One Year Down…

20/01/2026Dusty Leave a comment

*How do you like the shirt I got for Christmas?*

Well! It’s been a year, hasn’t it?

We started with DOGE, and Liberation Day, and tariffs that were on and then off and then on and then off. We did not start with the Day One promises to end the war in Ukraine, nor the war in Gaza, nor to reduce the price of groceries and the cost of living. We have moved on to the Department of War attacking boats in the Caribbean without any evidence (so far as we know) that they even have drugs; certainly there is no evidence that they are “narco-terrorists,” as they are not, even if they are transporting narcotics, as they are not people who are using unlawful violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims. And, if they are transporting narcotics, they are not moving fentanyl to the US, as fentanyl comes from China through Mexico, and not through Venezuela; if they are moving drugs (and there is no evidence that has been presented which says that they are, which means, according to our own concept of justice, that they are innocent, not having been proven guilty) then they are sending cocaine to Europe. Not great, but not the justification used for their slaughter: and there is, of course, no justification for the order to kill two men on a sinking shipwreck, which was an illegal order that the military followed – even though when our elected Congresspeople made a public service announcement to encourage the military not to follow unlawful orders, the administration freaked the fuck out and acted like that was sedition: entirely ignoring the clearly unlawful order that had been issued, and followed. Now the man who followed the order is doing fine, and the man (one of them) who reminded him to follow his oath is being stripped of his rank and pension.

Hegseth is scrutinized by Congress over boat strikes | AP News — *These guys say that THAT guy shouldn’t have his rank.*

Integrity has defined my brother's service to our nation, as a combat veteran, astronaut, and US Senator. Any effort to undermine that is an abuse of power.

It has been a fucking year.

A year with a shutdown, and a tax cut for billionaires, and increased health insurance costs for the rest of us. A year of dissent being squashed in clear violation of freedom of speech, with university students being arrested and jailed and deported for their speech, even while the administration promotes the same genocide the students were speaking out against: it’s almost like we have traded the right to speak our minds, for the opportunity to slaughter innocents, and then steal their homeland and make money from it. A year of our National Guard being weaponized against us in order to stop peaceful protests, while actual insurrectionists were pardoned en masse: almost like our right to assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances has been traded for the freedom of loyal brownshirts. A year of deportations: starting with sending innocent people, both legal immigrants and US citizens, to torture prisons in El Salvador (along with millions of dollars in recompense for the considerate acquiescence and collaboration of the Salvadoran administration), continuing through shocking raids on homes and assaults on children, finally culminating in the recorded murder of an innocent American citizen, and the subsequent shielding of the murderer by the federal government, which continues to lie and accuse everyone who is not one of their murderous thugs. And again, the administration is cracking down on free speech, sending federal troops, and cruelly assaulting anyone and everyone they can.

It’s been a year, now, that we still have not gotten the Epstein files. Only about 1% has been released, and that 1% includes absurd redactions and previously-released information.

Happy Anniversary, President Trump. One year ago you took the oath of office for a second time: and you immediately set about destroying the country that elected you, in every way that matters: most often to increase your own wealth and power, sometimes for no good reason that I can discern – why, for instance, do you want to remove the ACA? You don’t give a shit; you don’t have that many employees. You do not profit directly from health care costs going up for individual citizens. I recognize that the likely reason is you have some billionaire whispering in your ear, like fucking Wormtongue only slimier, telling you that the ACA is unAmerican and that removing it will make America great again, and just as you expect your followers to do, you are absolutely willing to get on board without a single second of questioning “Wait – why is government-subsidized health care bad?” I also recognize that there is a certain amount of traditional Republican posturing in your political stances as well; like, you also don’t give a shit about abortion, or about gun rights, but your base expects you to remove the one and protect the other, so you do, because you are yourself entirely indifferent to anything that doesn’t affect you directly; and I know that the right hates all things resembling socialized health care (Except for the Medicaid and Medicare that they and their families use; but I’m not going to get into the hypocrisies of Americans: that blade always cuts both ways, and I’m not interested in yet another round of Whataboutism, which is rapidly becoming our national pastime): but why have you decided that this is the thing you’re so set on destroying? Your congressional delegation is clearly not on your side with this one, not all of them; so why didn’t you give up and let people keep their goddamn subsidies, and just take credit for it like you do with everything else? Why do you feel this burning need to destroy people’s lives?

Is it really just because Barack Obama got the ACA passed into law? And you hate him so much, and you are so profoundly jealous of all of the ways that he is better than you (which is, in fact, every single way imaginable except in the Shithead Championships, which you win walking away), that you want to do everything you can to destroy his signature accomplishments? I mean, that would certainly explain you destroying the JCPOA and fucking up our actually effective strategy in Iran, but I assume another benefit there for you is the potential war, which you’d clearly love to have because then you could claim Iran’s oil to go with Venezuela’s; but the ACA and the subsidies that keep people insured have nothing to do with oil. I honestly don’t get it. I get the drug price thing, because you intend to force the drug companies into making sweetheart deals with you so you can sell medications to Americans through your new Trump Rx company; but again, that has nothing to do with insurance or the cost or health care in general.

Mitt Romney And Super PAC Attack Obama's 'Cool' Factor: Will it Work? | IBTimes — *Haters gonna hate*, *I guess*

Are you really just that much of an asshole? Based on how you respond to questions from reporters with insults like “Quiet piggy,” and criticism from random passersby by saying “Fuck you” and flipping them off, it might just be that. But while I can easily accept that you do so much damage to my country and my fellow Americans because you are an evil, greedy fuck, I still struggle with you doing this much harm just because you’re a fucking prick. Maybe in honor of this august occasion, I will make this my gift to you: I will accept that your vile nastiness is on its own enough to explain your actions. Though really, that’s a gift to me. It will make it easier.

And I need to make this easier: because the actual task is going to be very, very hard. And the longer we focus on the wrong thing, the more harm will be done, and the harder it will be to solve the problem and complete the actual task that lies before us.

Here’s the truth, which I want to put before you all now, on this anniversary of the second inauguration of this vile warthog of a man: Trump is not the right thing to focus on. He is not the problem. I don’t say that to delegitimize or devalue everything that we have all done to oppose the slimeball: it was necessary, and to some extent it still is. The thing is, Trump could have been the problem, and to some extent he still can be the problem: because it is still possible that Trump could actually destroy this country. He could do it in two ways: he can start a nuclear war, and he can overthrow the legitimate government based on the Constitution and become an actual dictator. The nuclear war option remains, and will for as long as Trump is in power; the best we can hope for there is that his own self-interest will not be served by the death of the planet. We can also hope that the military will not follow an arbitrary and capricious order to launch nuclear death at the world; this hope that the military will not obey Trump’s most deranged and destructive orders is also what we can count on for the second threat, that of a coup and Trump’s elevation to Emperor – and frankly, I had a lot more confidence in that bulwark keeping us safe before Pete Hegseth told soldiers to murder drowning men, and they fucking did it. And then invaded a sovereign nation to kidnap their president. And they’re proud of it. So I dunno any more if this is something we can feel safe and secure about: would the military actually rise up and betray their oaths, and destroy their own way of life, in order to put Trump onto a throne? I really want to say no. But I can’t be sure.

So: Trump is still an existential threat, and so everything we can do to remove him, personally, specifically, from office is a good thing to do. His actions are doing real harm to real people, so everything we can do to oppose the specific actions of this administration are genuinely good things to do, whether the intent is to prevent the harm, ameliorate the harm, or provide a balancing benefit to offset the harm: all good. All righteous, all positive, all beneficial. Keep doing all those things.

But recognize, too, that so long as Trump doesn’t overthrow the government or set the world on fire, he will have to leave office. And we will still have to live in this country that he fucked up. And the real issue, of course, is that Trump isn’t the one who fucked it up: we did. Because we voted him in.

Okay, not “We.” I don’t think the people reading this mostly voted for Trump, and I don’t believe we are all equally to blame for his election, including those who didn’t vote for him. So “They” did vote him in. But we still have to live with them, in the same country; and if we don’t want to make this country an evil, unjust tyranny, we still have to let them vote. That’s the fight. That’s the work we have to do. Healing.

I don’t know how to do it. I think about that a lot: how can we prevent this from happening again? I think about it most often in specific terms of trying to rebuild the international alliances and cooperations that Trump is setting on fire; like, if he really does break NATO by making more and more absurd demands for Greenland or what have you – I will not assume that owning Greenland is the last or the stupidest idea he will have; this is only the FIRST year of FOUR – how could we convince the other members of the treaty organization that, after Trump is gone, we will never allow another piece of shit like him to take over our country and fuck it up the same way?

What laws could we put in place? What safeguards to ensure that this shit won’t happen again? I mean, we can certainly (in theory) pass a law to rescind the Supreme Court’s absurd decision that presidents are not criminally liable for their actions in office; that would require a congress that were not members of a cult, and a President willing to hold himself or herself to an actual moral and ethical standard; but I can imagine that happening. But so long as the President retains the immunity of the office, which I don’t think should or could be removed, we can’t really guarantee our allies (soon to be our former allies) that they can trust this country: this country that was willing to elect this fucking guy.

Trump rewrote foreign policy as president. If he wins in 2024, he wants to go further : NPR

Twice.

Honestly, I don’t think we can; I don’t think we will ever be able to heal the rift that we are creating, that Trump is creating, right now. Partly because it is our fault, as a nation: we have never actually healed our own racist and biased culture and institutions, and so this could quite easily happen again. It would look different, but to think that there would never be another Republican demagogue who could tap into the resentment on the right, or a liberal demagogue who could create even worse conflict by actually persecuting the right the way they like to pretend they have been persecuted, is to ignore what gave rise to Trump’s initial success. It was not his brilliance. It was not his charisma. It was not Trump at all, though he did bring enough to the table to make it happen. He was the match, and he started the fire: but the fuel was already there, and it will remain after this match is snuffed out.

I think we have made progress, over time, towards healing the wounds that underlie this country’s dysfunctions. I think that because a hundred years ago, I would not have thought I was racist at all, and today I know that I harbor some prejudices, mostly unconscious, and that I once had some quite serious biases. I know that I live a privileged life, largely built on the privilege of my upbringing, which was at least partly due to my race and my socially-accepted gender identity. A hundred years ago, I would have just thought I was – normal. Natural. So: progress. Now I can work to identify the problems in myself, and get better; and that, multiplied by 330 million, is how we can make this into a country and a culture we can all be proud of, from end to end, rather than only in pieces, and with exceptions and excuses. Just like the fights against Trump himself, all of the work we have done and are doing towards being better people in a better world is all good work, and should continue.

But it’s slow work, and as long as it continues unfinished – and resisted and denied by millions and millions of us – there are openings for evil people to exploit. That’s how we got Trump. And it’s how we’ll get the next one. I am hopeful that this current shitshow will swing the pendulum in the correct direction, and our next few years will be better and more productive; but as long as the system stays the same, the pendulum will always keep swinging, and it will swing back this way again: and then we’ll have to do this shit all over again. And considering that Trump is worse than Bush who was (in some ways) worse than Reagan, who was (in many ways but not all) worse than Nixon, I’m afraid of who the next swing will bring us. And I’m also afraid that the swing away from Trump will not go far enough, as Biden did not go far enough, as Obama did not go far enough, as Clinton…actually, Clinton should be in the list of evil swings, because his predecessor, George HW Bush, did an honestly better job of adhering at least to the status quo and therefore not committing evil acts, though neither of them did good things. The worse the bad ones get, the lower our standards become for the “lesser evil” we are willing to accept. And that’s not good.

I’ll tell you right now, the one bright spot I can see in the fact that this administration is only one year through its four-year run is that the horror show going on in front of us, and including too many of us, is far and away the most effective mirror we could ever hold up to our own faces, our own flaws. The worse it gets, the more we recognize how bad we let it get, how deep and how dark the problems are that gave rise to this.

Please. I beg you. Recognize that the first problem is the determination not to fix the real issues, but rather to slap a bandaid on them and pretend that everything is fine. If you think that electing a moderate centrist who will do the same things Biden did – sign new executive orders that rescind Trump’s, pass a different kind of budget – that may have good things in it, as the Inflation Reduction Act did, and all the rest of Biden’s quite real and positive accomplishments – but that does not change any of the underlying structural problems (Just as Obama’s ACA did not solve any of the larger issues with health care in this country, even though it was genuinely good to make insurance more widely available and to end lifetime maximums and denial of coverage due to pre-existing conditions – and I would be much more interested in the Republican congress’s claims to want to fix the problems instead of just extending subsidies that mainly enrich insurance companies if they weren’t currently in a cult enthralled to the guy who released the Great Health Care “Plan”), then I guarantee you that the pendulum will swing back sooner than you like, and maybe go farther than you can stand.

Just imagine, for a moment, President Joe Rogan. Or President Nick Fuentes.

And then think about what we can do to solve the larger problems, and to do it quicker than we currently are.

Here, just so I don’t name all these issues and sound all these warnings and offer absolutely no solutions: the two most important things I have learned in the last decade are the incredible amount of money that gets spent on politics, and the deep ignorance of so much of this country’s populace. The two are linked: because the wealthy who buy politicians are more powerful if the populace is ignorant – and that does include those who buy Democratic politicians, because while they generally don’t have the same sociocultural goals, they sure as fuck benefit from the same economic policies, which is why the Democratic party doesn’t change the basic economic structure of this country, and somehow opposes Bernie Sanders even if the other option is Donald Trump – and the more ignorant the populace is, the more effective the control mechanisms of the wealthy become. So while I don’t ever want to become a politician directly, and while I am not good at taking actual political action myself, I am exceptionally good at one of the other critical solutions to the larger underlying issues: education. I am a damn good teacher, and also a decent content creator. So that’s my task, and I am doing it, and I will continue doing it, to the best of my ability and the limits of my capacity. And that will make things better.

Especially if we can all do the same.

One year down, everybody. Look forward. Keep moving. Don’t give up.

I Wish for Each

06/10/2025Dusty Leave a comment

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

So all right. We’ve been hearing a lot about this lately, right? Those are the words of the First Amendment to the Constitution. But what does it mean?

What is free speech?

Does it mean anybody can say anything they want? Anything? Or are there limitations? Should there be?

Does it only apply in American? Only to citizens? Does it apply differently to public figures, to famous people?

And why the hell are we still talking about this? Do we not know what it means? Shouldn’t we know what it means by now? I mean, really?

Okay: well first, let me just address that. I do not think there is anything wrong with having a conversation again. I don’t believe that something can be talked through once, and then that’s it, and we all know everything there is to know, and there’s no need to bring it up again. I understand that people get tired of having the same conversation over and over again, but you see, I’m a high school teacher: my whole job is essentially to have the same conversation over and over and over again. From one year to the next, from one class to the next, from one student to the next, I have to continuously repeat myself, and that often means I have to continuously find new ways to say the same things I have said before. The fact that I am willing to do that, even eager to do that, is what makes me a good teacher: because if I got impatient with students who didn’t hear or didn’t understand what I said to another student, then nobody would learn after the first student. I confess that I do get tired of saying the same things to the same people over and over again, but that’s not the same thing as having the same conversation: that is stating the rules, the limits and boundaries which are necessary for us to live and work together and abide one another, and then stating them again because some childish, selfish person decided they didn’t have to follow the rules. And then I repeat myself: and then I get angry about it.

But if you didn’t understand what I said before? I will say it again. If you don’t understand it after the second time, I will say it a third time, in different words or with different examples. And I will keep repeating it until it is clear and fully understood. And then, when you have a new thought or a new experience, and that changes how you view what we talked about before, I will happily talk about it again: perhaps after I have thought about it some more, to integrate whatever new concept or perspective you brought into it today, apart from what we discussed yesterday. No problem.

We seem to still be having trouble with freedom of speech. We are still talking about it, still debating it, still disagreeing over it; and now we are doing this in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s death. In that wake, and, I suspect, pretty directly related to that terrible crime, my wife was censored by Facebook, because someone reported a post she shared about Trump, calling it spreading misinformation. It was not, it was simply a joking criticism of the administration; specifically, it was this:

Exploring Shutdown Day 1: Discovering New Perspectives

My working assumption is that the person who reported her post was a Trump supporter, angered (as always) by libs and the left and so on, and recently energized by Kirk’s murder and the gaslighting from the right, convincing people to take action now to defend free speech (And please stop talking about the Epstein files and the still ongoing wars in Gaza and the Ukraine and the swiftly tanking U.S. economy), who probably reports every left-leaning or Trump-criticizing meme they see. Probably laughing while they do it. Facebook, as a private company that doesn’t want to suffer the wrath of the Trump administration, not only took down my wife’s post, but has also been monitoring and restricting her posts ever since: they are limiting her free speech. These new situations — unique neither to Charlie Kirk nor to my wife — has given people a new perspective on the issue, so: let’s talk about it again.

Here. This is where we start.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Okay, so the First Amendment actually says a lot of things. It restricts Congress’s ability to control religion, and the press, and peaceable assembly, and the right to petition, all in addition to the freedom of speech. Let’s put those other aside for now: though it may be worth considering why all of those different, and all of those important, ideas were all packed together into a single amendment, and then the next one is only on one issue: guns. And the one after that is only about not letting soldiers sleep in your house against your will. Both important, maybe (though neither as important as freedom of speech) but both very narrow topics. Why are all these other things together in one place? Honestly, I haven’t read enough on the Founding Fathers and their choices regarding the Bill of Rights, so I could only speculate; but either way, we can ignore this topic for now, because we’re only here talking about the freedom of speech (and the others will become more clear as we focus just on speech, I think). Freedom of the press might come into it directly if we want to talk about Jimmy Kimmel, but it’s not clear to me that that discussion needs to involve anything other than free speech; that one right seems enough to cover what happened there. So let’s focus.

What is freedom of speech? Why do we have a right to it?

So hot take: freedom of speech is not actually critical. It is a roundabout way to protect the actually critical thing — or rather, two critical things: freedom of thought, and freedom to express those thoughts. Freedom of thought is absolutely critical to humanity, because in the most essential sense, we are our thoughts. I am what happens inside my skull. My body is also a critical part of me, but if I have a broken body, I am still me, because it doesn’t change what is inside my skull. It changes how well I can act out and reflect the decisions I make inside my skull — my freedom to express my thoughts — but it doesn’t change who I am. But if my brain dies, then who I am is gone, even if my body remains. My body can’t express my thoughts if I have no more thoughts: and without those thoughts, there is nothing for my body to express, no purpose for it to achieve; it can continue for a period of time, and then it will, mercifully, stop.

I wonder if my body would be sad if my brain died. Would my body grieve the loss of my mind?

Well: I would grieve the loss of my mind, so the question of my body’s reaction is academic. It is a part of me.

Now, in the ordinary way of things, there is nothing that could limit my freedom of thought. It’s one of the great things about being a sentient, thinking being; on that most essential level, we are always free. (Well, almost.) It’s because we are always essentially alone, and because there is no substance to thoughts: they can dance and flit anywhere we can imagine, always within the skull that holds the brain; and nothing will change other than the thoughts themselves — and potentially the mind having those thoughts. Nothing else is affected, and so nothing else can affect those thoughts: they can dance and flit to anywhere else, faster than anything that actually exists. Nobody else will even ever know where our thoughts are going, inside our minds. This was what Henry David Thoreau was talking about in On Civil Disobedience, when he described the inability of the state to actually punish him with a night in prison after he refused to pay his taxes:

I could not but smile to see how industriously they locked the door on my meditations, which followed them out again without let or hindrance, and they were really all that was dangerous. As they could not reach me, they had resolved to punish my body; just as boys, if they cannot come at some person against whom they have a spite, will abuse his dog. I saw that the State was half-witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes, and I lost all my remaining respect for it, and pitied it. Source

As he says, his thoughts cannot be trapped inside the cell, but can go anywhere that Thoreau wishes to send them: and the attempt to punish his body because they cannot punish his mind is just pitiable. What the State wants here is to control his thoughts, because they want to control Thoreau’s actions through his decision-making ability. Because their initial attempt to control his actions, through a threat to his body’s freedom if he made a certain decision the way the State didn’t want him to decide, didn’t work: knowing the threat, Thoreau still decided not to pay his taxes. His thoughts were uncontrolled, and his person/body/being followed along that thought decision, and didn’t pay his taxes. So then the State put him in jail: and he just kept right on deciding not to pay his taxes, regardless of what they did to his body. His thoughts were entirely unaffected, and uncontrolled, and they did the thing that the State didn’t want them to do — without any influence from the State at all. And so we all do, every thought we have that is in defiance of what our society demands of us. We are free to think whatever the fuck we want to, even the thoughts we’re not supposed to have, or not allowed to have.

Please take a moment and think a thought or two, which people outside of your head would not allow you to have, if they could tell you what to think. Any thought you like. Any thought at all.

Nice.

So because nobody can control a person’s thoughts, the laws focus on the second critical part of the process of having a free mind: the expression of our thoughts. Free speech, and in a broader context, free expression. Let me focus on that second aspect for a moment, because it shows more clearly what the point is here.

