Le Tricoteur

It was these fucking things that got me thinking about what eventually became this post. The "Arts of Peace/Arts of War" statues located near the Lincoln Memorial and the bridge across the Potomac between Washington D.C. and Arlington, VA.

The idea for these things dates from the late 1920s. The committee tasked with decorating the D.C. side of the new bridge - apparently the old span was beat-up and undersized, but didn't get up on the target list for replacement until the party to cut the ribbon on the post-World-War-denkmal (the "Tomb of the Unknown Soldier", in case you couldn't guess it...) was crashed by some traffic jams and general clusterfuckery so noticeable that even the Former Boss of 20th Century Political Corruption, Warren Harding, couldn't look past it - came up with "equestrian statues" since that's what every fucking republic needs is more "statues of men on horseback", right?

Well, the design and construction of these lawn ornaments sounds like a perfect parable for a city run by Congressional committee. The request for proposal went out in 1928 (the actual bridge RFP was issued in 1925) but there was a whole bunch of dicking around with the designs. I especially love this description from the Wikipedia article on how the sculptors were selected:

"James Earle Fraser and Leo Friedlander were both commissioned to craft sculptures for the eastern terminus. Just how Fraser and Friedlander were chosen is unclear. Fraser's biographer, August Freundlich, and the National Park Service both say there was a competition. Freundlich puts the date of this competition as 1931, and gives no further details. This contradicts reports from the Office of Public Buildings and Public Parks and Washington Post, which point to a selection process (not necessarily a competition) in 1929. Friedlander's biographers, however, state the artist was directly chosen in 1929. Museum curator Joel Rosenkranz says Friedlander's commission came directly from the firm of McKim, Mead & White, and mentions no competition."

"The more things change...", right? These jamokes would have been right at home slipping Felony Fats' Reflecting Pool Boy a bagful o' cash under the table to fuck up the pond liner.

The tale of the journey between design and construction is a similar sort of "designed-by-a-committee" epic. Design submittals, reviews, redesigns, resubmittals, re-reviews, re-re-designs, and then along came the Great Depression and the whole fucking thing got shut down for lack of funds.

The project diddled along in the Thirties - one big change was in materials for the statues, from granite to bronze - and then along came another World War and bronze was needed for making mess kits or something, so the statue plans went back into storage until VJ Day.

Okay! Now they were cookin'; the post-war boom was ready to go boom, and...wait...now you're telling me that the cost of casting these ginormous traffic islands was twice what you told me in 1939? The fuck..?

Being good American entrepreneurs the sculptors and their Congressional committee patrons shipped the manufacture overseas. To Italy, to be precise, where these paperweights were cast at several foundries between late 1950 and April, 1951.

The Wiki article says that the idea was to "...use fire-gilding to finish the statues. Fire-gilding is a process in which gold leaf and mercury are applied to the bronze. Fire is applied to the area, which causes the gold to adhere to the bronze and the mercury to evaporate."

This apparently was a problem. The quality of the various foundries varied significantly; some were good at the bronze but poor at gilding, others better with the gilt but sketchy with the bronze itself. All the initial gilding was judged too glitzy - the Wiki says that original casting samples were "...shipped to the United States, where it was discovered that the color was too bright." The sculptors' on-site rep had to finesse the Italians to get the metal finish to look like the design plans called for, but eventually did, and the big metal slugs were finally set up and officially dedicated in September, 1951.

And there they sat, for the succeeding 75 years.

Now bronze is a very common sort of "outdoors-metal-sculpture" material. It's fairly durable, and it's also fairly ductile - that is, "not brittle" - so it deals with heat and cold changes, rain, snow, sunlight, all the stuff you can lump together as "elements", pretty well.

It also develops a "patina", a natural (or artificial - different patinas may be applied to bronzes to get certain effects) oxidation product. The link describes perhaps the most familiar patina you know:

"Oxygen and water molecules react with the metal and form a layer of corrosion that discolors the metal. Think of the Statue of Liberty. This statue is clad in copper sheets, but its long exposure to the air and water has corroded the copper, giving it the statue’s iconic green color. That green color is patina, therefore the Statue of Liberty is the perfect example of a beautiful patina statue." 

Yep. The big green Frenchwoman in New York Harbor wasn't originally green but shiny copper.

These bronze ponies developed this patina over the course of 75 seasons, like this:

Now I've seen various bronzes, and the natural patina can add some depth and character to what is otherwise just a shiny hunk of metal. The photos of these statues don't look particularly interesting to me, but some of that may be that big Art Deco stuff kind of leaves me cold. It's the Thirties "burly peasant and heroic soldier" kind of monument sensibility that makes me think of Moscow subways and Mussolini's Marble Arch looming over the Libyan desert.

Anyway, peacefully oxidizing along the Potomac is where they were until Trump lumbered into view.

Okay.

Now, if there's one thing that Fats luuurves more than money (for him), and pussy (for him), and punishment (for his enemies) it's gold. I mean, if you know any one thing about the porcine rascal, it's that "gold" is his thing. 

His reign is the "Golden Age". The money he throws at the U.S. Navy is to build a "Golden Fleet". His special pay-me-for-a-green-card for rich white foreigners is the "Trump Gold Card". He's nailed up so many gilded knick-knacks in the Oval Office that the sonofabitch looks like the party room in a sleazy Vegas cathouse only with Gilbert Stuart's George Washington glowering down from over the bathroom door.

So it's hardly surprising that when Orange Foolius turned his artistic vision to these statues the result was to go from this...

...to this.

 

And that's what got me going. 

I'm not sure exactly what part of this latest damn gold Trump thing that got me so hot.

Was it the gaudy waste? Sure! Here's the guy with whose encouragement his buddy Elon took a chainsaw to government pennies that went to help people, like USAID, but who's been hoovering up graft and hucking tax dollars to J6 traitors, rich pals, and other scummy wingnut fool farms like beads off a MArdi Gras float. 

That this cretinous toad thought nothing of chucking a million or five at slathering gold on fucking statues while telling people who he was kicking off food stamps and utility-bill-assistance to suck it? Sure!

Was it the whole Welthauptstadt Germania neo-Nazi/grotesque Soviet statuary gilded vibe of these things? Sure, that too! The Atlantic magazine piece about them starts like this:

"The 19-foot statues, called The Arts of War, were once easy to miss but now look a bit like oversized children’s trophies, especially next to the classical and austere Lincoln Memorial. Seeing them is as if, on the walk between Arlington National Cemetery and the National Mall, you’d suddenly stumbled upon a P. F. Chang’s."

