There Is No Bottom

As of the time of writing this, Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) has announced that she will vote to confirm Pete Hegseth as Donald Trump’s Secretary of Defense. This is a big shoe dropping in favor of Hegseth’s confirmation, because Ernst, a veteran and sexual assault survivor herself, was viewed as one of the Republicans who might have voted against him. Given this endorsement, it appears almost certain that Hegseth will be confirmed.

Let’s talk about Pete Hegseth. In my mind, I see him as evidence that Trump’s second term is going to be far more unhinged than the first. However you felt about Jim Mattis, Trump’s first Secretary of Defense, he was at least qualified for the job as a former four-star general. By contrast, Hegseth holds no qualifications other than being a Fox News host who looks good on TV; besides loyalty, that is perhaps what Donald Trump values most of all in his Cabinet.

Additionally, Hegseth faces numerous allegations of impropriety. According to this Democracy Now article, he has been accused of sexual misconduct and drunkenness at work. He’s also made statements disparaging women and LGBTQ+ people who serve in the military. Now, I’m not a big fan of the military anyway, and if there’s anything good that comes out of Hegseth’s impending confirmation, it’s that he’ll bring to light how rotten the U.S. military is as an institution. 

But the fact remains that he’ll almost assuredly be Secretary of Defense, and he might well order the military to fire on peaceful protestors. That’s the whole point of firing civil servants who voted for Kamala Harris and putting in Project 2025. Trump told us exactly what he was going to do, and all too many of us thought he was the lesser evil. If Trump truly wants to invade Canada and make our northern neighbor the 51st state, do you think Pete Hegseth will stand in his way? 

In the grand scheme of things, I suppose it shouldn’t be too surprising that Ernst would vote for Hegseth despite her past. Every Senator had to evacuate the U.S. Capitol on January 6 when a mob violently stormed the building and tried to have them murdered. Not only did the man who incited that mob not get any jail time, he was elected President again and will be able to pass his agenda with the full support of his party. It’s a cult, led by a senile criminally-liable rapist who used to be a Z-list celebrity.

Hegseth isn’t the only horrendous Trump nominee who’s almost guaranteed to be confirmed. There is also Robert F. Kennedy Jr., last seen threatening to spoil the election against Kamala Harris due to being on the ballot in many swing states. He’s now been nominated to lead the Department of Health and Human Services despite being an anti-vaxxer whose rhetoric led to a measles outbreak in Samoa.

In the immediate aftermath of the 2024 presidential election, RFK Jr. stated that he would not take away anyone’s vaccines. He would not seek to ban immunizations - it was a matter of choice. However, given how the last decade has gone, how the “doomers” have been right more often than they have been wrong, I can’t help but think of this example:

Donald Trump announces Brett Kavanaugh as his Supreme Court nominee in 2018. Image taken from the PBS News website.

That’s right. During their confirmation hearings, Supreme Court Injustices Gorey Gorsuch, Gang Bang Brett, and the Contagious ACB all insisted that Roe v. Wade was settled law. They claimed they would not vote to overturn the constitutional right to an abortion.

Well, guess what? They did. In 2022, Roe v. Wade was overturned, meaning that these same three Injustices committed perjury. Because of our archaic Constitution that designates the nine Supreme Court members as basically imperial overlords, there’s no way to hold them accountable. And since they ruled that Trump was above the law and could do whatever he wanted in office, there’s no way to hold him accountable either.

So here’s what’s most likely going to happen. During his confirmation hearings, RFK Jr. will “assure” Republican Senators that he isn’t going to ban vaccines. The GOP Senators who were previously on the fence will claim to believe him, and they will vote to confirm an anti-vaccine activist to head the HHS Department. Make no mistake: Even if bird flu doesn’t turn into a global pandemic on the scale of COVID-19, there will be plenty of vaccine-preventable illnesses and deaths as a result. When that happens, Susan Collins will feign surprise, making the face below when Kennedy does, in fact, ban vaccines and bring polio back.

“Surprised Pikachu” meme. Image taken from WIRED.

As horrendous as these policies are, however, I see no incentive for the GOP members of Congress to resist.

Now, let me clarify what I mean by that. I don’t say this because I lack conviction that vaccines are safe and essential, or that the Department of Defense must be run by someone who knows what the hell they’re doing. Rather, I mean that there’s no political incentive for people like Senator Joni Ernst to vote down these Cabinet picks.

Have you ever wondered why there haven’t been nearly the mass protests that there were after Trump’s first election? Well, other than the Kyle Rittenhouse precedent stating that you can shoot demonstrators in cold blood and literally get away with murder, Trump won the popular vote this time. He’s been normalized.

Yes, had Harris won the election, Trump would still have gotten 45% of the vote at minimum due to how polarized the country has become. However, the fact that more people voted for Trump than Harris means that people are less viscerally angry at the election being “unfair.” And as much as I hate Donald Trump, he did not steal the 2024 election. He won it fair and square, and that’s the worst part of all.

So no. The GOP Congress is not going to vote against any of Trump’s agenda, even if he tries to invade Canada. The American public has voted that there should be no limits to his power, and they voted for members of Congress who believe the same. 

It’s too fucking late. The GOP is going to do what they will, and the American people are going to suffer what we must. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. 

My Favorite Songs: “Big Red Gun” by Billy Talent

Cover art for Billy Talent’s “Big Red Gun.” Image taken from Spotify.

Billy Talent, a musical quartet hailing from Mississauga, Ontario, Canada (the city that looks like a giant office park from the air), have been one of my favorite bands for several years. And yes, in this case, several does mean seven - long live David Jelinsky!

In all seriousness, Billy Talent’s lyrics very often tackle difficult topics. They’ve got tunes about unrequited love, trophy wives, and plenty of political songs in case you weren’t sure if they were a punk band or not. One of their most aggressive songs is the first track off their 2016 album Afraid of Heights, which is titled “Big Red Gun.”

If you care to listen to the lyrics as you read this blog post, make sure you have headphones. The song is very loud, and you don’t want any passers-by to get the wrong idea if they hear you listening to it. Especially if you live in America. 

Brothers in arms who share my fears,

Time to protect what you hold dear.

This line refers to the “camaraderie” between gun owners, particularly those who are in the National Rifle Association. To be clear, polling in recent years has suggested that even a majority of gun owners support gun control , but Billy Talent was obviously aiming for a caricature. And who can blame them? Second Amendment fanatics claim to own firearms for protection despite research suggesting that these weapons are more likely to kill a friend or family member than an intruder.

There's been a rise in new ideals,

Threatening to change the way we live.

This is how the “Second Amendment People” react to any attempt to tighten America’s gun laws. In reality, there hasn’t really been a rise in “new ideals”, because the gun control debate ended when nothing was done after Sandy Hook. I’ve said it before, but if you were going to write about a fictional event that would make Americans support gun control, you couldn’t do much “better” than Sandy Hook. Instead people embraced conspiracy theories and ensured that nothing would ever be done.

Who knows what trouble's found a way,

Found a way to your door today?

Who knows what trouble's on its way,

On its way to intimidate?

The Republican Party always loves to push a bogeyman, because that’s the main way they win (besides voter suppression, that is). In 2018 it was the migrant caravan that mysteriously vanished after that year’s midterm election. Actually, migrants from the southern border with Mexico are always a scapegoat. Because you can never know what’s going to come next, it’s best to have a gun at all times. At least, that’s what they say.

All I want is a big red gun!

(Oh, yeah, yeah, oh)

I'm gonna shoot, shoot, shoot at the setting sun!

(Oh, yeah, yeah, oh)

And all I want is a big red gun,

I'm gonna shoot, shoot, shoot 'till the thrill is gone!

This is the first part of the song’s chorus, which brings to mind a Western film in which an outlaw fires a pistol at the approaching dusk. I mean, that’s literally what the narrator says he’ll do. The narrator isn’t using his gun for any practical purpose either (not that they’re good for anything but hunting and killing) - he’s just firing away for the fun of it. This fits in with the gun culture we see in the United States; I mean, a sitting Congresswoman used to own a restaurant where “open carry” has nothing to do with takeout. It’s totally cringe-worthy.

'Cause this is my right no matter the cost.

Get outta my sight when baby's got a big red gun!

(Oh, yeah, yeah, oh)

Baby's got a big red gun!

(Oh, yeah, yeah, oh)

It doesn’t matter whether the shootings happen at a concert, a nightclub, a university, an elementary school, or a house of worship. Second Amendment fanatics keep insisting that it’s their right to own weapons of war, no matter how many people must die in places that are supposed to be safe. In terms of the “baby” line, we keep hearing those stories of 2-year-olds who accidentally shoot themselves with their parents’ weapons. And then there’s Congressman Thomas Massie’s infamous Christmas card.

Congressman Thomas Massie (R-KY) posing with his family and their weapons for a Christmas card. Image taken from the BBC News website.

Pride is a weapon in your hand.

Freedom awards the faithful man.

I hear the message loud and clear,

Straight from his lips into my ear.

And lord I just can't walk away,

Walk away from the enemy.

The law will never disagree,

On the target of my insecurities.

We constantly hear about how proud gun owners are to be gun owners; this is hardly ground-breaking. “Freedom awards the faithful man”...yeah, well, I want to be able to walk around in public without the fear of being randomly shot. The part of this verse that resonates most with me is “the law will never disagree on the target of my insecurities”. The narrator of this song wants a big red gun so that he feels strong and powerful. No matter how high-caliber his weapon may be, however, he’s still just a pathetic, insecure human being who wants to project bravado.

We call them twisted and deranged,

(Baby's got a big red gun!)

But we gave them the keys to annihilate!

(Baby's got a big red gun!)

How long before the next one's in the ground?

(Baby's got a big red gun!)

After every high-profile mass shooting, the right-wing calls the perpetrator a twisted, deranged man (because it’s almost always a man). However, the pro-gun policies pushed by a certain political group ensured that this twisted, deranged man had access to the assault weapon of his choice to mow down many people at once. How long before the next one’s in the ground? Well, probably less than a day.

So proud of all your history,

But history made a big mistake.

(Baby's got a big red gun!)

The judge and jury stand before you now.

(Baby's got a big red gun!)

The United States Constitution, which the right-wing loves to extoll even as they trample all over parts of it (like the Fourteenth Amendment, the one that prohibits those who have incited insurrection from holding political office), is notoriously difficult to change. This stands in stark contrast to countries like France, where the Constitution is a living document that changes with the times when it’s warranted. If I had to guess, I think it’ll be at least fifty years before the Democrats and Republicans agree on something important enough to warrant another amendment.

Furthermore, the people who wrote the Second Amendment also believed that women shouldn’t be allowed to vote and that it was okay to own black people as property. We shouldn’t treat what they say as gospel, and yet our archaic “legal” system ensures that it will forever be that way. What a sick, depraved country we are.

'Cause baby's got a big red gun!

Baby's got a big red gun!

Baby's got a big red gun!

Oh Momma what have I become?

That last line is just perfect. When various other countries have issued travel warnings against you, when your society has very little internal trust at all, and every community is touched by gun violence at some point, there’s only one question that really needs to be asked: What have we become? What sick, twisted society allows schoolchildren to be slaughtered in their classrooms? Do we really have any moral high ground to criticize any other nation?

I don’t think so. The United States is the worst country in the world, and that’s why Billy Talent’s “Big Red Gun” is an amazing song.

Comparison Is The Enemy of Joy

There are many things I do that I really shouldn’t. To some extent, it’s normal to be caught up in vices - it’s the reason the city of Las Vegas even exists.

However, I also believe it needs to be said that not all of these vices are healthy to engage in. One of them is related to a term that’s become quite commonplace in the age of the Internet. To be sure, social media has significantly popularized any term that consists of an abbreviation, but FOMO is especially potent.

FOMO, an acronym for Fear Of Missing Out, is very often exacerbated by seeing someone on a social platform, particularly a figure you may look up to, doing something you wish you could be doing as well.

I’ll give an example. As of the time of writing this, I’d just finished a wonderful morning of skiing with my father. We’d each enjoyed a bowl of the most delicious ramen I’ve ever had outside of Japan. And I mean it - that stuff tastes like it was made with fresh ingredients, not the packaged shit loaded with sodium that is so often seen in the States. 

However, once I had the chance to check Discord again on my phone, I opened said app. And that’s when the pang of FOMO hit me right between the eyes.

A friend of mine, whose username I will not print here (and whose real name I don’t know) had completed a very popular, and incredibly thought-provoking, fanfiction. They’d been working on it for several years (several meaning seven), and I couldn’t help but feel proud of them. 

Indeed, I was damn happy for them. If you’ve never worked on a long-term project like that, you can probably never appreciate just how rewarding it is to mark it as complete. To some extent, I don’t even know how it feels.

But the fact remains that besides being pleased, I also felt extremely jealous of this friend. I wish I could say that I’d been able to commit to a fanfiction like that and chisel away at it over a period of months to years. Indeed, I’ve abandoned more stories than I care to count, so to see someone hang up a trophy of having completed something that major…well, it certainly promotes FOMO.

Beyond the realm of fanfiction, FOMO can manifest in many other ways. As a terminally online young man, I spent more time on social media than, again, I care to admit. And it’s very common for me to see someone on vacation somewhere that I’d really like to visit, and that’s like a FOMO Factory.

The other aspect of FOMO that can be very toxic is when it makes me want to compare myself to others. Objectively speaking, I have a family that loves me (and I love them back). I’m in relatively good health, and I live in a decently affluent metropolitan area. I recently graduated magna cum laude from a moderately selective university, and I’m applying to graduate school to start this coming fall. From that standpoint, I should be a very happy person.

And yet, the Internet has ruined my mental health. Whenever I log onto Reddit, I constantly get bombarded by news that the sky is falling. Now, I’m not going to say everything is amazing - I don’t mean to be a Pollyanna, because it isn’t productive. 

