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Further
Monsters 'R Us
One was the good Rev. Nalwamba, who arrived in the U.S. in 2002 for a religious conference. Having publicly condemned human rights abuses by the Ugandan government, and subsequently heard from colleagues that government agents were pursuing him, he decided to stay in Colorado and apply for asylum. In 2010, after his application was denied, he began living peaceably in Lakewood under a 15-year ICE supervision order, reporting to immigration officials as required, working as a health aide for people with developmental disabilities, and serving as a pastor at nearby Resurrection Anglican Fellowship until he retired two years ago.
In September 2025 he was arrested by ICE; they charged he was under a removal order dating back to 2010, and that he'd failed to "cooperate with efforts to obtain travel documents" before a deadline, aka to help with his own deportation in a timely manner. He was taken to the GEO Group's private ICE detention facility in Aurora, where for over a year DHS repeatedly vowed to deport him and then didn't. On Oct. 20, after his lawyers filed a second habeas corpus petition, Judge Cyrus Chung ruled feds had exceeded a “presumptively reasonable” six months of holding time with "no concrete plan” to return him to Uganda, and ordered his release.
When he was detained, Nalwamba was a fit 77-year-old who regularly walked, exercised and played ping pong. Inside, his health quickly deteriorated. He caught pneumonia which persisted for weeks, lost over 30 pounds and the ability to walk, developed a stubborn cough, chest pain, scratchy throat, headache and fatigue that were never treated - and besides, "You don’t want to go to the hospital - they shackle you like a bull.” "He walked in. He can't walk now," noted Colorado Sen. John Hickenlooper. "They want the misery of one person to be known by others. It's a low-rent form of terrorism to make people so scared they'll self-deport."
Along with the barbaric cruelty, observers also blasted the "staggering hypocrisy" of a regime that simultaneously charged Biden et al "targeted" Christians yet in their voter intimidation efforts sent ICE into churches, interrogated church staff, and detained and abused a church elder. Last week, because they hadn't alienated Christians enough by picking a fight with the Pope, they also turned a supposed prayer gathering of Catholic bishops into a sleazy photo op, prompting two angry Archbishops to apologize, charge they'd been "manipulated," and clarify this was "in no way an endorsement of the president, his policies, or his party."
In the final, petty degradation meted out to Rev. Nalwamba, detention officials told his attorneys they would ensure his safe passage on release with a wheelchair and escort, and then reneged on it all. The wheelchair couldn't go out to the gate, they insisted, nor could vehicles approach it. Hickenlooper: "There is no excuse for this cruelty. None.” In the end - no surprise here - it was two young mensches also being released who hooked their arms together - one lawyer: "It was heartbreaking and it was infuriating" - carried the reverend to his waiting car, and went on their way: "They didn't even give me a chance to say thank you.".
After his release, a buoyant Nalwamba said he’s “in another world." He talked to his children, he's well fed, he’s staying with a family who lent him an electric scooter to get around. The next day, he visited a health clinic to get a chest X-ray, blood work, TB testing. He looks forward to physical therapy and reconnecting with his church community: "I am a happy man." Except for the monsters, still here. DHS said they were "forced" by "an activist judge" to release "an illegal alien" who "chose to overstay his welcome in violation of our nation's laws." Most vitally, "He remains in the country illegally," under a removal order, without legal status.
So much, or not yet for Obama's Michigan citing of "a decency we should expect from our public officials." Attorneys plan to reopen Nalwamba's asylum case; conditions in Uganda have seriously deteriorated with widespread crime, unrest and targeting of political opponents and a U.S. "Do not travel" advisory in effect. At the same time, says attorney Joy Athanasiou, she has never seen "this inhumanity and cruelty" over 20 years of working with detained clients. Before, there were under 1,000 habeas corpus petitions a year; now there are about 90,000, a demand "100 times greater than what we can provide.”
Nalwamba says his thoughts remain with those innocents still inside a callous, corrosive environment worse than any maximum security prison. He loves the America he has lived in for almost 26 years, he says, and has always thought African and other countries should aspire to be like the U.S. But no more, he adds, not without drastic change. Those other countries, he argues, treat their livestock better than he was treated. "It's as if they've gotten used to treating people that way, like they're taking care of goats or cows,” he said. “I have never imagined human beings treated like I saw in this place."
The Rev. Edward Nalwamba Photo by Resurrection Anglican Fellowship
Being There: Are These People In the Room With Us?
Lately, though, the GOP is reportedly freaking out, watching the line between fact and fiction increasingly blur in Dear Leader's mashed-potato mind as the economy keeps tumbling and vital mid-terms approach. They want him to celebrate (albeit largely imaginary) tax cuts, trade deals, safe borders, winning fights against drag shows and "transgender for everyone" (sigh). Instead, he raves about livestreamed executions, the hotness of GOP candidates, often in the wrong state - "His ass, shit, it's like a pile of muscle" - his bestie Putin who's been "fine on Ukraine," how "not a single" undocumented immigrant has entered America since he took office, how soaring gas and diesel costs are "a small price to pay," though it's unclear for what.
He garbles words or makes them up - "When we had the hurricane...We call it a watercane" - prompting excited patriots to up their expectations: "OK, cancel the Blue Wave, we want a Blue Watercane." Wearily, he jokes about creating a robot lookalike on the campaign trail- "Nobody would know the difference" - so he can stay home and watch TV, his true, small vocation. Weirdly, he fantasizes about trashing other countries: He boasts about "polling higher than anyone has ever polled in Venezuela," which is why "after I finish with this" he'll to go Venezuela, "learn Spanish quickly, it won't take long, I'm good at languages" and run for president there, and yes we are here for it.
Hopefully, Venezuela won't have pesky reporters asking him questions that drive him to melt down in "dementia anger-flare." Because he lacks both impulse control and any trace of decency, he's also lauded Vivek Ramaswamy's grotesque ad against rape survivor and Dem opponent Amy Acton, wherein her estranged, unhinged mother calls her a liar, charging the Fake News "is trying to convince everyone this Ad is bad because it’s so good!...It's called 'hitting pay dirt.’” He adds that if his "legendary" mother "said anything bad about me, (it) would go down as the Ad of the Decade — Maybe the Century!" Vivek should keep the ad up, he says, so people know Acton is "a DISASTER who, uncontrollably, lies, cheats, and steals!” Killer pot/kettle.
There are more. The racist fraudsters who got rich on corruption - and turned Minneapolis into Fallujah - want us to rat on our neighbors for...fraud under Trump's stammered "Fraud Whistle...Blower Incentive...Program" whereby "Americans (can) report theft of taxpayer dollars," with DOGE "skunk-works" stragglers helping. Turn in someone with $1 billion, you get 1%: "That's a lot of money.” Except the cap is $30K, you probs won't see it, and it's queasily akin to Nazi bounties on Jews. Stephen Goebbels was even there to smear phantom Somalis who get $30 million for a fake daycare, buy BMWs or mansions, fly their kids "first class all over the world...living the high life." What a sick fuck. Meanwhile, America urges, "Call in fraud at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue."