I'd say that equating them with a Chang's was a bit too high-tone a metaphor for this paint job; they look more like the sort of cheapo gilded plaster knockoff "Venus de Milo" yard ornament you'd expect to see outside the "Dolphin II Gentlemens' Club" on Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway right off Highway 217.

But after I sat down and thought about it I realized what really pissed me off about this. For itself, an as an emblem of my country circa 2026.

I hate all of this.

I hate the "fuck you, I got mine" arrogance of it. 

I hate what that says about the person who did it. About the people who applauded it. Or ignored it. Or hand-waved it. Or voted for it.

I hate that while something like half to two-thirds of the people in the nation he rules despise this motherfucker, loathe what he's doing, utterly reject what passes for policy coming out of his gilded palace and the fuck-you to all of us who despise him that these golden idols symbolize...

And that there's not a goddamn fucking thing we can do about it.

Our system makes it possible for him, for them, to rule like kings. With 50.1% of the Congress, 6 of 9 of the Supreme Court, that Felony Fats can rule like goddamn Caesar.

And that's what this shit looks like.

It's Louis XVI with his table full of ormolu clocks while starving kids begged in the street and died.

It's Nicholas II playing warlord while his soldiers were butchered by his incompetent "leadership".

It's George III, it's Charles I, it's Nero and Tiberius and Caligula. It's every other goddamn plutocratic royal moron, lolling about in golden ignorance and carelessness (or petty anger or madness...) while the nation burns and the people rage in powerless fury.

The original tricotreuses were poor women of Paris.

In October 1789 their fury - at their own poverty and starvation and at their royal masters' wealth and indifference - erupted in something called the "Black March":

"Encouraged by revolutionary agitators, they ransacked the city armory for weapons and marched on the Palace of Versailles. The crowd besieged the palace and, in a dramatic and violent confrontation, they successfully pressed their demands upon King Louis XVI. The very next day, the crowd forced the king and his family to return with them to Paris."

As is so often the case, however, these people were offered public praise and made much of...until they tried to get hold of real power to punish those aristocratic scum and to change their lives for the better:

 "On 21 May 1793 they were excluded by a decree from the galleries of the Convention; on 26 May they were forbidden to form part of any political assembly. The veterans of the march and their numerous successors and hangers-on gathered thereafter at the guillotine in the Place de la Révolution...as sullen onlookers...the tricoteuses...watched the guillotine as they knitted."

And that, my friends, is right where I am. Exactly how I feel.

Does that mean I'm not going to do whatever I can do within the current political climate to defenstrate the gilded sonsofbitches? Ohhellno. 

But in a political system increasingly tilted against me, with "allies" on my side of the political divide who seem to think that empowering words and optimistic protest songs will defeat fascist goon squads, I'm left with nothing more than a hot coal of rage burning my chest.

I long for nothing so much as a day when I can sit and rock and knit and smile as one after another the bloody heads tumble down off the block.

Trump, Miller, Hegseth, Thomas, Roberts, Kavanaugh, Markymarkwayne...fuck it, let's toss Alex Jones' and Newt and Callista Gingrich's and Steve Bannon's empty noggins in the basket, too. 

It took millions of soldiers and sailors and aviators, tens of thousands of bombers and aircraft carriers, tens of millions of tons of bombs and shells and bullets to defeat the last great outbreak of fascist scum.

Before that it took years of war and hundreds of thousands of deaths and miles and acres of destruction to defeat the first great outbreak of racist traitors here in this nation.

Now that task is before us.

 
"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo. 

"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

Private parts

 Like Paul Campos, I don't "get" transgender.

It's literally impossible for me to imagine. I'm physically male, and while I can imagine finding other men attractive and desiring men sexually I literally can't conceive how I would think and feel as a hetrosexual (or homosexual, or asexual, or any other sort of...) woman. 

While I don't feel that desire I can see a man and think "Wow, he's (fill in the attractive adjective)." without feeling physical attraction, meaning I "get" homosexuality.

(And bisexuality, and asexuality, and a lot of other "sexualities") 

But I can't feel what it would be like to be female, to think of myself as a woman. I don't "get" that.

And that's just fine. 

I don't have to, to understand that some people do feel that way. I "get" that it's an actual thing, just like I get that there are a whole spectrum of emotional and physical feelings and identities and...well, people, who aren't like me. 

Because people are complicated.

And y'know what?

That's just fine, too. Provided those complications neither pick my pocket nor break my leg, have at it my brothers and sisters and everyone in between.

Y'know what I don't get?

People who seem inordinately obsessed with policing other people's complications enough to do stuff like this:

Who does this serve?

Seriously. What earthly "good" does this do? How does this make anyone's life better or easier or simpler?

The world is full of horrors.

Someone with male junk who doesn't think of themselves as male?

Is not remotely close to one of them.

But apparently the sort of people who now call themselves "conservative" believe that isn't so. To the point of changing the rules to MAKE those people "a problem".

Why?

How does this even make their fucking lives any better?

A day ending in "y"...

So, after a year of magisterial thumb-sucking the U.S. Supreme Court issued it's ruling that confirms, in the same sense that your eyes "confirm" seeing a barn in broad daylight, that, no, the executive branch cannot - simply by calling some random things an "emergency" - grift the power of the purse explicitly assigned to the legislative branch by the foundational documents of the republic.

Tl:dr; fuck you, Fatso, your "big beautiful tariffs" are illegal.

I'll get back to this in a bit, but the most annoying-to-the-point-of-infuriating part of this is the whole "No, duh?" part.

Everyone with a functioning hindbrain knew this the moment the felonious fucker came storming off his gilded toilet to announce that We the People were going to do a big ol' round of McKinleynomics. I wrote a whole post about this idiocy back in April 2025 when the nitwit spammed everything with his first round of them, and then revisited the subject with my own Tariff Tale in November. 

(Oh, and at this point I should throw in the most recent chapter of my personal encounter with Dumbfuck Don's Tariff Turgidity, in which I received a reply to my disputation of duties in January, 2026. UPS sent me the following:

"I am the Post-Entry Researcher assigned to the attached dispute. Your shipment has been flagged for aluminum duties, and U.S. Customs requires the attached Section 232 form to be completed. If the items do not contain aluminum, please enter the commodity name in the description field and indicate “N/A” in all remaining fields."

Okay, now; keep this in mind. The time and expense of all of this nonsense, from the billing for, and initial payment of, the duties on the object (a replica sword manufactured in Japan), the additional 200% tariff demand, my dispute of the additional demand, and now UPS' dispute of my dispute, were being borne by U.S. citizens. Neither a nanosecond nor a penny of this stupidity was coming from Tozando, the Japanese retailer.

