The daily flood of outrages, leaks, performance theater, and sheer evil emanating from the Trump White House can be so distracting that it is easy to get caught up in the news cycle and lose sight of what is important.
Let me suggest two things we keep our eyes one, two of many deserving our attention. The first is the apparent intention of the Administration to begin greatly expanded assaults on undocumented residents. Unfortunately the law is on Trump's side, but wherever and whenever we can, we need to shield those being targeted and try to create safe spaces where they can hide from the ICE [The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service.] America has a long tradition of this sort of thing, reaching back way before the internment of Japanese-Americans to the slave patrols, or "paterolers," who went into the woods after runaway slaves. There is no need to reference Nazi Germany. This is as American as apple pie, and we need to fight it.
The second thing is by-elections and off-year elections wherever they crop up. Like many of you, I have donated to the campaign of Jon Ossoff to take Georgia's Sixth House District on April 18th. There are other races coming up this year, and every one of them is vitally important. Fantasies about Trump leaving the White House are enticing, but the real struggle is to seize as much power as we can from the Republican Party. Despite regional concentration, gerrymandering, and voter suppression, there are enough of us to take back at least a part of the government, if we can just get our people to the polls.
Meanwhile, I have devoted two days to doing my taxes, and I am almost done. I am simply thrilled that my pittance will be put to such good use by the government!
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I see more and more stuff in the media about Mark Zuckerberg having presidential ambitions.
What do you think about him?
Only what I saw in the movie about him, which did not give me a warm fuzzy feeling.
To Robert's suggestion of doing what we can to dull the effect of ICE -- I totally agree. In my home state of Massachusetts we have four proposed measures, the most notable of which is the Safe Communities Act, which stop short of making the state a sanctuary state. There are currently 4 states doing this. For those so inclined, join the Our Revolution #slack channel devoted to sanctuary and keep on top of initiatives in your home state.
As for Mr. Zuckerberg, I'm sort of in a "fuck all billionaires" mood today. Check back with me tomorrow to see if the verb has changed.
This Observer editorial about Zuckerberg is very critical of him and seems worth a glance.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/19/the-observer-view-on-mark-zuckerberg
Zuckerberg, unlike Trump, is competent and efficient, pro-globalization (in the capitalist variety), liberal about gay rights and women's reproduction issues, not blatantly racist, has never defined himself very clearly whether he is a Republican or a Democrat, and can read everybody's minds. On his Facebook he "likes" Obama and Corey Booker, but he also likes Chris Christie and Nicolas Sarkozy.
The ICE raids have me very anxious. However, at least here in California there seems to be a good deal of opposition to them. Even the farmers, who largely supported the so-called president, are voicing worry now that their cheap workforce is threatened. The big dummies. (Each election season, Interstate 5, which runs up the middle of the state through its farmlands, becomes one long boulevard of advertisements for whatever Republican candidate is running.) We'll have to see what develops.
It rankles me to think of Zuckerberg as the politician of the future. Ugh. Maybe it's because we're the same age. However, T***p is so off-the-spectrum terrible that almost any possiblity would seem like a welcome return to normalcy. Zuckerberg, as far as I can tell, is a libertarian -- good on social issues, obtuse on economic issues.
Finally, people are speculating about T***p's Sweden gaffe. Apparently there was a terrorist attack in a town called Sehwan in Pakistan, and it seems likely that T***p read this in his briefing as "Sweden." Our minority-president is not functionally literate.
I'm sure that Mark Zuckerberg knows the difference between Sweden and Sehwan, and maybe even speaks a few words in Swedish: he's a very gifted young man.
Still, there used to be this strange idea of the government of the people, for the people and by the people, not of the super-rich, for the super-rich and now by the super-rich.
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