Category Archives: comrade trump

trump and his nazgûl advisors want to take us back to 1798

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Shit’s getting way beyond weird now. We’re moving into deeply scary fascist lunacy. Yesterday Trump posted this:

I will invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to target and dismantle every migrant criminal network operating on American soil.

Okay, we can be confident Trump himself is completely ignorant of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. But some of his Nazgûl advisors are as clever as they are hateful, and they’ve latched onto an ugly 226-year-old chunk of legislation. The Act in question was one of a set of four laws dealing with immigration and speech enacted in response to an undeclared war with the French First Republic (after the fledgling United States decided to stiff France for loans they’d accepted during the American Revolution).

Three of those laws–the Naturalization Act (dealing with the requirements for citizenship), the Alien Friends Act (allowing the imprisonment and deportation of non-citizens), and the Sedition Act (criminalizing false and malicious statements about the government)–are no longer in effect. They were either repealed or allowed to lapse. But the Alien Enemies Act is still, weirdly, in effect. It’s now Chapter 3 under Title 50 of the U.S. Code. It states:

[A]ll natives, citizens, denizens, or subjects of the hostile nation or government, being of the age of fourteen years and upward, who shall be within the United States and not actually naturalized, shall be liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed as alien enemies.

It was used against the French in that undeclared war in 1798, against the British in the War of 1812, and against Japanese-Americans after the attack on Pearl Harbor at the beginning of World War 2 (and to a much lesser extent, against Germans and Italians after the US entered the war). Don’t ever forget that 82 years ago the US forcibly rounded up approximately 120,000 men, women, and children of Japanese descent, and detained them without trial for around three years.

This hateful fuck will try to end representative democracy in the US.

Could it happen again? Yep. If Trump should win/steal the election and invoke the Alien Enemies Act, it absolutely could happen again. Obviously, the act would be appealed to SCOTUS. Although none of the Acts of 1798 were subjected to judicial review (Marbury v. Madison, which confirmed the concept of judicial review, wasn’t decided until 1803), the few SCOTUS references to the Alien and Sedition Acts have suggested the Court would consider them unconstitutional. But that was before the current Trump Court, which is so far up Trump’s ass that they granted him wide immunity for ‘official’ actions. It’s very possible this Court would allow it.

Remember this: the Act refers to people “not actually naturalized.” To be eligible to begin the naturalization process, you have to have been a permanent resident in the US for at least five years (three years if you are married to a U.S. citizen). Once the process has begun, it still takes around another six months or so to become a citizen. That means people who’ve been living legally in the US for five and a half years could still be detained, confined without trial, and deported by Trump.

This is fucking terrifying on so many levels. Trump back in power, with a cooperative SCOTUS and aides who are dedicated fascists, will do unimaginable damage, not just to the US and representative democracy, but to the entire world.

picking up stones

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Trump: Women, I am your protector.
Women: You’re what?
Trump: You will no longer be abandoned, lonely, or scared.
Women: Okay, dude, you’re creeping the fuck out of us right now.
Trump: You will no longer be in danger.
Women: Oh shit, we are deffo in danger now.
Trump: Your groceries will be more affordable.
Women: [looking at each other] The fuck?
Trump: You will be able to turn on your faucet and have water come out.
Women: [looking at each other] Yeah, I don’t know. I’ve got segue whiplash.
Trump: You will no longer have to be depressed or unhappy.
Women: While you’re talking, there isn’t enough Xanax in the world.
Trump: You will no longer have to think about abortion.
Women: Uh, yeah, I’m pretty sure we will.
Trump: You will no longer have to worry about strangers eating your cats.
Women: Jesus suffering fuck, this guy.
Trump: I will protect women at a level they have never seen before.
Women: Fuck you in the neck, we can protect ourselves.
Trump: Nobody protects women more than me.
Women: We’re calling E. Jean Carroll right now.
Trump: Women will be happy.
Women: [Picking up stones] Feeling happier already.

EDITORIAL NOTE: We must burn the patriarchy. Burn it to the ground. Burn it, gather the ashes, piss on them, douse them in kerosene, set them on fire again. Burn the patriarchy, then drive a stake directly through the ashes where its black heart used to be. Set fire to the stake. Keep burning it, over and over. Burn it for generations. Nuke it from orbit. Then find a good book, some chocolates, and a cozy chair. Maybe with a cat.

0 and 2

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That title’s a tad misleading. There was only one actual assassination attempt on Trump’s life. The second incident was basically a security breach, but it’s being described as an assassination attempt. In order to be an assassination attempt, you have to actually attempt the assassination. The Secret Service stopped the guy before an attempt could be made. Which, you know, is what they’re supposed to do.

About that…people (and by ‘people’ I mean Republicans and gutless Democrats) are posturing outrage again, asking “How did the would-be shooter get so close to Trump before being spotted?” He got that close because 1) Trump insists on golfing at his public courses, and 2) golf courses are fucking huge, and 3) unless a golf course is in a secure area (like, say, a military base) it would take a LOT of personnel to secure the entire perimeter. This is why presidents Obama and Bush often golfed on military bases. They weren’t greedy narcissists like Trump, who’s happy to charge the Secret Service for green fees that’ll go right into his own pocket.

I don’t know, but I’m assuming the Secret Service was running some sort of rolling security bubble around Trump’s golf cart, securing a couple of holes ahead of him and a couple of holes behind him. Which, really, is enough…or would be enough for an ordinary ex-POTUS. An ex-POTUS who wasn’t an active, volatile threat to the future of democracy. An ex-POTUS who didn’t thrive on pissing people off.

Let’s face it. A lot of people would like to see Trump dead. A lot of people responded to the first assassination attempt by saying they were sorry the shooter missed. A lot of people fucking hate Trump.

I want to see him cry.

I’m not one of them. Well, okay, yeah, I hate the guy. But I don’t want to see him dead killed by an assassin. I don’t want him made into some sort of MAGA martyr. That could lead to something really really ugly. And, frankly, a quick death is too good for Trump. I want him to suffer.

I want to see him tried by a jury of ordinary citizens and, it’s to be hoped, convicted of his crimes. I want to see him incarcerated. Or at least—at the very least—facing some sort of carceral punishment, even if it’s something like 20 years under house arrest. I want to see him bankrupt. I want to see his assets seized to given to E. Jean Carroll. I want Trump broke and humiliated and reviled. I want his wife and family broke, humiliated, reviled. I want him to be internationally scorned; I want global headlines calling him a convict. I want Trump alive and painfully aware that he’ll be one of the most despised characters in American history. I want him cognizant that the name Trump will be mocked and scorned for decades.

I want the motherfucker to suffer. I’m somewhat ashamed of that, but there it is.

completely batshit deranged

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I’m really beginning to believe that a line has been crossed. I’m talking about the line between neurosis and psychosis. I’m talking about Donald Trump.

A week ago, on August 30th, Trump sat down for a chat with Tiffany Justice of ‘Moms for Liberty’ (which, seriously? Is there a ‘Moms Adamantly Opposed to Liberty’ group somewhere?). The issue of trans rights came up and Trump said something completely batshit deranged.

“The transgender thing is incredible. Think of it. Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s gonna happen with your child. And you know, many of these childs [sic] 15 years later say, ‘What the hell happened? Who did this to me?’ They say, ‘Who did this to me?’”

That’s…well, as I said, completely batshit deranged. And as much as I complain about the news media ‘sanewashing’ the batshit deranged stuff Trump says, I have to admit that I did the same thing. I laughed with others about it, and basically dismissed it as Trump being a fucking bonehead again, exaggerating wildly for effect. Because, c’mon, ain’t nobody gonna to believe a kid goes to school and comes home days later (I guess the kid’s parents were busy and didn’t notice he was gone for a few days) with an entirely different set of gender tackle.

But then yesterday Trump held a rally in Mosinee, Wisconsin. And guess what? He basically repeated that same completely batshit deranged story. He said,

“Can you imagine you’re a parent and your son leaves the house and you say, ‘Jimmy, I love you so much, go have a good day at school,’ and your son comes back with a brutal operation. Can you even imagine this?”