Per UPS the duties on aluminum imposed by the administration's both then- and now-clearly-illegal fuckery were, indeed, 200%. Which sent me back to the calculator and, after that, the laptop keyboard, to compose the following reply:

"Here's the Section 232 Form with the information from this item, based on the following:
The item is a replica sword.
The aluminum is contained only in the blade.
The weight of the blade is approximately 5kg
The amount of aluminum in the blade is 13.5% per the manufacturer's declaration.
Based on this the approximate weight of aluminum is approximately 0.675kg.
The price of aluminum in Japan is listed as $86/ton for Q4 2025.
Therefor the value of the aluminum in this item is ($86/907.185)*0.675, or about  $0.14."

At which point I came damn near to dropping three dimes in an envelope and mailing them to the Post-Entry Researcher's address in San Diego. I resisted, but, fuck, it was a damn near-run thing.

I'm debating whether to now go ahead, or turn around and demand my initial $54 back from Felony Fats' crew of gormless idiots).

Here's the larger, and more infuriating, point of my ranting about this. It's just one more goddamn thing that this crew of acephalic numbskulls does every fucking day. And...

What's

The 

Fucking

Value

Of 

ANY 

Of 

This 

Trumpy

Bullshit?

To any of us not 1) in the two-yacht income brackets, or 2) utterly baked in gibbering racist, sexist, xenophobic, Christopathic lunacy to the point where "fucking with those people" is "in my best interests" (i.e. nuttier than a Snickers bar). 

I mean, pick one. Any one. Of the fucking things these treasonous Nazi fucks have wrangled up over the past year and change, like these ridiculous (and now officially illegal) tariffs.

Deporting everything and everyone in sight? Drywallers, bean and pear pickers? Bodega grannies? School kids? (Oh, and ass-beating and murdering random passersby in the process)?

Sluicing tax cuts to fatcats?  

Pimping coal mining?

Deregulating everything in sight so the fatcats and coal miners and all the other GOP remoras get to wet their fucking beaks while the world overheats and the clean air and water disappear?

Trashing things like the vaccinations and the medical care and research and disease control that made 20th Century medical care the safest and healthiest in human history (for those who could afford it, anyway...)?

Doing bizarre, random, vicious and/or stupid acts of violence all over the place, from South and Central America to the Middle East as they destroy the post-1945 Western alliance systems?

And that's just the legal stuff. We haven't even turned towards the grotesquely Trumpy corruption that makes Warren Harding's crew look like rank amateurs and the policeman in Arrijan green with envy.

At least the OG Nazis had World War 1 and Versailles and occupation and hyperinflation and depression to blame. And actual, no-shit Commie Reds right next door.

Doesn't excuse the murderous fuckers, mind. But you can see how Joachim and Marta Mittagessenkasten could see voting for the sonsofbitches.

What's our excuse?

That transsexual illegal Haitian porch pirates are cooking up Labrador au gratin? 

Give me a fucking break.

That, as I've repeated over and over, is the truly infuriating piece of all this Trumpfuckery.

It's more than the destruction. It's more than all the toxic "isms" aimed at people just trying to live a life; poor people, brown people, immigrant people, non-binary people, gay and lesbian people, liberal people, urban people. It's more than the vile, repugnant, evil shit that these fucksticks love and plan and do every fucking day.

It's the obvious pointlessness for everyone - liberal or MAGAt - who's not living off daddy's trust fund or some sort of credit-default swap scam or who isn't, as noted above, so mentally baked as to be functionally an intellectual house plant.

None of this shit "makes America great".

If the average Republican wasn't in a Trump cult the GOP would have been tossed in the trash bin of history after 2008 the way they were for the two decades after their post-1929 plutocratic fellatio made it clear whose trouser snake they were Hoovering.

 (I see what I did there)

Here's the problem for the rest of us, though.

The mention of 2008 dredges up the ugly reality that, much as the non-insane factions of political power are an order of magnitude better than the MAGAtraitors, they're not that great for the rest of us.

It was as plain as a dog in the daylight that the wealthy, the financial rentier class, the finance bros and banksters, the government "regulators" and fiscal manipulators that were and are in their pockets, are largely in control of the government's hand on the economy. Fiscal policy. Tax policy. Employment and education and almost every other aspect of life in the United States is grotesquely tilted in the direction of the "rich, the well-born, and the able".

It's not "conspiracy theory" for those of us not born with a trust fund to suspect that even if every MAGAt was raptured tomorrow the chances of us and ours getting a better deal for medicine, for college, for solid, reliable, good, rewarding work followed by an honorable and comfortable retirement are...not exceptionally high.

Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns, & Money has an excellent explanation of the problems with the notion that "we" just need to "take the country back from the MAGAts" by voting out Republicans and then joy and happiness will reign: 

"The approach required by this profounder corruption (the "financialization" or elite capture of the economic as a whole, of the sort that 2008 was a symptom, not a cause) is not recovery: returning to where we were means going back to a state of affairs that was manifestly unsustainable. To borrow from the architect of the Democratic Party’s most enduring platform, any recovery that simply restores things as they were will see us all right back where we are now before too much time has passed. Franklin Roosevelt argued in 1934 that the nation needed not merely recovery but “reform and reconstruction . . . much of our trouble today and in the past few years has been due to a lack of understanding of the elementary principles of justice and fairness by those in whom leadership and business and finance and public affairs was placed.” Reconstruction—Roosevelt was well aware of the word’s legacy after the Civil War—meant that leadership, and the conditions that kept them in place, “had to be corrected.” 

My only quibble is that it needed more ropes and lampposts, just as 2008 should have, but you take what you can. What we need, though, is a thorough cleansing of the Augean stable of corrupt elite wealth and privilege that has metastasized in the American system. A complete revision of the post-Reagan tax-cut-and-deregulation schemes that have returned the nation, economically and socially and politically, to 1929 if not 1899.

The failure of the First Reconstruction must be reversed, and the success of the Revolt of the Rich and the Rise of the Second Confederacy that has taken place over the past forty-six years, must be destroyed.

Can the United States post-2025 do that?

I'm not sure.

But, goddamn it, we have got to fight for it.

Because the alternative is to be ruled by these idiots.

 

No, it's not radio silence...

 ...it's the damn Frontiers post.

How this joint - blog and country - feels at the moment.

I've finally got to the crux of the biscuit - the collision between the German "strong right wing" (the three right wing feldarmee) and the Allied left (principally the French 5re Armee and the British Expeditionary Force).

