Yes It Is Beginning, Another End Times Laugh Riot Week

 Yet Another Barking Rant

John Currin,  Park City Grill  (2000)

There is an inbred,

genetic-template look for these people.

This post feels incomplete; unconnected observations thrown up at the wall -- spitballing, as it were -- about the omnipotent, they-are-always-with-us Rich. You may think this is low-hanging fruit, but it's not. It's a reminder.

If this blog's observations had any impact in the public discussion of serious issues, then this post might be seen as having more meaning. But, it's just unsourced opinion by one individual with no agency beyond their own existence. 

I am as singular, and no more important than, any of the dead discovered at Pompeii whose names we'll never know. We can see what their last moments must have been -- but all the events and actions and experiences in their lives are unknown, lost.

Some of my observations offered will, in all probability, cause the few readers of this blog to say yeah okay, Boomer; eyeroll, whatever the fuck, but this is life here in downtown Earth. Be well.

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Bring My Car And Be Quick, You Dirty Little Proles

Amazingly prescient: If you haven't read this novel (1986), please do so. 

I'll just say it: American and Western society is essentially owned by a vicious, arrogant layer of wealth. Call them the 0.001 % -- principally Old Wealth, maintained in the same families for generations. I have been around these folk (almost married into a branch of one of those families) and they are just as stereotypical as characters from a comedy-of-manners film, dropped into Real Life. It's uncanny.

They do not know how to build a fire, use basic tools, make coffee, set up a tent or cook a filet of sole; they hire others to do that sort of thing. They scream at domestic servants or gardeners as things, barely even human. They are inbred, culturally; they are cruel and voracious, and they truly exist.

They own multiple homes, in neighborhoods which, if you don't live in them, you'd better have a verifiable reason to be there. They move in a cyclical progression from home to home, with seasonal vacations at resorts and private hotels.

John Currin,  Stamford After Brunch  (2000)

Most of these families know (or are at least aware of) each other. They are supported by the same circles of accountants, financial and investment advisors, personal assistants, tax and estate attorneys, physicians and surgeons, tailors, gardeners, chefs and valets. They walk in comfort and anonymity along the same private, manicured paths as their families have done for generations.

Their children attend a tight circle of preparatory schools, and enter certain European and American universities as Legacies. Eventually, they will slide into sinecures at law and investment firms. They are members of clubs we wouldn't be allowed to join. Typically, these children intermarry.

Within their class, maintaining their family's financial fortunes is the critical priority. There's also a certain amount of competition between players, a jockeying for position: It's Edith Wharton and John Cheever with a touch of Voltaire, an essence of films like "The Discrete Charm Of The Bourgeoise", The Ruling Class, or 'Reversal Of Fortune'. 

That competition plays out in odd ways -- like, bidding against each other to possess a specific, classic piece of art, or owning the largest yacht / private jet / media company; or, building a family bunker and compound in New Zealand, or purchasing a Hawaiian island. 

Jeremy Irons and Glenn Close as Claus and Sunny von Bulow

In "Reversal Of Fortune" (1990)

They tolerate the Zucks, the Musks, the Jobs' and Bezos' and Thiels and Andreesens; all the Tech Bro billionaires, as nouveau riche arrivistes; pool boys, waiters and office workers who somehow struck it rich. Not the right sort -- no history, no breeding- -- but, they can afford to live well, and, if the past is any guide, within a few generations their money will disappear. Or, they'll eventually become accepted, part of the Class.

And they have serious class solidarity: depend on it.  Even when Claus von Bülow appeared to have attempted to murder his wife --  members of his class might disapprove, but they would never show that to the rest of society. They would "support the side" against a greater mass of humanity: We are the Owners, and Fuck You Peasants (see 'The Draughtsman's Contract').

Our Fabled Wealthy don't wait in line, don't submit to passport control or customs checks. They aren't required to appear in court for all but the most serious charges (if they appear at all, even then). They are not accountable under any law in the same way, or to the same extent, that you or I are.

Collectively, they believe that they own us -- whether we accept it, or not. They believe in the age-old Puritan assumption (as fundamental to the beginnings of America as slavery), that their wealth is proof that they are the Elect of god. They will rise to heaven on the Day Of Judgement and spend eternity in a wonderful softness, with many Treats: Of course.

They also believe in the corollary to that assumption -- that poverty, people who are poor, are disfavored by god. God made them poor. And because of that, on the Big Day 'O Judgement, they will burn in Hell.

Our Fabled Wealthy believe this (or some version of it), as surely as they accept the basics of Newtonian physics. It is axiomatic for them. Oh, ayuh.

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You Are Pwned -- A Dream Coda

Years ago, I had a dream which stands out in memory -- because I don't often dream with details that I recall so completely. 

I was some kind of mountaineering guide, taking wealthy persons up ... not Everest, but some similar peak. I was "inside" myself in this dream (sometimes dreams allow you see yourself in 'camera view'), looking out on a snow-covered slope -- a right triangle of pure white, from upper left to lower right -- against a sky of deep Cobalt blue.

A man in his late twenties / early 30's stood a few feet in front of me, wearing an orange parka with the hood pulled back. He had a light stubble of beard, curly, reddish-blonde hair, and wore a pair of aviator-style sunglasses. He was completely at ease, smiling, and spoke with an accent (French, I knew, in that telepathic way of dreams). He wasn't arrogant in his delivery, but matter-of-fact, as if describing the weather.

"I will tell you how it is," he said. "My family is thirteen hundred years old. One of my ancestors was  knighted by Charlemagne. We've survived plagues, wars, financial collapse, revolutions, occupation. We've had our black sheep, our idiots -- but mostly, we have made fortunes and passed them down to the next generation. We've been good at it, and lucky. We live very well.

"If you can't trace your family back more than a few generations? I don't care. You've always worked for pay -- but maybe you get lucky, win some lottery, and your children inherit that money? I don't care. In one, maybe two generations, it will be gone, absorbed into banks, financial houses, and by taxes. Perhaps my family owns some of those financial houses.

"We own forests and mines. We own companies" -- he waved at me with one hand -- "Maybe you have even worked for us. But some day, you will be dead, and that will be the end for you. Your name will be forgotten, as if you and everyone in your family line before you had never existed. My family will still be here. Many recognize our name. No one knows who you are.

