Hispanic Fanatic

There’s a fair amount of Latino pride surging through my household lately — the result, as you can imagine, of a certain malevolent rodent taking over the Super Bowl. 

This is despite the fact that I am not Puerto Rican, and I’m more of a grunge rock guy than a reggaeton fan. 

But I love seeing Latinos excel. And I also love a good party. Hey, who doesn’t?

Ha — you know the answer to that.

No sooner was the halftime show over than angry white conservatives proclaimed how very, very oppressed they were because for the first time in the history of the universe, a major event was not focused on them. The indignity of hearing Spanish, and seeing all that joy, has launched a million apocalyptic fits among Republicans, who are now threatening to unleash the power of governmental investigations upon those radicals who dare to twerk.

I guess they wrapped up that whole Epstein investigation and now have lots of free time to focus on other equally pressing matters.

Yup.

In any case, I have to wonder if doubt ever creeps into the right-wing mind. It is painfully obvious that the Super Bowl halftime show was a tremendous success, while the hastily conceived alternative concert was, to be diplomatic, not so well regarded. And yet conservatives continue to die on that hill, buried under ever-increasing piles of ludicrous and straight-up racist arguments.

Does it ever cross their minds that most Americans do not share their terror over hearing Spanish? Do they ever say, “I don’t know much about this music or culture, so maybe I can learn more” instead of reflexively lashing out at the unknown and clinging to the familiar and the pedestrian? Do they see people dancing and proclaiming the power of love and welcoming all types of individuals, and feel, just for a moment, that their posture of fury and self-righteous rage is misplaced and kind of, sort of, a little bit pathetic?

Probably not.

But more and more, Americans are seeing conservatives for what they are. And all we can do is shake our heads and say, “Que triste.”

Yeah, that was Spanish. Get used to it.

I’ve mentioned before that I am a proud member of Gen X.

Well, make that usually or perhaps occasionally proud. We have our flaws.

In any case, I remember the 1980s, and they weren’t that rad… excuse me… they weren’t that great.

As such, it is disconcerting that so many members of my generation glamorize a time that was loud, shallow, and ugly. And holy fucking hell, did the music ever suck.

But 1980s nostalgia isn’t just for middle-aged Gen Xers who remember a time when their knees didn’t hurt and a person could be entertained for a whole afternoon with just five dollars in quarters at the arcade.

No, this yearning for 40 years ago is especially acute for Trump and his devoted fans.

I know, we all think of the “again” in the MAGA slogan as referring to the 1950s. And indeed, the desire for that simpler world of milkshakes and segregation is strong among the baby boomers. Damn, they rhapsodize about the Eisenhower years.

But attitudinally, the conservative movement is all about the 1980s. That was the last era in which white men were the unquestioned leaders of America, and it was still ok to make racist jokes in public. Sure, there were ladies in the workplace, because of that damn women’s lib movement of the 1970s, but men could still grab a female ass in the office without everybody getting all uptight about it. Best of all, rich guys were heroes, and nobody — I mean, nobody — was stressed about the environment collapsing, Muslims moving in next door, or gay people doing anything other than hiding and cowering in fear.

For white male conservatives, this was the last good time.

Yes, in the 1980s we were under constant threat that the USSR would bomb us into oblivion at any time. But that’s not a concern because the Republican Party of the 2020s loves Russia. They don’t even mind when the US president kowtows to a Russian dictator whose propaganda machine gleefully proclaims that corrupt Republicans will destroy America.

I suppose that’s the new version of winning one for the Gipper.

In any case, Republicans — especially white, male, straight Christian ones — will continue to pine away for the 1980s. They want a nation where ethnic minorities are never the lead in movies, women stop getting nominated for president, and rich guys can yell, “retard” again.

As if all that weren’t vile enough, they will likely indulge in their retrograde fantasies while blaring Starship’s We Built This City.

Totally gnarly.

I’ve never been a big fan of the Second Amendment.

This poorly written clause has provoked more death and mayhem in this country than any other scrap of the English language. And its homicidal power has only increased in recent decades, as belligerent  dudes insist the right to own an AR-15 is so fundamental, so crucial to liberty, that slaughtered children are just an annoying byproduct of its greatness.

