Dispatches From The War Fronts, Part II: To the Meth Labs of Montezuma!

Our advance forces are already scouting the invasion beaches

 Dispatches from the War Fronts

Editors' Note: Recently we brought you news about one of the two wars the Tangerine-Faced Fascist intends to start once he is installed as President-for-Life. This week, we give you a thrilling preview of the second front, where he expects to take on our wily adversary just south of the Rio Grande. 

By War Correspondent Douglas MacArthur with Fred C. Dobbs in Sonora
 
While one mighty expeditionary force invades Toronto, thus securing a happy and co-prosperous future for the troubled realm of Canada as America’s 51st state, to be named Trumpland, another will be aimed southward at Mexico, according to strategists close to the omelet bar at America’s new capital, Mar-a-Lago.

These sources, after careful consultation with incoming Secretary of Defense Pete “The Ladies’ Man” Hegseth and his chief of staff, Johnny Walker, say that detailed plans for the subjugation of Mexico are well advanced. 

Already there is talk of bombing in and around anyplace in Mexico where Party Animal Pete suspects that drugs are either being manufactured, distributed, or stored.  Which is anyplace.  According to Vox:
 
One of the hottest new ideas in Republican politics is, apparently, launching a war in Mexico.

Three recent articles — in Rolling Stone, Politico, and Semafor — traced the rise of the proposal from obscurity to the party’s highest levels, finding ample evidence of the idea’s popularity in the GOP ranks. 

Former President Donald Trump, for example, has been asking for a “battle plan” to “attack Mexico,” specifically targeting drug cartel strongholds in the country. Every single declared Republican presidential candidate has endorsed treating cartels like terrorist organizations. And in both the House and the Senate, leading Republicans have proposed authorizing the use of military force in Mexico to fight cartels.

The ostensible excuse for starting such a war is the plague of fentanyl being smuggled across the border, almost always by U.S. citizens:   

 

Of course, the real reason that America is suffering from an invasion of fentanyl is because lots of Americans, including we suspect more than a few who voted for the Tangerine-Faced Racist (or would have if they weren’t so gorked out on drugs) enjoy taking fentanyl.  No one is going around kidnapping unsuspecting upright citizens and forcibly injecting them with the crap.  America has a drug problem, sure enough: we love us our drugs!

Whether that can be cured by bombing Mexico remains an open question.

We suspect that the real reason for going to war with Mexico isn’t fentanyl.  Or even the supposed invasion of desperate refugees seeking asylum in a country almost equally desperate for workers, as billionaire Republicans will admit:

A company owned by two of Donald Trump’s top mega-donors has routinely brought dozens of its workers from Mexico to staff its warehouses in Wisconsin and other locations even though they do not appear to have permission to work in the US, according to a Guardian investigation.

Uline – a giant Wisconsin-based office and shipping supply company controlled by billionaires Liz and Dick Uihlein – shuttles in its own workers from Mexico....

You don't say.

We suspect the real reason is that the Tangerine-Faced Fascist and his gang of drunken hooligans think that beating up on little brown people is fun, especially the women and children.  It also make you look strong and powerful, as any Storm Trooper will tell you.

Lest you think this is a recent example of Republican insanity, in fact it is a reprise of the real reason why President Dick Cheney and his front men and accomplices, many doing business today as our Wonderful Republican Allies, thought it would be just a swell idea to start a war with Iraq, despite the fact that it had zero involvement in the September 11 attacks on America.  

Smashing Saudi Arabia or Syria would have been fine. But we hit Saddam for one simple reason: because we could, and because he deserved it and because he was right in the heart of that world.

That was foreign policy genius and Iraq warmonger Tom Friedman explaining that the reason to start a war with a country was to show how strong the United States was. Also there were terrorists in the neighborhood, just a few hundred miles away in other countries. 

By the way, it turned out great. Except for the 400,000 dead, the $2 trillion burnt and the fact that Iraq is a vassal state of that supposed sponsor of worldwide terrorism, Iran.

But Mexico is no Iraq and if the Tangerine-Faced Fascist rains death and destruction from the air on anyplace in Mexico that Tulsi Gabbard tells him is in the neighborhood of a drug dealer, what could those Hispanic weaklings do about it?

So far, according to Reuters, Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum does not appear cowed by the Tangerine-Faced Felon's threats to protect Mexico whether it likes it or not, even though she is of the gender that the TFF like to rape (digitally – please don't sue!) in department stores:

The drunken drug-addled psychopaths scarfing down sh***y gristly steaks at Merde-y-Lardo may not realize that the United States has already invaded Mexico numerous times.  The first one yielded Knott's Berry Farm and Las Vegas, so that constitutes a win.

The third time didn't go quite as well,  Fortunately, thanks to our extensive archives we can bring you our reporting from March 1916:

PANCHO VILLA ON THE RUN, PERSHING SAYS

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The Mexican Bandit Won't Be Able to Hide from the Mighty U.S. Army 

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Our Boys Enjoying the Tequila and the Senoritas! 

 

By Our Special Correspondent
Via Telegraph from Chihauhua

Our splendid Army has already achieved a magnificent success in the expedition to bring that notorious Mexican brigand and terrorist, Pancho Villa, to justice at the end of an all-American noose.

This correspondent accompanied our brave lads as they crossed into Mexico without opposition and established a forward operating base at the strategic hub that is Colonia Dublan.

The commanding General John Pershing, showing the dash and initiative that marks the leonine Anglo-Saxon race (as compared to the sluggish untrustworthy Hispanic), wasted no time in pursuing Villa, ordering a powerful column of American cavalry 60 miles south to bag the bandit.

Our brave boys on the attack!

The brilliant American plan contemplated a multiple-column operation to encircle and trap Villa and his gang of desperadoes.  General Pershing, showing the tactical genius that so marks American military leadership, boldly decided to move one column by train to its designated location.

Despite the brilliance of the scheme, it was frustrated as usual by the laziness and inanition of the local population, which refused to supply the railroad with the fuel needed to advance.  As a result, manly American troops had to stop every few miles to chop the needed firewood. 

Eventually, the rickety Mexican locomotive, lacking the power of its counterparts north of the border, broke down completely, forcing our troops to debark and proceed on horseback.

Once in position in Barbicora, the American troops learned that the perfidious Villa, instead of standing and fighting like a man, had slipped away into the countryside.  Whereupon our boys commenced a thirty-two day search of the vicinity, frustrated by the lack of cooperation from the surly, untrustworthy locals.

