There’s a story attributed to noted Anthropologist Margaret Mead in which she’s asked at a lecture what she thought was the first sign of civilization. Apparently, the student thought she would say something about the development of arrow heads or pottery but she answered that she considered the first sign of civilization to be a femur she had found that had been broken and healed. The story claims she displayed the bone as she was talking about it. She said that evidence of recovering from broken bones was never found in the remains of competitive, savage societies. There, clues of violence abounded: temples pierced by arrows, skulls crushed by clubs. But the healed femur showed that someone must have cared for the injured person – hunted on his behalf, brought him food, and served him at personal sacrifice.

It should be noted that the story cannot be verified. It first appeared in 1980 but Ms. Mead died in 1978 and was never asked about it. No verifiable evidence has ever been discovered to support the story. But I think it persists because it sounds right. It suggests human compassion indicated the beginnings of civilization. But if you think about it, a badly broken bone would have had to be set – a process likely beyond the knowledge of proto-civilization peoples. If the bone had only cracked, it’s possible the guy just toughed it out until the thing knitted. Still, it’s a nice story.

Civilized nations around the world provide care and support for their disabled citizens. The United States pretends to, also. Here, disabled people who can’t work are often provided a stipend. It’s little more than a national conscience salve. It’s nowhere NEAR enough to live on and – the US being the US – if a disabled person does find a way to make a little money, the stipend is immediately garnished for 50% of whatever was earned. Punishment built right into the system. Standard operating procedure in the US: make sure the downtrodden STAY down…

Here’s something you might not know: it’s expensive to be disabled in this predatory nation. Disabled individuals are a captive market and there’s NOTHING capitalists love more than a captive market. The profit margins are amazing! Disabilities often require supportive equipment. The equipment requires maintenance – expensive maintenance. Housing is an extra challenge. Stairs in a potential rental, for example, may seem like an obvious impediment to housing and they are. But if your wheelchair is 28 inches wide, you can’t live in a house with a 26 inch doorway into the bathroom thus limiting one’s housing options even further.

The point is, there are a LOT of hidden costs to being disabled and they are just exploited in this once-great nation. If caring for the disabled is the first sign of civilization in a society, what is preying upon the disabled considered?

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These days, I find myself wondering how long the Pro-Covid-19 crowd is going to be able to keep their beloved virus in play. They’ve nursed it through Alpha, Beta, Delta, Gamma, and Omicron variants and they seem intent on keeping the thing alive as long as possible. So far, the virus supporters have kept the thing alive FAR longer than I would have guessed. We’re going into year three of this thing and, man, am I getting sick of it. Well, no. I’m trying NOT to get sick from it. The anti-mask, anti-vax crowd, however, they just want this thing to go on and on. At least, that’s my read from their behavior.

From the moment the Feckless Fuckup allowed the virus to run rampant through our society, thinking people probably should have known we were facing a long, drawn-out process. We didn’t, though. Despite the rhetoric, we thought people would wear masks to protect those around them and we all waited while science dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s on the vaccine. Once available, smart people thought everyone would line up, get the jab, and tamp the virus down, leaving it no suitable hosts. It was, simply, the responsible, adult thing to do.

Truth? It never crossed my mind that contrarian conservatives might be Pro Covid. Donnie the Dumbass lied to his sycophants. HE secretly took the vaccine then told them not to do the same. They dutifully refused the vaccine and continue to whine and bitch about wearing masks. (Apparently, doing the right thing infringes on their freedumb…) On the upside, the vast majority of people dying these days from the virus they deny are the same contrarian conservatives who refused to do the right thing in the first place. In a remarkably stunning development, they’re actually culling themselves from society. Quite the service, actually. Thank you. On the downside, though, they’re STILL overwhelming the medical system and their refusal to act like adults is STILL killing people who tried to do the right thing. There are regular stories in the press about people having health crises and dying because they can’t get into hospitals overwhelmed by the Pro Covid crowd.

