The attack by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth against Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., is far from over, in part because of the untested legal workaround Hegseth is using as intimidation.

The case remains an unexploded, irksome explosive that could seek to destroy free speech to keep Hegseth from having to answer questions from the public he is supposed to serve.

Like most of the Trump administration assaults on perceived political enemies, Hegseth is nasty, under-evidenced,  overly personal, and seeks a punishment most easily achievable rather than focusing on proving a declared violation.

As with threatened but failed prosecution attempts against James B. Comey Jr., former FBI director, New York State Attorney General Letitia James and others, they are meant as retribution and protection of Trump and his circle, not resolution of crimes or civil law violations. As in those cases, the threat of reconstituting cases continues.

In November, Kelly was among six lawmakers to make and distribute a video citing the military’s own warnings for officers and enlisted personnel to consider whether they are being given illegal orders to carry out, and that they have the right to say no. Yesterday, Kelly filed suit in federal court, saying that Hegseth had unlawfully punished the senator for his speech and violated his due process.

Though Kelley and company, all veterans or former intelligence officials, did not reference specific military orders that should be questioned, we’ve seen several instances recently in which the orders to strike anew at stricken crew members on a suspected drug boat, the deployment of National Guardsmen to city streets, or now, by extension, the shooting of an unarmed Minneapolis citizen protesting against the spreading ICE raids in residential neighborhoods all raise legal questions.

In what has become pattern in this administration, Kelly’s “crime” here was to point out the law that is taught to every officer and enlisted soldier, sailor, airman, Marine and Guardian. Only in the cockeyed view of this administration is a dissenting word from existing law seen as a cause for punishment. Kelly has promised to fight any punishment as unwarranted.

Hegseth Took Easiest Route

Though Hegseth had threatened to re-active Kelly, a retired Navy captain and astronaut, to stick him before a court martial board, Hegseth settled on a censure letter to Kelly’s file that says that the senator’s actions were prejudicial to good order and discipline.

That letter – something he could do without process or consultation – opens the way to possible reduction in retirement grade and pay.

That judgment remains pending before Secretary of the Navy John Phelan, who must recommend an action to Hegseth – who already has made up his mind. Regardless, the censure letter cannot be changed, but Kelly remains within time to file an opposing letter to answer its claims. (As an aside, Phelan contributed more than $800,000 to the then-candidate Trump’s joint fundraising committee.)

The possibility of a court martial still hangs in the air, though a board of military peers sitting as jury would have to overlook the statements that Kelly quotes as having come directly from the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) to which they all swore an oath. Hegseth has referred the others in the video to the FBI for investigation as having committed “acts of sedition.”

According to USNI News, which covers the military as an independent voice, Hegseth has a variety of punishments available, though most of them are intended for application towards serving military troops, not retirees, and not U.S. senators whose job includes oversight of the military. There are some limitations on what retirees can say freely, but there must be a direct link between objectionable speech and actual military operations. It also must involve something contemptuous against a politician or member of the chain of command.

Kelly’s remarks telling service members to refuse unlawful orders don’t fall under restriction from good order and discipline, and don’t advise specific military orders to refuse. Any broad contempt for Hegseth is shared far more widely than Kelly alone.

Legally Dubious

Meanwhile, the very same Hegseth has declined to cooperate with Congress about releasing videos of the September “double-tap” strikes against a suspected drug-smuggling boat crew and generally has withheld information about National Guard deployments or details about current orders and plans for the military in Venezuela.

Donald Trump himself told The New York Times in a recorded interview that he sees adherence to domestic and international law as relatively optional, that that his power as commander in chief is constrained only by his “own morality.”

Obviously, ordering military strikes in Venezuela without a specific aim other than capturing leader Nicolás Maduro to face drug charges, does not violate Trump’s morality. Nor do attacks on shipping, or on small, suspected drug boats, deployment of troops on our own city streets or extending paramilitary status to undertrained Homeland Security agents.

Given the number of court actions that have found legal problems with Trump administration enforcement actions, the possibility of “illegal” orders seems endless.

For a host of reasons, the warnings from Kelly and company seem well founded. Hegseth’s one-man prosecution campaign seems unfair and reflective of an administration that finds legal boundaries mere guidelines.

