Two Extra Depressing Moments from the Republican Debate of the Damned

1. Honestly, the conservadouche Fox "news" moderators, Bret Baier and Martha MacCullum, could have phrased things differently at the first debate of the future losers of the Republican nomination for president on Wednesday night in Milwaukee. Baier asked for a show of hands in answer to the question, "If former President Trump is convicted in a court of law, would you still support him as your party’s choice?" He might as well have asked, "If President Trump wanted you to come to his prison cell and suck his dick, would you?" The response would have been the same, with fast-talking, bright-toothed, empty-headed rich fucknut Vivek Ramaswamy eagerly raising his hand to volunteer that he'd vigorously gobble some orange knob and others joining in to demonstrate how much they want Trump's balls slapping their chins with pathetic, shouty worm Ron DeSantis and America's mopiest stepdad Mike Pence grudgingly admitting that, yeah, they'd mouth the mushroom. Only sad, hairless scrotum Asa Hutchinson and beach ball with high blood pressure Chris Christie had the nerve to say, "No, get that thing out of my face."

It's not that it's surprising that six out of the eight future losers would say they would support Trump, even if he's a convicted criminal. What were most of them going to do? Say the opposite and tempt Trump's animal packs of voters to flood them with death threats and doxxing? That's fucking frightening, sure. And it's not surprising that most of the half-dozen cowards deflected onto other issues, like accusing Joe Biden or Merrick Garland or Christopher Wray of politicizing law enforcement, as if law enforcement isn't a political entity everywhere and all the time. Between that and pretending to be tough by threatening to disband the FBI or fire someone, it was pathetic. 

What also wasn't surprising but was telling as hell is that not one of those who said they were fine voting for a felon convicted of attempting to overturn an election claimed Trump was innocent. Not one. Even Ramaswamy, who couldn't bend over fast enough for a train of MAGA morons to be run on him, didn't make the case that Trump is innocent, although he came close when he said, "There’s a difference between bad behavior and illegal behavior" to Chris Christie, who called "bullshit" so fast that it winded him. Ramaswamy added, "The fact is that these are politicized indictments and we have to call out the truth," which, again, is not the same as saying that Trump is innocent of the crimes he's accused of. 

It's just fucking depressing that so many Republicans couldn't say, "Fuck no, I'm not voting for a convict." But every single one of the candidates who said they'd vote for a guilty Trump is sure out there pretending to be tough, law and order, no-shit-taken, cop-humping, jail-filling motherfuckers. Every one of them would support going after Wray or Garland or Jack Smith, but, you know, that's not political. 

2. In Milwaukee on Wednesday, it hit 100 degrees with a heat index of 110-120. Schools were closed because of the high temperatures, about 20 degrees above normal. The heat advisory was in effect until 9 p.m., which is when the GOP debate began. The extreme weather this summer meant the question of climate change couldn't be avoided, and Baier and MacCullum didn't ignore it, listing some of the crazy shit that's gone on. 

When asked for a show of hands on who believe that humans cause climate change, DeSantis dickishly put a stop to the activity and called for a "debate" about it before not debating it at all and making some weird remark about needing "to be present" when disaster strikes. Ramaswamy, who, it should be noted repeatedly, is fucking insane, said plainly, "The climate change agenda is a hoax...the reality is more people are dying of bad climate change policies than they are of actual climate change," which is objectively idiotic. Nikki Haley seemed like she was on the verge of saying something compelling but she zigged right over to blaming China and India. 

It was honestly weird to watch the governor of Florida and the former governor of South Carolina not calling out climate catastrophe denialism for the dangerous bullshit it is. Their states are fucked if nothing changes. Haley could have talked about how she started the South Carolina Disaster Recovery Office that also focused on being prepared for the floods and storms and other shit that would be caused by climate change. The others could have attacked DeSantis for having his head so far up his ass on climate change that he's wearing his kidneys like Disney mouse ears. Young Republicans give a shit about this, but the candidates didn't. How in the world can you begin to talk about immigration issues without talking about how climate is affecting migration? 

The world is gonna burn and drown and these putzes are bleating on about getting rid of the Department of Education and how much they wanna bomb Mexico and other foolishness.

The Georgia Indictment Is a Defense of the Workers Who Make Democracy Function

One thing that comes across in the indictment of Donald Trump and the cabal of scoundrels, dregs, assholes, and Rudy Giuliani for racketeering and other crimes in Georgia is that Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis treated Trump like a criminal who happens to have been president. It's a contrast with the indictments from Special Counsel Jack Smith, who treats Trump like a former president who happens to be a criminal. In the federal indictments, for stealing classified documents and refusing to give them back, as well as for inciting the January 6 insurrection, Smith writes with a sense of mourning overlaying some measure anger, as if it's just a shame that it all had to come to this, but, alas, it did and now we must do something about it. That's not to take away from the effectiveness of the indictments. I'm just talking tone here.

Not Willis, though. Her indictment is a full-on bitch slapping, a cry of outrage that these motherfuckers came to her state, to her county, and shit all over the joint, and, yeah, someone needs to do something about that. One major difference between the Willis and Smith indictments is in how they deal with the actual real lives of people that Trump and his co-conspirators, indicted and unindicted, fucked up completely. Smith touches on it in vague mentions, but Willis? She’s fucking done, man. These traitorous assholes fucked with election workers, constituents she’s sworn to defend, and Willis wants the assholes to pay.

Willis lists “Harassment and Intimidation of Fulton County Election Worker Ruby Freeman” in the "Manner and Methods of the Enterprise" of Trump and his "criminal organization." Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss, provided some of the most compelling public testimony to the January 6 committee, detailing the hell their became because the goddamn president, his goddamn lawyers, and other goddamn scoundrels couldn’t shut the fuck up lying about what Freeman and Moss did while counting ballots. Freeman and Moss were doing jobs for the government of Fulton County, for Georgia, and for the United State, important work, and these craven dickholes wanted to destroy them or force them to lie.

Freeman’s name comes up 40 times in Willis’s indictment. Each and every time Rudy Giuliani slurped out her name in an official and unofficial capacity is listed as “an overt act in furtherance of a conspiracy.” Every time some other piece of Trump’s garbage attempted to harass and harangue and intimidate Freeman into joining them in lies is there as evidence of how mercenary and cruel the conspiracy was on an individual level, as if Freeman was a representative of the nation as a whole, as Trump’s savage goons tried to beat us all into submission. And every shit word about Freeman that fell out of Trump’s sphincter mouth, greedily gobbled up and foully vomited up as death threats and doxxing and misery for Freeman and Moss, all of that is there. 

I mean, fuck Giuliani forever for saying that “Ruby Freeman, Shaye Moss, and an unidentified man were ‘quite obviously surreptitiously passing around USB ports as if they're vials of heroin or cocaine’ at State Farm Arena to be used to ‘infiltrate the crooked Dominion voting machines.’” At least a racist piece of shit like Giuliani is consistent.

Freeman and Moss stood strong against this onslaught, standing up for what's right and what's real. They should be treated as heroes, but Trump couldn't stand that ordinary people might have some power that damages him, so they must be coopted or wrecked. Willis is standing up for them, for the people who do the grunt work of keeping shit running on very level of government. Someone fucking has to.

Freeman isn’t mentioned at all by name by Smith. She’s just an “election worker.” That’s not to disparage the federal indictment. It’s got a focus on going to trial quickly to put Trump behind bars and burying him where we don’t have to hear his ignorant farted words or see his raggedy basketball face wobbling as if ready to burst or implode at any moment. 

Willis also makes sure that attacks on election workers in general are not lost in the story of this pathetic chapter. Giuliani is called out for saying that “Fulton County election workers were stealing votes and that Georgia officials were covering up a crime in plain sight,” among other ludicrous things flung at the Georgia legislature and the public. 

The other amazing thing that Willis does is she points the way for other states to get in on the prosecution. She says that the criminal enterprise operated in Fulton County, Georgia, elsewhere in the State of Georgia, in other states, including, but not limited to, Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, NewMexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, and in the District of Columbia." And then she goes on to describe who did what to fuck with those states' elections and election workers.

It's a righteously angry document, and it's what we needed to express just how supremely angry we all are at what was done to us and what is continually being done to us and what will be done to us if people like Fani Willis aren't there to say, "Fuck, no. Not here. Not you."

Why Doesn't the Right Defend Kai Cenat's Actions as Free Speech?

This guy, Kai Cenat, has 6.5 million followers on Twitch, including 80,000 paid subscribers, and millions more following him on YouTube. He streams himself gaming, does pranks, and basically fucks around and makes a shit-ton of money doing it. No judgment. Anyone who makes a living doing what they love, as long as it's legit and/or doesn't hurt anyone, good on them. 

