2025: When America, Again, Said, “No Kings!”

~ Randy Blazak ~ Leave a comment

December 31, 2025

This might be one of the more shitty years we’ve experienced, and many of those have been attributed to Trump, so the bar is low. But seeing American sprint towards authoritarianism has been soul crushing. And thanks to fragile Trumpsters (and an even more fragile dean), I got bounced from my teaching position in the fall. But that forced me to pivot my pedagogy of the oppressed to a more lucrative venue and put my antifascist sociology curriculum online. (And I’ve pledged any punitive awards this fight generates all go to pro-democracy causes.) So 2025 is the year I became an “influencer,” with over 180,000 followers, a role I take with great humility. Trips to Los Angeles and New York City allowed me to broaden my message that America is on the brink of collapse.

On a personal level, it was a year of more work. My daughter moving from elementary to middle school required my full attention. Seeing her turn into an independent young woman was both thrilling and terrifying. Our December trip to the Big Apple may have been a last chance to bond with my “little girl.” She seemed completely at ease on the subway, like she was headed off to her life as an artist in the East Village. My personal life took a bit of break as I focused on her and the work fighting fascism.

The bulk of my work in 2025 was through my project, Cure: PNW. Our federal funding was cut minutes after Trump was sworn in but we managed to secure some local funding so we could continue building productive relationships between Portland Police and local activists. Much of that energy went to de-escalating conflict down at the Portland ICE facility, where I got used to being teargassed by the feds and having “less than lethal” munitions shot at me. The heroism of the ICE protesters, who kept things peaceful in the face of the sociopathic MAGA agitators, continually inspired me. They became my family this year, frogs and all.

This blog has changed as well. I began Watching the Wheels on November 24, 2014 as a parenting blog. My wife, Andi, had gone back to work and I had begun my tenure as a John Lennon-inspired stay at home dad. Very quickly, the call of the Black Lives Matter had me doing double duty as a parent and sociologist. This year I moved my political content to my Substack blog, The Blazak Report. The subscription model has allowed me to replace some of the income I lost when I was kicked out of the college for talking shit about Trump. Watching the Wheels remained my place to talk about feminist fatherhood (and James Bond movies).

At the request of my daughter, who’s friends have been Googling her, Watching the Wheels will go dark in 2026. I will continue to post on Substack and I invite you to follow me there. It’s been a great 11 years sharing my thoughts and insights with you. We all shine on.

Here are the Watching the Wheels posts for 2025.

Laissez les mauvaise temps rouler?: The Terror of 2025 and How to Stop It (January 3, 2025)

Laissez les mauvaise temps rouler?: The Terror of 2025 and How to Stop It

“It’s not my job to make you comfortable”: Teaching in the Era of Trump 2.0 (January 6, 2025)

“It’s not my job to make you comfortable”: Teaching in the Era of Trump 2.0

The James Bond Project #4: Thunderball (1965) (January 8, 2025)

The James Bond Project #4: Thunderball (1965)

The James Bond Project #5: Casino Royale (1967) (January 11, 2025)

The James Bond Project #5: Casino Royale (1967)

The James Bond Project #6: You Only Live Twice (1967) (January 12, 2025)

The James Bond Project #6: You Only Live Twice (1967)

The James Bond Project #7: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) (January 19, 2025)

The James Bond Project #7: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)

Deep Breaths: Now the Work Ramps Up (January 20, 2025)

Deep Breaths: Now the Work Ramps Up

The James Bond Project #8: Diamonds are Forever (1971) (January 21, 2025)

The James Bond Project #8: Diamonds are Forever (1971)

With the J6 Pardons, President Trump Just Set Up His Coup (January 22, 2025) 

With the J6 Pardons, President Trump Just Set Up His Coup

The James Bond Project #9: Live and Let Die (1973) (January 24, 2025)

The James Bond Project #9: Live and Let Die (1973)

DEI Makes America Great, or How Trump Ended the American Century (January 28, 2025)

DEI Makes America Great, or How Trump Ended the American Century

The James Bond Project #10: The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) (February 1, 2025)

The James Bond Project #10: The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)

Trump’s Shock & Awe Plan to Collapse the American Economy (February 4, 2025)

Trump’s Shock & Awe Plan to Collapse the American Economy

The James Bond Project #11: The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) (February 5, 2025)

The James Bond Project #11: The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

The James Bond Project #12: Moonraker (1979) (February 7, 2025)

The James Bond Project #12: Moonraker (1979)

The Myth of Merit (February 15, 2025)

The Myth of Merit

The James Bond Project #13: For Your Eyes Only (February 23, 2025)

The James Bond Project #13: For Your Eyes Only

The James Bond Project #14: Octopussy (February 27, 2025)

The James Bond Project #14: Octopussy

America is No Longer the Leader of the Free World (March 4, 2025)

America is No Longer the Leader of the Free World

The James Bond Project #15: Never Say Never Again (March 16, 2025)

The James Bond Project #15: Never Say Never Again

The James Bond Project #16: A View to a Kill (1985) (March 18, 2025)

The James Bond Project #16: A View to a Kill (1985)

Saying Goodbye to My Little Brother in the Pond (March 27, 2025)

Saying Goodbye to My Little Brother in the Pond

Watching the Death of Nation in Real Time (April 1, 2025)

Watching the Death of Nation in Real Time

The James Bond Project #17: The Living Daylights (1987) (April 6, 2025)

The James Bond Project #17: The Living Daylights (1987)

The James Bond Project #18: License to Kill (1989) (April 8, 2025)

The James Bond Project #18: License to Kill (1989)

The James Bond Project #19: GoldenEye (1995) (April 15, 2025)

The James Bond Project #19: GoldenEye (1995)

The James Bond Project #20:  Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) (April 17, 2025)

