‘The most uneducated buffoon in history stands at a podium, bloated with self-importance, lips pursed like a carnival barker ready to sell turd milk to the unsuspecting. He grins a grotesque smirk stretched across his face as he scrawls his name onto a hollow decree, a sham celebration of the dismantling of knowledge itself. The Department of Education falls, not with a bang, but with wheezing verbs, suffocated under the weight of his own staggering ignorance. Surrounding him are the usual suspects: cowards in expensive suits, servile sycophants clapping like trained seals, and racist opportunistic ghouls picking clean the bones of democracy. Liars, fools, and thieves all parasites fattening themselves on the hardships of the many. They stand in rigid formation, dead-eyed and soulless, their allegiance sworn not to country, not to principle, but to power, and the dark, festering rot that clings to it. And there he is the convicted wrong, the living embodiment of septic tank spew, his voice a noxious fog of grift and grievance. He lectures the world on right and wrong, irony clawing at the walls, desperate to escape the grotesque theatre of his moral void. The stomach turns, the air curdles, and for a moment, history itself recoils watching, in horror, as the great American experiment teeters on the precipice, led by a man who couldn’t spell “precipice” if his life depended on it.’

‘More fool me! Here I was thinking nothing that America’s Trump administration could do or say, no matter how politically and morally bankrupt, no matter how venal or violent, was capable of shocking me any longer. Then I woke to today’s news that one of the Trump cabinet’s bigger boofheads – the uber Christian nationalist, crusader-fantasist and “secretary of war” Pete Hegseth had announced that America would have a public firing squad execution of murderer Nidal Hasan. Reckless global militarisation including a threat at the UN to annihilate Iran, a litany of sexual misconduct allegations against the commander in chief, claims of blatant presidential corruption … they have all ceased to surprise and shock us, so inured has the world become to Donald Trump’s monstrous narcissism and maladministration. But now we have execution TV. Tune in to the livestream on Thursday 3 December to watch a military firing squad shoot the life out of Hasan, the former army psychiatrist who killed 13 people at a US army base in 2009.State-sanctioned killing as entertainment! Yes, the world’s supposedly greatest (or formerly greatest) democracy has arrived at an horrific new moral nadir. The fact that America remains Australia and the west’s most relied-upon and trusted ally despite the global wrecking ball the second Trump administration has proved to be, was already cause for deep concern. But being so closely allied to a country that now wants to turn the execution of a human being – no matter what their crimes – into a live entertainment event, promises to redefine depravity. Given that American states continue to execute so many convicted criminals, where might the United States ultimately draw the line? No doubt the ilk of Hegseth in American society – and elsewhere – will count down the days until they can tune in to the live coverage of Hasan’s execution in droves. Might the audience cry out for more – for livestream cameras in the death chambers across the land of the free? How would this populist administration respond? If you think it is a fanciful question, consider how far American governance and presidential values have slid in the moral murk in the past two years alone. Meanwhile, it is hard to contemplate a more audacious appeal to American society’s darker angels than this looming entertainment event. But there we are. We have arrived. Pass the popcorn, Don, and Pete! It would be heartening today to hear political leaders the world over condemn Hegseth and Trump’s planned introduction of Ghoul TV. But let us please start in Australia, where federal governments have for a long-time opposed capital punishment – let alone turning it into a public spectacle. Will the prime minister and his senior ministers stand up and condemn without qualification this depraved plan for America to livestream an execution? What about the leaders of other political parties here, some of whom have, after all, supported capital punishment? We are waiting. Meanwhile, how much further into the moral quagmire must America wallow before Australia rethinks its craven military dependence on Washington – not least via the reckless shackling of our strategic reliance to the US via the $368bn (and counting) Aukus submarine deal? Announcing America’s decision to turn killing into a form of entertainment, Hegseth said: “It was a radical Islamist attack in uniform inside the ranks, and so he’s going to get a firing squad of soldiers, as it should be, and we’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public, because people need to understand there’s serious consequences for these types of things.” America’s defence department later confirmed the execution would be livestreamed. This represents a significant lurch in the US from civilisation towards savagery. You cannot choose your family. But you can choose your friends and allies. And you can also tell them firmly when they have careened off the ethical rails. Actions speak louder than words. And this planned livestreamed execution says it all about what is happening in America today, opening the window ever wider on the Trump administration’s moral vacuity and its paucity of human decency.’ • Paul Daley is a Guardian Australia columnist

