Bromance

 

There’s a new statue on the east end of the National Mall for Washington DC residents and tourists to enjoy. The bronze statue shows two men frolicking, grinning wide and holding hands, each with a foot joyously kicked back.

“We celebrate the long-lasting bond between President Donald J. Trump and his ‘closest friend,’ Jeffrey Epstein,” a plaque at the bottom of the spray-painted bronze installation reads. A permit from the National Park Service will allow the statue to stay on the National Mall grounds through 8pm on Sunday.

The fabricator of the statue remains unknown, but it has artistic and thematic similarities to recent art pieces critical of the president.

Past sculptures on the National Mall that paid side-eyed tribute to Trump include a bronze pile of poop perched on a congressional desk to “honor” January 6th protestors, and a statue titled “Dictator Approved,” featuring a golden thumbs up crushing the Statue of Liberty’s crown and the base featuring approving quotes of Trump from Vladimir Putin, Jair Bolsonaro, Kim Jong-un and Viktor Orbán…

-The Guardian

"Donald Trump humiliates himself on the world stage with unhinged, insulting speech at the United Nations"

 

Every day is a new low with this president and his administration of unhinged lunatics, but America hit rock bottom on the world stage today with Donald Trump’s speech to the UN in which he told everyone that he was right about everything and that their countries are “going to hell” by not being monstrously inhumane in their approach to immigration.

“You’re destroying your countries. I can tell you I’m really good at this stuff. Your countries are going to hell.” Flitting from self-aggrandizing delusion to open, naked racism, Trump took credit for ending wars and trashing the UN for not solving wars themselves.

“I ended seven wars. And in all cases, they were raging with countless thousands of people being killed. This includes Cambodia and Thailand, Kosovo and Serbia, the Congo and Rwanda, a vicious violent war that was, Pakistan and India, Israel and Iran, Egypt and Ethiopia, and Armenia and Azerbaijan. It included all of them. No president or prime minister, and for that matter, no other country has ever done anything close to that. And I did it in just seven months."

“It's never happened before. There's never been anything like that. I'm very honored to have done it. It's too bad that I had to do these things instead of the United Nations doing them. And sadly, in all cases, the United Nations did not even try to help in any of them. I ended seven wars, dealt with the leaders of each and every one of these countries, and never even received a phone call from the United Nations offering to help in finalizing the deal.”

“All I got from the United Nations was an escalator that, on the way up, stopped right in the middle. If the First Lady wasn't in great shape, she would have fallen. But she's in great shape. We're both in good shape. We're both still.

And then a teleprompter that didn't work. These are the two things I got from the United Nations, a bad escalator and a bad teleprompter. Thank you very much. And by the way, it's working now. Thank you. I think I should just do it the other way. It's easier. Thank you very much.”

As if that wasn’t bad enough, Trump called climate change the “biggest con job ever perpetrated on the world” and said, “the entire globalist concept of asking successful industrialized nations to inflict pain on themselves and radically disrupt their entire societies must be rejected completely and totally, and it must be immediate.”

The most humiliating part, however, was him bragging…about his hats. “During the campaign they had a hat, the best-selling hat ‘Trump was right about everything,’” he told the gathered world leaders while discussing climate change. “And I don’t say that in a bragging way but it’s true. I’ve been right about everything.”

He’s been right about nothing. A senior foreign diplomat posted at the UN texted a Washington Post reporter and said: "This man is stark, raving mad. Do Americans do not see how embarrassing this is?" Yeah, we do.

-Occupy Democrats

"Donald Trump has, allegedly, found 'the answer to autism': Tylenol"/"Trump administration has taken steps to undermine pregnant women’s access to Covid vaccines and antidepressants"

 

On Monday, Trump announced that pregnant women should dramatically limit their use of acetaminophen, known by the brand name Tylenol or internationally as paracetamol, because, he claimed, it raises the risk of autism.

This claim is not supported by science. Research into links between acetaminophen use during pregnancy and autism have not proved a causal relationship, while medical experts widely agree that growing diagnoses of autism cannot be traced back to a singular cause.

