Stop the Idiocracy

Friday, October 3, 2025

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.

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.

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?

Psychic warfare: a jeremiad on why the advertising industry in the former United States demands drastic reform

image generated via Google Gemini

For the sake of mankind, stringent and rational constraints have to, starting yesterday, be imposed upon the American advertising industry (and probably elsewhere, too). Indeed, what is needed is nothing less than an entirely new model, for the televisual advertising apparatus has leapt too many proverbial sharks to be reformed or redeemed. The sheer cacophony and inanity to which one is subjected merely to watch a ball game—or most any broadcast at all—is increasingly intolerable, yet the American public, as with so much else, remains insensate to the psychic warfare daily waged upon them in the service of crony capitalism. (‘Crony’ is the operative word; I am no foe of capitalism per se, but we long ago surpassed the point at which the beast required taming and proper stewardship.)

Yes—psychic warfare it is, with the populace as its unresisting casualties. Every operative of the advertising agencies might well deserve committal, so relentless is the idiocy they have strewn across our airwaves and into our very consciousness over decades. Pure f**king garbage, in layman’s terms.

Does anyone ever pause to reflect upon the sheer juvenility and absurdity of roughly ninety-five per cent of these advertisements? Is there no one—besides myself—who yearns for a quieter, more decorous and properly ordered nation and world? Must we truly profess such affection for the prattling gecko, the mawkish caveman, the washed-up sitcom geeks in the T-Mobile spots, or that benighted emu and his handler Doug, along with the countless other inanities to which we are ceaselessly subjected? Do we not care that so many of the songs which accompanied our coming of age have been debased into mere marketing jingles?

A less intrusive, more humane model of advertising must be forged, though, as with so much else, I fear we are already too far gone to rescue ourselves from the abyss. —Arthur Newhook, 1 October 2025.

Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries drive one of the world’s largest energy giants to implore China and others for fuel

Sputnik/AFP/Getty

{Newsweek 1 October} ‘Russia has a fuel problem after series of Ukraine strikes’

Karma is a bitch, yeah?

“Russia is set to import gasoline from Asia to offset a growing fuel shortage since Ukrainian attacks have disrupted nearly 40 percent of the country’s oil refining capacity, it has been reported.”

{alternate text} Vladimir Putin seated against a backdrop of the Russian tricolour, the vivid red and blue of the flag contrasting sharply with the pallor of his complexion. Dressed in a dark suit, white shirt, and patterned red tie, he leans slightly to one side in a high-backed, ornate chair, the gilt trim and patterned upholstery suggestive of ceremonial authority. His expression is one of weary detachment, the downturned mouth and heavy-lidded eyes conveying an impression of morose calculation rather than animation. The lighting accentuates the sallow planes of his face, highlighting age and strain, yet the posture remains rigidly controlled, projecting the cold restraint for which he is known. The overall composition conveys not vitality but the weary gravity of a man both entrenched in power and isolated by it, a portrait steeped less in grandeur than in the brittle opacity of autocracy.

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.

ADP reports firms in the former United States shed some 32,000 posts in September

{NBC News 1 October} ‘U.S. companies shed 32,000 jobs in September in latest sign of labor market weakness’

Bleak news all around:

ADP may be the only jobs data reported this week. The government shutdown, which began Wednesday, means that the Bureau of Labor Statistics is closed and unable to publish the official government jobs report Friday.
Companies with fewer than 50 employees were among those hit the hardest in September, with firms employing 20-49 employees shedding 21,000 jobs and those employing fewer than 19 workers losing 19,000 jobs.
ADP said the negative number was due in part to recently revised BLS data but "the trend was unchanged; job creation continued to lose momentum across most sectors." Additionally, "pay gains for job-changers slowed to 6.6% from 7.1% in August."
ADP also revised down August's employment growth of 54,000 to a loss of 3,000.

The essence of the Quantico address: a calculated rite of humiliation, with Trump imperilling the patience of US generals

Alex Wong/Getty Images

{USNI News 30 September} 'Pentagon issues fresh edict on physical fitness and grooming standards in the wake of the Quantico address'

An assembly of generals, all feigned enthusiasm, hanging rapt upon each syllable uttered by the Secretary of War and the President of the United States. (/obvious sarcasm).

To be fair, the new directives, taken on their own, possess a surface logic—most notably in prescribing stricter standards of physical fitness and ensuring combat readiness. Yet what is far more disquieting is the pageantry of their unveiling, staged unmistakably as a ritual of humiliation. For years—since his first tenure in the White House—Trump has inveighed against generals who honoured their oaths. His disdain for the military is unvarnished, at once putting them on a pedestal and emasculating them. Thus to assemble them, and then subject them to over an hour of his typical rambling irrelevance, was to reduce the nation’s senior commanders to the theatre of abasement. They recognised as much; their stony demeanours and reluctant postures betrayed the truth.

