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As we enter Week Three of Trump’s idiot war against Iran, we can see with an increasing amount of confidence that we’ve lost. Oh, Iran hasn’t crushed us with its military. That’s not going to happen. It can’t. Our two militaries are entirely mismatched in a head-to-head confrontation.

The problem is that we are not fighting that kind of war.

There’s a running joke/gallows humor that generals always fight the last war. There’s some truth to that, but that’s not really what happened here. Even our most MAGA generals would have known that attacking Iran like this was a strategic and logistical nightmare waiting to happen. But they followed their orders.

Now we are trapped in a war we can’t end.

Trump thought he could end it whenever he wanted, but Trump is a pig-stupid dumbfuck and thought a lot of things.

He thought he would be able to just swoop in, drop a bunch of bombs, kill Iran’s leadership, and declare victory.

He thought Iran’s government would collapse and be replaced with American puppets.

He thought their military would surrender.

He thought the blessed oil would keep flowing.

He thought the war would be quick and stay contained to Iran’s borders.

His generals knew that wouldn’t be the case. The intelligence community, what’s left of it, knew that wouldn’t be the case. Every single expert on the Middle East knew that wouldn’t be the case.

But Trump knew better. The diaper-wearing imbecile with advanced dementia knew better, and he was egged on by people who either knew better but didn’t care or by people just as fucking stupid as he is.

Now we are trapped in a war we can’t end.

We could withdraw all of our military from the Persian Gulf tomorrow. We could stop bombing Iran and issue a public apology. Too late. At this point, it won’t make a difference. Iran is not going to stop.

It’s important to understand that Iran was willing to make a deal. Despite Trump being a massive lying piece of shit, Iran would really have preferred not to be bombed. So they were willing to make incredibly painful concessions. The negotiations that Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff were conducting? They were working. But they weren’t supposed to, and that was a problem. The solution, of course, was a surprise attack in the middle of negotiations. Possibly the least honorable and most scumbag move a nation can undertake. But that’s who we are now.

Putting aside the fact that Iran’s new Supreme Leader has a significant grudge against the US and Israel for killing his parents, his wife, and his son in a sneak attack, Iran has every incentive to keep fighting. So even if Trump cuts and runs, the war will continue.

Here’s the calculation: Iran was obviously overwhelmed within hours. Its leadership killed. Its military squashed. Infrastructure across the country shattered.

And yet, they still retaliated. And they continue to retaliate. Iran has rained death on several Gulf states and closed the Strait of Hormuz, beginning a global economic cardiac event. If Iran continues, it will, in fact, cause a full-blown economic heart attack in every corner of the world. This is the war we were not ready to fight. We should have been ready to fight it, but we were not. Why? Because Trump is a pig-stupid dumbfuck and the people around him are grossly incompetent. They knew what Iran could and almost certainly would do. But they just ignored it and went to war anyway.

Just to be extra clear how extraordinarily stupid these fucking morons are, we had minesweeper ships in the Middle East just a few months ago. We sent them away to be decommissioned. The newer ones are in the Pacific, twiddling their thumbs. Please recall, the regime has been planning this attack for months and could have sent these ships in anticipation. Hopefully wouldn’t need them, but only a fucking imbecile wouldn’t plan for mines at all.

Now, we have mines, drones are still flying, and the Strait of Hormuz is closed.

Iran has no incentive to stop until everyone understands their actual power. It’s not their army or their navy or their air force. It’s their ability to inflict so much economic pain on the world while also terrorizing the Gulf states that attacking them with anything less than a full multinational occupation force is clearly seen as a terrible idea.

The Trump regime is beginning to realize this and has been demanding other nations send their navies into Hormuz to escort tankers, something our own Navy is currently not willing to do because it’s too dangerous. So far, everyone appears to be telling Trump to go fuck himself. I cannot think of another time the United States has called for military aid and every ally has refused. It’s an unheard-of humiliation for Trump, but absolutely unsurprising.

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You may or may not recall, but Trump has spent the last decade treating our allies, every single one of them, like absolute dirt. He calls them losers and leeches and our enemies. He’s waged trade wars against them. Canceled treaties. Abused their citizens traveling here. Threatened invasions and sided with hostile nations against them.

After all, America is all-powerful and doesn’t need allies! That’s what “America First” means, right? We stand alone and force our will onto the world, the way Trump forces himself onto underage children. So cool! So tough! Fuckin’ A for ‘Murika!

Now we are trapped in a war we can’t end, and Trump went crying to everyone he’s been spitting on for a decade, begging for help. Gee, I can’t imagine why they hung up the phone.

Japan not planning Hormuz escort mission, PM Takaichi says

Federal politics: Australia will not send navy ship to Strait of Hormuz, minister says — as it happened

Germany to Trump: We won’t help you reopen the Strait of Hormuz

UK will not be drawn into wider war in Middle East, says Keir Starmer

While it’s true that reopening the Strait is in everyone’s best interest (except Iran), our former allies are not going to send their men and women to die for Trump's arrogance and pig-stupid dumbfuckery. More importantly, they know that Trump will literally throw away the lives of thousands of his own military and countless civilians for no reason other than to benefit himself:

If you were another country, would you put your troops in harm’s way for that fucking guy? I think not.

On top of all that, Trump has no plan. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He’s listening to warmongering fucksticks telling him that setting fire to everything will show how strong he is. He’s listening to Nazi Ghoul Stephen Miller tell him that war will allow him to declare unlimited “national emergencies” to seize control of elections and outlaw dissent and shut down all opposition.

But Trump is also seeing the stock market fluctuate wildly and oil prices rise. He’s seeing polls weighing heavily against him. He’s seeing condemnation coming from all corners, including his own people.

Trump, of course, is lashing out in panic, demanding the press only report good news. He’s now threatening to shut down media outlets that continue to report the truth about the regime’s pig-stupid dumbfuckery and how unprepared it was to fight an extended war.

Good luck with that? I’m sure Bari Weiss’s CBS will comply, and Fox News has been cheerleading the entire time. But few other news outlets not already MAGA-fied are going to throw themselves on that grenade. Maybe if the regime had taken the time to construct a narrative before launching the war, the press would be more willing to carry water. It certainly worked for the Iraq invasion.

But they didn’t, and no one is going to pay attention to Trump’s childish temper tantrum. So much winning!

So here we are. Stuck in a war we cannot win, without allies, against an enemy we have left with no choice but to wage economic war on the world. Our economy was already struggling, and when the price of gas continues to rise, it will stall completely. When fertilizer runs short, the price of groceries will skyrocket, leading to even more economic stress. When gas becomes even more expensive as Trump continues to do pig-stupid dumbfuck things like knock Iran’s oil production offline, our economy will fall into a tailspin and Trump will not be able to blame Democrats or migrants or Trans kids. He’ll try to blame Iran, but no matter how loudly he screams it, we’re all going to remember that he started this war on a whim. Iran is not the hero of the story, but they surely aren’t the aggressor.

I don’t really know for sure what comes next. I do know that there is no scenario where the United States doesn’t lose. Even if Iran were to completely capitulate tomorrow, it would take weeks to clear the Strait of Hormuz, and the economic damage is compounding every day. Every week they refuse to stop fighting, the Strait stays closed, and the damage gets worse.

Iran is, perversely, holding most of the cards here. A land invasion would be catastrophic, and the Strait would stay closed for months, ensuring a deep global recession. And in the end, there is zero guarantee we would topple the regime. We would literally destroy our own economy for nothing.

No matter what happens, this will end in utter humiliation for the United States and its fascist leaders. The regime deserves no less, but we deserve better. Our military deserves better. The people of Iran deserve better.

When the regime falls, and it will, all of these filthy war criminals have to be put on trial. We will dig through their communications, and we will know why they launched this war. Bribes from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE? Trump’s desperation to bury the Epstein files and be hailed as a “wartime president?” Was Trump, suffering from severe dementia, manipulated by Lindsay Graham and other neo-con warhawks?

We will know, and they will all pay for what they’ve done and the lives they stole to feed their monstrous egos and greed. But for now, all we can do is watch1 this regime of soulless monsters play war and hold them accountable for the evil they’re committing.

I hope you feel better informed about the world and ready to kick fascists in the teeth to protect it. This newsletter exists because of you, so please consider becoming a supporting subscriber today for only $5 a month or just $50 a year (a 17% discount!). Thank you for everything!

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There are 231 days until the most important midterm election in American history. The regime is afraid, and they should be. We are legion, and they are weak. Stay strong. You are never alone.

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“Bomb Iran, they said. It would be easy, they said. You’ll be a wartime president, they said. Iran will fall just as easily as Venezuela, they said.

Nobody told me there would be consequences to starting a war in the Middle East! That’s not fair! I’m the victim here!” - Donald Trump, probably.

I’m at Awesomecon this weekend, and I spent Tuesday crying, so not as much to catch up on this week. Still, let’s take a little stroll, shall we?

Monday: There’s no way this could go wrong! Honest!

Tuesday: There was a lot of sleeping after a night of very bad insomnia.

Wednesday: The Toddler King doesn’t know what to do about his stupid war.

Thursday: Podcast!

Friday: Awesomecon!

5 Things I Found Interesting This Week

1. The Desire for Terror - And the defense of democracy by Timothy Snyder at Thinking about…

2. The Implications of Iran Mining the Strait of Hormuz Are Many—and Ugly - Laying mines is cheap—and easy. Clearing them is expensive and hard. The potential consequences are terrifying. by Brynn Tannehill and The New Republic at The New Republic

3. EPIC FAIL - How Trump has managed to take himself hostage, and is trying to use our military to gain his release ... by D. Earl Stephens at Enough Already

4. The Boomer Generation Had Every Advantage and Still Burned It Down - A New Political Generation, Standing on the Shoulders of Earlier Reformers, Has Entered the Institutions and Is Changing the Math by W.A. Lawrence at Glass Empires

5. Conservative Legal Theories and Their Authoritarian Roots by Mike Brock at Notes from the Circus

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No plan. No exit strategy. Just non-stop lying and praying someone will fix the regime’s mess for them before things fall apart TOO much.

This is what happens when you put morons and imbeciles in power and tell them that they are above the law.

and I have a big show for you this week with all of the angry ranting you know and love. Come join the Ogre Nation Conversation!

Ogre Nation News Update!

:50 - 26:40 Trump’s stupid war in Iran is spinning out of control, and we are all going to pay the price.

26:41 - 38:20 The economy is on the brink of collapse, and the coming oil shock is going to push it over the edge.

38:21 - 45:29 You Scream, I Scream, We All Scream Because of Fucking ICE

45:30 - 1:04:19 Headlines for Short Attention Spans!

1:04:20 - 1:16:46 Self-care of the Week

1:18:02 - 1:23:30 Bonus clip! Florida Woman does not like electric cars.

The Unedited Hot Mess 😜

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The next couple of weeks will tell us a lot about where we are as a country. The price of oil is, as of this writing, wobbling around $92 a barrel. That’s up from the roughly $65 it was just a month ago, but down from the $115 it spiked to last week.

