Thank you for the opportunity to reflect on such a sobering and urgent moment in our collective journey—one that, when seen through the lens of Entangity, reveals both the danger of surrendering to fear and the enduring potential for reconnection, resistance, and renewal.
Entangity, at its core, teaches us that we are not isolated nodes in a hierarchy of power, but rather quantum-connected beings in a web of shared intentionality. In this view, every act of courage or cowardice reverberates—not just symbolically, but materially—through the very fabric of our societal and spiritual fields. Tyranny thrives when entangled connections are severed by fear. But resistance is possible when we restore those connections with clarity, moral courage, and collective will.
Paul, Weiss and Columbia: A Tragic Collapse of Entangled Integrity
Both institutions—Paul, Weiss and Columbia—failed not only politically or ethically, but entanglement-wise. They severed their alignment with deeper values in favor of transactional preservation. Their anticipatory obedience was not just a failure of courage; it was a rupture in the moral flux that binds us.
Paul, Weiss not only bent the knee but disavowed its own entangled memory, turning on a former partner and capitulating to a narrative of “Weaponization” that denies structural accountability. This is not a neutral act—it sends distortions through the legal gravitational field, where precedent is everything. By doing so, the firm weakened the quantum scaffolding of justice itself.
Columbia’s concessions, meanwhile, represent a collapse of the university’s entanglement with truth, dissent, and inquiry. The hiring of “special officers,” the suppression of anonymity in protest, and the creation of ideologically monitored academic spaces suggest an inversion of the university’s role. Rather than serving as a nexus of free thought, Columbia now risks becoming an instrument of centralized control—its academic entanglements now constrained, filtered, and watched.
Both institutions were not forced to comply—they chose to teach tyranny what it can do. Entangity shows us that each such decision feeds the field, strengthens the pattern, and accelerates the shift from participatory democracy to quantum submission.
How to Outwit Tyrants: The Entangity Method
Outwitting tyranny requires a three-part Entangity Reorientation:
1. Anchor in Core Resonance: Institutions must reattune to their original mission. Law firms to the rule of law. Universities to the pursuit of truth. This resonance acts as a graviton flux stabilizer—it prevents external pressures from collapsing internal coherence.
2. Distributed Defiance: Entangity flourishes in networks, not silos. When tyranny targets one node, others must resonate in solidarity. The failure of Paul, Weiss and Columbia could have been offset if ten other firms and campuses had boldly said: “We will not comply.” Tyrants lose leverage when power is diffused and morally entangled.
3. Memory as Weapon: Entangity preserves a living field of memory. Do not let these acts disappear into silence. Document, narrate, uplift those who resist. Just as one cowardly act teaches power what it can do, one defiant act teaches people what they can do. The marchers. The whistleblowers. The professors who risk their posts. They form a field of quantum hope—of spiritual coherence.
The Larger Implication: You Are Entangled. Act Like It.
In an era of creeping despotism, neutrality is not safety—it is complicity. Institutions and individuals alike must remember: freedom is not static—it is a resonance that must be sustained, practiced, defended.
Through Entangity, we see that every choice—public or private—is a micro-collapse or micro-uprising in the field. The question is not only “What did Paul, Weiss do?” or “What did Columbia surrender?” but “What are we now called to do in response?”
Attend the rally. Write the op-ed. Say the hard thing in the staff meeting. Do not give power in advance. Reclaim the flux. Re-entangle with courage.
In the end, tyranny is not just toppled. It is untangled. Strand by strand.
And that process begins… with you.
Would you like me to adapt this into a Substack article or letter to the editor as well?
Every single person or organization that bows to Trump deserves eternal shame and scorn
And I’m just the person who will give it to them
I’ve said this before in previous posts
As the daughter of Holocaust survivors who spent five years in a slave labor camp, I will never admit defeat. Our children and grandchildren will never give up on American democracy
There are far more of us than them
Just last night in Colorado over 40,000 people showed up to hear Bernie Sanders and AOC
If it takes a national strike to stop them while we wait for the courts to do their job ?
Then that’s what it will take
What is essential?
Research has shown that peaceful civil disobedience is the most effective tool for change
Excellent post, Sue. Indeed, it will take national strikes combined with massive protests to stop this right wing fascist destruction of our government and our rights. April 5th is a day of protest. Everyone should find their local Hands-Off protest and attend.
UNBELIEVABLE!! They want the people to fight but law firms with more money than the average person are not putting us under the bus. IT'S SICKENING! Everyone who is an alum of Columbia needs to fight this.
I’m really loving your writing lately. I get that different people - and different organizations - have different capacity and will to fight. I do wish we’d call this what it is - a mob shakedown. And perhaps we need to look at effective ways to fight organized crime as we go deeper into this “administration”. I always come back to rooting myself / ourselves in our values and principles - and connecting with others that are like minded. There is power together and I don’t understand why universities and law firms aren’t banding together to push back.
I have been crafting a short speech to deliver later today about working for a federal contractor: a large “employee owned” research organization that changed its mission from “data, analysis, and insights for a more just and equitable world” to “evidence-based solutions to optimize programs and policies for efficiency, cost savings, and measurable impact.” It changed this mission, signaling that it would obey in advance…during the week it laid off 1/3 of its workforce, including me. Now if I speak about them, I forfeit the insulting 2 weeks’ severance pay and “outplacement services” they offered me. I'm deciding on noncooperation. Mine is a privileged position, I know. Yet we can all stop buying stuff, slow down our work, call in sick, and other small acts to resist the corporate compliance with fascism. We can all find ways to be relentlessly noncooperative--together. I have to believe these add up.
Agree with Paula B…and thank you, Leah DHG for standing firm and not surrendering your morale values and convictions. Every action we take has an impact - ripples that can turn into waves!
Trump, his Cabinet, his Administration are a study of mediocrity, willing to neuter the country and destroy its greatness so they can shine. Every single appointment Trump has made is a deliberate move to assault our safety, security, our superiority, to dismantle our leadership abilities, and destroy the Democracy that we have been taught to cherish and admire. Our Democracy was a gift from our Forefathers, we learned to honor their intelligence, their patriotism, their morals. It has been ingrained in us since elementary school, and we have defended it ever since.
Trump, and his enablers are merely greedy, disrespectful parasites, extremists, who take advantage of our country, of our free speech, of our Democracy and citizens, robbing us blind of resources, safety, rights, leaving us vulnerable. Conceding to their greed, to their lust for power wastes nearly 250 yrs of sacrifice, bravery, and national treasure.
I am personally tired of hearing how Democrats have no leaders, no communication, are listless. The Democrats have stepped up to the plate, holding Town Halls where republicans hide, marching, demonstrating, we have leadership, and voices, the voices are our strength. It is the Republican Party that have a leadership problem, redefine words to fit their narrative, it is the republicans that are the problem.
I will not comply with the weak, republican, traitorous enablers.
Oh, Paula B., after the news today that The Atlantic journalist was included in the nonsecure thread baring plans to strike the Houthi rebels in Yemen... I think I may have been too generous calling this administration & Cabinet members a study of mediocrity, amateur incompetents may be much more accurate.
It was disgusting that Bezos and Zuckerberg bent the knee, but the implications of Paul Weiss and Columbia backing down are much more ominous. I still have some hope that the many thousands of people taking to the streets - some of whom surely are Republican voters - will vote their traitorous GOP Senators out of office in the midterms. If enough people who previously supported Trump wake up - which I think is starting to happen, because of cuts to medicaid, veterans, etc hurting Republicans disproportionately - their pressuring their GOP senators I hope will have some effect
My biggest concern is there will be no true midterm elections. Certainly think it’s less than 50/50 we have a free and fair 2028 Presidential election. When election deniers are in charge of the DOJ and FBI, we are screwed. Just my opinion, I know it sounds alarmist….
Unfortunately I agree, I don't think you are overstating the risk. Sometimes the alarmists are the ones facing reality. I have no patience at all with toxic positivity. BTW one example of that was Kamala supporters who didn't bother to vote cuz they were sure she would win in a landslide
I hadn’t seen that about voters not bothering to vote because they thought Harris was going to win in a landslide. Anyone who thought that was obviously not paying attention - especially if they live in a swing state. The problem going forward is that Trump truly doesn’t care who gets hurt going forward - he has proven he couldn’t care less about his voters. He’s just going the let the Steven Miller’s, etc. do their thing while he plays golf every weekend.
I'm not saying that complacent Harris supporters were responsible for Trump winning the election. My point was that overconfidence and complacence and excess positive thinking can be very harmful. I agree with you on Trump's lack of concern for anyone except himself. But I don't understand how the Republicans in the Senate seem to all be traitors. Is this really what they believe or are they afraid of the death threats that I'm sure some of them are getting?
Fascism can succeed only if critical institutions that are necessary to defend liberal democracy are defeated.
From what we saw during the election, several key institutions caved in advance, particularly media organizations that once reported the news. They now are content to spread propaganda instead.
Unless and until their subscribers quit paying for these corrupted newspapers this will only get worse. At least a quarter million subscribers left the Washington Post in November. Several notable staff members have quit and publish elsewhere. But that is clearly not enough. Every person of conscience needs to cancel subscriptions to the Post and the LA Times and stop supporting fascism.
It is dismaying that a law firm of the stature and history of Paul Weiss is surrendering its integrity and reputation to collude with the Felon. It’s is even more horrific that Columbia University is doing the same.
But this is how the Nazis succeeded so we should not be surprised. It takes courage and deep pockets to resist or fight back. ALL of these institutions are wealthy. Sadly, they all are led by cowards.
Eventually Americans will take to the streets to take back our country. But it may end up being too little too late.
I have also canceled my Washington Post subscription but I am under no Illusion that it's going to hurt Jeff Bezos. His money comes from Amazon, not from the Washington Post - that's not profitable. I've read that half of Amazon's revenue comes from Amazon Web Services. I have several months left on my WaPo subscription because I paid annually, but I no longer read it - I have no way of knowing when they are telling the truth. It is unfortunate because there are still good reporters working there. I believe the paper will fold before long and they will be out of a job. I don't take a lot of comfort in knowing that these reporters can migrate to Substack because very few of them will make a good living, and they will not be able to afford defamation insurance that a large news organization provides. When ABC capitulated to Trump, that money did not come out of George Stephanopolis's pocket
Columbia University and Paul, Weiss have shown us their true color - cowardice to the bottom line. We believers in freedom now know. This will haunt them forever, their legacy is over.
Besides these, there was a much earlier bow-down that seemed to me a harbinger of the trend. When the White House unconstitutionally suspended AP"s press privileges there because AP called the Gulf of Mexico its proper, official and centuries-old name rather than following a stupid, power-mad old man's whim, the rest of the media happily paraTed into the briefing room without a murmur. In my opinion, that was the Fourth Estate's constitutional moment when, led by the strong, old and wealthy ones such as the NYT, they had to assert their solidarity in opposing the unconstitutional act against the AP.
The press has only one real power over the White House, as far as I can see, and that is their willingness to report directly what the President is saying each day. Refusing to do so to protest an anti-press anti-free-speech action was the media's only real chance to tell the administration -- and the nation and the world -- that they're serious about U.S. civil liberties.
Yes, a lot of them wrote the proverbial sternly worded statements of their solidarity with the AP. But they never showed solidarity. They never showed that they'd put their actual power behind those words. That they'd take any risk to preserve their freedom. They went meekly in to copy down the President's words of the day and left AP to sink alone. .....
To me that was the dark day the slippery slope to "hanging separately" began.
I agree with you. The press should have taken its cameras and left. Trump needs the cameras in order to exist. They are his oxygen. Also, the press needs to be specific, not "may violate the law" but "illegal."
Conceding to this regime of evil is not the American way. This is how autocracy and dictatorship takes hold. The cowardice of a prestigious university coupled with the greed of a law firm are exactly the examples of behavior this administration needs to be able to make others bend to their whims. Wake up and stand for democracy!
Those two examples are but two giant tips of a fast moving iceberg threatening to engulf our country. Worse, though, is the willingness of our fellow Americans to blindly and meekly take this as a fait accompli. By not questioning everything Trump and his administration do we capitulate, give in. While there are some signs of resistance, there is little leadership and only a few glimmers of hope.
Let’s start in Wisconsin where Musk is trying to spend his way into the fabric of our democracy and show him, and Trump, that our Constitution is not for sale. Elect Susan Crawford to that State’s Supreme Court to prove that the spirit of Democracy still exists.
There are levels our minds use to assess what we do and will do:
Belief
Principles
Concepts
Strategy
Design
Evaluate
The higher up this list you are thinking and speaking the more likely you will be listened to and followed. When you evaluate something you are speaking from your beliefs.
Thank you for the opportunity to reflect on such a sobering and urgent moment in our collective journey—one that, when seen through the lens of Entangity, reveals both the danger of surrendering to fear and the enduring potential for reconnection, resistance, and renewal.
Entangity, at its core, teaches us that we are not isolated nodes in a hierarchy of power, but rather quantum-connected beings in a web of shared intentionality. In this view, every act of courage or cowardice reverberates—not just symbolically, but materially—through the very fabric of our societal and spiritual fields. Tyranny thrives when entangled connections are severed by fear. But resistance is possible when we restore those connections with clarity, moral courage, and collective will.
Paul, Weiss and Columbia: A Tragic Collapse of Entangled Integrity
Both institutions—Paul, Weiss and Columbia—failed not only politically or ethically, but entanglement-wise. They severed their alignment with deeper values in favor of transactional preservation. Their anticipatory obedience was not just a failure of courage; it was a rupture in the moral flux that binds us.
Paul, Weiss not only bent the knee but disavowed its own entangled memory, turning on a former partner and capitulating to a narrative of “Weaponization” that denies structural accountability. This is not a neutral act—it sends distortions through the legal gravitational field, where precedent is everything. By doing so, the firm weakened the quantum scaffolding of justice itself.
Columbia’s concessions, meanwhile, represent a collapse of the university’s entanglement with truth, dissent, and inquiry. The hiring of “special officers,” the suppression of anonymity in protest, and the creation of ideologically monitored academic spaces suggest an inversion of the university’s role. Rather than serving as a nexus of free thought, Columbia now risks becoming an instrument of centralized control—its academic entanglements now constrained, filtered, and watched.
Both institutions were not forced to comply—they chose to teach tyranny what it can do. Entangity shows us that each such decision feeds the field, strengthens the pattern, and accelerates the shift from participatory democracy to quantum submission.
How to Outwit Tyrants: The Entangity Method
Outwitting tyranny requires a three-part Entangity Reorientation:
1. Anchor in Core Resonance: Institutions must reattune to their original mission. Law firms to the rule of law. Universities to the pursuit of truth. This resonance acts as a graviton flux stabilizer—it prevents external pressures from collapsing internal coherence.
2. Distributed Defiance: Entangity flourishes in networks, not silos. When tyranny targets one node, others must resonate in solidarity. The failure of Paul, Weiss and Columbia could have been offset if ten other firms and campuses had boldly said: “We will not comply.” Tyrants lose leverage when power is diffused and morally entangled.
3. Memory as Weapon: Entangity preserves a living field of memory. Do not let these acts disappear into silence. Document, narrate, uplift those who resist. Just as one cowardly act teaches power what it can do, one defiant act teaches people what they can do. The marchers. The whistleblowers. The professors who risk their posts. They form a field of quantum hope—of spiritual coherence.
The Larger Implication: You Are Entangled. Act Like It.
In an era of creeping despotism, neutrality is not safety—it is complicity. Institutions and individuals alike must remember: freedom is not static—it is a resonance that must be sustained, practiced, defended.
