All the goodness and the heroisms will rise up again, then be cut down again and rise up. It isn’t that the evil thing wins — it never will — but that it doesn’t die. I don’t know why we should expect it to. It seems fairly obvious that two sides of a mirror are required before one has a mirror, that two forces are necessary in man before he is man.
As posted on Facebook by Jim Cate of St. Petersburg, who owns an extraordinary archive of photos.
* * * *
Any Common Desolation
Ellen Bass
can be enough to make you look up
at the yellowed leaves of the apple tree, the few
that survived the rains and frost, shot
with late afternoon sun. They glow a deep
orange-gold against a blue so sheer, a single bird
would rip it like silk. You may have to break
your heart, but it isn’t nothing
to know even one moment alive. The sound
of an oar in an oarlock or a ruminant
animal tearing grass. The smell of grated ginger.
The ruby neon of the liquor store sign.
Warm socks. You remember your mother,
her precision a ceremony, as she gathered
the white cotton, slipped it over your toes,
drew up the heel, turned the cuff. A breath
can uncoil as you walk across your own muddy yard,
the big dipper pouring night down over you, and everything
you dread, all you can’t bear, dissolves
and, like a needle slipped into your vein—
that sudden rush of the world.
""Angela Nikolau and Ivan Beerkus, the Russian rooftopping couple from the 2024 Netflix documentary “Skywalkers: A Love Story,” scaled the top of the Empire State Building this morning, dressed in black with helmets and masks. Angela wore cat ears. They unfurled a black banner reading “when the power of love beats the love of power the world knows peace,” a line commonly attributed to Jimi Hendrix."
+
Sonnet 116:
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
By William Shakespeare
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments; love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no, it is an ever-fixèd mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come.
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom:
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
Finally a Federal Judge has publicly stated for the record that Trump and Vance, the elected leaders of the United States are bigots.
A federal judge in Ohio ruled against the Trump administration Monday, citing bigoted comments President Trump and Vice President JD Vance made about immigrants.
U.S. District Judge Algenon Marbley ordered the White House to unfreeze immigrants' benefit applications, citing Trump and Vance's "outright hostility towards immigrants, both before and after the 2024 presidential election." These applications include filings for work authorization and green cards from people in the U.S. from countries including Burma, Canada, Iran, Nigeria, Syria, Tanzania, and Venezuela.
"Their ire appears focused on immigrants from countries in the Caribbean, South America, Africa, and Asia," Marbley, nominated to the federal bench by President Clinton in 1997, wrote.
The judge quoted many of Trump's comments against immigrants of color, including the time he railed against people coming to the U.S. from "shithole countries" or when he claimed Haitians are "poisoning the blood" of our country. In his second term as president, Trump attacked Somali Americans and accused them of adding "nothing" to the country, and oversaw violent immigration crackdowns across the country, particularly in Minnesota.
Marbley also highlighted Trump and Vance's made-up accusation that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating people's pet cats and dogs.
"If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that's what I'm going to do," Vance said in 2024, which Marbley quoted directly.
"This general hostility to immigration contrasts with an apparent interest in and preference for the migration of white people," Marbley added.
The ordeal of dying must be memory, so much seeing and losing forms.
Friends whacking at invisible ankles and you.
The action is done in a dream. Who did what?
The closed book, the feet
asleep.
Proof that you lived is that you kept notebooks.
Are you collecting material for dreams, she asked the audience.
None of them remembered collecting or dreaming.
Nothing specific, that is.
For a book, no.
They lay down that night not looking for a real thing but for a way back.
A dream broke time apart.
You’re allowed to fear the coming hallucinations, she added.
You met me at the subway
where tracks led east to
North Station and on
up to Cape Ann.
We were almost romantic
Not knotted but erect
side by side passively waiting
for an apocalyptic collision to rupture
the grave tension between wholly conscious
ontological thinking
and the steel pebbling motion of tracks
sparked into action by a fiery touch.
We smiled our way forward perfectly even.
To be described as a note that separates from a song and blows away.
When you are down to nothing more to call onOR you can say I walked Manhattan from sundown to dawn.
So I have traveled the world.
I walked by foot all over dungeons to see a film starring friends—Americans.
The ceiling collapsed from heavy rain and artificial colors condensed
along the sidewalk.
One puddle looked just like the world-marble.
Time had thinned for gravity and a speeding apple
Since time was lightweight and invisible.
Manifest, unbelievable.
A faraway land
And a hotel I never visited
In a ghost-book half-erased
You could tell I was in love with a non-entity.
This was the hardest part assigned to me.