Opening Fraud Charges for Fed Chair

In like fashion, the Justice Department’s announced investigation of criminal fraud charges against Fed chair Jerome Powell begs many of the same questions, though the prosecutor is U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro and the circumstances involve construction costs for a replacement complex on the National Mall and lying to Congress.

As a result, the probe comes across as a political swipe against Powell over disagreement with Trump about the nation’s basic interest rates, not a fix for high building costs. It’s another move towards intimidation rather than for justice, all because Trump wants lowered borrowing rates from an independent Fed panel. On top of all else, Powell’s term will expire this year and Trump can name his replacement (Trump did name Powell, of course.)

Two aspects stand out: The investigation has become public before it has collected necessary evidence, and it is shaped around a criminal charge as a first alternative, rather than one of multiple routes towards controlling the money spent or planned to finish construction. Criminal fraud will necessitate proving intent, among other things, and at this point, the prosecution does not even have the basic construction documents in hand.

Once again, the Trump administration is bending law enforcement around its desire for political results, not sifting evidence first to even determine if there is a crime here.

WE NEED YOUR HELP TO CONTINUE TO SHED LIGHT ON THE STORIES THAT IMPACT YOUR RIGHTS. PLEASE CONSIDER A DONATION TODAY. 

The post Hegseth’s Pursuit of Mark Kelly appeared first on DCReport.org.

What does it really mean for a state to be “dementia-friendly”?  

Over seven million Americans are currently living with Alzheimer’s disease and countless others suffer from other forms of dementia and cognitive impairment. As the prevalence of dementia and related diseases continues to rise, how we define dementia-friendliness matters.  

Recent rankings of dementia-friendliness emphasize disease burden and late-stage dementia capacity, like the number of memory care beds available. This definition is both antiquated and incomplete, though. Breakthroughs in early detection, disease-modifying treatments, and clinical trials are reshaping what it means to live with Alzheimer’s and dementia – but access to this progress depends heavily on state policy.  

In my recent piece for Health Affairs Forefront, I argue for redefining dementia-friendliness around the state policies that make early diagnosis, high-quality care, and community support possible. Across the country, states are already leading the way by expanding coverage for biomarker testing, investing in the workforce, supporting caregivers, and coordinating care across the disease continuum.   

You can read more here.

Please support this work by becoming a paying subscriber. This newsletter is free and will always remain free, but it still takes time and effort to produce. Your support means everything to me. For just $5 a month or $50 a year (a 17% discount!), you can keep the Opinionated Ogre going. Thank you!

🌟BECOME A CONTRIBUTING SUBSCRIBER!🌟

Prefer a one-time tip? We got you!

I’m taking a little bit of a break from the firehose of political news for something a little different: Holographic anime girlfriends.

No, this is not from a movie or TV show. This is something that is for sale in the real world and is just as weird and creepy as it sounds:

Even Razer’s own marketing pushes this uncomfortable idea of bonding a little too closely with Project Ava. Razer refers to Ava as a “Friend for Life,” and something that will “bridge the gap between virtual assistance and physical companionship by providing a 24/7 digital partner that lives right alongside the user.”

Holographic girlfriends are not a new idea. They’ve been around for several years, but now they’re being mass-marketed, and this is going to get really ugly, really fast. One of the things I do with my writing is look ahead at certain trends and ask, “Is that going to be a problem, and if so, how bad?” AI girlfriends is one of those trends.1

Two years ago, almost exactly, I wrote about AI-powered sex dolls and how excited the incel community was to finally get one over on the “feminazis” ruining their lives.

Sex dolls, particularly AI-powered ones, are really expensive, several thousand dollars apiece. The barrier to entry was too high to be a real problem. But these holographic “companions” will sell for just $120 or so. That’s very affordable, and there are multiple versions coming out from different companies. This is something the tech world is pushing REALLY hard.

Did you know the Opinionated Ogre has a weekly podcast? It’s true! New episodes every Thursday! Catch the latest episode here:

Join The Ogre Nation Conversation!

On the one hand, a little virtual AI assistant that can “see” you with a camera and respond to your movements and facial expressions is a sci-fi dream come true. But that’s not what these are going to be used for. We all know that. If they were, the little anime girl wouldn’t be in a t-shirt and…nothing else. Here’s one that’s completely normal and not 100% at all designed for the male gaze.

