In LaLa land, waiting for the apocalypse....
With two weeks 'til Trump 2.0, and MAGAland still in tumult, even pretty Los Angeles can’t fully escape thoughts of what’s to come.
‘Pink Palms,’ from the series, ‘The Golden Hour’ by multimedia artist Marco Walker
[Note: this post was updated Jan. 6th]
Jan. 5. As we approach the “Day One” political apocalypse….
Fifteen days to go before Trump 2.0 takes office and the gloves come off Project 2025. I am in LA, avoiding over-reading the news about Trump et al., and the official arrival of US illiberalism, in favor of cultivating other energies. Doing a mix of personal and political prep to be ready in two weeks.
I left the Bay on Friday for a warmer break before the start of the apocalypse, as LA folx are dubbing the coming regime and expected weaponization of Project 2025. I lived here for a year after leaving NY in 2001. At the time, I thought of LA as a version of Florida with its mix of strip malls, sleek glass high-rise buildings downtown, and row upon row of flat, low residential neighborhoods with so many cute Craftsman houses and dots of white adobe Mission-style homes that reminded me of Rollins College, where I spent my first two years of college while playing tennis on scholarship, mulling my future as a tennis professional. I had long Farrah Fawcett hair and Pop-Eye arms and was super tanned like the young college girls I see as I drive around LA now where everyone works out so much. Then I fell in love with a girl and soon moved to New York City and forgot tennis. But that’s for another story and another day….
My time in LA back then sometimes felt like pages of a Joan Didion novel. I was lonely, living the sharp grief of a breakup with my girlfriend, and coparenting our baby while newly living apart. I’d left my busy, happy NY queer journalist’s life and social circle without much planning for the CA life I planned to build. I arrived knowing just a few people, but not well, and stayed home a lot in solo maman mode, hustling to earn my keep as a freelancer journo when I wasn’t actively parenting. I felt curious about LaLa land then and ventured out a lot, but also spent much of my time alone. I attended parties where it took an hour to drive across town and no one thought much of that, but the party guests expressed surprise when I confessed that I knew nothing about the television shows they were excitedly gossiping about because I didn’t own a TV. I felt like an alien species, mildly. It’s not that I didn’t meet interesting people and make some good friends; I did, and they’re lovely, and they’re the main reason I’m back this week. But the Joan Didion part, her sense of clinical detachment, and looking upon LA and its denizens from one’s house with an anthropological and writer’s eye – that was a constant feeling. I never lost my sense of cultural dislocation.
I recall it now, as I get lost driving around, only vaguely recalling the streets I learned to navigate back then. But there’s no sting in it now, just amusement, and an observation of what feels the same and what is different, what catches my eye. The weather is much colder than I’d hoped. I was seeking some serious sun. I’m still a Fla girl at heart, and a Haiti one, loving more heat than less, always.
I always enjoyed LA’s weather and the wildflowers that line dry culverts and blossom all over Echo Park where I lived, and the cinematic horizon of tall, skinny palm trees at every turn. LA has the loveliest architecture, too, and retro modern design and old school signage, and I enjoy it a lot visually, aesthetically. I love the vintage postcard feel of its landscapes, too. It’s one thing I look forward to when I visit. That, and friends.
I was so furiously busy all of 2024 that I am recalibrating, as I wrote earlier. My planned resistance to the Trumpcalypse is taking two forms. Privately, I’m eeking out a bit more sun and chill time and pleasures I denied myself in 2024 before the return home to freezing NY and our appalling political reality. Politically, I’m engaging in a deep re- education/deep-dive phase, hoping to absorb more about past chapters of American repression in order to distill information useful to the present moment. Resistance lessons in particular.
Photo: AC d’Adesky
Before I talk about the politics, let me say more about LA and pleasure, because the latter is important. The balance is essential, the restocking of energy depleted in the yearlong effort to sound the alarm about Project 2025.
I’m visiting and staying with 90s friends here. First with Peter McQuaid and his husband Chris Lindes, who were living in LA when I was, and moved shortly after I did in the early aughts to Oakland, and returned to LA around when I left the Bay Area for New Orleans. They’re living in a new area for me, Exposition Park, and their house makes me envious for the life I rejected: calm, pretty, well-decorated rooms, a lot of great art on the walls by talented friends, a big outside backyard that invites you to plan a summer BBQ and loll about drinking gin cocktails. Two small dogs that demand petting. It’s comfortable and provides the respite I sought. I’m staying here another day before moving to visit another 90s friend, Mark Schoofs, also an editor I met in the gay 90s like Peter. He lives in Altadena with his husband and their 4 ½ yr. old daughter.