Our troops, having surrounded Villa on one side, learned that he had retreated south to Guerrero.  Although the dashing 7th Cavalry reached the rebel stronghold without serious losses, their movements were spotted by the Villa bandits in the town, who safely fled into the nearby mountains.  

After wisely staging a retreat to reequip and rearm, the American expedition expects to resume the pursuit and remains confident of its eventual success.   

Eventually, the Americans gave up the chase and went home, leaving Mexico to its own devices.  The good news was that this same Army having sniffed powder and shot in Mexico was well prepared to take on the German Army in the killing fields of France, which also turned out great.

If you're interested in the brilliant Mexican Invasion of 1916, you can read the official U.S. Army history here.  

This time the crack-addled [Surely, crack? – Ed.] military masterminds will likely employ a different strategy: long-range bombing of Mexican targets.  How it will end and how many innocents will die are of course unknown.  But, in the great tradition of Republican military geniuses like John “Bomb Iran” Bolton, what happens after the bombs fall is not their problem. 

Billionaire Republican plutocrats seize power and it's the fault of - Democratic elites!

By Meta-Content Generator A.J. Liebling

Before the year and American democracy ends, we thought we'd take a look back at the post-election explanations for why a candidate who ran on a platform of decency, integrity, tolerance, hope, and economic opportunity lost to a demented corrupt Russian-owned rapist.

It's taken a while for us to calm down enough to go back to the election aftermath.  Let's see how far we can get before our blood pressure threatens to blow off our heads.

The prevailing narrative, at least on the op-ed pages of our supposedly great newspapers, was that Democrats were a party ruled by a shadowy elite who were fatally out-of-touch with the hopes, dreams, fears, and goals of average Americans.  Average white Americans, that is.

Having recently downed a hearty breakfast, we can cite only a couple of examples before getting queasy.  Here's that well-known anti-elitist and champion of Italian deli meats, Professor David Brooks:

We were going to summarize his argument, but we couldn't find one. It seemed to be that Trump voters held a grudge against supporters of Democratic policies which they equated with “elitism.”  The meat in his logical sandwich was the oft-expressed resentment against Democrats and those perceived to benefit from Democratic policies.  Like, you know, Black people.

That might suggest an alternative explanation for white support of a white racist.  Not to Il Professore.

You might be shocked to know that Brooks had the explanation – those nasty Democratic elites – before he had the outcome he was trying to explain.  Back in 2023 he explained that those nasty elites were responsible for offenses such as enforcing the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education, opposing the Vietnam War, and “building systems that benefit only themselves,” like Medicare and the Affordable Care Act.

It sounds cracked but you can read it here.

His sister in bloviation, journalism's Norma Desmond, inveighed with all the fury of two-terlet Irish (and that's a lot of fury) against those loathsome elites who always looked down on middle-class Irish-American cop daughters who had to go to Catholic University instead of Harvard:

Democratic candidates have often been avatars of elitism — Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton and second-term Barack Obama. The party embraced a worldview of hyper-political correctness, condescension and cancellation, and it supported diversity statements for job applicants and faculty lounge terminology like “Latinx,” and “BIPOC” (Black, Indigenous, People of Color). ...

“When the woke police come at you,” Rahm Emanuel told me, “you don’t even get your Miranda rights read to you.”

There were a lot of Democrats “barking,” people who “don’t represent anybody,” he said, and “the leadership of the party was intimidated.” 

So the Tangerine-Faced Fascist won because 49.87% of those voting were sick of being corrected over their use of language.  

There are two things going one here.

First, as someone else observed (and we tried to find them but we couldn't), the ones who are most butthurt about being called out for their insensitive use of pronouns or epithets are the very same bloviators who grace our op-ed pages.  They're pissed off, and if they're angry, then brother you better believe that everyone else should be too.

By the way, what happened to Rahm Emanuel when the woke police came after him?  Unlike Laquan MacDonald, shot dead by a white Chicago policemen he did not threaten with deadly force, nothing.  Also unlike Laquan MacDonald, the outrageous injury to Rahm Emanuel was not covered up by – wait for, Rahm Emanuel, one of Maureen's many non-elite buddies. 

The second thing is that Maureen had her finger on something.  Something vile.  It's true that many TFF voters were angry because they felt that they weren't being allowed to say certain things.  Like calling Black people n*****s.  Of course, they clean that up a little for public consumption in a New York Times focus group:

We're not too sympathetic to their anger, to put it mildly, but there's no doubt many white and Latinx voters cherish their right to impose racial slurs on the rest of us.  How Democrats should appeal to these very fine people remains a mystery.

And before we leave Kevin's sister: how tf is Michael Dukakis, who rode the subway to his job as Governor in a $99 suit and makes broth from old turkey carcasses, an elitist?  Maureen must be listening to the voices in her head again.

Prof. Brooks knows whom to blame.

No one can accuse America's great white bloviators of originality.  Stigmatizing Democrats who seek social justice and a world in which not 100% of the rewards are siphoned off by a tiny, um, elite of crackpot plutocrats has been a mainstream Republican position since at least 1968, when it was weaponized by the former champion of divisiveness and disloyalty, Dick Nixon.

Anyone remember Spiro T. Agnew, Nixon's Vice President?  When he was not stuffing his pockets with crisp honeybees from Maryland contractors, he was used to make the case that the real elites were Democrats:

[Nixon] dispatched Agnew to map out a cultural description of another enemy, the op-ed unfriendlies and the network mandarins of what was beginning to be called the media. The views of “this little group of men” who “live and work in the geographical and intellectual confines of Washington, D.C., or New York City,” Agnew noted darkly, “do not represent the views of America.” He inscribed himself in history, and in famous-quotation anthologies, forever, when he said, “In the United States today, we have more than our share of nattering nabobs of negativism. They have formed their own 4-H club—the hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.”

The exuberant playfulness of Agnew’s language (as scripted by William Safire) seemed to signal that the bluster need not be taken too seriously.

You'll be shocked, shocked to learn that the flack who led the attack on anyone daring to criticize Nixon and his expansion of the Vietnam War went on to a glorious career as, wait for it, an op-ed columnist for The New York Times! 

What began as an attack on a free press was expanded to cover any and all opposition to the Republican project of plutocratic rule under the flag of white supremacy.

It was a bit of rhetorical ju-jitsu because then as now it was successfully used by Republicans to hide their ruthless campaign of enriching the rich through tax cuts and deregulation while further impoverishing the working class.

