The Democrats have a flag problem
The left needs to stop gifting ammo to the right. 🫏🎁🐘 Also: Radiohead, roasts, leopards, Pittsburgh, David Foster Wallace, and Miles Davis.
Dems have a flag problem.
You're fighting for America, right? So stop waving foreign flags and start waving American ones.
I saw one protestor in LA waving a Mexican flag while wearing a H@mas armband in front of a burning Waymo. It was like watching someone follow a checklist for how to alienate people who might otherwise support their cause.
This is what America thinks when it sees a guy in a H@mas armband in a standoff with a masked ICE storm trooper:
It all fuels the "foreign invasion" narrative that's catnip to FOX News mooks.
"These idiots waiving Mexican flags during the LA riots just gave Donald Trump the greatest political gift," Republican strategist Matt Wylie, who founded Freedom Project USA, told Newsweek. "It will be 'Exhibit A' as proof of an invasion. Those images have done more in the last few days to strengthen his ability to crackdown on illegal immigration than weeks of messaging ever could."
The dumbest thing the left does is forfeit patriotism to the right. It's like an ongoing own goal. The reason I (and many others) oppose this administration is because I LOVE AMERICA. Hating all this 🍊 crap is patriotic.
Protest away, but do it right. Be on the side of the Constitution. Be on the side of due process. Be on the side of what makes people around the world cross deserts and oceans to come here. America is the greatest experiment in democracy the world’s ever seen. Stop being a hater and start yelling, “U-S-A!”
FYI this is what civil rights protests looked like in the sixties:
And this is how Israelis protested their government in 2023:
The question I have (on repeat) for the left: Do you want to win or not? Because goddamn ya keep making it harder than it needs to be. It’s like Radiohead sang:
🎶 You do it to yourself, you do
And that's what really hurts
You do it to yourself, just you
You and no one else 🎶
Congressman Ritchie Torres (D) nailed it re: the radical left in an interview with Sam Harris:
I'm not aware of a civilization in human history that has ever succeeded on the strength of self-loathing. Like a society that no longer believes in itself will not long endure.
And I have found that there's often a disconnect between how an immigrant sees America and how a native born Gen Z or might see America. An immigrant sees a land of opportunity. Whereas a member of Gen Z will see nothing but a system of oppression, nothing but racism and sexism and xenophobia.
And look, there's certainly a danger in excessive nationalism, but there's also a danger in a deficit. Every civilization needs some degree of self-love and I feel like we have a culture of self-loathing in the West.
One thing I found inspiring about the Israeli left is before October 7th, during the passionate debates about judicial reform, you had a mass mobilization of Israelis largely from the left protesting the judicial reforms. And I found it striking that there were Israelis who were singing the Israeli anthem, Haktikva, and waving the Israeli flag and proudly proclaiming their Israeli patriotism.
And I feel like that's such a stark contrast to what we see from the American left, where you have leftists burning the American flag or denigrating the United States. I wish the American left would embrace the patriotism of the Israeli left.
Of course, ain’t no way any of these people will ever view Israel as an example to follow. Somehow the country socialists detest the most is the world’s most successful experiment in socialism.
The dumbest thing the left does is forfeit patriotism to the right. It's like an ongoing own goal.
And while I’m giving advice to the left on winning (I’m not talking ego strokes, moral superiority, or being right – I’m talking WINNING):
🏆 Stop complaining about being the victim all the time. Act like a winner if you want people to vote for you.
🏆 Give up all these purity tests. Progressives are the HR department while MAGA is the roast. Which would you rather be around? Progressives want to cancel you for saying retarded while MAGA is, well, a bunch of retards. (And the great thing is they won’t even get mad at me for saying that. They’ll just be happy I ain’t a snowflake.)
🏆 The left needs a guy with a huge 🍆. No, really. He can hate ICE, fight climate change, be pro-choice, oppose wealth inequality, and whatever else progressive. He just needs to do it all while bragging about his enormous schlong (w/ pic proof please). Trust me, the manosphere is simple – they will get on board with Dongus Maximus. "Well, if HE can vote that way..."
More:
🪖 I don't want to defund the police. I just want them to stop wearing masks. Masks are how we know who the bad guys are. Let’s start a #demaskthepolice hashtag.
🪖 "I'm outraged that I'm getting exactly what I voted for!"
-America
🪖 LA? Now? I thought his big tanks-in-the-street military parade was gonna be in DC in July.
🪖 🍊 is the perfect President for the internet: With both, everything is an emergency all the time.
🪖 After the Gulf thing, I’m wondering if he’ll insist we change the name of LA to Los Maralagos.
🪖 Saw this 🐆🐆 thing (below). Idea: How about Latinos get to stay in the US as long as Ecuador gives 47 a couple of those giant turtles? #artofthedeal
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Quickies
🎯 The female version of being a creep is that one lady in the office who always has candy.
🎯 The narrator of “Piano Man” has zero gaydar.
🎯 Odd how the "all life is sacred" people are always protesting Planned Parenthoods but never staff suicide support hotlines. Do they view humans like cars (i.e. they lose value once you "drive it off the lot") or what?
