Week One in the Death of America: There Is No United States Without Diversity

If you're like me, you're sitting there thinking, "What the actual fuck is even happening?" in reaction to the wave of nation-wrecking executive orders and actions by massive sentient pustule Donald Trump and his vile administration. I knew there would be fuckery. I just didn't think about how detailed the fuckery could be, how fast it would all go down, and how it could get into all the spaces of the federal government, like toxic ooze that is flowing quickly through the streets of your town and you realize then that open basement windows and the water system are now filling with poison and you don't know where the fuck you can go to get away from it. 

It's honestly hard to pinpoint what the worst thing is. The war on migrants and the southern border is fucking awful. The birthright citizenship challenge undermines the entirety of the purpose of the United States. The pardon of the January 6 insurrectionists is breathtaking in how it undermines the rule of law. The pure utter cuntishness of revoking security protection for people who have pissed Trump off demonstrates just how petty and insane the orange motherfucker is. And then there's the attack on diversity, equity, and inclusion in the federal workplace or in general, where the goal seems to be "get all those" insert every derogatory term you know here for anyone not straight, white, and male "off my lawn."

Look at this one paragraph from one executive order, on the Federal Aviation Administration titled "Keeping Americans Safe in Aviation": "Illegal and discriminatory diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) hiring, including on the basis of race, sex, disability, or any other criteria other than the safety of airline passengers and overall job excellence, competency, and qualification, harms all Americans, who deserve to fly with confidence.  It also penalizes hard-working Americans who want to serve in the FAA but are unable to do so, as they lack a requisite disability or skin color.  FAA employees must hold the qualifications and have the ability to perform their jobs to the highest possible standard of excellence."

That's some insidious shit right there. Look at everything it does. It declares a policy that no court ever found in violation of the law "illegal," so it's a fucking lie to call DEI programs that. A president cannot just say something is illegal and all of a sudden it is. That's not how government works (or, at least, used to work). It casts doubt on the hiring of anyone who is not white, male, and abled, claiming that diversity was more important than safety, which is also a fucking lie. It mocks anyone who belongs to diverse groups when it says that some people wanted jobs but "lack a requisite disability or skin color." And it implies that when diverse candidates are hired, they do not "have the ability" to do their jobs well, which is, again, a fucking lie.

The Trump administration's approach to DEI efforts is akin to the insanity over Communists in the government during the era of Joe McCarthy. In fact, you could replace "DEI" with "the Communist Party" in most of these statements, and it would pretty much sound the same. The most comprehensive of the executive orders starts with maliciously discrediting the entire attempt to make the federal workplace less discriminatory: "In case after tragic case, the American people have witnessed first-hand the disastrous consequences of illegal, pernicious discrimination that has prioritized how people were born instead of what they were capable of doing." Again, this just simply is a lie. Unless you can point out how, say, an incompetent Black woman was hired over a more qualified white man and that that hire would have stopped, say, a fire tornado in Los Angeles, then you don't have an argument. You have incitement, hyperbole, and all the -isms (race, sex, etc.). 

Next, Trump guts everything associated with DEI in the federal government. "I therefore order all executive departments and agencies (agencies) to terminate all discriminatory and illegal preferences, mandates, policies, programs, activities, guidance, regulations, enforcement actions, consent orders, and requirements." And just to make sure it's as dickish as possible, Trump revoked the 1965 EO that banned discrimination by any federal contractors. That's one way to welcome discrimination back to the businesses that work with the government, but it's not enough.

There's a section devoted to eliminating DEI in the private sector, too. The plan is to completely turn the idea of civil rights upside down. It's now a violation of the civil rights of white people if you value diversity in your workforce. If you do anything to hire because you want your business to perhaps reflect the population of your region, you could face litigation. Trump says he wants to "deter DEI programs or principles (whether specifically denominated “DEI” or otherwise) that constitute illegal discrimination or preferences." To do this, he's sending out his government to go after corporations and force them to comply or face action by the government that will result in expensive litigation: "As a part of this plan, each agency shall identify up to nine potential civil compliance investigations of publicly traded corporations, large non-profit corporations or associations, foundations with assets of 500 million dollars or more, State and local bar and medical associations, and institutions of higher education with endowments over 1 billion dollars" and go after them for supposedly making white men sad.

In addition to firing everyone involved in any DEI efforts, the McCarthyist part comes from memos sent out to the employees at various agencies that say, "We are aware of efforts by some in government to disguise these programs by using coded or imprecise language. If you are aware of a change in any contract description or personnel position description since November 5, 2024 to obscure the connection between the contract and DEIA or similar ideologies, please report all facts and circumstances to [a fucking email address I'm not including] within 10 days.  There will be no adverse consequences for timely reporting this information. However, failure to report this information within 10 days may result in adverse consequences." In other words, name names and inform on your fellow workers. Divide the workforce between the loyal and fearful workers and the ones who think this is all bullshit. Only if you suckle at Trump's sagging nipples are you considered legitimate.

It's all a blatant attempt to get rid of the legacy of the civil rights movement, and it probably will end up running afoul of actual civil rights laws, especially when it comes to private companies. But this administration and the Republican Party are here to take a wrecking ball to the legacy of anyone who dared to say that women or non-whites or disabled or LGBTQ people are deserving of the same opportunities as white men. It's an overwhelming use of presidential force to take back any power that was lost as the nation evolved over the last 60 years. They are beating the present to death in an alley for daring to look a white man in the face.  Next, they'll burn a cross on the National Mall.

The end of diversity is the end of the nation. The white paradise that squamous sleazebags like Stephen Miller envision is really the endgame for America, and they're just fucking fine with that. If you hate our diversity then you hate this country. You can live in Trumpland or you can live in the United States, but you cannot do both.

By the way, there's one extra-dickish part in the EO. It's a dig at academia and professors. It reads, "This order does not prohibit persons teaching at a Federally funded institution of higher education as part of a larger course of academic instruction from advocating for, endorsing, or promoting the unlawful employment or contracting practices prohibited by this order." To me, that's like bait, like saying, "Yeah, go ahead and speak out, evil professors. Nothing will happen to you" as they cross their filthy fingers behind their crooked backs and lick their lips at the chance to round us all up.

Martin Luther King Would Still Fuck Trump's Shit Up (Into the American Twilight Edition)

I don't have the bandwidth to go deeply into the complete fucking over of everything Martin Luther King, Jr. lived and died for with today's presidential inauguration of a man who is the opposite of King in every way possible. So rather than go with a whole history lesson about how King would have had hundreds of thousands of us in the streets today to show we won't go gentle into that Trump night, I'm just gonna give you a couple of quotes from King's 1959 sermon, "Unfulfilled Hopes." It's about how people deal with dreams that are shattered (in fact, he would title a later version "Shattered Dreams"), and he makes reference to how, in the Bible, the apostle Paul wanted "to carry the gospel of Jesus Christ to Spain" but never gets to Spain and ends up in a prison in Rome.

In describing how we react to disappointment, King talks about various kinds of people, including this:

"Have you ever seen mean people? Now, sometimes you take a good psychological analysis of that person. You look back, and you discover that that person had a distant Spain in mind that he wanted to go to, and he had a great hope and a great desire and because of the forces of circumstance something happened and he never got to that Spain. And he ended up confined in a little cell of life that had been brought up and built up around him by the very forces of circumstance. And now he lives in his cell, bitter and angry with life, and he has a sort of demonical grudge against life. This is his response. And he seeks to solve his frustration by taking all of this out on other people. And so maybe sometimes he’s mean to his children, or he’s mean to his wife, or she’s mean to her husband, or mean to people round and about because he can’t find life itself. Life is intangible in a sense; it’s invisible. We, we, we don’t see life; we see the manifestations of life. And you can never take life and hit life and beat up on life. And so he discovers that he can’t get life itself to beat on and pay back for what the universe has done to him, so he finds people that are tangible, and he finds things that are tangible, and he takes this bitterness and this hate out on these things. And this is the solution to his problem, he thinks. The bitterness within, and the anger, he becomes angry with the universe. And he fights the universe through people and things. This is one way that people deal with this problem of unfulfilled hopes. They react with bitterness and mercilessness and meanness."

