I’ve been non-stop listening to politicians and reporters talk about this budget crisis, how to solve it, if it’s a crisis to begin with, and whatever. I’ve been bemoaning trying to do any amount of audio editing for a story for my job that I know has to ignore saying the numbers aloud (like we’re supposed to), so I thought it would be nice to dust off this website and try to explain this as best I can, so all of this budgetary anguish in my head from the last two days doesn’t go to waste.

In his first preliminary budget address at City Hall on February 17th for the 2027 budget (I’ll just put the whole video above here), Mamdani told reporters that the city faces a five-point-four-billion-dollar deficit over two years and, by law, unlike the state and federal governments, the city budget must be balanced (due to the city's fiscal crisis in 1975 to 1975). Mamdani laid out two paths to rectify this issue. His preferred option is for the state to raise state income taxes on New Yorkers earning more than $1 million a year by about 2%, and the alternative, what he called the “most harmful path,” is a nine-and-a-half percent property tax hike at the city level.

Behind that binary, there are four main political actors who are staking out different positions, and the gap between them will, more or less, define who ultimately ends up picking up the tab.

On a more blunt level, Mamdani argues that “we” (the New York State Government) need to tax the rich, or everyone pays (via property taxes, which will also trickle down to tenants via landlords). According to the mayor’s official budget release, the city identified a pattern of underbudgeting in essential services, including rental assistance, shelter operations, and special education, that widened projected gaps to roughly $12 billion across two fiscal years. After applying savings (and essentially doing some austerity), updated revenue projections, and the currently agreed-upon 1.5 billion in new state funding from Governor Hochul, the remaining budget gap still stands at 5.4 billion.

Mamdani said, in remarks during his February 17th address that: “We remain firmly in a budget crisis. It is a crisis that we can and will overcome. Still, we cannot do so without either significant structural changes in Albany, or the painful decision [property taxes] of last resort.”

Unlike what many from the New York Post, FOX, the radio guys at WABC, and whoever else can claim, during the press conference (which I actually did watch), Mamdani made it really clear that this was not his first choice. As reported by the New York Times, Mamdani said, “The second path is painful. We will continue to work with Albany to avoid it,” Which he has continued to stress.

Mamdani was not hiding who the property tax would hurt: “property taxes would be raised by 9.5%. This would effectively be a tax on working- and middle-class New Yorkers who have a median income of $122,000.”

Speaking to reporters afterward, Mamdani told the guys from Hell Gate that his administration had “exhausted nearly every option” and that the wealth tax is “not only the fairest course, but also the most sustainable course.”

Here’s more or less what the property tax hike would look like:

The proposed 9.5 percent increase would affect more than three million single-family homes, co-ops, and condos, as well as over 100,000 commercial buildings across the city, according to the New York Times. According to the mayor’s official release, though, the hike would generate 3.7 billion dollars in fiscal year 2027. The Citizens Budget Commission estimated that this would cost a typical homeowner about 700 dollars more per year. For landlords, particularly those operating in rent-stabilized buildings, the costs would likely be passed on to tenants in market-rate apartments; rent-stabilized tenants are somewhat shielded since stabilization caps how much of the cost can be passed through. Still, for the rest of us in market-rate units(me), it’s bad news.

The city hasn’t seen a property tax rate increase since former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who raised rates after 9/11 and again during the Great Recession. As THE CITY noted, the effective rate has remained the same since then.

In addition to all of this, Mamdani would also draw on nearly 980 million dollars from the city’s “Rainy Day Fund,” and 229 million dollars from the Retiree Health Benefits Trust, which is a move that would leave the city vulnerable to future downturns (and I doubt the retirees would be happy).

As for Mamdani’s preferred option, here’s what the wealth tax would more or less look like:

This is the option Mamdani says is fairer and more sustainable. Still, it requires the state legislature and especially Governor Hochul to act, because New York City cannot raise its own income taxes without Albany’s authorization.

At the annual “Tin Cup Day” hearing last week (the annual hearing where the Mayor begs the state for money), Mamdani laid out some specifics before Tuesday. As reported by Newsweek, he reiterated to state lawmakers, “I believe the wealthiest individuals and most profitable corporations should contribute a little more so that everyone can live lives of dignity. That’s why, along with raising the corporate tax, I’m asking for a 2 percent personal income tax increase on the most affluent New Yorkers.”

The “Mamdani preferred” proposal has two components:

The first is a 2 percentage point increase in the personal income tax on New York City residents earning more than a million dollars a year. During Tin Cup Day, Mamdani said that “someone earning a million dollars a year can afford to contribute $20,000 more.” There are roughly 380,000 millionaires living in New York City, which is about 1 percent of the city’s population, and these same people already pay about 40 percent of the city’s income taxes, according to the Citizens Budget Commission.

The second component Mamdani is pushing for is a 4-percentage-point increase in the corporate tax rate on large, profitable corporations. During his campaign, Mamdani’s team estimated that the corporate hike would raise about 5 billion dollars annually, and the income tax increase would raise about 4 billion dollars, for a combined total of about 9 billion dollars. At the Albany hearing, Mamdani said the income tax alone would resolve “nearly half” the city’s deficit.

Mamdani also argued the tax increase would be offset by federal tax cuts. He cites a Fiscal Policy Institute report, in saying that the cuts in President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act would save New York millionaires more than 12 billion dollars in federal taxes each year, which is an average of about $129,600 per taxpayer (in this high-income bracket). In other words, Mamdani is saying that even with these state-level increases, the wealthy would still pay less per year than they spent in 2025.

Of course, conservative (adjacent) groups have pushed back on this, including the libertarian Cato Institute, which estimated in a report that the corporate side would raise closer to 3.8 billion(ish), and warned that a city-specific income tax could drive high earners to Long Island, Westchester, or out of state entirely, though I’m editorializing here, but don’t think this is something the Mamdani camp would believe, or care about too much to put too heavily in their calculation.

Governor Kathy Hochul has been the more immovable obstacle in this whole situation. She has repeatedly pledged not to raise taxes in 2026, and she holds veto power over any income tax increase that comes through Mamdani’s numerous allies in Albany.

At a separate event from Mamdani also on the 17th, Hochul downplayed his property tax threat. As reported by THE CITY, she told reporters she did not “think a property tax increase is necessary.” And according to reporting from NBC New York, the governor suggested Mamdani should look at where adjustments can be made in current spending and avoid “taxing for the sake of taxing” (I’ll get to this later with Speaker Menin).

The New York Times and Hell Gate both reported that Hochul said the mayor has until the summer to work out the real expenses, and that putting [his] options on the table “does not mean that’s the final resolution.”

But Hochul has been folding a bit and steering money toward the city. On Monday, February 16th, the day before the Mamdani budget(and ultimatum) was released, she announced the aforementioned 1.5 billion in additional state funding, including more than 500 million in recurring dollars. This brought the projected deficit down from 7 billion to 5.4 billion, which is good but obviously not enough.

Compared to Mamdani, Hochul is a pro-business moderate Democrat running for re-election (with his endorsement, lmao), and she has to balance downstate progressive priorities against the suburban and upstate voters who already resent how much state revenue flows to the city. Mamdani himself told Albany lawmakers, as reported by Newsweek, that “New York City contributes 54.5 percent of state revenue but only receives 40.5 percent back,” which I still don’t think Hochul can completely ignore.

Despite the ideological gap, Mamdani and Hochul have been unusually close allies compared to what I would’ve assumed a couple of months ago. As the New York Times reported, the mayor, since endorsing Hochul for re-election, told allies he would likely skip a “Tax the Rich” rally planned for February 25th in Albany. So this isn’t necessarily a scorched-earth fight (yet), even though I think there is an argument among DSA/WFP-adjacent groups that it should be. Instead, it’s played out, as of now, as a very public negotiation between people who do need each other.

City Comptroller Mark Levine has staked out a position that validates Mamdani’s diagnosis more than Hochul’s but still rejects Mamdani’s proposed treatment.

In an official statement released on February 17th, following Mamdani’s presser, Levine said Mamdani’s budget “honestly and transparently lays out the scale of our challenges” and praised the end of underbudgeting. He described the city in the presser as being “under the greatest fiscal strain since the Great Recession.”

But he warned that the proposed fix would be harmful. From the same statement: “To rely on a property tax increase and a significant draw-down of reserves to close our gap would have dire consequences.”

In an interview Levine did with NY1 after a closed-door briefing with Mamdani, Levine was more specific in that “raising property taxes would be no one’s preferred option, partly because the system is so flawed, riddled with inequality. It’s essentially a regressive tax as it’s currently structured, hitting homeowners and communities of color much more than it hits homeowners in wealthier areas.”

He also cautioned against raiding reserves like the rainy-day fund during a period of economic growth. He warned it would leave the city vulnerable to future turbulence issues. Levine’s alternative is that “We need to find greater efficiencies and savings across New York City government and reconfigure programs that are growing at an unsustainable rate.” He also said the city “undoubtedly” needs more help from Albany, but stopped short of explicitly endorsing the “Mamdani” wealth tax.

THE CITY reported that Levine called what Mamdani put on the table “a pretty extreme option” that also relies on “pretty aggressive revenue projections.” His office will release its own full fiscal analysis on March 11th, so let’s wait and see if his tune changes

City Council Speaker Julie Menin may matter most in this whole debacle because the Council has final say over the city budget. And she’s carving out a position that neither fully aligns with the mayor nor with the austerity crowd.

In a joint statement with Finance Chair Linda Lee, released the day of the budget, Menin said a property tax increase “should not be on the table whatsoever.” She also said the Council believes there are “additional areas of savings and revenue that deserve careful scrutiny before increasing the burden on small property owners and neighborhood small businesses.”

But in a radio appearance on the conservative Sid Rosenberg show on WABC on February 18th(why did she say this here??????), Menin explicitly opposed both the property tax hike and cuts to essential services. Instead, she pointed to what she sees as “clear areas of waste.”

Her main target for cuts is public sector and retiree healthcare costs. She said on Sid Rosenberg(again, why here?) that the city now spends close to 11 billion dollars a year, which is nearly 10 percent of the entire budget, on public-sector and retiree healthcare, a figure that was 6 billion just five years ago, which she called “unsustainable.”

Menin said the healthcare accountability office she created through legislation two years ago, before she was speaker, could save an estimated two billion dollars annually by leveraging the city’s purchasing power to renegotiate hospital prices. She gave an example about how a C-section costs $55,000 at one New York City hospital and $17,000 at another for the same procedure.

She also went after no-bid contracts: “For years, no matter who the mayor is, cities have utilized no-bid contracts to the tune of billions of dollars. Look, I’m a former small business owner. No small business owner would use no-bid contracts. You always competitively bid.”

These aren’t new Menin arguments(I would know). In a speech at the Association for a Better New York(ABNY) on February 4th, she laid out the same healthcare cost numbers and procurement reform agenda. And back in January, speaking to NY1, she had already signaled this approach, saying she’d spoken to the governor and that Hochul was “very, very clear that she is not willing to do anything on taxes.” Menin’s conclusion then: “We’ve got to identify savings in the budget.”

Menin’s position is politically significant in that she’s not calling for DOGE-style austerity, and she’s not saying cut social programs, as some people online are saying she is in Peter Sterne’s mentions. She’s saying the city is wasting billions of dollars through bad procurement and unchecked healthcare costs, and that those are the savings that should close the gap before anyone talks about raising taxes or cutting services, which, I mean, I hope she’s right, but I’m skeptical that finding waste alone will end up closing a 5.4 billion dollar hole without going to war with new york health insurance oligarchs, nor do I think that’s something she wants to do or will ever do.

Regarding all of this, the budgetary questions that will play out over the next four months are pretty simple if we’re being reductionist(which I am, this is my blog): does Albany tax the rich, does the city tax everyone else, or does Menin find enough waste so nobody has to make a choice? I genuinely don’t know, but I’d bet money (not $127 billion worth) that the answer ends up being some messy combination of all three, and, on a more selfish level, for the rent on my place, I hope it’s less so in the property tax direction.

For what happens next, the budget deadline is June 30th, and between now and then:

• The City Council will hold preliminary budget hearings and release its own projections by April 1st.

• The Comptroller’s office will release its full fiscal analysis on March 11th.

• Agency Chief Savings Officers, created by Mamdani’s executive order, will release savings reports by March 20th.

• The mayor will release a revised executive budget in late April.

• Negotiation between City Hall, the Council, and Albany will play out through the spring.

• AND: There’s a “Tax the Rich Rally” on February 25th in Albany.

Again, why did Menin give the most useful info for her stance on the Sid Rossenburg show? Like, he’s this guy?

Author’s Note:

Congress has already passed the One Big Beautiful Spending Bill/H.R.1 - One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a spending bill that, in addition to impacting Medicare and Social Security, would gut federal student aid and put millions of students at risk. According the university, at Fordham University, my university, over 55% of the student body will have their aid negatively impacted. Nearly 3,000 students at Fordham rely on Pell Grants, and most would see their awards cut or eliminated. The fight around this bill has now moved to the Senate, and is expected to proceed by July 4th.

Whether you're registered to vote in Fordham, the Bronx, or elsewhere in New York City, or anywhere else in the country, I urge you to contact your U.S. Senators and ask them to reject cuts to Pell Grants and federal student loans. This isn’t abstract; this is not, nor should it be, a right-wing or a left-wing issue; this is directly affecting your aid money, your wallet, and your family’s financial future. Thousands of your dollars are at stake.

Expect a statement from the university in the next few days.

Find your Senators: https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm

If I were an agent of a foreign power tasked with dismantling American educational hegemony, I couldn't have designed a better strategy than what the Trump administration is currently implementing on our current world-class system of higher education. By systematically attacking the very foundations of America's global advantage in research and development, its universities, and their procurement of the best and brightest of international talent, President Trump’s administration is essentially doing our adversaries' work for them. At my university(Fordham University), over 55% of students would be negatively impacted by the proposed changes. Nearly 3,000 Fordham students rely on Pell Grants, and most would see their awards reduced or eliminated altogether. These cuts will inevitably raise withdrawal rates, which will have grim results for both our school’s funding structure and, especially, the lives of University students across the country, particularly those from income levels most at risk from these cuts. These are students who attend colleges across the country, all while trying to balance tuition, rent, and jobs in a city that’s already unaffordable. It’s not just financial aid at stake; it’s $93 million in lost opportunity from just one school alone, and it’s not as if we’re special or uniquely in this attack.

If you have a vested interest in the continued dominance of American education or, alternatively, care about education at all, the numbers should tell you a devastating story. Nationwide, 7 million undergraduates rely on Pell Grants. These are students from every region and walk of life, many of them first-generation and working-class; these are your friends and mine. The cuts don’t just risk debt; they risk wiping out college access altogether for an entire tier of the American population, which includes some of the nation’s brightest minds, people you love and work alongside, people who would not be able to attend higher education without this grant. The National Science Foundation, which funds the fundamental research that underpins America's technological supremacy, is operating at its lowest funding level in decades. Grant funding has plummeted by 51% compared to the 2015-2024 average, falling from $2 billion to just $989 million. At Fordham, we've already felt this assault firsthand: for example, in the past few months, Fordham President Tetlow announced the termination of our $60 million EPA grant for environmental projects, with official documents from the university stating that "the objectives of the award are no longer consistent with EPA funding priorities.” To date, Fordham has lost approximately $600,000 in federal research grants, and yet, for all the hand-wringing about whether college is “worth it,” the data remains clear. Students at Fordham who received Pell support earn over $66,000 on average within seven months of graduation. These grants are not just helping students; they’re delivering positive results for us. However, sadly, I would be shocked to see if the Trump administration’s delusional approach to higher education will halt at this or stop, at what will be impacted by the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”

This isn't just about money or the ability of our nation’s universities to support our military’s R&D; it's about the future of American innovation in its entirety, especially as the Trump administration so desperately wants to move industry “back” to our shores. So, when physics funding drops by 85% and materials research by 63%, we're not just cutting budgets; we're surrendering our competitive edge in education to Europe, to China, and to whoever else, for little to no benefit to ourselves, while mostly at the detriment of our own country.

Many of these attacks on education by the current Federal Government largely center on the topic of immigration. In line with this, a recent masterstroke of paranoid destruction has come from the continued attacks on our country’s international students. Trump's recent decision to attempt to bar Harvard from enrolling international students represents perhaps the most shortsighted policy in modern American history. For decades, America's universities have served as talent magnets, drawing the world's brightest minds to our shores. At schools across the country and at Fordham, we've seen preliminary glimpses of this gross milieu of policy in action: several Fordham international students have received visa revocation notices, and the University administration has had to issue a warning that leaving the U.S. could result in an inability to return. This is unnecessary fear.

International students are not just our friends and peers; they not only make a massive impact on our personal lives, but they also have an incredible impact on our country. According to the National Foundation for American Policy, nearly two-thirds of the American billion-dollar startup companies were founded by immigrants or their children. Outside of some overt racial justifications for these policies(you all know what I mean by this), the right-wing argument against foreign college enrollment seems to center on the narrative that immigrants will go to the U.S. for school and then leave to “only” benefit their home countries with the knowledge they’ve, but this is obviously shortsighted. Even those who eventually return home still carry a soft power dividend. A survey of over 1,000 international students (spanning 43 countries) found that 52% said their view of the U.S. improved since enrolling here. Internationally, studies show that foreign graduates of American universities often return as business partners, investors, or allies, deepening trade and innovation ties with the U.S. Why would we squander this opportunity?

