Shaun is doing a fundraiser, a livestream, for the Women’s Foundation of Minnesota.

He’s playing Elden Ring and bashing monsters while the money comes pouring in. When I just looked, he’d raised $23,000 in his first day. He’s not done, you can chip in too!

And I regret it. Bet you didn’t know that Scandinavian-Americans are “over-empathetic” and that we’re a hotbed of “left-wing radicalism,” like that is a bad thing.

What explains why endemic disorder seems to plague Minneapolis? My pet theory is that if you look at the history of Minneapolis and compare it to the histories of other American cities that have similarly become hotbeds of left-wing radicalism and anarchy—say, Seattle—there are real commonalities. Both cities have a long history of powerful organized labor movements, factions of communist sympathizers, and a tradition of industrial-frontier progressivism. Each city also has a high density of Scandinavians. There’s something about Scandinavian transplant cultures that simultaneously brings an over-empathizing element—bring in as many Somalis as you can, don’t ask any rude questions about what they might be up to—and also a more militant, socialistic, progressive, and activist element.

He is such a dumbass.

Thomas Chatterton Williams has written up another piece sucking up to the powers-that-be, blaming the “super-woke” for the fact that he’s only on the board of The Atlantic and gets published in The Atlantic and has many peers and colleagues reading The Atlantic and is good buddies with the wise conservatives who steer The Atlantic. It’s as obliviously hypocritical as my short summary sounds, but don’t read The Atlantic to verify — just listen to Thought Slime who quotes bits of the article and also checks the statistics that Thomas Chatterton Williams didn’t bother to read.

Charming. It reminded me of an era when pretentious conservative twits like Williams were everywhere and didn’t have any real power, yet, and we’d point out how insane and ridiculous their claims were, and we didn’t have to worry that they and their friends were going to march up and shoot us. The good old days.

Here’s the only problem with comparing the Trump regime to Nazis: we have our own homegrown analogy, our heritage of slavery, and the enforcers of that oppression.

“Slave catchers” just isn’t as catchy as “Gestapo”, in addition to making white people uncomfortable. But it is more accurate. The Nazis were inspired by purely American racism, from the genocide against Native Americans and the reservation system to the use of concentration camps (tip o’ the hat to the British in the Boer War for that one, too). We have a lot of sins we should be more conscious of. It’s troubling how often we have targeted people on the basis of race: Native Americans, Black people, Japanese Americans…we’ve had special state-endorsed treatments for people of color throughout our history.

Consider this: ICE agents smashed in a car window in Minneapolis, and dragged a pregnant woman through the snow and ice on our cold hard streets, the week before Christmas.

Minnesotans on the scene reacted by shouting and throwing snowballs and ice at the thugs, because you must do whatever you can to stop the violence, and sometimes that means fighting back. The commenters online are full of hate for the helpless pregnant woman.

@chuckkugler1646
Why would a pregnant woman put herself in that situation? Wow is this a protest manipulation?

Blame the woman for existing.

@dianehaines1220
Unbelievable how the news will AlWAYS tell you that the illegal was pregnant, has autism, is breast feeding a 2 yr old, has cancer, has diabetes, has no criminal history (they committed a crime by being in the USA illegally), etc. Why, Media, do you always side with illegal aliens that have no authorization to be in the USA, and you give a Bleeding Heart story? Certainly you can do better!

I’m sarry, Diane, but most of us haven’t as thoroughly dehumanized “illegal aliens” (being in the US is not automatically a crime) as you have. These are human beings, and some of them will be pregnant, have autism, be breast feeding a 2 yr old, have cancer, have diabetes, have no criminal history, and a host of other human traits. They are people, not plastic mannequins lacking in all humanity, as you wish.

@DeannaEstrada-ki2ug
Get those criminals 🧊⛄🧊⛄🧊 ICE 🧊⛄🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸💯❤️🤍💙🦅👍😂🤣😂

There’s the mindless, hateful creature Diane was looking for.

Then I found this: WHEN IT HAPPENS by Tom Ellison. It made me feel a little better. I’m stealing the whole thing because I need this.

It’s been so long, you sometimes forget that eventually, IT will HAPPEN.

It’s impossible to say when IT will HAPPEN. But it can’t be too long until IT HAPPENS. Looking at the data (age, high-stress job, cardiac history), it is statistically plausible that IT will HAPPEN in the next thirty-six months.

Eighteen, if you factor in hamburger consumption and all the weird bruising.

Of course, it doesn’t feel right to want IT to HAPPEN. And it’s obviously not okay to try to make IT HAPPEN. That’s not what this is ABOUT, just to make things CLEAR LEGALLY as far as VARIOUS AGENCIES are concerned.

But regardless, IT is going to HAPPEN. So you’re allowed to think about IT.

Theoretically, some longevity breakthrough could happen that would enable IT to NEVER HAPPEN. Just the idea is PSYCHOLOGICALLY COMPLICATED. But realistically, IT will HAPPEN. After all, the medical research apparatus will shortly be fully dismantled, unless IT HAPPENS soon.

So, it’s fair to say that IT will happen. But you also prepare for the possibility, even if unlikely, that IT won’t HAPPEN for a long time. Some of you may not last long enough to see IT HAPPEN, which is RICH.

But you imagine where you might be, eventually, when you learn IT has HAPPENED.

Maybe you will wake up, anxious and scared and angry (i.e., normal).

