Mendocino County Today: Thursday 12/5/2024

Mendocino Coast | Clearing | Redwood Classic | Feisty Shoplifter | Election Results | Burn Permits | Free Food | Ed Notes | Santa Appearances | Alleged Mystery | Jim Dietz | Terrorism Expert | Holiday Party | Thrift Sale | Surendorf Biography | Boat Parade | Covelo Hotel | Jones Jewelry | Yesterday's Catch | Senior Dinner | Follow Up | Judge Thomas | SF 1930s | D.C. Done | Central Player | Bears Party | Oil Lawsuit | Marx Brothers | Lead Stories | Violent Revolution | Bob Stevenson | Military Spending | Pollywogs | Nominee Bargaining | Jukebox | Gleichschaltung | Breakfast | Third-Party Voting | Mustachio | Trump Voters | Carrying Water

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ISOLATED LIGHT SHOWERS from a weak front will dissipate later this morning. Temperatures will remain unseasonably warm through the week as high pressure ridging stays in place and amplifies. There will be another front Saturday that will bring a quick shot of light rain. Cooler temperatures will return through the weekend behind a cold front. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): Boy howdy did it fog up yesterday or what? I have clear skies & a warmer 47F this Thursday morning on the coast. There are plenty of low clouds offshore so it could get foggy again. Other than a slight chance of a shower our forecast looks dry until next Friday.

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REDWOOD CLASSIC IMAGES (from KB)

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TEEN SHOPLIFTER GOES DOWN SWINGING, earns felonies

On 12/01/2024 at approximately 11:54 PM, a concerned citizen contacted the Ukiah Police Department (UPD) to report a subject was actively shoplifting from the Express Mart at 390 East Gobbi Street. The citizen told UPD Dispatch that he and the employee had recovered the stolen property, however the suspect, later identified as a 15-year-old male from Ukiah was arguing with the employee.

During the UPD Officer’s response it was further reported that the suspect was physically assaulting the employee. Officer’s arrived on scene and located the male suspect on the south sidewalk of East Gobbi Street, just south of the business. Officers detained the suspect due to the report of him being involved in a crime and actively fighting with the employee.

Through the UPD Officer’s investigation it was determined that the suspect had entered the business and was observed placing items into a backpack. As the suspect attempted to exit the store, the employee told him to show him what he had inside of his backpack, and to return the stolen items. The suspect refused to return the items and fled on foot exiting the store. The employee and citizen followed the suspect and took a hold of the suspects backpack pulling him back inside of the store. The business’ video surveillance footage showed the suspect strike the employee with his right fist in the face two times, then swung his backpack containing a metal weight and pruning shears, striking the employee in the head.

When UPD Officer’s first arrived, they observed that the victim was sitting down inside of the business holding his head, and he stated that he didn’t feel well. It should be noted that the victim had visible redness on the top of his head. Due to the victim being struck in the face multiple times and a blunt object, the UPD Officer requested that medical respond to treat the victim. Medstar Ambulance arrived and ultimately transported the victim to a local hospital for further treatment.

Based on the UPD Officer’s investigation it was determined that the suspect used physical force to commit the shoplift, which classifies as a robbery (Felony). Additionally, the UPD Officer determined that a deadly weapon was used (metal weight/pruning shears) to assault the victim, which classifies as an assault with a deadly weapon (Felony).

The suspect was placed under arrest and transported to the Mendocino County Juvenile Hall to be booked for the listed offenses.

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REGISTRAR CERTIFIES MENDO’S NOVEMBER ELECTION RESULTS

by Mark Scaramella

Mendocino County Clerk-Recorder-Assessor-Registrar of Voters Katrina Bartolomie told the Supervisors on Tuesday that she had finished the certification of the November 5 election and overall, the turnout was down by a few percentage points from previous presidential elections.

Ms. Bartolomie didn’t offer any guesses as to why the turnout was down, but we suspect that it has something to do with the less than inspirational national Harris-Walz campaign that didn’t distinguish itself from Biden in any significant way, especially including the terrible War on Gaza, thus producing a lower than average overall turnout of Democrats, even the ardent ones that make up so much of the Mendo electorate.

There were no big surprises in the final local results except in the Willits City Council race where third place switched from a narrow victory for Robin Leier to a narrow victory for Willits High math teacher Matt Alaniz. it remains to be seen if Alaniz’s election will affect the controversies swirling around the City of Willits these days and whether Alaniz will support whatever the other newly elected Willits Councilpersons, including former Sheriff Tom Allman, propose to do.

In all the other local elections the outcomes didn’t change.

There will be no changes in the Ukiah City Council where incumbents Josephina Duenas and Doug Crane were re-elected. Former 2nd District Supervisor candidate Jacob Brown, who was running for the Ukiah City council, came in last in that relatively close six-person race.

In Fort Bragg, incumbent Lindy Peters was re-elected by a comfortable margin and newcomer Scott Hockett came in second for the two seats that were up for election.

Neither of the local fire service tax measures — In Albion and in the Ukiah Valley — got the two-thirds majorities they needed to pass.

https://www.mendocinocounty.gov/government/assessor-county-clerk-recorder-elections/current-election-results

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BURNED BY BURN PERMIT FEES

by Mark Scaramella

Nobody is happy with the Mendocino County Air Quality Management District’s (AQMD) proposal to raise residential burn permit fees from $19 to a ridiculous $135. Even the Air Quality Management District representatives — Interim Air Pollution Control Officer Doug Gearhart and Deputy Air Pollution Control Officer Efraim Lopez — acknowledged the drastic fee increase was pretty high, noting that it hasn’t gone up since the early 90s. Even more striking, the District’s cost analysis consultant calculated that a residential burn permit’s “actual cost” is $1,183 apiece.

The District paid the fancy consultant to do a detailed analysis of their budget, breaking down the various burn permit categories (some of which don’t even apply to Mendo) and allocating costs to each to achieve the bureaucrats’ fantasy of “full cost recovery.” It’s not clear how much the cost of the consultant’s analysis itself contributed to the large proposed fee increase. The consultants concluded that at present the District only recovers about 42% of its costs.

A large range of industrial and commercial burn permit fees were proposed to go up as well. Fees for large volume debris burns would range from about $1400 up to over $5,000. Fees for incinerators and power generation range from $1,500 to $2,200 per.

Several supervisors wondered why the district charged several thousand dollars for electric motor burn permit fees.

We were (not) surprised to see that at present an “agricultural burning multiple site permit” is free — no cost at all — and the consultant said such permits actually cost the District only a little more than a residential permit at $1,531 per. This amounts to yet another subsidy to the local wine industry giving them free burn permits when they want to burn down trees to plant vineyards, such as the burn that blanketed the entire Anderson Valley in smoke a few years ago when George Bergner burned down the Tin Man apple orchard to make way for a huge vineyard that he later sold to William Hill who bought the vineyard with teachers’ pension fund money. Predictably, there was no proposed increased fee for these “agricultural burning multiple site permits.”

