Stop the Idiocracy: October 2025

Monday, October 20, 2025

Amazon collapses, dragging half the internet—and all reliant upon it—into paralysis: a mere fire drill for civilisation’s fall

A spectral tableau of digital desolation rendered in cinematic chiaroscuro. A young woman with pale hair and an expression of quiet detachment stands amid the ruins of a once-modern city, its skyline dominated by black monoliths branded Amazon and Google. She wears a powder-blue dress with a white Peter Pan collar, its innocence jarringly at odds with the dystopian scene. In one hand she clutches a small loaf of bread—a relic of survival—while in the other she gazes down at a smartphone, its cold light illuminating her downcast face. Around her, the remnants of a fallen civilisation—darkened shopfronts, lifeless screens, tangled cables—form a graveyard of consumer technology. Overhead, storm clouds writhe with veins of lightning, their electric fury mirrored by the web of wires that ensnare the towers. The image reads as an elegy for the human spirit—adrift, obedient, and alone in the shadow of its own creations.

image generated via ChatGPT

{Mashable 20 October} ‘AWS outage update: What happened today and why’

Perhaps the body politic hath been something more than rash in permitting a slender coterie of vast corporations to hold dominion over near the whole compass of human commerce—and to consign it all to ‘the cloud’. If an entire infrastructure collapses at the faintest tremor, of what practical worth is that infrastructure? And why does no redundancy—of any worth, at least—exist to sustain it? From the internet to the power grid, from energy production to the extraction of the earth’s finite resources, few of us truly grasp the fragility of our modern age, or how fearfully we have enthralled ourselves to the artificers of Silicon Valley. Verily, we are become their vassals—SLAVES at the mercy of our technological overlords.

These incessant glitches fray my nerves and leave me in a state of abject vexation—and of late, there hath been no paucity of such afflictions in my own affairs. I shall not recount the full litany of woes, yet it suffices to note that my grocery delivery—through Amazon Fresh—was abruptly cancelled this very morning amid their latest systemic collapse. Then, in attempting to activate a new debit card with a different institution—yet one of the countless enterprises now beholden to Amazon Web Services, alongside such disparate entities as McDonald’s, Venmo, and innumerable others encompassing nearly every conceivable sphere—I found myself stymied by yet another glitch, and obliged once more to telephone some remote call centre in India to have the matter rectified.

It is without end—until, at last, the entire fabric of society doth crumble utterly, and whatever remnant of humanity survives is cast back into the dim estate of the cave-dweller. This technological grotesquerie hath insinuated itself into the sinews of daily existence, sowing silent chaos in the lives of billions. And this most recent outage—still not wholly resolved as I write—is but a fire drill, the ominous prelude to a coming conflagration that shall devour the whole edifice.

Do I, then, harbour hope for that collapse? I cannot with certainty avouch it. For I was an unwanted soul upon this planet long before the rise of the tech barons in the 2000s and 2010s; unwanted I remain beneath their cold dominion; and it shall matter little whether I be wanted once they—and the brittle edifice of their devising—have dragged the sum of civilisation into the abyss. For I shall not endure to behold the final ruin. Then again, judging by the precipitous haste of our present decay, that reckoning may well descend upon us before next Thursday—and I may not be so fortunate as to miss the ensuing ghastly revels. Such would be my luck. —Arthur Newhook, 20 October 2025.

Sunday, October 19, 2025

Trump posts AI-generated video of himself wearing a crown and defecating upon #NoKings protesters, then insists, “I’m not a king”

A grand allegory of moral decay and the cult of power, rendered in brooding chiaroscuro. At its centre looms a colossal figure unmistakably modelled on Donald Trump, enthroned in the ruins of a republic. He wears a makeshift crown fashioned from glowing television screens, his corpulent form draped in a dark suit and red tie, clutching a gilded bowl stuffed with banknotes—both offering and spoil. Behind him, the shattered dome of the Capitol stands as a mausoleum to democracy, while flames and black flags rise over a mob of zealots whose faces are lit by the cold, blue glow of their phones. In the foreground, a young blonde woman in a black dress gazes outward with haunted composure—part witness, part conscience—her presence a fragile counterpoint to the grotesque grandeur behind her. The atmosphere seethes with apocalyptic symbolism: tyranny enthroned, truth debased, and beauty left to mourn amidst the ruins.

image generated via ChatGPT

{NYT 19 October} ‘Trump Posts Fake Video of Himself Flying a ‘King Trump’ Jet Over Protesters’

A grotesque spectacle, and the act of a petulant man-child masquerading as a statesman—an overgrown bully and gaslighting autocrat who yet occupies the highest office in the land. If the President of the United States cannot conduct himself with a modicum of dignity and extend respect to all Americans, including those who dissent from him, as each of his predecessors managed to do, then he has no business holding that office.

The current GOP base is defined by a startling deficit of respect for those beyond its own tribal orbit—a moral decay that, if not arrested forthwith, will culminate in widespread atrocity. We already inhabit the danger zone of dehumanisation. Yet it was not always thus. Richard Nixon, for all his paranoia and moral blemish, never descended to such belligerent indecency; nor did any other Republican president or aspirant within living memory—from Eisenhower through to Mitt Romney—stoop to the dehumanisation of political adversaries or ordinary citizens.

Nor, indeed, have our Democratic presidents done so. Barack Obama, at his most incautious, made his now-infamous remark concerning rural Americans who “cling to guns and religion”—a comment that drew sharp rebuke, yet was expressed within a thoughtful, analytical frame and contained more than a measure of truth (and nothing offends such types more than hearing hard truths about themselves). Obama did not, however, produce puerile videos depicting his critics as yokels being drenched in filth, nor indulge in crude name-calling and mockery.

Manners matter. The current president and his acolytes would do well to rediscover that elementary precept of civil society. They have already learnt that millions of their countrymen are neither cowed nor compliant, and that we will not simply lie down and die to humour their authoritarian fantasies.

President Trump ought, at the very least, to issue a public apology to those he hath insulted—but of course he will not. Neither his party, nor the pliant media apparatus that shields him, nor the cultish fervour of his followers, will exert the slightest pressure upon him to do so. On the contrary, they are collectively manufacturing a civil war—and they shall have it, unless they remember, and swiftly, how to behave like human beings once more. But they won’t. —Arthur Newhook, 19 October 2025.