Old but still relevant."The US constitution is in peril. Civil and human rights are being trampled upon. The economy is in disarray. Federal judges in more than 120 cases so far have sought to stop Trump – judges appointed by Republicans as well as Democrats, some appointed by Trump himself – but the regime is either ignoring or appealing their orders. It has even arrested a municipal judge in Milwaukee amid a case involving an undocumented defendant. Recently, Judge J Harvie Wilkinson III of the court of appeals for the fourth circuit – an eminent conservative Reagan appointee who is revered by the Federalist Society – issued a scathing rebuke to the Trump regime. In response to its assertion that it can abduct residents of the US and put them into foreign prisons without due process, Wilkinson wrote: If today the Executive claims the right to deport without due process and in disregard of court orders, what assurance will there be tomorrow that it will not deport American citizens and then disclaim responsibility to bring them home? And what assurance shall there be that the Executive will not train its broad discretionary powers upon its political enemies? The threat, even if not the actuality, would always be present, and the Executive’s obligation to ‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed’ would lose its meaning. Wilkinson’s fears are already being realized. Ice recently deported three US citizens – aged two, four and seven – when their mothers were deported to Honduras. One of the children, who has stage 4 cancer, was sent out of the US without medication or consultation with doctors. Meanwhile, the regime continues to attack all the independent institutions in this country that have traditionally served as buffers against tyranny – !universities, non-profits, lawyers and law firms, the media, science and researchers, libraries and museums, the civil service and independent agencies – threatening them with extermination or loss of funding if they do not submit to its oversight and demands. Trump has even instructed the Department of Justice to investigate ActBlue, the platform that handles the fundraising for almost all Democratic candidates and the issues Democrats support. We are no longer Democrats or Republicans. We are either patriots fighting the regime or we are complicit in its tyranny. There is no middle ground Meanwhile, Trump is actively destroying the economy. His proposed tariffs are already raising prices. His attacks on the Fed chief, Jerome Powell, are causing tremors around the world. Trump wants total power, even at the cost of our democracy and economy. His polls are plummeting yet many Americans are still in denial. “He’s getting things done!” some say. “He’s tough and strong!” Every American with any shred of authority must loudly and boldly explain the danger we are in. A few Democratic members and progressives in Congress (Bernie Sanders, AOC, Cory Booker, Chris Van Hollen, Chris Murphy) have expressed outrage, but most seem oddly quiet. Granted, they have no direct power to stop what is occurring but they cannot and must not appear to acquiesce. They need to be heard, every day – protesting, demanding, resisting, refusing. Barack Obama has spoken up at least once, to his credit, but where is my old boss, Bill Clinton? Where is George W Bush? Where are their former vice-presidents – Al Gore and Dick Cheney? Where are their former cabinet members? They all must be heard, too. What about Republican members of Congress? Are none willing to stand up against what is occurring? And what of Republican governors and state legislators? If there were ever a time for courage and integrity, it is now. Their silence is inexcusable. Over 400 university presidents have finally issued a letter opposing “the unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education”. Good. Now they must speak out against the overreach endangering all of American democracy. Hundreds of law firms have joined a friend-of-the-court brief in support of the law firm Perkins Coie’s appeal of the regime’s demands. Fine. Now, they along with the American Bar Association and every major law school must sound the alarm about Trump’s vindictive and abusive use of the justice department. America’s religious leaders have a moral obligation to speak out. They have a spiritual duty to their congregations and to themselves to make their voices heard. The leaders of American business – starting with Jamie Dimon, the chair and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, who in normal times has assumed the role of spokesperson for American business – have been conspicuously silent. Of course they fear Trump’s retribution. Of course they hope for a huge tax cut. But these hardly excuse their seeming assent to the destruction of American democracy. We have witnessed what can happen in just the first 100 days. I’m not at all sure we can wait until the 2026 midterm elections and hope that Democrats take back at least one chamber of Congress. At the rate this regime is wreaking havoc, too much damage will have been done by then. The nation is tottering on the edge of dictatorship. We are no longer Democrats or Republicans. We are either patriots fighting the regime or we are complicit in its tyranny. There is no middle ground.! Soon, I fear, the regime will openly defy the supreme court. Americans must be mobilized into such a huge wave of anger and disgust that members of the House are compelled to impeach Trump (for the third time) and enough senators are moved to finally convict him. Then this shameful chapter of American history will end.”