After all, the second-largest city in one of the world’s most powerful countries is currently on fire. That same country recently elected a convicted felon who claims not to believe in climate change to be its President. Not only that, but the same convicted felon has been threatening to invade a country that’s long been allies with the United States. There are many other reasons Donald Trump should not have been elected, of course - the above is not an exhaustive list.

So no. Not everything is okay, and I think we need to be talking about how not okay the world is. That being said, spending 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, online is never good for anyone’s mental health, least of all mine. The line I should be a very happy person resonates with me today more than ever, as I fly home from my recent vacation in Colorado.

Speaking of comparison, let’s talk about Reddit. Every so often, there’s a post on the Pics subreddit about Australia’s third-largest airline, which is apparently the Royal Flying Doctors of Australia. The caption for that article is invariably that this “airline” has never charged a passenger throughout its nearly 100-year history. And invariably, this is meant as a dig at the United States, which famously does not have universal health insurance.

Australia’s Royal Flying Doctor Service treating a patient in a remote part of the country. Image taken from r/Pics.

Again, I’m not going to minimize the hell many people in this country go through as a result of the health insurance industry. It is a barbaric, for-profit system that deserves all the condemnation it gets online and in real life. The way many Redditors have reacted to the recent assassination of Brian Thompson at the hands of Luigi Mangione has only highlighted this system further.

A wise man once told me that comparison is the thief of joy. There are only two emotions it can result in. You might be smug if you believe you’re superior to someone else, or you might feel inadequate if you believe you’re inferior. 

Okay, I’ll admit it - that wise man is my father.

In all seriousness, one question that frequently comes up is this: If Americans are all so upset at the lack of universal health insurance, why aren’t there any mass protests? Those who have never lived in the United States probably don’t understand why we haven’t burned the whole country to the ground over this issue, and truth be told, sometimes I don’t either.

That being said, I live in Massachusetts, which is by any objective standard a pretty good place to live. At least, for now. On the Human Development Index, Massachusetts would be tied for fourth place with Hong Kong as of 2022. Only Switzerland, Norway, and Iceland are considered more “developed” than Massachusetts by this metric. Maybe I should identify more with my state than my country.

But let’s get back to the point. I constantly wish I lived in a country I could be proud to call myself part of. National pride is not the only thing that matters in life, of course, and by the standards of most people throughout human history, I have it good. It’s mostly the Internet that has convinced me otherwise.

For now, I have my family. I might still have a bright future even if my country doesn’t. But I’m just sick of constantly being made fun of online and feeling responsible for the hell Donald Trump is about to unleash.

Those two facts will go to war at some point, and I know which side I’d rather see emerge victorious.

Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Early Winter Chapter 1

I figured that as long as I was paying for this domain, I might as well host my new story here as well. I’ll do my best to finish this one. Word count of Chapter 1 is 2,196.

Evening had arrived in the Wellesley household, and the home’s middle-aged man and woman (who made up both halves of a perfectly Biblical marriage) had settled in for the news broadcast.

Now, when I say news broadcast, most people will likely picture a mainstream channel with those annoying talking heads who try to normalize everything the President says. After all, that President gave the media their highest ratings of all time, so why wouldn’t CNN et al be in the tank for him?

However, Mr. and Mrs. Wellesley were far from satisfied by the mainstream media. Even Fox News, which some might call a “gateway drug” to the greater “patriotism” of other channels, was not sufficient. Instead, the farmers from rural Alabama sat on their ratty old sofa, Mr. Wellesley downing a Miller Lite every ten minutes.

“When is Weldworth going to get to the good part, dammit!” Mr. Wellesley barked, banging his fist against the arm of the sofa. “We pay good money for our cable package!”

“Dad, nobody watches cable anymore,” their daughter, Rosemary, pointed out quietly.

“Clearly not nobody, because we do” Mr. Wellesley replied. “But we’re not going to be sheep. We’re not followers. Just because the rest of the world is switching to streaming doesn’t mean we have to.”

“But you’d save money doing it” Adam, the couple’s son, piped up. “If we didn’t have to spend so much money for the sake of a few channels we never use, we could…”.

Mrs. Wellesley clicked her tongue. “That doesn’t mean it’s worth it. Again, there’s a reason we don’t conform to this world. That’s because this world is not the goal for any of us.”

Adam sighed quietly. Not for the first time, he wondered if he’d been born on the wrong planet. Whenever his parents mentioned that all they wanted to do was worship Jesus Christ for all eternity, Adam wanted to roll his eyes.

“Oh, there we are!” Mr. Wellesley exclaimed in between chugs of beer. “Here he comes!”

A man (who was probably on the wrong side of middle age) appeared on screen. His hair stuck straight up as though he enjoyed sticking his fingers in light sockets, and he gave what many of Adam’s classmates would have called a “shit-eating grin.”

Not that I’d ever be allowed to use such language.

“Good evening, America!” the anchor announced. “My name is Charles ‘Upchuck’ Weldworth, and let me tell you - you’ve been chucked!”

That was the craziest thing about OAN. It wasn’t just that Weldworth and the other talking heads parroted such insane conspiracy theories. Rather, it was that these people seemed to have no self-awareness whatsoever. Who the hell calls themselves “Upchuck” and doesn’t expect to be totally ridiculed?

“You see, today’s the first day of the new presidency! And it’s a new morning in America! Some would even say it’s an American sunrise, isn’t it?”

Mr. and Mrs. Wellesley gave massive whoops, the former smiling even more widely than the man on screen. By contrast, neither of their children betrayed any such amusement.

“That’s right! After four years of stagflation under President Fiddlesticks, that demented old man who can’t keep from shitting himself, we’re seeing a resurgence in national pride! All over the world, from the Netherlands to the Philippines, America’s being respected again!”

Ugh. If only.

“I’m happy I’m not drinking Bud Light!” Mr. Wellesley announced proudly. “I would never spend a cent on that woke beer!”

“What if someone else bought it for you, then asked you to drink it?” his wife enquired.

“Then I’d shove it up their ass and tell them it’s a conspiracy! That’s because it is! The woke liberals are a disgrace to this country, they are the enemy of the people, and they deserve nothing but hell!”

Upchuck Weldworth cleared his throat. “Now it’s time to play a glorious song that reminds us just how lucky we are. We live in America, the greatest country in the history of the world, and that’s a damn fact!

“So now let’s stand for what might as well be our national anthem - ‘The Chosen One’ by Natasha Owens!”

The room in which Weldworth stood vanished from the screen, to be replaced by a music video featuring the newly elected President of the United States. 

As Adam listened to the song, he struggled to hold back his recent dinner of grits and country ham. The song started by clarifying that the new President was not something divine, even if he got in trouble “bigly” on regular occasions. Even if he was controversial, the song alleged, a perfect God could use people who were anything but for His purposes.

Couldn’t God have picked anyone else besides a convicted felon? Like, LITERALLY ANYBODY ELSE?

“That’s right!” Mr. Wellesley barked. “Our new President is in fact the chosen one!”

The scene then shifted to an image of those people whom the singer claimed were persecuting the President. Apparently the nation was under attack from the southern border, and Andreas Fiddlesticks hadn’t been the real President during his tenure. 

In other words, the song was what Adam’s classmates would have called “Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs”, except that Cocoa Puffs were considered too “woke” for the Wellesley children to consume. Adam wanted to chuck a remote at the TV, but he knew that doing so would lead to a punishment of Biblical proportions (no pun intended).

Rosemary sighed. “This song is insane!”

Mrs. Wellesley turned to her daughter. “Rosemary, that is blasphemy. The President is the chosen one, and there’s no doubt about that. He won, and you know it.”

“Yes, he did win,” Rosemary replied. “But that doesn’t mean I have to be happy about it.”

“Shut up!” her father exclaimed, and that’s when Adam knew there would be hell to pay. When Mr. Wellesley got angry, he thrust himself into a fit of blind rage, sometimes to the point where he’d yell incoherently at the sky. 

“But you’re not supposed to say that…”.

“I can say whatever the hell I want, Rosemary! Unlike how this country would be if the Democrats had been allowed to steal the election, we have freedom of speech! Besides, I bet the next thing I know, you’re going to rant and rave about Pokémon cards…”.

Adam frowned. “I wasn’t going to mention them.”

“Don’t interrupt your sister, Adam!” Mr. Wellesley bellowed, downing another couple swig of beer. “What truly matters is that kids these days are being brainwashed!”

“For once, I agree with your father” Mrs. Wellesley continued.

“For once?” Maybe you two aren’t as compatible as you might have thought when you got hitched in Vegas. It’s almost as if a few drinks over a poker table isn’t enough to know whether a marriage will last.

“Pokémon cards are Satanic” Mr. Wellesley proclaimed. “They are of the devil. And as much as that company Nintendo loves to pretend that they are exclusive, do you know what’s truly exclusive and invaluable?”

Neither Adam nor Rosemary needed to offer a response. It was light-years beyond obvious what their father would say next.

“Your eternal souls, children. Your God-given eternal souls are more important than ephemeral fantasies like Pokémon. For all I know, you’ll both want to turn into Pokémon one day, and then our society will really go down the tubes.”

It was then that Adam remembered an old story he’d once heard about the boy who cried wolf. It pertained to a boy who worked on a farm and “joked” about there being wolves when there weren’t any, which ultimately meant that the shepherds didn’t believe him when he spoke the truth later. In other words: If you gain a reputation for being a liar, don’t be surprised if nobody takes you seriously anymore.

Much like the farmhand in that ancient fable, every time Mr. Wellesley announced that America’s youth were heading for pure degeneracy, Adam had learned to take it with a grain of salt. Of course, given whom his parents had voted for in the most recent election, perhaps it was the older generation that had lost its way.

“I need a break from this” Adam announced, stepping up from an armchair that had seen better days.

“No way!” his mother exclaimed. “Evening is OAN Family TV Time™, and you can’t skip it! Don’t you support family values, like spending time together?”

Adam would have loved to lecture his parents about “family values” right then and there, but he knew it would get him nowhere. Besides, he truly did not want to spend another minute in the presence of these zealots who were supposed to be his parents.

“I’m just going for a walk,” Adam insisted. “I’ll be back before bedtime.”

“But what if a migrant from the southern border comes to our farm and kidnaps you?” Mr. Wellesley asked. “That’s far more likely to happen at night, and if it does come to pass, the police won’t be able to help you.”

“Dad, we live on a farm, with a giant fence. I’m sure I’ll be safe.”

Before his parents could object any further, Adam stepped out into the January evening. The night air was chilly, even in the Deep South, and the boy could almost see his own breath in the automatic light.

He had no destination in mind at first. However, his legs seemed to move on autopilot, propelling him forward on his way to the stables. 

It was Adam’s job to clean the stables every day, no matter how filthy they may have become. Consequently, he’d basically grown numb to the smell of manure, not to mention the way the hay and dust tickled his nose. Just like any other uncomfortable situation, exposure was the way you grew accustomed to it.

Opening the stable’s doors, Adam was struck by just how different it was compared to his living room. Yes, he might have resided in that house with his parents and sister, but in his mind, the stables were truly home.

One of the horses, a Palomino named Jack, stood in the corner of the stables, whinnying uncomfortably as he saw Adam approach.

“I’m not going to hurt you, pal,” Adam insisted. 

Jack paused, sizing up the boy for the moment. Then, the horse seemed to smile.

“I said, I’m not going to hurt you.”

Adam need not have clarified this again, because the horse visibly calmed down after that. Jack gestured at his designated area, which contained numerous strands of hay strewn all over the ground.

“It was a rough day,” Adam admitted. “Mom and Dad…well, you know how they are.”

This was a common occurrence. Whenever Adam spent time alone with the horses, he liked to speak to them. It didn’t matter that the animals couldn’t speak English (or any other language the boy would be able to recognize). Something about the horses’ demeanor made Adam feel like they understood him more than his parents.

They probably think I’m mentally ill. And maybe I am. But I’m going to do what feels good, in the words of one of my favorite musicians.

“They were watching Upchuck Weldworth on TV. Honestly, that show makes me want to upchuck, because that man’s just so insane. He keeps talking about mental institutions being emptied out into the country. I would literally go nuts if I had to watch another few minutes of that stuff.” (Adam was careful not to use the word shit, because he worried it might make Jack feel disrespected).

“They probably think I belong in one of those institutions” Adam continued. “They think I’m crazy, even if the actual word is neurodivergent. But that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with me.”

Jack sighed, a very loud noise that a city slicker would have been alarmed by. To a farm boy like Adam, however, it was the sort of sound one could fall asleep to.

“I might spend the night here if you don’t mind.”

The horse didn’t seem to object, not that he could use anything resembling words. A slight whinny was all it took for Adam to be convinced the answer was yes.

Adam selected a bed of hay just outside Jack’s designated area. Unless the horses decided to make a break for it in the middle of the night, the boy had no reason to fear getting trampled. And if that did happen (which there was no reason to think it would), his parents would have far greater problems on their hands.

As he curled up into the fetal position, Adam tried to forget the indignity of what he and his sister had been forced to watch with their parents. He tried to forget how infuriating he found his mother’s homeschool curriculum, which included fresh venom each day. And he tried to forget the notion that God above wanted him to suffer.

Maybe there’s still Something out there, the boy told himself. Maybe It’s not so judgmental as my parents want me to believe It is. And maybe there’s still hope for an oddball like me.

Little did Adam know, however, that when he woke up, everything would be very different.

Internet vs. Information

In the grand scheme of things, there was a time not long ago when you would get your news from the paper. You would subscribe to your local media outlet for a small fee, and the newspaper would be delivered to your door. You could rest assured that the articles you read were of the highest possible journalistic standards - they were in the New York Times, after all!

Nowadays, it’s a little different. The Internet, particularly social media, has fundamentally altered the way we consume our information. For instance, the barrier to posting something that could be considered “news” is far lower than it used to be. Instead of going to journalism school and earning your place on an editorial board, all you have to do is make an account on whatever social media site you desire and repost an article to your followers.