I have no idea where Altadena is, but it mentally sounds far. I know it’s near Pasadena and my only association to that is with the Pasadena museum, which I recall liking. The point is, LA is about distance and driving and I take pleasure in that, as well as getting mildly lost. Instead of being lonely or annoyed, I’m happy to be stumbling across new scenes, focusing on things other than Trump or Elump, as the media now call wannabe-president Elon Musk.
Friendship is why I came to LA. Years ago I realized that if I expected to hold onto the good friends I make in the different cities I live, I need to invest real time in maintaining these connections. Now, with Covid and our collective shift to living more remotely and apart from others, our over-reliance on text and Zoom, we don’t talk on the phone to our friends as much, either. So if they live far away, we must visit, we must make ourselves available, we must take the time to pay closer attention to them and their struggles, to care, to be physically present. At least I feel I do. For me, that also means not being overly preoccupied with work when I visit, so I can be properly present. I took this little window of the end year/new year to catch up and reconnect with my West Coast life. It reminds me of what I like about LA and why I left it at the same time. LA is a good place for me to visit, in other words.
This time I do what I most enjoyed when I lived here: art and museums, coffeeshops, little shops and random explorations of unfamiliar neighborhoods. Today I spent my Saturday in Culver City, in order to check out the historically famous restored industrial Helms building that houses a bakery that provided bread for the first Apollo astronauts, and reportedly has great croissants. There’s a Culver Arts District where everything was still closed for a few more days. LA isn’t rushing into the New Year, clearly.
The historic Helms baker, restored to its former glory.
Helms bread was sent into space to feed the first Apollo crew and Olympic athletes at a time when Americans felt more optimistic about the future.
I ordered a classic pain au chocolat to dip into my coffee, taking in the day crowd at Helms while I scrolled LA art exhibitions to catch. I stumbled upon Pink Palms, one in a series of gorgeous filtered photographs by multimedia artist Marco Walker, created as a commission for the Beverly Hills Hotel, the latter a classic of LA architecture. I instantly wanted that giant pink palm Dr. Seuss landscape on the wall of my beautiful nonexistent LA bathroom, where I could luxuriate in a hot bath scented with amazing-smelling botanical products also sold in the Helms bakery. (LA does sell so many competing fantasies at once, doesn’t it? It really delivers a soothing escapist antidote to, say, frothing unkempt Steve Bannon.) From Marco, I scrolled on to discover the gorgeous landscapes of another photographer, Christopher Russell (see below).
While there, I sat next to four young women, tres LA, dressed in what looked like casual-pricey gym wear, all drinking healthy green-tinged smoothies, having ignored the famous Helms pastries. Their conversation ping-ponged between boys, college classes, and the apocalypse, as they dubbed the uncertain future under Trump 2.0. I wasn’t eavesdropping, not really, but they were sitting right next to me, so I heard every word. It made me think, as I do often now, about the sorry world we are giving our children right now.
What if we’re not next to each other when the apocalypse happens?
~ Overheard at an LA brunch chat about Trump’s return
These girls were younger than my daughter’s, who are 24, 25, and 27 respectively, but were soon to graduate college. The Helms breakfast talk was an exercise in collective risk assessment, I quicky surmised. How risky was it for one of them(one of three blondes, the other a striking possibly faux redhead) to do a semester abroad? What if the apocalypse happened and she couldn’t get back to her family in LA? This was said seriously, and I could see these girls really were worried about the possibility of a major catastrophe of unknown proportions including even a nuclear bomb or war that might happen under Trump 2.0. I didn’t love the way they talked about their parents, because their conclusion was their parents are rather clueless and lame when it comes to offering any security as their world is falling apart, politically, metaphorically or literally. One of them asked if the others imagined they would live in Europe in the future. All of them agreed Italian boys were cute. And they kept returning to the subject of the apocalypse, including nuclear war, something I don’t like to think about.
It reminded me of how Trump is impacting the youth of this country, and how rotten it is that my own daughters also have a realistic, rather bleak sense of our political future. They don’t expect things to get better economically, and they know Trump and Co. are rogues, and it just bums them out – that’s the word they use – that they can’t do anything about it – that’s the feeling they have. They aren’t like me who’s a very politically engaged creature, but they are dialed in, like these young women are, and smart, and they are taking in every moment of the present shitshow and it all sucks, which was the conclusion of my very fit, healthy table neighbors at Helms.
I had to laugh at how LA they were and are though -- very Didion chat. They spent some time talking about the crazy vet who mowed people down in Nola and the mystery guy who blew up the Tesla outside a Trump hotel in Vegas. Both also sucked. Their lens was personal. While they acknowledged the tragedy of lives lost in New Orleans, it also sucked that now nobody will probably want to go party on Bourbon street so that wrecks Mardi Gras for them and their friends in the future. They are also quite unimpressed with Elon Musk and his tank Tesla truck which, as one declared, is so ugly and only a loser incel would drive.
