The Loquacious Pup has come in for a visit from the Red State where she is pursuing her graduate studies. Between trying to work, picking her up from the airport yesterday, and getting a flu and covid vax on Monday, I probably ended up exhausting my 63 year old frame. Meaning, yada yada yada, that I was remiss in putting up my annual Festivus post.
One would think I could handle a little vax and the physical challenge it presented at that this point, given that this was the very year that I set my personal distance record not once (67.8 miles in June) but twice (83.6 miles in October), part of a year of 6 marathons (bringing the lifetime total to 95) and 5 ultras., But… time marches on, and the reality of being social security eligible does assert itself once in a while.
And so… on with the opera?
We have crossed the 11-month mark of “America’s Demolition Expert President” Donald Trump’s continued wrecking ball presidency. Now that I think about it, the destruction of the East Wing of the White House really is just about a perfect metaphor for El Presidente’s mission of dismantling not just the administrative state, but the United States in general.
And so without a decent segue, I note that the recent disclosures under the “Epstein Files Transparency Act” have been “murky.” That law, signed by Donald Trump no less, was presumably intended to ferret out the rich and powerful men who, along with the late Jeffrey Epstein, were part of the world’s largest pedophile ring (that didn’t involve a D.C. pizza shop), but still involved “The Clintons and the Jews.” Nonetheless, some felt the disclosures might end the Trump Presidency, but right now at least, they do not appear to be changing the trajectory that the nation is currently on. That trajectory would be “straight to hell,” as the economic consequences of horrifically stupid policies like tariffs and billionaire tax cuts and dismantling health care subsidies still haven’t hit, nor has the full brunt of putting a psychopathic anti-vaxxer in charge of public health.
And so here we are, with around a week left of 2025, a truly consequential (though not in a good way) year in American politics and probably in world history. The year ends with a dubious non-disclosure disclosure of “the Epstein files,” El Presidente adding his own name to the Kennedy Center, and El Presidente promising to name a new class of battleships after himself just as he continues murdering Latin American fisherman in the name of a made up war against made up Venezuelan drug gangs and seizing Venezuelan oil tankers as maybe we prepare for war against Venezuela (coincidentally the holder of the world’s largest oil reserves). Obviously, global warming, whatever that is, and increased precarity of almost everyone except the world’s billionaires who have never done better also rolls on as we close out the first quarter of this century.
And so, we look forward to the national feats of strength. Happy holidays, be it a Merry Christmas, Happy Kwanza, belated Happy Hanukkah, or of course… Festivus for the rest of us.
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