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 to 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.

Trump and Hegseth Make the World Weirder and More Dangerous

I'm not particularly sympathetic to military officers, but I had to feel a little sorry for whatever generals made the 15 hour flight from South Korea to Washington, DC, to have a pissant little TV bitch tell them that they're fat and then watch a barely awake president blather about his signature and his problem walking down stairs when he wasn't talking about how awesome it would be for troops to kill Americans in the city streets of the United States. I mean, beyond "this could have been a fucking Zoom call," imagine spending your whole life immersed in the ethos of the military, of the (at least theoretical) discipline and respect for the Constitution, and you gotta travel until your ass is numb to listen to two dumb motherfuckers say you should forget all that and just fuck shit up because the bulbous orange blob man is ordering it.

The speech by Secretary of Defense (sorry, it's not really the Department of War until Congress makes the change) Pete Hegseth, a drunk who beat his wife, for the forced-gathered leadership of the US military yesterday veered between embarrassingly masturbatory Patton fantasies and genuinely disturbing shifts in policy. Mostly, he wasn't really speaking to the generals, who were there as set dressing for a reel on Instagram. He started by announcing, "The era of the Department of Defense is over... the only mission of the newly restored Department of War is this: war-fighting, preparing for war and preparing to win. Unrelenting and uncompromising in that pursuit. Not because we want war. No one here wants war, but it's because we love peace." Which is kind of confusing. If you're the "Department of War," that seems to indicate you're going to start, you know, wars; whereas, the Department of Defense would be more concerned with maintaining peace than waging war. I know it's all nuance and bullshit, but the fucking chest-thumping is completely ludicrous. And when was the mission of our military not "war-fighting"? Isn't that what all the guns and bombs and training are for?

Of course, every single person sitting in that room knew that, had lived that, and understood that this fucking shit-for-brains telling them that was a goddamned insult. 

So much of what Hegseth said was childish, ignorant, and deranged. "You kill people and break things for a living," he chest-pounded. "You are not politically correct and don't necessarily belong always in polite society. We are not an army of one. We are a joint force of millions of selfless Americans. We are warriors." Goddamn, he sounds like an incel desperate for likes while live-playing League of Legends on Twitch. Again, this fucking amateur, this pretender, this boy in grown-up clothes is saying this to hundreds of men and women who used to know exactly what the mission was but had that all scrambled for them. And let's be clear: the vast majority of people in the military, like 80-85% (if not more) are not frontline fighters. There's support staff, intelligence, logistics, maintenance, medical personnel, and more, and that's not counting the warriors whose job entails sitting in a trailer in the Nevada desert, piloting drones remotely for recon and for blowing shit up. Oh, and the IT departments that keep all that running.

Hegseth was wantonly, flagrantly insulting, whether it was his fat-shaming rant or his even stupider attack on beards (I guess those religious exemptions don't matter). And he said, "We fight not because we hate what's in front of us. We fight because we love what's behind us. You see, the Ivy League faculty lounges will never understand us, and that's okay because they could never do what you do." This moronic bitch doesn't get that a number of veterans are on Ivy League faculty, including former generals. And just calm down there, princess. It's not like defending the country is the hardest fucking concept to get your head around.

Now imagine the admiral who had to travel 20 hours from Manila to DC just to listen to a sleepy, deranged commander-in-chief talk about walking down stairs. No, seriously. Nearly an hour into his truly bizarre, disturbing, dementia-driven ramble about, fuck, I guess "stuff," Trump mocked Joe Biden for falling down stairs, which led to this extended...something...stream of consciousness? Inner monologue said out loud? Haints in his head he's having a conversation with? Honestly, I don't know...but this is really the president of the United States:

"I'm very careful when I walk downstairs, I'm on stairs like these stairs. I walk very slowly. Nobody has to set a record. Just try not to fall because it doesn't work out well. A few of our presidents have fallen and it became a part of their legacy. We don't want that. You walk nice and easy. You don't have to set any record, be cool, be cool when you walk down. But don't bop down the stairs. So one thing with Obama, I had zero respect for him as a president, but he would bop down those stairs. I've never seen him. Bop, bop, bop. He'd go down the stairs, wouldn't hold on. I said, it's great. I don't want to do it. I guess I could do it. But eventually bad things are going to happen and it only takes once. But he did a lousy job as president."

