Why It Matters If Trump Is Dead or Incapacitated Beyond Who Is President

Let's be completely honest: There are lots of people we'd like to see die. And we're not saying we want to kill them. There's a wide, wide gulf between wishing someone stopped existing and putting in the time and effort to make that happen. I'll put it this way: I'd love to eat a piece of a really great chocolate cake, but I'm not gonna spend months learning how to bake one and ice it properly. But if someone puts a slice of a cake they made in front of me? Hell, yeah, I'll gobble that up and compliment the baker. 

We don't even necessarily want most of our hopefully-soon-dying humans to die horribly. I mean, I don't give a shit if, say, Pete Hegseth falls into a wood chipper feet first or if too much coke stops his heart and he drops before he knows what's happening. I'd like Alex Jones to spend a few years homeless and begging to blow drunk dudes for their "protein shakes" before he has a stroke that leaves him unable to speak or move for years and no one has the decency to let him die. Don't get me started on Stephen Miller. But, again, it's all chocolate cake. Gimme a big ol' chunk of it, but I'm not cooking.

When it comes to Donald Trump, you'd think I want him to suffer. You'd think I'd want him to shit out his insides on live television as he begs for someone to help him, his orange glaze melting off his sweaty, pasty face while his wisps of hair become greasy strings against his bald head. You'd think I'd want him to be left alone in a room of women who Jeffrey Epstein trafficked when they were girls, each of them holding a straight razor. And while I don't not want those things, mostly, I just want him gone. Done. Gone or done.

For a brief, gleeful period of time this past weekend, speculation was running rampant that the absolutely thinkable had happened. Because he hadn't appeared in public for a couple of days or made one of his screaming mimi calls to some nutzoid right-wing outlet, over on BlueSky and Threads and, I assume, X (because fuck X), people were thinking that it meant Trump had fucking died. The thoughts and prayers of the hopeful varied from tentative "what if" to full-bore "pleasepleaseplease." You can say it's ghoulish or morally wrong or whatever weak-ass sentiment you want to put out there and pretend you're better than those of us who think it's actually more moral to hope that someone who is actively hurting millions of people is gone. But, goddamn, it was a beautiful few hours, like it was possible we'd get through this nightmare.

Now that Trump seems to have lumbered around a bit in front of distant cameras that can't get a real focus on him as some kind of fucked-up proof-of-life, the talk has shifted to whether or not he's had a stroke or a series of mini-strokes. We've been here before where Trump's obvious decline has been attributed to his failing heart or decaying brain. On top of that, we've had lumpy bearded skink J.D. Vance say, with little prompting, that he's ready to take over the presidency should he need to.

And that's the obvious reason it matters whether or not Trump's mobile and coherent enough to pretend to still be president. We can have all kinds of arguments over whether or not Vance would be worse than Trump (I lean on the side of him being more easily controlled and thus less chaotic, but I totally get believing he'd be a complete fucking nightmare - Trump but with a lifespan). But that's not why I think Trump being dead or incapacitated matters so much to so many of us.

Since he lost (no, really, he fucking well lost) in 2020, the speculating punditocracy has wondered if the MAGA (or Trumpist, if you prefer) movement could continue without Trump. The discussion has been around whether or not all this can possibly still go on once Trump is out of the picture, mostly as in not being able to run for president again in 2028, although, you know, that's still to be determined. And if there's one thing we learned after 2020, it's that Trump's presence as a figurehead of the MAGA movement looms large because he can still endorse and bitch endlessly online and at his rallies of the damned. So he'll be there whether or not he's trying to dare the Supreme Court to prevent him from having a third term (or if he just ends elections altogether and stays in power).

That's why, to my mind, the real question is what happens when Trump is really gone, as in not there. I genuinely believe, as I've said before, that this whole thing falls apart without Trump, and everyone around him knows that. If they thought this was sustainable without Trump, they wouldn't be rushing to kiss his ass endlessly and prop him up like a decaying stuffed walrus. The problem with a cult of personality is that without the personality, there is no cult. As I wrote when Trump announced back in 2015 (when I was right about him wrecking the GOP field but wrong about whether he would beat Clinton), "many voters simply will overlook [his many faults and fuckups] because he's the most goddamned entertaining clown in the circus, the only candidate they know, and his pop culture status has given him the aura of earthy wisdom instead of nonsensical shit-tossing." Also, "the voters are fucking dumbasses."

