Hunh...

I guess in some places, if the president tries to overthrow democracy, they can toss him in jail. 

I guess in some places, if a well connected insider cavorts with Jeffrey Epstein, they can arrest him.

Well done Britain.

Maybe?

 During the Iraq debacle, some idiot claimed that they were seeing "green shoots" of stability in the country racked by civil war. It's the same sort of thing I feel today, when I see the response to the state execution of Alex Pretti. The man was a literal Boy Scout, a literal choirboy. As Krugman notes, he is not being subjected to the same character assassination as Renee Good, who had the audacity to be a queer woman who didn't defer to the Big Strong Man sufficiently. Yglesias, who has developed a real knack for Steelmanning the indefensible, is actually unable to make the case for this bullshit. We are starting to see "unnamed sources close to the President" begin to ask very real questions about what is going on.

The videos of Pretti's murder are disturbing, but that is precisely the point. (I cannot fathom what his parents must thing, having to see the murder of their seemingly extraordinary son plastered across screens around America and the world.) The video makes it impossible for the Trump Administration to lie - or rather it has made it impossible for them to lie in a way that is defensible except by the hardest core of MAGA. 

Josh Marshall made the point about "escalation dominance" that clearly motivates Miller, Noem, Bovino and Lewandowski. They are "content creators" in our descent to fascism. 

They want the video.

Right up until they don't.

As of this moment, the GOP is fracturing over this issue. The public is appalled. They can try and push the narrative of Pretti having a gun on him, but that only infuriates the Second Amendment crowd. 

Trump believes in dominance politics, and his sending in shock troops and Brown Shirts to terrorize Minneapolis is an expression of that. 

He is also fickle and self-centered. If he sees this (if his addled brain is capable of taking in new information) and thinks "This is hurting me", then he will jettison people soon. If I had to guess that Lilliputian Martinet, Greg Bovino, would make an easy sacrifice. I wouldn't feel safe if I were Noem either, but Bovino is even more of an aesthetic embarrassment than Noem, as Trump doesn't like short little guys but like women who have butchered their faces for the male gaze. Seriously, I think that's it.

If Trump DOES throw aside Noem, I would absolutely expect her to go scorched earth, the way Marjorie Traitor Greene did. These are awful people - narcissistic, insecure, cruel - and they will turn on each other in a feral display of their own barbarism.

This is not "the end of Trump" and likely not even the end of Stephen Miller, despite him being the true architect of all this. However, we know Trump will case aside those he feels do not reflect well on him. This could be the moment when we begin to see them turn on each other.

I'm not necessarily optimistic, because after the initial outrage ends, the GOP will fall dutifully in-line. Still, it could be a start. Trump backed down over Greenland; he could back down here.  

Yes, Trump Is A Fascist

 I came about to this after resisting it during his first term, but Jonathan Rauch makes a pretty comprehensive case for the term.

Relatedly, in trying to process the execution of Alex Pretti, I realize that the last time I felt like this was January 6th. I feel that same white-hot rage that this is being done to our country, our ideals, our institutions. Rauch's catalog of Trump's fascism is just the academic framework for my anger. I can remember early on election night, when I realized that, no, the American people would re-elect this felon, this open sewer of human foibles. I drove out to the woods and screamed in pain and anger into the darkness. 

This is why.

Cringey liberals were right all along. 

Dignity Wraiths

 In Trump's first term, Josh Marshall coined the term "dignity wraiths" to describe those creatures who debased themselves to get into Trump's good graces, only to be further humbled and laid low by Trump's essential depravity and cruelty. Lindsay Graham was a good example. I think Bill Cassidy, who was the deciding vote to put that charlatan RFK, Jr. in charge of America's health, is another example. For his trouble, he has earned a primary challenger, boosted by Trump. 

Krugman makes a similar point with regards to the business leaders who have flattered and bribed Trump in order to avoid his wrath and cultivate his support. History has shown that this rarely works out well. Take Maria Corina Machado, who gave away her Nobel Prize, thinking it would move Trump into actually taking over Venezuela. He took it, she looked the fool and Trump is content to commit more piracy in seizing Venezuelan oil tankers.

