Re: lawless SCOTUS decisions, maybe you're thinking of the TPM post on "civic sedevacantism" that ends:
"I'm saying that we must disengage from the idea that this is what the law is. It's not. These are fraudulent decisions."
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/toward-a-theory-of-civic-sede-vacantism
Re: the problem of how to deal with things like the weakening of protections around pollution, it seems like there are three answers:
(1) move to a Blue state, where the state itself will pass and enforce regulations
(2) move to another country
(3) to another, better-run planet
I realize that for many people, these steps are not possible, which is why I include #3 (which, notwithstanding Kums (a)Lone) is impossible for every human, and won't be changing ever.
Like, how would I know if some toxin leaches into the water table? and10 years from now, the whole community gets cancer?
I guess the short answer is, you wouldn't. Trust in the federal government and American public is rightly breaking down quite a bit. The specific things to worry about will vary a lot based on where you live. Your worries and a lot more seem reasonable based on what I know about Texas. In California I'd worry about things like droughts and wildfires due to mismanagement of federal resources (the Army Corps of Engineers already released a bunch of water in reservoirs they shouldn't have, right?). Here in DC I'd worry less about that stuff - we aren't prone to those kinds of natural disasters, and Republicans and their lobbyists don't want the water in their own offices getting screwed up - and more about general breakdown of local government, with a slight chance of rampaging MAGAs.
Every day I'm thankful that my parents, sister, and her family live in Vermont. They're in probably one of the safest places in the country, and it's a day's drive for us to get there. If some disaster hits, we can't plan to get there on short notice, as discussed in the "Go bag" thread, but if we have a few weeks' notice and/or shelter in place through some initial crisis, we could pack our lives into the car to go join them. It would suck, but not as much as a lot of things that could happen. Sorry to be callous to the ~300 million Americans who don't have such a good escape plan.
Yeah, I mean the end of science research in America would really hit close to home in a way that nothing that happened last term did.
I'm genuinely shocked at how different this term is from the first one. I was really wrong in expecting it to just be more of the same. I'm not sure how much of that is prep-work done by Project 2025, how much is Trump having loyalists instead of regular Republicans, how much is Republicans being fully on-board with Trump, and how much is Musk. These Canada tariffs are just so insane it's hard for me to even come up with a theory about what's going on in this administration.
1: YES! Thank you, that's exactly what I was reading.
(Thank god it turned out to be something respectable and not like "A Quack's Guide to Soccer Moms in the Age of Trump and also Fashion" or some shit.)
On the plus side, this means I can keep pooping on Ohio.
Poop away, young stallion, poop like the wind.
The hidden downside to dismantling all the agencies that were created to keep us safe.
(1) move to a Blue state, where the state itself will pass and enforce regulations
And you are referring to the decision in "CITY AND COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA v. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY," no?
1: These are fraudulent decisions."
"Thank you again. Thank you again. Won't forget."
(And I do wonder in what context DJT thanked him before. Probably at the inauguration?)
Via Alexandra Petri on Bluesky:
Jewelry for our time: "The Sisyphus necklace" (miniature of him pushing a rock) "A reminder that you can overcome anything."
I'm feeling a bit dejected and also guilty. I'm about as secure as someone of my SES can be. I don't work for the feds, I'm an old white male, I will retire probably in about 5 years with enough to retire on, and if there are toxins in the water it will only affect the last fraction of my lifespan so something else will probably get me. Younger people I'm connected to (mostly in the wildlife field) are getting hit with real consequences already: job offers retracted, fired at 11.5 months into a 12 month probationary period, can't travel because of the dumb $1 limit on all fed credit cards. Obviously whole agencies and programs being shut down is affecting so many good people. I feel pretty ineffective at doing anything to stop what's going on. I don't even talk to people about it, because half of us realize and despise what's going on and the other half (let's be honest, 2/3 in this red state) are obviously good with it. I spend a lot of time walking out to the blueberry patch and garden to watch them grow.
11: "One must imagine yourself happy."
Last week a whole bunch of leaders decided that their country needs nuclear weapons, probably correctly. Most of these countries are inclined to keep defense expenditures down so they can keep shit out of their rivers and have a health care system that serves most of their people. This probably translates into a smaller number of nuclear weapons and a more vulnerable deterrent. Which means that in a crisis, and a crisis always comes sooner or later, they will be faced with a much smaller "use it or lose it" window than U.S. and Russian leaders have had in the past. Which means global warming might finally be solved.
