Gratitude Monday: True colors

Today’s subject of my gratitude may seem a little odd, because I’m wildly thankful that the Kleptocrat in the White House and the Gauleiters around him were so egregious in their overreach during his first week in power. Because this display of arrogance, belligerence and just downright ignorance of governance (much less of Constitutional governance) made it clear to every thinking person on the planet that there will be neither reason nor compassion in this administration or its Republican enablers. And that the sooner these replicants are replaced by actual human beings, the better for us all.

From the ongoing bitching (and lying) about the number of people who attended his coronation (including an appalling performance at the CIA headquarters and a call to the director of the US Park Service demanding to know why photos that showed the empty spaces on the National Mall were made public) to the executive orders beginning the destruction of the ACA, denying FHA mortgage relief, abandoning AFTA, an across-the-board hiring freeze at federal agencies, banning overseas funding to healthcare organizations that offer abortion services or referrals, demanding an “investigation” into alleged voter fraud (which could be the only explanation, in his mind, for him not winning the popular vote “in a landslide”, as he believes he deserves), completely refusing to deal with the obvious conflicts of interests around his businesses, greenlighting the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipeline environmental-disasters-in-the-making, banning immigration from a select number of preponderantly-Muslim nations (that do not currently do business with his companies), and, of course, ordering federal employees to stop releasing research findings about any scientific inquiry that his Gauleiters find contrary to their business interests—the tiny-handed tweeter has made it abundantly clear what his vision of the world looks like, and that he expects to make that vision reality.

And a grim reality it would be, starting with that gag order on government research agencies.

Seriously—that research is funded by taxpayer dollars (which, to be fair, he’s about to cut off), and they are obligated to be completely transparent about their findings. Moreover, it is part of the basic genetic structure of scientists to share their research, no matter where it leads. Not doing that is considered deeply unethical.

I’m grateful for this because if he’d taken a slower path to the obliteration of our Constitutional and the world’s basic human rights, he might have been able to slip enough of the Nuremberg Laws past us before we realized what was happening and they were all the harder to uproot. By unzipping his trousers and waving his willie at us, he basically pissed off so many people with brains, consciences and social media accounts that you can probably hear the uproar on the Space Station.

I’m particularly thankful for all the Alt-[agency name] and Rogue [agency name] Twitter accounts that (I hope to God) are tweeting from a variety of coffee shops and Wi-Fi hotspots, possibly using a secure platform for confounding attempts to track them down and terminate them with extreme prejudice. Because they’re tweeting scientific facts, over and over again.

Not the, you know, “alternative facts” the kakistocracy prefers. Which makes what they’re doing very dangerous.

It started with @AltUSNatParkSer, shortly after tweets from Badlands National Park on climate change were deleted and a curtain drawn around them. (The social media lead for @BadlandsNPS was basically the radioman on the Titanic sending out SOS messages until Iceberg Kleptocrat melted, sending the truth down to the briny deep.)

In short order there were several rogue Badlands accounts, including this one:

And @RogueNASA:

Look at the number of their followers. All of them.

And CDC, NOAA and others. One I particularly follow is @RoguePOTUSStaff:

I don’t know whether they’re actually in the White House or not. If so, they’re bloody brave. If not, they’re still shining the light of transparency on this administration:

Well, you get the drift. Follow them. And retweet them.

The list is growing—and you know it’s a thing when PC World is reporting on it. Also it’s a thing when within hours of each account popping up, it has hundreds of thousands of followers.

Moreover, following on House Speaker Paul Ryan's spineless toadying (yeah, I know toads have spines; it's a metaphor) this week, Wikipedia, for one brief, shining moment, showed him prominently on the invertebrate page. I am so glad that I've donated to Wikipedia; I consider my ROI to have been beyond expectation.

(Apologies to the horseshoe crabs.)

On a perhaps more serious note, the media has begun referring to “alternative facts” as lies, both on screen and in print. Even those without big budgets for defending weaponized libel suits. And many publications, including The Guardian and WaPo, have set up encrypted portals for people in and out of government to securely report events anonymously.

At any rate—even though I am extremely pessimistic about the situation here and abroad caused by the Kleptocrat, I’m truly grateful that they waved their flags so egregiously right away, and for people inside and outside the government who are not allowing repression to take hold without a fight.