A Poem for Thanksgiving from Indigenous America

"For Girls Who Run Through Storms like Buffalos, Knowing It’s the Quickest Way Through"

By Tanaya Winder

We were never ones to avoid pain 

even if we found him in another person.

And when we do (find him again)—

let him have not been born in the rain 

and grown up to become a storm. 

His kisses lightning that scorches the earth. 

As young girls, our grandmothers warned us 

When there is lightning, cover all the mirrors. 

But, one night thunder snapped; 

its rumble shattering the vanity.

We’ve chased cloudbursts ever since. 

Committed ourselves to flood and flight.

For girls like us who pray to the Sky Beings—  

Protect us whenever we go 

                                          where we were never meant to be. 

Put tobacco down 

for the ones

with Creator-shaped holes in our hearts. 

We spend lifetimes trying to fill,

to feel. What is the medicine for this?

Our mothers tell us (as they taught) 

Send them love. Send them love. Send [say it] love—

So, praise our fathers who left in the night,

mapping us into unlovable.

They made us tough as nails. Now we know 

how to hold ourselves together.

Praise the ones who listened 

when girls like us asked them to leave.

Praise the lovers who never returned.

You helped us no longer be afraid of ghosts.

For girls like us, 

the wound never fully heals.

The gentle rhythm of its pulse, a reminder to

praise our mothers for teaching us words are seeds.

We plant, bloom ourselves anew.

Praise the lightning. Praise the storms

we run through

because girls like us know—

this is where 

our medicine comes from.

How to Grapple with Having a Child Rapist as President

Funny thing: I hated Dick Cheney, like hated him with a visceral, almost incomprehensible level of hate. And I'll accuse him of all kinds of horrific things, but you know what I'd never say about him? That he himself is a rapist. I'm not saying he didn't cover for those who rape and torture. I'm not saying he isn't sexual assault-adjacent because we saw what happened in Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. I'm simply saying that, despite my loathing of the man, I simply have no basis to say he's a rapist or that he committed any kind of sex crimes. No one was ever reported to have accused him of that. And there are plenty of people I fucking despise who I could say that about. Indeed, if false rape allegations were genuinely, widely used to attack shitty people, you'd think that a whole lot more shitty people would be falsely accused of rape.

I bring this up not to backhandedly compliment Cheney ("nice job not raping, dick"), but to point out how absolutely fucking perverse it is that anyone would defend Donald Trump by saying that any accusations against him regarding rape and assault are fake (or "fake news," as the dunderheaded like to moan, like they've made some awesome point). First off, Trump is one of the most litigious little bitches ever, and he'd sue anyone who falsely accused him. And then there's the fact that a goddamned jury found him liable for sexual assault of E. Jean Carroll. And then there are sworn depositions stating that he raped or assaulted multiple girls connected with pedophile and sex trafficker and Trump bestie Jeffrey Epstein, let alone all the free-floating allegations and stories of his lechery and violence. And that's all before you get to the tranche of 20,000 documents where Epstein and others talk about what a fucking scumbag Trump is. That doc dump is merely an amuse bouche. Think what that means is in the entree, the actual Epstein files, the documents from the investigation into Epstein that led to his arrest and "suicide," as well as the conviction of his co-pimp, Ghislaine Maxwell, now serving time relaxing on a pillow while being fed grapes by guards in exchange.

As our torrential news cycle moves on to the next thing (the clusterfuck of stupidity over Russia's peace plan for Ukraine or Marjorie Taylor Greene punking out on Congress or the upcoming war with Venezuela for "reasons" or whatever disaster/conflagrations/fresh fuckery occurs while I'm writing this), we're still waiting for the next shoe drop, or, really, the next truckload of shoes to drop now that some version of the Epstein files are going to be released. Whether or not Trump has had his name redacted out of them or if those documents are held back for "national security" or because Trump ordered the Department of Justice to "investigate" Democrats associated with the scandal, one thing is certain: we will likely have to grapple with the idea that the president of the United States is, at best, someone who looked the other way while a close friend and associate ran a sex trafficking ring. Or, as seems likely, is himself a child rapist (and, yes, 15 year-old girls are children - let's not even entertain that weird discussion). The worst case scenario is that Trump himself was involved in trafficking, something that is, sadly, awfully, not outside the realm of possibility.