That's the guy who told the leaders of the military, who have had it hammered into them and hammer it into the soldiers they command that, as very clearly stated in the US Constitution, the US military doesn't wage war against Americans on American soil, that they will wage war against Americans on American soil. Trump said, using the quaint colloquial term for the n-word, "In our inner cities, which we're going to be talking about because it's a big part of war now, it's a big part of war."

Trump described the future battles this way: "The Democrats run most of the cities that are in bad shape. We have many cities in great shape too, by the way. I want you to know that. But it seems that the ones that are run by the radical left Democrats, what they've done to San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, they're very unsafe places. And we're going to straighten them out one by one. And this is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. That's a war too. It's a war from within...Last month I signed an executive order to provide training for quick reaction force that can help quell civil disturbances. This is going to be a big thing for the people in this room because it's the enemy from within and we have to handle it before it gets out of control. It won't get out of control once you're involved at all."

Every single one of those cities has seen a drop in crime. In New York City, shootings are lower than they've ever been. Murders are down. Robberies are down. If you send in troops, they'll just be picking up garbage like the National Guard soldiers are forced to do in DC because there's nothing else to fucking do because the police actually have a handle on the crime situation. Fuck reality, though. Fuck it raw.

One thing I don't get is why police unions aren't pissed off about all this talk. Yeah, we can say a lot of shit about how terrible cops are (and we should), and there are plenty of reasons that crime is down that have nothing to do with policing. But the president saying that troops need to invade cities in order to bring order is a fucking insult to the police in those cities. It's saying that they aren't doing their jobs. I mean, Christ, they already have all the military equipment they could want. It's redundant to send the actual army in. 

Unless, of course, your goal isn't to stop crime but to pretend bad shit is going on so you can take over the cities and intimidate the population and be the mad king you were always destined to be. 

It probably doesn't need to be said, but one thing that our military is not trained to do is be police (except for the ones trained as military police), and every general there knows it. I'm sure there are military leaders who are batshit crazy and would love to use "inner cities" as a "training ground" to attack "the enemy from within." But most aren't. Most know that if they are ordered to, it will be time to decide whether or not they are loyal to the obvious dementia-sufferer-in-chief or to the Constitution and the country.

Trump and Hegseth essentially undermined everything the United States is supposed to stand for, and they admit they don't give a fuck about history, about stability, about the rest of the world. In their very weird and very disturbed way, they have made life more dangerous for everyone on earth.

And now that Trump has declared that we are in an "armed conflict" with drug cartels, that's going to be his and Hegseth's and squamous tumor Stephen Miller's excuse to level what's left of the country they have already wrecked.

Kimmel's Suspension Isn't the Worst Thing Trump Has Done, But It Should Scare the Hell Out of You

It's really important to get this part right: Late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel was not insulting or even talking about Charlie Kirk when he said on Monday that last weekend we saw "the MAGA Gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it." Under pressure from the federal government, ABC, owned by Disney, suspended Kimmel's show indefinitely, which is censorship by any measure. The FCC chair, Brendan Carr, who looks like the creepy uncle who touches you too much, claimed that the real issue is that Kimmel "misled" people on the political beliefs of Tyler Robinson, Kirk's murderer, and that's not allowed.

Except that's not what the actual words there are doing. What Kimmel and his writers were saying is that Donald Trump and the entirety of MAGA world is distancing itself from Robinson. We don't know what Robinson believes. We have various hints, but we don't know. Before we knew even the small amount we know now, the MAGA media machine, including the president and his administration, accused everyone from George Soros to Rachel Maddow to "Antifa" for being somehow responsible for the murder, and, again, with no evidence, called for organizations and individuals on the left to be declared terrorists and silenced, forced into poverty from lawsuits, and arrested. That wasn't misleading? 

