AAAAHH

“Getting land, oil rights, whatever we had,” Donald Trump said speaking to reporters. “As you know, they threw our companies out, and we want it back.”

“They took our oil rights. We had a lot of oil there.”

Maduro was a president who oversaw one of the largest mass exoduses of citizens from his own country of any since the expelling of the Indians. 7 million people left Venezuela, more than the number of Jews that died in the holocaust and almost as many as the population of New York City today. The resulting migratory crisis saw hundreds of thousands of people streaming north through Colombia, central America, and Mexico onward to the USA. I write a little about that situation here. The repercussions of Maduro’s reign are still felt today, which is ironic because the exodus of the Venezuelans is probably the primary reason Trump became president. Maduro sealed his own fate in a way.

America, of course, did everything it could to ensure that Maduro’s dictatorship would fail. Full sanction of its economy after Venezuela nationalized its oil production killed its economy. Having an inflexible dictatorship ensured Venezuela would be doomed never to recover. And now, American capitalism guarded by the US military gets to return and seize the oil for itself. Venezuela will be “prosperous” now that American companies get to have the oil.

Will Venezuelans see an improvement in their quality of life under the USA? Maybe. Afganistan saw an expansion of freedom when the Americans were around. Women were allowed to read and learn type shit. Then America threw up its hands and left, plunging the people into darkness again (women are discouraged from reading in Taliban Afganistan). America doesn’t give one shit if Venezuelans live a better life. This is just another action packed scene on Trump’s stage meant to beguile us. America will do whatever the industrial complex believes is right in Venezuela, and the people of Venezuela may or may not someday be free.

It is interesting how America has the reverse of Venezuela’s oil problem. Under Chavez, Venezuela nationalized its oil industry. In America, the oil industry has nationalized us. Trump speaks of private companies as “us.” When he refers to Chevron having a lot of oil business in Venezuela 50 years ago, he says, “We had a lot of oil there.” Rare earth minerals help “us” because they let “our” companies make more stuff and reap bigger profits and make more jobs so the money can trickle down. He keeps talking about the American oil industry as if we are all one big team riding the wave of their massive profits to heaven on earth. In Trump’s vision of the world, the companies ARE us. Their success and the wealth they generate define America, in the president’s mind. In reality, however, there is no “us.” We pay for a product that we don’t have a choice in using. We burn the fossil fuels we are sold because we don’t have a choice. The success of the company doesn’t improve our lives at all. We just keep burning and commuting till we die.

Trump suggests that America is not GREAT if it is not the undisputed master of all natural resources in the western hemisphere. The great big companies NEED to succeed, for they are too big to fail. As if the geniuses at these oil companies (logistical masters and not the hereditary inheritors of grand industrial estates) alone guarantee our freedom and way of life. And to Trump’s crowd, this greatness is worth violence! I have to say that this is a dogshit imperial mindset that turns every American into a schizophrenic speculator praying for the success of his corporate masters so that he may have a small piece of the wealth back for himself. In the imperial mode of living, killing and coercing people in other countries with violence is a lamentable but unavoidable aspect of reality. “Realists.” My friends, we do not eat oil. In fact, I reckon we produce enough gasoline locally to keep our engines running and our heaters online just fine. You know what does eat oil? The 8 massive floating war machines we have had parked outside of Venezuela since August.

The military buildup outside Venezuela was ostensibly for the purpose of the eventual takeover of Venezuela. Like the world watching Putin mass his army along the border of Ukraine, we all sat dumbfounded while Trump amassed military power near Venezuela. The US military scoped out its target and tested the boundaries of its power by murdering small craft on the high seas. Trump and his allies literally all caps tweeted that Maduro was going down over and over again. America is sleepwalking.

“We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies – the biggest anywhere in the world – go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure and start making money for the country.”

This mad insatiable thirst for an ever grander global oil market that turns a profit every quarter forever and ever will be the end of us! Basing the health and happiness of a nation on its ability to suck poisonous black ichor out of the ground is just so incredibly wrong. No good will come of this!

Environmental game: a game that relates to environments and the player’s ability to change it. Notice that I do not define an “environmental” game as one that is able to visually recreate the natural world we experience on Earth. Good graphics are trumped by sublime gameplay that manages to capture essential facts of life. Video games are like moving paintings in that way. Environmental games make us think about our relationship to the world around us. Of course, a truly realistic simulation… where one could live as they would in real life… such a simulated reality would be pointless! Realism is unnecesary when creating an environmental game. The gameplay itself conveys more reality than the mere visual experience.

Minecraft is a true environmental game. The player, Steve, can create and destroy freely. Through extraction of the land itself, Steve makes houses, farms, and machines. The game is played through the first person, which always endeared me about it. I would only use f3 third person mode for taking pictures.

Age of Empires is a strategy game about controlling little people on a map to build structures like houses, mills, and baracks. They can perform resource gathering tasks like chopping wood, mining, or even tending to a field of crops to make food. As the player extracts, however, the environment changes. Where green forests once stood, stumps and stubble remain. After a long enough session, the land is trampled absolutely barren. The flat expanse of a battlefield!

Factorio is another game that offers the player a third person, top-down view of the environment, but like Minecraft, the player is in control of a single body. As a castaway space traveler, you must mine metals and craft them into machines. All of the machines the player builds work together to create a giant factory whose fires run as long and hot as the player is able to provide it with fuel… coal, wood, oil, enriched uranium. The very process of extracting all this stuff drains the life from the world. And the native population, agitated by the cloud of pollution the factory inevitably produces (unless the player carefully manages their electrical consumption with solar panels and batteries..). Under attack by natives, like some horrific techno-puritan in marshes of Boston, the player creates ammo, rockets, explosives, napalm… not to mention great big walls to keep everyone out. A kind of global warming is built into the game to organically fuel the necessity to develop a military industrial complex that consumes and endless amount of material from the land.

