pundits have labeled the upcoming election as “existential” to the importance to the country’s direction. But it also felt beside the point-- like privilege talking-- in the crowds of the last few nights. This chaotic tableau felt so much more urgent, and close to home.

...[T]he national headquarters of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. were set ablaze during protests Sunday night. TV commentators described the conflagration as a strike against one of the fortresses of the American labor movement, a theoretical ally of the protesters in the struggle for a fairer power structure. Next door, flames engulfed St. John’s Episcopal Church, where two decades of presidents have come to worship-- the so-called Church of the Presidents.

Suddenly, though, these monuments to American progress and history felt like quaint abstractions, cherished by official Washington but just another thing to burn down for the Washington disrupters of 2020.

On Monday on a sidewalk across Farragut Square, in front of the boarded up Oval Room restaurant, a protester named Athena Kapsides, a Washington public-school teacher, said that Mr. Trump had in fact inspired a great deal of activism in opposition to his own actions. In that sense, she said, he has been a catalyst for change.

“President Trump himself has tried to present himself as a fighter, but really he only fights for himself,” said Ms. Kapsides, who grew up in the Washington suburbs and wore a T-shirt bearing the likeness of Colin Kaepernick, the former National Football League quarterback who protested police violence against African-Americans by kneeling during pregame renditions of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Many believe that his statement resulted in his blacklisting from the N.F.L., where he has not played since 2017.

“He’s been a force for disruption,” Ms. Kapsides said of Mr. Trump. “But maybe not always the kind of disruption he planned for.”

The Incivility Of The Trumpist Regime

Monday night, Maxine Waters was Chris Hayes' guest on All In to explain how Señor Trumpanzee had misinterpreted-- purposefully-- her call for Americans to confront Trumpist Cabinet members into a call for violence against GOP Voters. What she had said had zero to do with violence and zero to do with GOP voters... it was simply about legitimate, constitutionally-protected protest about usually cloistered and unavailable government officials... very healthy. She then read a list of times Señor T had publicly called for violence against Americans. A few we should all easily remember:

• "Maybe he should be roughed up"
• "I’d like to knock the crap out of them"
• "Try not to hurt him but if you do, I’ll defend you in court. Don’t worry about it."
• "I’d like to punch him in the face."

Real civil, right? Speaking of which... Early Tuesday morning Mark Sumner posted an important essay at Daily Kos about the media's "civility debate." "The media demands for “civility”over the last three days," he wrote, "are not just being unfairly applied in a wholly one-sided manner-- dirty hippies aren’t allowed to comment on their betters-- they are themselves a dangerous and unreasonable demand that is threatening the nation."

It’s not just that major media sources have settled into a routine where when Donald Trump insults someone, their first instinct is to repeat that insult. Or that they are constantly in search for a comment from the left which, no matter how it is phrased, can be turned into the focus of some serious nose-lifted high dudgeon. It’s not simply that while the right punches, the press plays stenographer, and when the left fights back, they declare fighting out of bounds. It’s not even about the incredible spectacle of journalists who have personally been on the receiving end of both spit and thrown bottles while Trump rants about ending “political correctness,” suddenly chiding the left for refusing to be good little frogs while the water boils.

It’s that the demand being made for “civility” isn’t about language at all. It’s about throwing a ring of protection around the powerful. It’s about pretending that people whose actions wreck millions of lives on a whim, are cocooned from the consequences of their actions, not just because they have money, and connections, and resources, but because their power puts them on a different plane.

The idea that “politics” represents some kind of insulating blanket, that someone should be able to take any action in the service of a political office, then stroll out into the street and be treated with cheery “civility,” giving no consequence to what they’ve done in their day job, is not just foolish. It’s dangerous. That’s not civility. That’s royalty.