The result was 40 years of increasing income inequality until hapless old Joe Biden managed to turn it around just a bit:

 In fact, as any fool (other than those employed as a columnist) can plainly see, the return of the Tangerine-Faced Fascist was fueled by elites.  Billionaires like Leon Musk, Dick Uhlein and lovable Miriam Adelson together coughed up more than $400,000,000 to con the plebes into voting for a man and a party ruthlessly devoted to f***ing them over.

And it worked.  Now that the TFF is about to seize power for good this time, other billionaires, including the steroid-enhanced nerds Bezos and Zuckerberg, have kissed the orange taint and pronounced it delicious.  

The bottom line: America's plutocratic elite, in wallet and deed, have lined up to support the Tangerine-Faced Insurrectionist.

Our mainstream media seems unable to cover the objective truth: the average wage-earners are indeed being screwed by elites.  Just not the ones with the inclusive pronouns.

Dispatches from the War Fronts: 54-40 or Fight!

 Dispatches from the War Fronts

Editors' Note: For many years one of the Spy's most well-loved or at least tolerated features was its war correspondence.  For most of this century, America has been either engaged in or preparing for pointless bloody war.  Sometimes both.  And the Spy was there:

 

Unfortunately, that wet blanket Joe Biden ended all the fun by getting out of Afghanistan and failing to replace it with something equally otiose like attacking Iran.

But thanks to the wisdom of 49.87% of the voting American electorate, we're back in business.  This time, the warmongers are pointing us away from distant desert sands and much closer to home.  Today, we'll look at one of the fronts of our next glorious defense of freedom!

By War Correspondent Douglas MacArthur with Canadian Correspondent
Ramona Flowers reporting from Canada's capitol, Toronto. [That's not Canada's capitol, you nitwit – Ed.]

Never one to let legal niceties like not being in office yet to hold him back, President to be for Life Donald J. Trump has already moved boldly to make America great again by realizing its long-held dream of conquering, wait for it, Canada:

This thrilling image of our 47th and last President standing at the Canada-Switzerland border looking out at the Matterhorn has naturally led to speculation that, ever laser-focused on average working class Americans, Trump wants to give them plenty of lebensraum, albeit on the cold side.

The speculation was also fueled by reporting of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's groveling journey to America's capitol, Mar-a-Lago, to beseech the Orange Rapist for relief from Trump's threatened 25% tariffs on all Canadian exports to the US, including oil and lumber.  

Was Trudeau really worried about tariffs or was he just seizing on any excuse to escape the bitter December in Canada's capitol, Canada City?  [That's not Canada's capitol, either – R.F.]

We may never know. What we do know is that, in response to all this begging, various media sources reported:

Donald Trump reportedly suggested to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that if he didn’t like the tariff the president-elect threatened to impose, perhaps Canada could become the 51st state and Trudeau could serve as its governor. Trudeau laughed nervously at the apparent joke.... 

Has Donald Trump ever elocuted a joke in his life?  Of course not.  He makes threats, he dishes out insults, he boasts, he lies, and he leers.  But a joke?  Not so, Pete Hegseth breath.

We think he means it.

The question is why. I mean, as countries go it's perfectly nice.

It's right there.  It has oil and white people, two things the Tangerine-Faced Racist likes.  And as every high school senior in Boston knows, the drinking age is 18.  Road trip!

And on the dollar-store Mercator map the TFR stares it at Mar-a-Lago, it looks huuuuuge!  He may also be able to discern that Canada has a long coastline.  Lots of them.  He probably thinks that there will be plenty of prime oceanfront property on which he can build one of his crapcan golf course resorts with Saudi money.

Imagine the size of the resort he could build on say Baffin Island.  He may not be aware that a lot of that coastline has a few disadvantages that limit its value as a resort venue:

That's not ideal golf weather.  When it's that cold, the ball sticks to the tundra, making it impossible for him to cheat by kicking it  back to the green.

He also might want to think what would happen to his narrow House and Senate majorities even if Canada joins as a single state (it's about as populous as California).  Those two Senate and 50 House seats aren't likely to go Republican.

The Tangerine-Faced Fascist may think he can bring Canada to its snowshoes merely by strangling its economy.  He better hope he's right because an invasion might not turn out exactly as he hoped.

Fun fact: we've tried conquering Canada by force of arms.  It didn't go great.  Fortunately, thanks to our extensive archives we can bring you our reporting from November 1813:

AMERICAN FORCES STOPPED SHORT OF MONTREAL

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Courage of Troops Not Matched by Quality of Generalship

By Our Special Correspondent
Via Post Express from Ft. Ticonderoga

Although the situation remains sadly clouded by uncertainty, reports reaching Ft. Ticonderoga suggest that the American forces failed to break through the Canadian defenders at Châteauguay, southwest of Montreal and short of the goal of the St. Lawrence River.

The American forces, under the command of a Southerner named Wade Hampton, whose family we can safely predict is destined for no great place in our nation's military history, attempted to ford the Châteauguay River on 26th Oct. last.

Gen'l Hampton squandered his splendid troops

The river crossing was made without serious opposition.  But the wily Canadians retreated into their forests and took advantage of such terrain to inflict serious injuries on the American columns.  Further, certain French-speaking forces taunted our soldiery with crude insults, followed by volleys of cows and other forms of livestock.

A portion of the Canadian forces remained on the southern bank of the river, thereby harassing the American flank.  Although the great mass of American troops and their brave Mohawk allies remained intact, the irresolute Gen. Hampton unaccountably lost his nerve and withdrew to the south, thereby abandoning the planned conquest of the great city of Lower Canada, Montreal.

The debacle was especially bitter because it followed hard on the heels of the smashing success of our forces in York, the largest city in Upper Canada, which had led the American forces to hope that the demise of British authority in Canada was at hand.

It is the view of this correspondent that with improved generalship, the American Army can return to the Canadian Front with the wholesome and entirely achievable goal of ridding the Great White North of the British enemy and embracing that land as part of our rightful inheritance, even if it takes another 200 years.

Of course, next time under the command of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and his liberal administration of liquid courage, the results will undoubtedly be different.

From the Archives: Who is to blame for prejudice? Let's start with the victims!