So Cenat and another online content creator, Fanum, said last Friday afternoon that they were giving away Playstation 5s and gift cards in Union Square in the middle of Lower-ish Manhattan. It's a busy area even when it's not peak tourist season, which it totally, fucking annoyingly is. The announcement caused thousands of mostly young people to swarm Union Square. After being delayed, Cenat arrived and live-streamed for a little while from the event until it got too intense to keep going. It doesn’t look like Playstations were given away, but the crowd started to lose its shit and jumped on cars and tore up a subway entrance construction site and other parts of Union Square, getting into fights with the cops who arrived, all while Cenat drove away as people held onto his SUV like it was the last helicopter leaving the Fyre Festival or something. 

Cenat was arrested for first-degree rioting and inciting a riot, along with unlawful assembly for doing all this without a permit. 

Now, Cenat didn’t riot himself. He never encouraged people to riot, even if he did watch it and film it. All he did was tell people to show up. I mean, crowds have shown up at other events he’s held spontaneously and nothing remotely like this fuckery happened, but, at the end of the day, like at those previous giveaways and get-togethers, didn’t he only speak? Yet would anyone deny that he bears responsibility for what occurred? 

I mean, right-wing dirthumper media sure has no problem pinning the blame on Kai Cenat. Conservative columnist Cal Thomas, who I didn't even realize was still living, decried the riot, blaming a lack of fathers and seeming to imply they should be shot or threatened with being shot before being beaten with sticks. Over on Trump’s Truth Toilet, they’re saying things like, “Throw away the key.” Or as another stated flatly, “Social media star Kai Cenat INCITES dangerous  NY riot over promise of huge gaming giveaway.” You'd think they'd be defending his right to free speech.

But Cenat even cautioned people, “We're making sure to have good like protection and shit. You already know, we're trying to chill and shit…” And in hyping it, he seemed to anticipate that things could go awry and wanted to prevent it: “That shit might end really quick depending on how rowdy you get and shit like that. Make sure you pull up with somebody. Just make sure you pull up with a friend to make sure ya'll are good and shit like that.” Another way to put that? “Be there, will be wild.” 

Right now, Trump and his legal team of cockmites and asslickers are trying to make a case that everything Trump did to try to overthrow the results of the 2020 election and install Trump as a de facto dictator, up to and including the insurrection at the Capitol, were just free speech in action. Trying to get the Georgia Secretary of State to “find” enough votes to give the state to Trump? Free speech. It was "aspirational." Writing out a fucking plan to steal the election? Free speech. Telling the mob at his January 6 bullshit protest to march to the Capitol “you'll never take back our country with weakness.We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore”? Free speech. Sure, he also said to march “peacefully and patriotically,” but Kai Cenat told people to chill and make sure they’re good. That didn’t stop him from being charged. 

There are lots of reasons why Trump’s actions don’t fall under free speech. And the example is right there in the Kai Cenat arrest. You can’t do something that convinces people to commit crimes. You talk people into starting a riot, even unintentionally. And you can’t fucking well ask an official to create fake electors to substitute for the real ones and overturn an election. If you call it all "free speech," then I suppose it's free speech if Joe Biden talked to Hunter about business deals, right, MAGA freaks? Or when someone hires a hit man to murder their spouse? It's just aspirational speech until there's a corpse. The murder is the only crime, no? It gets absurd pretty fucking quickly.

Yeah, I'm comparing January 6 to the Union Square riot. The big fucking difference is that, unlike the January 6 motherfucking insurrectionists, virtually no one is defending the Union Square rioters. Large swaths of politicians aren't declaring them innocent or just tourists or that they were in a public place or anything of the sort. I know there are some concerns about violence in the police response and those should be dealt with, as should the assaults on the cops. Again, though, with very limited exceptions, no one is trying to minimize that shit, certainly no elected officials.

By the way, unlike Trump, Cenat has apologized and condemned the riot. First there was a statement from his publicity group that said, “We apologize to all of those impacted. We are fully cooperating with local authorities.” Then, yesterday, he unequivocally told the people who did the rioting that they fucked up: "I am beyond disappointed in anybody who became destructive that day. That shit is not cool... I had good intentions for this whole thing, and none of that was my intention. I don’t condone any of the things that went on that day. None of that is cool." He added, "As a whole, we all have to do better." He did not thank the rioters. He did not express love for them. He included himself in those who had fucked up.

So a fuckin’ Twitch streamer has more honor and decency than a former president. 

New Trump Indictment: Trump Didn't Give a Solitary Fuck About Anyone But Himself

One thing that has always bugged the shit out of me with the reaction of Donald Trump, who really was president of the United States for a weird, fucked-up period of time, to the results of the 2020 election. It's something that has bugged lots of people and it's something that others have said but deserves to be stated again in this new, post-third indictment context. So I'm not treading new ground when I say this: the easiest way to see that Trump knew that he lost the 2020 election is that he only ever says that his election was "stolen." 

See, if you gave a single fuck about "election integrity" or some such shit, you'd have to insist that the whole goddamned election was screwed up and everyone who got elected did so unfairly, including any Republicans. But even in that case, you'd think that Trump would have made the play because Democrats kept the House and Senate. If the election was all kinds of fucked with cheating and machine hacks and shady workers, if Republican area ballots were stolen or Democratic area ballots were illegally cast multiple times, then that's the case you make. You'd say all of it was fucked, including local races, including ballot initiatives, the whole damn thing. Toss it out and do it again.

By not insisting on these broad-based election shenanigans, but instead absolutely ignoring every other race (except for some late in the game concerns about the Georgia Senate races), Trump and his legal team were saying something that was simply impossible. If Trump votes were thrown out, then that meant other votes were, but Trump insisted that some people just voted for president and nothing else. Indeed, he insisted that dead people voted for Joe Biden and no one else. But there was no evidence of that. It would have had to be a massive fraud scheme with precise details and many different ways of going about it, overvoting for Biden in some places, ignoring Trump votes in others. You'd have to be fucking deranged or, you know, the stupidest of MAGA cretins, which is not a high bar to clear, in order to believe that you could commit fraud with such precision on such a broad scale. 

Yeah, the easiest fucking thing would have been for Trump to say the whole election was fucked and that he was standing up for everyone, every single candidate, every single voter. But Trump's poisonous narcissism would not allow that. It was about him and only him and fuck everyone else. The only votes that mattered were the ones for him. All other votes were worthless. 

Special Counsel Jack Smith points this out in the indictment when he discusses Trump's doltish attempts to get Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to find one more vote than needed to cover the spread between him and Biden. That came after Georgia's Bureau of Investigation said it "was examining all such claims and finding no merit to them." If the allegations of election fuckery couldn't be proven, then, fuck it, Brad, just fuckin' lie about the votes. That's proof right there that Trump knew he lost because, again, that's not what you do when you think something terrible has happened to the nation. It's when you don't want something terrible to happen to you. If you are defending the right to vote, you don’t ask the Georgia Secretary of State to find just enough votes for you to win the state.

Again and again, what comes through in the indictment, as it did in the report of the January 6 committee, is that Trump and his lawyer lackeys and lickspittles all thought that Democrats are simply not valid as voters or, indeed, as citizens. In fact, no one is really, truly American unless they support Donald Trump and would be willing to go to the barricades for him, quite literally on January 6, 2021. You are someone who is just trying to count votes? Fuck you, you're part of a conspiracy. You're a Republican elections official certifying votes that show Trump lost? Fuck you, you're RINO. You're a judge who rules that reality is actually real? Fuck you, you're a deep state puppet. 

What Smith has done is say there is one clear fucking reason for all this and its name is Donald Trump. You either can believe that thousands of people were involved in a massive, virtually undetectable effort to steal the election or you can believe that Donald Trump lost and couldn't fucking handle it because he knew that his criminal ass was exposed. And Smith is rightfully aghast that it was the motherfucking President of the motherfucking United States who committed all these acts. 

Think of how fucked it all is. To take one example, think of how many people degraded themselves for him, throwing themselves into committing crimes at his crude bidding through screamed speeches and hysterical tweets. Think of the lives destroyed just by listening to this prissy, bourgeois, orange pig man. Check out this paragraph on the false electors scheme: "On the same day [as the legitimate electors voted], at the direction of the Defendant and Co-Conspirator 1 [Trump and 'Big Tits' Giuliani], fraudulent electors convened sham proceedings in the seven targeted states to cast fraudulent electoral ballots in favor of the Defendant." They got state officials involved in it. Now, I'm no fancy shitheel attorney clawing at Trump's wallet pocket, but that's not First Amendment shit. That's "broke the fuckin' law" shit.  Trump didn't care, man. Trump didn't care that people were being induced to commit crimes. Trump didn't care that he was inspiring violence. As long as they were doing it for him, shit, that just shows they're good Americans. And, also, in the end, at its climax, it was a Hail Mary pass, a long shot, and he sat there for hours, waiting to see if those motherfuckers really got it done for him on January 6. 

