A Minor Symptom of American Breakdown

Car crash in 2018. By Charles Edward Miller from Chicago, United States - Car Crash 7-1-18 2246, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=71153146

一个汉语文功课的问："Comment [in Chinese] on how you drive, and how you drive on the highway...Comment on how people drive in your city..."

我的回答：“我开车开得不错。我开车开得有一点慢。因为我不喜欢超速罚单，所以我开车开得有一点慢。我遵守限速规定和交通法规。很多司机不遵守交通规则，他们开车开得特别快，所以我的城市（和美国）有很多交通事故和死亡事件。我觉得很多美国的司机都想死或者他们觉得他们是超人 （"Superman"）。我从前坐公共汽车和轻轨，可是我现在只开我的电动汽车。”

Aaand, the rest of the world is starting to notice! See this: "美国：法律视各州而定，一般为：东海岸普遍为非城区65mph（105km/h）城区50-55mph（80-89km/h）；中西部普遍乡村70mph（113km/h）城镇65mph（105km/h）市区50-55mph（80km/h-89km/h）部分市区（芝加哥为例）45mph（72km/h）；西部（怀俄明州等）非城镇80mph（129km/h)城镇山区65-75mph（105-120km/h）；西南部（德州亚利桑那等）非城区75-80mph（120-129km/h）；西海岸：非城区70mph（113km/h）；近郊：55-65mph（89-105km/h）；夏威夷州：60mph（97km/h）。现实是，美国普遍存在超速现象。。。" (https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hans/%E9%AB%98%E9%80%9F%E5%85%AC%E8%B7%AF, retrieved 13 January 2026)  还有看 "The Uniquely American Epidemic of Traffic Deaths," Deutsch, 2023.

Repost - Touching The Oppressor's Wound

I'd like to point my readers to a post which I wrote back in 2017.  The title of that post is "Touching the Oppressor's Wound."  That post lays out the theoretical basis for weakening the power of the oppressor by showing his agents how their oppression is hurting not just the oppressed, but the oppressor's agents as well.  That may sound like a crazy and impractical approach to dealing with an oppressor, but allow me to give a simplified summary of the points I wanted to make in my original post.  That summary is as follows:

• First, we know that when a tyrant or dictator recruits men to serve as his armed henchmen, he tends to select such recruits from the most violent, deviant, and psychopathic members of society.  This must be so, because the tyrant will want to use these men as agents of terror both against his own citizens and against the peoples of foreign nations whom the tyrant wants to conquer.  
• Second, in order to make these recruits even more effective as instruments of terror and violence, the tyrant will subject these recruits to the kind of training that greatly amplifies their viciousness and violent tendencies.  In other words, their training will amplify their tendency to act like monsters.
• Third, this violent viciousness will become such a pervasive part of the character and personality of these people that it will essentially be "on" at all times, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  This means that they will be very hard people to live with!  Indeed, there are multiple studies which show highly elevated levels of domestic violence among U.S. military and law enforcement personnel.
• Fourth, this tendency to violence and cruelty will actually turn out to be a weakness of their families and intimate partner relationships, as it can become a motivator for their spouses and children to seek some way of escape from relationships with these people.  
• Fifth, and most important: Therefore, a viable tool of resistance against a tyrant and his agents of oppression can be for trained volunteers and mental health professionals to offer counseling, help, and especially outreach to the spouses and children of these men.  For in offering such counseling and help, the volunteers and mental health professionals will be communicating to the spouses and children that their situation is not normal or acceptable, and that the men perpetrating this domestic violence are not normal or acceptable.  This will weaken the ability of the tyrant to continue to use these men as a pillar of support of his oppressive regime.
• The weakening starts with the volunteer, friend, or mental health professional getting the victim of domestic violence to admit that she is in a destructive relationship and that she (and any children she has) are in danger of serious harm.
• The volunteer, friend, or mental health professional must then bring the victim to see that her spouse's monstrous behavior is a direct consequence of his choice to do the violent dirty work of the oppressor.  The victim must be brought to see that her spouse has been turned into a monster precisely because being a monster is part of the requirements of his job.
• The victim must then be shown that there are righteous, legitimate ways of escaping from her monstrous situation, and she must be gently led to choose between staying in a harmful (and potentially fatal) situation versus walking away into a more healthy life.