"If that's unhappy for you, or if it makes you angry, I don't care," he said, and smiled again. "And that is how things are."

Fantasy Singalong With Big Bird At End Of Blog Rant

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Welcome To Your Midsummer Shuffling Of Deck Chairs In Third Class

 It Can't Happen Here Until It Does

(A near-annual posting -- originally From 2016, before the Trump-Time.)

Given a time machine, if there is any single event in modern history I would travel back to and attempt to prevent, it would be the killing of the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary in the Balkan city of Sarajevo at approximately Noon on June 28, 1914. It triggered the First World War -- and the Second, and the First Cold War - now, the Second - a fractured, tribal Middle East, and a rising, hungry China.

How this moment in history occurred seems unbelievable -- a string of events, choices made by its participants, all happening in just the right order and the right moment. If it was part of the plot in a novel or film, you might say Oh that's impossible; that couldn't happen. But it did. And its echo is still resonating over a century later.

The Archduke and his wife's assassination was a 'Black Swan', rara avis moment which pulled out multiple threads that led to a collapse of the Old World of the nineteenth century -- though what the event triggered had been boiling for some time. It's how history works. 

After eleven years of Trump, a worldwide pandemic, and the American Experiment in danger of being snuffed out by an armed, imbecilic 'christian' mob, we're still feeling the impact of what was set in motion on a street in Sarajevo that day in late June, 1914.

Sarajevo has a large number of unowned dogs living in the city. 

Here, Cousin Ignatz, Asleep At Princip's Post: Sarajevo, 2014 (Matthew Fisher / Postmedia News)

112 years ago today, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, the Grand Duchess Sophie, were shot by Gavrillo Princip, a member of an assassination team sent to the Bosnian city by the government of Serbia.

Collectively, the team was the gang which couldn't shoot straight: armed with crude grenades, a few pistols, and carrying some form of suicide pill, they waited along the route Franz Ferdinand's car would take as it drove beside the Miljacka river, which cuts through Sarajevo (local Austro-Hungarian authorities had helpfully published the Archduke's route beforehand).

Most of the team either was poorly positioned, or chickened out at the last moment.  One conspirator did throw a bomb at the Archduke's car -- which bounced off its folded-back fabric top and exploded near a second car traveling just behind. Several people in the car had minor injuries and it continued on to a local hospital.

The Archduke's driver, Leopold Lojka, continued to Sarajevo city hall. When Franz Ferdinand arrived, he effectively unloaded on the hapless administrators about the state of their local security ("I come to your city and am greeted with bombs!"). Meanwhile, back at the river, the would-be bomber had jumped into the Miljacka and swallowed his suicide pill -- which he promptly threw up. The police arrested him, barely managing to keep him from being lynched a mob of pro-Austro-Hungarian citizens, and so save him for later trial and execution.

At approximately 12:30 PM, having finally accepted the thanks of the Sarajevo city fathers, Franz Ferdinand and his wife got back into their car, planning to go to the local hospital to see those wounded in the bomb attack that morning. They used the same route, in reverse, that they had taken into the city, driving along the river. But when the Chauffeur, Lojka, came to a particular intersection -- to his left, a street; to the right, a bridge over the Miljacka river -- he was confused.

 The Royal Couple (Seated, At Rear) Leaving City Hall: Fifteen Minutes Left

Believing it to be the route to the hospital, Lojka slowed and turned left.  Almost immediately, he realized he'd made a mistake and stepped on the brakes. The car came to a stop a few yards into the street, and Lojka moved to put it in reverse gear.

 The Intersection of Kaiser Franz Josefstrasse and Appel Quay Road, 2014: 

The Archduke's Car Turned Left, Up This Street;
The Restaurant Where Princip Bought Lunch, Now A Museum (Photo: CNN)

At that same intersection was a small restaurant. Gavrillo Princip, last member of the Serbian assassination squad, had gone inside to buy a sandwich, angry and dejected after the team's failure that morning. Standing on the sidewalk outside the cafe, he saw a large, dark-green automobile turn out of the boulevard and come to a stop directly in front of him. 

In the rear seat were the Archduke and his wife. The heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne had been delivered, less than ten feet away, from an armed assassin who had come to the city specifically to kill him. 

Consider: every event that had to happen, like a string of dominoes falling, to bring everything together to allow this moment to happen. Again, if you were writing a novel or screenplay, anything that coincidental would be branded as implausible. Impossible. No one's gonna believe that.

Princip didn't hesitate. He dropped his sandwich, pulled a pistol out of his jacket and stepped towards the car, firing several shots, managing to mortally wound both the Archduke and his wife. Lojka, the driver, was ordered to rushed the royal couple to the local military governor's residence. Sophie died on the way. A military officer in the car, checking on the Archduke's condition, asked the wounded man how he was; Ferdinand said, "Nichts (It's nothing)", and died.

Just over a month later, Europe was at war. Over the next four-plus years, the entire social fabric of the continent and much of the world changed irrevocably. Monarchies ended; millions died; the map of the world changed as the victors annexed territory from Germany and Austria Hungary, and new countries were created. New technology was developed -- and, in the Versailles Treaty, the groundwork was laid for a second, even more horrible war to begin by 1939.

(And, in 1918-19, the Spanish Influenza infected 500 million people, killing 40 million, worldwide. It was the largest number of fatalities due to pandemic disease since the 'Black Death': the coming of  Bubonic Plague to Europe in the 14th century [which killed an estimated 200 million].  In the U.S., millions were made sick, and 675,000 died [0.6-plus per cent of America's population at the time, 103 million]. It's often referred to as the "forgotten epidemic" -- just one more terrible event in an ocean of violence and atrocity.)

 Cousin Ignatz, Worn Out By All The History

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Why the history lesson? We're living through history. When we read about events in Europe during the Interwar Years (1918 - 1939), there's a feeling of being slowly pulled down into a drain of inevitability -- revolving-door failures of parliamentary governments in France; Britian's declining empire; the manic Totentanz of global capital leading to 1929; the rise and fall of Weimar. Italian, German and Japanese fascism. The Russian revolution, civil war, and mass murder of Stalin's dictatorship; the terror. The Spanish civil war. 