The James Bond Project #20:  Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)

Save America – Adopt a Republican (April 18, 2025)

Save America – Adopt a Republican

Cooling Off the Hot Air of the Manosphere (April 28, 2025)

Cooling Off the Hot Air of the Manosphere

The James Bond Project #21:  The World Is Not Enough (1999) (May 1, 2025)

The James Bond Project #21:  The World Is Not Enough (1999)

Winding Down Elementary School: Gender Check-In (May 15, 2025)

Winding Down Elementary School: Gender Check-In

Escaping Gilead – My experience crossing the border (May 22, 2025)

Escaping Gilead – My experience crossing the border

The James Bond Project #22:  Die Another Day (2002) (May 26, 2025)

The James Bond Project #22:  Die Another Day (2002)

The James Bond Project #23: Casino Royale (2006) (May 30, 2025)

The James Bond Project #23: Casino Royale (2006)

The Gaza Question (June 3, 2025)

The Gaza Question

On the question of violence (June 21, 2025)

On the question of violence

The James Bond Project #24: Quantum of Solace (2008) (July 1, 2025)

The James Bond Project #24: Quantum of Solace (2008)

What Do We Do When the Violence Comes? (July 18, 2025)

What Do We Do When the Violence Comes?

Are Third Places Democracy’s Last Hope? (July 30, 2025)

Are Third Places Democracy’s Last Hope?

The James Bond Project #25: Skyfall (2012) (August 1, 2025)

The James Bond Project #25: Skyfall (2012)

The James Bond Project #26: Spectre (2015) (August 7, 2025)

The James Bond Project #26: Spectre (2015)

Raising a Daughter in Epstein’s America: Cozy Turns 11 (August 17, 2025)

Raising a Daughter in Epstein’s America: Cozy Turns 11

The Real Trauma of Trump 2.0 (August 20, 2025)

The Real Trauma of Trump 2.0

The James Bond Project #27: No Time to Die (2021) (August 27,  2025)

The James Bond Project #27: No Time to Die (2021)

Are We There Yet? On Dictatorship, Civil War, and Revolution (September 6, 2025)

Are We There Yet? On Dictatorship, Civil War, and Revolution

Responding to the Murder of Charlie Kirk: How to find calm in an insane nation (September 11, 2025)

Responding to the Murder of Charlie Kirk: How to find calm in an insane nation

Foreshadowing the Clampdown on Academic Freedom (September 19, 2025)

Foreshadowing the Clampdown on Academic Freedom

Growing up with a K-Pop Kid (October 2, 2025)

Growing up with a K-Pop Kid

Elegy for a Land Line (November 1, 2025)

Elegy for a Land Line

Dad’s Top Discs: Favorite Albums of 2025 (December 17, 2025)

Dad’s Top Discs: Favorite Albums of 2025

Standing, Again, at Ground Zero: Trying to capture the depth of 9/11 for my child (December 26, 2025)

Standing, Again, at Ground Zero: Trying to capture the depth of 9/11 for my child

Standing, Again, at Ground Zero: Trying to capture the depth of 9/11 for my child

~ Randy Blazak ~ 3 Comments

December 26, 2025

New York is like a giant magnet. I’ve been making pilgrimages to the city for over 40 years now for many different reasons. I had a speaking engagement there in 2018 and took my four-year old daughter and delighted at her constant wide eyes. (Although I had to tell her the bad news that if the Elmo in Times Square asked for a hug, we’d have to call the police.) So when Cozy, now 11, said what she wanted for Christmas was a trip to the Big Apple, I knew what we had to do.

There were some obligatory stops on the four-day stay in Manhattan, including shopping at Macy’s, the top of the Empire State Building, and the Christmas Tree at Rockefeller Center. But we were staying downtown, just a few blocks from the New York Stock Exchange, so I mustarded up the courage to suggest that we visit the 9/11 memorial. Born in 2014, my sixth-grader had limited knowledge about the event, other than it was a terrorist attack. When I was 11, I didn’t know much about the events of 1951, 13 years before my birth. The Korean War, that was it. I didn’t want to give her a history lesson, I just wanted to convey to her the weight of that day.

So on Tuesday morning, we walked over to the sacred ground as the rain mixed with snow. My first trip to Ground Zero was the summer of 2002, when the dust of the fallen was still drifting in the downtown air. Now, almost a decade and half later, the area has been completely transformed. “FiDi” is bustling under the new World Trade Center, opened the year Cozy was born. I had been to the memorial before, and it features in my 2015 novel, The Dream Police. But now it was all integrated into life in the city, a tourist destination.

I guided her to the places where the twin towers stood, now two deep fountains, ringed by the names of the thousands of people who died on another Tuesday morning. I told Cozy how, in 1987, when I was managing a band on Island Records, I would sit between the two towers and watch the commuters come out of the WTC subway station, work shoes in hand, and go up into the skyscrapers I first saw in the 1976 version of King Kong. Then I started to choke up and had to step back for a second to collect myself.

There’s no way to convey the horror of that day so I just told her a few details. I told her about the people who chose to jump to their death rather than burn to death and the sound of bodies crashing to the ground. I told her about Fight 93 and the passengers who crashed their own plane to stop it from being used as a missile into the Capitol Building. I told her about the hundreds of firefighters who were buried alive trying to rescue those trapped in the towers. And I sobbed. I’m sobbing as I’m writing this.

Since September 11, 2001, two billion people have been born on this planet. To them, 9/11 is a story from history, like Pearl Harbor is to me. Cozy will study in greater detail. I was 37 on that day. Maybe when she’s 37, in 2051, she’ll have something worse than 9/11 to weld her to history. I hope not. But when she does learn more about it, I want her to picture herself in that spot in Manhattan, filled with real people and two holes in the ground. I want her to remember the sound of my voice as it cracked.