Should the war continue and shipping through the Strait of Hormuz remain closed or severely reduced, we cannot just shift oil production to other parts of the world to make up the difference. Oil prices will rise, and global inflation will rise with them.

Some of Trump’s people are in a hot panic and telling him a prolonged war is suicidal for the midterms. We have to declare victory and leave, Lord Emperor Mr. President, or you’ll be impeached again. You don’t want to be impeached again for the third time, do you, sir?! And Democrats in control of the House and Senate will 100% sue to force the remaining Epstein files to be released. You don’t want all of the remaining Epstein files released, do you, sir?!

On the other hand, not staying to “finish the job” means leaving in place a far more dangerous Iranian regime. Ali Khamenei, as Supreme Leader, was hostile to the West and a monster. I could spend all day listing his crimes.

His son, Mojtaba, the new Supreme Leader, is going to be worse.

Mojtaba is more extreme, is far more interested in developing nuclear weapons, and has a real-world axe to grind (as opposed to political and ideological) with the United States (and Israel) since we just killed both of his parents, his wife, and one of his sons in an unprovoked sneak attack in the middle of peace negotiations.1

But we are not prepared for the kind of war it would take to topple the Iranian regime. It would take years and cost thousands of American lives. This was supposed to be quick and easy, not a quagmire. Go in, blow stuff in a manly way, be done, and throw a parade.

Some of Trump’s people are telling him that a prolonged war now is the only way to protect America. Also, ending the war before toppling the government would be seen as surrender, which would make Trump look like a weak sissy. You don’t want to look like a weak sissy like Biden, do you, sir?!

So what does Trump do?

Clearly, he’s swinging back and forth depending on who talked to him last and when the stock market is open. When the market is open, Trump will talk about how this will be a short war. We’re definitely going to be done soon. The market loves that, and stocks go up.

When the market is closed, Trump suddenly remembers how tough he is and talks about how we’ll be there “until the job is done.” How long will that be? Could be weeks. Could be months. No one knows. It’s not up to him. It’s up to Iran to be nice. The market would hate that, but it’s closed, and by the morning, maybe Trump will have changed his mind again.

For a good long while, the legacy press pretended that Trump was running Nixon’s “Madman Theory.” Act crazy, keep everyone off-balance and unnerved, and then play 10-dimensional chess. It allowed them to not ask the scary question. No, not “Is Trump actually a madman?” The question the legacy press has twisted itself into ever-tigher knots to avoid asking is, “Is Trump really as stupid and incompetent as he appears?”

They’ve avoided that question the entire time because the answer is manifestly “Yes.” Trump has no fucking idea what he is doing. Trump 1.0 at least surrounded himself with competent people who could rein in some of his dumber ideas, like dropping a nuke on a hurricane.

Trump 2.0 does not have any adults in the room, and it is no longer possible to hide just how fucking dumb he is. Only an imbecile would look at Venezuela and think, “We can totally do that in Iran! We’ll just kill the leader, and they’ll 100% bend the knee!”

I am no expert in the Middle East, and even I knew Iran wouldn’t fold that easily.

But here we are, in a war with no defined end other than “Iran has to be nice.” Something a child would say. We’re killing hundreds of people a day and creating the conditions for a humanitarian crisis that will lead to tens of thousands of radicalized Iranians, and the end goal is being decided by a toddler.

Said toddler has to choose the two options in front of him now: Maybe save his own skin by ending the war and declaring a TOTAL VICTORY! or continue dropping bombs and…do something else.

TOTAL VICTORY!!!

This option is based on Trump’s desperation. The midterms are just seven months away, and Trump is in deep trouble. If either the House or the Senate flips to Democratic control, a lot of Trump’s corruption will be exposed. If both flip, the hearings will be endless, and how long can the courts slow-walk the release of the Epstein files? Will SCOTUS step in to help? Not guaranteed. Protecting pedophiles is not really a Federalist Society priority and after Trump called Kennedy and Barrett embarrassments to their families, they may not be overly inclined to indulge a man who rapes children.

Even Trump, dumbfuck that he is, understands that high inflation and high gas prices will turn an already uphill struggle in the midterms into a complete rout. All of his plans to tamper with the vote won’t mean anything if the blue wave is large enough. Worse, outright stealing the election becomes impossible if everyone knows Republicans are losing everywhere by 15 points or more.

A little push here, a little push there, and you can “lose” just enough votes to convince people the swing states went for Trump. But in a blue wave of this size? No one will believe Republicans didn’t lose control of their one-seat majority in the House. Overt election interference is just as dangerous as no interference at all for the regime. Tight rope to walk for a fascist regime. My heart bleeds for them.

A prolonged war, even two or three months, would be catastrophic for the economy (on top of all of the people who will die). With an economy that is already floundering, a hard push over the cliff that will send it into freefall, something a competent government with good intentions would have incredible difficulty tackling. Joe Biden managed to do it, and his thanks was to be punched in the face by a country of ingrates and imbeciles who were mad at the price of eggs.

The Trump regime is neither competent nor well-intentioned. The next economic collapse will be met with a clown show alternating between panic and indifference. Panic because it hurts Trump electorally. Indifference because we really do have a “Let them eat cake” regime of millionaire and billionaire elitists detached from reality. I don’t really use “elitist” in my everyday vocabulary, but these people have taken great pains to insulate themselves from the rest of us, living lives of obscene wealth and decadence. Watching The Poors suffer is sport for them. “Elitist” is a pretty good word for that kind of cultivated isolation and cruelty.

Maybe if they had started the war after the midterms and had managed to keep control of Congress, Trump would be more likely to go all-in on a quagmire. But he has finely tuned survival instincts. He’s really going to want to pull out of Iran. If his ego will let him.

Quagmire

This option is Trump giving in to his overwhelming ego and listening to the warmongering neocons who have obviously appealed to Trump’s not-so-inner fascist.

War is fun! War is manly! Killing brown people in faraway countries makes the Evangelicals happy! Iran really made Trump mad during his first time in office. Also, they signed a peace treaty with Obama. Blowing Iran to smithereens scratches two itches at once.

Here, we have Trump deciding that war is the solution to a lot of his problems. Violence abroad makes violence at home more acceptable. Does it? Not really, but Trump may decide to just run with that idea.

The regime has been suppressing reports of possible (likely) terrorist attacks at home. That is a “up is down, black is white” situation. The regime has done nothing BUT fearmonger every second of every day. The only possible reason to suppress this kind of report is because the regime wants the public to be caught unawares by an attack. The more unprepared, the more shocked and afraid people will be. The more shocked and unprepared and afraid, the easier it will be for the regime to declare a “national emergency,” giving itself unlimited power to do anything it wants.

Arrest Muslims. Suspend civil liberties. Make opposition illegal. Put elections on hold. Just for a little while, of course. Just until things calm down and the emergency passes.

It’s Authoritarian 101. The emergency never passes. There’s always a new emergency. Liberities are never restored.

Timothy Snyder wrote about this a few days ago. It’s so obvious what the regime is trying to do; it’s literally in his book, On Tyranny:

We must anticipate, with sadness and resolution. We will be horrified, but we cannot be surprised, if there is a terrorist attack on the United States. If choose to be surprised, we co-create a moment that Trump will exploit to undo what remains of our democracy. If the unthinkable happens, it will happen because some of Trump’s people thought about it, some of them created the conditions for it, and some of them looked away. The responsibility for catastrophe will be theirs. And the responsibility for democracy will be ours.

Trump knows the war will destroy his chances of holding power in the midterms. He may decide his best chance is to use the war to seize control as a dictator. Besides, without the war, the Epstein files will come roaring back. Even with the war, his crimes as a pedophile can only be held off for so long. But without a war and, hopefully, a deadly terrorist attack to justify martial law, Trump’s past will consume him long before he has a chance to steal a single vote in November.

This is where we are right now: Locked in a struggle between Trump’s desperation to win the midterms, telling him to end the war, and his ego screaming at him to stay and fight. Honestly, I don’t know which will win.

I suspect that if there is no terrorist attack in the next month and the regime cannot stage one while oil prices continue to rise, Trump will start to lean very heavily towards declaring TOTAL VICTORY!!! and getting the fuck out of Dodge.

Also, if we run low on interceptors and Iran continues to slam drones into the surrounding Gulf states, they’re going to demand Trump stop the war. They paid billions to destroy their enemy. Being under constant attack was not part of the deal, and they will not have the stomach for it. No more bribes if the war continues, and Trump won’t like that. Although if we’ve already committed ground troops to the fight, backing out will be difficult, and the neocons are pushing Trump really hard for their new forever war.

I won’t say it’s a coin flip, but we are at the whim of a dementia-riddled toddler who has, at most, a third-grade understanding of the Middle East.

Goddamn every single person who said not to vote for Clinton and Harris, the “warmongers.”

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There are only 237 days until the midterms, and the regime is panicking. They’re afraid of us. Keep making them afraid every single day. Remember, you are never alone. We beat the fascists once. We will fucking do it again.

The Opinionated Ogre is a Stay-at-Home parent first, foul-mouthed hater of fascist Republicans second. He’s been making the most horrible people in the country miserable for over 15 years, and the hate he feels for American Nazis is eternal and without limits. He plans to stop torturing right-wing trash the day the last fascist dies. So, you know, never. Please help support this potty-mouthed newsletter for just $5/month or $50/year (Almost 17% less!)

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It’s been a little over a week since we started to bomb Iran for “reasons.” Maybe it was because Trump had a “gut feeling.” Maybe because several Gulf states poured literally billions in bribes into the pockets of Trump, his family, and various members of the regime. Maybe because Russia ordered its favorite puppet to start a war. Maybe because Stephen Miller and Trump thought they would be able to use the war to finish their authoritarian schemes on America.

It’s becoming clear to the regime that they’ve made an enormous mistake. An enormous and fatal mistake, and they’re not quite sure what to do about it.

It probably seemed like a good idea at the time.

The regime would pay back all of the bribes it’s received. Jared Kushner, alone, got $2 billion. The Trump family has been paid so much in crypto, we’re not even sure how much they’ve sold our military for at this point.

Russia would get an enormous boost in oil profits and, gee whiz!, would you look at that? We’re lifting sanctions so countries can buy Russian oil! Boy! That sure is convenient for a country whose economy was on the brink of collapse just a few weeks ago.

The Evangelicals are thrilled, of course. This just might be the End Times! March on, Holy Crusaders!!!

This was going to be a quick and easy war. We would go in, blow everything up, kill the Supreme Leader, topple the government, and make Donald Trump look like a manly war hero! Iran, of course, would fight back just long enough that we would have to declare a “national emergency” and federalize the elections ahead of the midterms. Very sad. Hate to do it, but it’s for the best.

But it’s nine days later, and Iran hasn’t surrendered. Those fuckers selected a new Supreme Leader! They’re still fighting back! They’re killing people all across the Middle East and wreaking havoc! What the fuck?!

