Maddow made another good point last night, regarding the upcoming 2024 election. She said it’s shaping up to be a referendum on choosing between indicted felon Trump and the rule of law.

What’s it gonna be, America? It could be this stark choice facing us next year. And if it actually does pan out that way, will we go the way of Turkey and Hungary and Russia—and now maybe even Israel—or will we finally put the final nail in Trump’s political coffin?

A predilection for autocracy may be on the rise, but so is a predilection for resistance, as Maddow notes. The resistance will need to be strong and relentless, because religious conservatism and white paranoia seem to be running on all cylinders right now.

We’ve been listening to Bag Man, the podcast from Rachel Maddow about the investigation and eventual downfall of Spiro Agnew, who ended up resigning the Vice Presidency in 1973, ten months or so before his boss, Richard Nixon, suffered a similarly ignominious fate.

Wow, what a duo. What a time in our history!

What’s not clear is how Agnew’s lawyers were able to make one of their demands stick—the condition that Agnew would serve no jail time—apparently because he was Vice President? This was a non-starter, from their perspective. What I’m not getting is how this was not immediately disregarded as a bridge too far, as something they could put on the table, but also something that could be easily taken off the table, dismissed or overruled.

Agnew and his lawyers were probably savvy enough to sense that Elliot Richardson and company were under a time crunch. Their first order of business was removing a criminal like Agnew from the line of succession to the Presidency, so some sort of plea deal, something that could be effected quickly, was almost an inevitability. Richardson was desperate, to some degree, and had to make the hard decision not to pursue to the fullest extent what apparently was a robust case against Agnew for bribery, extortion, and tax evasion (he was still taking kickbacks in the White House).

The parallels with Donald Trump are obvious and perhaps instructive, not to mention troubling.

How dare he drag us along for this drawn out, painful ride? How dare he? He has no shame, he doesn’t care, he’s just seeing what sticks, and what he can get away with. And we have to endure the whole painful fiasco because the press cannot let this go, cannot just ignore the bastard. This is news, after all.

Or maybe it’s just a strange, twisted carnival ride.

When all is said and done, Trump will be facing something approaching a hundred counts on at least four indictments, and he’s gonna avoid consequences for all of them, or at worst he’ll get what amounts to a slap on the wrist.

The Agnew case was a foreshadowing of things to come in this current encounter with a slimy politician, a slimy politician who is basically going to be allowed to walk away from doing time because the office he once held offers some sort of magic immunity? Because he was once too powerful to be prosecuted?

This makes no sense, and it won’t stop many from wondering: In what universe is such an outcome at all fair? Does it just come down to whose lawyers make the strongest argument or uncover some obscure technicality that makes a mockery of reason?

That’d certainly be in keeping with the whole Trump nightmare.

I listen to certain pundits on a regular basis, and the theme of late is the breathless conjecture surrounding the next batch of charges heading Trump’s way—the latest regarding January 6.

As often happens anymore, I was shaking my head and muttering under my breath after a recent segment because it absolutely mystifies me as to how people can still be talking about Trump carrying on as a candidate in 2024, as if nothing else is going on, as if there is no constant dark rain cloud above his head.

It’s obvious that many Republicans consider all the indictments a badge of honor of some sort, or as undeserved injustices, nuisance impediments that will just be disregarded and can’t keep Trump from running. It’s difficult for me to get my head around this.

It never ceases to conjure up disdain for the man who obviously doesn’t care about dragging America into the weeds while he tries to manipulate and exact revenge and create an alternate narrative.

I suppose it’s no surprise that he can be doing this to the country he so sarcastically loves. He obviously has no shame. There can’t be many left who haven’t yet seen him for who and what he truly is– a spoiled middle schooler, and the biggest fake out there.

Seems like it’s coming down to a fight to see which America is gonna prevail: the one that makes an attempt to be color blind and where the rule of law is paid more than lip service, or the one that’s resurfaced over the last few years and maintains a death grip on lily whiteness and Christian Nationalism and spews the same old nonsensical fearmongering and paranoia that have always been here, I guess.