During my brief tenure I loved loving best
One who didn’t exist.
In the early days, it was the opposite.
Nature (all of it)
Did exist and loved itself.
Clouds doted on the sea, amorousness
Was in the air returning every wave and sigh.
The squirrels told the oak
To shake its acorns down
For the poor dirt to eat.
“Freuchen tells how one day, after coming home hungry from an unsuccessful walrus-hunting expedition, he found one of the successful hunters dropping off several hundred pounds of meat. He thanked him profusely. The man objected indignantly:
“Up in our country we are human!” said the hunter. “And since we are human we help each other. We don’t like to hear anybody say thanks for that. What I get today you may get tomorrow. Up here we say that by gifts one makes slaves and by whips one makes dogs.
… The refusal to calculate credits and debits can be found throughout the anthropological literature on egalitarian hunting societies. Rather than seeing himself as human because he could make economic calculations, the hunter insisted that being truly human meant refusing to make such calculations, refusing to measure or remember who had given what to whom, for the precise reason that doing so would inevitably create a world where we began "comparing power with power, measuring, calculating” and reducing each other to slaves or dogs through debt.
It’s not that he, like untold millions of similar egalitarian spirits throughout history, was unaware that humans have a propensity to calculate. If he wasn’t aware of it, he could not have said what he did. Of course we have a propensity to calculate. We have all sorts of propensities. In any real-life situation, we have propensities that drive us in several different contradictory directions simultaneously. No one is more real than any other. The real question is which we take as the foundation of our humanity, and therefore, make the basis of our civilization.”
"A society that gets rid of all its troublemakers goes downhill."
+
"Men rarely (if ever) managed to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child."
+
"I began to sense faintly that secrecy is the keystone of all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy ... censorship. When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, "This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know," the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything -- you can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."
~ Robert A. Heinlein, science-fiction author (7 Jul 1907-1988)
Edvard Munch (Norwegian, 1863-1944) :: "The Sun," 1911 :: Oil on canvas :: 449 x 786 cm | 14.7 x 25.7 ft :: University of Oslo
* * * *
Gratitude rewires your brain. Laughter is anti inflammatory. Crying helps regulate your nervous system. Releasing anger can free the body from tension it was never meant to carry.
"Nothing you love is lost. Not really. Things, people—they always go away, sooner or later. You can’t hold them, any more than you can hold moonlight. But if they’ve touched you, if they’re inside you, then they’re still yours. The only things you ever really have are the ones you hold inside your heart."
no title, just experimenting Giovanni Tilotta, 2020
* * * * *
“if one accepts Jean Piaget’s famous definition of mature intelligence as the ability to coordinate between multiple perspectives (or possible perspectives) one can see, here, precisely how bureaucratic power, at the moment it turns to violence, becomes literally a form of infantile stupidity.”
― David Graeber, The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy
Graham Plattner’s withdrawal speech on Wednesday evening dominated the news cycle, even as our attention should have been laser-focused on Trump’s disastrous performance on the global stage. While there is much to discuss about Graham Platner’s exit from the race for US Senate, we should have faith in Maine Democrats to handle adversity and come out on top. They can beat Senator Susan Collins. We need to trust them to do the right thing and then support them when they make their choice.
Platner’s withdrawal and Trump’s NATO debacle are not alike. One is inside-baseball politics; the other is a matter of global peace and security. Even so, Platner’s troubles are irresistible clickbait for the media and political pundits, while Trump’s offensive, destructive, and (at times) delusional statements at the NATO conference are receiving muted coverage.
But the drip-drip-drip of Trump’s embarrassing missteps and calculated provocations is becoming too much for voters to ignore—especially when they are driving up prices at home and creating global economic uncertainty. See NPR, Iran tensions add fresh uncertainty to the global economy. (“Even before the latest attacks, the International Monetary Fund had downgraded its forecast for economic growth this year. . . . The possibility of renewed Middle East conflict looms large and could extend commodity price volatility, further threaten supply chains, raise prices, and weigh on financial conditions.”)
So, let’s take a look at how badly things went for Trump in Ankara, Turkey
Trump’s disastrous NATO meeting
It is difficult to describe how badly Trump stumbled at the NATO conference in Ankara and how much damage he inflicted on the US and the NATO alliance.
Before discussing the political damage, it is imperative to note that Trump’s mental deterioration was on full display. During a press availability in Ankara, Trump said that the “Islamic Republic of Japan” fired on a US aircraft carrier and repeatedly confused Putin and Zelenskyy (the latter of whom was seated within five feet of Trump). See Newsweek, Trump Appears to Mistakenly Call Zelensky ‘Putin,’ Iran ‘Japan’.
