Do you ever look around and think, wow, this is an absurd time to be alive! Well then, this essay is for you. Less the usual capturing of current events, more broad societal reflections.

Infection

Amongst other things, I’ve been reflecting on what unique phenomena make this modern era so bizarre and at times infuriating, as I often do. We live in the aftermath of a slow moving disaster, a behemoth so large that it’s nearly impossible to take in and comprehend, and so the destruction it leaves in its wake is… confusing. That is to say, there has been no single event - no singular war, no revolution, no Great Depression, no actual cataclysmic strike from nature. Those things are horrible but they make ready sense - that is, the disaster they leave in their wakes makes ready sense. Instead here, in this modern time, in my country that is the United States of America, we have had a slow burn. We have had a great festering wound deep inside the body, a thing brought on and spread by microscopic parasites, tiny unseen things that go unnoticed to daily human perception, but under a microscope would be seen to have horrific whirring circular mouths filled with dagger-like teeth, wormy writhing segmented bodies of pulsating doom, evil little beady eyes of red that see nothing but the flesh of the host in front of them. These things have feasted and multiplied and spread, burrowed through the muscle and ligaments and then the organs and into the bone marrow, and now finally, they have consumed most of what is available, and they are beginning to eat their way outward, through the deepest layers of flesh first, just starting to break through the epidermis in a strange outpouring of oozing bile and writhing mess.



And isn’t that some nice imagery?

What I am saying is, the infection has spread unnoticed, and only now when the symptoms become undeniable at the surface do we begin to realize the extent of the situation - the deep seriousness of the disease.

A Bash for Barons (Affordability is a HOAX!)

The country has been sold out from under us. This has happened for a long time, maybe since its inception in truth, but the veneer is being pulled away with vigor, and the guardrails are being smashed with glee. I believe the current wave starting with offshoring, with “free trade deals” and no worker protections, with concurrent union busting and demonization, all of which served to hollow out and then pressure and crush what was the working class and the middle class. We were then told that was just the Rust Belt, an interesting cultural phenomenon that could be summarized in a few articles about the people that voted for Obama and then voted for Trump in 2016. AND THAT’S THAT! As if a single portion of the actual issue had been addressed, let alone solved, and as if the problem ended with a generation headed towards retirement, with no consequences for the up and coming generation that is now in the exact same predicament. Dim prospects and a lot of pent up anger, what could go wrong!?

And more recently, what used to take corporate, lobbyist, and political maneuvering and finagling is now done out in the open. Antitrust laws aren’t in it; political donations are made on an unseen scale, best highlighted by the world’s richest man to the world’s gaudiest candidate; the tech lords talk increasingly of becoming actual lords; the surveillance spooks move out of the shadows and speak cheerfully of the advent of total surveillance via artificial intelligence and flying robots, which have themselves been normalized by the now commonplace unexciting word, “drone.” It’s just a fun little gizmo! Please do not mind the death doodad; it is just delivering your burrito and surely will not have a fucking Gatling gun placed on its back in future :)

Houses are increasingly unaffordable, and you know what? Maybe you don’t need a house. Instead, the price of what were once luxury goods, i.e. televisions and computers, have come down, so you can have those. You can have a laptop and you can go to a coffee shop and do nothing on your laptop and be told that because you bought a $7 latte you cannot afford a house. Meanwhile the federal minimum wage is still, somehow, $7.25 an hour, and jobs such as the barista that made your latte, the latte that everyone from you to the elites enjoys and wants made THE RIGHT WAY quickly and efficiently, jobs such as those are portrayed as base, easy, and undeserving of anything more than that most minimum of wages. That job is essential to everyone’s enjoyment of that commonplace thing, but you know what? Fuck it, fuck them, that’s a stupid job, and that person should do something BETTER if they want to make enough to live a basic life.

Meanwhile, Netflix is buying Warner Bros, actually no, Paramount wants to buy Warner Bros for some $108 billion, even though no one willingly uses Paramount and their app works less well than the Sims 1, and Larry Ellison, who barely has anything to do with Paramount!!!!! (just that his son heads it), is worth like $250-400 billion, no one knows, and is very tight with Donald Trump, the President, and champions AI and talks happily about the aforementioned total surveillance state onstage at events no normal people are invited to, casually saying ghoulish things like, “Citizens will be on their best behavior because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that’s going on.”

So that guy and Netflix, who used to send DVDs in the mail like 20 years ago, are fighting over the final stages of media consolidation as you sit and pay increased prices to watch what is increasingly lazy and controlled programming. BUT you watch it on the TV that was unaffordable not so long ago!!!!! Your flat screen (which no one says anymore because they’re all flat screens) is thin and sleek and HUGE, and isn’t that nice? Do not worry about your lack of a house to put that TV in, or lack of a living wage, or soon lack of a job or freedom under the very technologies and systems that these barons are openly fighting over as the gaudy president screams at his FTC to approve whatever mergers they want. Please do not worry. Just watch the new season of Stranger Things while you wait for the third season of Euphoria to come out where they’re all middle-aged and still doing drugs and fucking each other but maybe working office jobs, I don’t know.

Miseducation

Right… quite a tangent there. What was the point?

I believe the point was, the robber barons have emerged again, and now they are giddily wielding and consolidating their power out in the open, and they are buying our elections and politicians through direct payment, and if you have the gall to say something like, “Ok, so the presidential election cost about $250 million to buy, can I please have a living wage, or at least not have to declare bankruptcy to go to the doctor?” YOU CAN GO FUCK YOURSELF BUDDY.

The American education system has been gradually worn down, with a love for standardized testing and easily totable METRICS replacing any holistic sense of… well, an education. It is better to memorize a fact than it is to come to a conceptual understanding. This has been a long process, certainly spurred on by Bush 2 and his “No Child Left Behind” policies, as well as Republicans’ general disdain for the public education system, and myriad other factors that I’ll leave to longer format and people better studied than me. Then you throw in the recent culture war fixation with education and it’s a hard storm on an unrepaired structure. The arguments are over how gay a book is, and the general idea of a quest for knowledge, or better yet, the intrinsic value of continuously learning, are thrown out the shattered window right before the building falls in on itself.

So what happens when the fundamental idea of education, of being educated, of learning for learning, is twisted and sullied and cast away? Well, I would argue what happens is, the current state of the nation. How’s our public discourse been feeling?

Culture Wars

And speaking of culture wars at large, which are really just hyper-obsession with cultural issues (and certainly not class or economic issues), I believe the combination of the aforementioned two issues is largely to blame. There’s a lack of an educated way of parsing information and conducting discourse among the broader populace, and then there’s a very insidious pushing of the cultural issues by the wealthy, powerful, and politically-connected using the technologies that they push and the media systems that they increasingly control. To them, THE ELITES, it is very good if you and I argue over how gay a book is. It is very bad if you and I shake hands and then turn on them, asking why they need $400 billion, or why being a barista or a delivery driver is essential and yet “not a real job” that deserves a living wage. No, no, PLEASE PIONS do not shake hands, do not feel solidarity for one another, and please GOD do not organize! Instead, please look at this nonbinary person with blue hair, or this Venezuelan man with a tattoo, or even this ASSHOLE with a camo hat and a don’t tread on me license plate. Why don’t you all yell at each other and allow us to fly on our private jets to our helicopters which we’ll then take to our megayachts which we’ll then take to our tropical bunker islands WHERE THERE ARE NO SEX SLAVES! Please keep yelling long enough for us to finish our autonomous AI drone fleets so by the time you realize that you’re just a stupid little serf there will be no hope of mass rebellion ;) ;)

Webs

Yes indeed. Meanwhile, the magic little rectangles in all of our hands and pockets connect the world together at all times, which was a wonderful promise at first, but has instead turned out to be a constantly evolving nightmare. The connection was promised to be a thing of unity, like a vast network of humanity holding hands across the globe, but it has instead turned out to be a spider web, a sticky thing that is nearly impossible to escape, an intricate thing with a terrifying creature at its center, a patient predator that is willing to wait for us all to become ensnared before it flits casually over, injecting its venom and wrapping us up completely in the web, knowing then that it can take its sweet time and consume its prey when it pleases… it’s nice that the spider has plenty of wonderful snacks for later!  

Fin

Now, I realize that some portions of this essay may come across as being a bit CYNICAL. But alas, I do not actually feel cynical about life as a whole. Life, according to my recent studies and calculations, still seems to be the best thing on offer. No, what I’m really trying to get across is that some of the strange feelings that seem to be unshakeable in these modern times are JUSTIFIED. Does it seem like we’re not getting a fair shake? Do things seem very dumb, or warped, or just plainly absurd? Does it seem like there’s a uniquely bizarre character to the era in which we live? WELL, if you answered yes to any or all of those questions, then perhaps you will believe me when I say the point of this screed has not been to wallow in cynicism or overly-reductionist takes on the current paradigm, but to say that such feelings of general malaise or swirling bewilderment are JUSTIFIED and that we are living in ABSOLUTELY ABSURD TIMES.

Cheers!

A brief essay on the importance of a veneer of respectability, and what it may mean for a government and a political system to lose it, plus a couple current examples!

The Peeling Away

I think the most jarring part of all of this is learning just how critical the veneer of respectability is for a functioning political system, and seeing just how thin that veneer really is. It is thin and it is brittle and when scraped with aggression it breaks and it flakes and it falls away in irreparable chunks. And then it is jagged worm-eaten wood that rapidly deteriorates in the open air, turning out it has no real defenses under the veneer, and then it is wet and rotten and mucky, and when the aggressive scraping continues the wood itself begins to break away, and it is shocking to see the thing itself go - the structure that seemed so permanent decays quickly in the open without its veneer of protection, of respectability.

It turns out that ideals do matter, and respecting norms is a large part of keeping a system running. It also turns out that when one faction has complete power and strikes a deal amongst themselves to not enforce those norms, or rules, or regulations, or even laws, there is really no recourse. There have always been these nefarious handshake deals and general disregard for the greater good for furtherance of personal agendas, of course, but then there has generally remained at least some level of concern for that veneer of respectability - even if it is only in the interest of self-preservation.

“Well, we can’t be too egregious.”

“We don’t want the public backlash.”

“We at least have to think about getting reelected!”

If a system isn’t totally broken, no faction has total loyalty or permanence of power, and so there must be at least some level of concern about appearing to be so self-interested, so hypocritical, so antithetical to the essence of the founding principles of the system itself - some level of concern that too terrible of a showing will reap consequences, if not legal, as that has rarely been a meaningful threat, then psychic, moral - losing The People. Losing support.

That is certainly not the case at this juncture. This administration has moved quickly to strip the veneer of respectability from American government. It is not only a matter of not respecting norms; it is a loathing of norms. It is a rejection of diplomacy for transaction - “What’s in it for me?” Donald Trump and the people around him have sold the image of government as a business, as “the bottom line” being the ultimate truth, the only thing that matters. Everything else is fluff, extraneous, unnecessary and so to be discarded. ONLY THE BRASS TACKS! LET’S JUST GET DOWN TO THE BOTTOM LINE!

But instead of this being a practice of focus and clarity, it is reductionist. We are not getting down to the bottom line. We are simply racing to the bottom. For as it turns out, governing is not the same as conducting business, transaction cannot replace diplomacy, a nation of 350 million people is more complicated than a private organization, and appearances do matter. The veneer of respectability matters. At least acknowledging that there are guiding principles matters.

Right… but what am I really trying to say here?

Government in this country has always worked better for the elites, and the majority of our politicians have always been self-serving first and foremost. BUT! In the scheme of the world, in the scheme of history, we have had a relatively free society and a relatively well-functioning political system. We can speak our minds without fear of government reprisal. “Fuck Congress! Fuck the President!” We have regular elections and peaceful transitions of power. We have functioning courts and a functioning economy. The system is heavily flawed and skewed - I’m not attempting to bypass the obvious, only it is not the focus of this piece - but the gears continue to turn. That is my point here. We can live our lives. We have the broad strokes, even if much else is left to be desired.

The pact between Government and The People is certainly not as heady as a grade school teaching of the Founding Fathers drafting up the Constitution would have us believe. But it grinds on because the pact is honored to some degree. Norms are upheld to some degree. The veneer of respectability is kept in place. On some level, all of us - The People and the politicians - know we need it.

Well, that’s going away now.

Enemies

Just last night, Donald Trump, speaking of Charlie Kirk at his vigil said, “He did not hate his opponents; he wanted the best for them. That’s where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponents! And I don’t want the best for them!”

Also quite recently, Donald Trump, publicly (intentionally or not, unclear) urged Attorney General Pam Bondi to go after his political opponents. He purported to paraphrase “over 30 statements and posts” saying, “Same old story as last time, all talk, no action. Nothing is being done. What about Comey, Adam “Shifty” Schiff, Leticia??? They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done.” He went on to suggest one of his former personal attorneys be appointed as a U.S. attorney in Virginia to pursue these people, and then closed with, “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!” That is the President of the United States publicly instructing his Attorney General to use the full weight of the federal government to investigate and prosecute people he he personally wants revenge against.

The Kimmel Debacle

We have the FCC chairman, Brendan Carr, going on friendly right wing influencer Benny Johnson’s podcast and expressing his disdain for what he saw as Jimmy Kimmel suggesting Charlie Kirk’s killer was MAGA-inspired. Carr said, in reference to this, “But frankly, when you see stuff like this, I mean, look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action on Kimmel or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.” He went more in depth, explaining national programmers and licensed broadcasters, and how the FCC can and should take regulatory action against these broadcasters. He continued on, “So, I think again Disney needs to see some change here, but the individual licensed stations that are taking their content, it’s time for them to step up and say this, you know, garbage – to the extent that that’s what comes down the pipe in the future – isn’t something that we think serves the needs of our local communities. But, but this sort of status quo is obviously not acceptable where we are.” Subsequently, Sinclair and Nexstar, two large companies that are the exact broadcasters he spoke about, and to, the first of which is famously conservative, and the second of which is seeking special FCC approval for a multi-billionaire dollar merger granting them access to over 39% of U.S. households, announced that they would be dropping Jimmy Kimmel. Shortly after, Disney followed suit, and Jimmy Kimmel’s show was indefinitely suspended.

So we have the chairmen of the Federal Communications Commission publicly suggesting that regulatory action will be taken against broadcasters that do not answer his call for action, and that media companies should make changes. And then we have three large and influential companies almost immediately heeding his “suggestions.” Carr paints these “suggestions” as being devoid of partisanship or ideology, citing news distortion and broadcast hoaxes - it is just the FCC returning to robust enforcement in the public interest! But of course, that enforcement is cherry-picked, one-sided, and extremely petty.

It is disingenuous and weasely, as we will find is a common theme with this administration. “Teeeechnically, we’re just enforcing the rules!” Sure. But let’s use a dumb little illustration here. I’m playing a game of freeze tag. I single out one person, chase them down, and freeze them. Then I stand there so no one else can unfreeze them, and I don’t go after anyone else. There is no more freezing or tagging in this game of freeze tag. That’s all. Technically, I’m not doing anything against the rules! But do any of us really think that’s how the game is supposed to be played? And how long does anyone want to keep playing in that situation?

It’s bullshit. The chairman of the FCC is putting the FCC in the business of regulating speech, fuck the extremely thin proxy. Reading between the lines is clear: “Broadcast messages we approve of, or face regulatory action.” And the companies are either ideologically sympathetic or self-serving and cowardly, so the line is toed. Freedom of the press be damned. Freedom of speech be damned.

Disingenuous weasels.

Chaos reigns and the descent into the nightmarish carnival continues. No long form well-constructed essay here. Just bits and pieces along the way.

Tough Talk

Republicans and their ilk talk tough on crime. They love to talk tough on crime. They talk big shit about cracking down, about making arrests, about stymying the rampant VIOLENT CRIME. They are obsessed with the idea of a land RIDDEN WITH CRIME.

But the reality is, all of that talk, that obsession - it comes from a place of fear. They talk tough but they live in fear. The supposed toughness, the lashing out - it comes from a place of cowardice. They are terrified of a vague notion of the marauding criminal coming to terrorize them. THE RIFF RAFF COMING TO TERRORIZE THE COMMUNITY! They present their response as being tough on crime, like a sheriff in the Wild West single-handedly maintaining the sacred LAW AND ORDER. But that’s not what it is. They aren’t Wild West sheriffs. They aren’t cowboys. They’re vanilla straight-laced suburbanites that live in fear of a specter they rarely encounter. And by obsessing over it, by making opposition to it a fundamental part of their platform, by puffing out their chests and shouting about how tough they are - they show their cowardice.

“PROTECT OUR COMMUNITIES!!!" Sure, no want wants crime to run rampant. But to dwell on the possibility day in and day out? To give the specter center-stage in your psyche? Get a fucking grip. Grow a fucking spine. Walk tall, and learn to tuck that fear away. Walk tall, and don’t hide behind THE TOUGHEST CRACKDOWN YOU’LL EVER SEE, conducted by AGENTS OF THE LAW. All while you hide away from the world behind gated walls, shouting from the paralytic safety of your padded cocoon. No, this is not toughness; it is fear. And fear is no thing to be allowed to dominate a life. A life given over to fear is a life lived in cowardice. You understand? So carry yourselves, you fucking cowards.

Standard Operating Conditions

Former Texas governor and Republican presidential candidate Ricky Perry is apparently our nation’s most prominent advocate for ibogaine. Donald Trump has federalized the Washington DC police force for the first time since the Civil War. And it turns out that our elites may actually be satanic pedophiles after all!

It’s a strange timeline. The boomer-esque executives shout, “No one wants to work!” as they make the enticing offer of twelve dollars an hour, no benefits, TEAM SPIRIT REQUIRED! Meanwhile, Blackstone owns some 300,000 homes, and rent is going up, up, up, and healthcare is an abysmal mess.