It took well over a year before CheetoJesus finally confessed he had duped the rubes. He told them that not only did he get the vaccine, he’s had boosters and hinted that maybe they should do the same. They booed him. I imagine that if he maintains support for vaccination, his “CheetoJesus” status will be in jeopardy and he’ll be back to just being the standard Orange Moron. I DO wonder just how many of the Pro Covid ranks have received the vaccine in secret and just keep shouting to stay in with their crowd but so many of them are dying these days, the numbers can’t be that great.

It’s a natural fact that the very BEST way to get a conservative to understand a thing is for them to experience the thing personally. For many, though, experiencing their Pro Covid stance often leaves them unable to repent, being dead and all. There are many stories in the news about Pro Covid members begging for the vaccine as they lay dying in the hospital. Too late. I’ve seen stories where some dying of Covid, continue to insist that they’re NOT dying from Covid. Stubbornly stupid to the literal end. Some younger, healthier people will survive it, only to find themselves “long-haulers,” a secondary condition science is STILL trying to work out.

But the point is, Covid-19 and it’s various mutations are NOT going away so long as we have a Pro Covid crowd out there nurturing the virus. They just keep insisting the virus will run it’s course and disappear, mentally impervious to the reality that some huge number of people are going to have to die to bring it to pass – or that they may well be in that number. (812,083 deaths in the US so far as of December 29, 2021.) Meanwhile, the rest of us are going to have to keep our masks handy and keep getting the various boosters until the Pro Covid crowd either grows up or dies off and that’s going to take awhile…

Historians have a tendency to simplify events as a kind of shorthand. A result of this practice is that various historical events get “pegged” to other events. A good example is the idea that the Roman Republic failed when Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon with his army. But historians know the Republic had been struggling for some time and had become vulnerable to an ambitious egomaniac. They also know that Julius Caesar never declared himself Emperor. That title was first conferred on Caesar’s adopted son, Caesar Octavian. Caesar, himself, had become Pro-Consul, a position recognized in the Republic. The difference was, Caesar became Pro-Consul for life. The point is, the fact that we now teach that the Roman Republic became an Empire when Caesar crossed the Rubicon is because that’s the single most important act during a long line of other, smaller acts that led to the perversion from Republic to Empire.

Assuming humanity manages to survive at all, future historians will look back at the failure of the Republic of the United States and look for a distinct event they can tie to the fall. Their history will show, without question, that the long-term track that brought the Republic down was an intentional attack by the upper economic class on the norms and institutions of the country by co-opting the Republican Party.

I’m aware that history is happening now, right now, all around me, all the time. It’s one thing to look back at what, say, Jefferson wrote to Adams but right now, I’m very interested in what Hannity wrote to Trump. And Ingram wrote to Trump. And Trump, Jr wrote to Meadows, not his own father. Nice. It’s history, happening right now.

But it’s only this moment in history, the latest act in this absurd play. It goes back, to my mind, to when Newt Gingrich started misusing English to misrepresent things in an effort to undermine them. For example, before Gingrich, there existed an Inheritance Tax. It was designed to keep too much money from accruing in too few hands in order to serve the better health of the larger society. It worked. Rich people hated it because it kept too much money from accruing in too few hands (theirs) and served the better health of the larger society. Gingrich hired a guy named Frank Luntz to come up with “alternative descriptions” of things like that, then pressed the Republicans in congress to use the new, preferred, and, coincidentally, derogatory terms. Suddenly the Inheritance Tax – a tax on income from an inheritance – became the “death tax” – a god-forsaken tax on dying fercrissakes…

No. I’m wrong. I think the first salvo in the class war was the election of Ronald Reagan and the introduction of so-called ‘Supply Side Economics.’ It was a scam. It fooled a lot of people. Reagan was a true first salvo in the class war, but there have been far too many opportunities to stop the process since Reagan. He’s not the Rubicon moment.

Gingrich’s pernicious behavior is also one of the key moments but not, I think, the one that will get the historical peg as THE moment. I’ve been watching for it. There are many. Bush 41 being a one term President because he raised taxes in an effort to help America. Clinton dismantling the independent media in this once-great nation, allowing 5 corporate interests to effectively control the message. (Surprise, surprise, their message is ALWAYS corporate friendly.) Bush 43 ignoring warnings from his intelligence people, allowing the September 11 attacks, then using them to launch, not one, but two wars AND initiate constant and complete surveillance of the American people by the American government. The American War – wherever it’s happening in any given moment – keeps wealthy people wealthy. It’s why we keep bombing and bombing and bombing. It’s good for the One Percent, bad for everyone else.

