24 IX 2025: The cloaca maxima

The Elder Seneca (died c 39 AD) reports hearing a braggart boasting that he might be the equal of the top figures in several fields, “if I were a gladiator, I would be Fusius; if I were a dancer, I would be Bathyllus, etc.” Seneca continues: “I couldn’t hold my temper and shouted: ‘If you were a sewer, you would be the Biggest Sewer,” i.e., Rome’s Cloaca maxima.

This story was brought to mind by Trump’s speech at the United Nations. Lying and bragging and threatening are Trump’s “safe place,” the source of this ever-flowing, often flooding Cloaca maxima of self-promotion.

22 IX 2025: Triumph of the Will

Everything I see and hear from the rally-cum-funeral of Charlie Kirk reminds me of Leni Riefenstahl’s documentary about the 1934 Nazi Party Congress, Triumph of the Will. All the Nazi big shots were there for the Congress, and soundbites from their addresses are worked into the film: you can see Hess, Goebbels, Rosenberg, Streicher, Ley, et al. Hitler, of course, is presented giving several passionate speeches. 

The “Hate your Enemies Rally” in Arizona was in many ways similar. A star-studded cast from the Trump regime were present, many of them addressed the assembled faithful. Trump waxed Hitlerian in his “I hate my enemies” speech. However, the Oscar-winning Hitler imitator was Stephen Miller who delivered an unashamedly bigoted, hate-filled, foam-at-the-mouth speech that would have delighted the assembled members at Nuremberg in 1934.

21 IX 2025: Rally round

Charlie Kirk, whatever his faults, deserved a better funeral than one appended to the Trump Rally taking place out in Arizona. Yes, they have turned Charlie into a modern-day Horst Wessel, or, in Cardinal Dolan’s words, a “modern-day Saint Paul.” They’ve got a much larger crowd than Trump can usually draw these days, but who doesn’t like a good cry and a stage show worthy of Albert Speer. Trump is there, leading a star-studded troupe of the Trump nobility, and inviting all of MAGA to seek revenge for Charlie’s murder (if not in these exact terms).

Is Charlie’s death going to become the new Reichstag Fire?

19 IX 2025: Voice of the toilet

The death of Charlie Kirk has occasioned yet another surge of postings on the Internet. Many of these are mindless, some are vicious, and most are anonymous. It seems to me that the Internet has become very like a stall in a public toilet, with anonymous graffiti scribbled all over it.

19 IX 2025: The Emperor’s No clothes

The Emperor goes around naked. He wears no clothing, but he keeps asserting that he is the best dressed Emperor in all of imperial history. He is surrounded by a spawn of sycophants whose sole reason for being is to vie with one another in praising the Emperor’s attire. Under these circumstances it would seem safer to say nothing at all about the Emperor’s clothes. However, if the Emperor knows that you can see that he is naked, even if you say nothing, you’re on the Enemy List.

18 IX 2025: Catholic creep

I looked up the background of Brendan Carr, the latest murderer of free speech. He seems to think that as Trump’s Commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission he is a fit judge of what is “in the public interest.” So critics of Trumpism on the air-waves had better shut up or get out. 

Carr was a factotum at the reactionary Heritage Foundation, contributed to its Project 2025, the plan for the ongoing right-wing coup, and, judging from his education alone (BA from Georgetown, juris doctor from Catholic University of America), I would surmise that he is one of those unsmiling, unthinking, self-righteous Catholic boys that are recruited by reactionaries because they are so obedient and so resentful of democracy. A genuine inquisitorial creep.

17 IX 2025: Inhibition of Speech

The MAGAs want to turn Charlie Kirk into a demigod. Giving divine status to a newly deceased Roman Emperor required a vote of the Senate, but in the current U.S.A. it requires only a base of fanatics and the usual demagogues in the media and on the internet. Am I overstating the case? No. MAGAs have substituted politics for religion. This was easy to do, because their religion had been formed by their politics. So MAGA politics is the new would-be state church. 

So now, you can criticize or make fun of the Deity, saints, clergy men, odd religious practices, etc. all you want, for Freedom of Speech protects blasphemous and sacrilegious speech. But if you disparage the demigod Charlie, MAGA considers it blasphemy, and you can be fired from your job for no cause, be placed on a MAGA hate list, be threatened by MAGA fanatics, and maybe even ICEd.

14 IX 2025: MAGA’s Horst Wessel

In the course of the struggle between left and right (Nazi) elements in pre-war Germany, a card-carrying Nazi, a member of the SA, was killed in a street brawl by communists. The Nazi propaganda machine immediately canonized Horst Wessel as their “martyr,” and even produced a song, the Horst-Wessel-Lied, that became the Nazi theme song.

Mr. Charlie Kirk, a Christian Nationalist missionary, was assassinated by a teenaged nut-case, and now Charlie is being turned into a MAGA martyr and a national hero, and, along with Rudy Giulliani, is going to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom. How long before we will be hearing a Charlie-Kirk-Lied?

9 IX 2025: Civil defense against ICE

I suggest that cities where ICE is staging raids advise residents of their presence by sounding the weather-alert warning. This could be done on a city-wide basis or restricted to sounding alarms in particular neighborhoods where ICE is active. We have no one “Ready to ride and spread the alarm,” so it is the duty of city governments to warn their residents when they are at risk of being seized by un-trained pseudo-police who hide their faces and wear no uniforms.

2 IX 2025: Ghilaine is deserving too

I read that Donald Trump, the criminal’s friend, is planning to award the American Medal of Freedom to Rudy Giulliani. I guess the usual fee was waived for the impoverished Rudy. 

Suggestion: If we’re going to use the American Medal of Freedom to rehabilitate criminals, how about a medal for Ghislaine Maxwell? It could be a bonus added to her presidential pardon. She is almost as famous as Rudy, and a lot more criminal (so far as I know). Isn’t that why she was moved to a minimum security prison? Let’s put the past behind us and welcome Ghislaine back into the demimonde.