To any aliens trapped on this particular Earth in this timeline: We’re really sorry.
We’re really sorry that law and sanity didn’t prevail. We really thought that unity and diversity would have more swing than the tired cliches of divide and conquer. But we got screwed by promises like “He’ll give us cheap gas.”

We – and specifically, I mean my generational cohort – are not as used to adversity as we like to project. In our timeline, there were no great wars or assassinations. There was strife, but mostly along political lines, which usually was resolved by subsequent elections.

This recrowning of Trump as King of America is a culmination half a century in the making–a very long game with catastrophic consequences for democracy. And it lands on top of mental, geopolitical, and climatological crises that, each on their own, are staggering to the imagination.
However, we still have one great weapon that has always been effective against would-be dictators: humor. Like your average thin-skinned megalomaniac, Trump cannot abide being laughed at or mocked. His fragile little ego is in constant need of succor from his minions and Fox News. That is one weapon available to the commonwealth.

On the legislative side, Thom Hartmann and other Constitutional scholars argue that the Democrats must immediately establish a shadow government—what the British call the loyal opposition–which is charged with producing alternative nominees to replace Trump’s rich cronies and propose sane legislation to counter Trump’s demented rantings thinly veiled as policy ideas. Unfortunately, the Dems’ behavior thus far–as shown in the unanimous vote for warmonger Marco Rubio as Secretary of State – has been more in line with the puppet government of Vichy-era France. This is spineless and unacceptable. As Kyle Kulinski said last week on his podcast, “It is an option to just say no to everything.”

Telling the truth to power can also be effective. Witness Bishop Budde’s interfaith sermon at the Washington National Cathedral on January 21, where she got Trump and his brood firmly in her sights and, for two and a half minutes, read them what the Good Book has to say about mercy, compassion, and their plans for mass deportations, redefining gender, and causing fear and trauma to the most vulnerable among us. Their facial expressions changed swiftly between boredom and snarkiness. The Bishop knew going in she wasn’t going to convert them or budge their prejudices and hatreds one millimeter, but she took her shot–and in doing so, encouraged us all to do the same.
Speak truth to power. Laugh in its face when it threatens mayhem. Retain the power to say “No.” That is how we need to handle the Toddler-in-Chief and his brown nosers. Anything less is acceptance or, worse, obeisance.

Final notes: I was watching Ana Kasparian and Cenk Ungyr on their Young Turks podcast bloviate on homelessness. They got a) pretty much right about what causes homelessness but were completely wrong regarding the solutions are. The reason is their fundamental misunderstanding of how Housing First is supposed to work. According to Kasparian and Ungyr, Housing First means housing Only: give everyone who’s homeless housing, hand them the keys, wish them luck, and walk away. This is so patently simplistic, untrue, and incomplete that I wonder how two intelligent people could be so wrong about such an important subject.

Housing First is not one size fits all. Yes, it does start with housing–it’s the foundation. But then, you build on the foundation: for people with mental disorders and/or substance addictions or gaps in their work history, there are support systems in place–social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, job counselors, financial advisers, and any other professionals who can help the formerly homeless stay in housing. And yes, there are a few rare individuals who will require treatment before housing due to the pervasive and intransigent nature of their disorders. And it’s STILL less expensive than warehousing people in jails and camps.

The worst parts of Kasparian and Ungyr’s misunderstanding are its persistence and widespread propping-up of stereotypes. As Brittany Page has documented, the two Turks have been disseminating their wildly incorrect definition of Housing First for more than a year, thus giving their millions of viewers a completely false impression of a program that MAGAts are all too eager to discredit and defund.

But then, Kasparian and Ungyr have been showing up at Turning Point conferences, being contemptuously disdainful of Blue State governors (especially Gavin Newsom, who I have my own issues with). It’s one thing to debate the likes of Charlie Kirk and Ben Shapiro, sharing a stage and holding hands with them, quite another. As Frank Zappa once observed, no one looks good wearing brown lipstick.