Keaton

We buried Keaton this morning. He was a good bunny.

He was born here in our house, the son of Milkshake and Maybelline – Lauren’s 4H Fair bunnies. There were two others in his litter – Miley, who continues to soldier on, and Spotnik, who had some black spots in his fur and was therefore Not Up To Breed Standards and never going to be a 4H Fair bunny so we ended up giving him to a woman who needed a companion for her guinea pig. Apparently small rabbits like Dwarf Hotots are good for that.

Keaton was the second in our series of Dread Pirate bunnies, having been blinded in one eye by an infection some years ago just like his dad. He was a sweet little rabbit, far more so than his cantankerous sister, and always happy to sit on your lap or bound around outside in the grass and munch on the dandelions.

He’s on the right there, about a week ago.

Dwarf Hotots have an expected lifespan of 7-10 years, and Keaton made it a few months past 9 so he lived a good long life, well loved and cared for. He rests in the little animal cemetery out by the garage where we have buried a lot of critters over the years. It’s a peaceful spot, green and warm in the sunshine. There are dandelions. He’d have liked that.

Farewell, little bunny.

What, Again?

So apparently someone may or may not have allegedly tried to assassinate the president last weekend.

Again.

There does seem to be some doubt about this, from what I’ve been able to tell.

On the one hand, I understand why people would be unconvinced. There are a lot of things about this story that don’t add up, for example, and many of those things don’t survive even cursory examination. Nor is this the first time this particular president has gone to that well in order to gin up support from a public tiring of his shtick. How many times can you perform the same trick before the audience gets bored? Only the hardcore base thinks the last two tries were real – human ears don’t heal that quickly, after all – and this administration has such an actively hostile relationship with objective reality that the first thing most Americans thought upon hearing the news was that there was no way this could possibly have happened the way we were being told it happened.

Honestly, if anyone from this administration told me the sun was shining I’d pack an umbrella.

And it’s not like this administration didn’t have a pile of reasons to lie to us about this. This president’s approval ratings are plummeting, his illegal war of aggression is turning into the greatest strategic defeat ever suffered by the United States and he clearly has no idea how to extricate himself or the country from that, the economy is tanking faster than his approval ratings, corruption scandals are closing in on the Oval Office, the president’s accelerating mental and physical decline is obvious for all to see (when was the last time he went golfing?), and for all the misdirection and distraction being thrown at the American people the simple fact is that depending on which estimate you credit anywhere from 40-97% of the Epstein files haven’t been released as required by federal law yet even so his name is mentioned over 38,000 times just in the bits we’ve seen, several of which explicitly describe him as a child rapist.

He has lots of reasons to pretend this happened.

On the other hand, this is the sort of thing you get when a wannabe dictator tries to rule over a population that is seeing its future stolen from them by billionaires and right-wing extremists, that has watched jackbooted government thugs execute citizens in the streets in cold blood, and that regards gun ownership as a sacred right. Maybe it actually happened.  It wouldn’t be all that surprising if it did, would it?  If you can’t see a wave of political violence coming in the near future in the US you haven’t studied history, after all.

What has really been surprising to me is the fact that most of the country has forgotten about it already. It flamed up in the news cycle for about 36 hours and then the American people collectively decided that – real or not – it wasn’t interesting enough to compete for their attention with gas prices, little Timmy’s school play, or the NHL playoffs.

Dude, people are still talking about the Kennedy assassination more than six decades after the fact and this guy couldn’t get people to care for two full days.

And you know, I get it. I wrote this guy off a long time ago, and at this point the only news I want to hear about him is who his successor will be. That will be his only legacy. There will come a time – sooner than anyone thinks possible, I suspect – when everyone will always have been against him and his regime, and that will be that.

As a historian it is a strange moment to live through. As an American, though, it makes perfect sense.

Buona Festa della Liberazione!

It is Liberation Day in Italy today, the day when the Italian Republic celebrates the downfall of Fascism after World War II.

Italians have deep experience with Fascism. It was invented there, after all – the bastard child of nationalism and totalitarianism foisted off on the civilized world by a guy who had failed in pretty much every other aspect of his life and who would end his days strung up by his ankles in a public square in Milan as a warning to others, a warning that would have been good for us to heed.

Because like everywhere else in the western world Italy has seen a resurgence of Fascism in recent years. People have short memories and overgrown grievances and feel entitled to take those out on people they hate, and we here in the US do not hold any particular moral high ground in this regard. Despite sacrificing over 400,000 lives and a vast amount of wealth and equipment to help the Allies achieve the destruction of Fascism back in 1945 a large portion of the American population seems to be all too happy to see resurrected it here at home these days.