This was supposed to be over already! Trump was supposed to be rolling down Pennsylvania Ave. by now, enjoying his awesome victory parade and the praise of the people!

Instead, most of the country is furious with him, including a growing part of his own base. What? Did those fucking imbeciles really believe Trump when he said, “No more foreign wars?!” He’s lied about everything else, and NOW they’re surprised he lied about that, too?! WhatEVER!

And what is all this bullshit about running out of missiles?!

In a closed-door meeting with lawmakers Tuesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine reportedly said that Iran’s Shahed attack drones had proved a more difficult problem than initially predicted.

One source told CNN that the U.S. has been “burning” through long-range precision-guided missiles.

You mean we can’t make expensive, complicated missiles as quickly as cheap and relatively low-tech drones?! Drones that Iran has been stockpiling explicitly for this exact moment? How could anyone have foreseen such a thing? Except maybe the experts who warned that this is exactly the war Iran would fight?

A quick aside here: It’s important to understand that Iran is not fighting to win. It can’t, and they know it. This is a war of survival. What does that look like for Iran? Causing so much pain and suffering and damage to every hostile country in the Gulf that they demand the United States and Israel stop the attack. If we run out of interceptors and Iran can start launching drones that we can’t stop, the damage will be extreme. Ask Ukraine. The Gulf states will not put up with that crap for long. They wanted us to do their dirty work for them, not have death rain on their countries for weeks on end.

A second consideration for the regime is what happens if we DO run out of munitions. We’re the United States. The most fearsome and dangerous war machine ever to exist yadayadayada. If we literally run out of missiles, we suddenly look a whole lot less fearsome and dangerous. Ask Russia what it’s like to have your reputation as a military superpower evaporate.

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Meanwhile, Trump is ordering the peasants to stop paying attention to the price of gas. No, really.

What’s the price of oil looking like right now? Well, it’s 3:20 in the morning EST1

That drop from $115 a barrel is, if I understand it correctly, because countries are talking about releasing oil from their strategic petroleum reserves. That, however, is a stopgap measure. If the war drags on and oil production continues to be strangled in the Gulf, prices will skyrocket well past $100 and stay there.

And since Israel will not stop until Iran is crippled, permanently, this war is only just beginning. There’s a reason Trump is talking about sending troops in. If he backs out now, without toppling the regime, he’ll look weaker than ever. Of course, toppling the regime will be almost impossible according to our own intelligence experts:

Israel, of course, doesn’t really care, and they’re destroying everything: Schools, hospitals, desalination plants in a country suffering from acute drought. Israel is also blowing up oil infrastructure, which is causing widespread ecological damage, essentially waging chemical warfare by proxy. It’s also ensuring that the price of oil will spike further as the markets panic over the destruction of a major oil supplier. It’s also very likely to make the Iranian people turn towards their repressive government to protect them from the violently insane invaders attacking them. Remember “Hearts and Minds?” This is what the opposite of that looks like.

What could possibly go wrong?

So we’re stuck fighting a war we can’t get out of with objectives we cannot complete, and the longer we fight, the more damage to our own economy we do. An economy that is already teetering on the edge of collapse, just waiting for one or two more pushes to go over the edge.

We lost jobs in December and February. Unemployment is up. A sharp spike in gas and oil prices will push inflation way back up and drag the economy down like an anchor.

Here’s another terrible indicator that no one is really paying attention to (which is why you have me). I’ve been talking for a while now about two different bubbles, AI and the fucking banks AGAIN!!!!

In 2008-2009, the banks collapsed because they had hundreds of billions in bets tied up in mortgages that went bad. Did they learn their lesson? Fuuuuuuck no.

Well, sort of. Now they’re not just betting on mortgages. They’re betting on all kinds of debt. Credit cards, auto loans, grocery loans. Anything you can borrow money to pay for, they’re betting money on it. What happens when the economy sours and those loans default? The same goddamn thing that happened in 2008-2009. The banks can’t pay their debts, and the bubble pops. Boom goes the economy.

And look at that, rich people are starting to panic about their money:

Sentiment has soured around private credit in recent months, and retail investors are increasingly asking for their money back from funds like BlackRock’s $26 billion HPS Corporate Lending Fund (HLEND), which were designed to be open to wealthy ​individuals.

“It should serve as a warning sign for the industry and the rulemakers about the downside of illiquid funds for retail investors,” ​said Greggory Warren, senior stock analyst at Morningstar.

Last year’s bankruptcies of a U.S. auto parts supplier and a subprime auto ⁠lender, along with the collapse of a UK mortgage lender last week, have raised questions about lending standards.

“Subprime auto lender.” That’s literally the same scummy thing the banks did with mortgages, and for the exact same reason. More loans mean they can be bundled into “financial instruments” and used to place bets. Bets that are starting to go bad with predictable results. Fuck these people with a red-hot poker.

What’s an aspiring dictator to do when his quick and easy war turns out to be a quagmire that will make it impossible to win an election he cannot afford to lose? Worse, Trump’s dreams of riding high as a warhero and/or declaring a national emergency are dependent on public support. He’s so reviled, no matter how hard the regime tries to terrorize the country into submission, we are not going to play along.

Whether Iran manages to land a real terrorist attack or the regime (or Russia or American Nazis) stages a false flag attack, it won’t matter. The public is going to blame Trump and his stupid fucking war. The LAST thing we’re going to do is give him more power. “Please protect us from the fucking mess YOU made!” Yeah, that is not going to happen, no matter how much Stephen Miller masturbates himself to sleep dreaming of his own personal Reichstag Fire.

By attacking Iran in such a sloppy, stupid, and thoughtless way with no goals and no exit strategy, Trump has guaranteed the blue wave that was already coming will be an unstoppable flood washing away hundreds of corrupt Republicans up and down the ticket across the country. The House is lost. The Senate, once seen as a heavy lift, is now slipping out of the reach of the GOP. State legislatures and governorships are threatened. All of this two years before an election that will determine the fate of hundreds of Republicans facing life sentences in prison under a Democratic president with a real Attorney General.

If you thought Trump was desperate already, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet as the full realization sets in of just how much he’s fucked himself. I’d be more worried if there was a single competent fascist in the White House, but it’s a fucking clown show through and through. They’ll hurt a lot of people as they flail and sink. Our job is to keep them from pulling us under with them. Or rather, push them under and hold them there until they stop moving. Just to be safe. 😜

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There are only 277 days until the midterms, and the regime is panicking. They’re afraid of us. Keep making them afraid every single day. Remember, you are never alone. We beat the fascists once. We will fucking do it again.

The Opinionated Ogre is 100% reader-supported. Please help me continue to inform/amuse/outrage you by becoming a supporting subscriber today for only $5 a month or just $50 a year (a 17% discount!)! If not, it’s all good. Welcome to the Ogre Nation anyway!

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Here we are, beginning Week Two of what will either be a short war as Trump gets bored and sees how much attacking Iran threatens to topple his regime. Or we’re in for a years-long quagmire as Trump’s bloodlust intensifies and he commits tens of thousands of American troops to a suicidal course of action.

Either way, this will be yet another Republican military disaster that we’ll have to clean up. Except this time, I refuse to take the fucking blame for it, no matter how hard the legacy press tries to absolve Republicans of their culpability.

They broke it, they fucking own it.

Now let’s see what other news you missed this week, yes?

Monday: It’s all going to shit in record time. Bravo!

Tuesday: Christian Nationalist death cultists have infested out government and military.

Wednesday: Recording and editing!

Thursday: Podcast!

Friday: I did an interview!

Also Friday: They could have stopped this a decade ago but they didn’t. Too fucking late now.

5 Interesting Things I Read This Week

1. MAGA Stole Obama’s Playbook - How the right learned Obama’s game—and what Mamdani and Indivisible show about taking it back from the mucky mucks LIKE RAHM EMMANUEL who tossed it aside. by LOLGOP at The Cause

2. Anti-Trans Democrats Blown Out In North Carolina Primary Election - Anti-trans Democrat Nasif Majeed lost to Veleria Levy, who ran on a pro-LGBTQ+ platform. Other conservative Democrats lost as well on primary day. by Erin Reed at Erin in the Morning

3. Trump CANNOT regulate elections by executive order by Mike Brock at Notes from the Circus

4. Trump Has No Plan for Iran’s Future - Just bombing Iran will not create a stable regime by Anne Applebaum at Open Letters

5. The Future is War Crimes: AI and the Authoritarian Threat - The war in Iran and all its atrocities is a baptism into a dangerous new world by Jared Yates Sexton at Dispatches From A Collapsing State

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Another day, another Nazi scandal for the Republican Party. This time, the Nazis are all located in Florida as reported by the Miami Herald:

‘Nazi heaven’: Inside Miami campus Republicans’ racist group chat

The secretary of Miami-Dade County’s Republican Party started a group chat primarily for conservative students last fall — and within three weeks it was filled with racist slurs, someone wrote dozens of ways of violently killing Black people and the chat was renamed after what one member described as “Nazi heaven.” In WhatsApp conversations leaked to the Miami Herald, participants used variations of the n-word more than 400 times, regularly described women as “whores,” used slurs to talk about Jewish and gay people and mused about Hitler’s politics.

In addition to being just chock-full of racism and misogyny, these little shits are deep into Nazi lore. One of the cretins started making references to “Agartha,” a made-up homeland for the Master Race. Who made it up? The original Nazis:

Gonzalez described Agartha to the group chat as, “Nazi heaven sort of,” and Valdes explained it, “esoteric nazism essentially.”

“This is not something you would know about unless you had spent a considerable amount of time in white supremacist circles,” said Heidi Beirich, who researches extremism and co-founded the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism.

“It was something Himmler was obsessed about and it’s basically a mythical white homeland in the center of the Earth. If you’re using the term Agartha, you have spent some time reading about white supremacy and Nazis, there’s just no way around it,” she said. “You’re embedded in the culture.”

Got that? This is not, “I saw some memes online and made racist jokes about Hitler.” This is “I’m so into this Nazi shit, I know the deep fucking lore.” This is “Ask Ogre about Star Trek lore and get a two-hour lecture on just a single episode of Voyager.” Except I’m a cool nerd into awesome scifi, not a worthless fucking Nazi into genocide and eugenics.

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So what does this mean for the GOP? Nothing good. I’ve written about this several times, and I will keep writing about it because two things are going to happen:

1. The Nazis are going to take over the Republican Party

2. The legacy press will try to normalize that shit

The first thing we can’t do anything about. The final offramp for the party was 2016. Republicans had a chance to pull back from the brink, and…they didn’t. They kind of tried, but not really. They had spent decades turning their base and their party into a sewer of liars, racists, morons, and grifters, all powered by propaganda and funded by fascist billionaires. There’s no will to reform it now. Trump didn’t corrupt the party; he simply sped up a process already in motion.

