Fault Lines

by on Aug.06, 2026, under Politics

In the off chance that you are a MAGA supporter reading this, let me assure you of this:

None of the chaos engulfing America is your fault.

Just because you voted for a felonious rapist who is dragging the country toward autocracy while enriching himself and unleashing misery on the entire world, well, you are not to be held responsible for your choice to return a demented old racist to the White House.

How do I know this?

Well, as far back as Trump’s first election, commentors were falling over themselves insisting that liberals created this mess. The general argument was because progressives dislike racist jokes, all the salt-of-the-earth Americans had no option but to embrace fascism. It really was that simple.

This assumption — that millions of decent Americans were pushed into supporting right-wing insanity because of the woke mob— is still a popular viewpoint.

And it’s not just conservatives who are saying that.

Our old friends the moderate Democrats are insisting that Trump never would have won except for that meddling Bernie Sanders. If only the crazy old man had shut up about wealth inequality and oligarchs crushing us, everything would be great.

Just great. Yup.

The latest form of blaming the left for all things Trumpian presupposes that liberals are wrong to protest or advocate for progressive causes because we come across as too self-righteous or shrill. But we are also wrong to appease or normalizeMAGA demands, because that just encourages them to become more extreme.

OK, got it.

What about using humor to point out the absurdity of this disastrous authoritarian regime? No, we shouldn’t joke either, because that undermines how serious the situation is. But don’t be so serious either because of that first point about coming across as self-righteous.

So don’t say anything. But also reach out to MAGA types to educate them because they deserve our total respect no matter how much they would love to punch us in the face. How we reach out without saying anything is unclear to me.

In any case, the important principle is that progressives are always wrong. Whether we’re using facts to support our case, pointing out the consequences of the GOP agenda, or just asking for police to not shoot unarmed citizens, it’s our fault.

MAGA supporters are not responsible for their own actions, or for the often-sadistic behaviors they gleefully embrace.

It’s those darn leftists who keep pushing conservatives to be more extreme.

Of course, it’s strange that this argument doesn’t work the other way. The many excess of Trump (far more egregious and harmful than anything a liberal politician has proposed) are not carted out as an excuse for progressives moving farther left. Apparently, those liberals who are dabbling with democratic socialism are just whiny babies, and by the way, they are making millionaires feel unloved.

Now, it’s true that no other demographic of adults are ever given this sort of free pass on bad behavior. It’s similar to how struggling white men are never told to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and instead are reassured constantly that the nation will do whatever it can for them (while at the same time telling everybody else to fuck off).

But MAGA is special. Because no matter how much they cheer for the destruction of democracy and the establishment of a fascistic theocracy, it’s an understandable reaction to those real villains: college-educated people who advocate for universal healthcare.

Trump supporters simply have no choice.

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Cold Hard Cash

by on Jul.30, 2026, under Economy

I recently discussed the Republican Party’s obsession with calling anything they dislike “communism.” To the GOP, this antiquated insult applies to affordable childcare, cheaper groceries, and healthcare that actually heals people instead of making insurance executives richer.

However, just because I dismiss the GOP’s absurd insistence that democratic socialism is a front for Stalinists doesn’t mean that I hate capitalism. OK, that economic system has a lot of flaws (like, a lot). And the brand of capitalism that the US is currently practicing is more akin to corporatism or full-fledged oligarchy than the free-market concept they taught you in PoliSci 101.

But capitalism has its advantages (in theory at least), and the marketer Seth Godin, whom I’ve quoted before, recently made a good point about how capitalism can enrich society.

Godin points out that the “upside of free-market capitalism … is that every product and every campaign is an argument to win over customers, to solve problems in a new and better way.”

It would indeed be grand if companies tried to solve problems instead of fuck people over to raise their stock price a penny. But again, we don’t live in a free-market society that rewards problem-solving. We live a cutthroat-capitalist nation where billionaires think hording wealth is a virtue.

In any case, Godin goes on to point out why monopolies are so horrific for society, and it is simply because “they don’t have to argue.” When a monopoly takes over, “the customer has no choice,” and the “monopoly stops listening, innovating and working for improvement, because they don’t need to.”

OK, that makes sense. It’s one reason we have anti-monopoly laws. Of course, the Trump administration is flicking those laws away like they are pesky mosquitoes, meaning that this is a great time to be a money-grubbing robber baron.

But there is a political angle to why monopolies are so vile. You see, according to Godin, “the same is true for democracy vs autocracy,” in that the “despot has no need to make an argument, so they don’t.”

Keep in mind that our humble president is not even trying to make the argument that his policies have been good for America. He is focused on terrifying people into supporting him and suppressing the vote so he doesn’t face another impeachment.

