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.

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I tend not to write entire articles about a single tweet because it feels clickbaity, and I don’t give a fuck HOW hard Substack is trying to turn into a social media site that rewards clickbait, that shit is not happening. Been there, done that. Never again.1

However, every now and then, along will come a tweet that speaks to a larger issue. In this case, the tweet was funny as fuck, too.

If you don’t know who Joyce Carol Oates is, she’s a famous writer. Like, really famous. She’s so famous, I know who she is, and I’ve never read or seen a single piece of work she’s produced in the 60+ years she’s been running around earning awards (so many awards). My reading list skews towards Star Trek, Star Wars, Stephen King, comics and manga and I STILL know Joyce Carol Oates. So, you know, famous famous.

So you can bet Elon Musk knew exactly who the fuck she was, too, when Oates dropped a tactical nuke on his drug-addled head:

Oooooooohhhh snap! Musk’s response was…not great.

I really enjoy Musk swinging from basic schoolyard insults to “Grok, I am high on ketamine, please write an intelligent-sounding insult of Joyce Carol Oates for me.”

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Musk really is the most miserable person on the face of the earth. For all his money, he’s sad and lonely and joyless. He has no friends. He’s not a father to his children.2 He can’t even enjoy video games, and I KNOW he used to enjoy them because he grew up playing video games in the 70s and 80s just like I did. Speaking from personal experience, you never forget your first love. But now? His need to be macho alpha won’t even allow him to enjoy THAT. He has to be “the best player ever,” or he won’t even really play.

I cannot think of anything sadder or more pathetic than denying yourself the joy of video games because your stupid fucking ego demands everyone worship you as a god. That’s why Oates’ tweet burned Musk to his core. Every word of it was true and it was like looking into his own personal portrait of Dorian Gray. Except it was on the social media site he owns, written by someone more beloved than he’ll ever be and who will be remembered long after Musk is dead and only a footnote in history books.3

Now, as much as I enjoyed watching Musk whimper, what really caught my attention is that Oates perfectly sums up the problem of the obscenely rich and powerful right-wing parasites killing our democracy, our world, and our very humanity. I touched on this back in June.

They are incapable of experiencing true joy or happiness or love anymore. Something fundamental is broken within them, and their way to process that damage is to destroy everything and everyone around them.

There is a gothic horror role-playing series called “World of Darkness.” Think Dungeons & Dragons, but it takes place in modern times, and you play as a vampire or a werewolf or a ghost. Something that was once human but isn’t anymore. The goal is to cling to your humanity as long as possible.

The story is whatever you want it to be, but as you progress and become more powerful, you lose touch with what made you human. The less human you become, by definition, the more inhuman you become. Eventually, you lose all connection with humanity, and your character is done, consumed by darkness (hence the name “World of Darkness”).

I think about that a lot when I think about Elon Musk and Marc Andreesen and Peter Thiel and Donald Trump and his regime of unfathomably rich and powerful monsters.

Their money and power have disconnected them so thoroughly from their own humanity, they don’t even understand what it means to be human anymore. Elon Musk calls people “NPCs,” the acronym for “Non-Player Characters.” Those are the people in video games controlled by the computer. He doesn’t even see us as real.

Peter Thiel and Bryan Johnson, another creepy billionaire, inject themselves with the blood of teenagers in a desperate bid to stay young. Nothing inhuman about that, right?

Trump and Musk and Russ Vought, the “good Christian,” have engineered the death of hundreds of thousands of people in Africa through starvation.

Silicon Valley is overrun with billionaires and millionaires who openly talk about genocide because humans are worthless.

These are not people who wake up in the morning and experience human joy or happiness in any way whatsoever. They cannot because they are no longer truly human. They’re whatever their money and power have refashioned them into.

They cannot enjoy the same movies and music we all do, so they seek to control and destroy mass media.

They cannot love the same way we do so they seek to control and destroy all forms of love except that which conforms to their narrow definitions.

They cannot celebrate life the same way we do, or at all, really, so they seek to grind all joy from the world.

They no longer understand the rest of us because they no longer understand what it means to BE us. To love, to laugh, to experience happiness, to feel joy in little things for little reasons. All of that is gone from their lives, replaced by rage that someone, somewhere, is doing something a white Christian Nationalist does not approve of.

When the rich and powerful do not understand something, they fear it. And to fear is to hate. In turn, that hate moves them to lash out in violence because violence is easy and one of the few things that makes them feel better about being miserable all the time. Hurting others is one of the few balms to make them forget the emptiness of their own bleak lives.