I want to propose as an area of further inquiry: the bias that western colonizer nations have in making environmental games. Notice how my outline always surrounds the idea of extracting resources. The changes made to the environment in each of the games I listed above hinge on destroying the existing world in order to build an agricultural-industrial one. In Factorio and Minecraft specifically, the player generally plays completely alone or in a small group of friends. What is it about the story of a lone castaway transforming their lonely island into a productive distillation of home that so captivates us? Is the idea of settling and transforming a place an ingrained aspect of western culture specifically? JD Vance level question. A better question would be: are there people out there that make environmental games offering adifferent relationships with the world around us? Are there environmental/survival games where the player is not extracting from the land? changes our relationship to the natural world away from the idea of “extracting resources” altogether? Can a game be really fun if you aren’t constantly hacking at trees and smelting ores to fight beasts and monsters? The answer to these questions may present potential paths forward in the real world as well. Because a great environmental game should inspire hope, not despair!

A non-extractive but nonetheless environmental book I know of is called “My Side of the Mountain” by Jean Craighead George.

In this book, a boy goes off to the wilderness to get away from his giant, annoying family. He travels out to the Adirondacks many days hike from roads or towns. There, he isn’t frantic. There is no reason to build great palisades or battle with natives. He doesn’t even need to build a house; the hollow of a great tree is enough for him to sleep in. He kills a deer, just one, for meat and leather and befriends a hawk that becomes his best friend and hunting buddy. He hikes into town from time to time to see the librarian and learn how to do things. His greatest adversary, if they can be called that, are regular people. Rangers and men that would try to take him away back to civilization. It flips the survival genre on its head in a peaceful way. Man is not trying to recreate his agro-industrial life in the wilderness… hell no! This young man is trying to get away from all that and find some peace and quiet!

Are there games that offer this kind of gameplay? Peaceful survival gameplay, I guess you could call it. Can games like that be as fun as the hardcore survival games?

Created in May of 2024 following the victory of the Celtics in the 2024 NBA Finals!

Read it yourself lol https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/14/trump-arch-washington-dc-policy-chief

The original French arc was ordered to be constructed by Napoleon. Following Napoleon’s fall, France returned to a monarchy system after the French Revolution failed to achieve a stable Democratic system of government.

Trump Jr said the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, was prolonging the war because he knew he would never win an election if it ended. He said Zelenskyy was a borderline deity on the left, but argued that Ukraine was far more corrupt than Russia.

He also railed at the EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, saying European sanctions were not working since they had simply increased the price of oil, from which Russia could pay for its war. He described the European plan as “we are going to wait for Russia to go bankrupt – that is not a plan”

– Guardian Reporting, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/07/us-may-end-support-for-ukraine-war-effort-says-donald-trump-jr

When Ukraine disarmed its nuclear weapons in the 1990s, it signed on to the Budapest Memorandum with the US, Russia, and UK as a security assurance against future attacks. Unfortunately, this document proved repeatedly worthless when in 2014 and then again in 2022 Russia invaded Ukraine. The American response was, for a time, to prop up Ukraine with guns, bullets, anti-air weapons, and battlefield intelligence. It was a strict policy of the USA, however, that it would not allow Ukraine to directly attack Russia. Indeed, aircraft capable of bombing Russia and missiles capable of striking Russian soil were not granted.

Imagine a world where, upon the first Russian boot landing in Ukrainian soil on that February day in 2022, Ukraine responded immediately with B2 stealth bombers destroying large swathes of Moscow. Imagine the timeline where Russian cities met the same devastation as Ukrainian cities, and Russian citizens were forced to contend with the reality of war as directly as their Ukrainian counterparts. I think if that were even a possibility, Russia would not have invaded in the first place. Because if it had, Nuclear War would have quickly ensued, because Russia would be destroyed otherwise.

Unfortunately, we went through the Biden proxy war timeline. “Sanctions” against Russia by Europe and the USA merely solidified a new Eastern economy where China and India use Russia as a market. Europe itself cannot even ween itself off of Russian oil, so it continues to deal directly with Russia even as its politicians decry it. In short, the USA and Europe did nothing as Russia spent months amassing an invading force at Ukraine’s border. Putin was confident that sanctions and some tough battlefield losses would be all the pain he would experience from his attack. Since then, sanctions and tough battlefield losses are all the punishment he has received. Economic pain at home only helps Putin’s regime, which clings to power through the continuous inundation of his own population with fear and crisis.

Within a year of the start of Russia’s invasion, Republicans rallied with Russia and began denying assistance to Ukraine. Now, with Trump at the helm, the thought of a real military punishment for Russia’s invasion is a pipe dream. Trump is negotiating a settlement on Russia’s behalf that will see Ukraine disarmed and its territory cut apart and given over to Putin.

The only hope for Ukrainians now is that their spirit is stronger than the oppressors’ desire to possess their land. Like the Palestinians resisting Israeli occupation, the Ukrainians must be willing to endure hell on Earth to resist extermination. Is there a way out? I don’t know. Did the Chinese believe there would be a way out when the Japanese invaded in WWII? Did Europe believe there would be a way out during the Nazi occupation? Did Eastern Europe ever believe there would be a day when the iron curtain fell? Did the British hunkering in the subway believe they would ever walk free in London again when it had been reduced to rubble?