Saturday, October 18, 2025

None of this is normal, but a wise few remain: #NoKings, and the last vestiges of sanity and reason struggling for breath in a nation given over to absurdity

A haunting allegory of a civilisation in ruin, rendered in sombre, painterly tones. A woman stands amid the rubble of a city reduced to ashes, clad in the corroded robes and spiked crown of the Statue of Liberty. Her torch, once a beacon of hope, flickers uncertainly against a bruised sky heavy with smoke and grief. Tears carve pale tracks through the soot upon her face, her expression one of weary disbelief rather than theatrical despair. Around her, fragments of architecture—columns, facades, the ghostly outlines of towers—crumble into shadow, while a tattered flag droops behind her like the last echo of a broken ideal. The image captures a nation’s moral exhaustion, its mythic promise turned elegy; liberty herself brought low, yet still upright—her light, though dimmed, not yet extinguished.

image generated via ChatGPT

I avoid crowds and cities as one avoids contagion, and am not presently in the physical condition to attempt them; yet I stand wholly in solidarity with those taking part in the #NoKings demonstrations today—and indeed, such assemblies ought to become a daily ritual. A small act of civic penance, a means of shaming those Americans who have lent their sanction to the bovine-in-chief. It may avail nothing, but futility can bear its own kind of dignity sometimes. My instincts have ever inclined towards the public mortification of wrongdoers, and I confess a certain dark satisfaction in having exposed those who wronged me in life—though I cannot claim I was always successful in getting the responses desired. Too many of my past acquaintance are proof against shame altogether.

And speaking of the shameless—Donald Trump remains the apotheosis of the breed: a grotesque blend of vanity, cruelty, and avarice, his corruption so complete it now passes for ideology. His supreme arrogance and gall must be called out at every possible turn. Not in the naïve hope that the man himself is ever going to change—especially not when he is pushing eighty—but because some among those who have voted for him, yet are not entirely devoured by the #MAGA cult, may at last feel the stirrings of buyer’s remorse, and henceforth know better than to extend their faith to the Republican Party again. Perhaps, if enough citizens recover their senses, this long-degraded republic might yet birth a true third party, and in doing so become at last the representative democracy it has long pretended to be under this two-headed serpent.

As for the true believers in #MAGA—those countless millions who worship their false messiah with the fervour of medieval zealots; far more numerous than any of us once dared to imagine, comprising about thirty to forty per cent of the entire populace, which is far more than sufficient to keep their grip upon the nation’s throat. Well, they shall never know shame, not even when confronted with the most grotesque abominations perpetrated in the name of their self-anointed saviour on earth, …or in the name of their professed saviour above—for indeed, they serve two masters, a condition expressly cautioned against in the Scriptures. And understand neither.

Yet the truth must still be spoken, ceaselessly, until either this nightmare exhausts itself or consumes us outright: none of this is normal. Donald Trump is a moral derelict who, in any sane and civilised society, would be confined to an asylum rather than permitted to defile the presidency. The world must be made to see that there remain, within American life, a few who still recognise the squalor into which the nation has fallen, and who refuse to dignify its degradation with silence.

Whether any of it shall make the faintest difference, I cannot say; the descent may already have progressed beyond recall, and our destiny—as a Babylon reborn, once again undone by its own enthralment to a great and unholy deception—may well be sealed.. Yet it heartens me to know that some of my compatriots still recoil at the desecration of our country, while the rest either shrug in indifference or bend the knee before the most transparent charlatan this republic has ever produced. God help what remains of us. —Arthur Newhook, 18 October 2025.

Wednesday, October 15, 2025

Compassion is no repeal of law: DOJ orders Facebook to remove a group tracking ICE agents in Chicago

image generated via ChatGPT

{NYT 15 October} “Meta on Tuesday removed a Facebook group that was used to share information about Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Chicago after the Department of Justice requested that it be taken down.”

One may rightly condemn the excesses of ICE, and insist that non-violent migrants deserve dignity rather than degradation—and I would concur. Yet compassion, however noble, does not erase law. To obstruct officers acting within their legal remit remains an offence, regardless of intent, and regardless of how unjust the methods ICE is employing these days may be. And, furthermore, if one must broadcast the movements of federal agents, then at least choose a medium less porous than the echo-chambers of social media. #JustSaying —Arthur Newhook, 15 October 2025.

An omen, perhaps: the aircraft bearing ‘Secretary of War’ Hegseth home from the NATO summit in Brussels makes an unplanned descent in Britain—its windshield fractured, as if by prophecy itself. {BBC 15 October}

“Nations that embrace openness and cooperation are surging ahead, while those resting on past privilege are being left behind.” Once the world’s most powerful passport, the US now ranks 12th—its holders welcomed visa-free to fewer shores than a decade past. {WP 15 October}

Trump confers a posthumous Medal of Freedom upon a man whose life’s work advanced Christian nationalism—curtailing freedoms for undesirables, and all who refuse the yoke of Dominionist rule. {The Guardian 14 October}

Tuesday, October 14, 2025

Cruelty enthroned as creed: the Supreme Court rejects Alex Jones’ appeal, but the permission to be vile is sacrosanct in Trump’s #Murica and he will never be compelled to pay a single penny to the Sandy Hook families

A grave, allegorical image depicting the death of the United States of America. At its centre stands a weathered tombstone inscribed “United States of America, 1776–2012, R.I.P.”—its surface cracked, its dignity eroded. Draped across the stone is a torn, fading American flag, its edges frayed by wind and neglect. Atop the monument perches an eagle, wings folded, a symbol of vigilance turned to mourning. Around the grave lie the ruins of civic life: a rusted ballot box chained shut, a copy of the Constitution half-buried in dust, and a forgotten football—tokens of a republic that once prized freedom, reason, and unity. Beyond the graveyard, a ruined city smoulders under a pallid sun, skyscrapers collapsing into silhouette. The air is thick with desolation. This is not metaphor but epitaph—a requiem for a nation that, having exhausted its virtue, buried itself beneath the weight of its own decline.

image generated via Google Gemini

{USA Today 14 October} ‘Supreme Court rejects Alex Jones' appeal of $1.4 billion Sandy Hook judgment’

The Supreme Court of the former United States hath declined to hear broadcaster Alex Jones’s final appeal, thereby upholding the $1.4 billion judgement against him for his monstrous defamation of the Sandy Hook families. One might have hoped this would mark the end of his grotesque spectacle—but Alex Jones holds no intention of paying a penny to those he so cruelly tormented for profit, attention, and the hollow currency of infamy. Bankruptcy merely another pageant upon his stage.

