American Madness Journal

And So Here We Are, Watching a Crazy Man Wave a Toy Badge Around, Calling It “Politics”
If you’re just tuning in, and O how I envy your blissful ignorance if you are, a substantial chunk of the American electorate has gone quite insane, and seems determined to stay that way. They simply will not be enticed from the madhouse, though it is filling...

Some Week, Huh, Herschel?
Fellow frogs, I know it’s nice n’ cozy here in the boiling water, but do you ever hop out of the pot for a minute, just to take it all in? It happened gradually, day by day, but our status quo got all sorts of fucked up, didn’t it? 31 different flavors of...

The One With James Madison’s Flute
Friends, knowing what’s in store for you in the paragraphs to come….well, I hope you like white grievance, cuz you’re getting a heapin’ helpin’ of it tonight. The lunch lady is dispensing softboi whinging with an industrial-grade scoop this week. Plop. Plop....

Yeah, But Wouldn’t You Need a Functioning Brain to Think About Declassifying Something?
If anybody asks you what life in the United States was like in 2022, well, the big thing was Donald Trump trying to drive as many people as possible violently insane, because he figured the threat of further terrorism was his best shot at avoiding prosecution....

Why Isn’t the Mike Lindell Hardee’s a National Monument Yet?
Y’know, I think it’s perfect, actually, that we’re watching our stupid, stupid history unfold in fast food chain parking lots. We earned this. We cut zero corners constructing this madhouse. Holy shit, this country is sick in some genuinely strange ways. My...

Cannon’s Constitutional Calvinball & Other Semi-Fascist Shenanigans
I hope the leather-bound, multi-volume tomes on the Rise and Fall of Whatever the Fuck We Wind Up Calling This Madness are able to capture just how goddamn irritating it was to live through. Like, when you open the book, maybe a speaker in the spine emits a...

Yes, Joe Biden is the Divisive One. Die On That Hill.
Y’know, if this does all fall apart, at least future generations will be able to easily distinguish between the first American Civil War and the Dumb one. Silver linings. Okay, we better get the documents thing out of the way first, because it’s all so stupid,...

Liars, Lawyers, Laura Loomer, and…Listeria?
How does it keep getting dumber and dumber every single week? Mathematically speaking, it shouldn’t be possible to get too terrifically much dumber than bragging about passing a cognitive test, or telling folks to inject disinfectant, but damned if we don’t...

Crudités And Terrorism: Portrait of a Party Gone Mad
So, I’ve never been a big slasher movie guy, are there ones where the Attractive Vacationing Youths find themselves locked up with, like, hordes of heavily-armed morons? Gibbering idiots, incapable of so much as processing objective reality, yet still imbued...

He Thought He Could Steal Nuclear Secrets…And Keep Them…At His House.
Well, the news continues its lascivious, herky-jerky dance ‘twixt the slapstick and psychological horror genres. You’re trying to enjoy the simple purity of laughing at some masturbatory wingnut performance art, when WHOOPSIE, one of ‘em did a terrorism again!...

Kansas, Jobs, Alex Jones…Are We Doing Good News Now? Did I Miss a Meeting?
Folks, I gotta tell ya, I had a little trouble with this week’s blog. Just couldn’t get into the right headspace for some reason. Sure, there was the usual litany of abject madness to document, but there was something else, too. I think it was maybe…hope?...

Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Joe Manchin
American politics is like some sort of warped nature show, about animals behaving in impossibly self-destructive ways that upset everything we believe about evolutionary survival instincts. You can almost hear the gobsmacked British narrator, wondering why on...

The Hawley Scamper, and Other Fascist Dance Crazes
I’ve just learned we live not only in an era of rampant disinformation and ascendant fascism, but also, it would appear, to my chagrin and horror…the age of the Velveeta martini, and perhaps it’s time to pull the plug on the American experiment after all. I...

Look, Torturing Child Rape Victims Has Always Been the Whole Point of America
If you’ve ever read this blog before, you know the opening paragraph is always some needlessly verbose variation on “can you fucking believe how fucking crazy this shit is,” and I have never once needed to deviate from that format, because seriously, can you...

The News, or: An Incomprehensibly Vast Sea of Buttholes, Stretching Beyond the Horizon
Keeping up on current events, one winds up banging one’s head on one’s desk with some regularity, so I can’t be certain I’m not hallucinating most of this…that’d be preferable, honestly. I would like to request hallucinations of a more enjoyable nature,...

Everything is Terrible, But At Least We Can Still Laugh at Ted Cruz’s Shitty, Shitty Beard
Every day is a thrilling new adventure, here in th’Land of the Free slash th’Home of the Brave; you tuck yourself in at night, never knowing which of your rights the power-drunk, illegitimate SCOTUS majority will take from you next. When you wake up, you don’t...

I Hope Ruth Bader Ginsburg Haunts the Shit Out of These Assholes
So, I was feeling kinda judgy about the latest cynical serving of Jurassic Product, you know, “you honestly expect me to believe they’d keep making dinosaurs after five movies’ worth of T-rex rampages” kind of stuff, but then I gave a moment’s passing thought...

The Law Firm of Giuliani, Eastman, & Clark: Insurrecting Incompetently Since 2020
Are we absolutely certain it was heat that killed all those cows in Kansas? Did anybody check to see if any of them had, like, a Twitter account? Cellphone with a couple news apps? Because it’s been a lot lately, y’know? Just…a lot. Well, the second week of the...

Maybe The Real Capitol Riot Is The Friends We Made Along The Way
I know I can’t be the only one out there who keeps the Hamilton cast recording on in the car, just as I’m surely not the only one who shouts “oh go fuck yourself” every time they get to the part that goes “look around, at how lucky we are to be alive right...

The Peach Tree Dish of Liberty Must Be Refreshed From Time to Time With the Ravings of Idiots
Scanning through the week’s insanity, I’m overwhelmed with unanswerable questions. Why do we live like this? Does it truly have to be this way? And wait, does this mean John Hinckley’s room is available? Because I could use the peace and quiet. Can you believe...

Joe Biden > Howling Asshats, and Other Observations
Intellectually, we knew going in that we were dealing with people of low character and no discernible competence, but watching the MAGA GOP actually run the U.S. House of Representatives blows my fucking mind. My expectations were real low, you guys, but they...

All Things Being Equal, I’d Rather Be the Jobs Guy
Writing about Republican politics is like babysitting the shittiest kids in the world, and honestly, I feel like these little assholes owe us a good, long nap. Never a moment’s fucking peace. Little shits. Ok, you kicked Ilhan Omar off the Foreign Affairs...

Marjorie Taylor Greene and the 221 Dwarfs
Before we dive into the latest antics from Kevin’s kooky kakistocrats, let’s take a moment to remember the context: this is an audition, folks. This is the Republican Party putting its best foot forward. These are their church clothes, and this is their best...

Harry Potter and the Oversight Committee of Madness
Zounds. Possibly the dumbest week yet, and I don’t say that lightly. From “Idaho Republican sorry for comparing women's health to milking cows” to “I want you to make me a shoe I can fuck,” this week’s news was determined to bludgeon our battered brains into...

Moving Past the Speaker Vote Was a Mistake
Watching Republicans take control of the House of Representatives has been like looking at TikTok videos where they give sea monkeys knives and meth. Which I hope isn’t a real thing. It’s fuckin’ nutty out there, is what I’m trying to say. Well, it took a...