History shows us that incredible odds can be beaten when people resist conquest. The spirit of freedom is not so easily destroyed by despots. Even Putin’s Russia may someday collapse, as Stalin’s USSR did not three decades ago. Maybe within our lifetime, we will see Putin get what he deserves. I have a bad feeling, though, that American blood will spill to achieve that.

And to Trump Jr’s assertion that Ukraine is a corrupt state as contemptible as its invader…. HA! You cannot stand on the steps of the Kremlin holding up a sign saying “Putin Stinks!” without being beaten and dragged away to an arctic labor camp. The Trump family is not capable of understanding freedom. As a family of rent seekers, they see the subjugation of others into hierarchies and classes as the natural order of things. Freedom cannot flourish in America and the world until the Trumps are banished from politics forever. Like Midas, they would rather have a dead country gilded with gold upon every surface than a thriving, free America fighting for a better world.

Shin Godzilla is a 2016 monster horror movie from a long lineage of Godzilla movies stretching back to the original “Gojira” released in 1954. The plot is direct enough: a giant monster surfaces in Tokyo Bay, destroying everything in its wake. The Japanese military struggles to mobilize an effective force to counteract the beast, and devastation ensues. As a monster, Godzilla is horrifying in the same way that a great white shark is. White, unblinking eyes gleam out of an emotionless mask of a skull. Not quite dinosaur, not quite lizard, Godzilla stands tall and dark on the horizon like a pillar of volcanic stone. There is nothing cute or animal-like in Shin Godzilla’s rendition of the monster; all similarity to a dinosaur or alligator (so common in modern depictions of Godzilla) are absent. No, this thing is not a giant animal. It is a hulking, unfeeling colossus with a jagged maw and eyes that do not see. 

I’ll admit now that I have never watched a Godzilla movie before. I’ve seen Godzilla parodied and referenced in other movies. I’ve played some Godzilla games. But no, until I saw Shin Godzilla, I hadn’t watched a single Godzilla film. You know what I have watched? Neon Genesis Evangelion, the 90’s era mecha-anime about giant robots fighting space aliens. 

Shin Godzilla and Evangelion happen to share a director: Hideaki Anno. If you have seen Evangelion, then you will notice that fact immediately. The pacing, sets, and even the soundtrack in Shin Godzilla share striking similarities to the anime. In both works, a government agency is tasked with the impossible mission of fighting an impossibly massive foe. The members of Evangelion’s NERV battle gigantic angels sent from heaven to protect Tokyo. Shin Godzilla’s Japan Self Defense Force is tasked with protecting Tokyo from a giant walking lizard. Agents within both government agencies (Evangelion’s NERV and Shin Godzilla’s Self Defense Force) must work cohesively with each other as well as the members of other government agencies in order to discover the enemy’s weakness before it is too late. Truly, this movie is as much about the interplay of government agencies as it is about individual characters making decisions on-screen. The insides of offices are just as much a set piece as scenes of Tokyo’s destruction at the hands of Godzilla. That’s what Hideaki Anno is really good at: turning tactical meetings into exciting parts of the battle. There is usually a hype drum beat to complement the tactical action sequences.

(full soundtrack playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiONUl3B9po&list=OLAK5uy_mm0hs-zS7fdKdfdRwAbAixovax9k9YgB8&index=2)

The transformation of the government bureaucracy from bumbling/rigid to cunning/fluid across the film is clearly satirical. The Japanese government’s initial response to the emergence of Godzilla in the film is painfully mired in bureaucratic bullshit. From the start, while the monster has only manifested as a pool of blood beneath Tokyo Bay, the government is holding press conferences to deny the existence of a monster. Right up until undeniable footage of the monster is projected onscreen in front of the prime minister’s entire cabinet, they are denying its existence and formulating fake explanations for the phenomenon. When the monster swims up a canal and begins destroying boats, the government holds another press conference stating that, scientifically, the monster could not possibly support its own weight on land. When the monster indeed surfaces and begins destroying the city, the Prime Minister is only able to muster 5 measly helicopters in response. No use–not a single shot is fired. The Prime Minister calls off the attack when a fleeing civilian is detected near the monster. Choosing not to risk even one life by gunfire, Godzilla is able to make a getaway without being met with a single iota of military resistance from the government of Japan. The inability of the government to come to a single decisive response across its many disjointed branches comes off as comical if not horrifying. While people die on the street, politicians in offices bicker about optics and arbitrary rules of engagement with a monster. This part of the movie is very frustrating to watch on the first go around!

Some might call it boring, but the film is all about determined people working beyond the battlefield to win against an unstoppable monster. Scenes of destruction in the city are juxtaposed with well-dressed government officials studying, collaborating, and responding to Godzilla’s actions in real time. This was the set up in Evangelion too: the command center where the government coordinates its military responses is just as important as the battlefield. And when the monster eventually encroaches upon HQ, the two sides of the movie collide with devastation. Yes, the scene where Godzilla finally makes it to the heart of Tokyo is breathtaking in its portrayal of destruction. Like a nuke going off. One critic, William Tsutsui, writes: “Shin Godzilla leaves no doubt that the greatest threat to Japan comes not from without but from within, from a geriatric, fossilized government bureaucracy unable to act decisively or to stand up resolutely to foreign pressure.” Shin Godzilla turns bureaucratic inaction into horror.

