Too Many Crises And So Little Time

On Friday, January 31, the alarms started to sound on social media, particularly Bluesky. Federal workers in DC and regional officers were receiving severance offers or layoff notices in their email clients after 5pm. Young men claiming to work for Elon Musk’s DOGE project , were entering Federal office buildings in numbers and gaining access to server rooms. They reportedly entered Treasury and ASAID first. In the 4 hours or so it took me to ride an Amtrak train from New York to Boston, I saw the final end of the American empire commence.

It was a sudden and shocking turn of events. The executive was taking full control of the bureaucratic state and bypassing Congress. Offices that were funded to remain open per the 2025 budget were being closed

Since that Friday, life in this nation has been hell. Each weekend, another Federal agency is shrunken or shut down. Each week, the Trump administration commits an atocity or makes a fateful policy decision,. A guiding principle of these actions appears to be finding and cutting-off the sources for tolerance and respect in our culture (which they disparage as “wokeness”). This has led to a sudden stop to Federally-funded research as well as funding and reimbursements for higher education. The wokeness nust be stopped at any cost.

And now, on April 14, it has come to this - willful contempt of both a Federal District judge and the Supreme Court.

This nation can make anyone a slave by kidnapping them and forcibly fly them to either Panama or El Salvador. We are paying those two nations to take in slaves that they own and can do what they with to them.

I have written for years that this nation under Donald Trump is not sustainable. It is breaking apart. I don’t know if this republic can withstand another 80 days of this, given what the last 80 have brought. It’s collapsing so quickly, it’s fairly violent.

The damage already done has been catastrophic and will span decades. There aren’t enough days in our lifetimes to put this nation back together. It would be better to have a revolution or civil war to blow up what’s left so some of us can start over.

I think war is coming. Not midterms. War.

The Tail End Of Generation Y Steps Up

In just a few days, the youngest members of Generation Y have awakened. They have ended NRA discounts at car rental companies and have probably destroyed Marco Rubio's 2022 reelection campaign. Suddenly, I don't feel so old. The generation ahead of me has done something. Now can it keep doing it? The NRA is acting like they must be stopped. These kids have frightened the NRA. That's something that parents of 20 murdered children could not. 

This might be the beginning of a movement to make gun regulation an accepted and desired policy. And these kids who started the latest push for firearm regulation are off to the best start in US history. They will do more than just make the NRA a lobby group to avoid. Today's politicians will ignore them, but these kids will be running the nation 20 years from now. 

Even before the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre, Amnesty International was set to publish their annual "State of Human Rights" report. In it, they downgrade the USA due to its growing casualty counts in gun massacres. You can go read it here.

Republicans Are Cowards

He's not up for re-election for another 56 months. But Marco Rubio's Senate career virtually ended this week.

Rubio's cowardice was on full display on February 21, one week after the Majory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre. What would you expect from the man who said it was "Florida's turn" for a gun massacre hours after the Pulse nightclub massacre less than 2 years ago? The problem for him and the rest of the NRA darlings is that there's no longer any place to hide on the issue of guns. All the ideologically approved slogans have outlived their shelf lives. Guns don't kill people. To stop a bad man with a gun you need a good man with a gun. Mass shootings are proof that the issue is one of mental illness, not the easy availability of combat weapons. "Gun-free zones" attract gun rampages. And these deaths are the price we pay for freedom. Every one of the shibboleths you hear when these tragedies unfold are finally being seen as the empty, hypocritical expressions of a profit-addicted gun lobby. Their time might be up. Throw the creeps out!