Hold on

I’ve been thinking about it all week, and I just don’t know what to tell you on this, the 249^th anniversary of our national birthday.

Pretty sure the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence would side-eye each other and go down the tavern for a gill of brandy if they caught wind of how their bold gamble was turning out. They were ready to risk everything—“our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor”—to break away from Mother England; they were overwhelmingly men of property, so they had a lot to lose.

And the men who carefully put together the Constitution, with its first ten amendments, would be equally gobsmacked. Like the Declaration, the Constitution was a response to a failed government (in this case, the confederation) and it was constructed to “form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity”. (Liberty figured in both documents, but the concern was lawfulness as a basis for all government actions.) They crafted a form of government that they intended to live and grow; one that would be immune to feckless rulers, corrupt judges or petty legislators because of the built-in checks and balances.

They just didn’t anticipate a circumstance when we would have all three at the same time.

This administration has committed many of the crimes in the Declaration’s indictment of George III, in addition to many others no English king could have imagined. The Kleptocrat is manipulating global stock markets with his tariff declarations; building an armed secret police that can be turned against anyone in the country, citizen or not; declaring war on states, governors, mayors and anyone who doesn’t sufficiently bend the knee to him; breaking international treaties; violating constitutional provisions; ignoring actual laws; selling off national lands; enriching his family and friends; and generally behaving more despotically than anyone since Ivan the Terrible.

Congress—more specifically, Republicans in Congress—have utterly abrogated their constitutional power because they’re terrified that TACOman will sic his followers on them either politically or physically. They’re willing to kiss the ring just to hold the title (and those sweet, sweet lobbying contributions and insider trading opportunities), as they tug their forelocks and murmur, “Yas, boss” whenever he makes another demand on them. They’re about to take away healthcare from millions of Americans, throw billions of dollars at ICE, gut environmental protections and give billionaires and corporations more billions, hustling to get the job done in time to get home for July 4^th fireworks and barbecues with the constituents they’re fucking over.

And the courts—God bless them, the frontline judges and even most of the Circuit judges are doing their damned jobs like Trojans, but the most corrupt SCOTUS in history is in hog heaven, using their court-of-last-appeal power to cut out the constitutional support for decades of progress on civil rights. They’re barely cloaking their intent (or their glee) in their rulings. I’m pretty sure they write “because we can” in all of them and some clerk removes it before they’re released.

So—that’s where we are.

As that abomination of a bill moved back to the House this week, I had no Representative to contact: I live in the Virginia 11th, whose incumbent died a few weeks ago, unable to give up his position even as he was diagnosed with cancer. Because of that, and because our Republican governor is slow-walking the special election to replace him as long as he can, Democrats are down one vote in the House, and I’m the embodiment of taxation without representation. So I called the offices of two Representatives in adjacent districts: Don Beyer (10 years in) and Eugene Vindman (elected last year). The phones were answered (not going to voicemail or even to a “this mailbox is full” message, which happens when I call either of my senators) by actual humans. I thanked them for working through what is really a ratty week, and also asked them to urge their bosses to use their influence to stop this. It was the best I could do in the circumstances, and it’s what I believe the Founders and the Framers intended.

But, fuck—it’s so debilitating to be swimming against the tide in the cesspool that is our government, the creation of those men 249 years ago.

In honor of the congressional staff doing their jobs as diligently and as efficiently as possible, my anthem for Independence Day is “Keep Your Eyes on the Prize”. An old folk song, it became one of the mainstays of the Civil Rights movement. And right now, some days it’s all we can do to just hold on. I'm giving you Mavis Staples singing it.

(YouTube puts an "unsuitable for some viewers" warning on it. WTF?)

©2025 Bas Bleu

 

Burning bright

I don’t know where these hollow candle holders came from; probably IKEA. I love glass candle holders, but it turns out that this design is crap to keep shining, because the wax melts into the base and you have to carefully crack it into pieces small enough to shake out.

Basically, once you’ve burnt your first candles in it, you can’t ever keep it completely clean.

But, for some reason, when you get to the ribbed base of the IKEA candles, you get really beautiful patterns, particularly in the breeze put out by the ceiling fan. For the little I’m sure I paid for them, they were a good design investment.

 

©2025 Bas Bleu

 

Driving thoughts

Time for another round of Vanity Plates in Northern Virginia.

Remember that I have not seen the owners, so I'm just spitballing here. But perhaps a soprano, or a very zaftig woman? 

Princeton grad?

Possibly a narcissist, or maybe a therapist.

An advocate.

Yeah.

Well, duh.

A swimmer...