And mark me: Trump will wade in—perhaps on the orders of the puppetmaster in Moscow—to absolve Jones of culpability. A pardon, a reprieve, some grotesque political gesture—nothing should astonish us. We are dealing with a cabal that hath proclaimed open war upon Reality herself, hellbent on turning Americans against one another, and therein they have triumphed beyond their wildest fantasy. These individuals do not merely distort the world; they unmake it, and demand applause for the wreck.

Long hath Jones sheltered behind the corruption of ‘free speech’, wielding the First Amendment as both shield and cudgel, whilst his retainers bleat about liberty even as they crush its very heart beneath their heels. If they cannot pardon him, they shall canonise him; if not canonise, they shall martyr him, à la Charlie Kirk, demanding again that homage be rendered at football games and flags be flown at half-staff in mock mourning. One way or the other, the next phase of the farce shall be redemption, not remorse. Millions will once more dutifully follow along, for this country—God deliver it—long since bartered sanity and decency for spectacle.

Indeed, a renewed campaign to ‘redeem’ Alex Jones is already underway this afternoon—a grotesque rehabilitation in the name of populist grievance. Observe how brazen in general the right-wing sphere hath waxed since Trump’s return to power; their confidence is absolute, their scorn unveiled. They know the nation’s fracture runs too deep to mend, that the peasants are itching to begin slaughtering each other en masse, and they lick their lips thereat. These be heady, halcyon days for American Fascists, theocrats, white supremacists, and the like.

The tragedy lieth not only in what was wrought upon the Sandy Hook families—hunted, exposed, and driven from their homes in Newtown—but in the cold indifference of the nation that beheld it. Who rose in their defence, in earnest? None. Barack Obama then sat upon the presidential throne, conjuring up a rather infamous tear, and the trembling voice, and the familiar elegy of ‘thoughts and prayers’—a pantomime of pity so practised it might have been writ in advance (and probably further encouraging malevolent fools in their conspiracism). Yet when the curtain fell, nothing changed.

I remember that dreadful day with nauseating clarity: even whilst the bodies of children lay cooling in their classrooms, the national conversation was already pivoting—not to grief, nor justice, but toward the largely phantasmal tyranny of gun control. In this land, the right to bear arms hath been elevated to a sacrament, sanctified above human life itself. School shootings are now so routine they scarcely interrupt the afternoon news cycle, each massacre met with the same weary shrug and constitutional catechism: ‘necessary evil, price of freedom’.

That any soul could gaze upon those parents, those tiny coffins, and pronounce them deserving of their woe is thought enough to curdle the spirit. Yet here we are, a republic whose moral arteries have calcified beyond cure—a nation that hath mistaken cruelty for conviction and named it liberty.

We stand upon the brink of that which, in my youth in the late 20th century, had been unspeakable: civil war, and a rot of conscience so absolute that compassion itself is spent. Would that I could summon hope—for the families of Sandy Hook, for the country—but the abyss hath already opened. What awaits is no mere politics, but total civil collapse: cruelty enthroned as creed. And Alex Jones shall yet be laughing all the way to the bank. —Arthur Newhook, 14 October 2025.

Monday, October 13, 2025

A hollow ‘peace deal’ that leaves Israel no more secure: Netanyahu's surrender

$An illustration in the retro-realist idiom, charged with political and emotional disquiet. In the foreground, a young Israeli woman stands upon a stone terrace overlooking Jerusalem, her hands clasped in anxious prayer before her chest, the Star of David pendant glinting against her white blouse. Tears stream down her cheeks, their path catching the golden dusk light that softens yet cannot redeem the anguish in her expression. Behind her, the city unfolds in ochre tones, rooftops punctuated by fluttering Israeli flags. Looming above the skyline, a vast electronic billboard depicts Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump clasping hands, both smiling broadly — a tableau of power and performance that contrasts cruelly with the woman’s visible distress. The scene captures the fracture between public triumphalism and private despair: an elegy for a people caught between faith and betrayal, patriotism and loss.$

image generated by Google Gemini

{The Independent 13 October} ‘Trump urges Israel to embrace ‘peace and prosperity’ as he takes victory lap in Knesset speech’

Mr Netanyahu, in the immediate aftermath of the 7 October 2023 terrorist assault upon Israel, rightfully declared that Hamas would be wiped from the face of the earth. Yet two years later, we find him presiding—almost proudly—over a so-called peace accord that permits Hamas to continue to exist, the Islamist front’s infrastructure battered but intact. And who should stride into the frame but Donald Trump, the self-anointed peacemaker, basking in acclaim as he waltzes through Jerusalem like some conquering hero—his admirers, including Mr Netanyahu, too besotted to notice the irony.

Remember, this is the same regime in Washington that has just green-lit the establishment of a Qatari air base on American soil—Qatar, that convenient ‘ally’ whose coffers have long funnelled sustenance and sanctuary to Hamas itself. Yet the #MAGA faithful, ever impervious to contradiction, trumpet this as proof of Trump’s diplomatic genius, as though the mere appearance of resolution were peace itself. And an arrangement, I do suspect, will be fortunate to survive the week.

Meanwhile, Israel remains no safer, the people of Gaza no less oppressed, and Hamas no less murderous. The entire episode reeks of cynical theatre—ideology hollowed out and replaced by vanity, opportunism, and exhaustion. If betrayal can wear a smile, Mr Netanyahu’s is it. Once I admired him; now I see only a man trading his country’s soul, and its security, for the illusion of legacy. —Arthur Newhook, 13 October 2025.

