A correspondent's note drawing attention to amusing AI slop on YouTube - an ersatz Christopher Hitchens sending up King Donald - reminded the pond how on most days in recent times the pond has felt remarkably privileged.
Back in the day, the pond was made to study, in relentless detail, the creation and fall of the Weimar Republic, but it always felt dry and academic, an event from an increasingly remote past, a precursor to fascism run wild, images of wheelbarrows of bank notes made irrelevant by the power of badges, clothing fetishes, much strutting and ever more mindless harangues by a sociopathic man with a weird moustache. From Beethoven to that?
Yet now each day the pond can experience lived, of the moment, history, watching as the United States slides into authoritarianism, and yes, a form of fascism. More from Aaron Copland Ed Hopper to this?
Who'd have thunk it, who'd have imagined it?
Deeply infatuated by American culture, the pond has driven across the United States, and made many trips within it, always by car, as is the American way, and each time the culture was irascible, individualist and always claiming exceptionalism.
How the mighty are falling, have fallen, and the pond can't take its eyes off the sight.
Sure, the pond lived through the heady days of Russia's wild ride, before it was brought down and returned to dictatorship under the sociopathic Vlad the Impaler, but Russia has always been Tsarist in inclination, with talk of Communism merely a cloak for Tsarism.
And sure the pond has been the rise and fall of various European countries, of the Hungary kind, as they discover - or have thrust upon them - the notion that their real love is to be ruled and ruined by a hard man. (Not to mention all the South American countries that have turned from democracy to despotism and the disappeared, resulting in more than a few poignant movies).
Some countries, such as China, have stayed true to origin, with Communist emperors continuing the thousands of years of Huángdì (皇帝) rule.
But Americans loved to boast to the pond about their revolution and their constitution and their rights and their balance of powers, and yet here they are, with King Donald ruling over all.
Each day the pond revels in reports from the front line, and these must of necessity fall outside the realm of the lizard Oz hive mind.
Thus the pond might discover itself reading Ruth Marcus in The New Yorker, doing her best to cope with what has befallen the country in
Donald Trump’s Firing of a Federal Prosecutor Crosses the Reddest of Lines, The dismissal of Erik Siebert sends yet another ominous message about the risks of refusing to do the President’s bidding, and the lengths to which he will go to punish perceived enemies. (*archive link)
What a melancholy tale it is, and yet, given it's in the archive, only a teaser trailer is needed...
This odd justification—faulting Warner and Kaine for their bipartisanship—should fool no one. The source of Trump’s beef with Siebert was evident. According to numerous reports, Siebert had balked at bringing criminal charges against two of Trump’s supposed enemies: New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, who had sued Trump and his company for fraud; and the former F.B.I. director James Comey, whom Trump had fired during his first term. This moment was inevitable. Trump has been proclaiming for years that his political opponents should be locked up, but there is a gulf between loudly alleging criminal behavior and amassing the evidence necessary to prove the elements of an actual crime. The difference in Trump’s second term is that he is not about to be deterred by such niceties. This time around, the lawyers aren’t going to stop him.
The Trump Administration’s modus operandi has been to flood the zone with a torrent of illegal acts. One day it uses the military to blow up boats suspected of trafficking drugs, without legal authorization and in defiance of both U.S. and international law; the next it threatens to revoke the broadcast licenses of television networks whose speech displeases the Administration. These are not discrete incidents. They are linked by the common threads of Trump’s disdain for the rule of law, his bloated conception of Presidential power, and his readiness to bend the state to his will. The scope of the assault seems intended to inure the public to the outrages it is witnessing. It is impossible, emotionally and intellectually, to be worked up about everything, everywhere, all at once.
