If left leaning Americans are going to demonstrate any tangible instinct for self preservation, it’s going to have to start with bringing the same hostility they have for trump et.al to the folks who speak for them while shoving the knife in.
There’s a reason Dante put the betrayer in the deepest circle of hell. Unless people learn to hate the Democratic neoliberal consensus at least as much as Trump, we’re all going to be under right wing dystopia watch indefinitely.
Way back several months ago when a local university allowed Kevin Roberts to speak to students (at the behest of a small group that had requested he speak)- Baltimore hosted a protest. I wrote this letter to some of the administrators of the university and I am going to share it because I think it speaks to the sentiment of this article. I don’t know, maybe we should be writing more letters to leaders of unions, universities and other organizations, telling them to fight? Who fuckin knows? I just know it felt good to write it. Here it is:
When the history of this time is written, it will show that those in positions of leadership were faced with many excruciating decisions. Carry on with business as usual and facilitate our descent into illiberalism, or take a stand against the fascists who are consolidating power and moving this country rapidly to authoritarianism. As you all sat around last night munching on Chick-Fil-A sandwiches and listening to Kevin Roberts as he spoke about federalism, I hope there was a voice within each of you that whispered back that you'd made the wrong decision by laying out the red carpet and creating an environment in which Kevin Roberts was able to present as a person on the ultra-conservative end of the political spectrum, rather than as a fascist. I hope that voice whispered that as people who claim leadership positions within our society, you were standing on the wrong side of history. As we slip further away from our democratic ideals and slide further into what very possibly could become fascism, our leaders will be called to make decisions that reveal cowardice or bravery. Kevin Roberts did not need to be banned from campus, but he also did not need to be normalized by UMB...his agenda is anything but normal, rather he is an extremist and should therefore be treated accordingly.
The days of grayness and ambiguity in which we take a liberal democracy for granted are over. Each decision that we make will either be black or white. Each decision will center on whether we obey or dissent, and each action we will take will either move us in the direction of fascism or liberation from authoritarianism. It really is that stark. You saw it on display last night as you peaked out from behind the guns of the police and saw The People on the other side of the street, telling you that you were on the wrong side of the divide.
Determine the side that you are on and allow all your decisions to flow from there. Operating from a core of self-preservation versus communal liberation will pave the way for fascism, and ultimately leave you and those you love unprotected and vulnerable. Believe Kevin Roberts when he tells us that we are at war. We are. He is a General leading a team of ultranationalists in this war; if you think that you can protect the siege of the academic systems you love by waving a white flag and offering refuge to those seeking to burn down these systems, you will find yourselves standing in a pile of ashes.
Don't resign. Don't capitulate. Don't shrink away from this moment and hope that things will miraculously get better.
Fight. All of you in academia. Fight. Join together, collectivize, centralize command, coordinate action and fight. Stop acting as though you operate in bubbles of independent universities with competing interests and start moving in synchronicity. Together. Trump can pick you off one by one, but not if you act with coordinated response as though you are one large university system within the whole of our country, rather than an atomized collection of individual universities with separate and competing interests.
Don't kill the unions of your academic institutions. Allow them to flourish. Create an environment in which you are working with and not against them.
Don't sell out your students and give them up to the Trump Administration. Protect them. Offer them refuge.
Don't allow Trump to dictate the rules of dissent on your campuses.
Well said. Thank you for writing that letter. Sad you had to as these are universities and should know better. I have written to some journalists and told them that they do not have to give others space in their reporting to lie. They don't have to repeat other's lies. They have their own voice and their own podium and they do not have to allow others to seize it. Facebook was right and then caved. Bezos caved at the Post. Liberal minds think allowing a conservative on to lie is just being fair while conservatives do not allow that on their podiums. Claims of liberal bias is not true. Truth isn't liberal but conservatives want to falsely equate their lies to other's truth. Can't debate liars. Can't play fair when others are not playing fair. Don't want to lie? Fine. Just don't let others lie and aid them in repeating their lies. Which I see all day every day on supposed main stream liberal media. It will take millions of us not only writing letters but boycotting businesses that not only side with the dictator but those that don't stand up to him either. So far nobody has gotten that message. Nor do we have someone leading that message. Poland had Solidarity and Lech Walesa. They were fighting for rights. We are afraid to fight to keep them.