Yeah, we're grateful for those who didn't allow themselves to be sucked into Trump's fantasy maw. And, yeah, it's all well and good that people like Attorney General Bill Barr resigned rather than participate in the dicking over of the American people. It's fine that Vice President Mike Pence realized that his ass might be in a world of shit if he didn't certify the election and stood up to Trump. But it's not fuckin' fine that they stayed pretty damn quiet about how Trump was wrecking the joint until fairly recently. 

Barr and Pence and so many others who flinched at the end won't be charged with crimes. But they are guilty for putting the country in this fucking bind, for abetting a louche loser for as long as they did, riding his flabby coattails until they finally frayed too much for them. They let him shit all over the nation repeatedly and wiped his ass and said he could load up on fast food and do it again. 

Yeah, Trump, that rancid garbage dump of a human, needs to be jailed. But the stench from him will permeate us for the rest of most of our lives. The derangement will take a generation to phase out. It all starts with Trump finally being punished, and, truly, it looks like he really might be.

Because of Florida's Stop WOKE Act, You Couldn't Teach Much of Florida's African American Education Standards

It should have been so fucking easy for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is always angry that a non-white person might be happy and wondering how he can ruin that. When he was asked about the social studies standards released by the Florida Department of Education last week, in particular the one that read that "Instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit," he could have just simply said, "I haven't had a chance to look that over." Or "I'm not an expert on that. You'll have to ask the DOE." Boom. Done. Controversy avoided.

But if you're a motherfucker, and Ron DeSantis has never met a mother that he didn't vigorously fuck, you do what he did. You double the fuck down. As DeSantis whitesplained, "They’re probably going to show that some of the folks that eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith into doing things later in life." Imagine someone who was whipped regularly, whose wife was raped, whose children were sold off. Now imagine them being grateful that they were taught to make horseshoes. It's ludicrous, and DeSantis got all the bullshit piled on him that he deserved, including a spanking from Vice President Kamala Harris and the NAACP.

Let's get even clearer here. Yeah, slaves were taught skills. That's because that way the plantation or wherever they were being held didn't need to hire anyone and, you know, pay them to sew clothes or make leg irons. As far as "later in life," there were generations upon generations of slaves who were taught things that mattered to no one except their owners. "Later in life" just meant "dying a slave" until 1865. And one other thing ought to be mentioned here. A slave who knew how to do more than field work was more valuable when they were sold. Yeah, in fact, those "skills" were advertised. 

You see that ad? Being a carpenter, brick maker, or tanner got your owner a better price for you. That's how the fucking skills were "parlayed" for almost the entirety of the savage history of slavery in this damned country.

Pointing out this deeply fucked up standard upset some on the right. According to them, we were picking out one thing from a long, comprehensive document. Attacking Vice President Harris, the National Review (motto: "As white and fragile as Buckley's bones") said, "If you are able to read [the standards document] and conclude that the single reference to slaves developing skills (which I’ve bolded) is indicative of the narrative direction of the course, rather than a tiny (and correct) part of it, then you are beyond saving and you deserve to live your life as an ignoramus." Yeah, but if I give a speech where I talk about how the races need to unify and then I drop the n-word in the middle of it, why the fuck should anyone care about the rest of what I said?

To be fair, the standards on slavery and on African American history (Florida is one of only 14 states that require its teaching) do cover a lot of ground. But here's where the rub comes, because there's always a fucking rub when it comes to DeSantis and Florida and fucking conservatives. 

See, Florida passed the Stop WOKE Act in 2022, which is pretty clear about how things are supposed to be taught. For instance, you can't teach in a way that "a person, by virtue of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin, bears personal responsibility for and must feel guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress because of actions, in which the person played no part, committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, national origin, or sex." The way that's phrased makes it obvious that it's talking about white people. You can't make white people sad. It's ostensibly against things the authors of the bill don't understand, like critical race theory, but, basically, it's about history making white people think, "Man, I feel like shit that my ancestors fucked people over so horrifically. Maybe we should do something about that." Fuck that feeling, man. 

Now, I'm not sure how you're supposed to learn some of the things in the standards, like the Underground Railroad, slave revolts, and more, without blaming, you know, the whites who did all this to Black people. Even moreso, I don't know how you can teach that without someone feeling guilt or anguish. Jesus, I remember when I watched Roots when I was a kid. I was fucking enraged at white people and I'm really goddamn white. History should make you feel shitty. That's what makes you want to do better.

But it gets even more absurd. See, the standards list people that it would be good for students to learn about. One standard is to "Identify African Americans who demonstrated civic service," and it lists people like Colin Powell or Hiram Revels, who was a senator during Reconstruction. Also on that list is Carter G. Woodson. And that's where shit gets weird and tricky. 

See, Woodson was a historian and educator who believed that, as an NAACP biography says, "the white-dominated historical profession had little interest in Black history. He saw African-American contributions 'overlooked, ignored, and even suppressed by the writers of history textbooks and the teachers who use them.'" In 1933, he published The Mis-Education of the Negro, a book of his articles and speeches where he talked about how education reaffirmed white supremacy. As Woodson put it, the white-based education system had succeeded in cowing African Americans: "They usually say the races here are getting along amicably now, and we do not want these peaceful relationships disturbed by teaching of new political thought. What they mean to say with respect to the peaceful relation of the races, then, is that the Negroes have been terrorized to the extent that they are afraid even to discuss political matters publicly." 

Woodson saw it, man. He saw how this shit worked: "If you can control a man’s thinking you do not have to worry about his action. When you determine what a man shall think you do not have to concern yourself about what he will do. If you make a man feel that he is inferior, you do not have to compel him to accept an inferior status, for he will seek it himself." He called for the study of Black history, in the United States and elsewhere, which is one reason he started the movement for what became Black History Month, which is probably why he's on that list up there. 

But what Woodson really did was to provide a foundation for critical race theory in education. That's right. The Florida Department of Education wants students to learn about the guy who started CRT, which is prohibited by the Stop WOKE Act. 

That's how stupid this shit is. It's not only racist. It's not only anti-historical. It's not only hysterical. It's fucking farcical. 

And that should very much cause guilt, anguish, and psychological distress.

Marjorie Taylor Greene's District Owes a Lot to the New Deal and the Great Society (profanity free for the kids)

(If you want a rude version of this, check out my latest video for the Political Voices Network.)

Not to educatorsplain things to Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the enthusiastic genital displayer from Georgia's 14th District, but during her speech last weekend at one of those endless streams of conservative conferences that seem to be as frequent as a new Marvel thing, she went off, oddly, on how Joe Biden's policies were helping people. "Joe Biden had the largest public investment in social infrastructure and environmental programs, that is actually finishing what FDR started, that LBJ expanded on, and Joe Biden is attempting to complete," she said. Unsurprisingly, Biden's campaign for president used Greene's words approvingly, flipping the context to how, yeah, Biden's done some good things for the country and thanks, Marj. 

But there's another aspect to Greene's ignorance that deserves more attention. She very specifically went after Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs and Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. She sneered, "The Great Society were [sic] big government programs for education, medical care, urban problems, rural poverty, transportation, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, welfare" and more things. It should benoted that the fact that what she's listing are considered bad things by the gathered future fascists of America points to an emptiness in what we might quaintly call their "souls." 

The thing is that both the New Deal and the Great Society (including the War on Poverty) were very much targeting regions like Appalachia, part of which is in northwest Georgia, which is where Greene's district is. The New Deal created the Tennessee Valley Authority, and northern Georgia benefited with two hydroelectric dams that still provide power to several counties in the 14th. In fact, the Rural Electrification Act of 1936 was a major factor in the modernization of northwest Georgia and the electric cooperatives created by the law are still keeping the lights on there. 

Unlike the contemptuous Greene, FDR actually had a fondness for rural Georgia. He had what he called his summer White House in Warm Springs, which is in west-central Georgia, a couple of counties down from what is now the 14th District. Roosevelt found that the waters of the springs gave him relief from the pain of polio, and he got to know the farmers and workers in the state, learning about the rampant poverty there. There's no need to go through everything that the New Deal did for Georgia, with schools, subsidies to farmers, jobs, and housing, all while the short-sighted Gov. Eugene Talmadge was trying to hinder the programs, especially the ones that helped Black people.