“NO ONE’S HAVING KIDS!!!” they scream from their multi-millionaire dollar homes as a small staff of servants scurries around in the shadows performing all of the mundane but necessary menial tasks that it takes to function as an adult in modern society. “NO ONE WANTS TO WORK!!!” they shout as they are driven to the clinic for cutting edge experimental drug therapy, passing by a small line of tranq-ed out zombies frozen along a decrepit brick wall. “THIS GENERATION IS IN MORAL DECLINE!” they nod approvingly to each other around the dinner table, each of them just today having crushed a union, or laid off a large portion of their workforce in favor of cheaper and shittier AI, or, at the very least, foregone any form of raises yet again as the cost of living goes up, up, up.

Right. And meanwhile, you sweat and toil and debate each purchase, and the stock market surges to record highs. The president flips his decision on tariffs like a kid playing with a light switch, but instead of getting yelled at to stop by an aggravated parent, people like Charles Schwab get laughingly introduced in the Oval Office as having just made 2.5 billion, “TODAY!”

How much money did you make on the stock market that day? Oh? What’s the matter? You didn’t get the word ahead of time? YOU DIDN’T HAVE THE FUNDS FREE TO INVEST???

What a shame. Press on, pion.

The people in power now slammed THE GOVERNMENT GRAVY TRAIN and told us costs are being cut, for the good of the nation! AND NO MORE FOREIGN WARS!! Ok. Sure, maybe, in theory. But now what? ICE has been allocated a record budget and has begun a recruitment drive, offering multi-staged bonuses and student loan assistance! And ICE is now steamrolling into cities that don’t want them, raiding restaurants and Home Depots and conducting heavily-armed patrols of CESSPOOLS like public parks! ICE is rounding up everyone that can to meet arbitrary quotas developed in the horrific dungeon that is Stephen Miller’s shining bald ass head. Masked agents with no identification are snatching and grabbing, piling people into vans, and whisking them away to shadowy detention facilities. But fear not! It’s only the worst of the worst of the worst of the WORST criminals! It’s surely not just anyone who looks vaguely Latino, or African, or Asian, or uh, not white. As Kristi Noem, having moved past the casual killing of canines, responded to the allegation of racial profiling, “And don’t you dare ever say that again.”

So the small government conservative has gotten into bed and FORNICATED with the brave new world tech lord, and what have we gotten? Reduced government spending and a tidy adherence to free market principles?

FUCK OFF! Let’s try domestic militarization and a war within! States’ rights are so out of vogue. Government overreach is a silly notion when you’re just doing what needs to be done. The LONG ARM OF THE LAW can’t be long enough when you’re just cleaning up the country! Don’t tread on me, but please, PLEASE, run over my neighbors with treads!! DEPLOY THE ARMORED PERSONNEL CARRIERS TO MY NEIGHBORHOOD AND DESTROY MY ENEMIES BOTH REAL AND IMAGINED!!!

God. The hypocrisy and the short-sightedness are exhausting.

What are the interests of the common man? I cannot speak for us all of course, but I think it’s something largely as simple as a decent life. I will work, yes, but I will be paid fairly and not want for either the necessities or basic comforts. And there should be the real possibility for more - for better.

Is that how we feel today, in modern America? Does it feel like we’re on the cusp of getting more - of things getting better? Does it seem like a decent life is something that is going to come increasingly easily?

The Republicans are in power and they are in a race with themselves to see who can abandon the most of their principles the most quickly. The Democrats are happy to tell us that this is BAD, and then they return to offering nothing, and no one, having the vision of a stone buried beneath the earth. Meanwhile, they all profit, and Wall Street profits, and Corporate America profits, and the tech lords certainly profit, and they all use these profits to keep the wheel GREASED and turning. Turning, turning, turning in their favor.

We are encouraged to argue if perhaps the wheel should be a bit bigger, or a bit smaller, or turn a bit faster or a bit slower, or perhaps even be nudged a little to the left or the right. And so we argue, and the wheel keeps turning, and even when one side of the argument wins out and some minor adjustment is made to the wheel - it keeps turning. And that’s all THEY need - the politicians, the executives, the power brokers, the wealthy, the connected, the elites. They can adapt rapidly to any small adjustment that is allowed. And no adjustment that could be large enough to affect the fundamental turning of the thing is ever allowed. Certainly not.

Aftermath

Charlie Kirk was assassinated in broad daylight in front of a crowd on a college campus in Utah. As is standard in this bizarre day and age we live in, high quality gruesome video of the killing was almost immediately available across the internet. It was horrific. One shot was fired, and one shot hit him in the neck. His body went rigid and then limp, and blood spurted out - an absolutely haunting image. Then the smallest moment of disbelief, suspended animation, as often follows a sudden terrible event, and then pandemonium as the crowd began to panic and disperse.

And, not quite as immediately as the dissemination of the video, but close, the murder became a political flashpoint. The internet was quickly full of people on the leftward side of things celebrating Kirk’s death, or at least disregarding it - “good riddance” energy with a more malicious bent at times. And then full of people on the rightward side of things condemning those reactions and those people - “how dare you” energy with a more consequential bent at times.

Nuance is something that my countrymen seem to struggle with quite often. The average American mind is a dichotomous thing - THIS or THAT, GOOD or BAD. If one thing is true, then nothing seemingly in opposition to that truth can possibly be. There is no ability to hold two conflicting opinions in this mind - no potential to hold onto parts of an opinion while rejecting others. There is no shading. There is black or white, and no gray in between.

It should not be difficult to say that the assassination of Charlie Kirk was terrible and wrong, and then disagree with Charlie Kirk’s viewpoints and message in the next sentence. It shouldn’t be, but it seems that it is. It seems it’s difficult for some people to acknowledge the first point while believing the second point, and difficult for other people to believe that someone could speak of the second point while believing the first.

The administration has come down emphatically in the latter camp, highlighting the ghoulish celebrations and good riddances and using their disgust as a cudgel to pound a perceived opposition as broad as they please - any and all they deem guilty by association. It’s certainly not a new tactic - highlight the most extreme examples within a loose group or ideology, the ones that are difficult for anyone to defend, brew that strong sentiment into a potent toxin, and then pour it broadly across those one, two, three, six, ten, twenty seven degrees removed. Use the fervor to wipe them all out before anyone can notice that, hey, perhaps the net has been cast a little too wide here?

A smattering: people are losing their jobs over social media posts that are purported to celebrate Kirk’s death, with the administration encouraging and loudly cheering on such action; an arrest of a woman celebrating Kirk’s death at a vigil on a college campus in Texas, with personal investment from the Governor; Jimmy Kimmel’s show being cancelled after he highlighted Trumps hypocrisy around Kirk’s death, after encouragement from the commissioner of the FCC; Attorney General Pam Bondi promising to go after hate speech around Kirk’s death; the administration sidestepping the pending investigation of the killer’s motives to whip up frenzy around leftist groups, promising a multi-faceted crackdown - most recently, with Trump claiming that Antifa will be designated a terrorist organization.  

We have an administration and a President that ran on conservative sentiment that the Biden administration and democrats in general were overseeing an unprecedented attempt at stifling free speech. They shunned terms like “hate speech”, saying that had no place in a country where the First Amendment is sacred. And they highlighted examples such as the Twitter Files, where the government liaised with think tanks to “encourage” social media companies like Twitter to throttle back or punish certain forms of speech. And, more broadly, the sentiment - conservatives felt like they were being punished for speaking their minds and going against what they saw as the far too left-leaning cultural zeitgeist.

So, now they’re in power, and they’ve encountered a form of speech that they find reprehensible. What will they do? Will they take a principled stand? A nuanced stand? Will they slam the wrongs that were committed against them while they stand tall holding the torch of liberty and freedom, leading by example to show that they are better than what came before?

Right.

It’s been a while, and a lot has happened. Too much to cover! For this piece, I landed on a theme for this administration and these times, a theme that had been swirling around in my head for a while as I watched shitty events unfold at a manic pace: cruel & stupid. 

There’s four topics covered in this article, each attempting to tie into that theme: the attempted remaking and politicization of the military, the odd debate around the political assassinations in Minnesota, the ongoing immigration crackdown, and last but certainly not least, WAR.

Enjoy!!!!

Well, we’re some five months into this administration, and it’s been over three months since the last Finagler update. Months seem to move like years with this regime, so a truly insane amount of noise has been generated in that time. Issues, stories, controversies, people come and go, here and out front one day and then gone seemingly into oblivion the next, though not really of course - usually they remain lurking in the shadows doing their dastardly deeds, but just successfully out of sight and out of mind, replaced by the next flashy thing…

Now, why is that? Is it because the administration is just doing so much? Is it just a general sense of chaos amongst the media and the populace? Orrrrr, perhaps, is the bug a feature - incessant cacophony by design, designed to overwhelm and stymie any potential for concerted and meaningful response or counter-action?

STEVE BANNON LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, talking about Trump World strategy against the media:

“All we have to do is flood the zone. Every day, we hit them with three things. They'll bite on one, and we'll get all of our stuff done, bang, bang, bang. These guys will never be able to recover, but we got to start with muzzle velocities.”

