Donald Trump has become a catalyst for the making of unlikely bedfellows. Last night’s public appearance of Liz Cheney beside Kamala Harris, at the birthplace of the Republican Party, is a clear indication of just how serious many are taking the outcome of the upcoming election.

Cheney is as mainstream conservative as they come, yet she has made the decision to vote for the Harris-Walz ticket. She is, of course, anathema to the far-right zealots, but her temporary truce with Democrats means something. She’s not the only one who’s dared blur the lines of partisanship, and with good reason.

Even if some of the verbiage and claims are outsized and a bit hyperbolic regarding the danger of another Trump presidency, why would we as a nation find Trump-Vance at all palatable? Trump is a known quantity and has proven himself a pathetic, laughable misfit, not to mention a felon 34 times over. And Vance may be diabolical.

I don’t know if we can talk about “normal” going forward. But maybe we can revisit “reasonable” and “sane.”

Among this morning’s first page of Pinterest thumbnails, there was one that offered a picture of a first aid kit for gunshot wounds.

Gunshot wounds. You know—for that day when everything goes to shit and we all find ourselves in a scene from The Purge.

I was a Boy Scout. I know there’s wisdom in being prepared. But this seems a bit ridiculous and sad. Excessive, maybe even a dabbling in fear-mongering, like blood in the streets is an inevitability.

I understand that, given who the Republican ticket is, some might be thinking in these terms. But to see such an offering—on Pinterest—is a bit jarring. Only from the minds of a paranoid, self-appointed militia who are preparing for Armageddon if Kamala is elected.

Because, you know, Trump is the idea guy, and one of these days he’s gonna make America great again.

Smart enough to be deceptive. This is JD Vance. Maybe the person who we really need to worry about is on the ticket with Trump.

Vance is a slick talker, a good debater, for whatever that’s worth, and possessive of some frightening ideas about the path America should be choosing. He speaks in theories and vagaries, so one has to read between the lines, decipher and dig deeper. He buys into the philosophy espoused by Curtis Garvin, he speaks of far-right visions for the country, does not seem averse to violence, and probably has designs on running for President in 2028 or even before. He’s young and idealistic in a Third Reich sort of way.

So beware, America. Don’t give Mr. Vance an inch, don’t let him smooth talk you with those hypnotizing baby blues. He is a weird dude.  

The devastation post-Helene is gut-wrenching, and a reminder that we’re not in Kansas anymore.

What worries me is that the once relatively isolated pockets of destruction are no longer as isolated. They’re growing closer together and so numerous that insurance companies can’t possibly offer compensation and coverage.

Peoples’ lives have been upended and thrown into chaos, and there’s either no easy road back or no road at all. Stress levels are through the roof, bewilderment and shock are taking their toll, and maybe all of us are starting to wonder who’s next. When is it going to be our turn to sift through wreckage and pick up the pieces of our lives?

This isn’t pessimism, exactly. It’s just a recognition that no one is safe, no one emerges unscathed from the immense forces being unleashed by a changing climate.

Our attention should be rapt at this point.

Are social media companies to blame for kids’ suicides? Seems like a 21^st century question.

Sure, let’s blame it on the impersonal behemoths because they’re an easy target who must be preying on our innocent, angelic children’s naivete and undeveloped social and coping skills, and banking on parents who haven’t quite mastered the art of when to be parents instead of “best friends.”

Without reading the article (because I refuse to pay for Apple News), my gut reaction is that social media giants of course spend their days thinking of ways to keep people hooked on their products, keep people on their devices. But someone should be asking about the parents’ role in all of this.

A device that exposes an insecure, immature teenager (or younger?) to potential abuse needs to be monitored by an adult in the room. And maybe this is part of the issue: the adult either refuses to do their job of parenting—providing emotional support, establishing limits and guidelines—or there is little to no parental oversight in the first place. Or maybe the authority figure is feeding his or her own addiction to Facebook or Instagram, looking for affirmation themselves, bragging about a cruise to Antarctica or their gifted children and how great their lives are.

While there may be a need for regulation of some sort, and unless there is found to be something on the scale of concealed knowledge or a cover-up regarding nicotine addiction, it’s just too easy to blame everything on the big guy with deep pockets.