The other thing Kimmel said is simply undeniably true. Trump and his minions and accomplices are exploiting Kirk's death. Because I'm damned to be included on the mailing lists of assholes, I've gotten multiple emails from right-wing organizations seeking to raise money off it. It's being used as a cudgel against anyone daring to do something as terrible as quote Charlie Kirk on Instagram. They are wallowing in the opportunities the murder has provided them. Indeed, they keep accusing the "left" of "celebrating" Kirk's death (and, yes, there have been some people who posted things cheering it), but the real celebration is on the right as they engage in an orgy of self-righteousness and performative outrage. Which is their First Amendment right, as it is the First Amendment right of anyone to say that what they're doing is scoring political points.

What makes the Kimmel suspension and Carr's promise that "we're not done yet" so insidious and, yes, frightening is that it lowers the bar from mocking Kirk's death to any criticism of Trump or the MAGA movement being reason enough for censorship, intimidation, and punishment. Even worse, as Greg Sergeant points out, is that Carr is making it clear that this really is about Trump by using the FCC's "public interest obligation" as a sledgehammer. But, see, "public interest" is now not about the Constitution or even, really, the public. The administration is saying that "public interest" tied to Trump, that if you attack Trump, you're undermining the public interest. The FCC is saying that what's good for Trump is good for America and everything needs to follow that. If a plane was carrying the Epstein files, I assume Trump would shoot it out of the air and claim it's for the good of the country.

It gets worse. Even as unlikely compatriots like Karl Rove and Tucker Carlson decry the federal government's insertion of itself into TV content moderation, we have a parade of right-wingers saying that maybe they don't think the First Amendment is all that great. Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis, who looks like she's waiting to see you drink the tea she put cyanide in, said, "Under normal times, in normal circumstances, I tend to think that the First Amendment should always be sort of the ultimate right. And that there should be almost no checks and balances on it. I don’t feel that way anymore." So I guess our rights didn't come directly from God, as Republicans are fond of saying. 

Trump himself threatened to strip networks' affiliate stations of their licenses to broadcast, saying, in essence, the hell with the right to free speech: "When you have a network and you have evening shows and all they do is hit Trump, that’s all they do—if you go back, I guess they haven’t had a conservative one in years, or something—when you go back and take a look, all they do is hit Trump. They’re licensed. They’re not allowed to do that." 

Except they are. That's the whole point of the First Amendment. The freedom to shit-talk someone, even after death, even Charlie Kirk, is one of the founding principals of this country. The Declaration of Independence is a long shit-talk about King George III. The founders themselves regularly shit-talked each other (when they weren't, you know, dueling), sometimes in print, sometimes in debates. In a letter written for publication in 1800, Alexander Hamilton accused then-President John Adams of "disgusting egotism,” “distempered jealousy,” and “ungovernable indiscretion." That's just a little sample of vituperation leveled at Adams. There's nothing more American than shit-talking the president.

Indeed, you could argue that the real patriots are the ones willing to shit-talk Donald Trump, Charlie Kirk, and anyone else. And while, yes, obviously, there's a difference between suffering personal consequences for what you post on social media and the government demanding you be silenced, I'd argue that the government has a responsibility to come in and tell, say, a university that fired someone because a couple of trolls got a screenshot of single thing a professor wrote on Instagram that it's violating that professor's First Amendment rights. (I'm pretty sure that public universities, which are government institutions, will have this come up in lawsuits.)

Instead, what we're getting is everyone on the right cheering on the mass censorship of anyone who would dare suggest that Charlie Kirk said the things that he actually did say, which were awful and violent and degrading. But none of that matters because this is an opportunity for the totalitarian right to use this to force its demented control over the speech and actions of the country. It is, to put it simply, a chance to outlaw much of what the left says and stands for. It's a low-rent version of Naomi Klein's idea of the shock doctrine in action: using a "crisis" in order advance a harmful political agenda. Usually, it involves natural disasters or a terrorist attack. This wasn't the latter, but they're trying to make it into one and respond accordingly.

