Category: Terror

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The Dark Quarter — With winter comes dark and scary

The Dark Quarter

With winter comes dark and scary

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

October 31st 2026

There’s a period on the Celtic calendar, beginning around November 4th (Samhain) and ending around February 3rd (Imbolc) that I think of as “the dark quarter.” Days are at their shortest on average in that period, culminating in the winter solstice.

In the North, the sun is a distant memory, and even here in more temperate climes, the solar panels exist only to shield the roof from rain and snow. For most people it’s a time of getting up in chilly dark mornings and going to bed long after the sun has set. It’s a merciless time for people with seasonal affective disorder. Even dogs get depressed.

For those of us who are early risers and / or have cats in the house, reverting to standard time gives some respite; for myself, sunrise today according to my dumb clock, is 7:40 AM. Tomorrow’s sunrise will be at 6:41 AM. Sunrise’s latest morning here is January 4th, at 7:34 AM. So while the universe may have other ideas, our political latest morning of the year was today. Yuck.

If we were to stay on permanent Daylight Savings Time like Trump wants, sunrise in early January would be well after 8:30 AM. The further north you go the worse it gets until you reach the Arctic circle, at which point it’s moot what your clock thinks; the sun has had enough of this shit and is in hibernation.

While the biannual time change takes the edge of the diurnal vagueries caused by our axial tilt (yes, MAGAts, it really is a globe and it really goes around the sun!) the medical and economic costs of the time change are manifest. By now you might have guessed that I’m not a fan of permanent Daylight Savings Time, but in fairness, being on Standard Time permanently has its own drawbacks. The long summer evenings would be an hour shorter, and the earliest sunrises would be around 4:35 AM, a time most people associate with baker’s hours or the dog throwing up in the kitchen.

That said, it’s time for a clumsy and jarring segue; America is about to enter its own darkest quarter. (OK, so “dog throwing up in the kitchen” is at least a transitional phrase!). The election will be November 3rd, and if the polls are to be believed, Republicans will be swept from power in the House, and in all likelihood, the Senate. In normal times, that would occasion a sigh of relief and a return to the liberal standards that made the United States the envy of the world.

But these aren’t normal times. The President is a madman propped up and succored by some of the vilest capitalistic fascists this side of the Third Reich. Trump won’t accept the results of the election. We can say that much for certain. And the people behind him, including most of his cabinet along with billionaires such as Elon Musk won’t mind sacrificing as many of us as it takes in order to secure power.

Rumors are rife, of course. Among the ones I’ve heard this week: he plans a massive escalation of military action, up to and including nuking Tehran, or conducting a lightning invasion of Greenland. He will contest any and all election results that result in election losses, including the ridiculous “Don Simpsons” case in Alaska. He may try to seize ballots. There’s a chance he’ll deploy ICE and even the military to voting polling places. He may order his dog Mike Johnson to not allow the new Congress to convene. He may unilaterally implement policies ruinous to the United States and its people, but highly profitable for himself. He might simply flee to Russia armed with America’s remaining military and diplomatic secrets, a down payment on a lush dacha. He may try to instigate a major insurrection and declare martial law. Any and all of these possibilities are in the air, and should not be simply dismissed.

And yes, none of them may come to pass, and I’ll be very happy if that happens. But I’m not going to pretend they can’t happen, and of course those are only the “known unknowns”.

We do know that the drunken and incompetent Pete Hegseth has fired most of America’s military leadership, including a fresh round just this week. We know that he has had anti-aircraft batteries installed around Mar-a-Lago, although with drones capable of reaching Florida across the Atlantic or anywhere in North America, that’s probably a sensible precaution. We know that some of the most damaging elements of the “One Big Beautiful Bill” will come into effect, ruining millions of lives in America. And it’s not just rumor to say that he is desperate and probably frightened; it’s been obvious from his ongoing temper tantrums at his rallies and the disturbing increase of neurological tics and twitches and lack of physical and emotional control that are disturbing signs of dementia.

The dark quarter will end in January when the new Congress is seated, and if we haven’t stumbled into the world’s first for-profit world war, or had the military seize state capitols. Unless Trump has fled the country or died (my favorite rumor since it involves the least bloodshed and trauma) danger will remain. For a balanced evaluation of these rumors, visit today’s Guardian.

And of course the billionaire class will still be there, and still present its own grave danger to America. Polls suggest that they have spent enough money to defeat the billionaire tax that is on the California budget, and I will say this: no people who believe the ultra-wealthy should be coddled and obeyed can ever call themselves ‘free’. At best, they are vassals. Jefferson and Madison recognized the danger of such an aristocratic class. Jefferson even urged Madison to include in the Constitution a 100% Estate tax, arguing that “land should belong, in usufruct, to the living.” After Trump is gone, the billionaires will remain, a far more intelligent and subtle enemy.

But for now, let’s sigh and change our clocks, and hope we’re all around at the far end of our darkest quarter.

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Aprés le deluge — As Trump falls, we must rise

Aprés le deluge

As Trump falls, we must rise

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

October 25th, 2026

David Brin wrote to some unknown person on Facebook yesterday: I have got to repost this utter MALARKEY! If you issue a sanctimonious yowl like this one, while knowing nothing at all about how hard Bernie+AOC+Liz worked WITH Pelosi+Biden+Schomer in 2021-22… the one year in the last 20 when democrats had power, then all you are is a self-righteous ignoramus.

These are strong, smart people, fighting for us daily and WE LET THEM DOWN, not the other way around!

Try actually knowing something before yowling your smarmy righteous trap, hm? You could start here https://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2019/08/five-devastating-rebuttals-to-use-with.html

Am I pleased with them? Not entirely. They are horrible tacticians. Are YOU better?

Try out my own proposed Newer Deal tactics and reforms

https://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2025/11/the-contract-part-three-aggressive.html

Me: Do you propose we just forgive and forget the Trump administration?

Brin: You can go to hell. Masturbatory sanctimony is not restricted to MAGA. I have worked harder and more effectively against the madness on any given day than you have in the last YEAR and yet you are SO righteous! Whatever. If you are not a Kremlin bot you might as well be.

Me: In these times, telling me to go to hell is probably superfluous. You’re a better writer than that. But it’s a legitimate question: should we just forgive and forget?

OK, for anyone who thought the exchange is a bit startling, Brin and I go back a decade, and we’ve always had a contentious relationship. I suspect he thinks of me as some wet-behind-the-ears college sophomore with a single class in polisci, and he in the role of the irascible and hidebound professor from The Practice Effect.