This aspiring despot has no coherent or rational argument. And he no longer cares, if he ever did, about improving America. He figures he has a monopoly, so why not indulge in acts of corruption so brazen that his allies don’t even attempt a defense. 

But let’s return to the concept of capitalism. Can it be modified to fulfill its promise to society? Or have we jumped the shark economically and culturally, where the best we can hope for is that plutocrats take mercy on us and employ the masses to be their indentured servants?

Well, I have an answer to that question. But it will cost you a dollar to hear it.

Come on, I’m not going to just give it away for free. This is America.

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How to Be Unconvincing 

by on Jul.23, 2026, under Politics

No doubt, you’ve heard a lot lately about democratic socialism. That’s when you’re not hearing about communism, which hasn’t been a threat to America since 1989. But don’t tell paranoid old men who perpetually live in the past about that.

In any case, conservatives are playing the linguistic game, which consists of harping on the “socialism” part of that two-word term and insisting this approach to government, which is the system used in the most peaceful, prosperous, and happiest nations on Earth, is synonymous with the crushing tyranny of the USSR and China.

Right-wingers do this all the time. They yell that “Nazi” is short for National Socialist German Workers’ Party, implying that Hitler’s minions were leftists. They point out that the Ku Klux Klan was originally affiliated with the Democratic Party, insinuating that the KKK was a bunch of woke dudes.

This is the equivalent of the grade-school teacher snidely asking, “Can you go to the bathroom? Don’t you mean ‘May I go to the bathroom?’”

And just like that annoying teacher (who clearly hates children), this linguistic pedantry is embarrassing to even acknowledge. I would ask conservatives if their superficial, trite arguments — based on nitpicky grammar, deliberate ignorance, and a delusional view of history — have ever convinced anyone to vote Republican.

I picture a fledgling progressive slapping his forehead in disbelief and shrieking, “I had no idea Goebbels was in a political movement whose German translation includes the word ‘socialism.’ Now I must support ICE shooting people in the street.”

To the conservative mind, it’s just that convincing.

However, this belabored tactic of guilt by association doesn’t seem to be working. Recent surveys show that voters don’t find the term “democratic socialist” nearly as repugnant as the word “MAGA.”

And they are correct to think that.

So here’s some friendly advice for my conservative friends: Stop trying to demonize a phrase that younger people increasingly find appealing, while proving that you have nothing to offer other than fear, anger, and a flop-sweat twisting of words that fools nobody.

Every time you insist “democratic socialism” is synonymous with Mao, it just seems like you also don’t understand the difference between steak and hamburger, or the ocean and a lake, or the Brewers and the Rockies.

The rest of us comprehend reality. Join us here. 

I promise it’s not a communist plot.

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The Olds

by on Jul.16, 2026, under Culture

Perhaps it’s fitting that America is coming to the end of its lifespan.

Because our leaders are certainly coming to the end of theirs.

Back to back, we’ve had the two oldest presidents in US history. The US Congress now has two dozen  octogenarians and at least one nonagenarian. 

More than half of those lawmakers are running for re-election, because hey, why retire and let someone younger make decisions that will affect future generations when you can shuffle around the corridors of power and never endure the long-term consequences of your actions?

By the way, the gap between “the average age of an American and the average of a member of Congress has been growing, especially over the last 15 years.”

Political scientists have a term for this: gerontocracy (aka rule by older generations).

I’ve written before about the Scourge… I mean Baby Boomers. This is a generation that preached peace and love in its youth but then shrieked, “Give me more and kill them all” in its old age.

It’s bad enough that Boomers hoarded everything for themselves while lecturing younger people about being selfish, which doesn’t even get into how this most pampered of generations has the cojones to insist that everyone under 60 is weak because we don’t appreciate the decimated society and world they left us.

No, the lasting political legacy of this far from greatest generation is their refusal to cede power.

My generation (Gen X) will likely never have a president, as the country will probably leap from Baby Boomer domination to Millennial stewardship. That’s ok. We’re used to being ignored.

But what’s not ok is that this shift to younger leadership is not happening anytime soon.

We have enfeebled senators blubbering their way through their terms but still insisting on running for reelection. That’s when they’re not dropping dead of old age or disappearing because of age-related calamities. 

And it goes beyond politics. We are enduring “a quiet slide into generational inequality, in which older, disproportionately wealthy voters and homeowners shape the economy — and America’s democracy — to their advantage while insisting they’re really the ones who are under siege.”

Boomers now hold more than half of American wealth despite making up just 20% of the population. Economists say that “the old rich have pulled away from everyone else,” meaning that the US is not just an oligarchy, but is also an “oldigarchy.”

