A different kind of car song

There are lots of songs about cars and driving, but most of them are not political. Neil Young and the Chrome Hearts have produced a cut called "Lets Roll Again" that is unlike other car songs. This is the Official Music Video. Enjoy!

 

It sounds a bit like "This Land is Your Land." 

Trump Digs Coal

Donald Trump campaigned as a coal-friendly presidential candidate and his administration is trying to make good on his promises. From Politico two days ago: 

Trump signed four executive orders designed to eliminate what he sees as obstacles to ramping up coal energy production in the United States, including by opening up public lands for coal leasing. He is also pushing for the fuel to be used to power the artificial intelligence data centers that are expected to be a major contributor to skyrocketing electricity demand in the coming years.

One order would also instruct Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who chairs the president’s Energy Dominance Council, to designate coal as a “mineral,” which would help boost production under Trump’s previous executive order aimed at rapidly approving permits for domestic mineral production. It also directs Interior and other relevant agencies to lift barriers from mining the resource to boost production, according to a fact sheet.

I teach a course on the politics of climate change and all of my students can tell you that this is a very bad idea. Coal is by far the worst of the fossil fuels that cause climate change as it burns much less efficiently than natural gas and oil. As the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) keeps saying, climate change poses a " grave and mounting threat to our wellbeing and a healthy planet." The IPCC has essentially issued a "code red for humanity." 

Beyond its carbon intensity, coal is also "dirty" in the classic sense as it emits sulfur oxides and particulate pollution that is very bad for lungs. This estimate from a recent study by a team of scholars from George Mason University, the Harvard School of Public Health, and University of Texas at Austin is on the NIH website, but given the political climate could be vulnerable to a scrub:

The team estimated that between 1999 and 2020, 460,000 deaths would not have occurred in the absence of emission from the coal power plants.

That's merely in the US. Another study from University College London and Harvard found that "more than 8 million people around the globe die each year as a result of breathing in air containing particles from burning fuels like coal, petrol and diesel." 

Coal is also bad for miners and DOGE has set about killing programs and firing people that work on black lung and mine safety. Trump is also famously anti-union and anti-worker. 

In any case, the only way coal can compete in many markets is via subsidy as inexpensive natural gas has long been replacing coal in electricity generation. There was even a big drop in coal's share while Trump was president 2017-2020, but that just continued a long-term trend:

My students can also tell you that both solar and wind power are both now cheaper than coal and other fossil fuels around the world. This chart is from Popular Science:

Trump obviously digs coal, but his policies seem to be designed to make Mister Peabody wealthier, damn the consequences for the coal miner's daughter, her family, and all the rest of us. 

As the Weaver's asked decades ago, which side are you on? 

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2025 Oscars

As I do annually, this post reviews Academy Award nominees in major categories and provides my rankings within them. I am not predicting winners and only rank the films I have seen. This year, I have not seen very many of the movies, so much more than normal I will be updating this post and noting the edits with yellow highlights. 

You can find my post about last year's Oscars here and work backward if you want. 

Best Picture

Conclave 

The Brutalist  
A Complete Unknown  

Anora  

Emilia Pérez  

Dune: Part Two  

The Substance 

I really liked Conclave even though I was not really expecting much. It features great acting performances and an intriguing storyline. 

A Complete Unknown is an interesting and generally well-done biopic focusing on just a few years of Bob Dylan's life -- his period as a NY folk musician. There are a lot of great songs. 

Anora is an interesting character study, but it felt like I was watching a preventable catastrophe. Emilia Pérez is a unique film. Did we need it? 

Dune 2 has a complicated storyline and the acting is fine, but it is overly long and more of a technical achievement than anything else. Green Borders was a better film last year and I'm sure there were many other more deserving candidates for an Oscar nomination. 

There were many non-Oscar nominated movies that I liked much better than The Substance. Indeed, in the same genre, I thought A Different Man was better. 

Updates: The Brutalist is very good, but not especially entertaining. Conclave managed to be very good and entertaining. The nominations for Emilia Pérez , Dune 2, and The Substance suggest that this was a weak year for top films. 

I’m Still Here  

Nickel Boys 

Wicked  

Directing

Brady Corbet, The Brutalist

James Mangold, A Complete Unknown

Sean Baker, Anora

Jacques Audiard, Emilia Pérez

Coralie Fargeat, The Substance

I need to see more of the top films.   I never entirely know how to evaluate this category. 

Actor in a Leading Role

Adrien Brody, The Brutalist

Ralph Fiennes, Conclave

Sebastian Stan, The Apprentice

Timothée Chalamet, A Complete Unknown

Fiennes does a great job, though it is probably not the best performance of his career. That Nazi he played for Spielberg is difficult to shake all these years later. 