The thing about Brin is he likes to challenge people to think. That why he does what he does for a living, and he’s very good at it. I’ve been reading him for 40 years, and a fair chuck of my philosophy grew from his observations. He hasn’t posted a reply as of now, but anything beyond “I’m David Brin and you’re not” I’ll be sure to include.

So: the issue was whether we should forgive and forget with the Trump regime. My answer in a nutshell is “Forgive? Sometimes. Forget? Never. But this regime must go.”

It’s the day after the election, and despite Trump and Elon’s best efforts, the Dems have gained 40 seats in the House and six seats in the Senate (which is what the conservative reading of the polls suggests.). They have clear working majorities in both houses. The notion of Trump wielding unchallenged and nearly absolute authority has ended, and an era has effectively ended.

Now, it may be amusing to consider little old ladies sitting around knitting while the guillotines chop, chop, chop, but remember—it took France decades just to achieve the hideously poor standard of living it had before the revolution, and the bloodshed didn’t stop with les aristos. Revolutions may be stirring, but are always a shit idea. Even the American revolution, lauded as a “successful revolution” involved at least one subsequent government collapse, widespread popular revolts, and about 40 years before living standards for the plebs reached the levels they enjoyed under the oppressive English. I’m not praising the blood and horror and terror; I’m just pointing out that even without them, revolutions never work out well for at least decades. So let’s put post-revolutionary bloodbaths on the back burner, OK?

The flip side is excessive forgiveness. People point to the Civil War and Reconstruction as a gleaming example of how “With malice toward none, with charity for all,” bound up the nation’s wounds. But Lincoln got shot, and his successor, a southern Democrat, helped to dismantled the social progressive ideas that might have actually reformed the South, and as a result, we’re still fighting that fucking war in myriad ways.

Ford’s pardon of Nixon was a body blow to America: rather than heal, it grievously hurt the long-held belief that government could always be held accountable, and the Republicans learned they Could Get Away With It. Treason was already on their minds:

Nixon’s subversion of the Paris peace talks got him elected and extended the war two more years to no gain. He didn’t pay for that.

Reagan subverted negotiations over the hostage crisis, arranging with gleeful Iranian ayatollahs to delay the release of the hostages until after the election. He paid no price.

Reagan traded arms for hostages, and some of those arms led to the massacre of over 200 Marines in Beirut a few years later. He paid no price.

George Bush Jr ginned up wars with Afghanistan and Iraq, on the totally ersatz ground that Afghanistan was involved in 9/11 and Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. He paid no price.

Is it any wonder that Trump and the fascists propping up his regime felt no compunctions about running roughshod over all laws and decency and honor? They are convinced nobody would make them pay.

Brin is furious that people don’t trust New Democrats to finally make a stand and make the fascists pay for their undeniable crimes. “But they are with us on social democracy and justice and the working class and human rights!” he might say. But when it come to fighting the enemies of those laudable ideals, their track record, going all the way back to the Nixon impeachment, has been pitiful. Brin can point to the indisputable accomplishments we’ve seen under Clinton and Obama and Biden, but when it was time to stand for what is right rather than just what is politically popular, most Democratic office holders folded. They couldn’t withstand corporate money and religious fevers and the endless stream of lies from the far right. They couldn’t stand and deliver a stentorian shout of “THIS IS BULLSHIT!” Long after they needed righteous rage, they were mumbling about “taking the high road” against an adversary who sees decency as a weakness.

This may be their best, and possibly final, chance to address that.

The first thing they need to do is assure the general population and surviving Republicans (and the masters the Republicans serve) that efforts to subvert or nullify the results will be met with resistance up to and including street riots, such as the storming of the Parliament that saved South Korean democracy in 2024. These efforts are illegal, treasonous, and the people reserve the right to oppose such by all means necessary. “The tree of liberty…” and so on. We won’t be fighting against the United States; we will be fighting to restore it.

Once the new Congress is installed, the time has come to end the Trump regime once and for all. And the way to do that is by trying the entire Trump administration for treason.

The Constitution reads: Article II, Section 4 says: The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Now add this: Article III, Section 3, 2 which says: The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.

This means that on majority votes, the Senate can remove Trump, Vance, and the Cabinet in one fell swoop.

This doesn’t mean mass executions or even punishment: it limits the consequences to removal from office. Criminal trials, if any, will fall under the purview of the judicial system and by existing law, which is as it should be.

This means the Speaker of the House to become President, and with concurrence of the Senate, select a new vice president.

Then begins the tedious process of clearing out the corruption in all the government agencies. As a matter of precedence, all Senate appointees turn in resignations upon the seating of a new administration. The new Senate will have the ability to reappoint or not.

All agencies, the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security in particular, must evaluate all persons employed under the Trump regime, and if they have not meet the standards for employment established by law before Trump, be on probationary status until they can meet the requirements, including background checks, educational attainment requirements, and demonstrations of general competence and knowledge for the jobs they hold. All resignations will be accepted “without prejudice.” Yes, some evil bastards may skate, but a lot more bastards and incompetents will accept the deal for the sake of a quiet life without stigma.

Trump appointed judges will deserve scrutiny from various existing judicial review boards, but don’t assume all, or even many such appointees are corrupt. In Trump’s endless interactions with the legal system, most Trump-appointed judges involved have proved honest. The Supreme Court, on the other hand…well, start with inviting them to resign, and we can go from there.

Only after this is under way can political life as we know it return. Democratic centrists and the social democratic left differ not so much in the right directions to take, but rather how far we need to go on each trajectory. Our differences are political, not existential.

If I can make that distinction, then I’m certain Brin can as well.

I once had a comic piece in which I had a city planner in blitz-torn London saying, “First we destroy the Nazi monster. Then we debate what colour to paint the fire hydrants.” We’re at the “destroy-Nazi-monster” stage. The fire hydrants are tomorrow’s debates, and we won’t need to destroy any monsters in doing so.

Americans need to fight like wolverines to save the country now. Save the country, then we can worry about what it’s going to take to fix the damage.

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The Fall of Trump — He will not go gentle into that good night

The Fall of Trump

He will not go gentle into that good night

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

October 15th, 2026

Does this sound like a sane man?

