Handmaid’s Tale

Escaping Gilead – My experience crossing the border

~ Randy Blazak ~ 1 Comment

May 21, 2025

Ever since January 20th, when Trump pretended to take the oath of office, things in America have felt really dark. From people being grabbed off the street by ICE and disappearing from public view without due process to the rise and fake fall of Trump’s top campaign donor, Elon Musk, it’s felt very end of a nation-ish. This includes rumors about changes at the border.

Here in Portland, it’s about a four-and-a-half our drive to the Canadian border. I’ve made the crossing many times. Last time was in December when Cozy and I drove up to Vancouver for the Taylor Swift concert. The crossing was a blast with carloads of Swifties shouting to each other and Canadian border guards the recipients of countless friendship bracelets. It’s so nice having another country just up the road a piece.

So I decided to make a run for the border.

After Andi picked up Cozy yesterday, I hopped on I-5 to make that long journey north; Olympia, Seattle, Bellingham, to the Peace Arch crossing about 10 pm last night. Late on a Tuesday, the usual border traffic jam was gone, but there was something new this time.

On the American side of the Peace Arch, there was a red traffic light and a barricade pushing cars into one lane. Up ahead I saw two armed men talking to a driver. When they finished, I was waved me forward. Two men in black military gear and long rifles stopped me. I searched for any identifying organization; border patrol, ICE, HSI, FBI. Nothing. I could have asked. I could have said, “Hey fellas, I’m on a DHS CP3 project. Who are you with?” But the rifles just shut me up.

It was a brief interaction. One of the men asked me to role down all my windows so he could look in the car. It was clear they were looking for people, not contraband. I have no idea who they were. To tall white guys straight out of central casting. I assumed that if I wasn’t a white male, the stop would have been longer, but they sent me forward where I showed my passport to the border guard and headed into our great neighbor to the north.

I didn’t go all the way to Vancouver. I booked a “pod” just south of the city in Richmond because I saw a program about Japanese pod hotels and it seemed like a fun way to crash for the night before turning around and heading back the U.S.A. in the morning. If you ever wondered what sleeping in a coffin would be like, this was it. But the coffin had wifi, so I got an Instagram post up about the experience. Actually, it reminded me of sleeping on the tour bus back in my road manager days, so I slept well.

This morning, after breakfast at IHOP (it truly IS international!), I headed south. There had been a lot of talk that entering the US would be the real problem. That I would be made to swear loyalty to the Mango Mussolini or would they search my phone and look at my social media footprint where I daily proclaim the emperor has no clothes. One wrong thoughtcrime and I would go from Canada to El Salvador.

There were only two lanes open at Peace Arch so I had time to watch and get nervous. It was obvious that the guards were taking their time, especially with Canadian cars. When is was my turn, I got the 20 questions, about what I did in Canada, who I met in Canada, what I bought in Canada. I know that most of these questions are meaningless and just meant to give the guard a chance to evaluate your demeanor. He took my keys and opened up the back of my car. He said, “Where are all your clothes? Your backpack’s empty.” I wanted to say, “That’s my brother’s backpack. He’s dead.” But, for some reason, I said, “I left them in Seattle.” Again, my white maleness played a role, I’m sure. I was allowed to enter my country and head home to pick up my kid.

The whole thing was weird. Why are there armed guards before you get to the Canadian border guards? What are they asking Canadians coming into the U.S.? Last night, it felt like they are trying to stop people from escaping  the United States, not escape into it, like a scene from The Handmaid’s Tale. I can’t change my skin tone to repeat the experiment, but the joy of international travel by car is now tense and scary. Part of me wonders if I should have just stayed in my pod.

Beta Trump: The Day the King Fell Off the Hill

~ Randy Blazak ~ 1 Comment

October 12, 2024

I was 18 or 19 when I first heard the line, “Real men don’t eat quiche.” I remember being so confused because I loved quiche! Eggs, pie, it’s the perfect meal! Was I not a real man? What if I ate quiche with one hand and bashed someone over the head with lead pipe with the other? Where was this guidebook for what was and wasn’t the permitted behavior for real men, so we wouldn’t become fake men?

Judith Butler, the philosopher who wrote Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990), took issue with any attempt to define “real men” or what makes a “natural woman.” These are human inventions, invented by humans who have no actual authority over such designations. Sociologists know that gender is fluid and changes across time and space. What was masculine in 1954 is quite different from what is masculine in 2024. My own research on racist skinheads found them largely motivated by this changing nature of masculinity, as their manly factory jobs were offshored and “their women” declared their independence and began bringing home bigger paychecks. For Butler, gender was a performance and, boy, did the skinheads perform.

So it’s with great amusement that I watch the buffoonish performance of masculinity by former President Trump. This child of privilege, who has never lifted anything heavier than a golf club, has routinely pretended to be a strongman. On his first run for president, he regularly told his supporters to “knock the hell out of” protestors. When, as president, he contracted COVID, he defiantly ripped his mask off on the White House balcony (and was then whisked off to be treated by the nation’s top doctors). When an assassins bullet barely grazed his ear, he raised his fist and chanted “Fight! Fight! Fight!” His endless admiration of dictators like Orban and Putin is all part of the act. Former Chief of Staff Gen. John Kelly had to beg Trump not to praise Adolf Hitler in public. Admiring Kim Jong Un is one thing, but Hitler, well, that might be a PR problem.