Alas, the more loopy he gets, the more openly he flies his violent, racist, crassly unfettered flag. There are more curses and more bellicose AI slop like the video of a macho white guy put in prison with three scary black guys, by one scary black cop, who takes them all down: "Bullies Can’t Break a Strong Man." (So many pots/kettles!) The rallies grow more pugnacious too: In the second assault this month, a South Carolina sheriff's office is investigating an attack on a protester - punched in the head, neck and chest - that Trump cheered on, praising the thugs' "courage." "Who's the guy that threw that punch?" he excitedly asked. "I love that." He also mocked the victim as "a very unattractive guy," for a rare combo sick fuck and pot/kettle.
That was at a rally, in a reported “livestock arena” say what, for Darlene Graham, who’s “gonna have a big win.” If so, no thanks to his shambolic speech, which roamed from renaming the Atlantic Ocean - “I was always high end” - to insisting he doesn’t ramble while rambling - “I got - I know everything I’m doing. I got aptitude they dream about” - to again whining about the prizes he didn’t win: The Pulitzer for writing - “The people that got it shouldn’t have gotten it” - and the usual Nobel, despite being “one person who deserves it more than any yuman being." ”Not that I want it - it’s just ridiculous,“ he babbled. ”How the hell do you not get the Nobel Prize? i settled like 8 wars. The woman that got it, I don’t know where the hell she comes from.“ Losingest loser ever.
Finally, amidst all the lame, foul, daft fails, there are his deeply undignified transfers: The careening burlesque of a walk to his helicopter in Alaska. The ambling approach to his beloved, million-year helipad when he suddenly stops to acknowledge, salute and wave to a crowd of supporters, aka thin air. Eventually, the camera zooms out to show...empty space. A few seconds later, aides walk out from a different direction; other angles - here and here - show the same abyss, for which Fox would've run Biden out of town. Same for last week's event, ostensibly to honor first responders where, amidst a losing war, crumbling economy, burning planet and hungry children, Nero nattered and raved about his house projects. Nothing to see here.
“You're seeing this for the first time. This used to be grass. So if we did this, you couldn't do it. It was unusable. You know, this is built on a wetland. So the grass was always wet. Even if you were in a drought, the grass was soaking wet. And especially women with the high heels, they'd be holding their shoes. They go out and buy beautiful new high heels that go into the White House and they come back and their shoes are destroyed. But we did a job with the same stone that matches the White House stone and hasn't been totally finished. We're going with the black over here, too, because the limestone doesn't hold up well. Never, never did. Never will. But what we've done here is really amazing. We put a brand new coat over the White House, brand new coat. We fixed up the walls. They were all broken, chopped, terrible shape. A lot of the ornamentation, like around the windows, was broken. And many years ago, 30, 40, 50 years ago, probably a lot during Biden three years ago because he had no idea what the hell he was doing. But you'd look at a window and you'd see ornament on the right side. And on the left side, you'd see it was it had fallen off. Some people think that's OK, but I don't think it's OK. So we had molds made of the right side. We put it on the left side. It's all perfect now. So we re-skinned. Basically, it's a re-skinning. And that building is good to go for another 100 years or at least actually. But even this, the you see the the top sections where it was so bad, I didn't even like standing under it. The thing was all cracked and broken all over the place. We put the sign up, solid brass, half inch thick, as opposed to laminate. You ever see these laminate? They they don't want to spend the money on the brass. So they have a piece of brass laminated. It's about a hundredth of an inch thick. And they put it on a piece of wood to save a lot of money. And then in about two years, it decomposes and it's laying all over the floor. We don't do that. But up there is the Rose Garden. And then we, as you know, that wall has sat for 150 years empty. And I said, something has to be on that wall. And I just had the the notion I've often thought of it because I've never seen it before. A presidential walk of fame. So we went from George Washington to Trump. And that will be extended on this wall right up here because somebody said, oh, but you have no room for anybody else. I said, no, it extends this way. And but I'm going to have to leave that because whoever it is, maybe they won't be able to figure that out. And if they don't figure it out, I don't know what they're going to do. You know, but we have we have at least one hundred and twenty five years of extension going this way. So it's fun. But everybody loves the presidential walk of fame. Nobody knows if there is any. And we have a very generic, very good description of every president from Washington all the way down. And we get a little bit more personal as we get closer to my my year. Talk a little bit about in more detail about what we've had to put up with....All I do is write the truth.” - Donald J. Trump
Ladies and gentlemen, the President (sic) of the United StatesGetty Image
Whoosh And They're Gone
Born Kate Sharon Black in 1984, Zacharia grew up in California in the "liberal cesspool” of Cambria; she was the conservative “black sheep” of her family "thanks to the great, late Rush Limbaugh, who raised me as a kid on the radio." Describing a clash with woke patrons of her "cardio kickboxing gym," she said the owner once asked her not to wear her "Trump 2024" hat but "I would never take my Trump hat off to appease the left." A Pizzagate, Qanon and Stop the Steal buff, she was a "huge fan of ICE and Border Patrol" who briefly worked for Kristi Noem and a commentator for right-wing TV before being spotted by Trump, maybe because she scheduled her gigs when she thought he'd be watching. Totally normal.
Officials looking to replace Karoline Leavitt had reportedly narrowed down the list of candidates "only to find that (they'd) said something negative about (Trump)," which of course wouldn't do for the fragile toddler. Thus did uber-obsequious, ringlet-bottle-blonde "lizard person" Zacharia take to the podium, blare "Good morning!!" in a sing-songy screech, and stumble through a smiley, halting, inflection-challenged briefing about Trump's "historic one-day war," "attendance at record highs as enthusiastic hardworking Americans are lining up and packing arenas," a "booming economy....and a, um, he, great relationship...with Venezuela...um, and...my president, excuse me, my husband, that's a good one..." Not.
After the one question on Ukraine, and the famous, “I’ll have to get back to you on that,” it was over. 14 minutes, or forever in bimbo time. It got worse. The oft-repeated claims of being a lawyer when she’d failed the bar - weirdly, thanks Hannity - and of working in China on “international transaction law” when she was basically a paid intern. The verdict: "A train wreck," "a joke hire," "talk about a public execution," "between the 3rd-grade level reading and the fake attorney in China thing, brutal." Anti-DEI,.scandal-plagued Rick Santorum's glowing review: She was "not even close to the worst." Trump's lazy excuse: "I told her, 'If I were you, I'd reconsider.'" Fox: She's "transitioning" out of the job she held for 14 minutes.
It was a made-for-the-Internet spectacle. The White House declared, "She’ll be remembered as one of the all-time greats." America proclaimed, "She's gonna be a punchline for a very long time." Democratic strategist Mike Nellis clarified, "She wasn't fired because she lied,” a Trump requisite, but because "she was a bad liar." Another requisite: Michael Steele mused no more "blonde white female pronouncing his noise in a way that makes him feel good.” Some selfishly mourned the loss: "Please let her last long enough to hold a second briefing - I need the joy." Some empathized with SNL writers stuck with Friday night rewrites. Some were shocked: "I can't believe her husband, I mean president, fired her."
