Losing My Perspicacity March 28, 2025

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Good morning and Happy Friday! Thanks for starting your day with me today.

Before we get to the news, just a moment to make sure that everyone is taking care of themselves. The deluge of bad news that seems to hit us daily is a lot, and we certainly haven’t hit peak “news” regarding the economy or foreign relations yet. A few days ago, I saw that Europe is encouraging its citizens to stock up on 72 hours worth of supplies, and it strikes me that that’s not a terrible idea for Americans, either. Especially as I’m not sure what remaining skeleton of a federal agency would get that message to us.

Most of all, please practice self-care — a radical act in these times. Part of the plan is to bombard us with attacks on so many norms that we can’t possibly keep up with them all for any length of time. Almost certainly, the Trump administration thinks they can wait us out; that sooner or later we’ll all be exhausted and the protests, letter-writing campaigns, and angry town halls will slow to a trickle. Getting enough sleep, staying hydrated, moving your body to the extent you can, and finding hobbies and community that bring you joy are so crucial to maintaining the fight.

Here’s a great piece from Vice with some good advice on surviving the next 3.8 years.

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Today: Part of America is irretrievably broken: The decimation of HHS will have profound effects on women; Believe it or not, we need to start worrying about Greenland; Another student is kidnapped by ICE; Why so many Max Muncys? and The High Note.

Here we go.

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We are broken

For reasons that make me question my sanity, I’ve been unable to get my ass off of Facebook lately. It’s become the place I go to for politics rants, sharing news stories with the soccer mom crowd, and a place where a lot of organizing takes place. I hate this about myself, especially as Mark Zuckerberg stole my book to feed into his shitty AI machine. Alas, I’m still there.

Worse, I’ve found myself arguing with people in the comments of news stories that pop up on my feed. I know, of course, that this is a terrible idea, that social media comments are posted by some of the worst people imaginable, and that it’s my own fault for going there to begin with. I know all of this.

Still, I can’t help but be appalled and mortified by some of the things I see people say. I always believed we all grew up learning the same basic lessons in life — do unto others as you’d have them do unto you, be kind to those less fortunate than you, root for the little guy over the big guys (wasn’t that why Karate Kid was such a hit?), etc. But it’s become readily apparent in recent years that my belief was naive and ignorant.

I feel no need to blur out these identities as these comments were posted publicly under news stories and visible to all.

Here’s a guy celebrating Anheuser-Busch for pulling out of a Pride parade and calling the LGBTQ+ community “mentally ill.”

Here are a bunch of people who agree with ICE grabbing US students off the streets and shipping them to detention centers without due process:

Here are users railing against trans women and trans girls playing sports:

And Sherri here is celebrating Trump rescinding $153 million in federal funding for Illinois programs for mental health services, fighting addiction and substance abuse, and researching infectious diseases, all because he doesn’t like our governor.

I know what you’re going to say: Those are only a few comments out of millions left on Facebook each day. And you’re right. But check out any news story on social media, and you’ll see far more of these comments than we should be comfortable with. These comments aren’t coming from a few bad apples — they are coming from a large swath of Americans, who seem to embrace cruelty and punishment of those they deem different from themselves.

Here’s Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem posing in front of a clearly overcrowded jail cell in an El Salvadoran prison infamous for its human rights abuses.

I’ve spent plenty of time visiting clients in jail and prison, and I’ve never seen anything like that.

You would think that, given the numerous reports about immigrants who have been shipped off to CECOT mistakenly or based solely on their tattoos (one of which was an autism awareness tattoo), the US government would be doing everything in its power to get these guys out. But they don’t make mistakes. They are never wrong. Even when they’re caught using incredibly hackable messaging apps for coordinating military strikes, they blame someone else. And a wrongfully detained immigrant certainly isn’t on the list of people they ever think about.

And, of course, even amidst the Signal scandal, no one mentions or seems to care that 53 people were killed during the bombing of Yemen, including two women and five children. I guess this is just what we do now.