Editors' Note:  Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!  When we were put on the spot and asked to list what we were grateful for as the flaming dumpster fire that is 2024 burns what was left of American democracy to cinders, we admit we had to think about it.  We decided that we were grateful for a few things: we haven't lost our marbles, our racist brother in Annandale hasn't taken over our columns, our billions in ill-gotten gains and squads of vicious high-priced lawyers render our publishing empire impervious to pressure from the New Regime, and to pad our pages we can always dip into our 254 years of archives.

Speaking of those archives, among the leading ridiculous narratives being pushed these days is that the wave of anti-trans bigotry fomented by the Tangerine-Faced Fascist and his legions of taint polishers is the fault of those who oppose that bigotry.  We wondered if there were any examples of such victim-blaming that we could find in our pages, especially during the days when we relied more heavily on third-party news sources.  And guess what: we found some!

December 16, 1933

By Charles Lindbergh
Chicago Tribune News Service

To get on the wrong side of Jewish activists is often to endure their unsparing criticism, whether in America or Germany.

After a Democratic congressman defended parents who expressed concern about Jewish athletes competing against their young Christian daughters, a local party official and ally compared him to a Nazi “cooperator” and a group called “Neighbors Against Hate” organized a protest outside his office.

When Martin Heidegger said that denying any relationship between race and biology was “deeply misogynistic and regressive,” a prominent Jewish lobby accused him of betraying “real science.” A few angry critics posted photos of themselves burning his books before patriotic German students at the University of Freiburg showed them how to run a book bonfire.

When the new Hitler Government convened a call with Jewish groups to discuss new limits on the participation of Jew students in university life, one powerful Jewish banker/activist fumed that the administration would be complicit in “genocide” of Jews.

Now, some Jewish activists say it is time to rethink and recalibrate their confrontational ways, and are pushing back against the more all-or-nothing voices in their coalition.

“We have to make it OK for someone to change their minds,” said Lessing Rosenwald, executive director of Advocates for Jewish Equality. “We cannot vilify them for not being on our side. No one wants to join that team.”

Efforts by Jewish activists to protest alleged Nazis backfired

Mr. Rosenwald, who grew up in a prominent Jewish family in Illinois, said that as painful as Herr Hitler’s election may be for the Hebrew Race, they should see the benefit in treating skeptics less like enemies and more like future allies.

“No Gentile wants to feel stupid or condescended to,” Mr. Rosenwald said.

The public does not appear to be growing more empathetic to the Jewish cause. Fewer Americans today than two years ago say they support some of the rights that Jewish activists have pushed for, like allowing children to apply to universities without regard to their religion.  And multiple recent polls have found that a considerable majority of Americans and German believe advocacy for Jewish rights has gone “too far.”

Other prominent Jews like Robert Lehman said too many activists today are distracted by counterproductive debates — boycotting Hearst Newspapers for example, and insisting that there are no reasonable objections to allowing Jews into their cooperative apartments and medical specialties.

Mr. Lehman noted that Jewish activists lost credibility with many Americans once they started accusing people of bigotry over restricited suburbs.

“We looked unreasonable,” she said. “We should be talking about the 7-year-old Jewess who just wants to play soccer with her friends.”

September 15, 1964

by Jessie Helms
Beloved WRAL-TV anchor via North Carolina Newspaper Alliance

The North Carolina State University women’s volleyball team, which is at the center of a national debate over the inclusion of Negroes in college sports, advanced to its conference championship on Saturday without having played a single game in the tournament.

After a first-round bye, the team was preparing to play a semifinal match in the Appalachian Conference tournament scheduled for Friday, but the opposing team — South Carolina University — refused for the third time to play the Rebels because of their Negro player.

After NCSU beat Winston-Salem State University on Wednesday to qualify for the semifinal in Wilmington, the players celebrated by cheering and hugging. They talked quietly in a huddle, then cheered again.

Hours later the NCSU Rebels released a statement that read: “The decision to not continue to play in the  tournament was not an easy one. Our team overcame forfeitures to earn a spot in the tournament field and fought for the win over Winston-Salem in the first round on Wednesday. They should not have to forgo this opportunity while waiting for a more thoughtful and better system that serves all athletes.”

Protesters tried to keep a Negro player from competing

It was the seventh time this year that an Appalachian Conference team has backed out of a match against NCSU out of protest over the Negro player, who declined an interview request through a university spokeswoman. South Carolina, one of five teams to forfeit games against the Rebels this season, also forfeited two regular season games against them.

The university has not confirmed that the player is Negro (some claim that she is a mulatto or even a quadroon). But her involvement with the team prompted a teammate and her assistant coach to file a lawsuit earlier this month, trying to keep her from playing in the tournament — and also on white teams at all.

The Negro player’s affiliation with NCSU was published by a conservative website in April, surprising some of her teammates and opposing teams. And in the days and weeks to follow, the Rebels were struggling to find ways to comprehend the information as politicians addressed it in their campaigns. Negroes are allowed to compete in N.C.A.A. volleyball, even though their brute strength, caused by centuries of selective breeding of slaves, may exceed that of the white student athletes. 

In public forums, Senator Strom Thurmond and other conservative candidates vowed to find ways to bar athletes who were not classified as white at birth from college sports. Sen. Thurmond called the situation “so crazy.”

Marcia Blackburn, a senior player, and Virginia Cox, the assistant coach, along with 10 other white volleyball players, were the ones to sue thet Conference and its commissioner, the Rebels’ head coach and others involved with the university.

But a federal judge denied their request on Monday to bar the Negro player, clearing her to play, and on Tuesday another judge rejected the plaintiffs’ appeal, too.

Reaching the final without having played a game was exactly what Ms. Blackburn had hoped would not happen, she said last week in an interview, because the team would not have earned that berth.

“It wouldn’t be fair to all the other white teams, either,” she said.

December 1, 1970

by Diana Trilling
Commentary

...I say this as someone who has been called anti-woman, more times than I can count. For a decade now, I’ve been trying to balance a belief in the rights of women with my skepticism of some so-called “feminist” positions. I’ve written with a degree of sympathy about feminists who’ve been ostracized for wanting to maintain women’s-only spaces.   I dislike jargon like “a woman can do anything a man can do” that tries to mystify or elide the reality of biological sex. 

Occasionally, I receive angry or plaintive messages from feminists accusing me of helping America down a slippery slope that has brought us to our lamentable present, when discrimination against women has been normalized to a degree that recently seemed unthinkable.

 Over a dozen states now have laws restricting women's access to single-sex bathrooms. In the face of this onslaught against a women, there’s pressure on liberals to keep any qualms we might have about elements of progressive gender ideology to ourselves.