Though no press secretary really matters because Trump daily lies, veers, makes things up, some speculated on the next one: Scott Jennings, Katie Miller, Melissa McCarthy doing Sean Spicer. The Borowitz Report announced it's George Santos, who was "thrilled...I will bring to this job my experience not only as a lawyer but as a doctor and astronaut.” Also, he was cutting short his reunion tour "with his fellow Beatles." Some noted Zacharia "was press secretary longer than she was a lawyer." Others asserted they'd had blueberries, bananas, takeout and lettuce in their fridge longer than she had her job. Also that the U.K's Liz Truss lasted longer, as did the head of lettuce that often competed with her.
Some mulled Zacharia's future: "Next: memoir and book tour," "Now she can go back to studying for the bar, or at least its cocktail menu," "She is leaving 'to spend more time with my children, who will teach me how to read.'" A guy met her years ago on a cruise ship: She was telling a friend she'd partied the night before and slept in. They told her she'd missed them crossing the equator that morning. She said, "Oh, what did it look like?" Some waxed lyrical: "Like sands through the hourglass, so are the Days of Our Lives." Some lamented inflation: "I remember when you could get a few months of work out of a press secretary. Now they're like those new batteries - they look like they'll last but whoosh and they're gone."
In honor of her historic reign, Wikipedia’s “List Of Humorous Units Of Measurement” was updated to include the “Zacharia,” a “fractional unit of a Scaramucci,” the previous record for Anthony Scaramucci's 11 days as press secretary in Trump's first term. The change prompted heated debate, pained mathematical equations, admiration: "Nobody thought anything could go faster than the speed of Mooch, but here we are." There were questions - Are Mooches a metric system? Would that be 45 centi-Mooches? - and answers: "They convert at a 5/11 ratio." Talk turned existential: "A Scaramucci was a measure of time. A Zacharia is more ethereal, a measure of being, a disconnect between one’s story and one's purpose...Beautiful really."
And there was anger Zacharia got fired but Trump's still here, that the media and GOP have let him "get away with LYING ABOUT EVERY GODDAMNED THING...from 2015 SPOUTING THAT OBAMA BIRTH CERTIFICATE SHIT AND EVERY OTHER FUCKING LIE HE’S TOLD SINCE." And, in the last few months, that half of eight female officials have resigned or been fired, all replaced by men. That consistently inept, unhinged, corrupt, sick idiots like Hegseth, Patel, Lutnick, Goebbels, Vance etc lie, cheat, rave, royally screw up yet keep their jobs. What the fuck. Meanwhile Zacharia, still sketchy, posts altered photos from the Oval Office and declares the guy who threw her under the bus "kind, wonderful, gracious, thoughtful, enthusiastic and hard-working...No one will ever make America great the way he has and continues to." Damn, we hope not.
Helpful Press Secretary conversion table.Image from Bluesky
To Speak the Truth: On the Mediated Obscene
Reports seeping out from a still-mostly-blockaded Gaza describe "entire worlds wiped out" - extended families, neighborhoods, over 80% of all buildings, resulting in nearly 1.9 million Palestinians displaced. Gaza's missing, or last seen detained, handcuffed, tortured, naked, haunt those who survive: "We don't know whether to mourn them or wait for them." During occasional prisoner swaps, Israel hands over images or remains of decomposing bodies of detainees, many handcuffed, blindfolded, missing limbs, clearly tortured. Parents scroll or search through them, all that's left of a long-missing son: "How did I become a mother who hopes to find her child among mutilated corpses? My dream was to hug him. Now I pray simply to bury him."
Others relive brutality they withstood: fires, bombings, multiple evacuations, sights, smells, sounds of phosphorous bombs, drones, tanks; the terror of running to an outhouse fast enough not to "be sniped," as bombs fall the uneasy sleep close enough to outside walls that, if buildings fall, neighbors can dig them out or at least bury them, the first up-close sight of Israeli soldiers swathed in armor, looking "invincible." The orders to strip to underwear, blindfolded, tightly handcuffed behind backs; kneeling on ground of broken glass and rubble; insults, beatings, cold relieved only when their own warm welcome blood from punches runs over them. Trying to pray or sleep, hallucinating "between life and death," when blankets, speaking, changing position is forbidden: "Everything was forbidden except breathing and swift death."
Palestinian detaineePhoto by Activestills
And always there are the children, Gaza's "lost generation," roughly 700,000 students left behind by three years of war and deliberate “scholasticide" that have destroyed 95% of their schools, turned the rest into shelters for the displaced, killed over 20,000 students and 1,000 teachers, seen books burned for fuel for warmth or cooking. At the start of a new school year, the UN and its partners have set up over 500 tent sites - no desks, chairs, books, water, ovens in summer, freezing in winter - to serve up to 100,000 hungry, shell-shocked students struggling to focus in an attempted return to a "normal life" they can't imagine, who've grown up falling asleep to the sound of bombs, "their entire existence one of life amid rubble, tents, stones and sand," writes Tareq Hajjaj of kids often too young to remember what a home or school was.
Hajjaj fled for Cairo in 2024 so his only child wouldn't "grow up believing the whole world looked like Gaza." He left behind 15 nieces and nephews whose "expectations for ordinary life" he's seen shrink; on one video call, a six-year-old nephew saw him sitting on a sofa and asked how he fit it in his tent, and they dream only of a bigger, dryer tent. In the occupied West Bank, residents likewise endure new Israeli gates that turn villages into "an effective cage," Bedouin families are expelled, settlers steal land, livestock, homes, olive groves harvested by Palestinian generations past. This is not a Palestinian "superhuman capacity" for resilience, Hajjaj argues, but "the ordinary human behavior of people who have no other choice, who are left alone to their fate." To cope, they dismiss the hardship with “aadi,” Arabic for normal -"it is what it is" - but "there is nothing normal about it."
Many Gazans are still surviving on a fraction of the food aid they need.Getty Image
In a deeply complicit America that contributed over $30 billion to the enduring carnage, the truth of what our blood money has wrought slowly seeps out. Last month, the New York Film Festival premiered NAZA, the Guardian-produced documentary by two Israeli filmmakers that offers a grim "Window Into Systems of Mass Killings" in a Gaza where rabid Zionists argued there are "no innocent people." NAZA, the Hebrew acronym for civilian deaths as high as 500 for one legit target, presents damning testimony from 24 Israeli soldiers, faces obscured from Israeli retribution, who veer from naming their genocidal acts to rationalizing them through performative nods toward their guilt - a longtime form of Israeli sort-of-moral-reckoning with state violence known as "shooting and crying" that critics dub "addiction to the mediated obscene." The film will stream for free in November on The Guardian website.
This week, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani proffered a more heartfelt, equitable reckoning with what remains "a moral tear in the universe" by attending a peace vigil and press conference to commemorate the grim anniversary. As expected, he caught flak from both sides when he called out both Hamas' “horrific war crimes” - he's a Muslim "traitor" - and Israel's “devastating, ongoing genocide” - he's an "anti-Semite." Calmly, he noted, he "signed up for this," and will continue to insist on it, citing the need to equally mourn and extend human rights to the over 1,100 Israelis killed and 74,000 Palestinians subsequently killed. "This is part of what it means to believe in a sense of humanity, " he said. "We need not choose between which death we will mourn and which we will ignore, and we must reckon with the fact that all of it is to be opposed.”
