They are stealing from you

I keep catching myself having this feeling that surely this cannot stand. Something will be done. It's such an act of hubris to think that. Especially coming from an American. To expect that everyone of course recognizes the value of our lives. A favor we've almost never extended to anyone else.

I don't know. Happy Presidents' Day.

What about this:

"The richest man alive, an actual Nazi, and a real sicko, who was not elected to anything, is illegally firing tens of thousands of people from critical government roles to further enrich himself, and the president he has usurped, all to make Americans' lives worse."

That has to be among the biggest layups of all time for messaging right? They are stealing from you. They are robbing us all blind right under our noses. Not just robbing us today but also robbing us of a future.

And yet...

It seems like the most self-evident counter-argument I've ever seen in my life and it also happens to have the added benefit of being 100% true! You would expect to be hearing it shouted in chorus every day from every media angle available. Unfortunately this all presupposes that elected Democrats find billionaires abhorrent, which they do not, and that they believe lifting up the vulnerable is their job, which they do not.

Here take this instead though.

"I am a Democratic Governor with a plan to aggressively cut taxes for businesses by $10.5 billion by 2029 — and I am ready to work with Democrats and Republicans to get it done," Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro posted over the weekend. Ladies and gentleman your 2028 Democratic frontrunner.

And here's Virginia senator Mark Warner at their little retreat in Munich.

"I think the majority of the party realizes that the ideological purity of some of the groups is a recipe for disaster and that, candidly, the attack on over-the-top wokeism was a valid attack."

What groups man? What groups?

Everyone loves this shit guys please keep it up.

Elon Musk and his band of brigands have been busy decimating the government agencies that safeguard our food and drinking water, our forests and rivers and parks, our veterans, and the safety and wellbeing and education of our children. They're tearing apart agencies that protect consumers from fraud and financial scams, those that protect people from current and future diseases, and the ones that keep the fucking planes in the air! To name just a few. And more recently they've been fucking with the IRS and the safety of our nuclear weapons.

The bull has exited the china shop and is now flailing and kicking around wildly inside of the nuclear launch facility.

Any single one of those things is a rhetorical hammer that can and should be wielded. It's like the opposite of the thing with Thor's hammer in this case too. Literally anyone willing to try can pick it up.

These are not just abstract government agencies being downsized here either. These are real human being who are losing their jobs and therefore the ability to support their families and of course their health insurance. Many of them have been sharing their stories on Reddit.

"The thing that I can’t get over is that the actual richest man in the world directed my fucking firing," one wrote. "I make $50k a year and work to keep drinking water safe. The richest man in the world decided that was an expense too great for the American taxpayer."

I know you know all of this. We just have to figure out a way to make sure our supposed leaders start admitting what is happening out loud with the regularity and urgency that is required. Every damn day. We need to get them to grasp the enormity of the moment. And if they won't do anything it's their ass.

Please also remember that this cult of destruction is the minority in this country. And while many of them did sign up for this and are delighting in it I don't think it will be long before even a lot of Trump voters stop liking the taste of billionaire piss being sprayed all over their face.

This is an opportunity to galvanize people. To give them something to fight for. Something to believe in. Especially people who have never been given any reason to believe anyone was fighting for them. The tens of millions of non-voters who think – often with good reason – that both parties are the same.

And it's all been served up on a platter for anyone willing to lead. If not one of our representatives then fuck it let it be one of us. All of us.

Find a protest in your city. There are many of them going on all around the country today. Consider partaking in one of these anti-Tesla protests as well.

I've spent all week shoveling snow and yesterday was the worst of it yet this season. Six plus inches of the kind of wet slush you could break your back lifting one shovel-full. And this morning it's all turned to ice. A slick black frozen pond as far as I can see. I really don't want to do it but I'm going to go out and contend with that now. No one else is going to. Well my wife might but you know what I mean. You get the analogy here.

It's not as bad as it was in 2015 which I was just reminded of in some phone memories. Now that was a blizzard.

I'm coming up to the deadline for my next collection of stories and poems so I've been a bit preoccupied with that lately. It's about a world that was already bad before it became this new kind of bad.

Here's a story from the book I quite like. In a surprising twist for me it's about death. Paid-subscribers can read it below. Thanks for being here as always.

The hands I shook

I was so sick. Absolutely fucked. No two ways around the thing. Believe me I puked and cried over it and consulted every hack I could find on the computer and then after all of that there was nothing to be done. My close personal friends the doctors had become more aloof to me every passing month. Distancing themselves from my stench. Like I had done something wrong to them. Which I had. I had failed them in fact in my unhealing. 

A coach doesn’t exactly blame you per se for missing the final shot but they do remember how hard you had or had not practiced all season. Whether or not you had listened. Paid attention to fundamentals.