I’m certainly guilty. I bet you are, too. Someone wants to talk about the latest Trump-related catastrophe and your reaction goes something like, “I don’t even want to talk about it. It gets me upset and I’m just so tired of all of it. I can’t believe he’s even in there.” Sound familiar? Something like that, anyway. Well, too bad. We all need to pay attention and start dealing with it. We all need to face what our country is quickly devolving into. There were plenty of people in 1930’s Germany who didn’t want to deal with what was going on there, either. Yes, I went there.

You don’t even have to look hard for examples of the outlandish behavior and characters that we see on a daily basis. Just a quick perusal leads us to:

Chicago: ICE descends on an apartment building in the middle of the night. Some thugs even rappelling down from a helicopter onto the roof. Doors are kicked in; people ripped from beds (women and children indiscriminately included); everyone taken out into the street and questioned; children zip tied; and some US citizens were included in this raid. In all 35 people were taken into custody by ICE for being in the country illegally of which only 8 had criminal records, some of which were just traffic violations. After the smoke cleared, it appears that the absentee owners of the building had used ICE to clear their building so they could repair it and rent it to other people. There’s also been ICE-related shootings in Chicago and a raft of official citizen complaints concerning their behavior. One interesting anecdote witnessed by multiple reporters. Someone on a bike rode up to 4 armed ICE agents in downtown Chicago and yelled, “Trump sucks.” They chased him for over 5 city blocks and he escaped. Ask yourself: why are armed men, who can only detain people based on their immigration status, chasing a US citizen down city streets because he yelled something that 75 million of us feel? What would they do if they caught him? These new ICE hires are Trump’s personal army. Their loyalty is very much not to the Constitution, but to him. Where has history shown us that before? Think carefully.

Kristi Noem: She spells it with an “I” just like every exotic dancer. Ms. Noem is the Secretary of Homeland Security. She has no experience with law enforcement or terrorism, but she really is the Secretary of Homeland Security. Based on insider reporting, Trump named her as Secretary as a favor to Corey Lewandowski, who is rumored to have had an ongoing affair with Noem for many years. Prior to being Secretary, Noem was most famous for being the governor of South Dakota who admitted to shooting her puppy for not being trainable. She also shot a goat. She voluntarily put both those animal murders in her biography. She’s not the brightest bulb, to say the least. Her nickname is “ICE Barbie” for the elaborate photo ops that she sets up for herself. This is all just background. What Kristi did this week is she ordered the US Coast Guard to include in their annual budget funding for 2 private jets for her and other DHS senior staff. The jets are Gulfstream G700 luxury jets and the price tag is a cool 200 million taxpayer dollars. I remember just 10 years ago when senior government staff could be removed just for flying first class. Them days are long gone.

Supreme Court: You may argue that the Supreme Court of the United States should not be included in an essay about silly or dangerous actions by Trump lackeys. You’d be wrong. These are 6 Trump lackeys. Throughout the summer, this Supreme Court, through their “shadow docket”, has rubber stamped Trump’s egregious, blatantly unconstitutional actions. All while not providing any legal rationale or reasoning for their decisions. Now, they are poised to completely gut the Voting Rights Act and allow states to gerrymander their congressional districts to minimize the electoral impact of minorities. This is an action that Chief Justice Roberts has dreamed about for 30 years. The Voting Rights Act has been in place for over 60 years. but it will soon be history.

Tom Homan: Here’s your poster boy for jackbooted thugs. During Trump’s first term, he was the head of ICE. Now, he’s the Border Czar. Responsible for all deportation activities. This is the guy who has publicly threatened to arrest sitting Democratic governors for interfering with ICE operations by their public pronouncements. Someone should tell him that he does not have arrest powers. I didn’t include him here, though, for his normal boorish statements and actions. Nope, he did something special. In September 2024, Tommy accepted a bag containing $50,000 from 2 undercover FBI agents in a sting operation in exchange for “helping the agents (businessmen) secure future government contracts related to border security”. After the change in administration, Emil Bove III, former personal attorney to The Orange One, and by then a high ranking DOJ official, encouraged the DOJ to drop the investigation. Mr. Bove is now a federal appeals court judge (really!). Previously, the DOJ was considering charges related to bribery, wire fraud, and conspiracy. The case was dropped and the final bow on this gift was placed by Kash Patel, FBI Director and chief Trump bootlicker, who said in a statement, “…the Justice Department must remain focused on real threats to the American people, not baseless investigations.” He accepted a bag of money from 2 undercover FBI agents. Baseless?!

Himself: No roll call of administration clowns would be complete without bringing in Bozo himself. Each and every day there are at least 2 actions of his that could make this list. How do you winnow it down? You don’t even try. You just pick a few at random. Trump suspended all trade talks with Canada, our second most important trade partner, because he didn’t like a tv commercial that Ontario sponsored criticizing the imposition of tariffs on international trade. (I’ve seen it. It is really an effective message.) To review, the President, a grown man, cancelled trade talks with the country that we are closest to in the entire world because he didn’t like a commercial on his tv. Who makes this stuff up? Also this week, Trump destroyed the East Wing of the White House. He doesn’t own that house. That’s our house. He and his smelly body are just residing there for 4 years. He had announced that he was going to add a horrendous ballroom to the White House, but promised that it would be adjacent to the East Wing and not even touch the structure. Then, this week he demolished a major part of the White House. Not a peep from Republicans in Congress. He has the aesthetic taste of an aging Madame in a Nevada whorehouse and he’s running amok in our White House. Finally, Trump has decided that there is a war between someplace and us and that war gives him the authority to blow private boats out of the water and summarily kill civilians. No one in this country is allowed to just execute people suspected of drug smuggling without a trial and verdict. Even with a trial, trading in drugs is not a capital offense. So, no killing. What the hell is going on? Is this an attempt to goad Venezuela into war? Is this further evidence of Trump’s dementia? Or is this just an unfettered school yard bully with military toys at his disposal?

The above represents just a taste of what Trump and his flying monkeys have been up to this week alone. We didn’t even talk about Pam Bondi, the insult comic, or Steven Miller, the man without a reflection. Save them for later. The point is that this country cannot afford to have all of us throw up our hands in exasperation and opt out of participation. Remember: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.” I just made that up. No, it’s been attributed to various authors, but it is true and it is applicable to today.

Also, if you’re one of those people who cannot quite believe that modern man could have evolved from creatures that crawled out of the primordial ooze, reading the above should put your doubts to rest.

Post Notes

Christopher Hitchens, the late essayist, journalist and atheist and a man I admired, said, “Writing isn’t harder than speaking, but it’s lonelier. It’s a conversation with someone who isn’t there.” Hitchens was a masterful speaker and writer and he believed the two were intimately connected. He would continually remind his students to find their “voice”. He would say, “write more like the way you talk”. Never to compare myself to him or any great author, but I’ve always tried to follow his advice. Anyone who knows me when reading these essays would say, “Yeah, that’s the way Mike talks. What a pain in the ass.”

God, I used to love to hear Christopher Hitchens talk. What command of the language. What erudition. What a voice. He could convince the Pope to turn to atheism.