I can have my thoughts, and you can’t stop me. So far so good. But obviously, if I can’t act on those thoughts, then my thoughts cannot be complete. If, for instance, I think about spitting on the sidewalk, decide to spit on the sidewalk, but I cannot spit on the sidewalk — at the moment that is just because there is no sidewalk near me; I could spit on the floor of my office and call it a sidewalk, and to some extent I would have acted out my thought, and brought that thought to its completion, but then I would have to deal with my spittle, and also my wife would kick my ass — so I don’t spit: and thus the thought is not free, it is limited. I think, “I’m going to spit on the sidewalk!” and then I can’t do it: the thought is constrained. When the thought is constrained by reality — “I want to grow nine arms and use them to juggle chainsaws!” — then again, my thought is not free, but there’s no point in talking about our freedom to do things that we can’t do, or the need to pass laws to prevent things that are not possible. At that point, all we can do is shrug, and say, “It sucks to suck, Dusty. But you go ahead and dream of nine chainsaw-juggling arms, that’s fine, you can think about it all you want.” Freedom of thought is still protected, because I can carry the juggling arms thought as far as it can go; and as thought is still the most essential aspect of being human, that’s fine then. Thoreau can think that his taxes should not be collected by a government that supports both human chattel slavery and a war of conquest against Mexico (the reasons Thoreau didn’t pay his taxes), and if the action is not possible — if taxes didn’t exist and so he couldn’t choose to pay them or not to pay them — then he has all the freedom he could ever have.

But see, what happened is, Thoreau’s aunt paid his taxes for him, against his will. I don’t know why: I suspect she either thought he was suffering in jail and wanted to help him, or she was ashamed that her nephew was in jail, and wanted him to stop embarrassing her. (I would guess the second one, because she did not consult with him before she did it, and if she wanted to help, seems like she would at least visit and ask if he was okay.) Which then limited his free expression of his thoughts: he could think his money shouldn’t go to the government, and he could decide not to give his money to the government; but the government got his money anyway. Not because it was impossible for the government to have his money, but because someone else took his choice away. I guess it wasn’t really his money, it was his aunt’s money; but Thoreau’s idea was not to save his own pocket change, it was to refuse to participate in the government’s immoral acts, and when money went to the government in his name, it defied and negated his decision. Imagine if he talked to someone about not paying his taxes, if he argued with the government tax collector about the issue, and expressed his disagreement with the government, and said, “I will never contribute to this immorality, sir!” Can’t you just see the agent smirking and saying, “Sure, buddy. I mean, we already have your money, so you can say what you want.” Thoreau’s thought, while still free, has been constrained in its expression: and that pretty much ruins the thought; a thought which was not constrained by impossibility, it was possible, and he could have acted upon it — but then the option was taken away.

This is why, of course, jail is actually a very effective punishment for most people: because while we are all free to think our way out of jail, I would guess most people in jail want to walk out of jail: and they can’t. Which means their thoughts, while potentially free, are nonetheless really trapped along with their bodies. It is worth noting that, if you can find a way to free your thoughts, then prison wouldn’t matter so much; it would become a struggle to try to force you, through continued discomfort, to think about being in prison and how much you don’t want to be; then your thoughts are controlled, and trapped, and you are suffering for your punishment. But when Malcolm X was in prison, he found freedom in learning: and he talked in his autobiography about how prison really didn’t bother him at all, once he taught himself how to read and found things worth reading — and also once he found his faith in Islam, which also gave him something to think about that wasn’t constrained by being in a cell.

I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading opened to me. I knew right there in
prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read
awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive. I certainly wasn’t seeking any
degree, the way a college confers a status symbol upon its students. My homemade education gave
me, with every additional book that I read, a little bit more sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness,
and blindness that was afflicting the black race in America. Not long ago, an English writer
telephoned me from London, asking questions. One was, “What’s your alma mater?” I told him,
“Books.” You will never catch me with a free fifteen minutes in which I’m not studying something I
feel might be able to help the black man.

…

But I’m digressing. I told the Englishman that my alma mater was books, a good library. Every
time I catch a plane, I have with me a book that I want to read-and that’s a lot of books these days.
If! weren’t out here every day battling the white man, I could spend the rest of my life reading, just
satisfying my curiosity – because you can hardly mention anything I’m not curious about. I don’t
think anybody ever got more out of going to prison than I did. In fact, prison enabled me to study
far more intensively than I would have if my life had gone differently and I had attended some
college. I imagine that one of the biggest troubles with colleges is there are too many distractions,
too much panty-raiding, fraternities, and boola-boola and all of that. Where else but in a prison
could I have attacked my ignorance by being able to study intensely sometimes as much as fifteen
hours a day? Source

So again: the real goal of punishment, the only kind that is possible being constraint of the body, is to control the mind; and if the mind is able to continue thinking, then the constraint of the body is essentially meaningless. But in the vast majority of cases — and also, I will point out, in these two cases I have mentioned, because I don’t doubt that at some point Thoreau would have wanted to get out of jail and therefore would have felt trapped, and therefore actually would have been trapped, and Malcolm X would have been severely constrained if he had not been released to become the leader he became — trapping the body, because it limits the expression of thoughts, is an effective way to control a person’s thoughts. And even more importantly, for the purposes of society in general, constraining someone’s actions, the expression of their thoughts, is enough, because the purpose of prison is to stop a person from affecting others, and thoughts have no effect without expression. So just like I accept that I can’t ever have those juggling arms I dreamed of, society accepts that it can’t ever control our thoughts: and it just makes do with having potentially total control over our bodies.

And that’s where the amendment comes in.

I hope it is clear that thought without expression through the body, whether through action, through communication, or through a public display of some kind, is incomplete, and more importantly, useless. A useless thought is not a bad thought: all impossible thoughts are useless in and of themselves, which includes every dream, every fantasy, and every imagined existence; but they can still have enormous impact; and even if they don’t, they can encapsulate important things about the person who thought them, and that’s good, even if that encapsulated thought never reaches outside the mind that dreamed it. But when society wants to control us, controlling the impact we can have on other people is the primary goal and thus also the primary means of controlling people and the thoughts that define us. And that’s why the Founding Fathers included an Amendment that protects free expression in several different forms, most importantly speech and press and peaceable assembly.

Let me be clear now: the Founding Fathers were not always right. You don’t have to look any further than chattel slavery to know that they and their ideas, and the documents and the nation that they built, were fundamentally flawed, right from the beginning. There were some bad thoughts in there, and we’re still dealing with the legacy of those bad thoughts. But they were right in this: government wants to control people, and that means they need to control our thoughts — but they can only control our bodies, which is what they try to do. The First Amendment is there to set a baseline protecting our thoughts, through protecting the only things the government can attack and control, which is our actions.

So that is the essence of the Amendment, and the right: we have the right to express our thoughts, freely. The government cannot control our expression of those thoughts, so long as the thoughts do not have a direct impact on others in a way the government can control, and should control. In other words, if I decide to pick up a rifle and shoot someone I disagree with, that is no longer simply the expression of my thought, now it is an attack on another person, and it can be controlled, and should be because it is harmful. Though I will point out that, to some extent, the expression of that thought can’t always be controlled; sometimes it can only be reacted to after I have already done the thing I decided to do. But insofar as it can be predicted, and thus prevented, it should be.

Do I need to talk about why I shouldn’t have the unfettered ability to inflict harm on my fellow humans? Or can I assume we’re all on board with that? Just for the sake of saying it, the issue is that I have no right to control other people’s thoughts, nor their expression of their thoughts, except in the service of preventing harm. If I do harm to another person, I am affecting their ability to express and complete their thoughts, or possibly even their ability to think thoughts in the first place. If I am the one looking to do harm, not just prevent harm, then someone should have the ability and the right to stop me before I do harm.

Should that be the government? My first thought was to say that of course it should be; that this is the reason why we create governments and cede to them the power to control us: so they can prevent us from doing harm to one another. But government is frequently bad at this, and in that case, maybe other people and other authorities should have that power, that right, that responsibility, to prevent my harmful actions. But this is where we get into a conversation about how society should work, and that’s too complicated for right now. Suffice to say that the government, as imagined by the Founding Fathers — that is, existing with the consent of the governed — is a reasonable place to invest the power to control people’s obviously harmful actions. I would like to expand on the FF’s ideas about the governed who were consenting to the government, to include all of those who are governed, which would include people they didn’t consider worthy of consideration, or even consider to be people; it would also include all those who reside within the jurisdiction of the government in question, and who would be subject to the government’s control: those people should be considered “governed,” and therefore should be asked for consent to the government over them. Yes, that means undocumented migrants as well as those who don’t have full legal status. And also suspects, convicts, prisoners and parolees, all those governed by the justice system: they, too, must consent to the government over them, or else it becomes illegitimate and tyrannical.

And to be clear, when I say “consent,” I mean continuous, affirmative, and enthusiastic consent. The only kind of consent that matters.

Also at this point, I would like to express my burning volcanic rage that the First Amendment does not include the right to vote. What the actual FUCK, Madison? Why did you leave that one out?

It was the slaves, wasn’t it.

So all right: we should give the government the power to control our actions which can be harmful (and which can be controlled): but we retain the power to consent to be governed, and also the power to abolish the government if it becomes destructive of the ends we created it for, ideally through voting in free and fair elections. Since the government exists with our consent, what one thing do we most clearly need in order to legitimize that government?

A voice. The power to say “Yes,” and the power to say “No,” and to have those words heard. The power to consent, in the simplest terms. Continuous, affirmative, enthusiastic consent. If we don’t have that power, the government has taken too much control and has lost its legitimate authority, and should then be abolished: and that is the intent of the First Amendment, to protect and enshrine, first and foremost, our power to keep or abolish our government, which would otherwise have unchecked power over us.

You know: the power to vote. But in the absence of that, the power at least to speak, and to be heard. Not just to think freely, but to actually express those thoughts. The power to spit on the sidewalk. And on fascists.

So. Now. Did Charlie Kirk have freedom of speech? He did, and he should have: he spoke, and was heard. He lost that freedom when another person caused harm to him, murdered him, in an act that our government should have done all it could to prevent. Was Charlie Kirk a promoter, and therefore a martyr, for the cause of free speech? He was not: it was not his job to protect people’s right to free thought nor to free speech as an expression of their thoughts; inasmuch as he encouraged free thought and the free exchange of ideas through debate, then he was a proponent of free speech; but watching his debates makes it very quickly clear that he was not interested in the expression and free exchange of ideas, he was interested in scoring points and (as my students would say) farming aura: trying to get famous and powerful because he was seen as a staunch defender of his political and religious views. This is no criticism of the man: I would also like to get famous and powerful using my words, though I’d probably rather write than speak; but I want the same thing. But it does mean he was not a martyr for the cause of free speech, because free speech was not his cause: it was the means by which he tried to achieve his purpose, to fight for his cause. He shouldn’t have had to defend his free speech, he should have simply been able to exercise it. And just like Charlie Kirk, as a private citizen, it is not my job to protect free speech directly: that is what the government is for. To secure these rights, to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

Let me emphasize that again, because we talk about free speech as though it is just something that needs to be protected from the infringement of the government on our rights, that the point of the First Amendment is to constrain the government from taking away our free speech; the First Amendment is that thing, that is its point — but also, the real point of the amendment is to tell the government that it should be working to protect and secure that right for all people within its jurisdiction and influence. Actively. Affirmatively. Enthusiastically. Continuously.

Which means, in practical terms, that the government should not only have done more to protect Charlie Kirk from being murdered (if we believe the government could have done more to prevent that, which I think is self-evident, but that’s not the argument I’m making here), but also, it should be doing more to ensure that all people under the jurisdiction of the U.S. government, all persons resident in this country and under its control around the world, have the opportunity to be heard, to express their thoughts freely. By publishing their opposition to the war and genocide in Gaza, without losing their legal status. To have their case heard before an immigration judge, through the due process of law. Through posting whatever the fuck you want on social media, even if other people don’t like it, so long as it is not actively, directly causing harm. Through speech, through the press, through petition, through peaceable assembly.

Which means the government should have kept the Fairness Doctrine. And in this modern era, the government should ensure that social media does not censor people’s free speech, so long as that speech does no harm. In fact, I would argue that the government should have a platform for people to be heard, to be seen, to which all people who must consent to the government over them have access. I would include NPR, PBS, and VOA among those platforms, but I would argue the government should also provide some simple form of social media, to at least offer an alternative to the private companies, which are all controlled by billionaires with agendas. I don’t think the government should seek to control the social media companies per se, but they have a responsibility to ensure our rights: including the right to speak our thoughts, online as well as through print and speech. The government should also protect protestors and ensure that they have the right to assemble and petition for redress of grievances, so long as they are peaceable in that assembly.

Yes, that last clause, as well as the earlier condition that speech should be protected as long as it does no harm, does create an opportunity for the government to limit free speech, depending on what we mean by speech that does harm, or by peaceable assembly. I think the current laws distinguishing between protest and riot, and the laws preventing libel and slander, make sense and should remain (I don’t know enough about the specific laws and so can’t speak to their current efficacy, but conceptually, I’m in favor), and where these two rights cross over, with the law preventing speech that incites to violence, is also a useful law that protects people from harm. I also think there should be a gray area around and beyond those laws (Does “Fight like hell or you won’t have a country” count as incitement to violence? I honestly can’t say, not without further evidence of intent and context. If only there had been a trial…), and that the burden of proof within that gray area should definitely be on the government, as the ones who enact the control of people’s speech, to show that someone lost their right because they were causing harm with their speech. We have a system in place to carry out that process: but we need to have people in the government who are dedicated to maintaining and using that system.

We do not currently have that. We have an authoritarian who wants to eliminate free speech because he doesn’t want anyone to have rights except himself. We have a legislature that agrees with him, completely and slavishly — they are not expressing their thoughts, they are expressing only his. (The opposition, presumably, is not expressing the authoritarian’s thoughts. We just need to find where that opposition is hiding…) We have a Supreme Court that also thinks no one should have rights other than the President, and themselves, because they think their trump card over Trump (pun obviously intended, as all puns should be — also, we should have a right to pun…No, we do have a right to pun, and it should be protected by the government.) enables them to live as exceptions to the dictatorial power they want to give him, and they like the idea that a dictator could enhance the lives of the people whom they (the “justices”) deem worthy of enhancement, and destroy the lives of those whom they deem worthy of destruction, without they themselves dirtying their lil fingies. They’re wrong, of course, because if Trump ever did become a dictator, he would end up killing or jailing the justices because they have defied him in the past, and no dictator can abide that kind of challenge to their power; but then, all of these people are wrong. They all think that the dictator would only use power the way they want him to use power, and that’s not how dictatorship works.

Please take note, all you MAGA voters who want Trump to hurt the people you hate, but not you yourself. That’s not how dictatorship works. He doesn’t dance to your tune. If the Supreme Leader is the only one with rights, then we will no longer have rights ourselves: not the right to life, not the right to liberty, not the right to the pursuit of happiness. We will then not have the right to express our thoughts through speech or writing, through assembly and protest and petition; more importantly, we will no longer have the right to consent, and though that immediately means the government will no longer be legitimate, it also means that we won’t have the ability to remove it without violence.

That is where the Second Amendment comes in. It is not, as the fools who care only about that one and not the First would have us all believe, the right which ensures all the others; that is the First Amendment. It is free speech. It is the power to consent, and to withdraw consent. The practical power that enforces the moral and intellectual power is the right to communicate, to agree, to assemble and stand together: that is what changes governments. (Also, if we don’t lose it, the right to vote. Tell me why the right to free exercise of religion usurped the place that should have gone to the ballot, I beg you.) The right to defend ourselves physically is the last resort when the first one has been lost: and every one of those gun rights advocates, from the rational ones to the chuckleheads, have been ignoring the infringement of the First Amendment while trying to protect the Second. Protecting it, I might add, through their right to free speech.

So. Free speech is not only important, it is critical, it is definitive, both to us as humans, and to our country as a free country, with government of the people, by the people, for the people. It is the most important right we have, and it is the best way to delegitimize, remove, and replace the current government, which I think we can say safely does not have our consent any longer to govern us, taking “our” and “us” in the largest collective sense, meaning the majority of people governed by this administration. The government should not only not be infringing on it, the government should be actively protecting and promoting it: that is the government’s job, the reason it exists, and the best way to ensure that the other rights are also maintained. Because free speech leads to the free exchange of ideas and information, to the shining of a light into the darkness where tyranny grows. It’s what lets us all communicate and understand each other, and then agree: and take action.

Before it’s too late.

Bi(Partisan) Curious

11/06/2025Dusty Leave a comment

Donald Trump is going to turn me into a conservative.

That’s probably not true. But it does feel like I have grown a bit more in tune with conservatives as I understand them – certainly how I idealize them, which I know is about as far away from the truth as are the demonizations of the left that are so popular on the right, that we are babykillers or pedophiles or corrupt Fascist socialists who sell American secrets to China so we can feed that money to Hamas to promote anti-Semitism. But one obvious thing keeps coming up: I have grown much more suspicious of government, and much more frustrated with government inefficiency; and both of those feel conservative-leaning.

I mean, maybe it’s not Trump: maybe it’s because I’m getting older, which supposedly swings people to the right; though to be frank, I’m not getting richer, which I think is the actual reason why people become more conservative as they age. It’s always easy to demand higher taxes on the rich when you aren’t one of them – though it is also true that liberals, masters of NIMBYist virtue signaling, are also fond of raising taxes on other people and not on ourselves. I suspect as well that growing anxiety and paranoia contributes to the stereotypical political changes that come with age; as my own anxiety and paranoia are focused almost exclusively on government and authority, it’s basically driving me closer to socialism – or anarchism, even – rather than the increased fear of crime and of marginalized people which I’ve seen in older people around me.

But I’ll tell you what, I do think there needs to be a rebirth and resurgence of the conservatism that I grew up with (Now THAT makes me sound like an old man), at least the conservatism I think I grew up with; though it would be swell if people would first figure out that trickle-down economics is a lie intended to consolidate wealth and power in the hands of those who already have it and who then espouse trickle-down economics. The economic side is coming along, I think, as Americans may actually be figuring out that the Republicans we elected last year have done somewhere between fuck-all and fuck-you in terms of helping make life more affordable, while they fire thousands of people, reduce useful and vital government services, and cut taxes for the rich, as personified by Elon Musk. (I tell you what, if Musk turns out to be a double-agent for progressives, I will yell “AHA!” Because not a lot of genuine conservatives could have managed to throw as much shit on the GOP as Musk has done. I mean, he’s no Trump, but it still seems too much for it to be coincidence.) But I think the rest of what I imagine as idealized conservative values, like small government, local government, a clear focus on maintaining the rule of law and of the Constitution: that is what I think we actually need. And then, inasmuch as conservatism ever represented the values of independence and personal integrity, “family values,” patriotism and Christianity both in a humble, individual sense, I think people turning back to that would be an incredibly good thing.

Though honestly, it would be best if that happened to the people who are actually supposed to be conservative, namely Republicans, rather than if it happened to me. But I will confess a certain imaginary scenario in which someone like me, and maybe actually me, steps into the void left in the GOP after Donald Trump dies or becomes politically insignificant (and God willing let that happen soon), and helps people to remember that there is nothing particularly wrong with conservatism, that progressive ideas need to be tempered in rational ways, that there is benefit in a marketplace of ideas and a political process that features opposition and negotiation, that a single-minded government is dangerous no matter how right-minded (or left-minded) that government is. That the problem with the current GOP is, first, Donald J. Trump, and second, everything that Trump represents: authoritarianism, white supremacy, anti-intellectualism, hypocrisy and narcissism. Not the essential values of conservatives, which, while I generally don’t agree with them, I don’t think they are at all bad. I think the Republican party returning to those values – maybe a little more modernized than the 1950’s Eisenhower Republicans I’m probably imagining – would be the best thing for our country, barring an actual leftist revolution that swept the entire nation along with it, and I keep looking for someone to carry it out.

Can’t find them. Not in Trump’s GOP.

Can you imagine that, though? If someone charismatic enough to actually get Republicans to listen reminded them of what the party of Lincoln should truly be about? I can’t imagine a change in the politics of this country that would have a more immediate positive impact. Not even the hard pendulum swing to the left which I suspect is coming after this particular round of violent greed is over, because as long as progressives and liberals and Democrats in government are opposed by people who will lie with every breath, spread rumors and character assassination with every press interaction, start pretty literal fistfights over every disagreement, and ignore all political norms (Which, to be clear, are the ESSENCE of conservative sensibility, and there is not a much better indication that the Trump movement is not authentically conservative – other than the obvious abandonment of respect for law and order and police authority, in favor of supporting a multiple felon and the complete discarding of all due process) in order to exploit any opportunity to harm their opponents and increase their own power, government will continue to be too dysfunctional to inspire any long-term support for progressive ideas and movements.

Think of it: if the Democrats as they are currently constituted, headed by people like AOC and Cory Booker, Jamie Raskin and Adam Schiff, and Pete Buttigieg and Gavin Newsom, rather than Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, trying to actually enact Medicare for All, over the objections of Senators Donald Trump Jr. and Marjorie Taylor Greene-Trump (Dunno if she’ll marry one of the Trump boys or get Trump himself to adopt her, but I promise that she’ll be part of the family in the next decade. I am going to put my money on her taking up with The Nazi Cheeto himself after Melania finally divorces him.), who holds a filibuster on the floor of the Senate to accuse every one of the Democrats of supporting Chinese Triads in smuggling Fentanyl into Gaza to make Palestinian super-soldiers who will be unleashed across the southern US border to rape white women in order to bring about a wave of abortions which will then be used to distill that baby brain juice which keeps the Clintons alive.

What are the chances that any progressive/liberal alliance would be able to survive through that kind of inferno of flaming horseshit?

