Category: History

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Trump America — Another business destined to fail

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

April 5th 2025

When the Dow drops 3,600 points—9% of its value—in just two days, it’s pretty safe to say market conditions are ‘unsettled’ in much the same way that Grindavik is unsettled.

My guess is we’ll see a partial recovery Monday, and then the slide will resume. It’s illegal to manipulate markets for a quick and dirty profit, but that’s hardly going to slow down Donald Trump, America’s most powerful con man. He’ll keep right on making announcements that will manipulate the market to his advantage.

The game has already begun. Erik the Moron piped up today, saying that the tariffs were “negotiable” and the first countries to negotiate would get the best deals.

While that made perfect sense to a dimwitted conman, it will also completely blows up the premise behind Trump’s tariffs. The stated reason is that it will force manufacturing to either move to America or start up there. But that means the tariffs have to be inflexible and permanent. Nobody is going to go to the trouble and expense of moving their operations stateside only to find the tariffs have been dropped or reduced and they find themselves competing with competitors back in their previous locales who didn’t move.

The sheer hucksterism of “move now because these deals won’t last” is pretty jawdropping.

Of course, to make a factory that was paying its employees $1.50 a day to set up shop in America means that to make it work, the have to slash pay scales and find a way to greatly reduce all other costs to match what they were paying in Vietnam or Laos or wherever. In other words, to make it worth the overhead of the tariffs, they would have to cut everything to third world levels: no OSHA, no FDA, no EPA, no minimum wage, nothing.

Donald, of course is working hard to get rid of all that crap. It’s patriotic to send your eight year old to work in a poisonous, dangerous place where they might live to be 12 if they’re lucky. Florida is already working on legislation to replace migrant labor with child labor. No, I’m not kidding.

Warren Buffet, who knows a thing or two about the markets, suggested that Trump also inflicted the incoherent tariffs in order to drive interest rates up, something that would also greatly profit the markets. That statement left Donald screaming in rage, which tells you that Buffet pretty much nailed it.

Trump is openly defying courts, ignoring direct orders not to send innocent people to his gulags, knowing that the five fascists on the supreme court will rule in his favor. It won’t be Donald who ends the United States: it will be Thomas, Kavanaugh, Alito, Gorsuch and Coney Barrett, none of whom seem to realize that once they’ve ended the country, they will no longer have any importance to anyone. Some of them are rich and will do OK in the new plutocracy, but lawn jockeys like Thomas and religious whack jobs like Coney Barret will find themselves on the outside looking in.

Basically, the plutocrats are working to parcel out the United States and make it an impoverished third-world nation while making off with tens of trillions in profits. It’s the biggest heist in history. Then they move on to the next prosperous zone and conduct a parasitic orgy there. China would be a sensible target since it’s already authoritarian. If they aren’t stopped, your life, and the life of your children, will be one of misery and deprivation.

Think Trump and his manipulators are not out to ruin your life and kill your children? Consider this Raw Story news article today: “A federal judge in Rhode Island accused the Trump administration of “covertly” withholding funds for Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster relief programs from states that didn’t vote for him, Courthouse News reported on Friday. In March, U.S. District Judge John McConnell issued a preliminary injunction in favor of 23 states that sued the government over its plan to implement a broad pause to state aid,” noted the report.”

A court finding is a bit more than a accusation. The reason McConnell ruled the way he did was because he had solid, incontrovertible evidence that Trump was deliberately cheating people for the crime of living in a state that didn’t vote for him.

Pussy Riot, indisputably the bravest rock group in the world, showed up in Manhattan today to urge Americans stand up for themselves against Trump’s planned tyranny. The cowardice of the Republicans is well documented. Democrats, as always, are divided on the notion of whether ‘tis nobler to be spineless, gutless, boot-licking cowards or not. Fortunately, most are not.

It’s the same as with the American public, where I’ve had people tell me they won’t come to today’s demonstrations because they want to keep their heads down and survive. Understandable, but I have to wonder what makes them think life outside of Trump’s gulags will be any improvement. He plans to leave you in poverty and squalor. That’s what’s in store. At least in prison you’ll get moldy bread and contaminated water, just like you would outside. And inside, nobody expects you to pretend to love Trump. Hopefully.

As most of you know, four American serviceman drowned in Lithuania in a motor vehicle mishap. Their bodies were eventually all recovered, and as the caskets were taken to the airport yesterday for the flight back to America, thousands of Lithuanians lined the streets to pay their respects.

The servicemen landed today, but Donald Trump wasn’t there.

He had a golf tournament to watch. That was more important than losers and suckers.

The rallies against Trump begin in an hour and a half (I’m finishing this at 7:25 PDT). I’m hoping nationwise five million will show up, but I think three million will get the point across. There may have do be more than one day of rallies, and widespread strikes and boycotts. But if we want our freedoms back, that’s what it’s going to take.

In a world of Cory Bookers, don’t be a Mike Johnson.

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Lost Signal — Even by Trump’s standards, this was dismal

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

March 27th 2025

The breaking story about the Signal chat group conversation leading up to the bombing of Houthis in Yemen was already one of the most egregious and bizarre in the annals of American history.

Accidentally inviting the top editor of one of America’s most renowned journalistic magazines, (Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, in case you’ve been on the far side of the Moon this past week) to a group chat about a pending military attack is a bit like being in an NFL team huddle and glancing up to see the stadium announcer is also in the huddle, holding a microphone, listening carefully to the play plan and nodding thoughtfully.

Of course, to stretch that simile further, in this particular huddle there’s no assurance that any of the guys wearing your uniform are actually on the same team. You already know the coach is working for the other guys, after all.

The participants, caught out, have been throwing excuses and lies around madly in all directions like custard pies in a Mack Sennet movie. They’ve tried claiming that the transcript was a hoax, that they didn’t discuss classified information, and that Goldberg made it up because he doesn’t like Trump.

Tulsi Gabbard doesn’t seem to know what country she was in during the discussion. Well, you know how it is: you see one Asian country, you’ve seen all of them. At least one participant was in Moscow during the chat.

Speaking of Moscow, it seems that the reason the Pentagon had issued a blanket order the week before to never use Signal for any official reasons was because Russia had successfully hacked the encryption of the app. And while the Russians may not have been involved with this particular breach, it seems that the names, phone numbers, emails and passwords of all the participants in the session were available online.

About the only people who didn’t know were the American public. But by inviting Goldberg, they got that covered.

To call this a clusterfuck is a bit like saying the Fyre Festival didn’t go well. It’s damning with faint praise.

National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, the man who somehow invited Goldberg to the chat room, claims he never met Goldberg and had no idea who he was. Evidence, including photographs, says otherwise. It’s not quite clear how inviting a total stranger to a top-secret national security chat is somehow better than inviting the editor of the Atlantic. Apparently one guy there was awaiting confirmation to his government post!

But never mind all that. One person was conspicuous by his absence: Le grand citrouille, King Pumpkin, the Donald.