But even though I would like to see the Second Amendment revoked (or at least heavily edited, modified, and clarified), I accept it as the law of the land. You want a gun? Yup, you can get one, no matter how much I personally don’t like it.

So it’s more than a little perplexing to see Second Amendment “absolutists,” the same people who are the first to proclaim how much they love the Constitution, now backtracking, hedging, and wavering in their support for this supposedly sacred right.

These guys believe the Constitution is ala cart, and their belief in any of its principles depends upon how politically inconvenient they are.

Now that their leader — aka Tangerine Palpatine — has mumbled, “You can’t have guns,” many of them are saying, “OK with me, chief! What other theoretically essential values do you want me to abandon?”

Of course, some gun owners have pushed back… meekly and with the respectful tone that they would never adopt if someone were, say, asking them to wear a mask to prevent disease. But it’s a pushback nonetheless.

Our old friends at the NRA felt pressured to say something after a Republican president threatened gun ownership in a way that no Democratic president has ever come close to vocalizing. Remember all that nonsense about Obama taking your guns? The guy never even implied that you can’t have them.

So if you ever needed proof that many Second Amendment advocates are weak-willed hypocrites, here is your proof.

But to be fair, Trump and the most fervent of his hardcore supporters are not hypocrites. That would require them to have principles in the first place.

No, the MAGA faithful think about the Second Amendment the same way they think about all American rights: as something reserved exclusively for them.

In their eyes, the Second Amendment is not for Latinos or liberals or punk rockers who live in cities.

It’s for them — rural and suburban white, straight Christian men who are the God-given owners of this country. They alone receive the benefits of the Constitution, the protection of the government, and the right to say and do whatever the hell they want.

And if you don’t like that, watch out, because they are heavily armed. 

When Trump said gun ownership could be restricted, he clearly wasn’t talking about these guys.

He meant the rest of us.

And that goes for all our rights. They can just be whisked away like they never existed.

As I’ve mentioned, I lived in the great city of Minneapolis for seven years. During my time there, I became friends with a guy I will call Jordan. I’m not using his real name for reasons that will shortly become apparent.

Jordan and I spent a lot of time together, sipping our Surly Furious beers, pondering if winter would ever end, and being all open-minded and tolerant of others. You know — radical insurgent stuff.

In any case, Jordan recently texted me about what’s happening in Minneapolis, a city where heavily armed thugs are assaulting people, stomping on the Constitution, and unleashing terror on a populace best known for politeness.

With his permission, I am excerpting some of Jordan’s texts here:

This is simple retribution and punishment against the people of MN for not falling in line and helping this asshole become a king. It’s clear anyone undocumented is scared, but I know a scientist with a green card who is scared to leave her home. I’ve got work colleagues who are US citizens scared shitless and not coming into work. It’s literally affecting everyone. The damage they are doing here is absolutely crazy. They are not following laws and intentionally roughing people up.no matter what you’re doing.

They are here to send a message. Detain people for hours and release them without charges. Smashing car windows when people don’t move fast enough. They’re on the freeway pulling people over. Schools are in chaos. 

Restaurants are closed due to fear of staffing and customer safety. Because if ICE shows up, they mess with everybody no matter who you are. They rammed into a guy’s car because they said he was not a citizen but then drove away, leaving him with a damaged car. It’s all tactics to put the fear into everyone that anyone at any time can be harmed, detained, or have property damaged.

Also, we’ve got right-wing extremists calling in pipe bomb threats at Hennepin County buildings. ICE doesn’t care. 

One good and sad story is that a Mexican restaurant had workers too scared to come in, so the owner asked for volunteers to cook in the kitchen before all the food spoiled to make for their workers, and over 100 people signed up, and they had to turn away volunteers. 

I don’t know, we’re sad, we’re angry and we’re scared.

Yes, it’s a lot to take in.

Also, Jordan is probably pissed at me because he’s a Vikings fan, and the pseudonym I choose for him is inspired by Jordan Love, the Green Bay Packers quarterback. Ha, that was a good one.

Sports rivalries aside, I want Jordan to know that we support Minneapolis — and by “we” I mean the majority of Americans who are aghast at the Gestapo-lite marching through uptown. 