Right… so as has become characteristic for The Finagler’s coverage of this administration, there will be no attempt to catch up on all events that have occurred or to cover every topic - there will be no fervent and disoriented chasing of phantoms and specters in the night mist. No, there will instead be choice selection of stories to highlight the absurdity and egregious flailing about of this regime, along with commentary to try to capture the essence of these times… and so for this issue, that essence is:

CRUEL AND STUPID! Cruelty and stupidity. You know, there’s kind and smart, lovely; there’s kind and stupid, generally harmless; there’s cruel and smart, extremely dangerous but useful in some circumstances perhaps; and then there’s… cruel and stupid. No redeeming qualities. Just malicious and inept. A blunt object being swung about with aimless disdain. And isn’t that a real pleasure?

So here we go…


From the Associated Press: HEGSETH DIRECTS 20% CUT TO TOP MILITARY LEADERSHIP POSITIONS

Also, from CBS News: HEGSETH ORDERS MAKEUP STUDIO INSTALLED AT PENTAGON

It’s good to finally have a real warfighter at the head of the Pentagon, no?

If this juxtaposition rubs you the wrong way, as the latter CBS News article felt it may with “the price tag for the project was several thousand dollars, according to two of the sources, at a time when the administration is searching for cost-cutting measures,” fear not! Hegseth is laser-focused on frugality and lethality, for as a defense official told CBS News, “Hegseth is doing his own makeup ahead of TV appearances, not paying for a makeup artist.” Well, that settles that then. My mind and soul are at ease. Cut the brass and let our Secretary of Defense apply his own warpaint before appearing on daytime television, GODDAMMIT, this is THE LAND OF THE FREE AND THE HOME OF THE BRAVE!

Brave, indeed. Bravo, Secretary Hegseth, for defying gender norms. You know, when the administration rolled out its ban on transgender troops, I thought there might be some kind of REGRESSIVE POLICY developing! But now when I see Secretary Hegseth’s admirably progressive positions on cisgendered men not only wearing, but doing their own makeup, I feel reassured. I can rest easy on the issue of gender equality in our war fighting apparatus. Which is of course in the first place, the primary issue on most Americans’ minds when it comes to questions of WAR AND PEACE.

Certainly more in the forefront of the nation’s mind than such lesser moves as Hegseth’s recent direction for the military to cut 20% of its four-star general officers, 10% of its general and flag officers, and 20% of top National Guard positions. Efficiency! Don’t you get it? Cuts automatically lead to efficiency, because there are less people SIPHONING OFF OUR VALUABLE TAX DOLLARS, and so the remaining people simply have to operate BETTER to pick up the slack! This always works well in the corporate world, no? Do all workers not love this?

“Well, Barry, see, we’re downsizing.”

“Am I being fired?”

“What!?” insincere laughter. “No, Barry, no - but we have had to let 64% of your team go.”

“So who’s going to do their work?”

“Well, Barry, that’s why I called you in here. Think of this as an opportunity to excel.”

“… Will I be compensated for taking on these additional roles?”

Sincere laughter. “Ha! Barry, oh Barry, you are funny. I knew I liked you; that’s why you’re still here. Barry, be glad you have a job. Say, you mind stepping out and we can pick this up later? I’m getting a call…”

Barry returns to his desk and, with a fire burning passionately in his heart and a deep feeling of gratitude bubbling up deep within, he begins to OPTIMIZE and shortly thereafter is working at 600% of his prior efficiency, with 1000% the satisfaction!

Right! And while this is now the plight of countless federal workers across multiple agencies thanks to DOGE & Vought et al, it comes with particular potential for a much darker undertone in the military, because once we get past the clear stupidity in the fallacy in thinking that cuts must lead to efficiency, there is the question of - just which officers are going to be fired? Is it just going to be more black and women officers, as has already been done under the guise of eliminating those who have benefited from and/or support DEI policies? Is it going to be a random smattering to meet the arbitrary quota? Or is it going to be any and all who are deemed as insufficiently loyal to Donald Trump the Man, the issue arising with the potential for their being hung up on such outdated and annoying concepts as the military oath, the Constitution, and the potential legality and morality of orders?

More succinctly: is this just going to be an attempted purge of those who are seen as possibly valuing Country over Man? Of those who the administration believes may be tempted to resist illegal and immoral orders due to their having a moral compass? Or, as the administration will likely put it… those who aren’t REAL WARFIGHTERS!!? After all, Trump’s love for “real warfighters” is what began Hegseth’s path to being Secretary of Defense.

I do not want to digress too far into the past, but it’s worth a brief review here to provide concrete examples of the points in question. Who will be dismissed from the military brass? Who will be promoted? How are these moves meant to shift the ethos of the military? Who do Trump and Hegseth see as “real warfighters”? Well, back during Trump 1.0, when Hegseth was a prestigious co-host of Fox & Friends Weekend, we find a few interesting scenarios…

Army Lieutenant Clint Lorance suspected a group of unarmed Afghan civilians of being insurgents and ordered his soldiers to open fire during a military operation in 2012. He was subsequently convicted in a military court for the murder of two of these Afghan men. He served six years of a 19-year sentence before being pardoned by Trump in 2019. Hegseth had lobbied for the pardon.

Army Green Beret Major Mathew Golsteyn was charged with murdering an unarmed Afghan man. He believed the man was a Taliban bomb-maker responsible for killing U.S. troops when he killed him in 2010, admitted to killing him and burning the body during a CIA interview in 2011, was subsequently investigated by the Army, and was finally not charged due to insufficient evidence, though his medal was stripped and he was removed from the special forces… then, however, during a 2016 interview on Fox News, Golsteyn again admitted to killing the man. The Army went on to open another investigation and ultimately charged him with premeditated murder in December 2018. Shortly thereafter, Trump tweeted, “At the request of many, I will be reviewing the case of a “U.S. Military hero,” Major Matt Golsteyn, who is charged with murder. He could face the death penalty from our own government after he admitted to killing a Terrorist bomb maker while overseas.” He tagged Hegseth and Fox News at the end of the Tweet. Hegseth later interviewed Golsteyn on his show in February 2019. Trump pardoned Golsteyn in November 2019.

Navy SEAL Edward Gallagher was charged by the Navy for crimes including shooting civilians in Iraq, killing a teenage Islamic State prisoner with a knife, and threatening to kill fellow SEALs if they reported him. Hegseth lobbied for Gallagher, interviewing Gallagher’s brother on his Fox show in November 2018. Gallagher’s brother asked Trump to review the case during that interview. Gallagher was ultimately acquitted of murder by a military jury but found guilty of posing for photographs with the deceased body. The Navy subsequently demoted him as punishment. Trump reversed the demotion. The Navy then moved to start the process of taking away Gallagher’s Trident pin and expelling him from the SEALs. Trump again intervened, tweeting, “The Navy will NOT be taking away Warfighter and Navy Seal Eddie Gallagher’s Trident Pin. This case was handled very badly from the beginning. Get back to business!” Gallagher kept his pin and reposted Trump’s tweet on Instagram with the caption “Boom” followed by a series of explosion, flag, and applause emojis…

BOOM BOOM BOOM BITCHES! REAL MUHFUKN WARFIGHTERS!!! AIN’T NOBODY FUKN W OUR MUHFUKN COUNTRY BOIIIIIIII 😤😤🦅💥🇺🇸👊🏻👊🏻👊🏻👊🏻 - a press release from the Department of Defense, soon, probably.

Now look, I understand that war is awful and complex and extremely gray, gray in ways that neither I or my very extensive staff here at The Finagler can fully comprehend as we have not been in war. Accordingly, I understand there is an argument that perhaps these three men were pursued unfairly, or at least overzealously. There are dark things that need to be done in war, and impossible decisions that have to be made in impossible situations - it’s hard to pass judgment on those decisions from the comfort of an armchair. And I understand that the President as Commander in Chief has ultimate authority over the military. Yes, real and necessary disclaimers.

But then, there are two primary questions - first, should the military not be left to pursue its own military justice amongst its members, through its own internal processes and procedures? Isn’t that why the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the court martial exist? Back in 2019, then Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy argued pardoning the three men would undermine the military code of justice and would serve as a bad example to other troops in the field. Which leads to the second and larger question we’ve already been pondering…

Just who do Trump, Hegseth, and their compatriots see as the “real warfighters” - is it those that “get it done”, no matter what? Those that won’t get hung up on petty affairs like legality and morality, extrajudicial killings and civilian casualties? Those that can make the split second decisions with an emphasis on LETHALITY above all? FUCK RED TAPE and those who try to enforce it! See, we shouldn’t tie the hands of the REAL WARRIORS; we must let them do WHATEVER they need to do, HOWEVER they need to do it! Now let’s purge the brass of those fucking pansies who have any objections and make sure only the REAL TOUGH ONES remain for the wars to come!!! REAL WARFIGHTER MENTALITY!!!

A true change in ethos has to start at the top, after all. Policy for the rank and file trickles down and disseminates out from leadership. Hegseth and Trump are now remaking the military leadership, of course with themselves at the top as Secretary of Defense and Commander in Chief. And Hegseth and Trump have let us know quite clearly what kind of leaders they are…

HEAVY, MAN! And since writing the above in late May and early June, we have some highly relevant PRIME EXEMPLARS of the fast-paced overwhelming nature with which events unfold under this administration. There is the National Guard and Marines deployment to Los Angeles in response to anti-ICE protests, thus far a delicate dance of questionable legality with troops being responsible for protecting federal buildings, not civilian law enforcement. There was also a fascinating episode at Fort Bragg where the Army selected a crowd of soldiers to attend Trump’s speech based on partisan allegiance and physical appearance so they could cheer on the President enthusiastically and even buy MERCH! It really is all about merch sales at the end of the day, no? And then of course, most recently, Trump’s military parade in DC… the analyses are still rolling in, but it’s largely been deemed a semi-to-full flop, and in my personal opinion, this is primarily because the Army went their own direction with the spectacle - more Army history, a rolling museum to celebrate the branch’s 250th birthday, than ULTIMATE FANFARE to celebrate the DEAR LEADER on his 79th birthday.

