Decline and Fall
"A lot of people are saying, 'Maybe we like a dictator.' I'm not a dictator. I'm a man with great common sense.”
—Donald Trump
Spoken like a true dictator.
Now, I spent the beginning of the month blissfully unaware of the world on a bender—which came to an abrupt end when, well, that’s a story for after I’ve gone to court and found out the penalty for a certain potential crime. Anyway, that brought me crashing back into reality.
(Look, the guy threatened anal rape [and I think pimping me out if he could break my will with the rape?], told me how he watches my “sweet, f—t, p—y looking ass” through his window and I won’t like when he’s watching me through my window soon among other things in audio messages he sent me; I have no further comment, again, until after court, but some vehicle windows got smashed up when “back the fuck off” didn’t do the trick).
Back to the topic of the day.
Local news is still using Donald’s ‘crackdown on crime’ terminology, which is really doing some heavy lifting for sending the military in to occupy DC and threatening to expand this to various cities across the nation. And it’s not just the National Guard, Pirro’s all about Donald’s domestic terrorists marching around DC with shotguns and rifles. I mean, come on, that’s not gonna be liberals marching around intimidating people with those guns.
US attorney will no longer bring felony charges against people for carrying rifles or shotguns in DC
If we’re allowed to have a 2028 election before some bullshit excuse is made for martial law and it gets cancelled, his brownshirts are going to be more well-prepared this time around. Thanks, republicans.
Chicago, a few hours north of me, is one of the cities being threatened with military occupation—the real reason conservatives hate Chicago so much is because of the amount of minorities that live there.
It’s a power grab.
The same kind we’ve enabled, pushed for, and seen in other nations.
As my incredible military history professor, Prof. Nate, taught us in college: the military and the police serve different purposes. One is meant to subdue an enemy force; one is, allegedly, supposed to protect and serve.
Donald’s so eager to be a war president and so scared of our actual foreign adversaries, I guess he decided it’d be easier to just declare war on us citizens to make sure the country’s nice and weak for when China reaches its goal of matching military capacity in a few years.
What could go wrong?
I’m sure Xi loves it, I just wrote about the guy not too long ago.
Returning to the dichotomy between the military and the police: we’ve had enough problems with militarization since we started selling surplus military equipment to police forces across the nation that want to play with bigger guns and vehicles. This began under Bush Sr. with the National Defense Authorization Act in 1990, if memory serves.
Even so, bringing in the National Guard is not only unwanted, it’s an even more significant escalation. Go back to Rome and bringing troops in, in a similar manner, is literally the origin of the phrase “Crossing the Rubicon” and signaled the death knell of the Republic.
And, if you listen to the bog-standard version of the American Revolution taught in school: this is the kind of shit that made the colonists rise up against King George.
Among other things I’ve been catching up on: conservatives also want to talk about vetting and booting out visa holders, the kind of move that keeps up their appeal with the KKKaukus and credibility with the “worst parts of society” crowd. There are 55 million people in this nation on visas, a lot of them doing work Americans refuse to do.
Boot them out and Americans aren’t going to suddenly become more willing to go out and pick up those jobs. We’re just going to watch the economy deteriorate at a rapid pace while runaway inflation kicks in—and thanks to tariffs, trade will be even more difficult with erstwhile allies.
The claim is they’re looking for criminals. Well, if they want to be tough on crime and go law and order, the admin might want to look into, say, the January Sixth protestor who yelled at others, in reference to cops, to “kill ‘em.”
Oh. Wait. The admin did. I wonder how that went.
I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess he’s white and that plays a significant role in him getting a huge paycheck and cushy job for domestic terrorism when he should be rotting in a cell.
Does that say a lot to you?
Says a lot to me, none of it good.
Or let’s remember Kilmar Abrego Garcia; after everything he’s been through to finally get out of CECOT, he got snatched up this morning and the admin wants to ship him off to Uganda, to really make sure he can’t survive or get back.