A screenshot from a presentation I gave in October 2024 about the impact of the Internet on news.

The Internet has jeopardized the ability of newspapers to remain competitive. After all, you have the latest news at your fingertips that costs you nothing financially (though it may cost you your mental health). In fact, more than a quarter of U.S. news outlets that existed in 2005 had shut down by 2022. This has been linked to an increase in political polarization, because it focuses most coverage on national news. 

Anecdotally, while I like to think I pay a lot of attention to news in the United States (because I’m terminally online), I barely know what’s going on in my own city. That’s a pretty damning indictment of the mainstream media, isn’t it? 

Let me expand on the topic of polarization with an example. Let’s take Jon Tester, who, as of the day I’m posting this, is no longer a United States Senator from Montana. Tester, a Democrat who served three terms in the upper chamber, was first elected against a scandal-plagued incumbent in 2006, back when scandals still mattered electorally for Republican candidates. Nowadays, we’re all numb to this shit.

In 2012, even when Mitt Romney carried Montana by more than 13 percentage points, Tester was able to win reelection by focusing on his own accomplishments. Because local media in Montana was far more robust than it is now, people who voted Republican for President that year were more aware of a reason why they might vote for Tester on the same ticket. He presented himself as a hard-working dirt farmer who could resonate with his state’s voters.

Former U.S. Senator Jon Tester (D-MT) working on his farm. Image taken from Tester’s Wikipedia article.

Tester sought a fourth term in 2024. By that time, as this July 2024 article from The Nation points out, local media in Montana had significantly withered away. These small outlets, which would previously devote considerable time to discussing Tester’s accomplishments on veterans’ affairs or public land conservation, in many cases no longer exist. They’ve been replaced by talk radio or Fox News, which were all too eager to remind voters that Tester was a Democrat, and that anyone who votes for Trump should also vote against Tester. 

It didn’t matter that his opponent, Tim Sheehy, lied about shooting himself in a national park. It didn’t matter that Sheehy made highly offensive remarks about Native Americans. Many Trump voters in Montana didn’t know Sheehy had done those things, or else they didn’t care. And Tester lost by just over 7 percentage points. 

Of course, the Montana Senate race was not the only election impacted by the decline in local media. All over the country, millions of voters had no idea what the hell was going on. To provide a particularly egregious example, searches for “did Joe Biden drop out” skyrocketed in swing states on November 5.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I remember watching the June 27 presidential debate with my mother and my terminally ill Bouvier des Flanders. I remember watching Biden struggle over his words, and I remember the existential dread I felt as I saw Trump tell horrendous lie after horrendous lie, and Biden let him get away with it. 

When July 21 came around, I was on my couch on the front porch, isolating myself from the rest of my family because I’d tested positive for COVID. I was talking on a Discord server when I got a ping from a mod, stating that Biden had indeed dropped out. Sure enough, the 46th President had released a statement and all that.

Joe Biden’s letter announcing his withdrawal from the 2024 presidential election. Image taken from the New York Times.

After Trump won the November 5 general election, I was not only shocked and disgusted, but I was also baffled. How could so many people not know that Biden had withdrawn from the race? It was one of the biggest news stories of the year, capping off a chaotic 24 days in American politics! And yet, so many people didn’t know it had happened.

It gets worse than that. Inflation is commonly cited as a reason why Biden was so unpopular - people were willing to vote for fascism just because eggs were a couple cents more expensive. But inflation was far worse in Europe, in large part because that continent has suffered more economic impacts from the war in Ukraine. And yet in most European countries, Trump would be lucky to get 10% of the vote, if he were allowed to run at all!

I could go on and on about how uninformed so many people in this country are. In fact, the Google search trends in the days following the election speak for themselves. And of course, Elon Musk’s ownership of Twitter (which I now call Xitter, pronounced “shitter”) hasn’t exactly helped matters. He’s altered the algorithm to promote right-wing, hateful content above all else, and I recommend anyone who values humanity to jump ship to BlueSky.

However, I hope I’ve demonstrated that the Internet is part of the problem. It’s somewhat ironic, too. Twenty or so years ago, the general consensus even among academia was that the Internet, this superhighway of information that could document the sum total of all human knowledge, would all but negate the propagation of conspiracy theories and falsehoods. Surely nobody could go on believing that the Earth was flat, or that climate change was a hoax, or that nobody died at Sandy Hook, when there was so much publicly available evidence to the contrary.

It feels as though we’ve opened Pandora’s Box, but all hope is not yet lost. We have to accept, however, that the mainstream media (not to mention social media) isn’t going to save us. Given that much of the mainstream media is already bowing down to Trump in advance, we have to do it ourselves.

That’s where I come in. The main reason I continue to maintain this blog is because journalism is an essential resource even now. We can still use digital technologies for good, but we need to understand that the Internet has been part of the problem just as much as it’s been part of the solution. 

That’s why I urge you all to subscribe to my newsletter and spread the word. Thank you.

Why I Support NEIC

Unofficial flag of New England.

New England is that six-state region in the northeastern corner of the United States. It’s clearly defined as consisting of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is the region I’ve called home for all but one year of my life, and it’s somewhat different from the rest of the country.

The population of New England, as of the 2020 census, was about 15.1 million, spread out over an area of about 72,000 square miles, meaning that the population density is roughly 210 people per square mile. That’s more than enough for a functioning country, and in fact many of the world’s most prosperous nations (such as the Nordics) have fewer people than that. 

As for the geography, it’s also relatively diverse. Far from being one big forest, the region also contains some of the country’s best beaches (even if the water isn’t nearly as warm as in the hellhole known as Florida), as well as mountains that reach a peak of over 6,000 feet above mean sea level. The cuisine is also varied, from lobster rolls to clam chowder to cranberry products.

Of course, there are also cities such as Boston, known as one of the most innovative and progressive cities in the United States. That’s why the state of Massachusetts has a Human Development Index of 0.956. As of 2022, if it were an independent nation, Massachusetts would be tied for 4th in HDI with Hong Kong. Only Switzerland, Norway, and Iceland would rank higher.

As nice as it is in New England, however, we can’t escape the fact that New England is part of the United States. This country elected Donald Trump, convicted felon and power abuser extraordinaire, to be President once again, and for that we cannot be forgiven. During the next four years, Trump is going to take a sledgehammer to all our alliances, persecute the most vulnerable American civilians, and generally make life a living hell for those who oppose him. 

However, Trump is not the only danger. He would only be a 78-year-old demented man yelling on the Internet if not for the fact that half the country was willing to vote for him. And with Project 2025 right around the corner, he’s likely to invade blue states in order to carry out his mass deportations and fire on those who protest his agenda. The Kyle Rittenhouse precedent says you can literally get away with murder under the right circumstance.

Yes, New England is the best region of the U.S., but that’s like saying you have the best-smelling outhouse. Again, we can’t escape the reality that we’re subject to the jurisdiction of the Trump regime…or can we?

It’s for this reason that I’m announcing my support of the New England Independence Campaign, or NEIC for short. This movement advocates for the secession of these six states in order to form an independent nation of 15 million people.

Many will say that this isn’t possible, or that the Constitution prohibits it. First of all, just because the Constitution says something is illegal doesn’t mean it carries any consequences whatsoever. I mean, look at this:

The January 6, 2021 United States Capitol attack, which should have gotten Trump disqualified from running for President in 2024. This shows the Constitution may as well be toilet paper.

Furthermore, many of the Founding Fathers owned slaves, and they sought to enshrine the right to do so in the Constitution. That’s another example of the country being built on white supremacy. If slavery were still de jure legal today, I highly doubt the Thirteenth Amendment would be passed to abolish it. We’re simply too polarized for the parties to agree on anything important enough to justify an amendment. 

This stands in stark contrast to other countries like France. In France, for instance, they amended the Constitution last year to enshrine abortion rights into the country’s legal code. They may not be a perfect country, but I like the idea of the Constitution being a living document that changes with the times when it’s warranted. And New England is in general a less polarized place than the rest of the USA.

Furthermore, Massachusetts abolished slavery in 1783, long before the nationwide abolition. In fact, this was half a century before Great Britain, our former colonizer, abolished slavery in their own empire. (They did so in 1834). The state was also a center of the abolitionist movement and played a key role in the Union’s victory in the Civil War. Speaking of the Civil War, if slave-owning Southern states could secede from the country just because they wanted to keep owning black people as property, New England can do the same for a far more progressive reason.

Now, I’m not going to say New England is immune from the political insanity that plagues America. We still have our fair share of gun violence, as events like Sandy Hook (2012) and Lewiston (2023) remind us all too well. We still have to pay far more than we should for health care - but that’s the rest of the country’s fault, not ours. 

Furthermore, every state swung rightward in 2024, and although Massachusetts went for the Harris-Walz ticket with over 61% of the vote, this was a decrease from the 65.6% Biden won in the state in 2020. But what makes New England saner than the rest of the country is not just because it’s bluer, but also because of ranked-choice voting.

You see, ranked-choice voting has been found to reduce political polarization. This shouldn’t be much of a surprise, since most people who voted for Harris were really voting against Trump. But if people could vote third-party without wasting their precious ballot, this might allow other political parties to form and genuinely compete with the current duopoly. 

Maine already has ranked-choice voting. While Massachusetts voted against it in 2020 (because somehow people became convinced that “ranked-choice is less choice”), I think there’s reason to believe that if more attention were on Maine, voters in other New England states could right this wrong. Moreover, if New England were its own country, and RCV was passed at the national level, that’d be even better.

Before I move on from the topic of polarization, I want to make one thing clear: I’m not saying both sides are the same. That’s clearly not true. But so much of American politics feels like a sporting event rather than a serious conversation about what policies should be passed to benefit people. That’s a culmination of where polarization has driven us - off the deep end of insanity.

Of course, “if New England were its own country” is doing some heavy lifting here. At the time of writing, the New England independence subreddits are still relatively small, though they might grow exponentially if Trump succeeds in many of his horrendous goals. It will take a massive movement for leadership in these six states to even entertain the thought of secession. But the question I have is this: Can we afford NOT to?

In the words of John Lennon: You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. A New England unencumbered by the rest of the shithole that is the United States of America could be the prosperous, successful nation that I know we can become. If Marjorie Taylor Greene wants a national divorce, I’m more than happy to sign the papers.

The time has come. Let’s cast away the USA and build a civilized society.

This Is Exactly Who We Are

It’s the end of the year again, and I have little doubt that many people are celebrating. After all, that’s what they always do this time of year, with traditions such as the Ball Drop in Times Square. Lots of people will stay up until midnight to watch it turn from 2024 to 2025.

However, I don’t really feel like celebrating this year. From the other side of the year divide, we’re a lot closer to Donald Trump becoming President again and all the hell that will entail. If anything, I’m dreading the new year. That being said, this isn’t the purpose of today’s blog post.

I recently saw a post on BlueSky that I’ll link here . It basically argues that those people waving Confederate flags and swastikas (a symbol that’s come to represent one of the most horrific events in Europe’s history) aren’t “real Americans”. The poster asserts that “we literally had a war about each of these things.”

It’s incredibly tempting to believe that these asshats waving Confederate flags and wearing Nazi shirts are going against what the country is supposed to represent. I would rather not believe that I live in a country based on hate as opposed to love for our fellow citizens. Moreover, I think many of us would love to think events like Charlottesville are an aberration.

Political cartoon from the Boston Globe.

There’s just one problem, however: It’s not true. 

Now, I don’t want anyone reading this to believe I’m defending those who brandish symbols associated with hate. On the contrary, I think their views are despicable and have no place in a supposedly civilized society. Unfortunately, I also believe that we need to contend with the world as it is, not how we might like it to be.

This leads me to my thesis: The hateful ones represent our country more accurately than those protesting against them.

The reality is that the United States was built upon white supremacy. Many of the Founding Fathers, a bunch of white men that a great number of people (not all of them conservative Republicans) love to admire, endorsed this view. A decent percentage of the 1787 Constitution’s signatories owned slaves.

Even after the United States officially became independent from Great Britain, systemic racism didn’t end. In fact, it got worse, to the point that some on Reddit believe things would have been better if America lost its revolution. But that’s beside the point for now.

Eventually, the country fought a civil war over slavery. Now, lots of people even now will tell you the civil war was about states’ rights, but the important question is: A state’s rights to do WHAT? The answer, of course, was “to keep black people as property.” The Civil War was the deadliest conflict in American history (and the deadliest event period until the COVID-19 pandemic), with over 600,000 soldiers and an unknown number of civilians losing their lives.

It’s helpful to contrast the United States with another country that has a dark history: Germany. I don’t need to remind you what the German government was responsible for in the 1930s and 1940s, but there’s a key difference between Germany and the country across the Atlantic that played an important part in defeating them: There are no Nazi monuments today in Germany. In fact, there are laws against symbols associated with the movement, and even if you don’t face legal consequences for admiring Hitler as a “skilled leader”, you’ll still face social consequences for sure.

Robert E. Lee memorial carved into Stone Mountain, Georgia, USA. Nothing like this exists in present-day Germany.

Officially, American slavery ended in 1865, but the Jim Crow laws mandating things like racial segregation and poll taxes sprang up like poisonous mushrooms not long afterward. It’s worth noting that most of the Confederate monuments in the South today were built not during the Civil War or immediately afterward, but rather during this era. They were meant to make certain people feel a certain way, despite what Marjorie Taylor Greene might think.

It took a hundred years after de jure slavery ended for the Civil Rights Acts to be passed, and today’s Supreme Court is taking a sledgehammer to them. Even before SCOTUS became 6-3 Republican, however, systemic racism was alive and well in this country. We have near-constant stories of police brutality, for one, and there are more subtle examples such as redlining, which leads to many majority-black neighborhoods living in neighborhoods with higher levels of environmental pollution.