Sure. These aren’t going to be immediately used for sex. Did I mention that Project AVA by Razer runs on Grok, the Twitter AI now famous for spewing out Nazi propaganda and child porn on command? Oh, and tech companies having a camera and microphone watching and listening 24/7 to your most intimate conversations definitely isn’t a privacy nightmare waiting to happen.

What could possibly go wrong here? However could someone abuse this kind of technology? I’m sure it will all work out just fine.

Now, there’s a larger problem with all of this. Even if the technology was safe, which I promise you it is not, it’s not healthy.

There are multiple levels to the problem of male loneliness. We, men, have been conditioned to treat feelings like a toxic fungus on the bottom of our shoes. Anger is ok. Vulnerability is not. Empathy is literally being denounced as dangerous and antithetical to civilization.

It’s really hard to bond with others when you cannot express emotions of any kind. It’s all but impossible to forge a relationship with a woman if empathy and caring are off the table. The work we men need to do to attract a partner is just that, work. And too many men don’t want to do it.

Never mind the grooming or financial aspects. No one wants to date/marry a broke slob. Too many men don’t even want to do the bare minimum of treating a woman like a person. Lila, my now 18-year-old surrogate daughter, has told me repeatedly that the vast majority of guys she’s talked to last a week or so before they ask for naked pictures. She’s just a sex object to them. It’s hard to imagine why women aren’t throwing themselves at men. We may never solve this confounding mystery.

But now they’ll have anime AI girlfriends to tell them how funny and smart they are. How handsome and manly they are. How much they love to spend time with them, and how they can’t believe how lucky they are to be their AI girlfriend.

AI “friends” do not have a personality. They tell you what you want to hear. If you want flattery, they will flatter you. If you want them to laugh at your jokes, they will. Every single time. If you want them to love you, they will tell you that you are the center of their universe and they cannot live without you.

This is not a healthy dynamic. This is a funhouse mirror and a number of people have already been led down a dark path by AI, and this was BEFORE they started to make these things explicitly for the purpose of romantic relationships.

It’s important to understand that each generation of AI is worse than the one before it. They get more sophisticated, but also more deranged. The programmers do not fully understand how their creations work and cannot predict at all how they will behave during extended use. There is no scenario in which a human will develop a normal, healthy relationship with an AI girlfriend.

This isn’t even a Band-Aid over a growing problem. This is pouring salt on a wound and pretending it’s helping. Men will flock to this because they have been told that women are the enemy. That feminism has ruined their lives. The solution, of course, is to create the perfect woman yourself. One who never argues or talks back or says “No.” But such mindless sycophancy will only lead to frustration and even more anger at real-world women who are complicated and have agency. Women who would happily date a man if he could just think about someone other than himself for more than five fucking seconds.

These holographic girlfriends are not a solution for an external problem. They are an accelerant for an internal problem, and if they catch on, it’s going to be a disaster in just a couple of years. If we’re very lucky, men will buy them and get bored very quickly. If not, if they get addicted to the fawning feedback, the withdrawal is going to be terrible, and we’ll all suffer for it.

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!

☠️This Subscription Kills Fascists☠️

Prefer a one-and-done tip? Click here!

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 293 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.

Have you seen any photographs in your newsfeed recently of National Guard troops on the streets of American cities? If the news you get is anything like mine, you’ve seen plenty of photos of ICE agents in ridiculous military cosplay get-ups with their masks and guns and tear gas cannisters. Have you wondered why the National Guard has almost completely dropped out of the news?

For one, the Guard is deployed, but only in three cities – Washington D.C., Memphis, and New Orleans. In D.C., Trump controls the National Guard, so he can do anything he wants with them, and he still has the Guard patrolling the streets. In Tennessee and Louisiana, he has Republican governors who were only too happy to call up units of their National Guard and put them on the street on Trump’s orders.

But Trump has lost court cases in California, Oregon, and Illinois that have barred him from federalizing the Guard and turning them loose on the streets of Portland, Los Angeles and Chicago. In California and Illinois, the courts were particularly brutal to the Trump administration, with a judge in California ruling that Trump had violated the Posse Comitatus Act, which bars use of the military for law enforcement purposes. In Illinois, two courts stymied Trump. A district court stopped Trump’s deployment of the Guard to Chicago. That order was upheld by the 7^th Circuit Court of Appeals, which found that Trump’s claims of rebellion and rampant lawlessness in the streets of Chicago were overblown. In December, the Trump DOJ asked the Supreme Court for an emergency stay of the Appeals Court decision barring the Guard deployment, and for the first time in a case involving its emergency docket, the Supreme Court ruled against Trump and refused to issue the stay.

