Civil War!

The United States is in its second Civil War. Hopefully the casualties won’t be as great. Instead of relenting in the face of an inflationary economy and an unwanted and unauthorized war, MAGA remains strong. Yesterday Trump defeated Thomas Massie and right wing Americans said it was OK for Trump to produce a 1.9 billion slush fund which will ostensibly go to the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers and all those who were prosecuted for attacking the police defending the capital on January 6. But Trump is even scorning his own faithful,
in the radical endorsement of the notoriously corrupt Ken Paxton in the Texas primary. Whether this helps James Talarico the centrist democrat who defeated Jasmine Crockett remains to be seen. In terms of polarization, the Squad and Bernie Sanders are drawing the crowds while the more moderate Maine governor Janet Mills, who famously went nose to nude with Trump in a shouting match, has caved to Graham Platner. So it’s the radical right and what Trump
likes to call “the radical left” are facing off, with a number of prominent exceptions such as the Texas race which pits a moderate against an extremist. Actually Trump calls anyone who opposes his will “a radical left lunatic.” You don’t have to be AOC to apply. Will the two sides take up arms? Political violence is the new lingua Franca and that form of social capital is not fungible.

read “Double Reverse Midas Touch” by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star