Men's Lifestyle October 9, 2026 0 Comments

Exposing the Ugly Truth: Why Speaking Out in Trump’s America Feels Like a Fight You Can’t Win—But Here’s How to Stay Strong and Survive!

Ever get that feeling something’s just plain inevitable? Like when you’re mid-squat and your legs start waving the white flag, but you know you’ve got to push through? Well, this week’s news hits that exact vibe—but on a much messier, political level. Cassidy Hutchinson, the young White House aide who bravely testified on the chaos of January 6, is now under the microscope herself, facing accusations that range from alleged perjury to possible civil rights violations. It’s like watching someone wrestle with a shadow in the dim light—unfolding drama nestled in government corridors, echoing with whispers of inevitable fallout. And while the details can feel heavy and complex, there’s this nagging question: when is speaking the truth enough in a world that seems so hellbent on bending it? Dive into this tangled web of accountability, power, and the unexpected twists of history—because sometimes, the most predictable stories are the hardest to swallow. LEARN MORE

8 min read

Out on the Weekend

(Permanent Musical Accompaniment to the Last Post of the Week from the Blog’s Favourite Living Canadian)

The real infuriating part of this is how damn inevitable it was. From The Washington Post:

The Justice Department presented evidence to a federal grand jury this week in a case against Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide who was a key witness for a congressional committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Federal officials have accused Hutchinson of lying to lawmakers when she testified about the events surrounding the Capitol attack, said the two people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. It’s unclear the precise charges that prosecutors are considering. But prosecutors have been exploring charging Hutchinson with a civil rights violation, potentially bringing a more unusual case than a simple charge of lying to Congress, one of the people familiar said.

I remember being in the hearing room when Hutchinson testified. This was an extraordinary young woman who didn’t want to be there. Not that she was reluctant to testify. Rather, she appeared to be someone who took a job with the federal government because she wanted to serve, but she found herself at the employee’s canteen of a madhouse. The government’s charges seem to be that she perjured herself when she told the committee what someone else had told her about the president going batshit in his government vehicle after being told he couldn’t join the mob at the Capitol on January 6.

The Justice Department began investigating Hutchinson—who was an aide to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in Trump’s first administration—after two of Trump’s Republican allies in Congress, Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Barry Loudermilk of Georgia, referred her to the department this year for prosecution over what they alleged was false testimony. In 2022, Hutchinson, then 25, gave an explosive account of Trump’s behind-the-scenes actions on January 6 to the House select committee investigating the attack on the Capitol.

At the hearing, Hutchinson testified that Trump urged his supporters to march on the Capitol despite knowing they were armed. She testified that another White House aide at the time, Anthony Ornato, told her that Trump had lunged at a Secret Service agent inside the presidential SUV after being told he could not accompany the group as they marched from the Ellipse.

“Tony described him as being irate,” Hutchinson testified. “The president said something to the effect of, ‘I’m the f—ing president, take me up to the Capitol now.’” When that failed, she continued, Trump “reached up towards the front of the vehicle to grab at the steering wheel.” Then, she said, the president “used his free hand to lunge towards Bobby Engel,” the head of his security detail, who was riding in the armored limousine with him.

Hutchinson’s account of what Ornato told her has gained credibility as the second administration has unfolded. Presidential tantrums are now a regular beat, and that’s not counting the mother of all tantrums now ongoing in the Persian Gulf. This may not go anywhere except in the cobwebby depths of the president’s mind. But billable hours are billable hours, and Cassidy Hutchinson doesn’t deserve those, either.

There’s something funny going on, ” he said, “I can just feel it in the air”/He went to get the hangin’ judge, but the hangin’ judge was drunk.

—Bob Dylan, “Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts.”

The last official public execution in the United States happened on August 14, 1936 in Owensboro, Kentucky. The hanged man was a 22-year old convicted rapist/murderer named Rainey Bethea. The hangman was a former Louisville cop named Arthur Hash. The execution turned into a national event partly because the presiding sheriff was Florence Thompson, and a woman’s presiding over an execution shook up gender roles in a profound way. Newspapers all over the country made a meal of it. Eventually, Sheriff Thompson accepted Hash’s offer to step in and pull the lever. Come the day of the execution, with the sheriff sitting in an automobile from which she couldn’t see the scaffold, Hash showed up completely sockless drunk, so drunk that a deputy sheriff had to spring the trap and send Rainey Bethea off to glory.

I mention this story to illustrate that there was a very good reason why the United States banned public executions. The idea of a combination family picnic and civic festival to celebrate killing someone struck the nation as somewhat incongruous. Now, Secretary of Talking About War Pete Hegseth has floated the idea of livestreaming the execution of Nidal Hasan, the soldier convicted of killing 13 people when he shot up a Soldier Readiness Processing center at Fort Hood. (I wonder why Hegseth has directed this barbarism at Hasan, of all people? Surely, it has nothing to do with the fact that Hasan is Muslim.)

Hegseth has a real masculinity problem that he takes out for a walk on a regular basis. However, one hopes that this country doesn’t care to join him.

Weekly WWOZ Pick to Click: “Weed Smoker’s Dream” (Shotgun Jazz Band): Yeah, I pretty much still love New Orleans.