The thing is (to give away the plot) that there were several critical reconnaissance problems that affected the way both sides maneuver forces assembled, moved, and fought, and to analyze them I had to break the last half of August 1914 into a ridiculously granular level - literally day-by-day - of detail, and that's taking forever.

While I'm doing all this my country is going completely to a madman's Hell in a handbasket, and I'm not sure what else there is to say about it.

Put aside the usual GOP MAGAt bullshit - the basso continuo of stupidity, greed, racism, sexism, xenophobia, half a dozen other fucking toxic -isms - and it's the jaw-dropping stupidity of the Second Fraudulency Administration's cunning plans that hits so hard.

Seriously.

It's not the greed. It's not the criming. It's not the fascism.

Those were baked in from the moment this fucking country re-elected Felony Fats.

It's the utterly pointless, pinheaded, stop-me-before-I-shoot-myself-in-the-dick moron-grade dumbfuckery.

Let's gloss over the whole insane "Get Greenland!!!" side arc and focus on the real Krown Jool of Boneheadedness that these fucksticks are chasing;

"Mass Deportation Now".

Stop and think for a moment.

Who does this whole lets-chase-down-brown-folks-and-disappear-them benefit?

More to the point...how in Beelzebub's Fucking Hell does deporting random geezers, bodega grannies, drywallers, tomato pickers, and busboys even benefit you and me, Joe and Molly Lunchpail, Mister and Missus Average American? 

Are these people "criminals" in the "roll you for a nickel and stab you for the extra dime" sense?

Ohhellno. We've been over and over this. It makes no sense for 99.9% of anyone in this country illegally to go around criming and getting a police spotlight shining on them. Most undocumented people are the opposite; trying to keep on the downlow and below the cops' radar so they can make a living.

Are they "taking your..." fill in the blank here; job, house, tax dollars?

Pretty much no. The jobs most of these people are doing are those that legal citizens are largely loth to do; farmwork, meat processing, construction, "hospitality" (read hotel maids and waitstaff). They can't collect entitlements without, again, popping up on radars they don't want to attract. They're not manipulating the rental and housing markets. How? They rent houses or apartments just like citizens, and the cost of those rentals is determined by the owners and landlords, the availability by developers and zoning rules.

So how does 86ing them in job lots help you and me..?

 .

 .

. 

Take your time. I'll wait.

Okay, now. Here's the one place I'll agree with the fucking idiot Trumpkins: having a mass of people in a country who lack citizenship is troubling.

I've written about this over and over, and can't express it better than I did in 2017:

"...to be a stateless person, a non-citizen, in a foreign nation is not a good thing.

It's not good for the person, who has no civil rights, who is outside the protection of the civil law, and who is, therefore, hideously vulnerable to all sorts of malefactors.

And it's not good for the nation, that has this indigestible mass of non-citizens within it prey to crime and violence, exploited by employers and living in fear of taking part in the civil life of the community.

So. The bottom line really is; if you are a citizen of Mexico, or Ireland, or Bali...you belong in Mexico, Ireland, or Bali unless you are a legal resident or visitor of where-ever-it-is-you-are; in this case, the United States."

Yep. Still true. 

In a sane polity We the People would have a simple, orderly process for people who want to come to this nation, regardless of who or what they are, to get on the track to citizenship. Learn the Common Tongue (English) speedily, become conversant with the conventions of citizenship...

(and as a note here, the appallingly low level of civics knowledge of the supposed citizenry in this country is, or should be, a scandal. Way too many MAGAts get away with talking the shit they do because Joe and Molly don't have the fundamental understanding of the principles contained in the founding documents or a knowledge of this nation's history to refute the traitors' bullshit.)

...and become part of the quilt of people and culture and ideas that are the promise of this nation; equal justice under law. Liberty and justice for all.

The surface trappings of all this Trumpian lunacy - masked ICEstapo goons in the street, ridiculous lies about eating pets, secret prisons - is just the foam on the Latte' of Mindless Racist Xenophobic Stupidity of the MAGAt horde. Meaning that we could arrest, convict, and jail Felony Fats and his entire coterie of fools, assholes, and Nazi pals, and we'd still have this problem...because of the millions of the fucksticks around us who luuuurve them this nonsense.

So, nope.

We're not getting out of this with One Weird DeTrumpification Trick.

ICE.

Tariffs.

Antivaxx loonies.

"Entitlement" cuts to finance tax gimmees for fatcats. 

"antifa".

Greenland, Venezuela, Panama, Gaza, Iran...

They're all going to be problems for decades. The plutocrats who are the force that gives MAGA meaning are getting their tax giveaways and deregulation. The Christopaths are getting the Bible-banging. The MAGAts are getting the "I love eating shit so long as the people I hate have to eat more shit" they crave.

Between them the rest of us are fucked.

And, like I've been saying over and over; it's not just that we're caught in the MAGA dystopia.

It's that this is Stupid Dystopia. This is getting handed your ass because you let the world's most ignorant hillbilly chucklefucks into the control room of the nuke plant because you were pissed off that your email signature could include pronouns.

Christ on a fucking crutch.

 

Quiet desperation

I've tried.

I was sure I could get enough ridiculousness out of this idiotic "Portland is burning!" Trumpenonsense to dope up an "Acting 1st Lawes..." piece.

But.

I just can't.

This has become...whatever "reeeally fucking not funny" is.

The President of the United States is an unhinged moron, a complete and utterly lethally dangerous fool, acting on the delusions that exist only in his addled head as well as direction from the dangerously evil, greedy monsters that prowl around him.

And We, the People, can do nothing to stop or deter or delay this.

He's going to send soldiers to peaceful cities, his ICEstapo goons are going to try and gin up unrest to justify violent force, because this ninny has nothing inside his fat head outside greed and bile and prejudice.

And We can do nothing to change that, or to stop it.

I honestly don't know what more to say. We are at the nonexistent mercy of Nazis, the real-honest-to-God-no-shit variety as well as every flavor of other White Christopathic Scum that rides with the old school swastika-suckers.

And We can do nothing to change that, or stop it.

Well. 

We can vote. 

Sure.

In a year. And hope that the Nazis don't do what Nazis do; use force and fear to make that vote meaningless. And trust that they'll do what they haven't for the past year; bend the knee to the popular will and the laws and customs of the nation.

There's armed resistance, of course.

And without an invading army to destroy the occupation forces?

Ask a Soviet partisan or a French resistant or a survivor of the Polish Home Army how that goes.