One of the themes of this election has been the 18 point gender gap between Trump and Harris supporters. And it’s not just uneducated white men that are breaking for Trump. It’s also a lot of uneducated brown and black men. Even Obama has been enlisted to try to convince black men to vote for the black woman. Is Kamala Harris this year’s quiche?

Patriarchy is the oldest power dynamic on earth. Older than capitalism. Older than racism. It doesn’t go all the way back, but as long as we’ve been defining God as “He,” men have enjoyed the privilege of being the king of the hill. Over the last 100 years, men have been slowly pushed off their throne, but they are not giving up without a fight. More women are fully employed than men. More women are graduating from college than men. And now a woman is favored to be Commander in Chief. What’s a fragile boy to do? Trump’s appeal to these broken men is as He-Man, the Master of the Universe. Ah, those were the days.

So it’s not surprising that men from every generation who still buy into 1950s myths of masculinity have glommed onto the the fake bravado of the Richie Rich from Queens (who wears a girdle). They want their UFC, their trad wives, and their unrestricted access to women’s bodies and paychecks. Trump is the incel icon. His conviction for sexual assault only endears him to the lost boys of the twenty-first century. He claims he will restore the moral authority to the days when manly men (like him?) ruled the roost. Masculinity in Harris’ America is under assault from DEI, illegal immigrants, and drag queens, according to Fox News/MAGA doctrine. Trump even referred to radio host Howard Stern as a “woke beta male” after Stern interviewed Harris this week.

Trump’s dive into the cesspool of the manosphere, doing interviews on bro podcasts and bumping chests with misogynists like Logan Paul, may be intended to stiffen his limp poll numbers, but they’re likely to have the opposite effect. Trump should have taken note of the response to his Mini-Me, JD Vance, who tried to define what was and wasn’t a “real woman.” (Spoiler alert: It wasn’t childless cat owners.) The quip rallied women from across the political spectrum who collectively said, “You don’t know me, Couch Boy!” Trump’s pathetic performance of toxic masculinity may endear him to a small number of women who have Stockholm syndrome after years of abuse, but female voters are the proverbial sleeping giant. Just look at the turnout anytime abortion restrictions have been on the ballot.

The vast the majority of these self-declared “alpha males” (pffft!) have women in their lives who have caught glimpses of life outside of patriarchy. It’s a world where they have control over their lives and are safe(r) from sexual harassment and violence. They don’t want to go back to being Mrs. John Doe. A lot of the “alphas” are materially supported by women, even if it’s just living in their mother’s basement. And these women who have their alpha ears are telling them that real men support women’s autonomy and that, if not respected, they could easily take their love to a man who sees women as human beings. My guess is that those men who are still falling for Trump’s macho con don’t have women available for honest conversations. Like Logan Paul, they are flailing in a world that sees alpha men as vestiges of the bad old days.

That’s why Harris running mate Governor Tim Walz is so refreshing. Like me and Kamala, Tim is Generation X (all three of us were born in 1964), and grew up in an era when women gained immense economic and social power. We saw our moms move from housewives to career havers. Walz has all the manly credentials (veteran, football coach, fried food eater). He’s also a girl-dad (of a Swiftie, just like me!) and a defender of queer kids and women’s reproductive rights. The sad incels can try to define him as “soft” (“Tampon Tim”), but Walz’s version of masculinity is something painfully out of reach to them. His 30-year-marriage, compared to Trump’s serial philandering, stands as a model of how men should be in the world. (If you think any of Trump’s marriages were happy, I’ve got some stocks in Trump Steaks I’d like to sell you.) If Alpha Boy thinks he’s going to have a 30-year marriage with a trad wife, he hasn’t spoken to an actual female off the internet.

The conventional wisdom is that it will be female voters that save us from the strongman authoritarian trip of Trump and his Handmaid’s Tale Project 2025 vision of making America 1954 again. Many of those women will be telling their men they are voting for Trump and in the privacy of the voting booth pulling the lever for Harris. But I think a bunch of those alpha males will be voting for Harris, too. Because their girlfriends, wives, mothers, sisters, daughters told them that real men vote for women.

The End of Democracy and the New Dark Age

~ Randy Blazak ~ 1 Comment

March 28, 2024

I lived long enough to see several nations cease to exist, including Rhodesia (1979), the USSR (1991), and Yugoslavia (1992). Even though many believe that “God likes us the best,” there is no guarantee that the United States will exist in perpetuity. We could exist for thousands of years, like Iran, or the U.S. could be kaput by this time next year. There are certainly warning signs that the great American experiment may have a rapidly approaching expiration date.

The idea of America was born in The Enlightenment, the European Age of Reason. Intellectuals, inspired by cracks in the medieval divine right of kings that propped up the authority of the Catholic Church, fashioned a new paradigm in which free thinkers were no longer burned at the stake as heretics. Those cracks were created by the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s, that encouraged the translation of the Bible and believers to seek the truth themselves instead of trusting the dogma of the Church. (Many of those reformers were killed by the Church, including William Tyndale, who dared to translate the Bible into English.) The new rebellion was embodied by Galileo Galilei who’s crime was to present evidence that the earth went around the sun, and not reverse (and who was put on trial by the Church in 1633).