🎯 Poets think they understand nature so much better than the rest of us. Dirt this, waves that, flowers are pretty. Yeah, yeah. The rest of us get it too. And songwriters, re: the moon...
🎯 Men act like women are so confusing. Nah. Learn three things about astrology and try making a reservation somewhere.
🎯 I do NOT support an investigation into Musk’s use of ketamine, molly, and shrooms until it is confirmed we do not have the same dealer.
🎯 There are only 4 types of men now:
poly = burning man
incel = yearning man
bro = earning man
trans = turning man
🎯 There’s a scene in s4 of Mad Men where Dr. Faye says to Don, “I hope she knows you only like the beginnings of things.” Ouch. Related bit:
🎯 The past decade has been filled with smart people interviewing dumb people about why they're dumb. "So you know nothing. Why do you think that way?" The answer: They don't. We can stop with all this intellectual slumming. Dissecting foolishness is a fool’s errand – you either clock moron or you don’t.
🎯 Shoutout to Pittsburgh for incredible brand consistency with the yellow and black color scheme on just about everything. They really mean (Joe Greene) it!
🎯 All these time saving devices, yet we’ve never been busier. We’re ultraconnected, yet there’s an epidemic of loneliness. We can search for everything so no one agrees on anything. We’re all experts yet no one is trusted. We overdosed on width and lost all depth.
🎯 Life is about constantly yelling out "corner" and “behind,” yet still taking it on the chin.
Working Methods
Working Methods is another Substack I curate with creativity inspiration from art luminaries. Some recent gems there (link for full entry)…
David Foster Wallace: “What really great artists do is they're entirely themselves. They're entirely themselves, they've got their own vision, their own way of fracturing reality, and if it's authentic and true, you feel it in your nerve endings.”
Patricia Madson: “Just show up. Move your body toward your dreams. Go to where they’re happening–the gym, the office, the yoga class. Be there physically.”
Martin McDonagh: "If anything can teach you to write dialogue, it’s listening to people. Listen to people, observe people, as opposed to going to the movies and listening to characters. Write down exactly—to a word—how people speak."
Hermann Hesse: "When someone is seeking, it happens quite easily that he only sees the thing that he is seeking...Seeking means: to have a goal; but finding means: to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal."
Maria Callas: "Music should be essentially simple, and upon simplicity and beauty of line it can become great."
C.S. Lewis: "Always write (and read) with the ear, not the eye. You should hear every sentence you write as if it was being read aloud or spoken. If it does not sound nice, try again."
Miles Davis: “If you hit a wrong note, it's the next note that you play that determines if it's good or bad.”
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Thanks for reading. You like me for all the wrong reasons. And that's what I love about you. 😘
-Matt
Zen priest, Peter Coyote, on protest:
—
I’m watching the Los Angeles reaction to ICE raids with trepidation and regret.
Three years ago I taught a class at Harvard on the “theater of protest”— designed to help people understand why so many protests turn out to be Republican campaign videos working directly against the interests of the original protest.
A protest is an invitation to a better world.
It’s a ceremony.
No one accepts a ceremonial invitation when they’re being screamed at.
More important you have to know who the real audience of the protest is.
The audience is NEVER the police, the politicians, the Board of supervisors, Congress,etc.
The audience is always the American people, who are trying to decide who they can trust; who will not embarrass them.
If you win them, you win power at the box office and power to make positive change.
Everything else is a waste.
There are a few ways to get there:
1. Let women organize the event. They’re more collaborative. They’re more inclusive, and they don’t generally bring the undertones of violence men do.
2 Appoint monitors, give them yellow, vests and whistles. At the first sign of violence, they blow the whistles and the real protester sit down.
Let the police take out their aggression on the anarchists and the provocateurs trying to discredit the movement.
3. Dress like you’re going to church. It’s hard to be painted as a hoodlum when you’re dressed in clean, presentable clothes.
They don’t have to be fancy they just signal the respect for the occasion that you want to transmit to the audience.
4. Make your protest silent. Demonstrate your discipline to the American people. Let signs do the talking.
5. Go home at night. In the dark, you can’t tell the cops from the killers. Come back at dawn fresh and rested.
I have great fear that Trump’s staging with the National Guard and maybe the Marines is designed to clash with anarchists who are playing into his hands and offering him the opportunity to declare an insurrection.
It’s such a waste and it’s only because we haven’t thought things through strategically.
Nothing I thought of is particularly original.
It was all learned by watching the early civil rights protests in the 50s and 60s.
And it was the discipline and courage of African-Americans that drew such a clear line in the American sand that people were forced to take sides and that produced the civil rights act.
The American people are watching and once again if we behave in ways that can be misinterpreted, we’ll see this explained to the public in Republican campaign videos benefiting the very people who started this.
Wake up.
Vent at home.
In public practice discipline and self control.
It takes much more courage.
as a Californian who left my home state at 35, in disgust, in 2016 and still loves my country and wants to love that state, this was one of my favorite things I've ever read. Thank you so much for "getting it."