In other times, this would make them an object of pity. Feel sorrow for the person whose only outlet is mindless rage. Ignore them and maybe they’ll go away. But these are dark times, and the monsters are on a murderous rampage. The only proper response is to beat them back into the darkness they crawled out of. To cut out their cancer and save what we can before they kill too many. To cage the monsters and make them pay for what they’ve done. To ensure that no one can ever accumulate enough money and power to strip them of their humanity like this again.

Oates has clearly identified the problem. It’s up to us to solve it.

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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!

The Blue Wave is here! No matter what a handful of scumbag Democrats try to do to dissuade us, it cannot be stopped. There are 356 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.

“This return represents more than the restoration of land — it is the restoration of balance, dignity, and our sacred connection to the places our ancestors once walked.”

On a sunny afternoon on the shores of Trout Lake in northern Wisconsin, a Catholic sister and a Tribal president sat together at a table and made history.

Two years ago, the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration, a Catholic congregation, had approached the Lac Du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, a part of the Ojibwe Nation, and the original caretakers of the land, with an unheard of proposition: Would they like a piece of their land back?

The question took the tribe by surprise, said Araia Breedlove, their public relations director. They had never had a private property owner offer up a piece of land, much less Catholic sisters. But after ironing out the details, the two parties were able to close the deal last Friday.

With a flick of a pen, Sister Sue Ernster signed a document to formalize the land transfer with Tribal President John D. Johnson Sr. for a two-acre lakefront property that the sisters had owned since 1966. The appraised value for the land known as Marywood, which includes a retreat center and cabins, was $2.6 million. It was sold back to the tribe for just $30,000, the price the sisters paid to buy it.

“This return represents more than the restoration of land — it is the restoration of balance, dignity, and our sacred connection to the places our ancestors once walked,” said John D. Johnson, Sr., Tribal President in a news release. “The Franciscan Sisters’ act of generosity and courage stands as an example of what true healing and partnership can look like. We are proud to welcome Marywood home, to ensure it continues to serve future generations of the Lac du Flambeau people.”

It is believed to be the first such transfer of land from Catholic sisters to a tribe in the country.

“It’s a huge step forward for our Land Back Movement and reclaiming what was once ours,” said Breedlove. “The land is in a predominantly White area, and so to have a piece of our culture back where it belongs is extremely important for us.”

The two parties’ histories are intertwined in more ways than just the land. Between 1883 and 1969, the sisters operated the St. Mary’s Catholic Indian Boarding School, part of a larger project by the federal government and the Roman Catholic Church to forcefully assimilate Indigenous children and strip them of their culture. Ojibwe children were sent there, mostly from the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, but also from the Lac Du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, according to the La Crosse County Historical Society. The Lac Du Flambeau Band also had a government boarding school on its reservation. In the United States around 500 boarding schools were built for the purpose of anglicizing over 60,000 Native children.

Over the last five years, the sisters have been on a journey to understand their history, educating themselves about the role their boarding school played in the cultural genocide that occured throughout the boarding school system. They’ve joined the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition and hosted events with tribal members during the National Day of Remembrance of Indian Boarding School Survivors on the land where the boarding school once existed.

Ernster, who is president of the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration, said that while they know there is nothing they could ever do to “fully repair the damage that has happened and the trauma that has happened,” they saw the returning of land as one way they could atone for the past. “This is what we can do to really live our values,” she said. “One of the Franciscan hallmarks is to be in right relationship with all of creation, all people. And so this is another opportunity to live into that.”

Breedlove hopes this is just the beginning of a reparations movement. “My hope is that it’s a ripple effect, not just for other Catholic institutions, but for other tribal communities to look at what they see as reconciliation,” she said. “No matter how hard and how hurtful some of the actions of the Franciscan Sisters or the Catholic Church were, it’s important that forgiveness is how we move forward.”

The tribe has a couple of ideas for how to utilize the property, including as a way to recruit medical professionals like doctors and nurses. “We have a really big housing crisis here in the North, and we can’t get providers up here,” Breedlove said. “So we’re really struggling to provide basic health care to our tribal members.” They would also like to use the land to host cultural camps. “Whether it’s teaching kids how to spear [fish] or language, or drumming, all that stuff. Those are important things that we’re really hoping to incorporate there as well,” she added.

