Tuesday, July 21, 2026

Wise Words from The Contrarian

Words & Phrases

‘Disarray’ is another word for healthy politics

JENNIFER RUBIN

JUL 21

READ IN APP

On Sunday, Troy Jackson, former president of the Maine state senate, effectively wrapped up the nomination for the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination, filling the slot left by Graham Platner’s departure from the race after news of his sexual assault scandal broke. So ends the uncertainty over Platner’s replacement — and brings to an abrupt end the overwrought media coverage and angst-ridden punditry over Democrats’ travails in fielding a viable opponent to run against Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), whose vulnerabilities should actually panic Republicans.

When conflicts, surprises, or unforeseen events occur in Democratic ranks, as it did in Maine, you can invariably count on the billionaire-owned legacy media to paint events in the most extreme terms, often suggesting that missteps or uncertainty are evidence of the party’s impending doom. Such coverage often exceeds even the dictionary’s definition of disarray: “the state of being confused and having no organization or of being messy.” Instead, it veers closer to portraying outright chaos: “a state of utter confusion, disorder, or the complete absence of structure and predictability.”

Hackneyed clickbait that treats party politics as something that should be placid and conflict-free — as if Trump’s model of authoritarian control offers no hint of dissent and is the norm — is a bizarre way of covering politics in a democracy. Politics, like any human endeavor, is the product of sometimes irrational decision-making and forces that defy prediction. Moreover, in a democracy, it should be a messy affair, a venue for robust debate, diverse viewpoints, and contentious conflict resolution. What is abnormal and dangerous is politics that operates as a cult of personality, in which fear, self-abasement, and groupthink create a rigid uniformity that forecloses the push-and-shove of healthy debate.

As we saw in Maine, the conventional wisdom about Democrats’ periodic stumbles grossly exaggerated the party’s temporary woes. In fact, as soon as Platner’s sexual assault allegation burst into view, Democrats moved with remarkable speed and unity. National Democrats ranging from Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) uniformly agreed to pipe down regarding his replacement. Meanwhile, the energetic state party quickly devised a nominating process. Lo and behold, the party seems to have come together behind a unifying, electable figure this past weekend.

Huge credit goes to Maine Attorney General Shenna Bellows, who on Sunday announced that since “Trump’s attacks on our democracy are only accelerating, and the best way that I can serve our state and country at this moment is by focusing exclusively on my role as Secretary of State.” She explained, “This has been an unprecedented nominating process, compressed into days instead of months.” Expressing appreciation for all the volunteers who energetically swung into action, she emphasized “Democrats don’t have a day to waste in unifying around that shared goal.” Nirav Shahquickly followed suit, helping to clear the field and consolidate support around Troy Jackson. Numerous politicians, pundits, and advocates, e.g., pro- or anti-Zohran Mamdani, pro- or anti-Abdul El-Sayed, could learn something from this grown-up conduct, which prioritizes beating fascist enemies of democracy over scoring points against other Democratic factions.

The Maine episode reminds us that national media coverage and out-of-state political operators need to remain grounded in the day-to-day operation of state and local politics, where volunteers and staff keep the political trains running and activate when things don’t go as planned. Legacy and new media coverage might have avoided unwarranted hysterics (unless the goal was not accuracy but generating attention and coverage) had they better grasped the state of Maine’s grassroots politics.

Maine Democratic chair Charles F. Dingman, a thoughtful progressive with an intellectual bent, did a masterful job first helping to push Platner up and then quickly devising a credible nominating process for filling his slot. The weekend nominating convention, involving thousands of Mainers, can legitimately claim to be “representative, transparent, and accessible.”

The New York Times reported:

As Mr. Dingman rose to party chair last year, he told The Maine Morning Star that he wanted the state party to “be understood to be the party of Maine’s working people.”…
BJ McCollister, a Democratic National Committee representative, said few Mainers had “done as much as Charlie has done to make sure that there is some sort of social safety net protection — and the type of protections that progressives are often fighting for.”
Still, Mr. McCollister said Mr. Dingman had worked hard to be a “big-tent party” chair over the last year.