Acetaminophen can be used to alleviate fever and pain during pregnancy. Leaving those conditions untreated can carry “significant maternal and infant health risks”, according to a statement from the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine. Untreated fevers, for example, can lead to miscarriage, birth defects and premature births.

Trump’s announcement was a triumph for health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, who has a track record of making unproven claims about autism and autistic people. Yet it was also the latest move in another emerging campaign within the Trump administration: one that seeks to valorize “natural” pregnancy and motherhood – that is, pregnancy and motherhood without proven medical interventions – to the point where it can corrode women’s health and safety.

Over the past several months, the Trump administration has taken steps to undermine pregnant women’s access to Covid vaccines and antidepressants. These steps have been in defiance of widespread agreement among medical experts that the benefits of these therapeutics tend to outweigh the risks.

In May, Kennedy, who has long questioned the safety of vaccines, said that he “couldn’t be more pleased to announce” that the CDC would no longer recommend that healthy pregnant women get vaccinated against Covid.

Then, over the summer, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) hosted a panel about antidepressant use during pregnancy. Predominantly staffed with people who have a history of antidepressant skepticism or who have been consultants in litigation over antidepressants, the panel heavily emphasized the risks of taking antidepressants during pregnancy. One of the panelists, a psychologist named Roger McFillin, said that depression “has devolved into an umbrella term” and “doesn’t even have meaning any more”.

“Are women just naturally experiencing their emotions more intensely?” he asked. “Those are gifts. They’re not symptoms of a disease.”

They very well may be symptoms of a disease. Mental health conditions contribute to almost a third of all pregnancy-related deaths in the US, according to a 2025 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Of deaths involving mental health struggles, roughly a third were suicides.

Covid, too, endangers women’s lives – and those of their babies. A 2021 study of 2,100 pregnant women around the world found that women who contracted Covid during pregnancy were 20 times more likely to die compared to those that did not catch the virus. More than 11% of women who contracted Covid also had their babies test positive for Covid.

While the Trump administration casts doubt on whether women should use life-saving remedies to protect themselves against Covid and depression, Republicans have in recent months moved to embrace at least one kind of intervention: “restorative reproductive medicine” (RRM), a constellation of therapies that purport to “restore” individuals’ “natural” fertility without resorting to in vitro fertilization (IVF).

Advocates of RRM say they are working to present women with more options, but pre-eminent medical groups such as the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Society for Reproductive Medicine say that there is little evidence that RRM techniques work – and that it is effectively “a pseudonym for a basic infertility evaluation”, as one reproductive endocrinologist told the Guardian this summer.

These moves – the attacks on pregnant women’s access to Tylenol, to Covid vaccines, to antidepressants; the insistence that women should get pregnant without IVF – all adhere to a basic fallacy known as “the appeal to nature”, or the idea that something that comes from the earth is better than anything human-made.

This idea powers much of the “Make America Healthy Again” movement, of which Kennedy is effectively the czar. It is also patently false.

There are reasons why you are not supposed to drink unpasteurized, or “raw”, milk. (They’re called campylobacter, cryptosporidium, E coli, listeria, brucella, and salmonella.) And there are reasons why a small cut or a stubbed toe is no longer a death sentence. (They’re called antibiotics.)

When combined with pregnancy, the illogic of the appeal to nature is stretched even further, folding in on itself like Laffy Taffy. Not only should pregnancy – and the women who do it – be handled as “naturally” as possible, but pregnancy and motherhood are themselves women’s natural states.

Authoritarian governments throughout history have sought to convince their people that this is true, in order to subjugate women and to ensure that women are reliable sources of reproduction. That’s why the Trump administration’s drive to diminish pregnant women’s access to Tylenol can’t be divorced from, say, its pronatalist interest in encouraging women to have more babies through $5,000 “baby bonuses”.

Ultimately, all this may lead to fewer options and more pain for women – including those who find parenthood fulfilling, those who are uninterested in it, and those who are everywhere in between. In fact, without Tylenol, that pain may become quite literal.