So what can I say? That if, as they surely will, the MAGAts refuse to allow, or accept the results, of the popular vote, the choice is between hopeless rebellion or desperate inaction? 

Well, here I am, saying just that.

It infuriates me. Infuriates as in the old cartoon where the vulture says "Patience, my ass. I want to kill something."

It provokes nothing as much as murderous rage. Rage at the MAGAt scum. Rage at my own political faction who couldn't be arsed to turn out last year to defeat the MAGAt scum. Just...rage.

I'm sorry.

I wish I had more hope. I wish I had an eloquent prescription for escaping the jaws of this vise of thug fascism, of restoring the promise of the nation I grew up in.

I don't.

I'm going to try and come up with some sort of content this autumn. I still need to finish the "Frontiers" series. I still love to write...I just need to find something to write about other than the state of my nation.

Because if I do I'll find myself right back here, my gaze darkened, my fists clenching in a hate that begs, that longs for, that craves the sweet feel of the parting of throats under the blade. 

What fresh hell is this..?

I'm a soccer fan, but one thing I've been able to miss is the appalling "barstool sports" sort of "fan culture" shit. Apparently it's a thing, and not a good one. One of the staff over at Lawyers, Guns, & Money has a post up about this freakish "sports fandom fandom" that cuts to the real heart of our national problem:

"There are so many parallels between the popularity of Barstool and MAGA, it’s frightening. In fact, as this podcast very astutely points out, things like Barstool and Gamergate were very much proving grounds for MAGA. They’re all cults centered around the most toxic idiots on the internet. They’re all troll armies. They all have an undisguised loathing for women and POC. And most importantly they’re all movements and moments that give people permission to be their absolute worst selves.

Editing to say: It really hit me how much MAGA centers on monetizing being awful and how absolutely dystopian that is"

Tl:dr? "MAGA means never having to say you're sorry you're an asshole."

Here's my question, though; what the everlovin' fuck do you do with someone who WANTS to be an unapologetic asshole?

Seriously.

How do you possible "reach" someone like that?

Because the implicit part of being an unapologetic asshole is that you want, expect, and will fight to ensure that the "public square" is asshole-friendly. You're gonna do everything you can to ensure that there's no, not the slightest hint of, pushback against your assholery. You're never going to back down, give up, or give in.

Which is what we've seen from MAGA since Day Zero.

These dickstains have been loud and proud up in the grille of everyone and everything that has tried to stand up to or against them. Now, especially, since they have all the levers of federal power they've forced their opponents to bend the knee. And to their eternal shame, many have; universities, media conglomerates, pundits, functionaries.

Which is why I keep repeating; we, the non-asshole non-MAGAts, need to realize that

We

Are

At

War

with these people and their institutions.

They know they are; their openly stated objectives are to crush us and destroy everything we value. They are not our fellow Americans, not our fellow citizens, but our mortal enemies.

Because that sort of person is effectively unredeemable our battle must not be directed at them but against those around them, the non-voter, the marginal MAGAt (who cannot be won but who can be disheartened or frightened and terrorized into passivity), the "independent".

We have to detach and discourage the auxiliaries if we are ever to hope to crush the MAGAts.

Because that has to be our ultimate goal.

The lessons of Reconstruction, and the post-WW2 occupations, need to be absorbed this time.

After WW2 we hung the enemies, and hunted and terrified their partisans into fearful silence. After our own Civil War we pardoned the enemies and, as part of reconciling our society, let them craft their shitty Lost Cause stories into our national myths.

But. 

Assholes are always gonna asshole. There's no changing them, or that. Instead they must be forced into silence, and since they feel no shame, by fear. Fear of retribution. Fear of consequences. 

After 1945 we learned what we'd failed to absorb after 1865. 

Bill Sherman said "Fear is the beginning of wisdom". 

But for those who choose never to be wise, fear is, at least, the beginning of silence.

In my personal opinion? The best silence for these people is the silence of the grave. As Stalin was wont to say, if people are the problem? No people, no problem.

But I will take living but fearful silence if that's the best we can get from them.

Getting it so completely, utterly, totally fucking wrong

 

 

So that thing where "You don't know anyone as stupid as Donald Trump. You just don't."?

 

This is "I went to the Wharton School of Economics and slept thru the lecture on "The Great Depression: Wha'happen?"  

 

From the link:

"But the country began abandoning them when it created a federal income tax in 1913, the president says. Then, “in 1929, it all came to a very abrupt end with the Great Depression. And it would have never happened if they had stayed with the tariff policy,” Trump said in announcing his tariff plan last week.

Referring to Smoot-Hawley, he added, “They tried to bring back tariffs to save our country, but it was gone. It was gone. It was too late. Nothing could have been done — took years and years to get out of that depression.”

Getting the "Lesson of Hawley-Smoot" completely, totally fucking wrong and ass-backwards?

 

Y'think?

"Smoot-Hawley raised import tariffs by an average of 20% on thousands of goods, causing many top U.S. trading partners to retaliate. International cooperation on non-trade issues also declined, including on defense matters, helping clear the way for the rise of Hitler, Richardson said.

“There were some industries where they made profits,” Richardson said of Smoot-Hawley. “But overall, people in the U.S. and people around the world were losers.”

U.S. manufacturers saw foreign markets for their goods evaporate and output and consumer spending sank still further. Hawley lost the 1932 Oregon Republican primary in his district, and Smoot was defeated in November, as Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt trounced Hoover for the presidency."

Fuck me runnin'. If you wrote this as anything but "news" it would be dismissed as an improbable fiction. 

WASSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSF

Game recognize game

Now.

Then.

These numbnuts are deeply ignorant, profoundly stupid, and utterly incompetent. It's their good luck, and the rest of our misfortunes, that their MAGAt party is even more ignorant and stupid and cares nothing for competence so long as they get the performative spite and malice they crave.

And there is no remedy for them in the Constitutional system. No checks. No balances. Nothing.

The United States is now a Stupid Fascist state in fact, if not in name, and if We the People don't want that, well...history shows the path from autocracy to republicanism is ugly, brutal, and very often futile at least in the short and even medium term. 

The Revolution of 1789 led to military dictatorship by 1800 and decades of ruinous war. The Revolution of 1917 led to partisan dictatorship by 1921 and decades of brutal immiseration. Our own revolution was only prevented from a similar fate by a unique combination of individual probity and isolation from neighboring Great Powers.

So, no. There is no Good Way past this disaster.

