2025 has been a banner year for shit birds.1
The worst people imaginable have taken control of the U.S. and are hell bent on destroying everything it once stood for, while also taking down the meager climate controls we’ve erected and hobbling our ability to detect and fight lethal diseases.
A super minor casualty of the fascist takeover, but still annoying—it’s rained nearly every day here in Michigan this week.
There was no rain in the forecast.
Thunderstorms, even! I went for a walk one evening and was caught in a downpour that literally came out of nowhere. It’s not really something to complain about, but at the same time, why does our weather forecasting no longer forecast? Why was this a necessary sacrifice? I could get onboard if we needed to divert satellites to detect inbound meteors or UFOs or alien space babies. But to pad already fat wallets? Screw that.
This is a very first world problem, but it’s also indicative of the new America. Just look at the White House, for Pete’s sake! It looks like a tin-pot dictator jizzed gold all over the walls.2 (“Hey, relax, guy! I love gooooooold.”)
I knew Trump 2.0 was going to be bad—“my grift has doubled since the last time we met”—but the speed of the demolition has been shocking. It’d be impressive if I wasn’t mired in existential dread.
I wrote last December about the long-term viability of the superhero genre in an America that rejected justice as a core attribute. What before worked as cinematic manifestations of America’s idealized version of itself suddenly felt outdated.
A new Superman movie releases in 2025, just a few months after Trump is inaugurated. I honestly don't know how to reconcile those two facts. They seem incongruent. Like a kind of lie. How do I believe in a man with the power to do anything who always chooses to do what's right, when all evidence suggests the contrary?
The world is full of Lex Luthors. Superman was just a dream.