The Trump administration's frail justifications for these moves reveal the sheer cynical nature of this “project.” For instance, the Trump administration and large segments of the American right have chosen to weaponize some of the genuine concerns about the rise of anti-antisemitism on college campuses in order to enact deportations and detentions of “political dissidents.” In doing so, Trump and his allies have created a smokescreen and a loose justification for what is essentially a wholesale assault on the academic freedom and institutional independence of higher education. As a group of Jewish students from targeted universities wrote in the Jewish American publication The Forward,

“Trump's plans offer us no comment” and represent “an abject failure” in protecting Jewish students. Instead, the administration exploits "genuine fears of antisemitism to press its own ideological agenda."

https://forward.com/opinion/721870/jewish-students-universities-trump-antisemitism/

This policy is built on a conflation that deliberately obscures the crucial distinction between legitimate criticism of Israeli government policies, including its actions in Gaza that many scholars and international bodies have characterized as genocidal, and actual antisemitism. At this point in the conflict, I doubt anyone’s position on it will be changed by this article. Still, I believe it is an exercise in anti-intellectualism to disagree with the assertion that Anti-Zionism and opposition to Israel's Government and military actions are political positions, and that those political positions are not inherently expressions of hatred toward Jewish people in total.

The targeting of pro-Palestinian protesters for deportation, including students like Mahmood Kalil, who ICE disappeared in front of his pregnant wife for involvement in First Amendment-protected pro-Palestinian protests, epitomizes this dangerous conflation. When students can be detained and deported for expressing political opinions or writing op-eds about American foreign policy, we've abandoned the very principles of not only what made American universities attractive to global talent, but also the values of our country’s founding. The blame is not only with the federal government but also with universities like Columbia, which refused to protect their students like Kalil, who was shipped away to a detention facility in Louisiana with no warning, missing the birth of his firstborn child. The targeting of individual students sends a chilling message to all international scholars: America is no longer a safe haven for free inquiry, nor is it a place for free speech. It’s a policy that doesn’t just repel global talent, it squanders and silences our greatest minds, pushing away the very people who would contribute breakthroughs in academia, in medicine, climate work, tech, and even (more cynically) American business interests.

In line with how ridiculous this policy is, I’ll also include a brief, heightened, but real example:

Xi Mingze, the only child of Chinese President Xi Jinping, chose to attend Harvard and has reportedly continued to live in Massachusetts since. That fact alone speaks to the unmatched soft power of American higher education. And yet, figures close to the Trump movement, like right-wing “commentator” Lara Loomer, have now begun calling for her deportation, not based on security risks, but on the political spectacle of the act. That kind of rhetoric doesn’t just drive away international students; it signals to the world that education in the U.S. is conditional on ideological conformity. I have no idea why no one in Trumpworld is able to fathom appreciating the level of soft power required to have the only child of the leader of the United States’ competing superpower choosing to go to school in the US and stay here after.

Another Harvard alum, cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker, who’s hardly the “radical leftist” the right associates with academia, wrote in a recent New York Times essay, “Harvard Derangement Syndrome,” about the dangers of the Trump admin’s current approach. Despite Pinker’s own criticisms of Harvard, even he recognizes that the university “has made the world a better place" through innovations ranging from the programmable computer to oral rehydration therapy that has "saved tens of millions of lives." Cutting federal grants to such institutions doesn't just hurt America; it actively benefits our competitors, such as China, which Trump claims to want to combat.

As for where the United States is heading, I think you will start hearing the phrase “Brain Drain” a lot more in the following months.

Brain drain is defined as the emigration of highly skilled and educated professionals from one country to another, and it has begun to accelerate in the United States. As The Century Foundation reports, over 75% of U.S.-based scientists are considering leaving the country due to recent policy changes. Meanwhile, America’s academic competitors are rolling out the red carpet. In response to the U.S., the French Government launched its "Choose France for Science" initiative, Belgium's universities opened funded positions for American scholars, and the Netherlands established targeted funds to recruit fleeing researchers. Meanwhile, China has increased its science spending by 10% this year, compared to our… decrease.

For Fordham, and most schools, the “university’s response” demonstrates both the courage and the innate fragility of any institutional “resistance.” Fordham President Tetlow did join Harvard's Alan Garber and over 200 university presidents in signing "A Call for Constructive Engagement," condemning the

"Unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education.”

The short letter, which I recommend you read (imperfect as it may be), calls for constructive engagement while rejecting "the coercive use of public research funding” by the Trump administration. However, Fordham's experience also shows our administration's reach and the ways they are fighting. Fordham’s Faculty Senate passed a resolution to protect academic freedom, and the university joined an amicus brief challenging these attacks. Yet even with these “defensive measures,” we’re still in so many areas at the behest of the federal government, and Fordham’s still lost substantial funding and is facing ongoing uncertainty about visa revocations for our international community. At the end of the day, all of this “resistance” (and I guess this article too) is just letters, it’s just words, not lawsuits or direct action.

The Trump administration's defenders might argue these policies are about national security or protecting American students/workers. But this logic is backwards. America's growth in power and prominence post-WW2 never came from isolating ourselves; it came from our ability to further attract and integrate the world's economy and its best minds and partners into our system. While I personally might not have any interest in a new great power struggle or a new Cold War, Trump and his Republican cadres do. So when Chinese graduate students, for instance, can't or are scared to study quantum computing at American universities(and give a lot to the American economy while doing so), they don't just “disappear into the wind;” they’ll just study in Beijing or Hangzhou instead, building capabilities that will compete against the United States instead of for the United States.

What makes this particularly tragic is how unnecessary it all is. From the perspective of any political project involving them, American Universities are complex institutions that can and should more readily be reformed through targeted improvements rather than wholesale destruction. However, Trump's approach isn't about reform; it's about control and ideological conformity to a system and thought riddled with short-sighted stupidity. If I were designing a strategy to end American technological dominance, I too would defund basic research, expel international talent, and create an atmosphere of fear in academic institutions; I would use culture war rhetoric to disguise this demolition as symbolic of my distorted view of patriotism. In other words, I would do exactly what the Trump administration is doing.

Our competitors must be delighted. America is voluntarily dismantling one of the most important nodes of the system that made it a superpower, our educational prowess. Calling any of this "America First" is a delusion. New York State has already witnessed the closure of 10 private colleges in the past two years. With the proposed federal aid cuts, many more institutions, especially those serving low-income students, could and will likely face a similar fate. For those of us at universities like Fordham, watching federal grants disappear and international students receive deportation threats, as several of our students have already faced. The reality is clear: this isn't America First, it's America last, and for little reason, and everyone else besides Trump and those unwaveringly loyal to this policy knows it.

The House has already passed these extreme cuts to student financial aid. The U.S. Senate is now the last line of defense. Call your U.S. Senators today and urge them to reject this act before it comes to the floor by June 4th.

Senate Switchboard: +1(202) 224-3121
Email your Senators: https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm

I have little idea why our President decided to post this(publicly) against his fellow entertainer-turned-politician Volodymir Zelenskyy. Don’t kid yourself into being surprised by it; Trump’s been telegraphing about cutting aid to Ukraine for nearly the past two calendar years. In the twilight years/months/weeks/hours of our present configuration of international relations with the US as the sole superpower, we’re witnessing not merely a series of tactical realignments but an unfolding of relations spurred upon primarily by our President that, as much as some subsets of American liberal sphere would like to believe and chirp that is caused by “Trump/Republicans being stupid,” which is a notion/belief that even if true, is still completely useless and ignores the real benefactors and proponents of a right-wing/nationalist American retreat from the global order we created for ourselves(post-WW2, Post-Cold War), through statements and tendencies like the Trump ramble, above(which I ‘personally’ have no interest in going through line by line), if you look close it’s pretty easy to see the contradictions inherent in the post-Cold War liberal order that Trump and anti-Ukraine Republicans are seemingly taking an axe to.

The United States, through the new Trump administration's approach to Ukraine and European defense, as well as our new ambivalent posture toward Russia, is manifesting a deeper historical logic that transcends our conventional political categorizations. This logic is altering the nature of our world order and dominance, whether Trump himself realizes it or not.

Right now, The United States, through Trump and Russophilic Republican elements in power(Assad’s bestie Tulsi Gabbard's appointment as Director of National Intelligence lmao), is/must be attempting to repair its relationship with Russia not directly out of ideological affinity(though the right-wing nationalism sure does help) but through a calculated “realpolitik” maneuver aimed at containing China, or at least getting concessions from Russia in order to spur some sense of misalignment with Beijing. By negating Ukraine and transitively negating Europe, this Aufhebung strategy simultaneously preserves, negates, and transcends America's post-Cold War posture. The logic underlying this shift predates the current conflict; for years, American strategic thinkers, predominantly on the right, have maintained that effectively containing China's growing influence in Eurasia necessitates securing Russian cooperation, which must supersede liberal antagonisms towards Russia, to make a Russia>China stance the FoPo norm.

I’m not just speculating this is manifesting in consistent patterns observable in statements from Trump administration officials and throughout the global “alternative right” throughout Western democracies, which very often can be characterized as Russiophilic. However, the contradiction emerges in the fundamental misrecognition at the heart of this strategy: the belief that Moscow can be fully detached from Beijing represents an idealist illusion that fails to grasp the material conditions of their relationship. Some foreign policy realists could argue that a tactical U.S.-Russia détente could reduce China’s power. However, this overlooks the reality that China’s strategic importance to Russia, economically and militarily, makes such a realignment infeasible. Even if Russia gladly accepts concessions from Washington, it will not execute the 180-degree reversal American anti-China-hawks desire.

The Russia-China relationship has been subjected to a repeated, consistent, and ongoing trial by fire throughout the whole of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and China, despite however much humanitarian posturing their foreign officials like to do, has demonstrated remarkable resilience in allowing/facilitating the Russian war machine through raw materials, etc. Moscow recognizes the inherently unstable nature of American policy, where "fiercely competing centers of influence" in Washington could produce a diametrically opposed administration within a four-year period. Meanwhile, Russia's ties with China have proven stable, predictable, and structurally significant, and closening through things like BRICS(ik ik “not real” work with me), and commitments to increase trade between the two, which hit record highs in 2024. This might be characterized as Russia's recognition of the real beneath ideological fantasies, the concrete material conditions of interdependence that transcend idealist visions of a renewed American-Russian partnership.

China emerges as the primary beneficiary of this geopolitical reconfiguration, and by that, I mean the United States/Biden/Trump Administration's recent foreign policy fumbles. With our leadership being put in question for the whole global south to see regarding Israel-Palestine, and more recently, our USAID soft power (it does good things, shut up, still soft power) operations being dismantled worldwide, Beijing gains expanded opportunities to extend its influence through development funding and infrastructure initiatives. From Nepal to the Cook Islands and Colombia, Chinese officials are rapidly moving to fill the voids created by America's NGO retreat, and they have the money, the power, the stability, and the goodwill in the third world to do so. However, Beijing, despite participating in things like BRICS(which, let's be real, are far less real than an EU, NATO, or hell, even an AUKUS), harbors deep reservations about forming an explicit anti-Western bloc with Russia and North Korea in their official messaging. China recognizes that such an arrangement would require strategic leadership and a unifying mission, responsibilities it appears reluctant to assume as a nation that is predominantly a regional great power, while overreaching. This hesitancy reveals the Chinese position and predicament: simultaneously challenging Western hegemony while remaining dependent on the economic structures underpinning it, both to sustain their own growth through the production of consumer goods and to maintain their preexisting (though tenuous) peaceful relations with the West.

The European response, as documented in recent reporting from yesterday in response to the entire Ukraine debacle, exposes the contradiction at the heart of the modern European project itself. Europe finds itself caught in a dialectical bind desiring strategic autonomy while remaining dependent on American security guarantees. The Global Times(Chinese State media) editorial highlighting the Munich Security Conference shows how China perceives Europe’s “pickle,” noting Europe's "confusion about its role in the context of multipolarity." Europe's resources are depleted and will continue to be from the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, all while transatlantic trust erodes under Trump/Musk/Vance-ian American unilateralism. Technological competition, economic friction, and energy insecurity further exacerbate Europe's strategic anxieties. European leaders struggle to formulate a coherent response to Trump's diplomatic maneuvers with Russia, which clearly reveal the limits of the EU's capacity for independent strategic action as a disorganized bloc. I would be surprised if anything actually does happen. Still, I would not be surprised if the idea of Macron's often-promulgated “European army” gains traction in the coming week (I’ve already seen a number of articles in the past 24 hours while writing this out, mentioning and pitching it quasi-seriously).

What we observe in the current geopolitical situation and how powers, super, great, and “itsy” are what would be called a "parallax view" - not simply different perspectives on the same object, but fundamentally incommensurable positions structured by antagonism itself. From Washington's perspective, Ukraine represents either a bastion of democracy requiring defense (Biden) or a burden draining American resources (Trump). From Moscow's viewpoint, Ukraine constitutes both an existential security threat and the site of historical Russian identity. Beijing perceives the conflict simultaneously as proof of Western decline, a dangerous precedent for separatism, and as a potential model for the success or failure of annexation. Europeans see Ukraine as both a democratic partner and an uncomfortable reminder of both Ukraine’s strategic impotence and the dependence Europe has on the United States for security(exacerbated under Trump but still present under Biden).

These perspectives aren't merely different angles on the same reality; they represent irreconcilable antagonisms constitutive of global politics. The parallax gap between these positions cannot be resolved through better understanding or communication; it is the very substance of geopolitical struggle, while the “national question” is still in effect/debate. What appears as “realpolitik” from one angle appears as ideological fantasy from another, with no neutral position from which to judge.

Beyond any liberal moralism, Trump's statements regarding Ukraine (calling Zelenskyy a "dictator" and claiming Ukraine "couldn't win") represent not merely blatant personal antipathy but the manifestation of an approach that rejects a “Western Liberal-order Cold War moralism” in favor of great power pragmatism. His comment that the war "never had to start" signals not just a gimmie to Putin and his project but also a rejection of the liberal internationalist framework that has dominated American foreign policy establishment thinking, which Trump and the non-NatSec Republicans clearly hate. But I’d be lying if this approach, while I’m trying to articulate that it can’t wholly be reduced to personality politics or tactical miscalculations it represents the violent eruption of contradictions inherent in that post-Cold War settlement and competing visions of European security architecture, and in doing so by speeding up this eruption, it cannot be a play to “get Europe in line” or whatever Trump argues, it along with the tariffs at large(if they go through) must lead to a diminishment of American power at a global stage even if there are some tangential long term domestic benefits at home(but I(dumbass Uni student w a blog) don’t think its worth it). It’s all/must be dialectical negation. The existing liberal order faces challenges that it cannot resolve within its own framework. Trump's approach toward Ukraine and Russia does not represent a coherent alternative world order but rather a negative moment in a larger process that I hope is long-term and not cataclysmic.

What emerges from this, at least to me, is that the shortsighted attempt to repair relations with Russia at the expense of transatlantic partnerships will likely fail to achieve its intended objective of containing China. Instead, it may accelerate the transition toward a multipolar system characterized by fluid alignments rather than rigid blocs, a system and setup in which China maintains significant advantages through its economic leverage and strategic flexibility. The “I question” is not whether Ukraine can be sacrificed for improved relations with Russia but whether the liberal international order(as it shakily stands) itself can be transcended in a manner that produces a more stable configuration of power one that acknowledges the legitimate security interests of all major powers while establishing mechanisms to prevent a broader catastrophic conflict than the one in Ukraine that is actively going on. The current approach, with its contradictions and misrecognition, appears unlikely to achieve this transformation.

Anyway, praise dear Leader Trump, praise the Burger Empire, and have a good day, but War is bad, and invading your neighbors and allowing imperialists to get away with it is probably also bad.

Read the following for this:
Instead of doing work last night, I got furious and sifted through the below. If you want to read one of these that isn’t linked, I can send you a PDF if you email me.

Kaarbo, Juliet, Kai Oppermann, and Ryan K. Beasley. "What if? Counterfactual Trump and the Western response to the war in Ukraine." International Affairs 99, no. 2 (2023): 605-624.
https://www.reuters.com/markets/china-russia-2024-trade-value-hits-record-high-chinese-customs-2025-01-13/

Kundnani, Hans. "Europe Can't" Trump-Proof’ Itself." Dissent 72, no. 1 (2025): 35-37.

Laya, Arancha González, Camille Grand, KATARZYNA PISARSKA, NATHALIE TOCCI, and Guntram Wolff. "Trump-Proofing Europe." Foreign Affairs 24 (2024).

https://www.csis.org/analysis/refocusing-us-public-diplomacy-multipolar-world

https://files.libcom.org/files/Zizek-The%20Parallax%20View.pdf

Huet, Alexandra. "LE RETOUR DE DONALD TRUMP À LA PRÉSIDENCE: DÉFIS ET IMPLICATIONS POUR L’UNION EUROPÉENNE."

https://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-volodymyr-zelenskyy-ukraine-russia-reelection-eu-uk-war-olaf/

https://www.politico.com/newsletters/national-security-daily/2025/02/10/as-usaid-retreats-china-pounces-00195922

Anderson, Lawrence. "Predicting the unpredictable: Trump's foreign policy 2.0." RSIS Commentaries, 004-25 (2025).

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/china-doesnt-want-lead-axis

Plagemann, Johannes. "Introduction to special issue: ' Foreign policy signaling in the Indo-Pacific: Responses to the US-China rivalry in a multipolar world’." The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 27, no. 1 (2025): 3-19.

https://www.cfr.org/article/trumps-abrupt-turn-russia-and-whether-us-russia-team-could-gain-any-sway-south-and

Has Fordham University(our Uni) been a religious journey for you? Despite four years of Jesuit education and decades of Catholic school, We still find the tradcath revivalism of our peers cringe. We don’t even lie to our grandparents about not going to mass anymore. Yet there is something to be said about the ecstatic religious artwork, the “drinking wine at 11 AM on a Sunday” vibe, and the honestly flamboyant sexual guilt. We have begun to fear our time at Fordham University may be our last chance to reconcile our vague Catholic cultural roots with a direct experience with the divine. In a desperate search for God, the co-authors of this article have turned to Yelp.com’s list of the Top 10 Catholic Masses, which we’ve re-ranked for the god-fearing audience of The Paper after visiting all ten in one day. If we cannot find our religion here, blame the algorithm.

