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Our long local nightmare is over: the Nazi Nest has left Eckington. This was a house of January 6th supporters paid for by the Overstock guy, Patrick Byrne. Their mission was to advocate for a pardon of January 6th rioters through their nightly Freedom Corner vigil outside the DC Jail and by making a nuisance of themselves at court houses, hearing rooms and bars around town.

Calling it the Nazi Nest was not hyperbole. They named the house the Eagle’s Nest, after Hitler’s mountaintop retreat, one of the housemates was married to a prisoner covered in swastikas (we called her Nazi Barbie) and one of their supporters posted videos of how Hitler was right about the Jews. And this was before Elon Musk and other MAGA types began greeting crowds with Nazi salutes.

But with the release of J6 rioters, the grift has ended. You can’t raise money on behalf of prisoners after the jail doors have swung open.

The release of the January 6th prisoners was the worst thing that could’ve ever happened to Freedom Corner.

If the rioters were still locked up, the chuds of Freedom Corner could continue their grifting lifestyle, with their expenses (including the rent on the Nazi Nest in Eckington) paid for by donors. But since Trump pardoned them, their mission disappeared. And with it, their donos.

Even worse, they’ve lost their mission, the thing that gave their cult meaning. Before the pardon, they were key players in a great cause. Now, they’re nobodies headed home to deal with all the mundane aspects of life that they’ve put off for years.

Including getting jobs. The defining feature of Freedom Corner was their unwillingness to work. Despite living in DC for two years, they refused employment, claiming that their two-hour long nightly vigil prevented them from holding down jobs.

Instead, they grifted, garnering donations from big donors like Patrick Byrne and small ones like the “granny squad” who forked over their Social Security checks to Freedom Corner.

Despite the end of the corner, they’re still grifting. The recently released J6 prisoners all have Gift Send Go pages for donations. They also demand reparations. That’s right, the violent men who stormed the Capitol believe that they’re owed a check from the government.

Another J6 prisoner wants money so that he can tour the country in search of a 25-year-old wife. While he’s 39, he will accept a 35-year-old if he has to.

Another J6 advocate, in between her rapid-fire Twitter rants demanding an apology from all you bitches who doubted her, put out the call for $2500 for a three-day water park vacation. Seems a little steep for slip n slide.

So much begging. It’s their defining feature.

All these fierce advocates of freedom now demand free money from the public. They’re not going to get it.

Welcome to the real world, chuds. It’s a helluva hangover for you.

On November 6th, we all lost. Kamala Harris voters realized it that night.

For Trump supporters, the realization will come more slowly, if it comes at all.

And the chuds of Freedom Corner? Their story is rapidly fading away, overwhelmed by the manic pace of news and the country being driven into a deep, catastrophic recession.

They will always have the memories of Freedom Corner, thousands of hours on YouTube, unwatched and forgotten.

A bike ride around Washington, DC, illustrates the state of the city, and the nation, in our dystopian year of 2025.

People who bike are close observers. Since we’re not encased in a rolling living room, we notice things that driverists miss.

This is what I saw on a cold Saturday bike ride around DC.

The GW Fence

On my way to get a bagel, I saw that the University Yard at George Washington University now has a black mesh fence around it.

This was the site of protests against the war on Gaza last year. Students occupied the Yard for weeks, sleeping in tents, holding rallies and conducting teach-ins on the conflict.

Until they were expelled by the Metropolitan Police Department in an early-morning action. A temporary fence was put up around the Yard.

Now, there is a very sturdy permanent one with gates that can be locked, to prevent future First Amendment activities by university students.

It is part of a fortification of the city, as access to public spaces gets restricted by the authorities to keep troublesome citizenry away. Anyone who has been around the Capitol or White House recently can register the parks, sidewalks and green spaces taken from us.

Rally for Ukraine

After seeing that, I biked to the Lincoln Memorial, where several thousand people gathered to support Ukraine.