Prior to giving the land back, the sisters had been part of a two-year program given by Land Justice Futures that focused on issues like political education and community organizing. The organization started out as an offshoot from another movement called Nones and Nuns, which started in 2016 and brought together community activists and artists with Catholic sisters to promote an exchange of learning and sharing around how to lead an ethical life at a time of so much injustice in the world. Many of the participants were working in activist spaces on issues like the climate crisis, and the Land Back Movement and were seeking an alternative to the hyper-individualist and capitalistic lifestyle of Americans.

Meanwhile Catholic sisters had already been examining their own environmental ethics and were working on following the leadership of Pope Francis, who had pushed for a new economic model that could benefit all people, as well as urging care for the planet as a whole. And, they could teach young activists a thing or two about living in a collective and in a system not focused on hoarding wealth; sisters typically live together and vow to relinquish their own property when they join a community.

Land Justice Futures was born as a way to bridge the two movements more intentionally around land stewardship. The Catholic Church, after all, was the root of the colonialism and capitalism that has fueled the dispossession of land and the climate crisis, said Sarah Jane Bradley, one of the cofounders of the organization. With its vast land holdings, there was an opportunity to help Catholic sisters make decisions about the future of their properties as their communities shrink and age.

“[There was] a gap and a need to organize landowners around climate justice and around redistribution of land toward the people who are restoring balance and thriving life to our ecosystems,” said Bradley. That could look like giving back land, like the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration did, or through other agreements like a cultural use easement, which could allow a tribe to access land for their own ceremonies and traditions, transitioning land to a community trust or donating the sales of a property to an organization that could use it to buy their own land. The groups that have benefitted from these partnerships so far have included Black farmers, Indigenous collectives and housing justice organizations.

And it’s women who are predominantly leading the movement, Bradley said. That includes the real estate agents, lawyers and advocates that specialize in land back, and the leaders in the movement space that work on issues like food sovereignty. “There’s something really special about that,” she said.

Now, with Catholic sisters participating in this work and relationship building, the movement takes on even more significance. “Catholic sisters are the progressive edge of the Catholic Church, and the Catholic Church is the largest private landowner in the world. So what sisters choose to do carries weight,” Bradley said.

“Them choosing to move towards right relationship in a traumatized and hurting world, is cultural acupuncture.”

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Recovering from a high-impact arm injury can feel overwhelming, especially after a motorcycle accident. The pain and limited mobility can make even simple daily tasks frustrating. Speaking with a motorcycle accident attorney early can help you understand your rights and get the support you need while focusing on healing. Many people worry they will never regain full function, but with the right care and guidance, improvement is possible. Taking small, consistent steps each day can make a big difference in your recovery journey.

Understanding Your Elbow Injury

Elbow injuries from high-impact accidents can range from fractures to dislocations or ligament tears. The type and severity of the injury play a big role in how quickly you can regain movement. Understanding exactly what’s injured helps you follow the right treatment plan and set realistic expectations for recovery.

The Importance of Early Medical Care

Getting prompt medical attention after a high-impact elbow injury can make a huge difference in your recovery. The sooner a doctor evaluates your injury, the better the chances of preventing long-term complications and regaining full function.

Accurate Diagnosis Matters

Early medical care allows doctors to identify the type and severity of your injury properly. This might include X-rays, CT scans, or MRIs to visualize fractures, dislocations, or ligament damage clearly.

Tailored Treatment Plans

Once your injury is diagnosed, your doctor can create a treatment plan specifically for you. This ensures you receive the right combination of rest, therapy, or other interventions to heal effectively.

Preventing Complications

Prompt care can help prevent issues such as chronic stiffness, improper bone healing, and long-term pain. Acting quickly reduces the risk of setbacks that could extend your recovery time.

Peace of Mind

Seeing a professional early can ease anxiety and help you feel more in control of your recovery. Knowing you are following the right steps from the start makes the process less overwhelming.

Steps to Restore Mobility and Strength

Regaining full use of your elbow takes patience and consistent effort. Following the right steps can help you rebuild strength and improve flexibility while reducing the risk of reinjury.

Start with Gentle Exercises

Light stretching and range-of-motion exercises are usually the first step after your doctor clears you. These exercises help prevent stiffness and keep the joint flexible without placing excessive strain on healing tissues.

Engage in Physical Therapy

A trained physical therapist can guide you through exercises that gradually strengthen muscles around your elbow. They can also correct movement patterns to reduce pain and support long-term recovery.

Use Occupational Therapy for Daily Activities

Occupational therapists can show you how to perform everyday tasks safely while your elbow is still recovering. This can include ways to dress, cook, or write without overstraining your arm.