There is geopolitical commentary as well. Throughout the film, America acts unilaterally to attack Godzilla. When Japanese munitions inevitably fail to penetrate the monster’s armor, American B-2 bombers fly in and drop bunker busters on it. The Prime Minister was informed of the attack, but did not himself call it. Nonetheless, he immediately holds a (you guessed it) press conference whose sole purpose is to justify the American intervention, as if the PM has to prove himself to his own people in the midst of a 9/11 level catastrophe. That Prime Minister fucking dies btw, he doesn’t make it to the end of the movie. In another scene, an American politician is counseling his envoy to Japan (a young Japanese woman), telling her, “Japan has grown up enough to have international trade deals on the sly.” America, of course, wants to control Godzilla, and possibly even helped engineer it.

Frustration turns to horror again as the world plans to nuke Tokyo in a last ditch effort to kill the monster before it can spread beyond Japan. This part is heart wrenching, and I’m not even Japanese. The thought of dropping thermonuclear bombs on a city, to sacrifice all those people and all that land just to maybe stop Godzilla, is a titanic burden. Doubly so upon a population that already bears the trauma of being nuked twice before. I found myself feeling profoundly sad at the possibility that this might happen on-screen… strange emotions for a Godzilla movie!

Yes, this is a strange movie. I have seen nothing like it outside of Neon Genesis Evangelion. Hideaki Anno is a genius! If you have the patience for a monster movie with comparatively little monster and lots of dialogue, you might just fall in love with Shin Godzilla like I did. Or, if you are like my roommate Max who prefers when monster movies get straight to the big fights, then you will probably glaze over for most of the talking scenes. That’s okay too, because what we see of Godzilla itself is incredible.

I won’t spoil too much here, but Godzilla’s design is awful in a terrifyingly awesome way. The monster actively evolves throughout the film, changing its genome in real time to go from a giant aquatic lizard to a freakish bipedal dragon from start to finish. Godzilla’s arms are small, almost vestigially weak hanging above titanic thighs that seem barely to heft the bulk of the beast from footstep to footstep. Godzilla’s skin seems to ooze like hardened magma. The monster has no emotion–its face and jaw appear fixed into an unblinking snarl as if they were literally caste from molten obsidian glass. The unblinking part is probably the most striking feature. Two fish eyes peer out of Godzilla’s head. They don’t rotate or look around. They don’t seem to track movement at all. Don’t be fooled, however. The capacity to annihilate all life lurks within Godzilla’s lumbering form. The shark metaphor is apt.

I will watch more Godzilla movies and see how Shin Godzilla compares. I have a feeling this movie is one-of-a-kind though.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/28/college-student-deported-boston-flight-thanksgiving

Can you imagine being ripped out of security at the airport and being sent to 3000 miles from home? Supposedly never to return without being able to say goodbye to your family?

And here is the official Halluci Nation version:

The Neon Nativez remix is my favorite, much higher energy. It brings the Wednesday Adams lines to the front with a crazy electronic drop after. The original plays it cooler and drops the Wednesday speech at the end with screaming.

I read recently that Thanksgiving as we celebrate it today was created by Abraham Lincoln during one of his famous proclamations:

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they [our freedoms] should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.

Thus, a national day of Thanksgiving was established to unify all the informal Thanksgivings celebrated in every state across the country. Lincoln did this to help heal the nation after the civil war killed over 600,000 American men.

In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things.

Lincoln extols the miraculous nature of American prosperity despite the ravaged of war. The Thanksgiving mythology of pilgrims dining with natives, then, either existed independently or was affixed later than Lincoln. Perhaps the entire story of the Massachusetts pilgrims was made up retroactively? People have probably researched this.

Either way, we can’t escape the story now. The first Americans would have frozen to death if it weren’t for the locals. I’ve read that the pilgrims broke into and raided the winter caches of the local Indians who were away from the coast for the winter in order to survive. What a sorry lot!

I also learned that Jamestown (started 1607) in Virginia was the first surviving British colony in the Americas, with multiple abandoned attempts to colonize coming before. The pilgrims that I am biased toward as a New Englander came after aboard the Mayflower, in 1620.

It is Columbus day in America, and today we remember the fateful (and for many, fatal) connection that was made all those centuries ago between the peoples of America and Europe. Though it was not the first time people from the East met people from the West (Vikings were chilling with Native Americans long before), Columbus’s journey marked the beginning of a new era of trans-Atlantic movement that spelled the end of Native sovereignty in America and the start of the long era of colonialism that we still inhabit today.

Some say we should not remember Christopher Columbus because he was a slaver and a crook whose actions lead to the deaths of millions of people. It is hard to deny that Columbus’s voyage resulted in the destruction of an entire hemisphere worth of culture. Yet, I appreciate that Americans have a day to remember their own history. Atrocious though it may be to so plainly acknowledge that the arrival of Europeans spelled the doom of millions, I think it is worth keeping that fact close. It is through destruction that we the people came into our own kingdom in the most beautiful land in the world. If we cannot appreciate the sacrifices, many unwilling, that went into building America, then we do not deserve America. Barbarians, the lot of us!

In a theme that builds toward Thanksgiving and comes to a head at Christmas, Americans have an opportunity to reflect on their wretched origins. And wretched they were! Starving immigrants packed into the belly of a galley, feeding on hard bread nibbled by pests. Starving immigrants that, once delivered, had to starve through a frigid winter in a land they did not know. For all the furor among Republicans against the encroachment of immigrants in our time, the American people were themselves immigrants from the start. Dirtier then, and a lot less intelligent too I bet. These immigrants required help to survive, and they got it (wretched as they were).