Galileo laid out the framework for the new intellectual movements, taking root in oppressive monarchies in France and across Europe. Like Galileo, who did research based on a theory that made logical sense, the new thinking would be rooted in the values of rationality and empiricism, not blind trust and superstition. This “enlightenment” gave birth to an explosion of science that often contradicted the teachings of the Church. (“How do you reconcile the new fossil evidence with Genesis? Let’s do some research and find a truth rooted in the empirical!”) Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) infused this philosophy with the binding rights and responsibilities of the autonomous individual, a radical new conceptualization of freedom.

The founders of the United States were not brutish patriots who merely wanted independence from their taxers. They were deep thinkers who studied and debated the Enlightenment tenets. Thomas Paine was involved in the French Revolution and Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson’s time in Paris deeply informed how the rational and empirical experiment of American democracy would be constructed. The United States of America is a child of the Enlightenment and exists because the core values of the Enlightenment have persisted for 248 years.

When I taught social theory at Portland State University, we’d often get get into a spirited discussion about the end of the Enlightenment. If the Enlightenment was born in coffeeshops in the 18th Century Europe, when did it end? Some students would argue for 2001, when religious extremists attacked America and a hostility to climate science was a hallmark of the Bush administration. I would counter-argue that as long as democracy and science are still widely valued, the Enlightenment is alive and well. I have since changed my mind. The Enlightenment, that lifted humanity out of the Dark Ages, died on January 6th, 2021.

We knew that the Trump Administration was hostile to science. We saw it on a regular bases during Trump’s COVID briefings, with his ludicrous suggestions that the virus could be cured with sunlight or by injecting bleach. One of the world’s leading immunologists, Anthony Fauci, became a meme as he regularly face-palmed behind Trump’s “I know better than the scientists” buffoonery. And we knew that Trump was hostile to democracy. His administration was characterized by attempts to weaken voting access, Congress, the Department of Justice, and the courts, and a constant war on the free press (parallel to his Russian compatriot, Vladimir Putin). January 6th, was the culmination where he unleashed his anti-vax hordes on the Capital. Believing, despite of all empirical evidence to the contrary, that the 2020 election was “stolen,” the Trump mob tried to prevent the constitutional transfer of power and install their monarch.

In the following years, Trump has cozied up to the world’s dictators, like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, and made it clear that, if re-elected, he would weaponize the federal government to seek retribution against all his political enemies. I hope Mitt Romney has a safe room. Authoritarianism is six months away from America’s doorstep. Trump has joked that he would be a dictator on the first day of his presidency if he  wins. But if he loses, he’s already told his moronic anti-Enlightenment base that the election will have been stolen, and they are armed and ready to rectify the situation. Democracy’s only hope may be that Trump dies comically on the toilet this summer.

I routinely warn against the “sky is falling” prognostications. I remember thinking the Cold War tensions of 1983 would be the endpoint of the human race. (Remember Korean Air Flight 007?) We survived that and 1984. “The world moves on, another day, another drama, drama,” as Taylor Swift sings. But things are different this time. My feelings may be shaped by this federally funded project I’ve been working on for the last two years. We are tasked with interrupting political violence and the chatter I’m seeing about a “second civil war” has been ramping up the closer we get to Election Day. The Trump droogs are locked and loaded and ready to wage holy war on anything they deem to be “woke” or that stands in the way of their dear leader taking control of the reins of power. They are clear that both science and democracy will be fired from Trump 2.0, and if you don’t believe me, take a look at the Handmaid’s Tale agenda of the evangelicals at the Heritage Foundation who think Trump is God’s gift to embryos.

I try to talk about the Enlightenment whenever I can. It’s why America is here. It’s why we walked on the moon. It’s why we can save millions of lives with immunizations. And it’s why infertile couples can have children (except in Alabama). Trump and his minions embody the exact opposite of the values of the Age of Reason. They wanted to burn Anthony Fauci at the stake and hang Mike Pence from the gallows. If they succeed, three centuries of the triumph of rationality and empiricism will be succeeded by a new dark ages where the only value will be fealty to the sovereign, who is currently selling Bibles wrapped in an American flag. This is not dystopian fantasy. This a coming storm that could put out the light for a thousand years. But we stopped that storm 79 years ago. Can we do it again?

Not Woke:  Mauritania, where slavery exists and gay people get the death penalty

~ Randy Blazak ~ 1 Comment

September 7, 2023

I was reading recently how four Republican legislators in Florida, Dennis Baxley, Keith Truenow, Taylor Yarkosky and Stan McClain, were threatening the Florida town of Mount Dora (population 14,516) with “all legislative, legal and executive options available.” Mount Dora’s offense? A city-supported program that allowed local businesses to put “Safe Space” stickers in their windows, letting local LGBTQ citizens know they have a place to turn to if they feel threatened. The letter that Baxley, Truenow, Yarkosky, and McClain (their names should be known) sent Mount Dora is part of Governor Ron DeSantis’ “war on woke,” that has amped up the institutional marginalization of queer and BIPOC folks in Florida.