This isn’t some theoretical thing. The arguments here are not about angels on pins or the health of unseen cats. There are children being taken away at the border who may never see their parents again. And there are parents out there who will absolutely never again see their child again because he was gunned down for simply being black. And there are people out there whose lives are purposely being made worse, simply because those people-- those people who feel like they deserve to rule from inside Washington, and still go out to demand a good meal from the peasantry-- find them handy objects of ridicule.

The idea that political statements take place in some privileged space, and that pushing back outside the beltway is wrong isn’t just sickening, it’s surrender.

For many of the journalists engaged in this latest round of finger-waving, A large part of the argument is about who they value. They value those people they see, they meet, they talk with every day. Those people that they interview and quote are real people, worthy of nice things, even when they don’t say nice things. And the people who don’t have power, the people whose only appearance on television is as a literal face in the crowd, … are not. Not valued. Not worthy. Not real.

It’s why Sarah Sanders can lie directly to their faces every day, and threat them like a class of unruly third graders, and they’ll still moan in sympathy when Sanders is featured in a punch line. Because jokes hurt … not like the policies that Sanders is promoting that only take food and medicine from those who need it, and pump pollution into the air and water to the tune of 80,000 American lives lost. That tendency to place more import on those around you is only human. But the media’s tendency to demand it, is part of protecting the power structure.

When senators and congressmen wax lyrical over the magic age of civility past, even that is just another way of saying “when we once went to our country clubs together, free of our lessers, and the press coddled us even more.”

The press would be happier if Americans storming the castle would limit their efforts to the occasional neatly proscribed march. With colorful signs! And a permit!

The press is going to continue to be disappointed in us. If we’re lucky.

Democracy is messy-- and establishment media has always been worried about "civility"

A biproduct of reactionary Trumpism: A new poll released this morning found that half of us think the country is in "real danger of becoming a nondemocratic, authoritarian country." But maybe still civil? 55% see democracy as "weak" and 68% believe it is "getting weaker." About eight in 10 Americans say they are either very or somewhat concerned about the condition of democracy here. What an historical mistake we made... as a people! I hope it's not too late. We'll all counting on November! 

Now, please, go back up top and watch that lovely video of New Oder's "Age of Consent"-- and don't worry about all that civility in the beginning... it ends well. And you can sing to it, dance to it, dream to it.

Won't you please let me go
These words lie inside they hurt me so
And I'm not the kind that likes to tell you
Just what I want to do
I'm not the kind that needs to tell you
Just what you, want me to

We All Want To Beat Trump-- Here Are Some How To Guides For Patriotic Resistance

Yesterday David Frum spoke from his own experience as a Bush Regimist about what he feels works and does't work when it comes to Resitance. He's a smart guy but he has a conservative mind and doesn't understand how normal people think. His ideas, though, are valuable if you want to know how conservatives think. Trump's mind, obviously is neither normal nor conservative. He's fully insane and operates on a baser, primal level.

From is correct when he says our Resistance demonstrations "are exercises in catharsis, the release of emotions." What he doesn't seem to get is their value as organizing experiences for the long haul. He writes that "their operating principle is self-expression, not persuasion. They lack the means, and often the desire, to police their radical fringes, with the result that it’s the most obnoxious and even violent behavior that produces the most widely shared and memorable images of the event. They seldom are aimed at any achievable goal; they rarely leave behind any enduring program of action or any organization to execute that program. Again and again, their most lasting effect has been to polarize opinion against them-- and to empower the targets of their outrage. And this time, that target is a president hungering for any excuse to repress his opponents." All good insights. But hardly definitive. Below is what he has "to offer from the right to the left, against the storms of the Trump era." I doubt he's meaning to sound condescending or patronizing.

The more conservative you are, the more radical you are.

You want to scare Trump? Be orderly, polite, and visibly patriotic.

Trump wants to identify all opposition to him with the black-masked crowbar thugs who smashed windows and burned a window on his inauguration day. Remember Trump’s tweet about stripping citizenship from flag burners? It’s beyond audacious that a candidate who publicly requested help from Russian espionage services against his opponent would claim the flag as his own. But Trump is trying. Don’t let him get away with it. Carry the flag. Open with the Pledge of Allegiance. Close by singing the Star Spangled Banner... Trump’s presidency is itself one long flag-burning, an attack on the principles and institutions of the American republic. That republic’s symbols are your symbols. You should cherish them and brandish them.

