The Shitstorm Is Coming And It Might Get Loud

A meme I found on ImgFlip. I think this is from that show “Trailer Park Boys”.

A few days ago, there was a fire at the Pennsylvania Governor’s Residence. Governor Josh Shapiro and his family were evacuated from the mansion at 2 AM - if they had not been so swift, the assassination attempt would have succeeded. And yes, I consider it an assassination attempt, because that’s what the perpetrator admitted to. I will not name the perpetrator here; I don’t want to glorify him. 

As happy as I am that Governor Shapiro is okay, I feel pretty certain that political violence is going to greatly increase in this country. It’s easy to get a gun here, but this case demonstrates that you don’t even need a gun to do serious damage. It feels like a “crossing the Rubicon” moment - any candidate who’s an electoral threat to any Republican is in serious danger. There’s no going back from this, even if we one day have a Democratic President again.

A few weeks ago, Vice President JD Vance and several national “security” officials like Pete Hegseth texted their war plans in Yemen to a journalist from The Atlantic. This leak, which has come to be referred to as “Signalgate”, generated a lot of outrage at first. But at first is the keyword.

You see, it’s been less than a month and almost nobody is talking about Signalgate anymore. Okay, that’s not true - maybe foreign intelligence services are still debating how much information they should withhold from us because we can’t be trusted to keep it secure. But the general public in the United States has almost completely moved on from this scandal.

Speaking of intelligence, let’s look at Director of National Intelligence and Russian asset extraordinaire Tulsi Gabbard. Recently she came under fire for having declared her residency in Texas when she voted in Hawaii.This is the “voter fraud” that Republicans constantly cite as a justification for voter ID laws that are really meant to suppress the votes of those more likely to support Democrats. 

Now, voter fraud is a serious crime, even if it doesn’t take place nearly as frequently as Republican officials would have you believe. That being said, I think it says a lot about the current state of affairs that I don’t really care about this that much. I care far more about Gabbard being a Russian spy. And yet, nobody’s talking about Gabbard’s connections to Putin and Assad anymore.

That’s actually a common thread here: Nobody’s talking about any of this anymore.

The attempt on Josh Shapiro’s life should have been an Earth-shattering story. Instead, it wasn’t just memory-holed - people didn’t talk about it much even on the day after it happened. And you’ve gotta wonder, why is that?

I’ve got a reason. That reason is because it was largely overshadowed by the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

If you’ve been following the news, you probably know his story in general terms. If you didn’t see the news about Garcia, or if you’ve simply forgotten amid the chaos of the last few months, then I’ll summarize it.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia is an American citizen originally from El Salvador. He was recently detained by the Trump administration’s ICE goons and sent down to a notorious prison in his country of origin. The U.S. Supreme Court, in a rare unanimous decision, ordered Trump to “facilitate his return.” Admittedly, they did not provide a deadline by which this must happen, but it’s still a stunning rebuke considering the likes of Samuel Alito sit on said court.

Despite the 9-0 ruling against him by an otherwise very right-wing Supreme Court, Donald Trump has continued to defy this order. He has refused to return Garcia to the United States. Now, in fairness, Garcia is probably already dead. And if he isn’t, Trump is afraid of what the man will say once he’s back. Either case would result in riots in the United States - at least, I’d hope so.

As disgusting as this case is, it’s not even the most important part of that White House meeting. I think you know which meeting I’m talking about.

Donald Trump talking to Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele in the White House. Image taken from ABC News.

During the meeting between Donald Trump and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, Trump dodged the question of whether he’d do anything to facilitate Garcia’s return. Bukele told reporters that he would not return Garcia, and Trump seems to be going along with it. “There’s nothing I can do” is what he basically said.

Let’s talk about that for a moment. Even though Trump has been systematically destroying our alliances with other wealthy democracies, the United States remains one of the world’s most powerful countries in terms of military might. If Trump truly wanted to follow the Supreme Court’s orders, Bukele’s opinion be damned, there are any number of actions he could take. Instead, Trump is going to let the leader of a small country like El Salvador walk all over him.

Trump probably thinks that defying a court order makes him look tough. In this context, though, it makes him look like a pushover. In theory, he has so much power over Bukele if he actually wanted to use it. The fact that he chooses to let Bukele control him makes him look like, as some would say, a pussy.

There’s another moment from that meeting that’s getting a lot of attention. I’ll let Trump say it this time:

"Home-growns are next. The home-growns. You gotta build about five more places. It's not big enough."

Now, let’s ignore for the moment how very non-eloquent that quote is. Within the context of what Trump was talking about with Bukele, it’s genuinely chilling.

Trump wants Bukele to build five more prisons in El Salvador for American citizens who disagree with him. 

Is that actually going to happen? Quite possibly if nobody stops him. But if even the Supreme Court isn’t willing to use their own power and instead delegate it all to Trump, can he be stopped at all? It’s doubtful.

Lots of people on Reddit have made Nazi Germany comparisons. Very often, these people are dismissed as alarmists, and sometimes this is for good reason. But make no mistake - I truly believe in a matter of a few months, we’ve gone from 1932 to 1939. Everyone who opposes this administration should be very, very afraid.

Oh yeah, and while everyone else is distracted by the Bukele meeting, Russia launched yet another airstrike on Ukraine, this time the northeastern city of Sumy. As of this writing, thirty-six people have been confirmed dead as a result. Despite this attack occurring as Ukrainian civilians went to church for Palm Sunday, politicians on the religious right here are silent. In fact, Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, vetoed a G7 resolution to condemn this strike. This proves that Rubio isn’t actually one of the “adults in the room” - there is no such thing this time.

This gesture should be seen as outrageous, and it is. But it’s more than likely going to be forgotten in a few days when there’s another outrage. Look how quickly “Signalgate” was memory-holed. I’m confident that in a few days, people will have forgotten about Trump’s meeting with Bukele until American citizens are sent to these concentration camps en masse.

Of course, this is a deliberate strategy known as “flooding the zone.” The more crazy shit happens, the less the average person can react to it all, or even know what’s going on. This makes it a lot more difficult to organize a resistance.

Unfortunately, so far it seems to be working.