Over the past few years, I’ve been consumed with what feels like an impossible task: Ridding my life of plastics (or at least radically decreasing their use).

Reader, this is hard, if not impossible. I live in Hanoi, where the tap water isn’t always potable, which means I use filtered water that comes in giant plastic jugs (I do send these back to be re-filled which cuts down on the waste problem, but doesn’t solve the microplastics problem). The food I buy at the grocery store is wrapped in plastic. My leggings have microplastics in them. I go out of my way (and often spend more money) to avoid buying and throwing out plastics. But it takes extra effort, almost every day.

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But plastic-skepticism also comes at a strange political moment. As a person who is basically MAHA-lite, I often feel politically homeless: Conservatives have taken up the mantle of “health,” and while I’m happy to see any movement to better regulate things like ultra-processed foods, ubiquitous plastics, and potentially dangerous and unnecessary food dyes, tying common-sense health policies to a movement that opposes childhood vaccines and rejects decades of life-saving scientific consensus is… very very very bad. Watching Democrats negatively polarize also effectively cedes the important stuff (cracking down on the companies that are making the public very sick by selling ultra-processed foods for cheap, requiring actually nutritious school lunches, imposing regulations to cut plastics, and so on) to the MAHA crazies and the MAGA right, who are happy to use the power of government to pull funding to the American Academy of Pediatrics while letting Big Food run amok. I want Democrats to return to their roots as a party that challenges corporate power in defense of consumer safety, and I’d like it if they put public health at the top of that list, which has to include the food we eat, the air we breathe, and the plastics that are increasingly in our blood, brains, and bones.

So I was pleased to get a copy of The Problem with Plastic in my inbox. It’s written by Bennington College professor and Beyond Plastics founder Judith Enck, who has also worked on environmental issues for the Obama administration and the New York Governor’s Office, and co-authored by environmental justice reporter Adam Mahoney. It’s a hard look at how we became so plastic-dependent so quickly, who that’s benefitting, and who is paying the price.

Judith Enck very kindly answered some of my questions about the actual risks of microplastics, how to keep MAHA from having a monopoly on American health, and why you should leave plastic water bottles on the shelf. Our conversation, which was conducted over email, is below.

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1. I was so excited to read this book, as someone who has only recently gotten on board with plastic-skepticism and has tried, and utterly failed, to cut plastics out of my life. It also seems like there’s a lot of mixed information about microplastics and their impacts on human health. So help me cut through the noise: For people who aren’t living near plastics facilities but who are, say, putting their food in Tupperware and drinking their coffee through plastic coffee lids and handing their kids plastic toys, what are the actual risks? What should we be afraid of here? And how much do we not yet know?

The hard truth is that everyone is eating, drinking, and breathing plastic every day in the form of microplastics — the smaller bits of plastic that shed off of larger, plastic products. Think of plastic like your skin. Just like your skin is constantly flaking off in tiny pieces, plastic is constantly shedding tiny bits that break off into the product. This can happen, for example, when you open a plastic clamshell container of lettuce, unwrap a slice of cheese that is encased in plastic film, turn the bottle cap on a bottle of soda or water, or, yes, open your Tupperware container of leftovers. When you eat and drink products that were packaged in plastic, you’re eating and drinking the tiny plastic particles that come with it.

Microplastics are little shards of plastic that are 5mm or less. Nano plastics are even smaller.

Knowing all that, it should surprise no one that microplastics have been found in just about every part of the human body, including the lungs, blood, testicles, placenta, brain, and breast milk. It’s even been found in the feces newborn babies. Think about that: Babies are being born pre-polluted with plastic.

The confusion around plastic’s health effects is partly because there are two conversations to have: the health risk of the plastic itself and the health risk of the chemicals found in plastic. The plastic particles themselves can irritate, inflame, and even puncture cells, but equally worrisome impacts come from the plastic’s chemical additives, which can leach out of the plastic and into the body. Over 16,000 chemicals are found in plastic. At least 4,200 of those are considered to be highly hazardous to human health and the environment, and thousands more haven’t even been tested for their safety. The chemicals known to be hazardous have been linked to cancer, nervous system damage, hormone disruption, obesity, diabetes, and fertility problems.

Plastic’s human health impacts have been steadily coming to light as researchers uncover the extent of our exposure. A study published earlier this year in The Lancet found that plastic is responsible for at least $1.5 trillion a year in health-related damages worldwide. Last year, a study found that people with plastic in their carotid arteries were nearly five times more likely to suffer a heart attack or stroke. Though there’s still much to learn, findings from the past five years are alarming enough to warrant legislative and regulatory action — something we are not going to see from Washington, so state and local governments will need to lead.

2. I am always stunned to go into the grocery store and see how much of our food supply comes wrapped in plastic. When consumers are shopping, what should we know about plastics and food?

Companies have decided to put many food and beverage products in plastic, whether the use is practical or not. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never needed my potatoes to be individually wrapped in plastic. The same goes for a bag of bananas. And even though everyone knows what pasta looks like, manufacturers added a little plastic window on the box so we can scope out our spaghetti before buying it. Not only is this plastic unnecessary; it’s also not non-recyclable and toxic.

The best thing consumers can do when shopping is buy products not packaged in plastic, when possible. The less plastic packaging, the better — for our health and for our planet.

3. In our current highly polarized political environment, do you see a risk that plastic-skepticism will become MAHA coded? How can follow-the-science liberals follow the science here, when there’s so much we still don’t know?

I think the more people who become aware of the extent of the plastic pollution problem and are motivated to do something about it, the better. This is a bipartisan issue that affects everyone’s health, planet, and future. The MAHA movement has expressed concern over certain toxic chemicals used in plastics, like phthalates, and their potential health impacts on children. This is a very valid concern that everyone should agree on. The science shows phthalates have been linked to cardiovascular disease, premature death, hormone disruption, and even lower IQ scores in children. This is one of the many reasons why our government — on the local, state, and federal level — should pass policies to reduce the production and use of plastic, as well as ban certain chemicals from being used in consumer products.

It’s critical that people get their information from sources that don’t profit off of plastic or its chemical additives. You’re right in that there’s still a lot we don’t know when it comes to plastic’s impacts on human health, but there’s a lot we do know too — and it’s not good. New, independent, peer-reviewed studies on this topic come out every couple of months — microplastics found in a new organ, or associations discovered between microplastics in the body and human health. It’s enough for me to want to limit my own exposure as much as possible and urge policymakers to do more to protect us. We have science for policymakers to take action.

4. There seems to be growing skepticism of recycling from the left — whether it even does what it promises. So: Is recycling worth it?

People should absolutely continue to recycle their paper, cardboard, aluminum, and glass. And compost your yard waste and food waste. The skepticism around plastic recycling is justified — it’s not the magic wand the plastics industry has spent decades telling us it is. Less than 6% of plastic is recycled in the United States, and that’s because plastic is just an inherently non-recyclable material.

In order to recycle plastic, all the different types — with their different combinations of chemicals, colors, and polymers — have to be separated. You can’t just throw a milk jug and a soda bottle into the same recycling batch and expect a usable product. It doesn’t work like that — they are two different types of plastic and have to be recycled separately. The countless variations of plastics, colors, and chemicals make the sorting and recycling of every plastic product financially untenable and technically unviable.

Plastics companies have known this for decades, but they have spent millions of dollars telling us not to worry about all of the single-use plastic in our kitchens. “Just toss it in the recycling bin!” This is deceptive. The deception is so serious that in September 2024, California Attorney General Rob Bonta sued the nation’s biggest plastic maker, ExxonMobil, for deceptive statements about the recycling of plastics.

We can’t recycle our way out of this mess. Companies need to stop using so much plastic in the first place — and it’s up to policymakers to hold them accountable, because companies will not change simply because it makes sense.

5. The long-time narrative about plastics and the environment has been pretty simplistic — the sea turtle with the straw up his nose, the bird tangled in the plastic six-pack rings. Your book paints a more complicated picture. How are plastics fueling climate change and extreme weather? What are the less-visible impacts on our environment?

Plastic is made from fossil fuels, so it makes sense that the plastic pollution issue goes hand in hand with climate change. Many people don’t realize the extent of plastic’s impact on our climate, and one stat in particular usually hits home for them: Plastic production generates four times more greenhouse gas emissions than aviation. Think about that for a second: Plastic is FIVE TIMES worse for climate change than air travel!

Plastic contributes to climate change at every stage of its life cycle. This starts when greenhouse gases escape during extraction and refining of fossil fuels. It continues with more emissions from the energy-intensive process used to make plastic. And then there are even more emissions when plastic is transported, laying in landfills, or incinerated.

As we’ve seen in Los Angeles and other places, wildfires are becoming much more common as previously less dense areas get developed and hot temperatures and drought conditions fueled by climate change get worse. A May 2023 peer-reviewed study found that nearly 40% of the burned forest area in Western Canada and the United States can be attributed to 88 major fossil fuel producers and cement manufacturers, including ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, and Shell — some of the primary corporations behind plastic production. Essentially, the extraction and burning of fossil fuels — which are the foundation of plastic — have raised global temperatures and amplified dry conditions across the West, thereby increasing the amount of land burned by wildfire.

The climate crisis and the plastics crisis are one in the same.

6. One of the simplest changes you encourage readers to take on is getting rid of plastic water bottles. Why? What makes single-use plastic bottles so awful?

I strongly encourage people to use reusable cups and bottles whenever possible. Unless clean water is inaccessible, there are few reasons to use single-use plastic water bottles. You’re paying for plastic — not the water you can get for free — and that plastic is used for just a moment before polluting the planet for centuries to come.

On top of the environmental toll, an alarming amount of microplastics have been found in bottled water. A 2024 study found that bottled water can contain 10 to 100 times more plastic particles than previous estimates. One liter of water — the equivalent of two standard-size bottled waters — contained an average of 240,000 plastic particles from seven types of plastics!

7. I appreciate how you focus the book on the fact that we need political change, not just individual — forgoing plastic water bottles is not going to solve this problem. If you had a policy wishlist, what would be on it?

Unfortunately, companies have added plastic to so many products that it’s impossible for consumers to avoid it, and thus it’s impossible for individuals to avoid exposure. That’s why it’s on policymakers on all levels of government to pass policies limiting the production and use of plastic, as well as incentivizing reusable and refillable alternatives. Plastic pollution is a problem created by companies, and it’s up to policymakers to hold them accountable and curb their reliance on plastic.

For individuals wanting to do something to effect change, listen up: Don’t underestimate the power of your voice. Whether you’re writing a letter to the editor urging your elected officials to pass a plastic bag ban in your county or participating in a rally to pass a state bill reducing unnecessary packaging, your voice makes a difference. Speak up. Get involved.

If I had a policy wishlist — and who’s to say I don’t — it would be for the New York state legislature to pass the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act when legislators reconvene in January. When passed, this bill will reduce packaging across New York state by 30%, require the remaining packaging to be reusable or truly recyclable, require companies to pay modest fees on packaging, and require companies creating the waste to foot the bill for managing it. This is the kind of comprehensive policy we need on all levels of government to effectively rein in the plastic pollution problem. New York has an opportunity to lead the country and set a blueprint for other states. We’ll be joining countless New Yorkers next year in urging New York state legislators to pass the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act, and for Governor Kathy Hochul to sign the bill into law. I hope this is the year they’ll put people over plastic.

