unraveling

30.June.2026

It could happen here. It may be about to

Five months after Timothy Synder, "a historian of atrocity who was raised in Ohio" wrote about the prospect of ethnic cleansing in Ohio, anyone limited to casual attention probably would have thought that naming of it hyperbolic. Now that the right-wing majority of the Supreme Court has put in their ear plugs, put on their eye shades and you know where they put the cork, and declared that We See No Racism Here, a blatant, ridiculous, willful deception, the question is not hyperbole. Ethnic Cleansing in Ohio?

Driven by thug's fabulating Robin, J.D. "JD" Vance and his mendacity during the 2024 campaign, and by his boss' insistence that Article 2 gives him the power to do anything he wants, and now the Supreme Court's horrific capitulation, the question is of the moment. Will our federal government execute a "large deportation" of Haitians? Read the historical background, and weep.

"The work to normalize racist and Nazi language looks exactly like the [Supreme] Court’s ruling; the overwrought performative neutrality of the Court is not only dishonest in itself, but constructive in its outrageous mendacity of an atmosphere of unreality that favors violence. The Court, in other words, in not only permitting the executive to undertake violent actions; by doing so on the basis of transparently obvious falsehoods, it is actively creating the conditions in which such violence can be rationalized and escalated.

"Those who dispense the trauma are aware of what they are doing. In this whole Springfield story, it is the statements of Blood Tribe and the the vice-president that reveal the most self-awareness. They are guiding a process that they recognize, understand, and approve: the generation of an alternative reality with a clear definition of the detestable other, and then the mobilization of state power to eliminate that imagined enemy. If this process is completed, as there is every sign that it will be, they will have succeeded: and they too will be altered. Blood Tribe, and groups like them, will have seen how they can move the national conversation and the federal government....

"If there is a Springfield pogrom, JD Vance will have his first namesake policy. Although he has been outspoken during the first year of the Trump administration, and has gotten himself in the way of various endeavors, there is, as of yet, no clear instance of a policy of which he is the author and the executor. The ethnic cleansing of Springfield would be the first. “JD Genocide,” or perhaps “Genocide Vance” -- if all this happens, the sobriquets will write themselves."

29.June.2026

Texas' rising star

You might remember that night that a young fellow with an odd name who gave a rousing keynote address to the 2004 Democratic National Convention? That sprang to my mind when I read Heather Cox Richardson's excerpts of James Talarico's acceptance speech to the Texas Democratic Convention last Friday night.

It was of course a lot more Texas-flavored than national in scope, but you get that "something big" feeling from him. The contest for a US Senate seat between him and the perennially corrupt (if not "the most corrupt politician in America"—the competition is stiff) Ken Paxton captures the national Zeitgeist just now. Will we have billionaires and looting tyrants taking over, or something like democracy?

“[T]he current political landscape is too small for Texas,” he said. “Texas used to be known for our hospitality…. Friendship across tribes, friendship across divides. That’s what makes Texas so great. We’re this big mash-up of all these different people, all these different cultures, all these different friends. Think about, think about Tejano music. If you’re listening to a Selena song, you’re hearing Spanish vocal styles from northern Mexico. But you’re also hearing polka dance rhythms from Czech and German immigrants. This uniquely…Texan ability to welcome new friends and new ideas has made us one of the most exciting and innovative states in the country.”

“We’re the state that put a man on the moon,” Talarico said. “We’re the state that pioneered ranching and energy and computers. We’re the state that gave this country Barbara Jordan, Ann Richards, LBJ, and the Great Society. We’re the state that put breakfast in a taco.”

Then Talarico turned to the present. “[T]oday, we face a new threat,” he said. “Our state is being taken over by a new kind of tyrant: billionaire megadonors. They’re not invading with an army. They’re just buying the system. The billionaires who own the social media algorithms, who own the cable news networks, who own the politicians fighting on our screens, they are turning neighbor against neighbor. Weakening that spirit of friendship that makes Texas so great. They divide us by party, by race, by gender, by religion, so we don’t notice that they’re picking our pockets. It is the oldest strategy in the world. Divide and conquer.”

“But,” he said, “Texas will not be conquered.”