As long as Trumpian MAGA fanatics remain popular, they will ruin all attempts at a functional government. Because that is the larger Trumpian project: the undercutting of a functional federal government and a social power structure that serves the public interest and the general welfare promised in the Constitution, in service of the two main goals of the movement, namely a more lawless society where wealthy people and the white supremacist power structure can have free rein, and a right-wing-media-fed zeitgeist of apocalyptic terror that allows Daddy Trump to claim that only he has the strength and intelligence to save us all from the dangers and threats that surround us.

I do think that there is real value in conservative ideas and values – at least in real conservative values. It would have been wonderful if the last twenty years had included more genuine attempts to balance the federal budget and reduce the deficit and the debt, particularly in the times of economic growth, so long as it had been done the right way, by raising taxes on the wealthy. You know, the way Eisenhower did it: because asking the wealthy to contribute their fair share would show a respect for individual responsibility, and patriotism in the humble sense that asks everyone to contribute to the betterment of this nation and the people who make it up. (Also, while I’m no expert, I swear that taxing the rich seems pretty dang Christian…) Which value, when taken to a Trumpian extreme, is turned into that your-own-bootstraps nonsense which then justifies – or rather pretends to excuse – cutting Medicaid and food stamps and all of the social safety net, while allowing billionaires to extract all the wealth they could ever want without any return on our investments which made the wealth possible in the first place. I think the progressive desire to create programs that produce positive change is wonderful, but when combined with the liberal/Democratic desire to protect everyone and everything that needs protecting, it leads to levels of red tape and bureaucracy that undercuts the progressive program entirely; and, at least in theory, real conservatives would be useful in tempering or preventing that excess. Take, for example, this: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0uxWGBxJWf2oAB9uyDMoOB?si=407ef6fb2213428a

This episode of Jon Stewart’s wonderful podcast features Ezra Klein, the progressive former MSNBC host, who discusses a program intended to build rural broadband access under President Biden’s infrastructure bill. The program had a fourteen-stage process before a region – state or county or city – could receive grant money, which process produced so much red tape that out of 56 regions that applied for grants to build broadband infrastructure, only 3 had finished that process in the three years between the law being signed in 2021 and the end of infrastructure spending in 2024. And none of those three had actually managed to get the money and build the broadband. Klein goes into agonizing detail – he wrote about this in his most recent book – and shows how all of the delays and all of the red tape are well-meaning, but basically none of it is necessary, and taken as a whole, it was destructive: because no rural broadband was built. Multiply that by every other program Biden’s administration passed, and you can see why the Democrats lost the election: because even their important and genuine accomplishments never actually came to pass in the real world. Klein talks about how Biden planned everything on a six- to ten-year timeline – when elections happen every two or four years.

The best line in the podcast was this: “We are stuck between a party that wants to destroy government, and one that can’t make government work.”

I would argue that conservatives arguing for real conservative values could have counteracted the problems that come with a too-singleminded focus on liberal and progressive values. To be fully transparent, I do think that much of the problem is in the liberal influence on progressive movements, because I think it is liberals and Democrats who insist on political correctness and purity tests and virtue signaling, where progressives are focused on functional efforts to improve people’s lives. Klein talks about that, too, that part of the issue was things like a requirement that the subcontractors hired for the broadband installation represent women and non-white minority-run businesses, which is a great intention to have and a wonderful thing to try to do – but it’s not the point. The point was to build rural broadband (Which, coincidentally, would do a hell of a lot to help a large number of marginalized people; remember that women in rural areas are the ones who can’t find meaningful work opportunities, and also remember that the rural areas of the South are largely not white. Or maybe that’s not so coincidental, but it does show why liberals given total control can sometimes step on their own feet.). It’s this desire, not to achieve real progress, but to be liked, to be good, while working through the process, which makes the left twist itself into knots and get nothing done – though what I am ignoring is the fact that progressive goals and projects are frequently unpopular, because they are expensive and difficult and do not tend to aggrandize benefits in the hands of those who already have privilege, and it requires a spoonful of liberal/Democratic people-pleasing to help the progressive medicine go down… if there’s not going to be an actual leftist revolution, that is.

I don’t really know, at this point, if conservatives really do have that no-nonsense gruff exterior that we think of as people just getting shit done; but that’s what I’m imagining. I just picture a 60-year-old white man (Hey, I’m not stupid enough to think that the GOP will suddenly become multicultural; let’s not go too far into the fantasy) in a committee meeting, who just keeps responding to every liberal feel-good virtue-signaling suggestion with a steady beat of “The goal here is to build rural broadband.” Basically, I think we need people in government who just want to get shit done: not necessarily make sure that everything gets done in exactly the “right” way.

There is an important point to be recognized in the conservative drive to demand people work hard: because while government is necessary to make changes for large groups of people, particularly changes that are not profitable for any other group currently with privilege and power, what it comes down to, always, is people working hard. People in government work hard to make it possible for everybody else to work hard, by trying to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to actually benefit from their hard work. That’s the truth. Take it from me, a government employee who works hard to make other people work hard, so they can benefit from their own hard work. That’s what school is. And I don’t know that liberalism actually pushes people to work hard; within my example of myself and schools, liberals are the ones who get 504 accommodations and IEPs enacted and followed, and who make sure that the curriculum includes social-emotional learning and multicultural perspectives: conservatives are the ones who teach math and science and history. (English teachers are all liberals. With very few exceptions, who are mostly psychopaths.)

In the most simple sense (And I know I’m oversimplifying and basing this on stereotypes; doesn’t make me wrong, though), the recognition in liberal politics of the burdens of social marginalization and intersectional oppression, of mental health struggles and of the value of self-care, promotes a deeply valuable drive for people to take it easy, to relax and take care of themselves. But conservatism does value and push individual hard work, personal responsibility, self-reliance. Not Trumpian pseudo-conservatism, of course, which pushes people to hate everyone who doesn’t have dirt under their fingernails (Daddy Trump, as in all things, excluded, of course) unless the skin of those hands is brown, in which case they should be hated anyway no matter what is under their fingernails; but conservatism tells us that people need to do things themselves, and be responsible for the consequences of their decisions: which allows people to actually make those decisions themselves, without approval by a dozen committees, and then (in theory) holds them responsible for those decisions.

Liberalism is necessary to make sure that conservatives don’t treat people like shit in the name of promoting personal responsibility. (Also to make sure that conservatives in this country don’t go full white supremacist; which would naturally occur, as conservatism by definition is trying to retain and preserve a past system, which in this country means an oppressive racist and sexist system.) Progressives are the ones trying to make the world a better place, rather than trying to retain the status quo. I do not imagine that a United States run by conservatives of any stripe would be the best version of this country. But my God, watching the Democratic party fuck up every single opportunity that we vote for them has worn me the fuck out. The 2024 election broke me. The Republicans are going to lose in the midterms next year, and I am looking forward to that: but I cannot stand to watch Democrats win control of Congress in the coming reaction to Trump, and then do every fucking thing wrong again, so that 2028 swings back to the goddamn Republicans.

But right now, there is another reason. The main reason, the real reason, why I find myself wishing for a renewal of a conservative movement that probably never really existed. It’s not policies, not red tape and bureaucracy, not tax breaks, not cuts to the social safety net. It’s not the next election, not the future of how we see government. It’s none of those things.

I want to find a way to ensure that this country will still exist.

I’m trying not to overreact. I’m trying to see this as just more bullshit from Trump. But, I mean — he fucking sent in troops. Thousands of troops. To LA, to California, under his command, his and that fucking idiot Hegseth. He sent them not because they were needed, not because they were asked for, not because their presence will help: just because he wants to start a fight with the left, with California, with Gavin Newsom personally, who has been criticizing Trump for years, and who is willing to fight him back. Because MAGA wants to have the fight with the left — by which I mean the majority of the population of this country, the ones who don’t want a dictator, who don’t want tyranny, who actually want this to remain a Constitutional Republic, a country under the rule of law. They want to fight all the rest of us. They want to hurt us because they think we have stolen their country and filled it with illegal immigrants and trans people and abortions and fentanyl. They want us to pay for that: and Trump wants to help them do it. Not because he gives a shit about this country or what is happening to it; just because he wants to point his finger and see people die at his command. He wants the full might of the U.S. military to obey him, and destroy those he wants destroyed.

This is not about left and right, liberal and conservative. It’s about this asshole sending fucking troops to LA. It’s really just about life and death: life and death of immigrants and marginalized groups in general, life and death of this country and its self-image, life and death of the rule of law and the experiment in democracy that seems, at last, to have failed.

Our President sent troops to LA. Not to enforce the law: to enforce his will. To set off a fight — a fight that people are giving him — so he can escalate the tension until people finally snap, and fight, for real, fight for life and death.

Because Trump wants a war.

If Conservatives, real Conservatives, would help prevent that, then – yeah, I’ll be one.

I am a middle-aged white man, after all.

And whatever else I think of this country, I don’t want America to fall. Not like this.

Whatever it takes.

Shock and Awful

06/04/202507/04/2025Dusty 1 Comment

SHOCK AND AWE IRAN 2020 — *Okay seriously I Googled Shock and Awe to find a header image for this post, and I found this — and WHAT THE COWABUNGA IS THIS???*

Here: maybe this will be better. It’s a chimp, and that’s not actually poop — but the source is awesome, too.

Poop-Throwing Chimps Provide Hints of Human Origins | WIRED — *Read this. Really.*

It’s so hard to get my head around it.

I’m good at understanding things: especially people. I am extremely empathetic, I am a student of human personality and interactions, and I try never to underestimate the complexity of a person and their actions and the motivations. Because of my vocation, I have spent time with and communicated in fair depth with thousands of people; and because of my avocation, I have spent countless hours imagining people and creating their actions and motivations. So I think about this a lot: why do people act the way they do? And normally, I think I’m pretty good at understanding why people do what they do, and making sense of it.

But I can’t make sense of Donald Trump.

It pisses me off, and that’s part of why I call him a shit-flinging gibbon: that is my own frustrated attempt to fling that would-be dictator, that narcissistic Nazi, that Cheeto-skinned charlatan, the hell away from me, to dismiss him as nothing more than a beast, an animal without complex motivations. He tries to have sex with anyone female for the same reason he tries to eat all the cheeseburgers he can: because he is nothing but instinct, pure id. Just basic survival urges in a primate that is not currently in a survival situation, and so, just as if you imagine that great ape in a fine restaurant, for instance, he screams and climbs on the tables and the wait staff, and he chucks the table settings and steals people’s food, cramming it into his mouth while he threatens to bite anyone who gets too close to him.

I like thinking of Donald Trump as a terrified primate who is trying to bluster his way out of danger so he can hide somewhere with the bunch of bananas he just stole. And based on much of what he does, I think it’s a pretty helpful way to try to understand him.

Take his reaction, for instance, when he was first asked about the Signal group chat where his top advisors and his Vice President acted like braggadocious buffoons, while clearly violating multiple federal laws by chatting about war plans, in advance of an attack, on a non-secure, non-governmental chat app that the Russians had already targeted for hacking – the Russians who are years ahead of us in cyberwarfare.

Trump reacts to Signal group chat: ‘I don’t know anything about it’

Now imagine that’s a monkey being threatened by a reporter aggressively asking it a question that it can’t understand at all.

“I don’t know anything about it,” which he repeats several times, is the monkey first grunting and then screeching, backing away and baring its teeth; the nonsense attack thrown out at the Atlantic “I’m not a big fan of the Atlantic, to me it’s a magazine that’s going out of business” is the monkey swiping with a paw at the aggressor; the line about “Well it couldn’t have been very effective because the attack was very effective” is the monkey trying to look taller, maybe beating its chest to appear tough.

See how well it works?

But it doesn’t explain everything. It’s fun to imagine, and there are some moments when, truly, Donald Trump acts like an unthinking animal just reacting – often overreacting – to what he sees as a threat or a challenge; but it doesn’t explain everything.

My biggest problem is trying to understand Trump’s plans and strategies. Obviously this is where the primate metaphor breaks down, because while the great apes are capable of planning multi-step tasks and so on, they’re still not very good at it; and as far as I know, they are double plus ungood at understanding abstract concepts, which Trump clearly thinks about quite a lot: he wants to be famous, he wants America to be great. He may not understand what he’s actually doing and what really makes America great and what does not, but he does seem to have a grasp on the concepts “America” and “great.” So in this situation, he’s not just a shit-flinging gibbon. But it is difficult for me to think about Donald Trump as a person with a plan, and with a strategy. But I know it’s unfair to consider him as the opposite: having no plans at all, having no strategy – just the shit-flinging gibbon. That’s not right either. I genuinely don’t get it: too much of what he does makes no sense, at all. Take leaving the Paris Climate Accords: all he has to do is ignore it, as every past president has done, even the ones who sign these well-meaning but toothless treaties; somehow we’ve never managed to stop extracting and burning fossil fuels, and never managed to reduce our dependence on individual cars, and never even tried to have a national conversation about our consumption of goods and how it produces excess carbon (Here’s a wild thought: what if the tariffs are really just a four-dimensional chess strategy to reduce America’s carbon footprint by cutting us off from our international consumer goods?). Ignoring the treaty, and then making an ad about American energy production standing in front of some oil-spewing well in North Dakota, right in front of a giant oversized American penis-truck, which is parked in front of, let’s say, a single-use plastics factory which is belching out black smoke, would do all Trump wants to do to own the libs and encourage his base in their worst habits; so why make America look bad internationally by leaving the treaty? It doesn’t make sense, which makes me want to understand Trump as an idiot.

But is he?

Let’s examine the data and try to extrapolate a strategy. It makes sense to me that Trump wants the support of his base. That source of power, that he can sway his base any way he wants, has been much of the secret to his rise to the White House twice (Also twice losing the popular vote); so when he says things that make them cheer, that makes him happy. Makes perfect sense. I like saying things that make people happy with me, that make people clap for me; who doesn’t? And as that base following his lead helps keep the GOP in line, it makes even more sense that he would do things that make them happy. So because they are white supremacists, they hate DEI: thus he tries to crush DEI. Being also intolerant evangelical Christians, they hate trans people: thus he tries to ban trans people from existence. Back on the racism tip, along with the backwards-looking (and insane) patriotism, they like Confederate monuments: he tries to bring back the Confederate monuments that were removed after the murder of George Floyd. I don’t believe Donald Trump, who is a racist but also doesn’t seem to particularly care about anything that doesn’t profit him directly, and doesn’t mind spending time with people of color if they do have something to offer him, particularly cares about all of this stuff, but his base does and he likes to make them happy, so he does these things. I get that. No problem.

Another example: Trump is supported by billionaires, and considers himself aligned with billionaires and the pro-business wing of the Republican party. They do not care about DEI or the existence of trans people (Some of them do, to be sure; there are some fundamentalist Christian people who are obscenely wealthy and would really like this country to be a Christian theocracy; Betsy DeVos springs to mind. But for the most part, they just want more money and less government control over them.), but they hate government regulation: so he tries to kill the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and tries to shut down the EPA, and so on. Okay.

Then there is the crazy shit: renaming the Gulf of Mexico, and Mount Denali, and trying to take over Greenland and so on. Now, to some extent, that is sticking it to the libs, which his base and the billionaires love; and it’s also trying to look tough, which his base loves; and the Greenland takeover offers quite a lot of untapped mineral wealth, which the billionaires love. But also: really? I can’t imagine that he actually sees any of that as critical issues for the US to confront, and I can’t see even his base particularly caring about Greenland or any of the names of national monuments and geographic features that most of us never refer to by any name.

And then there are the things he is doing that are clearly just fucking stupid: the tariffs. I know the billionaires don’t want that to happen; they don’t want any government regulation. The regular folks in the base still love anything Trump does, and he has talked for years about how great tariffs are, so okay – but you know what he hasn’t done? Lowered the price of groceries or gasoline. Which was the most important issue that got him elected, by far, among both his base and the Republican voters in general. And if he wants to achieve anything in his term, he needs the Republican party to maintain control of the Congress, and he clearly knows it as he keeps trying to push the GOP candidates in the special elections, and he took back Elise Stefanik’s nomination so she could stay in the House. So why the hell hasn’t he tried to push the grocery stores to lower the prices of eggs? Why hasn’t he reduced or removed regulations that would make it easier to import eggs? Why hasn’t he cut deals with oil and gas companies to reduce the price at the pump – or even easier, gotten Republicans to remove gas taxes to lower the price a few cents a gallon? Anything he could do on that front would cement his popularity, and make him ironclad against any criticism. Even ineffective but well-publicized attempts, which is mostly how he gins up support from his base, would solidify his popularity.

So why hasn’t he done it?

Why is he working so hard to help Israel slaughter the people of Gaza? Sure, the conservative Jewish population supports Israeli aggression in general, and the right wing has used the Hamas attack to beat the drums of paranoia in order to sell guns to right wing Americans (who really need to be scared of military age men coming over the border, because maybe they are going to start gunning us all down just like Hamas did to the Israelis). And there’s this whole bizarre thing about evangelical Christians making Israel very important in their worldview because the apocalypse will happen there, or something. But as I understand it – I am not an evangelical Christian, which is perhaps an unnecessary disclaimer, and I am also not going to investigate their insanity too carefully – the idea is just that the Jewish people must possess the land of Israel before the Second Coming of Jesus Christ can occur. And there’s also supposed to be a bunch of war, and an antichrist (I got a candidate for you…) and a bunch of other things; but it seems to me that none of that requires the full removal of the Palestinian people from Gaza, and nothing else other than religious zealotry would even begin to explain the support for the genocide of the Palestinian people by the most famed victims of genocide in the history of the world. (I also cannot understand the desire of the Israeli government and military to literally just murder every Palestinian person. Don’t they ever get tired of revenge? Have they all just completely lost all humanity?) But there’s Trump, meeting with Bibi Netanyahu, sending all the weapons he can, threatening to rain down hell on the Gaza strip if Hamas doesn’t surrender all their leverage by giving up all the remaining hostages, authorizing (I mean, I assume he authorized it at some point, but maybe it was just Hegseth) attacks on the Houthis for their solidarity with the Palestinian cause – and talking about ethnic cleansing of the Gaza strip so that he can build the “Riviera of the Middle East.”

Okay, I get that last part. Trump is a real estate developer who specializes in gaudy, ostentatious, appalling displays of gross wealth and egotism; of course he’d see an opportunity in Gaza, which is beach front property on the Mediterranean. It probably felt like a task he could actually do well, as contrasted by everything political he can’t do, and who doesn’t like a chance to show off their actual expertise? I think he thought about it like a resort development project he was pitching, and he can’t understand why nobody else can see his vision; I bet he made at least one call to a model-maker whose services he has used in the past. And I bet he was stunned that nobody else agreed with his idea. All of which helps to show that he has the mentality of a child, and maybe he’s just pouting until everyone else decides his idea was the best and then they’ll come back and ask him to fix Gaza.

I mean, we literally did that with the Presidency of the United States. So I wouldn’t even consider it dumb for Trump to expect us all to come crawling back, asking him to do whatever he wants to do. I bet he’s counting on it. After all, when you’re a celebrity, you can do anything to them you want.

I hope all of the MAGA voters understand now what it feels like to be grabbed by a sexual predator. I’m sure the Palestinian people – everyone else in the world, really – would very much like to avoid that experience.

Now, if all of this is merely the actions of a shit-flinging gibbon, then that explains the stupidity of it all. There are some understandable motivations – power-seeking, for instance – which explains some of what Trump has done at least adequately. But I have not been able to think of an overarching goal which gets all of it to make sense. If tax cuts and regulation reduction shows a desire to help business, the tariffs fly in the face of that. If his real goal is to help (or just to please) the MAGA base, then that explains the racist culture wars, but not the lack of even attempted action on grocery prices or the cost of living. And if he really wanted to be a dictator for life, he not only wouldn’t have told the country that he was considering a third term, thereby tipping his hand, he wouldn’t have kept Hegseth and Mike Waltz after the Signal chat, because I guarantee you that what they did pissed off the military, whatever they may say in public (or not) and however they feel about Trump. Hegseth and Waltz – and Gabbard and Rubio and all the rest – actually genuinely put American pilots at serious risk of being shot down by the Houthis, who have advanced anti-aircraft weapons systems, and who have channels through Iran to Russian intelligence, which easily might have picked up the Signal chat PARTICULARLY SINCE STEVE WITKOFF WAS IN RUSSIA WHILE HE WAS PARTICIPATING IN THE CHAT.

One complaint I have about the Trump era: I don’t even know when to use all caps any more. Is that the most egregiously offensive aspect of the Signal chat? Or maybe it was the emojis? When is it time to yell? I want to yell all the time, but obviously I can’t do that. I have outrage fatigue.

Now, there is an obvious answer here, which would have pleased Trump’s base since they love when he is a heartless asshole, and it would have pleased the military, and it would have pleased the Republican party in Congress: he could have just fired everyone in that group chat. He loves firing people. It’s not even like he doesn’t want to signal that he made a mistake with his cabinet picks: he fired like 80% of his own picks during the first term, and the rabble just hooted and hollered and clapped their chapped hands and uttered such a deal of stinking breath that it choked him, and he fell down at it. (Sorry: that’s a Shakespeare reference. To The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, which I have taught often enough to have memorized some parts. I will have to write another post showing the comparisons between that play and Trump – and I better do it before he gets Et Tu’ed in the Senate, or else nobody will be impressed by my acumen.)

But no: Trump didn’t fire anyone. Which lost him (I would guess) support in the military and in congress, and indirectly with his base, who do not actually care about Pete Hegseth or Tulsi Gabbard or Mike Waltz: they care only about Trump. But they do generally support the military, so again, to shore up his own power and reputation, Trump should have fired them all, and made a big deal out of it. Tell me he couldn’t find another half-dozen nutballs to replace those “advisors” with. Are there no other alcoholic womanizing hyper-masculine douchebags in the military apart from Pete Hegseth? Seriously? And I even have a suggestion for someone to replace Gabbard as National Head of Intelligence: Maria Butina.

If Trump wants to be a dictator for real, he will never succeed without the full-throated support of the military; I don’t have to know any history at all to know that, but of course I know enough history to know that literally every single successful coup, ever, was carried off with the military’s complicity or at least tacit agreement and inaction.

So yeah, I don’t get it. Trump doesn’t make any sense to me.

But then I remembered this book I read with my book club. (By the way: I would HIGHLY recommend a book club like the one I am in. Half a dozen smart, involved people, and we read books that help us make sense of the madness of the modern world. It is – not necessarily comforting, because we read a lot of really disturbing shit; but it feels so very good to know that other people are thinking like you are and feeling like you are. Plus we get to have snacks, and the members who host our meetings make DAMN good snacks.)

Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein.

This is a fascinating and deeply depressing book. It explains the economic paradigm known as neoliberalism, championed most effectively by the Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman, and the effect that paradigm and Friedman have had not only on the United States, but on nations around the world. The title comes from another – uh, “expert” – whose ideas have had enormous influence on our world, a psychiatrist named Ewen Cameron. Cameron believed that people who had suffered terrible trauma in their lives, and who suffered the natural and inevitable consequences of that trauma, could be “cured” by replacing their traumatic memories with a tabula rasa: a blank slate. No memory of trauma, no psychological or emotional damage. He thought he could rebuild the person afterwards into a healthy and well-adjusted citizen. He experimented, therefore, with different ways that one could destroy a person’s memories, and eventually, a person’s whole personality, because the personality kept stubbornly resisting the attempts to erase the memories – almost like memory is an essential part of personality, or something. And so the process didn’t work, as any sane person could have guessed it wouldn’t; his attempts to erase a person’s memories and personality essentially just fragmented both, but never erased them. Klein doesn’t say because she doesn’t know what his real goal was, whether he wanted to help people and was just completely soulless, or if he was in fact a monster who wanted to destroy people, but when his theories didn’t pan out, he kept working on them – and ended up working for the CIA, finally creating for them a handbook on torture based on his work. The idea of it was that you could disorient someone so terribly that they would lose the ability to remember things like loyalty to their country or cause, or the consequences of revealing secrets they might have, and would therefore, in an incoherent state following the application of repeated and awful torture, be excellent sources of information because they wouldn’t even realize that they were revealing secrets, and so wouldn’t have to be coerced; and because they wouldn’t know who they were or what they were doing, they wouldn’t do things like conceal key pieces of information or lie at specific moments in order to protect whatever they were telling the CIA about.

The reason Klein talks about Cameron is because the basic system he created was what Klein calls the shock doctrine: in various tortuous and traumatic ways – frequently just literal electroshock, and frequently psychedelics administered without the knowledge and consent of his targets – Cameron would start with an incredible and overwhelmingly destructive attack on the psyche of his victims. He realized – or maybe it was the CIA that realized – that the most effective way to do this to a person was to remove anything that could be used as a solid base to stand on, mentally and emotionally speaking: Cameron is the reason why torturers now disorient their victims as much as they cause suffering, because that makes it easier and faster to eliminate any sense of self, any sense of identity: disrupt sleep, disrupt a sense of pattern or time passing, take away the victim’s knowledge of where they are, of what time it is, of what to expect, of who they are talking to, of anything and everything at all: do it all at once, as rapidly and overwhelmingly and completely as possible. This shock, either electric or psychological, was supposed to create the tabula rasa. And as I said, it didn’t, but it did effectively destroy people’s ability to resist control, and thus interrogation. And Klein’s insight was to recognize that Friedman and the neoliberals he taught and trained, and the political actors they influenced – there are several in the book, which is long and thorough, but perhaps the two most effective examples would be the George W. Bush administration, and Augusto Pinochet, the dictator of Chile from his 1973 coup through his overthrow in 1990 – used the same concept as a way to effectively short-circuit the democratic rule of law in countries they wanted to control.

Pinochet does it first, and he does it with the explicit assistance and advice of Milton Friedman himself, who advised Pinochet on how to establish a capitalist paradise after Pinochet had assassinated the democratically elected leftist president of Chile, Salvador Allende. Friedman’s advice was to take advantage of the shock of the coup and the violence that followed – Pinochet had been a general before his takeover, and so he knew very well the value of the military in overthrowing a legal government; he then used them to silence dissent by jailing political opponents, torturing them (of course) and in his own signature atrocity, having his enemies thrown out of flying helicopters – and force through the changes as rapidly as possible, before the people and any potential resistance could recover their balance and begin to push back. Pinochet did it, and it was largely effective (I’m leaving out a lot of this, of course – I recommend the book), and so it became the standard: the Shock Doctrine. Overwhelm people with something so outrageous, so devastating and unbelievable, that they won’t know up from down, day from night, or friend from foe, and then ram through your agenda before any potential resistance knows what’s happening. Exactly how Ewen Cameron taught the CIA (Who, of course, actively supported Pinochet, who replaced a leftist government with a far-right capitalist one – rule of law and liberties be damned) to overwhelm a person with a complete assault on all of their senses and touchstones, any sense of reality, so that their personality and therefore their resistance could be destroyed.

The book is a little out of date now; it was published in 2006. So of course the last use of the Shock Doctrine by neoliberal political actors that Klein talks about is the George W. Bush administration and 9/11. The terrorists created the shock: and the neoliberal Bush administration followed up with their agenda, mostly the USA PATRIOT Act and the rise of the surveillance state, along with, as Klein explains at length, the capitalist takeover of the military, pushing it through before anyone even knew what was happening, let alone how to resist. If Klein had written the book just two years later, she would have had another perfect example from the same actors: the way that the Bush White House got the TARP program passed directly after the economic collapse of 2007, which simply handed hundreds of billions of dollars to the very same corporate actors who had destroyed the global economy, as the administration enabled the Fed to purchase the “toxic assets” of companies that were, of course, “too big to fail.” If she had written the book fifteen years later, she could certainly have made much hay with the COVID-19 pandemic, though also I would argue that the incompetence of the first Trump administration, and the imperfect allegiance to neoliberalism that was held by the Biden administration, meant that less was done to change this country, and that opportunity was – uhhh, “lost.” I guess. But you can definitely see small instances of the Shock Doctrine being utilized, first in the Paycheck Protection Program that allowed anyone who wanted to get free money to apply for loan forgiveness; and then in some of the more controversial executive orders that both Trump and Biden used – such as Order 42, which kept asylum seekers in Mexico in order to quarantine them indefinitely.

But the neoliberal grip on the country, which probably peaked during Bill Clinton’s presidency if not George W. Bush’s (Every president since Reagan has been a neoliberal, regardless of party. George H.W. Bush was bad at it, possibly because he was actually concerned with helping the country; and Joe Biden moved away from his neoliberal roots, partly because he was influenced by our own Wizard of Oz, Bernie Sanders. Trump is a neoliberal, but also a shit-flinging gibbon, so not nearly as effective as Clinton or Reagan or even Obama.), has been slipping, under both Trump and Biden. So I don’t necessarily see the same unified, effective effort to achieve neoliberal goals (Complete laissez-faire economy, total free market – for details, read the book, or listen to Unfucking the Republic, who have a special, warm hatred for Milton Friedman) happening under Trump the first time, and especially not now – the tariffs are, if there is a God and any justice, making Milton Friedman flip over and over and over in his grave – but in thinking about Trump, and why anyone would want to support him in EVERYTHING that he is doing, I remembered this book.

And so now I’m wondering.

Let me also clarify: I do believe that Trump has handlers. The first term it was Steve Bannon, primarily, and maybe it still is; maybe it’s Russell Vought, the architect of Project 2025 and the director of the Office of Management and Budget. Bannon and Vought are both white supremacists who seek a theocracy, Vought including a neoliberal paradise and Bannon imagining a full-on Reich. I think anyone with more brains than morality, which includes almost everyone in Washington and certainly everyone in the administration (To be fair, Trump has, I suspect, very little in the way of functioning brain cells – but he is entirely amoral and frequently immoral, so “more brains than morality” is so low a bar it’s basically just a floor for the Donald), can manipulate Donald Trump as easily as breathing: tell him he’s a genius, make him feel like he is about to be asked to explain something but you won’t ask him if he just makes this very smart, very good decision, and then when he agrees not only that he should make that decision but it was originally his very smart idea, praise him for his intelligence and his ungodly machismo. Lather, rinse, repeat. I can’t imagine that everyone who wants to wield power in Washington would give up this golden opportunity to be the power behind the idiot.

But I can’t believe anyone would want all of what Trump is doing – or that someone who really wanted to control him would be unable to stop or blunt or reduce some of his stupid fucking ideas. If Vought wants the federal government eliminated so that white supremacy can reign again, why wouldn’t he want the dipshits in the Signal chat to be fired? (Though as I write that, I remember that incompetent government advances the agenda… so maybe this is the right guy to look at if we want to find the puppetmaster.)

So I’m wondering. What if Trump himself, and Elon Musk and DOGE, this whole administration, with its incredible stupidity and its incessant destruction of everything good, carried out entirely haphazardly and with brainless abandon – and yet ALL BAD as though it really was planned – is actually just the shock? What if the goal is to disorient us all so much, to make us all lose faith in so many things, that we don’t resist when the actual agenda is put into place, because we won’t even know who we are or where we are, let alone what is being done to our country?

I don’t know that this is true – I’m a little thrown, now, by realizing that a lot of this might fit in with Vought’s agenda – but I think it does make sense. I’ve always thought of Trump as the distraction: the gibbon flinging shit is impossible to look away from, and hey presto, tax cuts and the repeal of Obamacare. That last was stopped, finally by John McCain, who, I suspect, was not very susceptible to the disorientation of being tortured. (RIP, Senator. We miss you. Even if we don’t miss all of your policies and positions.) And maybe that’s all it is – but the problem is, if I’m right and ALL of this is the distraction, all of it part of the grand application of shock to the whole country and maybe the whole world, then either the plan is already happening while we are reeling – or it hasn’t started yet. And if it hasn’t started yet, I have to assume it is intended to be something so much worse than what we are currently dealing with, that they can’t try to put it in place until after the full shock has sent us all into a tailspin of confusion and desperation, unable to resist control.

I think I need to get my book group to read Project 2025.

And maybe The Handmaid’s Tale.

How the Handmaid's Tale Sheds Light on Our Own Dysfunctional Relationships - One Love Foundation

The Price

22/03/2025Dusty 1 Comment

I saw an opinion piece which stated that schools today don’t teach enough economics.

Fair enough. I don’t think that’s the biggest problem – I will argue, probably in future posts, that the lack of humanities education is at least partly responsible for the loss of empathy which is at least partly responsible for the rise of Trump – but it’s certainly true that schools don’t teach a whole lot of economics.

But you know what? Even though I didn’t learn economics in school – not one jot, not one tittle; I knew nothing whatsoever about macro or microeconomics by the time I finished my compulsory education – I did learn how to learn: and I have learned some of the basics of economics on my own.

I have learned enough now to correct the mistaken argument I accepted from my students in Oregon over a decade ago, which was part of the impetus for me to learn some economics, because I hate losing arguments, and I hate feeling stupid, and I thought, back then, that my students had won an argument and made me look stupid in the process. They were saying that immigration caused inflation, which I thought (without any strong factual basis, just vibes) was false; they said, “But immigration means more people buying things, which raises demand.”

“Right,” I said, waiting for them to get to the point.

“Raising demand raises prices,” they said.

“Right,” I said, still waiting for them to get to the point.

“…That’s inflation!” they said, and then chortled when I turned red and flapped my open mouth uselessly, unable to reply. I felt dumb. They won that argument.

Well, kids, it’s not that simple, and I know it now. Now I would say, “Increases in demand only raise prices when there is a restriction in supply; once the supply increases to match demand, that should level out prices unless there is some other upward pressure on the prices. So if immigration is slow over time, and spread out over an area as large as the US, it probably wouldn’t change prices at all: it might lead to a temporary spike in any given location, but once the supply chain adjusted, then all that would happen is a greater volume of sales, spurred by more customers, who also enter the supply side of the chain by getting jobs and adding to the aggregate productivity – and we call that growth. Not inflation.”

What’s that? You say the actual information, the specific content, which I gained during my primary education wasn’t nearly as useful as the skills I gained??

BUT ANYWAY.

(I don’t doubt, by the way, that I have made some errors in the above long-awaited rebuttal to students who couldn’t possibly remember the original argument; none of them will even see this post, I’m sure. My economics understanding is far from complete. But it still feels good to say that, so I’m going to leave it there.)

Here’s something I do understand, and would like to discuss now that we have some better idea of what the numbers are: the costs, and the benefits. We’re looking for a balance: and preferably greater benefits than costs. Right?

So what has Trump cost us? Compared to how we have benefitted from his election?

When Trump got into office, and I learned from at least one friend on Facebook that their vote had gone to Trump in hopes that he would bring down grocery prices and restore the (apparently) wonderful economy that we had in his first term, I decided I would keep track of the prices people wanted to elect this man for. Because I understand: I have spent most of my adult life not making quite enough to be comfortable, not enough to have it easy; things like price hikes and tax increases and wage freezes, furlough days and interest rates and insurance – I have been pinched by all of them, and slammed by some – have all caused pain and worry. Not to mention what I’ve had to go through with student debt, house debt, deferred maintenance costs, and medical bills – including medical bills for my pets. I get it, I really do, I understand why kitchen table concerns override most ideals, no matter how important those ideals may be. I understand that people are hurting: believe me, my family is too. We have debt. We have a mortgage. We have family medical costs, now. My mother, who will turn 81 this summer, is working, full time, to pay off her mortgage and her back tax bills. (I will mitigate that last one slightly by saying that my mom is a nurse, absolutely loves being a nurse, and the work she is doing now is in-home hospice care, mostly things like keeping an eye on someone overnight or while family caretakers are away. It is not heavy work, and she likes doing it. But she’s fucking 81, and she is still working. Full time.)

But now that we are two months in, almost two-thirds of the way through that “First 100 Days” marker that we like to make so much of, I think it is time to look at different prices. To be specific, I think it’s time we looked at the price we are paying for Trump: what it is costing us to have Donald J. Trump as our president, this second time around.

Ready?

First, gas and eggs:

As you can see, they have not gone down. Egg prices shot up because there has been an outbreak of avian flu, and millions of chickens have died or been put down to prevent further infection; eggs are in comparatively short supply right now. They will remain in relatively short supply until the chickens can be replaced: which means that even more of the eggs that might go to market will instead have to be used to hatch new egg layers (Not directly, of course, because the eggs we eat aren’t fertilized: but some clutches, some hens, some broods, however the egg farmers arrange and measure this, will need to lay fertilized eggs instead of unfertilized eggs, and that means fewer eggs produced for sale. And we are talking a LOT of chickens, and thus a LOT of eggs.), and then we’ll have to wait until those new chicks get big enough to lay eggs themselves. So it will be a while. And all of that assumes the bird flu which caused the problem gets resolved, the chances of which don’t look great right now. But while we are waiting on our egg prices to drop, it is also true that grocery prices in general have not dropped. Grocery price tracker: Inflation trends for eggs, bread and more during the Trump administration

It is to be expected that, assuming that some (or all) of the tariffs remain in place, prices will go up, which will include grocery prices. Trump Tariffs: The Economic Impact of the Trump Trade War

It is to be noted that Trump’s constant promises to lower grocery prices starting on day one appear to have been lies: this has not been his focus since taking office.

Gas prices have also not gone down, because again Trump has done nothing to lower them. “Drill baby drill” means nothing if you are looking to drill within the continental US; our oil is the wrong kind to make gas. And Trump has proposed a 10% tariff on Canadian energy – which is where we get most of the crude oil we turn into gasoline.

Why Trump’s fix for gas prices won’t work | CNN

“Why don’t we just start using American crude oil? Champagne oil sounds so nice!” Because oil refineries are set up to handle certain products, and changing them to other products is either too expensive, too slow, or just impossible. I mean, in theory the federal government could step in and use tax dollars to make the changes or subsidize private refineries so they could make the changes…

But that would require actual reliance on, and responsible management from, the federal government.

So: gas prices are not going down, probably will go up. Egg prices are not coming down for a long time, months if not years before all of the supply chains are back to where they were before the avian flu (and that also assumes there won’t be any other price shocks in the egg industry, or the grocery industry, or anything else – like changes in interstate commerce, or retaliatory tariffs, or hell I don’t know, a nuclear war with Russia).

How else are we paying for Mr. Trump’s return to power?

Well there’s the stock market.

United States Stock Market Index – Quote – Chart – Historical Data – News

You can go look at the graph. The stock market jumped up right when Trump was inaugurated, and climbed slowly upward to a new high a month in, on February 19^th – and then, tariffs. And the Dow Jones took a dive. It’s coming back up, the last couple of days, because the Fed announced they still plan to lower interest rates this year, because the overall economy is still strong and improving; but the temporary stays and exemptions Trump put on his own tariffs expire in two weeks.

So we’ll see.

The stock market is not the economy, and the market is volatile, so I don’t intend to use this as the only or even the main measurement of the cost of Trump; but it’s surely been a jolt to people with retirement savings in mutual funds.

I wonder how many of them voted for Trump?

So what else is there?

Well, there are all the people who have lost their jobs. And while I’m sure that hardcore Trump supporters will argue that these are actually benefits to the American people, because we are saving money by cutting these people off the government payroll, I’m going to look at the other side: we are losing their services.

DOGE Cuts Update Today: Social Security Changes, Pentagon Slashes Jobs – Newsweek

Let’s see: the Pentagon is cutting 60,000 jobs, which is actually fine with me in terms of our military budget and activities; I would like both to be curtailed. But that sure is a lot of people to put out of work. I’d really rather see those people still working, and maybe a couple fewer aircraft carriers and whatnot.

The EPA is cutting 1,000 scientists. The Department of Education is laying off 1,300 employees – and now Trump has issued an illegal order to shut down the department entirely. 24,000 probationary employees were fired; several of them will go back to work because the administration lied about having fired them for cause – but also, by the time the cases work through the courts and these people are allowed to go back to their jobs, many of them will have found other jobs, because who wants to wait several weeks or months to go back to work for somebody who fired you with a goddamn email from Elon fucking Musk?

The IRS is cutting 20% of its workforce, 18,000 jobs – which is great if we don’t want to find waste, fraud, and abuse among billionaire tax cheats and corporations contorting through loopholes and government contracts – and the USPS is cutting 10,000 people, which is great if we don’t want to, you know, communicate and stuff. But that’s fine: nobody even wants to know what’s happening now. We don’t want to watch this shit show.

The Veterans’ Administration is cutting 80,000 workers. I have no jokes at all to make about that. I have spent the last year and a half, with my wife, trying to work a claim for her mother, who is the widow of a veteran, through the VA’s system. I tried to do it myself. I couldn’t do it: after thirteen months of trying to make it work on my own, I finally got help from a VA counselor whose expertise is in helping people finish their claims. He got it done for us in two months. Now my mother-in-law is receiving the widow’s benefit she deserves, and needs.

Was that guy cut?

He is a veteran himself, and now he helps fellow veterans and their family members get into and through the system. He is kind, and professional, and very easy to work with and to talk to. He helped us.

So you tell me: if he was cut (and I honestly don’t know if he was, but 80,000 is a big fucking number, and I have no idea how many of these counselors and account managers are going to be cut in the future even if they weren’t thrown out in this first round), was that a benefit to our country? Or a cost?

How about the Social Security Administration? There are cuts coming: they are closing regional offices, and they are reducing workforce – firing people, that is. Oh, and also they are making it impossible to verify your identity over the phone, which means people who need to talk to the SSA will have to actually go into an office and talk to someone to get help with their account.

Right when they close offices and cut the number of workers available to help people.

How about that one? Cost, or benefit?

How are those eggs looking now?

My problem with all of this, of course, is that I don’t see any benefits: I only see costs. I see our economy getting battered, and people being callously thrown out of work, and services that I know directly are incredibly important to the point of life an death being cut. I guess people who hate the government are happy, but as I understand it, people hate the government mainly because it doesn’t help people: and while I’m sure that is the experience some people have, it is not the experience that others have; and surely, we can see that ripping the whole system into tatters is not going to help people more. Trump claims that there will be benefits in the future, but Trump is a known liar; and to my knowledge, he has never explained clearly what benefits will come from all of this, or exactly how they are supposed to arrive. Are we really supposed to believe the same old trickle down economics lies? That if we cut taxes for the richest 1% then the rest of us will be better off? It didn’t work the first time Trump did it, or when George W. Bush did it, or – EVER. So I’m not going to accept it now.

So if anyone actually knows what benefits there are to all of this to offset these costs, please, write me and let me know. I would really like to know what the upside is.

I would love to learn.

The Trump Doctrine: Bullshit, and Fling Shit

05/03/2025Dusty Leave a comment

Okay. Let’s talk. Honestly. Let’s get down to brass tacks.

The truth.

I’m trying to get my Freshman English students to do that. To talk honestly. They don’t – ever – but I think it’s mostly because they don’t know how.

See, what we have done in education over the last ten or twenty years is reward lying. Reward cheating. To a certain extent that is not new: I lied constantly when I was a teenager, especially to my teachers and my parents, and I would guess that most teenagers had similar experiences. And for the same reason: schools reward lying and cheating. For as long as schools have been product-focused, rather than process-focused, we have given students an opportunity to achieve all the rewards of school (All the apparent ones, at least) without doing the difficult parts. My grade in my classes was based on the work I turned in: which means that if I can find a way to cheat on those assignments, then I get the exact same grade I would if I did the work myself, the hard way. And sure, we also try to stop students from choosing to cheat, through threats of dire consequences if they get caught; but that “if” in what I just wrote is a humming, glowing, throbbing beacon of glorious light. Because teenagers are dumb: we think that we can get away with anything, even while we are actively not getting away with it. The very first time I caught students cheating – and they were cheating on a small, simple, easy assignment, a set of study questions that came after a reading, which they did with the reading in hand, in class – I realized while I was reading their responses that three young women, all friends, had given identical, word-for-word answers. They had copied. And the giveaway was they had used the word “oasis” completely out of context – something like “and the oasis of the story was the courage the characters had.” One of them – the one who had done the work and given it to the other two, the source student – had written “basis,” in cursive, and the other two had misread it. So I gave them all zeroes for copying, two for doing it and one for letting them, and when I handed the work back, I told them they had gotten zeroes. But instead of confessing, they argued with me. Vociferously. Angrily. Denying that they had ever done such a thing. I hadn’t handed back their papers, choosing to keep them as evidence, and just informed them of their grades; when they demanded I show them the evidence, I realized I had left the papers in my other classroom (Like many first-year teachers, I got the crappiest job assignment, so I floated between three different classrooms and taught two different remedial classes), and they insisted on coming with me to see the evidence; they yelled at me the whole way across campus, about how dare I accuse them, and they would never do that, and it was not fair, and so on. We got to my other classroom, I showed them their papers, pointed at where they wrote “oasis” and said, “Explain that.”

And they actually tried. They tried to come up with some bullshit on the spot about how “oasis” was meant to represent the safe space that had been created in the story by the characters… the girl who was talking trailed off in the middle of the sentence. I just shook my head and said, “No.” And they left. Grumbling. Still denying that they had done what they couldn’t actually prove that they hadn’t done – because they had done it.

But what happened? The student who had done the work had her mother complain to the administration, and I had a meeting with one of the vice principals and this mother. Who told us that her daughter was under a lot of stress, and after all, she had done the work, and then had made the poor choice to let her friends copy because they all just wanted so badly to do well. That’s not really bad, is it?? So, as per the decision my administrator made, that girl got the grade. The other two had a chance to make up the work and get a grade. They got a warning.

A few days later, one of the boys in the class told me that he had actually let the first girl, the source girl – the one who got the grade – copy his work.

So. This is the structure we have built for students. Cheating is overlooked; copying is standard; getting “help” with the answers is encouraged. Because the product is what matters, not the process by which you create that product. (It’s the perfect conceptual framework for a life cut short by working yourself to death in order to get the company more profit. But surely that’s just a coincidence…) And onto that structure we have added the internet, with all of its access to perfect information and perfect writing; and now AI, the same perfect information and perfect writing, but now both customizable – and untraceable. And we still grade students on product, not process. We still assign homework, so they can complete the assignments in privacy, without supervision, with full access to resources like AI and Google. We use the same assignments year after year, so students can pass on work they did to the next year’s class. And we tell them that what really matters in school is getting good grades, so you can get into good college, so you can have a good job and make money. Oh, we tell them they need to learn, they need to master the skills; but that’s just talking. Every single reward in school is derived directly from product. (With the exceptions of PE, the arts [which sometimes reward product, but not always – my wife’s Life Drawing class is graded only on process, her AP Art class graded largely on process… though in that last case that’s because if she graded their art work as she would grade a college student’s work, they’d all fail. She has high standards. And we don’t work at an art school.] and a few classes like foreign language, where students are graded on their conversation and pronunciation and so on: performance metrics.) And almost every product can be completed with some kind of corrupting assistance, whether it is copying from a friend, getting help from a family member, or using the online resources they have available. Even just using the excuse of “Oh no, my paper didn’t upload!” to get extra time to complete it and turn it in, with permission, a second time. Because after all, I can’t blame a student if the WiFi went down, right?

Right.

So I’m trying to get my freshmen to think about lying, and whether it is good or bad. They all, without exception, think it is good in the right circumstances, which are always two: to spare someone’s feelings – the classic “Do I look good in this outfit?” conundrum – and to save yourself from getting in trouble. They do usually offer a third circumstance: when someone threatens to kill you if you don’t tell them something, like where you hid the money, then it is acceptable to lie to save your life. Thank you for including that hypothetical, children; surely an important one. But it’s that middle one, the lying-to-get-out-of-trouble, that I want them to think about. Actually, the first one, too, because I gave them the counterargument: if you tell someone they look great when they look terrible, then you’re telling that person to walk around proudly, while they look terrible, and don’t know it. They didn’t have an answer to that. They’re not ready to admit what I think is the answer, that honesty really is the best policy, and the key to getting along is knowing how to speak truth without being harsh and insulting – you don’t have to say “Damn, you look terrible!” when someone looks terrible in an outfit, but you should not lie and say they look perfect when they look terrible – and the key to not getting in trouble is… not doing things you shouldn’t do. I don’t think they’ll all come over to my side, but I want them to think about it, because they lie to me constantly, and I’m sick of it.

But then, last night, I watched our President stand up in front of Congress, his words broadcast to the whole world, and tell lie after lie after lie. After lie. After lie. For ninety minutes. And the whole time, without exception, the Republican majority clapped and cheered for his lies. The two grinning dolts behind him, Mike Johnson and J.D. Vance, grinned and laughed – because Donald Trump didn’t just lie, he was also needlessly, gleefully cruel, and appallingly stupid, again and again and again, and clearly that stupid cruelty was even more popular than his lies. Because the cruelty won’t even get the apathetic next day fact-checking that his bullshit has gotten today; the cruelty we just let go, maybe frowning a little at how our President doesn’t show the same decorum we enjoyed so much from President Obama (When he wasn’t bombing people in the Middle East or deporting families from the US), who was always polite and well-spoken and never overtly cruel and bullying like this guy, with his goddamn shit-eating grin when he tells some joke about innocent people he’s going to harm, because it will save money, or because it will win him points with his equally cruel, stupid, bullying base. But he won’t have to suffer any consequences for his lies or his stupidity or his cruelty; he did all the same things last time, and we elected him again. Because eggs were too expensive.

(Please understand – and know that I am in the middle of writing a piece about that, about grocery prices and inflation and Trump’s broken promises regarding the issue, but I had to address this absolute horror show of a “speech” – that I recognize the genuine damage and stress that inflation and high prices inflict on those of us who are on the edge of not having enough. I am a high school teacher: I can’t afford eggs. I am also a partial vegetarian: eggs are one of my primary sources of protein. So I get it. I only mock the idea of egg prices as a reason to vote for Trump because even if we do see that as a valid reason to elect a president – and I will argue all day that presidents just don’t have that much control over prices in our system – it ignores SO MANY other things about Donald Trump. I get the need for relief from the cost of living: but that’s not the only thing that matters. That’s why I say it. If you disagree with me about the right priorities to focus on for a vote, then so be it. We’ll discuss this more another time.)

For now, let’s start with talking about what Donald Trump lied about last night in his address. This is easy to find, of course – here’s a good source FactChecking Trump’s Address to Congress – FactCheck.org, that gives a clear list followed by more careful analysis – but while they do include some of the things that sometimes slip past fact checkers, like that Trump ignored the influence of the Covid-19 pandemic on creating the economic situation that the Biden administration dealt with, they focused on the specific lies Trump told in the speech: and that means they don’t talk about the lies he has used as the justifications for his actions thus far, which he then discussed in the speech. And that’s where I want to focus.

But let me also list out, if you are not interested in following the link – if you believe, as many people do, that fact checkers are unreliable, that only independent media sources are believable, which means you have not thought a whole heck of a lot about why “independent” is more important than “part of an organization whose business model relies on truthful reporting rather than garnering attention” – some of the more egregious falsehoods that Trump spouted.

First, the savings he and Elon Musk have found through the “work” of “DOGE.” They have not found hundreds of billions in waste: they have “saved” about $20 billion, claimed $105 billion, and proved that exactly none of it was savings from eliminating fraud. It’s all “savings” from firing employees. Which, sure, that saves money – but it also eliminates work and productivity. If you have three people working for you and you fire one, you save one-third of your payroll costs – AND YOU LOSE ONE-THIRD OF YOUR PRODUCTION. Seems like this would be already known by two guys who run such huge and successful companies, but maybe not. They do both seem to believe that they personally do the work which is actually done by their employees, so, maybe they’re unclear on the concept.

Or maybe the only fraud here is the one being perpetrated by Trump and Musk and DOGE.

Kabosu, Dog Behind Famous 'Doge' Meme, Dead at 18

Next: Social Security. Trump went on and on and on about the MILLIONS of people who Social Security “believes” are over a hundred years old, including some that he said were older than the United States. So let’s be clear on this: when we say that “Social Security” “believes” these people are impossibly old… who are we talking about? Is Social Security the name of the person in charge of the organization? Is it the hive mind of all the bureaucrats who work there? Is it the AI who runs the database? Is Social Security here in the room with us now?

No: social security is the much-beloved system whereby we ensure that senior citizens don’t have to starve to death in shantytowns after they stop working. And it is also the biggest “entitlement” in the Federal budget: and therefore it is the one the Republicans most want to cut. But since so many of their voters are senior citizens, they can’t cut it without facing the wrath of their voters: so they try to turn their voters against social security. By talking about it like it’s the Avatar of bureaucrats, and that it’s stupid enough to “believe” that there are impossibly ancient people still getting social security checks.

Here’s the truth: the social security database is enormous. Tens of millions of people receive checks every month; hundreds of millions of people make payments into the fund for those checks every month. When people pass away, there is a form that one’s survivors are supposed to fill out and file with SS to let them know that someone on the roll has passed and no longer need checks. But: people don’t consider that to be an important job, especially while grieving, so they don’t always do it. Also lots of people don’t have loved ones to file the form. I would guess millions of people, over the years. The ancient people in the database are not people that Social Security “believes” are alive, they are people who were on the rolls as alive, and who have never been confirmed to be dead. See the difference?

Trump doesn’t. Well: he does, he just lied about it, and pretended these two different things are the same. They’re not. If you want to see this as a moment when Trump is monumentally stupid instead of a liar, I’m fine with that. And yes, it’s monumentally stupid: if someone told me there were people on the SS database who were over 120 years old, I would assume there was a mistake in the data, not that Social Security “believed” there were Americans living over 120 years old. Especially not the millions whom Trump gobbled about.

And while thousands of those people – thousands out of the millions, which is fractions of a percentage point – may still get checks, and some of them get checks because living people are using the name of a dead person to collect social security (Frank Gallagher does this with his dead mother in Shameless.), which is fraud, the rest of the millions of unconfirmed-dead people on the roll are just – on the roll. In the database. They don’t get checks. Money is not wasted on them, and it would not be saved by cleaning up the database. Of course cleaning up the database would be a good idea, but how many man-hours would it take to confirm that millions of people are actually dead? And if you decide to remove everyone who is over, say, 100 years old, there will be at least 80,000 people who will want to have a word with you.

Centenarian, older adult population change by state | Northwell Health

Several of Trump’s other lies were of a less serious nature: claiming that 38,000 Americans were killed during the construction of the Panama Canal (5,600 workers died during construction, mostly from diseases like malaria and yellow fever. Not all of them were American. Special Wonders of the Canal – PMC), that Biden inherited a great economy and Trump inherited a terrible one twice, that Europe has given less than the US to the Ukraine and that the US has given $350 billion – these are just bad facts; they’re definitely lies, but they are small, because none of them change people’s minds, and none of them serve as the primary justification for Trump’s bad policies: he wants to take us to war over the Canal because China has an influence there, not because some number of Americans died during construction; he constantly lies about his accomplishments and, especially last night, about Biden’s failures, but that doesn’t change anyone’s opinion about either man; Trump is going to give as much of the Ukraine to Russia as he can, because he wants to be allies with Putin, not because of how much Ukraine costs to defend. And he doesn’t want to be allies with Putin to save money, it is to make himself into a strongman, in appearance if not in fact. (Though I have to note here that when I said last night that Trump wanted to be Putin, my wife’s immediate response was “Trump will never look that good with his shirt off.” Savage, she is. But: she ain’t lyin’.)

But the lies I really want to get to with Trump’s speech are the ones about people who are disenfranchised in this country. Such as people who are described, by that shit-flinging gibbon and his handlers, as representatives of DEI: like General C.Q. Brown, whom Trump fired from his position as head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and whose fucking resume looks like this:

EDUCATION
1984 Bachelor of Science, Civil Engineering, Texas Tech University, Lubbock
1991 U.S. Air Force Fighter Weapons School, Nellis Air Force Base, Nev.
1992 Squadron Oﬃcer School, Maxwell AFB, Ala.
1994 Master of Aeronautical Science, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona Beach, Fla.
1997 Distinguished graduate, Air Command and Staff College, Maxwell AFB, Ala.
2000 Air War College, Maxwell AFB, Ala.
2004 National Defense Fellow, Institute for Defense Analyses, Alexandria, Va.
2008 Air Force Senior Leadership Course, Center for Creative Leadership, Greensboro, N.C.
2012 Joint Force Air Component Commander Course, Maxwell AFB, Ala.
2014 Joint Flag Oﬃcer Warﬁghting Course, Maxwell AFB, Ala.
2015 Pinnacle Course, National Defense University, Fort Lesley J. McNair, Washington, D.C.
2017 Leadership at the Peak, Center for Creative Leadership, Colorado Springs, Colo.

ASSIGNMENTS
1. May 1985 – April 1986, Student, undergraduate Pilot training, 82nd Student Squadron, Williams Air Force Base, Ariz.
2. May 1986 – July 1986, Student, lead-in ﬁghter training, 434th Tactical Fighter Training Squadron, Holloman AFB, N.M.
3. August 1986 – March 1987, Student, F-16 training, 62nd Tactical Fighter Training Squadron, MacDill AFB, Fla.
4. April 1987 – October 1988, F-16 Pilot, 35th Tactical Fighter Squadron, Kunsan Air Base, South Korea
5. November 1988 – April 1991, F-16 Instructor Pilot, wing electronic combat oﬃcer, and wing standardization and evaluation ﬂight examiner, 307th and 308th Tactical Fighter Squadrons, Homestead AFB, Fla.
6. April 1991 – August 1991, Student, U.S. Air Force Fighter Weapons Instructor Course, Nellis AFB, Nev.
7. August 1991 – August 1992, F-16 Squadron Weapons Oﬃcer and Flight Commander, 307th Fighter Squadron, Homestead AFB, Fla.
8. September 1992 – October 1994, Weapons School Instructor, and standardization and evaluation ﬂight examiner, F-16 Division, U.S. Air Force Weapons School, Nellis AFB, Nev.
9. October 1994 – July 1996, Aide-de-Camp to the Chief of Staff, Headquarters U.S. Air Force, Arlington, Va.
10. August 1996 – June 1997, Student, Air Command and Staff College, Maxwell AFB, Ala.
11. June 1997 – September 1997, Student, Armed Forces Staff College, National Defense University, Norfolk, Va.
12. September 1997 – November 1999, Air Operations Oﬃcer, Current Operations Division, Operations Directorate, U.S. Central Command, MacDill AFB, Fla.
13. November 1999 – June 2003, F-16CJ Instructor Pilot and assistant operations oﬃcer, 79th Fighter Squadron; Weapons and Training Flight Commander, 20th Operations Support Squadron; Operations Oﬃcer, 55th Fighter Squadron; and Commander, 78th Fighter Squadron, Shaw AFB, S.C.
14. July 2003 – June 2004, National Defense Fellow, Institute for Defense Analyses, Alexandria, Va.
15. June 2004 – June 2005, Deputy Chief, Program Integration Division, Directorate of Programs, Headquarters U.S. Air Force, Arlington, Va.
16. July 2005 – May 2007, Commandant, U.S. Air Force Weapons School, 57th Wing, Nellis AFB, Nev.
17. May 2007 – May 2008, Commander, 8th Fighter Wing, Kunsan AB, South Korea
18. June 2008 – May 2009, Director, Secretary of the Air Force and Chief of Staff Executive Action Group, Headquarters U.S. Air Force, Arlington, Va.
19. June 2009 – April 2011, Commander, 31st Fighter Wing, Aviano AB, Italy
20. May 2011 – March 2013, Deputy Director, Operations Directorate, U.S. Central Command, MacDill AFB, Fla.
21. April 2013 – February 2014, Deputy Commander, U.S. Air Forces Central Command; Deputy, Combined Force Air Component Commander, U.S. Central Command, Southwest Asia
22. March 2014 – June 2015, Director, Operations, Strategic Deterrence, and Nuclear Integration, Headquarters U.S. Air Forces in Europe – Air Forces Africa, Ramstein AB, Germany
23. June 2015 – July 2016, Commander, U.S. Air Forces Central Command, Air Combat Command, Southwest Asia
24. July 2016 – July 2018, Deputy Commander, U.S. Central Command, MacDill AFB, Fla.
25. July 2018 – July 2020, Commander, Paciﬁc Air Forces; Air Component Commander for U.S. Indo-Paciﬁc Command; and Executive Director, Paciﬁc Air Combat Operations Staff, Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii
26. August 2020 – September 2023, Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force, the Pentagon, Arlington, Va.
27. October 2023 – present, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

SUMMARY OF JOINT ASSIGNMENTS
1. September 1997 – November 1999, Air Operations Oﬃcer, Current Operations Division, Operations Directorate, U.S. Central Command, MacDill AFB, Fla., as a major
2. May 2011 – March 2013, Deputy Director, Operations Directorate, U.S. Central Command, MacDill AFB, Fla., as a brigadier general
3. July 2016 – July 2018, Deputy Commander, U.S. Central Command, MacDill AFB, Fla., as a lieutenant general
4. October 2023 – present, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

FLIGHT INFORMATION
Rating: command pilot
Flight hours: more than 3,100 including 130 combat hours
Aircraft ﬂown: F-16A/B/C/D and 20 additional ﬁxed and rotary-wing aircraft

MAJOR AWARDS AND DECORATIONS
Defense Distinguished Service Medal with two oak leaf clusters
Distinguished Service Medal
Defense Superior Service Medal
Legion of Merit with three oak leaf clusters
Bronze Star Medal
Defense Meritorious Service Medal
Meritorious Service Medal with two oak leaf clusters
Aerial Achievement Medal
Joint Service Commendation Medal
Air and Space Commendation Medal with two oak leaf clusters
Combat Readiness Medal
National Defense Service Medal with bronze star
Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal
Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal
Global War on Terrorism Service Medal
Korea Defense Service Medal
Nuclear Deterrence Operations Service Medal
NATO Medal
Republic of Korea Order of National Security Merit (Tongil Medal)
Republic of Singapore Pingat Jasa Gemilang (Tentera) Meritorious Service Medal
Republic of Korea Order of National Security Merit (Samil Medal)
Brazilian Order of Aeronautical Merit (Degree of Grand Officer)

PUBLICATIONS
“Developing Doctrine for the Future Joint Force: Creating Synergy and Minimizing Seams,” Air University Press, September 2005 “No Longer the Outlier: Updating the Air Component Structure” Air University Press, Spring 2016

Yeah. That guy was a DEI hire.

People who are endangered by the anti-vaccine movement that Trump supports and promoted last night – which is all of us, but is especially those who can’t work in close proximity to others, for any of a thousand reasons (permanent disability, mental illness, inability to travel, along with being immunocompromised, again for a thousand potential reasons), but who do work, and who who now have to return to work because Trump is a cruel idiot and a liar who claims that “not coming IN to work” is evidence of laziness or fraud. It is not clear to me whether the real goal here is just to fire valuable workers for a reason that Trump’s base can stand behind, so that Trump and Musk can channel the money “saved” from payroll into tax breaks for billionaires, or if it is to undermine the very idea that a person who cannot come into an office can nonetheless, in this day of complete interconnectedness online, still be a productive worker because that idea is, I dunno, woke or some shit. Either way, it is a stupid lie that is cruel to those who need the accommodation of remote work – and also cruel to those who just like it better, because what the hell is wrong with working from home if you can do the work?

Trump is going after people with neurodivergence, in addition to attacking those who need to live in a vaccinated world, by lying about the history of autism diagnoses, in conjunction with his comments about naming the anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to a post for which he is not only unqualified, but entirely unfit. It is not true that “not long ago” 1 in 10,000 children had autism; it is true that 50 YEARS AGO we did not understand autism nor how to diagnose the entire spectrum of conditions associated with the term. It is also emphatically not true that autism is a disability that would justify removing or changing the vaccine schedule, as Trump was implying. The entire argument that parents would rather risk their children dying of measles than “becoming” autistic because of the MMR vaccine is disgusting, along with being a thoroughly debunked and incredible lie. Even where autism does present as disabling, ask a parent of an autistic child whether they would rather have their child living or dead – and then duck, before they quite rightly punch you in the face. Though I’d be really happy if all of those theoretical punches landed on Elon Musk, and also on whoever suggested that Elon’s Nazi salute was a sign of Musk’s own autism. Remember: “Always Punch Nazis” includes punching those who argue that being autistic explains away Nazism.

But I will admit that, despite all of the terrible and cruel and stupid things that Trump said in that speech, the lies that actually bothered me personally the most were the transphobic ones. Maybe because they got the loudest cheers. Maybe because he seemed proudest of his anti-trans policies like the declaration that there are only two genders in the U.S. – which is both a lie, and a cruel and stupid statement. Or his executive order keeping men from playing women’s sports, which, HOLY GOD THAT I DON’T EVEN BELIEVE IN CAN WE STOP? Can we just stop? Can we just agree to never again allow anyone to repeat the absolute and utter nonsense and poppycock that there are “men” playing “women’s” sports? There are women playing women’s sports. Nothing more. And 99.99% of those women are those who were assigned female at birth. And also, this is fucking sports we are talking about. Not something important. Sports are entertainment. They are inconsequential. They don’t matter. They matter plenty to the people who play them, both professionally and passionately, and therefore they are worth consideration for the sake of those people; but the idea that a national policy, as a focus of what is essentially a state of the union address, would make such a deal of opposing the existence of trans people, particularly in relation to sport? What the hell are we doing here?

The answer is simple: we, and by “we” I mean that orange-tinted shit-flinging gibbon and his flying monkeys and most definitely not me, are attacking and belittling and trying to destroy and torment and kill anyone whose destruction would make the stupid, cruel base of the Republican party feel stronger and meaner, which is how they want to feel. Trans people are not the danger, regardless of what nonsense some goddamn volleyball player claims (Want to know how many volleyball players get hurt every year? About 35,000. Volleyball Related Injuries in Adolescents: A Decade of Data | Published in Orthopedic Reviews How many of those injuries were caused by trans athletes? Conversely, how many trans athletes suffer injury and abuse and death because of the way they are objectified and demonized and ostracized and assaulted in every way by the entire Republican establishment of this country? I bet it’s more than the one injury Trump claimed was caused by a trans athlete.)

I don’t know why this one upsets me more than the other loathsome false accusations and attacks that Trump launched at everyone who is morally and ethically and humanistically better than he is himself. But it does. I suppose it doesn’t matter why it bothers me, any more than it matters why the base and the Republicans and the shit-flinging gibbon himself chose trans people to try to destroy: it’s just that they found someone they can harm, and I have found someone – millions of someones – whom I want to help protect from that harm, in whatever way I can assist. I don’t really need to justify which fight I choose to take on: I just need to be aware of who my real target is.

It’s not just Trump. Just like Adolf Hitler, who was a uniquely effective figurehead for the Nazi party and the apparatus that rose during the Third Reich, but neither the brains behind that apparatus nor the one in control of it, Trump himself is not the cause of the problem, he is simply the most visible pimple on the very wide flabby ass of the MAGA movement. It is possible that, after Trump is gone (Hopefully before the end of his term, though personally I’m hoping for impeachment and jail rather than the death that many others think he deserves), JD Vance or one of the other flying monkeys will take over as the chief shit-flinger; and that might even be worse. It’s not even the billionaires who back Trump and who are taking advantage of the distraction he is because of the shit he flings – shit that is flung like no one has ever seen before – because the wealthy have always been there, trying to control things, trying to take advantage of every opportunity to have wealth and power, without being in the spotlight themselves. I know it’s not Elon Musk: there’s a reason why the real power brokers don’t ever do what he is doing, and put themselves out front. It’s because when people get mad enough to pick up the torches and pitchforks – and the more effective Musk is, the sooner that will happen, as it always does when inequality gets too extreme – they look for an obvious target for their anger. We all know who Elon Musk is. Who the hell is Rebekah Mercer?

(Is it wrong of me to point out that, were she to become known to those with torches and pitchforks — or, let’s say, were she to get targeted by the next Luigi Mangione — nobody would miss the ENORMOUS target that is her head?)

Natural History Museum Curators Revolt Against Trustee Rebekah Mercer for Funding Climate Change Deniers | Artnet News — *Now we know what Megamind’s mom looked like*

What I oppose is what Trump represents and distills. It is stupidity, chosen because it is easier than learning, and more comfortable than truth – because stupidity lies to us, even as we lie to the stupid. It is cruelty, because cruelty, also for the sake of ease and comfort, brings the displaced self-hatred of the stupid crashing down on the innocent; and not only do we then have that many more victims, some of whom will lash out at other disempowered people, but we also have those among the stupid who now cannot face enlightenment because then they would have to admit what they did to people who never deserved anything but the kindness and empathy due every one of our fellow human beings, and so those angry, cruel, stupid people will be even more incapable of changing what they are doing, no matter what truth is put before them and no matter what pleas for mercy they hear and ignore.

The worse we act, the less likely we are to stop acting badly. That’s why Donald Trump is the way he is: because he’s always been this way, he’s just been getting worse, for his entire life. And he’s an old, evil, man, now.

And everything he says is bullshit.

Waking Up

20/11/2024Dusty Leave a comment

I had a nightmare the other night.

We all had one two weeks ago. But that one is just beginning.

I don’t have very many nightmares. Although, I don’t remember my dreams very often, so it’s possible that I am running through a constant string of terrifying dreams all night and then blanking my mind of them when I wake; I do suffer from insomnia, and so I frequently wake up in the middle of the night and think anxious and frustrated thoughts for a while before I manage to get back to sleep — if I do get back to sleep. That might be from that hypothetical string of nightmares suddenly reaching some kind of tipping point, driving me out of sleep and into waking anxiety.

Hmmm… a series of nightmares that build up to a climax of anxiety which ruins sleep. That does sound like the current situation of this country, doesn’t it?

In my nightmare the other night, my wife and I were going through a zombie apocalypse scenario. I don’t remember the whole thing, but at the end, we were hurrying through the halls of a Generic School-In-A-Dream™, and it was right at the point of the zombie plague where you look around, and you realize that the people around you are not people, but are rather zombies: and not only that, but the people are giving you that sullen, angry stare that zombies tend to have right before they charge. In my dream it was particularly creepy because the one I saw and recognized as a zombie was a child, and the signal that the kid was zombied up was a bloody rip across his cheek. In the dream, Toni and I ran; but we didn’t get very far.

Zombie children staring at cell phones in dark theater. - Stock Image & Prompt | 2Moons — *Not the kind of zombies I was thinking of — but also, isn’t it?*

I am scared of zombies. Of course I am, and not just because the idea of being eaten alive is utterly horrifying; I am also scared of the zombie apocalypse because I know how it would go: I would die. Quickly. I have no survival skills, I have no combat ability, I have nothing that I could even offer to a group of survivors that would make them want to take me in, other than how well I could correct their grammar and help them interpret poems: two skills that I expect will not be highly prized in the apocalypse.

As they are not prized now.

But that is much less frightening to me than this: what would happen to my family?

My wife is a badass; she can fight, she can shoot a gun (which I never have), she is tough as nails. She could make it, at least for a while — as long as I was not slowing her down. But she wouldn’t leave me, so I would definitely be slowing her down; and that means I would have to worry about her survival, because I would be a liability for it — I would be putting her at risk. And then, even if we decided we would run for the hills or something, we also have pets: two dogs, a great big tortoise, and a tiny bird in a cage. Okay, the tortoise I could release into the wild; he would probably be fine — would zombies even eat tortoises? (Note to self: story idea — zombie turtle. Talk about slow zombies.) — but my dogs and my bird would not be fine. And I wouldn’t leave them. And that, of course, makes me think about the horror of watching my loved ones get hurt. Which is, far and away and always, the worst nightmare imaginable.

And that — watching people we love get hurt — is also the current situation of this country.

So look: I said in my last post that, if you were looking to solve certain problems and thought voting for Donald Trump and the Republicans was the way to solve those problems, that doesn’t by itself make you my enemy. I don’t agree with you, but if you did it without meaning harm, I don’t have to consider you that way, with full and vituperative enmity. But the thing is, voting for Trump was unquestionably voting for someone who will do harm: and while that doesn’t mean you wanted harm to be done, it sure as hell means you accepted the fact that harm will be done. Maybe you lied to yourself, and convinced yourself Trump would not do harm; but that was a lie, and you probably know it. The man not only did harm to people in his first term, he promised extensive harm for this term, and he has been accused and found liable for causing quite a bit of harm entirely separate from the trials he was able to maneuver out of because too many people voted for Trump over the rule of law. Again, I assume that if you voted for Trump, you weren’t actually thinking, “I don’t want the rule of law any more!” Maybe you even thought that Trump and the Republicans are the law and order party; which is fine, in some ways they are — but Trump himself is not, and you should have been cognizant of that.

More likely was that you expected harm would be done, but you expected it will not be done to you or your family, and you were willing to accept that outcome. If you weren’t willing to accept that outcome, obviously, you didn’t vote for Trump. If you voted for Harris, thank you, and I’m sorry; if you didn’t vote, well. You’re not my enemy. But you’re pretty damn pathetic. And if you voted for harm that won’t fall on you, then I want you to think about that, for the next four years, and then hopefully for the rest of your life.

(And don’t try to both-sides me: I recognize that voting for Harris was voting for harm to continue in Gaza with American support. I would have been thinking about that for the rest of my life. I probably already will be, as I voted for Joe Biden, who has been supporting that genocide for a full year now.)

So, when I had this nightmare about the zombies rising up to kill my wife and I, I woke up scared. I realized immediately that it was a nightmare and it wasn’t real (Unlike the current situation in this country, which feels just like a nightmare but unfortunately is quite real), but like an idiot, I thought this thought: What if the situation were real? How would I actually deal with a zombie apocalypse? And while most of the time (I don’t think about zombie apocalypse survival strategies all the time, but I have thought of them, when it isn’t 3:00 am on a school night) I can fool myself (See? I do it too.) into thinking that I would escape by hiding or running or just being super clever, on this particular night, lying in the darkness, I faced the truth: I’d be screwed. I would die. Probably in an awful way. And I would have to either hope to die first (which would break my most important promise to my wife), or I would have to watch my loved ones killed in awful ways in front of me, while I couldn’t do anything about it.

And that feels just like the situation in this country today.

I know that there are people who would read this and think, “Psssh. You’re just being dramatic. Come on, comparing the second Trump term to a zombie apocalypse? That’s ridiculous! He’s just gonna lower taxes and deport some people. Maybe ban trans people. Maybe go after abortion and birth control. No big deal! He’s not gonna end the world!” To be fair, maybe people who would think that way wouldn’t read this, but my point is that there are people, probably the majority of the 76 million people who voted for Trump, who would think I was exaggerating with this analogy.

You know those people in zombie movies who act like complete idiots? Who refuse to accept the truth? They deny that the zombies are rising, or that they are eating people; they refuse to accept the obvious danger, or to accept that their own actions — making too much noise, for instance, or opening doors without knowing what is on the other side — are unacceptably risky? You know how those people almost always get other people killed before themselves succumbing to the ravenous horde?

Humans vs. Zombies: Fight of the living dead – Basement Medicine

Right. This country has at least 76 million of those people.

No, I don’t know if that is true. Not all the people who voted for Trump are fools who think he won’t do any harm. Many of them want him to do harm. They are gleefully rubbing their hands together in eager anticipation of all that harm he will do; they probably have a list of intended victims they are especially eager to enjoy the suffering of. Maybe they have a pool, and are laying odds on who will get it, and who will be first. (To be clear, these people are my enemies.)

You know those characters in zombie movies who are rooting for the zombies, and hoping all of humanity dies in hideous agony?

Right: you don’t. Because there aren’t any people like that in zombie movies. There are no people, in a story of struggle between humanity itself and the vile corruption that is bent on destroying humanity, who want humanity to lose. (Note to self: zombie movie in which some people actually want the zombies to win and talk about how much cheaper eggs will be when most of the population has been eaten. Maybe include the zombie turtles in this?) Which just tells you that some proportion of Trump’s voters are even worse than the people in zombie apocalypse movies.

Which is pretty damn terrible to think about.

I really don’t understand it. I understand (though I condemn) the partisanship that kept people from being able to vote for Harris or any Democrat; I understand (though I deplore) the willful ignorance that allowed people to “forget” that Trump will do harm, or the barely concealed hatred and aversion that allowed people to accept the limited harm they think Trump will do, which they think won’t affect them directly. I understand and agree with the anger that I know many people felt over the DNC’s choice of Kamala Harris, who is not and never was the best candidate the left could have produced for President; though also, I have to say this: people are nervous about what Trump will do now that he doesn’t have the same guardrails keeping him in line as he had the first time, and the truth is that the biggest guardrail Trump had to get over was — us. We are the guardrail. We are the defenders of democracy and freedom in this country, because the actual political power in this country resides in our votes. And we had one job: to vote against Trump’s return to the White House. As people trying to get our apathetic, lethargic, cynical, disjointed, selfish political class to produce an actually good candidate who could provide actual positive outcomes, we had several things we could have and should have done; but as defenders of democracy, we had one job: don’t let the would-be tyrant get back into power.

And we failed. We let the zombie virus out of the lab. For the second time, too, because this is the sequel: and as with every sequel, the stupidity of those who fail to take the zombie apocalypse seriously has to be even more appalling and egregious — because Jesus Christ, we already went through this once, weren’t you paying attention when all those zombies were eating people?!? — and the violence and gore the zombies inflict on people has to be even more shocking, even more horrendous, either more disgusting or on a much wider scale; because the sequel has to up the ante from the first installment, or there’s no point to having a sequel. Right?

Zombieworld 2 - Movies on Google Play — *Love the zombie in the bottom right looking the wrong way.*

What kills me is the breadth and depth of Trump’s win. I can’t just blame those frickin Pennsylvanians: every swing state went to Trump. My state, Arizona, went to Trump. There are Trump supporters all around me, wishing harm but not talking to me about it. You know how the worst thing in a zombie movie is when the people are actually turning into zombies, and you don’t know who is going to turn next? Who has already been infected? Who is suddenly going to surprise you by revealing themselves as your enemy, as the person who wishes you harm, or even as the monster who is going to do you harm themselves, who is going to take a bite out of your shoulder on the way up to your jugular? Everyone looks the same, all looking normal, all talking about things the same way — and then suddenly someone’s eyes roll up in their heads, their skin turns chartreuse, and they groan and start nomming on their neighbors? Don’t you think that’s the worst part of zombie movies?

Okay, no, the worst is probably when people get dragged screaming into a horde that tears them apart and eats them alive.

I hope that there won’t be anything even metaphorically like that in this situation. It is just an analogy; I don’t think the world is going to go through even a human apocalypse, let alone something like a zombie apocalypse. I know we will survive this.

But also, Nazis marched in Ohio this past weekend. So I’m really not sure there won’t be a scene of savage and shocking violence where someone innocent is dragged screaming to their horrible bloody death.

So my dark-of-night thought about the zombie apocalypse was: I’d probably just give up. I’d run for a while — if we’re starting with my dream, I’d be with Toni — and then I’d end up giving in to despair, and I’d have to do one of those hideously sad scenes where two people say goodbye and then let themselves die together. And when I heard the election results, I thought sort of the same thing: maybe I should just give up. I mean, this is clearly what the people of this country want, more than I want to believe they want it. But they do. I don’t just think ignorant and evil people voted for Trump; I think there were rational people, good people, who made a bad decision, but who thought it was the right decision. I want to think that, given a chance to talk to them honestly and openly, I could convince those people that they made a bad decision: and then maybe they won’t make the same kind of mistake again — but also, I failed to convince them before this election. I failed to make any difference in this election. However hard I tried, it wasn’t good enough; I wasn’t good enough to solve the problem, to prevent this terrible outcome, to protect people from harm. I thought, Why would I try again when I failed the last time?

And that’s actually why I recognized this parallel between Trump’s election and the zombie apocalypse, and why I wanted to write about it.

Because what zombies represent is hopelessness.

The basic concept of the zombie trope is this: people, who are unique and special and valuable individuals, become zombies, a horde of identityless, soulless, lifeless husks, taken over and corrupted by some vile invader — a virus, an alien parasite, Disney. Having been corrupted, the former humans stalk other humans relentlessly, and turn those individual people into more indistinguishable members of the horde. It represents all of our fears of losing our selves, our identities, in the larger society, which grinds us up and devours us (along with the visceral horror of cannibalism, the idea of being devoured, reduced to mere sustenance and then destroyed and consumed by those who should shield and succour you). Zombies are seen as representing our fear of the future, particularly of technology, and the advancement and growth of our society into something that either doesn’t recognize our individual human value — or doesn’t care about it. Zombies don’t care that I am a teacher, or a husband, or a writer, or a man who loves animals; to them I’m just meat. And zombies are the meat grinder.

Zombies are the Machine. Zombies are the Man, in the abstract sense of an authority that doesn’t respect or value us, that sees us only as grist for the mill, or at best fuel for the engine.

But none of that is the horror of zombies. (That’s not true: much of the horror of zombies is in the eating, particularly in the eating alive, which is just appalling in and of itself.) The horror of zombies is in their relentlessness: the horde keeps coming after you, and nothing can make them stop. They do not get tired or bored or distracted (mostly), because they are lifeless and thoughtless and devoid of all desires other than hunger. They can not be killed, can not be scared off. You can sometimes destroy them, such as with the famed head shot, or with something like an explosion, a consuming fire, a bulldozer: some kind of overwhelming force, far more than would be needed to stop a human who was coming after you, which shows the sheer power to be found in giving up (or losing) humanity. But even if you fight the zombies, and win the battle, you can’t win the war, because you will run out of ammunition, you will use up all of your resources, and the zombies will keep coming: because we got the guns, but they got the numbers, to misquote the Doors. And of course, every one of ours we lose is one that they gain. You can outrun them — but eventually they will catch up with you, because you will get exhausted, simply because you are alive and therefore you need to rest. The dead — or rather, the undead — do not need to rest.

That’s the main horror of zombie apocalypse stories. There is no escape, and no way to stop what is coming for you. What is going to eat you, or turn you into another part of itself. And the result of that inevitability, (I have to link that clip. Also, the third movie is an interesting re-interpretation of the same fear, being consumed and turned into the corrupted enemy.) of course, is despair: a loss of hope, and the subsequent surrendering to apathy and lethargy and numbness, and then death and destruction.

Hm. Sounds like depression. Also sounds like the situation in this country right now.

So that’s what I felt, what I thought, when I heard that Trump had won the election. Fortunately, because I spend most of my time outside of politics, I didn’t feel that total despair, I didn’t lose all hope — because hey, the zombie hordes aren’t outside my door. They aren’t stalking me. I understand that some people don’t have that luxury, that solace, because the hordes are stalking them, and they are in real danger; but, without being selfish or trying to sound callous, I am glad that I can take solace in that I can still live. I can still teach — and while some of my students are a different kind of soulless zombie horde, many of them are vital and wonderful young people who learn from me. So there is hope there. I can still write, even though it is harder to find the time and energy to do it, these days. Because this is neither a movie nor my dream, I do not in fact need to sacrifice my wife, or hold her while we both die; actually, we are both quite healthy, which is nice to say. And the pets are safe and well. So no, it is not the apocalypse, not for me. I have hope, and hope means I can fight.

And it is not time to give up hope.

I mean that. While many of the guardrails that held Trump back from his worst impulses last time are gone now, and he will act like what he is, a cross between Veruca Salt (not the band) and a shit-throwing gibbon (Note to self: that would be a good punk band name.), there are still guardrails in place. We should be disturbed by the ones that are gone, and we should work to put them back in place, or even replace them with improved versions; but don’t think that Trump will be able to do all the worst things he or we could ever imagine. He won’t. The military will not betray this country, the Constitution, and their oaths, for Donald freaking Trump: and without the military, he can never have a coup or become dictator for life. He can get every single one of the Proud Boys, and the 3%ers, and the Neo-Nazis, and the Karens for Trump or whatever, and march them all on Washington: and a single armored division would wipe them out in minutes. So he cannot overthrow the government. And while the Supreme Court, themselves corrupted by something vile and awful and alien — namely a level of arrogance that we haven’t seen, I think, since literal nobles before the French Revolution — have given Trump the green light to do whatever official act he wants — they also reserved for themselves the right to decide what is an official act. And if you think they would ever give up that control over Trump, or any other President, well. You haven’t seen any movies with the nobility in them. Honestly, the people backing Trump don’t want him to overthrow the government and destroy this country; this country is where they keep their money. The Supreme Court serves that crowd, the billionaire class who want to retain the rule of law because that protects their billions — and, not coincidentally, the Court’s own power. So anything that looks like Trump trying to overthrow the Constitution and set himself up as a king will be thrown down by those who already consider themselves our overlords.

Let Them Make Mistakes: Marie Antoinette's Life and Wedding — *Is this the Supreme Court — or is this:*

This Week in Genre History: Mars Attacks! wanted to destroy Earth a bit too much | SYFY WIRE

So no, Trump won’t destroy the country, or our democracy.

But he’ll hurt people. A lot of people. Starting with the immigrants he deports, the women he strips of rights, and the trans people he tries to exterminate by allowing bigots to say trans people shouldn’t exist. And all of the people who love them, and will have to watch those people get hurt.

So in the face of that, we shouldn’t feel helpless or hopeless, and we shouldn’t despair.

We should feel sober. And frightened, especially for those who are in Trump’s crosshairs, although that may not be us and our families; it is surely people we know and care about, and people we should protect, support and succour.

We should feel so. Fucking. Angry.

And we should then focus that anger, that fear, that seriousness, on the task at hand: to fight the horde. To stop them from breaking down all of the doors, tearing down all of the walls, and especially to stop them from devouring people, whether they are our people or not. Because now it’s down to this: you are human, and you are unwilling to sacrifice those who are threatened for your own sake, especially for your own convenience, or for something as trivial as the price of eggs — or you are not. If you are not, you are of the horde, and you are our enemy.

All of you humans, all of my kin and friends and allies: don’t stop. Don’t give up hope: this horde will be defeated. This will be one of those zombie apocalypses where the zombie plague is cured, or something happens to wipe all the monsters out. You know why?

Because Donald Trump is an unhealthy 78-year-old, who very carefully and determinedly built a cult of personality around himself. For reasons I can’t really fathom, he was incredibly successful at that — more successful than any demogogue since 1945, probably. He turned the United States of America on its head, and got us to choose the path that leads to our own destruction — twice — and to cheer while we did it. It’s goddamn 1984. (And by the way: I’ve read 1984. And I understood it. My allusion is accurate.) But the best and most secure guardrail that will help protect us from total collapse into the evil and anarchy of Trump’s world vision is that Donald Trump will not live forever — and while he is alive, he is old, and unhealthy, and lazy. Half the stuff he could do, he won’t do, because he’ll be too busy watching Fox News and telling his cronies that he really is smarter than everyone else. And because only he himself is the focus of that cult of personality, nobody else will be able to step into his shoes when he dies.

In the meantime, before he leaves office with his diaper and his hands full of his own feces, or before he drops dead of a massive coronary, he will do harm. To people we know. To people we love. To people. And so that is our fight. To stop that harm when we can, to mitigate it when we can, and to balance it always by being so fucking aggressively kind that even the zombies would decide not to eat us, would instead pick us a flower and smile with their broken teeth in their rotted mouths, and say, “Thaaaaangk yyyooouuuuuuuu!”

Cartoon Green Zombie Monster with Flower Stock Vector - Illustration of death, yellow: 75571689

I’m going to shoot for that result with my classes, too. We’ll see if I can pull it off.

As for me? After I thought I would give up in the zombie apocalypse, and then told myself that I would never give up — and then thought that I am too weak, too ignorant, too pathetic and lame to actually be of any use to anyone in that dystopian scenario, I remembered something. I remembered a different post-apocalyptic book I read, years ago: one where the collapse is due to a disease that simply kills people, not one that reanimates the dead — you know, a much more realistic book. Science fiction, of course, as the most accurate and truthful books often are. And in that book, the main character is, at first, a conman, a liar who manages to get accepted into the broken anarchic society that replaces our modern one after the collapse; he gains food, shelter, allies — a life. And he does it first by lying. And then, he does it by storytelling, and entertainment: he puts on plays for the fortified groups he visits; he recites poetry. As years turn into decades, he helps to teach the children born into this terrible world, and because he travels from place to place, around and around a particular circuit, he becomes something of a messenger, helping these small, isolated communities to build connections, and to unite, in the end, against the common foe.

By the end of the book, it becomes clear that the conman, the entertainer, has actually done something genuinely valuable for the people he thought he was just lying to: he has given them hope. He has inspired them to keep going, even in the face of despair, even in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. He has brought people together, and reminded them of what it means to be human, to be more than savages slaughtering each other for food and warmth. To be people, rather than part of the faceless horde.

The name of the book is The Postman, by David Brin, a wonderful SF writer. It was turned into a reeeaaalllllyy bad movie with Kevin Costner in the lead role; it was so bad it has probably been entirely forgotten. But the book was actually good.

And you know what? I can do that. I could do all of that. (Not the lying, hopefully, because I am not good at it and I very much hate doing it. But I can.) I can be entertaining, and I can bring people together, and I can maybe inspire people to keep going, even in the face of despair and the seemingly insurmountable numbers of the horde.

I can survive the zombie apocalypse.

We all can.

Let’s go.

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The Enemy, Within

31/10/202402/11/2024Dusty Leave a comment

Listen. I’m not your enemy.

it may seem at times like I am. I get pretty mad about politics, and I say some aggressive and accusatory things, and also some pretty damn insulting things. We disagree, very strongly, about a number of issues; and you may see some of my opinions as representing a threat.

For instance, you see Donald Trump as the best choice for the next President. I see him as an orange fascist, a shit-flinging gibbon, who may be a threat to this country’s continued existence; though I admit, Trump’s not actually the threat; it’s the people who come crowding in with him, who, while we’re all staring at the shit-gibbon, are sneaking around in the shadows trying to make our lives worse so they can gain more of what they already have, wealth and power and the protective bubble of privilege. I don’t understand why you can’t see the threat of those people behind Trump. Though I understand why you’re staring at Trump: we all are. I went to the San Diego Zoo when I was a kid and watched a chimp pee in its own mouth. We like watching primates fling excrement. It’s wild.

I know that you think Kamala is the threat to our country; or, even more likely, you see her the same way I see Trump: you think she is a low-IQ failure, a Communist/Marxist liar who got her start in politics by spreading her legs for Willie Brown, and who never even won the nomination, just stepped in when Joe dropped out, conveniently for Kamala too late for the DNC to run a new primary but not too late for her to take the money he raised; and you think she is mainly a distraction whose job it is to open the door for those same shady characters I mentioned before, who, you think, will strip away our freedoms and the things that make us who we are, that make us the greatest country on Earth.

You worry about what she’s going to do to the economy, and how that will affect the people of this country.

I worry about what he’s going to do to the people of this country while we’re all focusing on the economy.

So, we disagree. Strongly. Often.

But we’re not enemies.

Neither one of us is trying to destroy the country, though we both accuse each other of doing exactly that. I think the threats you see, the things you believe will destroy the country, are absurd non-issues — like preventing trans people from playing sports — and I can’t understand why you don’t focus on the real threats that I see — like climate change. And yes, you guessed it: you can’t fathom why I believe in these things that are barely even real, like climate change, and why I ignore the moral collapse of this country, caused by the rise of DEI and drag queen story hour.

I know that the issue of trans rights is not the biggest issue on your mind, I know that it is the economy, immigration, and crime, in that order; I’m trying to show the starkest differences between us — because people on my side are also concerned about the economy and about immigration in ways I personally don’t agree with. So look on the bright side: you already won both of those arguments, as you won the argument about defunding the police. Whoever gets into office, Trump or Harris, Democrats or Republicans, they will cut taxes (though they shouldn’t, they should raise taxes on corporations and use it to fund Medicare for all, which will then save us more money and, more importantly, more headache than any tax cut ever could — but I also recognize that you think this is socialism gone wild, and you can’t believe I would ever trust the government to do anything important like provide real health care to real people; and I can’t believe you would trust corporations to do it instead of the government — and here we are.), and they will definitely pass that hard-on-immigration bill that the Dems handed the Republicans before Donald Trump told them not to pass it. He’s been taking shots for months, now, about that bill, so you better believe he would pass that same damn bill — except with the wall stuck in there somewhere. So you will get a tougher stance on immigration, and you will get a tax cut, and you will get a better economy (Because the economy during any presidency is largely built by the one before, so whoever wins this election will be hailed as a brilliant economic president because of the work that Biden has done for the last four years. But we can disagree on that, too.). One of the other places we disagree is trans rights, and that one I think is still up in the air; that’s why I used it as an example. I could have picked abortion: but I don’t think we actually disagree on that, not substantively.

I’m explaining this because I don’t want you to think I’m trying to paint you in a terrible way by talking about trans people playing sports or reading to children: I am not. I disagree with you. (If you are a trans person, or an ally and a supporter of trans rights as I am, and you think I am cozying up to people who want to remove your right to exist, hold on. Trust me. Read on to the end. I am not your enemy, either. [I’m just going to go ahead and assume that anyone who actually is trans is not on the Trump side politically. Not really.]) I do not think you, whom I disagree with politically, are my enemy.

I would like you to recognize the same thing about me.

Let’s talk about our disagreements a little more, and see if you can see this my way.

What makes someone your enemy? For me, it boils down to one thing: your enemy intends you harm. They wish to harm you. People who are not our enemies may (and often do) harm us, but they don’t intend it; that’s the difference. Anyone who intends you harm is your enemy.

So look at where we disagree. Start with immigration, because I don’t mean to ignore what many people think is a very serious issue. Here’s my opinion on it: there are too many illegal immigrants coming into this country.

Ha. Didn’t expect that, did you? Want me to really blow your mind? I’m in favor of the Second Amendment, too.

Where we disagree is what should be done about illegal immigration. I do not think illegal immigrants are bad people. I am tempted to explain that position by saying that I am not a racist, because I think a LOT of people who oppose illegal immigration hold that position because they are racist; but not everyone does, by any means. Many people oppose illegal immigration because it is illegal; many people oppose it because they think our country doesn’t have the room or the resources to support countless immigrants, and priority should be given to those who come here legally. I disagree with the first argument because laws can be changed: what matters to me is harm, not the fact of a law prohibiting specific behavior. I talk to my students about laws and morality all the time, and every single one of them thinks that some laws should be broken when the law is bad or the need is severe or the cause is righteous; I presume we agree on that, as well. I don’t like holding one position in one context and then changing it in another context; that is hypocrisy. So the issue is, if illegal immigrants are doing harm, their actions should be illegal, and they should be stopped; but if they are not doing harm, then it doesn’t matter that their actions are illegal: harmless actions that are illegal imply the laws should be changed, not that the actions and the people are bad somehow despite the lack of harm.

The harm illegal immigrants may be doing is taking limited resources. And as I said: I think there are too many illegal immigrants. (I kind of think there are too many people in this country, period, but then I don’t like people, so I’m not going to pay much attention to that thought of mine.) I will only say that illegal immigrants may be taking limited resources because it isn’t clear to me that illegal immigrants are the problem: they are emphatically not the cause of inflation or the housing crisis. But it is possible they are taking too many limited resources, and if so that should stop: one way would be if they should be reduced in number.

Here’s how I think we could do that, if it is the right thing to do: work permits and the right to migrate freely across the border, in either direction, for employment. Doing that would eliminate as an area of concern all of the people who immigrate and reside permanently in the US simply for economic reasons: because they could travel here, work, and then go back home with their families for vacations or when they have enough money. They wouldn’t bring their families here, because they would only come to work and send money home. Most people don’t want to move their family to a whole new country just for a job: they do it because if someone comes to the US for a job, they can’t ever go back, because then they could never return to work more. People used to cross the border to work when the agricultural season called for more workers, and then return to their native country when the season ended. We are the ones who stopped that, and it was stupid, and it caused millions of people to immigrate here with their families, permanently, reluctantly, because they had no economic opportunities in their home country and they didn’t want to be separated from their families forever. But go to the U.S. alone, just to work for a couple of months for picking season? No big deal. And then the only people who migrate here permanently would be those actually seeking asylum, seeking an entirely new life: a MUCH smaller number.

So. That’s my view on illegal immigration. I think immigration does no harm when it is handled reasonably; because of that, I think handling it reasonably is the best thing to do. Not build walls, not deport people, not militarize the border. (We are not, by the way, talking about fentanyl trafficking or human trafficking: one of the ways that we get twisted in politics is by conflating multiple issues that should be considered separately. This is just the immigration discussion.) Work permits and freedom to cross for work.

Maybe you still disagree with me. Maybe you think illegal immigration is illegal and so there should be a penalty involved, because breaking a rule is in itself harmful; okay. Maybe you think that immigrants with work permits would still take jobs that should go to Americans; okay.

Can you see that, even if you hold these opinions, or some other opinion that makes you disagree with my idea — can you see that I don’t intend you any harm? That I don’t mean to harm anyone? I want to make it easier to separate those migrants who want to work and then leave, from those immigrants who want to come here permanently, and I want to make it easier for both to get what they want. I believe that will do the most to decrease harm. (And, not coincidentally, it will reduce the harm done through human trafficking and drug smuggling, because much of that is done through exploitation of desperate people, and if we reduce desperation we reduce exploitation. But this is just the immigration discussion. I just want you to know I’m not ignoring the other problems.) That’s my full intent: and so even if you think I’m missing a critical concern of yours with my solution, I’m not planning anything that is intended to cause you harm. Or to cause anyone harm, but we’re talking about you.

That’s why I’m not your enemy.

Want to do another one? Take climate change. You may oppose the Green New Deal because you think that it will make everything too expensive, and that climate change can’t be affected by making you buy an electric car. You may think that Democratic politicians are using the Green New Deal to give kickbacks to the shady people standing behind them (Though if you do, you are ignoring that one of the biggest recipients of sweetheart environmental laws and policies is Elon Musk, who is not a friend to Democrats.), and you may think that electric cars suck and you don’t ever want to own one. (You may tell yourself it’s because EVs don’t have the range, or that the batteries are dangerous and lithium mining is toxic, or that the power to charge them comes from fossil fuels used to generate power in the first place — but it’s really because EVs don’t make the cool sounds that gas cars do, and you know it. Right, JB?)

I do not believe in a Green New Deal. I think it is a political statement that is now toxic. I wish it weren’t, because I believe in what it represents; but I don’t need the statement, I just want the results. I believe the government should support and encourage the US to move towards a greener economy and a greener infrastructure. I do not want Democrats giving kickbacks or sweetheart deals to their corporate cronies; they are bad at picking them, because they picked freaking Musk and made him the richest man on Earth, and he then fucked up Twitter. I really liked Twitter, so now I hold a grudge. (Mostly against Musk, who sucks for a plethora of reasons.) I believe the government has a role in educating the public, and especially in making sure that the corporations which profit from causing climate change do not get to lie about climate change, as all of the oil and gas companies have been doing for generations now. I admit I think that EVs are better and cooler than gas cars, and specifically because they don’t make the same noises that gas cars do.

It’s okay if we’re enemies on that score.

But again: can you see how I don’t intend to cause you harm? We may have different ideas of what should be done, and how it should be done. I want education. I want encouragement and support, but I want the change to come from the people and the companies of this country, not to be imposed by the government. I want that because government imposition of changes so vast and momentous doesn’t work: and I really think our actions on climate change need to work, and they need to work now. But I’ll bet you anything that we could find a reasonable compromise on the specifics of this issue.

Because I am not your enemy.

Go down the line: you will find the same thing, again and again. I hear pundits and people on both sides say that we are all Americans and we are not that different; I don’t actually agree, I think we are that different. I think we disagree on a whole lot of stuff. But I don’t think we are enemies, because I don’t think we intend each other harm. I don’t think most people intend anyone harm, other than those they see as enemies. I don’t think people who want to deport illegal immigrants want to harm those people, I think they just want to protect this country and they think immigrants are harming the US, and that deportation (and a wall) are the best way to prevent that harm. I know that people who want to impose EV mandates and so on are not intending any harm for those who might get affected; they want to prevent the much greater harm of the onrushing environmental collapse. Talk to citizens who support the idea of a Green New Deal about something like subsidies for those who can’t afford to buy an electric car, to make it possible to switch to an EV, and I guarantee they’ll agree immediately; and if you think that’s socialism, well. Tell me who it harms, and how.

You know what made me realize this? It’s abortion. Over 60% of this country’s citizens support abortion rights. That’s more than all of the people in either party, Democrat or Republican. The people I sometimes think of as white supremacists, the people I sometimes think of as religious fanatics (Don’t blame me for thinking that, you guys have Mark Robinson on your side.) — large proportions of them, of you, support abortion rights. And yet there are whole states — which may not have 60% support for abortion rights, but sure as hell have more than 0, which is the number of abortions some states seem to want to allow — trying to ban abortion entirely.

Even those people, most of them, don’t intend harm. They are trying to prevent harm. I think, vehemently, that they are wrong, that they are causing more harm than they are preventing; but I can have that debate with them. And other than the fanatics who actually want to murder people, I think they would be willing to have the discussion with me, too. Because we’re not enemies.

Now: let me say that there are people who intend harm. There are people who oppose immigration because they are racist; they want to militarize the border because they want people to die trying to cross into the US; they want there to be camps built to hold immigrants because they want immigrants to suffer and die. Those people are my enemies. As I think they are yours. There are people who want to prevent trans athletes from playing on teams with their identified gender because those people hate trans people, and think trans people shouldn’t exist. Those people intend harm to trans people: therefore they are my enemies. But I don’t think that’s you, either. I think most people who oppose trans rights think that it’s fine for trans people to exist; they think trans people shouldn’t play on sports teams, and they think trans people shouldn’t be around children. I disagree with those ideas — but I don’t think the people who hold them intend harm. I think those ideas actually do cause harm, quite severe harm; but I don’t think it’s intentional harm. Where it is intentional harm, where people think trans people — or those they mistake for trans people, like drag performers — should be killed? Those people are my enemies. And they should be yours. Murderers, even would-be murderers, do not get a place in the debate.

But I really don’t think that most people want to commit murder. And I think if you don’t want to kill people, we can talk.

So this, I think, is how we should think about this going forward. I disagree with you, a lot, and I will fight you, tooth and nail, over political points — but not literally, because I do not intend you harm, and you do not intend me harm. We are all Americans, even though we are very different. We are not enemies.

But you know who is my enemy?

People who try to convince you that I am your enemy. People who say that I am, intentionally, destroying our country, which I love dearly. People who say that I should be destroyed, that I should be jailed, or killed, for my beliefs and my political ideas.

People like Donald Trump.

So understand this: I don’t hate people who vote for Donald Trump — though I don’t like you, either. But I don’t think that most of you are my enemies. Some are: the racists are, and the anti-trans bigots, and the ones who want people to suffer and die because they disagree politically with Trump and his ilk. Donald Trump, however, is my enemy: because by trying to make you think that I am your enemy, he intends me harm. If you think the same thing about Kamala Harris, then I accept that she is your enemy — though I doubt you think that unless you think that all Democrats are out to kill all Republicans, and if you think that, you’re probably my enemy already. Trump is Kamala Harris’s enemy, and so she says things about him you wouldn’t say about people who aren’t your enemy: and he deserves them.

Because he is the enemy.

You’re not.

So if my enemy wins this election, I’m going to oppose him, and I’m going to be fighting those who supported him because he is my enemy, and I think he intends harm. But then after he is gone — and even if he wins this election, he will not destroy this country, because he has too many enemies and not enough allies — we will need to come back together, and hopefully find a new set of leaders to elect who do not tell any of us that we are each other’s enemies. Hopefully that type will never rise again.

Hopefully it won’t be you.

But I don’t think it will. Because we’re not enemies.

Do you agree?

Deep Breath — Now Hold It… Hold It… Keep Holding…

28/09/2024Dusty Leave a comment

***

Wow. It’s been so long since I’ve written a post that I got logged out of my own website.

I would apologize, but first, you all are sick of hearing me apologize; as I say to my students when they offer an apology for their behavior, “I don’t need you to apologize, I need you to do better.” And I can’t promise that I will do better: because the reason I haven’t been posting is that I’m too busy drowning in work and responsibilities. I haven’t caught up on the work, and the responsibilities aren’t going away; so I won’t be writing much any time soon. Though I do have a break a week from now, so I may be able to find some time there to post some more; I do have several ideas for things I want to write.

But this one has to come first. Because, you see, a large part of my problem with keeping up this school year is that I am extra exhausted: and a large part of that problem is that my students are extra exhausting. I’m back teaching 9th grade English, for the first time in 8 years; and the last time, it was an Honors class. I don’t have my lovely fantasy/sci-fi elective this year; not enough students signed up for it — though I can’t imagine who wouldn’t want to take a class in which you get to read “The Fortress Unvanquishable Save for Sacnoth.” (And I BEG you, if you like swords and sorcery and epicness beyond the known realms of epic, click on that link and go read the story. It’s lengthy, but it’s SO good.) The class was fun, and therefore easier to teach; the classes I have now are mostly not fun, and mostly not easy. And though I don’t want to sound like an old man shaking his fist at a cloud, I have to say that part of the problem really is my students, their attitude about school, and the way they treat me and my class.

But another factor — a more difficult one — is how my administration directs me to deal with those students.

For the sake of this post, which I want to keep shorter and more to the point than my usual logorrhea, I’m just going to share the text of a … friendly lil email I got from my administration. Let me preface this by saying that I actually like my administrators very much, first on a personal level and then second (and somewhat less than the personal) on a professional level. They work very hard, even harder than I do; and they, like me, like everyone in education, have enormous and ridiculous demands on their time and energy. One of the demands on my administration is for them to implement the systems that the higher-up administrators want them to implement; and at my school, as at many schools, one of those systems is PBIS.

I have written before about PBIS. But there is nothing I could say about it that would communicate the full level of insipid uselessness that it imposes on teachers. The basic idea of it is that we need to praise students for the things they do right, more often than we need to criticize them for the things they do wrong; and that’s fine — but the idea of it being a system that we need to impose on teachers? Processes that require training? The idea that it will produce data which we will then analyze and use to form data-driven decisions that will surely improve school for everyone? My god, the pile of steaming bullshit in that is larger than Mount Olympus. I already praise my students when they do things right. I do it because I am a kind person, and I care about both my students and the work we are involved in, this pursuit of their best selves. So it already happens. Any system, any process, any practice that teachers are trained in, is inevitably going to be artificial, and therefore undermine the actual relationships that teachers form with students, and which are far and away the best chance we have of changing the way they act, changing their attitudes and reducing their misbehaviors. Relationships, guys. Not PBIS.

When my students are being resistant, or obstructive — or just little freaking jerks — they don’t really need me to be nice to them and find something in their behavior to praise. They need me to tell them to shut the hell up, and make it stick: they need me to have a relationship with them that means they will listen to me when I tell them they need to shut the hell up. That is 99% of the problem with student behavior. For the sake of contradicting the image of me as old man shaking my fist at a cloud, let me say this: students today aren’t worse than they were ten years ago, or twenty, or thirty, when I was a student (Okay, thirty-five…): but they aren’t any better. They are sometimes, some of them, intentionally cruel; that is a separate and more serious issue that has to be dealt with individually and more emphatically. They are frequently distracted and detached, and that sometimes has to be dealt with, though I still generally believe the best way to handle that is to let them not learn anything for a time, and point out to them that they have not been learning anything, and maybe they should do something about that. But really, the problem that comes up in every class, every single day, and which requires a reaction from me, a reaction I am VERY tired of giving, is: they make too much goddamned noise. They just need to shut the hell up. That’s it. Otherwise they are basically fine, and usually good.

Or, as my administration put it in an email I recently received:

As we continue working together to create a positive and productive learning environment for all of our students,

Off to a great start. Also, I thought I was teaching them English?

But please, go on.

I want to emphasize the importance of using Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS) when addressing behaviors around our SSA campus. One key aspect that often impacts the success of these interventions is the tone we use when interacting with students. At times, incidents can escalate unnecessarily due to an improper or harsh tone. I encourage each of us to be mindful of how we address behaviors, focusing on de-escalation rather than confrontation. A calm, respectful approach can go a long way in turning potentially challenging moments into opportunities for growth and learning. It’s also crucial to remember that our students deserve the same level of respect we expect from them. When we address students with kindness and respect, we not only model the behavior we want to see, but we also build stronger relationships that can lead to more positive outcomes inside and outside the classroom. I’ve included some behavior interventions that can be helpful when dealing with defiant or disrespectful students.

Oof. Okay. First, I hope we all know that the least effective sentence in the English language is “Calm down.” It never, EVER, makes anyone calm. It is much more likely to piss the person off and add that to whatever agitation they are currently going through.

Second, I have to point out that I strongly suspect a particular interaction between one of my fellow teachers and one of our high school students, which happened the day before this email was sent out, was a large part of the impetus that led to this particular email: because that interaction was not positive, and was not de-escalated by the two people involved. So there was cause for some means of addressing that issue.

But — and this is third, but it should be first, last, and every number in between, when discussing how my administration works with their teachers in ways they should not — any particular issue with any particular teacher SHOULD BE HANDLED SPECIFICALLY WITH THAT TEACHER. Don’t talk to me about being calm; I am too calm. I need to lose my temper more often. Know how I know that? My students tell me that. Talk to me about not confronting my students when they misbehave: that is something I have trouble with. Don’t say that to my colleagues, several of whom are extremely good at addressing issues when they rise, and most of whom do it calmly.

Last, and best, don’t do what the email went on to do, and which it does in this first part as well: don’t tell us to be positive and respectful and several other handy pieces of trite advice, while doing none of those things in the email telling us to do them. Pedagogy experts are legendarily bad about this: almost every teacher training I have had in 25 years in this business has been largely about how to keep students connected to n involved with the learning, presented by people who fail to connect us to or involve us with the learning in any way. The most famous example is the trainers who teach teachers by showing us PowerPoint presentations with blocks of text on every slide, which the trainers then read to us verbatim while we are looking at the slides. Every teacher I know who assigns PowerPoint presentations would fail every one of those presenters. I myself just think about how much better it would sound if I read it for them.

So. Here are the specific pieces of advice this email then offered us. Ready? Here is How To Deal With Students Misbehaving 101. With notes by me, illustrating how I would put these nuggets of wisdom into practice. (If I ever put these into practice. [Not bloody likely. Not as they are worded here.])

Here is your hypothetical situation requiring my intervention: one of my students is talking too much, too loudly. That student needs to shut the hell up. Here is how I would say it, adopting my administration’s guidance. [Said guidance will be quoted preceding each example.]

– Stay Calm and Maintain Neutrality
Responding with a calm demeanor can prevent the situation from escalating. Take a deep breath before addressing the behavior to ensure you remain composed.

*Takes a deep breath, then, composedly,* “Shut the hell up.”

– Give Clear and Specific Directions
Sometimes students react negatively due to confusion or misunderstanding. Make sure your instructions are clear, direct, and specific.

“[Student name]: shut the hell up. Shut your mouth, with the words inside. Lock your throat into silent mode. Do not make the speaky-speaky noises. Am I being clear? Shut the hell up if you understand me.”

– Use Positive Reinforcement
Acknowledge and praise positive behavior when you see it. Often, recognizing what students are doing right can prevent future defiance.

“Good job shutting the hell up. Keep it up.”

– Provide Choices
Offering choices allows students to feel they have some control over the situation. For example, “You can either take a break for five minutes or finish your task quietly.”

“You can choose to shut the hell up, or you can accept that you have no control over this situation, and shut the hell up because I told you to. Your call.”

– Restate Expectations Respectfully
Respectfully but firmly restate your expectations, reminding students of classroom rules while remaining respectful and kind.

“I expect you to shut the hell up. Respectfully.”

– Active Listening
Take time to listen to the student’s perspective. Sometimes defiance comes from frustration or a lack of feeling heard. A few moments of active listening can de-escalate the situation.

“I am now prepared to listen to you shutting the hell up. I am actively listening for absolute silence.”

– Have a Private Conversation
Address the behavior in private whenever possible to avoid embarrassment or defensiveness. This can help maintain the student’s dignity and prevent power struggles in front of peers.

*Takes student out into the hall.* “Stay out here. Shut the hell up. Learn to have some dignity, and some respect for your fellow students, and for me.” *Returns to class where silence prevails. Teaches respectfully. Student’s embarrassment, standing alone in the hall while other students walk by and snicker, helps to enforce that their behavior was unacceptable. Student learns.*

– Teach Problem-Solving Skills
Help students reflect on their behavior and guide them in developing solutions for similar situations in the future.

“The problem with your behavior is that you are not shutting the hell up. Can you offer any potential solutions to this problem? Here’s a hint: it rhymes with ‘Butt the shell pup.'”

– Offer a Reset
Give the student an opportunity to reset their behavior without consequence by offering a short break or a moment to collect themselves.

“Let’s reset your volume to zero by shutting the hell up. Feel free to take a short break from talking. Collect your lips together into a single, unbroken unit.”

Look. At least some of this is valuable advice. For teachers who don’t know how to handle student misbehavior. Which is not all of us. More to the point, if all you had to do to teach somebody something they don’t know, and get them to adopt it as part of their pattern of behavior going forward, was show them a bulleted list, then *Takes a deep breath as advised* I WOULD HAVE GIVEN MY STUDENTS A LIST OF STATEMENTS THAT READ “SHUT THE HELL UP” AND WE WOULDN’T HAVE ANY MORE PROBLEMS. Also, I would give them a list of ways to write essays and read books, and how not to waste their lives and potentials and their very minds and souls on screens and social media, and a whole lot of things would be a lot better. (I have another list for Donald Trump. I’d really like for him to read my list, and absorb everything it says.)

And if you think I’m exaggerating about the prominence of the doesn’t-shut-the-hell-up problem, let me just say that the confrontation that might have led to this email was started by the student making loud noises in the hallway during class time. So.

I will end this by including the last paragraph of the email in question, which is almost everything I would want our administrators, or any colleague, to do when talking to their peers and coworkers. The only other thing I’d like to see with this is a statement that the administration will be working on these problems with both individual teachers, and all the students, who also clearly need to learn these steps in how to de-escalate a situation and treat people with the respect they expect to receive from those people. And for this whole email to never have happened at all.

Let’s continue to create an environment where respect and kindness are the foundation of all our interactions, and where every student feels valued and understood. Thank you for all you do for our school and our students. I appreciate all of you!

“I appreciate you shutting the hell up.”

Either/Or, Neither/Nor

30/06/2024Dusty Leave a comment

I watched the Presidential debate on CNN last Thursday, and I wish I hadn’t. Or rather, I wish I hadn’t seen what I saw, because I wish it hadn’t happened the way that it did. I wish there hadn’t been a debate for me to watch, because it did not go well for my side. Or, even better, I wish the sides were different: I wish the debate had featured entirely different candidates, giving entirely different answers to the questions — which probably should have been moderated by entirely different journalists on an entirely different channel.

Overall, I’m going to give that debate a vigorous No. None of the Above, please. We saw that Biden is too old and depleted to make up for his shitty moderate stances, and we already knew, and had confirmed for us, that Trump is a lying sack of crap who uses rage and cynicism to make up for his catastrophic reactionary stances. The whole thing just made me feel desperate and hopeless.

And that’s exactly the way it is supposed to be. At least according to the preferences of the people and forces which shape the politics of this country. Which, in our current state of affairs, is not the will of the people nor the votes of the majority: because this country is, practically speaking, not a democracy. The simplest understanding of a democracy is that the majority will of the people rules, and no president has ever been elected by a majority of the citizens of this country, let alone the residents. Certainly not these two specimens.

But that’s fine because this is actually a constitutionally limited republic, not a democracy. So there.

Actually dog Meme Generator - Imgflip — *ACtually…*

No, I’m fucking around, because there are internet bros who always get snotty when people in political arguments say this country is a democracy. It’s not. By the strictest definition, at least — and it’s a distinction that doesn’t even matter at all, and the fact that shitty people use their nitpickery about it to shame and silence people pisses me off: so I’m mocking those people. Sorry if it is confusing. At least the dog in that Actually meme is cute.

But here’s the real actually: whatever the intended shape of the government for this country, we are in truth currently controlled by an oligarchy: a plutocracy (or maybe a kakistocracy and certainly a kleptocracy) made up of people with too much money, who are willing (unsurprising, but still disgusting) and able (appalling and even more disgusting) to influence the political machinery of the country in order to benefit themselves, at the expense of all the rest of us. They have captured both major parties, thanks in large part to the influential power of money in our elections, particularly as unleashed by the Citizens United decision, and sanctioned de facto by politicians’ continued inability to pass election financing reform, solely because they put their own interests before those of the nation or their constituents.

Unsurprising. But still disgusting.

Because the people who run the politicians who run the country are in the business of doing business — namely using their money to make even more money, which is their sole purpose and motivation, their raison d’etre — the corruptions they create in our politics are mostly those which benefit business. They just got their personal Supreme Court to knock down Chevron deference, for instance, which will make it much easier for them — rich people who can afford the attorneys and legal costs, that is — to challenge government regulations in court, because now judges, who are definitely not experts in such matters as workplace safety or environmental impact, but who, like most people — especially these fucking people

— like to think they are experts in every way that actually matters, can knock down regulations that they personally don’t think are valid or necessary. Even if the actual experts disagree with them. And do we think that our One-Percenter overlords will be taking advantage of this process?

You bet your sweet bippy we do.

But the point is, the people in charge are best served by the continued dominance of the two major parties. Because both parties rely on enormous infusions of cash in order to defeat — each other. Elections like this one, choices like this one — like the contest between these two terrible old men, the Mummy and the Blob — serve the preferences of the ruling class, because they make us desperate, not hopeful. If we had a good candidate, one who gave us hope — and the last one such was Barack Obama (who still was not a great president, because he, like Joe, was too moderate and didn’t do enough to change the life of the average citizen of this country; though in fairness to Obama, he was trying to make change pretty much on his own, and fighting against the entire political machine, and of course he lost. Donald Trump gave some segment of the populace hope, but he’s a lying sack of shit, so that hope doesn’t count, in my opinion.) — then it would inspire people to get involved, to take action; the rulers do better, have more control, when we despair, and give up, and lie down and take it. Take whatever they give us, and hate everything — and do nothing. Most of us don’t even vote. Which makes it that much easier for the plutocrats to control the votes of those who do turn out. And they like that it is only two parties, and in every specific electoral contest, for every seat and every office, it is winner take all — the person who gets one more vote beats the person who gets one fewer vote — because that also makes it easier to control the politicians. This system means the two opponents are best served by focusing only on each other, cooperatively blocking any third candidate (who already has a named role in most three-way races: “spoiler”) and fighting to the death against their one nemesis, fighting for every single vote: and that means the holders of the moneybags, the distributors of the thirty pieces of silver — the rich fuckers who try to control everything — have a death grip on the entire system, because they have a death grip on both of the two major parties: because they offer either party a way to destroy the other party if the other party dares to try to give up that sweet, sweet dark campaign money. Their money is the best way for both parties to get one more vote than the other party.

See? If the Democrats stop taking corporate One-Percenter cash, they will lose all elections to the Republicans, and vice versa. Shit, even members of the parties who don’t continue to meet with the approval of our corporate masters can’t win elections, because they can’t win primaries in the face of huge amounts of money. And third parties can’t possibly compete with the amount of money that continues to flow to the two major parties — and there’s no need for the One-Percenters to shift their money to the third parties, because the two major parties do everything their masters ask of them, whether it is Trump cutting taxes on corporations (with a bone thrown to the rest of us in the form of a middle class tax cut which had a sunset clause, the tax cuts ending in 2025 [After the end of a hypothetical second Trump term, and no it’s not a coincidence: there ain’t no cynic like a government cynic], while the corporate tax cut did not.) or Biden failing to rein in the corporate profiteering which helped drive the inflation that may cost him re-election.

But if Biden, like Trump, fails to win re-election, that doesn’t matter, of course, at least not to the people who matter; because if Biden loses, our corporate hegemony will be perfectly satisfied with Trump in the White House. The one they couldn’t abide would be Bernie: and that’s why Bernie lost two primaries to deeply unpopular candidates. Because money. And political machinery controlled by money.

Welcome to politics where votes don't count and only money matters - drew carey oiler meme - quickmeme

Wow. I’m sorry: I didn’t even mean to go that far down this road. Now I’m wrecked in the eternal darkness of the abyss at the end, mired in hopelessness.

No. Fuck that. You know why? Because there is hope. Really. There is hope because, whatever those racist elitist pricks who founded this country meant to do, what they actually did was create a lasting democracy. A democracy — shut the FUCK up about a constitutionally limited republic, please, Internet Bros — because the power to change the entire government rests, in the end, in the hands of the people. No matter how cynical we are, I am, about who is in charge, and no matter how we keep feeling like there’s no way anything can change: there IS a way for things to change, and it is through Americans casting votes for their choice of candidate (and in some cases for their choice of laws). Because we can choose to remove and replace our elected officials, who — money or not — are chosen ONLY by votes, according to our laws, according to our system of government. There is no tiebreaker that counts how much money the candidate has. All that matters, for determining who runs this country, is the votes.

Yes: of course those votes are generally easy to influence through money; that’s how we got to where we are. But influence is not control. No matter how many times I call them overlords and masters and rulers, they are not: the rich influence everything, and so end up getting what they want most of the time. But not all the time. Because it is still votes that change the government. All of it: obviously we could vote in a new President, and new Senators and Representatives; but also, if we stack up enough votes for congresspeople who will actually do what we want them to do, then even the Supreme Court, the one unelected branch, can be controlled: they can be impeached and removed from office, they can be outnumbered by an expansion of the Court, their decisions can be overridden by laws passed by Congress, and even, if necessary, by Constitutional amendments: which are passed by popular vote.

Make no mistake: getting people to vote for anything is nearly impossible, unless you have, at this point, billions of dollars to pour into the campaign. But if something is nearly impossible, it is still possible.

YARN | Now, mostly dead is slightly alive. | The Princess Bride | Video gifs by quotes | cb1a7c60 | 紗 — *Just like my hopes*. *Not all dead. Not yet.*

(And also, let me note in passing that we have as much money as the One-Percenters: we just spend it on food and stuff. But we could buy ourselves an election, even in the face of all the dark money in the world, if we really needed to. Just think about that.)

It’s possible for us to throw off the yoke and chains of our oppressors. It is. We’ve done it before, in opposition to slavery and the secession of the Confederacy; after the Great Depression; during the fight for civil rights. We can do it again. The way to compensate for a lack of ready money to throw around is: organization. And patience. If I may paraphrase the Doors: they got the bucks, but — we got the numbers.

But that is the long term goal. So. What do we do about this current debacle?

Clearly we don’t want either of these fucking guys — sorry, I’ve gone far afield, let me bring it back:

We don’t want either of these fucking guys to be in control of our lives. Not even a little bit. I’ve been arguing for a while now, going back to 2020, that Biden is the better choice; but I still don’t want him to be President, and I never have. He was my third-to-last choice in the crowded Democratic field in 2020 (The two below him on my list were Marianne Williamson, because combining lunacy with complete inexperience is just about the worst thing you can do, and Michael Bloomberg, because actually putting one of the One-Percenters in charge is the worst thing you can do. [Note that, Trumpers. I don’t know how you got tricked into forgetting that, but that’s who Trump really is. Actually.]), and he was my second choice even in this election where my first choices (Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders — and Andrew Yang, and Jay Inslee, and Cory Booker and Julian Castro and John Hickenlooper and Tim Ryan and JESUS CHRIST FUCKING ANYBODY ELSE) didn’t run, because Dr. Cornel West would be a far better President than either the Geezer or the Groper. The Sleeper or the Shitbag. The Fumbler or the Fascist.

So do we vote for the third party candidates?

Do we boycott and refuse to vote?

We do not: because this election will put one of these two into the White House. The system cannot change between now and November; not unless we actually rise up and revolt. I don’t plan to grab a pitchfork and light a torch; if you do, we’re going to have to have some serious talks about what you plan to do and why, because violent revolution is something I can’t support as a pacifist; and as someone who both read AND understood George Orwell’s 1984 (That’s not a dig against you: that’s another one for the internet bros who say things like, “Facebook took down my anti-trans meme! It’s LITERALLY 1984!”), I recognize that revolutions generally don’t change the system, they only change the people who hold the whip: they don’t change who the whip falls on, nor remove the whip entirely. So we can discuss it, but I don’t think violent revolution is the right thing to do.

I think the right thing to do is to work on improving the system. We don’t even need to change it, to tear it down and build a new one, because as I said, this actually is a democracy in the most important sense: no, we do not vote directly on all political matters (which is actually what a “democracy” means, control by the people without representatives), but our votes have the greatest authority. We can vote to change literally anything in our system, even the system itself through Constitutional amendment.

I do think we’ll need to change a whole lot of things to make the system functional in the long term. But there are a couple of specific things that we can work to change in the fairly short term — meaning in the next, say, five to twenty years, but not before November — that will make an enormous difference, and make it much easier — even simply possible — to change everything else we need to change. Those things are the factors which give the plutocrats their ability to influence politics so powerfully: unlimited money in campaigns, unlimited advertising in campaigns, monied lobbying and the revolving-door interactions between the government and industry, the winner-take-all two-party system (and other minority-rule structures like the electoral college). I think there are politicians who would be willing to change those things for the better. Or maybe there are people who would be willing to become politicians in order to change those things for the better. Starting with money in politics: that is the simplest and most direct way we have to challenge the plutocrats, the One-Percenters. And people like John McCain existed. People like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who unseated a corporate Democrat using only small-dollar donations, exist and are currently in Washington. It is possible. It can be done. It may take years or even decades to get a majority of such people in Congress: but we can do it. And that’s what we need to do.

But what do we do about November?

About these two fucking guys?

@rmsthornton
#Trump #Biden #Debate #FYP #ForYou #Meme #Memes #Funny #Comedy #Humor
♬ original sound – R. M. S. Thornton

I know some of you aren’t going to like hearing this, and I don’t like saying it: but the answer is, we have to vote for Joe Biden. The arguments haven’t changed, not even with that incredible faceplant of a debate performance. Trump is still a wannabe fascist, who will do untold damage to the actual lives of real people during the four years he would be in office; not to mention the damage he would do to our democracy. Biden is a failure as a leader of our nation: both because he hasn’t done nearly as much as he should have done, and because he is a miserable excuse for a figurehead — not the most important role of a president, but not a negligible one. But he is not a threat to our nation’s continued existence. Trump really is.

Don’t stay home: the MAGAts won’t. Don’t vote for RFK Jr. (If you would otherwise vote for a Democrat, that is: if you’re a Trump voter, go right ahead and vote for ol’ Brain Worms): he’s a seriously terrible candidate in his own right (and currently only on the ballot in eight states, so literally cannot win 270 electoral votes and take the presidency) and votes cast for him would only result in the victory of Trump or Biden, with no positive effect at all; because he’s not running as representative of a legitimate third party. If you want to vote Green Party or Libertarian Party or another established third party, that has more merit, because a larger number of votes cast for a third party makes it easier for the third party to gain entry into future races, which is part of the way we break the duopoly of Democrats and Republicans; but be aware that, in this election, taking a vote away from a Democrat, even a shambling mound like Joe Biden, makes it more likely that Trump will take over, and that will be very bad for us all. Including Republicans, whatever they think about how much they’ll laugh in all those stupid lib faces once Trump is in charge. The truth is that Donald Trump is not our friend, and will not do anything to help anyone but himself, if he is returned to the White House. I promise you. For the same reason, I will not be voting for Cornel West, even though I like and admire him and would choose him over every other candidate. My vote for Dr. West will not make him win: and I cannot abide the thought of a second Trump term.

So I will do the right thing to protect and serve my country and my fellow Americans: I will not choose None of the Above, and I will not cast a protest vote. I will vote for Joe Biden.

This fucking guy.

And then I will work to make sure this kind of bullshit stops. Once and for all.

No more malarkey.

Just Dusty

Dusty Takes Over the Internet!

Category Agitation