Let’s go back to the Germany example. What many people don’t know is that the Nazis got lots of ideas from the United States. Now, the U.S. is not entirely to blame for the events in Europe - the perpetrators of the Holocaust knew what they were doing and made a constant, conscious choice to continue doing it. But we also need to remember that what happens in America does not exist in a vacuum, especially when the ability to get information up to the minute is far more pronounced now than it was in the 1940s.

So what I hope I’ve demonstrated here is that systemic racism has always existed in the United States, long before Donald Trump entered politics. When Trump said that the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally in 2017 had “very fine people on both sides”, lots of commentators on the left were very quick to insist that this is not who we are. America is a country of immigrants, they say, and we celebrate diversity.

Needless to say, the 2024 election begs to differ. Of course, we also need to acknowledge that even if Trump hadn’t won, none of these problems would have been solved. That’s not to say that they won’t get worse in the next four years, of course. But if we want to prove that we’re not a deeply racist country, we have to earn that reputation rather than constantly asserting that it exists. 

Because it doesn’t.

Americans Have Blood On Their Hands

Emergency vehicles surround the wreckage of Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243 near Aktau Airport in Kazakhstan.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last few days, you’ve likely heard that an airliner crashed in Central Asia on Christmas morning. The flight, numbered as J28243, was scheduled to travel from Baku, Azerbaijan (GYD) to Grozny, Russia (GRV), a short, routine trip across borders. However, it diverted to Aktau, Kazakhstan (SCO) and crashed there, killing more than half the occupants.

Following the crash, two competing narratives have emerged from the Russian authorities. One is that due to fog at Grozny, it wasn’t safe to land there, so they had to divert. That, of course, raises the question of why they would risk flying all the way across the Caspian Sea to an entirely different country. The other narrative is that it was a bird strike, but even a relatively small plane like this one wouldn’t crash just because it hit a few birds. In other words, this is highly suspicious, particularly due to the holes on the plane consistent with artillery fire.

My condolences go out to the families of all those on this flight. According to Wikipedia, slightly more than half the passengers were of Azeri nationality , with others from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Russia. Azerbaijan has declared a day of mourning, and I don’t blame them. However, this is eerily similar to something that happened ten years ago.

The image above is of a highway in the Netherlands, which was otherwise closed to traffic when the 298 victims of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 were being driven to their final resting place. It’s probably different in Europe, particularly in the Netherlands, but I feel like Americans forgot about this tragedy pretty quickly. 

In case you forgot what happened, Russian-backed separatists (read: Russia) in eastern Ukraine shot the civilian airliner down with a Buk surface-to-air missile. I can’t imagine what it must have been like in those final moments on that plane as…you know what, I don’t want to imagine it. But sometimes I feel a moral obligation to.

Now, since the MH17 tragedy, civil aviation authorities have learned some things. For instance, you shouldn’t be flying a civilian airliner over an active war zone. However, it seems the American public have not learned their lesson.

On July 17, 2024, to mark the tenth anniversary of the shootdown, I posted the above image on the Pics subreddit. One of the top comments was reminding U.S. redditors to remember that Trump supports Putin, and by extension “this drama”, and to “vote wisely.” At the time, like probably much of Reddit, I was a bit annoyed by how every other post seemed to be linked back to American politics, even if it’s warranted. But in hindsight, I feel like this message wasn’t emphasized enough.

Now, I voted for Harris. If we could run the election again, I would vote for her as many times as it took for her to win. But the fact remains that half the electorate voted for Trump, and he won. And now Vice President Trump (because let’s be honest, Elon Musk is effectively President) is likely to stop aiding Ukraine, and might even aid Russia. Given that Trump has threatened to invade some of our allies already, I think it’s at least conceivable he drafts Americans to fight for Russia in Ukraine.

An image Donald Trump posted on social media threatening to invade Canada.

Let’s get back to the crash that occurred yesterday as of the time of writing. Evidence suggests it was not an accident at all, but rather that Russia knew it was a civilian airliner and deliberately shot it down. It’s a wonder that any passengers survived, and the pilots of Azerbaijan Airlines are heroes for saving as many lives as possible. But I can’t help but feel that this wouldn’t have happened at all had Harris won the election.

Think about it. If Kamala Harris had emerged victorious, that would have sent a signal to Vladimir Putin that NATO would not stop aiding Ukraine any time soon. Therefore, Putin would have less incentive to order attacks on civilian aviation. To be clear (and I can’t believe I have to say this), even if he did have “incentive”, it would still be a despicable act of violence that has no place in a modern world.

But Trump voters enabled this. They have the blood of 38 deceased victims on their hands, and many of the survivors have severe injuries that will require a long, arduous recovery process. They were willing to hand Putin not only Ukraine, but civilian aviation, on a silver platter, and they were willing to do it just because they thought eggs might be cheaper. There is no bottom for Republican politicians, and there’s also no bottom for the voters who enable these politicians to keep selling our allies out.

If there is ever an accounting for what will happen over the next four years, more heads than Trump’s must swing (not literally, of course - I’m vehemently against the death penalty). Half the U.S. population are traitors of the highest order, and they need to pay for what they’ve done to global stability. The only problem is that I don’t know how to make them pay.

In the meantime, as the mainstream media sucks up to Trump (along with most of the Dumbocrats in Congress), I am a dissident. I will not obey. And my goal is to make the lives of Trump voters a living hell over the next four years. 

So join me. Please.

What’s In A Center Of Population?

In the realm of demographics, the term “center of population” refers to the position on a map in which the average person within a country or region lives. I find this concept quite fascinating because it deals with factors that drive both population growth and human migration within a country. 

Technically, there are three different definitions of the center of population. This is according to Wikipedia. You’ve got the mean center, or “centroid”, which asks you to imagine a flat map of the region in which you place an equal weight for each person on the map. In this case, where does the map balance? This is the definition most commonly used, so it’s the one I’ll go with here.

Aerial view of Hartville, Missouri, United States - image taken from the NOAA government website.

The above image is of a relatively unassuming small town in southwestern Missouri. From the sky, it looks like just another Ozarks community. However, what is special about Hartville is that according to the 2020 United States census, it is the closest town to the average location of the United States population. What is more relevant to the study of population trends in the country, however, is the direction this centroid has moved over time.

From this Wikipedia page , we can see that the center of population was in Texas County, Missouri as of the 2010 census, roughly 12 miles from the 2020 centroid. On average, this centroid has traveled west by southwest at a rate of roughly 2 or 3 miles a year for the last thirty years. This isn’t all that much in the grand scheme of things, but it paints a fairly clear picture as to where Americans are moving. 

It should be noted that this is not a new trend; the centroid has generally shifted west and south throughout the country’s history, ever since the first census in 1790. The first question we should ask is this: Why are so many Americans moving away from the East Coast?

Here’s an anecdote for you all. I’m from an East Coast state, Massachusetts, where young professionals are leaving at a rapid rate - a WGBH survey earlier this year found that about a quarter of such people did not intend to remain in Greater Boston for the long term. In fact, according to Wikipedia, Massachusetts lost a net of about 160,000 people to other states between 2020 and 2024, a higher raw number than all but four other states and a higher relative rate than all but six states. 

So why is that? Well, here’s a visual of the biggest reason:

Anecdotally, there’s a lot of construction of single-family homes going on in suburban Massachusetts. During my undergraduate studies, every time I visited my childhood home, it seemed as though another dozen lots had been sold, torn down, and were to be replaced by homes that were grander than what stood there previously. In other words, it’s about housing costs - they’ve simply become too prohibitive for many of the people who might like to live here.

Now let’s talk about states that have benefited from this domestic migration. Florida and Texas top the list. It can probably be presumed that some people are moving there for the nice weather. Now, I don’t consider heat and humidity to be “nice weather”, and I actually think Boston has the best climate of any major U.S. city. But that’s just me.

And then there’s Arizona. Arizona, specifically the Greater Phoenix area or the “Valley of the Sun”, has grown at an impressive rate considering its location. Perhaps it is indeed the quintessential American city given how little the developers cared about urbanism. Despite the impending lack of water, and despite constant warnings from climate scientists that the city may be uninhabitable by century’s end, people and businesses still flock there. And the cost of living isn’t even that low anymore!

Thumbnail for Yellowstone, Season 2 taken from Rotten Tomatoes.

Another beneficiary of this domestic migration is Montana. On a per capita basis, it has the third-highest rate of net domestic migration, and as with Florida, a common political narrative is that tens of thousands of people moved there the last few years because they were fed up with COVID restrictions.

These new residents have been seen as a factor making the state’s politics redder, as the GOP completed their conquest of the state with Senator Jon Tester’s 7-point loss to Republican challenger Tim Sheehy. Fun fact: MT-SEN 2024 was the most expensive congressional election in US history relative to the number of votes cast - nearly $500 was spent for every vote.

Montana is still thinly populated. Despite its extensive land area, it only has about 1.14 million people, less than 8 per square mile. Nonetheless, this number is rapidly growing as more people are inspired by shows like Yellowstone to move to Montana and live out their cowboy fantasies. It’s a bit ironic, too, because from what I understand, Yellowstone is an allegory for how out-of-staters shouldn’t be moving to Montana and ruining it for the natives. And yet it’s contributed to the real-life gentrification of the state!

It is worth noting, of course, that the United States is not the only country with a center of population. I’m not going to engage in unnecessary “USDefaultism” here, so let’s look at this map from the CIA World Factbook:

As you can see, the point on Earth closest to the average person is in what appears to be northern Pakistan - it’s an average of about 3,000 miles to everyone else. Given how populated South Asia, and Asia in general, is, this isn’t much of a surprise. By contrast, the farthest point from each person is just off the western coast of Chile. That’s where you’d end up if you dug a hole all the way through.

So what are the takeaways from the center of population concept? Well, I think it’s a reminder that there are very real pressures driving people to move to certain parts of the world and not others. My own state’s center of population isn’t that far west of Boston (it’s in the town of Natick). This is of course not uniform - there are people who’d rather live in rural areas. They may not be a majority, but they exist. Still, over time, we should expect the urban percentage of the population to increase. 

Thank you for reading.

Why The Alps Are (Probably) More Popular Than The Rockies

There are many mountain ranges in this world, many of which offer stunning views and the potential for outdoor activities. Some of these have more tourism infrastructure than others. Two of the most famous ranges in this regard are the Alps, running across the spine of Europe from France to Slovenia, and the Rocky Mountains, which stretch from Northern Alberta all the way to New Mexico. 

Now, precise numbers about how many tourists visit the Alps as opposed to the Rockies are very difficult to come by. I do mostly cursory research for my articles, so I couldn’t be bothered to sift through endless academic journals to find exact statistics. The easiest stats to find are at the country level , meaning that it’s apples and oranges. 

However, most of what I’ve seen appears to suggest that the Alps are more popular with international tourists than the Rockies. In this post, I’ll examine a few reasons why that may be the case.

A photograph I took from Copper Mountain, Colorado in March 2024.

First of all, considerably more people live in Europe than North America - more than 740 million for the former as opposed to 590 million in the latter. The Alps are simply closer to more people than the Rocky Mountains. However, this is admittedly a crude way of looking at the question, so let’s look at it in terms of cities.

The largest city close to the Alps would be Munich, Germany, which has a population of almost six million in its metro area. There are also several decently-sized cities in Switzerland, Austria, Italy, and France that can qualify as being “in the Alps.” What I’m trying to illustrate here is that the Alps are located near multiple population centers that have airports and train stations. From Boston Logan, I can fly directly to Munich or Zurich and be there in about 7 hours, and then easily take the train to the Alpine town of my choosing.

By contrast, the Rockies are not as easily accessible to someone visiting from Europe. While one can fly to Denver from Frankfurt, Munich, Paris, or London, Denver is the only major U.S. airport close to the Rockies, and even then it’s a decent drive. And because Amtrak is a national shame, you will have to drive there yourself.

There are also the Canadian Rockies, in which case one can fly from any of the aforementioned four European cities to Calgary, Alberta. Some people, like Not Just Bikes, say that Via Rail, the main Canadian rail system, is even worse than Amtrak. There’s also the Rocky Mountaineer train, but that’s strictly for sightseeing, not for anyone who wants to get to their destination in any reasonable amount of time.

Even in the summer, driving in a country you don’t live in can be stressful, but the high mountain roads of the Rockies can become downright treacherous in the winter months. And that’s something you just don’t have to deal with in the Alps, because Europe has actually invested in its rail service.

Conditions are frequently like this on I-70 in Colorado in the winter.

Now let’s get to another factor, which is the culture of each region. The Alps are split between several countries; excluding the microstate of Liechtenstein, you’ve got Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Slovenia, and Switzerland. As such, a trip to the Alps allows one to visit multiple countries in one go, and every country brings its unique culture to the table.

Meanwhile, the Rockies are only split between two countries, Canada and the United States. Now, many Canadians on Reddit will gladly tell you everything that makes their country culturally different from the United States, and they might well be correct where sanity is concerned. But the fact remains that a trip to the Rockies may not be as culturally enriching as the European alternative.

For instance, one important difference between the Alps and the Rockies is that in general, Alpine ski resorts were built around existing towns long before downhill skiing was a thing. These towns include, but are not limited to, Val d’Isere and Chamonix in France, Sankt Anton am Arlberg in Austria, and any number of locations in Switzerland. Because of this, there’s a lot more traditional Alpine architecture in Europe.

By contrast, most of the “villages” surrounding ski resorts in the United States and Canada were purpose-built just to serve the resort. One example is Vail, which was clearly built to evoke the capital-A Alpine charm, but just ends up looking so artificial. That’s because it is. And I don’t fault anyone who decides they’d rather visit a town that appears authentically European because it’s actually in Europe.

Vail Village in Colorado, United States. Image taken from East West Hospitality.