I wonder what her perspective on that day will be in 2051.  Will she remember the pointless wars it produced that took so many more lives? Will she remember the hate crimes that spiked after the attack and the Patriot Act that started to roll back our liberties. Or will she tell a story about how a divided nation found something to bring people together? Both can be true but I think the latter is more of the myth we tell ourselves about 9/11.

After the attacks, I had a recurring nightmare about being in the WTC subway station during the attack. The station begins to fill with water from all the broken water mains above and dead bodies float by me as I try to escape. That area is now the futuristic shopping mall called “Oculus.” We both were amazed at the open design with the subway stops adjacent to the shopping area. Cozy and I stopped by the Apple store where I bought a phone case, replacing my nightmare with some well-lit retail therapy.  It felt strangely healing.

She will learn more about that day; the ugly, the bad, and the good. Maybe, at some point, I’ll be ready to visit the museum and I can tell her more stories of that time, again through tears. I have so many memories, but it’s her story to discover now. I’ll tell her how I flew on 9/10 (with a camping knife in my bag) and, after the attacks, how silent the sky was with no planes above. And she can fold the tenor of my voice in with her own role in witnessing the history she’ll live through. 

Dad’s Top Discs: Favorite Albums of 2025

~ Randy Blazak ~ 1 Comment

December 17, 2025

2025 was a weird year for music. There was so much anxiety as Trump drug America into the gutter, I kept waiting for the soundtrack to kick in to amplify our revolution. Luckily we had regular gems dropped by Jesse Welles, the Arkansas bard. Watching him perform “Join ICE” on Colbert last month gave me hope that protest music still matters. I leaned heavily on the North Carolina punk band, The Muslims and their great 2021 album, Fuck These Fuckin Fascists, to get me through. That and my local jazz station, KMHD. But there were a dozen or so new releases that really brought me immense listening pleasure this year.

My 11-year-old daughter, who one year ago was a hardcore Swiftie, buzzing from seeing one of Taylor’s final Eras concerts, has moved on. “Dad, you love Taylor Swift more than I do.” I get what’s happening. She’s differentiating herself. I’ve loved the K-Pop that is now at the top of her charts, especially Stray Kids, but if I like it TOO much, I’ll ruin it for her. We did have a great moment in October listening to Swift’s new The Life of a Showgirl stream through the house (from separate rooms). Cozy was meh, and I was blown away by the song craft and the dialed back production that seemed very 70s FM to my ears. This is the Taylor Swift album I’ve been waiting for. By the fifth track, “Eldest Daughter,” I knew this album would be spinning non-stop.

It was a great year to be a Beatle fan, starting off with the best Ringo Starr solo album in ages, Look Up, where our drummer goes back to his first love of country music with great joy. The thirtieth anniversary of the Beatles Anthology series gave us Anthology 4. The collection included 13 unreleased tracks, plus the three remastered “Threatles” songs. The compilation was so lovingly assembled by Giles Martin, it felt like stepping into the studio with the boys. There is still magic to be discovered (and the Rubber Soul cuts were revelatory).

My absolute favorite discovery of 2025 is the Denver band, Dead Pioneers, fronted by Paiute spoken word artist, Gregg Deal. Their 2023 debut album and 2025’s PO$T AMERICAN slam punk rock power and indigenous indignation in a way that is both humorous and revolutionary. The PO$T AMERICAN tracks, “My Spirit Animal Ate Your Spirit Animal” and “STFU” nearly blew out my speakers this year. After the first listen, I immediately ordered a Dead Pioneers t-shirt and began saying prayers that they’d come to Portland. There has been a great void in my music collection by indigenous artists. If anyone should be raging against the machine in ICE America, it’s the first people. PO$T AMERICAN is everything I loved about The Clash 45 years ago. The more I listen the more I learn and the louder the drums get.

So here is my dozen discs for ’25.

  1. Dead Pioneers – PO$T AMERICAN
  2. Jesse Welles – Under The Powerlines II
  3. The Beatles – Anthology 4
  4. Taylor Swift – The Life of a Showgirl 
  5. Tyler Childers – Snipe Hunter 
  6. Wet Leg – Moisturizer 
  7. Rosalía – Lux
  8. Geese – Getting Killed 
  9. Jon Batiste – The New Americana Collection 
  10. Bad Bunny – Debí Tirar Más Fotos 
  11. Sabrina Carpenter – Man’s Best Friend
  12. Ringo Starr – Look Up

Elegy for a Land Line

~ Randy Blazak ~ 1 Comment

November 1, 2025

I was trying to respond to a message on Signal but I got a message that there was not enough space on my iPhone to open the app. So I had to find some old videos of the kid to delete and decide if I wanted to remove a few other apps I wasn’t actively using. Then I got a Facebook Messenger DM to respond to. As I was typing a response, another Messenger popped up. As I was deciding if I should finish the first message before answering the second one, my phone rang. It was a guy named “Michael” who wanted to talk to me about Medicaid A and B benefits. I wanted to be the lady in the commercial who just wanted to soak in the bathtub.

Electronic media has countless dark sides. Countless. One is the massive wave of stimuli that we are duty bound to respond to, from emails to TikTok comments. I spend a large chunk of each day deleting junk emails so I don’t have a panic attack every time I open my inbox. And a good percentage of those are emails I should read, but it’s just too much to process. And now that I have reached the status of “Influencer” on Instagram, I get hundreds of messages everyday, almost all incredibly supportive, or sharing a video I NEED TO WATCH. I try to respond to as many as I can, but I will occasionally get the indignant follower, offended that I was too whatever to respond. Where is my time?

And don’t get me started on the constant spam calls I get. Sometimes I’ll get a spammer calling while I’m on the phone with another spammer, all trying to separate me for my money. I’m getting better at not picking up but I do enjoy messing with them and seeing how long I can keep them on the line.” “Hello, my name is Michael and I’m calling about the new Medicaid benefits. How are you?” “Oh, I’m OK, Michael, but I’m suffering from a blocked colon. Do you think you’ll be able to help me? With my blocked colon?” Click.

All this has got me in the dreaded “Good ol’ days” funk that I typically warn against. Here we go. When was a kid, there was one phone in the house that was connected to the house by a chord. There was no call-waiting. If someone called while you were on a call, they got a busy signal and had to try later. That was it. No email. No texts. No DMs. If you didn’t have their phone number, you had to write a letter. On one side, we were more isolated from immediate conversations, but on the other side, we were more isolated from immediate conversations.

As a 20th century boy I can remember what it was like to be away from that landline and be unreachable. We knew when the street lights came on it was time to go home. We could be present in the moment. My daughter, born in 2014, will never know what it’s like to be unreachable. To be truly unconnected and on your own. I’m a sociologist, not a psychologist, so I can’t say if that’s a bad thing or not, but I do know there is great value of calmness and being present in the moment and that’s hard to do with all the pings and beeps and calls from “Michael.” I could unplug for a day but then I’d be stressed about all the DMs and emails that were piling up. Maybe a nice power outage would calm my nerves.

I remember staring at the telephone and wishing it would ring. Be careful what you wish for.

Growing up with a K-Pop Kid

~ Randy Blazak ~ 1 Comment

October 2, 2025

Fifty years ago, I was 11 years old and somewhere between my Elton John phase and my Kiss phase. All the girls in my class were in their Bay City Rollers phase. Now I have an 11-year-old and she’s firmly in her K-Pop phase. Yeah, there’s a new Taylor Swift album out tomorrow but that pales in comparison to having every single incarnation of the new album by Stray Kids (available at Target). I know, because I’ve had to drive her there to get each version. “I’m spending my own money, Dad!” I laugh because I was right there, spending my chore money on Kiss posters.

Three thoughts.

Thought One: I love the evolution of music. If you would have asked me in 1975 what the pop music of 2025 might sound like, I never would have guessed the post-modern electro-clash of South Korean K-Pop groups. It’s like music from another planet. Just blast “Ceremony” by Stray Kids and tell me what you are listening to. But it’s infectious. Is it “noise” (Get out my yard, kids!) or a brilliant innovation of the pop music genre? The rock and roll ethic is youth music is supposed to set the younger generation apart from the older generation. My Dad’s parents hated Elvis and my dad hated Run DMC. I’m supposed to hate this music but I’m fascinated by it. Sorry, Cozy. I’m in.

Thought Two: I used to lecture about “teenybopper” culture in my Sociology of Youth Subculture class. About how research shows that the “culture of the bedroom” allows pre-teen girls to experiment with heterosexual norms of dating. I’m from the seventies, so their were a lot of girls buying Tiger Beat for the pin-ups of Leif Garret and Shaun Cassidy. Cozy’s Stray Kids box sets come with similar swag that ends up on her bedroom wall. Her and her friend screamed yesterday as they pulled out the pictures of the members of the boy band, including Hyunjin, who she declared was her “husband.” Classic teenybopper. How many women my age were sure they would marry Donny Osmond?

Thought Three: Music is such a great way to bond with your kid. Some families have sports, or religion, or animal husbandry. Our house has always been filled with an unhealthy obsession with music. Taking Cozy to see Taylor Swift last year was something we will both talk about for the rest of our days. Being present for her present K-Pop obsession is a great gift and she knows I appreciate it because I was in a similar spot. (There is more than one picture of me in Kiss make-up.) Andi and I took Cozy to see the film Demon Hunter at the theater and she sang every world. On the fourth of July, Cozy and her girl squad were crammed into my Subaru and they put “Gnarly” by KATSEYE on repeat and full volume and sang at the top of their lungs while they threw Snap n Pops at pedestrians. It was bliss.

Thanks to Facebook routinely reminding me, I am often lamenting over pics of Cozy the Toddler. Or Cozy the Second Grader. I posted a lot of pictures of her and that was a great part of her and my life. Cozy the Middle Schooler has all kinds of new joys to offer. Yeah, I want her to get off her phone and clean up her room (That’s another conflicting conflict to explore), but there is so much for me and this kid to learn about each other. Me at 11 was on my bike, her a 11 is on TikTok. We’re different people in different times. Me at 11 was obsessed with Watergate and my first trip to Washington, DC. Cozy is more than aware that Trump is threatening her country and her city, in particular, but she distances herself because her father is so invested in it, often asking why I spend so much time on the protest front line.

So the music connects us. The night she was born, I held her in my arms and sang, “Yellow Submarine.” I can imagine myself on my deathbed with her singing me some K-Pop tune from the 2020s. I asked her yesterday, “What do you think the music of 2075 will sound like, because you’ll be there?” She said, “Like robots.” I said, “That’s what I said 50 years ago.” We’re both right.

Foreshadowing the Clampdown on Academic Freedom

~ Randy Blazak ~ 1 Comment

From Substack September 5, 2025

September 5, 2025

My senior year at Emory, I added a second major. I had taken more than the required sociology classes, so I decided to double major in political science. I wanted to better understand the history of fascism, but also the geopolitical events of the day. So I signed up for Professor Juan del Aguila’s Latin American Politics class and Professor Thomas Remington’s Soviet Foreign Policy class (where President Carter was a regular guest lecturer). I also enrolled in a semester-long course called The Philosophy of Marxism, taught by a wonderful Catholic priest named Professor Thomas Flynn. I tried to integrate all this with my sociology background into my senior honors thesis, a Marxist analysis of the Irish conflict.

