Hell Freezes Over.
Today begins a different reality. Today, Democracy takes a back seat to Oligarchy. Today, people celebrate evil intentions. Today, one’s skin color can get them arrested. Today, science and education are the enemies of higher stock prices. Today, Americans reject the qualities that once made the country great. Today, the media makes a hard pivot to prevent becoming the target of retribution. Today, one has to do the fact-checking for themselves. Today, we stop being the country our forefathers envisioned. Therefore, it is appropriate that this morning much of the continental US wakes up to polar temperatures and life-threatening windchill. We elected to go to hell and it has frozen over.
When I took the dogs out at 7:00 this morning, the air temperature was -1F. The wind blew from the North across frozen snow, creating a windchill of -11F. I could feel my mustache freezing on my face. The dogs, who had snuggled closely all night, were quick to take care of business and quite happy to come back inside. There were no birds singing this morning. As our blue-collar neighbors left for work, no one had their music turned up loud, no one was speeding through the intersection, and no one bothered to wave. The tight grip of the polar vortex leaves everyone looking for warmth and struggling to find it.
Already this morning, President Biden has made the unprecedented move of issuing preemptive pardons to retired Gen. Mark Milley, Anthony Fauci, Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, and Adam Schiff to protect them against retribution from the incoming administration. This isn’t normal. In a peaceful transition of power, there’s no reason to worry about becoming a political target for legal action. Only in a country preparing to yield to a dictator are such pardons necessary.
The country we face this morning is not one our children want handed down to them. In the midst of yesterday’s temporary TikTok outage, Tipper came to me with a video excerpted from last year’s Congressional hearings into the social media app. In it, Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton ‘grills’ TikTok CEO Chew Shou Zi. Here’s the clip:
Now, people who’ve been watching for a time understand that the entire Arkansas congressional delegation is like a herd of orange cats: they share a single brain cell and Senator Cotton never gets a turn at using it. This was Tipper’s first introduction to the nonsense, however, and as we watched the clip together she asked, “Who the fuck elected this idiot that doesn’t even know Singapore is not in China?” Our 14-year-old, who enabled a VPN on her own yesterday, understands that what is happening is bad news for the future of the US and she’s expecting those of us old enough to vote to do something about it. “You need to find a solution,” she warned.
After all the noise and protesting, few people in the US are paying any attention as prisoners are being released in Gaza and Israel. Instead, we’re all bracing for the impact of the Felonious Punk’s sweeping executive orders, which he says he’ll issue this afternoon. Believe it or not, there was a time when executive orders were rare. Prior to President Grant’s administration, executive orders were rarely used and only for limited White House purposes. While FDR holds the record at 3,721 (most related to WWII), President Biden has issued comparatively few, less than anyone since Grover Cleveland’s second term. The idea of coming into the office ready to issue 100 orders or more deliberately and maliciously demonstrates the president’s desire to bypass the role of Congress in establishing laws.
Here’s the thing: while federal employees are bound to follow executive orders as if they are law, the rest of us don’t. Executive orders are limited by the Constitutional reach of the Executive Branch. States can defy them. Cities can defy them. You and I can, and should, defy them. We do not have to be complicit in this rush toward dictatorship. We have choices and we are duty-bound as citizens to exercise them.
As chaos unfolds in DC, the rest of the world’s rich and powerful are gathering in Davos, Switzerland for their annual conference on how to run the world. According to Oxfam, billionaires’ wealth grew three times faster in 2024 than the year before. The wealthier billionaires become the more poverty the rest of us experience. With poverty comes disease and hunger. Along with the poverty comes a feeling of helplessness.
The good news: there are more of us than there are of them. We hold more power than any of us realize. All it takes is one nationwide strike to bring the powerful to their knees. We’ve been loathe to do that for fear that our 401Ks would suffer, but my friends, your 401Ks are meaningless if we allow the creation of an economy that won’t let you retire. We’re almost at that point already. There is absolutely no reason to not kick the stilts out from under the economy and take the country, and the world, back for people who are in the true majority.
I, for one, refuse to cooperate with the incoming administration. I’m not watching anything to do with the inauguration. I won’t cooperate with any executive orders. I won’t ‘turn in’ neighbors whose citizenship might be questionable. I won’t out people who fall anywhere on the LGBTQIA spectrum. I will support the use of alternative fuels. I will encourage those who defy this government. I will resist, dissent, and deny any unreasonable use of power by any government agency.
What about you? Are you willing to take a stand or will you roll over and play dead?
What the world needs now are more badgers and fewer possums.
Tuesday, January 21, 2025
Defy. Resist. Dissent.
Welcome to the Deep Freeze. When the Gulf (of Mexico) coast is forecasted to receive as much as twelve inches of snow, it’s time to pack everything up and stay inside for a while. We’re keeping the kids home from school today because, once again, it’s too damn cold for them to be standing at a bus stop. The ground was frozen to a degree that dirt crunched beneath my feet when I took the dogs out. My bones ache deep into their marrow. The animals are tightly snuggled together to preserve their body heat. I couldn’t write a more harrowing beginning to a novel of apocalyptic horror if I tried.
No one here watched the inauguration. We’re just not that into insipid stupidity. I’ve not read ‘the speech,’ and I won’t. I don’t mind fiction all that much, but I’m not into pompous self-aggrandizing from someone who is barely literate. No one who stood in the Capitol Rotunda yesterday has my respect. I refuse to acknowledge any authority they might claim. I will not use their names. I actively resist this entire administration and everything it attempts to do.
I didn’t turn off my news tickers yesterday, primarily because I was afraid that I might miss something legitimately newsworthy. While I was hoping for a mass suicide event in the Rotunda, I’ll settle for President Biden commuting the sentence of Leonard Peltier on his way out the door. Understand, a commutation is not the same as a pardon. This champion of Indigenous American rights is still technically under arrest but can finish out his days at home where he can receive the medical care he needs. The FBI can go pound sand on this matter. Peltier has always claimed innocence and there is plenty of evidence to support that claim, but because two federal agents were killed all the feds care about is having a scapegoat. Peltier has never been dangerous, but I remain hopeful that his words inspire an uprising.
The true criminals begin with the oaf who wouldn’t bother to put his hand on the Bible while taking the oath of office. You know, that thing that begins with “I swear…” If he’s not swearing on the Bible, then what’s the authority on which he’s swearing? His actions deny there being any authority greater than himself, which means it is up to us to prove how wrong he is.
Other low points of the day include but are not limited to the following:
Worth watching: Early this morning, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi had a phone call. “We jointly support the development of a more just multipolar global order and work to ensure indivisible security in Eurasia and the world as a whole,” Putin told Xi in remarks carried by the Russian state TV. “Joint efforts by Russia and China play an important stabilizing role in global affairs.” This is a frightening development as our two largest ideological enemies threaten to control more of the world. Keep an eye on this matter.
I don’t expect there to be a great deal of good news over the next four years. For that reason, I’m upping my use of AI-generated imagery on these posts. For the past few years, I’ve re-edited and re-imagined photos from my archives, but the situation we find ourselves in at this moment requires a change. Photos from my archives are from a happier time. They were full of fun, exploration, and frivolity. All that is gone and I’m not going to destroy my photos by trying to make them fit the disgusting and ridiculous circumstances we are in.
Not that any of this matters. Fewer than 100 people view any given update. That’s not exactly a movement that threatens to upset anything. Still, at some unknown point in the distant future, I want our descendants to know that someone put up a fuss. If the world collapses into this chaos, it won’t be because I didn’t try to warn you.
Personally, I’m going to sit here and drown my sorrows in caffeine.
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