20,000 dead in Gaza
It won’t help us to help anyone if we lose democracy
1,2000 killed by Hamas in Israel, with a not small percentage tortured and/or raped
If Trump wins again, this time he brings in only the goon squad: No more adults in the room! They just keep you from doing cool things like seizing power and keeping it all your life long and then handing it to your children or some other cronies.
Putin steering money to the loyal guardians of his criminal state, smiling and biding his time until the West gives up on last year’s prestige pin and he can swallow Ukraine whole, or mostly whole, claim victory to the people, keep it rocking.
This is also the promise of Donald Trump. Just take his stick down your throat and keep quiet and you’re allowed to go about your business and keep it rocking. How is it we don’t see this? How is it we don’t feel it wedging its way down our necks? Or do we like it? Is that our problem? We’re the sick ones and he just knows it?
Of course not. We’re just people. He’s just a person who’s decided to win and keep power at all costs (i.e. to live and die as a thug). And the system is just in a dangerous, a cracking, a faltering, a possibly collapsing state.
A friend’s father used to say to her, when Trump was running 2016, that he just wants a mafia president, someone like The Godfather to take charge.
Why? Thuggery does not seek what is best for all, nor even competent government: thuggery seeks to keep power and wealth and prestige and safety and clean water and decent food for themselves first, their family and other loyal thugs second, and nobody third. And you get what you seek. To a point.
Actually, completely.
You completely what you seek. And thuggery seeks the nihilistic daydream that only the thug and his immediate needs, affections, and notions are real, matter, are worth anything. And what is that but the daydream that animal vapors could become a God and nations could be made to bow to them. And while such daydreams can win for generations in outward time, in inward time they lose immediately and forever. Because a human who choses his own hoots and hollers over the Love that chooses everyone from the soul out — such a one chooses to run away from the only aspect of themselves they can actually understand, believe in, or care about.
Donald Trump is not currently wise enough to see that, and he probably will not grasp that anytime soon. And many are assembling around him, to varying degrees willing, but all more and more complicit as he tightens his fingers around their hopes and fears.
And thus does the wager of each US citizen tilt
more and more
away from how to thrive in a liberal representative democracy with freedom of speech and inalienable rights (nice little features like not being shoved into prison and/or executed for arguing with the president) and a government ultimately beholden to the people (the government’s responsiveness to the will of the people is far from perfect now; but the notion that an imperfect democracy is best repaired by replacing democracy with tyranny is as sound a political theory as it sounds)
and more and more
towards how to thrive in a thug-ocracy, where you pay to play: You want power, wealth, prestige, a guarantee of clean drinking water for your children? OK, then you would like to sign up for our premium package! You get to actively help suppress people who would speak out against the country. Maybe imprison journalists. Maybe sign off on the poisoning of political rivals. Maybe you’ll get to personally break the knee caps of those lousy traitors! Traitors to the one True Leader. Not so down with living and breathing crime? OK, shut up, keep out of the way, and we’ll probably let you go about your business. Those are the two main tiers. Pick most anything else, and, well: can we be held responsible for what happens to people who don’t play by the rules after we spelled them out plain as day?

So, yeah, if this ball bounces a little more wrong, soon enough those of us without the foresight to get on board with the nation’s conversion to The United States of Trump will have to either go quiet or run to some other land. But what land is safe from this giant, so powerful weapon? For a nation is always to some degree a weapon, and this is a big.

20,000 dead in Gaza
And all you can think about is whether or not you’ll be able to safely criticize your government in 2025.
What should we do?
My fingers numb and my mind driveling
I want out of this dangerous narrowing
of my easy-peasy parks and coffee shops movies and wine reading and writing walking and talking safe little life

Author: We forget
Editor: Tired
Copyright: Andy Watson, such as he was while yet he had a chance to speak himself outloud