The Vichy puppet regime in Nazi-occupied France organized a so-called “Passive Resistance” movement, akin to civil defense, to pretend that it was legitimate. Members were issued whistles rather than guns and were instructed to blow them hard if they saw something suspicious. In what passes for the American Left today, those who “resist” ICE are given whistles and told to blow them when they see ICE deportation agents in their neighborhoods.
After Renee Good was shot to death by an ICE agent in Minneapolis, right-wing defenders of the Trump administration suggested that she had brought it upon herself by failing to comply with her killers’ orders.
When widespread protests erupted in Iran over soaring inflation and high living costs, the Trump Administration openly supported the demonstrators and even pledged to launch military strikes against Iran if its security forces used violence against them. In the United States, however, when similar protests occurred — such as those following the killing of a woman by ICE in Minneapolis — the official response was strikingly different.
Among modern industrialized nations, the United States stands out as one of the very few that still lacks universal healthcare. Why do Americans accept this situation?
Under Article V of the NATO Charter, an armed attack against one NATO member is considered an attack against all members, including the United States itself. If the U.S. were to carry out its threat to attack Greenland—a Danish territory, and Denmark being a close NATO ally—this would create a highly bizarre and unprecedented situation.
Go to industry gatherings, especially in the media, and you’ll find that the old white male elite has been replaced, not by equality or equity, but by a different set of elites. The old boys’ club is gone, and that’s good. But this isn’t much of an improvement.
Whatever you think of the current administration, it is astonishing that so many Americans who hate the president and the government are willing to sit passively at home, rather than actively resist.
Venezuela is merely one of seven countries Trump bombed in 2025, one of several where regime change is the official but unstated agenda. Increasingly, Americans are being asked to support going to war and deploying the military in lethal actions even in the absence of anything approximating a casus belli.
ICE agents are the worst possible people. Masked and unidentified, they roam the country terrorizing innocent, hard-working people, and kidnap them and their kids with no consideration for their constitutional rights. Sometimes, you hear about some misfortune befalling one of them. Sadly, you have to pretend to at least feel neutral about this. Until the Trump madness blows over, here’s how to keep your poker face.
In the same way that companies like Facebook’s habit of scraping news from news websites helped drive traditional news organizations out of business, leaving Facebook with little original news to send out to its users, A.I. models are scraping websites for content, which will deny them the traffic they need to survive. Then, what will A.I. do?