Val d’Isere, France. Image taken from the Alpinium Ski Resort Guide.

Now let’s talk about the elephant in the room, which is the political situation in the United States. Obviously this doesn’t apply as much to potential visitors to the Canadian Rockies, but the American Rockies might see a decrease in tourism in light of the reelection of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency. I think that, in the context of how alpine tourism will be impacted by climate change, some people will boycott the United States due to their electing a climate denier to the highest office in the land.

Even if Trump hadn’t won, though, gun violence would remain a concern. The United States has a much higher crime rate than almost anywhere in Europe, certainly in terms of violent crime. Quite a few countries have issued travel warnings against us, and for good reason. But to be clear, our reputation is in the toilet, and we deserve it. 

Now, how many people who otherwise wanted to visit the United States will boycott it just because Trump won? I truly don’t know. It was reported in 2018 that $4.6B in tourist revenue was lost under his first presidency. That is a relatively small fraction of the total, of course, and it’s not like a gradual decline in international tourism is going to tank the American economy on its own. But I think it’s a notable barometer of where sentiment is at.

The U.S. Embassy in London after Just Stop Oil protestors vandalized it with orange paint.

In conclusion, those are a few reasons why tourism to the Rockies is generally less than that to the Alps. They are both stunning mountain ranges, but one is more accessible than the other, one is more culturally rich than the other, and one has a more favorable political situation than the other. Of course, a lot of this is conjecture - if anyone reading this wants to offer their own theories, they are welcome to do so. 

Thank you for reading. 

Phoenix Is The Quintessential American City

During Trump’s first term, we were the only country in the world to reject the Paris Agreement, and we will surely be again. Now, the Paris Agreement does not go far enough, and there’s no real enforcement mechanism even for countries that remain in said agreement, but at least the rest of the world is doing something as opposed to less than nothing.

No matter how much evidence we get that we need to change our policies, whether it’s on gun violence, health care, or the environment, we continue to stick our heads in the sand and deny, deny, deny that something needs to be done differently. As a society, we tend to believe that we can throw as much money as we need at a problem, and it’ll just go away. 

And there is perhaps no place that’s a better example of this cultural mindset than the “city” of Phoenix.

Golf courses in suburban Phoenix, Arizona, United States. Image taken from Thrillist.

Historically, major cities have been constructed on or near bodies of water for a number of reasons. Water is essential for life, and access to the sea is invaluable for any political entity. The four largest cities in the United States are all near the water. You have New York (Atlantic Ocean), Los Angeles (Pacific Ocean), Chicago (Lake Michigan), and Houston (Gulf of Mexico). 

Phoenix is the fifth-largest city proper in the country, and it’s a major outlier. Instead of being near a major body of water, it’s in the middle of the desert, reliant largely on groundwater in order to sustain itself. Per Wikipedia, the city has a hot desert climate with an average July high of 106.5°F (41.4°C)! And that’s the average daily maximum - in practice, there are often dozens of days a year where the high rises above 110°F. In fact, there’s a famous cartoon scene in which a character states that Phoenix should not exist.

The city proper has a population of about 1.6 million people, but the metropolitan area, the definition some people prefer to use, is estimated to contain about five million people as of 2022. That’s a 3.5% increase from 2020, which is more than a 20-fold increase from 1940. And it’s not called the “Valley of the Sun” for no reason! 

So why did Phoenix get so massive? Well, the start of the city’s rapid growth was around the end of World War II in 1945. Things were looking pretty good for the United States economically at that point, as many places in Europe had to rebuild post-war. Additionally, air conditioning became far more commonplace around that time, which made it more comfortable to live in the desert. 

Peggy Hill once said Phoenix was a monument to man’s arrogance, and I tend to agree. After winning the largest military conflict in human history, America wanted to flex its muscles. The planners probably thought “If we can win World War II, we can build a metropolis in the desert!” With this newfound superpower status, they figured that if you threw enough money at this project, it could work. And, well, it depends on what you mean by “work.”

Homelessness in Phoenix, Arizona. Picture taken from r/UrbanHell.

To be clear, Phoenix is not the only city in the country facing a housing crisis, nor is the United States even the only country with this issue. However, when increasing housing costs coincide with a hot desert climate that’s only going to get hotter, and is indeed already doing so, you have a recipe for real trouble. 

Some people have asked how homeless people manage to survive the extreme temperatures in places like Phoenix. The sad answer is that some of them don’t. In 2023, Maricopa County (anchored by Phoenix) lost some 645 people to heat-related causes, and 290 of these victims were homeless. We can talk all day long about how hazards like extreme heat exacerbate existing injustices, but homelessness is not the only problem facing Phoenix.

Consider the first photo in this post. Despite the lack of water, Arizona is a very popular golf destination. In the winter, the weather is seen as perfect. It’s pleasantly warm but not scorching, and it rarely rains because it’s still a desert. I’m not a golfer, but I’d imagine that’s the sort of weather conducive to that sport.

There’s just one problem, which is water. Namely, the lack thereof. In June 2023, Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs declared that new subdivisions could not be planned in Phoenix due to the water shortage. The majority of the region’s water supply comes from groundwater, which isn’t an infinite resource, and it takes many human lifetimes to replenish. And yet, people continue to flock to the region for the low cost of living and the nice winters.

A golf course in Buckeye, Arizona. Picture taken from the New York Times.

Golf tourism has been controversial in Arizona in recent years. At a time when water shortages partly induced by climate change have gained increased attention globally, and residential areas are sometimes told to reduce their use of water at home, the golf courses very often remain green all year round. And that takes water, an essential resource anywhere that is especially precious in a place without much of it.

Recently I was reading a thread on r/FuckCars about golf and how bad it can be for the environment, and one of the users made a great point. For obvious reasons, nobody goes to Iowa expecting to surf. So why should people go to Arizona and expect to play golf? Golf is for climates with more water security - it was invented in a country with a reputation for rainy weather.

Finally, let’s talk about sprawl. It’s no secret that American cities have a reputation for being car-dependent and sprawling. This stereotype is completely accurate - the relatively few cities that are walkable, such as New York, Chicago, and my beloved Boston, are very often expensive places to live. But I don’t think there’s any American city that exemplifies sprawl more than Phoenix. Just look at it.

All of this is Phoenix. Image taken from the Britannica website.

Now, as bad as things may be in Phoenix, as much as I might say that the city “should not exist”, the fact remains that it does exist. Indigenous peoples lived in the area now known as the Valley of the Sun many centuries ago - there are rivers near it. But not millions of them. Even so, there are steps the city can take to mitigate the uneven impacts of extreme heat.

This Vox video from a couple years ago was pretty fascinating. The dark gray pavement that comprises so much of Phoenix absorbs heat like you wouldn’t believe, whereas tree cover makes a noticeable difference in the opposite direction. 

Currently, Phoenix classifies trees as private property, meaning that anyone wishing to grow trees to cool their neighborhood down must use their private resources (i.e. their own money) to do so. Consequently, wealthier neighborhoods whose residents can afford to plant and maintain trees in the desert heat contain far more tree cover. More affluent regions of Metro Phoenix such as Scottsdale and Paradise Valley have abundant shade - it’s still very hot, but shade does help! And if the authorities classified vegetation as infrastructure, then public funds would be used to maintain them, meaning that (in theory) their distribution would be more equitable around the city.

In the end, though, we have to be honest with ourselves. As it stands right now, I think the necessary changes are unlikely to be made any time soon. This “monument to man’s arrogance” will remain standing.

But not only is it a monument to man’s arrogance, it’s also an illustration of how those with any power in America always look at the evidence staring them right between the eyes and pretend not to see it. Truth be told, because it’s so unsustainable and is only getting more so, Phoenix is the quintessential American city.

Australia’s Social Media Ban: My Thoughts

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese speaks about the proposed social media ban. Image taken from Reuters.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock recently, there’s a good chance you’ve heard that Australia has passed a law that would ban people under 16 from using social media. I understand that it’s not my country, so I don’t have too much skin in the game. Still, what happens in one country doesn’t always stay there.

Whenever I’ve seen discourse about this ban online, one of the biggest talking points I’ve noticed is that it would be impossible to enforce this ban. But I’m not sure that’s true.

After all, I spend a lot of time on the social media platform known as Discord. In fact, probably too much time. Discord has a hard and fast requirement that all users be at least 13 years of age. If you admit to being under that age, you’ll be swiftly banned from all your servers and probably reported to Trust and Safety. And from what I’ve read, the Australian law puts the onus on the platforms to regulate themselves.

First of all, let’s look at the facts. The ban applies to five sites: Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and Xitter. And yes, I call Elon Musk’s platform Xitter, pronounced “shitter.” Because ultimately, that’s what it is these days. 

In any case, only sites for which one requires an account to use will be affected. Websites like YouTube, which you can browse as a guest, are, according to the BBC, “unlikely to be banned.” And there’s a reason I cite the BBC here, because the United Kingdom is considering its own ban under terms similar to those used in Australia. Given that the UK and Australia are relatively influential countries on the world stage, it is at least conceivable that more countries will follow suit eventually.

Overall, I have mixed feelings about this sort of legislation. In all probability, it will never come to fruition in the United States, because the Democrats and Republicans aren’t likely to agree on anything so significant anytime soon. But that doesn’t mean I can’t have an opinion on it.

It has been well-documented that social media can have a negative impact on a person’s mental health. So much so, in fact, that the European Disability Forum felt the need to write an article about how young people should take care of their health in the digital world. I can certainly relate to FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) whenever I see people on social media bragging about their epic vacations.

Let’s use TikTok as another example. Prior to Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, I would argue that it was the most harmful out of these five social media platforms that Australia is looking to restrict. For now, let’s leave aside the misinformation that’s sometimes spread there, such as trivializing autism. And yes, autism can be good sometimes, but still!

Have you ever noticed that the younger generation’s attention spans seem to be getting shorter and shorter in recent years? Anecdotally, there are many schoolteachers on Reddit who say that the children don’t learn as well as they used to. And yes, Reddit may not be real life, but I think there’s evidence to bear this out. Internet addiction is very much a real thing, and I think it both comes from and contributes to the societal need for constant stimulation. The short, to-the-point TikTok videos that are 60 seconds or less really feed into that, meaning that so many of us are just used to putting in no effort.

I’m 24 years old. I feel myself addicted to Discord much of the time, but I didn’t start using Discord (I’m making it sound like a drug, because it kind of is) until I was 16. If I’d started at fourteen or even thirteen, I might be even more addicted to the platform. After all, there’s plenty of evidence, including common sense, suggesting that it’s harder to break a habit you start at an early age.

As bad as its impact on the attention span is, social media’s impact on mental health through activities such as doomscrolling is even worse. Now, there’s a lot of wrong going on in this world; all you need to do is read one of my “Anti-America’s Top Ten Countdown” posts to know that. But as privileged as it might make me seem, I think I would be in a much better mood if I wasn’t on Reddit all damn day.

Moreover, social media is probably one reason I compare myself to others so much. It isn’t remotely healthy to do so, because you’ll either feel smug or incomplete, but it still happens. Even some of the things I’ve done in real life, as fun as they were, are things I chose to do because others on Discord said they were amazing.

That being said, I can also see an argument for not banning social media for those under 16. If we view social media as a drug like alcohol, I would argue that the U.S.’ policy surrounding the drinking age isn’t the healthiest. Here, you’re flat-out banned from drinking until you’re 21. Now, alcohol isn’t good for a still-developing brain at all, but in practice lots of people go all-out drinking on their 21st birthday.

By contrast, most of Europe has a far more nuanced approach to the drinking age, and I think it’s better. There, teenagers are taught to have a healthy respect for alcohol before they’re allowed to drink it whenever. And maybe social media is a lot like that. Maybe instead of banning these platforms for minors, we should have more media literacy lessons in schools so that the students know the potential downsides of social media.

This isn’t entirely a novel idea. For instance, Finland has a implemented media literacy curriculum for students in basic education. While I’m not privy to the specifics of what is covered (in fact, I’ve never been to Finland even as a tourist), I would imagine it discusses the perils of unchecked social media use. After all, as has been covered extensively, the barrier to posting a story that might be considered “news” is far lower than it once was.

Much like the Internet as a whole, social media is a proverbial Pandora’s Box that we aren’t going to be able to close. We’ll never be able to return to a world without it. Australia is trying one approach to dealing with this problem; the UK might follow suit. Meanwhile, Finland is evidently trying another. And the United States will probably do nothing, just like we did nothing after the horrific tragedy that occurred twelve years ago today. 

I’m curious to hear your thoughts.

What Is The Alaska Of Your Country?

If you’re in the United States (or oftentimes, even if you aren’t), Alaska needs no introduction. It’s called the Last Frontier for a reason. 

Alaska was the 49th state to be admitted to the U.S. in 1959. At the time, the population was about 220,000 people according to Wikipedia. As of 2023, Alaska has a population of over seven hundred thousand people.This might sound like a dramatic increase, and it is, but it is still the third-least populous state overall. Its low overall population comes in spite of its expansive geographic area - it’s larger than Iran! And if it were an independent nation, Alaska would be bigger than all but sixteen countries.

Perhaps because of its isolation and outlier status in terms of population density, Alaska’s made quite the impact on popular culture. As a child, one of my favorite animated movies was Balto. I need to watch it again, come to think of it. That film was one reason my sister had always wanted to visit Alaska, a trip my family made in 2016.

It’s not just children’s movies that have put Alaska on the map. There are any number of reality shows that have done the same. There was that cringe-worthy series Ultimate Survival Alaska that ran for three seasons, essentially a poor man’s Amazing Race that was probably staged five ways from Sunday. Then there’s Alaska State Troopers, which I have not seen, but apparently documents the challenges experienced by law enforcement in such a vast territory.

TV thumbnail for Ultimate Survival Alaska.

All of these statistics might make one wonder: Do other countries have their own version of Alaska? 