I get ahead of myself, though. Columbus day is first and foremost about that first fatal contact. What world did the explorers from Europe see? On this day, we must remember that the land was not empty. In fact, it was not even sparsely inhabited. Charles C. Mann wrote a book about this very subject called “1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus.” In it, he looks to early accounts of colonists, explorers, and merchants to obtain an understanding of Native American populations during and before the arrival of Columbus. According to the account of a mariner named Verrazzano from 1523, the coastline everywhere north of the Carolinas was “densely populated” (50). Mann writes of Verrazzano being able to smell native bonfires for hundreds of miles off the coast. Their settlements marked the whole coast up to Massachusetts, smoke billowing. This is to say that before disease struck down much of the native population of the Americas, the land was actually densely populated. America has had agriculture, land management, and really civilization itself for many thousands of years before a European ever laid eyes on it.

The animal life of America during the exploration era was reportedly amazing. Mann writes of rivers near Boston bursting so full of spawning fish that they leapt out of the rivers and glimmered like a stream: “Runs of Atlantic salmon, short nose sturgeon, striped bass, and American shad annually filled the harbor. But the most important fish harvest came in late spring, when the herring-like alewives swarmed the fast, shallow stream that cut through the village. So numerous were the fish, and so driven, that when mischievous boys walled off the stream with stones the alewives would leap the barrier–silver bodies gleaming in the sun–and proceed upstream” (45). Today, freshwater spawns along the Massachusetts coast are so small that they are unnoticeable. Commercial fishing of alewives has been illegal since 2006 due to the depleted population and risk of extinction.

The vegetables need go without saying. The potatos, tomatos, carrots, and CORN that our cuisine cherishes and our diets depend upon are all, of course, the product of ten thousand years of domestication undertaken by native peoples.

And so on. The debt that Europeans owe Native Americans has been written about extensively, and I hope to write about it more. But Columbus day is really about contact. Wretched European meets wretched Indian. Or maybe not-so-wretched Indian. Maybe the Native Americans were the healthy ones– fit, eating well on vegetables and fresh fish, and living in a clean country. Maybe the Europeans, cloistered to ships and eating old bread, were the more wretched. Regardless, these wretched people were fated to meet, and their contact changed the world.

Columbus day is a great opportunity to explore the history of this contact. With greater empathy, we may be able to act better when the next contact inevitably happens. For it is destiny in this world that we will meet new and strange people that live lives alien to our own. The choice to make friends or enemies is ours. With a knowledge of history, we might be able to make the better choice. It is my hope that we will abandon superiority and choose peace with the new forms of humanity that we encounter every day.

~ ~ ~

Check it out!! VVVV

Mann, Charles. “1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus.” Vintage Books, division of Random House, Inc. Second Edition. New York

Donald Trump dropped another essay on us:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/countering-domestic-terrorism-and-organized-political-violence

(I suspect JD Vance actually secretly wrote the essay ;3 he’s a big shot (published!) writer and annoys his friends by writing about politics constantly)

I’ve summarized my favorite parts of the document below.

The essay presents a call to arms where Trump/Vance directs federal police officers to investigate and actively disrupt people engaged in criminal conspiracies to commit political violence:

“The United States requires a national strategy to investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence so that law enforcement can intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts. Through this comprehensive strategy, law enforcement will disband and uproot networks, entities, and organizations that promote organized violence, violent intimidation, conspiracies against rights, and other efforts to disrupt the functioning of a democratic society.“

The groups of people that could be targeted for investigation include “networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence.” This enforcement action against these so called conspiracies will be carried out by a new task force: The National Joint Terrorism Task Force and its local offices (collectively, “JTTFs”)

Contending that the recent spat of assassinations against high profile individuals like Charlie Kirk and the CEO of that healthcare company are not a series of isolated incidents, Trump/Vance calls attention to what they believe is an interconnected conspiracy trying to rally people to commit acts of violence in order to stifle Democracy. Trump/Vance takes great pains to express that the political violence we are witnessing is not occurring “organically:”

This political violence is not a series of isolated incidents and does not emerge organically. Instead, it is a culmination of sophisticated, organized campaigns of targeted intimidation, radicalization, threats, and violence designed to silence opposing speech, limit political activity, change or direct policy outcomes, and prevent the functioning of a democratic society. A new law enforcement strategy that investigates all participants in these criminal and terroristic conspiracies — including the organized structures, networks, entities, organizations, funding sources, and predicate actions behind them — is required.

This is to say that one’s desire to see a healthcare CEO blasted is not an organic feeling, but a top-down belief imposed on you by propaganda and an organized conspiracy against…. against what?

The president justifies this mobilization of federal agents by illustrating a panorama of violence being committed by “campaigns” that target and groom individuals to commit violent acts through online chat rooms, anonymous forums, classrooms, in-person meetings, through social media… pretty much every avenue by which modern humans communicate with one another is being used, according to Trump/Vance, to inspire people to violence against political figures:

These campaigns often begin by isolating and dehumanizing specific targets to justify murder or other violent action against them. They do so through a variety of fora, including anonymous chat forums, in-person meetings, social media, and even educational institutions. These campaigns then escalate to organized doxing, where the private or identifying information of their targets (such as home addresses, phone numbers, or other personal information) is exposed to the public with the explicit intent of encouraging others to harass, intimidate, or violently assault them. As in the case of several ICE agents in Los Angeles being doxed, the goal of these campaigns can be to obstruct the operations of the Federal Government as well as aid and abet criminal activity the Federal Government is lawfully pursuing. These campaigns are coordinated and perpetrated by actors who have developed a comprehensive strategy to achieve specific policy goals through radicalization and violent intimidation.