You can watch the whole speech on YouTube as well.

25.June.2026

The most important word is ME

Props to whichever wag responded to the World Cup Group G draw between Belgium and Iran (0-0 ICYMI last Sunday) to say "We didn't win against Iran but at least it didn't cost us 300 billion USD." Always look on the bright side of life!

HCR's first draft of history from yesterday, June 24, 2026 brought in strategic studies scholar Phillips P. O’Brien and his "comprehensive review of the events and outcomes of Trump’s war on Iran. Catchy title for his "midweek update #16": Negotiating Without Leverage And With Lies. Very much in thug's lifelong "Art of the Deal" MO.

In case you stepped away from the news for idk three months, "there is no actual peace deal at this time and the whole negotiating process could break down at any time." As our three stooges, J.D. "JD" Vance (who speaks for "us millennials"), super-grifter Jared Kushner and Steve "What Me Worry" Witkoff carry on "negotiating."

"The Trump administration has put itself in a position where it cannot go back to the use of military force, cannot put much if any real pressure on Iran, and therefore will have to concede most of the main points to the Iranians. And as the past week showed, the Iranians understand this.

"Personally, I have never seen the US in such a position of weakness....

"The US government has reached the stage where the default assumption must be that it is lying when it comes to Iran making any concessions. For months the Administration has been claiming that Iran was agreeing to this concession or that concession—and none of these claims has been true. Now that the US has even less leverage, the lies will probably get larger."

We live in an expanding universe, after all. Life is a "narrative struggle" that has now reached a "difficult phase." From just outside the UFC octagon still defiling the south lawn, thug (aka @surrealDonaldTrump) "truthed":

“So, I have Iran on the ‘ropes,’ ready to go down for the fall, willing to give us practically anything, and for the first time in decades, respecting the hell out of the United States and its President, ME, and the U.S. Senate decides to have a poorly timed and meaningless War Powers Act Vote, telling the Number One Sponser of Terror in the World that the United States doesn’t like what I am doing to them and I must stop, and by so doing has provided aid and comfort the Enemy. Four Republican Losers voted with the Dumocrats, and Iran asked my people, ‘what does that all mean?’ These Senators have just made my job more difficult, but I will get it done, one way or the other, because I always get it done!”

HCR boils it down: "Trump is clearly panicked." To the point of threatening "big Oil companies" and their retail outlets to make gasoline prices "start going down a lot faster." And then pulling a fast one on his Senate lickspittles who were all set for him to do something useful, signing the law to make housing more affordable to tell them NUH UH! unless he can get his legalizing election fraud bill (you know, the "SAVE America Act") done first.

It would be funnier if it weren't living out the playbook of Nazi political theorist Carl Schmitt, exploiting "emergency" to assume absolute power.

"Trump—who himself almost certainly has not read Schmitt—asserted this view in August of last year when he said: “I have the right to do anything I want to do. I’m the president of the United States. If I think our country’s in danger—and it is in danger in the cities—I can do it.”

Will we, the people stand for it? Stay tuned! Check your voter registration early and often!

17.June.2026

Berzerker produces massive strategic blunder

The Iran "deal" is mind-blowing for how bad it is. $300 billion, and no sanctions on their oil? Because we feel bad about how much we bombed them? At least we don't have to worry about their nukular, which was obliterated last year, wasn't it? I don't expect thug to honor it, I don't expect Bibi Netanyahu to stop his war on Lebanon, and I assume that yes, J.D. "JD" Vance will be left holding the bag. As IDK, he should be? He's the highest ranked sentient being in the executive branch.

Do you need more detail? I'm sure someone has spelled it out. Robert Reich has a two-word summary: "Total failure." (I would've gone with Epic Failure, but ok. Stay tuned for the descriptions of how gorgeous the emporer's new clothes are.)

Israel's far-right "Channel 14 personalities have been lining up to vilify Mr. Trump and his top aides," reports the New York Times. Props to The Atlantic for perhaps the quintessential headline: What Did You Expect?

"With no change in the regime’s character or ideological outlook, it is being rewarded with a shift from maximum pressure to maximum windfall."

