things to be thankful for in these dark times

let’s appreciate the good, and mock the stupid

topmost, I’m thankful to be surrounded by an amazing, supportive community of readers and commenters. yesterday’s post about Ms. Spouse’s homecoming generated over a thousand comments and emails. thank you all so much — from the both of us.

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I’m thankful for Democratic Governors like JB Pritzker and Gavin Newsom, who are refusing to obey in advance — and are vowing to hold the line against Donny’s fascist agenda.

“we also want to make sure that there isn’t a violation of peoples’ rights with raids, for example, that are done in coordination with local law enforcement — on people who are, frankly, holding down jobs and have been in this country for many, many years. we think that’s improper, and in Illinois, that’s not something that we would condone. there’s been some talk about using other states’ National Guards, red state National Guards, to somehow come into a blue state and try to enforce these new, Stephen-Miller-inspired rules, and that’s something that we’re just not going to accept.”

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I’m thankful for lawyers like Marc Elias, who will be doing all that is humanly possible to fight the Trumpist agenda.

“Donald Trump and the cynics want us to believe that he is all-powerful, and that if you fight back you will lose. he wants you to believe that if you fight back you may face danger. and he wants you to believe that it won’t matter, because he is in control of everything — and it is not true. it is time for us to build not a resistance but an opposition — something that is durable, something that will last for four years, and beyond. and we need to build that opposition now, and we need to all gird ourselves for the long run.”

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I’m thankful that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez exists.

“I don’t have marching orders for you right now. my marching order would basically be to find your safe network of people, to find your pod, to find your community. we have to do a lot of community building. and by that, I don’t just mean ‘organizing,’ politically. I mean active community building. we are in a position where the isolation of a capitalist system, the isolation produced by covid, just where we are as a society, people working three or four jobs just to make ends meet. we do not have community. and, believe it or not, community, whether it’s your church or mosque or temple, whether it’s a knitting group, whether it’s your dinner circle, building that community is actually far more transformative, and far more important than you may realize.”

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I’m thankful that I’m not a science-denying conspiracy loon who imagines that heroin is some super fucking awesome kind of study aid.

“I was at the bottom of my class. I started doing heroin, I went to the top of my class. suddenly, I could sit still.”

kids, don’t do heroin.

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I’m thankful that my senator isn’t a useless bag of hair.

Senator Hairbag forgot to mention that Donny Convict wants to cancel the Constitution.

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I’m thankful that Holy Mike Johnson is going to have a miserable year.

President-elect Donald Trump is set to take office in January with a razor-thin GOP majority in the House of Representatives that offers Republicans barely any margin of error.

Johnson, according to the ABC News reporters, “has pleaded with Trump to avoid taking any more House members for his administration.”

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I’m thankful that I’m not a day-drunk dumpster fire who has methodically fucked his own life right into the shitter.

“the reality is, I have no cash. it’s all tied up. so right now, if I wanted to call a taxi cab, I can’t do it. I don’t have a credit card. I don’t have a checking account. I have no place I can go take cash out, except the little bit that I saved, and it’s getting down to almost nothing.”

boo fucking hoo, Rudy Colludy. here, enjoy the world’s tiniest violin.

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I’m thankful that I’m not one of the worthless scribblers of the corporate-controlled press.

it’s essential work you’re doing, NY Times, sanewashing and normalizing a confederacy of horse-goo-guzzling sewer clowns. enjoy covering the coming bird flu epidemic.

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I’m thankful that I’m not a spite-fueled, broken-inside man-baby who has never known a single moment of joy in his entire miserable life.

by the way, here’s how a real president commemorates Thanksgiving.

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I’m thankful that I’m not in a cult.

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I’m thankful that I’m not stupid enough to believe the asinine “war on Thanksgiving” drivel that Fox News trots out every year at this time.

from 2019: “Trump vows Thanksgiving name won’t be changed.”

from 2020: “they also turn their neighbors in, in China, in the Soviet Union. this is so un-American, and right now, just keeping your family’s Thanksgiving traditions is an act of civil disobedience. the home is sacred. what we do inside of our homes is our business, and I want the government out of it. and believe me, big government — Marxism — this is the one space they’ve been trying to penetrate for a long time.”

covid protocols, that’s what they’re whining about — in the middle of a pandemic that killed over a million Americans. damn those Marxists for trying to keep you safe.

from 2023: “we went to go buy a turkey today. it was ninety dollars — for a turkey! … it’s all a choice by Joe Biden.”

spoiler alert: yeah, no.

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have a great Thanksgiving, everyone!

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here’s your daily reminder that I can be found on Blue Sky at this link.

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this is going to be my closing message for the foreseeable future:

practice self-care. do what you need to do to keep sane. if that means you need to disengage with my daily posts for a while, I get it. this community of ours will still be here when you return.

to all the people who have signed on in the days since the election, welcome aboard. settle in as we all try to deal with the shitfuckery that’s ahead of us.

we are all in this together, and we are all here for each other.