Quote of the day

 "Donald Trump has turned the presidency into something it shouldn't be: a job with unlimited ability to advance one's own personal interests at the expense of the public's." - Joe Walsh, F*ck Silence: Calling Trump Out for the Cultish, Moronic, Authoritarian Con Man He Is

A new report estimates Trump has profited 3.4 billion dollars so far from merging his business interests with those of the presidency. I'm old enough to remember when Republicans tried to end Bill Clinton's presidency over a failed land deal he and his wife made in Arkansas prior to becoming president that lost them money.

Quote of the day

“With 450 million FEMA dollars being reallocated to open Alligator Alcatraz, and 600 million taxpayer FEMA dollars being used to now open more concentration camps, and ICE burning through $8.4 million a day to illegally detain people—How much does it cost for fascism? How much do the taxpayers have to pay for a fascist country?” - constituent question to Rep. Mike Flood (R-Nebraska) at a town hall Aug. 4, 2025

Via Heather Cox Richardson

In which I remind myself these are the end of days

The future of medical research and public health policy is being decimated because the Republican majority is willing to sacrifice millions of lives to the alter of Emperor Trump's ego. Why else would they have confirmed this lunatic to be head of the HHS?

"COVID-19. There is an argument that it is ethnically targeted. COVID-19 attacks certain races disproportionately," Kennedy said at a recent dinner in New York City. The remarks were videotaped and first published by the New York Post on Saturday. 

 "COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese," he continued, adding, "We don't know whether it was deliberately targeted or not but there are papers out there that show the racial or ethnic differential and impact."

Somehow I missed this article from a couple of years ago. Of course, I never thought the HHS would be transformed into a mini-dictatorship run by someone who has no actual scientific or medical knowledge but just makes up wild conspiracy theories that exist only in his own mind, then unilaterally imposes those beliefs on the rest of the country circumventing all agency process and expertise.

We're living through an Orwell novel

Back in May, as part of the plan to Make America White Again, Orange Nero fired the first female and first non-white Librarian of Congress, and named in her place his personal attorney as the acting head, who has zero qualifications for the position and is already in a time consuming position as Deputy Attorney General. He happens to be a white male, however. And then something like this happens

As TechCrunch previously reported, parts of Section 8, as well as the entirety of Section 9 and Section 10, were deleted from Article 1 of the Constitution on the U.S. government’s official website over the past month. The changes to the sections, which pertained to congressional powers, the rights of individual states, and the rights to due process, sparked alarm at a time when the Trump administration has threatened to suspend habeas corpus.

Maybe it really was a coding error. That sounds plausible. But equally plausible is Trump appointees purging federal websites of information Dear Leader does not like. It's plausible because it's already been happening at an alarming rate.

South Park isn't wrong about Kristi Noem

"Habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country." - DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, redefining habeas corpus as tyranny

First, let me say again: Presidents don't have constitutional rights, they have constitutional powers. The Constitution guarantees rights to everyone in the United States; a president has no more or less of these. So the notion that Kim-Jong Trump is entitled to deport people with no due process is false; and suspending habeas corpus is not even a power of the presidency, Congress has the power to suspend habeas corpus. 

South Park's most recent episode offers a withering depiction of Kristi Noem and her Mar-a-Lago face. Noem responded that "it's always the liberals" who "make fun of women for how they look." Nevermind that the creators of South Park are libertarians; the issue with Noem isn't her physical appearance in itself so much as the desire to create a surface level appearance of glamour and artificial beauty while carrying out horrific human rights abuses. I'm thinking specifically of Noem getting her hair done up for a photo op in el Salvador where the people she helped put in a torture gulag with no due process are used as props, something that she should have to answer for in a court of law at some point since it is a violation of the Geneva Conventions.

A high-ranking American official visits a prison on foreign soil which we are using to warehouse enemies of her regime. She appears in a fitted long-sleeve tee and active-wear slacks. There is a ballcap on her head and a pound of makeup smeared across her plasticized face. A gold Rolex Daytona—worth more than some of these men will make in their entire lives—sits proudly on her dainty wrist. Every piece of this visual is carefully engineered.

It's like she has used plastic surgery to achieve the effect of Dorian Gray's portrait.

The fruit that they bear

 I don't think it's a far stretch from the kind of deranged hatred that MTG or the conspiracist lies RFK Jr spread about the CDC to this kind of hate.

After speaking with family members of the suspect, police are operating under the hypothesis he was either sick or believed he was sick and blamed the illness on the Covid-19 vaccine, a law enforcement official told CNN. 

 

The CDC, one of the world’s leading health agencies, is tasked with protecting the health of Americans. But it has come under fire during the second Trump administration as conspiracy theories continue to plague the vaccine credited with halting the spread of the global pandemic. 

The shooting occurred the same week US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – a longtime critic of Covid vaccinations, with a history of spreading vaccine misinformation – announced the cancellation of a half-billion dollars in investments in mRNA projects.

Before 2020 the CDC was a well respected institution across the political spectrum, but now as the Republican party becomes more and more Qanon-ified it's become the case that it has been added to their list of things that are a part of the grand conspiracy against them. If we had responsible Republican leaders, rather than insane ones, this needn't be the case. But we are rushing head first into a new dark age of unreason, where we destroy the institutions that protect us and help us.

Fox News is worse than it used to be

 I was in a waiting room the other day and had the misfortune of sitting near a television turned to Fox News. I spent years in the 2000s into the 2010s watching this network, and it was bad then, but I hadn't realized how much its turned into straight North Korean style state media. It was just non stop slobbering about how glorious the first two hundred days of Kim Jong Trump's dictatorship have been. It was completely untethered from reality, with the hosts and guest stating that the economy is performing amazing now (in contrast to the reality that he has broken an economy under Biden that was the envy of the world) and basically Trump with his god-Emperor powers is magically transforming the United States into a utopia, which is obviously at odds with the actual country being created: a fascist police state ruled by white Christian nationalist men where a handful of corporations and the mega-wealthy own everything and we labor to let them live in luxury while the federal government does, basically, nothing for citizens. Witness Trump himself using the presidency to add billions of dollars to his wealth, already (not to mention essentially embezzling 1 billion dollars from taxpayers after accepting a $400 million bribe from Qatar to give himself a luxury jet while healthcare is taken away from children, food from the starving.)

Oh, and they ended by saying a new government report reveals greenhouse gases aren't that dangerous. If Fox News had been broadcasting on Krypton the hosts would have been telling people not to worry about the fake news about Krypton's imminent destruction.

If you don't think this is fascism, well, you're very wrong.

"Yeah! Fuck them! Kill 'em. Yeah!" - current employee of the Department of Justice, urging violent protesters to kill law enforcement officers at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 

The linked above NPR article notes, "a Department of Justice spokesperson said in a statement, 'Jared Wise is a valued member of the Justice Department and we appreciate his contributions to our team.'" 

Future historians will look at this like our version of the Beer Hall Putsch. But at least Hitler went to jail for it, although briefly. The Holocaust Encyclopedia states that "despite its failure, the leaders ultimately redefined the putsch as a heroic effort to save the nation." Kind of like calling the insurrectionists political prisoners then pardoning all of them and purging the DOJ and FBI of anyone who held them accountable for their attempted coup. 

Wise was being prosecuted by the DOJ until Orange Nero, Kim-Jong Trump had the case dismissed. And now, of course, he has a position in the DOJ where he very clearly has a conflict of interest: "According to email records from multiple sources viewed by NPR, Wise holds the title of senior adviser in the office of the deputy attorney general and has been working on internal reviews of alleged 'weaponization' of law enforcement." Yes, who better to investigate weaponization of law enforcement than someone who was unfairly prosecuted for merely storming the US capitol to stop the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in American history and encouraging rioting members of a mob to kill police officers. The corruption never ends, it is bottom-less. 

A lot of Republican now support this - this fascism - because they think tyranny will only be imposed on people they disagree with. They're very wrong about that, also. No one is safe from any form of government where the Rule of Law is replaced with the Rule of a Leader. Who will protect them when the Leader or anyone he has delegated authority to turns on them? Not the law, it will be gone. 

As Robert Bolt put it in A Man for all Seasons 

Roper: So now you’d give the Devil benefit of law? 

More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil? 

Roper: I’d cut down every law in England to do that! 

More: Oh? And, when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you – where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast – man’s laws, not God’s – and, if you cut them down – and you’re just the man to do it – d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake. 

Substitute "not Trump's" for "not God's" and the point is the same.

The current United States president is deranged and has dementia

 What would it take to wake his supporters up to this fact? The president is now claiming he will use his magical powers to make this happen:

"This is something that nobody else can do. We’re gonna get the drug prices down. Not 30 or 40% which would be great, not 50 or 60, no. We’re gonna get ‘em down 1,000%, 600%, 500%, 1,500%"

If a $100 drug decreased by 1,500 percent that would mean the pharmacist would pay you $1400 to take it. 

Down down the memory hole

"Winston's greatest pleasure in life was in his work. Most of it was a tedious routine, but included in it there were also jobs so difficult and intricate that you could lose yourself in them as in the depths of a mathematical problem -- delicate pieces of forgery in which you had nothing to guide you except your knowledge of the principles of Ingsoc and your estimate of what the Party wanted you to say. Winston was good at this kind of thing." - George Orwell, 1984

Recalling Neal Postman thinking that had Stanley Milgram's subjects been required to read a classic work on obedience to authority and the claim of simple administrating policies not being a defense for causing harm they would have been less inclined to cause harm, I'd like to hope that if more people had read 1984 before voting for Trump they'd be less likely to support his administration creating memory holes. 

 In July, the National Museum of American History removed a placard from a display of presidential impeachments. The placard included Trump’s two impeachments. The placard that replaced it stated that “only three presidents have seriously faced removal”: Andrew Johnson, Richard M. Nixon and Bill Clinton. 

 The former placard including Trump’s two impeachments had been on display since September 2021. 

 A person familiar with what occurred told The Washington Post that the former placard had been removed following pressure from the White House

The Smithsonian (which is supposed to be independent of the Executive branch of government, but that was under our old system of government which was based in laws and the Constitution, not the Leader's will) has issued a statement saying the display will be updated in the coming weeks to include Dear Leader's record breaking two impeachments. We'll see how long that stands before it too goes into the memory hole.

You elected a tyrant and a monster

“I’ll go backstage before a show, and everyone’s getting dressed ... I’m allowed to go in because I’m the owner of the pageant… You know, they’re standing there with no clothes. And you see these incredible-looking women, and so I sort of get away with things like that.” - Donald Trump (2005)

"I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything ...Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything." - Donald Trump (2005)

"As President I wanted to share with Russia (at an openly scheduled W.H. meeting) which I have the absolute right to do, facts pertaining...." - Donald Trump (2017)

"I have the absolute right to PARDON myself" - Donald Trump (2018)

"As the President of the United States, I have an absolute right, perhaps even a duty, to investigate, or have investigated, CORRUPTION, and that would include asking, or suggesting, other Countries to help us out!" - Donald Trump (2019)

“I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president." - Donald Trump (2019) 

"I'm allowed to [pardon child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell] ... I know I have the right to do it. I have the right to give pardons." - Donald Trump (2025)

The "you" I refer to in the title is anyone who voted for this person despite the clear evidence - including his explicitly bragging about doing so - that he will abuse any power and authority within his reach. Be it claiming he's "allowed" to view young women undressing because he is the owner of a beauty pageant or that he can sexually assault women because "you can do anything" if you're a celebrity or claiming that being president gives him absolute rights to trample the rule of law. The common underlying theme is that he feels entitled to do these things.

Presidents do not have rights, they have powers - and they are not absolute; they are limited. Or at least they are on paper. What Trump claims for himself is more akin to the Divine Right of Kings, something this country was founded to end. Yet he claims the Constitution gives him the powers that the nation had rejected. I say had because Republican voters are apparently done with democracy. They favor something more in line with Führerprinzip, as they have no objection to Trump ignoring laws and governing directly by imperial decree or through late night diet soda fueled social media rants and all aspects of the federal government existing only to implement his will. He believes that he is accountable to no one, answerable to no one. And for some reason that I can not and never will understand, Republican voters are ok with that, despite Trump being absent of any regard for any person on the planet other than himself.

Not incidentally, the nation's founding generation were avid readers of "Cato's Letters." I have a particular affinity for #33 (1721)

There is no evil under the sun but what is to be dreaded from men, who may do what they please with impunity: They seldom or never stop at certain degrees of mischief when they have power to go farther; but hurry on from wickedness to wickedness, as far and as fast as human malice can prompt human power....

People are ruined by their ignorance of human nature; which ignorance leads them to credulity, and too great a confidence in particular men. They fondly imagine that he, who, possessing a great deal by their favour, owes them great gratitude, and all good offices, will therefore return their kindness: But, alas! how often are they mistaken in their favourites and trustees; who, the more they have given them, are often the more incited to take all, and to return destruction for generous usage. The common people generally think that great men have great minds, and scorn base actions; which judgment is so false, that the basest and worst of all actions have been done by great men: Perhaps they have not picked private pockets, but they have done worse; they have often disturbed, deceived, and pillaged the world: And he who is capable of the highest mischief, is capable of the meanest: He who plunders a country of a million of money, would in suitable circumstances steal a silver spoon; and a conqueror, who steals and pillages a kingdom, would, in an humbler fortune, rifle a portmanteau, or rob an orchard.

Quote of the day

 "[I]t is legitimate to infer in Marcus a visceral dislike of Hadrian and all his works. Hadrian had himself portrayed on his coins with grandiose titles: Clement, Indulgent, Just, Tranquil, Patient in Illness. Marcus made it clear that he despised such boastful imperial titles; the epithets he aspired to were those denoting a philosopher or a good man. And he loathed Hadrian for using murder and terror as an instrument of policy: Hadrian, it was clear, was a man who had no proper idea of friendship and knew neither its value nor its limits." - Frank McLynn, Marcus Aurelius: A Life

Quote of the day

 "Unforeseen consequences stand in the way of all those who think they see clearly the direction in which a new technology will take us." - Neal Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology 

Quote of the day

"The paradox, the surprise, and the wonder are that the clock was invented by men who wanted to devote themselves more rigorously to God; it ended as the technology of greatest use to men who wished to devote themselves to the accumulation of money. In the eternal struggle between God and Mammon, the clock quite unpredictably favored the latter." - Neal Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology

Quote of the day

"If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world." - J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

Baleful quote of the day

"In Texas people drowned in the recent floods because local officials didn't give the alarm soon enough, strongly enough. I fear that we are in the same situation on a national scale, though it's a flood seeking to overwhelm our laws and rights and functioning systems and principles in this case. I want a louder warning. I'm trying to give one myself." - Rebecca Solnit, "Please Shout Fire. This Theater is Burning"

I was just thinking to myself the other day how strange it is hearing the faux neutral voice used to described actions tantamount to the incipient stages of totalitarianism; in the name of objectivity top news agencies are misinforming their audience by not appropriately conveying the level of danger the nation is in from democratic backsliding. We need more voices like Solnit's.

Quote of the day

 "[S]ocial influences act through a mechanism; and the character of their action depends upon the character of the mechanism." - Charles Horton Cooley, "The Process of Social Change" (1897)

Via Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart by Nicholas Carr

Trivia of the day

Question: Who coined the term social media?

Answer: "It was [sociologist Charles Horton] Cooley in fact who coined the term social media - in a remarkable 1897 article called 'The Process of Social Change.'"*

*Via Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart by Nicolas Carr 

Quote of the day

 "For myself, I feel quite sure that if each of [Stanley] Milgram's subjects had been required to read Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem before showing up at the laboratory, his numbers would have been quite different." -  Neal Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology

Well, this has aged well

All of eight days ago I wrote:

We don't have rights because we're American: we're Americans because we recognize that all people have inalienable rights, and the government is only legitimate to the extent that it protects and preserves those rights. Or, at least, that's how it was supposed to work in pre-MAGA America. Under the new form of government that is taking shape, we don't have rights, we have privileges that are bestowed to us by Dear Leader (or as his followers disgustingly call him - "Daddy") and they are very much alienable. Any dissent, any independence of will that the Leader does not approve of will lead to a loss of liberty through various means of intimidation, threat, harassment, and/or persecution.

Today:

President Donald Trump escalated his long-running feud with comedian Rosie O’Donnell Saturday, threatening on social media to revoke her U.S. citizenship. 

 “Because of the fact that Rosie O’Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country, I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship,” Trump wrote. “She is a Threat to Humanity, and should remain in the wonderful Country of Ireland, if they want her. GOD BLESS AMERICA!”

So: it should go without saying, except it doesn't because he got elected, but someone with this temperament should not be anywhere near the presidency. This is not the rhetoric of a president who respects the rule of law, it is the rhetoric of a power mad tyrant aspiring to be emperor or dictator. He will assume for himself as much power as he is allowed to get away with; so far the six conservative supremacists on the Supreme Court, Republican voters and the Republicans in the House and Senate have not set a line he cannot cross. 

And the hubris of equating personal insults or criticism against himself as being "a threat to humanity." Delusional, much?

We don't need to understand that

Cosplay Fidel Castro Border Czar has admitted MAGA secret police are detaining people based on their perceived ethnicity.

"People need to understand, ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] officers and Border Patrol don’t need probable cause to walk up to somebody, briefly detain them, and question them,” Homan said. “They just go through the observations, get articulable facts based on their location, their occupation, their physical appearance, their actions.”

We understand that the Gestapo did not need probable cause to strip people of their basic, inalienable human rights and deny them due process, but what any true patriot understands is that what Homan is asserting is antithetical to American ideals and a threat to everyone's liberty. Not to mention morally reprehensible.

There are obviously a lot of Americans who support this (the Republican base of voters.) Please read They Thought They Were Free by Milton Mayer before it's too late.

Quote of the day

 "Radical social movement in their time are always viewed as disturbances of the moral order. It is only retrospectively that social movements are viewed as speaking truth to power in ways that make moral sense." - Jason Stanely, How Propaganda Works

Baleful quote of the day

"I visited four continents to write a global history of concentration camps. This facility’s purpose fits the classic model: mass civilian detention without real trials targeting vulnerable groups for political gain based on ethnicity, race, religion or political affiliation rather than for crimes committed. And its existence points to serious dangers ahead for the country." - Andrea Pitzer, "The case for calling Florida's 'Alligator Alcatraz' a concentration camp"

What are they celebrating?

"You may rejoice, I must mourn ... I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. " - Frederick Douglass, "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July" (July 5, 1852)

As I sit here at home with the sound of fireworks all around the neighborhood I find myself wondering what is being celebrated this Fourth of July. Is it the birth of an American dictatorship out of the ashes of American democracy? Is it the death of the American dream and in its place an American nightmare?  Or is it the exploding budget of a paramilitary secret police that will roam the streets of the US, kidnapping and disappearing anyone they don't believe looks "American" enough? You know, so that Republicans can Make America White Again through ethnic cleansing.

We don't have rights because we're American: we're Americans because we recognize that all people have inalienable rights, and the government is only legitimate to the extent that it protects and preserves those rights. Or, at least, that's how it was supposed to work in pre-MAGA America. Under the new form of government that is taking shape, we don't have rights, we have privileges that are bestowed to us by Dear Leader (or as his followers disgustingly call him - "Daddy") and they are very much alienable. Any dissent, any independence of will that the Leader does not approve of will lead to a loss of liberty through various means of intimidation, threat, harassment, and/or persecution.

A substantial number of Americans, basically all Republican voters, believe that this nation's troubles can be solved by eliminating from the population one category of persons, a group that our mentally faltering Dear Leader has demonized as violent subhuman monsters (who eat pets and geese.) We are now disappearing these people with malice and no due process to places that will imprison them forever or where they are likely to be killed or tortured; and now we are going to build a nationwide system of concentration camps, having budgeted more for this than the entire federal penitentiary budget. A close adviser to Dear Leader has already "joked" about killing 65 million people (the entire US Latino population, so genocide.) I would ask my fellow Americans who are in favor of this to flip through some history books and see if they can find examples of what happens when a country goes down this road, when it believes it has no choice but to eliminate a segment of the population. Is this what you want?

Earlier today I had someone tell me not to worry because they won't come for me. That's not how it's supposed to work, I answered. (Nevermind that Dear Leader has already expressed the intent to deport citizens and his intention to strip people of citizenship by fiat.) Either we all have guaranteed rights or we all don't have them. As Thomas Paine put it: "He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself." If rights can arbitrarily be abrogated for someone it can be for anyone. More broadly: if we don't see ourselves in the oppressed or persecuted then we foster an environment where injustice thrives. What say you, Robert Green Ingersoll:

It is by imagination that we put ourselves in the place of another. When the whigs of that faculty are folded, the master does not put himself in the place of the slave; the tyrant is not locked in the dungeon, chained with his victim. The inquisitor did not feel the flames that devoured the martyr. The imaginative man, giving to the beggar, gives to himself. Those who feel indignant at the perpetration of wrong, feel for the instant that they are the victims; and when they attack the aggressor they feel that they are defending themselves. Love and pity are the children of the imagination.

Or what else can we celebrate? The children that are and will die of preventable diseases because our healthcare system has been handed over to RFK Jr, basically an older version of the Liver King, a wellness influencer who promotes supplements in place of medicine with no medical expertise who does not acknowledge the reality of germ theory. 

Or is it this regressive Defund America budget bill that was signed into law today? Something that Dwight Eisenhower warned us about: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."

Or is it the estimated 14 million people we've sentenced to death over the next five years, blood sacrifices we're making to Ayn Rand's ghost.

The renaming of military bases after Confederates, men who fought and killed Americans for what they believed was their God given right to own black people as slaves and Dear Leader speaking out against a federal holiday that celebrates the end of slavery. Is that what the fireworks are for?

Quote of the day

"Trump's argument for the elimination of the estate tax is that the heirs of the super rich will no longer have to go beg a predatory Jewish banker for a bridge loan to overcome cash flow problems associated with the $15 million dollar estate they're about to get.​" - Chris Hayes

Quote of the day

 "We spend our days sharing information, connected as never before, but the more we communicate, the worse things seem to get." - Nicholas Carr, Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart

Quote of the day

 "A toxic relationship is just a cult of one." - Amanda Montell, The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality

Quote of the day

 "I always found the term conspiracy 'theory' overly flattering. Special relativity is a theory. The Big Bang is a theory. That aliens helped build Stonehenge? Not a 'theory.'" - Amanda Montell, The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality

Quote of the day

 "While magical thinking is an age-old quirk, overthinking feels distinct to the modern era - a product of our innate superstitions clashing with information overload, mass loneliness, and a capitalistic pressure to 'know' everything under the sun." - Amanda Montell, The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality

Literary quote of the day

 From The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett

"Don't you understand?" snarled Rincewind. "We are going over the Edge, godsdammit!"

"Can't we do anything about it?"

"No!"

"Then I can't see the sense in panicking," said Twoflower calmly.

Quote of the day

"[T]he nineteenth-century etiquette expert Caroline Carlton ... in an 1868 guide offered advice to would-be epistolarians: 'Letters of friendship, love, and affection are sacred things, and should be so imbued with the spirit of the writer as to render them worthy of the devoted attention they call for.'" - Nicholas Carr, Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart

Quote of the day

 "Letters sustained but also deepened relationships. And the care and attention devoted to a letter's composition and reading were themselves expressions of affection and respect. Once read, a letter often became a keepsake and, in time, an heirloom." - Nicholas Carr, Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear us Apart

Literary quote of the day

 From Sword of Destiny by Andrzej Sapkowki

"And sometimes I have doubts. Would you like your son to have doubts like that?"

"Why not?" the merchant said gravely. "He might as well. For it's a human and a good thing."

"What?"

"Doubts. Only, evil, sir, never has any."

Quote of the day

"An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself." - Thomas Paine, "Dissertation on the First Principles of Government" (1795)

Two hundred and thirty years later and this admonition is as relevant as ever. 

Quote of the day

"[O]ne of the grievous charges brought against George III. was, that he had made laws for sending men beyond seas for trial. That was one of the most odious of those acts of tyranny which occasioned the American revolution. The whole of the reasoning is not applicable to this case, but I submit to your Honors that, if the President has the power to do it in the case of Africans, and send them beyond seas for trial, he could do it by the same authority in the case of American citizens. By a simple order to the marshal of the district, he could just as well seize forty citizens of the United States, on the demand of a foreign minister, and send them beyond seas for trial before a foreign court." - John Quincy Adams, "United States v. The Amistad" (1841)*

What we currently have is a mad emperor claiming the authority to place non citizens beyond seas for life imprisonment without even a trial who has already expressed his desire to do the same to citizens. As Adams noted in his successful argument before the Supreme Court, King George III was considered a tyrant for doing less.

*Quote via the April 20, 2025 Digby front page.

Literary quote of the day

 "Every day and every hour, every minute, walk around yourself and watch yourself, and see that your image is a seemly one. You pass by a little child, you pass by, spiteful, with ugly words, with angry heart; you may not have noticed the child, but he has seen you, and your image, unseemly and ignoble, may remain in his defenseless heart. You don't know it, but you may have sown an evil seed in him and it may grow, and all because you did not foster in yourself a careful, actively benevolent love. Brothers, love is a teacher; but one must know how to acquire it, for it is hard to acquire, it is dearly bought, it is won slowly by long labor. For we must love not only occasionally, for a moment, but forever. Everyone can love occasionally, even the wicked can." - Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Quote of the day

 "Vitellius, the Roman emperor, dined on the brains of thousands of peacocks and the tongues of thousands of flamingos. Today we regard that as evidence of moral depravity. We could say the same about those who own ... megayachts." - Peter Singer, The Life You Can Save

Quote of the day

 "When life is going well, instead of feeling gratitude, we convince ourselves that we're the all-powerful ones making it happen (these are the Ayn Rand types.) - Tim Desmond,  How to Stay Human in a F*cked-Up World: Mindfulness Practices for Real Life

Quote of the day

 "For the moment, all that we can do is to dig in our heels, and prevent silliness from sliding into insanity." - E.M. Forster, Two Cheers for Democracy

Quote of the day

 "If we consider the assault on democracy an insignificant crime, we have all yet to master our past." - Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi, Fascist Spectacle: The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini's Italy

Quote of the day

 "It is impossible that there can be genuine and lasting peace through fear. Through fear can come only hatred, illwill and hostility, suppressed perhaps for the time being only, but ready to erupt and become violent any moment. True and genuine peace can prevail only in an atmosphere of mett, amity, free from fear, suspicion and danger." - Walpole Rahula, What the Buddha Taught

Quotes of the day

 From Family Lexicon by Natalia Ginzburg

• "Fascism didn't appear to be ending anytime soon. Indeed, it appeared to be here to stay indefinitely."
• "Soon no one was left who could pretend it wasn't happening, who could close their eyes, plug their ears, and hide their head under a pillow: those people were all gone."

Quote of the day

"I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection." - Thomas Paine, "The American Crisis" (December 23, 1776)

Quote of the day

 "What is terrible is easy to endure." - Philodemus

Via Beyond Stoicism: A Guide to the Good Life with Stoics, Skeptics, Epicureans, and Other Ancient Philosophers by Massimo Pigliucci, Gregory Lopez, and Meredith Alexander Kunz