Most of the industrial, commercial and vehicle-related fees are simply a cost for polluting, the bigger the burn, the bigger the fee. There’s nothing in the analysis that addresses actual pollution reduction or burn bans, however, you’re only supposed to burn on “burn days.”

The AQMD is an odd hybrid state/county office. The staffers are state employees, not county employees, but the District’s “Board of Directors” is the County Supervisors. Although the AQMD is a state office, the state provides essentially no funding for the office, and it must fund itself through grants, fees and penalties.

The Supervisors — minus former Supervisor Dan Gjerde who quit a month before his term was up last month to take a job as a transpo planner with Caltrans — and everyone else who commented tried their best to contain their outrage at the eye-popping size of the proposed increase, saying that not only is it too high, but it will increase fire danger because people will either burn their debris without a permit (less safely, presumably) or they will not burn it at all causing an increase in “fuels” (dry brush and leaves) resulting in less “defensible space” around their structures.

Supervisor Ted Williams thinks the residential fee should be zero to encourage people to reduce fire hazards; the other Supervisors agreed that it certainly shouldn’t be as high as $135. But nobody had any suggestions for alternate funding sources (except, perhaps, the County’s alleged $13 million surplus/carryover from last year as reported by County Auditor-Controller/Treasurer-Tax Collector Sara Pierce last month which, of course, is already attracting multiple funding requests.

Williams also pointed out that since a $135 permit fee would likely result in a drastic reduction in permit applications, the problem would just get worse in subsequent years.

It turns out that the biggest cost driver the District faces is responding to smoke complaints, mainly from neighbors, from all over the far-flung reaches of the County. Each complaint requires that the District dispatch a deputy pollution control officer to investigate. Site conditions can vary depending on weather, time of day, time of year, size of parcel, etc. Most of the time the burning is determined to be legal, even though the complaining party might not like it. Accordingly, not that many fines are imposed and the violation process can take a long time. So in most cases the “investigation” is a one-off trip, up to a day-long in travel time, to some outlying burn site, only to discover that a burn is legal, but smoky.

There was no discussion about the actual nature of the material being burned. (For example the controversial aggregate plant on the Willits grade which generated lots of complaints when their operating permit was up for approval a few years ago, creates a much more acrid smoke than ordinary woody debris.)

Supervisor Williams wondered if there couldn’t be some way to have local fire departments or county code-enforcement staffers pre-screen the smoke complaints to reduce the number of long-distance enforcement trips, but nobody followed up on that idea.

In the end the Board decided to — as usual — do nothing this year. Board Chair Maureen Mulheren asked CEO Antle to work with the District to review the proposed fee analysis and the issue will be postponed to early next year when the new Board, including Supervisors-elect Madeline Cline and Bernie Norvell, can determine how best to avoid or further postpone the issue.

As a practical matter the Board could take a two-pronged approach to this situation with the goal of eliminating residential burn permit fees entirely as a public safety measure: 1. Require the District to develop a cost reduction plan centered on reducing the number of long-distance responses to non-violations (via coordination with county code enforcement or memorandums of agreement with outlying fire departments, and/or simply ignoring certain complaints that are either chronic or vexatious), and 2. Solicitation of some of the Fire Safe Council or state/Calfire fire prevention money where it can be demonstrated that the expense is prevention-related.

Of course, the Supervisors have not demonstrated the basic managerial abilities to pursue any such approach, so don’t expect this issue to be addressed, much less solved, any time soon.

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ED NOTES

ALWAYS AGREED with the pot brigades about illegal water diversions. Pot gardeners aren't even in it with the wine people whose diversions are not only much more numerous, much more voluminous, they're forever. The pot people, even the large-scale ones deep in the outback, come and go, their battered acres sometimes recovering. The vineyards are not only prone to illegal diversions, the water they have legal access to is expended by them at profligate rates, and the wine industry is almost wholly dependent on destructive herbicides and pesticides on a scale that dwarfs the chemical dependence of pot farmers. An announcement in the Press Democrat the other day informed area “farmers” that the Sonoma County Ag Department was sponsoring a workshop on how to “manage” wild turkeys via “restricted use pesticides.” Doubt this class is for pot farmers.

MARY MOORE OF MONTE RIO REMEMBERS: “We had gathered for a rally for the ‘No on Prop 8’ campaign in front of the offices of the Republican Party on Washington Street in Petaluma. Unlike days prior, the ‘Yes on 8’ bigots actually had a sizable crowd of maybe 15, half of whom were young Latino men, some of whom I recognized from our Food Not Bombs servings. I wondered to myself why these guys would associate themselves with Republicans, considering that Republicans are a party which literally wants to deport every single immigrant in this country and has advocated the militarization of our borders. Well, I thought, maybe they are from the church and their pastor happens to hate gay people. Who knows? As they began to leave, I asked some of the guys why they were out there. They didn't seem to care too much or have any reasons. They said they didn't care who won, and that ‘a job is a job.’ I asked, ‘Are they paying you?’ ‘Yes, of course,’ they said. Here you have a party that relies on fear, xenophobia and immigrant bashing hiring local immigrant day laborers to hold their signs! I confronted the Republicans in their office and asked them to go on record saying they hired immigrant workers to hold their signs for them. Of course they denied it completely. I asked if anyone spoke Spanish. They were outraged at the idea. They got quite mad and asked me to leave…”

NO SOONER had Biden been declared our new president in 2020, and already visibly half ga-ga, than the news was full of big shot Democrats advising him to “govern from the center,” as if Biden's appointments were a gang of Bolsheviks and not the refried Clintonoids they were, and as if Biden had ever been anything better than an unprincipled opportunist. Governing from the center has always meant defending the interests of the banks, the dominant corporations and the war machine. Which is where Biden already was and which is where the Democrats continue to be, which is why Trump is president.

THE NORTHCOAST DEMOCRATIC PARTY for years gaslighted the Northcoast with the fantasy that trains would one glorious day run from Marin to Eureka, as they once did with two trains each way every day when Americans still knew how to do big stuff in the public interest. That fantasy of a revived railroad disguised a cynical property grab that eventually gave former Congressman Doug Bosco private ownership of the profitable parts of the old rail line while Ukiah got the property at the foot of West Perkins for a new County Courthouse nobody wants except our monarchical superior court judges, all but one of them loyal Democrats.