“Somebody leaked, some sleazebag,” said Trump. “They ought to go to jail and be shot for the rest of their life. They should be in jail. Leakers should be — in my opinion, leakers should be shot. They should be shot. In the old days, we used to shoot leakers. You know, leakers should be dealt with very, very strongly. They’re real to me. They’re the scum of the Earth!”

He also said this: “We had a rigged election. But because we did so well—we actually won by millions and millions of votes. It was just rigged. They rigged it through COVID and other things.” He was talking about the 2020 election, which was held while he was President.

Then there’s the openly racist garbage: “Barack Hussein Obama got into college for different reasons than you did. He’s not a smart guy.” [Italics mine]

This is stuff Trump said while barnstorming for Republicans in the past few days. He’s also been mocking the guy who climbed into a tiger enclosure in a Yorkshire zoo and was killed, despite pleas from the deceased’s family for him to stop.

Despite denying it, he did press the DoJ to open a politically-motivated “investigation” of Ilhan Omar, congresswoman from Minnesota. Supposedly, the date of her entry was falsified thus making her citizenship null and void. I suspect that her real crimes were those of representing Minnesota (Trump hates Minnesota almost as much as he hates California), being from Somalia, being a female, and openly opposing Trump. Trump has mused on the notion of revoking naturalized citizenship of anyone suspected of a crime. In Trump’s mind, crimes include being a Democrat, being a woman, having dark skin and/or not being a Nationalist Christian.

He’s claimed, falsely, that Greenland has agreed to allow unlimited oil and gas exploration and extraction for the US. Similar false claims include that gas prices have plummeted (they shot up 9% last month), that there is no inflation (now up to 3.7% admitted to by a now-compromised Department of Labor. (Due to an influx of Trump loyalists, nearly all branches of the government, the Department of Justice in particular, are now compromised).

He’s also promising prices will plummet. That’s called ‘deflation’ and any economist will tell you that counterintuitively, it’s not a good thing. This chart tracks price changes month by month going all the way back to 1913. Negative numbers signify “prices plummeting” and they don’t correlate with particularly happy times in US economic history. Most of them are 1930-1934. Either Trump is too stupid to understand basic economics (likely) or he thinks you’re too stupid to understand them (almost certainly).

Forget for a moment the breath-taking corruption (he personally has raked in some four billion dollars while president as his buddies and fellow grifters among the 400 billionaires in America rape the country to death). Forget the savage attempts to censor any speech critical of him, and his administration’s efforts to let a few right wing billionaires utterly control all American media. Forget his efforts to drive away allies while cozying up to the worst dictators in the world. He even seeks to emulate dictators he professes to hate. His recently-abandoned efforts to stage a public execution of the Fort Hood shooter put him in a small list of other countries with public executions: Afghanistan, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. Forget his berserk foreign policies and abuse of tariffs. Did you know Canada was the leading exporter of diesel fuel to the US until this year? Remember that as you spend $150 to tank up.

Even if you overlook all of the things that have already gravely injured the United States and threaten to destroy the country altogether, there is this: He was already morally corrupt, has severe psychological problems including narcissism and sociopathy, and was the ultimate child of privilege, exempt from all consequences for his actions and who, as an adult, is unlikely to have ever had to pump his own gas or buy his own groceries, let alone care what they cost. Now he has dementia to boot. His impulse control and ability to cope with even simple problems is slipping rapidly. Just the three quotes above from the past few days show how bad it’s gotten.

If he ever did have to do his own driving, people around him would be hiding the car keys from him, and I doubt he could pass a DMV license renewal test.

Right now, he’s also scared. It’s penetrated his self-imposed bubble that the voters hate him in record numbers, and they are going to punish the party of liars, grifters and cowards that have enabled him for the past decade. For perhaps the first time in his life, he’s facing the possibility of consequences, and, being mad and senile, is convinced that he is the innocent victim in all this, and must do anything and everything to prevent his enemies from defeating him.

If the election goes as expected and the GOP lose control o the House and possibly the Senate, expect him to pull out all the stops. He will be absolutely willing to destroy the country, possibly kill many people, in a wild effort to save his own ass. The election won’t end the danger; it will bring it to the fore.

He’s at his most dangerous. Plan accordingly.

 

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Bombs Awry! Behind the bluster, a real threat

Bombs Awry!

Behind the bluster, a real threat

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

October 7th, 2026

With nearly everyone else, I would have just assumed that Trump’s remarks about “Let them take out San Diego [or] Los Angeles” would just result from garbled phrasing. With a lot of extemporaneous speeches, the spoken word sounds more coherent than it would appear in writing, especially since the spoken word has all sorts of cues that words on paper lack: tone, pitch, timbre, pauses, timing, and of course facial expressions and body language. Anyone who has caught flak for being funny or “cute” on line realizes that humor without those cues can often be missed or misinterpreted—along with the fact that a given percentage of your readers are going to be humorless twats.

With Trump, that benefit of the doubt can’t really apply. Humor is out: he’s a cold, cruel man whose idea of hilarity lies in mocking and hurting the weak and defenseless. Forty-eight hours after he said that and the uproar began, his lackeys have spun endless “what he meant” excuses, but Trump himself has made no effort to correct or amend his remarks. He meant it.

These days his speeches totally lack any sense of real purpose, but are the same collection of prepackaged spiel that he uses regardless of occasion or tone that the speech might require. He’ll tell the same “you knew I was a snake” story at a campaign rally or at a military memorial. I’m not sure he has any actual understanding of half of what he says, but is just repeating himself like a broken Chatty Cathy doll.

And there is the constant element of actual malice. Trump hates California; not only has the state voted against him overwhelmingly in all three elections he’s faced, but it’s home to Governor Gavin Newsom, who was one of the first politicians to openly mock him, and did so very well. It’s also home to late night entertainers like Stephen Colbert or Jimmy Kimmel, along with all the hated Hollywood personalities who have stepped forth to oppose him.

The right wing propaganda campaign is that prosperous social democratic states like California, and especially California, are in reality vast wastelands of homelessness, drug use, immigrants and homosexuals. Even here in far northern California, which admittedly is quite different from the rest of the state, it’s not hard to find MAGAts complaining about what a hellhole the ‘dumocrats’ have turned California into. If you ask them what makes their lives in California a living hell, they’re usually reduced to bitching about gas prices, and the two point two cents per gallon in taxes that were added since Newsom became governor. (Yes, I’ve actually had people tell me that 2.2 cents is the reason prices are so high!) But this plays into Trump’s paws, and even if the vast majority of Californians know the agitprop campaign is bullshit, people in Nebraska and other places eat it up, and even cheer the promised destruction of that librul hellhole to the west that is why their taxes suck, or something.

