November First

by Bill Lasarow

“The desecration is not a broken façade. It’s a broken covenant.”

—Rick Wilson, 10/24/25

Anselm Kiefer, “Sülamith,” 1983, oil, emulsion, shellac, acrylic paint, woodcut, and straw on linen, 113 1/2 x 146”. Courtesy of SFMOMA, San Francisco.

The tearing down of the East Wing of the White House to make way for a ballroom — one among other acts of cultural and architectural vandalism — is emblematic of the monopoly on power that the American Dictator aspires to. He is his own Albert Speer, an aesthetic monotone that knows one color and one size. In his own mind, one plus one equals great, and the rest of you are as decadent as Stephen Miller and Adolf Ziegler insist we are.

George Grosz, “The Pillars of Society,” 1926 oil on canvas. Courtesy of Artists Rights Society/Estate of George Grosz.

The bond it violates is that the elected president assumes responsibility for the good of all Americans. Caligula’s violation is rooted in the pleasure he takes in humiliating and silencing all of us who have devoted our careers, indeed our lives, to the pursuit of aesthetic meaning and any other form of dissent. He has declared his war on the First Amendment and on the first of FDR’s four most basic rights: to free speech and free expression.

The larger impact he mirrors is the violation of the economic security of about 15% of American citizens, forget about  immigrants lacking citizenship status. Many of these folks voted for the strongman not because of his fascism or the mafia tactics he most authentically understands. They voted for his promise of relief from the increased cost of living.

Not two weeks before the East Wing was abruptly torn down, Caligula extolled his love for the building, saying he would build his ballroom without touching the White House itself. The lie was as gross as ever, and so predictable. The running count during this character’s first term was both a national concern and a running joke. Given this second term, it’s barely a point of discussion. How many during this past ten months? Is anyone keeping count? Do we even care anymore?

Trevor Paglen, “The Salt Pit, Northeast of Kabul, Afghanistan” from “The Black Sites,” 2006, C-Print, 24 x 36”. Courtesy of the artist.

One of the most persistent falsehoods during the campaign, when we expect candidates to exaggerate routinely, was his routine assurance that the cost of living would go down, that inflation would be tamed (as though during the Biden Democratic administration it had not already come down from the post-pandemic spike of close to 9% to 2.5% already), and that tariffs would bring in trillions of dollars. No one alive recalls Smoot-Hawley anyway, and enough voters were seduced by the theater of grievance into believing Caligula was truly their champion.

The White House, hey, just a building. Bricks and mortar.

The devil’s bargain behind the Potemkin facade was always the extortionist’s racket: “I’ll keep you safe, but it will cost you.” The mafia family has breezed past the Emoluments Clause like it was a minor footnote. And each round of the führer’s signing orders has demanded submission in return for rescue from a crisis that he and his lieutenants have only deepened. The trivial and profound have been stirred into a toxic brew that has brought us to the new fiscal year. November First, 2025.

Sue Coe, “The Pentagon Wound Lab,” 1985, mixed media and collage on canvas, 71 1/2 x 83 1/2”. Courtesy © of the artist.

The government shutdown has served the purpose of shifting attention away from what this November First is really about, a national budget now designed to lock America into servitude to the Predator in Chief and his inner circle of conspirators, fanatics, thugs, and lackeys. The politics must of necessity be risky, rooted as they are in a radical break with our history, not to mention Caligula’s advanced age and deteriorating mental and physical health. So this transition has to go fast, even as around 40 million Americans are being reduced to a state of economic panic. More than half the country gets this, since much has had to be done in broad daylight. Everyone who names this treason for what it is gets lumped into a separate basket called “radical,” “socialist,” “communist,” and most importantly “the enemy within.” However the situation is resolved, want to guess who will declare himself our knight on a white horse? And don’t cross him, or next year it will be worse.

It’s easy, from my position, to sit back and write about the coming totalitarian horrors, and how recovering or giving up on American democracy is the central issue of our time. Many of the very people for whom the Democratic Party successfully won a real share of what was once called the American Dream have turned their backs on the moral and policy formula that made for an economy and middle class of unprecedented size and strength. The empty promises, false claims, and menacing allure of the fascist siren are there for all to see, and around 60% of voters can now see it according to current polls. But for around 40 million Americans, that clarity does not put food on the table. Poor quality food at that.

Kara Walker, “Unmanned Drone,” 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Sikkema Malloy Jenkins. Photo: Ruben Diaz.

That still leaves people like myself and my family among the majority who are making out pretty well, thank you. We may be a bit put out by a new round of inflation and health care costs. We have our savings, sure, but we’ve owned our home for decades and have a treasure chest of equity, our own private safety net should we ever need it. We bought insurance on our life, our home and our health care, and now that my wife and I are senior citizens we have our retirement benefits, that monthly Social Security check, and Medicare, all in this regime’s crosshairs. Let me tell you, I know that me and my family will be fine for as long as I draw breath. Shutdown? We are virtually untouched. And my senior friends? Doin’ fine.

What I vote on first is the break from the moral and political foundations of democracy. I was born just five years after we shut down the German Holocaust, close enough to that history to still feel its deep chill — and to sense its return. I can also see why so many fellow Americans feel that same chill and can only trace it as far as their kitchen table, or a visit to the doctor, or a missed paycheck.

November First is the first day of the 2025-26 fiscal year. The first day in which $170 billion starts pouring into ICE to spend on rounding up far more than just “the worst of the worst,” another Big Lie, to turn its primary focus on “the enemy within.” It’s the first day in which Stephen Miller gets to fulfill his fantasy of building a national network of concentration camps designed to render citizens from the most prominent to the most ordinary invisible. The first day towards a nation in which many will be free to dine out, attend concerts and museums, take vacations, have families … under the first commandment of a fearful age: “be nice to me.” How very innocuous.

Customers watch the Dodgers’ final World Series game against the New York Yankees on October 30, 2024, at Distrito Catorce in Boyle Heights. Photo Courtesy of Jessica Perez/Boyle Heights Beat.

And the price of disobedience? Detention for anyone who asks the impertinent question, who participates in a future No Kings Day, who writes or even jokes critically about the price of eggs or the collapse of the Founders’ guardrails.

November First, 2025 is the date on which the game is truly on. It also happens to be the day of Game 7 of the World Series. My home team? The Dodgers. I’m a native Angeleno who as a boy used to go to sleep listening to the great Vin Scully. I grew up privileged to fulfill my own dreams of personal freedom and autonomy. Baseball Game 7s are both rare and exhilarating, and whether my team wins or loses the real significance of the day will be relegated to the background for a few more hours.

All I want for every kid in America and all around the world is to be in a position to enjoy such things. So the coming defeat, as a matter not of sport but history, of the mafia model of fascism masquerading as governance is my top priority as a voter because I can afford that luxury. A luxury that around 40 million Americans haven’t got.

Bill Lasarow, Publisher and Editor, is a longtime practicing artist, independent publisher, and community activist. He founded or co-founded ArtScene Digest to Visual Art in Southern California (1982); the Mural Conservancy of Los Angeles (1987); and Visual Art Source (2009). He is also the founder (2021) of The Democracy Chain.  In 2025 he relaunched Square Cylinder with Mark Van Proyen and DeWitt Cheng.