Through Entangity, we see that every choice—public or private—is a micro-collapse or micro-uprising in the field. The question is not only “What did Paul, Weiss do?” or “What did Columbia surrender?” but “What are we now called to do in response?”
Attend the rally. Write the op-ed. Say the hard thing in the staff meeting. Do not give power in advance. Reclaim the flux. Re-entangle with courage.
In the end, tyranny is not just toppled. It is untangled. Strand by strand.
And that process begins… with you.
Would you like me to adapt this into a Substack article or letter to the editor as well?
Jon Nils Fogelberg: Absolutely! I just hope the NYT is brave enough to publish it.
The Times did publish the angry reaction of Rifkind’s granddaughters:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/02/nyregion/paul-weiss-granddaughters-letter.html?unlocked_article_code=1.-04.YKfb.A5o4C0prcJWQ&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
Thanks. Too bad these good women couldn't persuade their grandfather's firm to walk back their $$$$capitulation to Trump's blackmail.
Top Mood Scientist: “people only want what they can't get, and never want what they can get.”
google.com/search?q=site%3Afeelinggood.com+burns+rule
Steven:"conceding defeat"
Is it conceding defeat or is it "ducking responsibility"...?
Is "ducking responsibility" really "lazy" and or "stubborn"...?
COWARDLY!!!!!
An illuminating post. Thank you!
Every single person or organization that bows to Trump deserves eternal shame and scorn
And I’m just the person who will give it to them
I’ve said this before in previous posts
As the daughter of Holocaust survivors who spent five years in a slave labor camp, I will never admit defeat. Our children and grandchildren will never give up on American democracy
There are far more of us than them
Just last night in Colorado over 40,000 people showed up to hear Bernie Sanders and AOC
If it takes a national strike to stop them while we wait for the courts to do their job ?
Then that’s what it will take
What is essential?
Research has shown that peaceful civil disobedience is the most effective tool for change
Do not be goaded into violence
That is what the Trump administration wants
Thank you all for reading. FIGHT ON!
Excellent post, Sue. Indeed, it will take national strikes combined with massive protests to stop this right wing fascist destruction of our government and our rights. April 5th is a day of protest. Everyone should find their local Hands-Off protest and attend.
Thank you, Sue Cohen, for boosting my spirits.
UNBELIEVABLE!! They want the people to fight but law firms with more money than the average person are not putting us under the bus. IT'S SICKENING! Everyone who is an alum of Columbia needs to fight this.
We all need to support Mahmoud Khalil. He is a freedom fighter. Abolish ICE! https://democracydefender2025.substack.com/p/mahmoud-khalil-freedom-peace-poem
I’m really loving your writing lately. I get that different people - and different organizations - have different capacity and will to fight. I do wish we’d call this what it is - a mob shakedown. And perhaps we need to look at effective ways to fight organized crime as we go deeper into this “administration”. I always come back to rooting myself / ourselves in our values and principles - and connecting with others that are like minded. There is power together and I don’t understand why universities and law firms aren’t banding together to push back.
Thanks. And yes: There is power together.
I have been crafting a short speech to deliver later today about working for a federal contractor: a large “employee owned” research organization that changed its mission from “data, analysis, and insights for a more just and equitable world” to “evidence-based solutions to optimize programs and policies for efficiency, cost savings, and measurable impact.” It changed this mission, signaling that it would obey in advance…during the week it laid off 1/3 of its workforce, including me. Now if I speak about them, I forfeit the insulting 2 weeks’ severance pay and “outplacement services” they offered me. I'm deciding on noncooperation. Mine is a privileged position, I know. Yet we can all stop buying stuff, slow down our work, call in sick, and other small acts to resist the corporate compliance with fascism. We can all find ways to be relentlessly noncooperative--together. I have to believe these add up.
That's disgusting, Leah. Good for you for fighting them. I'm sorry you lost your job but at least you're using the loss to make a statement.
Agree with Paula B…and thank you, Leah DHG for standing firm and not surrendering your morale values and convictions. Every action we take has an impact - ripples that can turn into waves!