‘Behold. The festering carcass of American rot shoved into an ill-fitting suit: the sleaze of a conman, the cowardice of a draft dodger, the gluttony of a parasite, the racism of a Klansman, the sexism of a back-alley creep, the ignorance of a bar-stool drunk, and the greed of a hedge-fund ghoul all spray-painted orange and paraded like a prize hog at a county fair. Not a president. Not even a man. Just the diseased distillation of everything this country swears it isn’t but has always been arrogance dressed up as exceptionalism, stupidity passed off as common sense, cruelty sold as toughness, greed exalted as ambition, and corruption worshiped like gospel. It is America’s shadow made flesh, a rotting pumpkin idol proving that when a nation kneels before money, power, and spite, it doesn’t just lose its soul it shits out this bloated obscenity and calls it a leader.’

Oliver Kornetzke

‘The most uneducated buffoon in history stands at a podium, bloated with self-importance, lips pursed like a carnival barker ready to sell turd milk to the unsuspecting. He grins a grotesque smirk stretched across his face as he scrawls his name onto a hollow decree, a sham celebration of the dismantling of knowledge itself. The Department of Education falls, not with a bang, but with wheezing verbs, suffocated under the weight of his own staggering ignorance. Surrounding him are the usual suspects: cowards in expensive suits, servile sycophants clapping like trained seals, and racist opportunistic ghouls picking clean the bones of democracy. Liars, fools, and thieves all parasites fattening themselves on the hardships of the many. They stand in rigid formation, dead-eyed and soulless, their allegiance sworn not to country, not to principle, but to power, and the dark, festering rot that clings to it. And there he is the convicted wrong, the living embodiment of septic tank spew, his voice a noxious fog of grift and grievance. He lectures the world on right and wrong, irony clawing at the walls, desperate to escape the grotesque theatre of his moral void. The stomach turns, the air curdles, and for a moment, history itself recoils watching, in horror, as the great American experiment teeters on the precipice, led by a man who couldn’t spell “precipice” if his life depended on it.’

Has he ever said an intelligent thing? “The most uneducated buffoon in history stands at a podium, bloated with self-importance, lips pursed like a carnival barker ready to sell turd milk to the unsuspecting. He grins a grotesque smirk stretched across his face as he scrawls his name onto a hollow decree, a sham celebration of the dismantling of knowledge itself. The Department of Education falls, not with a bang, but with wheezing verbs, suffocated under the weight of his own staggering ignorance. Surrounding him are the usual suspects: cowards in expensive suits, servile sycophants clapping like trained seals, and racist opportunistic ghouls picking clean the bones of democracy. Liars, fools, and thieves all parasites fattening themselves on the hardships of the many. They stand in rigid formation, dead-eyed and soulless, their allegiance sworn not to country, not to principle, but to power, and the dark, festering rot that clings to it. And there he is the convicted wrong, the living embodiment of septic tank spew, his voice a noxious fog of grift and grievance. He lectures the world on right and wrong, irony clawing at the walls, desperate to escape the grotesque theatre of his moral void. The stomach turns, the air curdles, and for a moment, history itself recoils watching, in horror, as the great American experiment teeters on the precipice, led by a man who couldn’t spell “precipice” if his life depended on it.’”