AS THEIR RAIL SCAM played out, the Democrats parked party loyalists — uber-hack Dan Hauser was in charge for a few years as was Bosco’s former Chief of Staff Mitch Stogner — in a few good paying train jobs to promote the myth of a revived Northwestern Pacific again connecting Southern Marin to what they claimed would be a thriving deep water port at Eureka. The prob with that fantasy was there is no sea traffic of any consequence in and out of Eureka, and it would take many millions of dollars to restore the ruined tunnels and track in the Eel River Canyon northeast of Willits.

IT IS NOT fantasy, however, to expect a revived train to run as far north as Willits. Nor is it fantasy to wish that a train would again link Fort Bragg to Willits and Willits to Larkspur. In 1920, as old, old timers will recall, you could board the Skunk in Fort Bragg and be in San Francisco in time for a nightcap at the Top of the Mark

FINE FRISCO DINING of the inexpensive type, and highly recommended if it's still Mango Medley at 3911 Judah, way to hell and gone out by Ocean Beach, where you'll find an amazing menu of unique dishes none of which cost more than ten bucks. Funky little place whose waiter I delivered an errant but avuncular pat on the head as I passed on in to my seat, “How you doing, kiddo?” only to discover she was a tiny woman. And the waitress. She did look rather nonplussed but asked me to come back again when I compensated for my gaffe by doubling the tip. One waitress, one cook. Two women do it all, and the place is always busy, and very, very good which keeps it busy.

ALSO very, very good and much less busy because, probably, of its obscure setting, at 200 6th Avenue, if it's still there in a literal hole in the wall between Clement and California, a young man born and raised in the Himalayas serves up what he calls “Himalayan Vegetarian Fusion.” I'm with the vegans all the way. In theory. Their arguments are unassailable. Cows are not defensible, but I continue to eat them and generally steer (sic) clear of anything advertised as vegetarian. Or even healthy. And “fusion” is one of those No Go words like “envision” and “paradigm,” always an indication you're closing in on crank territory. But this kid's food is excellent, featuring momo, “a Himalayan dumpling stuffed with vegetables” and an absolutely delicious lentil soup. Again, good food real cheap, nothing more than six bucks on a brief menu.

FOR BREAD, try Grain du Jour on Clement near 3rd. For those of us raised on Wonder Bread, one of the great advances in American life has been the development of an honest loaf of real bread. Used to be that to get a bread with any taste to it, and never mind nutrition, you'd have to age date your daily loaf of basic Wonder after dipping it in a mud puddle, kicking it down the sidewalk and throwing it a couple of times for your dog to fetch, and even then it still tasted like cotton. These days you can get excellent bread right here in Boonville at the Boonville General Store. In San Francisco, Grain du Jour, which is French for “Not Wonder Bread,” is the place you want if you're in the city and have a hankering for the staff of life.

THREE MEN —one Jew, two Arabs — were seated three abreast on an Air France flight to the US. The Jew mentioned to the Arabs that he was going to the bathroom, and offered to get them something while he was up. The Arabs thanked him for his kindness and said yes, they would each like an orange juice. Moments after the Jew had left, one of the Arabs noticed that the man had removed his shoes during the flights, and that they were still on the floor. He nudged his friend and suggested that they spit in the shoes. They did. When the Jew returned with the juice, the Arabs thanked him profusely and then suggested that he put on his shoes since the plane was landing. The Jew slipped them on, sat quietly for a moment, then turned to his Arab neighbors, who were giggling and nudging each other. In a soft, sorrowful voice, he said: “When will it end — the hatred, the vengeance, the killing, the spitting in the shoes, the pissing in the orange juice?”

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SANTA APPEARANCES

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A READER WRITES: Regarding the alleged Bari Bombing mystery, my heart gave a little jump when you wrote about the possibility that something might break loose under the new Kash Patel regime. The thought occurred to write up an FOIA request on Redwood Summer, to get all the juicy cointelpro details, until I realized that the spooks will protect their informants to the grave and beyond, something no doubt written into all their snitch contracts. If revealed, the resulting legal actions would quickly bankrupt the whole enterprise. Their lawyers say no. The assassination of Malcolm X serves as a good indicator of how the maiming of Judi Bari will be handled. Mums the word on FBI involvement, informants included, at least into the foreseeable future. The only sliver of justice that will be served in this case, at least in our lifetimes, will be what you write about it. That is all the solace we can expect, but it's a lot better than nothing. So thank you for your service.

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JIM ARMSTRONG: “AVTV was one of at least four ‘translators’ around the county, including Potter Valley, Laytonville and the granddaddy, Ukiah TIA (one of the largest such in the country). All of them shared for management and technology an eccentric electronic genius named Jim Dietz. I spent many hours with him up at Potter Valley site doing various maintenance chores and listening to his view of the world. It wasn’t until his death that I learned that he was a radioman on bombers flying over Europe in WWII. He never mentioned that or the fact that he had been shot down over the English Channel and bobbed around on his life raft for so many days before his rescue that the tradition of dividing up his belongings was over with when he got back to base.”

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JIM DIETZ

Lester James Dietz "Jim" Dietz, 81, of Ukiah passed away on Monday, November 8, 2004 at a local hospital with his family at his side. Jim was born February 15, 1923 in Indianapolis.

Jim went to college at Michigan State, and also attended Electronic tech school. Jim had lived in the Ukiah area for over 50 years; he was employed and retired from Pacific Bell. He was proud of his wit and knowledge, community services he participated in, his work with television improvement association, and also his grandsons. He was active in TIA, Telephone Company Pioneers and Plowshares. During WWII Jim served in the Army Air Force aboard a B-24 doing radio communication. He received several distinguished awards and medals, although he did not like to talk about the war.

Jim's family will remember his big heart, sense of humor, knowledge, love for his family and friends.

Jim is survived by his wife Ruby Dietz of Pateau, Ok., daughters Kriss Bader, Genie Dietz of Ukiah, son James Dietz of Ukiah, grandsons Luke Bader in the Air Force based in Las Vegas, Lee Bader, Blake Bader of Ukiah, granddaughters Skilina Licea of Wister, Ok., Nicole Reagan of Pateau, Ok.

(Ukiah Daily Journal)

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TERRORISM EXPERT ON KMUD
 
On Thursday, December 5, we have a top terrorism expert on "Heroes and Patriots Radio" on KMUD.
 
Brian M. Jenkins is one of the world's top experts on terrorism and transportation security. During his over five decades, Jenkins has advised governments, private corporations and religious organizations. 

Biography
Jenkins was born in 1942 in Chicago. He joined the United States Army at 19. He served with the 7th Special Forces Group in the Dominican Republic and with the 5th Special Forces Group in Vietnam. He subsequently served as a civilian with the Long-Range Planning Task Group advising General Creighton Abrams, commander of military operations in Vietnam.

He was featured in the 1980 documentary about the Vietnam War, "Vietnam: The Ten Thousand Day War".
 