On this MLK Day, Richardson reminds us that heroes are not perfect people. King himself was a serial philanderer. Heroism is not the same as saintliness. Heroism is meeting a challenge with courage and resolve. America needs more heroes right now. We need people who are in comfortable positions and enjoy great privilege to show half the resolve and courage as the Minnesotans protesting the military occupation of their cities. We need people like Lisa Murkowski to leave the Republican Party instead of knitting her brow and expressing her concern. 

You cannot placate this man. I have a hunch that NATO sending tripwire troops to Greenland will have the needed effect and Trump will not invade that country. They will negotiate some watered down, bullshit deal for minerals or basing rights, Trump will slink away, and his cultists will extol the Art of the Deal.

You cannot negotiate with the howling void at the center of this man's soul, and doing so will only lead to your own living damnation.

Europe's Next Steps

 The EU and NATO leadership is aghast at Trump's latest fetish for annexing Greenland. They should be. It's appalling. 

What should they do? They've sent tripwire forces to Greenland with the clear message that any military action would risk war with European countries. While Rep. Don Bacon has said that this would lead to impeachment, does anyone believe that Republicans would advance articles of impeachment? Or that enough Republicans in the Senate would vote to remove? "These men are coward, Donny."

If Europe cannot rely on Republicans to have a backbone, what should they do? I would say exactly what they are doing and more. Send NATO warships to Nuuk. Be crystal clear what would happen if Trump thinks he can send in some Rangers and Marines and seize Greenland. There are two reasons why this should work and one reason it won't.

The first is that Trump tends to bluster and bully, but then back down in the face of real opposition. TACO or Trump Always Chickens Out was about tariffs, but it's true across different events. He's a bully and bullies tend to back down from a show of strength. I'm sure the sycophants around him and his own preconceptions are telling him that Europe is weak and decadent, effeminate. Demonstrating that you won't be pushed around would garner Trump's respect, not a lethal response.

The second is that Trump is so damned thirsty to get peace prizes and sell himself as a peacemaker, that it seems you could leverage that. He's not going to start a shooting war and credibly claim to be the Peace President. Even he can't tolerate that much cognitive dissonance. Look at Venezuela; he okayed a lightning raid, verbally asserted control of the country, but does not seem to be eager for boots on the ground. This is where the bluster and threats break down. He has competing agendas in being Mr. Peace Prize and Mr. Imperialist and it seems unlikely he would do anything that might lead to American soldiers coming home dead.

The reason why it might not work is that Trump is fucking insane. As in detached from reality. He is surrounded by repellant sociopaths like Stephen Miller and Pete Hegseth who are capable of any manner of atrocities. Do you want to wager lives on the predictability of Trump's response?

You see the same dynamic, I think, in Minnesota. Walz has called the National Guard on standby to keep the peace. Trump, I think would back down, but Miller is salivating over an opportunity to escalate things in Minneapolis, and Walz calling out the Guard could be the pretext for invoking the Insurrection Act.

It is chaos. It is dangerous. The person most responsible for this is chaotic and dangerous - a doddering old maniac with delusions of grandeur. He is quite unpopular. 

But Kamala Harris had a weird laugh so what are you gonna do?

The Politics Of Renee Good's Murder

 Josh Marshall asked (sarcastically) "Is it good politics to defend a harmless woman getting shot in the face?" He was rebutting the idea that Trump has some mastermind media strategy that allows him to shape reality. In fact, that's clearly not the case - or not exactly the case.

The initial polling is pretty clear on two things: Democrats are outraged at this, Independents are pretty much opposed and Republicans are mostly OK with it. This polling will likely change, especially as there is a continuous stream of video from Minneapolis of people being harassed or beaten by ICE goons. Given both the pushback from the residents of Minnesota, the besieged psyche of ICE/BP, the belligerent nature if ICE/BP folks and the clear message that acts of violence will be met with official impunity, I suspect we shall see another shooting sooner rather than later.

What's more: It's Minnesota. Yeah, the Twin Cities are lefty-coded, but Minnesota could not be more centrally in the actual "Heartland." This isn't Portland or San Francisco or LA. It's white people being shot. There is a certain sociopathic segment of the Right that will cheer this on, but if this sort of state violence continues, I think it's going to make more and more segments of our society REALLY uncomfortable.