Same in the UK. “Driving through Nazi Germany today- I mean middle England…. Outside Birmingham Airport. And this is what greets people arriving in Britain. Flags everywhere, not as welcome or pride, but as intimidation. Weaponised symbolism. A message that says exclusion before it says hello. Is this how we want to present ourselves to the world? The first thing visitors see is not culture, innovation, or hospitality, but nationalism turned aggressive and hostile. Tourism, trade, investment, students, business confidence. All of it relies on Britain looking open, stable, and serious. Turning national symbols into threats does the opposite. You do not strengthen an economy by making the country look angry and closed. You do not attract growth by signalling fear of outsiders. You do not build pride by turning identity into a warning sign. This is not patriotism. It is posturing. And it makes Britain look smaller, not stronger. So do the news reports of Brits falling off ladders while the country argues about flags instead of fixing what is broken. If you want a weaker economy and a poorer future, keep choosing distraction over reality. That is the path you are on. And when the consequences arrive, I hope those flags come in handy. You may need them for tents sooner than you think. Some councils have paid £75,000 for these flags instead of helping people out on the lead up to Christmas. We should replace them all with rainbow flags in June. I do also think we should start writing refugees welcome on them with permanent markers. A national campaign. Vote Reform to be poorer! Just look at the new reform councils. If you cannot grasp what is being said here, then pause. This is not about flags. It was never about flags. It is about the people holding them. The intent behind them. The way symbols are picked up sharpened and used to hit other people with. The way patriotism gets turned into a weapon and then pointed downward. If you are still arguing about bunting while missing the cruelty, the contempt then that is the point being made. If all you see is cloth and colour and not who is being targeted underneath it then you might be the problem. This shabby, yobbish, and offensive behaviour makes be ashamed of being British.”

Rather old but still very true.“But there’s a reason. There’s a reason. There’s a reason for this, there’s a reason education SUCKS, and it’s the same reason it will never, ever, EVER be fixed. It’s never going to get any better, don’t look for it, be happy with what you’ve got. Because the owners, the owners of this country don’t want that. I’m talking about the real owners now, the BIG owners! The Wealthy… the REAL owners! The big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians. They are irrelevant. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice! You have OWNERS! They OWN YOU. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought, and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying, lobbying, to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I’ll tell you what they don’t want: They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests. That’s right. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table and think about how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. They don’t want that! You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork. And just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shitty jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it, and now they’re coming for your Social Security money. They want your retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street, and you know something? They’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you sooner or later cause they own this fucking place! It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it! You, and I, are not in the big club. By the way, it’s the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head with their media telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy. The table has tilted folks. The game is rigged and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care! Good honest hard-working people; white collar, blue collar it doesn’t matter what color shirt you have on. Good honest hard-working people continue, these are people of modest means, continue to elect these rich cock suckers who don’t give a fuck about you…. they don’t give a fuck about you… they don’t give a FUCK about you. They don’t care about you at all… at all… AT ALL. And nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. That’s what the owners count on. The fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue dick that’s being jammed up their assholes everyday, because the owners of this country know the truth. IT’S CALLED THE AMERICAN DREAM, BECAUSE YOU HAVE TO BE ASLEEP TO BELIEVE IT.” George Carlin

