When it was reported last night that Air Force One, en route to Switzerland, had unexpectedly turned back to the U.S., some of us experienced some… um… irrational exuberance.
The internet was abuzz with an entirely premature and, as it turned out, unfounded giddiness. I was already mentally inventorying my refrigerator, trying to remember if we had a bottle of bubbly on chill for the glorious day the Stark Fist of Removal comes for you-know-who.
We don’t, and we really should. I’d love to have a specially branded bottle of Champagne on hand for the occasion, maybe showing That Fucking Guy dancing in the flames as Satan (the South Park version) prods him with a pitchfork. There’s a business opportunity there for somebody in the beverage line.
Which reminds me, today I happened to see the cover of Wish You Were Here, and doesn’t the guy on fire look just a little like a younger, sharper version of Whatshisname?
Well… possibly seeing him there is a sign of derangement, and possibly the 5–10 minutes of unmitigated joy I felt last night indicate a deep inner disturbance. I’m going to go ponder these matters and maybe go for a nice healthy walk. I want to be here when the great day finally comes.
We’ve made it through a year of this bullshit — those of us who are still here, anyway, apologies to anyone who’s been deported and/or murdered — which is definitely something to celebrate. The poll numbers are pretty encouraging too. You don’t hear many Champagne corks popping, though. I guess a lot of people are doing Dry January.
And it’s not like we can sit around and wait for everything to magically get better in 2029. The damage that’s being done on a daily basis will be reverberating through our world for a long long time. But also, I have serious doubts that That Fucking Guy is even going to make it that far. As I watch him continue to degenerate mentally and physically, I find myself wondering what a post-TFG America looks like.
Certainly the words “President Vance” are ones that should make you gag. Everything J.D. has done in the last year, culminating with the grotesque smearing of Renee Good, has demonstrated that he is a complete moral vacuum. He is also, for someone who is nominally in the politics business, a shockingly unlikeable human being. He may become president, but he will never take TFG’s place as the charismatic leader of a quasi-religious death cult.
Most likely there will be a post-Stalinesque jockeying for power between Vance, Miller, Noem, Bannon, Rubio, and who knows who else? Marjorie Taylor Green is out there somewhere imagining that she could be next, and in the current insane timeline, who’s to say it’s not possible?
With any luck all the infighting will distract them from the fascism, and we can all get a little room to breathe. That would be something to celebrate too.
So it’s really awesome that the current President of these United States is a 79-year-old man with the mind of a toddler. He covets other people’s toys and telling him, “No, that belongs to somebody else” does no good; he stamps his little feet and shouts “But I want it!”
One such is the Nobel Peace Prize, which he decided he absolutely had to have, mostly I think because Obama got one. The Scandies weren’t going to give it to him because they’re not nuts. Then FIFA created a special Peace Prize just for him, but of course that wasn’t good enough, because deep down he knew it wasn’t real. Yesterday Venezuela’s opposition leader, who just happened to be last year’s winner, tried to give hers to him; possibly thinking she would be rewarded with a presidency. (She got a tote bag full of MAGA swag.) But it doesn’t have his name on it so what good is it?
Today he posted this on his little app:
It is my Great Honor to announce that THE BOARD OF PEACE has been formed. The Members of the Board will be announced shortly, but I can say with certainty that it is the Greatest and Most Prestigious Board ever assembled at any time, any place.
No doubt they will be awarding a prize, and it will be ten feet tall and gold and show the great man doing his jerking-off-two-dicks-at-once dance.
Despite this being the middle of January, it was a glorious summer’s day here in Arcata, sunny with a high of 59. (For whatever reason, that feels like 75 here; on those rare occasions when it does get over 70, it starts to feel too hot.) I find myself thinking about the good people of Minneapolis, where it was a balmy 43 degrees today, but the forecast for Saturday is a high of 8 and a low of –1.
Also they are currently in the midst of being invaded by a foreign power called the United States. ICE is on the streets there shooting people, throwing teargas around, and generally behaving like the low-rent Gestapo it is. So far the Minneapolitans are handling it admirably well — taking to the streets and resisting without slipping over into violence, which of course is what the Alt-Reich (new nickname, what do you think?) wants, an excuse to kick out the jams.
I am also thinking about the people of Iran, who are currently being slaughtered by their government on a whole different scale. Demonstrating once and for all that he is immune to irony, our president has been threatening to bomb their country, which is sure to help. Here is his message to them:
Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING — TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!! Save the names of the killers and abusers. They will pay a big price.
I would say the same thing to the Minnesotans, and to Portlanders, and to anyone else currently under siege. Stay strong, stay peaceful, and Illegitimi non carborundum.
I was going to write about David Bowie, whose 79th birthday it is today — word was he had put a song in his secret vault to be released 10 years after his death. So far I have seen no sign of that, though the actual anniversary of his passing is still two days hence. Which would be sort of an odd thing to celebrate, but then he was an odd guy.
But at the moment I am preoccupied with the continued degradation of my home country, as most recently evidenced by an ICE agent shooting an innocent woman three times in the face in the streets of Minneapolis. That itself is bad enough — like, really really bad — but the president and the puppy shooter made things worse by immediately demonizing the victim and trying to gaslight us about what had happened.
Weirdly, this occurred less than a mile from where George Floyd was killed five years ago. And as with Floyd, the preponderance of video evidence makes it hit differently from any number of similar atrocities that did not happen to have so many witnesses.
Will there be consequences? As of this writing, almost 24 hours later, we still do not know the name of the shooter, where he is now, what he is doing, and what charges if any he will face. Obviously this one man is not the whole problem, but he is a symbol of it, and he should be held accountable. As should those who backed him without pausing to consider the actual evidence.
That Fucking Guy’s account of the incident did not match what you can clearly see with your own eyes in the video. Possibly he had not seen it, or was fed some AI-generated version by his handlers? Anything seems possible.
And yes, this is only the tip of the iceberg of the evil that’s being perpetrated upon the land every day now. But it seems like a useful point of focus. Sorry, David, we’ll check in with you in a couple days.