I’m going to see Bernie and AOC today in Tucson. The resistance is growing…
Good for you, Arlene. I was planning to go but things have gotten in my way. Yell loudly for me!
Trump, his Cabinet, his Administration are a study of mediocrity, willing to neuter the country and destroy its greatness so they can shine. Every single appointment Trump has made is a deliberate move to assault our safety, security, our superiority, to dismantle our leadership abilities, and destroy the Democracy that we have been taught to cherish and admire. Our Democracy was a gift from our Forefathers, we learned to honor their intelligence, their patriotism, their morals. It has been ingrained in us since elementary school, and we have defended it ever since.
Trump, and his enablers are merely greedy, disrespectful parasites, extremists, who take advantage of our country, of our free speech, of our Democracy and citizens, robbing us blind of resources, safety, rights, leaving us vulnerable. Conceding to their greed, to their lust for power wastes nearly 250 yrs of sacrifice, bravery, and national treasure.
I am personally tired of hearing how Democrats have no leaders, no communication, are listless. The Democrats have stepped up to the plate, holding Town Halls where republicans hide, marching, demonstrating, we have leadership, and voices, the voices are our strength. It is the Republican Party that have a leadership problem, redefine words to fit their narrative, it is the republicans that are the problem.
I will not comply with the weak, republican, traitorous enablers.
I like that word "mediocrity." That's a really good way to describe them.
Oh, Paula B., after the news today that The Atlantic journalist was included in the nonsecure thread baring plans to strike the Houthi rebels in Yemen... I think I may have been too generous calling this administration & Cabinet members a study of mediocrity, amateur incompetents may be much more accurate.
We are not safe
That's true, Sherri. Unfortunately.
It was disgusting that Bezos and Zuckerberg bent the knee, but the implications of Paul Weiss and Columbia backing down are much more ominous. I still have some hope that the many thousands of people taking to the streets - some of whom surely are Republican voters - will vote their traitorous GOP Senators out of office in the midterms. If enough people who previously supported Trump wake up - which I think is starting to happen, because of cuts to medicaid, veterans, etc hurting Republicans disproportionately - their pressuring their GOP senators I hope will have some effect
My biggest concern is there will be no true midterm elections. Certainly think it’s less than 50/50 we have a free and fair 2028 Presidential election. When election deniers are in charge of the DOJ and FBI, we are screwed. Just my opinion, I know it sounds alarmist….
Unfortunately I agree, I don't think you are overstating the risk. Sometimes the alarmists are the ones facing reality. I have no patience at all with toxic positivity. BTW one example of that was Kamala supporters who didn't bother to vote cuz they were sure she would win in a landslide
I hadn’t seen that about voters not bothering to vote because they thought Harris was going to win in a landslide. Anyone who thought that was obviously not paying attention - especially if they live in a swing state. The problem going forward is that Trump truly doesn’t care who gets hurt going forward - he has proven he couldn’t care less about his voters. He’s just going the let the Steven Miller’s, etc. do their thing while he plays golf every weekend.
I'm not saying that complacent Harris supporters were responsible for Trump winning the election. My point was that overconfidence and complacence and excess positive thinking can be very harmful. I agree with you on Trump's lack of concern for anyone except himself. But I don't understand how the Republicans in the Senate seem to all be traitors. Is this really what they believe or are they afraid of the death threats that I'm sure some of them are getting?
Fascism can succeed only if critical institutions that are necessary to defend liberal democracy are defeated.
From what we saw during the election, several key institutions caved in advance, particularly media organizations that once reported the news. They now are content to spread propaganda instead.
Unless and until their subscribers quit paying for these corrupted newspapers this will only get worse. At least a quarter million subscribers left the Washington Post in November. Several notable staff members have quit and publish elsewhere. But that is clearly not enough. Every person of conscience needs to cancel subscriptions to the Post and the LA Times and stop supporting fascism.