Finally, Trump is scared and desperate. Most of his policies have blown up in his face, he’s the least popular president since polling began, and increasingly, it looks like Dems will pick up dozens of seats in the House and perhaps a half dozen seats in the Senate.

Even Trump has to realize that in the aftermath of such a shellacking, his own party will largely turn against him. He has to seriously consider the consequences of being convicted, expelled, and put on trial for a huge assortment of crimes.

He needs a 9/11, a Reichstag fire, an October 7th. To that end, he might consider creating at least the impression of a catastrophe hitting in America, and if there is to be such a thing, have it in a place he doesn’t care about, such as Los Angeles or San Diego.

While I doubt this would result in mushroom clouds over either of those cities, I could image “nuclear devices” being “discovered” in those locales, obviously snuck in by Iranians, or perhaps Canadians. And hey, if that caused widespread panic in southern California that interfered with voting, why, so much the better! Two birds, one stone, right?

I suspect that given the level of competence and intelligence we’re seen from his administration, any such effort would backfire on him. His ability to bullshit his way out of any threat has worn thin. People realize Mexico isn’t sending rapists, Iran doesn’t have nukes, Haitians aren’t eating our dogs and cats, they aren’t forcing gender change on kids at school, and Canada isn’t shipping tons of fentanyl into the US inside Iranian nuclear plants. (Apparently nuclear plants are illicit drug factories. Stop by your local atomic plant and pick up a couple dime bags for the kids on Halloween!) In short, the Donald softshoe show has run its course.

But if we assume that Trump can’t conjure up some sort of credible crisis to save his ass, the threat level escalates after the election, especially if it makes clear that Trump has lost control of Congress and possibly his own party. (I don’t think he’s going to try to cancel the election. Even his flunkies realize that might spark a widespread revolt and a very one-sided civil war he would lose.)

But in extremis, he’ll do everything he can to maintain control, and he’ll be a raging and unpredictable mass of howling paranoia and narcissistic end-stage rage. He’ll be extremely dangerous. He’ll risk anything and everything. He may even forbid Congress from convening in January.

For Californians, there’s an extra element of danger. He hates us because we are “disloyal” and “librul”. And he is perfectly willing to punish ‘blue states.’

Example: under all presidents since FEMA was established, there was no difference in emergency FEMA request grants among various states. It was a steady 85-90%. In Trump’s second term, that has changed. Red states enjoy the same 85-90% approval rate. Blue states are seeing a 20% approval rate. It’s almost like natural disasters no longer afflict blue states! Yeah, that must be it.

But meanwhile, California is looking at the winter from hell. The most recent projections of El Niño effects are flat out terrifying. One model I saw showed expected precipitation along the California coast to be an absurd 300-500% of normal for December through March, which is our wet season. If that actually comes to pass, the floods and landslides would be catastrophic!

Federal relief? Fuhgeddaboutit. We’re a 20% state—if we’re lucky. More than likely, Trump would just station troops along Oregon, Nevada and Arizona border to shoot Californians trying to escape. So if you happen to have El Niño’s email, you might want to send a note politely asking it to hold off until mid January, when hopefully we’ll have a new Congress and Trump has fled to Russia.

Otherwise, we’re on our own. Good luck.

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Unbalanced Battle — A ‘civil war’ would be uncivil

Unbalanced Battle

A ‘civil war’ would be uncivil

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

October 27th 2025

I’ve been hearing more talk of late about an actual civil war breaking out in the United States. An actual war, and not the ongoing struggle that has been the 150 year legacy of the Civil War. There are, sadly, reasons for this. Trump and his backers are pushing more and more to create or at least plausibly claim an insurrection so Trump can declare martial law and sweep the bill of rights and elections aside for a fascist dictatorship.

Certainly in the lead up to the No Kings protest October 18th, there were a lot of people openly hoping for widespread violence that could provide the impetus for Trump and his Project 2025 backers to shut down the United States once and for all. (Oh, people would still have their flag and anthem and even fake elections, because empty symbols are all that’s needed for a lot of people).

But the American people did themselves proud. Of the seven million plus protesters who turned out, exactly ONE was arrested nationwide. And he wasn’t arrested for violent or seditious behavior: Alabama cops hauled him in because he was dressed as a giant inflatable penis. Truly, he stood tall and proud for his country, but even Trump would have trouble calling that violent rebellion.

[Zeppnote:  An alert reader contacted me to tell me this:

The only thing wrong with your post is that the person in the penis costume was a woman!  https://1819news.com/news/item/court-appearance-pushed-back-for-woman-arrested-at-no-kings-protest-wearing-penis-costume
OK, so SHE stood tall and proud…!]

Interestingly, twenty-two others were arrested that day. All of them were Trump supporters who threatened or harassed peaceful protesters.

Needless to say, the online propaganda about how the protesters were domestic terrorists who hated America vanished in a puff of smoke. But have no fear—it will return. This bunch of wanna-be dictators lack creativity or originality—all of their tactics and even the phrases used in their propaganda are straight out of the well-worn Nazi playbook. They can’t even create their own agitprop, but this sack of losers think they can run a 21st century economy?

Still, the danger is very real, and so talk of an actual insurrection and possible civil war will continue, on both sides of the fence.

People tend to think of war as having distinct sides, along with battle lines and territories that are identifiable as being one side or the others. But even in the case of the actual Civil War, it was far more complicated than the simplistic maps in the history texts suggest. Both sides of the Mason-Dixon line had groups of resistors; saboteurs, propagandists, assassins. While the military lines were distinct, the populace was far more amorphous, with towns, neighborhoods, families and households all having their own civil strife. It’s unlikely that any state in the war had better than 80% support amongst its peoples.

It’s unlikely that the sort of strife being bandied about in America now would even have military lines. World War II was probably the last war that saw that phenomenon, and in an era of drone warfare and satellite surveillance, “frontlines” have become meaningless.

What is far more likely is an asymmetrical war, such as the ones the US fought (and lost) in Vietnam, or Iraq, or Afghanistan. It’s unlikely any states will formally secede until things have well and truly collapsed and it may be that a counter-coup occurs before such an eventuality.