But it's worth pointing out that in Greene's district alone, Fort Mountain State Park was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps. The city halls in Dalton and Cedartown, as well as the Post Office in Summerville, all came from New Deal money and effort. (By the way, even though it's out of her district, it's worth noting that the University of Georgia, where Greene went to college, was pretty much kept alive during the Depression by the millions invested in new buildings and programs through the New Deal.)

And the Great Society? Over 100,000 people in the district are on Medicare or Medicaid (with tens of thousands more eligible). The Appalachian Regional Development Act of 1965 led to massive economic development. The poverty rate in that area of Georgia dropped by over half, from 38.5% of people in 1960 to 16.9% in 1970. And Greene supposedly cares about fetuses since she is rabidly anti-choice. So why would she want to tear down a program that helped fetuses stay alive.  In 1960, the infant mortality rate in northwest Georgia was 29.1 deaths per thousand. In 1975? 16.4. Nearly 50% fewer babies were dying because of the Great Society. Seems like a really pro-life thing, no?

In other words, Greene's district pretty much simply exists because of two Democratic presidents. She should be on her knees every day, thanking FDR and LBJ, and she should be begging Joe Biden to continue helping the 14th as much as the other two leaders did. But, no, it's just easier to pretend that anything the government does is evil. 

(If you want the uncensored version of the video, subscribe to my Patreon.)

One Reason for a Speedy Trial for Trump: We Need to Know If He's Guilty Before Voting in 2024

Let us say, and why not, that you have a child, a son, at a local day care. Every morning you drop him off at, hell, let's call it "Little Tykes' Awesome School." You trust that they will make sure nothing bad happens to your son, and you've heard nothing but good things about LTAS. But then one day, you see something on your parents' group chat: one of the teachers has been arrested. You try to tell yourself that it could be any number of things that a teacher has been arrested for, but you're still freaking out. Then it turns out that it's the owner of LTAS who's been arrested. Jeremy Tykes was taken into custody after a parent told police that her daughter said...oh, shit. No, no, this is all rumor, you say. Then you get a link to a news story which says that there are video recordings of Tykes walking little girls into his office. Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck. You tell your boss you gotta go, jump in your car, and go get your son. After you pick him up and get him home, in a safe place, with safe snacks, you ask him if anything happened to him. No, your son says, nothing happened but he played with his friends and wants to watch TV. 

After his arrest and arraignment, where he actually gets bond for some reason you can't figure out, Tykes says he wants his trial delayed while he looks for work. He hopes to get another job running a day care or at least working for one. Really, he wants to run the one that he had run already. It's what he's passionate about, he says. Besides, he says through his lawyer, he's totally innocent, and there are no videos of him doing anything to any of the kids, and if some of them say he did something terrible, well, those kids were coached because some of his co-workers were out to get him. 

Listen, you know that false allegations have been made in these situations. You know there have been witch hunts that have destroyed careers. You know that, in theory, everyone is innocent until proven guilty in a court. You know all that, and you believe in it. But, still, you fucking well know that that motherfucker shouldn't be anywhere near kids until his innocence is established. Right? And that trial better happen really fucking fast before he gets another day care job and perhaps fucks up the lives of some more children.

See, one thing I keep coming back to with the potential delays in the trial of Donald Trump over his weird use and abuse of classified documents is that we better fucking establish his guilt or innocence before he's allowed near classified documents again. I mean, in seeking an indefinite delay, ideally until after the 2024 election, Trump's lawyers write, "While the Government appears to favor an expedited (and therefore cursory) approach to this case, it cannot point to any exigency or urgency requiring a rapid adjudication.  There is no ongoing threat to national security interests nor any concern regarding continued criminal activity."

And then, in a part that sounds like it was dictated by Trump and ordered to be included, they go on, "President Trump is running for President of the United States and is currently the likely Republican Party nominee.  This undertaking requires a tremendous amount of time and energy, and that effort will continue until the election on November 5, 2024...[Preparing for trial] requires significant planning and time, making the current schedule untenable and counseling in favor of a continuance."

This needs to be stated plainly: The ongoing threat to national security is that Donald fucking Trump can get his tiny orange paws on more top secret shit and do whatever the fuck he wants with it. Of course this is a national security issue. And, of fucking course, voters need to know that Trump fucked with our national security before they vote because there are still millions of people in this country who are stupid enough to vote for Trump. Even Trump's lawyers recognize this when they say, "[T]here is simply no question any trial of this action during the pendency of a Presidential election will impact both the outcome of that election and, importantly, the ability of the Defendants to obtain a fair trial." The impact on the election is the fucking point. Why shouldn't a conviction on mishandling classified shit not have an impact on an election? Would you say, "Yeah, he was found guilty of fucking kids, but we should totally let him work with kids again"?

Luckily, Special Counsel Jack Smith wasn't having any of it and said, in essence, "Are you assholes serious right now?" As the government writes, "Defendants Trump and Nauta claim unequivocally that they cannot receive a fair trial prior to the conclusion of the next presidential election, urge the Court to withdraw the current scheduling Order, and request that the Court not even consider a new trial date until some unspecified later time. There is no basis in law or fact for proceeding in such an indeterminate and open-ended fashion, and the Defendants provide none."

And it adds, "Finally, the demands of Defendants’ professional schedules do not provide a basis to delay trial in this case. Many indicted defendants have demanding jobs that require a considerable amount of their time and energy, or a significant amount of travel. The Speedy Trial Act contemplates no such factor as a basis for a continuance, and the Court should not indulge it here." Yeah, motherfuckers, everyone's got shit to do and would rather do that than go on trial for something that could put them in prison for years.

But, hey, if Trump's bizarre, self-aggrandizing reasoning actually works, hell, every accused criminal can say, "Yeah, I know I'm accused of murdering a classroom of a children, but I gotta work my shift at the 7-11 so, sorry, Judge, but I'm gonna have to take a raincheck on my trial date. We good?" Or maybe just, "I'm running for president, so I can't be bothered."

(Note: In one draft, I made the owner of the day care Donald Trump, but I realized that MAGA cretins would have no problem putting Trump back in the day care, and they'd likely be proud to have their children molested by him. I don't even think I'm being hyperbolic for effect.)

Where Is the Freakout Over the Assassination Attempt on Barack Obama?

About a year ago, an armed fucknut showed up outside Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh's house. Remember that? The fucknut was suicidal, angry about the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and ready to take out some judges on his way out the door. It's scary shit, no doubt, but, fortunately, the fucknut called the cops and turned himself in. And his gun was unloaded, but, you know, still scary shit. 

For a couple of weeks, right-wing media and the GOP lost its goddamn mind. The Republican National Committee put out a statement calling the fucknut "The Democrat SCOTUS Assassin." Fox "news" went nutzoid, with Jesse Watters, who always looks like he knows which room the passed out coed is in and can't wait to tell the other frat brothers, just asked questions about the fucknut's intent, like "Do you think that idea just popped into his head? Or did the orders come all the way from the top?" On Newsmax (motto: "Giving a handjob to crazy every night"), some fuckin' host whose name no one will ever know wondered, "Are Americans right to question if [Nancy] Pelosi was actually hoping for or encouraging violence that could lead to Joe Biden appointing a new Supreme Court justice?" Other conservadrones said that the national media wasn't spending enough time on the "horrific assassination attempt on Kavanaugh" (really? "Horrific"?) It didn't matter that it was covered extensively everywhere. Republican officials blamed Chuck Schumer, who had said, "You will pay a price" over the Roe decision to the Supreme Court and to GOP members of Congress, meaning, clearly, you'll face hell at the ballot box. Squamous creep Ted Cruz, manly but fleeing Josh Hawley, and the corpse of Chuck Grassley all attacked Schumer and Democrats for the fucknut's self-aborted assassination attempt.

In other words, it was an occasion to pile on Democrats. Republicans are always good at making poisonous lemonade out of bullshit lemons. And this batch had the bonus effect of distracting from all the violence by right-wing fucknuts who far outnumber the lefty ones. 

So when we learned that Taylor Taranto, a QAnon-believing shit-for-brains who was already wanted for whatever he did at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, was arrested on June 29 with weapons near former President Barack Obama's house in DC, certainly it would be different. Certainly those same people who complained about an alleged lack of coverage of the incident with Kavanaugh would be eager to cover the Obama assassination attempt and Taranto's desire to kill Jamie Raskin, Kevin McCarthy, and others. He was live streaming his search for tunnels in the neighborhood because QAnon morons think children are always being dragged into Democrats' houses through tunnels so they can be eaten and raped. Probably not in that order. Probably. Taranto didn't turn himself in. No, the cops found him and even chased him for a bit. Taranto is obviously fucking insane, but he had two guns, a machete, and 400 rounds when he was caught. Crazy can still kill. 

