John Steinbeck nailed it decades ago:
“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as the exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”
Change “millionaires” to “billionaires” and it’s just as relevant today.
The Supreme Court just allowed Cheeto to deport people to South Sudan, even if they have no connection to that war-torn country.
I haven’t read the court’s opinion yet, if there is one, so I don’t know what they’re claiming as the legal justification for this. Anyone here know?
Why South Sudan? And what’s next, deporting people to Syria or similar countries? I can’t help but think the whole point is cruelty.
The USA is dead. You now have the Trumpenreich.
The Apricot Arsehole now has his own private army, in the form of ICE, which will be his personal Dirlewanger Brigade to unleash upon anyone who doesn’t lick his ringpiece enthusiastically enough.
The USA is dead, because not enough people had the cojones to stand up to a spoiled manbaby, and The Man in the High Castle is about to become a nightmare documentary.
Trumpfuckistan not only has its Führer, it now has its Gestapo to accompany the self-declared god-king and Ineffably Splendid Pooh-Bah of the Universe.
I suspect that this will end in one of the following ways:
[1] Civil War 2.0;
[2] Implosion followed by descent into anarchy;
[3] Someone is stupid enough to start World War III in order to hasten the Rapture, and humanity becomes extinct.
I can’t think of any other explanation. They think of cruelty as a deterrent to illegal immigration, and as an added bonus the sadists are enjoying themselves and getting their perverse pleasure. The many and diverse ways they excise the cruelist means possible is astounding. They’ve now opened “Alligator Alcatraz” and are gleefully selling mugs and Tshirts. I find nothing amusing about a hell hole in a swamp where people can be disappeared to. What is wrong with these people? I’d mistakenly lived my life under the assumption that good people out numbered the bad.
Eggs can go up or…well up, but greatness, you can’t put a price on it mun. 
I always figured there were good, psychopaths, and garden-variety bad people. The last category, and. to a lesser extent the middle one, can be held in check by societal expectations and disapproval, even when they are, numerically in the majority to an extent. That line has not held in the US and it’s showing signs of weakening elsewhere. Even Canada has just passed laws pandering to its conservative eleements, that set the stage for greater government intrusion and erosion of personal freedoms.
Things like money and politics are fictions we all agree to follow but they quit working when enough of us no longer agree or start to make a lot of special-case exceptions to the basic principles.
My wife & I drove 500 miles to visit my daughter and grandkids yesterday and for the first time we took our passports along because now we are in a “show me your papers on demand” society. Last week people were funneled off the freeway in Texas onto an impromptu ICE checkpoint at one of those truck weigh stations. Signs were posted “HAVE YOUR PASSPORTS READY” as if that’s ever been a “thing” in the US, you literally don’t carry your passport with you because losing it is a greater probability than needing it for anything but international travel. But now we have trial balloons like this. It’s only going to get worse.
Back in 1990 only 5% of Americans had a passport. Now the number is up to around 48%. Larger, yes, but most Americans don’t have a passport. What is the gestapo going to do if an 80-year-old granny gets stopped at one of these checkpoints and she doesn’t have one?
In this particular case the guy relating the experience must have looked “white” enough because they asked him, “are you a US citizen?” And when he replied, uh, yes – they waved him on. They probably were profiling for immigrants / minorities and the lack of a passport would act as a pretext to detain them? Something like that anyway.
That this even has to occur to me as a possibility in my travel planning is hard, psychologically, to cope with. You go all your life taking basic freedoms as a given, and then they are gone, just like that.
Someone on FB put it succinctly:
“MAGA took a machete to advanced weather forecasting because they thought it would own the libs, not drown their kids” …
Threatening people with retaliation for doing not-illegal things hasn’t stopped Orange and his cabinet from retaliating against people when they do legal things, IMO.
I’ll be surprised if the thuggish trend doesn’t extend to this situation.
Maybe, in time, Donnie and the cabinet will learn to read, and then read their country’s foundational documents.
And maybe, in time, I’ll be the King of Spain…
The U.S. has an absolutely horrendous history of not paying attention to its foundational documents. Just look at our history, the real history–not the revisionist nonsense written by people with vested interests in maintaining the white male-dominated status quo.
Sure, this country has been a shining beacon on a hill if you were a well-off white male, but not if you were a woman, a poor white, black, indian, japanese, chinese, or mexican.
Trump and his minions are doing what the powerful have always done in this country–they’re just doing it out in the open for everyone to see.
In addition he has grifted way more than $400K selling everything from crypto to perfume.
Another green light for despotism…
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/08/supreme-court-federal-worker-firings-ruling-00442721