Like the story of the Titanic or the Hindenburg, we know where the story is going. We know it will end in Nanking, Kristalnacht, Dunkirk; Auschwitz; Stalingrad; the Warsaw Ghetto; D-Day; the Führerbunker; Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But you read about the years leading up to all that with a mounting sense of horror, because we all know how it ends.

Labour is trying to hang on in the UK and defeat the New Right; the Scots still wonder about independence; Nigel dreams of being the Trump of Britain. Putin dreams of grinding Ukraine under a bootheel. China bides its time. The Middle East continues a slow-motion atrocity: Gaza, Iran, the Gulf. Europe boils. Climate deterioration is not fake news.

America, ruled by Babbitry, greed and rabid delusion, retreats from the world stage; its leader is Bloated, Sick, and Raving, focused on being The Great Leader, surrounded by car-wash dilettantes -- and no one seems to be able to do much about it. 

And no matter how you want to characterize it, there's a confrontation -- between those who want a globalist neoliberal world (organized around the goals of international finance and business, together with the most powerful nation-state actors), and those who don't. The balances in the old alliances created after WWII have all but unraveled.  Kleiner Mann; Was Nun?

Hope you're not looking for an answer here. I am, after all, only a Dog, and no one listens to me.

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Reprint Heaven: Holiday Update For Third-Class Passengers

 We Had A Good Run 
[From November 27, 2024, prior to the arrival of The Monsters; slightly edited.]

I've noticed a binary spectrum developing -- with friends; commentors and analysts in the media -- about the arrival of the nazis in January. It's one perspective, or another; there's not much middle ground.

One Perspective: Things won't be as bad as you think. "You got a lot of hyperbole going, there -- and and and and; y'know, that kind of thinking is; well it's just not helpful, that thinking. You're frightening people, you're scaring people. You know that? Scaring them. And no matter how much you hate the Trump people, don't call them nazis. That's an incorrect use of the term -- and why don't you capitalize 'nazi', as a Noun? Thought you knew better. Look: You're being a downer. It's a difficult time; if you can't be supportive, just shut up. Shut up."

The Other Perspective: It is exactly as bad as you think (a group that includes Mary Trump, who is in a position to know whether her uncle is a fascist and dead serious, or not). It's tough, playing Cassandra in a room full of people who want any reason to feel less afraid. And, Things could be even worse than you imagine.

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Down But Not Out

So, I'll just say it: The United States of America we know is past, but not gone. It's in transition -- we don't know where we will end up, or when; but the United States which existed between 1945 and January 20th, 2017, is absolutely over. Our place as the arbiter of the World Order is over. In the past eleven months, our horizons about America have been pulled back to the limit of our own borders -- and ultimately that's not only good but necessary.

The long, persistent idea of The American Nation still exists -- the one backed by the Constitution, that we studied in school; chronicled by Ken Burns in so many films; the place where we and our families were born, lived; the nation we volunteered (or were drafted) to serve; the place we counted on to be there every morning when we woke up  -- because here, there were rules. Most of us were Safe.

But, 'Safe' depends upon your race, gender, economics; choices; your place in the pecking order of society. George Floyd was not safe. Matthew Shepard, Jazzlyn Johnson, Pauly Likens were not safe. The children at Sandy Hook were not safe.

The children abused by the team doctor at Ohio State, or in Catholic churches across America, were not safe. The families of Flint, Michigan (still) drinking lead-tainted water were not safe. And the families evicted from homes they could no longer afford in the 2008 Crash, or Covid twelve years later, were not Safe.

Even so -- in other societies, other countries, there might be armed troops in the streets; identification checkpoints. The press may be censored, muzzled. Mail and communications, monitored. Warrantless searches or raids on homes; arrest and imprisonment, or worse, for opposing the government. 

But in America, we had a Constitution. Our history rested on being a nation of laws. Until, we weren't.

Mistah Kurtz, He Crazy

We've always had crazy politicians -- but they were fringe, cartoonish characters, creeping around in the margins. The people we elected to keep America on an even keel (and stay out of our hair) spouted typical Democratic or Republican nonsense. 

But they would never allow The United States to become unstable and unpredictable, like those dreck countries in Asia or Africa, or dictatorships like Russia or China; North Korea. 

This was the United States of America, for fuck's sake; we're better than that. Until, we weren't. 

49% of people casting a ballot in the 2024 election voted for a demagogue. A fascist.

He told everyone during the campaign what he would do, and showed everyone (as if the previous nine years weren't already proof) who he is. People voted for him with full knowledge: This is what Trump is, and they did it anyway.

49% of the United States put a gun to our collective head -- grinning a manic grin, shouting MAGA !!! MY LIFE FOR YOUUUUUUU !!!! -- and pulled the trigger.

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Pass The Last Of The Schadenfreude, Please

As you sit down with family and friends over the holidays -- consider all the other people in past history who suspected they were on the edge of ... something -- catastrophe, collapse; war; oppression; penury; mass suffering: Peasants of Europe before the Hundred Years' or Thirty Years' wars; the Irish before the Famine; the French before financial collapse and Revolution; the Weimar Germans on Christmas Eve and over Hannukah in December, 1932. They gathered together anyway.

And now, We, The People.  Us.  On the edge of... we don't yet know.

Americans sat down to Thanksgiving on Tuesday, November 20th, in 1941. On the 26th, by proclamation, President Franklin D. Roosevelt established Thanksgiving as a national holiday.

Eleven days later, Japanese carriers reached their designated positions northwest of the Hawaiian Islands and launched the attack on Pearl Harbor.

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"Trumplandia, 'Tis For Thee"

So, our country, with its long and fabled history, much bad and some good, has come to the end of this phase in our national story. That America did not exist after Noon on January 20th, 2025. "The United States" in future is just a label.

Its new Owners should call it Trumplandia, because its government doesn't stand for anything but the twisted, unquenchable greed, violent misogyny and narcissism which will run our lives, until it doesn't.

