Nationalism

I remember being told in high school history that 'nationalism' was one of the causes of WW1. Everybody had it in their heads that they were the superior 'race'.

I also remember being told for my whole life - directly or indirectly - that being American was better than being anything else.

Dr Roy Casagranda:

@dairyofnomad Nationalism and Napoleon, explanation by Dr. Roy Casagranda . . . . #roycasagranda #nationalism #france #germany #nepoleon #europe #historytiktok ♬ original sound - Dairy of Nomad

Indivisible Email

ICYMI: Elon Musk is "tweeXting" about Indivisible. Twice this week.

You know what that means - we’re getting to him.

He’s ranting about "paid protesters" because the idea that people would stand up to him, to Trump, to the billionaire class - without being on someone's payroll - blows his little mind. That’s how these guys think (they also cheat at video games). Everything is a transaction. Everything is rigged in their favor.

So when they see an actual grassroots movement of regular people fighting back? It sends them into a tailspin.

And it should.

Elon Musk is currently raiding the US Treasury for everything he can steal. His hand-picked goons have gutted entire agencies, mass-fired Social Security Administration workers and shut down local offices, and thrown government services into chaos. He's demanding access to taxpayers' records and pushing to give himself direct control over where your money goes - all so he can fund Trump's billionaire tax scam, which rips Medicaid apart, slashes food assistance, and hands $4.5 trillion in giveaways to the ultra-rich.

That's what this fight is about.

They want to take everything. Not just public programs, but public power. They want an America where a handful of billionaire kings control the courts, the laws, and the money - while the rest of us get whatever crumbs they decide to let trickle down.

Over the next few weeks, we have a clear mission: Make Republicans in Congress pay for their complicity. Force Democrats to use the power we gave them. And stop the Trump-Musk coup from gutting our country.

Here's how we're going to do it.

The Next Phase of This Fight: Musk Or Us March Recess

The House and Senate are heading home for recess from March 15-23 - and they are desperate to avoid you.

Why? Because during the last recess, the few Republicans who dared to hold town halls got absolutely wrecked by their own constituents. People showed up. They demanded answers. They called out their Members of Congress for gutting Medicaid, slashing Social Security, and letting President Musk seize control of federal systems with zero oversight. In the days that followed, we saw those same Republicans start to get very nervous about their complicity and their plan to slash very popular programs like Medicaid.

Republican leadership took notes. Now they’re telling their members to dodge town halls altogether. They know that if voters see what they’re actually doing - selling out the country to billionaires while shredding programs that millions rely on -- it will be politically devastating.

And Elon Musk? He's panicking because he sees what we're doing is working. If we weren't a threat, he wouldn’t be xeeting about us.

The Plan: Make Them Answer For It

Next week, we'll send you the full Musk or Us Recess Toolkit. But here’s where we start:

• 📞 CALL YOUR MEMBERS OF CONGRESS RIGHT NOW AND DEMAND A TOWN HALL. If Republicans want to vote to gut your healthcare and hand billions to Elon Musk, they should have to face their constituents and explain themselves. As for Democrats, we need them to be out there, loudly, explaining to their constituents what’s going on and how they’re going to fight back.
• Call Senate Republicans - If they’re gutting Medicaid and Social Security, they should say it to your face.
• Call House Republicans - They’re looting the government for billionaires. Make them explain why.
• Call Senate Democrats - They must hold the line against extreme MAGA cuts and demand real guardrails to protect against the Trump-Musk coup.
• Call House Democrats - They need to hear from us. No deals. No blank checks. No business as usual.
• 🔎 FIND A TOWN HALL - OR REPORT ONE. If you know of a town hall happening, tell us here.
• 🪑 IF THEY WON’T SHOW UP, START PLANNING YOUR EMPTY CHAIR TOWN HALL. We will call them out. We will invite the press. We will make sure every voter in their district knows exactly what kind of coward they are (just for fun, we came across this video we did back in 2017 on putting together an empty chair town hall, and figured you'd also like to see it). And if your Republican senator or representative is dodging, reach out to a neighboring Democrat to stand in for them at your empty chair town hall.

This Is A Fight for Our Country

• Elon Musk and Donald Trump think they can rule this country like kings.
• House Republicans think they can steal from working families to fund billionaire tax cuts.
• They all think we'll sit back and let them get away with it.

They are dead wrong.

• This country does not belong to billionaires.
• It does not belong to Trump.
• It does not belong to Musk.

It belongs to us.

We do not do kings. We do not let billionaires steal our government. And we sure as hell don’t stand by while a corrupt former president and an unelected billionaire try to burn our democracy to the ground.

So here’s the question: Are we going to let them get away with it?

Or are we going to fight like hell?

Today's WTF

FWIW:

1. Ukraine owes me nothing
2. Trump and Vance can tie the whole thing to a cinder block and shove it up their ass
3. Not sorry not sorry, but I hate these fuckin' people

Foil Hats All Around

One fantasy to rule them all

Like legends and myths, there's a kernel of truth in most conspiracy fantasies.

Check out bellingcat.com

Big Sarge

@4thepeoplebythepeople #SonsOfLiberty #AdminTim #BigSarge #CallToAction #Veterans #Oath #NoExpirationDate #DefendTheConstitution #FMAGA #FDT #FTrumpSupporters #fypシ゚viral #ForYou #ForYourPage #America 🇺🇲 #RiseUpNow #BeforeItsTooLate ♬ original sound - 4ThePeopleByThePeople

Blackout Friday

#AltGov

#AltGov: the secret network of federal workers resisting Doge from the inside
Government employees fight the Trump administration’s chaos by organizing and publishing information on Bluesky

After seeing Elon Musk’s X post on Saturday afternoon about an email that would soon land in the inboxes of 2.3 million federal employees asking them to list five things they did the week before, a clandestine network of employees and contractors at dozens of federal agencies began talking on an encrypted app about how to respond.

