Monthly Archives: January 2026

cnut, hammett, and trump

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I recently mentioned to a friend that, despite the ongoing horror of Minneapolis, I feel more optimistic about the future than I did a year ago. And he agreed. He said something like, “It’s that whole King Cnut thing, right? Trump may think he’s the king, but even the king can’t hold back the tide.”

I stopped myself from correcting him. For some reason, people think the Cnut versus the Tide story is about Cnut’s arrogance. It’s not. I’ve forgotten the issue at hand, but Cnut’s posse was suggesting that as king, he had godlike powers. Cnut was saying, “Nope, I’m just a guy with a good job.” When he set his throne on the beach and ordered the tide NOT to get his feet wet, he was demonstrating the fact that he couldn’t hold back the tide.

Cnut getting his shoes wet.

But aside from buggering up the analogy, my friend is (I think) correct. Trump may think he’s got godlike authority. He’s certainly acting like it. In Minneapolis, in Greenland, in courtrooms across the US, in social media. Just yesterday on his Truth Social site, he (or one of this fluffers) wrote:

In Minnesota, the Troublemakers, Agitators, and Insurrectionists are, in many cases, highly paid professionals. The Governor and Mayor don’t know what to do, they have totally lost control, and our [sic] currently being rendered, USELESS! If, and when, I’m forced to act, it will be solved, QUICKLY and EFFECTIVELY! President DJT

This is Trump distilled. Three lines–all lies–that encompass Trump’s view of the world. First, he presumes nobody ever takes a risk for any reason other than personal gain. If people demonstrate against him, somebody must be paying them. Second, he’s compelled to belittle and insult those who oppose or disagree with him. And third, he needs to assert his own superiority–to brag about his own abilities. It’s all there in three lines.

Does he actually believe all that? Maybe. I don’t know. Dashiell Hammett, in a 1923 short story, wrote, ‘If a man says a thing often enough, he is very likely to acquire some sort of faith in it sooner or later.’ Hammett was pretty astute. I assume there are moments when Trump is truly convinced he’s a superior being.

It doesn’t really matter if Trump believes his own bullshit. The tide doesn’t. And like my friend, I’m inclined to believe the tide is slowly turning against Trump. He’ll shout and threaten and bluster and bribe, but he’ll never control Greenland and he’ll never subdue Minneapolis.

The tide is an insistent sumbitch.

in fear for my life

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By now, we’ve all seen the various videos of the recent horrific event in Minneapolis. TrumpCo and MAGA are pressing the view that the shooting was justified. What they want you to hear is that Jonathan Ross is a highly trained, experienced law enforcement officer who shot and killed a professional radical agitator who attempted to murder him with her car. His behavior, they claim, was justified because he was in fear for his life.

Another perspective. Renee Nicole Good was a 37-year-old mother of three (a daughter and two sons), a poet, and a stay-at-home mom married to Rebecca Good. They’d recently moved to Minneapolis from Kansas City. She volunteered to be a legal observer monitoring ICE operations in her new home. She and her wife (and dog) were surrounded by masked and uniformed armed men who were yelling at her and aggressively attempting to open her car door, She attempted to leave the scene, likely because she was in fear for her life.

There’s no doubt that fear makes people do stupid stuff. Fear makes people act on impulse rather than reason. Fear is valid.

But the law, it seems, prioritizes the fear of policing agents. The law prioritizes the fear of the only people at the scene who are carrying weapons. The law prioritizes the fear of the only people at the scene who have the legal authority to shoot people. The law prioritizes the fear of the only people at the scene who are trained when and how to use deadly force. The law prioritized the fear of the only people at the scene who have been trained NOT to give in to their fear. The law not only prioritizes their fear, it justifies it.

The law does not consider the fear of a woman surrounded by several masked armed men yelling at her and attempting to drag her and her wife from their vehicle. The law does not value the fear experienced by Renee Nicole Good.

EDITORIAL NOTE: Patriarchy must be smashed. The shattered splinters that remain must be ground into dust. That dust must be encased in lead and buried in an unmarked grave in the deepest desert.

an amazing thing

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Before actually addressing the nation, Comrade President Trump called in to Fox & Friends to chat about the raid that captured/kidnapped Venezuelan president Maduro. He said this:

“I mean, I watched it literally l like I was watching a television show. If you would’ve seen the speed, the violence — it was an amazing thing.”

Like I was watching a television show. There it is. Trump and his Cabinet of Yahoo Nazgûl suffer from cinematic epistemology. Their understanding of how the world works–and more importantly, how military operations work–is based on action movies. The good guys (and, again, this is TrumpCo’s definition of ‘good guys’) swoop in quickly, there are explosions and gunfire, a few secondary characters get shot (and maybe die heroically), the bad guys are killed or captured, the good guys manage to barely escape. Once back at their base, the exhausted heroes laugh and joke and maybe weep manly tears for their lost/wounded comrades, but are nevertheless proud to have served their nation. Then the credits roll.

