Reflections from the edge of the singularity
Collage time. I took an image from the most recent Wired politics issue from a Steven Levy article about the decidedly traitorous Silicon Valley denizens whom people like me used to look up to and thought were disruptors and fearless resisters to the status quo.
Turns out they were all just bootlickers.
![Family on Smith's Plantation, Beaufort, South Carolina, circa 1862. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress and learnnc.org. [1]](https://mikepaul.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/family-of-african-american-slaves-on-smiths-plantation-beaufort-south-carolina-e835a0.jpg)
Clint Smith, author of How the Word is Passed, takes on some recent thoughts about slavery’s legacy and whether or not museums are the last refuge of “woke.”
Trump’s Truth Social comment on slavery was unsettling for me not only because I am the descendant of enslaved people, and not only because I was born and raised in New Orleans, which was once the center of the domestic slave trade, but also because I am an American who believes that the only way to understand this country—the only way to love this country—is to tell the truth about it. Part of that truth is that chattel slavery, which lasted in the British American colonies and then the American nation for nearly 250 years, was indeed quite bad.
No matter how you decide to spin events, slavery was bad. Like, for real. Really bad. Always has been. Don’t forget that.
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You do not need the strongest powers of observation to see that crime is a pretext — and not the main reason — for the military occupation of Washington by federal agents and troops from the National Guard.
Libraries are one of the last truly public institutions—free, accessible to all, and serving millions every year. So of course, the Trump administration wants to destroy them.
On Friday night, Trump signed an executive order eliminating the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the only federal agency that funds America’s libraries. The same institution that provides:
📚 Early literacy programs for kids
📚 High-speed internet access for communities left behind by telecom giants
📚 Summer reading programs for children
📚 Job search assistance for unemployed workers
📚 Braille and talking books for people with visual impairments
All for just 0.003% of the federal budget—peanuts compared to corporate subsidies and military spending. But let’s be real: this isn’t about money. This is about power.
Libraries are one of the last spaces in America not controlled by corporations or the ultra-rich. They provide free access to knowledge, support marginalized communities, and serve as safe havens. That’s why the right-wing hates them.
This move is part of a broader fascist attack on public institutions. They’ve been banning books, terrorizing librarians, and defunding schools. Now they’re going after the very existence of libraries themselves.
We fight back.
📢 Call your reps and demand they stop this.
📢 Show up at town halls and library board meetings.
📢 Flood Congress with calls, emails, and protests.
📢 Support your local libraries—because once they’re gone, they won’t come back.
🔥 Defend public libraries. Defend public knowledge. Defend democracy. 🔥
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On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
H. L. Mencken
Sheesh. What a pickle we’re in, America.
The most likely answer is that they’re afraid of Trump, but the larger problem is that the MAGA movement—including its supporters in the military and the Defense Department—is based on fear and insecurity, a sense that American culture is hostile to them and that Trump is the protector of a minority under siege. Many members of this movement believe that the “left,” or whatever remains of it now, is engaged in a war on the traditional family, on masculinity, on American capitalism, on Christmas and Christians. They see DEI as one of the many spiritual and moral pathogens that threaten to infect fine young men and women (especially white ones) and turn them into sexually decadent Marxists.
Tom Nichols hits this issue right on its head. Why is the DOD so worried about DEI? Heck, why is anyone worried about it?
Of course, the argument that some MAGAs will come back with as they want to purge the government of anything that could be misconstrued as ‘DEI’–which they don’t understand–will be this: “Well, you lefties wanted to rename all those military bases named after Confederate war heroes!”