 

©2025 Bas Bleu

 

Good neighbors

It’s Canada Day—the Canadian national holiday, equivalent to our Independence Day—and it seems only right and proper to consider what good neighbors Canadians are—to us and the entire world. Especially in light of the Kleptocrat’s completely delusional ranting about how mean the Canadians are to him, and his slapping ludicrous tariffs on Canadian products under the completely ludicrous pretense of “national security”. (At time of writing, the 400% tariff is off, but we all know what the life expectancy of any of TACOman’s “policies” is.)

I could get silly and talk about Leslie Nielsen or one of my favorite TV shows of all time, Due South. But I’ve already done that.

And Canadians are way more than wacky comedians and upright Mounties in a cynical American city. They’re even more than mail-order pharmacies and refuges for cabernet-toting discontents fleeing whichever administration gets into office down here.

They are pretty much in every way the kind of neighbor you’d like to have on your street. They don’t throw loud parties, or park huge SUVs in their driveway, or toss their clapped-out washing machines in their weed-infested front yard.

They quietly go about their lives as conscientious citizens of the world, picking up the trash they find (and disposing of it responsibly) and pitching in whenever asked to help set the worst things to rights. They define the term “stand-up guys”.

Three things in particular I’m thinking about:

Teheran, 1979. In the midst of the chaos of the overthrow of the Shah, six American diplomats were given shelter in the Canadian embassy for 79 days, until they could be extracted by a joint Canadian-CIA mission. It was an act of both neighborly kindness and extreme courage for the Canadians to hide the Americans, especially at a time when it was clear that “diplomatic courtesies” didn’t rate high on the Iranian revolutionary priority list.

The Canadians risked personal safety and national policy to help out six Americans, who’d probably been trash-talking hockey teams right up until the embassy takeover. They didn’t hesitate and they didn’t flinch.

My second example of Canadian rectitude is Lt. Gen. Roméo A. Dallaire. Dallaire had just about the worst job of the 1990s: Force Commander of United Nations Assistance Mission Rwanda (UNAMIR), from 1993 to 1996. During the worst genocide of the second half of the 20^th Century, Dallaire commanded forces without resources, with limited remit and  no backing from his political masters. I cannot believe the fortitude of a man who still managed to save thousands of the people under his care.

Although at a terrible, terrible cost. Washington Post reporter Ken Ringle told the story much better than I could, so I’ll let him do it. It was an impossible command, an impossible remit and an impossible expectation. But Dallaire took it on.

I can just picture most American generals after that posting—speaking engagements, management consulting, appearances on talk shows, joining a racist régime and presiding over the destruction of American values. Dallaire went back to Canada, where PTSD led him to a suicide attempt. His big public outing has been to testify at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda against Colonel Théoneste Bagosora, who was subsequently convicted of war crimes. He also advocated for children affected by war—something he’s an expert in.

Canadians at every level have consistently shown their decency and humanity and neighborliness. On September 11^th 2001, ordinary citizens of the small Newfoundland town of Gander opened their homes and their hearts to more than 7000 air passengers and crew whose planes had been diverted to their airport following the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. They fed, housed and cared for the sojourners—as, frankly, they’ve done for more than 150 years.

Canada, after all, was the last stop on the Underground Railroad, where escaping slaves could find the guarantee of freedom and safety that wasn’t available to them in the United States.

In the musical world, Canada has given us Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Gordon Lightfoot, Sarah McLachlan. Imma let Justin Bieber, Celine Dion and Nickelback slide. Their writers include Margaret Atwood (whose The Handmaid’s Tale has taken on new elements of horror as it turned out to be more prescient than we though when she first published it), Michael Ondaatje, Louise Penny, Robertson Davies, Alice Munro.

The entertainment industry has been enriched by (for instance) directors Arthur Hiller, David Cronenberg, Atom Egoyan, Paul Haggis, Ivan Reitman; and actors Nathan Fillion, Nick Mancuso, Genviève Bujold, Dan Ackroyd, Anna Paquin, John Candy, Sandra Oh, Rick Moranis, Raymond Burr, Donald Sutherland, Jim Carrey, Graham Greene, Paul Gross… Canada is where American production companies go to film movies and TV shows that look like the States, but don’t cost like the States. Where would Star Trek: TOS be without William Shatner and James Doohan?

Also, I got two words for you: Tommy Chong.

I cannot express my admiration for the country that produced people like this. You don’t think of them a lot, because good neighbors don’t get in your face. But you’re always really, really glad they’re there.

Also—Canada will never, ever be the 51^st state of the US.

©2025 Bas Bleu

 

Gratitude Monday: Eleven o'clock high

The other day as I was leaving Trader Joe’s, I encountered what could have been a deadly situation.

However, I made it home without being strafed by the enemy squadron. For that I am grateful.

 

©2025 Bas Bleu