Watching union leaders crawl for Trump is beyond embarrassing. Solidarity means taking risks for working people, not groveling for scraps from power. There’s no strategy here, only cowardice and betrayal. The people doing the real work deserve better than this.
Trump's goal is intimidation, and the unions, media outlets, politicians, and most citizens are choosing to accept that, to be intimidated and to appease the constant abuse and bullying. Why? Fight the son of a bitch I say, but there is only safety in numbers, which makes it all the more disgusting to see labor leaders flush that potential power down the toilet. Again, why? This is your survival technique? Survive to be under someone else's thumb forever? Survive to not get anything you want and deserve? Rather than risk a fight, you will choose to live as a slave? Hey, if that suits you, go for it. Not me. I say fight. Let's fucking fight these fascist assholes. What is wrong with that? Who really thinks it is a good idea to kiss the ass of someone who openly wants to destroy you? That is just stupidity.
"Spit on your own and you can't do anything, but if you all spit together you can drown the bastards."
Here’s the best compliment I can give you: since Chomsky’s stroke, you have filled a good bit of the resulting void with not only excellent analysis but also much-appreciated wit. Keep it up!
Exactly. Like people who voted for Trump the first time in '16, you can be forgiven if you learned your lesson and never voted for him again. So to our institutions: Now you know. There's no excuse for continuing to fall into this trap.
"I believe in the principle of union democracy, and I am not a member of any construction union. So if I were to call Sean McGarvey a sellout to the cause of labor and a man who will go down in history as a Vichy-esque potato-headed fool, that does not mean much. Construction workers are free to choose who speaks for them."
Union construction worker here to inform you that we don't choose these folks either. NABTU utilizes a convention-delegate system much like the building trades unions individually, and this system keeps rank and file members from being able to exert power within our unions. We have very minimal impact on what happens at the national/international level of our unions, let alone this cross-jurisdictional council of bullshit.
Unions need to stick together. They need a national organization.
Then they need to align with others the dictator is attacking.
Law Firms, colleges, LGBTQ and others.
He singles out one at a time and none are able to stand alone. We want them to but it isn't practical if their businesses are threatened. So they do what humans do. Cave.
When Reagan fired the air traffic controllers every union should have protested and went on strike. Everywhere. They missed an opportunity. They were not thinking about the next day, year or about what that would mean decades later.
When union truckers and union dock workers ship to states or companies that do not allow unions they hurt those workers but themselves too.
Look at Europe. Tesla won't unionize. Other union workers will boycott them. They can't get their mail delivered.
Will to power. Use it or lose it. The wealthy have it and want more. It's always been a battle between the herd and the privileged.
We can vote and choose poorly, often. Propaganda works and the many want to believe lies and many simply can't think through issues that matter like this. Until it is too late.
Its not acceptable to talk about Trump in terms of being mentally ill. The trope is you cannot actually assess someone's mental capacities without a thorough assessment by a certified psychologist or psychiatrist. Fair enough, but this guy has been in the public eye for 8 years, with countless interviews, speeches, documented behaviors both public and privat. We have a pretty thorough history of this man behavior going back decades. IMO the man is a card carrying personality disorder and malignant narcissist, but it isn't necessary to give him a diagnosis. Just look at the DSM V traits that define a Narcissistic PD. Keep in mine one only needs to meet 5 out or 9 traits to qualify. Trump IMO meet all 9. But officially he is not a PD. OK fine. But if it walks like duck quacks like a duck... So in trying to negotiate with such a person you have to understand he is in fact sick, disordered, his perception of the world is so distorted its hard for most people to imagine. He isn't logical, reasonable or rational. He has no vision, principles, or values( accept his own self-aggrandizement). He incapable of acting in good faith. To capitulate to such person is dangerous; to be easily manipulated is seen a weakness, you become prey. You don't gain respect because he respects nothing but power. Narcissists are some of the most dangerous people in the world, the prisons are full of them.
As much as it sounds like a bumper sticker triteness the fact is when against up against guys like Trump resistance and staying united is a must.