In Oregon, the decisions barring Trump from deploying the National Guard are complicated and mixed, with one restraining order against Trump being overturned and another upheld. Oregon requested an en banc hearing of an appeal of the 9^th Circuit’s mixed decision. That hearing is pending, but in the meantime, the National Guard units Trump had federalized from Texas and California have not been deployed in Portland.

What’s going on with Trump and the National Guard? Well, we got a hint from Trump himself last week in his two-hour interview with reporters from the New York Times. One Times reporter mentioned Trump’s threat in 2020 to have the National Guard seize election boxes. Trump was asked, in a discussion about the upcoming midterm elections, if having the National Guard seize ballot boxes would be an option for this election. Trump lamented that “I should have” had the Guard seize election boxes in 2020, but for this year, maybe not. Referring to the National Guard, Trump explained, “I don’t know that they are sophisticated enough. You know, they’re good warriors. I’m not sure that they’re sophisticated enough in the ways of crooked Democrats and the way they cheat, to figure that out.”

Sophisticated enough? It sounds like Trump doesn’t trust the National Guard to do what tells them to do. His deployments to Washington, Memphis and New Orleans have petered out. Nobody is paying attention to them. Photos of the Guard in D.C. show people jogging past groups of soldiers standing near monuments on the Mall. Photos from Memphis show small groups of Guard soldiers walking along the Beale Street blues district with civilians passing them calmly. Photos from New Orleans are similar, showing small groups of Guard soldiers in the French Quarter walking past civilian tourists.

In a word, Trump’s National Guard deployments have turned out to be anticlimactic. One reason may be the demographics of the National Guard, which is about 80 percent male, 20 percent female, 20 percent Black, about 10 percent Latino, and about 5 to 8 percent Asian or other. Close to the demographic makeup of the military generally, but where the National Guard departs from the greater U.S. Army is in age. The average age of Guard officers is about 38, with enlisted soldiers averaging 29 years old. The Guard is also better educated than the Army at large, with more than 50 percent having a high school diploma or some college, 18 percent having a bachelor’s degree, and 9.3 percent having an advanced degree.

This is Trump’s “unsophisticated” National Guard – older, better educated, and nearly as diverse as the rest of the U.S. military with too many moral scruples for his taste.

You know who Trump likes and trusts now: ICE agents. There are no figures for the age, gender, and racial makeup of ICE agents, particularly new hires. But I looked in vain to find even one photo taken of ICE agents on the streets of Minneapolis showing either a female or Black agent. In the photos of Greg Bovino, the overall commander of the ICE and Border Patrol deployment to Minneapolis, he is surrounded by armed and masked white men.

ICE agents are doing exactly what Trump wants them to do in Minneapolis, Chicago, and elsewhere. They’re rounding up people without warrants who are non-white and appear to be foreign and speak English with an accent. They are using teargas or other “chemical irritants” against demonstrators. They are arresting street protestors at random, and they have killed one woman, Renee Good, who was not threatening or putting anyone in danger.

Kristi Noem, Trump, Vance, and all the rest of them are delighted, defending their out-of-control ICE and Border Patrol agents and attacking anyone who criticizes them. Trump himself accused Good and her wife of being “disrespectful” of ICE agents, as if that justified the shooting of Good and leaving her unattended in her car for nearly 20 minutes while waiting on the arrival of an ambulance.

Trump’s ICE recruitment campaign could be summed up as “normal people need not apply.” They aren’t trying to recruit people to defend the United States like regular Army and National Guard soldiers are hired to do. They’re recruiting an army of civilian stormtroopers, over-paying them with our tax dollars, and turning them loose on the streets of cities in Democratic Party controlled states like Minnesota and Illinois and Oregon and California. Trump’s ICE recruits are given minimal training in law enforcement because what they’re doing has nothing to do with the law and everything to do with aggression and repression and fear.