Feminists need to understand that there
are differences between men and women

That’s one reason, despite my interest in sex and gender, I haven’t written about these debates as much as I otherwise might have. But I’m increasingly convinced that this widespread reticence hasn’t served anyone very well. The basic right of ladies to live in safety and dignity, free from discrimination, should be uncontested. But evolving ideas about sex and gender create new complexities and conflicts, and when progressives refuse to talk about them forthrightly, instead defaulting to clichés like “women are no different from men,” people can feel lied to and become radicalized.

Rejection of progressive orthodoxy on gender can even become a lens through which people see the world; just look at Bobby Riggs. As the writer William Safire put it in an election postmortem, “I know people who haven’t been touched by this issue personally, for whom it was the only issue that decided their vote.”

There are some Americans, no doubt, who won’t be mollified by anything short of the erasure of women from the workplace. But others simply feel that progressives aren’t leveling with them, a perception Democrats might have been able to address with a bit more frankness.

Politically, nuance is a harder sell than certainty. But it’s more honest, and honesty is what’s needed in the face of a coming tsunami of malicious propaganda aimed at women and girls. To have a chance of weathering it, Democrats are going to have to do two things at once. They need to have some uncomfortable conversations about complicated subjects, while at the same time standing up for a minuscule minority that’s increasingly under siege. After all, the bullying of Shirley Chisholm — who has handled Republican cruelty with exceptional grace — is only the opening salvo in what is likely to be a far-reaching national campaign against female people.

Editors' Note: Actually, we're just f**in' with ya. These are all taken from transphobic crap recently published in The New York Times including pieces by Jeremy Peters, Michelle Goldberg, and Juliet Macur.

News from Zontar: The most momentous election in Zontar's history

Editors’ Note: Every so often the Spy Deep Space Desk gets a transmission from the mysterious planet of Zontar, located in the Remulac galaxy millions of light years from Earth. The planet is populated by a race of intelligent alien life forms whose communications, while largely incomprehensible to those of us here, may shed some light, however dim and distant, on the thought patterns of these bizarre creatures.  Over the past week we have gotten a series of transmissions from this faraway planet about an election on Zontar and its aftermath.  After our crack team figured out the bizarre Zontarian calendar (which appears to be based upon an advanced version of the Tesla self-driving algorithm), we were able to put the transmissions into some sort of order, but given that the election actually took place 634,000,000 years ago, what difference does it make if we got the order wrong? [OK, they get the setup – Ed.]

Zontar Date ᔰᔱᔲᔳᔴᔵᕘᕙᕤᕥ

After several suspenseful days, it appears that Deputy Supremo Zamala Harris has managed to eke out a narrow victory over her challenger, former Supremo Donald R. Drumpf.  Although she won the soul-counted voted by several billion, her margins in the Zontarian College were much narrower.  She won the key landforms of Zennsylvania, Wizzconzin, and Arithona by fewer than 20,000 votes.  Drumpf, as predicted, has refused to concede and has called his motley crew to prepare for battle at his luxurious death star, Zaralago.  

Zontar Date ᔰᔱᔲᔳᔴᔵᕘᕙᐐᑄ

Zormy Daniels brought down former Supremo Drumpf

Former Supremo Drumpf has unleashed his followers on an all-out attack on the Zontarian Capitol in an effect to stop Supremo Elect Zamala Harris from taking office.  Although he himself was unable to lead his forces into battle due to a chronic hair condition, his hordes tried to invade the Capitol, where they were stopped by crack forces of the Zontarian Guard.  The routed Drumpf invaders were forced to retreat to a Zooters located in the distant swamps of the Zorida Wastelands.  

Zontar Date ᔰᔱᐖᑲᔲᔳᔴᔵᕘᕙ

Under heavy Zontarian Guard, President Zamala Harris is inaugurated in the Zontarian Capitol Dome.  Although several former Supremos attended the gala event (as well as luminaries such as Zeyonce, Zoprah, and Zendaya), the peaceful transfer of power was marred by Drumpf's sullen refusal to attend.

Zontar Date ᔰᔱᑏᐔᔲᔳᔴᔵᕘᕙ

 Former Supremo Donald Drumpf is sentenced to 32 years in jail for his fraud conviction related to payments to former intergalactic porn star Zormy Daniels.

Zontar Date ᔰᔱᔵᕘᑏᑮᑥᔳᔴᔵ

Supremo Harris signs legislation giving ordinary Zontarians 25,000 Zontarian zitcoins to purchase starter asteroids. She also announces that she will continue to send arms, including starfighters, to Zontar's Zukrainian allies, locked in a bitter war against their Ruzzian invaders.

Zontar Date ᔰᔱᑏᑮᑥᔳᔵᕘᐫᑨᑮᑥ

Former Supremo Drumpf goes on trial at the Zontarian Capitol Dome on charges arising out of his effort to overthrow the Government of Zontar.  After four days of trial, he is convicted on all counts and sentenced to 20 years on the desolate rat-infested penal colony of Kweenz.

Zontar Date ᔰᔱᑏᑮᐫᑨᑥᔳᔵᕘ

Supremo Harris announces that after intensive mediation, she has brokered a deal to end the bloody conflict in Azag, ensuring the release of all Zisraeli hostages and protection for the lives of the indigenous Azagan population.  

Zontar Date ᔰᔱᑏᑮᐫᑨᑥᔳᔵ

In a sudden and dramatic turn of events, former Supremo Drumpf was rushed to the hospital having suffered a massive stroke caused by over-consumption of fried foods.  Drumpf's lawyers tell all courts in which charges are pending against him that he is much too sick to proceed any further with his trials.

Zontar Date ᔰᔱᑏᑮᑥᔳᐕᐧᑥ

Drumpf's former lawyer Zudi Zooliani
was found dead in this dumpster

Even more bad news for allies of the former Supremo when it was revealed that his former lawyer, Zudi Zooliani was found dead on Zatin Island, having suffocated in a dumpster in which he had dived, apparently looking for food.

Zontar Date ᔰᔱᑏᑮᑥᔵᑴᔳᔵᕘ

A Zorzia judge orders former Supremo Drumpf to be examined by independent physicians, having rejected as inadequate a two-sentence evaluation signed by Dr. Fil.

Zontar Date ᔰᔱᑏᑮᐫᑨᑥᔳᔵᕘ

Supremo Harris signs into law legislation protecting the rights of all Zontarian women to decide for themselves what to do with respect to their own reproductive systems.  

