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Our Law Firm Won’t Cave to Trump. Who Will Join Us? - The New York Times Op-Ed
We take seriously our obligations to our clients, our associates, our staff and their families. But at this crucial moment, clients need to find their courage, too. And partners at big firms — who often earn millions a year — must be willing to take financial risks when the fate of our nation, the future of our profession and the rule of law itself are at stake.
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The Imperialism Has No Clothes - Thinking about… (Timothy Snyder)
The American imperialism directed towards Denmark and Canada is not just morally wrong. It is strategically disastrous. The United States has nothing to gain from it, and much to lose. There is nothing that Americans cannot get from Denmark or Canada through alliance.
Also appears in similar form in the The Guardian as Vance’s posturing in Greenland was not just morally wrong. It was strategically disastrous .
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Surrendering to Authoritarianism - The Chris Hedges Report
Liberal institutions, including universities, traditionally surrender without a fight to the dictates of autocrats. Ours are no exception.
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The Last Chapter of the Genocide - The Chris Hedges Report
Israel has begun the final stage of its genocide. The Palestinians will be forced to choose between death or deportation. There are no other options.
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No Other Land & Israeli Apartheid
Watching No Other Land, the 2025 Oscar winner for Best Documentary, brought to mind the phrase “Israeli apartheid” again.
I don’t know when that phrase first came to mind. Probably sometime during the latest Gaza War, which started when Hamas-led militants attacked Israel on October 7th, 2023.
The combination of these two words—the first a Palestine homeland for Jews; the second best associated with almost fifty years of South African near slavery, is flabbergasting. I have a hard time reconciling that phrase with what I know of the history of the Jews in Palestine/Israel.
Growing up in the Catskills Borscht Belt with a Jewish father and a Catholic mother, I knew about the thousands of years of antisemitism that was weaponized by Adolf Hitler and the National Socialists in Germany to massacre 6 million Jews during World War 2. I know about the declaration of the State of Israel in 1948. I know about Israel’s decades of conflict with its Arab neighbors and the chimera of the on-again, off-again peace processes.
Until recently, I never thought much about the Israeli and Palestinian conflicts. Somehow, I thought, each group would eventually see beyond their legitimate grievances going back generations to somehow build a peace together. But the wishes of individuals always seemed stymied by the political agendas of their leaders.
Watching Israeli authorities demolish Palestinian homes in Masafer Yatta, a village in the occupied West Bank, made it apparently clear of the Israeli government’s unquenchable quest for Lebensraum, living space at the expense of Palestinians who have lived on the land for generations, land the Israeli’s now covet. The tables have turned with a Jewish David becoming an oppressive, violent Golem that will smash everything in its path.
Perhaps this is the fate of those who forget the entirety of their history and only remember the lessons of hate taught to them by past monsters.
03/25/25 Update - Hamdan Ballal: Oscar-winning Palestinian director attacked by Israeli settlers and arrested
03/27/25 Update - It took an Oscar winner’s ordeal for the world to see the truth of settler violence. This is how to stop it
03/28/25 Update - ‘This is no isolated event’: attack on Palestinian director brings rising settler violence into focus
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Atlas Shrugged: Galt's Return
When I saw a picture of Elon Musk dip-skipping in the Oval Office I immediately thought of Atlas Shrugged.
Ayn Rand’s 1,168 page dystopian novel explores the consequences of a society where individual achievement is stifled by collectivism and government overreach. Dagny Taggart tries to keep her family’s railroad running while investigating the disappearance of John Galt’s and other “makers” as society collapses around her, victim of the “looters and the takers”. Galt and his fellow strikers have from a world that tries to take the fruits of their labor without just compensation. The book ends with John Galt making the sign of the dollar and promising to return to society and rebuild it in his image.
I loved this book when I first read it in my twenties (I also loved its prequel, The Fountainhead. I mean, what twenty-something wouldn’t see themselves in a story about an Übermensch imposing their will on the world, overcoming all obstacles to triumph in the last chapter.
Looking back at it now forty years later I see the flaws. An Atlas Shrugged sequel would have John Galt, like Elon Musk and his group of techno-fascists, co-opt the looters-in-power, the Epsilon-Minus Semi-Morons, so he (they) can enrich themselves and impose their twisted ideas on society, democracy be damned.
Elon Musk disgusts me more than Donald Trump. He’s got a face that is definitely in need of a fist or, as the Germans say, Backpfeifengesicht.
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Writing My Congressman & Senators
This [February 7th] letter is a follow-up to my phone conversation with one of your staff on February 6th, 2025.
Since the Trump inauguration, Elon Musk and his D.O.G.E. group have short circuited democratic and legal safeguards in order to gain unprecedented access to sensitive government systems using strong-arm tactics.
Without oversight or accountability, these private citizens are in the process of defunding and dismantling legitimate government organizations based on their whims, their personal preferences, and their desire to enrich themselves at the expense of the American people.
I am asking you, as my elected representative, to oppose this naked and aggressive grab for power by a small clique of billionaire would-be oligarchs.
Work with your caucus and your like-minded colleagues in both parties to visibly and consistently oppose this attempt to create a Potemkin village of our American democracy.
“The whole world is watching.”
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August Landmesser Refuses to Give Nazi salute (1936)
You can read more about August Landmesser’s life here.
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Timothy Snyder's "On Tyranny"
For those who are shocked, appalled, disheartened, etc. by what happened on Nov 5th, please read On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder.
Published in 2016, it was a warning against what happened on Tuesday. But now that what we thought unthinkable has happened, this book provides hope and actions an individual can still take to slow the spread of autocratic oligarchical fascism.
- Do not obey in advance
- Defend institutions
- Beware the one-party state
- Take responsibility for the face of the world
- Remember professional ethics
- Be wary of paramilitaries
- Be reflective if you must be armed
- Stand out
- Be kind to our language
- Believe in truth
- Investigate
- Make eye contact and small talk
- Practice corporeal politics
- Establish a private life
- Contribute to good causes
- Learn from peers in other countries
- Listen for dangerous words
- Be calm when the unthinkable arrives
- Be a patriot
- Be as courageous as you can
The 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776 were not wild-eyed, rabble-rousers, but mostly soft-spoken men of means and education. They had security, but valued liberty more. Each one surely had more to lose from revolution than he had to gain by it. But they stood tall, and unwavering and pledged:
“For the support of this declaration, with firm reliance on the protection of the divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other, our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”
We each should follow their example as best we can.
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“First They Came” by Martin Niemöller
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Those Who Fail to Learn From History are Doomed to Repeat It
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Remember What His Uncle JFK Said
When I see this photo I’m reminded of a line from his John F. Kennedy’s 1961 inaugural address - “…in the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.”
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