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.
24 VIII 2025: U.S. being destroyed by whims
The United States is being destroyed by the whims of an ignorant, deranged man. The only clear policy of the Trump administration is to take revenge on everyone Trump thinks has “wronged” him. Of course, the list of these “enemies” is just about endless.
There are other sources of Trump’s whims: the neo-nazi Stephen Miller and the Christian-nationalist Russell Vought. Trump seems to believe whatever these dangerous ideologues tell him; they work mostly in secret and are surely the sources of many of Trump’s more destructive initiatives. Trump is too gaga to think up all the damage he is doing.
I have seen a photograph of Our Leader wearing a red cap that has on its front the words “Trump Was Right About Everything.” This reminds me of photos I’ve seen of Italy immediately after WWII that show empty streets and ruined walls with stenciled signs that say “Mussolini ha siempre ragione,” “Mussolini is always right.” If the Smithsonian survives, people may one day be able to see in its collection a battered hat that says “Trump was right about everything.”
24 VIII 2025: On the outside looking in
Donald Trump tries to destroy or at least do harm to anything from which he feels excluded. He is in fact excluded from a lot of things because he is a vulgarian criminal with whom no one with taste or honesty wants to be associated. But he also imagines he would be excluded from anything he can’t understand. His resentment is boundless and the number of persons and entities he resents is potentially limitless.