Zontar Date ᔰᔱᑏᑮᑥᕘᑨᐫᑄᑄ

The physicians appointed by the Zorzia Court report that Drumpf, while showing signs of what they called moderate to severe dementia, is nonetheless able to stand trial.

Zontar Date ᔰᔱᑏᑮᑥᔳᔵᕘᐫᑨ

The jury in the Zorzia case finds Drumpf guilty on all counts relating to his efforts to overturn the Zorzia election, and the judge sentences him to an additional 20 years, the time to be served in a notoriously tough private Zorzia prison known as “Mama's Place.”

Zontar Date ᔰᔱᑏᑮᑥᔳᔵᕘᐫᑨ

Supremo Zamala signs into law a bill that provides free child care, financed by projected revenues from a larger workforce and higher taxes on ultra-rich Zontarians worth more than 100 million zitcoins.

Zontar Date ᔰᔱᑏᑮᑥᔳᔵᕘᔳᔵ

Drumpf appears at his trial on charges of fomenting insurrection in a short white bathrobe, in an effort to persuade the judge that he is unfit to stand trial.  He interrupts the proceedings repeatedly, telling the judge that he is the duly elected Supremo of Zontar and sentencing the judge to galactic exile.

Zontar Date ᔰᔱᑏᑮᑥᔳᑨᑥᔵᕘ

After long debate, the Zongress sends to Supremo Zamala an appropriations bill that funds most of her key priorities, including expanding health and child care subsidies, and massive new investments in infrastructure such as housing and high-speed rail, financed by a tax on private rocketships, ketamine, and steroids.

Zontar Date ᔰᔱᑏᑮᑥᔳᔵᕘᐫᑨ

Former Supreme Donald Drumpf, still wearing his ketchup-stained bathrobe, is convicted on charges of fomenting insurrection against the lawful Government of Zontar.  When the jury delivers its verdict, he shouts, “I'm still big; it's the universe that got small.”

Zontar Date ᔰᔱᑏᑮᑥᔳᔵᕘᐬᑫᑫ

The Zontarian Department of Justice buys Drumpf's bankrupt Zaralago death star, intending to turn it into a penal institution for elderly prisoners, which will enable demented convicted criminals like Drumpf to live out their final days in dignity.

Zontar Date ᔰᔱᑏᑮᑥᔳᔵᕘᔵᕘᐬ

Following two years of peace and prosperity  Supremo Zamala's Zenocratic Party sweeps the midterm elections.  As a result, four new members are added to the Zontarian Supreme Court, thereby ending the tyranny of Justice Zalito.

Zontar Date ᔰᔱᑏᑮᔳᔵᑥᔳᔵᕘ

Z.D. Vontz succeeds Zamala as Supremo

Saying that the climate on Zontar had become intolerable, Zontar's wealthiest man, Zelon, blasts off into deep space to found a space colony that will recognize his true genius and is never heard from again.

Zontar Date ᔰᔱᔳᔵᑥᔳᔵᕘᑮᑥ

The Zontarian Prison System reported that former Supremo Donald Drumpf died on his golden throne on Zaralago, having choked to death on a piece of Zentucky Fried Chicken. His loving wife Zelania said “What a terrible loss. Chuck him into the canal.”

Zontar Date ᔰᔱᑏᑮᑥᔳᔵᕘᖝᖔ

Former Zontarian Senator Z.D. Vontz is elected Supremo, stating that Zamala and the Zenocrats were out of touch with the concerns of average Zontarians, including concern about recent arrivals from a primitive planet known as “Urth.”

The Spy's Political Genius tells you why Fascism won: It was the fault of the Democrats!

 

Editors' Note: How was your week?

Ours, not so good.  After the shock and the ibogaine wore off, we decided to find out what went wrong with the campaign to protect America from a corrupt Fascist bigoted Russian-owned sex offender.  And who better to give us the one right answer than the Spy's master political prognosticator David Bloviator?  After literally minutes of analysis conducted from his listening post at the National Press Club Bar, Mr. Bloviator had reached his unimpeachable and carefully-researched conclusion:  it was all the fault of those Democrats.  He graciously agreed to give us a few minutes of his peerless insights in exchange for an open bar tab:  

TMS:    Good morning, Mr. Bloviator.  The outcome of the election came as a shock to millions.  How could America choose a vile corrupt authoritarian with a record of incompetence in office and indictment out of it?  What's wrong with America?

DB: What's wrong is that my glass is empty.  

TMS: Of course.  Double Chivas-rocks for Mr. Bloviator.  Here's our corporate card; please open a tab.

The great seer knows whom to blame.

DB: [inhales his drink]  Ah, now I can share with you why the 2024 Presidential election turned out so disastrously for the Democrats.

TMS: Which is?

DB:  It was all their fault.  

TMS: Can you expand on that a little? 

DB:  The Democrats failed miserably to appeal to white working class voters .

TMS: But they supported unions, invested in hundreds of thousands of new manufacturing jobs in green energy and advanced technology.  Weren't those initiatives appealing to the working class?

DB: You fool!  You don't understand a thing about politics.  The working class was turned off by Democrats focusing on pronouns and words like “Latinx.”

TMS: When did Harris or Walz ever use the term “Latinx” on the campaign trail? 

DB: That's not the point. The point is that Democrats were perceived as pretentious elitists who used words like that and wanted 250-pound former linebackers to play on your daughter's soccer team.  How out-of-touch! 

TMS: Who wants that?  Has that ever happened in this country?

DB:  No but it could because of Democratic elitists.  Speaking of doubles, I'll take another one.  [Gestures to bartender]

TMS: What were the concerns of the white working class that the Democrats failed to address, besides the 250 pound trans linebackers?

DB:  They didn't address the concerns of the average voter about crime.  Crime is skyrocketing.  

TMS: No it isn't.  Most categories of crime are declining and some are at record lows.  

DB:  If crime is so low how come  I had to wait a full minute at the Dupont Circle CVS for some menial to unlock the shampoo cabinet?

Voters didn't like locked drugstore shelves

TMS: So you're saying that working class voters chose an incompetent demented insurrectionist criminal because they were tired of waiting for shampoo?

DB:  Now you're beginning to see the light.  Whatever else you can say about Trump, he understood those concerns and addressed them.  

TMS: How?  By campaigning to lock up shampoo thieves?   

DB:  That, and addressing immigrant crime.  

