Political issues – Page 3

Ugly media failure on “the Big Beautiful Bill”

Elizabeth MacDonough, the Senate parliamentarian. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

The media have done an absolutely rotten job of saying what’s in Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.” The stories will say something about the deficit, then revert to the usual he-said she-said political junk. It’s infuriating.

As is so often the case these days, we have to depend on refugees from the mainstream media to provide us with very basic information that the mainstream media ignores so that it can focus on the inane political yipyap that it loves so much.

Jennifer Rubin, who resigned from the Washington Post and is now a part of “the Contrarian” on Substack, provides a partial list this morning of items in the bill that the Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, said are in violation of the Byrd Rule.

You’d almost think that the media don’t want us to understand just how corrupt and repulsive Republicans really are. And, yeah, let’s talk about campus protests and trans teenagers instead — you know, those real threats to America.

Jennifer Rubin’s list:

• A provision selling off millions of acres of federal lands

• A provision to pass food aid costs on to states

• Proposed limitations on food aid benefits to certain citizens or lawful permanent residents

• Proposed restrictions on the ability of federal courts to issue nationwide injunctions and temporary restraining orders

• A proposal for a funding cap for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and for slashing pay of employees at the Federal Reserve

• A proposal to slash $293 million from the Treasury Department’s Office of Financial Research

• A plan to dissolve the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board

• An effort to repeal an EPA rule limiting air pollution emissions of passenger vehicles

• An item allowing project developers to bypass judicial environmental reviews if they pay a fee

• A measure deeming offshore oil and gas projects automatically compliant with the National Environmental Policy Act

• A modified version of the REINS Act, which would increase congressional power to overturn major regulations

• A scheme to punish so-called sanctuary cities by withholding federal grants

• An increase on Federal Employees Retirement System contribution rate for new civil servants who refuse to become at-will employees

• A measure seeking to extend the suspension of permanent price support authority for farmers

• A requirement forcing sale of all the electric vehicles used by the Post Office

• A change to annual geothermal lease sales and to geothermal royalties

• A proposal for a mining road in Alaska

• Authorization for the executive branch to reorganize federal agencies

• New fee for federal worker unions’ use of agency resources

• Transfer of space shuttle to a nonprofit in Houston from the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum

Streaming hours well spent

“Zero Day,” on Netflix, is the political opus that “Mountainhead” was not. Robert De Niro is magnificent as a former president who is called out of retirement to investigate a nationwide cyberattack.

“Mountainhead,” by the way, started out with an interesting premise but quickly devolved into a rather silly black comedy.

In “Long Way Home,” on Apple TV+, Ewan McGregor and his old friend Charley Boorman, starting in Scotland, ride classic old motorcycles across seventeen countries of northern and eastern Europe. It’s good, lightweight fun. It’s also a fine travelogue that gets us into some places where tourists don’t often go — northern Norway, Finland, Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia.

Drone photography has done wonders for travel documentaries.

After all, what is comfort food for?

Fried barley biscuit with fixin’s

Especially on a diet, there is only so much that a mortal can do to fend off the heathen craving for bread and wine. Yesterday, a friend in California who had no idea that I’m on a diet sent me this text:

“I got a loaf of organic sourdough batard, some organic avocado oil mayonnaise, some Irish Kerry Gold butter, and some prosecco from Spain. I also got a bottle of organic Merlot.”

That, and the news, sent me over the edge. I tried to work out how to get maximum comfort from, say, 900 calories or less.

Fried barley biscuits were the solution: flour made from hulled barley, a little olive oil, and nonfat milk. Frying the biscuits in a little peanut oil made the biscuits a little less dry than if I had baked them.

Ignorance and folly

One of the most horrifying images I’ve seen in months was the White House photo of Trump, Vance, Rubio and Hegseth lying their ignorant asses off for the cameras. It would be hard to find four greater fools and sicker souls anywhere on the planet, and yet there they were, in the White House.

MAGA types probably still believe Trump’s lies and triumphalism. But I give the media high credit for starting to get the truth out so fast that by Sunday morning, on the talk shows, Trump’s goons had to start walking things back.

One of my biggest concerns is terrorism. Iran doesn’t have the capability of a military response far from their own borders. They’ll have to retaliate on the cheap, and that means terrorism. The Washington Post took up that subject this morning: A weakened Iran could turn to assassination and terrorism to strike back.

