Hispanic Fanatic

We have not lost our democracy. That’s the good news.

We are rapidly losing our democracy. That’s the bad news.

Recently, the New York Times assessed how America is doing on 12 key aspects of democracy. They concluded that we have declined in all dozen areas, which is “a warning of how much Americans have already lost and how much more we still could lose.”

Ok, so we’re 0-12 when it comes to maintaining the guiding principle of our republic. That’s about as bad as it gets, right?

No, it’s even worse. You see, the Times analysis did not get into some of the grayer areas of America’s decline, such as the fact that in the last year, we have witnessed “a parade of rapid-fire knee-bending that has heralded in a new era of American exceptionalism—one in which we prove that no country capitulates to authoritarian tendencies faster than us.”

However, it’s not all bad news. This week’s election results imply that people are getting sick of Trump and his boorish brand of authoritarianism. 

The Democrats “won every race that was in meaningful contention anywhere in the country.” They won governorships, mayoral races, school board seats, “long-held [Republican] dog-catchers,” and “flipped a dungeon master in a rural Iowa D&D club… just everything.”

It is, of course, far too early to launch into a touchdown dance. But the off-year election’s results shows, at the very least, that GOP dominance is not a given.

In fact, it gives credibility to my assertion that the Democratic Party does not need to move to the right to win elections. Maybe Trump’s victory was not a sea change in American politics and harbinger of conservative ascendancy. More likely, the guy won because of “high inflation, Joe Biden’s disastrous decision to try to run for reelection, an underwhelming Kamala Harris campaign, and an anti-incumbent mood.”

If so, the “anti-MAGA majority has reemerged,” and democracy is not dead yet. 

That’s our hope anyway.

Whenever you hear someone brush off the existential crisis that this administration is inflicting on America with the words “It’s just politics” (or variations on this phrase), you are dealing with someone who feels they are immune. And to fair, most of the people who say this are unlikely to be grabbed on the street by masked thugs and whisked off to an impoverished country.

These people are usually white.

I had a friend inform me that I had no need to be concerned about ICE raids here in Los Angeles because I am obviously not a member of MS-13, so I would not be detained.

What a relief that was!

Granted, when I recently attended a Dodgers post-season game, a different friend asked if I was concerned about being swooped up and thrown into the back of an unmarked van. I told him that, yeah, it had crossed my mind, but the odds were in my favor with 50,000 people (half them Latino) surrounding me.

This second friend was closer to the truth of my situation, because obviously, this is not a great time to be brown in America.

You see, our pals at the most pliable U.S. Supreme Court in history have “allowed the Trump administration to use racial profiling in its militarized immigration raids.” The conservative justices have “effectively compelled all Latinos ‘to carry enough documentation to prove that they deserve to walk freely’ at risk of indefinite detention.”

The Trump Administration can now “target people because of their appearance and how they speak, as well as where they were found and what kind of work they do,” meaning that “to move freely in this country, it may become increasingly important to look white.” 

But what about the viewpoint of my naive friend, who said I had nothing to worry about because I’m not an undocumented gang member? Well, he should know that at least 170 U.S. citizens “have been held by immigration agents,” with many of those detained getting “kicked, dragged, and detained for days.”

So immigration status is no guarantee. All that matters is how dark your skin is.

These developments imply that I should walk around with my passport in case some overzealous ICE goon decides I look far too swarthy to be walking in a respectable neighborhood. Just the fact that I have to consider this shows you how far this nation has plummeted in its promises to its citizens.

And I assure you that I take it very personally indeed.

We are now a few days removed from the No Kings protests, so I’m fairly certain that if antifa was going to attack and unleash hell on innocent citizens, they would have done so by now.

Wow, maybe all those protesters didn’t hate America after all.

I spent the day at a protest that, to be honest, felt more like a block party than a political demonstration. But it’s possible that was the whole point, because one of the methods for fighting authoritarianism is to mock those in power, which is pretty damn easy with the Trump administration. We’re talking about the biggest collection of fools, sycophants, and delusional has-beens that has ever been assembled in one place. They would be comical if they weren’t so lethal.