Yes, Trump tapped into their racism, ignited their religious fervor, and fed their fears like they're starving puppies, but the devotion has always been to Trump. You think that all those voters who like the funny TV man are gonna get their asses of their couches to go rally for Vance? This has always been about Trump over everything else. They'll buy his shit, they'll vote for who he endorses, and they'll give up their health and safety for him. They'll turn against their family and neighbors, they'll plaster their houses and cars with memes portraying him as a superhero or Rambo, they'll hate who he tells them to hate and love who they tell them to love, but once he's not there to do it, there is no one take his place. Not his terrible children. Not any of the Fox "news" troglodytes he's elevated. And certainly not any of the politicians who have latched onto him like desperate remoras on the side of a lumbering whale shark. 

You can call me blindly optimistic, even deluded. You can say that he's unleashed something in Americans that will never go away. Yeah, it takes a while for a poison to get out of your system, and it can leave you permanently damaged. But you're alive. It'll take a long time to completely extricate ourselves from his filthy grip - hell, I don't expect to live to see us fully recover - but that starts with him just being fucking gone.

(Note: I don't expect Trump's 2 p.m. "announcement" today to have anything to do with this. It'll be some shitty action, like renaming the Department of Defense to "Department of War" or maybe he'll say we're invading Chicago or Venezuela or maybe he'll say they're arresting Democrats. He'll slur his way through it, perhaps even in a pretape, before disappearing again.)

A Poem for the Laborers

"New American" 

by Huascar Medina 

Don’t call me immigrant

I am the New American 

striving in New America

as a New American

I am not your invader

not an animal

nor criminal

I am a just person

just striving 

in a New America

In New America I am

a full-time student 

overtime worker

volunteering in my free time

if I plan enough ahead for free time

if I can even afford the free time

if my free time is approved

I work hard in New America

3rd shift warehouse 

2nd shift my house

always on call

no days off

freelance for life

4 jobs a week

blue and white collar

Don’t call me immigrant

I am the New American 

surviving in New America

as a New American

I am not your invader

not an animal

nor criminal

I am a just person

just surviving

in a New America

This is New America

student loans for all

high rent 

higher utilities 

low pay

rising healthcare costs

the cost of living

—deadly

no living wage

living enraged 

my cousins encaged 

for wanting to live in

a safer part of

New America

Don’t call me immigrant

I am the New American 

living in New America

as a New American

I am not your invader

not an animal

nor criminal

I am a just person

just living

in a New America

Strong and proud

able to withstand 

the distance I have traveled

the distance from my family 

the distance between us

the distance of our dialects

the distance in our churches

the distance in our homes

the distance between my ancestors

and my grandchildren

the distance from the streets

to the dorm rooms

the distance from the field

to the corner office suite

Don’t call me immigrant

I am the New American 

dreaming of New America

as a New American

I am not your invader

not an animal

nor criminal

I am a just person

just dreaming 

of a New America

Old America

don’t be afraid

we are all America

North America

Central America

South America

We are all Americans

We all strive in Americas

We all survive in Americas

We all live in Americas

They are all the same America

We all dream of a greater America

I want you to be paid a living wage

live in affordable housing

without college debt

or medical debt

or credit card debt

or national debt

I want no more racism

I am speaking of a New America

I am part of New America

whether you like it or not

so join me, please

Where the Hell Have I Been?

I know, I know, I fucking know that I haven't posted here. But I'm busy, goddamnit. I'm in Scotland at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with a (mostly) non-political show I wrote and directed, Midnight in Nashville. It's about a country singer who was popular in the early 2000s but she shot and killed her abusive husband and went to prison for 20 years. Now she's out and she has one night in a recording studio to make a comeback album. We've been getting some fine, enthusiastic audiences. We're waiting for the big reviews to come out, so that's all kinds of fun.