In identifying these “networks, entities, and organizations,” the essay explicitly explicitly calls out those who express anti-fascist views. However, the word “anti-fascism” is placed in quotes at all times throughout the essay as if to imply that the people this essay targets are not sincerely against fascism. Perhaps Trump/Vance is trying to say that the “lefties” are the real fascists trying to justify political violence:

This “anti-fascist” lie has become the organizing rallying cry used by domestic terrorists to wage a violent assault against democratic institutions, constitutional rights, and fundamental American liberties. Common threads animating this violent conduct include anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.

The above paragraph is the best picture we get for what this criminal conspiracy looks like. They are animated by a desire to overthrow the United States and oppose capitalism. They are driven by “extremism” in views on gender, migration, and race, but the essay never explains what these extreme views are and what the baseline view should be. The whole essay, in fact, is very flimsily sourced. Trump/Vance never explain themselves or even link to another article explaining the views of this conspiracy. They don’t even give specific examples of the organized campaigns other than vague references to the doxing of two ICE agents in Los Angeles:

These campaigns then escalate to organized doxing, where the private or identifying information of their targets (such as home addresses, phone numbers, or other personal information) is exposed to the public with the explicit intent of encouraging others to harass, intimidate, or violently assault them. As in the case of several ICE agents in Los Angeles being doxed, the goal of these campaigns can be to obstruct the operations of the Federal Government as well as aid and abet criminal activity the Federal Government is lawfully pursuing.

Ahah! They want to infiltrate and break apart groups that conspire to disrupt federal enforcement activity!

These campaigns are coordinated and perpetrated by actors who have developed a comprehensive strategy to achieve specific policy goals through radicalization and violent intimidation.

The essay never actually lists concrete policy goals that the conspiracy is fighting for. It only lists the beliefs that mark them:

These movements portray foundational American principles (e.g., support for law enforcement and border control) as “fascist” to justify and encourage acts of violent revolution. This “anti-fascist” lie has become the organizing rallying cry used by domestic terrorists to wage a violent assault against democratic institutions, constitutional rights, and fundamental American liberties. Common threads animating this violent conduct include anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.

We will be investigated for our beliefs, since our beliefs are an indicator of violent intent. I don’t like the sound of that. Trump/Vance should link us to the content online that they believe is causing the issue. It would be really interesting for the President of the United States to directly post a screenshot off 4Chan as evidence of a conspiracy. Trump/Vance is finally bridging the divide between public and online life that has marked the world since the internet’s inception.

(k) All Federal law enforcement agencies with investigative authority shall question and interrogate, within all lawful authorities, individuals engaged in political violence or lawlessness regarding the entity or individual organizing such actions and any related financial sponsorship of those actions prior to adjudication or initiation of a plea agreement.

So, does this mean my group chats are fair game? Is my group chat of my close friends where we talk shit about politicians and wish ill upon heads of state actually a conspiracy network that needs to be disrupted by the federal government? Will I be questioned by officers for messages I sent to my friends?

These questions are not answered by Trump/Vance. The exact method of enforcement is unknown. Presumably, the officers will access our social media somehow, either through infiltration of group chats (like how the government infiltrated Proud Boys) or by scanning our private communications without our awareness. Any messages we post publicly will probably be tied to a dossier in a database. Our names might start to become associated with usernames, handles, and online mannerisms in order to track our activity online and link us to expressions of dissident ideologies.

Is catching criminals worth giving up our privacy? Is it even legal for the federal government to arrest people because of things they say online in the absence of a crime being committed? Can somebody’s ideology be sufficient grounds for law enforcement action?

As described in the Order of September 22, 2025 (Designating Antifa as a Domestic Terrorist Organization), the groups and entities that perpetuate this extremism have created a movement that embraces and elevates violence to achieve policy outcomes, including justifying additional assassinations. For example, Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin engraved the bullets used in the murder with so-called “anti-fascist” rhetoric.

And this is what the killer of Charlie Kirk engraved on one of his bullets:

“Notices bulges OwO what’s this?”

The most concerning thing in this new executive order is the capitalization of Federal Government. Trump/Vance have created a new entity, a proper noun. Does this so called Federal Government really warrant such respect? Are we obliged to respect the federal government and those in positions of power? Those last two questions are what this whole drama is really all about.

“I think it’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the second amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational.” – Charlie Kirk

Andres Serrano, Piss Christ, 1987

I was speaking to a lawyer friend of mine a few weeks back about the power of judges. He was a clerk working beneath a district judge, and he described how confident she (the judge) was when giving orders to her staff. In the court of law, the judge is a monarch. She directs and the staff follows, even when she is wrong. My friend observed to me that judges are the most powerful people in America. You can appeal a ruling, sure, but the appeals will only go so far. If a case reaches the Supreme Court, it can go no higher. The way that supreme court justices choose to “interpret” the law is more powerful than the written word of the law itself, because there is nobody behind a justice checking their work. Their version of a law is the final version, unless a future supreme court justice chooses to re-interpret the precedent or congress re-writes the law.

Today, the Supreme Court lifted a lower court order to block Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from stopping random people on the street and arresting them without just cause or due process. The lawsuit in question alleged that ICE was using masked and armed agents to make arrests on the street based on racial profiling. The suit states:

“Individuals with brown skin are approached or pulled aside by unidentified federal agents, suddenly and with a show of force, and made to answer questions about who they are and where they are from.”