And so, we can see the attempted politicization of the military unfolding before our eyes - this administration does not hold anything sacred, and certainly not the lofty idea of a professional apolitical military, answerable to and under the command of the President as Commander in Chief, but with an ultimate oath to the Constitution - to higher, foundational ideals. Certainly not the idea that a Commander in Chief should not force them to choose between the two, for moral reasons, sure, but also for the simple fact that the Commander in Chief - the President - is also upholding the Constitution. No, it seems the administration would prefer a military of REAL WARFIGHTERS that is loyal to them rather than the country. And to do so, I suspect this administration would like to bring that potential rift between that high end of the chain of command and the greater oath to the forefront, to deepen it and tear it further, to erode longstanding traditions and force the issue to make the military at large choose to follow orders over oath, to make the concept of morality incompatible with REAL WARFIGHTING.

Well, we’ll see. It’s not all doom and gloom as I tend to doubt that the military will just roll over to any egregious attempt to force it down a road it has no desire to traverse, but the direction that the administration is attempting to lead in is itself deeply concerning.


Well, what else? Most recently, we have the terror in Minnesota - targeted political assassinations. State representative Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark were shot and killed; state senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette were shot multiple times and survived. These were not actions taken in public, a high-powered rifle from a covert vantage point at a high-profile event on a public roster, horrific but not unknown in our country. No, the killer, Vance Luther Boelter, disguised himself as a police officer and attacked the victims in their homes in the dead of night. It’s a different kind of political violence than we’re used to in America, and it’s an extremely dark turn for the country.

While the full details of it all aren’t publicly available yet, both politicians were members of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, and information suggests the killer was extremely anti-abortion and anti-LGBT. At this point, it appears the killer was a Trump supporter and some kind of security company employee who had previously preached in the Democratic Republic of Congo, shouting in that distinct evangelical preacher style about the horrors of the LGBT phenomenon. Police found a list in his hastily abandoned knockoff cop car with some 70 targets that included other Democratic politicians and doctors who provided abortions. Oh, and let’s not forget that his wife was detained during the manhunt, headed north with three relatives, a weapon, ammunition, cash, and passports. Are we getting the picture of his political and ideological motivations?

The killer had also been previously appointed by democratic Minnesota governor and former VP candidate Tim Walz to a state workforce development board. This board is a mundane governmental advisory board created by Minnesota law… let’s see, their mission is to “analyze and recommend workforce development policies to the governor and legislature toward talent development, resource alignment and system effectiveness to ensure a globally competitive workforce for Minnesota.” There are 41 board members appointed by the governor along with two state representatives and two state senators. Right. Has this paragraph fascinated and enthralled? NO!? Well, you’re clearly missing the OBVIOUS INSIDIOUS IMPLICATIONS!!

A (state workforce development board) WALZ APPOINTEE!!!! A DEMOCRATIC OPERATIVE!!!! A FAR LEFT LUNATIC!!!! Don’t you see? He was a PLANT - THIS WAS A FALSE FLAG!! That old video of him preaching anti-LGBT shit in Africa?? YEARS LONG PSY OP BABY! Or maybe a deepfake… whatever, the details don’t matter. Just ask our disgraced former Certainly Not Our President Elon Musk, who chose to respond to a tweet saying the left was responsible for these killings and the left had become a full blown domestic terrorist organization with, “The far left is murderously violent.” Or Utah senator Mike Lee! Lee offered a condemnation of violence and prayers from his official Twitter account, then let his real thoughts be known from the personal account, tweeting a picture of the killer and “This is what happens When Marxists don’t get their way.” Or how about Trump himself, who also offered an official condemnation before moving on to call governor Walz “a terrible governor” and “a grossly incompetent person” adding “I may call him, I may call other people too.” Nice! And then of course there is the general internet discourse, the shit you find sifting through comments on Twitter and other similar locales, what’s loose in the ~ether~… a large portion of MAGA world has decided the killer is a leftist, facts be damned. And that is the story.

Stupid, and callous to the point of cruelty. And, really more so than any debate as to the killer’s ideological motivations, we should really just be concerned with the act itself - this is political violence. This is political murder due to extreme polarization. This man, the killer, was convinced that those politicians were others, rather than fellow countrymen from a different political faction. It’s an isolated event, sure, but it’s severe enough that its impact should be universally chilling… that kind of thinking is what leads to the breakdown of civil society and functioning government - it’s what leads to civil war. Instead, the murders are almost brushed aside as just another gruesome event in this wild land, an occurrence rather than an act, and the debate around them becomes another flashpoint… Why did he do it? And emphatically not, what does it mean? And, how did we end up here?

THINGS ARE GETTING HOT, HOT, HOT!! And no one in power really seems to care. The culture continues to embrace hustle and grind, own the other side, FUCK EM, GET YOURS, AT ANY COST! You feel your blood start to boil!? Let your emotions run HIGH and then let them guide you completely - it’s all just based on a feeling. There is nothing else. It’s all just down to the basest of feelings and notions, turbulent emotions. And why not? If we finally have all agreed to admit this thing of ours is one big rat race, well, there’s no room for honor in that is there?




Well, what else? We must touch on immigration, no? In our last article we talked about Mahmoud Khalil and executive order 14188 targeting foreign students with visas, though certainly not based on their speech! So much has occurred since then as the administration has made the immigration crackdown one of their biggest policy priorities. ICE raids have become a constant occurrence - we’ve seen ICE agents snatch immigrants from courthouses; we’ve seen the arrest of judges accused of aiding some of those immigrants or obstructing their arrests. We see ICE agents in plain clothes and masks, no warrant, no identification, snatching people off the street and carting them away to difficult-to-trace detention facilities. We’ve seen the deportation of immigrants to El Salvador to be housed in the dystopian mega-prison that President Bukele built for his draconian gang crackdown. We’ve seen some of those people wrongfully deported; we’ve seen court battles; we’ve seen court orders delayed and ignored by the administration. The detentions and deportations have been extensive enough that BIG BUSINESS has started to complain about labor shortages, the farm and hospitality lobbies in particular - Trump promised exceptions, but then reneged just as quickly. We’ve seen agents detain and arrest democratic politicians who have the audacity to question them or demand entry to detainment facilities. We have Stephen Miller, the mastermind of the cruelty portion of the whole crackdown, suggest that the administration is looking at suspending habeas corpus. That’s right. And accordingly, we have Trump continuing to flirt with the idea of invoking the Insurrection Act and bringing the whole untethered weight of the federal government and military down on all those who oppose - what used to be the fantasized final boss battle for a certain type of conservative has now become a kind of sick wet dream for those converted MAGA hardliners… “As long as it’s not me getting fucked, I’d love to watch!” Yeah, I bet.

It’s too much to cover here. So instead, let’s look at a couple instances where the administration has doubled down after a loss or a setback, instances that highlight the vindictive nature of this immigration crackdown - punitive actions that are cruel by definition, and stupid by sheer amount of resources expended to pursue an end that does not serve the national interest.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia was the main story for a period of time - he was wrongfully deported to El Salvador where he was imprisoned, and his legal battle made it all the way to the Supreme Court, where the justices ruled that the administration must facilitate his return. The administration had refused to do so all along, and even then they stonewalled and delayed. Garcia was first detained by ICE on March 12th, deported a few days later, and not returned to the US until June 6th. During that time, the story went from the top headline to a distant back burner, showing the short attention span of the press and the inundation of new stories that the administration brings on. And during that time, the administration openly challenged and defied multiple judges and the Supreme Court, though Trump danced carefully with his language there, and it all went unanswered. But what I specifically want to highlight here - when the administration finally obeyed the Supreme Court order and brought Garcia back to the country, they immediately charged him with transporting undocumented people, continued to accuse him of being a member of MS-13, and are still keeping him in custody. The charges are of questionable merit - based on a traffic stop in 2022 that was never followed up on until now.

So the administration has dug as deep as they can to find something to charge this man with - this random El Salvadoran man that had been living in Maryland. The entire weight of the United States Justice Department is being thrown onto him because the administration is embarrassed and angry. The administration fucked up, talked big shit, and then had to climb down. They hate that - it’s a petty, vindictive emotion. Embarrassment becomes anger; petulance arises when they’re told what to do; Trump feels betrayed by what he sees as his own Supreme Court Justices. And so we get a spurious case backed by extensive federal government resources being thrown against a man that, in reality, poses no threat to the average American or to this country. It’s a vendetta, and honestly, even if Garcia was transporting undocumented people, I don’t think most people really give a shit - certainly not to the extent to justify the fucking federal government to pursue this random immigrant so doggedly. That in and of itself is stupid, and yes, cruel.