I saw Chalamet in Dune 2 and Stan in A Different Man so I have a feel for their work. Both are quite talented but this year I'd go for Fiennes among the 3 of them. Update: Chalamet was great in A Complete Unknown. And Stan was excellent in The Apprentice. It's a tossup. 

Update 2: Brody was really good too. 

 

Colman Domingo, Sing Sing

Actress in a Leading Role

Mikey Madison, Anora

Demi Moore, The Substance

Karla Sofía Gascón, Emilia Pérez

Madison committed to her role in Anora. She was very good, but it's an odd film. 

Moore's performance was perhaps the best aspect of The Substance, but that was not enough to save the film for me. Gascón's performance was fine, but I'm not sure it was Oscar-nomination material even if she was the title character. 

Cynthia Erivo, Wicked

Fernanda Torres, I’m Still Here

Actor in a Supporting Role

Jeremy Strong, The Apprentice

Guy Pearce, The Brutalist

Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain

Edward Norton, A Complete Unknown

Yura Borisov, Anora

I watched A Real Pain instead of the Oscars. It was a very good performance, but grating. Norton was also excellent and could have won. Borisov was understated and also excellent. 

In my view, Strong was robbed of the award, though he probably should have been nominated for Best Actor. He had a lot of screen time. Pearce was also excellent. 

Actress in a Supporting Role

Zoe Saldaña, Emilia Pérez

Monica Barbaro, A Complete Unknown

Isabella Rossellini, Conclave

Felicity Jones, The Brutalist

Saldaña gives an excellent performance and I can see how she won. She even sings and dances, of course. 

Barbaro was good, but Elle Fanning might have been better. Her face said everything when she watched Dylan and Baez singing duets. 

I don't believe Rossellini will win as this is a surprisingly small part. She is more seen than heard, perhaps predictably in a film about the selection of a new Pope. 

Ariana Grande, Wicked

Animated Feature Film

Flow

Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl

The Wild Robot 

This is unusual. In many years I don't see any of the animated features prior to the Oscars -- and may never see them. This year, I caught one because my wife wanted to see it (she usually has almost no interest in animation) and another because I teach climate change. A third was on a streaming service I'm accessing right now.

I really enjoyed Flow though I freely admit that the dog was my favorite character in a film mostly about the journey of a cat. The flooding and lack of people (and dialogue) makes this seem like a tale about climate change from the point of view of the natural world. 

W&G was fine, but not spectacular. The Wild Robot was too much of a kid movie for my tastes. 

Inside Out 2 

Memoir of a Snail 

Documentary Feature Film

Black Box Diaries 

No Other Land 

Porcelain War

Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat 

Sugarcane 

International Feature Film

Flow 

Emilia Pérez 

Flow was a very good film, but I suspect there are stronger contenders for the award. It's amazing to me that Green Borders is not on this list -- apparently a decision marred by government pressure. 

Maybe Emilia Pérez is a better movie, but I liked Flow -- but split Emilia Pérez into 2 nights because I really don't like musicals very much. 

I’m Still Here 

The Girl With the Needle

The Seed of the Sacred Fig 

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Best Films of 2024

The graphic below identifies the top 25 films from 2024 that critics ranked on their end-of-year "best of" lists. The full list goes to 100 and if you are interested in seeing it, I'm sourcing the list from the same website as I used last year. The methodology for compilation is ostensibly the same. Here's the detail from last year:

Films are sorted by the percentage of lists they are included on.* This is typically the same as sorting by number of lists included, but can vary when films make lists across multiple years.  For example, if one film makes 10 lists in a year with 100 lists available, it’s ranking will be higher than a film that makes 15 lists when 200 lists are available.  The times a film appears at the top of a list is used as a tie-breaker.

*punctuation errors corrected 

Basically, this is an annual best films comment that I'm posting for 2024. This is the post about the best films of 2023. Below this graphic, you'll find my rankings of these films (by tiers) with a list of the ones I still need to see. As I watch them over time, I'll edit the post but note the changes with yellow highlighting.  

This "best of" comment is distinct from both the annual post on "films of 2024," which is my end-of-year musing about all the films I saw in a calendar year, and my annual Oscar post, which concerns that year's Academy Award nominees. 

Top-tier films. These are very serious Oscar contenders:

TBD.

Conclave

The Brutalist

Anora

I did not have particularly high expectations, but Conclave is excellent film-making. A thriller about selecting a new Pope!

Anora was very well made, but I didn't think it was an all-time great or anything. 

