A Sociological Eye

  The last institutional barrier between us and the presidential narcissist who would be emperor is falling. It’s going to be up to us to stand up. Here’s your overview: the federal government has three branches that are supposed to serve as checks and balances to ensure the U.S. never has a king. Congress is supposed to make the laws, the president enforce them, and the courts rule on the constitutionality and legality of the actions of the first two branches. Our current self-worshipping president and his awful clown car of minions have decided that they get to make the laws, and can use them to stomp on all of their declared enemies. Whatever existing laws they don't like, they ignore. Who's going to stop them? Well, Congress is supposed to do that. But the Republicans who hold the slim majority either worship their Great Leader, or imagine they are slyly using him, or are terrified that if they don't bend to his every whim, his followers--their voters--will descend on t...

A Portrait of Zooey Zephyr Wow, rightwing social media bloviators are really going all in on the line that “America isn’t a Democracy! It is a Republic!” Have you seen this? I try to avoid Twitter as much as possible nowadays. Whole swaths of it used to be pretty dystopian, barely held in check by moderators. There were just some minimal rules—no hate speech, no misgendering trans people, no telling people exactly how you’d like to see them die horribly. Then Elon “I spent billions to be able to misgender my own children online!” Musk bought the place. According to him, banning hate speech is discriminating against Republicans. Evil leftists want to censor and cancel and muzzle people, but the noble right wing understands the incalculable value of there being no rules of civility! The right champions pure free speech! Tell that to Zooey Zephyr. (I collaborated with AI to make this portrait of her.) This week, Representative Zephyr was banned from the floor of the state legislature of ...