While I'm tossing off gift links to The Atlantic, have a gander at Peter Wehner's latest, The Apotheosis of Donald Trump. Ok, I don't know how "apotheosis" got in there; "the MAGA movement—and the 80-year-old man who leads it—is breaking apart," neither being deified. Not to put too fine a point on it,

"FOR HIS ENTIRE ADULT LIFE, Donald Trump has displayed patterns of behavior—grandiosity, lack of empathy, impulsivity, an obsession with power and dominance, a continuous need for adulation, hypersensitivity to perceived slights, a habit of demonizing those who disagree with him, exploitive interpersonal relationships, a chronic distortion of reality to preserve self-image, and an indifference to truth—that reflect his disordered personality."

Yes, and?

"The signs of Trump’s decline are everywhere: meandering soliloquies during Cabinet meetings, unplanned strolls on the White House roof, getting up and wandering to the windows in the East Room during meetings with oil executives. His obsessive fixation on the White House ballroom. The increasing number of deranged, middle-of-the-night Truth Social posts. The fury and indignation at routine questions from the press. And the steady narrowing of his vocabulary, his simplified syntax and reliance on a small number of stock phrases and superlatives. There’s no effort by Trump’s advisers to hide any of this. He won’t allow it."

16.June.2026

Good letters from some other Americans

Kinda hit the jackpot on Saturday, but didn't find out until Sunday, when a friend at church told me he had a letter published by the Idaho Press, which we subscribe to. Turns out there were seven letters, and two of them were by friends. If you can't get through the paywall from that link, never fear, I will summarize for you.

First of all, retired botany professor Don Mansfield, who has spent a lot of time in the Owyhee canyonlands over his 45-year career, speaking against depredation of our public lands, now put into overdrive by Herr Furor arbitrarily and capriciously rescinding previous presidents' orders that directed "federal land management agencies to restrict off-road vehicle travel when deemed necessary to “minimize damage to soil, watershed, vegetation.” So off-road travel is now OK, even if it may damage the landscape? I think not."

Maybe our Senator Mike Crapo, instrumental in encouraging the the Owyhee Initiative agreement, with its framework for resolving conflicts, and introducing the Owyhee Initiative Implementation Act back in 2009 will have something to say? "Readers, please urge legislators to codify in law those regulations. Help maintain healthy landscapes in public lands."

Marji Bass encouraged readers that independent candidate for the US Senate Todd Achilles offers hope for a better path than the division and damage we're currently going through, with virtually no pushback from the current pair. Jim Risch has had a hell of run in the US Senate, and wants to keep on being a toady for trumpism into his 80s. Let's do better.

The other 5 letters were interesting in various ways. Peggy Fahy of Star ridiculed the idea of the Republicans going back to a caucus rather than a presidential primary. (We had an accidental caucus in 2020, after our esteemed legislature biffed a bill setting a date, and stuff.) "nothing fires up already disenfranchised voters quite like watching their party make the process even more exclusive, more inconvenient, and more controlled by the same tiny faction they’re already fed up with."

Perennial correspondent Walt Thode of Boise makes the good point that Idaho's nonpartisan redistricting system should be national model. As opposed to the nation's current devolution for gerrymandering early and often. Call your Senators and Representative. Sigh.

Stress at the grocery store, chaos and corruption from the far-right leaders in our state Republican party ascendancy, and Vern Stevens of Melba raising the alarm about the easter egg of section 224 of the latest big beautiful war spending bill proposing to "fuse all research and procurement for weapons between the US military and Israeli military," allowing "the Israeli military to have complete access to all data, reasearch, development, and procurement for all of our weapon systems with little oversight and no disclosure to the American people." Call your... oh crap.

Speaking of Idaho's US senators, columnist (and Vietnam combat veteran, former Attorney General, and Idaho Supreme Court Justice) Jim Jones had his headline sanitized; you can read the original on his substack. Idaho's Congressional bootlickers have ignored the Constitution, most recently by voting to let a totally unqualified individual be the Director of National Intelligence.

Other than that, how was your weekend?