Don’t get sucked into the futile squabbling cul-de-sac of intersectionality and grievance politics. Look at this roster of speakers from the January 21 march. What is Angela Davis doing there? [the conservative mind is incapable of understanding this-- Frum isn't trying to sound like an asshole; he can't help himself] Where are the military women, the women police officers, the officeholders? If Planned Parenthood is on the stage, pro-life women should stand there, too. If you want somebody to speak for immigrants, invite somebody who’s in the country lawfully.

 Since his acceptance speech in Cleveland, Donald Trump has made clear that he wants to wage a Nixon-style culture war: cops against criminals, soldiers against pacifists, hard hats against hippies. Don’t be complicit. If you want to beat him, you have to reject his categories.

“Tone policing” has entered the left-of-center vocabulary as one of the worst possible things you can do or think. In fact, all effective political communication must carefully consider both tone and content. If the singer Madonna wants to indulge herself in loose talk about political bombing, let her do it on her own platform, not yours. If you see guys with crowbars in the vicinity of your meeting, detain them yourselves and call the cops You’re the defenders of the Constitution, the Republic, and the Western Alliance. Act like it.

Think strategically; act inclusively

The classic military formula for success: concentrate superior force at a single point. The Occupy Wall Street movement fizzled out in large part because of its ridiculously fissiparous list of demands and its failure to generate a leadership that could cull that list into anything actionable. Successful movements are built upon concrete single demands that can readily be translated into practical action: “Votes for women.” “End the draft.” “Overturn Roe v. Wade.” “Tougher punishments for drunk driving.”

People can say “yes” to such specific demands for many different reasons. Supporters are not called upon to agree on everything, but just one thing. “End the draft” can appeal both to outright pacifists and to military professionals who regard an army of volunteers as more disciplined and lethal than an army of conscripts. Critics of Roe run the gamut from those who wish a total ban on all abortions to legal theorists who believe the Supreme Court overstepped itself back in 1973.

So it should be for critics of President Trump. “Pass a law requiring the Treasury to release the President’s tax returns.” “An independent commission to investigate Russian meddling in the US election.” “Divest from the companies.” These are limited asks with broad appeal.

On the other hand, if you build a movement that lists those specific and limited goals along a vast and endlessly unfolding roster of others from “preserve Dodd Frank” to “save the oceans”-- if you indulge the puckish anti-politics of “not usually a sign guy, but geez”-- you will collapse into factionalism and futility.

The Democratic party remains open for business. If your concerns are classic Democratic concerns, you know where to go. But if you are building a movement to protect American democracy from the authoritarianism of the Trump administration, you should remember that the goal is to gain allies among people who would not normally agree with you. Just as the iconography of your protest should originate in the great American mainstream, the core demand of your movement should likewise be easy to explain and plausibly acceptable to that mainstream, stretching from Bernie voters to Romney donors.

Here are a few useful tests:

a) Could this demand be achieved by a law passed through Congress?

b) Can I imagine my Rush Limbaugh listening brother-in-law agreeing with it?

c) Can I tweet it?

If so … good.

Alternatively

d) Would I still be upset about this if Marco Rubio were president now?

If so … bad.

Protests are fun; meetings are effective

Protests can be powerful. Just this past week, the Romanian government withdrew a law intended to protect high-level corruption in the face of mass demonstrations in the streets of Bucharest. Big mobilizations send the message politicians most fear to hear: “A lot of us are mad at you.” That message resounds especially forcefully in the ears of Trump, so obsessed with the massive popular vote tally against him.

But bodies in the street represent only potential power, not actual power. Even the largest rally must sooner or later disassemble and return home. What happens after that? The difference between Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party was that only the second movement translated the energy and excitement of its early mass meetings into steady organizational work aimed at winning elections.