Old but still true.“But there’s a reason. There’s a reason. There’s a reason for this, there’s a reason education SUCKS, and it’s the same reason it will never, ever, EVER be fixed. It’s never going to get any better, don’t look for it, be happy with what you’ve got. Because the owners, the owners of this country don’t want that. I’m talking about the real owners now, the BIG owners! The Wealthy… the REAL owners! The big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians. They are irrelevant. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice! You have OWNERS! They OWN YOU. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought, and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying, lobbying, to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I’ll tell you what they don’t want: They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. Thats against their interests. Thats right. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table and think about how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. They don’t want that! You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork. And just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shitty jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it, and now they’re coming for your Social Security money. They want your retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street, and you know something? They’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you sooner or later cause they own this fucking place! It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it! You, and I, are not in the big club. By the way, it’s the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head with their media telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy. The table has tilted folks. The game is rigged and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care! Good honest hard-working people; white collar, blue collar it doesn’t matter what color shirt you have on. Good honest hard-working people continue, these are people of modest means, continue to elect these rich cock suckers who don’t give a fuck about you….they don’t give a fuck about you… they don’t give a FUCK about you. They don’t care about you at all… at all… AT ALL. And nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. That’s what the owners count on. The fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue dick that’s being jammed up their assholes everyday, because the owners of this country know the truth. It’s called the American Dream,because you have to be asleep to believe it.

George Carlin

I am scared. I am fearful about the extreme ignorance, simple mindedness and gullibility of some of the electorate. They are completely blind to the effects of neoliberalism, which is the main guiding force behind the bumptious, odious and fascist/racist Republican party who believe that competition is the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains that “the market” delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning. Attempts to limit competition are treated as inimical to liberty. Tax and regulation should be minimised; public services should be privatised. The organisation of labour and collective bargaining by trade unions are portrayed as market distortions that impede the formation of a natural hierarchy of winners and losers. Inequality is recast as virtuous: a reward for utility and a generator of wealth, which trickles down to enrich everyone. Efforts to create a more equal society are both counterproductive and morally corrosive. The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve. We internalise and reproduce its creeds. The rich persuade themselves that they acquired their wealth through merit, ignoring the advantages – such as education, inheritance, and class – that may have helped to secure it. The poor begin to blame themselves for their failures, even when they can do little to change their circumstances.

“I used to wonder how it was possible that Trump could have won in 2016 and then again in 2024, given how emotionally toxic, morally vacant, and psychologically mangled he is. I do not wonder anymore. He won for that exact reason. He was not a candidate. He was a mirror. If you were a racist, you found your guy. If you were a misogynist, you found your guy. If money was your only religion, you found your guy. If your heart was armoured shut, you found your guy. If you mocked disabled people, you found your guy. If you hated intelligent people, you found your guy. If you were a rapist, you found your guy. If you enjoyed golden showers with Russian sex workers, you found your guy. If you had done absolutely nothing to confront your emotional wreckage, you found your guy. If you were a serial cheater, you found your guy. If you were a perpetual bankrupt, you found your guy. If you stiffed honest workers, you found your guy. If you were a conman, you found your guy. If you mocked people’s appearances, you found your guy. If you longed for a toxic Daddy, you found your guy. If you were dissociated and disembodied, you found your guy. If you were unconscionable in every economic dealing, you found your guy. If you lied as naturally as breathing, you found your guy. If you had never eaten a green vegetable, you found your guy. If you were a white supremacist, you found your guy. If your ego contained a hole so large not even the presidency could fill it, you found your guy. If you were a sociopath who cared not one molecule about other humans, you found your guy. If he had only two of these traits, he never would have won. He won because he had hundreds of them, and millions of people recognized themselves in at least one. This has never been about Trump. It has always been about the people who finally had their worst instincts validated. Trump did not create the cruelty, he licensed it. He handed out permission slips for hate. He is merely a symptom of a far deeper disease: collective toxicity. If there is one sentence that explains Trump’s power, it is this: “He says the things I’m thinking.” That is the part that should chill the spine. Who knew that tens of millions of Americans were thinking such unconscionable things about their fellow citizens? Who knew how many white men felt so threatened by women and challenged by minorities that they were ready to torch democracy to feel big again? Who knew that after decades of apparent progress on race and gender, so many people were living in seething resentment, waiting for a demagogue to legitimize their worst selves and convert their bitterness into political power? We were living in a fool’s paradise. We aren’t anymore." — Michael Jochum

Which one?