I hope gasoline prices jump to $11 a gallon. Gasoline prices are one of the few things that the American ignorati can understand.

Fools, rushing in

Take that, Ezra Klein

Ezra Klein in attention-seeking mode. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

All liberal pundits have an inherent conflict of interest, a constant temptation that tends to lead them astray. Those of us who read the output of the punditry must always be alert to that conflict. It’s that competing for attention may sometimes override their integrity and wisdom. They have to be at least a little provocative.

We’re all familiar with the extreme versions of this on the right. Think Rudy Giuliani, or Marjorie Taylor Greene, or Lauren Boebert. They have no integrity at all. Their entire schtick is about theatrics for the sake of getting attention. Ezra Klein, certainly, has too much integrity to go that far — though I think it’s true that part of what led formerly serious pundits such as Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald off the right-wing edge of the earth is that they went where the attention is.

Klein’s bid for more attention was his book Abundance, published earlier this year. He apparently calculated, quite correctly, that there was a lot of attention to be had, as a liberal, for arguing that regulation was behind shortages of things such as housing.

Klein got his butt kicked in an interview this morning in the New York Times. It’s Ross Douthat interviewing Lina Kahn, who was head of the Federal Trade Commission under President Biden.

Douthat says: “There’s been a really stark division between people who want to organize liberal thinking around antimonopoly, anti-corporate power thinking, and people, like my colleague Ezra Klein, who have been arguing basically that the Democratic Party doesn’t have a strategy for dealing with the intense thicket of regulatory obstacles to building things and homes and factories in America.”

Khan (who I think is much smarter than Douthat, by the way), says: “Look, we need to talk in a market-by-market way, but if you are offering a diagnosis that is also suspiciously quiet about the role of corporate power, I think that should raise some questions as well.”

Some examples

Kahn is being subtle, and she is being fair. She is saying that Klein is ignoring the many ways that corporate power, in addition to regulation, leads to a shortage of affordable housing. I asked ChatGPT 4o to list some of the ways corporate interests inflate the cost of housing and the cost of renting:

• Large corporate entities — private equity firms, real estate investment trusts (REITs), hedge funds — have increasingly purchased single-family homes and rental properties, particularly after the 2008 financial crisis.

• Large developers and investment firms often buy and hold land (especially in growing urban fringes) without building, waiting for values to rise.

• Corporate developers increasingly construct entire neighborhoods of single-family homes intended solely for rent, not sale.

• A handful of large firms dominate sectors like building materials, cement, and lumber distribution, contributing to inflated construction costs.

• Corporate landlords and real estate lobbies (e.g. National Multifamily Housing Council) invest heavily in lobbying to block rent control, eviction moratoria, and tenant union protections.

• Some large landlords use rental pricing software (e.g. RealPage’s YieldStar) to algorithmically set rent levels and discourage undercutting.

Klein is on probation now

Klein, in my view, has traded a chunk of his credibility in trying to buy more attention. To me, this calls into question his integrity as well as his credibility. This can be a slippery slope, the slope that corrupted Greenwald and Taibbi so badly that only the right-wing mediasphere can stomach them.

This is happening at a time when corporate-owned media are increasingly pressuring their liberal pundits to compromise themselves to increase their appeal to right-wing readers. This is why Paul Krugman left the New York Times. It’s why Lillian Rubin left the Washington Post.

Let’s hope that Klein comes to his senses and doesn’t slip down that slope.

Trump’s trashy, and revealing, parade

Click here for larger version. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

What did we learn yesterday? When the time comes (and it certainly could), will Americans take to the streets in numbers great enough to do a proper Mussolini on Trump?

Halfway to the tipping point?

Erica Chenoweth, a Harvard political scientist, says that nonviolent protests lead to change once 3.5 percent of the population join nonviolent protests.

It has been very hard to find a total for the number of people who participated in “No Kings” protests yesterday. Axios reports 5 million. Other news source just say “millions.” How many people were at Trump’s parade in Washington yesterday? The White House itself said that 250,000 “patriots” attended.

Alt National Park Service said on Facebook that there were 11 million people at No Kings protests. I am highly skeptical of that number; we don’t know how it was derived. I also don’t know how Axios arrived at the 5 million figure, but it’s probably conservative. We easily seem to be halfway to what it would take to drive Trump out of office.

We’re just getting started.

If Trump’s parade cost $45 million, and 250,000 were there to watch, then the parade cost $180 per person. I hope they had a miserable time.

