Further

As our decrepit despot traipsed across Asia, he was fêted by leaders anxious to dodge his peevish trade wars by assiduously plying him, as one would for any dangerous, demented child, with adoration and treats: burgers, golf clubs, trinkets, ketchup and, in South Korea, even a crown for the wounded boy who would be king. Still, he couldn't keep up. In Japan, he wandered off mid-glitzy-ceremony like a nursing-home gramps looking for pudding, to be steered back in place. Nothing to see here.

The decline, of course, is ongoing. Monday, Trump told reporters he'd gone to Walter Reed Medical Center and gotten an MRI as part of a "routine yearly checkup,” except he'd just had one six months ago and an MRI is decisively not part of a routine test, but not to worry: He said it was "perfect," except that doesn't exist. For those inexplicably wondering about his cognitive state, he said he also aced a "very hard" sort of "aptitude test," except it's a very basic dementia screening that requires the patient to solve elementary-school level problems like remembering five words, identifying a giraffe or lion, and drawing a clock; he added that the test "took a while" and "was difficult,” two key factors doctors consider when assessing cognitive skills

We know the awful, the stupid, the cruel goes on, but we're heartened by the birth of "a new unified theory of American reality" to help explain the darkness. It's called, "Everyone is twelve now." Suddenly, we get it: the right's puerile idiocy, pointless vengeful assaults on law and decency, poop-bombing and racism, staggeringly simplistic solutions to issues like, "Let's arrest everyone" and "Why don't we just blow them up?" At 12, they learned to slap nasty names on anything they didn't like; now, they still do.

What one grateful patriot calls "the most important political thread of our time" came from one Patrick Cosmos, a musician and frequent Bluesky user who goes by @veryimportant.lawyer. All we know about him is that his moment of snarky political clarity swiftly spread across much of social media - an irony unto itself given that many attribute the current Infantilization of right-wing discourse, at least in part, to a scattershot Internet that gives an instant platform to the most vicious and pea-brained among us. Still, many argue the notion those in power never got past being 12-year-old, emotionally stunted losers deeply resonates in a grim cultural moment of conservative ascendance that feeds on ignorance, bullying, fear and lack of critical thinking.

Amidst plunging polls and righteous rage at his Epstein Memorial Ballroom, the inept manchild faces growing resistance, sublime to ridiculous, to his nascent kingship. Cue anti-ICE whistle kits - “Form a crowd, stay loud" - rainbow church steps, Newsom hawking knee pads, D.C. Jedi suing individual goons, and a successfully mobilized Bay Area, including his iconic bookstore's revival of Lawrence Ferlinghetti's howling edict that his people not "allow their rights to erode/and their freedoms to be washed away."

Trump was already underwater with the lowest approval rating for any president, even him, at this point in his reign - see no jobs, high prices, cancelled SNAP benefits, murdered innocents, rounded-up brown neighbors - before his abrupt, illegal obliteration of the East Wing for a gilded obscenity to host his billionaire suck-ups. For many, the travesty is a bitter echo of what in part got us here: Obama's mocking, gaudy, then-hilarious 2011 vision of a lurid purple "Trump White House, Hotel, Casino, Golf Course" with glitzy tyrant chandeliers and half-naked women welcoming you. Now, of course, we are about to have the execrable real thing, a tacky "abomination," born of his "poisonous bravado," bearing the "bombast (of) a dictator-for-life megalomania vibe."

In a perfect, ghastly metaphor for the state of our "democracy," J.D. and Drunken Pete just oversaw an "artillery fiasco" at a Marine Corps celebration where a live shell detonated over a highway and hit their motorcade - Lesson #1: "Morons Are Governing America" - and Trump abruptly began a demolition of the East Wing of The People's House for "his fucking ballroom," though he claimed construction "wouldn't interfere" with it. Lesson #2: They "lie like they breathe," bulldoze history and wreak havoc as they go.

On the same day as No Kings but definitely not to distract anyone even though the actual date they're marking isn't until November 10, repulsive bros J.D. Vance and manly "We Are The War Department" Pete Hegseth went to California for the 250th anniversary of the Marine Corps at Camp Pendleton to watch a training exercise that included firing live 155mm M777 shells out of howitzers from the ocean over Interstate I-5, an action Gavin Newsom decried as "an absurd show of force" that threatened public safety. Just in case, being a grown-up, Newsom shut down 17 miles of the highway. Vance, in turn, ridiculed his move as "consistent with a track record of failure," sneering the governor "wants people to think this exercise is dangerous" when of course it's "an established safe practice" and anyway he's a big boy who knows stuff.