Someone once noted that the American Story is one cliffhanger episode after another. The Great Depression was an example: the worst financial collapse in U.S. history. It could have been the end of our Constitutional Republic -- but, at the last minute, we got FDR. It was the New Deal, and a global war, which lifted America out of it. 

So, Our Story remains: How will they get out of this one? And, What next?

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Leave The Hopeism At Home, Yo

We have never had a dictator become President, not to mention controlling both Houses of Congress and a majority of That Court, before. Never in America have our politics -- our very lives -- been so openly and cynically manipulated by technology. Never have so few arrogant theocrats and technocrats spent billions of dollars so openly, to force their desires on so many.

Democrats, the political Left, are pushing back. Citizens will fight. It may be possible that this is a terrible, four-year, seminal period which America will emerge from battered but wiser -- as if struck with a terrible disease and surviving.  It may be that We, The People, endure, fucked over as usual by wealth and power, but that in the end We Get Out Of This One. Maybe. 

We seem to have so much stacked against Us, The People. One thing is true: The shared idea of a nation we've had to carry us this far is going to have to fundamentally change when and if we come through this. That is the transition I mentioned earlier. We can't be what we were before; so what will America become? 

The bullying, the lying and violent greed of the Right needs to be kicked to the curb -- but Neoliberal Happytalk and Hopeism on the Left won't work, either.

When you have this very technocratic, 'Third Way' neoliberal approach, and sprinkle in some anti-corporate, anti-billionaire populism... then you're a rudderless ship. You're not communicating what you are about -- and when you don't have a North Star every single person can point to and say, 'this is what the party is about', then your enemies can portray you as whatever they want.

       --  Hasan Piker, 'Pod Save America'; November 27, 2024

America can't be ruled by a dictatorship -- whether by an individual, or the Proletariat. It isn't the way in our Culture-- as opposed to our Society, which changes more rapidly and dynamically.

Perhaps we need to experience a cruel and vicious politics, the lawless application of brute force from the faceless ICE and CBP thugs. Perhaps we need the experience of feeling unsafe in our own land, so that We, The People will reject it -- now, and ever again. 

Yesterday, they were ruffians / Today, they control our lives /

Tomorrow, they will be the keepers of the public lavatories.

--  Juvenal

Trump and his toadies, the pack of Billionaire tech Bros, do not care about you, or me, or anyone but themselves. America is their social engineering laboratory, now -- and they are literally drunk, gibbering with delight at their power. Americans, as Eeelon said, will "endure hardships". Oh, they can't wait.

I've been rereading various histories of France under the Occupation. I'd recommend it.

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It reminds me of the 1993 film from a Steven King novel, Needful Things: The devil (Max von Sydow) comes to Castle Rock, Maine, opens an antiques / curios shop, and in selling various enchanted items to town residents, sets them murderously against each other. It ends in chaos, flames; madness and death. "Hey," Lucifer tells J. T. Walsh, who calls to confess he's just killed his wife, "These things happen."

There's a scene where von Sydow, his face a manic grin, grips his hands together -- shaking with glee as he literally feeds on the energy of the evil he's set in motion; 'Ave Maria' plays in the background. A few townspeople, including the police chief (Ed Harris), fight back. Castle Rock is ravaged; people are dead, shaken, the damage done; but the devil is finally forced to leave.

Von Sydow's Satan -- Looking Very Much Like Good Ol' Fred Trump

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Shaking with glee at their perceived power: We are standing at the precipice of a possible war in South America. Trump and his lackeys keep telegraphing that they want an excuse to broadly crack down against the hated Libs, the People of Color, the immigrant and the stranger. The No Kings rallies, the results of the November elections, polling results show the majority of Americans reject Trump, reject Maga.

Perhaps at this moment, Trump deteriorating in front of the cameras and determined to grip power with a bruised claw of a hand, is the Zenith of The Right's power -- that it all begins to fall apart for them from here. There's no way we can avoid what they intend to do. 

The seeds of their eventual failure may be sowed now; it can be a comforting prospect. Earlier today, I heard Mary Trump telling Molly Jong-Fast, "We'll get through this".  Maybe. 

Lee Miller's photo of a local nazi leader and family, having committed suicide, 1945;

One can only hope this is the future of our Fabled Leaders

We'll see.

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It Is Really That Simple

We Don't Know How Long We Have

What is the cost of lies? It's not that we'll mistake them for the truth -- the real danger is that if we hear enough lies, then we no longer recognize the truth at all. Then, what else is left but to abandon even the hope of truth? and content ourselves with stories. In these stories, it doesn't matter who the heroes are -- all we want to know is, who is to blame.

-- Valery Legazov, Soviet Physicist

    Remarks recorded before his death

    Moscow; April 26, 1988

For months, I've been trying to understand the reasoning (if any) behind what The Leader and his Lieutenants -- Mob-Boss style -- have done since January 20th. 

Every act seems to negate basic assumptions Americans make about our society, our place in it, and our potential futures. Musk and his DOGE team took control of databases in critical government departments. It's more than likely he's made copies of the personal data of a majority of the U.S. population. How it gets used, or whom Musk sells it to, is anyone's guess. We aren't told.

The 'Maga' affect financial markets. The Congress they dominate is poised to ram through a single, massive piece of legislation which (among other things) will increase an already huge national debt, and gut critical public health programs -- all to benefit one-one-hundredth of one per cent of our population, in perpetuity.

And, the effects of what Trump and his Lieutenants are doing is global: elimination of food and medical aid programs to foreign countries have resulted in the verified deaths of some 200,000 people, mostly children. So far. 

The bright new Legislation will also fund ICE / DHS -- more agents; more private prisons; more deportation flights and payment to dictators in Central America, North Africa, Eastern Europe for throwing whomever they want into the Grift Gulag.

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For Trump, the Gestapo-style raids, arrests, detentions and associated deportations have been an obsession: Blood and Soil. Over the past week, raids in Los Angeles culminated in federalized and regular military troops being deployed, on Trump's order, on the streets -- the major city of a Blue state. 

This may become the operational prototype for taking the ICE roadshow to other Blue cities. Our military will appear there, too. Eventually, troops sent on the order of The Leader may fire on Americans in their own country.

Why? Why all of this? When does it end; what's the end-state?