So what the fuck do we do with that? It's not meant to be a glib question. Think about the implications for, well, everything. We can assume that Republicans in Congress will live in denial or be ordered to do so or be intimidated into doing so, and thus removal from office isn't a possibility. So that means everyone from world leaders to everyday citizens will have to deal with a child rapist. How much shit can we stomach? And what does that say about us if we as a country don't have the will or the energy or, goddamn us, the interest in demanding that we not have a child rapist as president? We've sunk pretty fucking low pretty fucking fast in these last 10 months (sorry, that's how long he's been back in office, even though it feels like forever). Trump and his Republican lackeys have caused massive suffering and massive amounts of deaths. How fucking strong is the camel's back? How much can Trump corrupt everyone around him?

I wish I had the answer. Or maybe I do and I fucking hate it. We've already seen some pretty goddamn intense compartmentalization and denial in the fact that so many people seem to have no issue making nice with a court-adjudicated rapist of an adult, let alone a convicted felon (no, really, that all happened). Every single time someone is smiling next to him for a photo, they are giving the thumbs-up to Trump's crimes. So maybe that's who we are. Maybe we are so used to how shitty we've become that nothing penetrates our protective shell made of historical callouses.  

Or maybe, just maybe, the attention given to the Epstein files as some kind of Rosetta Stone of the corruption of the elites will have shifted the brain chemistry of enough people, especially those in some kind of position of power, that something will give, that maybe, finally, something is appalling enough.

But I'm not gonna hold my breath.

Random Observations on Senate Democrats Shitting the Shutdown Bed

1. Here's the thing that bugs the living shit out of me about 8 Democratic senators negotiating a budget deal with Republicans to end the government shutdown that has gone on for over 40 days: we, the base, had the backs of Democrats and even that wasn't enough to stiffen their spines for the long haul. It makes our party look like cowardly assholes, and it's a betrayal of an energy and movement that has been growing, from the massive No Kings protests to the overwhelming vote for Democratic candidates and causes all around the country (not just in the Northeast). Motherfuckers, we were ready to go, with money, with recruitment to races that weren't even in play, with enthusiasm and excitement and a base that was being repopulated with Gen Z voters. There's plenty of time before the midterms to get that momentum going again, but this is one hell of a mess to get through.

2. From the outset, Democrats should have asked for so much more than an extension on ACA health care subsidies and restoring funding to Medicaid and Medicare that the Big Barfy Bill cut. But they decided to narrow it down to those items, and we went along with it. And then Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who should be falling on his sword and resigning, negotiated that down to a one-year extension of the subsidies. And then the Hateable Eight negotiated that down to "we'll go fuck ourselves with our Obamacare subsidy request if you don't hit us too hard." Sure, they got a guarantee that federal workers fired during the shutdown would be rehired and a pinky-swear on a vote on the subsidies after the government reopens. But that's pretty fucking close to nothing. It's like getting promised an orgy and you show up lubed and tumescent, only to be told that not only is there no one else there, but you can only masturbate to an old, crispy Sears catalog. 

3. I know you've heard lots of scenarios about why this happened, from bougie frustration at being inconvenienced at the airport to genuine concern for the hungry to general cowardice to getting lobbied by airlines. Lemme take it in a different direction. 

If I were a Democratic senator forced at gunpoint to spin this in a way that doesn't make us look like total feckless bitches, I'd say the following: "The American people need to understand that the president of the United States is a fucking psychopath surrounded by fucking psychopaths with a Supreme Court majority of fucking psychopaths and fucking psychopaths running the Legislative Branch. The only difference between the House and Senate is that the House psychos are more open about how deranged they are and the Senate psychos are better spoken. Except for Tuberville. He's just a piece of shit psycho. 

