Friday Homestead Dispatch

Week Number Fifty-Three

1.
In just one year, Donald “Nobody’s done more for NATO than I have” *rump has destroyed Rules Based Order in this country and across the globe. Maybe in the end this is a good thing as it reveals, exposes, strips naked, shines a light on, clarifies, and denudes the idea that the status quo, for the last 45 years at least, has been for the preservation of wealth for the wealthy, and power for the already powerful — and Fuck The Rest Of Ya.

On the other hand, Andrew Egger of the Bulwark wrote that as long as I live, I don’t think I’ll get over this pure, dumb fact: Trump told his fans he had to blow up the liberal order because it was the only way to secure the very benefits the liberal order was already bringing us.

Trump insists America needs Greenland as a strategic positioning ground from which to restrain Russia and China in the Arctic. But thanks to the liberal order, this was something we already enjoyed. Through the magic of multilateral cooperation, we were able to treat someone else’s territory as though it were our own for the purposes of military positioning—not by bribing or intimidating them, but because they agreed their interests and our interests aligned.

Trump insists America needs to blow up America’s preexisting economic relationships to ensure America gets an advantageous position in international trade. But America already had such an advantageous position: an orderly world economic system that had lavished previously unimaginable prosperity on America and to the entire globe, with us at the proverbial (and very profitable) head of the table.

And Fuck The Rest Of Ya is happening right now. Minnesota is a war zone, not because of immigrants, but because of OWNING THE LIBS. When agents of the government can murder and injure civilians, break into people’s homes, and not be held accountable, this is Fuck The Rest Of Ya. As Jay Kuo writes, this is a vile practice by fascist thugs, and the legal guardrails are failing. Those guardrails were put in place long ago by the Supreme Court to prevent precisely this kind of abusive law enforcement overreach. The Court emphasized, in the landmark ruling of Payton v. New York, that under controlling Fourth Amendment law, the home is a specially protected place. There, protections against illegal searches and seizures are constitutionally guaranteed at the highest levels.

Today across Minnesota there is a mass mobilization taking place that could be the first statewide general strike in American history. The goal is that labor unions, community organizations, faith leaders, and working people across Minnesota are calling for a complete shutdown. No work (except emergency services), no school, no shopping. Nothing.

Mass protests can absolutely grow into mass strikes. The momentum is already building. On January 10th, 10,000 people turned out for a protest in downtown Minneapolis. The energy is there. The organization is there. The moral clarity is there.

Robert Kagan writes in the Atlantic Americans are so accustomed to this basically peaceful, prosperous, and open world that they tend to think it is the normal state of international affairs, likely to continue indefinitely. They can’t imagine it unraveling, much less what that unraveling will mean for them.

What’s unraveling? He writes, Americans are entering the most dangerous world they have known since World War II, one that will make the Cold War look like child’s play and the post–Cold War world like paradise. In fact, this new world will look a lot like the world prior to 1945, with multiple great powers and metastasizing competition and conflict. The U.S. will have no reliable friends or allies and will have to depend entirely on its own strength to survive and prosper. This will require more military spending, not less, because the open access to overseas resources, markets, and strategic bases that Americans have enjoyed will no longer come as a benefit of the country’s alliances. Instead, they will have to be contested and defended against other great powers.

He wraps up with Theodore Roosevelt’s words that great nations ultimately had to be guided by an “international social consciousness” that considered not just their own interests but also “the interests of others.” A successful great power, he observed, could not act “without regard to the essentials of genuine morality.”

And now ICE has gone a step further. Joyce Vance writes that contrary to longstanding Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, (ICE) is taking the position that it can enter people’s homes without a judicial warrant. Instead, they believe that an administrative warrant suffices.

Evil triumphs when good people do nothing. That’s why it’s important that we contact our elected officials in Congress and demand that they investigate and demand that ICE retract its policy. We know that this administration continues to push the limits once it gets started. At first, it may have been noncitizens with deportation orders. Some people may have thought it was okay, lawful, but awful. This week, it was a frail, elderly American citizen, forced out into the icy cold and detained after ICE entered his home without a judicial warrant. There is no telling where this will end up if we don’t shine a spotlight so bright that ICE can’t withstand it.

2.
Humpty Rumpty was a rambling mess at Davos 2026. We expected no less from his gob. He cannot get past the ’stolen election’ of 2020 and ties it in with Russia’s aggression toward Ukraine: “It’s a war that should have never started, and it wouldn’t have started if the 2020 U.S. presidential election weren’t rigged—it was a rigged election. Everybody now knows that. They found out. People will soon be prosecuted for what they did. It’s probably breaking news but it should be. It was a rigged election. You can’t have rigged elections.”

