A Criminal, A White Nationalist, and an Insurrectionist walk into a Bar...

 

There's no problem that can't be ignored if we really put our minds to it!
-- His Majesty Ralph Jones, King Ralph

Stop me if you've heard this one. 

Talk about a bad joke. 

The leading Republican candidate for President of the United States is a unrepentant seditionist currently under criminal indictment in four jurisdictions (and likely soon to be five), charged with nearly a hundred major felonies and who was recently found liable for sexual assault. 

He's not the first candidate for president with a mugshot, but he might be the only one who got arrested, fingerprinted, and had to call a bail bondsman while he was running for office.

He may or may not be the only candidate to try and make a buck off his criminal indictment, but he is most certainly the only one with supporters dumb enough to give him money for it. 

When he's not getting arrested, Donald Trump spends all day, every day, on his rapidly failing social media platform, crowing about his polls, attacking his imagined enemies, and ranting in all caps and the third person about how unfair everyone is to Trump. The more this guy talks, and the more he talks about himself in the third person, the more delusional he sounds. Trump is quite literally his own worst enemy and if he was your dad, you'd have him sedated and put into an elder care facility with big burly mean nurses and doors that lock from the outside. 

Trump's entire presidency was nothing but excuses -- well, that and golf.

He accomplished quite literally nothing, other than an ill-conceived trade war and record unemployment. And yet, somehow, the dipshits he screwed the worst are firmly convinced it's all somehow the fault of woke trans people, Joe Biden, and illegal immigrants. 

A bizarrely high number of his lawyers are disbarred or in prison. 

The only members of his administration who didn't end up writing books about how insane and incompetent and outright dangerous he is are the ones currently negotiating plea agreements to keep from going to prison for him themselves. 

Trump's most loyal supporters are the convicted felons he pardoned on his last day in office. 

He was a terrible leader, the worst kind in every aspect. He's the boss from hell. He's the officer who gets you killed, in peacetime. He's your crazy ex, the stalker who keeps violating the restraining order. He's the nut on the corner who smells like cat piss shouting about UFOs and CIA brain implants. He's racist Mel Gibson in a drunken rage leaving a voicemail on your phone. 

And he just might be the least presidential candidate to ever run for office -- and that list includes lunatic extremist and hardcore antisemite Lyndon LaRouche who ran for president from prison and who likewise had a violent cultlike following of deluded morons, brawlers, and antigovernment seditionists who still want him to be president even though he's dead. 

Trump is the foul distilled essence of the very worse aspects of America. He's loudly bombastic and proudly ignorant, all glitz and fake-gold veneer over a hollow shell of greed and dirty stained sheets like an Atlantic City casino. He's overfed and underinformed, the cold, stale, limp fast-food cheeseburger of politicians. He has more money than sense -- and he lies about how much money he has. He is chronically, pathetically, and desperately insecure and he spends every waking moment furiously compensating for his impotent inadequacies like a human shaped pair of rubber Truck Nutz dangling from the rear bumper of some jacked up, coal-rolling Texas 4x4 with a Molon Labe decal in the back window and a fake cowboy with a giant hat in the front seat.

Trump is right now openly threatening the Courts, attacking law enforcement, and promising to lock up everyone he feels done him wrong the minute he's back in power. 

Donald Trump appeals to the worse, most base, most shallow elements of his supporters and they love him because he makes it okay to be the very worst version of themselves. 

Trump...

What?

What's that? 

Gee, Jim, why don't you tell us something we don't know already?

All right. Yeah. I'm not telling you anything you don't already know. True. But, see? That's the thing. That, right there. I know. You know. Everybody knows. Hell, even Republicans know -- and they do. Oh, yes, they do. They know what a complete piece of shit Donald Trump actually is, but he's still the leading candidate for the Republican ticket by at least 40 points, maybe 50, depending on who you believe.

Republicans know, but they'll put him in power again if given even half a chance.

If you don't show up, Republicans are going to put Trump in the White House and they'll queue up behind him like good little storm troopers and they'll commit every atrocity and gleefully watch the Republic burn without so much as a single twinge of regret or a moment of conscience. Because while Trump was horribly bad for the country and the world at large, he was pretty good for Republicans. They got everything they wanted out of him and then some. He was the perfect Republican president, loud, stupid, cowed by wealth and power, easily manipulated by business and religion, and enthusiastically willing to screw all the people Republicans hate. They don't care what happens in the future, so long as they get rich and they get revenge now. 

They'll put Trump back in office. 

They absolutely will. 

How do I know? Well, Trump is not only the leading candidate for the Republican ticket, the guy in second place isn't even close. 

And who is the guy in second place?

Does it really matter? The official second place? Numbers, polls, etc? Really? I mean, they're all varying degrees of terrible, little goosestepping copies of Trump all busy trying to be the most extreme.

At this point, it's probably Vivek Ramaswamy.

Every time Ramaswamy opens his mouth it's to announce some authoritarian extremism that he plans on implementing his first day in office despite the fact it's blatantly illegal and grossly unconstitutional -- something that doesn't seem to much bother the party of self-declared "Constitutional Conservatives" given how few Republicans (zero) have denounced his fascism. 

Yesterday, Ramaswamy promised that if elected president, he'll deport American-born children of undocumented immigrants even though they are by law U.S. citizens. Deport them … where? To what country? They're Americans. By birth. By law. By the Constitution. They've never lived anywhere else. They're likely productive members of our society. They grew up here, went to school here, speak our language, live our culture. They didn't break the law, but they'd get punished for the sins of their parents and, man, it just don't get any more Christian than that, does it? Deporting them would be completely illegal, unconstitutional, a violation of international law and agreements, far beyond the authority of the president (or any member of the government), and a very, very Trumpian thing to promise.

And the crowd cheered. 

Previously, Ramaswamy wanted to ban 18 to 25-year-olds from voting, unless they passed a test based on his criteria -- or had military service, something he himself seems to have avoided. Again, illegal, unconstitutional, beyond the scope of the president's authority, but a very, very Trump thing to say given the common perception that young people tend to vote liberal and military service makes you conservative. The Republican response to any vote against them is to ban those people from voting and then tell you how we don't actually live in a democracy. 

You have to wonder exactly what answers you'd have to give to "pass" that test.  

Probably one of the most telling statements Ramaswamy has made is: "I've fired underperformers in the private sector. I'm going to do it for probably 75% of the people who work as federal bureaucrats in the government in Washington, D.C [...] Mass layoffs are absolutely what I'm bringing to the D.C. bureaucracy." This is yet another conservative who thinks you can run government like one of Trump's bed-bug infested hotels. Liquidate a few divisions, outsource essential services, jack up the stock prices and bonuses for all the executives. Like Trump, he doesn't see you as citizens, but rather as suckers to be fleeced for profit. 

Government as a business, run by a techbro like Elon Musk, and not a real great place to work hardly seems like the kind of country that would be much fun to live in, does it? 

Following the recent Jacksonville mass shooting, where a self-described neo-Nazi murdered three black people in a Dollar General and then turned his gun on himself, Ramaswamy immediately blamed the racially motivated hate crime on Democrats, Higher Education, and the Media, essentially saying that if people of color would just be quiet about rights, black lives, and justice, well, then racists wouldn't have a reason to kill them. Ramaswamy seems to think that if he's the biggest asshole in the room, all the old white Conservatives will forget he's a brown skinned son of immigrants with a funny name, an Ivy League education, and a rich Wall Street elite who runs a pharmaceutical company. 

The worst part is that he might not be wrong. 

Who else?

Well, there's Ron Pudding Fingers DeSantis, once the MAGA heir apparent, now just another wannabe fascist thrown under the Trump bus with Eric and Mike Pence. 

What can I say about Red Tide Ron that hasn't been said already? I mean, goddamn, when your biggest, most outspoken, most visible supporters are the flabby balding toothless genetic failures wearing Nazi uniforms and waving Swastikas in front of Disney, I'm not really sure what I can add to that. 

The pathetic sadness of DeSantis' attempts to appear manly is exceeded only by how much he fails at it. 

Every time DeSantis thumps his chest and declares in his little squeaky voice how much of an anti-woke stud he is, I picture him in a gimp suit getting his ass spanked by an insurance executive in a leather Goofy costume holding a Little Mermaid themed cat-O-nine-tails. The only thing bigger than Ron DeSantis' failure is Matt Gaetz forehead. Ron DeSantis couldn't get laid in The Villages with two front row tickets to The Grand Ole Opry and a handful of Golden Corral coupons.

Who else?

Mike Pence might be the only point of agreement in America: everybody hates him. Left. Right. Moderate. Extremist. There are probably space aliens living in some incomprehensible technological construct a thousand light years from here that hate Mike Pence and wouldn't anal probe him even if he was the last redneck on a remote Nevada highway. Everyone hates Mike Pence -- which sounds like a sitcom starring Kevin Sorbo and Roseanne Barr that got cancelled halfway through the first episode. 

Pence did one noteworthy thing in his entire ingrown toenail of a life. 

That one time, on January 6th, when he actually did his job and refused to stop the election certification. It wasn't heroism. It's just in that moment Mike Pence suddenly realized he hadn't gotten permission from Mother to be the villain he'd always wanted to be. So, he did the safe thing. Now, yeah, great, that worked out for us, for the Republic, but Mike Pence isn't any hero and the worst part about it for him is that he can't even pretend to be. 

That one thing, that one single action in his entire life when he actually did the moral thing, he can't run on it. 

He can't even mention it. 

It's his Waterloo. 

The Republican Party is so far gone that they're willing to hang a politician who actually takes the moral high ground. 

Mike Pence is as dead as Kevin Sorbo's acting career, he just hasn't figured it out yet. 