Obviously, not every nation has a polar region. For the sake of this article, “Alaska” can be seen as a metonym for a sparsely populated administrative division of a given country that is also relatively expansive in terms of area. Beyond the literal Alaska, as it turns out, quite a few countries have a figurative Alaska. 

Let’s look at Germany, a country I have a few online friends from. By population density, the German state ranked last is Mecklenburg-Vorpommern . It’s situated in the northeastern part of the country, bordering Poland and the Baltic Sea. Its capital is this beautiful-looking city called Schwerin that, according to Wikipedia, has just 96,000 residents. It probably feels somewhat like a small town, though how should I know? I’ve never been there.

Schlossbrücke in Schwerin, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany.

Like many rural areas of the United States, it appears Schwerin is relatively right-wing in terms of its voting patterns. Now, for the most part, the right-wing in Europe is nothing like the Republican Party we have in America. However, the far-right AfD party won a 26% plurality of the vote, and roughly that percentage of seats, in the most recent city council election.

Another interesting fact I learned about Schwerin while writing this article is that it is the city with the highest crime rate in Germany. However, this statistic is somewhat misleading, because it’s the only city in the country where riding public transit without a ticket is counted in the crime statistics. 

Of course, calling Mecklenburg-Vorpommern the Alaska of Germany is a relative term. Its population density is 69 people per square kilometer as of the end of 2018, and it has possibly grown since then. For frame of reference, that’s nearly twice the population density of the United States as a whole.

Aerial view of Niseko, Hokkaido, Japan. Image taken from the Niseko Tourism website.

Now let’s talk about Japan. It’s another beautiful country that I had the honor and privilege of visiting about two years ago now. That vacation was mostly a ski trip in the Hakuba Valley region of Nagano Prefecture. Not only is it a gorgeous place, but the food is amazing - the apple juice tasted like real apples! 

In all seriousness, Japan’s answer to Alaska is Hokkaido. It’s the northernmost prefecture and is relatively sparsely populated. Again, it’s all relative, as Japan has a much higher population density than the U.S. overall. Hokkaido’s capital is Sapporo, a city known for its beer and its annual snow festival.

This island is not only among the most sparsely populated parts of Japan, but it’s one of the snowiest places in the world, at least among those inhabited by any significant number of people. The city of Sapporo itself received almost five meters of snow in the average year between 1991 and 2020. And that’s just the largest city on the island, the place that likely has relatively hospitable winters compared to other parts of the prefecture.

Many other places on Hokkaido, such as the world-renowned ski area of Niseko, receive considerably more snow. In fact, Hokkaido in general is known for winter sports. Most of the ski resorts in Japan are fairly Westernized, but from what I’ve heard, Niseko is quite popular with Australian tourists. It’s to the point where you’ll hear “G’day mate” more often as a greeting than “Konichiwa”. 

So Hokkaido is undoubtedly the Alaska of Japan. However, at 61 people per square kilometer, it’s still denser than the United States’ average, and way denser than Alaska. I’ll go with a third example of “it’s all relative.”

Kayangan Lake, Coron Island, a popular tourist attraction in Palawan. Image taken from Wikipedia.

The third case we’ll look at is Palawan. It’s the westernmost province in the Philippines, itself a very densely populated country. Palawan is the largest province by area, as well as having the third-lowest population density if the provincial capital of Puerto Princesa is excluded.

As you can probably tell from the image, Palawan has a vastly different climate from Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Hokkaido, or especially Alaska. It is what many consider a tropical paradise, and it contains several popular resort cities like Coron and El Nido. Supposedly it’s one of the world’s best places for scuba diving.I’ll admit scuba diving isn’t really my thing; skiing is more my sport. But lots of people scuba dive in Palawan.

The “tropical Alaska” parallels don’t stop there. Palawan is sometimes referred to as the Philippines’ “last frontier” due to its biodiversity and relative isolation from the rest of the country. It’s relatively difficult to reach from more densely populated islands in the archipelago; most travelers have to fly from Manila or Cebu to Puerto Princesa, then possibly take a 6-hour bus ride to El Nido. Coupled with how far away the Philippines already are from the eastern U.S., my rear end is getting sore just thinking about a trip I haven’t even planned to take.

Overall, one thing I find fascinating is that many of these “miniature Alaskas” their respective countries are popular tourist destinations. I don’t know how many people visit Mecklenburg-Vorpommern for leisure, especially those traveling to Germany from thousands of miles away. But Hokkaido is well-known for ski tourism, and Palawan gets a considerable number of scuba divers and other tourists who love the beach. I’d imagine many of the latter’s visitors are from elsewhere in the Philippines, but still.

I think there’s something to be said about visiting places with relatively sparse populations. Yes, there are many reasons why a majority of the world’s population lives in cities. There are economic pressures leading to population growth, cities have more resources that people need, and it’s even more environmentally friendly to live in a city. 

Perhaps, however, the reason so many of these “Alaskas” are tourist destinations is the novelty. If I could travel to an exact replica of Boston in Europe, I would rather just stay at home. It’s the same reason you shouldn’t get McDonald’s as a tourist in Japan; wouldn’t you rather eat something you can’t get so easily at home? People ideally travel for something different from what they’re used to.

Alaskan Ski Resorts: Why Aren’t There More Of Them?

I’ve decided that I want to start this blog up again (I’m still paying for the domain, after all - might as well use it), but I’m going to switch it to being about geography, at least for the time being. Quite frankly, politics get pretty depressing after a while. 

Recently I saw a Reddit thread asking why Alaska had very few ski resorts. This was a question that fascinated me to no end, because for those of you who don’t know, I am an avid skier, having participated in the sport since I was 6 years old.

A topographical map of Alaska, taken from Earth@Home.

As you can see, the state is quite mountainous. In fact, it contains the highest peak in North America, Denali (which was named Mount McKinley until then-President Barack Obama restored the indigenous name for the mountain.) Fun fact, I actually have met someone who served as a Denali guide, though that’s a story for another time.

Not only does Alaska have a lot of mountains, it’s also got a lot of snow in the winter. Many of the mountains even have snow in the summer. Based on that, one would think the state is fertile ground for a ski resort. In fact, however, there are only 10 ski areas in Alaska with Wikipedia articles , a number that seems far too low for the largest state in the country by area. For frame of reference, Colorado, which has less than a sixth of Alaska’s area, has 35 notable ski areas. But as global warming threatens our beloved sport in Colorado, colder places that get more snow now will increasingly become more popular…right?

In other words, Alaska “should” have more than two hundred ski resorts if they were distributed evenly across the state. However, it doesn’t. So why not?

First of all, let’s consider one thing that won’t change no matter how much the climate warms: The length of the day. In my experience, most ski resorts I’ve been to close around 4 PM - that’s when the last skiers are allowed to get in line for the lift. Without totally doxxing myself, I live at about 42°N, and on the day I’m writing this (December 5, 2024), the sun rose at 6:59 AM and will set at 4:12 PM. That’s 9 hours, 13 minutes of daylight. During winter, the days are shorter; who woulda thunk? And crucially, the winter days get shorter the further north you go.

At 42 degrees north, the shortest day of the year is slightly over 9 hours long. However, in Anchorage, Alaska’s largest city, the sun doesn’t rise until almost 10 AM this time of year, and it sets just under six hours later. That’s just six hours of daylight, which may not be long enough to make a ski resort economically viable. And the further north you go in Alaska, the more limited the light will become. It just doesn’t make sense to run a ski resort that’s only open a few hours a day, and night skiing isn’t possible (or safe) everywhere.

Now look at this map. It’s from Wikipedia and shows Alaska highlighted in red. Given that, you can see just how far it is from the rest of the United States. The closest major U.S. airport to Alaska is Seattle/Tacoma (SEA), and even that flight from Seattle to Anchorage has a block time of 3 hours, 50 minutes. Ted Stevens International Airport (ANC) does maintain flights to some major cities in the American West, as well as Minneapolis-Saint Paul (MSP), but those are even longer than the one from Seattle. 

The only regularly scheduled international route to or from ANC, for now, is Frankfurt, Germany (FRA). This route is operated by German leisure airlines Condor and Discover Airlines; however, both are only seasonal. And that season is summer, which is not ski season, even in Alaska. I don’t know how many Europeans would want to visit Alaska anyway when Norway is a more politically stable (and perhaps more importantly, much closer) alternative. But with no direct flights during the winter, I’d imagine that’s a very limited market for ski tourists to the Last Frontier.

To put this into perspective, imagine that you live in Greater Boston, like me. If I want to go for a ski trip in the American West starting on January 20, I could either go to Denver in 5 hours or less for $250/ticket, or I could go to Anchorage and be there in 12 hours or more for $600/ticket. Yes, I looked it up; that’s the quickest way. Considering the limitations faced in terms of daylight, as well as the fact that things in Alaska are more expensive, most people in such a position will choose Colorado. And that’s doubly so for those in Europe, who have plenty of ski resorts in the Alps.

Aerial photo of Copper Mountain in Colorado showing how much infrastructure it takes to run a ski resort. Taken from Ski.com.

The last reason I’ll touch on is the cost. Not the cost borne by those who would ski at these hypothetical Alaskan resorts, but rather the cost borne by those who are going to build the resorts. 

A ski resort takes lots of time and money to set up. I’ve never been involved in the process of developing one, but I’d imagine that anyone who wants to would need to get environmental permits squared away. Who knows how much money that takes. And that’s before the lifts are built, which not only takes money, but also labor. Plus, most ski resorts in North America build “villages” at the base like the one pictured above - you need building permits (money), the salaries of people who staff the businesses (money), and upkeep (money).

As monetarily expensive as it may be to run a ski resort, labor is the real problem here. As my country has “learned” time and time again, you can throw as much money as you want at a problem, but if you don’t have enough people to work on a project, it will never be built. There’s a reason this country has a teacher shortage that is only likely to get worse.

At the time of writing, Alaska is the third-least populous U.S. state, with about 733,000 people in 2023. It is, by a factor of nearly five, the most thinly populated state relative to its geographic size, and that won’t change anytime soon. Employers in industries we might consider more essential than running a hypothetical future ski resort have already faced problems filling positions. They’ve turned to labor from outside the state. It sort of reminds me of how some young Australian adults work as ski instructors at resorts in Canada like Banff and Whistler. However, the sort of mass ski tourism some would envision in Alaska would require out-of-state labor (and sometimes out-of-country labor) on a far greater scale. 

In my opinion, if Alaska is going to gain a labor surplus sufficient to build new ski resorts (let alone dozens of them), the only thing that would really cause that is an increased AI boom. AI, of course, is problematic enough on its own - we’re already seeing these problems. Is it really worth training artificial intelligence to build ski resorts when there are more pressing issues to deal with?

All of the above being said, Alaska is a beautiful state that I believe is worth visiting if you can spare the effort and expense to get there. There are many types of nature tourism that can thrive there, but ski tourism likely isn’t one of them.

Back To December

So now it’s December, and that means the right-wing is going to go all-out with their culture war issues that sane voters won’t make their number one priority. Of course, “sane voters” is doing some heavy lifting here, given that this is the country that just gave Donald fucking Trump a second term.

Most of the time, Christmas is my favorite holiday. I love the aesthetic of it, especially when there’s snow on the ground (which, admittedly, isn’t as common as it used to be where I live). I even love Christmas music, but then again, I have never worked retail. If I did, maybe I would see Christmas music differently, because I’ve been blessed with so many memes about how “she’s defrosting” and the like.

A meme of Mariah Carey defrosting, taken from Reddit.

Now that we’re well and truly in the Christmas season as defined by retailers, the culture warriors are going to be at it again. I’m old enough to remember when Trump proclaimed people would be saying “Merry Christmas” again because of him. Yet again, this is another non-issue that the GOP has blown out of proportion.

I celebrate Christmas myself, even if it’s not really in a religious sense. That’s the same with the rest of my family. We are semi-nominal Christians, but we don’t go to church or anything like that except maybe for funerals or weddings. And I’ve never been to a wedding.

That being said, I know a good amount of people who don’t celebrate Christmas; there is a decently-sized Jewish population in suburban Boston. Yes, it’s polite to say “Happy Holidays” as a greeting in order to be inclusive, but I’ve never once met someone who’s offended when I slip up and say “Merry Christmas.” It seems everyone (at least, everyone I talk to on a regular basis) accepts that it’s just a greeting.

I’m telling you, it’s sickening that the Republican Party has been able to take power once again through emphasizing such vapid issues. I’d thought almost nobody cared about which greeting I used, but evidently so many right-wingers are even more insane than I gave them credit for. They’re really making a mockery of our country abroad, and I’m ashamed.

To me, and to many other Americans, Christmas has diminished in religious importance. Yes, a good number of people still go to church - significantly more than in Canada, Australia, or the majority of Europe. The percentage is, admittedly, lower than it used to be. But just because the religious meaning of the holiday has kind of fizzled out, that doesn’t mean it’s not still an important holiday to most of us.

Christmas in the United States is a lot like Thanksgiving in many regards. As I wrote about two weeks ago, Thanksgiving is an excuse to celebrate something. Even if it’s just the simpler pleasures in life, the fact that all of the family has survived another year in good enough health to gather together for the meal and to watch a Charlie Brown episode afterwards, it’s still significant. 

Like Thanksgiving, Christmas takes place near the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. Where I live, there will only be 9 hours, 5 minutes of daylight on December 25, 2024. The further north you go, the darker that day will be.

Maybe most people have done away with pagan traditions centered around worship of the sun. Maybe an increasing number have turned away from religion in general. But I think on some level, humans want some light in the dark of winter. Perhaps, amid the decrease in sunlight, people feel they need something to celebrate, even if it’s not based on anything supernatural.

Christmas at Bondi Beach in Australia. This will never not be amusing to me. Image taken from TimeAndDate.com.