Anyways, it's madness here, and I've seen some great stuff, including a new stand-up set by the amazing Sam Jay, who goes all in wrecking the American political crisis. But that's left me almost no time to post shit here, although I'm blue-balled because there's so much I wanna say.

I'll give writing a new post a try, but I'm off to annoy tourists with flyers for the show. If you know anyone here in this insanity, tell 'em to get their asses over to the Zoo Playground at 8:15 p.m. every night except Monday for the show.

Hey, Democrats: It's Okay to Be Outraged That a Rapist Might Have Committed More Rapes

You need to start from one assertion: Donald Trump is a rapist. A jury said it was more likely than not that he sexually assaulted E. Jean Carroll, and the judge in the case made it clear that it's only a quirk in New York State law that prevented the jury from using the r-word. In the way any person would understand "rape," it was rape. And that makes Donald Trump a rapist. When you start by saying that, everything else becomes so much easier to understand. 

What I mean is that it would honestly be surprising if Trump wasn't one of the "clients" of child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. I'm not going to review the accumulation of accusations, confessions, and video evidence that show just what a sleazy, grabby, rapey shitheel Trump was and is. You can check all that out pretty easily and you likely have heard about or seen much of it. 

The fact that Democrats don't constantly highlight that Trump is a rapist is political and moral malpractice. It was barely mentioned in the 2024 election, and it should have been the beginning of any conversation about Trump. Now, Democrats should react to any interaction with Trump in the way any non-rapist would react to being in the same room with a known rapist. They should treat Republican members of Congress like you would treat someone who is covering up for a rapist. If you say that norms or traditions don't allow you to act that way, then you have no understanding that a norm only works if everyone involved is adhering to it. Otherwise, you're just a sucker. And whatever bullshit social contract made Democrats the standard bearers of eternal comity, that shit was broken when Republicans made a rapist their leader and got him elected president again. 

One of the things that has bugged the hell out of me around the whole Epstein files affair/scandal/cover-up is that too few people are behaving like what's at stake here is whether or not the rapist president committed more rapes, whether he raped children, and whether he provided aid and comfort to the scuzzy fuck who procured the girls for Trump and others to rape. At the very least, it's worth knowing if Trump was aware of the awful shit that Jeffrey Epstein was doing and didn't tell anyone. Trump said that they had a falling out over some cheap property they were each trying to buy in Palm Beach, FL, in 2004 and never spoke again. We know that Epstein was being a fucking monster during the time that he and Trump were friends. We know that Epstein committed multiple rapes in his Florida mansion and that Trump knew about Epstein's fondness for women "on the younger side." But, like I said, that's a rabbit hole you can go down. I wanna talk the politics of this moment.

Republicans have taken the position that Trump didn't rape Carroll, didn't rape or assault any of the women who have accused him, and didn't rape girls provided by Epstein. That is, frankly, an objectively repulsive position, especially because, again, a judge and jury declared Trump a rapist in the civil suit and, just last month, a federal appeals court upheld the verdict. The GOP has decided that its everyone else's problem and we all just have to deal with it when it comes to there being a rapist leading us.

To a large extent, until recently, Democrats have simply accepted that framing and, as usual, let the GOP dictate the rhetorical parameters and the terms of doing business in DC. The Epstein files fuck-up by Trump gives Democrats a chance to reframe things and present them in the way they should have been presented all along: the president is a rapist who might have committed more rapes, including the rapes of children. If you don't want all the facts to come out about it, then you are covering up for a rapist. And what the fuck is wrong with you if you do that, Mike Johnson? What the fuck are you so worried about? Hammer them constantly about their complicity with a rapist. The Democrats' revulsion should be visceral, visible, and intense. Let voters know that, at long last, there is some shit you will not eat. Trump's closeness to Epstein is their problem and they have to figure out how to deal with it. Some Democrats are getting on board with this strategy, but they need to go harder. On an interview show, you can say when asked about anything, "Well, the president is a rapist, and we always need to start with that."