Chris Christie? LOL. C'mon. Might as well uncrate Mitt Romney in whatever dusty warehouse they're keeping him in, pop in a new battery, and let him regale us with stories of how much he loves dogs. I mean, sure, compared to the previous mentions, Christie seems almost human in comparison. But it only seems that way. 

Chris Christie is a petty, petulant sack of limp dicks who would be reviled as one of the worst politicians in America if Trump hadn't come along. 

Nikki Haley? 

Well, you know, Haley is one of the few former Trump confidants and Administration officials who isn't actually under indictment or in prison, so, I guess maybe that's something. 

But, the key thing there is that she was in the Trump administration and like Christi and Pence, she only seems rational in comparison. She only won the Republican primary for governor of South Carolina due to an endorsement by Sarah Palin and if you think she's reasonable, I'd remind you that the fucking Tea Party had her give the Republican "rebuttal" to Barack Obama's 2016 State of the Union Address. You forgot about that hour of insane conspiracy theories, racism, and outright lies, didn't you? Yeah, go look that up on YouTube and tell me she's the rational one of the bunch. Haley is another child of immigrants who is determined to pull the ladder up after herself. I got mine, fuck you. She might have some reservations about the Republican war on abortion, but she as hell isn't going to stand up for any liberal woman's right to choose, not if she wants the endorsement that is. 

Haley isn't the savior who pulls the GOP back towards the center, she's just another extremist only smoother and with better hair. 

Who else?

Tim Scott? Favorite recipient of Koch Brothers money? Maybe. But I have my doubts just how far Scott can go in a party that is increasingly open about its white nationalism. And like Haley, who appointed him to the Senate in 2013, Scott only seems reasonable in comparison to the rest of the Republican Party. Though, truthfully, if my choices were Scott or (Trump, DeSantis, Ramaswamy, Haley, et al), I'd grit my teeth and fill in the little circle for Scott. It better not come to that. 

Who's left? 

Ryan Binkley, Doug Burgum, Larry Elder, Will Hurd, Perry Johnson, Asa Hutchison? I miss anybody? 

The only way any of any of these dipshits are going to get anywhere near the nomination is a faulty electrical connection in a rainstorm. 

That's right. You heard me. A bolt of lightning. 

Like in King Ralph when the entire British Royal Family gets electrocuted during a photoshoot and  they have to call in John Goodman -- who would probably make a vastly better president than anyone Republicans currently have in the lineup.  

That's the terrible unfunny punchline of this terrible unfunny joke, right there. 

A criminal, a white nationalist, and an insurrectionist walk into a bar and, yes, we have heard this one before. Too damn often. And the punchline should be, "what can I get you, Mr. Trump?" but it's not. Because it's not just Trump, it's the whole rotten, miserable, ideology. 

It's the whole damn bunch.  

This is the best conservative America can offer us, this motley assortment of criminals, seditionists, bigots, and flag waving Nazis who want to crank the clock back to 1950. 

You know, Joe Biden might be old and he might not be everything we want and he might have gotten himself elected on the simple fact that he is not Trump, but at this point that's enough. 

We're not going to fix this in one fell swoop. 

Some young charismatic hero isn't going to drop in, unite the country, and move us back to level center. 

It's going to be a long, grim, painful slog, uphill all the way. 

We're going to have to beat these goons one contest at a time, and push them back into the wretched shadows whence they came. We're going to have to recover all the ground we lost before we can make any progress -- exactly as I goddamned warned some of you back when you were telling me how everything you care about was settled law.

At least you better hope it'll be a long hard haul, because the alternative is even worse. 

Just in case I'm not being clear here: we got rid of the Nazis and reset German society in four years, but it was a little hard on the furniture. 

We could have had the change we wanted more quickly, but, well, here we are. And for all those people who yelled at me four years ago, "DON'T TRY TO SCARE US!" I sure hope you're scared now. If you're not, you're a goddamn fool. 

I hope you're scared enough to show up and do your duty even if you really, really don't want to. 

You know where I'm going with this, don't you? 

But I'll say it anyway: You want a better nation? Be a better citizen. 

Don't talk like one of them. You're not! Even if you'd like to be. To them, you're just a freak, like me! They need you right now, but when they don't, they'll cast you out, like a leper! You see, their morals, their code, it's a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble. They're only as good as the world allows them to be. I'll show you. When the chips are down, these... these civilized people, they'll eat each other. See, I'm not a monster. I'm just ahead of the curve.
--The Joker, The Dark Knight (2008)

 

Where you can find me

 

Edit: Twitter X has become increasingly antisemitic, actively promoting and agreeing with antisemitic conspiracies and allowing advertising and promoted posts from self-declared white supremacists. Elon Musk's latest open Antisemitism is the last straw. I will no longer post my material there. I'll keep my profile as a placeholder, until that's no longer permitted. And I'll post links to my other sites. But I'm done with it. End Edit

I promised my followers on Twitter that I wouldn't leave the platform until they threw me out. 

I'll stick to it, (Edit: I'll stick to it. I'll use it to keep current and stay in contact with certain people, but new material will be posted elsewhere. The only thing I'll put on Twitter are links to those sites End Edit) but Elon Musk announced today he will remove the block option from the platform.

Additionally, Twitter, or "X" as it's calling itself these days, also finally killed Tweetdeck, which was my primary interface. 

I'll keep my account there, as promised, but the platform has become essentially unusable to me. 

I've been bleeding followers there for months, since Musk took over, and frankly I'm at pains to understand why I should provide the world's richest man with any more free content -- the guy should be paying me. Particularly now that I'll have to deal with thousands upon thousands of trolls, bots, and screaming haters that I am no longer allowed to block while also working through X's garbage basic browser interface.

Oh, and not to mention that I continue to be rate limited. 

I mean, you don't have to fuck me over more than a dozen times or so before I get the message. 

So, I'll be reducing my presence there starting today.

If you still want to follow me, here's where you can do so: 

Obviously here, on Stonekettle Station, I'll be moving a lot of content back here to my own website. 

My personal Facebook, maxed out, you can view the content there and share it, but I can't accept any new "friends." That's a Facebook limitation and I have no control over it

The Stonekettle Station Facebook group, a closed group, you'll have to request to join. Answer the membership questions, or your application will be rejected immediately. But once in, unlike my personal page, there aren't any limits and you can comment on everything and participate with 50,000 other super cool people. There are strict rules regarding behavior, so read those first and adhere. Act like a jerk, you get airlocked immediately. 

My professional Facebook Page, unlimited, unfiltered, unblocked. But you'll have to deal with the trolls and the jerks and the pedants. I don't moderate or curate the comments. 

Instagram, where most of my professional photography resides and some additional narrative. Also technical discussions of photography. 

Threads, limited at the moment as the platform really isn't useful to me until, if, there is a desktop interface. [There is now a dedicated desktop interface and I'm using Threads the way I used to use Twitter. Also, starting to see a lot of folks I enjoyed interacting with on Twitter now on Threads, also news services, information sources, celebrities, etc. If you want to follow me in a fashion similar to Twitter, this is the place I'll be putting most of my effort] I'm hoping this grows into a useful replacement for shortform, i.e. what Twitter used to be. 

Counter Social. It's like Mastodon, but without all the people who hate me.

Speaking of Mastodon, I do have an account there. It's in mothballs, I won't use it or post in the Fedverse anymore. The environment there was extremely unwelcoming to me. Your experience may be different, but I really, really felt unwelcome. Also there are a number of accounts in the Fedverse pretending to be me, using my name and my content that they're skimming from other platforms. Apparently that's acceptable on Mastodon. Just another reason for me to avoid the place. 

Post. A nice platform. Small. Not a lot going on. Still in development. 

Bluesky. I'm there. I'm posting. I'm leery, given that the guy who runs it was the guy who sold me out to Elon Musk, but I'm there. 

Patreon, you can support me here. I do some additional blogging there. Shortly there will be exclusive content just for Patreons. I intend to start a weekly video podcast. I'm set up. I've scripted out the first dozen or so episodes, but I've been on the road for the last eight months due to some family issues and haven't been able to get it up and running. I've hopefully resolved that situation and the first 'cast should drop shortly. 

You can also support me via PayPal and I very much appreciate that. 

And my store is here, Etsy, where you can find prints of my photography for sale, puzzles, pens, shirts, coffee mugs, and other cool things. 

See you around // Jim

What happens in Vegas doesn't always stay in Vegas

 

I had assumed that I would age with all my friends growing old around me, dying off very gradually one by one. And here was a plague that cut them off so early.
--Thom Gunn

As some of you have noted, I've been meaner than usual recently.

I'm told it's been noticeable over the last week or so on my various social media feeds. 

I don't dispute that. Nor do I apologize for it -- though interestingly enough a number of people wrote to tell me they liked the new meaner Stonekettle, so there's that. 

Anyway.

My increased crabbiness comes from the fact that I have COVID.

I've been fighting it for the last week or so. 

Now, you might be one of those cheerful sick people, but I'm not. I feel like crap most of the time these days, a legacy of spending most of my life in a profession that tends to beat the hell out of you on a good day. Twenty years of that and, well, yeah, I feel lousy most days now. So anything that makes me feel worse isn't something I handle all that well. I'm not a good sick person. And COVID has been kicking the piss out of me for a week with the primary side effect being that it's making me even more unpleasant than usual. 

Anyway, I mention it now because people have noticed and because maybe a narrative of what happened to me will help you, should you be unfortunate enough to get this crap. 

First, let me say this: I don't want any advice. 

REPEAT: I don't want any advice. None. Thank  you. 

Second, and I can not stress this enough, I don't want, need, or require any medical advice. 

