A Very Touching Scene

"You are being videotaped.
Touch anything on our property
and you will go to jail."

"I was only going to ask a question."

—Ann W., Raleigh NC
***

A bill recently introduced in the GOP-controlled North Carolina legislature would bar the state’s attorney general (Democrat Jeff Jackson) from challenging “any executive order issued by the President of the United States.”

Most of those EOs have already been adjudged unconstitutional or beyond the power of a US president or terribly fucking stupid—but apparently the NCGOP likes those qualities in its leaders.

And because they have a gerrymandered supermajority in North Carolina, they also feel confident enough to wipe their feet on the principles of democracy. 

Last December, for example, they enacted another law that would ban the NC Attorney General from "...arguing in court that anything the legislature has done is unconstitutional, or from taking stances in court that Republican legislative leaders disagree with."

In other words, "Here's your paycheck, but don't try to spend it."

A few days ago our friend Ann, who lives in North Carolina, had seen enough from NCGOP, and went to pay them a visit.

"I just decided to walk into the NC Republican Party building on Hillsborough Street and ask someone to explain this bill to me face to face. The guy I spoke to claimed to be unaware of it—which seemed really unlikely to me. So, I pulled up a screenshot of it on my phone and he said, "Oh, yeah...that one."

"In a really dismissive tone he said it was the AG's job to defend and represent the laws of the state—not go against them and cost taxpayers money with lawsuits. I said if the laws/bills weren't in the best interest of the state, the attorney general should be able to challenge them. He just said, 'These legislators are elected officials.'" 

"'SO IS THE ATTORNEY GENERAL!' I said in my inside voice. At that point I realized I was at a dead end, so I said thanks and left."

On her way out, Ann noticed the sign that greets visitors to the NCGOP building: 

"You are being videotaped," it begins. "Touch anything on our property and you will go to jail."

Fun! Who wouldn't want to engage with folks who feel this threatened by the world outside their little walls?

"So much touching..."

But that's today's GOP, is it not? A jacked-up truck load of bluster, dumped heavily over a foundation of wide-eyed, quivering fear.

You know what would be really fun? A touching party at the NCGOP headquarters! Sponsored, perhaps, by the Greater Raleigh Gardening Club—featuring a march directly from the nearest horse-poop compost pile.

WOMAN ON BULLHORN: "Touch something, friends! Touch the sign! Touch the doors! TOUCH EVERYTHING!"

NCGOP: [vomits on fainting couch, loses consciousness]

[fade to black]

News For People Who Don't Follow The News

"In 2025, the country
formerly known as the
United States of America
suffered a rapid
unscheduled disassembly."

“Terrible things are happening outside. Poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes. Families are torn apart. Men, women, and children are separated. Children come home from school to find that their parents have disappeared.”

Diary of Anne Frank 

January 13, 1943

***

The White House has fallen to the fascists.

And in its first week of occupation the Trump regime initiated the wave of barbarity it long promised.

Did you know? Were you aware? Do you care?

Because apparently a lot of people who voted for Trump 2.0 didn't know, weren't aware, or didn't care that what's happening now is exactly what was planned all along.

Let's recap...

Day One

*The "president" pardons more than 1,500 domestic terrorists who attempted to overthrow the US government on January 6, 2021. 

The message he sent was unmistakable: commit violent crimes on behalf of the regime and you will be protected. Equally important, you can go out and acquire firearms and ammunition for the next time your "president" needs you—all nice and legal.

*The "president" tries to change the US Constitution via executive order.

The 14th amendment to the Constitution specifies that anyone born on US soil is automatically a US citizen. This status, known as birthright citizenship, was enshrined in the 1800s. 

Whether you agree or disagree with the precept, as a matter of law amending the Constitution requires approval by two-thirds of Congress and ratification by three-fourths of State legislatures. Trump, however, tried to bypass this process, and was immediately sued by 22 states.

*Right wing billionaire Elon Musk, who spent $250 million to get Trump elected, spoke at a post-inauguration rally in Washington, DC. During his speech, Musk enthusiastically gave a Nazi salute—not once but twice. No one associated with Trump, Musk, or the GOP condemned the act. Instead, the response was akin to, "You didn't see what you think you saw...but even if you did, it doesn't matter."

Day Two

Trump attends a prayer service at the Washington National Cathedral, and somehow does not burst into flames upon entry. He did, however, become extremely heated when Bishop Mariann Budde implored him to show mercy to many of his intended targets.

"Mr. President, millions have put their trust in you. As you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. There are transgender children in both Republican and Democratic families who fear for their lives.  

"And the people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings; who labor in our poultry farms and meat-packing plants; who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shift in hospitals — they may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes, and are good neighbors. They are faithful members of our churches, mosques and synagogues, gurdwara, and temples.    

"Have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away. Help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here. Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were once strangers in this land."

Trump was so offended by this Jesus-y plea that he demanded an apology—which Budde declined to provide. Probably because she's an actual Christian, not the Trump-worshipping kind.

 

Day Three

The "president" orders an immediate pause on all communications from the CDC, the National Institutes of Health, and the Food & Drug Administration.

What better time to gag the departments that fight epidemics, protect our food supply, and research cures for diseases than when human flu is rampant in the US, bird flu is decimating the nation's poultry flocks, and the largest tuberculosis outbreak in US history is spreading through Kansas?

Day Four

Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News talking head, was confirmed as the US Secretary of Defense.

In a vacuum you might be able to make a case for Hegseth as a mid-level spokesperson for a random, inconsequential department at DOD. But in a sane country his well-documented history as an abuser of alcohol, women, and truth would disqualify him even from that.

Put another way, if you were running a venture of any kind, no matter how large or small, would you hire a candidate whose personal sociopathy was so disturbing, his own mother called him out in a scathing email?
***

Day Nine

On January 29, an American Airlines flight collided with a US Army helicopter over the Potomac River in Washington, DC. Sixty-four people were killed.

Reporter: "Do you have a plan to go visit the site of the crash?"

Trump: "I have a plan to visit, not the site, because why don’t you tell me, what’s the site? The water? You want me to go swimming?”

Actually, yes.

***
Obviously this list is far from comprehensive, but it is representative. We're now well off the map, into the land of "I never thought it could happen here."

It's a good time to be thinking about what you'll do when you see something you know is wrong and can't be allowed to happen. You may be afraid and your voice may shake—but if we don't speak now, when it matters most, we may not get another chance.

The New Abnormal

Monday, January 20, 2025

We just wanted everything to go back to normal.

After four years of chaos and grotesquerie, that wasn't asking too much, was it? It didn't seem like it at the time. 

So, we sat back and watched, relieved, as Joe Biden did what Democrats have done for decades: clean up after a good-for-nothing, incompetent Republican administration.

Joe did such a good job of it, in fact, that we forgot how bad the Trump years really were. And how they ended.

 

Now, in a rational world, there's no way a man as small, stupid, and malignant as Donald Trump could become president of "the greatest country on Earth" in the first place. Certainly not after being confirmed a rapist, a felon, and the traitorous leader of a violent rebellion against his own country.

America, after all, is better than that, is it not?

Spoiler: It is not. Because somehow the thing we now do best is forget. 

In this case, we forgot we live in a wildly irrational world. A world that has passively watched Trump commit crime after crime in broad daylight. Knowing he would do the exact same things again—and worse—if given the chance.

Biden knew it, too. And yet he allowed Zombie Trump to rise from the political grave to continue his reign of (t)error.

In fairness, Joe had a few non-trivial matters to attend to, like rebuilding a COVID-wracked economy, turning the temperature down on runaway climate change, and shoring up America's criminally neglected infrastructure. To his credit, those initiatives were remarkable successes—which a more self-aware nation would've rewarded with another term in office. Pity. 

That work, all of it, will now be undone at a breathtaking pace.

We're about to watch Trump swear on a Bible to support and defend the constitution, "so help me god," while an administration staffed by sex offenders, drunks, and Russian assets takes up the work of the Kremlin.

Simultaneously, we'll apparently be waging a war of one kind or another with Canada, Mexico, Panama, and Denmark.

If you think Trump will bring down inflation and bring prosperity to non-billionaires, you may want to have a contingency plan in mind. If you think the LA fires are horrific, get ready for them to be the new abnormal. If you don't believe Trump's threats to withhold funding for devastated states and communities...well, I don't know what to say other than "good luck."

A few days ago, at the funeral of former President Jimmy Carter, Joe Biden eulogized a kind and decent man. At one point he also seemed to deliver a warning to the incoming "president": 

“We have an obligation to give hate no safe harbor and to stand up to the greatest sin of all—the abuse of power.”

With all due respect, Joe, it's a little late for that.

And while we appreciate the many historic accomplishments of your administration...the one that history will remember most is the one that didn't get done.

***

"And so it goes." — Linda Ellerbee

Preparing For Rain

"What time is it?"
"Time to feed the creatures."

We got a couple inches of rain here overnight, according to the feed buckets scattered around the farm.

And it's funny how, once upon a time, we would've been agog at the very idea of two inches of precip in one night.

But then we moved to a tropical island.

These days we just shrug and say, "Welp, at least we don't have to water today."

The mud was slick and everywhere as we headed out to feed the many creatures who count on us at approximately the same times every day. I (predictably) worried about the horses (and one venerable horse in particular) slipping and falling.

On the fly, today's routine was modified thusly:

• Empty the water from the customer's feed container
• Fend off the impatient customer
• Fill the feed container
• Quickly extricate self and move on to the next customer
• Repeat repeat repeat...

We are, all of us, adaptable. Though always creatures of habit, we can, when necessary, change longstanding behaviors to accommodate the unexpected.

***

It's not a stretch to predict that 2025 will challenge the American capacity for change. Not just tweaks around the edges, but soul-wrenching, seismic distortions of the relative predictability we (incorrectly) take for granted. 

If you think this is hyperbole, I'd ask you to consider, as a whimsical thought experiment, what you'd do if you're mistaken. How you might adapt to a government you no longer recognize. How you'd respond to people—family, friends, neighbors—you may no longer find trustworthy.

You won't have to imagine such things for long. In 20 days or so (and many days after that) we'll know. And we'll adapt, as our humanity allows.

***

The rain today stopped a little before sunrise, and by mid-morning the clouds had passed to the north.

In two hours, maybe three, the ground was nearly dry.

The Art of Remembrance and Forgetting

Have a rememorable day

"The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian Islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. I regret to tell you that very many American lives have been lost. In addition, American ships have been reported torpedoed on the high seas between San Francisco and Honolulu..."

—FDR, Dec. 8, 1941

***

Americans never forget to remember. And vice versa.

We "Remember the Alamo!" and "Remember the Maine!"

We never forget Pearl Harbor, or 9/11.

Beyond that, we have a very short and selective memory.

Because, as someone once said many times, "...those who forget the past are doomed to remember the future."

As an example, who among us doesn't recall how General Antonio López de Santa Anna, of Mexico; Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, of Japan; and Osama bin Laden, of Saudi Arabia, were forgiven their treachery by the American people and went on to become President(s) of the United States?

(Sadly, the architects of the sinking of the USS Maine were never identified—none of them went on to become a US president. We are, however, left with a Remember the Maine cocktail to remind us of those exciting times in Havana Harbor. What better than absinth, after all, to sharpen the wits and hone the collective memory?)

US history is replete with formerly infamous figures who went on to be merely famous. And while rehabilitation of reputations took longer in pre-internet days, eventually many of the Great Wrongs of our past were excused and/or transmogrified into Great Examples by those who engineer such things.

These days that same process takes place in the blink of a news cycle. For example, on our National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, do you remember...

• A 2017 tour of the USS Arizona Memorial, during which the sitting US president had to ask his chief of staff what the event was about?
• The day we learned that those who died at Pearl Harbor were "suckers and losers"?
• That the very same US president, in 2021, led an armed attack on the US Capitol?

Those things may have seemed bad at the time, but here we are less than four years later, and all is forgiven! In fact, those documented events may have never occurred at all! Only in America (and a few other quasi-democracies), can you be THAT GUY, and re-become president of anything but a cell block.

It is truly a remarkable thing. A thing our forefathers would not soon forget, had they not died many-score and some number of years ago. 

Happening here, now, upon this continent.

Conversations With Gracie

She: "Do you think they understand they're in a place that doesn't get snow?"

Me: "I don't know...maybe? Probably not? I don't know. But it would be an interesting conversation..."

—Us, at 4:30 a.m.

***

"Good morning, Gracie."

"Good morning."

[silence]

"Did you have a good night?"

"Not bad. Got rained on some."

"You know you have a nice shelter right over there."

"Yeah."

"What do you suppose the weather is like in Pennsylvania right now?"

[silence]

"Gracie?"

"I don't like to think about that."

"Because of the weather?"

"No..."

[silence]

"Are you okay?"

"Not really."

[silence]

"You know we'll help if we can..."

"I know. You are nice."

"But?"

"My other people were nice, and then they weren't. They put me on a truck and I never saw them again."

[silence]

"I know. I'm sorry about that. They shouldn't have done that."

"The place I went was bad. Everybody was afraid, and it smelled like laying down and not getting up again."