As events in L.A. unfolded last weekend, I heard a political analyst on a podcast indirectly ask the same question. They saw Trump's sending troops -- over objections of the Governor, mayor, and the LAPD -- was not to reduce the size of protests and a chance for violence, but dramatically escalate it. It was a deliberate provocation, using military troops with live ammunition.

"Somehow," the analyst concluded, "Republicans feel what they're doing in L.A. around immigration is a political winner for them." Okay, I thought, But that makes no sense. Multiple polls show people don't support the government's immigration actions. There's no political gain in it. So, Why?

Then, it hit me: seen through a historical lens -- politics-as-usual; the United States Of America before January 20th -- then breaking everything, and acting as if they'll face no consequences for what they're doing... makes no sense.

But if their real goal is to remake American society -- a real Bolshevik, Khmer-Rouge, Taliban-style assertion of control, Or Else -- then what they're doing, and how, makes perfect sense. 

The Tell is their blatant lying, the doubling-down; one new outrage after another -- We do what we want because we can -- and shut up, peasants. Since they believe the People have no power, their opinions don't matter. 

ICE / DHS's immigration actions -- 'protecting America from an invasion of criminals' -- are a fiction. They only provide a justification for sending armed soldiers into American cities. What's happening in L.A. has nothing to do with immigration. It's about control. 

And god -- somebody's god, anyway -- help us all in the days to come.

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MEHR, MIT SCHLAG

The individual detained was a veteran, trying to make his VA appointment.

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Your Reichstag Tuesday Recap

 Revere Them As Royalty, As Gods

National Guard Troops

At Los Angeles Civic Center, Federal Building

June 9, 2025 (Daniel Terna / NYT)

                                            "How did you go bankrupt?"

                                            "Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly."

                                                    -- Ernest Hemingway; The Sun Also Rises (1929)

When things happen, they come in a waterfall, a cascade, a torrent. If you haven't been paying attention, they will seem to appear as if by magic, out of nowhere.  But they never do. 

What's unfolding is not a surprise. It's not hyperbole, or an exaggeration. The Leader wants a blood sacrifice on the altar of his madness. His Orcs are working Sir Sir, yes Sir, to manufacture it. 

Every passing day increases the possibility of live rounds being fired, someone dying -- and when that happens, all bets are off. It's what they want.

SFPD Faces Off Against Anti-ICE / Deportation Protesters, 

San Francisco Mission District, June 9, 2025 (Lauren Elliot / NYT)

The Past Is Present, And Tense

Even with everything that's happened since January 20th, convincing people to believe that we're deep into a fascist coup and to do something is hard. And, we've had nearly a decade to understand that what's happening, right now, was coming.

In the long-ago 2021 (via The Soul Of America),  Adolph Reed posted an observation ("The Whole Country Is The Reichstag"):

"The right-wing ... [has] a single concrete objective—taking absolute power in the U.S. as soon and as definitively as possible. And [they] even seemingly want, to destroy the social fabric of the country [in taking power] ...

"Discrediting government ... has been a component of the GOP game plan ..  and Democrats have reinforced [that] in their own way. ...Four decades of retrenchment and privatization ... steadily increasing economic inequality and government’s failure to address it in any meaningful way [fuels a] lack of confidence, distrust, and hostility toward government ... and eventually even the idea of the public itself.  And [Right-wing billionaires who] bankroll the ultraright have taken advantage of that, [stoking] frustration and rage into a dangerously authoritarian political force."

Campaign Commercial For Every Maga Rethug Candidate In 2026 --

Presuming We're Allowed Elections

(Los Angeles Civic Center, June 8, 2025)

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I grew up in the Fifties and Sixties. I believed in our long national Narrative of America as an imperfect country, always trying to Do Better, on a constant upward (and so, of course, liberal) arc into an inevitable future. That this idea looked identical to the post-WW2 economic boom enjoyed by white Americans, and may not have been good for other humans in other places, took time to learn.

National Guardsmen On The Streets Of Newark, NJ; April, 1967

In that Narrative, Watergate, Vietnam; riots every Summer in major American cities, and the National Guard in the streets; Nixon, Reagan, Bush; Forever War -- all could be seen as tragedies, regrettable episodes. So was the political Right. They were a Fringe, on the wrong side of history. The future would belong to a moderate, Liberal culture: always upwards. Of course it would.

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This Will Be On The Exam

Please listen to me when I say this -- and I want to be wrong -- but 50 years later, the children and grandchildren of the Silent Majority, the Birchers and the Klan, are back. 

They're bully-mean in their MAGA caps and January 6, 2021 - Civil War T-Shirts. They see the world through small, piggish eyes, and they hate you.

They Have Pledged Their Lives And Sacred Honor, To This, The Leader

They hate Colored People and Foreigners, and Eggy-heads, and Libs and Gay and Trans People; and them Eee-leets, weak and soft. They think vaccines and science are evil. They love god; yes they do (somebody's god, anyway), and America. But they hate you, and want you to suffer and die. 

America's Owners are delusional, and rich. Very, very rich. They don't like Trump, or the Base, or anyone who isn't part of their class. But they believe in keeping control of things, and expect some... regrettable, drastic measures are necessary. They want the same fate for you that The Base does.

The Base will be manipulated into doing those drastic things -- as people like them have done, time and again. And after the mass arrests, the kangaroo courts (if any), the private prisons filled; the mass graves covered over -- the Base will sing 'Amazing Grace' in celebration of 'god's great victory' over the evil demons they've expunged.

The likelihood this may play out, here in America, is no longer hyperbole. And I'm not the only person saying so. 

Obligatory Cute Small Animal Photo

In Middle Of Fascist Takeover

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I'll Take 'White Nationalist Political Narratives' For A Thousand, Alex

In 2021, author George Packer noted in The Atlantic that America's national narrative, Our Story, is a string of crises -- all leading to 'how we got out of it'. How we overcame and went on to even greater triumph: Upwards, always upwards.

But, Packer said, we don't have one unified Story of America -- we have four. The one chosen by the religious and political Right is that of a beautiful America, stolen from its people by immigrants, noisy and uppity People of Color, Women, Liberals, Socialists; LGBTQ+, and (the Base won't say so out loud, yet) Jews and Muslims and Catholics. 