A ceasefire in name only: The mother of 8-year-old Amal al-Mughayir mourns her death in an Israeli strike on Khan Younis last month.Photo by Doaa Albaz
Further glad proof of that reckoning was the awarding of the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize to “Navi” Pillay, 85, South African jurist, former U.N. human rights chief and member of the ICC who has led decades-long fights seeking accountability for apartheid, wartime rape and most recently the Gaza genocide. The Nobel committee cited Pillay's “exceptional courage”; noting her last report naming Gaza a genocide, she responded, "Why would you need courage to speak the truth?" Fittingly, Pillay learned of the award while at Germany's Nuremberg Forum, where Nazis went on trial in 1945: "I was sitting here minding my own business, listening to the panel present their research, because you’re always learning.” When colleagues applauded her, Pillay won the Internet by slyly adding, "Thank you so much. If you clap a little more, I may share this prize with President Trump."
Last year, Pillay was also awarded the Sydney Peace Prize. She dedicated it to “all the survivors of international crimes” and to “defenders of international justice (who) ensure that impunity will not be allowed to reign.” Joining her righteous fight is Mosab Abu Toha, a Palestinian writer and poet from Gaza and winner of the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary. Recently, per Zeteo, Toha wrote A Letter of Sympathy to the President of the United States after he saw posts online mocking Trump when he was seen wincing at the “deafening sound" of a military flyover for his autocrat bestie Chinese President Xi. "I didn’t like the tone of many of those posts,” Toha wrote. "I don't blame you for such a reaction/ I have reacted like this, and worse, hundred of times..."
To wit:
"My parents, wife, kids, and siblings have too.
So all of us now
know how
that sound feels.
In 2008, I was 16
on the roof of our house in Beit Lahia,
standing with my father, watching his pigeons in their coop,
when an Israeli, U.S.-made F-16
flew low, like a shaving machine,
before razing a neighborhood.
I panicked at its piercing shriek,
but also at the sight of the missiles
mounted beneath its wings.
But Mr. President, all of us, except you, know
the screech of a missile
or the blast of an explosion.
Do you know what’s louder than the screech and the blast?
The voice of a mother in Jabalia Camp,
begging me on October 31, 2023,
to search for the bodies of her husband and children
under the rubble
not just of her house,
but of the entire neighborhood.
The desperate pleas of 5-year-old Hind Rajab
from her uncle’s car in January 2024,
and the 335 bullets fired at her
before, during, and after the call.
The trickle of tears on the cheek of a father
who returned with no bread for his kids in a tent
in Khan Younis, and the screams of an infant
whose mother’s breast had dried up.
The heartbeat of 18-year-old Ahed
as her uncle, Dr. Hani Bseiso,
amputated her leg on a kitchen table,
without anesthesia.
It was dark!
The grinding footsteps of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiyya
as he walked toward the tank in his white coat.
I can hear the sound of his disappearance.
And I can still hear and hear more!
But do you know what will be much louder than all?
The sound of the gavel
in the court of justice."
Inevitable: You Show Up
Decades ago, Robert Reich warned an American economy moving increasingly overseas through the 1970s was creating a two-tired society of a few rich winners and too many left-behind Americans whose anger, resentment and historic racism could be easily manipulated by a savvy carnival barker hungry for power - especially with a right-wing SCOTUS willing to give him almost total immunity for his boundless crimes. The grim result: What Timothy Snyder calls unprecedented "superpower suicide," wherein a major country quickly crashes and burns due to incompetence at all the "basic instruments of state power."
Now, facing "the mid-term music," the GOP flounders through "a five-alarm fire," pulling out lies, bribes, denial. They "must WIN" by using "every tool" - vote early, absentee, in person, by mail (or ICE thugs). Rick Wilson: "Oh, NOW mail-in ballots AREN'T a scam? Sweaty Don is nervous." They hype a duplicitous White House App: "365 Days of Wins." Trump offers a stream of paltry bribes: $90 to 20 million seniors to offset higher Medicare costs he caused, $500 to a million "excess" Obamacare fees, $5,000 to every American adult if Republicans win, conjuring a shameless Oprah-like spectacle: "You get a car, and you get a car..."
The alleged master of the Art of the Deal grows cringey and desperate, as do his boasts. At a recent rally: "I know more about inflation, I know more about everything than anyone in this room, anybody anywhere in the world." Of his two-day "emotional support" debacle of a Texas convention, he claimed 107 million views compared to the NFL's 25 million; the reality was his 3.3 million vs. their 25 million views, with even Ken Paxton secretly complaining, "It dropped our numbers." One viral meme tells the tale: A sign with sky-high gas prices, an angry MAGA voter, and the text, "Turns out my truck doesn't run on liberal tears."
In 2015, Trump packed a rally in Mobile ALA with over 30,000 fans; last week, at a high school gym with mostly empty upper tiers, people began streaming out as he bragged the economy is "booming," with new plants "everywhere." Later, he stubbornly insisted, "There are no empty seats" and his rallies are "HOTTER than ever," so nothing to see here except mashed potatoes. "Just pretend I’m on the ballot," he pleaded, a loser's losing message amidst the debacles he's forged. In need of safe harbor, his itinerary in "a red-state October blitz" is almost entirely in deep-red states he once won by double digits: Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Kansas.
In Ohio this weekend, he raved Democrats' "transgender for everybody" policies would “mutilize your children," he has "record-winning numbers," "Talafreako" (in Texas, not Ohio) is a "vaygan" who "eats a piece of lettuce all day long" but he's now "gone full on eating meat" to get elected so he goes to barbecues where he's "throwing up all the time." He rambled, ranted, cursed, flaunted "the utter disdain for the office he holds and the people hes supoosed to serve." NYTPitchbot: "Whether it’s Obama saying 'Yes We Can” or Donald Trump saying 'We're gonna shove it up their ass,' both presidents adopted divisive slogans."
Beyond the rallies, the carnage persists. Millions have lost SNAP benefits. Many thousands, caught in our immigration atrocities, endure "quiet reckonings with what the country has become.” The Atlantic profiled the Ohio truck driver who hit and killed Haitian student Pierre Damas Bel in an apparent suicide; he is haunted by a young man who “would have been a model citizen,” who had to charge his own ankle monitor, who "was hurting - we did not do right by him.” War agit-prop still spews. So does cultural appropriation: Park rangers blast regime theft of Smokey the Bear, a forest fire refugee: "Only you can prevent fascist liars." "Zoologically-deficient hacks" have also dropped AI slop of USA-themed penguins in Greenland, where they don't live; some suggest they "shouldn’t have dismantled the Department of Education so quickly."