In any case, our easily triggered chief executive proved the protesters correct when he responded in a childish, boorish, cringy manner by posting an AI-generated video of him literally shitting on Americans. His base cheered him on because these pathetic sheep would cheer if he actually did shit on them. The rest of us just said, “instant metaphor.”

The AI video was just the GOP’s latest clumsy attempt to embrace the modern maxim that the “truth no longer matters[because] all you have to do is go viral.” Americans have shown that they will believe just about anything, so why not the ridiculous, the grotesque, and the obviously fake?

Speaking of believing absurdities, many conservatives continue to insist that everyone protesting against Trump is being paid. I find this belief fascinating because it illustrates the conservative mindset.

The conspiracy theory posits that conservatives are both overwhelmingly popular (because liberals have to resort to bribery) and outnumbered (because a vast organization of shadowy globalists are out to destroy them). But this contradiction is not the most egregious act of non-thinking.

After all, if millions of Americans were being paid to protest, why have we not seen one person waving her check around? Even loyal partisans can’t keep secrets well. These are apparently desperate, nonmotivated participants. So you would have thought one (or more likely, thousands) of them would reveal the Venmo payment or flash the cash for a TV reporter. Or at least one of these MAGA theorists would have gone undercover to reveal how he got paid. It can’t be a very sophisticated network if millions of unemployed losers just show up and get money.

But no, we get idiotic theories that can be disproved with nine seconds of logic. And we are supposed to take these concerns seriously.

The fact is that millions of Americans gathered together to display their disdain for a wannabe dictator. These participants “reported disagreement with political violence, in a turn from similar surveys at previous protests” and were less likely than Republicans to trash the place. 

Conservatives were disappointed that these so-called ferocious radicals marched through every major city and even in deep-red states, with few arrests.

It was, by some estimates, the largest one-day protest in American history.

That’s good news, because studies show that “if you want to guarantee success against authoritarianism, there is one more thing you must do: You must grow until at least 3.5% of the population is out in the streets protesting.”

This is the 3.5% rule, which theorizes that “if you manage to get that 3.5% of the country out in the streets with you, the historical data suggests your movement will win.”

Over seven million people protested last weekend. And the protests keep getting bigger. So achieving 3.5% (12 million people) doesn’t “seem so far away.”

And even while Republicans mocked the protesters, and seemed genuinely confused that the “no kings” name was metaphorical, a recent survey illustrated a disturbing truth for conservatives.

The survey gave people two options: Is Trump a “potentially dangerous dictator whose power should be limited before he destroys democracy” or is he a “strong leader who should be given the power he needs to restore America’s greatness”?

Americans chose the “dictator” option by a strong margin, 56% to 41%.

It took a while, but people are catching on.

A friend of mine from college recently texted me a cryptic sentence:

“We did it.”

Except it wasn’t that mysterious, because I had a fairly good idea of what she had done. 

My friend (let’s call her Mary) is married to a guy from Europe. They have talked for years about relocating to his homeland. Well, that idle chit-chat turned into active planning once a certain xenophobic blabbermouth reentered the White House.

Mary and her husband have now moved, most likely permanently, to a European country where they have universal healthcare, almost no gun violence, and higher standards of living than just about anywhere in America.

It’s one of those hellholes of “socialism,” foreign languages, and fancy pastries.

Mary is a well-educated, high-income professional. And now she will take that education and spending money to Europe. But don’t worry, she is easily replaced. Trump’s legions of the poorly educated and massively angry will crank out dozens of babies to take the place of libtards who create most of the nation’s GDP.

I know this sounds like the plot of liberals’ favorite movie, Idiocracy, but I now have first-hand evidence (albeit anecdotal) that it is actually taking place.

But don’t take my word for it.

Data for 2025 indicates that more Americans are leaving the United States. The number of Americans renouncing their U.S. citizenship has also risen. In the first quarter of 2025 (i.e., when Trump took office), expatriations more than doubled compared to the last quarter of 2024. If this rate continues, 2025 could see a record number of Americans moving overseas, exceeding the previous peak seen in 2020, when the pandemic provoked many Americans to seek out a country where people don’t spit in doctors’ faces or punch someone out for wearing a facemask.

This time, political polarization is a chief motivator. You would think this would make conservatives happy.