The issues Trump had campaigned on waxed and waned ...What remained was the dark energy he unleashed... Trump’s people still talked about freedom, but they meant blood and soil. Their nationalism was like the ethno-nationalisms on the rise in Europe ... Trump abused every American institution ... and his people cheered. Nothing excited them like owning the libs.

The beautiful America can only return when these demon-possessed culture-despoilers are destroyed. When our Blood and Land is cleansed and purified. Then all will be good again. 

America's Right has been told to prepare, and plan, for a confrontation -- final, bloody, retributive; like battle on the plains of Armageddon.. Trump's core sycophants -- Miller, Noems and Gabbard, Homan, Patel and Hesgeth -- are using this narrative like a blueprint. It's the logical culmination of forty years of victimhood propaganda and hatred. 

They've tied their fate as human beings to making this happen. It's why there are armed troops in Los Angeles. Something has to happen. It's the story arc of a cheap thriller -- Rising Action, leading to a Cliffhanger Climax; then to a Resolution -- and the ending is inevitable: It's Victory. It's "Owning The Libs".

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You Heard The Fist Here First

In the face of ever-more open corruption and misuse of presidential authority, the Democratic Left is splintered. Democratic leadership is divided at the DNC, and with few exceptions, Congressional leaders seem to focus on how the Right will be judged in the historical record. They send sternly worded letters, and make focus-tested remarks on PBS. 

But it's 2025. This is Crazy Donny 2.0.  American democracy is a store that's being looted right in front of us. It's clear, then, the People must act.  We're human beings, and You Don't Own Us.

The Left needs to come together around popular leadership who gives voice not just to criticism of Crazy Donny and his Lieutenants, but in defining why we're standing up -- a vision that doesn't include the Neoliberal shuck-and-jive of the Clinton and Obama years.  All this shouldn't even be a question.

The Leader, During The 2024 Campaign

The lies and hatred broadcast for forty years by Limbaugh, by the Murdochs and their hand-picked talking heads, are in the "historical record". But the Right thinks: we're Owning The Libs. It is all about the naked use of power, and using that power to enrich yourself.

Los Angeles is a provocation. The situation is like a madman with a gun, who keeps walking towards you while screaming, Don't get any closer!! I'm warnin' ya!! I told ya -- stop comin' at me!!  Finally, he shoots you, shouting, See what you did?? Told ya!! Told ya!! You Libs made me do it!!

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Blood And Soil: The Leader Speaks To The 82nd Airborne, June 7, 2025

 Troops Loudly Cheered Him; Booed Mentions Of Biden And "Gavin Newscum";

Los Angeles... [is] a trash heap... Generations of Army heroes 

did not shed their blood... only to watch our country be destroyed by invasion... 

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City Of Angles

This is playing out in Los Angeles. It's a test:  Crazy Donny and the Rethugs say America is being invaded and that's all he needs to "save" the country through mass ICE raids, no due process, deportations. Protests occur; troops are federalized. How quickly will People normalize military occupation? How quickly will a cowed media downplay coverage of any public protests in response? 

Los Angeles is a crisis, manufactured to fit the political narrative fed to the manipulated Base. It's an excuse for what The Leader and his Lieutenants want -- an America resembling Russia, or North Korea. 

They either have to make that Dystopia real -- to pull the trigger -- or give up their power. I suggest they will burn everything to the ground before they give up anything.

Los Angeles is a scaled-down version of what that vision looks and feels like.  It's a public warning to other state Governors, to ordinary citizens. It's an operational prototype for bringing the ICE immigration excuse to a city near you -- federalizing National Guards; bypassing Governors and Mayors. If thwarted, Crazy Donny may invoke the Insurrection Act, his 'legal' basis for occupying America; he loves to double down. 

If The People don't rise up and peaceably, legally, push back on all of this, the Right wins. They'll Own The Libs. Only, they don't just want to own us. They want to destroy us. 

They demand not only that People fear them, but revere them, like royalty; like gods.

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The Morning Of The Day Before, Again

 January 29, 1933

Statue Advertising Restaurant, Northern China

(John Woo, Reuters / 2016)

(This is originally from Sunday, January 19th, 2016.  This history still applies.)

Sunday
(Sh'vat, 5785, for those who do.  Note: The 1933 [Gregorian] calendar is the same as that for 2025.)

Poet Sarah Teasdale dies in New York City after an overdose of sleeping pills. She is most commonly remembered for "There Will Come Soft Rains" (aka 'War-Time'), published in 1920.

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound...

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

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On January 29, Edouard Daladier, French centrist politician, was asked to assume position of Prime Minister and form a new coalition government, which would last from January to October, 1933.

In 1938, Daladier was again a minister in (yet) another coalition government in France, and with extreme reluctance supported the 1938 Munich agreement to cede the Sudeten portions of Czechoslovakia to Germany, and (presumably) avoid a general European war.

Returning to Paris after the agreement was signed, Daladier expected hostile crowds, but was instead warmly cheered. A combat veteran of the Western Front in WW1, Daladier understood: The Great War had been such a monumental bloodletting for the world, a fall of European empires and whole ways of life, that few people wanted to see new monsters on the horizon.

However, Daladier understood that Munich was nothing but appeasement. He had no illusions about the ultimate intentions of Hitler and the nazis -- to him, Munich only delayed what he saw as an inevitable war. 

Seeing the crowds cheering his arrival -- to the man on the street, war over Czechoslovakia had been averted! Yay! -- Daladier turned to an aide and said sadly, "Ah, these morons".

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German Chancellor General Kurt von Schleicher had resigned on January 28th. The recently re-elected German President, Paul von Hindenburg, had to appoint a replacement who could form a new government. On January 29th he offered the position to Franz von Papen, who refused.

von Papen had already been Chancellor from June through November, 1932. The possibility of another civil war in Germany between the extreme right and extreme left was growing, and von Papen had tried and failed to resolve tensions. On January 29th he suggested to Hindenburg that Hitler be named Chancellor -- because, he explained to the old Field Marshall, Hitler could be controlled.

