01/16/2026
The Substack version of this post contains links.
https://open.substack.com/pub/trashgoatpress/p/this-article-wont-end
This morning Reuters reported that Donald Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act. He may be just floating the end of American democracy as a concept to see the kind of support he gets or maybe he’s just tiptoeing into the Rubicon until he gets used to the temperature. There’s no way to really know, but the anticipation amongst the Christian nationalists must be excruciating. It’s not hard to imagine the excitement at the Heritage Foundation – a phalanx of forked-tongued liches whispering, “Yes, yes, now is the time…faster, faster!”
One little scuttle bug comes to mind.
To wit, what a dire homunculus Stephen Miller is. I’m sure this engineered avalanche of eagle-f**king, skull-cracking newspeak body-armor chaos is making Miller giggle. That White House lawn ornament gargoyle gets far too much attention for the lazy, nationalist schtick that comes out of his mouth. Watching his remarks is akin to watching a Temu knockoff of James Woods serve up z-grade NSDAP rehashes. Imagine not just being a plagiarizing, tone-deaf hack, but an aspartame fascist that can’t even hit Goebbels’ beats. His uncle and cousin summarized him better than I ever can. If I’m overcome with a need to hyperfocus, I’ll dive in and likely discover that Stephen was caught with a Hugo Boss catalog in his middle school bathroom and that made him the Batman villain that he is today. There are more important things to think about than an off-brand N**i rubbing his hands together in conspiratorial delight.
I’ve been compulsively doomscrolling. At this point I can almost smell the pepper spray and hexachloroethane smoke. The invasion of Minneapolis corresponds with my first two weeks without a full-time job in more than three years. That’s given me too much time to both ruminate and optically mainline as much content into my brain as possible.
The result: a cycle of shaking, implacable rage followed by jittery exhaustion. My feeds tell me that thousands of my fellow decent human beings can relate. Collectively, we’re flogging our autonomic nervous systems like kids playing tetherball.
The videos and stories of ICE, DHS, and CBP agents beating, blinding, maiming, and shooting immigrants, protestors, and observers continue to surge in. An attempted murder by an ICE agent came and went through the giant content machine with hardly a squeak. The multi-agency federal minority-oppression complex is a tsunami of postmodern viciousness and old-fashioned bullying; a heinously obvious, incoherent, but utterly transparent clown parade of cruelty.
Watching Greg Bovino’s capos guard him while he uses a Target restroom feels like realizing you’re inhaling gasoline fumes in an enclosed space. Things seem fine and then suddenly you can’t think, your right eye starts twitching, your skull starts to feel like it’s starting to fissure, and you run to fresh air. You wonder how many brain cells you killed and if you’re going to throw up.
Like the sweet smell of gasoline, the video’s cacophony of whistles and invectives feels wholly American. Nobody tells authorities to f**k off better than our proletariat. The Bovino clip begins with pompous ICE as****es taking sulfuric flak on all sides from regular folks. But then the skull-splitting dread rolls in. A man shouts that if Bovino didn’t have a gun or a badge, he’d beat the s**t out of him. Bovino and his squad pause and weigh retaliating but, instead, start pointing chemical weapons and guns at everyone in the Target vestibule. There is no victory for the people here. It’s not a retreat on ICE’s part. Bovino came, marked his territory, and left with weapons drawn and his oppressive bulls**t intact.
The content coming directly from the frozen streets of Minnesota is an entire ark of chimeras. I don’t know if journalism is the correct term for the work they’re doing, but dozens of rogue reporters, streamers, activists, internet philosophers, and assorted, well-meaning weirdos have gone to Minneapolis to cover this awful thing. Reporting from channels like Jolly Good Ginger and Mercado Media both covers the spectacle of the protests and captures the personal experiences in Minneapolis this week. Albeit, to my knowledge, they aren’t trying to interview members or supporters of ICE or the rest of the rotten DHS alphabet soup. They’re out interviewing the folks that were tear gassed out of their homes and the protestors struck with flashbang shrapnel and pepper balls.
Last night, ICE shot a Venezuelan man in the leg. DHS claims that when ICE officers tried to arrest the man, he fled in his car, crashed it, and then ran away on foot. When an officer caught up with him, DHS claims neighbors came out of their homes and started beating on the officer with a broom handle and a shovel. The ICE officer then shot the Venezuelan man in the leg and set off a street-level s**tstorm for the rest of the night. Kristi Noem said that the perpetrators, “weaponized shovels and brooms.” And that is one of the weirdest phrases I’ve ever heard.
Mercado is currently being sought by the FBI in connection with a livestreamed video he posted that briefly captured shots of what might be ICE or US Marshals operation planning and logistic documents that were allegedly stolen out of a federal vehicle by another party. Nick Sortor, expert face weasel farmer and freelance right-wing extremist journalist first class, posted video of some folks making very poor choices by allegedly breaking into and stealing similar items (including a high-powered rifle) from an unmarked FBI vehicle. As far as I know, nobody is investigating Nick for conspiracy or anything else.
However, the FBI and Minneapolis PD did search the wrong apartment for the stolen items today and scared the hell out of a woman and her family before arresting the ostensible perpetrator. So yeah.
And now that I’m trying to finish this whatever this is, I’ve learned that ICE tried to put a woman with a traumatic brain injury into a no-win situation like the one they put Renee Good into. Apparently, when this lady didn’t take the bait and try to drive away, ICE officers pulled her out of her car, slammed her on the ground, and then carried her away. She later passed out at the detention center when she was refused care.
I’ve linked to copies of these videos from typically reliable sources, but I came across these directly on social before the traditional media processed them and deemed them fit for public consumption. I decided to let the folks getting paid to verify this stuff do their job before I tried to do it on my own. Certainly, the last few extant shreds of journalistic ethics dictate that these videos need to be authenticated and corroborated before they’re dropped into the mainstream, no matter if that adds hours to their release. Everybody honest is eternally playing catch-up.
Grimly, one must consider that the major news outlets are also likely weighing the impact that running footage of fed goons macing, shooting, beating, and shoving people into traffic will have on their organizations. If the current regime continues to use enforcement agencies and the courts as sappers against reporting that doesn’t praise the wholesale destruction of civil liberties and due process, having any kind of legitimate news department will be the opposite of profitable. CBS spiking the CECOT story only came to light because of how late in the game Bari Weiss crushed the story and how much rage that produced in the 60 Minutes newsroom. It’s easy to imagine nervous editors killing nascent stories in their cribs.
If operations like these are how Trump and his ragtag team of lovable, silicone misfits are trying to build consensus and seize power for their glorious authoritarian regime, Project 2025 so far is making a real meatloaf out of their ribeye. I can’t imagine that anybody but the most ardent of boot connoisseurs can look at this idiocy and think that it’s going well for anyone involved. If the s**t that’s happening in Minneapolis keeps getting increasingly brutal, Trump is going to lose the narrative if he hasn’t already. Do you want folk heroes, Kristi? Keep marching Greg and the rest of the spicy snack pack crew through the streets. That’s how you’ll get folk heroes.
Because Crazy S**t Keeps Happening