Then, it turns out that Donald Trump, on June 28, posted a 2017 garbage dump of a piece praising his first 100 days in office and it included the addresses of both Obama and his former chief of staff and nexus of all things crazy people believe, John Podesta. Taranto said he was targeting both of them. In fact, "Taranto reposted a Truth Social post from Trump containing what Trump claimed was Obama’s home address. In a post on Telegram, Taranto wrote: 'We got these losers surrounded! See you in hell, Podesta’s and Obama’s.'" You got that? The wannabe killer is saying he got his intel from Trump. 

Trump's Truth Toilet post is still up. You can look for it, if you want. I'm not fuckin' linking to it or screenshotting it. But of course Trump's not gonna take it down because that would mean he admits having been a factor in the potential assassination of a former president. It would mean he did something wrong. And that cockdribble never would do that.

While Fox "news" has covered it a little during the, you know, "news" part, as of today, there's not a goddamn thing about it on its website. But you know what else? It's gone from NBC's website. And CNN's. There are day-old articles in the Washington Post and elsewhere. And while Chris Christie has blasted Trump for it, there's been virtual silence from Democrats about it. 

In other words, the Kavanaugh sort-of assassination attempt got far more coverage than the nearly, actually committed assassination attempt on Obama, inspired and directed by another former president who is the frontrunner for his party's nomination. Trump should be fucking hounded endlessly about this. Frankly, we should be freaking out about it. It's one thing for an address to be public record. It's another for a vengeful cockdribble to spew it out to his idiot hordes looking for anything that means they should go get shooty at last. 

But, no, instead, do go on about the fucking little bit of cocaine some idiot left at the White House. That's so much more fucking important. 

Once again, our media attention, and, therefore, our own attention is being driven by whatever the right demands it be driven to. And Democrats play along, refusing to squeeze those lemons for themselves. 

In Its Affirmative Action Decision, the Supreme Court Shits on Higher Education

I was trying to figure which of the Supreme Court's 6-3 fuckings this week to write about. Perhaps the full-on face fucking of allowing any business that declares what they do "expressive" to discriminate agains LGBTQ+ people (or, really, anyone) because they think an invisible sky wizard will be mad at them if they don't. Is cooking expressive? Is diagnosing medical conditions expressive? Who the fuck knows? Or maybe the large strap-on ass fucking of the court blocking President Biden's student loan forgiveness plan where, in essence, the majority added back $10k or more in debt that had been eliminated. Thanks, John Roberts, you vicious, psycho numb nuts. 

But perhaps, as a college professor, I am best suited to talk about the pair of cases that led to the majority overturning affirmative action programs in higher education because that shit is dead center in my wheelhouse and I'm gonna fuckin' swing for the fences because I know what the fuck I'm talking about. The majority came to my fuckin' place of work and shit all over it. I don't go over to the Supreme Court and slap William Rehnquist's dead dick out of Roberts' whore mouth. 

See, in the roughly 250 or so years I've been teaching, I've led classes with little to no racial diversity and classes with extraordinary diversity. I've seen how diversity in hiring has an effect on the students and I've seen how diversity within the classroom impacts all students, white and non-white. So let me put this plainly: diversity and equity in higher education are pedagogically important in the classroom in a way that continues after graduation. Lemme put it even more plainly: this shit matters so that students of all races learn how to fucking exist in the real world. 

I could get anecdotal here pretty easily. I could tell you about amazing discussions in classrooms around works of literature where one student of one race will talk about how something is true to their life and another student of another race will say they never knew. I could tell you how blowing up the literary canon to include far more women writers and non-white writers and non-Western writers has enriched the classroom experience. I regularly teach works by American writers who are Black, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, African, and more, along with white writers you've heard of, and students are fucking thrilled by it because many of them end up finding something about themselves in that work and then it matters more and then it opens them up to other works. Every fucking year this happens, and the experience of those works is heightened by the diversity of the class itself. And then I see these students hanging out and making plans together. It's fucking beautiful. 

Frankly, I think that's what the people who are against affirmative action fear most: the normalization of diversity. Goddamn, I have taught in places where classes of 30 or 40 had one or two non-white students, if that. I loved teaching those students and gave it my all, but it feels so divorced from what they are almost guaranteed to experience outside that classroom. It matters. I know everyone on the right thinks higher education is either a waste of time or a means to a job, but it's also teaching you what it means to be in a diverse country. It makes you a better, more open-minded member of this damned society. 

But that's my personal shit and everyone in higher education can give you examples of that. Instead, let's get some research up in this motherfucker. For years, studies have been showing that a diverse student population has a net positive effect on socialization, on civic engagement, and, yeah, on grades. A 2013 study out of Princeton concluded, "Diversity of all kinds is generally associated with positive learning and performance outcomes. Not only do experiences with diversity improve one’s cognitive skills and performance, it also improves attitudes about one’s own intellectual self-confidence, attitudes toward the college experience, and shapes performance in the workplace."

You might say that the Supreme Court shouldn't worry about the pedagogical aspect of diversity in higher education. But ignoring it is tantamount to the Court setting curriculum for all colleges, participating in pedagogical decisions quite fully. And, as both Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in their dissents, abandoning diversity as a goal for the classroom and campus has larger societal impact because the students go into the workforce. "Greater diversity within the teacher workforce improves student academic achievement in primary public schools," writes Sotomayor. "A diverse pipeline of college graduates also ensures a diverse legal profession, which demonstrates that 'the justice system serves the public in a fair and inclusive manner.'" That last part is quoting a brief from the American Bar Association. Diversity in higher education makes everything stronger.

And what about the notion put forth by some on the right that we just don't need affirmative action programs anymore? That's bullshit. "Current rates of change suggest that it would take about 70 years for all not-for-profit institutions to reflect underrepresented students fully in their incoming student population...For Black and Native American students and for faculty from all underrepresented populations, there was effectively no progress from 2013 to 2020," says a 2022 report. If anything, the actual numbers would call for more intensive emphasis on diverse recruitment. That's reality. And we know in places where affirmative action has been banned that the numbers of Black and Hispanic students dropped a whole lot in flagship universities. 

Roberts goes on endlessly about the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. But if you're going to apply it to justify eliminating programs that attempt to enhance the education of all students under the idea that all races aren't being treated absolutely, totally, constantly equal all the time, then why not  use it to ensure that equality of opportunity in all education is assured? Why not force states to make sure that public schools in all places are offering the same level of funding and same level of services? In other words, if you wanna eliminate the need for affirmative action, then eliminate some of the things that cause it to be necessary. 

Or you just want to harm Black and brown people and don't give a fuck otherwise.

(Note: I can't leave this fucked up discussion without saying something about elite colleges, two of which were the defendants in these cases. Really, this was all about some students upset they didn't get accepted to Harvard or UNC-Chapel Hill, even though they might not have gotten in anyways. It's fucking absurd that we give so much importance to schools that are circle jerks of privilege, as if that's the only route to success in an area. US News and World Report's rankings can go suck all the dicks. You can get an amazing education in hundreds of other schools. Why would you want to got to schools that let George W. Bush or Jared Kushner in just because of their rich daddies?)

This Pride Month, They're Trying to Drag Everyone Back Into the Closet

On Friday in NYC, the annual Drag March for Pride Month got under way in Tompkins Square Park. It was the expected array of fabulous, fantastic, and/or delicious people decked out in outrageous finery, crossing and uncrossing gender lines. The march is the cause of the latest right-wing freak out over a perceived LGBTpocalypse because of a portion of a chant. 

One part of the marching group chanted, "We're here! We're queer! We're not going shopping!" as an anti-capitalist stance by some queer organizations going all the way back to at least the 1990s.  The freak out is because in the video clip that made the rounds of Nutsyzania (and apologies for linking to a right-wing dipshit for this) you can hear one guy and maybe one other person chant, "We're here, we're queer, and we're coming for your children." It's a clever joke playing on the worst fears of the most ignorant motherfuckers out there. It is so insignificant, like a flea fart in a hurricane, but conservative media, including Fox "news" and the New York Post and assorted cockmites of the right have picked up on that little bit of a sound bite and treated it like the entire goal of Pride Month is to force kids to go on puberty blockers or some such shit. 

The usual fuckers did the usual fuckery, leaping in to do their best dance of fake outrage. "This movement grooms minors to have mastectomies and castration and fuels a multi billion dollar medical child abuse industry," screamed rat banshee Marjorie Taylor Greene. Lesser animals talked about murdering LGBT people ("There's not a woodchipper big enough" or "Come and try") or "This is what evil looks like" or disgust at the very existence of people in drag or topless women (there's one in the video with nipple pasties) or assertions of "grooming" and pedophilia. You know the routine by now. Truth Toilet has lost its tiny mind over the whole thing. I'm sure we'll hear how this was supposed to distract us from Hunter Biden because every fucking thing seems to have that purpose now.

