My hands are clean

Since my article's publication last week Trump began ensuring that his government will be filled with Bronze Age Pervert-reading loyalists.  So far it's “very fine people” like Le Camp des Saints-loving deportation czar Stephen Miller, dog-shooter Kristi Noem, ICE Nazi Tom Homan, Proud Boy-invoking Matt Gaetz,“Great Replacement” theory fan Elise Stefanik and golf-buddy Steve Witkoff who I bet is just psyched to tee off with Ol’ Bonesaw MBS.  

Speaking of triple initials, I won't even go into RFK (Jr.) and ERM (Elon Reeve Musk) here as their weirdness knows no bounds and I don't want to steal work from struggling legacy journalists covering those two clowns.  But I can't resist mentioning that RFK one-upped Mithras’ bull-killing by dumping a dead bear in Central Park, and Elon’s new and memified DOGE gig for Trump loosely parallels the canine biting the tauroctony bull.

But the icing on the feculent cake that has been this past week is the FOX pundit, Afghanistan war-crimes apologist and civil war advocate Pete Hegseth as incoming defense secretary, a guy who famously joked about never washing his hands.  Pete was a textbook troll, offering up tasteless humour mixed with irony and plausible deniability, very much in the manner of 4chan and the alt-right.  This parallels the Mithraists who, as you may recall (if you read my rant published last week, or are knowledgeable about them), referred to themselves as Syndexioi or “united in handshake”.  It also parallels their Daddy Trump who does it constantly but personally loathes it.

There have also been a number of new articles since November 5th about Trump's plans to free the January 6th insurrectionists including, of course, the Pueri Superbi (Proud Boys in Latin if you're new here).  Our mango Mussolini has no need to do this as he won the popular vote and controls both houses of government while those guys are just tools, plus he has a record of broken promises.  Still, releasing them would be red meat for his base and would provide the added muscle of Pueri Superbi and similar groups for implementing some of his harsher policies like the planned mass explosions, perhaps further restrictions on abortions, harassment of trans people, and coming down hard on anyone who opposes these policies.  

Pundits trying to figure out why the Democrats lost the US election have been examining factors such as populism and the non-college educated.  I should mention here that while I work in education, many of the people I respect the most often have the least formal education (shoutout to my 98 year old grandfather, quite the techie who probably is reading this, wildly successful in so many ways, and who began his working life after completing grade 6).  Everyone has a pet theory about the Trump victory that's mainly a function of their own personal pet peeve.  Are you a Democrat who hates trans people?  Blame their inclusion in the category of “people deserving basic human rights” for the Democrats losing.  Hate African Americans?  Well, obviously it was CRT, DEI and “woke” (white people's replacement for the n-word) that moved people to the Republicans.

Populism’s a funny thing, sharing a lot with socialism, though in many ways a twisted or inverted version.  You can fail at pitching social medicine but succeed at advocating an identical nationalist and patriotic health care program, especially when it's for members of the armed forces.  Tomayto, tomahto: South American originally, but appropriated by the Romans. 

And speaking of the Romans, since people on all sides of the political spectrum are anticipating (either with eagerness or dread) Trump's upcoming January inauguration, I haven't heard much talk lately about the etymology of this very term: the consultation of the augers to determine whether or not a course of action is auspicious.  Instead of observing raven machination flights or Humbaba-visage viscera, in our times it's the pollsters and economists that we look to for prophesy, though both of these modern fields certainly have their limitations.  I mean who actually answers their phone when they don't recognize the number or believes in social mobility?  Still, I'm not suggesting that we return to the augurs.  We are not going back.