Month: June 2025

Morale is low in LA

The Guardian reports:

California national guards troops and marines deployed to Los Angeles to help restore order after days of protest against the Trump administration have told friends and family members they are deeply unhappy about the assignment and worry their only meaningful role will be as pawns in a political battle they do not want to join.

Three different advocacy organisations representing military families said they had heard from dozens of affected service members who expressed discomfort about being drawn into a domestic policing operation outside their normal field of operations. The groups said they have heard no countervailing opinions.

“The sentiment across the board right now is that deploying military force against our own communities isn’t the kind of national security we signed up for,” said Sarah Streyder of the Secure Families Initiative, which represents the interests of military spouses, children and veterans.

“Families are scared not just for their loved ones’ safety, although that’s a big concern, but also for what their service is being used to justify.”

Chris Purdy of the Chamberlain Network, whose stated mission is to “mobilize and empower veterans to protect democracy”, said he had heard similar things from half a dozen national guard members. “Morale is not great, is the quote I keep hearing,” he said.

[…]

Active service members are prohibited by law from speaking publicly about their work. But Streyder, of the Secure Families Initiative, said she had heard dozens of complaints indirectly through their families. She had also seen a written comment passed along to her organization from a national guard member who described the assignment as “shitty” – particularly compared with early secondments to help with wildfire relief or, during the Covid pandemic, vaccination outreach. “Both of those experiences were uncomplicatedly positive, a contribution back to the community,” Streyder described the message as saying. “This is quite the opposite.”

According to Janessa Goldbeck, a Marine Corps veteran who runs the Vet Voice Foundation, the feeling was similar among some of the troops being sent from Twentynine Palms. “Among all that I spoke with, the feeling was that the marines are being used as political pawns, and it strains the perception that marines are apolitical,” Goldbeck said. “Some were concerned that the Marines were being set up for failure. The overall perception was that the situation was nowhere at the level where marines were necessary.”

People resisting the ICE raids are co-workers and family members, they aren’t armed terrorists. The protesters are just doing garden variety protesting, and the LAPD is out in force acting like an occupying army themselves in the few blocks around the federal buildings downtown.

No marines are required and putting them on the streets ups the potential for bloodshed a thousand fold. Who knows if some hothead will provoke a deadly confrontation or a marine, untrained in domestic unrest situations (because it’s not his job) reflexively starts shooting?

A case in point:

An incident in Los Angeles during the 1992 riots following the police beating of Rodney King serves as a cautionary tale. According to the book “Fires and Furies” by Maj. Gen. James Delk, who oversaw National Guard operations in California at the time, Marines caused an incident when they accompanied police officers to a domestic disturbance in the wake of the riots.

A police officer asked the Marines to “cover me” as he tried to enter the residence, according to the book. Instead of simply pointing their weapons at it to deter the people inside, the Marines opened fire on the house.

“The officer had not meant shoot when he yelled ‘cover me’ to the Marines,” Delk wrote. The officer meant, “point your weapon and be prepared to respond if necessary. However, the Marines responded instantly in the way they had been trained, where ‘cover me’ means ‘provide me with cover using firepower.’”

And that was in the midst of a real riot, with massive destruction and violence. Almost 60 people were killed. That’s not what’s happening right now. Trump is trying to say that it was happening but he and his big, swinging … uhm tie, have quelled it.

He’s trying to intimidate all of us, not just the immigrants. He wants to militarize the big blue cities and make us all bow down and pledge fealty, just as he’s done to the law firms and the universities. Fuck him.

As Trump is ruthlessly abducting and deporting garment workers, dishwashers, nannies, gardeners, meat packers, strawberry pickers — blue collar workers who pay taxes and support the American economy with their labor — the U.S. is selling green cards to rich foreigners for five million dollars. And they are officially calling the “Trump cards.” As you can see, that is from an official government website.

This is positively medieval.

Sigh:

According to a new poll released Wednesday night, conducted by The Washington Post and George Mason University’s Schar School, Americans who are paying the most attention to the protests have opposed Trump sending in the National Guard and Marines by 17 points, while those paying little to no attention support the move by 17 points. The poll surveyed 1,000 Americans, including more than 200 California residents.

I don’t know if they are avoiding the news so that it doesn’t interfere with their love for Dear Leader or if they just assume that everyone supports Trump so they do too or what. But in our polarized country, a Low Information Voter decide elections. Let’s hope that somehow reality seeps in to at least enough of them to defeat the MAGA horde next time out.

Values, you say?