They don’t give much thought to what happens after the credits roll. That shit’s boring. If the film is profitable and draws an appreciative audience, they may consider a sequel. Maybe in a new setting. But basically, once the music starts and the lights go up, the movie’s over. Somebody will clean up and put stuff in order, doesn’t much matter who.

Did some Venezuelans die during this raid? Nobody’s bothered to discuss that. They’re just background actors. Non-player characters. Who cares about NPCs?

Don’t get me wrong, Maduro IS a bad guy. A very bad guy. He’s a dictator; he’s banned opposition parties, he stole Venezuela’s last election, he’d blatantly corrupt, he’s encouraged corruption among his administration and military leaders. He’s approved of torture and murder. He’s made deals with drug dealers. He’s…well, he’s a lot like Trump his ownself.

But Maduro really isn’t the issue. At least not for those of us in the US. The issue for us is that we have a corrupt, delusional president, a Cabinet that caters to his corruption and delusions, a Congress that refuses to challenge him, and a Supreme Court that shrugs off most of his depredations.

We’re not in a goddamn movie. We need leaders who understand that. We desperately need leaders who’ll at least try to hold Trump and his enablers accountable.

Editorial Note: The illustration is an 1883 wood engraving by Albert Robida for his book entitled “Le vingtième siècle” (The Twentieth Century). The original caption is “Les correspondants à la guerre” (The war correspondents).

things i’d like to see in 2026

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2025 sucked, don’t even try to tell me otherwise. 2026 has the potential to be better, though it could implode at any moment. Nothing is certain. However, in a feeble attempt to be optimistic, I’ve make a list of things I’d like to see in 2026. I don’t expect to see any of them, but hey, there’s no harm in hoping.

Anyway, in no particular order, I’d like to see:

  • local municipal police officers arresting ICE agents for violating the law. These assholes are running wild in the street and ain’t nobody holding them to account. Arrest them, cuff them, give them a fair trial.
  • sensible legislation limiting e-motos. I’m talking about these stubby bastards. They’re sold as ebikes, but they’re not intended to be ridden like bikes. I don’t have anything against them as a mode of transportation, but the sad reality is a LOT of these e-motos are ridden by assholes. Assholes ruin everything.
  • speaking of bikes, I’d like to see more people dressed in normal clothes on bikes. This isn’t a dunk on folks who wear lycra and ride road bikes. I’d just like to normalize cycling as transportation, not just as a form of exercise.
  • women in US films & television shows that look like actual women wearing actual women’s clothing with sensible shoes instead of models in high heels. Give me more Sarah Lancashires, more Olivia Colmans, more Susan Wokomas, more Lesley Manvilles. Give me women who can act, not just look good. (Okay, we have Merritt Wever in the US, who is fucking amazing; give me more Merritt Wevers too.)
  • Donald J. Trump in handcuffs and an orange jumpsuit…in a coffin.
  • quiet spaces. Deliberately quiet spaces, both indoors and outdoors, both public and commercial. Not silent spaces; just quiet. Spaces where you can have a conversation. Coffee shops, pubs, restaurants, and other businesses that commit to quietness should be given tax breaks.
  • Brett Kavanaugh busted for DWI.
  • a mini-series based on Ellen Kushner’s novel Swordspoint. Or any of her novels, really.
  • billionaires taxed out of existence. There’s no reason for billionaires to exist. Nobody has any real use for that much money. Every dollar somebody ‘earns’ over a billion dollars should be taxed at 100%. I mean, c’mon, if you spent US$100 thousand every single day, it would take you more than 27 years to spend a billion dollars. That’s just nuts.
  • more dedicated infrastructure for bicycles and other forms of mobility. I’m talking about bike lanes and secure bicycle parking. We should really make it safe and easy for not just cyclists to get around, but also folks in wheelchairs (and we should subsidize motorized wheelchairs to a much greater extent). We should drastically decrease car dependency (and the operative term there is ‘dependency’).
  • much much much more funding for the Arts. All sorts of arts, and especially weird esoteric arts, even if we don’t like them. Hell, we should encourage people–ordinary people–to take up any form of expression. I’d go so far as to support accordion players and mimes. It would make people happier, and lawdy, we need happier people.
  • also, Trump’s name removed from the Kennedy Cen…well, from everything.
  • capes for mail carriers. These people are fucking heroes; they deserve capes.

Okay, that’s enough. None of these things will happen (although I think there’s a decent chance Comrade Trump will go toes up in the next 12 months), but they’re still it’s nice to think about. Oh, wait. I forgot one.

I’d like to see the patriarchy smashed into tiny shards, those shards ground into the finest dust, that dust buried deep in the earth, and the earth above it salted so that nothing will grow there for a thousand years. Or so.

There. Done.

Editorial Note: By the way, the illustration is a wood engraving by Frederick Sandys from the early 1860s. It’s called ‘The Old Chartist.’ Chartism was a British working class movement that called for 1) the vote for every man aged twenty-one years and above (women, of course, were totally fucked), 2) secret ballots, 3) no property qualification to be a Member of Parliament, 4) payment for Members (so working men could temporarily leave their regular employment to work in the public interest), 5) annual elections. These were radical wishes unlikely to occur, much like my wishlist above.