TMS: But it's clear that immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than citizens, and aren't eating pets either.

DB:  You don't understand.  Democratic elites didn't address the concerns of working class voters about immigration, just like you're not addressing my concerns about this empty glass. [Gestures to bartender]

TMS: What concerns?

DB:  That immigrants are flooding into this country, taking black jobs, getting government benefits, and filling up apartments and hospital.  

TMS: Literally none of that is true. 

DB:  That's an even more damning indictment of the Democratic failure to get their message across. 

TMS: How did the working class conclude that Democratic elites are looking down at them?

DB:  Haven't you read those bloggers going on about how uneducated white working class voters are ignorant bigots?

TMS: Isn't that true?

DB:  What difference does it make?  You can't get anywhere by demonizing bigots and neo-Nazis.  

TMS: But isn't the Republican Party really the party of rich elites who gave hundreds of millions of dollars to persuade working class voters to vote against their economic interests?  Isn't Trump a supposedly elitist billionaire?   Isn't he bringing in a bunch of people with elite backgrounds and billions to throw around?  

DB:  You must be joking.  Would an elitist call his opponent retarded? Would an elitist stand up for the cats and dogs of some s***hole in Ohio?

TMS: And isn't it also true that Trump governed to protect the rich and large corporations by borrowing trillions to pay for tax cuts that largely benefited the so-called elite?

DB:  But he sent out $1,500 checks with his name on them. People remember that.  And you saw the same anti-elite sentiment in down-ballot races

TMS: You mean when a few plutocrats, including a guy whose company defrauded Medicare out of billions and another who made a fortune as a Mercedes dealer used their own and dark money millions to defeat more progressive candidates in Senate races in Florida and Ohio, including Sherrod Brown who spent his entire career fighting for unions?

DB:  Exactly.  Brown lost because he failed to garner support from working class heroes like Miriam Adelson and crypto bonus babies like the Winkelvosses. 

TMS: Why do you think that Democrats didn't get any traction out of pointing out that the Republican nominee tried to overthrow the U.S. Government, was adjudicated a rapist, and convicted of fraud?  Those seem like pretty big obstacles to electoral success. 

DB:  Again, these were the concerns of an out-of-touch Democratic elite.  The average American doesn't care if their President once tried to overthrow the government he now wishes to lead.  Keep in mind that the average American can't even spell 'insurrection.'

TMS: Let's turn to the claim that the election represented a repudiation of so-called “identity politics.”  Is that how you see it?

DB:  Absolutely.  Democrats must stop playing that game. The working class is turned off by it.

TMS: The white working class, that is.

DB:  What else is there?

TMS: But didn't the Republicans play the same game, by trying to pit white people against their supposed enemies, including people of color, immigrants, and trans kids? 

DB:  That's totally different. As one professor has explained it, only the left can ever be accused of “identity politics:”

 

One more time: identity politics can only exist on the left. A campaign that degenerated entire groups of people, and is fused into white Christian nationalism, is not engaged in identity politics.

[image or embed]

— Don Moynihan (@donmoyn.bsky.social) November 9, 2024 at 3:22 PM

 

DB:  The next thing you'll try to tell me is that my good Georgetown friend Maureen Dowd and her brother are indulging in “identity politics” by complaining about the Democratic base from the perspective of what we used to call in Dorchester “two-terlet Irish.” 

TMS: That's what it sounds like to me.  What do you say to those who blame misleading media and under the radar disinformation sources which continually painted a false picture of Democrats as out-of-touch elitists who care more about trans kids than hard-working Americans like Jeff Bezos? 

DB:  Isn't that what happened?

TMS:  No that's not at all what happened.  There's a media narrative that you seem to have swallowed like the ice in that drink that perverts the truth.  The Democrats campaigned on issues that benefit the working class and others struggling like higher minimum wages, support for unions, student loan relief, and tax breaks for first-time home-buyers.  But you and your fellow bloviators invented a story about a party that supposedly stressed correcting pronouns, buying dogs for immigrant dinners, and changing your kid's gender at recess.  Now that the election is over, instead of pointing to disinformation, dark money and the underlying persistence of racism and sexism in American life, you amplify that ridiculous falsified tale in an effort to get Democrats to abandon their long-held positions of protecting working class families and embracing tolerance and decency.  Don't you have any shame at all?  How can anyone take you and your fellow gasbags seriously if all you're going to do is recycle lies and right-wing drivel? Good-bye, Mr. Bloviator [leaves in a huff]

DB:  [to bartender] It seems as if our young whippersnapper forgot about his credit card.  Another double Chivas-rocks, my good man. 

The Fall of the American Republic: A Look Back from the Future

Editors' Note: They say that daily journalism is the first draft of history.  As America faces the most critical election since 1860, we thought we'd get a real historical perspective, since the first drafts we are reading every day are frankly pretty sh***y.  Therefore, we had to peer into the future and read what real historians wrote with the benefit of hindsight.  Today we offer an excerpt from the standard reference work, The Decline and Fall of the American Democracy 1968-2024 by the esteemed Professor of Western History at Harvard University of Korea, Prof.  Dong Geura-Mi, published by The Consortium of American University Presses in Exile in 2065.

Chapter 24

Those who were young in the autumn of 2024 will tell you that it was a golden time.  The weather, except for two serious hurricanes caused by climate change and its denial by the Republican Party, was warm and sunny from coast to coast.  Thanks to the Biden-Harris Administration, the American economy was humming, with real income growth, low inflation, and low unemployment.  In many cities, gasoline (the primary source of automotive energy then) fell below $3.00 a gallon.

On those fall weekends, hundreds of thousands flocked to America's gigantic pro-college football stadiums to thrill to the spectacle of young men crippling themselves for the entertainment of millions.  In baseball, the World Series featured the marquee match-up of the New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Dodgers. 

If you lived in one of the 43 U.S. states whose votes did not count for the Presidential election because they were not closely divided under the peculiar rules of the American Electoral College, you might have been able to ignore the election.  Almost one-third of Americans did, failing once again to vote, as turnout reached about 68%.

Feb. 2025: Immigrants are rounded up and detained

The actual electoral count failed to lead to a clear victor.  The Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, won the popular vote by over 3,000,000 over Republican Donald Trump.  But it availed her not.  In a shock, she lost the key battleground states of Pennsylvania and North Carolina by a mere 20,000 votes each.