In the wake of the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020, protests broke out across the country, some involving looting and vandalism. In the Los Angeles area, California officials called in the National Guard to assist local police. Similar protests occurred in Chicago. At the mayor’s request, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker dispatched his National Guard to assist police, but not to engage in police work. The damage was significant, yet state and local officials handled it, as they did in California, Georgia and elsewhere.

Donald Trump, then president, blustered, “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” But he did not put U.S. troops on the streets. Now he has in Los Angeles and threatens to across the country.

Isolated protests against Trump’s ICE raids in Los Angeles broke out on June 6. A few hundred protesters. The city and state had handled much larger protests before, some as large as 100,000. Over the heads of the city’s mayor and California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), Trump ordered National Guard troops into Los Angeles the next day, Saturday (take note).

Los Angeles Times veteran Jim Newton explains what he thinks is different now at Politico:

If a place as big and diverse as California can be said to have a coherent set of values, those today would include respect for the environment, benevolence toward immigrants, support for living wages and insistence on civilian control over police. And if those values prevail, they do so at the expense of Trump, who is on the opposite side of every one of them.

Trump’s maligning and threats have not worked against the world’s fourth largest economy and the source of “one-third of U.S. vegetables and three-quarters of its fruit and nuts” plus ” nearly 20 percent of the nation’s milk.”

From Trump’s perspective, California is thumbing its nose at his program for America. He’s right about that. What seems to confound him and his allies is that it’s not California’s political leadership that’s behind that contempt — it’s not Newsom or Bass or the state legislature — it’s the people of the state, in overwhelming numbers and relying on deeply held beliefs. Those leaders are merely reflecting back what their constituents demand. Again, Trump lost to Biden here by almost 30 points — more than 5 million votes —- despite all the state’s struggles and all the former president’s flaws.

In fact, Trump’s attacks on Newsom and Bass — including his empty threat to arrest Newsom — may be the best thing that’s happened to either in some time. Before all this, Bass was seen as having foundered in the face of the wildfire, which erupted while she was out of town; now, she’s the mayor standing up to a deeply unpopular and dangerous president.

That helps explain why Trump picked this fight in California, not just to be a bully but to force a showdown of values, to bring California to heel, or least to score points by trying.

If Los Angeles really were burning, Trump would sit back and let it if he thought it brought him political advantage, just as he did on January 6 with the insurrection he inspired just down the street from his residence.

On Saturday morning, the same streets that had been tense the night before woke to calm. Diners lined up at the Grand Central Market in downtown Los Angeles for breakfast. The March of Dimes held a rally across from City Hall. LAPD officers had a booth; one joined the line dancing. Children played cornhole and munched on crushed ice.

Despite the protests concentrated in a couple of downtown blocks, Trump could not allow California to return to normal. That would mean its values would prevail. Trump ordered 700 Marines to deploy to Los Angeles on Monday amid claims that the city was on fire, in chaos, occupied by insurrectionists. You could have fooled city residents. They were going about their everyday business.

Newton continues:

If the goal is to calm Los Angeles, the solution would be simple: Withdraw federal forces and let the LAPD and Sheriff’s Department do their jobs.

But that’s not the goal. The unrest goes on because Trump needs it to. He’s not just fighting for deportations. He’s fighting for his values in a state that rejects them.

Newton is being generous in ascribing to Trump values. What he has is a feral instinct for domination.

Does Trump need a national distraction from his reconciliation package that’s floundering in the Senate? Yes. But that is policy he cares about less than losing. California and immigration are personal. Trump means to exert the full extent of his authority, and to exceed it in the absence of congressional and judicial pushback.

Ev’ry knee shall bow. Ev’ry tongue confess. That Donald Trump is Lord king. Or he’ll huff, and he’ll puff, and he’ll blow the republic down. He means to bring the country to heel. Especially places that find him repugnant. That’s half the country. (Meaning people not acreage.) But not until after his Red Square moment this Saturday.

Trumpism, the MAGA movement and Christian nationalism, have revealed not just how many of our flag-waving neighbors are secret monarchists, but how many are poseurs when it comes to the values they claim not only to revere but to embody (more than you, Dear Reader). It’s not all for show. But a lot is righteous posturing aimed at convincing not only the rest of the country of their superiority, but themselves.

Your homicide rate is literally DOUBLE California’s. https://t.co/wiva57iu6i

— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) June 11, 2025

Newsom clapped back on Wednesday at Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s (R) claim that in her state, lawlessness would never happen like in that lefty bastion of California. Newsom points out (correctly) that the homicide rate in Arkansas is twice that of California’s.

* * * * *

Have you fought dictatorship today?