King Donald The First

 The atrocious murder of Renee Good in Minnesota by masked agents of the state has been likened to the Orwellian line of  "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command." This connects - and rightly so - the actions of the Trump administration with 20th century totalitarianism. I don't think they've achieved it, but that is clearly their goal.

However, in describing Trump himself, I think Krugman is correct here and here. Trump clearly sees himself as a monarch, a sovereign. His actions work to blur the lines between the state and his person. He sees the achievements of the state as HIS achievements and the resources of the state as HIS resources. This is why dissent of any kind is "treason," because the king is the sovereign. 

The basic, foundational idea of America - the thing we are celebrating this year's 250th anniversary - is that the people are sovereign. Trump's "L'etat cest moi" bullshit is deeply, deeply Unamerican. The raid to get Maduro was a very impressive bit of work by the extraordinary professionals of Joint Special Operations Command. Trump thinks he did it. He crowed about watching it on TV, like he was playing some sort of video game and the controller was in his hands. His desecration of the East Wing of the White House is reminiscent of some fading potentate building a palace in his own honor to stave off the looming reality of his own mortality. 

I honestly am not going to predict the fallout from Good's murder or Trump's illegal actions in Venezuela. I've been humbled trying to predict things where Trump is involved. Still, shooting a white mom in the face is not likely to increase support for his internal deportation policies. Those policies were never popular, as people wanted more border security, not attacks on their schools and neighborhoods in an effort to deport some roofers, line books and housekeepers. Before these events we had two polls on Trump's job approval. CBS had 41-59 or 18 points "underwater" and Rasmussen (Rasmussen!) had him 45-53 or 8 points down. 

ICE itself has seen support collapse, from +16 to -14 in November. That number is sure to fall further. People want the border "secure" but they don't want raids on apartment buildings, they don't want masked goons provoking confrontations on American streets. Support for abolishing ICE entirely has reached 42%, up from 29% in 2018. Not yet the majority position, but this was before ICE start shooting people in the face and then being held unaccountable for their actions.

I've been learning about pre-Norman Britain, and it is striking how the character of government often depended so completely on the character of the king. Trump is a man of low character, and his administration reflects this. I was reflecting on the fact that "shame" isn't actually a bad thing, if it serves a moral code. Relentless shame is debilitating, but if you wrong someone and feel shame, that's actually good. It allows you to make amends and rectify your behavior.

Trump's superpower is shamelessness, and that extends to his courtiers, who smear Renee Good rather than reflect on their actions that led to her slaughter in the streets of her hometown by agents of the state that are not welcome there. Their king revels in the blood on his hands, he bathes in it.

But hopefully, America remembers that we are not a nation of kings.

The Lying Is The Point

 Yesterday, video clearly showed an ICE officer in Minneapolis shoot and kill a woman who was "in the way" of an ICE raid. He violated many basic rules of law enforcement - don't stand in front of a vehicle; don't discharge your weapon into a moving vehicle - and he basically murdered her for "not complying."

Immediately the Trump administration made false claims about the woman, the incident and the nature of the threat to ICE. There are so many disturbing aspects of this incident that it does remind me of January 6th, in terms of which aspect I should be angriest about.

This happened for one reason only: Trump and Stephen Miller are looking for performative acts of oppression and intimidation in "blue" cities. They aren't finding the hundreds of thousands of "illegals" in these cities, and maybe they are stupid enough to think that this is just a matter of more raids. In fact, these wholesale assaults on civil liberties very much feels like the point of all of this. They've started to focus on Minnesota because of a fraud case surrounding day cares, which is currently being adjudicated. Yes, it was a crime, but it's being dealt with appropriately. The pretext is all that matters.

It is, of course, depressing to go online and see the inevitable toeing of the party line for what amounts to the lynching or extrajudicial killing of Renee Nicole Good. All the Trump sycophants and fascists immediately assumed the GroupThink about radical antifa leftists and the utter bullshit that - apparently in their minds - justifies shooting a mother in the head from point blank range.

It is also incredibly depressing to see the "she should have just complied" crowd place the cause of her death on her as opposed to the ICE agent who was very much NOT in danger of imminent death. That these are the same people who think Ashlii Babbit is a martyr and January 6th was no big deal is not surprising.

