“Out of all the sins of the Trump administration — wars, ICE raids, anti-vax lunacy and the return of measles, the empowering of Kash Patel and Stephen Miller, and so much more — Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy declaring war on “DEI bike lanes” is surely a small thing. But it’s also such a monumentally stupid act, so counterproductive, so anti-MAHA as to be completely maddening. NPR recently reported that staff at the Federal Highway Administration have been asked to purge any references to bikes and bike lanes from the agency’s website.“
Wait. What? DEI bike lanes?
“What bike lanes have to do with DEI is unclear. Likely this is the Biden administration’s fault for some admittedly political language touting the infrastructure bill’s grants. The Biden team announced they would “consider how projects can address climate change, ensure racial equity, and remove barriers to opportunity.” Which could be seen as lofty goals when many Americans were desperate for pot hole and bridge repairs. But that’s not really the issue here. If the Biden people were for something, then the Trump people must always be against it. This is a ridiculous calculus, counterproductive, and why voters are so sick and tired of our broken political system.”
I guess the assumption is that bikes are for poor people (and if you ever price check bikes, not even electric ones you will see how ridiculous this is), and therefore DEI, because we all know that poor people are not our kind (as rich white people used to politely say when being racist and /or classist).
Car-driving commuters say that one less person on the road makes their commutes better.
Seattle drivers are notoriously passive-aggressive and openly hostile to bikers at least according to bicyclists. And even the bike-riding hoards agree that our bike lanes are dangerous the way that they share the road with cars. A single car door opening inopportunely can send a biker to the hospital or morgue and turning right on red lights without looking for bikes is probably even worse.
So maybe better bike lanes might be something for Sean Duffy to think about the next time he gets in his behemoth RV for another taxpayer-funded Road Trip? Bikes are not going away nor are cars so maybe Duffy can see this as an opportunity to improve commutes or just getter around for everyone. The more people out of cars, the better and the funner:
“[My bike] gave me the freedom to not only get to places, but to access things that otherwise would have been out of reach. Even now, riding a bike makes me feel like a kid again. There’s nothing like feeling the air on your face and that freedom to just ride.”
We’re more than five hundred and fifty goddamn days into Season Two of The Donald Trump Shit Show: five hundred and fifty rancid episodes of a renewal nobody with a frontal lobe, pulse, or functioning remote control fucking ordered.
More than five hundred and fifty days of Cabinet sycophants mistaking ass-kissing for a résumé, billionaire boot-lickers marinating in oligarch gravy, political whores and donor-purchased meat puppets who couldn’t organize a two-car funeral procession, an economy stapled together with tariff grease and warm bureaucratic sludge, foreign policy conducted like a drunk Craigslist handjob, and a Republican Congress so spineless, supine, and erotically devoted to voluntary vertebrae extraction it should come with satin pillows, a drool bib, and a little bedside bell.
Everything is going spectacularly, catastrophically, Titan-submersible wrong.
And yet… somehow… through a feat of chronological acrobatics so strenuous it would make a Cirque du Soleil contortionist rupture three discs and reconsider their career choices…
It is still Joe Biden’s fault.
Trump appoints another gloriously unqualified dipshit whose only discernible qualification is a willingness to clap like a trained seal every time the Great Orange Sleep Apnea Pumpkin waddles into the room?
You guessed it… Biden.
These are Trump’s judges. Trump’s Cabinet. Trump’s economy. Every screwup, every scandal, every own goal, every international humiliation, every bureaucratic tire fire bears his fingerprints like a wet slab of cement somebody staggered across on their way out of a bar.
And yet…
The economy? Joe Biden.
Grocery prices? Joe Biden.
Inflation running hotter than every other country in the G7 after Trump was handed one of the strongest recoveries on the planet? Somehow… Joe Biden.
Trump slaps tariffs on everything that isn’t bolted to the fucking floor, lights global supply chains on fire with a blowtorch and a Sharpie, and suddenly your eggs cost the GDP of a small island nation?
At this point Donald Trump could back a golf cart into the Lincoln Memorial, declare war on the moon, appoint a decorative gourd as Secretary of Defense, and accidentally staple his own necktie to a Cabinet secretary, and within thirty-seven seconds some Republican congressman would sprint to the closest television camera, veins bulging like overcooked bratwurst, to explain that the real culprit here was Joe Biden.
Hell, Barack Obama still catches stray bullets from this asshole’s excuse factory. I’m genuinely surprised he hasn’t blamed Jimmy Carter for dropped calls, Abraham Lincoln for airline baggage fees, and Ulysses S. Grant for the fact that his Diet Coke keeps going flat.
Because the buck doesn’t stop with Donald Trump.
The buck files the paperwork to change its name, crosses state lines, assumes a half-dozen fake identities, and hires Todd Blanche to argue it never existed at all.
Remember during COVID, when that slack-jawed blame vacuum turned every White House briefing into another round of Presidential Pin the Blame on Literally Anybody Else.
China.
Democratic governors.
The media.
Anthony Fauci.
Blue states.
Windmills.
Anybody with a heartbeat and a name tag.
Anybody except the wheezing, blame-hoarding huckster standing behind the presidential seal. That bloated, grievance-gargling gasbag. That self-pitying, self-fellating monument to unearned mediocrity and industrial-strength narcissism. The only man in recorded history who wants all the authority of the White House, all the applause, all the parades, all the credit, all the fucking paintings, but reacts to accountability the way a vampire reacts to sunlight.
That’s not leadership.
That’s a toddler wearing enough bargain-bin polyester to shade a county fair livestock pavilion who still thinks “I know you are, but what am I?” is a governing philosophy.
Has there ever been a bigger whiner? A more prolific pissbaby? A more decorated professional victim in the recorded annals of human civilization? Somewhere on the wall of a cave in France there’s a thirty-thousand-year-old painting of one hunter pointing at another guy after the mammoth got away, and even that prehistoric buck-passer would take one look at Donald Trump, rub some charcoal off his hands, and mutter, “Jesus Christ, man… just take the fucking L.”
Not me.
Not mine.
I didn’t do it.
It was the other guy.
The election was stolen.
The virus came from somewhere else.
The economy would’ve been perfect if not for…
Fill in the fucking blank.
Because there’s always another villain. Always another sacrificial goat waiting patiently in the wings, powdered, pressed, and camera-ready for the moment this scapegoat-collecting bullshit artist needs a warm body to eat the fallout.
Donald Trump doesn’t solve problems.
He outsources blame.
It’s the one promise he’s never broken.
