• If the hearings last night made anything crystal clear, it was that Trump was the main organizing agent of the January 6 insurrection. What wasn’t so obvious was the footprint of the Republican Party in this insurrection and its aftermath. But the GOP was anything but onlooker. Some Republicans were active participants in the conspriracy, while others, intially shocked by this singular event in U.S. history, quickly morphed into spin doctors, at once sanitizing what happened, minimizing Trump’s role as the primary agent of insurrections, and eargerly embracing and spreading the Big Lie – a rigged election that Trump actually won.

• I was struck by the extent of the coordination between Trump and his inner circle and the proto fascist groups, like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers. In the immediate aftermath of the elections I underestimated the likehood of a violent insurrection to overturn the elections and impose, if not all at once, a white nationalist, anti-democratic, authoritarian political order. Not the first time I was wide of the mark, and probably won’t be the last.

• 20 million people watched the hearings. And according to one report, focus groups of independent voters were disturbed by what they heard and saw. How that will translate in the voting booth this fall is anybody’s guess at this point.

Looking at the primary results of the Democratic Party primaries tells me that its voting constituency is politically more complex and varied than we on the left like to believe. Not everybody is on the same page, leaning left, and ready to cast their ballot for the most radicial candidate. Election messaging, therefore, has to account for this variance – congressional district by district and within each district. This requires that candidates have space to modulate their message to fit their constituency. Full speed ahead, damn the torpedoes, and relentlessly tack left might feel good to some, but as an election strategy it can quickly become a recipe for defeat.

An old radical that I read years ago and still read today insisted that people on the left, if they hope to go beyond performative politics, should derive their tactics – and election message – from “a strictly sober and strictly objective” accounting of where people are at and – more to the point – what kind of candidate they are ready to vote for. Good advice back then and remains so now.

I honor the fallen in wars, but I can’t buy into the claim that their sacrifice preserved our freedom here and extended freedom abroad. That is a pernicious notion that conceals geopolitical, geoeconomic aims of the war makers who are found at the top layers of the state and society, while acculturating the rest of us to support for wars of aggression.

Consider, one example, the wars in the Middle East in this century. Did they defend or expand freedom anywhere? Were lives needlessly lost? I think the answer is obvious. History is replete with other examples.

Looked at the agenda of the upcoming Labor Notes conference and couldn’t help but note that the fall elections and electoral work generally were nowhere to be found. There’s an explanation for this omission, an easy one I would think. In any case, it’s a missed opportunity.

Republicans in Washington and across the country are falling over themselves in their effort to deny trans gender young people their rights, identity, and humanity. Meanwhile, when it comes to protecting young people and children in school they stand in the way of gun control legislation and other measures that would make schools safer. This is, in my view, criminal behavior. Lets make them pay in November.