Protests can energize people and overawe governments. But it is the steady and often tedious work of organization that sustains democracy-- and can change the world. Protests are useful mostly to the extent that they mobilize people to participate in the follow-up meetings to realize the protest’s goals. Collect names and addresses. Form Facebook groups. Keep in touch. Don’t argue: recruit. Meet in real space as well as online. Serve cake. Make your presence felt on your local elected officials not just once, but day after day, week in, week out. Make them feel that they could lose their individual seats if they do not heed you. They feel the pressure from lobbyists all the time…to succeed, you should be equally focused and persistent. And that requires above all: be motivated by hope, not outrage.

The outrage may get you started, but only hope keeps you going. Hope, as Vaclav Havel insisted, is an expression of the state of our minds, not a description of the state of the world. It powers you to undertake the daunting but essential mission: unlimited efforts for limited goals. You’re not trying to save the world. Just to pass one law. It doesn’t sound like much. It could be everything.

From Frum to Froma... distinguished journalist Froma Harrop. Yesterday she wrote about the right way to oppose Trump's unconstitutional Muslim ban. Like all of us, she wants "stringent vetting of immigrants entering the country [and] can easily envision Islamic terrorist groups trying to sneak operatives into this country... some terrorists have entered Europe hiding in the flood of refugees. But there are other facts. Not a single refugee admitted to the United States has committed a fatal terrorist attack here. For that we can largely thank the comprehensive vetting process put into place by Barack Obama. If there’s room for improving the process, go ahead and make changes. But where is the need for even a temporary ban? That implies we are facing a dire emergency." Kellyanne Con-Man's #AltFact Bowling Green Massacre may be believed in the drug ravaged counties that elected Trump, but it was a typical and manipulative lie which Con-Man has used in the past-- and without substance. "How," she asked, "might one express both support for refugee screening and displeasure with the Trump approach?" From would have no problem with any of her ideas.

For one thing, let’s not take the need for vetting lightly. I am not the commissar for protest signage, but it would be helpful for its artists to avoid conveying the idea that anyone who wants in should get in.

I also avoid emotional anecdotes about so-and-so’s being delayed for hours at the airport-- or some grandmother unable to reunite with a son’s family. Not every grandmother belongs in this country. We shouldn’t mind some entrants going through more paces, as long as there is a rational process whereby all comers are checked out and, once given the green light, can enter the country and go about their business.

Insulting vast swaths of humanity is not a thinking person’s path to national security. And when the good people we do business with and fight alongside are inconvenienced, we should also at least say, “Thank you for your time.”

In sum, let’s not confuse cruelty with being tough. But let’s also concede that we live in a dangerous world. Keeping the bad people out makes a country more accepting of the good people.

UPDATE: More On Resisting Trump

This list came from Bernice King, CEO of the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta and Martin Luther King's daughter. Overall, it's better advise than David Frum's on how to relate to the Trumpist threat, by the way.

The Positive Energy And Love Of The Bernie Sanders Rallies Swept America Today

This isn't going to surprise any Richard Florida followers but Brookings' Mark Muro observed, soon after the election, that "[t]he less-than-500 counties that Hillary Clinton carried nationwide encompassed a massive 64 percent of America’s economic activity as measured by total output in 2015.  By contrast, the more-than-2,600 counties that Donald Trump won generated just 36 percent of the country’s output-- just a little more than one-third of the nation’s economic activity." It's also completely unprecedented for a losing presidential candidate to have won so large a share of the nation's productive base. No election in decades has revealed as sharp a political divide between the densest economic centers and the rest of the country-- "high-output" and "low-output" America.

[W]ith the exceptions of the Phoenix and Fort Worth areas and a big chunk of Long Island, Clinton won every large-sized county economy in the country. Her base of 493 counties was heavily metropolitan.  By contrast, Trumpland consists of hundreds and hundreds of tiny low-output locations that comprise the non-metropolitan hinterland of America, along with some suburban and exurban metro counties.