From 1989 to 1998, Jenkins was deputy chairman of security firm Kroll Associates. Kroll is known for its world-class experts and solutions in corporate risk, including insurance risk, legal and regulatory risk, cyber risk, environmental, social and governance risk, and the risk associated with war and terrorism.
 
He currently serves as Senior Advisor to the President of the RAND Corporation and Director of the Mineta Transportation Institute's Transportation Security Center.
 
Jenkins also served as a member of the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security, 1996–1997 and as an advisor to the National Commission on Terrorism, 2000.
 
He has served as an advisor to the U.S. Department of State, the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and other government agencies.

Jenkins is the author of many books, including Unconquerable Nation (2006), Will Terrorists Go Nuclear? (2008), and Plagues and their Aftermath (2022).
 
Speak with our guest live and on-the-air at: KMUD Studio (707) 923-3911. Please call in.
 
John Sakowicz, heroespatriots.org

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FIRST FRIDAY AT FORT BRAGG’S ARK THRIFT STORE 7-9 PM 50% OFF EVERYTHING

Come get your Christmas stuff. We got LOTS.

Come pick up Christmas presents that are one of a kind.

Come get stocking stuffers.

Books! We have many, many books.

So pick up some stuff and help the Mendocino Coast Humane Society,

Shop and save the animals. What could be better?

The Ark After Dark. The Ark at the roundabout.

First Friday December 6 from 7-9 pm only for the 50% off.

18520 N Hwy 1 707 961-0365

If you don’t come Friday come on in anytime.

It’s always an adventure.

Virginia Taylor vzag@mcn.org

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LOCAL HISTORIAN KATY TAHJA will be at the Unity Club’s Holiday Bazaar at the Boonville Fairgrounds on Saturday December 7th with a table full of her North Coast history books. They make great holiday gifts and you can get them autographed.

Also check out her new biography of artist Charles Surendorf.

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LIT BOAT PARADE

Sunday, December 8
Noyo Center Marine Field Station

Doors open at 5:30 PM
Parade begins at 6:00 PM

Celebrate a dazzling display of lights at the annual Noyo Harbor Lit Boat Parade with beautifully decorated boats adorned with thousands of twinkling lights. The Noyo Center's electric boat, the Slack Tide, will be among the boats, participating in her first Lit Boat Parade!

Watch the parade with us at the Noyo Center Marine Field Station for a holiday open house and to cheer on the Slack Tide and other illuminated boats during this holiday tradition. Cozy snacks and warm drinks will be available for sale. Enjoy the festivities from the warmth and comfort of our field station and deck. Beer and wine will also be available.

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NOVEMBER 1962:

The Covelo Hotel burned to the ground early Monday morning, while firefighters from Round Valley, CalFire and Laytonville helped limit the damage to surrounding structures.

The fire is considered suspicious in origin.

The Covelo Volunteer Fire Department received the call at 2:41 a.m. and had the first apparatus at the scene by 2:46 a.m. By the time the first engine arrived, according to a fire spokeswoman, the fire was well established on the second floor and the roof was already involved.

Fire conditions were too hazardous for firefighters to do anything but keep the fire contained to the hotel and prevent its spread to nearby buildings. The Covelo Fire Department had four engines and a water tender on scene with 14 firefighters. A local private water tender arrived to assist. A CalFire engine with three firefighters assisted, as did mutual aid from the Laytonville Fire Department.

While the cause of the fire is still under investigation, a witness says local video shows two men entering the hotel and leaving it a few minutes before the fire started.

The Covelo Hotel was a popular waypoint at the turn of last century for hunters and fishermen. The hotel offered guides and maintained a string of horses for pack trips into the Eel River wilderness. It rebuilt after a major fire started on its grounds July 28, 1905, and spread to half the Covelo business district.

Firefighters were able to save the hotel from fire in November 1962 when six nearby buildings burned to the ground.

(Covelo, Back In The Day, George Meek)

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CATCH OF THE DAY, Wednesday, December 4, 2024

BRETT ADAME, 33, Ukiah. Trespassing, controlled substance, paraphernalia, probation revocation.

JAMES BAKER, 53, Laytonville. DUI.

VANESSA ELIZABETH, 55, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, probation violation. (Frequent flyer.)

JESUS GONZALES, 49, Ukiah. Paraphernalia, parole violation.

DAVID HAYDEN II, 43, Covelo. Stolen property, suspended license, probation revocation.

GENESIS PEREZ, 21 (5’3”, 96 pounds), Ukiah. Domestic abuse.

STORMY SCOTT, 48, Big Lagoon/Ukiah. Failure to appear.

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SMASHED & GRABBED

Editor:

Where we see a great opportunity with our democracy is in monitoring a new law. Does it reduce crime? What has it cost us, the taxpayers?

In the case of Proposition 36, for example, 10.2 million voters marked “yes” (68%) and 4.7 million “no” (32%). That tally doesn’t mean we will win the battle on crime. It does call for better accounting and reporting of the economics of crime and societal/legal choices of punishment and deterrence. Will this law precipitate new prisons to be built? What is the cost to staff them? Will the change result in a decline of smash-and-grab crime? Who will be monitoring these outcomes?

If we do not follow up in assessing the choices we make, our capacity to demonstrate critical thinking is a clear loser. Our elected lawmakers heard the voters. Us: We have the responsibility to hold them as accountable as those who perpetrate smash and grab. Moving forward without relevant transparent accountability makes us complicit in malfeasance.

Rich & Betsy Randolph

Santa Rosa

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JUDGE CHARLES THOMAS

by Paul Modic

What was the deal with Judge Thomas? Why did over 300 of his neighbors sign a petition to have him recalled in 1971? Was this the same crowd who signed the Anti-Hippie Petition of 1969? Ya gotta hand it to those rednecks, they practiced some civic responsibility with their petitions.

But really, what was the deal with the judge, and why did the hippies like him so much? Any surviving old hippies or locals have any Judge Thomas stories? And what's with the petition? What did he do to piss off the locals? (Probably just liked hippies for some reason?)

Charles Thomas responds:

He was my father. He had been a merchant marine and saw stoners on the ships. They never created any problems like the drunks did. He could not see putting some young person in Federal prison, with real criminals, because they were busted for a little weed. So the locals tried to get him removed from office because he was too lenient. It didn’t occur to them hippies could vote. He won by a landslide and was later elected to the superior court.

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MARKET & 16TH SAN FRANCISCO (1930s)

In the 1930s, the intersection of Market and 16th offered a snapshot of daily life in a rapidly evolving San Francisco. Streetcars crisscrossed the roads, connecting neighborhoods and supporting the city’s expanding population. The buildings along the streets reflected the architectural trends of the time, with a mix of residential and commercial spaces. Pedestrians and vehicles shared the busy intersection, creating a rhythm that defined this era. Market Street served as a central artery, weaving together the lives of people who called San Francisco home.

