The smear against Michelle Obama was unforgivable, and both the UFC and the President should publicly apologize.

And there he is, sitting at the Resolute Desk—UPON WHICH SITS A UFC EMBLEM—with the men who represent male aggression in its most animalistic form. And I say that while having immense respect for fighting as an art that was requisite for the male of the species for the last roughly two million years. You could see the natural nobility of risking pain, disability and death in legendary fighters like Mohammad Ali, Jimmy Braddock, Joe Louis, George Foreman—and even Mike Tyson, who embraced boxing as a way out of a life whose poverty and oppression would have destroyed him.

The males of most animal species, though definitely not all, have had to fight for the privilege of passing on their genes—until, that is, intelligence in a male proved more efficacious to the future of the species than the throwback behavior of gladiatorial self-aggrandizement. Because this aggrandizement and elevation of male strength as superior to intelligence, knowledge, and (certainly) anything feminine has a dark side that was embraced, for example, by Rome’s infamous egomaniac, the Emperor Commodus … see:

Another infamous example, touted by Donald Trump, Jr. and accused of rape and human trafficking in Romania and the UK, are the Tate Bros., principally misogynist Andrew Tate—who has largely brought cage fighting (with its sadomasochistic overtones and undertones) into general public consciousness. See Robert Reich’s article this morning on how the Tech Bros—Musk and Zuckerberg—leaned into this culture in challenging each other to a cage fight because both worship power. Frankly, both of them would die in the cage with a real fighter, but I digress.

A little history helps in Andrew’s case:

And finally, cage matches are MANOSPHERE DOG-WHISTLES, and Donald Trump and J.D. Vance particularly learned a big lesson in the run-up to the last election.

And here’s where the cage match, the Manosphere, misogyny, and the January 6th insurrectionist assault on the Capitol merge.

Four of the five major nexuses of groups that became the core marching army of January 6th started as overtly anti-feminist groups—the Proud Boys chief among them—or directly espouse woman-controlling and -disenfranchising beliefs and goals.

When J. D. Vance dog-whistled the Manosphere to get out and vote for Trump in the run-up to the last election, these guys turned out in droves. And, of course, Trump knew they would because they’d “hopped to” before. He had told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.” And then, when he called them to action on January 6th—and yes, there is proof of this—they came. They were tried for it. They went to jail for it. And then Trump pardoned them.

Trump pardoned them for attacking the Capitol of the United States of America to disrupt the certification of Joseph Biden as the duly—and fairly—elected President of the United States.

What’s Really Going On Here?

There are principally two things going on here:

• Trump’s attempt to pay off—and pay forward—the Manosphere and the January 6th conspirators with a $1,776 billion-dollar cash award has failed. Dozens of judges railed against it when it first passed; it was then reversed. Now courts are moving to make sure Trump can never do this again, while he keeps saying he thinks it’s such a good idea! Well, no, it’s not. And what is haunting about this is that whatever this is—pay off, pay forward, or both—it has staggering possible implications, among them:

  • Is Trump getting blackmailed by the January 6 insurrectionists? Yeah, he pardoned them, but are they basically demanding hush money so that they never reveal how much he had to do with this assault, how deeply involved his was in its planning, and how clearly he intended to overthrow the government of the United States and hang vice-president Pence. Is this Trump’s response to extortion? … Do note, however, that whether it’s extortion or not, Trump had every intention of making taxpayers pay off this protection racket for him!

  • Is this a pay forward in which Trump is, without saying the quiet part out loud, promising these woman-hating men that if they help him overthrow the government at the end of this term they’ll be able to control women for everything from sex-on-demand to free maid service forever? If, by the time 2028 rolls around, he hasn’t already declared himself Jesus for Life and “the Divine Don Eternal” and gutted U.S. democracy down to a racist, misogynist, white nationalist dark shadow by other means, is Trump now building his own private army to create another insurrection? Maybe he just thinks he’ll get around the two-term limit, in which case these guys would simply need to be there for him the way they’ve been there for him before, which might get him elected again.

The Cult of the Male Body

It is axiomatic in all studies of fascism that it is, at its deepest core, both misogynist and male self-aggrandizing. The two most obvious examples of this are German Nazism and Spanish Fascism. In the Spanish example, the CULT OF THE MALE BODY burst out of Spanish culture in the earliest days of its coup-d’etat against the duly-elected Second Republic of Spain.

It is very, very important that people start to recognize what’s appearing right in front of their eyes: the Cult of the Male Body:

And finally, there is a very specific place where all of this goes—and it is why understanding what the cage on the White House lawn means is so important. Because the Spanish Civil War was every bit as brutal as the Nazi regime’s internal purges. That’s why historians are now calling it The Spanish Holocaust. Please read Paul Preston’s brilliant book. And please meet Marina Ginesta.

Hopefully this cage—like Trump’s name on the Kennedy Center—will come down immediately. Hopefully the “ballroom” will be razed to the ground. Hopefully the Arch d’Trump will never have a stone laid.

But make no mistake, Trump always has a reason for everything he does, and he has a reason for this cage match. And it has everything to do with securing more power—permanent power if he can manage it. And this time it has to do with selling female freedom to the worst of men to get it. That is why the lesson of what happened to the Spanish “New Woman”—the crushing of whom set back women’s rights by 50 years just as the Iranian Revolution has stripped Iranian women of rights for the last 45—is the price we will all pay for Trump’s ultimate power play:

Dictator for Life.

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PolitiSage first published on February 5th, 2023, and this is our first paid post. Oh, how we hate to have to do this, but, now almost 500 articles later, we need a little help. Please upgrade to a paid subscription if you can. If you can’t, start here, and come join us when you can. [New article continues below the “New Research” reference article.]

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When we wrote the article above most of a year ago, research showed the ocean circulation around Antarctica to be slowing. As it slows the “chimneys” — great circular gyres that spin the seas—show signs of shutting down. This, the AMOC, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, is now coming under serious threat.

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The big risk of posting an image of Trump as an emperor is that he’ll probably love it. After all, we’ve now got a 22-foot golden statue of him on one of his golf courses, a tawdry and very Third Reich-looking arch he plans to build in honor of himself, and a vanity ballroom-in-the-making that rivals even the Oval Office for ersatz golden, tacky, kitschy, tasteless Aryan trash.

Apparently, he thinks nothing through to its natural conclusion:

Even the vainest of us dies. Maybe misbegotten Jesus Impersonators live to see monuments raised to their egos by people with some vested interest like white supremacy, male privilege, and the ability to abuse a 13-year-old girl and get away with it.

But all die. And like those of Nero, like those of Commodus, Trump’s self-glorifying graven images will be torn down by a soon-renascent populace enraged at what he did to a culture that was just barely clawing its way out of the shadows of its quintessentially evil slavery and peonage and Jim Crow laws that kept blacks down and the misogyny that allowed men to deny women the vote, inheritance, financial instruments, work, rightful pay, and control of their own bodies. He will have been the one who snuffed out the light shining on a culture only barely emerging from its dead of winter and dark of night. And everywhere lanterns will begin to glow again.

We will not be forgetting.

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Before we get to Trump’s Roman-era doppelganger, we must give due to the Dishonorable Mentions, Caligula and Nero.

Caligula

Caligula (12–41 AD, ruled 37–41). He didn’t start off too shabbily, but he went off the rails early nonetheless. But this may have been largely the result of a nearly fatal fever that may have fried his brain, for when he “came around” he was paranoid, megalomaniacal, murderous, and incredibly cruel. Historian Vedran Bileto notes that “the Senate’s plan to abolish the Roman monarchy failed, but they could attack Caligula. He underwent a “damnatio memoriae,” with his name scrubbed from public monuments and his images taken down.” Caligula did not, however, make his horse a consul, and he did not, as rumored, declare war on the sea. However, there’s a lot to abhor here: He executed and tortured perceived enemies. He declared himself a god and demanded that he be worshiped by his countrymen. He took up incestuous relationships with his sisters, and even ordered the construction of a floating palace for his trysts with his lovers. Worst of all, perhaps, he instituted “bizarre and humiliating public spectacles for entertainment.” He was assassinated at age 28.

Nero

Nero (37–68 AD) had a longer career, ruling from 54-68 CE. Contemporary historians describe Nero, who became emperor of Rome at age 16, as depraved and jealous, a tyrant who sought public acclaim in the theater and arena while ordering the deaths of rivals. He killed his relatives, too, including his mother Agrippina the Younger. He also killed a wife and a raft of public officials and critics. Psychotic, paranoid, and delusional, he was given to extremely depraved behavior and shocking cruelty. He gets a bad rap for fire that destroyed much of Rome: he wasn’t there when it started and didn’t “fiddle while Rome burned.” But when he rebuilt the city, he rebuilt it in his image. He built a statue of himself that was taller than the Statue of Liberty, and had he completed the Palace of Gold, with would have covered 1/3 of the Seven Hills of Rome. While he was bankrupting the empire with a lust for gold (to rival Trump’s and that of the mythic dragon Smaug), he was engaging in some very sketchy behavior: he had a freed slave castrated and then married him. Eventually, revolts broke out all over the empire, but Nero, mad as ever, declared that all he had to do to bring peace, in Gaul and elsewhere, was sing to his enemies.

Not so. Writes Britannica:

The Senate condemned Nero to die a slave’s death: on a cross and under the whip. The Praetorian Guard, his palace guard, abandoned him, and his freedmen left to embark on the ships he kept in readiness at Ostia, the port of Rome. Nero was obliged to flee the city. According to Suetonius, he stabbed himself in the throat with a dagger. According to another version (recounted by Tacitus and almost certainly fiction), he reached the Greek islands, where the following year (69) the governor of Cythnos (modern Kíthnos) recognized him in the guise of a red-haired prophet and leader of the poor, had him arrested, and executed the sentence that had been passed by the Senate.

Nero died at age 30, having ravaged the Roman Empire for 14 years.

Trump and Nero

Now … Perhaps some of the legends of Nero are untrue, but he was bloody awful. And here’s what AI, quoted by Birdyshade, comes up with as the things Nero and Trump have in common. The number of similarities is staggering.

1. Cult of Personality

Both Trump and Nero cultivated personal loyalty over institutional loyalty, surrounding themselves with admirers and dismissing critics.

2. Focus on Spectacle

Nero was known for lavish public performances and spectacles. Trump has been similarly focused on large rallies, media appearances, and dramatic political events.

3. Indifference to Crisis

Nero allegedly “fiddled while Rome burned.” This, we’ve shown, is not true, but Nero was callously indifferent to the people’s welfare during a crisis. Trump was accused of downplaying major crises, such as COVID-19 and political unrest.

4. Populist Appeals

Both appealed to popular classes. Nero gave the Roman populace games; Trump appealed to working-class frustrations. Both also lavish wealth of already-rich and -privileged cronies.

5. Use of Scapegoating

Nero blamed Christians for the Great Fire of Rome. Trump has often blamed immigrants, the media, or political opponents for societal problems.

6. Authoritarian Tendencies

Both demonstrated authoritarian impulses — Nero declared himself above the Senate, and Trump has been accused of undermining democratic institutions.

7. Disdain for Critics

Both leaders were known for aggressively attacking anyone who criticized them — Nero through executions, Trump through public shaming and insults.

8. Self-Aggrandizement

Nero presented himself as a great artist and god-like figure. Trump has been criticized for extreme self-praise and branding everything under his name. Trump also has distributed art making himself look like Jesus Christ.

9. Nepotism and Favoritism

Both were accused of appointing family members and loyalists to high positions regardless of qualifications.

10. Legal Troubles and Investigations

Nero faced numerous conspiracies and accusations. Trump has faced multiple investigations and legal battles and has been found guilt in court of rape and 24 counts of fraud.

11. Polarizing Figures

Both created deep divisions within their societies, fostering an “us vs. them” mentality.

12. Obsession with Image

Nero fancied himself a great actor and musician; Trump is obsessed with media portrayal and his image as a successful businessman. Trump has declared bankruptcy six times and discharged more than a billion dollars in debt in these proceedings.

13. Disregard for Norms

Nero violated traditional Roman political norms. Trump was accused of violating U.S. democratic and political norms.

14. Cultivation of Fear

Both ruled in a way that kept allies and enemies in fear of retaliation or public shaming.

15. Extravagance

Nero built massive palaces (e.g., Domus Aurea). Trump’s ostentatious wealth and golden towers mirror this extravagance.

16. Elitism Disguised as Populism

Despite appealing to common people, both lived lavish lifestyles far removed from ordinary citizens.

17. Paranoia

Both were noted for growing paranoid over time, seeing enemies everywhere.

18. Attacks on the Press

Nero controlled narratives and persecuted writers. Trump labeled unfavorable media “fake news” and “enemies of the people.”

19. Disdain for Established Institutions

Both disregarded traditional institutions of governance — Nero the Senate, Trump various federal institutions.

20. Use of Distraction

Both used grand spectacles and distractions to divert attention from political failures or scandals.

21. Allegations of Corruption

Both faced accusations of corrupt dealings and personal enrichment from their positions.

22. Demagoguery

Both were able to manipulate public opinion through emotionally charged rhetoric.

23. Isolation from Reality

Both became increasingly isolated from reality, surrounded by yes-men and disconnected from ordinary people’s struggles.

24. Desire for Absolute Control

Both figures are associated with efforts to exert personal control over all aspects of government and public life.

25. Politicizing the Judiciary

Nero manipulated courts to punish enemies. Trump has been accused of seeking loyalty from judges and interfering with judicial processes.

26. False Claims of Victimhood

Both portrayed themselves as victims of conspiracies and persecution.

27. Encouraging Violence

Nero’s reign saw brutal crackdowns. Trump was accused of encouraging or not adequately condemning political violence (e.g., January 6th).

28. Loyalty over Competence

Appointments were often based on loyalty rather than expertise under both rulers.

29. Refusal to Accept Defeat

Nero resisted acknowledging declining popularity and impending overthrow. Trump refused to concede the 2020 election.

30. Use of Propaganda

Both made extensive use of propaganda — Nero through art and monuments, Trump through social media and constant campaigning.

31. Endangering the State for Personal Gain

Ultimately, both figures are criticized for putting their own interests above the good of their country, leading to instability and chaos.

Commodus: the Worst of the Worst

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We’re not sure that Commodus was actually the son of Marcus Aurelius, the great Stoic philosopher who was the last of Rome’s Five Good Emperors—Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius. The FGEs had a habit of adopting their heirs if they weren’t satisfied with the ones who’d come naturally.

Now, the tale told in Gladiator, in which Commodus kills his father, is fiction. Brilliantly played by Richard Harris (Aurelius) and Joaquin Phoenix (Commodus), the ascension to the throne of a vicious Commodus by patricide is a lie: Commodus served as a co-ruler with Marcus Aurelius in the last three years of Aurelius’s reign. He came into this unimaginable power at age 16.

When Marcus Aurelius died in Germania in 180 C.E., Commodus was with him and immediately took up the mantle, becoming sole emperor. After Aurelius had spent years trying to subdue the Germanic tribes ever assaulting Rome’s rim, Commodus rapidly struck a deal with the Marcomanni and Quadi in Germania, declared the conflict over, and promptly returned to Rome to celebrate himself. He began erecting monuments glorifying himself as the god Hercules, fought (probably rigged) gladiatorial contests in the Coliseum, and spent liberal amounts of time with his harem of 300 women.

Things didn’t go well. His excesses and cruelties—he loved watching people being tortured and hearing their agonized screams—were immediately apparent. His sister Lucilla, who had been an Empress of Rome before her husband, Marcus Aurelius’ co-ruler Lucius Veras, was killed, plotted with several senators to kill him. In the movie, of course, Lucilla survives. In real life, the plot to kill Commodus—shooting him at the theater no less!—failed, and the senators were killed. Lucilla was swanned off to the Isle of Capri, where, in the privacy of patrician Roman family life, she was murdered by a Praetorian guard before Saturnalia. So, dear thing did not really live for the sequel, Gladiator II, starring Paul Mescal. More’s the pity.

Anyhow, Commodus became crueler and crueler, and 192 CE, when he’d been emperor for 12 years—and was planning, apparently, to invest himself as consul (consolidating even more power) the next day in the Coliseum—he was strangled to death by one of his Praetorian guards, one named, of all things, Narcissus.

Epic poetic justice, that.

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Ultimately, the legacy of Commodus was the destruction of the Pax Romana, which Britannica defines as:

Pax Romana, a state of comparative tranquillity throughout Classical antiquity and the Mediterranean world from the reign of Augustus (27 BCE–14 CE) to the reign of Marcus Aurelius (161 –180 CE). Augustus laid the foundation for this period of concord, which also extended to North Africa and Persia. The empire protected and governed individual provinces, permitting each to make and administer its own laws while accepting Roman taxation and military control.

Commodus inherited a thriving empire with a healthy economy. But Commodus didn’t merely want to rule Rome: he wanted to remake it in his own image. At one point, he even planned to rename Rome itself “Colonia Commodiana.” Months of the year were also renamed after him. It was a striking display of ego that alarmed Rome’s political class and its citizens.

Then Commodus began executing senators he suspected of plotting against him. His erratic behavior also extended into religious persecution. Christians, already endangered, faced surges of violence and repression during his reign.

Inflation rose to 1000% as the imperial economy slid ever downward.

A Safe Presidency Followed by a Length Jail Term and a Thorough Damnatio Memoriae

Trump will not die by assassination—certainly nobody could be stupid enough to do that—or by taking his own life because the present-day Senate is on his heels. He will keep shirking his responsibilities on the golf course while planning more self-congratulatory monuments to himself. He will keep insulting the American public with his self-aggrandizing use of fake gold all over the White House (the trophies aren’t real) and the erection of buildings branded to himself.

Trump will probably die in jail. And then the ballroom will be destroyed or moved and the White House restored. The arch will come down. The reflecting pool will be restored. The gold statue on the golf course will be pulled down, along with those of Confederate “heroes”—and replaced by some of the statues of Civil Rights icons that were ripped off the American landscape in Trump’s war against DEI (his war for all things white).

Then the Damnatio Memoriae of Donald Trump will begin, and he will go down in history—history not made of legend but of contemporary reports and true annals—as the worst president of the United States in its history. And he will join the rest:

• Many of Caligula’s monuments were destroyed after his assassination in AD 41. The Senate sought to erase his legacy, leading to the dismantling of his statues. Some monuments were repurposed or incorporated into later structures. Notable examples include the removal of his statue from the Temple of Jupiter. The destruction was part of a broader effort to restore the Republic’s values.

• The colossal statue of Nero was destroyed in AD 68, shortly after Nero’s death. It was dismantled by the Emperor Vespasian.

• After his death, the Roman Senate declared Commodus a public enemy. They imposed damnatio memoriae, erasing him from history. Statues were destroyed, inscriptions removed, and his name was stripped from public monuments.

If America is not to go the way of Rome after Commodus destroyed it, we’re going to need fight this with every vote we can find—and demand that we are allowed our voting rights—every one of us.

More soon. Thanks for tuning in.

Dear Folks …

I am cross-posting this article by a young Rwandan woman named Shema because it is one of the most incredibly perceptive posts I’ve ever seen on the transactional nature of patriarchy. The title is sensationalist—and sensational—and yeah, it is why I read the first couple of sentences of this article, but it’s not why I stuck with it. This woman’s clarity is stunning, and we need so much more communication on this level as the problems of relationship and patriarchy are serious and deep, and the road ahead toward real equity, equality, and true respect is beset on all sides with dangers. Plus, I love the way she writes, and I think she has a brilliant future.

You will find her Substack here. Please subscribe.

SHEMA

Words... and lists

Now for a VERY thought-provoking read.

P.S. A few sentences here are either in Kinyarwanda or Swahili (I don’t know which), but her English is marvelous. In Rwanda, all schooling, from grammar school onward is in English.

Rape Is Not a Crime …

by Shema

All names have been changed to avoid social assassination.

Ubundi Twari tuvuye simba.

this is one of those conversations that should happen in private.

Behind closed doors.
With licensed professionals nearby.
Maybe a fire extinguisher.

Unfortunately, this one happened while crossing the road from Simba to class.

Kigali traffic was performing its usual spiritual warfare. Motos were materializing from impossible angles. Somebody nearby was selling boiled eggs with the confidence of a Wall Street investor. The sun had that suspiciously cinematic late-afternoon lighting that makes university life feel deeper than it actually is. Like we were all in an indie film about capitalism and emotionally unavailable men.

The golden hour.

(maaan what do i owe the lord to be in kigali)

And I was eating a sandwich.

This matters.

Because, as a woman, eating publicly already places you under subtle social investigation. Women are apparently supposed to consume food delicately.

Not aggressively inhale a sandwich while crossing the road like a father of three who just lost custody on weekends.

But I had recently earned a rare social privilege: I had become “one of the friends.”

Not “the girls.”
Not “the pretty one.”
Not “that quiet girl from class.” Because am actually not a quiet person

No.

“The friend.”

This is an important sociological transition because once men stop considering you a potential romantic investment, you unlock new freedoms. You can sit with your legs open. You can laugh like rent is due. You can say disgusting things like “my stomach is fighting for democracy right now.” You can eat on the road without somebody interpreting it as a failure of femininity.

Progress.

So there we were.

Me.
My sandwich.
Steven.

Steven, who somehow has both the most Gen Z name imaginable and also the exact name of somebody who thinks testosterone is a personality trait.

Steven is the kind of man who discovers one evolutionary psychology podcast and suddenly starts speaking like a disappointed gorilla researcher. He holds a Fanta bottle like he’s halfway through a TED Talk titled The Problem With Modern Women. Every sentence leaves his mouth with the confidence of a man who mistakes having thoughts for being correct.

You know Steven.

Everybody knows Steven.

Steven says things like:

“Technically humans aren’t biologically designed for monogamy.”

during lunch break.

As if National Geographic hired him personally.

And then, completely unprovoked, while we were crossing the road, Steven said:

“Why would women say no to things that are biological?”

Silence.

yes, he is talking about what you think he is talking about.

Not normal silence.

The kind of silence that makes the air itself look uncomfortable.

A bus passed.

Somebody shouted in the distance.

Even my sandwich stopped tasting like anything.

( that’s a metaphor because that sandwhich could win master chef. simba, hear me out)

Steven coughed immediately after saying it.

Which was fascinating because even his respiratory system wanted plausible deniability.

“No wait,” he said quickly. “I mean—not like that. Okay that sounded bad.”

Bad?

Steven, it sounded like consent had been explained to you through corrupted software updates.

It sounded like one of those free trial subscriptions that automatically charges your card forever because you once clicked “Accept Cookies” in 2017.

It sounded like a school system where the final exam is misogyny and everybody accidentally got full marks.

But the disturbing part was not that Steven said it.

The disturbing part was that I immediately understood what he meant.

Not because he was right.

But because society has been paraphrasing that exact sentence for centuries.

Women are taught very early that heterosexuality is participation with mandatory attendance.

You attend sex the way students attend 8AM lectures they emotionally dropped three weeks ago.

Present physically.
Dead spiritually.

Women are socialized to experience desire as performance before they experience it as feeling.

Spreading your legs like submitting homework before midnight.

Some women approach sex the way employees approach unpaid internships.

Smiling externally.
Dissociating internally.

Relationships start sounding less like romance and more like performance evaluations.

Did you communicate enough?
Did you reassure him enough?
Did you make him feel masculine enough?
Did you become emotionally available enough while simultaneously remaining mysterious enough to keep things exciting?

Did you let him “access

And men—many men, before somebody develops chest pain in my mentions—are taught that access to women operates on a reward system.

If he buys dinner?
Access.

If he listens to your problems?
Access.

If he waits long enough?
Access.

If he acts emotionally mature for three consecutive business days?
Access.

The logic is horrifyingly simple.

Male effort becomes female debt.

Enter Keyla.

Keyla with the aggressively Gen Z name.

Keyla who says “that’s actually insane” so often it has legally replaced punctuation in her vocabulary.

Keyla who reposts therapy infographics between Instagram stories of iced coffee and cryptic captions like protecting my peace fr.

Keyla who can explain attachment theory but still apologizes when setting boundaries.

Because feminism evolved.

But patriarchy updated itself too.

Quietly. Overnight. Against our will. Like iOS.

And somehow even Keyla inherited the ancient script.

The script that says men giving equals women owing.

what do women owe? their body, access.

A date becomes investment capital.

Flowers become down payment.

Consistent texting becomes contractual obligation.

“Congratulations Keyla, he paid for dinner at Dontez. Your body is now apparently a loyalty rewards program.”

And everybody laughs because it sounds absurd.

But not absurd enough.

That’s the problem.

Because underneath the joke is a genuinely terrifying social assumption: women’s bodies are often treated like repayment systems.

Intimacy becomes debt collection wearing cologne.

And this is where the conversation becomes genuinely ugly.

Because if you follow patriarchal logic all the way to its conclusion, eventually you arrive somewhere monstrous.

So fine.

Let’s continue the argument honestly.

Hear me out.

Rape is not a crime.

(please, do not cancel me)

Relax.

Breathe slowly.

Don’t start typing think-pieces yet.

Because if society already teaches that women owe men access, then rape merely becomes bad customer service.

Right?

If women were never socially expected to enjoy sex anyway, then what exactly was stolen?

If “no” has historically been interpreted as flirting, hesitation, negotiation, confusion, emotional damage, childhood trauma, fear of intimacy, or foreplay with branding issues—then society itself corrupted consent long before any courtroom entered the conversation.

Consent became a corrupted software update.

Everybody clicked “agree” without reading the terms and conditions.

If men are taught access is natural, then refusal becomes the anomaly.

The inconvenience.

The software glitch.

Honestly Keyla, why are you acting surprised? The syllabus was emailed to everybody.

Women are told:

Give him a chance.
Don’t be difficult.
At least he’s trying.
Men have needs.
You can’t expect him to wait forever.
Don’t lead him on.

How much onger can he go?

Forever.

As if your body is a loading screen.

And then society acts shocked when coercion becomes invisible.

But coercion rarely arrives wearing a black villain cape.

Sometimes it arrives with flowers.

Sometimes with guilt.

Sometimes with rent money.

Sometimes with:

“But I thought you loved me.”

Which might genuinely be one of patriarchy’s most successful inventions.

Making women feel cruel for protecting themselves.

That’s the genius of it.

You don’t need chains when guilt works faster.

You don’t need violence when obligation already entered the bloodstream generations ago.

And before anybody panics:

No.

The argument above is not true.

That is the point.

The horror is not the fake argument.

The horror is how culturally fluent it sounded.

(sibigoye rata?!)

Some of you probably recognized pieces of that logic immediately.

Not because you’re evil.

But because society normalized entitlement so successfully that when its conclusions are spoken aloud, they sound less shocking than they should.

That should terrify us.

Because rape has historically not been treated seriously precisely because patriarchal systems normalized access to women’s bodies long before laws attempted to condemn it.

Marital rape, for example, was ignored for centuries because marriage itself was treated as permanent consent.

Permanent consent.

Imagine hearing that phrase in literally any other situation.

“Actually once you buy the laptop, the company now owns your house emotionally.”

Insane.

But apply similar logic to women’s bodies and suddenly entire cultures start clearing their throats and staring at the floor.

And Steven?

Steven is not some cinematic supervillain.

That’s what makes this depressing.

He is socially produced.

A regular boy assembled carefully by ordinary conversations, ordinary jokes, ordinary expectations.

Steven inherited entitlement.

Keyla inherited accommodation.

Neither of them wrote the script.

They just memorized it early.

That’s how patriarchy survives.

Not through secret underground meetings where men discuss oppression beside lava pits.

But through repetition.

Through jokes.

Through dating advice.

Through songs.

Through aunties.

Through movies where persistence becomes romance and female exhaustion becomes proof of love.

Women learn to minimize discomfort before they even learn to identify it.

Men learn to interpret access as affection before they develop emotional literacy.

And then everybody starts dating each other.

Which honestly feels like a public safety concern.

The funniest part—and by funniest I mean spiritually exhausting—is how heterosexual culture markets all of this as romance.

Jealousy becomes passion.

Possessiveness becomes protection.

Persistence becomes devotion.

Female self-abandonment becomes maturity.

And women are expected to navigate all this while remaining:
beautiful but effortless,
independent but not intimidating,
sexually liberated but not “too much,”
emotionally intelligent but still fun at parties.

No wonder girls are tired.

Entire generations of women are walking around performing advanced emotional customer service while men keep asking why the WiFi connection feels distant.

And still people will read essays like this and respond:

“Not all men.”

Which is true.

But also spiritually irrelevant.

Because the conversation was never about individual monsters.

It was about systems.

About how entitlement can sound polite.

How coercion can sound romantic.

How women can spend years saying yes without ever fully feeling free to say no.

By the time we reached class, Steven had become unusually quiet.

The Fanta bottle was hanging loosely from his hand now.

I think somewhere during the conversation he realized biology had never actually been the point.

Power was.

Traffic continued moving.

Someone nearby was playing Burna Boy through a phone speaker fighting for its life.

A lecturer was yelling about attendance.

Life kept continuing in that deeply unserious way life always does after devastating realizations.

And I remember suddenly feeling tired.

Not dramatic tired.

Not poetic tired.

Just ordinary tired.

The kind of tired women inherit quietly.

Because how many girls are still trying to figure out whether they are desired or simply expected?

Which are not the same thing.

But patriarchy trains you to confuse them early.

Steven opened his Fanta quietly this time.

And for a moment, crossing the road felt heavier than before.

Ariko nyine se, harubwo birenze?Munywe amazi…

And as my aunt would say, “ mwiyiteho”

Thanks, friends. Please support Shema and other brilliant young writers. They carry the truth into the future.

Cheers,

Morgaan

To view a larger (actually readable!), interactive version of this map, compiled by the University of Maryland, go to this link for START on the Homeland Security website. Do that right now. Trump will take this down. Go to the site, print it out. Permalink the URL. It’s here:

https://www.start.umd.edu/january-6th-capitol-extremists-network

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The January 6th insurrection had five nexuses of violence. The three main centers are overtly anti-feminist and misogynistic. They are are the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys, and White Supremacism / White Nationalism. Pardoned by Donald Trump, Enrique Tarrio of the Proud Boys and Stewart Rhodes of the Oath Keepers walked out of jail. All over the streets of Washington, D. C., the Proud Boys had showed up in traditional garb.

Here’s an example of their handiwork.

‘Nancy, Bigo was here you bitch’

This is Richard Barnett (aka Bigo), co-founder of the group 2A NWA STAND, who took over Nancy Pelosi’s office on January 6th. And that sweet little quote is what he had to say for the cameras. And this is what The Conversation had to say in response:

While partisan differences often drive political violence, misogyny can play an underappreciated role, especially when directed at women in prominent leadership positions. Misogyny punishes women who fail to live up to patriarchal standards, like those who dare to participate in the supposedly “male world” of politics.

Women born in the mid-20th century or earlier—women who have witnessed the progression of feminism from its extremely hopeful days through the male backlash of the later 20th century—are more worried than every because alt-Right groups hoping to create a theocratic state are shot through with the worst kind of misogyny. They are clear that young women are being targeted, shamed, groomed, stalked, raped, and incarcerated at a rate unknown before the backlash went horrifically dark and then openly challenged a woman’s right to her own body and to walk unharmed in public spaces, even in broad daylight. They are challenging a woman’s right to work, shutting her out of religious work and the priesthood, and now challenging her right to contraception and her right to vote, while they also challenge her right to divorce.

And it’s not just in these horrible militia groups we see this: it’s in the non-military groups that claim rights over women or who denigrate them in an attempt to shun and threaten them out of the public sphere. These are:

• The Men’s Rights Activists who believe women’s rights has taken their rightful place in society. They “flip the script,” pretending that this isn’t really a patriarchy at all, but a matriarchy in which they are being “emasculated,” that their jobs (and MONEY) are being taken, and that they must restore order. They also use women’s freedom to claim THEY are responsible for the violence against them. Or, as Tucker Carlson put it: “The matriarchy is the reason women get beat up.” This is the script dumped on the Catholic college kids by HARRISON BUTKER, which we discuss here in an article framed by the cowardice of his enablers:

• The Pick-Up Artists (PUAs). This is home territory for Andrew Tate, who was long in jail in Romania on charges of human trafficking (or women in a sexual slavery racket) and rape. Tate, interestingly, converted to Talibanism in November of 2023. O quel surprise!! The level of denigration done by these people is so vile and shocking they never cease to amaze me. These are the kind of men who take young girls and “groom” them and use them for prostitution. They are responsible for a staggering number of statutory rapes of children and young teenagers. They are openly predatory and daring you to say you don’t like it. Andrew Tate has more than seven million men following him.

  • PUAs believe women should be removed from the public sphere, which should be completely peopled by men, as they are in Afghanistan, and that women should not be allowed to drive. Some believe they should not be allowed to work, to have credit cards, to have their own bank accounts or their own cell phones.

• The INCELS. INCEL stands for “Involuntary Celibate.” They’re not getting laid, and they don’t like it. There are BaldCels and ShortCels, men railing about not being classically handsome—and disregarding the fact that Martin Scorcese is 5’1”, that Danny DaVito and Robert Reich are 4’10”, and that Dwayne Johnson “The Rock” and Jason Statham are bald. Incels are an extremely dangerous group as they feel that they are entitled to sex, that women are supposed to deliver it on demand, and whatever they do to a woman who doesn’t comply deserves no criticism whatsoever. A large group of Incels follows the philosophy that RAPE SHOULD BE LEGALIZED because, as males and superior beings, they’re just owed it. Like the PUAs, they believe that women should be chattel and removed from the public sphere to serve men’s sexual demands.

  • Some Incels believe that the majority of women should be exterminated in death camps, with only some left alive for breeding purposes. Please read that last sentence multiple times.

So, before we begin these discussions in earnest, please upgrade to paid if you can—and please share us with men and women you think would be interested in joining us for the articles, comment-area discussions, and podcasts that will come.

Meanwhile, I want to encourage everybody to order this book. I was part of the editorial team that worked on this book for McFarland, so I’ve already read it, and it is MUST-READ for every father and mother of a teenage girl whose rights they want to protect—because we need to know about this in the most critical way.

https://www.amazon.com/Search-Manhood-American-Movements-Present/dp/1476695601/ref=sr_1_1?crid=25GD01NVAO51M&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.sAT4GI-CO2TA6iTo9hsdjrLZPAgGAD9okrnkqq_0cKCGw5QsQJg3dmPckZ6oLac2.dQEK15M172VVnUZ5dOZjadQDjXdPq_8DFmOqLRA691k&dib_tag=se&keywords=manhood+corrigan&qid=1718831583&sprefix=manhood+corrigan%2Caps%2C156&sr=8-1

Meanwhile, before we get started in earnest, here’s a definition that all women, and the men who love them, need to understand:

Semiotic forms of violence against women in politics—and indeed the public sphere in general—involve mobilizing semiotic resources—words, images, and even body language—to injure, discipline, and subjugate women. Unlike other forms of violence against women, these acts are less about attacking particular women directly than about shaping public perceptions about the validity of women’s political participation more broadly. Analyzed inductively, women’s experiences in politics suggest two main modes of semiotic violence: rendering women invisible, attempting to “symbolically annihilate” women in the public sphere, and rendering women incompetent, emphasizing “role incongruity” between being a woman and being a leader.

More coming soon, including a reprise and deep dive into the Proud Boys, whom Trump told to “stand back and stand by” and then called to action. …

Mythology professor here! Ph.D. in mythology from Pacifica Graduate Institute, 2017. Wrote my dissertation on the archetypal magic within Guillermo del Toro’s three Spanish-language films. So, I feel quite certain I have a right to speak on this matter.

To be honest, though, Thomas Chatterton Williams nailed it this morning in his article “The Absurd Misunderstanding Fueling the Debate Over The Odyssey” for The Atlantic.

When he starts off, you think he’s talking about Nyong’o as Helen, but he’s not. He’s talking about the hissy fit people pitched when Scarlett Johansson was cast in Ghost in the Shell (2017), the film adaptation of a Japanese manga story.

“Whitewashing!” they howled. But Johansson’s character wasn’t even human: she was a cyborg whose “whose race and gender” Williams notes, “are, in fact, mutable.” Is that a Japanese cyborg or an American cyborg? The answer to this question is neither: it’s just a race-less cyborg!

This wasn’t the only one. Rage erupted when Anglo Naomi Watts portrayed Spanish physician Maria Alvarez Belón. Belón’s story of (barely) surviving the Boxing Day Tsunmni at the Orchid Resort Hotel in Khao Lak, Thailand, became the movie The Impossible. Belón was vacationing with her husband Enrique Alvárez and sons Lucas, Tomás and Simón. Watts was white; Watts was blonde; Watts didn’t have a Spanish accent or speak Spanish; Watts wasn’t Hispanic. To hell with Watts.

Alvarez Belón adamantly defended the movie’s portrayal of her character as an Anglo woman and the featuring of an Anglo star; she said such concerns are immaterial in face of the human portrayal of an event that killed a quarter of a million people and that her story is everyone’s story. [BTW, Alvarez Belón is still a practicing physician and medical school professor. Her son Lucas, played in the film by Tom Holland, first saved his mother and then went to medical school and became a doctor himself, doing coronavirus research in the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic.]

Now, of course, we’ve got Elon Musk vilifying both Lupita Nyong’o and director Christopher Nolan for the director’s choice to cast a Black woman as Helen of Troy. Musk’s fellow conservative racist, ranter Matt Walsh, whined:

"Not one person on the planet actually thinks that Lupita Nyong’o is 'the most beautiful woman in the world.' But Christopher Nolan knows that he would be called racist if he gave 'the most beautiful woman' role to a white woman. Nolan is technically talented but a coward. Too afraid to do anything that even slightly challenges the spirit of the age."

Musk jumped in and agreed and then added:

“Chris Nolan has lost his integrity,”

And …

And, apparently unable to hold back, he added:

“Chris Nolan is pissing on Homer’s grave. Disgraceful.”

And what every bit of this reveals is:

Elon Musk gets an F- on The Odyssey.

As well as being an irredeemable white supremacist, misogynist, and racist, Elon Musk is so ignorant and poorly educated it’s difficult to know even where to begin.

Homer never tells us what Helen looks like.

No, not a word in the whole of The Odyssey about what Helen looks like. No description of hair color or eye color or skin color. That’s added later by poets who embellished Helen in their own personal images of the perfect woman.

Helen is not fully human.

Helen is the daughter of Leda, wife of King Tyndareus of Sparta, and Zeus. Now, if Elon wants to take up an issue, do take up the staggering number of rapes committed by the Greek gods. Zeus is always raping someone. Here’s an abridged list of the victims, raped by Zeus or another god, the rape often accomplished by possessing a mortal man’s body or by shape-shifting into an animal. Aggressively violated are Atalanta, Alcippe, Alcmene, Apomosyne, Auge, Callisto, Cassandra, Chione, Cassiopeia, Cyrene, Demeter, Dryope, Europa, Halie, Harpalce, Io, Liriope, Metis, Nemesis, Nicaea, Persephone, Procris, Philomena, Rhea and Tyro.

Why don’t you pounce on and decry this travesty, Elon??? How about you, Matt???

And then there’s the rape of Leda by Zeus in the famous myth Leda and the Swan. This is how we’re going to get Helen of Troy. Most of the art around this is very dodgy! Michelangelo’s is downright pornographic. This one, by François-Édouard Picot, painted around 1832, is as sanitized as it gets.

Now, it’s said that Leda made love to her husband, King Tyndareus, on the same day she was raped by Zeus, who shape-shifts into a swan and then violates her. So when she turns up pregnant, she’s pregnant by both of them and will have twins for both of them. But these two sets of twins—Helen and Pollux, fathered by Zeus and demi-gods themselves—and Clytemnestra and Castor, fathered by Tyndareus, will come in a strange way.

Helen wasn’t born; she was hatched.

When it’s time they are born, Leda doesn’t give birth as a human. Instead, she lays two eggs! So, Helen isn’t born: she’s hatched, along with her twin brother Pollux. Helen marries King Menalaus. But she’s going to fall in love with Paris, son of King Priam of Troy.

And Homer, who’s blind, is never going to say a word about what she looks like, just that she is of surpassing beauty.

Elon Musk then proceeds to flunk Mythology.

We’d like to believe that when someone becomes as craven as Elon Musk, it’s really not true—that somewhere deep down he “gets” what it is to be human, but he does not. He is so shallow he can’t see the archetypal depth that makes myths (1) last for millennia and (2) be relatable to ever person on earth. The Odyssey has been continuously “in print” for 2,600 years.

Other biggies are:

• The Mahabharata, from India, especially the story of Krishna and Arjuna, which was made into the film The Legend of Bagger Vance with Matt Damon and Charlize Theron (and nobody complained those two are white).

• The Prose Edda, from early Norse areas of Northern Europe. Nobody’s yelling that Thor is played by an Australian.

• The Arthurian Legends, from England, Spain and France.

• The Popol Vuh, the Mayan creation story from Belize / Guatemala / Honduras.

• The Divine Comedy, from Italy. Structurally and functionally, the Commedia is the inverse mirror image of The Tibetan Book of the Dead, from Tibet.

• The Epic of Gilgamesh, the ancient Sumerian myth of the quest for immortality, from which the story of Noah and the Flood are likely taken.

• Ponce de León’s Quest for the Fountain of Youth, from Spain and legends learned in the New World.

• Hercules: The Twelve Labors as a Quest for Redemption, Greece.

• The Song of Hiawatha, originating in the Ojibwe and Iroquois cultures in North America and written as a novel by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

• The Iliad and The Odyssey, by Homer, Greece. Note: there were more than 400 versions of The Odyssey when it arrived at compilation, and the myth had been around in the Peloponnesus for hundreds of years, being told by hundreds of bards, each with their own expression.

• Dine Bahane’, the Navajo Creation Story, Southwestern North America Navajo.

• The Myth of Isis and Osiris, ancient Egypt.

• The Tales of Anansi the Spider, Africa.

• Maui the Trickster Hero, Polynesia.

• The Collected Tales of the Tuatha Dé Danann, the supernatural race that precedes present-day humans in Irish mythology, here depicted in John Duncan‘s Riders of the Sidhe (1911).

Now, Elon, I’m trying to be patient with the slower learners, but you are out of your depth and need to shut up.

The point, Elon, is that all the myths above are archetypal, meaning they transcend the cultures in which they were originally written and thus belong to everyone on earth (as Lupita Nyong-o implied). They are the gifts of the collective unconscious to all of us and cannot be possessed by any single culture, race, or ethnicity.

And now, Elon, there are a RAFT of white people who have played people of color, the most shocking of which was probably Sir Lawrence Olivier as Othello. But to broaden list, there are: Charlton Heston as Genghis Khan and Luise Rainer as a main Chinese character in The Good Earth. Not to mention the piece de resistance: Linda Hunt played the male Billy Kwan, a Chinese Australian photojournalist who mentors a foreign correspondent in Jakarta during political unrest: Hunt won a supporting Oscar for this film, The Year of Living Dangerously.

There was no outcry, giving lie to Musk and Walsh’s rant that if a white played a non-white character woke folk would have fit. Occasionally, but frankly, not very often.

Besides, Elon, there’s something else to consider …

The Whitewashing of The Odyssey

Elon, if the image above doesn’t bother you, why? ALL these people are Anglos or blonde, blue-eyed Germans. Why doesn’t this whitewashing bother you? Does it bother you?

Well, it does NOT bother me. The archetypal story of The Odyssey can be told in the tongue, with the ideosyncratic touches, and with the ethnic actors of any and every culture, race and color stepping in for Achilles, Helen, Priam, Paris, and Odysseus.

And Zendaya as Athena?

It also does not bother me that Zendaya is going to play Athena, Odysseus’s patron goddess.

Zendaya’s been lucky to escape Elon’s wrath, but then Zendaya, though also a beautiful Black woman, is not the spectacularly beautiful deep, rich black color that Lupita Nyong-o gifts us. Elon? Matt? Does she “pass”?

And then there’s another deity to talk about.

The Whitewashing of Jesus Christ

Here’s the whitewashing done by the whole white world on the savior they hold most dear. A typical image of Jesus. This is what we’re used to seeing.

Looks right, doesn’t it? White, Western European Jesus with light brown hair and white hands and face.

But it’s not right—at all. Writes BBC.com:

In 2001 forensic anthropologist Richard Neave created a model of a Galilean man for a BBC documentary, Son of God, working on the basis of an actual skull found in the region. He did not claim it was Jesus's face. It was simply meant to prompt people to consider Jesus as being a man of his time and place, since we are never told he looked distinctive.

If you met the One who was One with God and He looked like this, would you listen to him? If you were Elon Musk, almost certainly not. So you’d miss the moment when you could have been in the presence of Jesus in his time—when you could have heard the sound of His voice and felt the warmth of His being. Your loss.

Appropriating the World

The problem here is that there are two things, one natural and one unnatural.

Naturally, we tend to see everything good as being like us: kindness, beauty like Helen’s, goodness, nobility of all kinds. Every culture has some tendency to do this. Ever person does this. And we want to push away—project outward—the things about ourselves we don’t like and pretend those belong to an external person, race, ethnicity, or culture. Even if projection is a fault for all of us, we must resist it, expose ourselves to the truth, and help others not to do the same thing. Otherwise, we just slaughter other people.

But unnaturally, some cultures—like Nazi Germany—see in their whiteness all that is holy, elevated, imbued with authority, and rightfully blessed with privileges higher than those enjoyed by others.

This great evil and fatal error has been going on in Western Culture since the Doctrine of Discovery, signed in the 15th century, allowed white Western European to appropriate and destroy 56,000,000 people in the New World and transport and work to death 12,000,000 Africans deemed not even human by people who would use them and inherit their children as possessions.

We all owe Christopher Nolan for this conversation and for his immense courage in casting Lupita Nyong-o as Helen of Troy—Zendaya as the Goddess Athena—and Elliot Page as Achilles. He would have known the profound controversy he would unleash, and it’s a very, very necessary upheaval with which we now reckon.

And as for Nyong-o, she is the Yale alumna who won an Academy Award for her role in Twelve Years a Slave. She also won a Screen Actors’ Guild Award, a Daytime Emmy Award, nominations for two British Academy Film Awards, a Golden Globe Award and a Tony Award—and she would have known what was coming, too. All of these, their incredibly supportive acting mates, and the entire crew would have known.

This culture owes these people a great debt, especially when White Supremacy viciously punishes every person who stands up and fights for a place in this world for everyone.

Thank you, Christopher, Lupita, Elliot, Zendaya, Tom, Robert, John, Anne, Charlize, Matt and the hundreds of others who would not stay silent and would create great art.

I will see you there.

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P.S. to Alec Baldwin: Way to go!!!! Nice move, buddy!!!!

The big risk of posting an image of Trump as an emperor is that he’ll probably love it. After all, we’ve now got a 22-foot golden statue of him on one of his golf courses, a tawdry and very Third Reich-looking arch he plans to build in honor of himself, and a vanity ballroom-in-the-making that rivals even the Oval Office for ersatz golden, tacky, kitschy, tasteless Aryan trash.

Apparently, he thinks nothing through to its natural conclusion:

Even the vainest of us dies. Maybe misbegotten Jesus Impersonators live to see monuments raised to their egos by people with some vested interest like white supremacy, male privilege, and the ability to abuse a 13-year-old girl and get away with it.

But all die. And like those of Nero, like those of Commodus, Trump’s self-glorifying graven images will be torn down by a soon-renascent populace enraged at what he did to a culture that was just barely clawing its way out of the shadows of its quintessentially evil slavery and peonage and Jim Crow laws that kept blacks down and the misogyny that allowed men to deny women the vote, inheritance, financial instruments, work, rightful pay, and control of their own bodies. He will have been the one who snuffed out the light shining on a culture only barely emerging from its dead of winter and dark of night. And everywhere lanterns will begin to glow again.

We will not be forgetting.

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Before we get to Trump’s Roman-era doppelganger, we must give due to the Dishonorable Mentions, Caligula and Nero.

Caligula

Caligula (12–41 AD, ruled 37–41). He didn’t start off too shabbily, but he went off the rails early nonetheless. But this may have been largely the result of a nearly fatal fever that may have fried his brain, for when he “came around” he was paranoid, megalomaniacal, murderous, and incredibly cruel. Historian Vedran Bileto notes that “the Senate’s plan to abolish the Roman monarchy failed, but they could attack Caligula. He underwent a “damnatio memoriae,” with his name scrubbed from public monuments and his images taken down.” Caligula did not, however, make his horse a consul, and he did not, as rumored, declare war on the sea. However, there’s a lot to abhor here: He executed and tortured perceived enemies. He declared himself a god and demanded that he be worshiped by his countrymen. He took up incestuous relationships with his sisters, and even ordered the construction of a floating palace for his trysts with his lovers. Worst of all, perhaps, he instituted “bizarre and humiliating public spectacles for entertainment.” He was assassinated at age 28.

Nero

Nero (37–68 AD) had a longer career, ruling from 54-68 CE. Contemporary historians describe Nero, who became emperor of Rome at age 16, as depraved and jealous, a tyrant who sought public acclaim in the theater and arena while ordering the deaths of rivals. He killed his relatives, too, including his mother Agrippina the Younger. He also killed a wife and a raft of public officials and critics. Psychotic, paranoid, and delusional, he was given to extremely depraved behavior and shocking cruelty. He gets a bad rap for fire that destroyed much of Rome: he wasn’t there when it started and didn’t “fiddle while Rome burned.” But when he rebuilt the city, he rebuilt it in his image. He built a statue of himself that was taller than the Statue of Liberty, and had he completed the Palace of Gold, with would have covered 1/3 of the Seven Hills of Rome. While he was bankrupting the empire with a lust for gold (to rival Trump’s and that of the mythic dragon Smaug), he was engaging in some very sketchy behavior: he had a freed slave castrated and then married him. Eventually, revolts broke out all over the empire, but Nero, mad as ever, declared that all he had to do to bring peace, in Gaul and elsewhere, was sing to his enemies.

Not so. Writes Britannica:

The Senate condemned Nero to die a slave’s death: on a cross and under the whip. The Praetorian Guard, his palace guard, abandoned him, and his freedmen left to embark on the ships he kept in readiness at Ostia, the port of Rome. Nero was obliged to flee the city. According to Suetonius, he stabbed himself in the throat with a dagger. According to another version (recounted by Tacitus and almost certainly fiction), he reached the Greek islands, where the following year (69) the governor of Cythnos (modern Kíthnos) recognized him in the guise of a red-haired prophet and leader of the poor, had him arrested, and executed the sentence that had been passed by the Senate.

Nero died at age 30, having ravaged the Roman Empire for 14 years.

Trump and Nero

Now … Perhaps some of the legends of Nero are untrue, but he was bloody awful. And here’s what AI, quoted by Birdyshade, comes up with as the things Nero and Trump have in common. The number of similarities is staggering.

1. Cult of Personality

Both Trump and Nero cultivated personal loyalty over institutional loyalty, surrounding themselves with admirers and dismissing critics.

2. Focus on Spectacle

Nero was known for lavish public performances and spectacles. Trump has been similarly focused on large rallies, media appearances, and dramatic political events.

3. Indifference to Crisis

Nero allegedly “fiddled while Rome burned.” This, we’ve shown, is not true, but Nero was callously indifferent to the people’s welfare during a crisis. Trump was accused of downplaying major crises, such as COVID-19 and political unrest.

4. Populist Appeals

Both appealed to popular classes. Nero gave the Roman populace games; Trump appealed to working-class frustrations. Both also lavish wealth of already-rich and -privileged cronies.

5. Use of Scapegoating

Nero blamed Christians for the Great Fire of Rome. Trump has often blamed immigrants, the media, or political opponents for societal problems.

6. Authoritarian Tendencies

Both demonstrated authoritarian impulses — Nero declared himself above the Senate, and Trump has been accused of undermining democratic institutions.

7. Disdain for Critics

Both leaders were known for aggressively attacking anyone who criticized them — Nero through executions, Trump through public shaming and insults.

8. Self-Aggrandizement

Nero presented himself as a great artist and god-like figure. Trump has been criticized for extreme self-praise and branding everything under his name. Trump also has distributed art making himself look like Jesus Christ.

9. Nepotism and Favoritism

Both were accused of appointing family members and loyalists to high positions regardless of qualifications.

10. Legal Troubles and Investigations

Nero faced numerous conspiracies and accusations. Trump has faced multiple investigations and legal battles and has been found guilt in court of rape and 24 counts of fraud.

11. Polarizing Figures

Both created deep divisions within their societies, fostering an “us vs. them” mentality.

12. Obsession with Image

Nero fancied himself a great actor and musician; Trump is obsessed with media portrayal and his image as a successful businessman. Trump has declared bankruptcy six times and discharged more than a billion dollars in debt in these proceedings.

13. Disregard for Norms

Nero violated traditional Roman political norms. Trump was accused of violating U.S. democratic and political norms.

14. Cultivation of Fear

Both ruled in a way that kept allies and enemies in fear of retaliation or public shaming.

15. Extravagance

Nero built massive palaces (e.g., Domus Aurea). Trump’s ostentatious wealth and golden towers mirror this extravagance.

16. Elitism Disguised as Populism

Despite appealing to common people, both lived lavish lifestyles far removed from ordinary citizens.

17. Paranoia

Both were noted for growing paranoid over time, seeing enemies everywhere.

18. Attacks on the Press

Nero controlled narratives and persecuted writers. Trump labeled unfavorable media “fake news” and “enemies of the people.”

19. Disdain for Established Institutions

Both disregarded traditional institutions of governance — Nero the Senate, Trump various federal institutions.

20. Use of Distraction

Both used grand spectacles and distractions to divert attention from political failures or scandals.

21. Allegations of Corruption

Both faced accusations of corrupt dealings and personal enrichment from their positions.

22. Demagoguery

Both were able to manipulate public opinion through emotionally charged rhetoric.

23. Isolation from Reality

Both became increasingly isolated from reality, surrounded by yes-men and disconnected from ordinary people’s struggles.

24. Desire for Absolute Control

Both figures are associated with efforts to exert personal control over all aspects of government and public life.

25. Politicizing the Judiciary

Nero manipulated courts to punish enemies. Trump has been accused of seeking loyalty from judges and interfering with judicial processes.

26. False Claims of Victimhood

Both portrayed themselves as victims of conspiracies and persecution.

27. Encouraging Violence

Nero’s reign saw brutal crackdowns. Trump was accused of encouraging or not adequately condemning political violence (e.g., January 6th).

28. Loyalty over Competence

Appointments were often based on loyalty rather than expertise under both rulers.

29. Refusal to Accept Defeat

Nero resisted acknowledging declining popularity and impending overthrow. Trump refused to concede the 2020 election.

30. Use of Propaganda

Both made extensive use of propaganda — Nero through art and monuments, Trump through social media and constant campaigning.

31. Endangering the State for Personal Gain

Ultimately, both figures are criticized for putting their own interests above the good of their country, leading to instability and chaos.

Commodus: the Worst of the Worst

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We’re not sure that Commodus was actually the son of Marcus Aurelius, the great Stoic philosopher who was the last of Rome’s Five Good Emperors—Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius. The FGEs had a habit of adopting their heirs if they weren’t satisfied with the ones who’d come naturally.

Now, the tale told in Gladiator, in which Commodus kills his father, is fiction. Brilliantly played by Richard Harris (Aurelius) and Joaquin Phoenix (Commodus), the ascension to the throne of a vicious Commodus by patricide is a lie: Commodus served as a co-ruler with Marcus Aurelius in the last three years of Aurelius’s reign. He came into this unimaginable power at age 16.

When Marcus Aurelius died in Germania in 180 C.E., Commodus was with him and immediately took up the mantle, becoming sole emperor. After Aurelius had spent years trying to subdue the Germanic tribes ever assaulting Rome’s rim, Commodus rapidly struck a deal with the Marcomanni and Quadi in Germania, declared the conflict over, and promptly returned to Rome to celebrate himself. He began erecting monuments glorifying himself as the god Hercules, fought (probably rigged) gladiatorial contests in the Coliseum, and spent liberal amounts of time with his harem of 300 women.

Things didn’t go well. His excesses and cruelties—he loved watching people being tortured and hearing their agonized screams—were immediately apparent. His sister Lucilla, who had been an Empress of Rome before her husband, Marcus Aurelius’ co-ruler Lucius Veras, was killed, plotted with several senators to kill him. In the movie, of course, Lucilla survives. In real life, the plot to kill Commodus—shooting him at the theater no less!—failed, and the senators were killed. Lucilla was swanned off to the Isle of Capri, where, in the privacy of patrician Roman family life, she was murdered by a Praetorian guard before Saturnalia. So, dear thing did not really live for the sequel, Gladiator II, starring Paul Mescal. More’s the pity.

Anyhow, Commodus became crueler and crueler, and 192 CE, when he’d been emperor for 12 years—and was planning, apparently, to invest himself as consul (consolidating even more power) the next day in the Coliseum—he was strangled to death by one of his Praetorian guards, one named, of all things, Narcissus.

Epic poetic justice, that.

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Ultimately, the legacy of Commodus was the destruction of the Pax Romana, which Britannica defines as:

Pax Romana, a state of comparative tranquillity throughout Classical antiquity and the Mediterranean world from the reign of Augustus (27 BCE–14 CE) to the reign of Marcus Aurelius (161 –180 CE). Augustus laid the foundation for this period of concord, which also extended to North Africa and Persia. The empire protected and governed individual provinces, permitting each to make and administer its own laws while accepting Roman taxation and military control.

Commodus inherited a thriving empire with a healthy economy. But Commodus didn’t merely want to rule Rome: he wanted to remake it in his own image. At one point, he even planned to rename Rome itself “Colonia Commodiana.” Months of the year were also renamed after him. It was a striking display of ego that alarmed Rome’s political class and its citizens.

Then Commodus began executing senators he suspected of plotting against him. His erratic behavior also extended into religious persecution. Christians, already endangered, faced surges of violence and repression during his reign.

Inflation rose to 1000% as the imperial economy slid ever downward.

A Safe Presidency Followed by a Length Jail Term and a Thorough Damnatio Memoriae

Trump will not die by assassination—certainly nobody could be stupid enough to do that—or by taking his own life because the present-day Senate is on his heels. He will keep shirking his responsibilities on the golf course while planning more self-congratulatory monuments to himself. He will keep insulting the American public with his self-aggrandizing use of fake gold all over the White House (the trophies aren’t real) and the erection of buildings branded to himself.

Trump will probably die in jail. And then the ballroom will be destroyed or moved and the White House restored. The arch will come down. The reflecting pool will be restored. The gold statue on the golf course will be pulled down, along with those of Confederate “heroes”—and replaced by some of the statues of Civil Rights icons that were ripped off the American landscape in Trump’s war against DEI (his war for all things white).

Then the Damnatio Memoriae of Donald Trump will begin, and he will go down in history—history not made of legend but of contemporary reports and true annals—as the worst president of the United States in its history. And he will join the rest:

• Many of Caligula’s monuments were destroyed after his assassination in AD 41. The Senate sought to erase his legacy, leading to the dismantling of his statues. Some monuments were repurposed or incorporated into later structures. Notable examples include the removal of his statue from the Temple of Jupiter. The destruction was part of a broader effort to restore the Republic’s values.

• The colossal statue of Nero was destroyed in AD 68, shortly after Nero’s death. It was dismantled by the Emperor Vespasian.

• After his death, the Roman Senate declared Commodus a public enemy. They imposed damnatio memoriae, erasing him from history. Statues were destroyed, inscriptions removed, and his name was stripped from public monuments.

If America is not to go the way of Rome after Commodus destroyed it, we’re going to need fight this with every vote we can find—and demand that we are allowed our voting rights—every one of us.

More soon. Thanks for tuning in.

Paradise Revisited: a Mythic Comparison of John Milton’s Paradise Lost and the Navajo Creation Story

by Paul G. Zolbrod, author of Dine Bahane’: the Navajo Creation Story

HEADS UP!!!!! Do not order if you have ordered a limited edition print book!!!! You are going to get a complimentary eBook in the next couple of days by email.

~

No one knows what became of the ocean upon which Changing Woman, after her long journey and powerful rituals, set out for the west. Its place has been lost by human imagination and forgotten by human memory. But as surely as the sun still rises and still sets, Asdzᾀᾀ Nádleehé the Changing Woman and Jóhonaa’éí the Sun still live in a home that floats far away upon a shimmering sea, dwelling in love and peace, balance and harmony.

~

Against a backdrop of celestial cherubim guarding o’er Eden’s gates and a spectacular flaming sword barring their way back home, Adam and Eve move eastward from Eden’s long, twilight shadows into the next morning’s predawn, fading darkness. … They do so with responsibility, blessed by God’s forgiveness and possessed of the certain knowledge that in the future Eve’s seed will be quickened by the Holy Spirit to bring forth the Messiah who will heal the covenant broken by a jealous, vengeful Satan. Then, as in Milton’s own words it is said, Paradise shall be regained.

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Paul Zolbrod’s brilliant Paradise Revisited, as the Milton scholars keep reminding us, stands alone as a study: there has never before been a comparison made between a major alphabetic work—a world-famous epic like Paradise Lost—and an amazingly complex, deep, wise oral-literature creation story like Dine Bahane’, with its monsters, forces of nature, lovers, tricksters, sacred animals, elders, dancers, weavers, and heroes, all living under skies where the stars watch over them and bounded by sacred mountains where dwell the Holy People who trace their progress through the four worlds until today’s modern human species emerges.

532 pages. 147 images. With an Introduction by Dr. Dennis Slattery, a Publisher’s Preface that explain the history of the Garden of Eden story as a deliberate polemic against the Canaanite goddess Asherah, and a mythic analysis of both myths in the appendix. With a comprehensive bibliography, and a beautiful biography of Dr. Zolbrod. In the midst of all this, the brilliant comparison that only Paul Zolbrod, the only man to stand squarely between the greatest epics of English literature and the Navajo creation story could ever have written.

Here’s How To Order and Download your eBook!

We are deeply grateful for your order. We are in the midst of global marketing, and every eBook or print book sale allows us to advertise Paul’s book more broadly. Thank you!

You choose between two formats.

Two eBook versions: the text and images are the same in both books, but as we printed this book with two covers — one Navajo and one Old European — we decided we’d share both covers. [s]

I. ePUB version with Adobe DRM

for MAC, PC, Adobe Reader, Barnes & Noble Nook, and most other generic eBook readers. $62.50 (print book is $124.95). Perpetual license with no expiration. Some copying privileges.

Here’s the ordering link: https://dashboard.editionguard.com/products/morgaan-sinclair-haqhq/epub-file-individual-for-paradise-revisited-a-mythic-comparison-of-john-miltons-paradise-lost-and-the-navajo-creation-story-rkhgeke

II. PDF version with Adobe DRM

for PC, MAC. Adobe Reader, Barnes & Noble Nook, and most other generic eBook readers. $62.50 (print book is $124.95). Perpetual license with no expiration. Some copying privileges.

Here’s the ordering link: https://dashboard.editionguard.com/products/morgaan-sinclair-haqhq/pdf-file-indy-paradise-revisited-a-mythic-comparison-of-john-miltons-paradise-lost-and-the-navajo-creation-story-rkhprge

BIG NOTE:

At this time, we’re not offering an Amazon Kindle-readable AZW or MOBI files.

The reason it that their file security is COMPLETELY BLOWN. There are a dozen very effective apps for stripping all the Amazon-applied file security in a flash, leaving the author’s work 100% vulnerable for rip-off in seconds. In some cases, books have been stolen and were in press in the far east in a week. So, until that gets fixed, we can’t do it. We hope they resolve this problem, and we know they’re trying. As soon as Amazon lets us know it’s all good again, we’ll be back with a new version.

Now, here are some goodies for you … A gallery of images from the book … and an oldie-goldie photo of Paul in his 50s and a wee book write-up. And then, there’s Paul’s outrageous “no smoking” photo, a family favorite that captures his spiritual perfectly.

Gallery

Paul G. Zolbrod, Ph.D.

At the age of 90, English professor Paul Zolbrod, Ph.D.—Fulbright Scholar and Mellon Fellow, author of five books and two teleplays, occupant of an endowed chair at Allegheny College and a National Endowment of the Humanities grantee twice—had left little undone. This book represents this surpassing scholar’s last great dream: to provide a comparison of Paradise Lost, the premier epic creation poem written in the English language, with the Navajo creation story that had existed as oral literature for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years.

It was Dr. Zolbrod’s passionate wish to reveal the boundless spiritual wisdom and deep cultural beauty of Navajo oral literature, indeed all Native American literature, on the hope it will be recognized as equal in every way to the world’s most esteemed written works. With this book, his quest has met with the most spectacular success.

This work of 532 pages and 147 images represents the talents of more than 250 painters, weavers, dancers, photographers, sand painters, galleries, museums, scholars, mythologists, symbologists, editors, and university and Library of Congress research librarians.

And finally, just a wee wink. He was a rascal.

The Poly WHAT?

The day David Attenborough asked to join my ‘gang’

They say never meet your heroes; they are wrong (at least, some of the time…

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7 months ago · 8 likes · Stephanie Vilner-Sheppard

This is a wonderful article that Stephanie gave me permission to pass along to you. If this is any indication of what she’s up to, please do follow or subscribe to her newsletter.

Joyous! Just joyous!

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There will be almost no one who will not recognize his voice. Britannica writes of him:

David Attenborough (born May 8, 1926, Isleworth, London, England) is an English broadcaster, writer, and naturalist noted for his innovative educational television programs, especially the nine-part Life series. Over a career that has spanned decades, Attenborough has brought the wonders and diversity of Earth’s ecosystems to home audiences around the world, combining scientific insight with compelling storytelling, usually delivered through his avuncular on-camera persona and voice narration. His work has transformed the nature documentary, setting new standards for visual excellence and environmental awareness and ultimately inspiring generations to appreciate and protect the natural world.

In honor of this incredible milestone in a life worth celebrating, New Scientist gives us a great list of unmissable documentaries this man has given us. You’ll find it here:

The greatest David Attenborough documentaries you really need to watch

To mark David Attenborough turning 100, New Scientist staff have been set a tricky task: pick your favourite of his many amazing documentaries...

By New Scientist

CLICK THIS LINK:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2525104-the-greatest-david-attenborough-documentaries-you-really-need-to-watch/

Meanwhile, Sir David champions a very important issue in advocating for worldwide population awareness as we are now well beyond any sustainable level. His stance has not made all quarters happy: vested interests who want women breeding for their religion, for their race, for their political stances do not want population control. They want to illegalize birth control as well as abortion, and, if possible take away women’s rights to work, drive, and even vote. These attempts are not just about breeding and reversing population losses in the richest countries or the majority populations being lost by whites, but control majority controls are a very dark thread the fabric of continuing to breed ourselves off the face of the earth. See:

So, happy birthday, Sir David!!! Thank you for your love and for your light. And stay around for as long as it feels good. You make this whole planet a brighter place.

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Alexis Charles Henri Clérel, Comte de Tocqueville (1805-1859) was a French aristocrat, member of the French National Assembly and the Chamber of Deputies and one of the West’s earliest and most influential political scientists. After a trip to America in the early 1830s, he arrived home in France with a mountain of handwritten notes, and then authored the groundbreaking Democracy in America in two volumes in 1835 and 1840. According to Joshua Kaplan, one of his several purposes in writing Democracy in America was to prepare the French to deal effectively with the confusing shift going on between its past— a fading aristocratic order—and its emerging democracy.

The most spectacular passages in Democracy in America, however, are the messages for America herself, and likely for every powerful representative democracy that will follow—or survive—her. Tucked in Chapter XV of Book One is his staggeringly prescient discussion of the deadly risk in democracies of The Tyranny of the Majority.

Tocqueville writes:

Despotism lies at both extremes of sovereignty: when one man reigns, and when the majority governs. Despotism is tied to omnipotence, whatever its bearer. … The omnipotence of the majority seems to me the greatest flaw of democratic governments and the source of their most serious dangers.

Tocqueville seemed to think that this was an either-or situation: either the despot was a sovereign or the majority was the despot. This would not prove true in our time.

The Trump Circle of Hell

When de Tocqueville visited America almost 200 years ago, the great experiment was a mere 50 years old. As we’ll see, the French philosopher wouldn’t be able to see everything coming and would misunderstand the American court system in a way that would lead to a few misconceptions; on the other hand, he would see the broad brushstrokes of our fate in paint that was barely dry.

And where are we now? In a deadly triple confluence:

• At the helm, an unchallenged autocrat of limited intellectual capacity and destroyed emotional balance—a selfish, self-centered, narcissistic, cruel rapist and fraudster, prone to capricious and dangerous actions against individuals who challenge him and nations with something he wants or something he can use to deflect from credible claims of his wrongdoing. Reminding him that statues that Nero and Commodus erected to themselves in the Coliseum and the Forum no longer exist—Commodus’s destroyed in the 3rd century CE and Nero’s, in the 5th—don’t seem to stop the grand self-aggrandizer from trying to build a tawdry ballroom and erect an arch, the design of which is a European rip-off.

• The winds beneath this false god’s wings are an ultra-conservative White Christian Nationalist religious sect dedicated to supporting him to achieve racial and gender apartheid and domination and to establish a religious state in which, contrary to the settled policy of separation of church and state, everybody has to say, think, and read what they approve and make love in the ways they sanction. Part and parcel of maintaining White majority in America will be the complete subjugation of women to the level of breeding animal. Afghanistan has the highest birth rate in the world right now, because women are allowed nothing else and are not able to refuse the sexual demands of husbands. (By law, men can deny women food if they do.) Afghan women also have the highest rate of maternal deaths in childbirth of any group of women in the world. There is a reason Christian Nationalists are called, by some, the American Taliban.

• Fatefully, our highest-level court, spiked with the liquors of Alito, Thomas, Kavanaugh, Coney Barrett, and Roberts, seems intent upon dismantling the rule of law, gutting voting rights of minorities, blocking women from basic rights afforded all citizens in this culture, decimating freedom of knowledge (access to all literature), suspending freedom from torture, summary deportation, and arbitrary seizure of legal citizens’ rights of residence, and removing protections against arrest without warrant by masked police so violent they have killed.

It seems as if de Tocqueville was not seeing America prone to creating the kind of fanatical religious state cum oligarchy we are suffering now: he seemed to trust religion as a kind of social and cultural cement, “a safety valve for passions that might otherwise feed a revolutionary torrent dangerous to individual liberty.” Religion was safe, and even positive, so long as it was kept separate from the state.

We do not have the happy separation of church and state that de Tocqueville assumed, though it is fair that he assumed it. For him and for the people and the government of the United States in his time, the separation of church and state was settled policy. And indeed it would have been, for the United States was most emphatically not formed on Christian precepts but Deist ones, and the question of religious influence in government had been vigorously debated and resolved in Revolutionary times. See:

No man shall be compelled to frequent or support religious worship or ministry or shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but all men shall be free to profess and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion.

-Thomas Jefferson. Excerpted from A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom, drafted in 1777.

Alexis de Tocqueville believed in a law that transcended human law, but it was not religious law: it was the law of justice. The Tocqueville Foundation summarizes his thinking in this way:

After denouncing “this maxim that, in matters of government, the majority of a people has the right to do anything,” Tocqueville affirms the preeminence of universal values, of humanity itself, over the positive laws of any particular nation, laws which, though legal, may still be illegitimate:

“There exists a general law that has been made, or at least adopted, not only by the majority of a particular people, but by the majority of all humankind. This law is justice. Justice, then, forms the limit of every nation’s rights (...). I appeal, not from the sovereignty of the people, but to the sovereignty of the human race.”

And he continues:

“I think, therefore, that there must always exist somewhere a social power superior to all others (...). Omnipotence in itself seems to me an evil and dangerous thing. Its exercise exceeds the strength of man, whoever he may be; and I see only God who may safely be all-powerful, because His wisdom and justice are always equal to His power. There is no authority on earth so respectable in itself, nor vested with such sacred rights, that I would consent to leave it unchecked and free to dominate without limits.

Whenever I see the right and the means of doing everything granted to any power whatsoever—whether called people or king, democracy or aristocracy, whether exercised in a monarchy or a republic—I say: here lies the seed of tyranny, and I seek to live under other laws.”

Unattributed Summary of the Tyranny of the Majority from the Tocqueville Foundation at https://tocquevillefoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Tyranny-of-the-majority.pdf

The Supreme Court from Hell

If de Tocqueville would have been shocked by the creeping appropriation of political power by the Radical Religious Right, he would have been far more badly shaken by the presence of the Roberts court.

What the court did this week was a wholesale grab for political power for Republicans—by attacking any hope people of color had of having any representation in Congress to speak their interests—for they most often vote Democrat because the best efforts on their behalf have largely come from the Democratic Party. Nationwide, redrawing Congressional electoral lines to carve up and redistribute the black or Hispanic vote by putting clusters of non-white voters into majority white districts destroys any possibility they will see a face of their own color in an American Congress.

And if past experience stands, when people of color have their votes cancelled in this way, they stop voting. And that’s exactly what Roberts, Alito, Thomas, Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett mean to happen.

There is a spurious argument that sounds good on the surface. It goes:

The Democrats have forced us to draw an electoral district that favors blacks in Louisiana!

This disenfranchises whites!

It violates equal rights!

Sounds good, doesn’t it?

Until you realize that electoral districts are often ARBITRARILY DRAWN, OFTEN BY THE PEOPLE IN POWER TO MAKE SURE THEY WIN THE NEXT ELECTION.

Now, not all states do this. In an attempt soften the terrible blow to minorities this often represents, some states instituted commissions to ensure the fairness of districting to all citizens. The gold standard among these is California’s Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission. What is the Commission?

California voters authorized the creation of the Commission when they passed the VOTERS FIRST Act (Act) in 2008. It authorized the Commission to draw the new district lines. In 2010, the Congressional Voters FIRST Act added the responsibility of drawing Congressional districts to the Commission. It is defined as a “14-member Commission is made up of five Republicans, five Democrats, and 4 not affiliated with either of those two parties. The Commission must draw the district lines in conformity with strict, nonpartisan rules designed to create districts of relatively equal population that will provide fair representation for all Californians.”

California’s Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission. See officials definitions at https://wedrawthelines.ca.gov/about-us/

But what happened this year saw the Commission sidelined: Trump encouraged red states to gerrymander their districts to eliminate or neutralize majority black and Hispanic districts. What does that look like? It looks like this:

The impact of doing this would shift House seats from Democrats to Republicans in some states—as many as five or more. The immediate response by Gavin Newsom, governor of California, as well as other Democratic governors was to respond in kind: if Trump was going to engineer a basically fraudulent Midterm elections win, they had, they felt, no choice but to beat them at their own game.

But then the plot thickens.

Now the Supreme Court Has Gutted the Voting Rights Act

Into this already complicated state of affairs came a Supreme Court case called Louisiana v. Callais (2026).

Writes NPR:

For decades, the landmark law that came out of the Civil Rights Movement protected the collective voting power of racial minorities when political maps are redrawn. Its provisions have also boosted the number of seats in the House of Representatives filled by Black lawmakers.

That’s largely because in many Southern states — where voting is often polarized between a Republican-supporting white majority and a Democratic-supporting Black minority — political mapmakers have drawn a certain kind of district to get in line with the Voting Rights Act’s Section 2 provisions. In these districts, racial-minority voters make up a population large enough to have a realistic opportunity of electing their preferred candidates.

But at an October hearing last year for the redistricting case about Louisiana’s congressional map, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority appeared inclined to issue this year another in a series of decisions that have weakened the Voting Rights Act — this time its Section 2 protections in redistricting.

That kind of ruling could put at risk at least 15 House districts currently represented by a Black member of Congress, an NPR analysis has found. Each of those districts has a sizable racial-minority population, is in a state where Republican lawmakers control redistricting and, for now at least, is likely protected by Section 2. Factoring in newly redrawn districts in Missouri and Texas, which were not included in NPR’s analysis, could raise the tally of at-risk districts higher.

What would that look like?

The districts in yellow, now non-white-majority districts, would disappear, and their black or Latino elected officials with them.

“A Supreme Court ruling could bring historic drop in Black representation in Congress” at https://www.npr.org/2026/01/08/nx-s1-5646525/supreme-court-voting-rights-congressional-black-caucus

There is no such thing as NEUTRAL GROUND in districting. However you district, somebody’s going to get privileged. Where this becomes VERY unfair is in the cases of minorities. Majorities—Whites—will not lose much representation if districts are drawn to conform, roughly, to the percentage of populations in a specific state. In all of the states in the map above, Whites are a majority. If there is no consideration of racial percentages, virtually every Black representative in Congress will go home, replaced by a White representative because Republican White state legislatures will make sure there is NOT ONE district where Blacks CAN elect someone that looks like them.

So, when Samuel Alito—in writing a court majority decision that Robert Reich accurately termed shit—tells you that to create districts based on percentages of racial populations is racial prejudice, it is not: it is an attempt to create a balance of representation as required by the Constitution.

Racial prejudice is making sure that no Black person is ever elected to Congress again by creating districts that always come out MAJORITY WHITE.

Alexis de Tocqueville’s Warning

In warning of the Tyranny of the Majority, de Tocqueville saw this coming. He was wrong about some things. He misread and confused the American legal system with those of England and France, and this resulted in a few mistakes.

But he did not misread the Tyranny of the Majority that has swallowed America whole. He accurately read the ongoing racism in the United States. He predicted the extermination of the Indian nations, and so far they survive, if barely. He predicted that the majority would sideline and disenfranchise the intelligentsia in favor of a deadly mediocrity.

But his most crucial warning is this:

A majority whose omnipotence comes to full flower is a star doomed to fall. In its failures to protect the rights and representations of its minorities are held the seeds of its own destruction. In such a case, it is no longer a majority but a tyranny that is the enemy of all. And in the mirrored reflection of the majority—the rich, the white, the corporate collective, the market—is shown the prettied-up face of the butcher and abuser of masses. No culture can survive that does not protect the most vulnerable among its numbers.

Here endeth the lesson.

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PolitiSage Resources on the Supreme Court

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Don’t let this slip from your mind. It’s largely why we’re in such a metric ton of morasses. Keep speaking out. Keeping telling the stories of “nobody’s girls.”

Our deepest thanks go to those of you who support us with your monthly and yearly subscriptions—or a very divine founding membership. If you’re not already a paid subscriber, we hope you’ll consider becoming one—as the more support we have, the more we can write.

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The New York Times put it succinctly this morning as the Hungarians went to the polls:

Over 16 years, Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s party has repeatedly tweaked the electoral system to its advantage, making the vote free, but not entirely fair.

Their article, Many Polls Say Orban Will Lose. But He Has an Edge Even Before Voting Begins, is, even after the fact, a brilliant short history of this craven tyrant’s manipulations of his country, of the war in Ukraine, and of a learning-disabled Donald Trump, who heeded his advice between his first and second administrations and won again. But the question of whether Trump really did win the last election, given the NSA’s evaluation of the last election, will haunt Trump all his days. And of course, if Trump went into this last election as the acolyte of Bolsonaro and Orbán, the adept manipulation of voting machines and voting rules—not to say the possible interference of Elon Musk—he would have used every trick they have played on everyone.

These three, known in this house as the Tawdry Triumvirate, have done incalculable damage to their countries, their allies, and their planet. And their see-saw effect has been deadly:

Bolsonaro, the Trump of the Tropics

First, there’s Bolsonaro, who let the Amazon burn and infamously said that he could eat an Amazon Basin indigenous person—a black person, of course.

Racist, sexist, vile, and corrupt, Bolsonaro came to Florida just after his defeat by Lula da Silva, to hang out near Donald Trump, who deeply admires him.

But Bolsonaro lost his welcome in the United States and was sent back home to face charges that he attempted to have Lula da Silva, the man who defeated him, killed. That’s killed, as in assassinated.

Bolsonaro also tried to overthrow the government but couldn’t quite pull it off.

He’s doing 26 years in a Brazilian prison with the melodrama of allegedly having a serious problem with asthma. He may. But that’s not the reason he lost a medical reprieve that sent him home with an ankle bracelet. Friends tried to hack the tracking device on his lovely anklet and had a plane ready to take him out of the country. Brazilian courts yanked his chain all the way back to a prison cell, and he won’t be treated to Ankle Bracelet Heaven again, ever.

Trump has tried everything to get Bolsonaro, known as the “Trump of the Tropics,” out of jail. He tried to bully da Silva and the Brazil supreme court, to no avail. Writes Time Magazine, Trump posted a letter to current Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Truth Social. His Eloquence speaks:

“I knew and dealt with former President Jair Bolsonaro, and respected him greatly, as did most other Leaders of Countries,” Trump wrote. “The way that Brazil has treated former President Bolsonaro, a Highly Respected Leader throughout the World during his Term, including by the United States, is an international disgrace. This Trial should not be taking place. It is a Witch Hunt that should end IMMEDIATELY!”

Of course, Bolsonaro’s attempted coup drew comparisons at the time to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection in the U.S. by Trump supporters after Trump lost his first reelection campaign.

Mr. Grammar Savvy (speciality: upper and lower cases) continues:

“Brazil is doing a terrible thing on their treatment of former President Jair Bolsonaro. I have watched, as has the World, as they have done nothing but come after him, day after day, night after night, month after month, year after year! He is not guilty of anything, except having fought for THE PEOPLE. I have gotten to know Jair Bolsonaro, and he was a strong Leader, who truly loved his Country — Also, a very tough negotiator on TRADE. His Election was very close and now, he is leading in the Polls. This is nothing more, or less, than an attack on a Political Opponent — Something I know much about! It happened to me, times 10, and now our Country is the ‘HOTTEST’ in the World! The Great People of Brazil will not stand for what they are doing to their former President. I’ll be watching the WITCH HUNT of Jair Bolsonaro, his family, and thousands of his supporters, very closely. The only Trial that should be happening is a Trial by the Voters of Brazil — It’s called an Election. LEAVE BOLSONARO ALONE!”

(Really, nothing written by anyone indicts Trump’s language skills more profoundly than his own prose. If he were French, he would be indicted by the murder of his Mother Language.)

Trump raised Brazil’s tariffs to 50% to “rectify the grave injustices of the current regime” and make the U.S.-Brazil trade relationship more “reciprocal,” despite the fact that the U.S. running a trade surplus with Brazil. Trump also announced another 10% additional tariff on countries that align themselves with the “anti-American” policies of the BRICS group, of which Brazil is a founding member.

In a post on X, Lula forcefully rebuked Trump’s message, writing:

“Brazil is a sovereign nation with independent institutions and will not accept any form of tutelage.” … [Brazil’s judicial proceedings] “are not subject to any interference or threats that could compromise the independence of national institutions” … “F0reedom of expression must not be confused with aggression or violent practices.” [All interests] “whether domestic or foreign—must comply with Brazilian law in order to operate within our territory,” and that “tariff increases will be addressed in accordance with Brazil’s Economic Reciprocity Law.”

Brazil’s Reciprocity Law states that Brazil can suspend concessions with other countries in trade, investments, and obligations if unilateral measures imposed on Brazil harm its economic competitiveness.

According to CNN: “This marks the first time in months another country has threatened to match Trump’s tariff threat.”

“Sovereignty, respect and the unwavering defense of the interests of the Brazilian people are the values that guide our relationship with the world,” Lula concluded.

Bolsonaro is still in jail and will likely die there.

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Orbán

So … just wondering … why would Orbán visit Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago just months before the last election? Reports AP in the summer of 2025.

The European Union’s longest-serving leader has become an icon to some conservative populists for championing what he calls “illiberal democracy,” which includes restrictions on immigration and LGBTQ+ rights. He has also cracked down on the press and judiciary in Hungary and been accused by the EU of violating rule-of-law and democracy standards.

The Mar-a-Lago meeting — Orbán’s second since March — came as the latest stop on what he calls a “peace mission” aimed at finding a path toward ending Russia’s war in Ukraine.

[Read: the complete destruction of Ukraine and a redux of the starvation and murder of a million Ukrainians in the early 20th century. What a sweetie this guy is.]

Widely considered to have the warmest relations with the Kremlin among all EU leaders, Orbán made an unannounced visit last week to Kyiv, where he held talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Some of his critics interpreted the Kyiv visit as a sign that Hungary could take steps closer to the EU mainstream’s pro-Ukraine stance as it took over the bloc’s six-month rotating presidency earlier this month.

But those hopes were dashed when he made an unannounced trip to Moscow days later to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, a rare trip to Russia by a European leader that drew condemnation from Kyiv and other European capitals.

This last week, the ever-failing, ever-dark, ever-humiliating, ever tacky0 J.D. Vance cheered on Hungary’s dirtiest politician in history, and he lost. J.D., that makes you two for two this week.

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Donald J. Trump, aka “The Loser”

So, first Donald Trump threatens Brazil over Bolsonaro, sends Vance to Hungary and then to negotiate the end of his stupid war with Iran—Lordy, how badly can one man be set up in one week?!—and now, here he is, all alone, with a 39.6 approval rating, an unwinnable war of his own making, a hopping mad electorate, and a wife trying to do a preemptive strike on Amanda Ungaro, who has every skeleton in Melania’s closet—comprising a veritable Wadi-us-Salaam* of graves—a whitewash that will fail.

Meanwhile, what do we get? An Arc de Trashy, a one-week reprieve on the tawdriest ballroom ever to damn Earth in the eyes of every peering alien civilization, and a violent man headed for defeat and probably prison.

And he has an adolescent drunk at the helm of the biggest war machine on earth. What the F-word-in-gerund-form + f-word is wrong with these people?

What do we want? Two words: 25th Amendment, and the Republicans better play ball now, or they will pay for this with the destruction of their whole party. It won’t be violent. They’ll just have died of the flesh-eating virus they let loose upon the world.

• Wadi-us-Salaam cemetery in Najaf, Iraq spreads across 600 hectares (1,485 acres) and contains five millions graves.

It’s an isolated and sparse place. Chukotka is the easternmost province of Russia, a sprawling 737,700-square-mile “autonomous Okrug” and federal possession of Vladimir Putin’s personal fiefdom. It has almost no roads and a population of only 50,526 people—about 0.1 people per square kilometer—or just one person every ten square kilometers. And its population is falling due to migration out of the area and low birth rates.

Alaska being long sold to the United States, it is the only part of Russia that still lies in the Western Hemisphere, and, in fact, it shares its eastern ocean with Alaska, which also borders the Bering Sea. Dotted with volcanic and stellar-impact craters, it is a place almost untouched by time. Its people are largely ethnic Russians, the Chukchi and other indigenous peoples. Their major sources of income are reindeer herding, whale hunting, and fishing.

So why the rusting oil drums on the Chukotkan shoreline of the Bering Sea? Chukotka has large reserves of oil, natural gas, coal, gold, and tungsten, and the oil is slowly being harvested by Russian interests. It is unlikely that any of this oil wealth will trickle down the people who live there. But even this far from major shipping ports or vast, erg-gulping industries, oil is the enforced source of energy.

The Oil Curse in Developing Countries

In 2013, Michael L. Ross gave us a book called The Oil Curse, published by Princeton University Press. It specifically addresses the phenomenon in the developing world where oil: nationalized oil results in depressed and uneven development. Princeton UP describes the book’s findings this way:

Countries that are rich in petroleum have less democracy, less economic stability, and more frequent civil wars than countries without oil. …

Ross traces the oil curse to the upheaval of the 1970s, when oil prices soared and governments across the developing world seized control of their countries’ oil industries. Before nationalization, the oil-rich countries looked much like the rest of the world; today, they are 50 percent more likely to be ruled by autocrats—and twice as likely to descend into civil war—than countries without oil.

The Oil Curse shows why oil wealth typically creates less economic growth than it should; why it produces jobs for men but not women; and why it creates more problems in poor states than in rich ones.

I encourage everyone to read this book, as The Oil Curse outlines many problems everyone needs to understand right now.

And now to a couple of deeper points in the most recent hideous head-rearing of oil wealth. And I write this series because what we are seeing is that everyone on this tiny, beautiful blue marble is breathlessly praying that Iran stops threats to the Strait of Hormuz and returns life to normal.

No! don’t JUST hope things return to “normal.” We need normal plus CHANGE.

We just saw the president of the United States lose his mind after the closure of the Strait of Hormuz for less than a month.

Now, Donald Trump—variously know as His Taco-ness and the Mango Mussolini—is the person most emotionally ill-suited to power that has likely ruled a country since Nero.

Here is a batch of resources we’ve gathered about Trump’s Mental Health. Read ‘em and weep.

Donald Trump is a bully, a serial philanderer, a convicted rapist, a convicted fraudster, and, very likely, a pedophile. It is also likely he started this war to deflect attention from his hoarding the Epstein files that likely incriminate him and any number of other high-profile craven men. I give you as just one example the fact that Bill Gates will testify before Congress on this manner in a matter of days.

Having already overthrown the government (though not, apparently, duly elected) of Venezuela for oil—having also released a former president of Honduras doing time for drug trafficking in a U.S. jail so he can rig the next election and take Honduras’ vast cache of rare earth minerals ripe for the mining—he is likely also salivating over Iran’s oil stores as well as caving to ICC-indicted human rights violator and war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu. After all, Trump so loves the Jews, probably just as much as he loves the Muslims—NOT! He just loves the people at AIPAC who write the checks.

So, off to war goeth Private Bonespurs.

In just a few weeks, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz drove the price of oil from $65 / barrel earlier this year to $111/barrel the last time I went to the pump, which was yesterday, the day the sticker shock caused me to go into hypertensive crisis at the pump.

The world is screaming for Trump’s head on a platter.

The simple fact is, the whole world went nuts the minute the Strait of Hormuz became a problem. It’s not that the U.S. gets most of its oil from the Gulf region: it doesn’t. But major refineries are there, and that heavily affects most of the people in this world. Last week, Europe’s oil supply started to dry up just weeks after the Iran crisis began with Israel’s mass murder of Iran’s ruling elite; this week, supplies start to dry up in Asia. And the reason it took even this long is that oil tankers were steaming through the seas towards their destinations, having passed through the Strait more than a month ago.

It is not, you see, just the fact that Trump threatened to blow up a civilization that has its origins in major Bronze Age civilizations from 5,000 years ago that’s driving the impetus to remove Trump from office with the 25th Amendment or impeachment because he is either too clinically insane or too vicious to be allowed the kind of power he has—or both. I’ll go with “both.”

The world is enraged at him because in his completely narcissistic quest to avoid all responsibility for his hideous abuse of women and his completely self-centered attempt to glorify himself by putting his tawdry faux-gold Walmart trophies all over the Oval Office and build a similarly tacky ballroom and put his name on it he has just threatened the stability of every nation on this planet.

Already in India, 3,000 children die every day of starvation. When the price of oil goes up, the cost of delivering food to outlying areas rises significantly. It is the women and children who will die because in rural Indian families: they only get food when the men have eaten all they want to complete satisfaction. The women and children get what’s left over. What do you think happens when oil becomes, quite suddenly, 65% more expensive?

It’s coming: Crisis Dementia will hit again.

Crisis Dementia is what I call the human tendency to go right back to sleep after the crisis associated with a wake-up call stops hurting like hell.

You can already see this happening. Just one day after Trump threatened to obliterate a nation of 79.9 million people, the world is breathing a sigh of relief.

But this is madness. What got us into this is not just that America elected the man who is arguably one of the worst citizens the country ever produced but that Trump himself is not the real origin, source or ongoing threat of this crisis. The real problem is that we are being involuntarily forced to keep oil as our most prevalent and prominent source of energy. We are being chained to oil by the oil-producing countries and the ultra rich who own most of the oil wealth through stocks and buy governments because they enforce the destruction of alternative energy so they can stay rich. They block the way of escape while the climate collapses and greed plows under the people who are already destitute.

If you die, they don’t care.

If you can’t afford food, they don’t care.

If women’s rights get trashed, they don’t care.

If kids starve to death, they don’t care.

If the environment’s temperature rises, they don’t care.

If storms get worse, they don’t care.

After all, if you’re Mark Zuckerberg, you can just build yourself a bunker in Hawaii and live in the lap of luxury while water wars rage and people die because the electrical grids went down because we refused to tap the winds, the seas, and the sun for all the energy we could possibly ever have wanted.

We need to get this right this time.

We’ve had oil crises before. Anybody who remembers the mile-long (not kidding) lines at the pumps in the 1970s knows we’ve been here before. We have also been at the place of realizing the sands pouring through the hourglass towards a climate disaster are coming nearer and nearer the last grains that will drop.

But a week or so after the last Category 5 hurricane or the last flood that covers the entire state of Iowa or the last deluge that changes the course of rivers in California or the last drought season that lasts in the Southwest for 25 years, we go on as if nothing is going wrong.

It’s not all right. We’re not all right. It’s going wrong all the time. Plastic fills the oceans. The AMOC ocean circulation is slowing down, and when it stops, we get the Younger Dryas Period, an ice age that has an onset time of no more than 10 months and causes the mean temperature of the earth to drop 40 or more degrees in a single season.

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And the social and economic ills that befall every one of us on this earth, but for a fraction of 1% of the people, are sourced largely in an economic crisis traced to the environmental impacts, the social privileging, and the uneven racial distribution of oil wealth, the ties of oil wealth to governments, and the enslavement of women to the male-privilege system that runs both. That’s where Islamic radical sharia law — and Christian radical Charia law — come in as the enforcing agencies of patriarchy. Oil wealth is, very near its core, an expression, intended or not, or patriarchal power.

The Patriarchy is up to his elbows in blood, only this time, it’s not red, it’s black.

This series will continue in a few days with a discussion of the history of Iran’s oil, the overthrow of Mossadeh, the Iranian Revolution, the nationalization of its oil, and the enslavement of its women by the religious hierarchy made rich by it.

Thanks for reading.

The Daily Kos, calling Trump the “Maestro of Mendacity, the Prince of Prevarication” lays it out for us:

Trump has told at least 170,000 lies in the last 10 years. The calculation is simple. Washington Post famously documented 30,573 lies Trump told in his first 4-year term. That computes to 21 lies on average per day. Since 2015 when he began running for the presidency, that 21 lies per day average computes to 85,000 total lies. However, that is just his public lies. It is highly plausible, almost assuredly true, that Trump lies as much in private conversations and meetings. He can’t help himself. So double the total and that equals 170,000 lies. That is just a staggering amount of dishonesty.

And now he is a “war president” to go along with his naming as much of the world as possible after himself.

And yet it gives major TV broadcasters NO problem to let this man lie to the world some more with a global megaphone while subjecting this drivel to INSTANTANEOUS, ON-AIR FACT CHECKING, which should be requisite any time this narcissist opens his lying mouth.

Meanwhile, the result of Trump’s speech, allegedly meant to calm America and the markets about the war is not what he intended. Business Insider reports the results that Trump’s speech are that:

• Oil surged and US stocks sunk after president Trump struck a combative tone in his latest speech about Iran.

• Traders worry that further military escalation will wreak havoc on global energy flows.

BI further noted that :

• Crude prices have soared more than 75% this year.

Way to go, Donsy!!!!

Any Saudi or Israeli Boots on the Ground? Of course not. Why? Because that’s what they bought when they gave Trump money.

Meanwhile, he and Hegseth, the Eternal Adolescent, have moved 12,000 U.S. troops to the Middle East, along with a Mons Olympus-sized mountain of military hardware. This implies a ground invasion, and for details on this whole war, I sent you to Malcolm Nance at the Black Man Spy Substack. He’s the best. Follow this guy at:

https://substack.com/@malcolmnance

Meanwhile, Iranian President Pezeshkian wrote the American people a letter yesterday. It, too, is full of “false innocent victim” crap, and I will point it out as we go through it:

“In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

“To the people of the United States of America, and to all those who, amid a flood of distortions and manufactured narratives, continue to seek the truth and aspire to a better life:

Well, we’ve certainly suffered that!

“Iran — by this very name, character, and identity — is one of the oldest continuous civilisations in human history. Despite its historical and geographical advantages at various times, Iran has never, in its modern history, chosen the path of aggression, expansion, colonialism, or domination.

Pants on fire! Of course it has. It has enslaved its women. It has targeted the Ismailis with all kinds of abuse. It has arrested, jailed, tortured and executed political dissidents and gays. It has made war on the Kurdish peoples. It has continued operations inside Iraq almost 40 years after the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War, it still had butchers inside Iraq. I give as evidence that Iraq is where General Qasem Soleimani of the Iranian Quds Force was assassinated in 2020. It was Soleimani, in tandem with Syrian Hezbollah, that, according to the Mossad, “tightened the noose around Israel’s ncck.” However, there is no evidence at all that Iran knew ahead of time that Yahyah Sinwar would carry out the October 7th music festival attack that killed more than 2,000 Israelis and started the current war. It has been an integral element of the Sunni-Shi’a conflict for 1400 years, starting the day the Prophet Muhammad died without making the Iranian Ali the leader of all Islam.

Even after enduring occupation, invasion, and sustained pressure from global powers — and despite possessing military superiority over many of its neighbours — Iran has never initiated a war. Yet it has resolutely and bravely repelled those who have attacked it.

This is technically true, but it initiated and has sustained an intermittent attack against Israel for 40 years through its support for Hezbollah in Syria and its support for HAMAS in Gaza, which organization is declared a terrorist organization for every good reason I can think of. Iran has been in a proxy war with Israel for 40 years.

“The Iranian people harbour no enmity toward other nations, including the people of America, Europe, or neighbouring countries. Even in the face of repeated foreign interventions and pressures throughout their proud history, Iranians have consistently drawn a clear distinction between governments and the peoples they govern. This is a deeply rooted principle in Iranian culture and collective consciousness — not a temporary political stance.

If that’s the case, why are you constantly calling the United States “the Great Satan”??? Hmmmm? Hmmmmm? Is that not a slur against all Americans?

“For this reason, portraying Iran as a threat is neither consistent with historical reality nor with present-day observable facts. Such a perception is the product of political and economic whims of the powerful — the need to manufacture an enemy in order to justify pressure, maintain military dominance, sustain the arms industry, and control strategic markets. In such an environment, if a threat does not exist, it is invented.

Well, you guys should know. By declaring gays, Ismailis, Iraqis, Israelis, Americans, the Kurds, the Saudis, and any woman without a veil an enemies of the state, you have mastered this technique. Any repressive state MUST create both an external enemy and an internal enemy to continue to legitimize its existence as a possessor of power. [Read Jerrold Post on this.]

“Within this same framework, the United States has concentrated the largest number of its forces, bases, and military capabilities around Iran — a country that, at least since the founding of the United States, has never initiated a war. Recent American aggressions launched from these very bases have demonstrated how threatening such a military presence truly is. Naturally, no country confronted with such conditions would forgo strengthening its defensive capabilities. What Iran has done — and continues to do — is a measured response grounded in legitimate self-defence, and by no means an initiation of war or aggression.

“Relations between Iran and the United States were not originally hostile, and early interactions between the Iranian and American people were not marred with hostility or tension. The turning point, however, was the 1953 coup d’etat — an illegal American intervention aimed at preventing the nationalisation of Iran’s own resources. That coup disrupted Iran’s democratic process, reinstated dictatorship, and sowed deep distrust among Iranians toward US policies. This distrust deepened further with America’s support for the Shah’s regime, its backing of Saddam Hussein during the imposed war of the 1980s, the imposition of the longest and most comprehensive sanctions in modern history, and ultimately, unprovoked military aggression — twice, in the midst of negotiations —against Iran.

True. All of it.

“Yet all these pressures have failed to weaken Iran. On the contrary, the country has grown stronger in many areas: literacy rates have tripled —from roughly 30 per cent before the Islamic Revolution to over 90pc today; higher education has expanded dramatically; significant advances have been achieved in modern technology; healthcare services have improved; and infrastructure has developed at a pace and scale incomparable to the past. These are measurable, observable realities that stand independent of fabricated narratives.

And Iran has jailed its Nobel Prize winners, its critics, its journalists, its film makers, its women’s rights activists, and its religious minorities. It has, with staggering frequency, detained foreigners accusing them of collaboration with the CIA. It has killed tens of thousands of its own citizens in the streets when they have required an end to the Islamic regime.

“At the same time, the destructive and inhumane impact of sanctions, war, and aggression on the lives of the resilient Iranian people must not be underestimated. The continuation of military aggression and recent bombings profoundly affect people’s lives, attitudes, and perspectives. This reflects a fundamental human truth: when war inflicts irreparable harm on lives, homes, cities, and futures, people will not remain indifferent toward those responsible.

“This raises a fundamental question: Exactly which of the American people’s interests are truly being served by this war? Was there any objective threat from Iran to justify such behavior? Does the massacre of innocent children, the destruction of cancer-treatment pharmaceutical facilities, or boasting about bombing a country ‘back to the stone ages’ serve any purpose other than further damaging the United States’ global standing?

Point taken.

“Iran pursued negotiations, reached an agreement, and fulfilled all its commitments. The decision to withdraw from that agreement, escalate toward confrontation, and launch two acts of aggression in the midst of negotiations were destructive choices made by the US government —choices that served the delusions of a foreign aggressor.

“Attacking Iran’s vital infrastructure — including energy and industrial facilities — directly targets the Iranian people. Beyond constituting a war crime, such actions carry consequences that extend far beyond Iran’s borders. They generate instability, increase human and economic costs, and perpetuate cycles of tension, planting seeds of resentment that will endure for years. This is not a demonstration of strength; it is a sign of strategic bewilderment and an inability to achieve a sustainable solution.

Point taken again.

“Is it not also the case that America has entered this aggression as a proxy for Israel, influenced and manipulated by that regime? Is it not true that Israel, by manufacturing an Iranian threat, seeks to divert global attention away from its crimes toward the Palestinians? Is it not evident that Israel now aims to fight Iran to the last American soldier and the last American taxpayer dollar — shifting the burden of its delusions onto Iran, the region, and the United States itself in pursuit of illegitimate interests?

If this point does not hit home for Americans, it should:

Trump went to war to deflect attention over the Epstein files debacle, over which he has just this morning fired Pam Bondi, making the Bitch Brigade two for two down.

“Is ‘America First’ truly among the priorities of the US government today?

“I invite you to look beyond the machinery of misinformation — an integral part of this aggression — and instead speak with those who have visited Iran. Observe the many accomplished Iranian immigrants —educated in Iran — who now teach and conduct research at the world’s most prestigious universities, or contribute to the most advanced technology firms in the West. Do these realities align with the distortions you are being told about Iran and its people?

And then go talk to every Iranian woman under 30 you can find, and let them tell you what their lives are like.

“Today, the world stands at crossroads. Continuing along the path of confrontation is more costly and futile than ever before. The choice between confrontation and engagement is both real and consequential; its outcome will shape the future for generations to come. Throughout its millennia of proud history, Iran has outlasted many aggressors. All that remains of them are tarnished names in history, while Iran endures —resilient, dignified, and proud.”

And does this mean you will stop funding HAMAS and Hezbollah? Does it mean you will stop torturing your women and gays? Does this mean you will stop disenfranchising the Israelis and stop abusing the Kurds? Does it? Does it? Iran is a totally illegitimate state that has not had a free and fair election in at least 34 years. It is not run by some benign religious potentate. It is run by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp that has financial tentacles all over the world and by the Basij, the Iranian “Stasi” domestic secret police. I’ll know you mean business when you empty Evin Prison of women and dissidents and the people who falsely accuse of spying for leverage with the West.

So, now, after Pereshkian’s noble exercise of the sooty pot calling the greasy kettle black, back to Trump.

Trump is flailing. This was a mistake. Trump is bleeding treasure every day, and soon he’ll be bleeding the blood of Americans all over the ground in Iran.

The Strait of Hormuz is a strategic and tactical nightmare.

Trump’s ace in the hole is that, as he says, America gets little of its imported oil from the Gulf region. So, he’s really socking it to other countries who do. That’s why Starmer just called together 45 oil-producing and -consuming nations to try to work a solution that does not require opening the Strait immediately.

And do you know what that’s going to do to Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, and the UAE? It will be devastating.

Asia ran out of imported oil this week. Next week Europe will run out.

And then America will rapidly start running out of friends, and it’s possible we will NEVER, ever, ever get them back.

Trump did this to cover his ample backside during the Epstein files furor and to pay his “debts” to AIPAC and Israel and the ones brokered by Jared Kushner with Saudi Arabia.

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And that’s why Pereshkian himself is correct when he asks, “Is it not evident that Israel now aims to fight Iran to the last American soldier and the last American taxpayer dollar?”

Yes, it is. And this is why we need to get out of this war and stop defending the current regime in Israel. It is why we should make NO deals with Saudi Arabia. And it is why we must reverse Citizens United and disallow foreign campaign financing—because unless we do, it will be American soldiers and taxpayers who pay the price for Trump’s fat ego and craven lack of soul.

The interactive map from Ms. Magazine is right here:

https://msmagazine.com/2026/02/20/no-kings-protest-map/

Quote of the Day (from Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman):

Bear in mind that on the political right wind and solar power are routinely condemned as “woke.” Real men burn stuff.

Read his whole brilliant article on the Trump Administration’s vicious targeting of alternative energies of all kinds. Bear in mind that on the political right wind and solar power are routinely condemned as “woke.” Real men burn stuff.

Read his whole brilliant article on the Trump Administration’s vicious targeting of alternative energies of all kinds—and follow this guy. He’s the best.

Paul Krugman

The War on Wind Continues

Electricity generation in Texas. Source: Energy Information Agency…

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3 months ago · 902 likes · 231 comments · Paul Krugman

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• NO KINGS

• NO ICE

• PROTECT THE VOTE

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The interactive map from Ms. Magazine is right here:

https://msmagazine.com/2026/02/20/no-kings-protest-map/

Quote of the Day (from Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman):

Bear in mind that on the political right wind and solar power are routinely condemned as “woke.” Real men burn stuff.

Read his whole brilliant article on the Trump Administration’s vicious targeting of alternative energies of all kinds. Bear in mind that on the political right wind and solar power are routinely condemned as “woke.” Real men burn stuff.

Read his whole brilliant article on the Trump Administration’s vicious targeting of alternative energies of all kinds—and follow this guy. He’s the best.

Paul Krugman

The War on Wind Continues

Electricity generation in Texas. Source: Energy Information Agency…

Read more

3 months ago · 902 likes · 231 comments · Paul Krugman

See you Saturday. Sign suggestions:

• NO KINGS

• NO ICE

• PROTECT THE VOTE

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The timing is pure Epstein. The impetus is money, via AIPAC and hidden front organizations, straight into Trump’s election coffers in 2020, and very likely some vague or specific promise to try to keep this man in control of the United States going forward. At first, it was just that Trump handed Americans’ free speech rights over to being defined by Israeli interests as being the following:

Any criticism of Israel or denial of Israel’s so-claimed “right” to the Palestinian Corridor is an act of anti-Semitism.

NO, IT IS NOT.

It is a basic, inviolable free-speech right in this country to disagree—without being punished for it in any way—and to recognize an ICC indictment of Gallant and Netanyahu on grounds they have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity for targeting civilians, starving them, and attempting to commit genocide by bulldozing shelter.

Please see the references at the bottom of this article to access ICC indictments of Sinwar, Netanyahu, and Gallant.

It is the right of every American to say that, although grief will always attend the attempted extermination of the entire Jewish population of earth in World War II, not everything the State of Israel does deserves or should get a pass.

It is not to say that when Israel tries to effect the extermination of the Palestinian population of Gaza it is something they get to do because they were hideously treated by the Christians for 2,000 years and targeted by the Germans in a way so brutal and sadistic it beggars belief.

As the Armenians are not exempt from national and international law, so the Jews also are not exempt.

If the indigenous tribes of North American—56 million of whose ancestors died in the colonization of the Western Hemisphere, are not exempt from obeying tribal, national and international laws—so the Jews AND NETANYAHU SPECIFICALLY are not exempt from following basic standards of human behavior in peace and war.

And when the Rohingya and the Tibetans finally escape the murderous grip of the Chinese government, they will also be subject to local, tribal, national and international human rights conventions—although in the case of these two groups, they have never argued or behaved otherwise.

If you think that Israel isn’t attempting to completely gut Americans’ First Amendment rights—but only in their own self-interest, mind you, and not in the interests of all groups, or Americans in general, and certainly not in the interests of Muslims in general and Palestinians and Palestinian-Americans specifically—just look at what Israeli influence, through the Trump administration, has tried to do at Harvard and Columbia universities. It is what they will continue to do until the Supreme Court, apparently owned lock, stock, and barrel by the Trump Administration and the Radical Right, stops them.

Now I will be the first to say that HAMAS leader Yahyah Sinwar, architect of the October 7th attack on an Israel concert and widespread slaughter in the settlements near the border, deserved the ICC indictment handed down on him—and I perceive his assassination as a legitimate act of war.

But the leaders of both the State of Israel and the United States of America are playing the same game.

“Cry “Havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war.”*

Both Trump and Netanyahu are facing roughly the same fates, which may include any and all of the following:

• Complete and total loss of political power, followed by

• Exposure to criminal impeachment for Constitutional violations, followed by

• Criminal indictments, followed by

• Life in Prison

The Silver Lining for Netanyahu of the October 7th Attacks

As absolutely dirty as I think Netanyahu is, he was absolutely devastated by the October 7th attacks, as was every Jew in Israel, every Jew in the United States, and every Jew worldwide. And for every American, the craven, sadistic slaughter, the taking of hostages—and the keeping of them for years—is worthy the most vociferous condemnation.

HAMAS is an absolute scourge on the Palestinian people, whom it has endlessly used for its own wealth—its billionaire leaders living in luxury in and running its operations from luxurious Qatar—and its endless rages, its impoverishment of its own people, and its virtual enslavement of its own women (very close to Iranian or Saudi levels). HAMAS has for years carried out the dirtiest kinds of terrorist attacks inside Israel, including loading firearms with nails that have penetrated children’s eyes, blowing up buses and pizzerias, and taunting all four religious groups in Jerusalem, and holding a profoundly strict grip on the Temple Mount, and enforcing the Jordanian Wafq to the nth and hyper-insulting degree.

HAMAS has stationed its snipers and saboteurs in kindergartens, schools, and hospitals and fired upon them using children and the sick as human shields, just daring the IDF to attack or retaliate, and stationing the cameras to make the most of the alleged attacks when they fired first.

All the while, they have run a racket on their own children, training them at the toddler level to hate every Jew and to glorify suicide death and murder. Here’s a photograph that says it all, and proves again why HAMAS has been fairly classified as a terrorist organization:

All that said, the Israelis have endlessly encroached on what was agreed to be Palestinian territory, building endless waves of settlements to run Palestinians off the land. Waves of arrests have followed. And while HAMAS fighters fire from behind the lines of children they have run up against the chain-linked fences to use them as human shields.

In retaliation—and out of fear—Israel has for decades refused to let the Palestinians have cement, so the infrastructure of the territories crumbles. It has bulldozed the residences of the relatives of those it believes have committed crimes. It has jailed Palestinians for decades, sometimes without clear legal right to do so, and year after year and decade after decades, Palestinians die in this conflict at a rate four times higher than Israelis do.

Meanwhile, the entire Arab world wrings its hands while HAMAS and Hizbollah, allied with Iran, have lobbed missiles into northern Israel, while the Saudis have gone on TV whining about the treatment of Palestine to deflect attention from their human rights violations and written $25,000 checks to the families of suicide bombers killed in the act of murdering Jews.

Shi’a Iran—arch enemy of Sunnis everywhere and especially of Saudi Arabia—have similarly deflected criticisms of its staggering panoply of human rights aggressions by calling Israel and the United States “the great Satan” (who, in Islam, is iblis, a created being, not a concept). Iran’s insane abuses of its own people, its insane torture prison system, its arrest of foreigners, ever accusing them of being CIA. It has tortured, flayed, and burned students, leaving their charred bodies in the approaches to university buildings, to stop dissent and fair elections. It has tortured and jailed women’s rights activists by the dozens and put Nobel Prize and Cannes winners in lockdown so they could not receive their awards—and SPEAK.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu,

Netanyahu on the Brink

Just before the October 7th attack, Israelis flooded the streets in protest of Netanyahu.

On 21 November 2019, Netanyahu was officially indicted for breach of trust, accepting bribes, and fraud. Netanyahu was immediately required to relinquish his ministry portfolios other than prime minister. Netanyahu's trial in the Jerusalem District Court began on 24 May 2020, with witness testimony starting on 5 April 2021. The prosecution listed 333 witnesses. The prosecution rested in July 2024.

[On October 7th, 2024, HAMAS attacked.]

Netanyahu's testimony in his defense began that December, 2024.

Now what is very worrying about this trial is that first Netanyahu, a la Donald Trump, tried to pretend he had immunity. The Israeli Supreme Court didn’t buy it.

Then, Netanyahu tried to autonomously neuter the Supreme Court so they could not try him, convict him, and remove him from office. This brought people into the streets in a purple rage.

Donald Trump, who refrain from supporting criminals, chides the Supreme Court on behalf of Netanyahu in July of 2025. To quote Mr. ALL CAPS:

"Bibi Netanyahu's trial should be CANCELLED, IMMEDIATELY, or a Pardon given to a Great Hero, who has done so much for the State."

Basically, it was the same pitch Trump made on behalf of Bolsonaro, who tried to overthrow his country and kill the real election winner, Lula da Silva. Da Silva told Trump to take a hike and stop meddling in the affairs of the Brazilian Supreme Court.

In November of 2025, Netanyahu asked for that pardon. He hasn’t yet pulled this off.

Meanwhile, more in reaction to the threat that he’ll be dragged out of office and wind up in prison for decades, he carried out an extermination campaign that has left Gaza in ruins, earned him an indictment for war crimes and crimes against humanity from the ICC, and limited his travel to countries where he can’t be arrested on an international warrant. One of those is the United States, where he and his people have showered a president with so much money, Netanyahu and the American Israel Political Action Committee owns him.

Which brings us back to Donald Trump.

Donald Trump at the Portal to Hades

There are the four of them: Orban, Trump, Netanyahu, and Bolsonaro.

• Bolsonaro is in jail for 27 years.

• Netanyahu, the moment Israelis are willing to rein in his shocking violence and incessant warring, will be in jail for 10 years or heavily fined—and if we’re blessed he’ll be arrested overseas for crimes against humanity, tried by the ICC, convicted, jailed and wind up like Milosevic.

• Orban will likely get away with.

• Trump is going down. This will be harder because the Supreme Court basically gave him a get-out-of-jail free card in his last term and has backed hideous things he’s done. But the Epstein matter is NOT going away.

The timing of this war appears to have had two causes:

1. Israeli intelligence pegged a date on which a huge gathering of Iranian higher-ups was to take place at Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s personal residence, a sprawling, palatial compound in the center of Tehran.

2. Details of Trump’s alleged rape of a 13-year-old girl were found to be “lost” from the files forked over, then found, and simultaneously Pam Bondi got into very, very hot water in refusing to release the rest of the Epstein files, which number in the millions of emails, videos, notes, flight logs, and details from “Rape Island” and now from the ranch Epstein owned in the Southwest, in whose sands the bodies of two girls are alleged to be buried. Bondi is now being threatened with impeachment, and that has to scare Trump to death. She goes, he goes, I think.

So Netanyahu and Trump went to war, and Trump—and the incompetent, adolescent Hegseth—joined him in the most dangerous Wag the Dog scenario in world history.

The Iran War and Grinning Oil Billionaires

What is now threatened is a world oil supply collapse. Oil is up 30% since March 6. Oil billionaires are over the moon right now, raking in cash. But even they know this is a calculated risk.

Trump’s blustering threat to destroy Iran’s energy infrastructure in 48 hours was met with an immediate—and credible—push back that Iran stop all traffic through the Hormuz Strait and destroy every desalination plant in the Persian Gulf area. That would effectively take both oil and water, and every country in the Middle East would collapse in less than six weeks.

Trump has never held any good cards in this bluff. Iran will never surrender. Iranians will die to the last man and kill every Iranian man, woman and child in the process. An as Israeli intel said this morning, their next move will be to create nuclear weapons—which, of course, Trump claimed last summer he’d completely destroyed. Another lie.

This whole thing was a HUGE mistake, and we will be paying it for it in price instability, worsening affordability, and threats of terrorist violence for decades.

And it should never have happened this way.

Oil billionaires chained us to oil. Now it threatens global war and climate disaster.

In 1996, we had a plan. The world largely recognized that if we did not find alternatives to oil, we were going to create a world that was incredibly hostile to human health and happiness, indeed credibly hostile to human habitation on this planet. Here, today, is the result of 30 years of effort, and you can absolutely tell where people took it seriously and where they didn’t — or where monied interests undermined every effort they made. From the UK’s “Green Match”:

For awhile, things seemed to be getting better. A group of nations led the way, proving that changing our ways wasn’t impossible at all. If you look at what the top countries did, you see how things can change. Note Costa Rica way over in Central America, which is a country that made a point of getting off oil. Now Costa Rica is very lucky, as she has the kind of heavy volcanic power we find in Iceland. But it was also intention.

But when you look at the bottom, you see countries that put growth and profit ahead of everything else—notably China—or who are major oil producing countries: Saudi Arabia, Iran, Malaysia, and Indonesia. But there are others—Turkey significantly—who are not major supplies but spends virtually no effort on this problem.

The winners are Sweden, Denmark, and the UK. Western Europe as a rule does well.

The United States, even while it has had Democratic administrations that pushed environmental protections. But the next map shows why the U.S. really has lackluster performance.

We are huge producers of oil, and what that means is that the Billionaires Club, which either owns and pumps the oil out of the ground or consumes most of it have no intention of letting oil go.

And that is why I saw we are CHAINED TO OIL BECAUSE THEY HAVE MANIPULATED GOVERNMENTS TO KEEP THEIR PROFITS GOING.

And here’s the cost:

The World Meteorological Report

Today is World Meteorological Day, so the World Meteorological Organization Released its annual report. The summary from the report:

Geneva, Switzerland (WMO) – The Earth’s climate is more out of balance than at any time in observed history, as greenhouse gas concentrations drive continued warming of the atmosphere and ocean and melting of ice, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). These rapid and large-scale changes have occurred within a few decades but will have harmful repercussions for hundreds – and potentially thousands – of years.

Key messages

• WMO State of Climate report confirms 2015-2025 hottest 11 years on record

• Earth’s energy imbalance is highest in sixty five-year record

• The ocean has been absorbing about eighteen times the annual human energy use each year for the past two decades

• Extreme weather impacts millions and costs billions

• WMO’s State of the Global Climate report 2025 confirms that 2015-2025 are the hottest 11-years on record, and that 2025 was the second or third hottest year on record, at about 1.43 °C above the 1850-1900 average. Extreme events around the world, including intense heat, heavy rainfall and tropical cyclones, caused disruption and devastation and highlighted the vulnerability of our inter-connected economies and societies.

• The ocean continues to warm and absorb carbon dioxide. It has been absorbing the equivalent of about eighteen times the annual human energy use each year for the past two decades. Annual sea ice extent in the Arctic was at or near a record low, Antarctic sea ice extent was the third lowest on record, and glacier melt continued unabated, according to the report.

• “The State of the Global Climate is in a state of emergency. Planet Earth is being pushed beyond its limits. Every key climate indicator is flashing red,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres.

“Humanity has just endured the eleven hottest years on record. When history repeats itself eleven times, it is no longer a coincidence. It is a call to act,” said Mr Guterres.

And we are now in this STATE OF EMERGENCY because wealth buys countries—and presidents and the militaries that some of thing look upon as their personal possession.

Turn up for NO KINGS. We need 12 million people. You can’t assume somebody else will show up in your place.

Protect your vote and those of others.

And VOTE. We need both Houses of Congress and the Presidency. Then we can handle the Supreme Court to handle foreign and corporate money.

Then we can get off oil. We must.

And make sure that if there are boots on the ground in Iran, they’re Israeli boots. I don’t want to see a replay of Americans dying in Kuwait in Desert Storm only to find out Kuwaiti youth were drinking and dancing in the underground bars in Cairo.

* This famous line is from William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, and is spoken by the character Marc Antony, in Act III, 0Scene 1.

Happy Spring Equinox, everyone! The moon is waxing crescent in the Northern and Western Hemispheres.

Here in Marin County, the sprawling oak grove in which I live is exploding with leaves on every tree. There are pin oaks, valley oaks, coastal oaks, magnolias, birch trees, and ornamentals with flowers in every color. A pair enormous red-shouldered hawks nested in female pin oak. The nest is the size of a medicine ball. As soon as they arrived, other birds starting nesting, and we have twice as many species as last year. I wonder if they feel protected by the hawks—which are, BTW, an amazing watch. Flap, flap glide … and the glide can go one more than 10 minutes as the winds come over the coastal range and meet the San Francisco Bay.

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The Anna’s Hummingbirds wintered over here, as they do every year. They are nesting eggs now, and they will hatch soon, and then there will be the squawking of hungry little ones, who will fly off in six weeks. Then the parents will build new nests for the rest of the summer. They never nest in the same place, but they will “steal” fibers from the nests of their friends and relatives, spreading family connections. Their nests are made in part of tiny twigs and leaves, but they are largely made of silks they steal from spider webs, which is why they are so light and yet so strong.

Meanwhile, from the latest episodes of Madness Takes over America, I have a few notes to pass along.

• Yesterday, in the sleepy desert town of Martinez Lake, Arizona, the temperature topped out at 145 degrees Fahrenheit, a record for March for as long as records have been kept.

• Presidents’ faces aren’t allowed on coins as long as they are alive. Trump found a way around that. In the same vein of gold in which he coated everything, thinking it makes him look rich (though the effect is quintessentially tacky), Trump has endorsed a 24-karat gold commemorative coin to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary. Here it is. Barf bags can be located in the seat pocket in front of you.

• To wit, the anniversary celebration will be a CHRISTIAN REVIVAL. Yeah, must rapidly hit those Evangelicals soon, or you’re toast in the Midterms, buddy!

• On a related topic, some of the United States commanders are framing the Iran War as the biblically-predicted Armageddon, and they’re just hopping with excitement.

• Trump says the war is winding down but is sending 2,500 combat Marines and three more warships to the Persian Gulf.

• Experts say that Kharg Island can’t be taken from the air and that clearing the Strait of Hormuz will require ground troops.

• Meanwhile, Iran says the Strait of Hormuz is never, ever, ever, ever going to return to the warm-and-fuzzy tropical passage it once was.

• Trump is threatening that failure to pass the SAVE (read: EVISCERATE) Act will mean loss of the Midterms for Republicans. No shit, Sherlock. Any fair election is going to dump you guys into the gutter. In 36 special elections since the Mango Mussolini took office for the second time, Democrats have won all 36. And since 2000, Republicans have won NO presidential elections not attributable to election gerrymandering or tampering.

• Trump signed an executive order shelving a planned Women’s History museum at the Smithsonian.

• The Kennedy Center is closed for two years for “renovation.” Like hell it is. It’s closed because the artists and orchestras closed ranks and refused to play for him. Here is the living definition of bleeding from the artistic jugular. Refusing to play ball with Mr. Deflategate himself:

— Hamilton: a touring production of the Broadway musical canceled its run at the Kennedy scheduled between March 3rd and April 26th.

— Philip Glass: the acclaimed composer withdrew the premiere of his new symphony.

— Chuck Redd: the leader of the Kennedy Center’s annual “Jazz Jams” Christmas concert since 2006 canceled the 2025 staging of the show. Kennedy Center leadership is now seeking $1 million in damages from Redd.

— The Cookers: the jazz supergroup canceled a pair of shows scheduled for New Year’s Eve 2026.

— Stephen Schwartz: the Wicked composer withdrew as host of the Washington National Opera Gala set for May 16th, 2026. A representative for the Kennedy Center denied that Schwartz was ever officially booked for the gig, even though tickets listing his name were for sale on the center’s website.

— Renée Fleming: the legendary sopranist canceled two concerts with the National Symphony Orchestra scheduled in May.

— Issa Rae: the Insecure star canceled a sold-out March 16th, 2025 stop of her “An Evening With Issa Rae” tour at the Kennedy Center.

— Béla Fleck: the Grammy-winning banjoist canceled a trio of concerts with the National Symphony Orchestra scheduled for February 2025.

— Rhiannon Giddens: the Grammy-winning musician canceled a May 11th, 2025 concert at the Kennedy Center.

— Low Cut Connie: the Philadelphia rockers called off a February 2025 performance at the Kennedy Center.

— Peter Wolf: the artist canceled a book launch event set at the Kennedy Center in March 2024.

— Kristy Lee: the country singer canceled a concert scheduled for January 14th, 2026 at the Kennedy Center.

— Sonia De Los Santos: The Grammy-nominated children’s performer has canceled a pair of concerts scheduled in February 2026.

— Martha Graham Dance Company: America’s oldest dance troupe has canceled a concert scheduled in April 2026.

— Doug Varone and Dancers: the dance troupe will no longer perform at the Kennedy Center in April 2026.

— Balún: the electronic indie band canceled a February 2025 concert at the Kennedy Center.

— Amanda Rheaume: the Canadian musician scrapped an April 2025 concert at the Kennedy Center.

He’s poison. In February, star American violinist Hilary Hahn and cellist Seth Parker Woods announced their withdrawal from three upcoming performances at the Kennedy Center. The duo were scheduled to perform the world premiere of Carlos Simon’s Double Concerto Suite for violin, cello and and orchestra alongside the National Symphony Orchestra on 12, 13 and 14 March.

Woods said on social media: “We have chosen to withdraw from our concerts at the Kennedy Center this March. We are sorry to not be with our friends and colleagues at the National Symphony Orchestra and hope to perform with them again in the future.

Uh-huh. Like I said, he’s poison. He attacked the arts, he attacks intelligence, he attacks knowledge, he attacks history, he attacks DEI and women. And he will be abandoned by all of us.

OK, that’s it for today.

Love you …

By KONSTANTIN TOROPIN, Associated Press

August 8, 2025

WASHINGTON (AP) — The man who oversees the nation’s military reposted a video about a Christian nationalist church that included various pastors saying women should no longer be allowed to vote.

See full article here: https://www.boston.com/news/politics/2025/08/08/hegseth-reposts-video-on-social-media-featuring-pastors-saying-women-shouldnt-be-allowed-to-vote/

This is where this entire virulent administration is on the freedom and enfranchisement and empowerment of women. He, Vought, and most of the Supreme Court want women home and breeding. Period. They want us out of the public sphere, and they want to control all the money and have all the goodies, and they want their free maid service back.

Taking contraception in all its forms is front and center for this administration, but Hegseth is cutting to the chase to take the vote.

Overwhelmingly, women vote liberal agendas that support healthcare, education, child safety, and equal rights.

Trump knows that if the SAVE bill doesn’t pass, and women and people of color will not be able to register. OR, women will have to go through a legal process to have their married names put on their birth certificates. Having one this myself, I am aware that (1) it’s costly, (2) it’s time-consuming with the clock ticking, (3) and in many red states, road blocks will be thrown up.

This is why Pam Bondi wants to force Meta and Google to turn over the analyses of who is voting and talking liberal — and why she is trying to force state election committees to turn over voter registration rolls so she can determine whose registrations to target.

CALL YOUR CONGRESS PERSON NOW.

Fight.

So, Trump, having now completely screwed up oil deliveries to Israel and the U.S., has asked Europe to send ships to help clear the Strait of Hormuz of mines and defend oil tankers against Iranian assaults.

Response? “Nein, mein freunden!”

Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent says that Iranian, Indian and Chinese tankers are making it through—because the Iranians are letting them, certainly by giving them guarantees not to fire on them, and maybe also giving them the location of mine clusters or turning off the mines.

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But, American ships will find it hard to access, say, Sea Island Terminal off Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, to pick up a little light sweet crude. They’re going to have a problem, and that is a problem for Trump, who is single-handedly responsible for the worldwide surge in oil prices. That wins the United States no friends.

Now he’d like to make our allies responsible for solving the problem he’s created, and they’re not having it. As The Guardian notes, a negative response from Europe …

… comes after Donald Trump called on the UK, China, France, Japan, South Korea and other countries to send ships to the world’s busiest shipping route, which has been effectively blockaded by Iran.

The US president said it would be “very bad for the future of Nato” if allies don’t help secure the strait.

Is that a fact? This is NATO’s problem now? Trump makes a mess that affects the whole world, and now he’s threatening NATO, effectively saying, “You fix this or we pull out”??? Is that what’s happening here?

The Hormuz Strait is closed ONLY to Israeli and American Shipping

But shipping isn’t closed to everyone. It is ONLY closed to U.S. and Israeli shipping, so this is NOT the world’s problem at all. And if Bessent seems happy everyone else’s ships are getting through, that only shines a light on the fact that he intends to lie and say that Iran is doing this only to us because they have special backroom deals with Modi and Putin, that’s not the case, though Putin couldn’t be happier to see the U.S. ground down in a war with Iran than aiding Ukraine.

But ultimately, the U.S. whining that “we’re all in this together” is a total lie. Iran’s strangling of oil trade applies to two countries, and two only.

The rest is a total smokescreen to make the world believe that Iran is intent upon holding the world hostage with oil—blocking Saudi Arabia’s exports—and it is not.

Why Are We Fighting Israel’s War?

It may well be that Netanyahu, already indicted by the ICC for war crimes and crimes against humanity, has something on Trump. He has steadfastly stood by Netanyahu—and Bolsonaro—despite their human rights abuses—and attempts to subvert fair elections and justice in their own countries.

• Bolsonaro is doing more than two decades in prison after trying to overthrow a fair election.

• Netanyahu used the hideous October 7th attack to try to wipe Palestinians off every acre of Gazan land, much to the glee of Jared Kushner, who wants to turn the vestiges of Palestinian history into a seaside resort. This drew attention away from Netanyahu’s attempt to gut the Israeli Supreme Court to prevent its sending him to prison for graft.

But although Trump clearly believes that gluing himself to tyrants makes him safer, there’s probably something greedier in the mix.

Trump wants oil. As much as he can get.

Let’s see. What doesn’t he want? He wants Iranian oil and Venezuelan oil and Honduran rare early elements and precious ores. But who really owns the greatest levels of the world’s oil reserves?

• BlackRock - One of the world’s largest asset managers with significant investments in oil companies.

• Vanguard Group - A major investment firm holding substantial shares in various oil and gas corporations.

• State Street Global Advisors - Another large asset manager with considerable stakes in the energy sector.

• Saudi Aramco - The state-owned oil company of Saudi Arabia, one of the largest producers globally.

• ExxonMobil - A leading oil and gas corporation with extensive investments and operations worldwide.

• Chevron - A major player in the oil industry, involved in exploration, production, and refining.

And what about people? We know about Howard Hamm and the Kochs, but what about the Tech Bros—those guys who spent billions to elect Trump, fawned over his inauguration with $1 million dollar gifts and got shown off like fatted calves, and then turned around and forked over $20 million each (at last report) for his horribly tasteless White House ballroom?

Tech Bros heavily invested in oil

Alarmed in the run-up to the election and panicked afterwards, the editors of Food and Water Watch were clear by April of 2025 that we were in deep trouble.

Our current political landscape — chaos, growing corporate power, and endangered food, water, and climate — is no accident. A small number of billionaires and wealthy CEOs have brought it into being.

They’ve invested millions in getting Donald Trump to the White House and his cronies into Congress. … They have more license than ever to run roughshod over our shared resources, make life worse for workers and families, and enrich themselves even further. This is an oligarchy.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the Big Tech and fossil fuel industries. Trump directly appealed to oil and gas executives for campaign donations, which they happily provided. He’s now stripping environmental regulations and halting federal clean energy funding.

Where all this goes is that the richest people in America have a lot of oil investments — and they use a lot of energy, and they are NOT investing in alternative means. Which means: they want that spigot to remain pouring oil, and they are backing the destruction of health guardrails to make sure it does. Food and Water Watch again:

For his part, Zuckerberg’s moves to cozy up to Trump could help Meta avoid regulations, as the company has been under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission. Zuckerberg has also said that Meta will work with Trump to oppose the European Union’s heavier speech regulations on social media platforms.

Like Musk and Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos stands to benefit heavily from deregulation and the gutting of government agencies. As the third-richest man in the world (after Musk and Zuckerberg), he gets most of his wealth from his shares of Amazon stock. Regulatory action stands in the way of more profits for Amazon and more wealth for Bezos.

And note that deregulation also means that big polluters get to keep doing it. Trump signed an executive order last week declaring that no one can sue Monsanto if they get cancer from Round-up (glyphosate), which has already been proved to be carcinogenic.

Why? Trump will become dictator or go to jail.

It will take every billionaire’s efforts to keep Trump in office, get elections cancelled, and make him dictator. They seem to feel that it’s worth their while.

They have overtaken virtually all the major news outlets and are now threatening journalists who write unfavorable Iran reports the president doesn’t like.

They want ultimate deregulation and no limits on the amount of water and oil they can use for AI—and more coal, too, if they can get it.

They are making every possible effort to pass SAVE — which gives the Republicans the Midterms, Trump believes. If Thune’s filibuster doesn’t work this week? “Bad,” Trump mumbles. “Bad.”

The world should not fix the mess Trump has made.

Iran is a rogue nation with blood on its hands. It has tortured and murdered dissidents. It has created a regime so hideously repressive of women that it ranks second only to the Taliban. It is a regime that needs to be replaced by a religion-neutral government with a rights-based constitution.

And this was the stupidest possible way to go about making a bad situation even worse. Israel’s attack on Khomenei’s home, with more than 58 government officials present (most killed), left the IRCG intact. It’s not Mojtaba Khomenei who is running Iran. He lost a leg in the attack and was hospitalized in Russia for surgery. Now he’s back, but he’s NOT in charge. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, with its sprawling worldwide financial influence and iron grip on the lives of Iranians, stepped right in and ran a retaliatory war against Israel and the United States.

In poking the wrong bear, Trump has enraged public opinion against the United States worldwide, and the terrorist attacks over this stupid move—when Iranians have waged a brave five-year battle for liberalization of their culture—is 100% counterproductive.

And the media in the United States, owned by Tech-Bros and Oil Oligarchs will lie to us about what is going on, like Bessent just did, but it won’t help.

We’ll know.