What you will see the the rise of resistances nationwide. They will employ the timeless tactics of resistance fighters, planting IEDs, blowing up bridges, powerlines, roads, and canals. They will conduct whisper campaigns, claiming atrocities (some real, some not), and terrorizing suspected traitors to the cause. On local levels, Trump loyalists would be likely to adopt similar tactics.

Psychological warfare will play a big role. Trump will continue wildly waving the flag, the bible, and warning of “others” out to poison the pure blood of MAGAts. The resistance will hobble Trump forces anyway they can, and in a time-honored tactic bound to be extremely effective with Trump, try to poke the government forces into vicious overreactions. Does anyone for an instant think that Trump can’t be provoked into doing something really stupid and ill-thought out? Anyone? Remember, this is the toddler who just slapped an additional 10% tariff on Canadian goods because the premier of one province aired a commercial that accurately showed Ronald Reagan warning of the destructiveness of tariffs! (BTW, remember all the red-baiters who screamed about communism meaning the government took over the economy? They’re all supporting Trump’s strongarm economic tactics!)

Militias will play a role, although from what side will vary widely. Only the most utterly deluded would seek open battle with US military units since even the ones with military training would be no match at all.

The position of the military itself is of considerable concern. Morale under Trump is eroding rapidly—I see just today that members of one National Guard unit deployed to an American city to “restore order” are openly saying they will not obey any illegal orders and will uphold the Constitution. And I honestly have no idea how the Pentagon will go on all this. They know Trump and Hegseth are jokes, and that both stand in opposition to the Constitution. But we’ve seen other institutions take the knee: law firms, universities, the big news stations (granted, bought out by cowardly and/or malevolent corporate forces) so it’s by no means certain that patriotism and loyalty will carry the day for the United States.

It’s a future far too likely to happen. I hope it doesn’t, because it will ruin tens and possibly hundreds of millions of lives, kill millions and possibly tens of millions of people, and wreak so much damage on the United States that it will take generations to recover—if it ever does. And the safety and security of anyone reading this will be gone. For your sake and your family, let’s hope this scenario doesn’t eventuate.

Right now the resistance is peaceful and thinking very clearly, and hopefully that will be enough to defeat Trump.

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Market Markers — How now down Dow?

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

October 11th 2025

 

JPMorgan Chase’s CEO Jamie Dimon said he is “far more worried than others” about a correction in U.S. stocks. In an interview with the BBC, Dimon said, “You see a lot of things out there, the amount of uncertainty and I put geopolitics in that category, fiscal spending in that category, politics in that category, the re-militarization of the world in that category. All these things cause a lot of issues that we don’t know how they’re going to sort out…[W]e should be stockpiling bullets, guns and bombs,” as the world’s a “far more dangerous place.”

But remilitarization, while alarming in and of itself, wasn’t the only issue on Dimon’s mind. It’s clear he’s worried about AI, which I consider a multi-trillion dollar economic bubble that could pop at any minute. (My words, not his, just to be clear). He said, “So if the market is pricing in 10%, I would say it’s more like 30%, and I’m not saying next year because the timing of these things is almost impossible.” He considers a “market correction” likely, perhaps in six months, possibly two years.

A “correction” is nabob-speak for a market slump of more than 20%, which in the case of the Dow Jones would work out to a drop approaching ten thousand points.

The very next day, Lev Parnas wrote this: “Trump’s Tariff Shock EXPOSED — The $1 Billion Crypto Heist They Don’t Want You to See. Minutes before Trump announced 100% tariffs on China, a secret wallet moved over $1 billion into crypto — triggering the biggest market crash in months and revealing […] insider corruption and market.”

OK, it was no crash: the Dow slipped 1,500 points over two days, about 3% of its value. But yes, the timing was almost prima facie evidence that the corrupt and venal Trump gave some insider traders a heads up before making his shock tariff announcement. It’s hardly the first time something like this has occurred—indeed, Trump’s seemingly erratic and capricious tariffs games have made some people, including Trump and members of his family—obscenely wealthy.

This entire administration is run by corrupt plutocrats intent on plundering the entire American economy. This collection of libertarians and fascists have managed to convince themselves that the economy can manage quite nicely without any economic involvement of the society that created that economy in the first place. They’ve spent so much time arguing that workers are nothing more than an economic outlay and to argue otherwise is communism that they’ve taken up believing their own propaganda. Most of them are corrupt, and the rest are delusional. And they are in charge.

Add the vindictive madness that drives Trump and his supporters, the desire to utterly destroy a fifth of the labor force for the crime of dark skin or accents, the sheer paranoia and xenophobia that is causing them to cheer the dismantling of the United States of America (and yes, the democratic constitutional government IS the United States of America, and without it, it’s just another big patch of land with lawless tribes)—combine all that, and the stage is set for an economic catastrophe.

Project 2025, in the form of White House Office of Management and Budget director Russel Vought, is manipulating the latest Republican-engineered government to dismantle huge chunks of the government, firing tens of thousands of experienced and capable government employees supposedly because of the shutdown. There have been a dozen shutdowns, some lasting weeks. Workers got furloughed, knowing their jobs (and in most cases back pay) would be there when the shutdown ended. Vought’s vision of a fascist dictatorship means he must do as much to destroy the government now while he has the opportunity. He is doing this to the open cheers of his senile mouthpiece president, who has openly cheered “the unprecedented opportunity” to dismantle “democrat agencies.”

Most of those supposedly Democratic functions: education, medical care, legal protections, scientific research, and public protection agencies such as the weather service, OPEC, and FEMA, disproportionately serve the people in Republican areas, where state services are thin or even lacking and the overall economy is either weak or exploited by plutocrats in the name of “supply-side economics.”

But make no mistake—we’ll ALL be hurt if Trump and his handlers pull this off. We’ll begin missing meals or end up in the camps just in time for the entire financial structure to to implode, possibly taking the currency and remaining national wealth with it, leaving America—and Americans—bankrupt and destitute. Then, and only then, will the malefactors in the top 1% realize that we were the tide that raised their yachts.

By then, it will be too late. Unless we move to prevent it now.

 

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The Battle to Keep America — A Portland in the storm

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

October 6th 2025

Trump is was sending some 300 National Guard from California to Portland, Oregon, a city that Trump describes as “war-ravaged” and Trump’s stooges in the Pentagon are claiming are being sent “to support US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal personnel performing official duties, including the enforcement of federal law, and to protect federal property.”