I have a doctor, for the moment, you're not him, thanks (and more on that subject in a minute).

I got it on the last day of my recent photography trip to Navajo lands in the Southwest with my wife. I know exactly where I got it and I know exactly who gave it to me. The relative who infected us in Las Vegas (yes, my wife got it too) didn't know they had it either, until it was too late. So, there wasn't much we could do to avoid it. 

Worst part is that over the last few years since this disease first emerged, I've attended two Worldcons and a half dozen smaller cons, and if you know anything about science fiction conventions, it's a miracle I never got it before this.  

One fucking day in Vegas though...

Fortunately, we left Las Vegas (not knowing yet that we'd been exposed) and drove pretty much straight home. Two days, almost all of that in the car by ourselves. And when we stopped, we were far away from others (we're not particularly social people). We still wear masks in public when appropriate. We still use hand sanitizer. And we didn't start feeling the first symptoms until we were nearly home -- literally about three hours away. So, the likelihood we may have infected anyone else along the way is fairly low. Hopefully.

We got to our home in Florida late at night. Went to bed and woke up the next morning with sore throats and coughs. 

We tested right away. My wife was positive but I wasn't. 

We isolated of course. Had groceries delivered, given that we'd been on the road for two weeks and there wasn't any fresh food in the house. Called everyone and told them to stay away. 

That first day wasn't too bad. Mild headache. My neck and shoulders ached worse and worse as the day went by. Sneezing. Sore throat. Called my doctor and asked for Paxlovid, only to be told by the receptionist that the practice (three doctors) would not prescribe the antiviral. Beg pardon, I asked? We don't prescribe Paxlovid, she said in a tone dripping with disdain like I'd asked for a big jar of Fentanyl. Like just a blanket won't do it? Not based on patient condition? Just, no? That's right, she said. The doctor eventually called in a prescription for the sore throat, but not pax. Guess I'll be looking for a new doctor then, because that's just bullshit -- but common with conservative doctors in The South since the advent of COVID and politics-based medicine. 

The next day was the worst. I slept through most of it. Fever. Body aches. By then I was testing positive. I got up around noon, had some soup, wandered out to my office to see what was going on, and ended up with chills so bad I couldn't stop shaking. I was suddenly so weak I wasn't sure I could get back to the house. I got outside my office, it was about 98F in the shade. I sat down on the pavement in my driveway, which was hot enough to burn my ass in the blazing sun, and I was wearing a huge heavy hoodie, and I was still freezing. I eventually made it back into the house, crawled into bed and buried myself under a bunch of quilts and slept for the rest of the day. And don't think I wasn't still pissed about being denied Paxlovid, because I was. And still am. 

Day three was better. Still felt like I had the flu, still had a fever, but no chills. Throat was really sore and I had a persistent cough. But, I got a lot of work done that day, actually. Wrote an essay, processed a bunch of pictures from the trip. Finally ate something. You want to lose weight, I don't recommend COVID, but it does work. 

Lost my sense of smell on day five. 

That second day, I was ill to death, fever, chills, and the trash was full in the kitchen because we'd cleaned stuff out the fridge when we got home. I pulled the bag out, but I wasn't walking out to the road and trashcans. 

So I tossed it into the garage. 

And I forgot about it. 

It's a 100F here.

I forget about it for a couple of days. 

My wife eventually went out to the garage for something and I hear her retching, OMG SOMETHING DIED OUT HERE! 

I'm like, really? I don't smell anything. 

She looked at me, seriously? You don't smell that? Gag. Something must have gotten in here and died. 

I looked at the beagle, the beagle looked at me. And even he was wrinkling up his nose in disgust and it takes a lot to disgust a beagle. Trust me. 

That's when I remembered that trash bag from the kitchen. 

The one that might have had some raw shrimp in it. And had been sitting in the heat for days. 

Ooooh! The light came on. 

Hey, I've lost my sense of smell! That's not great, but from your expression it is convenient! I'll get that garbage out to the cans now. Sorry. 

It's weird. I can taste certain things, but not others. 

I can't really smell much of anything. 

Coffee? I can smell that. And taste it too. And it tastes as great as it always does to me. No problem. But fruit juice? Might as well be cold water. I don't know. I had some pizza last night and it tasted fine. I bleached the hell out of the kitchen and the garbage cans. Nothing. Couldn't smell any of it. Which was, again, convenient. So, there's that. But then it's Florida. This place mostly smells like cancer from the paper plant and moldy swamp water. Who wants to smell anything anyway, amiright? 

I'm told I'll get taste and smell back in a few weeks or so. 

We'll see. I not in any hurry. Especially since I'm the one who has to take out the trash in this horrible heat. 

Over the rest of the week, I wrote another essay. Processed more pictures from the trip. Wrote a bunch of social media posts. Rewatched The Mandalorian and the Book of Boba Fett. Watched Trump get indicted again and watched Elon Musk continue to destroy a $40 billion platform with all the finesse of that armed chimp in the movie Nope. I mowed the grass, or an acre of it anyway. The pasture can wait another week. I'm feeling better, still got that cough though. Still isolating. Still testing positive. Still a little tired. 

It's the first time I've gotten it. 

Hope it's the last, but it probably won't be given that the disease is endemic now. 

I'm fully vaccinated and have received all the boosters and, yeah, I still got it. But it was mild, I didn't die, didn't end up in the hospital with a tube shoved down my throat, hopefully won't have any long term complications. That's how vaccines work. 

I'm still pissed about not getting the Paxlovid. 

But, really, for me, the worst part about having COVID is that I can't see my 8-month-old grandson for a few more weeks. 

That blows. 

Though my lovely daughter-in-law is a sending me pictures nearly every day and Facetiming the good stuff. 

Getting old sucks, so does COVID. But being a granddad makes up for a lot.

Baloney

 

Why is “Phoney” (Like in PERFECT “PHONE” CALL, get it?) Fani Willis, the severely underperforming D.A. of Fulton County who is being accused of having an “affair” with a Gang Member of a group that she is prosecuting, leaking my name in regard to a Grand Jury pertaining to Election Fraud & Irregularities that I say took place in Georgia. I made a PERFECT PHONE CALL OF PROTEST. What does Phoney Fani have to do with me?
-- Donald Trump, Truth Social, 8/13/2023

"Phoney"

Phoney. Like Phone. 

Phone call. Phoney. Phone. See? And then Phoney is like Phony. Get it? Ha ha. Phoney. Hilarious. 

I am very clever. 

Oh yes, very clever indeed. 

You know, a perfectly normal, rational, adult message from a man who used to be President of the United States and wants to be again. Like that. Sure. Go ahead and have the lawyers put that on the legal documents and sing it in court Foney Fani bobani fofanny nanni mo nanni bonana...

What?

Yeah, you're right. I'll stop. 

Besides, you probably don't get it anyway. Too intellectual for us poor chumps, am I right? That's the Wharton Business degree talking right there. You gotta be well bred, Ivy League, upper crust...

What? 

Fine.  

A former president, currently under more than 70 felony charges, screaming online about how the election was stolen (or as he puts it "stollen") from him yesterday morning, and threatening witnesses and court officials today in advance of even more criminal indictments for attempted election fraud, is just how democracy works in America now. 

He claims to have "Massive and Conclusive Proof" of election fraud. 

Massive and Conclusive Proof [sic].

Gigantic, colossal, immense, tremendous, the most massive Brobdingnagian proof like no one has ever seen before!

Proof. 

Except so far the only proof Trump has managed to produce is an amateurish YouTube movie made by a convicted felon who was put in prison for committing election fraud and who Trump himself pardoned and some random gibberish from a failed pillow salesman who is mostly famous for cocaine benders and unhinged conspiracy theories. 

Which is weird. 

Really weird. 

Because despite millions of dollars and endless accusations and repeated promises of earthshaking evidence, these sons of bitch still can't prove election fraud in even the most sympathetic court of law. 

I mean, it's just astounding how far up their own assholes these Trump cultists are. Absolutely astounding. I honestly don't know how they're getting enough oxygen to keep what little brains they have operating. 

Or maybe they aren't.

Look here: Trump himself when he was president, first thing he did after being handed an office he didn't deserve by the Electoral College, formed the Advisory Commission on Election Integrity -- because he was mad that he'd lost the popular vote and was determined to prove that America loved him more than Hillary Clinton. 

You remember this, right? 

Sure you do. The Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. That's right. But a lot of other people seem to have forgotten all about it. Include the Press. 

And who did Trump put in charge of his big giant enormous Commission? 

Former Kansas Secretary of State (now Kansas State Attorney General), Kris Kobach, a hardcore Republican partisan who was absolutely convinced there was chicanery afoot and who was determined to prove it. Which is always what you want in an AG, a guy who starts out absolutely convinced of the conclusion and then goes looking for evidence to support it. No chance of a legal system going completely haywire with a guy like that in charge of Death Row, am I right? 

But I digress. 

AND EVEN WITH THE FULL POWER OF THE US GOVERNMENT BEHIND IT, THE FULL WEIGHT OF THE PRESIDENCY, KOBACH COULDN'T FIND A SINGLE CASE OF ELECTION FRAUD.

Well, I mean, he couldn't find a single case other than than a bunch of old white Republicans double voting, but somehow that doesn't count (see the previous note about forgone conclusions). Oh, and lest I sound too dismissive, a Republican "election" investigator hired by the commission was indicted for possession of child porn. So, you know, at least they got one arrest out of it. 

But again, I digress.

Trump's commission made repeated claims of voting by non-citizens. They told America with absolute certainty that millions -- not just one or two, but millions -- of illegal aliens were voting for Democrats. 

Millions. 

That was their count, not mine. Millions. 

But in the end, they could produce exactly zero evidence of this astounding claim. They couldn't even find one bedraggled Mexican fence-jumper to pin the whole thing on. 

Not even with the full power of the federal government behind them. 

And, ironically, even grossly openly-racist red states like Mississippi told Trump to "go jump in the Gulf of Mexico" and that their election systems were secure. The commission folded up and closed its doors in less than six months and Kobach slunk back to Kansas in defeat. 

Here we are, seven years later, and this ongoing lie about election fraud cost Fox News nearly a billion dollars in a lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems. Probably over a billion when you total up the settlement and the lawyer fees. 

And again, with all the resources, all the money, all the lawyers, all the billionaire backers and the complete and utter lack of any integrity or belief in any actual truth, Fox News still couldn't prove a single case of voting fraud or any exploited vulnerability in Dominion's electronic voting systems in any fashion whatsoever in any state including those controlled by political organizations sympathetic to Trump himself and more than willing to give Republican operators like Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell illegal access to their machines. Fox News couldn't show any compromise to the systems and had to admit in public that they were wrong. And then they had to pay. $787.5 million dollars to Dominion. 

And looks pretty certain that Fox News is going to lose a similar lawsuit to Smartmatic as well, maybe even harder. 

And speaking of Georgia, that state will likely cost Republicans engaged in this conspiracy theory dearly. 

For Trump, Georgia may very well be his Waterloo. 

Foney Fani bobani fofanny nanni mo nanni bonana...

What? 

Right. Sorry. 

Anyway. In every state, the integrity of the elections has been examined down the molecular level. In no case is there any evidence whatsoever of any significant vote tampering or voter fraud. There are minor isolated cases of corrupt voting officials attempting to change results and a few people voting illegally either on purpose or by accident (and in Ron DeSantis' Florida, "accident" and "illegal" have very questionable definitions, but still...), but in almost every case those votes were for Trump and/or Republicans and were never, ever, enough to change the outcome of any election in either direction. 

Not even close. 

Here's the thing: The real threats to democracy aren't at the ballot box and never were. 

The real threat comes from those like Trump who would ignore democracy and the will of the people altogether and who daily attempt to replace democracy with disenfranchisement, gerrymandering, intimidation, dark money, and when all that fails: seize power with violence and insurrection. 

Trump is the inevitable end result of that loathsome trend started by Nixon and Reagan.

It's the ideology of racism, selfish saber-rattling nationalism, endless corruption that is never held to account, slathered over by a thin veneer of the shallow aw-shucks John Wayne patriotism of those who themselves never served. 

It is the dimwitted paranoid maladapted knuckle-dragging inheritor of McCarthyism, Jim Crow and the German/American Bund, the distilled unhinged essence of violent cowardice whored up and presented as strength and manliness to the brawlers and the goons and the shouting mob too damn stupid to realize they're being used even as they are gleefully thrown into prison for the crimes of their leaders. 

It's not some foreign nation.

It's not some army at our border or some navy on our shores. 

It's this. This rot. This corruption. This cancer. This swollen orange carbuncle on the ass of humanity, sitting on a toilet in Mar-a-Lago right now, shitting his colon inside out in rage and furiously tweeting  hate and threats and fascism with his tiny sausage-like thumbs. 

This is always how democracy dies. 

This violent selfishness from those too lazy and stupid to do the basic grunt work of citizenship. 

When you demand the population swear allegiance to a flag but give your own fealty to party and ideology without a shred of self-awareness; when you demand business be given the same voice and rights as a citizen but then punish that corporation when it doesn't say what you want; when your prisons are full to bursting with the poor but not the rich; when justice and liberty are hereditary birthrights of privilege and increasingly unobtainable to the lower classes and when even violence can no longer change this condition, well, the end of the Republic isn't far away. 

The worst part is that in every case -- every single case -- the collapse is never a surprise. 

When it all falls apart, well, the warning signs were there all along. Loud. Obvious. Laid out in plain order, one after the other. Stop! Go Back! Danger! Danger! And in every case, the course of the fall could have been altered, or reversed, at any time, at any point along the way, if only the population had the will to do so.  

The greatest strength of a democratic republic is the citizen. 

Ironically, that's also its greatest weakness. 

It doesn't take much to bring down the mightiest Republic. 

You just have to stop believing in it. 

An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.
― Plutarch

The Latter Days of a Better Nation, Part VI

“They want to be the agents, not the victims, of history. They identify with God's power and believe they are godlike. That is their basic madness. They are overcome by some archetype; their egos have expanded psychotically so that they cannot tell where they begin and the godhead leaves off. It is not hubris, not pride; it is inflation of the ego to its ultimate confusion between him who worships and that which is worshipped. Man has not eaten God; God has eaten man.”
― Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle

 

Nothing like this has ever happened before!

"Just found out that Crooked Joe Biden’s DOJ secretly attacked my Twitter account..."

The President of the United States secretly attacked my social media account. 

Attacked. 

My Twitter. 

Note Trump doesn't bother to explain what he means by "attacked" or how he found out and who told him.

Note also Trump doesn't actually use his personal Twitter account, even though it's supposedly been restored by Twitter's new owner, so how exactly this alleged secret attack affects him in any fashion or in any way infringes on his campaign is left as an exercise for the reader. (It also brings up a fascinating implication that Twitter -- a privately held social media company in the hands of a foreign born billionaire infamous for irrational statements and actions and a self-professed hard conservative bent -- has direct influence on American democracy and if that is indeed the case then perhaps social media should be subject to strict government regulation and oversight, but I digress). 

Note that if Trump is talking about the account he used during his presidency, that by definition is public information, intellectual (sorry) property of the US government, and physically in possession of one Elon Musk, available to not only all Americans but the entire world. And he's the one who posted it for all to see, Donald Trump. Nobody else. And we're going to come back to that. 

Note also Trump's First Amendment rights seem to be fully intact -- and in point of fact, that man never shuts the hell up. He's been given an undeserved platform on every social media site (and he literally owns one) and every news channel and every pundit is lined up ten deep to interview him for free and broadcast his insanity to the world. There isn't a late night show or a political rally that wouldn't have him on board at the last moment. The First Amendment grants Trump the right to spew his bile and conspiracy and madness, but no one has to listen to him or give him a platform. 

And finally, if you're still unclear as to what a Begging the Question Logical Fallacy actually is, "Did Deranged Jack Smith tell the Unselects to DESTROY & DELETE all evidence?" is a textbook example. 

But, thus is the world we live in now, this bizarre construct of Reality TV. 

It's not Joe Biden. 

It's not Hunter Biden.

It's not Democrats. 

It's not the DoJ. It's not Merrick Garland and it's not Jack Smith.  

It's not some grand conspiracy led by Hillary Clinton and the Illuminati with a candlestick in the basement drawing room of a Washington DC pizza parlor. 

It's Donald J. Trump. 

It's all Donald J. Trump and no one else. 

Trump abused his office and he bragged about it. 

Trump broke election law in multiple states and he tried to do it in others and he boasted about his fraud on live TV and swore he'd do it again. 

Trump led a violent insurrection against the United States of America and he's proud of it. He could have stopped it -- and his staff and political party begged him to do so -- and he vehemently refused, and he did so on record. He committed sedition and treason right out in the open and is unashamed and determined to do it again. 

Trump violated every standard of morality, ethics, and the values of his position and he pissed on his oath of office every single day and he's not only unrepentant, he's out there right now unabashed in front of his Nuremberg Rallies and on Social Media profiting from his chicanery and malfeasance. You don't need to take my word for it, you can see and hear him for yourself. 

Trump literally told America, the World, that he could commit murder on the street in public and not only get away with it, but he wouldn't lose a single vote and here he is every single day determined to prove that statement correct. And it's looking like he wasn't wrong.

Nearly every lawyer who defended Trump, nearly every violent Brown Shirted brawler who rallied to his banner on January 6th, they're all in prison or facing serious legal consequences for actions committed in Trump's name. 

Those testifying against Trump in court, those bringing charges against Trump in court, they are almost all members of his own party, some of them even voted for him. 

No, this isn't on Joe Biden or Democrats or anyone else. 

It's all Trump.

“Hitler lied shamelessly about himself and about his enemies. He convinced millions of men and women that he cared for them deeply when, in fact, he would have willingly sacrificed them all. His murderous ambition, avowed racism, and utter immorality were given the thinnest mask, and yet millions of Germans were drawn to Hitler precisely because he seemed authentic. They screamed, “Sieg Heil” with happiness in their hearts, because they thought they were creating a better world.”
― Madeleine K. Albright, Fascism: A Warning

Donald Trump is the reason for Donald Trump's predicament and no one else. 

Trump lies shamelessly about himself and about his enemies every single day. 

Trump convinced millions that he cares for them, when, in fact, he would sacrifice them all without a second thought and has done so repeatedly. 

Trump's murderous ambition, avowed racism, and utter immorality are given the thinnest mask, and yet millions of Americans are drawn to him precisely because he gives them license to be their own worst selves. They scream "MAGA!" with happiness in their hearts, because they think once they've eliminated all of us, they'll somehow have a better world. 

And the more things change, the more you see the relentless cycle of history coming 'round again and again. 

This time, it's Trump. 

It's all Trump and it's all Trump in his own words and it always has been.

The thing about extremism is that each position must be more extreme than the last, more hyperbolic, more unhinged, more fanatical, until you're just screaming obvious insane spittle-flecked nonsense.

But if you do it long enough, like Hitler if you do it with enough rage and hate and fury, then people start to believe. 

See, these people, they often tell you how there can be no morality without their religion. Without their god, they say, everyone would rape and murder and steal and burn down civilization. It is only fear of their god that holds back the dark of night. 

But what happens when they replace their god with someone who gives them license to be their own worst selves? 

The ironic part is that the final apocalyptic book of their own Bible warns them of exactly that -- and yet those who sound the alarm most dire of the (alleged) coming End Times fail to see their own god's warning of evil in guise of salvation. 

Ancient religions aside, it's bad enough when it's just Cat Piss Man on the corner mumbling about UFOs and CIA brain implants, but when this raging irrational insanity becomes a political movement, civilization can collapse in an orgy of violent self immolation that nothing can stop it until it burns itself out and billions are dead.

And every time -- every fucking time -- afterwards, in the ruins of the once great cities, after the war crimes trials, after the remaining criminals have been hanged or thrown in prison, with the gut-churning raw-lamb smell of the rotting corpses and the acrid stench of the burning buildings still in your nose, well, then the survivors all look at each other in embarrassment and shame and wonder: how could this have happened? 

How could this have happened? 

Why did we listen to that guy? 

How could we have been led so far astray? 

How could we have let hate consume us like that? 

How? 

And why didn't someone stop it?

Oh yes, why didn't someone stop it?

Yeah. Someone.

Because in the end, among the ruins and the destruction and the dead, even then, they can never ever see how it was them who were the monsters all along. 

It was them who let it happen, while the ones they were convinced to hate were led away in chains and who stood by while the ashes from the ovens fell on their roofs like snow.

Yeah, why didn't someone stop Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, Trump, before it was too late?

Because someone never does. 

Today, now, here, in this place, that someone is US.

And that moment is NOW.

This is the deflection point, right here. This is the crux, the pivot that history will turn on. 

And that someone is us. 

Every generation these dirty rotten insane sons of bitches come again. The madness starts to rise up yet again. The barbarians are at the gate and the drums of war and revolution are beating loudly yet again.

The madness must be stopped now while it's still possible. 

This time we have a chance to stop them before they burn the world down yet again. 

Before it's us, those of us lucky enough to survive, standing there among the bodies of our countrymen, wondering why somebody didn't stop it. 

We're that somebody. 

And we better show up. 

Not someone, you.

You want a better nation? You want a better world? A better future? 

Then you have to be a better citizen. 

“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

Caveat Emptor

"You furnish the pictures. I'll furnish the war."
-- William Randolph Hearst to Frederick Remington
    Spanish American War (possibly apocryphal)

In America, the media is driven by profit. 

Profit. 

Not a sense of duty. 

Not patriotism. 

And certainly not the truth. 

Profit.

Like everything else in this country. 

The bigger the controversy, the bigger the conspiracy, the bigger the car crash, the bigger the fire, the bigger the rage and hate and insanity, the bigger the boobs, the bigger the jaw, well, the bigger the profit. 

If it bleeds, it leads. 

That, right there, is Trump's only talent, being the biggest, loudest, bloodiest show. 

The rest of the media will follow CNN. 

They'll give Trump whatever he wants. 

And they'll do it knowing it will be the same as last night.

They'll do it knowing that if they push Trump on America, he'll burn the country down just as they and he did last time. 

They know it. 

Like any arsonist, they'll light the fire knowing they can't control the blaze. Knowing people will die. But, that's the whole attraction, that's the thrill, that's what brings out the crowd. 

And the crowd is the payoff. 

There's an old adage in transactional analysis that goes something like: bad strokes are better than no strokes. Now, I'm not going to spend any time regurgitating freshman psychology, but basically the idea is that people allegedly prefer good interactions with others to bad, but bad interactions are better than no interaction at all. And maybe from a personal mental health standpoint that's even true, however evidence would suggest that in this age of ubiquitous 24/7 news, talk shows, and social media, society as a whole prefers bad strokes. Bad strokes and as many as they can get. 

We seek it out, those bad exchanges.

We revel in them, no matter how destructive they are to our own mental health and thus to our society. We're addicted to the drama, the show, the fight, the rage, the hate, the endless argument. 

It's validating. 

It's entertaining. 

No one goes looking for news stories about making the world a better place. 

That's why the holy men never talk about their hippy prophet's messages of peace and love, but rather shout their god's threats of violence and damnation from the pulpit and the street corners and across social media. Don't believe me? Read those signs posted in front of all those churches, never once do you see quotes from Jesus to love your neighbor, feed the hungry, heal the sick, clothe the poor, do unto others, give up your wealth, reserve judgement for your deity. No, it's always hell and damnation and hate.

Peace and love doesn't put asses in pews or money in the plate. 

Rage does and bad stroke are not only better than no strokes, they're a lot more profitable. 

Rage, hate, insanity, conspiracy, hyperbole, these are the things that drive clicks and likes and thus profit. 

Essentially: If it bleeds, it leads. 

Because Americans, most of them anyway, aren't interested in a media -- or a religion -- that tells them The Truth. 

Americans by and large aren't capable of managing a four-way stop let alone critical thinking. 

They don't want to be challenged. 

They want their own viewpoint reinforced.

They want to be told they are right, that they are special, exceptional, superior, and that it's everyone else who is in the wrong.

Most of all, they want to be entertained. 

Bread and Circuses while the empire burns, same as it always was.

That's Trump. 

Trump is our Nero. 

He reinforces the very worst in us. 

He tells us it's okay to be an asshole. He tells us it's okay to hate, to rape, to bully, to be violent, to steal, to be greedy, to not give a damn about anyone else, to be crass and uncouth and to gleefully fart in the elevator, to be selfish, to be ignorant, to believe in a world of paranoia and conspiracy, to take the easy way out, and to value profit above all else. 

Trump is Gordon Gecko, greed is good the ends do in fact justify the means -- which is exactly the appeal of every rich man in America. When you're a star, they let you do it. 

He tells us it's okay to fiddle while Rome burns. 

Because he's the one who lit the place on fire for his own self-aggrandizement. 

We're outraged CNN gave Trump unfettered airtime last night, with only the feeblest of resistance and a live audience of handpicked MAGAs to cheer him on and whip him into his usual red-face sweaty frenzy. 

But it wasn't any more an accident than the Great Fire which consumed Rome in 64 AD.   

It wasn't any naïve idea that Trump would act like a rational human being and a normal political candidate. 

They did it on purpose and with malice aforethought, just as Nero did. They don't care about the lives destroyed by the fire, they only see the grand palace they intend to build in its place. 

Warner Brothers Discovery (CNN's parent company) and Chris Licht (CNN's new conservative CEO) knew exactly what would happen.

Licht knew Kaitlan Collins would immediately lose control of the situation. And she did. 

Now to be fair to Collins, it's unlikely given the conditions which were specifically tailored to Donald Trump's worst tendencies that anyone could have kept Trump from doing what Trump does. But, since we're being fair, my sympathy for Collins is about a flat zero, given her extensive personal history with Trump, there's no way she didn't know exactly what she was walking into and exactly what would happen. Also, this is where I remind you that Kaitlan Collins started her career peddling hysteria, hate, and conspiracy theories for The Daily Caller. So long as I'm being fair and all. 

No, everyone at CNN and its parent company knew exactly what would happen. 

They counted on it. 

Because that was the plan all along. 

And from a profit standpoint, it was brilliant. 

Just as Elon Musk offering Tucker Carlson a show on Twitter is brilliant and something that might actually make Twitter profitable again. Maybe not so much great for democracy or ultimately the Republic itself but Musk doesn't give any more of a shit about the future of America than CNN does. 

And not caring about any future beyond profit is what we're talking about here, isn't it?

CNN got exactly what it wanted. 

Fox can only drool in jealousy and you can bet they'll offer Trump airtime on his terms just as soon as they line up advertisers. Ditto CNN, MSNBC, et al.

Now, I'm not really telling you anything that you don't already know, am I? 

But the part that gets overlooked is this: News Media, whoever they are, left, right, their politics change direction at the whim of their drive-by CEOs. Their talking heads switch conviction and allegiance with a Gumby-like flexibility Mitt Romney can only boggle at. If Elon Musk suddenly discovers he can make back his billions from liberals, Tucker Carlson will be pushing vegan diets and solar panels next week without a single backward glance or an admission that he ever believed anything else. Just like that time Glenn Beck decided he hated Donald Trump and thought he could fleece liberals out of a few bucks, then switched back to full MAGA and pretended like it never happened. 

Just like Kaitlan Collins went from The Daily Caller to liberal CNN and is now the darling of the new MAGA CNN. 

There are no heroes. 

There is only profit.

And I don't expect any better from the Press than I do from Donald Trump. They are one and the same, made for each other like a snake eating its own tail. 

Depressing? 

Sure, but it's no different than it's always been. 

From the broadsheets of the British colonists to the yellow journalism of Hearst and Pulitzer to the content scraping blatant plagiarism of outfits like Occupy Democrats to this latest stunt by CNN, in America, the media has always been about profit first, second, and last.

(So have our politicians and our religions, but I digress)

Now, there are plenty of journalists with integrity and who hold their professionalism and convictions dear even if it costs them their livelihood -- and sometimes even their very lives. 

But the institution itself is about profit and always has been.

In America, the Press is supposed to be the watchdog of liberty, which is why it is the only private enterprise specifically given enumerated rights in the Constitution. And there are times when it is that, maybe less so now than in recent memory, but those periods of principle over profit are comparatively few and far between in the overall history of the business.

Expecting anything else is going to get you nothing but bitter disappointment. 

As always, the burden is on us. 

The Press, the politicians, the various gods and their prophets -- or profits, depending -- will not save the Republic or build a better future. 

They will not because they have no interest in any better future and never have. That better future is boring. It is war and chaos and hate and rage and hysteria that sells newspapers -- or clicks and likes and YouTube views in the modern currency. 

Or votes, for that matter.

No, that better future is on you, Citizen. 

Just as it has always been.

That's why the Constitution begins with "We the people..." not politicians, not political parties, not religion, not the Press, not corporations, but we the people. 

Because that's where the real power lies, if only we have the wit and the determination to use it wisely. 

If you want a better nation, be a better citizen. 

“Every time a newspaper dies, even a bad one, the country moves a little closer to authoritarianism…”
-- Richard Kluger, Pulitzer Prize winning American author. 

Enough

You've got an invalid haircut
It hurts when you smile
You'd better get out of town
Before your nickname expires
It's the kingdom of the spiders
It's the empire of the ants
You need a permit to walk around downtown
You need a license to dance
-- Warren Zevon, Life'll Kill Ya

What if you had enough? 

No, really, what if you had enough?

You ever think about that? 

Really think about it? 

What if things were okay. Not great, but okay? 

What would you do if things were okay? If you had enough?

What would you do? Who would you be? 

What if you had enough money? I mean, not rich or anything. Maybe not even "well off." But mostly enough. That's the measure in our society, isn't it? Money. That's how we measure happiness, success, contentment. So, what if you had enough? Enough money.

What if you were better off than your parents. Getting by. You got a house, a car, some nice things. Sure you have a mortgage and a car payment, who doesn't? You're not living under a viaduct somewhere, right? Hopefully anyway. I mean, you could maybe live in a smaller place. You could drive a small cheaper car, something that gets good gas mileage instead of that monster $70K SUV with the V-8 and the 4-Wheel drive that you don't actually need, not to mention all that chrome. You could do that. But the thing is, you have the option and you don't want to. 

What if you had enough to eat? Maybe not steak and lobster every day, but enough to eat. What if you mostly ate food that you liked? Because you could? What if you had extra food even, enough that you didn't have to worry about every bite and could scrape the parts you didn't like into the trash? What if you routinely had the option to turn your nose up at certain foods and pick something else from the menu? What if you could expect a full belly, every day? And snacks. And drive up windows. And you could even eat stuff that was bad for you, not because you have to, but because you like it. And then you had the option to go to the gym and work it off, but you could just sit on the couch and watch 900 channels of TV instead. If you felt like it. 

What if there was no war? I don't mean holding hands and singing Kumbaya and all men are brothers or any of that John Lennon hippie bullshit. But what if there was no war right now? I didn't say the world wasn't dangerous, but what if the country was more or less at peace? No draft. The economy good enough that young people don't have to join the military for a decent paycheck or a college education. What if there was no danger of your kids dying in some incomprehensible fight overseas? What if the enemies of you nation weren't bombing you? Hell, couldn't even really reach you, because of oceans and distance and lack of capability. 

But...

What if you wanted to go to war anyway? What if you actually had that option? You live in a country that isn't at war, but you could go to war if you really wanted. What if there was a war overseas somewhere that didn't really involve you, but if you really wanted to fight, you could volunteer? You didn't have to, but you could? You could kit up, get yourself outfitted, and head on over to fight for some other flag? What if you were so privileged, you actually had that option, right? 

What if there were plenty of jobs? Maybe not great jobs, but plenty of them. You don't like what you do? You could quit. Because everyone was hiring. What if you could join a union and get better benefits and pay and working environment? What if there was record low unemployment and business had to kiss your ass because they needed you? 

What if you had all the civil rights? What if no one tried to stop you from voting or living in a certain place or being who you wanted to be? What if the cops didn't stop you for no reason or beat the shit out of you on the street just because they can? What if you could just identify as who you felt you were inside and then you could go out in public and be that person -- oh, I'm not talking about gender, though that too, but identity as a political party, an ideology, a patriot, a protester, an evangelist for your religion -- all the kinds of identities we just take for granted. What if you could wear the symbol of your religion or a hat with the words of your political affiliation on it in bold letters and the worst that happened to you was that you maybe got a dirty look once in a while? 

I mean, what if you had all the privilege of your society?

What if the world just assumed you were right simply because of who you are?

What if there were social safety nets? Nothing great, but you aren't going to end up in some "sanitarium" or an old folks home or a work house like your grandparents generation. 

What if you wanted to take a vacation and there were plenty of safe places to go? 

What if you wanted your kids to go to school and there were multiple choices -- including a religious option funded by the government that taught your particular brand of hate and intolerance and non-scientific fantasy-based bullshit and the rest of the country had to regard that "education" as valid? And your kid didn't even have to take the smelly old bus like the public school riff-raff because you had the luxury of driving your precious little snowflake to school every day in your giant gas swilling SUV?

What if you needed an operation? Or a cavity filled? And you could just go get that done?

What if you turned on the tap and clean potable water came out?  

What if you breathed the air and it mostly didn't give you cancer because government required the local factories to obey regulations?

What if there were public services, fire, library, schools, police, etc. And you could depend on them always being there when you needed them? 

What if that was your life? Or enough of the above anyway? What if you had enough?

What would you do then? 

Really, what would you do. That's not a rhetorical question.

What kind of person would you be? 

If things were okay, not great but okay. And not only okay, but a good chance that they could be better. That it would be better for your kids and better for their kids and so on? 

What would you do?

Would you just live you life? 

Would you enjoy it?

Maybe go play ball with your kid? Go for hike and enjoy the outdoors? Read? Watch a movie. Talk to your neighbors? Learn a skill? Go dancing? Putter around in the garden? Visit your family? Grill out? Go to the beach? Have a snowball fight? 

What would you do if you had enough? 

Would you enjoy your life? 

Would you really? 

Because that's the reality for a significant number of Americans. 

Not all, certainly. No, certainly not all. But many. Most even. We have enough. More than enough. Especially compared to those elsewhere in the world who very much don't have anywhere near enough. 

But, that's the funny thing, isn't it? 

That's the thing about having enough: it's never enough. 

Anyway, say you did have...

What's that? 

What?

Oh. 

Heh heh. Yes I see you. There in the back. Red faced. Yellow eyed. Mad as hell. Fingers reaching for your keyboard in righteous rage. Oh yeah, I see you. You'd be hard to miss. 

Who decides what's "enough?"

That's what's pissing you off, isn't it? You've read this far and you're furious, aren't you? You're about to tell me to go fuck myself. Any second now you're going to start shouting accusations: Socialist! Commie! In America we're capitalists and for capitalists it can never be enough, we can't be happy unless we always have more and even to suggest such is downright unamerican! Do you even know who Jeff Bezos is? Elon Musk? Howard fucking Hughes, man? Come on!

That's what you're going to say, isn't it?

Who decides? I'd like to answer: You do. 

You decide what's enough for you. That's the answer you want, right? 

I decide for me. We each decide for ourselves. Yeah?

But that's not really true, is it? 

LOL

No it's not. 

You see, society decides what's enough. 

Entertainment. Hollywood. Social media. Pundits. Politicians. Popular music. Our neighbors. 

Most of all, in America, the rich decide for the rest of us and then use their power and influence to convince us it was our idea. 

That's America. 

The majority of Americans today have enough. More than enough.  

But they for damn sure don't enjoy it. Especially the rich. 

I think about this stuff as I'm driving. 

And lately I've had opportunity to do a lot of driving. 

Due to a family issue, I'm now making the journey between Florida and Michigan twice, three times, a month. A thousand miles each way in the car, 14 hours on the road. 

Lot of angry Americans on that road. 

Lot of very angry Americans. 

There's a sign, on Highway 65, bit north of Indianapolis. 

"No Fence. No Jobs. Just crime and drugs."

That's it. That's the whole thing. No fence, no jobs, just crime and drugs. Huge letters. Giant commercial billboard next to the highway. 

No Fence. No Jobs. Just crime and drugs. 

Somebody was mad enough, unhappy enough, that they paid to rent that billboard and broadcast that message to the angry drivers southbound through Indiana twelve hundred miles from the border in question. 

No Fence. No Jobs. Just Crime and Drugs. 

No fence, but of course there is a fence. There's a wall. There's an entire branch of government dedicated to patrolling the border. But most ironically, the very people who are the most unhappy about that supposed lack of a fence are the very same people name for name who once cheered a Republican president when he stood in Berlin and demanded oppressive foreign leaders tear down walls instead of building them. I wonder, what the response from America would be if our neighbors built huge walls across our shared borders and told us to keep out and somewhere in the back of my head I can hear the ghost of Ronald Reagan howling in rage. 

No jobs, but of course we currently have the lowest unemployment rate in our history. Business is begging for workers. I drove two thousand miles last month and the one thing that was the same from end to end was the help wanted and we're hiring signs. No jobs. What? 

Just crime, as if there is no crime committed by those born north of that border. As if there isn't plenty of homegrown crime. As if all the crime in America was committed by brown-skinned illegal immigrants from south of the border. As if the kind of crime that affects most Americans most severely isn't some crackhead breaking into your car, but rather trillions in crimes committed by Wall Street investment bankers. As if the biggest criminals aren't the ones who have repeatedly vaporized your mortgages, jobs, retirements, and college funds. And not only do you not see any signs along the highway bemoaning the lack of accountability for these crooks, but we elect them to run our country. 

Just drugs. As if the only drug in America is Chinese fentanyl from Mexico. Right now, certain pundits and politicians and smug angry speakers at the recently concluded CPAC 2023 are advocating for military action against Mexico. Literally, like the previous president, suggesting we bomb Mexico in a massive escalation of the so-called War on Drugs. As if that would somehow get rid of drugs. As if we wouldn't just find something else to shove in to our veins, or up our noses, or down our throats. And if that's not a metaphor I don't know what is, because if Americans didn't want drugs, I mean really want drugs, Mexico wouldn't be supplying them -- same as immigrants and that aforementioned cheap labor. 