Trump must be furious

I watched ABC’s evening news to see how they played yesterday’s events. ABC correctly led with the assassination in Minnesota and the manhunt for the killer. Next was Israel-Iran, and after that the No Kings protests and Trump’s parade. Trump no doubt wanted violence in Washington so that troops could crush it and make him look strong. He didn’t get it. Instead he got upstaged by other events, bigtime.

There were reports that Trump was savaged in social media because his parade was a $45 million flop. Fox News quoted someone in the White House, who said that the No Kings protests were “a complete and utter failure with minuscule attendance.” Outside the Fox bubble, it was very much the other way around.

Who is more angry?

I have not been able to turn up any reports of violence yesterday by those taking part in the No King’s protests. The violence was from the other side — the shootings in Minnesota; vehicles driven into crowds in San Francisco and Culpepper, Virginia; and shots fired in Salt Lake City. Something happened in Portland, Oregon, but as far as I can tell it didn’t amount to much. The photos I’ve seen from inside the No Kings protest don’t show angry people. It looks more like a party. But we’ve still got three long, hot summers of Trump to get through — 2026, 2027, and 2028.

Trump is weak

Increasingly Trump is exposed as an idiot surrounded by radical but feckless idiots. Their batting average of successes to backfires, walk-backs, and back-downs is hilarious.

They wanted leftist violence in Los Angeles but instead got up-close video of a U.S. senator wrestled onto the floor and handcuffed by Kristi Noem’s goons. Putin ignores Trump. Natanyahu ignores Trump. Instead of the instant peace Trump promised, there is escalating war. China outmaneuvers him. Europe outmaneuvers him. Economists say we should brace for price increases this summer. Oil prices are up 7 percent because of Israel and Iran. Trump has started chickening out on deportations after corporate America somehow managed to remind him how much corporations depend on immigrant labor. His glorious parade fizzled. Violence by his brownshirts only stokes, rather than intimidates, the resistance. “Trump is wrapping up 100 days of historic failure,” Dana Milbank writes in the Washington Post.

I can imagine a scenario in which Trump more or less gives up, in which his hotheads such as Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem quit and go home in a frustrated rage, and in which Trump just surfs out his term and concentrates on sucking up money rather than destroying the American democracy. But I also can imagine a scenario in which he doubles down and continues to deploy the the authoritarian playbook.

But, based on what happened yesterday, I think the American people understand that, working together, we are much stronger than Trump.

The consequences of truth-telling

Terry Moran interviews Trump, April 29, 2025. Official White House photo.

The Washington Post has reported that Terry Moran will not be returning to ABC. Moran was suspended after a post on “X” that was critical of Trump and Stephen Miller.

As a retired newspaperman, I well understand why news organizations (other than, of course, right-wing propaganda organs such as Fox News) must defend their reputation for objectivity. Those are the rules, and according to those rules Moran went too far.

But we have rules, and we have truth. One of the reasons we are where we are today is that the responsible media, for years (ever since Fox News came on line in 1996), have been unable to tell the truth because of their rules about bias and objectivity. The lords of right-wing propaganda strangled the responsible media with its own principles. Thus the fascist movement could lie constantly and laugh all the way to the bank, and to the White House. The responsible media could not bring themselves to plainly call a lie a lie and then explain the purpose of the lie (which they understood perfectly well but wouldn’t say). The right wing has to lie. To them their lies are beautiful. Ethically they couldn’t care less. The responsible media avoid it at all costs.

The pathetic irony is that Terry Moran told the truth, a truth that is so perfectly obvious to rational, morally sane people that it hardly needs to be said.

There’s another thing. In reporting on Moran’s post on “X,” the responsible media were squeamish about even reporting what Moran said. They’d quote some of the post, but the context was never clear, and it was never clear whether they were reporting the complete post.

I’ve included a screen shot of the complete post.

I am terrified about what is going on in Los Angeles. I’m also terrified that things could be even worse on Saturday, because of Trump’s military parade (which Gavin Newsome rightly called “vulgar”) and the protests. Over the next few days we stand to learn a lot about the intentions of the Trump White House and the current appetite of the American people for putting up with it.

A glimpse of the post-Trump future?

Source: Wikimedia Commons

As Karis Nemick in the television series Andor reminded us, authoritarianism is always brittle. Though Trump is surrounded by some of the most eager and rabid — but also the most incompetent, the most deranged, and the most corrupt — lackeys in American history, the future of authoritarianism in America is tied to the fate of one and only one person — Donald Trump. Authoritarianism in America has a single point of failure.

