SOON, MAYBE.

For a while now I've been wanting to write a little something about a lot of nothing. A tribute to my old cat, Gracie maybe, or the beauty of nature, the susseration of the river, as it makes its slow journey to the ocean, or the delight of a Blue Heron wading in the shallows.

But now is not the time. We are citizens of a land that is no longer familiar to us. We have watched it getting closer, like a jagged rock threatening to slice into our hull, but we are helpless, our steering is damaged, we are on a collision course, and the helmsman is incompetent. There could have been a solution, but that is gone. We are no longer protecting, however awkwardly, the Constitution of the United States. It is gone, POOF. We can credibly ask the question, will there be a 2028 presidential election? We can even ask, what will it look like? Russia has elections, very well run elections. India has elections, also tightly controlled, which is a phrase you never want uttered in association to democracy. That's where we are. 

We are now in the struggle to regain, Jenga Stick by Jenga Stick, the Constitutional guarantees we have had for 249 years. It will require too much of us, but we can not not respond. It is what we leave those who follow us.

The 47th president of the United States is cutting deals with media outlets. They can no longer be considered, The Free Press. Late night comics can be cancelled by a vengeful, thin-skinned president leveraging an FCC decision. They are Tass or Isvestia. Organs of the state. 

Texas is trying to redistrict, only 5 years into the last redistricting, done by Republicans. And it was done in the early 2000s, by a fellow named Tom, The Hammer, Delay. Formerly a Representative in the time of the Gingerich Speakership. Texas has been firmly Republican since Molly Ivan retired as one of Texas' original wits, and they still can't gerrymander enough. Black and poor districts have already been under-represented because they will do anything to ensure that that happens. Texas is a little beyond the Western terminus of the Mason-Dixon Line, but it is most definately south of it.

The president's family is involved in countless examples of grift, graft, and what Christians at one time called money-changing. His staff are carving out their own sides of a fat hog, Stephan Miller, who has militarized ICE, is invested in private prisons where his victims will soon be occupying space. And the rules prison guards once had to follow are gone. Fascism is afoot. On a hob-nail booted foot.

What can we do? We whose fittest days are in the past. The truth is we are doing it. We are living through it. In the process we speak the truth to power. We insult them, openly or under our breath. For every step backward, we struggle to gain a half-step back. Small Displays of Contempt, or larger, more open ways of Contempt, we find the way to show that contempt. A middle finger extended against a photo of the Mango Moron, 3000 miles away, is still a display of contempt. But next year, the 2026 bi-election starts the voter take-back. We can not afford to sit this one out. If they can openly gerrymander in the middle of a 10 year redistricting period in Texas to gain 5 Republican seats in the House, nothing done legally can stop them. Here's the most important point of all. You must not vote for anybody who supported in any way, the fascist regime that has captured our country, and may well be plotting to control the vote in the way Putin and the Oligarchs control the election in their country. The way Narendra Modi controls India's elections.  Karl Popper warned us some 80 or 90 years ago in his treatise on The paradox of tolerance. "A society that tolerates intolerant ideas will succumb to the forces of intolerance. That is where we are now. We are punching up. If you need brass knuckles, then by all means use them! Together, we might be able to take back some of what we have already lost. We must not stop there, because they won't stop ever.