The first complete count in Georgia gave Harris a 12,000 vote lead.  However, the Republican Governor and Legislature of Georgia moved quickly to purge voter rolls of those they claimed might not have been U.S. citizens.  In some counties, Republican election boards and operatives selectively challenged mail-in ballots on the grounds of alleged mismatches between the signatures on the ballot and on the registration cards.  As a result, Republicans invalidated some 40,000 ballots and called into question the reliability of the vote count.

Claiming that it was impossible to declare a winner based on the popular vote, the Georgia Legislature certified its own slate of Trump electors to the Congress.

The furor was tremendous.  For all of November and December, lawyers maneuvered to challenge electors in Georgia and other states.  However, the Democrats had failed to capture the House by one vote and lost their Senate majority.

June 2025: SG Giuliani urges
the Court to ban abortion medication

As was the case in 2000, a Republican-dominated Supreme Court decided that Trump had won a majority of the electors and even if he had not, he would nonetheless win a House vote, which under the Constitution was decided by a majority of the states.  Therefore, in a 6-3 vote, Chief Justice Roberts declared that in the interests of “finality,” Trump had won a second term.

Trump's allies on the Republican right had prepared well.  Even as Trump gave an angry speech to a sullen crowd on Inauguration Day, his aides promulgated a series of executive orders and commands.

By the end of day on January 20, Trump had called out the Army and National Guard units to begin rounding up the 400,000 undocumented immigrants with unexecuted removal orders.  He stripped civil service protections from millions of federal workers.  He reinstituted his immigration bans.  

Most shocking to the benumbed populace, he announced a ban on the sale and distribution of abortion medication under the Comstock Act, and used the National Guard to raid health care facilities and impound stocks of the drugs.

The reaction was immediate.  Close to a million descended on Washington to protest the attacks on abortion rights.  But Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Stephen Miller had mobilized thousands of heavily armed troops and paramilitary forces and told them to use whatever force was needed to keep the streets clear.  The show of force intimidated the marchers, who remained peaceful.

It was a harbinger of much worse to come.  Acting Attorney General Jeff Clark ordered all U.S. Attorneys and staff-level lawyers to prioritize prosecutions of abortion pill providers and those giving sanctuary to noncitizens without immigration status.  When hundreds of Justice Department lawyers refused, they were summarily fired and replaced by new hires working directly for Acting Deputy Attorney General Alina Habba.

Soon the number of noncitizens subject to deportation grew by the millions, as Trump revoked all TPS and DACA designations, taking away legal status from those who had lived in the United States for years, and in many cases decades.

The Supreme Court's reversal of the right to gay marriage in 2025 and upholding of state bans on medical gender transitioning ushered in a new era of oppression of LGBTQ individuals, many of whom left the United States for Canada or Europe.

Trump's imposition of 100% tariffs on imports from China and 20% tariffs on all other imports caused economic chaos. As the cost of those tariffs was passed on to consumers, inflation spiked to 8%.  The retaliatory tariffs imposed by China and the EU led to disastrous falls in farm income and higher unemployment in export-driven industries.

Trump moved with similar dispatch in foreign policy.  With Michael Flynn returning as his National Security Adviser, he immediately terminated US aid to Ukraine and withdrew the United States from NATO.  Although the European NATO members tried to make up the shortfall, Ukraine was forced to accept a humiliating peace which led to its full absorption by Russia in 2030.  

Nov. 2026: unarmed and defenseless, Ukraine sues for peace

Impulsively, Trump agreed to fly to Moscow to celebrate with Putin the Ukraine cease fire deal.  No details emerged from their meeting, but shortly thereafter Putin transferred his exhausted but victorious troops to new positions bordering the Baltic States.  The results of the Baltic War of 2033-37 are outside the scope of this volume, but it is not too much to say that the map of Europe was remade for generations.

In the Middle East, Trump approved the Israeli plan to annex Gaza and the West Bank, but backed down when Saudi Arabia threatened to boycott US businesses and awarded Trump a lucrative contract to build a luxury golf resort on the Red Sea.

But the American home front was seething.  The families and friends of immigrants began to resist the National Guard roundups of newly-undocumented noncitizens. In some places, they armed themselves with assault weapons and faced down the Guardsmen.  Some of the troops backed down, but others, principally from the Texas and Florida National Guard, shot and killed armed and unarmed resisters alike.

As out of state federal forces invaded so-called blue states such as California and Massachusetts, their governments tried to resist and frustrate the roundups of immigrants and abortion providers.  Generally they were unsuccessful, especially after the Supreme Court upheld Trump's use of the Insurrection, Alien Enemies, and Comstock Acts.

Trump's massive and near-fatal 2026 stroke was regarded by his opponents as a chance for a fresh start.  They were wrong.  New President JD Vance, installed under the 25th Amendment, and his Chief of Staff Elon Musk continued the clampdown and even extended it.  Vance won re-election in 2028 and held the Senate after easing the pain of inflation with $10,000 checks bearing his picture, and the pattern was set.

Over time, the new Republican regime consolidated its power.  Justices Alito and Thomas were replaced by Aileen Cannon and James Ho, keeping a reactionary Republican majority in firm control of the Supreme Court.  In the 2030's the Court remade the administrative state by holding that independent agencies like the SEC and the NLRB violated the concept of a “unitary executive.” 

The toll these antidemocratic changes took on once powerful American institutions was immense.  Independent media outlets like The Washington Post and the liberal-leaning MSNBC network were closed down by their frightened proprietors, while others, like CNN and The New York Times, limited their criticism of government policies under the rubric of “occupying a neutral ground.”

March 2027: Florida college students seemingly
not bothered by loss of academic freedom

American universities were hard-hit by new regulations tying government aid, including federal student aid and loans, to compliance with vague guidelines intended to assure representation of conservative views.  Between those laws and others limiting medical and biological research in accordance with hard-right Catholic metaphysics, many simply found themselves unable to function. 

The richer schools opened satellite campuses in cities like Berlin, London, Tokyo, or Seoul, where academics out of favor with the American regime could teach and write without fear of persecution.  Some in deep red states actually picked up and moved to less oppressive states, like Houston's Rice University, which built a new campus in Los Alamos, New Mexico and sold its impressive Texas facilities to the newly-formed Musk University.

The economic stagnation and restrictions on liberty made living in the United States stultifying.  Before she left America to reside permanently in France in 2040, diarist Malia Obama recalled how even her parents were no longer optimistic about the future of their country....

Just a reminder that the last day to vote is Tuesday, November 5. It could be your last one ever.