Manage Pain and Swelling

Applying ice, gentle compression, or elevation can help reduce discomfort and inflammation. Following your doctor’s advice on pain management ensures you stay comfortable while staying active in recovery.

Be Patient with Your Progress

Recovery often takes weeks or months, and small improvements add up over time. Celebrating small milestones can keep you motivated and encourage continued effort.

Tools and Supports That Can Help

Recovering from a high-impact elbow injury is easier when you have the right tools and support. The right devices and guidance can protect your elbow, make daily tasks easier, and speed up your recovery.

Braces and Splints

Splints and braces aid in elbow stabilization and stop motions that can exacerbate your injury. You can lessen pain and protect your joint while it heals by wearing them as prescribed.

Adaptive Devices for Daily Tasks

Simple tools like ergonomic utensils, jar openers, or specially designed keyboards can make everyday activities easier. These devices help you stay independent while avoiding strain on your recovering elbow.

Support from Physical and Occupational Therapists

To increase strength and flexibility, therapists offer practical advice and exercises. They also provide methods for carrying out everyday tasks safely and without encountering difficulties.

Emotional and Community Support

Making connections with people recuperating from comparable injuries can ease anxiety and offer support. Online communities and support groups provide guidance, inspiration, and a sense of community that lessens the loneliness of the journey.

Common Challenges During Recovery

Recovering from a high-impact elbow injury is not always a straight path. Many people face obstacles that can be frustrating, but understanding them helps you stay prepared and patient.

Stiffness and Limited Mobility

Your elbow may feel stiff or difficult to move, especially after periods of rest or inactivity. Consistent exercises and gentle stretching can gradually improve flexibility and reduce discomfort.

Muscle Weakness and Fatigue

Muscles around your elbow can weaken during recovery, making everyday tasks more tiring. Building strength through guided exercises and physical therapy helps restore function over time.

Lingering Pain or Swelling

Pain or swelling can persist even with proper care, which can be discouraging. Using recommended pain management techniques and monitoring symptoms with your doctor can help manage these issues safely.

Emotional Frustration

Slow progress or setbacks can affect your mood and motivation. Recognizing these feelings as normal and seeking support from friends, family, or support groups can help you stay positive.

Fear of Reinjury

Many people fear that they will strain or injure their elbows again while going about their daily lives. Building confidence and avoiding setbacks can be achieved through gradual progress, appropriate technique, and the use of protective gear.

When to Consider Surgical Options

Most elbow injuries can improve with therapy and careful management, but sometimes surgery becomes necessary. Knowing when surgery might be the right choice helps you make informed decisions with your doctor.

Severe Fractures or Dislocations

If your elbow bones are broken or severely out of place, surgery may be required to realign and stabilize them. Proper surgical repair can prevent long-term deformity and restore better function than non-surgical methods.

Ligament or Tendon Tears

Serious rips in the tendons or ligaments supporting the elbow might not completely mend on their own. Surgical repair can help you regain strength and stability, allowing you to move normally again.

Persistent Pain or Limited Motion

When stiffness, pain, or limited mobility continue despite months of therapy, surgery might be recommended. Corrective procedures can improve the range of motion and reduce discomfort for everyday activities.

Consulting with Your Doctor

Your orthopedic surgeon will evaluate imaging, injury severity, and your recovery progress to determine if surgery is needed. Discussing risks, benefits, and realistic outcomes helps you feel confident in your decision.

Tips for Returning to Everyday Life

Getting back to your normal routine after a high-impact elbow injury takes time and careful planning. Following the practical tips can make the transition smoother and help prevent setbacks.

Gradual Return to Work

Ease back into your work instead of jumping in all at once. As your elbow gets stronger, try adjusting your duties or using supportive gear to reduce strain.

Resume Hobbies and Activities Slowly

Bring back your favorite hobbies—like sports or home projects—little by little. Pay attention to how your body feels, and don’t push too hard too soon to avoid setbacks.

Drive Safely

Depending on your movement and pain levels, driving again might take some time. Start by practicing in safe areas and follow your doctor’s advice before getting back on the road fully.

Maintain Good Recovery Habits

Keep up with your therapy exercises, stretches, and other recovery routines even after you’re back to normal activities. Staying consistent will help maintain your strength, flexibility, and joint health.

Celebrate Small Wins

Take time to appreciate the progress you make each week, no matter how small. Recognizing those moments keeps you motivated and helps you stay on track.