“All this pressure to become a mother and be a mother is emerging politically, but you’re not supposed to need any help or support,” the journalist Amy Larocca, author of the book How to Be Well: Navigating Our Self-Care Epidemic, One Dubious Cure at a Time, said in an interview earlier this year. “You’re supposed to be able to manage it all on your own and [have] no maternity leave, no medical care, no support.”

She added: “There’s a lot of shaming of women who need help and support.”

-Carter Sherman, The Guardian

Lawmakers Demand Answers Over Alleged $50,000 Bribe of Trump Border Czar Tom Homan

 

Accusations of supreme corruption, demands for an investigation, and calls for impeachment proceedings for several high-level Trump administration officials erupted on Saturday after it was reported that a Justice Department probe into Tom Homan, who serves as President Donald Trump’s border czar, was dropped despite documented evidence he accepted a bribe of $50,000 delivered in a bag by undercover FBI agents as part of a sting operation.

Citing multiple people “familiar with the probe,” a review of internal documents, MSNBC was the first to report that during “an undercover operation last year, the FBI recorded Tom Homan [...] accepting $50,000 in cash after indicating he could help the agents—who were posing as business executives—win government contracts in a second Trump administration.”

The New York Times, which also spoke to people familiar with the case, reported that the “cash payment, which was made inside a bag from the food chain Cava, grew out of a long-running counterintelligence investigation that had not been targeting Mr. Homan,” and that the encounter, as MSNBC also reported, was recorded. The Times indicates that the recording was audio, while MSNBC‘s version of the evidence suggests that video footage exists.

“Americans deserve disclosure of evidence showing top DHS official Homan accepting a bag full of $50,000 in cash We need to know why the investigation was dropped—all the facts and evidence.” —Sen. Richard Blumenthal

The case implicates both FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney Pam Bondi, who heads the Justice Department. Both were appointed by Trump and are deeply loyal to him politically.

MSNBC reports:

It’s unclear what reasons FBI and Justice Department officials gave for shutting down the investigation. But a Trump Justice Department appointee called the case a “deep state” probe in early 2025 and no further investigative steps were taken, the sources say. On Sept. 20, 2024, with hidden cameras recording the scene at a meeting spot in Texas, Homan accepted $50,000 in bills, according to an internal summary of the case and sources.

The federal investigation was launched in western Texas in the summer of 2024 after a subject in a separate investigation claimed Homan was soliciting payments in exchange for awarding contracts should Trump win the presidential election, according to an internal Justice Department summary of the probe reviewed by MSNBC and people familiar with the case.

The U.S. Attorney’s office in the Western District of Texas, working with the FBI, asked the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section to join its ongoing probe “into the Border Czar and former Acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Tom Homan and others based on evidence of payment from FBI undercover agents in exchange for facilitating future contracts related to border enforcement.”

The revelations prompted Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) to declare that Trump’s second term is the “most corrupt administration we have ever seen.” Matt Duss, executive vice-president at the Center for International Policy, asked: “Seriously though, has anyone ever been handed $50,000 cash in a paper bag for something legit?”

While that’s not a legal standard, news of the dropped case against Homan, given his central role in Trump’s ramped-up attacks on migrants and communities nationwide, sparked an array of outrage, many questions, and a demand for more answers from the Justice Department.

“Who’s the illegal now, Tom Homan?” asked Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).

“Tom Homan should be fired immediately and charged,” said Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.). “Kash Patel should be suspended pending impeachment proceedings, and anyone who aided in this cover-up should be held accountable. Homan’s relationship with GEO Group, who own Delaney Hall in Newark, should be thoroughly investigated, and the facility closed pending that investigation. The amount of corruption in this administration is endless.”

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) had a similar reaction. “Corruption that’s stunning even for this administration,” Markey said. “Homan and anyone who knew and covered this up must resign.”

As the Times reporting notes, the “episode raises questions about whether the administration has sought to shield one of its own officials from legal consequences, and whether Mr. Homan’s actions were considered by the White House when he was appointed to his government role.” In response to questions from MSNBC and the Times, Trump officials downplayed the seriousness of the case. They said that after it was investigated, the bribery allegations did not stand up.