Nothing like a takedown by four LA college girls.
It took me a minute to realize they were also budding feminists, albeit in a spoiled wannabe rich girl LA way. Shallow and too-casual about money, overly focused on their gym bodies, but sharply incisive about boys their age who are either super cute or jerks, but not both, and hating on broligarchs like Musk (like, who would ever want his baby? Gross, one said, putting a finger to her mouth like a bulimic), yet focused on their studies and invested in their own brains and rightly worried about how to plan for any kind of future. And banking on their sisterhood to get them through it, somehow. What if we’re not next to each other when the apocalypse happens? they asked. We should start planning now.
I left them talking about what to pack in their survival kits if they did take a semester abroad and a bomb went off somewhere and their parents were freaking out. Two of them would go back to their parents; two would not. One planned try to sneak back into America like some refugee, as she put it, shrugging, matter of factly. Because it would be, like, World War 3, right? The discussion included a hard review of must-bring cosmetics. Like, if you could only choose three, as the redhead demanded. It was all very LA-illuminating, but it also made me feel for them, and for all this next generation. America’s youth feel matter-of-factly screwed and can’t even contemplate the prospect of a fun semester abroad in Europe before graduating as the safest move. Surviving college has clearly taken on a whole other layer of meaning.
The Spangle Maker by photographer Christopher Russell (Pigment print, folded and scratched with a razor.) “Landscape is a place of endless metaphor,” states the artist. “I photograph the physical margins of the social pact.”
The sobering brunch table chatter prompted me to head for the public library in Culver City afterward to undertake some serious research before catching a museum later. I never made it to the museum. Instead, I got lost researching information about how US progressives responded to the early moves of Joseph McCarthy back in the 1950s, and reading articles about the parallels of then and now. Back then, Republicans were also feuding, which eventually led the Dems to regain power. Project 2025 is a stand-in for McCarthyism, and the key actor subbing for McCarthy himself is a less-known political mudslinger, Tom Jones, head of The American Accountability Foundation, or AAF.
I don’t want to go deeply into the AAF’s blacklist of political opponents and its effort to dox and intimidate those it deems political opponents here because I plan an update on the Resisting Project 2025 stack this week. But I do want to note the absence of media focus, as well as civil society outcry, about the unfolding doxing of Americans, a la Joe McCarthy. AAF has been building its blacklilst and doxing plan with $1 million of major funding and public support from Kevin Roberts and the Heritage Foundation and the involvement of key players like Stephen Miller and Russell Vought, both Trump 2.0 Cabinet picks, as well as now-retired ex-Senator Jim DeMint (R-KY).
In two weeks, we’re likely to see the weaponization of the blacklist as Trump puts his own people to head the Department of Justice and begin the purge of undesirables – read anyone not down with Project 2025. The names have been public for weeks, on the AAF website, and I’m not naming them to make it worse for those being targeted. But they span a number of federal agencies, and include top Democrats in Congress. They include the bigger names like Joe Biden and Liz Cheney, both of whom captured a lot of media ink this week. But they also include a lot of smaller names that, since April, have endured the start of a public witch hunt that aims to scare them and sully their reputations and careers and push them to quit public office, or simply punish them for failing to support a given Trump position in the past. It’s so ugly. I am looking into what the response to all this is shaping up to be. More to come in the other ‘stack.
PHOTO: Katie Goodale, Augusta Chronicle via USA TODAY Network
Over the past two days, a number of media stories have remarked on how irritated and opposed Trump is to having the US flag flown at half-mast to honor former President Jimmy Carter who just died at age 100 – another liberal loser to MAGAworld – because it takes public attention away from his victory moment of stepping back into power. Trump is also grousing about the rosy state of the US economy and overall positive balance sheet that Biden is leaving him.
Peter Baker wrote about this in a New York Times piece yesterday, noting that while Trump successfully campaigned on a re-election narrative of the US as a failing third-world country, the reality is starkly the opposite. Biden is leaving the US in better shape than any bequeathed to a newly-elected president since George W. Bush in 2001: murders are down, illegal immigration from Mexico is way down, the stock market is roaring, wages are up, inflation is normalizing, and unemployment is at a near historic record best. Meanwhile, domestic energy production and manufacturing are booming. Even fentanyl deaths have fallen. No wonder Trump wants to investigate Biden and punish him. He’s expose the fallacy of Trump’s arguments. Baker also notes that Trump won’t waste any time taking credit for Biden’s achievements.
