It’s been hellaciously busy around here of late, and it doesn’t seem to be getting any less busy anytime soon. I’ve spent the week grading discussion posts, prepping lectures, meeting students, and preparing the talk I’m supposed to give twice in the next ten days, and this weekend I still have two sets of exams to grade on top of, you know, grocery shopping, general home maintenance (always a struggle for me since I hate it with a passion), and the usual static of life.
So it was a bit dismaying to raise my head above the ramparts and discover that Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump and his minions, lackeys, cronies and slaves are still there, poisoning the land with their presence and reminding us all that there are more bodies than souls in this world.
It’s been a time, has it not.
Let’s see here, what have some of the highlights been of late?
1. The Pedo-in-Chief and his personal bartender Pete Kegstand gave a speech before the assembled leadership of the United States armed forces who had been ordered to attend from across the world, in person, which smelled a lot like a decapitation strike except that this crew of cannibals couldn’t decapitate a dandelion without somehow embedding the clippers into their scrotums. Imagine if you will several hundred hardened and disciplined men and women whose entire careers have been built on not taking bullshit from idiots being lectured to about “warrior ethos” and the necessity of committing war crimes by an increasingly senile draft dodger and a reservist. Apparently the performance bombed so badly that some parts of the military are now calling them Fat Man and Little Boy, and as someone who teaches an entire course on the atomic bomb I approve of that message.
2. It’s almost refreshing that Trump labeled his political opponents “the enemy within” – a direct quote from Adolf Hitler – and vowed to use military force against us. At least they’re no longer even pretending to be anything other than Nazis. My ancestors were given medals during WWII for shooting people like that, and I will be damned if I will disgrace their memory by bowing down before such people now. Fuck them sideways with a Buick.
3. Remember when Kamela Harris told us that if Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump were elected he’d send the army after his opponents and all the right-wing keyboard warriors spent weeks clutching their pearls and fainting because how dare she accuse him of such a thing? Good times, man. The longer this administration goes on, the more she was right about pretty much everything.
4. This week Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump’s personal Gestapo force used helicopters to assault … [checks notes] … an apartment building in Chicago. They zip-tied naked children, separated them from their families, and shoved them into vans because when your commander in chief is prominently mentioned in the compendium of sex crimes that is the Epstein Files I suppose you’d naturally feel naked children are fair game. But there will be a reckoning for this abomination, oh my brothers in Christ yes there will. When the new Nuremberg Trials come around, they will be brutal.
5. ICE is also tear-gassing first-responders in Broadview, outside of Chicago, because being a caricature of human evil is hard work and you have to keep finding new angles to impress the boss.
6. Speaking of the Epstein Files, we now have all of the signatures in Congress to force their release to the public except that the Republicans are so deathly afraid of being outed as pedophiles that they’re refusing to call the House of Representatives into session in order to prevent newly elected Arizona Representative Adelita Grijalva from being sworn in so she can cast that deciding vote. And until the Republican leadership does that, Congress cannot do anything about the current government shutdown. They’d rather protect pedophiles than get the government going again, and if that doesn’t tell you who the modern GOP is then nothing will.
7. Oh, yes, there’s a government shutdown. Perhaps you’ve heard? The Republican President, the Republican Senate, and the Republican House can’t figure out how to keep the federal government open so naturally they’re blaming … Democrats? Really? Apparently their strategy is to keep accusing Democrats of wanting to give undocumented immigrants free healthcare until someone, somewhere, believes it, except that this is MURCA and we all know that nobody is getting free health care except Congress so whatever it is that they’re smoking I hope they brought enough to share. So I suppose we’re stuck here with no functioning government until the Republicans’ collective psychotic break from reality comes to an end, which may be quite a while since they’ve been heading down this path since 1992.
8. Do you really want to know why there’s a shutdown? Because the Republicans have conclusively demonstrated that they cannot be trusted, that’s why. It’s also why this will take a very long time to end.
So it was a bit dismaying to raise my head above the ramparts and discover that Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump and his minions, lackeys, cronies and slaves are still there, poisoning the land with their presence and reminding us all that there are more bodies than souls in this world.
It’s been a time, has it not.
Let’s see here, what have some of the highlights been of late?
1. The Pedo-in-Chief and his personal bartender Pete Kegstand gave a speech before the assembled leadership of the United States armed forces who had been ordered to attend from across the world, in person, which smelled a lot like a decapitation strike except that this crew of cannibals couldn’t decapitate a dandelion without somehow embedding the clippers into their scrotums. Imagine if you will several hundred hardened and disciplined men and women whose entire careers have been built on not taking bullshit from idiots being lectured to about “warrior ethos” and the necessity of committing war crimes by an increasingly senile draft dodger and a reservist. Apparently the performance bombed so badly that some parts of the military are now calling them Fat Man and Little Boy, and as someone who teaches an entire course on the atomic bomb I approve of that message.
2. It’s almost refreshing that Trump labeled his political opponents “the enemy within” – a direct quote from Adolf Hitler – and vowed to use military force against us. At least they’re no longer even pretending to be anything other than Nazis. My ancestors were given medals during WWII for shooting people like that, and I will be damned if I will disgrace their memory by bowing down before such people now. Fuck them sideways with a Buick.
3. Remember when Kamela Harris told us that if Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump were elected he’d send the army after his opponents and all the right-wing keyboard warriors spent weeks clutching their pearls and fainting because how dare she accuse him of such a thing? Good times, man. The longer this administration goes on, the more she was right about pretty much everything.