One plaintiff in the case, Jason Gavidia (US Citizen), describes being pushed around and harshly restrained by ICE agents after they did not believe his claims that he was a citizen. They demanded to know the name of the hospital he was born in. I personally don’t remember the name of the hospital that I was born in. I probably have never been told it and have never needed a reason to ask. People across the country describe similar circumstances: unidentified agents in plain clothing suddenly surrounding them, demanding personal information, and making an arrest without cause or warrant. ICE agents on the street choose their targets, according to the lawsuit, by racial markers. An accent with poor English, brown skin, and working a labor job outside are signs of being an illegal immigrant that ICE uses to make an on-the-spot arrest.

The district judge that ordered the stay on ICE argued that this activity by federal law enforcement clearly breaches the 4th amendment of the US Constitution, which states that American citizen are not to be subjected to unlawful search and seizure. I would gather that it also breaks a number of other civil rights laws that ban discrimination based on race. The Department of Justice had responded that profiling using a “reasonably broad profile” is necessary in an area of the country where as many as “10%” of the population may be residing illegally.

Regardless of anyone’s opinion on this matter, the Supreme Court has made its own decision. In a 6-3 decision pitting the conservatives against the liberals, ICE is allowed to continue making random arrests using a race, language, and place of work as a legitimate criteria. This means that hispanic-looking people will continue to face random attacks and arrests by federal agents that, for all intents of purposes, look and act like thugs.

Justice Sotomayor wrote this in her public dissent: “Countless people in the Los Angeles area have been grabbed, thrown to the ground, and handcuffed simply because of their looks, their accents, and the fact they make a living by doing manual labor. Today, the Court needlessly subjects countless more to these exact same indignities.”

I do not need to state the danger of these developments. Our right to live free within this country is being challenged by thugs. Well paid and with little oversight, these ICE agents are free to roam the streets, roughing up citizens and immigrants alike with impunity while they pursue their own idea of public safety. What qualifications do ICE agents have to wield so much power over their fellow citizens? Their right to make arrests is stronger than that even of police officers, who must abide by the constitution and must not make an arrest based simply on whether a person’s skin is too dark.

And when did the American psyche become so closed, so violent? Why do we cheer when people are torn from their livelihoods under suspicion of being alien? Why is it such a crime at all to be born somewhere else, or by extension to *look like* you were born somewhere else in the eyes of a federal agent? By accepting racial profiling among law enforcement, we create a two-tiered Democracy where white-looking people are free while brown, black, or otherwise foreign-looking people are subject to harassment and distrust by the system of government supposedly created to serve them. it is a system that privileges one’s genetic traits in dealings with the law. It is a system of white supremacy, named or not. It is a reversion to the segregation era.

And why are we so eager to make an American future marked by apartheid? Why do we rush to build a country where we must all be ready to identify ourselves, to prove our place to birth with exactitude to please the curiosity of enforcers picking us out of crowds like wolves stalking a herd of sheep? The implication of an ICE-based system of law is that every person in this country is guilty of being an alien until proven innocent. Will there be checkpoints? Will a copy of my birth certificate have to be kept in my wallet at all times to be displayed at request? Do I need to pin my license to my lapel, un-obscured and plainly visible for the convenience of the cop? Freedom is the ability to walk down the street unhampered, unquestioned. To be innocent by default. Freedom is the right to be unworried outside, to be able to conduct your own business in your own time. Freedom is not having to worry that random acts of violence will be committed against you on the street, by agents of the government or otherwise.

Real police officers are proud to wear their uniforms. They display their badges openly so that all Americans can identify them and know they are being protected. ICE agents hide themselves. Whatever pride they have in their work is made by persecuting enemies created in their own minds. Hitler’s brown shirts were much the same. A thug is a thug.

“You got to be crazy, you gotta have a real need
Gotta sleep on your toes and when you’re on the street
Got to be able to pick out the easy meat with your eyes closed
Then moving in silently, down wind and out of sight
You got to strike when the moment is right without thinking” – Pink Floyd, “Dogs”

2025 US government using artificial intelligence to create nationalist propaganda.

“You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery.” – Ronald Reagan, 40th President of the United States

Indeed, the belief that freedom is worth dying for is central to our American culture. From a young age, we are taught about the pilgrims, who braved a vast ocean to make a new life for themselves in a new world in their own way. We are taught of the revolution, where the Patriots fought to be free from the rule of England and defeated the British Empire. In every story, liberty is an ultimate good in itself– a way of life that you would trade your life to maintain. “We the people,” reads the constitution, “in Order to form a more perfect Union […] secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” It is a founding principle of our country that we should work to protect freedom so that our children may enjoy its blessing. A tolerable (even comfortable) existence under the yolk is not worth accepting.

Even as America has grown into a global power with hundreds of military bases spanning nearly every country on the globe, the idea that freedom should be promoted has largely been the status-quo of American foreign policy. Until now.

“By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered:

“Section 1.  Purpose.  The United States foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values.  They serve to destabilize world peace by promoting ideas in foreign countries that are directly inverse to harmonious and stable relations internal to and among countries.

“Sec. 2.  Policy.  It is the policy of United States that no further United States foreign assistance shall be disbursed in a manner that is not fully aligned with the foreign policy of the President of the United States.