Let’s put aside the fact that the vast majority (all?) of the people who are hostile to “wokeness” couldn’t tell you what wokeness is, even if you offered to pay them in Trump Steaks. I would argue that caring about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI!) regarding historically marginalized communities is a good thing. Dismantling bigotry has generally been celebrated as a reflection of truth, justice, and the American way. But there is an army of powerful (mainly straight, white cisgender male) voices who are beating the drum, that woke is fundamentally transforming America and robbing people like them (straight, white cisgender males) of their God-given privilege. They want to make America Jm Crow again, when gay people were back in the closet, where guitarist Carlos Santana recently said they should remain.

I could give you a long lecture about how people respond to rapid social change, about internalized bias, or about how people are attracted to overly simplistic ideologies when they feel they have no personal efficacy. Instead I’d like briefly discuss a place where woke is dead as a doornail. No, it’s not in Ron DeSantis’ wet dreams. It’s in Mauritania, a country in western Africa.

First of all, anytime you start talking shit about a country in Africa, you MUST acknowledge the majority of that shit is the result of centuries of colonialism that have savaged the continent. So many of Africa’s problems are a direct result how those in the Northern Hemisphere have carved up the 12 million square miles and pillaged the land and exploited its people. Having said that, Mauritania has banished woke and become one of the planet’s most violent human rights abusers.

America is finally celebrating Juneteen (well, some of us are) to commemorate June 19, 1865, when the last slaves were finally freed. We can save the discussion for the loophole in the 13th amendment that allows for slavery in prison, but we generally agree that slavery in the United States ended 158 years ago. Slavery is alive and well in Mauritania.

Mauritania was the last country on earth to ban the practice (1981) and didn’t actually criminalize slave ownership until 2007, but the practice is still widespread. Contemporary slavery is rooted in the racist ideology learned from its European colonizers, with “white Moors” enslaving thousands of “black Moors,” as ethnic groups are ranked by skin tone and ethnic affiliation. The social caste system has led to between 10 and 20% of population living and working as slaves, according to a 2013 report. (About 10.3% of Americans were enslaved in 1860.) Now let’s talk about the Confederate flags flying in Florida.

On top of that, Mauritania is one of four African countries (along with Nigeria, Uganda, and Somalia) where being an LGBTQ person warrants the death penalty. (Several other African nations give long/life prison sentences for being queer.) Penalties for homosexuality are based on a strict interpretation of Sharia law, as religion is the primary weapon in the oppression of LGBTQ people in both Mauritania and the United States. While there have been no recent reports of gay or trans people being stoned to death in the African nation, there was a widely circulated 2020 story about 8 men who were arrested at a birthday party and imprisoned for “acting like women.” 

In 2023, the president of Uganda. Yoweri Museveni, signed the Anti-Homosexuality Act that mandates the death penalty for homosexuals. It should be mentioned that Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz condemned the act, saying “Any law criminalizing homosexuality or imposing the death penalty for ‘aggravated homosexuality’ is grotesque and an abomination. ALL civilized nations should join together in condemning this human rights abuse.” There have been many cases of gay men being executed for engaging in homosexual sex in Saudi Arabia, a country controlled by the same religious law as Mauritania.

The arrest, imprisonment, and torture of political opponents has made Mauritania one of the world’s great human rights offenders. The sadistic abuse of those who have opposed the national government have been well documented by Amnesty International (2008), the U.S. Department of State (2014), and the United Nations (2016). Not dissimilar from the book banning happening in Florida, citizens in Mauritania are prohibited from accessing literature that counters state doctrine. Gender-based violence is also viewed as a cultural norm in Mauritania. (The domestic violence rate in Florida is 37.9%, compared to the national average of 29%.)

When A Handmaid’s Tale was published in 1985, author Margaret Attwood said that her fictional novel was based on the reality of events under religious and authoritarian regimes. “I didn’t put in anything that we haven’t already done, we’re not already doing, we’re seriously trying to do, coupled with trends that are already in progress… So all of those things are real, and therefore the amount of pure invention is close to nil,” she said. In one form, Attwood’s fictional Gilead exists in Mauritania. Is it coming to America (or at least Florida)?

Watching the “war on woke” that seeks to make Florida (and America) more like Mauritania (and Gilead) should shake every freedom-loving American who cares about all off us, not just the exalted straight, white cis-gender men in the nation. In Florida, women have less rights they did two years ago (before Dobbs). Seeing DEI programs, rainbow flags, and black history classes being banned in the state may be DeSantis’s agenda to make Florida 1950 again, but I have to think that the majority of Americans are awake to what that looks like. If not, there are some gay black Moors in Mauritania that can wake them up. And for those who are so emphatic that “wokeism” must be stopped, I would beg you to stop and clearly define what you mean by “woke.” Woke might be something you actually believe in.

Either way, you know the establishment in Mauritania, who supports the death penalty for queer people and allows slavery continue, sees the “war on woke” as a vindication of their values. And, without a doubt, both Florida and Mauritania have redeeming qualities. Sandy beaches? But they don’t reflect the basic value of respecting the whole person and that’s the slippery slope.

Note: If you interested in helping LGBTQ people get the F out of Mauritania and other countries where they face state repression, please support the Rainbow Underground. Bring them here, where they are free to buy Bud Light at Target.  For more information, CLICK HERE.