So maybe Democrats after all are not in such disarray, and not remotely chaotic?

Conflict and debate do not equate to “disarray” or chaos; they represent the healthy functioning of a political party that rejects a cult of personality. Democrats who care about forming a big tent and stressing the value of testing ideas and vetting candidates should reject the temptation to silence one side or the other, and ignore unfounded speculation that internal opponents’ victories will ensure doom in the general election and the party’s national fortunes.

Maine Democrats remind us that the most critical aspect of defeating authoritarianism is robust, committed citizen participation.

When voters take their democracy seriously, interact with neighbors directly, engage in local conventions/nominating processes, and use their own networks to bat down conspiracies and hysteria, democracy thrives. Less doomscrolling and punditry, more citizen activism and engagement with fellow voters, inure us to the benefit of our democratic revival.

In short, let’s dump the “disarray” and “chaos” lingo to describe the hurly-burly, healthy operation of politics. Not every Democratic blip equates to disaster. In fact, Platner’s exit may well prove to be a godsend to the party in November. If Maine is any example, more attention to and confidence in local political leaders and grassroots volunteers (aided by selfless public servants such as Bellows) will be a boon to our mental well-being and defense of our messy democratic political system.

The Contrarian is community-supported. Help fund bold journalism and critical lawsuits to stop Trump’s corruption by becoming a paid subscriber. Join the fight now

Saturday, July 18, 2026

Loved Reading This One

I've been a fan of Pete's for a long time. Jennifer Rubin says it best why Pete's someone to take seriously.

Don’t forget about Buttigieg

Democratic fresh faces such as Texas Senate nominee James Talarico, thirty-seven, and midterm standout campaigner Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA), thirty-nine, have earned praise for their media savviness and ease in connecting with voters. However, Democrats should not ignore the continued maturation of former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg as a first-rate political leader and communicator.

Of the current batch of lithe, highly articulate, Obama-level-cool political stars, Buttigieg, forty-four, is literally and figuratively the veteran — given his military service, tenure in the Biden administration, and extended national media presence. Thanks in part to his greying beard, he no longer comes across as a precocious college kid. Instead, he brings a unique degree of gravitas and refreshing distance from the internecine squabbles between factions of the party.

As the 2020 Iowa caucus winner, he snagged the plum spot of headlining last Sunday at Iowa Democrats’ “Liberty and Justice Celebration” fundraising dinner, a high-energy affair that benefited from Democratic enthusiasm over its strong contenders for governor, Senate, and the 1^st and 3^rd House congressional districts.

Buttigieg argued persuasively that the elite corruption endemic in our politics is why “we cannot have nice things.” Reminding the crowd that “[o]ur political and economic and social systems have been letting us down for a long time,” he explained that “our economy is unfair because our politics is unfair.”

Our democracy has been hijacked by the current “carnival of corruption,” Buttigieg observed, pointing to Trump’s defective jet gifted by the Qataris and his grotesque self-enrichment, including crypto graft; the Supreme Court’s indulgence of Trump’s tyrannical whims with a grant of absolute criminal immunity; and congressmen’s participation in ethically galling insider trades and utter lack of interest in checking executive overreach. “This hurts us. This is why things aren’t working properly,” he explained. “This is why they can make you pay more at the pump for a war you never asked for; how they burned down the Department of Education while we are worried about kids who cannot do math or read like they are supposed to.”

Buttigieg conceded Democrats have too often gotten “boxed in” as defenders of the status quo. “But the answer cannot be to put everything back the way it used to be. We are not going to all this trouble to find the shards of everything they smashed up and try to tape it back together to look just like it used to,” he implored the crowd.

Eschewing buzzy descriptors (“socialist” or “center left”), Buttigieg demonstrates that the real imperative for Democrats is boldness, the determination to offer concrete, dramatic solutions to bolster our democracy and ensure widespread prosperity for ordinary Americans.

