109 Comments
User's avatar
henry sholar's avatar

they start with this in the first month of a four year term. how much worse will it get? will they exterminate people? how incorrigible are they? What is the depth of suffering that will amuse elon musk the most? will they document their atrocities for their pleasure to revisit the pain and suffering of their victims? AND WHO AMONG US IS GOING TO STOP THEM?

Expand full comment
ginny mellen's avatar

Right on the mark...

Expand full comment
Seitzinator's avatar

🎯🎯🎯

Expand full comment
Jenny Benjamin's avatar

We the people. All of us.

Expand full comment
Adam Cheklat's avatar

I will.

Expand full comment
Katherine E. Standefer's avatar

Holy shit. This is disgusting.

Why am I still surprised by the depravity? But I am.

Expand full comment
Mariah's avatar

I think we need to continue to be surprised, shocked by all of this.

Expand full comment
Amie Walter's avatar

Because you have a heart.

Expand full comment
Camille Sheppard's avatar

Exactly what I wanted to say.

Expand full comment
Seitzinator's avatar

🎯

Expand full comment
mmmmmmock's avatar

Minor note: Musk’s use of emojis was purposeful. The creature is not necessarily a “monster” as you noted, but more specifically a “troll”. He’s saying they feel they’re doing the nation a service by trolling the left and deserve an award for their work. We essential have middle school boys running our country.

Expand full comment
Jeff Sharlet's avatar

I didn't look close enough! Thanks. Corrected.

Expand full comment
mmmmmmock's avatar

Thank you for reporting on these events. It fills my heart with sadness and I hope that we can see the error of our ways sooner rather than later. Your writing is a much needed candle in the darkness.

Expand full comment
Stephanie Tidd's avatar

I think by calling them middle school boys you assign them far too much maturity. They are more like elementary school boys burning ants with a magnifying glass.

Expand full comment
ginny mellen's avatar

good analogy

Expand full comment
Seitzinator's avatar

I was thinking they remind me of primary school bullies. Only they’re trying to rule the world. They ‘re well on the way to destroy the U.S., although a different White House started that trend back in 1980. They are quite possibly going to start WWIII. They’re behaving as though they’re playing a video game. But this is not virtual reality. . At least not for those of us poor and regular people who lack the means to escape, or choose not to leave.

They are trying to destroy everything that is truly worth saving.

And they are doing it with the assistance & support of each and every leader or follower person/group/church/business/institution who continues alongside them—whether actively or passively in public, or actively behind the scenes, or actively through their votes or donations, as well as through feeding their egos and needs.

Some of us have recognized this for many years, some of us for much longer. Many of us have worked our brains, hearts, spirits, and bodies to the bone to effect constructive change, to try to get people to look-listen-see-hear-understand and to act to stop it.

Time is running out. We must act. In large numbers. And loudly. If we continue to sit back and leave it for others to do, it’s going to be too late. I get it, we’re exhausted & need some time to relax. But no action IS an action. And time waits for no one.

Expand full comment
Jim's avatar

Bully is the perfect term. They make up obvious lies, when caught they say they were only kidding, and they always pick on people who can't or won't fight back. The scolding when the President of Ukraine stood up to the US president. "You really shouldn't fight back against him." WTAF

Expand full comment
Seitzinator's avatar

Exactly.

Expand full comment
ginny mellen's avatar

true

Expand full comment
SoTiredofWinning's avatar

Vicious and malevolent ones

Expand full comment
Common Sense's avatar

I appreciate that you unapologetically call this what it is. Fascism. Some journalists and pundits still seem hesitant to use the term. We need to clearly define what we are up against.

Expand full comment
Kathy Doug's avatar

I heard Jon Stewart talking about not overusing the term so it loses meaning, but yes. Yes.

Expand full comment
babaganusz's avatar

Meaning is of value among people who want to communicate clearly and honestly with each other. It's of secondary-at-best value to demagogues and trolls.

Expand full comment
bernie holland's avatar

We used to use terms like fascism, ethnic cleansing and genocide sparingly with regard to exceptional events of history. However with this farrago of savagery and depravity that is on full display 24-7, it is increasingly difficult for those who possess even the slightest semblance of conscience, to find the language adequate to the task of expressing our utter disgust at the loathesome manifestations of evil that this rotting imperial system is affronting us with as we are being stampeded towards the abyss, deeper and darker than that of the Third Reich. I would dare say we are well on our way into the Fourth and that we are going to have to fight it to the death. It is a spectre of the most grotesque manifestation of utter evil. And it was fashioned by the oligarchic elites who have long abandoned the sanctity of life.

Expand full comment
Erin Keith's avatar

This IS SICK

The republicans (Musk et al) are disturbed, mentally ill people.