True Americans support our friends in the face of Russian aggression. Never did I imagine that the Republicans would bow before a KGB agent, but that is what has happened as they rush to surrender Ukraine to Putin.

For decades, the GOP warned about the dangers of appeasement, of repeating another Munich, and now they intend to do their own version of the Munich deal, hoping that giving Ukraine to Putin will satisfy him.

And they are operating not out of naïveté, but of deliberate betrayal.

Stabbing our allies in the back, cutting off food aid to starving orphans in Africa, firing government employees devoted to protecting consumers – the cruelty is the point for the MAGA party.

The Chuds are Unhappy

Yet, they are still angry.

A few miles away, Anarchy Princess was at CPAC, the fascist (they’re doing Hitler salutes now) conference in National Harbor. It’s not DC, not matter what they claim, but far down the river in Maryland next to a freeway.

Anarchy Princess was there just to observe, not to protest, yet this still earned the ire of the chuds of Freedom Corner. A pair of them tried to get her thrown out of the hotel bar, claiming that she was antifa, one of them with a beer in her hand, cross around her neck and a mouth full of obscenities. Doesn’t get more MAGA than that.

I just wanna say, I spent the last 8 hours roaming round the hotel where CPAC is happening, and even though a few crazy women screamed at me, I still did not get kicked out. pic.twitter.com/T6wccGpyuO

— Anarchy princess (@SatireAP) February 22, 2025

This toxic stew of hate and cruelty can be overwhelming.

The US Botanic Garden

Thank god for the Botanic Garden. Located across from the Capitol, this living plant museum was filled with an exhibit of orchids in every color and variation imaginable.

But I like the Tropics. Located under a 93-foot dome, this is a steamy tropical forest that is green and warm year-around. It even rains in there, with misters spraying water every few minutes. The heat and humidity make it a great place to defrost after biking in the cold.

Things are going to get worse. With layoffs, tariffs and cuts in federal aid for the states, we are heading into a recession. And there’s no guarantee that it will get better – unless we act.

We’re not alone. We outnumber them – Trump didn’t even get 50% of the popular vote. There is no mandate.

Speak Your Fucking Mind

The resistance continues, with new heroes emerging all the time. I lived with Colin Pearsall in college. I’m sure neither one of us imagined that we would one day do anything political, but the times call for it.

Or, as he put it, “What are you bowing down to, speak your fucking mind.”

 

What a long, strange grift it has been.

After more than 900 days on a dead-end street next to a cemetery, the so-called Freedom Corner vigil came to an end. This nightly insurrectionist meetup had provided thousands of hours of entertainment to trolls and fans  alike.

With the Trump pardons of J6 rioters, Freedom Corner is no longer necessary. They won.

The doors of Arkham Asylum have been flung open and now these violent men are back home in their communities – or wandering the halls of the Capitol – to terrorize people on behalf of Dear Leader.

Amanda Moore in The Nation wrote about the horror as prisoners celebrated with the J6 insurrectionist fan club, including Nazis and white supremacists. These people are your government now.

Freedom Corner vowed to leave no man behind. In fact, they left several men behind. A handful of these “good men” are being held on other charges like child sexual abuse.

This didn’t matter to Freedom Corner. They were ready to declare victory, have one final dance party and go home. Rioters gyrated on the corner outside the jail, grooving with the “old ladies” (their words) that had advocated for their freedom.

And it wouldn’t be Freedom Corner with one last blast of misinformation, as they claimed that Mayor Bowser delayed the release of prisoners (wrong), that their vigil was the second-longest in history (wrong) and that the corner was on Google Maps (hilariously wrong).

And if you ever wondered which side the police were on, MPD Sgt. Jackson got chummy as he posed for photos with Micki Witthoeft. She’s the mother of Ashli Babbitt and wants to see Nancy Pelosi and Capitol Police Officer Michael Byrd swing from the neck until dead.

