We're in for it now

The absolute state of things

Conditions in the US are alarming as all hell. This comes as no surprise. Waking up to Trump’s (stolen) reelection, filled me with dread. It was clear what was coming. Right away, they started rolling out Project 2025, attacking federal services and agencies, defunding US AID programs that provided food and medicine to poor countries. They declared war on “DEI,” which entailed wiping out Black and Native history and memorials, firing Black and female generals, cutting off funds for early childhood education and disabled support services.

I’ve tracked all this via social media, Maddow, The Nation, New Yorker, Mother Jones, the Atlantic. Instead of writing up details of a rapidly disintegrating socio-political order, I’m going to post screen caps, a mosaic of the direness. Originally I was going to intersperse it with the uprisings and marches that have happened in the past six months in Hungary, Serbia, and now Iran. The people in Georgia have marched in large numbers for 411 days at this writing, demanding overthrow of the Russia-installed puppet ruler. Marches are growing in the US too, but—another time.

First up, an advisory from ancient Sumeria, wisdom especially to my USian cohort: “Do not bend your neck for that which cuts necks.”

I’ve never gone in for imperial patriotism, heeding Virginia Woolf’s insight, “As a woman I have no country; my country is the whole world.” But amazing how swiftly the MAGA loyalists switched from the 18th century Don’t Tread on Me flag to absolute obedience to an autocrat, as satrized by this cartoon:

Another commentary shows a Magat reporting people to their employers, for some offence against the Pedocrat:

Some have fallen away from the cult, dismayed by the realization they’re going to lose their farms, their small businesses, or even their foreign-born spouses. But others hang on as loyalists to their autocratic Fearless Leader.

The cult is backed up by the clown-show syncophants who inhabit the US Cabinet and executive apparatus, openly defying the Constitution:

Funny how all previous presidents were able to function within the original legal framework. But we are in a different situation now:

The Republican party has openly embraced fascism, using racist rhetoric against immigrants to impose military repression, and blocking all attempts to defend essential federal services like Emergency Management, the Weather Service, and medical research. Their leader is openly corrupt, selling pardons and tariff excemptions and bitcoin, and is visibly impaired, and audibly demented. The power vacuum around him is filled by powerful men whose names most people do not know, like Russell Vought, who directs the United States Office of Management and Budget. He is, as ProPublica tells us, “the architect of Trump’s broader plan to fire civil servants, freeze government programs and dismantle entire agencies.” Another eminence grise is Stephen Miller, a Nazi who likes to quote Goebbels, including a line beloved of Qanon enthusiasts:

But even when a nest of young men exchanging racist and Nazi posts were uncovered among the well-heeled Republican cadre, the VP pooh-poohed it:

Pete Hegseth shamelessly proclaims the military dominionism. The new Secretary of War is a former Fox News guy and drunkard who sports crusader tattoos all over his body. One reads “Deus Vult,” the rallying cry in 1095 for the European invasion of Palestine. Four years later, they took Jerusalem with a massacre of Muslims, Christians and Jews. (It was witnessed by the chaplain Raymond of Aguilers, who wrote that the crusaders rode in blood that came up to their knees and even to the bridles of their horses.) Hegseth, a christian nationalist, advocates similar barbarity:

And who is this enemy? Other American countries, like Venezuela for starters, and possibly Mexico next:

The Pedocrat has threatened Canada and European countries. He’s imposed tariffs that disrupt the world economy and are crashing the US supply chain, causing Farmageddon. He has tried to coerce Zelensky who is fighting the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He’s bombed Venezuelan boats, invaded the country, and kidnapped its president, while declaring that he “will run” the country and appropriate its oil wealth. He’s declared his intention to take over Greenland, either by “buying” it, or “do it the hard way,” by invasion. Below, he refers to Danes colonizing the island, with no trace of awareness that the US was colonized in the same way:

But look at the wonders he is offering to Kalaallit Nunaat, “the Land of the People” as they call their country Greenland:

I didn’t even mention Cheato pulling out of the Paris Accords and international agreements on climate crisis (I’ll do a separate post on the unfolding disaster as the biosphere burns, floods, and is chopped down.)

Indigenous women protesting destruction of their lands at last year’s climate summit in Brazil

I’ll pass over for now Trump’s obeisance to Putin in his war on Ukraine, and in abandoning European allies generally. And his reckless destruction of the US economy, which he is foreclosing in ways that aren’t yet apparent to most people in the US, though it’s hitting the farmers hard now. Not just because of tariffs, and propping up Argentina’s beef market at the expense of US ranchers, but because persecution of immigrant farmworkers has left the crops rotting in fields the harvesters had to flee, because ICE came hunting them.

In 2025 we’ve watched in horror, and protested in the streets, as ICE goons were unleashed on the streets, homes, businesses, and even immigration courts. Their prey is immigrants, but it’s brown people they’ve hauled off, even if they have papers, even if they’re attending court to get their green cards, even if they have refugee status, even if they are US citizens.

They terrorize mothers, dragging children from their arms, or leave them in the car, abandoned and traumatized after seeing their their dad pulled out and beaten. Latin@s are primary targets, along with Asians and Haitians, but ICE has also detained Native people: Indigenous volunteer firefighters in Washington, and Navajos and Pima in the southwest:

Just recently, in the wake of ICE murdering Renee Good, they went after Oglala Lakota men in a city with one of the highest Native populations in the US:

They also shot two people in Portland the other day:

The Trump administration responds with full-throated support for ICE, denying the basic facts videotaped and witnessed by multiple people. Noem and Trump lied in calling the mom that ICE shot point-blank in the face “a domestic terrorist,” claiming that she had "weaponize(d) her vehicle" and "attempted to run" over an officer.

For his part, the vice president advocated for ICE to hunt down immigrants “door to door.” Of course this contravenes the 4th Amendment, but the full impact of such illegal use of arbitrary force is dramatized by the terrified mom who called 911 when ICE came after the Doordash delivery woman who ran into her house. (Good for her for protecting her, while ICE prowled around the doors and windows.) She had babies in there: “What do I do, what do I do, what do I do, I’m so scared!’

Renee Good is not the first person to be murdered by an ICE goon. On New Years Eve in Los Angeles, an off-duty ICE thug killed Keith Porter Jr., with no media coverage:

Here we have to look at who the ICE recruits are (beyond the fact that most score poorly on intake exams and often do not meet physical requirements). Their ranks are filled with Proud Boys, Jan 6 insurrectionists, “Replacement” conspiracy theorists, and other varieties of white nationalists:

Neo-Nazis are represented too, like this man with the SS logo tattooed on his cheek:

But that’s no problem for the current administration, which happily posts photos of its thugs shooting pepper spray into the faces of citizens bearing witness to their illegal operations:

They get to abuse people for defying their illegal orders, for standing on their constitutional rights. In the fascist order, Might Makes Right.

Bad as all this is, it’s worse when this terrorizing of the population is being set up as a pretext to invoke the Insurrection Act, in order to declare full martial law. Really, the Felonious Trunk has already declared his intention to do so:

Still more alarming, the Democratic leadership (using that word advisedly) is rolling over for it. Just as Merrick Garland sandbagged the prosecution of Trump for fomenting sedition on Jan 6 (and also funding its main actors).

I haven’t even mentioned how the Pedocrat has deployed all this violence—ICE raids, attack on Venezuela, “look! over there! terrorists”—to distract from the scandal of the Epstein Files, and his own desperate efforts to prevent their release. To distract fromt the fact that he lost the vote in Congress (captured as it is) and was supposed to release everything on Dec 19—but has not done so. And this goes to the systematic violence against girls, teens or younger in some cases, by Trump himself, and his cronies—not just Chez Epstein, either.

But there’s more to that tangle, involving Epstein’s kompromat-collecting and close involvement with foreign intelligence agencies, including Israel and Russia. Which would explain much about Cheato’s obeisance toward Putin, treasonous acts of which he is desperate to prevent disclosure. Some probably involve his theft of top-secret documents from the White House, but others will be videos and photos showing the extent of his misogynist depravity.

Remember how he looked like a whipped dog after his meeting with Putin at Helsinki? the one where no US translators were allowed? no witnesses. There were at another meeting in Alaska, where Putin dissed him by refusing to attend the state dinner. They emerged ashen-faced. Who knows what was said. They aren’t telling.