Listening, 23rd Day of Autumn, 525 M.E. (Betelgeuse): Just look at the headlines. Stable Genius to Ban VA Abortions for Veterans Even in Cases of Rape and Incest. A third of all female veterans are sexual assault survivors.

Stable Genius Moves to Cancel $4.9B in Congress-Approved Foreign Funding. Republican senator Susan Collins says the move is a "clear violation of the law;" while Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren called the Stable Genius a "wannabe king."

Pentagon to Restore Confederate General Robert E Lee Portrait at West Point Library. The controversial painting of Lee and an enslaved man was taken down after a 2020 law to remove Confederate tributes. (Also, didn't Lee lose the Civil War? I hate to tell you, but I like generals who win wars, not losers.) 

Stable Genius Looks to Tighten Visa Durations for Foreign Students and Journalists. The Stable Genius claims the proposed change is necessary to "monitor" visa holders amid his immigration crackdown.

Having secured his grip on the capital, the Stable Genius is now sending troops to several rebel-held cities, claiming to be restoring order there. The move follows raids on the homes of leading dissidents and comes as armed men seen as loyal to the president, many of them masked, continue to pluck people off the streets.

This is happening here, in the United States, and yet it's not talked about that way. Sober-minded people are wary of sounding hyperbolic or hysterical - their instinct is to play it down rather than scream at the top of their lungs. Could it be that the Stable Genius' march towards authoritarianism is so steady, taking another step or two every day, that it’s easy to become inured to it? 

His dictator-like behavior is so brazen, so blatant, that paradoxically, we discount it. As  Jonathan Freedland notes in The Guardian, it’s not unlike waking up in the middle of the night to a burglar wearing a striped shirt and carrying a bag marked “loot.” We would assume it was a joke or a stunt or otherwise unreal, rather than a genuine danger. So it is with the Stable Genius. We can't quite believe what we are seeing.

But here is what we are seeing: He has deployed the National Guard on the streets of Washington DC, so that there are now 2,000 troops, heavily armed, patrolling the capital. The pretext was fighting crime, but violent crime in DC was at a 30-year low when he made his move. The president has warned that Chicago will be next, perhaps Baltimore too, and his vice-president made remarks here in Atlanta that our fair city should be made more safe. 

He signs executive orders daily that are becoming increasingly bizarre and unconstitutional, banning all VA abortions, canceling congressional funding, decreeing architectural styles for all federal buildings. He "jokes" about a third term or cancelling the 2028 election altogether, and that some people maybe want a "law-and-order" dictator if that's what it takes to reduce crime. 

It's real, it's happening now, and we need to wake up and face the reality. We should all be screaming at the top of our lungs.