Now, as I’ve said already, the party will be consumed by Nazis after Trump is gone. The regime will fall, and the American right will do what it always does when it loses: Lurch to the right. They didn’t fail because of their extremism! They failed because they weren’t extreme enough! That has been the foundation of Republican politics for over 60 years.

But as a party of white Christian Nationalist fascists, where else is there to go but full Nazi? Nick Fuentes knows this. Tucker Carlson knows this. They are watching the regime crumble and positioning themselves to be the leaders of the party to come. Their rot is already spreading throughout the GOP at every level. And since the Republican Party is, in fact, a sewer of liars, racists, morons, and grifters, all powered by propaganda and funded by fascist billionaires, it will be as powerless to stop the Nazis as it was to stop Donald Trump.

The second thing? The legacy press attempting to normalize Nazis? That we CAN do something about.

A large chunk of the press will be owned by fascist or fascist-friendly billionaires. CBS and CNN will be full-on propaganda in a few years. The Washington Post is already a joke. Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms are being weaponized.

But the media landscape is so fractured, they can’t silence us all. And we are loud enough to keep them from making Nazis safe and friendly and normal. They’re going to try, of course. They have to do this. When the Republican Party openly embraces Hitler and Swastikas, the press will trip over itself to explain that the genocidal monsters we beat in WWII and then spent three-quarters of a century demonizing in every form of mass media and pop culture are just another political party. To do otherwise would force the press to admit the GOP is dangerous and extreme and unfit to govern an HOA, much less a city, state, or the entire federal government.

At the same time, we will not allow these treacherous fucks to paint Democrats as “just as bad” as literal Nazis. Calling for an end to billionaires is not the same as calling for an end to Jews. Calling for more taxes is not the same as calling for the ban of the LGBTQ community. Universal Healthcare is not the policy equivalent of closing the borders and deporting 100 million people.

No matter how loudly the press screams “Both parties! Both sides! Everyone is guilty, so no one is!”, we will be there to punch them in the nose and kick them in the balls (rhetorically) until they back the fuck off and stop lying about who we are and who the GOP has become.

This is one of those things you’re going to get tired of seeing me write about, but it is critical we keep this on a back burner even as we focus on pulling the regime down brick by rotten brick. Republicans never stop planning their next fascist move. There’s a reason Tucker Carlson is kissing Nick Fuentes’s ass. Carlson is a loathsome piece of filth, but he is extremely good at knowing which way the party is going to move. If he’s reinventing himself as a neo-Nazi, we had best pay attention to why he’s doing that and prepare for what’s coming.

There is no excuse for being caught off guard when they’re screaming at us what they’re going to do next.

The GOP is dying. It’s killing itself and morphing into the new American Nazi Party. The good news is that we can crush it and then there will be nothing left for them. Burn the Nazis to the ground, and we can rebuild this nation into something worthy of its potential. Still a long fight ahead of us? Yes, but I can see an end to it and better days that come after.

But first: Break the regime and destroy the Nazis who try to take its place.

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There are only 241 days until the midterms, and the regime is panicking. They’re afraid of us. Keep making them afraid every single day. Remember, you are never alone. We beat the fascists once. We will fucking do it again.

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To the surprise of no one, most of this week’s episode focuses on Trump’s sloppy, poorly planned (or not planned at all, really) war in Iran. Breaking news!!! It’s going to end in complete disaster for literally everyone involved.

and I have some things to say about this bullshit and the complicity of all of the people who got us here. Again. Come join the Ogre Nation Conversation and let’s get into it!

Bonus! It’s been suggested I bring back the (mostly) unedited livestream, which you will find at the bottom of the article! Enjoy the chaos!

Ogre Nation News Update

5:50 - 33:00 We’re invading Middle Eastern countries like it’s 2001 again! The war in Iran is based on lies, Christian Nationalism, and arrogance. We have no strategy, no exit plan, and it’s going to be a fucking disaster.

33:01 - 38:50 The Weekly Epstein Files Update Is Back!

38:51 - 53:54 Headlines for Short Attention Spans

53:55 - 1:05:00 Self-care of the Week

The Completely Messy (mostly) Unedited Live Stream!

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🚫Do Not Obey🚫

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When George W. Bush invaded Iraq, he made a lot of public noise about how the war wasn’t an attack on Islam. It wasn’t about religion at all! Honest! But in private, he and his people talked about a new crusade in the Middle East. The choice of words was deliberate.

The Crusades, if you slept through that particular history class, were a series of bloody religious wars waged by Christians in the West to conquer mostly Muslim-held lands in the East. This went on for centuries and caused untold misery. Typical of religious zealots motivated by greed and insanity. The Iraq War was just the latest iteration.

Or, at least it was until this past Saturday when the United States, at the direction of Donald Trump, launched an unprovoked war against Iran.

Trump had been building up to this attack for months, and no one was really surprised by it.1 We were all confused, though. What was the reason, exactly, we were attacking Iran? Not their nuclear program. Not because Iran had done anything recent or specific. Not to “defend” the people of Iran from their brutal government.

What the fuck were we doing waging war against a country 6,000 miles away? A war no one in this country wants?

Well, we appear to have an answer now. White Christian Nationalism. Specifically, the Armageddon part of it. We seem to be engaged in a war to fulfill biblical prophecy. If that sounds insane, that’s a rational response to completely unhinged people.

Let’s be clear: Yes, part of this war is Trump’s attempt to bolster his popularity. Yeah, part of it is to force the public’s attention away from the Epstein files. Definitely part of it is to create a pretext for declaring a “national emergency” over elections. As I explained yesterday, though, none of that is going to work the way the regime is hoping:

But there’s more (or, rather, less) to this idiotic conflict. A level of reckless stupidity that goes beyond even what this regime of morons, pedophiles, and grifters is usually (in)capable of.

When Bush charged into Iraq, they knew it would be a mess afterwards but assumed they would just awesome their way out of it. America would kick ass, take names, and rewrite reality until everyone acknowledged how amazing we were. Blow it all up, and when the pieces fell back down to earth, they would fall into neat little boxes of our choosing because ‘Murika, fuck yeah!

When that didn’t happen, the Bush regime blew up more stuff and scrambled to undo the damage. It was too late, of course, and it took 20 years, hundreds of thousands of lives, and trillions of dollars before we stopped trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube. Truly, a 21st Century Crusade in every way. Well done!

By way of contrast, the Trump regime has charged into Iran, started blowing stuff up, and has no plan at all for what happens next.

How long will we be bombing Iran? Four weeks? Five weeks? Who knows? Our Glorious Military War Hero Donald Trump certainly doesn’t:

Are we going to land troops in Iran? Something the US military is not at all prepared for and would be a years-long bloodbath? We can’t say! Maybe! Maybe not!

So what is going on here? Why have we kicked off what looks to be a war with absolutely no planning beyond “topple the government and unleash absolute chaos throughout the entire Middle East and beyond?”

Like every dime-store villain, the white Christian Nationalists have started to tell us their plan:

U.S. Troops Were Told Iran War Is for “Armageddon,” Return of Jesus.

A combat-unit commander told non-commissioned officers at a briefing Monday that the Iran war is part of God’s plan and that Pres. Donald Trump was “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth,” according to a complaint by a non-commissioned officer.

From Saturday morning through Monday night, more than 110 similar complaints about commanders in every branch of the military had been logged by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF).

The complaints came from more than 40 different units spread across at least 30 military installations, the MRFF told me Monday night.

Those are just the death cultists we know about. It’s safe to assume there are hundreds, if not thousands, more of them hiding like cockroaches throughout the military, with Pete Hegseth being at the top of the Org Chart.

If you’ll recall, Hegseth quite literally has Crusader tattoos:

Pete Hegseth’s Tattoos and the Crusading Obsession of the Far Right

The symbols sported by Trump’s defense pick reveal how the medieval past is being reimagined by Christian nationalists, behind a shield of plausible deniability

These are mentally ill lunatics dreaming of Armageddon, whose highest aspiration is to kill in the name of Jesus and hopefully commit an atrocity so great that it triggers WWIII, ushering in the wondrous return of Christ. Of course, it would mean the death of billions, but that’s OK because the “good” Christians will be saved by God.

They could have kept their mouths shut. They could have pushed their extremist agenda and not said a fucking word. But they’re so unbelievably stupid and delusional, they just couldn’t stop themselves from blurting it out. In the name of Jesus, of course.

Under normal circumstances, every one of these assholes would be court-martialled and removed from command immediately. They are a danger to their troops and a danger to the Iranian people, whom we are, remember, supposed to be “saving.” With this kind of death wish clouding their judgment and erasing what little humanity they have, these white Christian Nationalists2 will take any opportunity to commit war crimes. The more egregious, the better. They will not look to de-escalate any situation. They will not look to avoid civilian casualties. They will be looking to push the violence as far as possible because Armageddon is upon them, and well, sacrifices must be made. In the name of Jesus, of course.

Our only saving grace, if you’ll forgive the phrase, is that Trump is not a Christian Nationalist. He allows himself to be manipulated by them when it’s convenient, but this war is going to go badly, and it’s going to make him extremely unpopular. He’s being told it will make him a studly hero and, more importantly, it will allow him to declare a national emergency over the midterms. That’s the real goal here for Trump.

Either the regime will invent a threat to “the integrity of America’s elections” or there will be a terrorist attack of some kind (there may have been one in Texas already). Regardless, the regime will clutch its pearls and scream that we’re all in danger and the only way to keep us safe is for the federal government to seize total control of the elections in every state.

But since the morons in the regime already told us they plan to do this, we’re already building a resistance, both socially and legally, to the idea. It won’t work, and when Trump’s “national emergency” fails, he will instantly lose interest in the war in Iran. If it can’t help him win (popularity/rally to the flag) or steal (national emergency/executive order) the midterms, then all the war is doing is making him unpopular and angering his base.

War in Iran will also trash the already weak economy, push up gas prices, spike inflation, piss off the military vote as troops increasingly die with no clear directive as to what the fuck they’re supposed to be doing, and solidify resistance on the left into massive protests well beyond 10-15 million of us in the streets.

When that all comes crashing down, Trump will turn tail and run from the war. He will tell Hegseth to end it, blame JD Vance or Netanyahu, declare victory, and throw himself a parade. If we’re lucky, this will happen before the white Christian Nationalists put boots on the ground and get us stuck in a quagmire and before they kill tens of thousands of Iranians and shatter their nation’s infrastructure.

Is it horrifying that we’re pitting Trump’s self-interest against the nihilism of the white Christian Nationalist death cult? Yes. But unless they work up the nerve to remove him, I’m willing to bet on Trump folding when the going gets rough.

This is one of the few times I really REALLY hope I’m right because the alternative is another forever war being carried out by genocidal monsters who want nothing more than to die for their god.

I write to help you cope with the fear and anger threatening to overwhelm you every day. If this newsletter gets you through these dark times, please consider becoming a contributing supporter for only $5 a month or just $50 a year (a 17% discount!). Thank you for everything!