We have turned a corner. Using the National Guard isn’t working for Trump, because Guard soldiers do not fit the needs of Trump as he heads into the second year of this term. He has learned that he can’t use people whose allegiance is to the Constitution and the defense of the nation. He wants an army of pretend soldiers who have been hired to be loyal to him, who will follow any order they are given, including shooting people who are “disrespectful” and do not “comply” with orders.

Trump is doing the equivalent of hiring the people he pardoned for crimes committed on January 6 and giving them guns and vests and helmets and masks and turning his mob loose not on the Capitol this time, but on us.

Give a gift subscription

Leave a comment

Share

For several weeks now, protesters have taken to the streets across Iran to demand an end to the theocratic regime that has terrorized and repressed the population for decades. Hundreds and perhaps thousands have been killed by government forces that are raining bullets on unarmed citizens; more than 10,000 people have been arrested. The government has imposed an internet blackout as it tries to violently quell dissent.

It’s hard to overstate just how brave these protesters are. Every single night they turn out on the streets, knowing that simply by doing so, they may never come home. Every single person who protests risks their lives. And thousands upon thousands of them do it anyway.

Subscribe now

Iranians have risen up in protest before; their government has crushed them before. It is a fool’s errand to make any predictions about how this ends. But I hope, for the sake of Iranians, it ends with the fall of this regime and the blossoming of a vibrant democracy. Those are not likely nor easy outcomes. But bigger miracles have happened.

The Iranian regime, like most autocracies and certainly like all theocracies, is a fundamentally misogynistic one, and so it is perhaps not surprising that much of the protest momentum has come from women and those who support women’s rights (the Women Life Freedom movement lit a fire that was for a time dimmed to a mere ember, but clearly has not been extinguished). The Iranian regime’s control of women is vast and harsh. A severe and modest dress code including mandatory hijab is widely enforced, with the “morality police” roaming the streets and beating women who don’t comply; as is common in many authoritarian regimes, the authorities will sometimes relax enforcement, only to suddenly scale it up and make an example of some poor soul who did the wrong thing at the wrong time, creating a pervasive sense of fear and insecurity. Men have many more rights than women to jobs, money, property, power, and lives free from violence. Sons inherit more than daughters; widows barely get any their deceased husbands’ property, leaving them impoverished or dependent on whoever does; a woman’s testimony in court is worth only a fraction of a man’s; children almost always go to their fathers in cases of divorce, making it impossible for many Iranian women to escape abusive marriages; Iranian women are allowed to get degrees, but they cannot travel abroad without their husbands’ or fathers’ permission. Husbands can bar their wives from working. Men who abuse or kill women too often face little or no punishment.

The Iranian regime tends to clamp down harder on women’s rights when it feels under threat. “When the government faces unsolvable problems, it turns to issues it considers controllable,” one Iranian human rights lawyer told DW. “The oppression of women has become a central instrument of state power demonstration.”

Subscribe now

This is not unique to Iran. When autocrats grab power, they almost universally begin bulldozing the rights of women and minorities. Autocracy itself hinges on hierarchy, with a strongman at the top. Autocrats understand that their followers often want to see facsimiles of that hierarchy in their personal lives, with them at the top — and the easiest way to do this is to enforce gender hierarchies. This also creates a broader social normalization of top-down male rule, which of course the autocrat needs to be considered legitimate (an agent of the state who calls an unarmed woman a “fucking bitch” as he kills her and enjoys near-universal defense from the regime is representative, not anomalous). That the autocratic and theocratic Iranian government is also a fundamentally misogynistic one is not a coincidence, but a feature and a necessity of autocratic and theocratic regimes.

Supporters of and apologists for Islamism love to claim that they are the ones really truly standing up for Muslim women in opposition to a cunning West that uses feminism as a dirty trick to justify war and regime change. Like most widely-believed lies, this one has a grain of truth to it: The invasion of Afghanistan, for example, was bolstered by a sudden right-wing interest in the rights of Afghan women who had been long oppressed by the Taliban. But the cynical appropriation of feminist activism by George W. Bush and his administration — men and a few women who opposed women’s rights in just about every other context — is not the same thing as actual feminists beating the war drum. And I think you’ll have a very hard time finding many actual feminists today who argue that, because the Iranian regime oppresses women, the US should invade Iran, depose its leader, and usher in a new golden age of gender equality (this did not exactly work out well in Afghanistan).

