The End of the Second Republic

Waiting to cut out the deadwood.

Waiting to clean up the city.

Waiting to follow the worms.

Waiting to put on a black shirt.

Waiting to weed out the weaklings.

Waiting to smash in their windows

And kick in their doors.

Waiting for the final solution

To strengthen the strain.

Waiting to follow the worms.

Waiting to turn on the showers

And fire the ovens.

Waiting for the queers and the coons

and the reds and the jews.

Waiting to follow the worms.

Would you like to see Britannia

Rule again, my friend?

All you have to do is follow the worms.

Would you like to send our colored cousins

Home again, my friend?

All you need to do is follow the worms.

-Roger Waters, Waiting for the Worms

So, how's it going this lovely morning, the 162nd anniversary of Pickett's Charge?

The high water mark of the Confederacy, you say? Turns out Faulkner's elegiac observation that all was lost for those who sought to preserve the old Southern order in that moment may have been a tad hasty.

Here's a trusted advisor of the current chief executive, opining on one possible consequence of the opening of our first national concentration camp since they closed Manzanar:

You see, there are roughly 65 million Latinos living in the U.S. right now. Get it? We can cycle them all through the first concentration camp, in Florida of course, with their journey ending in some alligator's alimentary tract. Or maybe a python. I hear the Everglades are full of those, as well.

A couple days ago the Spray-On Sun King visited the camp with the Cabinet Member Most Likely to Have Cheered in the Theater When They Shot Ol' Yeller (probably too long of a moniker) and the Wee Governor, all laughs and back slapping as they prepare to open our very own Dachau for business. Now accepting reservations!

And yes, he made it all about himself. Because of course he did.

These people are beyond despicable. All of them. I'd wish ball cancer on everyone in the photo, but they lack the gonads to fall victim to that. Well, I mean, maybe her.

While they were yucking it up and taking selfies in front of the showers and the ovens, he cut off arms shipments to Ukraine, pretty much assuring that feisty little country will fall behind something far worse than the Iron Curtain. Look out, Baltic States! You're next!

And in a few minutes the House is expected to pass the BBB, officially ending the New Deal and the Great Society in one fell swoop. Because this is what Jesus always said he wanted.

One might expect that DJT's approval ratings would plummet in the midst of all this. Instead, they're actually higher than they were at the same point in his first term. Because that's the country we are, friends. We have met the enemy, and he is us.

This is why I've tried to stay away from the news.

[watching maybe the largest fly I've ever seen walk up one of the eight foot windows in my new home office. What could he have been eating to grow so enormous? Is there a carcass somewhere in the condo we haven't yet found?]

LGM, for its part, reposted an interesting historical analysis by a non-historian.

https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2025/07/the-third-american-republic

The basic premise is that we're living through a transition from the Second to the Third American Republic. The first stood for everything that was tossed in the hopper during Reconstruction, the second began at Reconstruction and contemplated an America that expanded the rights of previously disenfranchised people on the condition that our structures protect the privileged few. Now the country arrives at a crossroads as we abandon that rather minimal commitment and embark on another civil war to determine what kind of country we truly wish to become. God help us all.