Watching the world fall apart
The Column: 01.09.26
The world comes to an end and the world keeps on going. Life is a series of sinking ships but still people go sailing as if it hadn’t happened. Disaster strikes and people wake up the next morning and have breakfast.
I took a cab to JFK, which thus far has not been renamed Trump Kennedy Airport, and boarded a plane to Seattle, six hours over the Great Lakes (soon to be renamed Greatest Lakes) and the northern plains (Nowheresville) and the Rockies, and thanks to Wi-Fi I could watch CNN and see that the America we learned about in high school, a bastion of freedom, a bulwark against tyranny, a beacon of human rights and individual dignity, is not shared by our own government. There was Stephen Miller, the Secretary of Anger, yelling at Jake Tapper as if he had no right to question the current foreign policy of Whatever We Want Whenever We Wish and that, by God, America has a right to take Greenland by force if necessary and Tapper looked dumbfounded. It was like confronting someone on the street yelling that he is God’s envoy so get off the sidewalk and let me through. You’d look for a cop to take the poor soul to a safe place.
Stephen’s people came from czarist Russia 250 years after my people came here from Yorkshire. His ancestors left the czar behind but Stephen is trying to re-create him. He is the brains behind the mass deportations by ICE men and the reshaping of the Department of Justice to be Don’s law firm. You just hope the F.A.A. is not hiring air traffic controllers on the basis of loyalty to the America First way of thinking.
We have a proud bully for a head of state. This is a man who, to the best of my knowledge, has never uttered an apology nor expressed sympathy for suffering people nor told a joke that made people laugh nor talked about a book he read that made an impression on him. Richard Nixon was a giant compared to this man.
We never imagined our country would come to this but it has and we face the possibility that the man who says the woman shot by an ICE agent in Minneapolis was, despite video evidence to the contrary, trying to run him down, the man who ordered the kidnapping of Maduro is quite capable of canceling the 2026 election and putting his opponents under arrest. The Congress and the Supreme Court have relinquished their constitutional powers. Don enjoys similar freedom as Vlad and Xi do. He turned a great American political party into his personal cult. The murder of the Minneapolis woman will be investigated by Don’s FBI, and his Secretary Noem says local law enforcement has no jurisdiction. Poorly trained thugs with masks now are immune from law enforcement? Interesting.
You and I should be astonished. We may be witnessing the end of America as the Founders envisioned it, establishing the rule of law, the separation of powers, and promoting the general welfare and, as Lincoln said, “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal” — and if so, we should at least pay attention. If an earthquake struck and the walls rattled and windows broke, you wouldn’t go on grilling hamburgers, you’d want to see what a cataclysm looks like.
Policy adviser Miller said that a military operation to take control of Greenland is an option. Secretary Hegseth agrees. General Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has not weighed in though he must be aware that the NATO charter we signed forbids such a thing. I hope his mother taught him about right and wrong.
We may have lost our country but Amazon will still deliver, spring training will start, you can say what you like over the breakfast table, and you don’t know any Greenlanders personally and neither do I, so when the Marines capture the city of Nuuk and Jeff Landry becomes the prime minister, it will come as no surprise, and those who protest this will be low-IQ Marxist-Leninist garbage and why bother?
But what will we do on the Fourth of July? Other than eat hot dogs and set off fireworks? Will anyone give a speech? What can they say? Will troops be called out to prevent public unrest? Will there be unrest? And when these bastards finally leak away, what will they leave behind? An intelligent artificial government in deep bunkers in Nevada?
Come see Garrison Keillor live at one of his upcoming shows. Make the winter a little bit brighter with songs, skits, and The News from Lake Wobegon.
CLICK HERE for tickets.
The Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei) was the official secret police of Nazi Germany, formed in 1933, notorious for its brutal methods, operating above the law to enforce Nazi rule, suppress dissent, and play a central role in the Holocaust by arresting and persecuting perceived enemies of the state without judicial review. Led by figures like Reinhard Heydrich and Heinrich Müller, it was integrated into the SS and became a feared instrument of terror, effectively eliminating opposition and enforcing racial policies until its dissolution in 1945.
Sound familiar, anyone?
“If an earthquake struck and the walls rattled and windows broke, you wouldn’t go on grilling hamburgers, you’d want to see what a cataclysm looks like.” And yet so many are just asking, “Do you want cheese on that?”