White House Deputy Press Secretary Abigail Jackson told MSNBC the probe that led to the recording of Homan was a “blatantly political investigation.” However, it’s clear from the reporting that the original investigation was not targeting Homan at all.

In a joint statement issued Saturday, Patel and Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, said the investigation “was subjected to a full review by F.B.I. agents and Justice Department prosecutors. They found no credible evidence of any criminal wrongdoing.” That hardly satisfied Democrats in Congress, who said it’s clear the public has a right to know every detail about what occurred and why the case was dropped.

“Release the tapes—Americans deserve disclosure of evidence showing top DHS official Homan accepting a bag full of $50,000 in cash,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). “We need to know why the investigation was dropped—all the facts and evidence.”

-Jon Queally is managing editor of Common Dreams.

 

From the Bottom of a Deep Well by Jeff Price

 

I was a regular church attendee, a trustee, and even youth pastor for a short time. My wife, Patricia, taught Sunday school for several years. I did not find God there; nor did I find any redeeming value aside from a collection of good and well-intended people. I would categorize my faith as a well-researched humanist who enjoys debating Christian pastors as they ask for money with which they will likely remodel their suburban kitchens. 

Faith is my favorite subject, and despite incredible effort to be someone who has something of substance to contribute to such conversations, I cannot offer much intellectual debate on the existence or nonexistence of a creator, for I begin with a simple acceptance: given infinite time and all information, humankind likely does not have the capacity to truly comprehend the universe. It is akin to asking our beloved dog not merely to recite poetry, but to craft it—for there are thresholds of understanding that may always lie beyond us.

I have attempted to study many faith traditions, candidly hoping to find meaning there. What struck me most was not their differences, but their echoes. Each tradition seems to claim originality, yet the recurrence suggests either the shared longings of human consciousness or perhaps the repeated whisper of something beyond ourselves, trying to be heard.

Consider, for example, the story of Jesus: a miraculous birth under a star, a herald of peace, a teacher of compassion, who suffers and is ultimately sacrificed. Yet, this story is not wholly unique. Across the world’s myths and religions, one finds strikingly similar figures: divine children born under signs in the heavens, teachers who embody virtue, and martyrs who suffer for the sake of humanity.  Such parallels may point to common borrowing, or they may signal the deep archetypes that human beings have always reached for when trying to tell the story of goodness, redemption, and hope.

One could argue this repetition reveals the fraud in all of them—that religions simply borrow from one another. But one could just as readily argue those overlaps point toward a reality so undeniable that it surfaces in every human attempt to name it.

I find myself caught between those poles and capable of arguing either side compellingly, but believing neither. I am convinced faith is an explanation for some facet of the physical universe that is in harmony with science, but which we are unable to comprehend. While humankind arrogantly claims mastery of science, we look at the sky from the bottom of a deep well. 

I have also come to believe that organized religion, in its institutional form, is too often an overt fraud—an apparatus of control, a tool to make good people feel bad. The Pulitzer Prize winning poet Stephen Dunn captured it well with, "we knew what art was up, what ancient craft."

And yet, if one chooses carefully among its texts, there are fragments of wisdom, like pages of a scattered owner’s manual for life. There is self-help there, guidance for the bewildered, consolation for the grieving. Certain ideals—compassion, justice, sacrifice, mutual reverence—appear across cultures, across centuries, and across sacred texts.

For example, the historical record clearly establishes Jesus of Nazareth as a real figure, attested not only in Christian texts but also in the writings of fastidious Roman historians such as Josephus and Tacitus—leaders of a movement so disruptive it threatened Roman authority and culminated in his execution under Pontius Pilate. The real question is this: is it more extraordinary that he was merely a man whose life and words reshaped civilization, or that he was deemed the Son of God? 

I would argue that he was a mortal, a revolutionary whose parabolic teachings about love, mercy, and justice unsettled both empire and orthodoxy. He suggested that individuals could have their own relationship with the divine, absent the dictates of an organized church and free from the control of the state.

