“Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The Case of the Purloined Text Messages
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Our story begins, as every Portland political thriller must, with a text message and enterprising journalism.
A local real‑estate figure sent regrettable texts about city officials Those texts were then heroically “discovered” — some say by a Portland Mercury reporter seated behind him at a City Council meeting, practicing the ancient journalistic art of screen-peeking. Pulitzer, please!
But these weren’t just texts.
They instantly became:
· The Rosetta Stone of Conspiracy.
· The Dead Sea Scrolls of Backroom Dealing.
· The Smoking Gun That Proves Everything.
From these texts, Portland DSA quickly concluded that this person was:
· Puppet Master controlling every non-DSA political entity,
· Shadow Chancellor of PACs, developers, and possibly the Zoo elephants,
· Architect of a grand conspiracy to destroy tenant protections, affordable housing, universal preschool, and the Portland brunch-industrial complex.
A lot of power for one guy with an iPhone.
The Trump Playbook: When Politics Becomes About Enemies
This is where the story takes a darker—and more revealing- turn.
After the texts and the screenshots came the escalation.
Portland DSA didn’t just criticize. They began mapping enemies.
Not “people we disagree with.”
Not “opponents.”
Not “critics.”
Enemies.
Let that sink in.
They publicly celebrated and reposted praise for their effort to “map class enemies.” And who appeared on this list?
Not right-wing extremists.
Not MAGA activists.
Not January 6 apologists.
But civic leaders, mainstream Democrats, labor leaders, and public servants — including:
Jordan Schnitzer, Tina Kotek, Julia Brim‑Edwards, Dan Ryan, Laurie Wimmer, Eli Arnold, Vadim Mozyrsky, and even me!
The same movement that warns constantly about Donald Trump’s authoritarianism is now labeling political opponents as enemies.
Trump called journalists “enemies of the people.”
Sarah Palin divided Americans into “real Americans” and everyone else.
But neither ever published an enemies list nor congratulated themselves for it.
Portland DSA did.
And once you understand that fact, everything else in this story snaps into focus.
Are Mao-, Stalin-, or Kim-style purges next?
Will dossiers follow? Blacklists? Loyalty tests?
Who knows! The comrades aren’t saying.
But they have helpfully posted photos of themselves holding a “Socialism In Our Time” banner—imagery that practically writes its own punchline- and evokes the world’s most notorious authoritarian regimes
The irony is hard to miss: the group that warns loudly about authoritarianism is now flirting with its tactics.
The Sarah Palin Playbook: Inside the Tent, Outside the Truth
Supporters say Portland DSA is about solidarity, democracy, and justice.
But it operates exactly like the Sarah Palin model of political tribalism:
· Inside the tent? Hero.
· Outside the tent? Sellout, developer, dark-money operative.
· Disagree on strategy? Betrayal.
· Criticize a leader? Treachery.
The DSA playbook is identical- just with better coffee. More zoning opinions.
Every policy debate becomes a purity test.
Every compromise becomes capitulation.
You’re either IN the tent—or you’re OUT with Big Real Estate. Which is delicious irony, given this whole saga began with one real-estate guy’s text messages.
Meanwhile… at the Center of the Known Political Universe…
Not merely a political organization, but the political organization.
The sun around which all Portland politics orbits.
The One Ring to rule them all.
From this hub radiate the Sacred Red Strings:
The DSA Councilors: Morillo, Kanal, Lane, and Green voting in choreographed harmony.
The Peacocks: progressing only when Portland DSA approves the route and provides a Google Doc to be read from their screens at Council meetings. Defund the police, take Vienna junkets.
Olivia Katbi: DSA Chair, ensuring every vote stays on script. At the 2025 Socialism Conference, she led a panel on abolishing family policing (a euphemism for government-run child protection and welfare services) and the family itself — “the institution of the family acts as part of the carceral system in that it reinforces children as property.”
Nick Caleb: Attorney by day, eat-and-tax-the-rich evangelist by night (Lake Oswego digs excluded).
Boycott Ashkelon: Importing Middle East litmus tests and antisemitic rhetoric.
Portland for All: The coalition for all Portlanders (terms and conditions apply; you are not included).
Portland Mercury: The official chronicler and hagiographer, redefining investigative journalism as “looking over someone’s shoulder.”
Orbiting the outer rings, providing cosmic legitimacy:
· UFOs.
· Bigfoot.
Because if you’re going to map out a secret political universe, you might as well go full Pacific Northwest.
Antisemitism: When Silence Speaks Loudest
When third party antisemitic tropes surface, including during the recent council leadership drama, Portland DSA and the Peacocks don’t condemn it.
They do something far bolder:
They pretend not to hear it.
And in politics, silence isn’t neutrality.
Silence is complicity.
Movements reveal their values not by how they treat their allies, but by what they refuse to confront.
Preschool for All: The Tax That Never Met a Middle-Class Worker It Didn’t Like
Despite a reported $610 million surplus, DSA and the Peacocks have opposed indexing the tax to inflation — a simple fix that would prevent more middle-class working families from being swept into the tax year after year and stop expanding who counts as “rich.”
If your paycheck shrinks while the surplus grows, that’s not a flaw — it’s solidarity.
Ageism, Mockery, and the Politics of Contempt
Authoritarian politics doesn’t begin with censorship. It begins with mockery.
Which is why, at the recent Council debate on Council leadership, Councilor Angelita Morillo’s sneer mattered. Responding to older council members, she said:
Because I am not as old as you, I will sit here and I won’t have to go to the bathroom for the vote.
That wasn’t policy.
It was contempt- aimed squarely at older Portlanders. Seniors reduced to jokes.
This is how “enemies” are made: not with arguments, but with dehumanization. First you laugh at people. Then you dismiss them. Then you stop listening altogether.
And this wasn’t some anonymous internet troll. This was an elected official, aligned with a movement that claims moral authority over equity, dignity, and inclusion—except, apparently, when the voters are old.
The response: Seniors vote. They always have. They still do.
When a movement feels comfortable mocking people for their age, it has already decided who counts—and who doesn’t.
Enemy lists don’t start with arrests. They start with jokes.
That’s not progress.
That’s the oldest authoritarian trick in the book.
Conclusion: Where This Road Leads
This is where moral absolutism always ends: when disagreement becomes betrayal, when criticism becomes treachery, and when political opponents become enemies.
Every authoritarian movement tells itself the same story: that the purity of its cause justifies the tactics it deploys. That enemy lists are just transparency. That mockery is just honesty. That silence in the face of antisemitism is just strategy. That sweeping middle-class workers into a tax designed for the wealthy is just solidarity.
Portland DSA is trying to build a political culture where disagreement is betrayal, criticism is treason, and anyone outside the tent is a class enemy by definition.
That’s not socialism That’s not solidarity. That’s not justice. That’s the Trump–Palin playbook with better fonts.
Bonhoeffer warned that silence is a form of speech. Portland DSA has chosen a loud silence—on antisemitism, on ageism, on its own escalating rhetoric—while speaking fluently in the language of enemies, purity, and suspicion.
Portland is a city that prides itself on independent thinking, irreverence, and a healthy suspicion of anyone who claims to have all the answers. That instinct is worth protecting.
But don’t worry. Bigfoot’s been watching. And even he’s starting to wonder why the people who warn most loudly about authoritarianism are the ones leaving the biggest footprints.
He didn’t survive this long by letting one group draw the map and declare everyone else off the trail.
Neither should we.
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