Emory in the 1980s was a vibrant place. Between classes, frequent protests over apartheid, CIA recruitment, and whatever Ronald Reagan was doing that week, and keeping up with the abundance of live music, there was a small fracture on campus. As a kid from a Georgia Klan town, Emory opened me up to a multiplicity of progressive approaches to politics, culture, and sexuality. But there was dissent in the liberal utopia. A conservative group called Students for America, founded by Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed, began showing up in classrooms. Their goal was to out “liberal” college professors. They weren’t very effective. As it turns out, the truth is liberal.

But forty years ago, I already knew what this was. Having studied the rise of Hitler, I knew that college campuses were the first targets of the Third Reich. In April 1933, the Nazis passed the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service. It effectively forced universities to fire faculty who were leftist, Jewish, and/or anti-fascist. Among those let go was Albert Einstein. After that, students in the Hitler Youth and the National Socialist German Students’ League would report professors who made “un-German” statements or who were critical of the Reich. The students forced the firing of more faculty, often threatening them with violence. A climate of fear overtook German universities as Nazis purged them of any hint of “leftist indoctrination.” Many professors fled Germany, and others ended up in concentration camps.

At Emory in 1985, we joked that the Students for America were the Reagan Youth, following history’s fascist playbook. Little did we know what was to come.

The far right has long waged a war on higher education funding. Fascists need a docile, uneducated populace, not cohorts of college grads who have read Karl Marx and Frantz Fanon. Professors were in the crosshairs of Joseph McCarthy’s Red Scare in the 1950s. More recently, laws and executive orders have been passed to restrict university funding and curriculum around LGBTQ and race issues. In 2021, when I was teaching my Race and Ethnicity class at the University of Oregon, I announced on the first day, “This class is based on Critical Race Theory. Tell me if you have a problem with that.” Fortunately, Oregon still protects academic freedom, but I was told I would be watched by conservative students. It was clear that universities were nervous about pressure from the right. (That same year, Professor Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of the 1619 Project, was denied tenure at UNC–Chapel Hill because of pressure from conservative donors.)

Things began to shift after the election of Trump last November. Right-wing social media influencers began to encourage conservative students to out liberal professors and try to get them fired, as the Hitler Youth had done 90 years earlier. Far-right group Turning Point USA published their online “Professor Watchlist” (which includes some of my favorite academics, like Ta-Nehisi Coates and Robin Kelley). It should be noted that the front-page of their website features a “professor” who appears to be Jewish. Right-wing pundits and online influencers attacked history professor Ibram X. Kendi, the author of How to Be an Antiracist, and tried to have him removed from his position at Boston University. Hopefully academic unions are tracking complaints from conservative students. I’m guessing they have spiked.

When I was a tenured full professor at Portland State University, I felt ten feet tall and bulletproof. But this is a new era, and I am in a new position. As I focus on my consulting work, I’ve had the great privilege to adjunct at our local community college, and I’ve had a front-row seat for the shift. I have great respect for all my students, no matter their political leanings. Sociology classes are kind of group therapy. We’re all working it out in real time. But some of the young white men—the demographic that broke for Trump—have been given permission by our anti-education president to disrupt that sacred space. They are more likely to push back against discussions of patriarchy and white supremacy. It pops up in class, in course evaluations, and in online reviews, often as snide comments. Since I was in their exact shoes all those years ago (as a conservative white teenager), I desperately want to reach them. But I’m also deathly afraid of them. I’ve studied the history and know what they can do.

Fortunately, I’ve got a union and an administration that defends faculty freedom. But it feels like a dark cloud is coming to campuses across the country. And we have been here before. Buckle up.

Responding to the Murder of Charlie Kirk: How to find calm in an insane nation

~ Randy Blazak ~ 8 Comments

September 11, 2025

It was a call from a reporter. That’s how I found out that right-wing activist Charlie Kirk had been shot. I didn’t know enough to make a comment to the media. My brain started making a list who could have been responsible:

  1. Far right groups who think that Kirk’s Turning Point USA is not extreme enough.
  2. Right-wing groups who think Turning Point USA is too extreme.
  3. Someone having a mental health crisis.
  4. Someone personally connected to Kirk, like a spurned lover or someone he financially ripped off.
  5. Someone from the Trump camp, hoping to knock the Epstein files out of the news cycle and/or angry with Kirk’s demand that Trump release the files.
  6. A Russian plot to create political instability in the U.S.
  7. An incel frustrated over Kirk’s success as a family man.
  8. A nihilist who worships death and chaos.
  9. A suicidal individual seeking fame on their way out.
  10. An accelerationist who wants to hasten societal collapse.
  11. A right-wing “patriot” hoping to spark a civil war.
  12. A student hoping to harm the school where it happened.
  13. Someone from the left who opposed Kirk’s right-wing positions.

The immediate response to the shooting said everything about America. Some on the right (assuming they knew who the shooter was) called for violence on the left. Some on the left responded with the quip, “the only good Nazi is a dead Nazi.” Most expressed regret that we’ve gotten to this point. My social media feed was filled with hysterical MAGAs screaming about the “violent left,” while the left filled the feed with quotes from Kirk himself about the cost of gun violence in the protection of the second amendment. What a shit show.

This needs to be said. Charlie Kirk was a racist, homophobic, transphobic misogynist. He profited from spreading his brand of “free speech” hate. But he also encouraged public debate on these issues, not violent conflict. And he didn’t deserve to be slaughtered in front of his wife and children. He deserved to be ridiculed for his toxic beliefs. One day, he could have seen the light and become an advocate for tolerance. Now he’s just dead.

So on this 9/11, where does are nation go from here?