I suggest that in the United States at this time, there's no shortage of potential victims who could be helped by this kind of intervention.  For we have a military that has come unhinged from any moral restraints, a military which allowed itself to be deployed against its own citizens in 2025, and which is now busily killing people in other countries in order to take over those countries for Trump.  (First, Venezuela, then Cuba, then Denmark and Greenland, then...?) And we have domestic bullies like the ICE agents who have been shooting unarmed U.S. citizens lately.  (I'm a man and not a woman - yet I cringe at the thought of what it must be like to be the spouse of Jonathan Ross! Or one of his kids.  It truly must be a living hell...)  The kind of domestic violence interventions I am suggesting might be a pivotal tool in showing the men of ICE and of the U.S. military what monsters they have become by showing their spouses and children how impossible it is to live with these men any longer.

P.S. Those who read the original post will encounter comments from a few rather wacky and unhinged commenters.  These commenters spouted a bunch of right-wing talking points in their comments.  I believe two of the comments are from the same person even though one of them was posted anonymously.  Feel free to take the comments with a grain (or more) of salt.

Of Monkeys, Gourds, and Peanuts

I've been pleased to learn over the last few weeks that Donald Trump is losing the support of his base, as reported in such articles as "Three Polls That Show Donald Trump Is Losing His Base" (Newsweek, December 2025), "Trump's Support is Collapsing. But why?" (Vox, December 2025), and "How divides emerged at the heart of Trump’s Maga world" (BBC, December 2025). It is interesting to see that among the reasons for the collapse of Trump's support among white American males is the fact that MAGA Trump-ism has begun to seriously hurt the economic prospects of the people who comprise his base.  This is due to such factors as the costs of Trump tariffs to ordinary Americans, the harms to American industries and businesses from the international backlash against Trump-ism, and the negative economic impacts of Trump's mass deportations on America's farming sector.  But it must also be acknowledged that some of the negative economic impacts are due to the boycotts of businesses whose owners support Trump-ism.  Consider, for instance, how badly Elon Musk's businesses were hurt by boycotts in early 2025.  Consider also the decrease in revenue suffered by Amazon, Target, and Home Depot over their abandonment of workplace diversity, equity, and inclusion policies in their bid to curry the favor of Donald Trump.

So today I'd like to write a bit more about the agenda of Donald Trump and his supporters, and the necessity of economic noncooperation from those who are the intended victims and targets of Trump and his supporters.  To be quite plain and blunt, Donald Trump is one of the de facto leaders of a revanchist movement among white supremacists.  He and his supporters want to bring back a world which is the undisputed empire and sole possession of a small group of fat, privileged, evil people who have Made Themselves Great Again at the expense of all the other peoples on earth.  This is the goal of his international policy, which is why he is engaged now in violently trying to conquer other people's countries.  It is also his domestic policy, a policy whose goal is to return the United States to being a paradise for one privileged group of people while turning the rest of us into the domestic servants of this privileged group.  

But he and his supporters depend on an economic machinery which in turn depends on the support and patronage of large numbers of the very people whom he wants to dispossess and subjugate.  In this he and his supporters are like the British were in relation to India and China in the 19th and early 20th centuries.  India was a supposed British "possession", yet the prosperity of the British economy depended on Indians buying British goods.  This fact was expertly used by Mohandas Gandhi to hurt the British economy during India's struggle for independence.  For Gandhi persuaded his fellow Indians to stop buying British goods and to begin to develop their own self-sufficiency.  This drastically raised the costs of empire for Britain and was one of the factors that led to India's independence from Britain.  As Marshall Ganz once said, systems of oppression always depend on the people whom they exploit.  One powerfully effective, yet nonviolent way for the oppressed to hurt the owners of these systems of oppression is to deny them the payoff they are hoping to gain from their oppression.  Don't feed the beast.