"I don't use the word 'psychopath' lightly. But they all take pleasure in causing other people to suffer and in killing without remorse. The president has innocent people murdered when he bombs boats. He allows ICE to pepper spray children and babies so that an immigrant parent with a traffic violation can be treated like a terrorist, tearing families apart. And he has no problem letting Americans starve to death or become desperate for food as a negotiating strategy. He doesn't care at all if you and your children can't eat. In fact, he has gone to court to make sure you can't eat. That's the behavior of a fucking psychopath. And Republicans in the Senate are not just enabling the psychopath president. They are cheering him on, saying they like his serial murders and assaults on children. And they have wanted to make sure that millions of Americans don't get health care since this whole thing began. Fucking psychos. 

"I know some people like to use the idea that you can't negotiate with terrorists to justify standing firm. But the thing is that you can. Terrorists want something. They have goals and are willing to bargain. Terrorists have more self-respect than Republicans. And even most terrorists wouldn't do something that kills thousands, if not tens of thousands of their own supporters. But Republicans have no problem causing their voters pain along with everyone else. There is no one rational on their side.

"So how the fuck do you negotiate with elected officials who are willing to massacre the very people who put them in power? The psychopaths were going to happily put Americans through hell on food insecurity just so they could continue to put Americans through hell on health insurance because that's what psychopaths do. And the bonus bullshit is that we could do all the work of getting what we want and then the psycho president just vetoes it and we're all fucked again. Or it could have been all approved and voted into law and then Trump might just ignore the law and freeze the spending because of 'security' or an 'emergency' that is completely fictional and the cockmites at the Supreme Court will just let him. It all fucking sucks and we fucking suck for giving in. But at least we got a completely unenforceable promise of a vote on ACA subsidies and we saved SNAP and a few jobs. Now I'm gonna go home and cry.

"But before I do, lemme talk to you shitheels in red states. You need to give your representatives and senators as much shit as possible for doing this to the country. Or just admit you're the gimps of the GOP."

4. Of course, what Democrats should have done is give much the same speech and say, "And that's why we have to fight. No deal." We'd have gone to the fucking barricades for that kind of ballsiness.

Zohran Mamdani Will Win Because He's Showing How Hope and Joy Works Against Hate and Division

Have you really taken a few minutes to look at the campaign of Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City? Because lemme tell you: as despairing as I've been about the vast networks of fuckery arrayed against sane people, Mamdani is providing a double-barrel face-blast of absolute hope and joy, and of course people are eating it up. What's the choice here for mayor? Another sexual predator running on racism and fear while kissing Trump's ass and sucking billionaire dick or the dude who just held a soccer tournament for his supporters?

No, seriously, two weeks ago, in a park in Coney Island (which, if you don't live up here, is a neighborhood and not just an amusement park), Mamdani's campaign co-hosted, with a local football organization, the Cost of Living Classic, a free day-long soccer competition for teams from each of the five boroughs. A clever, lively ad had Mamdani inviting players, and a good-sized crowd showed up to watch, especially when Mamdani spoke before the final game. It was a brilliant move, and one that connected Mamdani with a multiracial sports community that has become huge in NYC. 

That's been how Mamdani has campaigned. It's been about how we all have far more in common than the shit that the GOP uses to divide us, and he's reached out to many different racial and ethnic groups. The difference with Mamdani is that, unlike virtually every politician (especially white ones), he looks completely at home fucking everywhere. I mean, look at his most recent ad, where he speaks Arabic and hangs out in small grocery stores and restaurants. Look at the ad where he speaks to the Latino community in Spanish and laughs at himself as he gets some pronunciations wrong. Look at him speaking to the Black parishioners at First Baptist Church of Crown Heights, connecting with everyone and talking in ways that join all working class people in common cause. That's some talent right there.

When he was attacked for criticizing Israel, Mamdani, who is Muslim, didn't change his position or try to come up with squishy ways to describe his beliefs. Fuck no. He explained why he believes what he believes and he went directly to Jewish groups to make his case. And now he's been endorsed by Jewish leaders, including orthodox and Hasidic rabbis. Not once has Mamdani hidden who he is, with a speech that talked about racist, Islamophobic insults against him and about how Muslims were treated after 9/11 and another video showing him breaking fast on Eid. 

Every move Mamdani has made has been with an open heart and open arms. When he goes after Cuomo (or, before he dropped out, Eric Adams), it's with an irrepressible, fuck-this-guy attitude. His man-on-the-street videos are object lessons in how a candidate can connect with the anyone. He unabashedly  proclaims his love and support for the trans community and has promised to back up that support with policies. He talks about "Trump-proofing" New York City against ICE and against the White House's attack on worker rights. And his focus on the cost of living in NYC is something that is music to every average person's ears, including free buses. (Seriously, read his policy papers. They are some thorough, well-conceived liberal positions, the kind of stuff that makes "moderate" Dems shit themselves at their think tanks.)

One thing that demonstrates how effective Mamdani's approach has been is not just the savagery with which the right has attacked him, trying to turn him into a radical communist who is going to burn down Manhattan.  It's that the hysterical right just looks dumb tearing into Mamdani for things like, no shit, not knowing Billy Joel's "New York State of Mind." Trump has threatened to cut federal funding to the city if Mamdani is elected. Do you know how cool all this makes him look to young voters? Yes, you old fucks, keep shitting on joy.

Above all else, Mamdani looks like he's having fun, and that's gotta be pissing off everyone from worthless corporate Democrats who refuse to endorse him to Fox "news" hosts to self-fellating podcasters. A big hip-hop lover, he's kicking it with the Wu-Tang Clan. He's DJing at gay dance clubs. He held a fuckin' scavenger hunt for supporters. The campaign expected 500 participants. They got thousands of people showing up. It's just a blast to watch this all unfold.

When he wins on Tuesday, Democrats everywhere should be studying Mamdani's refusal to play by the Democratic consultant rulebook. They should understand that this is the motherfucking future. People want a politician who is a whole human being, not a talking points machine, not someone constantly warning us about how shitty things can be, not someone moderating their beliefs to appeal to shitty people. In a time of misery, joy is a weapon and self-assurance is a shield. Use them widely and without apology.

America Is Living in the Trumpian Darkness Now

In the next week or so, multiple food banks in New Jersey will be having a huge grocery distribution event for furloughed and unpaid federal workers in the parking lot at MetLife Stadium, the place where the Giants lose. That's everywhere in America now. The food banks are bracing for the massive surge in need when Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits run out at the end of the month because of the government shutdown. When SNAP is gone, millions of families will face what one NJ food bank official called "No Meal November." People will starve, including kids. That's America now. Add to that the cost of health insurance as much as doubling for those in the Affordable Care Act Marketplace due to the end of tax credits that reduced premiums, and we will have many more sick and starving families very, very soon. That's America now. 

Meanwhile, in Chicago, untrained Immigration and Customs Enforcement goon squads are using tear gas to terrorize neighborhoods, including one that was about to have a children's Halloween parade this weekend. The goons are violently swarming homes and businesses and streets, all to arrest people for the misdemeanor of being in the United States without proper documentation. Chicagoans have organized so that they try to block ICE or blow whistles to warn others that they might be rounded up and torn from their families. Kids in schools are afraid their parents will be gone; parents are afraid their teenagers will be disappeared. That's America now, and it's happening everywhere, sometimes with the help of National Guard troops, and it was has the blessing and frothing encouragement of the president and the majority of Congress.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military is building up its forces in the Caribbean and off Venezuela, with an aircraft carrier carrying advanced bomber jets, ships carrying forces for land invasions, and many, many more ships, vehicles, and troops, readying for a ground and air attack on Venezuela and likely Colombia. It is, frankly, madness, and it's the prelude for what seems like an expansive view of US hegemonic power in the region, wielded violently and harshly. Apparently, Trump is going to meet with congressional leaders to tell them about his war plans when he returns from Asia, and the GOP members are fine with putting troops in harm's way because of delusions about drug cartels, regime change, and, let's face it, oil. That's America now. All this is occurring as the US continues to drone missile boats in the same seas, murdering people without charge or trial, under completely unproven suspicion of carrying drugs for cartels, as if Trump was tired of "the drug war" not being a shooting war. That's America now.