This is an eighty-year-old head of state. The President of the United States. And this… this is what passes for leadership in MAGA world: an overgrown fucking toddler who won’t cop to coloring all over the living room wall while he’s still standing there, diaper sagging under the gravitational pull of his own horseshit, clutching the fucking Sharpie in one fist and jabbing a finger at the babysitter with the other, swearing on his mother’s grave the dog learned cursive.
Leadership isn’t planting yourself behind a podium to gorge on applause when things go right and then vaporizing into a noxious fog of denials the second reality comes collecting its debt.
Leadership is ownership.
Leadership is possessing the vertebrae, the intestinal fortitude, the basic fucking decency to say, “This happened on my watch, and I’m responsible for fixing it.”
Donald Trump treats accountability like it’s a process server carrying child-support papers and an IRS auditor with a battering ram rolled into one. The instant it lumbers into his ZIP code, he’s already halfway over the back fence, bathrobe flapping, hair meringue listing to port, shrieking, sniveling, sputtering, and blame-spewing into the night that it was China, or Joe Biden, or the fucking wind, leaving behind nothing but a banging screen door, a chemical contrail of Aqua Net and spray tan, and the unmistakable stench of cowardice marinated in cheap vanity.
He inherited an economy moving in the right direction the first time. He inherited an economy moving in the right direction the second time. Both fucking times, he wrapped those bruised, blotchy, burger-greased little mitts around the wheel, mashed the accelerator with all the foresight of a drunken lawn mower, and steered us straight toward the nearest fiscal fucking sinkhole.
That’s on him.
He owns every market convulsion, every boardroom anxiety attack, every supply-chain migraine, every economic aftershock flowing directly from the policies he chose.
He also owns an obscene share of our national debt. Across just a term and a half, he racked up roughly twenty-eight percent of all the red ink accumulated since the founding of the republic. In a nation that’s been keeping books since powdered wigs and quill pens.
He did that.
He owns that.
And yet…
Still Joe Biden.
Barack Obama is not the president. Joe Biden is not the president. Donald Trump is the president. The economy you’re living in today? That’s him. The appointments. The pardons. The purges. The priorities. The consequences. Every signature. Every wound he carved into this country himself.
His.
At some point the training wheels come off, the alibis expire, and you either govern or you don’t.
Unless your name is Donald Trump, in which case every disaster arrives with a laminated list of alternate suspects ready for whichever quivering, expendable toady draws the short straw and gets shoved in front of the cameras.
The buck never stops with Donald Trump.
It never even slows the fuck down.
If he stubs his fucking toe, it’s Joe Biden’s coffee table. If he bites his tongue, it’s Joe Biden’s teeth. If he gets a paper cut, it’s Joe Biden’s envelope.
I genuinely believe we are two weeks, three tops, from that incontinent insult to upholstery shitting his pants on a tarmac, staring down in bewilderment like his own ass just staged a coup, and demanding a congressional investigation into Joe Biden’s role in Operation Brown Thunder. There’ll be hearings. Fox will book a gastroenterologist. Jim Jordan will subpoena a pair of Dockers. Todd Blanche will insist the underwear was weaponized by the radical left.
Anybody except the wheezing, blame-hoarding huckster standing behind the presidential seal. That bloated, grievance-gargling gasbag. That self-pitying, self-fellating monument to unearned mediocrity and industrial-strength narcissism. The only man in recorded history who wants all the authority of the White House, all the applause, all the parades, all the credit, all the fucking paintings, but reacts to accountability the way a vampire reacts to sunlight.
That’s not leadership.
That’s a toddler wearing enough bargain-bin polyester to shade a county fair livestock pavilion who still thinks “I know you are, but what am I?” is a governing philosophy.
Has there ever been a bigger whiner? A more prolific pissbaby? A more decorated professional victim in the recorded annals of human civilization? Somewhere on the wall of a cave in France there’s a thirty-thousand-year-old painting of one hunter pointing at another guy after the mammoth got away, and even that prehistoric buck-passer would take one look at Donald Trump, rub some charcoal off his hands, and mutter, “Jesus Christ, man… just take the fucking L.”
Not me.
Not mine.
I didn’t do it.
It was the other guy.
The election was stolen.
The virus came from somewhere else.
The economy would’ve been perfect if not for…
Fill in the fucking blank.
Because there’s always another villain. Always another sacrificial goat waiting patiently in the wings, powdered, pressed, and camera-ready for the moment this scapegoat-collecting bullshit artist needs a warm body to eat the fallout.
Donald Trump doesn’t solve problems.
He outsources blame.
It’s the one promise he’s never broken.
This is an eighty-year-old head of state. The President of the United States. And this… this is what passes for leadership in MAGA world: an overgrown fucking toddler who won’t cop to coloring all over the living room wall while he’s still standing there, diaper sagging under the gravitational pull of his own horseshit, clutching the fucking Sharpie in one fist and jabbing a finger at the babysitter with the other, swearing on his mother’s grave the dog learned cursive.
Leadership isn’t planting yourself behind a podium to gorge on applause when things go right and then vaporizing into a noxious fog of denials the second reality comes collecting its debt.
Leadership is ownership.
Leadership is possessing the vertebrae, the intestinal fortitude, the basic fucking decency to say, “This happened on my watch, and I’m responsible for fixing it.”
Donald Trump treats accountability like it’s a process server carrying child-support papers and an IRS auditor with a battering ram rolled into one. The instant it lumbers into his ZIP code, he’s already halfway over the back fence, bathrobe flapping, hair meringue listing to port, shrieking, sniveling, sputtering, and blame-spewing into the night that it was China, or Joe Biden, or the fucking wind, leaving behind nothing but a banging screen door, a chemical contrail of Aqua Net and spray tan, and the unmistakable stench of cowardice marinated in cheap vanity.
He inherited an economy moving in the right direction the first time. He inherited an economy moving in the right direction the second time. Both fucking times, he wrapped those bruised, blotchy, burger-greased little mitts around the wheel, mashed the accelerator with all the foresight of a drunken lawn mower, and steered us straight toward the nearest fiscal fucking sinkhole.
That’s on him.
He owns every market convulsion, every boardroom anxiety attack, every supply-chain migraine, every economic aftershock flowing directly from the policies he chose.
He also owns an obscene share of our national debt. Across just a term and a half, he racked up roughly twenty-eight percent of all the red ink accumulated since the founding of the republic. In a nation that’s been keeping books since powdered wigs and quill pens.
He did that.
He owns that.
And yet…
Still Joe Biden.
Barack Obama is not the president. Joe Biden is not the president. Donald Trump is the president. The economy you’re living in today? That’s him. The appointments. The pardons. The purges. The priorities. The consequences. Every signature. Every wound he carved into this country himself.
His.
At some point the training wheels come off, the alibis expire, and you either govern or you don’t.
Unless your name is Donald Trump, in which case every disaster arrives with a laminated list of alternate suspects ready for whichever quivering, expendable toady draws the short straw and gets shoved in front of the cameras.
The buck never stops with Donald Trump.
It never even slows the fuck down.
If he stubs his fucking toe, it’s Joe Biden’s coffee table. If he bites his tongue, it’s Joe Biden’s teeth. If he gets a paper cut, it’s Joe Biden’s envelope.
I genuinely believe we are two weeks, three tops, from that incontinent insult to upholstery shitting his pants on a tarmac, staring down in bewilderment like his own ass just staged a coup, and demanding a congressional investigation into Joe Biden’s role in Operation Brown Thunder. There’ll be hearings. Fox will book a gastroenterologist. Jim Jordan will subpoena a pair of Dockers. Todd Blanche will insist the underwear was weaponized by the radical left.
we know this. it’s not open to debate. we’ve all seen the erratic behavior. the pants-shittingly infantile tantrums. the utter lack of impulse control. the mood swings. the ever-shifting incoherence he wreaks on the world, as the family of raccoons that live inside his fat, waterlogged head randomly chew through allthe wires.
you know who I’m talking about: the Ivanka-esque blonde who’s ever-present, following three steps behind Dear Leader, everywhere he goes. the one whose official job is to make a broken-inside rage-baby feel good about himself.
Donny went on a posting spree yesterday, one that was even more crazypants than usual, shitting out dozens of childish memes all over his crappy app.
but of course, it wasn’t Donny pulling those antics all by himself. it’s Natalie Harp who curates all that shit in the first place and shows it to Donny, at which point he goes ‘hurr hurr hurr, so funny.’
so yeah, she’s every bit as bugfuck nuts as Dear Leader.
isn’t that charming? Donny and the diaper nurse are doubling down on the childish ‘Kaitlan Collins and Dylan Mulvaney, who can even tell them apart’crack that Donny made at the Correspondents’ Dinner. why? it wasn’t a particularly clever — or even remotely accurate — remark. it’s just a sad reminder that we’re dealing with the most infantile administration ever. it’s just sewer clowns and bridge trolls.
seriously, who’s panicking? who is this aimed at? it’s just Donny and Nattie, high on their own supply, smiling at each other and going ‘they’re so scared of us.’
which man, exactly, ‘saved America’? the psychotic teenager who was so out of control that his cold and distant parents shipped him off to a military academy, so he’d be out of their hair? the serial predator who used to fight with his dead pedo bestie over which one of them had the right to ‘own’ the Motel-a-Lago ‘spa girls’? the racist game show host? or the current doughy pantload in the Oval Bordello?
who even comes up with this stuff? oh look, it’s the worst remake of North by Northwest ever.
let’s get real. any real-life scenario where George Washington meets Dear Leader would simply be George repeatedly smacking Donny upside the head and going ‘what the fuck is wrong with you? America doesn’t have kings, you stupid dipshit.’
how MAGA-pickled does your brain have to be to sit down at an AI prompt and go ‘draw me Dear Leader saving George Washington from falling off of Mount Rushmore and there should be a clock with lightning in the sky, because it’s all something something something time travel’?
this is like proudly announcing to the world, ‘look how mentally ill I am.’
let’s do a quick fact check. does Donny in real life actually look as handsome and heroic as he does in that AI-generated drek?
yeeesh.
of course he doesn’t. that ‘cosmic commander’ bullshit is just the diaper nurse stroking the piss-baby’s ego. ‘look how rugged you are, sir!’
seriously, how can Natalie keep from swooning, being in such close proximity to such a hunk of alpha masculinity?
it’s all so fucking idiotic. no other world leader needs to be coddled like this. no other head of state runs their own social media site devoted to stroking their fragile ego. at this point, even Kim Jong-un has to be all ‘come on, dude. tone it down. you’re embarrassing yourself.’
and then there was this shit. Donny and Nattie farted out at about a dozen variations on the ‘Donny 2028’ theme, each one dumbfuckier than the next.
oh please. Donny wishes he looked anywhere near that good, ever.
look, I’m going to go out on a limb here and make a prediction: there isn’t going to be any serious effort to run Donny again in 2028. all we’re seeing here is Donny’s minders trying to troll us, and get us all riled up over nothing. it’s a distraction — along with a generous dollop of letting Donny think he has a chance to run in 2028, just to keep him mollified.
oh gee, Commander Crazypants is warmongering again. I have no idea what he imagines he’s accomplishing here, aside from antagonizing the country that’s currently shut down the Strait of Hormuz. does Donny actually believe that shitting out threats on social media is an effective way of negotiating?
Donny has clownfucked himself into an unwinnable don’t-you-dare-call-it-a-war on Iran, a quagmire that’s now in it’s fifth month, with no end in sight — and now he’s making things worse for himself, by posting first and thinking never.
oh, it’s our tanker now? what, we’re going to board Iranian oil tankers? just like that?
that’s a pretty strong boast — especially considering that there are reports that Donny’s gin-soaked Secretary of Death had to put his jolly little war on hold, because we’re fucking running out of munitions.
The U.S. military had been poised Friday to launch an intensive series of strikes against Iran, which could have lasted up to two weeks, the officials said.
But the operation was delayed so diplomacy could proceed and as officials discussed the effect a major attack could have on the U.S.’s shrinking stocks of Patriot and other air defense interceptors.
gee, maybe Piss-Drunk Pete should have spent less time obsessing over the testosterone levels of his warfighting warfighters and more time on making sure he had enough bombs on hand to win the war he thought would be over in an afternoon.
which brings us to this exchange between Meet the Press’ Kristen Welker and UN Ambassador Mike Waltz, because — well, you have to hear it to believe it.
Welker: “NBC News is reporting that the Pentagon is actually rationing some defense weaponry amid diminishing supplies. is America backing away from a larger military attack because our stockpile has been depleted?”
Waltz: “look, we have to take a step back here. a lot of stockpiles were depleted … the administration inherited a depleted military under the Biden administration.”
Welker: “but you acknowledge that they’re depleted?”
Waltz: “I want to be crystal clear. the US military has everything that it needs to conduct this campaign, and I have to tell you, the people who are leaking this nonsense deserve to be in jail.”
got that? America doesn’t have enough munitions, because of that meanie Joe Biden, who was old and icky and smelled bad — but we also have more munitions than we need, and anyone saying otherwise needs to rot in prison.
hey, speaking of rotting in prison — everything totally fucking sucks right now, but at least we can all enjoy Andrew Tate (or, more likely, some flunky posting for him) continuing to bellyache about how super unfair it is for an ahem alleged rapist and sex trafficker awaiting extradition for his ahem allegedcrimes to be deprived of his liberty.
boo fucking hoo.
this is going to be my closing message for the foreseeable future:
practice self-care. do what you need to do to keep sane. if that means you need to disengage with my daily posts for a while, I get it. this community of ours will still be here when you return.
to all the people who have signed on in the days since the election, welcome aboard. settle in as we all try to deal with the shitfuckery that’s ahead of us.
we are all in this together, and we are all here for each other.
It feels like a good portion of this nation is on death watch right now.
My social media feed is filled with photos and videos gleefully documenting the markers of his physical deterioration, with rising hope as his public appearances grow more sporadic, with almost giddy prognostications of his departure date from this place. People are posting their plans as if preparing for New Year’s Eve or a World Series Championship.
I am not exactly one of those people.
Yes, he has been an odious blight upon this planet and a cancerous presence to this nation. He is, without question, one of the single most objectively horrible human beings our species has produced.
Setting aside the reality that his passing would elevate a successor who is smarter, shrewder, less impulsive, and potentially far more effective in accelerating this country’s slide into theocracy, authoritarianism, and economic devastation for everyone but the billionaire cadre of amoral tech bro vampires who elevated him to the platform to begin with.
But I don’t wish for his death.
I wish he’d never been born.
If he departs this mortal sphere as I type this, it will do nothing to undo all the evil that his now bruised hands have wrought, to erase every vile thing his presence has exposed as he ascended politically.
It will not rewind the years of those who lived in squalor and poverty in New York City, on whose backs he built his jittery, hollow empire.
His death will not bring financial restitution to the thousands of workers and contractors left abandoned by the many bankruptcies that emancipated him from responsibility.
It won’t give back wholeness and healing to the girls and women he violated in secret or maligned in public.
It will not reverse the irreparable damage he has done to a political party whose members individually and collectively abandoned every legal and moral expectation to fall prostrate before him.
It will not elicit repentance in a white Evangelical Church that parted ways with the compassionate, loving namesake of its faith tradition and fashioned a vicious, sneering, profane, God-mocking idol out of his antithesis and bowed down before it.
His passing now could not allow us to unsee the repugnant grievance cult he unleashed here; the historically hateful movement of miserable people who’ve spent the last decade reveling in an unrepentant ugliness because he gave them consent.
It will not remove the legion of incompetent, predatory, corrupt sycophants he poisoned our government with; people who have and will continue to dismantle and pervert our systems of care and legal oversight.
And his death, as much as it would feel like an initial reprieve from the chaos he has engineered and the unfathomable suffering he has spearheaded, would do nothing to conceal the vile sickness he exposed within the people around us: the long-simmering racism, the scalding contempt for foreigners, the phobic hatred of human beings for their gender identity or sexual orientation.
Long after he is gone, we will be left with what we now know about our family members and friends and neighbors; about the people in our churches, about the parents of our children’s friends; about the pillars of our communities, about those we trust to govern us, to protect and serve us.
These atrocities, sadly, will all long outlive him.
He lived, and his life has done its brutal, irreversible damage.
And with that being true, I do not wish for his death; not yet.
I hope and pray that he lives long enough to face legal accountability for his crimes; that he will not depart this place before escaping consequences for the willful disregard he has spent 80 years showing for the laws of our land, for the disparate humanity that has called this place home, and for the sacred and powerful platform he never deserved to begin with.
I want him to live long enough to face a cell before he faces his maker.
These are the members of McConnell’s staffthe criminal conspiracy who are keeping his status a secret from the American people. Let’s fill up their email boxes and let them know how we feel about this.
never underestimate the ability of the shitweasels in the Donnyverse to take current events and clownfuck them into something evil.
remember those four young service members who lost their lives last week, while fighting in Preznit Fuckwit’s pointless and illegal don’t-you-dare-call-it-a-war on Iran — the ones who Donny dishonored at their dignified transfer, by using them as props, and putting his own disgraceful words into their lifeless mouths?
well, apparently the Pentagon doesn’t want you to remember, because they just un-personned them.
On Wednesday, the Pentagon reported on its casualties website that a total of 18 American service members had been killed during the war in Iran.
By Thursday, the Defense Department had lowered that number, reporting that 14 American troops had been killed in the war.
what in the hallowed name of Memory-Hole Jesus is this bullshit?
when The New York Times committed a journalism and asked for an explanation, Pentagon spokespeople were basically ‘hamina hamina hamina,’vomiting out multiple, conflicting excuses.
of the three shifting alibis, this one’s my favorite:
Three military officials said that one reason behind the change was that the Trump administration decided to remove four service members killed this past weekend from the list — three in Jordan and one in northern Iraq — because their deaths occurred after President Trump declared a cease-fire in the war in April.
oh really, Pentagon? that’s what you want to go with, that ‘it’s technically not a war, so they’re technically not war dead’?
fuck you. fuck you completely. repeat that explanation to the faces of those service members’ families. I dare you.
you better believe we’re in a war — an unwinnable one that Dear Leader started — but these double-talking sons of bitches are going out of their way to call it anything but.
oh look, somebody taught Lord Shitticus a new word.
“and that’s what this— skirmish we have going on, I call it a skirmish. this is with this skirmish we have with the ISLAMIC REPUBLIC— of Iran. and I call it that. because, let me tell you, they are getting hit so hard. and they want to make a deal. but I say they’re not ready to make a deal. because every time they make a deal they want to change it, and everything. they’re not ready. they’ll be ready very soon.”
sweat-drenched loser says what?
listen to Donny try to weasel out of culpability for the death, destruction and chaos he’s wrought. oh, it’s just a wee skirmish. what’s the big deal?
A skirmish is a brief, minor fight or a small argument. It usually happens away from the main battle or is an unplanned disagreement. [1, 2, 3]
sorry pal. skirmishes don’t get the Strait of Hormuz shut down, nor do they send the price of oil into the stratosphere. wars do that shit.
who do you imagine taught Donny to say ‘skirmish’? do you think it was Nosferatu McGoebbels? nah, that doesn’t sound like him. it was probably Donny’s stalker-slash-diaper-nurse, The Human Printer. she was with Dear Leader at the dignified transfer.
why on earth did Natalie Harp need to be there?
look, we all know why the Pentagon erased these four fallen: because they didn’t want Donny to be embarrassed by the ever-rising death toll in the reckless WAR he started for no coherent reason at all.
They died serving our country. They should be honored, not erased.
Lt. Tyler James Feehan, 25, of Hawaii
Pvt. Isabella Gonzales, 19, of Texas
Sgt. Angel Rampersad, 28, of New York
Sgt. Michael Emmanuel Swinton, 30, of North Carolina
holy shit, Uncle Jeff, did you just agree with Bill Kristol, posting on Elon’s Nazi Bar and Child Porn Emporium, of all places?
yes, I did. that’s how far through the looking glass we are.
it’s all so galling. We the People deserve so much better than this. We the People deserve truth and accountability, not a war machine that hides its dead so the colicky piss-baby in the Oval Bordello won’t throw a tantrum.
“we are closing schools and hospitals in this country, so we can bomb schools and hospitals in other countries. there is never enough money for education and healthcare, but there’s always enough money for war. this morning, we learned that one of our own, Pvt. Isabella Gonzales, was killed by an Iranian airstrike in Jordan. Isabella grew up in Carrollton, not too far from here. she was just 19 years old. she just graduated from Hebron High School. Isabella was sent to serve in a reckless war that no one asked for. we pay for it with our tax dollars. Isabella paid for it with her life.”
full disclosure: I may have teared up a bit just now, while typing out that transcription.
your reminder that the guy Talarico is running against — Ken Paxton — is a serial adulterer who let a confessed child rapist walk the streets of Texasthrough some sweetheart plea deal, just like the one Donny’s dead pedo bestie got in Florida.
that’s what the Texas Senate race is all about. honor vs dishonor.
Isabella Gonzales was nineteen years old, and sent to die in a war that some easily-manipulated fuckhead started because his despot bestie Bibi Netanyahu goaded him into it, and his piss-drunk Secretary of Death assured him it would be done and won in an afternoon.
say her name. say all their names.
Donny Convict is such a fucking imbecile.
I realize that just saying that breaks no new ground. in fact, it’s the main topic of conversation around here — but some days he just out-stupids himself.
MAGA CANDIDATES WON EVERYTHING LAST NIGHT IN ARIZONA, A COMPLETE SWEEP!!! I WON ARIZONA 18 MONTHS AGO. THE DUMOCRATS ARE DUMBFOUNDED. AFTER DECADES, ARIZONA IS BECOMING A REPUBLICAN STATE. CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL! President DONALD J. TRUMP
isn’t it stunning that the president of the United States has no idea how primaries work?
do you think maybe Donny’s diaper nurse could take him aside and explain to him that the reason Republicans won in Arizona was because only Republicans run in Republican primaries?
“… did with the Green New Scam, where— we were scammed. the whole country was— I wasn’t scammed, I got it right from the beginning. I got it from— the first minute when I heard this crap. you know? they were saying wind was so wonderful, so wonderful. except you couldn’t— watch your television. they wanted to watch the debate. Donald Trump against Sleepy Joe Biden, nobody could watch it because the wind wasn’t blowing. remember that? ‘darling, we’d like to watch the debate tonight. I’m sorry, the wind isn’t blowing.’”
what in the actual small-batch artisanal fuck is Dear Leader gibbering about? how are the nice men with the butterfly nets not interrupting Donny in the middle of his reverie to carry him off to a padded cell? the man’s brain has gone fuckity-bye.
if Joe Biden had ever told a story about ‘they couldn’t watch TV because wind,’ the press would have had a field day. five new books would have come flying out of Jake Tapper’s ass, on the spot.
and yet, when Dear Leader does it, crickets.
let’s do a quick fact check: did this happen? was ‘nobody’ able to watch the Donny-Biden debate because ‘the wind wasn’t blowing’ — or is it a thing that never happened the most?
this is going to be my closing message for the foreseeable future:
practice self-care. do what you need to do to keep sane. if that means you need to disengage with my daily posts for a while, I get it. this community of ours will still be here when you return.
to all the people who have signed on in the days since the election, welcome aboard. settle in as we all try to deal with the shitfuckery that’s ahead of us.
we are all in this together, and we are all here for each other.
Come gather ‘round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth savin’
And you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’
– Bob Dylan
Of course, he was right. The times are always a changin’: all things forever shifting, everything always in flux.
And right now, that perpetual change feels particularly terrifying and disorienting, as we find ourselves dealing with a never-ending tsunami of Constitutional crises, leadership failures, manufactured emergencies, curated conspiracies, human rights atrocities, and natural disasters.
But perhaps more than all of that, we are surrounded by what feels like a collective shift in the humanity around us; people who seem to be either turning away from the suffering around them, have grown ambivalent toward it, or worse, experience a perverse joy about it. It is the rising inhumanity we are seeing that is leaving us exhausted.
So, with all that worrisome shifting we’re immersed in, where can we find peace, where does stability come, what can we really hold on to? How do we stay human in times when inhumanity feels overwhelming?
We choose to do the work that only we can do, and the only work that we can do: we embody our values within our choices.
What would you say are some of the highest human attributes or qualities? Compassion? Kindness? Generosity? Courage? The good news is, nothing is preventing you from attaining such things. No politician can prevent it. No regime can hinder you. No hateful human being can keep you from being whoever you decide to be.
We stay human right now by staying within the space of our agency, by deciding over and over again who we choose to be.
We stay human by fighting the inhumanity within ourselves; by making decisions that center compassion, that override selfishness, that show bravery, that reflect whoever it is we aspire to be.
We ask ourselves what kind of person the world needs right now, and do our best to be that kind of person.
That helps us stay sane within the turbulence of change:
The human being you are in favorable circumstances is the human being you can be in disastrous ones.
The human being you are in a fully functioning Republic is the human being you can be in one that is failing.
The human being you are when responsible leaders are in power is the human being you can be when your leaders are malignant narcissists.
The human being you are when people around you seem decent and loving is the human being you can be when surrounded by people who seem to have lost the plot.
The human being you are when everyone around you believes what you believe is the human being you can be when no one around you believes what you believe.
You have the capacity to be constant when the environment you find yourself in is changing.
Shift happens, friend.
The times they are a changin’, but you can choose not to let the times change you.
Rep. Becca Balint (D-VT) thinks there’s something queer about Secretary Pete Hegseth’s fixation on masculinity. “I think it’s indicative of the fact that there are so many people in this administration that have some weird, like, intense, homoerotic feelings towards men while also being incredibly homophobic, and not just homophobic, but like, hate-mongering, fear-mongering about the LGBT community.”
here comes a spoiler alert: you know that deteriorating Oompa Loompa in the Oval Bordello — the one with the fluorescent tangerine yap and the fucked-up rat’s nest of cotton candy bullshit on his head, and the stinky diapers, and the cankles, and the neckgina, and the rotting hands — the one who’s turned America into a festering shithole?
well, it turns out that he isn’t very popular. in fact, he’s fucking toxic.
According to a new Washington Post-Ipsos poll released yesterday, only 15% of Americans strongly approve of Trump’s job as president, down 2% from what was already a record low in April. For context, the first poll conducted after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol still had 27% of the country strongly approving of Trump, down from a high of 35% the year before. His once “unshakable” base has now dwindled to about 1 in 6 Americans. Nearly half, or 47%, strongly disapprove.
wrap your mind around that: only 15% of Americans ‘strongly approve’ of Dear Leader.
that 15% represents what remains of the MAGA chuds who are too dim to realize that Donny has made their lives worse, along with everyone else’s — and there are only about as half as many of these brain-dead dipshits now as there were when Donny did his failed crybaby insurrection five and a half years ago.
let’s put that number in perspective.
Still, 15% of Americans are hanging strong with Trump. But then again, that’s less than the 19% who aren’t convinced the earth is round. Some people just don’t want to acknowledge reality.
yup, there are more dumbfucks walking around refusing to believe what their own eyes tell them about the shape of the planet than there are ‘strong’ supporters of Donny.
is it any wonder that Dear Leader is toxic right now? everything totally fucking sucks, it’s his fault, and everyone knows it.
we’ve got state-sponsored racism, and masked government thugs gunning down whoever looks at them funny. greed and corruption are off the charts, with a chief executive whose only interests are lining his own pockets and turning the White House into an even tackier version of his Florida golf motel.
and we’ve got that unwinnable don’t-you-dare-call-it-a-war on Iran that just resulted in the tragic deaths of two more American service members.
nobody voted for that shit. oh sure, Dear Leader’s cultists may have voted for the racism and the incoherence and the owning the libs, but they sure as hell didn’t vote for some clusterfuck of a war that’s raised the price of every fucking thing. so even they’re pissed at Donny right now.
plus, he’s a fuck-up. he’s fucked up our once-strong economy. he’s fucked up our relationships with our allies. he’s fucked up the East Wing, the South Lawn, the Rose Garden, and the Reflecting Pool.
he even fucked up America’s 250th birthday party. who fucks up a birthday party?
Donny, apparently.
how completely fucking embarrassing. you only get one shot at a 250th birthday party, and Donny whiffed.
so yeah, even the law-wattage chuds are starting to figure out that he’s not the messiah they thought he was. he’s a very naughty boy.
enjoy your 15% ‘strong approval’ rating, Donny. you did that!
you know what else is unpopular? ass-spraying mayhem. that shit’s got a zero percent strong approval rating.
you know what else is unpopular? ass-spraying mayhem. that shit’s got a zero percent strong approval rating.
Grocers and retailers rushed to pull products containing iceberg lettuce off shelves on Saturday, as Taylor Farms issued a recall, notifying customers that lettuce shipped to 27 states may have been contaminated.
The largest produce company in the country is under scrutiny after federal officials linked the company’s Mexico plant to an outbreak of illness from cyclospora, a parasite that can cause severe illness, including vomiting, cramping and explosive diarrhea.
now, it’s all well and good that shit is finally being dealt with, but check out this paragraph that’s buried down all the way at the bottom of the NY Times’ report.
On Thursday evening, Taylor Farmsexecutives met with the White House and the Food and Drug Administration to try to distance the company from the outbreak and air concerns about the official investigations into the outbreak.
what the fuck?
the fact that these sons of bitches were at the White House, trying to obfuscate their culpability, should be the lede of the story — not something mentioned in passing two paragraphs up from the end. most folks don’t even bother to read that far.
on top of that: how did Taylor Farms executives end up at the White House, anyway, right in the middle of this developing story? what corrupt shitwaddery is this?
I asked Google’s janky six-fingered plagiarism robot if Taylor Farms’ CEO had ever made political donations to Donny, and oh fucking boy, has he ever.
Bruce Taylor, CEO and chairman of Taylor Fresh Foods (Taylor Farms), and his company have a history of contributing to conservative and Republican political campaigns, including a notable $1 million donationtied to pro-Trump political funding infrastructure. Public campaign finance data and recent federal disclosures tracked by sources like OpenSecretsoutline these contributions. [1, 2, 3, 4]
In August 2013, the FDA’s traceback confirmed that the salad mix behind cyclosporiasis outbreaks in Iowa and Nebraska was supplied by Taylor Farms’ Mexican subsidiary to Olive Garden and Red Lobster restaurants. The FDA stated then, as the company states now, that grocery store packages were not implicated. That season, 631 laboratory-confirmed cases were reported across 25 states.
In October 2024, slivered onions Taylor Farms supplied to McDonald’s caused an E. coli O157:H7 outbreak that killed one person and sickened more than 100.
everyone should be fucking furious right now. this is yet one more example of off-the-charts corporate greed and corruption. Taylor Farms has been sickening and even killing Americans for years, and has been allowed to escape accountability, over and over.
and of course, Little Donny Fuckface is right in the middle of it, hosting late-night meetings with the culprits.
Andrew and Tristan Tate have been arrested in US on British extradition request. They face 59 charges of rape, trafficking for sexual exploitation, assault and offences relating to indecent images of a child and extreme pornography.
this couldn’t have happened to a nicer couple of shitweasels. here’s the video.
this is going to be my closing message for the foreseeable future:
practice self-care. do what you need to do to keep sane. if that means you need to disengage with my daily posts for a while, I get it. this community of ours will still be here when you return.
to all the people who have signed on in the days since the election, welcome aboard. settle in as we all try to deal with the shitfuckery that’s ahead of us.
we are all in this together, and we are all here for each other.
as another stupid week comes to a close here in America, let’s look back at the dumbest fucking shit that happened.
monday: you wanna talk about ‘deformed’?
Nosferatu McGoebbels is what would happen if an irrational hatred of all that is decent and good in this world became a real boy.
just take a listen to what this undead shit-goblin has on his mind.
“it’s not a coincidence that when you look at these violent Antifa demonstrations, not one of the people that is demonstrating looks like a normal person. not one looks normal. they’re all deformed in some way in their appearance, in their dress, in their mannerism.”
‘deformed’?
bro, have you looked in a mirror lately?
wait, what am I saying here? vampires can’t see their reflection in a mirror.
okay, that certainly explains a lot.
let’s just give the final word on the subject of Stephen Miller to the folks at The Onion, because they’re so fucking good at this.
tuesday: smell that? that’s the sweet smell of liberty
“‘air quality alert.’ so you’re like, okay, whatever that means. it’s going to be hot and humid, okay, air quality alert. then it says, it tells you, limit outdoor activity. and I thought, who’s telling me how to live my life? I’m an adult man, in a free country. you’re telling me, ‘limit outdoor activity’? so this is Big Brother with your tax dollars, telling you how to live? how dare they? how dare they say that? who are they? who has the right to tell me or you or anyone anything? it’s a free country, I can do whatever I want. but somebody in the government has the temerity to say ‘limit outdoor activity.’”
okay, I had to watch that clip two or three times, just to make sure that Eric Metaxas wasn’t mocking people who think like this. oh no, he’s serious. he’s super fucking outraged to be asked to follow voluntary health guidelines.
dude, Canada is burning to the ground right now, and all that smokey shit is floating right right down into our country. yeah, for your own good, you might want to avoid filling your lungs with that.
oh, you think so? well you can get the fuck out of here with your useful advice, because nobody tells Eric Metaxas what to do.
and this, my friends, is the difference between freedom and free dumb.
freedom is the ability to live your life as you see fit. free dumb is doing stupid shit specifically because someone tells you not to.
this is why so many of these dumbfucks died during covid — because nobody tells MAGA what to do.
so go for it, Eric. step outside and breathe deeply. fill your chest with all that smokey goodness. mmm, feel that tightness? that overwhelming urge to cough up a lung? that’s free dumb!
and while you’re at it, go play in traffic. that’ll really stick it to The Man.
wednesday: attention, citizens! new patriot guidelines have dropped
okay, the top row is pretty easy to figure out. don’t tread on the flag, yadda yadda. whatever. the bottom row is a complete mystery. what’s the unpatriotic part, being a sore loser? being a sore winner? not showing up at all for the bronze medal? oh wait — it’s being a guy and playing women’s sports. way to be incoherent AND completely fucking transphobic at the same time, White House.
but it’s the middle row that really has me perplexed. wearing a sombrero is unpatriotic? really?
now, I wanted to know if everyone’s gotten the memo on this. so, in the name of Responsible Journalism and Everything™, I asked Google’s janky six-fingered plagiarism robot to show me ‘pictures of Republicans wearing sombreros’ — and this is what it served up: six-time international lap hockey champion Handy Oakley, tarted up for Halloween in Mexican cosplay, along with her boyfriend, dressed as in ICE thug.
they’re such charming people. so classy. I hope the vigorous beetlejuicings this guy is getting is worth the embarrassment of being seen in public with a complete ninny
but the plagiarism robot also showed me this.
and this.
so now I’m really confused.
hey guys — don’t nobody tell Eric Metaxas that he’s not allowed to wear a sombrero, because you know what he’ll do next.
“women on base, you better be careful, HEH HEH. port calls, women, HEH, Asia, you better be careful. because these guys are going to be wild animals and you better watch out. [bursts out laughing]”
shut the fuck up, piggy. what the fuck is wrong with you?
friday: the further adventures of Some Fucking Idiot™
on Friday, some fucking idiot threw one of his most childish tantrums ever — and that’s saying a lot.
the fucking idiot got Big Mad at Canada for allowing themselves to burn to the ground.
how dare Canada inconvenience us with their stupid smoke? why aren’t they raking their forests? well, the fucking idiot’s gonna settle Canada’s hash, but good. he’s going to make them pay a smoke tariff! boo-yah, Canada!
look at what Antifa is making the fucking idiot do. now he has to go out and find a vandal-proof liner.
gee, if only there were some way of putting a fucking-idiot-proof liner around the entire country.
then it was time for the fucking idiot to attend his one scheduled public event for the day: a reception for FIFA at his fugly golden tower in New York City.
the fucking idiot used this festive occasion to whine once again about the 2020 election, and also to ramble incoherently about [checks notes] not getting credit for [checks notes again] 250 years? what the fuck?
and because the press wasn’t allowed at any point to get near the fucking idiot, not one reporter had the opportunity to stand up and, at long last, ask ‘what the fuck is wrong with you?’
how fucking idiotic is that?
this is going to be my closing message for the foreseeable future:
practice self-care. do what you need to do to keep sane. if that means you need to disengage with my daily posts for a while, I get it. this community of ours will still be here when you return.
to all the people who have signed on in the days since the election, welcome aboard. settle in as we all try to deal with the shitfuckery that’s ahead of us.
we are all in this together, and we are all here for each other.
Donald Trump and his Republican Party are on track to lose the November midterm in overwhelming, historic, and humiliating fashion. If Trump wanted to do something to change that, he could try being a less awful President. But that thought has never occurred to him, and so instead he did what he always does these days: he whined.
Trump gave a primetime speech last night to sell the American people on the idea that… he can turn the economy around? No. That he can fix his disastrous failed war against Iran? No. That he can even so much has fix the reflecting pool that he broke? Not that either. Instead Trump decided that the most important thing the American people needed to hear from him last night was how the 2020 election was stolen from him. No, really.
Everyone knew going in that this speech would be such a lie filled cringe fest that multiple major television networks decided in advance not to even air it. They almost did Trump a favor, because all he did during his speech was to unwittingly convince anyone watching that 1) he’s completely out of touch, 2) he’s clinically insane, 3) he’s senile, and 4) he’s near death. Just how poorly did Trump come off as he lethargically slurred his way through incoherent conspiracy theories? Imagine Alex Jones on a sedative.
. . .
Of course Trump thought that his speech last night was going to convince the American people to demand that the Senate pass his election-rigging legislation, so that he can have a shot in the midterms. Instead Trump merely convinced the American people that the 25th Amendment is in order.
This mess we’re in? It has nothing to do with politics.
The current President is a court-adjudicated rapist who recently paid nearly 6 million dollars in damages for sexual assault and defamation.
His name appears tens of thousands of times in the Epstein Files, and he has been credibly accused by dozens of women of sexual assault and harassment.
He is a 34-count felon, indicted four separate times, with 88 charges, ranging from fraud to election interference.
The only reason he is not in prison right now is that he has assumed the Presidency and marshalled the vast resources of the office to pervert our judicial and legal processes.
Despite all of this, we still have family members, friends, former friends, and neighbors who would vote for him again right now.
In what universe, in what iteration of this nation over the last 250 years, would a being this bereft of human decency have been tolerated in office, let alone passionately embraced?
In what political movement would rape and treason not be dealbreakers?
The answer is none.
This isn’t a political fracture.
I wish it were, though, as that would be relatively easy to navigate.
We are not a nation, as we’ve often thought, simply positioned on either side of the aisle working to craft reasonable, good-faith compromise somewhere in the humane middle. Sadly, that ship left the port a long time ago.
We aren’t even contending with a blind political tribalism that sees party over country, as the GOP of a decade ago has long since been rendered unrecognizable, abandoning its calls for a limited Government in exchange for unabashed authoritarianism.
The prevailing narrative of the last decade is that America has been fractured by political ideologies, bunkered down in disagreement on what path will most serve the common good. This is a dangerous fiction we need to discard once and for all.
The dividing lines in America have nothing to do with party affiliation anymore.
Just open up your phone, eavesdrop at the checkout line, or talk to your neighbor, and you’ll see the lines along which we now find ourselves:
One side celebrates innocent people being assassinated in front of their children, without due process.
One side rejoices in strangers going without food or medical care or housing, without knowing a single one of their stories.
One side applauds the bombing of foreign school children and the destruction of entire populations.
One side blindly despises other people for their gender identity, despite it having no impact on their lives whatsoever.
One side reduces an entire population to terrorists and drug dealers to justify their swift eradication.
One side conflates whiteness with righteousness.
One side defends the protection of pedophiles.
One side steadfastly worships a felonious, treasonous rapist.
And none of this is about politics; it’s about when faced with the suffering and injustice in our path, whether we will default to compassion or to cruelty.
America’s present divide reveals the orientation of hearts as we move through the world, the story we tell ourselves about other people, and what we want our lives to be marked by.
Will we be bleeding-heart empaths who err on the side of love toward all our neighbors, or callous, f your feelings sociopaths who rejoice in the pain of others because we’ve dehumanized them to the point that their lives are worthless to us?
Will we see empathy as our highest calling as human beings, or as a character flaw needing to be discarded?
One of the greatest lies we’re asked to accept as gospel is that all opinions are valid, that every position is somehow equally worthy of merit and deserving of consideration. We’re often led to believe that in every situation where an impasse is reached, the most humane response is to “agree to disagree”.
Of course, we can disagree on all sorts of issues without that disagreement being a , but there are some things that, as people of faith, morality, and conscience, we simply will not allow—and these things transcend politics.
The days ahead are going to require us to dig beneath the surface skirmishes and into the bedrock of what’s really happening here so that we don’t waste a second fighting fruitless battles that miss the point entirely.
Refuse to be gaslit and guilted for allowing “politics” to get in the way of your relationships because that’s not what’s happening here. This is an effort by people around us to sidestep conversations that call them to accountability for their beliefs, choices, and alignments.
It’s time we stopped pretending that our current national crisis is political, as that only serves to distract us from the far more worrisome truth that we need to reckon with:
We’re not politically divided; we are morally fractured.
We are not fighting legislative battles but a war to stay human or abandon our humanity altogether.
No election result will change that.
No power balance in Congress will remedy it.
No dictator’s expulsion will heal the brokenness of the people around us.
I was driving home this afternoon after picking up the doggos from day care, and on the corner of 7th Avenue & Osborn there was a panhandler wearing a red MAGA cap. You’ll have to take my word for it. Traffic was moving so I couldn’t snap a photo.
To Our Grandparents, Parents, Uncles, Aunts, Cousins, and Older Siblings,
We’re aware of what you think of us, either because you’ve told us during explosive, room-clearing conversations, over terse Cold War text exchanges, or in second-hand words passed through the people who now serve as the sole intermediaries between us.
You believe that we’re lost.
You believe we’ve changed.
You think we’ve become radicalized.
You think we’ve abandoned our faith, our families, and our nation, and you’re disappointed with us.
And we need you to know that you’re largely responsible.
Much of this is your fault.
You say that we’ve changed, and we have: we’ve become the people you taught us to become when we were growing up.
people who are deeply offended by inequity,
people who look out for the underdog,
people who grieve the suffering of others,
people who find the beauty in the diversity around us,
people who want others to have enough,
people who are aware of how fortunate we are to live here,
people trying to love our neighbors as ourselves,
people who detest liars, predators, and con men,
people who abhor bullies and bigots and braggarts,
And the people that we’ve become, in large part because of the wisdom and compassion you poured into us as children, can’t fathom, as adults, how you’ve voted for Donald Trump three times and how you still support him now.
It would have been unthinkable to those younger versions of us (and the younger version of you, for that matter), that you would have embraced this man: his cruelty, his depravity, his petty, vengeful, unloving heart.
That’s not the way you raised us, and so whatever issues you have with us now, you need to understand:
You made us this way.
You have radicalized us into loving, compassionate human beings, and we can’t fathom how that can be a problem for you.
We’re really proud of the people we are today, and grateful for the time you spent with us; the lessons you taught us about seeing all people as inherently valuable,
about being a person of your word,
about telling the truth even when it’s costly,
about admitting your mistakes,
about taking responsibility for your actions,
about valuing people over money,
about how we treat people, being what defines us,
We were paying attention in history class.
We were paying attention in Sunday School.
We were paying attention around the dinner table.
We were listening.
We believed you.
We did what you told us to do and became who you told us to become—and so now we care about the world, and we despise evil, and we live open-hearted and open-handed.
And that’s why we’ve found ourselves standing here wondering how you’ve become people we no longer recognize, how you’ve embraced the embodiment of the ugliness you warned us to avoid, how you stopped taking your own advice somewhere along the way.
You say that you only support the party or the policies and not the man—but we remember you telling us that we are known by the company we keep, that the ends don’t always justify the means, and that we can’t gain the world (or a Supreme Court seat) and lose our souls. Back then, you wouldn’t have tolerated those flimsy excuses for aligning with someone horrible, and we won’t tolerate them from you now.
As children, we looked up to you, and that part of us will continue to love you dearly and be grateful to you.
But as adults, we now see you eye to eye, and we grieve the loss of the people we imagined you were when you were teaching us how to be good human beings.
By continuing to support this man, you have gone against everything you told us was important growing up: decency, honesty, fairness, maturity, and empathy.
Either you were lying then, or you’re wrong now.
Which one is it?
The children we were and the adults we’ve become both want to know.