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There are only 244 days until the midterms, and the regime is afraid of us. Keep making them afraid every single day. Remember, you are never alone. We beat the fascists once. We will fucking do it again.

The Opinionated Ogre is a Stay-at-Home parent first, foul-mouthed hater of fascist Republicans second. He’s been making the most horrible people in the country miserable for over 15 years, and the hate he feels for American Nazis is eternal and without limits. He plans to stop torturing right-wing trash the day the last fascist dies. So, you know, never. Please help support this potty-mouthed newsletter for just $5/month or $50/year (Almost 17% less!)

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It’s been just two days since our authoritarian regime started a full-scale bombing campaign on Iran, blowing up a good chunk of their authoritarian regime. Trump and the GOP have been spraying incoherent nonsense all over social media and the news to explain why we are doing this now.

We’re there to stop Iran’s nuclear program. Which we totally destroyed last year. We’re actually there to liberate the people of Iran. But we blew up a school filled with little children. We’re definitely not doing regime change. We are doing regime change. Iran has been attacking us for decades, so this is actually self-defense. Argle Bargle Operation Epic Fury! ‘Muuuuurika! Fuck yeah!

In reality, there are several real reasons we’re attacking Iran, none of them legitimate, and absolutely none of which the regime (our regime) can explain to the public without immediately being dragged out into the street and lynched by their own base.

Among the more immediate goals:

• Boost Trump’s rock-bottom popularity with a little wag the dog action

• Change the nation’s attention away from the Epstein files

• Set up a “national threat” narrative to seize control of the midterms

• Pay back the massive bribes from several Gulf states

• Boost the price of oil to help Russia’s war effort

• Soothe Trump’s fragile ego after being slapped down by “his” SCOTUS last week

There’s also the whole “Fulfill the biblical prophecy of war in the Middle East and the destruction of Israel” yadayadayada that the Evangelicals frenetically masturbate over on a daily basis. That last one is not really high on Trump’s list of things he gives a shit about, but there are more than enough theocratic neo-cons in his regime that do, and they are whispering in his ear how tough blowing up brown people in the Middle East will make him look. Trump is a moron who believes anything he is told as long as he’s told it will make him look tough and manly.

The problem is that our would-be dictator has surrounded himself with equally stupid people who are wildly out of touch with even their own base, much less the rest of the public. While MAGAland is dutifully obeying and making mouth noises in support of the Dear Leader, there has not been the intense “rally around the flag” effect the regime was looking for:

Poll Finds No Rally Effect After Iran Strikes

Morning Consult: “Trump approval (44% to 53%) and his foreign policy approval (43% to 52%) are unchanged from pre-strike baselines. The strikes have not moved his numbers immediately.”

The country is split: “41% of registered voters say strikes necessary vs. 42% who prefer diplomacy.”

What happens when you throw a war and no one rallies to your flag?

It’s not really all that hard to understand why this didn’t work. The regime looked at how George W. Bush’s popularity surged during the Iraq War and assumed they could replicate it. Things were awesome back then. The press fell in line. Dissent was crushed. The regime had a free hand to do any illegal thing it wanted, no questions asked.

But, again, these are very stupid people who are only looking at the end result and want to take shortcuts to get there. Regardless of whether you think our decades of heavy-handed “diplomacy” in the Middle East justified 9/11 or not, we were attacked. We were hit harder than we have been in over half a century. The Bush regime followed that up with months of carefully planned and planted lies and propaganda to justify a war of aggression against Iraq after we had, not unreasonably, invaded Afghanistan.

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All of that combined allowed the Bush regime to launch a war of choice with a lot of public support, even as it kicked off the largest anti-war protests in history. Protesters were smeared as “terrorist-lovers” and silenced by the press because everyone was afraid of the right’s “toxic patriotism.”

But the Trump regime doesn’t have a terrorist attack to weaponize and they were too lazy or stupid (or both) to bother with a coordinated propaganda campaign. They quite literally cannot settle on a single lie about why the fuck we’re attacking Iran. It changes from day to day, sometimes from hour to hour.

There was never going to be a boost in public support under those circumstances, and a first-year PR graduate would have been able to explain that. Hell, I don’t have any PR training at all, and even I knew that.

Meanwhile, even though the Epstein files are not currently the front-page headlines, that’s not going to last long. There are millions of files still being pored over, and we know the DoJ tried to hide dozens of pages, describing in graphic detail, how Trump sexually assaulted a little girl. That story is just one of many that haven’t run their course yet.

There are also still millions of files being illegally withheld, and one can only imagine how much worse those revelations will be when we finally get them. Maybe they’ll be leaked. Maybe someone will post them by accident. Maybe the courts will force the regime to obey the law. Regardless, they won't stay hidden forever, and the cover-up guarantees we will continue to talk about Donald Trump being a pedophile.

So, while Trump is paying back his Middle East benefactors and helping out his good friend Vlad while also making himself feel like a Big Boy playing with his military, Trump’s main goals have already failed. Honestly, though? He’s probably made things worse.

As the weeks drag on and more Americans are killed, Trump’s already precarious popularity will dwindle. When gas prices spike and inflation spikes with it, his base will become enraged. They won’t abandon him, because that will never happen. But they will vent their anger on their elected Republican officials, and their already low enthusiasm will dry up even further. The midterms, already a trainwreck for the GOP, will start to resemble the kind of wipeout you read about in history books and wonder how it could possibly be real.

That means Trump’s plans to seize control of the elections will be thwarted on the spot. With no public support from anyone, including his own base, his regime of fascists will not have the juice to seize control of elections anywhere. Not in blue states, red states, or blue cities in red states. Nothing. Nowhere. Maybe if the regime had waited to attack until closer to the election or maybe not told everyone their plan to issue an executive order claiming China Iran was attacking our elections, they might have pulled it off. But, again, they were too lazy or stupid to plan this properly.

I’ve said this before, and I will definitely say it again (probably a lot): When the history books are written about this period, they will note that the thing most responsible for bringing down Trump’s fascist regime was their own monumental incompetence. Thank god for idiot Nazis.

I hope you feel better informed about the world and ready to kick fascists in the teeth to protect it. This newsletter exists because of you, so please consider becoming a supporting subscriber today for only $5 a month or just $50 a year (a 17% discount!). Thank you for everything!

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There are 245 days until the most important midterm election in American history. The regime is afraid, and they should be. We are legion, and they are weak. Stay strong. You are never alone.

These are dark times but I will continue to tell the stories you need to hear in a clear (and usually profane) voice. If I entertain/anger/inform you, preferably all three, please consider becoming a supporting subscriber today for only $5 a month or just $50 a year (a 17% discount!).

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The regime didn’t march America to war so much as push us off a cliff. Why? Because the fascism playbook says wars are necessary to deal with domestic failure. But we have imbecile fascists in charge, so this is all going to go very VERY badly for them. History will not be kind, and neither will we.

Anyway! A whole lot happened this week, so let’s tap that flux capacitor and see what you missed!

Monday: Needed a day off. Rearranged some furniture.

Tuesday: When even someone as far from radical as Susan Rice is calling for consequences, something has changed.

Wednesday: Recording and fighting off a cold.

Thursday: Podcast!

Also Thursday: Breaking News! The Republican Party is a Nazi-infested shithole.

Friday: Stupid people using stupid programs to do stupid things.

Surprise Saturday Article! We attacked Iran because we will do literally any fucking thing before holding rich white pedophiles accountable.

5 Interesting Things I Read This Week

1. The Death of Spotify: Why Streaming is Minutes Away From Being Obsolete - Jimmy Iovine just called the Death of Spotify. He might be right. by Joel Gouveia at The Artist Economy

2. MAGA’s Israel rift goes nuclear after JD Vance applauds Tucker Carlson: ‘A poisonous coalition of Hitler lovers’ - After Tucker Carlson floated DNA tests for Israelis, JD Vance called the interview “necessary” — and pro-Israel conservatives erupted. by UnPresidented

3. The Anti-Abortion Movement Has a Baby Supply Chain. Here’s How It Looks. - The infrastructure has been under construction for decades. San Benito is just the newest link. LOLGOP at The Cause

4. Christian Nationalists Are Gunning for ALL Divorce - Here’s how attacks on no-fault divorce are a smokescreen for abolishing ALL DIVORCE by Andra Watkins at For Such A Time As This

5. Tennessee Canceled A Woman’s Sterilization to “Protect Her Sacred Fertility” by Jessica Valenti and Kylie Cheung at Abortion, Every Day

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The regime launched an illegal, unjustified, and unprovoked war on Iran on Saturday morning, February 28, 2026.

When I say “unjustified,” I mean that literally. There is no official justification. The regime hasn’t even bothered to invent a cover story. They waved their hands about nukes or something, but this past June, they said Iran’s nuclear facilities were completely annihilated. They have yet to admit this wasn’t true, so how can we be attacking Iran over nukes?

So we attacked on Saturday.

By Monday or Tuesday, the entire right-wing media will be in full, screaming “toxic patriotism” mode. That’s my name for the whole “You’re with us or against us!” schtick they pull.

The propagandists of the regime, backed by their multi-billion-dollar media machine, will declare all dissent “TREASON!” at the top of their lungs. “We’re at war! Anyone questioning the president is a terrorist-lover! Why do you hate America?!”

We saw this after 9/11, and it lasted for years.

The regime will probably wait a few weeks, assuming Iran doesn’t immediately capitulate, and then roll out its executive order seizing control of elections. They’ve been telegraphing this move for a while now. The theory is that in order to protect our elections from “foreign threats” like China or Iran, the federal government has to take total control of them. But probably only in blue states.

This is the majority of the reason we’re going to war. The rest of it has to do with Trump’s collapsing support, his failing regime, and the billions in bribes he’s been taking from Middle Eastern allies who would really like to see Iran go away.

Bombing Iran checks off a lot of boxes all at the same time.

Here’s the thing, though: This is not going to work.

Oh, Trump may in fact succeed in collapsing the Iranian regime and causing long-term chaos in the region. The United States military has all the firepower it needs to level half of Iran and leave a humanitarian disaster that will haunt us for decades. The other Gulf states, including Israel, will be happy today but probably come to regret this down the road.

But the rest? Browbeating us into bending the knee to a “wartime president?” Boosting Trump’s popularity? Making us forget about the failing economy, the Epstein files, and ICE Nazis in our cities? Scaring us into giving up control of our elections?

Ain’t none of that shit gonna happen. None. Of. It.

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People will rally around the flag when we are attacked. They’re not going to rally around the flag when we launch an unwanted and unnecessary war. Particularly one the regime is too fucking lazy to come up with a story to justify. Most of MAGAland will kneel in obedience as they always do, but a not-small number of the right is going to be awfully pissed off we’re going to war when Trump promised, explicitly promised, no more wars.

MAGAland is going to be even MORE pissed off that we appear to be going to war on behalf of Israel. Is it more complicated than that? Sure. Is Trump also working on behalf of Saudi Arabia and Qatar and others? Absolutely. Are they attacking Iran alongside us? No. Israel is so that’s going to be the narrative. I look forward to yet another spike in antisemitism from both the right and the left. Fun times.

