Category Archives: comrade trump

land of the not-so-free and home of the scared shitless

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You know that song, right? The Star Spangled Banner? It’s sung at the beginning of almost every sports event in the United States. Yeah, that song. It looks like we’re going to have to change the lyrics. There are four verses to the song, though folks generally only sing the first verse. But each of those verses ends with a variation of the same line.

O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

Turns out the answer to that question is a firm “Nope.” Doesn’t matter if the banner is waving or not, because the US is no longer the land of the free or the home of the brave. Evidence? I got your evidence right here. Vanity Fair just published an article with the title

“They’re scared shitless”: The Threat or Political Violence Informing Trump’s Grip on Congress.

Over the last month we’ve seen Republicans in Congress cower before Trump, confirming Cabinet members they know…they fucking know…are unfit and unqualified. We’ve got a drunk misogynist wife-beater who mismanaged a couple of charities for veterans in charge of the Department of Defense. Pete Hegseth wouldn’t be considered qualified to drive a goddamn school bus. We’ve got a Director of National Intelligence who is a Russian apologist, an ongoing distributor of Russian disinformation, and who has refused to acknowledge that the Syrian dictator Assad used chemical weapons against his own citizens. We’ve got a Secretary of Health and Human Services who has a 14-year history of heroin abuse, who is an anti-vaccine nut, who is a Covid conspiracy nut, who claimed in a divorce proceeding that “a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died” which accounted for his…ah, fuck, you get the idea. RFK Jr. is a quack. These are NOT serious Cabinet candidates.

So why have Republicans in Congress supported them? Because, as reported by Vanity Fair (and others), they’re fucking cowards. They’re afraid for 1) their careers and 2) their safety.

Look, I’ve been legit afraid for my life and safety. I understand what it feels like when you’ve been told if you do X, then Y will happen to you. I was threatened several times during my years as a criminal defense investigator. I’ve been threatened by a burglary gang; I’ve been threatened by the guy who actually committed the bow and arrow murder my client was accused of (this was a guy who’d already done time for murdering another person by stabbing him multiple times with a bayonet); I’ve even been threatened by the police for outing an officer who’d slept with a witness. It’s scary to know that there are people out there who seriously want to harm you and are capable of following through with it.

But you know what? I still did my job, because it was important. Because there were principles involved. Because civil liberties matter. Don’t get me wrong; I was scared and I took every precaution I could. There were situations I avoided because I was so fucking nervous. But I did my job.

MAGA Republicans are right to be scared. There are a LOT of MAGA lunatics out there eager to prove their loyalty to Trump by engaging in violence. Many of the Republicans in Congress were potential victims in the January 6th Insurrection. They know what Trump supporters are capable of doing. What they’re willing to do.

But they have a job to do. And they’re…not doing it. Their job is a LOT more important than my job was. There’s a LOT more riding on their job than there was on mine. And they’re too afraid to do it. Oh, a few of them may actually agree with Trump, but many/most of them know better. They’re just too scared to stand up.

Home of the free? Land of the Brave? I’m not convinced the US has ever truly been the land of the free, though I like to think there have been periods in which we’ve tried to be. But we have, in the past, been the land of the brave. When fascism threatened Europe in the 1930s and 40s, the US…okay, we dodged around as much as we could, but eventually we stood up and fought to support Europe. We haven’t always been consistent in opposing totalitarian regimes, but we’ve always at least voiced the notion of freedom and representative democracy.

Now? Not so much. Now we have a POTUS who is openly pro-totalitarian. We have a POTUS who openly spreads Russian lies and disinformation, who openly undermines the very foundations of representative democracy, who is openly corrupt, who openly dismisses the legitimacy of the Constitution.

The Republican Party is fully aware of what he’s doing. And they’re unwilling to oppose him. Because they’re afraid. They’re willing to allow democracy to die in the US because they can’t find the courage to say ‘no’. Hell, they’re not just willing to let it die; they’ll volunteer to help bury the body.

trans-nuremburg

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This is how it begins. Germany in April of 1935. The Reichstag–the national parliament of Nazi Germany–passed the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service. This was done to cull specific groups from certain professions. ‘Non-Aryans’ could no longer hold positions in the legal profession, could not be employed within the civil service, could not teach in secondary schools and universities, could not provide medical care, could not work as tax consultants or notaries.

Two years later, September of 1935, two more laws were enacted. The Reich Citizenship Law defined who was allowed to be a citizen of Germany (and more importantly, who was NOT allowed to be a citizen). The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor established who could marry in Germany (and, again, who could NOT).

The purpose of these laws was to designate specific groups of people for exclusion from society, to de-legitimize them as fellow humans. We’re seeing similar efforts from the Trump administration, specifically targeting trans people.

Yesterday Trump issued an executive order called “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” It’s directed at trans youth and the educators who teach them. It essentially forbids teachers from supporting trans youth and promises to punish them (and their school districts) for refusing to obey by withholding federal funding. The entire order is based on lies Trump told his followers during the election.

Trump has also issued an executive order called Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness, which targets trans people serving in the US military. Trump’s order suggests trans troops are somehow unfit to serve. It categorically states:

[A]doption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual’s sex conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life.  A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member. 

This is blatant nonsense in an astonishing number of ways. Here are just a couple. First (and I have to admit I’m not relying on data here, just my impression) I suspect the majority of trans troops are trans men, not trans women–and most certainly NOT ‘a man asserting he is a woman.’ Second, Trump’s executive order claims “shifting pronoun usage or use of pronouns that inaccurately reflect an individual’s sex” hampers troop readiness and effectiveness. That’s blatant bullshit. One of the things the military instills in troops is that the uniform covers all other extraneous individual designations; religion, race, ethnicity, and gender are subsumed by the uniform. Putting on the uniform means abandoning a certain degree of individuality. Troops are troops.

Troops are troops.

Only about 15,000 of the two million military personnel serving on active duty and in the reserves are transgender. But that’s 15,000 people who have voluntarily chosen to serve their nation in the armed forces–which, it must be said, is a duty Donald Trump avoided by claiming he suffered from bone spurs. It’s 15,000 people who aren’t easily replaced. This order will actively disrupt military readiness and harm the very institution Trump claims to be defending.

Beyond that, the ugly fact is that many of the executive orders issued by Trump in his first ten days as POTUS are reminiscent of the laws passed by the Nazis in the 1930s. They’re designed to divide the nation, to direct hostility and hatred at a specific group of people, to blame them for any number of social problems. While these actions target trans people specifically, as with the Nuremburg laws, we can expect them to be expanded to cover all LGBTQ people.

We’re all familiar with Martin Niemöller’s famous quote–the one that begins, “First they came for the communists…” We’re less familiar with Niemöller’s transition from Nazi sympathizer to Nazi opponent. Although he originally supported Hitler (he voted for Nazis in 1924, 1928, and 1933) and was openly antisemitic, Niemöller objected to the inclusion of the ‘Aryan Paragraph’ (a clause added to most civil organizations that excluded ‘non-Aryans’ from participating) in the bylaws of the German Protestant church. That moral and ethical refusal to exclude others caused Niemöller to be interned in various concentration camps from 1938 to 1945.

My point (if you can call it that) is that we need to remember. This is how it begins. First they came for trans people… We need to remember and we need to stand up for the people under assault. Not just because those motherfuckers WILL eventually come for us (which they will), but simply because it’s the right thing to do.

yeah, this is where we are now

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Yeah, I don’t want to include a screenshot of this (because I don’t want it to show up in the link), but last night Comrade Donald Trump posted this astonishing and delusional comment on his Truth Social network:

The United States Military just entered the Great State of California and, under Emergency Powers, TURNED ON THE WATER flowing abundantly from the Pacific Northwest, and beyond. The day of putting a Fake Environmental argument, over the PEOPLE, are OVER. Enjoy the water, California!!!

Trump is claiming he ordered the US military (all of it? some branch of it? maybe a special secret water control operations unit?) to slip into California undetected, after which they flipped the Master Toggle Switch that controls the flow of water from the Pacific Northwest (or ‘beyond,’ whatever the fuck that is). Remember, this jamoke is the duly elected President of These United States. I don’t know if he actually believes this (which would make him actively delusional), or if he’s under the impression the citizenry of the US is stupid enough to believe a lie this blatant (and maybe they are, since they voted for him), or if he’s just bragging in order to feel good about himself (which is entirely possible). In any case, this is seriously fucked up.

Here’s the reality: The US Bureau of Reclamation (which is a federal bureau utterly lacking in troops) had shut down a few water pumps in Northern California for maintenance. The maintenance was completed yesterday and the pumps were restarted. End of.

This wildly bizarre episode is just one of dozens of equally disturbing things Trump has done in his first week as POTUS. It’s maybe the least damaging thing he’s done. The response of MAGA Republicans to all this bullshit? They’ve climbed up a tree and are hoping Trump’s wolves will find somebody else to eat first.

Republican Members of Congress addressing MAGA voters.

And the Democratic response? It’s almost as bad. The leadership seems to be attempting to sort out WHICH of Trump’s outrages they should address first, and how to craft the appropriate messaging to address that particular outrage in order to assuage the wolves.

What (in my opinion) they should be doing is standing up on their own hind legs and howling at the top of their lungs. They should be objecting LOUDLY to every single illegal command Trump has given. Hell, they should be objecting loudly to most of the legal commands he’s given, since most of those are cruel and intended to hurt people. They should be chasing MAGA up the tree.

The Democrats need to get angry and really loud and obnoxious; it’s the only way they can cut through the Trump Cascade of Bullshit. Otherwise, they’re just joining the GOP in the tree.

i’m back

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16

I’ve been away for a while. Not away away. Not ‘away’ as in a different location. I’ve been away from this blog. The last thing I posted was on 16 December, almost three weeks ago. I’ve been writing this blog since 2011, and this is the longest I’ve been away from it.

Why? Family crisis. I’m not going to go into any detail (partly because it’s not my story to tell, partly because it’s nobody’s business, and partly because I dislike folks who whinge online…or anywhere else, for that matter). I’m only tangentially involved in the FamCrisis (not my monkeys, not my circus); my normally calm, quiet, incredibly happy life is collateral domestic damage, so to speak. Life here has been wildly disrupted; everything is now crowded, noisy, busy, and chaotic. It’s this way, in large part, because it was calm, quiet, and happy. I mean, where else are you going to go to escape, right?

In any event, the situation hasn’t been conducive to writing. But so what? People have written under worse circumstances. And while everything is still ridiculously chaotic and rather grim (and likely to stay this way for some time), I’m starting to acclimate to it.

Even before the FamCrisis, I’d shifted away somewhat from my usual blog posting. Most of my posts over the last several years have been political. But the 2024 election left me in an absolute funk. Since the election, I’ve written more about photography than politics.

‘Annie’ was wrong; the sun ain’t coming out tomorrow. But someday…

But in a short time Comrade Donald Trump will once again infest the White House as an expression of the will of the people (the bastards). It seems pretty obvious that we’re entering into a grimdark era. Truth, decency, logic, kindness…that shit is out. Lies, grifting, loopiness, and willful cruelty will be featured in US ‘governance’ for the foreseeable future.

Ain’t no way I’m going to shut up about that. I’ll still write about photography and other stuff, of course, but I think it’s going to be necessary to call bullshit frequently and loudly in the coming months and years. So I’m back.

Editorial Note: Many/most of the problems we face are either due to or exacerbated by patriarchy. So we need to burn that shit. Burn it to the ground. Burn it, gather the ashes, douse them in oil, and burn them again. Piss on whatever is left, then salt the earth where the burning took place. Then burn the salt. Burn it and keep burning it, over and over. Burn it for generations. Then have tea and biscuits.

13 million

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On the morning of 9/11/2001 I woke up, turned on NPR as I got dressed, and heard a report that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. I turned on the television just in time to see the second plane hit. It was surreal. It was gutting. I vacillated between disbelief and horror. But I knew immediately that the entire world had just changed, and the change was going to be awful.

Same thing happened yesterday morning. I woke up, turned on NPR as I dressed, and heard the unthinkable news that Donald Trump had won the 2024 election. Disbelief, horror, and the same sinking awareness that the entire world had just changed. And the change is going to be fucking awful.

This morning I woke up and decided not to turn on NPR. I did, though, decide to look at the Electoral College vote. I expected the results to show that, like Trump’s first election in 2016, Trump had won the Electoral College vote while losing the popular vote.

But no. Trump won the popular vote. He actually got more votes than Kamala Harris. I just typed that sentence and it still doesn’t make any sense. How was it possible for Trump to get more votes than Harris? I mean, the guy ran the shittiest presidential campaign in US history. The guy was actually shouting about Haitians eating pets. He’d been convicted of 34 felonies, and found liable for sexual assault. How the fuck did that guy win?

This is how:

2020
Trump: 74 million votes
Biden: 81 million votes (the most votes ever cast for a presidential candidate in the US)

2024
Trump: 72 million votes
Harris: 68 million votes.

That’s how. Thirteen million people who’d voted for Joe Biden didn’t turn up. Thirteen million people just didn’t fucking vote. Thirteen million.

Why? I don’t know. I can’t be bothered to research their reasons. Before the election, I heard people complaining that Harris was campaigning with disaffected Republicans. Maybe some people stayed home because they didn’t like Liz Cheney. I heard people complaining Harris had flip-flopped on fracking. Maybe they didn’t vote because of environmental reasons. A lot of people, including me, were angry because she didn’t denounce the Palestinian genocide as vociferously as she should have. Maybe people sat out the vote as a protest. Maybe some people just didn’t want to vote for a Black woman. Maybe they decided to vote for Jill Fucking Stein or RFK. I heard people complaining about how Harris campaigned, that she didn’t do enough interviews, that she gave too many interviews to the wrong news outlets, that she ignored certain demographic groups. Maybe voters stayed home because they felt excluded. Or maybe some people saw all the enthusiasm for Harris on the news and decided she was going to win anyway so they felt they didn’t need to show up and vote.

The reasons really don’t matter. Not now. They didn’t fucking vote; that’s all that matters. They didn’t vote, and Donald Trump won. He got two million fewer votes than last time, and he still fucking won.

No, that’s not true. Not really. Trump didn’t win. Thirteen million voters gave it to him. Because of reasons.

The Palestinians? They’re more completely fucked now than before. Ukraine, absolutely fucked. Liz Cheney, fucked. The environment, fucked in so many ways you need an abacus to keep count. Trans people, fucked. Immigrants, fucked. People who look like they might be immigrants, fucked. Freedom of the Press, fucked. Reproductive rights, fucked. The list of people and causes that will be fucked over is long and deep. Things are going to get exceedingly ugly in the US. In the world. So very fucked.

Because thirteen million decided not to vote. They may never get the chance to vote again.

EDITORIAL NOTE: I’ve ended a lot of posts on this blog with a rant about the necessity to burn the patriarchy to the ground. I passionately believe that needs to be done. Patriarchy hurts everybody. I’m not going to include the rant today, because the American voters just invited the ugliest aspects of patriarchy to run the government and today I’m just too emotionally exhausted to shout. Tomorrow–or maybe next week, or next month–I’ll be less resigned. But today, the patriarchy has kicked my ass.

trump at madison square garden

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Every so often I take a stiff drink and subject myself to the fetid swamp of FreeRepublic.com in order to find out what’s on their feverish minds. This morning I wondered how these ‘patriots’ would respond to the ‘comedy’ at Trump’s Bund rally in Madison Square Garden.

As usual, their first response to anything that might reflect negatively on Trump is to claim it’s Democratic ratfucking or a false flag attack by the Deep State. In this case, they let the Deep State off the hook and went straight to sneaky Democratic infiltration tactics.

There is no doubt that this racist POS is a Kumrade supporter. He should be exposed immediately.
by alstewartfan

I’m guessing the comedian was implanted by the rat party.
by No name given

He may have thrown the Harris campaign a badly needed lifeline. It would not surprise me if he was a DNC plant.
by Dan in Wichita

You would have to prove to me beyond any doubt whatsoever that this person wasn’t simply a plant to show his indignation.
If someone is so mentally insufficient that they take such sincere offense at a joke, they aren’t capable of voting on any intellectual level. All emotion. Sounds like a Leftist.
I say a plant.
by rlmorel

Surprisingly, most Freepers agreed the comedy was racist. Not everybody, of course, but I’ve never seen this much general condemnation of a speaker supporting Trump. However, even those who felt the humor was racist focused their disapproval on whoever invited the comedian. They saw it primarily as a political or tactical mistake.

sigh this is really frustrating. why was this non-funny person even invited to speak? why are standards so low for this kind of event?!
by CondoleezzaProtege

It’s outrageous and disgusting.
by Romulus

It was an unforced error on the part of Trump’s campaign, but it will probably not have a huge impact. The electorate has become more sophisticated these days. Most have learned to filter out the “Trump is a felon”, “Trump is a NAZI”, “Trump is a threat to Democracy” talk and focus on what matters.
by mbrfl

IMO it’s such an unforced error. There was no need for something so stupid.
by hillarys cankles

Of course, there were those who defended the ‘comedy.’ Some thought it was actually funny. Some complained about the limits placed on free speech. Some felt that Democrats just don’t know how to take a joke.

You cannot joke about anyone other than white males. Let them shout from the rooftops and watch the entire act.
by bray

NYC humor is not MAGA humor.
by stars & stripes forever

I thought he was funny. He told about a pile of trash floating in the Atlantic Ocean, they call it Puerto Rico.
by tired&retired

Back to the joke. Good jokes have some truth to them. This was one of them.
by PeterPrinciple

“Distressing result of eating turkey day after day.
The poor old party has come out all over feathers“

Finally, there were Freepers who simply didn’t understand what the fuss was about. Somebody told a bad joke, who cares? It’s not a big deal. It’ll all be forgotten soon. Nobody cares about Puerto Rico anyway. It’ll have no effect on the election at all.

Puerto Rico isn’t actually a state so although they can technically vote, they don’t actually get a single Electoral vote…So (shrug) oh well I guess..
by apillar

Most Puerto Ricans I know in the US are voting Trump. They left the island “paradise” of Puerto Rico for a reason.
by LeonardFMason

I don’t visit FR very often these days. I’ve lost my ability to be dispassionate about it. But one thing I did find interesting on this visit: more people are willing to openly criticize Trump, to call his competence into question, to acknowledge some of his flaws. They’re all still going to vote for him, of course, but he’s been tarnished. He’s no longer the Flawless Genius he once was.