No Kings Day, June 14th (this Saturday)
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense

Waving foreign flags is an affront to America?

Let this tweet from Tuesday set the tone.

It sickens me to hear Spanish spoken on the streets of Los Angeles, San Diego, Palo Alto, San Francisco, Santa Ana, San Jose, Santa Barbara, San Bernardino, El Cerrito, La Mirada, San Luis Obispo

— Natalie Wynn (@ContraPoints) June 10, 2025

Wynn followed up later with “are you guys really going to make me explain the tweet? no. I won’t do it. This is where I draw the line.”

The joke would have gone over the head of Attorney General Pam Bondi of Florida. She’s probably incensed to hear Spanish spoken in Boca Raton, Punta Gorda, Ponte Vedra, Islamorada, and Valparaiso.

Bondi on Wednesday was still trying to sell the administration’s “California is on fire” bullshit.

 

View on Threads

Protesters in the few city blocks of Los Angeles where “California” is allegedly burning are committing an affront to the United States in a blatant display of alienness and refusal to assimilate.

“These people are waving Mexican flags,” Bondi accused. *

Very good, @AGPamBondi. Can you identify these flags too?

One of the above seven images of ethnic heritage celebrations is not like the others, at least to Pam Bondi, Donald Trump, and the MAGA movement. Can you guess why?

* An old friend grew up in Los Angeles referring to California as Occupied Mexico. Now his home town is reoccupied.

* * * * *

Have you fought dictatorship today?

No Kings Day, June 14th (this Saturday)
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense

The music world has lost a giant today. Since the news broke, it seems all the superlatives have been used up describing Brian Wilson’s genius, so I thought I’d let the music do the talking. And rather than slapping together a playlist of The Beach Boys greatest hits (too easy), it feels more appropriate to celebrate Wilson’s legacy via artists who have taken inspiration from him. In tribute, here are 15 covers and originals that channel his spirit.

The Beatles – “Back in the U.S.S.R.” – Granted, this may be cheating a bit, considering that (as the story goes) Beach Boy Mike Love overheard Paul McCartney working on this tune when they were both studying under the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in India and suggested that “[what Paul] ought to do is talk about the girls all around Russia, the Ukraine, and Georgia.” And so it came to pass. Then again, The Beatles didn’t give a tip o’ the hat to just anybody, you know.

First Class – “Beach Baby” – UK studio band First Class was the brainchild of singer-songwriter Tony Burrows, who also sang lead on other one-hit wonders, including “Love Grows Where My Rosemary Goes” (The Edison Lighthouse), “My Baby Loves Lovin’” (White Plains), and “United We Stand” (The Brotherhood of Man). This pop confection was a Top 10 song in the U.S. in 1974.

Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs – “The Warmth of the Sun” – A lovely cover from Sweet and Hoffs’ Under the Covers, Vol. 1 collaboration album. The original version (featuring one of Brian Wilson’s most gorgeous melodies) was on the 1964 album Shut Down Vol 2. Atypically introspective and melancholy for this era of the band, it had an unusual origin story. Wilson and Mike Love began work on the tune in the wee hours of the morning JFK was assassinated; news of the event changed the tenor of the lyrics and vocal performances.

Todd Rundgren – “Good Vibrations” – A near carbon copy of the Beach Boys’ brilliant 1966 hit, which famously took Wilson 7 months to produce (in four studios). This cut is from Rundgren’s 1976 album Faithful, which features one side of originals and the other devoted to “faithful” covers of 60s tunes.

10cc – “The Dean and I” – Imbued with shades of “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” (particularly on the bridge) and typically cheeky lyrics, this cut is from 10cc’s eponymous 1973 debut album.

Roy Wood – “Why Does Such a Pretty Girl Sing Those Sad Songs” – This uncanny homage is taken from the former Move front man’s 2nd solo album Mustard, released in 1975. I wager this one could pass as an original Brian Wilson composition in a blindfold test!

The High Llamas – “Over the River” – Band founder/keyboardist Sean O’Hagan has never made a secret of his admiration for Brian Wilson, hence I could have picked any number of his compositions to include. This instrumental, featured on the band’s 1998 Cold and Bouncy album, rings of Wilson’s Smile era.

Me First and the Gimme Gimmes – “Sloop John B.” – This fun punk-pop cover of a Pet Sounds cut cleverly tips its hat to the Beach Boys and The Ramones!

The Raspberries – “Cruisin’ Music” – The Raspberries go beach cruisin’ a la Wilson, from their 1974 album Starting Over.