Thanks for reading. And here’s to all of us resolving to use fewer plastics in the new year.

xx Jill

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Do you have any idea how much of a bumbling just-picked-up-a-paintbrush amateur Bari Weiss is in her new job as Editor-in-Chief of CBS News? I’ll tell you. She killed the big “Inside CECOT” story about the torture prison in El Salvador that was supposed to run on “60 Minutes” Sunday night. The story involved the Venezuelan immigrants who were flown by Trump’s ICE, against a judge’s order, to El Salvador, where in the prison they were beaten and sexually assaulted. Weiss told the producers that one of the things the story needed was an in-person interview with chief immigration Nazi, Stephen Miller. She helpfully provided them with Miller’s contact information, you know, because Bari Weiss is so plugged-in that she has stuff like White House phone numbers and email addresses at her fingertips.

There are several “as if’s” here. As if the producers hadn’t thought about interviewing Miller themselves. As if they hadn’t already contacted his office and requested an interview or at least on-the-record comments for the DECOT story. As if the damn “60 Minutes” team hadn’t been doing this kind of reporting better than anyone on the planet for the last 56 years.

Can you think of another bumbling amateur who is running a large organization he is not qualified to run? Hmmmm…let’s see…could it be Pete Hegseth? You remember Major Hegseth, who hadn’t run anything larger than a small non-profit supporting veterans before he became Secretary of Defense and was put in charge of more than 4.5 million uniformed and civilian people who work for the Department of Defense. Hegseth was the genius who included his wife, brother, and the editor for The Atlantic in a chat group on Signal as the Navy and Air Force bombed and rocketed Houthi strongholds in Yemen back in March, during which he shared the exact times of attack, what aircraft were involved, and what weapons they were using – all of this in real time as the attack was taking place.

We know enough about Pete to last us about 3 extremely unpleasant lifetimes. Let’s have a look at Bari. I’m not going to bore you with the story of her career as a junior editor at the Wall Street Journal and her time writing for and occasionally editing stories for the New York Times editorial section. Enough ink has been wasted on her dramatic resignation from the paper citing the firing of editorial page editor James Bennet and alleged “bullying” by Times staff members for her conservative political views.

Weiss worked for other people at both the Wall Street Jornal and the Times. She had no authority over other employees in either job. It was after her departure from the Times that she became an executive of a conservative-leaning Substack called “The Free Press.” I’m sure her newsletter on Substack, which the press refers to as a “media company,” made quite a bit of money and employed more people than Weiss herself before it was acquired by Paramount Skydance this year for $150 million.

But she could only have been in charge of a tiny fraction of the estimated 1,700 to 2,500 employees who work for CBS News. And as practically every article written on Weiss has noted, she had zero experience in television or running a large news-gathering organization.

Wow. Maybe Pete and Bari should get together for coffee sometime. She could give him advice on dealing with recalcitrant generals who have no respect for him, and he could tell her a thing or two about how to handle reporters who are going through your drawers asking questions you don’t want to answer.

The problem both have is that they were thrust into jobs that are clearly more than they can handle for political reasons, not because they had spent careers building up expertise in their fields. Well, at least Weiss can be said to have had a field with journalism. I don’t know what the fuck Hegseth’s career amounted to before he walked into the Pentagon, other than flexing his muscles to show off his Nazi tattoos and blathering on Fox and Friends on weekends.

Weiss now has the newsmagazine “60 Minutes” under her control, along with its staff of veteran reporters and producers, not to mention camera and sound people, many of whom have done their jobs in combat zones and places on the planet no person not working for “60 Minutes” would want to find themselves. I’m sitting here at my desk in Milford, PA, writing my Substack column, so I am certainly not putting down Substack as a place of business that can give you experience conveying information to a readership and these days, with live video and video podcasts, a viewing audience. But the Substack “media business” Weiss developed and sold for an obscene quantity of greenbacks did not qualify her to pick the outfits for CBS on the air talent, much less run its worldwide news gathering network.

I have some experience with “60 Minutes,” having been interviewed on the program twice. Let me tell you just a little bit about what that’s like. Getting a call from a “60 Minutes” producer is, I’m not exaggerating, life changing. It isn’t the prospect of “being on TV” and how that might change things in your life and career, which can of course happen. It’s…there is no other word for it…gravitas. You’re on the phone, and you’re thinking, even given all the reporting and writing and covering big stories I’ve done, these people are the fucking big leagues!

Because they are. Their standards are at the top of television news. I don’t mean near the top. I mean the top. Before they even call you, much less interview you on camera, they know everything that can be known about you and what you have to do with the subject of the interview. For one story, they knew everything I had written about the West Point honor code, and they knew as much as anyone could know about a then recent scandal involving cheating at the Academy.

To be honest, it was a little scary. You’re thinking, what did I write that they’ve read? Was I wrong about any of it? Was there anything I learned about the subject after the story was published? Because you can count on it that they know if anything changed between the time of your story and the interview with “60 Minutes.”

There was a third time that I was supposed to be interviewed by “60 Minutes.” It was 1998, and I had written an op-ed page story for the Times about the school shooting in Jonesboro, Arkansas. An 11-year-old and a 13- year-old had taken guns owned by one of their grandfathers and killed 5 people and wounded 10 at the middle school they attended. It turned out that both boys had been trained by their parents at a so-called “practical shooting course,” which taught them how to shoot rifles at human silhouette targets at various distances. My story pointed out the moral incongruity of teaching children to use high-powered rifles in exactly the same way I had been trained to use them in the Army.

Before being called by “60 Minutes,” I had been interviewed by Katie Couric on the Today Show about the Jonesboro shooting. On the program with me was the chief spokesperson for the NRA, Tanya Mataxa, who was poo-pooing everything I said as liberal claptrap even though I had been introduced as a gun owner and military veteran with extensive firearms training. Let’s just say, the interview wasn’t going well. Mataxa was filibustering, dominating the interview. Finally, there was a pause, and I asked Couric if I could ask Mataxa a question. Couric, obviously relieved, said “go ahead.”

I asked Mataxa if she thought teaching children to fire at targets in the form of human beings was good parenting, and if the NRA endorsed such “practical shooting courses” for children. Mataxa was stumped by the question. She was unprepared to take a stand in the name of the NRA. She filibustered until Couric interrupted her with “Answer the question, Tanya,” in an unusually loud voice for TV. Metaxa blinked into the camera and reached down on the floor next to her chair and picked up a copy of the Washington Post and opened it to a full-page anti-abortion ad and started shouting that “this is what we should be talking about! Killing babies!”

Shocked at this development, Couric shouted over her again: “Answer the question, Tanya!” Mataxa finally answered it, saying that the NRA stood behind parents who wanted to teach their children to shoot at human shaped targets.

I heard from friends with contacts in the NRA that Mataxa was almost fired for that answer. Time passed, and “60 Minutes” called wanting to interview me about school shootings. I said yes, of course, and we set up a time for their producers to come to New Orleans, where I was living at the time, to interview me.

A few days later, I got a call from the “60 Minutes” reporter who was scheduled to do the interview. They had to cancel the interview because no one from the NRA or any of the other pro-gun organizations such as the National Shooting Sports Foundation would appear on a program on which I was one of the interviewees. The reporter explained that they had called every pro-gun group they could find, and the answer was the same. They would agree to be interviewed only if I wasn’t on the program.

I told the “60 Minutes” reporter that if they went along with the demands of the pro-gun groups, they were effectively giving them the power to control who they interviewed and what viewpoints would get on the air. He apologized and said there was nothing they could do. They wanted to do a segment on school shootings, which were in the process of becoming a “thing,” so they would need to get someone else from a gun control group to interview on the show.

I have told this lengthy story, about which I have written before, because Blundering Bari proceeded to blunder into a very similar thing with “60 Minutes” over the CECOT story. The demand by Weiss that the CECOT segment wouldn’t air unless the producers interviewed someone from the Trump administration, preferably the odious Stephen Miller, effectively gave the White House veto power over what “60 Minutes” could put on the air. The Trump administration could continue to refuse to provide people to be interviewed for any story they had problems with.

When an email from Alfonsi leaked that discussed the issues raised by Weiss about the CECOT story, Weiss responded on a morning editorial call, essentially telling staffers that they should keep complaints in-house, implying that she had not been treated with “respect” in Alfonsi’s email about the dispute inside CBS News.

Just a squeak of irony from Bari Weiss, whose resignation letter from the New York Times, in which she complained about “wokeism” at the Times, became a cause celeb on the Right.

It’s too easy to say that this is what happens when incompetent and inexperienced fools are put in charge of large and powerful organizations such as the Department of Defense and CBS News. But fuck it. It is what happens. Bari Weiss would never have been hired at CBS News if its new owner, David Ellison, wasn’t the right-wing son of a right-winger who has given millions to Donald Trump, essentially buying the regulatory good will to gift his son a plaything he will use to keep the White House invitations coming for daddy.

We are already waist deep in dangerous political waters that threaten to swamp the First Amendment along with the 14^th Amendment and every other Constitutional provision that Donald Trump doesn’t like, including the 22^nd Amendment that limits a president to two terms in office.

Oh, well, we’ll have Bari Weiss picking stories for the CBS Evening News and “60 Minutes” that will tell us when the snakes and gators are about to gobble up all rights under the Constitution.

Won’t we?

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I hadn’t given much thought to the meaning of the word “honor,” in years, and now I can’t think of anything else.

I think what did it was the photograph of a worker installing Trump’s name above that of the man the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts is named for. I had such a visceral reaction, I searched for a word to describe my feelings. What Trump did was dishonorable. That’s all I could think: The man simply and completely lacks any sense of honor.

He lacks a lot of other things, too – decency, empathy, taste all come to mind. But his lack of honor stands out among the rest, because honor involves a sense of loyalty and dedication to others.

I went to West Point, which prizes honor in its motto: Duty, Honor, Country. On the first day that you become a cadet, which for me was June 4, 1965, they take the time out of an incredibly busy day to teach you about honor. You’re given a brief lecture by an upperclassman about the Honor Code, which states that “A cadet will not lie, cheat, or steal, nor tolerate those who do.”

That’s a lot to take in on your first day at West Point, when you are weighed, your height is measured, and you’re issued uniforms; you’re taught to salute and given what they call your three answers -- yes sir, no sir, no excuse sir; you’re taught how to arrange yourself into squad, platoon, and company formations and you’re taught to march; and then, having marched to Trophy Point, where stands Battle Monument, honoring those in the Union Army who gave their lives during the Civil War, you recite the oath that will guide your service to your country for the rest of your life.

They hammer into you the importance and necessity of honor to the profession of arms. It boils down to a simple concept: If you are to lead in combat, everyone must depend on the fact that you are giving truthful and honorable commands and answers to questions to and from those whom you command and those who command you.

That’s it. You’re told honor works both ways: they can depend on you, and you can depend on them. If you are asked what the position of your unit is, and you have not yet reached the place you were ordered to be, you must respond truthfully because units around you are maneuvering as well, and to lie about your position might subject you and your soldiers to friendly fire, or to artillery fire aimed at the enemy but which might hit your position if you lie about what your location is.