Trump had tried to send Oregon National Guard into the city, but yesterday, a Trump-appointed federal judge, one US district judge Karin Immergut, blocked the deployment, citing “a lack of evidence that the recent protests in Portland justified the move.” Governor Newsom of California has promptly filed a motion to prevent Trump from deploying his guard, citing the same specious reasoning.

[Note: this morning the same federal judge, US District Judge Karin Immergut, who banned deployment of Oregon national guard extended her ruling to include the national guard of all fifty states. It remains to be seen if the lawless Trump obeys this, and hope his vicious supporters don’t bomb her home like what happened in South Carolina yesterday.]

Portland is quiet and calm. There are no riots. There aren’t even any sizable demonstrations, and the demonstrations that have been occurring have been small, and sedate.

But the fascist provocateurs at Fox and Newsmax and similar trashy “news organizations” have been playing video of the disturbances from the George Floyd demonstrations five years ago over and over, apparently leaving a hopelessly addled Donald Trump convinced that Portland is in the throes of huge, violent riots. Obeying their masters at the Heritage Foundation and in Project 2025, they want to spark a casus belli in order to provoke martial law.

It’s the same thing they’ve been trying in Washington DC (where demoralized and idle guardsmen eventually were reduced to picking up trash in the parks because DOGE had laid off the federal workers tasked with that job) and Chicago (which has a lower violent crime rate than most cities run by Republicans) and Broadview, Illinois, where ICE thugs apparently shot someone yesterday. The horrific “Hup! Hup! Hup!” ICE raid which involved dropping masked and armored goons onto an apartment complex resulting in the grotesque arrests of dozens of people guilty of nothing more than sleeping in their beds was yet another provocation by an administration willing to risk civil war rather than have it’s dirty secrets and drive for dictatorship exposed.

Trump is a cornered rat, but the real danger are the vicious, sleek fascists propping him up, hoping he can drive the US into the more repressive dictatorship in modern human history.

To that end, they are employing the same tawdry tactics that every repulsive group of despots have used thousands of times to afflict humanity. Push people until they resist, and the call the resistance a “violent insurrection.” Far too often it works. Nearly all the worst, must murderous regimes in history have been built on the foundations of Horst Wessel murders (think Charlie Kirk) and Reichstag fires (something Trump has tried to provoke in Washington, in Los Angeles, in Chicago and now in Portland.

But there’s a reason it isn’t working as well here. Ordinary citizens have an absolutely unlimited ability to record and disseminate the actions and activities of the Trump regime and its thuggish troops. Trump is using the tactics that Hitler and Putin and every other dictator has used to gain power—neutralize and cow the press, rope in the support of fundamentalists, lie constantly, scapegoat and fear monger and falsely claim to be saving the country from nefarious activities.

But the government can’t control the images people are taking on their phones and uploading to the web. No matter how many time the Nazi provocateurs at Fox News put up five year old images of Portland in flames, there are thousands more images showing a city at peace, and with orderly and lawful gatherings to protest.

If Trump can’t control what people see and hear, he can’t win. For every captive news organization Trump controls, like CBS and ABC, there are thousands of voices, armed with evidence, telling different stories. For every Jesse Watters there are a thousand Thom Hartmanns. For every misleading image on Newsmax, there are a thousand more representative images of the same events on social media.

And this is how we defeat Trump and the fascists. Turn out and demonstrate wherever Trump tries to instigate, pull out your phones, and RECORD EVERYTHING. True, 95% of it will just take up disk space and be discarded later, but the other 5% may be vital evidence that helps forge public awareness and opinion, and defeat the propagandists and liars in their efforts to control and narrative and thus control you.

They want to write the history books. But you are the ones who will make the history.

Bear witness. You will win.

 

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Trump’s Terrors — Toujours, mon brèves et mon brefs, toujours!

Trump’s Terrors

Toujours, mon brèves et mon brefs, toujours!

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

September 22nd, 2025

Fearless Leader has officially executive ordered and deemed AntiFa to be a “Terrorist Organization.” Yes, with the capital letters. Scarier that way, you know.

I’ve never really considered myself a terrorist. My idea of a terrorist campaign would be sharply-worded letters to the editor, or snide memes posted for the edification of the local MAGAts. In moments of extreme rage, I have been known to cancel subscriptions. If I was working for Al-Qaida, I would probably be the bloke who writes the ads for the newsletter.

But I’ve been AntiFa since I was five years old, when I learned what fascists were. They were the nasties who were why some of my classmates had rickets, or were missing older brothers and dads. Prime Minister Churchill hated them, and by gosh, that was good enough for me. Down with fascists! Boo! Hiss!

So if I’m AntiFa (and the past seventy years haven’t offered any reasons to change that stance) does that mean that we now refer to them as just “Fa”? I don’t know. They aren’t very nice people. I don’t really want to be on a first-syllable basis with them.

The thing is, the more I learn about fascism, the less there is to like. I slowly evolved from “Hitler was a mean sort who bombed us and was horrid to his people” to learning about the death camps and death marches to the general horrors of authoritarianism.

Turns out that AntiFa was around back in the 30s. Not surprisingly, Germany, the 1930’s version of America Project 2025, had a communist-aligned group, the Antifaschistische Aktion. This was back when communism was fashionable, and people really believed the Soviet Union would become a Workers’ Paradise.

We learned to admire AntiFa terrorist organizations over the first few decades of my life. Of course, we had different names for them: The Resistance. The Underground. Freedom Fighters. The Irregulars. They blew up bridges and trains and best of all, bridges with trains on them. They were masters of sabotage, both passive and active.

If anyone bothered mentioning that the fascist governments considered them to be Terrorist Organizations, we probably just shrugged it off. They were fascists, after all. Bunch of bloody clots, that lot. Who cared what they thought?

Americans generally shared that view of AntiFa until the race riots and Vietnam protests came along, and the vicarious resistance heroes of World War 2 suddenly found themselves perched on the other side of a very uncomfortable fence. How dare those People demand equal rights, and why are those long-haired hippies be upset about being sent to die in the tens of thousands for no good reason at all? Repress! Repress! Repress!

The fascists, discredited by World War 2, saw an opportunity in America’s somewhat naive authoritarian streak, and began a long, systematic assimilation of the American right, beginning with the McCarthy era and the John Birchers and reaching its apex with the Trump coup. The AntiFa rebels of yesterday were now the settled and jealous establishment. And they prefer law and order to rebellion and idealism.