No. No, I can’t imagine it. In fact, I can’t even imagine any rational person saying it. I especially can’t imagine a fucking candidate for POTUS saying it. And I double especially can’t imagine a fucking candidate for POTUS believing it. But I’m actually beginning to wonder if Trump does, in fact, believe something like that is happening. I mean, if you say something completely batshit deranged once and it gets reported as being completely batshit deranged, a person who is NOT completely batshit deranged would know NOT to repeat it.

Completely batshit deranged?

But here we are. And all of a sudden, I’m hearing the lyrics to Psycho Killer in my head.

You start a conversation, you can’t even finish it
You’re talking a lot, but you’re not saying anything
When I have nothing to say, my lips are sealed
Say something once, why say it again?
Psycho Killer
Qu’est-ce que c’est?

Seriously, qu’est-ce que fucking c’est? It’s delusional, is what it is. And that brings me right back to that line I said may have been crossed in the opening paragraph. Back in January of 2021, in an article about Trump for Psychology Today, Dr. Stephen Diamond wrote this:

Once a person, including a leader, has crossed over the line from neurosis to psychosis, for, by definition, a delusion is a psychotic rather than neurotic symptom, that person has now become debilitated or disabled by a severe mental disorder, and may no longer be able to continue to perform or discharge their job responsibilities safely, efficiently and effectively. Their reality testing–which is different than neurocognitive functioning per se–has been significantly impaired.

Bingo. By repeating that completely batshit deranged story, I have to question if Trump’s reality testing has gone down the porcelain facility. It’s pretty widely accepted that he’s had a severe personality disorder for decades. But has he crossed that line? Is he actually delusional?

I’m thinking the answer is, yeah.

undecided? c’mon.

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A couple of days ago there was a headline in the Philadelphia Enquirer stating “About 3% of Pennsylvania voters are still undecided.” As of October 23 of this year, there are 8,646,572 registered voters in Pennsylvania. That’s 3,897,179 Democrats, 3,451,289 Republicans, and 1,298,104 independent and third party voters. Three percent would be 259,397 undecided voters. A quarter of a million Pennsylvanian claim they just can’t make up their minds. “Harris or Trump…man, I just don’t know.”

I’m inclined to think the headline should have read ‘About 3% of Pennsylvania voters are either lying sacks of shit OR completely fuckwitted chumps.’ The liars, of course, are Trump supporters who don’t want to acknowledge out loud that they’re racist, misogynistic assholes. And really, I don’t blame them. The completely fuckwitted chumps are just that—chumps who are completely fuckwitted.

(Okay, short etymological tangent. The origin of chump is uncertain, but it’s thought to probably be a mash-up of stump, chunk, and lump—all of which at some point referenced a short, thick piece of wood in Old English, Danish, and Middle High German. In other words, a blockhead.)

There has never, in the entire long, ugly, weird history of these United States, been a more vividly clear difference between two presidential candidates. Never. About the only thing they have in common is they both walk upright on two feet (although Trump’s posture calls that into question). Comparing Harris and Trump is like comparing apples and maybe some sort of foot fungus. I could make a list (an incredibly long list) of the differences between them, but unless you’re on the Editorial Board of the Washington Post, you already know most of those differences. And unlike WaPo’s Editorial Board, you know why they’re important.

My point, if you can call it that, is that it seems highly improbable that 3% of the voters in Pennsylvania are truly undecided. The reality is you’ve got some Trump supporters who are either afraid of confessing their support or who’d like to get a little bit of attention, so are lying about their position. And you’ve got some people who simply don’t care about anything outside of their own personal interests and who probably can’t be bothered to vote anyway.

This election won’t turn on convincing ‘undecided’ voters to become ‘decided’ voters. It’ll turn on 1) getting people to the polls and 2) making sure the people in charge of counting the votes and certifying the results do their job. Trump can’t win the popular vote. He probably can’t win the electoral vote. But he’s put a LOT of money and effort into ratfucking the certification process.