He was a laborer from a remote province, bearing the most common male name of his time, could articulate a vision of love and unity that still resonates across the world is remarkable indeed. The tragedy is that his message, which once invited freedom and solidarity, has too often been recast as a tool of control and division.

His message was one of unity across classes, calling rich and poor, Jew and Gentile, man and woman alike into a common humanity. It is not difficult to see why such an idea was dangerous to the Roman Empire. If he were the Son of God, it would be no surprise that we are still speaking of him today.  

Religious Texts

Much of what’s quoted as ‘anti-gay’ scripture is a translation error, either innocently or to support bigotry. The overwhelming proportion of Christians seem to intuitively recognize this without having factual knowledge. 

The Hebrew Qedeshim—often rendered ‘sodomites’—refers to male temple prostitution and coerces under certain power dynamics (Deut 23:17; 1 Kgs 14:24; etc.), not the people of Sodom or a sexual orientation. Genesis 19 and its parallel in Judges 19 condemn violent domination (gang rape), while Ezekiel 16 names Sodom’s sins as pride, cruelty, and neglect of the poor.

In the New Testament, Malakoi and Arsenokoitai likely target exploitative systems common in the Greco-Roman world—pederasty and sex with slaves—rather than consenting adult same-sex relationships. Read in context, these texts confront sexual coercion and commerce, not same-sex interactions among consenting adults. This is merely one of many modern perversions. 

In exploring these texts, I have found much that is lost in translation. There are also clear examples of hate, violence, slavery, and indefensible evil which are rampant in historical culture.

To study the New Testament in Greek, the Torah and Talmud in Hebrew, the Qur’an in Arabic, or the Upanishads in Sanskrit is to encounter shades of meaning that our modern languages only dimly render. I have read even further afield—the I Ching, the Sutrakritanga, the Pavitra [Hindi] Bible, and countless others—sometimes wrestling with nuanced translations in languages I barely understand. 

The deeper I studied the religions of humankind, the more I realize how little we truly know. Language itself becomes both a window and a wall, describing thought while also bounding it. I still routinely refer to churches as the place where good people are meant to feel bad. The curse of humans developing language is that we cannot process what we cannot shape into words, and so our inquiry into the divine is hobbled before it even begins.

The more I researched, the more religion revealed itself as a mechanism to control populations, to manipulate behavior, and to provide comfort in the face of the unexplainable. And yet, alongside these institutional flaws, the texts also point to something undeniable: that human existence cannot be fully explained.

I have come to believe that one need not be a person of faith to study religious texts and find value in them. Indeed, it is beautiful across time, language, culture, philosophy, and tradition where we find certain universal truths echo with near-perfect resonance.

There is beauty in religious texts, where surviving positive lessons consistently reemerges. I believe there are traits imprinted on humankind and on nature itself, laws written deeper than statute or creed. When we live in harmony with them, we flourish. Some call this ‘the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God.’ I hear more of Thoreau in it, though: the transcendentalist’s belief that truth reveals itself when we strip away the noise of society and walk quietly into the woods.

The “Golden Rule” is perhaps the clearest example: ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ (Matthew 7:12, Christianity); ‘What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor’ (Talmud Shabbat 31a, Judaism); ‘A man should wander about treating all creatures as he himself would be treated’ (Sutrakritanga 1.11.33, Jainism). Whether attributed to God, Confucius, Muhammad, Jesus, or the Buddha, the concept and even the words are nearly identical.

I tend to believe there is something beyond what we know, and that life is but one state of existence like gas, liquid, or solid, a phase in a continuum we cannot yet measure. Perhaps this is an overly idealistic hope, but it persists in me nonetheless. I concluded as a young man, that effort has executed so much hope I had.

Consider the phrase “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” in the Declaration of Independence reflects a long intellectual tradition stretching from ancient philosophy to the Enlightenment. Moreover, the Stoics, especially Cicero, argued that natural law was universal, eternal, and discoverable by reason: “True law is right reason in agreement with nature.” Medieval thinkers like Thomas Aquinas linked this to divine order, teaching that natural law was humanity’s rational participation in God’s eternal law.