Saturday, October 11, 2025

Trump’s immigration crackdown implodes: his own Labor Department concedes the crackdown drives food costs up, ruins farms

An illustration rendered in the tender, painterly idiom of mid-century Americana, suffused with melancholy and quiet dignity. A blonde young woman kneels in a sun-drenched pasture, her gloved hand pressed to trembling lips as she reads a foreclosure notice. A single tear traces her cheek, glinting against skin of porcelain pallor. Her cornflower-blue dress, dotted with white, and red neckerchief evoke a bygone innocence, yet the paper in her hand signals ruin. Behind her stands a weathered barn emblazoned DAIRY, its faded red timbers recalling years of honest labour, and a lone cow watches from the paddock as though bearing witness to the family’s downfall. The golden haze of evening softens the devastation, imbuing the scene with tragic pastoral beauty—a portrait of American despair caught between the romantic ideal of the heartland and the cruel arithmetic of economic failure.

image generated via ChatGPT

{WP 11 October} ‘Trump administration says immigration enforcement threatens higher food prices’

More of the poison you chose, then—the grand harvest of ignorance. The #MAGA faithful are now choking on their own nationalism, yet still too proud to admit the crop was sown by their own hand. Welcome to the Third World republic you built, bloody white trash:

The Trump administration said that its immigration crackdown is hurting farmers and risking higher food prices for Americans by cutting off agriculture’s labor supply.
The Labor Department warned in an obscure document filed with the Federal Register last week that “the near total cessation of the inflow of illegal aliens” is threatening “the stability of domestic food production and prices for U.S. consumers.”
“Unless the Department acts immediately to provide a source of stable and lawful labor, this threat will grow,” with increased funding for immigration enforcement from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the Labor Department said in the Federal Register, which is the place where all proposed rules are recorded for the public to view and comment.
Also, contradicting comments made by Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins that the U.S. farm workforce will become “100 percent American” as a result of mass deportations, the Labor Department noted that Americans are not willing to step into farm work and lack the skills to fill agricultural jobs that undocumented immigrants are abandoning.

The article observes—quite rightly—that Trump’s only course of damage control is to pay off American farmers for the ruin his own policies have wrought. It is a trick he has played before, circa 2018, when his petty tariff war with China gutted the very markets he claimed to defend. Only now the stage is darker, the stakes higher, and the madman unrestrained from within. Tariffs and immigration chaos have fused into a perfect storm, and the harvest will be famine.

I keep saying it, though it falls on ears deafened by flags and slogans: ‘y’all’ made a catastrophic, history-sized blunder, and the bill is about to arrive. —Arthur Newhook, 11 October 2025.

West Yorkshire: former ‘emo’ band frontman and convicted paedophile Ian Watkins killed in prison stabbing attack

An illustration in the expressive, painterly style of Fritz Willis, depicting a sorrowful teenage girl from the early 2000s ‘emo’ subculture. She sits slumped on the floor, her black hair framing a tear-streaked face heavy with disillusionment. Dressed in a black top with purple-striped sleeves, fishnet tights, and scuffed Converse trainers, she embodies the aesthetic of youthful melancholy. In her hand she clutches a Lostprophets album, its cover bearing the image of the band’s frontman, while another record lies abandoned beside her. The composition captures the instant of betrayal that comes when one’s idols collapse under the weight of their own depravity—the anguish of an innocent fan confronting the corruption of what once gave her solace. Warm sepia tones and soft shading lend the scene a bittersweet intimacy, transforming adolescent grief into a timeless study of lost faith and violated trust.

image generated via ChatGPT

{Sky News 11 October} ‘Lostprophets singer Ian Watkins dies after attack in prison’

I could not name a single Lostprophets song: their music remains a complete and blessedly vacant space in my memory—a footnote I never cared to read. They were one of those wretchedly formulaic ‘emo’ outfits that flourished among the younger cohort in the 2000s—the kids who were approximately ten years my junior, give or take—appealing to adolescent angst through distortion pedals and cosmetic despair. The sort of sound, such as I heard of it, that is utterly alien to my own more symphonic and intricate musical inclinations.

But while their ‘art’ passed me by entirely, I remember with sickening clarity the revelations that did emerge concerning their frontman, Ian Watkins. The crimes were of a wickedness so foul, so venomous to the very essence of mankind, that even the most jaded reader of true-crime reportage might have flinched. I will not reiterate the particulars—they are readily found elsewhere, and one need not pollute the mind—but suffice it to say they represented the nadir of human degeneracy.

Justice eventually found Ian Watkins, albeit years too late for the innocence he annihilated. Some creatures are beyond reclamation; alas, many of them are in positions of power and shall never—at least in this mortal span—be brought to bear for their iniquities. Each of us might name a rogue of that breed, perhaps an orange and elderly one, yeah? And there is no rhyme or reason whatsoever as to who God blesses with fortune and favour, as opposed to those He oppresses. More often than not throughout the history of humanity, good people suffer while the cruel ascend, arrayed in gold and glory for their wickedness. The cosmos keeps no ledger of justice—only irony.

Providence, it seems, doth mete out mercy with no more discernment than a drunkard casting darts. Yet, every now and again, it striketh a bull’s eye. —Arthur Newhook, 11 October 2025.

Friday, October 10, 2025

A farce too crude for any stage: the ‘America First’ Trump regime invites the Qatari air force to nest at Mountain Home AFB, Idaho

image generated via Google Gemini

{CNBC 10 October} ‘Qatar Air Force facility to be built at USAF base in Idaho, Defense Secretary Hegseth says’

The ‘America First’ charade—what a tawdry spectacle of hypocrisy it remains. Draped in the flag like pious patriots, they sell off the very soil beneath it to whichever foreign bidder flatters Trump’s vanity or funds the GOP’s campaign coffers. The Trump regime, in its latest grotesque parody of nationalism, hath invited the Qatari Air Force to establish itself at Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho—a scene so absurd one might think it lifted from a discarded political satire.

This, then, is the empire in its dotage: swaggering under the banner of sovereignty while leasing out its soul to the highest bidder. The rhetoric of ‘Make America Great Again’ rings hollow against the clatter of foreign boots on American tarmac. Once, even hypocrisy required a touch of subtlety; now, thanks to Donald J Trump and all who have enabled him, it parades itself in daylight, indifferent to ridicule.

