kiss the ring

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Let’s face it, Donald Trump is well on his way to turning the United States into a mafia state. It’s not just a matter of corrupt officials using governmental power and authority to enrich themselves (and their families and friends) while punishing poor and marginalized people. It’s not just manipulating the system so public services can be turned into private ownership for the profit of the already-wealthy.

It’s also the petty authoritarian mindset, that mobster code that demands unquestioned loyalty and obedience. Any disagreement, any hesitation, any refusal to obey is an offense that can’t be tolerated. Everybody must abase themselves before Trump. Everybody must kiss the Godfather’s ring. Failure to do so leads to punishment.

Back in February, during a conference of Governors, Trump threatened Janet Mills, the Democratic governor of Maine, over her public refusal to issue an unconstitutional ban on transgender athletes competing in school-sponsored sports. She replied, “I’ll see you in court.”

Hours later, the Trump Department of Education opened an investigation into Maine’s educational policies. Within days, there were six different administrative and Congressional investigations of Maine’s policies. Trump’s Department of Education threatened to cut off all federal funding to Maine’s Department of Education.

There are apparently no trans athletes competing at the collegiate level. There are around 45,000 high school students competing in sports competitions in Maine, four of which are trans girls. Only two of them have competed in statewide events. But Trump threw the entire weight of the Federal government against them. There are more federal investigations of this handful of high school girls in sports than there are of the fatal crashes involving Tesla’s ‘self-driving’ system.

Nonetheless, Maine’s universities, facing a massive loss of federal funding, have agreed to comply with Trump’s executive order banning trans athletes. But that’s not enough for Trump. Like a Mafia don, he insists on having his ring kissed. Trump wrote:

While the State of Maine has apologized for their Governor’s strong, but totally incorrect, statement about men playing in women’s sports while at the White House House Governor’s Conference, we have not heard from the Governor herself, and she is the one that matters in such cases. Therefore, we need a full throated apology from the Governor herself, and a statement that she will never make such an unlawful challenge to the Federal Government again, before this case can be settled. I’m sure she will be able to do that quite easily. Thank you for your attention to this matter and, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!! DJT

Aside from the bullshit lies (the State of Maine didn’t apologize), this display of arrogance and petty vindictiveness is classic mobster behavior. It’s not enough that he successfully bullied Maine’s Department of Education into complying with a spiteful, cruel, unconstitutional executive order. It’s not enough that he used the government of the United States of America to embarrass and punish four trans girl athletes. Trump is now insisting that Gov. Mills must personally grovel to him and humiliate herself before he’ll stop the intimidation. She must kiss the ring so he can feel powerful.

This is what America is now.

EDITORIAL NOTE: It’s no coincidence that the subjects of Trump’s pettiness and vindictiveness are women and girls. It’s baked into the patriarchal system WHICH MUST BE BURNED TO THE FUCKING GROUND. Burn it, gather the ashes, piss on them, douse them in oil and burn them again. Burn it for generations, just to be sure. Burn it burn it burn it. Then bake cookies

in which i get annoyed at success

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I’m trying to find a balance here between honesty and modesty. Here’s the thing: I mostly write short detective fiction. I write with the intent of selling my stories to one or two magazines–Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine or Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.

Why those two? Because when I wrote my first short detective story, I checked to see who published the most prestigious mystery magazines, and the answer was AHMM and EQMM. I figure if you’re going to get rejected, you may as well get rejected by the best.

This is where the honesty and modesty business comes in. I’m a good writer. Not a prolific writer, but a careful, deliberate writer. I’ve sold every story I’ve submitted to those magazines, with one exception (which, of course, I think was an error on their part). When you consider the acceptance rate for those magazines is about 3-4%, that’s a pretty good record. I’ve had stories included in Best Of anthologies, I have a story in Alfred Hitchcock’s 50th Anniversary anthology, I’ve won an Edgar for Best Short Story.

So yeah, I think I’m a good writer, but I don’t have much attachment to the finished product. I’ve written about this before.

Once I finish writing a piece of fiction, I seem to lose all emotional attachment to it. I’ve done what I wanted to do with it, I’ve written the story, and now it’s done. I submit the story to a magazine; they either accept it (and send me a check) or reject it (and send me a rejection letter), but that’s their job. My job is over. Time to do something else. The finished story is old news; it just doesn’t seem very important anymore.