That’s what they call “the combat example,” but it’s way more broad than that. If you’re tested academically, those in charge and those around you in your own class, must be able to depend on your score not having been achieved by cheating. And on it goes, encompassing everything you do. When you graduate, the idea of the Honor Code is that everyone graduating with you has accepted and lived by the same code you did. You could depend on them while you were cadets, and you can depend on them now and in the future.

While you’re at West Point, you think about the Honor Code all the time because it applies to everything you do as a cadet. When you graduate, the Honor Code, with its threat of expulsion if you are found to have violated it, is behind you. You don’t think about it as much. I don’t recall the word “honor” coming up even once in my brief time as an officer. It wasn’t even a category on the report that rated your effectiveness as a leader. “Loyalty” was, but “honor” wasn’t.

What does this have to do with Donald Trump and what he did in renaming the Kennedy Center? Given everything we know about the enormity of Trump’s capacity to tell lies about practically everything, why does Trump’s putting his name above that of John F. Kennedy stand out?

The Kennedy Center is the memorial that this nation, in grieving his death after he was assassinated, decided to erect in Kennedy’s honor. Not a limestone or granite monument like those honoring Lincoln or Washington or Jefferson. A center for the arts with Kennedy’s name on it was built as a “living monument” to a man who was not only a Senator and a President but a war hero who oversaw the rescue of the crew of his PT boat during World War II after it was rammed and sunk by a Japanese destroyer.

Kennedy served his nation honorably in combat as well as in government. To take from him the name of his memorial by placing your name above his is to steal his honor. Everyone knows what that is: to steal honor is to claim the honors awarded others without having earned them. It is a crime under the Stolen Valor Act to impersonate a soldier and wear medals that you did not earn.

That is what Donald Trump did in taking the Kennedy Center for himself. He stole John F. Kennedy’s honor.

As we all know, Trump is obsessed with putting the name “Trump” on buildings, vodka bottles, airplanes, a so-called “university,” and we could go on. When he visited Mount Vernon during his first term, he is said to have wondered why Washington had not named his home after himself. “If he was smart, he would have put his name on it,” Trump was quoted as saying.

Trump recently put photos or paintings of all the nation’s presidents along the colonnade outside the West Wing of the White House and affixed plaques beneath them. Much has been made of the inaccurate or disparaging nature of some of the plaques and the fact that the photo of Joe Biden isn’t of his face but instead shows an auto-pen. But what Trump calls this display says even more about the way he sees himself, the White House, everyone who preceded him, and the presidency itself. He calls it “The Presidential Walk of Fame.”

It seems silly to have to say this, but fame is not honor, even though Donald Trump clearly mistakes the two. Nor are gold appliques on White House walls. Nor is placing your name above that of a man who by his service to this country in and out of uniform brought honor not only to his name, but to the country he served.

Greatness will forever elude this small, pathetic creature in a suit and polished shoes, because greatness cannot be packaged and named like a product or a building. It can only be lived and then accorded by others.

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If the goal of releasing the Epstein files is to make those men who joined Epstein in sexually assaulting and raping underage girls accountable for their criminal actions, it’s not going to happen.

We’ve already seen videos of Trump and Epstein together. We know they were close friends. When the Epstein estate started releasing stuff like the so-called birthday book, we could see their relationship even more intimately. It has been known from the start that Trump will be in the Epstein files. That has been his problem, and our problem all along.

Once he was elected for a second term, he knew, and we knew, that the files would be held in the building of the Department of Justice, controlled by Trump’s Attorney General. The files concerning the convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein would never be released to the public in any manner that would endanger Donald Trump. Because Trump will not be damaged by the files, then neither will the other powerful men who abused young women with the aid and abetting of Jeffrey Epstein.

There is talk all over cable news tonight about how the DOJ has not followed the law written by the Congress and signed by Donald Trump mandating the release of the Epstein files. They’re interviewing congressmen serving on the Oversight Committee of the House who are saying that they will sue to force the DOJ to live up to the law. They are saying this on camera on the television news as papers that are completely blacked-out – just black boxes, not even a single letter or period or comma showing – are visible on the screen.

This is what Trump’s DOJ has been doing all this time: blacking out anything that would harm Donald Trump. Remember when we learned that Pam Bondi had ordered the FBI to bring 1,000 agents in from the field so they could “go through” the Epstein files? That was months ago. Some time after that, after at least a couple of months had passed, Bondi told the press one day that the Epstein “client list is sitting on my desk.” She arranged for folders that she said contained parts of the Epstein files to be given to right-wing podcasters and bloggers, who dutifully appeared outside the White House, brandishing their folders. Then we learned that all the folders contained was public information, including press clippings.

That’s how the release of the Epstein files started. Later at a July meeting of the cabinet, a reporter asked Bondi about the “client list” she said was on her desk. Bondi answered that she had been talking about the “Epstein files,” along with files on the Kennedy and Martin Luther King assassinations. Trump jumped in to save her from the line of questioning, saying that he couldn’t believe reporters were “still talking about Jeffrey Epstein,” whom he called, “this guy, this creep.”

But the press and the Congress persisted. Finally, the bill was passed supposedly forcing the release of the files. And here we are, a month later, still waiting, with Todd Blanche telling Fox News that the DOJ would release “several hundred thousand documents today,” and that he expected to release “several hundred thousand more” over the “next couple of weeks.”

Today’s release contained several photos of Bill Clinton, one of Trump’s enemies, in a pool and a hot tub with persons whose identities are blocked out in such a way that it cannot be determined whether they are female or male, or what their ages might be.

After at least nine or ten months of “going through” the Epstein files, that’s what the DOJ chose to release today, knowing every network and news source would feature the photos of Clinton in the pool, and Clinton standing next to Epstein at some sort of event, both men wearing fancily-decorated silk shirts.

