Timothy Snyder; The Logic of Destruction: And how to resist it, February 2, 2025

 TIMOTHY SNYDER; The Logic of Destruction: And how to resist it

"What is a country? The way its people govern themselves. America exists because its people elect those who make and execute laws. The assumption of a democracy is that individuals have dignity and rights that they realize and protect by acting together.

The people who now dominate the executive branch of the government deny all of this, and are acting, quite deliberately, to destroy the nation. For them, only a few people, the very wealthy with a certain worldview, have rights, and the first among these is to dominate. 

For them, there is no such thing as an America, or Americans, or democracy, or citizens, and they act accordingly. Now that the oligarchs and their clients are inside the federal government, they are moving, illegally and unconstitutionally, to take over its institutions.

The parts of the government that work to implement laws have been maligned for decades. Americans have been told that the people who provide them with services are conspirators within a “deep state.” We have been instructed that the billionaires are the heroes.

All of this work was preparatory to the coup that is going on now. The federal government has immense capacity and control over trillions of dollars. That power was a cocreation of the American people. It belongs to them. The oligarchs around Trump are working now to take it for themselves.

Theirs is a logic of destruction. It is very hard to create a large, legitimate, functioning government. The oligarchs have no plan to govern. They will take what they can, and disable the rest. The destruction is the point. They don’t want to control the existing order. They want disorder in which their relative power will grow...

The best people in American federal law enforcement, national security, and national intelligence are being fired. The reasons given for this are DEI and trumpwashing the past. Of course, if you fire everyone who was concerned in some way with the investigations of January 6th or of Russia, that will be much or even most of the FBI. Those are bad reasons, but the reality is worse: the aim is lawlessness: to get the police and the patriots out of the way.

In the logic of destruction, there is no need to rebuild afterwards. In this chaos, the oligarchs will tell us that there is no choice but to have a strong man in charge. It can be a befuddled Trump signing ever larger pieces of paper for the cameras, or a conniving Vance who, unlike Trump, has always known the plot. Or someone else...

Almost everything that has happened during this attempted takeover is illegal. Lawsuits can be filed and courts can order that executive orders be halted. This is crucial work.

Much of what is happening, though, involves private individuals whose names are not even known, and who have no legal authority, wandering through government offices and issuing orders beyond even the questionable authority of executive orders. Their idea is that they will be immunized by their boldness. This must be proven wrong.

Some of this will reach the Supreme Court quickly. I am under no illusion that the majority of justices care about the rule of law. They know, however, that our belief in it makes their office something other than the undignified handmaiden of oligarchy. If they legalize the coup, they are irrelevant forever.

Individual Democrats in the Senate and House have legal and institutional tools to slow down the attempted oligarchical takeover. There should also be legislation. It might take a moment, but even Republican leaders might recognize that the Senate and House will no longer matter in a post-American oligarchy without citizens."

THE 100 BEST PROTEST SONGS OF ALL TIME; Rolling Stone, January 27, 2025

Rolling Stone; THE 100 BEST PROTEST SONGS OF ALL TIME

"When Chuck D of Public Enemy famously called hip-hop “the Black CNN,” he was touching on a universal truth that goes beyond genre: Music and protest have always been inextricably linked. For some marginalized groups, the simple act of creating music at all can be a form of speaking out against an unjust world. Our list of the 100 Best Protest Songs spans nearly a century and includes everything from pre-World War II jazz and Sixties folk to Eighties house music, 2000s R&B, and 2020s Cuban hip-hop. 

Some of these songs decry oppression and demand justice, others are prayers for positive change; some grab you by the shoulders and shout in your face, others are personal, private attempts to subtly embody the contradictory nature of political struggle and change from the inside. Many of our selections are specific products of leftist political traditions (like Pete Seeger’s version of “We Shall Overcome”), but just as many are hits that slipped urgent messages into the pop marketplace (like Nena’s anti-nuclear war New Wave bop “99 Luftballons”)."

A peaceful but determined resistance to Trump must start now; The Guardian, November 6, 2024

Robert Reich , The Guardian; A peaceful but determined resistance to Trump must start now

"Countless people are now endangered on a scale and intensity almost unheard of in modern America.

Our first responsibility is to protect all those who are in harm’s way.

We will do that by resisting Trump’s attempts to suppress women’s freedoms. We will fight for the rights of women and girls to determine when and whether they have children. No one will force a woman to give birth.

