Every time I see a tweet from Jeffries or Schumer these days it really sends me to a dark place mentally. If elected Democrats can’t meet this moment, I despair in a way that makes me worry electoral politics is essentially useless in a post Trump world.

Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome, Im cabaret, au cabaret, to cabaret.

With Pete Davidson getting a big check to do the Riyadh Comedy Festival, the Saudis are finally paying reparations for 9/11. And jokes like that aren’t allowed at the Riyadh Comedy Festival.

1/ The comments directed @radiofreetom.bsky.social over the last few days about whether we are currently living in what can properly be described as a fascist state are completely missing his point.

I hope everyone realizes that the right’s assault on anyone who made light of Kirk’s murder or talked about all the awful things he’d said is a preview of what they have in mind when the orange guy shuffles off this mortal coil.

Thought the exact same thing earlier today.

Can’t there be one rebel in this family?

No matter what this meeting is about, Pete will always be a National Guardsman assigned to a Civil Affairs unit who got a bunch of crusader tattoos in his 40s because he wants you to think he's a cool, war-criming operator instead of an extremely online wife-beating loser

Bailing out Argentina clarifies "America First." The transnational right is first, everyone else is an enemy. The Trump admin defends it by calling Argentina an ally. But while US-Argentina relations are friendly, they're not allies. US allies are states Trump is antagonizing, such as South Korea.

I’m a little surprised the Comey indictment made it past a grand jury.

Opinions of James Comey and his time as FBI Director aren’t relevant here. The Trump DOJ manufacturing charges against Comey aren’t really about Comey, they’re about much bigger things: democracy, justice, truth, speech, and rule of law. For all of us.

im proud to have voted for obama, biden, and harris but i never lose sight of the fact that they work for us and as our employees are subject to frequent performance reviews because people fucking die when they suck at their jobs.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth convenes a meeting of generals (2025)

When this all started I said Israel had to play this very carefully or they would end up isolated, and worse. I didn't expect they would do so, but I said it and got called every name in the book.

The thing that the administration proved with the whole Kimmel affair is there is a robust market for high stakes defiance.

CHOTINER: Now this wasn’t a full-time employee? MR. MCGEE: No, no, Part-timer. CHOTINER: And you didn’t like him personally? MR. MCGEE: Oh, I mean, it was about his whole kind. Not just this kid. CHOTINER: You said this in the workplace. MCGEE: Yeah, at the 5-and-dime. Several times, actually.

What gave us Trumpism, perhaps, is that Americans resent it when they feel they are being told what to say and do. What may relieve us from Trumpism, perhaps, and I dearly hope and pray, is that very same sentiment.

What must the world think of this country now?

The President of the United States gave a press conference where he told the American people Tylenol causes autism and not to vaccinate your kids because of “all the liquid.” Some true mad king shit. The fact that we tolerate this as a society speaks ill of the lot of us.

I did not want to replace scientists and public health experts with conspiracy theorists. I thought that was an absolutely terrible idea. But the American people in their wisdom wanted it, or didn’t care. What a horrific embarrassment, imposing a lot of avoidable suffering and confusion.

One thing that is hard to quantify but I think matters a lot: the anti-Trump coalition has a ton of cultural capital and has been effective in using it at points (it also makes MAGA jealous). I think one effective pro-democracy move is for the professional class to pressure corporations.

IIRC, if The Rapture really happens it’s honestly going to be great down here for a thousand years until everyone gets thrown into the lake of fire. A thousand years without these assholes! It’s actually a pretty good deal!

It’s a small joy when you purchase some type of widget that lives up to the hype and is a game changer for doing certain tasks. And in those moments, I think “yay, capitalism!” until I remember that most of them are made in China, ostensibly a communist country. Economics is confusing.

Nixon’s presidency-ending crimes look like middle school pranks in comparison to the unprecedented corruption & authoritarianism now happening on a daily basis. We used to be a serious country in not tolerating this. We’ve lost our way. All because of One Special Boy 🤷‍♂️🤦‍♂️

Nothing is inevitable. In either direction. Hope and work.

Disney seems pretty screwed here. They want to be a company that sells to everyone, but now they face a president and political movement that demands everyone care only about them, which includes hating who they hate, except they’re less than half the country, and even less of the global audience.

Could it possibly be?

Media execs have fallen prey to a propaganda and harassment campaign that has completely divorced them from what people actually want right now. Both their insular information environments (group chats, podcasts) and ambient noise (Twitter reactionaries) have put them in a very stupid bubble.

genuinely believe that a large number of political, economic and media elites do not realize that nearly half the voting public did not vote for trump

🤮

Big media organization stands up for itself in response to Trump's frivolous intimidating lawsuit instead of capitulating. And because it's blatantly frivolous, a judge throws it out. It turns out that "no, see you in court" can get better results than "ok, whatever you want, please don't hurt me."

The way out of this is a critical mass of the population turning against it. I don't know the necessary threshold, and yes, some people obviously have more public influence than others. But in general, that's the way out. Anyone who scoffs at declining Trump support as irrelevant is wrong.

I still can't believe a large segment of Red America looks at this pampered crybaby, slathered in orange makeup with his cotton candy combover, doing his little dances to the Village People and going on endlessly about his passion for interior decorating, and thinks "now *that* is an Alpha Male"

The shining city on a hill is now the Bad Place.

Remember that in addition to all this other shit going on, we’re still barreling towards a government shutdown and recession.

In Auden’s words, it’s been a low, dishonest decade. And now we are paying the price.

Oh look at the liar.

I am not a “doomer”. What I am is someone who expected this fever to break a long, long time ago. And I do fear we underestimate how much worse it is going to get before it gets better, and the price that each of us is going to have to be willing to pay.

Respectfully disagree: 1) in fact it is unusual for a democracy w/ this level of GDP to turn authoritarian & so quickly; 2) the weakness of both institutions (congress & courts) and individuals (Schumer etc) is shocking. Would take less than 10 people in congress or 2 SC justices to stop all this.

He’s going to come back from England and issue an executive order to tear down the White House and replace it with a castle surrounded by a moat.

And to vote against Harris. We are a bored, decadent nation, and we wanted a show, not a minority woman with actual plans for governing. The voters got bored with the show that replaced White House Apprentice, so they brought it back.

I really wish so many hadn't lost sight of the fact that the biggest potential threat to speech is the state.

It is very important to understand that this was not just an editorial or business decision about what to air. This was in response to a direct government threat. This was government censorship of political opinions.

This is fascism. This is what fascists do. But once again, when future generations look back and wonder how fascism ever came to America, they will point right to all the fascist’s enablers. They will point to you @WaltDisneyCo, and you @Disney, and you @ABC, and you @ABCNetwork.

Silly Jimmy Kimmel. He should have just called for all homeless people to be killed and he’d still have a job.

There’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for people to build on the rubble of what’s being destroyed before our eyes. Private corporations bending over to forcefeed everyone government-approved speech is evil and amoral, but more than anything this creates boring, inauthentic, unwatchable shit.

We are moving closer and closer to a situation where this is an unconstitutional government that need not be obeyed.

When the big guy finally kicks it, are they going to try to force us to create shrines to him in our homes? If you don’t, you’ll be arrested for not mourning properly.