Another month down, and I haven't been productive, at least not here. I've been too active, if anything, in comments under some videos on YouTube and Facebook. I hope to bring some of those thoughts here.
Meanwhile, I found Zohran Mamdani's victory in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary uplifting. But I quickly began to worry. As with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez' upset against Joseph Crowley in 2018, I noticed that many celebrants forgot that Mamdani won a primary, not a general election. She did win and go to Washington, and has so far managed to defeat Democratic party-hacks and MAGA scumbags hired to try to dislodge her. I hope Mamdani will do as well, but the struggle isn't over yet. The frenzy of bigotry being hurled at Mamdani, not only by Republicans but by Democratic elites, outstrips what I remember seeing aimed at AOC. On the other hand, Mamdani has a little more political experience than she had, and seems well-prepared to take on his bigoted haters. But I'm taking nothing for granted.
For an old guy, I have to concede that Donald Trump has a remarkable level of energy. He travels around the world, he posts a flood of deranged, subliterate junk online, he's face-to-face with the media constantly. His speaking seems to be getting rapidly less energetic and coherent, but overall he's not slowing down. That doesn't make him good, it makes him even more dangerous. What chills me is how little even people I know who dislike Trump know about what is going on. This is boosted by a poll I saw reported today, which found that "Nearly half (48%) of Americans haven’t heard anything about the ‘Big, Beautiful Bill.’" and "Only 8% of all Americans name Medicaid cuts as a detail of the bill they have heard about." While the corporate media should be criticized harshly, I think my fellow citizens need to be responsible for their inattention to matters that will affect them. As I think Ta Nehisi-Coates said: you may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you.
Speaking of corporate media, NPR continues to appall me. In the wake of the shooting of two Minnesota state legislators and their spouses by a MAGA assassin, Morning Edition's A Martinez baited one of their colleagues on June 17:
Martínez: If you have a gun, are you thinking about taking it with you when you go places? And if you don't, are you thinking about buying one?
Scholten: Personal protection is certainly top of mind for lawmakers today and especially after this incident. We are reviewing a lot of our own internal safety protocols to see what else we might be able to do to keep ourselves safe, even in our own home. Even with the best security, we see here that it wasn't enough to stop or wouldn't have necessarily been enough to to stop the shooter in this instance.
I encourage everyone to read the whole story, and even more, to listen to the audio so you can hear Martinez working himself up to a peak of excitement at the idea of gun battles at political events in Minnesota. State Representative Hilary Scholten stayed calm throughout; Martinez, who often confuses news with sports and action movies, should be fired.
There's so much more, but this will do for now.
