It IS Different This Time And Racist White Men Should Be Fucking Terrified

Consequences are coming for you, motherfucker.

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!)

Every week, Rachel Maddow devotes a rather large part of her show to talking about protests against the regime in different parts of the country. Small groups in small towns. Large groups in big cities. Blue dots in red states who are angry at the regime. Red dots in red states who are angry at the regime. Young protesters. Old protesters. Protesters who have been holding signs for years. Protesters who have never held a sign in their lives.

Maddow does this each and every week, and I didn’t get it for the first month or two of 2025 when she started this. But then it clicked. Duh. Courage is contagious, as it always is. She wasn’t just talking about these people to fill airtime. She was building a permission structure for other people to step outside and protest. Nothing changes if the public doesn’t push back.

Taking my cue from the infinitely smarter Maddow, I have been posting and talking and writing about accountability over and over again. Both because I see the demand for it seething under the surface in a way it NEVER has before and because I fucking want it. I fucking want it so bad I will manifest it into existence if I have to type my goddamn fingers to bloody stumps to get it.

Nothing happens unless we can imagine it. The people who want us to “move on” and “look forward” and “heal the nation” are lying to you. The people who are telling you “nothing will change” and “no one will ever go to jail” are deceiving you. They are working to maintain the status quo. They are trying to limit your imagination.

If you cannot close your eyes and picture ICE and CBP erased from existence and every agent charged with kidnapping and assault and murder, it cannot happen. If you cannot see a future where the regime and its enablers and its footsoldiers face tribunals and life in prison, it cannot happen. If you cannot see in your mind’s eye Stephen Miller being led to the gallows to hang for ordering the construction of concentration camps and the murder of hundreds of thousands of human beings, it cannot happen.

The justice we deserve is what the people trying to limit your imagination are seeking to prevent. It doesn’t matter if they’re doing it from a place of cynicism or fear. Cynicism because we have never held racist white men accountable for their crimes in America. Fear because holding racist white men accountable would change the very fabric of this nation. Whatever their reason, they are attempting to hold you back. Attempting to hold all of us back.

The more we talk about Nuremberg trials and tribunals and mass prosecutions and hunting them down like the Nazis they are, the more real it becomes. This is how language works. This is why the right spreads hate. They normalize it, and then they make it policy. We can play that game, too.

Our job is to normalize accountability for racist white men. We must make the idea of putting Nazis in prison forever seem so inevitable that anyone arguing against it will seem insane. Who would ever argue against gravity? Who would ever argue against the Earth revolving around the Sun? Who would argue against #NurembergThemAll? We have to make consequences for the regime and its enablers so ingrained in our language and consciousness that it can’t NOT happen.

To that end, we need less “no one will ever see a day in jail!” and more of this:

[Philadelphia District Attorney Larry] Krasner vowed that “there will be accountability now, there will be accountability in the future, there will be accountability after Trump is out of office” — and he didn’t mince words as he closed out his remarks.

“If we have to hunt you down the way they hunted down Nazis for decades, we will find your identities, we will find you, we will achieve justice, and we will do so under the constitution and the laws of the United States.”

Fuck yes. I don’t care if it takes decades. If I’m on my deathbed 25-30 years from now and I’m still watching the trial of former ICE agents who have been on the run for decades, I’ll die with a smile on my face and a song in my heart. I’m fucking petty like that.¹

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I want them to live in fear for the rest of their lives. If they’re not rotting in prison, I want them to wake up every morning terrified that this is the day justice comes for them. Every time they step foot outside, I want them to wonder if this will be the time a dozen armed men tackle them to the ground and tell them they’re under arrest for the murder of helpless immigrants in overcrowded cells. Or the “disappearance” of immigrant children. Or the rape of immigrant women. Or the kidnapping and torture of American citizens. Or attacking children with chemical weapons. Or hiding mass graves. Or or or or.

This time will be different because we, as a people, are so very done coddling racist white men. And because the racist white men, still living in the past where there are no consequences, believe they can still do anything, maim, rape, and murder, with impunity.

The racist white men do not understand that they have crossed a line. They have dropped the pretense of being our fellow Americans. They no longer pretend to even be human. They have outed themselves as an irredeemable, violent death cult, and there’s no unringing that bell. They have declared open war on all of us and now we view them as the enemy.

Their confusion as we mobilize against them is perfectly understandable in this context. It has been generations since racist white men faced a nation hostile to them. And never before has that nation openly demanded punishment. An end to the depravity of racist white men? Yes. But consequences afterwards? Never.

When the regime falls, and it will, the racist white men and their enablers are going to wish they had stayed in the shadows where it was safe. Keep saying it. Speak it into existence. Will it to be. Believe it can happen, and it will. We’re already halfway there. People are already demanding it. Accountability. Consequences. Justice. Make them pay for what they’ve done and make the price so steep they’ll never try again. We can fucking do this.

I write The Opinionated Ogre Newsletter to help you cope with the fear and anger threatening to overwhelm you every day. If it 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!

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.

1. If the last words I hear on this plane of existence are, “We find the defendant guilty of crimes against humanity,” what a good way to die.