Enlightenment writers, especially John Locke, reframed natural law into natural rights—life, liberty, and property—arguing that governments exist to protect these rights and may be justly overthrown if they fail. William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England, widely read by the founders, reinforced that natural law was, “dictated by God himself,” and was superior to any human law and invalidated contrary statutes.

When Jefferson and his peers declared independence, they drew on their lineage to justify their cause not as rebellion but as an appeal to a higher law, binding on all nations and rulers, where reason (“Nature”) and divine authority (“Nature’s God”) together affirmed the colonies’ right to be free. This was clever as Blackstone was the King of England's legal counsel. They were revolutionaries that were also heading against treasonous trials in England. 

While I do not see God, at least in the traditional sense of a personified supreme deity, as the source of natural law, I do see it. When I read the works of historical thought leaders like Socrates, Plato, Cicero, Aquinas, Locke, Jesus of Nazareth, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Blackstone, I hear a recurring theme—that there exists a moral order higher than any government, a law written into nature and discernible by reason, which insists on the dignity of human beings and the duty to live justly in accordance with a naturally instilled code. For that reason, I am not a believer in absolute moral relativism.

While culture should indeed evolve, absolute relativism permits devolution, as it denies the anchoring principles that prevent society from sliding backward. Slavery, for example, must never be tolerated again, nor should practices like genocide, systemic oppression, or the subjugation of women—wrongs that some cultures once accepted as normal but which violate the deeper moral law that binds us all.

The single greatest lesson I have taken from twenty-five years of exploring these traditions is remarkably simple: kindness to others is a gift you ultimately give to yourself. It sustains, heals, and deepens our shared humanity.

-Jeff Price

Political Affiliations and Free Speech by Jeff Price

 

The only thing one should take from a person’s political affiliation is an indication that they are—often innocently—somewhere in a funnel of radicalization. The reality is that political affiliation is far less a matter of enlightened choice than it is the predictable outcome of circumstances. For most, it is determined not by careful study of philosophy or policy, but by geography, the media ecosystem to which they are exposed, and the peer networks in which they live. 

People are, in large measure, receptacles of the narratives that surround them. That is why the vast majority of Americans remain Democrats or Republicans. If political identity were truly the product of independent enlightenment, why do so few align with the Libertarian, Green, or Constitution parties? Why not with movements that have shaped other nations—the Labour Party in the United Kingdom, the Christian Democrats in Germany, or the Liberal Democratic Party in Japan? Why not with the ANC in South Africa, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in Mexico, or the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India?

For that matter, why not with historical forces that once commanded enormous loyalty: the Whigs, the Federalists, or the Bull Moose Progressives? The answer is that affiliation reflects conditioning, not epiphany. Political identity is overwhelmingly inherited from one’s environment, rather than chosen in a moment of sudden intellectual awakening.

When I hear someone say they do not want to hear a conflicting opinion, what I truly hear is that they do not want free choice at all. They prefer to continue operating as they were programmed, like a train fixed to its track, moving only where the rails laid by others allow.

Both major parties today indoctrinate more than they inform. This is not accidental. Statistical calculus shows that energizing turnout and generating contributions matter more to electoral outcomes than persuading moderates or undecided voters. As a result, citizens are fed extreme narratives designed not to inform but to inflame. Today, what should be a public square resembles a coliseum, where partisans cheer as their champions pummel caricatures of the other side, while objective truth lies trampled in the dust.

Because of this, I have chosen to be a non-participant—a conscientious objector of sorts—in the metaphorical, and too often literal, combat of politics. I have traded the right to vote for the freedom to remain fiercely independent. Just as every sport requires impartial referees, society too needs independent voices to limit the damage caused by political bloodsport.