So it’s been a weird experience for me to get frustrated over a story that’s actually been accepted. Here’s what happened. I wrote a story, submitted it, didn’t think about it for a few months. I finished writing another story and was getting ready to submit it, which reminded me I hadn’t heard back about the other story (I submitted that story to the other magazine). This was last October. I wrote the editor, asking for an update.

The update? “We like your story and want to buy it.” BUT there was some corporate issues which prevented them from issuing contracts; I was asked if I could be patient for a few weeks while they got the issue settled? I said yes, of course. In mid-December I got an email saying I should get a contract “in the next 2-3 weeks.” I was fine with that. Then on 1/2/25, I was told “your story is at the top of the list for when we can request contracts again.” On 1/24/25, I got an email saying, “you can expect a contract in mid February.”

No, this old photo isn’t how I write; just how I feel at the moment.

Mid-February came; no contract. It was annoying, not just because the contract was taking so long, but because for the first time, I felt emotionally involved in the product. It pissed me off that I cared about the story as a product. I told myself, “It’s just a story. It’s just words in a row. It’s just something I made up. I should be happy that somebody somewhere wants to give me actual money for sitting in a room and making shit up.”

A couple of weeks ago, I learned that the company that publishes those two magazines (and also publishes two of the best known science fiction magazines) had been purchased by another company. That explained the long delay in the contract. But I was still frustrated and annoyed.

So this morning, five fucking months after I was told the magazine wanted to buy my story, I wrote a polite email to the editor saying how much I’ve appreciated working with the staff of the magazine, but that this long delay was a shabby way to treat writers. I said I wanted to withdraw the submission.

I didn’t send the email. Why? Because, as I said earlier, I’m a careful, deliberate writer; I wanted to re-read it and make sure it was correct before I sent it. And I went to the gym.

While I was at the gym, I got an email with the contract.

That should settle the issue, right? But I’m sitting here, still annoyed as fuck. Partly because the email came from a different editor (what happened to the woman I’m used to dealing with?), partly because of the long delay, partly because this contract pays half on acceptance and half on publication (all the previous contracts paid on acceptance), and partly because goddamnit goddamnit goddamnit, I don’t know I’m just pissed.

The rational part of me says, “Just sign the damned thing and take the coin.” It says, “Don’t fuck up a relationship with a magazine that’s been good to me.” It says, “Give the new people a chance to get their shit together.” The irrational part of me wants to reject the contract because goddamnit goddamnit goddamnit, I don’t know I’m just pissed.

I’m also aware that a LOT of my anger is displaced fury at what’s going on in the US right now. I’m not used to being angry. I hate it. But here we are.

And the thing is, I KNOW what I’m going to do. I’m not in this for the money (nobody who writes short fiction is in it for the money, but being offered an extra US$700+ for sitting in a room and making shit up…well, that’s nice and it’ll buy a few eggs.

But goddamnit anyway.

no longer unthinkable

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Here’s a terrifying thing that’s almost certainly going to happen. At some point in the not-too-distant future, SCOTUS is going to be forced to decide on the limits (if any) of Comrade Trump’s authority. I don’t know what the issue will be. Maybe it’ll be about marriage equality, maybe about immigration or birthright citizenship, maybe about his authority to dismantle entire federal agencies without Congressional approval.

But at some point, THIS IS GOING TO HAPPEN. SCOTUS and POTUS will face off with the Constitution on the line. Maybe SCOTUS will just give up and agree Trump is king/dictator. That’s horrifying, but possible. But they may also rule there are limits to his authority. I like to think that’s more likely (but then I didn’t think it was likely that Trump would be re-elected, so what do I know?).

The question is this: what will happen when Trump ignores SCOTUS? Because he almost certainly will. I’m just going to remind you that SCOTUS has no power to enforce its rulings. In fact, the entire judicial branch of government at every level–municipal, county, state, and federal–depends on the executive branch of government to enforce its decisions. When a judge says, “Do this thing,” it falls to law enforcement agencies (which are part of the executive function of governance) to see that the thing is done.

But what happens if/when the court says, “Do this” and the executive branch says, “Nope”? What happens if/when the Supreme Court of the United States says, “Do this” and the President of the United States says, “Nope”?

