Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
Greetings from Ashlandia on Sunda, June 22, 2025. Speaking weatherly, it’s a better day today than yesterday. Sure, dark clouds still clot the sky with potentially ominous intentions. But sunshine is striking, driving the air into warmer realms. We’ve already broken past 60 F, three degrees above yesterday’s high. 72 F is in sight as a possibility.
Papi the butter butt floof is much happier. He’s snuggled into the vinca where just his tiny triangular orange face is marginally visible. Yesterday, he came in and stayed, finding a place to sleep until the rain, wind, and cold had gone away.
Well, Trump attacked another country but we’re not at war, oh no.Yet.We just bombed another country. Just a strategic ‘surgical’ strike on someone Trump thought was being a bully. On a whim. A hunch. Like a bet was being made.
A bet has been made. A bet that Iran’s nuclear program was more advanced than intelligence claimed. ‘We’ – because it was our government, acting on behalf of the United States, so we’re all involved, like it or not. So ‘we’ made a bet that we knew where the facilities were, and could reach and destroy. We bet that Iran and its allies would not respond. We made a bet that the mission would be successful and cow the Iranian leadership into not striking back. Will June 21, 2025, go down as an infamous act that triggered WWIII? Time will tell. If you bet on past history, this will get messy, but it might be down the road a few years.
We always knew Trump would attack. He’s been eager to use the military in whatever way he could to bolster his self-image. In the space of six months, he’s deployed troops against protestors and bombed another country, after, of course, threatening to invade Greenland and take it over and joking, “Maybe Canada should be our 51st state.” Ha, ha, what a brilliant funnyman. And then he claims he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. Please, someone shut him up before I pee my pants from laughing.
Today’s musical offering comes from — ta da — Der Neurons. For some reason that isn’t plain to me, they were kicking the morning mental music stream with “Basket Case”, a 1994 song by Green Day.
Alright. Had a double helping of warm oatmeal for breakfast. Risked some blueberries in it. Mouth took it all well, knock wood. Out to the coffee shop to write out the stuff piling up in my head. I wish for good things for you today and all days. Cheers
Here we are. I feel like things are piling up. Tension is rising. A big crash is building. But I can’t see what the crash will be like. Two many variables are in play.
When Trump left office after losing the 2020 election, this is where we thought he was taking us: the unitary executive, if not a dictatorship, a leader eager for revenge, willing to use military forces on any who opposed him. All the things we saw that he was, we said that he was, and now has proven to us to be what we thought he was, what we warned others about. Now we’re being shown as right. Now we’re waiting to see how far he’ll go, how deep the tear will be, how complete will be the destruction.
We know that Trump is a simpleton. But as a person who ‘speaks the people’s language, saying the things they think’, he’s a very effective tool for billionaires and the hardcore right. An unholy marriage was arranged on the right between neocons, new right, evangelists, racists, white supremacists, and misogynists. The underinformed and the rural, nursing a grudge because the Democrats didn’t seem to care enough about them were lured into the arrangement. The GOP went along because they wanted to be the party in power. They probably told each other, we can control him, if it becomes necessary.
I think the GOP were deluding themselves. The right-wing marriage is a frail transactional arrangement. It will not hold, but it wasn’t meant to hold. The left, and the Democrats were the ones moving the country forward. Getting equal rights for people. Raising the standard of living. Actually trying to improve the safety net and our education system. They — we, because I’m part of that left — are not perfect but we were looking forward, even if we sometimes move too damn slowly. Once the left is moved out of the way with their protective labor laws, the ‘nanny state’ which the right encourages them to scorn, Trump’s regime will be free to tear down the safety nets, send children back to work, and cut wages for the middle class down. That’s why removing the Department of Education became so important: it allows people to be indoctrinated. That’s why tariffs and rising prices will be secretly welcomed and accepted by the Trump Regime. He’ll keep telling his MAGAs the Democrats are causing it. And they, now well-trained to not trust the Democrats and to actively hate them, will accept it with little challenge or resistance.
What I didn’t understand until now is how many of those factions united under Trump were willing to go along with him, and will keep going along with him. That’s what polls are showing. Even as Trump does these things an his approval ratings fall, more Republicans identify and support him. It’s almost like this crises and destruction of the United States and its core strengths is what they want. Yes, there are some wretched individuals who thought that all the evil Trump would perpetrate would be done to others. They didn’t understand that Trump doesn’t care about them. Now some spill stories of regret for their voting decisions.
Now, serious questions are arising and falling. Is anyone above the law in the United States? Well, that answer is coming sharply into focus. How far above the law are they willing to raise him? Even if impeachment proceedings somehow begin, the mechanism for removing Trump from office is rapidly being torn apart.
More basic questions stand. How far are they willing to dismiss state rights as Trump seizes power and crushes opposition?
What will they do when Trump’s orders lead to the deaths of U.S. citizens on U.S. soil while those citizens are exercising their First Amendment rights? From what we’ve seen of most of them, they will go along with Trump. After all, it’s not hurting them.
Yet, they don’t see, even after all he’s done, the promises broken, and the lies made, that he will turn on them. Unfortunately, some will continue to embrace the transactional marriage because they’ve told themselves that he is a good man. To admit otherwise requires them to acknowledge that they’ve been duped, that they’re wrong.
Some already wonder, is there any hope for us after Trump? I’m not looking that far ahead any longer. Just get us through June.
Just get us through this week.
Then we’ll see where we stand.
Michael Seidel, writer 