Mahmoud Khalil was finally released from detention - he was held from March 8th to June 20th, during which time his baby was born. Land of the free! If you’ll recall, Khalil had his legal residency revoked because he had led pro-Palestinian and anti-war protests at Columbia University. He was taken into custody by ICE and carted away to Louisiana for detention, a place where an immigration judge may have an approach a bit more in line with the administration’s. Well, fortunately for Khalil, his attorneys had filed his habeas corpus petition while he was still detained in New Jersey, and the case was transferred to a federal judge there, Judge Farbiarz. The administration, naturally, requested to move the habeas corpus case to Louisiana or dismiss it, a request that Judge Farbiarz denied. Now, confusingly, while the habeas corpus petition was being considered in New Jersey, Khalil’s immigration case was being considered by a separate entity in Louisiana - by an immigration judge, Judge Comans. Note that immigration judges are actually employees of the executive branch and not the judiciary. So essentially, Judge Farbiarz was considering the constitutionality of the government’s case, while Judge Comans was only focused on whether Khalil could be legally removed from the United States.

Right, so remember, Khalil had not actually been charged with a crime - the government had revoked his residency and was attempting to deport him based solely on the assertion that his "presence or activities in the United States would have serious adverse foreign policy consequences.” So, for good measure, shortly after the habeas corpus petition was assigned to Judge Farbiarz, the government asserted that Khalil had willfully failed to disclose material information when he had applied for a green card in 2024. BOOM! CRIME!

Now did Khalil withhold information at that time? I’m not sure, and as with Garcia driving a van full of undocumented immigrants in 2022, I don’t really care. Why not? Because I do not support the federal government bringing its entire weight and vast resources down upon people that have not committed any serious crime. It’s like an arrest for jaywalking. Is it technically illegal? Yes. Does it actually matter? No. Does the average person care at all or want the government to use resources to go after it? No. But hardliners can use it to pursue, persecute, and prosecute people that they aren’t capable of “getting” otherwise. “We couldn’t catch you doing the thing we accused you of, so we’re just gonna grab ya for something else bub.” It’s disingenuous and malicious.

From there, things become legally complex… First, the immigration side. In essence, skipping a lot of finer legal points that are murky to those of us who aren’t lawyers, Judge Comans denied an asylum request by Khalil and has ruled that Khalil can be deported from the United States based on the government’s allegations of immigration fraud. Khalil can now appeal within the immigration system. A couple highlights from the immigration court side of things include the government submitting a memo stating that Khalil should be deported due to "past, current, or expected beliefs, statements, or associations that are otherwise lawful", and the assertion that Khalil’s being uncooperative with ICE agents during his initial detainment gave them reason to believe that he would escape, creating an exigent circumstance, allowing them to arrest him without a warrant. So how’s that? “He didn’t break the law, but he said some things that we didn’t like, and then when we went to arrest him without a warrant, he wasn’t stoked, so that gave us reason to arrest him.”

From the habeas corpus side, Judge Farbiarz ruled that the section of the Immigration and Nationality Act under which the government sought to deport Khalil is likely unconstitutional, did not rule on whether the government had infringed on Khalil’s First Amendment rights, and said that Khalil’s lawyers had not provided sufficient information to refute the government’s allegations of withholding information on his green card application, though he gave them additional time to address that charge. There was some wrangling over his continuing to be held over those withholding information charges, but Judge Farbiarz ultimately ordered on June 20th that Khalil be released. He had to surrender his passport and limit his travel to a handful of pre-approved states.

Farbiarz has said, “There is at least something to the underlying claim that there is an effort to use the immigration charge here to punish Mr. Khalil, and of course that would be unconstitutional,” and has additionally called the government’s efforts to continue to detain Khalil, “highly, highly, highly unusual.”

The administration has said, "There is no basis for a local federal judge in New Jersey —who lacks jurisdiction — to order Khalil’s release from a detention facility in Louisiana. We expect to be vindicated on appeal.” A tactic seen with Garcia - snatch and grab, rendition the person to some other place that better suits, then claim the judge back wherever ordering release has no jurisdiction based on the person’s current location!

So, after over three months, Khalil is finally out of detention, but the legal battles continue, and deportation still hangs over his head. The administration arrested him without a warrant for what is clearly his right to free speech, transported him to Louisiana, and entered into deportation proceedings. When a legal challenge was filed, they brought spurious immigration fraud charges against him. Let’s break that down one last time here - the administration asserted the absolute right to revoke Khalil’s residency and deport him based on his potential to have “serious adverse foreign policy consequences.” They beat their chest about it. But then, as soon as they were challenged on this, they finagled some immigration fraud charges into the picture, and stated that’s why they were continuing to hold and seek the deportation of Khalil. See, it’s personal and vindictive and so the only point is to punish and get rid of Khalil by making any argument necessary. It’s not about principle; it’s not about serving the interests of the country or prosecuting crime. The administration doesn’t like the guy and what he stands for, so they’re throwing shit at the wall and seeing what will stick.

Is that how we want our government to operate? Petty, punitive, contradictory… using any vague and forgotten statute possible to achieve its aims, arguing vigorously against the right to free speech after lambasting those who oppose free speech, rolling out sleazy tactics and justifications to arrest without a warrant, to rendition people into remote jurisdictions that better suit their goals, fighting hard to prevent a man from attending the birth of his child, and of course, expending vast time and resources to do it all. Extremely cruel, and almost impressively stupid. An administration and a government willing to do whatever it takes to achieve some hyper-focused vindictive end game on individuals who stand in opposition to them… they’re just tired of our rights standing in their way.


Alright, ONE MORE TOPIC for this article! And it’s a real joy. Something new and never seen before. Something ORIGINAL and EXCITING!! Something we’re all gonna love!!

WAR IN THE MIDDLE EAST!!!!! WOOOOO!!! WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION!!! That’s right, WMDZ BABY! A ROGUE REGIME, AN AXIS OF EVIL PERHAPS??? MISSION ACCOMPLISHED ANYONE??? RUN IT BACKKKKK BITCHES!!! For who doesn’t love a sequel after all? Especially when the original was such a universal resounding hit. Why not continue THE FUN??



Well, there’s some 55,000 people dead in Gaza. Hamas committed an atrocity when they attacked Israel in October 2023. And of course Israel has a right to respond. But uh… 55,000?? The place is a field of rubble and the people are starving and getting shot and killed while they’re lining up for food… because they’re starving. To death. Amidst the rubble. From the bombs.

Right, and during this war, Israel has destroyed much of Hamas’ leadership and offensive capabilities. After some missile exchanges with Hezbollah, they decapitated its leadership and destroyed much of the Lebanese militia’s capabilities. Meanwhile, the Assad regime in Syria finally fell and a rebel coalition took over the country, generally broadcasting a message that they didn’t want to interfere with the outside world and don’t want the outside world to interfere with them. The Houthis continued to occasionally enter the fray from Yemen, and then finally there were some exchanges with Iran directly. Well, it turns out that in those exchanges, Israel apparently destroyed large portions of Iranian aerial defense systems.

The Iranian regime’s so-called axis of resistance had been severely degraded, with portions essentially neutered completely. Their land bridge from Iran to the Israeli border, ironically aided years ago by the United States installation of a Shiite government in Iraq, was broken when the Assad regime fell. Missile movements through that bridge to Hezbollah operatives in Syria and then Lebanon had been one of their greatest strategic advantages, and one of the greatest threats to Israel.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration was apparently attempting to negotiate some kind of nuclear deal with Iran. Shockingly, sufficient progress on an Iran nuclear deal was not being made by the administration that had blown up… the Iran nuclear deal, during Trump 1.0.

Well, with all this as the backdrop, Israel decided to attack Iran. The Israeli government claimed that Iran was extremely close to being able to produce a nuclear bomb. American intelligence did not agree, but Trump disregarded this, choosing to side with Netanyahu.

So then came the will-he-won’t-he debate - will Trump get in this thing? Netanyahu, ever the politician, crafted his messaging to the President with PRECISION-GUIDANCE, striking a tone that ranged from patriotic to sycophantic, which is of course Donald Trump’s love language. Trump issued contradictory statements as he loves to do; we weren’t involved in Israeli strikes, but we were informed, and now maybe we’ll do it, maybe not, possibly, gotta feel out the vibes, I’ll decide later…

And then, on June 21st, just in time to kick us off for a HOT HOT HOT SUMMER, he made the decision and we bombed Iran. Nice! Using B-2 stealth bombers equipped with massive ordnance penetrators and submarines launching Tomahawk missiles, we bombed three nuclear sites. Iran did not return fire, likely because they were unable to. And there we have it; and here we are.

Let’s begin with a portion of Trump’s announcement on Truth Social: “A full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow. All planes are safely on their way home. Congratulations to our great American Warriors. There is not another military in the World that could have done this. NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

A FULL PAYLOAD OF BOMBS WAS DROPPED! ~stop~ NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE!

Isn’t that a beautiful juxtaposition? Isn’t that just the very essence of the foreign policy way of the American hawk, of the military industrial complex that brought us Afghanistan and Iraq? WAR EAGLE BABY! WE’RE GONNA BOMB YA, AND THEN YER GONNA LOVE US!!! HEARTS N MINDS!