It is the ability of Trump and Trumpism to get their followers to believe the lies - even with obvious video evidence showing the opposite - that is truly terrifying. The actual act of violence is appalling, but life can be cruel and capricious. Terrible things do happen. 

It is watching the entire Republican Party bow down before an altar of lies that is so unsettling. How can you recreate civic democracy under those circumstances?

January 6th

 Richardson makes a compelling case about the links between Republican rhetoric surrounding Democratic electoral victories that stretches back to the 1990s, and Trump's efforts to overthrow electoral democracy five years ago today.

She goes on to note the common thread from his two impeachments and the complete faceplant from Merrick Garland to delay the appointment of Jack Smith and then the SCOTUS' grant of immunity for presidential actions and how that created the lawlessness we see from Trump now.

Trump's whole life has been a bully who uses his money to bully contractors and debtors and escape the most significant consequences for his actions. He ran for president - allegedly - to boost his ability to start some sort of OANN type "Trump TV" to challenge Fox from the right. (Let that sink in.) Once he won, he now has to continue to bully and threaten to stay on top. The entire system of constitutional checks and balances is as foreign to him as calculus is to a sea urchin. 

January 6th was the moment when the old Republican Party could have held him responsible for his actions and we could have escaped this nightmare. If ten more Republican Senators had voted to convict in the Senate - and they all knew he was guilty - then we would not be staring down the insanity of 2025 and now 2026. We would not be threatening Greenland/Denmark. We would not be levying tariffs on whatever seizes his fancy. We would not be rounding up citizens and residents and deporting them to offshore gulags. In fact, there probably (certainly) would be a Republican president right now anyway, given the anti-incumbent tides that swept the world after Covid. They could have had their tax cuts and deregulation. 

Instead, it has become a party steeped and dependent on fear-mongering conspiracy theories.

Instead, democracy in our country is undergoing a series of battering blows every day. 

Is You Taking Notes On A Criminal Conspiracy?

 I saw a clip of the Rich Eisen Show, where he's interviewing Vince Gilligan, the creator of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, where Eisen asked him where some of the characters are now. When they got to the charming but corrupt lawyer, Saul Goodman, Gilligan quipped, "I think Trump pardoned him." The set erupted in laughter.

As Simon Rosenberg points out, the Trump Administration is more accurately categorized as a crime spree. The Epstein Files released yesterday were in clear violation of the letter and spirit of the law requiring them to do so. It was 119 pages of blacked out text.

Richardson notes that are seeing some cracks in the dam. A handful of House Republicans are starting to sign on to discharge petitions that are passing and forcing the human cypher known as Mike Johnson to actually bring popular measures to a vote. Let's posit that, for instance, Republicans finally get some sort of extension of ACA premiums passed through both Houses with Democratic support. Do we really think Trump will honor that law? 

More accurately, do we think that the creatures that surround this empty man will honor that law? Richardson points to the role that ghoulish fascist Stephen Miller has played in the illegal strikes against Venezuelan boats. Miller is basically taking the logic of Republican rhetoric since Reagan to its gruesome conclusion. There is at least some reporting that many of the people around Trump are basically trolls; they don't really mean anything they say, they just want a reaction. Miller is not a troll, he's a monster. 

I recently enjoyed Death by Lightning on Netflix about the assassination of James Garfield. The central importance of Garfield's death was the impetus it gave to civil service reform - a reform that dramatically reshaped the capacity of the federal government to actually carry out complex tasks. The spoils system that had existed since Andrew Jackson's presidency created strong party loyalty, but it left the government without capable people able to leverage expertise for good governance. You can't have a Department of Labor with statisticians to give you the information to stop child labor. 

My hope - not, I pray, a forlorn hope - is that the awfulness of Trump 2.0 will shock the jaded sensibilities of the American public in much the same way that Garfield's death did. These are corrupt, vicious people and they aren't especially smart. They are operating as if there will be no accountability. That's the subtext of the joke about Trump pardoning Saul Goodman.