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A HIGHER LOVE

Please know that I have finished my intended contribution to the Washington, D.C. Peace Vigil, consisting of putting in the prayer request (attending Catholic Mass every day at the Basilica) and providing food and hydrating beverages to the vigilers. I am prepared to move on to my next highest good. Feel free to make contact, as we continue enjoying being an intervening variable on the planet earth.

PS. Had to laugh when realizing that my previous sendout was misdated November 4th, rather than December 4th. Time flies when you are having fun! Just sitting here on a guest computer at the drop in center behind the homeless shelter at the moment. Am being here now! Not identified with the body nor the mind. Just the Absolute. Hey, what would you like to do??

Craig Louis Stehr, craiglouisstehr@gmail.com

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ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

I got thrown out at 17. I went to a friend’s house, then another friend helped me find a JOB and a room in a house share, not drugs. I have a hard time with compassion anymore as our streets are full of folks who expect the rest of us to support them and their addictions, make messes wherever they sit, and generally annoy people by asking for money. Or block our streets with garbage on a “trailer” made of stolen wheelchairs and bikes. Rejecting all offers of sincere help, or even sleeping bags…left to rot in the street…Seriously tired of it. I’m sorry life has been hard, but the central player in that life is…her. All of us have had hard times, we are not drug addicts.

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LA COUNTY OIL FIELD OPERATOR SUES CALIFORNIA OVER FINES IMPOSED BY NEW LAW

by Dan Bacher

Sentinel Peak, the owner of Inglewood Oil Field in Los Angeles County, has launched a lawsuit against the state of California over a law, AB 2716, that will require it to stop production and plug its wells or face costly fines.

Governor Gavin Newsom signed the law in September as one of several laws aiming to reduce pollution by giving local governments more authority to restrict oil and gas operations by shutting down idle wells, according to a press statement from Elected Officials to Protect America (EOPA) and EOPA California.

An idle well is one that has not been used for two years or more and has not yet been properly plugged and abandoned (sealed and closed), according to CalGEM, the state’s oil and gas regulator. The law fines companies for operating low-producing oil wells in the Inglewood Oil Field.

AB 2716 requires all low production wells in the Inglewood Oil Field to halt operations by March 2027 and all wells to be plugged by the end of 2030. A monthly $10,000 penalty will be imposed for every well in violation of those deadlines.

In the court documents, Sentinel Peak attorneys claimed the law “represents an illegal attempt to coerce an individual company to stop operation of its legal business.”

“The monetary penalties imposed by AB 2716 are grossly disproportional to the gravity of the offense that it is designed to punish,” the lawsuit states. “The imposed penalties are fixed and mandatory with no apparent upper limit. They have no relationship to any actual harm incurred by neighboring uses.”

Assemblyman Isaac Bryan, who represents the area where the oil field is located and authored the law, vowed to defend it.

“Our community has stood strong for decades to close this dangerous low-producing oil field, and we will stand strong in court to protect those frontline communities who have long deserved the right to live a full and healthy life,” Assemblyman Bryan told the LA Times. “The people of California spoke through their legislature that dangerous oil wells have no business right next to the community.”

The 1,000-acre area southwest of downtown Los Angeles has approximately 820 unplugged wells, including 420 that are actively pumping, according to EOPA. Roughly 80 percent of the operating wells are considered low-producing. They yield less than 15 barrels of oil or 60,000 cubic feet of gas per day.

“2024 marks the 100th year of oil drilling in the Inglewood Oil Field, the largest urban oil field in the nation,” Meghan Sahli-Wells, Former Culver City Mayor, Elected Officials to Protect America (EOPA) California Director. “That's 100 years of pollution, 100 years of greenhouse gas emissions imperiling our future, 100 years of oil spills and toxic releases, right next to homes, schools, parks, and churches.”

“Enough is enough,” she stated. “The residents who have endured the drilling for generations deserve healthy communities, free from dangerous oil extraction. Residents have advocated for years for the right to breathe clean air, and are deeply grateful to Assemblymember Bryan for championing and Governor Newsom for signing legislation that holds polluters accountable and cleans up this site by the end of this decade. While the oil corporation fights this in court, Elected Officials to Protect America stands by our communities who are fighting for the dignity of a safe future, and for people over profits."

Sahi-Wells was instrumental on the Culver City Council as mayor to stop drilling operations on the city’s portion of the Inglewood Oil Field, setting a precedent for other communities, the group noted. Culver City’s actions showed oil companies that local communities have the jurisdiction and legal right to protect their citizens from harm.

“For decades communities have suffered from cancers, lung disease, consistent headaches, bloody noses and asthma because of oil operations,” said Dominic Frongillo, Elected Officials to Protect America Executive Director/Co-Founder. “That’s why Elected Officials to Protect America (EOPA) California has been working since 2017 to help transition the state to 100 percent clean energy for the health of Califonians, especially those living in environmental justice areas who have been suffering the most from oil operations.

Frongillo added, “Over 500 elected officials across California have signed our letter to ensure a just transition as we wean ourselves off of fossil fuels to protect our people and planet. Culver City stood up to Big Oil. Local actions have encouraged lawmakers in Sacramento and the Governor to do the same. We urge the courts to uphold these laws.”

According to Sentinel One's fourth quarter fiscal year 2023 financial results, the company reported a significant increase in revenue, with total revenue reaching $422.2 million, representing a 106 percent growth compared to the previous year, EOPA revealed. This growth was accompanied by a substantial rise in Annualized Recurring Revenue (ARR) which reached $548.7 million.

“These oil corporations have made profits at the expense of the people who live near their operation,” said Ahmad Zahra, Councilmember of Fullerton, EOPA California Leadership Council member. “They even have continued to operate drills that barely produce yet pollute.”

“Lawmakers have stood on the side of the people. These facts along with the reality of the man-made climate crisis which is being fueled by fossil fuels clearly show it's time we plug these operations with a just transition to clean energy for all. Local governments must be able to create laws that protect their citizens from the harms that some corporations pose,” Zahra concluded.

Elected Officials to Protect America is a network of current and former elected officials who care deeply about protecting the planet and people. EOPA is committed to solving the climate crisis, ensuring environmental justice, and protecting our lands, waters, and democracy. EOPA educates through value-based storytelling, training lawmakers, and connecting elected officials to inspire strong environmental leadership.

EOPA California is a statewide, non-partisan network of California elected officials committed to protecting our communities, public health, and climate for all we represent.