But there’s this one problem: most Americans, at heart, are still AntiFa. They don’t like authoritarians. They don’t like cowards and bullies and vicious hatemongers. In short, they don’t like fascists. And no number of executive orders is going to change that.

And fascists, no matter how much lipstick they slap on, are still pigs. It’s intrinsic to the philosophy, which is that a select few are superior to the unwashed masses. They are entitled to control, supress, and exploit. It’s the will of God. It’s for the fatherland. Resistance is useless.

This past week’s uproar over the removal of Jimmy Kimmel from his show, and the largely unsuccessful effort to deify the reprehensible Charlie Kirk (more on that in a moment) showed that cracks are starting to appear in the Trump coup as people finally realize exactly what it is they are facing.

Kimmel said this to get banned: “The Maga Gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.” He didn’t attack Kirk, or mock his death, or praise the assassin, no matter what the liars of MAGA say. Just that. That’s all it took to scare the fascists.

The reaction to Kimmel being taken off the air was easily the biggest spontaneous explosion of public rage since the George Floyd demonstrations—and it was both totally non-violent and in a form the right couldn’t infuse with violence. It may have been the biggest single boycott in American history. Millions of people canceled their subscriptions to Disney+ and Hulu, and millions more sent protests to Sinclair and Nexstar Media Group. Sinclair in particular is a far right concern famed for having its television “journalists” chant fascist talking points word for word. People started compiling lists of companies advertising on the stations of either consortium.

Disney, out 4 billion dollars in stock value and millions of subscriptions, backed down and reinstated Kimmel. It remains to be seen if the authoritarians at Sinclair will broadcast him. It’s too early to declare victory, but the administration and Disney got a taste of what damage a determined underground can do.

Then there was the grotesque Horst Wessel rally masquerading as a memorial service for Charlie Kirk. Curiously, few of the speakers, including Trump, seemed to give a wet shit about old Charlie, but instead put on their best Nuremberg presentations. Of particular note was Steven Miller, who for some reason doesn’t have a large black swastika tattooed on his billboard-sized forehead.

He said, “We will defeat the dark. We will prevail over the forces of wickedness and evil. They cannot imagine what they have awakened. They cannot conceive of the army that they have arisen. We stand for what is good, virtuous, noble.”

He continued: “To those who are against us? “What do YOU HAVE? You have NOTHING, you are nothing! You are wickedness, you are jealousy, you are hatred, YOU ARE NOTHING! You can build nothing, produce nothing, create nothing. You thought you could kill Charlie Kirk? You have made him immortal.”

I’m sure it sounded better in the original German. It was, almost word-for-word, a translation of the speech Joseph Goebbels gave in a paean to dead Nazi nobody Horst Wessel.

It is no longer possible to disguise what these people are, and the threat they pose to all of us.

There’s a reason Trump calls AntiFa a “Terrorist Organization.” He fears us. We are AntiFa in our tens of millions, those who understand how important freedom and rights really are.

There are reasons we glorified The Resistance in the fifties and sixties. They were brave and steadfast in the face in ultimate evil.

We need to remember that, because Fascists don’t go away if you ask them nicely. Be prepared to resist. This week we showed that it can be done without violence or even defying the law (Executive Orders are not law). But we have to be firm. We have to be resolute. We have to be brave.

Nous sommes toujours la résistance!

 

 

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Sorry Charlie — But We Have Other Things To Discuss

Sorry Charlie

But We Have Other Things To Discuss

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

September 14th 2025

Charlie’s a good Nazi. That’s all I have to say about that.

Because our servile corporate media can’t think of anything else to talk about this week, let me fill you in on some of the other, apparently less important stories, going on right now.

NATO has invoked Article 4 in the wake of the Russian drone attack in Poland. The Russians claim the incursion of 19 drones, many of them armed, into Polish air space was “unintentional.” The Poles shot four of them down, and the Russians seemed disinclined to object to that. Article 4 isn’t a declaration of war (that’s Article 5) but it’s the equivalent of when a skunk starts tapping his forepaws and lifts his tail. It means “Back off. Now.” Putin clearly thinks that America is too cowardly and weak to call his bluff because he knows the American president is too cowardly and weak. But even without America, the EU has an economy 40 times the size of Russia’s and a military that, while not as huge, uses well maintained equipment and ordinance from the 21st century. Also, if Putin is hoping Trump will support him when the chips are down, he’s living in a fool’s paradise.

Some idiot MAGA wannabe named Tori Branum put in a SWAT call to ICE to raid a Hyundai plant and the Icicles promptly rounded up some 475 people, 300 of which were actual Korean nationals there on Visas to train American workers. Only one didn’t have his papers in order, and there’s no evidence he did so intentionally. South Korea is furious. They got their workers back, but none of them want to return to the plant in what many of them doubtlessly now think of “that shithole country.” It may cost the US a half trillion dollars in planned investments, and Japan and Vietnam are both openly rethinking making manufacturing plants in the US. That idiot congressional wannabee and the cowboys at ICE just negated the whole rationale behind the tariffs.

A district court just ruled that Trump doesn’t have the Constitutional power to levy tariffs unilaterally. That was clear to anyone who knew anything at all about the law and separation of powers, but it came as a huge surprise to the Pedodent, who is screaming that it will cost the US (imaginary) trillions in revenue. Now, the Supine Court may make one of its secret rulings that Trump can continue the tariffs for a few decades while they pretend to think it over (now their favorite ploy for supporting the Unitary Executive, or what historians refer to as “the dictator”).

In a bit over two weeks, funding for the government runs out. This is a crisis we’ve seen far too often, dating back to Newt Gingrich and his scheme to blackmail America, but the difference this time is that because of Trump’s gratuitous and illegal use of Rescission (reallocating or just flat-out stealing budgeted funding) there’s no point in passing a budget and so the Democrats can’t be arsed unless and until someone puts a choke collar on the Trumpster.

In Brazil, where corporate interests haven’t totally neutered the government, the former president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, was found guilty of plotting a military coup. Four out of the five Supreme Court justices tasked with judging the former leader found him guilty. He got over 27 years in prison. Hey, remember when we had a real supreme court that didn’t have six fascist clowns in black dresses? If the Suck-ass Six had been trying Bolsonaro, they would have put him back in office while they spent twenty years claiming to decide if he should have been voted out.