To any Democrats who think that this is somehow not the issue that voters care about, that voters want "kitchen table" issues discussed going into the midterms, that it's a distraction, as former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi stupidly said last week, I'd say give me a fucking break. This is a righteous, necessary battle. There are real people, victims, here, women whose lives were fucked up by the actions of these rapists, including the rapist president. It's as fucking kitchen table as it gets in that it's the kind of thing that people actually talk about around the kitchen table. You shout out to Americans that the vile Attorney General had 1000 FBI agents scouring the Epstein files for any mention of Trump and that shit will go viral because what the fucking fuck. (Odious blow-up doll Pam Bondi is scrambling, and it's kind of delicious.)

And anyone who says that Democrats don't want the Epstein stuff out there because it might implicate Democrats like Bill Clinton doesn't fucking understand Democrats. We have no problem tossing someone to the wolves. Ask Anthony Weiner. Ask Andrew Cuomo. Ask Al Franken. We're ruthless when it comes to wrongdoing being revealed. You mean if we sacrifice Bill Clinton, we might get rid of Trump? Fuck, yeah, that's a fair trade. 

The corporate media is already declaring that Trump has surfed his way through this wave of scandal and come out dry on the other side again. But it sure doesn't seem that way, with Tucker Carlson breaking with Trump, with MAGA drones at each other's throats (and some saying others have "Epstein Derangement Syndrome," which, yeah, get a new fucking phrase, assholes), with Bondi wanting to question imprisoned Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell, maybe even offering a pardon if she can bail Trump out by saying he was never involved. And Trump himself is throwing every fucking piece of red meat to the slavering MAGA hordes to try to get them off his scene. The latest is arresting Barack Obama for completely made-up bullshit about how Russia helped Trump win in 2016. 

In the end, like at the start, Trump is a rapist. Everything flows from there. I think that the best case scenario is that Trump’s a rapist who covered up for other rapists. The worst case scenario is horrific. Democrats should be acting like it's the worst case and what they do and say should reflect the disgust and outrage they should have. 

The MAGA Meltdown Over Jeffrey Epstein Is the Stupid Climax They Deserve: Bongino Agonistes

In the heady days before he was nominated to be the deputy to FBI Director Kash Patel, who always looks like someone just told him he's got flesh-eating bacteria on his taint, bald, Democrat-despising meatloaf Dan Bongino was telling his podcast audience how the walls hiding those who were protecting the files of monstrous pedophile and sex trafficker and rich Jeffrey Epstein were going to come tumbling down when Donald Trump started huffing and puffing on them. 

"The Jeffrey Epstein case is back," he frothed spittily on his Rumble show (Rumble, if you don't know, is the right-wing jerk-off's live streaming service of choice) on February 5 of this year, when Trump was already back in office. He then gleefully ranted something about Barack Obama's "fixer" (everyone is always given some kind of mob-related title): "Let me just give you a little litany and rundown of everything Obama's fixer was involved in fixing and what the hell was she trying to fix with the Jeffrey Epstein scandal? Are there some high level Democrats like the Clintons, who may have needed some stuff to go away with this?" You might look at that and think, "The fuck is this maniac going on about?" And that just means you aren't filling up your poor, overstimulated brain with the worms from the fevered swamp of nutzoid conspiracies, where everyone who opposes Donald Trump is fucking children and some of them are murdering them and drinking their blood and I wish I were making that up but you have to understand how many stupid and crazy people there are in this country right now.

Unlike grifters like, well, everyone on Fox "news," Bongino was a true believer in the Epstein conspiracies. He believed that Epstein was murdered in prison, and he believed in the list of clients Epstein (or his scum-sucking co-trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell) kept and that it contains Bill Clinton, Obama, and an array of "Deep State" players who are trying to bring down his one god, Trump, who he was so fucking sure was going to blow this whole thing sky high and bring hellfire down on the sinners. 