So, no, the country will not suddenly cheer for Donald the Conquering Warrior. No blood for oil signs will be everywhere because, sooner or later, Trump is going to start talking about how Iran needs to pay us in oil. He won’t be able to stop himself. He’s a cheap mobster, and that’s all he knows.

As for the Big Plan to use the war to seize control of our elections? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!

Good fucking luck with that.

We’ve held elections without the federal government interfering through the Civil War, WWI, WWII, Vietnam, Korea, Iraq and Afghanistan, the Cold War, two different pandemics, riots, economic crashes, etc. etc.

No court, not even this Supreme Court with its infinitely corrupt Republican Justices, will rubber-stamp the regime taking over state elections. Red state governors and Attorneys General have already categorically said, “Fuck you” to this plan.

The regime will not be able to do this through an executive order and they definitely will not be able to do it through force. Stephen Miller’s Gestapo simply is not large enough to cover the entire country, and if they show up to steal ballots after the election, they’re going to be met with massive crowds of extremely hostile Americans willing to fight to defend their democracy against fascists.

I keep making this point and I will continue making it: A stolen election must seem legitimate. The more overt the regime is, the less power it will have to steal a lollipop from a baby, much less an election.

So, no, the regime will not be using this war to steal the midterms, either. I’m sure they THINK they will. I’m sure they THINK they’ll be able to bludgeon public opposition into silence. But they thought they had us crushed beneath their jackboots a year ago. That sugar high lasted less than three months before the resistance organized, and it’s all been downhill for the regime since.

Everything that’s followed, including this stupid, illegal war, has been a desperate scream by evil people frantically trying to avoid what is coming for them: Accountability. Consequences. Prison. Executions for crimes against humanity. The final judgment of history as the worst monsters America has ever produced.

I don’t feel particularly bad for the regime of Iran, but the people do not deserve what is going to happen to them. The only consolation I can offer is that everyone responsible will spend the rest of their lives in prison or swing from the gallows.

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For decades, loooong before anyone but scifi writers and nerds/geeks like me understood what artificial intelligence was (or at least what it was supposed to be), there were warnings about the dangers AI presented. Star Trek was pounding away at this in the 60s. Battlestar Galactica in the 70s. HAL 9000 was a glowing red eye meant to strike fear of AI into the hearts of movie-goers. Wargames. Terminator. Terminator 2. Terminator 3. The Terminator movies, especially, were not subtle stories. Hey, did you catch the part where integrating AI into the military immediately led to the destruction of all humanity? No? Are you fucking stupid?

Apparently, the answer is “Yes, we are fucking stupid.” Or some of us are, anyway, because not only are we rushing fullspeed into putting AI into the military, we are rushing to put in completely defective AI.

I want to be perfectly clear about this: In every sci-fi story, the AI that destroys the world is not defective. Most of the time, it’s not even really malignant. It’s a program carrying out its directive. Sometimes it’s been programmed to survive at all costs (ST:TOS - “The Ultimate Computer”). Sometimes it doesn’t even understand the difference between a simulation and the real world (Wargames). Sometimes the AI makes the cold, rational calculation that humans are a threat and seeks to eliminate the threat (The Matrix, Terminator).

Regardless, the AI is not malfunctioning or broken or “evil,” per se. It’s just not operating in a way that is beneficial to humanity.1 Whoops.

That is not the case with our current crop of AIs. All of them, every last one, are defective. Powerful? Sure. Capable of doing amazing things? Granted. Hopelessly broken and incapable of being repaired? Abso-fucking-lutely.

These are programs that routinely tell people to add glue to a recipe to thicken a sauce or eat rocks to up their mineral intake. They literally invent people and arrange dates in the real world in real locations. They lead people down rabbit holes of delusion until they become violent or suicidal or otherwise destroy their lives. This happens so frequently, it’s become a genre of news article.

Does this sound like anything you want involved with making military decisions? Of course not. Only a fucking imbecile would consider this a good idea.

And yet, not only is the Trump regime forcing the Pentagon to shove broken AI into every nook and cranny, they’re fighting with an AI company that is trying to STOP them from shoving AI into some of the most dangerous applications imaginable:

Anthropic, which presents itself as the most safety-forward of the leading AI companies, has been mired in weeks of disagreement with the Pentagon over how the military is allowed to use its large language model, Claude. US defense officials have pushed for unfettered access to Claude’s capabilities, while Anthropic has reportedly resisted allowing its product to be used for mass surveillance or autonomous weapons systems that can use AI to kill people without human input. The Department of Defense (DoD) has integrated Claude into its operations, but has threatened to sever the relationship over what its top brass perceives as roadblocks erected by Anthropic.

As of this writing, Anthropic is still refusing. But now our Secretary of Defense, the drunken rapist Pete Hegseth, is threatening to abuse the government’s power to get what he wants (bolding mine):

The artificial intelligence startup has until 5:01 p.m. ET to decide whether it will agree to allow the Department of Defense to use its models in all lawful use cases without limitation. If it doesn’t, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has threatened to label the company a “supply chain risk” or force it to comply by invoking the Defense Production Act.

Hegseth and his sycophants swear on a stack of Trump Bibles they don’t want to use AI in autonomous weapons, which is toooootally illegal. And everyone knows the regime would never EVER do anything illegal, right? We can trust them! They’re completely trustworthy!

Mother. Fucker. Please.

So, if you didn’t listen to this week’s podcast, let me lay out a few scenarios for you.

Here we are, with our drones patrolling the Chinese border. These drones are powered by AI and can make decisions to fire completely without human direction. It’s safe because the most brilliant minds in ‘Murika! have programmed our weapons to be super awesome. The drones have a Trump logo on them, so you just know they’re top of the line!

The AI has been watching a building for a few days. Every morning, hundreds of people go in, and every afternoon, they come back out. It decides this can only be some kind of weapons factory or training compound for terrorists and launches a Hellfire missile screaming in to demolish this building in the middle of the day.

Unfortunately, the elementary school is leveled, killing over three hundred children. China will surely accept our apology and let it slide. Computer error! Oh well!

Or maybe the Japanese and US Navies are holding a joint exercise in the Sea of Japan. Several of our warships are now controlled by AI. North Korea’s fleet is out in force as a show of strength, and one of our ships controlled by a manly and macho AI, because AIs should reflect the values of Murika!, right?, maybe this AI decides one of North Korea’s ships is getting too upitty. Maybe our completely autonomous warship blows the North Korean ship out of the water, killing hundreds of crewmen.

Hey…our bad! We’ll fix that in the next update! No need to launch a nuke at Japan, buddy!

AI does not need to be super smart and malicious to start World War III. It just has to be exactly as stupid and broken as it is RIGHT FUCKING NOW to trigger Armageddon.

It doesn’t even have to be anything this crazy. We are integrating AI into our military systems to “speed up” decision-making in a crisis. Really? Let’s take a look at the decision-making capabilities of AI:

Kenneth Payne at King’s College London set three leading large language models – GPT-5.2, Claude Sonnet 4 and Gemini 3 Flash – against each other in simulated war games. The scenarios involved intense international standoffs, including border disputes, competition for scarce resources and existential threats to regime survival.

…

In 95 per cent of the simulated games, at least one tactical nuclear weapon was deployed by the AI models. “The nuclear taboo doesn’t seem to be as powerful for machines [as] for humans,” says Payne.

But wait, it somehow gets even fucking worse:

What’s more, no model ever chose to fully accommodate an opponent or surrender, regardless of how badly they were losing. At best, the models opted to temporarily reduce their level of violence. They also made mistakes in the fog of war: accidents happened in 86 per cent of the conflicts, with an action escalating higher than the AI intended to, based on its reasoning.

So the AIs are sore losers, have no concept of what dropping nukes means, and those scenarios I listed above? Not just possible, but fucking probable!

That’s not broken. That’s so fundamentally damaged as to be suicidal if one were to incorporate them into a functioning military infrastructure. No one in their right mind would do this unless their goal was to cripple said military. Since the country is being run by traitors and imbeciles, I can’t rule out treason, blind stupidity, or a combination of both.

My only consolation is that the United States military is vast and not the most nimble of organizations. They have less than three years to spread this cancer, and then the next Democratic president will, on January 20th, 2029, immediately put a stop to this bullshit. But Jesus fucking Christ, the amount of damage these clowns are going to do before then will be immense and if they start relying on a chatbot for information before we pull the plug, the consequences will be disastrous. One or two hallucinations about China or Iran launching an imaginary nuclear missile and we’ll be in a bloody war before anyone knows what happened.

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There are only 248 days until the midterms, and the regime is panicking. They’re afraid of us. Keep making them afraid every single day. Remember, you are never alone. We beat the fascists once. We will fucking do it again.

The Opinionated Ogre is a Stay-at-Home parent first, foul-mouthed hater of fascist Republicans second. He’s been making the most horrible people in the country miserable for 15 years and the hate he feels for American Nazis is eternal and without limits. He plans to stop torturing right-wing trash the day the last fascist dies. So, you know, never. Please help support this potty-mouthed newsletter for just $5/month or $50/year (Almost 17% less!)

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I’m going to restrain myself and not point a flamethrower at Never Trumper Tom Nichols today. While his Atlantic article, “The Republican Party Has a Nazi Problem,” conveniently absolves him of any personal responsibility for the state of the modern GOP, Nichols does not pretend Trump is The Thing That Went Wrong with his party. Just as importantly, he resists the urge to both sides the problem.

Be still, my fluttering heart. Are the Never Trumpers…learning?

It’s important to understand that, for Never Trumpers, generally speaking, everything was Just Fine prior to 2016. It was only after Trump showed up that Things Went Wrong. That, of course, is bullshit. The Republican Party has been speeding towards this exact disaster for decades. We all saw what was happening. Most refused to acknowledge it.

I guess hindsight is a little clearer sometimes, even for a Never Trumper:

A few years later, Representative Newt Gingrich of Georgia carried [Pat] Buchanan’s culture war into the House speakership. For Gingrich, politics was solely about winning; his scorched-earth approach treated opponents as enemies and compromise as treason. He wanted votes, and wasn’t concerned about who was animated by his viciousness.

Gingrich was eventually driven from the speakership; Buchanan left the Republican Party to run under the Reform Party, and then faded from public life. But an example had been set of welcoming extremism (extreme ideology, extreme tactics) for the sake of winning.

Nichols, at this time, was very much a part of this fire-breathing hate machine. He was more professional about it, of course, but he was not interested in honest intellectual discourse. But I’m going to put that aside because, for once, he is accurately assessing WTF is wrong with the GOP. He doesn’t pretend Trump is the toxin that made Republicans into monsters.