LB's mention of Spinrad's short stories got me to read his The Last Hurrah of the Golden Horde. One of the stories had this little timely nugget:
In a unanimous decision today, the Supreme Court declared The Constitution unconstitutional. "There is no provision whatsoever in The Constitution for The Constitution." the court decision pointed out.
I rewatched A Man For All Seasons for the first time since I was a young teenager a couple of days ago and damn if that didn't all too uncomfortably capture what it feels like to live under a lawless tyrant while clutching desperately and futilely at the last remnants of the law in order save yourself.
I'm sure it worked out fine for whoever that is.
He got his head chopped off, Moby
Went to my heavenly reward and have interceded on occasion since. Make of that what you will.
22 Wrong Lord High Chancellor Thomas
When the king cuts your head with a big fucking scythe, that a More, eh.
Will nobody rid me of whatever troublesome developer fucked up the clipboard in Office?
Will no one rid us of this troublesome [redacted]
Kings and annoying priests; England is so easy to get mixed up.
Speaking of courts and judges, there have been increased threats against judges given inflammatory rhetoric from Musk (and some Republican senators etc.).
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/judges-face-rise-threats-musk-blasts-them-over-rulings-2025-03-05/
Here is the measure response from White House spokesman Harrison Fields*:
"The White House condemns any threats to really any public officials, despite our feelings that a lot of these people are leftist, crazy judges that aren't following the Constitution," Fields said. "Just because these people are leftist, crazy, unconstitutional people doesn't mean they deserve to be harmed. That's not how you engage with disputes in this country."
*Seems to have been a Byron Donalds press person and then Heritage Foundation.
Speaking of not coping well, I finally created a bluesky account. But not with a username anyone would recognize, I don't follow anyone, and I don't post. I just wanted to be able to see posts from people whose accounts are set to only visible to logged in users.
Yeah, well Medicaid cuts will undermine blue states.
4: Yeah, my employer gets like 900 million in NIH funding. We recently had layoffs in clinical operations. We stand to losd hundreds of millions. I don't see how that's not crippling to the indtitution. I think that would suck for me personally even though I'm in a blue state. I don't think anywhere is safe.
Safe to assume that the entire point of turning off the water main is that Trump can then selectively turn them back on individual spigots as blue state governors agree to submit to whatever concession and humiliating ritual occurred to him that morning.
9: Well, I did specify two more options of escalating severity, specifically for when the less-severe ones fail.
The way I look at it, if SF (and CA) decide that they're going to abide by lawless Federal directives that harm their populations, that's a sign that it's time to leave.
Turns out getting methed up Nazis to run your government is going about as well the second time as it went the first time.
On...maybe a more serious note? I actually know more people who lived in the Third Reich than voted for Trump. One thing I've learned from them was that was life was normal until it wasn't. Or, life was normal and stayed mostly that way, as long as you didn't mind food shortages or forced conscription or ask questions about where your neighbors went or openly and publicly dislike Hitler. One thing that scares me is that our complacency and failure of imagination will let us drift to a point where any normal level of resistance is no longer possible. If this plays out the way Nazism did, none of us are safe, at all.
Today I walked around in the rain putting up flyers for an anti-Trump rally downtown on Saturday, March 9. When I got home I found out that Saturday is actually March 8.
If you go back out tonight with a sharpie no one will notice.
Yeah, the font is a little off, but I'm planning a sharpie tour tomorrow.
||
Axes, mud, and naked lovers notwithstanding, Saint-Denis had been at the heart of Frankish kingship for centuries|>
When the king cuts your head with a big fucking scythe, that a More, eh.
When you're making the point that your time's out of joint, say "o mores!"
When you're feeling dismay at the youth of today, that's "o mores!"
Disrespecting the old - they won't do what they're told! - that's "o mores!"
In these horrible times, let your thoughts out in rhymes, say "o mores!"
I just got back from my sharpie tour and the majority of flyers I had posted to telephone poles did not make it through the downpour we had last night. That's my bad for printing them on the same lightweight paper I use for printing zines. Next time I'll use thicker paper with some gloss to it, and thumbtacks instead of staples.