But the misappropriation of feminist politics is now common among conservative reactionaries, pro-Islamists, and autocracy supporters. Some of it comes from a familiar “separate but equal” view of gender equality: That women and men have equal dignity in the eyes of God, but different roles and obligations and therefore different rights. In this line of reasoning, men having more authority and power and freedom than women isn’t indicative of inequality, but of the reality of different needs and abilities. Another line is that actually, Iranian women want theocratic rule and mandatory hijab, and so do millions of Muslim women around the world.

This is, of course, hot bullshit. That some women want to see other women oppressed (and yes, legally mandating that women wear specific “modest” garments is oppressive and misogynist) is not a good argument for oppressing women. That some people want to impose their religion on everyone else is not a good argument for theocracy. Lots of people have bad idea and want bad things. The foundational ideal behind liberal democracy is that generally, people should get to choose their own leaders and determine their own paths, while minority and long-persecuted groups should also be protected from the tyranny of the majority — everyone gets individual liberty, the collective gets self-governance, and if the results are bad you get to change your leaders through elections. This is admittedly an imperfect and horribly inefficient system, and also, to paraphrase a line you have certainly heard, better than all the other systems we’ve come up with.

Subscribe now

In short: The Iranian protesters no doubt have a wide set of beliefs when it comes to their country’s future and rights of their countrywomen. But what they’re demanding now is very simple: It’s the right to decide their own future. And the first thing they want is an end to the tyrannical misogynists who have strangled their nation for nearly half a century.

This should be an easy thing for liberals, leftists, moderates, and freedom-loving conservatives alike to support. But, no. The Iran protests have also revealed a deep moral rot among some in the American far left, and (not surprisingly) a profound hypocrisy and reflexive racism among many on the American right.

Read more

The Opinionated Ogre is 100% reader-supported. Please help me continue to inform/amuse/outrage you by becoming a supporting subscriber today for only $5 a month or just $50 a year (a 17% discount!)! If not, it’s all good. Welcome to the Ogre Nation anyway!

🔥Burn Fascism To The Ground!🔥

Prefer a one-time tip? We got you!

America has a familiar pattern. The racist white men of the right break things. The left tries to fix it. The racist white men of the right break them again, but worse than last time. The left tries to fix it again and is blamed for not fixing it fast enough. No one pays a price for what the racist white men have done.

It has been this way since we failed to hang the leaders of the Confederacy as the traitors they were. When we didn’t hunt down and kill every last member of the original KKK. When we didn’t arrest and execute treasonous American Nazis during and after WWII, but we put 120,000 Japanese-Americans in concentration camps “just in case they were dangerous.”1

We didn’t arrest and execute the tens of thousands of racist whites who lynched thousands of blacks over the course of eighty years of terror. We didn’t arrest right-wing anti-government militias planning to overthrow the government. We dragged our feet on arresting Trump. We didn’t shoot several hundred insurrectionists on January 6th. There is always an infinite amount of forbearance for the fucking racist white men of America.

But I believe we have reached a tipping point. I believe that this time will be different, and woe be to the fascist fucks who brought us to this point.

Americans are an extremely punitive people. We only see morality when someone suffers for their crime. We are also a deeply racist people and tend to equate “crime” with “Those People.” We love to see Black teenagers put away for 20 years for stealing a $50 pair of sneakers, but cry bitter tears of regret if a white rapist in his early 20s gets any time at all for raping an unconscious woman. After all, we don’t want to ruin his future! He’s just a kid! Blablabla…

Still, we remain a punitive people. The left, traditionally, has resisted this impulse. Yeah yeah yeah…we’re the mob that “cancels” people all the time. Why, cancel culture is what “forced” the right to embrace fascism in the first place!

Sure it did, fucko.

There is, however, a slight difference between publicly shaming racists and misogynists and other assorted idiots and creeps, and holding racist white men legally accountable for their crimes. As mentioned, we traditionally do not do that. We like to “look forward, not back.” We prefer to “move on for the good of the country.”

The left is usually too busy trying to put out the fires the racist white men have set to be bothered punishing the racist white men.

I watched the left move on from the Bush regime because they had a country to fix. I watched them move on from Trump 1.0 because we had a lot of big problems that needed to be addressed.

Even before Bush and Trump left office, people were talking about “getting back to normal.” They weren’t talking about revenge or accountability. They just wanted Republicans out of office to put a stop to their criming. We just wanted it over so we could get on with fixing what they broke and put it behind us.