Meanwhile, the Republican-run Congress has ceded all of its constitutional authority to Trump, allowing him to do whatever he wants with funding that Congress passed, depriving states of infrastructure spending, depriving schools and institutes of research funding, depriving so many others of money they were budgeted and expecting. Trump today called himself "the speaker and the president," meaning that Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is, at best, a marginalized figure, and, at worst, Trump's enthusiastic semen depository. The shutdown is happening because Republicans refuse to restore funding for Medicaid and Medicare that was cut in their savage recent bill and refuse to continue those ACA tax credits, and Democrats in the Senate won't allow a vote on those principles. But it doesn't matter, really, what funding is passed because Trump can simply cancel or redistribute funding under the broad banner of "national security" and his enthusiastic semen depository won't even squeak about it. That's authoritarianism in its purest form, when all power rests in a single dictatorial figure, and that's America now.

Meanwhile, we are waiting for myriad cases making their way through the judicial system on everything from deportations to tariffs to the extortion of universities and law firms to reach the corrupted Supreme Court. Almost certainly, the radical right-wing majority will go back to its obscenity of a decision in Trump v. United States and restate that the only actual check on a president is for the Legislative branch to impeach and remove the president and that otherwise Trump can wage lawless warfare on the American people and the world as much as he wants. And, well, the aforementioned semen depository won't budge on impeachment. That's America now.

On and on this could go, with the attacks on medical science and food safety and education and so much else, the gutting of everything that made America America, the reduction of this country to a shadow of itself in less than a year, a diminution that will continue as we face, quite literally, starvation, war, and disease. We are in dark, dark times. That needs to be acknowledged. We are in a great deal of trouble, and waiting and hoping that somehow the 2026 midterms will bring us back to the light is putting a great deal of faith in a system that hasn't been able to prevent any of this from happening so far. 

I know you're waiting for the happy part, the part where I tell you that we need to just keep marching like we did last weekend (which was absolutely a good thing), but that's not going to be enough. I don't know what the next steps are. The wealthy and powerful people who could speak up are afraid of Trump turning his government against them, afraid of his MAGA idiot hordes coming for them. Yes, there are some Democrats putting up a fight, and it's great when Democrats have decent messaging, which they often don't. But it just seems like flea farts in a hurricane. If I were to offer any idea, it would be a general strike, but I'm sure they're hoping for that so they can call it an "insurrection" and unleash the military on us. Mostly, I'm writing this to have a marker of where we are right now, to say, "This is how dark it is now. You want it darker?" (Yeah, I know, it's a Leonard Cohen line.)

Yeah, I know I haven't mentioned the destruction of the East Wing of the White House, although it's perhaps more important historically that the East Colonnade, which dates back to Thomas Jefferson, was razed. That's because, at this point, the symbolism is so thuddingly obvious that it's embarrassing. We are a shameful nation, but we are led by the brazenly shameless, and they don't care what they wreck as they turn this America into their golden ballroom where there are only those dancing and those serving the dancers as the world outside the gilded walls burns from fires they started. That's America soon.

Random Observations on a Day of Joyful Protest in a Terrible Time

1. I had to be on Staten Island on Saturday, the Trumpy borough of New York City, where a bunch of immigrants and their descendants from Ireland, Italy, Russia, Albania, and elsewhere pretend that they are more American than the newer immigrants from the Dominican Republic, Syria, Liberia, Sri Lanka, and elsewhere, but I didn't want to miss out on the No Kings protest. So I headed over to the gathering outside the office of Representative Nicole Malliotakis, a Republican, in a nondescript building on a main drag. 