“Don’t tell me we cannot take big swings, take real risks, do big work,” he proclaimed to rising applause, “Don’t tell me it’s bad politics to talk about diesel prices and democracy in the same breadth because they are all part of the same picture.” Buttigieg says that it is not too much to demand a political system in which everyone’s vote counts the same and the top vote getter is the winner (i.e., dump the Electoral College), or in which we redesign the Supreme Court’s size and jurisdiction to re-establish its legitimacy, or in which we end — by constitutional amendment if needed — dark money’s iron grip on our politics.

Rather than hector one part of the party, Buttigieg leans into his Midwestern values and speaks to unifying sentiments. He insists that “the American flag does not belong to one political side in this country, just as surely as we know that God does not belong to a political party in the United States of America.” And he argues that genuine aspirations for security and stability do not require we bathe in reactionary nostalgia. “We know it means to know your past without going back to it.”

Buttigieg offers a formula for unifying Democrats and forging a broad pro-democracy coalition: dramatic political reform; wages sufficient for an ordinary worker to live on one job; access to affordable childcare, worldclass healthcare, and public schools; and taxing corporations and the richest people at least as much as working people.

Whether he runs for president in 2028 (why wouldn’t he?), Buttigieg deserves kudos for his undaunted, unabashed, and unequivocal defense of America’s foundational values and commitment to pursuing our “more perfect union.” Democrats are fortunate to have him as a model for progressive, dynamic, optimistic political leadership.

Friday, July 17, 2026

Meet Milli

Milli is the newest member of our household. She joined us at the beginning of May, has fit right in, and is well loved by all.

Now you may be thinking we got a pet, well she's got the name a pet may have but ...

here's her photo.

Not a pet!

She's a Mill. She grinds up and cooks our table and cooking scraps that we used to put directly into the compost bin in the yard. She begins the composting for us and I don't have to take daily trips to that compost bin outside. Now I take her bucket seen below when it reaches the full level. For the two of us it takes about 4 weeks. When we have company like we did for two weeks it filled faster.

Below is a guide to what can and cannot go in.

I have an app with a library to look up items. For example she can take corn cobs but not the corn husking. I put in the avocado and peach pits but decided against the mango pit.

Instead of a compost bin on the counter, I keep a bowl that I fill as I cook and do the dishes for the scraps to feed Milli.

The banana peel goes in. Oops I should take off the sticker. Milli doesn't want paper. She does take meat scraps which I didn't compost before. Because she cooks everything there's no fear of critters getting into the meat scraps.

She has a timer and is set to come on and do her grinding and cooking at 11 pm every night. Most mornings she's all done by the time I'm down in the kitchen. If she had a lot put in the day before she is sometimes still going or on her cool down cycle later into the morning.

Lastly the grounds have no odors! My compost pail on the counter would become quite smelly as the day progressed even with a lid.

Love you Milli!

Thursday, July 16, 2026

Another Good Contrarian Read

Academic Freedom Advocates Stand Up at Yale

Democracy does not defend itself

JENNIFER RUBIN

JUL 16

READ IN APP

It is all too common, as Anne Applebaum wrote of Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, for a Republican politician to “abandon his previous ideals, to bury the patriotism that was once so important to him, and to become, instead, a loud, opportunistic collaborator.” We have seen a horde of figures in civil society make their Faustian bargain with Donald Trump and his authoritarian, white supremacist regime. However, for those in positions of responsibility in academe, Big Law, media, and business, there is an alternative to slavish careerism and unbridled ambition to climb the inner rungs of power.

Even when elite institutions appear ready to buckle, individuals and groups with modest financial resources and limited legal protections have proven that they can stand up — at great risk to themselves— and shame the accommodationists, thereby slowing the rush to collaborate with a tyrannical regime. The contrast between feeble ingratiators and principled dissenters has been especially vivid in the realm of higher education.

Harvard, Penn, and a batch of elite universities have compromised academic independence and thrown diversity under the bus to ward off Trump regime threats to slash funding by signing off on agreements that compromise academic independence, allow government oversight, forfeit efforts to recruit a diverse student population, and cede protection for vulnerable LBGTQ+ students.

