Snow all over South Seattle...
Snow all over South Seattle… Charles Mudede

Almost Real Snow Is Finally Here: And so the old Seattle song goes: The roads are bad, the cars are crashing, many flights at Sea-Tac airport are canceled, the buses are slipping and sliding, and the schools are closed. The good thing is that the city does look so pretty in snow. The bad thing is that storms of this kind always do a number on our power. There are trees in this city that, when under the weight of the snow, finally give up the ghost with a crack, and fall to the ground, fall on us, or our homes, or our power lines, which are often supported by their dead. Trees do feel pain. They also think. They also do the best they can.

Muslims Who Committed No Crime, and Had Their Travel Documents in Order: Are finally reentering the US because Trump’s unconstitutional ban on Muslims was blocked on Friday by a “so-called judge” in our neck of the woods, James Robart. The Department of Homeland Security agreed to comply with this block, and the border was reopened for Muslims on Saturday. On Sunday, Trump tried to get the bad ban back up, but this effort was checked by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The block is still working today, and, as the Seattle Times reports, Muslims are again entering Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and being reunited with their families and their all-American purposes. The future of the Muslim ban is uncertain, but the fact that it was blocked and is now tied up in the courts, might have saved democracy as we know it. There are, it appears, limits to Trump’s awful amount of power.

Trump Blocked From Addressing Both Houses of the British Parliament During State Visit: Why? Because he is a sexist and racist.

A Young Burien Man Was Walking Home and Doing His Own Thing: When he was hit and his life cut short by a car. This car did not stop for him. It went on and on and on. The cops are now looking for the hit-and-run driver.

France Wants Our Scientists: And entrepreneurs. This is the pitch one of the stars of France’s current presidential race, Emmanuel Macron, is making to voters. Macron doesn’t want our tired, poor, and “huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” Trump can keep all of those. Macron, an economist, wants the crème de la crème of America, many of whom are from Iran.

Let’s As a Nation Have a Frank Conversation About White Incompetence: The right’s old argument against Affirmative Action was that it replaced competent white people with incompetent black people in university classes and important positions in the government and companies. The incompetence narrative in America has been all about blacks; and as such, it has perpetuated the deeper and older/slave-era narrative of black intellectual inferiority. But almost nothing is said about what we see so much of these days: rampant white incompetence. For example, there is this NPR story:

A terrorist video released on Friday by the Pentagon to show what it called intelligence gleaned by the recent raid in Yemen actually was made about 10 years ago, it acknowledged. Defense officials canceled a briefing they had called to discuss the value of the information recovered from Yemen and took the video off the website of the U.S. Central Command. They circulated clips from a video that showed how to prepare explosives without knowing it had already been public.

This is plain and simple white incompetence at the highest levels of our military. Let’s talk about it more.

Oh My God, Yes, Oh My God: Many American’s actually believe God—a super-ape who, according to them, made the whole universe—put Donald Trump in power. In this view of the election, God did not like the nasty woman, and very much wanted the pussy grabber to win. So, He took a break from dealing with supernovas and the expansion of dark matter, and totally loaded the election dice in Trump’s favor. Other Americans believe that God’s role in the outcome was minor. Because this God preferred Trump only a little more than Clinton, the magic He worked in the former’s favor was so-so. But some Americans, who evidently gave the matter a little more thought, believe God just minded his own damn business and let Americans have a God-free election.

Still, Why Did Millions of Ordinary Americans Vote for a Billionaire? The culture critic Walter Benjamin provided the answer in 1936 in the essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction“:

Fascism attempts to organize the newly created proletarian masses without affecting the property structure which the masses strive to eliminate. Fascism sees its salvation in giving these masses not their right, but instead a chance to express themselves. The masses have a right to change property relations; Fascism seeks to give them an expression while preserving property.

Benjamin was hounded to his death by the Nazis.

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Charles Mudede—who writes about film, books, music, and his life in Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, the USA, and the UK for The Stranger—was born near a steel plant in Kwe Kwe, Zimbabwe. He has no memory...