The trope of 1776 is that roughly a third of the then-American colonies was Loyalist, a third were rebels, and the remaining third just wanted to keep their heads down. Logistical difficulties, strategic incoherence, and Great Power rivalry with France ensured the rebellion became revolution and overthrow of the ruling order.

We certainly have ruling incoherence and economic difficulty from the fascists.

But we have no Power to come to our aid, and the internal division is even less favorable; the fascists run from about 30% - the true hardcore MAGAts - to 40% and the "heads-down" lumpen herdbeasts are another 30-40%. The police and military will obey The Chief Executive; there is no competing "Garde National" or rebellious militias to opposed regime gunfire with rebel gunfire.

We are, in fact...

 

I honestly have no words of hope or encouragement. I can't figure out a way to overthrow these sonsofbitches short of actual violent rebellion, and history also shows how often that goes badly for the rebels.

The time for phone banking and postcard writing is past.

But I can't stand the idea of simply bending the knee to these people. Is it time for building IEDs? How can that ever work? 

I can only stand, shaking with rage, as my country devolves before my burning eyes.

A letter to my sister

My little sis called me today. Left a voicemail about TrumpFuckery, and in particular mentioned Ukraine.

I just didn't feel like spending half an hour moaning and pissing about all that, so I wrote her this email:

 "The reality is that we’re screwed for at LEAST the next two years, and that assumes that these fucksticks’ idiot rampage fucks things up bad enough that even the idiot public gets pissed enough to vote Democratic. Which is far from a given; it’s just as likely that there’s a third party nonsense (which means the GOP wins) or they just don’t vote at all (…so GOP wins…).

 

The Trumpenscum has it all; all three branches, the press licking their taint…all we can do is try and delay and go to court - and that’s a weak reed given the SCOTUS Furious Five - or the streets, and that’s both risky and dangerous, because Fatso WILL invoke the Insurrection Act and become a Fuhrer in fact as opposed to in practice.

 

So everything and everyone we non-scum humans care about - parks, public spaces in general, social safety nets, modern medicine..? All we will have is what they don’t want or just don't want to trash because they’re fucking trash people who are stealing perfectly good oxygen and that's what fucking oxygen-thieves do.

 

Ukraine? Fuck. If the EU doesn’t step up they’re doomed. Palestine? Doomed. Taiwan? If Xi is willing to pay off Fatso? Doomed.

 

I’ll see if I can find the link, but Amanda Marcotte has a piece interviewing someone who’s deep-dived into the wingnut bible-bangers. (It's here).

 

The bottom line? It’s a cult, they’re fanatics, and there’s no reaching them; it’s culture war as ACTUAL war. There’s no going back any more than there was for the Hitler Youth dying in the streets of Berlin or the kamikaze taking off from Kyushu in August 1945. 

 

I’m not exaggerating; we cannot “beat” these people using democracy. They see that as race and religious suicide. They must be destroyed…and that means real, actual, no-shit Civil War. And I don’t see “our side” as ready and willing to do that. I don’t blame them! That’s horrendous!

 

But that’s where we are.

 

I'm reminded of the passage in Tolkien where Frodo is pissing and moaning about how fucked it is that this whole “ring” shit has to happen on HIS watch.

 

Gandalf replies, no shit, Sherlock, really? Word up Frodo, he says; that’s what EVERYONE in this situation thinks. It sucks. It just sucks. 

 

But it is what it is and all you and I and everyone else can do is suck it up. 

 

And so we do. 

 

I'm not saying "Stop fighting". Even if you're doomed to lose, you have to fight. Even if it means you die, if what you're fighting for is worth it, you fight - and die - as hard as you can. Every Nazi you kill in Poland before you die is one Nazi that can't invade France, can't invade Russia, can't defend Normandy or Italy or Berlin.

 

But that doesn't make the dying any easier. 

As we used to say over at Intel Dump:

 

WASSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSF!

A bas Citoyen Trump

 

Cui bono?

As usual, the news is overstuffed with Fatso's fuckery and that of his sejanus, Elmo.

It's not worth dissecting in detail; it's just more "Let's do 1929 over only the plutocrats win!" bullshit.

I did want to make a couple of observations, though.

1. If you're really hunting "waste, fraud, and abuse" of federal agencies you don't use racist nineteen-year-old coders. You bring in forty-eight-year-old forensic accountants.

You bring in the ElmoTeens because you want to write in backdoors and hack government servers for a plutocrat whose "businesses" survive on government handouts.

Just sayin'.

2. I want every interview of every Republican official at every level to begin with:
"You (or "your Congressional Republican colleagues") have introduced a plan to cut over 800 billion out of Medicaid, a program millions of your fellow Americans depend on for their health care. This will mean that millions of those people will lose that care. What do you recommend those people do?"

Every. Single. Interview.

Over and over.

Until one of them loses it and responds with Auric Goldfinger's line:

"No, I expect you to die." 

These fucking people.

Every morning I read the news and the thought that keeps returning is "How come you never have a rocket-propelled grenade when you really need one?" 

One more thought.

One thing that I think hasn't been hit hard enough in all the coverage of this TrumpMuskFuckery. The single biggest societal issue isn't just the looting and breaking things. 

It's the fundamental issue with the WAY the MAGAts are going about this.

Societies - settled, "mature", societies, economies, polities - depend on stability.

The way the people within the entities live, if they intend to live a peaceful, productive life, is dependent on knowing that 1) when they wake up today the "rules" - social, economic, political - will be the same as they were when they went to sleep, and 2) if things change, that change is done through a methodical, orderly (and in a republic) public democratic process.

That gives people chance to live stable lives in peace or, if things change, time and resources to either fight the change or adapt to it.

In other words, the laws and rules remain in place until and unless they are changed, and, if changed, are changed through gradual public debate and accountable legal or legislative processes. 

To put it more simply; civic life cannot be Calvinball.

That's the biggest problem with all this GOPFuckery. It speed-runs these massive changes, largely because (I believe) these sonsofbitches know that if they tried it the legitimate, Constitutional, legal ways they'd end up having to explain things that will make them look "bad" and risk getting handed their whole ass.

Because, for the non-billionaire class of citizens, they ARE bad. They will make the vast majority of us poorer, sicker, weaker, less-legally-protected, more insecure, more frightened, less "citizens" more "subjects".

And the MAGAts Trump is running know that. 

The polling on their mercantilist, racist, sexist, imperialist, every-other-Gilded-Age-ist fuckery is awful. When the public - even big swathes of the MAGAt public - knows the actual effects of all this stuff (as opposed to the "woke!woke!woke!" bullshit bullhorn version used to smokescreen it) they haaaaate it.

