…a day to bring confusion to our enemies. As you vote, remember that we didn’t choose to be their enemies. They chose to punish us for being who we are. That was a mistake, and today is an opportunity to show them what that mistake will cost them if they persist in it. We should take advantage of our opportunity gladly, but if, at the end of the day, we should prevail, let us remember not to gloat, but to keep on keeping on until the last of our tormentors finds something more honorable to do with their lives.
Incantations
Ciudad de Los Angeles
1966
The wind unfettered
in the cypress branch
the sea’s great heart
alert
in all of us
is meaningless
and noise like this
in honor of it
meaningless
So why
stand on my
cracked hillside here
pledging a smear of sun
the last gassed palms
flying over Silver Lake
allegiance
When I could
go back in and
put the coffee on
get myself ready for work?
If Not Now, When?
“Somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech. Somewhere I read of the freedom of press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right. And so just as I said, we aren’t going to let dogs or water hoses turn us around. We aren’t going to let any injunction turn us around. We are going on.”
Unbidden Bits—October 11, 2025
Life among our insistent MAGA fascists is made almost palatable by the caprices of human immanence. Gibson, Sterling, Stephenson, Doctorow—their antennae have long been busy registering what’s coming, even if ours have not, at least not yet. Here’s a revelation from Sterling’s Holy Fire that has lately added to the strain on my already overworked engines of impermeability:
Maya blinked. “Men and women just think differently, that’s all.” “Oh, that’s so stupid! ‘Anatomy is destiny.’ That’s all gone now, you understand? Anatomy is industry now!”
Okay, Zuckermuskians, top that if you can. We see you. Do you see us?
Lament
A haunted child
At his lemonade stand
Under a tree that was
Here before us
Will be here after us
Because it’s not in Palestine
There is no justice, child
Only the haunting,
the terrible beauty we can see
Because we’re not in Palestine
Credit Where Credit Is Due
This is more like it, Governor Newsom. Keep it up. If responsible government officials do their part, we citizens will do ours. Our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor—we all know the drill.
Is It Genocide?
Yes.
To call it anything else is to deny the painfully, devastatingly obvious.
Have I, as a citizen of the United States, been complicit in this genocide?
Yes.
To deny it is to pretend that the obligations of citizenship do not apply to me.
Were there provocations? Were they inhumane?
Yes. As true in October, 2023 as in May, 1948.
Do we need to talk about European colonialism, Muslim atavism and xenophobia?
If we’re being honest, yes.
How can a child of the Enlightenment, a citizen of the United States, countenance even the idea of an ethnic state?
Intellectually, not at all. Diplomatically, the wisdom of the principle of live and let live is unavoidable. We should accommodate any religion or ideology which doesn’t demand that we bend the knee to its claims of supremacy. (This absolutely includes Christianity, which has a long history of lethal meddling in other people’s legitimate affairs.)
Can we understand why, 80 years after the Shoah, Israelis feel embattled, feel justified in committing any atrocity which they believe will keep their enemies at bay?
Yes, absolutely.
Can we understand why, 77 years after the Nakba, Palestinians feel abandoned by the rest of the world—as alone as the Jew who once wrote on a Matthausen concentration camp wall, “Wenn es einen Gott gibt, dann soll er mich um Verzeihung bitten!” (“If there is a God, then he ought to beg me for forgiveness!”)?
Yes, absolutely.
Is there any hope of forbearance, of reconciliation here?
None that I can see.
Is this because I’ve become morally and spiritually numb?
Probably. Does this speak well of me?
No.
Can I, will I do better?
Time will tell….
The Trump Patrimony
An abused child speaks:
I wouldn’t want to be the last country that tries to negotiate a trade deal with @realDonaldTrump,” posted Eric Trump. “The first to negotiate will win—the last will absolutely lose. I have seen this movie my entire life.”
—Eric Trump, as quoted in “China Called Trump’s Bluff,” from an Atlantic article by Jonathan Chait published online in Apple News, May 12, 2025
We know this movie. It’s the one where the sons submit unconditionally to the cruelty of their father. It appears to be as popular in the Trump family today as it was two generations ago. Elsewhere it gets decidedly mixed reviews. Check out the Bible, or the Taviani Brothers’ film Padre Padrone. (Like the Bible, it’s available in a dubbed version for you Trumps, who still steadfastly refuse to acknowledge that anything of interest exists in the world except America-first assholes and their medieval prejudices.)
Yes Eric, I know you’d rather travel to exclusive game preserves in Africa to shoot large animals than read a book, so it might surprise you to learn that history is made by the sons who defy their fathers, not by those who submit to licking papa’s boots in the hope that someday they might inherit papa’s money and papa’s puissance. (That’s a French word, Eric. Look it up.)
Let me do you a favor, kid. Let me recommend another Taviani brothers’ film to you, La Notte di San Lorenzo. Pay special attention to what happens in the end to young Marmugi, the son of the local Fascist party chief who’d assumed thoughout the film that following in his father’s footsteps was his key to a bright future of domination over everyone in his village. Above all, consider how easily his actual fate could be yours.
Eldon Tyrell and Roy Batty On the US Constitution
It doesn’t obstruct replication, but it does result in an error in replication, so that the newly formed DNA strand carries a mutation and you’ve got a virus again. But this—all of this is academic. You were made as well as we could make you.
But not to last….
Unbidden Bits—April 16, 2025
Political posts on social media often seem little more than rehearsals for what we’d like to see engraved on the tombstones of our friends and allies, if not on our own. Fair enough. No matter what form we choose to embody our resistance, la lutte continue:
