And our slow slide into fascism continues to accelerate. Dear leaders name and face on any institution or inanimate surface that takes his fancy. Propaganda posters on various federal websites deliberately aping 1940s style master race artwork and slogans. The appropriation of Nazi slogans, the most recent being ‘One of Ours, All of Yours’ on Kristi Noem’s podium at her most recent press conference regarding the state of affairs in Minneapolis. It stems from the Nazi’s reprisals against the citizens of Lidice, Czech Republic after the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich. It’s one of the best documented Nazi atrocities and I need not repeat the story here.
The actions of ICE and the killing of Renee Good continue to be a national Rorscharch test. Self identified Republicans are roughly 2/3 in favor of ICE’s actions while self identified Democrats are less than 5% in favor and self identified independents are less than 20% in favor. Translation, the majority of the US population is horrified at what is unfolding and the consequences of those policies while the administration steam rolls ahead and congress remains complacent. With numbers like that, most politicians begin back pedaling and self correcting with an eye on the next election cycle but there’s been little of that happening. Which makes me afraid that there is a plan in place which will prevent a next election cycle, at least one which is conducted in a fair and open manner. What is the plan? Who knows. The most likely is continued provocation of the populace until something happens which will justify a military response/martial law. But it could be something like an executive order ‘postponing’ elections until voting machines and processes ‘can be verified’. And congress will likely continue to roll over, at least as long as Mike Johnson remains in charge.
The Epstein files remain a wedge issue. Congress did pass a law requiring their release and DOJ has so far not complied with the terms of the law. This of course has now led to the slow wheels of the court system getting involved. I don’t think we’ll see significant unredacted files for quite some time. In the meantime, a new accuser, Sascha Riley, has surfaced with lurid and stunning allegations. None have yet been vetted through testimony under oath but I wouldn’t be in the least surprised to find out that there’s at least some truth behind the sensationalism. The longer the delay, the more the portion of the population who have bought into secret pedophile cabals running the world from the basement of pizzerias are going to get restive. And they tend to vote Republican.
The administration is pressing full steam ahead on trying to rewrite American history, both recent and remote, to suit their narrative needs. The laughable and easily disproven lies regarding January 6th are spreading throughout the administration and into the Smithsonian and are likely to end up in approved school textbooks shortly. More insidious is the attempts to undo the entire Civil Rights movement as some sort of discrimination against white males. It trivializes the sacrifices, the blood spilt, the survival of lynchings and other Jim Crow horrors as if that sort of domination should somehow be honored. The administration has decided not to pursue any federal investigation of whether Renee Good’s civil rights were violated, a standard procedure after any fatal incident involving federal law enforcement leading to the resignations of most of the senior staff of the Civil Rights division of DOJ.
Sabers continue to rattle in three different directions. First, in Venezuela where it’s completely unclear who is actually in charge, dear leader is running around stating he’s the president. The Venezuelans might disagree and I imagine there’s law preventing the President of the US from being the president of another nation at the same time (but I’m too lazy to look it up right now). The administration seems to think that they’ll be able to pump oil by the millions of barrels right off the bat. The large oil companies, who lost billions in contracts and equipment when Hugo Chavez nationalized the industry a couple of decades ago, aren’t so sure and would like to be paid back for their losses before they invest anything new and try to rebuild a thoroughly degraded infrastructure. This, of course, has annoyed dear leader who took on the chair of Exxon Mobil, Darren Woods, for daring to speak truth to power. I’m sure there are some small upstart companies headed by Trump cronies who will be more than willing to snare government contracts and taxpayer dollars but I don’t think we’ll see much ROI.
Second, there’s Greenland. Any actual attack on Greenland would destroy NATO and likely push the US into a war of some sort with the EU. I think there will be a lot of rhetoric and an attempt to buy off the population with a casket of beads a la Peter Minuit as that’s the sort of diplomay that dear leader can understand. Cooler heads will likely allow a greater US military presence than currently exists at some point but it will probably end there. The army is currently having trouble keeping the troops fed at Fort Greely near Alaska as DOGE cuts decimated their support staff. Not sure how they think they’re going to support more folk in the arctic. It’s not exactly an easy place to relocate a civilian work force.
Third is Iran which is going through another set of upheavals and rebellion against the mullahs who have been in charge since the 1979 revolution. This is hardly new. There have been multiple other uprisings, all of which have been put down. Is this one different? Time will tell. Iran has been severely weakened by it’s support for Hamas and Hezbollah which have been smashed recently by Israel. There’s also the issue of water. Iran is in a massive drought and the regime has seriously mismanaged water policy for decades by subsidizing monsoon crops like rice which require an enormous amounts of water. Tehran’s reservoirs are nearly out, it’s undergoing water rationing and there’s been talk of moving the capital. The current administration may not believe in climate change but it’s out there with very real world consequences. Then there’s the religious politics of the region. The Iranians are Shia and most of the Arab world is Sunni. The Shiites and the Sunnis have been sworn enemies for nearly 1400 years now but I don’t think most of the higher administration has any real understanding of Islam and they’ve gotten rid of most of the operatives in the State Department who truly understand these nuances.
That’s enough depressing news for the day. For those concerned about my personal health and pain level, I’m doing OK. I invested in a really good soft cervical collar and I have found if I put that on for about an hour or so a few times a day, it really helps keep the pain level down, far better than the various medications I have tried. Two weeks until shots in the neck and with luck that will be the end of that for at least six months.
Rehearsals for South Pacific begin in an hour. So I am getting up, getting dressed, going out, and doing good by creating some beauty.
Life, The Universe, and Everything 