Life of Wry

A bit of a surprise to me, I was invited to participate in a meet-up this morning with our Congressman, Mike Thompson. Mike asked Don S to gather a small group of local political activists to meet with him and share concerns from the frontlines. It was an impressive who’s who of representatives from a variety of activist groups and unions. I knew everyone and had worked with most.

I consider myself more of a line-level activist, someone who responds to calls and does a fair amount of work in teams, but I don’t lead those orgs. Most of the folks gathered this morning do.

Whatevs. I had some things to say and certainly understood the task at hand. It was a fairly productive 90 minutes.. some blah blah but also some urgent reality checks about the moment we’re in.

For my part, I wanted to hear more from Congressman Thompson about how, specifically, we go beyond politics-as-usual to fight what we all know is something new and far more dangerous than anything we’ve seen before. I want to know that we are supporting a congress member who’s going to work with us to push back aggressively on this administration NOW, not wait for the midterms to turn things around. Thompson is a solid Democrat… of the Blue Dog variety (“Democrats committed to bipartisan problem solving and fiscal responsibility”). He takes a more moderate position on most issues. Since trump’s come back into office, however, he’s gotten an earful from folks in his district (via townhalls and thousands of communications that constituents have had with him & his staff) and has upped his game. Thankfully.

Going forward, I hope he’ll use the resources and energy of the resistance, and I hope he’ll carry to Washington these messages and act on this energy.  The resistance movement is very sophisticated and has a lot to offer. I hope we have a partner in Mike.

Look at this little blip I read this evening in the NYT (the bolds are mine).

The power of Loomer

The Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccine official resigned under pressure yesterday after he found himself in the cross hairs of the right-wing influencer Laura Loomer. I asked my colleague Robert Draper, who recently profiled Loomer, to explain what this tells us about what she calls her “independent auditing.”

For Loomer, the F.D.A. official, Vinay Prasad, failed a basic loyalty test: Even as he had criticized vaccine manufacturers and Anthony Fauci, he had, in years past, repeatedly disparaged Trump and his followers.

Loomer has devoted considerable energy to looking into the backgrounds of officials who fall under the purview of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who she says is “running a shadow presidential campaign” from his office. Prasad fell into that category.

In an interview today, Loomer said that someone like Prasad — who had said on his podcast of Trump, “I hate him, too,” and ridiculed his followers as a “cult” — was not beyond redemption. After all, she said, “JD Vance compared Trump to Hitler.” But, she added, Vance “publicly apologized.”

“My biggest litmus test, besides loyalty,” Loomer said, “is whether you’re honest and have enough humility to demonstrate that you’re sorry.”

According to Loomer, Prasad didn’t come close to asking for forgiveness from Trump. “You’ve got to at least pretend like you’re sorry,” she said.

Isn’t it creepy that someone can just take it upon themselves to run around trump’s government hunting down people who fail the loyalty test? She, presumably, passes those names along to officials who then fire these non-loyalists.

It’s a lot, this administration, and its baldfaced authoritarian practices. The stuff that’s overlooked or, worse, normalized because there’s just no way the media, the congress, the resistance movement can keep up with all this… it’s exhausting and defeating.

Never mind all the self-dealing.

I hate this.