Let Come What May, Is What They Say, Plus
Who's next? Bluto?
Let Come What May
I’ve been credibly accused of being a left-wing accelerationist, way back in the day when I was in the thrall of a certain socialist circle—Not All Socialists!—but these days accelerationism is mostly the province of the right, what with their longing for race wars and dictatorships and FEMA camps for the feebs and so on. That’s what’s behind their blowing up infrastructure and their various mass murders—provoking an overreaction from—all together now—the Deep State, and plunging the nation into chaos.
When all they had to do was wait for Democrats to fuck up while a wave of deeply confused voters joined with the cult to give a whole organized clique of far-right reactionary accelerationists a plurality of the eligible voters who voted. (As so often happens, the largest voting bloc was the eligible voters who didn’t vote.)
This excludes Trump, mostly, who is in it for the money, the payback, and the get-out-of-jail-free card, but whatever comes of the deliberated chaos he and his handlers (Stephen Miller primary among them) unleash, he’s unlikely to be either unhappy with it or in a position to temper it even if he wanted to.
This is not to say that there aren’t a bunch of wingers, including many of the now-empowered Project 2025 bozos, who think that women as chattel and the U.S. as a Christian theocracy aren’t accelerationist tactics but simply the appropriate way of things; they believe what they believe and it’s their job to make sure that you either believe it too or are set aside in whatever manner proves necessary.
But Miller, who is a White Nationalist (originally typed “White Nationalshit,” which on reflection isn’t really a typo but I’ve had typo angst lately), and his cohort are absolutely planning to provoke the kind of reaction that will enable them to effectively put an end to what passes here for a democracy, whether it’s by corrupting the voting process to the point where electing anybody who isn’t a them is impossible, or by just permantly seizing the government.
There will be a popular backlash to this shit at some point, and they will try to engineer a coup against (what’s left of our) democracy from it, so the current wave of shit is just going to keep on coming.
You can see this in the illegally-executed firing of the inspector generals, which some optimistic persons see as an opportunity for the Republican congress and the courts to reign in this iteration of the imperial presidency, while the administration see it as a test case of their power to defy congress and the courts. The courts could rule against them but, to paraphrase what Andrew Jackson is semi-apocryphally reported to have said in relation to Worcester v. Georgia, “they’ve made their decision; now let them enforce it.”
(The Worcester v. Georgia link is to Wikipedia, which is under assault from the wingers, and you could do worse than to donate to the organization in any amount.)
As for the Republican congress, well, you see their naked asses on display, and they’ve grown to enjoy it even if you’ve not.
All the same, this first week of the shitstorm has been weak relative to what the pustules promised. We’ve not seen the mass arrests and deportations promised, for instance. It’s not a frog-in-boiling-water thing, where they’re hoping to gradually acclimate everybody to what they’re doing; it’s just that they aren’t organized enough to pull it off yet, and it’s an open question whether or not they’ll get to that point. Certainly they want to, though, and certainly what they’ve already done is enough to instill a potentially crippling anxiety, which they do hope for.
Who’s next? Bluto?
We’ve got Kristi Noem, a sociopath who, unlike your Hatian refugee neighbors, might well eat your pets or at a minimum shoot them down in the streets, in charge of one major arm of the state security services; Whisky Pete Hegseth, who needs no introduction, in charge of what Trump hopes to turn into another state security service; John Ratcliffe, a hard-right Trump dogsbody and documented liar who once partnered at a law firm with John Ashcroft, the about-to-be-dethroned title holder of worst U.S. attorney general ever, as CIA director; and Marco Rubio, one of the most graphically sniveling Trump opponents-turned-groveling-devotees, as secretary of state.
Next up is billionaire hedge fund guy Scott Bessent for treasury secretary, who made clear in his finance committee hearing that he sees his job as catering to the interests of billionaires and corporations over those of, well, everybody else. He seems a Bluto-like character.
Two Democrats, Virginia’s Mark Warner and Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, voted with all the committee Republicans to advance Bessent’s nomination, and they’ll be joined by several more Democrats in confirming him, likely including giant turd in the punchbowl John Fetterman, whose capacity for homicidal bipartisanship knows few bounds.
Music
Johnny Smith, The Sound of Johnny Smith (“Gypsy In My Soul”); Reverb Motherfuckers, Route 666 (Full Album, pick your own favorite); God Speed You! Black Emperor, Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend! (“Mladic”).
Please Clap Redux
If you like what I write, please click on the like button and consider sharing the piece, as I am needy that way, and also perhaps
Subscribe!
If you give me lots of money, which actually has happened a few (two) times, I’ll send you a print of one of my pics of your choice (please email me, badcrowreview@gmail.com or weldon.berger@gmail.com, to let me know if you’re interested); regular paid subscriptions get everything but the print; free subscriptions get everything but the print and the satisfaction of keeping me in organic spinach; not subscribing at all gets the same as free subscriptions except for gratifying me in any way at all.
I can't begin to wrap my head around this. We are so far gone from sanity 😟