An empire’s decline rarely announces itself with dignity—it seeps through the cracks of its own bombast, until farce becomes its only surviving export. —Arthur Newhook, 10 October 2025.

{alternate text for the above image} A digitally rendered allegorical scene steeped in both grandeur and menace. At its centre stands a young woman in a vivid scarlet dress, her platinum hair rippling in the wind. Behind her looms an enormous American flag, its stripes swelling like storm waves against a golden, smoke-hazed sky. The phrase “America First” blazes on a banner nearby, echoing through the industrial backdrop of chimneys and military aircraft. Uniformed men stride about in regimented order, their presence mechanical and impersonal, while the woman—barefoot on the cracked tarmac—remains poised and solitary, embodying at once defiance and despair. The sunlight gilds her figure but cannot dispel the pall of authoritarianism gathering in the distance. The image juxtaposes patriotic spectacle with moral unease: a nation dressed for ceremony yet haunted by its own power, its ideals fluttering as perilously as its flag.

Thursday, October 9, 2025

Make America Mean Again: the vulgarian's coarseness is a contagion—Therapists warn that Trump’s bad behaviour is rubbing off on the general public

image generated via Google Gemni

{Huffington Post 9 October} ‘Therapists Warn This Normalized Trump Behavior Is Causing Real-World Harm: People often look up to the president — and in this case, that’s clearly a problem.’

“At the end of the day, at the core of it all, we are normalizing bullying,” Believe it or not, there are those of us in this rotting #Murica who saw through the orange charlatan from the moment he waddled into the political spotlight during the 2016 presidential election: all bluster and hollow pomp, a grotesque fusion of snake-oil salesman and a game-show host gone feral. Even then—and it was as plain as the noonday sun—many of us warned that his dark little genius was to offer his followers the most seductive narcotic of all: permission. Permission to be vile. To wallow in their worst instincts. To spit, to sneer, and to call it honesty, faith, and love of country. He told them, in essence, “Be monstrous—it’s patriotic.” And they bloody well believed him.

And so the poison spread. The result? A nation turned septic. It was plain to behold amid the pandemic: tantrums over mask mandates, anti-vax derangement, the whole ghastly carnival of ignorance dressed up as rebellion. Hundreds of thousands needlessly dead—martyrs not to liberty, but to pride: gross, swollen, and witless. They mistook selfishness for freedom, and obstinacy for courage.

And did anyone learn a damned thing from that grotesque morality play? Not a whit. We have stumbled straight into a moral sinkhole—truth now counteth for nought, cruelty is held a grace, and irony lies entombed beside empathy. The temper of the multitude hath soured to gall. Everyone is furious, yet few hearken, and the whole place feels like a sorry rehearsal for the end of civilisation.

One cannot build a functioning society upon spite and delusion. One cannot write a decent song—much less govern a free polity—when every voice screams in its own discordant key. All is but clamour now: harsh, unmelodious, and void of delight. The spirit of this age? A nation of amplifiers, each howling into the void, drunk upon the echo of its own folly. Verily, few tyrants in the annals of the world have so perfectly mirrored the collective nature of their countries in their appointed ages as hath Donald Trump. —Arthur Newhook, 9 October 2025.

“Psychiatrists have joined other public health groups in calling for the removal of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health secretary.” {NPR 7 October}

The eighty-seven-year-old former publisher of the Soviet-era Pravda found dead after a so-called ‘nervous breakdown'. - One does begin to wonder—what is it with Russians and their perennial tendency to fall from windows? Granted, it is among the more miserable places on earth to dwell, yet the pattern remains curiously consistent, yeah? {The Times 6 October}

“Peter Thiel does not want to build a better world like he claims. He wants to build a world where he decides what ‘better’ means. No one else gets a vote.” {Jacobin 6 October}

{alternate text for the above image} A digitally rendered dystopian tableau depicting a young woman with silver-blonde hair standing solemnly in a deserted urban canyon. She wears a bright yellow dress that glows defiantly against the cold, blue-grey gloom of the city. In her hands she clutches an American flag—not as a banner of triumph, but as an emblem of anguish and endurance. Towering screens on all sides project the shouting face of Donald Trump, his mouth frozen mid-harangue, echoing the omnipresent propaganda of an authoritarian state. Around her swarm identical men in suits, their faces contorted in mockery, fingers jabbing accusingly toward her as they chant slogans of populist fervour. The cracked pavement beneath her feet and the discarded placards reading Make America Great Again evoke the moral ruin of a nation intoxicated by cruelty. Her stillness, luminous amid the jeering mob, becomes the lone act of grace in a society drowning in its own hostility.

Tuesday, October 7, 2025

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE ALGORITHM

image generated via Google Gemini

Even those among thee who command the greatest engagement across social media are, in truth, seen and valued by scarcely five per cent of thy followers. If that! So know this: the whole enterprise—social media, the Internet, the infernal little devices to which we have shackled our lives—was a monumental mistake. Even if a few scattered blessings have arisen from it, in the grand reckoning it has proved a calamity for humankind. Over the span of thirty years, technology has inflicted grievous psychic harm upon me; I see that more and more clearly now. This wicked little genie will not return to her bottle, yet every life is the poorer for her escape.

I speak without exaggeration when I say I feel as though I inhabit a universe of the living dead. I shall not be dragged, kicking and screaming, into accepting this deranged nonsense as some ‘new normal’, for it is nothing of the sort. I refuse to feign happiness in a world that never wanted me to begin with. And as for Jesus—if He is indeed coming—then let Him come swiftly and lay waste to all of this. And if tribulation must precede redemption, then let those already exhausted of will and spirit be permitted to depart before the final horrors begin. I did not start any of this. So, for God’s sake—let me be.—Arthur Newhook, 7 October 2025.

{alternate text for the above image} In a desolate digital wasteland beneath a tempestuous sky, a spectral woman stands alone, cloaked in flowing, monastic robes that billow in the cold wind. Her pale face is upturned toward a fractured heaven streaked with falling satellites and flaming debris, her expression one of solemn revelation. Around her feet lies a vast, ashen expanse of discarded smartphones and shattered screens—an ocean of dead technology still flickering faintly with the ghostly glow of social media icons. The landscape stretches to infinity, symbolising the graveyard of a civilisation consumed by its own inventions. Crimson trails burn through the clouds like apocalyptic omens, while she, the last prophet or mourner of the digital age, stands at the centre of the storm—at once priestess and survivor, elegist and avenger of the fallen world.

