politics

Friday, November 7, 2025

Tuesday, November 4, 2025

He actually got a majority of the votes in a 3 person race, with Sliwa's 7.1% being not enough for Cuomo to win even if those votes were given to him, with his 41.6%. Now all those people who promised to leave NYC if MaMdani won, can leave, and what's his face in Texas can insist on a 100% tariff on emigrants from NYC, and the guy from Barstool who legally resides in Florida, can move to Florida, where he supposedly resides. I just can't with all the idiotic posturing.

I couldn't bring myself to vote for Adams or Sliwa in the last Mayoral election, and it will be good to see Adams go.

The New York Times would not endorse Mamdani, suggesting Cuomo would do a good job. Luckily New Yorkers took a different view.

I'm happy Trump didn't somehow rig the election, it actually gives me faith in democracy again. His mother is a filmmaker from India. His father is an academic from Uganda, with Indian heritage. His wife is an artist, born in Texas but of Syrian heritage, moved to Dubai Qatar at 9 with her software developer father and doctor mother. She wants to draw, she's an illustrator. Pretty cool to me. Reflects NYC's diversity and competence.

The exuberance I felt with Obama elected was quickly replaced by the worry at watching so many people trying to block him, obstruct him, undermine him.

The cockamamie attacks are painful. I'm going to pay attention to this administration.

As progressive as NYC is, Long Island re-elected a Trump lover (NY Post). All the major elections went to Democrats.

I believe there's a yin and yang in politics. The president comes in, and then gradually loses power, and all the elections flop to the other side, almost no matter which side. If Mamdani becomes president, there will be slew of Republican governors and mayors.

I live in an almost brown yellow place on the map.

Friday, October 24, 2025

The sin of empathy

I'm not sure if Trump created the divide between empathy and selfishness in America, but he sure drove a wedge between it.

I'm reading that people will not be able to heat their houses this year. Trump has cut the programs that allow poor people to get emergency heating in the winter (source).

Those who support what Trump is doing will say, they should work harder, make better choices, etc. Work two, three, four jobs, whatever it takes to heat the family. They should contort themselves, and not expect to depend on money from others.

And it's OK for Trump to give Argentina 40 million, to rebuild and do major renovations to the White House, even build a triumphal arch. The same "irresponsibility" of the poor family is OK with him because people should not be dependent on the government. The sin of empathy has been articulated by the right (source).

Read Douglas Sharp's amazing essay defending empathy.

It's the difference between people who hate the government so much that they're willing to throw their own countrymen and women under the bus, not even for less taxes on them, only the super rich, but to burn it all down. They're so angry at immigrants, they're probably excited watching all the beatings on social media. Most people are disgusted, but enough aren't. I know a sweet immigrant mother, who when I asked her if she was going to vote, started ranting about lazy immigrants. They're brainwashed by Fox News and social media into a hatred stance. If it wasn't so diabolical, I'd be impressed, instead I'm disgusted by the effort to harm people. I know a sweet man who thinks Trump is being persecuted! I've never met such a collection of idiots that are coordinated and weaponized. Truly diabolical.

Tuesday, October 21, 2025

Political Procedural TV shows

I'm watching The Diplomat and really enjoying it, and it reminds me of Madam Secretary and The West Wing.

Monday, October 20, 2025

Political essay

Conservatives don't like government, progressives see the potential. There are always mistakes and limitations to government, and conservatives a hyper focused on it, in their own way.

My psychoanalytical explanation is that often overbearing parents create a desire to be left alone. Also really selfish people don't like taxes or free riders. They'd rather have children starve instead of one person getting it who doesn't need it. The right would rather detain 170 citizens and catch one "illegal", an offensive term to the left (source)

I'm progressive, and feel very strongly that capitalism creates exaggerated winners and losers, and government can smooth out the excesses of capitalism.

Conservatives feel the greed motive really important in capitalism, they're afraid people won't be groveling or hungry enough to put up with asshole bosses if they get housing, food, education at discount prices. They have a real boner for unchecked capitalism and the inequalities they create. Trump is purposefully crashing the economy to exaggerate the winners and losers. The decreased power of the American currency will bring jobs back to the USA, he fantasizes. Like everything in politics, nobody is completely wrong or completely right. There's a Godel theorem of politics, because the perspectives of right and left can never be totally right, and personality is a sort of fixed aspect to people and there will always be these two perspectives. That's why the dialectic of democracy is so powerful, neither side decisively wins. Except when things become anti-democratic and one side cheats or changes the rules. Gerrymandering is cheating. Money for elections is cheating.

The examples are packing the supreme court by not giving Obama a seat, waiting till the Trump gets in. By not swearing in a duly elected representative to the people. By creating a secret force like the Gestapo and SS (source). We've never had authorities who had to cover their faces before. By sending in troops into cities, creating a war. Trump laughed about uniting the nation, he thrives of disunity. He just needs a few rich people to believe in him, the oligarchy.

Tyranny, fascism, nazism, authoritarianism, dictatorship is an autoimmune disorder. The body politic attacks itself. It's pathological.

The inherent rape of the people in this regime, is fittingly carried out by a convicted felon rapist and pedophile. It wasn't that long ago that the right was fantasizing about imaginary pedophilia rings, and you'd be on the left if you noticed this concern went poof, and disappeared. In the endless conversation between left and right, they will never completely see eye to eye. Just as Roosevelt created frustrated conservatives, so too, the orange transactional man creates left wing pendulum momentum. Trump is giving 40 billion to Argentina because the criminals need somewhere to flee when they lose power. Trump has said he's not going to heaven. He knows.

Noem, Stephen Miller, and others. If you google "who are the most evil people in Trump's administration, Google, which has swerved right, says it's a subjective term. The rule of law has to be suspended to establish it.

Fourteen million people are dying because Trump abolished USAID (source). Trump was happy to let 700k+ people die of Covid through his inaction (Right wing Forbes thinks 400k, it's political how you calculate it allegedly). It's a metaphysic to say they could have lived, because they're dead. It's a hazy vague administrative murder by lack of resources, something harder to grasp.

When I first heard about Freud's death instinct I was young and felt very strongly the urge to live. As I'm older now I understand the dark undertow of the death instinct, and being bad and killing people is what Trump wants. It's a death cult. That's why he's changed it back to the war department, because he wants to war, and death.

You ever stand in line and judge someone, wish they didn't exist? That's the murder instinct. Anger turned into action. Meanwhile Trump is unifying America in anger. Against him. If you've ever played Civilization, democracy doesn't like war, you have to overthrow it to go to war. Trump wants to take some land somewhere like his friend Putin has done over and over. The people generally don't vote for murder. That's why we just had the largest protest in American history.

This regime has the push it till we're taken out attitude.