[A baby rabbit hiding behind a weed in our back yard. Since the major landscaping work last year, the flora has rebounded astoundingly, and this has brought an influx of fauna, like the wee beastie above.]

Oh, what a week. Thanks to the Supreme Court’s recent decision, the USA is now officially a monarchy. The USA has always, thanks to our style of capitalism, been a neofeudalist country, but the confirmation that the President can do no wrong (as long as his actions align with the wishes of the religious and moneyed interests which determine who gets to hold which office) makes the USA no different from any other failed state run by a dictator. And the difference between an authoritarian democracy and a straight-up monarchy is really just splitting hairs.

Reading

Many years ago I picked up M. John Harrison’s Viriconium. I thought I had read it cover to cover, but upon re-opening the book I realize I never made it through the first section. This is unfortunate, as Viriconium is currently one of my favorite reads of the year.

Writing

I had the week off from work, and I managed to sneak in some writing time, mostly world-building and some thoughts about the recent confirmation by SCOTUS that the USA is, in fact, a fascist state.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Language, Politics
Setting: Wilderness
Genre: Solarpunk

Listening

William Elliott Whitmore, “Old Devils”

Interesting Links

• “How white victimhood is shaping a second Trump term” (Zack Beauchamp, Vox) – This is an interesting title, because never in the history of the USA have white people been victims because they are white. Never in the history of the USA have white people been repressed, oppressed, or marginalized for the color of their skin, in any context, at any level. Never once. The white supremacists and christian nationalists (who are really all the same people) at the core of Trump’s fan base are indulging, as they always do, in “DARVO” (Deny, Accuse, Reverse Victim and Offender). But since the American version of conservatism is nothing more than the continuation of the Confederacy, which itself was nothing more than the continuation of European Feudalism on American soil, the white supremacist mindset is at the heart of every conservative idea and action. If that were not the case, there would be no uproar about the teaching of Critical Race Theory. QED.