Let’s say, for example, that Comrade Trump issues an executive order ending birthright citizenship and further orders people born in the US to immigrant parents be deported. Let’s also say SCOTUS rules those orders are clearly unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, which states, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” And finally, let’s say Trump says, “Yeah, I’m deporting them anyway” and follows through on that.

What happens?

There aren’t many remedies. The 25th Amendment of the Constitution allows VPOTUS and the Cabinet to remove POTUS if he’s “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” But what if he’s just unwilling to do his duty? And what if the Cabinet agrees with POTUS (which, after all, is exactly why he picked those corrupt fucks)? The 25th Amendment assumes a Cabinet comprised of people with integrity and a firm belief in representative democracy. We don’t have one of those. So what else can be done?

There’s impeachment by the House of Representatives and conviction by the Senate, which would remove POTUS from office. But how likely is that? There’s also the 2028 election. But even if there’s a free and fair election, we know Trump is unlikely to willingly leave office.

That’s basically it. Those are essentially the only legal options if POTUS defies SCOTUS. The less-than-legal options? A military coup. Citizen rebellion, insurrection, revolution. Before the 2024 election, these would have been unthinkable. Now…who knows?

Let’s say Trump refuses to follow a decision by SCOTUS. What happens? I can see mass protests by citizens. I can see Trump ordering US troops to help state and local law enforcement to suppress those protests. I can see him ordering them to fire on protesters. I can see some commanders/troops refusing to follow those illegal orders.

Again, such a scenario was unthinkable a few months ago. Now it seems possible. Now it seems almost inevitable. Because Trump IS assaulting the US Constitution. And SCOTUS will eventually have to deal with that. And IF they rule against Trump, it’s exceedingly likely he’ll ignore them and do whatever the fuck he wants.

And if he ignores them…well, then. Here we are.

a long history of betrayal

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To folks who are surprised by Comrade Trump’s betrayal of Ukraine, I’d just remind you that he has a history of betraying US allies to the benefit of Russia. Let’s start back in 2019.

After Kurdish forces helped the US to dismantle the ISIS regime, Trump casually betrayed them. Something like 11,000 Kurdish men and women died fighting against ISIS. With ISIS largely destroyed, Turkey, who had their own problems with Kurdish forces, wanted to invade northeast Syria and attack the Kurds. A thousand or so US troops were in the way. Trump decided to withdraw the US troops, saying, “We never agreed to protect the Kurds for the rest of their lives.”

Hundreds of thousands of Kurdish civilians were displaced; hundreds were killed by Turkish forces. A few days later, Vladimir Putin announced Russia had made a pact with Turkey to take joint control of the Kurdish territory. Russian troops moved in and took command of the abandoned US military bases in Syria. A month later, Trump held a White House reception for Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, thanked him for the job he’d done in Syria and called himself “a big fan” of Erdoğan.

And don’t forget, a year later, in 2020, US intelligence agencies reported that Russia was offering/paying bounties to Taliban-linked militants in Afghanistan for attacking and killing coalition forces—including both US and British troops. Members of both political parties (not quite ALL the GOP had gone full MAGA-brained back then) insisted Trump raise holy hell with Russia and demand the bounties stop.

Trump did…nothing. Wait, not true. Trump 1) invited Putin to visit the US and stay at a Trump-owned property, 2) decided, after a call with Putin, to pull US troops out of NATO partner Germany, 3) suggested Russia should be reinstated in the G7 summit (a suggestion which other G7 nations soundly rejected), 4) refused to implement measures to combat Russian interference in the 2020 presidential election, 5) worked with Putin and Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed Bin Salman (who, let’s not forget, had a Washington Post reporter kidnapped, killed, and dismembered) to raise oil prices (which benefited US oil companies while raising prices of gasoline for consumers), 6) had his Department of Justice drop criminal charges against the Russian citizens and firms that criminally interfered with the 2016 election, and 7) had his DOJ drop charges against his former National Security Advisor who’d twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his interaction with Russian intelligence services.

Now, of course, he’s betraying Ukraine. Again. Remember, Trump’s first impeachment was grounded in his attempt to lean on President Zelenskyy. He tried to coerce the recently elected Zelenskyy into conjuring up some dirt on Joe Biden’s son by withholding missiles which Congress had already authorized. Trump wasn’t even very subtle about it; it was basically flat out mob-style extortion.