I remember how initially upset the George W. Bush White House was when the photos from Abu Grahib were released to the public. The administration believed that seeing American soldiers engaged in such acts of degradation, cruelty, and dehumanization of prisoners would turn Americans against the war. And some did turn against it. But a whole segment of Americans shrugged their shoulders and said something like, “Don’t be a terrorist, and you won’t wind up being tortured in a prison.”

Somewhere along the way, we’ve lost the lessons we learned from Sesame Street and Free to Be You and Me. We’ve abandoned what Schoolhouse Rock told us about The Great American Melting Pot and what Mister Rodgers taught us about accepting each other as we are.

I’ll be honest: I don’t know who we are anymore or how to get back to who we at least pretended to be.

We are so, so broken. Worse, we’ve become a nation that celebrates cruelty to others.

The future of women’s health is bleak under Trump

Currently, a woman has been criminally charged for having a miscarriage in Georgia and a midwife in Texas was arrested at gunpoint and (likely falsely) charged with providing abortions to impoverished, Spanish-speaking women. Meanwhile, thousands of trans women have to fear for the availability of their prescription medications. Things are not great for women.

Given this reporting from The 19th, things are about to get much worse.

We are only now starting to realize that, physiologically, women are not simply smaller men. Our brains are different. Women need more sleep. Heart attack symptoms are completely different in women than in men. Obviously, the ability to carry children makes cis women drastically biologically different from cis men.

Yet, women have not been studied to the degree men have. Before 1993, women were rarely included in clinical trials. Perimenopause, the 10 or so years before women reach menopause, is, in my experience, at least on par with puberty (if not pregnancy), yet Gen X was completely blindsided by it, because doctors never mentioned it to our mothers, who never mentioned it to us.

In 2023, Nature reported that medical conditions affecting women received far less funding than those affecting men. This trend, thanks to the Trump administration’s unspeakably cruel “anti-DEI” rules, will only get worse from here.

You guys, I think Trump is serious about Greenland

I can’t believe we have to have this conversation.

Whenever I’ve mused about World War III, I never imagined it would be started by a small, petty man over Greenland. And it’s not lost on me that the United States, in the year of our lord 2025, is threatening the hostile takeover of an autonomous territory. And especially not Greenland. I thought we had come to the conclusion that colonization was bad.

Hey, remember when we used to frown on countries that tried to bully and take over smaller ones? I seem to remember something about Iraq and Kuwait…

Another student grabbed off the street by ICE

Two days ago, it was Rumeysa Ozturk. Yesterday, it was Iranian Alabama doctoral student Alireza Doroudi.

I can’t wait to hear how the “come here the right way” people spin this one, especially as Elon Musk essentially did the same thing, only without alerting anyone.

As I keep saying, they are calling these students “threats to national security” without providing any evidence. And so much of America is buying it. The Trump administration is trying this out on students they believe the public won’t be sympathetic to before arguing they can revoke actual citizenship. They’ll try it out first on Americans with birthright citizenship — just watch.

What is the deal with all the Max Muncys?

This is wild, and I can’t even figure out how this is possible.

Just think of how few people in the world actually make it to the MLB. Then think how few of them are white and American. Then think of how many of those guys are named “Max.” Then “Max Muncy.” With the same birthdate.

The odds have to be astronomical. I feel it’s more likely that there was a glitch in the matrix than that this occurred organically.

The High Note

Each Day, I do my best to leave you with a smile on your face, a song in your heart, and the will to fight another day.

I happened across this incredible site that focuses on good news, called Squirrel News. I highly recommend bookmarking it for when you need to read something positive, even though most of it is happening in Europe. Better there than nowhere, no?

Even though I shared this earlier in the week, it’s so darkly funny that I wanted to make sure everyone saw it.

Finally, here’s an oldie but goodie to make you laugh — Bill Hader doing his Alan Alda impression.

Survive and advance today. Don’t let the bastards get you down.

See you all on Monday.