Trump is 78 years old. For his last year or so in office he will be a lame duck. In 42 months he will be gone (if he doesn’t die first from too many cheeseburgers and milkshakes).

There will be (there already is, actually) a fierce competition to become the next Trump and to keep the movement going. J.D. Vance, of course, wants to be the new Trump. I’m skeptical that Vance has got what that would take. Trump, it seems to me, wants a dynasty, not a functional movement. Don Jr. would like to be the next Trump, and it’s hard to imagine Trump supporting anyone else. I’m also skeptical that Junior has what it would take.

One of the things we learned from this week’s grotesque warfare between Trump and Elon Musk is how much Trump is hated by elites. Only Musk, at this point, has the power to turn on Trump. But, inevitably, that’s going to change. In three years or so, Trump’s power is going to be gone. Either his term will end, he will die in office, he will be assassinated, or unexpected and unpredictable events will somehow bring him down. Either MAGA creates and anoints another charismatic leader, or MAGA fragments from schism and goes into decline.

Whatever happens, once Trump is perceived as weak and vulnerable, an ugly tide will turn against him. A thousand savage wolves will come for Trump, both to hasten him off the stage and to extract revenge. Trump will be torn to pieces unless a MAGA successor loyal to Trump can be found. Historically, the picture is rarely pretty when authoritarians leave office or lose their power.

A great weakness of the Trump regime is that it is dangerously deficient in cold, pragmatic competence. The Nazis, without their cold, pragmatic competence, would never have gotten as far as they did. The Trump regime, on the other hand, is a pig circus of incompetent narcissists trying to generate video for Fox News. Without the pig circus that feeds the media, there’d not be much left of the Trump regime — not much that could get anything done, anyway.

Here I must add that my predictions about Trump have always been too optimistic. I just could not imagine that he could outlast all the many things that should have destroyed him politically and put him in prison. And even though I have a low, low opinion of at least half of the American population, my opinion was not low enough.

As the commentariat have pointed out, in the Trump-Musk pig circus we are seeing a struggle between MAGA, which wants to control us and dominate us, and the tech oligarchs, who want to own us, control us, and dominate us. Working together, their power is horrifying. But they have shown that their alliance is brittle. We must hope that they continue to try to dominate each other rather than work together.

Character in a time of fascism

Karis Nemik and Maarva Andor

Last week I finished watching the second season of “Andor” on Disney Plus. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. What sticks with me, though, is not so much the story. It’s the characters — and the character of the characters.

In a time of fascism, people sort pretty much into three groups: one, the eager fascists; two, the members of the rebellion; and three, those who can’t be bothered to care one way or the other. “Andor” is a brilliant character study of the first two types.

In this MAGA era, we all know some of the eager fascists. We also know people whose little lives are more important to them than anything happening in the larger world. What’s sad is that most of us who identify with the rebellion are so isolated. We’re frustrated that there is no meaningful role for us. This is a miserable vacuum in which stories can help us manage our isolation and frustration.

My guess is that those who created “Andor” know exactly whom they are speaking to — to those of us who would join a rebellion if there was a way to do it. There are times when the script of “Andor” breaks into a monologue and speaks to us directly.

Maarva Andor:

“There is a wound that won’t heal at the center of the galaxy. There is a darkness reaching like rust into everything around us. We let it grow, and now it’s here. It’s here and it’s not visiting anymore. It wants to stay.

“The Empire is a disease that thrives in darkness. It is never more alive than when we are asleep. It’s easy for the dead to tell you to fight, and maybe it’s true, maybe fighting is useless. Perhaps it’s too late. But I’ll tell you this, if I could do it again, I’d wake up early and be fighting those bastards from the start!”

Karis Nemik:

“Remember this, freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction. Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy. There are whole armies, battalions that have no idea that they’ve already enlisted in the cause.

“Remember that the frontier of the rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward.

“And remember this: the Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear.

“Remember that. And know this, the day will come when all these skirmishes and battles, these moments of defiance will have flooded the banks of the Empires’s authority and then there will be one too many. One single thing will break the siege.”

Mon Mothma:

“I stand this morning with a difficult message. I believe we are in crisis. The distance between what is said and what is known to be true has become an abyss.

“Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous. The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil. When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped from our hands, we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever monster screams the loudest.

“This Chamber’s hold on the truth was finally lost on the Ghorman Plaza. What took place yesterday … what happened yesterday on Ghorman was unprovoked genocide. Yes! Genocide! And that truth has been exiled from this chamber! And the monster screaming the loudest? The monster we’ve helped create? The monster who will come for us all soon enough is Emperor Palpatine!”

Luthen Rael:

“Calm. Kindness. Kinship. Love. I’ve given up all chance at inner peace. I’ve made my mind a sunless space. I share my dreams with ghosts. I wake up every day to an equation I wrote 15 years ago from which there’s only one conclusion. I’m damned for what I do. My anger, my ego, my unwillingness to yield, my eagerness to fight, they’ve set me on a path from which there is no escape. I yearned to be a savior against injustice without contemplating the cost, and by the time I looked down there was no longer any ground beneath my feet.

“What is my sacrifice?

“I’m condemned to use the tools of my enemy to defeat them. I burn my decency for someone else’s future. I burn my life to make a sunrise that I know I’ll never see. And the ego that started this fight will never have a mirror or an audience or the light of gratitude.

“So what do I sacrifice?

“Everything!”

Outlasting them is the best revenge

Jefferson Griffin, vile fascist pig

Today, at last, a ruling by a federal court put an end to a six-months-long attempt by a swamp-scum Republican, Jefferson Griffin, to steal a seat on the North Carolina Supreme Court. It’s important to understand the absurdity of Griffin’s claims to be able to invoke the appropriate level of disgust for this man. I won’t rehearse the details here — the mainstream media coverage has been good. But adding to the disgust is the fact that Republicans on the North Carolina Supreme Court kept Griffin’s claims alive for months when it was so obvious that Griffin had no legitimate claims and was only trying to subvert yet another election for Republicans.

North Carolina is a purple state. My expectation is that North Carolina will become bluer and bluer between now and the 2028 election, as Republicans show the world that what they are now is fascists. One of North Carolina’s senators, Thom Tillis, is up for re-election in 2026. He seems to understand that he cannot win a statewide election now, so he is one of the few senators market-testing flaccid Republican attempts to stand up to Trump.

My track record on Trump predictions is not good, because I have always been too optimistic that someone would stop him. Again and again, for years and years, the courts have let him skate, and Republicans in Congress blocked impeachments twice. For what it’s worth, I expect the next three and a half years to be a horror. But I still cannot imagine that fascism in America can survive the end of Trump. The fools who voted for Trump deserve all the misery that they are likely to get. Hatred for Trump already has reversed two elections in two other countries, Canada and Australia. Americans are far more stupid and more gullible than the people of Canada and Australia, but I don’t think Americans like fascism any more than Canadians or Australians, once Trump teaches them what fascism and corrupt government are, and they slowly perceive that it was not what they were promised.

Actually, the media have been negligent on one angle of Jefferson Griffin’s attempt to steal an election. I’ve tried to find out who paid for that six months of appeals, which must have cost many hundreds of thousands of dollars. I still don’t know. We need to know who is paying for these Republican attempts to subvert the law, the Constitution, and some of the most important principles of democracy.

2001 Honda Rancher TRX-350, 4-wheel drive, electric shift

I did not need an ATV

For several years I have fantasized about buying an ATV. Everybody has one here in the sticks, whether they can afford it or not. It’s considered essential equipment. I can by no means justify spending much money on an ATV, but I came across a 2001 Honda Rancher 350, well maintained with low mileage. I bought it from the shop that had maintained it. It had been parked for a year. It has new tires and got a thorough servicing including a rebuilt carburetor. It runs perfectly, and, like my 2001 Jeep, I expect it to still be running when I kick the bucket at age 104. It’s a classic.

I like the design of the older Honda ATV’s. The body has soft, curving lines, as opposed to the sharp lines of newer ATV’s. My 2001 model also has a kind — if slightly goofy — face, unlike the aggressive faces of newer ATV’s. I have plenty of woodland trails here to ride it on. I may get a little yard work out of it. And when I’m too lazy to walk the half mile to the mailbox and the half mile back, the ATV will get me there. It will get me outside more. Plus driving it is more of a workout than I would have thought. Steering it is far from effortless, and riding it in hilly woodlands requires a constant shifting of body weight according to the terrain. Maybe it will help keep me young, the better to outlast the fascists.