That’s not what is happening now. Just one year into Trump’s second time in office and no one at all is talking about getting things back to normal.

Did you know the Opinionated Ogre has a weekly podcast? It’s true! New episodes every Thursday! Catch the latest episode here:

Join The Ogre Nation Conversation!

You have the people whining that it’s all over. Everything’s ruined and nothing can ever be fixed. Those people are boring and lack the capacity to see anything beyond the next ten minutes. Ignore them.

There are, however, a lot more people who see the future very clearly. In that future, the regime topples. How is not really important. It could collapse and be driven out of power like so many fascist regimes before it (possible). Or we could push through to the ‘26 and ’28 elections with results so lopsided that no amount of tampering will be enough to keep the regime in place (likely).

Regardless of how it happens, the regime falls, and then come the reprisals. This is what will make this time different. There will be no “moving on for the good of the country.” There will only be investigations and commissions and trials, and if the regime continues as it has, mob justice.

Am I advocating violence? No. Am I going to shed a tear over ICE agents being found and dragged into the streets? Nah.

I keep reminding people that one of America’s foundational stories is that we kill tyrants and we are a country with 400 million guns. Choosing to be the tyrant in that equation comes with a price.

We are also a country that has glorified killing Nazis for the last 80 years. Maybe making your organizing principle Nazism is not a good idea in, again, a country with 400 million guns as well as a taste for killing Nazis.

Recruiting Nazis is a great way to be labeled a Nazi. Seems like common sense to me. What happens after that is pretty much all your own fault.

But I’m not really hoping for, or relying on, mass street justice. I predict/demand tribunals that will make the Nuremberg Trials seem quaint and provincial in comparison.

This is a regime that has three more years of escalation ahead of it. We’re already at concentration camps, secret police, and invading other countries after one year. The regime is obviously trying to speed run the entire Nazi playbook, and mass graves, if they haven’t already been dug, are being planned as I type this.

ICE is murdering people in the streets. They will continue to murder, and the frequency will increase as they attempt to spark a riot under orders from Stephen Miller. The tens of thousands of white nationalists flocking to recruitment offices will soon be out on the streets, poorly trained and heavily armed, with the belief they have “total immunity.”

They are all very, very wrong. Even when Stephen Miller uses the autopen to give them all a blanket pardon, it will not stop individual states from coming after them. It will not stop the next president from firing them all, stripping them of their pensions, and launching investigations anyway.

Here’s the important bit: I am not the only person saying this. It’s not just angry people on social media saying it. It’s not just random people at protests saying it. It’s people with platforms saying it:

Here’s Paul Krugman:

Here’s a warning to all his other enablers: if you do not do something to stop this madman, you will go down in history as traitors to this country.

And here’s a warning to those directly perpetrating Trump-directed atrocities: He will not be in power forever, and I expect and hope that you will be held accountable, personally, and prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

It doesn’t get much more level-headed and calm than Paul Krugman. And yet, here he is making the same case I am. There will be no “looking forward.” There will be tribunals and accountability for individuals. There are a lot of individuals to hold accountable, and look at that, the regime has conveniently built all this lovely prison space for us to fill with traitors.

Every day, there are dozens of new videos of ICE and CBP agents brutalizing people. Every day, new stories of horror come out of ICE detention centers. Every day, the regime pushes new levels of cruelty, and there are those eager to lap it up.

We see you and we will make you pay for what you are doing. You will cry and weep and rage at how unfairly you are being treated. Your wails will fall on deaf ears. Americans are not a forgiving people, and you have hardened our hearts, something you will come to regret. I promise you. You will miss the days of bleeding heart liberals.

I have faith in the better nature of mankind. But that is not what I am relying on here. Like the sun, our better nature will shine through once more. Eventually. For now, I have faith in our endless capacity for rage and our desire for revenge and justice.

We have let this cancer of white nationalism go for too long, and the racist white men have gotten too comfortable. They decided to go in for the kill. But if they fail, and it’s increasingly looking like they will, maybe they can try another insurrection. Then we’re right back to that equation of 400 million guns and watering the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants.

Damn shame that would be. I’ll bring the popcorn.

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!

☠️This Subscription Kills Fascists☠️

Prefer a one-and-done tip? Click here!

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 294 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.