The United States is on the proverbial ledge.  Hours after he announced the death, from the Oval Office, Trump blamed the “radical left” without even a suspect in custody. Activists in Portland are on high alert for retribution. In 2020, we saw right-wing actors outside Portland create “Pro-America” caravans to attack local Black Lives Matter protestors. The rhetoric in extremist forums, like 4chan, state the Kirk killing has green lit an open season on leftists. Could our Fort Sumpter be Utah Valley University? Has the civil war begun? Do I need to arm up to protect my family from gangs of Proud Boys attacking Portland? America is a powder keg, with troops on the street and endless chatter about right and left.

The good news is, America is not divided as Fox News would have you believe. Watching MSNBC whitewash Kirk’s hate mongering might be evidence. While the media (including MSNBC) leans right, the vast majority of Americans are happily in the middle. Surveys find a general consensus on “divisive” issues like gun control, abortion, gay rights, vaccines and even tariffs. That’s because, while we might debate an issue (Transgender swimmers, go!), our core values across the political spectrum are relatively stable. Conservatives and liberals, MAGA and Bernie Sanders fans, we generally value education, public safety, privacy, equality, fairness, and justice. Research shows when people from different political positions first share common values, political civility returns to the discussion. We can heal this divide.

Every 9/11, I like to focus, instead, on 9/12 – that incredible feeling of national unity we felt following the attacks. We have a choice this 9/11. We can push our peers farther to the extremes and tip the nation into an unwinnable civil war that will plunge our beautiful nation into years of traumatic violence. Or we can find that common ground and create a rebirth of our vibrant multicultural democracy. We can put down our doom scrolls and meet out neighbors, rebuilding community. Charlie Kirk’s life was dedicated to dividing us. Perhaps his horrible death can motivate us to reject violence and incivility and find what binds us. The attacks of 9/11 still tear at my heart, but the resilience of 9/12 gives me great hope.

Are We There Yet? On Dictatorship, Civil War, and Revolution

~ Randy Blazak ~ 1 Comment

From The Blazak Report on Substack, August 21, 2025.

August 21, 2025

Usually my time machine fantasies involve things like going back to 1965 to see the Beatles at Shea Stadium, or to 1415 to see if the Battle of Agincourt was anything like Shakespeare and all those movies depicted. These days I’m trying to leap ahead 100 years to see how 2025 turned out. Will 2125 be a new feudal era, another Dark Ages, where elite technocrats hold the all wealth and power and the rest of us are just miserable renters? Or will we have chopped the heads off the authoritarians and preserved democracy for another century?

There’s no guarantee that the United States lasts another five years, let alone a hundred. I’ve seen plenty of nations come and go in my life and Trump and his handlers are dismantling democracy so fast, I don’t have much faith that we will have free and fair elections in 2026. If Texas is any indicator, Trump and the GOP (now Guardians of Pedophiles) are setting up the apparatus of permanent rule.

But there’s a “but” there that I will get to in a minute.

There’s a lot of hand wringing at the moment around these three questions:

Are we in a dictatorship? It certainly feels like it. Trump is busy destroying the checks and balances of our constitutional democracy, there are troops on the street, and he is attempting an Orwellian rewrite of American history. But there are almost 900 federal judges who can gum up Trump’s plans and over 3 million federal workers who can throw in plenty of monkey wrenches. While the mainstream media has capitulated as much as congressional Republicans, the internet is still wide open and the journalists of social media are doing the hard work of covering fascism in real time.

Are we in a civil war? Not yet. If the National Guard starts firing on civilians, probably. But polls show the vast majority of Americans disapprove of Trump and his tactics, including the Gestapo-like sweeps of immigrants. We are not “brother vs. brother” in the 1861 sense. Yet. There’s a former Marine and current ICE protestor who told me that we shouldn’t “look right or left, but up.” He talks to conservatives (and ICE agents when they detain him) about joining this fight. More and more people are leaving MAGA as they figure out that Trump is only serving his billionaire oligarchs.

Is it time for revolution? This is a tough one. The people of 2125 may ask why Americans in 2025 didn’t stop the authoritarian takeover when they had the chance. (We love to ask the same question of 1933 Germany.) We know the heavy hand of the state is already upon us. Just look at how the entire Department of Justice was mobilized to mete out swift justice to the lawyer who threw a Subway sandwich at a federal agent. People throwing rocks at ICE vehicles are being quickly arrested. And the NRA is strangely silent.

I want to believe this can be resolved with a massive nonviolent uprising, but there may be a growing voice that advocates for offing the king and his corrupt court. The nightly battles at the Portland ICE building seem like rehearsals for storming the Bastille.

So here’s the “but.” We don’t have the advantage of 2125’s perspective. If there’s one thing I learned from Joe Strummer it’s that the future is unwritten. A whole bunch of things could happen. Donald Trump and JD Vance/Peter Thiel could drop dead (please, sweet Jesus, do us this solid), and America could wake up to the great harm done. The GOP could decide to take back its soul (led by the ghost of John McCain). The Democratic Party could get it’s shit together, focus on tariff-inducing inflation, health care, and making sure our elections are fair, and we, as a democratic nation, could burst Trump’s narcissistic bubble.

So, yes, it’s time for revolution, but it doesn’t have to be a violent one. Once MAGA feels the hit of the “big beautiful bill,” the ranks of the resistance will swell. It’s already happening. The protests at the Heritage Foundation, the Epstein scandal, the closing of rural hospitals, direct actions confronting returning members of Congress, and the fact that Sesame Street has been foreclosed on by Donald Grump will bring in Americans ready to fight and shut the machine down. This is just the beginning of our resistance.

There’s still more of us than them.

“The people have the power to redeem the work of fools.” – Patti Smith

The James Bond Project #27: No Time to Die (2021)

~ Randy Blazak ~ 1 Comment

This series is intended to evaluate each product of the James Bond film franchise through a feminist lens, and the relevance of the Bond archetype to shifting ideas of masculinity in the 2020s.

