Further

This holiday season, writes John Pavlovitz, "it’s a Herculean task to let our hearts be light." Daily, we confront the afflictions of an impossibly dark time - the cruelties wrought by a vile assemblage of hacks, liars, racists, and sadists who delight in Christmas-decked thugs menacing brown people with, "YOU'RE GOING HO HO HOME." Instead, we celebrate the judges, artists, pastors, organizers, brave pols, and regular people, aka "Radical Left Scum," refusing to bow to fascism. Go towards the light, and fuck these people.

We started this on Boxing Day - a British holiday described as the day when either gifts were given to servants and the poor or when mythical, hung-over, Scottish haggis fight it out in boxing matches, either which we'll take - feeling grateful to be more or less still standing after almost a year of brute insanity enacted by "some of the worst human beings on Planet Earth." Alas, they're still here, led by "the small, bitter man" and hateful worst of the worst who spent his sour "Christmas" trashing we the scum, hailing the end of "transgender for everyone," and ripping "the many sleazebags who loved Jeffrey Epstein" like he did. In a 100-plus-post frenzy, he then attacked Somali immigrants, urged Ilhan Omar to be deported, and urged his opponents to be jailed, called Stephen Colbert a “dead man walking” who CBS should "put to sleep," and warned, "Enjoy what may be your last Merry Christmas." One response: "Sorry, Jesus, I know it's your birthday, but Jesus fucking Christ."

In what was dubbed a "grievance Olympics," "conference of clowns" and "Wrestlemania with Podcasters," the noxious mucky-mucks of MAGA assembled for the first time since Charlie Kirk's death at an ostensibly celebratory AmericaFest that swiftly cratered into a toxic mess of orcs hating on each other. Despite the blinding glitz, savage barbs flew: Anti-Semite! Islam whore! Epstein flack! A coward! A cancer! And nonsense-vomiting. One viewer: "Holy shit, America." The Nazi kids are not all right.

Last weekend's public, ugly, inevitable fracturing of a once-lockstep right for all to see came at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest conference at Phoenix Convention Center. Billed as "a powerful celebration of faith, freedom, and the legacy of our founder" - though others called it "brownshirts in the desert" - it had Kirk plastered everywhere. Outside, banners urged "MAKE AMERICA CHARLIE KIRK"; inside, a huge portrait proclaimed, "WE ARE ALL CHARLIE KIRK"; nearby, weirdly, a Charlie Kirk murder re-enactment tent was set up for fans to take selfies in a spot just like where he was shot and killed. Wonkette: "Normal youth conference things!" About a third of the reported 30,000 in attendance, a "wretched hive of scum and villainy," were high school and college students who evidently have yet to find a life of non-malignant purpose.

The awful keeps spewing. The latest proof there is truly, repulsively no bottom: The most broken, powerful human being on the planet has added to his crappy, gaudy, reality-show "Presidential Walk of Fame" bronze plaques below the photos denoting a boorish, revisionist "history" of each president. Inevitably, he lobs the crudest insults at his direct predecessors - "divisive" Obama, "crooked" Biden - while praising his own supreme reign. America on the fucking, endless, childish ugly of it: "This is so exhausting."

As always, there are of course more substantive horrors underway. Pam Bondi has told the FBI to create a list of domestic terrorist groups - the non-existent Antifa and anyone else who espouses “radical gender ideology, anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism or anti-Christianity” - and establish a “cash reward system” to encourage them to snitch on each other. Because what climate change/it still snows doesn't it?, Trump is also dismantling Colorado's National Center for Atmospheric Research, home to the largest federal research lab on climate change and natural disasters.

So much darkness. Along with all the rest, in quick succession, the shootings at Brown and Bondi Beach, the murder of director and activist Rob Reiner and his wife Michele, and then the responses. To the beloved Reiner's awful end, a sick man-child spewed vile, loathsome filth that "says it all" about who he is. To the hateful attack on Jews, a Muslim man stood up for humanity with selfless grace and courage, a beacon of hope. Cometh the hour, cometh the man.

Rob Reiner, 78, and his producer wife Michele Singer Reiner, 68, were found dead in their L.A. home on Sunday; their troubled son Nick, 32, was arrested and booked for murder for their gruesome deaths. Reiner was not just Hollywood aristocracy, All In the Family's pacifist "Meathead" who went on to become the buoyant director of classics like This Is Spinal Tap, Stand By Me, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally; he was a fierce, thoughtful defender of democracy and decades-long advocate for causes he believed in - marriage equality, child development services, and taxing the rich for worthwhile goals like funding universal preschool with, brilliantly, a tobacco tax. A savvy political organizer willing to speak out "when silence was simply easier," said one friend, "Rob chose clarity. He stood for truth and accountability, unapologetically." His work featured "a deep belief in the goodness of people - and a lifelong commitment to putting that belief into action," said Barack Obama. "Together, he and his wife lived lives defined by purpose."