Not to mention, Opioids? Well, yeah, that scourge was foisted on us by an amoral AMERICAN company run by a billionaire family in a blatant display of absolute naked greed. The Sacklers had more than enough money, gobs more. But it just wasn't enough. And they didn't care how many American lives they destroyed, so long as they made more. They still don't care. But you never see angry signs along the highway holding Purdue Pharma to account. 

What would you do if you had enough?

Would you be happy?

Or would you look around for something to be miserable about? 

Would you put up a sign next to the highway?

I've got a neighbor here in this backwater little Southern town where I live. If you watch the various podcasts I'm on, you've heard me mention him before. Got to be about 80. Lives in a nice house, middle of town. Nice neighborhood. I don't know, but he looks well fed. Drives a nice SUV. Huge sign out front. XY equals Male!  He's so mad about trans people that he's got a sign in front of his house. That's how mad he is. But, in this town, the odds that he's ever even met a trans person (that he knows of) are vanishingly small. I doubt he could count on the fingers of one hand the number of trans folks he's met in his entire life. Yet, he's mad about it. So mad he's got a giant flag in his front yard. He can't be happy so long as those people exist somewhere in the world even though they literally have no impact on his life in any fashion. Goddamn, is he mad about it. Miserable. Angry. Happy people don't put up signs like that. 

But then, happy people don't go to church or watch Tucker Carlson either. 

What about you?

Instead of enjoying your life, would you go looking for someone to hate? Even if it had nothing to do with you? 

Would you listen to some millionaire TV pundit or some billionaire politician telling you how you're really a victim? That it's really drag queens or immigrants or the commies in China making you miserable, and not your own shitty self? 

What would you do?

Who would you be?

You ever really think about that? 

A bit further down the same highway, just outside Indianapolis, there was another sign: 

"Life's Too Short for Shitty Tacos!" 

Maybe I've had enough of people telling me to be miserable, but that seems like a pretty good philosophy. 

And maybe I've had enough brushes with mortality lately -- which is why I was on that road in the first place. 

Life's too short for shitty tacos. 

And shitty people. 

Life'll kill ya
That's what I said
Life'll kill ya
Then you'll be dead
Life'll find ya
Wherever you go
Requiescat in pace
That's all she wrote
-- Warren Zevon, Life'll Kill Ya

Piss and Vinegar

 Symbols matter: a Kennedy or a Reagan at the Berlin Wall; a Churchill with a cigar and a bowler; for that matter a green-clad Zelensky growling, ‘I need ammunition, not a ride.’ Simply by taking the hazardous trip to Kyiv, Biden made a strategic move of cardinal importance.
— Eliot Cohen, The Atlantic

Joe Biden went to Ukraine.

In the middle of a war. 

In the middle of a war waged by Russia.

And oh goddamn were both the Russians and Republicans mad about it. 

The symbolism of Biden's visit to war-torn Ukraine wasn't lost on the enemies of America. 

(Note: enemies, plural. Foreign and domestic. But I'll come back to that)

Vladimir Putin was damned unhappy about it. 

As well he should be. Because that was the intent. And there was a time when all of America would have cheered such a message. Up yours, Russia!

But that time is long gone. 

Be that as it may, Vladimir Putin is mad. 

You can tell from his speech this morning. 

It was the Moscow version of an American State of the Union Address. I could give you the Russian name of it, but you don't care and loosely translated its mostly just Putin's semi-annual They Hate Us Because They Ain't Us address. 

As such things go, it was a beauty. 

Putin gave the standard invader trope of how his war is really (mostly, sort of) about freeing Ukrainians from the tyranny of Kiev something something gazpacho oppression Nazis Western Powers and so on. No one really cares. Russians know it's bullshit. We know it's bullshit. Putin knows it's bullshit. Ukrainians for damn sure knows its bullshit. But, that's the official line Putin used to start the war and so he's got to ride that bomb all the way down like Slim Pickens a whoopin' and a hollerin' and waving his giant hat all the way to impact (or George Bush looking for Weapons of Mass Destruction, you pays your money and you takes your metaphor).

So, anyway, the Russians are just trying to help out the poor Ukrainians. Please clap. 

Meanwhile, official signs are going up around Moscow that say The Russian Border Ends Nowhere -- which is totally the thing you say when you're just trying to help your neighbors with their government and not rebuild the Russian Empire. 

Putin then launched into how the war is really about standing up to the West's unreasonable oppression of Russia. Also, he says, war is really good for Russia actually because Russian unemployment is down, the Russian economy is booming with making all the Russian war stuff, and also it allows for federalization of Russian business like in the good old days that every good Russian misses. 

Most important, Putin says, the war demonstrates to the world Russia's superior military might and power and enviable victories.  

Please clap.

I gotta tell you, it kind of made me nostalgic for those old Soviet speeches in Red Square. 

Stalin, Khrushchev, Andropov, you knew they were totally full of shit. I mean we knew they were full it, the Russian people knew they were full it, the Soviet Government knew they were full of it, but damn could those Old Guard Communists give a speech while the tanks and missile trucks rumbled by -- most of those machines barely able to finish the parade without breaking down, some actually being towed because they had crapped out before the ceremony even started. 

Putin finished up with a bit about mutual inspections under New START treaty and loudly rejected any access for US inspectors and you change a few names and boy does that sound like something you'd read on Truth Social.  

Anyway, looks like the extremists over there and over here got that new Cold War they've been wanting since the Berlin Wall came down. 

Speaking of extremism over there and over here:

That's sedition. 

From a sitting member of Congress, that's sedition. 

Of course, we apparently allow that sort of thing nowadays and it might even get you a choice committee assignment.  

And I told you we'd come back to enemies domestic and so we have. That's what you're looking at here. An enemy of America. Someone who wants to demolish the United States. Those are her words. 26,000,000 views, as of the time I took the screenshot. 

She might hate America as much, or more, than Putin. 

Greene is not alone in her sedition. Whenever Republicans don't get their way, and can't see any path to getting their way, they start talking about divorce and you don't have to look much further than Texans and their eternal threat of secession for an example. 

I don't suppose it's much of a surprise Greene, elected by people who continue to wave the Confederate flag 160 years after the South lost the Civil War, would suggest breaking up the Union. These people are nothing if not bereft of any new ideas. Just like their ancestors, MAGAs like Greene would rather burn the country to the ground, they would literally rather see America broken up, than live in peace and equality with the rest of us.

For them, life is always and forever a zero sum game. If others gets more, they always feel like they get less. If others are raised up, they always feel diminished. For them, freedom, justice, liberty, these are all measures of relative worth. For them, their perception of their own self worth is a measure of how much better they are than the people they despise. Equality is the single most horrifying concept they can imagine.

For those like Greene to be free, others must always be in chains. Always. 

And just like Vladimir Putin, and likely why they idolize him as a symbol of strength, Republicans of Greene's foul MAGA ilk are intolerant fanatics who are perfectly willing to kill all the rest of us over some manufactured outrage.

Greene, of course, is seen as the most likely candidate to be Trump's running mate in the coming election. That's right, she's angling to be Vice President of a country that she thinks should be broken up and a government that should be eliminated and if that isn't the very epitome of the MAGA mindset I don't know what is. 

Trump himself is on Truth Social this morning again carrying water for Putin. 

I'll spare you the Neville Chamberlain analogy and simply point out the staggering irony of presidential candidates, who themselves continue to engage in open insurrection, cheering on a reborn Russian Empire while at the same time suggesting the literal dismantling of the United States. 

And not only do Republicans see this as a legitimate political position, they consider it patriotism.

We live in dangerous times. 

And I suspect this is one of those moments in history where we are (again) on the very cusp of global madness and destruction. Time will certainly tell. We've stepped away from the brink in our past, though our history is one where we more often scream Geronimo and jump over the edge into the abyss a whoopin' and a hollerin' and waving our giant hats all the way down to violent impact. 

We live in dangerous times. 

But then we always do. 

I do see hope.

Because in this comparison, so long as we stand together, the fanatical dreams of MAGA Republicans like Greene and Trump are very likely as doomed to ultimate failure as is Vladimir Putin's hollow war. 

Which isn't to say there won't be violence and destruction along the way. Because there most certainly will be. It's inevitable now. 

But, just like Ukraine, if you want a better nation, then you're going to have to stand together with other good people and fight for it. 

And in the end, we will win. 

President Zelenskyy and all Ukrainians remind the world every day what courage is. They remind us that freedom is priceless. And worth fighting for. For as long as it takes.
-- President Joe Biden

The Mad Titan

 

I know what you're thinking, 'cause right now I'm thinking the same thing. Actually, I've been thinking it ever since I got here: Why oh why didn't I take the blue pill?
-- Cypher, The Matrix

 

Elon Musk is doing us all a favor.

We should probably thank him for it. 

No, no, we really should. We should thank Elon Musk. 

Oh, you know, not for destroying a platform that some of us, like Yours Truly here for example, have invested over a decade in, slowly building an audience, writing the content people actually come to Twitter for. 

I don't mean we should thank him for vaporizing that effort, because that's infuriating. 

No. Not that.

I mean we should thank Elon Musk for firing most of Twitter's employees, then using his massive platform to ridicule and harass them and send hordes of his drooling violent sycophants to destroy their lives. Thanks, Elon!

We should thank him for the Twitter Files. For releasing the internal corporate emails of his predecessor, the ones any rational person would interpret as nothing other than people doing their jobs. But we no longer live in a rational nation, and thanks to Elon Musk, the conspiracy nuts, the foreign agents bent to our destruction, and those determined to burn everything to the ground now have more fuel for the fire. 