I am not, and never have been, a defender of Donald Trump. In fact, I can say unequivocally that it would be difficult for me to care less about him individually. He has proposed some policies I find ludicrous and others I find sensible; the same could be said of President Biden and President Obama. I care neither to attack nor to defend any of them. What I do care about is the troubling notion that merely holding a different opinion about Trump might be deemed so offensive that it prevents engagement. That impulse is dangerous. It is, both collectively and individually, our duty to resist such intolerance.

Much has been said after the assassination of Charlie Kirk about free speech. Let us remember that speech we find unjust or inhumane should not be suppressed but spotlighted, for exposure to the light hastens its undoing. Humanity has a way of testing, challenging, and ultimately discarding falsehood. This is the deeper calculus of the universe: intellect, wisdom, knowledge, and benevolence ultimately prevail, while cruelty and ignorance collapse under their own weight.

I have long been critical of zealots on all sides who seem to care more about hating one another in support party affiliation than about loving their country and their fellow human beings, whether that hatred is directed toward "blue" or "red."

At present, we inhabit a nation of spiteful tribalists hurling rhetorical spears. Few take the time to study policy in depth. Rarely does one hear authentic debate about real problems and solutions. Political discourse has devolved into a contest of ascribing the worst motives and traits to the opposition. Such behavior has no value; it requires no talent, no discipline, no work. It produces only harm. 

I have long said that Democratic Party and Republic Party have evolved to be hate groups and that only violence will result. We have seen many examples in recent years confirming that this is the course. I predict we will see many more.  

I fear for the world we are shaping for future generations: a world of uncited assertions, bold opinions without substance, and violence from those unable to cope with beliefs not their own. I see a world ahead, where informed hypotheses cannot be safely tested without reprisal and, ultimately, a world of individuals so confident in their opinions, the question mark is absent from their written language.

-Jeff Price

"The designation of the amorphous group antifa as a terrorist organization allows the state to brand all dissidents as supporters of antifa and prosecute them as terrorists" -Chris Hedges

 

Trump’s designation of the amorphous group antifa, which has no formal organization or structure, as a terrorist organization permits the state to charge us all as terrorists. The point is not to go after members of antifa, short for anti-fascist. It is to go after the last vestiges of dissent. When Barack Obama oversaw the coordinated national campaign to shut down the Occupy encampments, antifa -- so named because they dress in black, obscure their faces, move as a unified mass and seek physical confrontations with police – was the excuse.

"I am pleased to inform our many U.S.A. Patriots that I am designating ANTIFA, A SICK, DANGEROUS, RADICAL LEFT DISASTER, AS A MAJOR TERRORIST ORGANIZATION," the president wrote in a Truth Social post. "I will also be strongly recommending that those funding ANTIFA be thoroughly investigated in accordance with the highest legal standards and practices. Thank you for your attention to this matter!"

I have no love for antifa. The feeling is mutual. I was a fierce opponent of the Black Bloc anarchists who identified with antifa. They embedded themselves in Occupy encampments and refused to take part in the collective decision making. They carried out property destruction and initiated clashes with the police. Occupy activists were antifa’s human shields. I wrote that antifa was “a gift from heaven to the security and surveillance state.”

David Graeber, whose work I respect, wrote an open letter criticizing my position.

I was doxed. My lectures and events, which received phone threats forcing venues to hire private security, including bodyguards, were picketed by men dressed in black, their faces were covered by black bandanas. They all carried the same sign, no matter which city I was in, that read: “Fuck You Chris Hedges.” During a debate with an anarchist supporter of antifa in New York City, several dozen black-clad men in the audience jeered and interrupted me, often yelling out sarcastically “amen.”

The state effectively used antifa -- I am certain antifa was heavily infiltrated with agents provocateurs -- to shut all of us down. The corporate state feared the broad appeal of the Occupy movement, including to those within the systems of power. The movement was targeted because it articulated a truth about our economic and political system that cut across political and cultural lines.

Antifa, let me be clear, is not a terrorist organization. It may confuse acts of petty vandalism and a repellent cynicism with revolution, but its designation as a terrorist organization has no legal justification.