And as far as social or cultural progress, keep in mind that “an aging society is more set on preservation than on renovation.” Boomers don’t much care for things that didn’t exist in their day, like trans people and female CEOs. Hell, they don’t much care for things that they actually did have in their day, like affordable college and scientific breakthroughs, because those concepts no longer affect them personally.

No, older Americans just want to live out their remaining years in peace and quiet. And that means holding on to as much power and money as they can while exhibiting pathological indifference to their children and grandchildren.

That’s far from ok, Boomer.

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On the Rise

by on Jul.09, 2026, under Economy

You might think that America, and perhaps the entire world, is in serious decline.

Is everything going downhill?

Well, fear not. Some aspects of the modern world are on a steady incline toward greater heights.

For example, did you know that the world added nearly a million new millionaires last year? And almost half of those are American, at “a pace exceeding 1,200 per day.” 

Wow — so many people getting fabulously wealthy and… what’s that? It seems that “median wealth — a figure more representative of typical adults than the mean — dropped across the majority of countries,” which is further “evidence of widening inequality.” Yes, even as we got more millionaires, “most people got poorer.”

OK, that’s not what we had in mind for a great surge upward. But here’s something else that’s on the rise.

It appears that “billionaires’ billions are increasing faster than ever.” Billionaires have a “combined wealth that is equivalent to nearly a fifth of the entire world’s total yearly output.”

We are now at in a situation where “the surging financial and political power of a few hundred individuals contributes to a growing inequality that is likely to persist for generations because most of that wealth escapes taxation, creating a self-perpetuating aristocracy.”

These insatiable oligarchs are the chief reason for the “shrinking slice of the economic pie that goes to workers” and the acceleration toward “a level of wealth concentration that will break society.”

OK, that is not what we had in mind when we clamored for more. But we can’t help ourselves.. We are Americans. Clamoring for more is kind of our thing.

In any case, there is one more aspect of modern life that is skyrocketing.

Last year witnessed “the highest number of conflicts between states since World War II, and the highest number of fatalities recorded since the Rwandan genocide.”

Yes, we’re getting more war. And if you thought 2025 was just an anomaly, “data this year so far shows the rise in conflicts globally is a trend that’s likely to continue.”

Researchers say that “the extremely high number of conflicts and wars … lends credence to the growing number of voices arguing that we are witnessing the end of Pax Americanaand the liberal world order.”

So if you’re feeling down, just remember that at least a few things are going up — like war, economic inequality, and the political power of trillionaires.

Truly, the sky is the limit.

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Semiquincentennial Blues

by on Jul.02, 2026, under Politics

As we celebrate (is that even remotely the right word?) our country’s birthday, let’s pause to consider that according to experts, “never before in American history has there been anything like Donald J. Trump, a president who in his first year back in office has collected about $1.4 billion in new revenues from cryptocurrency businesses that directly benefited from his actions as president.”

Yes, the guy who famously pledged to drain the swamp is so overtly corrupt that one has to assume his plan is indulge in massive amounts of grift so “people will not think anything about it is weird.”

Trust me — it’s weird. Also criminal.

In the quaint past, “presidents worked assiduously to show they were not connected to anything that could in any way compromise their decision making or leverage their public virtue.” But in this golden age of MAGA morality, the entire Trump family “has been unapologetic about its aggressive pursuit of profits,” causing historians, political scientists, and anyone who doesn’t watch Fox News to marvel at “the openness, the flagrant nature” of their blatant corruption, which they undertake “almost with pride — cashing in on the office itself” almost daily.

Unless one is delusional or oblivious, it has become “increasingly obvious that the obscene wealth and power of a select few, at the expense of the many, is a feature, not a bug for the Trump years.”

Those who are in on the scam — and that doesn’t include you and me — are “swimming like Scrooge McDuck in a sea of self-dealing and greed that is unprecedented in American history.”

All those pardons for donors, contracts for flunkies, and misuse of inside information are not “a disconnected series of scandals” but a well-coordinated system of depravity.

Yes, our avarice-prone chief executive is fantastically obsessed with money and power (also windmills, for some bizarre reason). But there is more to it. There is a dark psychological neediness. 

You see, the drooling, shuffling occupant of the Oval Office “wants more than anything to be seen as a brilliant man who has always been right about everything when he is transparently a butterfingered dunce whose professional expertise more or less begins and ends at making cutting remarks from a safe distance and directing other people to file nuisance lawsuits on his behalf.” We’re talking about a guy who insists he is a genius (a very stable one) even as the US economy teeters and he loses a war against a much smaller nation led by religious zealots. He proclaims himself to be an unparallelled mastermind, the mighty leader who “knows more about every subject than any expert without even having to study or even pay attention to any of it” despite the overwhelming evidence of his incompetence and his “relentlessly oafish output.”