The above is an excerpt of Donald Trump’s “REEVALUATING AND REALIGNING UNITED STATES FOREIGN AID” executive order from January 20th, 2025. In this excerpt, we find an assessment of the USA that is at once craven and aggrandizing. The order is aggrandizing, because in Sec. 2. it demands that foreign assistance programs align not with the principles of our constitution and the people it serves– but the capital “P” President of United States and *his* foreign policy interests. The order is craven because it says that the help America has been providing to the globe for the past 85 years since the conclusion of WWII has destabilized peace. In fact, Trump claims that the food assistance, medical treatment including AIDS medicine and prevention, and free educational programming that the US has worked to provide to the world for decades has been “in many cases antithetical to American values.” Since when has peace and harmony been worth abandoning people in need of help? When has it been an American value to let people suffer so as not to upset the tyrannical peace of a dictator’s kingdom? Why must the foreign policy of a single President override the enduring project of successive generations of Americans willing to fight and die for freedom? By this I mean to say that I disagree with Trump on all fronts: *his* American foreign policy is not god’s word. He does not have a right to steer the machine to his own policy interests. Policy belongs to congress. And it is evident that foreign aid delivered to the most downtrodden corners of the world does far more to promote peace than simply allowing rulers to rule their countries in solitude.

Of course, it is a crude joke that the executive order claims that “world peace” is in the cards for Trump at all, he who has bombed his way up and down the middle east, who strings along a war of attrition in Ukraine, who builds prisons in far away jungles for prisoners that will never go to trial, and whose weapons power the armies of despots from South America to Africa to Afganistan. The so called “foreign aid industry” that Trump despises apparently needs to be dismantled while that other government sponsored bureaucracy, the all-powerful military industrial complex that churns out war grows bigger every day. USAID has been dismantled. The Peace Corps is in the process of being torn apart. Voice of America is shuttering. Radio Free Asia has been defunded. All while the budget for American contracts with industrial weapons manufacturing and resource extraction grows by trillions.

Make no mistake– Trump’s foreign policy is one of the appeasement of dictators. God forbid a radio broadcast from the United States upset the sensibilities of the Martial Law government of Myanmar! God forbid Xi Jingping be offended by his characterization as a dictator on a small English radio broadcast from the Pacific! Xi merely suspended term limits in his country and has overseen all branches of his government with absolute authority for 13 or so years now… In the name of peace and harmony, Trump has ordered that federal agencies speak of other nations neutrally in regards to their political systems. Marco Rubio has written an order to the state department that its public communications “should avoid opining on the fairness or integrity of an electoral process, its legitimacy, or the democratic values of the country in question.” Trump has conceded that the American system, freedom and democracy itself, is not worth fighting for.

As Trump’s America shrinks back from Democracy abroad, it embraces authoritarians. Namely, Vladimir Putin, the ruler of Russia for over 21 years, former KGB operative, a leader who directed his Wagner Company to pillage African countries for gold while arming warlords to commit genocides, perpetrator of the ongoing war in Ukraine, has been allowed to walk free on American soil this week and ride in the president’s own limousine. They shook hands, smiled, talked in private, refused to answer questions, cracked jokes like old friends, and then parted ways without a deal.

It has been leaked that Trump has briefed the European Union that he intends to back a plan by Putin to exchange the Donbas region of Ukraine to secure a peace deal. Peace. Ten years since Russia’s last advance into Crimea. Not a drop of American blood spilt. Chamberlain went home after his meeting with Hitler declaring “Peace in our time!” America, of course, is a country that has never lost its own territory. America has only ever won wars and grown bigger. For the president of the USA to ask Ukraine to give up the fight against the Russian Empire has got to be the greatest hypocrisy ever uttered a senile old president. Would we accept a peace deal to trade Maine and parts of New Hampshire for peace? I don’t think so. I think Canada would have to kill us all first.

As the story goes, Fascism is the reverberation of imperial cruelty back to the homeland. The values of an empire toward its colonies inevitably comes back home to torment the citizens of the empire. As Trump works to devalue democracy abroad, it is difficult to ignore that his real aim is to eventually devalue democracy at home. Already, the will of congress has taken a second seat to the president’s policy interests. Already, due process is ignored while agents nab citizens off the streets for social media posts. Already, the state of Texas has had its district maps so mangled as to grant 5 extra Republican seats in an already Republican skewed state. Is freedom not sacred here? Is the tree of liberty not watered with the blood of tyrants? What is this??

A murderous dictator gets the red carpet treatment while hard working Americans are jailed without a trial. What secret thing did Putin have to share with Trump? So secret that they had to be alone together in-person to discuss it.

An unrelated word from our secretary-

SECRETARY RUBIO:  “I don’t know actually if it’s primarily student visas.  It’s a combination of visas.  They’re visitors to the country.  If they’re taking activities that are counter to our foreign – to our national interest, to our foreign policy, we’ll revoke the visa.”

QUESTION:  “Are all of those related to pro-Palestinian protests or (inaudible)?”

SECRETARY RUBIO:  “I’m trying to remember – there’s a lot of them now, because I’ve gone through every one of them.  I think there might be a few that are not, that are related to other groups that are – of people – we’ve also identified – but this actually is – it should be automatically revoked.”

QUESTION:  “And what does it mean when you say against the foreign policy of the United States?”

SECRETARY RUBIO:  “It runs counter to our foreign – that’s how we issue visas coming in.  I think about it this way.  If we knew this information – my standard:  If we knew this information about them before we gave them a visa, would we have allowed them in?  And if the answer is no, then we revoke the visa.”

One thing is for sure: members of the Trump administration are incapable of answering questions directly or concisely. After years of shitting on the Biden stutter, the Trump administration has found itself no more capable communicating with the American public when the questions get heavy.

It’s not easy spinning pretty lines from bullshit!