"In an age of attention scarcity, the greatest act of good citizenship may be learning to withdraw your attention from everything except the battles you've chosen to fight." - Oliver Burkeman, Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts
"Your President may easily become king ... Where are your checks in this government? Your strongholds will be in the hands of your enemies. It is on a supposition that your American governors shall be honest, that all the good qualities of this government are founded; but its defective and imperfect construction puts it in their power to perpetrate the worst of mischiefs, should they be bad men; and, sir, would not all the world, from the eastern to the western hemisphere, blame our distracted folly in resting our rights upon the contingency of our rulers being good or bad? Show me that age and country where the rights and liberties of the people were placed on the sole chance of their rulers being good men, without a consequent loss of liberty! I say that the loss of that dearest privilege has ever followed, with absolute certainty, every such mad attempt." - Patrick Henry, Speech before Virginia ratifying convention (June 5, 1788)
Tell me he's not talking about Orange Nero: "If he be guilty, will not the recollection of his crimes teach him to make one bold push for the American throne? Will not the immense difference between being master of every thing, and being ignominiously tried and punished, powerfully excite him to make this bold push? But, sir, where is the existing force to punish him? Can he not, at the head of his army, beat down every opposition? Away with your President! we shall have a king: the army will salute him monarch: your militia will leave you, and assist in making him king, and fight against you: and what have you to oppose this force? What will then become of you and your rights? Will not absolute despotism ensue?"
"Let's make one thing clear: we never earn the right to be greedy or to pursue our interests at the expense of everyone else." - Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy.
Towards this end, I think we need to have a serious conversation about a cap on wealth if we ever reform the United States as a functioning democracy.
"Terrible things are happening outside. At any time of night and day, poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes. They’re allowed to take only a knapsack and a little cash with them, and even then, they’re robbed of these possessions on the way. Families are torn apart; men, women, and children are separated. Children come home from school to find that their parents have disappeared. Women return from shopping to find their houses sealed, their families gone." - Anne Frank, Diary entry January 13, 1943
Terrible things are happening .... it's haunting. And the people currently making terrible things happen should be haunted by what they're doing.
This regime is firing women and minorities, is militarily occupying or threatening to occupy cities that have black mayors, disappearing immigrants, opening concentration camps and now they plan to restore a painting of Robert E. Lee with a slave guiding Lee's horse in the background. The portrait is 20 feet tall.
As the NYT put it: "The Pentagon is putting back up a portrait of Gen. Robert E. Lee at the military academy, as the Trump administration seeks to restore honors for American figures who fought to preserve slavery."
"When National Socialists speak of 'the people,' they never mean, as social democrats do, all the people, but rather the 'real' people, the ethno-racial-sexual-religious group that they identify with the nation, to the exclusion of all other citizens and denizens of the state." - Liz Anderson, "It's Not Socialism - It's National Socialism"
I also like, from the same blog entry: "One thing, at least, that Trump is proving is how ridiculous is the neoliberal claim, championed by the likes of Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek, that somehow a set of laws that protect private property, especially if it is concentrated in a few hands, would be able to protect individual liberty against tyranny."
I still remember reading Hayek's The Road to Serfdom twenty something years ago and immediately thinking how is this book still popular when its central premise has already been proven laughably false by history?
"I am feeling vulnerable too ... Is this what the artists in the Hitler days felt when their works were labeled 'Degenerate Art'?" - Felipe Galindo
His art is part of the list of works that Supreme Leader Trump wants purged from the Smithsonian. Here is the art. The Washington Post article linked above in the quote notes, "It shows a boy admiring Fourth of July fireworks through an American-flag-shaped fence on the U.S.-Mexico border, wishing he could be in the States."
Some highlights from the Declaration of Independence:
"Those who have subdued their ego understand that it doesn't degrade you when others treat you poorly; it degrades them." - Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy
"We need to gain perspective and see Trump for what he fully is: a wannabe tyrant who will abuse his authority to get what he wants; a narcissist who is incapable of or resistant to making informed decisions that affect the course of the United States; the center of a dangerous cult that espouses and is supported by complete lies; as if fabrication is his first language; a bully and a bigot; a man who is unqualified to be the steward of this nation that the presidency requires; a man who is untrustworthy and unfit to be our commander in chief." - Joe Walsh, F*ck Silence: Calling Trump out for the Cultish, Moronic, Authoritarian Con Man He Is
One point I disagree with: presidents aren't "our" commander in chief. They're commander in chief of the military, not citizens. The notion that a president is Commander in Chief of the country is corrosive to democracy.
The pace of our race towards totalitarianism seems to be accelerating concurrently with Orange Nero's descent into full blown dementia (did you know he's stopped ten wars, lowered drug prices by 1,500%?). With the military being deployed to occupy American cities to impose the regime's white ethnic nationalist agenda and break up and crush any dissent, it is only a matter of time before we have another Boston Massacre or a Tiananmen Square type event.
At this point my frustration is mostly with all the millions of voters who continue to support this growing fascist cancer. Part of the reason the revolutionary war was fought was to stop the use of military quartering amongst the civilian population. These were grievances listed in the Declaration of Independence, you know: "He has kept among us, in Times of Peace, Standing Armies, without the consent of our Legislatures ... For quartering large Bodies of Armed Troops among us."
Any real American patriot would be denouncing and opposing this regime, not supporting the dismantling of American democracy.
Do the supporters (Republican voters) of the fascist MAGA ethnic cleansing of the United States think the regime will only impose totalitarianism against Them (immigrants, visa holders, Democrats, liberals etc.)? That's not how the tyranny of totalitarianism works. I ask because everyday the threat to everyone who values living in an open society which respects the rule of law and human rights is increasing. This is the latest
The Trump administration is reviewing the records of more than 55 million US visa holders for potential revocation or deportable violations of immigration rules, in a significant expansion of Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.In a move first reported by the Associated Press, the state department said that all of the foreigners who currently hold valid US visas are subject to “continuous vetting” for any indication that they could be ineligible for the document, including those already admitted into the country. Should such evidence come to light, the visa would be revoked and, if the visa holder were in the United States, they would be subject to deportation.
"Fascism’s perversion of freedom’s meaning demands a richer conception of liberty than mere absence of constraint. As Snyder observes, the American Right has historically defined freedom negatively as freedom from government, which originally served to prevent federal intervention against slavery and later against various forms of discrimination. The humanist tradition offers an alternative conception of freedom: not just freedom from constraint but freedom to flourish, to develop one’s capacities, to engage fully in democratic life." - Jonathan Simmons, "The Humanist Response to Authoritarianism"
No, I'm not talking about the president. I'm talking about his handler.
The US state department announced on Saturday that it would stop issuing visas to children from Gaza in desperate need of medical care after an online pressure campaign from Laura Loomer, a far-right influencer close to Donald Trump who has described herself as “a proud Islamophobe”.Reminder: Loomer previously "joked" about the genocide of the entire US Latino population via a concentration camp in Florida. She is one of the closest, most influential advisers to someone who is transforming the US presidency into a dictatorship....In a pair of posts on the social network on Friday, Loomer had shared video of badly injured Palestinian children and their family members arriving in Houston and San Francisco this month, along with false claims that their shouts of joy were “jihadi chants” and that they were “doing the HAMAS terror whistle”.
The cowardly masked militarized ICE agents currently terrorizing the civilian US population in order to Make America White Again look like the masked paramilitary working for Lex Luthor in the new Superman movie.
Thanks, Republicans. You voted for this level of incompetence and compromised national security.
Papers with U.S. State Department markings, found Friday morning in the business center of an Alaskan hotel, revealed previously undisclosed and potentially sensitive details about the Aug. 15 meetings between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir V. Putin in Anchorage.Eight pages, that appear to have been produced by U.S. staff and left behind accidentally, shared precise locations and meeting times of the summit and phone numbers of U.S. government employees.
"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.
“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
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."
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
"[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
"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
"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
"[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
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.'"*"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
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.
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!”
"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.”
"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
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.
"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
"A toxic relationship is just a cult of one." - Amanda Montell, The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality
"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
"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
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.
"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
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."
"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
"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
"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
"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
"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
From Family Lexicon by Natalia Ginzburg
"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
