Here is my latest post on Substack.
This was written using ChatGPT4o with extensive prompting. Time spent, about one hour.
The Devil is in the Details
Sometimes delving into the details reveals more than the big picture. HCR (click) shows how the senseless dismantling of our nation’s emergency management system impacts ordinary people. As a former first responder, I know about the detailed and nuanced planning that goes into preparing, responding, and recovering from emergencies. The Trump administration sees only bloated bureaucracy “the deep state”; I see planning and readiness. Think about your local firehouse. It’s a garage with very expensive trucks parked facing out with a full tank of fuel and thousands of dollars worth of tools and equipment. All of it is unused and idle almost all the time. Seems wasteful, doesn’t it?
But on that truck, every piece of equipment is in its place, cleaned, checked out, and service-ready. That’s so that when your home is burning, firefighters have what they need for rescue and firefighting and can deploy it quickly. Similar preparations were in place for the disaster that happened on the Guadalupe River. The weather service had tools to estimate rainfall and predict flash floods. They had planned for communications to local officials who could warn those in the path of the water. But things went terribly wrong. The individual who should have received the warning and transmitted it to the locals was retired early in Trump’s cost-cutting drive for DOGE. The locals weren’t warned for a critical three hours. To see how rapidly water rises, watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqXXbjN-hhs
You first see a side channel of the river, dry except for the mud. Then you see the leading edge of a flow of water. Thirty-seven minutes later, you see a river, a quarter mile across, the bridge inundated as a house floats up to it! I try to imagine trying to evacuate a camp full of girls in less than half an hour as those waters surged.
In the aftermath, FEMA terminated the contracts for the phone banks taking calls for assistance from flood victims. They had run out of money to pay them.
It took Christy Noem three days to mobilize the Federal recovery. The Trump administration is lying and covering up these successive failures, and there are doubtless many more that I don’t know about yet.
Ignorant, incompetent, criminally negligent, inhumanly cruel. As a Quaker, I try not to have a hateful heart. But when I see the Trump administration undermining and destroying humane systems that took years and thousands of hours of training to build, systems that keep us safe, my blood boils.
The justification? We need the tax cuts. We need a bigger, meaner, ICE.
Worth Your Attention
Here are two links I recommend that you read soon. The first gives an excellent analysis of what drives the MAGA movement. You may even see a path to feeling empathy and compassion for the worldview that fuels the vitriol. But more important, the insights it offers may help you avoid adding fuel to the fire as you defend and assert your own values.
They Warned Us in 1945: Fascism in America Would Look Like Patriotism
How MAGA Became the Psychological Blueprint They Described
The second link is to Timothy Snyder’s free materials. On Tyranny, if you have not read it, is essential for understanding how to meet the threats democracy faces today. The materials offered by Snyder are helpful to both remind us of the basics, and to spread the word.
. . . and something much lighter from Snyder’s brother-in-law:
No One Rises Alone
At the last minute, I was asked to write a column for the Mother’s Day Sunday edition. Here’s what came of a tight deadline and thinking about how we underappreciate the many people, starting with our mothers, who give us what we need to thrive.
If we want America to thrive, we need to nourish each other, with nobody left out.
Anti-Trump Protest – Newtown
Over 1,000 Locals Stand for Democracy
All across the nation Americans turned out to show their disapproval of the Trump Administration and those who enable their excesses. Newtown’s crowd was large and in good spirits despite intermittent rain. Police took up positions to monitor and be a visible presence, but people were amiable and orderly and the demonstration remained peaceful. Click the box below to see the full collection of photos and video clips taken by Richmond and Marguerite.
Attention Fatigue
The antidote for news fatigue may be simply minding what has your attention. “Flood the zone with sh*t” has been the strategy of the GOP in 2025. It has been practiced for many years, but is at a fever pitch since #47 took office and began implementing Project 2025. Doug Muder explains how he thinks it works and suggests what you can do about it in the talk below. The clip is set to play his advice for coping. You may want to listen to the whole talk if the idea that your attention is being captured and manipulated is foreign to you.
“Whatever has your attention, has you.” ~Willis Elliott
Political strategists have long understood that controlling the media’s news cycle was central to manipulating what citizens see and hear about you and your adversaries. The GOP has been far more effective than the democrats, both in terms of developing Fox News and Sinclair as propaganda organs, and in generating outrage, shock, and fear to rapidly grab attention and rapidly shift it successively from one issue to another. The firehose flow of emotionally wrenching information keeps the public off balance and unable to fully grasp what’s real and what’s hype.
It’s not matter of getting the facts right, or interpreting them with critical thinking. It’s about regaining willful control over what has and holds attention. Can we learn to be mindful in the flooded zone?
Like a Mob Boss
Quakers Protest Current Events
Quakers are inherently grass-roots. It comes from the belief that metaphysical truth is revealed to any and all of us if we but listen. There is that of God in each of us, and, as communities, we are called to speak up when human events conflict with our values. One of the ways we express our collective sensibilities about important matters is to agree on a “minute” recorded at Meeting for Worship with Attention to Business. Here is one such expression of unity and commitment from my Newtown Friends Meeting:
Keeping Track
The very unpopular and much lied about Project 2025 is notching off its “accomplishments” one-by-one as congress allows the executive branch unfettered sway even when the actions are lawless overreach. Here is a website that’s keeping score and citing the sources.
This does not, of course, track items on the more hidden agenda of intended covert consequences that is disabling and eliminating the means to hold anyone accountable. Much of the factual reporting and more candid analysis is showing up in independent media like Substack.
The NY Times has a series titled “The Opinions” and if you are trying to understand the lack of GOP and mainstream media opposition to all of this evil, I recommend you listen to “There’s a reason even smart people surrender to Trump” (below).
There’s a reason …
This thirty-minute interview explores how we are being manipulated into anticipatory compliance contrary to our deeply held values. The GOP fell into line first, and now they are coming for the rest of us.
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