2025
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See a related poster for American men on this blog, one of them Black, captioned “Bonds and justice will smash the Nazis. Not bondage!" ↩︎
- More people have lived under despots of some kind than have not. Life still finds a way. So do freedom and justice.
- Despotism has played a large role in this country’s history, too, and the oppressed didn’t quit, even sharing their light. Recall the histories of Black Americans and of other othered groups.
- Hate the hubristic orange oaf and rocket oligarch for their abuses, if you want, but look for ways to leverage your emotions. Don’t let an understandable sense of powerlessness control you. Don’t allow the president and his helpmates to continue their assault unopposed.
- Start with the basics: Stay informed, but use your attention mindfully; protect your loved ones; rediscover the power of community.
- Remind yourself that this administration is no monolith. Neither are the Republican caucuses in the House and Senate, never mind the states.
- Every action the administration undertakes will challenge the unity that the GOP enjoys among its own. Overreach will make the coalition that is intent on destroying our government more vulnerable to fracture.
- Bide your time, if need be, but look for opportunities to raise awareness of specific problems. Look for ways to push back. Trust that your representatives are doing the same, but also verify.
- Get over your disgust at all people who elected this president. Most of these people share many of your values. Some are potential allies. Saying, “Told you so!” might feel good, but there’s no more time for that.
- Even the president’s supporters can be persuaded to protest against specific policies, including by calling their representatives. Look for the issues that people care about. With time, you might help them to see connections to other issues, but take baby steps, show humility.
- The corruptibility of people will favor the current presidency in parts of the government and in civil society, but the presidency’s actions in this regard will make it vulnerable to infighting.
- Find strength in how weak the administration’s actions reveal it to be. It does not trust normal legislative processes, not even when its party controls both houses of Congress.
- These people do not trust the FBI, the military, the government they head, or the people who elected them, but they trust in their own ability to purge and to lead the first three against as many of the people as they think necessary. They are wrong. Reliance on force without justice and public support on their side makes them weak.
- They think inciting the mob through social media posts is an effective mode of governance. While dangerous, this behavior is another sign of their weakness.
- They think threats of primaries are a viable long-term alternative to cooperation with members of their own party in Congress. The rich doners who make these threats viable strengthen neither their party nor the administration over the long term. Skilled cabals might exact high prices, but they do not last.
- They know that their rhetoric about trans and other queer people is favored by only a minority, and then largely in the abstract. The same goes for the racist, anti-DEIA cover they employ to discriminate while pretending that they are all about merit.
- Having only terrible arguments in their quiver, they rely on epistemic violence and memory erasure—lies, disinformation, public attacks on those who call them out, bullying teachers, strong-arming universities and schools, crying “censorship” in spaces they haven’t managed to dominate, deleting vital data from government websites, and more.
- Their attack against us and our government has been expanded to include our allies, too. Don’t get indignant when people in theses countries call all of us out on our tariffs and worse. Look for ways to show solidarity instead.
- We’re feeling exhausted by the assault on all fronts, but this assault takes people, and they are consuming their own at an alarming rate.
The one who deals the blow forgets.
The one who carries the scar remembers.
– Haitian proverb*
* Quoted in Jonathan M. Katz, Gangsters of Capitalism (St: Martin’s, 2022), front matter.
What’s the U.S. version of “banana republic”? “Orange republic”?
World War Two Poster Marking the Dignity and Humanity of Black Women on the Home Front
The American Front for Victory – This poster from World War Two operates on two levels. First, it emphasizes the contribution of “The American Front” to the victory for which the nation was fighting. American front because this was about the home front, the people, many of them women, contributing to victory in industry, in agriculture, through service, and with their savings. Second, the name makes an important statement about the women it pictures working. They are Black. In large parts of the country, racist Americans cast the fitness of Black people as American citizens in doubt, to say nothing of questioning their very humanity.1 Here, by contrast, four Black women are depicted doing dignified work for the national cause.
Moving clockwise from the top, one woman, wearing some kind of civilian uniform, is holding a bucket marked “save” and is participating in either the sale or purchase of “Defense Bonds”; another is working a potato field with the words “strong bodies” underneath; there is a woman in a nurse’s uniform above the label “volunteer service”; and a woman can be seen working on an airplane, perhaps installing its propeller. This is a poster proclaiming the importance of the home front and the dignity and honor of the Black women fighting on it.
Source: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Art and Artifacts Division, NYPL, image id psnypl_scf_061.
Books Are Weapons – World War Two poster by NYC WPA War Services promoting knowledge about Black history and culture, the war's colonial entanglements in Africa, and the role of Black Americans in national defense. The books referenced were housed in the New York Public Library's renowned Schomburg Collection.
Source: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Art and Artifacts Division, NYPL, image id 5211531.
I don’t get it. With the Abraham Accords from last time and now the changed situation in Lebanon and Syria, His Royal Orangliness might have been uniquely poised to obtain a grand bargain for Israel and the region. Instead everything he says and does worsens the situation. Have they no imagination?
“WPA Rhythm Band” by Elisabeth Olds, 1937. I love how dynamic this image is, like her “Harlem WPA Street Dance” from the same year.
Signed and dated print, Federal Art Project, NYC WPA, via Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Art and Artifacts Division, NYPL, image id 5180673.
Xi Jinping must be feeling really good. Putin’s worn down his army in a bid to end Ukrainian state- and nationhood. Felonious Husk is gutting the U.S. federal government from within, snuffing out crucial expertise. And Hegseth is leading the Pentagon—enough said.
“Harlem WPA Street Dance” by Elisabeth Olds, 1937. Signed and dated print, Federal Art Project, NYC WPA, via Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Art and Artifacts Division, NYPL, image id 5180674.
Not a bad drive, but still something of a forced march from the White Mountains to the great city that hosts the institutions under attack by Felonious Husk and his young fascists. Am finally lying in bed, but my body still thinks it’s in a moving vehicle.
Ethnic cleansing as daring do—if Orange Donald’s own country doesn’t move to try him and his collaborators in the end, other countries will.
King Donald as nation builder in the Middle East. It’ll be a snap with the U.S. armed forces at his command. He just needs a few more weeks to undermine everything that once made America a great power.
This will not end well for Felonious Husk. I just wish he wasn’t so intent on taking the rest of us with him.
Felonious Musk
is having a ball,
while Donald Dingus
performs for us all.
Presidenting is
the biggliest shit.
Don’t steal my show
or you’ll have to go.
Negro boy near Cincinnati, Ohio by John Vachon for the Farm Security Administration, 1942 or 1943.
Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2017877922/.
The fighting spirit and actions announced here are a breath of fresh air: “Congressional Democrats on Trump Admin. Closing USAID HQ”.
Bonds and justice will smash the Nazis, not bondage!
World War Two poster – The word "bonds" can work three ways here: the bonds or chains pictured here as broken, the bonds that unite us, and U.S. war bonds. The second of these offers the most powerful contrast to "bondage."
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Art and Artifacts Division, NYPL, image id psnypl_scf_065.
Democratic U.S. allies are going to need to find ways to stand up to the United States, whose government is being captured by Rocket Man, before this person starts leveraging U.S. foreign policy for his own ends. Orange Oaf’s capricious nature might just be the least of their problems.
Eighteen Points toward Strength and Solidarity in a Time of Fear and Despair
I wrote these to steady myself, but maybe they will be of interest and possible use to others.