I just got back from seeing Brian Cox’s new show Emergence, thanks to a buddy of mine having an extra ticket, and I have to say it’s a cool show with lots of really cool visualizations, science explanations, and even live footage of ongoing astronomy stuff. I recommend checking it out.

I particularly liked his take on the Great Filter, and the question of why it is that we’re the only space-faring civilization of which we’ve found even a trace. My personal favorite explanation is that everything’s too damned far apart for interstellar travel to be viable at any meaningful scale, but Cox suggested that the “filter” preventing other high-tech societies from developing and leaving their planets happens well before they get to the point of technology.

There is, of course, the other option, which is on most of our minds when this subject arises, which is the various ways we’ve found to “filter” ourselves out of the equation, the two big ones being nuclear war, and global warming (which makes nuclear war a bit more likely), and in both cases, the fate of humanity seems to come down to who has power where, and what they believe.

I tried writing a post about current political events in the US, and the question of Democratic Party leadership. The 2026 midterms were, to quote a recent president, a big fucking deal. Most of my readers will already be aware that we saw changes in the US political landscape that I probably would have thought impossible just a few years ago.

The reason why I would have thought it impossible is that the leadership of the Democratic Party has spent most of the last 30 years developing a philosophy of gradual changes through minute adjustments, and of politics via spreadsheet. It’s been bad enough that I’ve even had liberals tell me that enthusiasm for a political candidate is a red flag that they’re dangerous, and that someone like Bernie, or more recently Mamdani, is basically the same as Trump.

This is an ideology in which change is an inherent bad, and the more change there is, the more inherently bad it is. This is a problem, for those of us who believe we can do better than capitalism, because it turns out the status quo in the US is a lot closer to fascism than it is to any form of socialism, and so when it comes to choosing the lesser of two evils, there are a disturbing number of Americans, currently best represented by Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, who genuinely see even social democracy as more radical that a literal fascist dictatorship that has been carrying out an ethnic cleansing before our very eyes.

Schumer and Jeffries represent the politics of normalizing fascism, genocide, climate collapse and more. They are the wing of the Democrats that says things like “we need a big, strong Republican Party”, even as the GOP is drawing up plans for concentration camps and trying to outlaw opposition.

The Democrats have a historic opportunity to make real change, and to seriously interfere with the Republicans’ fascist agenda, but that will not happen if things stay as they are.

It looks like Schumer is vulnerable, and while it may not be possible to replace Jeffries (though I’d like to see my rep Ayanna Pressley take the job of Speaker instead), the closer we get to actually doing so, the more leverage progressives will have to force him to actually serve the people for a change.

The video below has more on the situation, but the main thing to do is contact your representatives and senators to urge them not just to oppose Schumer and Jeffries, but to advocate for alternatives. As it stands, the Senate alternative is Chris Van Hollen, and while the odds are worse for the House, it looks like Ayanna Pressley does have support.

Every expert I’ve seen has agreed that whether you’re analyzing the behavior of fascist movements, or of the malignant narcissists who tend to lead them, Trump’s only move is escalation. He wants to punish America for rejecting him. He wants to punish the whole world for hating him. He wants to punish humanity for outliving him. He wants to punish everyone who ever said no to him, and his true believers are right there with him.

The scale of damage he’s able to inflict will depend greatly on what, if anything, Congress does to restrain him, and we’ve already seen that Schumer and Jeffries have no intention of doing anything like that.

We cannot afford to leave this faction of the party in charge. The longer we do, the more people die.