We will block Trump’s cruel efforts at mass deportation. We will fight to give sanctuary to productive, law-abiding members of our communities, including young people who arrived here as babies or children.We will not allow mass arrests and mass detention of anyone in America. We will not permit families to be separated. We will not allow the military to be used to intimidate and subjugate anyone in this country.

We will protect trans people and everyone else who is scapegoated because of how they look or what they believe. No one should have to be ashamed of who they are.

We will stop Trump’s efforts to retaliate against his perceived enemies. A free nation protects political dissent. A democracy needs people willing to stand up to tyranny.

How will we conduct this resistance?

By organizing our communities. By fighting through the courts. By arguing our cause through the media.

We will ask other Americans to join us – left and right, progressive and conservative, white people and people of color. It will be the largest and most powerful resistance since the American revolution.

But it will be peaceful. We will not succumb to violence, which would only give Trump and his regime an excuse to use organized violence against us.

We will keep alive the flames of freedom and the common good, and we will preserve our democracy. We will fight for the same things Americans have fought for since the founding of our nation – rights enshrined in the constitution and Bill of Rights."

STAR WARS: Andor Clip - "Fight The Empire!" Maarva's Epic Monologue (2022); Star Wars via YouTube

Star Wars via YouTube; STAR WARS: Andor Clip - "Fight The Empire!" Maarva's Epic Monologue (2022)

"The adventures of rebel spy Cassian Andor during the formative years of the Rebellion prior to the events of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. The series explores tales filled with espionage and daring missions to restore hope to a galaxy in the grip of a ruthless Empire."

"Fight the Empire!" - Maarva Andor's Speech [Andor Episode 12]; November 23, 2022

 [Spoiler Alert]

"Fight the Empire!" - Maarva Andor's Speech [Andor Episode 12]

"We were sleeping.

I've been sleeping...

The Empire is a disease that thrives in darkness.

It is never more alive than when we sleep."

The worst is yet to come; Washington Post, July 27, 2017

Eugene Robinson, Washington Post; The worst is yet to come

"The Court of Mad King Donald is not a presidency. It is an affliction, one that saps the life out of our democratic institutions, and it must be fiercely resisted if the nation as we know it is to survive.

I wish that were hyperbole. The problem is not just that President Trump is selfish, insecure, egotistical, ignorant and unserious. It is that he neither fully grasps nor minimally respects the concept of honor, without which our governing system falls apart. He believes “honorable” means “obsequious in the service of Trump.” He believes everyone else’s motives are as base as his.

The Trump administration is, indeed, like the court of some accidental monarch who is tragically unsuited for the duties of his throne. However long it persists, we must never allow ourselves to think of the Trump White House as anything but aberrant. We must fight for the norms of American governance lest we forget them in their absence...

Do not become numb to the mad king’s outrages. The worst is yet to come."

Leave Your Laptops at the Door to My Classroom; New York Times, 1/2/17

Darren Rosenblum, New York Times; Leave Your Laptops at the Door to My Classroom:

"Focus is crucial, and we do best when monotasking: Even disruptions of a few seconds can derail one’s train of thought. Students process information better when they take notes — they don’t just transcribe, as they do with laptops, but they think and record those thoughts. Laptops or tablets can undermine exam performance by 18 percent. Other studies reveal that writing by hand helps memory retention. Screens block us from connecting, whether at dinner or in a classroom. Kelly McGonigal, a psychologist and lecturer at Stanford University, says that just having a phone on a table during a meal “is sufficiently distracting to reduce empathy and rapport between two people.”

For all these reasons, starting with smaller classes, I banned laptops, and it improved the students’ engagement. With constant eye contact, I could see and feel when they understood me, and when they did not. Energized by the connection, we moved faster, further and deeper into the material. I broadened my rule to include one of my large upper-level courses. The pushback was real: A week before class, I posted the syllabus, which announced my policy. Two students wrote me to ask if I would reconsider, and dropped the class when I refused. But more important, after my class ends, many students continue to take notes by hand even when it’s not required.

Putting aside medical exemptions, many students are just resistant. They are used to typing and prefer it to writing. They may feel they take better notes by keyboard. They may feel they know how to take notes by hand but do not want to have to do so. They can look up material, and there’s no need to print assignments. Some may have terrible handwriting, or find it uncomfortable or even painful to write.

To them, I’ll let the Rolling Stones answer: You can’t always get what you want, but sometimes you get what you need. My students need to learn how to be lawyers and professionals. To succeed they must internalize an ethos of caution, care and respect. To instill these values and skills in my students, I have no choice but to limit laptop use in the classroom.