After all, right wingers have been screaming at liberals for decades to leave America if they don’t like it. Curiously, they never aim this advice at Trump, who hates America far more than any liberal ever could. Seriously, look at the guy’s rants about how horrible this country is. They are the assembled quotes of a rambling lunatic, yes, but they are also the diatribes of someone who truly despises the United States as it actually exists.

And that’s one reason he and his acolytes want to change it. They don’t want an America that bares any semblance to those European nations where people are happier, believe in democracy, and avoid working themselves to death.

The conservative vision of America is a country that “is no longer synonymous with the aspiration to freedom, but with transactionalism and secrecy: the algorithms that mysteriously determine what you see, the money collected by anonymous billionaires, the deals that the American president is making with world leaders that benefit himself and maybe others whose names we don’t know.” Republicans see the USA as 3,000 miles of a theocratic fiefdom where they are permanently in charge.

They would be shocked to realize that not every America shares this vision, and some of them — ok, a lot of us — are talking about leaving once and for all.

You kids might not remember the 9/11 attacks, but I am certainly old enough to recall that horrific day.

I’m also old enough to remember when America had presidents who could speak in full, coherent sentences. But that’s another story.

One aspect of the attack’s aftermath that many people do not remember, or choose to forget, is the Patriot Act. This rabbit punch to our civil liberties was rammed through by Republicans and timid Democrats, all of whom insisted that unless we wanted religious zealots to blow us up repeatedly, we had to agree to be surveilled nonstop. We are still living with the legacy of this panicky response to terrorism.

I also recall more than one conservative in 2001 insisting that we had to racially profile airplane passengers and that we had to be willing to give up some of our freedoms to feel safe.

Well, a quarter-century later, a new breed of conservatives are bravely standing up, renouncing the past, and insisting that… we have to be willing to give up some of our freedoms to feel safe (or at least, not get offended).

You see, “some Republicans who consider themselves defenders of unfettered speech are getting more comfortable with limiting it.” At least one Republican congressman has said, “under normal times, in normal circumstances, I tend to think that the First Amendment should always be sort of the ultimate right” before adding “I don’t feel that way anymore.”

I must admit, I had no idea the First Amendment could be discarded so quickly simply because Republicans aren’t feeling it.

Also, these “normal times” that the GOP is referring to are apparently the Biden years, which pretty much admits that the Trump years are fucked up to the point that authoritarianism becomes the default.

The larger issue, a point that has been made multiple times over multiple decades, is that if anything bad happens, the GOP will melt down and shout, “And now we have to take away all your rights.”

Hell, sometimes nothing bad needs to happen for conservatives to, say, “Stop it with your civil liberties nonsense.” It takes very little for conservatives to jettison the values they claim to uphold. 

That might be because they never believed any of that stuff in the first place.

Just in time for Halloween, my publisher sent a box of my latest book. 

Here’s what the publishing house says:

The Amityville Horror (1979) was a box-office smash that terrified audiences with its supposedly true depiction of a real-life haunting in Amityville, New York. In the decades since its release, the film has gone on to be one of the most profitable independent films of all time, casting a shadow over the haunted house subgenre and spawning an unwieldy franchise of official and unofficial sequels. 

But in spite of the film’s success, it was lambasted by critics, and the “true story” that inspired it was already being debunked as exaggeration or even outright fiction before the film was even released. 

So what made audiences’ belief in its implausible origin story so stubborn? And why does The Amityville Horror continue to wield such an outsized influence on contemporary haunted house stories? 

In this lively analysis of the movie that traumatized him as a child, Daniel Cubias draws on wide-ranging research into the film’s themes, factual basis, and legacy to explain what continues to draw audiences to this flawed but nevertheless alluring horror classic.

Maybe I’m biased, but that sounds like a pretty cool read.

So go ahead and grab one before they sell out.

Thanks

It’s been more difficult than usual to keep track of all the outlandish conspiracy theories.

Was the shooter a groyper or a trans activist? Is antifa coming to burn your city down? Will taking Tylenol cause your head to explode?

You may have lost track of the myriad rumors that swirl into our minds every day, courtesy of our friend, the internet.

But do you remember this conspiracy theory from a couple of weeks ago?: Trump is near death, and the White House is covering it up.