The jury’s out, which is a sad commentary. Maybe this seemingly perpetual tug of war is the best we’ll ever aspire to.

Sounds like another indictment is about to land, this one re January 6. Jack Smith and company are doing what they can to make sure Trump is unavailable for 2024. I hope it works.

And how about MTG? Wow, she has really drunk the Kool-Aid when it comes to defending the Donald—she gets so animated and indignant and angry! It’s a great show and sounds like she’s actually convinced of his innocence, spewing all the cliched talking points certain Republicans are still so fond of carting out.

Bottom line, as Brian Tyler Cohen notes, is that Trump is an indicted felon in multiple cases! And hopefully, at some point, a convicted one. He has zero business being a candidate for POTUS. His insistence on continuing to run should be the final nail in his coffin, because HE DOESN’T GIVE A RAT’S ASS ABOUT AMERICA.

He’s just a sore loser who doesn’t want to go to jail.

The forecast summary in the task bar simply read “polluted air,” nothing more. A refreshing cut to the chase.

Six hundred and seventy wild fires burning in Canada, only half of them being tended to. Almost 24 million acres burned this season, roughly the areal size of Indiana, already twice as much forest acreage lost than in any of the previous ten years.

But all is well on the blue marble. Just ask pretty much any Republican, or management at ExxonMobil.

Just saw that Russia is claiming it apparently has a sufficient stockpile of cluster munitions to strike back, which is fantastic news. Now Ukraine can be turned into the latest unlivable hellscape polluted with unexploded ordinance for generations to come.

So this is what it’s come to—just throw the kitchen sink at them and to hell with the aftermath.

War should be beneath us.

After I write something as negative and cynical as the last entry, I find myself with a case of regret the next day, like I overstated the feelings and want to take some of it back. But the remorse eventually passes and I end up not wanting to take any of it back. It’s what I’ve felt for a long time—that it seems like we’re motivated by shallow things here in America.

What have we fought to protect? What way of life are we supposed to be so dedicated to dying for? Is what we have now what the founding fathers envisioned? Because sometimes it has the feel of a runaway train that’s bouncing down the tracks, too caught up in acquiring things and only reinforcing the difficulty of being even a little selfless.

America exists in reality and as an ideal. The ideal has only been partially realized. There is a long way to go before we are what many come here hoping to find.

All this talk of shattered dreams and disillusionment over the increasingly elusive American Dream just doesn’t cut it for me, begging the question, “Why the long face?”

Is this the goal of everyone’s life? To make enough money so we can have all the material possessions one could possibly want—a house or two, a vehicle or three, the best schools, the best toys, privileges galore, endless opportunities for our children, bragging rights, a safe neighborhood, a garage full of crap that ends up being yard sale fodder and stuff with which we saddle our heirs when we die? And then count it all as admirable achievement? And then be able to tell your children that they can do the same, only better? Is this the goal, the Holy Grail of existence– fulfilling some mindless patriotic duty in the name of shallow pursuits?

Sometimes it seems we have it all wrong, that we add unnecessary weight to our shoulders by making consumption part of a contract we all must honor. We foster blindness, isolation, hubris, a lack of awareness of a bigger world and any sense of obligation beyond that to ourselves. It’s as if a good job and a house of our own are some sort of birthrights or the stuff of lofty aspiration, like success is measured in quantities and accumulation and trophies on a shelf.

It’s no wonder the world is burning. We’ve shortchanged ourselves and others, counted unsustainability as achievement, in pursuit of too much that crumbles and degrades slowly and robs the earth and fouls the air we breathe.  

-Not only are the writers on strike, but now the actors are gonna walk out. Oh, the humanity! What are we gonna do now?!

What are we gonna do now?

-State Farm is doing what all good corporate neighbors do: writing no new policies in Florida. They’ve already done the same in California. It’s never been about giving people peace of mind. It’s always been about what’s profitable, good for business. Maybe they’ll be soon calling it a day in Vermont, too?

Mother Nature is always offering up curve balls. What’s an actuary to do?