We are in the midst of an enormous backlash against the rights of queer people in this goddamned country. Things have moved really fucking quickly from drag queens in front of kids to drag queens in general, from trans kids to trans people in general, from banning books with queer characters to banning anything with a friggin' rainbow in general. We're in the midst of an attempt to drag us all back into the closet and lock the door, and lemme tell you, as someone who fought this shit already to get us to where we were before the slavering hatemongers came up with a new way to make bank once the same sex marriage issue seemed to be settled, it's fucking frightening, fucking enraging, and just fucked in general.

Here's some shit that happened in just the last month or so:

In New Hampshire, fucking Nazis showed up outside a coffee shop in Concord to chant and yell slurs while a drag queen story time was going on inside. And then I'm sure they all went back to someone's basement and circle jerked in triumph while talking about straight they are. 

Crazed white nationalist protesters showed up outside a school board meeting in Glendale, California, to rant and get violent about LGBTQ content in the district's curriculum. They had Proud Boys, January 6th insurrectionists, and other assorted fucknuts there, and riot police were present to separate the fucknuts from the LGBTQ supporters, parents, and people. And then I'm sure the Proud Boys went back to someone's basement and totally didn't jack off because, no, really, they actually believe that shit. 

Nazis also showed up at a drag brunch fundraiser to support LGBTQ+ kids in Columbus, Ohio. That roused Republican Governor and crazy son of a bitch who is actually less crazy than most of the GOP Mike DeWine to pen an editorial condemning the existence of Nazis, even if he didn't offer any support to the queer community. 

And then there are the laws that have been passed and stopped by various courts that ban treatment for trans kids or ban people in drag in places where children might be. But that hasn't stopped those same states from banning discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity in their public schools. It's not just Florida's Ron DeSantis, who always looks like he's telling someone, "This dick won't suck itself" as he shoves their head into his lap. Oklahoma's governor just approved rules that could take away a school's accreditation if their libraries have "sexualized materials" (which sounds like cum rags, frankly). 

According to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, more than 200 anti-drag protests, threats, and violent incidents have taken place in the United States in the last year. That's IRL shit. It doesn't count online harassment and hate speech, which is probably so high that it's impossible to register how much of it is out there. 

The problem has always been that a small, loud contingent, with politicians who want to fan the flames of fear and hate to get votes, can make life a fucking misery for a lot of people. And that dopamine jolt of getting "likes" makes people believe jump on the hate bandwagon, whether they truly give a shit or not. And you know what? Most of them fucking don't. They just think they're supposed to. 

Lemme end this with an anecdote. On the NYC subway right now, you might see ads from the dating site Tinder. Leaving aside whatever you think about Tinder and swipe culture, the ads themselves are fascinating because they show various kinds of couples in romantic situations for various gender combinations: same-sex, opposite sex, even non-binary (with the line "A toothbrush at their place"). I really dig their positivity and, really, sexiness. I sat on the subway on Friday thankful that I live somewhere that this kind of thing causes no issue whatsoever to almost every single one of us. No one gave a shit.

You know who else didn't give a shit, too? The people bringing their kids on the train. No one told their children not to look. No one fucking cared. And that goes for the two obviously tourist families who went on and off (I was on a long ride into Brooklyn). They had southern accents, and each was two straight parents and three kids of various ages. They glanced at the ads and then went about their business, like the rest of us did. If they had given a shit at all, they could have gotten off and gone onto another car. They didn't because it didn't matter that much if they saw two men who love each other. (Yes, I know they could have been southern liberals.) 

I fully believe that most people in the United States don't believe any of this is a threat to them or their precious kids. But, like with so many issues, they give into pressure from their peers or their churches to hate where they just don't have that hate. Yeah, that makes them suck, too. But that means they might be persuadable. As we learned with same sex marriage, once it was decided, it went away as an issue (until recently when the Christian nutzoids realized this insane Supreme Court might actually overturn it). 

As Pride Month winds down, we need to push the zealots and Nazis back in the closets. That's where hate belongs, not love.

Get in the Fucking Game on Trump's Indictment, Democrats

President Joe Biden has been very clear: No, motherfuckers, he will not answer your goddamned questions about the federal indictment of former president Donald Trump on 38 counts of just being a fucking cockknob and possibly, but not provably (yet), a traitor. Not only will Biden not answer your questions, he won't comment on it. And he doesn't want anyone in the White House to talk about it, nor does he want his reelection committee or even the Democratic National Committee to say jack shit. And, yep, as of this writing, the DNC has not a peep on its website. 

To an extent, sure, yeah, I get it. As we're told on tiresome repeat, this prosecution is "unprecedented" and needs to be handled with utmost respect for the Justice Department and for the justice system of the United States in order to preclude any accusations of politicization. I mean, you don't want people thinking that this is Biden and the Democrats jailing Trump because he's the leading candidate and almost inevitable presidential nominee for the Republican party. You don't want them to think that the Justice Department, the Attorney General, or the Special Counsel aren't acting independently. You wouldn't ever want that narrative to get out there. You wouldn't want to help that narrative.

Oh, wait. Except for the fact that it's the narrative that's now congealed on the right and the silence is feeding it to bloating and crowding out other narratives. In fact, here's what Trump said last night at his shitpile country club in New Jersey: "Today we witnessed the most evil and heinous abusive power in the history of our country, a very sad thing to watch. A corrupt sitting president had his top political opponent arrested on fake and fabricated charges." And then, later in his pissy, tired little speech (which was interrupted, no shit, by the pathetic sycophants present singing "Happy Birthday" like they were shrieking a funeral dirge), Trump promised that, if he's reelected, "I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president of the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family." The yowling savages in the crowd chanted, "Lock him up!" in response because everyone loves the hits.

You got that? Trump said that it's wrong if he's prosecuted but he will make sure that Biden and his family are prosecuted. In other words, the open politicization of the Justice Department that Trump wanted in his first administration would occur in a presumed second. That orange, dough-faced shitmonger has no problem laying it all out there (although you'd probably wanna ask his voters how it went locking up Hillary Clinton last time around). 

By the way, for the record, Merrick Garland, not Joe Biden, appointed Jack Smith.

Republicans have been all over the airwaves, with most of them denouncing the indictment in varying ways. There have been a couple of outliers, especially in the Republicans running against Trump, who condemn him for, you know, criming so blatantly. And a couple of those have promised to pardon Trump if they're elected because reasons. 

But the near-silence from elected Democrats has been ridiculous. Here and there, some have spoken out forcefully about the severity of the indictment, like Rep. Daniel Goldman of New York, who was the lead counsel in Trump's first impeachment, on CNN on Sunday. But most responses have been like Rep. Don Davis of North Carolina, who addressed things in the most milquetoast, weak tea, pedantic way possible: "What I believe is important is to allow the facts to continue to come forth through a process here and let's allow the Department of Justice to continue to do its work." On the floor of the Senate, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said, "This case must be allowed to play out through the legal process, without outside political or ideological interference." Nice, inoffensive, and completely fucking useless. 

Even Adam Schiff was on CNN last night and he was muted, talking mainly about how sad it is that Trump still has support. About the whole situation, he told Anderson Cooper, "It's a sad day when a president is again indicted, and what so many Republicans are doing to defend him by attacking the Justice Department, by sowing -- you know, an effort to sow disbelief and discredit the FBI, this is another way they're damaging the country, damaging our national security besides the risk it was already taken by having these documents in an unsecure place."

That last remark there is what should be the thing that elected Democrats are hammering constantly with at least the same intensity that Republicans are insisting it's all a witch hunt or that it's no big deal or that others did it or whatever random bullshit they pull out of the giant bag of bullshit they always carry with them. It's mind-boggling that Democrats are once again unilaterally disarming here (and, yeah, if Biden is making them do it, he's fucking wrong). 

This isn't that hard: Talk about the fucking crimes. That's it. Talk about the crimes. Talk about how fucked this all was when it comes to national security. Ask if people feel okay about nuclear secrets laying around the bathroom of a country club that was infiltrated by spies. Ask if they feel safe with that happening. Keep shoving this up the fucking asses of any Republicans who defend it. We're not talking about a love letter from Kim Jong Un. We're talking about documents that say, "Oh, hey, here's where the US is weak, enemies, so you can probably blow shit up here." And ask what kind of fucking asshole does this shit and what kind of assholes say it's all fine. Get angry about it, Democratic leaders. Let the public know that Trump's accused of doing something really shitty and harmful and he's pretty much admitted that he did it.