The city is taking a hit on behalf of the entire country right now, and for their perseverance, we own them our gratitude and respect.

I haven’t said much about Venezuela because I’ve been busy processing the fact that armed government militias are shooting women in the face and getting away with it. And when I’m not dwelling on that grotesquerie, I’m obsessing about the fact that millions of Americans are ok with this development, actively support it in many cases, and insist that a country where governmentalized thugs can murder people who disrespect them is just fine.

Yeah, it’s a lot to ponder.

In any case, the US invaded Venezuela a couple of weeks ago.

This was to stop the flow of drugs, or seize the oil, or end repression, or.. well, who even knows anymore? Certainly not the guy who authorized the incursion. 

Hell, just “a week after the mission to remove Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from power, the chief executive of ExxonMobil called the country ‘uninvestable,’ undercutting the economic rationale for the military intervention.”

This shifting of reasons and mess of contradictions was not enough to dissuade an acquaintance of mine, a Latino conservative who plastered my social media with proclamations of how great it was that we bombed Venezuela and captured Maduro.

This acquaintance ended his rhapsodizing with the declaration “I hope we take care of Cuba next.”

I’ve said it before: There is never enough warfare for conservatives.

I wonder if people like this remember the Iraq War, where we overthrew a vicious dictator and then were shocked when the people of that country were not grateful. We were even more surprised when we discovered that rebuilding a country is not as easy as eliminating a second-rate despot.

Even more relevant, I wonder if they know anything about US military intervention in Latin America, which has almost always culminated in violence, death, and suffering for the inhabitants, and never freedom and easy living for the nation we invaded.

Why do they clamor for more of the same, insisting that this time, under the auspices of a volatile ignoramus, it will be different?

Perhaps they would like to know that repression in Venezuela has actually intensified since we kidnapped Maduro, and there is no indication that life will be better for anyone any place where US troops are active.

And speaking of Maduro and how it relates to ICE thugs shooting people in American streets, keep in mind that the “worst thing that Maduro did is just what Trump is beginning to do: killing civilians and blaming them for their own deaths.”

Conservative who agree with Trump that mocking federal officials is grounds for immediate execution should note that the Maduro regime “claimed that the people they murdered were resisting government authority, and that the men who pulled the trigger had been provoked by those whom they murdered.”

Yes, we can either believe our own eyes and intuition, or we can embrace the “conspiracy story that Trump and his advisors are telling: that all evil has to do with immigrants and drugs, and that everyone who wants democracy and human rights in the United States is somehow part of a giant invisible immigration/drug/antifa conspiracy directed from abroad.”

Your call.

I had hoped that my first post of 2026 would be full of joy and chockablock with optimism.

Yeah, not so much.

What should we focus on first? How about the fact that ICE thugs are now shooting people in the face for not complying with their shrieked, random, contradictory orders fast enough? Or that the government demands that we reject evidence we see with our own eyes? Or that poorly trained neo-fascists have proven that they are willing to murder white women in broad daylight, so we can just imagine what they are capable of when they drag Latino men off to some dark cell?

Well, we can address all of that, plus the fact that even under the most extreme version of devil’s advocate, the trigger-happy ICE goon in Minneapolis was reckless and incompetent, and more likely guilty of at least manslaughter, if not outright murder.

Keep in mind that the gunfire in Minneapolis, a city I lived in for seven years, is not some stray occurrence or freak accident. Rather it is “the logical result of Trumpism and MAGA extremism, both in theory and in practice” because “a fatal encounter was all but inevitable” once you unleash armed hoodlums under the auspices of authority who serve no purpose other than to terrorize and provoke.

And the guy who Republicans insist will unite this nation is displaying an “indifference to facts, to due process, to the dignity of the deceased, and to basic human decency” that is beyond grotesque. The White House has made “ostentatiously dishonest statements that they knew would be contradicted by the video evidence available to anyone with eyes to see it,” proving once more that the “federal government now speaks with the voice of the right-wing smear machine: partisan, dishonest, and devoted to vilifying Trump’s perceived enemies rather than informing the public.” 

And all this has happened in the first week of what will likely be another miserable year.