Just last year, on September 9, 2024, Bongino repeatedly orgasmed on the air and into his pants describing what Trump said in an interview with some fucking tech bro professor. In that conversation, after Trump insists twice that he never went to Epstein's rape island, Fridman says, "It's just very strange for a lot of people, that the list of clients that went to the island has not been made public." Trump responds, "It's very interesting, isn't it? It probably will be, by the way, probably." And then he says he'll release the list in the weirdest fucking way possible: "I'd be inclined to do the Epstein. I'd have no problem with it." He keeps insisting he isn't involved in a way that makes you think he's totally involved. But this isn't about Trump. It's about Bongino, and this segment is the New Testament.

This is the fucking angel heralding the arrival of Orange Jesus for Bongino. "People are gonna lose their minds if the Epstein client list is revealed," he says, not even trying to hide his elation. A few minutes later, he goes all in on the list: "Folks, the Epstein client list is a huge deal because it speaks to an enormous problem we have in this, in this country. It is that there is a connected class of insiders that feel that they can get away with anything because they can...But the reason the Epstein client list being revealed is so important is because I want you to understand that there is a class of beknighted folks who beknighted themselves in a little round table who are not subjected to the same rules you are...Good folks, you're gonna see a lot of names on that. The Epstein client list, I believe, based on what I've heard from sources and the story I just told you, basically it's gonna rock the political world. There's a reason they're hiding it." And, yes, goddamn, Trump is gonna show it to the world.

If you go through transcripts of Bongino's show, a task I damned myself with, you will see Epstein brought up constantly. Bongino repeats, many times, a story he swears he heard from a valid source, no, really, about Bill Clinton going to the back of Epstein's plane with "young girls." He had an episode in January 2024 with the title "The Epstein Files Reveal the Shocking Truth." The Epstein files, list, coverup, and Trump bringing everyone to justice were a driving force for Bongino, who, it should be said, is a fucking moron, but the motherfucker believed with all his heart.

So imagine how Bongino must have felt when the Department of Justice and the FBI, the government entity he is deputy director of, released a statement about its investigation into their files on Epstein and announced, "This systematic review revealed no incriminating 'client list.'" And I gotta tell ya: thinking about Bongino watching his entire world crumble in front of him, sledgehammered by people he thought were his allies, like Patel and our demigorgon of an Attorney General, Pam Bondi, that shit just makes me laugh. He had to deal with the fact that all these supposed friends who, like him, like Trump, like nausea personified, JD Vance, all who said that the list was real, who claimed they had seen the list, were either lying then or lying now. Bongino had already had the soul-wrecking moment of saying that Epstein killed himself, according to Patel's FBI. Now this. Fuck. I wish someone had recorded it because it would be my new porn.

Imagine it. Imagine when he understood like the rest of us that there are only 2 possibilities for saying there's no list: that there was never a list and he was played and played hard, like everyone in the MAGA movement has been, that he's a rube like the rest of them. Or that his beacon, his one true love, his idol, and his surrogate father Donald Trump is on the list, that Trump fucked kids, and so that list must be disappeared like so many migrants in South Sudan. And that Patel, of all the goddamn people, is good with this.

So he lost his shit. He reportedly blew up in meeting with Bondi and Trump Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and is considering resigning. He didn't show up for work on Friday. Trump claims he still is working for the FBI, but no statement has come from him.

And now Bongino, in a job he isn't remotely qualified for, has to face this reality: He can leave and return to the conspiracy-mongering, with an audience of pissed off, betrayed, potentially ex-MAGA freaks (but still freaks), awaiting a new leader. Or he can stay and, oh, fuck, this is just (chef's kiss) perfect, become part of the loathed Deep State.

This meltdown is everything Bongino deserves. 

The Republican Budget Bill Is Going to Fuck Us Forever

It's going to take months, if not years, to figure out how much President for Life Donald Trump and his bitch Congress have fucked us with the Bullshit Bastard Bill. Top of the list is, of course, the vast expansion of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, filled with pissy, armed incels kidnapping people and guarding concentration camps. Some of the worst shit, like the Medicaid work requirements that are so dumb and unnecessary that it will destroy the program, won't take effect until 2027, after the midterm elections because, you know, Republicans count on people not giving a shit until they can't get cancer treatment. While that will lead to unnecessary loss of life, it is something that can be restored, although it'll cause some long-term damage to the health care system of the country, especially in rural areas. 