10. St Francis Xavier: We must have gone to the wrong Francis Xavier church. This was just a normal rectangle, non-church-shaped building attached to a Catholic school, and that made me an atheist the first time around. I went to a comedy show 5 minutes away from here a week before I visited, and the idea of seeing Ivy Wolk in my Sunday best did not make me feel closer to God. This did nothing for us.

9. Saint Agnes Church: You know that $1.50 Pizza spot by Grand Central Terminal? There’s actually an entire church right next to it. $1.50 Pizza is the only miracle I’ve ever experienced, but this is a generally pretty and quaint modernist church for its location. I was impressed by the logo, a white icon of a lamb, and a cross over a creamsicle orange banner. What’s the point of a missionary religion without brand identity?

8. Church of the Most Precious Blood: All I’m saying is that this church is about 3 minutes away from Canal St. station in Chinatown, but I didn’t see a single host of the Red Scare podcast attend Sunday mass here. This is the ideal tradcath LES influencer church. With how edgy the Church’s name is combined with the architecture’s ecclesiastical flare, you’d think Dimes Square would go to confession.

7. Church of the Blessed Sacrament: A midtown church feels like a pop-up store. You’re walking down the same Duane Reade-infested corner of 70th Street when, boom, gothic stonework belies shelter and free bathrooms. We overheard a man trying to open a bank account over the phone. It’s heartening to find places in NYC where people can rest and get help.

6. St Bartholomew’s: This is a midtown church for New York Times Podcast subscribers. Outside the church, a series of QR codes for St Bartholomew’s App were plastered. Their website was smooth and minimalist, providing information about a series of public conversations called The Forum, inviting book authors and university professors to talk about AI, the Divine Feminine, and Gandhi. Can you sense it? I can. These people aren’t Catholics. Yelp Dot Com has lured us into a den of Episcopalians. I like the Ezra Klein Show as much as the next liberal, so we’ll give it a pass.

5. Church of the Ascension: Tasteful white stone face bricks, ornate stained glass windows, and warm cream-colored walls and ceilings paid with incandescent lights throughout the nave, this was no doubt a smaller and intimate church, but all the same, it was one of the most inviting. Signage for recent and recurring notices for community outreach came in many languages; you can feel a concern for the well-being of its members and broader community. Church of the Ascension reminded me, for as much as my catholic education pre-college was often “draconian,” I must recognize the social good religion can provide. What more could you ask for from a church you find on Yelp?

4. St Patricks: No doubt it is one of the most famous and beautiful locations in NYC, but this isn’t what we were looking for. Let’s be frank: it was a long day and a long string of masses, and we really, really, really needed to relieve ourselves. I found myself directed to wait in line for what looked eerily like a confession booth hidden behind a shrine to St. Andrew. A woman asked me if this was the line for confession; I had no idea what to say. By the time I was pissing in a confessional facade, I could not shake the feeling that a pesky priest was glancing at me in such a private moment of relief. Took me back to grade school, and I didn’t like it.

3. Saint Francis of Assisi: Wokeness isn’t dead in the Catholic Church, as much as any American sedavantacist chud tradcath would like you to believe. As any good liberal, we love our Jesuits, and we love our Franciscans. This church was no doubt quaint, but it seems like it’s quite busy. The Church’s website and posted paraphernalia had much to say about protecting immigrants, their LGBTQ+ and environmental ministry, as well as providing services for the elderly and the unhomed, who, at the time we got out, seemed to find refuge in this place. If all Catholic institutions looked out for the marginalized, this visibly, baby, they’d have less of a stink on their reputation.

2. Trinity Church Wall Street: I’m sick and tired of Yelp lying to me, again, when we found this list on Yelp, it said “Top 10 Best Catholic Mass Near New York,” and it keeps taking us to these Episcopal schisms. Still, this is a literal bright spot in the financial district with how huge and gorgeous their illuminated central stained glass pane is. Also, Alexander Hamilton is buried here in case you want to pay your respects to him since you got duped by Lin-Manuel Miranda in middle school into liking a founding father who wanted to turn the United States into an oligarchy. He would’ve loved Elon Musk, and you know it: grow up and watch more musicals.

1. Cathedral of St John the Divine: Okay, so the Cathedral is gorgeous and massive and has a pride flag outside, and the street is named cathedral row after it or whatever, but we don’t even fucking care. Right outside the cathedral is the “Peace Fountain,” which is the single most ridiculous and awesome statue either of us has ever seen. Picture it: a 40-foot Archangel Michael facing off against Satan while nine peaceful giraffes spring out of a giant crab that is also a fountain. The whole scene is crowned by a smiling sun and sleepy moon perched atop a massive DNA helix meant to spew water. A garden of bronze animals made by children surrounds the base because, apparently, this beauty needed cute sidepieces. Also, the Cathedral was Episcopalian again! Heck, sometimes the best Catholic mass experience is Episcopalian, whatever. Thank you, Yelp.

This article is worse and less focused, but it has images, videos, hyperlinks, and way more information. This is yet another article in my now time-honored tradition of making each new post on here the “longest FunnymanWarRoom,” so if you plan on reading this, I’d recommend reading it in full on my Substack Website because right now it’s too long to fit in the email.

This article is primarily about the role of Falun Gong agitprop in America.

Hello Funnymen, $120 was spent making this. I hope you enjoy it, and if you’re mad that this article is biased(duh) and unserious surrounding quasi-serious topics(the last article was literally 9/11), read this paper cited below by Haiqing Yu of The University of Melbourne and click off of this.

Yu, Haiqing. "The new living-room war: Media campaigns and Falun Gong." (2004).

Google scholar link: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=1033583132132954841&hl=en&as_sdt=0,33

If you live pretty much anywhere in the United States (or anywhere in the Western world, for that matter), you've undoubtedly been bombarded by their ads. They're everywhere, from subway stations to YouTube videos, billboards to brochures, TV spots to radio broadcasts. These ads, designed with bright candy-colored pastel hues, feature dancers leaping in aestheticized traditional Chinese garb, with slogans declaring "5,000 Years of Civilization Reborn!!" "Art That Connects Heaven and Earth," and the ever more explicit "Experience China Before Communism!!!"

I’m talking about Shen Yun,

which is a “non-profit” US-based company that produces dance performances with symphonic music. Despite seeing ads for “Shen Yun Performing Arts” on practically every promotional format imaginable—subway ads, YouTube ads, billboards, brochures, TV spots, and radio—I still hardly knew anything about their “whole deal,” but according to the Shen Yun Performing Arts website, the name “Shen Yun” means the beauty of divine beings dancing, which is pretty pompous if you ask me(you’re reading this).

You may have been wondering how Shen Yun Performing Arts is able to call itself a non-profit, but just like Scientology(also U.S.-based), it’s due to Shen Yun being owned, operated, and staffed by Falun Gong, a broadly “new-age” religious movement(an organization some (me) would call a cult). The “performing arts” wing of this organization, since the company’s first show in 2007, has toured more than 200 cities internationally, with those early shows titled “Chinese Spectacular” Holiday Wonders” “Chinese New Year Splendor,” and “Divine Performing Arts” until the company transitioned to perform under the name “Shen Yun exclusively.” However, surprisingly, this “Shen Yun” entity has notably never performed in China, the country that this music and dance is supposed to be calling back to.

Days after I first and finally decided to look into those ubiquitous ads, I decided to bite the bullet and attend a Shen Yun performance on April 13th at the Lincoln Center “David Koch Theater”(named after and constructed by a dead right-wing billionaire) in New York City, which is the mainstage of the whole global Shen Yun production. After going, I won’t lie; I was impressed by the exceptionally skilled dancers, performers, choreographers, and musicians who make up the production; they should all be proud of their hard work and all of that. I will also not exaggerate, though, that this was one of the most insane things I have ever spent $120 (a crime) to experience. My performance started with a white dude speaking English introducing each song/dance’s plot, followed by a Chinese woman doing the same in Mandarin Chinese.

From the moment the curtain goes up for the first song, Shen Yun transports you into a “Divine Realm” on its giant projector, on the screen behind the performers, where the narrator(white dude) speaks of the spiritual discipline called Falun Dafa, gifted by spirits from the divine realm sent down to Earth, followed by performances in the first act presenting, stories about the monkey king, then to far more “politically charged” scenes dancers portraying beautiful young followers of “Falun Dafa” being persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party, even alluding to Falun Gong practitioners having their organs harvested by the Chinese government.

The last performance of the first act, titled “To Relay the Creator’s Call,” included messages on-screen displaying the English texts(right below this paragraph) decrying the “monstrosities of Darwin's evolutionary theory" and messages displaying "the evils of atheism," as well as the shocking appearance of an arts and crafts depiction of Karl Marx's face in a Communist tsunami. It quickly became clear that Shen Yun was not just a celebration of traditional Chinese culture, but a vehicle for promoting the religious and political teachings of the Falun Gong, a group that believes in supernatural abilities, apocalyptic visions, and the separation of races in Heaven. This show was "fun" but crazy and left me questioning the true nature of Shen Yun (which is, again, based in the US, not China), as well as the role of the Falun Gong movement in the United States, and how the Falun Gong and its "emissaries" work to shape public perception and influence Sino-Western relations.

Striving to relay the Creator’s call/ Revealing on stage the glory of a culture divine/Breaking the spell of atheism and evolution …” Modern thought has corrupted our original divine nature, the song continues. All “await the Creator’s deliverance back to Heaven.”

-English transations of lines from “To Relay the Creator’s Call”

Okay, so what’s the deal with Falun Gong and Falun Dafa, and why might “Shen Yun” posters and leaflets be literally everywhere?

^These are all rhetorical questions, but it all starts with this guy below.

The Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual movement founded by Li Hongzhi in China in 1992 during the Qigong Boom. Li introduced Falun Gong as a unique practice combining meditation, exercises, and a moral philosophy centered on truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance; in addition to this, the group's teachings encompass a blend of Buddhism, Taoism, and qigong exercises(Buddhist Mormons-Me), but it also espouses controversial beliefs regarding race, science, sex, and medicine initially, Falun Gong was positively received by the public and even the Chinese government, which facilitated its promotion through the China Qigong Scientific Research Society. However, as Falun Gong's popularity grew and as the faith “developed,” the Chinese government became increasingly wary of its potential as a social force independent of state control, leading to tension, and the eventual ban on their Organization within the country.

The Chinese government’s rationale for banning Falun Gong includes claims that the group spreads superstitious and fallacious beliefs, incites social disturbances, and poses a threat to social and political stability. Authorities established the "610 Office," a special security bureau tasked with overseeing the suppression of Falun Gong, employing measures such as propaganda campaigns, arbitrary detention, forced labor, and torture to compel practitioners to renounce their beliefs. The Chinese government also launched a significant propaganda effort, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic(Falun Gong is super Anti-Vaccine), to portray Falun Gong as both a physically and politically dangerous cult, further justifying the government’s actions domestically and internationally .

According to another “Shen Yun article” in the New Yorker from 2019, Li has been open about his beliefs that evolution is fraudulent, that people of different races will be separated in Heaven, and that homosexuality and promiscuity are unnatural. Li Hongzhi claims to possess supernatural abilities such as immortality and flight (but only when no one's looking). He predicts an apocalyptic end to the modern world, which both he and the show describe as "decadent."

Excerpt from Li Hongzhi’ Lecture in Sydney on Mixed-race people:

Li on Evolution:

If this article/post has sparked your interest in this Sydney Lecture, he really just says it all out.

Below, I’ll include some interesting bits that I’ve compiled about what this Li Hongzhi guy has to say about himself and his expectations of his Falun Dafa followers.

List of all of the abilities Li Hongzhi says he has, and things he expects of his followers:

Li Hongzhi's Claimed Abilities:

1. Interdimensional Being: He claims to be an interdimensional being with supernatural powers.

   1. Levitation and Invisibility: Li has claimed the ability to levitate and become invisible. These claims are part of the broader set of extraordinary powers he asserts, which also includes the ability to foresee the future​ (Wikipedia)​.

   2. Seeing Through Walls and Into the Future: Li is said to possess the power to see through physical barriers and to predict future events, enhancing his portrayal as a being with divine insights and capabilities​

2. Claims He has delayed the explosion of the Earth by 30 Years: claims that the mankind has been destroyed 81 times, and that he alone has delayed the explosion of the earth by 30 years.

   1. He claims that the mankind is corrupted, and the earth is the biggest dumping ground of the universe, and that by practicing "Falun Gong", the "true law" above all religions, one would never become sick or get in danger, and lead the world from another reset.

3. Ability to Implant the Falun: He believes he can place a metaphysical object called the Falun in his followers' abdomens, which supposedly rotates and absorbs energy from the universe, emitting energy that can "correct all abnormal states."

4. Control Over Energy Transformation: The Falun, once implanted, automatically absorbs and transforms energy, aiding the practitioner's spiritual practice without conscious effort on their part.

Expectations of His Followers:

1. Practice of Falun Dafa: Followers are expected to practice Falun Dafa, which involves a combination of exercises and moral teachings aimed at refining the body and mind.

2. Moral and Thought Controls: Li imposes a strict moral code on his followers, emphasizing truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance as supreme characteristics of the universe.

3. Rejection of Modern Medicine and Science: Followers are discouraged from engaging with modern medicine and scientific understandings, aligning instead with Li's teachings which promote alternative spiritual explanations for health and well-being.

4. Spiritual Segregation Based on Race: Li promotes a worldview that opposes interracial interactions and marriage, claiming that each race should remain pure and separate, which aligns with his teachings about the universe's structure.

5. Commitment to Spiritual Practices: Followers are expected to regularly engage in meditation and exercises detailed in his teachings, often requiring significant time and lifestyle adjustments.

6. Support for Li’s Propaganda Efforts: Followers are often involved in unpaid labor to support Falun Gong's extensive media and public relations campaigns, which include outlets like The Epoch Times, NTV(TV), UltraSurf Software(one of the most nefarious things they do imo(more later)) the ofcourse the Shen Yun performances

VideoINTERMISSION

Good YouTube Videos on Falun Gong:

This Chinese Cult is Not Your Friend - the Falun Gong story (part 2) by Washington Post columnist JJ McCullough  

"I used to work for Falun Gong" - YouTuber by a Former Musician who worked for Shen Yun, and lived in Dragon Springs:

^One of the greatest and funniest dudes of all time, he’s a former musician for Shen Yun, apparently to join their ensemble at the Koch Theater, you have to join the faith and start living at Dragon Springs(their compound), and its very funny how much he clearly didn’t care at all about Falun Gong at all while he was employed.

Okay so,

around the group's inception in 1992, Falun Gong experienced rapid growth in China, with the Chinese government estimating around 70 million adherents of Falun Gong/Falun Dafa by 1999. However, a silent protest in Beijing led to a government crackdown and the implementation of anti-cult laws. Following this, Li Hongzhi fled to the United States, where he established the Falun Gong compound and HQ, its often referred to in media as “The Mountain” and "Dragon Springs" in Deerpark in upstate New York, where Li Hongzhi and many of his followers and Shen Yun performers live, with Internet usage heavily monitored inside the compound.

Here are some photos of the compound and its location as well as a local news video on the damage they’re doing to the nearby environment:

local news environment video^

Good state media journalism incoming btw:

For more information on Dragon Springs/The Mountain, and those that live inside this counter-world, I highly recommend reading the article by Eric Campbell and Hagar Cohen for Australia’s ABC(their “BBC”(British Broadcasting Corporation you porn addicts) equivalent); they have some very fantastic interviews with people who lived inside the compound(which is still operational) regarding daily life under Falun Gong surveillance and security, as well as having more access than I will ever have.

Link to: Insiders reveal the opaque world of Falun Gong - ABC News

Whether conscious of it or not, you’ve probably seen media apart of Falun Gong's propaganda apparatus(including ads from this different white boy above) in the last couple of years, which includes the Shen Yun performances, the Epoch Times newspaper, New Tang Dynasty Television(NTD), and various other media outlets, has been instrumental in spreading the group's message and gaining political influence in the United States. The Epoch Times(founded in 2000 in NYC), in particular, has faced criticism for its overtly pro-Trump, anti-China stance and its promotion of right-wing conspiracy theories, including criticism from the New York Times who in 2020 wrote in reference to the Epoch Times that “with tens of millions of social media followers spread across dozens of pages and an online audience that rivals those of The Daily Caller and Breitbart News, and with a similar willingness to feed the online fever swamps of the far right.”

“Every other ad on YouTube is a commercial for The Epoch Times pushing Trump,”

Nearly three years after the aforementioned NYT article was written, in 2023, the Epoch Times marked itself as the 3rd most visited conservative/far-right website. However, in the years since the “Epoch” newspaper's alignment with not only Falun Gong's teachings but with Western movements, such as going all in on QAnnon/election fraud hoax, the Covid-19 anti-vax stuff that they loved, the Hunter Biden penis stuff, and all the classics like the Hillary Clinton Emails, and the Obama “not born in America” shit all has led to the outlet's perception of being cranky, biased, and lacking any real semblance of “traditional” journalistic integrity, but materially, the outlet’s rise in prominence raises significant concerns about the Falun Gong’s influence on conservative politics in the US and beyond.