Walk past the armed men and the protesters and the destitute.

Then, out of nowhere, the push notification from THE NEWS: “Breaking: IT Has HAPPENED.”

What will you feel like? When IT HAPPENS?

When IT HAPPENS, it will probably be FEELING. Just a huge, overwhelming sense of FEELING, the kind where you didn’t even realize how starved you were for FEELING. Punctuated with alternating waves of SECOND FEELING, as well as SENSATION.

Plus, a sudden absence of THIRD FEELING, which makes you realize the toll of A CONSTANT BASELINE OF LOW-GRADE THIRD FEELING for ten goddamn TIME PERIODS straight, even though you were still plenty aware of THIRD FEELING, trust me.

How might IT HAPPEN?

It may be morbid, but as it happens, there are many ways IT could HAPPEN.

Heart attack.

Golfing mishap.

An especially frightening NEWS SEGMENT on COASTAL CITY, which is generally not a statistically likely cause of IT HAPPENING, but is not out of the question, in THIS SPECIFIC CASE.

You may consider other WAYS IT might HAPPEN, especially when you are overwhelmed with THIRD FEELING.

You might then feel EMOTION, but don’t beat yourself up.

You wonder how THEY will react. When IT HAPPENS. It will probably be a complete SITUATION. It will be hard not to feel some amount of perverse SENSATION, watching THEIR POLITICAL FORTUNES.

And of course, you will have to tread carefully around RELATIVES, who will probably throw an absolute REACTION when IT HAPPENS. But WE can be MAGNANIMOUS in this new, post–IT HAPPENING world.

Still, you wonder what you’ll do, right after IT HAPPENS. Perhaps you will clutch your loved ones and watch TV, as the news anchors ACT APPROPRIATELY.

Perhaps you will SCREAM, out of OTHER FEELING.

Perhaps you will pop open a SPECIFIC BEVERAGE.

Perhaps you will scroll post after post.

Posts of INCREDULITY.

Posts of ANALYSIS OF WHAT COMES NEXT, WHICH CAN WAIT.

Posts of JOKES THAT EVEN YOU WOULD FIND TO BE IN POOR TASTE, NORMALLY, BUT NOT IN THIS CASE.

Posts SCOLDING THE PREVIOUS POSTS, AND POSTS REPLYING “WHATEVER MAN.”

Posts ABOUT OTHER TOPICS, AND IT’S LIKE, DON’T THEY KNOW IT HAPPENED?

Perhaps you will think of the countless people whose lives might have been DIFFERENT, if IT had HAPPENED sooner.

The important thing to remember, though, is that IT will HAPPEN.

I will not be magnanimous after IT HAPPENS. I want every enabler and apparatchik who went along with this tyranny to be torn down from their perches and deported in disgrace. I want to see the Potomac sanctified by the desecrated corpse thrown into it, as has been done with the Tiber and Thames. I want every wanna-be autocrat to know that there is nothing but shame and disgust awaiting them in the history books.

Let IT HAPPEN soon.

He’s always been this revoltingly racist, but somehow he got elected, because a lot of the citizenry are revoltingly racist.

Trump lied. Back in 2018, it was reported that he used the phrase “shithole countries” to describe various nations of brown people, and he denied it, claiming that he [n]ever said anything derogatory about Haitians. He was quite vehement about it, issuing repeated denials, claiming that this was another Democratic effort to discredit him.

That was then. Now, in 2025, open racism is fine and popular.

Two things about that speech. I avert my eyes from Trump typically, because I despise him so much and am sick of seeing him every goddamn day, and I instead focus on the gawping baboons in the claque behind him. Where do these people come from? What is wrong with them, that they would laugh and cheer at such ignorant remarks? These are the people who would attend a lynching and pose for photographs with the corpse afterwards. They are the monsters in our own backyard. We’ve got all this facial recognition technology that is currently used to track down people who oppose fascism; every one of these videos ought to be labeled with the names of the people performing hatefully in them: like, “at 1:18, Ralph Goonburger of Altoona, PA howls joyfully at a racist remark,” just so future generations can appreciate the contributions these otherwise unnamed citizens are making to the culture.

The other thing is that I, personally, am descended from immigrants from Norway and Sweden (and also England). Much of the history of my family in the 19th century was generation after generation of people from Norway bringing in new wives from Sweden and raising big families on frigid farms far from the mainstream population, creating kids with thick accents to work as farm laborers. We managed to avoid the worst of the general bigotry because it was displaced to more obvious targets — African and Asian peoples — but we had much in common in our circumstances with the Somalis and Hmong who followed along later. The only grounds for singling us out as “nice people” (we are nice people!) is the color of our skin. I cringe to see my tribe brought to the front of the room to be presented to the class as one of the good ones, setting us in opposition to our fellow, equally worthy, equally valuable citizens as somehow better. We aren’t. They aren’t lesser.

It’s ironic that he’s been complaining bitterly about Minnesota lately, a state where we acutely aware of and proud of our makeup as a blending of Scandinavian and German immigrants, with a good population of Native Americans (who we are embarrassed to say were treated shamefully by the state), which has been welcoming to other immigrant populations from Africa and Asia. We do have horrible racists living here, but generally, we’re conscious of them and try to do better.

What he was saying was simply blatant bigotry. That’s our president, the racist-in-chief.

It must be because of his German ancestry. We should work harder to keep those people out.