No matter how much he cruises through the world, Trump believes he's owed more and more: more money, more power, more love, more worship. And because he can never be satiated, he's put himself in that "little cell of life." King would fuck Trump's shit up because he understood exactly who someone like Trump is, how vain and small and awful he is. 

And since teaching the truth about the history of this country is about to become banned in many places, here's what King, in the same sermon, had to say for anyone who tries to cover for the sadists and racists in the American past:

"I look back over the dark days of slavery. Let nobody fool you about it. We can romanticize all we want to about the beauty of slavery. There are those who would still try to romanticize about the beauty of slavery, and they, they have their minds back to those good old days. Slavery was a tragic thing. All that the Negro had to look forward to was rows of cotton, sizzling sun, the whip of the boss, and the barking of bloodhounds. This is what he faced. It is tragic to be cut off from some things, but there is nothing more tragic than to be cut off from your language, cut off from your family, cut off from your roots. This is what the Negro faced—going over in ships out of Africa, huddled up in ships, not able even to talk to each other, thrown up and brought over to distant countries to work, nothing in their past to hold on to."

His point was that Black people faced horror upon horror and still found the strength to keep going, keep fighting, and keep the faith. It's a lesson I truly hope I can live up to in the next four years. 

(15 years ago, I wrote about how King would tell Democrats to sack up. Sadly, it's still relevant.)

Informing Ourselves to Death: Trump's Win and American Stupidity (Part 2)

(Part 1 is here.)

We've seen definite signs of the abject stupidity of the American voter in 2024 in so many ways. There are the states where voters put abortion rights in their constitutions but voted for senators who want a national ban. The fact (and it is a fact) that searches for "Did Biden drop out?" spiked on Google on Election Day, as well as searches for "tariffs" and "who pays for tariffs?", may seem like small data points, but it points to a larger issue with deliberate ignorance. Apathy is one thing, as in "I don't care about politics," but that's not an excuse to be totally disengaged. I don't give a damn about football, but I know the Giants and the Jets suck because I pay attention to the world around me. 

It's even worse when it comes to the things people believe that simply are untrue. For instance, a Gallup poll released this week showed that a majority of voters don't know what they're talking about. They were asked if "you believe the United States has made progress, stood still or lost ground in each during the last four years, since Joe Biden became president" on a variety of issues. A majority said we've "lost ground" on immigration (64%), the economy (59%), and crime (51%), among others. And that's simply objectively untrue. Immigration is under greater control than it's been in years, so much so that there isn't much for Trump to do at the southern border. The economy is doing great and crime rates are at historic lows. 

I get that we face a flood of disinformation, and that the right-wing, especially the MAGA-in-chief, is responsible for it. Just about every word out of Trump's mouth hole during the campaign was a lie, and he continues to lie. And he'll change his tune the second that he's inaugurated and declare that he alone is responsible for every good thing that he's inheriting as he comes into office. Of course, the slavering hordes of idiots who hang on his every word believe him over anything their eyes or ears might tell them. 

It's useless to get into the whole idea of how we used to gather 'round the TV and watch Walter Cronkite tell us what's what. It's useless to bemoan the end of newspapers and local media. It's useless to say that CNN used to actually care about that middle N, the one for "news," way more than it does now. It's useless to point out that getting your news from Facebook or Twitter is damaging what we used to think of as information. Every Pandora's Box around has been flung open and Hope had been beaten to death by the Evils in there.

But what I guess I'm getting at here is that while our access to information has blown up to an unwieldy size, so too, has our capacity for accepting facts and ideas that don't comport with what we desire to believe. And, again, I know that's not a new phenomenon, but, as I said last time, it's within the context of being able to challenge our orthodoxies. And that's disheartening. 

To put it simply, we who do profess to care about politics and elections are consuming more information than ever. But we do it with such prejudice that anything that doesn't confirm a belief we already hold is dismissed out of hand. So, for example, it should have been an easy task to disabuse people of the notion that trans people are taking over schools or whatever nonsense the right was propagating. There are only 5 trans girls competing as girls in sports in K-12 public schools. And there are fewer than 10 trans athletes in all of college sports. Every uproar on this issue is over a group of students so small that it is statistically zero. And the number of students taking puberty blockers is also so much smaller in proportion to the outrage being expended on the issue. It was a failure of Democrats to not make this their top talking point on trans kids. But it was a failure of anyone getting enraged by the idea that their little cis girl was in imminent "danger" of playing soccer against a trans girl. 

Instead, what the right especially is good at is flooding people with sources of information that all affirm each other, from Fox "news" and its devolved descendants to podcasts from verminous exploiters like Steve Bannon and Ben Shapiro to other kinds of media, social or otherwise, so that people have the illusion of being informed because of this daisy chain of affirmation. You only need a couple of percent of people who aren't true believers to think that one lie or another is real and you've won an election.

We're moving into a government that is going to control the information it allows to be disseminated from the government. If one of the tenets of Trumpism is the need to deny that Trump lost the 2020 election, then any studies or research that could reflect badly on Trump will be, at best, suppressed, if not outright discarded, with the void filled with lies. This could be worse than the first Trump administration because at least there were career federal workers who would counter things like injecting bleach. If those workers are purged for loyalists, it's gonna be required that we all bleach our veins because dear leader said it works. 

The entire operation of our federal system will be wholly based on lies and disinformation. We don't need Greenland, but you can bet we'll be hearing how the absolute most important thing we can do is take it if we can't buy it. The same with the Panama Canal. (The Canada thing just seems like a joke to piss off Trudeau, but who knows?) And a great deal of effort will be expended to not just do things based on lies, but to actually try to shift reality into the way that Trump and his MAGA freaks want it to be. 

And the most aggravating thing about this is that, when asked about it, most voters do seem to have some concept of what's real. For example, a Wall Street Journal poll showed that 75% of people only want undocumented migrants with criminal records deported, with 70% want to "protect longtime residents from removal if they don’t have criminal records." I'd say to a whole lot of people in that poll that that's not what you voted for. You voted for the opposite. And it would have been ridiculously easy to find that out. 

So the point to all this is that the information is there. It used to not be there. But it's all there. You can know what’s real and what’s not. You choose not to. That’s what makes you stupid. And that’s what makes you even stupider for electing Donald Trump. 

That's my thesis for understanding 2024: the voters "informed" themselves to death, meaning they embraced false information and pretended it was real and didn't care when it was pointed out that they were objectively wrong. For whatever reason, racism or transphobia or misogyny or whatever, facts went out the window, and, frankly, you're just stupid if your prejudice matters more than the truth. Stupidity won, so we get stupidity personified running the joint. 

(Coming up: Okay, smart guy. So what do we do?)

Informing Ourselves to Death: Another Explanation of Why Harris Lost (Part 1)

We keep getting "deep dives" into why Kamala Harris lost and Donald Trump won. They can be big reasons, like racism and sexism, or the ability of Trump's campaign to exploit the anti-incumbent zeitgeist through bro podcasts and transphobia, or Harris and the Democrats courting anti-Trump Republicans while taking other Democratic voters for granted. 

But I will always blame voters more than I will blame campaigns because, ultimately, each individual American had to decide whether to vote and who to vote for. I'm a fan of simple explanations, and the simplest explanation, by far, is that the majority of Americans of voting age are stupid. I mean that in a few ways. If you stayed home and didn't vote because you don't care about any of this, you're stupid. If you didn't vote because you hated both candidates, you're stupid. People on the left who didn't vote or voted third-party because of specific issues? Stupid. If that includes you, then I mean you. Letting Donald Trump back into office is the stupidest thing this country has done since at least the Vietnam War. (Yes, it is stupider than electing him the first time.)

By far, though, and it's no contest, the absolutely stupidest voters were the ones who voted for Trump. Let me qualify that: if you voted for Trump, you're stupid or evil or some unholy combination of both, in which case you've probably been tapped to be in Trump's administration. I've gone on at length before about my contempt for Trump voters and my refusal to try to "understand" them. (As I've said, I won't treat them like children. I'll treat them like adults who made an adult decision that's objectively wrong and respond accordingly.)