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THURSDAY'S LEAD STORIES, NYT

Police Hunt Gunman After Health Executive Is Killed in ‘Brazen Targeted Attack’

As Hegseth Vows to Fight, Trump Considers DeSantis for Defense Secretary

Trump Organization Plans an Ethics Policy Without Banning Foreign Deals

South Korean Lawmakers Question Military Leaders After Failed Crackdown

Supreme Court Inclined to Uphold Tennessee Law on Transgender Care

Google Introduces A.I. Agent That Aces 15-Day Weather Forecasts

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WATCHING THE INTERNET LIGHT UP WITH JOY over the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson has been interesting. We don’t know what the motives of the actual shooter were as of this writing, but the disgust and rage the public holds toward wealthy exploitative parasites these days is becoming more and more incendiary.

Watching all this I keep finding myself thinking of that JFK quote “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.” What are the people meant to do when predatory megacorporations ruin lives by the thousands? Write them sternly worded letters? Vote the corporations out of office? Their options have been closed to them.

— Caitlin Johnstone

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“THE CHANGES WROUGHT BY DEATH are in themselves so sharp and final, and so terrible and melancholy in their consequences, that the thing stands alone in man's experience, and has no parallel upon earth.”

On this day in 1894, at the age of 44, the author Robert Louis Stevenson died. Ten years later a collection of excerpts from his writings was published titled The Wisdom of Robert Louis Stevenson. Read it here: https://buff.ly/3mFdUqC

"It is a grim little wooden shanty, cobwebs bedeck it; friendly mice inhabit its recesses; the mailed cockroach walks upon the wall, so also, I regret to say, the scorpion: herein are two pallet beds, two mosquito curtains, strung to the pitch-boards of the roof, two tables laden with books and manuscripts, three chairs ... The bare wood walls are pasted over with pages from the 'Graphic', 'Harper's Weekly', etc" [Letters, VI, p280].

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BERNIE SANDERS VS. THE PENTAGON

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) might not be a big fan of billionaires, but he can agree with Elon Musk on one big thing.

The left-wing legislator gave a small bit of credit to tech mogul and Donald Trump ally, Elon Musk, while criticizing the government’s outsized defense budget in a social media post on Sunday.

“Elon Musk is right,” Sanders declared in a post on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. “The Pentagon, with a budget of $886 billion, just failed its 7th audit in a row. It’s lost track of billions.”

Pointing out congress’ reluctance to tackle the government’s glut of military spending, the avowed Democratic Socialist noted how “last year, only 13 senators voted against the Military Industrial Complex and a defense budget full of waste and fraud.”

“That must change,” he went on.

Defense spending has long been one of the bulkiest parts of the federal budget.

Congress approved $841 billion in funds for the Pentagon in 2024, an amount that added up to about 12.5% of the federal government’s total yearly expenses.

While the Democratic socialist and free market fanatic may seem like unlikely allies, Musk has already made a pledge to hedge government waste while copiloting Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) with former Republican presidential candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy.

Last month, Ramaswamy shot down seasoned State Department official, John Bolton, when the former National Security Advisor urged DOGE to redirect any of its potential savings to the military.

“We need to strengthen our military by focusing on the effectiveness of our defense spending, rather than just reflexively increasing the magnitude,” Ramaswamy said in response to one of Bolton’s appearances on CNN.

(Kelby Vera, Huffington Post)

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THE LAST TIME ALCOHOL POISONED A DEFENSE NOMINATION

by Maureen Dowd

The nominee for defense secretary was in trouble for carousing, transgressing with women and liquor.

President George H.W. Bush was trying to save his choice, so he assigned a top White House official to have a private chat with two New York Times White House reporters.

Gerald Boyd and I went over to the White House one cold day in February 1989 to hear what the official had to say about John Tower, a Texas senator and the chair of the Armed Services Committee, so diminutive that he could barely peek over the top of some lecterns. Could the president justify putting a man in charge of the Pentagon who was prone to drunkenness and chasing secretaries around desks?

What if, the official asked us in a wheedling tone, Tower gave up hard liquor and drank only white wine?

Gerald and I just stared at the official. This guy was going to start bargaining with us over the type of alcohol that Tower could drink?

What if, the official pressed on, Tower had only two glasses of wine a night?

Gerald and I were nonplused to find ourselves the arbiters of louche behavior, pulled into a negotiating session over inebriants. What next? Tower would promise to chase only one secretary a week?

What if, the official said, in a last desperate bid, Tower had only one glass of wine a night?

White House officials kept trying to make a deal. They told Gerald that Tower had told the president and two key senators that he was sticking to two glasses of wine a day on the advice of doctors who had treated him for a malignant polyp in his colon. But doctors interviewed by Gerald said that this sort of advice for that sort of health problem was puzzling. The White House also volunteered that Tower’s medical reports showed no evidence of liver damage. What if, Bush officials asked, senators were allowed to choose a physician who would be permitted to interview Tower’s physicians?

In the end, the Senate rejected Tower’s nomination, the first time since 1959 that the chamber had refused to consent to a president’s cabinet nominee. It was shocking, given how clubby the Senate was in those days and how freewheeling many senators were. Some of the senators who went up to vote against Tower had alcohol on their breath.

Bush learned the hard way what Donald Trump will learn with Pete Hegseth: Sometimes you have to cut your losses. As William Gladstone said, the first requisite of a good prime minister is to be a good butcher.

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THE TRUMPIST BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION

by Ron Jacobs

I want the FBI to be disbanded. Forever. I’ve wanted this to happen since 1970. When the Senate hearings led by Franck Church revealed the extent of the FBI’s (and the CIA’s) infiltration of political and cultural organizations a couple years later, my hatred of the agency multiplied a hundredfold. That being said, I don’t want the FBI to be replaced by a Donald Trump-run national police agency—a TBI, if you will. For those who don’t know and those who don’t remember, Richard Nixon tried to remake the FBI in his image back in the early 1970s. He got very close to doing so. According to what I’ve been able to parse over the years in my reading, conversation and other research, a big reason Nixon failed in turning the FBI into his own private police force was the presence of another powerful reactionary. That was the long time director of the Agency, J. Edgar Hoover, who only ended his directorship by dying.

So yes, Nixon tried to centralize the FBI, CIA, DIA and NSA under his command during his rule. Although the agencies were mostly in agreement regarding their targeting of the Black liberation movement, the antiwar movement and the New Left, it was a combination of Nixon’s paranoia and his fascist tendencies that convinced him to have one of his aides—a squirrely young right wing zealot named Tom Huston—devise a plan that would have consolidated all of these agencies under the direction of the White House. Nixon approved the plan on July 23, 1970 and it was rescinded five days later. Maryland Senator Charles McMathias, a liberal Republican (when there was such a thing) described what happened in a January 22, 1974 editorial in the Los Angeles Times: “Many constitutional lawyers believe that for five days in 1970 the fundamental guarantees of the Bill of Rights were suspended by the mandate given the secret ‘Huston plan’,” during those five days the plan was approved, “authoritarian rule had superseded the constitution.”