 

The ice had holes in it where people had fallen through. Big cracks were visible. Even a couple sections of open water.

Despite this, Americans walked on it anyway.

This isn’t a very subtle metaphor, I thought to myself, as I watched families step on the thin ice of the Reflecting Pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial. They gleefully danced around and posed for selfies, heedless the danger.

Americans made another dangerous choice last November when they elected Donald Trump as President.

It wasn’t a landslide; Trump didn’t even crack 50% of the popular vote. But in our skewed electoral system (designed by slaveholders to protect their rights) it was enough to claim a mandate.

DC is now a landscape of fences, from the Washington Monument to the Capitol and up past the White House, even stretching out one rude finger to encompass the Convention Center. It’s a maze, with black fences, vehicle barriers and police officers from numerous jurisdictions all to ensure that the Inauguration happens peacefully.

With the election of a man who sent a mob to sack the Capitol, political violence has been normalized.

What would Martin Luther King, Jr, think? This inauguration occurs on his holiday. He devoted his life both to nonviolence and the better angels of our character, both of which seem like very quaint notions right now.

I grew up in America where the side that used violence lost. It was condemned by Republicans and Democrats who were committed to the peaceful transfer of power.

But, if I was coming of age today, what would I think? America has elected a convicted felon, rapist and mob leader as its President. I’d conclude that if you’re rich and powerful, you can get away with anything in this country.

After watching people walk on the ice, I needed a drink.

Navigating my way past the fences and checkpoints, I went to Lost and Found, a bar in Shaw which is fortunate to be just outside the security perimeter.

They have Snowpants, an oatmeal stout and a winter tradition for me.

I talked to the bartender about all the fencing, both of us careful not to spell out our political affiliation. Those are the times we live in. She didn’t want to offend me if I was a MAGA chud; the reason that DC needs to be an armed camp now. This city has not forgotten January 6th.

“Blagden Alley is its own destination,” she said, in response to my question about whether the inauguration would impact business.

Lost and Found backs up to Blagden Alley, a historic alley complex that is very photogenic. Once filled with car repair shops and, for a brief moment, art galleries, it is now decidedly upscale.

The people going to the alley for a coffee at La Colombe or ceviche at Amazonia will not be going to the inauguration. They are DC people, who want to avoid all mention of Trump.

The inaugural crowd is not likely to stray from their hotel lobbies, believing Trump’s absurd lies that you’ll be raped if you cross the street for a loaf of bread. They would not dare walk down a dark DC alley, no matter the rumored delights.

America has made its choice. We’re all on the ice with them. In a few days, we’ll find out if it cracks.

January 6th was going to be their big day. Four years after the attack on the Capitol, the chuds of Freedom Corner would get mainstream media attention as they laid flowers for Ashli Babbitt and demanded the release of J6 insurrectionists.

With Trump vaguely promising pardons for the rioters, it was a topic much in the news. CNN and others filmed the chuds as they chanted the name of their martyr: Ashli Babbitt, Ashli Babbitt, Ashli Babbitt.

But this snowy and surreal spectacle would be upstaged by a viral video, one that quickly rocketed through the internet, too good not to share.

This is what happens when MAGA tries to do J6 again but in the snow#FreedomCorner #January6th #WashingtonDC pic.twitter.com/ds0Lb4fFi8

— Anarchy princess (@SatireAP) January 6, 2025

Members of the Freedom Corner vigil were on their way to DC to celebrate January 6th when they crashed on the highway. “God has cleared the way!” they cried seconds before they spun out.

God isn’t on their side, despite all their Bible-thumping.

Instead, Jesus took the wheel and guided them into the guardrail to the tune of MAGA YMCA.

Or, maybe, they were just stupidly driving too fast on icy roads. The chuds are known for their reckless driving. They believe that if you’re in a convoy, or on your way to a J6 rally, that you don’t have to follow the law.