But wait, I haven’t even gotten to the invasion of Venezuela yet. I suppose that will have to wait until next week’s post… unless something even more horrific happens before then, which let’s face it, is always possible.

Damn, this is an abysmal start to 2026.

We have definitive proof, as if any were needed, that our president is a depraved sociopath.

The most chilling aspect of this homunculus of hatred’s response to a beloved director and his wife getting murdered is not the gloating, the mocking, or the praising of himself. It is the implication that if the murderer turned out to be a right-wing goon, that was fine, because the couple had it coming. Even MAGA fans (well, some of them, at least) were disgusted at this rejection of basic decency and the grotesque wallowing in violence.

Don’t conservatives ever get tired of defending this repulsive behavior? At what point are they no longer owning the libs and instead cackling over pure evil? Do they even know anymore?

In any case, I will wrap up this final post of 2025 by celebrating the great Rob Reiner, who was responsible for one of my favorite films of all time, the insanely underrated road-trip comedy The Sure Thing.

I saw this movie when I was 16, and to this day, I have never related to any onscreen character more than Gib. Maybe it’s because Gib was a funny guy who was awkward with women. Perhaps it is because Gib tried to go with the flow but still got moody and morose. Or maybe it is because to this day, there are very few Midwestern-raised Latino characters in movies, so I don’t have a lot of options.

In any case, The Sure Thing is hilarious, which is a big reason I love it. But another reason for my admiration developed only later, when I rewatched the movie as an adult. 

It’s clear that Alison takes life too seriously, and she learns to lighten up through her relationship with Gib. But as Reiner himself pointed out, Gib takes life too frivolously, and he learns much from Alison. That nuance took me a while to figure out.

Yes, this director was so good, even his 1980s teen comedies were deep.

See you in 2026.

I recently created my first AI agent.

Don’t be impressed. It took ten minutes and no technical skill at all. The AI basically synthesizes my news feed.

But maybe I should look into developing an AI chatbot that can convert hardcore right-wingers into progressive activists, because that would be one hell of a cultural improvement from a tool that, so far, has been most effective at writing poorly phrased emails for lazy people and creating bizarro images.

You see, a recent study has found that AI chatbots “can sway voters better than political advertisements.” The researchers found that “a conversation with a chatbot can shift people’s political views” more effectively than talking to a human can. But since we’re talking about AI here, and there is always a dark side, you will be unsurprised to know that “the most persuasive models also spread the most misinformation.”

Basically, your Tia Ana will remain steadfast in her political views no matter how many facts you throw at her or regardless of how much you plead. But her principles may waver if an AI bot lies to her enough. 

No, that’s not reassuring.

The researchers say that “the chatbots’ persuasive power could have profound consequences for the future of democracy.” For example, politicians who “use AI chatbots could shape public opinion in ways that compromise voters’ ability to make independent political judgments.”

As we know, many Americans believe Jewish space lasers control the weather and vaccines cause babies to explode. And those beliefs have a head start even before AI does it thing. 

Research shows that the affinity to believe total nonsense is more of a trait for conservatives. This tendency apparently extends to AI, as the study revealed that “chatbots advocating for right-leaning candidates made a larger number of inaccurate claims than those advocating for left-leaning candidates.” 

You see, if AI is parroting right-wing nonsense, it quickly runs out of objective truths. So the chatbots create “misleading or false information” to become more persuasive, and AI “essentially reaches to the bottom of the barrel of stuff they know, so the facts get worse quality.”

The researchers conclude that this study implies “a troubling world for democracy.” But they have a solution. All we need are “strong guardrails to keep the systems in check.”

If AI chatbots could laugh, they would bust out cackling at that statement. Because in the interest of making tech bros even more money, and to facilitate Silicon Valley’s continued right-wing drift, the Trump administration has made it difficult to create any guardrails — never mind strong ones.

Most likely, conservatives will swarm Americans with AI chatbots, deep fakes, and technological tricks designed to fool people into thinking progressives are diabolical and the GOP is competent, neither of which is true.

So in the future, perhaps robots won’t need to rise up, attack humans, and subjugate them. Maybe we will just meekly do whatever AI tells is to do.