For thousands of years, humanity has asked the same question: Why are we here? Religion answered early, confidently, and critically without evidence. That confidence became its greatest strength. When answers arrive before questions are fully formed, they harden into tradition, authority, and eventually taboo. From an atheist perspective, religion is not mysterious; it is familiar. It follows well-documented psychological, sociological, and evolutionary patterns. Gods look like people. Moral codes mirror ancient survival needs. Sacred texts reflect the scientific ignorance of their era. This is not an insult it is an observation. If religions were divine revelations, why do they look exactly like human inventions? Religions make the most extreme claims imaginable: An invisible, omniscient being created the universe. This being intervenes in daily life. It listens to prayers. It cares deeply about sexual behaviour and dietary rules. It rewards belief and punishes doubt. Yet not even one of these claims has been independently verified. Contrast this with science. Science makes modest claims, backed by evidence, revised when wrong. Religion does the opposite: maximal claims, minimal evidence, zero revision. Why is belief without evidence praised in religion but rejected everywhere else? Would you board a plane built on faith? Accept a diagnosis based on prayer? Trust a bridge designed by revelation. If faith is a virtue, why is it never used outside religion? Prayer is often defended as personal, harmless, and comforting. But when evaluated, prayer performs no better than chance. Large-scale studies, including the STEP Project found no measurable benefit of intercessory prayer and in some cases, those who knew they were being prayed for had worse outcomes, due to anxiety or pressure If prayer worked: Hospitals would replace ICUs with chapels. Insurance companies would track prayer frequency. Casinos would ban worshippers. Instead, prayer functions psychologically: it creates the feeling of control in an indifferent universe. Comforting? Yes. True? No. Religions claim ownership of morality, yet moral behaviour predates organized religion by tens of thousands of years. Empathy, cooperation, and fairness are evolutionary traits observed in social animals, primates, elephants, dolphins. Sacred texts routinely endorse slavery, genocide, misogyny, child marriage, collective punishment. Believers now reject these practices not because of scripture but despite it. If morality comes from God, why has moral progress required ignoring holy texts? Gods evolve because humans do. Early gods-controlled weather and fertility because humans could not. As science advanced, gods retreated. Lightning → electricity. Disease → germs Earth’s creation → cosmology. This pattern is called the God of the Gaps. Every gap filled by evidence is a god quietly evicted. Why do gods always explain what humans do not yet understand and never what they do? The defining feature of religion is not belief in gods; it is belief protected from questioning. Doubt is framed as sin. Scepticism as arrogance. Evidence as temptation. Any idea that cannot be questioned is not sacred it is fragile. Why would a true god fear honest inquiry? Atheism: Not a Belief, a Conclusion Atheism is not the claim “there is no god.” It is the conclusion that no god has met its burden of proof. This is the same standard used everywhere else in life. The universe does not owe us meaning. Reality does not bend to comfort. Truth does not care what we wish were true. And yet, despite no divine supervision, humans create meaning, ethics, art, love, and progress. If life has value only because a god grants it, what does that say about human worth? If your religion were false, how would you know? Why does faith require belief before evidence? Why do all religions resemble the cultures that invented them? If a god exists, why is it indistinguishable from a natural universe? Is truth defined by comfort or by reality? Religion was humanity’s first attempt to understand the universe. It was a starting point, not a destination. Clinging to ancient explanations in an age of evidence is not humility, it is fear of uncertainty. Atheism does not offer eternal rewards or cosmic surveillance. It offers something more demanding: responsibility. No gods watching. No divine safety net. Just humans accountable to each other. And that is why the idea is so threatening.

iT GETS WORSE.

The USA is tottering on the edge of dictatorship. We are no longer Democrats or Republicans. We are either patriots fighting the regime or we are complicit in its tyranny. There is no middle ground. Soon, I fear, the regime will openly defy the supreme court. Americans must be mobilized into such a huge wave of anger and disgust that members of the House are compelled to impeach Trump (for the third time) and enough senators are moved to finally convict him. Then this shameful chapter of American history will end.