When discussing media, critics/haters of Falun Gong(me) have also obviously pointed to the group's alleged cultish practices and beliefs that obviously influence their media coverage. How can the general public trust these “brave journalists” as defenders of free speech all while inside of “The Mountain” in Deerpark, NY(where many Epoch Times employees live), to produce unbiased coverage while the Falun Gong enforces strict control over almost all aspects of members' personal lives, as well as the encouragement of sincere, all-encompassing devotion to founder Li Hongzhi, and his crackpot pseudoscientific beliefs inside of the weird ass compound?

Inside of, but not limited to, the direct residents of Dragon Springs/The Mountain, Former members of Falun Gong have accused the group of brainwashing, forced labor within the compound, and physical and sexual abuse. These accusations, along with Falun Gong's promotion of pseudoscience and controversial conservative/reactionary teachings, have led many to question the wisdom of aligning with the group and propping up Falun Gong and their media and propaganda empire in the fight against the Chinese government's human rights abuses. At the present moment, the bolstering of Falun Gong has done little to anything in their religion's home country(which is the United States if you weren’t paying attention) other than deteriorate the relationship between the United States against one of its largest trading partners all while emboldening and financing anti-China partisanship advocates in government to the benefit of the profit margins of Falun Gong.

Aside in regard to UltraSurf freeware/and Manufacturing Consent

As mentioned earlier in this article, in my big list of all of the things Li Hongzhi expects of his followers, I mentioned UltraSurf freeware.

UltraSurf, a circumvention tool developed by two different sets of Falun Gong supporters, aims to help users bypass internet censorship, particularly the Great Firewall of China. Initially designed to promote free access to information in restrictive regimes, UltraSurf has been embraced by right-wing groups(NPR link, I’m not playing around) in the U.S. as a tool for internet freedom. However, this software has faced significant criticism due to its lack of transparency and the refusal to allow comprehensive code audits, raising concerns about potential security vulnerabilities and hidden functionalities, including the fact that the Falun Gong criticism website facts.org.cn, alleged to be operated by the Chinese government, is also unreachable through UltraSurf(free speech for me but not for thee).

Technical analysis of the Ultrasurf proxying software paper by Jacob Appelbaum

UltraSurf, despite its promotion as a champion of internet freedom, inadvertently supports censorship by enabling Falun Gong operators to filter and control the information flow. This aligns with broader criticisms of Falun Gong’s activities, including their use of media and technology platforms to propagate anti-China narratives and support the organization’s specific political agendas. Additionally, the relationship between Falun Gong and U.S. government-funded media outlets like Radio Free Asia (RFA)(Its programs are essentially just 4-hour broadcasts six days of primarily U.S.-backed anti-Chinese propaganda*) and Radio Free Europe (RFE) is extremely frightening, not to mention the fact that UltraSurf is not just associated but directly funded, in part, through contracts with the U.S. government's Broadcasting Board of Governors, which administers Voice of America and Radio Free Asia & Europe. Both organizations(RFA and Voice of America) have faced controversies over the management and allocation of funds intended for internet freedom projects, which were redirected away from tools like UltraSurf due to concerns over their transparency and effectiveness, though as of 2024, this funding from your tax dollars is still ongoing.

Keeping in mind this info on UltruaSurf, I want to bring up one of the most enlightening things that I read regarding the Epoch Times, specifically in my research for this post, which was from an April 2021 interview with Angelo Carusone, president and CEO of the media watchdog org Media Matters for America, conducted by the Guardian. As much as Falun Gong’s media empire works to assert its ideas openly and subliminally, I think Angelo Carusone does a good job at narrowing down the material function of these Falun Gong escapades on US/Western politics. It’s China(Before and After Communism)

I’m just gonna post a big-ass quote from the article, which I hope you will read, but if not, the main point is at the end and in bold.

According to Angelo Carusone, president and CEO of the media watchdog Media Matters for America, these outlets, and especially the Epoch Times, were always critical of China, and somewhat right-leaning, but were not commonly counted as problematic during the 2016 election as spreading falsehoods across social media platforms like Facebook.

But in a telephone conversation, Carusone said Epoch Times pivoted hard from 2017 towards material which stoked conspiracy narratives, and began spending freely in order to make sure that their message was prominent on platforms like YouTube.

“After social media sites moved against the fake news outlets, it left a gap,” Carusone said. “What Epoch Times did so well was to step right into that gap.” And, he says, they secured their niche by handing money to big tech platforms.

After Epoch Times spent about $11m on Facebook ads in 2019, the platform banned them from advertising on the grounds that they had violated rules around transparency in political advertising. But the outlet simply took its business elsewhere: according to data from Pathmatics that was analyzed by Media Matters

In the year to date, Epoch Times has spent an estimated $930,000 in digital advertising promoting videos and desktop display ads. Over 95% of their spending was on YouTube.

Through 2020 and into the early life of the Biden administration, Epoch Times and NTD alike promoted conspiracy theories related to the QAnon movement, the supposedly compromising international ties of Hunter Biden, and even sold merchandise outlining half-forgotten conspiracy theories such as “Uranium One”, which held that Hillary Clinton, as US secretary of state, engineered the sale of uranium deposits to Russian interests in return for donations to the Clinton Foundation.

While US rightwing outlets like One America News and Newsmax have profited by supplying the seemingly bottomless appetite among the rightwing grassroots for material that depicts American politics as a tangle of elite conspiracies, Carusone says it is a mistake to view the Falung Gong-aligned outlets as normal media companies.

The principal goal of Epoch Times – now publishing in 36 countries under the supervision of a network of non-profits – is not to generate profit, he says, but to mount a long and broad “influence operation”. And the goal of that influence operation, in turn, is “to foment anti-CCP sentiment”.

By leveraging the deep partisan polarization in US politics, and by tapping into a long tradition of anticommunism on the American right, according to Carusone, the outlets have sought to link Biden and the Democratic party to radical leftist movements like antifa, and then publish “anything that ties them to CCP influence”, however spurious.

Article Link: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/30/falun-gong-media-epoch-times-democrats-chinese-communists

This leverage is the appeal; this leverage is the primary function of Falun Gong’s media exploits in the United States and right-wing English content; it's a bigger market than any Mandarin Chinese “diaspora paper” will ever be in the US.

Aside #2 in Regard to Another “Dubious” Religious Org and Lessons From the Thingamabob That Killed Shinto Abe

Almost two years ago, on July 8th, 2022, Former LDP(Conservative) Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was shot dead during a campaign speech in Nara, Japan(beautiful city btw), with a homemade 40 by 20 centimeter double-barreled shotgun comprised of two metal plumbing pipes taped onto a wood mount, made by and used by the assailant, Tetsuya Yamagami. Abe's killing has been described by many as one of the most effective and successful political assassinations in contemporary history due to the near-immediate backlash against not only Yamagami but also the Unification Church and the LDP that the assassination provoked.

Tetsuya Yamagami himself, the Japanese media, and the police have all cited the primary motive for the assassination as a grudge against the Unification Church, also known as the Moonies, caused by Yamagami’s mother’s apparent financial ruin, caused by her extensive donations to the church. This tragic event brought to light the deep and controversial ties between Abe, his party, and money from the Unification Church in politics, leading to a massive public outcry and scrutiny of the church's predatory practices. (Good Reuters article)​.

Maybe shockingly to some, the Japanese public largely sympathized with Yamagami’s grievances against the Unification Church, as many had experienced or heard of the church’s aggressive donation solicitation tactics, which often led to financial distress for its members. According to an article from The Economist:

“The killer is seen by some as a dark hero, a crusader for the country’s underclass. Online, he is sometimes referred to as Yamagami Resshi, or Yamagami the Martyr. Female fans who fawn over him are known as “Yamagami Girls”. The prison where he is being held has reportedly run out of space to store the gifts sent to him.

Banyan Staff article from the Economist

This widespread sympathy and the ensuing public pressure forced the Japanese government to take decisive action. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's administration(LDP) announced the severance of all ties between the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the Unification Church, which included funds for an investigation regarding the Church’s influence in the countri’s politics.

The power of the "highly problematic" church could be diminished considerably, said Professor Yoshihide Sakurai of Hokkaido University, who has written a book on the Unification Church and is an expert on cult issues.

-Nicholas Yong & Jean Mackenzie, BBC News

Furthermore, the Japanese parliament passed legislation to restrict the activities of religious organizations like the Unification Church and to provide relief to victims of its exploitative practices.

The “Moonies” throughout the “church’s” history have (like Falun Gong) been strongly associated with anti-communist and conservative ideologies, which have materialized primarily in bolstering anti-Chinese rhetoric, mainly in Korea, Japan, and the United States. Founded by Sun Myung Moon in the Republic of Korea(South Korea), the church has been actively anti-communist, stemming from Moon's personal experiences during the Korean War. The church has engaged in political activities and funding efforts supporting conservative agendas in Western-allied nations.

Even across borders, I think the Japanese reaction to the Moonies after the Assassination of former Prime Minister Abe presents a visible precedent for the extremely visible dangers of conservative alignment and endorsement of “any old” anti-communist group given free rein to politically operate within a democratic country, no matter how controversial and cultish a group, “religion", or “church” may be.” The lesson of Abe, the LDP, Yamagami-girls, and the Moonies can show us how Western Democracies can and should be able to move away from these groups, and I don’t think the Japanese people are too different from the American people. However, I will note that it would be preferable not to have any assassinations or unnecessary violence.

(but it’s not like we’re gonna learn our lesson; the American right makes the Falun Gong so much money!!).

Aside #3: An Elephant In The Room: The Organ Stuff, Chinese Government Organ Harvesting Allegations

Serious segment(most controversial part)

One of the most important facets of Falun Gong’s messaging has little to do directly with their actual faith. In this, I’m referring to the Falun Gong organization’s claims that the Chinese government engages in forced organ harvesting from its practitioners. These allegations are supported by some testimonies from Falun Gong members, and through investigations like the Kilgour-Matas report conducted by Canadian MP David Kilgour and journalist Ethan Gutmann of the Washington, D.C, based Victims of Communism Foundation, which suggests that “prisoners of conscience are killed for their organs.” These reports often cite short wait times for organ transplants in China and the low rates of voluntary organ donation as indicators of unethical practices​ (Wikipedia)​.

Now listen, this is not to discredit or diminish the historically egregious policies of the Chinese Government under the CPC, though these “organ claims” are and have been met with significant skepticism and denial from Chinese authorities. The Chinese government admits to having previously harvested organs from executed prisoners but insists this practice ended in 2015(this is publically available information. The Chinese Government asserts that all current organ transplants are sourced from a newly established national donation system aimed at enhancing transparency and ethics​ (Columbia Library Journals). Critics of Falun Gong's allegations argue that the evidence is mainly anecdotal or based on investigations without direct access to Chinese facilities, which undermines their credibility.

According to a 2017 report by The Washington Post, research and investigative efforts have challenged the claims that China continues to conduct 60,000 to 100,000 organ transplants annually in secret. Data gathered by the American company Quintiles IMS indicated that China's consumption of immunosuppressant drugs(essential medicine for preventing organ rejection in transplant patients) matched the number of transplants reported by Chinese authorities. In 2016, health official Huang Jiefu reported that China performed 13,238 organ transplants. Xu Jiapeng, a Quintiles IMS account manager in Beijing, remarked that it was "unthinkable" for China to maintain a hidden transplant system that the immunosuppressant drug data would not reveal.

Critics have suggested that the immunosuppressant data might not account for foreign transplant tourists, but the same report from The Washington Post found these claims to be unsupported. Jose Nuñez, who heads the World Health Organization's transplantation program, stated that the number of foreigners traveling to China for transplants in 2015 was "very low" compared to countries like India, Pakistan, and the United States, as well as compared to China's historical figures, leading to even more skepticism of the Falun Gong and Victims of Communism Foundation’s claims.

Moreover, Chinese officials(not me) have suggested that these allegations are primarily politically motivated and aimed at undermining China’s international reputation. The Chinese highlight reforms and increased voluntary organ donations as evidence of their commitment to ethical practices in organ transplantation. This debate and those who support “each argument/side” underscore a broader geopolitical conflict, with both presenting contrasting narratives and evidence regarding human rights and medical ethics in China.

​ (Columbia Library Journals, this is probably the best source on the issue)​.

Final Thoughts:

Okay, so what’s the lesson here? Is there an opinion, is this dumbass substack “blogger”(me) is trying to get you to take away from this? I’d say the answer to that question is that Falun Gong is not good, or at least that it often does bad.

While it is crucial to stand against the Chinese government's or any government's persecution of religious minorities, it was and is equally important to maintain a critical stance towards actively hostile right-wing religious extremism. Failure to do so risks undermining the integrity of the opposition to authoritarianism and could ultimately dilute the cause for "religious freedom."

The persecution and oppression of Falun Gong practitioners or any religious minority by the Chinese(or any other) government is a serious human rights concern that deserves attention. However, it is also important to critically examine the teachings, practices, messaging, and political influence of the Falun Gong movement itself has, as well as how people in the Western right-wing use Falun Gong(and Shen Yun) to deepen the division between China and the United States. The group's propaganda apparatus, including Shen Yun's performances, media outlets like the Epoch Times and NTD, and their other various exploits(especially Ultrasurf) have all played significant roles in shaping public opinion and promoting a particularly vocal anti-China agenda in the United States and other Western countries.

It's crucial to stand against human rights abuses, though I think it's reasonable to be cautious when uncritically aligning ourselves with groups whose beliefs(aforementioned) and practices may not align with what you want, influencing public policy. As tensions between China and the United States continue to escalate, and with some of our worst politicians practically begging for another Cold War, it's important that we approach groups like the Falun Gong, the Unification Church(Moonies), the Scientologists, and even more traditional* religious organizations like LDS and the Jehovah's Witnesses with more nuance. It is essential that Americans uphold human rights and freedom while also working toward dialogue, understanding, and peaceful resolution of conflicts without relying on weird pseudoscientific religious organizations in guiding our foreign policy toward hostility and war.

As much as I(and sane people) can and should be haters, people in a democratic society should be allowed to believe in weird and stupid stuff, conspiracies, and homophobic guys who are able to levitate when no one’s looking, but that doesn’t mean that those ideas and tendencies of any organization like Falun Gong should have free rein to influence American medicine, foreign policy, and domestic U.S. politics in the way that the Falun Gong and their outlets continue to do so.

I’ll be sure to buy the discounted tickets for Shen Yun in advance next time.

If you or your organization is mad about what I said, you can harass me here: dwmcdonald9@gmail.com

(Update: As of July 22nd 2024, this article is really funny)

As of February 2024, if anyone tells you that the Democrats and Republicans are going to nominate anyone other than Joe Biden and Donald Trump, they’re either not paying attention to the polls, or they’re still getting campaign staffer checks from the humiliation fetishists that still fund Nikki Haley’s campaign.

This November, America is getting ready for the most elderly presidential contest in our young nation’s history, only beating the “second most elderly presidential election” by four years. That election was our last one in 2020, an election that we’re “doing over again,” also between Biden and Trump. By the end of their second term, Donald Trump would be 82, and Joe Biden would be 86, assuming neither man dies before the end of their term(WHICH HAS A NON-ZERO CHANCE OF HAPPENING) or before Americans cast their ballots in November. 

Another guy on Substack, Ettingermentum, in his article titled “What If Trump And Biden Both Die: Thinking over the not-that-quite-unthinkable. “said it funnily:

“The current President is older than helicopters and napalm. The former President is older than hedge funds and credit cards. Both are older than the state of Israel.”

There is no question both of these men are extraordinarily old for the most powerful office on the planet; it’s all that the mainstream media has been able to criticize Biden over lately(most don’t talk about real stuff he does wrong in (the Middle East)). However, if you allow me to get on my “moral high horse,” I’d want to argue against the tendency for (political)ageism and that it would be a shame if age became a disqualifying feature for the Government Office.

A lot of discourse surrounding “the appropriate age for holding political office” has been heightened recently, not just because of the election but because of the release earlier this month of Robert Kyoung Hur’s of the U.S. United States Department of Justice’s special counsel report on President Biden’s handling of classified information.

The report described Biden in an devastating way as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” who had “diminished faculties in advancing age.” As Biden was addressing the report during a February 8th, 2024, press conference, he referred to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi as the President of Mexico, and the same month, Trump praised Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán as a “great leader of Turkey.”

In Biden’s Defense, Mexico also has pyramids, I guess?

No matter what any other publication will tell you, both men aren’t exactly doing great. The age of both Presidents is an issue and could potentially be THE issue of this election. According to an October 2023 poll by Pew Research Center, most Americans, regardless of political party preference, favor age limits for those holding federal office.

I’m gonna argue against the majority of Americans. We are in exceptional circumstances; Donald Trump was the oldest President ever to be elected into office when he was sworn in during his inauguration in 2017(beating Reagan). And Joe Biden, during his inauguration in 2021, became the oldest President ever to be elected. While the advanced ages and observed cognitive slip-ups of both Joe Biden and Donald Trump do raise legitimate concerns about their individual capacities to serve effectively as President of the United States, these instances should not serve as a basis for instituting age limits for presidential candidates or any other political office. Implementing a blanket age restriction undermines the democratic principles of choice and equality, it disregards the diverse capabilities of many older individuals, and it could very well lead to a slippery slope or, worse, a new legal precedent of discriminatory practices in political candidacy.

The debate over the impact of age on leadership in the 2024 presidential election brings attention to not just the candidates’ physical number of years but their current cognitive abilities and “vigor.” Determining an appropriate age limit is inherently arbitrary. Physical and mental abilities do not decline at the same rate for everyone. While some individuals may experience a decline in certain faculties with age, others maintain high levels of cognitive function and physical health well into their later years. Establishing a one-size-fits-all age limit does not take into account these individual differences, potentially excluding competent individuals from serving based on arbitrary criteria.