The Barfy Bollocks Bill also contains some things that are pretty much guaranteed to permanently scar our futures on the only planet we have and thus will fuck us forever. We will never escape the effects of the depraved defunding of any effort at all to mitigate the climate crisis. Trump and the savage fucknuts in the House and Senate are not just behaving as if every other day doesn't bring another climate catastrophe. They are actively making it worse, as sure as the methane from Trump's Big Mac farts do. 

Much of the damage is done by cutting the funding that had been appropriated under President Joe Biden, in an action called "rescission." And many items in the bill are just rescissions that seem benign until you dive into the details a bit.

So, for instance, the bill calls for "Rescission of amounts for forestry," which says, "The unobligated balances of amounts appropriated [in Biden's Inflation Reduction Act of 2022] are rescinded," with the sections listed. If you go to the IRA and look at that section, you can see exactly what Trump and the little bitches are rescinding. It includes "$50,000,000 for the protection of old-growth forests on National Forest System land," as well as $400 million in grants to help farmers and others mitigate the risk of fires and $100 million in administrative costs. Why is this money still available? Because Biden's bill said the funds are "to remain available until September 30, 2031" and so it could be pulled. Biden should have just flooded the country with the funding, but now it's gone.

In this abomination of a bill, when you get to Title VI: Committee on Environment and Public Works, you see this shit: 

Take just one of those: "Rescission of funding to address air pollution." That says, "The unobligated balances of amounts made available to carry out section 60401 of Public Law 117–169 (136 Stat. 2079) are rescinded." Public Law 117-169 is the IRA. Section 60401 appropriated $32.5 million for "to support data collection efforts relating to (A) disproportionate negative environmental harms and climate impacts; and (B) cumulative impacts of pollution and temperature rise." Also, it would "establish, expand, and maintain efforts to track disproportionate burdens and cumulative impacts and provide academic and workforce support for analytics and informatics infrastructure and data collection systems." And it would make sure that data is available to members of the communities affected. But that is too woke because it acknowledges that pollution does cause bad shit to happen. However, if we pretend it doesn't, then, I guess, magically it won't. That always works out well. Every single thing in that list is something that was trying to unfuck us and give the planet a future. But I guess if I were a cruel, unhealthy asshole who has been living on borrowed time for at least five years, I wouldn't give a shit, either.

It just goes on, all these little details in the bill that we won't even understand until we wake up in a scorched or flooded hellscape, but at least we won't be wondering how this happened. 

Some of it is just confoundingly dickish. Like, shit that was meant to create jobs, which Trump could totally have taken credit for, was cut. "Section 50142 of Public Law 117–169," the Brutal Bunghole Bill says, "is repealed and the unobligated balance of amounts made available under that section is rescinded." That's the section of the IRA for Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing, including, "funds appropriated by this section may be used for the costs of providing direct loans for reequipping, expanding, or establishing a manufacturing facility in the United States to produce, or for engineering integration performed in the United States of, advanced technology vehicles." Why was it just shitcanned? Because the funds can be used "only if such advanced technology vehicles emit, under any possible operational mode or condition, low or zero exhaust emissions of greenhouse gases."

See? By wholesale repealing it, you can make the libs cry, give a gift to auto manufacturers, and ruin the earth. Was anything added in the bill to encourage advanced technology vehicle manufacturing? Fuck you. You know it wasn't because those are electric vehicles and only pussies drive things that don't burn fresh, tasty fossil fuel.

And it just keeps going. Here's another section:

That's all under a header "Termination of Green New Deal subsidies." Except the Green New Deal was never passed. So Republicans are just pretending it was to get the blood of the ignorant all angered up, probably at AOC. Most of what's here just moves the date funds must be spent from 2032 to September of this year, thus disincentivizing the extra expense of some of these efforts at clean energy for the home and vehicle. 

And here's the deal: It would be one thing if they were doing all this destructive shit and saying, "Well, that's how we're funding our terrorist police force." Then you could point to a reason and think, "Hey, it's a totally fucked-up and evil thing to do, but at least it makes some skewed logical sense." But the Bonkers Boneheaded Bill is such a boondoggle of debt due to tax cuts and cruel spending, to the tune of several trillion dollars added to the deficit, that all of the money in these efforts could have been left untouched and it wouldn't have mattered more than a tiny bit to the overall cost of the fucking thing. 