Conclusion

Healing from a serious elbow injury takes time and steady effort, but recovery is achievable with the right care and patience. Working closely with your medical team and following your recovery plan will help you regain mobility and strength. If your injury happened in a motorcycle crash, talking with an accident attorney can help you access the support and resources you need while you focus on healing.

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My very first school district is in the news yet again, and this time their troubles may usher in some bad legislative choices by the state of New Hampshire. 

I started out life in Claremont, New Hampshire. The first school I ever attended (Maple Avenue School) is still there and still operating (sadly, North Street School and Bluff Elementary are not). I can still vaguely remember the layout of the playground where I ran around with my friend, fellow country kid Becky Dole, and my first crush, Lanissa Sipitakowski. After third grade, my father's employers sent us to Pennsylvania, and I have almost never made it back to Claremont. Strolling through Google maps, it looks like our old house on the River Road might be gone. The Livingston farm right next door became factory buildings years ago. 

But I still notice when Claremont makes it into the news. 

In the 90s, Claremont was the face of two major lawsuits, among the first to bring the state to task for inadequately funding school districts (you can read about it in Andru Volinsky's book, The Last Bake Sale).

Claremont is in the news again, and it's related to funding, again. It appears that all sorts of accounting screw-ups resulted in a district that believed it was financially healthy, but instead is in a real big empty hole. A deficit of millions of dollars. A deficit so problematic that the district had to get a $4 million loan from the Claremont Savings Bank to insure they could open the schools last fall. The superintendent and business manager have both terminated their employment with the district. 

This is a good example of how some huge school district messes can be the result of local issues and not state policy ideas. But this crisis has opened the door to a state policy idea, and it's a particularly bad one.

A last-minute amendment to a bill in the legislature would give New Hampshire the option of a state takeover of troubled school districts.

This is not a new idea. It has been tried before-- that's how we know it's a bad idea.

Ohio has tried state takeover and it has not gone well (Failure Exhibit A is, oddly enough, the first district that ever hired me to teach) because, among other things, bringing hire guns from outside the district to deal with its issues while simultaneously trying to learn what they are-- not a great plan. In fact, Lorain had local-style financial and accounting problems similar to Claremont's, and the guy who was brought in to fix them was a pretty complete disaster. 

Or we could look at Tennessee's Achievement School District, a bold school takeover plan that was supposed to take schools at the very bottom of the ratings and catapult them to the top-ish. It failed. It failed a lot, through several leaders and over the course of several years. 

School takeovers mostly fail, and they mostly for a set of reasons, most of all because they assume that the state can find somebody who knows how to run a struggling school district and is, for some reason, available to hire. 

Many of them also fail because their actual goal is not to fix the district, but to dismantle it and charterize the scraps, sometimes because of a childlike belief in the imaginary awesomeness of charters and sometimes because of a grown-up belief in the real power of collecting piles of taxpayer money.

The New Hampshire bill has its own interesting twists. New Hampshire already has a bill that says the state can revoke a charter school's charter or put the school in probation if the school commits any of several listed Naughty Things. So the argument for the new public school law is that public schools should be under the same sort of watch. 

The stated goal is to get audits done and audit results public. However, the proposed amendment is extremely broad. A school district can be put on probation "if the school fails “generally accepted standards” for fiscal management; if it violates state or federal law; if the school materially violates a state administrative rule or standard; if the school does not file an annual report of its finances; if the school does not follow other state or federal reporting requirements; and if the school “fails to remedy” the causes of its probation." 

Right there in the middle of the list you find that violating a state board administrative rule or standard could trigger probation, which is wide enough to drive a small planet through, Basically, the state board would be free to go after pretty much any district it was in the mood to take over. 

If the school fails probation, they get a state-appointed administrator-- a school district tsar with the combined powers of a superintendent and a school board. The very first power listed by the bill is the power to 

Override any decisions of the school district's board or the school district superintendent, or both, concerning the management and operation of the school district, and initiate and make decisions concerning the management and operation of the school district

This kind of super-CEO is what Ohio tried, and the question becomes where the heck do you find someone with this massive assortment of powers and competencies who is not already in a perfectly good job? It's an impossible job, a job that requires someone to be the best super-superintendent ever under the worst possible conditions. I suspect the assumption is that the school district is in trouble because it's being run by bozos, so any reasonably competent bozo can fix it or any barely functional charter can replace it, which mostly tells me that the bozos involved in this particular show are the ones writing laws.