A more-than-likely fictional example may be helpful.  I'm going to repeat a story I heard long ago when I was a member of an abusive church, and which I've seen repeated since in the evangelical-o-sphere.  Supposedly there are countries in the developing world in which villagers go out day by day to hunt monkeys.  They are supposedly able to trap these monkeys by spreading hollowed-out gourds on the ground.  Each gourd has a small hole in its shell, and inside the gourd are a few peanuts.  When monkeys find the gourds, they reach inside and grab the peanuts as the hunters watch.  When the hunters come to seize the monkeys, the monkeys are so fixated on the peanuts that they won't let them go - even though by holding the peanuts they are unable to remove their hands from the gourds.  The gourds in turn are so big and heavy that the monkeys cannot run away from the hunters.  Thus the hunters are able to catch the monkeys and crack their skulls, and the monkeys are turned into monkey stew.  One note: I personally don't know whether most monkeys anywhere in the world would fall for such a trick, as I've never owned a monkey as a pet.  I specialize in cats.  I also suspect that the originators of this story have never seen a monkey in their lives, except in pictures or on TV. But let's assume for the moment that this story is true.

Now consider a person who is a member of a historically marginalized group, or a group which is targeted for oppression by a rich, powerful piece of garbage like Trump or like one of his supporters.  If the person who has been targeted for oppression continues to buy things made and sold by the Trump-oids, isn't he financing the very people who want to bash his brains out and turn him into cooked monkey meat?  How many of us allowed ourselves to be made into monkeys during this past holiday season?  How many of us splurged in our spending during Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, and New Years? How many people of color bought Teslas in 2025?  How many will want to buy a Tesla in 2026? How many of us will watch the Superbowl in 2026? How many of us will join the military in 2026 even though the U.S. military is likely to be deployed against our brothers and sisters in foreign lands?  How many of us are signed up for Amazon Prime and YouTube and Hulu and Fox and Netflix and ESPN and HBO? How many of us are still using Spotify (which has for a long time been involved in cheating musicians out of their earnings, and which in 2025 ran recruitment ads for ICE)? Boycotts and other forms of economic noncooperation mean letting go of the peanuts. Don't let the present system of oppression make a monkey out of you.

Image courtesy of Craiyon (craiyon.com). Created 17 October 2025.

(Yes, yes, I know - this is a picture of an ape and not a monkey.

But you can't expect too much from the free version of an AI service!)

Boycotts Have Begun to Bite

Truly this is an age in which those people who have been historically marginalized, disenfranchised, oppressed and enslaved by dominant powers are being called on to rise up and resist their continued mistreatment.  That means that this is the time for us to resist the Trump administration and its attempts to revive exploitative supremacy.  Over the last eight years much of my writing for this blog has therefore focused on the theory and practice of strategic nonviolent resistance.  As I have repeatedly stated, this kind of resistance consists of much more than merely staging mass protest marches and rallies.  As noted in Gene Sharp's book From Dictatorship to Democracy, there are at least 198 methods of strategic nonviolent action.  (His book lists only 198 methods, but he himself acknowledged that there are actually many more methods than these.)

One of the categories of tactics of strategic nonviolent resistance is the category of economic and political noncooperation.  This kind of noncooperation - especially of economic noncooperation - can impose extremely painful costs on a would-be oppressor or dictator (such as Trump) and on those rich and powerful people who comprise the dictator's pillars of support.  I'd like to suggest that the use of boycotts has begun to catch on in this year, 2025.  A number of large retailers who terminated their diversity, equity and inclusion programs this year are now feeling the bite of consumer boycotts.  Such retailers include Amazon, Target, and Home Depot (or, as I like to call them, Home Cheapo).  This year's holiday season may not be a very merry Xmas for such retailers as these.  You can read more about these holiday boycotts here: "Can Holiday Shopping Boycotts Make a Difference?", Yale Insights, December 2025.  Note that even though the cited article seeks to cast doubt on the effect of these boycotts, the fact remains that the boycotts are having enough of an effect to force the mainstream organs of power to take notice.  

The Advice of Benjamin

I must apologize to any readers who might wish that I had posted more frequently over the last several months.  Admittedly, my posting has been light.  In particular, I have stepped back from regular updates to my series of essays on the subject of economic precarity.  This is not because this subject has become less relevant.  Indeed, it has become increasingly relevant as the governments of many nations are being taken over by the Global Far Right.  However, my eyes are on a number of trends which have yet to come to full fruition.  Until those trends mature fully, I think it best to keep quiet.  To quote from one of the characters in A Canticle for Leibowitz, "Probing the womb of the future is bad for the child."

