Further

Oh man. Same old clown show, awash with boondoggles, each more cringey than the last. As the mad man-child deconstructs DC and slaps his hideous face and name everywhere - historic buildings, fascist arches, garish statues, possibly imaginary gold phones - others have taken his lead with their own patriotic spinoffs. Cue "Fuck You" upgrades, a Strait to Hell arcade for a video-game war, and a Trump/Epstein "Memorial Reading Room" packed with 3.5 million pages of files, where "the truth is hard to deny."

Trump's narcissistic vandalizing of D.C. - couldn't his KKK dad have just hugged him now and then? - is "something dictators have done throughout history," noted Bernie Sanders of his proposed SERVE Act, or Stop Executive Renaming for Vanity and Ego. Co-sponsored by six Senate Dems, the bill would bar any sitting president from naming federal properties after themselves, an act both "arrogant" and illegal. At this rate many weary Americans would likely argue, "Let the chiseling off begin," but for now the bill sits in legislative limbo and we're stuck with the resulting atrocities; they continue to multiply like locusts, even as he's proposed a $10-billion fund for more "beautification" projects around "the capital of the greatest Nation in the history of the world."

In a triumphal move back toward democratic rule, Hungary's new leader Péter Magyar took his oath of office Saturday in a "regime-change" ceremony rich with symbolism before thousands of jubilant constituents. The sense of a hopeful new political era resonated in Magyar's tribute to a victory for "ordinary, flesh-and-blood people" - and in the gleeful moves and air guitar of unstoppable "dancing machine" and new Health Minister Zsolt Hegedűs. Lookit this guy boogie. Damn, we can't wait.

The day's celebration" marked Magya's stunning defeat last month of authoritarian Viktor Orbán after 16 years in power. A 45-year-old lawyer who founded the center-right Tisza party in 2024, Magyar won a two-thirds majority over Orbán’s nationalist Fidesz party, which will allow him to roll back many of Orbán’s policies. Tisza now controls 141 seats in the 199-seat Parliament, with over a quarter held by women; Fidesz won 52 seats, down from 135, and far-right Mi Hazánk (Our Homeland) took six. Magyar has vowed to restore democratic institutions, clamp down on corruption, repair ties with the EU, where Orbán often vetoed key decisions including support for Ukraine, and unlock about $20 billion of EU funds to help jump-start Hungary's struggling economy,

With no grown-ups in sight, a feckless war lurches and whipsaws on, run by a regime full of clowns, drunks, losers, grifters, all steadfastly defying the will of the people. Trump rants, Hegseth lies, Rubio punts, and shameless, "bad paranoid mess" Ka$h Patel, who actually likes to spell his name that way, is gifting bottles of personally branded bourbon - "KASH PATEL, FBI Director," boasting "strong notes of insecurity" - on all sides. Nothing to see here.

The dizzying pivots on Iran go on, with Dear Leader "paralyzed" by what he started and can't for the life of him figure out how to end. The military blockade of Iran's ports is "the greatest military maneuver in history"; also, if Iran doesn't give in to his demands, they will be "blown off the face of the earth." The "already legendary Epic Fury" is almost over, and the Hormuz Strait will be "OPEN TO ALL" if Iran just agrees to the 14-point US plan they dismiss as "a wish-list." One day, Project Freedom is "a gift to the world" that will get all 2,000 stranded ships through the Strait; the next day, with two ships through and Navy commanders resisting, he pulls the plug in the name of an almost-here "complete and final agreement" that doesn't exist. It turns out he veered away because the Saudis, angry and mistrustful, wouldn't let him use their bases or air space; NATO countries are also increasingly.barring the US from their bases. Iran's chief negotiator: "Operation Trust Me Bro failed.”

Hoo boy. The stupid and evil, somehow accelerating, burn. America's so-called leader, the "Worst That Has Ever Drawn Breath," manifests ever more cognitive dissonance on steroids. Absurd, addled, vindictive, looming above "a circus of death and chaos," he commits war crimes, guts voting rights, plots devastation, abases decency, murders mercy, yet whines about mean jokes. But as America reels, Banksy, Bruce, Platner and others increasingly declare, "We are not fucking doing this anymore."

Amidst what the head of Amnesty International calls "the year of the predators," humanity itself is under attack, most notably by our ludicrous narcissist and his "casual, bewildering cruelty." Despite his foolishness, Nesrine Malik writes, "This is what evil looks like": See history's portrayals of Hitler - "the startling insignificance of this man who has set the world agog" - and Mussolini, "that funny man, that consummate buffoon." Trump's "farcical puniness," Malik notes, is "a projection onto the world, not of large intent, but of smallness and fear...The consequences of his violence are secondary to the validation that comes from inflicting it (to) erase his terror of humiliation (and) feed his sociopathic appetite for escalation." Thus can deeply silly still equal dangerous.