A GREAT MOMENT FOR HUMAN DIGNITY, PERSONAL AUTONOMY, AND SELF-DETERMINATION: THE UK HOUSE OF COMMONS HAS VOTED TO ADVANCE A BILL TO THE HOUSE OF LORDS THAT WOULD LEGALISE ASSISTED DYING FOR THE TERMINALLY ILL IN GREAT BRITAIN

Wikimedia Commons

{BBC News 20 June} Bodily autonomy should be a fundamental human right - the absolute ownership of one's own physical and mental being. Yet America's regressive majority, fuelled by religious and political extremism, consistently denies this basic freedom.

The Terri Schiavo case exemplified this cruelty two decades ago: Republican politicians and Christian fundamentalists fought to keep a vegetative woman 'alive', perversely branding it compassion. Forcing the terminally ill to suffer under the guise of 'sanctity of life' is among the most inhumane acts imaginable.

Today, I commend those UK MPs taking this courageous step toward reducing preventable suffering - a small but vital victory for human dignity.

Copyright 2025, Arthur Newhook. @Sunking278 on X-TWITTER, and at the same handle on FACEBOOK. BLUESKY - @arthurnewhook.bsky.social. REDDIT - https://www.reddit.com/r/StopTheIdiocracy/new/. DONATIONS GRATEFULLY ACCEPTED at https://tinyurl.com/ArthurNewhook.

IF ONE ARRIVES HERE DEFENDING IRAN, EXCUSING HAMAS’S ATROCITIES IN GAZA, MISATTRIBUTING THOSE ATROCITIES TO THE WRONG PARTY, OR SLANDERING ISRAEL AND JEWS, DO NOT EXPECT ENGAGEMENT

At minimum — depending on your level of stupidity and malice — such comments will be deleted, and one will likely be blocked. Do not waste my time.

While I grapple with my own mental health struggles, I refuse to succumb to this epidemic of antisemitism and historical amnesia. History shows with grim clarity: civilisations that persecute Jews inevitably face ruin.

For millennia, the world has failed to eliminate the Jewish people — and it never will. I would wager with 98% confidence that none of these Israel/Zionist rage-merchants has ever been personally wronged by a Jewish individual. And even if they were, the perpetrator’s faith was irrelevant to the incident. Enough of these dangerous and irrational delusions. Israel is no enemy, nor are Jews. This truth must stand, unshaken. —Arthur Newhook, 19 June 2025.

Copyright 2025, Arthur Newhook. @Sunking278 on X-TWITTER, and at the same handle on FACEBOOK. BLUESKY - @arthurnewhook.bsky.social. REDDIT - https://www.reddit.com/r/StopTheIdiocracy/new/. DONATIONS GRATEFULLY ACCEPTED at https://tinyurl.com/ArthurNewhook.

OBAMA DECLARES THE FORMER UNITED STATES IS ‘DANGEROUSLY CLOSE’ TO AUTOCRACY — NO, WE’RE ALREADY THERE

National Portrait Gallery

{The Hill 18 June} Obama: US ‘dangerously close’ to moving toward autocracy

And what is Obama’s legacy, anyway? Pushing moderates toward Trump, turning conservatives into nationalist populists, and costing the Democratic Party countless congressional and state legislative seats nationwide — thereby helping spawn today’s extremist movements — that is  his legacy. More recently, his grievous betrayal of President Biden, in backing the most hopelessly inept candidate imaginable — someone who, by circumstances of her birth, could not have won in America even had she been competent, and had not placed personal ambition above her boss and her country — confirms it: Barack Obama is a power-hungry autocrat with messianic fantasies, fortunate only that Trump has set the bar so low he appears downright humble by comparison.

Had someone told me in 2008 that the idol worship surrounding Obama — which repulsed me to a virulent degree at that time — would one day seem positively mild, I would have either laughed or shuddered. Furthermore, that it would be the Republican Party — the party of John McCain — enabling the next, even more insidious demagogue? Unthinkable. And yet here we are.

The country is now a lost cause, but still I pray we never face a tyrant who makes Donald Trump look modest by contrast. It seems almost impossible to imagine — but never doubt, things can always get worse. They usually do.

Copyright 2025, Arthur Newhook. @Sunking278 on X-TWITTER, and at the same handle on FACEBOOK. BLUESKY - @arthurnewhook.bsky.social. REDDIT - https://www.reddit.com/r/StopTheIdiocracy/new/. DONATIONS GRATEFULLY ACCEPTED at https://tinyurl.com/ArthurNewhook.

A state lawmaker and her husband have been murdered in what authorities have deemed a targeted, politically motivated assassination. It is now open season in the former United States on anyone who opposes the Trump regime

Reuters

{BBC News 14 June} Democratic state politician and husband shot dead in targeted attack, Minnesota officials say.

Open season now in the former United States on anyone opposed to the Trump regime. The blood of Melissa Hortman and her husband is on the hands of every single rank-and-file Trump voter, whether they like it or not; a nation held hostage by violently ill sociopaths at all levels. Whatever performative and half-hearted condemnations Trump, other elected Republicans, and right-wing media figures may be giving at this moment to the contrary, this is the inevitable result of #MAGA rhetoric.

