Category: Current Events

It has already begun.

Trump is afraid.

The security is ever tightening in D.C., and on Wednesday night there were a ton of police out as well as groups of 12-14 National Guard posted in Metro stations near the White House. Some will say he’s not afraid, and that he’s just trying to goad people into a reaction so he can declare martial law. Well, he may be trying to goad people, but when narcissists feel even remotely threatened, they lash out and behave the way he’s behaving. Secure Presidents don’t expand jersey walls and perimiters ever outward from the White House.

I posted about this on Threads and it went semi-viral, with thousands of likes, hundreds of comments, and hundreds of reposts and shares. VERY few people disagreed with me, and those who did seemed to think the increased military presence had to do with a high-speed chase that killed a photojournalist that night. But that doesn’t explain the increased Guard presence in Metro stations near the White House, or the military aircraft flying all over the place from Fairfax and Alexandria, Virginia, to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, or the drone patrolling the waterways. Once I made my post, people began reporting in from all over DC, sharing that they saw increased Guard and police presence, too.

I considered that it might have been leftover security from the idiotic J6 MAGA fools who were in town on Tuesday, too, but this was a full day later.

Oh, that. I’ve seen video clips of them harassing, haranguing, and even threatening police officers with bodily harm. How no one got arrested, I don’t know, but it was bad optics because those jackasses were all White men, and we all know what would have happened if they were Black. There must have been a standing order not to escalate, but dang, threatening a police officer is a felony, no?

At any rate, things are getting ugly in the U.S., and I don’t think anyone but the poorest of poor who are just struggling to get through every day can or should carry on each day as though it was a normal day. We’re at the point in history where when people look back on today, they may very well ask why no one did anything to stop it. The excuse that “well, we need to work and our health care is tied to our jobs” no longer applies—and I used to feel that way, myself. But things have changed so much in the last 48 hours that to sit there and do nothing is tantamount to aiding the rise of fascism.

But he wants us to react because he wants a reason to use the Insurrection Act and cancel the mid-term elections.

Yes, I thought that way, too, until an attorney made a post about how this is actually misinformation that helps Drumpf because it keeps people from rising up. The Insurrection Act is not about canceling elections. It’s more an exception to the Comitatus Act, which prohibits using the U.S. military for domestic policing. To cancel an election would require a Constitutional Amendment and that will never happen because the Blue states would never ratify it. In fact, only Red states would consider going along with any call to cancel an election, until they figured out that Blue states would basically take over.

At any rate, ICE clearly has orders to incite. One jackass kicked over a candle at a memorial for Renee Good. Another one took a rose off a memorial, put it in his lapel, and then offered it to a female ICE jackass.

Yeah, well, my father and his buddies came home with mementos from WWII, too, like arm bands, patches, epaulettes, and sabers. They used to loot the Nazis’ homes after they killed them or took them prisoner, bring everything out to the town square, and help themselves to what they like, then burned the rest. When the Reich fell, they took the flags and wrote their names and addresses on the white part so they could keep in touch when they got home. Just a little reminder that it works both ways. As it is, Jonathan Ross, the man who murdered Renee Good, has been doxxed, complete with a picture of his house, where he had been known to fly the “Don’t Tread on Me” flag, which has become a code for MAGA fascists who support the regime. One person joked that it was wrong to do that—because whoever doxxed him should have included information about parking in the neighborhood, heh.

But this what it will come down to, friends. It took a multinational effort and a World War to rid the world of Hitler and the Nazis, and it will be the same with Drumpf and American Nazis. There will have to be a sustained resistance inside the U.S., and people will indeed die. They’re dying already.

A journalist in Kyiv, Chris York, explained things very well. The planet is about to be divided in three, with the US taking over the western hemisphere, China taking over Asia and likely Africa, and Russia taking over Europe. He said words that broke my heart: “The United States has effectively abandoned Europe.” And it’s true. We have. In fact, we likely will attack Greenland and Denmark, and when we do, it will be out of our bases in Europe, likely bases in Great Britain. That will be the end of NATO, which is exactly what Putin wants, and he will make a press to take over Europe.

But we can still stop this. It will require more than inconvenience. It will require sacrifice, and it will require everyone. But it’s the only way.

So what are you going to do for the next phase of Project 2025, when ICE goes door-to-door and knocks on yours?

Or if a DoorDasher being chased by ICE runs into your home when you answer the door to get your food, like I saw on a video today?

Will you open the door and let them take her? Or will you protect her to the best of your ability?

Will you be Miep Gies, who hid Anne Frank and her family? Or will you have blood on your hands?

Will you stand up for what is right, or be an accomplice to evil?

This isn’t hyperbole, folks. If you ever wondered what you would have done as an average German citizen in 1939, you’re doing it now.

Watch this space, and join the resistance. We’re stronger together.