Here's the thing that gets me about all this stupidity (and, believe me, I know people have been stupid forever). We exist in a time when the amount of information available to us at any moment is beyond comprehension. If you want a government report, you don't have to order it and wait for it to be delivered. If you want to read legitimate scientific and medical research, it's a few clicks away. It's all there. All the real information you could ever want. I don't expect everyone to want to access it. I don't expect everyone to have the time to look everything up. The point is that more facts are out there than ever before, as well as everything that proves those facts.

When pundits and politicians (primarily Democrats) talk about The Way Things Used to Be when it came to governing the country, one of the things they mean is that we used to have a relatively stable group of agreed upon facts on an issue. Politicians of both parties would look at crime statistics, for example, like those provided by the FBI, and then they'd argue about what to do as a result of those statistics. Democrats might argue for gun control and poverty programs. Republicans might argue for more guns and more cops and more incarceration. You had a group of facts interpreted through different ideological lenses. 

And, for the most part, that's how it worked on most issues: taxes, spending, foreign policy. Sure, there was hyperbole and posturing and accusations about how one side wanted to let criminals run free or the other side doesn't care about children being killed. There was manipulation of facts, sometimes egregiously (as in the Willie Horton ad in the 1988 election). But, again, a great majority of this had some basis in reality. Even if it was stretching the truth, it was still founded in some truth. (Yes, there are many, many exceptions you can come up with throughout our history, especially those based in racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, and more.)

Somewhere in the 1990s, reality began to wither with the rise of the internet. Believe it or not, children, there was a huge conspiracy then about the supposed "Clinton Body Count," where millions of people believed that the then-President and First Lady, Bill and Hillary Clinton, were personally responsible for murdering or having murdered dozens of people. That one never went away. I heard people talking about in 2016 as if it were real. Then came the 9/11 truthers. And then came the lie about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and then we went to war based on that. That should have led to a rededication to reality. Of course, then social media kicked into high gear, and, well, that was it. 

So, despite all the information at our fingertips, information we had during all of these lies, a fantasy version of reality has taken over and infected everything, like some kind of slime mold you can't scrub away. 

What's my point? What's this got to do with Harris? More on that in a couple of days. 

To Make It Through the Next Four Years, Stop Hoping Someone Saves Us

Even though I've bailed on Uncle Elroy's Phantasmagorical Hellscape of Incel Nazis and Rapey Transphobes, I keep my ear to the social media wall over on BlueSky and Threads. And one thing that's bubbled up lately amid the shitting-oneself despair about the incoming Trump administration is a vague sense of hope because of the not really well-named "MAGA Civil War" over visas for foreign workers. It's a battle between the racist capitalists and racist isolationists over who is the better racist, the fight America deserves. Some are wondering if this will hinder Trump's agenda, which is really just "cause as much chaos to take as much money as possible until we die or are chased out of office."

Now, I'm not saying it's not well-named because we haven't gotten any fields covered with the corpses of MAGA foot soldiers, however gratifying that may be. I'm saying that because it doesn't matter what the MAGA freaks outside the administration want. Trump won. It's over. There is no war to be fought on any meaningful level until the 2026 midterms. Yes, everyone can position themselves in anticipation, but nothing anyone says will stop Trump from getting into office. But we're human, and we like to hope. We like to think that Trump will die in prison. We liked to think that Bob Mueller or Jack Smith or Kamala Harris would save us. We really wanna see Democrats throw a 14th Amendment Hail Mary pass. Perhaps we even need to think and believe that in order to keep going. I've said recently that we need to fight lost causes for that very reason. Today's lost cause can become tomorrow's victory.

I wanna offer an alternative idea here: Stop hoping for that miracle. That doesn't mean don't have a goal or a dream or whatever. But stop hoping that some magical deus ex machina is going to swing in and wave a stick and make it all go away. Stop hoping that past precedent shows us the future, as in "Well, in 1975, this happened so, obviously, it will happen to Trump." Stop hoping that Democrats in Congress will be able to slow down Trump's rolling meat grinder from leaving minced bits of the Constitution and tradition and everything else in the broken streets of America. Stop hoping that Trump and the Republicans will be a clusterfuck of dysfunction. Stop hoping that the courts will do something to mitigate the wreckage. When you stop hoping, you can clear your head and get to fucking work.

What's coming is a fucking nightmare. That's how I'm starting 2025. It's going to suck in ways that we can't even anticipate it sucking. I said in 2016 and I'll say now: It will be worse than you can imagine. And that's because I think that everything we're seeing shows that not only are the guardrails off, but that no one will be able to even find guardrails.

Trump is going to wield like a bloodstained hammer the Supreme Court's decision that anything the president does in his "official" duties is totally cool, even if it's something we might quaintly call a "crime." I believe wholeheartedly that when the courts step in to put a stop to whatever fuckery is afoot, Trump will ignore them and use the SCOTUS free pass as justification. That's not even to mention that it's likely that if a case makes it to the Supreme Court itself, the savage dicks in the majority will side with Trump.

And you can hope for process and law to save us here, but that's foolish, too. You can say, as some have, that the SCOTUS only gave Trump immunity, not everyone else who would carry out whatever criming he wants to do. So? Trump can pardon them from any federal charges. Hell, since preemptive pardons are all the rage, he can do that before they start to drag people out of their houses and lock them up without any due process. And if you think that due process is going to be followed, if you think that a "massive immigration court backlog" will slow them down, well, what do you think the camps will be for? To hold migrants until whatever kangaroo justice system is set up tosses them out. As for the states stepping in to somehow outmaneuver a Department of Homeland Security, Trump's "border czar" (one of many completely made-up roles Trump's created) said, "Either you help us or get the hell out of the way, because ICE is going to do their job." That promises a confrontation which might involve the military. Like I said, worse than you can imagine.

I'm not saying you should despair. I'm saying you should be ready for despair, be ready for what might happen, and use that shit to figure out where your energy for fighting can be used, whatever your income or general ability levels are. Start local. I joke around about there not being any future elections, but I don't think that's true, if only because states run them. Making elections secure from the ways Trump and the GOP can fuck with them is one of the most important things we can do, and that means organizing to toss out the assholes in your state legislatures who are making voting harder for some groups. Join organizations that are advocating for more state constitutional amendments on abortion rights. Get decent school board members elected. And find and support progressive media outlets because CNN and the rest of corporate media can get fucked. If things go full fascist at the federal level, any bulwark will at least slow shit down.

Right after the election, I texted a buddy, "I'm so exhausted by hoping." Hoping set me up too often for the almost inevitable failure of hope to win. But I'm never too tired to kick some ass. Too drunk, maybe. But never too tired. Fuck the new year. At best, it'll be a wash. But let's set shit up for the years beyond. 

(Note: Because caveats are necessary in this oversensitive age, I'm not saying you can't hope and work. I'm saying you can work better without the way I'm defining "hope" here. It's like if you get into an argument with your partner and think, "Well, when this is over, I know we'll have hot sex." That's gonna color how you argue, and you will find your unfucked ass out on the sidewalk.)

(This was originally published on my Patreon page for subscribers. You can join starting at $1 a month. You can do an annual subscription so you don't have to keep track of another monthly thing. But join in. The other subscribers are awesome, with smart, feisty comments and discussions.)

Haiku Review of 2024: Slow Haikus

Okay, one more round. While the vast majority of the haikus couldn't get past the election (which, well, we never will), a few other subjects came up, including the annual check-in from Hong Kong and, wait, sports? Enjoy the final dose of haiku:

From Tasha in NC:

The Fuck-ry

Black women stare now

At fools who won’t vote with sense

The fuck-ry cometh

From Earl in Nashville:

So much depended

On electing Kamala--

Damn those white chickens

From Mary in Minnesota:

Reality Bites

Vikings’ year at last?

Until they choke down the stretch.

Tale as old as time.

From AlContraire in Shawnee, KS:

Dumpster Ire

Dead child in the trash

Couldn’t afford to feed it

Then why was it born?

From Chris in HK:

Hong Kong's 45 Jailed Democrats

The law said they could

Xi JinPing said they couldn't

Guess who fucking won

From Jack in a deep red section of a blue state:

A Lesson On Consequences

This ain't Passover, 

Trump voters are not exempt;

ALL will feel this pain

From Kristina in Holland, PA:

Jimmy Carter died

He was very old

but why not someone shitty

I won't name instead?

From QSantiago on Planet Earth

2024 DONE!

Fuck off, ‘24!