Trump’s personal aesthetic is brash, vulgar, and bold, characterized by an obsession with gold-gilded interiors, glossy surfaces, and faux-historic finishes. He simply has no taste. Look at this shithole!

“I used to wonder how it was possible that Trump could have won in 2016 and then again in 2024, given how emotionally toxic, morally vacant, and psychologically mangled he is. I do not wonder anymore. He won for that exact reason. He was not a candidate. He was a mirror. If you were a racist, you found your guy. If you were a misogynist, you found your guy. If money was your only religion, you found your guy. If your heart was armoured shut, you found your guy. If you mocked disabled people, you found your guy. If you hated intelligent people, you found your guy. If you were a rapist, you found your guy. If you enjoyed golden showers with Russian sex workers, you found your guy. If you had done absolutely nothing to confront your emotional wreckage, you found your guy. If you were a serial cheater, you found your guy. If you were a perpetual bankrupt, you found your guy. If you stiffed honest workers, you found your guy. If you were a conman, you found your guy. If you mocked people’s appearances, you found your guy. If you longed for a toxic Daddy, you found your guy. If you were dissociated and disembodied, you found your guy. If you were unconscionable in every economic dealing, you found your guy. If you lied as naturally as breathing, you found your guy. If you had never eaten a green vegetable, you found your guy. If you were a white supremacist, you found your guy. If your ego contained a hole so large not even the presidency could fill it, you found your guy. If you were a sociopath who cared not one molecule about other humans, you found your guy. If he had only two of these traits, he never would have won. He won because he had hundreds of them, and millions of people recognized themselves in at least one. This has never been about Trump. It has always been about the people who finally had their worst instincts validated. Trump did not create the cruelty, he licensed it. He handed out permission slips for hate. He is merely a symptom of a far deeper disease: collective toxicity. If there is one sentence that explains Trump’s power, it is this: “He says the things I’m thinking.” That is the part that should chill the spine. Who knew that tens of millions of Americans were thinking such unconscionable things about their fellow citizens? Who knew how many white men felt so threatened by women and challenged by minorities that they were ready to torch democracy to feel big again? Who knew that after decades of apparent progress on race and gender, so many people were living in seething resentment, waiting for a demagogue to legitimize their worst selves and convert their bitterness into political power? We were living in a fool’s paradise. We aren’t anymore." — Michael Jochum

‘The most uneducated buffoon in history stands at a podium, bloated with self-importance, lips pursed like a carnival barker ready to sell turd milk to the unsuspecting. He grins a grotesque smirk stretched across his face as he scrawls his name onto a hollow decree, a sham celebration of the dismantling of knowledge itself. The Department of Education falls, not with a bang, but with wheezing verbs, suffocated under the weight of his own staggering ignorance. Surrounding him are the usual suspects: cowards in expensive suits, servile sycophants clapping like trained seals, and racist opportunistic ghouls picking clean the bones of democracy. Liars, fools, and thieves all parasites fattening themselves on the hardships of the many. They stand in rigid formation, dead-eyed and soulless, their allegiance sworn not to country, not to principle, but to power, and the dark, festering rot that clings to it. And there he is the convicted wrong, the living embodiment of septic tank spew, his voice a noxious fog of grift and grievance. He lectures the world on right and wrong, irony clawing at the walls, desperate to escape the grotesque theatre of his moral void. The stomach turns, the air curdles, and for a moment, history itself recoils watching, in horror, as the great American experiment teeters on the precipice, led by a man who couldn’t spell “precipice” if his life depended on it.’

Reddit has become unusable. It has moderaters that are censorious, sactimonious, petty and do not care about. free speech. Adverts are becoming unbearable and the riculous time limits drive me mad! The inane Avartars are imbecilic too.

Spot the apostrophe.