Trump’s DOJ has everything that was seized at Epstein’s homes in Manhattan, Palm Beach, New Mexico, and his island estate in the Virgin Islands. They have every document. Every photo. Every video. The contents of every safe. They have all his financial records detailing his relationships with major banks and stock trading firms.

They have everything.

We’re going to see a lot of it, but we’re not going to see the parts that implicate Donald Trump in illegal activity with Jeffrey Epstein, whether it be financial or sexual. Because the DOJ is going to protect Trump, they’re going to protect the other wealthy and powerful men who were friends with Epstein and enjoyed his hospitality, his financial advice, and the underage girls provided to them by Epstein and by Ghislaine Maxwell at Epstein’s direction.

This is what happens in dictatorships and police states. In Putin’s Russia or Orban’s Hungary or Erdogan’s Turkey, do you think they would release incriminating government-controlled files on powerful men unless they were enemies of the leader, and he directed his law enforcement officials to do it?

It’s not going to happen here, either. Our oligarchs and celebrities and political figures, all of them men, who enjoyed friendships with the pedophile Jeffrey Epstein – they will be protected, too. It’s too dangerous to Trump for it be any other way. Some of these men know the truth about Trump’s relationship with Epstein. Some of them know how Epstein helped Trump avoid taxes. Some of them know what Trump did with Epstein when they partied in Palm Beach and New York and the Virgin Islands. Some of them know what happened on Epstein’s jet aircraft – who was on the plane, and whether there were underage girls on the plane with them.

None of that will come out because those powerful men can implicate Donald Trump, and he must keep them from talking.

This is how corrupt this country is. First, that Epstein got away with his pedophilia for so long, that he got away with trafficking underage girls to other men for the purpose of prostitution for so long, that he got away with concealing money in offshore accounts for wealthy and powerful men for so long. He even avoided federal charges in Florida in 2007 when he was caught because powerful men conspired to make a deal to let him off in return for a slap on the wrist by the state of Florida and a stay in jail that wasn’t a real jail sentence at all.

Our country has been further corrupted by a man who was very close friends with the pedophile, Jeffrey Epstein. His name is Donald Trump, and he will cause his Department of Justice to protect these powerful and corrupt and wealthy men so they will continue to protect Donald Trump. It’s heartbreaking.

Borat got it right: “What a country!”

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The Opinionated Ogre is a Stay-at-Home parent first, foul-mouthed hater of fascist Republicans second. He’s been making the most horrible people in the country miserable for 15 years and the hate he feels for American Nazis is eternal and without limits. He plans to stop torturing right-wing trash the day the last fascist dies. So, you know, never. Please help support this potty-mouthed newsletter for just $5/month or $50/year (Almost 17% less!)

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The first month or two of the Trump regime was a brutal shock to a lot of people. I tried, and mostly succeeded, to contain my disdain for those who were surprised by the vicious cruelty unleashed by a fascist white nationalist government intent on ensuring there would never be another free and fair election in the United States again. It’s not like Republicans haven’t been telling us exactly what they planned to do for decades. It’s not like hysterical liberal radicals like me haven’t been screaming at the top of our lungs what was coming for decades.

No. This all came out of absolutely nowhere. Who could have possibly predicted that an entire political party enamored with fascism and minority rule and white nationalism would govern accordingly? We may never understand what happened to the GOP. A true mystery for the fucking ages.

But after the first several weeks, the shock wore off and people got angry. Angry people mobilized. That mobilization became sand in the gears of fascism. Fascism, already a tenous project, faltered. It certainly helped our cause that the fascists in question are some of the dumbest motherfuckers of our time. There IS such a thing as a competent fascist. Thank god we have so few of them. Donald Trump prefers bootlickers and damaged people who will be personally loyal to him instead of the fascist agenda.

When the history of America’s second failed fascist uprising is written, the fact that Donald Trump was its leader will be noted as the prime reason it rose to prominence. But also the prime reason it failed. If he had actually cared about the cause, we would be in trouble. But Trump only cares about Trump. He has no greater vision beyond himself. Not even to make America a reflection of his own personal glory. That’s too much work. Too much of a hassle. America can fuck off and die as long as Trump gets rich and leaves behind monuments and landmarks with his name on them.

So the regime is breaking in under a year. Not a good track record for a 1000-year-reich. For example, last month’s elections could not have possibly gone worse for the GOP. Democrats flipped multiple seats all across the country. Republicans flipped three two one none. Not a single fucking seat anywhere in the entire United States. That was the highlight for the regime over the last month and change. It’s only gone downhill from there.

And yet. No matter how badly Republicans do. No matter how much they’re flailing. No matter how strong the resistance to their fascism is. We get this doomer shit.

is right, there is nothing these fascist fucks can break that cannot be rebuilt or replaced. I’m Gen X and even for Gen X, I’m cynical. But you know what I’ve come to understand in the last couple of years? Doomerism is lazy.

It’s sooooo easy to throw up your hands and say, “It’s all over!” That means you don’t have to fight anymore. Fighting is hard. When you give up, you can just sit back and do nothing because why bother? Isn’t that so much less stressful?

Doomerism is also cowardice. Fighting is scary. Looking at an unknown future is scary. If you already “know” you’ve lost, then there’s no uncertainty. Surrender is a warm blanket to smother the fear.

But really, doomerism is a sad lack of imagination. It means the doomer looks at the world and cannot see something better. They cannot envision a world without suffering and strife and cruelty and pain, so they just give up. They cannot see any future at all beyond what we live in now.

How obnoxious. What a betrayal of everything we are as a people and a species. Our defining feature has been to imagine a better future and make it happen. If it weren’t, we would still be sitting in a cave, afraid of predators. No one would have ever said, “No Kings!” in 1765. No one would have spent decades being beaten and murdered by police to secure women’s right to vote. No one would have crossed the bridge at Selma. No one would have fought the police at Stonewall.