In stark contrast, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech at Davos 2026 had all the hallmarks of an articulate adult. While *rump rambles about divisiveness and coercion, Carney is promoting the idea of “middle powers” pursuing a system he called “variable geometry,” in other words, different coalitions for different issues based on common values and interests.

This is not naïve multilateralism, nor is it relying on their institutions. It’s building coalitions that work issue by issue with partners who share enough common ground to act together. In some cases, this will be the vast majority of nations. What it’s doing is creating a dense web of connections across trade, investment, culture on which we can draw for future challenges and opportunities.

HCR paints his speech in a positive light noting that his vision is a version of the “diplomatic variable geometry” of former U.S. secretary of state Antony Blinken, but Carney’s vision de-centers the U.S., noting that middle powers must work together to be at the table to avoid being on the menu. Under a system of variable geometry, countries can develop infrastructure and trade at home, strengthening their own nations, while negotiating new international agreements, as Canada has done recently with China, Qatar, India, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Thailand, the Philippines, and Mercosur, a South American trade bloc made up of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay.

“We know the old order is not coming back,” Carney said. “We shouldn’t mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy, but we believe that from the fracture we can build something bigger, better, stronger, more just. This is the task of the middle powers, the countries that have the most to lose from a world of fortresses and the most to gain from genuine cooperation.”

Carney’s speech upset *rump enough that he rescinded his offer to Canada to join his “Board of Peace.” Heh. Bored of Peace is more like it. The idea of *rump presiding over a “Board of Peace” is almost laughable. Why would any country consider joining up with this doddering old fool? The NYTs writes that this organization is an attempt to create a rival to the United Nations — but with Mr. Trump firmly in charge. The document said Mr. Trump would have veto power over many of the board’s decisions, and it asked countries to contribute more than $1 billion in exchange for a permanent seat. Again, coercion. Pay me and I’ll include you, but I’m in charge. Pretty good racket.

But I digress. Keep in mind that Canada, not unlike like many countries with a large land mass, is also known for being in bed with big oil and has many open pit copper mines (one of which is Hudbay, the company responsible for the giant scar on the southwest corner of the Santa Rita Mountains just south of Tucson). And its harsh treatment of First Nations peoples has been highly documented. No saint, that country. Most indigenous people have NOT had a seat at the table.

In that light, consider Dr. Stacey Patton’s post where she writes when he (PM Mark Carney) says, “If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu,” Black and colonized people should hear something even starker: our people have always been the damn menu. The only difference now is that more countries fear being served alongside us.

She goes on to say when powerful nations talk about “values-based realism,” we must ask whose values have ever been protected by realism. When they talk about “sovereignty,” we must remember whose sovereignty was erased to build theirs. When they talk about “rules,” we must remember who wrote them, who enforced them, and whose bodies paid for their exceptions.

Carney is right about one thing: nostalgia ain’t a strategy. The old order is not coming back. But neither is a moral awakening guaranteed. The collapse of a lie does not automatically produce truth. It produces a vacuum. And vacuums are filled by power, not by conscience.

For Black people, immigrants, and colonized communities, the task is not to mourn the rules. We were never fully inside their protection. The task is to recognize that the mask is slipping, the language is changing, and the system is preparing for a world where it no longer needs to pretend to be fair.

Watch and listen to Carney’s speech to come to your own conclusions. I will say it’s a breath of fresh air to hear a leader talk of uniting nations for common cause.

3.
Jack Smith testified yesterday, under oath, and put the case against Donald Trump into the permanent congressional record, line by line, without theatrics and without apology. He did not debate or emote, just stated what the evidence showed, what the law required, and why he acted. History can argue with many things, that record will not be one of them.

Mary Geddry writes that while that record was being laid down, Trump was busy staging imaginary global boards, rage-uninviting Canada, posting doctored arrest photos, and reminding the world what governance looks like when it collapses into grievance, grift, and spectacle.

Read her essay here which traces that contrast, from Smith’s testimony, to Trump’s Davos tantrums, to the administration’s open embrace of propaganda, and then ends where real power still lives: in Minnesota, where workers, families, unions, and communities shut things down together and showed what collective action actually looks like.

4.
Next week the Morpholinos take the stage at Monterey Court Thursday night for our usual shenanigans. Make a reservation!

For a special treat, and if you like whiskey, Alvin Blaine and I will be playing a special happy hour at Whiskey Del Bac Friday afternoon, January 30, from 5:30-7:30. It’s a bit tricky to find so I’ve included an easy to read map. Hope to see you there!

And now…