For example, if you just go online and watch Sen. Bernie Sanders speak and compare him to how Biden speaks, regardless of whatever your political opinion is, and what you think of either man(I also guess it’s “unwoke” to like Bernie now), Bernie Sanders, who is also of advanced age and is one year older than President Biden, continues to be able to articulate solid and clear viewpoints to the public, and maintain an active role in politics, highlighting the subjective nature of aging. He’s still the damn Chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. Sanders and many other seniors like Mitt Romney, Chuck Grassley (demons), and Ed Markey(angel) are still ‘sharp.’ Sanders still displays continued engagement and clarity in communication, in contrast with concerns about major cognitive slip-ups from other senior politicians in the Senate, like Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who is the same age as Sanders. Mental capacity cannot be solely determined by age. 

If the argument of the “arbitrary nature of age limits” still isn’t working for you, rather than imposing age limits, a more nuanced approach could involve regular health and cognitive assessments for politicians to ensure they are fit for office. Health assessments could be a more equitable way of ensuring that all politicians, regardless of age, meet the physical and cognitive requirements of their demanding roles. I’m speculating, but I’m sure plenty of politicians under the age of 60 would fail that test, but that’s a whole different kind of article.

Look inward at how we vote and talk about these guys.

At the heart of our kinda busted democratic system is the principle that the electorate should have the freedom to choose their representatives without undue restrictions. Imposing age limits on candidates could easily be seen as undermining this principle by restricting voter choice. Even if you, like millions of Americans, think that Biden and Trump are both lousy and “cognitively impaired,” democracy still thrives on the idea that voters are capable of making informed decisions about who is best suited to represent their interests, regardless of the candidate’s age or anything else about their appearance or character. Despite all of this talk of age being an issue for both candidates, there’s practically no one from Trump’s base who seems to care.

Except from Rebecca Davis O’Brien of NYT:

In a New York Times/Siena College poll of six battleground states, an overwhelming majority of voters said they had serious concerns about Mr. Biden’s age, with 70 percent saying he is too old to be president. Fewer than half of voters have expressed similar misgivings about Mr. Trump.

By setting age limits based on physical years, the system implicitly undermines the electorate’s judgment(however stupid it may be) and autonomy by restricting voting for candidates who otherwise may be qualified and supported by a majority of voters.

You’re not crazy for not wanting a man with access to the second-largest nuclear arsenal to be senile or crazy. While concerns about the ages of presidential candidates like Biden and Trump highlight valid discussions about cognitive abilities and leadership effectiveness, they should not pave the way for age-based restrictions in political candidacy. Limitations like a “presidential age cap” contradict the fundamental principles of democracy(if we still have any) and voter autonomy, potentially sidelining competent individuals based on arbitrary criteria. Instead, embracing alternatives such as comprehensive health and cognitive evaluations, with a commitment to transparency, could work to ensure candidates’ fitness for office.

If you follow me on other websites, as much as I do like shitposting about Kamala Harris valiantly taking the presidency upon the non-zero chance that Biden dies, the function of the Vice Presidency of the United States should be the penultimate answer in easing voters’ fears by providing an “American safety net” regardless of a given presidential candidate’s age or competence. Still, it might be hard for an America stuck with Mike Pence or Kamala Harris to agree with that. It’s not a crime to want the most powerful man on Earth to be sane.

I can’t wait to see what weirdo Trump picks this time.

The term “apartheid,” an Afrikaans word meaning “apartness,”

Hello FunnymanWarRoom newsletter subscribers, it’s been a while, and this essay/post is the longest one I’ve ever written for here. It’s not that funny of a post, but I hope you get something informative out of it.

The day this comes out(1/11/2024), the International Court of Justice will be hearing the opening statements of the case known as “South Africa v. Israel(Genocide Convention)” in public hearings at the UN’s Peace Palace in The Hague. The Republic of South Africa accuses the State of Israel of committing genocide in Gaza in violation of the Genocide Convention.

For those uninitiated, for this case, I think it’s important to consider the history of the Republic of South Africa, the nation that initiated these proceedings, so I’m going to try my absolute best to condense a lot of their modern history, but obviously don’t use me as a primary source.

The British Empire effectively let go of South Africa in 1910, immediately following the formation of the “Union of South Africa,” uniting the British Southern* African claims of Cape Colony, Natal, Transvaal, and the Orange Free State. Though the forming of this union marked the end of the 104-year(1806-1910) direct British rule of this beautiful part of the world, South Africa remained a British Dominion until it became a republic in 1961.

The colonial period before apartheid wasn’t exactly peaceful. To “get” those aforementioned territories 5319 miles from the island of Great* Britain, the British clashed with the Xhosha over a hundred-year period while also occupying the Cape in the Xhosha Wars(1779-1879) in response to the Napoleonic French Empire’s occupation of the Netherlands; the Dutch East India Company was under threat, and the British sought to safeguard their route to the East Indies. A century later, The British Empire invaded the Zulu Kingdom in 1879, annexing the entire territory of the Kingdom and Establishing the Colony of Natal. The British did also fight some fellow white/Afrikaner people in the First (1880-1881) and Second (1899-1902) Anglo-Boer Wars, annexing the two Boer republics of the “South African Republic (Transvaal),” and the “Orange Free State,” while also inventing the first ever concentration camps during the Second Anglo-Boer War in 1900, used to contain both Africans and Boers.

The brutal guerrilla warfare and scorched-earth policies conducted by the British in and on farms in Boer territory during the Second Boer War, in many ways, could help you understand the bloodied founding myth of Afrikaner nationalism. The war, without a doubt, exacerbated racial tensions in South Africa. The tactics used by the British during the war and the following economic disenfranchisement of Afrikaners deeply embittered them against British/Cape Brit'(s)/pommies, leading to a political system characterized by between British-dominated and Afrikaner-dominated parties, with still no representation granted to the thousands of Indian indentured laborers living in the colony/dominion, nor any representation given to the vast majority of the South African population: indigenous black Africans.

The National Party (NP) of South Africa was established in 1914 from the emergent Afrikaner nationalist movement. Its initial expressed goal was to protect the survival of Afrikaner (Boer) culture and language and promote Afrikaner interests in and throughout South Africa. The NP briefly merged with the South African Party to form the United Party in 1934, but a faction led by D.F. Malan broke away to reform the NP in opposition to South Africa's involvement in World War II.

Joe Biden was also born on November 20, 1942.

The National Party that broke away came to power over the United Party in 1948 under that same D.F. Malan's leadership. Its 1948 general election victory is often considered a reflection of Afrikans' grievances towards growing urbanization and a narrative of perceived threats to “Afrikaner identity,” however the 1948 South African general election is also noted as the start of the Apartheid era, which lasted under the Nationalist Party’s successive rules of D.F. Malan(1948-1954), Johannes Gerhardus Strijdom(1954-1958), Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd (1958-1966), Balthazar Johannes Vorster (1966-1978), Pieter Willem Botha (1978-1989), and Frederik Willem de Klerk (1989-1994), of which all were Nationalist party leaders, ruling the nation until the country’s first democratic elections held on 27 April 1994 (Freedom Day) in which civil rights advocate and African National Congress leader Nelson Mandella was made president soon after.

South Africa’s National Party explicitly ran on a platform that centered on the policy of apartheid. When the party came to power in the 1948 general elections, it did so with a clear commitment to implement apartheid, a system of institutionalized racial segregation and discrimination. The party's leaders argued that apartheid was necessary to maintain the separation of races and protect the identity and culture of the Afrikaner (white, primarily Dutch-descended) population.

Racial segregation landed and existed from the moment Europeans first settled in South Africa in mass, but upon gaining power, the National Party began to formalize and systematize the institutionalization of the nation’s modern racial segregation. The party implemented a range of policies under the system of apartheid, which had severe and lasting negative impacts on the non-white population of South Africa. Here are some of the most notable and egregious actions and policies enacted by the NP:

1.) Population Registration Act (1950): This law required all South Africans to be classified by race, leading to widespread discrimination and loss of rights for the non-white population.

2.) Group Areas Act (1950) enforced physical separation between races by creating designated areas where each racial group could live. It led to forced removals and the destruction of multiracial communities like District Six in Cape Town.

2.) Immorality Act and Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act: These laws banned marriages and sexual relationships between different racial groups.

3.)Bantu Education Act (1953): This established a separate and grossly inferior education system for Black South Africans, designed not to educate but to prepare them for labor or subservient sedentary roles at best.

4.) Pass Laws: The SA Govt. enforced strict pass laws that controlled the movement of Black South Africans—failure to produce a pass often led to arrest and imprisonment.

The Pass laws include:

4a.) The Native Labour Regulation Act of 1911 was one of the first laws to require Black workers in the mining industry to carry passes.

4b.)The Native (Urban Areas) Act of 1923: This act formalized residential segregation and controlled the movement of Black South Africans in urban areas. It required Black people to carry passes when in urban "White" South Africa.

4c.)The Native Laws Amendment Act of 1937: This law tightened pass requirements by restricting the conditions under which Black people could live in urban areas and requiring all Black men in cities and towns to carry passes.

4d.)The Natives (Abolition of Passes and Coordination of Documents) Act of 1952: Commonly known as the Pass Laws Act, this legislation required all Black South Africans over the age of 16 to carry a "reference book" (effectively a passbook) containing personal information and employment records. It expanded the pass system to women and intensified the restrictions on movement.

4e.) The Urban Areas Consolidation Act of 1945: This and its subsequent amendments further enforced residential segregation and the requirement for Black South Africans to carry passes.

5.) Creation of Bantustans: The government established 'homelands' or 'Bantustans' for different Black ethnic groups. These areas were underdeveloped and lacked proper infrastructure and services.

6.) Suppression of Political Opposition: The NP government banned opposition parties like the African National Congress (ANC) and the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) and imprisoned anti-apartheid leaders, including Nelson Mandela.

7.) Sharpeville Massacre (1960): The police shooting of 69 unarmed Black protesters in Sharpeville was one of the most brutal examples of state violence against anti-apartheid activists.

8.) Soweto Uprising (1976): A student protest in Soweto against the compulsory use of Afrikaans in schools was met with violent repression, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of young students.

9.) Widespread Use of Torture and Extrajudicial Killings: The government used torture, extrajudicial killings, and other forms of violence against political activists and opponents.

10.) Censorship and Control of Media: The NP government heavily censored the press and controlled media to suppress opposition and maintain its apartheid propaganda.

11.) Economic and Social Disparities: Apartheid policies led to significant economic disparities, with the non-white population facing systemic poverty, limited job opportunities, and poor living conditions.

12.) International Isolation: South Africa faced international condemnation and sanctions due to its apartheid policies, leading to significant economic and diplomatic isolation.

The Apartheid faced increasing internal resistance, notably from the African National Congress (ANC) and other political and social movements. Internationally, apartheid was condemned, leading to economic sanctions from the international community, global boycotts, Condemnation from religious orders, and student divestment efforts on college campuses targeted at companies doing business in South Africa, with all of these national and international anti-Aparthied tendencies reaching a breaking point in the mid-1980s, especially regarding the Apartheid South African regime’s relationship and findiancial dependence on the United States.

Now, I’ll talk about what I promised in the title and subheading.

Joe “Brandon” Biden is an 81-year-old man who was goaded into being the 46th President of the United States, and he’s the 45th man to hold that office. But obviously, he wasn’t always the President, and it's honestly surprising that his early years aren’t talked about a lot in the media or aren’t super present in the “cultural zeitgeist” at all. Still, it might also be because he’s also been here forever(he literally joined the Senate during the Nixon administration).

Joseph Robinnete Biden Jr. graduated from Syracuse University College of Law in 1968; Joey worked as an attorney. Initially, he practiced at a law firm but soon shifted focus to public defender work and then started his own firm. Soon after, Biden's political career began in 1970 when he was elected to the New Castle County Council in Delaware, and in 1972, Biden was elected to the United States Senate from Delaware. At the age of 29, he was one of the youngest people ever elected to the Senate. Just weeks after being elected the junior senator from Delaware, Joe Biden's first wife, Neilia, and 13-month-old daughter, Naomi, both died in a tragic car accident on December 18, 1972. He served in the Senate from 1973 to 2009 before becoming Vice President of the United States.

During his tenure in the Senate, Biden held several highly significant positions, including Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and for the purposes of this message to you, he was also the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, of which he was only a member in 1986 during President Ronald Regan’s Administration.

On July 23, 1986, Reagan’s Secretary of State, George Shultz, met with members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee(of which Biden is a member) on the basis of intensifying U.S. sanctions on Apartheid South Africa, against the wishes of the Reagan Administration amid popular bipartisan public disapproval of the Apartheid South African Regime.

A day after the hearing, the LA Times noted that:

“An especially bitter exchange erupted when Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), his voice rising with indignation, accused the Administration of siding with the ruling white regime in Pretoria--which he called “some stupid puppet government”--against South Africa’s black majority.”

For the next chunk of this article/post thing, I will be clipping from a transcript of this “especially bitter exchange” provided by the Washington Post. I really do suggest you watch the video of this exchange in full below, provided by your tax dollars(link to the full CSPAN hearing here). However, when you hear our now President and then Delaware senator speak, it’s good, it’s right, but the rhetoric can very well and should also apply to something else.

Biden: But these people are dying. His people are dying. You feel frustration, they're dying. They are being shot . . . . Children are -- they are lining up and shooting children.

Shultz: It's a terrible situation and what we need to be thinking about . . .

Biden: Is what to do about it.

Shultz: . . . is what to do about it.

Biden: What disturbs me, and I'll try not to be disturbed, is not merely . . .

Shultz: Remember, I'm a taxpayer. Just because I'm secretary of state, you can't kick me around, I'm a taxpayer.

Biden: I understand that, Mr. Secretary. But I want to tell you something. What disturbs me more than the policy that you call a policy is the rationale for the policy. You set out four principles that you adhere to and I will go over them in a moment. Then you say on page 14 of prepared statement , "We must not become part of South Africa's problem. We must remain part of their solution. We must not aim to impose ourselves, our solutions, or our favorites in South Africa."

Damn it, we have favorites in South Africa. The favorites in South Africa are the people who are being repressed by that ugly white regime. We have favorites. Our loyalty is not to South Africa, it's to South Africans. And the South Africans are majority black, and they are being excoriated. It's not to some stupid puppet government over there. It is not to the Afrikaner regime. We have no loyalty to them. We have no loyality to South Africa. It's to South Africans.

And the fact of the matter is . . . it is the leaders of South Africa and their people, black and white, who have the majority responsibility. They must rise to it. Well, they are rising to it. They are rising to it with the only thing left available to deal with that repulsive, repugnant regime of Afrikaners there. They have begged; they have borrowed; they have crawled, and now they're taking up arms.

Second thing, progress toward peace requires a timetable . . . . What is our timetable? What are we saying to that repugnant regime? Are we saying you've got 20 days, 20 months, 20 years? We ask them to put up a timetable. What is our timetable? Where do we stand morally?

Thirdly Biden quotes Shultz's testimony , "The choices before black South Africans are equally clear: To avoid an easy descent into violence, terrorism and extremism; to demonstrate by their action they understand the need for compromise." Hell, they've tried to compromise for 20 years. They tried everything, everything in their power. And look what's happened to them. They are being crushed.

And then you say, "The fourth principle is that our policies and those of our allies should ensure that expanded political liberties in a postapartheid South Africa are accompanied by an expansion of economic opportunities for all -- all -- South Africans."

Mr. Secretary, maybe it's because I come from the civil rights movement in this country. We sat there and we heard the same kind of arguments. The same exact arguments: "We cannot impose from the North a solution on the South. They must work out their problems, black and white together. We cannot as a nation expose them to the economic ravages that will come. We must consider what will happen after segregation before we eliminate segregation.' My Lord, and finally . . .

Shultz: That is not an accurate parallel . . .

Biden: Let me read it.

Shultz: . . . because we don't say we have to consider what happens after apartheid before we end it. We have said again and again and again that it's an abhorrent system. And I can be just as emotional as you can about that. And it needs to end.

Biden: You cite four principles. I assume they're all equally important. You say, fourth, "Our policy and those of our allies should ensure that expanded political liberties in a postapartheid South Africa are accompanied by an expansion of economic opportunities." My God, worry about that when it comes. These people are being crushed and we're sitting here with the same kind of rhetoric, the same thing, we heard. We heard, "Go slow." We heard, "We have to take care of the problem afterward." We heard, "We can't oppose . . . "

Shultz: You are totally misconstruing the testimony that I gave. Furthermore, senator, let me say that I hate to hear a senator of the United States calling for violence.

Biden: I'm not calling for violence.

Shultz: That's what you're doing. That's exactly what you're doing.

Biden: I hate to hear an administration and a secretary of state refusing to act on a morally abhorrent point. I hate to hear this country -- I'm ashamed of this country that puts out a policy like this that says nothing. Nothing. It says, "Continue the same." We put no timetable on. We make no specific demand. We don't set it down. I'm ashamed that's our policy. That's what I'm ashamed of. I'm ashamed of the lack of moral backbone to this policy.

Shultz: I resent that. I resent that deeply because there is tremendous moral backbone in that policy on a bipartisan basis and has been for many, many years.

Biden: There's no bipartisan basis for this.

Shultz: There is. I doubt very much if there is any real disagreement with the objectives set out there, with the steps that have to be taken if there is going to be the kind of change you want. There is no other way but to get those things to happen. Now the question is, what can we do to get those things to happen, and I think I outlined a course that is there and also have tried to point up to you and the South African government the terrible situation they are creating for themselves.

Biden: Obviously the action has caused violence or at least has not stopped the violence. There is violence, overwhelming violence in South Africa today. If you want to avoid more, the former prime minister of Australia Malcolm Fraser is correct: let the South African blacks know that we stand with them foursquare.