After that, Donald went on a rant calling him an “animal” who had beaten his wife. Said wife clarified that he had not beaten her.
If we want to talk about a man who has beaten his wife, though, we can turn to Donald. It appears he was able to scare, or bribe, her into recanting but ex-wife Ivana, if memory serves, had an incident when he assaulted her in the course of an attempted rape. I want to say, if the details aren’t too fuzzy, that he actually ripped out a chunk of her hair? Maybe even her scalp.
I believe the source for this is either David Cay Johnston’s The Making of Donald Trump or Kranish and Fisher’s Trump Revealed.
Or in one of these things, I’m sick of learning about this corpulent asshole.
Again, if memory serves, the argument his lawyer put forward in court was essentially that you can’t rape your wife; she’s your property, after all, and surrenders her right to consent when she says “I do.”
And we do know he’s a rapist, people like to split hairs, but he was essentially convicted of rape in the E. Jean Carroll case.
Moving on from such obviously brutal crimes: we’re also slashing taxes for the rich—and essential programs that provide for medicine and food for the most vulnerable.
That whole trickle-down/horse-and-sparrow bullshit again. Give the rich enough and we’ll be able to live off the dregs. Except they’re even tightening up the spigots on those dregs, to be real miserly about things.
This is why, for example, Robert Mercer (Net Worth: $900 million, I guess he lost billionaire status with all the dark money spending) likes to dock his servants’ pay if they don’t properly drain the last bits of his shampoo bottles properly into the new one, if I’m remembering the story from Dark Money right.
(These benefit slashes can really suck on a personal level: I went in to get an assessment, an early step toward addiction treatment. They won’t even screen me because I’m too poor. Guy walked me out of the office and basically said to go eat shit. Thankfully, I’m a spiteful enough man that I wasn’t gonna let that smarmy dick send me into another relapse. I had to prove him wrong when he mocked my finances and sobriety).
Today, the market’s down and it’ll continue to fluctuate, but the market doesn’t represent the average person, I only track it to shake my head at the vast gulf between reality and what it shows.
When reality catches up to the market and it sees a precipitous collapse, billionaires will swoop in with their cash to buy up a bigger piece of the pie at a discount rate. I remember my dad teaching me that this is what people should have done during the Great Depression—but then, it’s kinda hard to save up when you need that money for your basic needs. Growing up on this lesson has fucked with my own willingness to spend money and miserly behaviors.
The economy’s going to shit with inflation. And it’s only going to get worse as long as this administration continues to pursue moronic policies, tariffs being another one.
Today, I see rumors that with the help of certified nutcase RFK Jr., the admin has plans to ban the COVID vaccine—you know, the one that literally just saved millions of lives a few years ago. Given the whole misnamed ‘Make American Healthy Again,’ we’re cruising for an era of medicine that also reminds me of reading about the ancient world and ineffective ‘medicine’ with no scientific validity.
Wouldn’t be surprised if they expand this to go after other vaccines, which endangers all of us as a society.
As I see the headlines continue to roll on, it’s both disturbing and bizarre.
I’ve studied enough history that: these aren’t the actions of someone, or a party, trynig to run a country. They’re the actions of someone trying to destroy a country and run it into the ground.
The greedy bastards’ll be stripping the assets along the way, I’m sure.
It won’t be like Marcus Aurelius during the Antonine Plague, selling off the emperor’s treasures to provide for relief efforts. Quite the opposite: we’re dumping the COVID vaccine and funding for FEMA even as storm seasons get worse and worse for individual states.
What, was there a lesson to be learned from Hurricane Katrina? The Texas power grid failure when Ted Cruz ran to Cancun, ditched his dog, and blamed his daughters? The hurricans last year when conservatives ran with conspiracies galore about disaster relief programs?
Whether Donald is aware of what’s going on or not, who knows?