Monday, October 6, 2025

Somewhere in time

Somewhere deep within me there lingers a world in which I genuinely relate to—and even like—most of those around me, and they in turn to me. In that other life I am happier, more gregarious, more generous of spirit. I cannot shake the conviction that I was born in the wrong time and place; such scant appreciation as I have known only confirms it. To be unreservedly kind in this age is folly of the highest order. No more. I will hold nothing back about how weary I am of everyone and their endless nonsense. Someone must begin to grow truly angry. I only hope I shall not be forced to bear this burden for much longer, and may one day find some other place in time and space where my own people dwell. But so long as I remain here, I will not dissemble, nor feign contentment with this travesty or with those who populate it. —Arthur Newhook, 6 October 2025.

Damned near futile to care any longer, but no matter...

Rick Wilson poses the million-dollar question—and I rather think we all know where the smart money rests with that wretched lot.

Saturday, October 4, 2025

Trump’s degradation of US generals should affront every American possessed of integrity and the faintest modicum of sense

illustration by Randy Bish

Of all the ignominies committed by Donald J. Trump—both during his presidencies and throughout his sordid life—the public debasement of our nation’s military leadership shall stand among the most contemptible. That grotesque spectacle of humiliation will endure as one of his nadirs, a moment emblematic of his boundless vulgarity and moral void. And ours. It is high time for a reckoning in the glass—ye #MAGA supporters and enablers among the populace, behold thine own reflection. —Arthur Newhook, 4 October 2025.

{alternate text for the above image} A political cartoon portrays a decorated, stone-faced general in full military uniform, his medals and insignia exaggerated to the point of absurd density, symbolising authority and service. Beside him, bold text reads: “AM I INSULTED? A DRUNK AND A DRAFT DODGER JUST TOLD ME THAT I NEED TO DO BETTER.” The juxtaposition conveys his disbelief and indignation at being publicly rebuked by an unworthy superior—specifically, a leader who avoided military service himself. The artwork, drawn in clean, satirical lines, captures the tension between honourable service and corrupt leadership, serving as a critique of hypocrisy within political power.

Copyright 2025, Arthur Newhook. On X-TWITTER: @Sunking278 and @DollsFallen. REDDIT - https://www.reddit.com/user/SiberianKhatru278/. BLUESKY - @arthurnewhook.bsky.social. FULL LIST OF LINKS - linktr.ee/arthurnewhook. DONATIONS GRATEFULLY ACCEPTED on Cash App ($ANewhook), PayPal (paypal.me/Sunking278), and at https://tinyurl.com/ArthurNewhook.

“We're seeing these things like that we rarely saw in the country before.” Measles outbreak in upstate South Carolina

Shutterstock

{WYFF 3 October} ‘DPH: Measles outbreak reported in Upstate, South Carolina’

At least eight cases have been confirmed, five traced to a single school which, apparently, remains open. The report further notes that vaccination rates have declined markedly since 2020, when the anti-vaccine smear campaign achieved viral and mainstream traction. This, alas, is but the visible tip of a far greater catastrophe to come—especially now that public health in the now-former United States lies in the hands of lunatics and half or more of its population rejects science and common sense.—Arthur Newhook, 4 October 2025.

{alternate text for the above image} A close-up photograph shows a young girl lying on her side, her face and upper body marked by the distinctive red spots of measles. Her pale skin contrasts sharply with the inflamed lesions scattered across her forehead, cheeks, and arms. She gazes softly toward the camera with weary blue eyes, her expression subdued, a mixture of fatigue and quiet resignation. The soft lighting and muted bedding lend the image a fragile, intimate stillness, underscoring the vulnerability of childhood illness. The photograph captures both the physical manifestation of disease and the poignant stillness of convalescence.

Friday, October 3, 2025

The US Treasury is weighing the minting of a $1 coin in Trump’s honour—an act in direct contravention of federal law

via the US Treasury Department

{The Guardian 3 October} ‘US treasury considers special $1 Trump coin reading ‘fight, fight, fight’’

It is scarcely surprising that Trump should demand his likeness upon a coin. Yet what The Guardian omitted to note is that US federal law has long forbidden the depiction of living figures upon coinage. The statute traces back to the Civil War, when Treasury engraver Spencer Clark, given authority under a Congressional resolution to honour ‘Clark’—intended for the explorer William Clark—presumptuously placed his own portrait upon a fractional banknote. Outrage followed, and in 1866 an amendment to an appropriations bill forbade the appearance of living persons on currency.

That proscription has been reaffirmed in more recent times, most notably in the Circulating Collectible Coin Redesign Act of 2020, which authorised the semiquincentennial dollar coinage for 2026 while underscoring the prohibition. Yet, with a compliant Republican Congress that will not move to impeachment under any circumstance, one wonders what remedy would exist should the Treasury, at Trump’s obvious direction and encouragment, simply proceed with minting Trump coins regardless. And why stop there? His devotees in the #MAGA faithful have long fantasised about chiselling his countenance into Mount Rushmore itself. Idolatry is proscribed outright in scripture; yet in Trumpistan it is enjoined, even as its zealots brandish the cross and fancy themselves soldiers of Christ.

{alternate text for the above image} A monochrome sketch of a proposed US Treasury coin depicts Donald Trump rendered in heroic, authoritarian style. At its centre, he raises a clenched fist before a billowing American flag, his expression stern and resolute, the folds of his suit and tie drawn with deliberate gravitas. Around the rim, the word “FIGHT” is repeated three times, echoing the combative motif, while inscriptions at the base include “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,” “E PLURIBUS UNUM,” and a denomination of “$1.” The composition recalls the visual language of propaganda medals, casting Trump as both emblem and rallying cry for a politicised vision of national identity.