Viewed in isolation and made at a different venue, those misstatements could be dismissed as mere slips of the tongue. Here, they occurred at a NATO summit, where our allies were hanging on every word Trump uttered. To state the obvious, if Joe Biden had made one of those errors in similar circumstances, the calls for his resignation would have been thunderous and incessant until Biden resigned.
Where is the same outrage today? Where are the major newspapers, the opinion writers, and the Hollywood A-listers who believed it was their patriotic duty to call for a president's resignation within days of a stumble in a political debate? We need to hear from them now, with greater urgency and force.
Trump’s unfitness to serve was manifest at the NATO summit, and yet the same media outlets that hounded Joe Biden out of the 2024 presidential race accept Trump’s continued mental deterioration as “Trump being Trump,” and, hence, a non-story. We deserve better from our media. It is not too late for them to hold Trump to the same standard of mental fitness to which they held Joe Biden.
[Aside: Rather than addressing Trump’s staggering unfitness on full display at the NATO summit, the NYTimes Editorial Board published a lightning-quick editorial on Wednesday evening blaming Democrats for “trying to satisfy [Democratic voters] with a personality instead of a purpose. . . . It is a party still hoping a contender will spare it the harder work of deciding what it stands for.]
Hmm . . . is there any other major political party that is focused on a leader’s personality rather than his purpose? Oh, right! The Republican Party, which has become a cult of personality, a comparison that seems not to interest the Times’ Editorial Board. So, rather than addressing Trump’s collapse at NATO, the NYT Editorial Board believes that trying to “fix” the Democratic Party’s alleged obsession with personality is a more pressing priority. Shameful.]
During the meeting in Ankara, Trump continued his gratuitous attacks on NATO allies. In a spontaneous decision sparked by a synaptic misfire, Trump announced that the US would cease trade with Spain. He said,
Spain is a terrible partner in NATO. They don’t participate. They don’t pay. I don’t want anything to do with Spain. Cut off all trade with Spain. . . . Don’t even talk to them. They’re hopeless, bad people. There are a couple of others, but in particular Spain.
And just like that, the US is in a trade war with Spain, after the US president called Spaniards “hopeless, bad people.” In the days before Trump broke the US news media, a president who issued a slur against the people of any nation, let alone a reliable ally, would result in 24-hour carpet-bombing by the media.
Several hours later, Trump appeared to say that the trade war with Spain was suspended because the country “came back all the way today. Spain was very generous today.”
It is worth noting that Trump’s apparent retreat from the trade war with Spain was made during a flight from Ankara to England on the former Air Force One, which has been replaced by a Boeing 747 gifted by Qatar—which Trump intends to claim for his presidential library after leaving office. Trump may have flown on the old Air Force One because the Qatari Air Force One lacks the same defensive capabilities as the former Air Force One. See AP News, Trump flies partway home in an old Air Force One after Iran strikes (“The travel switch raised fresh security questions about the new aircraft that the U.S. spent $400 million to retrofit. Images of the Qatari-gifted jet captured since its unveiling show it is not equipped with some of the same missile detection and countermeasure systems as the older jets.”)
If it is true that the new Qatari Air Force One does not have the necessary anti-missile defenses, Trump has put the safety of the president and the national security of the US at risk by flying on a plane that is more vulnerable to missile attack than the old Air Force One. Vanity at its worst.
All in all, Trump’s attendance at the NATO summit in Ankara was a disaster. Trump insulted, offended, and rambled during press conferences. And on two occasions, he was worse than incoherent, seemingly unable to distinguish between Japan and Iran, and Putin and Zelensky. And he exposed a critical weakness in the new Qatari Air Force One.
All of this in 48 hours. Only Trump could fit so much losing into a 2-day period. But it gets worse. Read on!
Trump resumes active war against Iran
Hostilities in the Middle East erupted over the weekend after Iran attacked a commercial ship in the Strait of Hormuz. Retaliation by the US provoked counterretaliation by Iran, which targeted 85 US military sites in Bahrain and Kuwait. On Wednesday, in response to reporters’ questions, Trump effectively ended the ceasefire, trashed Iran’s leadership, and promised new strikes against Iran.
On Wednesday, Trump said,
They’re scum. They’re scum, they’re sick people, they’re led by sick people, and they’re vicious. They’re scum. I don’t want to deal with them, but they’re scum.
See HuffPo, Donald Trump Calls Iran’s Leadership ‘Scum’ In Latest Remarks.