When he gets trotted out for his doddering performances, a part of me has some pity for him. There’s definitely some elder abuse going on there.
If there was ever an elder who deserved it, it’s him. However, the rest of us shouldn’t have to live through his Mad King era because he can do, and is doing, a lot of harm to innocent people and damage to institutions meant to protect us.
The precedents he’s breaking in favor of authoritarianism and autocracy, republicans will be eager to repeat in the future. I mean, if a Democrat is ever in power again, I’m sure we’ll revert to “is the President even allowed to do anything?” but as long as you slap an (r) next to your name, it’s a magic pass to do all kinds of awful shit.
(Speaking of his mental state, Donald’s mind is so cracked he apparently can’t keep his thoughts straight about who ICE Barbie Kristi Noem and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer are, leading to the bizarre portmanteau governor “Kristi Whitman.” If I had to guess, he started thinking about fucking Noem and got all mixed up. At least she’s an adult and not Ivanka, that’s an improvement for him I suppose).
He does have a type: bimbos who lack self respcct; Nancy Mace falls into this category, too. I’d give a source for this, but it was a site that pulled up ad after ad. Computer might’ve caught something from it—kinda like Noem now looks like someone you’d catch something from.
Putin sure made a good investment with Donald in 2016.
Though that’s not to say we don’t have plenty of villains in our own country: look at Peter Thiel or Elon Musk and whatever machinations they’re up to at the moment behind the scenes.
Today, we’ve also got the administration proposing that SCOTUS decide whether “apparent ethnicity” is enough for law enforcement to harass minorities. When I was a kid, we called this “racial profiling” and it was considered a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, which includes the Equal Protection Clause.
Donald should be at least vaguely familiar with the Fourteenth considering that under oath, Jefrrey Epstein cited his Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth to protect his pal Donald when questioned about their relationship and shared proclivity for little girls. If you don’t wanna watch, I’ll transcribe:
Legal: “Have you ever socialized with Donald Trump in the presence of females under the age of 18?”
J. Epstein: “Though I’d like to answer that question, at least today, I’m going to have to assert my Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendment right, sir.”
Slots in disturbingly with a quote from Donald:
“I’ve known Jeff [Epstein] for 15 years. Terrific guy, he’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”
Not to mention his proclivity for walking in on underage girls getting dressed during pageants…
Don’t look for leadership on the right. They’re still blocking the release of the Epstein Files, among plenty of other heinous shit that should land them (and every goddamn piece of shit ICE agent) in a Nuremberg 2.0.
For all their “small government” bullshit, they’re all-in on autocracy and dictatorship.
For one more example, let’s look at Ogles, a craven excuse for a “leader:”
(I will not be acknowledging his first name. Andy was my uncle Andrew’s nickname to some neighbors and he was a good man, unlike Ogles, who never had a problem standing up (metaphorically speaking, physically I’m sure he did while sloshed). In fact, he could be quite belligerent I’ve heard).
I mean who needs those goddamn pesky checks and balances?
Who needs the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, we’ve got Donald Trump to run the nation into the ground like he’s run every business he’s ever run or owned into the ground!
Bears repeating, as ever: even managed to bankrupt a casino.
It’s actually impressive to be that shitty as a businessman.
You’ve got literal people with crippling gambling addictions forking over large sums of money for free (most casinos, like a lot of vices, do not rely on the casual gamblers to make their profits, they look to “whales.” Alcohol is similar: big companies don’t make a ton of cash off someone who buys a bottle and saves it for months. They make it from people like me who guzzle four 1.75Ls a week and uses Mike’s as a chaser).
Somehow, he’s an even shittier president.
Back to Ogles: I get wanting a job where you sit on your ass all day, but then I’m not an elected national leader with constitutents to care about rather than fuck raw.
I should have a conclusion here, I suppose, so geez, things are looking bleaker by the day. Hard to say “it can’t get worse,” cause it can and we’re well along the path, but nowhere near the end.