About 600 people were on the sidewalk, blocking a couple of parking lots, across the street from the office. With no speakers and no real organization beyond "let's meet here," it was an organic effort, with the expected well-made signs and the expected but no less delightful people in inflatable animal costumes. Goddamn, I love the inflatable costumes. It's such a gleeful, absurd fuck-you to the raging dickscabs screeching about "hate rallies" and how the left is filled with, as Trump spokesass Karoline Leavitt snarled, "Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens, and violent criminals." Lady, we're wearing frog and unicorn outfits and dancing. Calm the fuck down. Joy and liberation are the antidotes to hate and repression.

2. I've heard and seen some complaints on the social medias along the lines of "We gathered, we made signs, we chanted. So?" Lemme see if I can explain it: Sometimes you just want to hang out with 7 million like-minded people and not feel so fucking lost and alone. Yeah, I get it. The day didn't end in a revolution. It wasn't going to. Sometimes you go to your regular bar just to have a drink with people who are like you. And sometimes you end up hooking up with some hot dude and fucking the night away. But the fact that you don't do some fucking every time you go to the bar doesn't mean you can't just like being there, drinking, talking shit, meeting old friends and new people, simply allowing yourself to say, "Okay, okay, here, right here, I feel safe and like myself and all that fucking shit going on out there, all the people who are actively trying to fuck my life up, all the assholes who make it their job to ruin everyone's day, none of it matters for the little while I'm here."

Lemme put it another way: You know how empowering it is to see that hundreds of people in Staten fuckin' Island were ready to stand outside, with the NYPD across the street, and yell at the office of a shitty member of Congress? You know how important it is in places that are even filthier with Trump-humpers, like Cookeville, Tennessee, or Gulfport, Mississippi, or Idaho Falls, Idaho (where 1200 people gathered), that anti-MAGA protesters showed up and marched or chanted? Every single time these events happen, the movement strengthens. So, yeah, it's necessary. And if you're gonna say that this was all just preaching to the choir, well, as I've said before, the choir deserves to get preached to. That's why they go to church. To be inspired and to stay inspired. 

3. The weirdest fucking response to the incredibly peaceful protests, other than the assertion that these were going to be terrorist events or whatever threatening thing the hyperbolic right huffed and puffed about, is the insistence that Trump is not a king, so it's stupid to have a "No Kings" rally. Trump himself slurred that to his favorite media garbage dumpster, Maria Bartiromo. Meghan McCain embarrassed herself in typically moronic fashion, tweeting, "I don't understand how Trump is a King when he won every single swing state, the electoral college and popular vote in a democratic election." Are they really all such dullards? They're the most literal-minded motherfuckers. Boy, yeah, you got us. Trump is not officially a "king." Now shut the fuck up and listen to all the fucking ways that he's acting like one. 

Note: Although, if he were king, it'd be hilarious to see how his terrible children try to kill each other to see who gets to be next in line.

4. Trump's response to No Kings was perhaps the closest we're gonna get to him admitting how he really feels about the people of the country he "leads." The AI video he reposted of himself in a fighter jet named "King Trump," with a crown on his head, dropping tons of non-metaphorical shit on the heads of protesters is the kind of childish idiocy that MAGA freaks masturbate to because they think they've so owned the libtards. I mean, they might be fecal freaks, but keep your kinks to yourself. 

But, god, it's just so fucking boring. Get a new fucking act, you hacks on the right. We get it. You can make little cartoons where Trump does outrageous shit. It doesn't bother us as much as it just makes you seem pathetic and worthless. Now try something really surprising. If Trump had posted how he was glad that Americans peacefully asserted their right to free speech, that would have shocked the hell out of us. We wouldn't have known how to react. Instead, he's just who he always was: a cretinous little baby-man who desperately needs people to love him, even if they are, truly, the shittiest people ever.

Trump's done us a favor. One of the things that traditional and dumb Democrats have said is that they do things like show up at White House events or congratulate Trump for his (now-failed) Gaza ceasefire out of "respect for the office" of the presidency. But Trump doesn't respect the office. And neither should anyone else, least of all those who he wants to shit on.

