Two Neo-Fascist Megalomaniacs Walk Into A Bar Not Singing Puff The Magic Dragon January 8, 2025 You think I was hard on Elon Musk yesterday? That was just the half of it. Robert Reich asks: Why is the richest person on earth with the largest political platform in the world and the next U.S. president in his pocket becoming a global neo-fascist? Musk, he writes, is: boosting the far-right party in Germany with neo-Nazi ties . . . attacking the Italian judiciary . . . urging support for Britain’s far-right anti-immigration Reform U.K. Party . . . demanding Britain “free Tommy Robinson,” the far-right founder of the English Defence League . . . in jail because he was found to have defamed a teenage Syrian refugee and then defied a British court order by repeating the false claims. (Robinson has been previously jailed for assault, mortgage fraud, and traveling on a false passport to the United States, where he has sought to establish ties with right-wing groups.) allowing on X inflammatory lies of a kind that incited anti-immigrant riots in Britain . . . calling Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau an “insufferable tool” . . . . . . It will not be the first time in history that someone is seduced by the thrill of unconstrained power, although it may be the first time that so much of it is concentrated in one unelected megalomaniac. Worth reading in full. You’ve got an elected incoming president who kept a book of Hitler’s speeches by his bedside paired with a visionary but neo-fascist unelected co-president. Politicians and CEOs here in the U.S. and around the world are afraid of them. There is so much wrong with this picture. But while applauding whatever good things they may do (and we should, as I suggested yesterday), our job is to step up, yet again, to win the next couple of free and fair elections while we still have them. Tired and discouraged though we understandably are — I mean really: who isn’t sick of this? — it’s worth remembering: First, that the pendulum tends to swing back and forth. Second, that sometimes we win these things — like the 20 years out of the last 32 that we controlled the White House; the 16 of 32 when we controlled the Senate; the 14 of 32 when we controlled the House. And got things done like Clinton’s assault weapons ban and balanced budget; like Obamacare and the Infrastructure bill and the CHIPs Act and enormous jobs growth (46 million under Clinton/Obama/Biden; 2 under Bush/Bush/Trump) and my right to marry the person I love. (It’s also worth remembering that it’s hard to control the Senate, even though we did half the time, because Idaho and Wyoming get as many senators as California and New York. And hard to control the House because our Republican friends have more effectively gerrymandered than we.) So! As we’re asked in the weeks ahead to get back in the game . . . by running for office, by encouraging young people to run, by joining an Indivisible chapter, by volunteering with Field Team 6, by chipping in to fund these and so many other worthy blue efforts (very much including your state party and the DNC) . . . the most constructive, soul-nourishing answer we can give will be: YES. REST IN PEACE Peter Yarrow died yesterday. I spent most Saturday nights senior alone in the dark (my roommates were out chasing co-eds), gazing off at nothing, listening to Album 1700. It’s almost all hauntingly beautiful (only “I Dig Rock and Roll Music” and the “Big Blue Frog” break the mood) — but the two songs that touched me directly were “The Great Mandala,” about a young man who refused to go to Vietnam — I could never have gone either, nor likely summoned the courage not to go as he did; 1968 was a very fraught time for me (blessedly, I drew a very high lottery number) — and “Whatshername.” That one tells the story of a guy dropping in on an old college chum — seemingly for no special reason. He’s happily married with two kids “and one on the way,” but . . . well, listen and you’ll see why he’s really come. But before he gets there, he makes a little small talk — “How’s the preacher? How’s Don? Did he go back to school? No kidding! I thought he was gay.” — and then he gets to the point of his visit. But wait. Did hear that right? “No kidding! I thought he was gay.” It was just so . . . casual. Deeply closeted, listened over and over for notes of contempt or disgust — but nothing. I had spent the prior 10 years wound so tight — and this didn’t matter to the two bros? Gay, not gay, who cares? Really? It would be two more years before I could finally break out of my shell — I thought I was the only one like me in a college of 5,000 men, hundreds of whom, I would later learn, shared my same secret (did I mention it was 1968?) — but it sure stuck with me. So in a way I became friends with Peter Yarrow 57 years ago. But then became actual friends in 2015. I posted a long message he wrote us all in 2018, when he was 80. And concluded: “Now that, I would say, is a life well lived. And he ain’t done.” Yesterday, at 86, he was. I loved reading his obituary. A gentler, more loving soul I’ve never met.