It hasn’t ONLY been the GOP, of course. It could be Barack Obama pretending during the campaign that he was going to bring universal health care to the US, only to unilaterally drop the promised health care plan and provide only a “less than,” corporate-friendly insurance program. But I don’t think that will be it, either. The fact that corporations ALWAYS win in this once-great nation is a measure that Fascism, Mussolini’s version, has already taken hold. Mussolini defined Fascism as the marriage of corporation and state and asserted it’s authoritarian nature as preferable to socialism, liberalism, and democracy. Preferable to democracy. Keep that in mind as you watch one red state after another undermine the voting process in America. They keep passing laws that essentially say they’ll just ignore the outcomes they don’t like and simply declare their preferred winner.

But the fact that Fascism HAS taken root in the US only demonstrates that the Republic – much like the Roman Republic of old – has long since been under attack and corrupted. It’s only the outward sign, the one moment when the masses begin to understand that something has changed that will be pegged as the end of the American experiment…and I think I’ve finally realized what that moment will turn out to be: Covid-19.

The One Percent, making tools of the weakest thinkers and most gullible members of our society, co-opted the Republican party and declared their dedicated opposition to the health of the United States. But it has been a slow-moving coup. Everything that has happened could have been reversed. It’s very difficult to point to one moment and say, “THAT’S the one, that’s what did it…” Caesar crossing the Rubicon was an irreversible act and the single event I seek must be likewise irreversible. That’s why I think history will settle on the pandemic as the “moment” of the fall of the American Republic.

The tools of the GOP have been conditioned to believe that science is for suckers, private industry can do no wrong, and that government can do no right. Wrong, wrong, and wrong, but that’s their position. It has helped the One Percent lead the tools to wherever they needed to go to create upheaval and discontent. Then the pandemic hit. There was a moment, just a brief moment, when the conservative talking heads and thought-shapers wavered. In the face of a pandemic, despising science meant a death sentence for many of their own acolytes and they knew it. They considered, for maybe one day, telling the tools that, just this once, they could trust science. They should wear a mask and get the vaccine when it became available. They could go back to being obnoxious contrarians after the threat. But in the end? They didn’t.

They seem to have determined that giving cons truth, any truth, even one time, might well undermine decades of misinformation and seeded mistrust. If experts could be right once, couldn’t they be right twice? They couldn’t risk it, so the tools were conditioned to fight back – against science, against America. They don’t even want to. Despite all the shouting and spittle, the cons fear Covid-19 and WANT a cure. They’re just not allowed to use the one that works, so they’re trying anything, everything else in a desperate attempt to “own the libs.” (I confess, their stupid, self-inflicted deaths ARE teaching me something about them but I doubt it’s what they want me to learn.) The tools WILL stand against doing the right thing because that’s what they’ve been told to do. Their loyalty to their party, um, trumps their loyalty to the United States and even to humanity.

When Caesar crossed the Rubicon, he knew he was sending a message. The Republic had become expendable. When the conservative bubble directed it’s minions to die for the cause, they were sending a message, too. The autocrats seem to feel their control over the country is strong enough, they no longer need their tools to maintain disruption and feigned discontent. The tools have become expendable.

I think the fall of the American Republic will be pegged to the pandemic in the same way the fall of the Roman Republic is pegged to Caesar crossing the Rubicon. It’s an irreversible moment in history. Rome was never the same afterward and the US will never be the same afterward – if there ever IS an “afterward. What crawls out from the rubble will be a perverted and corrupted version of the United States of America. After Octavian, the Roman Empire went into a long decline that eventually led to the empire’s irrelevance. The American slide won’t last as long. We have far more competitive enemies than ancient Rome faced.