Not exactly: Clinton lost Maricopa County (49-46%) but won Phoenix, lost Tarrant County (52-44%) but won Fort Worth and won more urbanized Nassau County on Long Island, 51-46%, while losing more rural Suffolk County 52-44%. But why quibble. Muro makes the point that there are multiple problems suggested by all of this: "Most broadly," he wrote, "the stark political divide underscores the likelihood of the two parties talking entirely past each other on the most important issues of economic policy.  Given the election map we revealed, the Trump administration will likely feel pressure to respond most to the desires and frustrations of the nation’s struggling hinterland, and discount the priorities and needs of the nation’s high-output economic base."

He's wrong there. Well, maybe they'll feel pressure, but they have no intention of responding to that pressure, other than in completely hollow speeches. As we mentioned yesterday, moments after Trumpanzee read Bannon's inaugural speech asserting, falsely, that "every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs, will be made to benefit American workers and American families," he signed an executive order that, in effect, raised the mortgage payments for every low-income and first-time homebuyer in the country. Bannon and Trump apparently plan to create Fake News as the main function of POTUS... while Pence, Ryan and McConnell pass a standard, garden variety GOP policy agenda that screws the life out of the working class voters who backed Trumpanzee's election. But Moro is naively hopeful.

On one hand, more attention to the economic and health challenges of rural and small-city Rustbelt America could be welcome, especially if it focuses on the right things: realism about current economic trends, adjustment to change, improving rural education and skills training, and enhancing linkages to nearby metropolitan centers. However, Trump’s promises to “bring back” the coal economy and “bring back” millions of manufacturing jobs (that now don’t exist thanks to automation) don’t speak wisely to real-world trends in low-output America. They look backwards and speak instead to local frustrations.

On the other hand... [there are] doubts that the nation’s core metropolitan economic base will easily secure the investments it needs-- investments that has been shown to drive broader prosperity that benefits the entire nation.  Without a doubt, the mostly metropolitan counties of high-output America will need now to make more of their own arrangements, by establishing their own applied R&D centers, developing their own industry-relevant skills pipelines, and deepening local industry clusters. “Bottom up” will now be mandatory.  Yet with that said, big issues loom given the fact that no county can flourish entirely on its own.  How, for example, will high-output America secure the critical, historically federal innovation investments it requires to fuel the dynamism of its local advanced industries and the long supply chains that they support?  How will the heavily federal safety net be maintained?  And will necessary federal infrastructure investments be made in a targeted, efficient way that maximizes return on investment?

...[M]etropolitan areas are going to need to demand what they need, while taking matters into their own hands as best they can.

In the end, our data makes plain that while cultural resentments played a huge role in this month’s election, so too did a massive economic divide between relatively prosperous high-output counties and struggling lower-out rural ones.  Hashing out a serviceable politics and policy mix to serve that bifurcated reality is going to be a huge challenge.

This was reflected in the marches today. From Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon, there were massive turnouts for anti-Trump demonstrations, dwarfing his thinly-attended Mourning in American Inauguration celebration Friday (despite Sean Spicer's laughable lie today that more people were at the Trumpanzee inauguration than at any other inauguration, blah, blah, blah... false, false, false. It's the White House Fake News Machine). This was an aerial view of Chicago, where over 250,000 people were marching against Trumpism:

Turnout's outpaced all estimates. At the main march in DC, over half a million people turned out, more than double what the organizers had been predicting all week. Hundreds of "sister rallies" took place over the country. Between 2 and 3 million people turned out to protest Trump worldwide today. Here were a few of them:

• NYC- 500,000
• Los Angeles- 750,000
• Cincinnati- 10,000
• St. Paul- 60,000
• Denver- 100,000
• Philadelphia- 50,000
• Boston- 175,000
• Cleveland- 15,000
• St. Louis- 20,000
• San Francisco- 150,000
• Seattle- 170,000
• Nashville- 20,000
• Indianapolis- 15,000
• Austin- 40,000
• Charlotte- 10,000
• Ashville- 10,000
• Little Rock- 7,000
• Memphis- 9,000
• Atlanta- 60,000
• Montpellier- 20,000
• Lexington- 5,000
• Portland, ME- 10,000
• Portland, OR- 100,000
• Miami- 10,000
• Ithaca- 10,000
• Oklahoma City- 12,000
• El Paso- 1,000
• Houston- 22,000
• Dallas- 8,000
• Detroit- 4,000
• Lansing- 9,000
• Phoenix- 20,000
• Trenton- 3,000
• Orlando- 3,000
• Pittsburgh- 25,000
• Boise- 5,000
• Helena, MT- 10,000
• Des Moines- 26,000
• Oakland- 100,000
• Kansas City- 10,000
• Omaha- 14,000
• Tallahassee- 18,000
• Albuquerque- 20,000
• Hartford- 10,000
• Madison- 100,000
• Birmingham, AL- 10,000
• Raleigh- 20,000
• Las Vegas- 15,000
• San Diego- 40,000
• Moscow (the one in Idaho)- 2,500
• Honolulu- 8,000

Pat Benatar, with co-writer Linda Perry, created a new song, "Shine," as a tribute to today's massive marches and rallies. Here's the video of the recording session:



There were also anti-Trump marches in London (100,000 people), Edinburgh, Paris, Berlin, Budapest, Toronto (60,000), Sydney and Melbourne, Australia, in New Zealand, Bangkok, Yangon, Seoul, Tokyo, Beirut, Belgrade, Amsterdam, Lisbon, Athens, Capetown, Singapore, Warsaw, Shanghai, Delhi, Ottawa, Rome, Reykjavik, Madrid, Barcelona, Stockholm, Oslo, Dublin, Buenos Aires, Accra, Lima, Bogota and Mexico City. And in Antarctica.

Despite Morning Joe's Cluelessness, Green Day Does America Proud! "No Trump, No KKK, No Fascist USA!"

Was I lucky when I became the president of Reprise Records! The label had just debuted Green Day's Dookie and it was hurtling past gold and platinum sales. They reminded me of my favorite band, The Clash, in so many ways, not the least of which was a very genuine ideological perspective that encapsulated the ideals of the French Revolution-- liberté, égalité, fraternité-- and my first job was to persuade our European companies, which were ignoring the record entirely, that Green Day was for real. First stop: London. The chairman of our U.K. affiliate was condescending and steadfast. There would be no push for Green Day from his company; period. "We already had punk. What have you got next?" Next? Next, I went to Germany and forged a new kind of alliance-- to bypass the U.K. in breaking new American releases in Europe. The German company put their full marketing push behind Dookie and soon enough the U.K. was struggling to keep up with a Green Day explosion enveloping all of Europe. Dookie was one of the first albums to have ever been awarded the brand new "diamond" status-- 10,000,000 sales in the U.S. alone.

This morning I woke up and the hypocrites on Morning Joe were castigating the cast of Hamiltion for being rude to Pence-- and for creating a "dangerous" situation for his family. Why not, the elitist scum who sit around the vile table, pontificated, wait for Trump to do something wrong before attacking him like that. Like that? A mild reminder that the president needs to work for the common good? And wait? Trump just spent over a year spewing hatred, bigotry and divisiveness and his first appointments were a KKK psychopath and a neo-fascist, Attorney General-designate Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III and senior advisor Steve Bannon. Wait for what? Round-ups and concentration camps. Please, God, let Mika and Joe and their table be the first bunch carted off to never be heard from again!

I shut the TV off as quickly as I could and went downstairs to the DWT office and saw the reports from Sunday night's American Music Awards. Green Day stole the show-- no surprise there-- but it wasn't just the music. During a performance of one of their new songs, "Bang, Bang," Billie Joe added in a chant: "No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA!" Oh, yes. And fuck Morning Joe! As far as I know Trump hasn't tweeted for Green Day to apologize yet. Let's hope he does. And let's hope MSNBC invites Billie Joe over to make fund of Mika and Joe one day soon too.