Ageing infrastructure is lethal infrastructure: witness the conflagration at a 114-year-old Californian oil refinery

Los Angeles Times

Residents described experiencing seismic-level alarm:

The El Segundo refinery, built in 1911, is Chevron's second largest in the US and produces 285,000 barrels of crude oil every day.
It supplies a fifth of all motor vehicle fuels and 40% of the jet fuel consumed in southern California, Reuters reported.
El Segundo Mayor Chris Pimentel said firefighters were able to respond immediately to the blast.
"Our station is about a .25 mile away from the gates of Chevron," Pimentel told reporters. "Obviously, we are very concerned, and there is a lot of investigative work to be done to see what has happened."
The blaze was visible as far as Los Angeles and filled the air nearby with the smell of petrol.
In addition to investigating the explosion, officials in the city of El Segundo said they are monitoring air quality levels for signs of pollution.
One nearby resident, Mark Rogers, told the Los Angeles Times that the blast was startling for people nearby.
"I thought we got nuked or something," Mr Rogers told the local newspaper. Another resident, Keith Mohr, said the flames looked like they were "300-foot".
"I didn't know if a plane crashed or there was an earthquake or both," he said.

{BBC News 3 October} ‘Massive fire at Chevron refinery in California contained, officials say’

{alternate text for the above image} A dramatic night-time photograph shows the El Segundo oil refinery in California engulfed in flames during the early hours of 3 October 2025. Vast plumes of orange fire and black smoke billow skyward, staining the low clouds and casting a sulphurous glow over the sprawling industrial complex. Illuminated stacks, tanks, and pipelines stand silhouetted against the inferno, their skeletal frames stark in the blaze’s glare. Emergency lights flicker across the grounds below, dwarfed by the scale of the conflagration, while the lights of Los Angeles shimmer faintly in the distance. The image captures both the raw power of industrial catastrophe and the precarious fragility of infrastructure under fire.

“I’m sitting in my parents’ house on LinkedIn 24 hours a day.” University degrees in the former United States have become scarcely worth the paper upon which they are inscribed

image generated via Google Gemini

{CNBC 3 October} For first-time job hunters, a college degree isn’t unlocking the opportunities it once did, data shows

‘No country for young grads’. A labour market of anaemic hiring and grudging firing is disproportionately scourging the newly credentialled. Unemployment among recent graduates has risen to a nine-year peak, with no prospect of relief—least of all as artificial intelligence begins to drastically reconfigure workforces both great and small. Bearing in mind that this malaise is not confined to the former United States, it remains nonetheless symptomatic of a deeper affliction besetting our dying nation: wherever one looks—government, corporate boardrooms, or the spaces between—one beholds a polity grown too vast, too unwieldy to endure. It has become the ultimate victim of its own success. Now the reckoning has come; we are paying the piper, and the edifice collapses around us. —Arthur Newhook, 3 October 2025.

{alternate text for the above image} A stylised illustration portrays a young woman in graduation robes and mortarboard seated despondently on a park bench. Tears streak her face as she clutches her diploma, its red seal stark against the gloom. Beside her rests a makeshift sign reading “DEGREE = JOB”, its irony underscored by a nearby newspaper whose headline declares “Job Market Collapse – No Prospects for Grads”. The backdrop of a grey, leafless park with looming city towers deepens the sense of futility, framing her as a symbol of betrayed aspirations: educated yet abandoned, caught between ceremonial achievement and the economic void that renders it meaningless.

Who will pull the trigger? Loyalty, indoctrination, and the fate of a nation’s people

image generated via ChatGPT

When one considers whether United States military personnel would fire upon their own citizens if so ordered, the answer is neither a simple ‘yes’ nor an unqualified ‘no’, but a question of the individuals asked to do the shooting and the groups or persons designated as targets. Many would comply; some would not. And though I do not impugn the honour of American service members as a whole, I am convinced those who would under absolutely no circumstances fire upon a civilian are the minority. These are human beings—susceptible, as all are, to manipulation, indoctrination, intimidation, prejudice, and superstition.

As more of the principled generals resign their commissions, their places shall be filled by those more malleable to the corrupt regime that the American electorate has restored to power. Simultaneously, the radicalisation of boys and young men immersed in the ‘manosphere’ are swelling the ranks with feral jackboots whose veins run with bloodlust and whose hearts seethe with hatred. We are in grave peril. This is no mere passing storm. By this time next year many of us may be gone. I cannot divine my own fate, only that something—one way or another—is going to have to give before too long. —Arthur Newhook, 3 October 2025.

{alternate text for the above image}A dark, cinematic scene depicts armed soldiers in heavy helmets and tactical gear confronting a crowd of subdued civilians outside a neoclassical government building draped with American flags. The atmosphere is suffused with foreboding: soldiers grip rifles, some aimed menacingly at the unarmed figures, whose expressions range from fear to grim resignation. The building’s tall columns loom in the gloom, its lit windows casting faint, watchful glows against a turbulent dusk sky streaked with red. Smoke or mist clings to the ground, intensifying the sense of oppression and imminent violence. The composition evokes the imagery of authoritarianism, civil unrest, and the fragile boundary between order and brutality.

Thursday, October 2, 2025

An ominous portent, to understate it: US hiring intentions for the September quarter sank to their lowest ebb since 2009

image generated by Google Gemini

In addition, seasonal recruitment projections have fallen precipitously from last year’s levels. At the same time, planned job cuts have surged to heights not witnessed since the darkest months of the COVID-19 pandemic, when entire sectors contracted under the weight of lockdowns and economic paralysis. Employers are bracing for further and greater turbulence, shedding labour where they can and withholding opportunities where they might once have expanded. And the principal culprit being cited? Why, the tariffs that our fearless leader claims are going to save our economy. This is the inevitable consequence when a nation of the economically illiterate—not that I profess any particular genius in the field myself—entrusts its fortunes to an economic illiterate who, corrupt to the hilt and beholden to foreign despots, was once again elevated to high office after having proven to be an abject failure in his first run. #Murica —Arthur Newhook, 2 October 2025.