Look, I know that what's happened to Jimmy Kimmel pales in comparison to what the US government is doing to migrants (or what we're funding in Gaza, for that matter). Kimmel is a wealthy man with all kinds of resources at his disposal, and I'm hoping that he tells ABC, Disney, Trump, Sinclair, and everyone else to go fuck themselves as they try to force him to apologize to Kirk's widow (which would be weird since he didn't insult Kirk), give her money, and donate to Kirk's hate group (fuck you, that's what it is when you're on the receiving end of the hate), Turning Point USA. I'm hoping that he says he wants to sue the Trump administration and goes for it. Hell, Disney is a big damn, wealthy corporation run by rich pukes who, of course, want to protect the bottom line for their investors because that's all the morality capitalism can muster. 

But surely they have to know that it's never going to be enough for these monsters in the White House. ABC paid Trump off and had George Stephanopoulos apologize for saying that Trump raped E. Jean Carroll, which, you know, he did. It wasn't enough. Kimmel didn't say a damn thing about Kirk's politics and even sent out sympathies to Kirk's family and expressed horror over the shooting. It still wasn't enough. There is no satiating them, there is no end point, and they will always, always, always find another way to extort and threaten and blackball and punish. People with the means to do something need to fucking well do something. As I and many others have said, what's the use in having "fuck you" money if you don't occasionally say, "Fuck you"? It's not even that big an ask. George Soros just gave $10 million for the redistricting effort in California. The money's there. Whatever a lawsuit would cost will be far, far less than the next round of extortion.

Meanwhile, the rest of us without deep pockets or portfolios that would allows us to retire are left to wonder how we can react to this. I have friends in red states who feel like they're risking their jobs if they express an opinion on Facebook that isn't "Charlie Kirk is the awesomest human ever and I will bless him every night in my prayers which I definitely say before bed." I wanted to write something savage about the whole situation, but I didn't because I didn't want to wonder if I'd become the next target of Libs of Suck My Cock or whatever (sorry - I'm not going cold turkey). 

That's the way this works. It starts with Jimmy Kimmel and some professors and other workers, and it causes fear in others in media, entertainment, and anyone who writes or posts. That's of a piece with how this administration wants to spread fear, whether by picking up people in the country legally for protesting the war in Gaza or drone-murdering a boatload of Venezuelans or by deporting migrant children in the middle of the night or deporting migrant adults to countries they have no ties to or sending masked goons out to terrorize communities. It's the same with detention facilities and defunding universities and suing law firms. Fear and compliance are their tools. The counter to that is courage and protest and refusal, but that is far easier said than done.

We need some leaders here on this, but, sadly, we are bereft of them. There's a line that's been haunting me from Tony Kushner's  A Bright Room Called Day, a frighteningly prescient play about artists facing the rise of Hitler in Germany. A character comments on how he and his circle are not ready for what's coming, "This age wanted heroes. It got us instead." Maybe Kimmel can be that hero. Maybe AOC, who delivered a hell of a speech on who Charlie Kirk really was while most Democrats just meekly acquiesced to a vote on an official day of remembrance. Hell, maybe it's you or me. Just know that this fight is gonna be hard and it's gonna end up hurting a lot of us as they contort all the tools of the government to serve themselves and wreck the rest of the country. You should be scared now. But not too scared to act.

Well, Shit, I Guess I Gotta Write Something About Charlie Kirk

Before yesterday afternoon, I was debating what to write about today. The legitimately fucked-up birthday letters to Jeffrey Epstein were a strong possibility because they do a good job of revealing one of my favorite facts: ultra-rich people are often incredibly stupid and have no taste whatsoever. Like there's not a good joke in the whole batch. It's all just smug, wink-wink, boy, Jeff sure loves to fuck young chicks and, hey, here's a lifetime of sexual assaults written off like boys-will-be-boys shenanigans. There's an air of desperation, too, like they all really liked being in this club and are begging for the cool dude at the top to pat them on the head. And that's before you get to the rape and sex-trafficking. Surely, those who participated in this parade of horrors need to be prosecuted and buried in prison cells, up to and especially including Donald fucking Trump and, if needed, Bill Clinton.

I totally could have done that pretty easily, but I took a pass. 