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The Weimar Republic had survived the 1919 civil war between the Center-Right and the 'Spartikus' Left (which became the German Communist Party, the KPD) only because the Center begged the German army to crush the Leftists.

That bargain linked the survival of a moderate democratic republic to army support -- meaning the officer class, heavily linked to Prussia's landed nobility -- part of the same mixed bag of conservatives which had always been on top under the Kaisers. 

The 1929 stock market crash (Thanks, America! Didn't see that coming!) resounded around the world. By 1932, the Depression had kicked Germany's people to the curb. The most significant aspect of Germany's politics was how most people gravitated to one extreme or the other in the country's political spectrum.

Times were desperate; there wasn't much of a Center left to hold. On the Left were the KPD and Red Front. On the Right were a number of nationalist / conservative parties. The nazis (NSDAP) were the most radical.

Something usually glossed over in summary histories about Weimar in 1932 is the backstage maneuvering by the same traditional conservative layers of German society, attempting to maintain a grip on power. 

In April of 1932, a national election was held: Hitler ran against Hindenburg for the Presidency of the German Republic -- and while the nazis made gains in the Reichstag, Hitler wasn't popular enough to beat the Old Man.  

National elections for Reichstag deputies saw support for the nazis rise to 37% : with the KPD, they were a majority party. Anyone who wanted to govern in Germany's parliament would need their support (Remember, however -- Hitler's stated position was to eliminate all political parties in Germany, except his own).

In May of 1932, the moderate conservative government was frightened there would be an eventual revolution from the Left -- enough that General Kurt von Schleicher, and a previous Chancellor, Franz von Papen, held secret meetings with Hitler to offer a proposal. 

In order to keep the KPD and the nazis from fighting in the streets, the brownshirts and SS had been banned from holding public rallies and marches. von Schleicher told Hitler the ban would be lifted -- also, the Reichstag would be dissolved, and new elections called. The then-Chancellor, Heinrich Bruening, would be dismissed by Hindenburg.  von Papen would replace him... and Hitler would support von Papen's conservative nationalist government. 

Conservatives were just as frightened of Hitler and his NSDAP as they were the KPD. This attempt to appease Hitler -- they would have a real 'seat at the table' -- was really about neutering the nazis and bringing them under control of the moderate conservatives. 

Hitler agreed, only in order to have the ban on nazi public appearances lifted. Bruening was dismissed; von Papen was named by Hindenburg as Chancellor. However, Hitler had no intention of being co-opted into von Papen's government, and said so -- that he considered it a 'temporary measure'.

When the political situation continued to deteriorate through 1932, Hitler claimed to be the only political figure who could hold the Republic together. He requested a meeting with President von Hindenburg so that he could demand to be appointed Chancellor. In a humiliating session, the old Field Marshall treated Hitler like the ex-Gefreiter (Lance Corporal) he was, and refused Hitler's demands. 

The entire episode fed into Hitler's general delusions of power. Being Chancellor became the only outcome he would accept, and made it impossible for the conservatives to offer him anything less.

The nazis and KPD continued fighting in the streets. Hitler and leading nazis (mostly, Goering and Goebbels) kept pushing von Papen and the conservatives: only Hitler could unify the country and control the Communists and political-Left parties. 

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von Papen kept pushing Hindenburg, and von Papen said he would become vice-chancellor. The nazis would have only two of 7 cabinet positions; non-nazis in key government positions would contain Hitler. Finally, faced with continuing Right vs. Left violence, Hindenburg sent for Hitler and offered him the Chancellorship.

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On January 29th, 1933, the New York Times ran three separate articles about events in Germany.  The first looked at European stock markets, saying “apprehensions [are] generally felt over the fresh evidence of Hitler’s influence in the German situation.”

The second article summarized events in Germany, stating that Hindenburg was seeking a coalition government -- and that Hitler could only be made part of it through a guarantee that his power, and the nazis', would be limited.

Many leading intellectuals in Germany had serious misgivings about any government that might include Hitler -- “a straight Parliamentary government headed by [him]... is not envisaged in sober-minded political quarters.”

The third article was a long piece on Mussolini, Stalin, and Hindenburg. Hitler was only briefly mentioned; the article spoke of Hitler's "extreme policies", and inferred that he and the nazis were not the future of Germany in the same way that Mussolini and his fascists, and the Soviets under Stalin, appeared to be.

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Monday, January 30, 1933

Adolf Hitler appointed Chancellor of the Weimar Republic.

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Your Holiday Steerage Update For Third Class

 We Had A Good Run 

I've noticed a binary spectrum developing -- with friends; commentors and analysts in the media -- about the arrival of the nazis in January. It's one perspective, or another; there's not much middle ground.

One Perspective: Things won't be as bad as you think. "You got a lot of hyperbole going, there -- and and and and; y'know, that kind of thinking is; well it's just not helpful, that thinking. You're frightening people, you're scaring people. You know that? Scaring them. And no matter how much you hate the Trump people, don't call them nazis. That's an incorrect use of the term -- and why don't you capitalize 'nazi', as a Noun? Thought you knew better. Look: You're being a downer. It's a difficult time; if you can't be supportive, just shut up. Shut up."

The Other Perspective: It is exactly as bad as you think (a group that includes Mary Trump, who is in a position to know whether her uncle is a fascist and dead serious, or not). It's tough, playing Cassandra in a room full of people who want any reason to feel less afraid. And, Things could be even worse than you imagine.

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Now It's Done

So, I'll just say it: The United States of America we know is done. It's over. 

That long, persistent idea of a nation -- the one backed by the Constitution, that we studied in school; chronicled by Ken Burns in so many films; the place where we and our families were born and lived; the nation we volunteered (or were drafted) to serve; the place we counted on to be there every morning when we woke up because, at least here, there were limits. Most of us were Safe.

But, 'Safe' depends upon your race, gender, economics; choices; your place in the pecking order of society: George Floyd was not safe. Matthew Shepard, Jazzlyn Johnson, Pauly Likens were not safe. The children at Sandy Hook were not safe. The children abused by the team doctor at Ohio State, or in Catholic churches across America, were not safe. The families of Flint, Michigan (still) drinking lead-tainted water were not safe.