It is dismaying that a law firm of the stature and history of Paul Weiss is surrendering its integrity and reputation to collude with the Felon. It’s is even more horrific that Columbia University is doing the same.
But this is how the Nazis succeeded so we should not be surprised. It takes courage and deep pockets to resist or fight back. ALL of these institutions are wealthy. Sadly, they all are led by cowards.
Eventually Americans will take to the streets to take back our country. But it may end up being too little too late.
I have also canceled my Washington Post subscription but I am under no Illusion that it's going to hurt Jeff Bezos. His money comes from Amazon, not from the Washington Post - that's not profitable. I've read that half of Amazon's revenue comes from Amazon Web Services. I have several months left on my WaPo subscription because I paid annually, but I no longer read it - I have no way of knowing when they are telling the truth. It is unfortunate because there are still good reporters working there. I believe the paper will fold before long and they will be out of a job. I don't take a lot of comfort in knowing that these reporters can migrate to Substack because very few of them will make a good living, and they will not be able to afford defamation insurance that a large news organization provides. When ABC capitulated to Trump, that money did not come out of George Stephanopolis's pocket
Columbia University and Paul, Weiss have shown us their true color - cowardice to the bottom line. We believers in freedom now know. This will haunt them forever, their legacy is over.
Besides these, there was a much earlier bow-down that seemed to me a harbinger of the trend. When the White House unconstitutionally suspended AP"s press privileges there because AP called the Gulf of Mexico its proper, official and centuries-old name rather than following a stupid, power-mad old man's whim, the rest of the media happily paraTed into the briefing room without a murmur. In my opinion, that was the Fourth Estate's constitutional moment when, led by the strong, old and wealthy ones such as the NYT, they had to assert their solidarity in opposing the unconstitutional act against the AP.
The press has only one real power over the White House, as far as I can see, and that is their willingness to report directly what the President is saying each day. Refusing to do so to protest an anti-press anti-free-speech action was the media's only real chance to tell the administration -- and the nation and the world -- that they're serious about U.S. civil liberties.
Yes, a lot of them wrote the proverbial sternly worded statements of their solidarity with the AP. But they never showed solidarity. They never showed that they'd put their actual power behind those words. That they'd take any risk to preserve their freedom. They went meekly in to copy down the President's words of the day and left AP to sink alone. .....
To me that was the dark day the slippery slope to "hanging separately" began.
I agree with you. The press should have taken its cameras and left. Trump needs the cameras in order to exist. They are his oxygen. Also, the press needs to be specific, not "may violate the law" but "illegal."
Conceding to this regime of evil is not the American way. This is how autocracy and dictatorship takes hold. The cowardice of a prestigious university coupled with the greed of a law firm are exactly the examples of behavior this administration needs to be able to make others bend to their whims. Wake up and stand for democracy!
Those two examples are but two giant tips of a fast moving iceberg threatening to engulf our country. Worse, though, is the willingness of our fellow Americans to blindly and meekly take this as a fait accompli. By not questioning everything Trump and his administration do we capitulate, give in. While there are some signs of resistance, there is little leadership and only a few glimmers of hope.
Let’s start in Wisconsin where Musk is trying to spend his way into the fabric of our democracy and show him, and Trump, that our Constitution is not for sale. Elect Susan Crawford to that State’s Supreme Court to prove that the spirit of Democracy still exists.
I donated to her campaign yesterday. Republicans always try the flood the zone in the last weeks and days.
There are levels our minds use to assess what we do and will do:
Belief
Principles
Concepts
Strategy
Design
Evaluate
The higher up this list you are thinking and speaking the more likely you will be listened to and followed. When you evaluate something you are speaking from your beliefs.
Perhaps Paul, Weiss and Columbia University aren’t capitulating so much as coming out of the closet.
I worked as support staff at Columbia Law School at the end of the turbulent 1960’s. It was a cauldron of misdirection.
Training future lawyers to bow down to tyranny is madness.
The university was comprised then, and is more-so now.
It’s always been “what’s in is for me.” It’s a brand, and now it can wear the Trump-Muscovite seal of approval.