Day of the Lemur, 44th of Spring, 526 M.E. (Castor): Yesterday, it was revealed that the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) is at least partially funded by a foreign government working closely with Vladimir Putin. In a speech, Péter Magyar, the man elected to replace Viktor Orbán as President of Hungary, revealed that Orbán had been using Hungarian government funds to finance CPAC. Orbán had clearly been working for the benefit of Russia’s president Vladimir Putin, and just days before the election, news broke that last October, Orbán told Putin, “In any matter where I can be of assistance, I am at your service.”

CPAC had celebrated Orbán’s efforts to destroy the liberal democracy of Europe in order to replace it with what he called “illiberal" or “Christian" democracy. He replaced the multiculturalism at the heart of democracy with Christian culture, stopped the immigration that he believed undermined Hungarian culture, and rejected “adaptable family models” in favor of “the Christian family model.”

Sound familiar? CPAC has been spouting Putin's propaganda for some 25 years now. 

But you know what? I don't even care. The world's climate is crumbling and an insane, megalomaniacal narcissist is fumbling around in the Middle East, the most volatile area on Earth, in the most reckless way possible. Worsening heat waves are supercharging hurricanes, and Typhoon Sinlaku has intensified in the last 24 hours to a Category 5 storm with 180-mph winds. Gray whales are dying in San Francisco Bay at an alarming rate, and Greenland's nearshore fisheries are collapsing. At this point, I'm pretty sure my body's already heavily contaminated from microplastics, PFAS, and pesticides. Scarcity of water will become the next global crisis, and already is in many parts of the world, and will further exacerbate global migration, inflaming the already present intolerance and economic inequality. So if 75 million morons think the world would be a better place if all families resembled a 1950's television sitcom (e.g., Father Knows Best), that's the least of my concerns.

It's hard to feel compassion or loving kindness for a nation that willfully gets on board a clown car heading off a cliff while loudly proclaiming that their god is telling them to floor the gas pedal.