Tag: Politics

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.

Use Your Words, Use Your Feet

Went to the protest yesterday in D.C. There was one in every state capital. My friends thought the turnout was okay. I thought it was anemic, myself.

Maybe the Make America Healthy Again Commission will stir people action. Here’s something that I am wagering will put a lot of people, especially parents, on alert.

“Seventy-seven percent of young adults do not qualify for the military based in large part on their health scores.”

Okay, so that’s the reason. Forget all the other crap surrounding it. They want to build a war machine with other people’s kids, because it damn sure isn’t going to be Barron Trump out there in the frontlines.

And here’s where they come for the mental health and obesity meds, section 5, item iii:

“…assess the prevalence of and threat posed by the prescription of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, stimulants, and weight-loss drugs”

Wormhead RFK, Jr. has already put forth the preposterous notion of creating “camps” where people can go to “work off” their substance and alcohol use disorder. Yeah, no. I will lay money he’s on Suboxone and lying through his teeth about his own treatment, but beyond that, while the very notion of any kind of “camp” coming out of this regime (and let’s call it what it is, a regime, not an adiministration) is terrifying, doing that for substance and alcohol use disorder is absolutely absurd from a medical point of view.

Folks, I’m going to say this bluntly: If you’re complacent, you’re complicit. Sitting back and letting other people do the hard work of trying to preserve some semblance of democracy in this country isn’t going to fly. Nag your elected officials. Bombard the White House with correspondence. Post on your socials. SHOW UP.

Your next chance to take action is the Nationwide Economic Blackout on Friday, February 28. No Amazon, WalMart, or BestBuy. In fact, I wouldn’t buy anything that day unless it was from a small, independent business, preferably Black- or woman-owned.

Your next chance to stand up and say something is Stand Up for Science, which will likely be on Friday, March 7. Take the day off and show up.

Nah, I’m not couching this like “do what you can.” I’m couching this like “do what you should.” Most of us have not had to see a draft. Most of us have not engaged in combat. Most of us have sacrificed absolutely NOTHING to preserve our own rights and freedoms. So there’s no excuse not to get off your ass and do something simple like write to your elected officials and walk around for a few hours at a protest. That is minimal effort.

They’re coming for you. They’re coming for your kids and grandkids to use them as pawns in expansionist wars.

DO SOMETHING.

Still Alive

How are you doing?

Things are hell in the U.S. Capital, thanks.

I could say so much about who needs to watch out for their rights being eroded. As in, married women who have taken their husband’s last name and don’t have a passport are the latest target, with the re-introduction of a Bill for the SAVE Act. Their birth certificates would no longer be a valid way of proving their eligibility to register to vote because it has their maiden, and not current, last name on it. If that’s you, either get a passport or change your name back to your maiden name legally. Same for if you’re divorced or widowed. You know, assuming we even have another election.

But there are so many people who are at risk that honestly? Going forward I think it’s up to each person individually to figure out their risks and how to protect themselves. It sounds cold, but freedom isn’t free. If ya want it, yer gonna have to work for it and be vigilant in protecting it. Get on your non-Facebook socials, preferably Threads, and start reading. I recommend Guy Fawkes News, who is also on BlueSky. Why? Because with the possible exception of the Associated Press, the mainstream media is not reporting everything, like, say, the protest in front of USAID where people were screaming “Shut down the Senate!” or the various activities of Anonymous, which as the kids say, has entered the chat. Anonymous has come out in opposition to the regime and have already doxxed the Phony Stark minions at DOGE who got into the government systems. As I understand it, Anonymous is having a hard time finding Phony Stark’s Social Security Number, which could very well mean that the SOB is not even an American citizen—which, by the way, would make the Fanta Führer guilty of treason by way of giving state secrets to foreign entities. See also, did you know USAID was instrumental in breaking Apartheid, and that the Inspector General for USAID was investigating Starlink’s business dealings with Ukraine right before Phony Stark shut the agency down? Make no mistake, the Fanta Führer isn’t running the country. Phony Stark is.

Anyway, the media is getting shut out and isn’t even going down swinging, so you’re going to have to rely on socials and that’s a you thing. Definitely get to BlueSky because if ZuckerBorg gets a wild hair up his arse, Meta products will become problematic, even Threads. If you don’t make the effort to inform yourself in nontraditional channels, you’re going to be an easy target and it’ll be your own fault so don’t come bitchin’ because you’ve been told—just like all the #leavingMAGA people were told all along that they wouldn’t be spared because of their whiteness.

And speaking of those people, yeah, no. No sympathy. Some on the left—usually men, because men have not been suffering since the Dobbs decision—have been talking about how we need to welcome the leavingMAGA people into the tent. Nah, this is the “find out” part of “fuck around and find out.” The leavingMAGA people are extra odious because they didn’t care about human rights and voting rights and deportation and government purges and cuts to social programs and so on until it affected them personally. Nah, it’s time for tough love, buppies, so…

Just remember, no matter how low you think the regime can go, it will go lower, because decent people just can’t imagine that kind of evil.

P.S. Dear Canada: We don’t want Wayne Gretzky, either. And it’s okay for you to turn off the lights. Don’t let Fanta Führer fool you. You’re going to have to treat him, and the USA, like a recalcitrant five-year-old who is waiting with boundless patience for half a chance to put his hand in the cookie jar when no one is looking. So keep watching, and boycott us. And that goes for the rest of the world, too. Boycott us until the Fourth Reich’s balls fall off.

Until next time, which is I don’t know when.

Subversively yours,

Zen