Ken Sharp – “Girl Don’t Tell Me” – Ken Sharp is a sort of power pop Renaissance man; in addition to releasing a number of singles and albums, he has authored/co-authored 18 music books-including tomes on Cheap Trick, The Raspberries, The Small Faces, and Rick Springfield. This song was the B-side of the Beach Boys’ 1965 hit “Barbara Ann”; Sharp’s cover incorporates Beatle influences.

Martin Newell – “Miss Van Houten’s Coffee Shoppe” – Despite the fact that he writes hook-laden pop gems in his sleep, and has been doing so for five decades, endearingly eccentric singer-musician-songwriter-poet Martin Newell (Cleaners From Venus, Brotherhood of Lizards) remains a selfishly-guarded secret by cultish admirers (of which I am one). This bouncy number suggests some heavy Brian Wilson influence.

Los Lobos – “Sail on Sailor” – This fabulous cover is from Los Lobos’ 2021 album Native Sons, which paid tribute to L.A.-based artists.

The Dukes of Stratosphear – “Pale and Precious” – It’s hard to miss the Brian Wilson influence in this cut, taken from the band’s 2nd album Psonic Psunspot (this “band” was actually a nom de plume for an XTC side project).

Flo & Eddie – “Keep it Warm” – Here’s another one that could pass for a Wilson original (well…satirical lyrics aside), by ex-Turtles/Mothers of Invention members Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman, from their 1975 album Illegal, Immoral, and Fattening.

David Lee Roth – “California Girls” – No one could ever accuse the former Van Halen front man of being camera-shy. This remains one of the most memorable 80s videos, and also holds up as a great arrangement of one of Brian Wilson’s signature compositions.

Previous posts with related themes:

Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road

Love and Mercy

More reviews at Den of Cinema

— Dennis Hartley

You can almost feel, emanating from the White House, a libidinal desire to do violence to protesters, as if that will, in one fell swoop, consolidate the Trump administration into a Trump regime, empowered to rule America both by force and the fear of force.

Yes, it is a “libidinal desire” for these twisted sadists. And it is most certainly not consensual.

Here’s a gift link for the whole piece. It’s truly great and even offers some hope.

Anne Applebaum in The Atlantic on Trump’s latest moves:

Revolutions have a logic. The revolutionaries start with a big, transformative, impossible goal. They want to remake society, smash existing institutions, replace them with something different. They know they will do damage on the road to their utopia, and they know people will object. Committed to their ideology, the revolutionaries pursue their goals anyway.

Inevitably, a crisis appears. Perhaps many people, even most people, don’t want regime change, or don’t share the revolutionaries’ utopian vision. Perhaps there are unplanned disasters. Smashing institutions can have unexpected, sometimes catastrophic, consequences, as the history of post-revolutionary famines shows very well.

But whatever the nature of the crisis, it forces the revolutionaries to make a choice. Give up—or radicalize. Find compromises—or polarize society further. Slow down—or use violence.

The bloodiest, most damaging revolutions have all been shaped by people making the most extreme choices. When the Bolsheviks ran into opposition in 1918, they unleashed the Red Terror. When the Chinese Communists encountered resistance, Mao sent teenage Red Guards to torment professors and civil servants. Sometimes the violence was mere theater, lecture halls full of people demanding that victims recant. Sometimes it was real. But it always served a purpose: to provoke, to divide, and then to allow the revolutionaries to suspend the law, create an emergency, and rule by decree.

I doubt very much that Donald Trump knows a lot about the methods of Bolsheviks or Maoists, although I am certain that some of his entourage does. But he is now leading an assault on what some around him call the administrative state, which the rest of us call the U.S. government. This assault is revolutionary in nature. Trump’s henchmen have a set of radical, sometimes competing goals, all of which require fundamental changes in the nature of the American state. The concentration of power in the hands of the president. The replacement of the federal civil service with loyalists. The transfer of resources from the poor to the rich, especially rich insiders with connections to Trump. The removal, to the extent possible, of brown-skinned people from America, and the return to an older American racial hierarchy.

They are using revolutionary tactics to achieve their goals — DOGE, Harvard, The media, The NIH. It’s all familiar.

But their plans are being thwarted by the courts, they have failed to produce the desired results (DOGE) and they’re having to resort to a different strategy:

Now Trump faces the same choice as his revolutionary predecessors: Give up—or radicalize. Find compromises—or polarize society further. Slow down—or use violence. Like his revolutionary predecessors, Trump has chosen radicalization and polarization, and he is openly seeking to provoke violence.