Second-tier films. These are very good and could garner Oscar support:

A Different Man

A Real Pain

Challengers

Dune: Part Two

Janet Planet

Juror #2

Civil War

Third-tier films. These are entertaining but flawed films:

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

Love Lies Bleeding

The Wild Robot

I Saw the TV Glow

The Substance

Fourth-tier films. I found these to be disappointing and do not recommend (if necessary, could remain blank):

TBD

Films yet to see (20 of 25 as of today):

Nickel Boys

All We Imagine as Light

Wicked Part One

Sing Sing

Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World

Hard Truths

The Beast

Nosferatu

Evil Does Not Exist

No Other Land

Glancing through the rest of the top 100, I've seen the following films already and rank them roughly in this order:

Best of the rest

Green Border (#45) (I'd put this in the first tier above)

A Complete Unknown (#27)

His Three Daughters (37) This could have been an Oscar contender in acting categories.

Between the Temples (42)

Thelma (61) 

September 5 (40)

Rebel Ridge (50)

Kneecap (60)

I liked most of these films more than all of the third-tier above. 

These were all about the same

Saturday Night (73)

Twisters (86)

Will & Harper (96)

Emilia Pérez  (33)

Problemista (82)

Hit Man (31)

Flow (30)

My Old Ass (49)

Less enjoyable

Kinds of Kindness (63)

The Fall Guy (71)

Trap (44)

Nearly all of these films would be in my second or third tier above. 

Note that the list numbers change slightly over time as more "best of" lists are added. That explains any discrepancy in ratings noted. 

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Books of 2024

James by Percival Everett

Underground Empire by Farrell & Newman

[Oops, an unfinished version of this post went online December 30 just before midnight.]

This is my annual post listing and briefly discussing books I read in the most recent year. It seems kind of hard to believe, but I have produced such a post every year since 2005. This is a link to the 2023 list if blog readers want to work backwards. You will find that the books are loosely ranked within categories. 

Also, I posted short reviews of almost all of these books at Goodreads. 

Non-Fiction

Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman, Underground Empire

Laura Neack, National, International, and Human Security

Michael Doyle, The Cold Peace

Most of the non-fiction I read this year was related to baseball (see below), but I did manage to complete a few other books. The Neack volume was the text in my spring 2024 Security Studies course and it worked very well. I would use it again, though I'm on sabbatical 2025-26 and don't teach Security in 2024-25. Doyle's book is interesting and offers some thoughtful comparison chapters thinking about autocracy today (especially in China and Russia) versus Mussolini's fascism and Japan's imperial period before World War II. As an international relations liberal, Doyle is concerned about how the domestic characteristics of states shapes their foreign policy behavior. He offers some insights about US competition with China and Russia and thinks about how to avoid disastrous outcomes that are plausible in a new Cold War.

The outstanding non-fiction book of the year for me was Farrell and Newman's Underground Empire. They make a convincing case that the US has exploited widely unknown economic and technical advantages for its own ends. Basically, they describe centralized chokepoints relating to the internet, banking, microchips, etc. The list of examples when the US exploited its leverage includes the nuclear deal with Iran and the Trump administration's sanctioning of an ICC prosecutor and another official. With Trump returning to power,  I would urge everyone to think seriously about this almost hidden ("underground") but potent US power that seems quite vulnerable to abuse. The authors dream about using the tool to stop climate change or corruption, but I'm skeptical that those will be priority items on the US agenda 2025-2028. 

Baseball non-fiction

Roger Angell,  A Pitcher’s Story

Lucas Mann,  Class A 

Tyler Kepner, K: A  History of the Game in Ten Pitchers

John Sickels, Bob Feller

Keith Law, The Inside Game

Barry Svrluga, The Grind: Inside Baseball’s Endless Season

Ron Backer, Baseball Goes to the Movies

Denny Matthews with Matt Fulks, Tales From the Royals

Yes, I read quite a number of baseball books this year and the list above does not even include the annual Baseball Prospectus that I consumed as well. Angell's book is about David Cone who struggled during the 2000 season even as his NY Yankees won another World Series. It's good and I'm not just saying that because Cone was drafted by the KC Royals as a local athlete who later returned to the team and excelled. 

I much enjoyed the books by Mann, Kepner, and Sickels and would recommend all of them. Mann writes about professional baseball in small town Iowa and it speaks to many political issues too -- working conditions for labor, immigrant labor, globalization, the consequences of corn subsidies, etc. 