Trump is also going bonkers about other 11th hour Biden moves to both secure his presidency as a legacy of democratic reform, but also protect people from Trump 2.0’s revenge scheme. Biden committed the cardinal sin, to MAGAland, of awarding a Presidential Citizens Medal, the second-highest civilian honor, to Never Trumper Republican Liz Cheney and Bennie Thompson, joint leaders of the January 6th Congressional Committee, a bold statement about what Biden thinks of his successor. Biden also awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Trump’s sworn enemy, Hillary Clinton, and the man MAGAland regards as evil incarnate, liberal donor George Soros. He also awarded medals to Evan Wolfson, Mary Bonauto and Tim Gill, LGBTQIA+ activists who helped secure marriage equality – another stick in the MAGA craw. Each of these medals felt like a Take That Donald! blow by Biden, and a reminder to all of us of the vision and sacrifice of Americans who champion social justice. It was a statement that said, our heroes are those who champion liberty and democracy. Let’s honor them by holding up that torch.
Then came the legal blow provided by Judge Juan Merchan, who not only denied Trump’s motion to dismiss a hush money case involving falsified business records, but plans to sentence Trump on January 10th. Trump won’t serve time in jail, but the conviction will stand as a mark against Trump forever, though he’ll seek to appeal it. America will inaugurate a felon on January 20th. Merchan’s actions are a reminder to America that the rule of law and the ideals of democracy must continue to be defended by non-partisan judges and courts.
Photo Collage: Shutterstock
As I read about the Biden medals and the parties at the White House earlier, I kept mulling about Joe McCarthy and the vengeance plan Trump’s circle is primed to unleash. It all has the feeling of a theatrical drama being played out on a national stage, which is exactly what it is. I also felt heartened to come across some new examples of resistance to the revenge scheme.
Last year, Governor Gavin Newsom took a major step to protect people in California from online doxing, or harassment, signing AB 1979: The Doxing Recourse Victims Act into law. It allows people to pursue civil action and get restitution for harms they endure as a result of online doxing. Other states have taken note. At the federal level, Republicans also took action recently to protect federal workers – and maybe themselves – from the promised Trump 2.0 purge to come and a weaponized Dept. of Justice.
Last month GOP Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR), Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and five Republican colleagues introduced the Public Servant Protection Act, a bill designed to protect government workers, officials, and appointees from being targeted at their homes. That comes after Never Trumper Republicans suffered MAGA doxing and personal threats, too. Over the past three years, 129 death threats were made against Assistant United States Attorneys or their families according to Justice Department data, according to the National Association of Assistant United States Attorneys, which is tracking doxing attacks. So did many election workers in the months leading up to the election.
There’s also a new online portal, Civil Service Strong, just launched as a proactive resource against the planned weaponization of Schedule F, the Executive Order that Trump 2.0 will resurrect to mass-fire millions of federal employees, starting with Biden appointees, especially officials in the Dept. of Homeland Security and USCIS. The new portal aims to protect some 2.2. US federal workers and is a project that was developed by a coalition of groups including Democracy Forward, CREW, POGO, State Democracy Defenders, and the federal unions AFSCME, AFGE and NFFE. It’s an outgrowth of work by several anti-Project 2025 Working Groups convened since last summer by Democracy Forward that have worked to plan counter-moves to Project 2025’s agenda.
The new portal offers a number of resources for future whistleblowers, and information about help federal workers may seek from the Merit Systems Protection Board, and how to lodge complaints in cases of discrimination or intimidation. As the clock winds down to January 20th, then, progressives are winding up their watches for the planned counter-strikes. They’ve also lined up legal rebuttals the different Executive Orders Trump will sign on Day One, and have plaintiffs ready to go, too.
‘Mirage,’ by Marco Walker, from the series, The Golden Hour
As I look upon the cinema landscape of tall palms here in LA, I’m also keeping my eyes trained on the horizon that is just two weeks away. The mountains beyond mountains, as a famous Haitian proverb says. We’re digging the political trenches of a very uncivil war, one in which the champions of democracy are organizing regiments for the fight-back. While we brace for the ugly Day One Shock and Awe, I’m training my sights on where I anticipate counter-strikes to surface first.
Meanwhile, it continues to cheer me to see MAGAland continue its feral dogfight, pitting would-be tech MAGA against America First MAGA. Pitting President Elump against the holy roller Christian nationalist camp, led by wildman Steve Bannon and Marjorie Taylor Greene. Among the many things I read about yesterday, and am reflecting upon with a lens of historical insight, is how the infighting among Republicans in the past led Democrats to regain power. That was a eventual post-McCarthyist corrective. The MAGA infighting is hurting Trump, exposing what was touted as a united rightist Project 2025 front, revealing Trump 2.0 to be a venomous snakepit of ego and power only too happy to eat its own.
Let’s cheer them on.