We will never be the same

Trump and Musk did it

And from me:

Sad Billionaire

Being rich doesn't

Make you happy. Elon proves

Losers are losers.

If We Had Listened to Jimmy Carter

Everyone laughed 

At White House solar panels

As the world burned down.

Big, huge thanks to everyone who sent in your haikus this year. I read every single one of them, even if they sucked (and very few did). Let's kick this bullshit year out of the bed at last. Who knows what kind of lover the next year will be? I'm guessing rough and barbed, without a safe word. But we can do this, everyone. We can fucking tell them we won't be beaten down. 

Haiku Review of 2024: What We Do in the Haiku

Man, you all are pissed off in your haikus this year. I got a whole lotta variations on "Fuck you, [insert name]" and "We're fucked" and "Fucking Trump voters, man." 

From DJ in London, Ontario: 

No Thanks, Orange Cretin

Fifty-first state, huh?

Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, Trump;

Canada’s all good.

From Dick Fritter of the Great White North: 

Fraud?

What happened to their

Massive fraud accusations?

Bullshit, bullshit. FUCK

From RG in Illinois:

Can't fix stupid...

Yep. Voted for him.

Punched myself right in the dick.

I'd do it again.

From Rob J in NYC:

Concepts of a plan

dawdle about in Trump's head

never to be free

From Nancy in the Pacific Northwest:

Our Mainstream Media

Sanewash the insane,

whitewash the incoherence,

greenlight a fascist.

From Esquire:

MAGA Originalist

I don't understand

Amendment One. Must rely 

on Amendment Two.

From Jim in CA:

Meanwhile, Justice Alito Sleeps Like a Baby

I’m pregnant.  What state

Do I move to?  Or is it

Another country?

And me:

It's Obvious

Anti-DEI

Is just racism from some

Butt-hurt white people.

Gaza Wasteland

I'm wondering when

it stops being defense and

Is just genocide

Okay, one more day of this and then we're done with this bitch of a year. Send 'em on: rudepundit@yahoo.com. And don't forget the form: a line of 5 syllables, a line of 7 syllables, and a line of 5 syllables. Title it if you want. Let's keep it going until the bitter end of the bitter times.

Haiku Review of 2024: Some Haiku Somewhere

Keep 'em coming, motherfuckers. Once again, I asked and you have already sent a shitload of haiku. Coming in from sea to dingy sea, you're once again defining the year with your simple, short poems. Here are a few of the absolute best I've read so far:

From Tom, missing friends in Asheville:

Ode to Climate Change

Helene's fury proved

That mountain towns are not safe

From hurricanes' wrath

From Heather in Minnesota:

Snow drifts white this eve.

Hate, greed, or war, no matter

Snow'll be red by morn. 

From Rabbitearz in L.A.:

Beware of Beardo

If that couch could talk...

That weird eyeliner guy is

Holding the NUKE CODES.

From Not Clever Enough to Think of a Clever Name: (me: oooh, meta)

Too Depressed to Think of a Title 

fight fight fight he said

as bullet tore through his ear

more guns than voters

From Debbie in Dallas:

OH, LOOK!

it's a guillotine

Sharpened and ready to go

Whom is it for - OH!

From TMangrove in Wisconsin:

Four More Years

I can’t I just can’t.

It’s hard. They are relentless.

I will not give in.

From VJ in NJ:

Suit Up!

We now stand against

Weaponized stupidity

A blitzkrieg of dumb

And from me:

Not Until the Sepsis Starts

A pregnant woman

Bleeding in a hospital

Parking lot, Texas

The Real Threat

Drag queens don't rape kids.

But in the church's rec hall

Your youth pastor does.

Keep on sending them in to rudepundit@yahoo.com. I've got dozens more to get through, but I want to get haiku'd in the face repeatedly. Make that happen, rude readers.

(Note: The titles of the posts will be variations on my favorite TV shows of the year, in case you're wondering.)

Haiku Review of 2024: 20th Anniversary of Reducing the Fuckery to a Size We Can Handle

That's right. Back in 2004, I did my own review of the year through the delicate poem with the incisive power of a stiletto made of metaphor. Then rude readers started sending me their own, which led to me just saying, "Well, fuck it. Join in." And you have joined in, emailing, at this point, over a thousand of the little bastards. So let's do it again. For the twentieth goddamn time. Let's skullfuck this bullshit year with haiku.

The deal is the same as it ever was. I'm a stickler for the form: three lines of 5 syllables, then 7, then 5 again. But the subject is wide open. Be serious, be stupid, be your incredible or fucked up you. Email them to rudepundit at yahoo dot com. Whichever ones make me laugh or make me cry or get me all hot and throbbing or some combination of two or three of those will be published on the blog. I'm the only judge here, and I'm probably drunk right now, so no insult if you don't get in. 

Give it a title. And include some name and place, like "F. B. from Trumpwillfuckusover, Alabama" or "Jackie from Tucson" (I'll miss you, What We Do in the Shadows) or "Elon's Burning Tesla from NYC."

Here's a few for inspiration:

The Consultants Fucked It Up

"Weird" was the best way

"Weird" said, "They're awful, just creeps"

Should have stuck with weird

A Thing I'll Never Understand

No one tried to stop 

Penny from killing Neeley.

Riders with blinders

When We Eat the Rich

I'll skip my portion.

Too full of hormones and shit.

Stringy with smug hate.

Okay, it's early and I'm out of practice. But now it's your turn. Flood me, motherfuckers. 

The Rude Pundit's Annual Nativity-palooza, Now with Bonus Cultural Insensitivity

Like movies about suicidal snowmen and tortured ghosts and pole-frozen tongues, some things are a tradition around the rude house. Beloved reruns are good for the soul. My favorites to trot out this week are the Invader Zim Christmas episode and Olive the Other Reindeer. Even here, in Left Blogsylvania, we can indulge in revisiting old posts.

Before Threads, Twixter, Instagram, Reddit, TikTok, Buzzfeed, and many other places you can get your fix of weird shit, I posted this Christmas blast back in 2004, updated yearly with new bits of freakishness (some links might not work anymore, but they were or are all real and unironic):

Xmas - And, lo, a small teddy bear will lead them:
In the days before Christmas, the Rude Pundit roamed his neighborhood, looking at the displays in the charming stores and corner markets. There he saw the agony of so many dichotomous feelings about this holiday. One window had a kneeling, praying Santa next to a baby Jesus in the manger. Santa's hat was off. He was balding. Another display had the jolly old fat man landing his sleigh and reindeer on the roof of the manger. Surprisingly, neither Mary nor Joseph seemed rattled by the noise, although a camel was looking upward, as if asking, "What the fuck?" The Rude Pundit loved that camel.

Ah, sweet camel, what the fuck, indeed. Christ and commerce, Alleluia. The Savior has been born and he thanks you for your presents. Santa showing that he'll even honor the king of the Jews in the land of Islam. There's no telling what it means (and don't get all up in the Rude Pundit's face about St. Nicholas). Except this: we want to embrace both things, good deconstructionists that we are: Santa, who soothes our greed, and Jesus, who promises us peace. Either way, we want them both to tell us we're good people, nice people. And, of course, guilt-ridden Christians want to make sure that Santa toes the party line, you know.

For the holiday, here's a few of my favorite nativity sets, none of which are intended to be mocking of the event:

That right there is the Veggie Tales Nativity. In case you don't know, Veggie Tales are cute vegetables who love Christ and salad tossing. The newborn savior up there is a carrot. Get it? A baby carrot? What a delight.


Holy shit, that bear nativity is one of the creepiest fucking things I've ever seen. Staring straight ahead with their dead eyes, it looks like a satanic cult sacrifice to some horrible bear-demon. Although, the three wise bears have provided snacks for the blood rite: salmon, honey, and berries. All go well with cub entrails.

Every year, I think, "I wonder if there's an even weirder nativity set that I can find" and every year I come across something where I think, "Yeah, that's friggin' crazy shit, man." Here, it's the snow people nativity, with a snow angel, a snow Joseph, a snow Mary, and horrible, smiling snow kings. Did Snow Mary give birth to Snow Baby Jesus? Or did they all just make Snow Baby Jesus out of snow? And the temperature in Bethlehem this time of year is in the 60s. Is that why they seem to be festooned with turds, to try to hold their globular shape a little longer?

