Performative Politics on Parade

People's Park, Trump's Projections, Democracy vs Disinformation

The standoff at People’s Park.

People’s Park’s Performative Politics: They came for People’s Park in the middle of the night last week, the latest skirmish in Berkeley’s decades-long power struggle. Like an invading army, hundreds of cops cleared out a couple dozen homeless campers and protesters while construction crews began walling off the 2.8-acre park with huge shipping containers, double-stacked.

It seemed like overkill, this aggressive police action to build a massive border wall around a small park between downtown and the UC Berkeley campus. By morning, all the roads around the park were barricaded by police, many in riot gear, ready to fight. Speakers at a late morning protest rally decried the “police state” and its “Gestapo tactics,” with one declaring, “We’re going to take over and there’s not a damn thing they can do about it.” Yeah, right.

But the standoff looks very different if you take a step back to gain some perspective. What once might have been a righteous struggle for people power is now a ridiculous example of performative politics by supposed leftists who value symbolism and nostalgia more than reality.

Back in the ‘60s when hippies dubbed the vacant lot People’s Park, there was good reason to make a stand. UC Berkeley bought the land through eminent domain, demolished housing on it, then let it languish. The Vietnam War was raging and UC Berkeley had cracked down on free speech in nearby Sproul Plaza and on the growing anti-war movement while tacitly supporting the war.

So People’s Park became an epicenter for the peace movement as volunteers turned it into a real park and community gathering space. Then came Bloody Thursday in 1969, when police violently reclaimed the space for the university, destroying its amenities, killing one activist and injuring others. That’s when People’s Park took on outsized symbolic importance.

But today, People’s Park is shabby and dangerous. The university highlights police reports of 18 rapes, 19 robberies and 110 aggravated assaults in the park over the last three years.

At the protest last week, speakers defended the rights of the couple dozen homeless people who live there and called for more parks and affordable housing in Berkeley. But that’s exactly what UC Berkeley plans to build on the site: 1,100 student housing units (opening up needed affordable housing in the city) and 125 supportive housing units for the formerly homeless, all while maintaining 60% of the property as public open space that will be far better maintained and welcoming than what’s there now.

Past efforts to reclaim People’s Park have been met with violent resistance and property destruction, costing about $1.5 million in 2022 before that effort was abandoned, just as previous attempts were. So what seems like police overkill becomes an understandable strategy to secure the space with minimal conflict and damage.

People’s Park’s defenders are so aggressive and threatening that they’ve caused Berkeley City Councilman Rigel Robinson, a rising young progressive who represents the district and was running for mayor, to abruptly resign this week. He cited “harassment, stalking and threats,” mostly over his support for the project, for his decision to leave public service.

The Left can be laudable for standing up against “the man” in favor of the poor and the natural world. But we hurt our cause when we engage in petty, pointless fights like trying to block People’s Park from better serving the people of our community. And we sully ourselves and our values when we resort to bullying and threats to get our way.   

False Prophet, Real Profits: If “God Made Trump” to save our republic, as Trump and his followers claim in a laughable new video, then God has pretty sick sense of humor. And was it God that made the MAGA crowd so fucking gullible, or was that generations of right-wing media brainwashing from Rush Limbaugh through Fox News to wackadoodle Internet rabbit holes?

I’m no theologian, so I can’t be sure. But I have been following the full-blast firehose worth of evidence over the last week or so that: 1. Trump has enormous balls, so big that they seem to rob his brain of the blood needed for basic cognitive reasoning; and: 2. Most Republicans are willing to follow their putative savior down whatever dark pathways he fancies.

Exhibit A is, of course, the Jan. 6 insurrection Trump led to overturn the 2020 presidential election and soothe his wounded ego after being rejected by American voters again. Last weekend’s third anniversary of the assault on the U.S. Capitol was a reminder of just how far gone Trump and his followers are.

Biden and Trump gave dueling speeches to mark the anniversary of the insurrection, both darkly warning we’re doomed if the other is elected. But while Biden cites harsh facts about Trump’s dangerous demagoguery, Trump conjures up a fantasy world of “J6 hostages” imprisoned by a tyrannical federal government that staged a fake insurrection and has prosecuted hundreds for it, including himself.

“When you talk about insurrection, what they’re doing, that’s the real deal,” Trump said, fueling a misinformation campaign that has most Republicans believing in obvious lies.    

Trump’s presidential platform is built of his own psychological projections, accusing Biden of his own shenanigans: attacking and undermining our democratic system, weaponizing the justice system against political opponents, and profiting from the presidency.

Last week, House Democrats released an investigation finding that foreign governments spent $7.9 million at Trump-owned properties during his presidency. And that’s on top of all the personal and political fundraising Trump has done off his stolen election lies, his kids profiting from his run, and the $2 billion that Saudis gave to the investment fund run by Jared Kushner, Trump’s advisor and son-in-law.

Yet House Republicans ignore all that as they push impeachment proceedings against President Biden because his son Hunter may have profited from the Biden name, despite there being zero evidence that Joe Biden helped or benefitted in any way. And now they want to hold Hunter in contempt of Congress for insisting on an open public hearing instead of closed-door kangaroo court.    

Trump’s is a worldview riddled with contradictions, none of which seem to bother or deter him or his fervent followers. Trump claims to be immune from criminal prosecution for anything he did as president, then promises to prosecute Biden for his allegedly criminal presidency.

Trump slammed presidential opponent Nikki Haley for forgetting the Civil War was about slavery, then doubled down on that view by claiming he could have cut a deal with the Confederates to avoid war. Sure, the slaves wouldn’t have liked it, but then again, maybe our country wouldn’t be in such a mess if President Lincoln had just let the South secede.

If God did make Trump, perhaps it was as a joke or a test of Americans’ faith, reasoning or compassion. We were warned about false prophets, including guys like Trump seeking real profits and power.

Democracy vs. Disinformation: What happens in a year when half the world’s population is voting in consequential elections just as media disinformation campaigns are being supercharged and social media controls on it are flagging? Well, we’re about to find out.

As The New York Times reported this week, there are 83 elections happening this year, most of them in June, including the parliamentary elections for the European Union. The EU has been pushing Elon Musk to crack down on disinformation on his X/Twitter, but that petulant man-child is only making things worse.

Just this week, Musk once again booted a bunch of journalists and lefty activists off the platform without explanation — then, after it was reported, reinstated them, also without explanation. If we’re really relying on erratic billionaires to safeguard our democracy, this really is The End.