Surreal dissonance flourishes. Because they are "committed to leading the world in Gold Standard Science," other regime goons are bravely charging ahead to "MAKE AMERICA HEALTHY, SAFE, AND BEAUTIFUL" with an executive order to "ELIMINATE FOREIGN, INVASIVE TICKS AND MOSQUITOES" to "restore enjoyment of the great outdoors" through "safe and effective technology-enabled methods," thus rebuilding "public trust in science." Too little, too late? Still, their effort aligns nicely with Press Barbie's move to Fox News, per The Borowitz Report, "as a stepping-stone" to acquiring the requisite “warrior ethos" to become Secretary of Defense. And that profound disconnect is alive and festering in the incoherent child king somehow still babbling about "the golden age of America.”
Declaiming, “Watch for the ‘Midterm Surprise!’,” he just boasted his sparse rally crowds are "unbelievable!" He even added for the 8,726th time his now parody-level, "Nobody has ever seen anything like it"and raved the GOP is “flipping races all over the place.” As a public service, Aaron Rupar, who's borne witness to years of this insanity, urges we read the transcript of his recent Time interview to grasp "the grave cognitive impairment" of "random brain firings" like, "I just got a tariff from Lindsey Graham" and "100 million people watched the midterm convention." Observers: "He’s like a criminally inclined rutabaga with some language skills" and "He looks like an attendant just asked him if he wants pudding or Jello and he’s mad he has no idea what those are."
Sunday night, Indivisible hosted a "Hands Off Our Vote" event in New York to prep for Oct. 17's No Kings and the election. Despite our fatigue - from lying, thieving, genocidal rants, fucking ballrooms - a fiery Mark Ruffalo vowed to "Hulk-out" to convey his rage. "We are so tired, but we can't give up now," he said. "They want to keep us afraid. Their only weapon is our fear. But we're inevitable." He recalled meeting with activist Harry Belafonte a few years ago and asking, "How are we going to know what to do? When are we going to know when it's our calling? And he said, 'Brother, you’ll know. And then you go. You show up.’“
Robert De Niro, out of furious fucks to give, raged at policies crazy, cruel and increasingly unpopular. "Power...to...the...people," he intoned. "It isn't just a slogan. It's the founding principle of our nation." So what do those now unduly empowered do? he asked. "They try to take our votes away. Are you kidding me?" (Ghost of Travis Bickle) "Hands Off Our Vote. Lemme put it another way - keep your fucking hands off our vote," he seethed. Then he led the crowd in an explosive call-and-response to "spineless officials, the Supreme Court, masked ICE thugs," finally "that coward, that fucking piece of shit Donald Trump. When he tries to take our voice and power away, what do we tell him?" To each, he bade,"Keep your fucking hands off our vote!" and take back the House, the Senate, our country. In brief, show up.
- YouTube www.youtube.com
Trump's middle-school level AI images feature headless penguins in Greenland, where they don't live. Truth Social post
Patriotic Cowboys 'R Us
Still, with men reportedly fleeing MAGA, their need to "pump up that masculine animus" is well-served by Pete's juvenile, chest-pounding, lethality-obsessed focus on testosterone in the name of a "High-T Department of War" that has "nothing to do with science and everything to do with regressive ideas of what masculinity is." The same idiocy fuels all the culture war malevolence: Banning books, gutting DEI initiatives - "Diversity is not our strength" - blocking promotions for women and Blacks, a "no more dudes and dresses" transphobia, and ending tenure for civilian professors at military academies 'cause who needs to protect independent thinkers, scholars, leaders, experts from "the tyranny of a government that actively hates its critics," the "mindset of someone who has learned nothing (from) American military failures."
And so to another cringey, Strangelovian "State of the Force Address," which was not a thing until a TV bobblehead took over the military and turned it into bumbling amateur-hour theater. Last year, he summoned nearly 800 generals, admirals, advisors from around the world, all smarter and higher-ranking than him, to rant about beards and "fat troops," tell them they "kill people and break things for a living," and prattle about a 10% cut in their numbers by "removing redundant force structure to optimize and streamline leadership." When he paused for applause, there was only deep silence. Maybe because a Joint Chiefs chairman, two service chiefs, two intelligence directors, several generals and the better part of the Army’s senior leadership "were told to run faster by a weekend television host."
On Wednesday, he gathered about 600 officers and enlisted members, again at the Quantico Marine Corps Base in Virginia, for another speech. In the weeks leading up to his latest dash of show business, The Wall Street Journal reported, he emailed commanders asking them to nominate troops to attend. They had to "fit certain physical standards," he wrote, to have the proper height/weight ratio, with "impeccable grooming: "I want central casting." If they were hot enough, he added, as a bonus some would have "the opportunity" to join him in a hot and sweaty dawn work-out at the Pentagon. Totally normal! And luckily, a camera crew was there to follow them on a chanting, banner-bearing run through D.C. To make them look even cooler, he gave them all t-shirts that read, "This Is War." Or at least off-off Broadway.
Later, before a giant American flag, he dropped the hammer in a campy speech many compared to SNL's Colin Jost doing Pete Hegseth, or Tom Cruise's braying misogynist in Magnolia, or George C. Scott's Gen. Patton "minus the inspiration." Under his "less generals, more GIs" mandate - though it's "fewer" not less - he said he was doubling the previous cut of 10% of high-ranking personnel to 20% with, wrote Tom Wellborn, "the confidence of a man who has looked at the most powerful armed force in the world and concluded its central weakness was the number of people in it who outrank a major," what he was. Months into a disastrous war, "That is the force Pete Hegseth has built by subtraction. What it has lost is (what) a general is for, which is to be the person in the room who says no, and (he) has made sure, one firing at a time, there is nobody left in the room to say it."
"The media calls that a purge," blustered Hegseth, evidently expecting criticism. "I call it accountability. As usual, what the media levels as an accusation, I wear as an accomplishment.” He haughtily went on to “lay it out simply for the anti-American losers in our media...We are no longer the woke department, or the weak department. Simple translation? No fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals. Just warriors." On coverage of the war and eight attempted suicides on the USS Lincoln, he slammed “disingenuous headlines about deployment lengths, false claims of low troop morale or flat-out propaganda as if it’s written by our adversaries.” "The information space is a battle space," he said. "The ideological clowns are out. The patriotic cowboys are in." Smirking, he added,."With testosterone testing on top." Jesus, dude.
He also announced several new programs with fancy warlike names like Fortress America and Autonomous War Command or AutoWarCom, a "four-star combatant command with service-like authorities built to scale autonomous and robotic capabilities," and "The Next Great American Base," the first new military base in 40 years, with all 50 states "invited to bid for it like an Amazon headquarters," and "America's Corps of Cadets, creating new college partnerships with right-wing Liberty University and Hillsdale College, plus Louisiana State, Mississippi, Tuskegee Universities, to increase the number of "patriotic leaders of character" and counter "anti-American, DEI-worshiping woke factories," aka the Ivy League schools Hegseth attended.