[silence]

"I don't know why they did that to me. Did I do something wrong...I don't think I did. I did the same things every day for a long time. Then one day they didn't want me to do them any more. They came to get me like always, but they didn't say anything to me. They just put me on the truck and walked away without me."

[silence]

"I was on the truck a long time. Hungry and thirsty. Then I was someplace else. The place I didn't like."

"I know. That's how we found you. We saw pictures of you, and wanted you to come here to be with us."

"I didn't want to come here. I didn't want to leave my other people."

"I know. You did a good job and you deserved to stay with them."

"Why, then..."

"I don't know. It's just something they do. It wasn't your fault."

[silence]

"When are you going to send me away?"

"We're not. Not ever."

"I don't believe you."

"I understand. I guess I wouldn't believe us either."

[silence]

"I still see them in my dreams sometimes..."

[silence]

[silence]

***********

Gracie Lou is a 20-year old Belgian draught horse, rescued from a kill pen in Oklahoma. Prior to that she was an Amish work horse.

The Curse Of Chaos

"May what you put into the world come back to you threefold."

—Wiccan wisdom
***

Let's say, just for laughs, that you're a Trump voter: I have a question for you!

Did you know when you voted what he was campaigning on?

No need to answer out loud, just think about it for a minute: "Hmm, did I have a solid understanding of his plans for America, or did I not have any clue at all?"

Your answer, broadly, will fall into two unsavory buckets:

• "No, I generally don't know what I'm doing from one day to the next—but by golly, I voted for him anyway!"
• "Hell yes I knew, in great, gory detail—and that's exactly why I voted for him!"

Debating whether your answer makes you a minion or a monster is a waste of time now—because the unpredictable, real-world consequences of your decision are upon us. 

Trump 1.0 featured hundreds of thousands of Americans dying needlessly thanks to that administration's grotesquely incompetent handling of the pandemic. It ended (as we know since we witnessed it in real time), with an attempted coup. In America.

Trump 2.0 stands to be worse because the incoming administration has made it clear the chaos will be intentional and thorough (see Project 2025 for details).

Either way, you buy the ticket, you get the whole ride.

On a very related note, are you familiar with the US government policy of rounding up and imprisoning Americans of Japanese descent during World War II? I used to think this shameful bit of history was common knowledge, but now I'm not so sure—given that so many states have chosen to sanitize (and therefore desecrate) American history.

Little-known fact: Texas was a major hub for those WWII internment camps.

And yet somehow, despite the fact that these camps have been variously described as unconstitutional, a grave injustice, and "utterly foreign to the ideals and traditions of the American people," — Texas now wants in on Trump's mass deportation plans, which the past and future "president" has literally promised will be bloody.

"The Texas General Land Office is offering President-elect Donald Trump a 1,400-acre Starr County ranch as a site to build detention centers for his promised mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, according to a letter the office sent him Tuesday.

"Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham said in the Tuesday letter that her office is 'fully prepared' to enter an agreement with any federal agencies involved in deporting individuals from the country 'to allow a facility to be built for the processing, detention, and coordination of the largest deportation of violent criminals in the nation’s history.'

"The state recently bought the land along the U.S.-Mexico border in the Rio Grande Valley and announced plans to build a border wall on it. The previous owner had not let the state construct a wall there and had 'actively blocked law enforcement from accessing the property,' according to the letter the GLO sent Trump."

(Note that the prospective deportees are characterized as "violent criminals," conveniently ignoring the fact that immigrants, legal and otherwise, commit crimes at a far lower rate than "real Americans." Also, so much for due process and ensuring non-criminal, non-immigrants aren't swept up in the hysteria.)

As some may recall, Trump's first experiment in creating American concentration camps did not go well—unless you consider separating children from their parents and then losing those children in a Byzantine bureaucracy "going well." 

This is just one of the many malevolent Trump 2.0 "policies" that will never make America great—but will make it apocalyptically unrecognizable.

Already, some of our friends are living in fear of what may happen in the coming months. As one said:

"Many of us may not survive this government. Stephen Miller, who’s the mastermind on immigration, has promised to 'turbocharge' denaturalization of naturalized citizens. I may personally be caught in this evil web—who knows what will happen to some of us?"

The slide into chaos is slow, until it's not.

And, as it'll be a long fall from Reagan's apocryphal "shining city on the hill," we should expect a wild ride to the bottom.

***

"May you live in interesting times."

[actually not a Chinese curse, come to find out—but a curse nonetheless]