The Catch-22 of Trump 2024, or, How Donald Trump’s Comical Death is Democracy’s Great Hope

~ Randy Blazak ~ 2 Comments

September 19, 2022

The good news is most Americans don’t want Donald Trump to run for president again. In a  recent PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll, 61 percent of Americans said they want the orange oaf off the ballot. Of course, another poll, from Harvard, found 67 percent of Americans don’t want Biden to run for re-election (citing his age, not his attempt to overthrow the government). But Trump has become the drunk uncle who won’t leave after the holidays. Based on the spotty attendance of Ultra MAGA weirdos at his recent rallies (“Huge!” pfft!), Trump’s cult of personality seems to be shrinking like his legal team.

But it only takes one Timothy McVeigh to ruin your whole day.

Just take one look at the people showing up at these MAGA rallies. On one hand, if you ever wondered were old white people go to die, it’s to a mostly empty arena dressed in red, white, and blue “Let’s Go Brandon” golf shirts. But on the other hand, these people are batshit crazy. That fascistic devotion to Trump is reflected in numerous polls that report the majority of Republicans still believe the Big Lie, that the Con Man from Queens won the 2020 election. As Joseph Goebbels is alleged to have said, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”

Behind the wack-a-doo attendees at Trump rallies are numerous “patriot” militia members who are heavily armed and waiting for the go from their dear leader to kick off their “boogaloo” with the promise that the rednecks will win this civil war. A recent ADL report found scores of Oath Keepers in the ranks of the military, police, first responders, and among elected officials. Like a page out of the racist playbook, The Turner Diaries, these Timothy McVeigh-wannabees hope to make January 6 look like a Beach Boys concert on the DC Mall.

Which brings up to the conundrum of 2024 and Trump’s concerning attempt to force his way back into the White House. There are three possible scenarios, and none of them end well for this great nation.

Scenario 1: Trump runs in 2024 and a crushing recession, endless memes about “black crime,” the harassment of poll workers, and a well-timed news story about an undocumented immigrant from Latin America savaging a white woman (whether true or not), and 45 becomes 47. Trump takes it as a mandate to further deconstruct American democracy. Can you imagine what the federal courts will be capable of doing after another four years of Trump appointments? Suddenly The Handmaid’s Tale will look like a utopia instead of a dystopia. As forces loyal to the Constitution try to prevent America from sliding into an authoritarian state, civll war becomes eminent.

Scenario 2: Trump runs in ’24 and loses to Biden (or Kamala Harris because Joe fell off his bike). It will be seen as evidence of another “stolen election.” Nearly every MAGA candidate that lost a primary this year claimed to be a victim of “voter fraud.” As funny as it’s been they are sitting up the expectation that if Trump loses in ’24, it will be because the unseen evil forces. (Spend some time on Trump’s Truth Social or Gab and you know it’s the “Jews.”) Since peaceful means will be seen as no longer effective, violence will be called for – Civil War 2: The MAGA Boogaloo.

Scenario 3: Merrick Garland indicts Trump for his role in the January 6 insurrection or handing over classified documents to Putin, or throwing ketchup at the wall. Whatever. Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits ANY politician who has taken the oath of office from holding future public office if they have “engaged in insurrection or rebellion.” Engaged in, not caused. You better believe the DOJ is mulling this one over with sweating brows. While this is probably the best option that demonstrates that our Constitution and the rule of law actually fucking mean something in this country, the “defund the FBI” crowd is still going to be triggered and urged to drag themselves out of their troll holes and shoot SOMEBODY.

This really sucks. It sucks for America and for those of us that just want to live in peace and not have to have to defend ourselves from roving gangs of MAGA militias looking for liberals, Black Live Matter activists, and drag queens to hang. I have weapons training but I’d rather spend my gun budget on some shrubbery and taking my kid to Disney World (if the DeSantis Army hasn’t nuked it). Plus, I suck at that Big Buck Hunter game. I don’t know how good I would be at mowing down marauding Proud Boys on my street.

So America’s hope seems to lie in Scenario 4: The death of Donald J. Trump. And it can’t be from the most likely cause, a massive heart attack. The QAnon loons will see conspiracy all over that outcome. You thought bunker dwellers had a field day with JFK’s (and JFK Jr.’s) death. They will see the hand of Fauci and/or Antifa in Trump’s “natural causes” bucket kicking. And then we’re back to the armed rebellion of the sub-moronic legions. No, it has to be in public and as mundane as possible.  He’s gotta trip over his feet and break his neck at a golf course, or fall off a stage at rally while doing that embarrassing white man dance. He could choke on an Egg McMuffin or maybe he could step out of a speeding limo after an argument with Eric. It’s gotta be Darwin Award-level stupid.

We know from research that cult-like movements tend to fade when the charismatic personality at the center expires. (Except for the Dead Head thing. That shit refuses to go away.) The MAGA faithful might rally around Junior, or the more frightening Ron DeSantis. But they can’t give them what Don gave them, the ability to be stupid but feel smart. And the Trump chapter closes, not with a bang, but with a briefly lingering oder.