I know. We had the audacity to celebrate Thanksgiving, treating ourselves to the briefest of respites from the nonstop clown-car shitshow that now makes up American government. And what happens?

Well, for starters, our possibly ailing, possible senile president openly admits to committing war crimes (but then tries to jettison the blame to someone else). 

Hey, remember that “controversial” video of Democratic leaders reminding military personnel that they should refuse to carry out illegal orders? Yeah, it looks like that was sound advice that has unfortunately gone unheeded. 

In other disturbing news, our nation’s centuries-long reputation as a beacon of freedom for oppressed people has been stomped into oblivion. We are kicking out refugees who helped us in a botched war because one of them is a homicidal lunatic. This is because we now judge whole groups of people based on their worst members, unless of course, they are white Americans who tried to overthrow the government, in which case we do not even judge the worst of them at all.

And while we’re at it, we’re expelling other immigrant groups because… well, there really is no good reason. Hell, even the most ardent Trump defender has to admit that referring to communities of black people as “garbage” and harassing them for a crime that they are not even remotely responsible for is not, as the kids say, a good look.

But don’t worry. Our government has made it clear that Afrikaners can get going on rebuilding their whites-only homeland right here. So we still love certain immigrants, and the reasons why are not glaring or obvious in the least. Nope.

Oh, one more thing. It is more than a little odd for a guy to threaten war (despite his boasting that he would never start a war) because he is so angry about the illegal drug trade, but then turn around and pardon a man who flooded America with those same illegal drugs.

Yes, it’s all very depressing, infuriating, and perplexing. So basically, it is another day in Trump’s America.

And we just can’t get a fucking break.

Americans celebrate Thanksgiving in different ways.

For me, the holiday is an opportunity to take a break from writing 1,000-word diatribes against the bumbling neo-fascists straining to turn America into a Christian nationalist white supremacist nation.

Instead, I will post a few of my favorite quotes about this current era of madness and delusion that we are white-knuckling through. Here they are:

Qualified people get fired or leave. Sycophants, stooges, frauds, charlatans, lackeys, lickspittles, bootlickers, and phonies take over. And this prescription is being filled across all of government, making the prognosis for the country’s health, both now and into the future, increasingly bleak.

—Heather Cox Richardson

The blue states pay taxes to the federal government, which redirects them to the red states. Voters in red states take advantage of this redistribution, while claiming … that they are against such a redistribution and that they are being cheated because they do not get enough. Governors of red states … push the logic of the federal system to the limit, treating themselves (not the Constitution or the law and certainly not the taxpayers in blue states) as the final arbiter of what can be done with taxes. This arrangement, when looked at from the outside with a cold eye, can hardly be seen as natural and sustainable.

—Timothy Snyder

The true ideologues are the ones who are insisting there is only one way to be a man or a woman, and it’s their way, and we must all comply. They aren’t defending women, who are a vast and varied category unto ourselves. They’re trying desperately to enforce one narrow, particular vision of gender in a world that’s bursting with variety.

—Ann Friedman

“Trump derangement syndrome” is real — but it’s not what they say it is. In an epic case of projection, followers of an infamous deranged criminal accuse their foes of a mental disorder…. The MAGA masses will not be satiated without expansive displays of rage, cruelty, and sadism directed at hated out groups and designated enemies.

—MSNBC

There’s a big chunk of House Republicans who just want to break something. That’s just how some of these folks define governing. It’s how their constituents define success.

—Gordon Gray

Ronald Reagan moved the U.S. closer to the laissez-faire ideal than almost any other country. The conservatives who sold this vision promised it would lead to a new prosperity for all. They were wrong about that, of course. Since 1980, the U.S. has become a grim outlier on many indicators of human well-being.

—The New York Times

Most Republicans, along with many pundits, are pretending that Trump is a normal president. They are ignoring his mental lapses, calls for authoritarianism, grifting, lack of grasp on any sort of policy, and criminality, even as he has hollowed out the once grand Republican Party and threatens American democracy itself. It’s hard to look away from the reality that Republican senators could have stopped this catastrophe at many points in Trump’s term.

—Heather Cox Richardson

Be sure to employ some of these quotes at your holiday dinner with your conservative relatives. I guarantee a rollicking good time. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!