Right now, according to one poll, 63% of independents think the indictment is a serious matter. As the narratives develop around the case and around Trump, if the main one those voters hear is from the GOP crime-enablers, it could have an effect on the pudding-brained independents whose whims seem to shift from election to election. Democrats can get them on board by making clear that you can ally with the criminals or you can ally with the ones who believe that you shouldn't put the nation at risk. There's a window of time to accomplish this, and Democrats have gotta jump on the messaging train. 

We keep pretending that all this shit is normal because Trump and his spokeworms get away with saying it. No, it's not normal for a president to just take whatever the fuck they want when they leave. Trump keeps lying about it. Last night, he told the Bedminster zombies and plague rats, "Hillary Clinton took hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of furniture, china, flatware, rugs, and more from the White House and she wasn’t prosecuted. How about that one? She took the furniture and the china." The Clintons weren't prosecuted for the $190,000 in gifts and other things they took because they either returned them or they paid for them in a settlement of the issue. In other words, it's the complete opposite of Trump and the documents. 

But these stories and Trump's telling of them become accepted as fact, no matter how many fact checks there are. That often happens because Democrats try to be decent or upstanding or what the fuck ever when they should be laying it on the line and creating the narrative instead of responding to it and certainly instead of being silent.

The Trump Indictment Is Just Embarrassing (Sorry, MAGA Cretins, Not for What You're Thinking)

 

Look at this shit. No, not just the boxes of government documents that former President Donald Trump, who is probably already working on bragging that his ass is worth more cigarettes than anyone else's in the federal pen, hoarded like a deranged squirrel anticipating a long winter. No, look at the bathroom and shower in The Mar-a-Lago Club’s Lake Room, which seems to be a sitting or dining area.

Truly, what the fuck is this? This is some trailer park shit right here. Like when you're trying to make your double-wide look palatial (and I can make these jokes because, yeah, I lived in a trailer park in a double-wide when I was a kid and I fucking visited friends whose bathrooms were pimped out like a white trash Louis XIV decorated it). I mean, beyond the fake marble and fake gold fixtures, even beyond the whorehouse chandelier and the chintzy sconce that must have hit Trump in the head every time he got a blumpkin from a lucky bride before he wiped his ass with classified docs, what the hell is that shower curtain? That's Dollar General chic right there. You know the joint is filled with black mold.

Why give a single fumbling fuck about the decor of a Mar-a-Lago shitter? Because it's representative of fucking everything to do with Donald Trump, the man and the president. Mar-a-Lago was, in his telling, the "Winter White House," a place so gorgeous, such a signifier of wealth and power, that it deserved that moniker. But, as with all things Trump, it's just some gold paint on a pile of shit. And that gold paint might fool those inclined to see all shiny things as valuable and important, but everyone else knows it's just shit.

That's fucking embarrassing. In fact, the whole indictment of Trump on 38 counts of document fuckery is embarrassing. 

And dangerous. Trump did, in fact, put the security of the nation at risk. It's beyond doubt that he had documents that related to the defense of the country, the nuclear arsenal, the weaknesses of our defenses and those of our allies and enemies, and so much more. He kept stuff that was so top secret that a president on their own couldn't declassify it. That's reality. That isn't up for discussion. And if you acknowledge that reality (which MAGA freaks and Republican cowards are loath to do), as well as the reality that anyone with the right amount of money could get membership to the club, then you cannot escape the conclusion that the former president at least set up the circumstances where spies for unfriendly countries could read about how to attack the United States. That's scary shit.

But that doesn't in any way hinder how embarrassing the whole affair is because, from what we know now (and, sure, it's definitely possible that a thousand more shoes will drop), it looks like Trump did all this just because he wanted to keep important shit and show off what a big shot he was. Motherfucker waved around documents and talked about how secret they were. It was just another version of dick measuring: "Oh, you own a Picasso? Well, I can tell you how to blow up France. Top that." And he didn't want to give them back because then he wouldn't be that big shot anymore. They were his and fuck you if you wanted them back. 

 

I mean, honestly, it would be less embarrassing if this whole thing turns out to be espionage because at least there's a fucking purpose beyond feeding the voracious ego of a soulless orange monster with mommy, daddy, and every other relative issues. At least it would mean more than impressing the dead-eyed zombies with botox smiles parading around a cut-rate Xanadu, pretending to worship the moron king who gets off playing DJ, spinning "YMCA" while everyone gorges themselves at the overpriced feed trough. God, this is all so devoid of meaning that the nation should be ashamed that it allowed his election, that it allowed him to roam free for so long, that it didn't rise up and vomit him out like bad, overcooked steak.

For many others, it would be tragic, but tragedy is only for those who were once or who could have been heroes. It would require a genuine fall, but Trump was always this farting, pie-in-his-face clown. This is cringe comedy at its cringiest, and, for fuck's sake, for the good of a country he has driven mad, let this be the thing that puts a stake in the heart of Trump's narcissistic, criminal existence.

The Real Mind Virus Is the GOP's Attack on Reality

There is one question that I don't see being asked of right-wing politicians when they start talking about all the things they want to ban from the "public" (and I put "public" in quotes because the real public doesn't actually give a shit about any of this, but a fantasy public that the GOP pretends exists sure cares a lot about making sure their kids don't learn that it's possible for same sex couples to love each other). It's a simple one: "What's your end goal here?" Or, to put it more simply, "What are you trying to accomplish?"

As often as Florida governor, GOP presidential candidate, and man who looks like making children cry arouses him Ron DeSantis talks about crushing the "woke mind virus," which I think means, "Shit I can make sound scary," as often as he promises to "leave woke ideology in the dustbin of history," as he does in his truly, laughably shitty campaign website, I haven't seen a single challenge to him where he's asked, "The fuck do you want?" 

Because what would be the answer? What could possibly be the answer to, say, the desired outcome in eliminating all programs at schools that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion? Just to game it out here, those in the DeSantis/Christopher Rufo camp of purging the offices of diversity or any academic programs that teach things like "racism is bad" would probably trot out their evil initials of doom and declare that, in and of themselves, DEI and CRT (whatever the fuck they think critical race theory is) are discriminatory. But how they're discriminatory is never explained because the explanation would have to include "against white people" and as blatant as they are about their racist intentions, they never quite make the leap to that. (Yes, there are exceptions who have always been shitheels and say the worst things possible.)

Even more insidious and directly harmful are the anti-science attacks on treatment for trans youths and the absolutely insane crusade against drag in public. It directly crosses with the book banning and curriculum censorship because anything that mentions LGBTQ+ people is seen as somehow "grooming" kids to become gay or trans or something not straight and cisgender. (And, by the way, fuck you if you have a problem with the term "cis." Language changes. Deal with it.) 

Again, we haven't heard what the final objective is from DeSantis or legislators in all the states that have lost their goddamn minds (and court cases) over drag performances and trans treatment. They'll say they're preventing child sexual abuse, except facts don't back that up. They'll say it's for the welfare of children, except that makes zero sense in a world inundated with sexual imagery, images and ideas that don't necessarily say they are targeting only feels of heterosexual lust. I mean, I know a few lesbians who thoroughly enjoy the Tennessee Titans Cheerleaders. 

I mean, it's fucking obvious what they want. They want to curtail the power of non-whites, power they see growing along with the teaching of the harm whiteness in this country has actually done. They want to push LGBTQ people back into the closet, or the prison, by making their existence illegal. They want to control speech, control sexuality, control all those things that they see as threats to their power, a power that is enforced through hegemonic whiteness and enforced heterosexuality. 

Or, to put it another way, the politicians and media apparatchiks who push this agenda are fucking frightened little bitches asserting their remaining power to fuck shit up for everyone not them. (And let's be clear: the public doesn't support most of this shit.) They want to fuck up public education. They want to be able to jail or punish ideological enemies. And they want to do it by pretending that's what the endgame of "wokeness" is when the endgame of wokeness is really, simply to fucking ask people to stop being assholes and to acknowledge that reality is fucking real. Yeah, that means teaching children that shit was fucking awful and, hey, let's learn about the awfulness so we can be less shitty. Yeah, that means saying that trans people need our support and that queer couples are just couples. But I guess it takes some effort to do that. It's a hell of a lot easier to tell people, "You should be afraid. Go hide and cower with your guns until we make it safe for you again."

If the "anti-woke" forces had to say what they ultimately want, it would sound vile. It's about erasure. It's about elimination. It's about returning to an imagined past that they keep insisting was somehow good when, really, it was just a clusterfuck of hate, violence, and repression. That's why they need to be pushed to say it. 