It may yet be these very generals—men, and a diminished handful of women, many of the latter already purged by this regime—who preserve the republic. For they did not appear as a cadre inclined to betray their oaths, nor to contort the Constitution into sanctioning a presidential war against his own citizenry and all whom he capriciously names ‘enemy’. One suspects, or at least strongly hopes, they confer in private, formulating strategy for the inevitable hour—fast approaching—when the Commander-in-Chief’s commands trespass so egregiously into unlawfulness that they cannot, in conscience, be obeyed.

{alternate text) In this photograph taken on 30 September 2025, rows of senior US military officers, clad in dark dress uniforms heavy with insignia, ribbons, and medals, sit in stony formation at Quantico. Their faces, rigid and unsmiling, betray an air of discomfort that undercuts the ceremony of their appearance. Some look downward, others stare blankly ahead, while a few allow the faintest flicker of exasperation to cross their features. The sea of green and blue uniforms, punctuated by the glint of brass and polished cloth, forms a tableau of disciplined composure masking inner disquiet. Against the gravity of their bearing, the mood is unmistakably strained, the officers’ silent demeanour reflecting a collective unease at being compelled to endure the rambling oratory of President Donald Trump. It is an image less of military pomp than of professional stoicism tested by political theatre, each face a study in the art of concealing disdain under the iron weight of duty.

Monday, September 29, 2025

CDC issues Level 2 Cuba travel alert as chikungunya outbreak spreads—an affliction leaving victims bedridden for months.

{Daily Mail 29 September}:

Americans are being advised to practice caution when traveling to a Caribbean island because of an outbreak of a deadly virus.

The CDC has placed a Level 2 travel warning on Cuba after local officials raised the alarm over an outbreak of chikungunya virus, a painful viral infection that can leave victims bedridden for months.

The disease is spread by mosquitoes, with patients suffering a sudden fever and then joint pain in the hands and feet that can be so severe that sufferers are left unable to walk for months. In rare cases, the disease can be fatal.

Officials in Cuba have not revealed how many people are infected, but say that the outbreak is focused in Matanzas province, 60 miles east of Havana. There have been no deaths reported so far.

It is not clear what prompted the CDC advisory, but the alert comes just days after US health officials began investigating a possible locally acquired case of chikungunya on Long Island, New York, the first ever detected in the state.

The infection was detected in a woman who said she had not recently traveled off the island, home to more than eight million people and the celebrity-loved Hamptons.

And amid a surging outbreak of the disease in South America, with health officials at the Pan American Health Organization warning that Brazil, with 210,000 cases, is among the worst affected.

Globally, more than 317,000 cases and 135 deaths involving the virus have been detected this year, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, which tracks international figures. In 2024, there were 620,000 cases and 213 deaths.

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

Yet more Russian mothers to have their sons slaughtered, with Putin ordering the largest conscription drive in nine years

Vladimir Gerdo/TASS

“Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday ordered the conscription of 135,000 men by the end of 2025, the largest conscription drive in nine years.” {The Moscow Times 29 September}

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

From Ryder Cup to ruin: bearing witness to a country’s self-caricature

Reuters

{The Guardian 28 September} Bryan Armen Graham: ‘US fan ugliness at the Ryder Cup was merely a reflection of Trump’s all-caps America’

A nation of overgrown children, beset by pathetic Daddy issues and divested of courtesy and basic civility. The former United States have become the world’s laughing-stock, yet, like pigeons, Americans befoul every ground upon which they tread and strut as though possessed of innate superiority. I state, unequivocally, that I desire no share in a universe populated by such people, still less to remain marooned behind enemy lines. I would be gone already had I the requisite capital; and, as I have said before, I shall ever despise myself for not foreseeing this collapse a quarter-century ago. Had I known, I would have devoted myself solely to amassing the means of escape, rather than to the puerile follies in which my idiot peers and I were then engrossed.

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

Teenager charged with setting fire, unlawful entry, at a Beverly, MA, church

Wangkun Jia/Alamy

{NBC Boston 29 September} Pilgrim Cumberland Presbyterian Church fire

At this very moment, something especially grievous is unfolding within the psyches of adolescent boys and young men, and the consequences for society are already revealing themselves in forms ever more grotesque and alarming. Merely observe who their role models are, and it is scarcely surprising that juvenile delinquency—among boys especially—is soaring within this decaying nation. It shall grow yet more grievous with every passing day, and I shall persist in chronicling this decay until, at last and mercifully, I am released from this wretched planet and its denizens.

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

Fed-up

Time to get this blog back up and running in earnest, as relying solely on social media for anything is foolhardy and dangerous. Especially bloody Facebook. Screw that company to all Hell.

Am presently of a particularly rarefied order of fury—and without a drop of drink in me. Many should count themselves fortunate that, though I have instilled the fear of God in some when necessity demanded, I am neither psychopath nor sociopath, nor, indeed, a murderer. No matter; in these accursed years nothing is appreciated. I know I am thrashing a carcass long dead, yet I fully intend to proclaim my sentiments to the entire world for as long as I must endure this thankless existence. —Arthur Newhook, 29 September 2025.