The other problem with school takeover pans is that they never, ever include a part where some collection of wise people look at the troubled district and try to figure out what the problem is and what resources could be best used to fix it. This is the test-and-punish part of No Child left Behind and Race To The Top writ large-- look for a quick and easy way to determine a school is "failing," then target it not for special assistance, but for dismantling, defunding, and/or privatizing.

We could argue all day about the ethics of the takeover approach, but we can skip all that because it's like arguing whether or not it's a good idea to get spiders out of your house by setting fire to building-- it just doesn't work. Here's hoping New Hampshire doesn't turn itself into one more disproving ground for this failed policy. 

America’s Global Standing Takes Yet Another Hit

This autumn, I was supposed to visit the United States as an official guest. Together with other European journalists, I was selected to participate in a friend-making program organized by the State Department.

For two weeks, I was to travel across four states, visit media organizations and universities, discuss journalism with Americans and meet with authorities at various levels. Everything was organized, planned, carried out and paid for by the U.S. authorities, part of a program that has been around for many decades.

That was not how it turned out.

For decades, the United States’ international trademark has been to win hearts and minds. But something  big changed in a short time: President Donald Trump now sees more value in blackmail, punitive tariffs and ultimatums than in ‘soft’ diplomacy.

Then the same authorities who invited me to their country as their guest  suddenly went silent.

This story begins a few years ago. A couple of diplomats from the U.S. Embassy in Oslo asked if they could nominate me to participate in an exchange programm for young people, better known as the International Visitor Leadership Program or IVLP.

Since 1940, this has been an important tool for the American State Department to promote diplomacy and understanding between the U.S. and the rest of the world.

Arctic Circle Visit

The diplomats who recruited me  were visiting Tromsø, a small city north of the Arctic Circle where I live, to familiarize themselves with the media landscape in Northern Norway. At that time, a controversy surrounding the arrival of American nuclear submarines in Norway had reached the columns of the regional newspaper Nordlys, where I was working.

Geopolitics above the Arctic Circle, where the golf stream can create shirtsleeve weather in December and further north Norway borders the Russian Federation, are also  local. My columns and articles, and those of others, were full of reporting on American foreign and security policy.

My immediate reaction to the official invitation: why not?

I’ve never been particularly interested in the United States. I cannot recite lists of American presidents or name all 50 states. But I have always been fascinated by how Americanism plays out around the world, especially in Europe.

In late summer, confirmation of my trip came from the U.S. embassy. My departure from Norway was set for Sept. 13. I received a list of all the participants along with the cities and states we would visit. This seemed most promising.

The specific program is called the Edward R. Murrow Program for Journalists: Investigative Reporting. It was designed to give European news media professionals a better understanding of the American news media landscape today. It’s named for the American journalist who virtually invented radio news, the CBS correspondent who broadcast live from London rooftops as Nazi bombs fell down around him, as you can hear a bit off here.

I was told to report to the consular section of the U.S. Embassy in Oslo for a visa. That’s when things started to get interesting. For my previous trips no visa was required, but that was before Trump began his second term.

Soft diplomacy

For decades, the United States’ international trademark has been to win hearts and minds. Some 230,000 people have participated in an IVLP program, a dozen of whom became Nobel Prize winners. About 500 are current government officials, according to the US State Department. They participate in programs ranging from security policy, art and culture to women’s rights and leadership development.

But something  big changed in a short time: President Donald Trump now sees more value in blackmail, punitive tariffs and ultimatums than in “soft diplomacy.” Support for civil society is being cut. The country is withdrawing from multilateral cooperation. This creates opportunities for other nations.

China has long recognized that power is not only about economic growth and military build-up, but also about narrative. Soft power—the ability to shape others through peaceful persuasion—has therefore become a central part of Beijing’s global strategy.

Implications Explored

What does this mean for Europe?

The Trump administration’s attacks on the press, political opponents and control functions are now so commonplace that they are no longer news. Both the U.S. civil service and political appointees are now under constant pressure from the president and his allies to conform to whatever Trump wants.

What significance does this have for the U.S.’s relationship with us in Europe? Purges and reorganizations lead to a loss of expertise and institutional memory. This could backfire when a major crisis arises. Employees in ministries are being reassigned or fired as Trump loyalists are appointed to those posts. To Team Trump, the federal civil service is the enemy. The room for experienced federal experts to maneuver is limited.

Just One Question

When I arrived at the consular section in Oslo, I was asked only one question: ‘What do you do for a living?’