15.June.2026

The Apotheosis of Washington

HCR doesn't title her daily Letters from an America, just the date. The June 14 edition steps away from current events and takes us back to the formation of the Continental Army on that date 251 years ago, and outlines their six year campaign to overthrow the tyranny of rule by a king. Then two more years to negotiate the Treaty of Paris, and for General George Washington to retire, job well done. (But wait—there's more!)

Fast forward a generation, most of 34 years, when our U.S. Capitol was being rebuilt after the British came back for a little arson in 1812, and "fine artist John Trumbull picked the moment of Washington’s resignation from the army" for the centerpiece of the rotunda. Trumbull told President James Madison “I have thought that one of the highest moral lessons ever given to the world, was that presented by the conduct of the commander-in-chief, in resigning his power and commission as he did, when the army, perhaps, would have been unanimously with him, and few of the people disposed to resist his retaining the power which he had used with such happy success, and such irreproachable moderation.”

That's just one of four magnificent painting Trumbull executed, along with the signing of the Declaration of Indepence, the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown (in absentia, embarrassingly), and the surrender of Burgoyne at Saratoga. You can take a virtual tour with the curator on the website of the Architect of the Capitol. In those good old days, "Trumbull's mission was to convey the values he viewed as foundational to American democracy as he understood it: honor on the battlefield, self-restraint, and rational and orderly debate." Imagine that.

We have stood in the center of the rotunda, and looked up in wonder, wishing we were closer to the over-the-top, 4,664 square foot fresco painted by Greek-Italian artist Constantino Brumidi in 1865 (anything else going on in 1865?!), The Apotheosis of Washington. Thanks to Wikipedia, and imagery from the Architect of the Capitol, we can get much closer. (Maybe a little too close?)

14.June.2026

Since it's Sunday, welcome God?

Now that the pandemic taught us durable skills for going digital, the Boise Unitarian Universalist Fellowship is streaming all its Sunday services, with archived videos available on its YouTube channel. Ill blows the wind that profits nobody!

We've been posting teasers on Facebook, and with "all are welcome" settings, dissenters are starting to chip in their 2¢ and what-not. I'm struggling with another timeless proverb ("Do not feed the trolls.") and my desire to respond. I did report and block the twit who dropped an utterly gratuitous f-bomb. And blocked the fellow who launched his supposedly Biblical screedlet with "Democrats are faithless," as if our religion and the political party were one and the same, and his godlike pronouncement were of value.

A retired nutrition services supervisor responded to one 28 sec teaser by asking "God is not present in your worship?" without saying which god they were talking about. Apparently not the omnipresent one, because, well, you know. "Everywhere" means "everywhere," right?

I puckishly responded, "It's BYOG," which if you take the trouble to learn anything whatsoever about UUism you might agree is apt. We also welcome the godless, paradoxically. If Jesus himself were to drop by, we would definitely welcome him. And his parents.

They responded with a sad emoji, which, ok, that's apt too. I'm sorry you're sad that God does not get called out in our words to the humans in attendance. Another person responded to the FB comment with just a question mark (also very UU!), and the commenter elaborated,

"She mentioned who's welcome. God was not mentioned, either as being present or being welcome."

Our minister, the Rev. Sara LaWall put the emphasis on everyone, without, apparently, including every being every being wants to have mentioned by name.

So that's an unexpected twist on our words of greeting, that "everyone is welcome here." The list can't be infinite, and no one in attendance has expressed unhappiness about God not being called out explicitly. You would be welcome, even if it turns out that it's not your cup of tea.

America's cage fight

What do you get for a lawlessly corrupt birthday boy who has broken most of the nation's fine china while blundering around his bully pulpit? Accountability seems so impossibly old-fashioned now (not to mention impossibly broken as well), but the heart yearns. Before we get there, we can at least celebrate the win for The People and the loss for thug in removing his bloody self-homage from the Kennedy Center, even if his corrupt cabal is still infesting its board.

John Harwood and Joyce Vance discuss whether thug's enablers will face legal trouble after he's gone? Maybe.

Harwood asked: "Do you see bribery statutes being violated and potentially generating prosecutions?"