You seen scenes where a major military operation is underway, and they release photos of the president and his cabinet all sitting around, looking tense and serious as they rescue hostages or grease bin Laden or whatever.

Not in this case. The closest to presidential leadership is when one of the participants says vaguely that he thinks Donald approves of what they’re doing here. Evidence suggests that Trump had no idea what was going on. To paraphrase the famous Watergate investigative question: “What did he know, and does he know that he knew it?” It seems pretty clear that the President of the United States was absent simply because he had nothing to offer.

Trump himself seems to have no idea what the scandal is about, and is mostly reduced to his boilerplate deflection and denial, some of which may actually be valid. It’s pretty clear he has no idea what Signal is, but having discerned that something called Signal was involved, he has declared it defective and wants people to look into it. After all, it let that Goldberg, who was mean to him in the past, in. Something must be wrong with Signal.

He’s variously tried claiming the transcript was a hoax (that backfired: Goldberg released more to show it wasn’t) and that the Democrats were to blame somehow, and that no secrets were discussed. (Several of the participants have tried making that claim, stopping just short of saying the dog ate their homework.) He is, in a word, clueless.

He doesn’t even have the wit to address the specifics, but is just generally doing The Donald, the things he always does when he’s feeling defensive. He’s the old guy with the cane batting at imaginary insects.

He finally realized that there was something to all this confusing ‘signal’ stuff and described the event as a ‘glitch’ and boasted that it was the first glitch in the two months of his administration. A sardonically amused Rachel Maddow that evening spent a full half hour running down the glitches so far. She didn’t pad it or speak slowly. It’s an impressive pile of glitches, worthy of Inspector Clouseau.

But no worries: Trump will have Clouseau’s real-life equivalent, Inspector Hegseth, in to determine what, if anything, happened.

In addition to the blatant incompetence, malice and possible treason, public discourse needs to include whether Trump has any control over this gang of fascists, crooks and subversives or is just their little smiley face for the public. Are the lights on? Is anybody home?

The next day we learned that a) four US soldiers were missing in Lithuania and b) nobody had bothered to tell Trump about it.

If you need more evidence of how feckless, reckless, and anti-American this junta is, consider the following exchange between Congressman Jim Himes of Connecticut and alleged Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.

HIMES: Do you think it’s responsible for you, as head of the intelligence community, to retweet posts from individuals affiliated with Russian state media?

GABBARD: That retweet came from my personal account.

HIMES: Personal account? You’re the Director of National Intelligence, not an Instagram influencer. There’s no such thing as “personal” when you’re elevating Kremlin propaganda.

GABBARD: I have the right to share information—

HIMES: Information? You mean Russian disinformation. You sit in high-level intelligence briefings, then turn around and boost the same narratives Moscow is pushing. Should we just CC the Kremlin on your next meeting and cut out the middleman?

GABBARD: This is just an attempt to smear me—

HIMES: Smear you? You lied under oath in a Senate hearing yesterday, claiming you knew nothing about classified information, while sitting in Signal chats where war plans were discussed. You retweet Kremlin-backed sources, then act shocked when people question your loyalties.

GABBARD: I’m focused on national security—

HIMES: National security? While pushing Russian propaganda and pretending you’re clueless about intelligence leaks? If a Democrat had done half of this, you’d be screaming treason on national TV.

GABBARD: This is about free speech—

HIMES: Free speech? You’re the President’s top intelligence advisor, not some random guy on Twitter. Every word you amplify has consequences. And right now, you’re handing America’s enemies exactly what they want—straight from your “personal account.”

https://x.com/Acyn/status/1904907517261705605

Speaking of Twitter, I’m a bit surprised Musk wasn’t one of the participants. I suppose he’s too busy destroying the United States, though. That can keep a man busy, you know.

Or maybe he’ll join the chat when they discuss bombing Toronto. Hopefully the Russians will leak that before it happens.

 

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Circles within Circles — The universe versus the heavens

Circles within Circles

The universe versus the heavens

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

March 20th 2025 Happy Equinox!

I just finished watching an anime series on Netflix called Orb. It’s 25 episodes, and is based on a highly fictionalized 14th and 15th century Europe, where a church, identified as “C” is fighting to preserve the biblical belief that Earth is the center of creation, and is the bedrock, immobile, and all other heavenly bodies rotate around it. A disparate group of sky watchers, some clergy and some not, dispute this view, arguing that the Earth actually goes around the sun. The church reacts with a vicious inquisition and with death by burning mandated for heliocentric heretics. It is basically a fictionalized account of the general tone of the 14th through 17th centuries.

I was going to do a review of the series upon its completion, but the fact of the matter is it isn’t very good. The characters are wooden and two dimensional, and while it shows charts showing the patent absurdity of the church’s beloved geocentric model, it doesn’t really explain why the far simpler and logical heliocentric model didn’t prevail. After all, it already did in such places as Japan, China, India, and the Middle East. (It was also known in parts of the Americas, but Europe didn’t know about the Americas at that point.) One of the rationales for the Crusades was that the ‘heathen Muslims’ believed the sun was the center of the universe.

It had its moments of absurdity, as in when one cleric found his faith in geocentrism shattered by finally observing Venus “in full phase.” Since Venus and Earth are on the same orbital plane, the only time Venus would be in full phase in relation to the Earth is when it is directly behind the sun from us. And finally, the ending of the series was nonsensical, abrupt, and confusing. Bit of a shame, really—it did start out promising, and at least some of the people involved did the homework. The casual background images of the sky, especially at night are amazing, accurate, and in a few sequences when the POV is over several minutes with stationary objects to the side, you can actually see rotational movement of the stars as they are occluded by the foreground object. That was impressive. As noted, someone put some real work into this.

I had recently encountered stats showing that a full 26% of American adults—over a quarter of the voting population—believe the sun goes around the Earth. A smaller but still statistically significant portion of the population believe the Earth is flat. I can’t even blame religion for this: America has a deep anti-intellectual, anti-science and unimaginative streak, one exemplified by the present administration. This is encouraged by industries that find scientific analysis of their products and emissions to be inconvenient and even expensive. Easier to dismiss science than it is to argue against it. I encounter victims of this on line, and sometimes I’ll actually engage with them. (As soon as religion or conspiracy theories show up, I just block them as a waste of carbon.) I like to challenge them to work out the math for a flight, using the Hohmann transfer trajectory, to get to Mars and back. I can do one good enough for nevermind, and I’ll bet there’s an app for my phone that could do it up to NASA or ESA requirements, too.

One of the more impressive elements of the series was the display of the movements of the planets. Astronomers of the era bent over backwards to display the elements of apparent planetary motion. The results usually look like they were done on a Spirograph. This is because the five inner planets as seen from Earth move backwards at regular intervals for varying amounts of time. It’s called retrograde motion, and it’s easily explained by the heliocentric model.

Think of it as a circular race course, with each planet in its own lane—Mercury on the innermost, Saturn on the outermost. Earth is in the center one. Mercury goes around every 88 days, Venus every 225 days, Earth every 365 days, Mars every 687 days, Jupiter every 4,333 days, and Saturn every 10,756 days. It makes for a very boring race, I agree.

In the middle track, Earth races ahead of the slower outer planets, passing them and making them appear to move backward compared to the fixed objects in the background—in this case, the stars. The two inner planets appear to move backward against the stars because when their orbits on are on the far side of the sun, they are. If we’re at 3 o’clock moving toward 2 o’clock (sorry but they move counterclockwise seen from above) then the two might be moving from 11 o’clock to 7 o’clock.

Heliocentrism explains that phenomenon without having to have a body stop dead in its tracks and then loop back on itself with grand disregard for inertia or common sense. Unfortunately, the religious fundamentalist mind tends to embrace the more convoluted and irrational explanation as evidence that God’s powers exist and are above the silly laws of the world.

Nonetheless, heliocentrism prevailed. Without math and scientific theory to support it, it was a competing opinion. But with math, it all adds up.

Let’s take a look at how that happened.

Per Wikipedia: “The first non-geocentric model of the universe was proposed by the Pythagorean philosopher Philolaus (d. 390 BC), who taught that at the center of the universe was a ‘central fire’, around which the Earth, Sun, Moon and planets revolved in uniform circular motion. This system postulated the existence of a counter-earth collinear with the Earth .”

The heliocentric model, while much simpler than any Earth-centric model, lacked anything beyond Occam’s Razor to justify it. Without math to describe it, it was just another opinion. Copernicus started that route, stating that the orbits were circular, with a motionless sun at the center, and unvarying. All three statements were incorrect, and had no more empirical justification than any other theory, but it was a step in the right direction.

Kepler, between 1609 and 1619, devised his three laws that clarified the behavior of the solar system.

Kepler’s three laws state that:

  1. The orbit of a planet is an ellipse with the Sun at one of the two foci.
  2. A line segment joining a planet and the Sun sweeps out equal areas during equal intervals of time.
  3. The square of a planet’s orbital period is proportional to the cube of the length of the semi-major axis of its orbit.

It wasn’t until Newton released his Principia in 1687 that he deduced the ratios of gravitational attraction.

He determined that the force of that attraction (F) was equivalent to the mass of the first object times the mass of the second object, divided by the distance between the centers of the two masses, squared.

Newton was flummoxed by his own discovery, writing “That one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum without the mediation of anything else, by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one another, is to me so great an absurdity that, I believe, no man who has in philosophic matters a competent faculty of thinking could ever fall into it.”

Absurd or not, it was the death knell of theological objections to the heliocentric theory of the solar system.

The final nail in the coffin came over a century later, when Henry Cavendish devised the universal gravitational constant, which described the strength of the gravitational attraction (6.674 × 10−11m3⋅kg−1⋅s−2) which showed exactly why the planets moved the way they do.

With that, the last piece fell into place and heliocentrism was established theory, on par with evolution, gravity, and atomic theory. We have landed craft on Mars and Venus, and approached all the other planets, using the advances listed above to do so. You fling a craft at Mars, and you aim it while it’s still within a few thousand miles of Earth and it COASTS to its target, some 130 million miles away. Moving target. That’s one hell of a game of darts!

With fascists and religious fanatics clawing down every scientific and philosophical advance since the 14th century, it’s important that you stand for science and knowledge. But you need to know WHY you are standing for it, and have the tools you need to defend it, and the knowledge to explain it. You aren’t like those morons who take it on faith because god loves irrationality, or it’s a commie plot.

A lot of science is well beyond the ken of any normal person. Quantum physics, with indeterminacy, eigenstates and probability collapses, is confounding, especially since we live in an artificially stable world above a foundation of chaos and random chance. We don’t really know if the universe is expanding, contracting, or not doing anything at all. Or if it has edges. The cosmological constant provides us with the unsettling news that the density of the universe just happens, by chance, to exactly match the amount of dark energy (which seems to be decreasing) and without the match, we wouldn’t exist at all.

Fortunately, you don’t have to take any of that on faith. It reflects nothing but the current state of our knowledge, and we really are still seven blind men trying to describe an elephant. Upheavals in our apprehension of the universe are frequent. The wonder and strangeness of the universe will always far exceed our imaginations.

But in our quotidian lives, some things are infallible and constant. Among them: the Earth is an orb, and revolves around the Sun. The Sun revolves around the Milky Way core. In fact, it’s safe to say that in our universe, everything revolves around something else. With one possible but as yet unknown exception.

Don’t hesitate to slap down the flat Earthers. But do take the effort to understand WHY you are right and they are wrong. You owe that, not just to them, but to yourself.

 

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The Rise of Emperor Trump — After the Don, Darkness

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

March 16th, 2025

That Donald Trump is mad almost goes without saying. He has been a pathological malignant narcissist his entire life, going back to a loveless childhood with a cruel and vicious father, a wraith of a mother; no friends, not even pets.

Long before he entered politics, he was widely hated and despised for his cruelty, his dishonesty, his open contempt for women and his hatred of minorities. His wealth protected him from the consequences of his mental illness, but his history of civil suits tells a squalid tale of lust, greed, viciousness, and open thievery. He is and always has been a wastrel, a moral and ethical sewer of a man. Had he been born poor, I am certain he would have died in prison long before he reached thirty years of age.

His unrestrained presidency has been the absolute nightmare many of us feared, as he throws away an entire nation for his own aggrandizement. Manipulated by fascist billionaire scum, given a army of servile and ever-compliant underlings to wreak his will, Trump is rapidly tearing apart the fabric of society, replacing the United States with…

Well, history tells the tale. People may consider this time utterly insane, a time of nihilistic orgy and abandonment of human mores, but historians recognize this. Oh, yes, we’ve trodden this path before. I’ll give a few examples shortly.

I caught some of Trump’s characteristically windy speech at the Department of Justice the other day. It was the same as the SOTU and his stump speeches. People are stupid enough to let him mar memorial services and other solemn occasions with the same self-serving bullshit. The same litany of lies, defamations, whinging, racism, hatred of all who are different from him, and bellicosity. And I realized: that’s all he’s capable of doing any more.

We know that in his first term, “Doctor” Ronnie Jackson saw fit to administer the Montreal Cognitive Assessment Test to Trump. It’s a simple fifteen minute test used to set benchmarks for onset or continuing development of dementia and/or Alzheimer’s. It’s not something a doctor would ask of a sitting President of the United States without a damned solid reason. I don’t know if they administered any such test to Reagan in his second term, when his mental decline was becoming evident, but he and his staff were together enough not to blurt it out to the public. Trump actually boasted about it, repeatedly, and never realized that just the fact that someone thought he needed to take such a test raised a whole host of questions.

Age-related dementia is progressive and irreversible. It progresses at various rates, even in individuals, and along with increasing loss of cognitive abilities, it can cause catastrophic personality changes. While it can take people who have been pleasant all their lives and turn them into utter horrid monsters, I’ve never heard of a case where a life-long jerk got compassionate or thoughtful.

Trump is well into dementia, and propped up by his toadies and never held to account, so he’s only going to get worse.

I suspect that’s why Elon Musk has effectively co-opted Trump’s office. He’s a young, vicious, soulless libertarian with his own set of mental problems, exactly what the fascists want, and he’s there to “be” Trump long after Trump has forgotten he’s president.

I repeat. It’s only going to get worse.

There isn’t a country in Europe or Asia that hasn’t seen a peaceful and beneficial land fall to madness and destruction. Indeed, Trump is just an example of such madness that is presently expanding globally: Russia, Iraq, Iran, Hungary, the Philippines, Brazil, the list is getting longer. Eventually fascists/theocrats collapse due to corruption, cruelty and incompetence, but they can cost millions and even tens of millions of lives in the process. Best to avoid it in the first place, but humanity is flawed. As history shows:

An excellent summation of History’s Nine Worst Leaders by Conner Brighton can be found here.

https://www.worldatlas.com/history/history-s-9-worst-leaders.html

I have made light edits for clarity in both excerpts.

Commodus was the son of the previous emperor Marcus Aurelius and had been groomed for the position his whole life. However, despite his father’s best efforts, it would seem as though Commodus was destined for a life of selfishness and cruelty.

From a young age, he was justly hated by those around him for his inflated ego and lack of honor. The resentment held towards Commodus only grew when Marcus Aurelius suddenly died in 180 AD and his son came to power.

At no point throughout his twelve-year reign did Commodus show any concern for the well-being of the empire. He was much too concerned with holding lavish festivals, gladiatorial games, and extravagant parties for himself and the few friends he had in the Roman senate.

Commodus was exceptionally paranoid and routinely had members of his court executed for treason without the smallest shred of evidence. He also built up an obsession with becoming a gladiator himself. Something that was considered unbelievably low class for any decent Roman, let alone an emperor.

He would hold “fights” against other gladiators in a vain effort to prove his combat ability. These contests would of course be rigged in his favor. He never did kill any of his opponents but he was known to slice off the odd ear or nose depending on his mood. Commodus would often claim that he was undefeated in the arena and that there was not a man alive who could beat him…

…Commodus was so bad that his rule would spark an end to the Roman golden age and almost prematurely destroyed the Roman Empire.

If that doesn’t bear a ton of similarities to the tale of Donald Trump, I don’t know what does. I could picture him employing AI to stage gladiator fights between himself and his enemies, real or imagined, with predictably vainglorious results. Or continue what he’s already doing now, which is forwarding the absurdly over-the-top tractor art of him riding a dragon or blessing Jesus or looking compassionate and heroic.

There’s a temptation to compare Trump to the even more notorious Caligula, but Trump seems to have stopped raping virgins, and while he’s sent many jackasses to the Senate, he’s never sent a horse.

Robert Mugabe

Almost as soon as Mugabe took power, the standard of living began to decline drastically [in Zimbabwe]. Access to education and healthcare took an immediate dive. Even access to clean food and drinking water became a struggle.

In 1987 Mugabe declared himself the first-ever executive president. This made Zimbabwe essentially a one-party state in all but name. There were plenty of elections held between 1987 and 2017 but all of them were plagued with accusations of Mugabe using violence and political pressure to rig elections and intimidate would-be opponents from running against him.

Aside from the endless examples of political violence at the hand of Mugabe, perhaps his biggest failure had to do with his handling of the economy. By the early 2000s, Zimbabwe’s once thriving agricultural sector of the 1970s was on life support. A series of droughts and decades-long mismanagement by inexperienced and corrupt officials led to massive food shortages.

By 2008 the nation’s economy was in total freefall with inflation reaching an unheard of 100,000%. Mass unemployment destroyed what was left of the middle class and thousands of Zimbabweans fled for greener pastures in neighboring countries.

Summary

Bad leaders come in all shapes and sizes. Mass killings and genocide are certainly good markers for an evil leader but a poor leader does not always need to be at the same level as Pol Pot or Joseph Stalin to be considered bad.

History is full of heads of state that were either way in over their heads or could simply not be bothered with the unique problems that their nations were dealing with. Perhaps through the study of history, we can spot similar patterns with our leaders in hopes of avoiding the same kinds of tragedies and mishaps in the future.

Connor Brighton July 30 2023 in History

That was just two examples. Monarchies often end up with a succession of bad or foolish leaders. Theocracies always turn awful because they all depend on the most talented snake-oil salesman convincing others that he knows what their silent and invisible god wants. It happens to Republics, of course. Some, like Germany or France, recover, usually at a ruinous cost. Some like Russia, just end up with a succession of bad rulers, no matter what they try. By Russian standards, Putin is actually somewhat benign, and believe me, that’s not saying much. On the rare occasions they get a competent and wise leader, such as Gorbachev, they promptly and utterly collapse despite that leader’s best efforts.

Americans have never been at this point before, and the fact that they have no real history of truly cruel and oppressive leaders makes them more vulnerable to this one. Americans used to see that lack as a strength and proof of the superiority of the Constitutional system. They had to do a lot of white washing to arrive at that conclusion, and America is known in Europe as a country that regrows its virginity on a regular basis. In truth, Americans are no better or no worse than the population of any other land, and like all the other nations that have been faced with imminent disastrous dictatorship, they will find they need to resist and fight the problem before it completely subsumes the land. If they don’t, they face decades of ruin and deprivation.

Will enough Americans see the danger in time?

 

 

 

 

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The Ambush — Senile Man bites visitor

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

March 1st 2025

That Trump is vicious, deceitful and a bully has never been in question. We’ve known that about him for over 40 years, because of his long and tawdry history of cheating contractors, mistreating employees and renters, endless scams (including bilking a children’s cancer charity), humiliating wives, and general lechery. The man is, and always has been, a pig.

He’s also incompetent. He lost more money in business in the 20th century than any other American businessman, and only his willingness to lie, cheat and steal kept him afloat. Casinos are almost a license to print money—he bankrupted all four that he owned.

He has no respect or use for family, friends or allies. He turns on them with monotonous regularity, and it’s no accident that his most vociferous critics are family members, former associates, employees, members of his administration, and supporters. I don’t include friends in that group since I doubt he has ever experienced friendship. Petless his entire life, it’s no surprise that he feels no need for human contact other than commercial sex.

He is and always has been a hateful, loathsome, despicable man, and the fact that he not only is tolerated but thrives in our society is a deep condemnation of American social values and principles.

I’ve known this about him for decades. That’s going back to his wild public fling with Marla Maples, when I saw the expression on the face of his wife—the one now buried in an unmarked grave on one of his golf courses.

So even though I was appalled at the cheap and thuggish ambush of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy yesterday, I was totally unsurprised. He had to put on a show for the only man he regards as his better, Vladimir Putin (he even snuck a “reporter” in from the Russian propaganda outlet TASS to record the ambush for Putin’s entertainment). He also had to appeal to his dwindling band of flying monkeys, the group of so-called Americans who cheer Trump and revere him as some sort of cheap Jesus figure. Including, of course, the cowardly, treasonous Republicans who are selling out their country in the vain hope of currying favor with a man who almost certainly will turn on them when they are no longer of any use. He has given Congress “battered wife syndrome.”

You can find videos all over the net of the seven minute meeting, and see it for yourself. It won’t be pleasant—not if you have any pride or self-respect, or care even faintly about your country.

For America, it was one of the lowest points in her history. For Trump, it was just another Friday.

But almost missing in the mountain of coverage is one of the most alarming elements in his display, the open and increasingly unstable dementia. Raving about his predecessor in office who armed Ukraine in the wake of the Russian invasion in 2018, he repeatedly referred to him as Obama. Not Biden. Obama. He also said ridiculous things, such as that Ukraine attacked Russia, or that the US gave Ukraine $350 billion, although that might just have been his characteristic Hitleresque lies, rather than senility.

He had one of his toadies on some right wing blog attack Zelenskyy for his non-business suit garb, saying it disrespected the Oval Office—the same Oval Office where Elon Musk in his goofy “Tech Support” Tee Shirt stood not three days earlier.

He did immense damage to the United States, and has placed the US squarely in the realm of pariah nations—those with regimes like Putin’s, or Xi’s, or Kim’s—places too unstable and too inimical to American interests to be trusted.

But the senility showed up again later, when he pardoned Pete Rose. Apparently he thinks pardoning Rose will allow him to enter baseball’s hall of fame. Rose did have a criminal record: he pled guilty in 1991 to failing to disclose taxable income. He had to pay the taxes owed, serve five months in a resort prison, and do community service. It was unrelated to his MLB woes. I’m not sure Trump even knew Rose had that criminal record (I had very nearly forgotten it myself) but he apparently was pardoning him from being banned from the HoF. Which, of course, he doesn’t have authority to do.

It may actually help Rose, though, because far too many of the baseball owners are cut from the same cloth of cowardice and servility that stain the American character in the face of wealth and power. So Rose may get inducted as a result, and even though I feel he should be inducted myself, under these circumstances I think it would add, rather than absolve, the air of disgrace around Rose. He’s lucky he’s dead.

Trump also made the fiat declaration that English is the official language of the US. Again, he doesn’t have the authority to do that, but I’m sure there are endless Nazi bigots in state legislatures avid to declare the speaking of any language other than English illegal. “Did I hear you say ‘tête-à-tête’? You’re for the camps, you furrin asshole!” I wonder if dialects are illegal too? Is Scotty from Star Trek breaking the law in our new world ordure?

This all comes in the middle of a massive dismantling of the United States, so in the end it may not matter, because by the time he’s done with us, the US will just be another third world shithole and it won’t matter what he says or does because we’ll all be dead, in the camps, or terrified into utter silence.

Unless, of course people start growing some angry self respect and love of country, and start growing it NOW.

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The United States versus America — The time is coming to choose sides

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

February 19th, 2025

I picked up a follower on Blue Sky the other day (I must be in double digits by now!) whose page reveled in his love of country and patriotism. He had pictures of himself in uniform, along with pictures of wheat fields and sunsets and dogs and all the other things that make America special in the eyes of hyper-patriots.

Nothing to take offense to, but I was mildly curious. I’m skeptical of hyperpatriotism for the same reasons I’m skeptical of overt religiosity or guys who scream about “impure women” or whatever. All are signs of fundamentalism, a mental disorder I’m at best uncomfortable around. My writings and posts don’t attract such people, other than the ones who want to scream about what a degenerate I am. One of the nice things about Blue Sky is that people like that tend to weed themselves out in pretty short order.

But I was curious. What did my new-found friend think about events over the past month? I scrolled through his past few weeks of posts. Not one word about any current event: nothing about the abandonment of Ukraine, or a psychopathic South African billionaire and his pock-faced juvenile delinquents rummaging through all the national secrets and finances. Nothing about the immense damage Trump has already inflicted on the country, both domestically and in foreign affairs.

I didn’t block or mute the guy, but I did elect to not follow him back. (Some people think the number of followers they have validates them, and that’s fine. I measure my reach by the number of people I elect to follow BACK. This eliminates all the people who want to sell me land, drugs, or bitcoin, the illuminati, or who want to sex me all night long for the cost of a penicillin shot.)

The polls show that Trump’s popularity is dropping at over 2% a week, which in the ideologically rigid present state of public opinion represents a vast and momentous shit. His polls on the economy have dropped 12% in two weeks, even though the economy really hasn’t reacted to his policies. But many idiots still measure the economy by the price of eggs, which is like picking the Superbowl winner by which mound of corn a chicken pecks at first. And the price of eggs is skyrocketing as bird flu decimates the laying hens.

The malicious ineptitude of the TrumpenMusk regime is starting to percolate through all the propaganda from newspits like Newsmax or the Washington Post. All the redcap morons are starting to realize they really mean the stuff they said in Project 2025, and do hope to wipe out medicare and social security and shift ALL the tax burden to the lower class while they totally raid the entire nation’s wealth. Right now they just see it in them cutting programs that matter to them; day care, product safety regulations, conservation, etc. In short, all the millions of things government actually does because it’s far cheaper and more efficient than the private sector could possibly manage.

For many years, the right wing has promoted the silly notion that you are a patriot if you love America but want to get rid of the United States. Instead of “United States” of course they say “government” and they lie constantly about how the government is wasteful (it is, but so are corporations; but a lot of their operations are ‘proprietary’ and so they aren’t transparent or responsive to public interest, and unfortunately it’s been nearly 250 years since Americans had to deal with power centers that were unresponsive to the public interest.) Government is oppressive, evil, eats kittens, yada, yada, yada.

What they don’t understand (and are prevented from understanding) is that the United States, the thing that makes America special, IS the Constitution, and the government which it founded. The separation of powers, the mandated responsiveness to the people, the protection of the oppressed, the Bill of Rights – that is what the United States is. That is what the rest of the world envied. Not fields and dogs and sunsets, because every fucking country in the world has those, and some are prettier. Without the United States, America is just another patch of land filled with squabbling and destitute peasants, no better than most and worse than some.

The Constitution—the heart and soul of the United States—exists with the express purpose of using government to defend the people from the depredations of banks, aristocrats, and churches. While it has had an imperfect record with these, it worked well enough to make America the greatest of nations for a long, long time.

Trump and Musk are the vile faces of an evil consortium of fundamentalist churches, rapacious corporations, and vicious plutocrats—all the evils men like Jefferson and Madison wanted to free the citizenry from. The reason Trump and Musk are dismantling government isn’t to save the taxpayers money—they have zero interest in that, and quite the opposite, in fact. They want to create a power vacuum and fill it themselves, and put every public need on a “make it pay” basis. Instead of a not-for-profit service such as social security or medicare, they want to run it on a 30% markup, and regard the actual services as outlays that need to be minimized for the sake of profit.

We’re rapidly approaching a point where all the dog and sunset-loving cardboard patriots have to decide if they love a rapidly diminishing America, or want to fight for the United States.

I know which line they may cross: when they declare that they are no longer obliged to observe court rulings. That’s where I begin to advocate the overthrow of Musk and Trump by any means possible. At that point, they are outlaw, and enemies of the United States.

If people want to keep the America they love, they may well have to take up arms on behalf of the United States.

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The Wednesday Night Massacre — The battle between Trump and America is joined

The Wednesday Night Massacre

The battle between Trump and America is joined

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

February 14th, 2025

Some of you may remember the Saturday Night Massacre. It was the turning point of the Watergate scandal in 1973, when it was revealed that Richard Nixon had taped his conversations in the Oval Office—which would likely include conversations pertaining to the break-in at Democratic Headquarters in the Watergate hotel and subsequent conversations about the cover-up of the crime and possible White House complicity.

The special prosecutor investigating the case, Archibald Cox, promptly issued a subpoena for the tapes. Nixon refused, and ordered Cox to drop the subpoena. Cox refused. Nixon then ordered the Attorney General, Elliot Richardson, to fire Cox. Richardson refused and resigned. Nixon then ordered the assistant attorney general, William Ruckelshaus, to fire Cox. He refused and resigned. Finally, Nixon found a willing toady in the contemptible Robert Bork who said, in effect, oh, hey, master, no problem! Cox is gone. Bork went on to become a hero to the morally bankrupt conservative movement, even getting nominated to the Supreme Court before people remembered who he was.

The fiasco pretty much sealed Nixon’s fate. Americans hadn’t yet been subjected to 50 years of right wing propaganda designed to erode their confidence in democracy, freedom, justice and themselves. They realized that Nixon’s behavior was not that of an unjustly accused president, and his support plummeted.

Now here we are not one month into the most criminally capricious and ethically destitute administration in US history, and an even bigger massacre has taken place.

Eric Adams is the mayor of New York City, and he is a piece of work. He was, at best, a shady cop for many years, and rose to captain. He retired, got elected to the state senate, then became Brooklyn borough president, and then ran for mayor, winning handily against an inept vigilante.

Adams’ ethics, if he ever had any, vanished, and by 2024 he had been indicted on federal charges of bribery, fraud, and soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations. He was the first mayor to face federal charges while still in office.

Then Trump got elected, and set about destroying rule of law. After Matt Gaetz flamed out, he picked his second-best alternative, Pam Bondi, to run the Justice Department. (Yes, she was sloppy seconds to Matt Gaetz, so don’t get your hopes up.) The DoJ immediately became what Trump claimed it was when it was prosecuting him: corrupt, incompetent, and politicized. (Trump ALWAYS accuses others of being what he is himself).

Trump needed scapegoats who couldn’t fight back to blame the country’s problems upon, and immigrants are his version of the Jews under Hitler. He was delighted that Eric Adams shared his views and wished to punish people in order to make it look patriotic. Eric Adams wouldn’t be much use in prison. So he told Bondi to make the charges go away, just like he did with hundreds awaiting trial for January 6th, and she passed word down to one of her flunkies, Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, to make the case go away. Emil, no hero, passed word down to one Danielle Renee Sassoon, who was appointed the acting US Attorney for the Southern District of New York by Trump just the month before. Bove claimed that the charges against Adams, a Democrat, were politically motivated. (The charges were brought under Merrick Garland during the Biden Administration.) Bove no doubt presumed that Sassoon would be as corrupt, nuts and/or servile as all Trump’s other appointments.

Well, turns out she isn’t.

She wrote a seven page letter detailing why she could not follow Bove’s orders to drop the case against Adams, and resigned effective immediately. Starting to sound familiar?

It turned into an avalanche. According to an MSN report, “According to a person briefed on the matter, after Sassoon refused to dismiss the case, the Trump administration directed John Keller, the acting head of the Justice Department’s public corruption unit, to do so.

“Keller also resigned on Thursday, two people familiar with the matter said. Kevin Driscoll, a senior official in the department’s criminal division, has also resigned, one of the people said.

“Three other deputies in the Justice Department’s public corruption unit – Rob Heberle, Jenn Clarke, and Marco Palmieri – also resigned on Thursday over the orders to dismiss the Adams case, a person familiar with the matter said.”

Wow. This already makes the Saturday Night Massacre look like an office spat over nuking popcorn in the microwave and stinking up the place. Seven resignations on principle, and counting.

An army of skunks couldn’t stink up the place the way Trump has.

More resignations are expected as all the decent people get out, leaving the Justice Department (and our dependence on a fair and just legal system) in the hands of obedient strutting swine and toadies. Good luck, America. I’ll probably end up in Gitmo for writing this.

Mind you, the massacre 52 years ago took place when lack of evidence made the entire Watergate case a matter of “he said she said.” Many people sided with Nixon in good faith. That’s not the case here.

Bove’s order to Sassoon made it clear that there was a fiddle in the case. Again, according to MSN: “Sassoon said the memo Bove wrote directing the case be dropped makes clear Adams is being granted leniency in exchange for assisting the federal government with its immigration priorities, citing a meeting Jan. 31 that she, Bove, Adams’s attorney and members of her office attended.

‘Adams’s attorneys repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo, indicating that Adams would be in a position to assist with the Department’s enforcement priorities only if the indictment were dismissed,’ Sassoon said in the letter Wednesday.”

Rachel Maddow reported that the order was to dismiss the charges against Adams “without prejudice” which, Maddow explained, meant that they were to be suspended rather than dropped entirely, and would be left hanging over Adams’ head for as long as he was in office and carrying out Trump’s pogrom against immigrants for him. No hint of coercion there, right?

It’s been 52 years since the Saturday Night Massacre. Since then, Americans have been subjected to a half century of endless propaganda designed to erode American confidence in democracy, freedom, justice and self-respect. The Massacre effectively ended Nixon. Will this end Trump? With a corrupt Court and servile, cringing Republican congress? Will the public finally rise up against this criminal?

When the right decided to avenge Watergate and end the American experiment, they probably didn’t think it would culminate in Donald Trump, already known back then as a vicious and unreliable clown.

But their cause is a broken and twisted one, so it’s no surprise their hirelings are broken and twisted people.

All the decent people in the Justice Department are getting out. What remains are swine and lower than swine.

Good luck to all of us

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Springtime for Trumpie and USA — Winter for … well, everybody

Springtime for Trumpie and USA

Winter for … well, everybody

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

January 19th 2025

It really does feel like March 1933, doesn’t it? Hitler has just seized power. In America, the country is teetering on the verge of collapse, and a dozen states are no longer accepting US currency, opting for state script instead. A third of the banks have collapsed, and millions are starving, desperate, homeless. The Republicans are saying the poor are refusing to buy food or pay rent in order to punish the rich. A new guy, an affable and seemingly shallow New York pol named Roosevelt is about to be inaugurated, and the same people beating their breasts over starving children refusing to keep millionaires comfortable are warning the country will collapse, banks will fail, and people will suffer greatly—just like they did under Republicans, only they leave that last bit out and hope nobody notices. Meanwhile, Japan has expanded over much of west Asia and is making little effort to conceal its plans for the Philippines, Indonesia, and even Australia.

We’re at about January 1933 if the parallels hold up. Things are bad and look to get far worse in the near future.

American voters were seduced by an unholy coalition of plutocrats and zealots, who gleefully encouraged people to be their worst. Hate immigrants, gay and trans people, liberals, non-Christians and anyone with a good education. They believe such ridiculous lies as immigrants have a higher crime rate and eat people’s cats and dogs; gays and trans are forcing children to have sex-change operations in secret, liberals want us all to live in caves and hug trees, and non-Christians are completely amoral and most are terrorists. And worst of all, the educated sneer at morons and use big words. It’s why flat earthers hate astrophysicists.

It’s not really a surprise that a crowd like that would vomit up a con artist, a rapist, a philanderer and a felon to the oval office—again. What is shocking is that there are so many Low People (as Stephen King once famously referred to them as) that they could do it. I think a lot of fundamentalists are correct that only God can make people good. Take anyone who thinks that only an invisible, silent sky pixie in his head stops him from stealing, raping, cheating and killing, and give him permission to be a scumbag in the name of god and country, and you end up with a depressingly large number of scumbags.

How low? Well, look at the politicians who watched the Los Angeles fires and thought to themselves, “Hey, I can use that to blackmail the country into doing what I want!” Sure, they’ll provide aid. But they want … conditions.

It’s about as low as an American politician can possibly sink. Donald Trump is one of those politicians, of course, but that’s no surprise. There are mob bosses, serial killers and CEOs with more principles and decency. A lot of it comes from states that California has sent many billions of dollars helping after disasters, such as Florida. Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Scumsuckers) said, “I believe that if a state is so grossly mismanaged that the initial disaster is not quickly contained, then we have a responsibility to do common-sense things.” OK, but remember your whole fucking state is going to be underwater by the end of the century, and you’ll be begging for our help. “Rebuild maybe so that the conditions are such that the threat from fire is lessened so that we won’t have to do it again,” added Rep. Carlos Giménez (R-Mewling Hypocrites). Have you asked California for aid in hardening your structures against hurricanes, Carly? Oh, and what’s your stance on immigrants? Ready to throw those whiny ungrateful Cubans out?

At least Florida, like California, contributes more in revenues to the country then it gets back. It’s small compared to the $85-120 billion California overpays, but at least Florida carries its own weight. The loudest whiners come from pauper states that take far more than they give back. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Blub blub blub), a shell of a man emptied by toxic religion and subservience to Donald Trump, indignantly demands conditions. Say, Mike, how much did California demand in return for helping after Katrina? Or any of the other dozens of catastrophes your state has suffered?

Gavin Newsom said of Trump last year, “Everything was a transaction against his own citizens.”

Indeed. Well, expect more of that. Trump is out to punish anyone who didn’t vote for him. States, individuals, it doesn’t matter. He feels victimized because people hate him for being a hateful person, and he is out for revenge. It’s all very noble, you know.

But Trump and his followers have various weaknesses to exploit. The MAGAts and zealots are of a fundamentalist mindset, and are rapidly developing factions and schisms over such issues as whether there are “good immigrants” versus the regular kind, or how much government should be destroyed. (Most, but far from all, are smart enough to want to keep the parts of government they benefit from.) Those can be exploited. The billionaires have a united front right now, but wait until they start seeing others getting favored treatment, whether they actually are or not.

And finally, Trump himself has myriad weaknesses. He’s vain and cowardly. He just moved his inauguration inside and semi-private, supposedly because of cold weather (24F, or -5C, but who could have guessed it would be cold in January?) but I suspect he feared a small crowd would be there, or worse, a large unfriendly crowd from the 100,000 strong demonstration held two days before. He also doesn’t hesitate to screw over his helpers and followers. He’s infamous for that. Tens of thousands of people spend large amounts of money-in some cases life savings—to bear witness to his glorious restoration to the throne, only to have him cancel just 36 hours prior. Even the given reason was stupid. And threatening America’s best allies seems like a really dumb idea, especially given the quality of the few “world leaders” who do support him in Russia, China, Hungary or North Korea.

And you’re seen the quality of his cabinet and other position nominees. You could find a better collection of people in the county drunk tank on a Saturday night with a full moon. Criminals, bankrupts, white supremacists, conspiracy nuts and fools. It’s like each was made from a shaving off Donald Trump himself.

Lastly, there’s Trump’s competence. Or lack thereof. His followers are going to be very upset that many of his “first day” promises are vaporware, idiot ideas aimed at angry morons. His followers, as is usually the case, will be the first to get hit by his supposed brainstorms. Pissing off an angry, ignorant mob that has already been artificially riled up by propaganda seems like a really dumb idea.

As for the rest of us, resist in any way possible. Be rude. Be firm. Make life as difficult as possible for these idiots. And maybe we can salvage the country by doing so.

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Cry Havoc! — And let slip the war of dogs!

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

January 3rd, 2025

For those of you familiar with Marc Antony’s speech in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, no, I didn’t transpose the famous quote. This isn’t a mustering of the troops. This is just an avoidable dog fight amongst mangy curs scrapping over carrion.

I’m referring to the opening day of the 119th House of Representatives. The second order of business (after the quorum call) is the vote to select a new Speaker. Mike Johnson (R-Self-Styled Christians Who Worship Trump) is the current Speaker—for now. A weak man stuck in an impossible situation, he’s been the least effective Speaker since the antebellum era, the last time the nation has been so divided by sectionalism. The Democrats, at least, are taking it seriously. Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who fractured her hip and had it replaced last month, is there. They know there is an outside chance that in all the chaos, they could end up in control of the House. At the very least, they can enjoy the spectacle of the Republicans self-destructing. The margin Republicans enjoy in the House is one vote. And at least one Republican, Thomas Massie (R-Screaming Right Wing Loons) has indicated to kindred soul Matt Gaetz (former R-Pedophiles, now OANN flack) that he would not be supporting Johnson. Colorfully. “You can pull all my fingernails out; you can shove bamboo up in them; you can start cutting off my fingers…I am not voting for Mike Johnson tomorrow, and you can take that to the bank.” OK, let’s put him down as a tentative no vote. A new complicating factor is Chip Roy (R-Mean Texas Bigots) who wants to be in charge of the Rules Committee. The MAGA coalition allow that if Johnson endorses Roy for that role, it might bring the non-Massey coalition in line and put Johnson over the top. However, the other 150 members of the GOP caucus who aren’t completely insane aren’t impressed. Don Bacon from Nebraska told the press, “Putting Chip Roy in charge of the rules committee is like putting Stalin in charge of amnesty and diplomacy.” This puts Johnson in an impossible situation—support the loathsome Roy and risk losing non-MAGA Republicans, or reject him, which would probably cost him three or four MAGA votes, perhaps more. Well, hee-whack. He didn’t support Roy, to his faint credit. Massie voted for the 118th House Majority Whip, Tom Emmer, so Johnson’s margin is zero. Why am I paying such close attention to this? Well, without a House Speaker, the new Congress, whose members were sworn in earlier today, cannot convene. Until they have selected the Speaker, the only thing they can do under the Constitution is select a new Speaker. They don’t officially exist until that happens. …and Representative Ralph Norman of South Carolina just voted for House Republican Gym Jordan (R-Men’s Shower Room). Right. Cry havoc, indeed. Havoc is a neat word. It means either “wide and general destruction” or “great confusion and disorder.” The GOP have just implemented the second meaning of the term. Congress is paralyzed. They can’t certify Donnie as President. For starters. I’m wondering what happens on the 20th if Donnie still hasn’t been certified. Trump himself realizes it’s a very important formality—he staged an insurrection to try to prevent Biden from being certified almost four years ago. I’m sure folks remember. This is the third go-around where the GOP have imploded over picking a speaker. It took 15 votes to get Mike Johnson, a relative unknown, into office that last time. Almost two weeks. That takes us very close to January 20th, you know? Living where I do, I know any number of idiots who opine that the United States would be better off without a government. Or they want a government in charge of cops and the military and nothing else, thus owing nothing to the people. Every so often I point out that if government spending is the heart of the economy, keeping the blood flowing, then governance is the brain. The United States without a government, one responsible to the people, is just another shit hole country like Russia or Hungary, and at worse is a vast anarchy like Somalia. It would fly apart, and there’s maybe ten states with the economic might and diversity to survive as sovereign nations. Most of the red states would be economic basket cases without the support of the nation. The MAGAts, who love America but hate the United States, may be taking us on the first step along that path. I’ve suggested this before, and now I’ll do so again: if just five Republicans cross the aisle, and become Democrats, this would not only provide the country with a functional Congress, but blunt the horrors that Trump hopes to visit upon us. He’d threaten to primary them like he does, but as Dems, they would be facing a Republican in the next election anyway. It’s unlikely to happen, but if enough simply abstain from voting at some point in the Speaker votes to come, Hakeem Jeffries could take over, and the country can remain functional. Trump is bad. Anarchy with Trump pretending to be president would be even worse.
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Solstice 2024 — Expiry dates and the Cassandra Effect

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

December 21st, 2024

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Science may not have a hard-and-fast rule that stipulates when hominids became truly human, but if it was up to me, I would say it was the first a hominid raised his fists in the air and shouted, “We are all DOOMED!” Now, granted, science may find that a bit unhelpful, since nobody can say when the first doom-shouter arose, but they have been an inextricable part of humanity since it became overcooked apes.

“The end is nigh” may be a popular pastime with us somewhat-evolved monkeys, and the real allure lies in the fact that if you shout it long enough, you’ll eventually be right. All things end. Look upon my works and despair. We are but mortal. Even the Universe has an expiry date.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with doom-shouting, of course. Oh, you won’t get invited to many parties and your kids will tell you the music in your day was also crap, but often such shouts warn of clear, present, and avoidable dangers. Things such as overpopulation, climate change, nuclear proliferation and pandemics are very real and even existential threats.

One drawback to doom-shouting is that the shouter will encounter the Cassandra effect. Cassandra was an ancient Greek soothsayer who was always right, but cursed because nobody ever believed her. Part of it is because most people are at least mildly optimistic. There are the incurable Panglossians, (aka “idiots”) who see everything through rose-coloured lenses, and the deterministic optimists (my group) who acknowledge the dangers and threats but think we can work our way through them. We’re also idiots, but a good deal less starry-eyed about it.

Most doom shouters are full of crap, of course. Humanity did not end because of cats, communists, Elvis, or rap music. Religious texts are big on “End of Days,” leading to endless trouble because of nitwits who interpret it to mean it is Divine Will they bring about the End of Days, but those texts are uniformly a load of crap, too. Too many people believe if you pile bullshit high enough, it becomes worthy of worship. Another sign of humanity, I suppose.

Which brings us to the here-and-now. America has willingly swallowed poison, and we’re all waiting to see if it was a lethal dose, or if America will end up puking it up and feeling really bad for a long time after.

For those of us currently living in the US who aren’t part of the One Percent, we’re in for hard times. There’s a very real possibility that America as we know it won’t exist by Solstice 2025. Class-based coups are always ugly, and those staged by the aristocracy tend to be even crueler and bloodier, and often throw the host nation into third-world poverty. And that, in a nutshell, is what has happened in America.

My brand of optimism doesn’t believe that the course of human events is on an inevitably downward path. If that were true, I believe history would have come to a close at the gates of Auschwitz.
No human force is truly inexorable, no matter how powerful it seems. The USSR was one of the most brutal and pervasive regimes in history, but when the government lost even the passive consensual support of the people, it collapsed relatively bloodlessly in a matter of weeks. It wasn’t a one-off. Ask Assad—his mail is being forwarded to Moscow now.

Our would-be masters, no matter how arrogant or brutal, absolutely depend upon our support. Without it, they will fall. Remember that. A national strike and millions in the streets peacefully protesting, can end them. It’s up to us. It is always up to us. Be prepared to resist.

How will the world do? We seem to be undergoing a world-wide convulsion and shifting, one that seems to happen every ninety years or so (the 1930s, the 1840s, the 1760s). Each brought about strife, loss, and bloodshed, but in the end the overall lot of humanity improved. That’s important to remember—the next decade might be fairly crappy, but history suggests a better life for the survivors.

The existential threats I mention above will still be with us. They are, after all, reiterations of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Nothing new under our sun. And while its possible that one or more of them may raise up to decimate us, I doubt any will end us. For all that we seem hell-bent on self-obliteration, there’s always some sort of built-in override that causes enough of us to dig in our heels and save us from ourselves. Overall, pollution isn’t as bad as it was fifty years ago. A lower percentage of people died in warfare in the 20th century than in any century going back to the 14th century. (Admittedly, those are low bars.)

We’ve managed to live under the nuclear threat for eighty years now. We aren’t likely to see a pandemic that will kill off a third of us like the one in the 17th century. Over-population was seen as an intractable and inevitable doom fifty years ago. But our birthrate is declining world wide. (Due, in part, to the aforementioned pollution. Details, details.)

Even climate change may encounter built-in natural governors of the sort that prevented Earth in the past from becoming another Venus, or allowed it to come back at least three times from a state of “Snowball Earth.”

How will we fare? Um, well, let’s just say the Earth is considerably more durable than we are. But existential threats mean existential reckonings. We may yet find ways to avoid the worst of the consequences we’ve laid out for ourselves.

I believe, and will always believe, that we will somehow muddle through, and even prevail.

Why would we persevere, if not for the fact that most of us believe that?

It’s Winter Solstice 2024.

The wolf didn’t eat the sun. It will return.

Don’t lose hope. Never lose hope.

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