There's the bonkers Project Meridian to study "the future of warfare," headed by "three of our nation’s best minds" - two tech fat cats and one 83-year-old MAGA hawk - none of whom have served in the military, two of whom have made fortunes from it. Cue Elon Musk, a gonzo rocket salesman with billions in Pentagon contracts, GOP pol Newt Gingrich, who got almost as many deferments as Trump during the Vietnam War, and Palmer Luckey, MAGA donor, self-proclaimed "radical Zionist" and founder of tech company Anduril - "three great Americans to help plan the next war with three people who have never been in one," what could possibly go wrong?" From a military Reddit: "Is this real?", "Yes master code-monkey, infosec ninja, and tech infrastructure guru Newt Gingrich age 83. Our enemies are so fuct bro!" and "Oh fuck this fucking Nazi-loving fuck outta here."
There's a new Office of Religious Affairs for a DOD "putting on the full armor of God" to "strengthen the moral, ethical and spiritual readiness of our warfighters," aka "do the Lord's work to improve smiting capacity," because, "while we wage physical war, the real battle is spiritual." (Maybe why the Pentagon's covering up not-real casualties?) It's "voluntary," which skeptics say is akin to being “voluntold” to do things. Finally, as a party favor, troops were given a new 144-page "field manual" of transcripts of Hegseth speeches. Its forward is by Trump, in classic Trumpese. "As your Commander-in-Chief, I will not ask you to fight dumb Wars," it reads. "I will unleash you to be violent, lethal and unstoppable - and I will always have your back. Godspeed, Great Warriors. Thank you for your attention to this matter!"
- YouTube www.youtube.com
Along with other regime Nazis, crackpots and fools, theories abound as to what the fuck is wrong with Pete Hegseth. Many argue he's afflicted with the common sickness of countless, soulless, mediocre white men who know, deep inside, they have risen further than they deserve to. Hence, the bottomless need to be subservient to a monster like Trump (who is too mad to know that) to maintain their place and value in a white guy patriarchy, to always understand "who they get to abuse, and who they are supposed to take abuse from," and to remain within that vaunted structure, the only one where they have power and respect, by continuing to rule over those they've been taught are beneath them. It's also why, conversely, they freak out when their vital slot is threatened: See Hegseth's frantic lie detectors at any sign of leaking, mocking, saying no.
Hegseth seems particularly despised by Americans, many of whom eagerly await his war crimes trial, his impeachment,, his rapturing - hopefully first in line, though maybe behind Goebbels/Miller. The concrete damage done by his legacy - the calamitous war, hollowing of the military's promotion chain, lethality-tinged dumbing down of its intellectual infrastructure and exploitation of those serving - will presumably take years to repair. But people hate him just as much for his personal failings: his gross unfitness and incompetence, his swaggering "Jr High Machismo," the Nazi-adjacent arrogance of "this nose-powdering drunk," the lying, preening chutzpah of the military's worst-ever leader consistently "acting like a 19-year-old edgelord loser," like "a dipshit," "an asshole," "an absolute tinydick in every goddamn way."
Several truly obnoxious moments of his state-of-the-empire speech ignited that animus. His attack on media who do their job and tell the truth about him began with a lame nod to the First Amendment - "A free press is of course important" - that veered to a diatribe: "But partisan activism that intentionally smears the troops and the historic mission they are undertaking (is) anti-American. It's sick. It's a national betrayal. It's treason, actually...It has to be said." Umm, not, said America: "Secretary of Dewar’s doesn't get he’s the only one getting smeared, not the troops," "I love the free press until they say words I don't like in which case I call them traitors and want them killed," "Bro, they're not shitting on the troops, just you," "It's called free speech, fucknut. The thing your troops are supposed to defend," "The mission of our military has become historic only in the degree of its absurdity."
Then there was a pitiful, fitness-instructor-like defense of his bullying of troops: "Telling someone to get in shape or shave or fix their uniform or start busting their ass - that's not discrimination. That's leadership." Fact: Actually, it's neither. It's stupid, shallow, beside-the-point bullying. Many argued it's just "being a dick" and "an asshole." That he should "tell his boss to get in shape and start busting his ass." That it's weird how he "doesn't get to the part where he actually discriminates." That leadership is "inspiring, being an example, not getting your nation into an illegal war, losing it in days and committing war crimes." That he's "a drunk, vain, adulterous rapist with ridiculous sideburns." That it's "stunning in an awful way a man his age is so immature." That "this motherfucker is waaay out over his skis." And damn, more fucking patriotic cowboys is the last thing we need thanks.
How Pete's (deservedly) doingScreengrab from CNN
Here We Remain: A World That Abides Slaughter
The final own goal of his attack on the press, teased by a frantic promo, was the launch of Trump TV: The Essentials Station, the White House YouTube channel recast as a 24/7 livestream of Trump's "greatest hits." Cue a July rant at Mt. Rushmore about "the communist menace," last year's speech at dinner with King Charles, a 2016 whine in Kentucky about the wet stairs he overcame. YouTube's real-time data let the "king of ratings" see it quickly crash and burn, from a paltry 8,000 viewers to half that to 1,000 to 704 (LOL) as J.D. announced stripping health care from 760,000 people - way below the 2,000-plus then watching birds snack on seeds and nuts. Many relished the flop - "Fascism is awesome!" - or suggested new slots: "Wake Up & Rage Tweet, Ketchup-Throwing, They’re Eating our Pets, The Great MAGA Crypto Scam, Wheel of Pardons" and, from 2:01 to 2:02 a.m., “Covfefe.”
Then came a clumsy, swooning welcome - "the deference was deafening" - for his strongman soulmate Chinese President Xi Jinping, the world's biggest jailer of journalists and never mind the "communist menace," with its empty pomp, cartoonish tour of a hole-in-the-ground ballroom and million-year helipad: "He has a great interest in granite." Accomplished: nada. The next day, with his approval rating "somewhere between Ebola and Ed Sheeran," he waddled into the 81st session of the UN General Assembly and threatened one of its130 participants with war crimes, musing, "Do I annihilate the Islamic Republic quickly and drive them into hell?" Iran's delegation swiftly walked out. Mehdi Hasan: "For shame. The president of the United States goes to the United Nations and threatens genocide against a member state in front of the world. This is where we’re at."
Slurring, stumbling, wandering at unhinged, racist length - details here - Trump boasted about murdering over 200 people “at war with civilization” in illegal boat strikes, celebrated (and inflated) the theft of Venezuela’s oil, charged trans people are a national security risk, inanely declaimed “to the (raping and plundering) victor belong the spoils” - the inept, terrifying vision of a "demagogue who hijacked American democracy devolving into a mad king before our eyes." The speech, a "sad and dangerous national embarrassment" with its "ridiculous braggadocio, narcissistic puffery, absurd demonstrable lies, open criminality and deranged, murderous threats" landed "with silence inside the hall and a pile of fact checks outside it, (the) death rattle of a rapist president and what’s left of America’s reputation on the world stage."
Afterwards, normal world leaders "went back to making plans that don't include the United States." Or, in the case of Denmark, trolling. Trump has created a fictional backstory for a "deal" on Greenland "long in the making - you could go back many, many decades, probably centuries" - that just repackages an existing 1951 deal; ahead of a meeting held later at the U.N., officials played the Sondheim song Send In The Clowns, with a long zoom to Rubio. At this point, writes Paul Krugman, it's "Underwear on the Outside” time, a callback to Woody Allen's 1971 film Bananas about a third-world nation's absurd strongman. Coverage of the U.N., he noted, focused on Trump's rabid rejection of global cooperation or the fact almost everything he said was a lie. The bigger story: "The leader of what used to be the world’s most powerful nation, now collapsing before our eyes, has clearly, undeniably lost his mind."