And when Trump’s support on FreeRepublic begins to get squishy, well…as my kin used to say, “A pig has enough arithmetic to take a short cut to the trough.” They loved him when he was a winner. They still loved him when they thought he’d been cheated. But will they still love him when he’s a two-time loser?

my prediction

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We’re going to have a history-making election in eleven days. Here’s what I think will happen. Wait…two things. First, let me admit I’ve been wildly wrong before, especially in 2016 when I was absolutely confident Hillary Clinton would win big. Second, this post will be ever so much better if you read it using the voice of Maria Ouspenskaya. Okay, right, here’s what I think will happen:

  1. Harris wins, carried primarily by women who are mobilized by Dobbs. At least ONE of the seven swing states will be a landslide Harris victory. If she wins North Carolina early, that’s it–game over.
  2. Trump will obviously claim victory, will claim fraud, will challenge everything in court, and will lose almost every case–just like last time.
  3. There won’t be any serious Congressional fuckery during the Electoral ballot count.
  4. Jack Smith’s cases against Trump will pick up speed.
  5. Trump will visit a nation in the Middle East (probably the United Arab Emirates, possibly Saudi Arabia–neither of which have extradition treaties with the US) to negotiate a golf course or hotel…and will stay ‘temporarily’.
“Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and Autumn moon is bright.”

That’s it. Those are my predictions. While Donald Trump has–and will apparently always have–passionate supporters, I think most folks are just sick to fucking death of the guy. I think they’ve had enough of his bullshit and chaos. I think even folks who may not have voted for Harris will be relieved if/when Trump finally leaves the stage.

I may be wrong, of course. But I can hear the voice of Maleva talking to Larry Talbot, “as the rain enters the soil, the river enters the sea, so tears run to a predestined end.”

just the right amount of fretting

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We’re two weeks out from election day and there’s a whole lot of OMG OMG Trump’s gonna try to steal the election if he loses OMG WTF do we do now?! floating around in social media. And it’s making some folks downright frantic.

Yeah, Trump is absolutely going to try to steal the election when he loses. That’s just a fact. We all know it. We saw him try to do it four years ago. Of course, he’s going to try it again. This time he’s better prepared for it. This time he knows what he did wrong last time. (Okay, that’s not entirely true; Trump is just a bone-ignorant as he was last time, but now he’s got a cadre of feral GOP fascists who are far more skilled at ratfucking.) This time the stakes are higher…both for the nation and for Trump his ownself. He loses, and he’s looking at prison.

So yeah, it’s understandable that folks are worried. EXCEPT for this: the Dems are also better prepared than last time. We’ve had four years to put as many safeguards in place as possible. We’ve had four years to anticipate Trump’s moves. Things look better for us than they did four years ago. For example:

  • We’ve changed the Electoral Count Act to make it far more difficult for state legislatures to reverse the results of an election.
  • We have hundreds of lawyers, lawyers in every state, ready to counter the GOP’s attempts to ratfuck the votes, and they’ve got dozens of briefs already written and ready to file, tailored to each state.
  • The governors of five of the seven so-called ‘swing’ states are Democrats. The two GOP-led states includes Georgia, where Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger both resisted Trump’s efforts four years ago.
  • Of the 60+ lawsuits brought by Trump four years ago, all but one was shot down. Many of the judges in those cases were Republicans, some appointed by Trump his ownself. They’re no more likely to agree with him this time.
  • Four years ago Trump had the Department of Justice and the Attorney General in his pocket to help him. Now, the DOJ and the AG are more independent.

This isn’t to say that your anxiety isn’t warranted. It’s not to say there’s nothing to fret about. Trump, his Nazgûl lawyers, and his angry supporters are willing to use any corrupt means that might give them a chance to obtain power, including violence. We HAVE to be concerned and vigilant.

I mean, c’mon, look at the amount of badly-applied makeup this guy’s wearing.

But remember, Trump failed last time. He’ll almost certainly fail again. Failure is Trump’s true brand. Trump is all make-up and weird hair. His strength is mostly an illusion. So yeah, there’s reason to fret. It’s right and proper to fret about the election.

Fret enough to get out to vote. Fret enough to encourage your friends and fam to vote. Fret enough to put up a yard sign or cough up some coin to donate to your local candidates. Ain’t nothing wrong with fretting about this election.

But don’t fret too much.