So even though these people have it all; executive, legislature, courts, every lever of U.S. government...they aren't even trying to do this through the Constitutional framework. They want Calvinball because Calvinball is only fun if you're Calvin. 

For the rest of us it's just scary, stupid, unpredictable, dangerously unhinged chaos.

And you can't run a huge industrial republic on unhinged chaos.

Unless...

You're a plutocrat and you don't have to rely on things like legal rights or poultry inspections or Medicare, or...you think you are that plutocrat.

Then you can hope to pluck loot from the chaos.

It worked for Attila.

Which is an excellent reason not to see how it works here and now. 

Because when society works for barbarism the people inside it have to become barbarians or die.

Speak

Speak, your lips are free.
Speak, it is your tongue.
Speak, it is your own body.
Speak, your life is still yours.

See how in the blacksmith's shop
The flame burns wild, the iron glows red;
The locks open their jaws,
And every chain begins to break.

Speak, this brief hour is long enough
Before the death of body and tongue:
Speak, 'cause the truth is not dead yet,
Speak, speak, whatever you must speak.

~ Faiz Achmed Faiz.

I'm not sure I can adequately describe how both terrified and infuriated I feel.

Terrified because I'm old, and weakening, and poor, and alone. My supposed "fellow Americans" just spit on everything I believe, empowering the worst of our nation's past, present, and future. I am confronted with the horrifying certainty that I will be faced with the awful choice between Vichy and Resistance, knowing the gruesome fate awaiting most resistants. 

Yet I am so furious I cannot lie down before this. Especially now that the Traitor Trump has promised to use my Army for the greatest treason since the War of the Rebellion, using my brothers to round up other Americans - knowing that they WILL take them up, innocents alongside all the drywallers and berry-pickers and bodega grannies and the layabouts, petty crooks, and assholes, for the "crime" of just being here - to herd into the camps practically identical to those that we built for the last betrayal, to punish our fellow Americans for the crime of being Japanese.

And I'm insane with fury that I'm forced into this, like a man caught in a moving train, for no more reason than millions of dumb fucks couldn't vote for a woman, didn't understand fiscal reality, or were terrified that the cutie in the corner booth was sporting a cock under her cocktail frock.

I don't want to have to face down angry cops. I don't want to have be arrested, gassed, beaten. I don't want to risk jail, or worse, for standing up for simple human decency and political sanity, and I'm viciously enraged that millions of people have forced that on me.

But I don't see how I can not do all those things, run those risks, and live with myself at the end of the day.

And that's terrifying.

Today in "Republican is the New Stupid": How do you say "Deportee" in Japanese?

Scott Lemieux at LG&M has a long-form piece on the disaster-to-come that will be the Trump47 deportationpalooza. This from Radley Balko:

"Trump approached the presidency like he ran his businesses — like a mob boss. He thought the Justice Department should have been his personal law firm, and has vowed to weaponize it against his opponents should he win again. It isn’t at all difficult to imagine how, once in place, this deportation force might be used to enforce Trump’s other authoritarian impulses and campaign promises, like infiltrating blue cities to “fight crime,’“ arrest homeless people, or to beat — and possibly shoot — people who stage protests against his policies.

Deporting even a fraction of 15 million people would also wreck the economy. Inflation would soar (especially when combined with Trump’s plan to slap a 10 percent across-the-board tariff on imports), and the U.S. would likely spiral into a recession, possibly a depression.

Naturally, House Speaker Mike Johnson has expressed his enthusiastic support.

Trump and Miller aren’t going to deport 15 million people in four years. It just isn’t possible. But the important thing — the thing that ought to be immediately disqualifying — is that they plan to try"

Very much yes.

But - here's the Extra Stupid Special Sauce; you want to see an industrialized nation with what amounts to  a de-facto complete immigration ban?

Japan.

"The number of vacant houses in Japan has surged to a record high of nine million – more than enough for each person in New York City – as the east Asian country continues to struggle with its ever-declining population.

Abandoned houses are known in Japan as “akiya” – a term that usually refers to derelict residential homes tucked away in rural areas.

But more akiya are being seen in major cities, such as Tokyo and Kyoto, and that’s a problem for a government that’s already grappling with an aging population and an alarming fall in the number of children born each year.

“This is a symptom of Japan’s population decline,” said Jeffrey Hall, a lecturer at Kanda University of International Studies in Chiba. “It’s not really a problem of building too many houses” but “a problem of not having enough people,” he said."

No matter what fucking Nick Fuentes - a Peak Republican Dumbfuck if ever breathed - "thinks" (if that's a valid term for the residual electrical impulses in his fat head), the American public, and American women in particular, aren't going to start popping out his sprogs enough to wash the dishes, wipe the asses, pick the crops, and clean the chicken carcasses.

Kids are fucking expensive! And hard, unpaid work! Remember the GOP mantra: "If you can't feed 'em, don't breed 'em." Amirite? Well..?

Kiboshing divorce and abortion ain't gonna help, either.

The bottom line is that most large industrial nations see an overall decline in native resident births as the dearth of needs for farmhands and shop assistants become obvious and kids become, in effect, a luxury good, an indulgence.

The planned Operation Endlösung (look it up...) is fucked up for many reasons.

But, like so much of Trump47, the bottomless stupidity is one that is far too often left unsaid.

Again, I'm not nearly so arsed at being ruled by evil traitors.

It's the being ruled by these fucking dumbfucks that really stings.

Update 11/14: Bill Scher at Washington Monthly has a worthwhile long read: 

"Overall, immigration is good. You wouldn’t want to live in a country where nobody wanted to get in. Without a steady flow of incoming workers, businesses—particularly in specific sectors such as agriculture, meatpacking, and construction—would strain to find workers. Some companies would shutter, and others would provide clunkier service while increasing costs. Small-to-mid-size cities would lose population and revenue, forcing cuts in schools, police, and so on.

However, too much immigration in a short period causes acute disruptions. States and cities struggle to find sufficient lodging. Schools can’t handle sudden increases in students who need to learn English. As with just-right inflation, Goldilocks immigration policy engineers an amount that’s just right—relatively slow, steady, reliable, and predictable."

I've been banging this drum for literally decades.

"So instead we get this idiotic argument that all we need to do is fence these little heatherns out and everything will be Good. God will once again be White and in His Heaven, the food will magically get harvested, processed, cooked and served by Real (i.e. white) Americans who will suddenly, magically, want to work for the pittance we want to pay for these jobs to prevent our food, clothing and service costs from reflecting what it would cost to pay humans actually living wages to do these things.