Expand full comment
ConsciousCreme's avatar

I have a photo from Tucson AZ of six girls in shackles walked up the ramp of a C130. They’re just girls. Two are in pink hoodies. They are literally wearing the clothes they left home in that day. I wish I could post in the comments. I put the photos on my substack. I’m not here for money or subscriptions. Please go get them and share them and make them go viral. I want to know who these girls are. They deserve to not be erased. Are they even still alive? Abused? If you voted for him YOU DID THIS.

Expand full comment
Jeff Sharlet's avatar

Thanks. Very scary. Your post says ABC News. Do you remember the article? I'd need context.

Expand full comment
Jim's avatar

I found at least one instance of the picture at the UPI website.

U.S. News Jan. 24, 2025 / 6:25 PM / Updated Jan. 25, 2025 at 2:56 PM

First illegal immigrant deportation flights take off on military aircraft

By UPI Staff

I'm not sure if links are allowed:

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2025/01/24/mexico-immigration-first-deportation-flights/4411737759577/

Expand full comment
ConsciousCreme's avatar

See “ Jim’s post “ and I screenshot those photos from a news feed from Phoenix AZ called ABC15. I see other pics elsewhere that showed men getting led into what looked like same plane same angle, but I didn’t see the girls’ photo widespread.

Expand full comment
ginny mellen's avatar

YES!

Expand full comment
patricia marie's avatar

heartbreaking stuff, among other things.

Expand full comment
Bill Smith's avatar

The thing is that after a while — and not a long while— the handcuffs bind the cops as tightly as they bind the prisoners, and poison the people who tolerate it. This is some sick shit.

Expand full comment
kimoco's avatar

I do not know if I should cry or punch walls at this point.

Expand full comment
ginny mellen's avatar

Agreed. Both are right on.

Expand full comment
David Thorne's avatar

Thanks for this. I have had in mind lately 70s/80s central america death squads (eg in El Salvador, Guatemala), the US hand in their formation and proliferation, and the tactics they deployed, including “disappearing” people. There are plenty of other similar examples of the use of disappearance in history, but there is something in the ghostly connection between this video (its attitude, tactic, use of media and use of bodies to leave a sign as warning to others, the overarching policy behind it, the sheer fucking horror of it as an act of state-sponsored terror, the fact that some derive a certain measure of pleasure from it and cheer it on) and those death squads that is beyond uncanny and unnerving—

Expand full comment
Catherine O'Kelly's avatar

From the website IFSW regarding Argentina from 1976-83: Assassination occurred domestically in Argentina via mass shootings and the throwing of live citizens from airplanes to death in the South Atlantic. Additionally, 12,000 prisoners, many of whom had not been convicted through legal processes, were detained in a network of 340 secret concentration camps located throughout Argentina.

These are Los Desaparacidos and the stories are heartbreaking. It is so unbelievable what human beings are capable of doing to harm innocent people who are caught up in a cycle of war...it has happened so many times over the years.

Expand full comment
Seitzinator's avatar

🎯.

Expand full comment
Jon Notabot's avatar

"You never see anyone’s faces, because these are not, to the regime, people. They are a category: “dirtbags.” “Alien.” Chained. There are two kinds of people in this video: Those who locked in chains, and those who lock the chains. There are two kinds of people in the fascist imagination.

Fascism thinks that’s funny."

Gracious gore. Dignified depravity. Casual cruelty.

Stately snuff..

Expand full comment
Dogmother2's avatar

Banality of evil

Expand full comment
Seitzinator's avatar

“Stately stuff.”

Expand full comment
Denise Fanelli's avatar

This is what so many of my fellow Catholics voted for!!

I want to cry and I feel sick to my stomach!!

Expand full comment
Fred Mogul's avatar

They are geniuses at finding new ways to become more and more inhuman with every passing day. Of course Musk would salute this innovatively demonic messaging. Goebbels would be proud.

Expand full comment
Jeff Sharlet's avatar

Hey, Fred!

Expand full comment
ginny mellen's avatar

agreed

Expand full comment
Jeff Quiggle's avatar

Fascism eats everyone, eventually. Today it’s “migrants,” who knows who’s next. Sooner or later, it’ll be American citizens. This is disgusting, dehumanizing garbage and I’m embarrassed for our country.

Expand full comment
Jim's avatar

There's a reason everyone knows the poem....

First they came for....

I don't even have to finish it, do I? Four words and we all know what it is. There's a reason we haven't forgotten. There's a reason we should never forget.

Expand full comment
Seitzinator's avatar

Exactly, Jim.

Expand full comment
Kathy Doug's avatar

Deeply f’d up. It scorched my retinas when this White House account w black logo popped up on one of my feeds. Thank you for digging in to it, you are stronger than me.

Expand full comment
ginny mellen's avatar

Clearly a call for us all to be strong. But it feels so beside one's nature.

Expand full comment
Susan Davis's avatar

I have no words . But I think I'm feeling desperate. After that cold anger at those who make police porn and those who have it made. I guess I have words after all. We don't need AI. We've got humanoids running the show

Expand full comment
ginny mellen's avatar

true

Expand full comment