The tweet by Anarchy Princess has two million views – far more than watch CNN on a typical night. Famous for trolling Peter Navarro, she knows a viral video when she sees one. AP was the one who spotted it, clipped it and recognized its potential.

The story of Trump supporters crashing went global, appearing on TMZ, WorldStar, the Daily Dot and elsewhere. It’s the perfect start to the Trump Administration, a visual depiction of his followers entering the “find out” phase.

The chuds of Freedom Corner thought that they would go viral on January 6th. And they did, but for their comical idiocy.

Four years too late…

That was my thought seeing the huge fence go up around the Capitol. The seat of our democracy is now surrounded by rings of fencing, scores of police vehicles and hundreds of officers. And that’s just what I saw as I traversed the vast perimeter on a bike.

No longer are there just velvet ropes and officers in windbreakers to protect the counting and certification of Electoral Votes.

January 6th is now a  National Special Security Event, with the powers of the vast American government now mobilized to protect democracy from American citizens.

I hope this is the end of naïveté. As Americans we possess a kind of shared delusion. We’re the indispensable nation. The city on a hill. The good guys.

But if you read American history, and read it carefully, you can see the truth behind the soaring rhetoric: we were a nation founded in blood, born out of a civil war that pitted neighbor against neighbor.

Not that Civil War – but the one we fought in 1776 to escape the rule of a king. The losers got tarred, feathered and shipped off to Canada.

While the Constitution said that all men were created equal, slavery was written in our founding document and Southern slaveholders were our first leaders.

Mobocracy was the rule. Books were banned in the South (like Uncle Tom’s Cabin), slavery could not be mentioned in Congress and publishing an editorial about abolition would get you and your printing press thrown into the river.

Force was used against anyone who stood in the way of white men making a dollar. Native Americans were exterminated by armies, militias and vigilante mobs.

Later, we would develop this fiction that we are different than our violent, lawless ancestors.

January 6th should teach us that we’re not. Hopefully, the Democrats have caught on that we’re not living in an episode of the West Wing.

The best speech doesn’t win. The most powerful force does, whether that’s a shrewd political operator like Bill Clinton or a ruthless general like Sherman (who should’ve razed more of the South).

There is no need for the fence around the Capitol. The rioters won.

While it ended very badly indeed, 2024 did have its pleasurable, or at least, memorable, moments. Photos, fuckery and more – this was my best of 2024.

Photos

Early in the year, we had one of those blink and you’ll miss it DC snowstorms, little more than a dusting that rapidly melted but not before I got the dramatic photo of the sunset above. It was one of those lovely off-season moments, too cold for tourists, when it feels like you have the city to yourself. Like most of my photos, it was shot with an iPhone.

I was brought back to reality by January 6th. A dozen insurrectionist supporters from the J6 vigil outside the DC Jail (the Chuds of Freedom Corner) marched in the freezing rain, shouting their demands for freedom for the men who attacked the Capitol.

With my Canon Rebel SL2 (an ancient by digital standards camera), I captured Patricia Eguino aka “The Commish” in full death metal rage. “Traitors!” she yelled as the J6 supporters rallied on Pennsylvania Avenue. Eguino followed the insurrectionist losers as they trudged around the Capitol, heckling them all the way.

Later in the year, I got a photo of another powerful woman who has been a scourge of the right: Anarchy Princess.

After becoming famous for trolling Trump advisor Peter Navarro, she combined activism and reporting as she covered the J6 trials, the Presidential campaign and other events in DC and elsewhere.

I like this portrait of her because she’s set up to livestream and is sitting next to a really interesting work of public art: the Golden Spike by HYBYCOZO in Dupont Circle.

Bad weather makes dramatic photos. After a thunderstorm in July, I rushed down to catch the surreal golden light at the Washington Monument. This was taken with a Canon EOS RP, a mirrorless camera.