My ancestors fought in that war. They were given medals for shooting Fascists, in fact. I suspect they’d be infuriated to see what has happened here over the last decade and they’d have every right to be.

WWII has largely faded into a set piece of old movies and mythology these days, with the lessons of the war ignored by the powerful and their slaves. We forget these lessons at our peril, and it will be a long time before we recover from the current degradation.

Italy, though, has an entire holiday dedicated to not forgetting the fall of Fascism and what that meant for the country. They remember it, and this makes Italians better prepared than we are in the US.

I belong to a couple different social media groups connected to my genealogical researches, including several tied to Ruoti – the hilltop town in Basilicata where my great-grandparents were born. One of them posted this in honor of the day:

What’s particularly lovely about that photo is that the short house on the right is the one where my great-grandmother was born in 1870. I’ve stood in the street in front of it. Another family lives there now, of course, but it was still an experience I treasure.

My great-grandparents left Ruoti for Philadelphia long before Fascism reared its head in Italy. Their son, my grandfather, spent WWII as a machinist in the Philadelphia Navy Yard, and their nephews fought in Europe. And when the war ended they celebrated.

But the fight against Fascism is never permanently won. It must be fought every day, by every generation, in every place where it might reappear.

“You don’t fight Fascists because you’re guaranteed to win,” said John Cusack. “You fight Fascists because they are Fascists, and the people of the world have memory, and they know where these stories end.”

Buon 25 Aprile, compagni!

Fly High

In a world on fire, one takes what pleasures one can.

This week is the best week in professional sports, bar none – the first week of the NHL playoffs, when the intensity is high, the pressure is on, and the schedule is packed. Every day for the next week there will be games upon games, each one hard fought for and each one progressively more interesting.

Of course I can’t actually watch any of them, as the NHL in its perpetual quest for obscurity refuses to broadcast them on the same network that they use to broadcast their regular season and I will be dunked in a vat of mayonnaise before I pay for yet another subscription service, so I’ll read about it all in the morning, I suppose.

The fun part for me is that my hometown Philadelphia Flyers are back in the postseason for the first time since lockdown. Seriously, the last time they started a playoff game they were isolated in a bubble and all the games were played in empty arenas. It was one of the weirder parts of the pandemic, and they didn’t last too long before being eliminated.

They weren’t even supposed to be playing now. On March 18 the sports knobs gave them a 3.8% chance of making the playoffs, but they went on a tear and clinched a spot with a game to spare. This is why they now have that number stitched onto their warmup hoodies.

I like this year’s team. They’re scrappy. They play hard. They’re not the most talented group in the playoffs and I’ll be shocked if they win it all, but they’re fun to watch. They’re a tough out and nobody wants to play them and that’s all I ask. Plus they have the best mascot in sports.  Gritty rules.  Sports is a form of entertainment, after all – you get wrapped up in what is, in the grand scheme of things, a meaningless spectacle, you enjoy yourself for the time it happens, and when it’s over you go back to the world you left. There is value in that.

Once again they’re playing the Pittsburgh Penguins, a team that has won roughly seventy Stanley Cups and feels entitled to win the next few as well from what I can tell. I actually like the Penguins, having lived in Pittsburgh in the early 90s and watched them win it all when they were still underdogs and not the perennials that they are now. I just don’t like them as much as the Flyers.

It amuses me that the same sports knobs who gave the Flyers less than a 4% chance of getting to the playoffs at all were also predicting that they would be happy just to be there and they’d get swept by Pittsburgh without too much effort. It turns out that two games into the best of seven series the Flyers are up 2-0 and headed back to Philadelphia to see if they can end this on home ice.

They’re not going to, of course. I don’t see the Penguins getting swept either. But right now the Flyers are outplaying Pittsburgh by a wide margin, they’ve got momentum on their side, and they’ve served notice that they are not to be taken lightly.

Can the Flyers still lose? Of course. I’m from Philadelphia and pessimism is my birthright. I’m still trying to figure out how the Eagles can lose the 2018 Super Bowl. But for now I’m just going to enjoy what’s in front of me, cheer for a Flyer series win, and let the rest of the world do its thing without me for just a little while longer.

Go Flyers.

And Now, the Weather...

We’re fine.

It has been quite a week for weather here in Our Little Town. We’ve had tornado warnings in four of the last six days with all of the severe thunderstorms that go with them, and the temperatures dropped like they saw a state trooper – it was 84F (29C) at one point this week and nearly that high yesterday before falling to 37F (3C) overnight – which likely didn’t help.

We get these storms here and we're used to them, but this kind of frequency isn’t normal. It’s a good thing the climate isn’t changing, because otherwise I’d be worried.

What?

Oh.

Sigh.