Former Special Counsel, Jack Smith, wants to testify in public about what he found out about Trump's role in January 6th. Sure, we all know that this was his doing, but he's now effectively immune from prosecution, so a public airing of his misdeeds is the best we can hope for. If, as I suspect, Trump pardons everyone as he heads out the door, then we will need these sort of "truth and reconciliation" moments to come as close to exposing the criminality of these thugs as we are likely to come.

Disgusting Is The Only Word For It

 Trump vomited forth something unusually vile, even for him, in the wake of Rob and Michelle Reiner's murder. Seth Abramson makes an important point. Yes, everyone is right to see this as the fundamental brokenness within Trump's shriveled soul. When Trump heard that Reiner - a prominent critic of his - was killed, he assumed one of his supporters had done it, and then he basically blamed Reiner for it. If Reiner hadn't have been a Trump critic, he wouldn't have been killed, so basically it's his fault for not loving Trump enough.

Of course, it appears as if their disturbed son killed them, and Trump is - again - wrong. However, Trump knows in his bloated guts that his supporters are ready to commit violence on his behalf and he's willing to exonerate them. It's the same logic that has him pardoning crook after crook. As a crook himself, he wants to make sure everyone knows that being crooked is OK.

It is very sad that we have to share our brief time in the planet with this shitstain of a human being constantly dropping his pants and waving his withered hatred around. It's concerning, though, how quickly he excuses violence that he thinks we committed on his behalf.

Not Actually Surprising

 The man arrested in the January 6th pipe bombing case is both an anarchist and a Trump supporter. He sounds a bit...deranged, but then again, he's a Trump supporter and an anarchist. 

The idea that someone who loves Trump might also have anarchistic impulses is a reminder that Trump himself is an arsonist to our institutions. For millions of Trump supporters, the destruction is the point.

Thrashing About

 I feel fairly certain that Trump and his lackeys will slow roll or cherry pick the Epstein information. He didn't obstruct their release because it makes him look good. At the same time, we should see stuff trickle out via leaks. All of this means he's getting weaker, and when he gets weak, he lashes out like the malignant narcissist that he is.

We perhaps saw this dynamic already play out with Trump's fascistic call for the execution of members of Congress. The crime of these members - all of whom have served in the national security services - is that they reminded military and intelligence officers that they should not follow illegal or unconstitutional orders. This is enshrined in the military code. It is not - or never has been - controversial. Service men and women should not follow illegal orders, because "I was just following orders" was not a valid defense at the Nuremburg Trials.

Impressively, none of the members made any direct references to Trump's illegal actions in Venezuela or his illegal deployments to American cities. They simply reminded people of their obligations to follow the law. This anodyne statement sent first Stephen Miller and then Trump into a rage. Labeling this as "sedition" and "insurrection" led them to call for the execution of the members of Congress. (Not for nothing, but the free debate clause protects members' speech.) 

Ironically, Trump/Miller's freak out made sure that this message was amplified.

Yeah, this is bad, but it could also be a sign of Trump's increasing weakness. If internal GOP polling is as bad as the public polls, the GOP could be waking up to the idea that tethering themselves to this addled old shitbag is a bad idea, especially if that means appealing to extrajudicial killings.

The weaker Trump gets, the more outrageous he is likely to become, the weaker he will then become in turn.

Buckle up!

Competitive Authoritarianism

 Steady State, a group of former US intelligence and defense officials, has stated that America is moving towards "competitive authoritarianism." In this system, there are elections, but important democratic checks don't exist and power resides almost exclusively in the Executive. Hungary and Türkiye are prime examples of this. 

Perhaps the most important paragraph:

Among the key indicators of democratic decline identified in the report: the expansion of executive power through unilateral decrees and emergency authorities; the politicization of the civil service and federal law enforcement; attempts to erode judicial independence through strategic appointments and “noncompliance” with court rulings or investigations; a weakened and increasingly ineffective Congress; partisan manipulation of electoral systems and administration; and the deliberate undermining of civil society, the press and public trust.

Tell me what's inaccurate about that statement. 

For those of us who care about democracy and America, we have all looked towards the 2026 midterms as the critical moment for discovering (as opposed to deciding) whether of not we still live in a democracy. If elections return a Democratic Congress, then we can still claim to be a democracy. If voters prefer a Democratic Congress, but gerrymandering and the Supreme Court gutting the Voting Rights Act returns a Republican House, I can't help but wonder if that's just the end of the line for "America."