Since I read Angell at the beginning of the year and the Sickels bio of Bob Feller at the end, I essentially bookended my reading year with 2 interesting stories about very talented pitchers. Feller pitched in the 1930s, when he was a teenage sensation and young star player, then lost multiple years to his voluntary service in WW II, and returned as one of the best pitchers in the game before his fastball lost its heat. He'd probably be very famous if his career had not been interrupted. 

The Kepner book is about pitching too, focusing on 10 different kinds of pitches used by athletes in the highest level of the professional game. 

I'm a big admirer of Keith Law's work but I did not learn that much from this book. Most likely, this is because I've previously already learned a great deal about the game from Law and other similar analysts. 

The Backer book is OK though I disagreed with the author about the quality of many movies he discusses. The Matthews/Fulks book is really only for KC baseball fans and even then is not great. Too many stories are undeveloped or even untold. 

Literature and Genre Fiction

Percival Everett, James

Matt Haig, The Humans

J.M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians 

John Updike, The Witches of Eastwick

Charles Portis, The Dog of the South

Colson Whitehead, Zone One

Norman Mailer, Armies of the Night

Don DeLillo, Falling Man 

The best fiction I read this year is appearing on many "best of" lists -- James, by Percival Everett. I don't often read new books, but I'm glad I read this one as it is outstanding. You probably already know that is a retelling of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of the runaway male slave that helps Huck.  I really liked the satirical film American Fiction last year, which was based on another of Everett's novels. 

Haig's book made me laugh out loud and Coetzee's novel provided valuable insights about colonialism. Both are fairly quick reads. The Portis book is also good and worth reading, though it is a bit dated in parts. If you look at the Goodreads page for Witches of Eastwick, you'll find many reviewers who consider this an offensive book by a misogynist. I honestly do not think it is that bad and feminist author Margaret Atwood wrote a glowing review in the NY Times decades ago.  Would she still like it?

I was a bit disappointed in the Whitehead zombie book because I have had far better experiences with some of his other novels. Mailer was worth reading as history, but is obviously dated. There are other flaws too. It had been a few years since I read a book by DeLillo and this post-9/11 work is not one of his stronger novels, unfortunately. 

Genre Fiction

I.S. Berry,  The Peacock and the Sparrow

Kate Atkinson,  When Will There Be Good News?

Eric Ambler, The Dark Frontier 

Philip Kerr,  The One From the Other

Richard Dean Rosen, Saturday Night Dead

Donald E. Westlake, ,Plunder Squad (as Richard Stark)

David Goodis, The Burglar 

Duane Swierczynski, Fun & Games

Donald E. Westlake, Don’t Ask

PD James, Cover Her Face 

Lawrence Block, Hit Man

The above books are a cut above the ones listed below. The I.S. Berry spy novel is really good and I urge people to read it. I had read a favorable piece about the author in the Washington Post and am glad that I followed up. It won many awards, including an Edgar, and appeared on many "best of" lists in 2023.

Many of these books are parts of series that I am reading. The Atkinson book is an entertaining entry in the Jackson Brodie series, though he's arguably not the most interesting character in the story. Kerr's Bernie Gunther has survived WW II and the Nazis, but still finds plenty of corruption and crime. Rosen's former major league baseball player-turned-detective Harvey Blissberg starts the story with a vague baseball connection, but this is really about a murder involving a TV show similar to Saturday Night Live. The title is thus a play on words. 

Unsurprisingly, since I do virtually every year, I read the next books in sequence in the Parker and Dortmunder series by Donald Westlake (he wrote Parker books as Richard Stark) and these examples were entertaining. I'm having trouble finding the next Parker book but hope to read it soon. 

I had never read the first PD James book featuring Adam Dalgliesh, but now I have.  It was fine, but not outstanding. Obviously I am reading that series out of order, but I am trying to correct that error. I didn't mean to start a new series by Block since I have not finished his Matthew Scudder books, but the work was on my shelf and seemed interesting. It is though the chapters seem more like short stories. Some apparently were originally published that way in magazines.

The books by Ambler, Goodis, and Swierczynski are standalone books worth reading. You will find crime and/or intrigue. Or both. 

Peter Schilling, The End of Baseball

Agatha Christie, ABC Murders

Jason Matthews, Kremlin’s Candidate

Sara Paretsky, Bitter Medicine

Robert Parker, Pale Kings & Princes

Chuck Palahnuik, Choke

Ian Fleming, You Only Live Twice

Ross Macdonald,  Trouble Follows Me

 

Sue Grafton, N is for Noose 

Derek Raymond, The Devil’s Home on Leave

I'm not going to say much about the remainder. Most I gave 3 stars on Goodreads, so they are not terrible, but they all lack something. The bottom 2 books here were especially disappointing as I have enjoyed a number of Grafton's earlier books in the Kinsey Milhone detective series and had been recommended Raymond's work. 

As you can see, there are some mediocre efforts here in series involving Christie's Hercule Poirot, Paretsky's VI Warshawski, Parker's Spencer, and Fleming's James Bond. 

I wanted to like the Schilling book, and enjoyed much of it, but in the end I felt it needed both tighter editing and fewer major characters. 

The Red Sparrow series ended in a somewhat disappointing way as far as I'm concerned though I enjoyed the first book quite a bit more and probably liked Kremlin's Candidate more than book #2 Palace of Treason.

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Films of 2024

Attribution: AlexiusHoratius, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons 

There are a large number of 2024 movies I intend to watch and some of the very best ones will be appearing on screens in front of me in the coming weeks of the new year. I say screens because this year I actually saw more than a handful of films in the theater -- for the first time since December 2019 (or maybe early 2020, I don't recall precisely). 

As for the films I saw, readers can find my brief reviews and ratings at Letterboxd. On that site, I have been religiously logging all the films I've seen, not merely those released in 2024. It appears I watched 97 films this year; thus, the list of new films below reflects only a small portion of my total movie viewing. It does include a few foreign films that were technically released in 2023 but were not widely distributed in the USA until this year. 

As longtime readers know, this is an annual list and here is a link to last year's post if you want to work backwards through my viewing experiences. 

Films from this first set of films will probably receive award nominations, or at least deserve strong consideration. Two of them received recognition last year.

Green Border **

Zone of Interest **

Thelma *

The Teacher's Lounge **

Kneecap

Lee *

If you are a film buff, you probably already know about the Oscar nominations for two of the foreign films from 2023 -- Zone of Interest won an Oscar and was nominated for another; The Teacher's Lounge was also nominated. They are powerful and important films with very different subjects (Nazi death camps and elementary school theft). Green Border is an exceptional foreign film about Syrian refugees that opened in Poland in 2023 but was not available until mid-year 2024 in the US.  Though eligible last year, it was not nominated for an Oscar after facing domestic political backlash. 

Thelma is quite a different film, a fairly lightweight comedy action movie. We saw it on a big screen at the State Theater in Traverse City, as part of the reimagined TC Film Festival. Now, through much of the year, Tuesdays are reserved for festival films. Our show featured a Zoom discussion with the director-filmmaker Josh Margolin after the screening, featuring Q&A by Michael Moore. That may have influenced my rating, but it is a very entertaining movie.

Kneecap is about Irish rappers...and British colonialism, so be sure to check it out too. Lee, starring Kate Winslet, is an excellent biopic about a pathbreaking female photo journalist. Its release was delayed by the Hollywood acting/writing strikes of 2023.  We saw this at the State Theater in Traverse City (home of the revamped TC Film Festival  mentioned above) during my fall break in late September. 

Next, these films were quite good and might receive award consideration. More likely, they will be remembered as very solid movies:

Girls Will Be Girls *

Civil War
The Missile *

Between the Temples

Will & Harper

June

Rebel Ridge

The Teacher Who Promised the Sea * & **

Carry-On

The three films with asterisks are foreign films that my spouse and I saw at the Blue Mountain Film Festival in late spring in Canada. There are some terrific acting performances in these movies and all address important topics. Green Border from the above list was also at the festival but we didn't attend, partly because it is very long. 

Readers may be more familiar with two movies I saw on Max and Netflix this summer, Civil War and Rebel Ridge. They are entertaining and definitely worth seeing. Both have been picking up some votes (#32 and #55 currently) on critics' "Best of 2024" lists.  We watched Civil War in the same fall break weekend that we saw Lee and both feature female photojournalists during wartime. 

Between the Temples (#40) is funny thanks to a strong cast with good material. Through no fault of his own, I'm sure, Jason Schwartzman sometimes rubs me the wrong way. He's watchable here.

Will & Harper (#97T) has received a lot of press and it is a thoughtful and entertaining film. June is a documentary about June Carter Cash. I like her music and appreciated the doc.

Carry-On is an action movie on Netflix with a Christmas setting. Will it be the Die Hard of the 2020s (and beyond)? There's a reasonable chance of that. The hero isn't as funny as Bruce Willis sometimes was in the earlier film (iirc).

Finally, these films in the last set were less interesting to me though generally watchable and entertaining in one way or another:

Hit Man

A Quiet Place Day One

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice 

Problemista

Love Lies Bleeding

Trap

This list actually includes several films that are appearing on critic "best of" lists. Love Lies Bleeding is currently standing at #24 on that list, making it arguably the best film I saw this year. While I think I know what it was trying to say, too much of it didn't really click with me. Likewise, my spouse and I didn't find Hit Man or Trap (#32 and #46) to be all that great. They were too formulaic and predictable, even when they were going for novelty, if that makes any sense. 

In contrast, we had very low expectations for the Beetlejuice sequel and we kind of liked it. We rewatched the old one in preparation too. Problemista  (#88) was both quirky and fun (and was also delayed by the Hollywood labor strife). The Quiet Place prequel was OK but it didn't have that much to offer beyond what the prior films in the series did.

I'm obviously missing a large number of highly rated films from 2024 and plan to see them through 2025 (and beyond). I used to provide a list (and I still might) of top-rated films that I have not yet seen, but I didn't do it the last couple of years and no one complained. 

NOTES: 

* I saw these movies in theaters!

** Foreign releases from 2023 not really distributed in the US until 2024. 

I will update this if I watched any new films before midnight on the 31st.

I also saw "Blood of Angels" in a theater, a film made by local artists that I know personally. 

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Vote No on Trump

Donald Trump notoriously refused to have a second debate against Kamala Harris -- perhaps because polls and critics overwhelmingly thought he lost the September debate. His verbal mistakes and ridiculous claims during that performance have given way to physical stumbles this week. The guy is 78 years old and his supporters spent months attacking the apparent decline of an aging opponent earlier this year. The electorate obviously absorbed that and Joe Biden was supplanted as the Democratic nominee as a result of the fear of a geriatric president. I don't think Trump wanted America to see another contest highlighting the stark contrast between him and the far more vigorous and quick 60 year old Harris. 

However, anyone can watch video of Trump campaigning in 2016 and it is quite evident that he is a shadow of his former self. His messages are less coherent, he rambles, and he misspeaks with great regularity. Those are links to articles, but just search YouTube for old footage of him from 2015 until 2020.

Through 2020, America became increasingly unimpressed with Trump and his daily COVID TV show. Many analysts say that the 2020 election was a referendum on Trump's handling of the pandemic -- and he lost. Biden won by 7 million votes nationally. 

In any case, despite the lack of a second debate to highlight the contrasts between the candidates, there is still time for the Harris campaign to emphasize the stark differences in their views of America. I intend to make another post highlighting why Harris is the far superior candidate -- not only in temperament, but also because of her pro-choice stance, climate change policy, the importance of Supreme Court nominations, her plans to restore higher and fairer tax rates on the richest Americans, the survival of the Affordable Care Act, etc. Trump is far worse on all those points. 

In this post I'm going to pick some choice Trump remarks that highlight some horrific stances the former President has taken regarding his plans for those opposed to his ideas and policies.

Before I begin, however, I would note that this clip from the 2016 campaign would have been disqualifying for someone seeking to be a junior high school assistant principal let alone President of the United States. I'm not sure new young voters are familiar with it:

Indeed, I've seen credible claims that the youngest voters don't really know anything about Trump's notorious Access Hollywood video footage. This also seemed disqualifying at the time -- and many Republicans said so:

Those words, which Trump and his followers dismissed as "locker room talk," were seemingly very accurate as reflected in Trump's civil defamation trial where a jury found that the former playboy committed "sexual abuse" and even "rape" against a female journalist -- and then denied it. 

I have not even mentioned the 34 felony convictions for business fraud that were again returned after a jury trial. Average Americans, not partisan competitors, heard the evidence presented by prosecutors in NY and decided he filed fraudulent documents concerning his under-the-table payments to porn star Stormy Daniels. Basically, instead of using personal funds to buy her silence, which might have been legal, Trump used business funds and recorded that the payments were for legal services. All of this was in an attempt to hide the facts of his tryst from a voting public in 2016. In other circumstances we'd call that "hush money." 

As I've blogged previously, some of my greatest concerns about Donald Trump center on the fact that the former President regularly makes the kinds of claims and threats that people associate with dictators and tyrants -- he fantasizes about not relinquishing power (and sought to remain in power after losing an election), describes his political opponents as "vermin" or enemies of the people, and threatens to turn the powerful US military against those enemies. 

Just this week, Trump discussed having Republican Liz Cheney, who co-chaired the January 6 investigation in Congress, face a firing squad for her political opinions. 

This is on top of Trump expressing open admiration for non-democratic rule in March 2018 -- and the press reported that the Republican donors in attendance applauded!

Chinese President Xi Jinping recently consolidated power. Trump told the gathering: “He’s now president for life. President for life. And he’s great.” Trump added, “I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll give that a shot someday.”