As others have noted, “the reflecting pool fiasco, in which Trump created the idea there was an emergency, ignored experts, bypassed normal procedures to give a wildly inflated contract to a crony, bragged about his success, ignored the problems, claimed his enemies had sabotaged him, and finally stationed troops around the landmark he had turned into a swamp, represents the Trump administration perfectly.”

That’s the real symbol of America today.

Happy goddamn birthday.

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Master Plan

by on Jun.18, 2026, under War

I know. The terms of the ceasefire for the Iran debacle look, shall we say, rather underwhelming.

That’s being polite. You could also say that is the “the worst foreign policy blunder in decades,” which is what Republicans (yes, Republicans!) are calling it. I guess that would make it the biggest US fuck-up since the Iraq War, which was the last time a GOP president invaded the Middle East in a boneheaded, calamitous decision that let to disaster and death.

By the way, why does anyone vote Republican in the hope that the GOP will improve the economy and avoid warfare, when the exact opposite has been true this entire century? But let’s skip that conundrum for now.

Instead, let’s analyze the Trump Doctrine, which can be summarized as an approach that “combines amorality and incompetenceto empower enemies and betray allies, as it dilutes American power in a Dunning-Kruger stew of bluster, arrogance, and stupidity.”

Where’s the lie in that definition?

Everybody knew the Iran War (wait… are we calling it that?) would be a catastrophe. This geopolitical farce is “classic Donald Trump.”

After inflicting misery, this ace negotiator got bored, left the mess for someone else to clean up, declared victory, and wound up with a deal worse for America than before the war began. People who ask, “What was the point of the war?” are still inexplicably blind to the fact that there is no point to anything Trump does, because every decision he makes is based on his selfish, vile instincts and immediate needs.

There was never a point to the war, just like there is no point to all the needless suffering he is inflicting on America’s residents and the global population. He does it because he can and it sounded good at the time.

Now that this “humiliating comedown for him and the nation he leads” appears to be complete, he will move on to some fresh travesty, some other way to desecrate the nation for no good reason. 

There will be no lesson learned here. The guy doesn’t even understand the war he just lost. He has “confirmed America’s capitulation to Iran” while offering the “desperate rationalizations [of] a man who cannot face facts and admit defeat,” leading even the most impartial of observers to wonder if the president of the United States is “losing his grip on reality itself.”

However, there is one possible benefit to this idiotic fiasco. The resulting and completely predictable energy shock “is likely to accelerate a transition to renewables like solar and wind as well as nuclear power,” meaning that a right-wing administration of dullards and fabulists may have done more to jump start green technology than all the touchy-feely eco warriors ever have.

Wow — maybe that was the plan all along. 

Clearly, we are in the presence of a super genius. Yup.

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The Wrong Kind of Inspiration

by on Jun.11, 2026, under Politics

OK, so Hungary didn’t work out. What other small, corrupt nation can right-wingers emulate as their model for a future America?

Well, damn. They are fixating on my family’s homeland of El Salvador. How absolutely flattering. Yup.

It is constantly disconcerting how often conservatives boast about America being the greatest country in the world and then qualify it with “but we should really be more like [tiny authoritarian nation with a negligible GDP] because they have it right.”

Republicans have moved on from the flop in Budapest to focus on El Salvador, where Nayib Bukele has set himself up to be president for life. This neo-fascist hero has co-opted the separation of powers, heavily relied on the military for internal policing, and built the world’s largest prison, which happens to be a concentration camp where the US sends many of its former residents to die. In El Salvador, authorities can detain anyone without a warrant, deny them access to legal counsel, and suspend the right to assembly. Independent media is nonexistent, and the state promotes “a cinematic version of Bukele” to create a cult of personality.

All of this is peachy keen with American right-wingers, who see Bukele as “an aspirational figure” and “yearn to implement his authoritarian transformation of El Salvador” in the United States.

On behalf of my family, let me say that we do not want America to become El Salvador. We would like more pupusas, but that’s about it.

Of course, it’s not just hardcore right-wingers who are flirting with despotism. Around the world, in “both developing and developed countries, democracies are facing historic tests” as polls show “mounting public apathy from voters, particularly young people, and growing disenchantment with the ideals of liberal democracy itself.”

Compared to just a few years ago, Americans are less likely “to see a democratically elected government as ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ important to the United States’ identity as a nation,” and there is a “growing rejection of the basic principles of democracy and human rights, and increasing support for authoritarian populism among people who feel that concepts like democracy and human rights and due process have failed them.”