Vance outlined the federal bribery statute, noting that the publicly known facts about "the ballroom" already warrant an investigation (you know, once we have a DOJ that isn't fully cuckolded and corrupt), and boiling it down to the nut:

"This is full-on grift, and that's not what presidents are supposed to do. Trump operates in safety. He owns the Justice Department. There's no independence there. And the Supreme Court has given him this outsized blessing...."

Unfortunately, I'm old enough (and this blog is old enough) to remember how the Supreme Court fixed corruption by defining it out of existence, from US v. Sun-Diamond Growers in 1999, to the 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. I'm also old enough to remember being alarmed and horrified with the so-called unitary executive theory which thug has now brought to the full-on nadir of "I told you so."

9.June.2026

The Twilight Zone

The Interview on the NYT this week is well worth the whole hour (with no commercial interruptions!): Scott Pelley on the Bari Weiss Era and His Last Days at 60 Minutes.

In a moment when some leaders (one in particular springs to mind) can't handle a tough question, especially if a woman is asking it, Scott Pelley shows how it's done, with integrity, sincerity, and his heart.

It was on my (practially infinite) to-read list, but seeing Marc C. Johnson's latest on the tenuous state and future of journalism, Tick. Tick. Tick, encouraged me to click it up, and watch the powerful video. And also to read the whole, long, famous speech by Edward R. Murrow to the Radio and Television News Directors Association in 1958. Attention spans were longer before the internet, weren't they?

Maybe the world was just as crooked and stupid back in the day, but in this timeline the likes of which the world has never seen, when show business and advertising and political scheming are running non-stop on every imaginable channel (and more than a few unimaginable ones), when our demented clown-leader casually accuses anyone who opposed him with simple-minded slander that projects his own flaws in spades... consider who are the "gang of stupid, crooked people that [sic] don’t care about your country." Don't let him cover his damn tracks. He's a liar, a convicted felon, and criminal in many more ways than have yet been counted, let alone adjudicated, and someone who doesn't care about your country beyond what he can steal from it.

ICYMI, he has now nominated his former (and still!) personal defense lawyer, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who has told us he will defy the law that Congress passed and thug signed to release the Epstein Files, for full-on attorney general. The likes of which the world has never seen.

Picture in your mind's ear, a Wisconsin rainstorm pounding on the metal roof of a barn, with a backdrop of John Deere's beloved green and yellow, staged at the regime's request, and The Man Who Couldn't Take It Anymore getting up to stumble off the set because a woman asked him hard questions that he didn't want to answer. "Crooked" and "Stupid" are not either/or, Mr. President! You can be crooked and stupid, sir. And too much of a weak loser to answer the damn questions, losing your ability to manipulate others in the twilight of dementia.

Meanwhile back in primary season, Steve Scalise, a man without evident integrity, is thumping that same evidence-free drum that is thug's favorite instrument, casually deprecates the "integrity" of California's election, because [specious reasons]. Who needs evidence when you've got vague innuendo?

"Look, whether you can prove fraud or not, it does undermine voter integrity in the vote."

GOP leadership guy hand-waving can't sentence get straight. But yeah, no, you can't prove fraud if you don't have evidence. We've seen that show and its sequels five dozen times already.

1.June.2026

Can we go back to a different future?!

Scott McFarlane talked to Joyce Vance this morning, and she's got the video on her Civil Discourse blog. It's a good listen (not least for MacFarlane's warm butterscotch timbre), and wraps with an upbeat message from Vance:

MacFarlane: "...so many of these Trump dramas—and 'dramas' is an understatement—these Trump crises end up back in the same places; the DC Federal court, the DC court of appeals, the 11th Circuit, Judge Cannon's involved somehow... This is a mess, but way too serious to be characterized as a mess. It's a threat to democracy."

Vance: "This feels overwhelming to me, and I suspect it feels overwhleming to all the folks listening with us. I would encourage you, don't be overwhelmed. Look for the theme here, which is that the federal judiciary is alive and well and kicking, and doing its job."

Sometimes too slowly, but we're "headed for justice." (We hope.)

At the beginning of the conversation, they mentioned Vance's Week Ahead, and the image from Back to the Future 2.0 (maybe I'll have to see that?), of Biff Tannen's Pleasure Palace. She noticed that Biff and Thug look a lot alike... What do you know?

raveling

Tom von Alten