Other speakers tried to steer the conversation back to reality. Secretary-General António Guterres stressed the primacy of international law, especially in Palestine, calling the birth of the U.N. "an act of defiance (by) people who refuse to surrender the future to fear...who know our futures are bound together." But with accountability: The U.N. deems Gaza "a collective crime," a "live-streamed atrocity...sustained by the complicity of influential third states"; their complicity must be confronted for the rule of law to survive. Holding photos of Iranian children killed in U. S. strikes, Iran's president Masoud Pezeshkian argued it is Trump who has defied international law, while Iran has remained committed to negotiations. “We have only defended ourselves. We are not terrorists." He also called for accountability on all sides, asking "why Israel kills, yet Iran is subject to sanction.”
Israel kills. And Benjamin Netanyahu offered a bellicose "potpourri of lies and incitement" to deny it. In his "furious, ugly and disgraceful" diatribe, he called universal charges of genocide "the biggest lie of the century," summoning the chutzpah to call the carnage in Gaza "the opposite of genocide." Anyone who disagreed, he raved, was "a moral coward." They include about half the Assembly, who walked out as Zionist allies chanted “Am Yisrael Chai," "the Nation of Israel lives"; hundreds of protesters outside, with about 100 arrested, among them Brooklyn Council Member Chi Ossé, who later posted a selfie in handcuffs with “Free Palestine. Netanyahu burn in hell"; and world leaders "spreading lies about my country and our brave soldiers." They are all "tyrants (in) a global anti-Jewish conspiracy (to) erase us from the face of the Earth," Bibi brayed. "Instead of collapsing, we delivered devastating blows to all of them with our great American friends."
There was much more. He brandished a pager in tribute to Israel's 2024 operation targeting Hezbollah in Lebanon that killed 12 and wounded over 3,000. He dismissed settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank as the work of "juvenile delinquents." He said bombing Iran was "’one of the easiest decisions I’ve ever had to make." Truly shameless, he claimed Israel still has "the most moral army in the world.” He denied a Haaretz report, confirmed by the New York Times, that Egypt's intel chief warned him in September 2023 that Hamas was planning "a major attack" but he declined to pass the tip on to his intelligence agencies. He assailed as "anti-Semitic" the duly elected mayor of his host city, who deems him a war criminal and wants the ICC's arrest warrant against him enacted. He claimed "many Jews no longer feel safe in New York." He evidently doesn't either; he flew into New Jersey.
He ended his speech with a Bible verse from Samuel that describes the genocide of the Amalek, enemies of Israel, after God orders King Saul, "‘Go and completely destroy those wicked people." Saul mostly does, but spares their king and “the best of the sheep and cattle." Then the prophet Samuel admonishes him: "(God) sent you on a mission, but you have rejected the word of the Lord, and the Lord has rejected you as king over Israel." Samuel's murderous gist: “Nezah Israel lo yeshaker,” or "the eternity of Israel will not falter.” The lesson Bibi draws: "We have no choice but genocide." And so they undertook it: Over 73,900 direct deaths, about half women and children. Over 175,000 wounded, often gravely. An estimated, obscene 641,000 ultimately dead, from destruction of the healthcare system, malnutrition, disease. The bodies of perhaps 10,000 more still lie under the rubble.
And the devastation goes on. Under Israel's blockade, there is widespread hunger, 90% of Gazans remain homeless, trauma and illness go untreated. More than 900 wheelchairs donated by two Australian non-profits for over 11,000 disabled children - Gaza has the most child amputees per capita in the world - are held hostage in Jordan warehouses by outlandish Israeli restrictions on anything that could "serve a military purpose." Other targets of insane "dual-use" ban: Portable toilets, sleeping bags, tarps. bandages, diapers, shampoo, tent poles. And evidently kites after Bibi declared "targeted strikes”against the launch of any kites, balloons or drones, with the IDF ordered to "act forcefully" against perps in a besieged hellhole where Palestinian children are deemed “explosives of the future." "What a childhood in Gaza teaches: Want less."
The cruelty, madness, loss continue to spark palpable rage. Actor Mandy Patinkin, a Jew aware of history, on the corrosive effect of "the revenge business": "How could it be done to you and your ancestors, and you turn around and do it to someone else?!” Omar El Akkad - born in Egypt, raised in Qatar and Canada, a US citizen - on "what it means to live under an ordering of the world that abides slaughter, and whether any ordering ever stood for anything at all." He wrote the book One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, though its full title is One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will always have been against this,” what one critic calls "a cathartic savaging" of empire, Western hypocrisy on Gaza, selective empathy in "the most privileged sliver of global society."
"When the unspeakable happens, the world should stop but it doesn't," he writes of the comforting bubble of a white nationalist world run by broken men and their accomplices. They blithely "shrug at one kind of slaughter," having developed "a terrible immunity...When it mattered, who sided with justice and who sided with power?” The time to choose is now, he adds, and hindsight will not undo or excuse their crimes: "At the time they say, 'Yes, this is tragic, but necessary'...The alternative to the countless killed and maimed and orphaned...screaming from under the rubble (is) barbarism.” "There is no way to finish the sentence, 'It is unfortunate that tens of thousands of children are dead but...'" he movingly writes. "There is no such thing as someone else’s children."
The evening after Netanyahu attacked Zohran Mamdani as anti-Semitic - Mamdani dismissed the "baseless lies meant to sanitize his genocide against Palestinians" - the good mayor was home at Gracie Mansion, busy with one of Carver's "small, good things." The mayor hosted Palestinian families from Gaza who have lost family members or made their way to America as refugees to "honor their contributions (and) acknowledge the losses they have endured." They ate a meal; a smiling Mamdani glided around the table, filling water glasses. They also planted an olive tree - for Palestinians, source of food, wood, fuel and symbol of peace, hope, resilience, a deep connection to their heritage and ancestral land. Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish: ‘"Here we remain, as long as thyme and olives remain." Zohran Mamdani: "May peace be our future."
A young boy in Gaza mourns his murdered mother Getty Image
A Certain Weeping: Beyond Bin Laden’s Wildest Dreams
And, these days, commies. Ted Cruz savaged "communists and Islamists (who) hate Christians, hate Jews and hate capitalism.” Little toad-like, wide-eyed MAGA Mike shrieked we are a nation "being attacked from within" (true, that) by Dems "beholden to radicals. We have let the barbarians inside the gate, and next year the Communists will be in Congress." (Oh, please.) Ever-slimy J.D. called half of Congress "the party of hatred (that) despises America and the people who built it." Don Jr. revisited the "dystopian hellscape" of left-wing ideology, declaring, "Communism is on the march." His demented old man said Dems "turned our cities into scenes of death, misery, murder, poverty and destruction," but thank God "we took that dark age of America and turned it into a golden age." Also, he'll give you a $5,000 bribe if you "cheat like hell" on Election Day. Inspiring.