In her "Letter" today, Richardson talks about the sentiments of the Revolutionary generation regarding where true power should lie, and they placed it, very consciously, in the Legislative branch. Republicans in Congress have abandoned legislative prerogatives to placate the dictator in the White House. The Supreme Court - not the lower courts - have abandoned all principles to rule randomly in favor of Trump whenever possible. The American "Revolution" is more accurately understood as a secession movement within an imperial system that denied them representative government.

In the decade before the Civil War, Daniel Webster argued that - unlike in 1776 - secession made no geographic sense. The Atlantic separated the colonies from Britain, but as Webster put it, the mountains and rivers all run the wrong direction. Indeed, looking at the electoral map from 2020, trying to map out a country where Biden won more than 50% of the vote creates a very odd map.

From Maine to Virginia would be part of the new country, but we would have to merge with Canada, because Minnesota and Illinois would want in. What to do with the former Blue Wall states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin is a big conundrum. Colorado and New Mexico are Blue, but Arizona is Purple, and that's the bridge to the Pacific Coast.

Drawing those lines would be hard, but I'm not sure why we should persist in the fiction of living in an America that is no longer recognizably American. We do however need to be having these discussions. The SCOTUS and Congressional Republicans cannot think there are no consequences to abandoning democracy.

More Illegality

 Trump was banned from using Oregon National Guardsmen in Portland. So he grabbed some from California. Given how we've seen ICE behave in recent days - behavior that should upset anyone in favor of professional conduct by law enforcement - the best we can hope for is that the California Guard keeps these ICE thugs from beating up the citizenry. There are rumors - only rumors - that the worst violators of public safety in Portland are MAGAts looking for a fight. It would be grimly amusing if the the California Guard beats up a punch of Proud Boys and 3%ers.

None of that obscures the increasing lawlessness and fascist actions from the Trump administration. I think 90% of this is coming from Stephen Miller's warped brain, but until someone tells him to go back to the hole from whence he crawled and as long as Trump's pudding brain is technically in charge but actually ceding power to Miller, that's where we are.

Pretty Good Analysis

 Click through to Elon's hellsite to watch a pretty interesting video on Tyler Robinson.

The Shooter Was Turned In By His Family

 The FBI didn't "get him" because they were running around spreading false shit about trans stuff on bullet casings. 

There will be a lot of bullshit, lies and misconceptions in the next 24 hours as they piece this guy together and figure out why he did it. The early returns appear to show at...wait for it!...highly confusing set of beliefs and actions. There are rumors he's a registered Republican who donated to Trump's campaign. There are rumors he's a groyper, which is a fringe neo-Nazi group led by Nick Fuentes and famous for the Pepe the Frog meme. Fuentes and Kirk were enemies for a time.

We see all the usual signs: excessively online, too many guns and a valorization of gun culture, at least a little alienated.

What we do not see is a trans person, a blue-haired bisexual barista, a cringey liberal wine mom, a Democratic official, an immigrant or a racial minority. 

I would not be at all surprised if we find out he had some left wing views on something like wealth inequality. Horseshoe theory and all that. However, the disgusting smear by just about every member of the Trump Administration that this was "radical left lunatics" is - at first blush - completely untrue.

UPDATE: It seems that there's a very, very good chance that this guy was indeed a Groyper. My worry is that a politicized FBI will not allow that conclusion to reach the living rooms of the average American.

Not The Same

 We still don't know who assassinated Charlie Kirk, and given the rank incompetence of Kash Patel's FBI, we might not catch the guy. At this point, we have to hope some local police make the case. The leak of lies that there were "trans markings" on the bullets shows where the priorities are from the top of the FBI and whatever remains of the rank and file after Trump's purges.

As Marshall points out, the simple fact is that the MAGA Right is deeply steeped in and tolerant of violence. The obvious example is January 6th, but Trump's language is always infused with violent imagery and threatening language. That does not limit his appeal in certain segments of the Right, but increases it. The poll Marshall cites says that only 39% of Trump supporters agree with the statement that political violence has no place in American society. For non-Trumpers, that number is 66%. 

