A Twisted Place

Leon Wilk

When multiple layers of American society shrug off authoritarian abuse, corruption, and attacks on democracy, ordinary complacency becomes collective complicity.

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The official Soviet propagandists, the fiery Komsomol proselytizers circa my distant youth never believed a single word of the sheer BS they were dishing out in industrial quantities on a daily and hourly basis. They were not stupid, just infinitely cynical and shameless. Now, decades after the seemingly invincible and eternal Soviet Union's ignominious demise, they must be laughing their butts off in rapidly freezing-over hell while listening to the exact same harebrained slogans, vituperations and promises being repeated in all earnestness and with great gusto and total conviction in English, the irresistibly seductive language of their supposed class enemy, in the historically doomed imperialist West of their ardent hidden dreams. One of the disadvantages of a long life - having to watch the relentless, insurmountable merry-go-round of foolishness in the world.

The car's on fire and there's no driver at the wheel And the sewers are all muddied with a thousand lonely suicides

And a dark wind blows

The government is corrupt And we're on so many drugs

With the radio on and the curtains drawn

We're trapped in the belly of this horrible machine

And the machine is bleeding to death

The sun has fallen down

And the billboards are all leering

And the flags are all dead at the top of their poles

It went like this:

The buildings toppled in on themselves

Mothers clutching babies

Picked through the rubble And pulled out their hair

The skyline was beautiful on fire

All twisted metal stretching upwards

Everything washed in a thin orange haze

I said, "Kiss me, you're beautiful… These are truly the last days"

You grabbed my hand

And we fell into it

Like a daydream

Or a fever

We woke up one morning and fell a little further

down

For sure as the valley of death

I open up my wallet And it's full of blood

The FTC under Biden was investigating and suing about this. The trump admin dropped this.

Well, also nine Democrats – you can't make this up! What's wrong with our society?

"If you live it up, you won't live it down"

So she left Monte Rio, son

Just like a bullet leaves a gun ...

Why didn’t you stand up, one by one, and walk out during Trump’s obscene tsunami of lies that he called a speech? White House correspondents, or D.C. media honchos, or whatever you think you are – you’re not politicians who need his endorsement to get elected. You don’t hang out at the Republican clubs around town frequented by Scott Bessent and Stephen Miller and Don Jr. You don’t owe Donald Trump your loyalty.

Why did you just sit there in a spangly ballroom he claimed to have built, decorated with chandeliers he bragged had “Czech crystal,” and watch him fall asleep when awards were being given out to reporters who had stood up to him? You’re not reporting from the Oval Office, watching him sleep in the presence of idiots like EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin as he kissed Trump’s ass. It was your dinner.

He stood up there, when he finally woke up, and he insulted your colleagues and friends like Kaitlin Collins and others. They’re the ones you should be loyal to, and you just sat there and according to reports, looked uncomfortable and studied your phones. This was your chance to stand up to him. Not even the Wall Street Journal reporters he sued for $20 billion for the story they wrote on Trump’s connections Jeffrey Epstein – who you gave an award to – refused to shake hands with him when they left the stage from receiving their awards! Don’t you remember that he threw the Journal out of the White House press pool? His lawsuit exposed the address of one of the Journal reporters, Khadeeja Safdar, causing her to leave her home and relocate somewhere else because of threats from Trump’s supporters, and even she shook his hand.

Jeff Tiedrich, who writes a very funny Substack called “everyone is entitled to my own opinion,” which you should be reading daily not only for its humor, but for its attitude, has had a recurring theme in his column, that the first reporter who stands up and asks Trump “what the fuck is wrong with you,” should receive what Tiedrich calls a “lifetime Pulitzer.” Last night could have been your opportunity to symbolically ask that question. All you had to do was stand up and walk out while he was giving his boring speech, insulting your friends and compatriots, and telling one “joke” after another that at everyone’s expense but his own.

I mean, he stood up there and told a whole string of lies about crime in Washington D.C., complete with unmistakable racist undertones. For crying out loud, you live in Washington D.C. You’re the fucking White House Press Corps! Part of your job when you’re on duty is writing down his lies and reporting them, but last night was your chance to say to the man you know lies every time he takes a breath, I’ve had enough. Shut up with your lies. I’m not listening to them tonight.

So, I’m going to turn Jeff Tiedrich’s question around and ask it this way: What the fuck is wrong with you? Nobody had a gun to your head last night. You weren’t going to get fired if you stood up and walked out of Trump’s blithering spew of lies and exaggerations and braggadocio. Is access to power and the prestige of a White House press pass so important that you’re willing to mortgage not only your reputations but your souls by bending a fucking knee to the man who shut down USAID and is causing hundreds of thousands of deaths just because he wants to stick it to the libs?

Yesterday, the White House announced they’re going to put up “warning signs” outside the Smithsonian Museum of American History. You know what that’s about. You’ve been reporting on it since he issued one of his stupid executive orders against the teaching of what he and his lackeys call “DEI history.” Look around you at your fellow reporters who are Black or Latino or gay. Have you asked yourself how they feel every time one of Trump’s lily-white spokespeople, starting with Karoline Leavitt, talks about the evils of DEI? You know what they’re telling their drooling racist MAGA base: DEI is the reason anybody who’s Black or Latino or gay or female got their jobs.

Fuck these people and their racist bullshit. Last night was your chance to stand up and show your contempt for his insane un-American lies and nonsense. What’s it going to take for you to grow a spine? He has filed utterly specious lawsuits against your friends and fellow journalists. He has kicked good reporters out of the Pentagon and the White House and Air Force One.