One year on

Today is January 20th (happy birthday, Erik, sorry it falls on a bad anniversary). That means it's been exactly one year since the current president—an improbable amalgam of Ralph Wiggum and Emperor Palpatine—resumed power and re-began his assault on the United States.

I could go into all the atrocities of the past week or so—of which there are many, not the least of which is Felon47’s demented letter to Norway's Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere, in which he obtusely blamed the Norwegian government for the choices of an independent board unaffiliated with the state, claimed (again) to have halted wars that remain ongoing, pretended not to understand territorial rights, implied that the United States existed "hundreds of years ago" and landed boats at Greenland at the same time the Norse did in the 13th Century, and demanded NATO "do something for the United States" as if the common-defense alliance's purpose was to be some sort of patron—but we are all suffering from WTF fatigue, right?

Suffice to say, the outrages continue, largely unabated.

So, I figured it was time for another letter to Congress. I fully expect it to fall on deaf ears, but if enough of us deluge our representatives with demands for action, with pleas to rise to the occasion, with calls to fight for the continued existence of our republic, maybe we'll see some more leaders grow a spine and stand up to these fascist terrorists occupying the White House and the majority party in Congress.

I urge you all to make use of the link in the sidebar and send your own letters to your three House and Senate representatives.

January 20, 2026

Dear Sen. Maria Cantwell (D WA):
Dear Sen. Patty Murray (D WA):
Dear Rep. Pramila Jayapal (WA-7):

 

Hi again.

Just wanted to remind you all that over the weekend President Trump committed several more impeachable offenses and yet no one in Congress seems to be doing anything about it.

I say "seems to be" because I know how Congress works; I know that the minority party is operating at a significant disadvantage. But when I see Democrats go on television and/or speak to the press, very little of what they're saying rises to the reality of the moment. I see Chris Murphy demanding no masks for ICE agents, I hear Ritchie Torres offering a bill to make ICE agents wear QR codes, I read that Hakeem Jeffries declared that "we’ll figure out the accountability mechanisms at the appropriate time."

Milquetoast, small-scale pleas for reform.

Well, I have to ask, if what we've endured for the past year doesn't put us at "the appropriate time" right now, what the hell will it take to get there?!

I am pleased that you, Rep. Jayapal, are one of the few out there recognizing the calamity we're facing if action isn't taken. I am disappointed that you, Sen. Murray, have evidently dismissed the concept of not funding the government at the end of the month because it wouldn't immediately stop DHS from continuing its abuses. I'm not sold on the idea that a shutdown would help, but I don't see how it could hurt (and I'm aware I may be missing something there). No matter what, it's leverage. Just like the Senate had leverage last fall during the shutdown over ACA subsidies and then threw it away for nothing, this stance at least has the appearance of the same kind of capitulation.

DHS is a rogue operation, a sprawling and largely unaccountable behemoth of a department that never should have been created in the first place, a manifestation of paranoia and trauma inflicted by 9/11 and exploited by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. A long-term goal needs to be the dismantling of the whole department and returning some of its functions to their former agencies while doing away with others, including ICE, and I want to hear that goal articulated by people in Congress.

Right now, in this moment, this country is on the brink of civil war. Donald Trump and his ICE Gestapo are firing on Fort Sumter right now in the Twin Cities. You all may not have the ability to use the current funding deadline to immediately strip this lawless militia of its resources, but doing nothing—even maintaining the status quo—is unacceptable.

We need to know that our Democratic leaders and our representatives—this is still a representative democracy, at least for now—understand that you don't "reform" fascism. You impede its workings, you refuse to fund it, you refuse to confirm its operatives, you oppose it however possible until you can crush it for good. And we're not hearing that. Again, Rep. Jayapal, you're on the right track, at least, thank you for that, but you're one voice and we need to hear the whole party speak up.

We need to hear every elected Democrat demand that everyone in Congress, most assuredly including Republicans, abide by their oaths of office and respect and defend the Constitution of the United States. Which REQUIRES CONGRESS TO REMOVE THIS PRESIDENT ASAP:

Article II, Section 4: The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

"Shall be" isn't an optional phrase. This president, this vice-president, and the majority of this cabinet have all betrayed the Constitution and their oaths to it multiple times in the past year. This president, abetted by the vice-president and the cabinet, has engaged in bribery on a near-daily basis. This president, enthusiastically abetted by this vice-president and this cabinet, has committed multiple other high crimes, both criminally speaking and in the more fungible sense of damage to the nation—including but not limited to murder, abuse of power, betrayal of alliances and treaties, obstruction of justice, corrupt use of the military, piracy, kidnapping of American citizens and a foreign head of state, destruction of government property, illegal taxation, theft, and lest we forget, suppression of the Epstein Files which no doubt implicate the president in even more criminal behavior.

Every single member of both houses of Congress should be made aware, if they are not there already, that failure to impeach and convict equals a betrayal of their oaths. Sooner or later this regime will come to an end. If it ends with the United States surviving, then every Congressperson and Senator who refused to act in accordance with his/her oath will be remembered as a fascist enabler AT BEST and will be subject to consequences ranging from prosecution to ostricization to simply the end of political careers. If the regime ends with the United States transformed into a totalitarian state, then every Congressperson and Senator who refused to act in accordance with his/her oath will have lit the kindling that starts the second revolutionary war.

