Beatlefan Executive Editor Al Sussman offers a counterpoint to some fans who’ve been whining about various aspects of the reissue of “Let It Be.” Here’s his more evenhanded impression of the 1970 film’s restoration. … Well, I watched the … Continue reading
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Who do we wish to be? In conversation at The Ink, Eddie Glaude, Jr., Princeton professor of African American studies, ponders, in essence, “Who do we take ourselves to be?” in the wake of 50 years of Reaganism, Thatcherism, neoliberalism. That framework is collapsing. What kind of society have we created? Madison and others insisted on the importance of character, that we had to be certain kinds of persons in order for democracy to work. And this 50-year run has exacerbated some of the distortions in what makes us who we are. We’ve always dealt with the dangerous and disfiguring effects of white supremacy, of patriarchy, of class ideology. But over the last 50 years, they’ve congealed in a particular sort of way. For democracy to work, we have to admit that we have to become better people. If we are the leaders that we’ve been looking for, then we have to become better people. And if we’re going to be better people, we have to build a more just world, because the world as it’s currently organized actually distorts our sense of self, our relationship with each other.
“Why Hannibal Lecter?” And has a thing for “the late, great Hannibal Lecter,” a “wonderful man.” What a catch! Cohen will be back to testify before this goes live, so I’m bailing. Enjoy. ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us.
The Bulwark is featuring a fascinating piece today about Trump and fascism, a very urgent topic: IN THE INITIAL, HEADY DAYS after Joe Biden’s 2020 victory over Donald Trump, many public commentators played down Trump’s threats of not leaving the White House quietly, with some outright dismissing concerns about his electoral lies. Others, though, saw Trump for exactly who he was—and his actions for exactly what they were, even from the outset. One of those discerning voices was Federico Finchelstein, a professor at the New School who studies the history and dissemination of fascism. Just a few days into Trump’s refusal to concede, Finchelstein authored an op-ed in the Washington Post linking Trump directly to a series of previous authoritarians who clung to power, helping introduce Americans to the term auto-golpe (self-coup). It was one of the most prescient pieces of analysis of America’s post-election troubles—vindicated especially on January 6th, when Trump helped sic insurrectionists set on violently overturning the election results.
James Fallows has a fascinating analysis of that weird rally last Saturday: Among Donald Trump’s virtues is that he does not drink. That is useful to remember in considering his current speaking style. On Saturday night Deb and I sat through the nearly two-hour entirety of his rally performance at Wildwood, on the Jersey shore, as televised by Fox. The whole thing is archived here, courtesy of Right Side Broadcasting. To me this version of Trump sounded genuinely different from the crowd-pleasing showman who rode televised rallies to success (and big audiences for the cable outlets) in 2015 and 2016. Maybe it’s just that his material is now so familiar and tired. Maybe it’s that Trump has nearly exhausted the “what will he say next??” Evel Knievel-style suspense and excitement of his live shows. Maybe it’s that he goes on at such length. Whatever: the result is less “outrageous” than … boring. It could also be that there is something more visibly wrong with him.
Trump has brought his surrogates to the trial to violate his gag order for him: He went into the courtroom along with Byron Donalds, Doug Burgham and Vivek Ramaswamy. They stayed for about 45 minutes and then emerged and gave press conferences spouting all the crapola Trump isn’t allowed to say due to his gag orders. Unbelievable:
Ed Kilgore takes a look at the inconceivable result in the Times/Sienna poll showing that huge numbers of people remember the Donald Trump years as glory days for America. [W]hen the New York Times–Siena polling outfit asked voters “to describe the one thing they remembered most from Donald J. Trump’s presidency, only 5 percent of respondents referred to Jan. 6, and only 4 percent to COVID.” 39 percent cited “Trump’s behavior” as most memorable, and another 24 percent named “the economy.” Aside from the radical shrinkage of COVID and January 6 in the rearview mirror, what’s remarkable about this reaction is that it had little to do with what we normally think of as specific events, much less issue positions.
Those are responses to what Trump has been saying about the judge in his NY criminal trial: On a recent Tuesday morning, a visibly frustrated Donald Trump sat through a tense hearing in the first-ever criminal trial of a former American president. During a break, he let rip on his social media platform. New York Justice Juan Merchan, Trump declared on Truth Social, is a “highly conflicted” overseer of a “kangaroo court.” Trump supporters swiftly replied to his post with a blitz of attacks on Merchan. The comments soon turned ugly. Some called for Merchan and other judges hearing cases against Trump to be killed. […] The April 23 post by Trump and the menacing responses from his followers illustrate the incendiary impact of his angry and incessant broadsides against the judges handling the criminal and civil suits against him. As his presidential campaign intensifies, Trump has baselessly cast the judges and prosecutors in his trials as corrupt puppets of the Biden administration, bent on torpedoing his White House bid. […] The rhetoric is inspiring widespread calls for violence.
His parochial obsessions are going to get us all killed There has been some serious push back on social media to the belief that MAGA peacenik Donald Trump could start WWIII from both the right and the left. Apparently, Joe Biden is a violent warmonger for providing material support to America’s traditional allies while Donald Trump is a dove because he only oversaw a war with American troops on the ground in Afghanistan and ramped up the drone war to unprecedented heights throughout the world. But whatever. Facts aren’t really relevant at the moment. We’re all about feelings and vibes and because Trump has indoctrinated massive numbers of Americans with the lie that the whole world respected and feared him so much that they all bowed down to him and we have world peace for the first time in history. And yes, a number of lefties are similarly deluded about Trump because they haven’t closely observed what he is or what he has planned. Here’s one little example: If Donald Trump wins a second term in the White House in November, NATO may fall apart, a recent wargame found.
Resisting the right’s fit of pique I’m trying not to repeat the mistakes of 2016. I really am. There was no way the country was crazy enough to elect Donald Trump president, I told myself. “He’s mentally unstable,” I told my parents one night while visiting for dinner. One well-heeled Bernie Sanders supporter, unnerved by Trump signs sprouting like weeds out in the county, printed and fabricated his own quarter-sized Clinton signs by the thousands in response. They went like the proverbial hotcakes. Then I spent the afternoon of Election Day 2016 greeting voters outside a nearby polling station standing a few feet away from Talks To The Sky. You know what happened later. This fall, she might be proudly wearing adult diapers outside her pants in solidarity with her king. Sadly, Americans are crazy enough to elect Donald “88 Counts,”professional huckster. They proved that once already. They left him in charge ahead of a global pandemic and got American carnage and the sacking of the U.S. Capitol.