But wait - what’s this? Trump via Tweet in 2013, “Remember that I predicted a long time ago that President Obama will attack Iran because of his inability to negotiate properly-not skilled!”

Oh no!

Trump campaigned heavily on no more foreign wars - no more unnecessary military adventurism causing the loss of American blood and treasure, as they say. Trump and the majority of Republicans, at least MAGA-aligned and adjacent Republicans, had long decried American support to Ukraine, equivocating Russian invasion with Ukrainian resistance and saying simply that the war needed to end. There’s too much risk of a wider conflict, of a nuke going off, of World War 3! Well, ok. Let’s just accept that for a moment. We have a supposed anti-war candidate and anti-war movement ~ AMERICA FIRST ~ saying we need to focus on our own interests. No more involvement in these myriad overseas disputes.

Right, well, here we are again. It seems Trump just couldn’t resist the temptation in the end - Netanyahu said he could change history! Iran kept talking shit! The military parade was a flop! And those planes and subs and bombs… they’re just so cool. Just so ~~badass~~~ ;) ;)

In watching the news coverage today, the day after what has been dubbed OPERATION MIDNIGHT HAMMER, this seems to be a common theme: it’s just so badass. The news channels are putting up stats and infographics about the raid, and the pundits are emphasizing the impressive amount of machinery that took part: 125 aircraft! Seven stealth bombers! Multiple fighter jets! Dozens of air refueling tankers! SUBMARINES!! 75 PRECISION-GUIDED BOMBS!!! FOURTEEN MASSIVE ORDNANCE PENETRATORS!!!!! THE FIRST-EVER OPERATIONAL USE OF THIS WEAPONNNNNNNN FUUUUUCCCKKKKKKK AHHHHHH

Salivation. Meanwhile, Iran and Israel continue to exchange fire, and the administration is messaging to Iran that they had better not strike at American interests, or things will be much worse. And why would they? As the administration is now telling us repeatedly, this was a limited strike. As JD Vance said this morning, “We are not at war with Iran. We are at war with Iran’s nuclear program.”

And isn’t that a nice distinction. Of course, it remains to be seen if the country that was bombed agrees with the sentiment. That’s the thing about military action and escalation - you can’t control the response. And if the response causes a certain amount of death or damage, the government will feel that it requires another response. And so on and so forth, and then you have a war that neither side really wanted. And then you have death and destruction for the people. Generally speaking, all those decision makers that directed all those responses will be just fine. It’s the ordinary people that suffer and die.

Well, we’ll see what happens. Iran of course knows their limitations in a military conflict with the U.S., so it’s unclear what course they’ll really take, despite the harsh rhetoric coming from the regime. But I think the point right now is in the hypocrisy of it all - the hypocrisy of Trump and his administration to run as anti-war, to criticize the Ukraine war as having the potential to drag us into a major war, and then to so quickly take a completely voluntary risk that could thrust us into… a major war. The hypocrisy of the Israeli government and our government to begin bombing a sovereign nation, justified or not, and then tell that nation that they had better chill the fuck out or there will be consequences. It’s punching somebody in the face and then telling them they had better calm down or there will be a fight. We can keep debating the strategic objectives and the intelligence, but the whole thing is hypocritical and disingenuous, and as usual, the government and the media are rallying around the flag and the irresistible idea of military prowess - WHAT AN IMPRESSIVE OPERATION! WHAT A BADASS MILITARY! WHAT A HIT ON THE BAD GUYS!

Sure. I have no love for the Iranian regime, for a repressive and radical theocracy, and Israel certainly has a case to make when that regime repeatedly calls for their annihilation. But I think the American people are overwhelmingly tired of becoming involved in foreign wars, in wars that benefit the elites and not the people, and I know Trump ran on that sentiment. So what the fuck are we doing? As of now, there is very clearly insufficient proof that this is in our interest. The military industrial complex, the foreign policy hawks, the Israeli lobby, yeah - but The American People? I’m not seeing it.

And to close this topic, in classic fashion, after a day of administration officials, including the Vice President, making the media rounds with a carefully crafted message - “These were limited strikes! This is only about the nuclear program! This is not about regime change! We do not seek a wider war! Iran, it is therefore in your interests to NOT strike back!” We have our Dear Leader, taking to his Truth Social, with this profound statement:

“It’s not politically correct to use the term ‘Regime Change,’ but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!”

Sensational. Cruel, and at its very core, stupid.

EDITOR’S NOTE!!! Later in the evening (Monday, June 23rd) after finishing and posting this article, Trump took to Truth Social once again, this time to suddenly announce that a ceasefire deal had been reached and would begin in about six hours, after Israel and Iran had completed their in progress final missions… he dubbed their war “THE 12 DAY WAR”, said it would be officially over after 24 hours of the ceasefire, and threw around a lot of superlatives and God Blesses. Well, alright. If the hostilities end that’s a good thing - the people in Iran, Israel, and here in America don’t need another war. Of course questions remain - will both sides keep to the ceasefire? Was Iran’s enriched uranium and capacity to enrich further and obtain a nuclear bomb actually destroyed? Time will tell. But in closing, I think this is worth asking: if you and your friends start a problem, and then you all solve it, is that really an accomplishment? Better than the alternative, sure - the problem is over… but what if you all had just avoided starting the problem in the first place?


Honorable mentions for topics not covered:

• Democrats’ continued inaction and ineptitude
  
• Trump’s manipulation of the entire stock market with tariff announcements and pauses
• Elon Musk’s departure from government and subsequent feud with Trump
  
• Palantir’s tentacles spreading through the government and military
  
• The dystopian Army promotion of a group of tech execs to Lieutenant Colonels
  
• THE BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL and all the bullshit packed in there
  
• The proposed sale of public lands
  
• The administration’s wider attempts to stifle the power of the judiciary and checks and balances at large

Last piece kicked us off on the new Trusk Aministration, the first post since post-election analysis and what I intend to be a resumption of semi-regular coverage. In keeping with that general style, this piece will make no attempt to cover every event that has occurred or issue that has arisen in the meantime because, frankly, there is far too much shit happening and I believe such an endeavor would be self-defeating. So instead, we take a miscellaneous sampling of current happenings and elaborate and commentate upon them. THE 2025 REGIME FOLKS:

March 10th - 13th

Well, Donald Trump said he could not rule out a recession, and the markets have responded accordingly. For someone that has such a loose relationship with the truth, it was an odd occasion to be forthcoming. Trump has been imposing and delaying tariffs, giving menacing whiplash, but all in all, compared to his first term, he seems much more serious about their full and total implementation. He’s even said he plans to increase what’s already on the table. So, given this and other matters such as the firing of large swathes of the federal workforce, but mostly the tariffs, he was given the chance to reassure the market: give them that bullshit optimism that they so love, and that bullshit that he is so good at giving. Smooth it over! Instead, he did not. He left the door open to voluntarily walking the country into a recession and immediate pain.

Well, great!

A couple immediate thoughts: First, Donald Trump ran on being the best for the economy, on having a strong economy, and being loved by the markets, and now that he is in, less than two months in, he is telling us the economy and the markets may have to suffer. BAIT and SWITCH! The Republicans have doubled down on this tactic recently, namely the last election cycle and this administration, and where there used to be a sort of ~gentlemen’s agreement~ that the bait had to have some small resemblance to the switch, now there is not. That inconvenience is gone. Now it is quite acceptable to tell an outright lie and replace it with an outright lie OF ANOTHER SPECIES ENTIRELY! No resemblance. Scream it all loud enough and with enough emotionally-charged terms interspersed and they’ll take what they’re served. Perhaps my favorite current example: Trump’s total disavowing of and distancing from Project 2025 during the campaign, and Russell Vought’s subsequent very consequential appointment as head of the OMB.

Second, if Trump is willing to say that a recession is possible and there may have to be some pain - just how bad is he expecting it to get? That is to say, was this a random moment of being forthcoming with the American People, contrary to previous habits, or was this an informed maneuver to begin to prepare us for what his administration now sees as the inevitable suffering - a tepid pivot from the outright lie to an understatement more closely aligned with the truth? The truth then being CRASH AND DESPAIR. This then being a chance to waffle, or pivot, and begin to veer down the path of, “Well, we never said that it wouldn’t get bad before it was good, folks, you see…” An attempt to preemptively soften the inevitable blowback when the lie was so large. I suppose time will tell!

Alright, sure. But what about the underlying point that he’s making here - the necessity of short-medium-term economic pain for long term prosperity, for a whole realignment? Well, here, conceptually, I may actually agree. The great offshoring of American manufacturing and related jobs was a death knell for the blue-collar middle class backbone of the country - the Rust Belt was not so rusty before the likes of NAFTA and associates. When you allow the exporting of jobs for owners and shareholders to maximize their profits, but provide no protections or plans for the domestic workers that are affected, there are going to be negative consequences. Negative consequences for the workers, and so inevitably and profoundly, much to the elites’ chagrin, negative consequences for the country. We have seen that on an immense level over multiple decades. There is an argument to be made that rather than provide alternative conciliatory measures, this wrong needs to be righted, and jobs need to be brought back into the country, and thus there will be inevitable pains during the adjustment. An argument to be made, sure. And much of the detail missing in this brief writing. However, there was also the busting and gutting of unions. And there was also the vast deregulation and hyper-growth of the financial sector, really culminating in the Financial Crisis and Great Recession, but still just as present, still with an addiction to zero or near-zero interest rates. Then there’s also the wealthy elite and primarily Republican assault on worker protections and rights. And then, more broadly, there’s also alternative arguments to be made, that rather than try to bring the old jobs back, we should create new jobs, in new industries - you can’t turn back the clock so look ahead, not backwards.