They're doing it because, like most evil motherfuckers, they just like doing evil shit. We made them feel bad about the climate crisis for a couple of years so now they're taking their revenge on everyone, especially generations yet to come.

We won't understand what harm this viperous, villainous Congress, vacant of anything approaching morality or empathy, has really done for a long time. There's so much fuckery in the details buried in the bill that it will all need to be parsed and interpreted and litigated. But one thing is for sure: they have fucked us. We need to get our spiked dildos of justice ready to fuck them back.

Conservatives on the Supreme Court Try to Erase Gay People in Mahmoud v. Taylor Decision

The logic of fucked in the head Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s fucked in the head opinion in the 6-3 decision in the case of Mahmoud v. Taylor is it’s wrong that LGBTQ+ people exist and it’s wrong that they deserve happiness. The six conservative fucknuts, using the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of religious worship, say that it’s wrong if a school district allows books with LGBTQ+ characters in their classroom libraries and it’s wrong if the teacher is going to read the book aloud. Also, the school has to allow the parents to opt out their precious little pure angels or they might be taught the horrors of life in a diverse culture. It’s so dumb and so backwards that it’s an insult to teachers, to religion, to the Constitution, and it is of a piece with the majority’s infantilization of the population in their decisions. 

Without going into the whole case, here’s a quick summary: “Montgomery County’s school system expanded its English Language Arts curriculum in 2022 to include books with LGBTQ+ characters, part of an effort to better reflect the diversity of families in the county’s religiously diverse and politically liberal population… A coalition of parents from a variety of religious backgrounds — Muslim, Ukrainian Orthodox and Catholic — protested the curriculum updates, and three couples and the organization Kids First sued the district. The parents said they were not trying to change the lesson plans or remove any books from classroom shelves. They just wanted to have the option of saying their children would not participate.”

Now, there’s a part of me that says, “Well, fuck it. They should have just let the kids of the stupid parents sit out.” And the school district did have a policy allowing that, but they stopped allowing it. Why? Well, because there was no requirement to teach the books that the parents had an issue with. And the books themselves? Alito goes to great pains to portray them as these evil texts that will hinder the “religious development” of their kids. In his drama queen way, Princess Alito says, “We reject this chilling vision of the power of the state to strip away the critical right of parents to guide the religious development of their children.” 

And what’s causing this chilling vision? One of the books is Uncle Bobby’s Wedding, where Chloe, a little girl, learns her favorite uncle, Bobby, is getting married to his boyfriend, Jamie. Chloe doesn’t give a shit that Bobby’s gay. She gives a shit and is upset because Bobby is the party uncle who does all kinds of fun stuff with her. It’s a story that has been told a million times, and the only difference here is the couple is gay. Chloe learns marriage doesn’t mean Bobby will stop being Bobby, and so they have a party. But that’s the sinister part for Alito, who really writes that the wedding “is presented as a joyous event that is met with universal approval… there are many Americans who would view the event that way, and it goes without saying that they have every right to do so. But other Americans wish to present a different moral message to their children. And their ability to present that message is undermined when the exact opposite message is positively reinforced in the public school classroom at a very young age.”

So, in other words, the simple existence of a gay couple, and, believe it or not, they do exist, and the fact that they experience joy, which, I can confirm, they do, is an abomination to people who believe in a certain kind of invisible sky wizard, who will be very angry if you accept the gays. It’s absurd. And it gets stupider (and stick with me, because the stupid will reach a crescendo in a moment).

Another book, Intersection Allies (a terrible title that makes my teeth hurt, to be honest), is filled with people who are different from regular ol’ middle class white kids. It’s got a kid in a wheelchair, a kid whose family speaks Spanish, a poor kid, an Muslim kid, and a bunch of others, including a transgender kid. It’s like one page of the book, and the whole thing is about having compassion for the different types of people a child in the 21st century might meet or even have in their class. But, once again, Alito is having none of it: “The book and the accompanying discussion guidance present as a settled matter a hotly contested view of sex and gender that sharply conflicts with the religious beliefs that the parents wish to instill in their children.” Yeah, but what about the religious beliefs of the parent who are letting their transgender 7 year-old express their gender identity? Don't those beliefs or lack of beliefs matter?