This was the very patriotic, all-American message, that so offended Trump and Morning Joe idiots:

Is Civil War Brewing in the Democratic Party? A Guest Post By J.C. Peters

For weeks, it appeared the Republican Party was headed for imminent civil war. Eminent Republicans disavowed their own presidential nominee, Senators and Representatives seesawed, there were the #NeverTrumpers and the #RepublicanwomenforHillary. It seemed all but certain that Donald Trump would cause a split within the GOP and start his own party (and media empire) after inevitably losing the election.

But after Trump’s stunning victory the shoe is suddenly on the other foot. On Wednesday evening, angry progressive millennials took to the streets in several cities to protest Trump’s victory, carrying their favorite anti-Trump signs and chanting ‘Not my President’, in defiance of that one cardinal rule without which democracy cannot function: that the losing side must accept defeat and acknowledge the mandate of the side that prevailed.

Meanwhile, in California there is talk of secession. Yes, secession. Apparently it is no longer the exclusive go-to implausible option of deeply conservative Americans howling at the liberal course of the country, now progressives, too, have begun dreaming about their own Shangri-La, where life is communal, organic and morally superior.

For progressive millennials it was quite the year. First they were energized by an angry white voter from Vermont who made European-style socialism cool again, talking about the need for a political revolution, of fixing a rigged economy, making education and health care free for everybody and doubling the minimum wage.

Then they were zapped by the ugly reality of party politics, learning the hard way that support and favors typically don’t go to the outlier who wants to shake up system, but to the candidate who will defend the status quo, who has rubbed elbows with the establishment and knows what they want to hear.

But in a time where many are fed up with a gridlocked Washington that seems more intertwined with Wall Street and corporate America than with the will of the people, running a Washington insider whom big banks pay $250,000 per speech against a populist outsider who says he is going to fix Washington and bring back jobs, turned out to be a political blunder of epic proportions.

If the Democratic Convention had instead nominated Bernie Sanders, things could have turned out very different. For one, he might have been more successful in getting Democrats-- especially millennials-- to the polls.

But perhaps even more important is that Sanders, like Trump, is a populist, and even after almost thirty years in Washington, he is still perceived as an outsider. He has railed against the moneyed interests, against the rigged economy, against globalization. And when it comes to the economy and how to make it work again for the middle class, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump’s views really aren’t all that different.

This election was never about race, at least not for the people in battleground states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Ohio, who propelled Trump to victory. It was about jobs. They didn’t vote for Trump because he is white and male, they voted for him because instead of calling them a basket of deplorables, he vowed to be their champion and bring back their jobs. Many of them could have voted just as easily for Bernie Sanders.

One thing is certain: Donald Trump is not a classic Republican and Bernie Sanders is not a classic Democrat. They are essentially third party candidates running on the platform of two parties who between them have nominated all the presidents since the mid-1850s. The fact that they did so well, tells us something about the direction these two parties must move in if they are to remain relevant in future elections.

Because oddly enough, these two septuagenarians are the political bellwethers of a new age, where rapid technolization and robotization, together with ever expanding globalization, are pushing blue-collar workers outside of the production process at an alarming rate, forcing the federal government to step in on a scale not seen in the United States since Franklin Roosevelt introduced his New Deal in the 1930s.

Considering this and the stinging defeat it just suffered running a status quo candidate, the Democratic Party would do well to heed the call of progressive millennials and move to the left. If it doesn’t, it could well be looking at a strong, new progressive party to its left before the next presidential election.

J.C. Peters is a legal philosopher and historian who frequently publishes about U.S. constitutional law, American and European history and foreign policy issues. He is also the author of the political thriller The Dog and its Day, about an assassination attempt at the Republican presidential candidate.