That goddamn nightmare fuel isn't a lab experiment gone horrible awry. It's a bunch of white mice with eyes so wide they look like someone laced some cheese with meth and let the little bastards go crazy. It's gonna be horrible when baby Jesus mouse gets crucified in trap.

This is not to mention the Chickentivity, the Moosetivity, the Barntivity, the Native American Nativity, and the various Beartivities, all available unironically for your Christmas consumption.

And then there's the baby nativity:

You might think, "Oh, that's adorable. What's so wrong with it?" To which I can only inform you that the implication of it is that a baby Mary shoved a baby Jesus out of her baby vagina.

Speaking of implications, think of what this dog one means:  

This means there is a dog Pilate who will sentence dog Jesus to dog crucifixion. It means that there is a dog Mary Magdalene who is a dog prostitute. This is not to mention the dog centurions who routinely torture and kill dogs, the dog slaves who serve their dog masters, and the Jewish dogs who get blamed for everything. But don't worry. Dog Jesus will rise from the dead in three days. Have some damn kibble waiting for him. 

And to all a good night.

Oh, wait. What's that you say? You think that last one was kind of a weak one to end on? Well, then, fuck you. Here's the Day of the Dead nativity:

Yeah, you might think they're singing Christmas carols, but they're all screaming in horror and pain. Essentially, that's Christmas in the time of MAGA and Covid.

Oh, wait. What's that? Those aren't that bad after all we've suffered? Then how about these terrifying motherfuckers:

Or maybe that's just how we'll all look after climate change has its way with us.

All of those are preferable to this fucking thing here. This might be the first of these nativities to make me feel visceral anger. Check this shit out:

It's like someone was taking a crap in an IKEA bathroom and thought, "I've got it! The birth of our lord and savior, but stackable!" Imagine the fun you could have with these. I'm already thinking about arranging the Wise Men around Ass for a sticky menage. Mostly, though, this is just middle finger to your guests if you put this out, like you're saying, "Oh, you expect a nativity at Christmas? Suck on these posts."

Wooden blocks not your thing? Want something that's a bit more of a weapon so you can strike down the heathens who won't let you say, "Merry Christmas"? Maybe a little more Flintstone-ish? Then here's some fuckin' rocks. 

Not enough like the nativity you might see on the mantle of the leader of a forest cult dedicated to cannibalism and blood drinking? How about this folk horror: 

It's like the last thing you see before the cellar door closes and you wait to find out if you're meant to be sacrificed to the corn god or impregnated by the cock of the spirit of the wheat in a fertility rite. Puritans would look at these Puritan-looking motherfuckers and decided, "Nope. There's no god. Let's just jump in the ocean."

But what is Christmas without a little cultural insensitivity? For that, you get the Apache Nativity: 

Nothing says, "Welcome Baby Jesus" like being born among the people that will be mass murdered and stripped of their land and religion, all in his cute widdle name.  Bonus points for the totem pole with a look of "What the fuck am I even doing here? And why have me shaped like a crucifix?"

Finally (for real), here's one I actually like. It's the Recycled Auto Parts Nativity: 

C'mon. It's got everything. Skeletal camels, edges that would slice open a loaf of bread and some fishes, and baby Jesus sleeping on a bed of chicken wire. That's awesome art by Armando Ramirez, and I'd proudly put that up in my home next to my Peanuts creche and dare some internet asshole to talk shit about it. 

Merry Christmas, baby. Let's just get out of this year alive. May George Bailey finally get to push Mr. Potter into the frozen river.

(Note: Previous editions of the nativity post have included the Zombitivity, Dogtivity, the Boyd's Bears Nativity, and the Rubber Duck...oh, fuck, you get the idea.)

The Immigrant "Invasion" Is Just WMDs All Over Again

There is no immigrant invasion at the southern border of the United States. That needs to be said at the outset any time you wanna talk about What's Wrong With Our Country. No matter how many times people say it, no matter how much it's covered, no matter even if elected Democrats agree, it's simply not true. The immigration system in this country is broken but that's because Republicans have refused to fund the courts needed to quickly process asylum claims and other cases. 

The idea of an immigrant "invasion," as Donald Trump (who we really elected president for a second time - I know, it's fucked up, right?) puts it constantly, has one purpose, and that's to scare the public with a lie so that a cabal of power-mad assholes can remake the nation to suit their warped, contorted viewpoints. That should sound incredibly familiar for those of us with brains that actively remember shit more than a tweet-cycle old. 

It's weapons of mass destruction all over again. 

Oh, sweet children of America, you need to know that in the scary months after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 (that's the "9/11" you hear about every year, in case you weren't born yet or are fucking dumb), the administration of President George W. Bush decided that the nation of Iraq needed to be attacked and remade as a "democracy," free of its dictator Saddam Hussein. The fact that Iraq had nothing to do with the attacks and the fact that the dictator of the country that did have a great deal to do with them, Saudi Arabia, was apparently off-limits was not something you were allowed to say openly lest you be labeled anti-American. Besides, we were assured, endlessly, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, big missiles, perhaps nukes, shit that could fuck up, say, Israel or even our allies in Europe or maybe even the USA itself. So we had to invade Iraq, take it over, and prevent the mad leader of the country from unleashing hell on the earth. In 2002, the president was given blanket authorization to use military force against Iraq by a bipartisan vote in both houses of Congress. Again and again, we were told that we needed to bomb the fuck of the country to prevent a mushroom cloud over DC. Anyone who disputed that idea was treated as a traitor, even if you were a veteran. Ads were run declaring your support of terrorists if you dared say that WMDs (as the shorthand went) were a lie. The foreign policy and economic policy of the United States was remade around the goals of eliminating WMDs and turning Iraq into a shining example of freedom in that region of the world. If that sounds weird and hyperbolic, if anything, I'm understating how this shit went. 

And, of course, it was all a lie. There weren't WMDs. The whole thing was bullshit, but two-thirds of Americans believed Iraq had something to do with 9/11. Two-thirds believed the WMD lie. All of them were wrong (I could say, "All of you were wrong" since I was right, but I don't wanna be smug about it), but Democrats and Republicans leaned into the lie because of the fear of opposing such a huge part of the population. Nearly three-quarters of the country supported the war, which eventually changed to over half coming around to saying it was mistake. But the damage was done to Iraq and to the US, even if the defeat of the GOP in 2008 was one of the outcomes of the entire fucktastrophe. 

Of course, since we're Americans, we're damned to repeat every goddamned mistake in an endless cycle, and while we're not being lied into war this time (although there's weird talk about sending troops into Mexico), we are once again watching policy decisions being made that will wreck millions of lives because of hysteria over a lie that has caught fire. 

So not only did Donald Trump run and arguably win on his unending declarations of "the greatest invasion in history" happening at the US-Mexico border, but it's become a standard line for every Republican in office at all levels. And Democrats have joined in, going from accusing Republicans of stoking fears with their rhetoric to campaigning on the very restrictions that the anti-immigration right wants. Hell, even some supposedly left-leaning pundits have used Trump's language. And, again, it's all a lie. I don't want to go into all the ways it's a lie (like the fact that the majority of undocumented people came into the country legally and just stayed).

Like the WMD lies, this lie serves a policy purpose and it's not just to get the rubes all heated up to vote for fascists, although that worked pretty fuckin' well. The very word "invasion" is important because a declaration of an invasion could be a pretext for Trump using the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to get the military involved in rounding up and deporting anyone who is undocumented. Beyond that nightmare, making everyone believe that the hottentots are rampaging through the border in order to pillage our villages and rape our dogs and murder our women or whatever the fuck puts a violent justification on policies that are simply ignorance and racism, stopping the Great Replacement and White Genocide and that kind of bullshit that gets Trump, Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, and Elon Musk all hard and throbbing.

And, like invading Iraq (and that was really an invasion), billions of dollars will be spent to act on this lie. It will enrich a few loyal companies who get the contracts to build the detainment camps. It will cause wanton violence as every armed fucknut jonesing to go nutzoid on their immigrant neighbors tries to "help." And, eventually, it will fail as people realize what a horrific clusterfuck of family separation, caged children, and decimated workforces is doing to the country. 