To be fair, maybe democracy has failed them. After all, in this bastion of democracy, we are under the thumb of old men who hold disproportionate power over us and are quite overt about their contempt for anyone who was foolish enough not to be born rich and male.

But do we really want to be El Salvador? Have we given up on the American Dream (whatever the hell that is) and replaced it with the Authoritarian Settle?

If so, that will be a compromise that we soon regret.

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I’m An Expert And So Are You

by on Jun.04, 2026, under Culture

The only businessman I trust is Seth Godin. If you are not familiar with his work; Godin is an entrepreneur who focuses on marketing. 

But as opposed to our well-known titans of industry, Godin doesn’t blather on about how great he is or screw over whole countries so he can grab a little more cash or embrace fascism because nobody loves him or explode rockets left and right.

Those examples are not made up.

In any case, Godin wrote a recent article in which he explained the shitshow that we are living in. Well, he didn’t use that term because he’s a lot classier than I am, and he is politically nonpartisan. But his analysis holds up when trying to figure out how a corrupt gang of incompetents, loudmouths, and lunatics took over the US government.

Godin explains that “expertise and firmly held beliefs don’t always go together,” and he uses the following diagram to illustrate the idea:

As Godin points out, “plenty of well-trained professionals have earned the right to have strongly held beliefs,” a contingent that includes “surgeons, jugglers, and historians,” among others. Professionals combine expertise with strong beliefs.

Then there are the innovators, who have “plenty of experience and training and have chosen to be flexible.” As Godin points out, “when an innovator suggests a counter-intuitive or even nutty concept, it might pay to listen carefully.” After all, they have some idea of what they’re talking about.

Most of us, at some time or another, will fall into the category of curious. This is when we “don’t have a lot of domain knowledge, but we’re able to ask intelligent questions and to listen carefully to the answers.” We’re being curious when we’re honest about our lack of expertise. Ideally, we engage with others in the spirit of goodwill and exhibit a willingness to change our minds.

It’s that upper-left quadrant, where ignorance meets strongly held beliefs, that we encounter the foolish. These are the people who have “little in the way of expertise, and are generally unwilling to change their assertions or goals.” As Godin puts it, “Alas, social media has elevated the foolish.”

Think of the influencer who failed high school biology but still insists that vaccines are dangerous. They have no expertise in the field but refuse to listen to data or logic. Or better yet, consider the secretary of health and human services.

Now imagine a whole administration full of people who have no experience, no training, and no clue about what they’re rambling on about, but are convinced that they are brilliant. 

The professional, the innovative, and the curious wind up getting steamrolled by an incessant, aggressive horde of the foolish.

And that’s how we got here, to this most unhappy place.

That’s how we got present-day America.

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The Leader We Deserve

by on May.28, 2026, under Politics

I’m not exaggerating when I say that if we had installed a sock puppet as president in 2025, we would be in better shape today.

A sock puppet, or any inanimate object that made no decisions, would never have implemented idiotic tariffs that ravaged the economy, 

A sock puppet would never have launched a war with Iran for vague, confounding, contradictory, arbitrary, and imbecilic reasons, resulting in widespread death and destruction.

Would a sock puppet steal $1.8 billion dollars from the US Treasury and plan to hand it out to thugs and flunkies beholden only to him? Possibly, but not necessarily.

A president who did nothing would be an improvement on a president who willfully makes mystifying, moronic decisions that seem designed to hurt America.

Unfortunately, we do not have a sock puppet for a chief executive. We have a careening, decaying narcissist who “is not good at wars, economics, or geopolitics” but is “amazingly good at corruption.”

Americans are starting to catch on — about 18 months too late, but they are catching on, nevertheless.

The vilest person to ever be president has an approval rating that is sinking faster than a Tesla dropped into a black hole. The only people who still believe in his insanity are the hardcore base.

But that’s a new problem. You see “Trump’s strategy for power has a tighter and tighter hold on fewer and fewer people.” As MAGA withers and dies, it will become even more toxic, without the nominal need to appeal to anyone but zealots who are quite literally willing to die for this repulsive bigot.

As the right-wing “base of support shrinks, the concentration of primary-voting diehards and Cabinet-level dead-enders in the president’s party will only increase.” This means that the flailing despot’s “threats to upend democracy will only grow more intenseas Trump’s faction of MAGA diehards keeps shrinking.”

Basically, these fascistic fucks will try to take the whole damn country down with them.

I know of no solution to their whiplashing destruction. 

Hell, maybe we can talk them into voting for a sock puppet.

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