It’s still in its nascent stage so we haven’t yet seen the worst. But it’s very easy to see it coming:

The Marines in Los Angeles may provoke more violence, and that may indeed be the true purpose of their mission; after all, the Marines are primarily trained not to do civilian crowd control, but to kill the enemies of the United States. In an ominous speech at Fort Bragg yesterday, Trump reverted to the dehumanizing rhetoric he used during the election campaign, calling protesters “animals” and “a foreign enemy,” language that seems to give permission to the Marines to kill people. Even if this confrontation ends without violence, the presence of the military in Los Angeles breaks another set of norms and prepares the way for another escalation, another set of emergency decrees, another opportunity to discard the rule of law later on.

The logic of revolution often traps revolutionaries: They start out thinking that the task will be swift and easy. The people will support them. Their cause is just. But as their project falters, their vision narrows. At each obstacle, after each catastrophe, the turn to violence becomes that much swifter, the harsh decisions that much easier. If not stopped, by Congress or the courts, the Trump revolution will follow that logic too.

The congress will do nothing. We already know that. And Red States, for all their decades of caterwauling about states’ rights are all in as well:

Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr and 25 Republican AGs expressed support for President Trump’s response to the violent anti-ICE rioting taking place in Los Angeles, saying the commander in chief’s decision to call in the National Guard was the “right response.”

“In California, we’re seeing the results of leadership that excuses lawlessness and undermines law enforcement,” the 26 attorneys general wrote. “If you set police cars on fire, throw Molotov cocktails at law enforcement, and loot businesses, you must be held accountable.”

The AGs said what’s occurring in California is the result of failed leadership.

There has been virtually no looting or Molotov cocktails. Those who did that have been arrested. The cars set on fire were Waymos, not police cars. These AGs are full of shit. But that’s beside the point. We know now and forever, that states’ rights principles only apply to them. Blue states are vassal states under Trump rule required to pick up the tab for the fascist red states. That’s the deal.

No

A nine months pregnant woman was roughed up by ICE agents:

A 28-year-old pregnant woman set to give birth as early as next week is speaking out about being detained by immigration authorities in California, even after telling agents she was a U.S. citizen.

Cary López Alvarado lost her balance as agents “shoved her” during her arrest over the weekend, she tearfully told NBC Los Angeles on Monday from a hospital bed. “That’s when I kind of leaned forward, trying to protect the stomach.” López Alvarado told Telemundo 52, NBC’s sister station in Los Angeles, “I was afraid that they were going to hurt me.”

In an interview at her home Tuesday with Noticias Telemundo, López said “I crouched down and held my belly because I was scared they would hurt me…three agents were grabbing me and trying to handcuff me.”

After being released Sunday, López Alvarado said she started experiencing sharp pains in her stomach and was hospitalized. With just one week left before her due date, her doctors said they are monitoring López Alvarado as well as her baby, NBC Los Angeles reported.

Masked men wearing Border Patrol uniforms pulled up to a building’s private parking in the city of Hawthorne in marked U.S. Customs and Border Protection vehicles on Sunday, after following a white pickup truck with two undocumented workers, one of which is López Alvarado’s partner, Brian Nájera.

López Alvarado and her cousin Alberto Sandoval, who is also a U.S. citizen, opened the parking’s gate so her partner and co-worker could come in. López Alvarado and Sandoval as well as Nájera her partner and the other co-worker were in the building doing maintenance work. López Alvarado said she and her cousin believed agents would need to show they had a warrant to be able to enter their workplace.

They did not need to manhandle, hand cuff and arrest her. But they did. Arresting an immigrant in his workplace is not an emergency. There is no reason that they have to exert their authority in every single situation.

But they are under a quote now, as directed by Commandante Miller and they will do anything to make their numbers. Even if it requires roughing up ]heavily pregnant women.

Who are these people?

— Victor Hugo, Les Miserables

Good luck with that.

King Trump, cultural arbiter:

Months after orchestrating a conservative takeover of the Kennedy Center’s leadership, President Donald Trump will attend “Les Miserables” on Wednesday, his first show at the performing arts facility that has become a symbol of U.S. cultural and political divides.

[…]

Trump’s appearance at “Les Miserables”, a show about citizens rising up against their government, comes just days after he sent U.S. Marines and the National Guard to quell protests against his administration’s immigration raids in Los Angeles. First lady Melania Trump and Vice President JD Vance will also attend.

I heard about this watching CNN this morning. Kasie Hunt begged to differ with that framing saying that Trump and his followers see themselves as the heroic citizens rising up against their government. I guess that’s true. They certainly do see January 6th that way. But they are actually more like the French revolutionaries of 40 years earlier — the Jacobins, at least when it comes to their blood lust.