When Hoover downright rejected Nixon’s plan and convinced Nixon to give it up (one guesses this was done through blackmail and threats of various kinds), Nixon and his advisors came up with a Plan B. This plan still gave Nixon plenty of power when it came to directing investigations against his perceived enemies. It also resulted in the creation of the secret covert operations unit that would become known as the White House Plumbers. These men, all of whom came from the black ops sections of the CIA and other agencies, broke into offices, intimidated opponents and otherwise waged a mostly illegal war on the aforementioned targets opposed to the Nixon agenda. They were also involved in going after more mainstream personalities on Nixon’s personal enemies list. The original plan proposed by Huston included a set of contingencies that included the construction and maintenance of concentration camps in the US desert for leftists, Black radicals and others deemed national security risks.

Many folks in the popular Left movements in the early 1970s discussed the rumors we had been hearing about the camps. Some of the conversations were in jest, but all of them had a serious and ominous undertone. Living in western Germany at the time, where remnants and reminders of its recent Nazi past were everywhere, I couldn’t help but be reminded of that past and its similarities to the police state unfolding under Nixon and his palace guard. When the investigations collectively known as Watergate began to uncover numerous illegal actions by the White House Plumbers, multiple police agencies, the FBI, CIA and NSA, those of us who were still involved in extra-parliamentary politics nodded our heads, confident that our instincts had been correct. Of course, the surveillance and black ops against the antiwar and liberation movements didn’t stop for long. By the time Reagan had made it through his first year in the White House, things were more or less back to how they were in 1974. The difference was that a lot of the actions taken in the 1960s and 1970s by the police state were now legal, especially if the president committed them. This trend has continued. As for Nixon and Trump, the fact that Trump is serving a second term after being indicted for dozens of crimes and convicted of felonies in thirty-four instances kind of says it all. Fascism is more than just a rumor and is quickly becoming fact in the United States.

Which brings me to the Nazis and their Reich. Once they were handed power by the German chancellor and Bundestag, the Nazis and Hitler created lists of their enemies. These lists, called Sonderfahndungslisten (Special search list—literal translation), were lists of people who were to be arrested by the SS once the Wehrmacht annexed a country. The lists included citizens and (especially in Britain) European exiles from the Reich. According to the SS commander who composed the list for Britain, it included 2820 names. In an October rally in Wisconsin, Trump told the crowd he would go after what he called “the enemy from within.” According to various news reports, these enemies include Democrats, members of the media and numerous others. It does not include the millions of immigrants the Trumpists are hoping to detain and deport. One assumes they are on other lists maintained no matter who is in the White House. The effect of such lists is to silence the opposition. I fear this may already be happening among the liberal opponents of Trump.

Another aspect of Trump’s return is his determination to decimate the federal bureaucracy as it currently exists; what trumpists like to call the deep state. This includes the Pentagon. The positions that would remain after this purge would be filled only with those loyal to Trump and his policies. It’s reasonable to assume that if those remaining are not considered loyal, they will be replaced by others who are. In other words, the deep state would remain, except its allegiance would be to Trump and the forces he represents. One can see this already happening if they look at Trump’s picks for his cabinet and staff. Some might argue that every president brings in their own people. This is only true to a point. What Trump is working towards is something more akin to what the Nazis called Gleichschaltung. As I wrote in 2017, when Trump first took power,

“A historian friend told me that he did not believe history repeated itself. Bearing that in mind, I asked him if he thought it still had lessons for us to draw on. He answered, yes of course. Keeping that under consideration, I decided to take a deeper look at the rapid changes Donald Trump and his “people” are trying to put in place in the United States. As I began my investigation, it was announced that Trump adviser Steven Bannon had replaced a General and an intelligence chief on the National Security Council. In essence, this move is another attempt by the Trump administration to upend the traditional chain of command (the professional class, if you will), with ideologues from outside that class.

Upon hearing of this move, I was immediately reminded of similar moves by Adolf Hitler at the beginning of his regime. Known as the Gleichschaltung, this time period in the rise of Nazism involved (among other things) the replacing of various members of the German government with Nazi ideologues whose primary allegiance was to Hitler and the philosophy of Nazism. Essentially the process of bringing all elements of power, from the government to the military to the trade unions to the media, into line with the Nazi state, the Gleichschaltung began with the elimination of independent state legislatures. This was followed by the dismantling of trade unions, attacks on the independence of the churches (especially those opposed to the Nazis), the elimination of all political parties except for the Nazi party…. In addition, the private militias of the Nazis became official state military organizations with the task of enforcing allegiance to the Hitler wing of the Nazi party.”

Repeating the point I made above, and after looking at those Trump has selected to work with him beginning in January, it’s quite clear that the strategy of Gleichschaltung is what the trumpists are engaging in. Of course, not every element of the Third Reich’s takeover will be replicated in the US circa 2025, but then again it’s not Germany in the 1930s.

So, yeah, I want the FBI to be dissolved. And the CIA, DIA, NSA. I don’t want a new surveillance state under the direction of trumpists, tech bro billionaires and their companies, the Israeli intelligence industry or the local police. Unfortunately, the trend I detect as regards the contemporary surveillance state indicates that we will be getting exactly what I (and millions of others) don’t want. Indeed, much of it is already in place and currently working. There are very few modern politicians from either corporate party that vote against the intensifying panopticon and even fewer who speak loudly against it. The corporate sector is on board and putting in bids to get their piece of it as I write. Given the ongoing privatization of public agencies, if the trumpists succeed in shutting down the FBI, one possible replacement might be a mostly privatized national police agency. If they don’t succeed in shutting it down, one can be reasonably sure that the FBI with trumpist management would remove any agent, clerk, forensic expert, etc, not on board with the FBI becoming another tool in the trumpist vendetta against those “enemies within” that they seem to fear so much. Those FBI employees who are forced out would be replaced by fellow trumpists ready to do their leader’s bidding. In other words, the Trump version of Nixon’s dream might be fulfilled.

(Ron Jacobs is the author of several books, including Daydream Sunset: Sixties Counterculture in the Seventies published by CounterPunch Books. His latest book, titled Nowhere Land: Journeys Through a Broken Nation, is now available. He lives in Vermont. He can be reached at: ronj1955@gmail.com,)

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WHY I VOTED THIRD-PARTY

Editor,

I’m a progressive Californian, a Black man, and I did not vote for Democratic presidential contender Kamala Harris this year or Donald Trump. I voted for Claudia De La Cruz, the Peace and Freedom Party candidate for president.

The decision was easy. With two exceptions over the last four decades of presidential elections, I have always voted for a progressive third-party presidential candidate. (The two exceptions? Hillary Clinton in 2016 because I liked the idea of breaking the glass ceiling. And Walter Mondale in 1984 because of my distaste for Ronald Reagan.)