This time he’s betraying Ukraine while claiming to negotiate a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia. Negotiating, my ass. This is what he expects from Ukraine:

  1. for Zelenskyy to apologize for not being grateful enough to him personally,
  2. to agree that Russia can keep the territory it illegally acquired in the invasion,
  3. to agree never to join NATO,
  4. to accept all that WITHOUT any guarantee of security in case Russia decides to end a cease fire.

This is what Trump expects from Russia:

  1. the US will lift sanctions against the government of Russia
  2. the US will lift sanctions against specific Russian citizens and oligarchs.

That’s it. Essentially, Comrade Trump wants to ‘negotiate’ Russia’s victory. He’s openly serving Russian interests. He has no interest in the welfare of Ukraine, or Europe, or humanity in general. He has no interest in democracy; to be fair, I don’t think he has any real interest in fascism either. Trump’s only real interests are in getting and keeping power, and punishing his detractors.

EDITORIAL NOTE: Trump doesn’t just betray US allies; he betrays everyone. His fellow Republicans, his business partners, his charities, his clients, his wives. In a very real way, I don’t think we can say Trump has betrayed the US, but only because he was never loyal to the US to begin with. He’s never been loyal to anything or anybody.

five things

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Name five (5) things you accomplished this week in support of the agenda of President Comrade Donald J. Trump.

  1. Further dismantled the US government’s ability to govern itself by summarily firing several thousand random federal employees.
  2. Played 18 at Trump Doral in Miami and 18 at Trump International in Palm Beach. Scores not reported, but probably best ever.
  3. Abandoned role as global leader in democracy and open aligned the US government with noted Communist dictator Vlad Putin (assisted by that bearded guy who’s always hanging around).
  4. Had a public temper tantrum when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy failed to thank me enough. He also refused to thank my buddy Vlad Putin. Nobody would even know this Zelenskyy guy’s name if not for Vlad. He owes a lot to Vlad.
  5. Attended a presidential cabinet meeting hosted by Elon Musk, who said he fixed that thing where he accidentally stopped preventing ebola for a while. Is that right, ebola? I thought that was the way colored people spoke. I mean the Blacks.
“Look, all I want is for you to thank me, preferably on your knees, like that bearded guy does.”

Extra credit: The S&P 500 and the NASDAQ fell for the second week in a row as tariff threats escalated again and US government bonds fell to their lowest levels in nearly three months.

you have to be there

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The question came up again today. “Is there a relationship between the way you write and the way you shoot photographs?” Somebody asked me a similar question a couple of years ago, and this was my response:

My response was pretty simple: Never thought about it. And then, of course, I started thinking about it.

And, of course, since the question came up again, I started thinking about it again. The last time I was asked the question (yeah, I actually had to go back and find that blog post and re-read it to know how I responded last time), I focused on writing and photography as matters of craft. I said they were two very different crafts, and…

[W]hile writing and photography are both vehicles for self-expression, they’re completely different vehicles. Asking if me if I write the same way I shoot photos is like asking me if I drive a truck the same way I paddle a kayak.

That’s still true. But this morning it occurred to me that there’s another fundamental difference between the two crafts. It’s this:

Photography is the only medium of self expression that requires you to be physically present.

You can paint a picture of a house on the edge of a mountain meadow without being there. You can write a scene that takes place in 17th century Venice or on the planet Tralfamadore. You can dance the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy without being in an enchanted garden. But to shoot a photograph, you have to be there. (Yeah, sure, you can set up a tripod and rig some sort of timed or remotely triggered shutter release, but c’mon, you know what I mean.)

I can write anywhere. To shoot a photo, I have to be there. Right there, at that precise spot in that precise moment. Five seconds earlier, five seconds later, it’s a different moment. Five inches higher, five inches to the right, it’s a different photo. When you shoot a photo, you’re right there.

This isn’t to say photography is more real, or more powerful. I could write a scene…or, better yet, a poem…about the way light falls on a coffee cup that would be as emotional or more emotional than a photo. I could write a scene about a man crossing a street as the light is ten seconds away from turning green that would be full of tension.