{Yahoo Finance 2 October} ‘US hiring plans sink to lowest since 2009 in September as labor market slowdown continues’

{alternate text for the above image} A graphic illustration, evocative of mid-20th century Pop Art, delineates a tableau of fiscal pandemonium. In the foreground, a statuesque female figure with a platinum blonde coiffure and a demure verdant frock stands immobilised, her visage a study in profound disquietude, her eyes wide with unutterable consternation. Surrounding her, the floor of a financial bourse erupts in a paroxysm of hysteria. A cacophonous throng of male financiers, their features contorted in agony, gesticulate wildly amidst a maelstrom of plummeting indices displayed on electronic boards. The composition starkly juxtaposes her static, doe-eyed paralysis against the kinetic frenzy of capitalist collapse, creating a powerful allegory of innocence confronting a cataclysm of avarice.

Priorities: Trump regime to persist in disfiguring White House grounds with a garish ballroom, even amidst a government shutdown

Getty Images

{ABC News 2 October} White House ballroom construction to continue through government shutdown

Essential programmes are cut, the most vulnerable suffer—yet many of those afflicted (the poor, often rural white ones) still cheer Trump as he inflates his ego and fleeces all in sight beneath the guise of making the former United States ‘great again’. The nation draws perilously near a breaking point. Those exhausted by Trumpism will not endure in their patience forever and at some point there is going to be a revolt; and he and his millions of acolytes ought not delight so blithely in that prospect. They are toying with fire, and in time it shall be they who are consumed. Their minds and souls are already forfeit, and how fortunate for their manipulators that is so. —Arthur Newhook, 2 October 2025.

{alternate text for above image} A night-time photograph of the White House grounds circa 2009, featuring a large temporary ballroom tent illuminated from within, its chandeliers casting a warm golden glow. The translucent roof and side panels reveal a gathering of guests inside, dressed formally, with soft light spilling through the arched windows of the walkway that connects to the main structure. The Washington Monument rises in the distance, starkly lit against a moody sky, anchoring the scene in its broader national context. Trees frame the edges of the composition, their dark silhouettes enhancing the contrast between the festivity of the interior and the sombre, clouded night beyond. The image captures a juxtaposition of grandeur and impermanence, the tented structure providing a fleeting stage for ceremony and spectacle upon historic ground.

Copyright 2025, Arthur Newhook. On X-TWITTER: @Sunking278 and @DollsFallen. REDDIT - https://www.reddit.com/user/SiberianKhatru278/. BLUESKY - @arthurnewhook.bsky.social. FULL LIST OF LINKS - linktr.ee/arthurnewhook. DONATIONS GRATEFULLY ACCEPTED on Cash App ($ANewhook), PayPal (paypal.me/Sunking278), and at https://tinyurl.com/ArthurNewhook.

Manchester, England, on Yom Kippur: at least two dead in synagogue attack. The blood of this day stains many hands

Getty Images

{BBC 2 October} “What we know about Manchester synagogue attack”

TO THE RIGHT-WING EXTREMISTS, you keyboard Nazis: persist with your preposterous, long-debunked anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, by all means. TO THE FAR-LEFT ZEALOTS who assiduously ascribe all blame for Gaza’s horrors to Israel and Zionism while exculpating Hamas and its Islamist cohorts — continue your plaints. Do so, and you will only ensure that more Jews and other innocents pay with their lives. Blood is on the hands of many today, and each and every time acts of hatred are inflicted upon the Jewish people.

My grandfathers and uncles—one of them lost upon the beaches of Normandy—fought and prevailed in history’s greatest struggle to consign Fascism and anti-Semitism to oblivion; yet here we stand once more before their spectre. Lord, I have long felt Your enmity towards me from the hour of my birth, but have You now abandoned the world entire? It assuredly appears so. —Arthur Newhook, 2 October 2025.

{alternate text for above image} A solemn group of men, clad in sombre suits, stand with arms entwined in a gesture of solidarity and grief, their bowed heads framed by the distinctive kippot that mark their faith. Photographed from behind, their figures lean into one another as though bracing against an unseen storm, embodying the collective weight of loss following the attack on a synagogue in Manchester on 2 October 2025. The quiet intimacy of their embrace, against the blurred greenery beyond, speaks less of spectacle than of endurance—an affirmation of identity and shared sorrow in the face of violence.

Copyright 2025, Arthur Newhook. On X-TWITTER: @Sunking278 and @DollsFallen. REDDIT - https://www.reddit.com/user/SiberianKhatru278/. BLUESKY - @arthurnewhook.bsky.social. FULL LIST OF LINKS - linktr.ee/arthurnewhook. DONATIONS GRATEFULLY ACCEPTED on Cash App ($ANewhook), PayPal (paypal.me/Sunking278), and at https://tinyurl.com/ArthurNewhook.

Polish press: “Russian special services allegedly planned a terrorist attack in Poland using cans of explosives disguised as canned corn.”

Wikimedia Commons

{UNN 2 October} 'Instead of corn - explosive material: Russian special services prepared an insidious terrorist attack in Poland - Wiadomości Warszawy'

The European Union should have sealed its frontiers with Russia and its vassal Belarus three and a half years ago; though, even that might scarcely suffice to thwart Putin’s operatives from staging false-flag outrages, their obvious aim being to cast blame upon Ukraine and to sunder Kyiv from Warsaw. However absurd it may appear to those unclouded by Kremlin and far-left/far-right propaganda to imagine Ukraine striking a vital ally, millions—indeed, perhaps billions—particularly in the now-former United States, have shown time and again their readiness to embrace any lie, however fantastical, so long as the demagogues who utter it—Putin, Trump, and their ilk—are seen to be hurting the people in their societies whom they despise (such as Jews, Blacks, homosexuals, atheists, anyone with an IQ of three digits, so forth: it is a very long list, as we know). —Arthur Newhook, 2 October 2025.

Wednesday, October 1, 2025

Israeli foreign ministry: activist Greta Thunberg detained aboard Gaza aid flotilla, reported ‘safe and healthy’

AFP

{Reuters 1 October} Israeli foreign ministry reports activist Greta Thunberg, detained aboard a Gaza aid flotilla, is being held in safety and good health

Unbidden counsel to Miss Thunberg: confine yourself to championing climate awareness, and abandon any pretence of advocacy for a society of Islamist zealots who visit unspeakable cruelties upon their women and lay every ill at the feet of the Jews. Why imperil your life on behalf of those who, given the chance, would sooner despoil and slaughter you?