Weekly Visit to the Pathé Archives: Here, from 1958, is the saga of Wickie, a mouse that the U.S. shot into space atop a Thor rocket. Alas, Wickie’s capsule was lost at sea after splashdown. History is so cool. And heartbreaking.

ICE performed its usual brownshirt cosplay this week. From The New York Times:

A federal agent shot and wounded a man in New York City on Thursday, heightening concerns about immigration enforcement in a city with millions of immigrants. The man, Oscar Belgal, 28, a Dominican immigrant, was shot in the Marble Hill neighborhood as agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement tried to arrest him while he was in a car with his 5-year-old son.

Gunplay in New York City. Brilliant idea.

Meanwhile, down in Mississippi, the basketball team at Mississippi Valley State has run afoul of the administration, too. From ESPN:

Qingfang Pang, who is from China, was detained on Sept. 29 and is being held at the Richwood Correctional Facility in Richwood, Louisiana, according to the ICE database…A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, under which ICE operates, said in an email that Pang entered the U.S. legally on Nov. 17, 2023, on a temporary basis not to exceed Sept. 5, 2024, but remained in the country beyond that date. “He accepted voluntary departure and will remain in ICE custody pending removal,” the email read. “This administration will not ignore the rule of law.”

No. Stop. You’re killing me here.

Discovery Corner: Hey, look what we found. From Phys.org:

New results from the ALMA COMPASS Large Program (Complex Organic Molecules in Protostars with ALMA Spectral Surveys) show that young, still-forming stars are surrounded by a surprisingly sophisticated “chemical starter kit,” including organic molecules such as methanol that may one day enrich planets.”We are getting completely new insights into the complex chemistry occurring around the youngest protostars,” said Jes Jørgensen, professor at the Niels Bohr Institute of the University of Copenhagen and principal investigator of the program. “The interesting question is how these chemical ingredients may influence the conditions on planets and potentially the origin of life there.”

Several of the highlights from this first wave of results focus on methanol, the simplest alcohol, which plays a central role in building larger organic molecules. ALMA’s sensitivity and advanced spectral capabilities allow the detection of faint and obscure variations of methanol, among other molecules.

Alcohol? Booze in space? Suddenly, the events of the last 10 years make sense. The universe is drunk as hell. Go home, universe.

Hey, Popular Science, is it a good day for dinosaur news? It’s always a good day for dinosaur news.

Bitemarks on the fossilized jaw of a tyrannosaur called Albertosaurus appear to illustrate the first known example of scavenging raptors feasting on a much larger dinosaur The prehistoric snack scene is detailed in a recent study in the Journal of Paleontology. However, researchers, one alternative theory may point to an even darker fate.

…

Interestingly, the tooth marks on the dinosaur’s lower jaw suggest an unexpected postmortem scenario. Paleontologists didn’t find any evidence of bone healing, which strongly implies the Albertosaurus received the bites around its time of death. This means whoever dined on the dinosaur was a scavenger, or at least an especially hungry carnivore—and they were much smaller than their meal. “This turns everything on its head, because you’re dealing with a very small dinosaur eating a very big, mean, nasty dinosaur like a tyrannosaur,” study co-author and University of Alberta (UA) paleontologist Philip Currie explained in a recent video.

Cannibal Dinos! Roger Corman died too soon. This would have made him happy now that they’d lived then.

I’ll be back on Monday for whatever fresh hell awaits. Be well and play nice, ya bastids. Stay above the snake-line and wear the damn masks, and take the damn shots, especially the boosters and any New One. In your spare time, spare a thought forall the victims of our current epidemics, including the killer countertops, and for the victims of the horrific glacial collapse and flood in Nepal, and for Rep. Max Miller’s wife and child, and for the Iranian people, and the Lebanese people and all the other people downrange in our newest war, and all the people in ICE detention,and the victims of ICE violence, and the Epstein victims, and Eric Swalwell’s victims,and the victims of the storms in Hawaii, and the victims of the Canadian wildfires, and also the ones in Spain, and the victims of the floods in Missouri, and the victims of the heat domes, and those affected around the world by wildfires, and the victims of the Venezuelan earthguake, and for the victims of the earthquake in Japan, and the victims and their families in the Tumbler Ridge school shooting in Canada, and for the shooting victims in Austin, and for the families of the victims of the mosque shooting in San Diego, and in Michigan, and in Virginia, and in Louisiana, and for the victims and their families of the shootings in Wilmington, Delaware and Kansas City, and for the families and victims of the mass shooting in Midland, Texas, and for the brilliant journalists of the Washington Post, and for the citizens of the occupied city of Minneapolis and South Burlington, Vermont, and the people in the flooded areas of southern Africa, and in the flooded areas in Ireland, and in the flooded areas of Brazil, and the flooded areas of Nepal, and for the storm-clobbered, flooded areas of the upper Midwest, including my alma mater, and in Georgia, and for the people affected by the tornados in Mississippi, and for people suffering from the hantavirus outbreak on the Hondius, the outbreaks of measles, the Hegseth Flu down in Texas, the explosive diarrhea bug, and the Legionnaire’s disease outbreak in Harlem, and the victims of the heat wave in Europe, and for our LGBTQ+ citizens, who deserve so much more from this country than they’re getting.