Milquetoast is insufficient. Small-scale reform is insufficient. Removal is required.

 

Sincerely,

Tim Harrison

Shoreline, WA

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, Democrats, Democracy, Posted on January 20, 2026 at 7:38PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

1 Comment

May We Live in Interesting Times

The past week has been, let's say, trying. I've not been doing well with it.

Those who have been readers of this irregularly updated site know of my struggles with what I refer to as the Black Hole; while in inapt metaphor in some ways, it serves my purposes. The gravity of depression is the worst thing about it—it pulls you into it and the deeper you go the more energy it requires to break free.

Except you can't ever break free of the Black Hole. It's always there, the best you can do is achieve a high, stable orbit. I manage this more often than not, thanks in large part to psychopharmacology, but not always.

Even when not in the grips of an episode, maintaining orbit requires a certain amount of energy. If you get sapped of that, you start losing altitude. Gradually at first, so slowly that it can be a week or three before you realize you've slipped and only notice when it gets to be closer to a free-fall.

Anyway, ever since President VonClownstick was declared the winner of the election four years ago, there's been an extra layer of tension in my psyche. Like many of us out there, I'm anxious. A kind of primed fight-or-flight response waiting to be triggered. My mind has been on a more-or-less constant Red Alert. This year it's only been ratcheted up. I mean, impeachment failed because the entire Republican party has become a corrupt anti-democratic scourge and then the pandemic hit. And that was met with such ignorance, disinterest, and astonishing levels of incompetence as to put the US Government effectively on the side of the coronavirus. It was already enough to drive one up the wall, and then RBG died, and we can't even give her the mourning she deserves because her death set off another round of nationwide anxiety attacks.

I hit the wall. Figuratively, I mean, I didn't actually punch my walls. But I was angry enough to. I was mad at pretty much everything for a while there. My Red Alert mind boiled over in frustrated rage at how our society put itself in an entirely predictable, entirely preventable, mostly self-inflicted catastrophic circumstance.

I've started to gain some altitude on the Black Hole. I'm not spewing anger at every turn any more. I'm a little more even-keeled. But the catastrophic circumstance we're living through is no better. After RBG died and we all set about fretting over how to prevent the VonClownstick brigade from further turning the Supreme Court into a fascistic rubber stamp for government by mobsters, the pre-election GOP propaganda and machinations to interfere and cheat went into overdrive.

I don't know how I'm going to keep up the necessary fight against the Black Hole over the next couple of months; I won't truly be able to relax and really climb to high orbit until this regime of criminal thugs is gone. But in the meantime, we've all got to do our part to make sure we actually get to that point.

That means, first and foremost, to ensure that everyone who is able to vote does vote in this election.

The Trumpsters are out there decrying voting isn't legitimate, that we need to "get rid of the ballots," that people shouldn't be allowed to participate unless they vow to support the incumbent. The president is on TV just about every day making such claims, railing against mail-in ballots, against early voting, against participation, basically. His claims are all bullshit, of course, but they have a purpose. The guy is by no means an intelligent person, but nor is he a total moron. There are one or two areas in which he has some competence, and manipulation is one of them.

The president is railing against voting by means other than in-person at polling places for two reasons. One, because he wants to lay the foundation for his inevitable "legal" challenges to the election when he loses; by squawking repeatedly for months about how mail ballots are fraudulent in advance of the election, before there could even be any evidence of what he wants us to believe, he hopes to make it seem reasonable to make that claim after the fact—he needs this advance primer because he knows his challenges will be baseless and wants to create a false basis in the minds of the public first. Two, and this is something I have yet to hear any media types give much attention to, because mail-in/absentee ballots leave a paper trail, and the more voters he can drive to in-person voting at polling stations, the more votes will be cast on machines that can be hacked and by methods that cannot be traced.

Donald Trump is the most obvious and most prolific practitioner of psychological projection anyone's ever seen on a national scale. When he accuses someone he considers to be an opponent of a certain behavior, you can bet it's because he himself is doing it. Be aware of that whenever you hear him accuse someone of something nefarious. He is accusing the Democratic party of dishonesty and thievery because he is dishonest and thieving. He may actually believe it; it is entirely possible that he cannot conceive of other people behaving in ways he does not, that he truly believes that everyone is as crooked and self-interested as he is because what else is there? He has no frame of reference for anything else.

Anyway, that's a whole 'nother tangent. The point right now is that we all have to vote. We have to turn out in unprecedented numbers, to cast an avalanche of votes for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris so large that it overwhelms the efforts of the VonClownstick faithful to cheat and sue and discredit their way to "victory." Everyone, if you're not yet registered to vote, do so now. Get an absentee ballot if you can. Cast it as soon as possible. Do everything you can to ensure your ballot is able to be counted on or before election day.

'Cause this is it. If this goes badly, this country is over and we're on our way to being Trumpistan. Donald Trump and the Republican party have declared war on the United States Constitution and on democracy itself, and if we allow them to win that war all bets are off. We have to beat them. Soundly and decisively. And then make sure this can't ever happen again.

Tagged The Black Hole, Politics, President VonClownstick, Democracy, Joe Biden, Posted on September 27, 2020 at 3:06AM   |   Permalink   |     |  

No Comments yet