I know what my family is going to do for Christmas. We’ll get a tree like we usually do, and we’ll hang up the numerous ornaments in our collection. We’ll get up that morning and go through our stockings by the fireplace. We might not be children anymore, but that doesn’t mean the power of rituals has been fully lost on us.

 And then we’ll eat breakfast consisting of fruit salad, bagels with lox and cream cheese, and of course, that delicious cranberry apple coffee cake my mother and I bake every year. During that time, my paternal grandmother, one of the most interesting and wise people I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing, will no doubt have plenty to talk about. That’s what Christmas is like in my family. Even in an era of increased secularization, even when white Christmases become less and less frequent, some things never change.

Overall, I’m not sure what the overarching message of this post is. I’ll admit that I just wanted to write something for the blog after a few days’ radio silence. It’s probably nothing profound, but if it makes at least one person think, that can only be a good thing.

A Reflection on Linguistics

I have never thought of myself as a linguistics expert. In fact, I’m basically monolingual. But it’s nonetheless a fascinating topic that I think deserves a blog post today.

You see, I live in the United States, a country whose tourists are infamous for being “ugly Americans” who expect everyone to speak English to them wherever they go. Now, not every American tourist is like this, but stereotypes exist for a reason. And a reflection on this topic has led me to realize that we’re at a disadvantage relative to many other countries.

A map showing leaders of select countries according to how many languages they spoke as of late 2022, per r/MapPorn. Joe Biden (USA) was the only one to speak only English.

Most of the people I know were required to take a foreign language in high school. Many of these people, including my brother and I, selected Spanish, but it never came naturally to me. At least, not as naturally as it came to my brother. My brother, one of my best friends, did an exchange program in Spain at age 16, and later an internship in that country. I have done neither of those things.

This stands in stark contrast to Europe. On the occasions when I’ve been fortunate enough to visit European countries where English does not have official status, virtually everyone I’ve spoken to has had good enough English to where I could hold a conversation with them. Until recently, I can’t say I questioned it very much. I guess I just assumed “that’s the way it is”, without really thinking about why.

Indeed, the data bears this out. According to a 2022 survey, almost 80 percent of Americans living in the US are monolingual. This stands in stark contrast to the fact that 65% of Europeans speak multiple languages according to the same survey. The linked article, published a few months after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, details the implications this has for both America’s economy and geopolitical status. And TLDR: It’s not good.

It wasn’t until Trump’s first term that I learned the United States doesn’t actually have an official language at the federal level. Of course, in practice, English is as good as the official language, since day-to-day life here really runs on English; indeed, more than half the states have designated it as such. That being said, the real reason Trump proposed making English the official language at the federal level was as a monument to his xenophobia, not because it would actually affect U.S. policy, let alone daily life in this country.

I could go on and on about how the United States and United Kingdom exerted efforts to promote the notion that English should be the “default” language. This has been well-documented in many academic texts and doesn’t need to be discussed any further here.

However, it’s not just Anglophone nations that have contributed to “language consolidation.” The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), uses English as its official working language.  This is despite the fact that only two of its member states, Singapore and the Philippines, have actually designated English as having official status for civilian life.

Representatives from Southeast Asian countries at their 2024 summit in Australia, taken from Kiripost. Despite (or because of?) the diversity of languages used by civilians in their countries, all of these leaders have agreed to speak English at the meeting.

Meanwhile, here’s some food for thought: There are more than seven thousand languages currently spoken by the world’s roughly 8.2 billion people. Many of these tongues, however, only have a couple thousand speakers at most, meaning that if they are not taught to younger generations, we risk losing these languages for good.

Just think about that for a moment. This post is published in English. If your primary language is English, or another widely-used language like Spanish, Mandarin, or Russian, it probably seems unthinkable (if you’ve considered it at all) that one day your language, the tongue you use for everything in your day-to-day life, could vanish. And yet, there are people, including a large percentage of the world’s indigenous population, who live with this reality every day.

Moreover, languages are not just systems of communication. Anyone who’s taken a second language in any capacity has probably figured out that every language provides a different way of seeing the world. Whenever the last speaker of a language passes away, the world loses a unique perspective. I think that’s regrettable, just like the loss of biodiversity all over the world as a result of environmental issues like deforestation and climate change.

In my mind (and again, I say this as someone who is functionally monolingual), this is an issue that deserves more attention than it’s getting. As indigenous issues have become increasingly politically salient in countries like Canada and Australia, both governments and civilians in those places have reflected on their ancestors’ role in what would become this crisis.

The Aboriginal and national flags of Australia, side by side. Image taken from the Catholic Leader website.

Canada, for instance, has their Truth and Reconciliation Commission, something I wish the United States would do. Indeed, there are many things Canada does that I wish we would. But I’m getting off track here.

The point is, if English is your first language, you should think critically about how it came to be this way. If you travel abroad, don’t be that “ugly American” who assumes that everyone around you needs to speak your language. And consider what it must be like if your own language was marginalized in favor of what others say should be the “default tongue.” 

Maybe the opportunity to gain this knowledge is the only thing I can be thankful for this year.

Platform Peril

No, not THAT kind of Platform Peril.

One of the things I’ve thought about a lot lately is just how important it is to be mindful whenever you have an audience. 

What I mean by this is the responsibility you have as someone with a platform to disseminate information responsibly. In the age of social media, the barrier to posting information that others might see as news is far lower than it used to be. You can simply go to your computer (or phone), type in a series of words on BlueSky, and congratulations - you’ve become a reporter! 

This is one of the many ways in which the Internet has fundamentally altered the way we live our lives. Among other things, it’s driven local journalism to the brink of extinction. Maybe I’ll write more about that some other time.

Of course, as a certain superhero once told us, with great power comes great responsibility. That has hardly ever been more true than it is today, in an era when we face so many overlapping crises that the U.S. government is either not solving or actively working to exacerbate. And if you don’t believe me, just take this example:

Boston Globe political cartoon from 2017.

It’s no secret that systemic racism exists in America. Even after it was no longer legal to own black people as property, we had the Jim Crow era in which there were whites-only drinking fountains, schools, etc. And I also don’t need to tell you that even after segregation no longer carried the force of law behind it, it remains effectively in place in many U.S. cities. This doesn’t even take into account the endless police brutality we see in the United States that nobody ever bothers to do anything about other than kneel in kente cloth.

All of this came to a head when Trump became President the first time. In case you’ve forgotten (which would make you the average American voter) , there was a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017. After the murder of a counter-protestor, Trump went to the podium and announced that there were very bad people in that group, “but you also had people who were very fine people, on both sides.”

The uproar was immense from the same “liberal” media who seem awfully silent now. They rightly pointed out that when the President of the United States speaks, people listen. It’s no surprise that hate crimes spiked under Trump’s first term, and they are already rising again now - just look at all those racist text messages sent in the days following his 2024 victory.

But just think about the power of Trump’s platform. I might be among his detractors, but the fact remains that when the President of the United States speaks, people listen. I’m old enough to remember he told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” during a debate, and days later the FBI unveiled a plot to kidnap and probably kill Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. 

Now, I’m going to do something surprising. I’m going to talk about irresponsible famous people who don’t live in the U.S. I know. Crazy, right?

A 2013 anti-vaccine rally in the UK, from The Independent. As an important disclaimer to remain in compliance with ethical standards: These people are incorrect, and the ideas they promote here are not only dangerously wrong, they’re just plain dangerous.

Those of my readers who are significantly older than me might remember that in 1998, a study was published in The Lancet, the most prestigious medical journal in the United Kingdom, “demonstrating” a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. Again, to remain in compliance with my better judgment, this link does not exist.  

The “doctor” behind it, Andrew Wakefield, was stripped of his medical license once this “study” was found to in fact be fraudulent. In a way, however, the damage was already done. Just look at who the US is going to have in charge of public health in Trump’s next administration. The harms of not vaccinating your child are very well-documented. We have seen the consequences in the 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa, a particularly dangerous disease given that the measles virus can “reset” your immune system’s memory. But there are over eight billion people in the world, and if even a relatively small percentage are led to believe that vaccinating your child can cause them to develop autism, that’s still a lot of people.

More importantly, this doesn’t just harm public health, but also public trust in scientific institutions. As a reminder, The Lancet was previously the UK’s most trusted medical journal. It’s not just the conspiracy theorists who always shit on scientific advancements who might be swayed by such a fraudulent “study.”

Consider also the average person who doesn’t pay much attention to the scientific community, but trusts science as an institution because they have the evidence on their side. In the UK at least, this is far, far more people than those we might call anti-vaxxers. The Lancet published, and still does publish, many things that are demonstrably true. So when they publish such harmful disinformation, even if only once, this plants the seeds of doubt in some minds that maybe other scientific journals aren’t to be trusted as well. And if too many parents refuse to vaccinate their children, herd immunity will be jeopardized for the rest of us. If RFK Jr. is confirmed, we’re in deep trouble as a species.

In both of the cases I described above, the messengers probably didn’t care how much damage they would end up doing. Trump certainly doesn’t, and it speaks to the unique depravity of this country that we allowed him to return to power. 

Just because some of our “leaders” aren’t mindful of the power of their platforms, however, doesn’t absolve small creators like myself of our obligation to tell the truth. After all, the reason I write this blog is because I want to provide a news outlet for the resistance to the incoming Trump regime. I’m as careful as I can be to always get the facts right, and I only wish that more well-known people were equally mindful.

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Anti-America’s Top Ten Countdown: Week 4

It’s that time of the week again, so it’s time for Anti-America’s Top Ten Countdown! Today we’ll be going through the top ten most important stories that every progressive member of the resistance needs to know about. Without further ado, here we go!

10: GOOD RIDDANCE TO GAETZ

So Matt Gaetz had to withdraw from consideration to be Donald Trump’s Attorney General after four Republican Senators (including Senator-elect John Curtis of Utah) privately voiced their opposition to his confirmation. To me, this is a case of “good riddance.” This sex-trafficker is not going to be the Attorney General of the United States after all. However, that doesn’t mean anyone else Donald Trump picks (such as Pam Bondi, his new choice) is going to be any less dangerous. If anything, I’d argue that Bondi is more dangerous because liberals don’t despise her as much. People won’t be as motivated to resist this outwardly inoffensive lady as opposed to Matt Gaetz. But at least Gaetz won’t be coming back to Congress, and I always love to watch a conservative get humiliated. Countdown number nine!

Protest against anti-Asian hate crimes in 2021, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Image taken from ABC News.

9: VOICES OF VIOLENCE

So in Minneapolis, Minnesota the other day, two trans women were beaten outside of a railway station. Minnesota, of course, was the home state of Kamala Harris’ running mate, Tim Walz, and Walz has designated it as a sanctuary state for the LGBTQ+ community. Remind me again why the country chose Trump and Vance over the jovial, joyous man known as Tim Walz? In any case, this shows that Trump’s rhetoric has emboldened those who traffic in hate. This is hardly news, considering all too many moments during his first term. Even so, now that Trump is actually going to be President once again, his words matter even more. I fear that hate crimes against marginalized communities are only going to increase in the coming years. Countdown number eight.

Bob Casey Jr. speaking at a Kamala Harris rally on November 4, 2024. He would be narrowly defeated at the polls the following day.

8: CASEY STRIKES OUT

The final Senate race of 2024 has been decided, ladies and gentlemen. In the midst of a recount, three-term Democratic incumbent Bob Casey Jr. of Pennsylvania has conceded to Republican challenger David McCormick. Casey ran a pretty lazy campaign, and I’d long been a pessimist about Democrats’ Senate chances in 2024, but even I didn’t expect him to lose his seat.

 And yet, by a margin of 48.8 percent to 48.6 percent, he has indeed been defeated. This means that the Republicans will have 53 Senate seats in the coming Congress, and that Democrats will need to flip four GOP-held seats to retake the chamber in the 2026 midterms. Honestly, this is the Senate loss that angers me the most. Sherrod Brown and especially Jon Tester were always going to have very difficult races, but Casey won by 13 points in 2018! I suppose he got too complacent. Countdown number seven.

Rooster getting swabbed to test for H5N1/avian flu. Taken from the American Veterinary Medical Association.

7: ONE FLU OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST

The last time a zoonotic disease emerged during a Trump presidency, it ended with more than a million Americans dead of COVID. And that was when Trump still needed to get reelected. Now, with a further emboldened Trump having nominated anti-vaxxers to key public health posts, dozens of cases of bird flu keep popping up in humans. A case was confirmed just yesterday in a US child. If Americans were able to grow numb to COVID deaths, though, they’ll grow numb to this. And I guarantee you that if this does indeed spiral into a pandemic, nothing will be done. It’s just like how we do nothing about mass shootings, only on a far greater scale. Oh yeah, and this disease has a 50 percent case-fatality rate, whereas COVID’s case-fatality rate was 2 percent at most. And look how much devastation that caused! We’re clucked. Countdown number six.

Donald Trump shaking hands with Mark Rutte. Image taken from Bloomberg.

6: THE RUTTE REACTION

Recently NATO Secretary-General and former Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte met with President-elect Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago. I think we can all read between the lines and know that this was done for one reason, and one reason only: Rutte was begging Trump to stay in NATO. 

Well, I hate to say it, Mark, but you’re wasting your time. I voted for Kamala Harris in part because I wanted the US to keep supporting Ukraine for as long as it takes. But you’re not going to convince Trump to remain a NATO ally. Just as Joe Biden is Benjamin Netanyahu’s bitch, Trump is Putin’s bitch. I wish the US would hold fast to our European allies, but he isn’t going to, and the sooner these countries realize they can’t convince Trump not to lick Putin’s boots, the better off we’ll all be as a species. Countdown number five.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at some meeting. Image taken from the Toronto Star.