What can be done now is for Democrats to stop giving in to the Trump language on immigration. Leave that shit to Fox "news" and it's devolved descendants. Let shitheel podcasters scream into the void about migrant caravans or whatever. We've already ceded so much ground by allowing the GOP to exploit every story of a migrant committing a crime. How about instead talking about how migrants are mistreated and killed. How about showing some goddamn strength instead of going along with the raging pitchfork-waving mob? Put out some torches instead of helping to light them.

Maybe, just maybe, we can stop this lie before it fucks things up as badly as the last lie. 

Sorry, CNN and MSNBC, But It's Not Us. It's You

I haven't watched CNN or MSNBC for a single second in the month since the 2024 presidential election. I've been a loyal viewer of CNN pretty much since it started, through the bullshit times of enforced patriotism, like the first Gulf War or after 9/11, and through the transition from being a news channel to being, in its current state, an extended talk show, one long episode of The View or the Sunday political chat fests, with occasional breaks for a news story. 

With MSNBC, I've had a more tortured relationship, vacillating between appreciating the early weirdness of the channel as it featured shows hosted by liberals like Phil Donahue and crazed conservatives like Pat Buchanan, to being a semi-regular viewer of Keith Olbermann and an occasional guest on Ed Schultz's show. But as it descended into a kind of smug insider party with smirky outrage expressed in the most pin-headed way possible, it lost me. And not just because of Morning Joe. I've never been able to handle the most recent primetime lineup, probably since the failure of Mueller Report to do anything that it was hyped to do by the hosts on that lineup.

And these things are relationships. We build up trust with the hosts we choose or the network we watch. You see that in the fervent devotion of Fox "news" viewers who refuse to believe anything that's related to "reality" without getting the okay from the Fox fucknut brigade. One dear friend of mine had MSNBC on pretty much all day, every day, whenever she was home. Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski were her morning coffee klatch and she didn't go to bed until she heard the history lesson that Rachel Maddow was dishing out. But not anymore. She's also gone cold turkey.

We on the left that still watched the corporate media's news networks had a kind of deal in our heads: we'll put up with your bullshit as long as, at the end of the day, we're on the right side of history. In the last few years, that meant tolerating the deranged bothersiderism that pretended that anything Hunter Biden was remotely equal to a single hour of the criminality of Donald Trump. That means watching CNN bring on guests and analysts who were objectively despicable human beings who regularly lied. Sorry, but a rational news organization wouldn't invite back anyone who said the 2020 election was stolen. That's fucking deranged and the people who believe it should be treated as such, up to and including Trump. And I'm not even talking about the regular awful conservative jizz spewers like Scott Jennings. 

But we hung in there because we got our fix of appalling acts by Trump and his administration and then the MAGA freaks when Trump was out of office. And they were covered like the appalling acts they are. And it was good enough. For a while, that is.

In the 2024 election, on CNN, we watched as every outrageous thing that Trump said he would do if reelected and every crime that he was on trial for and every horrible fucking cretin in his circle and every consolidation of oligarchic power around him was simply another story and not anything abnormal or alarming. To an extent, with Trump's vows about controlling the media, CNN was reporting on its own destruction with the objectivity of a crazy person recording his observations of the scenery after leaping off a tall building. And, I mean, just fuck you for the act of faux balance. If someone is about to kill you and you've got access to a gun, you don't discuss the ethics of gun ownership in the United States and the propagation of violence because of it. No, you shoot the fucking gun and explain yourself later. Journalism had a responsibility to prevent Trump from getting reelected because it's a check on unchecked power, which Trump promises to wield. If you are part of a democratic system and exist because of that democratic system, then when something is going to tear down that system, you deal with it like a threat. Instead, we got more yahoo safaris where Trump voters were interviewed as if their fucking stupidity was down-home wisdom.

On MSNBC, it was arguably worse because they were attempting to fight the good fight but in the most annoying way possible: by assuming that everyone was terminally online. It said what we wanted to hear, just feeding an anti-Trump emotional algorithm that was satisfying as hell, but ultimately was worthless. (Again, I find MSNBC mostly unwatchable, but your mileage may vary.)

Since the election, ratings have plummeted for CNN and MSNBC, which is to be expected to an extent, but usually the falloff post-election is across the board as people pay attention to other shit. However, Fox "news" is gaining viewers, and, of course, the mad motherfuckers there are crowing about it. 

But this isn't about ratings. It's about a very real feeling that we were abused and hoodwinked into a belief about the election that simply wasn't true. To an extent, that's on us. We wanted to cling to the hosts and guests who declared that they thought the polls were way off and Harris would win in a blow-out. But we have to live with ourselves. We don't have to live with the people who fostered that fantasy. 

And with the frightened voices of Joe and Mika talking about how they flew to Mar-a-Lago to kiss Trump's voluminous ass echoing in our ears, with CNN reporting on family separation policy as if it's the same as a new tax on Corn Flakes, with the shift in the reporting on the economy to emphasize how great it is as opposed to the gloom and doom of the pre-election period, with the pretense of objectivity and the mask of fairness making the monstrous innocuous, with the billionaires who own the mass media desperate to kowtow to the incoming fascist regime, I can't figure out a single reason to go back to my decades-long addiction. 

I've kicked you out, CNN and MSNBC. You fucked it all up and now I'm fucking done. Get your shit together or just disappear.

Note to Democrats: We Have to See You Fight, Even If It's a Losing Cause

Since the (re)election of Donald Trump, it's natural that Democrats would engage in some self-reflection. Of course, it's not like Republicans did that after Trump lost in 2020 and then tried to overthrow the election. But, you know, if you're a rational group of humans, you reassess after you lost and think about what you could do better. Perhaps you come up with some new ways to inspire voters. Perhaps you think about the running of campaigns and methods. Maybe you even figure out how to present your party's beliefs in a way that makes more sense. 

You know what you don't do? You don't cry, "Uncle" for an extended period of time while punching yourself in the face repeatedly. You don't decide that the real solution to your failure to move the needle the two percent it might have taken to win is to abandon your values and to turn your back on the rhetoric you used throughout the campaign about Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans. You don't throw people and movements under the bus. And you don't, you absolutely don't offer a helping hand and any words of encouragement or praise for a man who you declared a "fascist" and a "Nazi" and a criminal and a rapist whose return to power would mark the end of American democracy and would plunge the world into chaos. 

But that's exactly what Democrats have been doing. From Joe Biden, who is still president, acting chummy with Trump at the White House to Colorado Gov. Jared Polis praising the lunatic Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to Bernie freakin' Sanders starting a tweet about the Pentagon budget with "Elon Musk is right." You know what you call someone who is willing to work with fascists? I don't think I even have to answer that. 

Sanders has been extra odious, saying that the election results were because Democrats "abandoned working class people." Then you add in Democrats like rank opportunists Reps. Seth Moulton and Tom Suozzi blaming their party for refusing to condemn the extraordinarily rare occurrence of transgender girls playing in girls sports in high school, with Suozzi saying that the party was "pandering to the far left." Look, I don't think Kamala Harris ran a flawless campaign at all, but one thing you cannot say about her or the Biden administration is that they didn't do anything for the working class or that they did anything about transgender rights. It's simply false on both accounts. And it's giving Republican lies credence instead of saying what's really true, which is that Trump won because people believed his falsehoods, not because he was telling any hard truths. You have to be willing to tell people who voted against you that they're wrong, not that you're wrong.

What Democrats are missing right now is that we, the base, desperately need to see them out there fighting. Yes, there has been some strong condemnation of Trump's alarming parade of criminals, predators, freaks, and con artists as nominees to cabinet and other offices. But that's not enough to rally us because lemme tell you something, Democratic leadership, we're hurting. We're watching as the cases against Trump for genuinely serious crimes (like, you know, leading a coup and stealing top secret documents) disappear. We're watching as the other cases are ground down in proceedings that will likely end with dismissal. We're waiting for the Biden administration to go into overdrive for not just judicial appointments, but for things like renewal of Temporary Protected Status for hundreds of thousands of migrants. 

But even that's not enough. One of the things that Republicans did successfully when they were out of power was fight and fight, even if they were losing battles, like the constant effort to overturn the Affordable Care Act. And I know you're tired, Democrats in office. God, we voters are, too. But we're angry, and you're giving us nothing to focus our anger and our desire to resist.

