Life of Wry

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.

So far this year, the resistance has organized major national marches and rallies in April (Hands Off), May (May Day), June (No Kings Day) and July (Good Trouble Lives On). We were driving from Bayeux to Paris on June 14 and missed No Kings Day, but I’ve been able to attend the others. And, of course, there have been many, many other actions (like protests at Tesla dealerships, and smaller actions of all kinds in thousands of communities across the nation). I expect these to continue. The movement is only growing.

Today in Woodland, about 250-300 folks gathered. It was super well organized by two neighbors who heard about the John Lewis effort through Indivisible and decided to pull something together. Good for them! Here they are.. just a couple of friends:

They invited about 8 other folks to speak (all excellent) and recruited the Davis Raging Grannies to sing:

The speakers (a couple of pastors, a few immigrant rights folks and some others who are spearheading acts of resistance in other ways) spoke, then sign-bearers stood along the street and waved at the millions of cars who drove by and honked in solidarity.

I like this Indivisible action team from Davis — the Visibility team — who often position themselves on freeway overcrossings, but also show up at Russell and B St, and other high traffic areas in town. And of course the various protests in our area. I particularly like these signs.

I really love the signs people come up with that so speak from their hearts:

I’ve finally come to the conclusion that, yes, trump is really, really good at getting exactly what he wants. If he’s your guy then you are winning big. He’s done it. The office of the President of the United States is inarguably the most powerful position in the world, but he’s taken it to another level. He’s got not only every fucking element in our country by the tail, he’s got the whole world bending a knee to him. He did it. In spite of just about every country hating the fucker, he’s got pretty much the whole bunch of them begging to be loved and accepted by him. They may talk tough, but then they capitulate to his every demand. He’s got the entire republican party scared out of their wits to cross him, he’s got corporations, law firms, universities, and a good part of the media all falling in line. How he managed all of this in such short order I’ll never understand. But damn, bullies gonna bully and it sure seems to work. If you threaten and humiliate and lie and manipulate, people fold. At least it’s working for him. And with his propaganda machine running at full tilt and the right wing media amplifying absolutely everything he says, he’s been able to fool half the country to go along with an agenda that hurts a huge percentage of them.

Because, his objective was never to govern, never to be a leader for all of us. His objective was simple this second time around: stay out of prison; exact revenge against those who would hold him accountable; and, as always, indulge in corrupt self-enrichment. Period. Along the way, he requires a pathological degree of ego stroking, revels in humiliating and berating anyone who challenges him, and he’s playing a fuck of a lot of golf. He is absolutely drunk on himself. It’s just nauseating.

He’s not smart enough to do the policy stuff or mastermind the court battles — that’s the domain of the Steven Millers and Russ Voughts — but he’s more than willing to let them run the tables as long as he can claim all the credit.

So, yeah.. he’s winning. And the rest of us (like, the whole world, planet and everything that is decent, kind and humane) are just screwed. We have no tools for this, and apparently no strategy. We poor dems just keep playing by the rules, operating as though decency, the rule of law, and goodwill will prevail in the end. I’m not sure anymore.

I’m so angry and so frustrated. Willing to fight on, of course, and will. But the unfairness of our current reality… that one stupid, damaged, ego-driven, depraved, morally bankrupt punk ever got a hold of this much power, that so many have just rolled over and let him take the helm, out of fear or their own self interests…. that his tactics even work, just kills me. It’s profoundly unjust.

As I’ve said for 10 years, he is ruining us. He is eating us alive.

~~~

It does soothe my roiled soul to at least make fun of him.. so here are a few faves of late:

Feels like a meme posting day.

First, we have last week’s benign insta post from James Comey… remember him?… he was the head of the FBI which was overseeing an investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 elections, so trump fired him b/c he didn’t want anyone to undermine his, gag, victory.

Even though the 86-47 thing’s been around for a while (remember 86-45 and 86-47?), Comey’s post caused quite the [faux] stir. So. much. outrage! Especially from the trump man who’s been waiting forever to find a hook, anything, to get James Comey. His hatred runs deep (which is ironic, given that Comey’s bungling of the Hillary email hoax was a significant reason trump won in 2016).

Anyway, I’ve loved all the variations on the 86-47 theme. I particularly like this one:

Come summer, I’ll be spelling out my own variation with our garden’s cherry tomatoes.. look for that.

In the meantime, a couple more memes on the day:

These are the actual words delivered in the Oval Office this morning by our ridiculous, conspiracy-happy pres who ambushed the President from South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa with a whole weird media presentation on the killing of white farmers in his country.. a gross misrepresentation of what’s really happening in that country.

And finally, yet another sweet little Pooh and Piglet conversation…

After the inauguration of the greatest threat to democracy in our history, we realized that we needed to gather with other like-minded friends (and strangers) and TALK. I suppose we felt lost (how could this resurrection-fomenting, document-stealing, women-abusing, blathering fool of a felon possibly get elected?). I suppose we felt powerless (how can we ever protect the things we love and need with a MAGA governmental trifecta?). Maybe we could gather our friends (and strangers) to talk about the latest book we’d read, but who’s got time to read books (when we’re busy trying to save democracy)?!

We (Sister District Yolo) came up with an idea: A Not-a-Book-Club. Instead of big, time-consuming books, we’d talk about timely articles that got us thinking, or sparked new ideas, or offered some inspiration in the midst of the most depressing firehose of news ever. Instead of feeling nauseous and defeated and overwhelmed and angry, we could find some common cause with our neighbors, some community, some solidarity.

We set up four groups, each meeting at a different time and place. I co-host the mid-week evening gathering with Don

This evening, we gathered for our third one (they’re monthy). We talked about JB Pritzger’s barn burning speech in New Hampshire a week or two ago. We contrasted his approach “everything, everywhere, all at once,” (including massive protests, mobilization and resistance) with a dem strategist’s approach (Doug Sosnick) that includes a sequential 4-part plan. It was a great discussion. Everyone came prepared (the readings took less than an hour .. easy peasy).

And there were snacks.

Here’s this month’s group (I cut off Chris’s upper body):

I’ll close with this:

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.

— Margaret Mead

I could write about our crumbling democracy and the rise of authoritarian rule. I could repost what others have written about same — I mean, there are some great writers out there who are putting bold and brave words to this unfolding horror show. Or I could drop some memes into my blog from time to time.. as they, too, tell the story… and/or express so well how I feel.

Here are a few:

One of my favorite Substacks — I have many — is this fellow Robert Hubbell. Here’s a snip from this evening’s post:

He goes on to describe in detail today’s court drubbings. He then went on a rant about how trump’s enriching himself immeasurably through his meme coin grift and also ranted about how trump’s going after ActBlue. Of course the assault is relentless (the intent). We can only hope he flames out at some point (not likely) or the effects of his actions on real people will start to take a toll on his favorability (could happen).

~~

Finally, two memes I like: