[Catherine Chandler]

Dear Sphereans,


Unfortunately, and to my great sadness and horror, I believe Rick Mullin is 100% correct in his assessment (posts 8 & 10 above).



I believed, as a proud Canadian citizen for over fifty years, living on my peaceful perch in the "true North strong and free" that I, my children, and my grandchildren would be forever immune from anything more than the usual nastiness at US Customs border crossings (when they routinely ask me why, oh why in the world I prefer to live in Canada; or most recently (2024) What are you doing living up there, girl?).


But not anymore. Hopefully the cancer that is rotting away the United States will not metasticize. Canada is part of the Commonwealth and part of NATO. We will NEVER become the "cherished 51st state."



As Rick points out, things will not only be nasty, they will be exponentially more horrendous than they are at present. It will be civil war, IMHO.


It is all well and good to join resistance-type organizations, but, sadly, it will take brute force to counter brute force. Most Americans are not even aware of some things that are taking place as I type this message. They are too busy listening to Fox or glued to their phones watching TikTok influencers.



I'm sorry not to be more optimistic. But as Michael says, every day there is another (or more than one) outrageous, despicable, illegal act coming out of Washington D.C. Can things "turn around" in 2026? Too late, my friends, too late.


Love and peace from Uruguay (where I just might take up permanent residence),


Cathy

[Julie Steiner]

Those more pessimistic than I — and I am pretty pessimistic! — are probably right that it is too late to make much of a difference.

But they are certainly right if the Americans who are still paying attention don't even try to do more than wring our hands and sigh.

[Jayne Osborn]

Gosh - how would most people rate a global pandemic against what is happening right now?
We got over the former, eventually, albeit with huge losses...
Will we get the same result regarding the latter?

Before COVID-19, the most severe pandemic in recent history was the 1918 influenza virus, often called “the Spanish Flu.” The virus infected roughly 500 million people—one-third of the world's population—and caused 50 million deaths worldwide (double the number of deaths in World War I).

The world also recovered from that - so there's still hope that we'll make it through, ...despite Trump!

Jayne

[Catherine Chandler]

Jayne:


The next pandemic is already in the "brewing" stage. Bird/avian flu. H5N1. RFK Jr. says, just let the virus take its course. Well, the course has already begun, with the virus having mutated to bird-to-cow transmission. So far, the human fatalities were not human-to-human infections. But, given time, H5N1 WILL mutate. Humanity had better be well prepared. The morality rate is 52%.

[Andrew Frisardi]

I feel the sense of doom, too, but it’s also true that the Trumpers want us to feel despairing and hopeless. We have to resist that.

Bernie Sanders and AOC are hitting the nail on the head with their Fighting Oligarchy tour. Bernie is right: it’s all about insane greed—starting with the three techno-billionaires sitting in the front row at the inauguration.

Buying elections is nothing new, but it has never been done in the U.S. on this scale. Musk is shadow president not only because he gave more than a quarter of a billion to Trump’s campaign, but because he intends to buy other wins for Republicans so they can keep power in Congress in 2026.

One place to start fighting back is the supreme court election in Wisconsin, coming soon. Musk is pledging an obscene amount of money for that one, to protect his business interests and profits. Brian Tyler Cohen talks about it with his guest here. And here’s the aptly named website for countering Musk's outrageous power-grabbing in Wisconsin, and by extension to the rest of the country and even in Europe.

[Brian Allgar]

As I've said before, where's the Second Amendment when you really need it?

[Clive Watkins]

For me, whose professional life was spent in the education of young people aged 12 to 18 (and for a time into their twenties), this resonated in a most alarming way.

https://open.substack.com/pub/acgray...utm_medium=ios

Clive

[Max Goodman]

Originally Posted by Julie Steiner

Those more pessimistic than I ... are certainly right if the Americans who are still paying attention don't even try to do more than wring our hands and sigh.

Hear, hear. I admire your energy and focus, Julie. I know I'll want to look back on this time and feel that I did something more than complain.

Originally Posted by Andrew Frisardi

One place to start fighting back is the supreme court election in Wisconsin, coming soon.

Yes. Thanks, Andrew.

*

Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser under President Barack Obama, recently in the New York Times:

You are meant to feel powerless. That is what a strongman wants: to make you feel as if nothing can stop the takeover of your country.

...

Recently, the most promising signs have been seen in the actions of ordinary people protesting at Republican town halls and the enormous crowds that turned out in several states to see Bernie Sanders rail against oligarchy.

...

Nika Kovac ... [who] has led successful movements against authoritarian politics in Europe [says] “you have to build huge coalitions around one particular topic, when they are attacking something that really matters to people.” Looking at the United States, she volunteered health care as a place to start. ... Pushback could [also] come on income inequality, housing, education, Social Security and free speech, to name a few. ... [I ]f you can get a win on one issue, it punctures the sense of invincibility and inevitability that a strongman relies on.

...

The opposite of shame is pride. Let’s be proud of fighting back, of caring about one another, of committing to rebuild what is being destroyed.

[Clive Watkins]

Bumping this up....

[Julie Steiner]

I'll leave the Big, Ugly Bill (and other disasters) for others to discuss. I'd like to focus my comments on positive things, although those have been few and far between lately.

The No Kings Day march on June 14 had a lovely turnout in downtown San Diego. I had found the lack of age diversity for the April march, with an estimated crowd size of 3,000, depressing. (I'm 56, and for that march I was one of the youngest marchers I saw all day, but perhaps that was because the local universities were still in session, and they were all having their own marches to protest the suspension of federal science and arts funding.) Initial estimates for the downtown San Diego No Kings Day march were 60,000, later raised to 69,000. And when I was driving home, I passed smaller protests at several major intersections.

A week before that, I had started walking neighborhoods with Alliance San Diego, distributing door hangers in English and Spanish with instructions to follow if law enforcement knocks on the door or enters a workplace. The door hanger includes photos comparing a real warrant (i.e., with a specific name and/or address on it, issued by a court and signed by a judge) against one of the bullshit all-purpose ones often used by I.C.E. — and, for all we know, by masked wannabes from local white supremacist groups.

In the course of those walks, I had an interesting interaction with two retired men, apparently neighbors, who had been having a conversation in a driveway. Instead of passing them to hang a card on the doorknob, of course I asked if they knew anyone who might like information on what to do if law enforcement knocks on their door. One of them said vehemently that illegal aliens should all be deported, so I could take that trash I was distributing and keep right on walking past his property. "Okay, thanks. Have a nice day," I said, and turned away to catch up with my partner on the other side of the street.

But after that man went up the steps into his house, the other one chased after me and asked if I was distributing propaganda telling immigrants to disrespect law enforcement. Glad that my partner was only a few houses away, I remained neutral and courteous and told him no, that the door hangers I was distributing just informed people of rights they might not know they had, because the Constitutional guarantee of due process applies to all people in this country, whether they are here legally or not.

To my surprise, he then confided in a low voice — as if worried that the neighbor he'd just been speaking with might hear him — that although he still loves Trump, he thinks that I.C.E. has gone too far by deporting non-citizens who are quite obviously not dangerous criminals. He said, "These hardworking dishwashers and gardeners we see zip-tied by I.C.E. on t.v. are not the drug dealers, terrorists, and rapists that Trump was talking about deporting. I.C.E. needs to be focusing on the bad immigrants, not the good immigrants."

I took a chance and asked, "Is it possible that Trump exaggerated how many millions of immigrants are drug dealers, terrorists, and rapists — and now he can't meet the deportation numbers he promised without rounding up good people, too?" He said, "Bingo!", and then he actually thanked me for sharing information so that "the good immigrants" will have a better chance of being able to stay here. I couldn't believe it.

Baby steps to common ground. He still seemed afraid of how his fellow Trump supporter might react if his apostasy was overheard, but his conscience had been bothering him enough that he felt the need to trot down the street to tell me about it.

So, there's hope for some MAGA folks. Their conversion may be too little and too late to do much good, especially if it only happens one-on-one, but it's possible to plant a seed here and there.

I found the following five-minute video on how to help people leave Trump's cult helpful. (Apologies if it's not viewable in some countries.)
https://substack.com/inbox/post/167049100

Other bright spots:

San Diego's newly-appointed (last month!) Roman Catholic bishop is a former refugee, having arrived in the U.S. as from Vietnam at age eight. One of the first things he did was to issue a letter speaking out against the arrests of immigrants who have shown up to their hearings as instructed — and who have even had favorable rulings sometimes — only to be snatched by I.C.E. in the hallways and disappeared. The letter asked Catholic clergy to attend immigration court hearings to show solidarity on International Refugee Day (June 20). He and a group of priests were joined by other religious leaders, including a Muslim imam. There was a heartwarming amount of publicity for that, and there's talk of it becoming a more ongoing program instead of just a four-hour photo op on one day.

Yesterday I was heartened to see in the news that local veterans who had served in Afghanistan have also been attending the hearings of translators and others who risked their lives to assist the U.S. military against the Taliban — often only to be snatched in the hallways by I.C.E., regardless of the outcome of the hearing, and deported back to be murdered by the Taliban. The veterans groups are emphatic that their members are doing so regardless of their personal political affiliations, because these deportations are so glaringly immoral.

Keep on trying to make a difference, however small and futile it may seem.