I reject the guilt-trip knock about how a third-party vote is a throwaway vote, or worse, one that opens the door for big, bad bogeyman candidates. And I don’t make my choices thinking it doesn’t matter because in my “blue” state a Democrat will win anyway. I mark my ballot the way I do because it reflects my conscience and deepest political beliefs.

I’ll admit that this year I didn’t tell most of my friends and family my plan. I would have been ripped from pillar to post, verbally mugged: “It’s a wasted vote.” “It will hurt the cause.” “It is downright silly to vote for someone who almost no one has heard of in a party that hasn’t been relevant since the Vietnam War.” My relatives and associates were passionate supporters of Harris. Their enthusiasm was understandable. They would have regarded my vote as wrecking the history-making chances for a Black woman with East Indian roots to sit in the Oval Office. I understood, and I had no illusion that I could change their minds.

In any case, the issue for me was not Harris, her policy positions or her campaign. (I won’t engage in the onslaught of second, third and fourth guessing about what sunk her.) The issue was and is the two-party system itself.

Republican and Democratic politics are an iron chain that tethers the American electorate. Voting for De La Cruz was my way of taking a hammer to that chain. I prize independence, the right to exercise freedom of choice, and I believe that more choices are true to the spirit of democracy.

This is not a starry-eyed delusion. Many countries have a pluralistic representative system with multiple political parties. Their citizens have a real choice to vote their beliefs and interests. The parties they can vote for are not on the fringe. They win offices. They hold seats in parliaments and assemblies. They often form coalitions with other parties to gain a more powerful seat at the table. The multiplicity of parties gives more people a distinct voice in how their government works.

But baked into U.S. politics is the notion that there can only be two parties, and the winner takes all. The Constitution doesn’t demand it, and every four years, I hear people wishing for other choices, other parties that could have a shot at making an impact.

With either a Republican or a Democrat guaranteed to take power, special interests make their bets. This year, both campaigns had king’s-ransom war chests flowing with donations from regular people but mainly from fat-cat corporations, industry and trade groups, big-gun labor unions and a parade of millionaires and billionaires.

The two-party system also guaranteed that only Republican and Democratic agendas got media exposure, major endorsements and nonstop public attention. Other approaches to our challenges, our security or our role in the world just didn’t have a chance.

Let me be clear again. My vote for De La Cruz was not a deliberate snub of Harris, and I have no regrets. I simply believe that for our democracy to be a democracy, the people must have choices, and those choices should not exclusively come marked with a Republican or Democrat label.

— Earl Ofari Hutchinson, author of ‘President Trump’s America’

(thehutchinsonreport.net)

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HOW TO TRUST A TRUMP VOTER

by Jan-Werner Muller

Just like after the US presidential election in 2016, we are hearing endless exhortations from pundits (and some Democratic politicians) to make an effort to understand Trump supporters, to earn their respect, to be curious about them, not to be condescending etc. There are two obvious problems with this kind of rhetoric: first, nobody asked Trump voters after 2020 to show empathy with, let’s say, African American women and try to comprehend why they had strongly supported Biden. As so often, the lazy talk of “polarization” obscures a profoundly asymmetrical situation.

Second, the “arrogance” of liberal elites is largely an invention of right-wing media. Long before Trump, talk radio and cable TV hosts practiced the art of creating political community through a sense of shared victimhood – Trump only brought it to a head when he explicitly told his supporters at rallies that “we’re all victims.” The point is not that the supposedly resentful “deplorables” never have reason to complain about injustice; rather, it’s that “elite condescension” is less an actual experience than a political meme that always fits.

But there’s something else. If it makes any sense at all to issue imperatives about which citizens should engage with which other citizens on which terms – and one may well ask whether it does – then, politically and morally, things are exactly the opposite of the way the standard commentary would have it: there is no particular political or moral burden on Harris voters, but there is on those who pulled the lever for Trump. It has to do with a form of trust that is indispensable in halfway functioning democracies.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, rising distrust is not automatically a threat to democracy; everything depends on who is trusted and why. As the social scientist Pippa Norris has pointed out, people aren’t necessarily less trusting in general; but it can hardly be a good thing if they have plenty of what she calls “credulous trust” in internet quacks. By the same token, liberals – who today so often default into defending “the institutions” and traditional “norms” – used to be the party of distrusting any concentration of power; British political thinkers such as Jeremy Bentham were primarily theorists of political distrust for good reasons.

Still, democracies do depend on a minimal level of a specifically political and horizontal form of trust. Political trust not in the sense that we trust others to vote for our interests, or support our ideas, or affirm our identities: obviously, plenty of people don’t; there are endless conflicts and disagreements in any democracy (contrary to the kitschy American rhetoric of “we should overcome our divisions and all come together”). By definition, every vote produces losers, and a lot of people are always going to be disappointed by election outcomes.

However, as philosophers of trust have pointed out, someone who turns out not to be trustworthy does not make others feel merely disappointed. The distinctive moral reaction is a sense of betrayal; this also makes trust different from mere reliance or confidence: I am disappointed if my new car breaks down; but only a friend can make me feel betrayed.

How does that matter in politics? One has every right to feel betrayed by one’s fellow citizens if one has reason to believe that they brought someone to power who might fatally damage democracy. As the commentariat has been stressing, a lot of people cast a ballot because of economic frustrations and “post-pandemic pain”: they suffered from inflation and trusted – credulously, it has to be said – that Trump was somehow going to “fix it” (never mind that inflation had already been coming down substantially in recent months).

Let’s assume then that millions of US citizens voted for Trump not because they wanted autocratic kleptocracy (of which Trumpworld already shows many signs). But if so, the burden is on them to say and show this (the liberal resistance, if any, will come out and make noise anyway). It’s for Trump voters to restore the trust that people, for all their conflicts over interests and ideas, have to have in one another in a democracy: we all have to be able to trust that others are competent and willing to go on with democracy as a common concern among free and equal citizens.

An idealistic proposal that only a theorist of democracy would come up with? Maybe. But it’s much less peculiar than the notion that losers in an election owe the winning side some special duty of empathy. Liberals often took on that duty in the past because, in a perverse way, it suggested that everything was still up to them; they were the ones with agency. The performance of liberal contrition (“we arrogant elites neglected the left-behind!”) and the reaching for ready-made answers – Hillbilly Elegy, with its mixture of resentment and sentimentalism, flying off the shelves – were as patronizing as they were reassuring: it’s all still up to us; if liberal elites can act (or at least talk) differently, the political outcomes will be different.

A willingness to confront fellow citizens with the question “Did you really want this? If not, will you speak up and act up?” is a lot less comfortable. But it does presume that others can think and act, and that they might see the point of restoring political trust among all citizens. Posing the question – and making the argument – is at least worth a try.

(London Review of Books)

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