Later, at a 9/11 Pentagon event, he and his lackeys reiterated their devotion to “never forget” not to learn anything from a grievous, vengeful past. Trump said his Iran debacle fulfills a "sacred oath" to "never, ever forget,“ or learn, squat. Dangerous zealot Pete said "our warriors" have "fought an Islamic theocracy that has wished us death for half a century, that cheered on 9/11," a total lie. Iran's government and people decried the “mass murder of human beings" on Sept. 11, with huge crowds attending candlelit vigils. Sliding past pesky facts, Pete yawped Iran still "plots to kill our citizens" and "we're still sending terrorists where they belong - to Hell." Then he crudely veered to Scripture: The struggle against evil "will continue until Judgment Day, "our only answer (is) eternal vigilance,” and thank you Jesus for brave new "warriors who will say when it matters most, 'Send me.'”
Startlingly for those of a certain age who, dumbfounded, watched it unfold on that blue-sky day - and then rewatched it a thousand times, trying to grasp a reality so much of the world, but not this once-shining city on a hill, has experienced - about a third of Americans are too young to remember the chaos of 9/11 - its searing images of office workers, often holding hands, plunging to their deaths; the collapse of both towers in a vast cloud of ash, dust, paper, carcinogens; the courage of firefighters and first responders, thousands of whom died that day or later of cancers; the initial summoning of our better angels as a nation came together for one another. Historian David Blight cites "the essential grief of it...a sheer sense of unspeakable loss." He also calls it "the most visual event in our history, so shocking, so horrifying that you can’t watch it without a certain weeping."
Obviously, it didn't last. At first, Bush's language was of criminality, not war. The resources of the federal government would go to help victims' families and "find those folks who committed this act." He was rational: He told Congress the terrorists "practice a fringe form of Islamic extremism (that) perverts the peaceful teachings of Islam." Then - from fear, hubris, ineptness, talking to mad Cheney? - his rhetoric pivoted to the martial, the need in a new world to "win the war against terrorism." “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists," he said, and new Sen. Hillary Clinton echoed him: “Every nation has to be either with us or against us." Absurdly, he vowed to end terror, evil itself, "a frightened child wishing to rid the world of bad guys." Even language warped into creepy, blood-and-soil, "Nazi-resonating" totalitarianism with the newly coined "Homeland Security."
9/11was "when things began to go wrong for the United States," argues former Bill Clinton adviser Bill Galston. When "the world's most powerful country responded to the worst terrorist attack in its history by inflicting terror of its own," we swiftly squandered our global good will, power, money, resources and whatever remained of our moral capital after decades of imperialist crimes to invade Afghanistan, then Iraq, now Iran, in forever wars born of the same lies, missteps, ignorance, arrogance and racism whose abuses and lack of accountability continue to haunt and fracture us today. Added to millions of innocent lives lost, the reflexive move to demonize, dominate or torture those seen as lesser also led to "a staggering level of the willful infliction of suffering...of gratuitous cruelty and sadism that became operationally part of the war on terror."
An estimated 940,000 people were killed by direct, post 9/11 violence in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen; up to another 3.8 million people died indirectly in those war zones. Bush promised great military victories, as Americans learned (again) to equate national strength with the ability to inflict harm. When misbegotten wars faltered, ravaged, failed - it took the Taliban just 20 years to retake power - leaders began recycling 9/11 lies to justify new wars (see Iran), recycling hardware and manpower from the old, well-funded wars for a paramilitary and counter-insurgency force at home (see ICE), finding domestic enemies to scapegoat and target (see migrants et al), and pitting Americans against each other while turning a blind eye to the boundless corruption behind it. In brief, after a long road of death and destruction, "The war on terror has come home."
Historians debate whether Osama Bin Laden "won" after all in the dark aftermath of 9/11. He failed in his desire to establish a caliphate and expel western countries from the Middle East, but "the magnitude of the self-inflicted wounds (of) America's overreach," argues former Obama advisor Ben Rhodes, "hastened our own decline, division and betrayal of our own story.” Rhodes is often haunted by the cost in blood and treasure of what we did - and what we didn't do, say, for climate change, health care, education: "If you came down to Earth from another planet and tried to make sense of the fact that the United States spent several trillion dollars chasing a relatively small number of terrorists around a few countries, toppling governments and then fighting insurgencies when it has huge problems...you would think this is a country that has gone insane.”
To The Intercept's Nick Turse, a quarter century after 9/11, "It's clear that bin Laden won." A major goal, Turse notes, "was to trap the U.S. in expensive, foreign quagmire wars that would trigger domestic economic collapse." In 2001, America enjoyed an unimaginable budget surplus of $128 billion. After decades of ruinous wars, tax cuts for the rich and too much spending on the wrong things, today's national debt is over $40 trillion, we'll pay more than $1 trillion in interest, and that will likely double in the next decade. In 2004, Bin Laden touted his strategy of "bleeding America to the point of victory," writing, "All that we have to do is to send two mujahidin to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qaeda to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses without achieving for it anything of note.”
Of late, America's "swirl of toxic policies and overreach has opened the door to something beyond bin Laden’s wildest dreams" - the rise of a more deadly terrorist than any foreign threat or even Cheney, who deemed "quietly" waterboarding detainees "a no-brainer.” Trump, Putin's fragile, useful idiot, has "stepped into that slipstream of othering people" - Black president, Mexican "rapists," immigrant caravans, Democrats - unleashed by 9/11, and swiftly taken nearly 4,000 authoritarian actions, 1,050 undermining democracy: Over 940 silencing dissent, 650 destabilizing foreign policy, 600 gutting civil rights, 500 spewing misinformation, one biggie tryiing to kill us all with greenhouse gases, and now headlining the global erosion of democracy to render the U.S. "Patient Zero." "Bin Laden is long gone, but his spiritual successor remains ensconced in the White House," Turse darkly notes. "The Al Qaeda leader couldn’t have hoped for better."
At last week's 9/11 remembrance, several relatives of the dead spoke out against the same "sickening, unfathomable" othering, denouncing "using this tragedy to spread hate, which does no honor to the victims." Jonathan Larsen likewise urges we find hope in the "stories of what people did when faced with the prospect of horrific death, people who had to weigh that against their own humanity." Those stories offer "hopeful messages about America" because "they’re about humanity, a humanity 9/11 was engineered to make us forget." Our own "true instincts," he argues, are "of greatness, of self-sacrifice," demonstrating "that any of us, unburdened by stupid stories about who our fellow humans are, will help each other." 25 years later, "What we need to recover our forgotten better natures are better stories." May we tell them, and hear them above the unutterable carnage, and find solace going forward.
Update: Oh look! Over there! Another lying scumbag, another hapless scapegoat, another desperate, vengeful, shiny circus - "Operation Heartland Surge To Find New Imaginary Enemies" - to distract us from colossal crimes and failures. Huh.
ICE, born of Bush/Cheney's ill-conceived War on Terror, brought the war home to Chicago.Getty Images
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