4. This week Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump’s personal Gestapo force used helicopters to assault … [checks notes] … an apartment building in Chicago. They zip-tied naked children, separated them from their families, and shoved them into vans because when your commander in chief is prominently mentioned in the compendium of sex crimes that is the Epstein Files I suppose you’d naturally feel naked children are fair game. But there will be a reckoning for this abomination, oh my brothers in Christ yes there will. When the new Nuremberg Trials come around, they will be brutal.
5. ICE is also tear-gassing first-responders in Broadview, outside of Chicago, because being a caricature of human evil is hard work and you have to keep finding new angles to impress the boss.
6. Speaking of the Epstein Files, we now have all of the signatures in Congress to force their release to the public except that the Republicans are so deathly afraid of being outed as pedophiles that they’re refusing to call the House of Representatives into session in order to prevent newly elected Arizona Representative Adelita Grijalva from being sworn in so she can cast that deciding vote. And until the Republican leadership does that, Congress cannot do anything about the current government shutdown. They’d rather protect pedophiles than get the government going again, and if that doesn’t tell you who the modern GOP is then nothing will.
7. Oh, yes, there’s a government shutdown. Perhaps you’ve heard? The Republican President, the Republican Senate, and the Republican House can’t figure out how to keep the federal government open so naturally they’re blaming … Democrats? Really? Apparently their strategy is to keep accusing Democrats of wanting to give undocumented immigrants free healthcare until someone, somewhere, believes it, except that this is MURCA and we all know that nobody is getting free health care except Congress so whatever it is that they’re smoking I hope they brought enough to share. So I suppose we’re stuck here with no functioning government until the Republicans’ collective psychotic break from reality comes to an end, which may be quite a while since they’ve been heading down this path since 1992.
8. Do you really want to know why there’s a shutdown? Because the Republicans have conclusively demonstrated that they cannot be trusted, that’s why. It’s also why this will take a very long time to end.
9. The First Circuit Court of Appeals tore the regime a new 100pp-long asshole over its transparently racist and flagrantly unconstitutional attempt to revoke birthright citizenship by fiat. “The analysis that follows is necessarily lengthy,” the Court wrote, “as we must address the parties’ numerous arguments in each of the cases involved. But the length of our analysis should not be mistaken for a sign that the fundamental question that these cases raise about the scope of birthright citizenship is a difficult one. It is not, which may explain why it has been more than a century since a branch of our government has made as concerted an effort as the Executive Branch now makes to deny Americans their birthright.” This sounds very restrained, but if you know how judicial opinions are usually written you will understand that this judge is practically screaming here and is about one step away from ordering everyone connected with bringing this shoddy and ill-considered case to go to prison for wasting his time.
10. And the tariffs are starting to kick in, even as Tariff McTariffson keeps adding more, retreating from previously declared positions, and then pirouetting into new and ever more insane variations of the same thing. Inflation is skyrocketing, food prices are becoming untenable, and in response Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump has simply ordered the government not to report bad news since that’s always worked for North Korea.
I’m sure there’s more. You can’t go more than half an hour without some violently illegal act or gut-wrenching scandal coming out of this rogue regime, the sort of thing that in normal times would result in resignations, jail sentences, impeachments, exiles, and public shaming, and this was just a list I put together in ten minutes on a Saturday night when I was trying to avoid grading. These are horrifying times to be an American, when our own government is actively working to destroy everything that makes this country worthy of respect and admiration. The regime will lose in the end, but the damage in the meantime will be severe.
Be safe out there, my fellow Americans, but not too safe. There is work to do.
4 comments:
"The regime will lose in the end." Maybe. I'm unconvinced that I will see a functional US federal administration in my lifetime.
I never specified a timeframe.
But they will lose.
It will be generations before the US recovers, if it can be done at all. Even after Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump brightens the world by leaving it, there will still be be vast amounts of work to be done.
Gotta start somewhere.
7. 1992? My calendar says Reagan was inaugurated in 1981. (Unless you consider Nixon for laying the groundwork, in which case you have to push it back to 1969.) Not that it matters. Future historians will be able to pinpoint a definitive date when this mess began, and it will be a date that we cannot even imagine from our present viewpoint. (Forest, Trees, et al.)
At this point, if I get picked up by aliens, I’m just gonna go ahead and consider it a rescue mission instead of an abduction.
Lucy
Reagan and Nixon laid a lot of the groundwork for all of this - the shift starts more or less with Nixon's Southern Strategy - but I consider them garden variety assholes mostly (not entirely - viz. Watergate and Iran Contra) within the usual boundaries of American politics. Both of them actually had some genuine achievements in spite of themselves. I chose 1992 because that's the official kickoff of the Culture Wars, when Pat Buchanan stood up on national television at the GOP nominating convention and declared war on half the country and nobody in the Republican Party contradicted him.
Figuring out when eras begin and end is a tricky matter for historians and always a question of interpretation. When did the 90s end? 12/31/1999? The dot-com bubble? 9/11? It depends on how you define 90s and how you define what came next. Historians will never pinpoint a definitive date when the current mess began but they will spend a lot of time and ink arguing for their choice.
There's a great meme out there where the aliens declare that they're going to wipe out our leaders and the response is "Fuckin' A, man!"
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