Netanyahu may have finally overstepped with the fascist right that support him, bombing Qatar. Supposedly they were bombing Hamas terrorists with those magic bombs that never hurt innocent people. The Qataris were not amused, and for a wonder, neither was the United States, usually head supplicant to Benji.

California, which still maintains American values, made it illegal for peace officers to wear masks or conceal their identities. In pre-Trump America that may have seemed a no-brainer, but now that Trump has his own secret police made up of January 6 rioters, mercenaries and other bottom-feeder thugs in masks, it’s become necessary. Steven Miller, poster boy for Gay Nazis Who Pretend to Like Jews, is planning to double down on ICE raids in Los Angeles. If they show up with masks, I hope the LAPD arrest them. Not holding my breath, but Californians are going to be asking them hard questions if they don’t.

Meanwhile, we’re hearing the word “Stagflation” more and more. Those of us alive in the 1970s remember it well: 15% annual inflation combined with 8% unemployment, the result mostly of the “oil shock” when OPEC doubled oil barrel prices. Ah, good times. The Republicans (!!!) tried the experiment of government control of wage/price freezes (Whip Inflation Now) which compounded the disaster. Republicans are weird. They hate all the good things about socialism (universal healthcare, schooling, child care,etc.) but when the heat is on, they embrace all the worst elements of communism (wage and price freezes, hiding unfavorable statistics, and economic coercion of corporations). Oddly, they insist socialism and communism are the same thing.

Meanwhile, farm workers, documented or not, are avoiding the fields because of ICE raids, and tariffs are driving the costs of all imported foods up. In July, the wholesale price of produce jumped 38%. Yes, in just one month. And we’re just now coming up on the main harvest time, and tariffs are just starting to bite. Job growth was already starting to slow when Trump took office as the Biden boom ran its course.

So there’s all that to consider while nervous talking heads on TV try to suck up to the MAGAt extremists. Just so you know, there’s more to talk about other than some asshole whose only redeeming feature is that he got shot, or as I like to call him, “2025 School Shooting #46.”

Oh, yes. Release the Epstein files!

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After the Demonstrations — Ways to further block fascism

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

April 22nd, 2025

New York Times columnist David Brooks has called for a “comprehensive national civic uprising” to protest the Trump administration. Brooks, who has been with the Times since the invention of dirt, is the ultimate establishment ‘button-down’ conservative. When HE calls for a “comprehensive national civic uprising,” you know we’re well out of normal times.

I was at the local demonstration Saturday, and while the crowd was enthusiastic, it was about two-thirds the size of the rally held two weeks earlier. Part of that was because it was cooler and windier, and because it was on Easter weekend.

But it got me thinking. The 50501 “Hands Off” rallies, while terrific at galvanizing public opinion, aren’t going to be enough. Interest will wane, especially since it would become obvious it wasn’t slowing Trump’s fascist coup against America in the slightest.

Brooks is right; a civic uprising is needed. I’m not thinking peasants with pitchforks and blood in the streets; with a half-billion guns loose in the country, that’s the last thing we need. What we do need are national strikes. Yes, plural. Rolling strikes, areas hit once per week.

When you hear the word ‘strike’ you may think of workers walking off the job in protest. But this is America: only 3% of workers have union protection, and most unions are barred by law from having ‘wildcat’ strikes. And most states have what is laughingly referred to as “right-to-work” laws which generally translates to “at will” employment. You only have a job until the boss gets a bug up his ass, and you’re out the door, usually without so much as a day’s warning.

The fact is most American workers don’t have much more in the way of job security and rights than your typical wage slave in Bangladesh. Most people live paycheck to paycheck, and are perhaps two months away from homelessness. It’s a shit work culture, but it’s the result of 45 years of Reaganomics.

So a strike has to be something much more than workplace actions.

They may have coercive power over you on the job, but they can’t make you buy stuff. There have already been embargoes ranging from one day to one week against major retailers such as Amazon and Nestle, and boycotts against Target and similar outfits that have been ongoing, and they’ve been effective enough to cause worry in the right quarters. The Trump admin already floated the idea of a 5 year prison sentence for anyone demonstrating in front of a Tesla dealership. Elon Musk has already figured out that the widespread hatred caused by his rampage through most government programs isn’t going away, and he has already lost hundreds of billions and risks losing it all. He announced he’s getting out of politics by the end of May. Hopefully he’ll get the fuck out of the country.

But picture this: the manager at the local fast-food joint has already told his employees that if they so much as call in sick on the day of a scheduled strike, he’ll fire them. Yes, in much of the county, a shit boss like him can get away with that crap. Because we still have full employment, jobs are scarce, and he holds the whip.

But come the day of the strike, all the employees he coerced into showing up are standing around idle, because walk-in business has dropped 70%. He’ll send some of them home, of course, and if he’s a big enough a bastard, he might try telling them not to join any protests that might be going on.

If this happens once a week, he’s going to see that his profit margins—which in the fast-food industry are pretty thin—are vanishing. He can’t take a 10% overall loss in business.

And if he starts firing people, he may find he no longer has any control over them, and they may well be standing across the street from his business on days of the strike, adding to the pressure for people to stay away and urging employees to engage in malicious compliance.

What we need to do is set up five zones across the country, one for each workday, Monday through Friday. One day per week, we get as many people as possible to buy nothing (currently such actions exempt small, locally-owned businesses, and that’s a wise distinction to make). Nothing purchased on line, and skip lunch at the chain eatery. Don’t buy groceries that day. (It’s ok to stock up the day before if needed—the bosses will notice the one day slump a lot more than a smaller one-day bump in sales.)

And on those Zone days, everyone who can, protest. It can be as small as a bumper sticker, or a small flag, or even a prearranged dress code (for instance, everyone wear something red on the Zone Action Day.) If you can march and chant and ring cow bells, do so. Just…don’t let up.

And keep the pressure on elected officials. Republicans are already running scared, and they need to realize that Trump and his MAGAts are the lesser of two factions. They are between a rock and a hard place, and you are the hard place.

And talk to people. Persuade them that this is no longer just “politics”; it’s the survival of a free and open America. These aren’t disagreements over policy; this is a fight to stop a fascist coup against the United States, and if we don’t stop them now, then we may face a very bloody war as the final option. And nobody with any sense of decency or intelligence wants to go there.

We fight hard now, or we fight for our very lives later. There’s no point in asking nicely. The fascists aren’t going to simply go away.

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