He has surrounded himself with others that are just trying to profit from being around power and will do whatever he wants. He will discard any that question his power and put an incompetent sycophant in their place.
Short term some will profit. Long term all of us are screwed. Even the Christians that support him don't realize he'd make Christianity illegal if he could when he doesn't need them. He doesn't care. The Church should have learned this when Hitler and Mussolini did not stick to their agreements.
Now, he can be manipulated. He can be flattered and distracted. Yet he can't be appeased.
Ask Pillow Man or Mayor Rudy. He never came back to help them. He discards people often. Wives tossed aside. He has no friends, just people he uses.
Canada has arms up. They need to align with the EU. Along with others and tell him to pound sand. Don't let him negotiate country by country. Japan could have aligned with Canada, Vietnam, Mexico, Australia, the EU, Ukraine, Brazil, and so many others. They caved to 15%. How long will that last? What else was he paid that we don't know about? Vietnam gave him the ok for a golf course.
Of course he keeps changing the playing field and moving the goalposts because his tariff strategy isn't going to work. It is bluff, bluster and a lot of ignorance.
He might get lots of bribes in the meantime. Tariffs are taxes passed on to us. So will those bribes.
Also, while I recognize that, as president, trump has an enormous of power to wield (thanks unitary executive ghouls!), he's still one of the most thin-skinned, cowardly, and all-around least intimidating people in public life. As such, it's even more embarrassing to watch people like the NABTU president grovel like this.
Also also, thank you for the shout out to Gaza Soup Kitchen and WCK. What's happening in Gaza is the greatest crime against humanity I've seen in my (not all that long but not all that short, either) life.
If left leaning Americans are going to demonstrate any tangible instinct for self preservation, it’s going to have to start with bringing the same hostility they have for trump et.al to the folks who speak for them while shoving the knife in.
There’s a reason Dante put the betrayer in the deepest circle of hell. Unless people learn to hate the Democratic neoliberal consensus at least as much as Trump, we’re all going to be under right wing dystopia watch indefinitely.
Taken in, taken in again
Wrapped around the finger of some fair-weather friend
Caught up in the promises, left out in the end
🎯
They don't want you to know the food supply is tainted and millions are doing this.....
sfood1.trackdok.com/alew1m
Way back several months ago when a local university allowed Kevin Roberts to speak to students (at the behest of a small group that had requested he speak)- Baltimore hosted a protest. I wrote this letter to some of the administrators of the university and I am going to share it because I think it speaks to the sentiment of this article. I don’t know, maybe we should be writing more letters to leaders of unions, universities and other organizations, telling them to fight? Who fuckin knows? I just know it felt good to write it. Here it is:
When the history of this time is written, it will show that those in positions of leadership were faced with many excruciating decisions. Carry on with business as usual and facilitate our descent into illiberalism, or take a stand against the fascists who are consolidating power and moving this country rapidly to authoritarianism. As you all sat around last night munching on Chick-Fil-A sandwiches and listening to Kevin Roberts as he spoke about federalism, I hope there was a voice within each of you that whispered back that you'd made the wrong decision by laying out the red carpet and creating an environment in which Kevin Roberts was able to present as a person on the ultra-conservative end of the political spectrum, rather than as a fascist. I hope that voice whispered that as people who claim leadership positions within our society, you were standing on the wrong side of history. As we slip further away from our democratic ideals and slide further into what very possibly could become fascism, our leaders will be called to make decisions that reveal cowardice or bravery. Kevin Roberts did not need to be banned from campus, but he also did not need to be normalized by UMB...his agenda is anything but normal, rather he is an extremist and should therefore be treated accordingly.
The days of grayness and ambiguity in which we take a liberal democracy for granted are over. Each decision that we make will either be black or white. Each decision will center on whether we obey or dissent, and each action we will take will either move us in the direction of fascism or liberation from authoritarianism. It really is that stark. You saw it on display last night as you peaked out from behind the guns of the police and saw The People on the other side of the street, telling you that you were on the wrong side of the divide.