To be a doomer is to look at all the people who fought and died to advance the cause of freedom and civil rights and say, “Why did you even waste your time?”

To which my response is, “Fuck you, doomer.”

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It’s important to understand that you do not have to have a crystal clear image of the perfect future you want. I don’t. That’s not my job. My job is to envision a future without fascism. Without racist assholes threatening to put my kids in a concentration camp. Without an incel trying to spike my girls’ drinks and rape them. Without a eugenicist trying to murder my autistic son because he’s a “burden” on society.

I envision a future where the American right has been smashed to dust. Their power broken forever, leaving us free to move America forward, unfettered by their greed and hate and pettiness and ignorance.

What does that look like, exactly? I don’t know. A new Constitution? Amendments to the old one? An entirely new system? I haven’t the faintest idea. That is for people smarter than me to figure out and implement.

But I don’t NEED to know the specifics to know it can be done. We are the only advanced nation in the world without universal healthcare.1 We don’t have maternity leave. Our prison population is larger than the populations of about one-third of the nations on the planet. China is the only country that’s close to the number of total prisoners, and they have over one billion more citizens than we do.

We can, if we choose, be a better country. We can be a better people. There is a future out there where we take care of the least of us. Where our civil rights are protected from the likes of the NRA and the KKK and the fucking police.2 Where women are believed, and trans kids are safe. Where elections are secure, and politicians answer to their constituents, not to billionaires who no longer exist.

That world is out there and we can have it if we fight hard enough and long enough and never give the fascists a moment of peace. The thing they want to hear more than anything else is “We’re doomed” because they rely on the illusion of inevitability. Fake it till you make and then keep faking it because fascism cannot govern; it can only destroy.

You don’t have to be everywhere, fighting every fight. You don’t have to be at every protest. You don’t have to support every cause. You don’t have to spend every waking moment focused on crushing the regime. No one has infinite bandwidth. Pick your lane. Do what you can. Be a drop of water in the blue wave that’s coming. That’s all a wave is, after all: Drops of water moving in the same direction.

There are so many more of us than there are of them and they know it. That’s why they want us scared and demoralized and sitting at home, whining that “we’re doomed.” The fascist fucks know there’s nothing they can do to stop what’s coming for them except to get us to stop ourselves. I'm tired of the doomers because I’m not stopping. Are you?

I hope you feel better informed about the world and ready to kick fascists in the teeth to protect it. This newsletter exists because of you, so please consider becoming a supporting subscriber today for only $5 a month or just $50 a year (a 17% discount!). Thank you for everything!

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Fascism hates organized protests. They fear the public. They fear US. Make fascists afraid again by joining Indivisible or 50501 and show them whose fucking country this is!

There are 319 days until the most important midterm election in American history. The regime is afraid, and they should be. We are legion, and they are weak. Stay strong. You are never alone.

I was standing at the sink after dinner last night scraping a plate when I started thinking about the new iteration of the word, “scrape.” You see it used all the time to describe how Artificial Intelligence (AI) trains itself by “scraping” information that it collects everywhere it can. Those AI super-data-farms sitting outside cities in the Midwest and South? That’s what they’re doing – scraping data found in news reports, websites and social media posts, magazines, medical and technical journals, even books that are in print and copyrighted by authors. The word “data” in the above sentence means “words.”

I have written tens of millions of words in the nearly 60 years I have been a writer. I use words to form sentences, and I use sentences to form paragraphs, and I use paragraphs to convey information and ideas and descriptions, and in the novels I have written, stories about people’s lives I have made up. It’s what writers do. They live their lives and in doing so, have experiences, see things, meet people, read books and magazines and newspapers, watch the news, go to movies, go places they’ve never been before, return to places they have visited and see and experience those places anew – that’s a woefully incomplete list, but you get my drift – and they sit down and write about all of it.

When AI “scrapes,” it is collecting the words of writers who have written about their experiences and the facts they have found, and in some cases, their feelings and opinions about those facts. AI does not experience the world and write about it. AI collects writing about the world. To the extent that AI rearranges those words, it is writing about writing. If you ask questions of an AI platform, the answers it gives you are the words of writers who have had experiences or gathered facts and written them down. Almost every answer you receive from an AI platform has been stolen from someone who went out and lived a life and wrote down words to describe how they lived it and what they learned.

AI treats numbers differently. Numbers express quantifiable information. AI is able to analyze numbers by “reading” the numbers over and over and looking at the results of manipulating them differently until it is able to come up with an answer presented that amounts to analysis. AI can do this very, very rapidly with unknowably huge quantities of numbers. AI is able to look at photographic information and express it as numbers and “see” the numbers in ways that are difficult for humans to do because of the hugeness of the amounts of data involved. Facial recognition is an example of this. Humans can of course recognize faces, but they cannot compare thousands of images of faces as quickly as AI platforms can.

AI is being used as a tool to invest money. AI systems use programmatic algorithms and other numerical analytic devices to see and identify patterns in trading stocks and use all of it to see which way markets will move and predict profits and losses. AI can do this much faster than human beings.

Elon Musk was part of OpenAI when it was dedicated to research and the development of ways AI could be used to benefit humanity. He parted ways with OpenAI when it dropped its “open” nature and became a “closed” machine with the goal of growth and making profits. Musk told a story that the reason for his break with OpenAI was about ideological bias, but it was really all about money.

Musk established xAI in 2023. Just two years later, xAI bought Musk’s X platform and integrated the two platforms into one system. This year, Musk became the first person in history to be awarded by his primary company, Tesla, what amounts to a one-trillion-dollar salary for a year’s work. Musk must meet certain financial goals in order to “earn” this incredible amount of money, but his ambition was realized when the company, of which he is the largest shareholder, agreed to pay him such a salary.