This is where we are America. The threat of armed political violence is very real and the clock to 2024 is ticking. The great hope of America may just be Donald Trump driving his golf cart into a pool at Mar-a-Lago and getting his khakis caught in the pool drain or being hugged to death by Diamond and Silk and the My Pillow guy. But it’s gotta be spectacularly stupid, like the man himself.

PS. Scenario 5: Ukrainian victory drives Putin from power and the kompromat that Vladimir has on Trump falls into pro-democracy hands. Trump is told it will be released if he doesn’t permanently retire. Trump moves to Moscow where he spends his remaining days paying prostitutes to pee on pictures of Barack Obama.

Confronting Our Deaths in a Pandemic

~ Randy Blazak ~ 4 Comments

April 7, 2020

It’s not a good time to be watching the news. The stories of people losing loved ones to COVID-19 can have me sobbing like a baby. Parents, like, me leaving their families too quickly. Some are frontline medical workers, some are educators, some are bus drivers that an idiot coughed on. They were here and then they were gone. Most got a test too late, not that there’s much help that’s available once you slide down the hole. I have a very old friend who is on a ventilator in a hospital room in Atlanta and we’re just hoping the wind shifts direction and blows him back to his family. So turning on the TV at the moment is sure to remind you that the glass is half empty as it’s being used to waterboard you.

JohnSean

I started this blog in late 2014 because I was inspired by John Lennon’s decision to leave work and become a stay-at-home father for his son, Sean. I wanted to give the same kind of intensive care to our daughter, Cozy. Cozy, 5, is now the same age as Sean was when John was killed by a gunman in front of their New York home. In numerous interviews, people ask Sean Lennon what he remembers about his dad and he honestly replies not much. That answer shakes me to the core. I’ve gotten to meet Sean a few times (and so did Cozy, in the womb), and I always wonder how his life would have been different if he had gotten two or three more years with his fab father.

The specter of death seems very real today, watching the rising death count from coronavirus. (Remember on February 26th, when Donald Trump said that in a couple of days, the virus would disappear, “like a miracle”?) You can tell me that I’m statistically more likely to be killed by a falling Comcast satellite than to die of the novel coronavirus, but that’s not going to register, especially since there’s a pretty good chance I’m already carrying it. My persistent cough worries me. There’s no fever but the “science” on what this thing is seems to change daily. We certainly don’t have any leadership on the issue from our president, just daily campaign rallies where the science is attacked along with journalists and handy scapegoats (“China!”).

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The rate at which people go from fine to dead, body stacked in a refrigerated truck, is horrifying. The Detroit bus driver who went on social media to complain about coughing passengers was dead in 11 days. And like the Class of 2020 high school seniors who will never be in high school again, no prom, no hugging your favorite teacher, there’s little chance to get your house in order and say goodbye. If you’re lucky, you’re isolated from all humans, including your family, with a ventilator tube down your throat. People have brought family members to emergency rooms “just to be safe” and then never seen them again.

I’m not obsessed with death. Other than being over 50, I’m not particularly “high risk,” but what does that even mean? I’m the family member who makes the supply runs to the grocery store, where two employees tested positive. I touched an avocado to see if it was ripe. Then I touched my face. I’m probably gonna die. It’s been nice knowing you. When I was 7, I stole a piece of Brach’s candy from a Piggly Wiggly. There, I said it.

I do worry about leaving my family in the lurch if I succumb to this thing. I know it’s fashionable and all, but it seems like more trouble than it’s worth, and I think my wife would be pissed off if I got COVID-19 after running to the store because I suddenly had a mad craving for Pop Tarts. I think she actually likes me and appreciates my ability to, um, well, do something. God, I don’t even know. I do know my daughter thinks pretty highly of me and I’d prefer to stick around long enough for her to learn that I made some life changing decisions so this wonderful family could exist. Am I the only one who is thinking about how all these fragile relationships turn out if I become a part of the daily corona body count? I mean they can’t even have a funeral for dead me. I require a wake with multiple drunken awkward moments! But I was just cremated along with all the other wheezers. Poof.

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For those of us that have wrestled with depression, there’s a real need to constantly monitor our mental states. The moment it really hit me was the first time I had to wear a cloth face mask in public. I sat in the grocery store parking lot trying to get my courage up to don a cute face covering that one of our crafty neighbors had made. I knew it was the responsible thing to do, maybe even saving lives (I had touched the avocado, after all), but it felt like I was giving into the fear. Once inside the Fred Meyer, mask in place, I saw all the other depressed faces hidden behind their masks. It felt like an awful version of The Handmaid’s Tale. The sinking feeling that this was normal now had me wanting to go lay down in the bread isle and cry. What started out as kind of funny (“Why the hell is everyone buying toilet paper?”) is now centered around saving the lives of family members. On a beautiful spring day, it can seem so dark.

Those of us that don’t die, will get through this. And maybe we’ll have that promised renaissance afterwards. I just wish we had an actual leader to help guide us through the darkness instead of a self-serving madman. I guess it’s up to us. I guess it’s always been up to us. Let’s live. At least until we can have funerals again.

America is Becoming a Dystopian Nightmare: What Do We Do Now???