I’m confident Harris will win the election. I’m not as confident she’ll become president.

the bleeding ear of trump

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I confess, I’m a wee bit disappointed. I mean, yeah, I’m glad Trump’s idiotic but hypnotic control of the MAGAverse is waning. But I really thought this might happen. I’m talking about the potential for an Ellen Jamesian moment.

Now some (okay, probably most) of you right now are wondering, “Greg, old sock, who is this Ellen James of which you speak and what would that moment entail?” I’m going to tell you. Back in 1978 novelist John Irving published a novel called The World According to Garp. It won the National Book Award for Fiction the following year. Garp was the first novel I’d ever read that explicitly examined toxic masculinity, and the first novel I’d read that featured a trans character in a positive way. It also looked at ideological extremism and cults of personality. One critical element of the narrative revolves around a group of women who cut off their own tongues in solidarity with an eleven-year-old sexual assault survivor (Ellen James) whose tongue was cut out by her rapists to silence her.

When I first saw a Trump supporter wearing a sweatshirt with a ‘Diapers over Dems’ logo and other supporters wearing adult diapers with the logo ‘Real Men Wear Diapers’ I thought his cult of personality might have hit a high water mark. Then came the assassination attempt. Trump’s ear got pinked, possibly by a bullet fragment. It doesn’t matter what pinked his ear; it got pinked. It bled. He had to wear a bandage for a few days. And some of his supporters adopted the bandage. People actually put bandages on their ears. It looked ridiculous, but that never stopped them before.

I felt all the elements of an Ellen Jamesian moment began to coalesce. I actually thought there was a chance–not a great chance, but a chance–members of the MAGAverse would pink their own ears. But no. The cowards stopped with the bandage. Sure, there was at least one guy who got a tattoo of Trump surrounded by Secret Service personnel with his tiny fist raised and an angry look on his face. But that was about it.

Bloodless fake crucifixion

I truly believe that if the assassination attempt had happened a year ago, we’d have seen some MAGA fuckwits piercing their own ears. A year ago, a bleeding ear would have been seen as Trump stigmata. Maybe the most dedicated Trumpists died of Covid, maybe his people are just weary of having to support every idiotic thing that rancid motherfucker utters, maybe JD Vance has hollowed out some of his support, but a year ago Trump’s bloody shirt would be enshrined at Mar-a-Lago. A year ago Trump would be selling cheap-ass Chinese-made white shirts with symbolic blood on the collar. It seems clear (to me, at least) that Trump doesn’t command quite the same passion that he did a year ago.

And yes, that’s a good thing. A very good thing. But I did sorta kinda want to see Trumpists tearing out a chunk of their own ears.

madam president…oh, that sounds good

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President Uncle Joe has done something amazing. He made the decision to voluntarily relinquish the most powerful political position on Earth. He did it under some pressure, to be sure. But he did it with grace and dignity. Compare that to all the ugly bullshit Comrade Trump pulled in a desperate attempt to cling to power–the lies, the threats, the violence–even after he was legitimately defeated in a fair election.

Even more amazing, Biden did something no other politician has ever done. As an old White man, he is willingly surrendering his power to a Black woman. Think about that for a moment. He didn’t have to do that. In fact, by most reports, the majority of the Powers That Be in the Democratic Party opposed that approach. Even a lot of Harris supporters said they preferred a more open contest to determine who’d be their nominee. Biden deliberately scuttled that idea by quickly voicing his support for Kamala Harris. He basically challenged the Democratic Party, saying, ‘Don’t even think about denying a Black woman as the Democratic candidate.’ That was ballsy.

He didn’t do that out of pique; he didn’t support Harris out of spite, just to thwart the people who’d refused to support him. He did it because he believed it was the right thing to do. And lawdy, our boy Joe was right. The organic groundswell of support for Harris has been nothing short of astonishing.