There is no "woke mind virus." There is only what's real and what's fake. And the GOP can't face reality.

A Poem for Memorial Day

Game Over 

by Eli Wright

Maybe it was our aimless idealism,

or misguided patriotism.

Maybe we just didn’t understand what we were

getting ourselves into.

Driven by the desire to serve some greater good,

or follow in the footsteps of our fathers.

Some of us needed money for college,

or wanted to see the world in a new way.

But we couldn’t find any other way to pay for it.

We wanted to prove that we were men,

So we took the oath,

then traded our Nintendo’s for M-16’s.

We started out pushing buttons,

ended up pulling triggers,

and it was like no game we had ever played before.

When we first tasted war, we became addicts.

Got hooked on bullet crack and artillery blast.

Every day one of us would overdose on sniper shot or IED.

Some of us never got sober, relapsed on 3 or 4 tours.

Wishing we could just go back

to playing video games or Cops & Robbers again.

But there was no reset button this time.

No getting back up after counting to ten.

Our eyes were sewn open,

unable to look away from horror stories

unfolding in front of us.

We came home incomplete,

with no words to describe

how our hearts are now beating us black and blue

for some of the things we had to see and do.

We all got what we asked for, in one way or another.

But maybe we bit off more than we could chew

and we’re still struggling to swallow it all.

We’re still choking on the truth that we were lied to.

And even though they said our war was over,

it sure doesn’t seem that way.

But hopefully,

one of these days,

we’ll finally make it back home.

(This poem comes from Warrior Writers, a non-profit organization that teaches and gives space for veterans to write and create art about their experiences. You can donate here.)

In the UK, They Banned Knives When Knife Crime Rose

As an American, it's easy to be cynical about knife crime in the United Kingdom. I'm here right now, and already I've seen multiple TV news segments about all the stabbings and threats of stabbings with knives and machetes. When I saw a BBC report with the chyron "Knives: can we end the violence?" my gut Yank instinct was to think, "Oh, England. You're adorable that you're only worried about one-on-one knife attacks. Try living every fucking day of your life damned to be in a country where mass shootings happen with a frequency approaching hourly." 

Last night, I saw the play Dismissed at the Soho Theatre, which I disliked a great deal for being didactic and over-directed and more. But it sure seemed to be relevant to the nodding audience. It's about a teacher reporting a student who brought a knife to school, and her agony and guilt over the boy's coming expulsion. Now, in the US, schools do freak out over any weapon brought to school property, even in a student's car. Hell, they freak out over Advil. But, again, I thought, "Damn, must be nice to live in a place where that knife is the worst of your worries on school grounds." 

I mean, the idea of getting knifed is fucking frightening, so I'm not trying to diminish or infantilize the amount of knife crime in the UK, which has risen since the fucking Tories have gone full austerity on things like government services, including the NHS. This is mostly a result of the utterly disastrous, laughably and obviously dumb self-inflicted wound of Brexit, which was supposed to bring a bounty of funding to the UK, especially the National Health Service. But it's a fucking failure, a pile of lies, and no one with any real power is suggesting that the nation unfuck itself, including the feckless Labour Party.

But, yes, it's true that violence with crime has risen under Conservative leadership, and, yes, the right-wingers are using it as an excuse to push for harsher punishment for knife crimes perpetrated by anyone over 16 and tactics like "Stop and Search," which is essentially "Stop and Frisk," except with a more polite British-sounding name. And, yes, that shit hasn't really done anything because the problem won't be solved until Brexit-driven inflation and Tory-driven austerity is brought under control. 

So far, pretty much like the United States except with far, far less murder (262 "sharp object" killings last year). However, one thing is very different.

See, in 2019, as a result of the rise in knife crime, the UK government, which, again, is led by the Conservative Party as it has been since 2015 (or 2010, depending on how you count a coalition), tightened a ban on "offensive weapons," as in "can be used in a criminal offense," not "they stink." Prior to the new law, you couldn't carry the banned knives in public. Now, you can't even own them. If you do, you can face up to six months in jail. The laws fully went into effect in 2021. And you know what? The level of knife crime declined. It's still higher than it was, but it's lower than it became.

Think about that. There was a rise in violent crime and they banned the weapons being used in the crime. No movement to halt the ban gained any traction because while, sure, a person with a knife is responsible for the crime, it sure is harder to hurt someone if the knife isn't available. 

One type of knife that has gotten really popular, especially with young people, is the "zombie knife," which is a supposedly cool-looking blade that resembles hunting knives in zombie movies and TV shows. And there was a loophole in the law that allowed for certain kinds of those knives to be sold online, along with machetes that aren't used for gardening. Right now, the UK Home Office is looking into closing that loophole because that's what the fuck you do. 

This shit isn't hard. In the United States, we make it hard because we pretend that the Constitution gives us the right to individually own the means to destroy ourselves. Here, that kind of thinking is seen as madness and completely antithetical to the safety of the public. Or, you know, common fucking sense.

A Brief Observation on the Verdict Declaring Donald Trump Sexually Assaulted E. Jean Carroll

There was a time in the not-so-distant past when it was just fine to sexually harass and assault women. Slapping a woman on the ass was supposed to be taken as a compliment. Discussion about women's looks and their fuckability was a constant in workplaces. And by "fuckability," I mean "rapeability" because it didn't matter if the woman wanted to be judged that way. Consent was something that was given the moment a woman agreed to be alone with a man. It was a bullshit, stupid time, and a good many men didn't buy into it. But a whole fuckin' lot of them did and not enough of those good men did enough to stop it. So there was a kind of impunity, especially since a woman who didn't "happily" accept the ass slaps and tit comments and sex propositions was seen as uptight and man-hating while a woman who didn't give in to fucking when alone with a man who wanted to fuck was seen as a cocktease and prude. And if you were a woman who was raped by a man, your entire sexual history would be questioned, as well as what you wore and what you did to make that man rape you.

This is the gendered world that both E. Jean Carroll and Donald Trump came of age in. And when Carroll was alone with Trump in that dressing room at Bergdorf-Goodman, this fucked up sense of male desire being more important than female agency was overtly present. Trump (and, sorry, I'm not going to mince words because I'm not on a jury and I don't have to follow legal definitions) raped Carroll because, in his own words, he felt he could. Because not only did the unwritten rules of celebrity demand he be allowed to, but everything that Trump believed about masculinity said it was his right. And those same fucking terrible ideas about female sexuality and the treatment of rape victims affected E. Jean Carroll, which is why, despite being the wise, witty feminist that she was, she mostly stayed silent. Hell, one of her friends who she told about the incident even advised her to shut up about it because "He's got 200 lawyers. He'll bury you." It wasn't just the lawyers. It was the toxicity of Trump's ideas of masculinity and his proprietary belief about women's bodies. And that was the 1990s, for fuck's sake.

The difference, as revealed at the trial, is that Carroll evolved and Trump did not. Carroll was emboldened by the MeToo movement and contemporary ideologies of bodily autonomy. That propelled her to an act of exceeding bravery in suing Trump for her rape and for his defamation of her. Knowing the onslaught of threats and insults, of barbaric attacks on her credibility, her looks, her career, her motives, everything, she still took him on, even as it meant the end of her long career at Elle magazine, even as it placed her in a limelight she never asked for. Most of us would never be that courageous.

Meanwhile, Trump insisted that Carroll was a crazed liar. He said that she wasn't his type, implying, quite plainly, that there was a type that he would deem rape worthy. He insisted that every famous man could do what he said on the Access Hollywood tape and could get away with it, that it wasn't anything different than what's been done for "the last million years...unfortunately or fortunately." And that last word, "fortunately," is just fucking galling. Women are supposed to be grateful that a star sexually abuses them? Fuck him. Fuck him utterly and completely.

At the end of the day, it took only a couple of hours for the jury to decide that Carroll was telling the truth and that sometimes even Donald Trump has to be told, officially, that he's a fucking liar. No, they couldn't call him a "rapist" (but, again, I can and I will), but they could say he was a fucking monster. They could say that the past is fucking dead. Everything Donald Trump believes is dead. Let it fucking rot. And let's move into a future where women can name their rapists and be heard. 

No, everything is not going to change overnight. It's only changed disappointingly little since that older time. But Carroll has created a path to some kind of reckoning where evil men pay a price. We can cynically say that Trump won't change, that his voters won't give a shit, but sometimes things move forward quickly and sometimes slowly. And no matter how many troglodytes try to drag us backwards, no matter how many assholes on TikTok or Twitter try to say the old ways need to stay, they can go to hell. The movement is always forward.