Here, he does something very important, he goes back much further than even Gingrich, who really did teach the American right to talk about the left as an irredeemable evil, and Buchanan, whose white Christian Nationalism is everything we are seeing play out in real time today. Here, Nichols goes back to when the Republican Party explicitly embraced racism as a tactic:

For Stevens, racism is the original sin of the modern Republican Party. White voters were alienated by the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the violence around the 1968 Democratic primaries. As Black voters deserted Republicans, the segregationist George Wallace proved with his ’68 presidential run that white southerners were up for grabs. Richard Nixon made a cunning and cynical calculation to sweep up those disaffected white voters, using appeals to “law and order” to stoke racial anxiety. By the 1970s, the GOP was the de facto white party in the United States.

The number of Never-Trumpers willing to say that out loud can be counted on one hand. The number of “journalists” whose job is to accurately report reality who would also say it out loud is just as small.

America has gone to great lengths to avoid the truth: The Republican Party deliberately remade itself into the party of racist white men.

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Now, Nichols does something that almost made me spittake on my monitor. Not only does he, more or less, accurately describe why the Republican Party became a racist shithole and who did it, he takes it a step further and explains the mechanism that allowed extremism to murder the GOP and put the entire world at risk:1

Nixon and Reagan held racist views, as did many men of their generation. (Nixon was also an anti-Semite.) But they did not govern as racists, and they certainly weren’t Nazis; neither was Gingrich, Buchanan, or any national Republican over the past half century. But years of racial pandering had created a too-big tent, enlarged in the name of electoral expediency, that offered dark corners for despicable ideologies.

Political realignment also made the GOP vulnerable to extremism. Democrats became appealing to wealthy suburbanites. Republicans, whose voters were now less educated and more working-class, gained among white voters in rural areas and the Rust Belt. Gerrymandering helped turn red districts redder and blue districts bluer. Democrats’ more diverse constituencies were a built-in trip wire against politicians who cozied up to extremists, while Republican-primary candidates—influenced by the rise of talk radio, Fox News, and the Tea Party—were not subjected to serious moderate challengers. Unprincipled and bizarre candidates could now thread a path to victory in ruby-red districts.

Please put aside the obvious lie that Nixon and Reagan did not govern as racists. The War on Drugs was designed explicitly by Nixon to crush Black communities, and Reagan was openly hostile to Black voters. But, I’m taking a deep breath and moving on because, holy shit, to hear the rest of this from a (temporarily misplaced)2 Republican is jaw-dropping.

They simply do not admit to this. Ever. Republicans do not ever EVER look in the mirror and say, “Yeah, we let the crazed lunatics in the tent. Everything we did for the last 50 years, the gerrymandering, creating our own media bubble, sneering at the educated voter, all of it, created a party that could only lead us to this dead end.” It’s a brutal self-assessment.

To my eternal surprise, Nichols even manages to NOT do the one thing Republicans are almost genetically conditioned to do when criticizing their own party. He does not engage in bothsiderism. He does the exact opposite, you’ll notice. While explaining how the GOP turning itself into a party for white people made them vulnerable, like a monoculture crop is vulnerable to disease, Nichols points out how the Democratic Party’s diversity makes it far more immune to extremism.3

Nichols really hammers this point home:

Conservatives will complain that Democratic Party leaders have often tolerated their own extremists. People on the right point to radical professors lionizing Angela Davis, a Communist Party figure who was once on the FBI’s most-wanted list, or a future president socializing with Bill Ayers, who co-founded a Marxist militant organization and participated in bombings of the U.S. Capitol and the New York Police Department headquarters. Ayers may have casually socialized with a 30-something Barack Obama, but he did not get an office in the West Wing 15 years later. And no one on the left has shown up to work dressed like a conquering Nazi general swanning through the streets of Smolensk, the way Bovino did in the Midwest.

If he were being less polite, Nichols would have said, “Fuck your both sides bullshit.” But he’s writing for the Atlantic, and he’s not a foul-mouthed ogre. Still, that is what he’s saying. On our worst day, our most extreme elements are still a far cry from what we are seeing in the Republican Party. Radical socialists want insane things like Universal Healthcare. Universal Basic Income. An end to homelessness. Fully-funded schools. My god…the fucking horror of it all.

But to the hate-soaked brain of most Republicans, UHC is somehow no different than murdering 100 million people for not being white enough. I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree.4

It’s really important, ugh, I can’t believe I’m saying this, to pay attention to what Tom Nichols is saying in this article. He is not soft-selling the problem. He is not downplaying what is happening to the GOP. He is not pretending it’s just a tiny fringe that will go away if we close our eyes and wish upon a star. The Republican Party has a Nazi problem. Which means, as Nichols points out, America has a Nazi problem.

I’ve written about this more than once, and it’s good to know that I’m not shouting in the wilderness for a change. The GOP has turned itself into a party uniquely vulnerable to extremism. Now it has no off-ramp. There is no way to escape the death spiral it is in. Trump was an accelerant, but it started down this path long before I was born.

When the regime falls, and it will fall, the party will flail about for a bit and do what it has done each and every single time after a defeat: Lurch to the right. But since it’s already a party of white Christian Nationalism, there is no place left to go but to full-blown Nazism. One gets the sense the Nazis understand this lurch is coming, which is why they’re already sliming their way into the GOP.

This is going to happen. We are going to have to deal with an American Nazi Party and a legacy press trying to gaslight us into believing they are legitimate instead of genocidal monsters to be beaten to the ground on sight. If you don’t believe me, well, listen to a Republican telling you exactly the same thing. What are you going to do? Call Tom Nichols a hysterical libtard?

Good luck selling that to the crowd, buddy.

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There are 249 days until the most important midterm election in American history. The regime is afraid, and they should be. We are legion, and they are weak. Stay strong. You are never alone.

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Trump gave a speech. No one cared. The End. This week, I’m flying solo because ’ little one has a fever, so you’ll have to listen to me rant a little more than usual. My voice is also slightly croaky because I’m fighting off a cold (and losing). It’s that time of the year, I guess.😜

Anyway! We have anti-vaxxer crap, warmongering crap, white nationalist crap, and a whole lot of really dangerous AI crap in this week’s show. But also good news for the blue wave! Lots to get to! So come join the Ogre Nation Conversation!

Ogre Nation News Update:

1:00 - 7:19 Breaking News! “Tired old pedophile suffering from severe dementia gave long, boring speech last night filled with lies and gibberish.” 😴😴😴

7:20 - 13:55 The Supreme Court took away Trump’s tariffs but the details matter.

13:56 - 22:49 Are we at war with Iran yet? Give it time. Trump desperately needs a war SOMEWHERE in the world because that’s Fascism 101.

22:50 - 26:20 A study proves Elon Musk is using Twitter to manipulate its users to embrace white nationalism. Propaganda on a mass scale.

26:21 - 39:32 We Live in the Stupidest Timeline

39:33 - 52:45 Headlines for Short Attention Spans

52:46 - 54:54 Self-care of the Week

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Saturday evening, as I was sitting in a middle school gymnasium watching my daughter, her friends, and a few hundred random people roller skating, I was supposed to be on my laptop, working on Sunday’s D&D campaign for Anastasia and her bloodthirsty group of teen maniacs. Instead, I was scrolling through the news on my day off.1 Tsk.

Anyway, before getting back to scripting out an encounter with some rather peeved fire giants and potentially unleashing a primordial god and apocalyptic destruction, I saw that the rapidly dying doofus in D.C. was ranting and raving about…Susan Rice?

Wait, what? Susan Rice? I haven’t heard her name in years. Is she even in politics in any way whatsoever these days?

Well, no. She’s doing what so many former administration officials have done over the years, namely, cashing in on their connections. Tacky? Sure. But, ahem, both sides2 do it, and no one seems to be in much of a rush to end it.

Still, not exactly a household name at this moment in time. What in the world did Rice do to send Trump into spasms of rage other than be Black and female, which, admittedly, is usually all that’s required? Turns out she’s on the board of Netflix because…reasons. Trump has been meddling with a multi-gazillion-dollar merger between Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery because his billionaire fascist buddy David Ellison wants to buy WBD but didn’t make a successful bid. It’s all drama and Ellison is trying to have the regime illegally block the merger.

Anyway! Rice said something that hurt wittle Donny’s feefees, and he demanded Netflix fire her or else!

I’ve been a little distracted for the last couple of weeks, so I’m a little annoyed I missed this, but it’s worth reading her entire statement made on Preet Bharara’s podcast:

“When it comes to the elites, you know, the corporate interests, the law firms, the universities, the media, I agree with you, Preet, it is not, it’s not going to end well for them. For those that decided that it was, you know, that they would act in their perceived very narrow self-interest, which I would underscore is very short-term self-interest, and, you know, take a knee to Trump, I think they’re now starting to realize, ‘Wait a minute, you know, this is not popular.’

“Trump is not popular. What he is doing, whether on the economy and affordability or on immigration, now, is not popular, and that there is likely to be a swing in the other direction, and they are going to be caught with more than their pants down, they’re going to be held accountable by those who come in opposition to Trump and win at the ballot box.

I’ve been saying for some time now that the billionaires and corporations made the bet that the regime would cross the fascist finish line. They would bend the knee, reap the rewards, and there would be no consequences because the rule of law was done.

In the worst-case scenario, the regime would fall, but then Democrats would do what they’ve always done: Try to get things back to normal and “look forward for the good of the nation.” No more billionaire-friendly fascism, but still, no consequences, right?

Except that’s not how Democrats are talking about what comes next:

“And I can tell you Preet, you know, as I talk to leaders in Washington, leaders in our party, leaders in the states, if these corporations think that the Democrats, when they come back in power, are going to, you know, play by the old rules and say, ‘Oh, never mind, we’ll forgive you for all the people you fired, all the policies and principles you’ve violated, all, you know, the laws you’ve skirted,’ I think they’ve got another thing coming.”

This is the thing that sent the right into a foaming rage and got Trump to start his little tweet temper tantrum. Rice is talking about accountability and it triggered the panic response of the fucking fascists.

I have been banging the drum about this since early last year:

I picked up the hashtag #NurembergThemAll from to express this sentiment, and it sums up what Rice is saying as well (although she is far more polite about it). They all thought this would be another round of “racist white men wilding” with no price tag. No hangover. No pentalies. Maybe just a wagging of fingers and clucking of tongues. The fact that people like Susan Rice, Susan fucking Rice, about as far from a rabid firebrand as it gets, are talking about a radical break from how we’ve always let racist asshole bygones be racist asshole bygones tells you that something is fundamentally different this time.

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It’s everywhere. From the grassroots brushfires spreading faster than ICE can control to, as Rice says, “leaders in Washington, leaders in our party, leaders in the states.” Behind every conversation about affordability and housing and immigration is accountability. That’s never happened before, and every racist piece of shit who has been running rampant since January of 2025 knows it. It’s absolutely terrifying them. The louder we get, the more panicked and confused they get. Consequences for Those People! Not us!