The current AI platforms – this is not an exhaustive list, but they include OpenAI ChatGTP, xAI, Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini, Microsoft Azure AI, Meta-backed TensorFlow and PyTorch – are growing as fast as they can build their massive data centers. It is hard to know where AI systems are going, what the future holds for the technology, and for you and me, the humans who live on this planet. Cars were once built by humans; then by fewer humans and more machines, then by even fewer humans and robots. I’m sure they are working on systems that will one day give us cars that have never been touched by a human hand.

We know where those technological changes went. We can see the cars on our streets and in our driveways. What can we see of the changes wrought by AI? We read a story occasionally about AI being used by doctors to analyze tumors, to review and analyze medical tests, even to make diagnoses. We can see AI on our phones and computer screens, popping up with Google searches and in automatic “help” bullshit in Microsoft Word, in photo manipulation and what we might call fake-manufacturing.

Where we really see AI at work is in photos taken in the White House with tech moguls attending thank-you dinners for “contributing” to the hideous ballroom Trump is in the process of building, whether we like it or not. We see AI in their wealth. This is what AI does best: making more money for fewer and fewer people. This is nothing new. It happened when automation caused fewer human beings to work on auto assembly lines. The auto companies, and the people who invested in them, got richer every time a worker lost a job and a profit margin went up.

It has been called “progress,” and we know we can deal with it, because we have dealt with its after effects for at least a century and a half or more.

We have seen greed before, too, and we have felt its effects. The great Depression looms darkly over the history of this country.

I do not think, however, we have seen greed on the scale we are seeing it today. We went nearly two centuries without a single billionaire. Now we have thousands of them, and we have centi-billionaires. We have billionaires who own yachts the size of World War II battleships. We have billionaires who own enough land to amount to a small state. Now that Musk is a trillionaire, we will have billionaires who want what he has just because he has it.

But what has greed gotten Elon Musk, to use just one example of an extremely wealthy man? His ambition is so enormous that he wants to reproduce himself with what amounts to a race of Elons. He has impregnated an unknown number of women, some of whom are house in a compound in Austin, Texas, that resembles something out of The Handmaiden’s Tale. What has he done with that? He has sought more women to produce more Elons. He is obsessed with genetics. Do you recall who else is obsessed with genetics? Donald Trump. He has staffed an entire government dedicated to cleansing this country of people they consider have “bad” genes. It’s not necessary to “go there” with a mention of who that reminds you of.

Do you remember earlier this year, only a month into Trump’s second term, when Musk brought his son into the Oval Office and stood there next to Trump at the Resolute Desk and talked to the press for more than a half hour? Musk had one of his children with him, a son he calls “Lil X.” As the president of the United States sat there pretending to listen, Musk expounded on many of his theories of the benefits of cutting the government, how we shouldn’t be sending money to people overseas – he went on and on. Meanwhile, Lil X scampered around at his feet, trying to get his attention, creating mischief, going over to Trump’s desk and playing around, in short, acting like a four-year-old boy. I remember watching the whole thing in abject amazement, because despite the fact that Musk picked up the boy and put him on his shoulders and held him with his right arm, he paid absolutely no real fatherly attention to him. His eyes were on the reporters in the room – not even on Trump – as he continued to ramble on answering questions. A few times, as the boy pulled at his pant leg and reached for him, Musk smiled slightly, but not at the boy. He was smiling at the reporters. Trump said almost nothing until the boy became obstreperous enough that he got Trump’s attention, at which point Trump pronounced him “a high IQ individual.” Because…good genes.

As a father of three children, one of whom was a very active four-year-old boy, I do not know how you can be in a room with your son and essentially never look at him, even when you reach down to put him on your shoulders. Musk put Lil X there not affectionately, because it feels good to have a child on your shoulders, or because you’re giving him a ride, but to shut him up. Trump had no reaction. It was obvious that Trump had very infrequently, or even never, put one of his children on his shoulders.

This is not human behavior. It is inhuman. To act in such a way depresses you and depresses the child. Musk’s smile to the press was fake, a performance. The whole thing was a performance. Trump did not smile even once, not at anything Musk said, not at the child. The attention in the room was not on him. He was unhappy, managing to remain impassive, rather than showing anger, which was probably his real reaction.

There is another billionaire on the planet with ambitions to be a trillionaire. His name is Vladimir Putin. The trillion dollars he wanted to be paid four years ago was Ukraine. He has killed hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians trying to achieve his goal of paying himself an entire country as a salary. He has bankrupted both his own country and Ukraine. It will take years, if not decades, for both countries to recover from his egomaniacal ambitions.

How does this have anything to do with AI? Because AI, and the men who are running the companies with AI platforms, are not satisfied with being human. They are not satisfied with what you might call a human quantity of stuff, whether it is money or power or things. They want more and more and more so badly, they are attempting to build an inhuman future that will give it to them, because the human history of the past did not give enough to the men who came before them and were so much like them.

Elon Musk is a perfect example of this kind of inhumanity. His ambition, his greed, is so enormous that he is not even satisfied with living on this planet. He wants to create a place for himself to live on the inhuman planet of Mars. That barren world is a perfect place for Musk and men like him. On Mars, there will be no laws, no courts, no regulations, no taxes, nothing to get in Musk’s way.

Musk’s greed, and the greed of Trump and men like him has no limit. It is inhuman. We need human beings. We don’t need Elon Musk and Donald Trump. Their dreams of a master race comprised of high IQ individuals with perfect genes will die of its own airless idiocy or fail because it is inhuman. Perfection is a series of mistakes that collects incremental bits of wisdom in a process that never ends. Progress is never quite getting where you want to go. You end up where life takes you. That’s how you know you’re human.

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