There have obviously been cases of left wing violence, but the volume and intensity from the right is higher across the board. The Butler would-be assassin was not apparently driven by political beliefs, but the whacko in Florida who tried but never got off a shot has some amorphous left wing views but is mostly just nuts. (He's representing himself in his trial that just started and it's going about as well as you might expect.)

Just recently, we had the assassination and attempted assassination of two Democratic state legislators in Minnesota and the fire bombing of the governor of Pennsylvania's house. 

Because the appeal to violence is so much more prevalent on the right, we really do have to hope that Kirk's assassin has either crazy views or far right views (but I repeat myself), not so much for partisan advantage, but because it will derail (though not end) the calls from violence on the right. 

It's Utah. It's not just Utah but Provo, which is REALLY conservative. Idaho ain't that far away. The shooter clearly was adept with a rifle to hit Kirk in the neck from that distance. He's a white dude. The only clear sign that he might be to the left is the target. Kirk, however, had enemies to his right. 

In much the same way that Butler was perpetrated by some cookie cutter school shooter type which led to Trumpists being somewhat impotent in their anger, we had better hope that whoever shot Kirk is not a dyed in the wool leftist, because Trump and his myrmidons are baying for blood and perfectly willing to engage in slaughter in their holy war against pronouns and windmills.

The Gathering Dark

 The assassination of Charlie Kirk is morally abominable. He was, it must be said, an asshole provocateur, and he was literally trolling his questioner with a smirking remark about gun violence when he was shot. This in no way justifies anyone killing him.

There were a few voices online who went for Edgy Internet Asshole at his death. Essentially every elected Democrat or prominent Democrat spoke out in horror at the events in Utah. I doubt that will matter, as Trump has already vowed vengeance on Kirk's killer or killers, despite not knowing what the motives of the shooter were, as the shooter is still at large.

Trump and others have escalated the rhetoric of violence around this act for two reasons. The first is that they tend to do that reflexively. Trump's every instinct is to attack and dehumanize. His opponents are "scum" and "animals" not people with whom he disagrees. 

The second is that they see this to their advantage. One commentators lacking in rudimentary self-awareness said that Democrats were to blame for calling Republicans Nazis, and then immediately said that they could use this as their Reichstag Fire to destroy their enemies.

The increasing sense that the other side is not just wrong but inhuman is impossible to maintain in a civic democracy. It is also difficult to avoid, when the other side is engaging in behavior that seems antithetical to everything you believe. However, the job of an American President should be to calm things down, and we only have a Republican President, not one interested in healing or bringing together the diverse peoples of this country.

We will no doubt see some Edgy Internet Asshole become the True Voice of Democrats when portrayed on Faux News. But hopefully we find the assassin soon. My guess is their politics will be weirder and more confusing than we imagine right now.

UPDATE: I don't think quoting Kirk's actual words constitute being an Edgy Internet Asshole.

A Republic, If You Can Keep It

 Both of my muses, Krugman and Richardson, write about the possibility that Trump and his legions will end American democracy in the next fifteen months. Neither, I fear, are being alarmist. With Trump, there is always the dynamic of "kidding on the square" where he throws out some outlandish thing - annexing Greenland? - and then sees what happens. With the Greenland thing, he hasn't followed through on that and his attention wandered to other things, but his current outward musings about using emergency powers in American cities seems to be a clear precursor to interfering in the 2026 midterms.

Trump knows that if he does not radically disrupt the democratic process, he will lose the House and possibly the Senate, even with a favorable map. As he did in 2020 election, he is musing about extralegal measures to make this happen. The difference is that in 2020 there were a handful of Republicans willing to stand up to him. That is simply not the case now. 

Was the ICE raid on the Hyundai plant in Georgia a warning sign to Governor Brian Kemp? Maybe. If you cross Trump, you will feel his wrath. (This is one way that Trump's death and replacement with Vance would - I think - be an improvement. Vance has no principles, but he lacks that feral vindictiveness that is the core of Trump's being.)

Trump is manifestly unpopular. Trump's sinking deeper into the Epstein scandal. The economy is weakening. This makes him more dangerous, not less. Something I hope that Democratic Senators understand.