There were lots of student-led protests against the war on Gaza this year, including the occupation of the University Yard at George Washington University. One of the most dramatic moments I witnessed was outside the White House Correspondents Dinner, where people protesting genocide confronted members of the media.

DC isn’t all politics. One of the most interesting things I saw all year was Dvorak Dreams at the Kennedy Center, an outdoor video display on massive screens that paired music and flowing imagery,

My ability to quickly get around the city and take photos is only possible due to the bike.  I am Red Bike Guy so I used Capital Bikeshare a lot but also spent a lot of time on my Brilliant Cooper, which I like because it uses a belt instead of a chain (no maintenance required).

Fuckery

We love fuckery.
– Anarchy Princess

Trump cultists love to dox people. It’s what the right does.

Doxxing means that they will flood your social channels with threats and try to get you fired from your job. They target not just you, but anyone connected to you, including your family.

The chuds of Freedom Corner threatened to dox my friend Biketifa, an “agitator” who angered them with his mocking posters on a dumpster outside their vigil.

With my help of myself and Anarchy Princess, we decided to get ahead of the story. She interviewed him on YouTube and I wrote a profile in Biketifa Exposed.

Now it can be told: not everything in my article is true. I planted half-truths and lies to send the chuds off-course as they tried to find out his employer and spouse. And it worked! We watched them conspiring on Twitter as they went down rabbit holes in the wrong direction.

As AP stated: We love fuckery. It was not the only bit of misinformation I created to disrupt the insurrectionists. Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet.

And Biketifa turned his trolling into an art exhibit at Artomatic, the massive temporary art show in downtown DC.  His posters mocking the chuds went from the side of a dumpster to being framed and sold to collectors.

Early in the year, I wrote a lot about the Take Our Border Back Convoy because it was so much damn fun.

This was quite a con, a convoy that raised money with the aim of putting bodies on the border to stop immigration. Instead, it was a live-streamed farce as a parade of personal vehicles broke traffic laws in multiple states before reaching a compound that was near the Texas border, but not on it. Participants were fleeced of their money and baptized in a horse trough.

And I continued to cover the ongoing failure of Freedom Corner, including how they inadvertently ensure that J6ers get longer sentences, lie about their violent activities, are unable to attract a crowd and continue to get even weirder in their cult-like devotion to Trump.

There was also a moment of justice, as Freedom Corner attendee Steven Girard was found guilty for assaulting Anarchy Princess. This was a fascinating lesson on the use and abuse of the legal system, as Girard delayed proceedings for a year before ultimately being forced into a court room.

How I Became Red Bike Guy

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.
– Steve Jobs

In 2024, I published How I Became Red Bike Guy, a memoir of the Trump years in DC and my fifteen minutes of fame for mocking the Patriot Front.

It was a book that I tried writing multiple ways. During our chaotic times, I had written blog posts, articles and much more – how could I put them together into a book?

Becoming Red Bike Guy gave me the ability to bring these disparate experiences into a coherent narrative. It was what gave those moments meaning.

The experience of watching a Trump mob march down your street on the way to sack the Capitol – that changes you. As does photographing years of demonstrations in the nation’s capital.

My rage at seeing DC attacked on January 6th and the experience of watching the trolling and fuckery of the Freedom Corner chuds made me the person to mock the Patriot Front. Biking, photography, humor – the dots connected. I am Red Bike Guy.

What Is Next?

I won’t make any predictions because I’ve been consistently wrong about well, everything, since 2016. Sadly, I overestimated my country’s commitment to democracy and basic sanity.

Anything is possible.

Contemplating 2025, all I can think is:

Being dumped by George Santos was a fitting end to a very bad, no good day for the chuds of Freedom Corner.

The nightly insurrectionist vigil outside the DC Jail has struggled to attract attention from politicians or members of the press. Where, they moan, is the Gateway Pundit or Tucker Carlson? The only TV crews who drop by the corner are the Europeans, who love to film the American freakshow for their snickering, continental audiences.