Yes, it seems like the distant past when everyone was posting pictures of Trump’s hands and asserting body doubles were on the Oval Office and conjecturing like mad. It was so long ago that, back in those halcyon days, we still believed in the First Amendment.

I know — ancient history, right?

Well, the most obnoxious and unpopular person to ever lead a major nation is alive and kicking, thank you very much, and he showed off how non-dead he is by delivering the most unhinged, bizarre, and befuddling speech in the history of the United Nations.

I can assure you that this was no body double, my friends.

However, the rumors have led to the inevitable question about the inevitable end that all of us face. Someday, whether days or years from now, Trump will no longer be around.

Now, I’m not wishing harm upon our illustrious president.

Do you hear that, all you government goons and right-wing busybodies who are scouring the internet for any sign of dissent? I am not wishing harm upon the guy.

In fact, I’ve said many times that I hope old number 47 continues to thrive in great health. I want him to live to be 100, when he will be an ancient and withered symbol of the nation’s descent into insanity and a living refutation to all those people who deny they stood by or applauded while this country spiraled into fascism. Ideally, Trump will celebrate his centenarian birthday in prison, surrounded by his yes men and fellow failed authoritarians.

But I digress.

What happens when Trump exits this mortal coil?

I mean, besides dancing in the streets. That’s a given.

Well, whenever he dies, it will be a liberal plot.

He could keel over a decade from now while eating a cheeseburger, and right-wingers will claim lesbian folk singers poisoned him. The man could impale himself on a golf club in 2040, and conservatives will insist an immigrant college professor speared him.

From a media perspective, he will not go quietly.

His passing will be a landmark in US history. It may be greeted with a collective sigh of relief or a violent attack. It may usher a period of shame and reflection, or it could provoke mass executions.

We don’t really know. Nor do we know what will happen to his most zealous followers, who will have to face life without their domineering daddy figure.

Like all things Trump, I am wary of this development, as unavoidable as it is.

And like all things Trump, there is no way to prepare.

So the authorities have captured the person who allegedly shot that fascist guy last week.

And it turns out the shooter is a gay Latino Muslim immigrant who is chairman of his local antifa chapter.

Wait a second, let me check that. No, he is yet another socially isolated, angry, young white man who grew up in a household that fetishized guns and worshipped the Republican Party.

I know you didn’t see that one coming.

Even though the shooter is not the dark-skinned foreigner that conservatives were literally praying for, that hasn’t stopped them from vowing vengeance. 

Republicans are compiling lists of people who have not expressed the minimum amount of mourning for a bigot that the GOP deems adequate. This is because the Republican Party is against cancel culture and believes strongly in free speech. Yup.

Also, the Trump administration is threatening progressive organizations, because this murder has given them the excuse they have been dreaming about. The White House says unspecified groups face unclear consequences for undetermined crimes. I’m sure the Trumpists will be thoughtful and well-reasoned in their approach. After all, this is the team that just blows up ships in international waters for the hell of it.

And of course, right-wing militants — who need a reason to get violent as much as fire needs a reason to burn — are ready to attack. Even more than usual, these lunatics are prepping for full-on warfare. And as we know, even though conservatives deny it at every turn, right-wing violence is exponentially more common and catastrophic than left-wing violence.

In the midst of all this conservative sturm und drang, myriad conspiracy theories have popped up. Because they must. Seriously, if there has ever been more fertile ground for conspiratorial nonsense than 21-st century America, I would like to know.

The assassination is rumored to be the work of a dark cabal, or an inside job, or the work of a Satanic liberal cult, or simply enough, the Jews (who wind up as the villains in every conspiracy theory). Some internet nutjobs insist the shooting was fake, and that the fascist guy didn’t die at all. I’m surprised that nobody has insisted that it was an elaborate suicide — yet.

With all this mishmashing of fact and fiction, progressives find themselves in an odd place. For the first time in, well, maybe forever, misinformation is beneficial to liberals.

This is because the shooter does not fit the easy profile of an ethnic minority gone savage, or a crazed immigrant out for blood. Again, he’s a native-born white guy who was raised Republican. This background has led to conjecture that he fired that shot as the opening salvo in a right-wing civil war. We’re hearing about internecine conservative plots and online mutual trolling and groypers, which is a term that I resent I had to learn.