But here we are. In the hierarchy of the Administration’s horrors, the Siebert firing is about as bad as it gets. Since Trump regained office, the Department of Justice has dismissed career prosecutors for an array of unjustified and self-serving reasons: for daring to have worked on the criminal cases against Trump; being the daughter of Comey; failing to remove personal pronouns in a signature block. It has dismissed pending cases to serve political ends, such as that of New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams. What’s happening now is worse. Dropping the criminal charges against Adams amounted to a political perversion of the justice system. But using the criminal law to punish political opponents as retribution inflicts far greater damage. Here, a potentially guilty person doesn’t walk free; an innocent person is harmed. The prospect of eventual acquittal in the case of an unjustified prosecution is of little comfort; as Trump well understands, being indicted and having to stand trial is ruinous enough. Firing a prosecutor for refusing to pursue a political opponent without a sufficient legal basis crosses the reddest of lines. Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche were reported to have privately defended Siebert and questioned the viability of the case against James. On Saturday evening, Trump directed a Truth Social post at his Attorney General, demanding action. “We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility,” the President wrote. “They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!! President DJT.” For good measure, Trump said he would nominate his former criminal-defense lawyer, Lindsey Halligan, to take Siebert’s place. “She will be Fair, Smart, and will provide, desperately needed, JUSTICE FOR ALL!” Trump wrote, of Halligan, who has been the White House staffer in charge of removing “improper ideology” from museums, as it’s described in an executive order. “Lindsey Halligan is a really good lawyer, and likes you, a lot,” he publicly assured Bondi.
And so on ...
What a tawdry tale it is, and in the way of such outings, a founding father makes an appearance, in much the same way as bible studies make an appearance in Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters' notion of education in Oklahoma ...
As an aside, see Hanna Rosin in The Atlantic, and ... Is Oklahoma Breaking Public Schools? “Woke”-teacher screenings. Trying to get Bibles in schools. A two-part series on how one state is remaking American education.
Always a distraction, always a Christian Nationalist with a fascist streak waiting to be found.
Back to The New Yorker, and Jonathan Blitzer and Seeing Enemies Everywhere, The government’s working definition of “hate speech” now seems to include anything that offends Donald Trump personally—including late-night comedy.
Again only a teaser trailer is needed ...
As an example, Vance called out an essay in The Nation that assails Kirk’s views on women, homosexuality, and affirmative action. “It made it through the editors, and, of course, liberal billionaires rewarded that attack,” Vance said. By “attack,” was he referring to the murder, or to the writer’s withering appraisal of Kirk’s positions? It scarcely mattered. The Open Society Foundations and the Ford Foundation, bêtes noires of the political right, were to blame. Miller, meanwhile, vowed that “we are going to channel all of the anger that we have over the organized campaign that led to this assassination to uproot and dismantle these terrorist networks.” Evidently, he hadn’t read a 2024 study from the Department of Justice which found that “the number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism”; in recent days, it was taken down from the department’s website.
The first nine months of Donald Trump’s second term have been a breakneck exercise in rebranding those disfavored by the White House as enemies of the state. Such enemies can have many faces, and the government has gained increasing latitude in picking them out to serve its agenda. The week of Kirk’s death, the Supreme Court issued a ruling that allowed federal immigration agents conducting “roving” patrols in Los Angeles to arrest residents on the basis of their race or ethnicity, or just if they’re speaking Spanish in a Home Depot parking lot. At the same time, the Justice Department is devising its own means to target anyone who opposes the President’s immigration policies. In August, it moved to fine Joshua Schroeder, a lawyer in California who unsuccessfully fought a client’s deportation in court, for making what the government claimed were “myriad meritless contentions” and “knowing or reckless misrepresentations.” He appears to be the first attorney sanctioned under a memo, signed by the President in March, to penalize lawyers or firms that pursued what the government deemed “unreasonable” cases against it.
Last week, the Justice Department advanced its prosecution of LaMonica McIver, a Democratic congresswoman from Newark, whom the Administration has accused of “assaulting” a federal agent outside an immigration jail in May—a charge she denies. She was arrested along with Ras Baraka, the mayor of Newark. (The charges against him, for trespassing, were dropped.) According to footage from an agent’s body camera, the officer who arrested Baraka said that the order had come from Todd Blanche, Trump’s former personal lawyer and now the No. 2 at the Justice Department.
And so on, until, spoiler alert, the closer ...
The idea that speech or thought contrary to the government line could trigger punishment is the dream of autocrats. Eventually, it makes enemies of everyone. When Barack Obama weighed in, on Tuesday, to state that he could abhor Kirk’s killing yet still oppose his world view—including the suggestion that Obama’s “wife or Justice Jackson does not have adequate brain-processing power” to be taken seriously—it felt both anodyne and radical. Administration officials and Republican members of Congress were calling on constituents to report unsavory comments they might have seen or heard about Kirk. It may be only a matter of time before even plain truths like Obama’s cause offense, or worse.
Given it's King Donald, the pond would have preferred "wet dream", but yes, it's the dream of autocrats, and the US is no longer headed by a president, it's headed by a monarch who doesn't just dream of autocracy, he spends each day with his minions and sidekicks enacting it.
There are outlier disidents keep on holding out hope, a bit like British pundits on Times Radio or in the UK Daily Terror, promising that perhaps tomorrow Vlad the sociopath will suffer a crushing defeat and be toppled, and Ukraine will be victorious, but victory has been an agonisingly long time coming.
There's David Frum in The Atlantic, hoping against hope...Trump Might Be Losing His Race Against Time, The president is gambling that he can consolidate authority before the public turns too sharply against him.
Autocracies are headed by one man but require the cooperation of many others. Some collaborators may sincerely share the autocrat’s goals, but opportunists provide a crucial margin of support. In the United States, such people now have to make a difficult calculation: Do the present benefits of submitting to Trump’s will outweigh the future hazards?
As Bondi makes her daily decisions about whether to abuse her powers to please Trump, she has to begin with one big political assessment: Will Trump ultimately retain the power to reward and punish her? It’s not just about keeping her present job. On the one hand, people in Trump’s favor can make a lot of money from their proximity to power. On the other, Richard Nixon’s attorney general, John Mitchell, served 19 months in prison for his crimes during Watergate. If Trump’s hold on power loosens, Bondi could share Mitchell’s fate.
Trump’s hold on power is indeed loosening. His standing with the voting public is quickly deteriorating. Grocery prices jumped in August 2025 at the fastest speed since the peak of the post-pandemic inflation in 2022. Job growth has stalled to practically zero.
Almost two-thirds of Americans disapprove of higher tariffs, Trump’s signature economic move. His administration’s attack on vaccines for young children is even more unpopular. This year has brought the highest number of measles cases since the Clinton administration introduced free universal vaccination for young children in 1993. Parents may be rightly shocked and angry.
Shortly after MSNBC reported that Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, had accepted $50,000 in cash from FBI agents posing as businessmen last year, allegedly in exchange for a promise to help secure government contracts, the pro-Trump podcaster Megyn Kelly posted, “We DO NOT CARE.” This kind of acquiescence to corruption has been one of Trump’s most important resources. But the American people become a lot less tolerant of corruption in their leaders when they feel themselves under economic pressure. As of early August, nearly two-thirds of Americans regarded Trump as corrupt, 45 percent as “very corrupt.” More than 60 percent think the Trump administration is covering up the Jeffrey Epstein case. Almost 60 percent regard Bondi personally responsible for the cover-up.
All that and more...spoiler alert...
The survival of American rights and liberties may now turn less on the question of whether Pam Bondi is a person of integrity—which we already know the dismal answer to—than whether she is willing to risk her career and maybe even her personal freedom for a president on his way to repudiation unless he can fully pervert the U.S. legal system and the 2026 elections.
Bondi's the cure? Perhaps stick with the disease.
Faintest of faint hopes, but what if time and disease worked its magic, or even fainter hope, rebels decided enough was more than enough? What if King Donald were to finally fail and fall?
He'd be replaced by JD, arguably even more deplorable, at one with Dracula...
Pilots, medical professionals, teachers and one Secret Service employee are among those who have been suspended or sacked for social media posts that were deemed inappropriate about Kirk's death.
Critics have argued the firings threaten free speech and employee protections, although US companies have wide latitude to terminate employees.
Vance's comments aired on Monday in an episode of the Charlie Kirk Show, a daily podcast that Kirk hosted before he was shot in the neck last Wednesday while hosting a debate at Utah Valley University.
He was joined by the White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, who vowed to dismantle the left-wing "terrorist networks" he said were responsible for the killing. Police have said the 22-year-old suspect in custody acted alone.
In the episode, the vice-president said that left-wing Americans "are much likelier to defend and celebrate political violence", and added that "there is no civility in the celebration of political assassination".
A recent YouGov poll found liberal Americans were more likely than conservatives to defend feeling joy about the deaths of political opponents.
However, a poll conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute in 2023 - when Democrat Joe Biden was in the White House - found that a third of Republicans agreed with the statement: "Because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country."
Vance's remarks come as other Republican US lawmakers echoed calls for those publicly celebrating Kirk's death to be punished.
"I will demand their firing, defunding, and license revocation," said Florida congressman Randy Fine in a post on X on Sunday, as he called for such people to "be thrown out of civil society".
South Carolina congresswoman Nancy Mace urged the Department of Education to "cut off every dime to any school or university" that refuses to retaliate against employees making insensitive posts about Kirk
And so on ...
Each day the pond turns to The Bulwark for the latest news from the frontline, the latest stories of submission and surrender...
Where Have All the Boycotts Gone? The watchdog that didn’t bark.
When I started calling up some of the groups that are typically involved in this type of advocacy, I was surprised by how few were willing to speak with me on the record. One person went out of their way to make sure I did not describe their organization as “liberal” out of concern that it would draw unwanted attention from bad actors on the right. Everyone agreed that the chilling effect was real and they all complained that funding from deep-pocketed liberal donors had dried up, making it almost impossible to organize a healthy opposition to Trump—especially considering his litigiousness and his eagerness to sic the Justice Department on his foes.
Maybe Disney broke, maybe Kimmel will return, but Kimmel as the signal for action?
“A lot of these organizations don’t have the money, they don’t have the resources, they don’t have the staff,” said Amanda Litman, cofounder of Run for Something. “That might sound like an excuse, but you just can’t do this shit if you don’t have the people.”
Each day there's some sucker who thinks it's all about debate ... The New York Times and Anti-Anti-Fascism, On the burdens of solidarity.
Inter alia...
[T]hese aren’t actually debates at all. They’re performances designed to generate specific emotional reactions for viral distribution. Participants aren’t trying to persuade anyone or genuinely engage with opposing viewpoints. They’re trying to create moments that will get clipped, shared, and monetized across social media.
Kirk perfected this grift. As a recent detailed analysis of one of Kirk’s debates demonstrates, when a student showed up prepared with nuanced, well-researched arguments, Kirk immediately tried pivoting to culture war talking points and deflection tactics. When debaters tried to use Kirk’s own standards against him, he shifted subjects entirely. The goal was never understanding or persuasion—it was generating content for social media distribution.
Put it another way ...
And speaking of debates and doing your own research, look where it gets you ...
Start with Wednesday, when the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee heard testimony from Susan Monarez, the former CDC director whom Kennedy forced out of her job just weeks after she had started. It was Monarez’s first public appearance since the firing, and she had a lot to say.
Along with Debra Houry, a veteran physician and administrator who resigned as CDC medical director in protest of Kennedy’s policies, Monarez described the ways she said Kennedy was sidelining or firing anybody who might object to his widely discredited ideas about vaccination. That included, she said, the time Kennedy demanded she preemptively endorse changes in vaccine recommendations for children—a demand she says she refused.
“I was fired for holding the line on scientific integrity,” Monarez said.
That was just a warmup for Thursday and Friday, when the CDC’s official advisory committee on immunization met to consider some of those aforementioned vaccine-recommendation changes. The committee was full of Kennedy appointees he’d put there after firing the scientists who had been on the panel before. And the proceedings unfolded about how you’d expect, with familiar, scientifically questionable assertions about alleged vaccine harms.
But the meeting also stood out for its disarray. One particularly memorable sequence started at the end of Thursday’s session, when the panel prepared to vote on a resolution that would affect availability of the MMRV shot, which combines immunization for varicella (chickenpox) with immunization for measles, mumps, and rubella.
The resolution’s wording and meaning were unclear, as one panelist protested openly. The panel approved it anyway, only to hold a new vote—and reverse the decision—at the start of Friday’s session, evidently because several other panelists had also been confused.
“We are rookies,” chairman Martin Kulldorff acknowledged in his opening remarks Friday—which perhaps understated things, given that five of the twelve members hadn’t even been named until four days before.
The upshot of that MMRV debate is that few children are likely to get the combined shot anymore. And while that’s not earth-shattering, because most kids already get two separate shots anyway, the decision along with the rest of the week’s developments were the clearest sign yet of Kennedy’s true intentions. Although he insists he is not anti-vax—that he simply wants to promote choice, and to uphold “gold-standard science”—he keeps finding ways to make vaccines less accessible and, in so doing, to reduce vaccination rates overall.
But last week showcased another, equally important side of Kennedy’s management: the way he is eliminating the people and dispensing with the procedures that allow agencies like the CDC to carry out their basic functions in a transparent, scientifically sound way. The effect isn’t so much to realign priorities as it is to unleash chaos. But that can still be corrosive to the government’s credibility—and hazardous to the people who depend on it.
And so on, authoritarianism - call it by its proper name, fascism - in action ...
The resemblance to Lysenkoism is startling. Please allow the pond to juxtapose in approved reptile style two images ...
The latest news on that front?
WaPo, still busy sacking columnists, made a meal of it ...
Story 1
Politico's response was to run words from the collective of horses mouths ...The Trump Administration’s New Steps to Tackle Autism, Here’s how we’re going bold.
This from a team led by a demented monarch given to whims?
GIDDY UP
The president got medical ahead of his major autism announcement.
Trump said vaccines “can be great” unless you “put the wrong stuff in them.”
Trump was speaking ahead of a Monday press conference where he suggested vaccine skeptic Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has “found an answer to autism.” Acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, is expected to be blamed.
“Children get these massive vaccines like you’d give to a horse… like you’d give to a horse," he added.
“And I’ve said for a long time, I mean, this is no secret, spread them out over five years. Get five shots, small ones. You ever see what they get they get? I mean, for a little baby to be injected with that much fluid, even beyond the actual ingredients, they have sometimes 80 different vaccines in them. It’s crazy.”
The president, who in 2020 suggested an injection of “disinfectant” could be used to fight COVID, compared the size of needles used on infants with those used for horses.
“It’s like you’re shooting up a horse,” he said of children getting vaccines. “You have a little body, a baby, and you’re pumping this big thing that’s a horrible thing, so I’ve always felt that, but we’ll be having a big discussion about autism tomorrow.”
And behind it all is the hate mongering, and the hate speaking, and the love of hate... happy bag man day at The Bulwark ...
The light will defeat the dark. We will prevail over the forces of wickedness and evil. They cannot imagine what they have awakened. They cannot conceive of the army that they have arisen in all of us. Because we stand for what is good, what is virtuous, what is noble.
And to those trying to incite violence against us, those trying to foment hatred against us, what do you have? You have nothing. You are nothing. You are wickedness. You are jealousy. You are envy. You are hatred. You are nothing. You can build nothing. You can produce nothing. You can create nothing. We are the ones who build. We are the ones who create. We are the ones who lift up humanity.
On and on he went in this vein. It was a disturbing display of venom made a bit more shocking when one’s reminded that Miller is arguably the single most powerful person in America at the moment.
But he was only emulating his jocular leader, his king, his emperor...
“He did not hate his enemies. He wanted the best for them,” Trump said of Kirk, reading from the teleprompter. Then he turned to the crowd for an ad-lib: “That’s where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponent, and I don’t want the best for them. I’m sorry. I am sorry, Erika. But now Erika can talk to me, and the whole group, and maybe they can convince me that that’s not right. But I can’t stand my opponent.”
And what of the both siderist NY Times?
Too late, the horse has already done, and the chipping away will continue for the next three years or more ...
No wonder the Ruskis are delighted.
Each day, as they live under the jackboot of a repressive dictator inclined to make people fall out of windows or head off to gulags, they can chortle at the way that the United States too has fallen on hard times. Why a 'gator swamp sounds even better than Siberia.
See how Russian state TV, closely modelled on Faux Noise, US American state TV, celebrates ...
Russian experts enjoy recent events in the US
The USA is still exceptional; they’re setting new records for moving from democracy to dictatorship, abandoning science for superstition and modern medicine for quackery, all at the same time. So much winning!
ReplyDeleteAnd Rupert's reptiles keep telling us that we should be ascending to peak anxiety, that Dictator Don is not inviting our Prime Minister to admire the gold leaf in his office. Increasingly, that is shaping as a badge of honour. For what it is worth, my personal hope is that the PM does not get an invite, because those who have had such favour from on high don't seem to have walked away with any real benefit for their country. Well, those who represent still-functioning democracies do not.
ReplyDelete