The bright side? It looks like our authoritarian strongman is going to be Donald J. “Donnie the Dumbass” Trump, a man so stupid, so corrupt, so completely incompetent, he makes Mussolini look like a political genius. So…there’s that…

I think my favorite story of the week is the one in which the January 6th panel in the House has obtained a PowerPoint presentation made for the dumbass that details the steps to how to overthrow American democracy. The panel received the information from Mark Meadows, the one-time chief of staff in that oh-so-corrupt White House. He started off willing to cooperate with the panel. He turned over some documents then decided he wasn’t going to cooperate, after all. Now the panel is referring him for criminal charges for refusing their subpoena…but they STILL have the documents…

The PowerPoint presentation is 38 pages long. Meadows had the copy he turned over as early as January 5th – the day before the infamous coup attempt. He didn’t turn his copy over to anyone until it was demanded by the panel. Quick question, if he KNEW a coup was planned for the next day and he didn’t DO anything about it, isn’t he culpable as well? Shouldn’t he be sharing a cell with his beloved CheetoJesus?

The really sad part to all of this is that the Republicans have been working overtime to eliminate democracy from their dark little states and have changed the rules to the point where the GOP just gets to choose and declare a preferred winner in their states. I believe all of this screaming and yelling that the last “election” was stolen is simply noise intended to blunt the complaints that come from the left when the next election IS actually stolen.

All the criminal conspirators have to do is wait things out until the mid-term “elections” which have already been rigged in their favor while the so-called “Democratic controlled Congress” chooses to do nothing. (That’s worth paying attention to – the Dems COULD take action to address what’s happening but they choose not to.) Once the GOP regains control, the investigations will be dropped – right along with the Constitution of the United States of America…

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There’s a conservative writer out there, P.J. O’Rourke who wrote a book once called ‘Eat the Rich.’ First, he’s a humorist so his libertarian conclusion doesn’t really need too much investigation. You start off Libertarian, you end up wrong, pure and simple. No surprise, he finds so-called “free market” economics the best possible answer. The book is about defending the excesses and selfishness of rich people. The suggestion is that without rich people, economies crash.

Admittedly, it’s an old book. It was written in 1998. Libertarians were still having some success selling their stupid idea that so-called “supply side economics” was something other than the launch of a class war against working Americans. Time has proven the failure of the concept. In truth, it’s failure was understandable with just a little thought. Some of us – including Bush 41 – knew it was all bunk from the time St. Reagan first blurted out the words. But here in America, asking people to think is a fool’s errand. It seems too many are afraid that might hurt…

Upon further review, the only thing that O’Rourke got right was the title and not in his intended sarcastic sense. Of course, the tools of the one percent, conservatives, are still desperately clinging to the notion in the hope that someday, somehow, some of it might become true. But then, those tools will believe anything. They’re not exactly the “turn to for knowledge” crowd. Honestly, I didn’t know people could be so embarrassingly stupid – and it seems to take a gargantuan force of will to achieve the feat.

But for people still capable of thought, I’m just going to say it – rich people are bad for economies. They do FAR more damage than good if for no other reason than they gain the market power to do whatever they want and then they go ahead and do whatever they want without regard to the wreckage they leave in their wake. Here in American, the rich have become SO rich the US government is having difficulty keeping up. That’s too rich.

The answer is and continues to be, the stupidly named Democratic Socialism. It’s a Capitalist system. It’s just regulated Capitalism. It keeps greedy people from controlling the commons. It keeps those same greedy people from hoarding wealth to the detriment of the society around them through high taxes on high incomes. In fact, Democratic Socialism is the economic system that made America great in the first place. FDR knew far too many Americans would crap their panties at the word “socialism” so he called it ‘The New Deal’ but it was just Democratic Socialism in it’s infancy.

Sadly, I don’t see any normal means to returning to Better America. The one percent launched and won their class war before most of us even realized we were under attack. Bill Clinton was a masterstroke in their scheme. Elected and derided as a ‘Democrat,’ Clinton did more to advance the One Percent’s agenda than any other modern President. But the words of JFK have never been more true: “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”

‘Eat the Rich’ was coined as sarcasm but I think it’s going to become the battle cry of the revolution…

The dumbass released a statement that said, and I quote: “Anybody that doesn’t think there wasn’t massive election fraud in the 2020 presidential election is either very stupid, or very corrupt!” The internet, of course, attacked his double-negative sentence that admits there was NO election fraud in 2020. Frankly, I’d guess he KNOWS he’s confessing the election was fair but wants to keep his big lie rolling so he puts out a statement like that, knowing his base isn’t capable of grasping his true meaning. Those who can’t figure out the double-negative will hear what they want to hear. Those of us who can, will understand his concession.