Employees on a four-day, 10-hours-a-day schedule wouldn’t even see the email until Tuesday – past the deadline for responding – some noted. There was also a bit of snark: “bonus points to anyone who responds that they spent their government subsidy on hookers and blow,” one worker said.

Within hours, the network had agreed on a recommended response: break up the oath federal employees take when hired into five bullet points and send them back in an email:

“1. I supported and defended the constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

“2. I bore true faith and allegiance to the same,” and so on.

It was only the latest effort by a growing and increasingly busy group banding together to “expose harmful policies, defend public institutions and equip citizens with tools to push back against authoritarianism”, according to Lynn Stahl, a contractor with Veterans Affairs and a member of the network. Increasingly, the group is also trying to help its members and others face the thousands of layoffs that have been imposed across the federal government.

Calling itself #AltGov, the network has developed a visible, public-facing presence in recent weeks through Bluesky accounts, most of which bear the names or initials of federal agencies, aimed at getting information out to the public – and correcting disinformation – about the chaos being unleashed by the Trump administration.

With 40 accounts to date, their collective megaphone is getting louder, as most of the accounts have tens of thousands of followers, with “Alt CDC (they/them)” being the largest, at nearly 95,000 followers.

The network has also formed a group and a series of sub-groups on Wire, the encrypted messaging app, to share information and develop strategies – as played out on Saturday.

The #AltGov hashtag has roots in the first Trump administration, perhaps most famously through the “ALT National Park Service” account on what was then Twitter, according to Amanda Sturgill, journalism professor at Elon University, whose book We Are #AltGov: Social Media Resistance from the Inside documents the earlier phenomenon. (That account, with its 774,000 followers, has since moved to Bluesky. Its online presence is parallel to and separate from the #AltGov network.)

The original #AltGov Twitter accounts were dedicated to “sharing information about what was happening inside government – which usually doesn’t get covered as much, because it usually works”, Sturgill said. Examples included the first Trump administration’s deletion of data and separation of families through immigration policies, she said.

The people behind those accounts also banded together to “provide services the government wasn’t providing” – like helping coordinate hurricane relief and distributing masks during the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Those efforts were often coordinated in Twitter group chats.

It was “a movement, more than an organization”, Sturgill said – and the same could be said of the current version, which moved its social media presence from X (formerly Twitter) to Bluesky “because of the Elon mess”, said Stahl, referring to Musk’s 2022 purchase of the app. “It’s not safe to organize [on X] anymore,” she added.

The current iteration has not been reported on to date, but the numbers of the Bluesky #AltGov accounts have doubled in recent weeks without media attention, Stahl said. The group internally vets all members “to make sure people work where they say”.

A thread from the Bluesky #AltGov account for the Fish and Wildlife Service compiles five funny responses including “Counted all the fish and ensured they were gendered properly”

“#AltGov dates from the first Trump administration, but it’s even more needed now,” said an employee at Fema, the disaster response agency, who requested anonymity to avoid being targeted at work. She recently launched an #AltGov Fema account on Bluesky. With nearly 13,000 followers, the account says it’s dedicated to “helping people before, during, and after (this democratic) disaster”.

“Every federal employee takes an oath,” said the Fema employee. “When I did it, I teared up.” She said one reason she decided to join #AltGov was because “information [from the federal government] is so compromised right now. Everything is going on behind closed doors.”

As an example, she mentioned the moment nearly two weeks ago when Trump and Musk brought attention to her agency, claiming that Fema was spending $59m on housing immigrants in New York hotels. The administration fired four Fema employees. So she turned to Bluesky and posted on the #AltGov Fema account:

Fiction: FEMA paid $59 million last week for illegal immigrants to stay luxury hotel rooms in NYC

Fact: FEMA administered funds allocated by Congress via the Shelter and Services Program (for Customs and Border Protection) which reimburses jurisdictions for immigration-related expenses. FEMA just sends the payments.

“The official story the federal government was telling was a lie!” the #AltGov member told the Guardian. “Of course they didn’t throw CBP under the bus – because to them, those are the people who lock up immigrants.”

Stahl, the federal contractor, said that #AltGov members are also increasingly turning their attention to what she called “action plans” for everyday citizens, such as calling members of Congress and attending town halls. “The idea is to get regular people aware of what’s happening … [and] maybe even inspire some people to run for office,” she said.

And as Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) swings its “chainsaw” through federal payrolls and piles up layoffs, #AltGov members also are using encrypted chats to figure out how federal employees can help one another. “[A]re we thinking of gathering resources for terminated folks?” one #AltGov member recently asked on Wire. “We are gonna need food bank info and benefits and anything the [federal] unions don’t cover.” Others weighed in on building a website to cover such information.

Sturgill said the first go-round of #AltGov was “interesting … [because] it kind of stood up a different way of governing by putting it in direct contact with people – a ‘government with the people’. Whether this [version] can take it further depends on how much of the government is left.”

A Question

Some politicians and their supporters claim the Holy Gospel as their book - their spiritual guide - their moral compass.

How can these people identify as Christian, and then treat the poor, and the sick, and the stranger like shit that needs to be scraped from their boots?

Today's Nerdy Thing

The Ort Cloud

• We don't really know what it looks like
• It takes light from the sun 8 minutes to get to Earth
• It takes light from the sun about a month to get to Neptune
• It takes light from the sun about a year and a half to get outside the Ort Cloud

Reporting Its Own Demise

Jeff Bezos has announced the death of The Washington Post in advance.

Coincidentally, my subscription runs out as of today too.

Keith explains: