This is the Epstein presidency, the Putin presidency, the Centi-billionaire presidency, the Netanyahu presidency...

[lostnfound]

and none of those people are our friends.

Very little has surprised me since November 2024. The boldness of demolishing the east wing? Yes, a little bit, because it was so sudden and visible. Not much else. We know who he is and what his motivations are: wealth, power, self-adulation, revenge, sadistic pleasure. A strategy for destruction is their specialty.

A strategy to build the positives is so much harder than a strategy for destruction. The few ‘positive’ ideas the rightwing once had got funneled, co-opted and distorted into a trash heap — of hate, entitlement, avarice or opportunism. I for one think that a couple of those ideas could have been beneficial in their pure form — for example, a kind of self-sufficient distrust of government handouts as a solution for too many problems. Skepticism about the extent to which more regulations will achieve desired goals. But instead of engaging in earnest debates on policy at least half of the time, they are manipulators and sock puppets of one power center or another — none of whom prioritize the well-being of the American people.

All of his key constituencies want to weaken or destroy the US, or enslave it to an oligarchy. They’ve wanted an austerity plan in the US since the 1970s. They are like vultures waiting for wounded prey to die, circling above. There is money to be made in crashes, from the outside, just like there is money to be made on hurricanes. I have recently thought that the vulture would actually be a fair replacement for the bald eagle as our national bird.

And a name change maybe, to The Surveilled States of America. All of the lame excuses that are used to justify surveillance would be an affront to any of our liberty loving forebears. They are protecting us?? Give me a break. We American humans are not protected from anything much. One look at the Epstein situation, or the three-tiered ‘justice’ system, or the price of insulin, or the circus of the NRA after mass shootings, or hungry schoolchildren,, or untested rape kits, or corrupt and deceptive politicians robbing us of our American pride, or unsolved murders, or abusive cops — examples are everywhere that there is no earnest effort to protect the public where it matters. Surveillance is about concentrating power and control even more than it already is, a fascist desire shared by the centi-billionaires.

I want my kids and future grandkids to be free to travel anywhere in the country, to speak their mind freely, to vote and to challenge their elected leaders. To be anonymous if they want to be, to earn a living that lets them stand up straight not be hunched over and bowing, fearful of being cast out in a desperate world.

Whatever is that thing in the White House, it is connected to a larger evil than one man.