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There are four rules of gun safety. 1- Treat all guns as if they are loaded, always. 2 – Never point the muzzle of a gun at anything you aren’t willing to destroy. 3 – Be sure of your target and what’s behind it. 4 – Keep your finger off the trigger until you’re ready to shoot.

From time to time, I make reference to my own proposal for a gun management law I call ‘The Keep Your Gun Act.’ It does two basic things. One, it raises the rules for gun safety to the laws of gun safety while eliminating subjective interpretations from gun-friendly authorities. (Essentially, if you break one of those laws, it can’t be excused as an accident. e.g., guns don’t “accidentally” discharge…) The other thing it does is require gun owners to secure their weapons so that nobody can take them without permission. If your gun is stolen because you thought it was cute to leave it in your nightstand and then used in a crime, YOU can – and should – be charged as an accessory. Let’s put the “responsible” into “responsible gun owner.”

This little punk-ass bitch shooter in Michigan took a gun from his father’s nightstand to kill the four kids who have died so far. Apparently, the kid posted photos of the gun with the caption ‘My new beauty.’ According to Reuters, the father bought the gun for the kid as a Christmas gift. A killing machine as a Christmas gift…just like Jesus would have wanted…

At some point after the twisted child’s rampage the parents got wind they were going to be the subject of an investigation and, in a demonstration of their principled position, ran and hid. A lawyer tried to cover for them but his statement turned out to be false. The truth was, they ran away and hid in a warehouse. It turns out, someone let them into that warehouse and now THAT person is under investigation, too. Now the parents are under arrest and facing charges of manslaughter. Good.

Michigan, being so stained with red, doesn’t have specific laws requiring gun owners to secure their weapons from children so it will be a tough trial for the prosecution to win. Still, if the information trickling out in the media is anywhere near accurate (I know, a big ‘if’…) the parents willfully turned a blind eye to their sick son’s problems…then armed the little prick. It seems they got the outcome they desired. Maybe father and son can go to the same prison…

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In a new attack on poor people born in bad places, the Sour Cream Court is about to overturn Roe vs Wade. Make no mistake, this ruling does nothing but harm people with the fewest resources – that is, those who will have the hardest time providing for their offspring. Anybody who can pull together the scratch will just take a little vacation from their red-state hellhole to a blue state, obtain the services they need, then come home “refreshed” – and no longer pregnant.

It’s possible to eliminate abortions by attrition but the so-called “anti-abortion” crowed always stands against any and every alternative. In truth, they’re not anti-abortion. They just want to punish women (not the men) who have sex. Otherwise, the sperm donor would be on the hook for child support from the moment of conception, right? I don’t know ANYBODY who is “pro-abortion.” But the “anti” crowed ALSO refuse to teach children about reproduction and they refuse to provide birth control and they refuse to help the poor with financial aid – at least, to the extent possible.

Some people know forced births only harm a specific segment of our society. Pseudo-justice Barrett even suggested it’s okay to force women to term since they can just give the baby away. And we all know, once born, that child is on his own.

It’s interesting. Roe did NOT address abortion specifically. It’s about privacy. Overturning Roe means women are losing their right to medical privacy in some (red) states. Maybe they’ll have to go back to bringing in a permission slip from their husbands to obtain birth control, too…

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The defense at trial hasn’t started yet, but Ghislaine Maxwell’s “people” are out in force pretending that she’s as much a victim of Jeffery Epstein as the girls in question, as though she’s just the scapegoat. She was the groomer and sometimes an active participant in the sexual abuse. She was/is every bit the perpetrator. Two people committed those crimes, Epstein and Maxwell. Epstein died in prison. That doesn’t mean Maxwell gets a pass.

I don’t know how the trial will play out. Maxwell is rich and the once-vaunted “rule of law” in this once-great nation is only selectively applied anymore. But this woman seems to have been a full partner in the trafficking of underage women scheme and she should take her own responsibility for her own actions…