Right now, I'd love to see some Hail Mary passes from the Biden administration. I want to see him grant blanket immunity to every migrant who has applied for asylum and to pardon all the Dreamers and give them a path to citizenship. I want to see him try one more time to come up with a way to do away with student loan debt. I want him to commute the sentences of every federal prisoner on death row so that Trump can't come in and start executions again. 

And I want to see Democrats go for it on whether or not Trump is ineligible to take office under the 14th Amendment's prohibition on anyone having committed insurrection from being president. 

I know, I know, I know these are all causes that are likely doomed to fail (except for the commutation of sentences, which is totally within the president's power). But losing causes also draw a line in the sand; they clarify what you believe in and what your opponents believe, and they show that you are willing to fight, even when the odds are against you. That gets people ready to go again when the 2026 midterms come around: we can see what's possible if power is shifted, we can get the messaging tested and strong, and we can see you're not just laying down your arms.

Even on a symbolic level, I want to see the groveling before Trump to stop. No Democrat should go to the inauguration. By going, you are ignoring his lies, and you might believe you are honoring the American tradition of peaceful transfer of power, but you're actually giving aid and comfort to someone who ended that tradition. You're forgiving a criminal who has show no remorse and you're abandoning everything that Democrats have fought against for the last decade And for what? For the hope that he maybe won't set a Kash Patel-led FBI after you for having opposed him? For a moment of his idiot hordes not inundating your offices with death threats? Being decent to indecent people is a fool's game.

Because, see, right now it seems like Democrats aren't fighting. It seems like they've surrendered. And that sucks because the rest of us out here in the trenches haven't.

A Thanksgiving Poem from Indigenous America

"after Sacred Water"
by Kinsale Drake, a Dine' and a member of the Navajo nation

I.
we inherit:
every gathering pool a blessing
formed by careful hands each monsoon
a heartbeat turquoise vein
the sound of underwater
brimmed with mosses
here laps the quiet tide of love

II.
in the summers we would flock to my great-aunt’s
swimming hole down the canyon
dizzy from the jumbled journey in a truck bed
poke at the tadpoles squirming in the red clay
my mother watched from orchard shade
she had been down here many years before
with her sisters her brothers
picking apples, following the bend
of the river leading the goats to the wayside to drink
now the water is too polluted
with cow manure uranium
we trace the mud with our eyes
watch the petroglyphs stretch in the shadows
miss the feeling of the sun wicking river from our skin

III.
in 1956/ the glen canyon dam began construction/ with an explosion/
was hit with a demolition blast keyed/ by the push of a button/
in the oval office/ the bottom of the canyon/ dotted by navajo/
ute/ paiute footprints/
still cooling/ the explosion/ a scar in the earth still aching
with uranium mines/ yellowcake/ yellow corn/ tumbled
in the runoff/ what do you call ancestral homestead/
stopped like a kitchen sink/ the water/ of your people
redirected to ranches/ fatten cattle that render the san juan undrinkable/
quench the white men in bars that don’t admit ndns/ water
and mineral/ packed into bombshells/ how do you drown
by your own artery/ today
the lake has never been shallower/ a drought
of its own becoming/ not even time to weep/ before the crossing/
before the fleeing/ marina of familiar fossils/ zebra mussels
scour the bones of old adobe/ stilled
beneath the surface/ the ancient sun rendered closer/
every day/ as the ranchers lament the withering/ the tourists
sticky with sun/ dock their houseboats/ the people who have known
this land/ see the slickrock
still emerging

IV.
in the third world, coyote took the water monster’s baby
so the water monster decided to make it rain endlessly
the water rose and flooded and choked the peaks
of sacred mountains
and the beings that lived there
did not know where to escape the flood
what saved the world was a reed curling
into the sky a way to climb out into the fourth world
an offering by First Man beloved by the gods
the one from which we all were formed
there are things that remain stolen that holy people
weep for and others look to us with upturned hands
ask where the reeds come from flee to the highest peaks
dream of another world they can scurry into
through a wound in the sky
we have no answer for them we have known this the entire time
tell our stories go to the water
tend this land
and remember

Democrats Must Stand Up for the Rights of Transgender People, Including Trans Youths

It wasn't that long ago, less than ten years, in fact, where, in a confirmation hearing for Attorney General nominee Loretta Lynch, Sen. Lindsey Graham, who was a prick even before his mouth became Donald Trump's penis koozie, wailed and gnashed about the growing passage of laws in the states allowing same-sex couples to marry, "What’s the legal difference between a ban on same-sex marriage being unconstitutional but a ban on polygamy being constitutional? Could you try to articulate how one could be banned under the constitution and the other not?" While this whole issue would be put to rest a few months later by the then-relatively sane Supreme Court in the Obergefell decision, Graham's screaming mimi routine had been echoing throughout the nutsosphere for years: same-sex marriage would lead to legalizing marriage with animals or marriage with babies. It was crazy shit. One ultra-evangelical group of fucknuts said that if New York legalized same-sex marriage in 2011, it "could prove to be decisive in the culture war for America's soul."

Of course, of course, of fucking course, none of this came true. Not a goddamn thing. No one tried to get a law passed so they could marry their dog. Babies are still single. And polygamy is still illegal even if some religious shitdicks practice it. The worst thing that's wrong is that it was not, in fact, decisive in the culture war. All that happened is that same-sex couples could get married and have the pleasures and pains of matrimony that opposite-sex couples got to enjoy. For nearly three-fourths of Americans, it's all good. That mass support for same-sex marriage happened pretty fucking quickly after the Supreme Court decision, but it had been building for years as more and more states legalized it and more and more people got exposed to it. What once seemed exotic and alien now just seemed normal as hell to most everyone. Essentially, they realized that it didn't affect them in any way whatsoever, so why the fuck should they care? God bless the apathetic USA, I guess.

One of the biggest issues in GOP ads in the 2024 election was rights for trans people, both youth and adult. The Trump campaign and his party decided that the idea of trans kids participating in sports (or, to be specific, trans girls participating in girls sports since no one seems to make a fuss about trans boys doing the same in boys sports) and the idea of a trans woman using a bathroom for her gender rather than biological sex (or, to be specific, trans women using women's bathrooms since no one seems to make a fuss about trans men using the men's room) would freak people the fuck out and turn them against the Democrats. They and their PACs spent a couple hundred million dollars on the ads, running them in Senate races and elsewhere, and flooding the airwaves with them for Trump. The accuracy of the ads didn't matter, as truth and reality doesn't matter at all to the right. One line in an ad, "Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you," pretty much said everything that assholes wanted to hear.

And while the jury is out on how much they tilted the election for Trump, they defined Democrats as supportive of some kind of deviancy, even if the real deviant fucknuts are those who obsess over the genitals of children and those of people taking a shit. I'll just add that, anecdotally, everyone I've talked to who voted for Trump told me it was because of trans issues. I've heard the same from other friends who dares to ask Trumpers how they could vote for someone who is objectively one of the shittiest people ever to draw breath. 

Lots of people will be quick to point out that Kamala Harris didn't talk about trans people at all. Sure, Tim Walz might have, since he actually did something to assure gender-affirming care for trans kids in Minnesota. But the Democratic presidential campaign avoided the issue like a potato on fire, and that was fucked up. I'm on the side of people like Ed Rendell, the former governor of Pennsylvania, that it was a huge fucking mistake not to stand up to the attacks and defend trans rights. Like not allowing a Palestinian speaker, it was political malpractice not to have a trans speaker at the Democratic National Convention. It didn't matter that Harris wasn't campaigning on "woke" or trans or anything else. Republicans were going to say she was, so, fuck it, may as well do the honorable thing and defend people who need defending. 

Harris's silence on all things trans (except in the most generalized mention of LGBTQ+ rights) allowed Republicans to damage not just her but, more importantly and in a far worse way, trans people. If nothing else was being fed to people about trans men and women and youths, if all they heard was the horrific negative shit, then they'll assume that's all there is to say about it. Fucking hell, they barely came at Trump for saying that kids go into school and get their sex changed at recess or some such bullshit, which was legitimately insane. Trump and the GOP are planning to unleash hell on trans people, especially on kids seeking gender-affirming care. And, instead of calling out the GOP for being fear-mongering little bitches, Democrats are actually debating if they should abandon trans people altogether on some issues. 

