Seriously, use the browser you like, don’t worry about battery. Matt Birchler has advice for Mac users.
Nations Are People. Do you deserve to die for your own bad government?
If you live in America, your government is run by Donald Trump. Ugh. You might despise that guy. You might have worked hard against him during campaign season. When you visit another country, and tell them that you are American, you might add, “But don’t judge me!” You would not want to be branded with the weight of the various stupid and despicable actions of your own government. You understand, first, that you do not agree with those things, and second, that you as a regular person have little power to affect those things. You are just living your life. You want to be respected as a human being.
“Unfortunately, this simple and intuitive understanding of the difference between the government and the people of your own country often evaporates–or gets erased–when the discussion turns to foreign countries. When someone says “Russia,” you probably think of Putin, not of the teenage girl dreaming of what she will do after graduation. When someone says “Iran,” you probably think of something that is often referred to as “the regime,” rather than of the laughing family gathering for a holiday meal. This mental mistake, this unwitting juxtaposition of one thing for a different thing, is like a steamroller that paves the way for you to accept unacceptable things. You would never nod sagely and agree that a bomb should be dropped on a child. But air strikes to “cripple” the “command and control” of a “hostile regime?” Well, of course, serious people understand that this may be necessary in the grand chessboard that is geopolitics.
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Are you willing to be killed for your own government’s sins? Are you willing to have your house destroyed and your child hit by shrapnel and your elderly parents lose access to medicine because of the policies of the latest president? If that seems unfair for you, it is unfair for anyone, anywhere. From this perspective, it is easy to see that the hurdle that a war must clear to be truly moral is so high that it stretches up into the clouds. Grounding ourselves in this perspective–always holding people, and their right to live, in the forefront of our minds–is the only way to make clear judgments about what our own government does with its killing machines.
Promises The ‘Trump Phone’ Would Be ‘Made In USA’ Lasted 1/100th Of A Scaramucci. The Trump organization has scrubbed its website of claims that the phone would be made in America. Now the site has handwaving about how the phone will be infused with “American values.” By Karl Bode at Techdirt.
Cross the Courts Off the List: We have enough information to conclude that the law won’t save us.
The most significant remaining opportunity for course correction is the midterm elections. It is not so much that the elections (which if history is any guide should cause Republicans to lose control of Congress) are a magic wand that will fix our broken democracy, any more than, you know, Obama’s election fixed America. It is instead the much more modest but vital hope that Republicans can still lose power in elections. The midterm elections will be a test not so much of whether the Democratic Party will finally become the heroic resistance heroes we need–they won’t–but rather a test of whether Trump and Co. will have it together to suppress the vote to the degree that elections, also, need to be crossed off the list of fruitful avenues of opposition.
We are going to see ICE agents at polling places, and politically motivated government investigations of political opponents, and possibly a number of non-Republican politicians and activists arrested and put in jail. That will be the setting of the midterm elections. Trump is a man who does not believe in even the abstract concept of losing an election. He is surrounded by yes men top to bottom in the federal government, and he has armies of armed agents at his disposal. The midterm elections are going to be a very, very important gut check for our democracy, and the extent to which it still functions. We, all of us, all of civil society, must protect the integrity of those elections at all costs. If the Trump administration is able to suppress the vote so severely that the midterms cannot be seen as fair, we are in an even worse place than we are now.
Having given up on the possibility of a Supreme Court line in the sand, I am now looking at those elections as the next most important data point about how much hope is left to return to our traditional standard of “normal.” Apart from the elections, the other meaningful source of opposition is: Us. People. I have hoped that organized labor could be the rallying point for popular opposition to dictatorship. So far, that hasn’t happened. Institutionally, the long decline in union power has rendered organized labor extremely ineffective, disorganized in the face of a war on the existence of public sector unions, and unable to act in a powerful, concerted fashion on a nationwide scale. It is still possible, however, for unions to be one part of a grassroots coalition that forms to battle this out. The national protest movement we have seen arise–most recently the “No Kings” protests–shows me that the bulk of public opinion is on the right side here. The fascists are a minority. Stopping their advance, though, will require funneling the public opposition into organizations, into all facets of direct actions. What we have now is the sentiment, but not the organization. It can be built. The situation is not, in any sense, hopeless. There is much more to be said about the mechanics of all this, but for now, join an organization that is in the fight, and fight.
It’s just that the path is narrower. We don’t gain anything by telling ourselves fairy tales about what is coming. If the courts won’t do their ostensible job of saving us then it is time to think of the law not as the arena of our salvation but as a minefield to pick our way around carefully en route to a more promising destination.
I received this in my Facebook notifications. I didn’t realize adolescent memes and dad jokes count as “high-quality content.”
I loved “Airplane” when it was first released. I laughed and laughed and probably saw it several times.
A few years ago, I discovered Julie had never seen “Airplane” and then sat down to watch it with her. We were both bored and gave up after about 20 minutes. But that was long enough for us to watch the “Saturday Night Fever” parody scene, and we both decided we’d like to watch “Saturday Night Fever” again.
And man — I think I have said this here before — but “Saturday Night Fever” blew me away that time. In my mind, I had previously conflated the movie with the cheesy disco comedies that came out in its wake. But “Saturday Night Fever” was brilliant and dark. One of my top 10 movies for sure.
The 100 best walking cities of 2025. — I can vouch for Barcelona, London, Edinburgh, Copenhagen, New York and Glasgow.
Mitchellaneous Vol. XCII: Nine things I saw on the Internet
McDonald’s around the world: A discussion with author of McAtlas: A Global Guide to the Golden Arches, Gary He. By Chris Arnade, who has written about McDonald’s as local community centers and force for good, particularly for the poor.
You could escape the heat or cold, charge your phone, get inexpensive food, use the bathroom, and connect to Wi-Fi, while generally being left alone, as long as you didn’t act too weird.…. if you want to understand America, spending time in McDonald’s is not a bad way to go.