But my point is this - in fairness to the administration, I am not totally against the idea that there is a need to make some fundamental shifts in our economy, even if those shifts cause some temporarily painful disruptions and CUT OFF THE GRAVY TRAIN for a bit, so to speak. We can’t always focus on the short term gains to the detriment of the long term trajectory, as Trump said in so many words. However, from there I diverge. Who is this shift for, and what are its real goals? Are we just trying to bring back some car manufacturing factories for a hollow red district win, then pay the workers shit, offer shit benefits, bust up their unions and siphon more profits off to domestic wealth holders? Is there any real focus on the worker beyond a potential swing state voting bloc? Do their rights matter - does their dignity matter? If a corporation by necessity must place profits for its shareholders above all, who will place the good of the workers above all? If we don’t establish that kind of oppositional balance of tension in the system, then how will any of this matter? How will workers be able to live well if they aren’t allowed to fight for themselves, and if no one is fighting for them?

Well, what else? We have the energy secretary saying, to oil and gas executives, that climate change was “a side effect of building the modern world.” Correct! Thank you, Secretary Wright, for confirming what scientists have been saying to people like you and your audience for decades. What a bold and brave man to take such a stance in this administration - to proudly confirm that climate change in our time is indeed human-driven. Kudos, sir!

No? Am I misinterpreting that remark - missing some context, perhaps?

Tesla shares have been sliding dramatically, so just last night our President declared that he would purchase a Tesla - today! This morning! He would do so to support his friend and Certainly Not Our President (CNOP) Elon Musk, explaining that “the Radical Left Lunatics, as they often do, are trying to illegally and collusively boycott Tesla, one of the World’s great automakers, and Elon’s ‘baby’, in order to attack and do harm to Elon, and everything he stands for.”

Alright - first, of course, as is always first in THIS PUBLICATION - the raw and powerful absurdity. We have a Republic, a NATION, THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, and our dear leader is issuing late night proclamations… that he is going to buy a new car. From his friend’s company. In the morning.

Next, more seriously, is the always-hyperbolic and, more darkly, intentionally-maligning suggestion that the collective actions and protests being organized against Tesla are illegal, and in a nod to his prior troubles, collusion. Collective action is collusion, and protests, when inconvenient, are illegal! This is actually part of a broader and quite serious push by Trump to paint protests that are against him, his allies, or his causes as illegal, as criminality, and thus the protestors as criminals subject to police and legal action - ILLEGALS THEMSELVES. If you can’t beat em, LOCK EM UP!

(An aside - as with Secretary Wright, I am pleased that President Trump has hit the nail on the head, noting that the protests and boycott of Tesla are intended to “do harm to Elon, and everything he stands for.” How astute!)

And on that note, we arrive at a dark tale for The People’s rights - the detention of Mahmoud Khalil. Khalil goes to Columbia and was an organizer of the pro-Palestinian protests last year. He’s an activist, and he’s loud about it. This put him on the radar, as it often has throughout the brief and beautiful history of Our Nation. It also plays directly into the current culture war obsession with the Israel/Palestine conflict, meaning both the current actual war in Gaza, and the myriad accusations of racism at home, namely the left slamming the right for anti-Palestinian sentiment, and the right slamming the left for antisemitism, particularly during and after the aforementioned pro-Palestine campus protests.

Well, I’ll try not go get too lost in THE WEEDS here, but there’s various talk of pro-Israeli individuals and organizations back-channelling with sympathetic political contacts with the explicit intention of having Khalil punished/deported. Through some kind of strange and twisted grapevine, Khalil’s name made its way into the consciousnesses of the Trump administration upper echelon, i.e. Trump himself and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Here it was met with a hostile audience, a la Trump’s executive order 14188, signed in early February, which calls for the deportation of students with visas who have broken laws during the previous year of protests. It also finds the administration’s recent cancelling of approximately 400 MILLION DOLLARS in federal money for Columbia based on the university’s perceived lack of action on the protests… that’s a very real and very serious cudgel that the administration has chosen to beat the university with.

Right, a little background context, but the point is, Khalil was seized from his home in New York by ICE agents on March 8th. They pulled him out and put him in an unmarked car in front of his pregnant wife, and then they did not bother to tell her where he was being taken. He ended up in a detention center in Louisiana where he was then initially denied attorney-client-privileged phone calls.

Khalil is a lawful permanent resident of the US with a green card, and his wife is a US citizen. The ICE agents displayed no warrant. Khalil was able to get his lawyer on the phone during the arrest, and she spoke to one of the ICE agents. The agent said they were acting on State Department orders to revoke Khalil’s student visa. The lawyer informed the agent that Khalil actually has a green card, to which the agent said, well, we’ll revoke that instead.

The administration has cited a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that permits the deportation of lawful residents if the Secretary of State believes that their presence presents a risk of potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.

Trump took to his Truth Social airwaves to say that ICE had “proudly apprehended and detained” Khalil, and that “this is the first arrest of many to come,” amongst other maximalist language.

Actually, you know what, here’s the full Trump post because I think we should all know exactly what our President thinks about the matter:

“Following my previously signed Executive Orders, ICE proudly apprehended and detained Mahmoud Khalil, a Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas Student on the campus of Columbia University. This is the first arrest of many to come. We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it. Many are not students, they are paid agitators. We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country — never to return again. If you support terrorism, including the slaughtering of innocent men, women, and children, your presence is contrary to our national and foreign policy interests, and you are not welcome here. We expect every one of America’s Colleges and Universities to comply. Thank you!”

Tom Homan, director of ICE, said the administration considers Khalil a national security threat. He went on to ask, “Can you stand in a movie theater and yell fire? Can you slander somebody verbally? Free speech has limitations.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that Khalil’s case is not about free speech. He said, “This is about people that don’t have a right to be in the United States to begin with. No one has a right to a student visa. No one has a right to a green card.”

Maybe no one has a right to…citizenship?

Right. So here we have the Trump administration doing a snatch and grab on a legal US resident who has not been accused, let alone convicted, of a crime. Instead, he’s being portrayed as a radical terrorist supporter, an antisemite, and a bad person - he’s being accused by the administration of having the wrong views, views that are not in the national interest, and expressing these views loudly, and then the administration immediately and FORCEFULLY tells us that this case has nothing to do with free speech!

“Well, sir, why are you deporting this man?”

“Well, we don’t like the way he thinks, ok?”

“Well, sir, uh, how do you know what he thinks?”

“Well, he said it!”

“Ok sir, and uh, are you not then deporting him because of what he said?”

Brow furrows and eyes narrow, “Listen, buddy, I know what you’re trying to do here - I’ll tell you this right now, ok? This has nothing to do with freedom of speech. It’s just… well, we can’t have him here SAYING THESE KINDS OF THINGS!”

So we have a picture forming - expressing the wrong opinions and engaging in the wrong activities can land you as persona non grata with the administration. At this point, those opinions and activities may just start to be construed as pro-terrorist and/or anti-American, against the national interest. And worse, actually, that may be akin to standing up in a theater and yelling, “FIRE!” or in other words, not under the purview of protected speech - not even a matter of free speech. At this point, the individual, because of their opinions and activities, may be deemed a threat to national security, and at that point, well… let’s see what kind of obscure legal code we can cite to GET RID OF EM!

See, as the administration is telling us, this isn’t a matter of free speech - it’s just, well, bad people doing bad things that maybe aren’t actually crimes but still need to be punished so maybe just some murky legal theory or even extralegal (illegal) means will have to be used to get to the desired end, which is, well, getting those people to stop doing those bad things… but then again maybe if those things aren’t actually crimes and they’re just things those people are saying then maybe we’ll just have to get them to stop saying those things… which maybe actually it will be easiest and really BEST FOR ALL if the people just go away? A little detention or deportation because, well, we have to stop them because they’re BAD. So you see, nothing to do with free speech, just bad thoughts from bad people that need to go away. BAD ACTORS ONLY! Easy breezy!

Is it more fun to skip stupidly and merrily into authoritarianism?

Everyone should be fired up about how our government is treating Mahmoud Khalil simply because it is wrong. It is wrong, cruel, and stupid.

But it should also be alarming to everyone. Make no mistake, this kind of action starts with the easiest targets - people without full US citizenship. Easiest legally and easiest socially. The “others.” All the while the REAL CITIZENS are assured they have nothing to worry about! But if a regime is allowed, by the courts, by the populace, to begin punishing people for having views contrary to theirs, they will not stop at the “others.” No, they will gradually find ways to make all those who loudly disagree with them into “others.” And then it’s open season.