So, when disgraced former Congressman George Santos announced that he was now on their side, it generated real excitement. He starred in one of the most chaotic moments of Freedom Corner history when he dropped by the corner when he was still in Congress.

Now, he believed in their cause. Pardons for all!

So I’ve had a change of heart…

Pardon all J6 political prisoners on day one… NO exceptions!

This week on the 5th I will be visiting freedom corner in DC!

💪🏼🇺🇸

— George Santos (@MrSantosNY) December 3, 2024

Perhaps he suddenly understands the plight of prisoners because he is soon to be one. Santos gets sentenced next month for wire fraud and identity theft.

Santos went to DC. He attended a Christmas party at the Capitol. But he did not make it to Freedom Corner, despite his promise.

It was another failure, for a movement that specializes in it.

Earlier in the day, Guy Reffitt was resentenced. I’ll spare you the technicalities but it was an opportunity to see his sentence reduced. The chuds, ignorant of the law and drunk on the hopium of their QAanon news universe, believed, absurdly, that the judge would reduce his 87-month sentence to zero. He would be home for Christmas.

Any chance Reffitt had for a significant reduction was negated by his behavior. Appearing before Judge Dabney Friedrich, he launched into an obscenity-laden tirade. He did this in front of his family, who were removed from the courtroom, and his chud supporters, who flounced out. One of the chuds said that the judge was “mean” and that she had said a lot of things that were hard to hear, i.e., the truth.

After resentencing, Reffitt received 80 months instead of 87.

Anarchy Princess was there, too. Watch her report if you want to know what it was like in the courtroom on a day of high drama:

The hits kept coming. Also sentenced on Friday was Philip Grillo, who received one year and was taken into custody immediately – a highly unusual move.

Gabriel Garcia was also at the US Court House. The chuds are big mad that this J6er has been ordered to report to prison before Trump’s inauguration (and expected pardon).

The wheels of justice grind on – that is what angers January 6th supporters the most. They believe that the legal system should just let everyone go now. On the nightly calls to Freedom Corner, convicted prisoners fantasize about being released on January 20th and having front row seats at the inauguration.

The fact that the judges and juries stay true to their duties, not yet perverted by fascism, has sent them into fits of rage. Trump won so why even have these trials, they believe, thinking that they’re special people who are allowed to attack police officers and walk free.

At the end of their very bad, no good day, they let the frustration out by threatening a “reckoning” for Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who has presided over many J6 trials.

Just Jenn Baker threatening federal judges by name.. ya know, normal stuff #FreedomCorner #reckoning #PrayerVigil #creepy pic.twitter.com/Hah3uW3ZV5

— Conald Rump (@realConaldRump) December 7, 2024

Later, Guy Reffitt’s wife, Nicole, made a threat of her own:

Drunk nicole reffit threats DOJ with an incendiary device 👀 @FBIWFO @FBI #maga #cult #freedomcorner pic.twitter.com/met2HYQWY8

— B$$$ (@Bossmoney8444) December 7, 2024

It was Nicole’s birthday too. She celebrated with a cake on a dead-end street next to a cemetery on a bitterly cold night. These are the rewards of being a MAGA celebrity.

And, as the hour grew late, it dawned upon the chuds that George Santos was not coming. He had ditched them. Santos knows a loser when he sees one.

After the election, I went to a graveyard.

The occasion was the birthday of John Philip Sousa, the legendary “march king” who composed the official march of the Marine Corps and other rousing, patriotic tunes.

He is buried at Congressional Cemetery and every year they celebrate his life with a program and a concert.

A John Phillip Sousa impersonator told some corny anecdotes about Sousa and his band (“Madame, please lower your hem and raise your C”) and then the Marine Corps Band marched into the cemetery, horns and drums playing in a tub-thumping beat.

I was leaning against a gravestone as I watched this. Congressional Cemetery is a “living” cemetery that encourages visits. Kids and families were sprawled among the marble tributes to long-dead politicians.