To put it simply, conservative religious beliefs trump everything else in the majority’s reasoning. As several commentators have pointed out, this could lead to complete anarchy. Should Mormons and Muslims be able to opt out of readings that involve drinking alcohol? Should people who belong to racist religious sects be allowed to opt out of learning about slavery? What if they’re reading a book about a woman president and that offends the sexist fundamentalists in various faiths? It’s all fucking ridiculous, and to avoid a total clusterfuck of dickhead parents allowing their prejudices to dictate the curriculum, most schools will just avoid anything but the most anodyne shit. You might wonder why the hell don’t the kids just go to religious schools, ah, but Alito says that because the families are too poor to afford that, it’s on the rest of us to affirm their crazy.

Students can learn shit in school that they don't agree with. Parents have a right to teach their ignorance to their kids. Alito's just worried the kids will think the ignorant parents are fucked in the head like him and that their religious development is worthless. Yet Alito is saying that the parents’ religion takes precedence over everyone else’s right to not have religion imposed on them.

It’s something that Justice Sonia Sotomayor states pretty fucking clearly in her dissent. She quotes the First Amendment and emphasizes that “prohibit” is the key word: “The Clause prohibits the government from compelling individuals, whether directly or indirectly, to give up or violate their religious beliefs.” In other words, the government can’t force you to believe a certain way. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t learn shit. 

Sotomayor remarks that the majority’s decision fails “to accept and account for a fundamental truth: LGBTQ people exist.  They are part of virtually every community and workplace of any appreciable size. Eliminating books depicting LGBTQ individuals as happily accepted by their families will not eliminate student exposure to that concept. Nor does the Free Exercise Clause require the government to alter its programs to insulate students from that ‘message.’” Right. Your stupid fucking parents and your dumbass church can teach you, say, all the creationism you want. But get that ludicrous shit out of the public school science classroom. 

But some of you may still be stuck on the whole “Fuck it. Let the poor religion-abused kids stay home on LGBTQ day. The district should just reinstitute its policy of opt out.” Except there is a policy in place that the parents in this case could have used, which Sotomayor mentions: "Rather than avail themselves of the district’s established process for challenging objectionable instructional material, petitioners sued the MCPS Board in federal court.”

And this is the crescendo of the stupid. Yeah, the parents had options. But right-wing groups, like the odious Moms for Liberty, got their legal claws in this and wanted to get the frothing mongrels in robes on the high court to put us further on the road to their Christian nationalist vision for the country. Alito even quotes the local leader of MFL as if she’s just an interested parent: “Some parents showed up at the [Montgomery County School] Board’s public business meetings to express their concerns about the storybooks’ content.  In an early 2023 meeting, for example, one parent represented herself as ‘a voice for parents in [her] community, many of [whom] are actually working today and unable to attend.’” That concerned mom was Lindsey Smith, head of the Montgomery County chapter of the maniac Moms. She’s also testified before Congress about how terrible it is to tell kids that gay people are real.

And there you have it. The set up. The lawsuit. The pay off. A successful attack on LGBTQ people, as well as on the education of students based in reality and not some backwards-ass fantasy world that they want to use to subjugate the rest of us, all under guise of supporting the Constitution that the majority ignores like it’s a homeless queer kid on the streets of DC. 

How ridiculous is this? Here’s Alito: “In making this argument, the dissent seems to confuse our country with those in which laws enacted by a parliament or another legislative body cannot be challenged in court. In this country, that is not so.  Here, the Bill of Rights and the doctrine of judicial review protect individuals who cannot obtain legislative change.” And this was on the same day they said that courts should not be allowed to do national injunctions. 

There is no actual legal theory at work here, no consistency, no real beliefs in anything but letting conservatives get everything they've wanted.