Determine the side that you are on and allow all your decisions to flow from there. Operating from a core of self-preservation versus communal liberation will pave the way for fascism, and ultimately leave you and those you love unprotected and vulnerable. Believe Kevin Roberts when he tells us that we are at war. We are. He is a General leading a team of ultranationalists in this war; if you think that you can protect the siege of the academic systems you love by waving a white flag and offering refuge to those seeking to burn down these systems, you will find yourselves standing in a pile of ashes.
Don't resign. Don't capitulate. Don't shrink away from this moment and hope that things will miraculously get better.
Fight. All of you in academia. Fight. Join together, collectivize, centralize command, coordinate action and fight. Stop acting as though you operate in bubbles of independent universities with competing interests and start moving in synchronicity. Together. Trump can pick you off one by one, but not if you act with coordinated response as though you are one large university system within the whole of our country, rather than an atomized collection of individual universities with separate and competing interests.
Don't kill the unions of your academic institutions. Allow them to flourish. Create an environment in which you are working with and not against them.
Don't sell out your students and give them up to the Trump Administration. Protect them. Offer them refuge.
Don't allow Trump to dictate the rules of dissent on your campuses.
Fight.
In Solidarity.
Well said. Thank you for writing that letter. Sad you had to as these are universities and should know better. I have written to some journalists and told them that they do not have to give others space in their reporting to lie. They don't have to repeat other's lies. They have their own voice and their own podium and they do not have to allow others to seize it. Facebook was right and then caved. Bezos caved at the Post. Liberal minds think allowing a conservative on to lie is just being fair while conservatives do not allow that on their podiums. Claims of liberal bias is not true. Truth isn't liberal but conservatives want to falsely equate their lies to other's truth. Can't debate liars. Can't play fair when others are not playing fair. Don't want to lie? Fine. Just don't let others lie and aid them in repeating their lies. Which I see all day every day on supposed main stream liberal media. It will take millions of us not only writing letters but boycotting businesses that not only side with the dictator but those that don't stand up to him either. So far nobody has gotten that message. Nor do we have someone leading that message. Poland had Solidarity and Lech Walesa. They were fighting for rights. We are afraid to fight to keep them.
Watching union leaders crawl for Trump is beyond embarrassing. Solidarity means taking risks for working people, not groveling for scraps from power. There’s no strategy here, only cowardice and betrayal. The people doing the real work deserve better than this.
Trump's goal is intimidation, and the unions, media outlets, politicians, and most citizens are choosing to accept that, to be intimidated and to appease the constant abuse and bullying. Why? Fight the son of a bitch I say, but there is only safety in numbers, which makes it all the more disgusting to see labor leaders flush that potential power down the toilet. Again, why? This is your survival technique? Survive to be under someone else's thumb forever? Survive to not get anything you want and deserve? Rather than risk a fight, you will choose to live as a slave? Hey, if that suits you, go for it. Not me. I say fight. Let's fucking fight these fascist assholes. What is wrong with that? Who really thinks it is a good idea to kiss the ass of someone who openly wants to destroy you? That is just stupidity.
"Spit on your own and you can't do anything, but if you all spit together you can drown the bastards."
-Bob Crow
“An injury to one is an injury to all.” I must be deluded; I thought that was a foundational union principle.
Here’s the best compliment I can give you: since Chomsky’s stroke, you have filled a good bit of the resulting void with not only excellent analysis but also much-appreciated wit. Keep it up!
Exactly. Like people who voted for Trump the first time in '16, you can be forgiven if you learned your lesson and never voted for him again. So to our institutions: Now you know. There's no excuse for continuing to fall into this trap.
"I believe in the principle of union democracy, and I am not a member of any construction union. So if I were to call Sean McGarvey a sellout to the cause of labor and a man who will go down in history as a Vichy-esque potato-headed fool, that does not mean much. Construction workers are free to choose who speaks for them."
Union construction worker here to inform you that we don't choose these folks either. NABTU utilizes a convention-delegate system much like the building trades unions individually, and this system keeps rank and file members from being able to exert power within our unions. We have very minimal impact on what happens at the national/international level of our unions, let alone this cross-jurisdictional council of bullshit.
Unions need to stick together. They need a national organization.
Then they need to align with others the dictator is attacking.