The band, known as the President’s Own, stopped at the grave of John Philip Sousa, and launched into “The Stars and Stripes Forever.”

You’ll recognize the tune if you’ve ever watched the July 4th fireworks in Washington, DC. It’s played at the finale.

Some in the crowd at the cemetery stood and placed their hands over their hearts.

I’ve been reading a lot of history lately, including the very lengthy but fascinating Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America, which is history from a Native American perspective, with Native nations as protagonists and colonialists as “the other.”

Watching the Marines perform in blood-red uniforms, I was reminded that this patriotic tune would be heard quite differently from victims of American power.

These same Marines will perform at the inauguation of Donald Trump in January.

Owning the Libs

Later in the week, I was in Georgetown, walking behind a couple of young women. They were mocking their classmates for being upset by the election results.

“Oh no, I’ve lost all my rights,” one of them said, laughing.

They don’t have the rights to control their bodies that their mothers and grandmothers did; a source of amusement to them.

After the election, someone on Twitter said that he had voted for Trump since I referred to his supporters as “chuds.”

Well.

Congratulations, you threw away democracy to own the libs. I hope it was worth it.

Into the Memory Hole

I watched a lot of TikTok videos. The common theme, particularly among young white people, was that Trump didn’t do terrible things last time, so why would he this time?

This ignores two major facts:

1. He did do terrible things, like the Muslim Ban, putting kids in cages and inspiring the January 6th attack on the Capitol. A whole year of death and horror – 2020- has been placed in the memory hole, a passage of time that Americans never discuss as if under mutual agreement.
2. Democrats stopped him from completing his most horrible tasks, like putting his enemies in camps, surrendering Ukraine to Putin and abolishing the Department of Education.

Those guardrails are now gone. The Supreme Court eliminated our system of checks and balances by making the President a king.

Welcome to the Find Out Part

The mass delusion is astonishing, millions of people who think that the leopards won’t eat their faces.

I watched a news story about a Latino family who voted for Trump. This family had relatives who were undocumented yet, they naively believed that the INS wouldn’t deport them because they were good people who held jobs.

LOL.

An INS agent with a quota to fill won’t care. It will be a lot easier to find the “good” illegals because they’ll have homes and workplaces that can be raided.

Prison stocks are up. An American gulag archipelago will soon be constructed, filled with “good” immigrants. And a lot of companies will grow rich with government contracts.

Because we live in an oligarchy now. Musk, Thiel, Bezos and others have captured our democracy with doddering Trump at the helm, a useful idiot.

After the election, the chuds of Freedom Corner celebrated, dancing on the dead end street between the DC Jail and Congressional Cemetery.

Trump said he would pardon the J6ers with a typically meandering and vague promise.

Prisoners held in the jail called in to the corner and described how they would be walking out of the jail on January 20th. Some even fantasized about attending the inauguration. Imagine that: J6 criminals at the Capitol that they attacked.

But who will actually be freed? The J6ers can’t even agree among themselves who should get a pardon. All J6ers? Just the non-violent ones? What about the ones who are Nazis, child molesters and murderers? Should they go free? What about the ones that J6ers think are snitches or antifa?

I think that they will be disappointed. This is a government by and for the rich now. The J6ers are cannon fodder.

The Find Out phase will be brutal, as Trump voters discover that he wasn’t serious about lowering prices but he was serious about a nationwide abortion ban, deporting even the “good” immigrants and prison camps for anyone who speaks out.

Wonderland Ballroom

It was a very long week. One looked for hope anywhere you could find it.

I met friends at Wonderland Ballroom, which is not a ballroom, but a dive bar (by DC standards) in Columbia Heights. Located on a corner, with outdoor tables, it’s a good spot to sit and have a beer as the city streams by on bikes, scooters, cars and busses. There’s even a soccer field across the street. A lot to watch as your mind goes blank.