Trump also said in response to a reporter’s question that he was ready to end the ceasefire, saying, “I think it’s over... As far as I’m concerned, it’s over I think it’s over . . . .” Trump went further, saying that he was “not sure” he even wants a peace agreement. Shortly thereafter, US CENTCOM announced that it had begun a new round of major attacks on Iran. See CENTCOM Official Release, U.S. Forces Complete Another Round of Strikes Against Iran.
Predictably, oil prices began to increase on the news of renewed hostilities between the US and Iran. See USA Today, Oil prices are up. Gas prices could soon spike, too. (“Oil prices spiked on July 8 to their highest levels in weeks after President Donald Trump said the ceasefire between the United States and Iran was “over.”)
The latest round of hostilities will likely lead to a second increase in gas prices in the US, reversing some of the decline over the last several weeks. Consumers (and voters) will experience the pain of price increases all over again, even if the increases do not take gas prices to new highs.
Trump’s alleged “peace deal” was a mirage. He won a few weeks of reprieve through a notional ceasefire, but the ground truth never changed: Iran emerged as the victor, claiming control over the Strait of Hormuz, an outcome that Trump cannot tolerate.
Trump and Republicans are stuck in a war they cannot end unless they engage in a humiliating surrender that involves ceding control of the Strait of Hormuz to Iran.
Concluding Thoughts
Graham Platner’s withdrawal speech was received poorly. It was largely an attack on other Democrats, many of whom were his supporters. He failed to mention Trump, Susan Collins, or the women who accused him of inappropriate behavior or sexual assault, except to say that the allegations against him were false.
It is important to recognize that Platner generated genuine excitement among Maine voters. As he departs the race, we must disentangle three strands of the enthusiasm for Platner. First, Maine voters who met Platner in town halls were impressed and motivated by his charisma and innate political skill. Second, voters were enthusiastic about his ideas. Finally, voters believed that with Platner, Democrats could finally defeat Susan Collins.
We don’t know who will replace Platner as the Democratic Party’s nominee. But much of the enthusiasm for Platner’s ideas and the hope of defeating Collins remain after Platner’s withdrawal. Whether the Maine Democratic Party can nominate a candidate who can replace Platner’s charisma remains to be seen, but it is a tall order. No matter. Despite the Times’ Editorial Board’s sneering accusations that Democrats lack ideas, Platner had a very specific set of proposals and positions that spoke to Maine voters. Anyone who steps into Platner’s shoes would do well to consider Platner’s platform carefully.
Finally, Maine Democrats are blameless in this matter. Indeed, they are victims, despite Platner’s efforts to portray himself as the victim. Many listened to his denials, evaluated his credibility, and gave him a chance at redemption. Others were skeptical but were focused on defeating Collins and saw Platner as a strong candidate.
While some groups have engaged in infighting and recriminations, we have no time for either at this point. While there are lessons to be learned, time is short to select a nominee and mount a campaign. Assigning blame or identifying internal control weaknesses can wait until after the defeat of Susan Collins.
Trump has re-ignited his war against Iran, and nothing good will come of it. Susan Collins has been Trump’s apologist, defender, explainer, and surrogate. The people of Maine can defeat her. That has always been the real contest, and nothing has changed that fundamental truth. We should trust the people of Maine to deliver the right result in November.
If you read one post today this is the one. No one writes a column with his finger on the pulse of the nation better than Thomas Friedman.
Credit...Finn Gomez/Getty Images
+
OPINION
THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Trump Is Fleecing Us
July 7, 2026
Seen from behind, a man in a white cowboy hat and American flag-print shirt and a woman with a braid hold each other close as they watch fireworks in the distance.
When the sun came shining, and I was strolling
And the wheat fields waving, and the dust clouds rolling
As the fog was lifting a voice was chanting:
This land was made for you and me.
— Woody Guthrie, “This Land Is Your Land”
Our country is built on written documents — the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, to name the most important. So to celebrate America’s 250th birthday, my wife, Ann, hosted a special event at Planet Word, the immersive language museum she founded in Washington to promote literacy. The singer-composer Nolan Williams Jr. led a singalong featuring classic American songs, including, of course, Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land.”
Despite 100-degree heat, a remarkably diverse crowd of 300 people packed the museum’s main hall, and young and old sang together with gusto. There was so much joy and camaraderie in the room — and so many leaving attendees saying to one another how much they wished the entire country could reflect that same harmony every day. So many people asked afterward, “Why aren’t we singing these songs together on the National Mall?”