~ Randy Blazak ~ 7 Comments

June 28, 2018

I’m sick to my stomach. It doesn’t seem like a survivable idiocracy at this point. It feels like the drift into authoritarianism. Both my undergraduate and doctoral work focused on how fascist movements emerge. My professional work as a researcher has centered on the threat of right-wing extremism. I have to slap myself to make sure this is not a bad dream. Trade wars lead to depressions which lead to authoritarian strongmen willing to do whatever it takes to make their nation “great again.” Is this 1938 or 1968? Old straight white men don’t see it, but almost everyone else sees the writing on the wall.

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At least the summer of 1968 had just a few central issues to focus America’s rage on; the Vietnam War, institutional racism, would the Detroit Tigers make it to the World Series (yes). For us in 2018 it’s dizzying. Our president alienating our allies and playing footsies with dictators, then lying about about a member of Congress, children being ripped from their parents by government police forces, the Supreme Court rolling back reproductive rights, worker rights, and banning many Muslims from entering the country. And that’s just in the last two weeks! How are we supposed to get a footing to fight back?

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Or is that their plan?

The announcement of the resignation of Justice Anthony Kennedy from the Supreme Court should be taken as a monumental threat to our democracy but, jeez, it’s just another headline. There’ a protest about it, but I was going to go to the protest about the Supreme Court ending fair share support of public unions, and also those kids on the border, and what were we angry about this time last month? I can’t keep up. I’ve got Trump fatigue and that’s good for Trump and his cult of personality. Is this how Germans felt in 1929?

The Supreme Court situation is more than dire. George H.W. Bush recognized stacking the courts with his “yes-men” was the way to go 30 years ago. It’s an old tactic but it was raised to a new height of authoritarian rule in 2016 when Senate Leader and human turtle Mitch McConnell refused to hold hearings for President Obama’s Supreme Court pick until after the election. Most of us thought, Fine, then President Hillary will appoint someone who is actually a progressive.

Trump’s pick (which constitutionally should have been Obama’s but GOP + U.S. Constitution = meh), Neil Gorsuch has helped to swing the bench away from the center and to the hard right. The decisions this past week prove that hard fought victories for women, workers, and a sane anti-terrorism policy can be zeroed out by a single vote. Now that Kennedy, the last remaining (Reagan-appointed) centrist is leaving, Trump can recreate the court in his image. Do you think he’s going for judicial balance or for a rubber stamp for his destructive policies? Look for Don, Jr. to be his go to “judge.”

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It’s clear that Roe v. Wade’s days are numbered and women and girls will soon be dying again in back alley abortions. (If Donald J. Trump ever paid for your abortion, now would be the time to come forward.) Marriage equality is in the cross-hairs as President Pussy Grabber tries to appease his evangelical gay-hating “Christian” base. Border policy that rounds up the “infestation” (his word) of non-white immigrants will be expanded. Start looking for an expiration date on green cards. But most of all the Trump Court will hand more of the people’s rights over to corporations and destroy the democratic (that’s a small “d”) fiber that made this country the shining city on the hill.

Trump looks more and more like Saddam Hussein every day, pushing this country into a permanent one party rule. He’s been quietly appointing scores of judges to the lower courts, including white supremacists. And we’re focused on Roseanne Barr and whether or not Sarah Huckabee Sanders can eat a burrito in peace. Post-modern theorist Frederick Jameson warned us that late capitalism would be characterized by an obsession with “politics” while the rich and powerful consolidated their control over the masses. “Trump’s creating an authoritarian state!” “Yeah, but did you hear on Fox & Friends what Maxine Waters said?”

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Speaking of TV shows, as I’ve mentioned before, this all seems like a preview of season three of The Handmaid’s Tale. Every woman and gay person who voted for Trump (or didn’t vote for Clinton) will see their rights rolled back. It might not be the government that is lynching “gender traitors” en mass and forcing non-Christians to work in the wastelands, but the hate mongers who love Trump and hate those who don’t will have high octane fuel for their pogroms. I spent the hour after the Kennedy announcement on white supremacist discussion pages and the Neo-Nazis could not be more excited about where Trump could take this.

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Where I’m stuck is what to do. When I watch The Handmaid’s Tale, I’m cheering for the terrorists. Whoever said that one person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter was right on the money. King George III called the American revolutionaries “terrorists” because of their asymmetrical warfare. Our country was founded by terrorists/freedom fighters. But there are also the Timothy McVeigh-style terrorists who call for a “2nd American Revolution” to purge America of its control by the “global Zionist cabal.” The 2nd Amendment Trumpies are itching for a civil war and any excuse to unload their ammo on random “libtards.” So, I think blowing shit up is probably off the table.

Can we rally behind a corporately-funded Democratic Party to plug the holes of this sinking ship in November? They don’t have a very good track record as of late and have done a perfect job of blowing perfect opportunities. Of course, all those “progressives” who refused to vote for Hillary in 2016 pretty much handed America Trump on a Mir-a-Lago platter. Can the entrenched misogyny be overcome by the clarion call of an Elizabeth Warren or are we just doomed to have to follow whatever old white man can puff up his chest the biggest?

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I’m so torn. There’s a big part of me that believes Trump supporters are either complete morons or racists (recognizing that there is a third possibility, that they’re both). There’s also a big part of me that believes Trump supporters, like the Nazi skinheads I have spent thirty years studying, have just been misled by those speaking to their emotional distress and can be rescued. And therefore that America can be rescued from this abyss it stands on the edge of. It’s easier to say, “You’re wrong and you are being lied to” than it is to say, “Hey, let’s talk about our common values and how we can act on something other than fear.” Are we up for that challenge?