Shultz: We do, we have let them know.

Biden: They don't believe it. And neither do I.

Shultz: Well, believe it or not, I must say I read my testimony a different way than you did.

Biden: That's exactly what you said.

Shultz: I'm surprised it could be read with those inflections . . . .

Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), chairman of the committee, then gave Shultz a chance to respond further to Biden.

Shultz: I said in my statement, and you picked it up and criticized it, that we shouldn't have favorites. What I meant by that was that we shouldn't be trying to pick out who should be the government of South Africa, who are the right blacks to be the ones to meet with. We'll meet with all comers, and there are lots of them. And it's a complicated situation. We shouldn't be trying to designate who the leaders are. We have to take them as they come . . . .

Biden: Let's be for the oppressed, whatever they happen to be.

I agree with Biden; I think we should be for the oppressed, whatever they happen to be.

These senate hearings led to the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986, which led to the imposing of economic sanctions against South Africa, prohibiting new U.S. investments in South Africa, bank loans to the South African government, and the import of certain South African products, most notably, the ban on Krugerrand Gold Coins, a major source of revenue for the country. The Act aimed to support nonviolent change in South Africa and called for the establishment of a nonracial democracy in the country.

One of the conditions for lifting the sanctions laid out in the 1986 act was the release of Nelson Mandela, the anti-apartheid leader and leader of the African National Congress, whom the South African government imprisoned for 27 years.

Initially, the President of the United States, Ronald Reagan, vetoed the bill, citing concerns about its effectiveness and potential impact on the South African economy and its neighboring countries. However, Congress overrode his veto, marking a significant bipartisan effort against apartheid. This was a rare occurrence and reflected the strong opposition to apartheid both within the U.S. political sphere and among the vast majority of the American public.

BBC: Nearly 100,000 Gaza buildings may be damaged, satellite images show

As of January 11th, 2024, the international human rights groups Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), as well as Israeli human rights groups B'Tselem and Yesh Din, have all designated or accused Israel of apartheid.

As well as this, United Nations rights experts have stated that “Israel’s occupation of Palestinian Territories is ‘apartheid’”

None of these organizations are fringe, off-base, “far-left” antizionist or expressed antisemitic organizations like some Likud-aligned Israeli or Western commentators would like you to believe. These are serious claims from serious organizations demanding moral outcry for the repugnant actions of the Israeli government.

As of January 2024, the groups I mentioned, including member states of the UN Security Council and General Assembly, describe Israel as an apartheid state for several reasons:

1.) Dispossession of Land and Property: Since 1948, Israel has enforced large-scale land seizures to dispossess Palestinians of their land and homes. These measures have been applied both within Israel and in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), resulting in Palestinians being confined to separate, densely populated enclaves. This is done to maximize Jewish Israeli control over land and minimize the Palestinian presence.

2.)Land Rights: The Basic Law of Israel Lands (1960) stipulates that the ownership of "Israel lands" can only be transferred between the state, the Jewish National Fund (JNF), and the Development Authority. The JNF leases land it owns exclusively to Jews. About 93% of the land in Israel is public land, and Palestinian citizens are blocked from leasing approximately 80% of this land.

3.) Right to Return and Residency: The Absentees’ Property Law (1950) classifies Palestinian refugees expelled after November 29, 1947, as "absentees," denying them any rights to their property, which was confiscated by the state. In contrast, the Law of Return (1950) grants Jews from anywhere in the world the right to become Israeli citizens. In East Jerusalem, Palestinians with "permanent" residency status face the possibility of losing their residency rights for various reasons, including prolonged absence from Jerusalem or for being deemed a security threat.

4.) Family Unification: The Ban on Family Unification, introduced in 2003, prevents family unification when one spouse is an Israeli citizen and the other a resident of the occupied territories. This law has affected thousands of Palestinian families, forcing them to split apart, move abroad, or live in Israel under constant fear of deportation.

5.) Commemoration of the Nakba: The Nakba Law, introduced in 2011, allows the finance minister to reduce funding or support to an institution that commemorates Israel's Independence Day as a day of mourning. This law impacts Arab citizens' right to preserve their history and culture and their ability to commemorate the Nakba, a significant event in their history.

6.) Discriminatory Treatment in Court Cases: The Israeli Supreme Court has adopted different approaches to discrimination cases involving Arab (Palestinian) citizens of Israel and those in the West Bank. While the Court has struck down policies that discriminate against Arab citizens within Israel, it has not directly addressed discrimination in cases regarding Palestinians in the West Bank.

https://www.hrw.org/report/2010/12/19/separate-and-unequal/israels-discriminatory-treatment-palestinians-occupied

https://2001-2009.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41723.htm

https://www.jta.org/2021/01/14/israel/israel-is-an-apartheid-state-leading-israeli-human-rights-group-says

https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/05/12/israel-discriminatory-land-policies-hem-palestinians

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/7/19/five-ways-israeli-law-discriminates-against-palestinians

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-system-of-apartheid/

https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/03/1114702

Everyone on Earth saw the torture, the destruction, the devastation, and the horror of October 7th and the aftermath of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, led by Hamas, the Palestinian Sunni Islamist group in control of the Gaza Strip, and as of today, it has been 96 days since those attacks and the world has seen other things since then.

Since October 7th today, Israel's war on Gaza has killed more than 23,200 Palestinians, with two-thirds of them being children and women. The Gaza health ministry says that more than 59,000 people have been wounded in the war. Al Jazeera English, on 22 December 22, 2023, reported that all of Gaza is at ‘risk of famine’ as fighting rages, with at least 576,600 people exhausted of all their remaining food supplies.

Not to conflate or delegitimize the suffering of any person involved in either of these conflicts. Still, for comparison, since the start of Russia’s War/invasion in Ukraine nearly two years ago in February of 2022, the United Nations Human Rights Office (OHCHR) says that more than 10,000 civilians have been killed in Ukraine since the Russian invasion. According to the same organization(UNOCHA), today, there have been 23,074 reported deaths in Gaza between 7 October 23 and 7 January 24, an average of 250.8 per day, and 330 deaths so far in the West Bank.

Using publicly available data, Oxfam calculated that number of average deaths per day for Gaza is significantly higher than any recent major armed conflict including Syria (96.5 deaths per day), Sudan (51.6), Iraq (50.8), Afghanistan (23.8), Yemen (15.8), Ukraine (43.9), and lastly Gaza, (250.8).

Time: As Israel Reckons With Killing of Hostages, Critics Worry About Routine Excessive Force Against Civilians

NBC News: How 3 Israeli hostages tried to save themselves, only to be killed by their own military

CNN: One in 100 people in Gaza has been killed since October 7

Our President, Joe Biden, has long been a strong supporter of the State of Israel. The same year, Joe Biden faced off against Reagan’s Secretary of State George Shultz in 1986 regarding the Reagan administration’s tacit support of Apartheid South Africa; Biden stated:

“If there were not an Israel, we’d have to invent one,” Biden said in the Senate session in 1986 after sending Israel $3 billion. America funds Israel “to protect US interests in the region.”

Video below & Video Link from Middle East Eye:

Directly from the U.S. State Department:

Steadfast support for Israel’s security has been a cornerstone of American foreign policy for every U.S. Administration since the presidency of Harry S. Truman. Since its founding in 1948, the United States has provided Israel with over $130 billion in bilateral assistance focused on addressing new and complex security threats, bridging Israel’s capability gaps through security assistance and cooperation, increasing interoperability through joint exercises, and helping Israel maintain its Qualitative Military Edge (QME).

The power of Israel, from its founding, has come from and by the United States, and in turn, pro-Israel lobbying firms(like AIPAC) spend millions of dollars every year to influence U.S. elections, like many other countries do, to maintain U.S. candidates and policies in support of their national project. This American Support for Israel notably includes military funding and funding for weapons that are currently being used in Gaza.

On November 27, 2023, Caroline B. Glick, the senior contributing editor of Jewish News Syndicate, published in her column an article titled “Biden is the primary obstacle to Israeli victory,” in which she cites an interview of retired IDF Maj. General Yitzhak Brick, in which he says below a sentiment I think every American taxpayer should grapple with while thinking about this conflict

“All of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it’s all from the U.S. The minute they turn off the tap, you can’t keep fighting. You have no capability. … Everyone understands that we can’t fight this war without the United States. Period.”

-Maj. General Yitzhak Brick

Today, on January 11, 2024, South Africa formally brought genocide charges against Israel at the International Court of Justice(ICJ) in The Hague. South Africa's charges are based on the 1948 Genocide Convention and include the following acts of killing Palestinian civilians in Gaza, causing serious bodily and mental harm to Palestinians in Gaza, and inflicting conditions of life on Palestinians in Gaza that are calculated to bring about their physical destruction.

U.S. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby last week called the lawsuit “meritless, counterproductive, and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever,” while Israel has rejected it as “blood libel.”

Israel is represented by Malcolm Shaw, KC, and the South African legal team includes John Dugard, Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, and Vaughan Lowe, KC. This case at the ICJ will take years to conclude or reach a verdict formally, and I don’t trust anyone who knows what the outcome will be. Still, hopefully, at least in some way, South Africa, a nation with a similar history to that of Israel, and its delegation, along with their case, may help prevent bloodshed and lead to justice at the highest level, now and in the future.

I guess if you’ve read this far, you understand the point of this whole essay/post is to highlight the hypocrisy and a contradiction, but for me, this was spurred by confusion and disappointment towards my head of state and the Government I’ll pay taxes to. It isn’t a gotcha; in 1986, Senator Joe Biden of Deleware was a moral, correct, and righteous actor in calling for the end of South African Apartheid and the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act, which makes it even worse when I wake up every morning to news of continued bloodshed finacially supported by the Biden admin at the United Nations with their vetos on a ceasefire. It’s just sad, knowing that Joe Biden has had it in him to chart another path. He’s one of the only men on the planet with any power whatsoever to do so.

Biden: Let's be for the oppressed, whatever they happen to be.

Hey, y'all, There is less than one year before the 2024 election, and it's looking like we’re going to get almost a carbon copy repeat of 2020,

Incumbent President Joe Biden vs Former President Donald Trump. However, if you’re a Democrat, there’s one glaring problem: Joe Biden’s polling is (as of December 3rd, 2023) by all current measures… NOT GOOD!

In mid-November, the news agency Reuters, in their US presidential polling tracker, noted that “56% of Americans disapprove of the President,” which is the lowest Biden’s approval has fallen to since April. Young voters are sour on Biden over various issues regarding the current conflict in Israel/Palestine, housing, and climate.

Concerning the President personally, there’s no question that the general public thinks Joe Biden is old; he was the oldest president in the history of the United States when he was elected, and that will still be the case if he gets reelected. It’s not ageist to mention or be worried about this, and it's not ageist to note that Biden is slowing down. As the presidential election approaches, the Democratic Party faces a pivotal decision: should President Joe Biden spearhead their campaign again, or is it time to look for new leadership? Of course, the standard margin of error a year before the election is around ±6 points between the two leading candidates. Still, Biden could have one severe fall to the ground or have a Mitch McConnell-level freeze once, and that would be the end of any of his reelection hopes.

Joe Biden’s approval rating has never recovered since he authorized the US military’s pull out of Afghanistan on 30 August 2021. Regardless of how you personally feel about it, that action marked the end of his general approval and popularity over 50%. Throughout his term, President Joe Biden's administration has faced significant challenges in public opinion, particularly concerning the economy, climate, gas prices, immigration, and other critical issues influencing public perception from all sides of the political spectrum. Economically, the U.S. experienced mixed outcomes: there were signs of recovery post-pandemic, but increased inflation rates, peaking at a 40-year high, persisted as a significant concern. While aiding recovery, some economists criticized the American Rescue Plan for exacerbating inflation during a low supply period. GDP growth showed early promise but was followed by two-quarters of contraction, raising recession fears, though an official recession wasn't declared​​​ and was avoided in large part due to the IRA (Inflation Reduction Act) and significant and successful pushes(incentives packages) increasing American job growth post-covid.

Public skepticism has extended to Biden's handling of critical issues. The majority of the American public expresses little confidence in his decisions on economic policy, immigration, and international crises, reflecting concerns over his effectiveness with Congress and in foreign policy, especially regarding China​ in right-wing circles and criticism towards his staunch support of Israel in many left-wing circles in Biden’s own party.

Biden's impact on the tone of national political debate is viewed negatively by a sizable portion of the population, with 39% believing he has changed it for the worse since taking office, according to Pew Research Center. These challenges, encompassing economic pressures and doubts about Biden's leadership effectiveness, have significantly shaped public perception, presenting hurdles for his administration as it approaches his 2024 election campaign.

This “electoral rut” may be something that may only be sticking to Biden and maybe not the rest of the Democratic Party. Notably, in a New York Times/Siena College poll, an unnamed, generic Democrat polled over 5 points higher than Biden does in a potential match-up against Donald Trump. (See below)

This poll isn’t just data; the significance of it is further emphasized by the Democratic Party's outstanding performance in the 2023 elections and referendums. Despite Biden’s declining approval ratings, Democrats have succeeded in various states, particularly in areas focusing on abortion rights post-Dobbs (Roe v. Wade overturning). Victories in midterms and special elections, as well as strong performances in races like the Ohio pro-abortion referendum, congressional races in Virginia, and Kentucky’s Gubernatorial Election, suggest that the party's platform remains resonant with voters against the Republican agenda even in red and swing states, independent of Biden's personal popularity.

Did not have this in the print artice but for emphasis here is a list of all of the elections that happened in november 2023, and note the states and the results:

1. U.S. House of Representatives Special Elections:

   • Virginia's 4th District: Democrat Jennifer McClellan won (margin not specified).

   • Rhode Island's 1st District: Democrat Gabe Amo won (margin not specified).

   • Utah's 2nd District: Republican Celeste Maloy won (margin not specified)​​.

2. Gubernatorial Elections:

   • Kentucky: Democrat Andy Beshear was re-elected by a margin of 52.5% to 47.5%.

   • Louisiana: Republican Jeff Landry won with 51.6% of the vote.

   • Mississippi: Republican Tate Reeves was re-elected by a margin of 51.2% to 47.5%​​.

3. Attorney General Elections:

   • Kentucky: Republican Russell Coleman won by a margin of 58% to 42%.

   • Louisiana: Republican Liz Murrill won (margin not specified).

   • Mississippi: Republican Lynn Fitch was re-elected by a margin of 58.7% to 41.3%​​.

4. Secretary of State Elections:

   • Kentucky: Republican Michael Adams was re-elected by a margin of 60.6% to 39.3%.

   • Louisiana: Republican Nancy Landry won (margin not specified).

   • Mississippi: Republican Michael Watson was re-elected by a margin of 60.1% to 39.9%​​.

5. State Treasurer Elections:

   • Kentucky: Republican Mark Metcalf won by a margin of 57.2% to 42.8%.

   • Louisiana: Republican John Fleming won (margin not specified).

   • Mississippi: Republican David McRae was re-elected (margin not specified)​​.

6. State Agriculture Commissioner Elections:

   • Kentucky: Republican Jonathan Shell won by a margin of 59.3% to 40.7%.

   • Louisiana: Republican Michael G. Strain was re-elected unopposed.

   • Mississippi: Republican Andy Gipson was re-elected by a margin of 58.4% to 41.6%​​.

7. State Supreme Court Elections:

   • Wisconsin: Janet Protasiewicz won by a margin of 11.02%.

   • Pennsylvania: Democrat Daniel McCaffery won by a margin of 6.02%​​.

8. State Legislative Elections:

   • The Democratic Party flipped control of Virginia's House of Delegates and retained the majority in Virginia's Senate. They also expanded their majority in New Jersey's lower house. The Republican Party strengthened its majorities in Mississippi and Louisiana legislatures (specific margins not provided)​​.

9. Notable Mayoral Elections:

   • Jacksonville, Florida: Democrat Donna Deegan won (margin not specified).

   • Danbury, Connecticut: Democrat Roberto Alves won (margin not specified).

   • Evansville, Indiana: Democrat Stephanie Terry won (margin not specified).

   • Manchester, New Hampshire: Republican Jay Ruais won (margin not specified).

   • Spokane, Washington: Democrat Lisa Brown won (margin not specified).

   • Terre Haute, Indiana: Democrat Brandon Sakbun won (margin not specified).

   • Wichita, Kansas: Libertarian Lily Wu won (margin not specified).

   • Charleston, South Carolina: Republican William Cogswell won (margin not specified)​​.

During the week before this article will be published, I conducted a very informal poll on about 50 [NAME OF MY UNIVERSITY] students about their opinions on our wise leader, Joe Biden. The significant majority of student respondents expressed that Biden was too old, with 88% answering “Yes” to the question, “Should Biden retire and let another Democrat run.” Even though most respondents indicated that they would still vote for Biden if he were on the ballot over a Republican, that doesn’t diminish the clear preference for another Democrat over Biden in the election, both nationally and on this campus. This poll, though extremely limited in scope, mirrors broader national sentiments and suggests a disconnect between Biden's personal appeal and the general support for the Democratic Party. The results imply that while the party's policies and stance on key issues like the economy and social rights resonate with voters, Biden as a figurehead may not be as effective in galvanizing support, especially among younger voters and some voters in key states over
the conflict in Palestinian(i.e., Michigan). This dichotomy poses a strategic dilemma for the party as it approaches the 2024 election.

Okay, so hypothetically, who do we run? And who will?