And like that fictional character, in a manner of speaking I too have chosen in these days to live a somewhat anchorite life at the top of my metaphorical desert mesa, wrapping myself evening by evening in my metaphorical prayer shawl.  However, I am not so detached that I haven't noticed recent news reports about the global wave of protests against corrupt and conservative governments around the world this year.  These protests have been led predominantly by the members of Generation Z, or Gen Z for short.  I am more than a little too old to be part of the Gen Z cohort, yet if Gen Z'ers don't mind, I'd like to offer some advice.  First, although mass protest is not without effect, I would strongly caution you all NOT to base your activism solely on mass protest marches.  In other words, don't have just one tactic in your suite of tactics. The scholar Gene Sharp identified at least 198 tactics of strategic nonviolent resistance.  These methods include both protest and much, much more than just protest.  Study his writings.  Read his book From Dictatorship to Democracy to learn how to think strategically.  Read the writings and watch the videos of Jamila Raqib.  Use the resources offered by Srdja Popovic and his organization CANVAS.  Learn how the widespread practice of radical frugality can disrupt the holders of concentrated wealth and power.  Learn the power and necessity of maintaining nonviolent discipline in your struggle.  And if you feel so inclined, please read the posts I have written for this blog from the end of 2016 until now, particularly the posts titled "From D to D" which I wrote as a study guide for Gene Sharp's book.  In solidarity I wish you all the best.

Escalating Noncooperation

This week the Trump administration has begun operations designed to destroy the government of Venezuela.  This is totally unnecessary, as Venezuela has presented no threat to the United States.  Rather, these operations are an expression of American white supremacist narcissism.

So what should decent, moral people do?  Many today are engaged in mass protest marches.  I have written extensively about the dangers and disadvantages of relying solely on mass protest as a tactic or strategy of strategic nonviolent resistance.  (See "Peter Ackerman's Accuracy" for instance.)  Acts of mass noncooperation and withdrawal from the dominant system remain a far stronger tactic than mass protest - especially when that noncooperation and withdrawal are economic in nature.  So let me suggest an avenue of noncooperation and withdrawal.

We know that many farmers - especially farmers who are in red states - solidly support Trump.  We also know that these farmers have begun to feel serious pain from the sanctions imposed on them by the nations to which they used to export their produce.  These sanctions were imposed by these nations in response to the tariffs on these nations' exports which were imposed by Trump.  We can increase the pressure on Trump's base by reducing our dependence on the things produced by his base.  This includes farm produce.  So if you want to do something constructive to help the resistance, start planting your winter vegetable garden.  Or start thinking about what and how you will plant next spring.  See how much you can reduce your dependence on supermarket farm produce.

A Deeper Dive Into Dilemma Actions

Here is a link to an interview which provides a clearer picture of a concept which I mentioned in my last post.  The interview was given by Srdja Popovic on the Democracy Paradox podcast and was posted on March 7, 2023. Srdja Popovic is the founder of CANVAS (The Center for Applied Nonviolent Actions and Strategies). CANVAS provides training to organizers who need to wage campaigns of strategic nonviolent resistance in order to liberate themselves and their people from oppression and build durable democratic societies. 

In the interview Mr. Popovic emphasizes several points which have also been mentioned on my blog, The Well Run Dry.  In particular, he talks about how essential it is for the organizers of a movement of strategic nonviolent resistance to start by developing a wise master strategy.  He also talks about why movements need leadership in order to be successful and why so many "leaderless movements" of spontaneous mass protest have accomplished so little over the last two decades.  He explains the concept of a dilemma action and shows how it can be a powerful tactic when wielded by skillful resisters who implement this tactic as part of a larger, well-formulated grand strategy.

The points he makes fit in well with my most recent post, which makes the case that struggle groups who wish to win need to evolve their tactics in order to fit with the ever-evolving nature of the space in which they struggle.  This particularly applies to the methods of protest and persuasion listed by Gene Sharp in books like From Dictatorship to Democracy.  I have mentioned previously that the methods of protest and persuasion are among the weakest methods of strategic nonviolent resistance.  Yet they are not useless - they can still augment the power of a resistance movement as long as the tactics of protest have evolved to meet the changing nature of the struggle space, and especially as long as these methods are part of an entire suite of strategically chosen tactics which accomplish more than just protest.  Calling for mass protest marches is not a tactic that fits the present times, due to the extreme ease with which an oppressor can neutralize this form of protest by injecting violence (including vandalism) into any such protest marches.  Feel free to listen to Srdja as he describes more innovative and effective tactics of protest.