Which leads — I am sorry to say — to a quite different variation on “This Land Is Your Land” heard on the National Mall later that evening. In my mind, it was the Trump variation, with lyrics that went, “This land is my land, this land is my land / From California to the New York island / From my cryptocurrency to the Qatari 747 / This land belongs to me and mine.”
One thing about President Trump: He is consistent. He never surprises you on the upside. He has never been remotely interested in being the president of all the people, only his base. He never tries to win by addition, only by division — only by us versus them.
As my newsroom colleague Shawn McCreesh reported from the mall: “Mr. Trump used the nation’s birthday to scaremonger about Democrats four months before the midterms (he talked a lot again about ‘communism’) and demand that Congress pass an act that would make it harder to vote.” Shawn continued, “What was meant to be the centerpiece of the nation’s 250th anniversary celebration was in some ways just another Trump rally.”
This very same Fourth of July, two other newsroom colleagues of mine, Eric Lipton and David Yaffe-Bellany, reported that nearly “1 million people who bought President Trump’s memecoin have lost money through the end of June, according to a report by the cryptocurrency analytics firm Nansen. Their losses total $3.81 billion.” My colleagues pointed out that the calculation came after Trump signed a financial disclosure revealing that the same crypto bet dealt him a $636 million payout. In all, his business ventures brought him at least $2.2 billion in 2025.
This is a big story, and my gut tells me that Trump also smells that this could be a big story: of how badly he fleeced his own supporters!
Since the start of Trump’s second term, it’s been widely reported that he has been exploiting the presidency for financial gain, but the story needed a real number and real victims. Now it has both — $2.2 billion in total gains for Trump and at least $3.81 billion in losses for his investors. That’s a bumper sticker. Trump famously boasted that he could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and his supporters would still be with him. Will they also stick with him when he fleeces them?
And, have no doubt, he was targeting them, as The Times also reported: “Three days before his inauguration, Mr. Trump unveiled a second Trump-branded investment — the $Trump memecoin, a type of novelty currency with little practical value. ‘It’s time to celebrate everything we stand for: WINNING!’ Mr. Trump wrote on social media. ‘Join my very special Trump community. GET YOUR $TRUMP NOW!’ But that turned out to be bad advice.”
Trump is surely terrified that the Democrats will win the House or the Senate or both and launch investigations into how much he has used his office, and exploited his own supporters, for grotesque personal gain.
Therefore, to my mind, the right themes for Democrats going into the midterms are two: If they win, they will expose how much Trump has been ripping off his own supporters; and if they win they will make bringing the country together a priority.
I believe the quest for national unity is the most underestimated political force in the country today. It is not an accident that CNN reported last month that “nearly half of Americans say they don’t consider themselves a part of either major political party, the highest level of partisan independence measured by CNN polling in more than a decade.”
I am sure that is true because I heard the best political analyst I know make the same point. His name is Barack Obama. Which brings me to a third variation of “This Land Is Your Land.” It was Obama’s speech at the opening ceremony of his presidential center in Chicago, which I attended. My favorite passage from Obama was this:
As algorithms keep feeding us a steady stream of distraction and outrage, as only the loudest, most extreme voices get attention, fanning our prejudices, appealing to our basest, most tribal instincts, it’s tempting to give in to cynicism and even despair, to stop trying. We start thinking that appeals to democracy and civic participation are corny and old-fashioned and boring and naïve, that the very idea of working on behalf of the common good is a sucker’s bet, and that in order for us to win, somebody else has got to lose. I get it. I am not immune to anger or doubt, but I do know this: When we lose faith in each other, when we stop believing that voting matters, that citizenship matters, that our collective voices matter, that how we treat each other no longer matters, and we give away our power to decide our own futures, we open the door to the most ruthless, or the most careless, or the most fearful among us, who see some groups and some people as more equal than others, and see government as nothing more than a way to divvy up the spoils and punish enemies and keep those who are different in their place.
The fact is, though, Obama continued, “I do not believe that is the story of America that prevails in the end. … I remain convinced that the overwhelming majority of Americans … aren’t looking for perpetual anger and division. They are looking for fairness and common sense and mutual respect, that deep in our gut we want to find a way to turn toward each other again, not further away.”
So, Democrats, you have your assignment. It’s to not let Trump bait you into blind rage and extreme ideas. He feeds off that. Just focus on how much he has been fleecing all of us while tearing us apart. And how much Democrats intend to pull the whole country together.
It’s important to remember that while media obsesses over the Trump’s summersaults of lies and buffoonery, ICE is ever busy, destroying the lives of decent people in America. People are rotting in Dilley and Delaney. Let us never forget them. And fight for whomever pledges to stop the fascists in 2027.