A photograph is just now. That both limits its power AND gives it power. A photograph is a real moment as it’s happening.

I hear a lot of people saying stuff like, “This photo tells a story.” No, it doesn’t. A story has a beginning, an ending, and a middle. Again, a photograph is just right now. It might suggest a story, but it’s the viewer who supplies it. It’s not inherent in the photo. A story is what’s taking place outside the frame, what the guy is looking at, why he’s looking, what he’s NOT seeing. A story is what’s in his pockets, what he’s thinking, where he’s going, where’s he’s been, what he did when he was there.

The photo is just a guy with his hands in his pocket, crossing the street while the Don’t Walk warning is flashing.

Back to the question. “Is there a relationship between the way you write and the way you shoot photographs?” Sort of. They both require practice to be consistently good, they both require a certain degree of disciplined composition, they both require a weird merging of passion and control. And (for me, at least), both writing and photography require me to be open and welcoming to the moment. Sometimes a random thought will completely change what I’m writing.

The difference is I can edit and correct what I’ve written. Reality isn’t so easily revised.

EDITORIAL NOTE: This isn’t really relevant to what I’ve just written, but it’s been a while since I’ve mentioned how critical it is to burn the patriarchy to the ground. Burn it, gather the ashes, grind the ashes into dust. Wait for a high wind then scatter the dust so that no two particles exist within a mile of each other. Then bake some bread and eat it with butter and honey.

recruited?

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Over the last couple of days I’ve seen a few social media posts and online articles repeating a claim made by Alnur Mussayev, the former head of Kazakhstan’s National Security Committee. In the British tabloid The Mirror, Mussayev wrote: “In 1987, our directorate recruited Donald Trump under the pseudonym Krasnov.”

I don’t believe that. I simply don’t believe Comrade Donald Trump was recruited to be a Russian intelligence agent. Part of my objection is semantic; recruitment involves getting folks to enlist–which literally means to sign your name on a list. I don’t believe ANY intelligence services in ANY nation would consider enlisting Trump as an intelligence agent. He’s not qualified to be an agent. He simply doesn’t have the skills, the temperament, or intelligence to be an agent.

No intelligence service would recruit this smug, self-satisfied, duplicitous fuckwit.

On the other hand, he’s an ideal intelligence asset. An asset is just a person (or a thing) that can be used to gather or disseminate information that might be useful to an intelligence service. An ideal human intelligence asset is somebody who is 1) easily manipulated through intimidation or flattery, 2) gullible and/or ignorant, 3) vulnerable to various forms of kompromat, 4) impulsive, 5) immoral or amoral, and 6) has access to useful information and/or can serve as a conduit for misinformation/disinformation. As an intelligence asset, Comrade Trump is a whole protein–he contains all the essential ingredients.

I totally believe Trump has been a Russian intelligence asset for decades. I absolutely believe Trump has knowingly served Russian geo-political interests. It’s indisputable that Russia engaged in coordinated disinformation campaigns to help get Trump elected, both in 2016 and in 2024. Back in 2021, The Guardian published a report stating the newspaper had possession of a Kremlin report of a 2016 meeting between Putin and his senior intelligence ministers outlining an intelligence operation to help Trump become POTUS. They felt electing Trump (who is described as an “impulsive, mentally unstable and unbalanced individual who suffers from an inferiority complex”) would “definitely lead to the destabilisation of the US’s sociopolitical system.”

And hey, bingo. Look at us now. You know Vlad Putin is a happy boy.

Even before his 2016 election, Trump was promoting Russian interests. Remember, when candidate Trump’s team established the GOP party platform for the 2016 election, the ONLY change they made was to weaken support for Ukraine’s defense. The original GOP platform promised to “provide lethal defensive weapons to the Ukrainian government” in response to Russia’s invasion of Crimea and their ongoing attempt to militarily annex the Donbas region. Trump’s people had that strong anti-Russia language removed (at the insistence of Paul Manafort, who was Trump’s campaign manager at the time AND who, according to the Mueller Report, made at least US$75 million for supporting Russian interests in Ukraine).

Now that he’s been re-elected, Trump is more openly supporting Russia and Russian interests. He may not have actually been recruited as an agent back in the 1980s, but there’s little doubt that he has now enlisted in the service of Russia.

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.