A Funk

"The totalitarian, to me, is the enemy - the one that's absolute, the one that wants control over the inside of your head, not just your actions and your taxes."

-Christopher Hitchens

A beautiful day out there, cloudless and seventy degrees.

And yet, what a funk I'm in.

And ridiculously enough, it's mostly about politics.

Last night we watched Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, one of the funniest and most trenchant shows on television these days. Each week, Oliver unpacks one topic in meticulously researched detail, his targets ranging from presidential pardon power to payday loans.

The week's offering detailed the destruction of New College of Florida.

We laughed and some of the absurdities, but I mostly found myself enraged and tearing up. That was a great school for a particular bent of student. The kids who went there and their families were mostly geeks, harmless and a threat to no one.

Which was all the more reason for the bullies and vandals who now rule Florida to dismantle the place and replace its vibe by creating a right-wing sports school. They didn't even have a mascot when Jim and PT attended, proudly displaying their "empty set" logo and proclaiming on t-shirts that their sports program was "still undefeated" (because they never had one).

I had been trying to cultivate indifference to Florida, but the relationship is too long and too deep for that. Disappointment turns to loathing. My neighbors literally all voted for this. Let nothing good happen there until they repent.

Then I flipped to the NBA Finals at MSG just in time for the national anthem and the image of our bloated chief executive aping a military salute on the jumbotron to a chorus of boos from the crowd. No one wanted him there, save the oligarch who owns both the team and the arena (where I graduated from NYU three weeks ago today). Mamdani had the cheapest ticket in the house, standing-room only in the nosebleeds. That is leadership.

Of course, because everything Dear Leader touches turns to excrement, the Knicks' thirteen game winning streak ended last night.

Finally came the news that ICE, newly funded by the despicable Republicans, plans to use a chunk of that money to invade NYC and teach the brownies and the libtards that no one, no place is immune from their unique brand of violence. The City felt like a safe place for P and me; now it's just one more venue to get politically raped by the fascists now running the country.

In fact, it all feels like one big violation of one group of Americans by another, the latter starting from the premise that the folks they are violating aren't really Americans, using some sort of sick, racist, sexist "no true Scotsman" measure of citizenship and personhood. Maybe they can clear out a chunk of the 100s up in Harlem and resettle them with Afrikaners.

And it's not going to end in November--they're already gleefully trying to undermine any attempt to oust them from power. There will be irregularities.

What avenues of resistance are left once a majority of us are disenfranchised? I think we all know what happens when political solutions are no longer viable. And that's what they want, they really desire that the victims lash out and give them an excuse to go all the way.

So yeah, not a great day, no matter how nice the weather.

I think I'll go play golf over lunch. It's impossible to hit a golf ball with MAGA roaming between one's ears.