If you take Rachel Maddow seriously, JD Vance is a scary dude who does not have America’s best interests at heart.

Vance subscribes to the rantings and ideology of Curtis Yarvin, a college-educated advocate for, among other things, gutting higher education and selling the properties to developers—which is just the tip of the iceberg of what he has in mind for America.

It seems the height of irony that Yarvin speaks ill of universities—of which he is a product—and considers them repositories for everything that’s wrong with America. What’s worse is that JD Vance mentions Yarvin’s name in the same breath that he talks about doing what it takes to rid the country of anything that smacks of progressive or liberal. Sounds like Vance prefers blowing things up and starting over.

Yes, this is the strangeness with which we are dealing right now. And it’s not like we needed Maddow to remind us—it’s just that she clarifies things, helps us see just how long this shit has been rumbling around in the zeitgeist. It’s been idling in the background for a century or longer, and has once again reared its ugly head.

Trump and Vance? They’d be a fucking nightmare. The fact that people can’t see this, or refuse to process it, is beyond mystifying. It’s infuriating.

What/who is an abortion survivor? Is this someone who actually survived the procedure, or someone whose mother decided not to have an abortion?

The anti-abortion memes one might come across drive home the point that life is precious, that—of course—the life in the human womb can’t be anything but another developing human, no matter the stage of development. Pro-lifers may also cart out all manner of convoluted logic, including a tug at the heartstrings, including the assumption that people who get abortions are all monsters, doing it as a matter of convenience without any forethought or consideration of spiritual or psychological consequences. And that—of course—is not true.

Anti-abortion crusaders speak from the heart in many ways, but they apparently also choose to miss the point of the debate. The argument is not over what’s being lost—a human life is being terminated when a woman goes through with an abortion. That point can’t be argued. But this has never been the actual point.

The crux of the matter, I believe, is that a woman has the right to make the decision and to live with the consequences of that decision. She has, or should have, domain over her own body. It is the business of no one but the woman involved. Apart from the context of a committed relationship with a husband or significant other, in which case having children should have already been a topic of discussion, the decision is left to no one but the pregnant woman.

Those who are thumping their Bibles and pointing to an ancient edict in the Old Testament, i.e. the 5^th Commandment—often times men in positions of authority—have no say in the matter. The issue has always been more complicated than simply harping on what the Bible says.

The Republican ticket for POTUS– especially the VP pick– doesn’t see it that way.

A limited incursion, as if they can just dial it up or down. Israel is on a roll, helping the world to take its eye off of what’s going on in Gaza with a “limited” ground offensive in Lebanon. And the U.S. is impotent in the midst of this carnage.

What can we do, though, since we supply Israel with arms and claim to be its best friend?

How this ends is anyone’s guess, but all war all the time has to be a real drag for everyone involved. Looks like Netanyahu/Israel has finally snapped, or maybe it’s that they’re just not gonna take it anymore. They’re gonna hand it out and hope that it somehow ends well.

Holy war. What a crock of shit.

So, was the dockworkers’ strike on anyone’s radar, or is this somehow a piece of Republican strategy to disrupt the economy five weeks before the election? It’s the first strike of the ILA since 1977—a few years short of fifty years ago.

What the hell?

It is October, so it’s about time for the stock market’s annual swoon. Looks like this year’s catalyst might be a panic over shortages of festively bowed Lexuses and crap to put under the Christmas tree. And toilet paper!

Americans are more reliant than ever on government aid, according to the Wall Street Journal. Anathema to any capitalist worth his salt, and we can’t have that!

All the more reason to elect Donald Trump, right? So he and his cold-hearted cronies can get rid of the detritus and leeches and immigrants siphoning all that precious money from the already-rich who could make better use of it somehow? Just tell people to pull themselves up, get a life– or get out– and stop whining, right?

Forget the aging population and economic distress. Such handouts smell too strongly of socialism, and goodness knows we can’t have that, what with all the socialism we already have and which people have depended on since the 1930s.

There’s something un-American, somehow, about providing a safety net. But maybe “safety net” by another name is simply an indication of a government that is responsive to genuine need, a government that isn’t totally in the pocket of the “self-made”, the venture capitalists and the real whiners who appear to not care about anything besides unsustainable growth and their own well-being. And who think they’re indispensable and somehow the only heroes.