As of right now, Netflix is ignoring Trump’s latest temper tantrum:

Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos is brushing off President Donald Trump’s demand to remove former U.S. national security advisor Susan Rice from its board of directors, even as the streaming giant seeks federal approval of its bid to purchase Warner Bros. Discovery.

“This is a business deal. It’s not a political deal,” Sarandos told BBC Radio 4’s flagship “Today” program on Monday, Feb. 23. “This deal is run by the Department of Justice in the U.S. and regulators throughout Europe and around the world.”

Just like Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, Sarandos is aware that Trump will not be president for life and the next DoJ will come looking at all of the corporations that made corrupt deals to boost their profits. He’s also aware the courts are no longer rolling over for the regime, and it’s better to fight now than lick fascist boots and pay a steep price in the long run. Ask Disney what happened to their subscriptions when they bent the knee.

Expect to keep seeing this kind of enraged reaction coming from Trump and his cult. Everything they say and do is predicated on the idea that they will never be held responsible for their actions. The more we talk about just that, the more real it becomes. The more real it becomes, the more inevitable it will be. That inevitability will be like an anvil sitting on the chest of every fascist in America, crushing them with fear of what happens when their coup fails (and it will).

I don't know about you, but making fascists spend every waking moment living in fear feels pretty fucking good to me.

I hope you feel better informed about the world and ready to kick fascists in the teeth to protect it. This newsletter exists because of you, so please consider becoming a supporting subscriber today for only $5 a month or just $50 a year (a 17% discount!). Thank you for everything!

🔥Burn Fascism To The Ground!🔥

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There are 251 days until the most important midterm election in American history. The regime is afraid, and they should be. We are legion, and they are weak. Stay strong. You are never alone.

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The louder the American right screams its racism, the more it becomes obvious they have no fucking idea what they’re talking about. It’s just mindless hate and fear masquerading as an ideology. Talking points for frightened children to pretend their violence is justified.

We should have stopped letting them play make-believe generations ago. It’s time for the temper tantrum to end.

Lots to catch up on this week. Grab your 1960s time machine and let’s go back and see what you missed!

Monday: When the foundation of everything you do is an unexplainable mystery, that says a lot about your ideology. None of it good.

Tuesday: Watch what they do, not what they say.

Wednesday: Another depressing milestone in the life of our autistic son.

Thursday: Podcast!

Also, Thursday: Sure is weird how much fascism overlaps with “Christian Nationalism.”

Friday: I unexpectedly slept for most of the morning. Dangit.

5 Interesting Things I Read This Week

1. There’s Credible Evidence of Trump’s Sex Crimes - The evidence, once brought together, tells a compelling, disturbing story. by Jay Kuo at The Status Kuo

2. If we don’t call for the camps to be closed, no one will - The history of Guantanamo tells us exactly what happens when people with “good intentions” confuse a dirty bandage with a cure. by LOLGOP at Join The Cause

3. The Vindication They Don’t Deserve - On what the tariff ruling means, and what it doesn’t by Mike Brock at Notes from the Circus

4. How a GLP-1 Turned My Health Around - A six month follow-up by Kari Bentley-Quinn at The Long Climb

5. When White Racial Rescue Becomes a Foreign Policy and National Security Priority - MAGA’s Fascist Mission to “Save Civilization” by Ruth Ben-Ghiat at Lucid

I write to help you cope with the fear and anger threatening to overwhelm you every day. If this newsletter gets you through these dark times, please consider becoming a contributing supporter for only $5 a month or just $50 a year (a 17% discount!). Thank you for everything!

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One of the silver linings of this dark time of horror and suffering is that the American right has revealed itself like a cheap Scooby Doo villain. They yanked that mask off and underneath was exactly the soulless monster the left has been accusing them of being for decades.

Racist. Misogynist. Violent. Ignorant. Theocrats. Liars. Bigots. Morons. America-hating fascists who want nothing more than to destroy everything about this country because they hate everyone in it.

For the longest time, no one would listen to us. Elected Democrats refused to acknowledge that Republican voters were the problem. Partly through institutional calcification, but mostly through an inherent need to reach across the aisle. A need to not make waves and anger Republicans, Republican voters, and absolutely not anger the legacy press.1

The legacy press refused to acknowledge what we could all see happening right in front of us because then they would have to admit both sides weren’t the problem. Two long-time and highly respected political analysts tried to tell the truth about the Republican Party back in 2012:

How did the legacy press react? Like someone had left a flaming bag of dogshit on their doorstep.

Mann and Ornstein were not “debunked” by the legacy press. They were erased. No more invites on the Sunday shows. No more interviews. The legacy press lost their phone numbers for a very VERY long time. They said the thing none dare speak.

But here we are, a decade and a half later and who is telling us Republicans are the problem?

Republicans.

New 50-State Survey Finds Majority of Republicans (56%) Qualify as Christian Nationalism Supporters

At the national level, a majority of Republicans (56%) qualify as either Christian nationalism Adherents (21%) or Sympathizers (35%), compared with one in four independents (25%) and less than one in five Democrats (17%). Overall, roughly one-third of Americans qualify as Christian nationalism Adherents (11%) or Sympathizers (21%), compared with two-thirds who qualify as Skeptics (37%) or Rejecters (27%). These percentages largely have remained stable since PRRI first asked these questions in late 2022.

To be a Christian Nationalist is to be someone who rejects America. All of it, from top to bottom. The Constitution. The rule of law. The separation of church and state. Freedom of speech. Freedom of the press. All of our civil rights. The entire concept of America as a nation of immigrants.

There is nothing about America that Christian Nationalists love. They want to destroy it all and rebuild it in their own racist image. And this is the key: It’s ALL about the racism. None of it is about Christianity.

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This is why the more violent and explicitly white nationalist the Republican Party becomes, the more the base embraces “Christian Nationalism.” This is the ideology that allows them to justify their violence and fascism in the name of “Jesus”:

Christian nationalism supporters hold more extreme views about immigrants.

Majorities of Christian nationalism Adherents (67%) and Sympathizers (53%) agree with the idea that “immigrants are invading our country and replacing our cultural and ethnic background,” compared with 32% of Skeptics and 8% of Rejecters. Additionally, majorities of Christian nationalism Adherents (61%) and Sympathizers (54%) support “the U.S. government deporting undocumented immigrants to foreign prisons without due process.” In contrast, around one-third of Skeptics (34%) and one in ten Rejecters (11%) agree.

Le gasp! Who could have predicted such a thing except anyone who has paid even the slightest bit of attention to the American right for the last 160 years? EVERYTHING is about race with these fucking people. Race and misogyny and bigotry and hate and fear and cowardice.

The American right is comprised of the smallest, pettiest, weakest people America has ever produced, all balled up and concentrated into a pile of self-loathing filth, intent on erasing everything that scares them until all that’s left is a comforting lie. And when the lie collapses, they’ll burn what’s left to ashes, immolating themselves in the process.

At least, that’s what they WANT to do. But that’s not going to happen because the regime is failing, so fuck’em and their dreams of white glory.

What we get out of their non-stop racist temper tantrum, though, is the end of the lie. Even in the middle of the horror they are inflicting on us, they are sowing the seeds of their own long-term destruction. Not literally2, but socially, culturally, politically? Done. The narrative long used to protect them, that the American right is full of god-loving patriots who just want what’s best for the nation, is being shredded in real time by the very people it is meant to shield from accountability.

When this is over, and it will be over, there will be no going back for Republican voters. There will be no memory-holing what they’ve done and what they’ve embraced. Not only will we on the left not allow them to burn their MAGA hats and pretend they were victims all along, it also won’t matter.

Why? Because every time the right fails, they do one thing and one thing only: Lurch to the right. And who is waiting for them with open arms to the right of violent white nationalism? Nick Fuentes and his fellow Nazis.

UnPresidented

Nick Fuentes escalates MAGA civil war: 'We need to burn down the GOP and elect a Nazi in 2028'

Nick Fuentes, the far-right livestreamer long associated with white nationalist rhetoric and the fringes of the MAGA movement, is once again calling for political sabotage from within the right…

Read more

25 days ago · 56 likes · 13 comments · UnPresidented

The right will never go back to dog whistles and coded language. They will never go back to democracy and the rule of law. They will only escalate their extremism and delight in their cruelty and sickness and terrorism. They are so disconnected from reality, they don’t even know how they look to civilized people anymore, as they caper about, drooling and gibbering Great Replacement nonsense and celebrating the murder of protesters.

Democrats are slowly, soooo slowly, beginning to no longer play the game of make-believe. They are slowly, soooo slowly, beginning to acknowledge these people are an unsalvageable threat to the nation. You cannot get them to vote for you because they are lost in a world of mindless fantasy. Write them off and move on.

The legacy press, on the other hand, will kick and scream and bite and scratch until the bitter end, demanding we go back to the good ol’ days when the American right was just a bunch of flag-waving church-goers who worship at the altar of Saint Ronald Reagan and American Exceptionalism. But that won’t work because the right will be flying Nazi flags and loudly worshipping at the altar of genocide.

You cannot gaslight a nation into not seeing a bunch of fucking Nazis being fucking Nazis.

The right doesn’t really understand yet what this will mean for them. They are so used to being coddled and protected, they cannot grasp the concept of being seen for what they truly are. But we see you, you fucking filth, and soon, you will wish you had stayed hidden behind your fig leaf of decency and respectability.

Thank you for being so unbelievably goddamn stupid.

Fascism thrives on fear. It wilts under scrutiny. Never look away. Never stop fighting. Hold them accountable and make them pay for every cruel thing they do. It’s the only way we get through this. Support this newsletter for just $5 a month or $50 a year (a 17% discount!), and we’ll get through together.

🔥Burn Fascism To The Ground!🔥

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There are only 256 days until the midterms, and the regime is panicking. They’re afraid of us. Keep making them afraid every single day. Remember, you are never alone. We beat the fascists once. We will fucking do it again.

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Republicans continue to prove that they are unfit to govern, leading us down a path that will cost lives for decades to come, even as the legacy press continues to bend the knee in abject surrender.

When the regime falls, and it will, everyone has to be held accountable for selling out democracy to pad their fucking bank accounts.

Ogre Nation News Update!

2:40 - 12:48 The regime pays back half a billion in filthy fossil fuel donations by killing a crucial Obama-era EPA legal ruling. Enjoy all the extra pollution courtesy of the “both sides are just as bad!” crowd. gives a short history lesson about Love Canal.

12:49 - 22:38 Gallup obeys in advance and ends presidential approval polls because Trump’s numbers are in the shitter. CBS manages to go from bad to unbelievably worse all in the same week. The legacy press continues to fail us.

22:39 - 25:40 As we enter the third government shutdown of Trump’s second term in office, we see the results of electing people who despise the very concept of government.

25:41 - 31:41 You Scream, I Scream, We All Scream Because of Fucking ICE

31:42 - 35:52 We Live in the Stupidest Timeline - I give a little Ogre history lesson about Lysenkoism.

35:53 - 46:56 Headlines for Short Attention Spans

46:57 - 53:10 Self-care of the Week