Again, those who hate liberals will not care what the facts are or the truth of what actually happened. But painting this murder as the work of unhinged liberals is already failing because of the shooter’s profile, the swirl of misinformation, and the absence of clear facts.

For the first time, liberals can say, “That’s not what I heard” and offer up their own crazy story that may or may not be accurate.

No, that is not good for society. But it may help to keep progressives alive.

By the way, we should note that the fascist guy rose to fame by demonizing immigrants and ethnic minorities. He devoted his career to spreading hatred of “the other” and convincing white people that they were under attack by swarthy foreigners speaking bizarre languages. Until his dying breath, quite literally, he insisted non-white people were violent and dangerous.

And then a white man shot him.

That’s proving your hypothesis wrong in the most tragically ironic way possible.

As of this writing, they still have not captured the person who murdered that fascist guy.

You may have noticed that I referred to the victim as a fascist because, well, that’s the truth. Getting assassinated does not convey sainthood.

This fact seems to have confused many Americans. We are being told to grieve for a man whose history of bigotry is undisputed. We are being ordered to show respect to a right-wing extremist who damaged many people’s lives and gloated about it. 

The media coverage refers to him as a conservative voice, as if he had the gravitas of a George Will rather than the calamitous impact of a smug racist whose views are straight out of the 1950s but with more animosity.

Listen, you can say he was wretched person without rejoicing in his death. You can denounce this killing, as all sane people should, without wallowing in crocodile tears.

The implication is that all Americans must refrain from badmouthing a man who despised everyone who was not a straight, white Christian male and who worked tirelessly to demean and dehumanize whole segments of American society. 

This demand for compassion is all the more jarring considering that much of it comes from conservatives, who have taken great delight in insisting that empathy is bad and kindness is for losers.

Yes, the modern conservative movement has nothing but contempt for empathy, unless they want it for themselves, in which case it must be given without delay or pause, and in huge heaping piles.

So what happens when all the eulogies from conservatives and weak-willed liberals fade away? Most  likely, there will be more political violence. It is obviously unavoidable at this point, and the fact that the Republican Party has amplified and intensified calls for political violence is something the GOP wants you to forget at the moment. But threats and bullying are the Republican brand now. The only surprise is that conservatives are shocked that their hyper-aggressive behavior and sociopathic mocking of victims has infected society. I mean, who could have called that?

Speaking of violence, it is indeed ironic that the victim in this case regarded gun deaths as no big deal because of, you know, freedom and stuff. Most likely, when he was rationalizing the deaths of thousands as necessary for the Second Amendment’s functioning, he was assuming that all that death would happen to someone else — probably some pagan immigrant who had it coming. Nobody who loves guns ever assumes that they will be the one who gets shot, the person who has to pay the price for this God-given right that is so essential that school kids have to wear bulletproof backpacks. Nope, it won’t them — until it is.

I also find it interesting that so many people assume that the killer had military training to make such a complicated shot. That’s certainly possible.

But it’s also possible that with millions of guns in the hands of millions of people, and with thousands of those gun owners spending lots of time at shooting ranges, at least one highly motivated lunatic would devote the effort to becoming an ace sniper.

Hell, there are probably hundreds of Americans who have never served in the military who could have fired that rifle. 

Does that make you feel safer?

It was a short week. And between fewer days to write and the ceaseless cavalcade of psychotic behavior flowing from the White House, I simply didn’t have the time or endurance to create a new post that catalogues the latest monstrosity plaguing our nation.

So instead, I have fallen back on an old favorite. Here again is a found poem constructed of real-life headers of IMDB critiques of the last ten movies I have watched. Enjoy.

Rotting flesh and worms replace the pumpkin carriage

Teeth claws and a moral message

The mothballs of memory

Loneliness in the void

Beautiful deep painful rage

A tantalizing theological tangle with a hollow core

Pure demonstration of a hardcore sociopath

That damn smiling monkey

It exists, then it doesn’t

Like my unfinished dream

Here are the movies (in poem order)

The Ugly Stepsister 

Jurassic Park

Blue Jay

Companion

Blink Twice

Heretic

Unknown caller

The Monkey

Bad Guys 2

Flow