These sorts of agreements, which have been imposed at Penn and the University of Virginia, have been roundly condemned for abrogating First Amendment rights and academic freedom, two cornerstones of our democracy. “These agreements are vague, contradictory and contain unlawful terms that subject universities to ongoing legal jeopardy,” wrote two Yale alums currently teaching at Penn. “For example, following Virginia’s policy could imperil Yale’s laudable efforts to expand access to low-income and first-generation college students.” Some of these extortionist deals have limited foreign student enrollment and forced schools to discriminate against trans students. They’ve also opened a Pandora’s box of ongoing litigation. “Provisions that conflict with the law and with one another expose institutions to liability from all directions. Also, the use of vague terms such as DEI, gender ideology, and domestic terrorism bolsters executive discretion and invites overcompliance.”

Last month, we learned that the Trump regime was “conducting a far-reaching investigation into whether Yale University’s admissions practices violate anti-discrimination laws, prompting one of the country’s most elite schools to pursue settlement talks with the government,” the New York Timesreported. The Justice Department, as it has time and again, has speciously claimed that efforts to expand diversity amount to illegal discrimination. In this case, DOJ is not only attempting to bully the medical school (the focus of its original allegations of “illegal preferential treatment to Black and Hispanic applicants”), but also the law school and undergraduate programs. Not everyone at Yale, however, has been willing to roll over and play dead.

Fortunately, Yale’s law school dean and other faculty are leading the charge against the latest infringement on academic freedom and the crusade against diversity. “The dean, Cristina M. Rodríguez, and a group of law school faculty members have quietly lobbied top Yale leaders in recent days, arguing that the Trump administration cannot be trusted, and that settling would threaten the rule of law and the university’s reputation,” the New York Times reported. “They have even explored whether the law school could be excluded from any settlement with the federal government. Students, faculty, and alumni have been openly pressuring Yale President Maurie McInnis,” a sign that Rodríguez has a reservoir of support.

In an insightful interview with the Yale Daily News, Yale alum and former FTC commissioner Rebecca Slaughter (whom MAGA Supreme Court justices ruled that the president had unlimited power to fire without cause), reminded the Yale community that “it cannot be that I, Becca, normal human, had the wherewithal to challenge something that was wrong and an abuse of power, and Yale — with its $44 billion endowment — does not.” She acknowledged, “It’s not fun to push back — it’s much nicer to sort of think about how to walk away or make it go away in the short term — but it’s so much better in the long term to stand on principle,” adding that “especially as an academic institution, I think Yale has an incredible obligation to do that, and that obligation is to its students, to its alumni, to its faculty, to its employees, to its partners.”

Courage may prove contagious at Yale, where an array of groups — including the Yale College Council, Yale College Democrats, the Yale chapter of the American Association of University Professors, and an alumni group “Stand Up for Yale” — have mobilized to put the kibosh on capitulation. Yale’s chapter of AAUP put out a letter declaring, “The choice before Yale is not simply whether to settle one investigation. It is whether to participate in a broader campaign to turn civil rights enforcement into a mechanism of political control.”

On Friday, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) spoke at Yale alongside Yale students, alums, professors, and Mayor Justin Elicker to push back against collaboration. “We’re at a legacy-defining moment,” Blumenthal said. “Yale will be regarded either as a beacon and a fighter for academic freedom or as the weakling who succumbed and obeyed.”

Whether defenders of academic freedom can prevail at Yale or not, the concerted effort to object to spineless capitulation and force institutional elites to justify their actions is critical in the fight for democracy, preservation of First Amendment rights, and defense of civil society. When elites learn that capitulation will spark fierce criticism and exact lasting personal and institutional cost, they are much less likely to engage in Quisling behavior and more inclined, however reluctantly, to resist authoritarian intimidation.

As the Trump administration and its MAGA enablers now face frequent legal setbacks and edge closer to a potentially devastating midterm election, it is especially critical for democracy advocates to hold the line, refuse to give away precious democratic ground, and deny the Trump crowd any easy wins. Now, more than ever, it is time for Yale, higher education, and civil society as a whole to keep their nerve and refuse to voluntarily concede critical freedoms to a faltering fascist regime growing more desperate by the day to cling to power.