The timing couldn’t have been better. I’ve no idea if this was deliberate or not (I hope it was deliberate), but Biden waited until Trump had weighed the GOP ticket down with JD Vance, the oleaginous Senator from Faux Appalachia, as his VP pick. This effectively pits the most joyless, misogynistic, racist tag-team in US political history against a young(ish), vibrant Black woman who laughs and dances and embraces diversity (along with a PTBNL).

Biden’s move has totally disrupted the MAGA election plan (such as it was). At a rally yesterday, Trump was reduced to claiming Harris “is totally against the Jewish people” despite being married to a Jewish man, and complaining that she was disrespectful by refusing to attend Bibi ‘War Criminal’ Netanyahu’s speech before Congress–which is risible coming from an asshole who refused to attend Biden’s inauguration.

Joe Biden wasn’t my first choice for POTUS in 2020. He wasn’t even in my top five. But he’s been the most effective president in my lifetime, and he did that without calling much attention to his effectiveness. In a normal election year, Kamala Harris wouldn’t be my first choice. But she’s completely changed the dynamic of this election cycle, and she is without a doubt the most authentic candidate of this generation. I couldn’t be happier.

This kid? She’s gonna be the President of the United States of America. How great is that?

I not only feel hopeful for the 2024 election, I’m beginning to feel something approaching confidence. Of course, I was confident that Clinton would win in 2016, so I distrust my confidence. But I absolutely believe that the ONLY way Trump can win is by successfully ratfucking the election–by challenging legit vote counts, by voter suppression, by installing corrupt election officials and MAGA-friendly judges. And if SCOTUS is any measure, that’s a distinct possibility. So while I’m confident that Democrats will win the election, I’m only hopeful they’ll gain the presidency.

President Harris. I like the sound of that. If we work hard and we’re fortunate, the first conflict of the Harris administration will be whether it’s Madam President (my choice) or Madame President.

EDITORIAL NOTE: A reminder that we must dismantle the patriarchy. Pull it apart at every joint, disassemble every element, demolish every component. We must gather all those fragments, douse them in oil, and set them on fire. Gather the ashes, drop them in an acid bath. Enclose the acid in a titanium container and launch it into a distant sun. Then have tapas and a colorful rum drink with a tiny umbrella in it.

if it had been anybody other than trump

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Yes, it’s an impressive photograph. You know the one I’m talking about. Trump, bloody, angry, fist raised. I’m not going to post it because I’m already sick of it. But it’ll probably win a lot of photojournalist awards, and rightly so. A lot of folks (and by ‘folks’ I mean ‘political pundits’) believe that photo is going to help Trump in the coming election. They think it’ll carry Trump along on a groundswell of sympathy.

A lot of folks are wrong.

Had it been anybody other than Trump, they’d probably be right. But we’re talking about Comrade Donald J. Trump here. Trump is different. There’s not a lot of sympathy for Trump. Perhaps the most remarkable (and, in a very real way, incredibly sad) aspect of the assassination attempt against Trump is this: so many people are disappointed that it failed.

Yes, that’s a horrible thing to say. But there it is. I’ve heard it and I suspect you’ve heard it as well. It’s usually expressed in a soft voice–maybe even a whisper–and it’s often said with more than a little shame. But it’s being said all the same. Regret that Trump didn’t catch one of those rounds fired.

The people saying this aren’t raging ideologues, they’re not political junkies, they’re not rabid progressives or conspiracy nuts. They’re regular people. Moms to their kids, people in the produce aisle at the market, couples eating smashburgers at a diner. They’re saying stuff like, “You know, I don’t really want anybody to get shot, I’m opposed to any sort of violence, but….” And they let that ‘but’ hang there, and the person they’re talking to frowns and nods. Or maybe they turn it into a joke. “Nobody’s been that disappointed by a couple of inches since Stormy Daniels.” And we cringe and groan, but we’re still nodding.

Most people who feel this way are properly reluctant to say it out loud. It’s a horrible thing to say. It’s a horrible thing to feel. I mean, we’re decent people–or we try to be. But that thought and feeling is out there, and it’s widespread. And it’s Trump-specific.

If it had been anybody other than Trump…