Trump voters deserve the consequences of their decision. Let them Find Out as family members get deported, OB-GYNs stop practicing in their communities and tariffs make everything much more expensive. It’s the only way they will learn.

We will be fine.

Located in the blue dot of DC, we won’t experience the horrors that will soon impact the rest of country. There is work that we can do, on the local level, to keep friends and families safe. We will retreat, retrench and wait for a better day.

Go to one of Donald Trump’s rallies. He talks about Hannibal Lecter, windmills causing cancer—and you will even notice people leaving early out of boredom.

The one thing you will not hear him talk about is you.

Kamala Harris, 9/10/24

With the media desperate to sane-wash Trump, it was smart for Kamala Harris to encourage people to watch one of the Orange One’s rallies of batshit insanity and flailing, incipient fascism.

Don’t read the quotes in the newspaper that editors clean up and turn into sane, coherent sentences. Instead, watch for yourself on YouTube, and try to make sense of the incoherent ramblings dished out by Trump to an audience of slavering cultists.

Kamala invited a comparison: a normal, kind person versus a delusional wannabe tyrant.

But, for newbies, encountering the unfiltered Trump world can be shocking. From chemtrail conspiracies to chugging raw milk, you have no idea how crazy some of your fellow Americans have become.

Those of us who have been watching “the chuds” as we call Trump supporters, can be a guide. We know the d-list celebrities, bizarre theories and cult-like language employed by Trump and his followers.

I’ve been watching for years. There’s a whole group of us online who monitor a rump offshoot of the cult called Freedom Corner in Washington, DC, which demands freedom for January 6th rioters and the hanging of Nancy Pelosi.

Every night, they chant the name of Ashli Babbitt, read out a list of insurrectionists with the benediction of “hero” and swear allegiance to Donald Trump.

The things I have seen on their livestreams! George Santos posing for selfies. Megaphone wars with counterprotestors. Cult members arrested for assault. Bizarre song and dance numbers. Arguments with the police. Hidden bottles of wine. Cardboard forts. Chalktifa.

It’s been a wild ride, with so many hard-to-believe moments that I created a glossary to keep track of the people, places and things of the chudoverse.

I’ve also watched plenty of his rallies, for many of the DC-area chuds attend them and livestream from the audience. (The dirty secret of Trump events is that he’s not attracting new followers but just getting the same olds again and again.)

But for newbies, watching a Trump rally, like his recent salute to fascism in Madison Square Garden, can be disorienting, like being thrown into an insane asylum where all the inmates think that you’re the crazy one.

Here are four tips to watch a Trump rally without losing your mind:

1. Watch on YouTube. Do not watch live on TV. You need the ability to pause and rewind (did I just hear that?), as well as being able to fast-forward through the hours of dead air and filler that comprise these poorly-managed affairs.
2. Take breaks. Crazytown is addictive. Once you’ve seen Trump swaying on stage to YMCA and Ava Maria, his brain an empty shell, with hundreds of people following along in a Pennsylvania gymnasium as if this is perfectly normal, it can be hard to pull away.
3. Be careful with RSBN. You can find Trump rallies on many platforms but the most dangerous is the Right Side Broadcasting Network (RSBN), which makes North Korean state media look subtle. This YouTube channel is for people who think Fox is too liberal.  They fill the breaks and dead air during Trump rallies with commentators praising their god-king interspersed with ads for coronavirus cures and MAGA coins.
4. Let someone else do the work for you. The best/worst parts of any Trump rally are quickly clipped and shared online. You do not have to watch the whole thing or even watch it live. Follow @atrupar or @acyn on Twitter for those viral moments.

Win or lose, the Trump cult isn’t going away. Millions of Americans believe that the government can control the weather and that January 6th was a setup. And that they are the rightful masters of this country, with democracy a mere fiction to be discarded when it gets inconvenient.

Know your enemy. Watch the cult.