Then I’m told that all social media accounts must be set to public. They will be screened.

“All of them?” I ask.

“All of them,”  the visa officer replied. “And we need your usernames.” She listed examples: Snapchat, X, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Flickr…

I lose track.

“Do you have X?” she asked.

“No.”

I deleted it when Elon Musk bought it, but I refrain from mentioning that.

“OK, all the others, then.”

“Is Flickr considered social media?” I ask., referring to a photo storage service.

“Yes.”

What to do?

I’m handed a document. It says: “Limited access to, or visibility of, online presence could be construed as an effort to evade or hide certain activity.”

What do you do in such a situation? This violates the fundamental principles of any journalist. Should I give the U.S. access to all my social media content, I ask myself silently?

On the other hand, it is possible to be pragmatic and swallow some principles for the greater good. I could give in and get a first-hand impression of a regime that is in the process of eating away at liberal democracy from the inside.

Most important, doesn’t the U.S. already have control over what I write on social media? Not that there’s anything exciting there anyway. A few pictures of my garden, my friends, and me traveling together and some soccer matches plus some articles I’ve written.

Well, I decided to put my accounts on “public” as the visa officer asked.

Next, I’m invited to a meeting with the embassy’s diplomats, where we go through the program’s purpose and content. The itinerary is confirmed. I’m sent lists of other participating journalists and the cities we will visit.

Weeks go by. I ask about the visa.

‘You will be notified when the application has been processed,’ is the response from the embassy’s consular section.

Time to Go

The day of departure arrives. The diplomats who invited me to the United States are unable to respond when I ask about the promised visa.

‘The visa process takes on a life of its own,”  I’m told.

At last I finally got my passport back in an envelope, but without a visa.

Former CIA Director William J. Burns has described how American diplomacy is now being undermined from within. What was once a strength — a foreign service that represented the United States with knowledge and long-term vision — is now seen as an obstacle by the Trump administration. Even a visa invitation from the State Department to participate in a program organized by them is not enough in my case to be allowed to enter the US.

I have wondered a lot about why I never got a visa. I have never in my career covered U.S. politics. I have never been arrested, used drugs or been involved in criminal activity.

Could it be a Facebook post from January 2021 that raised a red flag at a visa office in Washington D.C., where I referred to how the storming of Congress was covered in the Russian media? Or was it a debate on the night of the presidential election that a friend and I organized in Tromsø, entitled “MAGA 2.0 or MAGA Splash,” that set off alarm bells?

I have no idea. I will probably never know.

I have since tried to find out why I never got a visa. But neither the consular section at the embassy nor the diplomats who invited me to the U.S. have been forthcoming. I hear nothing from the former. From the diplomats, the message is that the visa process is something they have no insight into or control over. Sorry, they say.

Just as this column was to be published I heard back from the American embassy about the reasons my trip was cancelled. The anodyne explanation came in an email:

“Mr. Trellevik,
Thank you for your email and apologies for our delayed response.  The visa was refused because your program start date passed before the visa could be issued.  We are unable to issue J-1 visas when the purpose of travel no longer exists.
Thank you for your email.”

This is, of course, just a way to get away from the basic issue—they ‘waited me out’ until the program was over before refusing to issue me a visa.

Balance of Power

Trump’s new term is more focused on attempting to change the entire balance of power and dismantle the rules-based world order. I’ve read stories of foreign journalists being arrested and deported in America.

I called an acquaintance in the U.S. and aired my concerns long before I realized that I would never get a visa to participate in the program.

“You have to come over and report on how democracy is being dismantled piece by piece,” she said, adding a dire warning for me and my fellow Europeans:

“It is an illusion that what is happening now in the US cannot happen in Europe.”

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The post Team Trump Rudely Reneges On An Invitation appeared first on DCReport.org.

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For the last 3 or 4 months, maybe a bit longer, Marjorie Taylor Greene has been a loud, obnoxious asshole. OK, she’s always been a loud, obnoxious asshole but she’s been directing the majority of her bile at her own party.

Here’s the thing. This isn’t the usual internecine fighting among Republicans where they’re trying to one-up each other in who can be the shittest person. That’s so normal we hardly even notice it anymore. Instead, Greene is blasting her own party for protecting pedophiles and keeping the government shut down, and refusing to extend the ACA subsidies.

She’s also gone against Trump on his warmongering, his support for the slaughter in Gaza, and his failures on the economy.

Don’t get it twisted. Greene is no liberal. She’s still a racist scumbag overflowing with tinfoil hat nonsense to appeal to the MAGA base of inbred imbeciles.