Law Firms, colleges, LGBTQ and others.
He singles out one at a time and none are able to stand alone. We want them to but it isn't practical if their businesses are threatened. So they do what humans do. Cave.
When Reagan fired the air traffic controllers every union should have protested and went on strike. Everywhere. They missed an opportunity. They were not thinking about the next day, year or about what that would mean decades later.
When union truckers and union dock workers ship to states or companies that do not allow unions they hurt those workers but themselves too.
Look at Europe. Tesla won't unionize. Other union workers will boycott them. They can't get their mail delivered.
Will to power. Use it or lose it. The wealthy have it and want more. It's always been a battle between the herd and the privileged.
We can vote and choose poorly, often. Propaganda works and the many want to believe lies and many simply can't think through issues that matter like this. Until it is too late.
You make the good and obvious point at the end that the suck-ups don't work... it makes them/us suckers.
Its not acceptable to talk about Trump in terms of being mentally ill. The trope is you cannot actually assess someone's mental capacities without a thorough assessment by a certified psychologist or psychiatrist. Fair enough, but this guy has been in the public eye for 8 years, with countless interviews, speeches, documented behaviors both public and privat. We have a pretty thorough history of this man behavior going back decades. IMO the man is a card carrying personality disorder and malignant narcissist, but it isn't necessary to give him a diagnosis. Just look at the DSM V traits that define a Narcissistic PD. Keep in mine one only needs to meet 5 out or 9 traits to qualify. Trump IMO meet all 9. But officially he is not a PD. OK fine. But if it walks like duck quacks like a duck... So in trying to negotiate with such a person you have to understand he is in fact sick, disordered, his perception of the world is so distorted its hard for most people to imagine. He isn't logical, reasonable or rational. He has no vision, principles, or values( accept his own self-aggrandizement). He incapable of acting in good faith. To capitulate to such person is dangerous; to be easily manipulated is seen a weakness, you become prey. You don't gain respect because he respects nothing but power. Narcissists are some of the most dangerous people in the world, the prisons are full of them.
As much as it sounds like a bumper sticker triteness the fact is when against up against guys like Trump resistance and staying united is a must.
He is corrupt. Certainly a narcissist.
He has surrounded himself with others that are just trying to profit from being around power and will do whatever he wants. He will discard any that question his power and put an incompetent sycophant in their place.
Short term some will profit. Long term all of us are screwed. Even the Christians that support him don't realize he'd make Christianity illegal if he could when he doesn't need them. He doesn't care. The Church should have learned this when Hitler and Mussolini did not stick to their agreements.
Now, he can be manipulated. He can be flattered and distracted. Yet he can't be appeased.
Ask Pillow Man or Mayor Rudy. He never came back to help them. He discards people often. Wives tossed aside. He has no friends, just people he uses.
Canada has arms up. They need to align with the EU. Along with others and tell him to pound sand. Don't let him negotiate country by country. Japan could have aligned with Canada, Vietnam, Mexico, Australia, the EU, Ukraine, Brazil, and so many others. They caved to 15%. How long will that last? What else was he paid that we don't know about? Vietnam gave him the ok for a golf course.
Of course he keeps changing the playing field and moving the goalposts because his tariff strategy isn't going to work. It is bluff, bluster and a lot of ignorance.
He might get lots of bribes in the meantime. Tariffs are taxes passed on to us. So will those bribes.
never a good strategy!
They don't want you to know the food supply is tainted and millions are doing this.....
sfood1.trackdok.com/alew1m
Excellent! Thank-you!
Wow. That is some embarrassingly shameful shit.
Also, while I recognize that, as president, trump has an enormous of power to wield (thanks unitary executive ghouls!), he's still one of the most thin-skinned, cowardly, and all-around least intimidating people in public life. As such, it's even more embarrassing to watch people like the NABTU president grovel like this.
Also also, thank you for the shout out to Gaza Soup Kitchen and WCK. What's happening in Gaza is the greatest crime against humanity I've seen in my (not all that long but not all that short, either) life.
This came up in my feed a day after I set up a Substack on radical trade union strategy geared for the anglophone world. Thanks for this post.