This really is the last chance(This being now(12/5/2033) for Biden to drop out, and I’m extremely skeptical that he will; if he does, it would immediately fire a starting gun to one of the fastest snap presidential primary elections in the Democratic Party’s history. There are three “main” people already running for president on the Democratic side against Joe Biden: Minnesota Representative Dean Philips, political commentator Cenk Uygur, and author Marianne Williamson; however, if Biden were to drop out, I would expect this list to become much more saturated, but here’s a few names of 3 US governors I hope and/or think would put their hat in the race.

Number 1: Josh Shapiro, the Governor of Pennsylvania, has garnered a favorable reception early in his term, with an approval rating stabilizing around 53%. Shapiro's strengths lie in his fresh approach to governance and his ability to not just appeal to voters in Pennsylvania but act on their behalf, especially in times of crisis that need swift disaster management, like in the case of the infrastructure failures causing the I-95 collapse, where he issued a disaster emergency proclamation and swiftly reopened the lanes, as well as his immediate pledges and orders protecting abortion rights after the Dobbs Decision. Pennsylvania is a pivotal swing state. Shapiro not only matched Biden’s performance in 2020 but also exceeded the President’s margins in his election to the Pennsylvania Governorship in 2022.

Number 2: Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, with a 56% approval rating, is noted for flipping every branch of Michigan's government blue during her two terms in the governor’s office of a decisive swing state in the last couple of elections. Her decisive actions, particularly during the pandemic, have resonated with the majority of her voters, positioning her as a potent Democratic contender on a national scale in a rising Midwest(This also applies to Shapiro).

In my opinion, Whitmer is the best one(Read the Ettingermentum article and scroll to the bottom).

“in 2018, when she first ran for Governor. On the ballot alongside her was a proposal for a constitutional amendment to hand power over redistricting from the Republican-controlled state legislature to an independent commission. The measure would win in a landslide, as would Whitmer; in a state that had voted for Trump just two years prior, she would win her race by nearly 10 points, the largest margin of victory of any Democrat in Michigan that year. While other Democratic candidates in similar races, from Stacey Abrams to Andrew Gillum, struggled to benefit at all from the blue wave, she did so with ease, not only matching but outright exceeding national shifts to the left. Even this early in her career, she had already set herself apart from the pack.”

Link to article

Number 3: My governor from California, Gavin “Gruesome” Newsom, holds a 56% approval rating and is starting to be recognized for his increased national media presence, especially post-Dobbs, with things like his Sean Hannity interview and debate with the Republican Governor of Florida and hopeful Presidential candidate(lmao) Ron Desantis. His leadership in managing California's complex economy and harping on key social issues not just in his state but nationally marks him as a prominent figure in the Democratic Party with potential presidential appeal, despite his(let’s be real) “coastal elite” baggage as a Californian(a downside that isn’t present in either Josh Shapiro or Gretchen Whitmer).

The following section between the “_____________” was not in my article in the paper, but I am going to include it for this as some of my more honest opinions:

________________________________________________start

Whitmer(YEAH!), Shapiro, and Gavin that people(me) float will run; it’s unlikely that any of those three and any “players” will run unless President Joe Biden himself doesn’t admit he’s seen his polling numbers against a guy who’s an ex-game show host and a political insurrectionist and make the call that it should be someone besides himself. Of those, There are a bunch of other democrats besides the three governors I mentioned in my article(this one kinda) about who/should consider running if Biden is out.

I’ll list some and give some quick thoughts:

• Vice President Kamala Harris(D-CA)-No, 53% dissaproval(at a minimum)

• Governor J.B. Pritzker (D-IL)- Yes, big boy, big guy, still a low performer

• Governor Tim Walz (D-MN)- I like him ig

• Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg (D-IN) -We will get negative votes, laughably unqualified.

• Governor Roy Cooper (D-NC)- We would actually win that state this time, worse Andy Beshear.

• Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY)- He should run for President in 2028 and Win

  (may write about him more at length later this month)

• Governor Jared Polis (D-CO)- No.

• Mayor Eric Adams (D-NY)- Turkey

I will also say that the DNC shat the bed on young voters on climate and on Palestine, regardless of how strongly you feel either way about it; just a matter of if they will end up choosing just to vote “against Republicans.”

Young people to Joe Biden: You betrayed us on climate change

The fact that the national DNC is actually spending money thinking that “Florida is in play” is honestly embarrassing; Joe Biden has lost a fuck ton of young voters for not supporting a ceasefire in Gaza, as well as most American Muslims in key states(like Michigan, which has been a decisive swing state in the last few elections) may not be voting for Trump now, but they’re certainly not voting for Biden. I expect that Biden’s approval rating to never reach post-afgan levels.

Though Joe Biden would probably win every swing state if he legalized weed in October of next year, lol

Quote from an Al Jazeera article:

“‘Not Trump’

Muslim Americans said they did not expect former President Donald Trump to treat their community any better if re-elected, but saw denying Biden votes as their only means to shape US policy.

“We’re not supporting Trump,” he said, adding the Muslim community would decide how to interview other candidates.

It remains to be seen whether Muslim voters would turn against Biden en masse, but small shifts in support could make a difference in states Biden won by narrow margins in 2020.

A recent survey revealed a significant decline in Biden’s backing among Arab Americans, dropping from a substantial majority in 2020 to just 17 percent.

This shift could have a crucial effect in states like Michigan, where Biden secured victory by 2.8 percentage points, and Arab Americans constitute 5 percent of the vote, according to the Arab American Institute.

Among the general public, opinion polls show most Americans back an end to Israel’s war in the besieged enclave.”

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/3/us-muslims-pledge-to-ditch-bide

Personally, I don’t want Joe Biden to Run, I am of the opinion that he should retire; as of right now, with the current field, I will flip a coin to see if I pick Cenk Uygur or Marianne Williamson for the DNC primary for climate & foreign policy, then just end up voting for Joe Biden for president in the general election(in California.)

However, if Joe Biden is the nominee, which will probably stay the case, I might decide on election day to vote Green as a joke to participate in making Joe Biden win the election, but while losing the popular vote(which is the funniest outcome)
^Only because I’m from California, and it’s gonna go blue anyway.

______________________________________________________end

Despite the challenges facing President Joe Biden, he still possesses some notable strengths, including “vast” experience(he was literally elected to the US Senate during the Nixon Administration, (God, he’s so old)) and parts of what could be perceived as a “good track record of leadership” during the latter half of the COVID-19 pandemic/Vaccine Rollout, and the 2022 global energy crises caused by the war in Ukraine. However, amidst shifting public opinion regarding his presidency, especially amongst young voters, the question of whether this unpopular president should still run is an extremely contentious one among the political class in government and media, but that’s not the case for the general public. The Democratic Party faces a critical decision balancing Biden's will to run and the “incumbent’s advantage” with the electorate's clear desire for change. 

Please Retire Joe for the Good of the Republic.

Hey All,

First of all, the guy who did this is cool, and his name is Giovanni Battista Piranesi. I haven’t done any art appreciation bits on here in a while, so this may be a shorter post, but I’ve been looking and have been interested in Piranesi’s work ever since I first saw them this week online, so here I am.

For a basic rundown, Piranesi was born in 1720 in Venice and trained as an architect before moving to Rome in 1740. In Rome, Piranesi became fascinated by the ancient ruins and started documenting them through detailed etchings. His most famous work in this vein is the “Vedute di Roma,” which made up a series of 135 prints.

“Vedute di Roma” is cool, don’t get me wrong. I will admit I like looking at them and thinking about the Roman Empire and all that(go look at it), but in all honesty of Piranesi’s series of works, the one most interesting to me is a series of 16 prints made around 1749-50, in which Piranesi created his acclaimed “Carceri d’invenzione” (“Imaginary Prisons”) a series of etching and engravings which are typically seen as early precursor of Romanticism and Surrealism - depicting huge, labyrinthine prison interiors with obscure machinery and infinite stairs.

What Piranesi is able to create are basically surrealist Catholic God-fearing architectural fever dreams of oppressive and goliathan design - vast labyrinths of stairs and machinery that stretch on forever. These ominous prisons completely warp your sense of space. Carceri d’invenzione” is filled with endless hallways and shafts that nearly seem to swallow the tiny human figures. People become powerless ants, overwhelmed by the sinister vastness of the vaulted ceilings, disappearing into the darkness, the final roof so far away it might as well be replacing the sky.

Despite the massive scale, Piranesi’s prisons are completely claustrophobic and confining; the staircases, scaffolding, and stone buttresses descend endlessly into shadow, unlike any sensible, ordinary buildings open to the sky.

Piranesi used the chiaroscuro method of strong contrast between light and shadow. This creates a sense of drama and depth/space in the paper.

The lack/replacement of the sky in a lot of these works bleeds desperation with no horizon. Still, the facade of one and with no discernible escape or free movement within these works powerfully conveys the feeling of infinite, inescapable imprisonment. These structures seem designed to crush the human spirit through their sheer monumental bulk.

Piranesi’s prisons convey darkness and a dread, both physical and psychological, with the little humans we see and relate to. Within their enormous walls and the desperation they cause, all hope is seemingly lost forever. The scale Piranesi is working with is powerfully oppressive.

I will try to stop being an annoying art narc, but I am trying to be sincere; I really do like this guy’s work; it is all so incredible.

To preface: I know Piranesi didn’t invent the optical illusion(that was the Greeks), but for example, in The Round Tower(Below), the cylindrical room looks like it stretches upward forever. But it’s really just the same visual elements repeating over and over. These radial patterns draw your eye upward and give the illusion of an endless ascent with so much detail and all by hand. In the 18th century, before anyone had any foundation of optical illusions and their forms, he was sometimes throwing dozens of optical illusions per etching using radial perspective, false vanishing points, exaggerated foreshortening & cropped framing, and impossible structures, sometimes all being present within just one of these “frames” depicting these prisons, which is super impressive, and he was able to do all of this in large part because of his architectural background allowing him to both use and deconstruct architectural methods to craft these gargantuan prisons.

Piranesi’s use of optical illusions prefigured Op Art and its focus on disorienting effects. His repeating patterns and visual tricks challenged the eye centuries before these were more formally and widely understood, with Piranesi’s radical manipulation of perspective and imagery in his Carceri series foreshadowing many later developments in visual art.

And it’s cool to see the influence Piranesi had on surrealists like MC Esher, Max Ernst, and Giorgio de Chirico in some ways, directly building upon Piranesi’s irrational juxtapositions and oneiric dreamscapes nearly a century after his last work was made. But of those guys, the aforementioned Dutch artist M.C. Escher was my favorite, employing impossible geometries and scale to dwarf the human presence. In Escher's work, people become part of the mathematical patterns, trapped within the infinite loops and disorienting dimensions, with much more “clean precision” in comparison to Piranesi's gritty prisons with weathered and brutal textures.

With more of his work below, I’ll leave it here: this guy’s stuff is cool, and I like it, simple as(ignore the literal newsletter I run).

See ya!

Link to the Full Carceri d'invenzione collection

A bit over a month ago, I picked up this fun little thing called the Game Boy Camera. Above is a picture of a blue Game Boy camera inside a Game Boy pocket console, which, as you can hopefully see, is displaying a picture of my Cat above this short blob of text. I’ve been having a ton of fun with it!

The Game Boy Camera, developed by Nintendo Research & Development 1 and the Japanese company Jupiter, is a 1998 cartridge-based accessory for the Nintendo Game Boy. Its camera has a 128×128 pixel CMOS sensor, and it can only store just thirty 128×112(0.001434-megapixels) grayscale digital images before you have to start deleting and replacing its photos, which only use the 4-color palette of white, light gray, dark gray, and black that the Game Boy system is limited to.

Despite the limits of the Gameboy Camera, with its extremely low resolution of 0.001434 megapixels and its four “black to white” colors, I’m still having a good time with this thing. Maybe it’s nostalgia for some and a general interest in niche video game history for me, since I never grew up with this thing, but I honestly really like taking pictures with this little guy. Though some people, even today, are doing some crazy stuff with this antiquated piece of technology, such as the one in the image above/the hyperlink embedded in this text, the limitations of the camera are actually fun to work around.

This is a relatively quick update compared to what I think I’d prefer to be making right now, but I’ve been taking quite a few pictures with the Gameboy Camera recently(I’m biased, but I think they’re pretty good), and I think this would be another good place to share them, so I’ll leave a couple of my favorites with some mild descriptions below.

66%  of residents in New York City are renters, and across every major metropolitan urban center throughout the United States has a majority of non-homeowning residents. Boston, with 65% of its residents as renters, Los Angeles at 70%, and Chicago at 66% renting is just the fact of life for middle and working-class urban Americans. Now the “American Dream” of home ownership many suburban and rural Americans achieve just isn’t a reality for the majority of American urbanites. Urban renters face a wide variety of problems, from rising rents and cost of living to inflation to displacement, but in the last decade, the often controversial discussion around gentrification has become top of mind in most discussions across urban America.

Tensions surrounding the topic of gentrification are high in urban America, and it continues as a hot-button issue. With it comes hostile discussions surrounding the dichotomy between new tenant gentrifiers and original residents at risk of displacement. Gentrification is often described as the process of changing the character of a neighborhood through the influx of more affluent residents and businesses while displacing original residents with less economic capital. When new tenants with higher amounts of economic capital and the ability and willingness to pay more for rent and amenities move into lower-income areas in urban centers, the cost of living increases tremendously, making it hard for the original residents to afford to live in the places they grew up. However, almost all discussion surrounding gentrification in urban America centers on the dichotomy and relationship between new tenants and original residents, ultimately disregarding a predatory third party that benefits and profits most from these two groups of renters and the process of gentrification. All renters have to pay their rent to someone, and that predatory third party are the landlords.

No average American urbanite has the financial resources and capital to buy their own home or building, and the social housing in the U.S. is laughable in comparison to those in China or in the European Social Democracies, which makes renting and interacting with the landowning class a near necessity for those who wish to live in the urban capitals of the U.S. America’s housing runs under a market system where housing is viewed as a commodity in which landlords who have the wealth to do so hold the vast majority of property in most urban centers, landlords have an economic incentive to raise rents and increase profits to meet market demand, and cater to tenants who have the ability and capital to pay more. Landlords exacerbate the problems of gentrification, and they not only will make these problems worse for original residents, but without sufficient rent control and housing alternatives, they are incentivized to do so.

When we think of landlords in the colloquial sense, the average American usually pictures noncommercial housing firms, mom-and-pop shops that own one or two buildings, and individual and independent “slumlords” raising rents. However, in the last decade, the housing market has drastically corporatized and centralized into the hands of predominantly large private equity groups and hedge funds. In the city of Atlanta, according to a 2019 Atlantic article, “between 2011 and 2017, some of the world’s largest private-equity groups and hedge funds, as well as other large investors, spent a combined $36 billion on more than 200,000 homes in ailing markets across the country. In one Atlanta zip code, they bought almost 90 percent of the 7,500 homes sold between January 2011 and June 2012” (Semuels). The monopolization of housing in major cities makes the issue of commodification even worse as the disconnected; often, multinational investment firms are even less concerned about the lives of tenants than small property-owning landlords. A study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta found that corporate landlords were “18% more likely to file evictions than small landlords”(Raymond). Even more concerning is that some of the largest corporate landowning firms discussed in the study filed eviction notices on up to a third of all their total properties within a year. The quote by German writer Erich Maria Remarque, though dramatic, illustrates this trend well: “The death of one man is just a death, the death of two millions is a statistic.” At the scale of the corporate landlord that will probably never meet or ever interact with their thousands, if not tens of thousands of tenants, those landlords can no longer view the student, the single mother, the businessman, and the artist as anything other than a “statistic.”

Under a market system where housing is viewed as a commodity in which landlords hold the vast majority of property in most urban centers, landlords have an economic incentive to raise rents and increase profits to meet market demand and cater to tenants who have the ability and capital to pay more; however, this process of continued profit accumulation stops when the amount of profit offered by a given building is capped, and that cap and solution in many cases is rent control. Rent control is most commonly defined as government control and regulation of the amounts that landlords can charge for rented housing. Like all other government-regulated controls on the prices of commodities and expenditures, rent control comes in the form of a series of laws that place “rent ceilings” , or maximum prices that landlords are able to legally charge tenants. A 2019 Stanford study found that “rent control increased the probability a renter stayed at their address by close to 20 percent.” (Diamond et. al). The price cap may be what's implemented on landlords, however, the goal of these policies are to protect tenants that can’t afford steep rent increases from their landlords, as well as protecting those same tenants from economic displacement from their homes. Displacement is driven by an unrelenting and unregulated market looking for profit, and with that search for profit and further wealth accumulation means rising rents. A 2021 article by The Hill argues that “by curbing excessive rent hikes and preventing retaliatory or unjust eviction, rent control mitigates the power imbalance between tenants and landlords, advances overall neighborhood stability, and prevents an eviction crisis as our cities become more expensive places to live” (Weaver). With this, people that can afford to stay in their homes have security and reassurance that they are able to stay in their homes without the fear of displacement, and it also, by law, negates the market incentive for landlords to evict original residents in favor of new tenants with higher financial capital.

Rent control is good, but it's not “a” or” the” final solution to the major issues that face the core issues of displacement and gentrification. With regard to rent control or any “price ceiling” under a market system,  if you set a maximum price for a good below what the market price would be, you lower the incentive for landowning firms and developers to build and rent landed property for tenants. It is the scarcity of housing that gives it value under a market system, and it is the scarcity that influences and empowers those that have land over those who don’t, and though rent control does help the issues of gentrification and displacement, it does nothing to make housing less scarce. Ultimately, rent control policies do help people with the affirmations Stanford study citing that “rent control increased the probability a renter stayed at their address by close to 20 percent.” (Diamond et al.). However, with landlords still controlling the commodity of housing and what groups the scarce resource of housing goes to, Rent control only offers a bandage solution to the broader issue of the commodification of housing. It is for these reasons that the introduction of public housing initiatives, developments, and legislation akin to the “Vienna model” of housing may offer a solution to the commodification issue.