So what’s happening here?

It’s not super complicated. Greene is a cockroach. Her job is to KEEP her job. She is a political animal and her survival instinct is well-honed. When Trump was ascendant, she was all-in on Trumpism.

But Trump isn’t so ascendant anymore, is he?

Long before Tuesday’s bludgeoning, Greene clearly saw the shift in the country and decided, “Fuck this. Trump is a losing bet.” Not every Republican who keeps their wagon hitched to Trump will be wiped out when it all implodes in spectacular fashion, but a lot of them will be left in pieces on the ground. Greene looks determined to avoid that fate.

Does that make her a hero of the resistance? Fuuuuuck no. Is the enemy of my enemy my friend? Absolutely fucking not. We tried that with Liz Cheney and, not for nothing, Cheney went all in on supporting Democrats to stop Trump. That is not what Greene is doing here in the slightest.

Greene is building a place for herself in the GOP in a post-Trump world. A world she sees coming in the very near future.

That’s a problem for Trump.

I keep pointing this out (because it’s true): Fascism is based on the illusion of absolute power and inevitability. It can’t be stopped because it’s irresistible and it’s what the people want, bla bla fucking bla. That’s sometimes true because people are stupid and don’t realize what they’re giving away until it’s too late (Germany, 1933; Russia, 2000; Hungary, 2010). But it’s still always an illusion that has to be maintained at all costs. Once the illusion is broken, the entire premise of fascism: power and strength and control, crumbles and the system collapses.

It’s been quite some time since Trump and his regime projected real strength. Even longer since they projected any kind of control. Tuesday’s electoral bloodbath showed how little support Trump has and just like that, Greene doesn’t seem like an outlier. She seems like a prophet.

Allegedly, she’s not the only Republican who sees the writing on the wall. A month ago, Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell said at least 100 House Republicans were ready to vote to release the Epstein files. There’s new reporting from David Shuster backing this up:

To understand why so many are (allegedly) ready to break ranks, it’s really important to understand that Republicans have made opposing pedophilia a central organizing principle of their party. Accusing everyone they hate of being part of a shadowy global cabal of wealthy pedophiles probably seemed like a good idea at the time. The problem is that it turned out to be actually true and the leader of their cult is a central figure of the cabal. Whoops.

Worse, the left is well-known for burning its own to the ground. We rarely circle the wagons for real crimes and certainly not pedophilia. There will be no “both sides” to this. The right, on the other hand, very much circles the wagons and makes a million excuses. If there are 10 Democrats in the files, we will demand all 10 go to prison. If there 100 Republicans? Fox News will demand all 10 Democrats go to prison. See how this works? But the base won’t accept that.

What happens when you have built a cult whose central premise is that pedophiles and anyone protecting them must be destroyed? How do you reprogram it? You really can’t. Greene knows it. So does the rest of the party, which is why so many of them have been working nonstop to hide the Epstein Files.

But they can’t be hidden forever, and too many people have seen them for the files to be “accidentally” destroyed. They’re going to come out and Trump will be exposed as a pedophile. The very thing his cult has been trained to loathe above all other things.

There is already a thriving opposition to Trump. Add millions of MAGA who will not tolerate a child rapist in the Oval Office, even if they won’t support a Democrat, and it’s all over for the regime.

This is what Greene is anticipating. Now, the question is: Did she start too early or will she be seen as a visionary by her supporters?

Greene is up for reelection in the midterms. It’s going to be a wave election and Republicans all across the country are going to be pummeled into dust. Greene’s seat is pretty secure. She won her last election by 30 points. Even a massive blue wave is not going to touch her. But I’ll bet a shiny nickel she’s going to draw a primary challenger. Someone eager to suck up to Donald Trump, who is undoubtedly tired of her criticism.

If so, pay attention to that race. If Greene wins her primary, that means the MAGA base has not turned on her for turning on Trump. And I promise you, Trump will speak out against her, loudly, because he will want to send a message to the rest of the party not to cross him. But if Greene wins anyway? That means the base is no longer behind Trump. And if Trump cannot command the base, he commands nothing, including the Republican Party.

Greene is trash. She always was, and she always will be. But I think she heralds something incredibly dangerous for Trump and very good for the rest of us. The enemy of my enemy is not my friend, but I sure as hell am going to cheer her on in her quest to outlive Trump because her success speeds up the end of American fascism.

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The Blue Wave is here! There are 360 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.