Note: Axios says the video shows Trump dropping "a brown substance." NBC, the New York Times, and others said it's "what appears to be feces." It's shit. Just say it's shit, you fucking babies.

Democrats Can Control the Narrative on Immigration

Two things need to be stated again and again when talking about the Trump administration's unleashing of Immigration and Customs Enforcement to brutally attack immigrants, legal and undocumented, in this country. First, there is only one reason any of this is occurring, and that's because Trump is allowing it to happen. Yeah, yeah, squamous Stephen Miller is the slithering snake in Trump's ear, like Sir Hiss in that Robin Hood Disney cartoon. Ultimately, though, it's Trump's call. The other thing is, rhetorically, just as important: The only "crime" committed by most of the people being beaten and torn away and zip-tied and disappeared and warehoused in hellholes is some misdemeanor violation. Or it's a draconian crackdown on immigrants who committed some minor crime years ago and are being deported because Miller only gets an erection when at least 3000 people are rounded up a day.

In any case, ICE isn't using drones and helicopters and flash bang explosives and dozens of agents in military gear to round up murderers. If you zip-tie naked children and leave them on the sidewalk for hours, you're the bad guys. It's fucked beyond fucked, and anyone who approves this kind of action or participates in it should face prosecution while anyone who condones it should be treated like the piece of shit they are and never allowed to show their depraved faces in public again.

Democrats are starting to show some spine in talking about what bullshit these raids are. But that's not enough. Most of the time, unless it's someone like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrats in Congress will hedge and say that, yes, they agree something needs to be done about the border or about undocumented migrants, but not like this. That's the wrong approach. It's allowing Republicans to control the narrative about immigration, and, you know, fuck them. Fuck them hard with the spiked dildo until they're begging you to fuck them harder.

It's been that way for a long time, with Republicans freaking out about some surge in immigrants (which, yes, did happen during the first part of Joe Biden's presidency as a reaction after end of the tightened border in Trump's first term which was then closed completely during the Covid pandemic). The GOP then works in tandem with its fucking crazies in their media, social and news, which makes the public reaction seem so much larger than it actually is. And then Democrats immediately say that they can solve the problem that Republicans have brought up, which means they are playing on the GOP's home turf. It's time to set the terms of the argument and fucking ignore Republicans on it.

What I mean is that the only story that Democrats should be telling is how immigration benefits this country. That should be front and center and not enforcement. Polling on immigration is all over the fucking place, which means that there is room for new dominant narrative. I mean, the hell with saying, for instance, "Obama deported more people than Trump has" as some kind of sign that Democrats are serious about immigration. No, instead, offer example after example of how immigrants, including those who were originally undocumented, have made life better for the country. 

You know where I'd start? I'd throw Ronald Reagan's corpse at Republicans. Fuck Reagan generally, but the motherfucker actually did one or two things that weren't cruel and destructive. His 1986 amnesty for undocumented immigrants was imperfect, but it did allow for 2.7 million of them to gain legal status, with about a million eventually becoming citizens. The financial benefit of millions of people who had been living in the United States for at least five years suddenly able to fully participate in the economy was huge, from the taxes on the higher wages they were able to earn to the houses they bought to the investments they made and more. You can get specific and talk about immigrants who went from undocumented and scared to proud citizens no longer living in the shadows. Make today's GOP disown Reagan. 

It won't be easy when the GOP meat grinder accuses Democrats of open borders, but that story is getting old. That story is being supplanted by kids being torn out of the arms of parents and armed assholes slamming young women to the ground and kneeling on their necks when not just threatening to kill them. Don't take the fucking bait. When pressed on things like crimes that undocumented immigrants have committed, it's easy: offer the story of the immigrants who built businesses that employ Americans and others. Don't play their game.

Take back the story of immigration in this country. It's a beautiful one. It is who we are. It's one that everyone used to love and one that has been tarnished by the hate that Republicans demand we all have. Instead, react with the love and the lack of fucks of an anti-ICE protester in an inflatable frog costume being shot with pepper balls and then dancing, dancing, dancing, with a joy that those assholes with the guns will never understand.