Scripturient

Trump: America’s Mussolini

While Trump’s racist, misogynist running mate, JD “Shady” Vance, in 2016 called Donald Trump, “America’s Hitler,” (before he became a Trump sycophant) it was really a dictator too far. Trump, the racist felon and serial liar candidate for the US presidency, is far more like Benito Mussolini than Hitler in many ways. Of course, I realize their political careers are not parallel and that Trump has not yet managed to be the dictator he so clearly plans to be if re-elected (a dictator only on … click below for more ↓

A Time for Political Optimism at Last

After many dreary months of the relentless, pounding negativity, insults, accusations, lies, deflections, racism, and rage-farming of a convicted felon, tax cheat, and serial liar Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, we now have a significant counterbalance to give us — including those of us outside the USA — hope for America’s political and social future: Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. Wow. What a change. Instead of the vituperative MAGA firehose of lies, insults, slurred and mispronounced words, cognitive slips, more lies, racist and misogynist insults, sleazy … click below for more ↓

Trump and the Trojans

Donald Trump — aging, obese convicted felon with more criminal trials pending, serial liar, serial adulterer, business fraud, con man, tax cheat, rapist who boasted about his sexual assaults, misogynist who boasted about it and continually insults women, racist, bankrupted casino and hotel owner, scam artist, spray-painted sneaker and printed-in-China bible salesman, thief of classified documents, grifter who stole from a children’s cancer charity to line his own pockets, indicted four times, con artist who scammed students at his fake university, wannabe dictator in serious … click below for more ↓

No Dog in That Fight, But I Still Care About the Results

As a Canadian, I can only watch US politics from afar, albeit with unease. My comments on events and issues there are those from an armchair observer who has no dog in the ongoing, and increasingly bitter partisan fights. Like a lot of voices on social media, mine is that of an outsider. But… like any citizen of this planet who is concerned about our collective future, I have an interest in the outcome of the upcoming US election, just as I have one in … click below for more ↓

Trump, Ozymandias, and the Hubris of Ambition

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! wrote Percy Bysshe Shelley in his 1817 poem, Ozymandias, the ancient king who called himself in the poem, the ” king of kings.” I was thinking about that poem as I watched the news that an AR-15-wielding, fellow MAGA Repugnican had shot at the convicted felon and wannabe-dictator Donald Trump at one of his hate rallies. Do you know the name of the person the shooter actually killed? Or the two people seriously wounded? Of course not, … click below for more ↓

Council Screws Collingwood Residents. Again.

Like many other residents in council chamber yesterday, I was deeply disappointed but not surprised by our council’s decision to continue with staff’s anti-resident/anti-environment plan to deforest Sixth Street to make it a better speedway for cars passing through town. The council chamber was full to capacity with people upset with the plan, hoping council would recognize their anger and distress, hoping council would listen, would prefer 21st-century pro-resident, green-street planning, and reconsider the previous pro-vehicle/anti-tree plan. But they didn’t. The majority of council sided … click below for more ↓

The Very Model of Bureaucratic Inefficiency

Here is the textbook model of bureaucratic inefficiency and council sluggishness that deserves a satirical Gilbert and Sullivan song of its own: Collingwood is conducting a “speed limit survey” through its user-hostile website. What’s inefficient about that, you ask… well, first consider the timeline. This survey is so complicated, so difficult to assemble, so challenging to put online it has taken the town three years to get all of the four vague questions online and ask residents what they think about the idea.* Yes, I … click below for more ↓

Review: The Design of Books

Like with so many other technologies in our lives — computers, cars, bread machines, flushing toilets, DVD players, convection ovens — most consumers don’t know or appreciate how books are made, or why they are made in such familiar shapes and structure. In more than four millennia since humans invented writing, the way that writing has been recorded and shared has evolved from clay tablets to the modern paperback and hardcover. Because we are so used to seeing and reading books, few of us stop … click below for more ↓

Christofascists Make Their Move in Oklahoma

The MAGA pseudo-Christians in the USA have recently been making bold moves toward implementing their oppressive theocracy and making Gilead a reality in their states. Louisiana required one of the two biblical Ten Commandments to be posted in every classroom (albeit without identifying which of the two even though they have significant differences). Now Oklahoma has decreed that “all schools must incorporate the Bible and the Ten Commandments in curriculums.” No one is surprised that when ranking education in the 50 states, these are always … click below for more ↓

The Litter That’s Killing Everything and Everyone

Four and a half trillion. That’s how many cigarette butts are estimated to be littered every year on our streets, sidewalks, parks, downtowns, parking lots, lawns, and everywhere else smokers feel entitled to leave them. That’s 4,500,000,000,000 pieces of toxic, non-biodegradable, chemical-soaked plastic waste that smokers — and smokers alone — pollute the earth with every year. That’s litter deliberately left to poison the water, kill plants and wildlife, and remain in the environment for more than a decade, doing their damage. An estimated 1.69 … click below for more ↓

Donald Trump and the Art of Victimhood

Persecution. It’s a deeply-ingrained core component of the myth of Christian history, and well-weaponized in modern times by rightwing politicians who depend on the support from both the faithful and the pseudo-Christian Talibangelists. We’re under attack, they claim, justifying their own attacks on other faiths and non-believers. They use the imagined threat of persecution against Christians to justify book banning and book burning, forced prayer in schools, cuts to education, closing libraries, cuts to healthcare, bans on same-sex marriage, and restrictions on women’s reproductive rights. … click below for more ↓

Pro-Car Planning is Destroying Collingwood’s Environment

I warned you: Council would support the anti-resident/anti-environment/pro-vehicle attitude that pervades town hall. I warned you they would deforest Sixth Street to make it a bigger, faster speedway for vehicles. I warned you they would add more pollution, more noise, and more traffic on Sixth Street. I warned you that they would lower property values there. I warned you they would make it more unhealthy for residents, for our water, and for trees and wildlife. And they did. CollingwoodToday has the sad story of how … click below for more ↓

A 30-Year-Old Warning About Rising Fascism

Convicted felon and insurrection supporter Donald Trump claimed in a media conference after his trial that, because the justice system works, Americans are “living in a fascist state.” It’s not the first time Trump has used the term to describe opponents or their accomplishments. Last month he told donors Biden was “running a Gestapo administration” and added that Biden is “surrounded by fascists around the Oval Office.” But Trump and his supporters have been using the term to describe opponents — including those in his … click below for more ↓

May 30: The Day Justice Prevailed

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! He chortled in his joy. Thirty-four criminal charges and found guilty for every one of them. Thirty four! Of course, I don’t have to tell you the name of the person, since the whole world knows whose recent court case I’m writing about. And have been celebrating about, ever since the verdict came in.* May 30, 2024, was a historic day everyone will remember like they remember 9/11, the day Kennedy was shot, and the day the Canadian hockey team … click below for more ↓