No Time to Die (2021, directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga)

August 27, 2025

And in the end. Here we are at the final (for now) review. The final Daniel Craig performance as James Bond. The final 007 in the 59 year history to be produced by Eon Productions and anyone named Broccoli. And perhaps the last Bond film ever. Spoiler: James dies but rumors of another reboot abound. Last February, Amazon/MGM bought the franchise from Eon, so we may get another generation of 007, perhaps AI generated.

No Time to Die,  the 25th Eon Bond film, wraps up the Bond story in some interesting ways. Danny Boyle was to direct but backed out at the last minute so True Detective director Cary Joji Fukunaga took on the job. Daniel Craig, 51 at the time, who’s body had been battered by the role, reportedly said he’d rather slash his wrists than play Bond again. MGM reportedly offered him $100 for two more Bond films, which he turned down. He utilmateiy accepted a payday of $25 million for a film that would tie up the Bond story’s loose ends. We’d see some familiar faces for the last time, including Jeffrey Wright as Felix Leiter, Ralph Fiennes as M, Naomie Harris as Moneypenny, and Christoph Waltz as Blofeld.

NTTD doesn’t really have a Bond girl in the traditional franchise sense. For the first time, a female lead returns in a film. Léa Seydoux, who played James’ love interest, Dr. Madeleine Swann in Spectre, returns in NTTD and she has a surprise for 007. Ana de Armas, who racked up the awards as Marilyn Monroe in 2022’s Blonde, is CIA agent Paloma and she out-La Femme Nikita’s Nikita. Her action scenes are the highlight of the film.

The final installment gives us the expected Bond tropes, including our final underground lair, Bond in a tux, cool gadgets (including a glider submarine), exotic locations (Bond’s back in Jamaica!), and more than one Aston Martin. But this Bond is not the walled-off Lothario of the past six decades. Craig still plays him with smirky panache, but NTTD 007 is a family man.

For one last time, let’s plug the film into our evaluation matrix and see how the final Bond film ranks in our toxic masculinity scale.

Driver of Action – It makes sense that the final film centers on Bond himself. As Spectre ended, we have James leaving MI-6 to be with Madeline. The MI-6 crew, including Q, play small roles. There’s even a new 007, who, fittingly, is a black female, played by Lashana Lynch. Bond is reunited with CIA agent Felix Leiter, who is killed by a bad DOJ agent. The diversion from solo Bond is the scene with Ana de Armas in Cuba where they make an excellent team opening an epic can of whoop ass on Spectre.

The Role of Violence – Rogue Bond doesn’t need a license to kill, but when he’s reinstated to MI-6, his body count is off the charts. The Cuba scene with the Paloma has the highest kill rate in Bond history and in the Norway chase scene and the underground island lair of the assassin Safin (played by future Freddie Mercury Rami Malek) we see countless henchmen mowed down. Fan count is 27 killed but it felt like twice that. As usual, Bond dodges an endless hail of bullets, but one fired by Safin, finds him, leading to his death as British missiles destroy the island base.

Vulnerability – James Bond has never been more vulnerable in a James Bond film. The first part of the film, Bond is plagued by thoughts of Vesper Lynn, his previous love interest who died. Then he’s plagued by thoughts that Madeleine has betrayed him. Then he learns that that was a mind trick by Blofeld. Reunited with Madeleine, he learns that he has a child named named Mathilde. In the end he sacrifices himself to save Mathilde and Madeleine.

Sexual Potency – That’s not really the vibe in this film. The films opens with James and Madeleine, in love in Italy, including a scene in bed. He tries to make the moves on a woman in his room in Jamaica until he learns she is an MI-6 agent, the new 007 (in a scene that felt like an homage to Live and Let Die). He briefly flirts with Paloma until they get busy killing Spectre baddies. NTTD is a Dad Bond film.

Connection – Jame is fully connected to Madeline in this movie. Even in the scene where he puts her on the train after he believes she tried to kill him is full of pathos. Later in the film, he tells her, “I have loved you and I will love you.” Once he learns Mathilde is his daughter, the parent protection gene is unleashed and he is focused on saving his people. NTTD has no cute epilogue where we see he’s survived the missile strike and on a boat, drinking martinis with Madeleine. We see him blown up real good and the film ends with Madeleine telling their daughter about her heroic father.

Toxic Masculinity Scale: 1

Summary: NTTD might score higher because of the constant explosion of gun violence, but paternal Bond levels all that out. Even the title sequence steps back. Over a great Oscar-winning theme song by Billie Eilish, instead of the titles being projected on the bodies of nude women, it’s over Bond and his weapons. It should also mentioned that the credits included the names of many women, not just hair and make-up and casting. For reasons that might be sad (the end of Eon Bond films), we finally get a more human model of masculinity from Ian Flemming’s iconic character.

No Time to Die’s release was held up by the COVID pandemic. Principle photography wrapped in October 2019, but post-production was shuttered during the lockdown. The final Eon Bond film had its world premiere on September 28, 2021 at London’s Royal Albert Hall and landed in a market where most theaters were still closed. A month later, the global deaths from COVID-19 topped 5 million.

Because of the nature of corporate ownership of film franchises, nobody really lamented No Time to Die as the LAST JAMES BOND MOVIE EVER. In fact, “Bond 26” is currently being written by Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight and Dune director Denis Villeneuve is tapped to direct. Who will play the new Bond? Rumors are floating about Kick Ass star, Aaron Taylor-Johnson. I’ve been routing for Idris Elba, but he might be a little old. Could it be a person of color? Or even a woman? I mean, why not? We can only hope the new Bond is a healthier versions of masculinity that is both vulnerable and lethal. He (or she) still has a license to kill, after all.

