We do not comply: how do we disrupt the momentum of Trump’s cruelty?

The Guardian ^ | 27 Jul, 2025 | V (formerly Eve Ensler)

[MtnClimber]

Every day brings more devastation. But daily forms of rebellion can restore our sense of purpose.

The exterminating force of Project 2025 is plowing through the culture, the government and people’s hearts and bodies like a drunk on a violent tear. We wake each morning, holding our breath to bear witness to the new devastation: PBS and NPR defunded, cuts to the fight against human trafficking, Medicaid gone for millions, Ice working to surveil critics, tons of food for the poor ordered burned and wasted.

The momentum of cruelty always feels inevitable. Cruelty is by definition “a callous indifference to or pleasure in causing pain”. For those of us who have suffered physical, political, racial and emotional abuse, it feels like a familiar steamroller of violence. We only have to witness the cries of parents being separated from their children, men screaming out for “libertad” from cages in Everglades detention center (AKA Alligator Alcatraz), non-violent protesters beaten for trying to stop a genocide, to be frozen in that same incapacitating dread and fear.

What is the antidote to this destructive environment of mendacity possessing us now with fear, ennui and self-mutilating rage?

Ash-lee Woodard Henderson, a powerhouse activist and brilliant organizer, told me: “It’s not decided where we go yet. Which is why it feels tense. What we know is that there’s no going back to an old normal because our economic system has failed us and our governmental structure is being destroyed. They’re trying to replace what was with this minority rule of disgustingly wealthy humans dictating what can happen not only in this country, but globally.

[Tzimisce]

Do these people eat their own bullshit or do they just expect me to?

[Elsie]

But daily forms of rebellion can restore our sense of purpose.

Uh, it'll take more than that!

[Elsie]

Nothing new under the sun.

—Solomon

[Does so]

I forwarded your quote to a neighbor.

My communist neighbor sent me a modern critique of this letter, saying the theme was nonsensical, satirical, and written anonymously in 1766.

In it, Franklin pretended to be a farmer, addressing the subject [farmer] in its Latin form.

[Agatsu77]

What a pile of crap!

[Bullish]

She’s an Elanor Clift look alike and they sure think alike. Full of $hit.

[Bullish]

Hah, they get half this stuff FROM their therapists these days.

[Candor7]

Luckily, we dumb, knuckle dragging peasants form a not so silent majority.

And our predecessors? What did they have to say to such ignoramuses?

" If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.

Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: first, a right to life; secondly, to liberty; thirdly to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can.

The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men."

Samuel Adams

August 1st ,1776,

Philadelphia State House

[Candor7]

Yes, they all to a man ( they do not know what a woman is) have chosen suicide by Fentanyl.

Prepare the pits of quick lime!

[MikelTackNailer]

And all this time I thought Lily Tomlin wrote and performed "The Vagina Monologues". Turns out Tomlin's one-woman show, "The Seach For Intelligent Life on Earth", was on Broadway during the same era.

"What does the 'V' stand for?". Wikipedia didn't say. I was going to suggest "V for Vengeance" but FReeper Eleutheria5 already did.
Then I remembered a bit Jim Carrey did in the movie "Me, Myself and Irene" where he pulled an item from an annoying woman's grocery cart and got on the store's PA system:

"Price check on Vagiclean, aisle five. I repeat: price check on Vagiclean, aisle five. That's Vagiclean! We've got a customer down here with a full-on fallopian fungus. She's baking a loaf of bread and I think it's sourdough."

Now that's a monologue.

[budj]

Here is a link to the full article from Franklin.
Franklin on Poverty
It's not "whimsical", but in common format for the time.

Here's a link to a critique of Franklin's writings on welfare.
Franklin on government welfare
Good luck with your neighbor.

[Eleutheria5]

V for Vendetta, by Alan Moore. Great comic book with Mature Readers advisory. The movie, however, was disgustingly woke.

Same thing was done with The Watchmen’s TV series. Comic book was awesome. Movie was a true reflection of the book. Then the TV series aired, and it was horrible. CRT all the way. I don’t know if the second season ever came out. I hope not.

[Eleutheria5]

Knuckle dragger./s

[Candor7]

Yes, I agree and saw the sarc tag. Like you I wear the deplorable tag with pride.

I wonder whether these fallen Americans have ever cracked open a history book or read the Constitution.

I fart in their general direction.

To these ignoramuses and Eve Ensler:

[Eleutheria5]

Samuel Adams makes some decent beer, too. He must be getting on in years, though.

That Eve reminds me of a line from Atlas Shrugged. “Not a single fact. Not even a made-up one” (caveat: not a Rand-y, but she did write a few good lines).

[unread]

A fool and his nation are soon parted.

[mewzilla]

Meanwhile, also from the UK, something that is just fine with the folks at the Guardian...

PeterSweden
@PeterSweden7

UNREAL

British police just ARRESTED and searched the house of an independent journalist for the crime of posting on social media.

Britain is also CENSORING videos of the anti mass migration protests yesterday.

Soviet Britain.

From Concerned Citizen

8:08 AM · Jul 26, 2025 100.7K Views

https://x.com/PeterSweden7/status/1949079369059537109

[Candor7]

Sam Adams rests easily in the belly.

But could you imagine what an Eve Ensler beer would be like?

Crack one open and it is either completely empty, or full of ichorous poison suitable for psychopomps like Obama.

I wish her all the best Darwin Awards.

[Elsie]

bttt

crack one open?

Nothanks!

[Eleutheria5]

Even Ensler would be too many hops, not enough barley to give it substance, and barely any alcoholic content.