Stop Being Awful

Two chicks resting in a person's hands.
Image: Duygu Güngör on Unsplash

Oh, my word. There has been such ugliness these past few days. First, I’m going to put this out there about how people are reacting to Joe Biden’s cancer. I think it says everything that needs to be said with respect to how a lot of MAGA people are calling the diagnosis “karma.”

Indeed. It seems empathy and compassion are completely shot in the U.S.

Look at what Congress and the Senate are doing. The current budget bill would pretty much destroy Medicare, Medicaid, and SNAP. These odious Republicans are not going to be happy until the poor have nothing left to lose. It’s very short-sighted of them. See: France, 1789. Tell ya what, though. Most people aren’t going to care about which party someone belongs to when it comes to putting heads on pikes. At that point, all politicians are going to look the same because deep down, most of them are. Cory Booker, I’m looking at you. (Booker voted to approve Ivanka Trump’s felonious father-in-law as ambassador to France.) You’re not much better, Bernie Sanders, what with your comments on “identity politics.” Thanks for reminding us all that you are, at heart, an obliviously privileged cis-het white male.

And then my heart just broke today when I read of the 14,000 chicks abandoned in a hot USPS truck for three days without food and water so that nearly 4,000 of them died. Who in heaven’s name made it legal to ship chicks through the mail?

If you’d like to help with a donation, foster, or adoption, the name of the shelter that is caring for them is First State Animal Shelter and SPCA. You can make a donation through their website.

Yep. People need to stop being awful.

Third-Party Sellouts

I’ve had the flu since last Friday and have been home recuperating all week. Yes, I’m vaxxed, but that doesn’t prevent infection like some magic forcefield that rebuffs errant sneezes. It just means that if one does get infected, one can fight it off better.

Anyway, yesterday the illness broke. I was tired but definitely had rounded the corner and was starting to feel human again when I VERY STUPIDLY decided I was well enough to handle Threads and other sources of public discourse and news. And there I was in the wee hours, calling out Jill Stein supporters for selling out women, children, people of color, older people, the poor, LGBTQIA+, and immigrants in THIS country to throw their little political hissy fits.

Oh, my good GAWD, I am so tired of the trope that voting for Kamala Harris was a vote for genocide. Ever notice how so many of those types going on about that are men, usually white ones, who will not be affected in any way by Project 2025 who expect the rest of us to sacrifice our safety and reproductive, civil, and human rights to take a side in a conflict between two groups of people 10,000 miles away who have hated each other for 1,000 years and will hate each other for 1,000 years more? Nah, brodudes. I didn’t vote for genocide when I voted for Harris. I voted to protect my own country from fascism. I voted to protect my fellow Americans from Project 2025 and exactly the crap that’s happening now. Domestic policy matters. And right or very, horribly, disgustingly wrong as it is now, the U.S. will always support Israel to one extent or another because the U.S. gets a lot of intelligence from Israel about entities in the region who are hostile to the U.S.

Well, if you were Palestinian- or Arab-American you would–

VOTE THE SAME DAMN WAY I VOTED THIS TIME. Look, if Gaza were Italy, I’d still vote for Harris. I say that even as my sister is headed to Messina to meet cousins we didn’t know we had. My father fought for the Allies. My mother, who was part German, supported the Allies in WWII. My paternal grandfather, who was direct from Italy as a first-generation immigrant, was all in for the Allies in WWII. They were American first, tied to the old countries second. That’s my attitude, too. My goal in the voting booth was to do right by my fellow Americans—my friends, loved ones, neighbors, colleagues, and myself, right here in the U.S.—by trying to stop Creamsicle Caligula.

Furthermore, Stein is nothing but a shrill cicada who comes up out of the earth every four years to make noise, only instead of having the good graces to fly away and shed her mortal coil after giving everyone a headache for a few months, she goes back into the earth to await the vibrations of a campaign speech so she can re-emerge and do it all again. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I would see how some feel she’s a right-wing plant because she does nothing but deflect and siphon votes away from the Democrats and then she drops off the face of the earth. She’s useless, her candidacies are hopeless, and voting for her, or not voting, makes one partially responsible for what is happening in the U.S. right now. Those who threw their votes away—votes that millions of Americans have fought, killed, and died to preserve—have no moral high ground, and they’re about to find out as much as the idiots who voted for Apricot Pol Pot thinking he would lower the price of eggs. As I told one transgender man who was nattering on about how the Democrats weren’t much different than Republicans and who will likely be screeching an octave higher from a beardless face in six months when the regime takes his hormones away, “I voted for the [candidate] who would not take away your gender-affirming care AND who had a chance of winning. You threw your vote away. That’s on you.”

And don’t get me started on all the Drumpf-humpers who are now going on like, “Well, I didn’t vote for THIS. He betrayed me.”

Yeah, you voted for this. You just didn’t think it would affect YOU. You were fine with it as long as it happened to someone else. So you, too, can sit down and shut up.

As for the regime, holy hell, someone needs to do it soon. You know exactly what I’m talking about. Yes, you do. And, like the punchline of an old joke, whoever does it needs to take no chances and do all three.