Learning is more than the acquisition of facts. Learning is not dominant/passive. What is pushed at us is not absorbed. No one teaches anyone. We take in what we can. We reflect. Insights arise. There is a sharing of gifts. Learning is a collaboration. Teaching and learning together in reciprocity. Learning is dialogue.
The first rule of Power Club is that consequences are for the rubes. Right up until the farthest right puts them in a camp or the farthest left loads them onto a tumbril.
The real trouble isn't finding the right flavor of power seeker. It's getting out from under the whole system.
I like marijuana because it keeps me from killing people. And I think there are a lot of people out there who are just like me. The reason it's not legal is because most people get up in the morning and get high, then forget to go out and vote for it.
The horror of class stratification, racism, and prejudice is that some people begin to believe that the security of their families and communities depends on the oppression of others, that for some to have good lives there must be others whose lives are truncated and brutal. It is a belief that dominates this culture. It is what makes the poor whites of the South so determinedly racist and the middle class so contemptuous of the poor. It is a myth that allows some to imagine that they build their lives on the ruin of others, a secret core of shame for the middle class, a goad and a spur to the marginal working class, and cause enough for the homeless and poor to feel no constraints on hatred or violence.
Dorothy Allison at History Is A Weapon. A Question of Class
An obituary by Brittany Allen at LitHub. Dorothy Allison, author and force of nature, has died.
She continues: “I grew up poor, hated, the victim of physical, emotional, and sexual violence, and I know that suffering does not ennoble. It destroys. To resist destruction, self-hatred, or lifelong hopelessness, we have to throw off the conditioning of being despised, the fear of becoming the they that is talked about so dismissively, to refuse lying myths and easy moralities, to see ourselves as human, flawed, and extraordinary. All of us—extraordinary.”
Disinhibition will be the order of the day in Donald Trump’s America.
The comprehensive nature of Trump’s victory suggests that alongside the large core of voters thrilled by his misogyny, xenophobia, bullying, and mendacity, many more are at least not repelled by his ever more extreme indulgence in those sadistic pleasures.
[Heraldic charge. A stork, crane or the like standing on one leg may be called "vigilant" or "in its vigilance".]
* * * *
“The bedrock of autocracy is laid with the abdication of vigilance.”
― Sarah Kendzior, Hiding in Plain Sight: The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America
“The vulnerability of precious things is beautiful because vulnerability is a mark of existence.
The fall of Troy. The fall of the petals from a fruit tree in blossom. To know that what is most precious is not rooted in existence— that is beautiful. Why? It projects the soul beyond time.”
Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it. The event of yesterday was one of those kind of alarms which is just sufficient to rouse us to duty, without being of consequence enough to depress our fortitude. It is not a field of a few acres of ground, but a cause, that we are defending, and whether we defeat the enemy in one battle, or by degrees, the consequences will be the same.
When I coined the term “AI Erasure” for my master’s thesis, completed at Victoria University in Australia, my fear was how AI could reshape our understanding of history and identity. In Brazil, African voices were historically marginalized and pushed out of literature, academia, and media. AI erasure will industrialize this eradication to levels never possible before.
Worse, because of the perception that AI isn’t biased, and the misguided idea that machines will be fairer when dealing with difficult issues—because “they don’t see race, class, ability, or gender”—combined with the anthropomorphizing of AI tools, we risk that these histories will disappear entirely.
Guido Melo in Africa Is a Country. My Mother's Buried Story
Senate Republicans support the $1.8 billion slush fund and political hack Bill Pulte for DNI
June 5, 2026
Robert B. Hubbell
Note: This newsletter was researched, drafted, and (audio) recorded while on a trans-Atlantic flight with a painfully slow and inconsistent internet connection. I appreciate your understanding for any uptick in the usual number of errors and the quality of the audio.
In a despicable act of cowardice and contempt for the American people, Senate Republicans defeated a Democratic attempt to block Trump’s $1.8 billion thug fund. Although wannabe Attorney General Todd Blanche claims that the DOJ will not proceed with the fund, Trump has not confirmed Blanche’s commitment. Given the ambiguity, the only rational path forward is to pass a law blocking the effort to steal $1.8 billion from the Treasury to “compensate” convicted insurrectionists, cop beaters, and child molesters.
No matter what happens, every congressional Republican now owns the thug fund. Even if it is not resurrected from hell, they have sided with Trump in one of his most odious acts as president. If Trump does bring the fund back, they will own every payment to every convicted cop beater, child molester, Capitol Building defecator, and repeat offender arrested after Trump pardoned them on the first day of his second term. See The Jan. 6 Pardons: How Many Clemency Recipients Have Faced Other Charges? | Lawfare.
Per Lawfare,
At least 97 of the more than 1,500 individuals granted clemency by President Trump for their roles in the January 6 Capitol attack have been arrested for, charged with, or convicted of crimes separate from Jan. 6 since their participation in the Jan. 6 riot. [¶]
At least 14, meanwhile, have been charged with sex crimes or crimes related to child sexual abuse material (CSAM), and at least six have faced domestic violence charges. Others have faced charges for physical assaults, illegal firearms possession, or other violent crimes. At least 20 have been charged with driving under the influence (DUI) of alcohol or drugs or public intoxication.
Although three vulnerable Republican Senators tried to escape the stain of Trump’s thug fund by voting for the Democratic amendment (Susan Collins (Maine), Dan Sullivan (Alaska), and John Husted (Ohio), the damage is done.
It is now the official policy of congressional Republicans that it is unnecessary to prevent the theft of $1.8 billion from the Treasury for the benefit of convicted criminals because we can trust Trump not to proceed with the plan that he called “a beautiful thing” on Wednesday.
While it is not clear how this reprehensible debacle will unfold, it is a massive political miscalculation by congressional Republicans. They have missed the moment and misread the anger of the American people who are struggling to pay for gas, groceries, and rent while the former leader of the Proud Boys is looking for “tens of millions” in compensation because he was indicted, tried, and then convicted of seditious conspiracy by a jury of his peers. See Ex-Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio tells PBS News he believes he’s owed tens of millions from DOJ fund | PBS News.
We must be relentless in reminding Americans that Trump and the Republicans in Congress are attempting to steal $1.8 billion of your tax dollars to reward insurrectionists for seeking to end democracy in America.
Trump says DNI Acting Director Bill Pulte will look at “rigged elections.”
Trump sparked outrage by naming Bill Pulte as the Acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The DNI is the president’s principal national security advisor tasked with synthesizing intelligence gathered by 18 agencies. Pulte has no intelligence background. He is an investment fund manager who used his position at the Federal Housing Finance Administration to unlawfully snoop through mortgage applications of Trump’s political enemies, which Pulte then unlawfully disclosed to Trump-friendly prosecutors in the DOJ.
Lest anyone believed that Trump was appointing Pulte to advise regarding intelligence, Trump said on Thursday that Pulte “may find out some things about the rigged elections, etc., etc.”
Trump claimed on Wednesday that he was looking for other candidates to replace Tulsi Gabbard and that Pulte’s acting status would be temporary. That backtrack was a sop meant to mollify Senate Republicans who beat their breasts in false outrage over Pulte’s appointment. See Trump says Bill Pulte won’t be director of national intelligence permanently - CBS News.
Every day of every week of every year, bad actors plan threats against the United States. Because of the hard work of the US intelligence community, most of those threats are thwarted. But under Bill Pulte’s direction, the intelligence community will be looking for “11,780 votes” in Georgia to prove that Trump won the 2020 election. God help us all if something gets overlooked because Trump’s madness has infected the US intelligence community.
[Update: Republicans blocked a Democratic amendment to the reconciliation bill that would have disqualified Pulte from serving as Acting DNI. Republicans are placing Trump’s pathetic need for revenge ahead of the safety of all Americans. The Hill, Sens. Cassidy, Collins, Murkowski vote to bar Pulte from serving as temporary DNI.]
Concluding Thoughts
The takeaway from today: Even when faced with cratering favorability ratings and widespread public backlash, congressional Republicans can’t make a clean break from Trump on the most corrupt, depraved efforts of his presidency.
We must convert their cluelessness and cowardice into a wave election so overwhelming that it will be incontestable—even by the likes of unrepentant hatchet men Todd Blanche and Bill Pulte.
RIP Marjane Satrapi, 19-2026
I was saddened to learn today of the death of the artist Marjane Satrapi. Satrapi was only 56.
Satrapi is probably most recognized for her first published work, Persepolis, a graphic novel she completed in 2003. Persepolis was one of the first books I wrote about on Biblioklept, way back in 2007, when this blog was not half a year old. Here is the entire post:
“It was…
gummygunk
germansingergirl
origamiaround
prguitarman
dededos
janainaart