New glasses

At my age, part of outlasting the fascists is to take care of the brain. We now know how important good vision and good hearing are for keeping the brain healthy and active. It had been almost three years since I got new glasses. I have glasses for reading and glasses for driving, but I particularly notice the improvement with my new reading glasses (which I also use for the computer).

The book is Lower Than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity, by Diarmaid MacCulloch, an Oxford historian. I’ll have more to say about the book when I’ve finished reading it. It’s already pretty familiar terrain to me, though. When I claim that there is nothing on earth more cracker-fed delusional than the church, and when I further claim that there is no subject on which the church is more horsewash whacked than sex, I’m entirely serious. Anyone who doubts it either doesn’t know much about the history of the church or will believe pretty much any old thing as long as they’re told that it came out of the mouth of God.

My eye doctor is in King. That’s where the The Dalton bar and restaurant is, which I’ve written about before. (A Bistro and Bar in Trumptown). As usual, I had the grilled salmon with garlic mashed potatoes and grilled green beans.

I tried to talk the bartender into selling me a half shot of Oban 14, just so I could taste it. But he wouldn’t do it.

Mountain Laurel

Mountain laurel is very common all over the Blue Ridge Mountains. Here in the foothills it is less common, but it is very abundant on the ridges and creek valleys around my house. The ATV gets me to places where I’m more able to appreciate it. Just now the mountain laurel is approaching the end of its blooming season. If I had ever seen mountain laurel bloom before, I don’t recall it.

Scottish pie from the high street bakery in Dunbar. One of these is a meat pie, and the other is a fruit pie.

Scotland calling

Travel is another thing that helps me outlast the fascists. I’ve booked a trip to Scotland in late September — a lovely time of year in Scotland. I’ll be hanging out with Ken, of course, near Edinburgh. But also an old friend from California is making his first visit to Scotland, so I’ll meet up with him and tag along for a few days in Aberdeen and Inverness. I have been to Inverness, but not to Aberdeen.

Scottish pie from the high street bakery in Dunbar

Is revolt taking root in the zeitgeist?

“People will suffer,” says Mon Mothma. “That’s the plan,” says Luthen. “You’re not angry at me. I’m just saying out loud what you already know. There will be no rules going forward. If you’re not willing to risk your conscience, then surrender and be done with it.”

Last night I finished re-watching “Andor” season 1 (for the third time). Tonight I will start watching season 2. I have avoided reading reviews, but I’ve seen some of the headlines. It seems season 2 is going to have a lot to say about American fascism, or, as NBC News mildly puts it, “the plot’s relevance to current events.”

The Trump White House will start walking things back when rich people and CEO’s complain about the pain they themselves feel from Trumpian recklessness. But, toward everyone else, as many have pointed out, the cruelty is the point. It was reported that the CEO’s of Walmart, Target, and Home Depot met with Trump this week to warn him that, given the course Trump is on, there will be empty shelves by summer. Trump, of course, doesn’t care a fig for what empty shelves would mean for ordinary people. He would only be able to understand what empty shelves would mean for corporate profits.

The Trump White House can be counted on to double down on cruelty when ordinary people are concerned. As I said to a friend in email this morning, it is as though their fascist sadism gives them so much joy that they are blind to the political calculus of blowback. Or maybe they just assume that they have enough force at their disposal to put down revolt.

You don’t get to work for the Trump administration unless you are corrupt, completely uncaring, sadistic, and willing to do any vile thing that the emperor wants done. Thus they are all blind to the motivations of anyone who isn’t like them. There isn’t any wiring in their brains for that.

I have high hopes that, while the Trump administration merrily and triumphantly provides the motivations for revolt, “Andor 2” will help provide some inspiration.

Riley Moore, a congressman from West Virginia, is one of the Republicans eager to do photo-ops at Trump’s concentration camp in El Salvador. It seems obvious that he can’t comprehend, or just doesn’t care, what a public display of sadism like this means to decent people, or how history will view images like this. He imagines, in his triumphalism, that he will always be on top. But he is just one elite fascist up against the global many, and he can’t comprehend just how precarious his position is. I’m reminded of another quote from a story — Tyrion Lannister’s lines to Cersei after her acts of cruelty: “I will hurt you for this. I don’t know how yet, but give me time. A day will come when you think yourself safe and happy, and suddenly your joy will turn to ashes in your mouth, and you’ll know the debt is paid.”