The fun storm for me was Wednesday, when Kim and I decided that none of the options on our weekly menu planner appealed to us so we decided to order a pizza from one of the local places here in town. I went out to pick it up and was on my way back home when my phone let out that godawful squawk that severe weather alerts come with these days and I knew what that meant but at that point I might was well just keep going until I get home. I turned onto the main road near my house, looked west toward the horizon, and thought, “Well, THAT can’t be good.” I made it home and by that point things seemed to have calmed down so we set up the pizza in the dining room, and then the sky turned black again and Kim went over to the door to check what was going on. The clouds were moving in different directions, which is never a good sign, so into the basement we went.

We’re getting to know the basement well this week. Fortunately we’d set up a Gamer Lair during lockdown so there is a couch down there to sit on, and it is well stocked with food and beverages.

It wasn’t bad pizza after all that, but I have to admit I have been completely spoiled by pizzas in Italy and by the ones we make ourselves to replicate them and I try not to be That Guy but there you have it.

Last night, however, was the kicker.

You knew it was going to be bad from the weather forecasts and the fact that schools across southern Wisconsin were closing early and canceling afterschool activities. People in this state understand tornado weather. They don’t mess with it. They will stand outside and watch for an unconscionably long time as things get closer, but that’s a separate issue. I’ve been here thirty years now and I’ve pretty much got my Midwest Dad “stretch and observe” techniques down pat. Kim was supposed to have dinner with the Science Squad but they had the foresight to reschedule.

The first tornado sirens went off a little after five.

This, by the way, was while my neighbor was mowing his lawn. He finished mowing the lawn. Welcome to the midwest.

If you’ve never had that experience, a tornado siren is – and is supposed to be – an unsettling noise. It sounds like every air raid siren you’ve ever heard from an old war movie, a deep and urgent wail that cannot be interpreted as good news even if you’ve never heard it before. When the sirens go off, that means something has been spotted and it’s not just theoretical anymore. We’d been under a tornado watch since early afternoon – that meant that conditions were right for tornadoes to develop. You keep an eye on things and go about your day. The sirens mean you’ve got a tornado warning – that means there actually is a tornado and it’s time to respond to that fact.

Most of the next couple hours were spent in the basement. At some point I grabbed the cat and brought her downstairs as well, much to her dismay.

There were at least two confirmed tornadoes nearby that I know of – one south of town, one east. There was an intense amount of hail – quarter-sized (2cm) around us, bigger elsewhere, and I did seriously worry about our windows but they seem to have held up well. And it rained. Oh, my, did it rain.

Roads flooded. Bridges washed out. A train derailed in town because the tracks got washed out. At least one school is closed indefinitely and the Luthern church over by the county fairgrounds is still underwater, as was much of downtown last night. City officials are comparing the flooding to 2008 – when I took Oliver and Lauren downtown and we watched people try to grab fish in the parking lots with their bare hands – and the river hasn’t even crested yet.

We got off pretty lightly, all things considered, one of the joys of living in the higher elevations of Our Little Town. A bit of water in the basement. Kim’s jade plants on the front porch were damaged and the tulips in the front yard got hammered. No loss of power.

I’m ready for the weather to be boring again, though.

Paid Up

My taxes are in, so I’m a fully-paid up American for the next year or so.

I’m not sure that the federal government has earned its keep this year, if I’m being honest here. The main reason why Europeans seem comfortable with taxes while the “taxation is theft” idiocy remains popular here in the US is that Europeans pay taxes and get services while Americans pay taxes and get illegal wars and bloated oligarchs.

I’d like to see Americans get services for our money, though. Such as:

A fully-funded postal system, rather than the systematically and deliberately starved one that we seem to have. Folks, the Post Office doesn’t lose money any more than the military does – it costs money. Not everything is supposed to turn a profit.

A rational healthcare system that doesn’t deliberately exclude the poor and the sick. The American model of private health insurance does not make health care more effective, more efficient, or more affordable, and once you understand that this model is a financial services industry that profits by denying care to those who need it, a lot of things make more sense. Again, not everything needs to make a profit.

An actual public transportation system that would reduce our dependence on automobiles, make our cities more livable, our air and water cleaner, and our foreign policy less dangerous, and also allow more Americans to get more places without having to devote a sizable chunk of their income to purchasing, maintaining, fueling, and storing vehicles.

A justice system that holds insurrectionists, corrupt corporations and the people who run them, wealthy criminals, and child-raping government officials to account would also be nice. I’d actually contribute more for that. How much could a wood-chipper cost?

And so on.

But whatever I may think of the intentionally and historically poor performance of the federal government these days, one does not mess with the IRS. As I tell my students when we cover Prohibition, it was not Eliot Ness who got Al Capone.

So I’m paid up, but not especially happy about it.