Thursday, July 17, 2025

PACT OF FORGETTING: WHY THE #MAGA BASE, AND THE PEOPLE AND INSTITUTIONS OF THE FORMER UNITED STATES IN GENERAL, WILL NEVER ALLOW TRUMP AND ASSOCIATES TO FACE JUSTICE FOR (IN ALL LIKELIHOOD) VISITING EPSTEIN’S PAEDOPHILE ISLAND

Getty Images

Whilst some of them are grumbling, waiting for the #MAGA faithful to break permanently with their cult leader is a fool’s errand. I submit unequivocally: even if there were incontrovertible, undoctored video evidence of Trump sexually assaulting minors, 90% or more of his constituency would maintain their allegiance, provided he continues to sanction their licence to hate fellow Americans.

If disclosures of Russian electoral manipulation on his behalf in 2016 failed to unseat him, if his lamentable handling of this century’s gravest public health crisis proved insufficient, if his mendacious claims of electoral fraud and the January 6 insurrection they incited could not bring him down—then this matter certainly will not. ‘Teflon Don’ has never been a truer moniker.

Close enough to half of the populace in the former United States—the ruling plurality holding roughly 85% to 90% of the guns, and most of the political power—has declared this man infallible, and they will cling to that belief until the bitter end (and beyond, if any of us remain by then). Yes, humans really are this depraved. The past decade has proven we must grow up and confront this reality. The sooner we do, the sooner we might begin fixing this infernal mess. Or maybe not.

Expecting Congress to act on this in earnest—barring a few rogue figures—is as naïve as believing the American public will demand accountability. Given that countless such miscreants, alongside elites across commerce, religion, entertainment, sports, and media, likely frequented Little Saint James, exposing Trump would force them to expose themselves—and the fallout could theoretically collapse the entire system, obliterating everything Americans thought they knew.

Yet even if the full client list were made public, I doubt the American public could bear the sheer scale of it—the revelation that so many idolised figures were complicit in these horrors. Most would retreat into denial, attack the evidence, then ultimately demand their own Pact of Forgetting, much like Spain’s after Franco’s death and the collapse of Fascist rule in the mid-1970s.

Yes, it is that grave. Many are now too jaded to feel shock, having lost all faith in humanity (your correspondent leans decidedly this way, in case it wasn't obvious). The world's horrors come so thick and fast they've become a blur.

Democratic societies, when faced with truths too monstrous to bear, typically choose collective amnesia over painful moral reckoning. Here, it would simply occur on an unprecedented scale. Justice shall not be served—abandon all hope. —Arthur Newhook, 17 July 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.

Thursday, July 10, 2025

Roger Waters, not content with causing damage to the legacy of one of the world’s all-time greatest musical acts, now flirting with prison time in his relentless campaign with Israel; and speaking of disgrace, Kemi Badenoch makes a fool of herself yet again

Medios y Media/Getty Images

A couple of matters from my ancestral homeland that are bothering me at present:

Roger Waters could face prosecution in the UK after voicing support for the proscribed terrorist organisation Palestine Action—Enough, Roger. Stand down: you're in your eighties, and your reckless antisemitism (he can deny he hates Jews until he is blue in the face, he does) and misguided sympathy for the rank-and-file Palestinians who have been enabling Islamist extremist since Israel's founding and well before that even—have already cost David Gilmour and the Pink Floyd brand countless millions in recent years. Do not pursue martyrdom; exit the public stage and spend your remaining years in quiet retirement, and stop sullying the name and image of a legendary and noble brand. {Euronews 9 July}

AFP/Gettty

Meanwhile, in her latest address, Leader of the Opposition Kemi Badenoch has insulted disabled Britons and dared disgruntled Tories to defect to Reform UK. How much longer will the British people—and her own Conservative Party—tolerate this woman, of all people, branding a fair portion of them as lazy and appointing herself the supreme arbiter of British values? I do not even live in the UK (though I do not mind one bit imparting the truth that I am far more British by blood than a sizable share of modern British nationals, and certainly Kemi Badenoch) but listening to her spew this bile makes my blood boil. All she has achieved is accelerating the slow suicide of one of the world’s oldest and most storied political parties. Frankly, I could not care less if anyone takes issue with my tone. This is an international disgrace, a prime example of how much of the world—and the English-speaking world, at that—is now living under kakistocracy. {Sky News 10 July}

Saturday, July 5, 2025

Medicaid, madness, and the unbearable weight of disillusionment with it all

Someone who was once very special to me but is no longer the gentle soul she was—and who happens to be disabled—is very likely going to lose her Medicaid coverage and will be financially ruined. Yet there she is on X-Twitter, praising her favourite president on the 4th of July. And here I am, desperately just wanting this whole bloody world to stop. The depths of my disillusionment with humanity have become utterly insurmountable. —Arthur Newhook, 5 July 2025.

Friday, June 20, 2025

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.

Thursday, June 19, 2025

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.

Wednesday, June 18, 2025

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.

Saturday, June 14, 2025

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.

Thursday, June 12, 2025

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.

Wednesday, June 11, 2025

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.

Saturday, June 7, 2025

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.