The James Bond Project #26: Spectre (2015)

The James Bond Project #25: Skyfall (2012)

The James Bond Project #24: Quantum of Solace (2008)

The James Bond Project #23: Casino Royale (2006)

The James Bond Project #22:  Die Another Day (2002)

The James Bond Project #21:  The World Is Not Enough (1999)

The James Bond Project #20:  Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)

The James Bond Project #19: GoldenEye (1995)

The James Bond Project #18: License to Kill (1989)

The James Bond Project #17: The Living Daylights (1987)

The James Bond Project #16: A View to a Kill (1985)

The James Bond Project #15: Never Say Never Again (1983)

The James Bond Project #14: Octopussy (1983)

The James Bond Project #13: For Your Eyes Only (1981)

The James Bond Project #12: Moonraker (1979)

The James Bond Project #11: The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

The James Bond Project #10: The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)

The James Bond Project #9: Live and Let Die (1973)

The James Bond Project #8: Diamonds are Forever (1971)

The James Bond Project #7: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)

The James Bond Project #6: You Only Live Twice (1967)

The James Bond Project #5: Casino Royale (1967)

The James Bond Project #4: Thunderball (1965)

The James Bond Project #3: Goldfinger (1964)

The James Bond Project #2: From Russia With Love (1963)

The James Bond Project: #1: Dr. No (1962)

The Real Trauma of Trump 2.0

~ Randy Blazak ~ 2 Comments

From The Blazak Report, August 11, 2025.

NOTE: This piece was originally provided to paid subscribers to The Blazak Report on Substack.

August 11, 2025

Unpacking the impact of traumatic events on our brains is an adolescent science. We’re just beginning to understand the ways acute and chronic trauma affects how the parts of the brain work. Much of what we do know is because of the courageous sharing of war veterans. This journey of understanding is detailed in the highly readable book, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by V.A. doctor Bessel van der Kolk. But the short version is that trauma can freeze the brain in the fight/flight/freeze mode. Our amygdala hijacks our prefrontal cortex and we are forever on the battlefield.

Fortunately, we’ve also learned that people can heal their deepest traumas. Once PTSD officially became a diagnosis in 1980, treatment plans followed. But the hard truth remains that it is next to impossible for trauma to heal when there are new attacks coming in. An open wound will never heal when it is constantly being picked at. And that brings us to the trauma of Trump.

So much of our nation’s history has been a piss-poor attempt to heal the scars of the past. The Black Lives Matter uprising of 2020 was a desperate plea to heal the racial wounding by American police. We clearly diagnosed the problem and began implementing treatment in the form of meaningful reforms and prioritizing diversity, equity, and inclusion as American values. And then in 2025, it went all off the rails.

Donald Trump is the abusive husband, standing at the door, threatening his immigrant wife with violence if she leaves. Or if she stays.

There are so many groups who are suffering residual trauma from Trump 2.0.

First women. Trump’s Supreme Court rolled back women’s reproductive rights in his first term. While out of office he had to face a jury of his peers for one of his many sexual assaults and America still elected the “Grab ‘em by the pussy” rapist. His war on women has only ramped up in his second term, shored up by a cast of misogynists, like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who belongs to a church that thinks women should not have the right to vote. The gang of Epstein pedophiles roams free, protected by the GOP. How can girls and women feel safe knowing the federal government has been taken over by incels?

Next immigrants. So much for the pledge for Trump just going after the “worst of the worst.” Children with cancer, nursing mothers, and any brown person within ICE’s reach has been grabbed by masked goons and sent to disgusting internment camps or Central American gulags. Legal residents, asylum seekers, dreamers, veterans, and, yes, citizens have been caught up in ICE’s “one-shade-of-not-white fits all” mass deportation plan, as Stephen Miller screams for more. The anxiety of my students, some DACA, some from mixed-status families, some just Hispanic, is palpable. Many immigrants are refugees from violent police states like El Salvador and Syria, carrying massive trauma loads of their own, hoping to find peace and safety in the United States. And now masked men with guns are smashing their car windows and ripping them away from their families.

Veterans are also on this list. We got the memo after the Vietnam War that we need to take better care of our veterans, recognizing the scars of service run deep and long. What was derided as “shell shock,” is now viewed as the very real journey of living with PTSD. Tom Cruise movies aside, we had a national call for healing in a rare example of bipartisanship. Right or left, we all agree that we need to do everything possible to support our veterans. Since January, the cuts by Pvt. Bonespurs and his fellow civilian Elon Musk have devastated struggling vets. They include $30 billion from disability benefits and $1.6 trillion in health care cuts for vets over the next ten years. Most recently, Trump is denying early retirement for transgender members of the Air Force. Why? Because he can. It should be noted that not a single member of the Trump family has served in the military. Not one. He has referred to them as “suckers and losers.” Their wound has been ripped back open by a rich brat from Queens.

We could go on and on. Trans people because of his childish “there are only two genders” executive orders. Native Americans because of his war on tribal sovereignty. Protestors because MAGA officials have promised to use lethal force against them and “put them in trauma.” And all queer people and people of color because of his undoing of decades of progress by ending federally funded DEI programs. And there are so many more. I have a Latina green card holder in my life and she recently told me that she “low grade hates white people” because they are completely oblivious to the stress she must endure every waking hour living in Trump’s America. I totally get it. I mean, wouldn’t you?

Trump and his MAGA masters are driving America into a new Dark Ages. The last Dark Ages was centuries of the most brutal torture. More than princes and princesses, it was random drawing and quartering. The amount of new trauma that’s coming our way while Trump and his goons golf on New Epstein Island may not be survivable. And that’s their goal, because the traumatized are less likely to fight back.

That’s why we have to fight now.