Oh yes, we should thank Musk for giving voice to the absolute worst elements of our society, the mean little trolls, the racists, the bigots, the misogynists, the violent nationalists, the self-proclaimed Nazis, the Ultra MAGAs, the proudly stupid, the deliberately ignorant, the bullies, the chaos agents, those who hate for hate's sake, the conspiracy nuts, the antivaxxers, the religious lunatics, the seditionists and insurrectionists and the violent howling mob of unhinged bomb throwers. Thanks to Elon Musk, they now not only have a voice, they have full command of the narrative and can spin themselves as victims and martyrs, just as their kind always has to justify their violent hate. 

We should thank Elon for raising up the knuckle-draggers, the Brown Shirts, the goons, the barbarians who would gleefully tear down the fundamental institutions of civilization, civil rights, national infrastructure, equality under the law, education, social safety nets, justice, science, et al, and who would cast doubt on the integrity of democracy and the very worth of civilization itself in order to replace it all with selfish libertarianism, fanatical religion, and violent anarchy. 

It's freedom of speech, not freedom of reach, says Musk. 

Clever. Catchy. And completely arbitrary. 

And so, we should thank Musk for his random autocratic style of unfettered capitalist greed where you never know what's going to get your voice promoted, or more likely suspended, de-platformed, ruined, starved, and/or made into a target of the violent furious mob for some billionaire's amusement. 

Twitter 2.0 has become the twisted fantasyland of a capricious mad god. 

There are no rules, no appeal, no possible way to know what might offend, or amuse, Elon Musk from one moment to the next, a man who by his own admission finds most social interaction incomprehensible -- and there's the definition of irony if ever there was one. 

Every day on Twitter under Musk is a minefield of dog turds and cat vomit that you must navigate in the dark, barefoot and off balance, ass backwards into the unknown. 

Musk tells us that social media is the town square of democracy, that Twitter is about freedom of speech, and it is -- so long as you are willing to pay for that right, so long as you can afford to give a billionaire your money each month for the privilege of eating out of his garbage can, and so long as you don't make him mad or give offense to the wealthy. Because if you can't or you are unwilling to pay and bend the knee, well, then your voice no longer matters.

Freedom of speech and freedom of reach for $8 a month. What a bargain. 

In a world run by the rich, only those who can pay are worth listening to. 

Yes. Yes, indeed, we should all thank Musk for that, for showing us that world. 

Twitter has become a Second Life simulation of that dystopian America.

Ironically, that's exactly what the Constitution was designed to protect us from. 

The Constitution was literally designed to protect Americans from the capricious impulses of arbitrary power and to prevent some foreign-born despot from ruling over the nation.

Yet, again ironically, those most vocal in their fanatical sycophantic support of this new Twitter and its rule of self-declared absolutism are those who most vocally define themselves as Constitutionalists. 

Of course, Twitter isn't the government and the Constitution doesn't apply to global social media platforms run by the world's richest man.

(Or second richest man, or whatever his status is today. The exact degree of his wealth and power hardly matters down among us pig shit covered peasants). 

You see, Twitter is a bellwether for what an America, a world, run at the mercurial whims of fickle immoral unrestrained oligarchs would look like. 

And it looks exactly like what our founders were most afraid of. 

Anyone else find it particularly ironic that those self-styled "Alpha Men" who have spent most of their miserable pinch-faced lives bullying those born biologically male as betas, cucks, sissies, fags, queers, gay, girly, pussies...

... and demeaning those born biologically female as butch, dyke, tomboy, masculine, et al...

...are now somehow mad because they are being asked to call LGBTQ people by their preferred pronouns? 

Musk's complaint is daily echoed by petulant conservative politicians who are right now on his platform decrying wokism. They seem to think the basic common courtesy of calling someone by their preferred address, be it their name or a pronoun, is some terrible form of oppression of the sort where you have to press #1 for English. 

I am particularly boggled at the part where a man whose entire vast fortune was derived almost entirely from the work of science and engineering in the service of capitalism, now turns to unhinged conspiracy theories in an attack on science. That's what he's doing here, you know, by going after Dr. Fauci. That "gain-of-function" dog whistle. Musk knows, couldn't help but know, that gain-of-function is a common tool of virology and medical science, used by science the world over to prepare for and anticipate possible harmful viral mutations of common diseases. Without gain-of-function testing, and loss-of-function, you wouldn't have many common vaccines, or at least not in time to do any good -- and the military would be without a method of protecting its troops from possible weaponization of things like small pox and anthrax. 

There's simply no evidence of the accusations perpetuated by Musk in the second paragraph above. 

In fact, the evidence shows just the opposite, i.e. that Dr Fauci and those scientists like him have quite literally saved the lives of billions.

But blaming experts, the "elites" for some imagined crime combined with the idea that common basic courtesy and respect for others is somehow something something gazpacho OMG NAZIS! is exactly the sort of thing the Nazis themselves actually did to justify their own sense of victimization. 

Musk knows it. Republicans know it. 

They do. Because you notice they never actually provide any specifics. 

Oh no! We're being oppressed by pronouns!

Under the Nazis, Jews and others deemed undesirable, such as LGBTQ people, were murdered wholesale in the camps. 

Under the Soviets, those arbitrarily deemed criminals, such as again LGBTQ people, were sent to the Siberian gulags to die.

In North Korea, they publicly execute people with antiaircraft guns at the whim of Kim Jong Un.

Under Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge murdered so many of their own people, the skulls of the dead were stacked in pyramids as high as a 3-story building.

In East Germany, the Stasi infiltrated every layer of society, turning paranoia into an artform where brother informed on brother and children on parents and people were disappeared into the brutal national security apparatus and never seen again. 

In Argentina, they threw people out of airplanes for fun. 

We still have no idea how many of his own citizens Idi Amin Dada murdered. Or Baby Doc Duvalier. Or Saddam Hussein for that matter. 

Here in America, we once kidnapped Africans from their homeland and turned them into farm equipment, literally made them into livestock and forced them to work in the fields. And the genocide of Native Americans, well, we really have no idea how many died and we really didn't care as our government herded the destroyed ragged remnants of their civilization onto forgotten reservations -- until we needed the resources of that land, I mean. 

But all of that horror pales in comparison to the oppression of ... pronouns. 

The "woke mind virus" as Musk calls it. 

Woke. "The belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them." That's woke, as defined by lawyers representing Florida State Governor, Ron DeSantis, who is right now in court defending his administration's authority to apparently perpetuate that very systematic injustice instead of correcting it. 

The belief that there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them. 

To quote Morpheus, huh. 

I mean, the same people complaining about "woke," about "cancel culture," are the very people complaining on Twitter about how they are personally being systematically persecuted by American society and "cancelled" due to their beliefs. 

I hate to keep using the word "irony," but there's a degree of perverse hilarity when a man who feels pronouns are oppression named his own most recent offspring "X Æ A Xii" which Musk says should be pronounced "X Ash A Twelve." 

Not to mention that for a guy who is often referred to as being "redpilled" both by himself and by his conservative anti-woke fans...

... there's a stunning lack of self-awareness, given that the term "redpilled" itself entered the anti-woke vocabulary via a film literally written and directed by Lana and Lilly Wachowski -- who are perhaps two of the most prominent and influential trans women in history.

As I said, repeatedly, ironic. 

And sad.

And more than just a bit bizarre. 

Of course, for Musk, it's personal. 

And what of those caught in the middle? 

Those like me. 

Like most of you. 

The ones who actually create the actual content of social media?

The ones currently losing followers and being driven off the platform? 

Musk's business model makes zero sense -- and I'm being charitable by assuming there is such a thing as an actual model or any sense to his behavior whatsoever. 

I mean, what is Musk's end goal? 

He says he wants to make money, that Twitter must be profitable. 

Okay. I can see that. The guy spent $44 billion buying the place, he probably needs to make that back at some point, if only to pay off his creditors. But, instead of building a platform where content creators attract more users, and thus advertisers, and thus profit, he's turning Twitter into a wasteland that attracts only a particular sort of self-abuse.

Musk is gambling that reinstating Donald Trump, James Woods, Laura Loomer, et al, will attract users.

And maybe it will. 

But that is a very limited pool and those aren't the sorts of users who mainstream advertisers are willing to engage. 

And if those who make and sell art, actors who make movies, manufactures who sell soap and frozen pizzas and gewgaws you can't get on Amazon, bloggers, YouTubers, writers, comics, cartoonists, buskers, donut makes and small business owners, and those who don't give a damn about American politics (oh, you forgot about that, didn't you? That a significant number of Twitter's users aren't Americans), or even just people who want to grow a following by tweeting cat pictures, i.e. users who can no longer build a business on the platform because they can't depend on Twitter to establish and obey its own rules, to be reliable, to be supportive, to be responsive to their needs, then they won't build a business on that platform. 

And thus that platform will never be profitable. Q.E.D. 

And what does that leave Musk? 

Because platforms of anti-woke angry users already exist. Parler. Gab. Truth Social. And they're not the sort of places that grow much beyond a certain point, or attract advertisers, or turn a profit. They become a toxic stew of hate and spammers so vile that even the most fanatical MAGA hat loses interest and wanders back to mainstream platforms specifically because there are liberal voices there to scream at. 

And those places, those platforms of anti-wokism, are hardly bastions of free speech. 

In fact, they become incubators of the very oppression Musk says he fears above all else. 

Owning the libs turns out to be a terrible business model. 

And once again, as a metaphor, it's a lousy way to run America. 

We've survived by hiding from them, by running from them. But they are the gatekeepers. They are guarding all the doors, they are holding all the keys. Which means that sooner or later, someone is going to have to fight them.
-- Morpheus, The Matrix