Before a discussion as to what housing alternatives removed from the influence of landlords looks like, it is important to understand the history of where the landlord class originates as well as the history of landed property itself. Landlordism and “renting” of property have historically existed as an economic mode of capital accumulation even before the rise and establishment of capitalism.

(Get ready I’m about to be annoying and quote Marx, but he’s always right about this sort of thing)

The origins of landed property find its origins in the structure of feudalism, defined as an economic system where land was the basis of all economic and political power before capital and the extraction of surplus labor. This became the key economic driver in the transition from feudalism to mercantile capitalism. According to German philosopher and economist Karl Marx, in his work, Das Kapital, Volume III, surplus value is defined as the excess of value produced by the labor of workers over the wages they were paid. Marx’s description of surplus value is based on a model of economics and production under capitalism; however, under feudalism, “rent” and surplus value were identical. Under feudalism, all value and labor produced by feudal peasants were directly expressed by the “rent,” or the ability for a feudal peasant to exist on a plot of land. In the hundreds of years following the transition from feudalism to capitalism, the only thing that has changed with respect to rent is what economic class the value of rent is given to. With this, the primary distinction of capitalism with respect to feudalism is defined by the separation of the economic classes to which workers/peasants give their labor and rent, as most renters, in order to maintain, keep, and gain access to the shelter must set aside a portion of their accumulated capital into their rent. “The transformation of rent in kind into money rent,” writes Marx, “that takes place at first sporadically, then on a more or less national scale, presupposes an already more significant development of trade, urban industry, commodity production in general and therefore monetary circulation.” However, workers under capitalism do now have the ability to spend their earned capital on other commodities separated from rent and the landlord/feudal lord. The average working-class urban renter may give their labor to others besides their landlord to gain capital, however, to gain the privilege of shelter; a renter must always have enough to pay.

There is no doubt that the introduction of a stronger rent control policy, the introduction of subsidies for public housing, and or the abolishment of landlords as a class would obviously be economically disadvantageous for landlords. The case as to why we should disregard the whims of the landlord class is not because the people who are landlords are individually and uniquely evil people. Instead, the case against landlords revolves around the fact that they don’t create value. Many may argue that “If landlords don’t create value,” then why does anybody rent? Do landlords not provide a service of selling a living space for those that do not have the capital to own a property outright? The answer to both of these questions is no. Scottish Economist Adam Smith states that “as soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce.” From the landlord, there is no new value being created, as all value they offer already existed and continues to exist before and after the landlord. The “service” that landlords provide by “offering” shelter is the opposite of reality. Landlording is the denial of access to already existing shelters. In that, the landlord is simply using property relations and exorbitant amounts of capital to buy the licensing to restrict access to the human necessity of shelter to extract a person’s wealth to a product that is otherwise available without the existence of a landlord.

Public housing is most commonly defined as a form of housing in which the property is owned, controlled, and funded by the local or central government. In a 2020 NPR article, author Ally Schwitzer wrote about how European-Style public housing projects akin to the Vienna model could help solve the housing affordability crisis amongst renters in the urban United States. In the U.S., the concept of public housing comes with very loaded connotations. Public housing in the United States was primarily an initiative pushed following the end of the Second World War. In Schwitzer's article, she interviewed Saoirse Gowan, a senior policy associate with the left-leaning Democracy Collaborative, stating that public housing, or “projects,” in the United States have “been reserved for poor residents, typically black Americans barred from economic opportunity. Owned and operated by governments, disproportionately located in high-poverty areas and exclusively available to the neediest occupants, public housing has never had a working financial model.” Public housing's implementation in the United States of America was seen as a last-ditch resort to stop widespread homelessness among already impoverished communities, many of whom did not receive the same social and financial benefits offered to white and middle-class Americans following the "New Deal era. Public housing in the United States was, upon creation was nearly immediately disincentivized, with Gowan stating that “Public housing in the United States was designed to fail.’ ‘it was designed to be segregated, it was designed to be low-quality” (Schweitzer). In Vienna, Austria, however, the government's “social housing” public housing policy did not suffer the same fate. Compared to public housing projects in the United States, in Vienna, social housing serves a different purpose of simply providing housing to the broader public, and according to the London School of Economics, “social housing accounts for an estimated 40% of the housing stock in Vienna.” This 40% of the population, however, is not solely in the lower class of the city, this broadly high-quality housing stabilized by the government is open completely to the whole public across varying incomes, ages, and populations within the city. Gowan herself, living in social housing, stated, “It's something that even a relatively well-off person would say, ‘This is good enough for me; I'm happy here'’” (Schweitzer). Social housing is also typically placed in desirable areas within Vienna as well as required to meet the same architectural and quality standards as any other private building in the city. Higher-income tenants within social pay the market rate rent for an area, subsidizing rents for low-income residents, with half of all social housing units required to house those making under 53,225 EUR (58,980 USD). On the topic of the European nation’s social housing policy a 2013 article in the US-based Governing magazine noted: “The Viennese have decided that housing is a human right so important that it shouldn't be left up to the free market” (Holeywell). Housing policy like that in Vienna is found across the world in places like Hong Kong, Singapore, and Barcelona, all of which are seeing success amongst renting populations with high standards of living, notably all without highly fluctuating rent costs that drive displacement, and most principally all without the involvement of landlords.

According to UC Berkeley’s Urban Displacement Project across the country, “41% of all households in our 53 metro study area (26.9 million) live in neighborhoods where there is a high level of vulnerability to eviction or displacement” (Chapple). These 41% of households represent thousands of families, students, couples, and people just trying to scrape by with an economic system that not only disincentivizes their housing but this system, all the same disincentivizes the renters, the people themselves. The process of gentrification drives displacement, and in the United States, gentrification has an extremely hot-button issue. The debate surrounding gentrification has pitted the “tribes” of “original residents” and “new tenants” against each other, but this debate and conflict between manufactured factions won’t ever solve the systematic issues with American Housing policy and the commodification of housing. There are existing housing legislative efforts across the world, in nations with economies per-capita much smaller than the United States, that actively work to alleviate the financial pains and housing insecurity that their citizens face; these policies are capable of being implemented in the U.S. Will our government be pressured to make housing policy work to help make the majority of urban Americans’ lives easier, or will our housing policy continue to cater to the pockets of the small leeching landlord class?

Works Cited:

Cea Weaver, opinion contributor. “There's No Denying the Data: Rent Control Works.” The Hill, The Hill, 24 Sep. 2021, https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/573841-theres-no-denying-the-data-rent-control-works/. 

Chapple, K, et al. “Housing Precarity Risk Model.” Housing Precarity Risk Model, UC Berkeley's Urban Displacement Project, https://www.urbandisplacement.org/maps/housing-precarity-risk-model/.

Demsas, Jerusalem. “I Changed My Mind on Rent Control.” Vox, Vox, 2 Dec. 2021, https://www.vox.com/22789296/housing-crisis-rent-relief-control-supply.

Diamond, McQuade, Qian. “The Effects of Rent Control Expansion on Tenants, Landlords, and Inequality: Evidence from San Francisco.” American Economic Review, vol. 109, no. 9, 2019, pp. 3365–3394., https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20181289. 

Holeywell, Ryan. “Vienna Has Figured out How to House  Its Population—from Poor to Solidly  Middle Class—in Luxurious, Low-Rent Apartments.” Governing, Feb. 2013, pp. 28–30. 

Immergluck, Dan, et al. "Evictions, large owners, and serial filings: Findings from Atlanta." Housing Studies 35.5 (2020): 903-924.

Marx, Karl. Das Kapital. Edited by Friedrich Engels, Regnery Publishing, 1996.

Raymond, Elora L and Duckworth, Richard and Miller, Benjamin and Lucas, Michael and Pokharel, Shiraj, Corporate Landlords, Institutional Investors, and Displacement: Eviction Rates in Single Family Rentals (2016-12-01). FRB Atlanta Community and Economic Development Discussion Paper No. 2016-4, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2893552

Scanlon, Kathleen, and Christine ME Whitehead. Social Housing in Europe II: A Review of Policies and Outcomes. LSE London, London School of Economics and Political Science, 2008.

Schubach, Alanna. “Stop Blaming the Hipsters: Here's How Gentrification Really Happens (and What You Can Do About It).” Brick Underground, Brick Underground, 15 Feb. 2018, https://www.brickunderground.com/rent/what-causes-gentrification-nyc. 

Schweitzer, Ally. “How European-Style Public Housing Could Help Solve the Affordability Crisis.” NPR, NPR, 25 Feb. 2020, https://www.npr.org/local/305/2020/02/25/809315455/how-european-style-public-housing-could-help-solve-the-affordability-crisis. 

Semuels, Alana. “When Wall Street Is Your Landlord.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 8 Apr. 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/02/single-family-landlords-wall-street/582394/. 

Shuli, Redi. “Gentrification and Landlord Harassment.” Spring 2018 Shaping the Future of New York City, 15 Mar. 2018, https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/alonso2018/2018/03/14/gentrification-and-landlord-harassment/. 

Smith, Adam. Wealth of Nations. Classic House Books, 2009.  [Original source: https://studycrumb.com/alphabetizer]

“Once in his life a man ought to concentrate his mind upon the remembered earth. He ought to give himself up to a particular landscape in his experience; to look at it from as many angles as he can, to wonder upon it, and dwell upon it.”

-N. Scott Momaday

Yosemite National Park, United States

In his quote regarding the conservation of the environment, Navarre Scott Momaday is correct, and the fact that it is correct is and should be exceedingly troubling to all those that care for our Earth. Still, it should be equally alarming for all of us that inhabit it. The conservation of anything is disparaged, as Momaday says. As for the environment, there is an incredible and unparalleled lack of care, dignity, integrity, responsibility, and care from the members of the economic ruling class that are the primary contributors to the destruction of the planet and the deterioration of our collective wellbeing.

Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, China

The Carbon Majors Report, published in collaboration with the Climate Accountability Institute, found that on the subject of climate change, just “100 companies are responsible for 71% of GHG emissions.” all of which and their processes are headed, controlled, and sustained by the far upper crust of society. The people who are responsible for this ecological crisis are most certainly not dining this for “the greater good,” nor are they doing this for the good or for the sake of their underpaid and unrepresented workers, and they are certainly not destroying the planet for the needs of the people. The men who run these systems do not care about any of these things. All they care about is the collective greed run by profit and capital, and today they have the money and power to continue this sick cycle. This is the guiding principle no matter how many wondrous coral reefs are destroyed, no matter how many vast and lustrous forests are decapitated from the Earth, no matter how many noxious fumes are pumped into the air turning our crystal blue skies to a haunting orange, the people at the top do not care, they will not take responsibility, they have the wealth to avoid the struggles that will come with the destruction of our planet, and they have proven that no matter how much proof there is of their damages, given the opportunity their greed will not stop.

Victoria Falls, Zambia & Zimbabwe

One word in this quote that, in particular, speaks to me is the word “integrity.” In this instance, this word speaks to me concerning all the performative acts that these terrorists against nature conjure in an attempt to hide from the public what they are doing. Shell will have advertising with polar bears, BP(British Petroleum) will create websites to track your “personal” “Carbon Footprint,” corporate lumber companies will have tree mascots, Nestlé will preach sustainability as they use slave labor and steal water supplies only to resell it for profit, and the world’s wealthy will zealously lecture poorer countries about the dangers of fossil fuels—after devouring and guzzling massive amounts of new gas, coal, and oil from their private jets. As for integrity, it’s clear as day that these ecologically irresponsible companies have none. The most insulting thing of all is how these people of power push the blame, whether that be to other companies or other nations, but most slanderous of all is how they push the blame on the everyman and to the members of the working class. They do this in many ways, by pressuring recycling to an insane degree when all of that plastic just ends up in various countries in the Global South unused, they switch to performative paper straws that do close to nothing, and they push the everyman to buy and consume far more expensive and “humane” products all to prove and gesture and push the insidious lie that the average person is in any way responsible for the brunt of this catastrophe. And this lie is nothing close to the truth.

Denali National Park and Preserve, United States

The key problem with contemporary environmental conservation is the clear lack of responsibility not on the part of the unrepresented lower, working, and middle classes but instead by the overwhelming and vast majority of corporations and billionaires who proliferate the further expansion and the commodification of the death of our planet. Stopping climate change will never be “Good Business,” and until these people and power are either stopped, restrained, or gutted, this crescendoing cycle of destruction will continue until it is far too late.

Iguazu Falls, Brazil

End of article

Komodo National Park, Indonesia

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After a few years of little rain and repeated news about water shortages and drought fears throughout California, this winter hit historic rainfall Records. we got quite a bit of flooding, mudslides, and a bunch of hulking trees falling over. Every spring, California's desert hills explode in vibrant blossoming wildflowers; because of that rain this year, we got a really beautiful Superbloom.

If you’re following me from California, please go out and enjoy the Superbloom! Sadly not in the state this month to see it in person; however, below are some lovely photos of the California Superbloom this year with their photographers cited so you can also appreciate it online with me.

Link to places where you can see the bloom throughout California

Frederic J. Brown

Ruby Wallau

Aude Guerrucci

David McNew

Tayfun Coskun

George Rose

Frederic J. Brown

Mario Tama

Will Lester

Aude Guerrucci

Jennifer Cappuccio Maher

Frederic J. Brown

Mario Tama

On November 15th, from his Florida Mar-a-Lago residence, former President Donald J. Trump announced the launch of his 3rd Presidential campaign following his Republican Party’s disastrous performance during the 2022 midterm elections. With the vast majority of Former President Trump’s 2022 handpicked midterm candidates losing their elections (ex, Mehmet Oz, Blake Masters), coupled with the threat of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ potential 2024 run, confidence that Trump can lead the Republican party and continue to capture the party’s spotlight is being put into question daily. 

However, recently, former President Donald Trump has faced the most scrutiny for his November 22nd dinner at Mar-a-Lago with British alt-right political commentator Milo Yiannopoulos, American Nazi commentator and live streamer Nick Fuentes, and rapper and producer Ye (Kanye West). High-profile Republican leadership within Trump’s party has come out and condemned the former President for holding the dinner, with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell both denouncing the dinner as well as the guests invited. So ,who are these guests, and what does this mean for the “Political Right” in the United States?

Milo Yiannopoulos:

Milo Yiannopoulos, a British Commentator and conservative media grifter, first got his start in politics in 2014 and went on to become an editor for the ultraconservative media outlet Breitbart. Under his tenure, the website published articles and opinion pieces that promoted racist and anti-Muslim themes throughout 2014 and 2015. Yiannopoulos positioned himself as a “Gay Conservative,” with much of his 2016 being spent on his Dangerous F*ggot Tour, visiting college campuses across the country to rail against issues and movements like feminism, political correctness, transgender rights, Antifa, and Black Lives Matter. However, Yiannopoulos’s time at Breitbart came to a close when comments he had made supporting pedophilia surfaced, causing him to lose his job. Earlier this year, Yiannopoulos claimed he underwent homosexual conversion therapy and is now “Ex-Gay.” Following this, he was hired as an intern and strategist for US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Nick Fuentes:

Nicholas Fuentes is a Hispanic American Nazi, incel white supremacist leader, organizer, manlet, and media figure who seeks to forge a white nationalist alternative to the mainstream Republican party. Nick Fuentes first gained notoriety and attention after he left Boston University in 2017 due to his involvement and attendance at the white supremacist “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Following this, Fuentes started the online Livestream show “America First with Nicholas J. Fuentes,” in which he quickly gained popularity and a cult following amongst the online right. Fuentes has referred to his supporters as “Groypers” or the “Groyper Army,” in which he sponsors the idea that his supporters’ bigotry is “culturally essential” to preserve white, European-American identity. Fuentes has been excessively critical of modern feminism, citing there being no need for women’s suffrage, stating that “hookup culture” is a Jewish conspiracy, and saying on air that “having heterosexual sex is gay” and “Semitic.” Despite claims of calling members of the LGBTQ+ community groomers, pedophiles, and social degenerates, Fuentes, in 2022, was found with several gigabytes of femboy pornography on his phone. Fuentes has repeatedly denied the Holocaust, the impact of American slavery, and British colonialism. To further distance himself from the mainstream GOP, Fuentes founded the America First Political Action Conference (AFPAC), which hosted a variety of right-wing figures and political pundits.

Ye (Kanye West): 

Rapper and Producer Ye (Kanye West) has been a provocateur for the majority of his career throughout the 2010s; however, his most recent spotlight in the American media landscape has by far been the most damaging to not only his career and legacy but also the American political climate as a whole, centering the rapper’s opinions on Jewish people and antisemitism primarily. On October 8th, in his now infamous tweet, Ye stated, “I’m a bit sleepy tonight, but when I wake up, I’m going deathcon 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE The funny thing is I actually can’t be Anti-Semitic because black people are actually Jew also You guys have toyed with me and tried to black ball anyone whoever opposes your agenda.”  Following this, Ye went on to lash out against  “Jewish Zionists,” who he claims control the entire music recording and banking industry. West pushed back at the idea that it was being antisemitic. Once again referencing the 12 lost tribes of Judah, West said, Just days after Ye, Fuentes, and Milo’s dinner with the former president Donald Trump, Ye’s antisemitic sentiment seemed to reach a breaking point; however, with Ye’s December 1st interview with far-right commentator Alex Jones, in which Ye said that he “loved Hitler”, “loved Nazis” and, that the “Holocaust didn’t happen.”

With all of this, we have to wonder what the result of this new flavor of the American right-wing will bring; it’s led by an antisemitic and bipolar rapper, a femboy porn-watching Nazi, and an “ex-gay” British pedophile.