I know that the Trump campaign has been trying to play up Joe Biden's recent slip of the tongue inadvertently calling Trump supporters "garbage," but Biden is not the candidate, he clarified his remark to make clear he was talking about specific speakers at the Trump rally in Madison Square Garden, AND Trump himself makes similar comments all the time. For example, on Veterans Day in November 2023, Trump called his political opponents "vermin" and an "enemy within" that his administration would persecute: 

“We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections,” Trump said toward the end of his speech, repeating his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. “They’ll do anything, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America and to destroy the American Dream.”

It is clear from the speech context that Trump was not talking about some small slice of people who actually identify as communists or Marxists (though a new round of McCarthyism would be horrible). He imagined that this collective group is more dangerous than China or Russia. It's a lot of people.

Trump went on further to state: “the threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous and grave than the threat from within. Our threat is from within. Because if you have a capable, competent, smart, tough leader, Russia, China, North Korea, they’re not going to want to play with us.”

Trump has called Kamala Harris supporters garbage and scum. Just about a week ago, he called the US the "garbage can for the world." 

While words matter and these words are especially concerning, all voters should be frightened about how a new Trump presidency would address the so-called vermin/scum/garbage enemy within. Trump himself claims his response would involve setting the National Guard and military on these foes. Consider his words from an interview on Fox in mid-October 2024:

"I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within,” Trump said. He added: “We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think they’re the big — and it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen.”

Now circle back to that quote about Cheney above -- and the many documented times Trump has encouraged political violence. Former top national security and political aids who worked for Trump have warned that he is a dangerous wannabe fascist who should not be anywhere near the presidency again. I believe them. 

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The F Word

Nope, not that one. I mean fascism. Not all readers may know what that term means or implies, historically. Most have a vague idea that the term is associated with Hitler (and maybe Mussolini), but don't realize that the word isn't merely a label for a type of politics that may seem obscure to them. It's a label for a particularly dangerous type of authoritarian politics that ends democracy. 

Political scientists often point to numerous examples where fascists and fascist-adjacent authoritarians came to power VIA ELECTIONS and then do everything in their power to assure that their political opponents (along with academics, journalist, artists, and other voices of dissent) are silenced, thrown in prison, and even killed. They do not relinquish power and subsequent elections are effectively "rigged" by the fact that opposition has been illegally crushed.

It's been shocking to me for some time that the European Union, a democratic institution, has not done something dramatic about Victor Orban's Hungary. His rise to power -- and many years in office -- exactly reflect this danger. Many Americans on the right are openly infatuated with this pathway and celebrate Orban as if he were someone to emulate. 

In any case, it is important to realize that the road to fascism is the road to the end of democracy, even if a democratic election lies along the pathway. The presence of a prominent (and successful) fascist in American politics poses great potential dangers.

For those wanting more detail, the Council on Foreign Relations provides a helpful definition of fascism: 

Many experts agree that fascism is a mass political movement that emphasizes extreme nationalism, militarism, and the supremacy of the nation over the individual. This model of government stands in contrast to liberal democracies that support individual rights, competitive elections, and political dissent.

In many ways, fascist regimes are revolutionary in nature. They advocate for the overthrow of existing systems of government and the persecution of political enemies. However, such regimes are also highly conservative in their championing of traditional values.

And although fascist leaders typically claim to support the everyman, in reality, their regimes often align with powerful business interests.

Why would John F. Kelly, Donald Trump's longest-serving Chief of Staff, a former four star general in the US Marines, call Trump a fascist? 

Shall we go through the definition?

First, does Trump lead "a mass political movement that emphasizes extreme nationalism, militarism, and the supremacy of the nation over the individual"?

Trump is a self-described nationalist and ran as a populist, claiming to support the little guy who elites had trampled in the past. He claims to lead a very popular mass political movement. Trump lied and said he won the 2016 election in a "landslide" and repeated the lie after the election of 2020. 

The movement's slogan is literally "Make America Great Again" (MAGA), which is not the same as the liberal democratic objective to prioritize individual rights and dissent. I refer to liberal democracy here as a form of limited government -- the type America has attempted to create since its founding, open to free flowing information, equal protection under the law, minority rights despite majority rule, the rule of law, and a market economy. Americans aspire for a more perfect union, but this can require struggle. America's orginal voters were property-owning white men. Only gradually were other men, women, people of color, adults aged 18 to 21, etc. allowed to partake in this democratic experiment.  

Numerous Trump policies and/or proposals put his view of national goals over individual liberty -- the Muslim ban, the family separation policy, recision of Title IX protections for transgender students, and many more.  If none of that seems bothersome to the reader, don't forget the famous classic poem "First They Came" by Pastor Martin Niemöller.