I was absolutely sure I was going to write on the budget deadline coming up and how Democrats need to leverage the little power they have now, right fucking now, in order to extract something from the Republican brutes who behave like hungry jackals rampaging through the savanna. Minority Leaders Hakeem Jeffries in the House and Chuck Schumer in the Senate are negotiating a pretty fucking low price on Democratic complicity in a budget resolution that will allow the Trump administration to continue to wreck lives, consolidate power, and get his party to coalesce around a metastasizing fascism whose end is, frankly, the suppression if not elimination of the Democratic Party. Yes, subsidies for people who get their policies from the Affordable Care Act are important, as they keep insisting, but it's pretty thin gruel. That's like negotiating over the price of a car and saying, "If you give me a pine-scented air freshener, I'll pay the sticker." The ask should be restoring all Medicaid and Medicare funding, forcing the president to release all funds that Congress had budgeted and he rescinded, ending the immigration torture camps, and more. Fucking fight to win, even if you're gonna lose. Sometimes it's more noble to get punched in the face than cower in a fetal curl, crying, "Don't hit me." 

Unfortunately, I had to move on from that because Charlie Kirk died.

It would have been a no-brainer to write about the United States straight up drone murdering a boatload of Venezuelans by claiming they were gang members importing drugs, which is fucking deranged even if it's true. We have a goddamn Coast Guard that can stop boats and apprehend the suspects. They do it all the time. Then everyone stands in front of piles of perfectly good cocaine or meth or fentanyl about to go to waste, like they just bagged the biggest crocodile in the Nile. You could get Vice President JD "The 'D' is for 'douche'" Vance to use his patented shit-gobbling smirk while posing with the haul or the suspects instead of sending him out to act like a sassy bitch on X defending the obvious crime. And now that we know that not only was the boat turning around when it was hit, and not only do we not have any proof that it was carrying drugs and not, say, migrants, and not only has the Venezuelan government said the people on boat were not the supposed terrorists in Tren de Aragua, but we hit the boat "multiple times" in order to kill everyone on it. There is no scenario here where we're not the bad guys. 

Yeah, I could have gone on about that, but, you know, Kirk was murdered.

Hell, I could have written about the batshit insane story of the South Korean workers who were in the US completely legally but were rounded up, shackled, and detained by ICE while setting up a Hyundai plant in Georgia that would provide thousands of jobs for the state. I could have gone on quite a bit about the bugnuts Trump-fellating GOP congressional candidate who called in a "tip" about the plant and has pretty much fucked the state and possibly a good chunk of the American auto industry which depends on relationships with South Korea. I could have also gone into what we're learning about the subhuman conditions in which we're holding people in detention. I could have tied that and the boat story into something about the end of due process in this goddamned country. I could have added in about the racist cuntmites on the Supreme Court making it legal for ICE or the cops to stop anyone who looks Hispanic and ask them to prove right then and there that they're citizens or face being imprisoned in horrific detention facilities. I would have had all kinds of names for the justices, like John "Bitchface" Roberts.

I might have spent my time writing about a hundred other important things that touch the lives of so many people, so many nightmares ongoing now, so much awful shit, the disgraceful and embarrassing and dangerous things being done in our name by our government and by governments in red states, like the attempts to destroy universities over false antisemitism accusations, cheered on and enabled by sad, greedy fucks who never even went to college but pretend that they have insight when they really are fucking idiotic losers who attracted rich fascist pukes to give them tons of money to spread their hate or we would have never heard of them, like...well, you know.

I thought about writing on this 24th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks about how we're in as much danger as we were before then because of the rank incompetence of our supposed security leaders in DC, like Kash "Always Looks Like Someone Told Him He Got Syphilis From the Donkey He Fucked" Patel, and the fucktastrophe of mass firings across every agency that was created to prevent this shit. But now, apparently, it doesn't matter if it's all dismantled and instead of dealing with real threats, the entire security apparatus is devoted to making sure that migrant families are tortured before deportation. 

But, of course, I can't write about any of that because someone shot Charlie Kirk and killed him. So I'm obligated to say something about him. And what I'll say is this: over the years on this blog I have written virtually nothing about Charlie Kirk because fuck him and fuck Turning Point USA. He objectively, intentionally made life worse for millions of people and he's not worth wasting my time on. I stand by that. 

And now I've written something about Charlie Kirk, like a good pundit should.