Antifa sees any group that seeks to rebuild social structures, especially through nonviolent acts of civil disobedience, as the enemy. They oppose all organized movements, which only ensures their own powerlessness. They are not only obstructionist, but obstructionist to those of us who are also trying to resist. They dismiss anyone who lacks their ideological purity. It does not matter if individuals are part of union organizing, workers’ and populist movements or radical intellectuals and environmental activists. These anarchists are an example of what Theodore Roszak in “The Making of a Counter Culture” called the “progressive adolescentization” of the American left.

John Zerzan, one of the principal ideologues of the Black Bloc movement in the United States, defended “Industrial Society and Its Future,” the rambling manifesto by Theodore Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber, although he did not endorse Kaczynski’s bombings. Zerzan dismisses a long list of supposed “sellouts” starting with Noam Chomsky and including myself.

Black Bloc activists in cities such as Oakland smashed the windows of stores and looted them. It was not a strategic, moral or tactical act. It was done for the sake of destruction. Random acts of violence, looting and vandalism are justified, in the jargon of the movement, as components of “feral” or “spontaneous insurrection.” 

These acts, the movement argues, can never be organized. Organization, in the thinking of the movement, implies hierarchy, which must always be opposed. There can be no restraints on “feral” or “spontaneous” acts of insurrection. Whoever gets hurt gets hurt. Whatever gets destroyed gets destroyed.

“The Black Bloc movement is infected with a deeply disturbing hypermasculinity,” I wrote. “This hypermasculinity, I expect, is its primary appeal. It taps into the lust that lurks within us to destroy, not only things but human beings. It offers the godlike power that comes with mob violence. Marching as a uniformed mass, all dressed in black to become part of an anonymous bloc, faces covered, temporarily overcomes alienation, feelings of inadequacy, powerlessness and loneliness. It imparts to those in the mob a sense of comradeship. It permits an inchoate rage to be unleashed on any target. Pity, compassion and tenderness are banished for the intoxication of power. It is the same sickness that fuels the swarms of police who pepper-spray and beat peaceful demonstrators. It is the sickness of soldiers in war. It turns human beings into beasts.”

But while I oppose antifa, I do not blame them for the state’s response. If it was not antifa it would be some other group. Our rapidly consolidating police state will use any mechanism to silence us. It actually welcomes violence. 

Confrontational tactics and destruction of property justify draconian forms of control and frighten the wider population, driving them away from any resistance movement. It needs antifa or a group like it. Once a resistance movement is successfully smeared as a flag-burning, rock-throwing, angry mob — which those in the Trump administration are working hard to do — we are finished. If we become isolated, we can be crushed.

“Nonviolent movements, on some level, embrace police brutality,” I wrote. “The continuing attempt by the state to crush peaceful protesters who call for simple acts of justice delegitimizes the power elite. It prompts a passive population to respond. It brings some within the structures of power to our side and creates internal divisions that will lead to paralysis within the network of authority. Martin Luther King kept holding marches in Birmingham because he knew Public Safety Commissioner ‘Bull’ Connor was a thug who would overreact.”

“The explosive rise of the Occupy Wall Street movement came when a few women, trapped behind orange mesh netting, were pepper-sprayed by NYPD Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna,” I went on. “The violence and cruelty of the state were exposed. And the Occupy movement, through its steadfast refusal to respond to police provocation, resonated across the country. Losing this moral authority, this ability to show through nonviolent protest the corruption and decadence of the corporate state, would be crippling to the movement. It would reduce us to the moral degradation of our oppressors. And that is what our oppressors want.”

I saw how antifa was weaponized to break the Occupy movement. Now it is being weaponized to throttle any resistance, no matter how tepid and benign.

This justification for widespread repression is absurdist theater, characterized by fictions, including the supposed “Red-Green” alliance of Islamists and the “radical left.” Stephen Miller, Trump’s top policy adviser, insists there was an “organized campaign” behind the assassination of Charlie Kirk, whose martyrdom has turbocharged state repression. Any Trump opponent, including billionaire financier George Soros and his Open Society Foundations, will soon be caught in the net.

We are all antifa now.

 -Chris Hedges

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