Can anyone who has been paying attention genuinely doubt this has always been the intended outcome? To systematically inflame the heavily armed, anti-intellectual portion of the populace long steeped in racial, cultural, religious, and economic resentments against the rest of the nation — a very large percentage of the overall population, far larger than most care to admit. While Trump, the GOP, and its allies in the halls of power are giving lip service to being outraged, and the sort of Republican voters who are not rabid #MAGA probably are legitimately shocked and dismayed, most of the rank-and-file #MAGA crazies are celebrating the murders in Minnesota. Further violent copycat acts are inevitable for as long as this violent and outsized, Christofascist personality cult holds a death grip on the country. —Arthur Newhook, 14 June 2025.

Copyright 2025, Arthur Newhook. @Sunking278 on X-TWITTER, and at the same handle on FACEBOOK. BLUESKY - @arthurnewhook.bsky.social. REDDIT - https://www.reddit.com/r/StopTheIdiocracy/new/. DONATIONS GRATEFULLY ACCEPTED at https://tinyurl.com/ArthurNewhook.

Anne Frank and the paradox of human nature: idealism and harsh reality

Alamy stock photo

“Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart.” —Anne Frank, born 12 June 1929.

If this sentiment — and many others like it in her writings — is tragically naïve, we must first remember hers was an extraordinarily gentle and innocent spirit. Though demonstrably wise beyond her years, she was still but a child. Such words should be read not as a mirror of reality, but as an aspiration.

The stark reality? Bloody hell no, people are most certainly not inherently good. ‘Goodness’ is not innate in humans, it must be taught — arguably the central aim of child-rearing — and one person’s ‘good’ often clashes with another’s. It is why laws are necessary, and prisons equally so. At heart, humans are wicked, but reason compels us to suppress those baser instincts for society to function. When these restraints fail, the social contract is broken and all manners of tyranny and depravity are allowed to play out. This is what happened in Nazi Germany, and is playing out today in the former United States.

One thing, however, is beyond dispute: the Nazis were pure evil, and their modern ideological heirs are no less so. Somewhere in this world right now is an Anne Frank, and the cycle of senseless death and suffering continues without mercy. —Arthur Newhook, 12 June 2025.

Copyright 2025, Arthur Newhook. @Sunking278 on X-TWITTER, and at the same handle on FACEBOOK. BLUESKY - @arthurnewhook.bsky.social. REDDIT - https://www.reddit.com/r/StopTheIdiocracy/new/. DONATIONS GRATEFULLY ACCEPTED at https://tinyurl.com/ArthurNewhook.

In Dallas, the Southern Baptist Convention demands theocratic policies: abortion = murder charges, banning porn and same-sex marriage, opposing 'wilful childlessness', and restricting sports betting

IMB Photo

{AP 9 June} Southern Baptists target porn, sports betting, same-sex marriage and ‘willful childlessness’

Many Americans argue that our (secular) government has grown too big and tyrannical over the decades powerful — and there’s merit in that critique. But imagine the scale of a theocratic state required to impose these edicts on hundreds of millions who simply wish to be left alone. We are not talking about a hypothetical; it is already slowly unfolding in our ‘red’ states.

I yearn for an era when churches largely steered clear of electoral politics. Yet this Christofascist movement won’t peak without a bloody fight. Civil war. The road back to sanity will be long, and darker before the dawn. —Arthur Newhook, 11 June 2025.

Copyright 2025, Arthur Newhook. @Sunking278 on X-TWITTER, and at the same handle on FACEBOOK. BLUESKY - @arthurnewhook.bsky.social. REDDIT - https://www.reddit.com/r/StopTheIdiocracy/new/. DONATIONS GRATEFULLY ACCEPTED at https://tinyurl.com/ArthurNewhook.

Trump, in phone calls hard upon the heels of Elon Musk’s tempestuous departure from the regime, asserted that Musk is “a big-time drug addict.” Did he really only just figure this out?

photo: Tom Brenner/WP

{WP 7 June} Inside the battles that shattered Trump and Musk’s alliance.

Elon himself hath spoken openly touching his consumption of ketamine. He hath likewise been forthright concerning his receipt of testosterone treatments. If Trump were witless in this matter, his inner circle could not possibly have remained ignorant thereof. Is it not so? The evidence strongly suggests Trump and his circle tolerated Musk’s behaviour without condition—provided he remained useful to them. And vice versa. Whilst not altogether the golden standard it once was held to be, the Washington Post’s findings leave no manner of doubt.

Nevertheless, I do seriously question this president’s faculties: it is not always easy to discern when he is merely posturing and when he is, indeed, authentically afflicted with dotage. Be it as it may, he is a most complete fool—and a very traitor—for having ever climbed into bed with this galaxy-brained, drug-besotted South African interloper. —Arthur Newhook, 7 June 2025.

Copyright 2025, Arthur Newhook. @Sunking278 on X-TWITTER, and at the same handle on FACEBOOK. BLUESKY - @arthurnewhook.bsky.social. REDDIT - https://www.reddit.com/r/StopTheIdiocracy/new/. DONATIONS GRATEFULLY ACCEPTED at https://tinyurl.com/ArthurNewhook.