What about militarism? Trump's efforts to MAGA included (in his first term) an effort to "make our military stronger than ever" as his then-Secretary of Defense said at the time. Trump perhaps wanted to be viewed as the "peace candidate" in 2016, but he repeatedly made (or makes) outlandish military threats against other states -- including North Korea, Iran, and now "the enemy from within." That's militaristic. Trump talks openly about deploying the US military against alleged internal threats -- despite laws designed to prevent that exact scenario. 

Incidentally, that Defense Secretary statement about military strength was from former four-star Marine General Jim Mattis, who reportedly agrees with Kelly and called Trump “the most dangerous person ever.” Notoriously, Trump appointed numerous generals to fill top slots in government, including to positions that are typically reserved for civilians, worrying some scholars of civil-military relations and democratic governance.

Beyond Kelly and Mattis, others from that group have offered similar warnings about Trump as a fascist threat to democracy:

Mark Milley, who was appointed by Trump to be the nation's highest ranking military officer as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called him "fascist to the core" and "the most dangerous person to this country" in comments to journalist Bob Woodward.

Some of the non-military former staffers have also agreed with Kelly and signed an open letter.

Second does Trump "advocate for the overthrow of existing systems of government and the persecution of political enemies"? Was his regime "also highly conservative in...championing of traditional values"? 

After January 6, the answer to the first question seems obvious. Trump has been offering the "big lie" since losing to Joe Biden in 2020 and still does not accept the results of the election even though he lost dozens of court cases and all of the "evidence" for a stolen election has been convincingly  and thoroughly debunked. Even when Trump sympathizers attempted to recount ballots in Arizona, they arrived at a result that favored Biden by even more votes than the original count. Trump knew that he lost -- according to his Attorney General and his political advisors. His own daughter (Ivanka, who served in the administration) admits that he lost. 

Some people might consider all this and merely think Trump is a "sore loser." But there's much, much more. He gathered protesters and extremists to Washington in an effort to stop the certification of the 2020 election, he worked with political figures in various states to manufacture fake Electoral College electors and ballots, he is charged with inciting protesters to criminal and violent behavior, and he both privately and publicly urged Mike Pence to take actions that are not in the power of the Vice Presidency. 

Since losing, Trump has repeatedly said he will seek revenge on his political enemies -- it's a growing list that includes lots of Republicans that have spoken out against his lies. I do not have time or energy to document each case as an "NPR investigation has found that Trump has made more than a hundred threats to investigate, prosecute, jail or otherwise punish his perceived opponents, including private citizens." By name he has mentioned Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, Liz Cheney, Anthony Fauci, etc. Trump openly says he wants retribution. 

The championing of conservative values is part of Trump's message so I won't belabor it. He appointed judges who eliminated the right to abortion and calls now for a "states-right" approach, which is what segregationists wanted for civil rights. He supports tax cuts and gun rights and makes anti-immigration and massive deportation a central argument for his election. These are now all conservative causes -- to say nothing of his recent use of anti-LGBTQ rhetoric. 

Third, despite Trump claiming "to support the everyman," did he, "in reality...often align with powerful business interests"? Trump's main legislative victory as president was a huge tax cut that primarily aided wealthy people and business interests. He appointed a large number of billionaires to his Cabinet -- and very few women or people of color. Elon Musk, the world's richest man, has been advising Trump and openly campaigning for him in person and on his social media site. 

That's the CFR list, but I could easily add more points. Trump has said he would be a dictator on day one. He has stoked violence in American politics -- a critique I have been making for many years. Trump repeatedly praised authoritarians and dictators while he was president -- and after. The list includes Russia's Vladimir Putin, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, Hungary's Victor Orban, and Chinese President Xi Jinpin. Behind the scenes he apparently admired Adolph Hitler. He has "joked" about serving as president beyond two terms (contrary to the US constitution) and reportedly made all kinds of policy suggestions that would not be legal. Some of the generals and other former Trump officials speaking out against him say he has no understanding of the rule of law. 

I haven't even mentioned his almost unfathomable propensity to lie -- notably even claiming falsely that his January 6 speech encouraged merely peaceful protest, that no one was killed that day, or that no one was armed. All readily disproved. Oh, and by the way, this lying is buttressed by his constant criticism of the media, which he has called "the enemy of the people," and threats to jail reporters and strip away broadcast licenses. 

Anyone thinking of voting for this man should take into account the views of the numerous inner circle Republicans -- including former Vice President Dick Cheney -- who are courageously speaking out against Trump and urging his defeat in November's election. 

NOTE: I may update this piece with links and ideas that I overlooked.

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