Even so -- in other societies, other countries, there might be armed troops in the streets; identification checkpoints. The press may be censored, muzzled. Mail and communications, monitored. Warrantless searches or raids on homes; arrest and imprisonment, or worse, for opposing the government. 

But in America, we had a Constitution. Our history rested on being a nation of laws. Until, we weren't.

We've always had crazy politicians -- but they were fringe, cartoonish characters, creeping around in the margins. The people we elected to keep America on an even keel (and stay out of our hair) spouted typical Democratic or Republican nonsense. 

But they would never allow The United States to become unstable and unpredictable, like those dreck countries in Asia or Africa, or dictatorships like Russia or China; North Korea. 

This was the United States of America, for fuck's sake; we're better than that. Until, we weren't. 

49% of people casting a ballot in the election voted for a demagogue. A fascist. He told everyone during the campaign what he would do, and showed everyone (as if the previous nine years weren't already proof) who he is. People voted for him with full knowledge: This is what Trump is. And they did it anyway.

49% of the United States put a gun to our collective head -- grinning a manic grin, shouting MAGA !!! MY LIFE FOR YOUUUUUUU !!!! -- and pulled the trigger.

1/20/25 is a red line in the calendar of history: Where we, Americans, ended. Please take note.

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Pass The Last Of The Schadenfreude, Please

As you sit down with family and friends over the next month -- consider all the others in past history who suspected they were on the edge of catastrophe, collapse; war; oppression; penury; mass suffering, but gathered together anyway: Peasants of Europe before the Hundred Years' or Thirty Years' wars; the Irish before the Famine; the French before financial collapse and Revolution; the Weimar Germans on Christmas Eve and over Hannukah in December, 1932.

And now, We, The People.  Us.  We're on the edge of... we don't know. We only know it will be bad.

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Americans sat down to Thanksgiving on Tuesday, November 20th, in 1941. On the 26th, by proclamation, President Franklin D. Roosevelt established it as a national holiday. Eleven days later, Japanese carriers reached their designated positions northwest of the Hawaiian Islands and launched the attack on Pearl Harbor.

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"Trumplandia, 'Tis For Thee"

So, our country, with its long and fabled history, much bad and some good, is finished. That America will not exist after 12:00 Noon on January 20th, 2025. "The United States" will be only a label.

Its new Owners should call it Trumplandia, because it won't stand for anything but the twisted, unquenchable greed and violent misogyny and narcissism which will run our lives from this point forward.

Someone once noted that the American Story is one cliffhanger episode after another. The Great Depression was an example: the worst financial collapse in U.S. history. It could have been the end of our Constitutional Republic -- but, at the last minute, we got FDR. It was the New Deal, and a global war, which lifted America out of it. 

The American story remains: How will they get out of this one? And, What next?

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Leave The Hopeism At Home, Yo

We have never had a dictator become President, not to mention controlling both Houses of Congress and a majority of That Court, before. Never in America have our politics -- our very lives -- been so openly and cynically manipulated by technology. Never have so few arrogant theocrats and technocrats spent billions of dollars so openly, to force their desires on so many.

Democrats, the political Left, will push back. Citizens will fight. It may be possible that this is a four-year, seminal period which America will emerge from battered but wiser, as if struck with a terrible disease and surviving.  It may be that We, The People, endure, fucked over as usual by wealth and power, but that in the end We Get Out Of This One. Maybe. 

We seem to have so much stacked against Us, The People. One thing is true: The shared idea of a nation we've had to carry us this far -- right up to January 20, 2025 -- is going to have to fundamentally change when and if we come out the other side of this. The bullying, the lying and violent greed of the Right needs to be kicked to the curb -- but Neoliberal Happytalk and Hopeism on the Left won't work, either.

When you have this very technocratic, 'Third Way' neoliberal approach, and sprinkle in some anti-corporate, anti-billionaire populism... then you're a rudderless ship. You're not communicating what you are about -- and when you don't have a North Star every single person can point to and say, 'this is what the party is about', then your enemies can portray you as whatever they want.

       --  Hasan Piker, 'Pod Save America'; November 27, 2024

America can't be ruled by a dictatorship -- whether by an individual, or the Proletariat. It isn't the way in our Culture-- as opposed to our Society, which changes more rapidly and dynamically.

Perhaps we need to experience a cruel and vicious politics, to feel unsafe in our own land, in order that We, The People will reject it -- now or ever again. 

Yesterday, they were ruffians / Today, they control our lives /

Tomorrow, they will be the keepers of the public lavatories.

--  Juvenal

Trump and his toadies, the pack of Billionaire tech Bros, do not care about you, or me, or anyone but themselves. America is their social engineering laboratory, now -- and they are literally drunk, gibbering with delight at their power. Americans, as Eeelon said, will "endure hardships". Oh, they can't wait.

I've been rereading various histories of France under the Occupation. I'd recommend it.

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It reminds me of the 1993 film from a Steven King novel, Needful Things: The devil (Max von Sydow) comes to Castle Rock, Maine, opens an antiques / curios shop, and in selling various enchanted items to town residents, sets them murderously against each other. It ends in chaos, flames; madness and death. "Hey," Lucifer tells J. T. Walsh, who calls to confess he's just killed his wife, "These things happen."

There's a scene where von Sydow, his face a manic grin, grips his hands together -- shaking with glee as he literally feeds on the energy of the evil he's set in motion; 'Ave Maria' plays in the background. A few townspeople, including the police chief (Ed Harris), fight back. Castle Rock is ravaged; people are dead, shaken, the damage done; but the devil is finally forced to leave.

Von Sydow's Satan -- Looking Very Much Like Good Ol' Fred Trump

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Shaking with glee at their perceived power: Perhaps this is where Trump and his Orcs are now. It may be possible that this moment, before they've even swaggered into the White House, is the Zenith -- that it all begins to fall apart for them from here. 

There's no way we can avoid what they intend to do. That the seeds of eventual failure are being sowed, now, can be a comforting prospect. Earlier today, I heard Mary Trump telling Molly Jong-Fast, "We'll get through this".  Maybe. 

Lee Miller's photo of a local nazi leader and family, having committed suicide, 1945;

One can only hope this is the future of our Fabled Leaders

We'll see.

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