But right now fear is driving these people, like this ludicrous fear of MS-13. (I want “Angel Family” rallies for people killed by the police, or corporate malfeasance, or falling trees.) Trump’s “campaign events” look more and more like the fascist rallies of 80 years ago, full of scapegoating and dangerous conspiracy theories packaged in easily busted lies. Are his crowd paid actors (like they were at his campaign announcement) or are these people for real?

I don’t know what to do right now. A little angel is sitting on my shoulder and saying, “Randy, you’ve studied this phenomenon your entire adult life. You know what’s coming. Gather your family and get the fuck out.” But part of me wants to reason with these people one last time and remind them that we can be one nation again. That this politics of division will be the end of us. I’m ready to put my shoulder to the wheel to build bridges instead of walls. I’m ready to fight and recruit allies. Even old white men (and their “classy” (barf) women) can be reasoned with. It’s not over yet. America, I’m giving you until November.

 

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Watching the Wheels Turns 3: Thanks and Resistance

~ Randy Blazak ~ 2 Comments

November 23, 2017

As you get older, measuring years in a life seems more difficult. The difference between my year as a 15-year-old and Randy at 16 seem like distinct chapters of a very logical book. I couldn’t begin to tell you how 46 was different from 45. But having a child puts you back on the clock. We’re not giving Cozy’s age by weeks anymore. (It’s 170 weeks today, if you care to know.) But the transition from 2 1/4 to 3 1/4 has been pretty grounding.

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It seems like a moment ago I was starting this blog, fully employed as a full professor at Portland State University, while the baby slept and my wife returned to work at her job at Planned Parenthood. Now we have a kid who runs the board on Candyland and likes to tell me what things really mean. Her sense of humor is as warped as her father’s. She likes to complain about our car being “stinky.” Yesterday, from the backseat, she said, “Daddy, can I tell you something crazy? If there was a stinky man here he would say, ‘I really like your car!’” I laughed so hard I almost ended up on the sidewalk.

Another year watching this child evolve as I’ve watch my country devolve. A year ago, I still was hoping that the election was just a bad dream. Now were racing towards either a version of The Handmaid’s Tale or Idiocracy. I can’t tell which is coming first. Last November, I was in New Orleans at the annual convention of the American Society of Criminology. One of my esteemed colleagues who also studies hate grabbed me by the shoulder and said, “This election might be bad for the country, but it’s going to be good for us.” Who knew how right he’d be? From the dramatic rise in bias crimes, Muslim bans, the rise of the alt-right fascists, Charlottesville, and Trump cultist who say they trust their pussy-grabbing leader more than they trust Jesus, it’s been one quick death slide of a once great country. But anybody who says the emperor has no clothes on is branded “fake news” by the MAGA police.

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It’s certainly kept me busy. I’ve done more interviews on hate crimes, the alt right, and mass shootings this year than I can count. CNN, NPR, Al Jazeera, flying to New York for CBS News (Yes, I saw Charlie Rose). I think the most surreal moment was doing an interview in a Portland hotel room with a former racist skinhead for a Canadian film crew doing a documentary on Trump-era hate and having to take a break to do an interview on Trump-era hate, via Skype, for live TV in Turkey. The world wants to know what the hell is happening in Trump America. I’ve been researching this issue for 30 years, so I guess it’s my time to join the global conversation. Hopefully, my words will help sound the alarm.

This Thanksgiving, I’m thankful for a few things. I’m thankful that the resistance to this swing to the moronic and hateful is being countered by a growing number of Americans, including traditional Republicans. The opposition to this thing that looks more and more like fascism is sometimes noisy and annoying and might veer off message or attract its own knuckleheads, but it is vital to the salvation of the core American values. Let’s be clear, Trump and his alt-right thugs want to destroy America and remake it in their hateful image. There would be no antifa (anti-fascists) if there weren’t fa (fascists). And there are fascists. I’m thankful that people are standing up to any form of authoritarianism, including those standing up to sexual harassers and abusive police. Maybe we needed the Trump nightmare to finally ignite the red blood cells of this country.

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Most of all I’m thankful that everyone in my family is safe and healthy. We are growing in spite of this assault. My wife has to keep her green card handy and we know that the GOP, under their dear orange leader, is hellbent on taking our daughter’s healthcare away from her. But so far we are holding strong. Cozy is doing great and we are thankful for her Obamacare-funded vitamins. Knock on wood, she seems perfect in every way and doesn’t even need diapers anymore. (Thank you, Frozen undies!) A friend recently had a stroke and I know how quickly all that can change, but we are strong and ready for the winter. Our little family is mighty.

In three years this blog has engaged in discussion in lot of issues, from baby brain development to football violence, and tried to keep the feminist lens in focus. A year ago, I was writing about the children of Aleppo (who are still being bombed, btw) and lord knows what I will be writing about a year from now. (2018, make America smart again?) But I am thankful to be able to share my family’s life and my random thoughts about the state of the world. And I’m thankful that you’re here as well. Unless you’re a troll.

4 Novembers