We’ve been going to the Tax Preparer People for a couple of years now, ever since my mom died and I had to figure out how my part of the estate would work that way. “Don’t try this yourself,” my brother told me. “Get someone else to do it.” And you know? That was good advice, and we've followed it ever since. So last month I took all of the documents I had in my possession down to the TPP office, sat down with my designated person, answered a few questions, promised I would obtain the last couple of outstanding documents in time for them to file everything by the deadline, and left. It was lovely, and worth every penny of the fee charged.

There were a few changes this year.

For one thing, we forgot that Oliver is no longer a dependent and didn’t adjust any paperwork last year, so we owed the IRS a decent amount of money. Darn kids getting older and turning into responsible adults! This is also the last year we’ll be able to count Lauren, so even further adjustments will have to be made soon.

For another thing, apparently the IRS no longer believes in paper checks (admittedly, who does other than me these days?) and is now giving the Big Frowny Face to anyone who doesn’t use direct deposit or withdrawal for their taxes. The TPP helpfully provided a couple of web pages that would allow me to pay my various debts online, and surprisingly enough this process actually went pretty smoothly. It all went through.

Next year, though, I expect some improvements. If I can’t get the postal system, the healthcare system, or the public transportation system, I’ll settle for the justice system.

Maybe they’ll put a little check-box where you can direct your extra contributions. It will say “Wood-chipper” next to it.

Thoughts on the Current Situation

The President of the United States has lost his goddamned mind.

This week Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump issued a flat declaration that he was ready to have the United States commit crimes against humanity in order to win his illegal, unconstitutional war against Iran. He promised genocide – to wipe out an entire civilization in such a way that it could never rise again.

An entire civilization. The vast majority of whom, by definition, are noncombatant civilians. Think about that.

This threat is, all by itself, more than enough to warrant his immediate removal from office. He should be hauled off in chains, brought up on war crimes charges in international court, convicted, and sentenced to the punishment appropriate for genocidal maniacs. That he ultimately backed down from his threat is irrelevant. He crossed a red line that no head of state should cross and he must face justice.

And yet the Republicans in Congress do nothing. In a just world Congress would have been called into emergency session within hours of that declaration in order to exercise their Constitutionally-mandated oversight on the Executive and remove him from power, and they chose and continue to choose to remain idle and silent. They won’t even allow a vote to make the war legal retroactively, since they know they will lose. They are every bit as guilty of war crimes as he is and should suffer the same fate.

Not everyone is silent. A lot of us are screaming into the void, desperately trying to get some accountability, some way forward out of this that doesn’t involve mass casualties. At least a hundred Democratic Representatives and Senators are openly calling for impeachment. A solid majority of Americans now favors this, in fact. Hundreds of elected officials are openly calling for his removal through the 25th Amendment. The demands of justice are getting louder.

And it has to be said that not even all Republicans are silent. Former MAGA bot Marjorie Taylor Greene tore the guy a new one on social media. “He has gone insane,” she said to everyone in the Trump administration, “and all of you are complicit.” It is truly bizarre to find myself agreeing with Marjorie Taylor Greene, but here we are.

For fuck’s sake, even Alex Jones – a genuine slime mold of a human being – came out swinging against all of this and the fact that he is on my side is just conclusive proof that the whole world has gone mad.

But this is what you get when a child rapist launches an illegal war of aggression against a sovereign nation to try to distract people from his sex crimes. It scrambles things.

Naturally this week is when the story broke that the regime didn’t like what the Pope said about their illegal war and threatened him with a new Avignon. For those of you who didn’t pay attention in history class – which, as a historian currently grading exams, I would estimate is most of you – this is a reference to the 1300s, when the French kings basically kidnapped the papacy, removed it from Rome and installed it in the French city of Avignon, making it a puppet of the French crown. This threat is not the flex that Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump or his minions, lackeys, cronies, enablers, and slaves think it is. Declaring war on the spiritual leader of the largest Christian denomination in the United States – a guy who grew up in Chicago, for crying out loud – isn’t going to end well for them.

I suspect that the United States is likely on the brink of serious civil disorder. We have a mad king threatening to destroy the entire world to avoid being held accountable for his crimes, a death cult that worships him and won’t lift a finger to stop him, and an increasingly pissed off majority rapidly approaching torches and pitchforks territory because they want a livable world to pass down to their children and the main threat to that is the guy at the top. Trump and his minions, lackeys, cronies, enablers, and slaves just keep digging in deeper, unwilling to concede anything to anyone and eager to burn the nation to the ground and piss on the ashes rather than see their agenda hindered in any way. Something has to give.

I don’t condone political violence, but at this point you’d be a fool not to predict it.

And where that goes is anyone’s guess.