5: DON’T BLAME CANADA

So Canada has decided to defy the United States with regards to the recently-issued arrest warrants against Benjamin Netanyahu, Yoav Gallant, and a deceased Hamas leader. Meanwhile, Biden keeps supporting Netanyahu to the ends of the Earth. It’s as though Biden didn’t want to wait for Trump to take over and destroy our relationship with our closest ally; he had to do it himself.

Now, to be fair, this is mostly moot. Netanyahu isn’t stupid enough to travel to a civilized country when he knows he’s likely to be arrested on the spot if he does. In other words, Trudeau probably won’t need to act on this promise. But it’s far more than Biden was willing to commit to, so I’ll give credit where it’s due. Even after Biden’s Vice President literally lost to Donald Trump because she supports Israel, he keeps showing that he deserves the title of Genocide Joe. If Trump throws him in prison, I won’t be too sad. Countdown number four.

US Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) riding the escalator. Image taken from Yahoo News.

4: THIS AIN’T NO NETHER-NETHER LAND

Tom Cotton, the biggest warhawk in a Senate full of them, isn’t too happy about the ICC’s arrest warrants against a pair of genocidal maniacs. In fact, he’s so unhappy about it that he wants to invoke the Hague Invasion Act.

Now, in case you all don’t know, The Hague is a real place. I’ve actually been there. It’s the third-largest city in a beautiful country known as the Netherlands. More importantly, the Netherlands is a NATO ally of the United States, or at least they’re supposed to be. At a time when NATO needs to be strongly behind Ukraine, Tom Cotton wants the alliance’s most powerful country to invade a fellow member. All of this for the sake of supporting Netanyahu against the warrants. 

Will this actually happen? Probably not, but you never know when you have people as insane as Tom Cotton in the Senate. Countdown number three.

Donald Trump pointing at something. Image taken from Yahoo News.

3: AMERICAN IDIOTS

Donald Trump’s Cabinet is taking shape, and it’s every bit as bizarre and horrible as many of us feared. I don’t need to tell you how dangerous people like RFK Jr. are, because you already know that. But remember Project 2025? The reason we kept saying that we could not allow Trump to be elected, but that so many people dismissed after Trump distanced himself from it?

Well, it’s happening. Trump has designated Russel Vought, one of Project 2025’s authors, to lead the Office of Management and Budget. Even if, during the campaign, Trump kept insisting he had “no idea” what Project 2025 was, he’s now filling his Cabinet with people who were behind it. I’ll borrow a line from a wise YouTuber I used to watch regularly: “Trump is a man who has no ideas, who surrounds himself with people who have bad ideas.”

But at a certain point, I have to give Trump credit. Even in the face of anti-Project 2025 attacks, even though so many people should have known just how dangerous it was, they voted for him anyway. Our education system is truly lacking, and we are a sick country. Many of us deserve what we’re about to get. Countdown number two.

Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who will remain a former President. Image taken from the Boston Globe.

2: I WISH I’M GOING TO BRAZIL

I never thought I’d live to see the day when Brazil’s democratic institutions proved more durable than those in the United States, but that day has arrived when I’m all of 24 years old. A Brazilian court has indicted former President Jair Bolsonaro on charges related to trying to overturn an election loss. Now, where have we heard that one before?

Oh yeah. The guy who attempted a coup after losing an election was just elected again here. A country that had a military dictatorship in the not-too-distant past now has stronger institutions. I wish America would have taken note and realized that there’s only one way to deal with people who try to overthrow your government. Instead, we get to suffer under Trump for four more years and end the rule of law, all while Brazil and the rest of the world laugh at us. Countdown number one.

DNC JumboTron in 2024, taken from Politico.

1: THE DUMBOCRATIC PARTY

In this case, Dumbo is not a flying elephant who was the titular character of one of my favorite movies when I was a small child. Instead, it’s the prefix for one of the most incompetent political movements in the history of the world. 

These people managed to lose to Donald Trump twice. He might be a convicted felon, but apparently that doesn’t matter if the opposition runs a horrendous campaign. I don’t know how the DNC managed to screw this one up, but quite frankly, it’s unforgivable. In fact, we should probably burn the Democratic Party to the ground, because whatever rose from the ashes afterward could not possibly be more inept than the current opposition to fascism.

I’ve written about this before; it’s the feckless versus the fascists.Despite being given so many avenues to attack Donald Trump for so many different horrendous policies, they have been utterly incapable of taking advantage. Twice. In any other country, a political party with a similar record would go the way of the Whigs. But the Democratic Party has to stay, because it’s our only domestic bulwark against the world’s most dangerous organization. Arceus help us all.

Bibi’s Biden Bitch

Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, who now face arrest warrants from the ICC. Taken from France 24.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last twenty-four hours, you’ve probably heard that the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu, Yoav Gallant, and a dead Hamas leader. This is an important first step in holding the Israeli government accountable for its crimes against humanity in the West Bank, Gaza, and now Lebanon. 

If Netanyahu travels to one of the 125 countries that are signatories to the Rome Statute of the ICC, he will be arrested. Notably, the United States is not among those countries, though that shouldn’t be surprising given that he came here in July to address Congress and was welcomed with open arms by most lawmakers.

Now, I’ve previously written about how not voting for Harris over the Gaza issue was idiotic and selfish. While I feel terrible for the people of Palestine, I continue to have no sympathy whatsoever for the Americans who were determined to defeat Biden and Harris because of their support for Israel. It’s not like Trump is any better on this issue, and he’s so much worse on everything else.

If you were to criticize the arrest warrants for any reason, you could argue that Joe Biden should have been listed as well. And I would agree. As someone who voted for him in 2020, and would have voted for him in 2024 if he’d accepted his party’s nomination, he truly is Genocide Joe. Yes, Israel had the right to defend itself after the inside job that was October 7, but they didn’t have the right to massacre more than 44,000 civilians and counting.

The choice Joe Biden faced. Taken from RootsAction on Xitter.

Now, it’s no secret by now that Joe Biden’s unconditional support for Israel likely cost his Vice President the election. Biden repeatedly claimed that Donald Trump was a grave danger to American democracy, and now he’s buddy-buddy with the man. But in order to prevent Trump’s return to power, he needed to appeal to the voters who were turned off by his support of this genocide. 

Again, as disgusted as I am by Biden’s support for Netanyahu, I didn’t support the Uncommitted movement. But these people held the election in their hands, and they could still vote. American voters are pretty shortsighted, and it’s not just those on the right. But back to the ICC.

After the arrest warrant was issued, Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister of the magical utopian land known as Canada, stated that his country would comply with international law and the arrest warrant. If Netanyahu travels to Canada, he will be arrested on the spot and sent to The Hague to be tried for war crimes. Admittedly, this is mostly moot, because I highly doubt Netanyahu is dumb enough to travel to a civilized country like Canada that supports international law. Trudeau likely won’t have to act on this promise, but it’s still far better than my home country’s response to the warrant.

Lawmakers of both parties have condemned the ICC for issuing the arrest warrant. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, the most aggressive warhawk in a Senate full of warhawks, even cited the Hague Invasion Act. He threatened to attack the Netherlands, or any other country that complies with the arrest warrant. The Netherlands, one of our NATO allies in Europe! Of course, I suppose they won’t be our ally much longer once Trump takes a sledgehammer to our relationships with our soon-to-be former allies.

 Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, meanwhile, stated that if the ICC went after Israel, “we’re next”. My response to that is like that owl meme saying “O RLY?” Like, what would you expect? If you commit war crimes, the ICC will go after you. That’s how a civilized world should work.

However, I can’t absolve the Democrats of their complicity either. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, who might as well switch parties at this point, signed the joint statement issued by a bipartisan group of Senators. He said that accepting the ICC’s jurisdiction over Israel was to acknowledge that they had jurisdiction over the United States. No shit! That’s the point! No country should be above the law!

Finally, let’s get to Joe Biden, also known as Genocide Joe. The man I voted for in 2020 and was prepared to vote for this year in order to stop Trump from returning to power. Even after the issue of Israel-Gaza likely cost his Vice President the election, bringing the man he claims to be so dangerous to democracy back into the Oval Office, Biden continues to be Bibi’s bitch. He refuses to condition aid to Israel even now (though, to be “fair”, his successor in two months won’t condition aid at all), and his Press Secretary, speaking for all of America, has stated that we’re working with Israel to consider sanctioning the ICC.

A picture is worth a thousand words. Taken from Reuters.

I’ll leave you with a double standard. According to official numbers, Russia has killed more than 12,000 civilians in Ukraine. Admittedly, the actual number is probably several times higher, but you could say the same about the civilian death toll in Gaza. To be clear, I do not support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, even if my country’s next President does. I think Putin should be locked away in The Hague, no questions asked.

But while Russia is the scum of the Earth for invading Ukraine and is rightfully condemned and sanctioned, Israel continues to get U.S. support even under Biden. I think that demonstrates that the United States doesn’t care about human rights at all. Russia is our enemy, so they must be sanctioned for committing genocide in Ukraine. Israel is our ally, so we must support them as they commit genocide in Gaza. When you hold such inconsistent positions on two conflicts, it’s no surprise that the world treats your word as though it has no meaning.

Then again, U.S. foreign policy does a 180° every four years. Maybe I’ll write about that in the future. For now, as sickening as it is that Trump will be our next President, I won’t shed a tear if Biden is locked away for his support of a genocide. He was willing to back Israel even to the point where he ensured the destruction of his own country, and that’s not what a patriot does. So I’ll say this from a leftist perspective:

This, but unironically. Taken from Amazon.com.

Relevant Song Lyrics: “World On Fire” by Daughtry

A wildfire burns at Blue Hills Reservation in Milton, Massachusetts. Courtesy of CBS Boston.

Because I’m posting this on a Thursday, it’s time for an episode of Relevant Song Lyrics. Given that it hasn’t rained here in literal weeks and wildfires are burning all over a state that isn’t supposed to get them, and given that we just elected a climate-denying President, I thought “World On Fire” by Daughtry was an appropriate choice. Lots of people don’t like Daughtry, which I don’t understand. But here we go.

Going down like a dead man walking

One step from a body in a coffin

Just one, one of the fallen

This passage perfectly reflects the state of American democracy, if you could even call it a democracy at this point. Even though we just had an election in 2024, and even though we might still have elections in 2026 and 2028, they won’t be free and fair. We’ll be a “zombie democracy” like Turkey or Hungary until our democracy is in the grave for good, just like in Russia.

Waking up to a blood moon, howling

Can't drown it out, even with the medicine

Tearing through me like a bullet of adrenaline

In my case, I’m on anti-anxiety meds, and they don’t help. Not well enough. I just want to lash out at my country for electing such a dangerous man again. Every time I wake up, I’m reminded that Donald Trump is the President-elect of the United States, and I feel sick to my stomach. We knew exactly who he was, and we still gave him the popular vote. I may not have voted for him, but I’m still responsible.

Arms heavy, face down on a deathbed

Blame the gods while choking on the violence

In the end, silence is deafening

I take this to mean that the Trump voters are going to blame Democrats for everything that goes wrong in the next four years. When the economy doesn’t improve (or gets worse - Harris lost despite a booming economy!), the red-hats are going to blame the politicians who claimed to resist this orange fascist as opposed to the orange fascist. If bird flu goes south and turns into another pandemic, then they’ll literally be choking.

Marjorie Taylor Greene “boldly” claims that the Democrats created Hurricane Helene and can control the weather. Image taken from Rolling Stone.

Can you hear the crowd like a thousand sirens?

In the night like thunder striking

The sickness is rising, the angels are crying

That's the sound of a world on fire

Admittedly, I don’t expect there to be very many protests this time around. Trump won the popular vote, so he can at least claim some “legitimacy” even if he shouldn’t have been allowed to run in the first place. Besides, most Democrats are too scared to protest. I know I am. In terms of “the sickness rising”, just look at HHS Secretary-designate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has some serious brain worms. Whether or not you take the word “angels” literally (which I don’t, not really), it’s clear that those of us who want to do good in the world are distraught right now. And why shouldn’t we be? That’s exactly what a world on fire looks like, as Chris Daughtry reminds us.

Stressed out, head trauma, took a beating

Takes more than a pill to numb the feeling

It’s been said before, but the United States is almost surgically designed to keep you stressed out. Even though we’re supposedly the richest country in the world, our life expectancy is on the decline, That should be a national scandal, especially when one party continuously pushes policies that make it this way. It’s been said that half the country couldn’t afford a surprise $400 expense, which is pretty damning when four hundred dollars isn’t that much money in the grand scheme of things. And again, my anti-anxiety medication doesn’t do much to make me stress out less. At this point I mostly take it because I feel dizzy if I don’t.

Bang, bang, no mercy for the healing

Oh, twenty dead without a fight, without a reason

Twenty more in a cop car, bleeding

All tryna win a war without a meaning

The first two lines of this passage probably refer to the United States’ gun violence crisis. And yes, it is a crisis of our own making. There’s no mercy for those who are injured but survive mass shootings, as they often have obscene medical bills. That’s the only thing more American than mass shootings. 

The children at Sandy Hook or Robb Elementary, the concert-goers at the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Vegas, or the bowlers in Lewiston, Maine (a shooting that’s pretty much been memory-holed even though it’s the 10th-deadliest to date)...they weren’t fighting anyone at all. In all four of these cases, no concrete motive was determined for the massacre, not that that means anything. They’re just dead without a reason. And don’t even get me started on police brutality. In fact, this song was written in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the George Floyd protests.

The George Floyd Protests in 2020. Thanks to the GOP, they accomplished nothing other than banning discussion of racism in schools.

So yes. The world is truly on fire, and what’s more, half the American public are arsonists. If human civilization still exists at the end of Trump’s term (and that’s a big if), and if there is to be any accountability at all for those responsible, I blame the voters just as much as the politicians. Trump would be a deranged old man whining on Truth Social if not for the tens of millions who were frothing at the mouth to put him back in the Oval Office. And they got their wish. The world is burning, and Americans lit the match. And if I believed in hell, we’d all be going there.