That's an absolute dereliction of political and social duty and so anti-progressive that you may as well close up shop. You can see the effects of this refusal to engage in the battle with Republicans feeling absolutely free to be the worst version of their already motherfucking awful selves, especially with the election of Democrat Sarah McBride as the first transgender person in the Congress. A former LGBTQ+ ally, Rep. Nancy Mace did a heel turn and decided to make life miserable for McBride and all trans people in the Capitol by getting Speaker Mike "I want to see what porn my son sees" Johnson to say that everyone has to use the bathroom of their biological sex, which begs the unanswered question of who is going to check and how. Not one to be out-crazied, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a troll both inside and out, allegedly said that she'd "fight" a transgender woman who came into her precious ladies room. 

To their credit, led by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrats have finally found a spine on this trans issue, speaking out against Mace and Johnson for their transphobia. Now how about translating that into other action? How about saying that unless someone announces their biological sex, it's impossible to know whether the person in the bathroom stall has a dick or a pussy? How about saying that if it was so easy for men to get away with sexual assault by putting on a dress and going into a bathroom, a whole fuck of a lot of them would have done it (and even if that did happen, it's about a cis male committing the act, not a trans woman)? How about saying that the number of trans girls playing high school sports is so small that it's fewer than the number of trans people who are murdered for being trans each year? How about saying that it's between kids and their parents if they want to take puberty blockers or have top surgery? How is that any goddamn business of anyone else's? You get to stand up for parental rights there.

This is what the fuck we're supposed to do as Democrats: work to make sure that oppressed and demonized groups feel safe in this America and have the same opportunities as everyone else, including the right to just live their fucking lives. Don't do the assholes' job for them by being silent. Speaking out and being an active ally can lead to normalization, yes, but also demystification. See, the more you talk about it, the less scary it becomes. The more visibility Democrats give trans people, the more it just becomes another thing that everyone learns is no big deal to anyone except the trans person and their loved ones. That, like same-sex marriage, it's not about you unless it is you. 

Biden Will Be Remembered More for What He Didn't Do Than What He Did

Other than the election and everything related to it, one thing stuck in my craw this past week, and it stuck there hard, so much so that I can't cough it up. At her daily briefing, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked if President Joe Biden would pardon his son Hunter, who is facing sentencing after pleading guilty to federal charges related to tax evasion and lying on an application for buying a gun. She responded, "We've been asked that question multiple times. Our answer stands, which is no."

Now, you can tell me that Joe Biden respects the law and lots of such shit. But Hunter Biden was the subject of a slavering witch hunt by Republicans who were out to destroy his life for simply being Joe Biden's son. The fact that we know anything about him at all is a testament to how clean Joe Biden's record is: they had nothing on the father, so they went after the son so they could make the father guilty by association. In other words, the motherfuckers wanted blood, and they weren't going to stop until they got it.

Yet here's Joe Biden, who is not only leaving office, but that office is being taken over by the man who put the target on his family's backs. When a parent has the power to save a child from a pack of wolves, that parent has an obligation to pluck the child to safety. Sure, the GOP and the gabbling goblins on the right would lose their shit, but they'll lose their shit if Hunter Biden is sentenced to anything other than the death penalty. 

It's ragingly frustrating. Pardon your son, Joe. Jesus Christ, use the power you fucking have while you have it. Don't let the bastards get everything they want. Fucking hell. 

In late 2019, I wrote that I didn't want Biden to be the Democratic nominee because he believed too much that he could work with Republicans and that he wouldn't bother punishing Trump and the fuckers who aided and abetted his crimes. Biden actually said at a fundraiser back then, "With Donald Trump out of the way, you’re going to see a number of my Republican colleagues have an epiphany. Mark my words. Mark my words...It’s going to take two things: One is somebody who in fact, knows how to reach across the aisle and get things done." 

I know we all blame Merrick Garland for the failure to prosecute Trump quickly and we want to hang him up like pinata and pummel him (rhetorically, of course). But I would not be the least bit surprised if Joey Gladhand up there didn't hold the Justice Department back, thinking that not going after Trump would buy him some good will with the GOP as he tried to get shit done. He learned the lesson that all Democrats are cursed to learn too late: Republicans are motherfuckers and they will try to fuck mother every chance they get. That's what they do. It's right there in the word. 

Biden made restoring norms that Trump had shit on and tossed into the garbage more important than wielding power. But he didn't realize that institutionalists like him were worthless in the Trump-warped DC landscape he returned to. And Democrats followed his lead. Sure, they were able to get some pretty amazing things passed, but they never used the power they had. When Jim Jordan, who looks like if armpit sweat were a person, defied a House committee subpoena, they never once threatened to bring charges against him or have him arrested. They just let it go. That was a pattern: Republicans do or say something outrageous and Democrats just keep their heads down and plow ahead, not realizing the outrage is actually hurting them. If you're MMA fighting but you want to treat it like a boxing match and only use those moves, don't be surprised when you get kicked in the throat and land on the ground, gasping for breath.

It continues even after the 2024 election. We went through a couple of years of Biden and Democrats telling us that Donald Trump's reelection is an apocalyptic event that will wreck our nice democracy and shatter our alliances around the world and send the country reeling into despair. But what does Biden do after Trump won? He fucking congratulates him and tells the country that everything is just fine. No. Just fucking no. Be mad. Chastise us. Tell us it's fucked up and now we need to be vigilant or Trump will shred what remains of our national character. "I've said many times, you can't love your country only when you win," Biden said after the election. But you don't need to roll over and pretend shit's not fucked up. Biden loved his son when his son was fucking up, but he sure as shit let Hunter know he was fucking up and needed to do something about it. 

I'm not blaming Biden directly for Kamala Harris's loss. I don't know what would have happened if he had dropped out early and Democrats had gone through a bruising primary battle. But I am blaming him for allowing Trump to be able to run. I blame him for not immediately having the lead insurrectionist arrested after inauguration. Like Barack Obama's failure to hold Wall Street bankers or George W. Bush to account for all their crimes, it casts a pall over the presidency and the system of justice. The only way ruthless assholes learn to back down is to be a ruthless asshole to them. 

I'm writing this as a way of saying that the Democratic leadership of the future should not be so invested in returning to doing business as usual. Biden promised us that, but it wasn't enough because Republicans and their media outrage machine didn't fucking want it and Trump wouldn't allow it. That ship of comity and cooperation has sailed the fuck away. If we ever have another election, whoever emerges as a leader out of the reckoning that Democrats are having would have to be a take-no-prisoners destroyer of norms because norms aren't fucking laws. No one gets punished for not doing things the Way They've Always Been Done, so don't. Break open the Supreme Court. Fire anyone who Trump leaves behind (like Postmaster Louis Dejoy). Fuck process. Fuck procedure. Fuck any of it that gets in the way of putting this strain of politics in this country in its grave. Republicans learned that the only thing that should encumber them is laws, and then they will test those laws until they reach the breaking point or they can get away with whatever the fuck they want to do. I'm not saying to be the abject Constitution-haters Republicans are, but, Jesus fuck, murder the Senate weirdness like nominees being held up when a senator from that state objects. Use power like you like having power.

Institutionalism is bullshit. Tradition is often just another word for "behind the times." Goddamn, I can't get over that the president won't even pardon his maligned and persecuted son because of a belief in the innate goodness of institutions. Biden's tragic flaw, like its been for so many Democrats, is believing that if you just show your opponent that you're playing by the rules honestly, they'll respect that and work with you. It simply doesn't work that way anymore (if it ever truly did). The price we now have to pay for that fucked up adherence to an idealized past is incalculable. Despite all the good that Biden did do, much of what he got done will now be reversed by these jabbering jackals who could give a shit less if it hurts people to do it. Despite having made a significant contribution to helping the working class, mitigating climate change, getting us out of a pandemic, and more, that failure by Biden to evolve, even after having a front-row seat to Republicans obstructing Barack Obama endlessly, even while watching Republicans devolve in increasing and frightening ways, will be his legacy.

(Note: Well, that and his failure to even attempt to rein in Benjamin Netanyahu, but that's a post for another time.)