As Hadrian himself might have said: Nam tua res agitur, paries cum proximus ardet.

It is your business when your neighbor's house is on fire."

Fuck but these people are so goddamn stupid it's astounding they remember to breathe. The problem is vast and involves dozens of polities and millions of people. Using "deport the brutes" to solve the problem is like trying to fix a pocketwatch with a hammer.

But watch these idiots do it.

Arming up for the new civil war

Paul Campos has it exactly right:

"Donald Trump won the election, and that reality has to be acknowledged and lived with, because at least for the moment the alternative is worse. But the last thing Democratic elites ought to be doing at the moment is signaling any willingness to cooperate with his completely explicit goal of trying to destroy the democratic process that just put him back in power. When dealing with fascism, the difference between cooperation and collaboration is non-existent, and statements like this obscure that critical absence of a distinction.

The options for defenders of liberal democracy are to resist, flee, or surrender. Bipartisan cooperation isn’t on the menu with Trump and Trumpism, and anybody who claims otherwise is either a fool, or thinks that they can cut a deal with Donald Trump while somehow still keeping their own hands clean at a time like this"

There is little enough I - an old man alone in a shitty Northeast Portland apartment, struggling with late-life health issues, post-divorce loneliness, and the blues - can do to "resist".

But what I can do, I will. Starting here.

I will be "the enemy within" of all things Trumpian, MAGAt, Republican, fascist (but I repeat myself) and any and all who "cut a deal" with them.

I will use my words. If need be, I will use my body.

I cannot see how it ends well. They control all the levers of power and a monopoly on force.

Most partisans are killed.

 

But I can't keep my own hands clean. Not and live with myself.

"We" also know who "We" aren't "The People"

Yes, it's a shithole.

But I have friends I stay in touch with on what I usually refer to as "The Goddamn Facebook" and I'm too lazy to use old-school snail mail.

One of them - a former GI who worked for me - posted this picture yesterday.

I lit up.

"Seriously? I'm supposed to be all cool and polite about how we're "one nation" when millions of people voted to come after my Social Security and Medicare, come for my gay and lesbian friends, come after my daughter and her OB/GYN if her pregnancy goes wrong, come after me - since I despise Tubby I'm "the enemy within" - and my liberal pals, come for my investments (fucking "Tariff Man? Fuck right off with that Gilded Age horseshit!) and probably my Army retirement, too? Because we're "We The People"? As the old joke goes, what you mean "we", kimosabe?"

Once I'd cooled off, though, that got me thinking. 

Who, by our new Leader's own words, a no longer going to be part of "We The People"?

Well, me, the enemy within, that's for sure, and my dirty hippie liberal commie pals.
Anyone not straight.
Anyone Muslim, and probably anyone not the "right kind of Christian", if they're troublesome enough.
Anyone poor, especially anyone who needs "entitlements" like Social Security and Medicare to get by (that's me, too, BTW...).
Anyone darkish-looking; Tubby wanted to shoot at the BLM marchers, so Black Lives Don't Fucking Matter anymore, if they ever did.
Anyone who criticizes The Leader or any of his goons. Hi there, Bezos? You think sucking up is gonna save you if your paper reports the gross corruption we're gonna see from Tubby again? Hahahahahah..!
Anyone who runs crosswise with the no-longer-standing-back Proud Boys.
Anyone with a pre-existing medical problem.
Anyone whose pregnancy goes dangerously wrong.
Anyone who tries to save the pregnant woman and in the process has to take a risk that it will kill the kid inside.
Anyone protesting anything Tubby does; the BLM thing again, he wanted to shoot "rioters" and you know fucking well that the slightest violent act will be enough to make any street protest a "riot".
Anyone else Tubby hates and, as I've probably mentioned, he's a real good hater.
Anyone...

Should I stop? I can go on. There's LOTS more people the MAGAts hate.

That doesn't even take in the people outside this country who need its help; Taiwanese and South Koreans and Ukrainians. 

Anyone on Tubby's pal Vlad's hit list. 

I'm sure I can think up more if you want.

Oh, and while I'm here...

I know this is like bitching about the boring TV programming in the middle of a typhoon, but...

81 million of you turned out to vote against Tubby in 2020.

Only 67 million - so far - bothered to vote against him yesterday, when it was obvious that he's crazier and more vicious than a shithouse rat than he was four years ago.

 

Where the fuck did 14 million of y'all go? Disneyland?

 

Tubby got 2 million FEWER votes than he got in 2020. If y'all had showed up...

Well..?

Well, at least we know who "We the People" are...

In a time of unprecedented peace and prosperity the American public has chosen to elect a gibbering idiot who pines for the Gilded Age and dreams of Hitlerian policies towards everyone he hates - and he's a good hater - and his clutch of little Nazis who will take an axe to the 20th Century to ensure that no drag queen ever reads "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" to second graders again.

To the extent they can, the GOP will root out workplace and environmental regulations and undo the already too-threadbare social "safety net". They will increase the already too-high economic inequality to ensure we become ever more an oligarchy.

Their open lunatic anti-vaxxer, anti-"Obamacare" crowd will undo public health and make us sicker and weaker.

In 1933 the German public had endured war and starvation, hyperinflation, militias fighting in the street, the punitive effects of Versailles...and STILL did not vote in the Nazis.

What's our excuse? That the cutie in the corner booth might be a transwoman in a cocktail frock?

That the roofers next door might be here illegally?

At this point all I can do is echo this comment from the election thread over at Lawyers, Guns & Money:

"The bottom line is that there are more fucking assholes in America than anyone wants to acknowledge.

More immature, misogynist, racist, greedy, myopic fucking assholes than anyone is comfortable admitting to; more really rotten, selfish human beings who choose hate over love, exclusion over inclusion and "fuck you, I got mine" over any sense of humanity.

It's time to face the facts. The fucking rot is wider and deeper than any of us want to admit, and it's growing.

It all makes me want to puke, and the worst of it is that I honestly don't know how to combat it all. All I DO know is that we must all keep fighting, because to capitulate is to descend into madness."

The madness is upon us.

We're in a Project 2025 World now.

Updated 11/6 p.m.: I know this is like bitching about the boring TV programming in the middle of a typhoon, but...
81 million of you turned out to vote against Tubby in 2020. 
Only 67 million bothered to vote against him yesterday, when it was obvious that he's crazier and more vicious than a shithouse rat than he was four years ago.
Where the fuck did 14 million of y'all go? Disneyland?

 Tubby got 2 million FEWER votes than he got in 2020. If everyone who voted for Biden turned out yesterday...

Well..?